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bau-rookie · 4 years

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a close examination of Hotch and Foyet

in which Hotch’s greatest strength becomes his fatal flaw.

(a/n: super long essay, because i don’t know how else to consume media apparently lol. i’ve been sitting on this since “100″ because it is really sad and I just wanted to make sure I get all my thoughts in order. It is, to my discovery, Aaron Hotchner’s birthday today, so what better way to celebrate than by explaining all the ways the Foyet arc reads like a Greek tragedy and how Hotch is an amazingly well-written character. Sorry the only way I can think about paying tribute is by making myself sad. Oh there’s GIFs too! I made them and that’s neat :D)

I. Ingredients for a Greek tragedy.

Greek tragedies stem from classical plays, usually about the nobility, and is centered around their struggle against the Gods/Fate. The noble character has a hamartia, or a fatal flaw, usually their own arrogance, that brings upon their own downfall.

Technically, Criminal Minds would fall under the category of modern tragedy which focuses more on common people and everyday problems. (Though you could argue that being a BAU profiler isn’t your typical career, which makes our characters noble not by blood, but in spirit.)

In modern tragedy, there is less of an emphasis on the involvement of a higher power or Fate. Every bad thing that happens is of mankind’s own making, and this is something that CM discusses often, that evil isn’t necessarily brought upon by a higher power. It’s brought upon by ordinary people choosing to do terrible things.

And Foyet is no different. He chose to kill all these people because he wanted to, but his fascination with Hotch and how his plans for him play out, entrap Hotch in a tragedy more Greek in nature.

What Foyet ultimately does is take Hotch’s greatest strength—his stoic resolve to serve justice—and uses it to hold him personally responsible for the death of his ex-wife, all while bending the hand of Fate to his will.

II. Hotch as a noble character.

In “Omnivore” we are introduced to the Reaper and the many ways he tries to exert control and power over his victims. After killing so many times loses its appeal, the Reaper decides to toy with detective Tom Shaunessey by offering him a deal—if you stop hunting me, I will stop hunting them.

While we sympathize with Shaunessey simply trying to save lives, he does so with the knowledge that he is deliberately letting a serial killer go free. The fear and the guilt eats away at him until his death.

Hotch, on the other hand, quickly establishes himself to be a resolute pursuer of justice. We don’t get to make those decisions. We don’t let them get away with it. He holds onto the idea that they have no right to decide who lives or dies and that the victims that unsubs like the Reaper takes, are not something he, or anyone in his line of work, should feel responsible for. Their sole responsibility is to stop them.

This isn’t to say that Hotch is unaffected by the increasing number of bodies. When he turns down the deal and the Reaper attacks the bus full of people, he is visibly shaken by this, so much so that we see Hotch cry for the first time. It takes Rossi delivering some tough love to remind him of what’s important.

Look, if you want to end up like Shaunessy, like Gideon, blaming yourself for everything, you go ahead. But that voice in your head—it’s not your conscience. It’s your ego. This isn’t about us, Aaron. It’s about the bad guys. That why we profile them. It’s their fault. We’re just guys doing a job. And when we stop doing it someone else will.

Hotch and the team in general, are faced with constant reminders that they are only human. They are fallible and cannot control every outcome.

Not everyone can handle the stresses of being a profiler. Despite the horrors, the chance of failing, Hotch’s greatest strength is his stoic resolve. He’s become our beloved Unit Chief, the person on the team who takes on the most pressure, takes it upon himself to, at times, shield the rest of the team from the greater burdens. Personally, he’s arguably also the one who sacrificed the most to have this job, having lost his marriage.

Yet despite the horrors, despite the toll, Hotch shows up for the job anyway. Because he can’t imagine letting the bad guys get away with it.

III. Foyet as a representation of Fate

“The Eye of Providence. A symbol adopted by the U.S. Government with the words: Annuit Coeptis. Latin for “Providence or fate has favored our undertakings.” The Reaper seems to see himself as the personification of Fate.” — Dr. Spencer Reid, “Omnivore”

From the beginning Foyet is shown to have a flair for theatrics. He leaves markings of the Eye of Providence, writes Fate in blood, calls himself the The Reaper. He has delusions of grandeur and posits himself as a higher power, one who gets to decide the course of other people’s lives. Everyone who has the misfortune of coming into contact with the Reaper, becomes another chess piece in his twisted game of Fate.

In another life, Hotch would never cross paths with Foyet. But because he did, Foyet acts as Fate, bringing down divine intervention in the form of driving Hotch into a tragedy of his own making.

Foyet acting as Fate is, paradoxically, also an argument against the actual existence of Fate. Everything that happens is a result of Foyet’s choices. It is him, a man, and not Fate who is choosing to kill, maim and be cruel.

When it came to Shaunessy, Foyet also emphasized pinning the blame of the death of innocent lives on the failure of law enforcement. It isn’t Fate when there’s something you could do to stop it. Shaunessy took the deal because he felt personally responsible for the possible loss of lives, an outcome that Foyet pretty much predicted, but one that doesn’t really affect him. Shaunessy agrees, he gets off on controlling the police. If he doesn’t, well, he can just keep on killing.

Foyet repeats the deal with Hotch. Offers him the deal, which Hotch refuses then immediately murders 7 people on the bus, setting a chain of cause and effect that makes it seems like Hotch’s actions led to this gruesome outcome. Again, placing the blame personally, on Hotch. And Hotch does blame himself, if momentarily.

Later, once Foyet escapes and corners Hotch in his own apartment, he makes it clear, you should have made a deal. Foyet acts as a vessel for Fate, a vehicle through which the consequences of Hotch’s actions are served.

Foyet takes it a step further, when he puts Haley and Jack in witness protection. Left all the usual clues, to simply say your wife and child are in danger because you never took the deal. I hold all the cards here, your fate will come for you eventually.

Then Foyet disappears, and waits. Leaving Hotch filled with guilt over endangering his ex-wife and child, at the mercy of Foyet’s arbitration of Fate.

IV. Dominoes and fatal flaws

By the time “100″ rolls around, you’re so captivated by the action happening on screen that it’s easy to overlook how we got there. When I first watched this season, I had assumed that Foyet would be put on the back burner until the end of the season. His quicker-than-expected return seems to be happenstance, the writers behind-the-scenes doing some plot magic, but if you reexamine the events that lead up to “100″ we see Foyet’s greater machinations at play.

On the surface, the preceding episode “Outfoxed” seems to be a straight forward throwback to an earlier case. Faced with a family annihilator, Hotch and Emily visit the original Fox in prison, believing the current unsub might be a copycat. The episode seems to be about the mental toll being a profiler brings, with Emily contending with a sense of disgust at having to get intimate with a serial killer (post-”Lauren” this reads very differently, but I digress). Until right at the end, when they reveal the admirer letters were actually from Foyet, and the one being outfoxed is Hotch.

When the events of “100″ go down, we hear Foyet repeatedly blame Hotch for what happens with Haley, calls out what we see as a noble resolve to instead be Hotch’s fatal flaw. It was the same thing that led Haley to leave him, a failing borne from Hotch’s own ego, the part of him that insists that it be him who catches the bad guys, that it be him who risks it all. And Foyet uses that to his advantage, uses Hotch’s resolve to trick him into thinking that maybe he did cause all of this tragedy to happen.

One small detail that caught my attention, and set me on this Greek tragedy path, is when they try to track down Foyet in “100″, Garcia notes that he had set an internet search alert for the name “Peter Rhea.”

At this point, Foyet was ready to go after Haley and Jack. He already had pictures and surveillance of the U.S. Marshall in charge of them. He could’ve gone and killed them anytime, but that’s not how Foyet operates. He needs Hotch to feel personally responsible for things ending badly. He set the bait with the letters and simply had to wait for Hotch and the team to get close enough, to find Peter Rhea. This is, of course, incredibly risky. The team could catch him before Foyet gets anywhere close to Haley and Jack, but Foyet is sure of himself and is an extensive planner. He made sure he was always two steps ahead.

The irony is that Foyet would never have gone after Haley and Jack if Hotch and the team didn’t get close to tracking him down. There’s an added layer of Spencer figuring out Foyet’s alias using his genius anagram deciphering brain and Garcia’s expert tech analyst skills. Foyet managed to hurt Hotch because this specific BAU team are just too damn good at their jobs.

Foyet set up dominoes that only Aaron Hotchner could tip to fall. He does it so well it almost feels like Fate.

V. The inevitability of fate

“Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster called destiny.” — John Hobbes, “Omnivore” closing quote.

A key aspect of Greek tragedy, is that Fate is often the result of divine intervention. They cause certain events to happen in certain ways so as to result in the most tragic outcome, usually death. It’s designed so that the audience is aware of what’s to come, and can see no other way for the story to end. The tragedy is supposed to feel inevitable.

One could argue, that there is no such thing as Fate. Life is simply a sequence of random happenstance, but our need to prescribe meaning to the chaos cobbles up stories of predetermined destinies. Especially when the idea of owning up to our mistakes and their consequences is too much.

All of this was the result of one sick man, George Foyet, choosing to be so cruel. And Hotch was simply a victim of circumstance because if Foyet wasn’t going after Hotch, he’d be going after someone else.

But what are the odds that Hotch’s first case as lead profiler happens to be The Boston Reaper? It was from that moment that Hotch’s fate was really sealed, he and Foyet would be forever intertwined.

Hotch, being who he is, had inadvertently, made the Reaper personal. Even when his BAU team was sent away, his resolve wouldn’t let the Reaper simply disappear. It led him to build his profile, alone and over many years. Any other person might’ve just let the case go, but not Hotch.

So when Shaunessy died and the Reaper resurfaced, the only person in the world who knows enough about the Reaper to track him down, is Hotch. It’s what leads him to George Foyet, a victim at first glance, and Hotch comes to him unaware that he is promising The Reaper a new, worthy adversary, one a decade in the making. And everything, from his prison escape, to his attack on Hotch in his apartment, plays out exactly as Foyet expects it to, because as much as Hotch can read him, Foyet can read his behavior too.

At the end of 5x03, “Reckoner”, Rossi talks about what could have been when it comes to his childhood sweetheart to Hotch. About how he was too obsessed with his job, with the hunt that he gave up his chance of having a family. Rossi warns Hotch, don’t make my mistakes, kid.

You have a family. When all this is over, what are you gonna do to make sure you’re not a lonely guy wondering why you let the purest thing in your life get away?

My initial reaction was that they were setting up for Hotch to leave the BAU for good. The man who hung on to the job so much that it cost him his marriage, for the first time, actually considers leaving it all behind him. Because what Rossi says to him, driven by the circumstances that Foyet has created, is too profound for him to ignore. Foyet is too big of a thing to just move on from once its over.

Of course, my hopes of Hotch riding off into sunset to live a quieter life and watch his son grow up were optimistic at best. It’s a fantasy that purposely ignores the reality of who Hotch is, simply because I want the alternative to be possible. By the time Haley is buried, and Strauss offers Hotch retirement, we already know what his answer is going to be. Because everything we know about this man can only lead us to one conclusion.

Aaron Hotchner is the man who goes after the bad guys, the man who doesn’t let them get away with it. No matter how much I yell at my screen about how Hotch should just retire and spend all his time with Jack, deep down I knew that was never going to happen. Him losing Haley and still going back to work, seems like the only logical outcome. It’s almost feels inevitable.

VI. Catharsis

The point of tragedy is, according to Aristotle, to achieve catharsis. The purging of emotion through the telling of another person’s suffering. And that’s what “100″ does (unless your heart is made of stone and you somehow did not tear up even once).

Others would say that tragedy is meant to teach us a lesson. Meant to teach us the limits of our mortal abilities, to warn against hubris and arrogance; to remind us that they are higher powers and unseen forces beyond our understanding or control.

Criminal Minds doesn’t try to give us that lesson. Like in so many previous cases, the premise of a crime procedural is really a way of examining human nature. Why do people do bad things? More often than not, though our profilers can figure out how an unsub goes from doing thing A to thing B, they don’t have a satisfying answer for why.

In Foyet’s case, he does all of this to Hotch because he can, because he enjoys making him suffer. It is evil, unnecessarily cruel. There is no sense to be found in what happened.

But “100″ does not deliver pure tragedy. It ended in the death of Haley but it also provided hope in the survival of Jack. Hotch finally rids the world of Foyet, though the way it went down, you can’t help but wonder about the price of justice, if the cost is too much for this one man to pay. But then the show reminds the audience, that this one man isn’t bearing that cost alone.

Aaron Hotchner has his team, his family, and with their support, a chance to recover from the tragedy that Foyet wrought.

I used to think that, despite being dead, George Foyet still won. He set out to hurt Hotch, and that’s exactly what he did. We’ve only seen Hotch openly cry twice at this point, and they both were directly caused by Foyet. And I suppose that’s still partly true. It’s hard to really tell with our stone-faced unit chief, but it’s hard to see how Foyet wouldn’t linger.

But that victory isn’t absolute. Foyet is gone, and he loses every time Jack gets to spend another day happy and alive. Foyet loses, every time Hotch shows up for the job and doesn’t let another unsub like him get away with it.

And maybe that’s the lesson. That though good doesn’t always triumph over evil, there is a way to move past tragedy. And that path lies not in solitude, in carrying the burden alone, but in the solace of our friends and family who can bear witness to all that we must face.

For all all my waxing poetic about how Hotch is a noble hero, this entire ordeal just shows how human he is. Yet despite his flaws and the tragedy, the core unassailable truth of who he is, the values he represents, remain unchanged.

He is Aaron Hotchner. The guy who hunts down guys like Foyet. The guy who doesn’t let the bad guys get away with it. The guy who, despite everything, managed to save his son. The guy who will keep his promise to the woman he was once married to, to teach their son that love is the most important thing. The guy who makes sure that his son knows that good people do exist.

Aaron Hotchner is the guy who, despite all the hurt, the pain and the loss, chooses to be the hero. And that’s the farthest thing from tragic.

#did i spend all day thinking too much about a fictional character?#hell yes #i don't know how else to be #i just think aaron hotchner is neat ok #and he deserves the happiest of birthdays #maybe i'll write a fic about it tomorrow #but for now i rest #criminal minds #charlie watches criminal minds #aaron hotchner #david rossi #george foyet #mine: gifs #criminal minds gifs

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 5 years

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Humans are Space Orcs, “Two Drops of Rain.”

Alright you pseudo-sadistic people out there.

Lets be honest, we all sort of like watching authors emotionally torture their own characters, and lets also be honest that authors can sometimes be super mean to their creations.

Well I have decided that, in my universe, actions have real psychological, emotional and physical consequences. So, I am going to have to be the bad guy and be a little mean for this one.

Expect character development, and light suffering.

A droplet of rain clung to the glass of the window reflecting an inverted view of the sullen grey sky. It hung suspended there for a few seconds, capturing a moment in its surface, before rupturing and rolling downward disrupting other droplets and causing them to bleed downwards. The rain was heavy enough that the grassy compound outside was covered by a layer of grey. Water droplets lept from the concrete creating a silver haze about the ground, and anything past the distant shadow of buildings on the other side of the square was nothing more than a silhouette perhaps a lamp post, or a lone car hunched in the rain.

He raised his hand to the glass, the warmth of his fingers casting a delicate glaze of fog over the transparent surface before his fingers even made contact.

“Adam.”

He tilted his head back watching as a pair of droplets began to roll down the outside of the glass. He watched them intently wondering which one of them would win. At first it seemed like the droplet on the left would, but ultimately it’s speed caused it to lose too much weight, and it got stuck halfway to the ground.

“Adam.”

He turned away from the window distracted from his daydreams and brought back to current reality; A white cinder block room, with industrial grey carpet and modern grey furniture accented in blue. Large tropical prints hung on one side of the room fake and grey in the cold light of early spring. A large desk sat opposite cheep steel and wood crouched under an equally cheap set of metal shelving units supporting long lines of fake, leather-bound volumes letters printed in minute gold or silver script up their spines.

The entire right wall was made up of floor to ceiling glass windows allowing in the thin dreary light cast through the clouds above. On the desk a small glass orb contained a self sustaining biome including a colorful pink sea plant and a single shrimp-like creature. Next to that was a family photograph lovingly dusted of grime, but somehow equally lifeless as the tropical prints on the wall.

A large green plant sat next to him.

It was real, he had already checked.

“Adam?

“Hmm.”

“I was asking if you had been feeling better since our last session?” The woman who sat in front of him was older, with short steel-grey hair, and a delicate pink white scar running over one of her eyes across valleys of sagging skin. Despite that, she was quite fit for her age, and sat with a hard straight-back demeanor that belied her surprisingly gentle manner.

“I….” He paused looking out the window again trying to track single raindrops as they pelted towards the ground and failing. He sighed, “Not really, no.”

“Do you think you can try and tell me what’s bothering you?” He could hear the rain pounding against the bushes outside the window. It was a distant sound like static or the roaring of a crowd.

“I wish I could.” The chair below him creaked slightly. It wasn’t exactly comfortable;industrial and hard, but he didn’t mind that so much. He wasn’t here to be comfortable; he had come here to get help.

“You mentioned before that you were having trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, and that was affecting your work. Is it still?”

He shifted in his seat, and below him, Waffles, his dog, rolled onto her other side service vest creaking slightly as she sighed, “No ... the sleeping isn’t much better, and I think I’ve made it pretty clear that my concentration is still shot.” He tried pointedly to look away from the window.

The rain picked up a little, “And what exactly is it that you think about during those times.” She wondered

He thought for a minute, “Nothing mostly. Sort of just on autopilot you know…. It’s easier there, like I don’t have to think so much.”

Her shiny black shoe bounced softly in the air, “So thinking has been difficult, or do you find yourself thinking about something specific that you’re trying to avoid.”

He rubbed a hand against his temple, “I… a little bit of both I guess. Um… Its like every time I try to think about something, something I really need to think about. My thoughts just keep coming back to…. To what happened.”

She tilted her head slightly focused, intently, but no so intently as to be uncomfortable, on him, “You have yet to talk about what happened.”

He remained silent.

“You don’t have to say anything today if you aren’t ready, but I think it's important, and I think you think it’s important, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing these obsessive sort of thoughts.” her hands swirled to emphasise the repetitive nature. A silver ring glinted on her finger.

“I guess I’ve just been…. Trying to figure things out…... “

“Don’t feel obligated to push yourself. We can wait as long as you need.” A clock ticked on the wall above her desk filling the silence.. It seemed as if it would go on forever.

“I watched a man get beaten to death, and did nothing to stop it…..” His voice was sudden filling the silence of the room with a sudden heavy weight. His heartbeat picked up as if saying the words made the reality more tangible, but now it was out in the air, he found the words sliding from his mouth easy where they had once been halting, “I watched a man die…. I knew he was going to die….. I knew hours in advice hell eighteen maybe nineteen hours. At any time I could have gotten up and walked over to the guards and told them what was going to happen, but I didn’t. I could have gone to his cell and warned him, I could have told him to run when he entered the room. Hell, I could have jumped in front of him, but I didn’t do any of it.” HIs voice had risen in cadence and octaves filling the space with it’s agitation. At his feet, Waffles sat up sensing his unease turning her head to look at him, “But you know what…. You know what I did, I sat there and did NOTHING, in fact I did worse than nothing. He’s no friend of mine, that’s what I said. I looked him in the eye and that’s what I said knowing what was going to happen to him. Like an absolute BITC-.”

“Why.” her voice was stern, and the expression on her face made it very clear he was escalating out of line. He relaxed back into his seat breathing hard. His heart hammered inside his head drowning out the sound of the rain.

“Why what?”

“Why do you think you didn’t do those things.” Waffles whimpered a bit sticking her head in his lap. He hadn’t even noticed that he was ringing his hands, a habit that he had acquired after losing his leg. It generally didn’t go past that, but once upon a time it had been a precursor to hair pulling, something that Waffles had been trained to stop.

“Because I’m A B-”

“Adam.” She said sternly, “A decision is a matter of cognition, not of a personality trait. So let’s be a little more constructive. Tell me what you were thinking.”

He sighed deeply in frustration, glancing out the window again. He couldn’t even see the light post or the car from earlier. The bushes outside the window jumped and rattled rather violently under the downpour, “At first I…. I felt sick…. I wished I was anywhere but there, I wondered if it was actually real….. I wondered why this was happening to me, and how I could make this sort of decision….. And then. After all that I was, I was ...”

She waited, but when no answer was forthcoming she prodded gently, “You were….”

