#he rarely talks about any interpersonal feelings with it. he just tells us what its like

[psychictimestone]

You know I'd love it if someday a game or some kinda media delved into Silver's feelings towards the future. For the time being, the future is just some vague place that Silver says he comes from and explains how he exists plot wise, but how does Silver see it after all this time? Is it home? Is it warm and embracing? Is it a place he wishes to fiercely protect because of that? Or is it just a duty and a string he's forever tied by because he feels he has to protect it as he feels it's his only role in the world. Because the future denizens happiness means more than him finding it to be his own home?

I'd like to see it explored from a more personal standpoint someday.

[marierg]

Bad Batch Hemlock Analysis

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

WARNING: Talk of sociopaths, serial killers, and death!

Do not Read under the cut if you haven't watched!!!!!!!

Alright Homies hang in there with me cause I'm dusting off my old Investigatory skills for this one. I will start off with I had to watch these episodes twice just to be sure of a few things and then went back and re watched a few of the other ones and let me tell you, we got some interesting clues here.

I will give this small bit of my background for reference. Before working in the medical field I earned my way through college by working for Law Enforcement and other Public Safety Departments for the metropolitan county that I resided in. Additionally a lot of my family are Law Enforcement, specifically Prosecutorial Investigators. During my service time I worked undercover flushing out and apprehending child traffickers & killers among others. This is a civilian version of how we used to work up files.

Below I will include a work up for Hemlock and what we can extrapolate.

Royce Hemlock:

Caucasian Male, mid 40's to maybe 50 years old

Occupation: Scientist, head of the Imperial Advanced Science Division.

The first thing we can analyze is that the writers gave us the set up within Hemlock's first appearance, he's the stereotypical profile of a Sociopathic Killer. Most Sociopaths become serial killers around 30 yeas of age but sometimes as early as their teens. Most are Caucasian males, are we getting the picture...

Sociopathic tendencies and behaviors:

Superficial charm and good intelligence

Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking

Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations

Unreliability- still hasn't delivered results to the emperor

Untruthfulness and insincerity- he lies as easily as breathing

Lack of remorse and shame

Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior- Apologizes because he knows its the social norm, not because he is sorry.

Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience

Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love

General poverty in major affective reactions- In other words his reaction (with few exceptions) is the calm flat affect. He doesn't respond to the threat at the compound with panic but annoyance and possibly feeling inconvenienced. His gaze is dissociative and blank.

Specific loss of insight- His ego is so inflated that he can't see past the work he does to acknowledge the danger in the room, he will never believe himself to be in danger if he fails.

Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations- He barely acknowledges Tarkin and the others in the room, never calls his collogues on Tantis by name. They just exist in his world.

Fantastic and uninviting behavior with alcohol and sometimes without- the anger that sometimes slips past the facade

Suicide threats rarely carried out

Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated

Failure to follow any life plan

Facts and theory: For being a by all accounts a brilliant scientist he was expelled from the Republic Science Corp for, "Unorthodox experimentation." I will tell you now that for the Republic to have charged and expelled a Scientist it would have a) taken time to build a case and b) like any serial killer that means that Hemlock was at this for a good while.

We can also gather that Hemlock must have been at least somewhat successful at his work. At some point the Emperor (then chancellor) took notice of him and the experiments and saw an opportunity (and fellow sociopath). What is truly unknown at this point is if the the Emperor knew about Hemlock before, during, or after his prosecution and expulsion. However what we can gather is that soon after his expulsion the Emperor ushered him into his hidden science division and out of sight to keep working.

Victims: For the Republic to have prosecuted him there would have had to be complaints which led (I would put hard credits) to victims and bodies. another question that this raises is whether or not Hemlock was betrayed by his former collogues and or that he brought in former coworkers and scientists by recruitment or force. We have seen examples of the kind of leverage pulling by using families against imperials before in Rogue one.

Hemlock shows no regard for sentient life whatsoever. we've seen this first hand, but we are also seeing a behavior that is long past set in stone. What this means is that prior to his expulsion he was doing these experiments in plain or partial sight. This means that he was keeping records off the republic files, but probably still within the facilities, he would have to lie or falsify docs regularly to continue gathering data.

In the real health care world there is a reason that Doctors cannot download or access files except at certain terminals to prevent sensitive data transfer. Somehow Hemlock would have found a way around the safety firewalls and data trackers in the system to gather his data, but it would have still left a trail to follow. When confronted Hemlock probably would have had to have had some type of false or cover research study to try to explain things away, especially if they searched his files. Again he lies as easily as breathing, his work is the only thing that matters.

Along that line of thought is the reflection of his affect towards others, he has ever shown two emotions and one of them extreme anger. While normally controlled and clinically detached Hemlock has reacted with extreme anger when his work has been threatened, not his life but his work. He reflects all of his self importance onto his scientific achievements and when someone or something comes between his reaction is anger and (possibly) violence. Another question is how many of his subjects suffered in extreme because of how the experiments were failing. This is a particularly concerning thought with regards to Crosshair, remember what Emerie was telling him about cooperating? This means that it's happened before and witnessed by Dr. Karr.

Another Tactic that Hemlock has employed often and to great effect is emotional manipulation. This man understands finding the chink in the armor and how to twist that to perfection. We saw this with the single minded search and recovery of Omega in order to get Nala Se to work again. Hemlock doesn't care that he's traumatizing a child or even if he ends up killing her. "She will suffer your consequences."

We see this again as Hemlock throws Tech's goggles at Hunter's feet. Not just the physical action but also using Tech's name in such a cold manner in an attempt to push Hunter to act in anger. Thankfully the Sarge kept his head... unfortunately Omega did not. Which is not to say we didn't expect that, she has been through far too much for a kid her age and by god she tried to save her family. Honestly I'm proud of that lil fiesty sweet Bean.

Weaknesses: While most sociopaths feel themselves too intelligent to be found out they can at times be sloppy. In some cases killers will keep trophies of their victims, in others the body is disposed of in similar manners or with ritual. One case from the eighties (if I recall correctly) had the killer injecting insulin to kill the victims but made the mistake of doing it in front of family members and not disposing of the evidence in a more careful manner. When later questioned the family remembers that the victim was given medication but that they weren't diabetic. Perfect example of plain sight and no questions.

My best guess is that is how Hemlock was found out the first time, he left small but important clues for the investigators to follow. Eventually all of the small pieces would have built the frame of this puzzle to start to build the bigger picture.

Now this does present the Batch with an advantage, Hemlock is so over confident that he may not expect an attack. His base is remote, shielded within a mountain and guarded by (probably) brainwashed commandos. His certainty that he can't be followed, tracked, found, or even betrayed is a weakness that could be exploited by the Boys and also by Omega if she can gather help.

Advantages that the Boys have are friends with special skills: Phee (who would want retribution for Tech), Rex and Co, Cham Syndula and the fighters of Ryloth, the Wookies! Point is that if their friends would likely come to the aid of a rescue. More so these particular allies are specialized in insurgency and Spec Ops (Gregor I'm lookin' at your Kataran armored butt). I would also place cold hard credits on a few of the refugees on Pabu having been former freedom fighters.

Possible Clues that we can gather from this work up:

A.) The fight isn't over yet and if we jail break it's gonna be a one shot all or nothing. There is going to be a need for scouting, extreme air support, ground transport, and other necessary egress for the injured and experimented on clones. There is going to need to be help from the inside in order to infiltrate, which is where I foresee Dr. Kerr coming into play.

B.) Hemlock is a dead man, whether by the hand of the empire (ala Rampart) or at the hands of the clones (poetic justice) this man cannot be allowed to survive.

C.) I don't think that Tech is dead and I shall explain. When Hemlock threw the goggles he was playing Hunter, he also said that Tarkin wanted to question them personally. Now knowing Tarkin from Rebels and a New Hope we know he likes to keep prisoners alive for information. Tarkin could have killed Leia the minute that Alderaan was toast but he knew the value of the knowledge she held, he's a cagey character that way. I believe that Tech is alive and that is how the Imps got to Sid.

I know it's a longshot in the dark here but keep in mind this is Clone Force 99. Genetically modified to be stronger, tougher, faster. Crosshair survived an Ion engine and 32 days on a platform with nothing but his wits. Hunter has survived being shot by Cad Bane. Tech has previously WALKED AND FOUGHT on a broken Femur!!!!!! So yeah there's a chance!

@wild-karrde and @rain-on-kamino Girls lemme know what you think!

[butch-reidentified]

hi, in a post you recently said 'if you're ever questioning if something you're experiencing in a relationship is healthy, please don't hesitate to reach out to me and ask', so i was wondering if this was okay? if not, please ignore and sorry for the convenience. i hope this isn't triggering but it includes bdsm and rape fantasies.

i'm very lucky to be in a relationship with a man who made it clear for day 1 that he wasn't going to hurt me during sex, pretend to force me, or engage with any of that. i used to be big time into bdsm but over the last 10yrs i've been doing more feminist reading and having conversations with others and tried to unpack all of that, which has left me wanting to distance myself from it. i stopped justifying and defending bdsm, stopped engaging with bdsm-content in fiction and stopped watching porn all together. i got more involved with anti-prostitution and porn advocacy too.

the problem is that i'm still engaging with it internally. it's like a switch flips in my head when i'm with my partner and i construct this world where i'm being forced but can't show it. i used to think it was because of prior trauma and i was trying to get a sense of control, but it just feels like i'm using that as an excuse. it's a big thing in the bdsm community to justify it by claiming you're 'working through your trauma' but i was supposed to be past that now. it's been years so i feel like i don't have a good reason to be still doing this.

do you have any advice? once again, thank you.

I'm glad you asked! it wasn't exactly what I was talking about in the post - more internal rather than interpersonal - but I actually can relate in a sense. my wife tells me that sometimes when I get super stoned (which I rarely do tbf), I talk about wanting some fucked up things. I definitely THINK about some fucked up things. I'm quite far out from any posttraumatic mental effects, so I also don't feel that that explains it, and I'm fairly sure I had some questionable fantasies prior to my traumas, too. i wouldn't call it kink, though, bc they're not inherently tied to sex nor arousing to me on their own. I think I like violence and adrenaline and always have, and I don't really care which direction the violence goes, I just find it fun. but that's not a "need," as men would have you believe. it's just a quirk of my personality, and while I choose not to engage with it outwardly (I don't start unnecessary fights but I don't shy away either), I also refuse to make myself ashamed by it. there is no such thing as a thought crime. your stances against prostitution, porn, and, yes, bdsm as well, are not compromised or hypocritical because you have those thoughts. let them be, observe them, and release them as feels right to you. i think the idea that we must analyze such things to death is rather Christian in nature and likely in origin: the idea that our thoughts and desires can be sinful themselves, or that they speak to who we "really" are. I think that's a load of shit. I don't believe anyone who would claim to have never thought (or even desired!) some really unhinged shit. humans are weird! I'm glad I have someone I can tell all my unhinged thoughts to without judgment, but none of it means I'd ever act on such things.

tldr, we all have some out of pocket thoughts (beyond just intrusive thoughts, to be clear!) and I don't believe there's anything wrong with that on its own, nor are we obligated to explain them

I don't expect everyone to agree with this, but it is where I stand on the matter

[baodurs]

i filled out this super cool button character profile by @extraordinarymage for sabrina! thank you for making this, it was a lot of fun to fill out <3 the bulk of it is under a cut and oh boy is it long !!!

Short, Quick Reference

Name: Sabrina Wiseman

Pronouns: She/her

Sexuality: Bisexual

Love Interest: Kent

Main personality trait: Confidence

Secondary personality trait: Morbidity

Relationship with Nick: Full of love, haunted by unaddressed guilt and frustration. But mostly full of love.

Nickname for Nick: Saint Nick (used sparingly)

Resentful or accepting?: Slightly resentful

Main strategy (interpersonal, insightful, innovative?): Insightful

Ethical or expedient?: Expedient

GENERAL

Name: Sabrina Larkspur Wiseman

Nickname(s): Sab, used by anyone; Sabby, only Nick and Sally; and, of course, Button for Nick.

Birthday: I think I made her an October Libra for the purpose of a template I did months ago, but I’m not sure! No concrete birthday yet, I’m always very slow to nail down details like this.

Age: 20

Pronouns: She/her

Sexuality: Bisexual

Hair color + style: Blonde. A little past shoulder length, sometimes wavy. Usually a middle part. For Aeon, tied back in a bun.

Eye color: Blue, entirely because of the section of Frank O’Hara’s “Meditations in an Emergency” that goes, “My eyes are vague blue, like the sky...”

Height: 5′5

Piercings: Multiple in each ear, but a couple have started to close.

Tattoos: None yet! Sab likes the idea of a tattoo but is worried about finding the perfect design, whether she’d end up hating it, that the pain might be greater than she expects and she’ll look like a baby in front of her tattoo artist. I’d like to think she eventually consults Sally and/or Glitch to come up with an idea that she falls in love with, but I haven’t come up with what that would be!

Clothing style: Mostly solid colors, not a lot of patterns. Nothing super bright, but a fairly varied mix of pastels, neutrals, dark colors, black. Partial to denim skirts and sweater tops. Ankle boots. Likes a good turtleneck. She’s bolder when it comes to formal wear, and especially loves suits. Big fan of silk and satin.

Since she has a pretty accurate face claim, I’ll link some gifsets I’ve rb’d for appearance ref if you are so inclined.

STATS

I’m always adjusting minor things and swapping scenes around, but these are from my most recent Sab run! Most scores hover somewhere around these values.

Personality:

Confidence: 53%

Humor: 5%

Morbidity: 22%

Resentful: 57% | Accepting: 43%

Strategy:

Interpersonal: 12%

Insightful: 50%

Innovative: 10%

Ethical: 43% | Expedient: 57%

KEY DECISIONS:

What is Nick’s nickname and why?: Saint Nick, used very rarely. It’s a joking reference to the time she thought Santa was an evil Ment out to ruin Christmas, and a point about Nick overdoing it with the cheer. “Saint Nick” is usually code for “I know you mean well, but please mind your own business.” Otherwise, she just calls him Nick.

What is their favorite type of cookie (and its name and why?): Salted caramel chocolate chip! No special name.

What was their initial reaction to Sally hugging them, as kids?: She just froze. That could just be me projecting adult Sabrina onto her childhood self; I don’t imagine that she was as uncomfortable around strangers or quite as cautious back then. But that’s what I’ll stick with.

How did they ace the ASE test?: The in-game option she takes is “My entire life has revolved around strategic avoidance,” but the one about being just plain smart also sounds like her. If Sab has the chance to thoroughly (over)prepare for something, she will do it. Her mind blindness also has her constantly (over)analyzing situations. So, hard work and relentless anxiety!

Did they manage to win their first assignment? How?: Yes, by having Sally block the door. I’ve headcanoned some slight differences in how it plays out, which I wrote about in-depth here. To summarize, Sab thinks of blocking the door as a desperate last resort, not a clever loophole, and she pushes back against Rosy’s praise because she wishes she could have done it the “real” way. Rosy goes from being impressed to being annoyed that she’s willfully missing the point.

What was the primary emotion Button felt during the Aeon bombing (love, gratitude, etc?): Guilt. She feels very guilty about how much Nick has given up for her in general, but I think that in the moment, it’s on a smaller scale. The fact that Nick was on the phone with her when it happened, coming to her rescue like always, becomes emblematic of their whole relationship for her, and she really fixates on that.

Who drove them home from the hospital from and why?: Glitch. Sab responds to her initial text with “Are you sure?”, and is relieved when Glitch takes that as “Yes, please.” She doesn’t relish the idea of being around someone more connected to her family or Nick at that point.

How do they feel about Nick riding around in their mind?: Worried, at first. Just because it’s so unknown and absolutely insane. After seeing Doctor Amari, she’s excited! Sab is thrilled to be a Pollard Five and intends to take full advantage of it. I am not looking forward to seeing how she reacts when that’s taken away from her.

Why did Button agree to do the undercover mission?: To prove she still deserves to be an MIV. Sabrina feels stupid and reckless for putting herself, Nick, and Aeon in this position, but she knows she’s smart, and she hasn’t worked this hard for nothing. She wants to prove what she could do with a normal Pollard Score and make herself too valuable to give up even when she’s back to Zero.

Told Glitch about your mind blindness?: Depends on the playthrough. I’m constantly going back and forth on whether Sab meets Glitch for coffee or wanders the city with Nick in her second chapter 5 slot (after trying to track down Kent). If she does meet Glitch, though, she absolutely tells her; with how touchy Sab is about privacy, she couldn’t stomach not warning Glitch that Nick could hear everything they said.

Figured out K’s secret?: Nope. She finds enough of the clues to be given the “I knew it!” option in-game, but she didn’t actually put it together. Sab is too angry and embarrassed by learning that Kent is an AMO to find any reason to interrogate it. “The random guy I met before school just happens to be a jerk” is a perfectly sound explanation to her.

Found Noh’s clues?: Not at the metro station. Sometimes she sees the Vengeance brooms in chapter 5 (again, depending on the playthrough), but that’s it.

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP:

Love Interest: Kent

Why them?: Sab feels an immediate kinship with Kent after learning about the NPO program. It’s kind of funny how quickly he moves from the least sympathetic position in her eyes (Ment who got past me and read my mind without my knowledge) to the most sympathetic (non-powered child of a prominent family aiming a league above where he “belongs”). A lot of new respect for his competence. Her fate is sealed when she realizes that his kindness at the hospital wasn’t him trying to make up for some wrongdoing, but just him being very sweet. (She had scoffed over “You needed help.” But now she’s like, “Oh. He meant that?! Fuck.”)

As they spend more time together, Sab realizes how weirdly similar they are in other ways, too. And she starts to feel safe/secure around him in a way that she’s extremely not used to. Growing up surrounded by Ments, Sab has a lot of issues about being too much, too difficult, needing to “be worthy” of love. So someone like Kent who is not a Ment, who has no “obligation” to care about her, and whose judgement she trusts implicitly? Being around him and being loved by him mean a lot, and I think will go a long way towards helping her reflect on her other relationships!

What are their first impressions of each other?: Okay, there are like 3 first impressions with Kent. First: he’s tall and handsome and secretly adorable, and they have similar career goals, so she’s drafting a five-month plan to woo him and get his number. Second: he’s a lying, self-obsessed loser who owes her many explanations. Third: oh no, the first impression was true! And he’s been continually, selflessly kind to her in spite of her overt hostility. Scratch the five-month plan, because the crush was only fun when it was entirely superficial; now she really, really likes him and that just sucks.

We know that Button makes a good impression on K by stopping for their dogs, but apart from that... I mean, the “we confused each other” from chapter 7 is very apt. Sab has lots of shifting personas, and Kent sees pretty much every one within 24 hours. The prevailing impression before everything gets cleared up is probably just that she cares a lot? About everything? Her stopping for the dogs, how seriously she takes the first assignment, the way she seems so deeply affected by something he said or did that morning. It’s a rare side of her to meet first because she usually pretends to be above everything.

What feature does your Button find most attractive in their RO (ex. appearance, personality, etc.)?: Probably his composure. And his... steadfastness? The way he seems unruffled by anything, his soothing presence. She really admires that about him and finds the calm contagious.

What do they do to spend time together?: Going on drives together! Kent driving while Sab plays songs she thinks he’ll like, talking or not talking. Cuddling on the couch while reading their own separate books. Museum dates. Walking the dogs together.

Do they argue? How do they handle arguments and disagreements? How do they make up?: I imagine that the first month or so of their relationship would be difficult, just because they’re both bad at expressing themselves and not used to relying on other people. Kent kind of negates a lot of Sab’s impulses to get defensive or hostile, so instead of arguments, I think there are more likely to be awkward periods where she’s just stewing in something without addressing it. Most of their fights would be, like, one of them becoming really distant for a concerning number of days until the other tries to awkwardly check in on them.

