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justme315 · 3 days

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New family 1/?

! Warning !

swearing, angst, fear, step-family, g/t family, abuse, mention of abusive giants, gigantophobia, mention of the character being religious, sickness

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I was fucked.

I'm sorry for using that kinda language but I really was. You see, my whole life has been destroyed by thoese damn giants.

Sorry, I don't think I introduced myself yet, I'm Zack.

Me and my mom were always a team. After my dad has passed away when i was 6 she was the only person important to me. It was basically us two against the whole world.

Something that might also be important for you to understand my story is the fact that we live in a world full of humans (like my and my mom) and giants. Giants are.. humanoid 60-ish feet tall creatures. Easily to say - their dangerous. The government rightfully understood the danger and the fear of us humans and created 'human-only' zones, cities, countries even. There were also a few 'giant-only' zones, but I'm not really sure why. It's not like the giants would fear us. Most of the places thoese enourmous beasts live are simply 'mixed-zones', places where both humans and giants can live. Thank God that me and my mom always lived in a 'human-only' zone. I was always skeptical and yeah, terrified of giants.

My mom was different though. Maybe she was just dumb (sorry for saying that mama) but she just couldn't sense danger. She worked in a company that required her to sometimes travel to 'mixed-zones' or 'mixed-cities'. I was always opposed to that but she.. enjoyed it. She even said that she made some giant "friends". I never believed in their honesty though.

But what changed my life once and for all, had happened when I was just 16. Well, going on 17 already, but yeah, still 16.

I never ever once questioned my mom's romantic life after my dad has passed away. She just.. never acted like she wanted to start a new relationship. And I was very okay with that.

But one unfortunate day, just after she came home from one of her business trips she told me that she has got a boyfriend.

That was weried to know, I mean c'mon, picturing your mom having a crush, dating, falling in love etc. is just.. weried and kinda disgusting if you ask me.

Of course, I questioned her and soon I reaveled her secret.

"Zack, I have been dating him for a little over a year. I was just scared of how you might react. But now, I must tell you since.. he proposed."

That felt like I was stabbed straight into the heart. How could she have kept having a boyfriend a secret from me for so long? Why would she? Being lied to by her felt horrible. I thought we were a team - we always told echother everything. But I guess I was wrong.

Really soon I found out that my mom's boyfriends (and now fiances) name is Andrew, that he was just slightly older than her and had two sons about my age, he was also a widower, and according to my mom, we had much in common.

I really couldn't understand why my mom would keep her boyfriend a secret. Untill she revealed she wanted for us to move in with him and his sons. I mean, she had a lot of planing to do, as she was soon to get married again, so that was kinda understandable. I wasn't opposed to moving into a new home, but changed my mind really quickly when my mom reaveled that our new home would be in a mixed-city. I mean, I was never even in that kind of a city, never even seen a giant in real life and was hella terrified of them! She should've understood me. Before she 'fell in love' she always has.

I asked her a milion times if Andrew and his sons can't just move in with us but she always found some excuse. Once, our house was too small, then his older son didn't want to switch universities, another time Andrew was scared of loosing the job. It was always a stupid excuse. Untill she finally reaveled the truth.

You see, Andrew, my mom's husband-to-be was a giant. And so were his sons.

To say that I was mad and scared was an understatement. I felt lied to. I felt like I was being dragged into something I didn't want to be a part of. I, understandably, questioned the honesty of my moms relationship, which angered her the most. I was angry with my mom for over two weeks after finding out about the size of my soon to be step-family and barely spoke with her. I couldn't be away from her for long though and forgave her, but in my heart I still had plenty of doubts.

My friends didn't help ease my fear. I told my best buddies at school and the stories they have told me only made me more afraid and suspicious of the said Andrew and all giants at that point.

"Don't y'all remember Joseph from middle school? He moved to a mixed-city with his parents. He was stepped on by a giant and died!"

"That's nothing compered to what happened to Amy. A quick death is better than being tortured. She is my cousin. She moved to a mixed-zone because she wanted to go to a better collage. One of her giant male classmates kidnaped her and done horrifying things to her. Once she was found she had missing limbs, many scars.. She was mentally, physically and sexually abused by him for months, untill they found the giant. And he barely got any jail time for that! She's still in mental health hospital!"

"My dads best friend Thomas was freaking eaten alive!"

Yeah, I think 3 stories is enough to give you the idea of how freaking terrified I was of the said 'step-family'. Some might say I am a specist (a person that discriminates based on the species (giant and human)) but I wouldn't agree. I don't really think that a human can be a specist becouse we are in the more vaunurable position. Also, I don't hate giants becouse of their size. I hate and fear them because of how brutal and cruel they are towards humans. Maybe a giantophobe would be a more appropriate term for me.