“Angry…. No, no angry isn’t strong enough. I was livid, furious… i….” He felt his throat constrict, “I wanted to…. I wanted.” His voice cracked and he looked away. Tears had sprung to his eyes, and he furiously tried to blink them back angry at himself. Waffles whimpered and scooted forward against his legs resting her big soft head in his lap large brown eyes looking up at him with a deep unwavering concern not understanding his pain but begging to take it away, “ I wanted to Kill him.” He finally finished voice barely above a whisper, “I have never wanted anything so bad in my life, I wanted to go down there myself and strangle the life out of him. I thought about…. About bashing his head against the concrete. I wondered what it would be like to feel his skull caving in under my hands….” He went quiet, “Disgusting.”

“Adam,” her voice was soft but firm, “ in all my years of working, I have heard people want to do a lot more for a lot less, but why don’t you tell me why you felt that way.”

Waffles shoved her snout against his hand. He had been rubbing his chest, another habit he had as a result of PTSD, a condition long dormant now resurfacing, “Number one because he was a pedophile, number two because he was a liar, number three because I know for a fact he planned on going back to his old life after getting out. He had no remorse….. He deserved to die.”

“If that’s the case than he got what he deserved didn’t he?” She wondered tilting her head to the side.

He shook his head vigorously then nodded then sighed in frustration, “yes… I…. i mean no….. No one deserves to die like…. Like that, but ...I mean maybe he did, but that wasn’t their choice to make.” He finally blurted

“So, he deserved to die, but he deserved to die as a result of justice, and not as a result of a prison riot.” The rain had died down just a bit. Distantly a momentary beam of sunlight peeked through the clouds before vanishing once again.

Adam sighed, “YES! That's it…. The justice system is supposed to take care of this, but it didn't ...”

“Then why do you feel responsible if it was the justice systems’ job?”

He stroked Waffle’s ears foot tapping in agitation, “I…. well because I AM the justice system. Not like to be a dick or brag, but out in space, I am the arm of the UNSC, Fleet commander. It is my job to deal with human issues offworld, so when the justice system fails it's MY duty to fix it. My job, my objective ...”

“So it was your job to save this man’s life so he could be properly punished?”

“Well, yes.” he rocked in his seat again, agitated, “But I didn’t. I sat there and I did nothing, and you know what. I LIKED it, a part of me enjoyed watching that bastard die. He deserved it…..” A sudden stab of guilt shot through him, and he groaned rocking softly as he lifted his head to the ceiling eyes catching onto porous surface of the panels above. His eyes burned. His voice began to crack again, “But, but then, then when I remember feeling bad for him, and it just makes me feel WORSE because he hurt kids, he was a monster, and I have pity for him! SO does that mean I’m siding with a pedophile? So…. so it was either give in and kill him with the rest of them like he deserved treat him like the monster he is…. Or or I could stand to the side and absolve myself of the murder, but do nothing and still have his blood on my hands, but also have the knowledge that I showed that disgusting fuck mercy when he didn’t deserve it. Either way I…..” His voice caught. He could feel his stomach contracting into a sob, but he forced it down head in his hands.

The room went silent, and waffles jammed her head in between his hands forcing him to quit as his hands sought out fistfuls of hair. His chest and diaphragm contracted and released but he clenched his teeth and shut his eyes. He wouldn’t cry here…. He had been weak enough.

It took a long time before he was finally able to control himself and sit back up. He had gone very hot, and could feel waves of heat wash over him from the effort .

When he looked up he found a glass of water being proffered to him, and he took unable to look at her.

“Adam, it is horrible that you had to make that decision. You have to understand that no matter what you did in that situation would have resulted in the same outcome.” He may have gotten control of his breathing, but he had worn far to thin, far to thin in the intervening weeks. He pointedly looked away feeling hot tears pooling at the corners of his eyes.

His face remained blank.

“You join in, you’ve committed murder, you stand out, and you’ve let a man die, you run to the guards and you protect a pedophile. There was no decision you could have made that would have resulted in a desirable outcome… Tell me, Adam, Do you really think that anything you could have done would have saved that man’s life?”

He wasn’t able to stop it as a hot tear spilled down the side of his face. He kept his head turned only halfway towards her so as to hide the moisture. He rested his head against his hand so as to discreetly wipe it away, “No …” he finally admitted.

“Go through that with me.”

More tears. He fought desperately to keep the one eye dry as moisture pooled against his hand.

“Because I couldn’t have fought them all off even if I had tried, and the guards would have just let it happen anyway, but I could hav-”

“Could have what? Adam, you did what you could. You stood back to the hazard of your own health so as not to be part of something you didn’t believe in. You couldn’t stop it, and you couldn’t walk away, and that in itself is more than what a lot of people could, or would have done. A lot of people would have joined in to save their own skin.” It had grown darker outside, and he could see his reflection in the glass of the window. His black eye had long since faded but, Krill still urged him to rest as a result of bruising to his right kidney. At least he had only peed blood the one time.

“But I ... that's not, not the problem.” He shifted in his seat, and the dog scooted closer again, “I wanted to do those things, I wanted to join in, I couldn’t stop them.” His voice was growing in pitch again, and as it did the tears only flowed faster. They began to trickle down his forearm, and soon his other eye was overcome. He tried to wipe them away, but they wouldn’t stop. He was fighting a losing battle, and that only made him angier, and that only made the tears worse “Every d-damn t-time I fuck up…. I…. I-I'm weak and useless an-n-nd-” he snarled in frustration embarrassed and unable to look her in the eye, “I s-screw up so m-much, childish, o-over e-em-motional like a stupid, w-winey t-trusting-”

“Adam.”

“B-bit-”

“Adam!” Her voice cut through his rant leaving his silent. He turned away from her no longer able to control himself embarrassed. He just wanted to leave to never have to show his face to anyone ever again.

“First of all we are going to stop that sort of talk right now. It’s pointless, meaningless and it will get us nowhere. Now, do me a favor and take a few deep breaths and calm yourself. Finish the glass of water.”

He did as told still not looking at her. Waffles licked at the tears on his hands so eager to help him wash away the evidence. He finished off the water which helped a little to calm his diaphragm. He took a long slow, shaky breath.

“Would you like to continue this session another time?” She asked, “I can see this is hard?”

He shook his head stubbornly though he still couldn't look at her.

She sat back in her seat accepting his go ahead “Second of all, whose standards are you holding yourself to.. Who expects such impossible perfection, honestly if you expected any more from yourself, you may as well wish to walk on water too.” He allowed a rueful smile to break through on that last part though it was half hearted.

“Where are you getting these grand ideas of what you have to be?”

He leaned his elbows on his knees and stared down at the floor rubbing the back of his palm over his face. The eyepatch felt sort of cold and slimy now…. He was a mess.

“I…. Guess I don’t know.” He said softly.

“Your parents, family, crew members? How have they been acting towards you?”

He shrugged, “All surprisingly supportive…. Too supportive.” Waffles poked her head up under his arms resting her head against the side of his face scooting forward knowing he was upset desperate to make it go away. Her tail beat against the floor once and then twice.

“Too supportive. How can they be too supportive.”

He paused mouth opening and closing in confusion before sighing in frustration dropping his head; the one eye began to leak again, stupid missing eye which still had tear ducts, “I guess it just feels like…. They all expected me to…. Fall apart, and I did. Its like they understand that poor little Adam Vir wasn’t going to be able to handle what happened, so lets walk on eggshells so as not to upset him.” his voice was growing thick again. Ever time he broke, the edge got closer, and there was no way to hold it back.

“And what’s so wrong with letting yourself fall apart? Sometimes it happens, sometimes it needs to happen.”

He was back to where he was before, accept the tears fell silently now his voice remaining surprisingly calm, “Because it’s weak.”

“That’s a pretty antiquated understanding of emotion. Sounds like something a man from the 2000s would say.”

He said nothing, “Who do you model yourself after, Adam?

He sighed, “My father, I guess, Captain Kelly, my mother, my older brothers…. I guess maybe a little bit from…..movies.”

Her voice was soft, “Sounds like a lot to live up to doesn't it, and let's be honest. Not all of it is entirely true to life.” On the far wall the clock ticked, “You ask me that sounds pretty exhausting.” A distant rumble of thunder rolled across the open lawn. Wind picked up causing the leaves on the bushes to dance.

“Do you think maybe you feel the way you do because it seems you can't live up to the expectations you set for yourself?”

He remained quiet.

“Weak liable to break or give way under pressure; easily damaged.” She read aloud, “Now I find it interesting how a man who claims to be weak walks into my office on the coattails of a trauma and, instead of talking about the trauma he talks about his moral dilemma. He doesn't complain, he doesn't blame. He takes the weight of responsibility for an entire universe on his shoulders.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit late for platitudes, doc.” he muttered staring down at his hands.

“Not platitudes, Adam. Observations.” She switched her crossed ankles, “So we know you aren't weak, and you can probably tell me why you aren't useless.” A car’s headlights cut through the rain illuminating a burst of light over the edge of the leaves. When she didn’t speak he sighed.

“I’m not useless because I command an entire fleet of ships, I was a decorated fighter pilot, I do all these things etc.etc.” His voice was flat and monotone. Another slow tear dropped to the floor creating a dark circle on the grey carpet. He knew what was coming next, so he continued, “I’m not stupid or winy or a bitch, but…. I DO make lots of mistakes, I am childish, to trusting and over emotional.”

“What mistakes?”

He wiped at his eyes again. Waffles whimpered quietly her head on his knee, “Well, I’ve been cheated by a Tesraki, almost got my crew killed, Trusted an enemy and almost got my crew killed, trusted a strange alien species and almost got my crew killed, lost my eye and almost died, got captured more times than I can count, almost died more times than I can count.”

The rain was coming down in sheets again. The drops which had once dotted the window now ran down in curtains, “Adam, Trust isn’t a weakness, and mistakes don’t correlate to failure. You are dealing with an entirely new species, new problems. If you didn’t make those mistakes then someone else would have to, and who knows, for them it may actually be fatal. Almost dead and very dead are separated by miles.”

More headlights.

“It ok to hold yourself to high standards Adam, it's generally a good thing, but don’t set it so high that no one can reach.” Light was fading outside and she stood from her chair prompting him to do the same. Waffles yawned and stretched. A streak of lightning rolled across the sky like the branches of some sort of celestial tree.

He wiped at his eye again finally turning his head up to look at her.

She was smiling at him, a genuine smile, not fake or pitious, “I think we really got somewhere today leave it on a positive note?”

He nodded, and she walked him to the door, “Homework, go easy on yourself this week, ok.” The door opened, he thanked her and then walked into the hall bright with the overhead lights and the same steel grey carpet as inside the office. He steered Waffles down the hall and into the men’s restroom, vacant accept for himself under the sickly fluorescent lights.

It was late.

His gate felt unsteady and his hands braced himself upright against cold porcelain.

He learned forward over the sink to splash cold water on his face pulling off the eyepatch and washing it off before pulling it back over his vacant socket. He lifted his head and stared at himself in the mirror, messy blond hair, red puffy eyes and cheeks. But As he looked, a different face stared back at him, greying skin, yellowed sclera, and cerulean blue irises.

He had yet to tell her about that issue.

He turned away from the mirror and stepped from the bathroom into the hall.

Their car was waiting outside, but despite that, the two of them were still soaked by the time they jumped inside

Rain drummed against the car windows. He rested his cheek against the glass eye closed against the cold on his skin. It felt good…. He was quiet, and inside he felt strangely fragile like a cracking porcelain sculpture. Lightning flashed across the sky, and Waffles sighed her upper body resting in his lap lower half sitting under the dashboard. The windshield wipers drummed out a steady beat against the glass. He didn’t speak with the Driver, but paid him electronically and stepped from the car upon reaching their destination.

Wet tires against wet concrete, and he was left to push through the rain, jacket pulled up against the cold.

The interior of the ship was dark. Most of the crew had gone on leave. He walked through the dark halls alone, and imagined he could hear the drumming of the rain against the hull, but knew that wasn’t likely. He was just passing by the mess hall pausing when he heard laughter and saw a warm yellow light cut across the floor. The warm voices seemed to pull him in as the marines talked laughing and joking, but he couldn;t do it, couldn't make himself go in.

Once upon a time he wouldn’t have imagined missing an opportunity to socialize, but instead he turned to the dark hallways heart heavy. He had no idea where his feet were carrying him.

Sunny sat up at the knock on her door called from her worried musings by the hesitant knock. She wondered what the marines wanted now. With the Commander out for the day and most of the bridge crew gone, it remained up to her to keep the Marines in tact, which was a surprisingly difficult job to maintain.

“Come in!” She called

The door hissed open, and she was momentarily blinded by light throwing her hand up to find a silhouette standing in the doorway. It stepped in and the door snicked shut behind him.

Adam stood in the doorway, his body and hair damp with rain, his face with saline. His hands hung cold and white at his sides. Little tracts of water pooled around his boots and glistened on his jacket. His ears were flushed pink with the cold.

She stood slowly and quietly as if worried a sudden movement might scare him away. He hadn’t spoken more than a few words to her in what seemed like years, but was more like a week or two. His usually bright green eye was awash with a cold greyness, as if the cloudy sky above and seeped into his soul, but a closer inspection gave her the distinct impression of…..

Pleading?

“Sunny….” His voice was a soft rasp, thick and heavy like he was speaking past a great weight.

She missed him.

“Adam…. Is everything ok?”

His mouth twitched, his cheek quivered, his jaw worked for a long moment like he was fighting with himself internally. It looked painful, and was hard to watch. When his voice came, it came with a slight quiver, “No…. I…. its been…. A really shit day.”

She wanted to move forward, to help him, but she knew like a man drowning, he would need to reach for the help before she could pull him in. Didn’t mean she wanted to watch him drown, choking and gasping for air.

His expression was distant and glassy speaking past her more than to her, “She says I hold myself to standards that are too high.” Sunny remained quiet waiting, drawing him out, “But WHY are the standards too high? Why am I expected to fail….. WHY Does everyone have to be so understanding. Why can’t it be just what it looks like, yes Adam you fucked up and what you did was wrong and you failed. What is wrong with that?” The human looked up at her eye glistening with the vestiges of agony, “Why can’t the bar be set high….. sometimes , sometimes people just fail, and that's the truth of it. Why can’t we admit that. Why can’t anyone look me in the eye AND TELL ME THAT.” His voice was hoarse .

“Why do I have to be so accepting….. It just…. It feels like giving up. Like giving up on the man I’ve always wanted to be.”

“You wouldn’t give up, Adam….. Even if you were capable of it.” She said softly

Hed breathed in heavily air catching in his throat, “Why can’t I do this better….” he threw his hands up in the air.

“Because…. You’re only human.”

“Being human ISN’T AN EXCUSE ANYMORE!” His voice rattled off the hull reverberating through the metal. His voice snapped completely and he sagged back against the wall hand to his throat. She couldn’t stand it anymore, she couldn't watch him drown.

So she jumped in pushed past the current to catch him. He sagged against her as she fought back the current threatening to pull him under.

“How do you do it, Sunny.” he whispered

“Do what?” She wondered.

“I can’t even fight off failure when everyone is at my back…..you….. You did it and the entire world was at your heels……”

The ship was quiet, simply the soft whirr of the backup generators to pierce the quiet, “When I was young, my brother taught me one valuable lesson. He told me, Sunny stop trying to be something you’re not and may never be, but take what you have and be the best version of the person you are now…. I didn’t listen to him for the longest time…. And I suffered for it.”

She took the Human’s face in two of her hands and made him look up at her, “Maybe you can set the bar high, Adam, but you have to make sure the bar is in the same room. Because if you weren't so trusting, and if you didn’t make mistakes….. Than you would have kicked me off the ship as soon as I walked on”

Lights reflected from his eyes and she dragged, pulled him towards shore with all her might. Her voice was soft, “So I say be damned to being perfect….. Let's be honest, it's not exactly a human trait anyway.”

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anistarrose · 4 years

Text

Fear The Reaper A Lot, Actually - Chapter 4

AO3

Chapter Summary: An unlikely friendship springs from a book club, while secrecy becomes more important than ever for Tres Horny Boys. Kravitz receives a summons. Angus does a hit.

Characters: Kravitz, Taako, Barry Bluejeans, Angus McDonald, Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, Noelle | No-3113, The Raven Queen, The Director | Lucretia, misc. BoB cameos

Relationships: Taakitz, Angus McDonald & Taako, Barry Bluejeans & Kravitz, Kravitz & Angus McDonald

Don't let the Lunar Interlude-esque setting confuse you — this update's a long boi! If you can't already tell how much I love Angus McDonald, then the next few thousand words should make it pretty clear.

***

Some days, Kravitz found paperwork relaxing. Today was not such a day.

The Raven Queen was almost always receptive to his suggestions about how to restructure the forms, and happy to do what she could to minimize the bureaucracy and tedium inherent to almost any other office job. But today, Kravitz’s unbeating heart just wasn’t in his work — just like yesterday, after he’d returned from Wave Echo Cave.

So it was simultaneously a relief and a surprise when a blue glow flashed in his peripheral vision, and he felt the telltale tug of a summons from the Material Plane, specifically…

“The moon?” he muttered out loud. “What is with these people and ridiculous floating secret bases?”

The pull of the summoning spell was designedly weak, and easy for Kravitz to shrug off if needed — but he wasn’t going to pass up an excuse to get out of the office, and try to part ways with Taako on a better note this time. Maybe he could ask around, find out if anyone knew what Lucas and Noelle were up to…

In a cozy bedroom on the moon, a hissing plume of smoke emanated from a sapphire arrowhead, embedded in the soil of a potted plant. As the smoke solidified, Kravitz’s human form took shape, and instinctively scanned his new surroundings for dangers or necromantic abominations.

Two floor-two-ceiling bookshelves were stuffed with novels and encyclopedias, and glow-in-the-dark stars covered the ceiling. The bed was neatly made, but was so small it couldn’t have accommodated anyone larger than a gnome, or a halfling… or a human child.

“Hello again, Mister Grim Reaper,” said Angus. He sat on a tiny wooden chair, pen in hand and notebook open to a fresh page. “I’ve got a number of questions for you.”

Kravitz plucked the arrow from the potted plant, and the electric blue glow of the sapphire faded. “Does Taako know you have this?”

“Nope. But if he did, he’d probably endorse me breaking the spirit of the law, if not the letter — after all, you never said that only Taako could summon you this way.”

Kravitz holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I was just… expecting to meet with Taako today, so this surprised me. But I’d be happy to answer your questions — provided they don’t take more than an hour or so.”

Angus narrowed his eyes. “Will you answer me honestly?”

Seeing no reason to lie to even the most precocious of ten-year-olds, Kravitz declared: “I swear to answer truthfully upon my oath to the Raven Queen.”

“Then tell me — why are you so nice?”

“Pardon?”

Angus glared at him. “You know exactly what I mean — why are you so helpful? You tried to reap my friends’ souls, and told them they that could only save themselves by accomplishing an impossible task! But then, you — you saved them yesterday, and even healed them! What are you playing at?!”

Immensely grateful that he’d set the terms on his own honesty oath, Kravitz told the truth with a few details omitted. “I helped them because they seemed like nicer people than most of the bounties I hunt — and in that strange sort of ‘begrudging respect’ way, I guess I’m growing fond of them.” Taako even moreso than the others.

“If you were really fond of them, you wouldn’t be trying to kill them in the first place,” Angus muttered, lowering his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz told him, and that too was the truth. “It’s just what my job demands —”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have gotten into this line of business!” Angus screamed, wiping tears from his eyes. “In two months, I’m gonna lose three of the closest people I have to family, and it’ll all be because I’m just a kid detective who can’t track down a couple of liches — but it’ll also be because of you! I hate you, and I hate everything you stand for!”

Angus’s fist sunk harmlessly into Kravitz’s raven-feather cloak, but he staggered backwards like he’d punched a brick wall, falling to his knees and taking off his glasses to sob — but against his better judgement, Kravitz kneeled down at Angus’s side.

“Don’t count out Taako and the others just yet,” he whispered. “I’ve seen them do miraculous things — escaping from me in the laboratory, for one thing, and banishing Legion, for another. If they can defeat thousands of unruly undead souls in combat like that, then they might just be worthy opponents for even the most crafty and powerful of liches.”

“You’re sure they’ll be okay?” Angus sniffed.

“No,” Kravitz admitted. “I’m not sure. I wish I could be, because I really don’t want to send them to the Astral Plane. But they’ve got help — not just your smarts, but my scythe as well, because I don’t intend to just stand idly by without giving them a fighting chance. I… truthfully, Angus, when I offered them the deal, I wanted to bring an end to the headache they’d given me by any means necessary. But they’ve earned my respect since then, and though the deal can’t be undone, there’s no rule stopping me from aiding them. I don’t want to reap their souls if there’s any way I can avoid it, any excuse or loophole.”

Angus rubbed his nose. “Do you — do you normally like reaping people’s souls?”