What does their future look like?: Uhh some random lore: I think eventually they do get married, despite neither of them caring that much about it. Sabrina would be excited to have something to plan, and she knows it would make the people around her happy. They have a long engagement; there’s never really an “official” proposal, just an acknowledgement that yeah, they’ll get married one day, and then eventually they get rings. The engagement is almost Sab’s favorite part, honestly. She likes planning and showing off her ring and calling Kent her fiancé, a lot of fanfare on her part for a wedding that ends up being very modest and chill.

OTHER RELATIONSHIPS (Feel free to go in depth!)

Relationship with Nick: When I first started developing Sab, I thought that with as difficult/prickly as she can be, her relationship with Nick would be worse than it is. Never bad, but certainly strained, with more jealousy/resentment on her side. However, she rejected this. She is resentful, but never towards Nick—she internalizes the negative parts of their relationship so they manifest as guilt instead. And that’s the problem, not resentment. Sab thinks he’s overprotective, but that doesn’t make her angry; it just makes her sad. She wishes things were different and he didn’t feel so responsible for her, but she also doesn’t know how she could manage without him taking on so many of her burdens. So, guilt! So much love, but always looming guilt.

Having Nick in her head has helped. It’s added a new kind of guilt (“I’m a horrible person for being so giddy that people can’t hear my thoughts even though that requires my brother to be in a coma”), but getting inside Nick’s head for once and really feeling his love for her changes things. Makes her feel way more secure, I guess? It’s easier to see her brother as human person, a friend who loves her, rather than a perfect selfless paragon who sacrificed everything to raise her, which is an important shift.

There are also Things happening with self-presentation in the fact that they’re both models, and flirts, and pretend to be shallow. And the ways that they’ve responded to vastly different expectations. And selflessness versus selfishness. But I have no idea how to talk about that yet.

Relationship with Father: Strained and distant. Sabrina doesn’t necessarily blame him for leaving, but she hates how he’s handled it. She’s incredibly frustrated that John insists on keeping them in this miserable limbo of uncomfortable visits, even though moving away was (to her) a tacit acknowledgement that she and her parents are better off without each other. He’s trying to force a relationship that Sab thinks is ultimately harmful for everyone involved. For Nick’s sake, she’s willing to grin and bear the visits, but it never works because John can obviously tell it’s an act. He pushes her, she gets defensive, and so on to infinity.

Relationship with Mother: Like with John, Sab doesn’t resent Hope for the incident itself, or for leaving afterward. It was terrifying, and the idea of being around Hope makes her panic—but she thinks of that as just another irrational anxiety symptom, and she’s trying to work through it. What she does resent Hope for is letting it get to that point at all. Sab is incredibly bitter that Hope will suffer silently to the point of almost killing her (during the incident) and potentially herself (with the BRS), while Sab has no choice but to be completely open. Especially because they’re so similar in that way—she’s almost jealous. “Oh, so your silence is allowed to almost kill me and it’s ‘nobody’s fault’ but I can’t pretend to enjoy a single lunch with Dad without him calling me out for lying?”

And even though she doesn’t hold the incident itself against her, Sab is very hung up on “Why are you never quiet? Why are you always there?” She knows, on some level, that this was not a Personal Judgement against her. But because Hope keeps so much quiet, this is the only honest expression of her mother’s feelings that she can remember! It would take a lot for Sab to believe that Hope was really, genuinely interested in reconnecting with her, rather than just pretending to love her "enough” this time because to do otherwise would reflect poorly on Hope as a mother.

Relationship with Sally: Besties <3 Sally is the only member of the Wiseman inner circle that Sab doesn’t have complicated feelings about. They both have hidden morbid streaks that they bring out in each other, and can laugh about. They both have competitive streaks that work well together because they’re always on the same team. And their wants/needs from the relationship complement each other well, I think. Sally has always felt valued because she’s useful and not because she’s loved, while Sab has always felt smothered by love/care without feeling like she genuinely adds value to other people’s lives. So it means a lot to both of them that they’re able to help each other practically, while also genuinely loving and supporting each other outside of that.

Relationship with Gray: Full of trust and genuine care, but predicated on distance. Sab loves him a lot for being so careful not to cross any boundaries, physical or emotional, with her. She’s grateful that he’s there for Nick in a way that she doesn’t feel she can be. But "I like Gray because he doesn’t push me and is good to Nick” means that any hand he extend makes her defensive, because she’ll either view him as an emissary of Nick or start to panic because their normal routine is being disrupted (she doesn’t tell him about Hope in ch 3, for example).

They get along very well in a friend-of-a-friend sort of way, and bond over being cautious counterparts to Nick. Also, Sab never had a crush on Gray, but she is not immune to tall superhero and thinks it’s fun to fake flirt with him. (You know Isabela’s “You have pretty eyes” routine from DA2? Sab does that to Gray when conversations steer towards things she’d rather not talk about.)

Relationship with Glitch: I’m really excited about these two! They click from the start, and Sabrina feels immediately comfortable around Glitch, which makes her feel distinctly uncomfortable whenever she catches herself. Externally, they have pretty different personalities, but they’re both perceptive and... socially manipulative? aware of their self-presentation?... in ways that they both pick up on right away. So it’s a lot of conversational maneuvering and trying to figure out what the other’s game is, while also genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

Relationship with Kent/Kenna: I could go truly insane here. See the romance section above instead.

Relationship with Kim: Sab wants him to like her sooooo bad. He’s one of the only people to ever really get through to her, re: my headcanon conversation after the first assignment. Authority figures tend to treat her as special, whether that’s negatively because of her mind blindness or positively because she’s such an overachiever. She had no idea how to respond to that not being the case (and didn’t handle it well at first), but chapter 6 solidifies her respect for him.

It also turns Rosy’s opinion of Sab around; he was impressed by her in class but left his office thinking she was self-absorbed and naive. But the bombing is a reality check, and her response is very measured and practical in a way that surprises him.

Relationship with Lev: She doesn’t mind the comparisons to Nick or the “maybe one day they’ll fix you” comments as much as you might think. They aren’t her favorite, but she prefers that sort of thing to the inspirational platitudes belied by coddling that she got from her family growing up. Sab has fond memories of Lev and is grateful that he’s always been kind to her, but doesn’t have any particular feelings apart from that.

Relationship with Clarence: Holds a grudge against him for causing a scene, making her late, and generally being a jerk. But she can’t fault him for being right, after what happened! Mostly she just wants to avoid him, but she’ll be thrilled to lord her success over him if/when she proves herself.

Relationship with Dean Branham: Like Rosy, another authority figure that Sab desperately wants to impress. But without the personal investment she has in Rosy’s validation, more “Oh, this person is in charge, so I should make her like me!” Despite Nick’s and Rosy’s reservations, Sabrina doesn’t really have a problem with being “strongarmed” or manipulated into cooperating; for now, she figures Branham was just doing her job and respects her tactics.

Relationship/attitude towards Ments in general: Mostly just uncomfortable and wary around them. Sab doesn’t want her mind read, and she figures that no Ment wants to be forced to read it either. So she has a pretty strict “no Ments” rule for close personal relationships (excluding Nick, Sally, and Gray, of course. But only Nick really counts because he’s the only one who can hear her thoughts whenever she’s nearby). Not out of hatred or resentment, just because she knows it will be easier for everyone in the long run.

Do they have any other important relationships, past or present? (Relatives, friends, etc.?): Not many, but yes! Sab dated around a lot in the 2 years before Aeon (more like year and a half, because she completely shut it down once she was more focused on preparing for the MIV program), but there are 2 relationships that were formative/important for her. A high school sweetheart, and someone Sab met through modeling. She doesn’t keep up with her high school ex, but the model is her best friend outside of Sally and Nick, and they still keep in touch! I’m still developing them/the relationships, and I’ll probably post more about them someday. They’re fun!

PERSONAL BIO

Describe their personality: Confusing and contradictory. She has two main modes that confuse people who meet both (e.g., Kent). She’s either cold, stuck-up, and sometimes hostile, OR she’s charming, frivolous, and sometimes flirty. Mode 1 is tense but stoic and inexpressive; mode 2 is seemingly relaxed but very posed and insincere. Mode 1 is for when she feels uncertain or has no agenda apart from “get to point B”; mode 2 is for when she’s more comfortable or trying to manipulate someone. Her actual personality is a bit closer to the second, but she doesn’t pretend not take things seriously or hide when she’s annoyed.

Strengths: Analytical, methodical, detail-oriented. Very driven and hardworking. May not always act like it, but does have social skills/charisma; a great liar, if you can’t read her mind. Unfailingly loyal and loving to her favorite people, so so so warm and affectionate and supportive if she really loves you. Very perceptive.

Weaknesses: Way too proud. Can be petty and vindictive. Self-absorbed (she doesn’t mean anything by it, but it’s hard for her to see past herself sometimes). Stubborn, hates being wrong. And... emotional isn’t the word, but strong negative emotions can really cloud her judgement. It ties into her being proud, petty, and stubborn; if she’s really upset about something, she can cling to that emotion instead of re-evaluating it or moving forward.

Phobias: From this ask about the phobias that are planned to show up in-game, there are a few that I could see fitting Sab, but I want to wait to see how they’re implemented before I fully commit. Which is very metagame-y, I know (and I am very metagame-y about IF), but “fear of X” is so broad that it really does depend on when/how it manifests in the text.

That being said, agoraphobia is almost a lock; crowds do make Sab very anxious if she can’t keep track of everyone within a certain distance, and if she can’t leave when she starts feeling antsy. Claustrophobia is a maybe. The choice that triggers it (in chapter 4, about hating MRI machines) suits Sab, but I’m not sure if she hates MRI machines because she hates tight spaces, or if it’s more related to her general anxiety about hospitals, medical tests, etc. Which she definitely has!

What activities/club did they do in school?: She avoided anything group-oriented as far as possible. She took piano (maybe violin?) lessons and did recitals, but wasn’t in orchestra. The one exception was maybe National Honor Society or some equivalent, which she would have joined for her resume’s sake. And I think she would have tutored!

Where do they escape to when they need space?: A little used library corner, where she can people watch without being seen/heard.

How do they feel about/cope with their mind blindness?: Sab hates it but tries not to dwell on it. She knows that it’s no one’s fault, and she mainly just tries to... minimize it? Drown out her thoughts, limit her contact with Ments. And, least healthily, very rigidly managing herself. Because there’s so much of her that exists outside of herself, without her control, she tries to either filter or completely suppress everything else. Part of why she got into modeling, she can perform and be perfect and have total control over the final product of her body in the photographs for whatever campaign. Some Day This Will Be Better. But definitely not where she is in current canon.

How has your Button changed since the Incident with Hope?: Developed many new anxieties and disorders and syndromes :) She also became way more self-conscious, as in literally conscious of and way more tightly monitoring herself, what she’s thinking, what she’s expressing, how she’s sitting, etc. Less emotive face, more rigid posture.

If they weren’t an Aeon student, what would they be doing?: Sab would have beaten herself up forever if she “proved everyone right” by avoiding Unity/Ments entirely, so she’d want to stay in the family business somehow. She probably would have ended up doing scientific research on mental agility. Maybe even working for Mirrortech or some other biotech company, which I imagine would have been an interesting conversation to have with the family.

RANDOM FACTS:

Zodiac sign: Like I said, I assigned her Libra months ago for the sake of a template. But I don’t know enough about astrology to commit. Libra or Leo, probably.

Hobbies: Music, reading poetry, “cooking” (i.e., sitting on the counter and not helping while Nick makes dinner)

Likes: Watching other people (Nick) play video games, dressing up, taking long showers/baths, dark chocolate with caramel, back hugs

Dislikes: Being patronized, hot weather, going to the doctor, driving, doing anything she is not good at

Type of bedsheets: Bamboo.

Drink of choice: Cucumber mint lemonade! For hot drinks, some kind of caramel coffee. For alcohol, she refuses to get drunk because she’s terrified of having even less control of her mental broadcast, but at home/around people she trusts she’ll have a glass or two of wine. Doesn’t know enough to be picky, but doesn’t like it too sweet.

Favorite food: Probably some pasta dish Nick makes with asparagus and tomatoes and a lot of garlic.

Favorite color: Like a light turquoise!

Favorite music: Music to her was another mind-shielding tactic before anything else, so she tends to like upbeat-ish electronic/pop stuff. Catchy and repetitive, and/or with lots of personality to drown out her own thoughts. On the other end of the spectrum, she does have a soft spot for crackly, lo-fi, old or old-sounding slow songs—something about fuzzy recordings simulating a weak telepathic signal.

Favorite season: Hmm, spring and autumn are both good. She likes either side of winter.

Anything else you’d like to share: My heart and a long, fulfilling marriage, with anyone who reads all this 💍

[maddiefriendlovesbilly]

Spencer x Ghost?

Spencer x Ghost

(AAAAA- it has been months since you sent this to me, and all i can say is im so sorry) Side note I have my friend @lethalbreadkills helping me with this one!

For reference: Maddie (maddiefriendlovesbilly) is green, Jimmy (lethalbreadkills) is red (((its 4:30 at the time i have joined this so im dead braincell wise sorry yall))) and Orange is stuff we decided together :3

Also this is so very chaotic im so sorry for this anon but this has been in my fuckin drafts for SO LONG and this is the only way its getting finished (its now 5 am uwu) im so sorry for all the shitposting i do its a mess. I shouldnt have been allowed here. (we finished at about 5:30 am its hell <3)

Sphost? Ghencer?? Sphoster??? I adore and despise them all equally.

We have decided that it should be BeanieGhost

Anyway I think this ship is really cute

They’re both so neurotic I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue

One of them starts a rant on some topic and the other joins the hell in

I’m an advocate of LETTING SPENCER INFO DUMP BECAUSE HE DESERVES IT OKAY

And Ghost would let this dream come true???

I would die for both of them and if Spencer told me I had to die I wouldn’t even complain, no questions I’d just be like “Aight.” I trust him that much.

(Not sure I trust Ghost’s judgment enough to do that unquestioningly; sorry Ghost)

Back on topic

I can’t imagine these guys on anything that comes close to society’s definition of a date

It’d be more like “hey you wanna come on this hunt with us?” “maybe, depends if there’ll be snacks” or like chilling in Spence’s room binging the entire star trek: original series in one sitting or “oops sorry about that level 11 entity that attached to my soul and is now wreaking havoc in your house, wanna make out later to make up for it?” “Fine but you also have to play three rounds of Call of Duty with me afterward”

They wouldn’t be romantic often but like highkey? I can see them throwing themselves into the line of fire for each other with a recklessness only they could survive

We can’t forget that Spencer is a more than 60,000-year-old overpowered demon/god/entity/thing, which, yes, could throw a slight wrench in this ship for multiple reasons, but I choose to make angst out of it instead.

Side note: Ghost is a chronic conspiracy theorist (and you can’t tell me otherwise) and every once in awhile Spencer will offhandedly say something like “Y’know I helped the Egyptians build the pyramids” and Ghost just goes fucking feral.

Look, I’m not saying Spencer IS touch-starved and most likely has issues creating and developing relationships and therefore avoids interpersonal connection, especially offline, but I AM saying he is prime material for it. (thats a lie thats exactly what shes saying don’t believe it) (I’m projecting okay dont judge me) (loser imagine projecting)

Imagine with me for a second: Why does Spencer willingly stay with a family who locks him in their basement with only minor complaining? He’s a near all-powerful entity just released into the world for Spence’s-sake - If he wanted to, there’s no telling what havoc he could wreak! So why doesn’t he? Why would someone so powerful, so terrifying, so dangerous that a group of people decided to seal him away forever stay with the first family he finds in sub-par conditions for years - especially someone who’s seen to be as high-maintenance as Spencer? Let me hit you with a theory: He’s chasing the feelings of validation, safety, and love - no matter how rarely it’s shown - that a family can provide. Being socially isolated for even a few years can do a number to a person’s psyche (I should know, I’m projecting onto this character right now), let alone thousands.

Now maybe Ghost can’t match thousands of years in isolation, but damn if he doesn’t have a few years of crippling loneliness on his record too.

I can see the two of them learning how to be vulnerable around others together, emotionally and physically; learning how to open up and how to talk through issues; and some third point, because points are better in threes.

(May I suggest that these losers are both trans but thats just me adding in my own projection lmao)

(You absolutely may)

Imagine the conversation thats just “so i have a murderer in my head thats an ass” “rip to u ig sounds like a you problem :///”

imo spence has trouble expressing emotions other than like,,, annoyance and haughtiness, its like sort of his go-to defence, so showing Ghost his emotions is a big step for him

I hear you, and i say yes good. (found this one headcanon that i kinda live by where he was uh, either autistic or adhd i dont remember but theres that too) OH yeah that would be at thing huh. Spencer: *is emotionally vulnerable @ ghost* ghost: oh shit im trusted??? Oh fuck uh.

Yeah so like…. Ghost and spence showing emotion at eachother is kind of :flushed: ghost be like: whats an emotion. Imagine having emotions fuciiing loser hhaha,,,, *laughs nervously*

Ghost is also very emotionally distant with most people so it would probably be like “what??? The fuck?? Emotions?????? You have those???”

Ghost and Spencer be like *gay*

So another idea is that maybe Spencer realizes Ghost doesnt play any games [like the uncultured SWINE he is] and decides he must [remedy] this and so he introduces him to like, nintendo first. (some bitches thought that said nintendo fortnite. Im bitches) and theyre playing like, mario kart or smash or smth and Ghost gets really [fuckin into it]

Ghost and spencer: *literally in eachothers laps playing fucking wii tennis*

Spooker: what are the- *TOAST FUCKING SLAPS A HAND ACROSS HIS MOUTH* shut up you dont wanna know what happens when its mentsonssbfdjfsd (sorry i had a stroke uwuwuwuw)

(Theyre in denial we don’t judge in this house)

They will not hesitate to play dirty either, they will straight up push each other over and vaguely flirt

Ghost is losing and straight up fucking goes “ur hot” and spencer actually dies and boom ghost is the winner. sparkle emoji Magic sparkle emoji

“I am Not a HomoSexual:™:” “Yeah, sure you aren’t” “Screw off”

Pet-names-ish: Asshole, Gaymer-Boy, casual insults, Mr. Spirit Bitch, Mistake, Loves Ghosts More Than His Boyfriend What A Fucking Loser aka Gay-ass

Pros:

They both open up a lot most likely. Gain someone to trust since they’ve sort of been through the same things (though on much different scales)

I can see soft hours of hanging in each other’s bedrooms

Spencer is a tsundere you cant tell me otherwise youre just a coward if you disagree

So is Ghost so this can only go well

Every time Ghost has to solve a case at the Acachallas Spence is just peaking out from his basement like “the fuck is this?? Hot Man??????”

Enemies to lovers 500k (Gets Hot and Steamy :flushed: NOT CLICKBAIT!!!!11!!!!! 18+!!!!!!! GAY LOVE StORY!!!!!!) Lemonz!!! Made from teh Sexiest of Wattpaders UWUWUWU YAOI Boys Love don’t like don’t read!! (this is so fucking stupid jkfnd) I hate this with a passion Q^Q. All my years of being a basic watpad fanboy have helped me to the moment i bring maddie to tears

The steam is just like,,,,, holding hands and being angy all the fuckin time the steam is literal because their anger translates into actual steam

Cons:

Their angst has nowhere to go and it just sits between them like two raccoons at a dumpster-style mexican standoff

They really start off hating each other huh. Like, I know this can still lead to healthy relationships but neither of them are very good at healthy relationships with people he hasn’t known for his Whole Life so that’s an Oh No.