That day was the worst day in my entire life. And it's really hard to beat the day my dad had passed away.

We sold the house. We were at the airport. All ready to go to a mixed-city, over the wall that the government made.

Mom was all smiley and happy, her nose never leaving her phone.

"Andrew texted me that he and his boys are at their side of the barrier already, waiting for us. They can't wait to meet you!"

Right, didn't I mention that they all knew echother, but me?

"I just can't wait to show you the city and our new home!"

I was standing there quiet. No matter how many times I told my mom that i don't agree with her choice of dating a giant or for the fact that I didn't want to move away into a mixed-city she would always say that I will change my mind once I overcome my fear. Hell, I would.

I held my bag closely, trying to hold onto whatever I have not to lose my composure. I was terrified and angry, sure, but showing thoese giants from the start that they have some power over me, even though it was obvious, wasn't something I would do. At last, if I could hide my emotions.

Just a few minutes before our flight, a flight in the opposite direction landed. I saw all those humans, coming back from the mixed-city, most of them seem, okay. That made me confused and curious. Would it really be all that bad?

Untill I saw a girl, probably my age, on a wheelchair. I mean, there is nothing wrong with disabled people, don't get me wrong, but she was crying so she easily got everyone's attention. A woman run up to her.

"Mom!" The girl sobbed, opening her arms to hug her mother. The woman tried calming the girl down but she just kept crying and screaming "It was just supposed to be a student exchange program!! This scary giant crushed my legs!"

The girls voice echoed in my head. It was different to hear stories of distant people, but to see someone hurt by thoese monsters in front of my own eyes was completely different.

Even my mom lowered her phone and looked at the girl with pity in her eyes. I prayed to the Lord to open her eyes and return home safely with me.

"Poor girl" she signed "That must have been a.. horrible accident".

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"Accident?" I looked at my mom angrily, finally letting my emotions out "A giant crushed her legs".

"Honey, I'm sure they didn't mean to.." she looked at me, somewhat shocked at my defensiveness. I shouldn't have expected her to understand. She just simply couldn't sense danger. And that could get both of us killed.

"Her legs were crushed by a giant, mom!" I raised my voice, even so slightly as I couldn't believe how blinded she was by her feelings.

"Zack, calm yourself down" she looked at me more strictly now, as I was getting other peoples attention. I couldn't bare the thought of how stupid this all was. I just wanted to be home. Or anywhere at that point. Anywhere but in a spece where giants were allowed.

"You-" I began to speak.

"The flight 16-399Bhc** is preparing to take off. We ask all the passengers to board the plane within 5 minutes. Thank you and have a good flight" said a voice from the speaker.

"That's our flight!" My mom cheered up and grabbed my arm, pulling me as she ran to the plane.

She was so excited it made me feel like I was gonna puke.

Don't get me wrong, I always loved planes but this time I felt uneasy. My whole body was shaking ever so slightly, I felt like I was about to puke, I swear I heard my heart pumping blood, my head was spinning..

That can easily be called my worst ever flight.

After we landed I need a good 15 minutes in the bathroom to regain my composure.

"Honey, are you alright?" I heard my mom knocking "Are you sick?"

"I'm fine mama, I'll be okay" I mumbled, though I didn't feel like I was going to be okay for at last next few hours. I was also convinced my life was about to end so why bother worrying my mom. But before I cross the barrier of the airport, I didn't have to see or interact with any giants. Maybe me feeling sick was actually a gift from God to give me more time to get ready for what was about to come? As I was almost ready to go I hear my mom speaking:

"Honey, are you sure? I texted Andrew and he and Ethan are worried sick. They can drive us to a hospital"

And then I got sick again at the mention of the giants.

Oh, you might not know who is who. Andrew is my moms 45 year old husband-to-be, but I'm sure I have spoke about him already. Ethan is his older son, he was 21 back then. His younger son - Ryan - was 17.

After, what appeared to me as a minute and to my mom as an hour I finally could exit the bathroom.

My mom rushed me, saying that the boys have been waiting for us long enough. I was feeling less and less okay. I couldn't keep my emotionless demeanor. My eyes felt heavy, my heartbeat fasten as well as my breathing, my legs were shaky and I was not able to say even one word.

As I saw the enourmous glass wall behind which were a ton of giants, I felt like I was going to faint.

Or simply turn around and run.

My mom stopped in her trucks and looked at her phone. After maybe three seconds of reading what I supposed was a message form Andrew she looked into the direction of 3 giant men waiting and her eyes started to freaking sparkle and her smile grew.

She then looked at me and pointed in the direction of thoese giants, who weren't looking at us, thank God.

"That's Andrew! And Ethan and Ryan!" She said with an excited expression.

Andrew was surprisingly the shortest of the group. He had brown hair that were turning grey, a short beard, thick glasses, a blue sweater and more elegant pants. He was overall a handsome middle-aged dude, if it wasn't for the fact he was freaking enormous.

Ethan was talking with him. He had fluffy brown hair and was slightly taller than his dad. He had a few freckles and dimples on his cheeks, his smile was truthfully welcoming. His white hoodie also looked very comfy.

The tallest one was the youngest - Ryan. He had black, short hair, a pierced ear and stylist clothes. If he would have been a human, he looked like one of the popular kids that you always look up to. I really liked the belt he had, same with the rings on his fingers.

All three giants had the same eye color - hazel.

My mom grabbed me again and pulled me into the direction of the glass wall that was the last thing keeping me outside of the reach of giants. She looked so happy to see them that it was hard to recognize her. She only ever smiled at me like that before.

Soon enough, we were close to the exit of my comfort zone. My fear only grew as we were closer to the giants. It was still probably about 20 feet between us and the door when Andrews eyes rested on us. I felt the enourmous gaze and felt like I was stung. Soon both his sons eyes locked on me and my mom. She realized quickly and slowed down with the running. She then waved at them. Andrew and Ethan waved back. Ryan stood there, looking maybe a little conflicted but surely also kinda annoyed.

At that point I could feel the blood boiling in my veins. My heart ached. As well did my head. My legs were shaky. I felt like I couldn't catch my breath correctly.

If you think you're not socially awkward, three giants looking down at you with their enourmous eyes, almost scanning you as if you were an insect would change your mind right away. And if you are socially awkward like me? Well, you would feel as if you were just about to die.

My mom rushed me again, ready to exit the safe space, that only allowed humans. I walked behind her, but I wasn't as excited or as fast. Partly, becouse I wanted to be out of the giants reach for as long as I could and partly becouse I was feeling worse and worse.

To be honest, I don't know what was making me feel bad. Maybe it was all the emotion, fear, anger and all, maybe it was my mental health killing me and shouting at me that danger was close, maybe it was the horrible flight, maybe it was my body being sick. I don't know.

What I do know is, each step I took, the more powerless I felt. My legs felt to weak to hold my bodyweight.

My mom was already by the exit door when she turned around to rush me again. I was maybe 7 feet behind her, still surrounded by the enourmous gazes of those three giants, two of which were smiling. Their smiles made me sick in my stomache, but Ryan who was the only one not smiling made me feel ever worse somehow.

I totally expected my mom to yell at me to hurry up, based on how excited she seem but she just stared at me for a secound with wide worried eyes and then returned to me.

"Are you okay honey? You don't seem too good"

I wanted to answer her but it came out as a soft yelp. I thought I was going to puke again.

Faces of the giants became more serious and worried. I didn't like that expression either, to be honest.

I looked back at mom as she reached out to me and raised her hand to my shoulder for comfort probably.

"Are you scared Zack? Is that it? Because if it is, I assure you, they won't hurt us. Ever." She spoke in a soft, quiet voice. Her expression didn't show anger but she looked more understanding than any other moment of the past few weeks. She spoke with such confidence I could have believed her.

Well, I maybe even would have if I didn't faint.

Because just a moment after she spoke my vision went black and my body felt weak. The last think I remember before fainting were thoese scary gazes and my mom yelling:

"Zack!"

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Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the 1st part!

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physalian · 1 day

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Narrative Framing Devices

This is a long one…

A story need not be told chronologically, nor does it have to be only one layer deep. There’s a ton of different ways to frame your narrative, I’m just picking a couple today, some I thought worked and some I thought didn’t, and my personal favorite.

Most people think of framing devices in terms of time travel stories or fairytales, where it may start in the present or the future and work backwards, giving up the ending before telling how we all got here. Or by chopping up the chronology and letting the audience try to puzzle out the order.

There are also those that break the fourth wall, with the narrator beginning the story directly addressing the audience but never doing so again, or the narrator opening the story telling their own story to a present audience, so we’re the audience behind the fictional audience.

The other obligatory framing device is the time-skip, a la “6 years later” or “8 months later”. I’ve already talked about those. Or the preface/preamble/prologue that may spoil some important event later in the story, or is simply an important moment or montage of moments to catch the reader up on “how did we get here”. Shoutout to Castlevania for the most efficient pilot episode I have ever seen, with a 1 year timeskip.

Also honorable mention to the “A Life in the Day” montage from Magicians, speedrunning decades of a life together between two characters stuck in a Situation, maybe 60 years? Key moments between the two having a whole romance, with a kid and grandkids, over the course of one beautiful bit of soundtrack. One of the best episodes in the show, for a sequence that only lasted a little over 5 minutes.

—

Story within a Story | Princess Bride, "Ember Island Players"

Best example I can think of, specifically the film, which is based on a book that already incepts itself. The movie opens with a regular kid being read the book The Princess Bride by his grandfather, and occasionally cutting between the kid’s reactions and the fantasy story with the actors.

There’s several moments where the grandfather either loses his place and rereads a scene that replays the same dialogue, or skips a scene in the “kissing book” because his grandson gets squirmy, and moments where the grandfather narrates over a couple montages.

Princess Bride is one of those movies that knows exactly what it is and isn’t trying to be something it’s not. It’s self-aware and loudly and proudly sincere, with one of the best revenge arcs ever put to film.

Recap episodes can either be clipshows or get really creative like ATLA, telling the series recap through the medium of a propagandized play about the Avatar's journey, performed by actors of the Fire Nation. The Gaang sits there in vague states of discomfort, horror, or in Toph and Sokka's case, thrilling enjoyment, watching their hardships and heartbreaks played for laughs. That it's the story we know, but also with the added filter of it being enemy propaganda takes what could have been just a clipshow and still told multiple layers of a story with it.

The Fourth-Wall Break | Riordan-verse, Deadpool

“Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood” defined a generation. It’s one of those fourth wall breaks that opens up the story and never appears again, though occasionally Percy will get slightly self-aware, saying things like “I didn’t know it then, but I’d never come back here”. But for PJO it almost doesn’t count.

Kane Chronicles on the other hand chose a bizarre framing device, having the two leads pretend to host a radio show, or a podcast—something where they were recording themselves and I don’t think it worked very well whenever it popped up and stopped the plot.

Shoutout to Tangled, too, for having a fairytale style fourth-wall break at the end, much like KC, where Flynn reveals that Rapunzel has been listening to him tell their story the entire time. Many fairytale stories open up with the physical book flipping open to the story, like Shrek and Shrek 2, but I don’t think those are translatable to the written medium very well.

The big one, though, is of course Deadpool. Have not seen the second one, and while ‘breaking the fourth wall’ isn’t by itself a framing device, DP & Wolverine absolutely makes it one, fast forwarding and jumbling up the sequence of events to deliver a “how did we get here?” during the opening credits.

Chronology Salad | Memento, Predestination

Have not actually seen Memento but I know the premise, working backwards as the protagonist recovers his memory of “how did we get here?” Predestination is a batshit insane time travel story that I don’t think most people have even heard of and detailing the plot at all is giving spoilers but it is the most “how the fuck did we get here??” movie I have ever seen.

Then you have stories like Twilight that open with “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die” that spoils (kind of) the ending, with the goal of the story not detailing if something bad will happen, but how. Twilight’s prologue reminds me of The Bachelor, where they’ll tease the audience with *shocking* moments completely out of context from later in the season that are way less cool when they actually come to pass (from the one time I watched with relatives out of morbid curiosity).

The point of these chronological mixups is how all the random puzzle pieces fit together, despite essentially spoiling themselves constantly, they’re so random, so out of place, meant to keep you constantly guessing until the big reveal of the picture on the box—and are extremely tricky to do well without completely losing your audience. You’d have to have a very thorough outline to not confuse yourself while trying to write it.

Honorary mention here for Inception, one of my favorite sci-fi movies, because the plot is crazy, but still told chronologically, just across different dream levels. However, the movie does open with the ending scene (though you don’t know that on your first watch). And Tenet, but I don’t know anyone who likes or cares about that movie.

Dual Timelines | Outlander

There are others I just cannot think of them at this moment. Dual timelines tell two stories simultaneously across two different eras, either decades apart or mere hours, with some relation between the two. Sometimes one timeline’s protagonist is the ancestor of the present timeline, for example.

Dual Timelines happen in sequential order, making them distinct from a flashback arc (more below) essentially two chronological plots running in tandem squished into the same book, episode, or film. They carry equal weight and try not to overshadow each other in flair or importance.

In Outlander, Protagonist Claire is already a time traveler, in a time travel story whose rules are “whatever happened, happened, and you end up causing whatever you tried to prevent”. Season 2 opens with her returning to the present, leaving the entire rest of the season with a foreboding sense of dread, wondering what will get her back to that moment.

Season 3 dangles the carrot on the stick, randomly cutting between Claire in the 60s and trying to move on with her life for… I think 20 years, while Jaime, her love interest from the past, just keeps getting kicked while he’s down. It takes forever to get these two back on screen together. And the dual timelines continue taking up screen time when Claire and Jaime’s adult daughter also eventually makes a trip to the past. Points off for being blatantly manipulative storytelling with its cliffhangers, but season 1 is still worth the watch.

Flashbacks, Flash-Forwards, and Flash-Sideways | Lost

This show’s earlier seasons were heavily framed with this device. In The first 3 seasons (up to the last episode) the framing device was exclusively flashbacks, focusing on one of the main 13 heroes for an episode, particularly in season 1.

They didn’t always answer “how did we get here” but told some story relevant to the character in the present, either a challenge they had to face or parallel relationship drama or ghosts come back to haunt them. Usually, these little flashbacks were told in sequential order, but they could hop months or years ahead at a time depending on the episode.

The flash-forwards began in season 4 and closed the gap between the “Oceanic 6” escaping the island and all the missing time while they were gone, before the infamous “We have to go back” line.

The show also had flash-sideways, which featured the main cast, many of whom had been dead for a few seasons, reprising their roles to show what could have been their lives if they never crashed. To… mixed reception.

The show also also had a time-traveling character who in-universe experienced flashes of the future and got mentally temporally displaced between two timelines for a hot minute.

Lost was… a show that demanded a dedicated following. I still love it.

Flashback Arcs | My own personal soapbox

This right here is the whole reason for this post. First you have flashback episodes and I can name a lot of those—ATLA has a couple, “The Storm” & “The Avatar and the Firelord” but both are technically “stories within a story” with characters either around a campfire telling it or reading about it. The alternate timeline takes up a majority of the runtime, only occasionally cutting back to the present characters for a reaction.

In TFP there’s an offbeat flashback episode “Out of the Past”, framed, again, as a character telling this backstory stuff to another character. Many, many vampire stories will have flashbacks to some degree, since their characters live for so long. Vampire Diaries, especially in the earlier seasons, had dozens of them filling in all the blanks back during the Civil War when the two leads, Stefan and Damon, were competing for the affections of the main villain, all leading up to how they were turned, and how she allegedly died. Once the Originals were introduced, the show then had flashbacks to a thousand years ago, when they were human, and various eras in between.

True flashback episodes don’t waste precious minutes setting up a framing device, they just dump the audience in an alternate timeline and let them figure it out on their own that something isn’t right.

But none of that comes close to the full-on Flashback Arc. I. Love. This. Trope.

I actually first saw it when Arrow was good in its earliest seasons, cutting fairly equally between a present-day Oliver back home and starting his hero journey, and him learning combat back in the past, over several episodes like a series within the series.

What you end up with is a happy medium between a full dual timeline and a random grab-bag of flashbacks as they become necessary to the plot. A flashback arc relies entirely on the existence of the A-plot to make sense, as opposed to a dual timeline where it’s essentially two self-sufficient stories rolled into one big narrative. This arc is substantially shorter than the rest of the plot, cutting the story it’s telling down to the absolute need-to-know moments and cutting all transitions between the two. These arcs tend to cover weeks, at minimum, and decades of a long life at most.

I think they're best implimented after the first book, film, or season. Not something you want to throw at your audience who barely knows or cares about these characters, so if you're stuck with ideas for a sequel, consider the Flashback Arc.

My favorite thing that I have ever written (sans ENNS) was for my sci-fi WIP, a C-plot flashback arc in 13 parts. They started out as in-universe nightmares to give credibility to when these flasbacks started occuring, framed around the character's reaction to the scene, but then took off independently to avoid redundancy.

This arc covered his time as a POW, telling the reader how he came to be the living weapon he was, and the first detail it opened with was the reveal that he wasn’t the only one of his kind, he’d lied and shouldered the blame of every atrocity to protect the others, as their numbers dwindled and it all fell into place. A truth he wouldn't tell with a gun to his head.

Because you already knew he lived, because he’s right there in the present A-plot, the arc wasn’t telling you if he’d survive the war, but what he’d do to survive, and how it all fell apart. Because it was framed up with the existing narrative, I had a lot more leeway in omitting details and dropping the reader weeks or months ahead as opposed to this being a completely fresh story with new characters. You knew immediately based on the tone that this POV was the C-plot flashback POV, and you knew the only person who could narrate it was my poor character.

Over 13 POVS, 34k words (of a total whopping 202k), I told a whole love story, established and killed off 10 characters, and gave heaps of worldbuilding lore and exposition to fill in all the blanks in the present and answer questions that this character would never, and revealed just how much he lied about and why.

All of this tied in with the A-plot, staggering the physical placement of POVS within the book to hit at the right moments tonally and as the character’s condition kept deteriorating because he refused to talk about What Happened. His reason was that he’d done all of this and suffered so much to keep their legacies pure. If he gave it up now, he would have done all this for nothing.

And this was some heavy shit. There was murder, suicide, death by giant alien super robots fond of ripping people apart, assault, mercy killing, torture, gaslighting, and psychological horror. One of my magic systems let magicians regrow limbs alchemically, which meant they could endure a shit ton of pain and just get reset to do it all over again.

It was a lot.

But because it was just in flashbacks, I gave you just enough dark shit before cutting back to something marginally lighter, not just one long slog of misery. There was also the unknown of how quickly it would end. The book would end when you hit the last page, but you had no idea which flashback POV would be the last.

And also.

I got to flex my writing skills to the fullest, writing this character’s flashback POV in a completely different tone and style to make it that much more distinct from the rest of the present book.

ENNS’ sequel is very much under construction, but the one thing already polished is a flashback episode packed into one chapter for one of my characters. It’s perfectly knife-twisty and I can't wait for people to read it.

—

There’s dozens of framing devices out there. Most important thing, I think, is not sacrificing audience understanding for the sake of something ‘cool’. Doesn’t matter how amazing the story is if your audience gets completely lost and confused trying to keep up with what’s going on.

If you'd like to check out my book, Eternal Night of the Northern Sky is available now!

#writing #writeblr #writing a book #writing advice #writing resources #writing tools #literary devices #flashback #narrative structure

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cal-daisies-and-briars · 1 day

Note

Humbly here to request my weekly sentences :)

🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️ I am SO intrigued by this idea

YAY!

45 for 🧟:

---

“It looked like a singular flashlight,” Maddie explains.

“Maybe it’s just someone looking around,” Hen says.

Because she hopes. Because she worries about the alternative. Because she needs for there not to be a threat to her son.

“Right, yeah,” Maddie nods. “Like a scavenger. Or a traveler. I’ve been there.”

“We don’t know,” Bobby decides. “And we’re not going to panic until we do. A handful of us can go scouting tomorrow.”

Hen is almost certain that includes her. Good. She’ll make sure Karen stays behind with Denny, where it’s safe.

“Sounds like a plan,” Karen says.

“I’ll take the first stakeout shift,” Bobby announces.

“I’ll join you,” Athena offers.

“I appreciate that,” Bobby replies.

And that’s that. It’s settled. They have a plan.

Having a plan always makes Hen feel better. Not totally better, but less bad. The worst is being in a predicament and not knowing what next move to make. At least this isn’t that. Yet.

But, still… Hen would be lying if she said she gets much sleep that night.

September 8th, 2018

Denny is overflowing with joy in the morning. A few days of playing with boys his own age and he’s pretty much descended into being a total rascal. But compared to a child that only had adults for company and seemed a bit too old for his age, Hen will take a bit of mischief and silliness any day.

“What if something terrible happens?” Hen asks her wife quietly as they get ready for the day. “Denny is finally getting to be a normal kid.”

“I don’t know if this is normal,” Karen says, looking across the room to where Denny and Christopher are playing Connect 4. “But, yeah… I know. I can’t stop thinking, Eddie left his kid here. He trusted Maddie and all of us. Now what if when he gets back…”

God, Hen hadn’t even considered that.

“I hope they get back soon,” Hen mumbles. “We could use numbers and weapons on our side, just in case.”

---

60 for ❄️:

---

Basically, Eddie can’t be blamed for any of this. He’s free of guilt. He didn’t mean to… Well, do anything.

Really, all he wanted to do was be less of a fucking mess.

“I think group therapy would benefit you,” Frank says, one session in late June.

Christopher is still gone and Gerrard is still captain and life still pretty much sucks. Every day just feels like an endless loop of fucking shit.

“You firing me, Frank?” Eddie asks. “Took you longer than expected, actually.”

Eddie’s been doing that a lot lately. The whole sarcasm thing. More than usual. And not just to Frank. He’s even begun to make tiny, biting comments in Buck’s direction. Which is completely unfair of him because all Buck is doing is supporting him. Just… Well, sometimes Eddie doesn’t know what else to say when… When things are brought up.

Frank smiles patiently. “I think group therapy would benefit you, in addition to our sessions together.”

Eddie blinks. “Twice the amount of therapy? Extra people? I don’t know.”

Frank nods. “Yeah, it’s not most people’s favorite idea at first. But the feedback is usually pretty good.”

“Why would I need a group?” Eddie asks. “These problems… They’re pretty specific to me.”

Though, if Frank can point him in the direction of a support group for people who have encountered eerie clones of their dead spouses, Eddie will shut his damn mouth and get going. If this is a recurring thing for people, that’s just insane. Eddie will gladly join that class action lawsuit against god or the universe or whatever Buck would interpret it as.

“Not all of what we’ve talked about is specific to you, Eddie,” Frank says. “A lot of people struggle with-”

“But isn’t everything with Chris and Kim and all that the most pressing thing?” Eddie interrupts. “That’s what I need to solve first.”

“It all helps, Eddie. We’ve talked about this. You being in a better, more open and accepting place with yourself? That will help with the rest.”

Eddie groans a little. It all sounds so counterintuitive. Even though Eddie knows he’s probably right. Why should he get to work on accepting and loving himself, when the consequences of his actions are still hurting his son? Keeping him away from home? He shouldn’t get to be happy right now.

But the thing is, Eddie made a promise. To Buck, first. The night Christopher left. More than that, though, to himself. He’s going to trust the process. Therapy. The whole nine yards. He’s not going to let this destroy him.

#daisies and briars writes #go and kill go and die fic #a cold world fic

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rearranging-deck-chairs · 9 months

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the doctor isnt neurodivergent or autistic or adhd or nonbinary or genderqueer or asexual. what the doctor is, is Not From Here

#which necessarily of course says something abt their (non)whiteness #(i had all these words in quotation marks first so mentally add those to whiteness too)#but we've them be black for all of 1.5 episode now so #lets see how that develops you know #also i dont think i understand the politics of that part well enough to say much abt it #not that i probably understand the politics of these parts better but #im annoyed enough abt this Thing happening these years. in these 20s i guess. the 'representation' thing #to complain abt it anyway #the dsm isnt real and it isnt gonna fuck you buddy #maybe i'll read some books and then one day i'll write an essay driven by spite and pettiness #i wonder if i can make the thesis statement about the tension between their status of main character #in a 60 year running family adventure show vs this therapy thing we're doing now #like. you cant do that. in terms of like. what story is and does. what a character is and does. it strains #in an interesting way. like im not saying they Shouldnt have done it. im just observing. that you cant do that really. i think #or maybe you can! but i'll find that out #i also dont know shit abt narratology or whatever so. need to read books first. sigh #always have to pause my thoughts to read myself in first its so annoying. esp bc i rarely really do #bc then new thoughts new things to do you cant do EVERYTHING. you can do almost nothing. bane of my existence really #but like you might even be able to say smth interesting here about whether you can call them traumatised at all #remember that article i saw around on tumblr a few years ago i think that was abt like. some scholar in the middle east maybe #saying that ptsd is a western thing bc it necessitates a Post #all of this is western. psychiatry is western. its all stories. how you conceptualise trauma is a story #whos Other is story #where youre from is a story what you stand for is a story who you are is a story #ah. checked the article. dr samah jabr. palestinian. i'll start with her book maybe

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arklay · 11 months

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RESIDENT EVIL → THE WESKER FAMILY

To the public, little is known of the families behind some of the world’s most renowned bioterrorists, but the question remains: did they play a role in causing their children to walk down the path that they did? Or are these individuals simply ambitious criminals with delusions of grandeur?

For Diana Wesker (née Afanasyeva), her introduction into the bioweapons black market trade was upon discovering her employers were using her research into limb regeneration with salamanders to further their experiments in creating enhanced soldiers, instead of developing human therapies with which she was recruited for. Although the prospect of using biological weapons in the military did not appeal to her, the concept remained fascinating for her own selfish endeavours. Born on the 27th of October, 1963 in Sydney, Australia to Russian immigrant parents, Diana had harsh expectations placed upon her at a young age, ones that no matter how hard she tried she could never live up to. Her mother, Tatyana, was an unfeeling woman, absent for long stretches of time with little regard to how it affected her daughters, much more concerned with her craft as an accomplished opera singer. Viktor was no better. A strict man whose role as father and ballet master blurred, he pushed his girls to one day follow in his footsteps. Whilst Sofia enjoyed ballet, and went on to become a professional ballet dancer, Diana’s heart was set on going into the field of biology. She wished to make a name for herself, separate from her family – to which she succeeded.

Diana was married to former U.S. Marine, Dave Monroe, for only a year until he was declared dead in 1992 after succumbing to injuries sustained in a horrific car accident. Foul play was ruled out while Diana played the role of the grief-stricken widow, but in reality, she had snapped after years of mistreatment at her husband’s hands, and opted for something she could pass off as an accident to be free of him. For years she believed he was dead – and he was, legally – but that proved to not be the case when he found his way back into her life again in 1999. Unbeknownst to her, she had been lied to by the police and coroner, who were paid off by her employers when they took Dave’s body for themselves and used him as one of their first test subjects in developing supersoldiers. Before he could ever hurt her again, Diana’s second husband, Albert Wesker, tracked the man down, captured him and tortured him, before allowing Diana to get her violent and bloody revenge.

The origins of Albert Wesker’s involvement in bioterrorism, alongside his twin sister, Alex, are much different than that of Diana’s. The two hail from London, Canada, but unfortunately, they hold no memories of their lives there, nor what happened to their biological parents when they were eight years old. Agents of Oswell E. Spencer, an aristocratic billionaire and eugenicist, took the twins from their home and executed their parents as per Spencer’s orders. Albert and Alex were then placed in a home funded by the Spencer Foundation where they were given new names and a privileged upbringing. They had access to the best education possible, free to pursue whichever field they decided, but it was by no accident they both went into virology and bioengineering; at home, their adoptive parents – agents whom they believed to be their real parents – instilled them with the beliefs of Oswell E. Spencer, harbouring disdain for war and pestilence, and believing humans to be an evolutionary dead-end in need of a rebirth. They were only two of the hundreds of children “adopted” as part of what is known as Project W, a plan intended to develop an advanced race of human beings. The most promising candidates were headhunted by Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, the twins amongst them, where they went on to create bioweapons for the company founded by none other than the man who had handpicked them for his plan. The final stage of this was to infect the thirteen Spencer saw fit, however, only two survived; Albert received the intended effects, now possessing superhuman abilities, however, Alex was only offered more time to live due to her terminal degenerative illness.

In the summer of 1995, Diana was working undercover within Umbrella to gather development data on their projects for her company. Here, she had a chance encounter with Albert, an intelligence officer at the time, which permanently altered the course of her life. The two were never seen far from one another’s side, marrying in 1998, and they went on to become notorious in the bioweapons industry. The development of the Uroboros virus was where things took a turn for the worst. Although Diana’s infection was successful and she bore abilities that rivalled her husband’s, the plan itself did not succeed as they had hoped, and almost cost Albert his life at the hands of his former subordinates.

Now, they work within the shadows, with Diana declared missing and Albert believed to be dead. Their legacy, however, lives on with the mark they left on the world. As visionaries in their field, they influenced bioterror attacks carried out by countless individuals and organisations. In turn, they also inspired others to fight against such atrocities. One such person happens to be Albert’s son from a former relationship, Jake Müller, whose existence he was unaware of.

#mine.#oc: diana #pair: ewskers #click for better quality cause it's large & tumblr ate it ♡#hii so happy birthday diana !! queen is 60 today :]#um. there's no template cause i made this from scratch...i couldn't find any i was vibing with so i was like you know what lmaoo #i'm sorry for the essay...it was meant to be just a short rundown of the family but well...that happened. typical leah fashion...#oh and guys. did you know that there's a limit to the amount you can put in one blockquote? that's why the rest is just left like that caus #i didn't like how it looked with a blockquote each paragraph...cause the spaces between were unever. you understand 😔#with the tree i was also going to include weskids adoptive parents but i couldn't figure out how to arrange it all & make it look nice !!#cause i also wanted to have spencer in there as well cause he's a big reason why the weskids are the way they are...was maybe gonna include #sherry as well. like connected to jake (hehe) and then do her parents too but that would've made things so wide & it's already big enough #yes. i hc that albert & alex are biological twins. just for clarification there :] i don't think i added anything else that isn't canon or #implied with canon. cause the weskids were put in homes (or at least whatever ''controlled environments'' means) where they were monitored #by umbrella but were unaware of it. so yeah. i don't think i really changed much there !!#honestly i could've kept rambling cause there's alex's whole situation. there's my lore with jake's mum. there's way more with the ewskers #but it's already so long & i can't be concise so there's that lmaoo oh also diana's grandma. so much stuff #also meant to say the weskids birthday in that ramble. it's january 15 1960 :] they are capricorn sun leo moons but alex was born earlier s #their rising signs are albert is a scorpio rising & alex is a libra rising !!#had to redo the image cause typo on diana's birth year for some reason lmao so if that messed up the formatting i will sob

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