Kravitz took a moment to think about his answer. “I was a human like you, once. Alive, and precocious, and always getting in over my head. When I died, and started serving the Raven Queen as a reaper, I felt like I had discovered my life’s purpose, even though it ironically required becoming undead as a prerequisite. My duty is to keep the balance of the universe — to save lives by stopping liches, necromancers, and their foul servants from upsetting that balance — but I remember what it felt like to be mortal, to have mortal loved ones. So… I don’t enjoy watching people grieve, because it feels all too familiar.”

He sat down, and crossed his legs. “I don’t tell a lot of people about this, but in a way, if I’d come to terms with death and grieved more quietly when I was alive… well, let’s just say I probably wouldn’t be a reaper today.”

Angus managed a smile. “You know, you’re nothing like the Grim Reaper in the Caleb Cleveland, Kid Cop books.”

“Oh? I know there are… a variety of misconceptions about me floating around in the world, but I haven’t read that series. Are they detective stories?”

“They’re the world’s greatest detective stories,” Angus declared, “and I own every installment!” For the first time since his ill-fated attempt to punch Kravitz, he stood up, and selected a book from his bookshelf. “This is the first one that you — well, not really you — show up in.”

Kravitz took a look at the cover illustration, which featured a child in a deerstalker hat standing back to back with a deathly pale man, dressed in tattered gray robes and wielding an iron scythe. The title read Caleb Cleveland and the Mask of Death.

“Not much of a resemblance, is there?” Kravitz mused. “I guess can’t fault them for the iron scythe, because that’s what everyone seems to expect, but iron and celestial magic don’t always get along — better than iron and fae magic for sure, but still not especially well.”

“His personality isn’t a whole lot like yours either, sir,” Angus sheepishly admitted. “This is the start of the five-book Grim Reaper arc, which starts off with the reaper helping Caleb solve murder mysteries until Caleb’s previously-struggling private detective agency — which he started after his schism with the corrupt police establishment in the last book — is renowned throughout the country. But then Caleb realizes that the reaper is just trying to bring about an era of prosperity and increased population density, so that he can kill the maximum number of people possible while poisoning the water supply! And of course Caleb disavows his partnership with Death, but the reaper spends the next four installments of the arc committing more murders as revenge — which initially felt like a little bit of a motivation downgrade, if I’m being honest, but it also led to some great continuity between books as well as some really well-written horror that unsettles without pulling on cheap shock value! So they turned out to be some of my favorite books in the series, and… I’m sorry if I judged you a little hastily because of them. You’re a whole lot nicer than the Grim Reaper I expected.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You’re hardly the first person to misjudge me for my line of work, and I don’t expect you to be the last.” Kravitz flipped through the book, which was full of underlined words and fan theories neatly written in the margins. “Actually, do you mind if I borrow this? I’ve always loved mystery novels.”

“You really want to read it?” Angus’s eyes lit up. “Uh, well, I should probably start by giving you the first book in the series, otherwise a lot of callbacks to previous adventures won’t make sense. But I guess I did kind of just spoil the whole plot of Books 21 through —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kravitz assured him with a smile. “And I think I will take Book 1 to start out, please.”

“Alrighty, then!” Angus selected a well-worn book from his shelf and handed it to Kravitz. “Could you, um… let me know what you think of it when you finish reading?”

“I absolutely can. Oh, and Angus?”

“Yes?”

“You sound like a marvelous detective. If anyone can crack the case of these liches, I believe it’ll be you — but don’t beat yourself up if you can’t, alright? That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, and you’re a growing kid — you need your rest.”

Angus nodded. “I’ll try to remember that, sir.”

***

Angus gave directions to the three Reclaimers’ shared dorm, but didn’t specify which individual room was Taako’s, so on a hunch, Kravitz knocked on the door of the room that smelled the most like baked goods. Sure enough, he heard Taako shout “It’s unlocked!” over the banging of bowls and cookie sheets.

“You need to look after your arrows better,” Kravitz warned him as he entered. “If someone with more malicious intentions than Angus were to steal one, then they could easily lure me into a trap.”

Taako blinked. “Whoa, what happened to your accent? I thought you were a stranger and almost chucked a bowl of gingersnap dough at your head!”

Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “Did you really? You look like you’ve got a pretty firm grip on it, there.”

“No, you called my bluff. I’m too good of a chef to just go chucking perfectly good food whenever someone spooks me — the point is, what is up with your voice, my dude?”

“It’s, um… a work accent,” Kravitz explained. “My normal voice isn’t that intimidating. As you can tell, heh.”

“Still wouldn’t want you to slice me up with a scythe, though. You gotta give yourself more credit.” Taako rolled a small handful of gingersnap dough into a ball, dusting it with sugar and placing it in the corner of a fresh cookie sheet. “And to answer your complaint earlier, Angus wasn’t as slick as he thought he was when he swiped that arrow, but I let him get away with it ‘cause I knew neither of you two dorks would try to fight each other or anything like that.”

“He actually did want to fight me for a minute or two,” Kravitz replied, “but we worked it out and now we’re apparently… book club buddies? I’m not sure, I’m no good with kids — or maybe I’m better with kids than I’m consciously aware of?”

Taako snorted. “I didn’t endear myself to little Ango at first either, but now I guess I’m his hero, and his teacher, and maybe even his emotionally adopted uncle or something? There’s just something magical about that kid.”

“Absolutely, but… he seemed stressed.” Kravitz sighed, and Taako’s expression softened. “I suppose this is partly my fault, but there’s an awful lot of pressure on him.”

“Yeah, he — he doesn’t find it so funny when me an’ the boys joke about death, I’ve been noticing. I’ll make sure he takes some time off the case to relax — you think that would help him?”

“I think that would be a good place to start.” Kravitz nodded, glancing over the sheets of oatmeal cookies cooling on the adjacent counter. “You look like you’ve been keeping busy yourself.”

“Yeah, the Director was so thrilled with my Candlenights macarons that she requested a couple batches of oatmeal-white chocolate and some gingersnaps. Guess she read my cookbook or something — ‘cause my whole cookie portfolio is choice, don’t get me wrong, but those are a couple of my top-tier baked goods after the macarons.”

“They smell heavenly — and I should know, working in the Astral Plane! Do you mind if I try one?”

“Wait!” Taako pushed Kravitz’s hand away from the tray. “I didn’t check them for — hang on, you’re already dead, right? You know what, go for it. Sorry about that.” Under his breath, he added: “It’ll be fine. Perfectly fine.”

Confused and a little concerned, but too polite to decline Taako’s offer, Kravitz took a bite of an oatmeal cookie. It was still slightly warm, and the white chocolate melted in his mouth, but he couldn’t imagine it being any less of a delight after having cooled, either.

“So, how many of these does your boss actually want,” asked Kravitz, “and how many can I take back home? They’re just as good as they smell!”

“Course they are,” Taako snickered. “Gimme a few minutes here, and I’ll make you a little gift baggie.”

“Speaking of gifts, that reminds me —” From an inside pocket of his cloak, Kravitz procured four new summoning arrows. “I spoke with the Raven Queen, and was able to arrange an exception to that… company policy, the one about summoning me for business only.”

Taako didn’t look away from his cookie sheet, but his ears immediately perked up.

“You can use them outside of emergency situations — within reason, of course,” Kravitz continued. “I don’t want to manifest in the middle of, I don’t know, a heated debate about moon bylaws, or whatever it is that you people vote on up here.”

“Actually, it turns out moon society is kinda authoritarian.” Taako finished filling the first sheet with gingersnap dough, and began work on a second. “But be honest — how much of this was actually premediated on your part, and how much is just a spur of the moment decision now that you know I’ll give you free baked goods?”

“It was premediated, but make no mistake, the baked goods are a bonus,” Kravitz chuckled. He neglected to mention that there had been no company policy in the first place, nor had there been a conversation with the Raven Queen. Part of him just wanted to give Taako his Stone of Farspeech number like he had with Angus, and bid farewell to the archaic summoning rituals altogether, but it would still be handing over personal information to an active bounty, and there were some lines even Kravitz didn’t dare cross — at least, not yet. “But as good as it is to be able to keep in touch with you, there’s something I should probably warn you about sooner rather than later.”

“Fire away.”

“I assume you were looking for Lup in Wave Echo Cave the other day. But that didn’t unveil many clues to you, did it?”

“Unveil? No matter you and Angus are starting a book club, you speak in the same detective mambo-jumbo. But you’re right, we found zilch.”

“Are you going to start looking for Barry Bluejeans next, by any chance?”

Taako made a funny expression. “Yeah, I guess that’s the plan. But, well, we also agreed that the plan should be to stay on the moon to rest and train for a couple days — ‘cause Magnus has been a bad influence, and we all rushed into the cave expedition just a day after we almost died averting the crystal apocalypse. You saw how that worked out for us.”

Kravitz nodded. “Today is the first day I’ve actually seen you without bags under your eyes. It suits you.” The last part slipped out without Kravitz thinking it through, but it prompted a wink from Taako, which Kravitz considered among the better possible outcomes of impromptu flirting.

“But getting back on topic,” he continued, “I wanted to warn you about Barry. I’ve encountered him a number of times, and he’s not exactly a normal lich.”

Taako sat down on a stool and crossed his legs. “Well, you dunno what my reference point is for liches. He could be a totally regular, run-of-the-mill lich by my standards — maybe a little spooky, but nothin’ to write home about, you know?”

“Then you’d be consorting with some pretty strange liches, because Barry is a very confusing one. Most liches are either antisocial or obsessed with grim monologues, but Barry has held a handful of coherent brief conversations with me — all of which started out weirdly normal, until he started rambling nonsense about the planar system with a genuinely unsettling amount of conviction.”

“Oh, those liches,” Taako muttered, nodding along. “Always saying the darndest things.”

“I feel like you’re not taking this as seriously as you could.” Kravitz narrowed his eyes. “To be fair, I’ve never seen Barry hurt innocent mortals, which is another way he differs from essentially all other liches — but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a threat, especially if you’re hunting him down. After all, there’s a reason I’ve spoken to him several times, but never successfully captured him.”

Kravitz thought back to one of his first and most troubling encounters with Barry, about a year after the end of the Relic Wars. They’d crossed paths by accident, in a seaside town recently demolished by a serpent of the Oculus’s creation, and Barry had exploited the shambles of the port to his advantage, hurling fishing nets and tattered sails at Kravitz as he made his escape.

“You can’t run from justice forever, Bluejeans!” Kravitz had shouted, slicing through a weighted net with his scythe. “Your kind all wind up in the Eternal Stockade eventually!”

“I’ve spent decades bracing myself for the end of apparent eternity and the exhaustion of apparent infinity,” Barry had replied matter-of-factly. “If your prison could really stay intact until the end of time, then I’d be happy to hunker down there with everyone I love and wait for this storm to blow over.”

With a flick of a spectral hand, he’d flung a half-dozen crates of rotten fish at Kravitz’s head. “But you don’t see me handing my soul over without a fight, so… I guess that should tell you everything I think about your so-called ‘eternal’ stockade.”

Kravitz had easily dodged the crates, but stepped right into the epicenter of the geyser that erupted from beneath the dock a moment later, launching him into the air. By the time he’d flown back down to sea level, Barry had been long gone.

“You know, if he still seems pretty chill for a lich,” Taako mused, dragging Kravitz back to the present, “and he’s harmless except for when you try to capture him, then… why are you still trying to capture him? Why not just let him do his thing?”

Kravitz sighed. “That’s a good question, and I’m honestly curious… why do you think I haven’t given up on him?”

“Well… ‘cause liches are illegal, right? Is this a trick question?”

“That’s the answer I was expecting, and you’re not wrong — but that’s not the entire story, either,” Kravitz told him. “I also don’t want to leave Barry to ‘do his thing,’ as you put it, because I don’t know what ‘his thing’ entails. I’ve heard him allude to needing something specific out of undeath, but I don’t know what that is — if it’s immortality, or power, or something else altogether. I don’t know if he’s just putting on a harmless facade while he waits for me to let my guard down.”

Taako nodded. “You think he’s planning something.”

“I know he’s planning something. Most liches, they’re unpredictable because the combination of undeath and their hunger for power has eroded their sense of logic and driven them insane. And at first, I thought this was the one thing Barry had in common with them — with his nonsensical grim warnings, and haphazard pattern of popping up in the last places I expect — but over the past decade of hunting him, I’ve gradually realized he isn’t insane at all. He just bases his decisions off of information that no one else in the universe seems to possess, and constructs plans that no one else in the world understands. He’s unpredictable, but not irrational — and coming from a spellcaster as powerful as he is, that honestly terrifies me.”

Taako whistled. “Guess we’ve really got our work cut out for us, then.”

“I’ll leave you with this: please, if you track Barry Bluejeans down but he seems civil, and reasonable, and harmless, you still cannot and should not trust him, no matter what he tells you. With liches, even abnormal ones, you can’t risk anything less than constant vigilance. Take it from someone who learned it the hard way centuries ago, and has been significantly better at his job ever since.”

“Aww, you’re worried about us,” Taako snickered as he placed the gingersnaps in the oven. “But I read you loud and clear — you don’t need to worry about me falling for a lich’s tricks, of course, but I’ll remind the other two goofuses to be careful.”

He frowned, closing the oven door. “Although, now that I think about it… what does Barry even look like as a lich? I don’t actually know what we should be searching for, but I’m assuming it’s not a normal-ass dude in jeans.”

“Oh, you can’t miss him. Most necromancers spring for black or gray robes, but his is bright red.”

Taako’s eyes went wide. “You know those grim warnings you mentioned him giving? Would they happen to be about, uh, the hunger of all living things?”

“You’ve met his lich form, too?” Kravitz slapped his forehead. “Were you also the best man at his wedding? Do you golf with him on Saturdays?”

“Man,” Taako muttered, “I am so glad we decided not to tell the Director about this.”

***

Angus found Noelle in the Bureau’s gym, dumping a cooler of water on her teammates as they finished an intense workout. On the other side of the room, Avi was thoroughly demolishing Brad Bradson at an impromptu game of half-court basketball, and a small but rowdy crowd had gathered to watch.

“Not gonna lie, I’d kill to be a tireless cyborg like you, Noelle,” Carey groaned, overdramatically collapsing into Killian’s arms. “I’m exhausted.”

“I dunno. If training didn’t make my arms ache, then I don’t think it would be half as satisfying,” Killian replied, wiping her brow. “Although some laser eyes to pair with my crossbow might be pretty kickass.”

“I’m enjoying the whole swappable body parts thing more than I thought I would,” Noelle said. “At first I was worried I’d accidentally fry a whole bunch of people with my arm cannon, but it turns out I can just take it off for non-violent occasions!”

“Hey, Angus!” Carey called out, waving to him. “Got any strong opinions about cyborgs and integrating technology into our bodies?”

“Um, I was actually just here to ask Noelle a few questions. Is this not a good time?”

Noelle shrugged. “Well, we just finished training for the day, so I don’t see why not.”

Angus beamed. “Great! But do you mind if we conduct the interview somewhere… a little quieter than this gym?”

Noelle raised an arm, shielding Angus from a stray basketball. “Sounds like a plan.”

Upon arriving in Noelle’s as-of-yet sparsely furnished dorm, Angus sat cross-legged on the floor and opened to a fresh page in his notebook.

“So, Magnus told me that you had a run-in with Barry Bluejeans shortly before his death in Phandalin. I’d never want to force you to think back to traumatic memories, but if there are any details you recall about him off the top of your head, that could be vital to our investigation.”

“I appreciate the concern, but it’ll be alright,” Noelle assured him. “I’ve already been thinkin’ back to that encounter a lot, ever since I learned Barry was a lich — ‘cause he really, really didn’t act like how I was always told liches would behave. See, he… he almost took a blast of fire to the chest while he was shepherding us into that stockroom, and even then, he told us to stay in there while he risked his life trying to lead the dwarf away. He was so brave, and he even got that dwarf out of the bar… but still not far enough away, I guess.”

“Was he using any spells? Magically redirecting fire? Did he try to teleport you to safety?”

“No, no spells that I saw. He threw a chair across the room to distract the dwarf at one point, but that was with his own two arms and I imagine a whole lot of adrenaline, not any sorta spectral mage hands or whatever it is that wizards use.”

“Hmm.” Angus clicked his pen. “I hate to say it, but if he didn’t cast a single spell, then it sounds like he really wasn’t trying that hard to save the town…”

“No, that’s not it. I’m sure of it. He told us not to be afraid, but he was… he was scared. Did a real good job of hiding it, but he was shaking as he closed that door to that stockroom and went back into the bar to face the fire. I sincerely believe he was doin’ everything he could to save us from the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, and it just… wasn’t enough.”

“I wonder if Lich Barry has — or rather, had a kinder but more incompetent twin brother,” Angus mused, jotting down the thought in his notes. “It would make more sense than — wait. What did you just say about the gauntlet?”

“That Barry tried to save us from it? I guess I didn’t know what it was called back then, not until after I died and I remembered the Relic Wars —”

“Exactly! Noelle, you’re a genius!” Angus sprung to his feet. “We need to go talk to Johann!”

Noelle floated after him as he raced out of the room and towards the nearest elevator. “About what? The Voidfish?”

“Right! Maybe Barry didn’t cast any spells when he was alive because he didn’t remember that he could!”

“So when he died, the memories would’ve all rushed back to him, and he could go back to his lich-y business!” Noelle finished. “But why would the Bureau have erased information about Barry, of all people?”

“I don’t know,” Angus admitted as they stepped into the elevator and it began to descend. “Maybe he used to work with them, and went rogue? I’d ask the Director, but…”

“She’s not in on the lich-hunting secret, right. But you’ll probably have to tell her eventually, won’t you? Y’all can’t keep sneaking out forever.”

“Oh, I know. But the Reclaimers are going to be the ones to break the news to her, not me. They were the ones who lied about it in the first place, after all.” The elevator doors opened, and Angus sprinted out at full speed towards Johann’s office. “Johann, I have a question! Is there a way to check what people the Voidfish has erased?”

Johann gingerly set down his violin, and tapped his head. “You’re looking at it. I’ve been in charge of feeding info to the Voidfish basically since the Bureau got started, and lucky for you, I’ve got a pretty good memory for who and what gets erased from the rest of the world.”

He sighed. “I kinda… I feel like the least I can do is remember them when no one else will, you know? ‘Cause it’s what I hope someone will do for me when I’m gone, and… well, that got real depressing real fast. You probably don’t want to hear that, kid — so just tell me, who do you need to know about?”

“I realize now that I’m forming the question in my head that this might sound like a goof,” Angus admitted, “but have you ever erased information about someone named Barry Bluejeans?”

Johann laughed. “You’re right, that does sound like a goof! I can’t remember hearing about him before, never mind erasing him — and I’d definitely remember a name like that, trust me.”

“Oh.” Angus’s face fell. “I was so sure…”

Noelle drifted over to the Voidfish’s tank, watching the swirling galaxy patterns drift by. “Don’t give up, Angus. You might still be onto something — maybe the info could’ve gotten erased before Johann was in charge here, or maybe before the Bureau even found the Voidfish.”

Johann nodded. “Yeah, maybe. You want me to ask the Director about it?”

“No!” Angus and Noelle shouted in unison.

“Not yet,” Angus added hurriedly. “Maybe eventually. I’ll need to talk to Taako and the others about it first.”

“Okay, whatever,” Johann shrugged. “I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but you do you.”

As Noelle rode the elevator back to the roof with Angus, she asked: “So, what’s our next move?”

“I guess we should go tell the Reclaimers about the break in the case, or lack thereof. And maybe make an argument for coming clean to the Director, while we’re there.”

They made their way back to the Reclaimers’ dorm, but upon opening the door, every one of the room’s occupants jumped out of their seats in shock.

“Oh, it’s just you two,” Taako sighed, lowering his Umbra Staff. “Try and knock next time! I thought you were Lucretia coming to bust our secret meeting!”

The living room looked exactly how Angus would expect the site of an impromptu clandestine gathering to look, with dozens of papers scattered about and a corkboard lying on the coffee table. Red and blue strings connected dozens of thumbtacks, and the center of the board was occupied by a red crayon drawing of a disembodied robe.

Merle chuckled, elbowing Magnus. “You know, if you’d really wanted to keep our meeting secret, then we woulda made sure our ‘security guard’ actually locked the goddamn door —”

“That’s not important right now,” Magnus interrupted, closing the door and motioning for Noelle and Angus to join the circle around the coffee table. “What’s important is that you two haven’t let anything slip to Lucretia since the last time we talked!”

