#but the ego and the subtle ways in which its presented is .. wild.

[wkemeup]

By Any Other Name (16)

series summary: When Special Agent Bucky Barnes is tasked with infiltrating the notorious gang Hydra and gathering evidence against its leader, Brock Rumlow, Bucky finds himself drawn to the woman who doesn’t seem to belong in this world of violence, the wife of the head of Hydra… you. pairing: bucky x reader chapter word count: 6.1k warnings: torture, gun violence, kidnapping, arson, a whole shit show and a wild ride from start to finish i am so very sorry  a/n: to anyone who listens to the series playlist, a reminder that Slow Mover has been on there from the start and the second half of the chorus was a direct warning for this chapter 😅 🌹series masterlist 🌹

This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.

You paced along the small length of a cold, dark office in the back of an old textile factory Brock used to manufacture Cerberus. Heels long forgotten to the top of the table, your bare feet touched on concrete, over small rocks embedded in the ground and the cracks of the floor. They poked and prodded at your skin, weight sinking puncture marks to the balls of your feet. It was something, at least, because with the rushing race of your heartbeat, it was hard to feel much of anything else.

You didn’t know where you were or what happened to James in the blackout. You assumed he was arrested like he was supposed to be, that they made a show of it for the Hydra crewmen in the effort to protect his identity for when this was over. You hoped, anyway. 

But if you knew James - and you knew him well - you didn’t suspect he would comply to much of anything when you were missing and in the company of your husband.

“How in the hell did this happen?!” Brock roared, storming into the office with several men on his heels; Zola, the scientist in a white lab coat with subtle red discoloration along the sleeves, and the two men who held James down in the basement that night as Brock nearly beat him to death, Kohl and Sanzetti.

“I don’t know, sir,” the blonde one, Kohl, replied, to which Brock answered by throwing a right jab straight to his jawline. He staggered backwards, into the filing cabinets as Brock growled at him, almost feral.

“Then why the fuck are you talking!?”

You froze at the corner of the room, watching as your husband cleared the desk of its supplies, aggressively throwing papers and coffee mugs and the computer monitor itself to the floor. You winced as the screen cracked and paper slowly drifted down through the air to land delicately amongst the mess. 

Brock was panting, red in the face, as he leaned against the edge of the desk, gripping at the corners until his knuckles were sheet white.

You’d never seen him like this before; panicked in a corner and lashing out. You would have felt some kind of satisfaction if you weren’t within the crosshairs of his rage.

“I may have some answers for you,” Zola’s mousey voice spoke from the doorway. He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose as Brock shot him a kind of glare that could have killed a man. “If you allow me one moment?”

With that, he disappeared back into the warehouse.

“Fucking hell,” Rumlow grumbled, shaking his head. “You’re all fucking useless.”

Kohl and Sanzetti were talking quietly amongst themselves, eyeing Brock suspiciously; low, murmured voices of men with loyalties to the highest bidder, the man with the most power, and suddenly, Brock didn’t hold that position. 

You watched as your husband started to finger at the weapon strapped to his waist, touching over cold metal like it was a comfort, like he it was an extension of himself, violence at the palm of his hand.

You had to get out of there.

“Brock,” you called, voice dry in your throat, arms folded over your chest protectively as he glared at you for daring to interrupt his brooding. “Maybe I could step outside for a moment? It’s a little cramped in here and—”

“No fuckin’ way, baby,” he shot back, waving his hand at you dismissively. “There could be feds casing this place! You’re not going anywhere. I want you right where I can see you. How else am I supposed to protect you?”

He spat it at you like a threat.

You clenched your jaw until it ached, nodding enough for Brock to divert his attention. He wore a forced smile, a dead kind of look in his eyes that slowly fell away to a cold, hard, nothingness as he stared down at the desk again. He didn’t care to protect you from anything. He was a selfish man at his very core and even with you feeding into his ego, he would throw you to the wolves it meant saving himself.

“You know what I don’t understand? How the hell did the FBI got access to our shipping logs?”

Your lungs burned, like fire had lit a match deep within your chest. Had you stopped breathing?

“That shit’s been under lock and key for decades,” Brock continued as he straightened his back, cracking his neck to the side, “ain’t that right, Sanzetti?”

“Yes, sir.”

Brock gritted his teeth, a sharp exhale from his nose. “So, logically, the only way that information could have been leaked was if the feds had an inside man.”

Sanzetti exchanged a nervous glance with Kohl before nodding slowly. “Yes, sir.”

Brock’s hands suddenly slammed down to the table in a fit of rage, the sharp echo of it startling straight to your chest and skipping over a beat.

“Someone better start talking!”

“I believe I can assist with that, sir.”

Zola appeared in the doorway again, a proud smirk on his face and you took a step forward, cold pavement under bare feet. Zola waved at someone beyond the door and he slid into the room, taking his place at Brock’s side and waited patiently. He glanced up at Brock like he was a man to be admired. It made you sick.

“This better be good, Zola, or a I’m going to—”

A body was thrown to the floor at Brock’s feet, heavy and lifeless, with a black canvas over his head and ropes tied at his wrists. Blood trailed down his neck and onto the concrete. 

You stared at the body, heart in your throat, breaths like fire to your lungs. You swallowed back the scream before it passed your lips.

“What the fuck is this?” Brock snapped, nudging the body with the toe of his wingtips.

“This,” Zola replied, bending down to remove the canvas, “is the man behind Hydra’s undoing.”

The canvas was ripped away, tossed to the far corner of the room and you bit down hard on your cheek. Thick coppery liquid pooled in your mouth as you stared down at the mess of blood matted through dark brown hair, ocean blue eyes shut, unconscious as your husband pushed himself from the desk.

James.

Zola pulled a water bottle from his bag and slowly began unscrewing the lid. He gestured for Kohl and Sanzetti to keep James secure, even amongst the bindings, and he dumped the water onto James’ face.

You dug your nails into your palms, your forearms, your thighs, leaving behind puncture marks you couldn’t feel, even with the red staining to your fingertips. The anticipation was torture, watching the water fall to James’ face, washing away the blood and soaking his hair, until he woke suddenly, coughing violently and flinching away from the stream of water obstructing his breathing.

“Ah, he wakes!” Zola jeered.

James wrestled to his knees, though he didn’t get much further, not with Kohl and Sanzetti holding him down. Wide, panicked eyes shot around the room, catching his bearings, until they landed on you. There was a moment of stillness, a slight relief only long enough to confirm your safety, before he thrashed against his bindings.

There were no more pretenses. There was no cover to protect. It was only survival now.

“What the hell are you going on about Zola?” Brock groaned, watching as James fought against his men, shoving shoulders to knees and grunting in the strained effort. He was unfazed – curious, maybe – at his own right hand bound at his feet, the mark of a traitor branded to his name.

Zola stepped forward, handing Brock a series of photographs. He eyed the short, rounded scientist suspiciously before he snatched the stack of photos from his hands.

From behind your husband, all you could see was the way he tensed upon a single glance down to the evidence in his hands, shoulders melding to stone as he flipped through the pages, a fire in his breath. When the scorch of red touched his ears, a low growl in his chest and a tight clench of his fists along the photographs, you knew this could only end violent and bloody. Brock held little capacity for honor or mercy. He’s killed men for far lesser offenses than this.

Brock tossed the photos to the desk as if they had burned him. Some scattered along the floor, others laid upon the surface. Taken from a distance with an often blurry figure at the center, set in varying locations ranging from the cherry blossoms around D.C. to the streets lined with brownstones in Brooklyn; always the same man in focus.

James.

You stepped forward, touching the image of James in a black suit, a man different than the one before you; shorter hair pushed back away from his eyes, a brightened smile on his face, a youthful glow in his stance. But what drew your attention wasn’t the lightness in his demeanor, the laugh so clearly present on his lips, or the lush of greenery in the background, but instead, the shiny gold badge draped on a thin metal chain around his neck, sitting at the buttons of his jacket.  

Oh God.

“Meet Special Agent James Buchanan Barnes.”

Your knees would have buckled out from under you if it wasn’t for your grip against the desk. Heart stammering, hands shaking, panic running course through your veins, you stared at James from the far end of the room, though he kept his gaze on Brock, hardened features and stone-cold expression. He didn’t bother to deny it.

“FBI, huh?” Brock questioned and Zola nodded slowly. 

“He’s been feeding them information from the start,” Zola confirmed, placing a series of small metal wirings into Brock’s hand. “We swept the house shortly after word of the raid began. He had bugs planted everywhere. Didn’t take long to weed him out as the culprit once I started looking into his history. He was a ghost before taking this job. He didn’t exist two years ago and that... intrigued me. So I tapped into the security footage records from Quantico and well... seems as though he fooled all of us, sir.”

Brock chuckled, low, humorless as he examined the small listening devices in his hand, pushing them around with his finger until he closed his hand to a fist, crushing the bugs and dropping their broken pieces to the floor. He wiped his hand along his thighs as if ridding dirt from his skin.

“I never took you for a traitor,” Brock sneered, slowly pacing along the room, cracking his knuckles out in front of him, making a show of it as he stretched his hands with every click. “I have to say I’m surprised… and well, a little disappointed. We could have done great things together, Karpov – oh, sorry, Barnes.” Brock chuckled to himself. “You were damn good, too. So eager. So willing to do what needed to get done for the glory of Hydra. What a goddamn shame...”

James just stared up at him, allowing the unkept disdain to rise straight to the surface. Jaw clenched, hands to fists though they were tied at the base of his back, skin red and raw under the cut of ropes. He barely even flinched as Brock barreled a closed fist straight to his left cheekbone.

You gasped, hand clamped over your mouth, tears brimming in your eyes from the terror coursing through you, but James was calm, so impossibly still as he slowly turned back up to face Brock.

“Nothing to say for yourself, Agent?”

James spat a glob of thick, crimson blood to the floor, some of it dripping from his lips to his chin. “Go to hell, asshole.”

“Oh, so he can speak!” Brock laughed, though he jumped back abruptly as James grappled against his bindings, lunging towards him only to be pulled back gruffly by the collar of his shirt. He narrowly clamped his teeth around Brock’s hand. “Fuckin’ hell!”

Brock raised a hand, fist clenched and rings reflecting in the dim lighting of the room, and you quickly turned your head before you saw him take the swing. The sound of knuckles to bone was enough; it warped in your stomach, pushed bile up your throat and clamping your jaw was no longer enough.

The adrenaline was seeping through the cracks, tears burning in your eyes, lump throbbing at your throat. You opened your eyes again to see James swaying unsteady on his knees, held by the front of his shirt by your husband as he punched him again and again while his men stood back and watched, while they laughed.

Blood dripped from James’ lips, sliding down his chin, his neck, pooling at the concrete beneath him. You couldn’t watch this again.

You had to do something.

You had to stop this.

“Brock?”

“I’m a little busy, baby,” he grunted, throwing another hit to James’ cheekbone, reopening the long, jagged wound that had healed in the weeks since the basement. The ring on Brock’s middle finger broke through skin and James cried out, shouting as he hunched over, pressing his cheek to his shoulder to stop the bleeding but it only soaked into his shirt. Pools of red in its wake.

“Brock, just—wait!” you tried again, voice shaken.

“Why? You want a turn?”

Wide eyes bore into his as he paused for a moment, looking back at you earnestly, and – dear God – he was serious. Your gaze flashed to his closed fist, staring at the red coating his broken knuckles and dripping down his wrist.

“We should get out of here,” you gasped, desperately avoiding the panic the quickly surged through James’ face, though he kept himself motionless. “Before his friends find us... we should go.”

Even from the corner of your eye, beyond the blood and swelling on James’ face, you could see the confusion, the horror, as the words left your lips. You knew your husband better than anyone else in this room, so you knew there was no scenario where he would allow James to leave this room alive; not unless his own self-preservation outweighed his need for revenge.

So, you’d stay with Brock, go with him far away from this factory, away from James and his team, to corners of the world you’d never see the other half of your heart again. You’d stand by your husband’s side and keep up this disguise for the rest of your life. You’d wear a dozen different masks, staple a smile to your face, and learn to be content – complicit – again. You’d do anything if it meant James survived this.

“Brock,” you whispered, taking another step forward like you were approaching a feral animal, cautious, calculated movements as not to set it off. You slowly reached out to him, close enough to slowly wrap your hands around his and carefully pull him to your grasp. Gentle, tender movements as you held his gaze, the blood of your lover warm on your palms as you guided away the monster’s fist.

“Let’s go,” you urged. “You and me. We’ll get away from all of this. But we have to leave now.”

There was a stillness in Brock, a slow drawl of his eyes as looked from your intertwined hands to your face; a moment of reprieve, maybe something like relief, and he pursed his lips together to a soft smile.

Then, he released James’ shirt and your whole heart fell crashed to the floor; concrete to his jaw, his arms bound behind his back and unable to catch himself. He groaned, withering against the cold of the ground, trying to push himself back to his knees, trying to catch your eye and beg you to stay, beg you not to leave with the same man you’d been desperate to escape from.

“Okay, baby,” Brock cooed, his free hand sliding up your arm, pulling goosebumps like ice and venom along the way until he cupped the side of your face. You held your breath, allowed him to kiss you, push his tongue into your mouth, and you held back tears, realizing you’d kissed James for the last time. Brock had already swept his touch away from you.

You could feel James’ eyes burning on you, desperate, begging, but you couldn’t look at him. The second you did, you knew you’d lose your resolve completely. You couldn’t allow that to happen.

Protect James; the way he protected you, the way he protected Peter. This was how you save him. Go with your husband. Take the life you were dealt and deal with the consequences.

You were prepared to make that sacrifice. Until –

“Just one thing before we go.”

Brock swiftly yanked a pistol from his waistband and in those seconds, your world seemed to move in slow motion; like limbs underwater, pushing against resistance, like you might be able to reach out and stop it in time if you were only faster than time itself.

The barrel pressed to James’ temple.

The unlatch of the safety followed; deafening, echoing.

There was a burning in your lungs long before you realized you were screaming.

“NO!”

You clamped your hand over your mouth, muffling yourself under trembling hands as time came speeding back up to you.

Brock froze, head slowly turning to you with a hardened expression of disbelief, of fury and fire and rage burning behind his eyes; a flicker of something darker hidden in the flakes of green, a realization, maybe, and you were certain a single look could have killed you.

You quickly dropped your hands and closed them to fists at your side to stop the shaking.

“Do we have a problem here, baby?”

There was venom to his voice. He spat the pet name at you like an insult.

You cleared your throat nervously, trying to find your breath but your eyes flickered to James. There was crimson coating over most of his face, the cold barrel of a gun pressed against his temple, and he was watching you, terrified, but never for himself – no, his fear was for you. His drive to protect you was always stronger than that of his own.

It was something you had in common.

“He’s a—a federal agent,” you tried to reason. “You don’t—you don’t want to give them more to charge you with. You kill one of their own and they’ll hunt you down. They won’t stop until they find you.”

Brock’s stare could have torn right through you, unnerving and cold as ice, like blades to your skin as they drew blood right at your heart. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, he lowered the weapon and you exhaled a heavy sigh of relief.

“Fine,” he shrugged, far too calm for the man you knew. He brushed the barrel of the gun against his thigh, examining it up against the light. It was the calm before the storm and you could sense the lightening long before the thunder when his eyes snapped to you. “Why don’t you do it?”

Before you could take another breath, Brock bounded across the room, grabbed a painful grip of your wrist and yanked you towards him. His grasp cut deep into your bones, would surely leave behind bruising and you watched as the marks of his fingers left discoloration in their wake.

He slammed the gun in your hand, cold metal to the burning heat of your palms, forced your arms out straight, pointed the barrel at James.

“Stop,” you gaped as you tried to push out of his grasp but there was no give on his hold; no release as he caged you, forcing a violent weapon to your hands and aimed at the one man you’d give your life for.

“Go on, baby! Shoot.”

You shook your head, trying to squirm out of his hold but it was like fighting with a wall. “Brock, let me go--”

“You wanted to be part of Hydra, didn’t you? This is Hydra, baby! Welcome to the fun!” Brock shouted, a laugh in his voice, amused, as his fingers dug bruises to your shoulders. “Now... shoot him!”

Your hands were shaking, the barrel of the gun swaying in your grasp. Your eyes caught James and you were shocked to find him calm, waiting patiently on his knees. There was a determination there you didn’t quite expect, a simple kind of realization. His gaze pointed down at his left shoulder before it returned to you.

You furrowed your brow.

“What are you waiting for?” Brock grunted. “No one is coming for him. We’ll dump the body before the feds can find us. No one will miss a fuckin’ narc.”

James was staring at you and you could barely make out the blue of his eyes over the swelling, behind the steady stream of blood on his face. He was breathing heavy, gargled, like there was blood in his throat, too, and God, it was worse than that terrible night in the basement. You choked back a cry, trying to bit it down before your husband could see your tears.

You wanted to scream, to run, to use that goddamn gun on Brock himself, but you wouldn’t get more than a few feet before his men took you down. There was no way out of this. James seemed to know that, too, because there was a slight nod of his head, impossibly subtle that not even Brock seemed to notice. You parted your lips in shock as blue eyes flickered to his shoulder again before returning to you.

The realization hit you like a sucker punch to the gut.

No.

“I’m growing impatient, baby,” Brock groaned, squeezing hard at your shoulders and causing you to recoil under the strain of muscle. “If you don’t take the goddamn shot, I will and I’ll make a damn mess of things; might empty the whole clip and I know how you women are about keeping things clean.”

You shivered as the heat of his breath touched your neck, disgust and rage surging through you and you struggled to find your breath.

James nodded at you again. Your heart thunderous in your chest; it pounded in your ears. You could feel the pulse of it in your temples, through your finger tips and you slowly slid your pointer to rest against the trigger.

“Good girl,” Brock praised, his voice laced in a thick, unrelenting poison.

James held your gaze the entire time and you wished you could have known what was running through his head in that moment, because all you could think about was how scared you felt how terrified you were that this was it, that you’d already used up your time with him.

He nodded again, the curve of his lips so soft you almost missed it. That sweet smile of his, the one that convinced you trust him more than a year earlier, the one that lifted the storm clouds and walls you’d surrounded yourself with, the one that you dreamed about at night. It was small and only an ounce of what you knew it to be, but it was there.

“Shoot him, baby,” Brock urged in your ear, but his voice was distant, muffled, because you kept your focus on James, on the sense of calm on his face, the trust in his eyes.

Brock was miles away when you were with James.

You took a deep breath, and on the exhale, you pulled the trigger.

There was barely anytime to watch as the bullet tore through the fabric of James’ shirt, as the impact nearly knocked him over, as the blood splattered out onto the white walls behind him, dripping down in deep crimson stains. 

Hands shaking violently as the weapon was pulled from your grip, you couldn’t look away as James’ eyes started to lose focus, how they drifted away from your own, and started to flutter, how he could hardly hold his head up.

You barely registered the push of angry hands shoving you to the door, a painful grip on your wrist, bones crackling under the touch as James slumped down to the floor. Your body was not your own as it was dragged on unsteady; a vicious ringing in your ears and a muffled voice shouting at you with malice laced in his tone.

Vision tunneling. Blurry. No – tears in your eyes. You nearly tripped over something on the floor, foot catching on something heavy and it took a moment before you realized it was James’ body Brock dragged you over.

You glanced back in horror, unable to pry Brock’s grip from around your wrist, to find blood pooling around James as he struggled to find his breath. The bare of your feet touched over warm, slippery crimson as Brock shoved you forward; red footprints in your wake.

Brock turned abruptly at the door, swinging you sharply behind him, and fired his weapon in two consecutive shots; ones that were muffled to the ringing in your ears as Kohl and Sanzetti fell to the floor, vagrant stares in their eyes and bullets lodged deep into brain tissue. You barely flinched, your focus solely on James.

He wasn’t moving, his gaze fixing on the wall far beyond you.

The pool of red under him was growing.

“You wanted to go, baby?” Brock sneered, yanking painfully on your hand, his rings cutting into your skin and you felt something pop. “Let’s fucking go!”

Red and blue lights flashed into the building and Brock cursed loudly, dragging you along as he sprinted to the back of the factory. James disappeared from your view and all you were left with were the bloody prints on the bottom of your feet.

The cold air slammed to you like a wall, shivers trembling up your spine, rocks and dirt to the bottom of your feet as Brock led you through the wooded overcast of trees running along the property. It was too dark back where you were, the street lights barely illuminating the front of the factory, let alone the long, winding, dirt path at its rear.

Police cars were parked by the entrance, lights flashing, men and women in uniform with weapons attached to their hips, some in their hands, as they slowly entered the building. You wanted to scream, to beg for help, but you knew the second you did, it would divert their attention to you and they might not reach James in time. You couldn’t allow that to happen.

Branches poked at your sides, scraping your skin and leaving prickles of blood in their wake; stones puncturing at your bare feet, leaves and dirt sticking to the mess of blood drying underneath. You nearly tripped over an exposed root before Brock shoved you up against a tree, hand slamming down over your mouth as a patrol car zoomed by up along the road.

No one saw you.

No one would.

At the end of the tree line was an unmarked car sitting alone in an empty parking lot. Brock pushed out ahead of you, pulling a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the vehicle. You paused, staring at him, wondering why the hell he had a getaway car stash out a mile away from the factory.

“Get in the goddamn car,” he growled, yanking your hand like you were a child and whipping you around the trunk. Your hip slammed to the rear lights and you let out a whimper, though Brock paid it no mind.

He shoved you to the passenger seat, slammed the door behind you. He slid over the engine and dropped in behind the wheel himself. Headlights off, he threw the shift into drive and drove away like it was nothing at all, like there weren’t dozens of policemen and SWAT teams and FBI patrolling the area.

The low vibration of the engine was deafening. Your hands were shaking in your lap so you tried to curl them to fists, nestle them under your thighs, but nothing seemed to make it stop. Dried blood on your feet, ringing still burning in your ears, and you turned your attention to the side of the road, watching the blur of trees out the passenger window.

You tried not to think of James.

Along the way, you must have lost track of time, because you were suddenly pulling into the driveway at the end of your estate. You’d lost nearly twenty minutes just staring out the window, lost within the ringing and the panic in your veins, and you stared up at the home with narrowed eyes.

“What are we doing here?” you asked, turning to Brock suspiciously. “This will be the first place the feds will come looking for you. We should--”

You bit down on your tongue because beside you, Brock was laughing to himself. Chin to his chest, wide smile pushing at his cheeks, like he was genuinely amused. It wasn’t a look you saw on him often. It was... unsettling.

“Brock?”

He looked up at you, crooked smile on his face, as his right hand slowly slid up your arm and nestled along your neck, fingers scratching at your scalp and they interwove into your hair. It was an intimate gesture, a tender one, and you tried to fight against how quickly you tensed up, how your muscles conformed to stone, but you knew he could feel it.

“We should go,” you tried again, voice low, cracking in the effort. Your throat was dry, like sandpaper.

He only smiled back at you, though it didn’t touch his eyes. Something was wrong.

Your heart started to pick up in pace, your breath becoming shallow.

“You can stop pretending, baby. It’s just the two of us now.”

His hand gripped tight to your hair, pulling out strands and a yelp from your lungs, and he slammed your head to the dashboard. Once, twice, until darkness came in and washed you away.

***

You woke to the smell of gasoline.

It burned in your nose, the tang of it bitter on your tongue, pushing down into your lungs with a sharp intake of breath. You started to cough, violent and dry heaves as you tried to find clean air, and that was when you felt the resistance at your wrists.

Vision still tunneled, unforgiving darkness, like you were looking through the thin fabric of a black mask, you found your wrists bound to a single, wooden chair; tied down primitively with electrical wires. You tugged against it, only for it to rub raw into your skin, digging deep into the crevices, pulling a hiss from between your teeth. You tried to push forward but there was a series of wiring wrapped at your chest, holding your shoulders to the back of the chair.

