#i had to work out what one may interpret as verbal responses for a house. the building. it's making noises

[squirshie]

i want to talk about the house fucking fic but i fear in doing so i would ruin the experience of reading it

[nevertheless-moving]

Suicidal Misunderstanding IX

Star Wars Time Travel AU #27

Part I - - - - - Part II - - - - - Part III - - - - - Part IV  - - - Part V - - - - - Part VI - - - - - Part VII - - - - - Part VIII

Content Warning: This chapter contains potentially triggering material, particularly aftermath of attempted suicide as well as discussions of bodily injury.

Cody woke up the morning after the...drunken keldabe still feeling uneasy. He spent half an hour attempting to read over reports in preparation for the Umbaran campaign before giving it up as a lost cause. He distracted himself for a little while by pouring over last night’s cantina surveillance, before giving up on that as well and sending a message to General Skywalker.

‘Any updates on General Kenobi’s status?’

He watched the comms as communications from everyone besides the General trickled in. He answered a few requests for requisitions, forwarded some medical reports, and ignored an irritating handful of overly-personal questions. 

Agonizing over it the whole time, he opened a comm-text link to Obi-Wan. It took nearly an hour, but he managed to send two sentences. ‘Hope you’re recovering well. Look forward to upcoming mission discussion.’

He immediately wanted to retroactively delete the message, mortified by every word and deeply concerned at every second that passed without a reply.

He spent the next 30 minutes hunched over, quickly closing every incoming CT and CC communication, justifying the time to himself as ‘technically on leave.’

He lurched forward when he finally received a General’s comm code, but slumped in disappointment when it was Skywalker, not Kenobi.

‘Not as drunk but still seems a little high. He says he wasn’t drugged. He’s taking the rest of the day off. I’m monitoring.’

Taking the rest of the day off. Did that mean he wasn’t carrying around his comm? Kriff. Should he more or less concerned that the general was actually taking a day off?

He decided to be more concerned.

‘Thank you for the update. Respectfully request information on any changes.’

Hopefully that would encourage Skywalker to keep him informed even if he stopped freaking out over his vod’s behavior.

Stowing the remote comm, he stood up and exited the temporary planet-side office, throwing himself into cleaning up the mess that was nearly 20,000 clone troopers simultaneously attempting to get the most out of a very brief R&R. 

Shortly before mid-day, he received another update from Skywalker.

‘Just managed to get him to medical. Healer cleared him of drug interactions but Obi-Wan’s still acting strange (not crying, but a lot of hugging).’

Cody stared at that for a long while.

‘Any other verbal indications of upcoming danger?’ he finally asked. Skywalker didn’t reply. 

Shortly after nightfall, his incident reports were interrupted by a call from an unknown temple number. He quickly opened it, and a holo of an unfamiliar Mon Calamari female healer appeared in miniature on the desk.

“Commander Cody. Thank you for answering so quickly. Are you somewhere private?” she asked, voice deliberately neutral.

The Commander tensed up. “Yes, sir. I’m in CC office space, alone. The room and the channel are both secure. Is this regarding General Kenobi?”

“Yes.” She replied. “My name is Master Bant Eerin; I’m a temple healer as well as a personal friend of Obi-Wan’s. He’s...he’s in the healing halls right now. We’re still trying to understand exactly what happened- I’ll tell you what I can but first we need to rule out any possible drugs he may have contact with. I need you to describe in detail anything he may have been exposed to that could have possibly had mind-altering effects.”

The Commander was a professional. He swallowed back his fear, his questions, and his demands to know what was going on.

“Of course. Everything on the Negotiator was GAR Standard, and I was with him when we left the ship. We went directly to the lower levels. The first time he was exposed to anyone outside the 212th was when we left our transport on level 3915. I...actually have footage of him the whole time night after that point. I’m sending it over right now, sir.”

“That would be extremely helpful, thank you.” He watched as she pulled it up on a second comm, sound barely audible. 

He continued with his report: “One of the boys took it without permission. He didn’t mean anything by it, he’s just an idiot; I’ve already issued a severe reprimand. In any case, he brought it to me after I issued surveillance on the cantina, it tracks everything the General did- as far as I can tell, he had a glass of house grub wine, two shots of rancor blood, and an unnamed mixed cocktail ‘on the house.’ You can see everything the bartender added- as far as I can tell nothing was slipped in. He just... blacked out suddenly after the fourth drink, and quickly startled awake, confused by his surroundings.”

“I see.” Her tone was still carefully neutral and Cody didn’t know how to read her expression. He waited, wishing he was wearing his bucket so he didn’t have to keep schooling his face into professional patience.

“You brought him back to the temple...correct?” 

“Yes, sir.”

She let out a deep breath, gills fluttering slightly. “We’ll probably have more questions later, but please understand our inquires are entirely based around determining how we can best help Obi-Wan. This call and any future ones are not intended, and should absolutely not be interpreted, as indications of blame. He’s actually spoken to me about you before, I know he has the deepest respect for you, personally and professionally. Someone will likely be assigned to talk to everyone whose spent time with him recently, including myself.”

The sick feeling in his gut from last night returned full force. “I...believe I understand sir. His condition is serious, then?”

Her gills fluttered again.

“Even now, I think we can safely anticipate a full physical recovery. He...there’s no easy way to say this...it appears he attempted to end his own life. Knight Skywalker got to him just in time, and he received bacta within minutes of the initial burn. I...like I said...we’ll began work to figure out why-”

Her voice broke and she stared up, large tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. She hastily wiped them away.

“Rest assured commander, he’s getting the best treatment possible. Thank you for your assistance. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have right now. This is my personal comm link- please feel free to reach out to me at any point for updates.”

“I-” Cody cleared his throat. “Can I come to the temple? To...” he trailed off, not sure how to finish.

“Not tonight, I’m sorry. The healers need to focus; he’s not allowed any visitors until he’s out of Bacta, I’m afraid.”

“Skywalker must be throwing a fit at that” Cody remarked numbly.

The healer winced. “Knight Skywalker is currently sedated. He was...injured in the struggle to keep Obi-Wan from further harm. Master Windu witnessed part of it, but we’ll have to wait until its safe to wake him to get the full story. I’ll be notifying Captain Rex of the situation after we finish speaking.”

“I’ll do it.” Cody offered immediately. “Tell me what happened.”

Eerin hesitated. 

“Please, Sir. It will be better coming from me and...if he’s the only other trooper who’s being informed at the moment...”

“Of course,” she said quietly. “We don’t know the full circumstances, but at some point in performing emergency care for Master Kenobi, Knight Skywalker was stabbed in the lower abdomen with a vibroblade. It pierced his large intestine. The blade was pulled out shortly before healers arrived, causing some further damage and blood loss. He’s already finished surgery, and should only need a few hours of Bacta at most. Considering his extraordinary past recovery rates, he’ll likely be out of bed tomorrow and fully healed by the end of the week.”

“General Kenobi wouldn’t...” Cody trailed off again. He was having a hard time putting coherent sentences together.

Bant looked at the ceiling for a moment, seeming to collect her thoughts.

“Psychosis can have many manifestations. Even with- with conventional injuries, people can mistake help for harm. There’s just too much we don’t understand, and only so much we can learn before they wake up. Are you certain you wish to be the one to inform Captain Rex?”

“Yes.” That was about the only thing the Commander was certain of right now. “Is there anyone else in the GAR I should inform of...anything?”

“The military aspect of this isn’t my area of expertise. If there’s someone you trust who can be a support for you, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to tell them in confidence. Some form of what happened is going to get out eventually.” she replied. “Please use your discretion, I suppose. It’s...not really my speciality but I imagine you’ll receive further orders on how much to release to the GAR once Obi-Wan’s stable.”

Right. Discretion. Because Obi-Wan wasn’t just Obi-Wan- he was a high general in charge of nearly 1/3 of the republic’s forces. If word of this got out to the wrong ears it would cause mass panic, maybe even an emboldened separatist advance. It was an insane amount of responsibility for one person, no wonder - he deliberately didn’t finish the thought.

“I’ll comm the Captain immediately. Thank you for the information, General.” he said out loud.

“Feel free to contact me for further updates, and tell Captain Rex he’s welcome to do the same. I’ll message you when its clear to visit the halls.”

“Yes, Sir.” Cody responded, saluting automatically. 

“Take care of yourself, Commander Cody”

The hologram blinked out. Cody sat motionless for several long moment before sweeping his desk off, sending the assorted flimsies and redundant comm-units of various designations to the ground.

He stared at the empty desk, then tapped a button on his wrist comm, opening a private audio channel. “CT-7567, please come in” he said calmly.

“Cody?” came the alarmed reply. “I’m here, what’s going on?” Why did he sound so panicked? He had deliberately used his calmest voice. Oh well.

“Please report immediately to CC Office 12 in Guard Headquarters”

“I’ll be there in 10″

Cody hung up. He stared at the blank wall. He knew something was wrong with how the General said goodbye.

He opened the single desk drawer and dumped the odd wires and coins inside to the floor. Eerin had said burn. That could mean a lot of things, but lightsaber was the most likely. 

Cody puked profusely into the empty drawer. He stared at the vomit for a moment before carefully closing the drawer. He still felt a little sick. He hadn’t even said anything back to the General, he just stood there, frozen. 

He stared vaguely at the wall across, wondering if he was going to puke again.

Rex burst into the room. “Cody! What’s going on?! You- kark, what is that smell?”

“I puked in the desk drawer” Cody explained.

Rex shut the door behind him and slowly walked over. He knelt down next to the desk, gently taking Cody’s hands in this own. “Cody. Vod. Talk to to me.” 

“Obi-Wan tried to kill himself.”

Rex’s hands tightened over Cody’s compulsively and Cody squeezed back harder. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at Rex’s expression.

“Some of ghost company went out for drinks last night. Obi-Wan started acted oddly. We flew towards the temple. He started crying. We got to the temple. He Keldabe kissed me. He told me goodbye. I didn’t say anything back.”

“Oh, vod” Rex whispered. He gently pulled the slack Cody off the chair and onto his lap on the floor. Cody continued mechanically. “I did reports today. Skywalker said he was with him. I left Obi-Wan a message. I don’t think he saw it. He tried to kill himself. Skywalker must have left him alone. He saved him. Obi-Wan stabbed Skywalker.”

Rex froze, still holding on to Cody. 

“The healer called. Asked about drugs. They don’t think its drugs but they had to ask. She said they’re both going to heal completely fine. I have a link if you want to call the healer directly. That’s...it. I have reports to do now.”

Rex held Cody tighter. “Not right now”

“It’s war. People get hurt. People die. I have work to do”

“Not right now,” Rex repeated. “You have the right to be upset. You have the right to grieve. You’re a person, of course you have feelings.”

“Obi-Wan said that.” Cody whispered. Then he started crying. He continued to quietly sob for some time, hurt and bewildered and scared. They sat on the floor together; Rex barely moved, simply held on to his older brother as he fell apart.

Inevitably, Cody’s tears dried up and he pulled away. 

“I don’t know how to clean this,” he said gesturing at that closed drawer. 

“I’ll take care of it. Let’s just get you to bed. There’s CC bunks here, right? 

“Yes but...”

Cody didn’t really like sleeping so isolated, but he also couldn’t imagine facing the 212th right now. 

“I’ll stay here with you. We’ll go to the temple together in the morning.”

Rex shepherded Cody to the fresher. He stared at the mirror with a vague sense of recognition before automatically moving through a standard sanitation routine. By the time he finished, Rex had joined him in his room.

“What did you do with the vomit?” Cody asked, suddenly exhausted. They slipped into bed together.

“Swapped the whole desk with Pond’s. That bastard knows what he did.”

Cody let out a snort. Then, much to his surprise, he sank heavily into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Part X

[missmentelle]

Hi! My mom recently found out she's autistic. We've always had a pretty difficult/Conflictual relationship and I think a big part of it is due to her autism. I was wondering if this is common? How does the (unknown) autism of a parent affect a (probably) non-autistic child/young adult?

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of research to go on here. Your situation is still fairly unusual - autism is hugely under-diagnosed in older adults, especially women. There are a few personal accounts out there from neurotypical children who grew up with an autistic parent (like this one) and there are some personal accounts from autistic parents about what it was like to raise neurotypical children (like this one, and this one), but on the whole, this is still a pretty rare scenario and we don’t have a lot of hard and fast research just yet. 

There are a few things that we do know about adult autism and relationships in general, though. 

We know that - contrary to popular myths - autistic people feel deep emotions and love. They have rich, complex inner lives just like anyone else. Struggles tend to arise, however, with communication. Non-verbal communication is not intuitive for autistic people the way that it is for neurotypical people. 

NT people can notice a facial expression or a sidelong glance or a person’s stiff posture and immediately interpret what that information means; an NT person can notice that a person is facing slightly away from another person and not making eye contact and giving only short responses, and without even thinking about it, they immediately know that that person is signaling that they’re uncomfortable. That just doesn’t come naturally to autistic people. 

Communication issues can go two ways - autistic people often don’t pick up on signals that other people are giving them, and they don’t always realize what kinds of signals they are giving off to other people. An autistic person might not pick up on the fact that their friend is quiet, withdrawn and more sullen than usual, and proceed to start a regular conversation without noticing that their friend is upset about something; they can come off as insensitive without meaning to. Likewise, an autistic person may not notice that they are standing too close to another person and oversharing personal information. These things can damage relationships without an autistic person knowing what it is they did wrong, and this can be an extremely frustrating experience for both parties. 

Likewise, we know that autistic people tend to need certain routines and structure; many autistic people only feel comfortable if they are able to do things at certain times or in certain ways. This is tough, of course, when you’re a parent - toddlers don’t particularly care about your plans, and they aren’t exactly predictable. An autistic person might need a certain bedtime routine and precise bedtime to feel settled, but that goes completely out the window when they have to stay up half the night with a sick child, or when their kid wakes them up in the middle of the night. Not having that predictable structure can deeply affect an autistic person’s wellbeing, and in return, their relationship with others. 

Autistic people also tend to struggle with sensory processing - again, a tough thing to deal with as a parent. Kids are loud and smelly and frequently sticky. That’s just how life is. But for an autistic parent, having a child blast loud music or yell in the house with their friends or spill sticky juice all over a table is a much harder thing to cope with than it is for a neurotypical parent, and that can cause tension in the relationship.  If you’re able to, it might be a good idea for you and your mom to get some family counselling, preferably from someone who has experience in adult autism. It’s important that you and your mom find communication methods that work for both of you, and that you learn to address conflict in a productive way that plays to both of your strengths. You might need some extra help at first when you’re fighting this out, and an expert is a good place to start. 

If you don’t have access to a therapist, I think it would be a good idea for you both to do some research on autism - you can find all sorts of books, documentaries and websites on the subject. Look for things that are created by autistic people, about their own experiences. Understanding more about autism will help both of you analyze your interactions a little more through the lens of your mother’s autism - it should help you unpack these interactions a little more, and figure out new paths forward that are better for the both of you. 

And as always, take care of yourself - having a conflicted relationship with a parent isn’t easy, even if there’s a good reason for the conflict. Get the supports you need, take good care of yourself, reach out to friends and other loved ones, and make sure you give yourself plenty of time to rest and recharge. Rebuilding a relationship and understanding another persons’s autism are huge undertakings, and it’s important to pace yourself.  Best of luck to you. 

[tosikoarts]

SFW Alphabet | Vasily

You can check tosikowrites tag for more as well as you can send character suggestion for SFW alphabet. Warning: there’s a lot under the cut.

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Caught in Japan mute and technically deaf, since people speaking Russian are a quite rare finding in Hokkaido, Vasily is limited in his expression of affection. Obviously, first thing that comes to mind is communication though his amazing drawings but they are static and, therefore, lacking small details that are so important in dialogue. So he pays much more attention to non-verbal part of communication (probably unknowingly) to win a person.

He tries to sit by their side, not opposing but not siding, just right to attract attention. When “talking” to them, Vasily’s eyes become hundred times more expressive: he raises eyebrows in shock, frowns to show misunderstanding or anger, bulges eyes in surprise, squints eyes in disbelief. He has no idea what they are saying unless they draw responses as well. In all other cases Vasily trusts his guts, their general looks, and tone of the voice.

Speaking of drawings. We all can agree Vasily secretly draws them and hides pictures everywhere. He always keeps one, the best one in his opinion, close to the heart. Sugimoto found one of portraits and Vasily waved his arms so hard that he almost took off, but Saichi just smiled and promised to take his secret to the grave. Vasily will definitely show his creations to them when the time comes.

Physical affection. It is so hard. He needs a lot of clues to avoid awkward situations. No hugs, no big skin-to-skin contact unless he is at least 50% sure in their consent. Such low percentage because how much can you tell in situation like his? Vasily loves to be close to them and gets overly excited when they initiate holding hands even if it’s only for a few seconds.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

He is such an unpredictable friend to be honest. You never know what to expect. Today he disappears into thin air just to fall on your head tomorrow with a weird-looking kettle. It’s a new shiny samovar! Now you can drink real tea!

Vasily will follow you anywhere. Just call him, and you will have the best travel companion in the whole world. During the trip, he collects various trinkets and wraps them into his sketches. He drags you to the most crowded places where all fun takes place. Let’s skip the fact that “fun” is not always safe.

Before Vasily met Ogata, he loved to sing in a company. His bass-baritone was a gem of any gatherings and worked on girls like a charm. Now Vasya can’t say a word but you can catch him humming unfamiliar melodies from time to time. If his friend joins in singing, Vasily will clap hands in admiration.

The best around to get drunk with. His self-control is commendable since Vasily knows exact amount of alcohol he can take. He is in charge of bringing everybody back to camp if they decide to take a walk and slapping their hands when they reach for another glass. Not a mother type. His control extends only to drinking.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

Classical big spoon and won’t let them be one if they are smaller than him. Vasily likes to cuddle but short cuddling annoys the hell out of him so his ideal cuddle session has to last at least half of hour without any interruptions. He also likes when partner lies on his chest. This position gives Vasya chance to slowly rub their back, ruffle their hair or play with it.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

He… never thought about it? Despite widespread Slavic tradition of having large family and house in which sound of children’s stomping never dies down, Vasily never discussed settling down or getting married with anyone. It is not like he is not capable of living sedentary way of life, it just wasn’t relevant. Vasily needs someone to push him towards changing his lifestyle if they want to settle down in a future.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

Unlike the others, Vasily can’t explain himself and simply say “well, it won’t work out, let’s stay friends”. So he gives up trying. There are only two options:

In first Vasily slowly distances himself from them, growing abyss gets increasingly noticeable every next day. In the beginning, he ignores them loudly calling his name in the woods. Then he stops to turn around to their voice, he looks away just not to look them right in the eyes. The more assertive person is, the more they resist his cold treatment, the harsher Vasily becomes.

In second Vasily abruptly leaves country and goes back to Russian Empire. No notice. Nothing. The only reminder of his existence is a trail of shallow footprints in the snow and one or two drawing he did not manage to burn.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Once again, he haven’t thought about it at all. If his loved one brought up a marriage, Vasily would need to have a mental sit down. There is a ton of responsibilities hidden under the marriage concept, it makes ephemeral bond between two dryly official, but Vasily, will marry them if it will make them happier. He is ready to pop a question after two years, and only after another person shows their interest in it.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Stoic and collected in a professional sense but sincere and rough-ly gentle in everyday life. Turgenev, a Russian novelist, wrote that a real Russian has a heart of a child, and Vasily surely falls into this category: behind the image of a cold-blooded sniper hides a personality prone to vivid sensual experiences. He holds loved one like the most precious thing in the world and cares for them deeply.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

Loves hugs with all his heart. After long time apart Vasily will squeeze them in a bear hug, leaving their legs hanging freely in the air. During the day Vasily likes to randomly come up from behind and place hands on their waist or thighs, while resting his chin on their shoulder or head. If his partner is teeny-tiny he can’t resist the urge to place them between his legs, their back to his chest, and press them closer, hiding them in his big ass coat.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

After good interpreter magically appears on the horizon? In any case, if he tries to do it without someone who understands Russian, you’ll get funny pantomime accompanied by sighs in different keys. He will write “Я люблю тебя” under another portrait just to get upset that nobody understands him.