“Um, we haven’t, but…” Angus frowned. “We were actually thinking it might be better to let her in on the secret. I have a lot of questions that only she can help us answer —”

“Then they’ll just have to go unhelped!” Taako declared, magically silencing Angus’s Stone of Farspeech. “If you tell her our lives depend on arresting one of the Red Robes, she’ll go ballistic!”

Angus blinked. “I think I’m missing a lot of context here, sir.”

“I think I’m missing even more,” Noelle added.

Magnus pointed at the drawing of the Red Robe. “See this? This is Barry’s true form, according to Kravitz. And according to Lucretia, the Red Robes are all super duper evil, so she’s not too keen on us talking to them. Or interacting with them any more than we have to, really.”

“Well, what’s supposedly so evil about them?” Noelle asked. “Are they all liches?”

“No! Well, actually, they might be,” Merle admitted. “I dunno the states of all their souls, but we do know they made the Grand Relics!”

“What?” Noelle gasped.

“You know, like the Philosopher’s Stone?” Magnus added. “And the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet?”

“No, I know what the Grand Relics are, but there’s gotta be some mistake,” Noelle replied. “Barry was trying to stop the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet from going off and incinerating the whole town — and even if he was amnesiac when I met him, I just can’t imagine him ever creating something like that. It just doesn’t make sense —”

“Nothing about Barry Bluejeans makes sense,” Angus agreed. “There must be something we’re missing…”

“I’m sure there is, but one way or another, I’m pretty sure Barry did help make the Relics,” Magnus told them. “He’s popped up near almost every one of them, except for the Oculus —”

“Yeah, remember when you sensed a lich in the Cosmoscope, Noelle?” Taako chimed in. “That was Barry. He rooted through Lucas’s trash and said some ominous shit about billions of lives getting devoured. Doesn’t that sound like a guy who could be the evil mastermind behind the Relic Wars?”

“Well, why don’t we just ask him?” Merle spoke up. “I mean, it’s not like we have any trouble finding the guy even when we’re not looking for him, ha! — so next time we run into him, how about I cast Zone of Truth, and ask what he has to do with the Grand Relics?”

“That’s a great idea, sir!” Angus exclaimed, but his face fell after just a moment. “But if Barry usually just shows up around the Relics, and we have no idea where the last three are, then how will we know where to look for him? We don’t have the time to wait for another to surface randomly like the Philosopher’s Stone and Gaia Sash did.”

“Kid’s got a point, Merle,” Taako admitted, rubbing his chin. “But as long as we don’t have any other leads… I can think of at least once place it wouldn’t hurt to check, and maybe even grace with a séance!”

“Phandalin?” Noelle asked, and Taako nodded.

“Exactly! Sure, the last time we revisited an old stomping grounds didn’t go so well, but Phandalin’s just a flat circle where you can see danger coming from any direction. What could go wrong?”

***

End notes:

Some miscellaneous headcanons about the stuff in Angus’s room: Magnus made the bookshelves and chair, Lucretia provided the bed and helped Angus attach the stars to the ceiling, and the books are almost all Angus’s own. It took a while to bring them all up to the moon, but Lucretia was happy to help, and she and Taako both gave Angus a few more novels to add to his collection.

Next chapter has some exciting stuff happening, including an appearance from a certain lich that the boys may or may not be hunting, so stay tuned! I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hold the every-other-Tuesday update schedule after Chapter 5, because long story short:

I got a part-time job that doesn’t take up that much time, but does occupy the part of the day when I’m usually in the mood to write.

I had mild insomnia for like a solid 4 nights, which I have since recovered from but not before it threw a wrench in my writing process, so that burnt through a “buffer” pre-written chapter or two.

I’m by no means abandoning this fic, but if updates slow down to more of a monthly pace after Chapter 5, this is why! Just wanted to give you all a heads-up.

#taz #taz balance #taakitz #taako taaco #kravitz taz #angus mcdonald #magnus burnsides #merle highchurch #no-3113 #lucretia taz #barry bluejeans #taz balance spoilers #fic: FTRALA #rosalia writes fic

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detectivedreameater · 4 years

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There’s Still Work To Do|| Winston and Marley

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @danetobelieve and @detectivedreameater SUMMARY: Marley needs Winston’s help to foster a lead on Roy’s operation. Neither of them can stand by after Roland’s sacrifice. CONTENT: Death mention, mass poisoning mention

Keeping oneself occupied was always a good way to ignore emotions. Marley had read that in a psychology book in high school and had also read that it was a common coping technique. At the time, she’d rolled her eyes about it, but now, without even thinking anything of it, she found herself doing just that. Too much had happened recently and she needed to concentrate and focus on the more important things-- taking down Roy and killing Tommy. But while both of those were out of the question at the moment, she had turned her eye to something else. It was technically Agatha’s case, but everyone was sharing information gathered about the poisoning at Pat’s Place. There was a name in the file that Marley had recognized-- as well as a face. Two of the four men her and Felix had taken down were in this file. What they had to do with the poisoning, she wasn’t sure, but she knew someone who could help her figure it out. All she needed to do was track their cell signals and trace their routes that night. And so, she found herself headed to Winston’s desk, back in the corner “IT” room, knocking softly. “Hey,” she said, standing in the doorway, “I’ve got a thing I need your help with.” She lowered her voice a bit, glancing over her shoulder. “It’s a Roy thing,” she said in a lowered tone.

Winston couldn’t sit still. Physically, mentally, emotionally. Whatever you wanted to call it. Didn’t matter. They had to keep busy, because when they let their mind stop churning and when they let everything stop whirring that was when all of the emotions threatened to come crashing in. So they worked longer and harder then they had before. Working through cold cases and their own projects. They avoided going home. Trying not to have to talk to Rio too much just in case he realised what the problem was. But they couldn’t get Roland’s face out of their head. They couldn’t get Roland’s last words out and they were re-reading them for the millionth time when Marley knocked on the doorway. “Of course, come in and shut the door.” Winston turned to their laptop and tapped a few buttons that set up a nice little buzz of interference incase they were bugged (Roy must be bugging everything right?) and then murmured a quick enchantment that would soundproof the room to some degree. They were still working on the code to get this to happen automatically but it wasn’t exactly something that you could just rush, unfortunately. “What do you need and I’ll make it happen?” Anything to get back at that bastard. Anything to make sure that Roland hadn’t died for no reason.

Marley stepped inside and could instantly feel the strain coming from Winston. They weren’t exactly good at hiding their emotions, at least not in the capacity of their body language. But she opted to ignore it, for now. If they wanted to talk, they would, and she was sure they’d never want to talk to someone like her about that stuff, anyway. She set the file down next to them and pointed at the two men she recognized. “I’ve seen these two around, and I know they work for Roy. I’m hoping tracing where their cells were the day of the attack can help give us a lead or something. Obviously I can’t just say this to Keen, so I need a way for this lead to crop up so we can follow it, too.” Hopefully this would keep them busy enough for the moment, help provide some distraction. She knew it was distracting her enough, and if she could get her hands around another man’s throat to crush in vengeance for Sarge, it would just be a treat on top of everything else. “Think you can help with that?”

With something to do, something to keep them busy, Winston was suddenly a little less glum. It was a temporary thing, of that much they were very aware. But they knew that they would be able to at least look into this and see if they could help Marley get back at Roy, even if it was in the smallest of ways, but that was something right? It had to be something because they were done wasting time. Wasting time had let Roland get killed and Winston couldn’t live with that again. “Okay, if you’ve got their information then tracing them shouldn’t be hard, the GPS towers in White Crest ping really regularly and keeping up with everything is not a huge problem. I can come up with a way to let this lead crop up so you can follow it up without it seeming … strange or out of character. Nothing to give Detective Keen the proverbial.” Winston was glad for the distraction. They were glad for anything to keep them busy and in their own way this was Marley keeping them safe and busy. “I can definitely help with it, I can probably help with it right now. It shouldn’t take me too long.” Winston glanced up at Marley and shrugged, before setting to work, tapping away on their keyboard.

“Perfect,” Marley answered, looking down at them with as much of a confident glance as she could muster. It wasn’t much of one, with the bandages still on her face and the pain of moving it still present-- but she tried for one, anyway, because it seemed like the kid could really use a confidence boost. “What would we do here without you?” she teased, standing up and folding her arms. “Yeah, I’ve got their numbers. Here,” she pulled her own phone out, clicking through a few things before setting it down in front of them. The note tab opened on it was labeled “Bookshop- Felicity” and below it were three phone numbers, labeled “Amy”, “Karen” and “Cameron”. “The first two are our guys,” she pointed out.

The confidence in Marley’s eyes helped a little bit. Winston had taken their co-workers for granted before. That was a mistake that they were determined to never make again. It wasn’t worth making that mistake again. You never know when you might lose them. There were so many good people that they got to work with. Marley. Jane. Agatha. Cece. Kaden. Regan. Each had their own specific gifts to give and Winston would never forget them. “I’m sure that they’d find someone else that was equally useful to overwork and underpay,” Winston couldn't’ help the jokes, it distracted people away from asking how they were doing. A question that they could only answer with ‘fine’ or ‘I’m doing okay’ or ‘you know it’s just how it goes’. Winston quickly typed the numbers into their computer and began running a track and trace program which got no results straight away. Unsurprising. “So normal and conventional means haven’t worked, but I can do some … magic to work it out. But you know, you’ve got to pretend that I didn’t do magic to do this because I can’t have Captain Maynard finding out about me or really the supernatural, that’s something I do not want to explain.”

Marley chuckled. She shook her head and reached out to pat Winston on the shoulder. “Oh, kiddo,” she said, leaning over to watch the screen a bit closer, “I’ve been lying about magic since before you were born.” She paused. “Probably.” Admittedly, she didn’t know Winston’s age, but it was still funny to say. She moved around to lean against the desk next to them, crossing her arms over her chest again. “Work your magic, then,” she instructed, eager to watch. Magic was one thing she didn’t know too much about, and she’d never really cared for it, either. Her expertise was other supernatural species’, but it never hurt to learn more. “Pun intended.”

Rolling their eyes, Winston had to admit that there weren’t many people that they would allow to call them kiddo. Marley was perhaps one of two, maybe three outside of their family. But she had saved their life and that gave her the right to call them whatever she wanted. “I’m 24” And Marley couldn’t be older then like 30ish, so what had she been lying about magic since she was a child? Winston somehow doubted that but they weren’t about to say it. What was the point? Grumbling under their breath, Winston pulled the leather wrist brace -- that Miriam had made for them -- off of their hand and held it over the webcam on the computer. Closing their eyes for a second they began the familiar steps of reaching out with their minds eye and feeling the very fabric of the data that they were trying to access surge beneath their very will and they began to work through it, sifting through GPS locations data and dates before they finally found what they were looking for. It was more difficult to move the information into a file but not out of their reach. A month ago perhaps but they had nothing but time to focus and practice now and it wasn’t long before the printers in the corner of the room began to whir and the information printed as a physical copy as well as saving in three separate locations, their work hard drive and two separate backups. Sweat glistening on their forehead, Winston lowered their hand shakily. “The information’s being printed as we speak.”

Marley leaned back and watched as Winston began to do their thing. All magic was different, and it was fascinating every time observing it. It hardly looked like anything was happening at all, but the printer jumped to life and started whirring and Marley went over to where it was and watched curiously. It was printing GPS locations. Heading back over, she grabbed her phone from in front of them and started typing in the coordinates as they were printed. It was in White Crest. She zoomed in. It was a house, in a neighborhood on Harris Island. Interesting. The satellite map she was able to pull up showed several different cars parked outside, and-- “Here,” she said, heading back over to Winston, “that’s a video camera.” She tapped her phone screen. “Think you can tap into that and let us have a look? I just need one little thing for a tip off to make it seem real. Anything.”

Magic still drained Winston particularly technomancy. Each time they tapped into it. They were convinced that it was all brand new. Now they were really starting to get a grasp on it. As the GPS pinpointed a specific location. Winston took a long deep breath and wicked the sweat from their brow with the back of their spare hand before wheeling over to another bank of monitors without rising from their chair. Swallowing back exhaustion they grabbed their very cold coffee and swallowed it, grabbing a handful of candy from a half empty packet on their desk before nodding. “Absolutely, I can tap into that.” They set to work, locating the camera and trying to access it in conventional methods. They didn’t try very hard. They didn’t have time for this. Roy was getting away with literal murder, of a police sergeant and here Winston was trying to play fair. Enough was enough. “One sec,” they grunted as they once more raised their palm and the eye on their hand blinked several times before rolling back in on itself and Winston was gazing through a traffic camera. Reaching out with their will, they forced it to turn on a screw that wasn’t built to turn and view the house. It didn’t take long before Winston was able to see various members of what they assumed was Roy’s operation. “I’ve got, three, maybe four targets loading stuff. This camera doesn’t usually have a view point so I assume they think it’s a blind spot. I can get it to take photos and print those photos off to give you more proof, is that going to be enough to go in?” Winston asked, already pretty sure that they knew the answer. They set to work, snapping grainy photos via the CCTV and sending it to the various backups and printing hard copies off for Marley to show Agatha. They could feel their energy gently sapping away as they worked. But it was worth it. Anything for Roland.

Whatever mojo they were working, it was doing its job real well. Marley watched the thing in their palm for a moment, curious about where they’d gotten an eyeball in their hand, reminded of the strange cultists they’d run into that had those exact same things. She didn’t care to press right now, not when everything was already tense. She nodded. “That’s absolutely perfect,” she said, already knowing they were doing just that. The printer whirred to life again and she went over to it, plucking them off one by one as they came out. “You’re a fucking godsend, Winston,” she said, turning to look back at them. She didn’t know how to make people feel better, that wasn’t her forte-- hell, she was pretty sure she hadn’t even helped Anita feel better about any of this-- but it was worth a try, right? “And as far as we’re concerned,” she said, coming back over to them, “you’re irreplaceable around here.” It was quiet for a moment before she tacked on-- “If you tell anyone I said that, I’ll make your life a living nightmare.”

Drained was an understatement. Winston really needed to spend more time practicing magic. They knew that the likes of Nell, Bea and Luce had been practicing it for a lifetime and that meant that their proverbial magical muscles were always going to be more attuned to this sort of thing then Winston’s and they were all so much stronger in magic then Winston. At least in terms of stamina. “Uh…” had Marley just told Winston that they were irreplaceable? That was unexpected and Winston wasn’t really sure how they were meant to react. “Honestly, I just it because they took Roland and I know I’m acting like I’m fine but I’m not but I won’t tell anyone that you said anything because I would hate to break your tough guy facade but that actually meant so much more to me then you could ever imagine.” Winston took a moment to swallow before the words kept tumbling out of their mouth. “Roland was one of the few people in this station who really seemed to think that I had any potential and I feel like people just don’t get it sometimes but hearing you say that is so....” Winston’s jaw snapped shut for a second and they swallowed three times before continuing. “It means a lot.” Their eyes glistened as they attempted to blink back tears. Now wasn’t the time to cry but even still. “I won’t tell anyone though, please go and ruin Roy’s day before I break down into tears and embarrass us both.”

Marley saw the tears and felt suddenly as if she’d done something very wrong. She didn’t know what to do, but then the kid was rambling about Roland and their feelings and how no one believed in them here. Okay, she was going to have to knock a few skulls around here. Discreetly, of course. She didn’t need people thinking she actually cared about Winston or anything, they were just useful and keeping them around was a benefit to everyone. Still… “It’s-- hard. You’re allowed to feel upset by what happened, ki-- Winston.” She glanced around, unfurling her arms a bit. “Just-- take it easy, okay? If you need time off, to yourself-- take it. We’re all grieving, in our own ways.” She paused, the words catching thickly in her throat. Drawing herself in. “Roland wouldn’t have wanted you to work yourself to death over him. Just-- remember that.” She didn’t know what to do next, so she just shuffled the papers she’d collected and headed to the door, pausing a moment. “And if anyone ever says that rude shit to you again, let me know,” she looked away, “I’ll take care of it.” And then she closed the door. She still had work to do.

#chatzy #chatzy: winston #wickedswriting #there's still work to do #winston #mass poisoning tw

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writing-prompts-for-friends · 4 years

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Notes on Robert McKee’s “Story” 23: Tearing Down Act Design

☝ Maybe this post will make you throw out the storytelling map your English teacher gave you.

Every single person who has taken a literature class has seen a diagram along these lines at some point. This is the one-track path that all “Good Stories” must take:

But do all “Good Stories” really have to follow this trajectory? And where exactly do subplots fit in on this? In this post, I share Robert McKee’s answers to these questions.

How Many Acts?

First, what even is an act? Let’s make sure we have a clear understanding.

“As a symphony unfolds in three, four, or more movements, so story is told in movements called acts--the macro-structure of story.

Beats, changing patterns of human behavior, build scenes. Ideally, every scene becomes a Turning Point in which the values at state swing from the positive to the negative or the negative to the positive, creating significant but minor change in their lives.

A series of scenes build a sequence that culminates in a scene that has a moderate impact on the characters, turning or changing values for better or worse to a greater degree than any scene.

A series of sequences build an act that climaxes in a scene that creates a major reversal in the characters’ lives, greater than any sequence accomplished.”

Okay. So how many should acts should we have? Most famous works we’re familiar with have three acts, as illustrated in our picture above. But is that the golden rule?

According to McKee and Aristotle, no, three acts is not the golden rule. A good story can have just one act--we may see this in a one-shot fanfiction or a short story.

A story can have two acts as well, most commonly seen in sitcoms, novellas, or hour-length plays.

However, when a work reaches a certain length, such as a feature film, an hour-long TV episode, a full-length play, or a novel, three acts are the minimum.

Why is this? Who decided that three is the magic number?

“As audience we embrace the story artist and say: ‘I’d like a poetic experience in breadth and depth to the limits of life. But I’m a reasonable person. If I give you only a few minutes to read or witness your work, it would be unfair of me to demand you to take me to the limit. Instead I’d like a moment of pleasure, an insight or two, no more than that. But if I give you important hours of my life, I expect you to be an artist of power who can reach the boundaries of experience.’

In our effort to satisfy the audience’s need, to tell stories that touch the innermost and outermost sources of life, two major reversals are not enough. No matter the setting or scope of the telling, no matter how international and epic or intimate and interior, three major reversals are the necessary minimum for a full-length work of narrative art to reach the end of the line.

Consider these rhythms: Things were bad, then they were good--end of story. Or things were good, then they were bad--end of story. Or things were bad, then they were very bad--end of story. Or things were good, then they were very good--end of story. In all four cases we feel something’s lacking. We know that the second event, whether positively or negatively charged, is neither the end nor the limit. Even if the second event kills the cast: Things were good (or bad), then everyone died--end of story--it’s not enough. “Okay, they’re all dead. Now what?” we’re wondering. The third turn is missing and we know we haven’t touch the limit until at least one more major reversal occurs. Therefore, the three-act story rhythm was the foundation of story art for centuries before Aristotle noticed it.”

Act Length

(For the sake of explanation, let’s stick with the Three Act pattern.)

Take a look at that diagram that you were probably forced to memorize in lit class again.

Here, we see that all three acts are equal in length.However, McKee provides a different distribution. He stresses that his diagrams are foundations and not formulae, and while his are specifically for the film medium, he believes that they are applicable to the play and novel as well.

For now, let’s just look at the Central Plot timeline and disregard subplots. In his foundation, he has broken a 118 minute, three act film into the following pieces:

Act 1: 30 mins (25% of film)

Act 2: 70 mins (60% of film)

Act 3: 18 mins (15% of film)

Notice in particular how short the last act is compared to the others. McKee states, “In the ideal last act we want to give the audience a sense of acceleration, a swiftly rising action to Climax.” If we draw out the last act too much, we run the risk of slowing pace and taking away from the momentum we have built up.

Now let’s take a look at Act 2. It’s a whopping 60% of the film. That feels like a lot to me. McKee echoes something that Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing, that it is the second act where things can get claggy and boring. So how can we keep from getting stuck in the swamp that is Act 2?

Add subplots or more acts.

Subplots are such an important topic that they necessitate their own post, so for now let’s just discuss when we would add more acts.

How Many Acts?

“Not every film needs or wants a subplot: THE FUGITIVE. How then does the writer solve the problem of the long second act? By creating more acts. The three-act design is the minimum. If the writer builds progressions to a major reversal at the halfway point, he breaks the story into four movements with no act more than thirty or forty minutes long.

A film could have a Shakespearean rhythm of five acts: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. Or more. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is in seven acts; THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER in eight. These films turn a major reversal every fifteen or twenty minutes, decisively solving the long second act problem. But the five- to eight-act design is the exception, for the cure of problem is the cause of others.”

So maybe you have a thriller you want to write, and you’re sick of there being a stupid romance in every single story that comes out these days (Oops, are my own opinions bleeding into this? lol), so you want to write just a straight up thriller, with NOTHING else going on but the central plot. Cool!