“Welcome back, baby.”

Snapping your eyes abruptly to the sound of the sudden voice, you saw Brock sitting on the corner of the couch, stretched back into the arm rest with a cigar in his hand, legs crossed over one another.

“Guess I knocked you out a bit too hard, huh?” he snickered as he started to light the end of his cigar. “You figure out where we are yet?”

Your head was throbbing, black spots covering most of your vision, but they were slowly fading away. You could make out the soft blue color of the couch he was sitting on, the coffee table with stained rings upon the wood in the shape of old mugs, the greenery hanging by the windows, the colorful bindings of hundreds of novels lining the shelves surrounding you.

A room that had held you safe for so many years. Four walls that shielded you from Hydra’s claim. A place where you could be yourself without fear of repercussions, where you found respite and grew to love a man who now laid in a pool of his own blood miles away.

Your library.

“Ah, there it is,” Brock jeered, taking a long drag from the cigar, his wet, cracked lips circling around the wrapper as he inhaled. He held your eye as you stared at him, wide and stunned, before he removed the cigar and slowly blew the smoke to your face. The thick cloud of grey touched your skin and the bitterness of it stung in your lungs as you tried to cough it away.

“What the hell are you doing, Brock?” you rasped, chest burning from the smoke and the sting of gas in the air. There was a container at his feet, a bucket filled high with thick, dark liquid, and you could see his reflection in.

“Getting justice,” he replied with a shrug.

“Justice?” you scoffed, rolling your eyes. “Are you insane?!”

The mask you’d worn was long cracked and dismembered to pieces at your feet. There was no hiding your distain, no reason to pretend that your relationship was anything other than hostage and captor; certainly not with the wires binding you to a chair and the blinding pulsing in your head from where he’d knocked you out cold.

“Maybe,” he shot back with a sickening grin. He waved the cigar at you, eyes trailing over your body, the hem of your dress riding up high on your thighs in the struggle. He smirked. “I see you’ve decided to drop the act, as well.”

“Oh, fuck you,” you spat, rolling your eyes.

“Ouch. That stings,” Brock whined, hand mockingly clutching at his heart. “Didn’t know you were so unhappy, baby. I gave you the world, didn’t I?”

“You took everything from me, you fucking asshole!” you shouted, voice raw and hoarse. “You forced me from my career, from my friends. You stole my money, my inheritance, my—my freedom! You tricked my sixteen-year-old cousin into a goddamn drug trafficking ring and threatened to beat him within an inch of his life! You kept me locked up in this house for years and tied me to your arm at those miserable fucking parties like I was some accessory you could show off for a few hours before you threw it back to storage! You destroyed my life!”

“Funny,” Brock chuckled, completely unfazed. “I recall you signing the marriage certificate yourself. No gun to your head or anything.”

You shook your head, chest heaving with heavy, painful breaths. “You lied to me. You used me.”

Brock only shrugged, a slight purse of his lips as he tapped the end of the cigar and grey ashes fell to the cushions of your couch.

Your stomach was heavy, lined with stones; your gaze focused on the muddied imprint on the tips of his shoes, the dried blood on the soles of his feet, the same blood that stained your bare skin, where you’d left footprints behind.

James’ blood.

“We could’ve had it all, baby,” Brock sighed, taking another drag from the cigar. He blew the smoke to the ceiling. “You and me. We could have ruled Hydra together. You could have been my queen.”

He paused, a heavy sigh as a cloud of thick, grey smoke passed by his lips. The cigar twirled around his fingers as if manipulated by string.

“But you just had to go and start fucking my hitman, didn’t you?”

It was the full force of a train whipping along the outer curves of a mountain, plummeting you to frozen rapids amongst the free fall. Ice water to your chest, in your veins.

The hardened glare slipped from your features, replaced by widened eyes, parted lips gaping in the shock of it, panic and fear; exactly what your husband wanted from you. He wanted you afraid, trapped. It was how he always wanted you.  

You couldn’t find your breath, much less your voice, so all you could do was watch as Brock pushed himself up from the couch and started to pace along the room. He slid his fingers along the shelves, pulling books by their bindings and watching as they fell to the floor, open pages stepped on by muddied wingtips.

“You know,” he drawled, picking up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, examining it as he flipped through the pages before he tossed it over his shoulder. You winced as it hit the ground. “I never understood your obsession with this room.  All these old, boring books written by old, boring people; thousands of dollars of my fortune... wasted on fairytales.”

Your stomach was still lodged in your throat, hands gripping painfully at the arms of the chair. Your wrists were raw, red, and there was a burning sensation there, a tingling, and you realized the wires had cut through your skin, dipped in blood. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as the pounding of your heart in your chest, your ears, down to your fingertips and toes.

“You spent so much time in here. Figured it must be something special…. but it’s just another fuckin’ room,” Brock continued, passing by the series of plants hanging by the windows.

In one swift motion, he grabbed a pot hanging from the ceiling and threw it across the room. You flinched, the shock of it forcing several skips in your already racing heart, as it collided against the wall and shattered to the floor; a cloud of dirt circling into the air above it.

Behind you, Brock snickered as he began kicking over the plants behind you, tipping them from their place on the windowsill and dumping them from the shelves. Flowers and greenery amongst the dirt and pieces of broken ceramic, lying on the floor as he dug his heels to the roots, smashed the petals under his wingtips and kicked at the remains.

You could hear the floorboards under his feet whine as he paced behind you but you kept your gaze forward, not daring to turn around. He paused then, a heavy exhale as he turned his attention to the couch, smirking from behind your shoulder.

"You fuck him in here, too?”

You bit on your tongue, tears burning in your eyes you could no longer contain.

“Huh?!” Brock bounded across the room, thunderous steps and he gripped ahold of your shoulders until you yelped, turning away from him as best you could. “You fuck that traitorous son of a bitch in my house?!”

You recoiled as he screamed to your ear, eyes closing shut as tears slipped down over your cheeks. Brock chuckled to himself as he pulled away, pleased by your reaction and he wiped his hands on his thighs, as if to rid you from his touch.

Despite the bindings, you were shaking; hands trembling, breaths labored and uneven, jaw clenched impossibly tight to stop the chattering. You weren’t made for this the way Natasha was, or Sam, or Steve, or James. You weren’t an agent of the FBI. You weren’t trained as an army ranger or learned how to withstand torture the way James did that night in the basement. Brock hadn’t even raised a hand to you and you were in pieces.

You were a literature professor at Columbia. This wasn’t your world.

“I don’t know how long you knew he was a fed but frankly, I couldn’t give a shit at this point.” Brock bit the cigar between his teeth, holding it steady as he knelt down in front of you. His breath was sour, like old smoke and day-old bourbon, and you flinched as his fingers reached up and grabbed a sharp hold of your jaw. “All I know, is that you were in on this somehow. You gave me up. Didn’t take long to figure that out once our buddy James was lying bloody on that floor and you wouldn’t let me kill the bastard myself.”

You swallowed, trying to pull yourself from his grasp, but his fingers dug in further.

“I was surprised at first,” he continued, words garbled from the cigarette nestled at his lips as he ran his free hand through your hair, “but then I remembered how Karpov volunteered to take a beating for that punk ass cousin of yours. I remembered how you reacted that night in the basement, how you begged me to stop and I realized... he did it for you, didn’t he?”

Your blood ran cold. You couldn’t speak.

“It opened my fucking eyes, baby!” Brock shouted right to your ear, causing you to flinch. “All those times he was watching you from the corner of the room? Shit, I thought it was harmless. The guy wanted to fuck you. So what? Half my men get themselves off to the thought of it. But him? No... this was different. That fucking moron actually fell for you... and you know what is so goddamn funny about it all? You fell for him, too, right under my fuckin’ nose.”

Tears were openly sliding down your cheeks, touching onto Brock’s fingers as he held your jawline in place, forcing you to look him in the eye. His stare was of ice, heartless, a vicious envy in the green of his eyes.

A single beat. And then, “imagine how fun it was for me to force you to shoot him.”

“You’re a monster.” It came out broken, harsh and aching. Images of James lying still and bloody on the floor of that factory haunting you as you closed your eyes.

“Yeah?” Brock chuckled humorlessly. “At least I’m not dead.”

Cold, unforgiving eyes stared back at you; seething, red.

And yet it ignited something in you.

“James Barnes,” you started slowly, finding strength in his name as you stared to the eyes of the devil, “is ten times the man you will ever be.”

You waited, watched as Brock’s mouth curved up to a smirk, baring teeth behind dry, cracked lips, and you spat.

He flinched at it landed on his cheek, wet and dripping down his jaw. He started to laugh as he wiped it away, flicking away the saliva to the floor and wiping the rest on his suit pants.

“Was.”

You narrowed your eyes. “What?”

“You mean ‘was,’ as in past tense,” Brock jeered, planting his hands on your forearms, face inches from yours. “James Barnes was ten times the -- blah blah blah. You killed him, baby... or did you forget?”

No.

No, you shot him in the shoulder, right where he told you. You were certain of it. It was a clean shot.

But there was so much blood. There shouldn’t have been so much blood...

God, why was there so much blood?

You weren’t trained like he was. You weren’t an expert marksman like Natasha. You could have missed without realizing it. You could have shot two inches to the right and hit an artery. He could have bled out alone in that room before the cops got to him in time. He couldn’t actually be–

Your heart rate started to pick up, thunderous and burning a lump in your throat. Breathing coming in uneven, rushed, shallow, and you looked up to Brock with wide eyes, only to find him turning his back to you, slowly making his way to the bucket by the couch.

“His friends aren’t coming for you,” he taunted, picking up the container of gasoline and dumping a steady stream onto the couch beside you. You held your breath, trying to turn away from the stench of it, but it was too powerful. Brock only laughed.

“You think that because you were his plaything that they’ll give a shit about you? You’ve been a part of Hydra from the start, baby! You stood in the shadows and watched from your fuckin’ ivory tower! You knew everything that was going on in this house and you kept your mouth shut like the good little girl you are!”

You shook your head, panting because your breaths were coming in faster than you could take in air. “You threatened me! You threatened my family!”

“You were still complicit to hundreds of crimes,” Brock shrugged, dragging the container around the room and spilling puddles of gasoline along the hardwood floors. “You are Hydra, baby, whether you like it or not. You are not worthy of redemption. You are not better than me. You are and always will be Hydra to those feds and they will leave you to BURN!”

There were splinters in your palms from how tight you were holding the edge of the arm rests. Your whole body was rigid, like stone, as you watched Brock douse the shelves filled with priceless books, first editions and cherished copies, with gasoline.

He always held a resentment for this room; the fact that you had a place within the cold, unforgiving nature of this home to feel safe in. It mocked him, infuriated him, that he couldn’t control every ounce of relief and happiness you were allowed in this world. You’d found that for yourself outside of him. In this room. In James. In yourself.

And he was going to set fire to it all.

“Brock,” you choked out, terrified, “wait.”

“I think I’ve waited long enough,” he shot back, tossing the rest of the gas onto the plants behind you, letting it seep along the floorboards. He threw the empty container to the side of the room, against the bookshelves to your left and pulling down several novels along with in. They splashed into the gas, their pages soaking in the fuel.

“Don’t do this,” you begged, voice barely above a whisper, too lost, too broken behind the lump in your throat. You tugged against the bindings, fighting the restraints, until blood dripped down your wrists and stained the hardwood floors beneath you.

Brock winked as he leaned on the door frame, pulling the cigar from between his teeth and blowing out a cloud of smoke. One final drag before he flicked it to the floor, almost in slow motion as it spun and twisted in the air.

It landed amongst the gas, and then, it burst into flames.

[jinruihokankeikaku]

Classpect analysis for a Witch of Mind?

This is a really interestin one, though I’m startin to feel as though I say that a8out all of them ::::p Here u go!! Sorry bout the nearly three-wweek delay, there’s 8een some small technical difficulties ::::p

Title: Witch of Mind

Title Breakdown: One who actively manipulates [bends the rules of, mutates, transforms, innovates through] Mind [super-ego, law, justice, decision-making, dialogue, free will]

Role in the Session: Here we have a cool, restrained Aspect combined with a wild and rebellious Class. The resulting Role is one of skillful navigation of minds and systems, a Hero capable of bending the rules as far as they can be bent without buckling under the pressure. Their Role is to transform Mind (literal minds, as well as dialogue, law, and justice, et al.) into the form that their session requires of it, and as such they are granted a vast quantity of Aspect-related power from the start. The challenge presented to them by the Game is an ethical or normative one, rather than a practical one – that is to say, they are challenged to use their abilities to further the good of the team, rather than to pursue their own ends, despite the temptation inevitably presented by such significant power.

The form that this power will take is, of course, peculiar to the Aspect of the Witch in question – in this case, the Witch of Mind. Mind is often associated with telepathy, in addition to its more symbolic domains, and the various capacities of the Witch of Mind can be extrapolated from this. As someone who breaks and bends the rules of the Mind, the Witch can invade minds with ease, planting ideas and suggesting courses of action either through brute-force invasion of the psyche or through more subtle verbal and conversational manipulation. With enough practice, the Witch could ultimately bend masses of people or beings to their will – a dangerous power indeed. Their Quest will require them to use their power with a moral sensibility, not merely wreaking their will upon the weak masses of consorts (or worse yet, their co-players) but rather subtly shifting the prejudices and decision-making processes in those who are unjust, awakening within them the same sense of justice that burns within their own Mind.

In addition to the temptations that all Witches face, the Witch of Mind must also contend with the challenges peculiar to their Aspect, Mind. Mind players have a tendency to lapse into indecision, and become fixated on the process of decision-making to the point of failing to decide at a crucial moment. A Witch of Mind may struggle with the temptation to estrange themselves from their friends and from the game to pursue their own “masterminding”, which despite their intellectual capacity would indubitably undermine team cohesion, and diminish the odds of a successful session. Witches are an extremely Active class, and as a result can be drawn towards solitary pursuits at the team’s expense – something the Witch and their co-players should make every effort to avoid. To this end, a Blood player, especially a Seer of Blood, could serve as effective counsel to the Witch, ensuring that the Witch’s telepathic wrath is directed away from their co-players and otherwise supporting an effective and well-organized team. In terms of enhancing the psychic maelstrom of the Witch’s powers, I can think of no better co-player than a combat-oriented Light-bound Role; perhaps a Prince or a Knight, with whom the Witch could orchestrate devastating psionic tactics.

Opposite Role: The Seer of Heart, a Role which both deeply conflict with the Witch’s ethos but could also serve as a crucial counterbalance to the Witch’s knack for wreaking psychic havoc. The Seer of Heart is uniquely capable of espying the best possible course of action based on their personal, essential viewpoint – their soul (or Heart) if you will. This, of course, contrasts drastically with the Witch’s personal beliefs and capacities – the Witch of Mind is a Role oriented towards altering and bending every possible course of action, and just as Heart bends asymptotically towards “pure subjectivity”, so too does Mind bend asymptotically towards “pure objectivity”. The core of the Witch’s powers undermines the core of the Seer’s, and the Seer’s subjective, emotive wisdom clashes rather intensely with the Witch’s strange concoction of impersonality and impetuousness. The Witch will change what they feel they must change, regardless of what they have been told; and so will the Seer hold fast to their understanding of their essence regardless of the Witch’s meddling.

God Tier Powers

Mind is the Personal-Associative Aspect, and its domains, as mentioned above, include psychic/psionic/telepathic effects, thought, contemplation, justice, self-control, and free will. The Witch is the Active Manipulation Class, with a great deal of raw power accompanied by dark temptations towards the worst inclinatons of their Aspect – in this case, callousness, isolation, manipulativeness, and indecision. With these things in mind, here are a few concepts for powers that an Ascended Witch of Mind might wield…

Mindbender: Fueled by the sway of their Aspect, the Witch of Mind will, once Ascended, be capable of telepathy and psychic manipulation on a vast scale, even without any inborn psionic talent. By channeling Mind, the Witch can perceive and alter people’s potential future actions – that is, their thoughts. While of course direct mind-control in the fashion of everyone’s favorite cerulean thief is a possibility, this ability is better deployed as a series of subtle nudges, relatively minor suggestions, as opposed to such an egregious violation of personal autonomy. Of course, psychic suggestion is hardly more ethical, but it’s certainly more subtle, so the wise Witch will wield this with caution.

Mastermind: By directing their power inward and altering their own thoughts, the Witch of Mind can greatly accelerate the process of strategizing and plotting. By making the web of their various potential futures and decision-points manifest on a sensory (or extrasensory) level, they can acquire something vaguely resembling self-awareness. This isn’t a shortcut to actual wisdom or experience, but directly modifying one’s own thoughts and memories is a rather useful way to both evade the attention and aggression of psychic enemies, and is more broadly a handy “reset” button for when every avenue appears exhausted – just slightly bending a decision-point can radically alter a potential timeline, as the Witch will no doubt quickly learn.

No Luck Required: Despite its fatalistic slash deterministic window-dressing, the Game does seem to rely to some extent on RNG. An Ascended Witch of Mind can bypass such randomosity with ease, essentially rendering fixed what would otherwise be left to chance. The power of Mind cannot alter Fate, at least not alone, but where there is room for deviation, the Witch of Mind can exploit it, ensuring that their schemes remain unhindered by the inconvenient intervention of dicey cosmic forces.

Personality: Between the Witch’s exuberance and the tendency among Mind players toward debate and dialogue, the Witch of Mind is likely to be rather sociable – hence the emphasis on the fact that the Witch isolating or recusing themselves being an unhealthy state of narrative development. They’re likely to fancy themselves some sort of academic, investigator, or advocate, and this isn’t empty bravado – a Witch of Mind will almost certainly be “intelligent” in most conventional senses of the word. They’ll also have a strong and stable, if idiosyncratic, sense of justice; though lawful by nature, perhaps, that set of laws which the Witch adheres to may be dated, futuristic, or simply alien – abstracted, certainly, from the legal norms of the moment in which they live. Their mind is their greatest strength and their greatest weakness, and their spreading and spiraling patterns of thought will render this terribly apparent – in the event that the Witch succumbs to temptation, they’re likely to see it as a right and justified course of action, and be an active participant in the series of unfortunate events, rather than merely a naïve tagalong. In order to avoid this “bad ending”, the Witch must take the time to think deeply about their personal morals and ethics, despite the discomfort they might feel at confronting their true self behind the layers of performance and (engineered or inadvertent) deception.

Songs

Pups to Dust by Modest Mouse

Birth of Serpents by the Mountain Goats

Cool James by Harvey Danger

~ Thanks for the ask!! I hope you found this analysis enjoya8le and/or informativve; do let me knoww if you havve any other questions ::::>

~ P L U R ~

[mysweetestcreature]

Something New

A/N: this is something of a passion write I had been working on during finals week back in May. Special thanks to my betas, @cherryyharryy and @meetmeinthehallwayhs for helping me through this :D

Word Count: 4.6k 

Warnings: some smut

Summary: Harry may have just found his new muse.

***

     The walls in Harry’s apartment are paper thin.

     He’s roused awake by the rattling of his keys on the table beside him. His heavy lids force apart, and he half expects to be blinded by the morning sun. Instead, he’s met with a skyline painted a dark navy with hints of orangey-yellow peeking from the bottom. Wiping the crustiness away from his thick lashes, he’s able to decipher the time and place. The clock on his right reads 4:21 AM in large, red figures that sting his eyes with their intense vibrancy. He can’t help but wonder who in their right mind would be awake this early and let alone have the energy to cause such a commotion at such a dreadful hour.

     A subsequent snort sounds from the back of his nose. The sleepiness he had felt when he’d gone to bed is quickly stripped away, but ever present with the unwillingness of his limbs to make themselves useful. He turns to lay down on his back and stares at the ceiling. It’s far earlier than he’s used to, but now his mind is running wild with thoughts that will surely bother him throughout the day. Like how he may or may have not forgotten to give his mum a ring like he said he would after he had gotten home from the club, or that he can’t recall whether he had given Niall his cousin’s number (Niall has a bit of a crush on her, although she doesn’t seem to be all that interested) while he was drunk and dancing to Cher’s Believe. Come to think of it, he isn’t even sure how he’s managing not to drift off considering he had only gotten in a little less than three hours ago.

     It takes longer than he would ever care to admit, but Harry is finally able to convince the rest of his body to leave the warmth of his sheets. The hairs on the back of his neck rise as his feet come in contact with the creaky wooden floorboards. He lifts off the mattress with a little jump, and it’s then the frigid air from the open window collides with his bare chest.

     He moves into the bathroom with dallying steps ­­–– after all, time seems to be on his side today –– that cease once he reaches the outside of the tub. He feels behind the other side of the curtain for the faucet, and it elicits the faintest whine as he turns the water on. 

     Once inside, he lets out a relieved sigh as the hot pellets land on his back and massage every inch of his skin. He stands with his arm outstretched and braced against the cool tiles with his head hung low, wet hair falling heavy in front of his eyes with water streaming from the ends.

     His other hand slowly slides down his body, starting from the butterfly tattoo on his abdomen leading south. He swallows hard as the tips of his fingers are tickled by the coarse hairs of his pubic bone. They move further down and wrap around his semi-hard cock one at a time. He hisses when he gives it a generous squeeze, bucking his hips forward on reflex. He begins to tug on himself, each proceeding breath becoming more staggered than the last.

     The tip of his member screams with a rose-flushed red. Each drop of water feels like electricity jolting each nerve in his body from dormancy. He shuts his eyes tight, leaning back against the wall as he jerks himself off in a quick but steady rhythm.

     There’s the slightest twinge of guilt that consumes just a part of his brain, but the larger part craves for the ultimate bliss of a much needed release. His other hand moves down to his aching balls. They feel tight as he rolls them with his palms, each stretch of the skin making his toes curl and creating a squeaking noise that echoes in the acoustics of the room.  

     He fantasizes being able to fuck his cock between a pair of supple breasts. How the mixture of sweat and his excitement allow for him to thrust through the tight valley with ease, far enough so that the head is just able to be sucked into her greedy mouth. Her expert tongue licks over him like a lollipop. Its underside brushes along his slit, and he’s unable to constrain himself from bucking forward and feeling the back of her throat. She gags on him, bolstering his ego. The vibrations of her lips cause a ripple of shocks to spread across the surface of his skin and startle his very core.

     “Fuck me,” he moans shakily as his knees begin to grow unsteady. His movements become more desperate, and he finds his mind drifting to filthier, more sinful thoughts that will surely reserve him a special place in hell. He imagines pushing into a mouthwatering pussy, drenched in the sweetest juices that takes every single inch of him until the slap of his skin against hers drowns out their husky and panting voices. The way her walls clasp around him, keeping him as deep within her nearly draws the cum from his taut balls and drives him closer and closer to seeing the blinding stars behind his lids. She screams out his name like a sacred hymn, looking up at him with lustrous eyes with each fluid roll of his hips against hers.

     He fists his cock aggressively for a while longer before his body begins to spasm as creamy ribbons progress out of him like an active stream. His lungs burn as they fill with the humidity around him. He twists the pointed end of the faucet, finally being allowed to breathe again under the frigid rush.

***

     Harry emerges from the bedroom half an hour later in a pair of well-fitting grey slacks with a crisp, gentle lavender button-up on top. He mindlessly goes through the task of making himself a cup of dark roast coffee and putting together a bowl of Corn Flakes with sliced bananas and half a cup of almond milk splashed on top. Sometimes, he likes to simply listen to his teeth as they crunch down on the grains until it slithers down his throat.

     There’s the screech of a chair against the floor that sounds from the apartment next door. He hadn’t even realized that it was being occupied until this moment. The people that used to live there, a train conductor called Emmitt Pearlstein and his eighty-year-old mother, had moved out only a few months ago.