They totally feed off of each other’s stupidity (but this could be seen as a pro too so take that as you will) as well as anger - im talking one-upping each other kinda shit

Its ridiculous honestly how intense it gets, like they straight up need intervention sometimes because they dont realize they can just STOP

Conclusions:

I think this would be a relationship that would that a lot of time and hard work to make work, but i think in the end it would be really super cute!! Like it would make no fuckin sense to anyone else but somehow they’d understand each other and help each other through their similar issues. Also theyre both big nerds in different ways and i think they’d have just ranting sessions back and forth over and over and it would be soft!!!!! So yeah, i think it would work, at least, i want it to :D

So. Maybe?? I feel like it could, but they’d need to work pretty hard to make it healthy and not constant fighting. Could be stupid amounts of cute and wholesome but also could be stupid amounts of oh no and pain, depending on how the two act. If they learned how to get along with each other and work past their differences it could be super cute and soft. Just a very, er, bumpy beginning. And middle. And end. (this makes me very nervous,,,,why did you mention an end) (wouldnt you like to know weather boy) (TvT) UFDUNS bumpy but soft . Agreeing with the loser gay, want this to work it’d be interesting :3

[adrunkgiraffe]

I have been through this journey before, so I get to be actually frustrated about it.

IUnder a read more because im not subjecting y’all to this. Also: I should caveat I haven’t watched the episode cause I’m waiting till its on Netflix but I have watched way too many other episodes of Supernatural so I have a right to say these things. 

TL;DR: I mean you all knew Cas’ confession was fucking bullshit and that SPN is...hm. But I’d like to actually express my genuine frustration, for a moment? I’m going to say things you already know, but I have too much knowledge of this show and too much stupid meta in my brain about a series I haven’t genuinely enjoyed for at least 5 years which makes this not just blandly bad but disgustingly insulting to me not even as a gay just as like. A writer?

Or, even shorter: Cas’ confession is just a Charlie Bradbury Speedrun 

So. As some of you may know if, for some reason, you followed me back in 2013 (and till...okay fine 2015), I used to be, uh. Really into SPN. Really, I was into Destiel. Like, as in, I slogged through seasons 1-3 to get to Cas and am also really vulnerable to the Sunk Cost Fallacy and projecting onto characters. (I was in 8th grade in 2013, okay? Get off my back)

Also, because I monopolised use of the TV, I kind of...also got my parents into it? In a “this is silly but fun” kind of way.

Over time, critiques of the show from viewers, learning what queerbaiting is at all, fatigue with how long it was going, and also fatigue from how characters I enjoyed, like Rufus, or Crowley, or Ellen, or Jo, or Kevin, or Charlie, or Cas a few times, kept getting killed off. As time went on, it didn’t escape my notice that, aside from Cas, all of these characters fit one or more of the following criteria:

They were a woman

They were a person of color

Were Queer or Queer-coded in some way (listen Crowley was bad rep but at least Mark Sheppard actually kissed a man on screen)

I also just...generally got tired of the way the show treats women and sidelines people of color. 

The final straw really came with Charlie’s death. It got us all excited, because she hadn’t been back in a bit! And it was interesting to see how reuniting with her dark side from Oz had changed her! (yeah remember the fucking Wizard of Oz storyline? The writers sure don’t!) And maybe she’d get developed! Because at this point, Charlie and the fairly good writing of her character was a major upside for the series! Charlie was cool, fun, gay, and morally complex in a way...none of the female characters had been before her, in large part because by definition, her relationship with the boys would always be platonic.

And then. Offscreen. She is violently murdered. For no damn good reason. Like, literally, her being brought back in this episode after fucking off to europe after having returned from fucking off to Oz seems to have filled two purposes in total. 

The codex is solved (but Sam doesn’t know till next episode)

Charlie is dead, which means Dean can be angry, specifically at Sam, and kill more people because he’s the big bad this season. 

That’s it. Two things. Twooooo whole reasons to do this episode. Whoopee. 

But you didn’t come here for this, you came here for me to rip this reveal to shreds. Don’t worry, I’ll get there. What I want in your minds is that Supernatural already had a really good anddynamic queer character. And then they killed her off to make Dean angry. No, it doesn’t matter that they brought her back in season 13 or whatever. They made that decision. 

After the rage this incited, I started realizing general flaws in the writing (I had probably already noticed them but now I was angry enough to complain.) Every conflict is born of Sam and Dean not communicating/taking on burdens and Dean being angry at Cas for reasons that ranged from good to ridiculous, but in a way that always went way too fucking long, (which...yes, does make the “you do it for love” gifs fucking hilarious). It didn’t help that seasons 11 and 12 were next, which meant Demon Dean and GOD’S FUCKING SISTER, plus the decision to resurrect Mary, which, while I do like her later scenes, as a season 12 finale it...well I’ll be honest it kinda sucked. It undercut the majority of the Winchester’s’ arcs and their slow and painful journey out of their father’s toxic vengeance quest and knowing Mary as a person when it’s too late to know her was one of the last semi-compelling grounders of the narrative. 

By this point it was a hate-watch for my parents and I.

So then, I’m at college, and I’m not watching anymore cause I don’t have the motivation or access to Hulu to continue, and SPN is bad. I watch the Scooby Doo crossover when it comes out and my friend and I make fun of it, and we also continue making jokes about Dean and Cas and queerbaiting because we’re queer, but I don’t keep up. My Dad does though, so when I return, I watch some with the fam and lads. It’s even more tiring without context. 

So flash forward to Quarantine, my sister, the only one with taste, has left, and we have run out of netflix to watch. So we return to the well, and seasons 13-14 are. I’m gonna say it. Bad. Really fucking bad. The cycle of bad communication continues, season 14 has like seven antagonists and the way it’s structured makes it so I literally cannot remember the timeline of a season I watched 3 months ago. Oh also, they have a queer coded cannibal snake monster for...well I guess Jack’s snake bud was cool but like. Huh wow it’s almost like these writers don’t handle queers well. 

Our one saving grace is Cas, but he’s barely in any episodes, though I did note that his deal with the empty, being happy completely for one moment killing him, that struck me as “this has potential and I know they’re gonna half-ass it somehow.” Also Jack and Mary, but then oh...plot….The most compelling it gets is literally the finale.

But then, 3 days later, the first half of season 15 comes out on Netflix and it’s...actually kind of acceptable. The new character they give Jack’s actor is fun to watch him play until they make him evil. Exploring just how toxic Chuck can be gave the series direction again. The alternate future was genuinely scarring, and Eileen’s return was genuinely moving. Most of all, though, Cas got the opportunity to tell Dean no, that Dean was being unfair to him, had always been unfair to him, and he was sick of it. I had no illusions, I knew Destiel was never gonna happen, and Cas was gonna die, but giving him that bit of agency, letting Cas grow and be self-sufficient, and be angry with Dean not for existential reasons but interpersonal ones, was such a good sign for me, and Dean grew too! Dean fucking apologized for being horrible and Jensen Ackles had a...yknow what, ill give it to him, he had a good acting moment. 

But the thing. About. The “I love you.” 

Let’s take it in parts.

What was good: I’m gonna admit it, lads, “Wanting what I can’t have” - AS A LINE - is good, and, structurally, there is something to the Empty Deal that could have been an interesting aspect of Cas’ arc when it comes to self actualization and being on even footing with Dean. The problem is, this is Supernatural, and that arc only comes up when I bring it up because character study, even in bad media, is fun for me. 

What was bad:

I mean. Like. All of it? All of it. 

Okay. Fine. I’ll be specific. 

Cas dies immediately when - possibly because- he is revealed as having feelings for Dean. They kill him as they queer him, that’s a Bury Your Gays Speedrun right there.

Like the least they could have done is have him mention it to someone in another scene or something to establish some romantic feelings on the part of canon a full episode beforehand. That would have been the literal bare minimum. 

When Cas starts praising Dean, for some reason both the writing and Misha’s acting take a bit of a downswing (from...where it already was). Cas, whose most powerful moment this season was acknowledging that Dean’s anger at him is cruel and unfair, flatly praises him for doing everything out of love and it reads with a misunderstanding of both Dean as a character and Cas’ understanding of Dean. Dean is angry! VERY ANGRY! And it’s a problem he needs to work on and rarely does. 

Talking out of my ass, a better speech would have been about how Dean is angry because of his love for Sam, family, and the people around him, how, for better or for worse, he can’t help but be angry on behalf of others, and that his journey of moving that tendency towards the better is what made Cas care so much. Guys this alteration to the metaphor took 2 minutes to write tops I am an Art History student and these are TV WRITERS WITH YEARS OF EXPERIENCE CAN YOU TELL THEYRE NOT TRYING YET? 

A better speech would, of course, have come out of a better series. My point: this part was half-assed. Poorly written. Wow it’s almost like the series is also poorly written. 

 Also, Misha is the better actor of the three(***OF THE THREE), but his choices in that scene are jarringly out of character which. Makes the bad writing worse. It doesn’t help that they cut to the same fucking shot of Dean 3 times. The chemistry in that scene makes it feel so fucking hackneyed. Because it is. 

This combines lead me to the point: (wait there was a point to this?)

As someone who does not have the luxury of watching this capsized ship fall into boiling seas from a distance, it is less insulting to me that they did this so last minute and then sent Cas to the Void than it is how they did it. They had ingredients for something that could have been compelling enough to me as a former fan of the show to think that they had put effort into it, that they had decided months, perhaps even years ago to do this, and had crafted a storyline around it. That this was an intentional decision they cared about. It wasn’t. It was barely even pandering, because it’s almost insultingly blatant. 

SPN kinda proved to me that it didn’t care about queers when Charlie was killed off. It proved it to me again when Cas, not only died in confessing his love for Dean but did it in the weakest result of what could have been a surprisingly strong story.

[farmhandler]

Subtle

Rating: T

Pairing: Kolivan/Keith

Warnings: Some alien biology, that’s about it

CH: 1/1

A/N: fic/art trade with the wonderful @kolikeith. They requested anything koliveith where another member realizes they are together, which I am only happy to provide!

Regris hates mornings.

It is anunspoken gripe that he has held for what feels like decaphoebs. The Blade of Marmora are early risers by necessity no matter the cycle nor the system. Their latest missions have lead them into systems that have a cycle much shorter than Regris is used to, and as a result they have been sleeping less often and waking more. The sporadic few vargas of sleep they all have managed has been wearing on his team.

Duty first, Kolivan would tell him. Ah, what he would do to sleep in.

“Quiznak,” he swears, vaulting out of bed in one fluid movement. He thwaps his tail against his bedframe in irritation as he makes quick work of his bed and then heads into their communal bathroom space. The other blades are already up and about as he makes his way to the bathroom to wipe his body clean of the moisture it produced overnight. He feels naked without his suit, but it would not make sense to dirty his clothing first thing in the morning.

“Regris,” Antok says as he passes. He is a blade of few words, but some of them he reserves for Regris. They have a strange sort of companionship not found within many of the blade ranks stationed here.

“Did Kolivan mention anything about the data we’ve been decoding?” Regris asks him, getting straight to the point. Antok eats early, and so does Kolivan, and usually Keith if he isn’t trying to get killed on some suicide mission.

Antok shrugs his shoulders. Regris’ tail swings behind him.

“You’re useless,” he says without meaning it, leaving Antok to finish his morning routine and wash his body clean.

To his surprise, he sees Keith leaning against the wall out in front of the communal space, wearing what he can only assume is the human equivalent to sleepwear. Humans have an affinity for dressing in loose clothing at night.

Regris is about to offer him a greeting when Kolivan comes out of the bathroom’s entrance, tugging at the wrists of his suit like he has just finished putting it on. He moves out of the doorway and looms over Keith, saying something quietly to him that has Keith smiling.

Regris stops moving. His tail thrashes behind him. Kolivan does not bathe often, and he is always early. Regris can count on one claw how many times they have met like this. He doesn’t particularly want to awkwardly shuffle past the pair, but the wet state of his skin is bothering him now more than ever.

Someone catches Kolivan’s attention. He steps away from Keith hastily to address them, and Keith looks around like he is surprised to find that they are in public.

When he catches sight of Regris, his face starts to turn pink. Regris cocks his head.

“Keith,” he says on approach. “Have you had a chance to check on the decoding algorithm that we’ve been running? Kolivan wouldn’t let me spend the night with it.”

“Because he knew you’d never leave,” Keith points out. Regris doesn’t point that if he stays up, he doesn’t have to war his way through every morning. He is looking forward to the day they can eradicate sleep entirely. “And no, I haven’t. Everyone on team echo is busy preparing for Kral Zera.”

Kral Zera. The ceremony meant to repair the broken empire. The ceremony that the blades are going to sabotage with a dozen bombs and take out the highest in their ranks.

“I’ll check on it later,” Regris says, and then he awkwardly shuffles past Keith and Kolivan to get to the bathroom.

---

Regris’ concern is always his code. Data. Interpersonal relationships are the furthest thing from his mind when he’s focused on a mission, but even Kral Zera has him rattled.

It is in the middle of the cycle, while a huge batch of data is being processed that he decides to take a rare break and head towards the cafeteria for some food. His stomach helpfully reminds him he skipped breakfast by growling loudly.

He is nearing the cafeteria when he catches the scent of Keith wafting from the other end of the hall. He picks up his pace, eager to find Keith and enumerate over the details of the Kral Zera mission.

When he turns the corner, he is once again surprised by the presence of Kolivan. Lately, the two of them have been appearing together more often than not, their scents intermingling in a way that Regris does not like. Or at the very least, he isn’t certain how to take. It is true that Keith is a valued member of the blades, but his days of being a vratling following its mother are over.

He watches them speak indistinctly, noting the downturn of Keith’s mouth to mean that the conversation is not going well. He lifts his arms in a gesture of expression his frustration, then points in a random direction. His voice echoes a little louder, but Regris still can’t make it out.

“I have been looking for you, Keith,” Regris says upon approach. Both of them turn to stare at him, and he inexplicably feels as though he is intruding. He salutes Kolivan. “I had some questions about the mission for Kral Zera.”

“You are not the only one,” Kolivan tells him. “I had intended to summon the entire team, but since you’re already here, I’ll speak freely.”

“Of course.” Regris inclines his head.

“I was just discussing with Keith how the mission is critical, and that we cannot let our emotions get the better of us.”

Keith scowls openly as Kolivan remains tense beside him. He is standing much closer than the spacious hallway would warrant, but Regris is not one to question.

“Of course,” Regris repeats, looking between them uncertainly. “The mission first.”

“At least you remember it,” Kolivan says, sounding quite unlike himself for a moment. He’s looking at Keith.

“We’re going to be fine,” Keith insists calmly. For all of Kolivan’s talk of holding back one’s emotions, he seems….distraught.

“My simulations have confirmed this is the best course of action,” Regris adds. Kolivan’s expression does not change, his scent sharp with unease. “They will be distracted by the goings-on above, and the entire sector will be guarded by a ghost staff.”

“For once we will benefit from the Galra Empire’s brutality,” Kolivan says, sounding resigned. “I know you will both perform…admirably.”

“Like we always do. We’ll get it done.” Keith turns to Kolivan. “This is going to work.”

“I am not concerned with the mission’s success,” Kolivan states, staring down at Keith. His fingers brush against Keith’s side, and Regris wants to point out there is plenty of space to his right.

“I’ll be returning to my data sets,” Regris says.

“Let me know what you find,” Kolivan tells him, his eyes flicking briefly in his directly before he returns to Keith.

---

Regris doesn’t see Keith alone until a few days later, right before the mission is meant to start.

The first thing he notes is the smell.

Not his smell, but the scent coating his person. It is obviously Kolivan’s. They have been spending much more time together as of late prepping for the mission, so it is not entirely surprising. They eat lunch together often as well, and Keith can be found in Kolivan’s office on any quintant.

“Ready?” Regris asks. Keith nods, and then Regris can’t help but add, “Kolivan appears worried this time around. My simulations and datasets didn’t calm him like they usually do.”

“Yeah,” Keith replies slowly, pulling his hood over his head. “He’s…distracted, I think. Talk about an emotional wreck,” he mumbles under his breath, in a tone that Regris assumes Keith thinks he cannot hear.

“We’ll be fine,” he adds. “It’s a big mission, but isn’t it always? We’ve been through worse.”

Even though it doesn’t sound like Keith is talking to him, Regris nods.

“And another thing—”

“Keith.”

Kolivan’s voice suddenly sounds from beside them. Neither of them flinch at the sharp tone of his voice, too used to surprises as a spy unit, but Keith’s eyes instantly light up.

“Kolivan!” he says, stepping forward. He pulls his hood down. “Aren’t you supposed to be briefing team alpha?”

“Yes, I was. I just finished. As if I could leave without my echo,” he says fondly. Regris’ tail flicks behind him. His scent wafts over; he smells like Keith smells like him.

Ah, he thinks as he watches Kolivan take Keith’s braided hair in hand, making some excuse that he has done it incorrectly. Recently, Keith had decided to grow a braid. Regris is a Galra half-breed, and since he does not grow hair, its significance often escapes him.

He watches Kolivan stroke his fingers down the length in an intimate gesture and thinks, ah.

“Ah,” he says out loud.

Kolivan jerks like he just realizes Regris is there. He was near the doorway, shadowed partially, so it is possible. Apparently, many things are possible.

And now Kolivan is staring at him like he wants to murder him. As if he were to blame for his flagrant display of affection. Regris swallows, then gestures to his pad. “I was just reviewing the data with Keith.”

“The data. Yes.” He clears his throat. “Very well. I would like to hear about it. Please continue.”

Keith’s face is pink again. As the pieces are still slowly coming together, Regris remembers vaguely that it is an indicator for embarrassment, or perhaps happiness?

“If you look at this diagram, it should be easy for our spies to hide here, and then with our blades they can slice through the metal wall after arriving here…”

All the while he speaks, Kolivan stands closer to Keith than is socially acceptable among the hierarchy. Then, when Regris moves to scribble at his pad and correct a mistake, out of the corner of his eye he sees Kolivan lean down, and Keith lean up.

“I have corrected the mistake,” he announces loudly. When he lifts his head, they are both looking at him innocently. He says nothing to the pair—they will hear enough later once this gets out, but his tail swings gently back and forth, and for once he hopes that there will be a peaceful end to this adventure soon.

Mostly, so he can sleep in one morning. For once.

[holdthosebees]

Reasons: A Study

So. I want to talk about anchors, and parallels, and That Line from mag 167. 

MARTIN: So, when you say Gertrude wouldn’t have been able to go on without a reason-- JON: Yes, Martin, you are my reason. 

First, while we’re all melting down about the adorable queerness of this exchange, I want to nail down exactly what they mean. 

On one level, it’s a declaration of romantic devotion. It seems pretty clear also that what Jon is alluding to is that, without Martin, he wouldn’t be going to the panopticon; he wouldn’t be trying to fix the world at all. Instead, he would be “resigning” himself to “ruling [his] domain,” which is a fancy and way of saying ‘going full Beholding, turning full monster, and spending the apocalypse siphoning the suffering out of his victims. In short: having Martin around, having someone prompting him keep moving in a semi-linear fashion towards a concrete goal, and having a relationship he cares about protecting is what’s keeping him human. Or, as close to human as he can get, anyway. This is... complicated. There are people who are reading it as super romantic, and I get that! I don’t in any way want to say that they’re wrong, and this post isn’t about how Jon and Martin’s relationship is secretly Bad and Doomed or whatever. But TMA has consistently shown itself to be a show willing to dive into the messy bits of relationships between traumatized people, and ‘this one person is the only thing keeping me from spiraling into monster hood’ is definitely messy. 

There are a few parallels that immediately spring to mind, and I’d like to go through them one by one.  First: the obvious parallel, and the one that most people are drawing, is to Martin’s line in 158:

[MARTIN]: And then Jon came back, and suddenly I had a reason...

This is a line I see quoted out of context a lot, in the ‘tumblr likes to take bits of text and mash them together to make moodboards’ way. Often, in more Jon/Martin-y contexts, the sentiment behind it is filled in based on the line that came before it: “Maybe I just thought joining up with you would be a good way to get killed.” The implication drawn, then, is that Martin is saying that Jon coming back gave him a reason to live.  That is, however, not actually what he’s saying! This quote is actually rarely quoted in its entirety; what Martin actually says, specifically, is

[MARTIN]: And then Jon came back, and suddenly I had a reason to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control so you didn’t take it out on him. And if that meant drifting further away, so what? I’d already grieved for him. And if it meant now saving him, it was worth it.