In order to avoid the slowdown in Act 2, you may want to consider adding another act, thereby shrinking the length of Act 2, giving you another chance for another exciting twist.

However, beware because adding acts can cause some of the following problems in your story:

The multiplication of act climaxes invites cliches.

For each act there must be a climax. And each climax must be progressively greater than the last. It is difficult enough to think of the three climaxes we need for a regular three-act story. You’ll be dipping down deep into that well of creativity.

The multiplication of acts reduces the impact of climaxes and results in repetitiousness.

“Even if you have a limitless well of creativity, turning act climaxes on scenes of life and death, life an death, life and death, life and death, life and death, seven or eight times over, boredom sets in. Before too long the audience is yawning: “That’s not a major turn. That’s his day. Every fifteen minutes somebody tries to kill this guy.”

What is major is relative to what is moderate and minor. If every scene screams to be heard, we go deaf.

This is why a three-act Central Plot with subplots has become a kind of standard. It fits the creative powers of most writers, provides complexity, and avoids repetition.”

So feel free to have more acts, but in moderation. Next, let’s take a look at some non-standard act patterns you may want to use.

False Endings

What’s a false ending? You’ve seen it a thousand times over. It’s a scene so seemingly complete that we think for a moment the story is over. E.T. is dead--it’s the end of the movie. In ALIEN, Ripley blows up the spaceship and escapes, we think. The original TERMINATOR movie has a double False Ending.

McKee issues this caution regarding them:

“For most films, however, the False Ending is inappropriate. Instead, the Penultimate Act Climax should intensify the Major Dramatic Question: “Now what’s going to happen?”

Act Rhythm

Here, McKee points out the importance of alternating between value-charges. (For a refresher on value-charges, please see this post on the values in your theme, and this post on maintaining balance between the opposite values.)

“Repetitiousness is the enemy of rhythm. The dynamics of story depend on the alternation of its value-charges. For example, the two most powerful scenes in a story are the last two act climaxes. Onscreen they’re often only ten or fifteen minutes apart. Therefore, they cannot repeat the same charge. If the protagonist achieves his Object of Desire, making the last act’s Story Climax positive, then the Penultimate Act Climax must be negative. You cannot set up an up-ending with an up-ending. ‘Things were wonderful...then they got even better!’ Conversely, you cannot set up a down-ending with a down-ending. When emotional experience repeats, the power of the second event is cut in half. And if the power of the Story Climax is halved, the power of the film is halved.

On the other hand, a story may climax in irony, an ending that’s both positive and negative. What then must be the emotional charge of the Penultimate Climax? The answer’s found in close study of the Story Climax, for although irony is somewhat positive, somewhat negative, it should never be balanced. If it is, the positive and negative values cancel each other out and the story ends in a bland neutrality.

For example, Othello finally achieves his desire: a wife who loves him and has never betrayed him with another man--positive. However, when he discovers this, it’s too late because he’s just murdered her--an overall negative irony.”

☝This gave me a lot of thought. I tend to write for myself, and I like to have up-endings with all loose ends tidied up. Looking back at everything, I have set up up-endings with up-endings in many of my stories, and I can see now why even to me the finale feels lacklustre.

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

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ladyteldra · 4 years

Note

Also strings of fate!

Omg. I forgot this was technically a crossover.

Okay. So I was going to say this was a Diablo fic. But I was wrong. It's a Diablo/Harry Potter fic following Itherael, the Archangel of Fate, and how free will/choices interacts with his domain. It actually follows several possible timelines including both the original and the final.

Basically, Itherael keeps records of all that has and will come, except in canon, humans are unaccounted for. Which I think is silly, so I decided they're just hard to account for because their choices aren't pre-ordained so several possibilities exist for every event they're part of. It mostly follows him.

This is also a MoD!Harry fic. It is probably @dominotnk's fault. And I'm weak.

I'm not going to bother editing or anything as it is mostly just the meta and plotting bit. So here we go.

Supposedly, the Tomes and Scroll are based on Anu's power and his All Knowing Sight was fractured with his death. But both the his and his enemies bodies created Demons and Angels. The Worldstone allowed for the creation of Humanity and that is part of him, so they fall within Creation as well or Demons would not fall within Fate either.

----

Itherael is the Angel of Fate. Humanity is not part of Creation so they can not be seen by the Tome of Fate. But that makes little sense.

But set Fate could be different. Humans are not bound because they can choose. They are not within the scroll because they're actions can take too many paths. They do not have a greater purpose they specifically strive towards at their birth, but choose that as they go.

There are also just too many.

Lesser demons are chaos, but not threats on their own. The greater demons have limited numbers and are therefore easy for the Tomes to keep track of. But not every action is accounted for.

He's compiles the sights of lesser angels for a better understanding of the possible path, but most do not give thought to humanity so neither do their visions. Over the years, he has distanced himself from actively diving into the crystals for the chance of losing himself is greater now than before Humanity's rise.

He has also seen what should have been the End. The razing of the Heavens. Where Diablo would win and the Crystal Arch would be no more.

He has never shared that writing.

He has grown quieter as the final fate draws closer. The sights of others never looking past that point and he Fears. But his fear is a sad thing. It is sorrow and regret, not rash actions or demands.

Then a cloud seems to lift. There is a new script among fate, one he can not read, but changes the face of possibility. There is an after, though the razing of Heaven is still prominent, there is a sliver of else.

-----

The Nephalem is still not predicted, but Itherael is more proactive in his defiance of the invasion. He can not replace Hope, nor can He act against Fate before Fate is changed, but he can work towards divergences if they exist. And that is what he does.

Hope still falls to Despair for a time.

But it is not within his Domain that they'll reside. The Halls of Fate will be protected for his Domain echoes through Time. They will not Shatter because that is not the only choice.

-----

The difference is a man, at least he says he's a man. A man that should not be. What man can not die? Yet he is neither angel nor demon nor nephalem born. He walks in the shadow of Death as a friend. He has mastered the final Fate and fears it not.

Harry Potter has come to Sanctuary and can not sit aside as the world burns. He might not be among the Nephalem’s group. But he is not completely idle. Even if he is his mere presence changes things.

Maybe Death is bound to him and him alone in this.

Perhaps he wanders Pandemonium and saves the Aspect of Wisdom from himself. For Wisdom can not comprehend the corruption of humans, but knowledge can not avoid their existence either. A being of Pure Good that wandered before other Beings existed, can not look into the abyss of darkness and remain the same. Yet an angel is not capable of change on its own.

Perhaps he wanders and yet does not save the aspect, but is instead kept aside as a being that is not demon or angel or human and is therefore not among the corruption. Not part of the Conflict. Maybe Wisdom is still assigned and Death dies as a human takes its place.

-----

Perhaps his part is nothing but the change in view. He walks among the mortals and helps where he can, but he is no more or less than any one doing the same.

But that view saves Fate. For what is an Angel when his Aspect is forever lost? The Libraries remain as they always have, a little more chaotic as the crystals sing of possibilities rather than certainties.

An Angel slightly freer than he was.

A man whose existence is to thank.

And many paths laid before them both.

Many paths the Angel can not bear to see come to be.

Itherael appears before Harry. To ask for a chance to know him. To court him. Because in most paths Harry ends up with someone else, Itherael remains through time alone.

But in one, in some with every step closer to acting, Itherael and Harry are one and the path is Light and Song and that is his wish. He will diverge Fate to make it so.

#diablo 3 #harry potter #itherael #Strings of Fate #wip sampler

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softnaruto · 4 years

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Can i request any scenario\drabble(no matter genre,time,18+ or not) with KibaXYuki clan fem SO who is Kiri ANBU. Like they met during mission & tried to kill him by mistake. And under the mask she acts cool and badass, but without depressed & shy bean who thinks that his feelings are either cruel joke or not good as they are from different villages.

Death’s A Charm

author: hi hi! sorry for the late response! I hope you like it!

pairing: Kiba x fem! Kiri clan! reader

words: 1949

genre: fluff, action

warnings: blood, wounds, death, and... fighting

this was too long so I cut it! pls keep reading after the cut!

Kiba’s eyes slowly opened as he looked around, the shade of the forest limiting the sun’s harsh rays. He began to smell something… someone, to be specific. He immediately stood up straight, looking around for Akamaru. His last memory was foggy, and his surroundings did not look like Konoha’s forests either. He looked off to the side, noticing a small creek before cupping a bit of water with his hands.

He needed to find Akamaru and get the hell out of there.

“You’re really going to drink that water?” A strange voice asked, causing him to tense up as he lifted his hands up to his mouth. He let go of the water, looking around him, but finding no one. “God, you really are a dog.”

Kiba’s eyebrows scrunched together as he stood up straight. He took a kunai out of his back pocket, ready to defend himself from any attack. As he stood looking out into the forest, glances of the past came to him.

He was… with Hinata and Shino, on their way to Sato, the Village Hidden In the Mist in order to track and deliver stolen information that had reached the Land of Fire. They had to part ways halfway through as Hinata and Shino finished tracking the culprits and Kiba was left to deliver a scroll that had been found. However, after coming across a certain area in the Land of Water, Kiba had been surrounded by the culprits’ puppets and was outnumbered.

All he could remember was Akamaru standing bravely by his side; nothing else. He could easily be outnumbered now, but his mind kept going back to Akamaru… and the stranger mentioning a dog clearly meant that they had him.

“Where’s Akamaru?!” Kiba yelled, his eyes trying to trace the different scent in the air. All of a sudden, he heard a bark coming in from his left, and a big shape running towards him. He instantly recognized the shape, and a small smile appeared on his face, before remembering that there was an enemy out there.

A shape appeared by Akamaru, hidden in the fog that had accumulated through the forest. Kiba scrunched his eyebrows together, trying to see if it was an illusion or not.

“He missed you,” The figure said, standing in front of Kiba. Akamaru ran towards Kiba, barking and happily wagging his tail as he nuzzled into Kiba’s hand. Kiba ruffled Akamaru’s fur, before looking up at the figure questionably.

“This is definitely Akamaru and he’s not hurt either. Who are you?” His eyes trailed down the mask, and he noticed that the figure was a woman. She carried a sword with her, but nothing else. He recognized the mask as an ANBU from the Hidden Mist and raised his eyebrows. “You’re an ANBU. Why are you here?”

“I saved you, idiot. A thanks would be great.” The figure didn’t say anything after that, but gave him a gesture for him to follow.

“I didn’t need you to save me, whatever that means.” Kiba muttered, rolling his eyes as he cautiously followed the figure down the forest. The ANBU led him to a small clearing, before sitting down on a fallen log.

“You were outnumbered, of course you did.” She said, setting her sword down. “My orders are to help you deliver that scroll. Usually I would just take it, but truthfully… the Hidden Mist wants to show our trust in the Hidden Leaf, whatever that means. We’re waiting until you’re ready to go, since you’re just too weak. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, you’re from the Leaf. You’re all weak cowards.”

“A coward? Are you talking about me?” Kiba asked, becoming quite annoyed by the stranger. He huffed, sitting down across from her. He noticed the wounds on his body, from the raggedy shirt down to his bruised legs. As he took notice of the wounds, the pain came suddenly. He groaned, softly leaning on himself as he tried to hold it in. “Where did all of these come from? I don’t remember them.”

“You should wear a dog collar. It would’ve let me know that you were not the enemy. I accidentally—” She was cut off by Kiba, who huffed in anger.

“Now I remember! You tried to kill me.”

“Yeah,” The figure said, shrugging, “But I barely even sliced you and you passed out. You would’ve died if it hadn’t been for me. Anyway, I gave you some food pills before you passed out, so you should be good to go soon.” The figure answered, before standing up quickly. “There’s someone here.”

Kiba had already noticed it. The change in scent—someone had arrived to their location. He tried to stand, but his wounds began to create a throbbing sensation throughout his body. The newcomer had begun to make its offense as a series of kunai began to attack the land surrounding them, causing Akamaru to growl in a certain direction. The ANBU began to defend Kiba and herself with her a kunai, deflecting and hitting any coming in their way.

All of a sudden, a second offender came up from behind her, causing Kiba’s eyes to widen.

“Behind you!” He yelled, standing up to his feet, almost losing balance. He drew his kunai out, deflecting the incoming weapons.

The ANBU shinobi turned around, beating the other’s sword away. However, her actions were a bit too late as the attacker’s sword sliced through her mask, letting it fall onto the floor. The ANBU quickly sliced her sword through the man’s skin, letting the man fall to his death.

She then ran to the other attacker’s location, and Kiba wasn’t able to see much of anything, but a loud scream echoed from across the forest. A shinobi walked form a shadow across from him, and Kiba drew his kunai closer to himself.

“Don’t stress out, it’s me.” She said, wiping a few of blood drops off of her face. Kiba’s eyes stared in wonder as he took in the shinobi before him.

She was… the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen. Sure, he had his fair number of crushes throughout his life… but this felt different.

She walked over to him, adjusting a bandage around Kiba’s torso that he had failed to notice was there. She straightened up, looking at him before looking away quickly, her strong presence suddenly becoming docile.

“Your… mask,” Kiba mentioned, noticing the distance between them. A small blush appeared on her face, and she quickly stepped back, walking over to her mask before picking it up.

“It’s completely ruined,” She mentioned, her voice much smaller than it was before. “Damn it. Anyway, we need to get out of here.”

It was her sense of self; her safety blanket. She was a completely different person with her mask. Her mask was a persona of herself, a cruel shinobi that was trained to kill without a second thought.

But without it? She was… just her; a kind, soft, and shy individual.

The pair walked down the forest, trying to get away from the battle scene. They were now walking towards the Hidden Mist; there were no other options left. The walk was silent, and Kiba found his eyes lingering to her figure more than usual.

“You know,” Kiba said, looking over her as he tried to walk beside her. His hands lingered on his wound, trying to keep it from bleeding too much. “At first you were kind of an asshole, but then your mask came off and… you’re like beautiful.”

The shinobi next to him froze and her eyes looked over at Kiba, showing this disbelief.

“I—” She started, but no words dared to come out of her mouth. She stared at Kiba for a few seconds before shaking her head and walking forward.

Kiba raised his eyebrows as he saw her walk forward, using the opportunity to look at her figure.

She really was… beautiful. And, well, nice. She had fixed and bandaged his wounds when he had passed out… she could’ve simply just left him there and reported his dead body with a scroll in her hand, but she didn’t. She stayed until he woke up.

The curiosity got the best of him, and he walked faster to catch up to her.

“What’s your name, anyway?” He asked, giving her a charming grin of his.

“I’m… I’m not supposed to answer that.” She replied, her voice wavering a bit. She gripped her sword closer to her, as if to create a barrier between her and the rest of the world. She wanted to leave at that moment—just disappear and go back home. She wanted to get a new mask and report to another mission where no one knew what she looked like.

The couple of hours quickly melted away as the couple continued walking, taking breaks in between walks due to Kiba’s wounds. In their breaks, the mysterious shinobi would fix Kiba’s wounds, dressing them in new bandages. Kiba would take the small opportunities and question her about her life—what is her talent? Was she a leader in the ANBU? How old was she? What was her name?

Every time he asked her something, she would freeze and not say anything. Her cheeks would flare up and she would quickly stand up before walking faster than before. At some point, Kiba found her to be quite cute. Her mannerisms, although done in confidence, were different from her past self, which Kiba found quite interesting.

They soon reached the Village Hidden in the Mist, and as soon as Kiba gave the scroll, he was free to go back home. As he had his wounds checked out in the local hospital, his mind went back to the shinobi that had helped him get to the village. He wondered if he would ever see her again—the cool demeanor under her mask, and the shy, soft side of her.

He walked throughout town one last time after being released from the hospital, trying to see if he could catch a glimpse of the beautiful shinobi that wouldn’t leave his mind. However, he was quickly left with no trace of her whatsoever and decided that maybe she just wasn’t supposed to be in his life. As he walked towards the entrance to the village, he saw a figure standing in the middle of it. She wore a mask and was leaning against one of the doors to the entrance. Kiba looked at her as he began to get closer and recognized her clothing.

“It’s you.” He said, a small smile appearing on his face. “Missed me?”

“Please,” The figure said, almost sounding a little flustered. She quickly straightened up. “I was told to lead you out of the town. This is it. Now, leave.”

Kiba pursed his lips in surprise—what had happened to the soft girl he was talking to earlier? The shinobi that couldn’t even look at him without blushing?

“Actually,” Kiba said, stepping towards her, “I’d like to ask for your name. Yeah, yeah, the ANBU aren’t allowed to say anything about themselves, but I already know what you look like. I was thinking that if I were to ever find myself in the Village Hidden in The Mist… I would like to take you out.”

“You—what?” Her voice wavered and was completely taken aback by his confession. She crossed her arms, silently wishing she wasn’t there. She wished to run away and never talk to him again… but his presence was nice to have. “I—”

“C’mon, you can whisper your name to me. I promise to take you out next time.” Kiba whispered, leaning in towards her.

She leaned back, surprised by Kiba’s sudden movements.

“Uh—well, it’s… Y/N Kiri” She stuttered, trying to hide the surprise in her voice.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Kiba Inuzuka.” Kiba smirked, leaning back and looking at her with a smile. “I’ll take you out next time, Y/N, for sure. Without your mask though, you’re cute without it.”

That Inuzuka charm.

#naruto #naruto headcanons #naruto scenarios #naruto imagines #kiba #kiba and akamaru #kiba x reader #anime #anime scenarios #anime headcanons #anime x reader #fluff and action #THE INUZUKA CHARM IS ON

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commodorecliche · 4 years

Note

Hey Lindsay, I've read a few of your fics and I love the way you write :) I've been trying to write a story but i'm just stuck at the outline. So, I was wondering if you could, perhaps, make a little tutorial or a walk-through your process? I'd like to have my story points defined before I start writing but I don't have a structure that I can follow and I really love your style *-* It's okay if you don't feel like it though. I understand. Thank you in advance ^^

hey there friend! i’m not sure when you sent this ask today, i so hope you haven’t been waiting all day for my reply!! i just saw it.

first things first - thank you so much for your kind words about my writing. they really mean the world to me. and i am SO EXCITED to hear that you’re working on your own fic. that’s amazing!!

now to the meat!

so i don’t know if i have specific or... super organized... process, per se, and i don’t really do a ‘strict’ outline, in the most traditional sense of the word (meaning i don’t have a document full of numbers and bullet points and such). and everyone’s process is going to be a little different, so bear in mind, what works for me might not work for you. but once you get the feel of writing your story, you’ll get a better sense of what your own writing process is. and you’ll figure out what works and doesn’t work for you. the way i do things might not work for you, but that’s totally okay, you’ll come into your own as you go along. and hey, maybe this will work for you! who knows!

but what i generally do when i start a new fic is:

1: i type out my rough and basic idea. i like to do this (and most of my outlining/drafting) in all caps, it helps keep me focused and helps me organize what i have ‘drafted’ and what i have properly written lol.

so for example, um, In the House We Remain, my first idea was jotted out like this, at the top of my document: SAPPY GHOST STORY, AZIRAPHALE BUYS A COTTAGE THAT CROWLEY USED TO OWN, CROWLEY DIED THERE. CROWLEY WAS AN AUTHOR AND HIS BOOKS ARE STILL IN THE HOUSE, WHICH IS HOW AZIRAPHALE GETS TO KNOW HIM.

that’s my base level idea, and i kept it at the top of the document.