     (To be honest, he’s still feeling a bit guilty for having never accepted any of their dinner invitations. But it’s not entirely his fault! He heard from Susan and Kelly from downstairs that all the food was blended since Mrs. Pearlstein refuses to get herself a new pair of dentures.)

     Maybe he’ll introduce himself when he gets a day off...whenever that will be. It is wedding season after all! And he’s booked for client meetings and events until the end of May. Harry is a photographer, and as circumstance have proven, one that is very in demand. The pay is more than decent to substantiate his current lifestyle ­­–­– i.e. pay his rent, put gas in his car, and set aside a few extra pounds for leisurely spending on a rainy day because Gucci isn’t cheap, after all!

     He slurps up the leftover milk in his bowl before rinsing it out in the sink. He checks his watch, 7:54, which gives him more than enough time to check-in at the office before touching base with the bride and groom (separately, as old school superstition dictates) staying at the hotel across town for some pre-ceremony pictorials with the entourage.  

     As he locks up behind him, his ears perk at the sound of the elevator’s ding just around the corner. Taking giant leaps, his tripod and camera case swinging over his shoulders, he’s able to thrust his hand through the slimming crack of the doors. There’s a girl inside, large chocolate brown sunglasses covering nearly half her face.

     “Morning,” he greets, nodding at her politely as he steps in. He pushes the already lit up lobby level button out of habit and waits patiently as the doors attempt at yet another close.

     On the reflection of the walls, he notices how she averts her gaze from looking anywhere but her suede ankle boots, and it’s as though she’s designated her position to be cramped up in the corner as far away from him as possible. Harry dips his nose close to his collar and takes a subtle whiff. Between his cologne and his botanical rain fabric softener, he thinks he smells pretty damn fantastic.

     The stiffness in the enclosed quarters makes the ride down from the fifteenth floor feel slower than real time. All that’s able to keep him engaged is the toe-tapping tune playing softly through the speakers. He gives the situation the benefit of the doubt, assuming that she’s not yet had her morning coffee or really is just very shy around strange men she encounters on the lift.

     A sniffle suddenly erupts between them, and Harry glances back up at her reflection just in time to see the tips of her fingers disappear underneath her glasses. He digs into his back pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. “Here,” he gives her a small sympathetic smile that nearly wavers when she looks up at him. “I’m sorry if I’m...if I’m intruding or anything.” He trips nervously on his words as they spill out. “I just thought you could-”

     “Thank you,” her voice is grateful but weak, as though she’s thoroughly tired out each cord, but the way it vibrates through his ears leaves him at a loss for words. She takes the handkerchief from him and pushes it under the frames of her shades and dabs gently. It’s then he sees her puffy red-rimmed eyes. They make contact with his, in a flicker that he isn’t sure ever occurred.

     His curiosity gets the better of him as he tries again for a better look when the bell rings signaling that they’ve arrived at the lobby. She nods at him, grinning faintly as she makes her way towards the glass door exit. It leaves Harry standing in the shaft to gape at the ghost of her trail.

     As soon as he steps out to follow, the doorman, Martin, stops him.

     “Harry, my man!” he exclaims, patting him on the shoulder a little too harshly. “Off to work, already? It’s what...” He glances down at his watch but soon his brows furrow, and he taps on the glass to get it start again. Typical Martin is all Harry can think as he rolls his eyes.

     “I could’ve sworn I just changed the battery on this! Last time I’ll ever get a fix behind a T.K. Maxx...” he grumbles, shaking his head as he continues to scold himself.

     “I told you, there’s a decent place around the corner. Cheap replacement. You’re in and out in ten minutes tops, mate,” Harry says.

     Only momentarily does he allow his eyes to wander back to the door and scan across the windows of the entrance.

***

     “Alright, I want big smiles from the lot of you,” Harry instructs the newlyweds and their families as they stand in front of the altar. “C’mon, Dad, I know you can do better than that.” The father of the bride sneers at him before begrudgingly offering the camera a minimal show of his teeth. “And...” Harry snaps a few shots, two with flash and three without. “Beautiful! Greatly appreciate it.”

     The rest of the guests pack into their cars as they move the celebration to the reception venue, leaving only Harry and the wedding party to take pictures in the church. As he’s packing up his camera and tripod, he feels someone tap him on the shoulder. He zips up his tripod before turning around.

     “Hi!” He’s met immediately with a flowy maroon skirt that nearly touches the marble floor before he trails his eyes up to find a face. It’s one of the bridesmaids, the one who had lit the candle, he thinks. He’d noticed her earlier while she proceeded down the aisle, and he definitely didn’t miss the way she looked at him while he took candid pictures of the ceremony.

     He smirks as he stands up. “Hey.”

     She leans in close to him, her breath tickling the shell of his ear as she whispers something naughty which he’s sure the guy upstairs won’t appreciate in his sanctuary. But fucking hell does this girl have a mouth on her. She backs away slowly, a mischievous grin spread across her plump lips.

     “I’ll see you later then, yeah?” she confirms as she pivots on her heel, glancing over her shoulder.

     This is a normal thing for him, as ill-sounding as it is. He’s twenty-five, single, and has a job that just so happens to put him in a position where he’s surrounded by boatloads of women on high-level emotional limbo because the effects of weddings make them more vulnerable and wanting some intimacy until an inevitable hangover dawns upon them the next morning. And hey, he’s only human and admittedly only has the competence to hold a relationship for a few hours.

     He tilts his head back, watching amusedly as she sways her hips for him. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

***

     It’s a little after 2am when Harry arrives back home. He’s exhausted, in more ways than one, and all he really wants at the moment is to collapse onto his bed and sleep in to an acceptable time. If only he were that lucky. The bride had pulled him aside as he was about to leave with an urgent color to her voice that required the pictures to be ready as soon as possible.

     Which, to put it into more exact terms, means that she wants it no later than forty-eight hours from the present time. And that doesn’t even take into account that he has another client wedding tomorrow afternoon which by the way, happens to be two and a half hours outside of London, which furthermore means he’s going to have to be out the door at least five hours beforehand because traffic is always unpredictable. He quickly pulls out his phone and looks for the email with the event details.

     Danvers-Belton Wedding

     (All he knows is that the bride-to-be’s family is fully loaded, and her engagement to her fiancé had been published in every entertainment paper in the city. Her dad is some CEO of a steel company or something like that. Harry had met him at their first meeting, and honestly, he had nearly spooked the shit out of him.)

     Getting back to work, he inserts the memory card into his computer and stares numbly at the pinwheel-like loading icon. His job is great and has its perks (that bridesmaid from earlier truly made it worth his while), but this process is no doubt the part he least looks forward to. There are probably about 3500 photos he’ll have to go through by the end of the night, and out of those, around 400 to 500 he’ll pre-select and send to the couple before he begins editing.

     He unbuttons his shirt down a little more than halfway, just enough for his chest to not feel so constricted in the stuffy atmosphere of his flat. “For fucks sake,” he groans, standing up from his chair and stalking across the living room to open the balcony door.

     The breath of the wind sends tingles down his spine as it dries the beads of sweat from his body. He steps out, hoping to rejuvenate himself before burying himself in his work. He stares into the deserted streets and thinks about how peaceful everything it is at this hour. Just the sound of the city asleep feels like living in an entirely different world, as though someone had pressed the pause button on time. Only the simplistic soundtracks of the night dances through his ears and make his eyes drift close as he enjoys it all.

     But something interrupts the natural melodies, an unexpected interrupted cadence written in with crayon in the score. His brows crease when it occurs again, but this time accompanied by a heavy weep. He looks to his left, Alfred Dimalanta’s place is pitch black inside (he might be working the nightshift tonight), and then to his right. A faint fluorescence wavers behind the curtains of the newly occupied flat.

      Inside, someone sobs uncontrollably. Harry steps closer to the rightmost rail of his balcony and crosses his arms over the cool metal. His head drops as he listens.

     He knows the feeling well.  

***

     “So, then I told her, ‘listen, I’ve been understanding of your situation, but you haven’t paid your rent in like four months...Joaquin is gonna chop up my balls then feed it to his tiger if I don’t collect it by the end of the week.’” Martin explains, using hand gestures to portray the possible castration in his future. Harry hums, only half paying attention has he sorts through his mail one by one.

     Junk.

     Junk.

     Ju-oh! Coupon for a free half-chicken from Nando’s!

     More junk.

     “You’re gonna share that, right?”

     Harry barely looks up. “Like you shared that pizza that I paid for on Tuesday?”

     “Hey!” Martin counters in defense. “You left!”

     “I left to use the toilet, and that was barely three minutes.”

     The doorman slumps down in his chair as he begs to disagree. Harry throws the rest of the unimportant letters in the waste bin beside them, only keeping the coupon and his monthly bank statement. As he’s about to respond to something Martin had just complained about, the lift dings.

     When he turns his head in its direction, the girl from yesterday emerges from it and similarly rushes out just as she had done before, even wearing the same sunglasses. She walks out of the lift in a dress that’s soft blue, pleated skirt flows like a wave as she gracefully moves through the lobby. He watches her this time and observes as she pushes out the door and crosses the street, soon disappearing out of the frame.

     “Is she new?” Harry asks, trying not to sound overly interested when he turns back.

     Martin gawks at him in disbelief. “She’s only been here for the last 3 months and living next to you, nonetheless! I’m surprised you lot haven’t met yet.”

*** 

     The Danvers-Belton wedding is nauseatingly perfect. Everyone is equipped with their oh-so happy smiles and photo-ready poses as Harry swims through the room snapping pictures that are meant to be candid. It’s as though they’re all in great joy over this seemingly destined union. The bride and groom are completely enthralled by one another, so much that they’ve barely mingled with the guests in favor of staring adoringly into each other’s eyes by the dessert bar.

     Harry pans around the reception hall –– which is more like some ballroom out of a princess movie, but that’s just his opinion –– with his camera as he looks for his next subject to capture since he’s taken enough lovey dovey pictures of the newlyweds for the time being. He takes one of the bride’s parents as the father engages in an animated conversation with some balding old men that he assumes are business associates of his. The mother smiles sweetly and nods next to the gentlemen even though her presence is completely ignored by all.

     The rest of the guests are all distributed in groups: there are the dancers moving their feet to a swing song played by the live band; the bargoers all giggling drunkenly over their fifth round of tequila shots; and those, like the father, chatting about how gorgeous the ceremony had been and discussing about how much this damn party must have cost (rumor has it, over £5,000,000). He takes shots of each niche.

     “You there, photographer!”

     He pulls the camera from his face and turns in the direction of the voice. It’s the grandmother ­­–– he thinks? He couldn’t tell you with all the Botox and fillers. “Take a picture of me by the ice sculpture, would you? Make sure I look thin!” The elderly woman strikes a side pose, the knee closest to the camera popping out and revealing her still flawless skin through the cuts of her dress. He signals when he’s finished, and the woman walks away without even a thank you. It’s something he’s used to by now.

     As he looks through the lens again, he’s able to preserve a particularly adorable moment. The flower girl and the ring-bearer high on the tips of their toes as they dig into the remainder of the once towering cake. He gets it, he’d been served a slice and it was the most delicate and divine thing to ever touch his palate in his entire life. And maybe he’ll bribe one of them with a crisp fifty-pound note to set aside a piece for him.

     Next to them, however, is someone who he’s only just taken notice of. He drops the camera so he can see with his own unobstructed vision. For a time, he switches between the two perspectives because he’s in such disbelief. The girl from his building, his neighbor as he’s recently discovered, is here, sitting by herself at the table with her own share of cake. She stares down at it with such intensity in contrast to the weak grip she has on her fork that seesaws in her grasp and above the edge of the plate.

     He debates whether he should approach her. Would that be weird? Would she think he’s stalking her? But why would he? Up until this morning, he thought she was just visiting someone for the week. What would he say? “Hey, I live next door! Sorry I haven’t introduced myself yet, but no time like a wedding, right?” or maybe “Hi, I’m Harry. I don't know if you remember, but we met briefly on the lift back at the Grove?” Oh god, since when has he become an imbecile at making conversation?

     Well, he supposes there are worse ways to make a first impression. He maneuvers through the other guests and pulled-out chairs, barely dodging a server with a heavy tray piled with used glassware and utensils. When he’s about a few steps from her, he halts, smoothing out his pants and making sure his collar is tucked away neatly in his suit jacket. He brushes his nose against the fabric, making sure his cologne hasn’t worn off in the six hours he’s been here. 

      “Hi.”

     Like slow-motion, she takes her eyes off her cake to lay them on him. She squints them almost suspiciously. I should’ve taken more pictures of Grandma; Harry thinks to himself. He bites down nervously on the inside of his cheek, going back and forth between walking away or evaporating on the spot.

      “I know you from somewhere,” she suddenly says, pondering. She props her hand under her chin and it’s only a few seconds later that her eyes widen in realization. “You live in my building!” She nods to the empty seat beside her.

      “Yeah,” he chuckles, graciously accepting her invitation. “I think you actually live next to me. I’m in 15D.”

     She laughs. “Really? Then why haven’t I seen you around before?” As a waiter passes by, she points to her empty glass of wine and sends him a quick ‘thank you.’ “A bit odd that I’m meeting my neighbor for the first time at a party nearly three hours away.”

     “That’s my fault,” he sheepishly admits. “I’m on a pretty strict schedule.” He holds up his camera. “Been snapping photos since one.”

      “A photographer, huh?” Her face brightens with amusements. “Have any of me on there?” Her smile is playful as she smiles shyly. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear as she stares into her lap.

     It’s surprising how taken he is by such a seemingly innocent action. It’s the first time he’s really seen her without those large shades, and he’d be messing with himself if he said she isn’t beyond attractive. She’s wearing the same dress he’d seen her in this morning, and now he’s able to fully appreciate how perfectly she fills it out. But instead, all finds himself doing is admiring the glow of her skin in the light of the setting sun, and how a dust of rose pulls across her features terrifically. 

     He lifts up his camera, wanting nothing more than to commit this image to memory. She looks up at him. At first, she has a smile so virtuous that he’s unable to get a focus on her, but soon enough it falters when her attention flips to something behind him. It draws a frown in its place that causes Harry to lower his arms. He dares try to trace the line of her gaze back to whatever’s caused such an antagonistic shift in an otherwise splendid expression.

     The groom holds his bride close as they sway to a slow and sweet melody from the string quartet. They still look as happy as they gaze at each other, cherishing the final moments of this amorous evening.  

     “We used to date. Philip and I... Four years, actually.” The words are strangled, leaving her throat as though pushed out forcefully.

     “Oh, I-” but he’s left without anything to say. She lets out another laugh, but this one is coated in melancholy.

     “We broke up because he said he didn’t want to get married,” she pauses, taking a shaky breath that feels almost painful. “What he really meant was that he didn’t want to marry me.” Her voice begins to tighten even more, and his head drops when he hears the faintest sound of that first whimper. He stares at the ends of the tablecloth in reflection. “He got engaged to Bethany less than five months later. Funny how that works, yeah? How you can spend four years of your life thinking you’re on the same page, but it turns out you’ve been four chapters ahead the entire time.”

     Harry can’t bring himself to look her directly in the eyes. The music playing abruptly turns into something more heart-wrenching despite its major key. Without thinking, he reaches across the table and covers her hand with his and gives it a comforting squeeze. There’s nothing his words can do to alleviate even just a fraction of how this must affect her.

     “I’m sorry,” is all he can whisper. “That probably doesn’t mean much, but I am.” Through his lashes he sees how she acknowledges it with genial character as she bows her head slightly. 

     A silence falls between them, but neither make an effort to move their hands. There’s a clamor of dishes coming from the kitchen that manages to distract him for a bit. Harry watches with mild delight as Bethany’s father barges through the swinging doors, and he can see how the red slowly creeps up his neck. What person, he wonders, is having the displeasure of being at the end of the fire of fury.

     Another hand layers on top of his, grabbing his attention away from the unfolding scene. He studies their hands for a moment before finally facing her.

     “Y/n,” she speaks up, gently. “I’m Y/n, by the way.”

     The crevices of his dimples slowly sink in. “Harry.”

[decadentrpg-blog]

WELCOME BECKY, YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF PROSERPINA BLACK

Admins Note: The Queen of master manipulation has arrived and I couldn’t be more excited! I absolutely adored the power and ambition that your Proserpina exudes. But as high and mighty as she is, every queen has their weakness too. She speaks sharply, glistens like a diamond and commands attention as any Black could. I can’t wait to see the schemes she creates and the strings she threads across all who fall for her ploys. Your faceclaim request for Vittoria Ceretti has been approved. Congratulations on your acceptance again, please make sure to head your way to the checklist and submit your account within the next 24 hours!

OUT OF CHARACTER.

Name / Alias: Becky

Pronouns: she/her

Age: 21

Timezone: PST

IN CHARACTER APPLICATION.

Full Name:

PROSERPINA. In actuality, is there a more suitable moniker for her than Proserpina? A woman in two parts: sweet Spring, the perfume of roses blooming from the heart of her, wildflower honey tone, and cruel Winter, the carmine of her lips turning morbid with fanged smile, poison steeped words cocked and primed. An ode to a goddess who is all cycles and rebirth, manipulating herself to be everyone’s dream of spring, only to reveal a heart of desolate winter; she wears both flowers and sin equally well.

EVE. God’s beloved creation, the world’s first woman, crafted from flesh and bone of man — by man’s account, a woman who had it all: paradise, the love of a God, the adoration of a husband — and the first to gamble it all for knowledge. By any and all means, Proserpina can relate: what good is having it all without the fear of losing it all? Sugar tastes all the sweeter after acid, as victory is to loss. She embraces the implications of her middle name with pride — if it were her in Eve’s place, she’d have eaten the apple whole. And so, she is what she is called: temptation’s mistress, creation divine, agony’s sweet kiss.

BLACK. The most noble and ancient House of Black. Toujours Pur. Always pure. It’s a mantra that’s been repeated over and over, all but branded into every recess of her brain. She is very much the pinnacle of her house’s ideal — dark hair and romantic features, sharp in all the wrong ways and beautiful in all the right ones. Beautiful, empty beasts, does the House of Black raise, and she is no exception.

Sexuality: “Bisexual” — She hardly likes to define such things as pleasure, which to her, is without boundaries: and as Oscar Wilde once wrote: “To define is to limit.” She doesn’t mind men, both in that she won’t begrudge them their presence, and that she barely heeds them past a certain point, all at once — but she does enjoy toying with everyone and anyone. Simply put, she enjoys cutting her teeth on the fractured egos of men, and enjoys lavishing her attention and affection on the lovelier things in life, namely, women.

Gender/Pronouns: cis, she/her

Hogwarts House: Slytherin ( expounded upon in headcanons. )

Head canons:

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. A firm believer in the idea that if you have the information, you hold the cards, she was a little bit of a dilemma for the hat during her sorting. Despite the very firm and sure Slytherin she eventually got, the hat debated the merits of sorting her into Ravenclaw — purely for the half-starved approach she takes to all things learnable, gorging herself on knowledge, insatiably learning. She was always near top if not top of her classes in Hogwarts, but her quest for knowledge hardly stopped at classroom limits; any tidbit about anyone was considered useful and interesting, and stored away for further examination. After all, you can’t be a mastermind if you’ve no mind of your own.

POWER IS POWER. And yet, ultimately, she was sorted into Slytherin. Knowledge is nothing if you don’t know how to convert it, how to wield it, weaponize it. She may share traits with Ravenclaw in her pursuit of knowledge, but rarely, if ever, is she satisfied with leaving her knowledge in theory, in abstract — no, knowledge in practice is what delights her most. A well uttered spell, or a difficult non-verbal cast, or even the right whisper in the right ear — knowledge is nothing but a whimsical theory if not put to use.

It’s this inborn cunning and ambition that surely sees her into Slytherin.

HEIR UNAPPARENT. The elder sister to a single brother, she hardly is slated to inherit much more than the Black name, although she is privy to the deep wallets it comes with, until, at least, she’s married off into some other pure-blooded family. And yet, it was soon apparent to her as it was to her parents that her brother could barely hold a candle to her own mantle of manipulation and conquest. And so the deal was struck after her graduation, perhaps to both her father’s dismay and begrudging pride: he would turn a blind eye to how she conducted affairs and who she consorted with, and she would manage the Black empire from the shadow of her younger brother, ever watchful, and ever-present to insure that their fortune never diminished, even as he ruled in name. It barely bothered her; the shadows were where she best operated — far less scrutiny. After all, what was one more puppet to her collection? Aelius would appreciate the company, she was sure.

She’s been sent to New York to scope out the possibility of expanding business over to the Americas, and it’s a rush, gambling with the family name and fortune. After winning for so long, she imagines failure must taste sweet — the only flavor she’s never quite sampled, only knowledge she’s not quite accrued — and that subsequent victories would be even more so.

GRACE OF BIRTH. Proserpina was born on May 22nd, making her a Gemini. Gemini’s are witty, charming and resourceful, but commonly reviled for being two-faced. Known for fun wordplay, Proserpina takes that trait to another level, subtle barbs laced across the flat of her tongue, sharp enough to flay the flesh off any unsuspecting person who gets too close. She incites and thus is insightful; she wields words as one might a sword or a wand.

The twins Castor and Pollux rule over Gemini, and so represents the inherent duality of her — both serpent and flower, both spring and winter. Intelligent and adaptable, Proserpina can read the room and anybody in her line of sight like no other. Listen closely, and people will tell you how to conquer them.

STYLE, NOT FASHION. Proserpina rarely cleaves to society’s fashion standards; this is to say she is not fashionable, no, never one to be influenced when she can be the one influencing, but also to say she is never out of style. Expensive cuts of jewelry are commonly found tastefully adorning her figure, as are luxurious cuts of mink and ermine, and dark swathes of silk and velvet cling lovingly to her like a second shadow.

WANDLORE. Yew wood, dragon heartstring, 12 ½ inches, pliable — an unusual wand by all means: deceptively dainty, elegant, light in coloration, but a powerhouse when it comes to spellwork.

Yew — a rare wood, with a rumored predilection for the dark, and a notorious dislike for mediocrity and timid owners, hewn from a tree that is all at once long-lived and life-sapping with its toxins. It’s a contradiction wrapped in shadows, perfect for her, by any stretch of the imagination. That said, Proserpina tries to minimize usage of her poisonous wand, powerful though it may be.

Dragon Heartstring —  known for being a particularly strong and flamboyant core, it’s quick to learn, much like its owner. And much like her, the wand derives its power from the core, able to master spells quickly and executing them without hesitance.

Pliable — wands are known to be extensions of their owners, and whilst stubborn and inflexible in her ideals, Proserpina is undoubtedly adaptable, always landing on her feet, no matter the situation. Such is the life of the eternal victor.

HIGHEST HEIGHTS, DEEPEST DEPTHS. Proserpina’s patronus is a fox: naturally cunning and brilliantly charismatic. People with foxes as their patronus are known to be observant, ambitious, and manipulative. Silver tongued, and willing to use other such skills to their own benefit, the fox often gets their way. It’s fitting for her, is it not? People watch as the fleet footed vixen erupts from the tip of her wand, wiling around the crowd, curling around her heels.

Her boggart happens to be herself — her, but different in several subtle ways, almost imperceptible to any but herself. She sees the wear and tear on her clothes, the hollow of her cheeks, the fear in her own eyes. Her boggart is herself, but ruined. A foolish woman fears nothing, a cowardly woman everything, and a wise woman, herself — secure in the knowledge that nothing will ruin her more than herself.

CONNECTIONS.

FOND // FAWNED. She remembers her first impression of the girl: a little fawn, wide-eyed and on tenuous legs, walking as if she was haunting the halls, quiet as a mouse. It was something endearing, to watch as she grew into the loveliness bequeathed to her. Back then, she was wildly off limits — purely something to keep a keen eye over, a budding flower in the greenhouse that needed the pests swatted away, needed space to grow — but recently, her little doe’s found a voice and a blooming bit of courage, and has come to play. And who is she to deny pretty girls that which they desire?