By drifting further away, he doesn’t just mean from Jon--he’s talking about his choice to keep working with Peter, to keep pushing himself into the Lonely. Jon coming back, in context, didn’t so much give him a reason to live as it did give him a reason to sacrifice himself. He was still aware that he was losing himself, and might wind up dying; Jon being around just made that feel meaningful.

This, I feel it should be noted, is exactly what Elias was counting on. Martin made the choice to continue on his own, to try to jump on the grenade without telling anyone that it was there, and this turned out to be a huge mistake. It was one heavily influenced by grief, by trauma, and by the impact the Lonely had already had on his mind. 

It was also the exact opposite of what Jon’s saying now--except for the ways in which it isn’t. They both cite one another as their reason for working towards a goal that they know might be impossible, because the act of protecting each other gives meaning to a potentially meaningless existence. For Martin, though, that meant courting avatar-dom, while Jon is trying to push it away. For Martin, this singleminded devotion turned out to be unhealthy; his prioritization of what he thought Jon needed from him over his own wellbeing wound up causing both him and Jon a lot of grief. And as for Jon...

Well. We don’t know yet. Jon and Martin are alone together in a horrific apocalypse landscape, so singleminded devotion is kind of par for the course. Martin is literally the only good thing Jon has left in the world, so I’m not going to say that he’s wrong for using Martin as a grounding point. And we know, from previous seasons, that focusing on building positive, trusting relationships is one of the things most effective in maintaining humanity! 

At the same time, though, there’s another parallel I’d like to talk about--and that’s the parallel between Jon and Martin’s relationship and Daisy and Basira’s.  The first thing that “you are my reason” pinged for me, right off the bat, was the memory of Elias calling Basira Daisy’s last tether to humanity in season 3. Their relationship for the latter half of season 3 mirrored Jon and Martin’s season 5 relationship in a number of ways; mainly, the more monstrous partner (Daisy, Jon) who’s thrust into the thick of things (fighting monsters, trying to manage the Beholding) to protect the human partner (Basira, Martin), who meanwhile is anchoring said monstrous partner to their humanity while basically hanging out and making big picture plans anti-Elias plans. 

It’s not a perfect parallel, obviously, but the dynamics are there. They’re both avatar-human relationship based around that idea of a single anchor point--and, whoo boy, did Daisy and Basira problematize that dynamic. Daisy killed people, and Basira turned the other way. The fact that Daisy was so reliant on Basira to act as her moral compass means that, in the cases where Basira didn’t interfere, her own moral compass degraded. Her reliance on Basira to anchor her meant she wasn’t anchoring herself, and, combined with Basira’s enabling, that lead her down an extremely slippery police-brutality lined slope. 

Why is this relevant to Jon and Martin? Because the justification Martin gave when trying to convince Jon not to feel guilt after Not!Sasha--that it’s fine to kill monsters, as long as you aren’t going after innocents--is extremely reminiscent to how Basira and Daisy justified Daisy’s actions for a long time. 

In Mag91, when preventing Daisy from murdering Jon, Basira tells Daisy that she’s always known what Daisy’s been doing, but she was alright with it, because she thought Daisy just killed monsters. Like Martin turning Jon’s tape over to the archives crew, she steps in once she realizes that someone she thinks of as a person is also in danger. Later, when confronting Jon, she seems to draw a firm line between Daisy’s actions, which were compelled and so required no guilt, with Jon’s actions in going after innocents. Compare this line from Martin, in Mag166:

[MARTIN]:  This isn’t like it was before! We’re not talking about innocent bystanders in cafes here, Jon; these things are - th-they’re just evil, plain and simple, and right now they’re torturing and tormenting everyone! If you want to stop them and have the power to, then - then, then yeah, let’s do it, let’s go full Kill Bill!

Once again, we’ve got a clear black and white moral boundary: if you want to kill monsters, that’s fine, because the things you’re killing aren’t human. There’s the differentiation between compelled attacks on innocents, and the choice to go after things that are evil. Both Martin and Basira brushed aside their partner’s guilt, on the basis of compulsion; both Martin and Basira encouraged them to use their powers to go after monsters, which they considered morally justified. The circumstances are different--Basira didn’t want Daisy to die, while Martin wants Jon to stop blaming himself for the end of the world--but the choices they’re making are in some ways very similar.  

We know where that goes for Daisy and Basira. Basira, while initially Daisy’s reason for staying human, also becomes her reason to return to the Hunt. She, like season 4 Martin, makes the choice to give up on her humanity to save the person she’s anchored to; unlike Martin, nothing stops her before she goes through with it. We’ll have to wait until the Hunt episode of this season to see how it ends, but it’s definitely not going to be happy. 

All of which is to say--it was a sweet moment that shows some great development in their relationship, but if Martin is Jon’s one reason for staying grounded, we have historical reason to believe that this isn’t necessarily a good thing. It is, at the very least, a complicated thing, and something that probably won’t escape the same exploration of codependency, us-vs-them mentality, self destructive behavior, and interpersonal responsibility that has shown up in almost every relationship in the podcast. This time, though, the stakes are even higher--if Jon loses himself, he doesn’t just kill a few people, he becomes what the Beholding intends for him to be. 

(This also isn’t even getting into the weeds of codependency in regards to Martin’s caretaker trauma, and what it means to be relied upon as the sole person keeping another human being grounded and together, or how that ties into the ways in which trust in their communication seems to be slowly eroding over time and under--but that’s another post entirely.)

[ffwriteradvisor]

Character skill sets

Obviously, you don’t really want a character that brings nothing to the table. On the other hand, a character who can do anything and everything so good that they can compete with deities dedicated to the subject of the day is often too much for the average reader to believe. There’s also a matter of how well the skills mesh together in practice, the amount of variety brought to the table, the difference between a developed skill and a mere talent, the nature of the skills - are they the sort of thing that anyone can develop or are they based on some inherent trait? - and how age and life experience plays into building a character’s ‘resume’.

It’s, as you can tell by the small laundry list I just rattled off, a tricky business.

Good news - there aren’t any hard and fast rules to giving characters skills. There are some guidelines and you’ll often find yourself playing by ear to see if your latest take strikes a sour note or not, but there are only a few ways to really do it wrong and, even then, there’s ways to salvage it.

But let’s focus on the points I listed already.

Let’s Play ‘Pick The Protagonist’ - (The Problem Of The Unique Protagonist Asset)

How many stories have you watched or read where the main character has a special, one-of-a-kind ability that makes them stand out above all the other characters in the story?

The answer is probably ‘a lot’. It can take the form of a one-in-a-million power, a sacred sword that only allows one hand to wield it, a legacy passed down over the ages... there’s a lot to work with here.

There’s nothing wrong with doing that with your protagonist. It’s probably one of the better reasons for dragging a random person into the plot - if you’re the only person who can stop the end of the world because the anti-Doomsday weapon decided that it lives in your hand now, there’s not a lot you can do about it. But there’s also something to be said for a protagonist that doesn’t have a grand destiny giving him a fair shot at victory just by merit of existing.

Plus, like. There’s also logistical issues to deal with. So let’s address those.

Depending on the story or fandom that you’re working on, a unique protagonist asset isn’t feasible. Sometimes because such things don’t exist in-universe (One Piece would be a good example of a series where literally the only thing you need to be a contender is a will to succeed and a boat, though I guess you could consider Conqueror’s Haki or a Devil Fruit ability ‘unique assets’...), but sometimes it’s just because the canon main character of the story you’re writing for already has that asset on lock.

There are ways around the second - you can kill off the original guy and take their place through reincarnation as said-guy, plot erasure of the guy (just flat-out make it so he doesn’t exist, it’ll be fine), or just being a convenient runner-up who happens to meet the bare minimum requirements to be the guy.

You can also shoehorn your OC into position to turn the Chosen Uno into the Chosen Duo, though this path of action doesn’t have the best reputation historically thanks to the influence of the Dread Mary-Sue on fandom culture (I’ll be posting an article about that eventually), or change the story to make room for a large range of potential Chosen - this one specifically can allow for an added plot aspect, because suddenly there’s competition to achieve the final goal and complete the quest for whatever.

And on that subject, let’s jump to our next point!

The Problem With Superman (and how to challenge the man who has everything) 

Now, there’s no shortage of characters who, quite simply, are written to be good at everything - sometimes not even just good, but the very best ever. No, I’m not talking specifically about the Dread Mary-Sue, though the archetype associated with that term does often come with such a description. This is a pitfall just about anyone can fall into, irrespective of age, gender, background, or the originality of the work in question, even if the most blatant forms of it seem pretty easy to avoid.

Most writers know better than to make one character good at everything, but you get exceptions fairly regularly. Batman writers, for one, have a tendency to assume that Batman knows everything there is to know and can defeat anyone on his own ‘given enough prep-time’. There’s also the fact that a fair few Superman stories often have to call on Kryptonians or Kryptonite to make the plot complicated enough that the solution of ‘just move really fast and take advantage of invulnerability to punch/move/freeze/melt the problem before bad thing happen’ doesn’t work.

Then you have the more subtle examples. Where a character isn’t good at ‘everything’... just everything relevant to the plot and what we see of the setting. A good way to pick out this is to look at a story and start removing characters. Remove the science guy, the spy, the sidekick... If you can shave the cast down to your Super-suspect without having to change any major or middling-size plot points, twists, and story beats or having to shift the difficulty level of the setting, you probably have a problem.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for every story, especially if they have a very small cast to begin with. There’s also the fact that most stories are built around emotional journey’s instead of ‘use x skill to get to y place at z time’. But a lack of difficulty or danger played completely straight is something of a warning sign if you’re working with a genre that requires that there be some manner of challenge in the story.

So, let’s take a look at some of the more specific issues with power distribution.

Equal Opportunity Asskicking vs. There Can Only One Chosen One In This Town (how common is power in the setting and how does that affect the plot)

Have you ever thought about how many series - video games in particular - have the protagonist solve all the problems they come across, even the ones that seem like the sort of thing any rando could handle? Especially when you have a big organization that could theoretically handle a few of these things without the protagonist being present for everything?

It’s often hand-waved as ‘they’re not strong enough to deal with it’, but why would that make sense? If the setting is so dangerous, why isn’t there more people operating at or above the protagonist’s power level without being a member of the primary cast herd? If there’s such a dangerous colony of animals on this island, why are these fragile citizens still living there? Why is this martial art that’s so powerful and useful so goddamn rare and special despite its utility? How did such a weak person climb so far up in an organization that seems to value the punchinating power of its employees above all else?

It doesn’t make sense.

This is a problem that plagues a lot of series with an emphasis on fighting. The average person becomes an alien creature as the protagonists and antagonists gain more and more power and take down bigger and bigger opponents. The ante keeps going up and the rest of the world stays down where it started, which... well. Doesn’t make sense.

Think about Dragon Ball for a moment. On the Earth of that series, how many people would you say represent any kind of physical threat to the protagonists or the antagonists at any point in the story? I’m not asking over the course of the story if Dragon Ball-era Goku could stand even half a chance against Cooler, but if you took a specific episode from like... oh, I don’t know, the Cell Saga, how many people on the planet at that time would stand a chance of surviving the events of said-episode if they were brought into the blast radius of the plot?

The number is probably in the low tens. And the fact that, even with a lifetime of training in setting, the best chance for a person in that setting to survive that specific scenario would be coming from ‘superior’ alien stock such as the Saiyans.

And Cell isn’t even the top of the danger totem pole in setting.

Going back to our previous example, One Piece is a fairly good example of how to handle this. There are many routes of power in the series - Devil Fruits, Haki, training, inherent species traits, and more are possible in terms of physical strength, but there is also value given to intelligence and the ability to strategize and create unconventional solutions. Even the ‘weakest’ member of the Straw Hat Pirates, Usopp, who has no Devil Fruit, species ability, mutations, or, alterations, and only one form of Haki (fairly recently awakened and not even one of the offensive utility variants), is able to keep up with the rest of the crew by having a variety of weapons and skills he has developed himself. There’s also the fact that people in the setting tend to be fairly well developed to the danger levels of their relative environments, either in terms of physical strength or having strategies to deal with the dangers around them.

It still suffers from the emphasis on combat before most else, which is common in Shonen, but it at least feels fairly balanced compared to some other series that have a similar approach to strength in setting.

Besides power distribution in a setting, there are other things to consider beyond combat applicable skills.

Combo Platters/The Five Basic Food Groups (the importance of variety and moderation)

There are different types of skills that you need to balance when making a character, both in terms of variety and rationing them out in a reasonable manner.

There are career skills (good for making money, but not overly relevant to day-to-day life), utility skills (cooking, cleaning, basic home repair, etc.), recreational skills (art, music, other specific skills that aren’t necessary for day-to-day activities but lack the immediate financial reliability of career skills), interpersonal skills, and combat skills (self-explanatory).

Obviously, different skills have different ‘weights’ in terms of plot impact. A fighting series probably won’t make much of a character’s house painting skills unless it has an impact on their combat skills (which is entirely possible depending on how the writer goes about it), but someone knowing how to use a sword at a high level means that they’ve got a lot of physical capability to quite literally cut through the competition.

If you need a combat skill for a character... well, I already dedicated a post to talking about that specific range of skills. You can also apply their non-combat related skills to their fights in a tertiary sense - a lack of primary offense can lead to unorthodox tactics to bridge the gap.

But other skills have their uses too. It can allow you to make use of your characters outside of a combat context, reveal things about their character that might not be immediately obvious from their appearance - not just their interests, but background as well, though I’ll cover that a little later in more detail -, and bring them into the orbit of other characters naturalistically. You can only have so many Crash Into Hellos before the charm wears off for the audience.

In giving your character skills, you need to balance those skills. Making a character a ‘master of combat’ who can use any weapon under the sun like a master doesn’t work without some kind of supernatural explanation - martial artists tend to specialize. I’m not saying that you can’t have a character with multiple weapons skills - there’s a lot of historical real-world precedence for that, actually, usually in the combination of ‘ranged/close range/mid-range’. But a lot of those multiple weapon sets tend to be in sets that cover the weaknesses of the other weapons - sword, bow, and spear cover different combat ranges and needs, and there are various martial arts that teach their students weapons handling in conjunction with unarmed skills.

A generic ‘swords skill’ is non-functional - there are many types of sword in the world, varied by their size, weight, shape, and intended use in combat. Some swords are intended more for stabbing, others for slashing, and while you have more than a few that can do both, there are some are simple not built to stand up to the stresses of the other style.

They Didn’t Cover This In Kindergarten! (why you need to tailor skill-sets to your character’s life experience and background)

Another thing that can affect the size, nature, and diversity of a character’s skill set is their age, life experience, and background.

You wouldn’t expect a character that comes from nobility to have any concept of how to street fight without some kind of explanation attached. The same rule applies in reverse - you wouldn’t expect a character living in the gutter to know the nuances of fine manners and etiquette of nobility without a good reason. Depending on the period, a person from the second background couldn’t even be expected to know how to read.

That’s not to say you can’t use those things, but you have to have some kind of structure to support those additions. Maybe your noble doesn’t have the spotless background most would expect from one of their station or, in another scenario, someone pulled a Prince and Pauper switch back in the day and then neglected to switch them back. Same with your gutter rat - maybe they’re a fallen noble, maybe someone made a go at pulling a Pygmalion with them before losing interest, or maybe they’re an autodidact (that is to say, self-taught).

The age of a character can also affect the width and breadth of their skill set pool. People don’t expect five year olds to know much about anything - their reading skills are just getting started, their language skills a bit rough around the edges, and their ability to prepare food is generally limited to toast and toast-adjacent goods like sandwiches.

On the other hand, an elderly character, while having plenty of time to collect lots of skills, may not be able to utilize all of them anymore or might have even forgotten enough of them to be counter productive.

My grandmother, over the course of her life, has worked at several jobs that had fuck all to do with each other. She was a carhop at a drive-in, worked at a grocery store, worked at a local medical factory, worked at a guitar factory assembling instruments long enough to have a hand in every part of the process along with possessing the know-how to design a thing to make winding strings (I might be miss-remembering her exact description of the thing) faster and safer (and then not getting paid or credited for it after the company started using it), and drove bus for several years. She also had all the skills of an at-home housewife, a professional upholsterer, unprofessional seamstress, knows how to treat and care for wood furniture, knows how to work with and maintain leather (not how to make it though), was a very good cook until her physical condition no longer allowed her to handle such tasks, was physically capable enough at one point in her life to help with construction on her own home, and was a good enough artist that she was given two separate opportunities to go to college for the subject back in the 50′s.

That’s a lot of stuff. Each career - including housewife, as there’s a lot of work involved in homemaking - might provide for three to five distinct skills, a few of which would be extremely specific to that particular career path.

On the other hand, a lot of these skills haven’t been used for decades, meaning that not only would she be extremely out of practice, her understanding in a certain field might be anywhere from thirty to sixty years out of date. There’s also the fact that her physical condition is very different from what it was back then, meaning that even the skills she remembers how to preform correctly might not be feasible thanks to her own body failing to cooperate.

The Humble Bundle (varied skill-sets that come from specific careers/backgrounds).

As I touched on in the previous section about how to select certain skills for a character based on life experience and backgrounds (admittedly based on variety + how time factors into it, but that’s the point of specific focus sections), we‘re going to take a closer look at ‘skill clusters’.

You don’t have to cluster all of the character’s skills - in fact, I suggest making sure that you don’t do that, unless the character is specifically a bit character who is there to perform a specific function rather than being a long-term fixture in your cast - but there are some that simply are more expedient to cluster and can sometimes boggle the mind if the character sometimes lack some of those vital skills.

Say you have a character who’s a trucker (or, if you’re working with fantasy/sci-fi, the local equivalent of). They’d probably know how to handle a few different kinds of vehicles (in a mundane context, they’d probably be qualified for both commercial driving licenses and the unregistered kind most people have, but possibly also know how to handle loading vehicles), know how to repair their vehicle if it is damaged (this can vary in skill - knowing how to jury-rig a solution to a small inconvenience is very different from resurrecting a dead engine), have a good understanding of navigation, access to a trade-specific tongue (radio jargon, for one, if we’re still sticking with the mundane modern AU), know how to handle long hours of relatively boring work... and that wouldn’t even be the sum total of their skills tied in some way to this particular profession.

Still, it doesn’t read as an unrealistic amount of things for a single person to know how to do, does it?

On the other hand, if I gave you a character who’s... I don’t know, a generic protagonist of no particular employment and said that their list of skills includes navigation, medical knowledge, being an expert chef, trained fighter, classical ballerina, multiple languages, and limited telepathic ability, it reads as a bit much, doesn’t it? Especially when it just comes up out of nowhere without warning or even an allowance for being less than good at those things.

Part of it is that it takes time to learn how to do things, as we covered in the previous section. Having a talent or instinctive understanding for a particular subject can help cut down on that, but that can only excuse a few things - someone who’s a natural born fighter usually can’t turn that natural instinct towards language acquisition or legal understanding. The other part is that everyone knows that most people aren’t good at everything they turn their hand to, so even with a lot of effort, we wouldn’t expect a single person to be good at everything.

That’s why a diversified cast is important, so the needs of the group can be met in a more believable way, though there are also work arounds that can be used to keep the cast smaller or the inability of the group to meet those needs can be used to raise tension in the story. Injuries become a lot more notable when there’s no healer in the group, after all.

Gifts, Loans, and Hard-Earned Pay (the difference between talent, training, and temporary trades)

Now, there are a couple things you could use to ‘explain’ why a character is good at things. Like most of the points I’ve made so far, this is expanding on a few things I mentioned off hand in earlier parts of this article, such as the importance of age and life experience.

Now we’re going to be explaining the mechanics of why a person might be good at certain things. There are a few different approaches to this.