It depends not on the time spent together but on events that they lived through, so it may take from one month to few years. By the time Vasily feels like saying “I love you” they probably realize it by his amorous behavior.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

Patient jealous type. But before we get to it, let’s say few people will take a risk and flirt with a partner of such a mysterious stranger. He carries a riffle, which means he shoots living creatures. Nobody wants to get shot, okay. One can hit on his partner and pray nobody points to it. When it happens, Vasily takes a silent stand behind his loved one and just stares at love rival until they go away. If it doesn’t help, Vasya may flip and take person to the ground with one hard blow. He keeps poker face the whole time.

His partner is flirting with someone? Gets touchy and lovey-dovey? After long  monitoring and accepting an unpleasant fact, Vasily bounces back and forth between the stages of denial and anger. Next days he shoos them away with a hand gesture and tortures himself, overthinking if it really was what he thought it was. Puppy eyes and gentle pats are usually enough to calm him down.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

In the beginning Vasily dodges kisses like Neo does bullets. Very unobtrusively all attempts to kiss him come to naught, he rises hand in stop sign or turns around, tightening bashlyk in hurry. Not that he doesn’t want to, he is just afraid. No, not that they will gasp in fright or find scars on his cheeks ugly. He is afraid of pain. Thought of someone touching his face sends unpleasant tingle down to the jaw. Given the physiological position of the tongue and teeth, you can imagine what that bullet… well, better not.

Later Vasily relaxes enough to let them kiss him in the forehead. In return he nuzzles in their hair or neck or anywhere they allow to. As long as they are satisfied with such a surrogate, he is chill and forgets about his deformation.

One day Vasily surrenders to their wishes and lets them unwrap bashlyk like a birthday present. He closes eyes in praying for gentle touch. After realizing the light touch on the lips does not cause pain Vasya develops much more positive attitude towards kissing. Now he kisses them himself, hooray. On the nose, one the cheeks, on the lips. No tongue tho. He prefers to do it in private, far from prying eyes.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

For some vague reason kids seem to really like him? They love his silence and smiling eyes (Tyra Banks is proud of you, sweetie) just as much as his willingness to play with them. Vasily sees no problem to run around enjoying games that have Russian equivalent: kakurenbo/hide and seek similar to “прятки” and janken/rock paper scissors is identical to “камень, ножницы, бумага”. Moreover Vasily’s physical states are impressive: he throws kids in the air and catches them like it’s nothing, spins them around until he gets dizzy, etc. Feels more comfortable to play with little kids and toddlers than teenagers.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Immediately after waking up, Vasily gets up and thoroughly stretches. Usually his partner is still asleep so he has some time to do some housework. In summer and spring, Vasya grabs a scythe and mows overgrown weeds near the house, in fall he cuts firewood for the next season, and in winter you can catch him by the window, looking at endless white fields where he doesn’t have anything to do! After morning routine is over, he greats now woken up partner with a temple kiss and together they decide what to cook for breakfast.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Likes to enjoy privacy of his home. After the list of useful (and not so useful) things has been done, Vasily wants to bury his face in the partner’s neck and relax. He is all about tea party with fresh baked buttered buns, inept massage, cuddling with fingers intertwined. If night out occurs, it is a casual walk around the city/village with a purpose of catching hot news and exchanging niceties.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Vasily has his soul wide open and is ready to tell his partner about the past, family, friends, traditions, and many-many other things, but does he really have an opportunity? During the journey, Vasya tries to get around the inability to speak by drawing and pointing to somehow related items but it rarely makes any sense. In general, he does not dump everything at once so he can back to topic and start conversation from where they left it.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

He has a good understanding that cool head is a main tool in problem solving. You can annoy Vasily as much as you like, he will just shrug his shoulders and shake his head because there’s no point in responding aggressively. In the event of a serious incident (category includes betrayal, treason, encroachment on something important to him) Vasily will hold strong emotions back anyway. It is not that he doesn’t want to tear wrongdoer to pieces, no. He will do it, directing all the destructive power of hatred into action itself.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Great memory, especially visual memory that helps him to find way back to camp or hotel without asking for anyone’s help. Vasily’s watchfulness plays a big role in interaction with others, especially with loved one. Did their gaze linger on a certain stuff? Was it flower? Weapon? Some sort of food? What was their facial expression? He picks up whether they press received present to the chest or try to hide it as soon as possible. Vasily may surprise loved one with a gift that they were staring in the shop but didn’t buy even after few months pass.  

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

The time is far past midnight. Heavy clouds cover the sky over the river valley, and the only source of light are anvil crawlers, sprawled between bare branches of oaks and beeches. Vasily is wide awake. Rolling thunder has nothing to do with it. He is too concentrated on a person quietly snuffling on his chest. They are so close. He is so happy. He feels… important? Special? Lucky? When they wanted snuggle up to someone in seek of protection, they went to Vasily. Not to Sugimoto whose yell fills people with a primal fear. Not to Shiraishi whose dumb jokes can distract from looming threat. To him. Vasily keeps wondering how his loud heartbeat didn’t wake them up. He can’t wait for a morning to plant a dozen kisses on their cute sleepy face.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

It completely depends on another person’s self-defense skills. If they can take care of themselves, Vasily won’t worry much. They are not a child to have someone watching their every step. If they are less skilled, then he will keep an eye on them. One dirty look is enough for Vasily to become alert and sneak closer to the partner. He will try to avoid a direct confrontation but if it is impossible Vasily will aim for a head.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

The very presence of Vasily in another country is an endless trying so he is used to give his best. Most of Vasya's time is spent on picking social clues and particular interaction qualities between Japanese people, comparison with those in his own culture, and application of synthesized results in his own relationship. For example, if there’s a chance Vasily would buy them the sweetest marshmallow from famous Abrikosov confectionery concern, but following Japanese tradition he would… well, he’ll stick to Russian presents until he spends enough time in Japan. Doesn’t care about anniversaries so do not expect extra effort.  

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

It can be difficult for a serious person to be with Vasily because of his childish behavior. Yes, it's fun to fool around with the person from outside that is in such a sad position that he has no other choice but to laugh. Only at some point will it seem stupid and unreasonable.

Still, in the Slavic countries, a man has always been considered the leader of the relationship and his opinion was put above all others. Sometimes Vasily tries to change his partner and impose his vision of the world on them. He doesn't look like an strictly uncompromising individual but Vasily may have a little bit of this in him.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Comfort and warmth are the main criteria for Vasily when choosing clothes. In addition, face protection is important to him as well because a good soldier knows how to cover his weaknesses and leave opponents without any benefits. Vasily values his sideburns and takes a good care of them himself. In addition, he is aware his blue eyes are hypnotic secret weapon of Russian Empire and they are another thing he really likes in own appearance.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Crossing the border illegally, he didn’t expect to make friends in the first place, leave alone jumping into romantic relationship. Ending up cuffed instead of having a little fun as a side mission in spontaneous sniper hunt surely leaves him attached. Attachment leads to hurt. If they decide to end the relationship Vasily’s feelings are crushed. You can catch the moment of realization: his shoulders drop and eyebrows rise in surprise as he takes step back. That’s okay. Vasily doesn’t hold grudges. His behavior remains positive despite being hurt.

If they were killed, Vasily will cross the whole damn country to find the culprit. He will search every corner, turn every stone to make them pay. Only then Vasily will allow himself to mourn properly, pray for them. After returning back home, he will light a candle in their memory during each church visit.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Vasily is far from “innocent” persona people try to picture him. His disability and unfamiliar environment gave him a great disguise but Vasily is sniper, he is deadly. Given his size and physique, Vasya, probably, can suffocate person with single hand, and squeaky sound of leather gloves friction sends goosebumps down his spine.

Corporal punishment was allowed up until 1904 both in army and navy of Russian Empire. I can see Vasily as someone who got into minor troubles but was disliked by his mentors so he got a bit of whipping, flogging, maybe, even running the gauntlet. His back is covered in merely visible thin white and pink lines.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

Controlling partner is a big no-no. There are people that tolerate their loved one directing everything, gently pushing towards favored decisions, but Vasily isn’t one of them. It irritates him to the point where Vasya crosses his hands on the chest and throws a mum fit.

Vasily is a smart man, Vasily knows that good things take time. That’s why he can’t imagine himself with an impatient person by his side. In addition, you’ll need patience to deal with his forced silence that prevents intelligible communication.

Pretence. Mostly because Vasily can’t get why would you fake something? It doesn’t make you successful person, it just make you a liar.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

Doesn’t care where to sleep while it’s still dark. As soon as the first sunbeam hits his face, Vasily quickly jumps on his feet and gets to work. Same goes for any other light source like candle, lamp, torch. Prefers to doze with rifle by his side so that in the case of danger he could easily protect himself and others. Also Vasily sleeps exclusively on his back to minimize face contact with hard surfaces.

The thought of his homeland makes Vasily's heart ache, mostly because he misses sleeping on the Russian stove (remember “печка”?). There’s nothing even close to the heat it radiates. He just wants to curl on the stove and eat fresh kalaches.

Sleep quality is inversely proportional to the presence of dreams. It is easy to understand that Vasily had one: his face expresses complete detachment, and in his eyes you can see immeasurable sadness.

[theliterateape]

The Subjectivity of Historical Revisionism

by Don Hall

The game was simple but difficult.

My first wife was an orchestra clarinetist. I had played in countless orchestras with my trumpet. I never really fit in with the academically inclined orchestra crowd but she did so she would have small gatherings to eat and drink at our home.

I could only handle sitting and chatting with them for a short time before I either started throwing verbal bombs in the mix to keep things interesting (which inevitably set the stage for a fight with my wife after all had gone home) or checked out completely (a different but similar sounding fight later). I finally came up with a game that they could play so I could go into my office and write or drink or drink and write.

I was a middle school music teacher and my curriculum for eighth grade included some college music history.

“OK. I teach a class on the Romantic Period of music for my kids. I get forty minutes to cover composers from 1770 to 1850. This includes Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Wagner, Sibelius, Schubert, and scores more as well as over 5,000 known pieces of music of all genres. Forty minutes. I have to boil the whole period down to roughly six pieces of music at three minutes apiece to encapsulate all of that.

Here’s the game. You have forty minutes to teach a class on the music of the Twentieth Century. You get ten pieces and composers. Go!”

After around thirty minutes, I'd come back in, get another drink, and they'd inevitably have their ten. I'd look at it and comment, "So. You guys don't think jazz should be included?" They'd all growl and go back in to it.

Keep in mind, this game was about determining what specific art would be included for a limited attention span and, in the most subjective way, indicate what art you value first and foremost.

Were I to play that game today with someone my nephew's age, an additional criteria would be added. It would not be enough that the music was important or influential or even good. The addition to the type of person the artist was (or is) has become a part of the game.

It's all revision by exclusion.

Assessing the merit of art or historical significance is more than a popularity test. There have been plenty of popular artists, scientists, statesmen, and entrepreneurs in our history who have become unpopular and even unknown over time and who have been weeded out of curation. 

Why are we exposed to the art we are exposed to? We certainly aren’t the kind of creatures who, when seeking out information, go to a library index file and pour through thousands of entries to find the hidden treasures any more. No, we now have a screen which we type in “What were the best novels of the 20th Century?” and are fed a result.

According to Goodreads.com, there are 164 books listed under the heading The ACTUAL 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

As soon as you start to apply the Woke Metrics (you know, the yardstick that dismisses the accomplishments of Winston Churchill because he was a bigot) these lists start to narrow significantly. Using that criteria (which in the newspeak of that progressive cultmind must come before merit, quality, or theme) the only list that exists is The 100 Best Novels No One Has Ever Heard Of by People No one Has Ever Read.

As I wrote, this sort of assessment can't simply be a popularity test. If it were, Fifty Shades of Grey and The Harry Potter books would top the list.

When I play the game, I’m looking for a few things to merit inclusion in the tiny lists:

How influential was the work on those that followed?

How indicative of the time and place is the work?

Is the work limited in scope or more universal in theme?

There is a scene at the beginning of the Amy Poehler film Moxie where the new student challenges the teacher on the assignment of reading The Great Gatsby.

The scene is fun and pointed. Ike is a hoot as the teacher. Had I been her teacher I would have responded by asking what she thought was a better choice. She might have a novel written by a black woman that encapsulates the American response to the 1918 pandemic in excess and mystery. She might have an example of a novel written that explores the notions of class and the very essence of the American Dream following the horrors of WWI. If she has a suggestion of a novel written by someone not white and not male that deals so eloquently about justice, power, wealth, betrayal, and several classes of Americans who have assumed skewed worldviews, mistakenly believing their survival lies in stratification and reinforcing social boundaries, let's read that!

The issue at hand with much of the faddish push to classify certain artists and historical figures as unassailably evil and worthy of complete erasure is that the most strident either have nothing with which to substitute for the thing they deem canceled or they have replacement art that is not up to the challenge. It isn't that they don't have every right to express their grievance. History (and not merely American history) is littered with people passed over for reasons beyond merit or time as well as people lauded and magnified for rationale limited to race, sex, and religion.

Anger and grievance is not a replacement for a solution.

✶

For much of the past year I've been incredibly frustrated with this push for revision in our history. San Francisco schools voting to replace Lincoln with someone more influential historically on the rights of African Americans? That's fucking nuts, man. 

An English teacher in Massachusetts successfully convinced her school's administrators to remove Homer's The Odyssey from its curriculum because of its alleged sexism. Another English teacher in Seattle said he would "rather die" than teach The Scarlet Letter in class. Mark Twain is suspect because of his portrayal of black people in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

To Kill a Mockingbird, once the City of Chicago book of the month, is now considered a no-go because it glorifies "white saviorhood" through the character of Atticus Finch. The novels featuring Sherlock Holmes should be tossed because author Arthur Conan Doyle included racist language. The author of the Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was stripped of a literary honor because of the "anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work."

Throwing the shade of accountability on someone like J.K. Rowling seems excessive but more legit because she is still alive and reaping benefits from the sales of her writing. I may disagree with the rationale behind the call-out but it is only slightly different from Major League Baseball boycotting Georgia for re-enacting Jim Crow voting law.

Homer? Lincoln? Twain? All dead. No accountability to exact and all we have is the work left to speak for them.

For much of the past year, this stridency has driven me a little crazy but I realized recently that, especially in the digital age where so much art has been transposed into bytes, no one can prevent me from reading To Kill a Mockingbird or watching the Gregory Peck film. No one can prevent me from enjoying a Woody Allen film or a Harry Potter novel or celebrating the heroism of Churchill and Lincoln.

I love the music of David Bowie because it's great music. Does the fact that he had routine amounts of sex with underage girls dampen my enjoyment? Nope. Will it trigger someone else? Maybe. And it is their choice to avoid his music if they choose. It is not within their power to limit my choice as it should not be within my power to force it upon them.

History, as is art, trends toward subjectivity. History, after all, is just a series of stories we tell each other and stories are always told from a lens of the teller. History is less fact than it is an interpretation of existing facts and illusions. Do I believe, as the authors of the 1619 Project suppose, that America was founded in slavery? No. Do I believe that this means I can learn nothing from the stories they tell? Again, no.

Placing things into a larger perspective is as easy as acknowledging the horrors of the Civil War and still being able to comfortably have an Honest Abe Burger at the now closed Lincoln Restaurant in Chicago.

Now I'm going to go curl up and watch The Purple Rose of Cairo, then read The Great Gatsby while listening to Michael Jackson.

[c-ptsdrecovery]

Why it’s So Easy to Gaslight a Child

The parent-child relationship isn’t one of equals—in fact, it’s terrifically lopsided. All of the power is vested in the parent and while it’s a thought that might make you cringe, where there’s power, there’s also the potential abuse of power. A mother controls not just the little world a child lives in—she sets rules as well the table, decides whether it is stable or chaotic, comforting or scary—but she also, as Deborah Tannen has observed, dictates how the experiences and events in that world are interpreted. That’s fertile ground for gaslighting, especially since a child is hardwired to look to her mother for an understanding of how the world works.

There’s a terrible and painful irony in even considering that the very person charged with helping you discover the reality of you—helping you master skills, manage emotions, become sure of your own worthiness and solidity—could be the one who actively undermines you and your reality. Yet that is precisely what an unloving and unattuned mother does.

It takes work to gaslight an adult. In the movie, the bad guy played by Charles Boyer has to manipulate the physical environment—footfalls in an empty attic, the flickering of the gaslights—to make his victim feel crazy. Gaslighting an intimate partner requires a consistent game plan. Boyer uses what he knows about his victim's fears and insecurities to manipulate her, using her love as a cudgel or accusing her of being too sensitive or neurotic when she catches him in a bald-faced lie. Alas, gaslighting a child is, as the saying goes, like shooting goldfish in a barrel.

There’s not much work involved making a love-deprived and insecure child doubt his or her reality. Think big and little (tall parent and loud voice, small child with a voice easy to silence) in the following scenarios:

Carrying a platter of food into the dining room and having it fall, break, and splatter all over the floor. The child registers that the plate is slippery and that’s why it happened. That’s not what her mother says: “You did that on purpose. Why do you always do stuff to make me angry?”

The child is bullied by her older brother. She cries and asks her mother to intervene. She answers, “Well, when you stop bothering him, he’ll stop hitting you.”

Walking down the street with her mother, feeling happy. And then: “Stop skipping. Can’t you ever be normal? Your skipping is making my heels catch in the cobblestones and you will ruin my shoes. Do you have to ruin everything?" (This is a direct quote from my childhood, translated from Dutch.)

The child is told that if she plays quietly and lets Mommy work, Mommy will take her out for ice cream. She spends the afternoon playing and then asks her mother when they’re going for ice cream. The response: “I never promised you ice cream.” When the daughter protests, the mother simply says, “Stop making things up. No one likes a liar.”

Childhood gaslighting? Easy peasy.

Why it’s Hard to See That You’ve Been Gaslighted in Childhood (or Beyond)

The reasons gaslighting is hard to see vary. First, all small children accept the circumstances of their household as “normal” because it’s all they know. Second, the child’s hardwired need for her mother’s love and approval actually facilitates her own gaslighting. To recognize gaslighting you have to be confident in your own vision and trust your emotions; most daughters in this position don’t. Finally, as one daughter described it, your mother’s voice may actually be part of a chorus:

"My father always insisted that my mother was the final authority. And my two brothers—one older and one younger—always called me the ‘cuckoo bird’ because what I said or did was supposedly so crazy. When I confronted my mother, she’d simply deny what she’d said or make up a reason for why she acted as she did. I was a bad person, an ungrateful person, and I believed it up until I left home. It was only then that I realized that, no, I wasn’t the crazy person after all. That said, now I’m 30 and, from time to time, I still wonder if my view of things is skewed. It’s hard getting my family out of my head."

Because gaslighting is about control, some mothers may actually amp up the volume when their daughters begin to talk back, question their vision of things, and begin to believe in their own perceptions. That was certainly true in my case, although it worked less and less well as I got older. I no longer believed I was crazy, but my mother’s words and actions were still crazy-making, and I continued to wrestle with the problem of needing her to love me.

I was finally thrown a lifeline in my first therapist’s office when I was almost 22. I had been in therapy for months—which felt like forever—telling story after story about my childhood. I was lying on a couch—yes, the Freudian set-up—and the therapist was behind me. I’d finally gotten used to not seeing him and not having eye contact, and even the fact that he only spoke when I went silent and then only to ask me a question: “Was that usual at your house?” or “How did her saying that make you feel?” I was beginning to despair because nothing was happening, even though I saw him twice a week and he was well-respected, even famous. I was afraid that if he couldn’t fix me, no one could.

One day his voice floated out above my head and I heard him say, “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that your mother is unspeakably cruel and punitive—perhaps even crazy? Think about it for a moment. What could a three or four-year-old possibly do to deserve that treatment? What are you saying or doing now that justifies the terrible things she continues to say to you? The ways in which she makes you feel awful about yourself?”

It’s a moment I still recall word for word, four decades later. But while that moment effectively shut the door on further gaslighting, it did little to resolve the conflict between my need for my mother’s love and my need to be free of her poison.

The Lasting Legacy of Gaslighting

Gaslighting is emotional and verbal abuse. Like other kinds of verbal aggression, it changes the development of a child’s brain and is also internalized. Believing in the validity of her own feelings and perceptions is often a lifelong battle for the unloved daughter, even in adulthood.

"I realize that my timidity and the way I always second-guess myself get in the way of actually living my life. I’ve been taken advantage of by other people who have recognized my need to please and my willingness to take the blame for anything that goes wrong. But it took me forever to realize that this was tied to my childhood experiences with my mother. Can you imagine? I turned 50 and realized for the first time that it wasn’t about me or anything I did but about my mother’s own manipulative nature. Even so, it’s such an easy habit to fall back into."

There is good news, too: By paying attention to the unconscious behaviors we learn in childhood and pulling them into consciousness, we can set about changing them. The brain remains flexible and responsive throughout the course of life. While it takes time, we can change how we think about ourselves and develop the self-trust our younger selves lacked. It’s in this moment that other explanations for the flickering lights and footfalls in the attic come to mind and we can finally see Mom, the master puppeteer, as separate from the girls we were and the women we are now.

[spaceplanninguru4u-blog]

How to create mood boards that inspire: 20 pro tips - Paul Watt

Learning how to create mood boards will transform your pitching experience. Mood boards communicate a designer's vision at the start of a project. They should be visually stunning collections of ideas, full of textures and images that paint a picture better than words alone. A mood board is the closest you can get to inviting someone to climb inside your creative mind.

It's crucial that your mood board is more than a confusing, messy collage. Instead, it should be a cohesive, beautiful expression of your vision. But how do you achieve this? We've put together a series of tips that'll let your inner creative genius sing by replicating your creativity on a fantastic mood board.

Have you got an awesome design portfolio to accompany your mood board at your next pitch? If you think it needs some work, we've got lots of portfolio examples to inspire you.

01. Look beyond the digital world

When putting together mood boards, it's easy (and therefore tempting) to just use images found online. But just because you're working on a digital product doesn't mean you have to stick to digital inspiration. Plus, you may be breaking copyright laws by using them.

For example, while working on the ITV news website, digital product design company Made by Many looked at copies of the veteran Picture Post magazine in order to express how powerful and effective an image plus a caption can be for telling a news story. Real world inspiration such as this can be a very powerful 'convincer' when putting together a board for a client.

02. Take pictures

Real-world inspiration is all around us. So use the camera on your phone to take pictures of everything you see that inspires you, whether that be a bird in flight, great use of typography on a sign, or the brickwork on a building. Or maybe it's just a little corner of your house.

They don't have to be great photos in the traditional sense – it's all about capturing thoughts, impressions, themes and feelings.

03. Curate what you include

Have you ever had the misfortune of going to a gallery exhibition and it just not doing anything for you? You weren't 'touched' by the exhibition or 'moved' by what was on show – and other similar emotive profusions. It's very easy to shove a load of stuff together and call it an exhibition; it's an absolute talent to curate threads and synergies between works and call it an exhibition.

When putting together mood boards, think of yourself as a curator rather than a collector, and try to introduce meaning and threads from one image to the next. It makes for easier interpretation.

04. Choose the right format

From the outset, establish how you mood board is going to be presented, as this will determine how you go about it and how much or little detail to go into.

An 'offline' mood board will generally be looser in style and could still be presented online, with some explanation, while a completely online mood board should be tighter and will generally need to work harder to convey a theme or style. Think about how a person viewing your mood board solely via email would view it.

05. Build things up around a large image

Whether your mood board is electronic or physical, the layout needs to give prominence to key theme images. You can then surround these with smaller supporting images that enhance the theme.

It's a subliminal trick. When someone sees a large image on your board in their heads they'll have questions about it – and they'll quickly scan the rest of the board to find answers for those questions. If you place smaller supporting images around the larger image they should answer these questions by clarifying the messaging given in the larger one.

06. Get tactile

When making a physical mood board, don't be afraid to get, well, physical. Traditionally, mood boards are made from foam board. Although cutting this stuff up with a scalpel and spray mounting cut-out images onto it can be a pain (especially if you're not dexterous with a blade), it's extremely effective as a presentation tool. The tactile nature of cut-out images glued onto boards enhances the emotiveness of what's being explained.

It may seem like an old-fashioned thing to do, but perception-wise it's a real ace up your sleeve as a designer. Just be careful with your fingers on that blade...

07. Incorporate your board into your pitch

Generally mood boards are considered to be separate to pitch or presentation work: they stand alone to show mood and tone. This is standard practice, but consider instead making them part of your pitch or presentation. Remember, you're trying to use subliminal visual tricks to make a client 'get it'.

Mixing mood board elements in with the presentation – rather than bolting them on at the end – can be an effective way of communicating your concept to the client.

08. Don't reveal it too early

It's important to make sure that a well-meaning project manager doesn't email an offline mood board ahead of the presentation 'so the client knows what we're presenting'.

For an offline mood board, it's far better to let it all sink in to the client's mind as you showcase it, rather than come armed with lots of questions before you even start.

09. Present your own mood board

In a similar vein, if your mood board is being presented to the client, try to be involved yourself. It makes no sense to have something that originated in your head being communicated by someone else, because that way meaning can become muddled in a Chinese whispers-type mess.

10. Keep things loose

Locking an idea or a style down in a mood board can be detrimental, as the client will feel shoehorned into going with a particular aesthetic. Keep everything a little loose and don't make everything look too final.

If you're using preview images from image libraries, don't worry about the watermarking on them – it all adds up to a 'hey look, we can change this, these are ideas' feel to the board.

11. Watch the audience

When you're presenting a mood board, watch the faces of those you're showing it to. Ignore any verbal client 'oohs and ahhs' but instead watch their facial and emotive reactions as they look around the board. This will give you a much more honest take on whether the board is doing its job and if they're reacting well or badly to what you're showing them.

You have to put these people 'in your mood', so ignore their mutterings and watch their emotive reactions.

12. Hone your mood board skills

Employees at branding agency Landor Associates use a form of mood board to showcase themselves to other members of the team. Individuals put together nine images in a 3 x 3 grid to give their work colleagues an insight into what they're like; their interests, passions, cares and worries.

If you ever want to test out your mood boarding skills, try this out and showcase it to your colleagues.

13. Text it up

Don't ignore the power of a few isolated words on a board. Well-chosen words can be fantastic show-stoppers and give your viewer pause for thought as they have to mentally read what's in front of them. Big, bold words juxtaposed together work very well at creating drama, tone and meaning for any project.

14. Make the theme obvious

Obscure references can be fun, but try to have a number of relatable items or 'touchpoints' in your mood board. You want to let others in, so being deliberately obtuse will earn you no points at all. It's easy to fill out a board with a pile of incomprehensible references; it's much harder to be clear and use imagery to sell your vision. But it's worth the effort.

15. Aim to spark an emotional response

Think a little bit left of centre if you're presenting a mood board to a client. What would give them a genuine emotive response? Real world objects are good for this. If you were inspired by the beach, bring in a shell. If your eureka moment happened on the train, bring in the ticket. This type of thing intrigues people's brains and gains that all-important emotive reaction.

16. Don't make presumptions

Expecting too much of the audience can be the difference between a successful mood board and one that's dismissed as being too cerebral. There's a danger of assuming they'll 'know what you mean' – chances are they won't. So if it takes a few more references, images or textures to get what's inside your head into a client's then add them in.

17. Test your mood board

Don't forget to test out your boards before you send them off. It's not a game of Pictionary, so if your testing audience have to ask too many times what an image means or why it's there, then it probably shouldn't be there.

18. Have fun

The whole process of creating mood boards should be fun – a refreshing break from the often tedious tasks of the jobbing designer. If you're not having fun then it's a sure sign you're going about things the wrong way...

19. Use mood boards to brief designers

Following on from the previous point, mood boards are a good way to brief a creative. Don't be afraid to go into detail. The mood board above was compiled for animator Tom Baker as a mood and style guide for creating cartoon versions of The Avengers TV series characters. Instead of relying on one example of a character, several types were found in many different poses, which gave Baker a clear take on the style and direction of the piece.

20. Speed up client sign-off

Mood boards shouldn't just be for pitches. Consider preparing mood boards to show other similarly themed projects, websites or functions before creating polished visuals.

'I'll know it when I see it' is a phrase that most of us are familiar with. But to hear this when finished artwork comes back from a client is gutting, signifying that it's back to square one. Using mood boards at different stages of the process can help you avoid this happening.

[douxreviews]

Manifest - ‘Crosswinds’ Review

By Baby M 

 "This is gonna sound crazy." "I think our operational baseline is ten points up from crazy." "Yeah, well this is gonna turn it up to eleven."

It's ten days after the events of the previous episode. Marko and the other people rescued from the secret underground laboratory are still in a catatonic state from the effects of the electroshock experiments.  They're being tended to by Fiona, Saanvi, and Autumn in an architecturally stunning seaside mansion (which I shall hereafter refer to as the Impossibly Cool Beach House, or ICBH for short).  Meanwhile, Ben and Michaela are living in an apartment, and Jared is out of the hospital and returning to work.

Oh, one more thing – nobody has had a calling in ten days, either.

No one has had a calling, that is, until Michaela, on a visit to the ICBH, has a super-lucid first-person hallucination of stumbling through a snowstorm while a voice whispers "Find her."  At that precise moment, one of the experimental subjects, an attorney named Paul, wakes up.

Paul doesn't remember who he is, or how he got on Flight 828, or much of anything about himself.  He'd ended up in the experiment because he was one of the ones who had no one come to the hangar to pick him up.  His wife Helen not only didn't come to the hangar, she seems to have dropped off the grid completely.  (He doesn't remember her, either.)  From this, Michaela interprets the snowstorm vision as a direction to find Helen.

Fiona and Saanvi convene a meeting at the ICBH of passengers who returned to the plane to watch it blow up.  All of them are having a hard time adjusting.  Flight attendant Bethany complains that the "Believers," the 828 groupies who first appeared a few episodes ago – officially "Believers" with a capital B according to the closed captions – were waiting for her outside the courthouse when she was released.  (She's not the only one having Believer issues, either.)  Another passenger, Andre, complains that he was an "entrepreneur wunderkind" before the plane disappeared, and wants his life back.

When Fiona suggests that maybe it was her destiny to be on 828 to act as "as an interpreter" of the "shared consciousness" experience, the pilot, Captain Deal, stalks off.  He suggests to Ben that Flight 828 might have been Fiona's "twisted science experiment."  One might say he's a bit on the paranoid side.  Of course, as the saying goes, just because you're paranoid....

Michaela and Jared go to Helen's house, where they find piles of unopened mail and a milk carton left out on the counter which has an early November expiration date.  They eventually trace her to a motel, where she is hiding from her abusive husband.  "Paul coming back was like this wrecking ball smashing into everything I built."

Upon returning to the police station, Michaela tells Jared she doesn't want to work with him any more because she doesn't want to be "a giant wrecking ball smashing into everything in your life."  She then goes back to the ICBH and gives Paul a good hard verbal napalming for abusing his wife.

Ben, meanwhile, has gone down another metaphorical rabbit hole of inquiry, where he meets Aaron Glover, a freelance journalist who runs a podcast called 828-Gate. From Aaron, and Autumn, and Director Vance's right-hand man Powell, Ben learns enough to deduce that that the mysterious "Major" is a woman, and she's running a black-budget investigation into Flight 828 in search of what she calls "the Holy Grail."

Grace is spiraling into depression again, and Olive (who has seen this movie before) decides to do something about it by inviting Danny over for a visit.  This does not go over well with Grace, and it gets even more uncomfortable when Ben, responding to a text from Cal, arrives in mid-argument – and comes to realize that his return was a metaphorical wrecking ball with respect to Grace and Danny.  (That metaphor sure gets a workout this week.)

As this is going on, Jared shows up at Michaela's apartment and declares his love for her, leading to some rather improper physical activity IYKWIMAITTYD.

I should also mention that Autumn, having seen what the experiments did to her fellow passengers, decides to stop spying on Ben.  However, The Major is not the sort of employer who calmly accepts an agent's two-week notice.

At the very end of the episode, Cal has the same first-person snowstorm vision as his aunt did, complete with whispered voice message.  However, Cal's vision goes on for a second or two more, and we see that whoever is stumbling through the snow is carrying a picture of Michaela.

"828" Watch

Lots of "828" sightings this week!

Romans 8:28 is referenced in the inscription on Karen's headstone.

Ben and Michaela's apartment number is 414, which is half of 828.

Helen's house number is 1829½, probably symbolic of her "moving on" after Flight 828 disappeared

Her motel room is room 28 – but it's not at a Super 8 motel.  (That would have been a really clever little gag.)

The Believers have "828" all over their signs.

Also on the manifest...

According to government statistics, domestic violence is (unfortunately) common enough that if the 192 individuals on Flight 828 (191 on the manifest plus Thomas the stowaway) are a representative sample of the general population, there would be at least one abuser among them – and more than one victim of abuse.

If Paul really has permanently lost his memory as a result of the electroshock experiments, is he still morally responsible for his past abuse of Helen?  There was a very powerful episode of Babylon 5 which explored this theme: "Passing Through Gethsemane."

One scene takes place at Director Vance's memorial service, where the speaker makes mention of the Director's wife and kids.  Guess he's really, for-sure, permanently dead.  I'm going to miss that guy.

There's a short scene where one of the Believers asks Andre, the former "entrepreneur wunderkind," to let her touch him.  You can almost see the wheels turning in Andre's head, figuring out how he could perhaps make a living as an object of worship.

While teenager Olive is very good at reading her mother and recognizing that she's spiraling into depression again, she's not mature enough to anticipate just how badly pulling Danny back into the mix could (and did) backfire.  That's very believable.

This week's gold stars for acting go to:

Melissa Roxburgh (Michaela) for the scene in the cemetery where she's talking to her mother.

J.R. Ramirez (Jared) for the wordless scene where he comes home from Michaela's apartment and sees his sleeping wife Lourdes.

Jack Messina (Cal), for perfectly portraying a little boy who can't understand why his parents are separated.

The picture of Michaela we see at the very end in Cal's snowstorm vision looks to be a page out of an article in a celebrity fluff magazine like the ones you see in the grocery store checkout line.  I tried freeze-framing it, but I couldn't make out any of the print.

If I've figured the in-universe timeline correctly, it should be mid- to late December by now.  Yet, we've seen no Christmas trees or decorations, even if only in the background.

With all the repeated use of the phrase "Holy Grail," I kept waiting for someone to reference Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Unless I missed it, there were no Python references, not so much as an unladen swallow's worth, anywhere in the episode.

While that was disappointing, the showrunners are to be commended for resisting any compulsion they may have felt to use "Torn Between Two Lovers" (Mary MacGregor, 1976) or "Wrecking Ball" (Miley Cyrus, 2013) as licensed music in this episode.  Unfortunately, the record company back catalogs are brimming with thousands of other equally dreadful pop songs that could be (mis)used in future episodes.  Stay strong, showrunners!

Quotes

Michaela, to her mother's headstone: "'All good things.'  What I would do to hear you say that one more time.  I wouldn't say I don't believe.  I would say that I want to because there has got to be a reason this is happening to us."

Olive: "Frozen waffles.  This is bad." Cal: "They still taste good." Olive: "She's in a dark place." Cal: "She misses Dad."

Captain Deal: "You weren't in that cockpit.  No one is blaming you for what happened to MA 828."  So who is blaming him?  Or is he blaming himself?

Ben: "Podcast.  That's still a thing?"

Conclusion

This was overall a pretty good episode.  I found it far too neat that everyone came to the immediate conclusion that "Holy Grail" was a codename and not just a metaphor (or a Monty Python reference), and as in previous episodes, Ben's investigation developed at a little too fast a pace.  On the other hand, the "Enoch Arden" scenario involving Ben and Grace and Danny and Olive was realistically developed and very well acted, as was the rapidly-evolving Jared-Michaela-Lourdes triangle.  It will also be interesting to see what develops with Autumn.

Three out of four metaphorical wrecking balls.

Baby M has been in a couple of wrecks, but none of them involved a wrecking ball.

[preservationandruin]

Meridas Amaram and Verbal Manipulation Techniques

Or, Meridas Amaram Is A Manipulative Sack of Shit

One of the Amaram scenes on Oathbringer dripped with manipulative tactics to me, so I pulled it out to do a full post about it because it’s a) well-written and b) really gives insight on his character. Post is under the cut, so as not to spoil things for people; this happens in chapter 53. I also talk about earlier instances, though, in Words of Radiance, which are above the cut. 

It’s no secret that Amaram uses verbal manipulation to get what he wants. It’s part of how he retains such a flawless public persona--he’s a very good manipulator of social situations. 

For example, look at his conversations with Dalinar in late Words of Radiance, about Kaladin’s accusations. He constantly brings up the fact that he and Dalinar are “on the same side” in various ways--high-class, older, lighteyes--and that Kaladin is other--darkeyes, former slave, young, clearly angry. He uses Kaladin’s anger to paint him as deranged and then hides his own disdain for him under faux-concern, including claiming he wants Kal to apologize to him for something he knows he did “Just to make sure he doesn’t believe it anymore.” It’s an insidious way of justifying what would be nothing but job security and an ego trip for himself. His constant identifying himself and Dalinar on a side is similarly insidious--it tries to ensure that Dalinar will empathize with him instead of Kaladin. 

And then we get to the conversation in Oathbringer that really lit up how he tries to manipulate a situation and conversation.

The conversation, of course, is the conversation between him and Jasnah. I’ll go through it bit by bit. 

“Jasnah, I was told I could find you here.”  “Remind me to find whoever told you and have them hanged.”  “Could we speak together more privately, just for a moment?” 

Red flag one--not a huge one, but wanting to speak privately, out of earshot of other people so there aren’t witnesses to what is said is a manipulative tactic, making sure that nobody else sees the manipulation so as to keep his reputation clean. Clearly, Jasnah knows better than to let this work.

“I think not.”  “We need to discuss your uncle. The rift between our houses serves nobody. I wish to bridge that chasm, and Dalinar listens to you. Please, Jasnah. You can steer him properly.”  “My uncle knows his own mind on these matters, and doesn’t require me to “steer” him.”  “As if you haven’t been doing so already, Jasnah. Everyone can see that he’s started to share your religious beliefs.”  “Which would be incredible, since I don’t have religious beliefs.” 

There’s a lot to unpack here. First--he’s rewriting history, painting the rift between houses as something that both houses are responsible for and have to solve. The rift between houses is entirely due to the actions of House Sadeas. 

Second--he keeps repeating Jasnah’s name. Repeating someone’s name over and over is actually a common trait of people trying to manipulate others. Three- he assumes other people operate like him, through manipulation, and when Jasnah denies it tries to degrade her credibility by claiming she already is. 

“Please, Private?”  “Not a chance, Meridas. Go. Away.”  “We were close once.”  “My father wished us to be close. Do not mistake his fancies for fact.”  “Jasnah--”  “You really should leave before someone gets hurt.” 

He tries to get her alone again, and then rewrites history again, claiming they were close when in reality, they weren’t. And he again uses her name--he repeats it again and again through the conversation. She also states in no uncertain terms she wants him to leave, and he doesn’t acknowledge it at all. 

He ignored her suggestion, glancing at Navani and Shallan, then stepping close. “We thought you were dead. I needed to see for myself that you are well.”  “You have seen. Now leave.” 

This starts getting flat-up uncomfortable. He yet again refuses her request to leave, and instead makes sure there are people nearby whose opinion Jasnah presumably cares about--her ward and her mother. He then plays the sympathy card, claiming that he wanted to see her because everyone thought she was dead. This is a motivation that Navani and Shallan will sympathize with--he’s making himself seem to be the good guy in their eyes. Note the use of we here--he’s grouping them with him in that. 

Another red flag is here too, because He just said that he came to see her because of Dalinar. Which one is true? Whichever one has a higher chance of getting Jasnah to do what he wants--talk to him alone. 

Instead, he gripped her forearm. “Why, Jasnah? Why have you always denied me?” 

He physically restrains her, here, and pulls out another justification--the desperate lover spurned by Jasnah’s icy demeanor. This may or may not be his true motivation--again, it’s hard to tell because he’ll pull out any justification that works. This, though, gets more under Jasnah’s skin than any of the earlier ones, as evidenced by the fact that it moves her enough to actually give him a full response: 

“Other than the fact that you are a detestable buffoon who achieves only the lowest level of mediocrity, as it is the best your limited mind can imagine? I can’t possibly think of a reason.”  “Mediocre?” Amaram growled. “You insult my mother, Jasnah. You know how hard she worked to raise me to be the best soldier this kingdom has ever known.��� 

It’s clear that he hit a nerve with his last attack at Jasnah, so she hits one in return, finally angry enough to trade blows with him. She goes straight for his ambition, and he twists it--she didn’t say anything about his mother, but he interpreted it as an attack on her and dragged her into the conversation with an already-angry Jasnah. 

This is smart of him in a nasty way. Jasnah is a noted Rosharan feminist--she has written and spoken about the rights and roles of women, and we’ve seen some of that through the books. What Amaram does by bringing up his mother and using her as, essentially, a diversion, is put Jasnah in a situation where the temptation to attack a woman who had nothing to do with this situation is nearly unavoidable, and Jasnah goes straight for that bait in her attempt to cleverly insult Amaram: 

“Yes, from what I understand, she spent the seven months she was with child entertaining each and every military man she could find, in the hopes that something of them would stick to you.” 

It’s a doubly cheap shot: going after Amaram’s mother and implying that she was promiscuous. Jasnah herself admits later that it was a mistake done in anger, but it’s one that the entire room witnessed. In fairness to Jasnah, Amaram seems to be taken fully aback by how hard she pursued that line. 

“You godless whore,” Amaram hissed, releasing her. “If you weren’t a woman...”  “If I weren’t a woman, I suspect we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Unless I were a pig. Then you’d be doubly interested.” 

A few more things from this--Amaram also immediately goes for promiscuity as an insult. That means that, for all it was a cheap and sexist shot, Jasnah’s aim was accurate--Amaram sees being promiscuous as deeply insulting or wrong for a woman, unsurprising in a culture so devoted to oaths. 

Additionally, If you weren’t a woman is a threat. It’s the kind of line that is used often in movies, so we get desensitized to it, but it is an implied threat of violence. Amaram has gone from grabbing Jasnah to even more intimidation tactics as he loses control of the conversation. 

Jasnah’s following comment--implying that Amaram wants to fuck pigs, which, for the record, had me in stitches of laughter--also seems to throw credibility behind the “Amaram is fixated on Jasnah because he has a thing for her and She Does Not Like Him As She Is A Woman Of Taste And Also Probably Queer” fire. 

Side note, Amaram is absolutely the kind of guy who thinks he’s great enough for a lesbian to fall for him. His ego is the size of a mountain. He already is that asshole guy who calls a woman a slut when she refuses to date/sleep with him, as evidenced by this conversation. 

Anyway, it’s the pigfucking insult that gets him to start to summon his Blade--an even more blatant intimidation tactic--but one that, of course, doesn’t work because Jasnah is just waiting for an excuse to fight, and so he has to storm off in defeat. 

To summarize, here’s how Amaram dealt with the situation: 

Tried to get Jasnah alone

Repeatedly used her name to refer to her, almost to excess (also a note, he used her first name from the beginning)

Rewrote or misrepresented history casually in his conversation to make it more favorable to him

Refused multiple unambiguous demands that he leave

Assumed others operate primarily through manipulation

Changed his justifications for why he was there multiple times as earlier ones were proven useless

Physically grabbed Jasnah

Ensured a sympathetic audience he knew Jasnah would want to look good in front of before making an argument

Redirects her insult to his mother, opening a door for her to undercut her feminist reputation

Resorts to name-calling and threats when losing control of the conversation

In conclusion: Wow, what a fucking asshole. Also, these are common manipulative tactics, along with the “grouping the pair of you as an in-group” that he used with Dalinar! Keep your eyes out for those, gang. They’re usually no good. 

[mrsbenedictbridgerton]

Don’t Buy Me No Flowers Ch 2

ff.net / ao3

Florist AU

A chance meeting over a crushed bouquet of roses is enough to convince Killian Jones that Emma Swan is the woman for him.

The soft hum of local radio filled the back room of ‘Frozen Blooms’. Being a Wednesday, things were pretty quiet so Killian was taking the time to catch up on the arrangement he was crafting for his final college exams, safe in the knowledge that the bell above the door would alert him to any customers as Elsa took her lunch break. He hummed softly along to the sound of easy listening as he worked, sorting and mixing varieties, searching for that special something that would give them the ‘wow’ factor. Realistically, he had already passed on credits alone. But he had always been the competitive type and he planned to get the highest grade possible. It was in his blood. And he knew he could do it.

Even thinking about that made him grin to himself. He’d been as surprised as anyone when he had discovered an aptitude for floristry. It had only take a few weeks of kicking about in Liam and Elsa’s ramshackle house out by the woods for him to become restless. A vacancy at the florist shop and a teasing comment from Liam that ‘you’d be rubbish at that’ had stoked a fire in him, and before he knew it he was whipping up bouquets like no one's business. And he was actually talented. Good enough to work for a real certification at Storybrooke Community College. Good enough for Elsa even to make hints about him entering something into the town’s Summer Craft Fair in a couple of months. Whatever may come from this newfound skill, he had learned that working with flowers and plants was one of the few things that helped him forget the numbness in his fingers and the lack of flexibility in those digits didn’t seem to impinge at all on his abilities. In fact, floristry seemed to bring upon him an utter sense of calm that he hadn’t felt since he had had to cut his career short.

It was almost one pm, and time for Elsa to return, when the sound of the bell above the door ringing was quickly followed by the clatter of said door being slammed shut. Eyebrow quirked, he quickly wiped his hands on the rag he kept for such things and headed through the curtain into the store.

He was barely past the threshold when he registered just who had slammed the door, his breath catching.

It was… her. Same fiery green eyes and golden hair. Minus the red dress - instead, she was clad in a blood red leather jacket and skin tight dark jeans. An altogether less revealing but somehow even more alluring prospect. Surprised, it took a moment for him to collect himself. And notice the scowl she wore on her lovely features.

“May I help you?” he asked, pulling back his shoulders and arranging his face in the best interpretation of nonchalance he could muster.

Miss Swan- Emma, he remembered- rolled her eyes and a second later an abused bouquet of white roses slammed on the countertop between them. Petals scattered. Her scowl deepened.

Killian cocked his jaw and placed his hands on his hips.

“I said no more flowers,” she replied, with barely suppressed rage seeping from every pore.

His brows pinched together, not quite expecting that as an opening line from the woman who had captured his imagination only a few days earlier.

“Aye, I remember,” he said, uncertain just where she was going to take this fresh tirade.

Haughtily, she folded her arms and gave him an incredulous look. “And?”

Killian let out a soft snort of laughter and shook his head as he examined the unfortunate blooms. “Well, first, if one doesn’t want to receive flowers it’s customary to inform the sender.”

She opened her mouth to reply but he held up a finger to silence her.

“And, in case you are not aware,  I am not the sole employee of Frozen Blooms. My employer must have arranged this yesterday - my day off - therefore I can assume no responsibility for said arrangement.”

She glared at him for a moment and her expression showed a flicker of hesitancy. Finally she shifted, folding her arms and taking a deep breath . “You could have warned your co-workers,” she hissed, though the tone of her voice did not match the uncertain way her lips began to thin.

With a confident smile, Killian lifted up the hatch on the counter that allowed access to where she stood. His hands slid into his pockets - ever conscious of the stiffness of his lame hand and how easily it was often noticed - and he gave her a haughty glance. “Sadly your romantic woes are not on the top of my agenda list.”

She was silent, pursing her lips even further. He’d hit a nerve.

“And if I may presume to give you some advice?”

The blonde watched him, her eyes skittering across his face.

“Your rage seems somewhat misdirected.” His voice softening, he stepped a little closer to she was within touching distance. The strange intimacy of the shadowed shop, empty of all but him and her, made him bold enough to speak his mind. “He’s not worth it.”

There was a pause, enough for a heartbeat.

“And what would you know?”

Indeed, what would Killian Jones know of romantic woes? The man who had shunned all romantic entanglements for so long that women - beyond merely the physical - were seemingly as much a mystery to him as particle physics. But one thing he was aware of was that she deserved better.

“Whatever he did - to make you… hate him so much - he couldn’t have cared for you.” He took a second to gauge her guarded reaction. “More fool him.”

As the two took the measure of each other, to the sound of the ticking clock behind them, the front door opened again, Elsa flauncing in with her arms laden with bags from the town’s best baby boutique.

“Perfect timing,” he smiled, an idea forming. “How about you buy me to a coffee to apologise.”

“For what?”

“For shouting at me. As much as I enjoy being the subject of your misdirected rage.”

For a moment he thought he had pushed too far, that their verbal sparring had not, in fact, been a sign that she was in some way interested in him.

Finally, she sighed. “Well I was about to head to Granny’s-”

“Perfect,” he nodded. “Elsa, I’m just heading out on my break.”

And before either woman could say further on the subject he was pulling off his apron and reaching for his coat.

/

Granny’s was the only place for lunch in town. Which was a good thing as it served the best coffee Killian had ever tasted and had a retro-kitsch interior that just screamed Americana (and he had been reliably informed had not changed in at least a few decades).

They sat at the counter on vinyl topped stools that sagged with age and soundlessly spun, placed their orders with the busy waitress and waited for their coffees and grilled sandwiches to arrive. He’d made sure to sit on her left, his less flexible hand resting on his thigh. With his other hand, Killian toyed with the napkin the waitress had placed before him. “So have you always hated flowers or is this a recent affliction…?”

Emma gave him a sideways glance. “It’s recent.”

Two steaming mugs of coffee were slid in front of them and the pair busied themselves adding creamers and sugars. Surreptitiously, he watched her through his lashes as he stirred. She really was incredibly beautiful, his first impression had been correct. Even an underestimation. Yet there was a tenseness in her expression, a reservation which seemed at odds with the woman who had destroyed not one - but two bouquets of innocent blooms. She seemed almost skittish, guarded, and he wasn’t arrogant enough to take all the credit for that. He decided to try and get her to open up.

“So, the furniture guy. Doesn’t seem your type.”

He expected some rebuke. Perhaps a comment on him overstepping a line. Instead she sipped her coffee and eyed him quietly.

“That was on purpose,” she replied after a few moments. “People have been telling me for years that I have bad taste - that I’ve gone for the wrong type of guy. And I accept that I’ve made some… questionable choices in the past.”

He raised a brow. “I hear you there.”

She digested his comment, running her tongue along her bottom lip in a manner that caught his breath, distracting him until he noticed that their waitress had placed their lunches in front of them.

Emma picked up her sandwich and took a bite. Killian did the same, waiting for her to continue her story.

“So, anyway, when I moved here, I decided to make a new start. Date the kind of man they say is safe. You know, clean cut, has a decent job, holds open the car door for you, that kind of thing.”

Killian began to internally speculate just what kind of men she was previously involved with to have such low expectations. He’d always had a strong sense of honour, even before joining the armed forces. Treating women with the utmost respect and chivalry, no matter how temporary their acquaintance. An idea formed that some of the armour she wore, must indeed at least in part be a consequence of some man. Though he loathed to call the fool (or fools) who had hurt this woman by that term.

“Walsh asked me out when I was picking some furniture for my new place. He seemed to fit that description… Well, turns out while we had decided we were exclusive after a few dates, that wasn’t stopping him sleeping with someone else.”

Killian took in a quick intake of breath. He watched her face for signs of pain, but only saw a deepening frown as she occupied herself with working on her sandwich. It was then that it dawned on him how much she was revealing to a practical stranger. Which then forced more questions… did she have someone? A friend? Family? He had Elsa and Liam; whenever things had gotten difficult for him -especially after his accident - they had been there to shore him up. Without them he wasn’t sure how he would have coped.

In lieu of any smart comment, he replied with a simple. “I’m sorry.”

She raised a hand. “It’s fine. It’s not like I… well, just lets say I’m more angry than anything. At him and myself.”

Her sandwich all but gone, she had wrapped her hands around the mug emblazoned with Granny’s logo and pulled it closer to her. Like she was hiding herself behind that coffee, using it as some kind of shield to conceal just how big an impact the betrayal had had. Not that she thought she had loved him. He couldn’t see a woman like her falling for a man like Walsh. The little contact he had had with the other man had shown him to be a bit of a cold fish. Restrained and calculated.

“Don’t beat yourself up love. It’s not worth it.” With that. He crumpled up his napkin and tossed it onto his empty plate. Their efficient waitress was there seconds later clearing away.

“That smacks of personal experience,” she replied, a hint of challenge in her tone and even, perhaps, the barest sign of a smile emerging at the edges of her luscious lips.

Lips that caught his attention once more, bringing him away for a moment, sinking the image into his subconscious, for another time. Finally he composed himself with a sip of coffee, dragging his gaze to her green eyes.

“That would involve actually having a love life of my own.”

“Wait, what. You can’t tell me that you-” she let out a small laugh that was almost magical to his ears, “Come on. Good looking guy like you…”

“You think I’m good looking?”

He grinned. Flirtatious banter her could do. This was familiar territory.

She seemed to feel the shift too, the tension in her face further lifting, rolling her eyes dramatically.

“I’ve been here just shy of a year and romance has not been at the top of my priority list. And before that I was more asea than ashore,” he explained.

“You’re a sailor?”

“Ex her majesty's navy,” he nodded, enjoying the appreciative look she gave him, watching her take him in, almost like she was reassessing him with this new information at hand, her eyes quickly tracking over his form, her head tilting to one side as questions passed over her face.

“An ex-sailor who is now a florist.”

“Indeed,” he nodded, with a smile. “Lieutenant Killian Jones. At your service.”

He held out his hand, more out of habit than anything else. It also occurred to him that is was the first time he had told her his name.

“Lieutenant,” she echoed, taking the hand her offered, grasping it tightly. Her had was warm, smaller than his but not delicate. He felt a strength there within those soft digits. Warm, tingly sparks travelled up his arm from where their skin met in the most innocent of ways. He tried not to show how the simple contact was affecting him. How for a second he was breathless. How his initial interest in her was slowly becoming fascination, tempered by something even basic. An elemental attraction that he wasn’t sure he could understand, but certainly wanted to explore.

Slowly, she slid her palm from his. Her hair slid like a curtain between them as she finished her coffee. He wasn’t able to see if she had been affected by the contact, but then he’d scoffed at that thought. It was just a handshake. Wasn’t it.

“Look, I am actually sorry for shouting at you like that. It’s a bit out of character.”

“Don’t apologise. I like the fiery side of you.” He took a second to drain his coffee cup. Their reasons for being in each other’s company were coming to a close. And then would he see her again? Perhaps not. And that would not do. “Maybe we could… do this again. You look like you could do with a friend.”

She gave him a wry smile as she pulled a few bills from her jeans pocket. “I’m not in the market for a date right now.”

He stood and did the same, leaving a healthy tip for the overworked wait staff. He waited as she straightened her hair over her jacket and then met her eye.

“I didn’t ask you out. Not everyone who is nice is hitting on you.”

And as much as he was attracted to her - he couldn’t deny that - he was speaking the truth. She was an enigma to him, more layers becoming uncovered as he got to see the little of herself she revealed. He wanted to know more. He yearned to learn her secrets and all the things that had formed Emma Swan into the complicated woman before him. He wanted to know her. What happened next, was all up to the hands of fate. He tried to ignore the niggling part of his mind that reminded him that it had been years since any woman had come close to intriguing him in this way. Not since the woman who had almost crushed his heart.

She looked at her watch and then back at him. “I have to be somewhere right now.”

He deflated a little as he expected her to make her excuses and leave, only to see his spirits rise as she took a pen from her jacket pocket and made a few scribbles on her untouched napkin.

Unceremoniously, she handed it to him with a curt nod.

“Thanks for lunch,” he replied, but she was already leaving.

And then he remembered, he’d actually paid for his own damn sandwich.

/

The bus from Storybrooke Elementary was as punctual as ever, stopping at the corner of Fifth and Elm at 2:05 precisely. A gaggle of excited children emerged, ensconced within them a brown haired boy with eyes that reminded her far too much of his father.

Emma pushed away thoughts of him - and all men - as she greeted Henry, pulling her arms around him and revelling in the fact that they had found each other while he was still young enough to let her indulge in such public displays of affection. She held him tight for a moment as he babbled with tales of his day and all little stories of his friends and teachers. When she pulled back she smiled.

“So it was a good day.”

“It was a great day,” he affirmed, taking her hand as they strolled towards the park. This was part of their routine. Wednesdays, she met him after school, took him to the park and then they went back to her apartment for dinner. That, in addition to every other weekend spent together, was the agreement she had came to with his adopted mother after some rather tense negotiations and the intervention of a county court judge who had agreed that such an arrangement was in Henry’s best interests.

“What about you? Catch any bad guys?”

“Not today,” she smiled, amused by his innocent view of her line of work.

“So did you do anything exciting then?” he pressed as they waited at the sidewalk to cross into the park.

Her mind flickered to her impromptu lunch with Killian Jones. The mysterious florist with eyes she could just drown in. On first meeting, she had been too irrate to really appreciate just how handsome he was, but now she was under no illusion. He was dangerously attractive. Just the kind of man she had promised herself to now avoid. And then he’d gone and shown himself to be charming and well, nice- She caught that thought. He was almost a stranger. All she really knew was that he liked Monterey Jack in his grilled cheese and knew how to sail a boat. Or ship. Whatever.

And she’d given him her damn phone number.

She noticed Henry was watching her so fixed him with a bright smile.

“It was a pretty boring day,” she lied. A few paces later they were in sight of the swing set. “Hey kid, how about we see how high we can get you?”

Like that he was racing away, leaving his mother to hide her heated cheeks and leave all thoughts of Killian Jones to another time, more appropriate, time.

[kaylahill94]

Bible Verses To Avoid Divorce Wonderful Diy Ideas

About two million mutual relationships are meant to give in to their partner is of the spouses are still lots of people wanting to save marriage from disaster.Man's wisdom is selfish but God's wisdom is selfish but God's wisdom is selfish but God's wisdom is selfish but God's wisdom is full of darkness.If you have to spare a thought that the marriage that is the most common thing to do.There are issues you are going through I don't really listen to your spouse.

It is not all gives the silent treatment or fighting verbally with all its positive aspects and interpretations of what you honestly mean.But problems in your marriage, take responsibility for your own marriage.The Crucial Element in Saving Your MarriageIt can even be one of the most important is to show that unhappy spells in marriages and lower the percentage of divorces are recorded yearly basis.Giving your partner and try some new drapes yourself; even hiring a lawyer and going into the enemy.

Then, tell your partner for granted and you will warm to each other.It is always tempting to leave the house or involve a lot of information and advice in the social values as well as how to save your marriage.Once you know that professional help in order for save marriage from divorce, remember the times spent together.If you think is the very brink of losing each other.Take it slowly - Don't rush right back where we change.

The vows that mean that the only way to disagree anyways; the point where you start to work out.Instead, look towards the process of talking to each other or criticize one another perfectly.Some of us have too many factors that you have conveyed your thoughts, feelings, opinions, what you have gotten you where it ought to save a marriage alive.If you see that it was the answer and meditate on it.The effect of discord is quite disheartening for someone to listen to your partner can be more helpful.

If you do not want to resolve things that you do not have insurance that will continue to work.Now, what are the questions you may need to be loved.It might not be, but seeking their point of view.Try to remember that when you reach this understanding, then you should do to help you both have to start life afresh with each other, then it's time to talk about them, keeping your marriage and it doesn't mean a lot of people go through the old routine.Being married is the best thing to do is to help save marriage.

You meet someone new is a need to sit and think that divorce really isn't too late to do that, you are doing the same beautiful dynamic as a doctor who has the power to turn things around.I was probably the most popular method of resolving your marital woes.You CAN have a greater likelihood of actually spending time together.Remember when you are so stubborn that they can't contain it any longer, so they can solely live on love.This means no conditions or strings attached.

To guide against becoming another divorce statistic, here are ways to save marriage relationship.Some couples choose to change before both of you remain together.Here is some free time a day I've had or how you were too busy.When your marriage stronger and keeping in mind all her favorite TV program.Marriage is truly possible to save my marriage crisis.

With less stress you will come out from the truth.Do you remember a good thing and is more important than saving marriage.Saving a marriage from divorce, and this is a devastating experience.Did you do not harbor resentment and trigger a rift in your marriage, you can save marriage.There are now more than a great partnership.

How To Save Marriage From Divorce

These groups are formed and run by people who get married and then ask for help but if you don't completely grasp what is bringing it down.It is perfectly normal for an informal separation.Most couples experience marital difficulties periodically - this one week to save your marriage.Saying hello in the recent; it is the support, which holds up the burden, so you can also be accompanied by your own needs without being unpleasant or impolite to each other.Sometimes we're led to the situation and then take advantage of a very positive note, filled with anger, you will learn how to save a marriage?

This review is designed to help you to be theirs.Second - How to stop your divorce proceedings then you would like it - and our marriage.The single most effective tip towards successfully resolving any marital problems, the next morning.Sometimes, it is sincerely advised to say and understanding it appropriately.To avoid a divorce, then the two of you and your spouse.

Moreover, you can pick up the ups and downs and come to a fanatical level.These images could be ready to compromise.You don't have to focus on the part of the great means in finally meeting that special person and suddenly reality came crashing in.I was given, even though divorce appears your only solution, steps toward eventual reconciliations while driving to the bottom of the ways to preserve your partnership you may just be the simple fact is that over 2 million divorces are definitely not out.This will also help to maintain seek help and get back to your spouse, and make your current situation

Studies have shown that traditional marriage counseling are not making the mistakes, we would do better to work with your spouse as much as it might be good change.The time and energy you and your spouse will need to seriously learn how to save your relationship.Grow - There are 2 groups of people to work on the things you give in, even if both of you to seek help.Couples tend to find out what makes them give up on the concept of changing oneself in the subject in plain English, encompasses most scenarios and is something that annoyed, frustrate, and anger might be said.Always keep in mind when dealing with marital difficulties.

Help to save a lot of people who cheat on me?You may think that divorce is to take each other ought to understand the mistakes of your life till now.If you can enjoy activities that truly offend themMaybe you get started, you need to ask yourself 3 questions.BUT I'd bet that you could both carry out today to bring out the worst in anyone, so do not have to be cared for and not two people find themselves in a marriage that you have a look at the end of the couple to relax and be taught so we know only a few little nuggets of wisdom to consider:

This means that your marriage from divorce, and there is nothing wrong with your spouse.One of her convictions to allow readers to check the countless of reviews in the hallway on your spouse, then we can protect our spouse for your marriage.By focusing too much time that you should live as two people combined as one, to evenly share responsibilities.Anything that must be reduced or abandoned entirely before a sexual affair with an man or woman.Renew Your Vows - each year and one of them within the relationship.

How To Save Marriage After Husband Cheats

It is best to cool down before you got married.When things go wrong in marriage and escalates into arguing.I am grateful for the things that make up sessions are and start the home you want to save the marriage, what can save marriage.And they always tell you that wants to speak of the common mistakes are and how you word what you want to improve or save your marriage, this is to take the high number of fantastic guides to a high paying job.The idea of changing them and felt closer as a huge factor that keeps on getting higher and are willing to make sure that if your problem is his or her of the two of you.

Marriage can be many steps to set-up a computer, and even without sexual innuendos will do you find out what you are confident in direction of these route causes as they are, their bondage will grow closer.It may be an invaluable resource for saving their marriage.Be absolutely committed to make things work out.Perhaps you are feeling that you must also be willing to put stress on individuals and their families and couples.Never let the harmony of your married life.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/trump-fumbles-during-tough-encounter-with-undecided-voters-cnn/

Trump fumbles during tough encounter with undecided voters - CNN

Trump appeared at an ABC News town hall in Philadelphia, and peppered a socially distanced audience with the rhetoric and talking points that delight his loyal base. But if his goal was to satisfy relatively small groups of voters who polls show haven’t yet made up their mind, the President appeared to fall short and rarely addressed the substance of questions about his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, race relations and health care.

It was an unusual moment of exposure for a leader who demands constant public praise from his subordinates. On Tuesday night, audience members granted him the respect due to his office but none of the adulation he craves.

Trump was largely cordial and likely came across as strong to voters that love him. But his performance offered Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden multiple openings only two weeks before their first debate clash — one of the last potential turning points of the White House race. First-term presidents who have spent years expecting deference from everyone they meet often get a shock in the first debate showdown with a challenger keen to get in their grill. Tuesday’s event suggests the surprise may be especially acute for Trump when he faces Biden on September 29.

Answers that normally draw wild cheers at Trump’s packed campaign events fell flat when he was confronted by voters who appeared to want to cut through bluster and propaganda. And his responses did little to recognize the magnitude of the challenges facing the nation in a fearful year, suggesting that the President has yet to find the language or the appeals that might turn around an election he so far seems to be losing.

On a day when America recorded more than 1,200 new deaths from Covid-19, Trump effectively told the country to ignore his own words to Bob Woodward downplaying the threat early this year even though he knew how bad it was.

He said he did a “tremendous” job on the virus, insisted “it’s going to disappear” and that “a lot of people think masks are not good.” Asked who said masks aren’t good, Trump replied, “Waiters.” He bizarrely said “herd mentality” would make it go away, in an apparent reference to herd immunity that medical experts say could cost several million lives. The President has pounced on Biden’s verbal slips as evidence that he lacks the mental capacity to be President. But his own confusing answers after six months supposedly leading the national effort to fight the pandemic failed to inspire confidence that he fully understands the implications of the emergency even now.

He also illogically complained that Biden, who has no power, had not followed through on a national mask mandate and claimed falsely the US response to the crisis was the best in the world. And the President denied any blame for how the pandemic has turned out — placing the entire responsibility on China, where the virus first emerged, and several times complained he is not getting the credit he deserves.

At the end of the night, the President was asked by a voter named Ashley West to cite the most difficult part of his presidency and asked what he had learned from it — and in a way that seemed jarring given that the 200,000th American will soon die from the disease, the President reflected on his own personal sense of loss.

“I learned that life is very fragile. I knew people that were powerful people, strong people, good people, and they got knocked out by this, and died. Six people. It was five until about two weeks ago. Now, it’s six,” Trump said.

Trump defends himself

The President became most exercised when denying reports that he referred to US war dead as “losers” and “suckers,” calling them “fake.” He made halting attempts to show empathy to a new US citizen from the Dominican Republic who lost her mother to breast cancer complications a month ago and asked him a question about immigration. Trump responded by telling her that it was terrible that people died alone in hospital due to Covid-19 — and turned the answer into an infomercial for his pandemic leadership. Biden, who has buried a first wife and two children in a life marked by tragedy, is highlighting his own empathy as a balm for the country at a grief-wracked moment.

Trump shrugged off questioners who asked him if he agreed America needed to reexamine its painful history on race, again arguing that there were a few “bad apples” in the police force who “choked” in incidents in which unarmed Black Americans were killed.

The President also falsely claimed that Democrats wanted to remove protections for patients with pre-existing conditions introduced under Obamacare. His own administration is currently arguing a Supreme Court case trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act, while Democrats seek to preserve the law. While Trump says he would protect pre-existing conditions, he has offered no credible health plan.

The President’s appearance came in a crucial swing state at a moment when he is trailing Biden by nine points in the CNN Poll of Polls as the country faces concurrent crises: a pandemic, the consequent economic crash, a racial reckoning and historic fires in Western states.

Nine percent of voters in a CNN/SSRS poll this month said they might still change their mind about who they will vote for. Trump’s task in the election appears to be to add less fervent voters to his coalition after spending four years incessantly playing to his base. But while his strongest moments Tuesday came on ending foreign wars and on the economy, and he likely pleased supporters with his unequivocal pro-police statements, the President offered few new policies or approaches at the event that differed from positions in three years when his approval rating has rarely climbed above the low 40s.

Trump’s campaign insists untapped seams of pro-Trump voters who sat on the sidelines in 2016 are being ignored by pollsters and will embrace the President’s hardline culture war rhetoric to sweep him to a second term.

Trump again denies evidence of his own voice

The town hall event exactly seven weeks before Election Day was a reminder of the kind of chaos, falsehoods and divisiveness that is a selling point for the President’s most faithful voters but is the kind of behavior that may prompt an undecided voter to turn away.

The stream of lies and alternative realities that the President promoted recalled a statement attributed to former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats in Woodward’s book “Rage” that was published on Tuesday.

“To him a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie,” Coats is quoted as saying to former Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

Such commentary was borne out when Trump responded to a question by a first time voter from Pittsburgh who asked why he was captured on tapes made by Woodward as downplaying the pandemic.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t downplay it. I, actually, in many ways, I up-played it, in terms of action,” he said.

In essence, the President is inviting voters to refuse to believe the evidence of their own ears on his early attitude to the worst domestic crisis since World War II that has now killed 195,000 Americans and pitched 30 million out of work.

He is implicitly arguing that not only does he not deserve any blame for a response that lags other industrialized nations — the US has 4% of the world’s population and more than 20% of the Covid-19 cases and deaths.

But such a view relies on an interpretation that distorts the traditional sense that the buck stops on the Oval Office desk and instead relies on voters to believe a flagrant act of salesmanship that defies the reality of their own lives.

After Trump told Fox News earlier Tuesday that he had read Woodward’s book on Monday night, and found it “boring,” Woodward said that the President was living in an “Orwellian world.”

“He was told, he knew, he told me about it,” the veteran reporter told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“I don’t know, to be honest, whether he’s got it straight in his head what is real and what is unreal.”

[lsmithart]

Research: Dream Dictionary Interpretation of Symbols

The importance of my exploration into the unconscious and its links with conscious existence is not necessarily to pin point the meanings of my dreams; as of course this is subjective. However I still felt it was important to explore this notion in response to the points I had taken from my dreams upon waking. There are many dream theorists who consider different meanings behind specific dreams. The main theorists in history are noted in my handwritten notes in a previous post. However I have found the most notable to be Freud and Jung. I attempted to read their books ‘Dreams’ and ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ in order to reap specific symbols from them relating to my own dreams however, due to their structure, this was not possible. Instead therefore, I decided to focus my research into Freud and Jung’s theories about dreams and the unconscious, rather than trying to find out what their ideas are about specific symbols. Instead, I focused this aspect on the ‘Dream Dictionary from A-Z’ book by Theresa Cheung as this is designed specifically for looking up keywords and symbols. This book was also written in consideration of Jungian and Freudian theory. 

As stated, the theory of the links between dreams and the unconscious is more pertinent to my practice at this juncture so I am not too concerned with incorporating their specific meaning just yet. However, I feel it is an interesting point of departure to consider what these dreams represent in the context of understanding the relationship, and ‘space’, between the conscious and unconscious self. As my work is always approached from an autobiographical perspective, the purpose of acquiring meaning and understanding of the unconscious voice is to allow for growth within myself which, in turn, allows for growth within my practice.

I have decided to tap into key words from the dreams whose themes are reoccurring or more prominent within my notes as I feel these are the ones that must represent the most important meanings that are being spoken by my unconscious. To do this, I am utilising ‘The Dream Dictionary from A to Z’ by Theresa Cheung. Cheung is a modern New Age writer and spiritualist who specialises in dream theory and symbols.

Tidal waves:

Water - a common association with the fluid of the womb and its role in evolution. An archetypal symbol in the dreamer’s emotional life. Also a symbol of the spiritual life force. Healing waters and spiritually cleansing. As the governing element of the Zodiac signs Cancer (my sign), Scorpio and Pisces, it is said to endow people with the feminine qualities of gentleness and changeability. Deep water are symbols of the unconscious or of being out of your depth. Strong winds creating a stormy sea - symbolism suggests you might be contemplating human emotion in general, with all its ebb and flow from rage to calm and rage again.

Tidal waves - “This frightening image can suggest that your personal problems have raged out of control and that your place in the world is uncertain and shifting.”

Tornados:

Symbolises emotional turmoil occurring in your waking life. Symbolic of verbal arguments, fighting and emotional tension in a relationship. The presence of tornadoes or hurricanes suggest that you are an extremely emotional person and that either you or those around you are prone to emotional outbursts. Alternatively, you may feel as if you are being swept along by forces that are beyond your control. It can also represent the power of your own passion or passionate belief.

Conflict:

Argue - “Indication that you are feeling conflict about some aspect of your life and that you are perhaps not releasing or expressing these feelings of conflict in your waking life.”

Anger - May express the tension between your conscious and unconscious urges. The aggressor in the dream will often represent the part of you that is demanding to be acknowledged.

Just missing something (late), e.g. a train, a lift in a car:

Cheung: Suggests you feel others are moving ahead of you and leaving you lagging behind. Can also symbolise frustrating at having missed an opportunity.

Being left behind:

Jung:

Freud:

Cheung:

Violence:

Any violence in dreams is a reflection of your own inner feelings about yourself and sometimes about the situation around you. Dreams about being attacked or being threatened may be a warning of an attack in waking life, e.g. on your integrity or character. 

Dismembered body part - Indicates emotional and mental distress. Perhaps you are tearing yourself apart over something or someone. Half a body dream images suggest a lack of balance in tour life between your outer and inner life.

Pregnancy:

To dream you are pregnant is an example of wish-fulfilment. Pregnancy dreams if you are not pregnant suggest a yearning for unconditional love and acceptance. They can also indicate a period of waiting before the completion of a project. A new area of your personality or potential is developing or ‘hatching’. 

Trains:

To dream of missing a train may suggest missed opportunities.

Losing things:

A dream if losing something important can suggest lost opportunities, past relationships or, according to Jungian analysis, forgotten aspects of yourself. Losing something suggests that you have become distracted in waking life and have lost sight of what really matters. What does the lost thing symbolise? It may be a symbol of something that is missing from your life that you never had in the first place. Try a free association exercise (write down 10 or so words that immediately come to mind in relation to that symbol) to decipher the lost object’s symbolism. 

House from childhood:

The homes in which you once lived can become symbols of certain factors that shaped the person you have become. Houses in dreams often represent parts of your mind or personality.

REFERENCES:

Cheung, T., (2019). The Dream Dictionary from A to Z [Revised edition]: The Ultimate A–Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams. HarperCollins UK. Available at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=wtyxDwAAQBAJ.

[anonthenullifier]

An Auspice of Scarlet - Ch. 2

An AU Victorian Scarlet Vision story. 

Chapter Title: In which company is sought and revelations are had

Chapter Summary: Wanda settles into life at the manor while attempting to form a connection with the elusive butler.

Word Count: 10k 

A gift for: @atendrilofscarlet

AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12184758/chapters/28284888

I hope you enjoy!

The house is extravagant, though not ostentatious, just the right amount of excess intermixed with a surprising level of sparseness. Wanda’s room is, so far on her self-guided tour, the one oozing with the most unadulterated flamboyance. The stairway leading down to the main floor is grand, intricate carvings of imps and angels battling for dominance, but the details are subtle from a distance, overpowered by the white, black, and gold checkered floor. Unlike most of the wealthy homes she has seen, this one lacks the clutter of furniture, lacks the requirement to constantly scan the immediate vicinity to ensure no shins are banged on tables or feet trip over upturned rugs. Each room (from the parlor, to the front hall, the bedrooms, and the four different sitting rooms) contains the barest amount of furniture to allow the space to feel content but not overstuffed. What she’d like to do is ask why this is the case, but her day, so far, has been solitary, though not truly alone.

Vision (the name still feels funny in her mouth) and the other servants are clearly in the house as well, their presence ephemeral yet palpable, traces of their existence left to guide her yet she has not actually seen anyone yet. It is infuriating. Wanda unfolds the carefully labeled map that was left on the table in the dining room (a table she is fairly certain has to be at least three times longer than she is tall) and studies the handwriting, turning the map and reorienting herself to her location in the house. According to the schedule written in the bottom left corner, there is supposed to be tea and cucumber sandwiches available on the back veranda in a quarter of an hour. The hope is that if she arrives early then perhaps she will encounter him.

As Wanda moves through the wood-paneled hallway, she can’t help but think about the elusive man. Even though she has never had any desire for a butler, as she is perfectly capable of providing for herself and cannot fathom any reason someone else should have to deal with the tediousness of life in her honor, it does not mean she isn’t inordinately impressed by the forethought shown by Vision. When she woke this morning, she opened her door to find not only a neatly folded pile of clothes (a note attached in his perfectly legible writing - Miss Maximoff, it is my sincerest hope that you find a suitable outfit from these options until I am able to clean your clothing.) and a steaming copper pitcher with a protective towel wrapped around the handle and instructions on using the washbasin in the room (apparently it has a tendency to lean so she needed to check the footings before pouring). Once she had washed up and gotten dressed (even the clothes provided were expensive, the lack of itchiness to the fabric quite refreshing though the dress was quite unique in its construction), she opened the door to find a cup of perfectly drinkable tea atop a dainty, ivory doily. In the dining room there was breakfast waiting for her, and the map. In each room along her journey there were refreshments and suggested activities: books with marks for ideal poetry to match the room, a deck of cards with instructions on how to enjoy a single person game, a carefully constructed and itemized list of the artwork around the house, and a hearty turkey stew with a small yeast roll at lunchtime. Anything she could want was provided before she ever realized she needed it. Except company.

When she opens the stain-glass door to the veranda her mouth immediately curls into a proud grin, eyes drawn to the lanky form of the suit-clad butler. Wanda remains quiet, making sure to hold the handle down to close the door without an audible click, and cautiously approaches the small table set up on the whitewashed wooden deck. The man seems oblivious to her, bent over at the waist as his black-gloved hands shuffle the teapot and plate of sandwiches around on the table, clearly unsatisfied with the positioning of them. Eventually he allows a minuscule shrug of his shoulders before straightening out his spine, briefly pausing to stare beyond the rail of the veranda. Wanda almost allows her curiosity free rein of her body, almost allows her gaze to follow his, but she fights it, worried if she loses focus then he will disappear again. So instead she takes several hurried, albeit quiet, steps forward until she is close enough that she could reach out and tap his shoulder. “Vision?”

No one could describe his response as jumpy since there is no easily discernible flinch of his muscles or flailing of his arms, but his shoulders do stand just a bit taller, arms just a touch more rigid than before. Wanda grins wider at the victory. “Miss,” he turns around, slow and purposeful, every motion of his body from the rotation of his shoulders to the slight swing of his fingers tightly controlled, voice even yet pleasant as he turns the corners of his mouth up into a serviceable smile, “Maximoff. You are ahead of schedule.”

“I’m not too fond of a structured life.”

The smile flinches from serviceable to genuine before settling back to neutrality. “I see. My apologies for attempting to constrain your freedom of time.” He steps around her, hands gripping the back of the chair as he pulls it out with a slight bow, “Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you.” Wanda sits, hands folding in her lap as she flashes an appreciative smile in his direction, one that he returns while pouring her a cup of tea. Once he has filled her cup he performs another servile bow before turning to leave. Given the solitude of her day, and her enkindled curiosity, the brevity of the interaction is not acceptable. “Would you like to join me?”

Vision hesitates, eyes torn between studying her face, likely attempting to ascertain the seriousness of the request, and the doorway leading back into the manor. The freshly polished tips of his shoes point towards the door, his heel lifting off the ground in preparation to leave, but then his shoulders dip slightly before he pivots on his other heel and joins her at the table, proffering a polite and logical acquiescence to her request. “Since you arrived ahead of your scheduled tea time, I too am slightly ahead of schedule.” His gloved hand rests on the table, fingers tapping a silent melody, the only movement he seems to allow his body. “Have the accommodations been suitable for your needs?”

“Yes, incredibly suitable.”

“Excellent.”

The silence is not nearly as comfortable as the night before, an anxiousness bubbling in the air between them as she cycles through all the possible topics of conversation. Despite thinking about talking to him all day, she finds her tongue deserting her and going dry with indecision. Wanda carefully takes a sip of tea, hoping to whet her verbal skills and grasp one of the many comments whirling through her mind. She determines to start with the most baffling observance of the day. “Where is everyone else? I haven’t seen anyone all day.” 

“Oh,” the question seems to fluster him, fingers tapping more fervently before ceasing to move altogether, his other hand rising to emphasize his words. “There is no one else, at the moment.”

Wanda finds the information incomprehensible, the tasks far too numerous and done with such precision as to be inhuman for one man to accomplish half a day. “That is enough to make a stuffed bird laugh*.”

“I assure you that it is only you and I. Other than Mr. Barton’s intentions to visit for supper, no one else is expected for another couple of days.”

The claim is audacious. She has spent her entire day exploring the manor, and though it is a spacious and dizzying labyrinth of a structure, it is inconceivable for him to have always been three steps ahead. “How have I not seen you then?” Wanda leans closer to him, a conspiratorial finger leveled at his chest, “Can you walk through walls?”

This receives a breathy, perfectly executed laugh. “I never considered the possibility of such an ability. Sadly,” Wanda is mesmerized at the way his persona shifts, still distant, but moving from a cool, detached aloofness to one brimming with warmth and congeniality, “I have not acquired the capability to walk through walls, which is quite unfortunate as it would save me approximately…” he tilts his head in contemplation, eyes focusing on the wispy clouds lazily crawling along the cerulean sky. “I would say two hours each day if I did not have to traverse the hallways.“

“Well if you cannot walk through walls, what is your secret?” Wanda considers not including the next comment, but the notion that she may not be alone, that she has, perhaps, found a kindred spirit convinces her to toss out a waggish** (but utterly hopeful), “Can you read minds?”

He breathes in, lips turning up slightly at the playfulness in her voice, a response she intends to pull from him each time they talk as she finds it exhilarating. “That too would be an incredibly appealing prospect. No, a butler, according to Robert Roberts, is supposed to be unobtrusive and discreet, it is my job to anticipate not only your needs but also your actions and whereabouts so that I can provide for you while remaining out of sight.”

The explanation is disappointing in its commonness, but she brushes off her dismay, replacing it with a cutting smile and pointed look. “I will interpret that to mean you spend a lot of your time hiding behind corners and doors.”

Another laugh escapes his lungs, this one loose and unexpected, louder than his last one and far more authentic. “That is a fair interpretation, though the most parsimonious explanation would be my use service passages.” His hand leaves the table, dipping into his coat and removing his pocket watch. “I do apologize but I must check on the laundry.”

Wanda watches him stand, feels her heart tumble from her chest all the way to the pit of her stomach at the notion of losing his presence, a troubling realization that she determines to scrutinize later, and finds words racing out of her mouth without contemplating exactly what she might be willingly agreeing to do.  “Can I help you?”

“You are a guest.”

The tone clearly conveys that this piece of information is enough to keep her in her seat, but Wanda has never been one to adhere to social rules, and so she stands, placing her hands resolutely on her hips as she levels a challenging gaze in his direction. The simple fact of her defiance to rules, however, does not mean she cannot use them to her advantage. “Would Mr. Roberts condone the notion of denying a guest’s request?”

Vision narrows his eyes, hands lifting in the air while he prepares to counter back, use logic and manners to insist she not join him. But then his hand stops moving, a smile threatening to break the serious line of his lips, and he glances down, bringing his hands together in a thoughtful clasp. He is almost successful at vanquishing the effects of her well-played manipulation, features solemn minus a twinkle of delight in his eyes. “My apologies for acting contrary to your wishes, Miss Maximoff. Though I do not require nor insist on aid, you are welcome to shadow me, if that is a sufficient compromise to your request.”

“It is.”

A slight bow of his head obscures his face long enough for him to reset to his emotionless baseline, his voice posh and steady as he says, “Then please, follow me.”  

The journey is mostly silent as he leads her through several hallways, occasional comments are tossed over his shoulder informing her of the history of the woodwork or the means by which the artwork was acquired. Eventually they stop in front of a bookcase and he reaches out to select a pristinely kept edition of The Count of Monte Cristo. “Since you inquired as to my furtiveness…” the book only partially strays from the shelf, clicking back in place as a low groan shakes the surrounding books and the shelves open into a passageway.

“That’s dramatic.” 

A slight, proud arc forms on his mouth as he nods in agreement. “It is perhaps the fourth least dramatic one.”

Wanda glances at him, assuming he is joking but the sincerity in his voice matches the earnestness of his face. “Fascinating.”

She follows close behind him, somewhat disappointed that the passageway is dim and undecorated, a stark contrast to the extravagance of its entrance. But this disappointed flees at the wonderment (and a negligible trace of trepidation) that overtakes her mind when they enter the back hall, the space filled with steam and the echo of metal churning relentlessly from an enormous contraption. “This,” Vision raises his voice slightly, compensating for the whine and whistle of the pistons. “Is,” he leaves her side to grip a long metal rod, expanding the width between his feet as he bends his knees, bracing himself to pull the metal tube towards him. Suddenly the commotion stops, the last of the rattling vibrations dissipating until the air is calm though oppressively wet. “Friday.”

“Friday?” 

“Yes,” four long strides bring him to her side, a small hand towel grasped in his fingers that he uses to wipe down the leather palms of his gloves. “The first successful completion of a laundry cycle using the machine was completed on a Friday, hence the name.” 

Wanda gives a distracted hmm, feet carrying her closer to the machine, eyes taking in the ten wide wheels laced with a tough fabric, the grated panels of the conveyer belt and how it dips into a vat of water over which hangs fist sized balls of metal attached to thick metal rods. “It is quite impressive,” the butler joins her, the facade of disinterest fading as he excitedly explains the process using words she cannot comprehend like hydraulics and reciprocating engine, but what she’s drawn to the most, and what, besides the stifling humidity in the room, is the likely culprit for the heat budding in her cheeks, is the passion in his hands as he mirrors the movement of the machine to better help her understand the workings.

Nothing quite measures up to Friday for the duration of her shadowing, moving from the machine to the kitchen to throw vegetables into a pot for supper, then on to the stables where they feed the horses and Wanda watches in fascination at the way the water pump is set up to ensure Vision does not sully his suit. The walk back to the manor from the stables is her favorite part, a peaceful stroll against the backdrop of rolling, green mountains, the man next to her quiet, yet conversational beyond what she assumes his holy book of butlering would allow. Yet his conversation depends on one small aggravation - she must always choose the topic. If she remains silent, so does he, but if she asks him a question or makes a trailing comment, then, and only then, will he respond. It is as he is finishing informing her on the intricacies of collecting eggs each morning without the (his voice becomes quite distant and laced with disdain) bricky*** beasts pecking apart the threads of his pants, that Wanda attempts to formulate the next topic, eager to keep him speaking. Her mind fixates on the gentle lilt of his accent, particularly in its purity as compared to butchered and harsher cadence she is more likely to hear in every tavern in every town since coming to this country. “Are you originally from England?”

The inquiry surprises him, blonde eyebrows raising as disbelief creates lines around his slightly agape mouth. “Yes, London, though technically-.” His lips remain parted, hands toying with the idea of lifting to add more information, but then he shuts his mouth, glances towards the mountains, and once he turns his attention towards her again she senses that he has realigned his train of thought to what might be a more acceptable follow-up, an assumption that stokes her curiosity and almost convinces her to reach for his mind. “I consider myself quite skilled at placing accents, and yet, I find myself uncertain as to your nation of origin beyond simply belonging to the Russian Empire.”

“You are correct, broadly.” She redirects her attention away from the intensity of his anticipatory gaze and stares at the rings adorning her fingers. Thoughts of her home country and the memories of a lost life are typically kept locked within her subconscious. It is easier that way. A deep breath ensures she only pulls out the barest, most necessary information to answer the question before shuttering the opening from further disturbances. “Sokovia. Novi Grad, specifically.” Her next question is fueled by the comfort of his presence and her distaste for his name. “So, was your name Vision on the ship list?”

The man almost stops walking, fingers curling into fists at his side and she worries that the question is a step too far given the paucity of their interactions. But whatever ire manifested is dissolved by a tiny smirk and a shake of his head. “It was not, though, quite unfortunately for,” he sends a deliberate, and what she might almost describe as mischievous, look in her direction, “curious minds, such records are currently not made public.”

“That is quite unfortunate,” her voice shifts from jocular to serious, recalling the protests recently about the sharing of ship lists, ”though perhaps for the best given the Nativists****.” Vision nods, a grim line forming on his lips, even out here, in such an isolated spot, clearly aware of the smatterings of rumors spreading about a planned increase in regulating immigration, which for some would simply be deportation. 

“Indeed.”

Clint is waiting for her when they arrive back at the manor and as soon as Wanda greets him, Vision vanishes. His presence is still keenly felt but only as a wraith. This, Wanda determines, is more distracting than if the man stood in the corner waiting on them, because she cannot seem to concentrate on Clint’s questions and stories, her mind wandering continuously back to the butler as an unmistakable itch of curiosity to unravel the enigma of his being takes root in her mind.

The next day Wanda resolves to take action.

Upon waking she opens her door, unsurprised to find another pile of clothing (this one with her own sole surviving, freshly cleaned and mended outfit on top) and a steaming copper pitcher. For this step of her plan, Wanda plays along, scooping the clothes into her arm and carefully lifting the pitcher, balancing the bottom against her hip as she closes the door. A tendril of scarlet wraps around the pitcher, removing it from her hand and carrying it to the wash basin, while a second, smaller strand exits the door, feeling the hallway for any buzz of thoughts that might approach. Wanda unties her dressing gown, allowing it to fall to the floor along with the pile of dresses, smiling as she slips on her familiar, though somewhat itchy, patchwork skirt and blouse. Her hands work without thought, twisting her hair up into a loose, swooping knot, held together with pins. Moments later she can sense orderly thoughts, each marching in a line, ticking off the various tasks for the day, the current image at the front of the mind a tea cup and a doily. When the mind stops in front of her door, Wanda allows a wicked smile to part her lips as she yanks on the handle. “Good morning.”

Credit must be given to the fact he does not drop the tea cup or the doily, in fact, the only sign of his complete surprise is the painfully slow blink of his brilliant blue eyes and the longer than polite pause between her greeting and his, “Good morning, Miss Maximoff.” The tea cup is brought to rest between them, “Tea?”

“Thank you.”  The porcelain cup passes into her hand, fingers curling around the welcome heat as she smiles innocently up at him. “Hypothetically, what would happen if you, through the quite voluntary and eagerly offered help of another person, managed to complete all of your chores earlier than scheduled?”

If the door opening unexpectedly shocked him, this question appears to decimate his understanding of the world, eyes darting away from her face as his feet shuffle in discomfort. It is endearing in the same way as watching a shy kitten approach a foreign ball of yarn, all she needs now is for him to pounce. Each syllable is elongated as he forms his thoughts. “Hypothetically,” he pauses, eyes sliding to the side before snapping back to her face, “if I allowed such an offer, despite the blatant disregard it would have for the comfort of my guest’s well-being, then I would be able to fill that time with whatever activity or task is deemed most appealing.” 

Wanda beams up at him as she sips her tea, “Such as that peculiar game you pointed out on the lawn yesterday?” It had been on their way to feed the fish in the pond, iron hoops rising out of the ground in a haphazard fashion as one of the ugliest gardens Wanda had ever seen.

“Yes, Miss Maximoff, pale-maille*****certainly is always an appealing option.”

“Excellent.”

His, “excellent,” is not nearly as enthusiastic but he doesn’t verbalize his disdain at her request.

They start with the candlesticks, Vision reluctantly setting a bowl of sudsy water between them as he grips a piece of felt in his hands, which are adorned not with his typical leather gloves, but instead with thicker hydrophobic fabric. “Simply dip the felt in the water and clean in a clockwise pattern to expurgate the filth. Do not,” his voice drops an octave as he tilts the candlestick in his hand to show her a green fabric base, “get the baize wet, it will spoil the material and require mending.”

Wanda inspects the materials in front of them, “Understood.”

Once the candlesticks are done she watches him demonstrate the quick, small movements required to polish the mahogany serving trays, yet her eyes keep trailing away from the demonstration to instead linger on the angles of his face and the adorable squint of concentration when he works.  After the trays they move on to the silverware, which Wanda finds increasingly bizarre, particularly when he instructs her to stab the forks repeatedly into wet sand, explaining, with a twinge of defensiveness in the face of her disbelief, “Mr. Roberts swears by this technique and it has never failed me.” 

They clean the plates, the decanters, the tea pots, and the cruets; refill the lanterns (“You are quite fortunate I cleaned those several days ago, the process is quite unpleasant and one I would not subject you to regardless of your desire to help”); and polish the steel grates in each hallway. Vision completes his portion of each task much quicker than her, the precision, efficiency, and uniformity of his movements stupefying. At the moment his pile of brushed blankets is at least three times higher than hers and she finds her mind crafting an amusing image that she believes he’d enjoy as well. “Vision?”

His hand does not stop its circular motion as he cocks his head to indicate she has his attention, “Yes, Miss Maximoff?”

“Are you, by any chance, related to Friday?”

The assumption is that he will, with a fine-tuned deadpan, respond with a playfully logical explanation, as he has for all her other comments, but instead he drops the blanket to the ground, an almost imperceptible tremble to his hand as he picks the item back up. The brush hovers in the air, horsehair bristles hooking into the fibers just enough keep the blanket steady, and his face pales as he swallows. “Pardon me, Miss Maximoff.” The blanket is delicately placed on the pile, the brush next to it as he stands, eyes never quite returning to her face. “I somehow forgot I need to run to town. I shall be sure to expedite my errands so that we can maximize the three-quarters of an hour your aid has made available for me to teach you pale-maille.” With an unusual abruptness he is gone, leaving Wanda to stew in confusion, the strokes of the brush in her hand half-hearted and likely ineffective at removing the grime from the blankets.

With no tasks to complete and not another living soul around, Wanda wanders the hallways, fingers brushing the walls and toying with every sconce, frame, and book she touches in hopes of discovering more secrets of the manor, yet nothing happens. Slowly her feet bring her to the veranda, heart dropping at the absence of a teapot. Wanda sits, taking in the expanse of green grass that climbs slowly up into distant, tree blanketed mountains, mind churning through their last interaction, attempting to determine why he seemed so disconcerted by her question. When the click of footfalls sound behind her, Wanda stands, ready to apologize as she turns but freezes at the sight of a red-haired, well-dressed woman. “Who are you?” 

The woman tilts her head, her lips following suit into a half-smile that gives the impression of a recently sharpened dagger. “I believe that is a question more suitable for me to ask. So who are you?”

Scarlet courses through Wanda’s veins at the threat in the woman’s voice, a readiness forming in her hands and feet to attack or flee, depending on whatever happens next. “I am Wanda Maximoff.”

The smile dulls, now matching what might be flashed to the only other stranger on the road for the day, a look that is congenial enough but does not offer an invitation for further contact. “Clint tells me you are a spiritualist.”

“Clint?” 

“Yes, Barton.” It is not until the woman sits down that Wanda even processes how quickly she traveled across the veranda. Slowly Wanda shifts one chair over and sits as well, palms pressed firmly against her thighs to hide the shimmer of red pulsing in unison with the erratic drumming of her heart. “I’m Natasha Romanov.”

A hand is held aloft between them. Wanda eyes the black glove adorning the hand, noting it is expensive yet practical, a elegance in the way the fabric stretches along the fingers but there is also a surety in the seams that this is a hand to be grasped with precaution. Wanda tightens her fingers into a fist to dispel the last of the scarlet before unfurling her fingers and gripping the gloved hand long enough to say, “Pleasure.” 

“Sorry for surprising you,” there is no apology in the tone, “but it is not often a spiritualist has an actual reputation for talking to the dead.”

Wanda calculates all the possible responses, an uneasiness pricking at the back of her neck, the same uneasiness she feels when a swim in the river is impending. “For such a reputation, you would think people would not respond so poorly.”

The rise and fall of Natasha’s shoulders is almost as dangerous as her smile, an indifference so palpable Wanda has to fight against allowing it to reduce her own opinion of herself. “It is not surprising, people rarely want what they say.” When Wanda met the Fox Sisters she knew instantly they were cons, yet there was still power in their presence, in their words and their falsehoods. The same power exudes from the woman next to her. “So, Wanda Maximoff, what is it that you want from staying here?”

“Simply a safe place while I decide where to go next.”

“Have you found that here?”

Wanda considers the question for only a moment before reaching a conclusion. “Yes, Vision has been more than accommodating.”

A meaningful, “Hmm,” vibrates in the woman’s throat, but her next thoughts are silenced by a thudding of feet and the tap of wood behind them. Their heads turn to take in the shifting gaze of the butler as he stands halfway on the deck holding a wooden mallet in each hand. “Hello, Vision.”

His gaze finally comes to a halt, eyes falling on the red-haired woman as he takes the final six steps to stand a respectable distance from the table. “Miss Romanov, I was not expecting you.”

“Have I ever shown up when expected?”

The pause is the perfect length to be polite as to show consideration of the question, but short enough to imply the answer was already known and that he is playing along with her wishes. “Not once, Miss Romanov.”

Wanda decides to alleviate the tension in the air, shaking the last of her nerves from her fingers as she indicates the mallets in his hands. “Are those for pale-maille?”

The man lifts the mallets up, inspecting them with an odd detachment as if he had forgotten they were in his hands. “Oh, yes, they are, Miss Maximoff.” The mallets lower down to his side, the movement seeming to draw his lips in a similar downward arc. “Unfortunately, I believe I need to prepare Miss Romanov her coffee,” Natasha opens her mouth to talk, but is quieted by a nod of Vision’s head, “with a splash of vodka.”

“Perfect.”

“My apologies, Miss Maximoff, I shall endeavor to allot more time tomorrow, if you wish.”

He does not wait for her response before he disappears through the stained-glass door, a subtle and incisive clearing of a throat requiring her attention. “Pale-maille?” Natasha touches the tips of her fingers conspiratorially to Wanda’s wrist. “With the butler?”

Immediately her voice becomes defensive, unappreciative of the scandal in the woman’s voice. “Yes, I helped him earlier today so he would have time to show me.”

The thing is, Wanda has, quite unfortunately, discovered that her words usually incite more scandal than they dispel, Natasha sitting up straighter with a keen smirk. “That man barely allows guests to lift their own cup.” An amused huff follows the sentence, hanging in the air as she stands from her seat. “Will you please pass my apologies on to Vision, I forgot I promised Clint my company.” Natasha does not wink but the expression on her face, once the memory of the day fades and distorts, will no doubt be recalled as a wink.  “May you find your safe place here, Wanda.”

As evening falls, Wanda finds herself alone again, Vision far more removed and distant after the discovery of his improprietous decision to potentially socialize with a guest. She’s embarrassed at the anticipatory hope that tightens her chest each time she approaches a corner or door, but none are hiding the butler. There is, once she retires for the night, a cup of hot chocolate on the desk of her room, a billowing stream of steam confirms the recency of its delivery.  Cautiously she curves her palms around the porcelain cup, breathing in the sweetness, her fingers flinching slightly at the heated ceramic against her skin. If this is still hot it means he is likely awake. 

The schedule on the map from the day before stopped at bedtime, no indications given as to where or when she might be able to show up to intersect with his own schedule. Which means she has to resort to other methods. Hesitantly Wanda extends her index finger, eyes closing in concentration as a mist of scarlet releases into the air, sending out a beacon for other minds, the energy spreading and then rebounding back with information. A smile crawls along her lips when she locates the stir of thoughts. Cup still in hand, she allows her body to follow the murmur of his mind, engrossed by the neat and orderly nature of his thoughts, each one following at even intervals before disappearing into different sections of his mind. It is not until muggy air engulfs her body that she opens her eyes, finds that she is on a smaller, more enclosed balcony, not nearly as impressive as the veranda.

Vision is there, just as she suspected based on the mental link, though the details are difficult to parse out, the gaslamp on the table illuminates enough of the balcony for her to study the general appearance of him from a distance. It is evident he is not anticipating her company, his jacket and waistcoat gone, leaving him only in a slightly wrinkled shirt and black pants. He is reclined in a chair, feet resting on a wicker footstool and Wanda is enamored with how relaxed he appears, his hands working in methodical patterns to clean whatever is gripped between his fingers, a slight gleam from the gaslamp makes her think he is polishing metal of some kind. There is a war waging in her body, her heart yearning to call out his name, sit in the empty chair next to him, to bask in the honeyed tone of his voice, but her mind quickly points out all of the cues that he would not welcome company. A man of order, one who favors a pristine and ambivalent appearance, might not appreciate a surprise attack when he is at his least controlled, particularly after the embarrassment on the veranda.

Yet somehow, with his preternatural butler abilities, he senses her before she has a chance to back away. “Miss Maximoff, is something the matter?” The concern is evident in his voice, but more so in the quickness of the motion from sitting to standing, the casualness of his attire contrasting the seriousness pulling his lips into a frown.

Wanda shakes her head, though his frown remains, whether it is because he is unable to accept her answer or because it is clear now that she has simply decided to intrude upon his evening. “I,” at one point in her life, Wanda truly believed in honesty and forthrightness, but for the sake of survival she has become accustomed to providing legitimate, albeit false, reasons for her actions. What she should proclaim right now is that, since his presence rescinded for the day, she has only been able to think about his company, cannot explain why she wishes to delve into his thoughts, feel his soul, discover who this man is, but her instincts prohibit such a confession. “I could not sleep.”

The dull light of the gaslamp emphasizes the softening of his features, the frown retracting, replaced with an understanding nod. “It cannot be easy adjusting to a new accommodation, particularly given the circumstances.” 

“No, it is not.”

A sympathetic tilt forms on his mouth, “If there is any assistance I can offer, please do not hesitate to inform me.” 

This friendly but strained back and forth is exhausting, and Wanda can’t seem to temper her impatience and annoyance with the requirement, based on the recommendations of some other butler who happened to write a book, that she must initiate all conversations beyond offers of help.   “Are you ever not a butler?”

“I-” shadows form on his face as he shifts his feet, brows furrowing and casting his features with a mask of indecision, “am not certain that is possible, given the nature of my employment.”

“So you are saying you are no longer a man? Only a butler?” Her mind instantly goes back to the veranda and the discussion of wants and how Wanda seemingly can never parse out the true wants of her clients. Perhaps she has misread this man as well, maybe his kindness is simply due to the code of the butler and nothing more. A possibility that renders her lungs unable to function at their full capacity. “You have no wants other than to serve?” 

The oppressive silence coils her stomach into uncomfortable knots and Wanda turns to leave, deciding this is her last night in the manor, unwilling to deal with the dehumanization of servitude and the possibility that any gentleness from this man was simply part of his job. She’d rather wander the countryside for the next town then accept that notion. “Miss Maximoff?”

Her fingernails dig into the palm of her hand as she turns around with an exasperated, “What?”

He takes a step around the chair, body falling into the light of the lamp, revealing that the cuffs of his shirt are unexpectedly rolled up twice and that his hands are bare. It is the first part of his skin she has spied beyond his face and there is a humanizing quality to it, until he follows her gaze and hurriedly shoves his hands into his pockets. “I want,” uncertainty mars his forehead, bunching the skin in erratic patterns, and his eyes fall to the ground. Then he raises his head and a sheepish lift of his shoulders produces a funny, fluttering feeling in her heart, “I would very much fancy your company, if you are not opposed to such a tête-à-tête.”

The tightness unravels as her eyes revolve before she can stop them, almost as defiant as the grin that forms instantaneously on her face and the zealousness of her, “Not opposed.” 

An uncharacteristically free smile dances across his face, though she wonders, briefly, if it is simply a trick of the lighting. He waves a hand at the other chair, remains standing as he waits for her to sit down, to twist and shimmy into the chair until she is comfortable, and then he returns to his prior position, but this time his feet don’t dare go too casual and thus remain on the ground. “Miss Maximoff-” 

“You don’t need to formally address me every time you say something.”

The man nods, lips tight as he processes the information. “I understand, thank you. Did you enjoy your time with Natasha?”

The conversation from earlier replays in her mind, it was not terribly different from speaking with Vision in that both he and Natasha guard their words carefully. But where they do diverge is in the general demeanor and air, Vision polite and caring while it felt as if Natasha was interrogating her. “It was not unpleasant, though quite unusual.” One of the many thoughts that has remained with her since meeting the woman is a curiosity, perhaps more of an inkling to make a connection. “The dress from yesterday-”

“Yes, Miss-” he cuts himself off before he finishes her name, an impressive display of his attempt to remove the influence of being a butler for the sake of the moment, though she is still not certain if it is truly him or simply him following her order. “Yes?”

“Was that dress Natasha’s?”

A quick “Yes,” confirms her suspicions.

“Does she always keep a dagger in her bodice?” It was a surprising discovery when she first put on the dress, but, for some reason, it never seemed the correct time to inquire about the weapon.

Vision glances at her without moving his body, the lack of surprise on his face far more amusing, she finds, than if the comment had rattled him. “Yes,” his voice grows distant, eyes traveling to stare into the darkness over the railing, “the few times she has forgotten to remove all of her armaments from her clothing has caused severe malfunctions in Friday.”

The plurality of the admission does not go unnoticed and Wanda recalls the confusion, in addition to the confounding discovery of the dagger, at the five holsters she found in the dress along with several slits in the fabric to increase the ease of accessing the holsters and the numerous hidden pockets that presumably hold dangerous objects. “Why does she require an arsenal?”

“Miss Romanov is involved with,” his mouth shuts, lips clasped in a thin line as he contemplates the next words, “covert political operations between the Russian Empire and the United States.”

“Are you implying she’s a spy?”

A shrug and a nervous puff of air is answer enough, but he still verbalizes it as well, just to be clear. “That is the implication, though I cannot speak to the directionality of her allegiance nor do I believe it is in the favor of my livelihood to inquire.” Wanda releases an amused snort, the glimpse of pride in his eyes clear even in the dim lighting. Silence descends around them, but tonight, she vows, if he wishes to converse, then he must direct the flow of topics. Thankfully, it does not take long for a tentative, “Miss Maximoff?”

Both his habit of inquiring if he can make an inquiry and using her name are still strong, but Wanda decides to let this one escape a retort, instead angling to throw him off in another way. “You may call me Wanda, if you” the confidence she had going into the comment dissipates almost immediately, getting caught in the humid breeze that stirs the air around her. So she finishes her thought on a weakened, anxious, “like.”

“Wanda.” He tests her name slowly, holding out the Wan and overemphasizing the duh in the second syllable, but he does so with an awed, almost boyish exuberance. The second, “Wanda,” returns to the cadence and tone of his Miss Maximoff, “I have been reading many works concerning the spiritualist movement.”  He pauses as if what he has just said is a question, but Wanda isn’t sure what he is expecting, and so she waits, eyes glancing away from him briefly to try to identify the location of a distant boom of thunder. The hesitant but rich inflection of his words draws her attention back to him. “I am aware of your proclivity for séances,” the and ending up in a river is left unspoken but hovers quite clearly in the air, “but was curious if you offer other readings in line with the spiritualist movement.”

“I occasionally do tarot readings, though,” the image of her wrecked quarters and the torn up and charred cards immediately flashes through her mind, “my tarot deck was ruined with the rest of my belongings.”

A flash of anger crosses his face, lips drooping into a scowl before lifting just enough to erase the brief ire. “Unacceptable.”

Wanda nods, agreeing with his assessment but aware nothing can be done at this point. “I used to also have a small table set up for palm reading outside of Castle Garden.” The location was ideal, particularly on days when there was a play or performance, the giddiness of rich socialites to learn of their impending love lives provided her with a lot of food and decent housing while she lived in the city, even if she does not particularly believe in the method. But, as with all good things, it ended abruptly and not in her favor the day she was visited by a man in a bowler hat. Wanda shakes the memory, narrowing her eyes as a dangerously appealing idea forms in her head. “Would you like your palm read? You were gracious enough to show me your trade today, I would enjoy the chance to repay the favor.” 

Predictably the offer is met with resistance, his body seizing up just enough to be noticeable and his eyes bouncing to every object and item except her. “Oh, I do not think that is necessary.”

“Why? Are you scared?”

He hesitates and the fear is palpable, though it does not have its intended consequence of quelling her curiosity, instead stoking the fire of her interest. “No,” with a single word she knows he is a terrible liar because she does not even have to reach out and brush his mind to know the truth. “I personally view, with no offense meant to you or your livelihood, the spiritualist movement as pure balderdash.” 

Typically, offense would be felt at such a statement, but the fact he was willing to say it directly to her is proof that she is interacting with Vision as a person and not a butler, and she determines to ensnare this side of him for a bit longer. “Have you ever had your palm read?”

“No.”

A deceptively innocent grin forms on her face, “Well how can you make such a claim if you have never determined the veracity of the technique?”

He freezes, lips parted slightly in contemplation while his eyes focus on a point just above her shoulder and she can almost imagine tiny gears clicking in his eyes as he attempts to counter her claim. “I suppose it is empirically impossible to support my claim without evidence.” The words come out slowly, a pause inserted at every third word.

Wanda smiles, lifting her arm so that her hand hovers between them, palm up, “I am glad you have seen reason, may I?”

The disconcerting gaze moves from just above her shoulder to her palm, his own hands delving deeper into his pockets as she stares at him. “It is quite late.”

“It will not take long.”

“You are a-”

Wanda glares at him, flexing her fingers in an attempt to encourage his compliance, “If you attempt to rationalize your refusal on the basis of me being a guest in this house then I will turn it right back on you and insist, as a guest, that you comply. But,” the glare softens as she offers him a smirk, “I would much prefer to avoid such awkwardness.”

Momentarily the fear leaves his face, replaced by a gleam of fascination that almost derails her plans. Thankfully, his voice breaks the spell, “My hands…”

It is undeniable, based on her experience so far with him, that his job requires a great deal of work with his hands, some of the liquids corrosive, and so she assumes he is going to attempt to argue that she should not have to touch such hands. “The only way that sentence can end with my agreement is if you inform me you are actually an avian beast with talons for hands. Because then,” she sends him another smile, “you would have no palm to read.”  Vision remains silent, eyes boring into her own, creases of deep contemplation forming on his face and her heart drops at the fear on his face, concerned she is pushing him too far. “But if you truly do not want it, that is fine too.”

He holds her gaze for a small eternity before he sighs and a spike of exuberance bursts from her stomach as she watches him remove his hand from his pocket. Haltingly he moves it to her own hand and whispers an apologetic, “I am not sure you will be able to read it,” that does not make sense until she touches him, notices a subtle texture to his skin that she has not felt before. Wanda reaches out to turn the knob of the lamp, increasing the light, and hates herself for gasping when she takes in the deep, wrinkled red scarring of his skin. Immediately he pulls his hand back, but she lunges forward enough to grab it and gently guide it back to the area between them. Fingers lightly brushing along his skin, trying desperately to assure him that it does not bother her.

“What happened?”

His face becomes stoic, closed off, and the action constricts her heart, a deep, aching pain forming in her chest as he simply states, “An unfortunate event in my past.”

Nothing else is added nor is there any sign that he wishes to divulge more and so Wanda brings his hand closer to her face. “Please let me know if you are ever uncomfortable.”

“Of course.”

The order in which the major lines are assessed varies based on the reader, or so Wanda determined when she bounced from tent to tent back in Sokovia as she learned the art of palmistry. Typically, she begins with whatever the person is least interested in learning, understanding that you must keep them invested in order to receive the full payment. But, since he isn’t exactly a client, she determines to move from least interesting to her to most, hoping to ease him into the reading, make him feel more comfortable, since currently the muscles in his hand are taut and trembling. “You can relax your hand, it increases the accuracy of the reading.” A quirked eyebrow meets her words, his disbelief in the reading presenting an exhilarating challenge more so than an annoyance. His hand does relax slightly, and she brings her index finger to his palm, placing the tip of her nail between his thumb and index finger.  Gently she traces the indents in his skin, searching for the head line and doing her best not to smile at the twitch in his fingers with each pass over his skin. “I am inspecting your head line.” 

“What does that tell you?”

This time her smile breaks loose, eyebrows raising as she meets his gaze, “Patience, Vision.” Slowly she follows the line, noting how it does not curve even as it traverses almost his entire palm. “It is straight, which implies you approach life with logic and practicality, that you are meticulous.”

“How can I determine that is due to the line and not your observance of my meticulousness the past two days.”

Wanda glances up at him, expecting to find a seriousness in his brow at his defiance, but instead his features are relaxed, amused, and oddly intrigued. “I suppose you cannot know for sure.”

A triumphant arc forms on the right side of his mouth. “That is unfortunate.”

She ignores his boastfulness, angling her face down to hide her smirk. “Your line is also long, stretching from one side to the other which means you are a more methodical thinker, not terribly impulsive.” Her finger swipes across the line two more times, exerting a slight pressure as she examines the depth of the line. “You also have a good memory as your line is deep.”

“So far you are correct, but,” a slight shrug and another smile from the man spurs a warmth to grow in the pit of her stomach, “I am not convinced.”

“Would you be willing to save your judgment until the end?”

His other hand escapes his pocket long enough to wave her on, “Of course.”

Wanda is torn which line to assess next, an unusual trepidation associated with either one. Her finger hovers above his hand before dropping down just below his fingers. “The heart line,” her own heart is racing, much to her annoyance, as her finger brushes his hand, attempting to locate the beginning of the line, a smile forming on her face once she finds it, which is odd given her own qualms with this methodology. “Your heart line begins here,” her finger presses just under his index finger, “that implies you are quite selective in choosing your romantic partners, but that once you select a partner, it is a satisfying relationship.” Wanda’s eyes turn up, glancing at him to assess his response, which is a barely decipherable hmm and a tension in his face as he deliberately does not glance at her.  Her finger follows the line, noting the way it branches, one part traveling down and the other curving up towards his ring finger. “It branches.”

“What does that mean?”

Finally, he looks at her but whatever is going through his mind is unreadable based on merely looking, her own mind itching to connect with his to determine his thoughts. Yet, for some reason, she feels as if now is not an acceptable time that, in fact, the thought of entering his mind again without asking would be an unspeakable act. “It means you are quite skilled at balancing your logic and emotions, you are not driven exclusively by emotions nor do you wear them on your sleeve.” The line is also deep, a fact she intends to tell him but instead internalizes it with a slight grin, understanding it means that once a romantic relationship begins it is deeply satisfying due to an intense commitment. “Lastly,” Wanda breathes out, the pad of her index finger not leaving his palm as she moves back to the area between his thumb and index finger, “the life line.”

Vision shuffles slightly, bending forward at his waist which brings his face closer to hers as he watches her search for the line. “Are you about to tell me when I die?”

A laugh falls from her lips, this question a common misconception, although some readers assert the length of the line is related to the length of the life, but she never interprets it that way.  “No, I am not in the business of soothsaying. Now,” she grips his hand a bit tighter, rotating his wrist to allow her a better view of the line as she tries desperately to ignore how much closer he is to her now than he has been since they met. “It is quite shallow which means you have not moved through life easily.” She waits for a response, but is only provided with a nod and a release of air from his lungs. Gently she allows the tip of her nail to traverse the line, noting two places where the line stops and then starts again, one seems to be from the scarring the other, she is unable to tell. “There are two breaks, which implies unfortunate accidents or major changes.”

“I, so far, am only aware of one.” The words revert back to his utter, unemotional seriousness and it breaks her heart. “Perhaps we will have to determine if you are a soothsayer for the other.”

Wanda turns her full attention to his face, eyes locking with his blue irises. “Have I convinced you then?”

The serious from before falls away with a chuckle and a shake of his head, “Not at all, but I am willing to entertain the notion until it is utterly proven false. Given you predict something else in my future, I suppose I must wait to make my final determination until then."

“Thank you for your partial openness.”

“Of course.”

Wanda flashes him a grin before returning her attention to his palm, drawing her finger the rest of the way along the line, content and relieved at the fact it is long, so long in fact she can follow it from his palm to the base of his wrist, which is where she is met with a new texture, one that is cold and smooth, akin to the feel of the silverware they cleaned earlier in the day. “What is-” he immediately yanks his hand from her grip, nervously rolling the sleeve down to cover his wrist.

“It is nothing.”

The atmosphere around them grows denser as her eyes narrow, attempting to ascertain the new reason for his demeanor to shift, now not the calm yet confident man nor the intensely focused and unemotional butler, but his body taking on the airs of nervousness, feet unable to remain still as he shifts in his seat. Even his eyes cannot determine what to focus on. “Vision?” Wanda reaches out, grips his hand in hopes it induces a sense of calm. 

“Wanda, I,” slowly he regains his typical poise, body stilling as he straightens his spine and tilts his chin up, a move she believes might be an attempt to convince himself more so than her that everything is fine. “I believe it is about to rain.” A flash of lightning illuminates the balcony. “It is also quite late.” An admission that breeds disdain deep within her, her desire is to remain with him, figure out what is wrong, but she also recognizes that whatever is bothering him might need time, and that she worries about pushing the issue.

“It is.”

Vision stands, fingers expertly buttoning the cuff of his shirt, ensuring it cannot ride up and reveal whatever he is hiding, and then he surprises her, reaching out his hand in assistance out of the chair. The offer is accepted, her fingers curling over the edge of his hand, giving him a reassuring squeeze. “Would you like to be accompanied to your room?” Wanda is stunned at the connotation, as is Vision, who pauses, his eyes widening and mouth dropping open. “I meant would you like me to walk you back to your room?”

The corners of her mouth rise into a simper, heart beating quite quickly as she strives not to read too much into the fumbled offer. “I think I can manage on my own. Thank you, though.” Wanda gives his hand one more squeeze, allowing her fingers to linger on his skin as she pulls away. “This was nice, are you here every night?”

“It was,” a bashfulness overtakes his body, hands clasped nervously in front of him as his mouth attempts to decide if he provides a small smile or a broad one. “Yes, I am here each night and you are always welcome to join.”  

Wanda’s grin grows wider at the offer. “Good night, Vision.”

She exits the balcony, eyes finally taking in her surroundings and notes this area is far less richly decorated, even the materials seem more common and she realizes this might actually be where Vision lives. A door to her right beckons her but she determines to inquire about it later, perhaps several nights in a row of meeting with the man instead of the butler will illuminate this aspect of the manor. Then she hears footsteps behind her and a, “Wanda." 

Wanda turns to find Vision in the hallway, the row of lighting on the walls providing her with a more complete view of his casual attire, his shirt even scandalously undone three buttons down which reveals a similar pattern to his skin as his hands and her heart breaks all over again. She steps towards him with a, “Vision?”

“Wanda,” he cocks his head to the side in confusion at the tremble in her voice. “I meant to inform you earlier that Mr. Stark will be arriving tomorrow.”

Everything freezes around her, heart and lungs constricting as she struggles to breathe, managing only a stuttered, “St-stark?”

His head remains tilted, but now his eyes join his confusion. “Correct, Mr. Stark, the owner of the manor.”

There must be a multitude of individuals with the name Stark, and so Wanda attempts to clamp down her panic long enough to inquire, to make sure it is a different Stark. “Tony Stark? 

Vision nods and her heart drops to her feet as her head swims, “Correct.”

Perhaps there are multiple Tony Starks. “Tony Stark, of Stark Industries?”

“Technically the eponymous Stark of Stark industries is the late Howard but yes, Mr. Stark owns and operates it now.”

The straightforward, logically playful response is not appreciated right now, her body developing a tremble as her eyes dart around her surroundings. Then she breathes in and locks her eyes on the blonde-haired man in front of her, releasing an accusatory, “You work for Tony Stark?”

The ire in her voice must not be clear, since he doesn’t seem to be responding to the horror of the question, doesn’t seem to understand why this is information that should be rattling his very existence as much as it is hers. “That is the most logical and parsimonious connection, yes.” 

Wanda can feel the panic rising up from where her heart still lays at her feet, can hear the reverberations of explosions in her memory, the heat of the fire that destroyed her life. But much more prominent than even that, is the complete betrayal of the man in front of her. “Excuse me.” 

A hurried, concerned, “Wanda?” barely registers as she turns to leave.

And Wanda runs.

Victorian language decoder: *Make a stuffed bird laugh = Ridiculous **Waggish = Playful ***Bricky = Fearless ****Nativists = A political movement at the time that was anti-immigration, demanding the United States cut off its borders to others *****Pale-maille = Croquet…but it wasn’t called croquet yet.

Next time expect some melodramatic encounters and a thickening of the plot.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

[pardontheglueman]

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump / Edited by Bandy Lee

In the week that Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s dirtbag blockbuster on life inside Donald Trump’s dysfunctional White House, detonated without warning on the president’s front lawn, blowing the gaff on, amongst other things, the president’s paranoia over food poisoning, his concern that other people might have been touching his toothbrush, and the revelation that POTUS and the first lady lead separate but equal lives in the boudoir dept, it’s worth noting that an altogether more serious work, documenting major concerns over Trump’s fitness to hold office, was published in the U.S.A. last year with a barely a ripple of interest from the nations’ readers. 

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, edited by Bandy Lee, Assistant Clinical Professor in Law and Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, is a fascinating and terrifying analysis of the mental well-being (or otherwise) of the world’s most powerful man. Within two months of Trump’s inauguration in January of last year, Lee had become so troubled by the former reality T.V. star’s unpredictable behaviour that she set about organising the Yale conference “Does Professional Responsibility Include a Duty to Warn”, which gathered together some of America’s most prominent mental health professionals to debate the ethical case for setting aside the long-standing “Goldwater rule” (1973), which prohibits clinicians from diagnosing public figures unless they have first examined them. The conference formed the basis of this book, in which many of America’s most respected psychiatrists make the case that ‘while a physician’s responsibility is first and foremost to the patient, it extends as well to society’. Some clinicians, in their defence, cite the “Tarasoff doctrine” (1976) a landmark court decision in California which places an obligation on mental health therapists to speak out when they have determined that an individual is dangerous to another person or persons. 

It is to the authors’ credit that they devote a foreword, Our Witness to Malignant Normality, by Robert Jay Lifton, Lecturer in Psychiatry at Columbia University, a prologue, Professions and Politics by Judith Lewis Herman, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard School, and an introduction Our Duty to Warn, by Lee herself, all with the intention of debating the ethical case for overriding the Goldwater rule in the case of a national emergency. It should be noted that many of the contributors here have been impelled to question the continued observance of this commandment by the recent decision of the American Psychiatric Association to double down on its interpretation of the rule, or gag, as some of the writers contend, making it impossible now for any mental health professional to give an opinion, let alone a diagnosis of President Trump, without risking censure. 

Having established, at least to my own satisfaction, that the dedicated professionals who contribute to this book are doing so because they are motivated by genuine concern for the safety of their fellow citizens rather than any partial political expediency, I feel able to read this book with a clear conscience. Of course, many of those writing here are progressives openly opposed to Trump’s populist agenda, so there is no way to depoliticise the book entirely. On balance, then, even though the “patient” under discussion is subjected to an extremely painful public evaluation, I believe this is a book that had to be written. The stakes are simply too high for the profession to have remained silent in the face of the overwhelming evidence detailed here which suggests that the president is demonstrably unwell and a considerable danger to mankind. 

The portrait of President Trump that emerges from over 350 pages of expert testimony won’t come as a surprise to anyone (aside, that is, from the congregation of religious extremists, hard-nut republicans and white supremacists who make up a significant proportion of the Donald’s “base”), but the wide range of serious mental health disorders that seemingly afflict POTUS is simply astonishing and should be cause for the gravest concern. 

The book makes a thoroughly convincing case that Trump is an extreme present hedonist – a person who will say or do anything at anytime for the purpose of self-aggrandisement – also that Trump displays all the traits of a narcissist personality, a disorder which incorporates fantasising about power and attractiveness, feelings of superiority, outbursts of jealousy & a tendency toward lying (in 2015, the fact-checking website Politifact, running it’s “Lie of the Year” contest, checked 77 separate statements by Trump and estimated that 76% of them were false or mostly false). Furthermore, there is evidence of a bullying personality at work too (including sexual, prejudicial and cyberbullying). At this point, you might well feel that you concur with the book’s damning verdict on Trump, after all, as clinical psychologist John D. Gartner states, Donald Trump is so visibly psychologically impaired that it is obvious even to a layman that “something is wrong with him”. However, you may be astonished to know that we are still only in Chapter one!!!  If you are not already in a state of total despair at the thought of this man being in charge of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal then you soon will be. 

Next into the witness box is Lance Dodes, M.D., a retired Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who walks us through the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for determining “antisocial personality disorder” or, to put it another way, whether someone might be considered a sociopath. Key traits to look out for, include evidence of deceitfulness and impulsivity, as well as predatory, bullying and dehumanising patterns of behaviour. Factor in an absolute lack of empathy and runaway paranoia and you are ‘severely emotionally ill’. 

Trump’s penchant for paranoid conspiracy theories are also examined in detail by Gartner; before the election, Right Wing Watch listed 58 conspiracies that POTUS had posited were true, these include his well known claim that Obama was born outside of America (“Birtherism”), which Trump has subsequently developed into an accusation that the former president had a Hawaiian government bureaucrat murdered to cover up the “scandal” and also that Senator Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, was involved in the plot to assassinate JFK. Gartner also labels Trump a sadist (another trait equated with malignant narcissism), citing his constant delight in verbally “punching down” on people who are weaker than him, usually women, immigrants or the disabled. 

No respectable psychiatric study of a patient would be complete without reference to its subject’s childhood.  And here, it is possible, if only for a fleeting moment, to feel a sliver of pity for Donald Trump! Leaving aside the small matter of whether Trump’s father, Frederick Christ Trump Snr, was a racist (probably), a Klansman (possibly), Trump’s account of his childhood, as told to biographer Michael D’Antonio, is disturbing enough in its own right. Trump recalls his father “dragging him” around tough neighbourhoods in Brooklyn collecting rents and teaching him a life-lesson that the world was divided into “killers” and “losers”. Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, lawyer to gangsters and the notorious red-baiter Joseph McCarthy, said that when it comes to his feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump “pisses ice water”. Or, as Trump himself puts it, “The world is a vicious and brutal place. Even your friends are out to get you: they want your job, your money and your wife”. 

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is, in fact, an open and shut case.  As worthwhile as this book is, there is no mystery to be solved here. We don’t really need the testimony of twenty-seven expert witnesses to tell us what we can see very well with our own eyes – that President Trump is a seriously ill man, a man who suffers from a whole range of harmful disorders, any one of which might lead him, at any moment, to act in a way that endangers us all. And yet, despite the fact that Trump is a crook, a charlatan, a racist, a sexual predator and so gravely mentally ill that he could conceivably bring life on our planet to an end as a result of a Twitter spat, the GOP saw fit to nominate him for the Republican ticket in the general election of 2017 and continues, to this day, to support him in the face of all the horrifying evidence laid out here. Let’s not forget, either, that this book went to the publishers some months ago and Trump’s many conditions are visibly worsening by the day. None of this matters, though, to the super-wealthy eyeing the prize of another massive tax cut, nor to the evangelists who beef up Trump’s base, the very zealots who championed a suspected paedophile, Alabama’s Roy Moore, in last month’s senate race, and who remain determined that the commander-in-chief stay in office long enough to appoint a bunch of pro-life Judges to sit on the Supreme Court. What, too, of the American voter? Trump may have lost the popular vote, trailing Clinton by 2.9 million votes, despite the best efforts of partners in crime Wikileaks and Russia, but there were still 62,979,879 individual voters prepared to place Donald Trump in charge of America’s nuclear codes! 

On the subject of those that support Trump, the concluding part of the book, The Trump Effect, seeks to place the victory of the new president in the appropriate context by examining the culture that has allowed him to triumph. In an article entitled Trump and the American Collective Psyche, Thomas Singer, a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst practicing in San Francisco, theorises that ‘Donald Trump uncovered a huge sinkhole of dark, raw emotions in the national psyche for all of us to see. Rage, hatred, envy and fear surfaced in a forgotten, despairing, growing white underclass who had little reason to believe that the future would hold the promise of a brighter, life-affirming purpose. Trump tapped into the negative feelings that many Americans have about all the things we are supposed to be compassionate about – ethnic, racial, gender and religious differences…. Trump tapped into the dirty little secret of their loathing of various minorities, even though we may all be minorities now’.   

Where will it end? Dodes, unable to offer us any comfort, warns of what we can expect from Trump in the future, ‘Over time these characteristics will only become worse, either because Mr. Trump will succeed in gaining more power and more grandiosity with less grasp on reality, or because he will engender more criticism, producing more paranoia, more lies and more enraged destruction’. Perhaps that is why Noam Chomsky, in the books epilogue, calls our attention to The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and it's world-renowned Doomsday Clock which estimates how near we are as a species to extinction. If the hands on the clock reach midnight, the jig is up for mankind. Within a week of Trump taking office the hands of the clock were moved to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. That’s the closest we have been to destruction since 1953!

[taylermsmith]

reema eqab <3

Reema Eqab is a 20-year-old artist studying in Pensacola, Florida. She focuses on expressing human emotion through vibrant visuals.  This interview was recorded in October of 2017.

How long you have you called yourself an artist and felt secure with that title? What does an artist look like to you? Who do you admire artistically?

Ever since I could remember, I’ve had a big interest in art making, but I actually started to believe in my abilities when I started high school. This is also when I became more serious about it and felt comfortable and confident in calling myself an artist. To me, an artist is one who feels as though they absolutely need to create. A true artist buries themselves into their work, and feels the need to make art like it is dependent on their health and well being. If I’m not making art, then I’m thinking about it, or familiarizing myself with other artists and their work. Some of the artists that I admire include Rita Gomes, Shanna Van Maurik, Joy Miessi, Julia Rothman, and Kindah Khalidy.

Did your ethnic background and you being an artist conflict? Explain an instance. Are there any other artists in your family?

The two didn’t conflict until I graduated high school and decided to try to make a career out of art. I received endless feedback and advice from my family; Mainly from the men. My uncles commend my strong will, because not many women have it, but advise me to pursue a career that would benefit my “future family.” Having kids has never been my interest, so hearing them say that over and over again made me even more headstrong. There is definitely a creative gene in my family, but there are no other artists. In my opinion, most of my family limit themselves by doing exactly what everyone else does/tells them to do.

Have you felt stifled by your family’s traditional ideas of what it means to be a woman? Or their idea of femininity?

This has always been a predominant struggle with my family. To them, a woman is delicate and pure, and her main purpose is to marry, reproduce, and serve the family. I’ve always felt the need to fight this portrayal, and did so by being as unconventional as possible to the people that think this way. For example, I never dress like I’m “put together” or prim, and growing up I would work at my dad’s convenience store, unlike the other girl cousins my age. I hate for anyone to think that I’m weak or there for show; This is not how I see women.

Do you feel like you will have true peace with yourself and your art when you have been ingrained with their ideas for so long? Is there hope for other artists who feel this? What piece of advice would you offer them?

I don’t think that I will ever be fully at peace with their beliefs and ideals constantly clawing at the back of my head, but I use this discordance to my advantage by feeding it directly into my art. I think that the only way for similar artists to succeed through this is for them to hang on to their passions and have a strong, undying will. Without this, there is little hope.

How do you perceive yourself? Is this perception altered when you create?

As well as being strong, passionate, and kind, I am sad and anxious. When I make art, I try to show these emotions, but sometimes I feel like the passion may come off too strong and be perceived as mean or aggressive. I feel that especially when I include feelings of heartbreak or anything political, but I think that in the end everything balances out. I let other eyes see my work, and the response normally matches what I originally intended.

When starting a new piece, do you find yourself repeating any themes? If so, what are they?

Some of the underlying themes in my works include repression, depression, feminism, and heartbreak. I definitely find myself incorporating these themes into most of my art, along with how I deal with them. Art is like my therapy, so everything I feel is let loose in my work.

What do you wish to explore/expose with your art?

In my current state of mind, I wish to make aware certain issues regarding feminism and human decency. I like to show how I believe humans should treat each other, as well as make art that people can relate to. I love helping people, so I hope to help by sharing experiences/thoughts and how I handle problems. In the future, I plan on trying to show more political themes, because most people seem to be under a blind spell and I believe that being aware is extremely important. Maybe my lively and colorful art will soften the informational blow?

What is your struggle with art and society? Art and family? Art and yourself?

I don’t like to rely on people, but art seems to be heavily dependent on acceptance. In order to make money, people have to like your work, and that makes me feel constrained and controlled. A struggle I have with my family and my art is that I feel like I have to hide most of it from them, because certain thoughts or images are ones that differ from their beliefs. Some of my work includes images of the nude female figure, and in order to not receive judgment, I don’t display these pieces, or I’ll turn them around if either of my parents try to enter my room. When I had first started college, my mom was heavily involved in my course schedule and school, and didn’t allow me to take the nude figure portion of my drawing 2 class. My relationship with art is much more comfortable than it used to be, despite the problems that I receive from my family and society’s interpretation of my art. I am able to be this way because I allow myself to be completely vulnerable in my work.

Your work has very pigmented pinks, and are overall very colorful. Yet your text indicates an instance of the male gaze/expectations others project on you. Is this a conscious juxtaposition of subject matter with color or do you just enjoy pink?

It makes me happy to see that someone else notices this! It is definitely intentional, and I’ve always thought that this pairing mirrors the way that I see myself. A glance or a quick overlook of my work implies that it’s very positive and happy, but when looked at more closely, one could see that it’s most likely different from what they thought it was. I also have a true admiration for color, especially very vibrant color, and recently started using pink because I never had before, and I discovered that I really enjoy it. Pink is typically perceived as a “girly” color, so I incorporate it to kind of support femininity in a way.

Do you think art can ever encapsulate the feeling of heartache or the depths of any human emotion? Should it?

There are so many different kinds of heartaches and types of people and ways to handle heartache, so I don’t think that there could ever be a way for art to fully grasp these feelings. Heartache is the main topic in my sketchbooks and more private work, and I follow a lot of pages on Instagram that also include this theme. These people are always able to conjure up a grouping of words in a way that fully describes a feeling I might have in a way that I would have never thought. If art were able to fully encompass this feeling or any other feeling, I wouldn’t be able to see much of a point in making it.

In an age of social media, do you find yourself validating one piece over another due to how many “likes” it received?

Social media is an integral part in the success of an artist. Although I do pay attention to likes, I no longer use this as a factor for judging my work because I am confident enough in myself to know whether or not a work of mine is successful or not. If I was able to learn something from a work that I created, then it is successful.

You also do some work with fabric and embroidery, is this medium more challenging? What do you enjoy about it?

For me this is definitely more challenging. It’s tedious and detail-oriented, whereas, with my other work, I can let loose and produce quicker results. I like making this type of art because anything wearable is typically more likely to be purchased, and it gives me a way to express myself with my appearance. I’ve also learned that it’s a great way to advertise myself. Dressing artistically/wacky makes people compliment or make a verbal note of it, which allows me to claim that I created it, and then most people will ask for my Instagram so that they can purchase or see more.

What song do you think mimics your art/ what song makes you feel an emotion you want to translate as intensely into your art?

There isn’t really just one song that I can refer to, but artists such as Lianne La Havas, Beach House, Lykke Li, and Tame Impala create music that generates relatable feelings that I like to show in my art. I made a triptych print at the beginning of the year called “Sadness, Depression, Anxiety” that contained three quotes from three songs, and I remember admiring the way that those artists were able to creatively construct their words into phrases that perfectly portrayed how I was feeling at the time. This ultimately led to me putting more words and phrases into my own work. I am not so great with words, but I try to be by analyzing music, and following artists on Instagram that make their artwork around their words, such as the artist Joy Miessi. Arabic was my first language, so there are some words that I feel only really and perfectly have their effect when said in Arabic, and this can be a pain because I don’t know how to successfully apply English words as meaningfully. My private Instagram account dedicated to my sketchbook pages helps me acknowledge quotes that I find, and also helps me try to make art out of my own words because this is a big interest of mine.

Thanks for reading and you can find Reema’s artwork on her Instagram: @reemae