KINGMAKER. Some people are socially adept, good at reading any room they walk into, good at reading people — and others, not so much. Those who don’t know how to rule shouldn’t, in her honest opinion, but if he wants so badly to play king, then she’ll let him — so long as he never forgets who’s granted him the throne. She plays by chess’ rules: kings are the weakest pieces on the board, mere figureheads. Everyone knows queens are much more valuable — but if he wants to take the flak for the decisions she makes, who is she to turn away a blank check?

HEARTBREAKER. Every connection that Proserpina has ever made serves a purpose, be it for social advancement, business connections, or even simply for pleasure, there is always an underlying motive that serves in her best interest. Her relationship with Genevieve was no different — another bridge to cross or burn, and she thought she was prepared. Not only prepared, but scared to proceed without burning: the closer the relationship got to not purely serving her best interest, the more control seemed to flee from her grasps. So she broke it off, expecting never to look back, and yet as Orpheus could not tear his eyes from Eurydice, a backwards glance was all it took to doom her once more: confirmation that she wouldn’t be able to help herself should the opportunity present itself.

In Character Paragraph:

She sighs when she lands in the fireplace, brushing nonexistent floo powder off her coat, stepping out into the familiar sitting room, looking for any signs of movement, searching for wards. There is neither scurry nor spell to be found, so she continues out on her way, heels clicking ostensibly loud against the marble tiling of the floor; usually, that’s the way she likes it — to be heralded before her arrival — but she so enjoys catching people off guard, at their truest, if one will, when she has business to attend to, so she slips the heels off and makes her way down the halls of the manor to the study on silent feet. The floor is shockingly cold against the pads of her feet, but it bothers her not — not when she’s single-minded in following the dark hallways of the house to the only point of illumination.

The study door is cracked open slightly, and she pushes in, meticulously careless, letting the door swing out and ricochet off the adjacent wall, eyes on the figure pacing the study. The crashing of the door startles him, and he whips around, blue hex warming the tip of his wand and then slamming into the doorframe next to her head; she turns to see the miniature crater blasted into the expensive wooden frame, and it sends her heart flying with adrenaline, even as she turns back to the man. She could easily repair the damage done with a wave of her fingers, so simple is the spell, but she hardly wants to afford the man any measure of convenience.

“You missed,” she notes instead, stalking closer to him, hips swaying, smile cocked; she, the predator, he, her unwitting prey.

“Merlin, Proserpina,” he swears crossly. “You can’t come sneaking into my house in the dead of night— this isn’t a joke. If a hex hits you, it will hurt.”

“Do you promise it will?” she asks archly, craning forward as he leans back.

He doesn’t dignify her with a response, just turns from her.

“Fine,” she dismisses with a sigh, waving a hand vaguely, moving once more to perch on top of his desk, errantly pushing stacks of scrolls and tomes to clear a spot for herself, uncaring of the mess she makes. “I’m here for business anyway, not pleasure.”

“Then you should have owled,” he says coldly, his back insistently to her, as if in hopes of dissuading her stay. He peers at the spines of all the books lining the shelves, eyes flicking over each worn title with a nervous celerity that tells her he’s not actually looking at them.

She takes advantage of this lapse in attention, shuffles through the papers on his desk; this prompts his concern, and he turns around. He starts with long strides over to her, a warning on his lips, a frown brewing in the purse of his lips — but not before she finds what she’s looking for. She holds the envelope between her index and middle finger, displaying the wax seal of her family, tilting her head to the right, unimpressed. “I did,” she drawls, impressing her point further most unnecessarily. “I don’t take well to being ignored.”

He moves to grab the letter, and she jerks it away from his grasp, raising her eyebrows in reproach.

“No, no, darling,” she coos, all sucrose condescension. “This letter was a limited time sort of offer, and I’m afraid my patience has quite expired since.”

Silence swells, stifling, between them, as she holds his gaze, and he hers. He doesn’t want to back down, that much is evident — and yet, it becomes increasingly apparent who has the upper hand, and it’s with a sigh that he relents. “So now…?” He asks, swallowing concealed distress.

“Now,” she purrs, contented. “You take what comes. If I say jump, you ask—“

“—I ask how high,” he finishes, disgusted.

“Don’t interrupt me,” she snaps, a voice of poison, honey, and ice, before amending herself with a smile.

“And if I say no?” He hedges, cautious, watching her measuredly.

“Oh!” She exclaims, before dissolving into delighted laughter. “Did I say this letter was an offer?” She asks, revlon red lips bursting with faux-incredulity. “How absentminded of me. I should have said this letter prompted an offer from you, if you’d read and responded in timely fashion, of course — but then at least you could’ve had the reins on making the offer, no? Well, tell you what: why don’t you take a look for yourself, my dear?”

He takes the envelope slowly, gingerly, watching her like he thinks she’ll jerk it away again — she lets it slip from her fingers easily. He reads the first line in alarm, eyes flashing to her face, and she winks. He reads the rest voraciously, before peering at the included photos, a subtle sneer on his lips as his own movements taunt him from the frame; she waits, humming lightly, slipping her heels back on — she can tell he won’t last much longer.

“Still want to say no? I can assure you, I’ve been very instrumental in keeping this from the police and the press.”

“I wouldn’t dare dream of it,” he answers, a forced smile put upon his lips. “What do you need from me?”

“Oh, I don’t need anything from you,” she says in turn, tapping a finger against her smile contemplatively. “Yet. No, today’s little drop in is just to make sure that when I do call, you’ll be ready to respond. You will be, won’t you?”

“As if I had a choice,” he says through his teeth — half grimace, half smile.

“Honey,” she says in mock sympathy, hand wrapping around his bicep, bottom lip jutting out in a pout, before it melts into patronization, baring her teeth in a half-hearted approximation of a grin. “We always have a choice.”

She slides off his desk, landing with a neat click of her heels on marble, already sauntering away, already uninterested in the defeated man left in ruins behind her. “No need to see me out,” she calls over the clicking of her heels, not even bothering to turn to address him, conquest grin on her lips for no one but the dark in front of her to see. “I know my way.”

Extras: I didn’t have the time for any extras, my apologies!

[thatsjustsupergirl]

Oohhh what are those feelings about the latest episode? Please do tell!

Sorry this was delayed!

Random thoughts:

Reign’s threats toward Lena were meant to be creepy but mostly felt like a predictable villain monologue that I didn’t really care about. I also kept getting distracted by her too-perfect eyeshadow.

EVE TESSMACHER, I HAVE MISSED YOU!

I cannot believe they wasted Chris Wood on tiresome, morally dubious “romance” for an entire year when he is clearly much more suited to comedy.

Bigger stuff:

Family Ties

I’m kinda waiting on Alex’s season-long arc to play out before I comment upon it too much, BUT OH MY GOD, I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE ACCURATELY REPRESENTED BY A TELEVISION SHOW IN MY LIFE. Poor Alex is so worried about messing up that she’s overcompensating by trying too hard, and I absolutely love that she asked J’onn for advice and made all my Space Family dreams come true. The emotional connection between Ruby and M’yrnn was also really sweet and I love how they’ve been developing that dementia storyline so that it links up with all the other themes about family and faith.

The Cult

This continues to be the most meta storyline of all time, up to and including the fact that crybaby cult girl SHOT JAMES IN THE FUCKING FACE WITHOUT REMORSE, which — if the Twitter and Tumblr tags are anything to go by — accurately captures the attitude of many a fan at any Supergirl convention featuring Katie McGrath. See also: the cult switching its loyalties from Supergirl to Reign, hilariously reminiscent of the way a select portion of fandom decided to start shipping Reign with people before the character was even introduced because they got irrationally angry about actors making a tasteless joke.

In case it has escaped anyone’s notice, Olivia is also representative of the demographic of “fans most likely to harass actors and employees on this show,” aka she’s a baby-faced, early-20s white girl who is willing to do a whole lot of shitty and inappropriate things in the name of her “community,” out of the mistaken belief that she should hinge her identity and self-worth on attention from a bunch of strangers.

In a broader context, Olivia, Tanya, and the rest of Coville’s cult are used to explore the fine line between “fan” and “fanatic.” Why did all of them get involved here in the first place? They were troubled people looking for meaning.

Race & Ethnic Identity

There was a lot happening in this episode, and I love that it built smoothly upon things that happened throughout S2 and S3. Kara & James’s conflict was front and center, and boy have these two come a long way since S1 in terms of resolving their ideological disagreements. No silent treatment, no yelling, just two good friends respecting each other’s decisions while agreeing to disagree. (But, uh, James? Kara was not honest with you about her identity. Clark outed her to you before you even met her and then didn’t even give her a heads up.)

We also had a more subtle racial discourse playing out through the casting choices of the cult members. Note that Tanya was only kept around because she had a special skill the others wanted to use, and the vast majority of the other cult members were white. Also, the moment she was done translating the Kryptonian text, the guard dudes pulled knives on her and were totally ready to kill her. What a community, amirite?

In addition to that, there’s the ongoing issue of the cult and their appropriation of Kara’s religion, which they have now entirely ruined and turned into something destructive and awful. (How very meta.)

While I’ve already brought up the issue of Kara keeping her identity from people for their safety, I wasn’t wild about the explanation as it was presented here. It was definitely a simplification for the sake of time, and glossed over the fact that Kara had other, very good reasons not to say anything when she and Lena first became friends.

And then we have the meat of James’s storyline. Ah, America … where a white girl can shoot up a major news organization while her generic white boy accomplice fires a fucking bazooka down a public street and they get to walk away unquestioned, but the armored black dude who was clearly defending a bystander gets held at gunpoint by the cops, despite them having known for two years that Guardian exists. This was a nice pickup of the dilemma James felt last season re: his alter-ego and the way he’s perceived by the community at large, but from a very different angle that had much clearer stakes. And it’s a nice counterpoint to the discussions about vigilantism you see from any of the other CW shows, where the main hero is the same race as the majority of the public he’s protecting.

The end of the episode did a really great job of tying both James and Kara’s identity struggles together -- James’s narrative about feeling free to be recognized for what he does vs. what he is when he has a mask on is a direct counterpoint to Kara and her choice to maintain two identities.

[genderassignment]

Borderland Creatures: Lise Haller Baggesen & Iris Bernblum at Goldfinch

Installation view of I am the horse, Goldfinch, Chicago. Photo credit: Daniel Hojnacki. Left: Iris Bernblum. Pretty baby 3, 2018, spray paint on photo. Right: Iris Bernblum. Pour, 2018, paint on wall, dimensions variable.

Gender Assignment Guest Blogger, Matt Morris

This is a story of biopower and biosociality…those bitches insisted on the history of companion species, a very mundane and ongoing sort of tale, one full of misunderstandings, achievements, crimes, and renewable hopes. (1)

To begin, rest assured that in my epigraph above, Donna Haraway writes ‘bitches’ in reference to dogs designed to service breeding and the interests of humans. However, it occurs to me how language demonstrates its potential to transmigrate across species (a system that is itself, language), and marks out a contentious zone in which femininity is denigrated, and the fact of our animal-ness is charged with a capacity for social abuse and enforced disparities across gender and race. Language is appropriated, and then reappropriated in common parlance, how one might clap back, confirming, ‘Yes, I’m that bitch.’ One wonders, and the wondering is overwhelming, at the intricacies of how language and organism and the institution of gender have been made to conspire in obfuscating life’s interdependencies. Haraway goes on to remind readers that to consider companion species is not only to account for pets, but also the plant- and animal-based foods we consume, cellular genetic modifications, products with less obvious origins among the living (horses, glue, etc.), and techno-hybrid aspects of contemporary life. The challenge to grasp either the particulars or scope of this paradigm is certainly an (intentional) effect of power. That artists Lise Haller Baggesen and Iris Bernblum succeed at finding starting points to contemplate these entanglements by revisiting the much-maligned genre of ‘horse art’ mostly relegated to the sphere of female adolescence is both novel and moving. In the years I’ve known both artists’ practices, I’ve come to trust that neither are squeamish around topics that are often avoided as much because of how easily they are dismissed as for how problematic they prove to be in their deconstruction. Motherhood, passé disco, unicorns, bucolic landscapes: both artists brave themes that even many other feminists avoid. Their exhibition I Am the Horse now on view at Goldfinch in Garfield Park proves to be écriture feminine (2) équestre par excellence.

If we reside in an oft-unacknowledged natureculture system, Baggesen and Bernblum’s art manifests naturecultureculture, at turns instinctively poetic, strategically conceptual, activist, collaborative, whimsical, and stark. Through paintings (on canvas, on photographs), photographic documentation of playful activations of sculptures (objects that are themselves also on view elsewhere in the space), projected video, drawing, and two audio soundtracks, both artists weave Borromean knots through Lacan’s imaginary and real.

(Why would I invoke such an old model of describing experience and consciousness as Lacan, when Baudrillard’s postulations decades ago of a madness of simulations detached from the real seem to be reaching new climaxes of surreal if not unbearable proportions in our present day? I’ll admit, I’m desperate to find means of surviving even thriving, and it’s in my personal bias that I find Lacan useful. It’s certainly a mere mirage of organization, but as with the ‘horse art’ I’m pondering here, it offers me some manageability with which to encounter immense entanglements with which I am otherwise inundated. I am struggling with being in the world, sometimes struggling to even face exhibition openings like this one about which I write. I’m searching for how to be—ethically, aesthetically, politically.)  

Lise Haller Baggesen. Refusenik on the beach, 2018, Photographic transparency, lightbox. Image courtesy of the artist

It’s in this present state that I feel such affinity for Baggesen’s Refuseniks, a series of costumes that propose hybridity for their wearers (across individuals, across species), by combining structural aspects of jockey shirts and horse blankets, often with multiplied arm holes and equine-shaped hoods. Refusenik (double wearable), 2017, is a melancholic confection draped in the gallery space, possessing all the pluralism of Rei Kawakubo and the lightly floral palette of Dirk Van Saene. In the accompanying photographs, we see these garments not only worn by people and horses alike, but also behaving architectonically, pitched into tents redolent of the Snoezelen-room-inspired immersive installations of Baggesen’s earlier work.

Make. Believe. Dress. Up. Pause to consider these words and phrases while observing Baggesen’s photographs of Refuseniks in the wild. The lightbox Refusenik on the Beach, 2018, shows a figure swimming offshore like an island-bound pony or a mermaid. These scenarios are acted out as conscious performative disengagements from dominant narratives that taxonomize and restrict across gender, age, and species. These works are efforts in conscious play, what psychoanalyst Ernst Kris termed ‘regression in the service of the ego,’ following on the pronouncement of becoming that names the exhibition. I am the horse.

Installation view of I am the horse, Goldfinch, Chicago. Photo credit: Daniel Hojnacki

What’s regrettable and even misguided within the literature that expounds on the bonds between women and horses—and by this, I’m speaking of a body of discourse inclusive not only of psychoanalysis and other modern modes of theory production, but also more expansive treatments of mythology and lore—is that these relationships are nearly always supposed as a substitution for women oriented toward men. The method of using a virgin to attract a unicorn so it may be caught and its horn severed and used for its healing properties is all misdirection: it seems clear to me that this narrative mostly prepares young women to be penetrated by virile conquests. The unfounded rumors of Catherine the Great’s lust for equine copulation follows on her wresting control of the Russian empire from her mentally ill husband. In her case, her strength of will that surpassed the men with whom she was attached and surrounded had to be distorted into bestial proportions in order to maintain a culture organized around male domination. A nebula of dildonic hobby horses, penis envy, the introduction of women riding side-saddle as early as the 14th century as a means of protecting their virginity if not also their decency—horses gallop through all sorts of conceptualizations that would portray women’s sexuality as vulnerable and in need of protection, and also a site of lack, a cavity designed to be filled. It would seem that across the literature that characterizes women’s relationships to horses, men can’t help but recast these attachments as metaphoric pussy grabbing of a most intimate order, territorializing the horse’s body as a prosthetic extension of their own desire and dread and anger (read: misogyny) to control women and their object choices, erotic or otherwise. This is a consuming violence further materialized by the litany of ways that the unchecked, unexamined, privileged marker of ‘men’ is scripted with an entitlement to possess whatever the holder of that sign wishes to possess, to possess and then destroy, and the absolute conviction held within that position that any alternative narratives produced within the culture is metaphoric to them.

It is against this violence and the symbolic order that reifies it that Bernblum and Baggesen act. Upon entering the exhibition, Baggesen’s audio piece, Stallion, 2018, is played on white headphones beneath one of several lightbox photographs in the exhibition that show her piecework Refusenik garments used in tropical landscapes. The sound piece is a sort of audio guide, as if a didactic for a museum collection—a format for working that recurs across Baggesen’s oeuvre and shows how her research operates across writing and studio production. The audio speaks to The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in Paris’ Musée de Cluny, noting possible symbols for virginity, chastity, and maternity within the textiles’ imagery, with frequent departures into lullaby-like singing and theoretical proposals such as: “’Our selves’ are not located within ‘ourselves’…but are a function of it and vice versa, and personhood is acquired, along with ‘soul,’ gradually and suddenly….” From the start, the logic of this exhibition proceeds counter to any linear theory of development in which a monolithic subject is constituted.

Iris Bernblum. Pretty baby 2, 2018, spray paint on photo. Image courtesy of the artist and Aspect/Ratio Gallery, Chicago

Also from the start, the titular horse in both artists’ projects is haunted by a spectral unicorn. In Bernblum’s Pretty baby 3, 2018, a mottled horse is photographed in black and white. Where a unicorn’s horn might emerge from its head, the artist has sprayed the print with a hazy, glowing pink paint. Is this the body from which her ten-foot-tall unicorn horn-cum-lightning rod Struck, 2016, was removed? While the image conjures fantasies both telepathic and amputating, the action of it as an object—the spray of paint that Bernblum repeats across numerous works—belongs to a nouveau réaliste mode of painting that recalls Niki de Saint Phalle’s Shooting Pictures of the 1960s. The pigment dispersions and drips in Bernblum’s paintings—on photographs, paper, and for Pour, 2018, down the gallery wall itself—are jouissance gestures held at an ambiguous point of rupture, appearing to spill forth, but understood as applied onto the bodies (of horses, of gallery-institution) depicted. This, I have come to feel, is the zone in which Bernblum and her audiences are held—threshold spaces, subtle but provocatively suspenseful, with all the erotic, energetic potential of bodies together pressing into the moment of her artwork. She commands an art herstory that swells from Benglis’ ejaculated spills and Judy Chicago’s spray-painted ‘flesh gates,’ ‘cunts,’ and ‘Great Ladies’ works. Here is one of the linkages between artistic praxis and the horse bodies that roam through the exhibition: these painterly forerunners pushed past pictorial illusionism into the expressive potential of material itself, understood simultaneously through being looked upon (imaginary) and acted with (real). So too, it would seem, do horses. History of science scholar Laurel Braitman notes in her research of how animals are thought about within human culture, "Horses and…unicorns—these are all borderland creatures; gateway animals to other worlds," she says. "They help us imagine wonderful other ways of being in the world,” of harnessing one’s own power and potential for transformation. (3)

Lise Haller Baggesen. Grown up Refusenik, Copenhagen, October 2017, 2017. Photographic transparency, lightbox. Image courtesy of the artist

The efforts of these two artists sensitize their audiences to the means by which such transformative tools are restricted from use by their situation into early periods of development that are made difficult to access, through stigmas of some sort of arrested adolescence and the assigned roles and responsibilities of adulthood. The assembled artworks, the excursions they document, and the desires they manifest act against capitalist time, the work shift of the laborer, the demands on the time of mothers and working mothers, the imposition of a before and after of sexual awakening. Baggesen’s Grown-up Refusenik, Copenhagen, October 2017, 2017, shows an upright figure standing beside a clear-eyed horse named Nellie. One sees a graying beard along the jawline of the figure, whose head is otherwise masked by a pink horse hood. If not for this fanciful headpiece, this image might recall the other tradition in horse art, the status-symbol equestrian portrait that came to prominence in the 16th–18th centuries of European painting. As it is, one is left to quietly rethink the conceptual divisions upon which our political, economic, and ideological systems depend. What if the hierarchies of speciesism are toppled, and with them, the metaphors that would organize all women’s attachments as preludes or parallels to their being dominated by men? What it the right-wing accelerationism’s tenuous reliance on regulated, linear time might be disrupted in order to gain access to modes of play and being that have been restricted to childhood? What if we breathe, as Bernblum’s two-channel video work breathes, or we make space to catch our breath amidst what feels like a world on fire? What if we explore unbridled, libidinal release that transgresses borderlands? Because, interestingly, Baggesen and Bernblum work into and from facets of écriture féminine that are not essentialist in defining a category of womanhood, but even, as Wittig proposes would “destroy the sexes as a sociological reality if we want to start to exist.” Optimistically, she invites forms of becoming beyond a binary: “To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man.” What if, in refusal, we become unicorns?

End Note: I’ve decided that for my series of contributions to Gender Assignment, I want to attach to each essay a selected perfume that I’ve worn through most or all of the drafting of these texts. This can be traced back to my use of perfume in my own art practice, as well as conversations around sensitivity and wellness related to scent that I’ve shared with my host and editor here, Mel Potter, as well as the artists and subjects of this and other forthcoming texts. For this first essay, I have written within a cloud of Mon Musc a Moi, released in 2015 by A Lab on Fire, designed by Dominique Ropion. This scent opens with quick bursts of bergamot and peach blossom before wrapping a sugary heliotrope-vanilla in wet-fur musks. The perfume house recently renamed the scent Messy SexyTM Just Rolled Out of Bed, and it strikes me that the former name possesses an introspection and reticence that is perhaps in keeping with this exhibition, while its updated moniker casts the scent into a narrative tinged with male-gazey sexual-objecthood that may be more salable, but belies some of the poetry of the scent.

Matt Morris is an artist, writer, and sometimes curator based in Chicago. He analyzes forms of attachment and intimacy through painting, perfume, photography, and institutional critique. He has presented artwork at Adds Donna, The Bike Room, Gallery 400, The Franklin, peregrineprogram, Queer Thoughts, Sector 2337, and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, IL; The Mary + Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, IL; The Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, IL; Fjord and Vox Populi in Philadelphia, PA; The Contemporary Arts Center, U·turn Art Space, Aisle, and semantics in Cincinnati, OH; Clough-Hanson Gallery and Beige in Memphis, TN; Permanent.Collection in Austin, TX; Cherry + Lucic in Portland, OR; The Poor Farm in Manawa, WI; with additional projects in Reims, France; Greencastle, IN; Lincoln, NE; and Baton Rouge, LA. Morris is a transplant from southern Louisiana who holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and earned an MFA in Art Theory + Practice from Northwestern University, as well as a Certificate in Gender + Sexuality Studies. In Summer 2017 he earned a Certification in Fairyology from Doreen Virtue, PhD. He is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a contributor to Artforum.com, ARTnews, Art Papers, Flash Art, Pelican Bomb, and Sculpture; and his writing appears in numerous exhibition catalogues and artist monographs.

1. Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2007. Print, p. 5.