In terms of purely mundane ways, you have talent and training to explain why a person would have a certain level of ability with specific skills. These can’t universally be applied across the board, of course - you’d prefer someone with medical knowledge over someone who says that they have a ‘talent’ for it and there are other fields that require a person have a certain amount of instinctive ability to flourish. Most would agree that it’s important to have both in any given field - for example, art requires both talent (the ability to visualize what you want) and training (to transfer that vision to reality).

When dealing with supernatural settings, there are other routes. Boons from supernatural beings, familial inheritance, memories from a past life, temporary grants of power from special artifacts, and so on.

This can allow for a skill to be acquired quickly while also pushing along the plot in various ways, but there are a number of drawbacks to this one as well - a character who has been granted a supernatural power might lack the practical experience in how to use that power well, the memories of a past life don’t confer the physical conditioning required to actually pull off some of those skills or the world has moved on since those days, rendering those skills out of date and possibly useless, the artifact has a mind of its own and opinions on how it can/will be used, etc.

There are drawbacks to the more mundane routes as well. Training takes time and effort, along with coming with the risk that the character has been trained wrong or in a way that isn’t helpful to their current situation - ex. a medic who’s extremely competent in a hospital setting but is now stuck in a place where they have none of the resources they’re used to, a self-trained martial artist who doesn’t know how to modulate their force well and has a lot of holes in their technique because they never had a trainer to point that sort of thing out.

Talent can lead to a person becoming complacent with the idea that they’re automatically going to be good at a thing forever despite evidence around them to the contrary and make them frustrated whenever they do run into something they don’t quickly understand or make progress with.

On the upside, you can also use these to build off of each other. Training can help refine both talent and control over new gifts, a well-chosen gift can make a well-trained character something breathtaking, and discovering a previously untapped talent can throw a character who’s previously had to struggle for everything in their life a well-deserved bone.

Now, hopefully this covers enough points thoroughly enough to be helpful to everyone. If not, please shoot me a comment and I’ll try to expand on any areas I might have missed.

[skillsaus-blog]

Understanding others' Feelings

Understanding others' feelings is a very powerful thing. Not only can this help you make your partner feel closer to you, but it can also lead to a stronger, more satisfying relationship. Here are some of the things you should know about understanding others' feelings. If you are looking for ways to make your love life even better, then read on.

When you're with people, you feel a lot of things. You get bored, frustrated, excited, and downright tired. And you know that feeling of being in the wrong place. It can be easy to let these feelings push you away. If you want to bring your partner close to you again, you need to learn how to understand others' feelings.

The way you act in a relationship is a direct reflection of how you relate to others. So when you find yourself acting angry or happy, it's not because you're happy or angry, it's because you're behaving in a way that makes you feel good. Understanding other's feelings is one of the best ways to correct your behavior so you can make others feel good.

As you exercise, notice how you breathe: shallow, long, etc. As you listen to someone talk, look at their breathing: long, short, fast, or slow. They're getting exactly what they want from the conversation.

You need to think about all the different perspectives you have about a situation. When you take into account everyone's viewpoint, you start to realize that not everyone sees things the same way.

Understanding others' feelings can help you understand yourself. Each of us has a different way of relating to the world. Once you take all the perspectives you've had about something and put them all together, you will start to realize how the world works and what it takes to achieve your goals.

This type of understanding is very important in increasing your emotional intelligence. We all know how to react in certain situations, but we rarely do anything about it. An excellent way to learn how to interpret others' feelings is by taking a look at how you respond in different situations.

There are two types of understanding: Analytical and Synthetic. Synthetic understanding is a little easier to work with because it's already in your mind. If you know what you're feeling, you can do something about it. If you have no idea what you're feeling, then understanding others' feelings is much harder to do.

Synthetic understanding is easier to come by when you're dealing with people you really know well. Say for example, your boss, a good friend, or someone whom you can open up to. In this case, understanding others' feelings is a lot easier.

Understanding others' feelings doesn't mean you have to just take their word for it, but it's very effective for relationship building. There are a number of reasons for this.

Let's say your significant other is having some problems with her boss, but you think she's just a little bit unfair. Now, you've taken her feelings into consideration, and you can see that the boss does deserve it, but maybe she doesn't deserve it all. You can then understand why he did it.

Understanding others' feelings is a wonderful way to communicate with your loved ones. In fact, it will be even more effective if you can come up with a way to communicate with them in a different way. You'll learn how to take their feelings into consideration without having to be theone to do it.

Sources

This brief scanned the following sources (title, domain, description):

There Are Actually 3 Types of Empathy. Here's How They Differ--and How You Can Develop Them All (inc.com) - Understanding the 3 types of empathy can help you build stronger, healthier relationships.

Understanding Other People (for Teens) - Nemours KidsHealth (kidshealth.org) - Being able to predict how other people might feel, act, or react is a skill that helps us build better relationships. These tips can help you develop the skill of understanding others.

Understanding Others (psychologytoday.com) - Understanding other peoples' feelings is a catalyst for human connection.

Understanding Others (skillsyouneed.com) - Understanding others is crucial to developing empathy, a key part of emotional intelligence. Learn more about the skills that enable it.

Try to Understand Others (psychologytoday.com) - Tilt toward the positive, which is not looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. Given the brain's negative bias, you're only leveling the playing field.

Empathy And Understanding Others - Improve Your Social Skills (improveyoursocialskills.com) - Learn how to empathize with others, understand your own emotions, and avoid interpersonal conflicts and misunderstandings.

Understanding others' feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it? (theconversation.com) - While we need empathic skills to relate to others sometimes, too much empathy can be a bad thing.

Understanding Others' Emotions : How Do We Do It? (medium.com) - It's a Saturday night and you've just walked into a crowded room at a friend's party. The room is bumping and everyone is having a good time. As you turn the corner you recognize an old friend…

Understanding Another Person's Emotions An Interdisciplinary Research Approach (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) - An interdisciplinary research perspective is developed concerning the question of how we understand others' emotions and how reliable our judgment about others' emotion can be. After an outline of the theoretical background of emotions, we briefly discuss ...

How to Help Your Child Develop Empathy (zerotothree.org) - Yes, you can help your child be more empathetic! Try these practical tips to help infants and toddlers develop empathy and understand that others have different thoughts and feelings than they do.

Empathy - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) -

Ages & Stages: Empathy (scholastic.com) - Empathy is an important gateway to social and emotional growth in children. Poole, Miller and Church discuss how to nurture empathy in children at various age and develop

The Psychology of Emotional and Cognitive Empathy (lesley.edu) - The study of empathy is an ongoing area of major interest for psychologists and neuroscientists, with new research appearing regularly.

People with autism can read emotions and feel empathy (spectrumnews.org) - The notion that people with autism lack empathy and cannot recognize other people’s feelings is wrong.

understanding others' feelings Crossword Clue, Crossword Solver (wordplays.com) - Answers for understanding others' feelings crossword clue. Search for crossword clues found in the Daily Celebrity, NY Times, Daily Mirror, Telegraph and major publications. Find clues for understanding others' feelings or most any crossword answer or clues for crossword answers.

Understanding Others' Feelings: The Role of the Right Primary Somatosensory Cortex in Encoding the Affective Valence of Others' Touch (jneurosci.org) - Brain imaging studies in humans have shown the existence of a shared somatosensory representation in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), putatively involved in understanding others' sensations ([Keysers et al., 2010][1]); however, the role of S1 in such a high-level process is still unknown. To ascertain the causal involvement of S1, and its possible hemispheric lateralization, in encoding the affective valence of emotional scenes, depicting, or not, a tactile event, we gave to healthy participants a picture-based affective go/no-go task and low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was chosen as control site. rTMS over the right, but not the left, S1 selectively increased the participants' latencies in the affective go/no-go task, but only when the affective state was conveyed by touch; intriguingly, this interfering effect was associated with the empathic ability to adopt the subjective perspective of others. The left, not the right, DLPFC is also involved in affective go/no-go performance, but regardless of the sight of touch, and independently of empathic abilities. This novel evidence demonstrates the crossmodal role of right S1 in encoding the pleasant and aversive consequences of others' sensations evoked by touch. [1]: #ref-24

Communication: How to Understand Others' Feelings for Relationships (6seconds.org) - Do you want to know how to understand people more easily? A starting point is a wide-spread lie we tell others -- and ourselves. Here's how to connect on a deeper level.

Topics

These topics were mentioned multiple times across various sources:

theory of mind

facial expression

Cognitive empathy

Emotional Intelligence

social behavior

emotional response

mirror neuron

mental state

emotional state

frontal cortex

interpersonal relations

body language

affective empathy

empathic concern

Emotion recognition

Emotional empathy

emotional information

personality disorder

mirror neuron system

cingulate cortex

neural basis

interpersonal relationships

empathic accuracy

empathic reaction

empathic understanding

empathic behavior

empathy skills

brain area

empathic feeling

Social Cognitive

Questions

These are some relevant questions found across sources:

What is Empathy?

What empathy is (and what it's not)

How is empathy measured?

How Do We Empathize?

Can empathy be selective?

How did you know what he was feeling?

How to Help Your Child Develop Empathy

What is she feeling?

What You Can Do To Nurture Empathy in Your Toddler

Why do we need it?

[spacecharr]

Why I’m Not Threatened By Old Men

A (high) treatise on why young women shouldn't be afraid of all old men.

Written by a (high) young bi woman of colour.

---

Lemme start by saying I wrote that title because I thought it would be clickbaity. And I wrote the subtitle like that because I'm being "funny" and I anticipate it will generate trolling. My popcorn is getting cold, and I want a show.

And incidentally, it's all true.

Because this is SpaceCharr pontificating on #authenticity and weed, son!

My local Starbucks is small, has a tiny little patio, limited seating and serves a wildly diverse customer base. From your Basic Skinny Pumpkin Spice Latte Bitch(TM) to uniformed police, from sharply dressed businessmen to soccer moms with three kids and a Burberry purse, from punk-rock loud and proud visibly LGBTQ folks to button-down sweater-vest old-schoolers, and from local college kids to retired old men.

It’s fascinating to see the crazy range of people and it makes for eavesdropping lazily on some hilarious (and sometimes very serious) conversations ranging all over the place.

And for some reason, I have a really really easy time getting old white men to talk to me. 

Lemme lay some context: I’m a friendly gal. I’m sociable, (I’ve been told) charming, easy going, and very casual. I remember in elementary being given feedback by my teachers that I was “unapproachable”, and they were worried I would have difficulty making friends. From junior high on, I purposefully (after much coaching from my parents and my mom especially) sought out opportunities to learn better social skills. As an only kid, I didn’t have any siblings to be guaranteed friends with, and my relationship with my extended family was spotty at best. 

So if I wanted friends, I knew I’d have to get them on my own. (Troll Note: I know some dipshit’s gonna be all “omg sure #thathappened. Like a grade schooler can know that” - and you’re right! Grade like, 3-6 me had no fuckin’ clue. But 20s me? Who’s gone through a bunch of psychotherapy? Now she knows a bit more)

I learned interpersonal skills. I did drama, I joined clubs, I did Toastmasters (fuckin’ fantastic, btw, look for your local chapter), and I even did the Dale Carnegie Interpersonal Skills course that’s based off How to Win Friends and Influence People (1000% recommend, A+ on how to be a decent human despite its manipulative-sounding title which is brilliant). I learned how to be a more approachable person - and I learned why people find it approachable.

I saw the difference in how people received me when I spoke formally versus when I spoke in a very familiar tone (”hello” vs “hey, hey!”). I noticed that I could easily put the people I was dealing with off-balance in a good way (relieved surprise) with humour and well-meant self-deprecation. I learned through trial and error what body language and touch cues elicited in terms of responses across various types of people. It became second nature for me to analyse and act on these, and my knowledge of these techniques helps me daily in my work as a consultant.

So now, after several years in the workforce, multiple significant life events (aka I’m relatively old), and more overall life experience, I’m often described by my coworkers and friends as “very friendly and often happy”. Of course, according my sibling-like co-scoundrels in my cube farm, I am “disgustingly upbeat” - but they say it with love because they know I’ll tease them relentlessly, too.

I have found over the years that I have actually changed down to the core of that grade school girl. I’ve gone from a kid who struggled to make friends and who was seen as unapproachable, to a person who can very quickly establish good rapport. 

(side note: holy fuck I just realized I went from Dandere to Deredere... I’m a fuckin’ anime side character, shit)

Kind of the best example of what I mean is an interaction I had with a new massage therapist at this place I had a gift card for. That is to say, a complete and total stranger whom I had never interacted with or seen in the past. The shop I was at had you wait in the reception area with the receptionist until the RMT came to get you. So this dude came out to meet me, introduced himself and we chatted easily for a bit. After not even a minute of us chatting, he and I were laughing together and shared an easy chemistry. The receptionist - remember, who’d been there when the RMT and I introduced ourselves for the first time - then asked me “oh, are you two old friends?” to which he and I laughed and said “no, we’re just friendly”.

Anyways - that’s the context.

I’m a friendly gal. Sociable, a bit charming, easy going, and easily able to manipulate her own behaviours in order to make the other person feel more comfortable.

In Harry Potter-code: I’m a Slytherin who can play a Hufflepuff, but only because it gets me what I want - your cooperation and rapport - more easily. However, I also do genuinely mean those nice Hufflepuff-like actions - just, there’s an ulterior motive attached.

I’m also young, and obviously with South Pacific Islander blood in me (exotic features - I’ve been told I’d be cast in Miss Saigon if they ever did a musical in my city - I took it as as compliment, since I’m friends with the old white dude who told me that and he did mean it as a compliment).

Let’s put this together:

Exotic, tan-skinned young woman

Chatty, friendly, skilled at making people feel comfortable

Can make someone feel like an old friend

Easily self-deprecating and humourous

In a Starbucks with chatty retired old dudes and a lot of shared seating

Can anyone else see why my title makes more sense? (Legit, I am high, so if it doesn’t make sense, that makes sense)

Lemme spell it out for you bois: I’m an old perverted white man’s wet dream.

(yes, I’ve been told such to my face; yes, I believe from experience that most of the people who won’t believe me are straight young men - not out of malice, I think, but out of a belief that people aren’t that bad [not that old men finding young women attractive is bad - acting on it in certain ways however, can be]).

I’ve worked out of the Starbucks I mentioned several times in the past. As a consultant, I have a measure of flexibility in my schedule and I find I work best on some of my problem solving and documentation work when I’m out of the office. The change of scenery and the need to shut out the environment to “see” my work helps me - plus I don’t get drawn into the co-scoundrel shenanigans.

And I’m not kidding you - 8/10 times that I go there, I make a new old white man friend. Even the bi dude I met (srsly, it feels like since I made the decision to be openly out, I’m meeting more and more bi people everywhere when before there was nobody) was an old white dude.

I fuckin’ love it.

I am a young, bi woman of colour who loves having old white man friends. 

Because they’re just as chill, non-judgemental, self-deprecating, sociable, and easy-going as I am. And they appreciate my dad jokes and bi puns. Seriously. Dads everywhere - we all secretly love your jokes.

And, y’know what? I think more young women - LGBTQ or not, PoC or not - should want to have old white dudes as friends. 

INB4 tumblrinas: I don’t mean resurrect Hitler and be his gal pal. I mean don’t dismiss a possible friend just because they’re old, white, and have a dick. Use your brain - not every human is good, but likewise, not every human is bad. We come in shades in all ways.

I won’t tell you what to do, because I don’t know. What I want to share with you is why I feel the way I do. And let you do what you will with it - because I’m not interested in changing your mind. I’m interesting in trading stories and adventures - and understanding more about each other through that exchange.

Here’s why I love being open to talking to old white dudes:

Dad jokes. I’m not kidding. I love Dad Jokes.

They’re often past the point of giving a shit about society, so if you have a genuine, good-natured conversation about your point of view, chances as they won’t give a shit as long as you’re happy and no one’s dying.

They have amazing stories. I can’t tell you the number of times a new friend of mine has launched into crazy tales of things they got up to when they were younger.

They have great advice. Often, they’ve made some pretty bad mistakes. And they’re all too happy to share their lessons and spare someone else the trouble.

They often just want a chat. They don’t need a new friend, they don’t want your number, they just want a lively conversation with someone who isn’t gonna call the cops on them.

It’s so freakin’ easy to make their day and make them smile. And the genuine surprise when they find a young chickie they’ve no doubt had to weigh the pros-and-cons of talking to, who is easy-going and as happy to make their acquaintance as they are hers? It’s so cute. Old man smiles are so cute.

They respect you for being unapologetically who you are. They know that they’ve invited themselves into a talk with you - and they’re willing to carry and/or exit that talk if they find you being openly yourself. (which means if “yourself” is a fuckwit, they’ll just drop you if they know what’s good for ‘em; but then you’re just a fuckwit in Starbucks)

I guess for more location context, I should add that I live in Canada; it’s not an uncommon occurrence here for spontaneous conversations to happen. It might be more rare in other places, though. My city is also quite progressive and has a fairly active and supported LGBTQ scene.

All this said, it’s just a really nice experience in my mind to have good relationships (passing conversations, spontaneous coffee clubs, casual friendships, or more serious friendships) with old dudes as a young woman.

It’s like having a legion of second father figures, or uncles, more accurately fun drunkles, and older brothers. 

I enjoy several significant friendships with old dudes:

I go for coffee almost every week with two white old dudes and a dudette (I’d say “old” but she’d punch me out): our conversations range from politics to wood relationships to name calling to sibling-like teasing.

I have three co-scoundrels at work that I’m close friends with, all are old men. None are in a position to help me with anything at work, but damn are they hilarious and they’re a ready Friday-afternoon morale boost with their antics.

I have a very close old Japanese-Canadian friend. We have a complicated and somewhat tense relationship, but ultimately I think it can be said that we have a certain platonic love for each other. Though we don’t speak frequently, we’re both very significant to the other. He was my taiko instructor.

I have another very close relationship with one of my long-standing old dude friends. He’s known me since I was 9. A single hug from this man can stop an anxiety attack in its tracks. We kiss each other on the cheek and like to weird out the ladies at Starbucks when we go there with each other by holding hands - we’re both Slytherin trolls.

Don’t forget the OG Old Guy: my proper Old Man. My papa. Our relationship was strained by my mother’s unhealthy approach to all her familial relations during my early years. But as I’ve moved out, gotten older, and gained more life experience, it feels like my dad is finally realizing I’m not a little girl anymore - that I’m a woman, with woman needs, woman wants, and woman expectations and behaviours. We don’t talk about all things, naturally, he’s still my dad. But I can’t tell you how great it feels to have a dad who I know has my back no matter what.

I feel like there’s a certain conditioning for young women to “fear” the “old white man”. Certainly for me in particular it feels like there’s lots of factors in play: my “tropical” ethnicity, my youth, my LGBTQ nature (still haven’t been asked for a threesome as a bi woman - I’m impressed with my city), and, naturally, my gender.

While I do know that those are all things that certainly do warrant a certain amount of wariness around strangers (old in my neighborhoods usually means highly conservative about, depending on the age of said person, “the immigrants” or “the non-whites”. Age from young-old to old-ass-old. They’re a product of their time.), I also think it’s vital not to let that wariness get in the way of making a possible new friend.

Anyways, I need to wrap this up.

How does this loop back into #authenticity and weed? Well, it’s been my experience that the old (white + some Asians, in my case) dude friends that I’ve made are some of the best people to help you be yourself.

They have anecdotes to illustrate benefits, cons, risks, and rewards; they have dad jokes and puns to bring some much-needed levity; they don’t give a fuck about the other Starbucks goers - for better or for worse; and they - just like you - just wanna have a good day and be able to be themselves.

Does this apply to every old man? No. Does it not apply to every old man? No.

If you’ve read this far, you have the brain capacity necessary to give someone a chance. Now, you’ll wanna do some preparation if this is nearing your max capacity, because you wanna make sure you’re not letting the wrong old man come talk to you all friendly-like. 