2: from there, i start thinking about what are some MAJOR scenes i want to have happen. not the minute details, just the major scenes that were popping in and out of my head when i was daydreaming about the fic. these can be as minimal or as thorough as you like. for In the House We Remain, i had a pretty set idea on how i wanted the story to progress from start to finish, so i had a lot of scenes already in mind.

using the same fic as an example, these are some of the scene ideas i wrote in my fic document, underneath my top line idea: SCENES: - AZIRAPHALE SEES THE COTTAGE (ANATHEMA IS THE REAL ESTATE AGENT) AND HE LOVES IT. HE BUYS IT THAT DAY. (DEFINE THE LANDSCAPE AND HOW THE COTTAGE LOOKS, PROBABLY WANT A POND IN THE BACK, THAT COULD BE HOW CROWLEY WAS MURDERED. COTTAGE SHOULD BE COZY AND DREAMY, A LOVELY THING SET OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE. LOOK UP PICS FOR REFERENCES.) - GUNNA HAVE TO MENTION SOMETHING ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT’LL CONNECT TO HOW CROWLEY DIED, SOME VISUAL INDICATORS OF HIS SPIRIT. MAYBE WATER STAINS ON THE FLOOR? LIKE DRIPPING WATER MIGHT POOL AROUND A WET PERSON’S FEET? AM I GOING WITH DROWNING AS CAUSE OF DEATH? DUNNO.***COME BACK TO THIS. - WHILE UNPACKING AZIRAPHALE SEES A BUNCH OF UNFAMILIAR BOOKS IN THE STUDY AND IS CURIOUS ABOUT THEM. - AZIRAPHALE TALKS TO ANATHEMA ABOUT THE BOOKS AND THE AUTHOR. LEARNS THAT CROWLEY IS THE AUTHOR, AND THAT HE OWNED AND DIED IN THE HOUSE MYSTERIOUSLY. - AZIRAPHALE READS THE BOOKS, LOVES THEM, FEELS A CONNECTION WITH CROWLEY. - AZIRAPHALE SOMEHOW CONNECTS WITH CROWLEY’S LINGERING SPIRIT IN THE HOUSE (DETAILS TO COME) - THEY START COMMUNICATING. CROWLEY REVEALS THAT HE WAS MURDERED - I WANT THIS TO BE AN EMOTIONAL SCENE, AZIRAPHALE VERY UPSET AND DISTURBED BY WHAT HE’S BEEN TOLD. ALSO AFRAID CAUSE HE’S MADE CONTACT W/ SOMEONE WHO’S VERY DEAD. MAYBE HE EVEN CALLS ANATHEMA AFTER TO REVEAL THE NATURE OF CROWLEY’S DEATH. - NEED SCENES OF AZIRAPHALE GROWING OLD IN THE HOUSE WITH CROWLEY’S GHOST, THEN EVENTUALLY DYING AND ACTUALLY UNITING WITH HIM. SAPPY, EMOTIONAL, THE WORKS. - AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY’S SPIRITS LINGER IN THE HOUSE, EVEN AS A NEW COUPLE MOVES IN.

those were my major scenes that i needed to write and that would make up most of my story.

3: flesh out the aforementioned scenes. break these scenes down individually and think about them, picture them like a movie in your head. when aziraphale sees the cottage, what’s happening around him? has he gotten out of the car? what is the weather like, is it a dreamy setting? should the wind be gently rustling the trees and his hair? is he in awe? does he take a moment to take in the exterior of the house. what does the house look like? picture that entire scene from start to finish, then jot down your thoughts. remember, you aren’t actually doing Proper Good Writing out. you’re just getting the ideas down and the draft ideas fleshed out. 4: once i have those scenes fleshed out (always typed in all caps for me lol), i start the actual ‘writing’ process. I drop the all-caps, start using proper grammar, and go into I’m Telling A Story Mode. I usually try to start writing at the beginning, because i tend to visualize my stories as movies that play in my head. i need to mentally see it progress as i write it, like i would do if i were watching a movie or reading a book. but sometimes that doesn’t happen - sometimes beginnings are the hardest part. if you struggle with the beginning, skip to the first most fleshed out scene you have, the one you feel most comfortable with, or whatever scene you feel REALLY ready to write. this writing doesn’t have to be perfect (it definitely won’t be lol). but you’ll start to get a feel for how you want to actually present this story and these scenes once they’re all finalized. you can edit it and make it prettier later, but for now, just get some words on the paper as if it were a story you were ready to tell. 5: once you have your main scenes fleshed out, you need to start making connections between them. stories need depth and background, so you need to be able to go “okay, i have aziraphale loving the house and buying it, then i need him to find the books in the study, how am I going to connect those two scenes?”

you can do this part either as you go along (example: you’ve written your first Major Scene, and you want to progress onto your next scene, so you write the connections first, then once you have the connection scenes done, you can then move on to the next Major Scene from your draft) OR you can get all your major drafted scenes written, and make your connections AFTER those scenes are done. you just gotta see what works for you.

i prefer the first method, i try to write the major scenes and the connection scenes as i go along so that i have a natural flow. that also allows me to make some changes to a later Major Scene before i actually write it. (example: hm, i was gunna have Aziraphale do XYZ in the next scene, but with this connection, I think having him do ABC in that scene might work better).

if you don’t have a clear-cut idea yet for how to connect your scenes, go back to the all caps ‘drafting’ mode, where you’re just throwing ideas on the page in between, like: ‘AZIRAPHALE HAS JUST MOVED IN AND IS READY TO UNPACK, I NEED HIM TO BRING HIS BOOKS TO THE STUDY TO START UNPACKING THEM AND SHELVING THEM. THAT’S WHEN HE SHOULD NOTICE CROWLEY’S BOOKS THAT HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY APPEARED ON THE SHELVES.’ from there, go back into ‘proper writing’ mode when you’re ready, and flesh out that scene - what is aziraphale doing while he’s unpacking? are his boxes of books already in the study, or do i need him to have a reason to bring them into the study? maybe a mover accidentally placed one in the wrong room. this is your connector that will get you between scenes. 6: once you have all your scenes done in a proper first draft, go back, do re-writes, add new things that you think you might need, take out things that aren’t necessary, check your grammar and spelling, and do your final proofing. (read your story out loud too - it’s the easiest way to catch typos, errors, or weird phrasing)

7: don’t be afraid to write ANYWHERE. many of my ideas for scenes popped up in the middle of a work day, and every time that happens, i text myself. i send myself a text, all caps, with the scene idea, and i don’t open it until i’m ready to write. it helps me keep track of things. i did a lot of writing in notebooks, on post-it notes, wherever really. i even have googledocs installed on my phone so i could access a fic from anywhere if i had a sudden idea. and if i had something new to add to the document, i put it in all caps, so i would know i needed to address it later.

8: act things out! seriously, i’m not kidding. act your scenes out with yourself. especially dialogue scenes. have those dialogues with yourself, think about how you want dialogue to progress, and talk those ideas out in a way that sounds natural to you. that’ll help you write your dialogue later. (the number of times my husband has walked in on me running through some dialogue aloud......... goodness).

9: don’t be afraid of music :) maybe it’s silly, but i make a playlist for every fic i write because i like to listen to music to get me into the correct mood for what i’m writing. it helps me a LOT. maybe it won’t be as helpful for you, but always worth a try.

and that’s really.... the extent of my process. it’s a little messy, i know, and maybe it’s not the best advice. and i just hope that it at least a LITTLE bit of sense... but i hope it will at least be of some help to you! if you’re confused about anything, please don’t hesitate to message me.

or if you want to chat one-on-one, that’s totally fine too. i 100% don’t mind if you send me a chat message. i’m always happy to help.

#kind nonnies #long post #writing #advice #fanfic #Anonymous

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bionicdragonguardian1 · 5 years

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Recluse Vampire Izuku

Inspired by @25coriandah‘s little bit of art (which isn’t even something that happens in this part, oops) where Izu finds Wolf Pup Kacchan and has no clue how Werewolves work, and every book is wrong.

Slightly moved the Timeline Forward c.1920s America, Izu still dresses in his Victorian Garb. Where they’re currently living NOT specified, but that’s what I had in mind while writing this.

If you wanna get State Specific, I was thinking Colorado

Izuku’s age is based on the Grigori legends (11-13th centuries) so I headcanon that he just really liked his early-Victorian Clothes.

Yes, I made the girl that turned him Toga and the girl he turned Uraraka

Also yes, I combined the standard Vampire fangs with Supernatural’s mouth full of retractable ones because I just love those but it still seems kinda dumb that they lose the regular fangs.

Part One:

Sorry that this is just planning out Izuku’s backstory, but I wanted to make sure I had at least a slight foundation for Izuku’s character before introducing Katsuki.

Izuku was the sole son of a noble and a merchant’s daughter when his father died his family refused to accept either of them into their family. So while he was the only man alive that held his mother’s strong merchant name, he was rejected by the ones that had true sway in the world they lived in.

His mother had married his father as young as she did- a mere fourteen- because her father was dying and they all knew that while Inko Midoriya knew the ins and outs of all the sales her father had been doing for years no one would take her seriously without a husband doing the negotiations for the business. As the fifth son of a noble family, Hisashi actually stood to gain something by marrying into the Midoriyas and forgoing his noble name.

It had been senseless violence that had turned that on its head a mere two years after they’d met, mere months after Inko had given birth to Izuku. A random killing that happened for no reason other than the fact that the man wanted to do it.

Now without her father, husband, and a baby on her hip, Inko had no chance of keeping the sales moving the way they had been. Izuku grew up learning all he could about his mother’s inheritance, that he could fight to take back once he was of age. But life was still difficult for them. Winters were harsh and Izuku had to convince men at least twice his age to take him seriously.

Rather difficult when he didn’t have much of shouting tone in his voice box, and he was rather unassuming looking. He just wished he was a hidden monster, able to show them that he could prove them wrong.

He wished that for many years.

He got his wish when he was sixteen. But not in the way he wanted.

A man Izuku had never done trade with before showed up at his mother’s business, asking for him specifically.

Something felt strange about but business hadn’t been going well recently with the groups choosing sides and fights breaking out in the streets. They needed this deal if the man was seriously going to give them half the money he was offering.

It all went to hell from there.

He should’ve realized why he felt like he recognized the man’s face far sooner than he did. When he finally figured it out, he was in too deep. This wretched man was a lord, one of the ones who was bringing the fights into the streets. Despite that, he hardly seemed to lose any of his pawns.

Izuku found out why that night. The teeth dug into his throat catching on his trachea, choking him with that, and when blood flowed into his lungs he felt like he was drowning.

When the teeth let go the last thing he expected was to wake back up.

But he did. His throat was sore, bone dry, and his stomach burned for food.

He had this habit of gnawing on his lower lip but was stunned when he felt a harsh prick in his lip and blood on his tongue.

He came face to face with the one who bit him again, a blonde woman who looked to be about his age, with gold eyes, and sharp canines.

For some reason he hissed at her, feeling his jaw flex in an unfamiliar way. She returned it and he watched stunned as her two sharpened canines, as well as the rest of her teeth were covered by a new row of pointed teeth sharper than even her unnaturally sharp teeth.

Izuku felt his stomach drop as he realized that would explain the strange feeling of his jaw flexing.

Whatever she was, she had turned him into.

She used his paused to pin him to the floor, like the rabid animal he was acting like.

Izuku could hear the clanging of chains from down the hall as clear as if they were in the cell with him. Though once they reached the cell he heard something else.

A strong, loud, fast, pumping and it made his newly acquired teeth ache.

The chains stopped rattling, the pumping remained and Izuku fought the blonde girl for an entirely new reason.

“Try not to kill her, but if you do that’s ok too.” those were the first words she said to him and Izuku didn’t understand what they meant. “Though she’s a bit of a pest, so I hope you do kill her.”

He would not kill. That was a fact and no matter what had happened to him, that would not change.

The blonde kept him pinned by the neck, watching as she let Izuku see what was the source of his new hunger pangs. A girl, brown hair and brown eyes, blush in her cheeks as she struggled against the chains that kept her from going any further than three feet from the eyelet in the floor.

He wanted to eat this girl. His stomach would’ve rolled if it wasn’t so hungry.

When the blonde woman let him up, he didn’t even think, he just moved. Moved so fast he heard her wrists snap at the pull of the chains, the crack of her skull against the stone. Only pausing when he heard the beating her chest slow to what he knew was a dangerous point.

He was killing her. That killed his hunger in an instant. With the hunger no longer clouding his mind, something else kicked in and all he knew was that he was using his teeth, that were currently latched onto the side of her neck, to inject her with something.

Finally, he could take his teeth out of her, looking back at the blonde with horror and confusion in his eyes.

She just smiled, then cheered at the fact that she was still alive. Izuku breathed a little easier at that, only then did she lead him out of the cell and back to the upstairs. Where he met with the man who wanted to pay him again.

The man explained what had happened to Izuku, what he was planning to do now, and that his mother had been told he was dead- since he could no longer act like he was human- and given the entire amount that Izuku had been told they would receive.

It was unsurprising to Izuku that his mother planned to leave. This city had taken away her husband, and to her knowledge, her son. This country had taken her mother and her grandparents. The only thing that eased his heart was that they had lost track of her considering she left so quickly afterward.

It made his refusal to kill and play soldiers easy. Especially considering it had the man more than willing to try and kill him, and when Izuku escaped, he was pursued through the night, but after that, they were willing to just let him die.

Had Izuku not been as inquisitive in the after-death as he was in his true life, he probably would’ve. Yet, he learned that he could survive on the blood of animals, for the most part, and only needed the blood of actual humans once a year.

It took about a decade before he met more like him.

Most of them were in small groups, maxing out at about a dozen.

The man that had planned to use Izuku had hundreds.

It took him until then to realize exactly how much about him had changed, physically. Other than the things he realized on his own.

His ears were pointed now, he did, in fact, have two sets of teeth. His canines were the only parts of his teeth that could possibly give him away without him either feeling threatened, going hungry for long periods of time, or when he was feeding. Sunlight could kill him, though what he had been told was in fact untrue.

It wasn’t direct sunlight that would kill him, he’d just get sunburned easily, it was sunlight through a blessed magnifier. Though magnifier sounded like a stretch since church windows were apparently strong enough to do him in.

His reflection no longer showed in mirrors due to the presence of a holy metal. While it wouldn’t kill him- like their mythical opposite- it did reflect that he no longer had a pure being to be reflected.

He would, in fact, never age again.

That made Izuku ready to go charging back into the monster’s den and kill him, he was constantly underestimated due to his age and now that would never stop.

He wouldn’t call himself nomadic, he had met several small groupings of vampires that were and he didn’t really fit in with them either, instead, he moved along on his own.

Eventually, he ended up in England. At first, the sheer number of vampires worried him. It had been nearly five hundred since he had seen a grouping this large, and he was only lucky that the group had destroyed itself from the inside out before anything too horrendous could happen.

Once he had realized that they were peaceful, and surprisingly scared of him when he said when and where he had been turned, he was less worried.

Though he stayed to keep a close eye on them.

It was also surprising that while they covered a vast portion of a country, these people were strongly connected.

He’d never tell them but it made him feel suffocated.

It came with the upside that he’d been able to see the brunette girl he’d turned all those years ago was still… he couldn’t say alive, perhaps Not Dead worked in this situation?

At least both of them were offended that the only reason they had been called together was the fact that they were turned around the same time in the same area.

Her presence made things feel less suffocating. For awhile. Not to mention she had a life outside of Izuku being this stranger that she just happened to know.

He stayed put for the longest time in his life, but when every single one of their kind in the country knew him by name and face he needed to leave. Now.

Despite the outcry of war.

He’d settled away from where he thought humans would settle but was surprised to find that there were Natives who lived in this area already.

While they were distrusting of him at first, they quickly realized that Izuku couldn’t care less about them if they left him alone.

Sometimes he wished he’d cared more, by the time it was too late. Yet, he stayed largely disconnected from other people, despite how much time continued to pass.

He’d become something of a myth- more than he already was- which he could accept, because it largely kept people away from him. Even if meant that he would have to go a bit further when he actually needed to drink human blood.

Which was why he was stunned to his core when he stumbled across a small blonde child, unconscious in the woods near his property. He may be a myth but he’d been alive for centuries so he had enough money to pay his taxes, unlike some people nowadays. He wondered if that was why the boy had been left in the woods. One too many mouths to feed.

The boy’s heart was loud, possibly too loud and too fast, given his size and apparent age, but Izuku felt something he hadn’t felt since he was truly alive, a pull to another person.

He barely realized he’d already moved by the time he had the blonde boy in his arms. That was when something caught his eye. The boy’s ears weren’t covered by his spiky blonde locks as Izuku had thought, rather they were upon his head, pointy, and covered in equally blonde fur. He also had a tail, from what Izuku could feel. Though it was tucked down his pant leg so Izuku had missed it on his preliminary scan of the boy.

Social recluse, yes. Moron, far from it, he had all new books and hundreds of old ones he’d had his acquaintances in other countries send him when he decided to make this his permanent home.

He still sent letters to most of them, across several countries, and the more studious ones were easy to agree to buy two of all books and send him one. So long as he returned the favor. He’d agreed when one of them had literally come to find him across a wartorn country because he hadn’t sent him a new book.

He just hoped that somewhere in his collection had at least some information to help him with the small boy.

@thepinkjinx, I hope this appeases you until I can finish my next bit.

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cannotgiveafuck · 6 years

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Billy Batson & Captain Marvel identity analysis (long post ahead)

Alrighty then! So I contemplated posting this bc it's so closely tied to the wip fic, buuuut here it is. Ive never been really satisfied with how some media portray this character bc they either lean too far towards childish or angry, or divide the identities too much. And whilst writing the fic I thought about how I wanted to portray him and what that entailed. A long semi comprehensive ramble of headcanons and character analysis based on the individual and combined identities of Billy and Marvel!

First, we have Billy. This kid who's parents died on a work trip, was left in the care of a greedy/selfish old man that did not care for him at all, has bounced through foster homes for a plethora of reasons (some of which are behavioral or abusive), and ultimately decided trying to make it on the streets was his best option (before being picked up by Dudley).

Now, backstory wise, it's all very obvious that Billy would have trust issues, especially towards adults (and double towards adults who try to control him). His learned attitude towards those that set their eyes on him (both before and especially after becoming Marvel) is guarded and aggressively defensive, he's snarky and sarcastic, ready to flee at a moments notice, and scared of being once again used, abused, and tossed aside if he were to trust someone. But at his soft core he desperately wants to be cared for, he wants affection and love and family, he wants a safe and secure home, he wants to believe in good.

All of this bleeds into his attitude towards his peers, too. Before becoming Marvel, he's a bit jaded and lost - his wrecked home life creating the chasm that keeps him from opening up and relating to others, from making real friends (the few exceptions being friends he considers family, and whom he is very loyal and protective of). After Marvel, Billy doesn't even try to associate with kids his own age. He stops going to school and is so focused on trying to be a good hero, he has distanced himself even more. But also, all the situations that he is exposed to really matures him. He still enjoys video games and sports, but he's also worrying about keeping Fawcett City and the world safe and working with JL - he doesn't have time nor patience for naive and clueless kids. But since he still is a kid and wants to have fun, those he let's in he holds onto and divulges everything to.

However, despite his hard outer shell, I do believe Billy is good and tries to be good and wants to see the good in those around him. A prominent and reoccurring memory of his parents is them telling him to be a good kid. That very much shapes Billy's views and ideologies. He wants to be a good person, which means he needs to help others (however he sees fit, from stopping bullies to carrying an old ladys groceries), but also realize that there is good all around him in everyone else, too. He has kind neighbors, and a community that helps each other, he knows everyone has their own struggles and they may direct negative emotions outward but may just need a helping hand in return. Billy knows suffering and cruelty and does not want to cause that, he wants to end it. So, theres this conflict inside him that he views as being smart vs being good. His true sunshine and trusting demeanor is boosted when he is chosen by Shazam, because now he has this divine and worldly responsibility to do and be good. And while he does not hold value in himself (abandoned and abused orphan does not hold a high confidence or self esteem level), he also wants to prove that he is worthy of inheriting this power, that there is good in this world and in him.

Now, second we have Captain Marvel. This is where identities become...complicated. The way I see it, Marvel is a mesh of 'Billy Batson', 'The Potential Adult Billy Could Be', and 'The Vessel of The Greek Gods Powers'. Since I've gone over Billy's identity, it transfers onto Marvel pretty seamlessly. So as The Adult Billy, he is still Billy Batson, but the grown up version, comfortable in his skin and in social standings with others, he is without the limiting physiological responses and capabilities of being a child. Despite all his experiences, Billy is still a kid - a bit awkward in his growing body, he's impulsive with his emotional responses, he jumps to conclusions and is very one track minded, has a hard time putting words to thoughts or instincts and understanding certain things and intentions (situations being very black and white). But as Adult Billy who is Marvel, he still sees through the same eyes, but he can filter distractions and pause to think through reflexive emotions, and he has a better understanding on just how morally grey the world can be, a gained clarity on other intentions and livelihoods, and he can empathize and read other's emotions in more detail than just the basic happy/mad/sad. Basically, Billy's brain has physically grown to that of an adult.

On the other hand, there is also what I like to believe is a...sort of third will in what makes Captain Marvel. He is, for all intents and purposes, a vessel or an avatar of sorts. He is a Chosen Champion by the Wizard Shazam to wield the powers of the Greek Gods (specifically the Greek gods, bc...well, that's a whole other post to ramble on), hes the mortal connection between them and the human world, their gift to the humans as a protector, as the guiding light of good. He is a symbol and title beyond one person. It is much like the mantle of Batman being passed on, except instead of all the gadgets and tech and databases...it's experiences and memories and wisdom gained by the previous Marvels, and available when properly called upon. Captain Marvel is like a reincarnation every time there is a new chosen champion. Billy is himself, but there were also others before him, other Marvels that existed and lived that can be remembered.

There is, however, a weird side effect to this being that the more in touch and immersed with these previous Marvel's he becomes, the more he slips away from himself - less Billy and human, more ancient and disconnected. He loses Billy's mannerisms and speech pattern and warm empathy, he still follows the ideology of good, but the charisma is gone, he's distant and cold.

All of this makes for a very interesting and fun way of writing Marvel and Billy - in how they each think through situations, how they each interact with the same people, how they each react to everything. And that's including how the same people react and treat each of them differently. Someone may see and treat Billy as a kid, but with Marvel they interact with and see an adult, a peer. When someone knows who Marvel really is, they need to consciously remind themselves that Marvel is Billy is a kid, because literally everything about Marvel screams at their senses that he's an adult (sunshine naivety aside). He still walks and talks and looks and is capable of thinking like an adult. It's not a situation of a couple of kids standing on top of each other in a trenchcoat or a kid dressing and doing their makeup like an adult. Magic has made him an adult, sort of.

At the core of it, the one experiencing and remembering and feeling everything is a child. There is no separating that, he is a different face of the same coin. So while Marvel can handle the emotional and mental exhaustion and stress of the situations he is put in, Billy Batson is going to suffer through the replays when everything is done. Because superheroing is not all saving lives and being praised, it's seeing people be hurt and bleed, interacting with the worst of humanity and others, witnessing tragedies and death in small intimate encounters and in large numbers. He is the one that will have nightmares and trouble sleeping, he is the one that will bear the brunt of the trauma and remorse, navigating detailed memories of violence and how it felt to hurt, wondering why there are phantom pains and aches when his body is not damaged, all with no trusted support system to turn to (because if he does, will the JL just see him as a child who cannot handle being a hero? will they turn him away?). Billy is the one having his childhood and innocence ripped away from him for the sake of the world. There are consequences of being the chosen champion, and while Billy is willing to accept them, will continue to fight and uphold his divine duties, will put others before himself every time, it wont make be easy.

The potential of how complicated Billy and Marvel can be, and how other heroes cannot fully comprehend it without a trusted in depth discussion (only Black Adam can understand and lemme tell you, that's a hot mess) - that's what makes him and his situation so interesting and fun to write.

#billy Batson #captain marvel #shazam #long post #character analysis rambling #i just have lots of ideas and feelings for his lightning boy #and this is just billy as a kid #as a teenager it gets even more complicated

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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7.11, Adventures in Babysitting.

Sam needs a mental break after three weeks of nonstop research on Dick, but Dean's entirely one-track mind about it. Sam leaps at the "barely even a case" of tracking down the girl who'd tried to call Bobby for help, while Dean goes to pressure Frank into actually doing what he paid him for and finding out what those numbers Bobby died for meant.

(at that point, they were pretty much all Dean had left, other than Sam, and he was still keeping a side-eye on Sam as if he knew it was only a matter of time before he went nuclear, too)

Krissy has essentially had a "dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few days" moment, and Sam is under the impression that Krissy doesn't really know about the hunting despite being a teenage child of a hunter (projecting his own life experience? following her lead where she doesn't mention the hunting first because of the secrecy her own father demanded of her?):

SAM: It's just you and him, huh? I know how that is. Look, um... Sometimes on the road, crap happens. So I'll help you track him down. KRISSY: Really? SAM: 'Course. Did he happen to say where he was going? KRISSY: Said he had a couple leads near Dodge City.

Near Dodge City. Remember how we compared Dean's mourning during s7 to his concentrated bout of specific-to-Castiel mourning during early s13, which culminated in the Big Win of getting Cas back immediately followed by the hunt Jack found in 13.06... in Dodge City? Yeah, I do.

Pretty sure the events of 13.06 are directly tied to the events of 7.11, thematically, with a specific parallel drawn between Krissy and Jack, in both their naivete, their baseline of not understanding the full picture of the hunt they're on, and yet with a STRONG need to prove themselves worthy as hunters, as good at the job and useful to everyone else. Krissy is an actual teenager, and Jack might be two...wenty... twenty-two, but they both struggle with this exact same teenage need to prove themselves.

The hunt begins because every hunter who goes after the vetala is working from the same set of incomplete information-- just like Jack going in believing it's zombies while Sam suggests it could be run of the mill grave robbers, and not even knowing about ghouls who he reclassifies as "zombie shapeshifters" after learning more about them. The only one who knows vetalas hunt in pairs is Dean, and he's sleeping for the first time in weeks (because he feels like they actually have a lead on Bobby's numbers and can sit and watch and wait for that lead to pay off now) and misses Sam's call. So again, it's the lack of information sharing and the belief he has all the information he needs that leads Sam to fall into the same trap Krissy's father did. But that's Sam's issue that I've already discussed in previous s7 posts-- believing in his version of reality despite not having the full slate of information to work with.

It's like some weird version of the Dunning-Kruger effect at work, yes?

Because in some ways, Krissy storming in after Dean told her to stay in the car (and even handcuffed her to the steering wheel) was just as ill advised as Sam and Lee before him going after the Vetala with the wrong information. But... in this case, I see the twist.

Sam and Lee both expected one vetala and were only captured because vetala hunt in pairs. So it's a nice little turnabout that Krissy provided the second surprise hunter during their rescue mission. Except for the fact that her interfering ended up getting her father nearly killed... Yes, she pulled a nice little trap off, but the vetala wouldn't have attacked her father again if she hadn't stumbled in on things...

But we'll never know if Dean would've been successful at killing both of them before either Sam or Lee was attacked by the other one.

Krissy's conviction that she was in the right here is so similar to Jack's conviction that he can handle the ghoul in 13.06, though, and we all know how that went. He didn't even kill the ghoul, it escaped to injure at least one more person after this (Sarge), and Jack ended up killing an innocent man who was only trying to help and wasn't expecting Nephilim Death Ray aimed at him...

Not working with all the information, being less-than-truly-prepared... it's what Sam and Dean even cautioned Sheriff Romero about in 14.16 when he was upset that the general public was kept in the dark about all the supernatural things in their world. Even hunters who theoretically have spent their lives dealing with the supernatural can be caught off guard, unprepared, or just overconfident in their own judgement and abilities. And those actions can have some pretty upsetting consequences.

In 14.16, the Sheriff learned one of those consequences when his own son wandered into the woods entirely unprepared for what really lay out there waiting for him. At least they got to the monster before it did any permanent damage.

#spn 7.11 #spn 13.06 #spn 14.16 #lies and damn lies #practicalities of monster hunting #s14 hellatus rewatch #it's spirals all the way down #spiders georg of the tnt loop

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aspiring-dm · 5 years

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Three-Headed Puppy Is Back On His Bullshit

So, some of you may have read my previous post about Paolo Manchado, the Cerberus from a game of Monsterhearts I’m playing in. The game has mostly just been me playing and the GM torturing me with the awful choices I impose on myself. Paolo has ended up being one of my favorite characters to play due to the deep, painful, emotional trauma I experience while portraying this innocent monster. This post is going to be a more in-depth look at the first three sessions I’ve played with him.

So in session one, we’re off to a somewhat slow start that many powered by the apocalypse games experience where the GM is frustrated trying to figure out what the player(s) want to do and the player(s) are frustrated trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do. I’ve never been a fan of any games that take place inside a school because the act of roleplaying the menial act of going to classes bores me sooo much (I was in many free text role plays on supercheats and figment that had this problem).

Paolo is a Cerberus. In particular, THE Cerberus “gave birth” to him, a phrase which here means he woke up in Unity, New Hampshire, knowing he was Paolo Manchado, son of Cerberus, put here on earth to ensure that the beings of light and dark remain in their place. That goal makes up every fiber of his being the same way blood and bones make up you and me. He gets very frustrated because humans keep trying to get him to feel human and he keeps telling them “I am incapable of feeling the same way you do about life, relationships, and purpose. Not I DON’T feel the same way, not I WON’T. I CAN’T.”

So we started off in a classroom, and then there was a car crash outside. The car had crashed into nothing, so Paolo was searching around for invisible creatures, visiting her in the hospital, gazing into the abyss, trying to find answers but nothing was really going anywhere.

Then he encounters Ronan, who directs him at Elijah, who he’s apparently trying to avoid. Paolo could smell death on Elijah and chased him under a bridge, demanding to know what he was. Turns out, he’s basically a zombie.

Elijah’s backstory is that he was seduced by Ronan, who took him back to his cabin, starting making out, started getting handsy, started getting knifey, and then sacrificed Elijah in a dark ritual. Elijah came back, though, now in undead form, with some dark violent tendencies he can’t control.

Paolo lets Elijah go and goes to track down Ronan, the true problem here. Specifically, Paolo’s not concerned with the mere existence of zombies or warlocks in his town, just when they start interfering with mortal lives, which Ronan had willfully done. After talking a bit to Elijah’s ex, Hero, Paolo manages to track down Ronan’s house. They traded lots of high philosophy arguments that I forget most of, which mostly amounted to Paolo demanding that Ronan not hurt anybody else and Ronan shrugging and going “What can you do? Gotta break a few eggs.” Ronan is frustrating and clearly Neutral Evil. His alignment doesn’t concern Paolo, though, only his risk factor of exposing the dark side of the world.

So Paolo leaves. By the way, having been born without parents, or money, or a social security number, Paolo’s only possessions are the clothes on his back. As such, he lives in an abandoned boxcar, like the Boxcar Children. This is important to note because when he gets back there, Elijah is waiting, depressed. They talk a lot about Elijah’s issues with being dead, his personality defects both before and after dying, his relationship issues, etc. Then they both went to sleep together. Before you ask, yes, there were gay vibes, but that’ll just make it worse later.

That night, Paolo discovered he had the ability to enter a sort of mindscape, which was essentially Elijah’s Metaverse Palace where there was a courtroom where he played judge, jury, defendant, prosecutor, and defense. The people on the stand were all the people Elijah had fallen in love with telling the judge Elijah how quickly he’d fallen in love with them and what he did that drove them away.

Then Paolo discovered the ability to interact with these mind-Elijahs, and took the stand before taking the role of one of the attorneys. Thus began a long and emotional and philosophical monologue by Paolo trying to help Elijah learn how to control his emotions, how to not love to eagerly, and especially not to love people like Ronan. See, Elijah was still in love with Ronan, even though Ronan had only used him for the sacrifice (Ronan’s mind had also gotten pulled into this Palace). A little bit of progress was made here.

This was about the end of session 1 I think.

Later, Paolo went to Ronan. He’d at some point looked into Ronan’s emotions (because these are powers a Cerberus has for some reason) and learned that Ronan was obsessed with being remembered for his “scientific” achievements. So, Paolo went to Ronan and said “I am the only creature of my kind in the entire world. Maybe you can put your... creative energies into studying me, rather than murdering people.” Paolo is not confident in Ronan’s agreement having a lasting effect, but as long as it’s working he’s not complaining.

That night, Hero came to Paolo’s boxcar saying that Elijah needed help. Paolo was apprehensive at first, because it’s not really his job to help in general, but when it came to his attention that Elijah was attacking someone he agreed to follow her.

Elijah’s dark side had given him a need to be feared, and was hitting a guy’s car with a baseball bat, with the guy inside the car. Paolo transformed in front of Hero (his eyes turn black, his hands grow bone claws and fur, and his teeth sharpen) and tried to threaten Elijah down at first, but that didn’t work, so he then convinced Elijah to come back to the boxcar and talk.

Elijah, defeated, came to the boxcar and began smashing the door with his fist repeatedly, droning and punching. Paolo had asked this before, but he asked it again, what did Elijah want. Elijah’s answer was always the same: he either wanted to go back to the way things were before he died, or be able to move on and die.

Paolo thinks very hard, and very conflicted. He and Elijah had become close friends over the course of these two sessions, but Elijah’s worsening condition made him a threat to the balance between worlds Paolo was sworn to protect. Paolo asked this wanting an instruction on what he could do. While he knew his purpose, he was very directionless on how to achieve it.

Paolo asked Ronan if he could reverse Elijah’s curse, but Ronan’s experiments to look into such a task would be both risky and time-consuming. Time Paolo might not have.

So, while Elijah slept in Paolo’s boxcar, Paolo stared at his confused and broken friend and made a horrible decision. He set about the gruesome work of chewing Elijah’s head off. He didn’t bother trying to clean the boxcar- he knew the police would find it. He simply buried the head in the snow, left the body in the car (in case they could reconnect somehow), and wandered off into the woods. He stopped in the cemetery where he made his new home. The next day, on Hero’s birthday, he told her what he had done. It broke her more than it broke him, to say the least.

While Elijah had been alive, he’d asked Paolo what kinds of girls he was into. Quote, “What about Jessie Lynn?... She’s cute...” After Elijah died, somehow the words stuck with Paolo. He’d gotten very close to Elijah very fast and it ended very badly. Paolo just wanted somebody he could be friends with and take very slowly, without needing to deal with the whole monster thing. So he started talking to Jessie Lynn, who played a sort of Magic the Gathering Parallel that Paolo likes because Cerberus is one of the cards in it. And they started being friends, and that’s where session 2 ended.

AND THEN THE BULLSHIT BEGAN. Oh, you think murdering your zombie son who you wanted to teach how to love but whose psychological illness made him a danger to himself and to society so you ATE THROUGH HIS NECK was pretty raw and emotional? Well session 3′s the game that made me feel actual anger and cry actual tears. This is the game where Jonah starts yelling at NPCs at 1 AM and waking up his parents.

By the way, here and there have been some interactions with Jupiter, a ghost in Paolo’s class, but she doesn’t bother him too much cause she’s not very active and can never remember anything anyway.

Fast forward three weeks, Paolo and Jessi Lynn have been getting along pretty well, nothing super serious has happened except for all the student life trauma of finding out your classmate was mysteriously murdered, police had questions, etc.

Paolo gets back to his graveyard he’s been sleeping in, because that’s his life now, and he finds Hero lying under his tree. Who knows how she keeps finding where he sleeps. Anyway, she looks up at him and she’s a vampire now and says she needs his help and Paolo and Jonah both go “Welp. This’ll end badly.” She starts telling him about how she’s been on a drinking binge since Elijah’s death and she met this vampire and she asked him to turn him because he said she could see Elijah again, and she takes Paolo to the body of someone she killed. Paolo at this point is honestly not very conflicted. The vampire who turned her would only be a problem if she hadn’t literally asked to be turned, but Paolo still wanted to identify the guy so he could be aware of vampires in his town.

As for Hero, he sent her to Jessie Lynn’s house (the girls were both good friends) and tried to find out anything he could about the vampire, but to no avail. He went back to Jessie Lynn’s house to check up on her when he heard a scream, ran into the room to find Hero feeding on Jessie Lynn. Already Paolo is panicking because if Hero’s gonna have Elijah-like impulses, it won’t be good. Paolo tries talking, he tries pulling her off, he tries hugging her, he tries playing wounded puppy dog, but I ROLLED SIX FAILURES IN A ROW during this whole segment, giving me two level-ups within ten minutes. AND THEN I DIED cuz Hero ripped my throat out. Luckily I had just taken a move last session that meant I never stayed dead, so a few hours later Paolo wakes up propped against the dresser, Jessie Lynn lying on the floor with a damp towel against her neck.

Paolo is thinking, one, okay this is weird, but of course since I’m the child of the guardian of the underworld, they’d just send me back. Two, gotta make sure Jessie Lynn is okay, yep she’ll be fine despite the big hole in her neck. Three, gotta find Hero. Eventually Paolo finds her in a crawl space on the staircase and get her to talk to him, reassuring her that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated.

Then Jessie Lynn wakes up and Paolo keeps Hero hidden in the crawl space until there’s and opportunity for her to get away, and he tells Hero that if she can’t get into her own house (due to needing an invitation) he’s recently been sleeping near Ronan’s cabin in the woods, which no one lives in. Jessie doesn’t remember much about the attack, and Paolo struggles to find a good lie, but luckily “I don’t know” seemed to work well enough. While Paolo’s wounds have vanished, his clothes are still coated in his blood (which right now we’re going to pretend Jessie thought was her blood), and she offered to let him borrow some of her dad’s clothes while she washed those. So the fanfiction begins, and then while Jessie is making tea and dinner Hero runs out the door.

Fanfiction continues, a moment where Jessie reaches for Paolo’s mug and he thinks she’s going for his hand so he reflexively takes her hand awkwardly. Then of course they end up sharing the same bed, and then the smutty stuff began.

I’ve been portraying Paolo as semi-aromantic? Not exactly fitting that label, the main idea being that as he is a Cerberus, he doesn’t experience the same range of emotions that humans do, but he does still possess a human-ish body with sexual urges. I think it’s possible he’s capable of romantic love, but so far such a thing couldn’t happen with any creature from this world.

So anyways, after a somewhat awkward first time for both of them, Paolo basically confesses as much as he can about himself without outright telling Jessie monsters exist. He tries to explain that if she had known the parts he can’t tell her about they might not have happened like this, but she doesn’t seem concerned about it at all.

So onward from there, Paolo heads out the next morning to the cabin to find Hero’s broken into it and slept on the bed. Paolo scrounges up some clothes for her and gives her his hoodie hoping it’ll be enough to protect her from the sun, but it’s not enough. Also we later retconned, because the fanfic nature of this game demanded it, and decided that Paolo made no attempt not to watch her change and Hero made no attempt not to be watched changing, which may or may not be relevant in future sessions, idk. They decide they’ll have to wait til nightfall, and Paolo leaves for school.

Now, Paolo has never not worn his hoodie anywhere. Given as its one of the only things he owns, he doesn’t really take it off much. But in this case, he’s forgotten to get it back from Hero, exposing the snake tattoos on his back (there are many snakes, all of their heads coming to the back of his neck while the tails slide down his back and curl around his upper arms). Several students were curious about them. Things during the day with Jessie were about the same, except she kept giving Paolo playful looks of “I know what your dick looks like.”

Paolo spends that day trying to get Jupiter to not walk through walls and then spends some time with Jessie before returning to the cabin. Having discovered that his blood sates Hero’s hunger and also he can’t die even if she overfeeds, he decides to become her personal blood bank to keep her from attacking people.

Then the two of them go shopping to get her some clothes that don’t look like they were made for a lumberjack twice her size. She immediately gets into the vampire look, with the black, and the fishnets, and yadda yadda. She also gets Paolo a black leather jacket, to which his response was “I already have a jacket though... I wear it everyday.” She also insists he pick something out, so he gets a pair of fingerless gloves, which apparently Elijah also wore and Hero gets quiet for a moment.

Paolo then takes Hero home and invites her into her own house before her dad comes downstairs and grounds her. Paolo returns to the cabin. Previously he’d been sleeping outside under a tree because he didn’t expect Ronan would appreciate him breaking in, but now that Hero’s already broken a window and now that Paolo’s experienced what a real bed feels like, he decides to go in and sleep on the bed.

So, Saturday, Paolo and Jessie meet up and they decide to go help Hero (who at this point, I believe Jessie thinks she was sexually assaulted based on the vague approximations of what Paolo’s told her) and spend time with her while she’s grounded. Paolo knows that grounding is a punishment given by parents to their children, but he’s unclear on what exactly that means, so he spends a little while just trying to find a roundabout way of getting Hero to say what grounding is without him directly asking.

Hero’s got garbage bags up on all the windows, saying she sunburns super easily now. Jessie goes into another room to try to find something more permanent, leaving Hero and Paolo to FUCKING discuss the fact that Paolo hasn’t told Jessie Hero’s a vampire, or what he is. This is the part where I started feeling Paolo’s anger and frustration, because they get into an argument and then Jessie enters the room and Hero goes “Hey, I’m a vampire, and it’s his job to kill me!” Paolo tries to play it off like a joke, and then Hero shows Jessie her fangs. Paolo, in his anger, just shuts down for a moment, goes to close the door, and slumps down in front of it, now trying to process in his head if this information is going to leave this room, or if he has to repeat what he did with Elijah with the girl he slept with and also Elijah 2.0. Jessie runs out another door in the room, Paolo makes no attempt to stop her and angrily starts yelling at Hero about his job and how her actions were totally reckless, if Jessie tells anyone there will be panic on both sides of the divide and basically a war would just break out. Hero’s trying to act like it’s not that bad and Paolo’s not having any of it, and he’s trying not to bring up the fact that it’s very possible he has to KILL both of them now.

So he leaves and tracks down Jessie hiding in the hollow of a tree. Some notes about Paolo’s role play, his voice is always very ineffectual and emotionless, he often hums three times while trying to think about things he doesn’t find super serious. In this moment, though, he angrily stands outside this tree and demands Jessie talk to him. She tries to leave multiple times during this conversation, but he keeps stopping her. Says “Guess now I have to tell you.” He explains everything about Elijah being dead and Hero being a vampire and his job to make sure normal humans never find out about it. Looking back, he never actually said anything about what he is, just his job. And then he gets to truth of what happened to Elijah and he says “It seems manipulative to tell you this! It feels like a threat, and there’s no way to get around it being a threat!” And he tells her that he killed Elijah. Then she leaves, and he just stands there. In his mind, he’s making a gamble. He’s gonna hope Jessie doesn’t tell anyone, and if she does... well, he can start killing people later. For now he just wants to feel like he’s accomplishing something, so he goes back to help Hero with her window situation.

Hero and Paolo have a long argument containing many typical elements of Paolo arguments, such as “it won’t be that bad if people find out,” and “you can choose your own destiny” vs. “I literally cannot I am not a human.” Somewhere in here I started crying actual tears as Paolo’s defeated by the world. He wants so badly to not have to kill anybody and he’s remembering how awful it was with Elijah when he failed him.

Hero leaves the house for a bit, and when she comes back Paolo is still standing in the middle of the room. He’s so lost on what he should do he can’t even figure out if he should go anywhere or move at all. The first time she tries to comfort him, he turns away from her, in his mind the current situation is her fault to begin with. The next few times he shows no sign of accepting or resisting. She hugs him, makes him sit on the bed, makes him lie on the bed, and plays with his hair after calming him down a little. She tries to get him to stop thinking for a bit, which only happens when she starts humming a song, but beyond that his mind is racing. She falls asleep and Paolo assumes she expected him to, but his version of sleep is actually consciously gazing into the abyss, so his options are either think while conscious in this world, or think while conscious in the abyss. The abyss is the more informative and intimidating of the options, so he just stays awake until she wakes up again.

That’s where we are now. Fucking three sessions and Paolo’s already broken. Oh: right after sleeping with Jessie he took the move Loyal, so Jessie’s basically his master. ALSO, though, Jessie hates him now and wants nothing to do with him, so unfortunate timing on that. *shrug*

#paolo manchado #monsterhearts #ttrpg #campaign diary #powered by the apocalypse

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wewererogue · 5 years

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The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people

[by Erwin James / The Guardian, February 2013]

On Bastoy prison island in Norway, the prisoners, some of whom are murderers and rapists, live in conditions that critics brand ‘cushy’ and 'luxurious’. Yet it has by far the lowest reoffending rate in Europe.

An inmate sunbathes on the deck of his bungalow on Bastoy. Photograph: Marco Di Lauro

The first clue that things are done very differently on Bastoy prison island, which lies a couple of miles off the coast in the Oslo fjord, 46 miles south-east of Norway’s capital, comes shortly after I board the prison ferry. I’m taken aback slightly when the ferry operative who welcomed me aboard just minutes earlier, and with whom I’m exchanging small talk about the weather, suddenly reveals he is a serving prisoner – doing 14 years for drug smuggling. He notes my surprise, smiles, and takes off a thick glove before offering me his hand. “I’m Petter,” he says.

Before he transferred to Bastoy, Petter was in a high-security prison for nearly eight years. “Here, they give us trust and responsibility,” he says. “They treat us like grownups.” I haven’t come here particularly to draw comparisons, but it’s impossible not to consider how politicians and the popular media would react to a similar scenario in Britain.

There are big differences between the two countries, of course. Norway has a population of slightly less than five million, a 12th of the UK’s. It has fewer than 4,000 prisoners; there are around 84,000 in the UK. But what really sets us apart is the Norwegian attitude towards prisoners. Four years ago I was invited into Skien maximum security prison, 20 miles north of Oslo. I had heard stories about Norway’s liberal attitude. In fact, Skien is a concrete fortress as daunting as any prison I have ever experienced and houses some of the most serious law-breakers in the country. Recently it was the temporary residence of Anders Breivik, the man who massacred 77 people in July 2011.

Despite the seriousness of their crimes, however, I found that the loss of liberty was all the punishment they suffered. Cells had televisions, computers, integral showers and sanitation. Some prisoners were segregated for various reasons, but as the majority served their time – anything up to the 21-year maximum sentence (Norway has no death penalty or life sentence) – they were offered education, training and skill-building programmes. Instead of wings and landings they lived in small “pod” communities within the prison, limiting the spread of the corrosive criminal prison subculture that dominates traditionally designed prisons. The teacher explained that all prisons in Norway worked on the same principle, which he believed was the reason the country had, at less than 30%, the lowest reoffending figures in Europe and less than half the rate in the UK.

As the ferry powers through the freezing early-morning fog, Petter tells me he is appealing against his conviction. If it fails he will be on Bastoy until his release date in two years’ time. I ask him what life is like on the island. “You’ll see,” he says. “It’s like living in a village, a community. Everybody has to work. But we have free time so we can do some fishing, or in summer we can swim off the beach. We know we are prisoners but here we feel like people.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect on Bastoy. A number of wide-eyed commentators before me have variously described conditions under which the island’s 115 prisoners live as “cushy”, “luxurious” and, the old chestnut, “like a holiday camp”. I’m sceptical of such media reports.

An inmate repairs a bike. Photograph: Marco Di Lauro

As a life prisoner, I spent the first eight years of the 20 I served in a cell with a bed, a chair, a table and a bucket for my toilet. In that time I was caught up in a major riot, trapped in a siege and witnessed regular acts of serious violence. Across the prison estate, several hundred prisoners took their own lives, half a dozen of whom I knew personally – and a number were murdered. Yet the constant refrain from the popular press was that I, too, was living in a “holiday camp”. When in-cell toilets were installed, and a few years later we were given small televisions, the “luxury prison” headlines intensified and for the rest of the time I was in prison, it never really abated.

It always seemed to me while I was in jail that the real prison scandal was the horrendous rate of reoffending among released prisoners. In 2007, 14 prisons in England and Wales had reconvictions rates of more than 70%. At an average cost of £40,000 a year for each prisoner, this amounts to a huge investment in failure – and a total lack of consideration for potential future victims of released prisoners. That’s the reason I’m keen to have a look at what has been hailed as the world’s first “human ecological prison”.

Thorbjorn, a 58-year-old guard who has worked on Bastoy for 17 years, gives me a warm welcome as I step on to dry land. As we walk along the icy, snowbound track that leads to the admin block, he tells me how the prison operates. There are 70 members of staff on the 2.6 sq km island during the day, 35 of whom are uniformed guards. Their main job is to count the prisoners – first thing in the morning, twice during the day at their workplaces, once en masse at a specific assembly point at 5pm, and finally at 11pm, when they are confined to their respective houses. Only four guards remain on the island after 4pm. Thorbjorn points out the small, brightly painted wooden bungalows dotted around the wintry landscape. “These are the houses for the prisoners,” he says. They accommodate up to six people. Every man has his own room and they share kitchen and other facilities. “The idea is they get used to living as they will live when they are released.” Only one meal a day is provided in the dining hall. The men earn the equivalent of £6 a day and are given a food allowance each month of around £70 with which to buy provisions for their self-prepared breakfasts and evening meals from the island’s well-stocked mini-supermarket.

I can see why some people might think such conditions controversial. The common understanding of prison is that it is a place of deprivation and penance rather than domestic comfort.

Prisoners in Norway can apply for a transfer to Bastoy when they have up to five years left of their sentence to serve. Every type of offender, including men convicted of murder or rape, may be accepted, so long as they fit the criteria, the main one being a determination to live a crime-free life on release.

I ask Thorbjorn what work the prisoners do on the island. He tells me about the farm where prisoners tend sheep, cows and chickens, or grow fruit and vegetables. “They grow much of their own food,” he says.

Other jobs are available in the laundry; in the stables looking after the horses that pull the island’s cart transport; in the bicycle repair shop, (many of the prisoners have their own bikes, bought with their own money); on ground maintenance or in the timber workshop. The working day begins at 8.30am and already I can hear the buzz of chainsaws and heavy-duty strimmers. We walk past a group of red phone boxes from where prisoners can call family and friends. A large building to our left is where weekly visits take place, in private family rooms where conjugal relations are allowed.

After the security officer signs me in and takes my mobile, Thorbjorn delivers me to governor Arne Nilsen’s office. “Let me tell you something,” Thorbjorn says before leaving me. “You know, on this island I feel safer than when I walk on the streets in Oslo.”

Through Nilsen’s window I can see the church, the school and the library. Life for the prisoners is as normal as it is possible to be in a prison. It feels rather like a religious commune; there is a sense of peace about the place, although the absence of women (apart from some uniformed guards) and children is noticeable. Nilsen has coined a phrase for his prison: “an arena of developing responsibility.” He pours me a cup of tea.

“In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking. In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings.”

A clinical psychologist by profession, Nilsen shrugs off any notion that he is running a holiday camp. I sense his frustration. “You don’t change people by power,” he says. “For the victim, the offender is in prison. That is justice. I’m not stupid. I’m a realist. Here I give prisoners respect; this way we teach them to respect others. But we are watching them all the time. It is important that when they are released they are less likely to commit more crimes. That is justice for society.”

The reoffending rate for those released from Bastoy speaks for itself. At just 16%, it is the lowest in Europe. But who are the prisoners on Bastoy? Are they the goodie-goodies of the system?

Hessle is 23 years old and serving 11 years for murder. “It was a revenge killing,” he says. “I wish I had not done it, but now I must pay for my crime.” Slight and fair-haired, he says he has been in and out of penal institutions since he was 15. Drugs have blighted his life and driven his criminality. There are three golden rules on Bastoy: no violence, no alcohol and no drugs. Here, he works in the stables tending the horses and has nearly four years left to serve. How does he see the future? “Now I have no desire for drugs. When I get out I want to live and have a family. Here I am learning to be able to do that.”

A convict works on Bastoy prison farm. Photograph: Marco Di Lauro

Hessle plays the guitar and is rehearsing with other prisoners in the Bastoy Blues Band. Last year they were given permission to attend a music festival as a support act that ZZ Top headlined. Bjorn is the band’s teacher. Once a Bastoy prisoner who served five years for attacking his wife in a “moment of madness”, he now returns once a week to teach guitar. “I know the potential for people here to change,” he says.

Formerly a social researcher, he has formed links with construction companies he previously worked for that have promised to consider employing band members if they can demonstrate reliability and commitment. “This is not just about the music,” he says, “it’s about giving people a chance to prove their worth.”

Sven, another band member, was also convicted of murder, and sentenced to eight years. The 29-year-old was an unemployed labourer before his conviction. He works in the timber yard and is waiting to see if his application to be “house father” in his five-man bungalow is successful. “I like the responsibility,” he says. “Before coming here I never really cared for other people.”

The female guard who introduces me to the band is called Rutchie. “I’m very proud to be a guard here, and my family are very proud of me,” she says. It takes three years to train to be a prison guard in Norway. She looks at me with disbelief when I tell her that in the UK prison officer training is just six weeks. “There is so much to learn about the people who come to prison,” she says. “We need to try to understand how they became criminals, and then help them to change. I’m still learning.”

Finally, I’m introduced to Vidor, who at 72 is the oldest prisoner on the island. He works in the laundry and is the house father of his four-man bungalow. I haven’t asked any of the prisoners about their crimes. The information has been offered voluntarily. Vidor does the same. He tells me he is serving 15 years for double manslaughter. There is a deep sadness in his eyes, even when he smiles. “Killers like me have nowhere to hide,” he says. He tells me that in the aftermath of his crimes he was “on the floor”. He cried a lot at first. “If there was the death penalty I would have said, yes please, take me.” He says he was helped in prison. “They helped me to understand why I did what I did and helped me to live again.” Now he studies philosophy, in particular Nietzsche. “I’m glad they let me come here. It is a healthy place to be. I’ll be 74 when I get out,” he says. “I’ll be happy if I can get to 84, and then just say: 'Bye-bye.’”

On the ferry back to the mainland I think about what I have seen and heard. Bastoy is no holiday camp. In some ways I feel as if I’ve seen a vision of the future – a penal institution designed to heal rather than harm and to generate hope instead of despair. I believe all societies will always need high-security prisons. But there needs to be a robust filtering procedure along the lines of the Norwegian model, in order that the process is not more damaging than necessary. As Nilsen asserts, justice for society demands that people we release from prison should be less likely to cause further harm or distress to others, and better equipped to live as law-abiding citizens.

It would take much political courage and social confidence to spread the penal philosophy of Bastoy outside Norway, however. In the meantime, I hope the decision-makers of the world take note of the revolution in rehabilitation that is occurring on that tiny island. (94)

#long post #Erwin James #theory #norway #prison

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howtohero · 5 years

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#214 Forcefields

Whenever you’re a public personality it’s a given that whenever you do anything anywhere somebody is going to try to throw something at you. Sometimes it’s harmless: a compliment, a smile, a huge wad of hundred dollar bills (if you don’t specifically know that that large number of non-sequential unmarked hundred dollar bills was acquired illegally you’re allowed to keep it pass it on!). Other times it’s a bit rude but it’s still not really gonna affect your day since you are a superhero and you’re plenty powerful: an insult, a tomato, flaming garbage. But sometimes it’s really dangerous stuff that you do not want to hit you: a hex, a heat seeking missile, a really big rock that has your name scrawled on it in permanent marker. (For a brief period the villain The Defacer was going around scrawling the names of superhero’s on different large rocks in the hopes that a stronger villain would eventually come along and use their superior strength to hurl the rock at the designated superhero. She was quickly defeated but her legacy lives on! Many of her rocks are still out there and every so often they do get thrown at the named superheroes.) You may be thinking, “woe is me, am I forced to live a life where people can just throw things at me every time I go out to the field???” and the answer to that is a big fat KIND OF. We can’t stop people from throwing things at you but we can sure as heck stop those things from hitting you in the face and ruining your day! In fact, eagle eyed readers may already have noticed that the solution was actually carefully hidden within that question. (Bat-eyed readers may already have noticed that the solution is up top in very large letters). We’re referring of course, to forcefields.

Forcefields are a superhero’s best friend. A good one will protect you and your loved ones and your home from all manner of outside attacks and unwanted solicitors. Forcefields can be used to shut out all of life’s problems. Boss on your back about the quarterly financial reports? Forcefield! He can’t bother you now! Also your computer just flew into a wall so you couldn’t get that done anyway! Birds giving you anxiety because the fact that they’ll always be a little bit better at flying than you due to generations of inborn instincts? Forcefield! Birds can’t even get near you now. Also you’ll stop getting feathers in your teeth every time you accidentally fly into a bird at lightning fast speeds. Supervillains keep launching nuclear missiles at your hideout because you accidentally posted your location on social media? Forcefield! Which will also conveniently protect you from all the nuclear fallout that I guess is just gonna annihilate everything around your hideout. Er, don’t worry, they make big forcefields! You can just put one around the whole city!

City-wide forcefields are actually growing to be pretty popular in states or countries with a large super presence. You’d be surprised how many evil schemes could be foiled by just erecting a giant forcefield around a city. Superheroes have been able to retire just thanks to the presence of city-wide forcefields. Unfortunately though, supervillains are nothing if not creative. Some supervillains have used forcefields of their own invention to trap entire cities in impenetrable domes. It’s the ultimate hostage situation. (At least until somebody figures out how to make a large enough forcefield to hold the entire planet hostage.) <Say that gives me an idea!> Supervillains use these forcefields to cut off cities from the rest of the world often causing them to descend into chaos and anarchy within a matter of minutes. It’s a classic scenario with no clear and simple solution but don’t worry we’ve got a couple of absurd and complicated ones that’ll get you right out of that problem!

You’re a superhero, you should have no less than thirteen different secret passageways that can get you in and out of the city undetected, but if you don’t it’s time to make some. Fire up your Drills for Thrills drill tank and start heading down. If your supervillain is any good they’ll have thought of that and their forcefield will extend into the ground and you won’t be able to simply dig a tunnel underneath the forcefield. But who cares about, we’re not going under, we’re going to circumvent the problem entirely. Simply keeping on drilling downward until you get to the Earth’s core. Now, if you’ve splurged and paid for the Drills for Thrills deluxe package this won’t be a problem. Your drill will be 100% guaranteed heat resistant and you can just keep on drilling through to the opposite side of the Earth without any fear of being burned, melted, or convected to death. If you didn’t pay for the deluxe package, well, turn around I guess, this is not the option for you.

No forcefield is perfect (generally this is unfortunate but in this case it’s quite handy!) they tend to have at least one weak spot somewhere. To exploit these weak points you need to contact a friend on the other side because the two of you need to exert an intense amount of force on either side of the weak spot in order to compromise the structural integrity of the entire forcefield. If the forcefield is blocking any signals from getting out, preventing you from contacting your allies on the outside through conventional means, worry not, your city has been trapped in an impenetrable city by a supervillain, there are going to be cameras. You see, one of the reasons supervillains take hostages is for a ransom, a city’s worth of hostages is probably worth a lot of money so you can be sure that they’re going to be making a ransom video. And if they’re not even doing it for the money they’re doing it for the bragging rights so they’re still going to want a recording of what happened. All you need to do is get your markers and your glitter glue and make a big poster and stand in the camera shot. If your friends are watching the news or follow the supervillain on social media they’ll see your message and the two of you can attack those weak spots and save the town together.

Turn your entire city invisible. Get some industrial scale levels of invisible paint and just paint everything invisible. Or project a hologram of an empty field over the entire city. This will make the bad guy think that your city was a transdimensional city that simply blipped out of this plain of existence. Supervillains know better than to trifle with the unknowable forces that control transdimensional cities so they’ll probably just pack up their forcefield and call it an early day.

Dress up like a different supervillain, one who the offending villain hates. This shouldn’t be too difficult, most supervillains wear masks so you don’t even have to horribly scar your face or paint your skin blue or anything. Then, once you’ve perfected your costume, go up to the forcefield and laugh maniacally. This is sure to catch the attention of the villain who has trapped you who will, at first, join in with your laughter. Maniacal laughter is quite contagious. There’s your medical fact for the day. Once the laughter dies down though, the villain will most likely ask what the heck you’re laughing about. Supervillains are a questioning and inquisitive lot. And also remember, he hates you, he does not want you laughing. Now this is the most important part, and you better be able to carry out with the utmost confidence. You need to convince the supervillain that you have trapped them within a forcefield. This is not going to be easy but it’s also not going to be as difficult as you might think. All you have to do is convince the villain that your master stroke was to trap the entire world except for your city, which is actually secerelt your supervillain headquarters, within a giant forcefield. It’s the ultimate scheme, remember, no villain yet has managed to trap the entire planet in a forcefield so the entire planet bar one city will be seen as quite the feat. The real villain isn’t about to let you take credit for doing something so amazing which you didn’t even do! They’ll bluster and rant and rave and accuse you of lying and repeatedly claim that you are mistaken and that they trapped you within a forcefield. This is where you have to make sure you stay your course and stay calm. Just shake your head and say something like “Oh Demolistructor you simple minded fool, can’t you see? You played right into my hands! Oh you poor thing, you don’t even realize how thoroughly I have bested you. I guess now there’s really no question of which of us is the greatest villain!” I guarantee you that’ll get their hackles raised. If you get them mad and flustered enough they’ll shut off the forcefield to prove to you that it’s theirs and then all you need to do is punch them in the face and steal their forcefield projector.

If you’re using forcefields as a superhero in order to trap criminals, remember that this is not a permanent solution. Forcefields are useful to stop a villain in their tracks, or to isolate them from their weaponry or machinery, but they cannot be used as full-time prisons. For one, they’re (more or less, see above) impenetrable, which means you can’t give your prisoners things like food or a clean, less on fire set of clothes. There are also no bathrooms in forcefields. So make sure you get those villains to actual prisons before long. Also, if you’re creating a full forcefield bubble, you need to make sure that air can be circulated. You don’t to suffocate yourself or others by creating a full air-tight forcefield. Superhumans with the ability to create their own forcefields are often endowed with the secondary power of choosing their permeability. They can allow carbon dioxide and oxygen to pass in and out while shutting out harmful gasses or water or oxygen-sized shrunken assailants. But if you’re designing you’re own forcefield you’re not going to be able to be as exact, so keep that in mind when deciding to use forcefields in different scenarios.

Forcefields can be a highly useful asset in any superhero’s arsenal. They can be used, to protect, repel, or even trap enemies, but they can also be used against heroes in the same ways. So know your forcefields, know their capabilities, their strengths, their weaknesses. And remember, regardless of which side of the forcefield you find yourself on, nothing is ever truly impenetrable, so be ready to get creative.

#superhero #superheroes #comics #comedy #humor #funny #advice #forcefields #shields #force fields #The Defacer #Demolistructor #Dr. Brainwave #the dome #trappaccino #transdimensional cities

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