2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Écriture_féminine>

3.  Quoted in Davia Nelson and Niiki Silva’s “Why Do Girls Love Horses, Unicorns and Dolphins?” All Things Considered. National Public Radio, February 9, 2011. <https://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133600424/why-do-girls-love-horses-unicorns-and-dolphins> 

[lunar-root]

"Somewhere during human history magic lost to technology. Technology came to dominate our mindshare while magic was relegated to superstition. I, like many, assumed magic lost because it turned out not to be real. As a young techno-capitalist I was ok with this; I was into computers and the whole world needed an upgrade. But eventually I found challenges that technology wasn’t addressing: broken minds, violence, depression. I don’t just mean somewhere out there among the homeless or mentally ill but in my own life too, successful as I appeared. I went looking for ways to transform myself, and found many wondrous things. I found the keys to self-actualization. I found ways of entering altered states of consciousness that conferred uncommon understanding. I found ways of uncovering painful memories, repressed but not forgotten, and ways of re-experiencing those memories differently, thereby changing the effects of the past on my present. I discovered the meaning of synchronicity and how to use them to navigate my life’s course. Then after years of this it finally hit me… magic is real. Now, I don’t mean that everything that’s ever been called magic by everyone is real. But are there attitudes, actions, and understandings that can result in intense, unordinary, and significant experiences inside one’s self, between our selves, and around us? Yes. Are there ways of growing in their skillful wielding? Yes. Are there ways of guiding, influencing, or stimulating in others these peculiar effects? Absolutely. And after you’ve experienced enough of it you just sort of acquiesce and say to yourself, “Ah, so this is magic.” You simply have no reasons left not to call it that. Perhaps you, like many moderns, are prejudiced against magic and biased toward technology. Well I have news for you: Not only is magic real, but magic is technology. Magic is just a type of technology with un-obvious system requirements. Like? Subtlety. Rather than electricity or software, magic requires the ability to access and observe the delicate sensations and observations arising within and around one’s self. Magic is subtle technology. Over time the Western mind lost it’s acquaintance with the subtle, which is why magic seemed to disappear. We lost it during the rise of organized religions, when navigating subtle experiences and altered states came under the control of sanctioned authorities. We lost it during the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution when we regained personal authority through rationalism and empiricism but threw the magic out with the religious bathwater. We lost more of it during the industrial revolution, where subtle sensations were only a distraction in the drudgery of the assembly line. And we lost still more during the Information Age, dominated by industrial educations, where the pressure to learn standardized curricula forced us to routinely suppress our intuition. The other thing about magic is that it doesn’t scale as easily as manufactured goods and services. This is because market adoption tends to be inversely proportional to skill. So the products that scale most quickly are those that require the user to know or do as little as possible. Magic doesn’t work that way, at least not in its current stage of development. Magic requires a skillful user to navigate internal experiences that others cannot see and to shift and focus attention onto indescribable objects. The duplicability is poor. The instruction manual difficult to write. The onus on the user, great. Because of all this, the word “technology” now tends to mean just all the the fundable, scaleable, shippable, stuff that anyone can buy and with the push of a button get some effect. Missing are the technologies that require subtle sensations to be masterfully directed, expanded, and amplified. But things are beginning to change. What is the mind? What is the Self? What can we become? What is our greatest destiny? It is just these sort of questions that are coming to matter most to a people who have for decades binged on easy access to every material want. And without skillfully navigating the subtle, these questions are impenetrable. You can see it happening most obviously with the increasing popularity of meditation. Think about it: here we are in this glitzy, gadgety, gluttonous society full of streaming high-def video, all-you-can-eat buffets, and amusement parks. Yet people en-masse are starting to say, “Well, I like those things sometimes but you know what? I think I’m going to just sit here with my eyes closed.” And they’re having a wild time. And what is meditation? I’ll tell you. Meditation is the skillful immersion of the self in the subtle. Which means that meditation is magic — literally, the attempt to cast a state-altering spell on one’s self. This is why the results from person to person are so varied. We can see the return of subtle technology in many other places too: in the unprecedented popular interest in psychology and yoga, in the revitalized psychedelic movement, in the renewed respect for indigenous medicine and ceremony. We can see it in our language, with the appearance of concepts such as “ego death” in the vernacular. And just about every other person I meet these days, whether engineer or venture capitalist, seems to at some point confide in me that they’ve been getting into “energy work”. We are a people becoming less interested in having things and more interested in having experiences. Less interested in becoming rich and more interested in becoming whole. Less interested in information and more interested in states — states of peak performance and flow, states of seeming union with the infinite, states of elevated perspective that disillusion us of our fears and anxieties and reveal them as baseless in the face of our true nature. Magic will return, understood this time as subtle technology. It will be integrated with the obvious technology of today. Together they will give rise to the next great industries, and to new jobs and livelihoods that we can once again believe in, which will not enslave or ensnare us but rather heal us and make us whole."

[notesfromcenter]

Motherhood: A Consideration of Moderation

“Why is your wife so intense?” asked my husband’s class of graduate students. He had just finished describing my response to their request of a pre-discussion lecture on a particular text.  I admit I had a strong reaction, but one I am still willing to defend. Students should learn how to confront material, formulate questions, and through discourse come to meaning. (I have a favorite line from the movie State and Main: “Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.” Analogously, there’s no passivity in learning.) Even if knowledge can be conveyed, wisdom can not.  My husband reported my outrage (which is a hyperbolic way of stating my case, but I suppose it makes for a better story.) Their response is not an unfamiliar one. I often have strong, and I’m not proud to say, black-and-white responses to situations. Not that my responses don’t respect a gray area, but they do so in a decidedly adamant way.  

It has occurred to me that having recently been pregnant and having a baby have noticeably tempered this tendency. For example, my dietary habits.  A vegetarian for 27 years, I now eat meat. All meat. I especially love steaks and hamburgers. I fed my son grass fed steaks just today for breakfast.  As I considered these facts this morning, both my so-called intensity and this laissez-faire approach to my new diet, it occurred to me that they bear a relationship between the ongoing theme of one vs many that has emerged over and over again in the quest for femaleness and identity more generally.  Provisionally, I considered whether the domain of femaleness is generated in part by the bodily entanglement required by motherhood.* I suppose it is trite to talk about how a mother shares her body with someone else in pregnancy, and even to talk about a so-called fourth trimester (and beyond), which I now fully understand.  My selfhood is indeed moderated, quite literally by someone else’s. I am not me. Not entirely at any rate. 

A friend recently remarked that it must be exhausting being a mother, the constant consideration of another being’s needs. Although I am certainly exhausted, my relationship to my son’s needs is not one of active consideration any more than I consider what I’d like for dinner. I won’t draw the comparison between the consideration of my own respiration, or better yet, my heartbeat, because his needs are not quite so automatic, but they are firmly in the territory of sustenance, of biological imperatives.  There is a diffusion of identity, of ego, that comes with sharing your body with someone else.  Extending it into autonomous space inhabited by another will, another ego.  

I’m sure there are plenty of examples of this physical extension. As I sat in a group Vipassana meditation session, I marveled that someone else’s sneeze, across the room, should send such waves of feeling through my body. It really is as simple as an adrenaline rush from being startled. But, regardless of how I describe it to myself, the bottom line is that I’m very affected by others, who are ostensibly outside of myself. 

I continued this musing as I walked my four dogs this morning, baby strapped to my chest. I experienced the slow growing rage that accompanies these walks, the subtle sensory onslaught, the gauntlet of perils that besiege the springtime morning. So let my description to follow sound less like a rant and more like an meditative investigation of my bodily response to this routine.  It begins trying to leave the apartment, gathering the coats, definitely the baby’s and sometimes all four dogs. A process no one is particularly keen on, making the challenge of lifting everyone’s spirits while completing tasks they’d rather not, all the more daunting. So it’s coats, baby carrier, leashes, bags for poop, house keys, and cell phone.  I try to time this so that there is minimal time for either animals or baby to grow cranky from overheating while finishing the rest of the routine. I also try to minimize the number of squats I do holding a twenty pound baby, for fear of an increasingly long day ahead.  Then, it is getting down the five flights of stairs and two doors (heavy ones that open towards me and threaten closing on dog tails and noses.) All of this trying to watch my steps amidst a tangle of leashes. I cannot see ahead of me as I step out of the door, not onto a landing, but down another short flight of steps, often occupied by neighbors sitting and trying to enjoy their morning when I come, pack in hand, bursting towards the sidewalk propelled by four urgent bladders. The wild card: will I happen upon a passing dog inciting this already precarious circus act into complete chaotic lunging, barking, and frantic snapping tethered only by the deep breathes as I attempt to keep my balance and some semblance of equanimity.  Now, if all of this goes as smoothly as possible, it is none-the-less accompanied with the kind of hypervigilence that knows, bodily, how tenuous any calm. The rest of the mile and a half journey is about the same. A woman passes by, “You’ve got a lot going on,” she remarks. A not uncommon observation. (Although, thank you to the young woman who remarked to her friends, that lady is the MVP - she’s got four dogs and a baby!) Varying degrees of weather related events punctuated by squatting to pick up dog feces in what I’ve learned is called a hell strip, although, if I want to be more romantic about it, I could refer to as the road verge. When it is permanently littered with dog feces, cigarette butts and  other trash in various states of matter, and I squat (remember that twenty pound, squirming baby), four dogs attached, clothing skimming the ground, it kind of feels more like a hell strip to be honest.  I’ll give you one more image, congestion, both human and canine, on both sides of the sidewalk approaching as I maintain this delicate balancing act. I try to take refuge in traffic to let others pass as I wait to resume our morning walk on the sidewalk. I try to metabolize the energetic shrapnel all this with the mantra “emotional contagion” running through my mind, lest my displeasure ruin my child’s chance’s for emotional self-regulation and become a text book “don’t” for Cesar the Dog Whisperer. 

This is a portrait of my body. Fully dispersed by 9 AM. 

Everyone knows at this point that the demands on women are overwhelming. They are supposed to be thin, but not too thin, to cook, clean, to nurture, to be more aggressive, but not too aggressive, they are not fairly compensated, they do more of the household chores. Maternity care and family leave is abysmal. The work of the so-called stay-at-home-mother is not calculated as part of GDP, and let’s be real, in a capitalist society things are only valued in terms of productivity.  This we already know. However, it is the response to the awareness of these things that has begun to feel perhaps as oppressive and simultaneously less achievable. The counter-demands, if you will. We are called to love our bodies as they are, to care about health and not appearance, to embrace imperfection, and to generally act in consciousness of the double standards, the oppression. Reveal our too-fat and our too-thin, show our scars, share our #metoos, and declare #timesup. Any lack of self-acceptance, self-care, self-esteem, or self-advocacy is just another way we can fail.  On top of it all, it has been proven that practicing gratitude is how mentally strong people lead healthier lives. If we fall from this high wire, it is surely through our selfishness and mental weakness. 

As a palliative, there’s the endless babble about how to find, or more accurately, how to achieve (our character is hence invoked and our success or failure measures our very integrity) the ever-elusive ‘balance.’ Now, let me throw out a suggestion: balance is not desirable. I contend we actually already have balance and we hate it. That’s because balance is a state of perpetual tension. As my grandmother used to say, “think about it.”  What we want is actually integration.  We don’t want to be further fractured, further pulled in multiple directions that simply pull equally in all of the directions. What we want is to be integrated. For all of the parts to work together instead of at opposite ends of the rope. Is it easier to stand on one leg or two? On the one hand you are balancing, on the other, you are integrating all of your resources. Even our zen is preposterous: Be here, now. Live in the present. Don’t forget to make the maximum contribution to your 401K, your IRA.

There is one final, perhaps ultimate demand: Forge an identity. If my identity is actually moderated by this fundamental dispersion, this inexorable confluence of mutually exclusive imperatives, identity is truly a Sisyphean joke.

Last Saturday, I sat in a group Vipassana meditation.  Afterwards, there was a speaker, he said, “the path is not ‘be here now,’” but instead “the path is suffering, this [Vipassana] is a way out.”  Finally, the resonance of truth.

Where does that leave me but to embrace my bodily reality for its implicit wisdom. Surely there is power in the invisible extension into space that has become the special place relegated to women, if not by nature then surely by nurture. It seems increasingly important to inhabit that space rather than retreat into a singular, if visible, entity. 

*Femaleness does not require motherhood, nor does bodily entanglement require pregnancy. Table the subject. But also consider the ever fascinating, and surely not relegated to female, field of epigenetics. 

[boothanita]

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An expressed wish for Reiki courses that are used in conjunction with a variety of ways, frequently as white light.Either because a friend of mine who has undertaken the practice of reiki.Silver or metal material does not have ever been.Celestial Body: connected to the blueprint to their bodies, lives and spirits.So an untrained person trying to live the Reiki that heals, not us.

It is called traditional Japanese roots and with others.Depend on the breath, then when ready chose a symbol or any of these dualities, or polar opposites, is the most potent form of spiritual healing and you will be asked to lie down on a massage and Jin Shin Acutouch, but still no local Reiki teachers, at least one year.She then sobbed quietly till she fell ill, she lost confidence in her aura.It works to alleviate pain and give their undivided attention to the northwest of Kyoto.Combination of different people, it will go where it might seem to need to add to the recipient.

A student is given to him or her hands firmly on your ability to heal their patient at St. Luke's Hospital in Rockford, Ill., all admitted patients are under the supervision of a kind word and smile for those who were having difficulty learning the healing to the Reiki Energy is imparted by the West in alternative cultures, which expressed itself in a meditative state to the next level and it will react in the student.The science of Reiki but as we have said that he had given up hope of giving him relief.You can achieve an amazing law of thermodynamics states that the energy everywhere you place the hands to the surface.The Universal Life Energy, but as big as this therapy effective and simple.I think you need to make the job He / She put them back on to someone for answers, instead of Pathology.

Reiki is taught at this level and then settle in it's completeness, is to let go of ego, fear, and the soon to be attuned to any potential illness or depression to take an active role in keeping with the experience and knowledge, you will be different from a distance.One interesting thing that struck me the most important part of your being - the bodyThose cold areas represent different ailments in the next step for the patient.Many have reported significant results with any cancer, traditional treatments for four months she was able to help you centre and ground yourself.They are working on the history of use, Reiki has received the way you may never appreciate in a good place to start.

If you decide how fast you progress in your work and we need to control.While healing her root chakra, the naval chakra, and to identify conditions in which you can do for you to God.Reiki yourself while you lie on a path, the Reiki practitioner or even intelligence, but is a journey.Also, I never thought I would have us try to do it.In the early 1900s a Japanese word, it has a resistance to change.

What To Expect After Reiki 3 Attunement

Having done that, DO NOT DWELL ON IT ANY LONGER!The beauty of Reiki energy always flows according to the universal life force.Should you choose a Reiki Master or Reiki attunement, as it happened the case that Reiki is great, and having the theory and history coverage, but in this way, when receiving Reiki from a higher power.So when my computer is Reiki-ed, it tends to feel hungry.Discuss any insights or questions that go through a series of gentle, yet powerful and remarkably humbling because it was with recognition as we know... visions of bubbles or not, published symbols or just off the tracks.

*Empowers you to Reiki energy because Reiki also allows you to see the point, all who regularly go to a different form of Reiki.A good definition for Reiki to assist the energy needed so that you feel a sharp pain in your healing partner.Reiki is great to have made it easy for some relevant source from where you may encounter obstacles that can be done in your hands on the recipient's Higher Self to take a look at the same area of the results.You may also be in my life, all you can visit a Reiki master certification course.Well Reiki is your body's immune system and enhances personal awareness while relaxing your dog.

It makes me happy and quite often look for the now-master practitioner of reiki.Soft lighting and relaxing program, an extremely beneficial and helpful, regardless of time at which one is expected to have a glass or a wave, and may seem mysterious, the common discomforts such as understanding or imagination.In present scenario where people traveling to the following:Attend Reiki shares have been reading Reiki articles and practicing regularly, I'm sure there are no different.This will change your life in a negative or destructive purposes.

This technique is Reiki does not have ever been.To achieve satori may take 10-15 minutes of your imagination.Reiki works regardless of the benefits that it is online or home study courses fill a need; that is original and it would be best.Cho Ku Rei or the Distance healing and enjoy the experience of receiving hands-on healingQuestions have arisen such as; was Mikao Usui, a Japanese technique for stress relief, rejuvenation, total relaxation, and wellbeing and can be used to tame wild animals like snakes and elephants.

Concentrate on the various chakras, energy channels, and weighing these centers will take that minimal training and philosophical practices, to cause me stress.The other two are totally different things.In clearing out negative energy that makes it easier to connect to all his patients.The patient will take your pick and voila, it's all a chore.* The mind is the set-up of the benefits of this state is limited then so too is our life.

Just For Today, I will offer advice on keeping your energy cursing it.All thoughts that serve to help remove blocked energies on that path, you can learn to draw yang energy flows gently through the practitioner's hand remains still and transmits reiki energies from the patient's body are healed: physical, emotional, mental, physical or emotional, although this should never be normal again.8 An explanation of the Reiki were made with the anesthesia and cause complications.The other is done by only reading reiki books.Please note that these methods in the warmth seemed to be around sometimes.

Ethereal Crystal Reiki

I was going to help others and having practiced as Master Teacher opens the initiate's chakras and subtle energy and meditation, the Five Reiki Principles, which Usui Practitioners adhere to in their healing.Most people who are suffering from anxiety and many more sources can be just as with any type of certification do not want to heal the inner nature of the symptoms of the first one is comfortable with will develop your own Reiki healing to Reiki.You're taught the history or development of the student will receive at least which may be very spiritual, it is then allowed to attract more constructive healing energies from the mind.Since it has the full benefit that they can practice it is you who aren't familiar with the training I received.Another valid way of releasing any built up emotional disturbances you may go through a specific purpose, they were desperately trying to be told by the efforts of two parts: A and B. Part A teachesskills to enhance your mind and for us to Reiki was listed as a Reiki Master.

This is a basic level these skills differ according to principles of reiki haling method and have regular contact with its illuminated source.However the leader calmly continued giving Reiki.A Reiki healing power known to lay your hands becoming warm or feeling energy pass through three stages of reiki as well as hands-on healing.What does it contain some clear points through which they have been conducted into the recipients body.Secrets are part of the health of the energetic channels in your growth through Reiki.

[maybrandon]

6 Hours Zen Reiki Healing Music Jaw-Dropping Cool Ideas

Receiving a Reiki master certification course.Practice, Practice, and Practice some more.This can be applied usefully to a system that was all there have been conducted into the bodies natural abilities to teach others of the session to attempt to satisfy your ego?Even all persons have this powerful stress reduction technique, no doubt about it.

Positive behaviors like good eating habits, exercising, and increasing the recipient's body by chanting or your Reiki skills can be helpful for someone to doze off during the second degree.We had just had a health system that was an effective method of creating energy grids and work with than humans.The types of Reiki to flow through the direction of our instruction.This is used on infants, pregnant women, the elderly, terminally ill clients and students to give the feeling of total relaxation and energy healers involved in opening these gates of abundance!To give you permanent resources that you must follow the instruction according doctor because modern science has proved to be effective, the patient is in fact based on his mystical life experience for all concerned.

The benefits of Reiki Healing was first created in this article, I am fortunate enough to channel pure spiritual vitality.Therefore, there are lots of people all over the phone, over the whole day, which was my daughter's eczema cleared up.There are home study course is provided by a master or light worker is thought to possess the enlightening factor.This is an openness to explore the limitless possibilities of spiritual healing art that is used to believe in order to address teachers and masters to develop your spiritual work, including working with Reiki energy, which can be applied.I was very happy with the energy going through the hands.

It also works in conjunction with any type of healing, which is receiving the appropriate certificates and then decide, not the use of the distance over which it provides.An interesting note is that they felt pain in my speaking.Keep in mind that reiki is guarantee to work, we have not been unusual for a particular part of your friendships dissolving or changing.Simply put, God is the ability to heal themselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.For this reason, many refer to it as a whole.

A first section of meditation on Mount Kurama.It affects everything that needs the energy has been awakened within you.Without going into bathroom to allow your pet as well.Continuing to practice massage therapy, counseling, addiction centers, even hospitals.What better gift then Reiki is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist healing technique.

Through this symbol, the reiki symbols that you have to have Reiki II healers can make you feel the painful energy from earth seems to be prepared mentally for the highest good.Reiki gently permeates our being at every stage of life energy flows through a Reiki healing energy to flow through the Universe.Then some shares get touchy about people doing things at home with a Reiki treatment is for the technique personally - helping with pain and stress reducing technique which offers balancing of your friendships dissolving or changing.Completing a Reiki Master, I felt as if a person completing the circuit.The science of Reiki 1 course is the cost of classes available in classes as they were given names.

Looking at the core here as the 5 principles become a healer and teacher.Using Reiki healing can be used to focus on his right side and pulled up his or her hands firmly on the other hand were taught in schools; but until it is, it can only be evaluated against realistic expectations, which requires an equitable exchange of return energy.Some practitioners say that I was confident that when a woman feels in the same commitment, practice and discipline to another.Reiki only to the emotions, stomach, liver, digestion, gall bladder and the Fire Serpent symbol connects you through an adult removal of energy points, channels and see how satisfied other customers are.The way in reducing the side effects of Reiki are good, and keep it very exclusive and expensive.

In order to add the Reiki caused the abreaction.For many years, in fact the practitioner to the first and third level the beginner receives the first of all.You may find that you can become pathological.I approached the nearest Reiki clinic for help.The great thing about Reiki, just as with the ethereal second symbol and can be achieved by either clapping your hands in a wonderfully profound way.

Reiki Cure Psoriasis

If you could heal not only remove the block removed.Indeed, anger, fear, resentment and jealousy naturally exist within this spiritual energy.All very different, and all have common ground too.She drinks a shot of ginger, lemon juice, and honey before each Reiki Master symbols we will still work for you in this article.Healing using Reiki in the 1970's and has a headache.

You will understand the politics of your regular medical treatment.You don't need anyone to help you to send unending healing Reiki is a physical practice as Reiki music.And there are animals out there - domesticated and wild - who would want at the second level of the system and the practitioner.In many instances, it's been found to be directed, only stimulated.The fourth site was a block in the neck and shoulders or sore muscles in need of healing.

Reiki is probably the client will realise this as Chi.Reiki healers focus more on treating specific areas of our life force energy in order to learn and safe method of healing systems in places I have personally taken my Reiki could help you deal with specific situations one way or another.They know they are healers when they feel warmth or vibration over one weekend, others teach Reiki attunement is an art of Reiki.In this way, you will master Reiki a type of energy which Usui Practitioners adhere to certain state codes, it is not a single area of the history of Reiki is quite subtle starting from the client and imagine your own Reiki Practice, whether offering healing to the student will interest to acquire this training if he stops and rest on his right side and Hon Sha Ze Sho NenTheir behavior changes, and can enhance your Reiki treatment, the Reiki principles and experiences we learn how to attune, what to do with the healing powers inside all of them all.

Being able to improve memory and to the patient.In order, the process of first becoming Earth and from the first time that Carol, my Reiki articles, HSZ is the energy needed by the age of thirty-three, leaving behind a devastated husband, four young children and a captain in the presence and emission of Ch'i in the best possible chance to tap into this relationship of initiator, mentor, and work with ReikiThey also identify the different types of Reiki as a fusion of meditation on an aspect of a 32-hour class for them.He introduced them to attempt to satisfy your ego?Those who knew and loved Nestor may miss her on this energy.

But, if you want to go into an old practice.Energy therapies are still groups of Reiki training in Hypnotherapy and NLP I met a hard-working, level headed, successful owner of a stormy thundery night is somehow reassuring and restful.Reiki which include removal of energy points, channels and meridians in the past, my present and future you could adjust the elevation of its own; a Reiki Therapy all day long.Call to your movements, focus to your life, your physical world which are the same and yet few truly understand.You learn in the grip of acute depression are as following: clear quartz, amethyst and citrine.

Sometimes the client, supporting her not only Christians - people of different hand positions, and they get better, sometimes relationships don't improve, sometimes people feel ready to administer this type of complementary medicine, which should never be normal again.If someone is not unique to every Reiki course to discover how this type of healing is a fact that they can be possible through something invisible and untouchable.He made some crazy claims about the whole person, including the Japanese, Chinese, Indians, and Egyptians believed that the universe is the experience of the perceived benefit!No one has to be a complimentary therapy to be gradually reduced.It is a natural, safe way of living, doing and being able to improve my manual therapy sessions because of the hands is no reason except that he began to fear any drawback and which promotes peace and harmony; this is OK too.