But once you find one who’s just a swell dude? Cut ‘im some slack, maybe remember that he’s struggling to speak your vocabulary as much as you’re struggling to understand his. 

Sit back, drink some coffee, smoke a joint, and share a story once in a while.

Anyways. That’s been SpaceCharr Pontificating.

Cheers, buds.

Stoner note:  My hand rolling’s gotten so much better. And the weed I have doesn’t seem to smell as strongly as the pre-roll I had that one time, so I might sesh in the park at some point. I have my inaugural shroom trip this weekend - bestie agreed to tripsit! Yay! And she’s bringing the whole Planet Earth HD collection! - so it might not be for a while. I want to give the experience the attention it deserves, plus I need to establish a clean baseline to experiment accurately with microdosing.

[disneytva]

Q&A: John Landgraf Talks FX Networks Future Under Disney Umbrella

So you talked about FX’s future in relation to Disney’s streaming efforts. Have you started to formulate a picture of what that might look like, specifically, in terms of what FX’s role is?

No, we can’t. The bottom line is – and it’s frustrating, I’m sure that HBO felt the same thing in a much longer period, actually (when the AT&T-Time Warner deal was closing). But the truth is, we can speculate and plan all we want, but we can’t be directed, so essentially there’s a lot of work to be done once the deal’s closed to try to hone in on a specific strategy.

Are you getting a sense of how much investment you might see or where you might want to focus that investment?

Bob (Iger) has not declared the level of investment yet. I feel like what he’s indicated is that at (Disney’s) investor day, which is in April, he’ll start to articulate broadly the level investment corporately. But if you think about it, there’s a lot of sub-units in that corporation, and so hypothetically, even if you knew what the whole amount was, you wouldn’t then automatically know what portion of it might fall to FX, so we’ve kinda done what we always do, which is worked in the other direction, which is said, “OK, well we don’t want to be infinitely big; we don’t want to have an infinite number of at-bats.”

We’re excited about the prospect of having more, but we don’t want to change our fundamental focus or our brand, and so a lot of that has to do with process, it’s not just about what you pick. It’s about how you focus on things, it’s about how you work with people. It’s a very bespoke, sort of extremely intensely intimate interpersonal relationship we have during production and development and marketing and the holistic process with folks.

And it’s not an infinitely scalable process, right? So we’ve asked ourselves a different question, which is, “OK, if we had more resources, how would we want to use them? What would we like to do? What would we propose to do in the future that we’re not doing today? How much more of this, how much more of that? And how would we get there?” So we’ve done a lot of thinking about that.

But ultimately, we have to present that to Disney, they have to decide whether they agree with it, and then they have to decide whether it fits into their larger strategy. So all that has to happen after the transaction closes.

Iger has said that he’s going to be investing more in FX and sees it as a vital source of original content for Disney’s direct-to-consumer platforms. How do you see that impacting your relationship with Hulu?

That’s a really good question. To be honest with you, what I can tell you, is that what we’re all singularly focused on at FX is our process and curatorially the FX brand. On the one hand, we’re excited about the possibility of expanding it, so the notion of going into some unscripted programming, for example – which we’ve done some of, “30 Days,” “Black and White,” some things in the past, but very little – having that be a sustained and enduring part of our brand is exciting, because we have a profound level of respect for the level of filmmaking talent, the level of storytelling talent, in those genres.

So that’s really exciting, but we just don’t know, to be honest. All I can tell you is that what we’re interested in doing is continuing to build the FX brand, and what Bob seems to be interested in doing is taking a number of brands that he has invested in and that he respects, and using them as organizing principles inside the larger streaming ambitions of Disney and organizing principles for investing in and making stories.

He’s been really gracious about that, and you know, FX does something that doesn’t exist within the umbrella of the corporate Walt Disney parent. And that’s exciting to us, because we feel like we have a lane that no one else really occupies right now. But exactly how that works with Hulu, I couldn’t tell you.

But it wouldn’t be under the umbrella of Disney Plus and its family-friendly programming? They’ve been fairly clear about brands that would feed into that service.

No. It seems quite clear to me that FX wouldn’t be and shouldn’t be a part of Disney Plus, shouldn’t really be directly associated with the Disney brand. They’re just too different. We’re not a family brand at all, and therefore seems crystal clear it’s going to have to be a component of the Hulu strategy. But exactly how that’s going to work, I can’t tell you.

You talked at some length about FX’s quality-versus-quantity theme in your remarks at TCA. On a lot of your shows, if a creator wants to make more, they can make more, and you’ll work with them on timing. Does that model of working with creators hold up in a world where Disney has an increasingly voracious appetite for content?

Well, I can tell you that we’re going to be working for Disney, so I really can’t speak for them in terms of how their larger strategy and their need will dovetail, but we’ve tried to initiate a lot more.

So I hope we can always take a pause when we need to, when we feel like something’s important qualitatively – I guess all I can tell you is if you look at the way Disney has built its feature business. No feature-film studio in the history of Hollywood has had a batting average even remotely as close to as high as that studio has, and they fundamentally decided to make a lot less movies but put more investment and more time and more energy and more marketing into the ones they make. So every philosophical conversation I’ve had with Iger has been is sympatico, which is that he doesn’t want to just throw things out there and just be really, really focused on quality. It feels actually, really comfortable, from a cultural standpoint.

How much pressure has been put on your ability to recruit talent and maintain creative relationships, given the big deals that we’ve seen for creators such as Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes and Kenya Barris?

What puts pressure on it is the money, to be quite blunt. If you are a profitable corporation or you’re part of a profitable corporation, and you have a standard that every dollar you invest should yield a dollar or more in revenue, and you’re competing against corporations that are fundamentally losing money on a free cash flow basis just keep doubling down on those losses and will lose money for decades if they need to (in order) to get to a different outcome.

Then, there’s just really a different standard when it comes to money. That said, we’ve stepped up when we needed to, even when we had competitive bids coming from one of those others. Again, we’re not trying to corner the market on talent; we’re trying to have enough talent to be able to have this extraordinary brand, and I will say that beyond the money, everything else we offer is way better, because we do less. So we all read everything, we all sit in the room and watch every rough cut, we look at every season of every show.

There’s an attention to detail on each episode on each relationship on each season of each show that can’t be matched by any organization that’s doing a level of volume that’s 35 times greater in terms of volume. You just can’t do it. So there we have an advantage. And so the question is can we get to or close enough to competitive from a financial standpoint that the other advantages kick in.

But I will say this, we don’t miss very often. So on the one hand, it’s difficult for us to match the capital structure of a business that’s losing money, but on the other hand, they spend a lot of capital on things that don’t prove to be creatively or commercially successful, and we spend a small amount of capital on things that don’t prove to be commercially or creatively successful. What we do spend, we spend really, really efficiently.

If your batting average is the focal point of the brand, do you worry, then, about what happens when your volume increases and you inevitably have more misses?

Sure. As I said earlier, it’s not just about some genius in our culture about picking shows. We really, really work on that, and spent so much time debating it and talking about the current state of television – what’s not good and where should things go, and what about this idea and that idea – but it’s really more about the process of what happens after we say yes. It’s about the level of attention to detail and support that people get in that.

And that is not an infinitely scalable process so we can definitely do more, but part of what we’re saying is: We don’t want to compete with any of these platforms on volume. We want to be a brand, and then you have a different question, which is, “What is the optimal scale for a really good broad competitive brand? Do we want to try to be as big as HBO?”

We’ve looked at that really, really carefully. So far, I don’t think we’re even going to ask to match that footprint in terms of scale. I think we’d like to match it in the profusion of genres they program in, although that’s easy to say and hard to do, because you could say you wanted to have a weekly or variety show like John Oliver or Bill Maher, but the truth is, those things come along very, very rarely. Can we sustain a batting average where 13 of our 14 shows make year-end best-of lists, ever year? No. I don’t think anyone could sustain that. And we’ve been at about 80% for five years. I think that’s tough to sustain. But if you look at where our batting average is relative to anyone else, it could fall and still be best in class.

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day Four! (6/21)

Wow, we’re already at the fourth day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! You’ve probably seen this preface on previous parts of this list, but if you haven’t read my first post, that writeup’s “One note before we get started” section, explains more clearly what this list is and why I’m writing it!

Plenty of visual novels talk about sex and intimacy, so for today, I’ve set aside four with my personal favorite approaches to the topic — CODE:Phantasm’s 404 Error: Connection Not Found, parade’s No Thank You!!!, SugarScript’s Cute Demon Crashers, and Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim, plus a conversation with Mitch about his creative process on Tusks.

Head on in to hear about your little brother dyeing his hair pink, a truly inscrutable protagonist, freeloading demons playing Mario Kart, and inspirational Skyrim mods!

404 ERROR: CONNECTION NOT FOUND (CODE:PHANTASM)

Itchio Tagline: “Sometimes connecting to others is harder than loneliness.” Genre(s): Slice of life; drama. Release Date: July 30th, 2017 (demo); TBA (full version). Content Warnings: Text-only depiction of sex and sex work; adult content.

404 Error: Connection Not Found is the story of Ren Matsuura, a camboy who ran away from home after turning eighteen and supports himself financially through camming — but thanks to his agoraphobia and general anxiety, he rarely goes outside, to the point that he’s pared all his social connections down to casual conversations with his clients and lying to his younger brother Haru about what he does for a living. When his brother decides to come visit for the first time since Ren moved out, Ren is forced to confront the fact that his guilt and shame have driven him into a corner with no support system. In the span of the demo, he starts to try and reach out to the clients he has a more regular relationship with to prepare him for Haru’s eventual visit, ending on a cliffhanger that seems to be leading directly into the plotline of the main story.

This visual novel’s demo is the shortest of all the stories on my entire list, to my knowledge, but it’s also the most memorable demo I’ve played in a long, long while. As someone who’s had to contend with similar mental illnesses in the past — paranoia and agoraphobia unsurprisingly have a pretty high degree of comorbidity! — I felt like Ren’s slow struggle to make progress for the sake of his younger brother was written sincerely, thoughtfully, and believably in the timespan of a single demo playthrough. Ren can be funny, when he’s not spiraling internally, and his rocky progress at trying to talk to others more honestly is loaded with plenty of funny jokes and quips about his takes on things. He’s a sympathetic, well-rounded protagonist who comes across strongly in the demo alone, and I ended up really rooting for him to make it to a place where he was happier with his life.

There’s another aspect to the story that I ended up really liking, too: the fact that sex work, especially jobs like camming, can be extremely common among LGBTQ people who can’t support themselves financially in other ways. Ren can’t go outside and can’t interact with many people without severe, earth-shattering anxiety attacks (a few of which we see in the demo!), so this job is what he’s got. It’s a job that’s sustained him for years, and although it’s certainly fed into his own relative isolation, 404 Error seemed to walk that careful balance of making it explicit that it’s Ren’s own lack of steady support for his mental illness instead of the simple fact that he does sex work that causes his interpersonal problems. I’m optimistic about the remainder of the story’s handling of those kinds of things, too, because what was present in the demo was sympathetic and sincere! There’s not very many sex workers or camgirls/camboys in visual novels outside of an extremely tiny handful, let ones alone in conjunction to stories that acknowledge of the way LGBTQ people as a whole can struggle with more convential jobs, so Ren’s genuinely empathetic personality and the hope I have for his future makes me excited to see where CODE:Phantasm takes 404 Error from here.

404 Error: Connection Not Found’s free Yaoi Game Jam demo is available now, and you can follow the CODE:Phantasm team on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to stay updated on their progress with Ren’s story.

NO THANK YOU!!! (PARADE)

MangaGamer Tagline: “This summer vacation begins with a car accident...” Genre(s): Comedy; drama; mystery. Release Date: June 28, 2013 (Japanese); February 27, 2015 (English).  Content Warnings: Adult content; multiple sex scenes; frequent sexual harassment; blood; drugs; violence; death.

Right off the bat, I think parade’s debut visual novel (as a studio, at least) does a lot of interesting things and definitely seems to be aiming high with creating distinct, memorable stories. The art in No Thank You!!! is gorgeous, its voice acting is top-tier, a lot of the side characters are compelling even beyond the space or role the narrative gives them, and the love interests alone are all fully-realized characters with interesting stories. Romance option Ryu’s route, in particular, fleshes out the larger sense of mystery and the other characters to an astounding degree! That’s to say nothing of the most unique mechanic — which I mostly call the NTY!!! button — that offers you the chance to say “no thank you” in a variety of scenes without always telling you what it is you’re saying that to. It’s occasionally a little too easy to guess, but at certain points I ended up lulled into a false sense of security with that easiness that the game was all too ready to take advantage of with a much less obvious choice.

One of the sticking points with No Thank You!!! that I’ve seen other players express, on the other hand, is the way protagonist Haru is written. That’s not to say his writing specifically is bad — parade clearly had a vision in mind for Haru’s personality, and from his sketchy beginnings to his clearer end, he’s a coherent character with a consistent narrative. While the crux of the story is more insight into Haru, where he came from, and what the truth behind all those mysteries might be, though, Haru’s behavior still underpins a lot of what drives the romance routes forward. And his behavior... The official quote on his personality, “[s]exual harassment is an everyday activity for him,” can at times seem like it’s underselling exactly how often he tries to grab an ass. It’s no surprise that a fair few other players I’ve seen have walked away with pretty strong opinions on Haru as a character. (I’m personally not a huge fan.)

But to me, a divisive protagonist who you don’t actually fully understand as a character — Haru’s thoughts on a lot of key things are far less accessible than the likes of Aoba Seragaki or most Western M/M protagonists, which leaves you knowing most of his thoughts or feelings via his interactions from others — seems to go perfectly hand-in-hand with the way the visual novel as a whole operates. No Thank You!!! puts you at a distance by Haru’s viewpoint being occasionally “indecipherable” (to use the official phrasing), and then it throws you further with its sometimes-unpredictable NTY!!! button mechanic, but the strength of its other individual pieces taken together still sold me on it as both a solid set of mystery stories and an 18+ dating sim.

Also I really like Maki.

No Thank You!!! is available for a sale price of $19.95 on MangaGamer’s store (18+), and you can read more about parade’s story and characters on MangaGamer’s designated No Thank You!!! page (also 18+).

CUTE DEMON CRASHERS (SUGARSCRIPT)

Itchio Tagline: “A short and silly consent-friendly and sex-positive VN!” Genre(s): Modern fantasy. Release Date: April 7th, 2015 (Mirari and Akki’s routes); August 15th, 2015 (full version). Content Warnings: Multiple sex scenes; detailed uncensored nudity.

I don’t think I could sum up Cute Demon Crashers better than the Itch.io tagline does — it’s short, it’s hilarious, and it’s got an emphasis on consent that meshes perfectly with its goofy “a bunch of incubi and one succubus come to the mortal realm to have sex” plot. The characters are all charming and fit perfectly into its universe, with distinct personalities that come across clearly without ever feeling hamfisted in the limited time that the script lets you spend with them. Although this isn’t necessarily a romance game, especially given that incubi and succubi are “closer to what people know of as aromantic” according to the SugarScript FAQ, its cute, thoughtful writing and adorable design in everything from the characters to the user interface mean that there’s plenty of love infused in every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers.

Like yesterday’s We Know The Devil, Cute Demon Crashers is one of those visual novels with a distinct, memorable mechanic that almost placed it squarely in Tuesday’s creative design list. Cute Demon Crashers is one of the first visual novels — or, by my experience, the first altogether — to implement a mechanic specifically themed around stopping in the middle of sex. If you’re ever uncomfortable or you just plain want the scene to end, you can hit a button and protagonist Claire will talk with her partner to bring things to a close. (There’s also an option to just plain old not have sex with any of them, and spending time with the characters!) A lot of the dialogue in these scenes in particular is thoughtful, nuanced, and reads to me as being a pretty realistic depiction of how someone like Claire might ask those questions or express those kinds of concerns. 

The way Cute Demon Crashers handles intimacy and sexuality, by another measure, is one of those things that I think has also had a not-insignificant impact on the visual novel community as a whole; I’ve seen a fair number of people who’ve apparently never enjoyed an 18+ dating sim before talk about how its portrayal of sex resonated with them or brought them some measure of comfort. Because of the SugarScript team’s relative investment in the English-language visual novel scene as a whole, too — this project was born out of NaNoRenO and I’ve seen them promote development forum hub LemmaSoft or other small visual novels more than once — the compassion for the player that’s written into every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers seems to extend naturally to everyone else around the team in real life, which is something extremely special.

The entirety of Cute Demon Crashers is available now for free, and you can find out more information on its upcoming sequel (Cute Demon Crashers: Side B) on the SugarScript Twitter, Tumblr, and Itch.io!

Itchio Tagline: “GAY ORCS available in YOUR AREA.” Genre(s): Romance; fantasy; community building. Release Date: July 18th, 2015 (First Day demo); January 1st, 2018 (FUARLANG/full main story); TBA (individual route endings). Content Warnings: Adult content; sex; mentions of violence.

Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim, from head to toe, is one of my favorite depictions of sex and intimacy in video games — and with every gradual update, especially the most recent FUARLANG build that finished out the mai storyline, I’ve only become more sure of that. There’s an endearingly genuine quality to its art, character dialogue, and even in things like the NPC autonomy feature, where your companions have just as many chances to sway things like group votes or decide who’s on watch as you would without NPC autonomy being enabled. 

Interested to hear Mitch talk a little bit about his design process and the inspiration behind Tusks, I got in touch and asked him a few questions!

Thanks for taking the time for an interview, Mitch! While the title might be fairly self-explanatory, haha, how would you outline Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim in more detail to somebody new?

Tusks is a visual novel where the player joins a group at an annual orcish gathering, in a forest at the edge of a semi-mythical version of Scotland, and you then travel with this new found family and get to know them better. Most of the game is your group getting into adventures, talking to them one-on-one at camp at nighttime, and making decisions about how to go about your travels. The game's cast are all queer, and the game itself is an exploration of queer identity, community, history, and our relationship with the idea of monstrosity/Otherness.

I think it's fair to say that Tusks, as well as your larger body of work, deals a lot with intimacy and sexuality, especially the intersection between those two things; this is probably a question you've thought over yourself a fair bit, but what in particular interests you about those topics that drives you to explore them in Tusks and your other work?

Part of it is the fact that intimacy and sexuality are areas that can be massively important to queer people (especially since many of us are marginalised as a result of our sexuality being seen as deviant) but there aren't a lot of mainstream sources that play with intimacy and sexuality in relevant ways. And part of it is just because exploring sexuality for its own sake can be fun as well!

Definitely! There's always room for more fun with depictions of sexuality, haha. The premise for an all-orc dating sim is definitely a memorable one, and one you've fleshed out incredibly well with the thoughtfulness of your worldbuilding and character dynamics. What was the original inspiration that you built Tusks on, and what helped carry you across the finishing line of completing (for the most part) its story?

It was a lot of different threads coming together: I'd been playing a modded Skyrim save with an orc character who, in my head, was gay and had left his stronghold so to find other orcs like him and establish his own wee found family. That happened at the same time as me finding out about the NaNoReNo visual novel game jam, plus wanting to work on a game that actually put queer characters and discussions first and foremost rather than us just being a token presentation.

As for what carried me through, there was lots of things: the excitement of getting to tell stories that you just don't see in mainstream games, getting amazing feedback from players, and then at the end when I released the full main story on New Years', it was sheer bloody-mindedness.

There's a fair few interesting mechanics in Tusks, especially with regards to NPC autonomy; can you share a little bit of insight on why you decided to include those and how they function in the code?

NPC autonomy's a small but effective way of just slightly upsetting this idea that in visual novels, the player character gets to make all the decisions -- it automatically puts you in a decision-making leader role, and it's up to the writer then to narratively justify that -- which can be difficult if you're wanting to tell a story about a group of equal partners. So instead, NPC autonomy lets characters vote on things or lets characters potentially turn you down for romantic encounters.

It's an optional feature, so it's possible to play the game without it being on -- it just slightly changes the flow of the story and makes it seem a tad-bit more like you're part of a collective, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense! I think my playthroughs where NPC autonomy was on were definitely more interesting, by and large, because it really does add a lot to that sense of cooperation and community.

If you had to pick just one, what non-human (and non-orc) creature do you think more people should appreciate?

I'm really interested in exploring things with strong mythological connotations like minotaurs, since they're surrounded by particular ideas like labyrinths, being half-human and half-animal. I'd also really like to see someone explore the monstrousness of hags from [Dungeons and Dragons], because I think there's probably a way to talk about them and explore their relationships to femininity, presentation, glamour magick, witchcraft, and power.

Good choices! Those are both definitely really interesting ones. To wrap things up, are there any LGBTQ visual novels from other developers that you'd like to recommend?

I'd recommend checking out The Bitter Drop, by Isak Grozny; Ladykiller in a Bind by Christine Love, and We Know the Devil by Date Nighto!

Perfect! It's been a pleasure talking to you, Mitch, and I'm looking forward to your future projects.

Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim is available now for a reverse-sale price of $2.02, and you can support Mitch Alexander’s work on Patreon or follow his “nonsense” on Twitter and fully-released work on Itch.io!

[bethgreeneishopeunseen]

What do you mean that you are an Empath?

Before I delve into the metaphysical concept of Empaths, I should clarify the different kinds of empathy. To be honest I’m still pretty new to being an Empath and the related community and research. However, I do know about some of it as the development of empathy often comes up in relation to trauma. How a person experiences empathy can develop and/or change because of trauma and usually does. Anyway, there are two main types of empathy. James Fallon, a neuroscientist and an expert on psychopathic behavior summarizes them as (X):

“Cognitive empathy is the ability to know what other people are feeling, and emotional empathy is the kind where you feel what they’re feeling.” 

Social predators like narcissists and psychopaths tend to develop cognitive empathy as it allows them to blend into society, wear a convincing mask, and identify potential targets and their vulnerabilities. I wish I had known about this type of empathy a few years ago. For so long, I thought my twin brother was an empathetic person. He said that he was, and he acted the part. But in hindsight, he never was. It was all an act. When I’d come to him, drowning in pain because of our parents’ abuse (in particular our father’s), he’d tell me to just get over it. That I had a victim complex. We really are the perfect, fucked-up yin yang twins. He’s darkness, and I’m light. He knows what people feel, and I feel what they feel.

So, neurotypical people have a normal amount of emotional/compassionate empathy. They can pick up on what another person is feeling and want to help. In my AP Psyche class, during our feral children section, empathy was actually listed as one of the two defining traits of humanity. And then there are what I call Empaths with a capital E. These kinds of people have emotional/compassionate empathy to a high degree, a hyper empathy if you will. From what I’ve read, Empathy is something that’s more genetic in nature. Hyper empathy can also stem from trauma, as interpersonal abuse conditions you to your abuser’s moods. My father, and my mother to an extent, was very mercurial. My father was a volatile man who would do things like throw shit at the wall and damage doors. I had to learn from a young age how to read him. So I’m very sensitive to a person’s face, tone, and body language and how they change.  

Anyway, being an Empath means that I feel people’s emotions and their overall energy/aura. It can be very overwhelming. One of the first times I noticed it was when I was catering an event on my campus last year. It was a dinner at the President’s house, so everyone was running around stressed, including myself. But the moment I went downstairs to the employee bathroom, I felt calm. It wasn’t my stress that I was feeling. However, I really became aware of it because of my paranormal experiences last year. I’m in my school’s Paranormal Club, and last year we visited an old restaurant and Gettysburg. The restaurant had some construction dating back to the Revolution, and in the dirt-floor basement we got some EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon; ghost voices). (One of the EVPs was actually an unidentified male voice saying, “No,” to my question of, “Did you die here?”.) In the basement, I suddenly began to think of these Civil War spirits that were reportedly seen, and I grew emotional. I had a knot in my throat and water at the edge of my eyes. It was odd. Then later that month we visited Gettysburg for a weekend. On our first night we went to Sachs Bridge, a place known for its activity. I watched a cigarette re-light itself, felt its cold back end after it eventually went out (as if something cold had held it), and then watched said cigarette move by itself when set on a railing. (And no, there was no wind that night and especially at that moment.) By the riverbank, as we were asking questions to the air (and hopefully ghosts), I began to feel sad emotions out of nowhere, like I had at the restaurant. Feelings of sadness, of yearning. Tears welled up in my eyes and slipped down my face. 

And these excursions were last April. Back then I was still pretty numb and dry-eyed, as I was just starting to heavily process the abuse. After Gettysburg, I talked to @bethgreenewarriorprincess​ and a college friend about it, as I was considering that I was an Empath. The emotions that I had felt on those excursions weren’t mine, I couldn’t trace them to a specific trigger. My friends validated the possibility, especially after I mentioned my mother’s connection to the paranormal. She told me that the women in our family saw things. Her house was haunted by her mother and her uncle, and she would see shadows and figures move out of the corner of her eye. So I inherited my mother’s sensitivity, but mine was different. Rather than seeing I feel.

Overall, Empaths tend to attract toxic people, damaged people, and ghosts. Empaths are known for having a naturally healing aura, and we also like to help others. We’re fixers by nature. Anytime a friend of mine expresses distress I feel the urge to drop everything and jump to their side, to nurture them. Burn-out is a big risk with Empaths, from what I’ve read, and I can believe it.

My empathy has really grown in the last few months. Being abroad really helped to open up that part of myself, which was likely warped and stunted because of my family. Europe’s old architecture tends to affect Empaths as they have more energy because of the history. I would often be overwhelmed in cathedrals, actually, as this reverence and power would wash over me. It helped that my two closest friends that I made in France, @boldly-qo and @teachers-are-nerds, are also Empaths. We supported each other. boldly-qo and I were housemates, and we became French sisters. They have more experience with being an Empath and the paranormal, so they helped me embrace this side of myself.

I had my first personal paranormal experience about a week ago, during finals. I woke up one night at 3 a.m., and I kept hearing a clicking noise in the corner between my window and the door. I remembered that boldly-qo had looked for ghosts earlier that day. I sensed something in the room with me. It wasn’t malevolent, just a presence. The next day, after I mentioned it to boldly-qo, they mentioned seeing an orb. Orbs are common with ghosts as they require the least amount of energy. (Full-body apparitions are actually rare because of the energy that a ghost would need to generate.) The next night, right after I turned out the lights so I could go to bed, my overhead lamp started to flicker. While there had been electricity problems at my host’s throughout the semester, my light had never done that. And the flickering light moved around on the ceiling lamp. I thought that there was a presence in the room, so I got boldly-qo. They also felt something, something non-malevolent and likely female. The room wasn’t cold, but there was a cold energy and I also felt a heavy weight on my shoulders and chest.

boldly-qo had a spirit box app on their phone, and so we used to try and communicate. For socio-historical context, our host’s house was built in the 20s and during the 40s, Nazis lived downstairs. I stayed in Aix-en-Provence, and there was a concentration camp outside of town. From what I’ve gathered, spirit boxes are a relatively new kind of tech in paranormal research. Ryan uses them a lot on Buzzfeed Unsolved. The device/app scans radio frequencies at an extremely fast rate, generating a large amount of static and white noise. It’s so fast that, in theory, any voices heard can’t be human. 

We learned three things while using the spirit box app: The spirit was a woman named something like Milfred (I think Mildred, as my great-grandmother had the same name), she didn’t live in this house, and she didn’t like being there. Grief and sadness overwhelmed me, and I started to cry, outright sobbing at one point. As I told boldly-qo, those emotions weren’t mine. They held me as the feelings ran their course. It felt like Milfred had left. I felt closure.

That night, boldly-qo dreamt that a soldier had killed them and took their family away. I think that we helped a spirit whose family was taken to the camps. Maybe she was drawn to the house of her killer. We know that Milfred was likely drawn to me and my energy – I’m grieving the loss of my family right now. We’re kindred spirits in a way. While I was frightened at first, because there was a presence in my personal space, by the end of the experience I felt empowered. It was beautiful being able to help someone who was suffering, to let a person know that they were seen.

I know that this is a really long and personal post, but I didn’t know how else to answer your question. It’s taken me about a year to internalize this part of myself, and it can be a hard concept to understand if you haven’t lived it. It’s a bit surreal and really connects you to the greater universe, to a sense of spirituality.

[incinase]

headcanon 001.

                      this headcanon is going to delve into todoroki’s psychiatric disorders and how they impact him. WARNING: this post will contain very heavy subjects, such as child abuse and its effects, depression, ptsd, and mentions of schizophrenia. also it’s fucking long. you don’t have to read all of it, but the important parts are the bold text and what follows it shortly after.

LONG POST !!!

                                                   c-PTSD

this stands for complex post traumatic stress disorder. “ Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD; also known as complex trauma disorder) is a psychological disorder thought to occur as a result of repetitive, prolonged trauma involving sustained abuse or abandonment by a caregiver or other interpersonal relationships with an uneven power dynamic. ” thank you, wikipedia. i think this disorder is a bit obvious with todoroki, but i’m gonna get into it anyway.

some of the symptoms todoroki experiences are, but are not limited to, inhibited anger, shame, guilt, a sense of distinction from others, “Distorted Perceptions of the Perpetrator. Examples include attributing total power to the perpetrator, becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, or preoccupied with revenge” (source), isolation, distrust in others, dissociation, memory repression, reliving memories.

there are moments when todoroki becomes consumed with anger, even to the point of no longer being in control of his power, and it all relates back to his father (you know, his abuser). he is quick to feel shame and guilt about things, given that all his life, every “wrong” thing that he’s ever done, he’s been punished for. he’s been told all of these things were his fault and that he should feel guilty for them. he may not express it (which is something i will get into later) but even little things tend to get to him pretty deeply. like, say, he knocks something down by accident. he’ll take a moment and stare at it with a blank expression and process what happened, but he’ll freeze for a moment, unsure of what to do, and become slightly afraid and feel guilt for ruining something. of course, once logic kicks in, few seconds later, he’s able to assess and take care of the situation. 

in regards to his distorted perceptions, i wanna be careful to mention that endeavor was indeed an abuser and it’s not just todoroki’s disorder that is “distorting” this. he WAS abusive, definitely, and him (and a bit of his mother, though he’s repressed the memory with her) are the primary reason todoroki even suffers from this disorder. that said, todoroki is still bitter and begins to fixate on this idea of spite that rises up in him at around 12 years old. this is the age when his anger begins to manifest and when he starts comparing his father to other peoples’ and realizes just how shitty he’s been treated all his life. he becomes resentful, to the point of getting into UA and trying to become the best hero without using his dad’s power solely just to spite him. he disregards all others’ opinions and fixates on his hatred, allowing it to fester and boil and refusing to ever have a proper conversation with his dad, despite how his father may attempt to. if forced into a situation with his father, he stays bitterly silent. 

he begins to isolate himself from others near the beginning of the middle of his primary school experience. i’d say around 6 or 7 years old. out of fear, he never really felt that he could rely on others, and was very shy and unconfident which led him to not develop very many close relationships. he was very close with his older sister, fuyumi, and didn’t mind talking with others, so long as they initiated the conversation. he was quiet and studious, again, out of fear of disappointment and rejection from others. eventually, he became cold and distant -- after years of friendlessness, he becomes to feel bitter toward others, but mostly himself, thinking something is wrong with him and there’s something about him that is uninteresting and unappealing to other people. he begins to accept that he doesn’t need other people, despite his loneliness, and grows used to the idea that he doesn’t need friends to succeed. what with the trouble the idea’s always caused him, he begins to think that having friends would only hinder his goal in competing to be the top hero. 

in regards to dissociation, he often dissociates when reminded of something he’s experienced in the past, or is in fear of experiencing in the future. he dissociated when his mother splashed his face with the boiling water and later repressed the memory, and continues to dissociate during different events to present. there are signs that point to this pre-battle with bakugou and during, as well as in his battle with deku in the sporting events. it is also seen that he has flashbacks and relives his memories as a response to a stimulus to them. this occurs when he is faced with similar situations or if he dwells on the ideas and memories too often, and will often manifest themselves when on his lonesome, or trying to sleep.

                                                Schizophrenia 

" Schizophrenia is characterized by thoughts or experiences that seem out of touch with reality, disorganized speech or behavior, and decreased participation in daily activities. Difficulty with concentration and memory may also be present ” (source). as well as  " a serious mental illness that interferes with a person's ability to think clearly, manage emotions, make decisions and relate to others ” (source). i’d say he developed this in his early teenage years, around 12 or 13. he doesn’t really realize he suffers from this, however, often chalking it up to poor past experiences, stress, irrational thoughts, and general tiredness or confusion. everyone experiences schizophrenia differently, so i want to get into how todoroki experiences his.

before i get into all of his symptoms, i want to mention that some of them can come and go periodically and some of them overlap with the ones mentioned above. since i already explained those ones, i’m not going to get into them again. in order to better understand, i’m going to cross out the ones mentioned next that i’ve already explained.

some of the symptoms he experiences regarding this disorder are, reduced speaking, confused thoughts, hallucinations (not often, however), flat affect (i’ll get into what this means) which goes along with the vacant expression, trouble concentrating, trouble sleeping, irritability, dwelling unreasonably on the past, social withdrawal, problems making and keeping friends, angry outbursts, poor personal grooming, inability to understand certain information and social cues, and reduced feelings of pleasure in day-to-day life. 

reduced speaking is pretty self explanatory, you know, he doesn’t speak much. he doesn’t speak unless he feels that he needs to, and he doesn’t speak unless he’s confident that he can voice his thoughts appropriately. he experiences confused thoughts that become jumbled in his mind somehow, which make it difficult to voice what he’s thinking without saying something he might feel is wrong. he likes to know what he’s going to say before he says it, out of fear of messing it up. he limits himself, for, any expression he’s allowed himself, he was later punished for. he might feel ashamed if he were to speak and falter in his thinking in front of others due to his reserved nature.

he has rare( r ) hallucinations, but only if he’s triggered by an event that bears resemblance of something he’s been through before or is afraid of going through in the future (or again). most of them are visual and auditory. he doesn’t experience any tactile hallucinations or any other sorts. they, 99% of the time, relate to his upbringing, parents, and siblings. during a moment in which he may be experiencing an emotional episode, he will hear his father’s voice once more, telling him degrading things about himself and giving him commands. he doesn’t act on anything that he’s told, but he’ll often hold his head in irritation and shame. they don’t last long, though, and he’s able to calm himself from them decently enough.

flat affect is “ a severe reduction in emotional expressiveness. People with depression and schizophrenia often show flat affect. A person with schizophrenia may not show the signs of normal emotion, perhaps may speak in a monotonous voice, have diminished facial expressions, and appear extremely apathetic ” (source). there’s not much else to be said on the subject of how it affects him... i think this is explanatory enough. i do want to mention, though, that flat affect is a reduction in emotional expressiveness -- todoroki still experiences emotions like any other person would, he’s just unable to express them well. like i mentioned before, vacant expression goes along with this. vacant expression is just as it sounds, like he’s spacing off, his eyes are empty, he’s not looking at anything in particular, and bears no emotional expression on his face. with this, he also has trouble concentrating. he’s able to concentrate well on his studies and when working on his lonesome, but in regards to other people and conversation, he often loses sight of what they are saying to him and can no longer find himself able to concentrate on what they’re saying. he may start to space off halfway through a conversation, or become distracted by something else, or other thoughts he may be having. 

he has trouble sleeping, which ties into a bit of what i mentioned before in regards to his c-ptsd. before he sleeps is when he is alone and lets his thoughts run, and that can often lead to too many thoughts, an inability to relax, or reverting back to instances of his past, his day (whether they be positive or negative), and the replaying of random memories in his mind (sometimes distorted from the way they actually happened). 

he experiences a lot of irritability, but it’s generally subdued beneath his ‘emotionless’ exterior, as well as purposefully held back in an effort to avoid violent confrontation. there are only little things that get on his nerves and annoy him, but it’s generally not anything serious enough to cause an issue over. so, he doesn’t. he had poor personal grooming before entering UA highschool, sometimes being unable to perform regular hygienic duties, i.e. showering, brushing his teeth/hair, etc. instead, he’d only be able to perform the bare minimum. once he entered UA, he felt more motivated to keep himself clean and presentable, despite how hard it may be for him sometimes, some mornings. it’s something his father always drove into his head, which tied into his thoughts when reminding himself that he needed to take care of himself. 

he’s very intelligent and is able to tie certain things to others, thus giving him sound conclusions in battles and regular confrontation with other people, but he often misses out on social cues and understanding of given information. he’s better at deciphering and analyzing situations, but social cues aren’t necessarily one of his fortes, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t always understand. the only thing is that he generally takes things quite literally -- he’s able to discern other people’s emotions and how they are feeling, but in regards to things like slang, metaphors, and sarcasm, he generally doesn’t pick on up on it well. though, that’s not to say he doesn’t understand any of it.

his pleasure in day-to-day activities, as well as a simple enjoyment of life is reduced and sometimes seems quite depleted. he often seems bored or uninterested (which isn’t always the case -- refer back to his flat affect) but he does have a hard time enjoying himself. this ties in a bit with his depression as well, which i didn’t mention in this post because, while it is a major disorder and matters greatly, people generally have a pretty good idea of what all it entails and how its symptoms most often affect individuals. 

[eidolonlathi]

My contribution for Ajin Secret Santa 2017:

Here’s my Secret Santa gift for my giftee @pleasesavetanaka Merry Christmas, Romi! I hope you have a wonderful time during the holidays. For this fic I tried to think of a character/ship combination you might like. I hope I managed to pick something nice for you.

Title: This Will Pass

Paring: Kemper/Sato (one-sided love)

Summary: There was no way Kemper would have admitted this out aloud but actually he was beginning to feel a little bit sorry for Fox.

This Will Pass

There was no way Kemper would have admitted this out aloud but actually he was beginning to feel a little bit sorry for Fox. Wouldn’t have admitted it out aloud because you couldn’t show pity for someone who behaved so competent and capable whenever they were out on an operation. Fox was one of those rare people who had the ability to live in nothing but the present if a situation acquired it to do so, analyzing their surroundings reliably, always acting according to the situation. In other words he was exactly the kind of person you wanted to be around when on an operation.

 It was when they were back at the base again Kemper found he couldn’t stop watching Fox though, a slight form of pity creeping slowly onto his mind. It was just, Fox always made such a lonely impression whenever he was not immersed into an operation. He always seemed to listen intently to whatever conversation was going on around him, starting to talk on the rare occasions a subject managed to hold his interest but showing a badly veiled annoyance once it wandered into a direction not holding his interest.

 And this Kemper had realized since a while, there was a broad range of subjects Fox was not interested in the slightest. Matters concerning family and friends, everything having to do with interpersonal relationships would make that almost repulsed expression appear on his face, rendering him quiet again and making him go back playing his video games. In the beginning Fox had tried talking about his interest but had stopped bringing those matters up since long ago. It was just a bit sad, Kemper thought, seeing Fox so isolated while being in a group.

 It really was a bit odd how different it felt to spend time with him when it was just the two of them alone. Then Fox never gave off that isolated impression, even when playing his games. During those times there was a comfortable silence hanging between them, a state easily making room for words if they should happen to come along. Sometimes Fox could even be talkative then, having developed the tendency over time to let Kemper know what odd thought it was that was currently occupying his mind. As if forgetting his surroundings he sometimes would show an absentminded smile when they were talking, an odd gleam behind his eyes. It was one of the rare occasions Fox looked more or less content.

  O O O

  It was less than three weeks until Christmas. To say that Kemper felt not in the mood yet would have been a massive understatement. Currently being stationed in the dessert, nothing but dry earth and dust surrounding him. Not even to mention the heat. Relentlessly burning down from the cloudless sky, it felt abysmal. Suddenly he had to remember the last letter he had gotten from his brother, mentioning how things were going with the surf shop. His brother wouldn’t have any snow during Christmas either, they both would be located in hot areas. Despite himself Kemper felt a slight ting of longing. At least his brother would have the chance to go to the beach instead of being stuck in a remote dessert. Taking a deep sigh he decided to quit his ponderings.  Kemper had never really wasted a thought on the landscape surrounding him but now that Christmas was arriving he felt slightly melancholic.

 He seemed to be the only one feeling this way. With nothing else coming up this afternoon Warren and Smithers had already decided to fight the heat in their own favourite way: Sitting outside while having a cold drink. Kemper had joined them, hoping that doing so would help him fighting his dark thoughts. Fox had tagged along, given up to participate in their conversation and was already deeply immersed in his game.

 But the world seemed to have conspired against Kemper. Even here everything the people around him wanted to talk about was Christmas. Smithers pondered along: “This year I decided to be diligent. The presents for everyone at home? Everything already decided on and done with!”

 Warren had to laugh: “So you learned from last year when you were too late with... well, absolutely everything.”

 Smithers took a deep sigh, the good mood from his expression disappearing: “Don’t remember me. Cathy wouldn’t let it go for months.”

 Now Kemper had to laugh too. Seeing Smithers being so remorseful for once, it was so atypical.

 It didn’t last for long though. Smithers took a long sip of his drink, collecting himself. Then he looked Kemper straight in the eyes. “What about your presents for Anne? Everything already set?”

 Kemper had no reason to feel pressured: “Let’s say I don’t have a reason to feel stressed about anything.”

 Smithers shook his head, taking another sip of his drink. “Of course you don’t. Our Gigolo here always knows how to play it smooth. I’ve never seen you getting stressed about anything involving your girl.”

 For a split second Kemper was sure Fox had gotten all still but that couldn’t be. The instant Kemper gave a glance into his direction he looked as ever when immersed in his games, staring at the screen in concentration and hitting the buttons. The part in the game must have been especially hard to solve. Most of the time Fox looked relaxed whenever he was busy with his games but now the expression of his eyes had become heavy, almost worried. In that instant Kemper felt infinitely grateful that in difference to Smithers Fox never felt the need to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. He never asked invasive questions, unlike Smithers.

 Collecting his thoughts Kemper took a sip of his own drink: “I haven’t thought that much about Christmas until now anyway. It will still be weeks until then.”

 “Those weeks fly fast and if you mess anything up you’ll get reminded on it forever”, Smithers said, not willing to just let it go.

 Warren seemed to be fed up with the whole issue too. He noisily opened a new can, already having finished his first drink, all while showing that disarmingly charming smile of his. “Call me cynical, but to tell you the truth Christmas has lost most of its meaning for me since I’ve grown up anyway. It’s just one of those traditions you have to participate in or everyone around you gets offended with you.”

 This finally seemed to take the edge away from Smithers musings. He shrugged his shoulders in agreement. “You’re not wrong.”

 Warren continued: “And the whole deal with Christmas aside, let’s not forget that this day will also be someone’s birthday. Isn’t that right, Fox?”

 Fox looked up, showing a rare expression of surprise. Though if it was because Warren had addressed him directly or because someone had mentioned his upcoming birthday Kemper could not say. “What? Oh yeah, my birthday’s on Christmas”, Fox simply confirmed, pausing his game.

 “Your birthday’s on Christmas? Seriously?”, Smithers asked, sounding baffled.

 “Christmas Eve, actually”, Fox said, shrugging his shoulder. He had collected himself again, looking and sounding unaffected. Kemper could sense though that he was beginning to feel uncomfortable with all the attention directed at him. Talking about himself, Fox didn’t like that. Despite of this he had mentioned some things to Kemper over time, sparse, carefully phrased things.

 “On Christmas! Haha, that must be annoying! I bet every present you get during that time is supposed to count for Christmas and your birthday together!” Smithers looked like he was in high spirits again, the bad memories of his last Christmas forgotten.

 The expression on Fox’s face still looked completely blank. “I don’t really care about presents.”

 “Actually that’s a good way to look at things. Just like with Christmas there is so much unneeded fuss going on with birthdays”, Warren said. He looked like he regretted brining the subject up, now that it became apparent that it had brought Smithers in one of his rambling moods.

 And really, Smithers wouldn’t stop: “Though being born during Christmas, that’s a dangerous thing!” He looked at Fox, a content grin showing up on his face. “You know what my Romanian Grandma used to tell me? People in her homeland believe that those born around Christmas are fated to become vampires after their death. Freaky, huh? But she firmly believed in those old superstitions.” Smithers grin widened, almost turning malicious: “What about you Fox, did you keep a secret from us, have you been one of the undead all along?”

 Hearing this Warren rolled his eyes in annoyance. Kemper kept his face straight but could relate to the sentiment. It was hard to guess what could be harder to deal with, a Smithers in a good or one in a foul mood.

 A small smile showed up on Fox’s face. He looked completely untroubled: “I can’t say for sure, I mean I never died. I’m fairly certain that I’m not a vampire right now though. After all I’m sitting in the sun without going up in flames and everything.”

 The grin from Smithers face disappeared. He looked up at the deep blue sky with the desert sun glaring down at them. No longer looking content he only huffed. “I guess you’re cleared from any suspicion, at least for the moment.” With this Smithers finally changed the subject.

 No longer at the centre of attention Fox went on playing his video games, sinking back into quiet concentration.

 The entire issue still wouldn’t leave Kemper’s mind once they were back in their quarters. “You should have told me your birthday was coming up. I didn’t even know”, he said, having to make an effort in keeping an accusing tone out of his voice. Last year he had missed Fox birthday, not having known it had been in the first place, Kemper had just realized this.

 To this Fox only shook his head, smiling slightly. At least he wasn’t making that tense impression from before, when Smithers hadn’t stopped bothering him with questions. “My birthday, presents. None of this matters to me, so there’s no need for you to worry, honestly.”

 Hearing this made Kemper almost feel upset. “Come on, don’t say this. There must be anything. Birthdays are the kind of thing your family tends to fuss over you so I should think of something to make up for it, at least a bit.”

 Kemper realized that he had said the wrong thing before Fox had even answered. He was still smiling but the expression in his eyes was hardening. “I told you, it’s fine”, he said in that friendly voice he would often use to keep people at a distance, quietly shutting down while still standing in front of Kemper. “Besides, it’s during Christmas, so everyone will be busy with more important things anyway.��� With this he walked over to his bed, flopped down on it and continued playing his game.

 What an odd thing to say. Odd but mostly sad. Kemper suppressed a sigh. Maybe he should have let it go but his first impulse when the birthday of a friend came near was to think what to do for them, he couldn’t help it.

  O O O

  Despite better judgement Kemper had decided to listen to his gut feeling. It was Christmas Eve, it was Fox’s birthday and it was an occasion to give a present. Fox took the package Kemper was handing him over, expression slightly perplexed. “Thank you. But you didn’t need to. I would have been fine without anything.”

 “I know, but I wanted to give you this here. Happy Birthday, Fox!” Kemper didn’t even try to hide the excitement in his voice. He wouldn’t have picked some kind of meaningless present just for the sake of having something to give. But that thing here, he had the feeling it was exactly the sort of thing Fox would like.

 “Thank you.” Fox lowered his gaze, displaying a weak smile, the sort that was more visible in the eyes instead of around the mouth. The expression carried an air of absentmindedness that was so completely atypical for Fox, Kemper had the impression he wasn’t even aware how his face looked right now. “Well, now you got me curious after all”, Fox admitted, unwrapping the gift. The moment he realized what he had gotten he halted his movements. “Is that... how did you get that?”

 Kemper smiled contently. “Forbidden secret connections.” More like a nephew who was heavily into video games but wasn’t that the same?

 Fox looked at the game. “This one here, it barely gets sold anymore. I had problems replacing it once it broke.”

 “I know. You mentioned it.” More like Fox had grieved it mournfully. Not being able to play his favourite games, it seemed to be one of the few things capable to genuinely upset him. Seeing him like that, Kemper had felt downright sorry for him.

 Fox shook his head, looking at Kemper in disbelieve, still smiling. “That was months ago. I didn’t think you’d still remember.”

 “You underestimate my memory, of course I’d still remember it. I’m sorry Fox, I told you I get you something for your birthday, you agreeing with me or not.” Kemper had to laugh. So his hunch about the present had been right, he liked that. Being able to make Fox smile, it felt nice.

 Fox shook his head, still looking happy. “I’m not even complaining anymore. Thank you.”

 Kemper wasn’t done yet though. He opened the drinks he had brought with himself, set on using what was left of this evening to celebrate Fox’s birthday. To his surprise he wasn’t met with any resistance to this idea, the contrary, Fox wouldn’t stop smiling. Which was a pleasant surprise. Seeing how dismissive Fox had used to act whenever his own birthday had come up, for some reason it had made Kemper sad to witness it.

  O O O

  There was such a deep ambivalence in how Fox sometimes acted, at times Kemper felt lost at how to deal with it. Being on an operation with him, in many ways he was the kind of company you wanted to have during such a time. His judgement was fast and precise and he always acted reliable. And yet. And yet Kemper sometimes got that strong gut feeling that there was only a thin layer of self-control that predicted Fox from becoming... yes, what exactly?

 Kemper couldn’t put it into words. It was nothing but a collection of short moments and vague feelings, connected by the impression that something about the excitement Fox felt for battle was a little bit much too feral. A sharp gleam suddenly appearing in his eyes, vanishing as quickly as it had shown up in the first place. A grin showing entirely too much teeth, hinting at something almost unhinged.

 But more than anything visible Kemper felt it in the way Fox behaved. Relying on the thrill of those dangerous moments, seeming to use them as a mental crutch for whatever it was that kept his mind at unrest. Because there was an unrest in Fox mind, Kemper could tell. Like in the way he seemed to immerse himself even more in his beloved video games during a period with no combat coming up. With the way there sometimes would sneak in a certain hesitation in the way Fox worded things whenever they were talking, even though over time Fox had begun to gradually open up to Kemper.

 He didn’t show that openness when other people were present. Sometimes he would get into conversations with Warren or even Smithers but there would always remain this certain veil of a separating politeness he would use to prevent them from coming near him too closely. Fox had a whole arsenal of expressions he used to keep people at bay, expressionless smiles, meaningless nods and that hollow fog sometimes turning up behind his eyes.

 Kemper wasn’t even sure if other people noticed these things.

 Kemper’s ponderings were stopped by Fox’s voice: ”Kemper? Hey, were you even listening to me?”

 Feeling slightly disoriented Kemper teared his gaze away from Anne’s picture. He had developed the habit of looking at it whenever he felt at loss, he had noticed that some time ago. The explanation for this was simple: He missed her, increasingly so. Feeling he had won control over himself back again he turned around, showing Fox an apologizing smile: “I’m sorry, I was lost in thoughts.”

 “Thought so.” Fox said, laying the handheld console he still was holding aside. “I just said Smithers makes it hard to sympathize with him with the way he always has to turn every conversation towards himself. We got it, Cathy wasn’t satisfied with how he handled Christmas this year either.”

 For a moment Kemper felt surprised. It was such a rare thing for Fox to engage in any of the interpersonal drama going on around them. Kemper sat up: “Since when are you interested in that?”

 “I’m not! That’s the point, I couldn’t care less about it and yet he wouldn’t stop shouting in my ear about it. He went on about it the entire afternoon”, Fox said, a suffering expression showing up on his face. Fox admitting that he felt annoyed with anything, he hadn’t done that in the beginning of their friendship. Still was only doing it when no one but Kemper was around.

 Kemper shook his head, smiling in sympathy. Seeing Fox like this, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. “He was endlessly going on about it, you’re right about that.”

 “It’s because Warren is on leave right now. Now I’m the one who has to listen to his monologues the entire time.”

 “True. I tell you what, next time he won’t stop bothering you I think of a way to distract him.”

 Fox went still, expression one of complete surprise. “You don’t have to. Really, I mean… that wasn’t why I was telling you about it. I was just ranting.”

 Kemper had to laugh “I know that! But when Smithers attacks you like this, I’m getting the feeling that I can’t leave you alone.” Kemper regretted his choice of words the moment he had said it out aloud. Patronizing Fox in a way like that, he wouldn’t like it, he couldn’t like it. He was one of those painfully independent personalities who would get offended if you just slightly implied they needed to rely on your help.

 Kemper expected Fox expression to turn into something icy, mercilessly shutting Kemper out. What happened instead was that Fox showed one of his rare warm smiles, the kind that was more displayed in the eyes instead of around the mouth. It made him look startlingly unguarded. “It’s not necessary, really but I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you.”

 Kemper smiled back, mainly because he felt too startled to do anything else.

  O O O

  Fox laid his handheld console aside, letting hear an absentminded sigh. Kemper was sure he hadn’t even been aware of letting hear a sound. The truth was, the last few days Fox had been surrounded by a heavily melancholic atmosphere. He had tried to hide it but Kemper had noticed anyway.

 If he had been able to Kemper would have liked to help. But just coming clear and directly asking what the matter was? That would have made Fox close up even more. At the same time Kemper couldn’t keep silent anymore either. “Don’t tell me that game is too hard for you to beat”, Kemper said, making sure to sound carefree.

 Fox raised his gaze, looking at Kemper, the look in his eyes gradually getting clearer, as if he had been lost in thought or something. Finally he shrugged his shoulders, showing a weak smile. “The contrary. It’s not really a challenge, that one.”

 Kemper gestured towards the box Fox was storing away all of his games: “Just play another one then.” Getting a thought Kemper had to laugh. “It’s not as if you suffer from a lack of what to choose from.”

 Fox was still smiling at Kemper. The expression looked genuine but at the same time his eyes were beginning to cloud over with something alarmingly close to desperation. “I don’t find them very interesting either. At least not at the moment.” With a sigh that was nearly a groan Fox flopped down on his bed. “Nothing’s fun at the moment. There isn’t some interesting operation coming up soon either.”

 Kemper had to stop himself from letting hear a sigh himself. “You’re not wrong. This might change anytime soon though.”

 “Yeah, maybe.”

 “You sound tired too. I have problems concentrating on things too when I lack sleep.”

 Slowly Fox turned his head, giving Kemper an intense look. “Maybe I just need to sleep, yeah.” He sat up again, straightening his back, suddenly looking self-aware. “You don’t even look tired now though. What were you busy with the entire time?”

 Suddenly feeling embarrassed Kemper felt his face getting hot. His grip was fastening on the catalogue he was holding in his hands. “Looking up jewellery.”

 “Jewellery?”

 “You know, I didn’t even have a ring ready when I was asking Anne. I just asked her following a sudden whim; the moment had just seemed so perfect.”

 Fox looked baffled. “You asked her without having a ring? So it wasn’t planned then?”

 “Not directly, no. She still said yes though. I was lucky there.” The memory made Kemper laugh. “I have the whole things backwards. Anne still deserves a ring though.”

 Fox eyes sharpened. “Make sure to pick something nice then.”

 “That’s what I’m trying.” Kemper shrugged his shoulders. “Anne doesn’t even want a ring. She said she doesn’t need one as long as we’re just together.”

 “She doesn’t want a ring? Well, I guess things like rings pale in comparison to spending the rest of your life with the one you love.”

 “Since when can you be this poetic?”

 Fox huffed. “I’m not poetic. I’m just saying not insisting on a ring sounds like a nice gesture.”

 “Haha, insisting or not, Anne will get her ring. She deserves one!”

 That dull haze from before was beginning to erase the sharpness in Fox’s eyes again. “Agreed, she does. Pick something nice then.”

 Kemper was set on doing exactly that, continuing to study the catalogue in front of him. The silence had returned since some minutes until something caught his attention. “Look at that! They have crystals shaped in the form of animals.”

 “Crystal animals?” For the first time this evening Fox had sounded interested.

 “You need to see this. That’s crazy, who needs something like this?”

 “Let me see.” Fox stood up, sitting down next to Kemper and giving the catalogue a sceptical look. “I don’t know. That somehow looks decadent.” He leaned in closer until he was almost leaning against Kemper. “Is that a boar? Who in the world needs a crystal boar?”

 “Or a horse, a giraffe... oh, look. They even have a little fox.”

 “They do.” Fox had sounded slightly baffled, staring at the figurine.

 “Maybe I should get you one. As your own personal mascot.”

 “Is that a threat? Don’t you even dare.” Fox huffed but had to smile at the same time. Kemper liked that look a lot more than the sombre mood Fox had been in before.

 Beginning to feel thoughtful Kemper looked at the crystal animal and then at Fox again. “Say, how did you get you nickname anyway? Everyone was already calling you that when we met”

 “Ah, yes, they already did that”, Fox said in a quiet voice.

 “It can’t come from your name. Samuel and Fox sound nothing alike. It can’t have its origin in your last name either.” The moment Kemper had said this he suddenly felt hesitant. Maybe getting curious like that had been a bad idea. Fox didn’t like personal questions, Kemper knew this but in the light mood of the moment his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

 Despite Kemper’s concerns Fox didn’t seem to mind any of this though. There was still the ghost of his earlier smile left on his face, keeping the heavy atmosphere of the last few days at bay. Fox began to explain: “That one time, Smithers had said to Warren that he thought I would look like one, like a fox. He insisted the resemblance was due to a sinister light in my eyes, whatever that was supposed to mean. From then on the name kind of stuck.”

 “I see”, Kemper said, suddenly feeling sombre himself. He looked at the crystal fox in the catalogue. It didn’t look sinister at all but small and harmless. “Foxes are supposed to be smart and clever. I think that’s why it fits you.”

 “Are they?” The tone in Fox’s voice had been unreadable.

 “That’s what everyone associates them with. Look at foxes in stories, fairy tales and the like, they’re always the most intelligent animal around and are never outsmarted.”

 Fox laughed, suddenly and bitter. “Have the people writing these stories ever met a fox?” Calming down again he took a deep breath. “That’s not quite like foxes are in reality. In reality they’re the kind of animal that manages to sneak into the henhouse, sometimes giving in to the temptation and killing more than they can actually eat, just for the joy of killing.”

 “Do they?”, Kemper asked, feeling sadder by the minute by the was Fox eyes were getting clouded over by that melancholic haze again.

 Fox nodded slowly: “They do. And that’s not even the worst. If you’re out of luck they will manage to give you or your livestock rabies, they’re famous for spreading it. And if it isn’t rabies they will spread some kind of parasite. In other words foxes are not much more than vermin.”

 “At the same time they’re still clever though. You’re slandering those poor little creatures”, Kemper insisted.

 “Just wanted to explain what they’re like outside of fairy tales”, Fox said, despite his words looking like he had calmed down a bit.

 Kemper continued. “And despite everything they’re cute animals. I’d rather be a fox than a boar.” Accentuating the sentiment he pointed at the picture of the crystal boar. “That one here’s the shady looking guy if you ask me.”

 As if despite himself Fox huffed, suddenly quietly laughing. “You’re a friend of all foxes then?”

 “Now that you ask me so directly, of course I am. I already surrendered to their charms, henhouse raiding or not.”

 To this Fox quietly shook his head, a small but genuine smile showing up on his face. Finally, Kemper thought, feeling glad to see it. Despite trying he hadn’t yet figured out the reason behind Fox’s mysterious sadness but even if he failed to do so: Kemper still wanted to try and make it better.

  O O O

  Kemper felt ashamed admitting it, but he couldn’t stop being a friend to all foxes even once he should have known better. Besides, the fox had stopped being one, according to the media the former fox went by the name of Sato these days. There was nothing left anymore that would have prevented Kemper from despising him completely. As he should have done. Right?

 And yet. And yet something in him refused to do so, refused to despise. Maybe that meant that he was weak, maybe it meant that he was a good friend. He didn’t know and knowing wouldn’t have changed his feelings anyway. Kemper was a friend to all foxes, he couldn’t help it.

 The End