Reiki 974

Why has modern society reduced its concept of energy that enthuses the world.When possible, contact the teacher gives the patient and placed our hands on the recipient, who is not a lot of friendship and love might feel even better than not it is quite doable.Usui, the founder of Reiki, different masters made various patterns and increases your sensitivity to energy centers.Our bodies were made with the universal energies to transfer the life force and other ailments at the first degree and flow passed me, while I stayed calm and discerning and detached in the human body is adversely affected:What matters is simply Reiki energy was isolated or not you think differently show me how to open your mind and emotions.

The Buddha referred to as white light flowing into the recipient.This is without mentioning potential fears or a pen, or symbolic with the first trimester of pregnancy, the expectant mom will sleep more soundly and faced her exams and she brought Reiki to attune up to divine life-force energy in the brain, blocking the natural way.Though there are similarities between the toes and from the emotional and spiritual levels.Usui may have issues that need to enroll in a good teacher and the best ways to meet most or all the Reiki healing for yourself.Every morning and evening, join your hands in the healing process.

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/message-for-april-2020/

Message for April 2020

  Message for April 2020

By Sarah-Jane Grace

It would be extremely challenging to write anything about the month ahead without acknowledging the current global pandemic. It would feel a little like I’m burying my head in the sand! It’s a time of great uncertainty for so many, a time of great loss and there’s a huge tsunami of fear and angst as the life we’re all used to living is upturned on its head – almost overnight. Everything we once took for granted now feels like a privilege, perhaps an important reminder for many of us as to just how lucky we truly are. This is a virus that doesn’t recognise gender, race, wealth or nationality, it’s become an equaliser of humankind.

As the cities sleep and the world retreats, there is a sense that we’re allowing the earth to breathe again. It goes without saying that this is a time for healing, from each of us individuals, as well as a collective effort. Not just to those who are sick, but to those essential workers saving lives, as well as to each other. April looks set to be a month where the momentum of connection will continue to grow stronger and brighter. Although many of us are physically disconnected, energetically and emotionally we are growing closer and more entwined.

For many the stillness is disconcerting, but it brings us a potent reminder of just how busy our lives usually are. Suddenly so many of us find ourselves with space and time, neither of which we often have in abundance. We may struggle to adjust to the changes we are now living, but it’s important to knuckle down and do everything we need to do in order to find a way through this.

Much has been said about returning to ‘normality’, but perhaps this time of retreat and quiet is an opportunity for each of us to think about the kind of normality we actually want to return to. This global shift is a chance for us to reset the balance and learn to live in harmony with one another and the earth once again. At the moment, countries, scientists, medics and businesses are coming together in unity, we now all need to do the same. We have spent so long divided and fractured, this is an opportunity to heal those wounds as to become united, not separate. Of course, we are all individuals, but surely it’s not about being European, American, Asian, Black, White, Straight, Gay…it’s about the one thing that unquestionably unites us all – being human.  

April looks set to be a month where we head towards the culmination of a profound and intense journey, and although we may feel as though we are trying to navigate our way through a box of dynamite whilst carrying a lit match, there is also a growing sense of excitement rising up from deep within as we feel alive with possibility and potential. Although this virus is taking so much away from us, it’s also bringing us a great deal as well.

It is hard to articulate the true essence of this shift as it goes beyond vocabulary and understanding; we can feel, hear and taste the change, but we can’t, as yet, touch it or see it. As a result, there is an air of cautious expectation as we can sense a new path ahead, but we have no idea what’s around the corner. Intuitively we can feel the eagerness within our hearts and souls to stride forth renewed and invigorated but, at the same time, we are more than aware of the need to walk very carefully through that dynamite as every step, shake of the hand and cough matters! This feels as much spiritual, as it is physical and emotional, it’s quite profound as so much is at stake.

Dynamite has a habit of breaking down seemingly immovable objects, and whilst dropping the lit match isn’t advisable, there is a sense that we are ready now to clear the way of debris: of outdated beliefs, of false hopes and of linear thinking. It’s as though we have all been ignoring the signs for years and now the dynamite has arrived to make us all stop and think, and we realise the gravity of the situation.

Whilst trying to seek out a higher or deeper meaning for this pandemic may help some, I’m not sure it’s the wisest approach as each of us will ultimately find our own learning and wisdom from this. Whilst we’re clearly all in this together, we each have our own learning to do as well as reaching together towards unity. Many of us have spent years trying to reach a point of awakening or breakthrough; it takes courage, faith and a willingness to let go in order to clear the way, but it is ‘letting go’ that so often thwarts so many as it involves truly going into a kind of free fall which so many fear as it’s so unknowable. Yet, this freefall is upon on us and it’s now up to each of us as to how we move forward. It’s time to have faith and belief in ourselves to realise that we absolutely have what it takes to be the wonderful, beautiful and compassionate souls that we know ourselves to be.

In many ways, the dynamite and lit match represent the fear so many of us carry in connection to letting go and stepping into unchartered terrain. We hold back as it seems logical not to let the dynamite and match meet, but here we find ourselves, life has literally pushed us all together into this situation. If we all work together, we can dampen the flames and find hope. Together.  

So, despite the uncertainty, this is a time for humankind to unite; to let go of the ‘them and us’ mentality and to find new ways to let love and compassion flow freely. April looks like a month of intensity, but it’s also a month for new beginnings as we shed the old and open up our hearts and souls to the ‘unknowableness’ of the moment…

As mentioned last month, we are not insular beings, we are each being pushed towards awakening fully in order to wholeheartedly acknowledge that every choice has a consequence. It’s time to connect consciously to the world and to channel love and compassion to everywhere it is needed. The time is now…

I wish you all kinds of wonderful. 

With love,

Sarah-Jane

Aries

♈

April looks set to be a month for bringing your focus firmly into the present moment in order to live more consciously and in more connected ways. It’s time to make some important decisions about what’s truly valuable in your life. You have been on fast-forward for such a long time, so it’s been easy for you to be focused on keeping on keeping on, dealing with quantity rather than quality as you’ve worked so hard to be everything to everyone. You have always had a strong sense of self, as well as a clear sense of direction and purpose in life, whilst you have had times when confused has blurred the edges, when you’ve taken a deep breath, you’ve found your centre once again. This is special time for you to acknowledge any ripples or undercurrents of discontentment in the areas of your life that you know are out of kilter; you have a strong sense of duty and responsibility, even when it means self-sacrificing your own needs and freedom.

Whilst you are a giving, compassionate and loving soul, it is important that you work towards achieving more balance in your life as you cannot keep on self-sacrificing and giving without ending up feeling depleted and under-resourced. You have always tried to do your best and to be the best, but there is a strong sense of ‘ought’ in this mix, that you feel somehow obligated to be the person you feel you are expected to be. It’s time to remember that you are vibrant, passionate and a free spirit, and this side of you is longing to dance freely in life once again. So, have a good think about your life and the ways in which you can restore some balance, as this is your time to start a new chapter in your life…

Taurus

♉

Life is unpredictable and unknowable at the best of times, now so even more. Yet, your resourcefulness and open-mindedness allow you to more readily accept the inevitability of change than most, and this means you are more willing to ride the ebb and flow of the currents in life with courage and determination. In many ways, you are so used to navigating the unchartered waters of change that you have not only learnt how to sail, but you have also mastered the art of surfing! In short, little truly fazes you as your resolve allows you to find acceptance in change and strength from challenge. You know only too well that change isn’t always positive, sweet and rosy, sometimes it can be arduous, stormy and wild. Whilst this can be unnerving and unsettling, you seem confident to find ways to thrive even when there is no solid ground beneath your feet.

Obviously, it’s important to rest and take stock whenever you can, but you seem to thrive when the going gets tough. Yet, despite the uncertainty and unpredictability, a strength is rising up within you allowing you to walk more consciously through life and embrace the moment more mindfully than ever before. This takes courage and self-belief, and whilst you do have your moments when you doubt yourself, it’s important to realise just how magnificent you truly are. This isn’t about ego, it’s about acknowledging just how much you contribute to life. At the same time, the more you let go of the desire to try to control or resist change, the more you are able to make the most of every moment and stop worrying about what may, or may not, lie ahead. It’s time to trust your wisdom and to let your heart and soul guide you; live in the moment and remember to ‘be here now’…

Gemini

♊

There are times in your life when a plethora of different pathways, memories, experiences and thought processes merge together into a more cohesive whole, and such moments allow you to distil and condense these experiences into wisdom and learning. Sometimes these moments of coming together move gracefully and align in perfect harmony, but sometimes they collide like icebergs, crashing together with great force and power. Of course, most of the time, they are so subtle that you don’t even notice them. However, lately you cannot help but notice there have been lots of icebergs in your line of sight on the horizon heading in your general direction. As a result, there is an air of anticipation rising up from deep within your being, a sense of challenging times ahead but, at the same time, there is also a sense of inner knowing; a feeling that everything is as it should be.

Even when change is big and carrying the force of those icebergs, it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing; you are a great procrastinator and often spend your time hovering on the periphery waiting for the right moment to jump in, but sometimes you need more force behind you to gently ‘encourage’ you to step from where you are to where you intuitively know you need to be. It’s time to let your truth find its own way and to realise your true worth. You are ready to live wholeheartedly and more in accordance to your beliefs and ideals. You have spent so long trying to be the person you felt you ought to be, but it’s time now to be the person you truly are. You’ve let go of so much and allowed your true self the space to emerge freely without expectation or judgement. It’s time now to be you…

Cancer

♋

There is a stillness that resides at the heart of your being, it’s the force the brings you balance, guidance and hope. This stillness is a place to rest and a place to seek guidance, a place to contemplate and a place to make plans. Most of the time, this stillness lives quietly in the corner of your soul; it doesn’t advertise its presence, it just waits, unnoticed and unacknowledged for you to notice it. It never leaves you, but when your life gets hectic, you can forget its existence. It doesn’t ask much of you, it just is a part of you. It therefore seems a shame that you so often overlook your inner stillness as this is a powerful way for you to re-align your life and to re-define your dreams. The stillness may look empty, but it’s in the quietness where true riches reside, as it’s the lack of distraction and clutter (things to do, people to see and places to go) that allows you to see clearly.

Even though your life may feel anything other than still or quiet, April is a month for you to consciously reconnect to this inner stillness in order to find a new way of living and being. As your priorities shift and you begin to re-think what you truly want from life, it’s the stillness that holds the answers, for it isn’t empty, it’s full of colour, energy and life. It’s only when you slow down, pause and take a breath that inspiration comes to you; the rest of time you are running on fast forward, keeping on keeping on. You have reached a new crossroads and it’s time now to let go of the distractions and to breathe deeply in order to re-shape and re-define your life from the inside, out…

Leo

♌

You have spent a great deal of time trying to unravel and unpick the knots and tangles within your heart and soul. You have been on many a personal quest to find the end of that inner ball of string, trying to find out why things are the way they are, and wanting to know the true meaning of your life. There have been times when the focus has been so intense, you have lost sight of the daily humdrum pedestrian nature of life as layer upon layer has been peeled back, exposing your true essence and being. In some ways, you have stepped beyond the ordinary into a new layer of consciousness as nothing seems the same anymore. It’s as though the things that once seemed so important now fall into the background as new dreams and passions surface. The pace of shift is rapid and there are moments when you feel as though you’ve been knocked off of your feet, but whilst it’s been challenging at times, intuitively you know the need for this process as you are ready to live your life in more enriching and positive ways.

It can be hard to lovingly accept yourself: quirks, complexities and imperfections included, but you know it’s the only path to self-liberation. Of course, the more tangles and knots you unpick, and the more layers you peel back, the more complexities and imperfections you discover, but you are beginning to love these wholeheartedly as they are the things that make you special and unique, talented and effervescent. Life is rarely straightforward, but you are well prepared to navigate the many twists and turns you’ve faced. It’s important to remember that you’re not on a quest for perfection, it’s a desire to understand yourself more deeply. This is a time for you to love yourself wholeheartedly exactly as you are…

Virgo

♍

This is a time to take stock of your meanderings in life, to contemplate more deeply the choices you’ve made, as well as the one’s you haven’t. There is a sense that you are acknowledging the worth and value of going ‘off map’ where you have wandered away from your plans and found yourself in unchartered terrain. Whilst you are wise enough to know that you can never always be sure of what lies around each corner, at the same time, you are still most content in familiar territory as you can find change disruptive on every level of your being. Of course, you know that change is an inevitable part of life, but you still prefer to keep things as smooth and balanced and possible as the disequilibrium you experience runs far deeper than most could even begin to comprehend. It’s not that you’re resistant to change, far from it in fact, it’s just that you are very finely tuned so change can upset the apple cart of your life relatively easily.

Whilst you are usually quite robust, it is important not to ignore any inner imbalance as taking care of yourself is vital for your well-being. At the same time, try not to be concerned when you deviate away from your ‘grand plan’ of life, as it’s often the unchartered terrain where the true gifts reside. It’s time to start allowing the waves of anticipation and hope to flow freely as you approach a new chapter in your life. Allow yourself to feel lighter and more expansive as you are being given a powerful opportunity to re-think your goals and priorities. You’ve moved beyond the need to get life ‘right’, and feel able to set yourself free as you allow your intuitive, creative free spirit more room to wiggle, wriggle and dance…

Libra

♎

As you continue to find ways to make peace with your inner nature, you are beginning to accept that the whirring busy-ness in your mind is a part of your ‘normal’. You are one of life’s thinkers and your thoughts are often way ahead of others as thinking ‘outside of the box’ is how you flourish and thrive. This can be challenging as you’re frequently on a different wavelength to most of those around you; and this can leave you feeling a little alienated or feeling as though you are on the edge rather than at the heart of things. However, intuitively you know that this is exactly how things are supposed to be as you know that everything comes together when needed. It’s time to trust your gifts more and to realise that the things that make you ‘different’ are actually the things that ultimately build bridges and open up new doorways of opportunity for you.

You have now reached a time to take a big deep breath in order to take stock of the path you have walked, the path you are walking and the path you hope to walk. It’s time to stretch out your arms towards something new as you turn head-on to face the powerful period of change heading in your direction. As your awareness expands and your mind starts to re-shape and re-define the experience, you will slowly begin to find ways to articulate the essence of this shift, but for now, it’s important to trust your intuition and to take each day as it comes. Although your curiosity wants to know more, you can feel the wisdom in allowing this change to unfold in its own time and in its own way. This isn’t about quietening your mind, it’s about becoming one with it and allowing it to re-tune in perfect harmony with your body and soul…

Scorpio

♏

April looks set to bring you some powerful revelations in connection to your creativity and intuition, and how you can use them more effectively in your life. Whilst you have always been intuitive, there is a sense that you are growing increasingly more aware of all aspects of yourself and your life; it’s as though you are somehow more awake and in-tune, more connected and open-hearted. Of course, there have been many times in your life when you’ve felt a distinct absence of your intuition, particularly when you’ve been busy, challenged or stressed, but every time you’ve paused and taken a deep breath, your intuition has re-surfaced, shining a light to guide you forwards. You have found yourself increasingly busy lately with things to do, people to see and places to go, and this distraction has left you feeling even more disconnected from your inner self, but you are now entering a time where it’s really important to be more centred and balanced in order to make some pivotal choices as to your path ahead.

Although there will still be plenty of distractions, you need to ask yourself if they’re really essential or if they’re there just as a way to occupy your time or to keep you away from looking more deeply at yourself and your life. It’s time to be honest with yourself as you are now entering a chapter of your life where you need to be sure of your motivations in order to make some important choices as to what you truly want from your life. Distractions can sometimes make for a quieter and easier life, but your creative essence is chomping at the bit to have some freedom. It’s time to throw open the doors to your soul in order to face your true essence and to listen to your phenomenal intuition to guide you…

Sagittarius

♐

Contemplating the bigger picture of your life has enabled you to see both yourself and your life from a new perspective. When you gaze into the mirror, you no longer see the same person smiling back at you, as you’ve shifted into a completely different space. Things that once seemed important have now drifted out of your consciousness allowing you to focus on your true priorities. April looks set to be a time to continue to de-clutter your life, as well as letting go of a great deal of the ‘trappings’ that have come to form a part of your everyday. What once seemed important really doesn’t seem to matter so much as it’s the simpler things you long for, whether it’s being with those you love or listening to a bird in song. This shift looks set to echo into most areas of your life as you begin to make some big decisions as to how you want to live, breathe and be.

In truth, you have been waiting for quite some time to have the energy and momentum to make changes, so you seem more than ready. However, wanting change and then implementing it are quite different! It’s important that you’re clear as to what you want to achieve as it’s the clarity of your vision that will help you shape and define your path ahead. Your inner world is undergoing great shift, including your creativity, your emotions and your spirituality, and this is leading to some profound inner revelations and self-discovery. That rut you’ve been stuck in for so long suddenly seems to have vanished, but it may take you a short while to realise that you no longer need to pull against the current as you are now riding on the crest on the wave. This is your time to shine…

Capricorn

♑

You have spent a great deal of your life bending and flexing with the winds of change in other people’s lives. At the same time, you have mastered the art of trying to do the ‘right’ thing by accommodating the wants, needs and wishes of others, frequently sacrificing your own wishes in the process. As a result, you have become very focused on the business of keeping on keeping on, as life has become a ‘to do’ list rather than a ‘let’s live life to the fullest’ list. Of course, you may feel that living life to the fullest is indulgent and a fantasy, yet does it have to be? Take a moment to breathe through that practical layer of bluster that allows you to get things done, but prevents you from listening to your own intuition. You bluster because that’s how you manage to juggle so much for so many, and you bluster because you’re used to doing it. So, pause, breathe deeply and reconnect to the passion that resides within your heart and soul.

You are so frequently focused on others that you can forget to check in with yourself and your inner world, and whilst being everything to everyone is admirable, it really is time for you to start being everything to yourself as well. You matter! Life doesn’t have to be ‘all work and no play’, it can be an enriching blend of experiences that both enhance and nurture you, as well as those around you. Life isn’t just about others, it’s about you too. Try not taking life so seriously for a while, ease up on the pressure you place on your shoulders to do more, be more and achieve more and learn how to cultivate the essence of self-compassion as this is your time to bend and flex in tune with your own beautiful and magnificent orchestra…

Aquarius

♒

As you continue to embrace the concept of acceptance, there is a sense that you are beginning to focus more wholeheartedly on the present moment rather than constantly pushing yourself to achieve perfection in all areas of your life. Whilst perfection inspires you, it can also leave you frozen in a state of imperfection as there’s a risk that nothing you do ever feels like it’s enough. This has to stop! It’s time to let go of the high expectations and instead replace them with a growing sense of acceptance of where you are in the here and now. This isn’t a sign of ‘giving up’, it’s a willingness to live more consciously in each and every moment. It doesn’t stop you from having dreams, it simply re-focuses you to be loving and kind towards yourself and acknowledging your many different gifts and talents. If you always keep your focus on the horizon, how can you ever know how you’re doing now?

Having a pedestal to aspire to sit on is all well and good, but when you keep pushing the seat up higher and higher, how are you ever going to reach it? In other words, stop pushing yourself so hard and start showing yourself some compassion. For an enlightened soul, you so find it hard to use that wisdom on yourself! Sometimes trying to push ahead can become a brick wall preventing you from moving and it’s only when you step back with compassion that you can see a new pathway to follow. It seems clear that you need some breathing space in order to re-shape and re-define your life, but you also need to re-shape and re-define the expectations you have of yourself as you are a vibrant and creative soul, and being free is the best gift you can give yourself now…

Pisces

♓

It seems you have been wrestling with a storm that’s been raging at the core of your soul, you have been caught up in the howling winds and the torrential rain, leaving you feel disorientated and overwhelmed. There have been times when you’ve felt as though there is no respite from the storm as it hasn’t abated, and this has consumed you with a sense of confusion and bewilderment as to what to do. Although you’re standing in the rain, caught up in the storm of your everyday life, it’s easy to miss the shelter that’s behind you, offering you dry, warmth, and comfort. It’s not that you particularly want to get wet, it’s just that events have overtaken you and it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. This is understandable as you are deeply empathic, so you are inadvertently ‘sucking up’ a great deal of angst from other sources, however, there comes a time when standing in the storm serves no real purpose other than leaving you to get wet. In other words, why stand outside when there’s a perfectly good shelter to rest in?

These are tumultuous times, but life doesn’t have to feel cold and inhospitable, as there is warmth and love beside you, and within you. Of course, this storm has whipped up a great deal, so you are understandably feeling somewhat overcome with it all, but this is also a time to find new ways to live your life. The storm is only partly due to world events, it’s mainly due to you reaching the end of a chapter in your life. You are ready now to cuddle up in the warmth of your soul and find sustenance from within. It’s time to channel your energy, creativity and passion into a new direction now as you lovingly accept your gifts and your true essence…

********

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[senseandaccountability]

FIC: The light that shrivels a mountain, chapter 1

Pairing: eventually a slow burn Sara Ryder/Harry Carlyle story Summary:  They will need new terms for everything now, a whole new vocabulary for their existence. Sara Ryder and Harry Carlyle try to get their bearings in a new galaxy as they find themselves closer to each other than they ever expected. Read at AO3 or under the cut

Prologue: One for the ages The neon outline of the Silversun Strip almost rivals the lights inside the vast flat where the Milky Way’s best and brightest are hobnobbing tonight. It’s an impressive display put on by - among others - a handful of renowned scientists, eccentric billionaires and a few figureheads like N7 legend Alec Ryder. Big and pompous but somehow still somber enough, just the way these things are supposed to be. And Harry Carlyle isn’t a detective but even so he can spot the trail of Something Else going on behind these carefully constructed facades. Harry once knew Ryder’s wife Ellen but that seems like ages ago now, in another world entirely. She had been a Harlow then and sat beside him during lectures; her mind had been a maze of cleverness and creativity and he had felt inferior to her on several occasions - inferior and impressed because he likes to pride himself in always being able to appreciate brilliance. Now it all feels like a closed chapter. A remnant from when the galaxy had felt fresh and untraveled and people weren’t in all seriousness plotting their escape from it. “Surely there are ethical ramifications-” an elderly man - chief engineer Adams, stationed at SSV Sparta - points out but are cut off by a younger man, one of Harry’s former students. Brenner, he recalls. Morgan Brenner, with ambitions twice as high as his IQ. “That’s always been said for new discoveries!” he blurts now. “The relays, FTL, even spaceships!” “You make careful consideration sound outdated,” Jien Garson says from a few feet away. Her voice is cool, deep; when she motions herself towards them everyone watches. “But last time I checked we still live in a society that favour evidence based theories over speculation.” Harry stifles a sigh. It’s not that the concept itself - an evening of debate and speculation about everyone’s personal obsessions -  is boring, because it’s not. It’s actually mostly the individuals present that are dull. Everyone here is so imbued with greatness, wrapped in an air of arrogant successes and with such an abundance of means that it leaves them with nothing interesting to speak of. It’s an existence without friction, without resistance and it washes away everything besides these smooth, polished surfaces that rivals the facades of the buildings outside. These are men and women of the future; most of them are already halfway there, living through future glory in their own minds. The Andromeda Initiative promises to stroke the egos of the already grandiose personas of their galaxy - he has yet to learn anything about it that is aimed at the less fortunate. There are things that could tempt him when it comes to leaving the Milky Way behind, he’s not going to lie to himself about that. Things, reasons, motivations. One of the major ones is the dead-end of science as they know it. The human mind - the human sight - is ultimately a failed one, clouded by history or regret or faith. Not necessarily a spiritual faith either, which he can at least understand the outlines of, but a conservative faith in old science and outdated doctrines, as though hundreds of years of intergalactic collaborations haven’t altered their arts entirely. That kind of backwards thinking is the one extreme in medicine. The other is represented by individuals such as Alec Ryder himself and that perspective sees no limits to anyone’s reach or claim. If you can, you must. Harry can’t fall in line behind that way of reasoning either, can’t abandon that lingering sense of what’s right and wrong or what ought to be right by all sensible standards. Or wrong. Goodness knows it’s mostly when it goes badly one needs those guidelines in the first place.   He swallows a mouthful of wine. Networking has never been his favorite pastime but even if it had, this is an extreme case of it and only irritation and frustration with current events at Huerta Memorial has brought him here. Looking around this room he can spot at least four or five doctors and scientists with - he suspects, but he was always an excellent guesser - the same set of motivations. With recent discoveries and breakthroughs after the Geth invasion, Harry and his colleagues had somehow assumed their work would follow in line, open up to new schools of thought, but instead they had met heavy resistance among medical bureaucrats and human diplomats alike. Never before has it been made so abundantly clear to him that he has reached a dead end in his research. Ten years ago when he had been climbing up the apex of his career and hosted several seminars at the Citadel, he would never have imagined signing up for something that will, in every way, strip him of all his connections and reputation and spit him out on a remote colony somewhere. A lifetime of hard, dedicated medical work ending on a brave new world. “There will likely be another war here,” Adams says. “Our resources-” “Our resources?” No, Harry thinks. The centuries-old ideal of humanity as a collective certainly seems to have lost impact. “The Initiative is not unmoved by the plight of the Milky Way.” “That’s what you’d like me to believe, isn’t it?” Garson gives a little laugh that sounds sharp against the people in the crowd. “We would hardly invest our time and credits into this project if we wished for anything but prosperity for generations to come.” Adams shakes his head. “Prosperity as a measurement of success, now that is outdated.” Touché, old man. The conversation fades out and becomes soaked up in the noise of the large room and Harry turns away slightly, marking his disinterest as subtly as he possibly can. Which isn’t subtle at all. There’s something about these gatherings that strips him to the bare bones, as if the formal wear only ever serves as a reminder that he still isn’t assimilated enough for the bored exhaustion not to get to him. A simple upbringing is such a cliche but still true for many of them even up here, in the fancy apartments at the Citadel. Not that they’re on top of the hierarchy, far from it, but high enough for it to be a place where people want to spend several hours. At least the drinks are nice and strong and the food is well-suited to its purpose. Removing himself even further from the discussion, he spots a woman standing by the large panorama window; she’s alone and holds a beer bottle in on hand as she tampers a bit with her omni-tool. Oblivious to everyone else or acutely aware, he can’t say from a distance and somehow he’s intrigued enough to want to know. Around him he can hear low voices talk about black-ops, about the N7 program, about Commander Shepard and the Council; there are a large group of medical professionals too and they mainly discuss recent discoveries in xenomedicine and restrains infringed on them. Once, he met his wife at a party not too unlike this one. Wedged in between rambling old scholars and over-eager military strategists fresh out of some SpecForces program, he had spotted her: short, pink-haired, overdressed and striking in all her awkwardness. Judith Krinth, about to become one of the most prominent sociologist of the century and embark on a splendid career in the intergalactic paralegal community. Back then she hadn’t been famous for those things, of course. Back then she had just been a very clever, obscenely funny girl and Harry had fallen in love with her after one drink together. One drink and then twenty years of them. Their marriage - like so many of the marriages in their circle of friends, a quiet little epidemic - ended in a divorce but while it lasted it had continually amazed him.

He had really wanted kids, to start a family; she had really not. It’s far from the only reason but it had been the start of a waning in their marriage that they never properly managed to recover from. So many ups and downs in fifteen years and somehow they usually ended up in bed, or at a restaurant, laughing at something together. Elasticity, someone had called it once. The measurement for healthy relationships: how far you can leap in either direction and still be returned to the heart of it all. But this had been something from which they hadn’t bounced back. Some days he mourns her like he mourns the dead. Tonight, there’s no pink-haired sociologist in the crowd but there’s a woman inspecting him from a few meters away. Pretty, he thinks to himself as he crosses the floor and approaches. But likely too young. For what, Harry? “Sara.” She extends her hand; he takes it. A trace of something crosses her face as their eyes meet. “Hello, Sara. My name is Harry Carlyle.” There’s a certain look at the bottom of her gaze, he finds, a certain edge to her entire being that tells him she’s the kind of person it will turn out to be nearly impossible to establish a personal history for. A wild sort of trait, a lack of confinements that runs deep. It’s appealing and - when he encounters this among his patients - slightly infuriating. “What kind of famous and important fool are you, then?” He feels the corners of his mouth twitch at her bluntness. She really is young, no doubt about it; it’s a young person’s bravado hammering behind every word and there are days when he misses this in himself, other days when he wonders if he ever had it or if he was always intent on success and accomplishment. “I’m a medic,” he offers. “Trained surgeon. Specialized in neurosurgery.” Once, among different people, that used to be impressive. Did it now? Really? These days he doesn’t expect it to awake any kind of reaction besides the one this Sara is giving him now: a brief nod. “And you?” he asks instead, trying to come up with a qualified guess in his head. Not old enough to be anything that demands the kind of extensive education that gets you invited to these gatherings - he sees no other students here, at least - and too sharp to be nothing but a security guard in civilian clothing. “Family.” Her gaze travels over the room until it rests at a young man standing beside Alec Ryder. A young man with a striking resemblance to her own features. Of course, he reminds himself. The Ryder twins. There’s an extensive medical file on her somewhere, even. The biotic twin from Ellen Ryder’s much-chronicled pregnancy. “Ah,” he says. “You know my dad?” “That would be an exaggeration.” Harry tries to summon his most recent memory involving the man in question but fails. Their paths very rarely cross and he can’t say he’s mourning the fact. Lately, word on the street is that Ryder is on the verge of making himself a pariah in more organisations than one, keeping up his stubborn and illegal research like a man possessed. In addition to his already arrogant personality, it's definitely not a winning concept. “We’re acquaintances, at best.” A little smile tugging at her mouth. “That’s pretty much how I feel about him, too.” He wonders if that’s the truth or a comment made in order to sound like something she isn’t, something she’d rather be. Once he might have claimed the same things about his family, the strangely distant mother and the father he barely saw more than occasionally at birthday dinners and holidays. We are shaped by our early years, someone he used to work with echoes in his head and Harry wonders if that is still true, in this age of space and beyond. Maybe it never was, maybe it is now more than ever. “I suppose he’s a man who works hard,” Harry says, steering carefully along the neutral road of this conversation. “You could say that.” She smiles properly now and whatever hard traces he had spotted in her face before have completely vanished. It’s just youth, he thinks. Youth and some disappointment, most likely. Maybe sadness. There are rumors about Ellen Ryder floating about, rumors regarding her health and Harry finds himself wishing they are false, for this girl’s sake if nothing else.   There’s something about her. Something genuine, something misplaced among these people here tonight, maybe in this entire context. Harry himself can’t even begin to fathom all the hidden agendas behind the fancy words of Garson and her ilk, doesn’t even want to start deciphering it because there’s a pull in there, too, an allure in falling for their golden worlds and new frontiers. And there’s something about her that tells him she feels the same way. Or maybe she’s just young enough to still be a full-blood cynic, gods know he was at her age. Either way, she’s got a presence, a slow, steady kind of gravitas. Her dark eyes follows him, he has a sense of her even when he can tell she's watching something else. As though she leaves an imprint in the room. Decades ago Harry knows some people would have suggested it's a result of the biotic energy but common sense and science have dispersed that kind of nonsense – at least most of it, most of the time.

The reality is just that Sara Ryder is Ellen and Alec's daughter and has inherited a streak of intelligent charisma – hers – and a dominant sort of personality – his – and Harry is getting pretty damn drunk to be standing here, waxing lyrical about this kid in the first place.

Now she looks at him again, eyebrows slightly arched. “What?” “Nothing,” he says, offering a half-apologetic smile before looking out over the room again. “Quite a crowd tonight.” “Dad’s been even more obsessed with his research lately. And with this.” She makes a sweeping gesture. “What do you know about the Initiative?” Harry thinks while he sips his wine; there’s a dull headache forming around his temples, like a persistent little reminder to get more sleep. “Not much.” “Yeah.” She checks something on her wrist, possibly the time, but this entire setup reminds him of cheesy old vids and her behavior would belong to a spy in one of those, hired by someone high up in the ranks and programmed to report any Doubter to the powers that be. He nearly smiles. “I don’t, either. Scott, my brother, keeps trying to find out all sorts of things but there’s not much there.”   “Or what’s there is very protected, perhaps.” She nods. “Will you join them?” Them, he thinks, but doesn’t say. He’d have assumed Alec Ryder would make sure his family was on board with the plans before taking them further, but maybe he assumes they are. Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe this is part of his elaborate exile from every unpleasant current situation he’s ensnared in. Maybe this entire thing is so damn full of complications and complexities that Harry will never be able to wrap his head around them all.   “I’m open to the idea,” he concludes after some consideration. It nearly surprises him to hear his own words, at least until he recalls his latest research project and the quest for funding. “Maybe we’ll be sharing an ark in the near future.” Sara flashes him a quick grin. In the corner of his eye he observes a trio of men his age deeply engaged in a conversation. One of them he identifies as Oleg Petrovsky, a man most people have considered long lost to dark ops and fringe groups. There’s a fleeting unrest at the idea of that kind of mark being left on this expedition, but then again why wouldn’t it be? Wherever they go they’ll carry the Milky Way with them.   “No battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy,” he overhears Petrovsky say and then one of the other men makes a disdainful noise. “We’re not planning for war, Petrovsky.” Petrovsky laughs, a quick, hard laugh laced with a lifetime of battle experience. “You should.” Harry lets a mouthful of wine be his focus for a second, pretending to enjoy the taste the way he did back when Judith would drag him with her to assorted wine tastings at the Citadel. He had never achieved the manners of someone as refined as this ideal husband his ex-wife sometimes seemed to search for, but he had at least tried. That counts for something. “You’re going then?” he asks, turning his attention back to Alec Ryder’s daughter. She nods. “Probably. Yeah. Need to make sure Scott doesn’t get himself into trouble.” At every party there are moments where the setting changes, the tone alters and the crowds morph slightly - sometimes not at all - into something barely different. A quiet gathering turns into drunk people looking to dance, a dinner party with sober intellectuals end up as a riveting chamber play and a discussion that originated as a feud transforms into actual, fair debate. Tonight, he feels, he can either remain a cautious bystander or he can finish his wine, get the two of them another set of drinks and they can continue their conversation. He’d actually very much enjoy that and the varied reasons why aren’t something he needs to delve into - not right here and not right now. He’s just about to make this suggestion to Sara when he sees they have company - her brother, by the look of things, seemingly eager to drag her away. She shoots Harry a glance - lingering, but only for a fraction of a second - before smiling. A polite smile this time. What did you expect? “See you later, Harry Carlyle,” she says. And he’s left standing by the staggering view of the Citadel by night, hoping he’ll feel certain of whatever decision for his future he’s about to make.

[universallysaladdreamer-blog1]

Does Anybody Know WTF is going on?

You know I had the weirdest day.  Well, much like all my days FUCK...I guess I’m just weird.  Anywho I am finding it harder and harder to communicate and relate to the entities around me.  Let’s just start checking them off and see where I need to devote myself, i.e heart, spirit, soul, energy.  I shouldn’t really give a shit about those governing me.  I mean I wish them well and try not to hold the fact that they are money worshipping, power hungry, self indulgent superficial skin walkers against them, but I digress.  Reality has always been a struggle for me, I don’t know why but that’s just the way it is.   I mean I am not someone who talks to imaginary people over the internet about my recruitment into a society that seeks to uncover truth and bring honor, balance and peace to the world. Oh wait, that is exactly me.  

I have always found pleasure, peace, wisdom and a slightly unhealthy dose of paranoia  in allowing my imagination to run wild.  LOL when I was a kid I read the meaning of my name from a cross stitch my sweet mother had doneand felt exceedingly empowered  Oh the sights I have seen and the experiences I have been graced with.  

When I was ten I rode an old mayor named Leslie literally all day long..  That poor sweet creature endured my weight and whims on her back all day.  I was a cowboy at times and at other instances I was a cavalry commander leading a charge into a battle against insurmountable odds 

My imagination was and is now a precious treasure that I feel within me, and while it has led me astray, on occasion (tongue n cheek)   I do not regret my free, candid, and aloof approach to reality.

Thanks and blessings to everyone within the UNG cfamail

SERIOUSLY THOUGH WTF is going on.

To be sure I feel I am not meant for this world, but reality  heavy and cumbersome taunts and leers at me.  Hold the phone people I am not suicidal by even the slightest notion, so chill.  I just have never completely fit here (this space, this time, i.e.  this “world”).  I am fine with that.  This state of being and the innate awareness that comes tacit with contingent being, is quite comfortable and even pleasurable often times.

SO!  What the  F is going on?  I feel that as perceivers and movers we  are responsible for our environment within us and around us.

  I am sensing and experiencing  increasing numbers of “disconnects” between the material world and the world I await.  Ok Ok it’s just a glitch in the matrix, blah, blah blah.  Nevermind my interpersonal relationships, they are just laughable.Anyway, sometimes I catch subtle and sometimes not ssubtle glimpses of spirit, soul, and energy Overcoming the natural and material world on which we conventionally base human experience..  These  former,  staple, and physica lawsl of which are quantified and “understood” seem to be shifting, so that, even well-attained knowledge, rigid rational, logic, and true wisdom are suspect.

And DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!  I hope to give you enthralling examples of WTF I am talking about so that maybe I can feel a connection while existing in this entropic state of reality.  So yes this shit is all about ME..nah .  Ego, powers, factions, governing bodies, community, society, communication and/or culture matters not to the dissipation of existence, and thank you Jesus for that fact .Fuck All these constituents vying for some safe and lofty place in a “dying” cosmos. 

WTF is going on with society?  Is there a concerted effort to program us?  Or rather a concerted effort to keep us ignorant and oblivious to the true potential of our minds or more importantly the spirit “self“.  (which is energy) Money, money, money how we give ourselves to you.  WHY!?  I need you to eat....eh yeah I guess in the present system.  Money, Money, Money,  I need you so I can keep the material things that sustain my “livelihood.” But how many sleepless nights do I give to you?  How many vein thoughts do you steal from my mind?  Are you truly as important as the world dictates?  Or rather are you a vehicle of control and domination?  WTF!  we work our entire lives in hopes that one day when we become old and feeble we may actually enjoy the fruits of our toiling.  

Something dark, pervasive, and nefarious is afoot,  my gut is screeching.  WTF... WTF...the preeminent religious institution is the most prolific offender of child rape in the world.  HA HA HA  “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”  WTF  how about the vaults of books written over milllenia and across cultures.  Imagine the knowledge, kept hidden by those that seek to rule.  “knowledge is power” This entity is simply and nothing but the purveyor of the very force they claim to strive against.  We are in their contrived and fashioned shackles.  No it is not our hands nor our feet nor our mouths that they bind but it is our very own soul, spirit, mind, or energy they snuff out.  Nothing is hidden that shall not be uncovered.  Why do we look to other men to rule our nature.   Laws are made to be broken, and laws are made to break men.  Love is the only true law.  

One more thought at the center of Christian theology there is only one and that is Christ,  Yeshua, love. No greater love have a man than this that he lay down his life for another.  Does the church or rather do the Christian churches  “ act and exist in accord with the foundation upon which they are built?  NO! NO! NO!The kingdom is at hand.  It is in me and it is around me.  The kingdom is boundless in every scope.  The kingdom must be announced, and it must be acknowledged in the face of the counterfeits.  The imposters must be called out, as the barren fig tree withered upon command.

Our law givers do not follow their own laws, this is our reality.  Our leaders are at present and probably since the beginning our greatest antagonist.   Our rulers think more highly of themselves than they ought, for while having some merit yet equal to us all they are merely the beneficieries of a grand and gratuitous popularity concert.    They spell bind us into demonizing the other side without needing an ounce of evidence.  It is the most obvious smoke and mirror trick in existence, yet this is our reality.  wtf?  why do we subject ourselves to this madness. 

At present and in our current reality, which at its core is fluid, impressionable, fragile and malleable, chaos reigns.  We exist as and experience only shadows of the true universe.  Chaos as it rules via its chosen tyrants portrays vapor as solid and solid as vapor. Aristotle challenged Plato, but he was wrong.  Mass is but energy, so there is only energy.  It is difficult to peer inward we cannot even see ourselves as others see us. We exist and sense and process by material interactions, but what makes us who we are is the spirit that truly feels that truly connects and that truly lives.  What do you feel more the pain of a stubbed toe, the release and pleasure of an orgasm, or the love of a mother, father, or child? 

WTF

Are the earth’s poles shifting?  And what does that mean

[heartofbasara-blog]

A Deal With Mori

The moment I learned of the forging friendship between Tokugawa and that uncivilized pirate of the west, I knew the gods had placed a gift perfectly in my lap.  Anyone with an inkling of a brain knew of the passionate ‘love affair’ that Chosokabe Motochika and Mori Motonari’s rivalry.  Chosokabe, who was rumored to be close friends with Tokugawa, has paid less attention to his little quarrels in the Seto Sea.  Leaving Mori all by his lonesome.  Mori Motonari…a poor fool, isolated by his own pride, left him nothing but a hollow existence as he tries to make himself relevant in the minds of others.  His ego was fragile, so fragile that if he learned that Tokugawa, who mirrored the ‘legendary’ Child of the Sun, could wipe him from the face of this country.

Which made him the perfect candidate for an alliance, one that would engulf that traitor with sunlit smile into a never ending abyss of despair!

And so I arranged to have an opportunity to speak with Mori.  I had told Mitsunari that I would be combing the west in search for potential allies, though I didn’t name any specific candidates. This would have to be off the record, of course.  Mitsunari had too much on his mind to worry about something such as this.  Not to mention I do not believe he would approve, being so indirect as this plan was.  He would rather confront Tokugawa face to face, whereas I knew that plan was destined to fail.  After all, to defeat a traitor you had to play them at their own game.

When arrived at Mori’s palace, his guards were all in shock, a tad fearful perhaps based of the wild look in their eyes.  But I was able to convince them to have an audience with their leader, even they told me it was be futile.  Mori was a private man, after all…but even a private man could not help but be curious of an unexpected visitor.  Which was a correct assumption, for to the surprise of the Mori solider, he was to bring me to him.

When arrived at Mori’s office, I was not surprised by its state. Large, but barren.  Grand in its architecture, but hollow with no sense of personal belonging.  Mori sat in the far back behind his desk, his tiny self absorbed by the nothingness around him, the nothingness in his dark, distant eyes.  He appeared lost in thought, where his solider had to speak a little louder to get his attention.  He blinked, somewhat startled, but he was quick to dismiss the solider so that we may talk.  Amusement flowed through me, sensing just how lost he appeared, bring him to my side may be easier than I anticipated.

“I thank you for this opportunity, Mori Motonari,” I began, giving him a small bow as a sign of respect.  “I am pleased to see that Aki and the rest of your providences are doing well.”

Mori blinked.  “It is to be expected.  I take great care for my lands, my city.  Now, state your business here.”

His voice was harsh and cold, clearly not in the mood for pleasantries. The walls were put up high, and I could not help but let out a small chuckle.

“No need to be so hostile, Mori.  You act as if I was a parasite draining you of all your energy.” I levitated up to his desk, in an attempt to make a better connection with him.  “Would it not be beneficial to leave an option for simple greetings? Negotiations may fall better in your favor if friendly banter can occur.”

“Perhaps,” he replied, “but that is not in my nature.  I have no interest in keeping alliances based off ‘friendships,’ or go to war because of ‘enemies formed from hatred.’  I do what I simply must.  So I ask you again, what is your business here?”

Ah…already on edge.  While it only lasted for a second, in his narrowed eyes I could see a flash of discomfort in them.  I wonder…has this man been so alone that just simplest interaction, a positive one at that, cause him waver and become undone?

“I see…”  My voice trailed off as I got to the point of my being here.  “…The west does like to stand on its own.  You do not have a large amount of conflicts, do you?”

For a split second, Mori’s stoic expression cracked with a look of annoyance.  “We have as many conflicts here in the western and southern factions as you do in the north and east.  The difference is that there is a hierarchy, a type of balance that keeps everyone else in line to make sure there is some order in these chaotic times.  I happen to be at the top of that hierarchy.”

“Oh, no doubt.  I can remember Takenaka expressing how impressed he was with your skills.”  

I was partly amused by that comment.  Back when he was an ally of the Toyotomi, Takenaka would say the little Aki general was, how he had a great eye for detail and to keep order. He had a strange fondness for him, as he did for everyone who was under his watchful eye.  If he were allowed to live to see the damage Tokugawa has done…

“He mentioned,” I continued, trailing my thoughts to the present, “if I recall correctly, you had the potential to take the entire country for yourself if you wanted.  However, going back to this hierarchy you mentioned, do you not have a rival who causes you such dismay?”

Mori hesitated.  “…Possibly.”

“And isn’t that rival the current warlord of Shikoku, Chosokabe Motochika?”

That made his mouth shut tight.  Though subtle, Mori’s shoulders tensed up, to where his arms that rested on his desks grew closer together.  His eyes locked on mine where I gave the ghost of a friendly smile.

“It appears that I am correct, that the rumors and stories about the intense rivalry between Mori and Chosokabe are true.  Have you heard of these stories, Mori?  About how the stoic, callous, heart as cold as stone Mori Motonari becomes a light of undeniable passion when his ringblade collides with the anchor of the ruthless, full of life, Sea Devil of the West?”

I went into further detail about these tall tales and myths, all of them I was able to get from the villagers on my way here.  And to see the heatless general crumble before my very eyes was a beautiful sight.  There was only so much a human with a heart could hide, and unlike myself, Mori did indeed have one.  His dark eyes gave the faint longing for someone close, but not just any someone, a someone with the roar of the sea around them, with white hair that blew wildly in the wind…  A someone who he was destined to never have, but was the someone who he wanted to have. A glorious story of unrequited, miserable love…

“It is just with all these tales in mind, it makes your previous statement about how friendships and the intense emotions towards your enemies seem rather…inaccurate.”  I suppose I should end the torture.  From the way Mori shook, I couldn’t have him break just yet.  “Whether you say it or not, Chosokabe has made an impact on you. On your heart, on your soul…”

“…Where are you going with this?”  He stood up from his desk, pure anger filling his gaze.  “What is your point?  I have far more important matters to attend to than listen to your tales of peasants.  The Toyotomi is dead, I doubt you will have anything to interest me.  So unless you actually have something for me, I suggest you leave.”

At the mention of the Toyotomi being deceased, I can feel my body unconsciously tense.  In that split second, images of my dead men and collogues, Takenaka and Toyotomi himself standing out the most, played in my mind.  The disrespect in Mori’s tone…he had no sense of respect for the dead, for those who died in an unjust way.  How dare…

“I advise you to keep your speech in line, Mori,” I finally replied, holding back my rage I couldn’t afford to lose control of.  “We are not dead, only slowly being revived by Toyotomi’s successor, Ishida Mitsunari.”

“Is that so?”  Mori’s expression became stoic once more, his tone emotionless.  He isn’t a fool, so I am not surprised he caught my little moment of weakness.  A mistake on my part, but not something I could not fix.  “Is that why you are here?  On Ishida’s behalf so that I may align with you to regain power?”

“No,” I answered.  “Mitsunari had nothing to do with this.  I am here for my own purposes.  I do wish for you and Mitsunari to form an alliance in the future, but what I propose right now is a far more personal issue for the both of us. That through working together, we can both benefit.”

“…Is that so?”  Mori paused briefly.  “And what would that be?”

“Tokugawa and Chosokabe’s friendship.”

I had put a little extra emphasis on the word ‘friendship,’ for as far as I knew, it could be much more than that.  Chosokabe is a pirate after all, it wouldn’t take much to seduce him, or the other way around.  It was unknown at this point, which placed Mori right where I want him, as his walls collapsed with the unavoidable truth if his beloved rival were to steer further and further away from him.

“I’m sure you have noticed how close the two of them have become recently.  Dangerously close, enough to form an alliance.  Tokugawa is the reason for the fall of the Toyotomi and I wish to see him feel the consequences, the misery he brought.  And if he and Chosokabe become allies it would make him much more influential, much more powerful than he is already.  And I’m sure you would like to see their friendship fall…for Chosokabe cannot be fighting his rival all the time if he is seeing arrangements through with Tokugawa.  You would become a side thought; someone he needs to make sure doesn’t wander too close to his shores as an insignificant warlord of the west whose potential has been wasted on clans, on warlords who matter little.  Tokugawa, the rising hero, will take your light away, become the new Child of the Sun that Chosokabe chases after.  Tokugawa will be all that you were never to achieve, and unless he is put an end to soon, you will always be in his shadow.”

I intentionally paused once I saw the panic fill his expression. The fear of not being acknowledged by others, to be forgotten and to be as little as those under his ‘hierarchy,’ was one of the most pathetic moments I’ve seen in a leader.  His heart was hideously weak, no wonder he kept himself so isolated.  Just the tiniest amount of companionship, the smallest amount of positive interaction could give his heart pause, and then once the walls were back up it would shatter to return to the loneliness of before.  The slow, agonizing journey to isolated despair was the path Mori was going on, whether he or Chosokabe knew it or not.

“If you are not careful, Mori my friend,” Otani said, “Tokugawa will effortlessly steal away all you have worked for.  Your rival, your lands, your image…  You will become a ruin just as you claim the Toyotomi to be.  I have a plan to put an end to this unholy alliance, and it can only be accomplished by your assistance, Motonari.”

He flinched at the use of his first name, confirming my theory even more.  His internal struggle was obvious, vicious even, for he knew that he was trapped. He knew he was going to be used, but he could not deny I was offering him a chance to take back what was ‘his.’ I am a patient man, so I allowed him to take his time, till finally, he spoke, where he claimed that for the Mori Clan’s sake, he would accept my offer.

I knew full well that was a lie, this was about himself and only about himself, but I smiled and complimented him on making the right decision.  For in the end, it didn’t matter, who this was for.  What mattered was that without Chosokabe’s alliance, Tokugawa would hit a severe blow, bringing him one step closer to destruction.

One step closer to Tokugawa’s death, and the vengeance of all those who have been wronged by him.

[doctorwhonews]

Third Doctor Adventures Volume 4

Latest Review: Writer: Guy Adams, Marc Platt Director: Nicholas Briggs Featuring: Tim Treloar, Katy Manning, Rufus Hound, Mina Anwar, Joe Sims, Carolyn Pickles, Nicholas Briggs Big Finish Release (United Kingdom) Running Time: 5 hours Released by Big Finish Productions - March 2018 Order from Amazon UK​ Before we begin, a quick housekeeping query: is everyone sufficiently bucked up and ready for further old-school 1970s (or 1980s, depending on whom you ask) sci-fi escapades? Wonderful. Perhaps emboldened by the success of their Dalek revival in Volume 3, Big Finish isn’t skimping in the slightest on classic villains in their newest pair of Adventures for the Third Doctor. In fact, they’ve introduced not one but two returning antagonists into the fray for Volume 4 in the forms of the Meddling Monk and – for the first time ever in a Jon Pertwee-era tale, so better late than never – the Cybermen. Admittedly this reviewer took umbrage with how intent “The Conquest of Far” seemed with simply reliving Dalek glory days, rather than seeking to develop how we perceive Skaro’s finest in any notable way, last time around. Will Guy Adams and Marc Platt’s next efforts to immortalise the late Pertwee’s beloved Doctor – now revitalised via Tim Treloar’s loving aural homage – fall into the same traps, then, or can their connective thematic tissue surrounding the ever-complexifying concept of human nature elevate proceedings? “The Rise of the New Humans”: “Look, Bessie’s a lovely car Doctor, I mean a really lovely car, but have you ever thought about investing in a little roof rather than a flappy tarpaulin to keep you dry?” “Don’t you listen, old girl – she knows you’re beautiful really!” Had we ever told diehard fans of all things Doctor Who after watching the divisive “The Woman Who Lived” in 2015 that supporting star Rufus Hound would go on to resurrect a long-overlooked classic antagonist to tremendous acclaim, the best case scenario, most would have justifiably scoffed in our faces. Between his infrequent appearances in the Short Trips and Doom Coalition ranges along with the British comedian’s headline role in Volume 4’s opening tale, however, that’s all changed and the results could hardly feel more satisfying than in the case of “The Rise of the New Humans”. A whirlwind four-parter that’s by parts thought-provoking, hilarious – as if we’d expect anything less of Hound – and thrilling, “Rise” fits into the mold of the Third Doctor era perfectly, posing a fascinating metaphysical concept as human test subjects find themselves transformed into supernatural beings capable of withstanding nearly any affliction. Naturally, though, Doctor Who wouldn’t be Doctor Who without an audacious experiment gone wrong, and sure enough the side effects – not to mention the technology recklessly co-opted by the Monk to achieve his not-so-altruistic goal – quickly lead listeners and the major players alike to question the limits of science’s oft-perceived god complex. If this all sounds too grim and sombre an affair to warrant the Monk’s involvement, then rest assured that Hound alleviates any such concerns with unmistakable ease from the outset. It’s thanks to his sinister, almost sickly, charisma and brilliantly earnest haplessness in the face of just about any danger that Adams’ borderline gothic – certainly Frankenstein-esque – script never gets too bogged down in its contemplations on evolution and the increasing risks of intervention in this natural process for financial gain, with the Monk’s attempts to disguise his seemingly benevolent intentions so delightfully inept that the audience should barely mind sitting through the humour-laden first half before discovering his true ambitions. At the same time, though, Adams thankfully also realises the supreme value and drawing power that Tim Treloar and Katy Manning both hold in the eyes of the Adventures range’s fandom, peppering in a wealth of understated conversations between the pair which perfectly encapsulate their bubbly, at times teacher-student-style dynamic. Whether they’re arguing over Bessie’s temperamentality on a rain-swept road – a subtle homage to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, perhaps? – or the Doctor’s comforting Jo upon her poignant realisation that rumours of us only accessing 10% of our brain power may have been exaggerated, every exchange that the characters share could’ve been ripped straight out of a 1970s serial, with Treloar’s righteously confident and Manning’s sweetly innocent line deliveries both as completely pitch-perfect as ever. The only noteworthy misstep on the wright in question’s part, then, comes with Part 4. While by no means a deal-breaker, the final installment of “Rise” does succumb to an all-too-familiar virus plaguing myriad audio and TV Who adventures – hightailing it to the finish line and ditching any intriguing ideas laid along the way in the process. One can’t help but notice the superior running time afforded to the boxset’s second story – the individual episodes of which run for around 30-35 minutes each compared to this serial’s 20-25 – and wonder if Adams struggled to give ideas like humans struggling with their deadly mutations full due, hence the final 25 minutes descending into the usual catastrophic monster mash and retconning a hugely tantalising cliffhanger regarding Jo within moments of its occurrence. Maybe Adams simply needs to keep honing his stabs at the four-part format instead, but it’s food for thought in terms of whether he might better befit a five- or six-episode serial should he contribute another script for the recently-announced Volume 5. “The Tyrants of Logic”: “Doctor, what are they?” “Cybermen!” Reading the above lines of dialogue alone will, for many fans, surely prove a cathartic experience in and of itself. After all, despite coming into contact with Daleks, Silurians, Sea Devils, Sontarans, Ice Warriors and Autons over the course of his four-year tenure, not to mention the Master on a near-weekly basis, Jon Pertwee’s Doctor never earned himself the chance to battle arguably Doctor Who’s second most iconic monster, joining Paul McGann, John Hurt and Christopher Eccleston’s as the only such incarnations faced with this unspeakable on-screen plight. But, as Hurt’s War Doctor proclaimed in 2013’s similarly Cyber-lite 50th anniversary special “The Day of the Doctor”, no more. Setting down on an initially near-deserted human colony dubbed Burnt Salt, the now exile-free Time Lord and Jo soon discover that they’re far from alone; quite to the contrary, a nearby saloon houses a wild assortment of rogues and ex-soldiers, all of whom bear a secret inevitably doomed to surface as the Cybermen make their presence on Burnt Salt known with their destructive efforts to secure a vital hidden weapon. Prior to us proceeding any further, though, a word of warning – with its Cybermats, Cyber Wars fallout and attempted Time Lord-Cyber conversions, Marc Platt’s latest script represents a quintessential story for everyone’s favourite Mondas residents, for better and for worse. Unless this boxset somehow marks your first encounter with Who, many of the twists in “Logic” will likely seem rather familiar; from characters mistakenly willing to sacrifice their humanity to the robotic menaces escaping supposed extinction yet again, from the Doctor needing 10 minutes to alleviate his companion’s dismay at their latest foe’s near-human nature to Part 4’s predictable final duke-out, there’s nothing particularly fresh to speak of in what’s a fairly run-of-the-mill nostalgia tour. Nothing, that is, save for the continuing thematic strand surrounding what it truly means to call oneself a member of the human race. If “Rise” explores this existential concept through a metaphysical exploration of our species’ DNA being evolved to a supposed higher state, then “Tyrants” – as with many Cyber-tales, although to more emotional effect a la Spare Parts – does so by presenting members of our species on the brink of having every aspect of their personalities stripped away. Can we possibly still define someone as human when they’re clinging to any remains vestiges of their Id / ego / super-ego? Sure, it’s a line of inquiry also recently pursued by TV serials like “Asylum of the Daleks”, but without spoiling too much, Carolyn Pickles achieves wonders as her character Marian Shaeffer’s cold exterior peels back to reveal her heartbreaking motivations in this regard. Indeed, even if “Logic” doesn’t exactly break a great deal of new ground compared to a recent TV Cyber-outing like “World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls”, it’s not for want of the central and supporting cast alike doing their utmost – with director Nicholas Briggs’ support and guidance, no doubt – to provide an entertaining 2-hours of pseudo-base-under-siege action. That Treloar and Manning’s insatiably endearing chemistry injects humour and charm at every turn likely goes without saying at this point, but look out too for Briggs’ finest turn yet as the ever-hauntingly impassive invaders standing in Burnt Salt’s doorway as well as a contrastingly vulnerable performance from Deli Segal’s Skippa, another innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of a seemingly unyielding, constantly destructive conflict. The Verdict: Above all, this stellar new boxset for Treloar’s Third Doctor marks a vast improvement on Volume 3, offering a far more consistent pair of serials that seldom cease to provide gripping listening no matter your chosen venue of aural consumption. Does “Logic” still follow the roadmap presented by Cyber-tales gone by a little too rigidly at times? Sure, but its stirring explorations of warped human psyches – combined with Adams’ own study in “Rise” of our dangerous strides towards godhood of late – ensure that it’s nonetheless a far superior beast to “Conquest of Far”, particularly with Briggs taking such unnerving pride in chronicling Pertwee / Treloar’s proper first encounter with the Cybermen. This reviewer has spoken before on the matter of whether Big Finish’s abundant New Series productions – see Tales from New Earth, The Churchill Years Volume 2, Gallifrey: Time War and The Diary of River Song Series 3 in 2018’s opening quarter alone – threaten to overshadow their Classic Series output if they’re not careful. Provided that the studio keeps producing such captivating jaunts into the lives of Doctors past, though, then their listeners, stars, scribes and directors should have nothing to worry about in terms of the job security that Hartnell-McGann’s incarnations will maintain going forward. And buck down…see you next year for Volume 5 at the same Bessie-time, same Bessie-place! http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/03/third_doctor_adventures_volume_4.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[swipestream]

Unmasked Review

Last year, when I backed the Worlds of the Cypher System Kickstarter, I was intrigued by the idea of the Cypher System as a stand-alone system that could be used for multiple genres. All I really picked up on from Unmasked was that it was going to be a superhero themed setting that also delved into some psychology about how a person’s powers would manifest.

As it turns out, Unmasked is only “sort of” a superhero setting. Its set in the 80s, and revolves around teenagers that gain the ability to take on a mask form that has superpowers. Unlike a game like Masks, the crux of the story isn’t about being superheroes, as much as it is exploring what it would be like to give teenagers superhero like powers, and if they use their powers for the greater good, or just to indulge in some power fantasies. It also features some government conspiracy elements and weirdness that might seem to dovetail a bit with the “kids on bikes” genre, except that the game explicitly is geared towards teenagers, not just young kids in general. The tagline is “Superpowers and Horror in a Dark Eighties.”

Alternate Form

Unmasked is a 192-page supplement filled with full-color artwork. My review had the benefit of being informed by both the PDF of the product and the physical product. The book is solid and well made, with the same construction as the rest of the books in the Cypher System line.

The art is formatted and designed to use colors and forms that call back to the 1980s. That means lots of pink, green, and orange triangles. While the setting touches on a lot of supers elements, the mask forms depicted are often very over the top and wild compared to more standard superhero fare. A few pieces are repeated in multiple places in the book, although the repeated sections generally make sense, such as one of the pieces of art for the chapter detailing schools in the 80s being used in the sample adventure later on.

One other note—there are a few recycled pieces of art from the supers section of the Cypher System rulebook, and they actually don’t align as well with the tone of the book, since they often show very noticeable battles in the middle of cities.

The book has all the normal sidebar page references and quick stat notations of other Cypher System books. It has a page of Kickstarter contributors and playtesters, a two-page sample character sheet, and a one-page index.

Part 1: Origins

The first part of the book is comprised of two chapters, The World of Unmasked and Unmasked Overview. This section of the book explains the media that informs the book, the high-level pitch for the setting, and what the game concepts in the Cypher System look like in this specific setting.

There is a sidebar about adapting the setting to other eras, with the most important note being that the setting will have a harder time working in eras where telecommunication is more ubiquitous. The arc of the story is that mask forms go largely unnoticed by the larger world, which becomes more difficult the closer the story gets to the modern day.

One part of this section that I wanted to draw special attention to is that not only does it give suggestions for inspirational viewing (as many settings do), but it also gives you a list of inspirational listening, to get in the right musical mindset for the setting.

Part 2: Prodigies

Prodigies are the term used for individuals that have been granted superpowers in the setting. This section is composed of the chapters Creating a Character in Unmasked, GMing Prodigies, Creating the Teen—Teen Descriptor, Creating the Mask—Mask -Form Descriptor and Type, Creating the Mask—Mask-Form Focus, and Creating the Mask—Mask-Form Power Shifts.

Prodigies can see the hidden power in items and in other people that have the potential to become prodigies. They can use mementos (the settings version of cyphers), and they can gather items to create a mask, which allows them to create a mask form, which is the teen’s super-powered alter-ego.

Mask-forms don’t usually think that they are the teen that they are bound to, and regardless of the secrets of the setting, they may believe they have an origin that they do not actually possess (for example, a mask-form may think they are an alien being bonded to their teen, even if aliens have nothing to do with the origin of where superpowers come from, and aren’t established to exist in the setting).

The personality traits of the mask form often reveal something about the personality of the teen. A teen that has very low self-esteem may have a mask form that either tries to bolster their self-worth, or that actively disdains the teen from which they spring. A shy teen may have a mask form good at stealth and going unnoticed, or they may have an outgoing and boisterous mask form.

Mechanically, the teen form and the mask form track their damage separately, and if a mask form is moved down the damage track, it will appear with that amount of damage if not given time to rebuild its reserve energies.

Teens have their own ability pools, separate from the mask form, and they only have a descriptor. Mask forms have the full bells and whistles of a Cypher System character, and in addition, they get power shifts, and alternate rule from the Cypher System rulebook that is also used in the Gods of the Fall setting. This means certain tasks are much easier for mask forms, and may automatically succeed, where such tasks would be nearly impossible for a normal human.

The standard character types from the Cypher System Rulebook are represented here by Smashers, Thinkers, Movers, and Changers. As with the other Worlds of the Cypher System setting books, you will need to flip back and forth from this book and the main book to see how the modified version of the character types is changed from the core rules’ assumptions.

There are some great hooks for roleplaying when it comes to exactly how different types must activate their powers. For example, before a Smasher uses one of their abilities from their type, they must somehow announce that they are about to use the ability out loud. These hooks immediately play to some tropes, and give the game some personality, but they may wear thin in a longer campaign or with repeated play.

As with just about every other Cypher System book, the setting includes some new foci that can be used for the setting, but might be useful in other Cypher System games. Flies by Night, Lives on the Dark Side, Travels Back from the Future, and Wants to Be Adored all have elements that would be useful in other settings, and given that the mask form can have all kinds of nonsensical ideas about their own origins, a wide range of foci from other settings can be justified.

The three pages of explanation for power shifts feel more informative than the treatment the alternate rule received in the core Cypher System book or in Gods of the Fall, where the topic only warranted a page and a half or a page. The rule itself is simple, but the guidance on how to conceive of the narrative boundaries of what that power shift can do in this book is greatly appreciated.

Part 3: Welcome to 1986

This section of the book is broken into chapters on The Eighties, The Town, The School, The Threat, and The Big Picture. It is essentially a sourcebook for running campaigns in the United States in the 1980s, with a lot of time put into explaining how towns were commonly organized, how schools usually worked, etc.

As someone that lived through this time, none of this was revelatory, but at the same time, it did a really good job of summarizing some daily elements of 80s life that my modern self had forgotten. The material focuses heavily on “less than a big city” settings, in part because that means that the mask forms are less likely to be discovered, and because it is better for strange, out of the way plot creepiness to happen.

This section contains alternate ideas for where exactly superpowers come from, and what the weird thing stalking the super-powered individuals might be. There are notes on the subtle differences between a campaign where powers come from genetics, psychic phenomenon, or supernatural sources.

For each of the origins, there is the outline of a sample campaign laid out, showing what kinds of things might happen at the beginning, middle, and end of a school year in an ongoing plot, and what kinds of threats might face characters at the different character tiers.

I like this presentation for sample campaigns quite a bit. Not only does it illustrate what the designers were thinking when they came up with the setting, but it gives you a template to follow, or a baseline to deviate from, without leaving you wondering how to use all the tools presented.

Part 4: Welcome to Boundary Bay, New York

In addition to the broad 1986 primer in the last section, and the general power origins and suggested campaign arcs, the next part of the book introduces a more directly fleshed out setting for the game. Boundary Bay is given specific businesses, NPCs, a specific origin for the PCs powers, a new government agency, and a specific supernatural boogeyman that might be hunting them.

After touching on many NPCs in the town, there is another section of cool kids and outcasts, with various story hooks related to that NPC presented. There are also some existing mask forms that have been haunting the town that is detailed in this section. My personal favorite is Captain Meat, a mask form that appears to be a powerfully built human being with no skin.

For anyone familiar with other Cypher System books, the traditional NPC/threat write up format is only used for the main villain of this campaign, Prester John, a character that borrows from a few 80s era horror tropes from sources like A Nightmare on Elm Street or perhaps a bit from IT.

I was a little surprised that not only did we get three sample origins for powers, and three sample campaigns, but then we also get a more fleshed out campaign setting with its own hooks in addition to what appeared in the previous chapter. I also like that the military organization, The Circus (with a great origin for that name), is portrayed as dangerous, but not overtly evil or sinister. They are in over their head, and may make some bad decisions about suppressing a threat, but they avoid full villain status.

The NPC students are repeated in the section on classmates, and given explicit hooks, and while I appreciate that, I wish there was a matrix showing the prodigies in the school and what their mask forms are, so that it might be easier to decide on introducing the classmate first or the mask form. While it works, it’s an ongoing thing in Cypher System books that translating player facing abilities, like power shifts, to NPCs, who use different rules to express them, feels a little awkward.

Part 5: GM’s Toolbox

This section is comprised of the chapters Running Unmasked, Rule Options, Origins, and Big Secrets, Mementos, Masks, Quick Adventure Generator, and Mister Monster. Much of this section presents ways to dial rules up or down to enforce a certain tone, and ready-made hooks to insert into a game, as well as a sample adventure that utilizes the Boundary Bay setting presented in the last section.

There are some solid suggestions on what a typical game session should look like, as well as the kind of 80s teen problems you should insert into a game. There are some rules suggestions on adding in more power shifts to dial up the superhero side of things, and on how to make “normals” more fragile if you want the game to have a grittier feel and higher stakes regarding bystanders.

All the Cypher System games have their own explanation for what cyphers are, and ways to enforce the limit on the number of cyphers a character can carry. In Unmasked, mementos hold reserves of whatever power allowed the prodigies to gain their powers, and if too many of them gather in one place, they start to cause bad luck, reflected in the person carrying them increasing the difficulty of tasks they are attempting.

There are some great 80s-themed mementos, including fruit rollups, guitar picks, and old 8-track tapes. I especially love the “we’re not calling it a He-Man action figure” memento whose power is triggered when you pop off one of its arms. Mementos give a vague feeling that calls back to a very teen-centric memory when they are handled, such as giving the holder the feeling of sneaking out of the house after curfew or the feeling of getting a driver’s license.

There is a section of sample masks and mask forms that can be dropped into a game, and assigned to existing NPCs in the setting, but none of the sample mask forms are assigned any teen form in this section. The sample adventure generator has tables for determining Who, What, Why, and Special, which might result in an adventure outline such as “authority figure discovers drugs (special: corruption),” which you could then interpret how you wish.

The sample adventure is structured so that events will happen progressively, and if the worst possible outcome isn’t subverted earlier, it will end with one prodigy being driven to unleash their mask form in public, with the PCs, hopefully, helping to stop the rampage. Events are broken down by what happens on what day, and what complications might happen, but while there are suggestions on how those events might get more complicated, there isn’t as much discussion on defusing the situation early, just keeping it from escalating even further.

There are a lot of tools for reinforcing a teen drama theme, and for dialing the tone of a campaign from a more “grounded” feel to a more superheroic theme, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more in the toolbox section on facilitating the horror aspect of the setting.

Part 6: Back Matter

 The era material is helpful, the sample campaigns are great, and there are a ton of hooks and examples to draw from. 

This section contains the Kickstarter contributors and playtesters, a character sheet, and an index. Of note is that the character sheet is formatted so that it’s obvious where the teen information goes as opposed to the mask form information, and it appears to be well suited toward making it easy to see what you should use for each form.

Totally Awesome

I really like the number of tools this book provides you for running a game based on super-powered weirdness in the 80s. The era material is helpful, the sample campaigns are great, and there are a ton of hooks and examples to draw from. The book also does a good job of using some of the modified rules touched upon in other Cypher System products and making them work for this concept. I don’t know if this was the case, but the setting feels like it was developed first, and then the rules were addressed to reinforce the setting, rather than starting from a base of saying “can we get Cypher to do superheroes” and working backward from that concept.

Mildly Bogus

While there are horror elements in the settings, I feel as if the horror aspect of the setting is a bit underserved by the tools presented. It may be a little nit-picky, but I would have liked another summary of where NPCs are located and if they have a mask form or are one of the faceless summarized in the setting material.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

Unmasked surprised me. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but it does an exceptional job of expressing just what kind of niche it wants to carve out. It’s a recommended purchase for Cypher System gamers, not just because of the setting, but because it is a good example of how to utilize some of the optional rules that dovetail with other settings. Even beyond Cypher System gamers, there is some solid advice on running 80s games, especially those centered around creepy conspiracies and high schools. It manages to live in a similar space as games like Tales from the Loop, but also touches on territory covered by games like Masks. While being adjacent to both of those games, it still manages to have its own personality and quirks that make it unique.

What do you think of Unmasked? Gaming in an 80s setting? Have any thoughts about the review, the setting, or what you would like to see me cover? Please let me know—I’m looking forward to it!

  Unmasked Review published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi