#i keep thinking about that gateway. and how people had specific positions that they took around it.

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[xxisxxisxxis]

Gateway Drug | Part Sixty-Seven

Words: 7.3K

Warnings: Explicit language, explicit sexual situations, violence, abuse

Tag List: @unknownoblivion  @sinningsixx  @edwardtriggerhandzz  @lemmyjelly  @haileynicoleseavey17  @cierrasixx19  @oskea93  @mgkobsessed  @vamprlestat  @sharon6713  @itsametaphorbriansblog  @miriampraez  @allie-mcginn @xpoisonousrosesx  @rebeccaphillips14  @nicholeh7  @fandomshit6000  @lilmou5ie  @tamedhearts  @divaanya  @kingbouji3 @evrsncnewyork @6ixx6ixx  @ratedrkohardychick91  @floregrohlssard  @oldschoolimagineblog  @thanks2pete  @abaldboi  @swoopygorl @justjodeye @liith-ium  @caos18blog  @ytwahsog  @shamlessobsession @scarecrowmax  @toadspleen @random-internet-user-4471  @solohqrry  @loveofmyloif  @sparxx27  @kaitieskidmore1  @cruecifymesixx  @ijustwanttokiss70srogertaylor  @emmaelizabeth2014 @meetthesixxter  @sixxsixxsexx @sublimeprincesswasteland @arianareirg  @girlnight-terror  @mcnibberachi

@fancywasmyname1  @teller258316  @ggorehorror  @blowinmeupwithherlove  @xrosegoldwolfx  @mylifeisjustafeverdream  @redlipscrystalskies14 @str4nge-haze

LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE TAGGED

"Vivian, c'mon." Fred pleads, as I grip the headboard of the hotel bed as he tugs at my ankles. 

"I'm not talking to that freaking reporter." I protest.

"Vivian."

"Rolling Stone can suck my clit." I argue back, trying to maintain my grip.

"Vivian, you are acting like a crazy person." 

"I'm pretty sane compared to the other motherfuckers." I wince, my joint in my ankle popping. 

"It's not gonna be that bad, Viv--"

"--He's gonna ask about Vanity."

"So, let him, you and Nikki already know how to handle the Vanity questions." He insists. "We spent an hour going over it yesterday." 

"Fred, I can't."

"Viv, babe, c'mon, now. Please." He begs again. "For me, please." 

I think about it for a moment, before letting go of the head board, gaining a relieved sigh from him. 

"Thank you." He tells me as I pull my heels on and smooth my hair over. 

The nightmare of that freaking Rolling Stone journalist following us around for days, picking and prodding, was everything everybody thought it would be. Possibly the deepest question he asked, about the actual craft of Mötley Crüe's talent, was, "so how is the amount of chicks you guys fuck incorporated into the songs?"

As if they would even answer that honestly being that three of them were married and one of the three had a toddler at home with his wife.

And I was particularly annoyed because me and Nikki had to act like the most in love people in the world to debunk the Vanity bullshit.

I hold my breath the second the question leaves his lips, but nobody can trip up on the inevitable topic that we knew would come up at some point. 

Nikki's clearing his throat to cover the pause after "so, obviously there's buzz going on about the bombshell Vanity dropped on the Arsenio Hall Show" leaves Cal, our reporter's, lips.

"That whole thing was just...bullshit." Nikki tells him, laughing it off, looking at me.

I laugh along, too, although we both know it's the farthest thing from funny. 

"I heard it was a 'misunderstanding' or something like that." Cal adds. 

"It's not really hard to have misunderstandings with her, honestly." Nikki admits, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. 

"So, there was never an engagement?"

"I think she's let Hollywood get straight to her head." Nikki tells him. "I'm not trying to be an ass but that really put us," he motions between himself and I, "in a really fucked position for a couple days because obviously you hear one of your girlfriends say, you know, 'hey, I'm engaged to so-n-so', and you're married to 'so-n-so', and then have that added stigma about guys like your husband not being able to commit because all the girls around and everything…" He trails off. "And, look, I'm not upset that Vivian was thinking there could've been some truth to it, ya know? But even after Viv realized it was all shit, it was all out there and people were--and still probably are--thinking that it's true. So the media is constantly, wherever we go, asking about my 'alleged' engagement and if we're still even married or got divorced a while ago and so on. And I could give a fuck about public scrutiny, myself, because I knew what I was signing up for when I started a band. I took everything into consideration, but she didn't sign up for people calling her 'stupid' and looking at her to do something, when Vanity--who has no idea what the fuck she's saying or how heavy the allegations she's throwing around are--convinces people that she's engaged to me." Nikki goes on. 

"So, Vanity was lying?"

"Vanity was lying." Nikki shrugs. 

"You opened up a little bit earlier about your past struggles with heroin--you didn't accidentally propose to her when--"

"Write this down word for word, and put it as the fucking cover quote if you want to: I, Nikki Sixx, would have to be on a high dose of pure horse tranquilizer in order to be so fucked that I'd willingly propose, or agree to get married, to Vanity." Nikki says matter-of-fact. "And that's married or single." 

I felt horrible. I wasn't happy with Vanity, I was livid with her...but I knew what it felt like to feel crazy as a result of Nikki switching the story. The drugs were already taunting her sanity, and we just fucking added to it by saying something--that so obviously happened--never happened.

We were both so full of shit.

I let out a breath as I we get off the bus when we reach the venue, needing to get away from Cal and Nikki's lies for a couple minutes. 

I catch up to Mick and Emi, who're having a conversation, Emi's girlish giggling has me raising a brow, and I feel someone tap on my shoulder. 

Tansy. 

"Fuck off." I snap at her and she looks like she's going to cry. 

"Vi--"

"--You knew she was fucking him, and then protected them by keeping it from me. Fuck. Off." I clench through my teeth. 

This is enough to get her off my back as we head inside, as Emi let's out more laughter. 

Mick and Emi--who had a husband of 6 months back home--were growing closer and closer, oddly enough. I kind of knew something was up, but of course I never told anyone. I knew Nikki would give them hell for it, especially Mick, since he specifically told him, Tommy and Vince when they hired Donna and Emi, not to sleep with them/have a relationship with any of them because, "you don't shit in your own yard." 

So I kept my mouth shut, but Nikki and the guys eventually caught on to what was happening, anyway, and he and Tommy set loose a wrath on them any chance they felt like it.

I keep my expression neutral as the guys make their way by to go on once Doc tells them it's time. 

I avert my gaze from Nikki when he walks by,  being that Cal isn't even paying attention. 

But Nikki ensures the upkeep of our facade--his hand grasping my jaw, not enough to hurt, but enough to get my attention, as he presses a solid, passionate, knee-weakening kiss on my lips. 

When he's pulling away, he looks like he wasn't quite expecting it to be that good, but he's brushing it off in no time, giving me a smirk and a wink before grabbing his bass from his tech and getting where he needs to be for set, leaving me stunned in my spot. 

Once I snap out of my little trance, I’m going to the bathroom to fix my smudged lipstick.

I let out a heavy breath as I look at myself in the mirror, taking deep breaths. “He cheated on you.” I tell myself. “He lied, he slept with one of your friends, and he cheated on  you.” I repeat, trying to hammer my level head back into place as opposed to letting it run wild with fantasies over stupid little kiss...which is easier said than done.

As I’m stepping out of the bathroom, I’m running smack-dab into Sparkie, and I roll my eyes at his mere presence.

“Sorry.” I mumble, stepping by him, only to hear him walking behind me. 

“So, I’ve been thinking…” He starts and I exhale deeply, ignoring him, until he’s grabbing at my wrist, stopping me. “...I was gonna offer you a belated anniversary present but I guess you aren’t interested.” He states, dead, sunken in eyes cutting at me. 

“I’m not interested. Fuck off.” I hiss.

“You weren’t whistling that note last night.” He echoes and I snap around, shushing him so the people around us won’t hear what else he’s about to say. He just gets this smug smile on his face.

“Oh, right, I forgot people would flip their shit if they knew Saint Vivian was interested in scoring.” He slyly smiles, his decaying teeth making me grimace. How the hell does Tansy kiss him?

“I wasn’t interested in scoring--”

“--Why the hell else would you show up to my room at three in the morning, Viv?” He cuts me short, and I let out a breath. “Unless you wanted to fuck or something…”

“You really are on drugs, huh?” I sarcastically shoot back in reference to him being so insane to think I would actually want to sleep with him. 

“I’ve seen pictures of some cute little tricks you can do.” He says again, his fingers grazing at my cheek.

“Want me to go tell Nikki that?” I ask him--knowing I honestly should because Nikki would probably kill him if Tommy, Vince, or Fred, didn’t beat him to it--and he smiles.

“Sure, why not. It’ll be the perfect conversation starter as to why his precious, purely clean wife was in my hotel room after everybody was passed out.” He whispers, his atrocious breath is purely smoke and alcohol, before he’s rubbing his hand down my stomach, nearly getting between my legs before I force him away from me, controlling my urge to hit him as I turn and walk away. 

There was no way to explain why I went to Sparkie in the middle of the night, without it sounding like I was up to no good--not just because Sparkie is the physical embodiment of “no good”, but because I actually was up to no good.

I wipe more of my tears, dotting cold water from the bathroom sink under my eyes to try to calm the puffiness before grabbing some toilet paper and blowing my nose. 

I can’t fucking sleep, once again.

I dig in my toiletry bag to see if I packed any benadryl to help me sleep...but all I see is my bottle of Nardil.

I roll my jaw and feel frustration fill me before I’m unscrewing the cap and throw the bottle at the mirror, the pills strewing all over the bathroom counter. My hand is swiping against the cold counter, knocking a majority of the pills into the toilet before I’m flushing them.

They’re just a fucking waste of money. I’m realizing now they quit working a while ago, I was just so bombarded with loving Nikki in our perfect little bubble, but now it’s been popped, and I’m crashing down from my codependent high--that was disguised as genuine happiness and the lie that my antidepressant was working--is now gone.

A deep breath leaves my lips and I wipe my tears, again, deciding to just get something to put me to sleep. 

One fucking ambien or quaalude won’t kill me. 

The last place I want to be is pacing in front of Sparkie and Tansy’s room door but here the hell I am. 

I knock on the door, quietly, hoping he isn’t completely smacked out or he won’t come answer.

When the door swings open, he’s in tattered underwear, his bloodshot eyes looking at me, confused.

The bitter smell of burning heroin and coke flows past him into the hallway, cutting at my nose, and I grimace.

“I can’t sleep.” I tell him, quietly. 

“And?”

“I need something to help me sleep.” I explain.

My skin crawls when his eyes snake up my bare legs, his tongue running on the inside of his lips.

“I might have something for you.” He grins. “What’re you willing to give for it, though?”

I’m repulsed by him, but I don’t show my disgust.

“Nikki’s got plenty of money.” I state. “I can pay you back later.” He thinks a moment, before smirking. 

“The satisfaction of giving you your first ‘big girl’ drug is enough.” He says, stepping aside, and I cross my arms and step into the room, seeing Tansy knocked out cold on the bed, her naked body looking like a skeleton.

He’s plopping his suitcase on the bed, opening it, and I feel a sick feeling in my stomach at the sight of insane amounts--in bulk--in coke, heroin--at least two different kinds, judging by what I've seen Nikki with the past few years--and a copious amount of pills. 

I'm eyeing the pills, but when he reaches for a lump of tar, and looks at me deviously, I have to hold back vomit. 

"If you want to hold up the Sixx reputation, I highly recommend this." He says as if it's a fucking joke my husband is strung out. 

My eyes dart from the heroin, to the needles in a ziplock stored in the zipper compartment of the luggage. 

"I just need a pill to help me sleep." I tell him and he holds back laughter before holding his hand up as if telling me to hold on for a second as he goes to Tansy's purse. 

I hear him open a bottle and the rustling of pills, before he's bringing me back a pill and handing it to me.

Seeing it in the light, I realize it's a tylenol. 

"Come back when you're actually fun enough to maybe keep Nikki's eyes from straying." He mocks me and I roll my jaw before throwing the pill across the room and storming out. 

I didn't get any sleep that night.

I shake away at the memory, a single, stray tear rolling down my cheek before I'm quickly swiping it away as "Dancing on Glass" booms from the stage. 

I was so fucking sad. I wish there was a way to describe it that didn't sound so mundane...but that's what it was. Just fucking sadness being suppressed constantly with makeup and a decent smile, knowing I wasn't good enough. I felt like I was living with my mom all over again.

After the show's over, we head back to the hotel with Cal in tow, shooting off questions left and right that have nothing to do with the show itself.

"I gotta go to the bathroom." Nikki mumbles, standing up and I know he's just going to get away from Cal, and decide I'd rather be trapped in a small bathroom with Nikki, than hear another question along the lines of "so what drug is your favorite?" 

As Nikki's shutting the door, I'm getting my foot in, stopping him and he looks at me confused, before reluctantly letting me in. 

We wait in awkward silence before I'm pushing a strand of hair behind my ear. 

"Don't kiss me like that again." I tell him, sternly but politely, looking up at him and he pretends to be infatuated with the sink's water knobs. "Nikki."

"Why not?"

"You know why."

"Oh, right. We hate each other, how stupid of me to forget that." He hisses. 

"I don't hate you." I quietly say, and he lets out a breath. 

"Not yet, at least." He scoffs. 

"Nikki, you fucked up, that doesn't mean I hate you."

"But you're still filing for divorce the second Doc gives you the greenlight, right?" I don't say anything. "That's what I thought." 

He slips past me and leaves me to myself, causing me to close my eyes for a moment, and glance in the mirror before joining everybody else. 

He was right. I didn't hate him, yet.

The next day the guys are due to take the cover photo for their Rollingstone issue with Cal continuing to breathe down everybody's necks. 

"Are you not worried about stomach ulcers?" Cal asks me as I take a sip of Pepsi as we wait for the guys to get dressed for the shoot, and I raise my brows at him. "You have at least three of those a day and it's unhealthy, isn't it?" He adds, trying to sugarcoat it with laughter.

"I drink more water than I do soda...would you rather me be snorting rails of coke or smoking crack or shooting heroin?" I bite and his face falls. "If I want to drink three Pepsi's a day--if I wanna drink 300 Pepsi's a day--I will." Apparently I'm raising my voice, because Doc and Fred are turning their heads in my direction and I can see them slowly making their way to me. 

"Umm…" Cal says nervously as I show no sign of easing up on him. 

"I've earned the right to drink as much fucking Pepsi I want, Cal, sorry it's not as aesthetically pleasing as Jack or vodka, or chain smoking Marlboros, or isn't as romantically tragedized as junk--"

"--Vivian." Doc starts as I continue.

"But I like it, it's not the worst thing I could possibly drink on a daily basis, and if I want to fucking drink it, I will!" 

He looks like a scared weasel, backed into a corner, his eyes wide as he leans away from me slightly. 

I didn't realize how close to him I am right now, I'm practically in his face, bitching him out over a fucking Pepsi. 

"Vivian!" Doc's barking at me.

I'm backing off, with the help of Fred pulling me away from him.

I'm surprised Cal isn't pissing his pants currently, the look on his face says he's heavily considering it. 

"Get him the fuck out of here." I tell Doc, motioning to Cal. 

"Vivia--"

"--No, who the fuck does he think he is?" I argue with Fred when he tries to calm me down.

"What's going on?" Nikki and Tommy ask, coming over here.

"Nothing's going on, alright? Vivian's just--"

"--Vivian's just what?" I snap at Doc. 

"I'm so sorry, she gets neurotic." Doc ignores me as he tries to reassure Cal and I'm slinging my soda out of the bottle, onto him and Cal, as I yell, "oh, I'm fucking neurotic?!" 

"Viv!" Doc scolds me as I throw the bottle down and it breaks. 

"Viv," Tommy starts and I snap around to him. 

"Fucking say it, Tommy. I dare you." I grit out, the look in my eyes telling him, "say anything else, and I'll tell everything about Vanity and Nikki." 

"It was a misunderstanding, alright?" I hear Cal explain to Doc.

"No, no." Fred sighs as he's keeping me from hitting Cal, pulling me away as Cal flinches to get as far from me as possible, looking at me like I'm crazy. 

"Don't leave this out of your fucking article! It might just save the entire damn thing since your fucking journalism sucks more ball-pubes than your wife while you've been out here with your nose up our fucking asses!" I throw at him, and Doc closes his eyes and gives out a deep, disappointed sigh, while Fred's tugging me to the bathroom with Nikki on his heels. 

The second the door is closed, Nikki's snatching me away from Fred, his hand wrapping around my throat--not enough to hurt, but enough to catch my attention--and he pushes me against the wall roughly, seering down at me.

"The fuck is your problem?!" He demands.

"Hey, cut it out!" Fred cuts in, separating us, glaring at Nikki. "Don't fucking grab at her like that, I don't care how fucking pissed you are, Sixx, you got it?" He points at him. "And you," he looks at me now, "I don't know what the fucking hell you are tripping on, or if you're on the rag, or what the hell kind of demon possessed you recently but you're being fucking ridiculous." He snaps at me. 

My eyes are honing in on the rosary around Nikki's neck and I cut my eyes. 

"Is that one of mine?" I ask him and he looks down at it. 

"Maybe."

"For someone who hates God you really don't mind representing him."

"It's called a mockery, Vivian, get over yourself." 

"Give it back." I hold my hand out.

"Fuck off." He replies, going for the bathroom door. 

"I said, 'give it back!'" I scream.

"And I said, 'fuck off!'" He yells back. 

"It's a fucking string of beads with a fucking cross on it!" Fred outbursts louder than either of us and we look at him. "You have like four, Viv, what the fuck does it matter? He's always worn them." He points out next and I huff out a breath. 

I didn't mind when Nikki wore rosaries or crucifixes, I knew he was kind of mocking when he wore them, for the irony of a "devil worshiper" wearing one, but even when we got bad off I didn't mind...in fact as he got worse with his addiction, I hoped the spirituality that they represented would rub off on him and snap him out of his addiction. 

It was stupid and I know better now, but Charlette Kinston was my mother. I did have a small speck of her in me, even when I tried not to.

Later that night--more like the middle of the night--I'm still unable to sleep and end up tossing and turning for hours before getting a bath, hoping the warm water will relax me and calm my racing mind. 

Once I get out and get back into bed, I furrow my brows at the sound of something weird in my room, and I quickly realize what it is. 

The unsettling sound of the door knob twisting and turning throughout the dark hotel room, catches my attention and makes my spine prickle. 

I eye the walkie-talkie on my nightstand, and reach my hand out, turning it on. “2.” I say lowly.

“What, 6 and a half?” Fred’s exhausted voice replies.

“20.” I say, which is code for "where are you?"

“101." He grumbles back, "101" meaning the hotel. "In bed. Like you should be.” He says.

“There’s someone at my door.” I reply.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know what’s why I’m calling you.” 

“You want me to get outta bed just to come see who’s at your door, when you haven’t even checked?”

“...Good point.”

“Just look and see, and then let me know if I need to come, alright?”

“Got it.”

I get out of bed, hearing the door knob still rustling, and I tiptoe to the door, peeping out the peephole, to see Nikki, drunkenly fumbling with his room key, trying to put it in my door.

“It’s nobody, they’re gone. Goodnight.” I say to Fred.

“G’night, Vivian. Get some fucking sleep, you need it.” He adds and I roll my eyes.

“I would if I could.” I mumble, swinging the door open to face Nikki. He doesn’t say anything to me before stepping in, his bottle of wine sloshing onto the carpet.

“This key doesn’t fucking work.” He says, tossing it across the room. 

“Because it’s my room, not yours. Your key works for your room only...across the hall...where you should be.” I cross my arms as he takes another swig of his drink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when some of it trails down his chin. 

“Are you strung out?” I blurt, wanting to know whether I should be ready to fight with Sikki or not.

“No, and I haven’t fucking shot up in a long time.” He points his finger in my face. “Just been chasing the Dragon.”

“I can tell.” I state.

“I’m not high, smartass. I came down an hour ago.” He sits the wine down on my nightstand and I raise my brows. 

There’s a silent pause and I wait awkwardly for him to explain why he’s here, but as soon as I open my mouth to ask him, he’s saying, “you wanna go swimming?” I furrow my brows, confused.

“W-What?” I ask.

“You wanna go swimming?” He repeats, rubbing the back of his neck. “Like hangout or something.”

“Nikki, we’re separated. We don’t ‘hangout or something’ anymore.”

“No, but I’m not thinking straight due to the wine and heroin smoke, and you’re not thinking clearly because you can’t fucking sleep, so let’s just not think straight together--bonding experience--and pretend we’re at least friends.” He vouches, and I raise my brows, thinking about it. 

“The pool’s closed. It’s nearly 4:00am.” I tell him and he scoffs.

“We’re Sixxes, Viv, we can do whatever the hell we want.” He says it as if it’s common sense. “And it’d be nice to practice being around each other without screaming each other’s heads off.”

I give it one last thought, before letting out a sigh.

“Fine.” I relent. 

I was worried his sick plan was to drown me, and finally kill me, but soon after we put swimsuits on, and broke into the pool’s patio, I realized he was genuine about just wanting to “hangout or something” and it made me feel a little better that he missed me as much as I was missing him, even if he played it off smoother than I did at times.

“Is it cold?” I ask him as he wades through the shallow end seamlessly.

“No.” He tells me.

“Are you sure?” I question and he looks at me as I dip my toe in. “Nikki, it’s cold.” “Quit being a pussy and get in the water.” He says. “It’s not that bad, Viv.”

I dip my foot in, up to my ankle, and wrinkle my nose.

“Vivian Estine Sixx, get in the water.” He tries to hold back a laugh, keeping his stern facade. 

“It’s not cold to you because you have more body heat.” I cross my arms. 

“Are you calling me fat?”

“I’m saying you’re thicker than me.” I correct him.

“You can always take your bikini off to get used to the water quicker.” He says and I raise my brows.

“That makes no sense.” I argue.

“No, but it’d sure make me happy.” He grins and I splash him with water. 

I quickly regret it as he’s getting out of the pool, about to come after me. 

“Nikki, stop!” I whisper yell and he catches up and wraps his arms around me before hurling the both of us into the deep end. 

My body is shocked with the cold water, and the second I get my head above water, I’m gasping and shivering.

The second his head pops up beside me, I’m hitting at him.

“Jackass!” I scold him, and he laughs, brushing his wet hair out of his face. “It’s not funny.” I snap, swimming to the shallow and he follows me, still laughing.

“It’s so fun to piss you off.” He chuckles, running his hand over his face to get the drops of water from his eyelashes and I raise my hand to smack at him again but he raises his brows at me. “Fuck it off, Sixx.” He stops me before I even start.

“You started it, Sixx.” I reply, mimicking his voice. 

“What's new…" He says with a small smirk, thinking about something before the corners of his mouth fall slowly. "...I've done a lot of shit." He starts and I look at him. "Shit I'm not proud of. I don't fucking know when to just do something a little bit. I can't have a bump, I've gotta go through an eight ball as fast as possible. I can't have a drink, I gotta drink the place dry. I can't have a serious girlfriend, I've gotta marry her." He says, and I glance at him and he shakes his head. "I can't just have a one-night stand, I gotta have a fucking affair." He finishes and I lick my lips, keeping my tears back. "This might be fucked up, but I've realized I don't feel like I shouldn't have had anything with her." He says in reference to Vanity and I furrow my brows. "I just feel like we shouldn't have gotten married to begin with."

It hurts like a bitch, but I know it's the truth, because I feel the same way. 

"Me too." I admit and he finally looks at me. 

"I wouldn't change it, though. I wouldn't go back and change it." He clarifies and I smile softly, my tears unable to keep at bay. 

"I wouldn't either." I assure him. 

He stares at me for a moment, looking from my eyes to my lips, standing up straight, before leaning down. 

It's a sweet, simple kiss, that only lasts a moment. 

It took me back to our first kiss. It was odd, because when we first kissed we couldn't stand each other very much, like we couldn't at that moment in our marriage, either. I don't know if that nostalgic feeling crossed the wires in our brains to convince us to chase one last high together, but one thing led to another and got out of hand like it always tended to do with anything a Sixx did.

I grin in the mirror at him as he mercilessly pounds into me to the hilt with each thrust, my right knee hiked up on the bathroom counter, my left foot standing on tip-toes as his right hand is around my throat, his left hand holding at my waist.

My original intent was to get a shower and leave the kiss at the pool, like it was: just a kiss. 

But when we came back to his room where I had left my room key when I went with him so he could get his swimsuit on, and now I'm bent over his sink, tears in my eyes from the pleasuring pressure building up in me, the feeling of my wetness running down my legs at Nikki's doing, is something I've missed.

"Do you really fuck yourself or did you tell me that to piss me off?" He asks me, his dark eyes staring at me, causing me to clench down tighter onto him. 

"I really do." I reply as he holds himself against my cervix, causing me to grab at the counter as the delicious pain causes a high pitched groan to leave my throat. 

"Do you pretend I'm fucking you?" He questions next, deliberately slowing his pace, the friction of his skin inside my slick pussy satiating the hunger I've been feeling the past several days.

"Yes." I whimper out, my eyes rolling back for a moment. 

"Who do you imagine playing with your pretty," his left hand snakes between my legs, calloused, rough, fingers rubbing at my slick flesh, and I back back into him, biting my lip, humming, "perfect clit?" He asks me and I let out a ragged breath. 

"You." I confess, my knuckles turning white with how tightly I'm gripping the side of the counter. 

"Whose cock do you imagine stretching your tight, hot, wet pussy out?" He asks next, and I'm almost considering trying to get away from him because I don't think I can handle this much ecstasy at one time.

"You." I say again, his hand holding my throat harder in his grip, making my breathing a little shallower, but it only makes me more turned on, another wave of my juices coating his length as he starts picking his pace back up, making me cover my mouth with my hand to keep from screaming. 

"Whose name do you scream out in your pillow when you come?" He asks finally, a couple more stray tears rolling down my cheeks as my body is overcome with my orgasm, his hand taking my hand from my mouth as I moan out, loudly, "Nikki", causing him to smile proudly at me in the mirror.

Within a couple more minutes he's finishing in me, and stumbling back a little, a dopey, satisfied smile on his face, while we both come down from our sexbuzz and catch our breath, before going another round.

Nikki's said before, "you know you're addicted when you start lying to yourself about how you're not addicted."

I couldn't agree more.

But the real kicker is waking up to your husband the next morning after having sex, and the both of you pretend like you're strangers, not exchanging a single word before you grab your shit and get the hell out of their as fast as possible before anyone else realizes what happened. 

For the first time in his career, Nikki Sixx treated me like a groupie. 

And you know what? 

It was better that way, because it left no room for, "Oh, well, we had sex which means we made up so we're good now." 

We woke up, didn't look each other in the eye, I got off the floor, put my swimsuit back on so I wouldn't be naked, grabbed my key, and left without a word or a second glance.

There was nothing more to say. 

We'd said "goodbye" to our relationship, the same way we had said "hello" to it in 1981: with sex that meant nothing, but meant everything, all at once.

We're back in L.A. a couple days later, and apparently Karen got some help cleaning mine and Nikki's room up where I completely trashed it, because when we get in the house, all of our photos are back up, his awards are nice and neat on the wall, and our room looks untouched. 

The only give away that something happened is the broken mirror on the ceilings, but he doesn't seem to pay them any mind.

I guess he knew I would inevitably break something. 

I keep my lips sealed tightly together as I hear our bedroom door open, initiating Nikki to walk by with a slight, hungover, stumble, as he makes his way to the kitchen, not saying a word to me, not that I expect him to. 

He's coming into the living room a moment later, my bag of gummy worms I bought yesterday, in hand, and I roll my jaw, not wanting to start a fight over fucking candy…

...But go big, or go the fuck home, right?

"Those are mine." I tell him, pretending to be reading the newspaper I was reading earlier, and he looks me directly in the eye, opening the bag, taking one out, and eating it. 

"My money, my groceries." He states, chewing it, and I exhale.

"I'm gonna go take a walk." Karen comments, sighing as she gets up and walks to the back yard, knowing this is going to get ugly. 

"You're right. It is your money." I tell him, not arguing the valid point. "And if you keep splurging on heroin, you won't have any of it left." I add and he death glares me. 

"I'm not on fucking smack." He argues sternly. 

"You only eat sweets when you're trying to cut back smack." I say and he looks away from me. "At least you're trying to cut it, though." I mumble. 

The bag of candy is suddenly colliding with my leg as he throws it at my lap, spitefully, standing up. 

"Nikki, you can hav--"

"--It's yours. You have it." He hisses, going back to our bedroom, slamming the door loud enough to sound almost like a gunshot, causing me to jump in my seat. 

Nikki: 1, Viv: 1

I decide to shower later on, opting for the guest bathroom to avoid having to see Nikki by walking through our bedroom to get to our bathroom. 

I'm only under the running water before I hear the locked door knob twist, before loud banging on the door. 

"Vivian!" He screams on the other side.

"Yes, dear?!" I call back, annoyed. 

"What the fuck happened to my fucking cars and bikes?!" 

I raise my brows, actually forgetting what I did to his precious vehicles until now. 

"Open the fucking door!" He demands and I roll my eyes. 

"Don't you have better things to do?! Like cleaning the fermented wine--that's been rotting in the hot heat of our garage--from the interior of your cars?!" 

I hear the door knob move some more, and I peek out the curtain to see the knob twist completely, the door opening, and I see the little key in his hand.

We both stare at each other for one good second before I'm screaming as he comes for me, but I'm ducking under his arm and trying not to trip and fall on my wet feet as I scurry out of the room. 

"I'm gonna kill you, Sixx!" He threatens and I panic a little.

"What the hell is going on?!" Karen asks us, keeping Nikki back when she steps out of the kitchen to stop him from chasing after me any further. 

"She completely vandalized my fucking cars and my bikes!" He points at me. 

"I didn't touch the Jeep." I argue and he nearly shoves Karen out of the way but she holds her ground.

"I'm about to call Doc if you two don't calm down." She threatens.

"I'm calling the cops and having her ass locked up." Nikki states. 

"Do it." I boldly snap. 

"No, no, no one's calling the cops." She says, letting out a breath. 

"Do you wanna go see what the fuck she did to my fucking stuff?!" He raises his voice at her, motioning in the direction of the garage. 

"Have you stopped to think that's a result of what you've done to her?" Karen questions him and he rolls his jaw. "I know you're not used to having repercussions and consequences to your actions, but it's a simple theory called 'cause and effect'." She states and he cuts his eyes at her, probably thinking she's full of shit. "The 'scorned wife effect.' You cheat, she destroys your belongings." She finishes, giving him a quick, sarcastic smile, before stepping out of his way. "If I hear either one of you screaming, again, I'm calling Doc."

He pushes past me, and I go back to my shower. 

When I get out, Nikki's nowhere to be seen and the Jeep is gone so I assume he got out of the house for a few minutes, and when I leave our room, going to the living room, I stop in my tracks. 

I see her from the corner of my eye, in the foyer, staring at me, and I turn to fully look at her.

She looks like she's been on a binge the past few days, her brown eyes wild and body slightly jittery, her hands gripping tightly to the sneakers I let her borrow a few months ago. 

All I could do was stare at her, just knowing Nikki was going to have to come home and clean up the mess that he made.

“Vanity.” I acknowledge her, but not for long before I’m walking into the kitchen, hearing an oncoming storm approach as thunder rattles in the distance. 

I grab a Pepsi from the fridge, hearing her slowly creep into the kitchen with me, and my eyes slowly find the knife block only an arms length away from me on the kitchen counter.

Sober Vanity wouldn’t think of hurting a fly. Coked out, crazy, reckless Vanity on the other hand…

“Do you have anything to say to me?” She asks me, shakily.

“Was it good, at least?” I reply, leaning against the counter, staring at her. “When you fucked my husband...knowing he was married...was it good?”

Apparently I’m striking a chord, because she’s got angry tears coming to her eyes, her jaw clenching.

“For someone who’s all about Jesus--”

“--He came to me.” She states, shakily, and I keep my face neutral, although I feel my heart tighten in my chest. “During your time apart last year, he saw me in a Vanity 6 video, and within two hours, I was getting a call from my manager telling me Nikki Sixx wanted a date night.”

“Is that what you tell yourself to make you feel better about it?” I ask, raising my brows. “‘He came to me, I didn’t go to him’? Because at the end of the day, he’s married, and you knew he was married, and instead of turning him away, you welcomed him with open arms.” I point out. 

“Have you ever thought perhaps I’m your punishment for not appreciating him?” She asks me, a tear breaking past her lashes.

“Excuse me?”

“God punishes his children when they’re not obedient. You made a promise to God to be the best wife to Nikki you could be, and you broke that promise more than enough times.” She adds.

“So you’re saying God used you--having an affair with my husband--to punish me?” I ask her to clarify. She stays silent, looking at me with pure hatred, and I nod a little, calmly.

My glass bottle is hitting her square in the chest before I can even stop myself, a look of utter shock on her face as Pepsi splashes all over her, her hand holding at the inevitable severely bruised skin bound to form from where it made impact.

Technically, since she wanted to get biblical, I was supposed to stone her to death. Being I didn’t have any rocks, and God frowns upon such things, I opted for a one-time thing that still hurt her but not enough to kill her.

I guess Karen heard the Pepsi bottle shatter on the floor, because she's coming in, with a concerned look on her face...before her skin goes sheet white upon seeing Vanity. 

"W-What's going on?" She asks me.

"Vanity was just leaving." I state, rolling my jaw and Vanity looks at me like she's ready to attack.

"I'm not going anywhere until I talk to him." She hisses. 

I hear the front door open, and I smile at her. 

"Now's your chance." I smugly say, stepping past her, my shoes crackling on the glass as I take my sneakers from her hands, going to our room to put them up, saying, "I suggest you go to your room to avoid getting caught in the crossfire", to Karen as I pass by her. 

When I get in our room, that's when shit hits the fan. 

"You'd have to be on horse tranquilizer before marrying me?!" I hear her scream. "Huh?! You break up with me over the phone and then act like I'm crazy and embarrass me?!"

"You are crazy!" Nikki screams back. 

I hear her shriek, before the sound of skin violently smacking against skin, as Vanity barks out, "if you hate me, hit me! If you just fucking hate me so much!" 

I run in to see her hitting at Nikki while he tries to keep his patience.

"Vanity!" I scold, trying to pull her off of him. 

Her left hand is suddenly coming back in a fist, hitting me square in the eye. 

This does it. 

She's knocked to the floor, and her nose is bleeding, Nikki's fist is clenched and smattered with Vanity's blood, and his eyes have a look in them I haven't seen before. 

Vanity's now screaming and crying, kicking and clawing at him as he tries to grab her wrist to pull her up, so he instead grabs her hair and drags her out of the house.

"Nikki!" I protest, catching up to him when he's already got her down our front steps. 

He let's her go and glares at me, before he stomps back in, slamming the door, locking us both outside. 

Vanity's crying, a stream of blood running down her face, my own nose spilling red, but I can't help but crouch beside her and wipe the blood from her face and angle her head back as she sobs. 

"Just pinch your nose." I mumble, taking her hand, that's raw from slapping Nikki, and pinching it at her nose. 

I had never seen Nikki that angry. He later described his altercation with Vanity, as "hitting her like a man." 

I'm not sure if he actually hit her just because she attacked him, because I attacked him multiple times, and he never hit me--the most he did was push me, or grab my wrists or my throat, and even that wasn't enough to really hurt me, just enough to get my attention. 

I think everything was put into that single episode. 

Every time she made his life harder from the moment she stepped in to it, and even his own self-hate for letting things get the way they did between them, all the anger he had felt for himself and her were packed into that single punch. 

And none of it should have ever fucking happened.

[its-pronounced-quoassoint]

Power Rangers AU-Chapter 4

Pairings: romantic Logicality, Prinxiety, Demus, Remile

This Chapter Features: Deceit(goes by Dee) centric storyline, Dee has virtiligo but covers it up with makeup-very dramatic and will be explained later

This Chapter Warnings: hostage, mentions of alcohol, brief mention of smoking, sympathetic Deceit, sympathetic Remus

Credit for this AU goes to @when-day-met-the-knight (specifically this post).

If you would like to be added to the taglist for this fic please let me know in reply! 

First Previous Next

Chapter 4-Yellow

Dee doesn’t hate his life. At least when it came to school. Dee was the ‘second in command’ to the most popular girl in their school and took that position in stride. If there was a rumor going around, Dee was likely the one who started it. He knew whether any rumor was true or false and knew exactly how to manipulate the situation to make himself come off perfect. 

Dee had to admit, his high school life waas certainly better than he could imagine. Every flick of his hand is met with a faithful servant. Every teacher turning a blind eye when he skipped. An invitation to any party anyone was having. 

All of this, and the only thing Dee has to do is be Kayley Harlem's ‘gay best friend’. 

Through Kayley, he met Roman and Remus. Roman, another gay boy for Kayley to sit by in class for clout during school hours, and Remus, the one who helped her skip and get alcohol or something to smoke.

Roman was certainly not close to Dee. The two had flirted a lot when they first met, but Roman stopped that after a week for reasons he wouldn’t explain. Dee didn’t quite mind. Nothing would ever happen between the two and he knew it.

However, it was the other twin that Dee found himself oddly close to. He never knew what Remus meant to him, but he did mean something. Remus was insane and gross, but there was something spontaneously sweet about him that Dee liked. He wished he could describe or understand it, but that lead him down a path he had never been before. A path that Dee felt was best left undiscovered

Dee rarely found himself regretting his situation. It had been like this since he joined the school in Sophomore year, and he'd grown used to his place. 

Like usual, Dee, Kayley, and Remus were sitting in the back bathroom of McDonald’s across the street from their school. It was probably fourth hour, but Dee didn’t know exactly. Kayley was playing on her phone and texting some guy while Remus lazily stretched out on the sink counter. He munched on fries and slightly bobbed his head to whatever music he listened to. As Dee was about to reach up and grab a fry from Remus, the door to the bathroom opened.

“Seth!” Kayley cheered. She stood up and gave Seth a look. “Ready to go?”

“Yup.” Seth nodded, reaching a hand around her waist and leading her out the door.

“Don’t wait around Dee. I’ll see ya later m’kay.” Kayley waved.

Dee nodded though he knew she wasn’t paying attention to his reply. The bathroom was left in almost silence. The ventilation whirred as Dee laid back once again, the faint sounds of Remus’s music drifting to his ears.

“You don’t have to stay you know.” Remus stirred. 

“What?” Dee asked, sitting up to look at Remus.

“You don’t have to stay here. I know you only really hang around me because of Kayley.” Remus shrugged, staring up at the ceiling. “And she did tell you to not wait around.”

“Remus wh-“

“And it’s not like you want to hang around me anyway. I mean, you did say so yourself. Just leave like I know you want to.”

“Remus I swear-you’re still on that?!” Dee shot back angrily.

“Dee. I’m literally repeating everything you told me.” Remus stated calmly, though something about his voice put Dee on edge.

“I was drunk!”

“Barely. You’ve got a high tolerance and had maybe a few sips. If I’m being generous.” Remus finally peered over at him. 

Dee hated that. That look in Remus’s eyes. He just hated Remus’s eyes in general. His irises were so dark and shined like he could burst into tears at any moment. Why, of he and Roman, did Remus have to be the one with with tearful eyes? You could never tell what Remus was thinking when he looked at you. Dee heard people say eyes are the gateway to the soul. If that was true then Remus’s soul must be the most vague, unreadable thing in existence.

“Remus, I didn’t mean it li-“

“You said it literally last week.” Remus quirked an eyebrow. 

"Look. I'm-"

The ground shook. Faint screaming from outside the McDonalds as well as the monstrous cries of those aliens attacking their town replaced the growing tension in the bathroom. Both boys groaned. 

"Again? What is this stupid prince's deal?!" Remus pulled his earbuds out annoyed.

"Prince?" Dee asked.

"Nothing. Just get somewhere safe." Remus brushed it off. 

"Where are you going? Shouldn't we stick together?" Dee said, his voice a little more desperate than he would have preferred to admit.

"Dee, just keep yourself safe okay? I gotta go." Remus said hurriedly. He rushed out of the bathroom, leaving a very baffled Dee to watch the door as it swung.

"You're hiding something Remus." Dee mumbled curtly.

He walked out of the bathroom warily and searched for Remus. As he stared out the windows something flew dangerously low above the McDonald's. The employees were crouched behind the counter and began whisper-shouting for him to join them. 

"That guy in a green sweatshirt. Where'd he go?" Dee asked. 

"Hopped the counter, through the kitchen, and out the employee exit to the back alley." The oldest worker recalled. 

"Thanks." Dee followed Remus's movements out the door. 

As he walked out the door and into the alley Dee could see flashes of light. He stared as the Green, Pink, and Blue Rangers stood in the alley. 

"Anyone see Thomas?" The Pink Ranger asked. 

The voice coming from the Ranger was familiar to Dee, but muffled and it began annoying him that he couldn’t tell who’s voice that was.

"He's covering the breech on Copper's street." The Blue Ranger stated. "He'll be over here soon."

"Where the hell is my brother?" The Green Ranger stamped his foot. 

"What did I say about swearing?" The Pink Ranger crossed his arms and sighed. 

"Seriously? You're holding me to that?" The Green Ranger turned to Pink.

"What are you three doing just standing around?!?!" The Red Ranger called as he ran into the alley.

"Where were you?" The Blue Ranger asked in an annoyed tone. 

"At the meeting spot! We said behind thrift shop!" 

"We said McDonald's." Blue pointed out. 

"What!?! When did we ever-"

"Okay kiddos! Aliens first! Arguing later!" Pink shouted to get their attention. 

"Right!" The Red Ranger turned on his heels and began running. Quickly followed by the other three. 

Dee watched them go, following quietly until the end of the alley. The Blue Ranger summoned the seperated ends of his lance and knelt down. Suddenly the Pink Ranger, from several yards ahead, turned and began sprinting toward the Blue Ranger. He jumped on the ends of the lance and the Blue Ranger boosted the Pink one into the air. As the Pink Ranger went up the Blue Ranger connected his lance and held it out for the Pink Ranger to balance on. Blue used all of his force to boost Pink into the air. He landed on the roof of the nearest shop and summoned a bow to shoot the minions. The Blue Ranger ran up to the Red Ranger, who dipped his broad sword so Blue could catapult himself off the blade and spear several minions at once. The Red Ranger and Green Ranger stood back to back, hacking away at whatever minions came close. 

Dee watched in awe as they fought. Sure, they were sloppy, but it was evident they were working as a team. At least as close to a team as they could get. 

"Ooo, who're you?" An unnerving voice behind him asked. 

Dee turned quickly. The person stood a little taller than him. The only thing Dee could really see about their features, were six glowing purple eyes. 

"I-I-" Dee stumbled out of the alley not knowing how to react. 

"Doesn't really matter who you are, I guess. Those Rangers will risk anything just to save some random person. Humans are sympathetic like that." The person stepped into the light of the sun with Dee, revealing the crown and dark hair that shadowed their face. "Well, sypathetic may not be the right word. I think it's more stupiditiy than sympathy."

Suddenly the person had a hold of Dee's shirt and a cloud of darkness surrounded him.

When Dee opened his eyes, he was standing in a wide open area. It appeared as though he was in the middle of a construction zone, but no workers, or really anyone, was around. 

"Where-"

"It's some new building." The person said from a few feet away. 

"Oh." He stared at the dark person, something about them was unnatural. Wrong. Like they weren't really what Dee was seeing. “Why are you doing this?" Dee asked not really knowing where he was taking the conversation.

"I don't have a choice. It's just what I gotta do." They sighed. 

"Why?"

"Cause it's the only way to get this stupid planet under control."

"Why do you want us under your control?" Dee asked. 

"Why do you ask so many questions." The person said in a fake, shrill, voice. 

"Jeez you're fun." Dee sarcastically commented. 

"Oh shut up. The Rangers will be here any second." The person looked around. "I just want this over."

It was quiet. Dee felt beads of sweat fall down his face. He didn't know what to do. He felt like he could run, but if he tried this, well, whatever this person was, could definitely hurt him. Dee's mind couldn't focus. There was so much. It was too quiet. Like all destruction had seased. Leaving Dee to his thoughts. The sun was too bright and the person holding him captive was too calm. 

"Are you sure this is it?" A voice asked. It was distant. 

"Well, the minions were certainly trying to run this way, and seemed focused on this building." Someone replied. "I would know for sure if you had listened to my plan-"

"I get it!! I get it!!" Another voice jutted in. 

"How do we even know it's gonna be him?" The voices were getting louder. Footsteps closer. Dee's breathing became more erratic. "I mean who knows what other-"

The voices stopped. The Rangers stepped into Dee's view and were all caught off-guard. 

"I-I-uh," The Pink Ranger tried to speak. 

"Dee?" The Green Ranger croaked. 

"Is that your name?" The villain asked. 

"Um-"

"I'll take that as a yes." The villain shrugged. "How's it going Rangers?"

"What are you doing?" The Red one took a step forward.

"Me? Oh, you know, a little trade." The villain chuckled. "Hand over the morphers or the human comes with me."

"What?" The Green Ranger said darkly, taking a step with Red. 

"You heard me. Give up the morphers." The villain pulled Dee closer and summond a little ball of flame, pointing it toward Dee.

"That's not how the morphers work." The Blue Ranger stated. 

"You can't just take them off. They choose the wearer. They choose the Ranger." The Pink Ranger began.

"Don't even try to trick me! Give them up or he's not coming back!" The villain put the flame closer to Dee's face. 

"Listen to them! They know what they're talking about! You can't just hand them over!" The Green Ranger strained, tensing when the fire got closer to Dee.

"No! No, no, no!! You're just trying to trick me and I won't fall for it!!" 

"We aren't lying! I mean it! You can't give them up!" The Pink Ranger stepped closer. 

"Don't make this difficult! I will take him! I'll take more than him if I have to! Just hand them over!!" The flame was getting too close. Dee felt the fire's heat and yelped. 

"Dee! Oh god, please just stop! Don't hurt him please!" The Green Ranger walked forward.

"No!! Don't come any closer!!" 

The heat was too much. Dee yelped again and wimpered. 

"Okay, okay, okay I won't! Just let him go!" The Green Ranger begged. 

"You can't take them off, we told you. You lost!" The Red Ranger stated.

"You're lying!" The villain sneered. 

"We're not! I promise we're not!" The Green Ranger almost sobbed. "I-I-I'll prove it!"

"How?" The villain pulled the fire away and loosened his grip on Dee.

"Yeah how?" The Pink Ranger turned to Green. 

The Green Ranger pulled his hands up in front of his chest. 

"Remus no!" The Blue Rnager tried, but it was too late.

“Green Ranger, deactivate.” 

Dee closed his eyes hastily, until opening them slowly to see Remus standing there in place of the Green Ranger. His face was a mix of attempted confidence and fear. His eyes dangerously close to spilling tears. 

"Remus?" Dee squeaked. 

"I can prove it." Remus stated, his voice barely shaking. "Try for yourself! You  can't take it off." 

The villain’s grip on Dee loosened further and he let the fire fizzle out quickly, moving his hand to attempt to yank at the green band on Remus’s wrist. It didn’t work. The band only tightened around him.

“No.” The villain’s voice wavered as he whispered. “No, no, no, god no. Please.”

“We told you. They don’t come off.” Remus said, trying his hardest to keep his voice steady.

“No, no, no.” Dee felt as the prince’s hand went slack and fell. 

He looked over at the Rangers and saw the pink one gesturing for him to run behind them. Dee moved to do so, but stopped quick, turning to see if the villain was paying attention to him. When he looked at the villain’s face, his stomach dropped. 

“Why, why.” The villain croaked, voice barely above a whisper. “I-I-I can’t keep-I can’t-this doesn’t-“

“There’s no use in trying.” Remus said calmly.

“I-It’s, um, you don’t have to keep doing this.” Dee began, he didn’t know at all when he was saying. “You can stop.”

“He’s right.” The Pink Ranger began. “Virgilius, you can stop this. You don’t have to do this. You-“

“You’re being forced to do this aren’t you?” Dee began. He saw as the villain, Virgilius apparently, softened his hold on Remus. Eyes faltering. 

“I-I-“

“It’s okay.” Dee tried to muster a smile. “You don’t have to do this. You can stop.”

“No, I-“

Dee felt it before he knew anything was happening. A strong hold on his wrist, metal collapsing around him. He gasped and pulled his wrist up to his eye level in slight shock. There the yellow morpher was, collapsed around him. 

The room was silent. 

“Gosh.” The Pink Ranger borough his hands to where his mouth would be.

“Dee you’re-“ Remus started.

“I knew it! You Rangers pretend you care! You act! You lie! You lie and lie and lead me to think!!” Virgilius stepped away hastily. “All humans do is trick! And lie!”

“No! No this isn’t a trick!” The Red Ranger said quickly. 

“I promise this isn’t-I’m not-there's-“ Dee, for once in his life, didn’t have the words. There was just so much going on. He was a Ranger now. A Power Ranger. The Yellow Power Ranger.

“No I'm not falling for it! I’m not falling for your human schemes!!!” The villain summoned fire in his hands and began his attack.

“Dee!” Remus tackled him to the ground, the prince’s fire ball barely missing the two.

Dee stared up at Remus shakily still processing the events. He saw the bright pink, blue, and red flashes of light as the respective Rangers summoned their weapons and began battling.

“Thanks.” Dee said, just loud enough for Remus to hear.

“No problem.” Remus grunted, lifting himself off of Dee and sitting on his knees next to him. “Where’s emo?” 

“Not sure.” The Red Ranger answered.

Dee sat up to find himself alone with the other Rangers. No villain in sight.

“He just left?” Dee asked.

“He tends to do that.” The Blue Ranger shrugged.

The Pink Ranger walked over to Dee and crouched down, extending a hand. “Pink Ranger deactivate.”

Dee stares back in Patton’s kind eyes as the Ranger armor faded to light. 

“Welcome to the team.” He said with a slight giggle.

Dee gave Patton the smile he had reserved for him alone and took the extended hand.  

Taglist:

@tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors@maddarc@pheonix-inside-reblogs@thisismysanderssidesblog@almost-all-my-ships-are-gay@mostpeopleannoyme@the-smol-est@i-sexually-identify-as-a-mistake@nadja-chamack16@too-bi-too-function

[miracleboiz]

Making a Home Ch. 10

Kita Shinsuke had experienced a lot in life. He had been raised with his grandmother, a loving foster parent and for some time he followed in her foot steps before finding his own path. He thought his foster care license had expired before getting a call at three am with two small boys thrust into his arms. Miya Osamu and Atsumu, from broken homes but still fighting. Thirty days before his license expires. Thirty days to make a choice, keep the boys or let them be separated into different homes. Thirty days to fall in love with them.

Words: 3k

Relationships: Gen

Warnings: Mention of past child abuse, non-graphic abuse

Not from Kita, but it is mentioned. I will post any warnings before any panic attacks or vague descriptions of abuse.

Read below or on AO3

Shinsuke didn’t look up as the doorbell rang again, letting Oikawa move past him to greet whoever had come in. Instead he and Osamu had Azumane on his knees in the back corner office while Osamu did his best to braid a ribbon into the long stips. Azumane still looked a little traumatized from having a four foot tall child run up to him and yell the question at him to braid his hair.

“Are you sure… This is highly unprofessional.” Azumane said, glancing up at his boss.

Shinsuke was moving the drawings on the back wall to clear up more space and barely gave Azumane a quick flick of his eyes before he was shrugging. He didn’t say that as long as Osamu was smiling he would let him do anything, he didn’t think it needed saying aloud.

“My store, my rules. And I think you’re meeting the dress code just fine.” Shinsuke hummed, trying not to laugh at Azumane’s defeated sigh.

“We have a dress code?” Sugawara’s voice made Azumane whine a little louder as the silver haired man crouched down to offer Osamu a new clip to slide into the braided ribbons before moving to the thread wall. Azumane gave him a look of despair as the butterfly was quickly added to his hair, Shinsuke only felt a little guilty that it was probably starting to get unnaturally heavy. Not nearly enough to stop Osamu though

“Yes, it specifically states not to wear anything Oikawa considers to be good.” Shinsuke turned, ignoring the laughter that broke from Sugawara as the pounding of feet reached him. Seconds later Atsumu burst through the gateway.

“ ‘Samu! I’m getting married.” The words made Shinsuke drop the drawings immediately as he scrambled to understand what was going on. He twisted to stare open mouthed at Atsumu, completely speechless as the child rushed at his brother and skittered to a stop in front of him.

“Why?” Osamu looked as confused and terrified as Shinsuke himself felt. Atsumu either didn’t notice or didn’t care because he just held up a box with a bright oversized grin.

“ ‘Cuz if I marry him then I get all the cookies always!” Atsumu chirped, eyes wide with wonder and delight. Shinsuke slowly turned his head to blink at Azumane and Sugawara, both of them were already looking to him for answers.

“Akagi…” Shinsuke called, letting his eyes fall shut as he heard Akagi’s squeaky answer from outside of the back office. He moved around the boys, pausing only enough to brush Atsumu’s hair down from the wind, and looked to find Akagi attempting to hide behind a rack.

“I left you alone with him for…” He glanced at the clock and then back over. “An hour and a half. And now he’s getting married?”

Akagi looked momentarily ashamed before shrugging and holding up a box of baked goods. He smiled pleasantly over the box, attempting to flutter his lashes sweetly but it did nothing against Shinsuke’s annoyed glare.

“It’s not my fault.” Akagi whined, pitching his voice up and making a few customers glance over. He quieted when Shinsuke’s eyes narrowed but his pout only grew stronger as he huffed.

“I didn’t tell Shinji-kun to give him an extra muffin. He just did it and said he liked Atsumu’s shirt, then Atsumu was declaring their engagement to everyone. I thought I was going to have to fight Takahiro-kun for his son’s honor.”

Shinsuke watched him before sighing and glancing back at the twins. They had joined Azumane on the ground and were currently sharing pieces of muffin with him while Sugawara finished grabbing the fabric he’d actually come in for.

“I think Asahi’s already planning the wedding outfits,” Sugawara said breezily as he moved past and back to his customer.

“I’m not making enough money to deal with all of you at the same time.” Shinsuke said softly, wondering if this was going to be his life. 

Running after Akagi to keep him from accidentally traumatizing Shinsuke’s kids, or worse teaching them things to traumatize all of the adults in their life. Meanwhile, Sugawara had found Oikawa and was currently harassing him with a perfectly innocent smile while he tailored a customer’s pant leg. Azumane had grabbed his tablet and was sketching something out while Atsumu was being taught by his brother how to continue the endless braids on Azumane’s head.

In all honesty, a life like this… was a good one. The feeling was sweet, winding in Shinsuke’s stomach as he watched the scene and he wondered if that was why his grandmother had never given up on foster care. Children weren’t necessary for his life to be happy, he was happy before they had arrived and if they left he would still find his life fulfilling and what he wanted. Yet, they brought something new, something light that Shinsuke was hesitant to give up. He could nurture them, protect them, help them grow and the option was more enticing by the minute.

“Oh shit you’re smiling… I’m going to die… Goodbye my sweet ‘Mimi, goodbye my muscular boo Aran, farewell my darling nephews- Shinsuke where are you going? You know my dramatic monologue needs an audience. Don’t make me download TikTok to get attention, you know I’ll do it.” Akagi called softly as Shinsuke took the box of treats before turning and walking away, a fondly exasperated smile playing on his lips. Shinsuke raised a hand to dismiss his remarks, ignoring the whine that rose up.

“Go help one of the customers, I have kids to watch.” Shinsuke said, slipping into the office to watch Atsumu finish his first braid. It was terrible and unbalanced and Shinsuke was proud of him.

“Hey, did you want to meet the others and bring them their muffins?” Shinsuke asked the two of them, holding up Akagi’s box in explanation. Both of them lit up, smiling brightly as they nodded and reached their hands up eagerly for Shinsuke to take them.

The day passed rather quickly, especially after the length of the day before, and as seven o’clock hit Shinsuke was flipping off the last light in the shop. Azumane and Sugawara had left only a few minutes before and Akaashi had escaped a few hours ago. Oikawa was still on the phone with someone but he gave Shinsuke a thumbs up and mimed locking the door as he passed.

Atsumu had already snuck back into the house and was curled up on the couch with Kitty as he played through ‘Spyro’. Osamu on the other hand, had decided he was in charge of Akagi for the day and was enjoying bossing him around.

Still, Shinsuke hadn’t expected to walk into the office between the two buildings to see Akagi on the floor and Osamu in front of him. Osamu was doing his absolute best to explain how to draw a flower for a card and Akagi was either intentionally harassing him or genuinely had no idea what he was doing. Shinsuke watched from the doorway for a moment before deciding it was a little bit of both.

More than a few doodles decorated the floor, markers and crayons laying beside both of their knees while they leaned over Akagi’s current project. Each one was decorated with rather… adorable characters for ‘cheer up’ and ‘you’re doing great’. Shinsuke honestly had no idea what it was for or why Osamu was making Akagi make them but as long as they were having fun he wasn’t going to say anything.

“No, no, you have to make petals- Shinsuke-san!” Osamu chirped as he felt eyes on his back and turned to see him. He grinned, a bright and free smile, and pointed at Akagi who was still just drawing lines on his paper.

“We’re making cards for Azumane! So when he gets scared he can look at these and know it’s okay!” Osamu explained and Shinsuke’s heart melted. He moved over, gently mussing the hair and trying not to give in to the urge to kiss his head.

“That’s great, Osamu. Will you be helping me with dinner tonight as well?” He asked, heart swelling at the way Osamu’s eyes lit up and the child twisted to grab ahold of his hand.

“Can I?”

“Of course. But you need to clean up all of this before we can. So why don’t you help Akagi clean up and then we can get started?” Shinsuke offered and Osamu nodded. He turned to Akagi, hands on his hips.

“C’mon Oji-san! Let’s get this taken care of! Then I can show you how to cook so you’re not hungry anymore.”

Shinsuke laughed softly, making his way inside as Akagi insisted he knew how to cook. Between himself and Osamu, Akagi might actually leave the country with basic knowledge to feed himself instead of eating out constantly.

Shinsuke glanced over at the couch as he walked in, noting Atsumu’s curled-up position. As attached to his brother as he was, Atsumu hadn’t really branched out much and didn’t seem to connect with people as well as his brother. Even with his comment about marriage (though Shinsuke still thought it was rather cute he had forgotten that money was a thing that he could use to buy pastries and instead skipped straight to marriage) he hadn’t brought up Shinji-kun or the bakery again all day.

“Do you mind if I sit with you?” Shinsuke asked softly, waiting for Atsumu’s nervous glance and jerky head nod. “Thank you, Atsumu… Can I check on your cheek?”

This time Atsumu fully froze, pressing the pause button on the game. His eyes darted to Shinsuke before he slowly nodded his head, anxiety clear in his gaze. Despite seeming to finally relax and branch out, Atsumu wasn’t actually asking for what he wanted. Instead he was letting his brother lead them around and following along happily with whatever adult offered him something.

Shinsuke moved closer until he could gently tilt up the child’s head, looking over the dark purple skin carefully. Atsumu’s eye didn’t seem affected by it and it was healing well for only being the second day. Though Shinsuke could see that it was slightly swollen, the skin around it pink and irritated like someone had been prodding it.

“Does it hurt much?” Shinsuke asked as he pulled his hand back with a quiet thank you.

“I’ve had worse.” Atsumu said and Shinsuke noticed he didn’t answer the question. Atsumu turned his head away as Shinsuke tried to look closer, a frown on his own lips.

“Atsumu, were you touching it?” He kept his voice light and gentle so Atsumu wouldn’t think he was in trouble. Regardless the child flinched subtly, fingers grasping the controller tighter.

“The… the people in the shop… kept staring…” Atsumu confessed after a few heartbeats, shaking slightly. “I wanted to make them go away but… It just… made it worse…”

Shinsuke stared at him for a moment, feeling guilty for not noticing at all. Of course Atsumu would have been self conscious about his face especially with the memory of how it happened so fresh in his memory. 

“Why didn't you say anything?” Shinsuke regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Of course Atsumu hadn’t said anything. He didn’t know he could trust anyone yet, it was only the second day there was no way he would have warmed up so quickly with his past.

Atsumu froze, shaking slightly and Shinsuke realized he was trying to hold his breath before he started crying. His mind blanked for a second before he rapidly told himself to calm down and instead focused on Atsumu.

“I’m sorry Atsumu. It’s alright if you don’t want to tell me things, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise…” Shinsuke started but it was clear that it wasn’t helping when Atsumu shook again with a ragged breath. “Atsumu…”

Shinsuke licked his lips, trying to think of how to calm him down before Osamu and Akagi finished. He didn’t want Atsumu shutting himself off to everyone to keep his brother happy and he definitely didn’t want Osamu to pick up on his brother’s panic and leave him with two anxious kids to calm down.

“Atsumu,” he started again letting his voice soften until it was near a whisper, “it’s alright. I’m sorry they were staring at you, next time you can come back inside if you want. I’m sorry I didn’t notice, I should have been there to help you. I’m very sorry I didn’t protect you.”

Atsumu’s gaze shot to him, once, twice, three times. The tiniest tears were forming at the edge of his eyes at his panic before confusion started to build instead. His mouth moved without words, and his eyes danced around the room. His fingers tapped at the controller for a moment before he finally seemed to be able to come back to himself.

“What…” His voice was a whisper and Shinsuke regretted not watching his words better. “Why… Why are you sorry?”

“Atsumu, it scared you right? Made you upset that they stared?” Shinsuke waited for the inevitable nod before continuing. “I should have stopped that but I didn’t realize it was happening. It’s my fault for not protecting you… Atsumu… A parent is supposed to protect you, I should have let you know you were allowed to leave earlier or let you know you could have stayed right next to me. And for that I’m sorry. The bruises on your face won’t go away by poking at them, they’ll just hurt worse and now it’s because I failed you. I’m sorry, Atsumu. I hope you can forgive me.”

Atsumu wasn’t able to speak, he just stared at Shinsuke. Choked noises came from his throat but no words escaped as he looked on with confusion and anxiety. The child swallowed, looking away a second later before rapidly nodding his head.

The only other time any adult had ever apologized had been when Kenma-kun said sorry for his game music being loud back at the police station. No adult had ever apologized to Atsumu for messing up and certainly none of his foster parents had ever bothered to ask him to forgive them.

Atsumu had no idea what to do with the knowledge or how to act. Did he say yes? Did he hug Shinsuke? Did he say sorry back? Cry? Smile?

He put the controller down slowly beside him, biting his lip as he turned to look more fully at Shinsuke. His foster parent actually looked remorseful, like he did really feel bad for not noticing Atsumu’s problem. Atsumu wasn’t really sure how to tell him that he was good at hiding it, and he had a feeling that would just make Shinsuke sad again. After all… Parents were supposed to love their kids right? Being hurt would make a parent sad and Shinsuke had said...

“You… Said...parent…” Atsumu said softly, flinching internally as Shinsuke blinked at him. He meant foster parent, of course he did. Atsumu shook his head, shoving away the hope and the heartache that was taking its place.

“It’s okay…” Atsumu said quickly as Shinsuke opened his mouth to say something. “Really… it’s okay. I… I… I’ll leave, next time.”

Shinsuke hesitated, wanting to push further but this wasn’t a teenager. This was a scared six year old who didn’t have the tools or the emotional maturity to talk through all of this in one sitting. They’d have to work at it. Together.

“Only if you want to.” Shinsuke murmured, tilting his head to look at the bruises again. “I’ll go get an ice pack for the swelling alright?”

Atsumu nodded, letting his gaze fall to the couch when Shinsuke left. He should have known better than to think Shinsuke actually thought of himself as their parent. He must have meant whichever parents decided to adopt them, if any did.

Yet….

Shinsuke-san was kind, was it bad of Atsumu to wish Shinsuke was his parent? That Shinsuke would decide to keep them after all instead of passing them off like a baton? Was Atsumu a bad person for not wanting Shinsuke to be disappointed in him for being weak? Was he betraying his future parents by wanting Shinsuke to stay with him and Osamu?

He jumped as he felt Shinsuke sitting down again, looking up to see him offering an ice pack in one hand and… The fish crackers that Atsumu had asked for at the store.

Shinsuke’s blank face softened and Atsumu was starting to realize that Shinsuke wasn’t blank so much as… quiet. You had to look further than just his frown to know what he was thinking.

“You didn’t eat much at lunch since you ate so many muffins, so I thought you might like them.” Shinsuke explained as he reached forward and placed the ice pack gently over Atsumu’s bruise. Atsumu shook slightly, the words escaping him again but Shinsuke didn’t seem to mind as he ruffled his hair.

“Are you okay? You just have to nod or shake your head, okay?” Shinsuke said, the corners of his lips lifting as Atsumu nodded his head and moved to hold the pack on his face. Shinsuke pushed off the couch after opening the box, turning back towards the shop.

“I’m going to go see what’s taking Osamu and Akagi so long okay?” He explained, moving a few steps towards the door. He glanced back when a soft noise came from Atsumu, taking in the blinking eyes that lingered on the spot beside him.

Atsumu didn’t want to be alone again. Part of him hated it, he’d only had Osamu for years. Why was it different now? Part of him wanted to call Shinsuke back, ask if he was allowed a hug… Ask if he could stay a little while longer so Atsumu could pretend Shinsuke cared about him more than the money, more than because a friend asked. So Atsumu could pretend a little longer he was wanted.

“Hey Atsumu?” Shinsuke called, waiting until he glanced up to make sure he heard. “After dinner, would you be okay with showing me how to play that minecraft game?”

Atsumu’s eyes lit up immediately and he nodded, the barest hint of a grin growing on his face. Shinsuke couldn’t help but smile back, finally turning to look for his wayward sons that probably were covering his walls in paint. 

They had some more work to do. A lot more work really, but Atsumu was smiling and Osamu’s laughter was echoing from the office. Shinsuke couldn’t help but think that this was a very good life.

[bruhchantite]

Apprentice questions

I stole this from @pumpkunbread !!

Maybe some basic information first?

1. Where is their favorite place to hang out in Vesuvia? Why?

The shop, because they love to see the different kind of people to come through and look at their things or have a chat. Also the marketplace, mostly because of the Baker but also some other people with their shops and stands who treat them nicely.

2. How does your apprentice feel when they are called a witch?

They don’t specifically like it, mostly looking a little annoyed by it, but it really depends on the way the word itself is said.

3. Do they have a familiar? Why did you choose that animal? How did they meet?

Yes, they have a Crocodile Skink named Kankangre, Kan for short.  They got her on a walk through a far off city’s market place, passing through a stand that sold all kinds of animals for pet keeping or eating. They caught her just as she escaped a customers hands, hiding her out of instinct before anyone saw. Nien felt a connection the moment they touched.

4. Are there any of Nadia’s sisters your apprentice would like to hang out with?

Most likely Nazali and/or Natiqa.

5. What is their opinion of each of the courtiers?

Very wary of all of them, but they trust Vulgora the most, funnily enough. (”At least they’re honest about loving violence”)

6. What did they do while at the clinic?

Nien helped where they could, specializing in numbing pain and helping to a calm undisturbed sleep, which they have gotten quite good at.  They are not specifically open with emotional support but if someone wanted to know the truth, they would tell them. Some appreciated it, some didn’t, so Nien learned to differentiate between the people who actually wanted to hear it and those who just thought they did.

7. What are their tasks around the shop? What can they make?

They are very good with different tinctures, pain killers, sleep medication but also calming and soothing food. The mostly medical things come, in fact, from their time at the clinic. Even after being revived they seem to have the muscle memory to make these potions and herb packs.

8. Describe their daily routine.

They wake up early in the morning, mostly well rested since they go to bed early, too. They get ready for the day with some washing up, getting dressed and then heading out to the market, often when it’s still dawning. They get bread from the baker, take it back to the shop and have breakfast with Asra if he’s around. After, they open up shop until taking a break mid day, to get some food and rest while the day is the hottest, before returning to the shop.

In the evening they often wash up any dirty utensils and dishes, before heading out to go for a few drinks or just to spend time with their friends (with Fae, @wir-sind-jaeger ‘s Apprentice, for example). Occasionally they stay in and chat with Asra, play games and just enjoy each others company.

9. What Major Arcana would they be closest to? Is their a Minor Arcana card that suits them more?

Likely The Hermit

10. Describe their magical abilities. What are they best at? Worst?

Easing pain and, (very special Snowflake here, I know but let me have fun) every now and then they have visions in the form of feelings and presentiment of events to happen. They haven’t completely figured out what triggers it or how they can best pin point what exactly will happen, but they have been right not too rarely, earning them the title “The Oracle” in some parts.

They’re not very good at tracking spells and, sadly, protection spells above the easier levels of magic. Some simple disguises work, but anyone with a little knowledge of magic could easily look through those if they wanted to.

11. How do they get along with all the animals in the game? (Faust, Malak, Chandra, Pepi, Inanna, Camio, Melchior and Mercedes)

Mostly fine.  Animals are a lot easier to handle than humans, since they don’t concern themselves with lies or half truths. Not that Nien is bad with people. Animals are just easier to get along with when you know what they want or how their minds work.

12. Did they have a certain opinion about the palace and court before the events of the game? Did it change?

They did not like the way the count handled the city or the people in it.  Generally, Nien tends to be distrustful and suspicious of any wealthy and royal folk. They find that they often can’t and do not want to understand the struggles and problems of the common people.

13. How do they feel about traveling in the realms?

They are very excited and honestly, they will explore anything they can find out about it as soon as they have a little breathing time.

14. Where is their least favorite place in Vesuvia? Why?

The Castle always gave them a constant feeling of dread and uneasiness. In Lucio’s times as well as after.

15. How did your apprentice feel about Asra leaving all the time? Taking care of them?

They certainly get annoyed, especially with all his secrecy. They don’t like spending weeks alone in the shop. A day or two are fine, but after being used to constant contact it feels weird for longer.

Asra never really took care of them after they recovered from… uh... death and relearned to speak and do things on their own. Sure, he taught Nien the magical basics again, helped them discover lost things about themselves, but they generally are a really independent character. A lot of the times it ended up being the other way around, when they noticed Asra was having trouble with memories (we all know which) keeping him from sleep or upsetting him.

They appreciate everything he has done for them greatly.

16. Name one thing your apprentice wants to see happen, or say to someone.

Before their death they wished Asra and them could have spoken one more time, but generally they didn’t regret a lot about their life.

Now they just really want to tell half the royal court that they can’t stand their faces.

17. What is the outcome you see happening for your apprentice and their significant other?

I haven’t thought about this enough, yet but I am a big fan of the Asrian/Apprentice OT3. Hah.

18. What would drive your apprentice so far as to strike a bargain?

They are very cautious with dabbling in that kind of magic, but probably what most others would: Bringing back loved ones, fixing major mistakes with horrible consequences, etc.

19. At this point in the game, do they care more about recovering the rest of their memories or living as they are now?

They want both. Nien can’t stand to not know something this vital, they are very curious and hungry for knowledge.

20. Would they be up for another Masquerade despite all that has happened? New outfit theme?

No. No way. They prefer drinking in pubs and making fun of people there.

21. What is their first reaction seeing their LI cry?

Irritation and confusion. They don’t always know what to say in situations like this but they will comfort them, after some initial shock.

22. Are they scared of what they have learned? Of the powers they have developed?

No, they are rather happy about how much they figured out, even if not all of it is positive.

23. Do they like snow? Have they seen it before?

They have. Before their death, before they got the shop, they lived in a colder part of the world. Snow reminds them of home and they feel it brings some well liked nostalgia with it.

24. A magic lamp is found in the shop, and a genie inside gives them three wishes. What are they?

They will think very, very long and thoroughly about their wishes and will formulate them over and over before actually wishing for things, if at all. Genies are dangerous and the consequences of your wishes can be awful. 

They wouldn’t wish for things immediately, more when there are no other ways out of a situation without its help or something they vitally need.

On top of this they would expect that, whoever left the lamp in the shop wanted to harm either them or Asra more than do them any favors.

25. Are they still scared of the Lazeret?

No, they never were. When they entered the Lazaret they had already accepted that they were going to die. It was more of a comfort to know their suffering was finally coming to an end.

26. Do they have nightmares? Will it continue/develop after recent events?

They get nightmares when they start remembering. Dying takes its toll on everyone and they are secretly horrified over the fact of it even being possible to bring people back from it.

27. What is the best thing their significant other could do to cheer them up?

Physical affection, lots of attention and good food are all Nien actually lives for.  Also a good wine or other alcoholic beverages.

28. Describe what their magical realm gateway would be like?

A great valley surrounded by enormous mountains.  On one side is a big, clear lake you can see the bottom of if you step close. It seems to have big colorful fish, scales reflecting the sun and colors of the valley and the water plants are a dark, rich blue-green dancing softly to the waves. Around the lake are full, thick meadows full of exotic plants and grass. The air is clear, fresh and cold and it seems to always be dawn.  A forest is on the other side, almost only pine trees with only few softer trees. But don’t step to close to those, they can be dangerous and never lead anywhere good.

On the tips of the mountains there is snow. You might reach it if you take one of the many rocky paths.

[shitthehousessay]

 Alright, it took a day (albeit I haven't really had much of a chance to work on it), but it's finally done. Here's my responses to the 102 questions^^. I probably put too much personal info on this site lol.

I’m doing this on my laptop because of how long it is, but answers are under the cut. Hope you enjoy random tidbits about me!

--Zero (the [other] Ravenclaw)

1. What is their full name?

While I usually use and prefer Zero Ace as an online name, my irl name is Solomon.

2. Zodiac sign

Pisces

3. In detail describe how they look

I'm 5'10" with a build like Shaggy Rodgers. I'm about,,,, less than 120lbs (that's a guess really, it's probably way less or slightly more.). You ever see a cloud? Yeah, imagine one as black wavy/curly hair with red tips (natural, not dyed) that goes to about the bottom of my neck. Brown eyes, half philipino (no, I don't know any of the language), decent moustache, and I've been told by various people that they thought I was a stoner when they first met me.

4. How old are they?

I am 16

5. What clothes to they like to wear?

I don't really have any kind of set style either. I usually just go with whatever's comfy for me.

6. What’s their favorite piece of clothing?

I've got this really soft brown fake leather jacket that my dad got me about two or three years ago that I used to wear consistently, but I'm not sure if I have a 'favorite'.

7. Any piercings?

Nope

8. Do they have any other jewelry they wear?

I wear a Timex Ironman analogue watch that I got at Walmart a few years ago ('twas on sale) and a ring with a part that spins in the middle that I bought in like sixth grade at the Newseum in DC.

9. Any tattoos?

Nah

10. How old are they?

See above

11. What do they smell like?

Idk, disappointment probably

12. What are their four trinkets?

(I'm gonna do stuff on my school backpack for this one) -- I've got a Ministry of Magic keychain, a Pokeball keychain, a Spiderman keychain, and a Ravenclaw house emblem pin.

13. GOVERNMENT MANDATED FERSONA

Roomba with a knife taped to it

14. What kind of magic are they good at?

Accidental Procrastination, aka Time Travel

15. What kind of magic are they bad at?

Luck

16. Of the four, six or seven magical elements which are they most connected to? Four: fire,air water earth. six: fire,air,water, wood,earth, metal. Seven:fire, air, water, wood, earth, metal, aither.

Not sure if this is asking about choosing a single element or a group, so I'm gonna go with water.

17. What does their gateway look like prior to their memory loss? What does it look like afterwards?

(I'm not sure what this is asking)

18. Do they have a familiar? If they do. What type of animal is it? What is it’s name? Is it still around after they lost their memory?

I have an old yellow cat named Iris and he's pretty cool. We share birthdays and he's one year older than me.

19. Have they ever cursed someone?

I have tried and I will continue to try.

20. How do they handle those headaches/migraines?

I sometimes put headphones in and listen to ambience after taking some medicine, but on some of my bad days I just wait for them to pass, even when it takes a few hours.

21. What tarot card do they connect the most with?

I'm gonna be honest: I know next to nothing about tarot cards.

22. Where were they born?

Tennessee

23. What is their favorite color?

Like a light blue or teal. Specifically though? #41A9B8

24. What is their least favorite color?

This is a tough one. I'm gonna go with like a rusty brown

25. Are they right handed, left handed or ambidextrous?

Right handed

26. What were they like as a child?

This would take a while, but I was a little shit, imo. (Also, kinda hard for me to remember specifically rn)

27. What were their parents like?

My dad's okay, he's not the best but he's doing great. My mom? Well, let's just say my opinion of her has always been pretty decent of her up until around when 2018 started.

28. Do they have any siblings? If the answer is yes how many?

Yes, I have three half brothers, two on my mom's side (who I wish would die) and one on my dad's side.

29. Do they have any other relatives they are close with?

I've got a lot of aunts (dad's side) that I consider myself close with, along with a few cousins. There's also my Grandma and Grandpa (dad's side) that I love a lot. I also have a nephew who's about I wanna say 5 or 6 years old who's a blast to hang out with.

30. What are they afraid of?

Spiders kinda scare me. And a few things associated with low self-esteem that I don't want to mention here.

31. What do they identify as?

I am a Demi-Pansexual dude

32. Do they have any allergies?

None that I know of

33. Do they have any other medical problems?

I can't think of any specifics right now

34. What about mental health issues?

Depression and Anxiety both are self-diagnosed though. I'm waiting until after highschool, or until the age where I can legally keep things like those to myself without having to tell my parents, before I go to get them diagnosed

35. What’s that personal hygiene regimen like?

Showers at least once a day, twice if possible. Remember to try to brush your teeth, too.

36. Favorite rock or gemstone?

Amythest because it's my birthstone

37. Favorite tree?

Redwoods are pretty cool

38. Favorite type of weather?

Not too hot, not too cold and sunny and cloudless or overcast and rainy, depending on mood

39. Least favorite type of weather?

The type of cloudless hot day that just saps your energy away like nothing else

40. What is their favorite season? (remember winter is summer and spring is fall)

Winter

41. How many languages could they speak before the memory loss? How many do they currently speak?

English and very broken French

42. Do they sing or play any instruments?

I sing from time to time (albeit not very good) and I have an ocarina that I really want to take time and learn

43. What do they tend to joke about?

Self-deprecation is my go-to, then there's vine humor and some standup, then just nonsense humor (See: bORGER)

44. After a stressful day how do they relax?

Nap a bit, then some music and/or video games

45. Guilty pleasures?

Idk, I can't think of any. Sonic ‘06, maybe is the closest thing that I have to one.

46. idiosyncrasies?

I guess you could list a lot of the usual ADHD stimming methods. I also adjust my glasses from the side sometimes whenever I’m nervous/anxious or when I want to appear confident. Adjusting my watch on my wrist is also something that I do a lot. I know I have a lot more, but :/

47. How do they act when they first meet someone new? How quickly do they warm up to them?

I can be kinda timid and quiet. I usually try to listen in on conversations involving that person/people to try to find somethings that I can remember and use for initiating conversations, especially if it’s with stuff that I know a bit about. It usually takes two or three semi-long times amd well interactions spent with me for me to start being comfortable around other people. I don't warm up too quickly, unless if you can get through my barriers pretty well

48. In what order would they prioritize Love, fame, money, power, and knowledge?

Love, knowledge, money, power, fame

49. List four or more things they love to do

Draw, read, talk with internet friends, play video games, browse the internet

50. List four or more things they hate to do

doing boring and uninteresting school work, being an unnecessary nuisance, hearing about family drama, engaging in school drama

51. List five or more things they have said that sum up who they are

"I'm laughing my ass off rn because the program the state is using for EOC testing was apparently hacked so we aren't testing today, but when my class heard it almost everyone started looking at me and saying I did it." [...] "Meanwhile: I nearly tripped over my backpack"

"Oh good, we get to make memes of stuff in the Louvre for extra credit. Looks like my grade is about to rise drastically."

"I’m gonna go provoke this cult so I can get asks in my inbox"

“I stole this haircut from a lion”

"I have many problems"

52. How do they react to (both verbal and physical) conflict?

I'm a pacifist so I try to stay out of situations like that (They bring up too many negative memories and emotions for me)

53. What kind of bad habits to they have?

I have a lot of trouble with a perfectionist mentality. It gets me into a lot of sticky situations

54. What kind of character faults do they have?

What even is self-esteem/ self-worth/ self-love????? To me, my needs come last. Self-doubt out the wazoooooo. Tons of unresolved shit. That's barely even scratching the surface.

55. What’s their best trait in their opinion?

I try to have a lot of empathy for people and I want to make people happy, even if I’m not happy.

56. What do they think of their appearance?

I like mine, at least a bit.

57. How do they interact with people in a position of authority?

Honestly, it just depends on the person. If the person in question is a dick, you better believe I’m not going to react well to their face.

58. Who did they look upto as a kid?

Mostly like video game characters from games that I played.

59. How do they interact with kids?

I like kids pretty well.

60. Do they want kids of their own someday?

I don't know. I don't think I'm at a point in my life where I can answer that right now.

61. Are they religious? If so what god/goddess or gods/goddesses do they worship?

I'm agnostic

62. What do they think the meaning of life is?

Idk... Maybe... Self-discovery, in a way.

63. What would they want their last words to be?

There are three roads. Maybe omething meaningful, like "Thank you," maybe something vague and prophetic like, "You won't have to wait much longer," or maybe, just maybe, something like, "I'll be back bitches!!!"

64. What do they want to do before they die?

I want to make at least one game and book that people enjoy and that I will be satisfied with

65. What/how do they want to be remembered for after they die?

I would like to be remembered fondly by people who knew me.

66. How do they express affection?

I'm usually very asocial, so if I make an active effort to maintain communication with someone, then they usually mean something to me. I also send memes and stuff. Also, I try to open up a little more around people that I trust

67. What do they normally eat for breakfast?

It usually just depends on how much time I have in the morning. Can range from poptarts to a slice of toast between two pieces of bread to leftover pizza

68. Do they like spicy food?

Yeah

69. Favorite fruit and or vegetable?

Favorite fruit is probably mandarin oranges and my favorite vegetable is probably carrots

70. Do they like sweets?

On occasion

71. Do they drink alcohol? If they do, what do they act like when their drunk?

Nope, but probably like a damn fool

72. How do they take their tea/coffee?

I like sweet ice tea or maybe some herbal tea with a small bit of sugar or honey. As for coffee, I don't usually drink it, but I can drink it pure black or french vanilla

73. What food would they refuse to eat?

Most things that have a weird texture and/or smell

74. Is there anything they eat that most people would find unappealing?

You ever drink just straight sauces? Like A1 steak sauce or barbecue sauce? Yeah....

75. When going on the road what food could they not live without?

I need me some original ritz

76. What meal gives them a sense of nostalgia?

Not sure about nostalgia, but my school sells fresh-made chocolate chip cookies during lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and I get them a lot when I'm having bad days

77. What do they do when no one’s around?

I sometimes sing and maybe hop around, but I usually just do stuff that I do when people are around (like browse tumblr)

78. How would they react if a prized possession got stolen?

Cry, feel numb, or go ballistic. There is no in-between.

79. What’s the first thing they would buy if they won the lottery?

A better computer, that's for sure

80. What would their favorite modern invention be?

The Nintendo Switch!!

81. In a new unfamiliar place what do they do?

Observe the surroundings from the sidelines before doing anything

82. Someone just threatened them what do they do?

It depends on the situation, but I either brush it off or I take precautionary measures (like a protective order if my life is being threatened)

83. A rather well rich looking woman just dropped her purse and didn’t notice. What do they do?

I might try to give it back.... after I check her wallet and get some cash as an award...

84. What’s the worst thing someone has said to them?

The one that sticks out the most is probably the time when one of my older half-brothers was yelling at me and said that if I ever wonder why people say that I act like a school shooter it's because I act like one most of the time (all this stemmed because I was frustrated over a book recommendation not posting and instead of letting me silently cool down, my mom and brother kept on talking crap about me and I decided to say "Just shut up for a few minutes").

Oh, but there’s also the time when I went with my dad to the divorce case’s hearing to testify against my mom and my brothers and the judge looked at me and said “You’re 16, right? In two  years, you’ll be 18. When I was 18 I was heading to war. So, if you’re gonna cry, go do it somewhere else because I don’t want anyone coming up here and being a crybaby in my courtroom.” That fucking stunned me when he said it.

 85. What is the strangest thing they’ve ever come across?

"can i hear your belly" has to be the weirdest and most unsettling direct message that I have ever gotten from someone who isn't a bot and it haunts me to this day

86. Someone just stole food from them what do they do?

I don't usually eat a lot, so if someone takes food from me I don't really care.

87. They meet a man at a crossroads. The man says they can have everything they’ve ever wanted. What happens next?

I would check to see if there was anything I want to make sure that my family and friends and people who are close to me that haven’t experienced mental illnesses like depression or anxiety to never develop any mental illnesses as long as they live, before anything.

88. As a child what would they say they wanted to be as an adult? ie. When I grow up I’m going to _______

My dream has always been and continues to be to become a successful video game developer and/or producer. I want to help create worlds to escape to when the real world becomes a bit too overbearing.

89. What’s their D&D alignment?

I consider myself a neutral good

90. What is the stupidest thing they’ve ever done?

Oof, that's a long list. Probably entering the crawlspace under my Grandma's house too fast and getting a part of my lower back pretty bad. Boy, did it leave a pretty big scar.

91. Have they ever got in trouble with the law or been arrested?

Nope

92. Do they know how to win a fight?

I like to think so. I'm not going to not play dirty if I feel like I'm in danger. Also try to use the environment to your advantage if possible.

93. Are they good at hand to hand combat?

I dunno. I doubt it, but I haven't really tried.

94. Have they ever stolen something?

I have, but really only minor things and only from people that I hate

95. Have they ever killed someone?

Not yet, :p

96. What/who do they find disgusting?

I can't look at stuff or pictures like decaying stuff (like dead stuff) without gagging

97. What upsets them the most?

Conflict mostly. The thought that I'm bothering people also does it. And I feel odd, to say the least about physical contact.

98. What anime character would they be?

I feel like maybe Fafnir (Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid) or either Shinra or Mikado (Durarara!) could fit me.

99. What disney character would they be?

I didn't really know about this one, so I asked a few of my friends and one of them [the one who actually answered my question with an actual Disney character] said that I remind them of Sora from Kingdom Hearts, on the grounds that I've "got a good heart" and I'm "always confused". It was the nicest thing I've heard all week^^

100. What monster would they be?

Knife-wielding tentacle

101. What mythological figure would they be?

Tbh, I don't know enough mythology off the top of my head to answer this question.

102. List three songs that you associate with them.

Hmm.... this one is very tough for me because there are different songs that define different points in my life... As for songs that kinda aren’t bound by specific points in my life, even if I haven’t known these songs all my life, I'm thinking that these could fit the best here:

ECHO (feat. GUMI) by Crusher-P

Simple Life by Fox Stevenson

Canonball (Mythos Remix) from Megaman Zero 3

Anyway, I hope you now know a little more about me now. Do what you will with the information, I guess  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . It’s really late for me and I’m really tired so I may go ahead and get some sleep for tonight. Have a good one everyone^^ !

[emmapearsonjournal]

self-evaluation.

Ideas and Intentions

I have largely continued my thinking and ideas from my previous project in late 2020. In my proposal, I stated that my initial idea going into this body of work was to abstract and rebuild the human form as a method of visceral introspection. All too often we see the inner body as grotesque, so much so that we have become detached from it; we do not see it as ‘us’. Initially, I was enamoured with the mouth and female genitalia, as we see these as a ‘grey area’; we regard it as neither in the inner or outer body, simply a gateway or point of transition.

Through extensively researching Julia Kristeva’s abject Powers of Horror, my sculptures progressed into resembling creatures, which eventually developed into creating a series of them, Body Clips. These creatures are tangible and visceral, we feel connected to them as another ‘living being’ as they spatially jut out towards you, therefore bringing an uncanny animation to the surreal.

In this project, I exhibited in four exhibitions: Street View I, our Arts Festival, Woodlane Windows and a pop-up exhibition at Portland Gardens. All these exhibitions were vital for me to gain experience in curation, however my main goal now is to exhibit at an established gallery, which would garner a wider reach of people beyond the university.

One of my main goals for next project is to hone in on my ideas. I felt that my attention was spread very thinly this term due to a greater focus on exhibiting and the Arts Festival, meaning that there wasn’t a great attention to ideas and intentions within my work. This will come about through a greater focus on my work, and wider reading material.

Forms and Materials

I started using metal in my pieces in late 2020, and this love for the medium carried on into 2021. Unfortunately, the workshops closed in January, which made using metal (particularly welding) in my pieces very difficult. This made me transition into using line through sketching and drawing to manifest my ideas.

However, this quickly changed as the workshops re-opened. My work since then has largely been sculptural as it concentrates around the human body. The 3-dimensional nature of my work allows the viewer to spatially interact with my pieces as a form of involuntary bodily reflection.

I have recently transitioned to using TIG welding as opposed to MIG in the metal workshop. TIG welding allows you to melt metal with an electrical flame, and potentially texturise your piece. We can see in Spider, that the melted welding techniques produce ‘rotting’ visuals. To add to this, the high temperature of the TIG welder produces warm discolouration, which turn the hue of the once cold metal into something more bodily.

I also chose to work with metal because although it appears inorganic and unnatural at the surface, metal originates from ores which are innately biological. I thought that using an organic material (both literally and visually) was important when representing the human body, especially when they are in the form of creatures. This is because creates an initial material connection with our body, and the creature’s.

Imagination and Creativity

One of the biggest risks in this project was relying heavily on the workshops. As there was always the possibility of them being shut down again due to another lockdown, but also relying fully on the workshops for the entirely of my practice presents certain limitations beyond university. When I graduate, how will I be able to keep creating work if I do not have access to a welder? Although there were some less successful experiments, I believe that I branched out my work this term by using other forms and materials such as monotypes. Although these were not 3-dimensional, I felt that these created a feeling of the abject and the surreal through textured ink prints and accidental ‘white noise’. Despite this, I still reverted back to welding when I could - This is something worth noting throughout next year as I plan my career behind graduating.

As with every sculpture, there is always the risk of the piece not being fully represented online or in a photo. Therefore, I feel that stagnant photography does not work in this situation. I took a risk by photographing my pieces in a somewhat abstract manner, making them pieces in themselves. Rather than representing the sculptures formally in a photo, I ended up abstracting many of the photos of my sculptures that I took. This was because I wanted to maintain their creaturely nature by ‘peeking’ out from the corner of your eye, a quiet and subversive shock to anyone that glances over. Here, I would say that I represented the sculptures truthfully, however not exactly as someone may see it in the flesh.

Critical Reflection and Evaluation

I would say that the majority of my work was made for exhibition, as these are now live on my portfolio website. As laid out in my proposal, this was one of my main goals in 2021; I can now continue to update this website throughout my artistic career as my main means of displaying my work. Despite also using Instagram, I have found that a website is much more suitable for showcasing my practice; they are more customisable and can provide the viewer with more information about yourself. However, I will keep using Instagram because of its connectivity features. I can connect with other artists and creatives, opening up more opportunities in the process.

As I make more work for exhibition, I have found myself straying further from my ideas. I end up focusing more on the appearance of the piece rather than critically evaluating my thought process and research. I believe that this is both a positive and negative thing. On one hand, the appearance of my work led to the creation of a series, Body clips. On the other hand, I felt that my work did not process the way I wanted to in this project. I believe that this was because of my heightened focus on professional practice, with subsequently less focus on in-depth research to aid the exploration of my ideas.

Moving forward, I must learn to adapt to the fast-paced nature of maintaining an art career, as I will not always have the time to be piece-centric. Whether this will be collaborating with strangers, or simply producing more work capable of exhibition. Overall, I will have to learn how to balance working and exhibiting as they co-exist.

Personal Development and Professional Studies

For planning for the arts festival, I nominated myself for being one of the two group leaders; I wanted to gain experience with working and collaborating with people that I’m not familiar with. Through being a co-leader, I also had the opportunity to join the Hub Team where I managed curation and the overall look of the festival within another sub-group. Within my group, Unlocked, I not only contributed to planning but also the creation of the teaser trailers as well as being in the performance which served as the finale to the festival.

One specific thing that I learnt however, is the importance of tigger warnings and using other people in personal or group pieces. We neglected the importance of these and as a result, an incident occurred which resulted in my co-leader and I drafting an apology which would be emailed to the public. I would say that this is a major professional development as this makes me take the audience into account in the future. I have always thought of artwork as more of a display rather than an interaction, whether this be online or in the flesh. Due to this, I have become much more aware how the audience are affected by artwork, I also became much more aware about how they become incorporated within the piece itself.

Furthermore, using this leadership experience from the arts festival, I co-curated a pop-up exhibition with fellow artist Emilija Pliaukštaitė in June. Using my knowledge from the arts festival, we implemented these skills into the real world. I think that this is a prime example of how I have developed professionally using skills obtained through the university.

Aside from the arts festival, I also developed professionally in my practice beyond my studies. As mentioned above, I completed one of my main goals this term, creating a website to exhibit my work. I originally wanted to use this as a portfolio, however as times goes on I want to hold mini exhibitions online.

I feel that I have developed professionally this term, albeit in smaller ways. I want to build on these skills that I have started to learn this term and translate them for use in my future art career.

[mrsbeef]

THIS IS INCREDIBLY LONG

AND FULL OF EGREGIOUS HYPERBOLE AND GENERALISATIONS. It is my attempt to write a paper on Chinese Communist cinema as a tumblr post so it feels less scary. If you’re interested in this sort of thing then I am concerned for you read on.

Content warning for violence, misogyny, Nazis, antisemitism, seemingly unavoidable gender binarism, sex, Chairman Mao, Hitler, Stalin, and Freud.

Behold the gateway to a bright Communist future!

Anyone heard of visual pleasure in cinema? Specifically the theory that Laura Mulvey was talking about? For anyone who needs context, Laura Mulvey’s theory is based on Freudian psychoanalysis, and it basically states that the spectator identifies with the male hero, and is always in a masculine position compared to the objectified women on screen, and gets a kind of sadistic pleasure from that power. And moreover, she says scenes of women bring the narrative screeching to a halt, because the cheesecake scenes of their fragmented and objectified bodies freeze the action so the audience can have those sweet, sweet phallic fantasies. For the purposes of argument, I’m lumping ‘torture porn’ of the Game of Thrones variety under ‘cheesecake’. Sick, I know, but we’re going to get into some sicker shit later.

Now this theory definitely has some problems, but let’s stick with it for the time being. We can see that parts of it manifest in totalitarian cinema. Let’s take the USSR under Stalin and Germany under Hitler as two examples. There’s a propaganda film from 1936 called The Party Card (партийный билет) where a good Communist party member has her party card stolen, and the audience gets to internally crow over her loss of power. This is most obvious in the scene of the disciplinary hearing, which our heroine Anna has to attend because she allowed someone to steal her card and demonstrated a lack of vigilance. If you look at the way this was filmed, it is so voyeuristic that you can almost sense the director or someone jacking off a bit; imagine all these important mostly male politicos all talking down to this one poor guilty cringing woman. This movie came out just before Stalin started the major purges, and it was intended to caution party members to keep their documents safe from the enemy at all times. And they got the message.

Meanwhile, in Nazi Germany (a horrible phrase, I know), the propaganda film Hitlerjunge Quex (1933) was casting the Nazis in a positive light by contrasting their bodily vigour and healthy lifestyles with the exaggerated degeneracy of the German Communists. Scenes of Communists drinking, smoking, gambling and canoodling with loose (probably Jewish) women were meant to make the collective monocle of German society pop off, at a time when the disenfranchised working class was still warming to the whole Nazi thing. And of course it’s loose Jewish women who are used to make this point; women with all the icky sex bits, so when you’re revolted by them you have your masculine spectatorial power reinforced (and on some level it can start to make you feel kind of okay with these women getting hurt or killed). Nazi ideology was pretty open about its misogyny; pure Aryan women gotta produce them master race babies yo. And arguably fascism begins with gender hierarchy (if you believe some authors). So the film makes sure to have a nice pure, sexless blonde girl (the kind Klaus Theweleit calls “the White woman”, as opposed to the Jewy Jezebel “Red woman”) for a contrast.

If you look at it this way, these examples of totalitarian cinema seem to be using structures of visual pleasure to produce a kind of revulsion mixed with sexual arousal, so that the audience will orient themselves properly towards the correct ideology, whatever that happens to be at the time. Karsten Witte argues that Nazi cinema goes a step further by trying to bleed the visual pleasure out of film so that the audience is left in perpetual frustration-- good for breeding violence, maybe. He’s specifically talking about revues, the Busby Berkeley-type ones with the kicking legs and crazy stage setups. Apparently Nazis were capable of making even that shit unexciting by making all the choreography monotonous and lifeless, and filming a huge wide shot to show the whole stage and some of the seats; it’s like ZE CAMERA VILL NEVER MOVE DOWNSTAGE ON PAIN OF DEATH.

Anyway, in all this discussion, doesn’t it seem like something’s missing from Mulvey’s theory? A couple things, actually. Why so binary? Why so essentialist and ahistorical? What happens to this theory outside of the West? Isn’t this theory based in capitalism? What about class differences? Where is the female spectator/the female hero?* This is my big problem with anything that has Freud’s name on it, but I’ll keep my personal loathing out of this post as far as possible. So far, all anyone’s been talking about with this visual pleasure thing is looking at sexy girls. 

So let’s try taking this visual pleasure thing and transplanting it to somewhere really different: COMMUNIST CHINA IN THE 60′S. Think about it! You’ve got a communist political system and collectivist culture, different standards and signifiers of beauty, and radically different forms of gender expression mixed up with class struggle, thanks to a government that officially came out and said “men and women are the same”. Of course that was complete bullshit in practice, but it was the ideal, and movies are all about ideal. Chinese Communist propaganda movies were good for teaching women how to be good socialists. And in contrast with stuff like Party Card, revolutionary Chinese films had a lot of female characters who were actually heroic. They were revolutionary soldiers and workers and peasant militiawomen, and they were ideal models for real women to emulate. This naturally means that revolutionary films were being made with a mixed gender audience in mind, and not just to appeal to a certain gender demographic. Of course in traditional Confucian culture women’s social position was lower than dirt (not accounting for class difference), but all that was supposed to be over now. Now women can be heroic revolutionaries too! They too can approach the sublime ideal of the hypermasculine, vigorous Communist fighter who makes history with his own hands! Not actually reach, though. Only approach. See, this view of gender equality took hypermasculinity as the standard everyone was meant to aspire to. So anything ‘feminine’-- like long hair, bright colours, or sentimentality-- became icky gross and bourgeois. Nobody wants to be a woman, ewww. Revolutionary films offered women and girls a way to fantasise about being that hero in a kind of utopia where family/marital obligations and culturally ingrained sexism didn’t exist, unlike irl. With women and men supposedly being equal (on men’s terms), there also was less room for overt titillating sexiness on the cinema screen, and audiences could derive strong visual pleasure based on class differentials rather than sexual ones (more on this later). Sexiness did sort of find its way back in sometimes, though. And not just through subversive watching either.

I can’t really speak for Nazi Germany or the USSR as those aren’t my specialities, but Chinese political culture seemed particularly receptive to the bleeding together of aesthetics and ideology. Ban Wang calls it “aestheticised politics”; it’s essentially a totalitarian wet dream. They can get inside your head and reorient your tastes and desires so that everything that is ideologically correct seems beautiful and everything that’s taboo is ugly. Imagine that the government could influence what you think is sexy :O (I mean, it probably does in some way already, but that’s off topic) The aesthetics of the revolutionary film could concentrate the spectators’ visual pleasure in a way that benefits the state. You can accomplish this with visual cues, camera tricks, etc. And so the Chinese government may have indirectly produced a generation of young men (and likely some women) who enjoyed beating off furiously to female guerrilla fighters in shorts.

Case in point: the 1971 filmed revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women (《红色娘子军》). It’s well known for causing a flood of jizz sexual awakening for a good many young men in the Cultural Revolution. It was part of a canon of ‘model theatre’ works made for the purpose of exemplifying proper socialist aesthetics, in accordance with Mao’s weirdly well-formed ideas about exactly what those should look like. Plot-wise it’s a pretty standard revolutionary fable: peasant girl meets manly Communist Party official, evil and somewhat effeminate landlord is vanquished. Gotta love those gender dynamics getting mapped onto class antagonisms. But this is a ballet. Ballet is an inherently sensual art form, even if you take away all the tutus and rewrite all the romance scenes. And now that sensuality in ballet gets to blend with the martiality of the revolution! Excellent example: the classic pas de deux in romance scenes has now been repurposed (with added kung fu flavour!) for fight scenes! Can you say SEXY COMMUNISM???

It’s also an art form that relies on dance and music to appeal strongly to the emotions. So when they show us wonderful scenes of the army and the villagers getting along, we’re supposed to feel a warm fuzzy feeling of togetherness with our comrades. When they show us a heroic character being physically punished or martyred, we’re supposed to burn with class hatred, and maybe even get flashbacks to similar abuse we endured at the hands of the enemy. Maybe you might even be so full of rage you might form a mob with your friends and go yank the town ‘capitalist’ out of his home and beat him up. And when we see the inevitable triumph of Communist ideology, we’re supposed to overflow with excitement and hope about the future that we can build for ourselves! All this represents the pleasure people were intended to get out of watching these shows, and all the outcomes are very positive as far as the state is concerned. Noteworthy is that hardly ever are we as spectators put in a position of power over any heroic central female character. That’s not where the pleasure comes from. There is a scene where the peasant-turned-soldier Qionghua is reprimanded for seeking personal revenge, but it isn’t wank material; it’s just a stepping stone to her political maturation. She, like us in the audience, needs to learn that the collective comes first.

All this is well and good, but the famously prudish** Communist ideology also kind of shoots itself in the foot by using the ballet form. It necessitates form-fitting costumes, hence the famous shorts worn by the women soldiers.The moves they perform don’t help either. And neither does the camera, which moves through the complete depth of the stage and lets us get closer to the sweet leg-kicking action than we ever could in a theatre. Also the costuming contains little callbacks to traditional Chinese notions of sexy: check out Qionghua’s red suit (it ain’t just for Communism anymore), and the army uniforms themselves (crossdressing a la Mulan was considered hot). It’s been said that ballet takes place in a secret fourth dimension of the imagination, and some people’s imaginations*** were very fired up. There’s a reason performance stills from Red Detachment were so popular.

Basically the point here is that Chinese revolutionary films had a way different relationship to gender and politics than Western films. Maybe they were both just as illusory. But maybe there’s also something to be said for chasing your own fake fantasy as opposed to just being stuck being somebody else’s?****

* I’m using ‘female hero’ here because whenever these film people say ‘heroine’ they usually mean female romantic lead, and I am talking about something completely different.

** Sexy is fine only when we get to decide what you like.

*** In quite a few cases this would mean ‘genitals’.

**** This has to be the most unfocused piece of shit I’ve ever written.

[anauthorsblog-blog]

Hello Reader, If you have made it this far to the very bottom, congrats. And I thank you.  My name is Stephanie Shiori Okuaki (I refuse to use pen names for any of my books) and I am currently twenty three years old living in Los Angeles- born and raised. Silence of a Chink was published about six months after I graduated college and a few months later Agne’s Playground (my first novel) was released, and then Lucid. I will get to the specifics of how and what and where and why but first.. In a world that highly praises and favors technology, science, and business very few authors are recognized, if at all. Even for those who have been deemed as famous or award worthy, there will be a large sum of people who will dubiously look at you and say, “who?” when you ask them if they know that author. To make a long report short, authors [especially small authors such as myself] have the stereotype of not making much money aka being nobody and therefore not being important enough to talk about, or commend. But that wasn’t why I did this- do this.  I believe that books are a gateway into larger worlds, worlds that some people, more than you think crave to get away into to escape the everyday complex mediocrities- the sameness that all tends to blend in together. It is never just words on a page but something bigger- weaving lines of personal pieces, complex characters, twisted plot lines, and metaphors that remain in your head. But more than all this, it is also a miracle to me that something as simple as words on a page could be produced into a cathartic outlet for both the author and reader- a personal world, gateway, and also a healing process. I grew up as the socially awkward silently stereotypical asian kid who enjoyed sitting in the corner with her face between the pages of a book. Books understood me in ways most people couldn’t. It had always been my dream to get a book published, even long before I was gang raped or had attempted to take my life when I was a junior in high school. And even after all this time, books still continue to be my biggest mentor and kindest friend. Some may say that’s dumb.  I guess that somehow segues into how my first book happened. I have been writing personal pieces of prose since I was probably thirteen or fourteen. They first began in notebooks, lined pieces of paper and then eventually when Tumblr became popular I decided to post some of my writings. A teacher I was close to in high school was one of the first people to tell me I should seriously think about writing a book. A few others who had seen my writings had told me I should publish and write a book someday, that I was talented. At the time when all this was happening I was dealing with specific events that happened in college. I was in no position to be working on putting a book together, and I had no idea about the first thing on how to do it, even though I still continued to write when I could. I saved all those pieces of prose, telling myself that maybe it could turn into my dream I had stuffed into the back of a drawer I didn’t have the energy to open. I was eighteen, a freshmen my first semester into college when I was gang raped by two boys I let come into my dorm room after I had taken them to a party. These two boys were older and not students on campus. I was intoxicated and pretty gone when they started smiling at each other and taking my clothes off. Everything escalated until it was suddenly over and I was left on my bed- confused and disoriented. I had been frequently slut shamed and had a reputation of sleeping around, so I figured that even if I said anything to anyone I would be shamed for something I had already ‘done so much of.’ I knew nobody would take it seriously. I didn’t realize it was rape until a few years later, when my college professor laid his hands on me and sexually abused me. He had been doing it to students years before me, to which the school had told him to pass a rehabilitation program yet allowed him to come back. I decided to finally stand up and say no, and reporting this teacher had to do a hearing trial in the process. In the end he was fired but I still felt incredibly and hopelessly empty, and more than anything smeared. This all happened the last semester of college, during the time I had graduated. I had finally finished my education under the most horrifying circumstances and yet I didn’t feel accomplished at all.  During that last month when I was about to graduate, I noticed an opportunity in the school literary review that was looking for submissions of writing to be published. Something inside me stirred, especially because during that time I had started to write again and even showed some pieces to a few friends. On a complete whim, I ended up submitting a very personal poem, “Yellow” due to most of my experiences with sexual abuse and being an Asian American female. The people in charge emailed me saying congratulations and that my poem was going to be published in their review. A few weeks later I found myself reading my poem out to a small audience, with shaking but hopeful hands. It was around that time that the dream I had long pushed into the back of that drawer started cropping up again.  It started cropping up even more when I noticed that a girl much younger than I in my math class had published a book when she was a senior in high school. I eventually ended up messaging her and saying that it had been a long term dream of mine to get a book published. She was extremely warm and understanding- reminding me again why we writers do this, and she showed me the ropes. I had said worryingly to her how I had no idea how to do it, that I didn’t even know self publication was a thing, that I believed to get a book published you needed to have connections, or even get an MFA. She told me to screw all of that, and to do what I love. And I did. Six months later I ended up publishing Silence of a Chink- all on my own. And it wasn’t just the events that happened to me that made me decide a book needed to be published that was about these topics. It was the dream of having my words on a page to be printed and distributed and to eventually become something that would be around a lot longer than I am. That was my ultimate dream- to create and produce something that would be a long lasting legacy, that maybe someone could pick up someday and feel understood and connected and obtain a stronger sense of identity- just as books have done for me.  I thought after Silence of a Chink was released that was it for me. I had had people message me whom I have not talked to in years who told me my book had moved them, and to keep writing because I was talented. Somehow it had landed in Barnes and Noble. They told me they would always support my work and were looking forward to the next one.  I was struggling with bad writer’s block for a while after that, and had even hit a wave of depression afraid that I could never write again. I had attempted to start the next book with a series of short pieces again, when it was an inner desire for me to write a novel- but I truly believed I couldn’t do it. Weaving together chapters, making the pieces all fit and connect together was a daunting process for me- to somehow create a whole story and have it all make sense and also be entertaining at the same time. I had also worked a few days jobs and often spent a lot of hours writing in my car, trying to sort out and put together pieces and ideas. One night I ended up having a dream. The strange thing about this dream was that it wasn’t me or anyone I knew at all in it. It was literally as if I was watching a scene from a movie- that was how real it felt. I dreamt that a boy had run away from home but had come back without his family seeing him. He had taken a piece of chalk and writing “Forgive me” on the wooden steps ended up running off near the gate where no one could see him. Some time passes and eventually his mother comes out, and then his father. His father notices the writing and the boy watches with tears blurring his vision as he recognizes the father recognizing that its his son. I woke up and wrote the dream down right away. I knew that I had to somehow turn this into a book and that very same day I ended up brainstorming out the plot to a story. It took me a few weeks but eventually I ended up writing, and creating Agne’s Playground.  A couple weeks later I decided to surprise release my third, Lucid. I told no one about it and wanted to surprise my readers. Lucid was mainly a compilation of pieces and poems I had put together and had been working on for some time [specifically eight months]- in my car, long nights after work when I couldn’t sleep, anywhere I could really. It was a joy to watch and format this third baby, now that I knew how to do the ropes better and work the program. Format wise, this is probably my proudest work. It is hard as an author though to say which one of my works is my favorite, they are each separately their own stories and struggles and gateways. I have to say though that my work has progressively improved, another reason why maybe Lucid would be my proudest work. I have not stopped reading, and as a writer I would have to say the best way to improve and to keep getting better and better is to just keep reading. I believe that to really be good at what you do you need to love it, more than anything. Reading books were the number one thing that got me here, to my third book.  As an author, it is my job to completely, helplessly and very vulnerably belt out the truth and not be afraid of it. This was what I decided to imprint on the back of my third book Lucid, “Dear Reader, Don’t be afraid of the truth.” This is the ultimate message that I always hope to give out to my readers. Not boat heaps of money or fame or even recognition, but a sense of clarity. If I can make someone pick up my work, read a piece and feel something then I’ve done my job. If I have somehow shaped a part of their world in that way.  I am extremely fortunate to have gotten here. A lot of people think that being an author without making much off of it or even signing with a bigger label is silly or lame. I believe otherwise. In my heart I believe I am doing the right thing- what is not only best for me but what is best for my work.  It honestly feels like no time has passed since I started this whole thing- and that’s how I can tell this is something I truly love doing. I feel that very few people do what they truly love anymore- and if they do there is always some kind of price tag involved. For the first time in my life I have created and successfully produced something I decided and wanted all on my own. No one told me to do this- in fact very few people believed that I would be able to do it. Our culture is constantly caught up in doing things to please others, very seldom is self love ever encouraged or amplified. I hope to challenge this, every step of the way.  These books will be here longer than I am. For that I am grateful, but I am also grateful for what writing has done for me, and how free its made me become- in every sense of the aspect. A huge heaviness has passed and I feel incredibly weightless, to be doing what I love in this way and to share this with other people.  So thank you, if you have made it this far. The only piece of advice I truly believe in giving out is to just do what you love. Find it, keep it, and it’ll love you back. I promise. Sincerely, Stephanie

[utrechtcentral]

Julien Pineau introduces Strongfit to Utrecht

We welcome renowned fitness guru Julien Pineau to Utrecht. a welcome new resident indeed!

To quote from the Strongfit website: Sports have been a part of Julien’s life since he was young and he’s been a state and national champion in a number of sports including soccer, swimming and wrestling. As an adult, he really found something he liked with MMA and Jiu Jitsu and spent time traveling the world to learn from the best in the industry. That time spent with the best made him want to learn more about sport and movement so that he could coach others. In 1993, he began his coaching career as a conditioning and grappling coach for the MMA gym where he trained and in 2008, he opened his own gym that focuses on strongman training. StrongFit was born and has evolved from a single gym to a full education program. Julien’s  brain is wired to see faulty patterns and visualize, in space, how people move. With his knack for diagnosing muscular and strength imbalances he has developed his own system to identify what issues are and fight root of the problem. He now travels the world delivering seminars to coaches who have the common goal of fixing people and ridding them of pain. Julien introduced himself to me I found coaching at age 21. My first martial arts teacher, Nguyen, put me in charge of warm ups in the classes. Our class sizes were too big at the time, and it was my job to make the warm up so hard that we could cut the attendance in half. At the time I was doing a lot of body weight movements as my warm up, so he asked me to provide instruction with the first 20 minutes of the session. Two weeks later, the class size had doubled. While my teacher was upset with me, the coach inside of me was born. I didn’t find a job, I found a vocation. My drive for competition was overtaken by by connection to coaching others. This evolved over time from private instruction to opening my own gym in 2008. What is your fitness background? I have always been an athlete. My success in competition began as early as 8 years old. The first sport that I competed in at a national level was soccer. I broke my foot just before the national tournament, and quit shortly after. From there, I became explored other sports. I was a state champion swimmer at 13. It took me until age 19 to find my true athletic potential with grappling and mma. I pursued high levels of training throughout 15 years, including training with Gracie Barra in Brazil, until I had found strongman at age 37. That transition lasted for 4-5 years. Now, I train because I enjoy it. I have started to play pool again, but focus more on mastery of the skills than competition in the sport.

Tell us a bit about Strongfit It’s not a method, it’s a way of learning. Strongfit has evolved much as I have  through disciplines of movement and sports, training methods, and the knowledge I’ve gathered over the years. I started to explore what drives individuals both physically and mentally. My goal was to create a system that would help people to move well, improve their athletic performance in a non-destructive way, and ultimately find themselves through movement. Is it as my son tells me a case of mind over matter? We have a tendency to choose one over the other, but I believe they’re connected. The mind and the body are connected through the central nervous system- which is the gateway to everything. It is the nervous system that will lead us every time. What attracted you to designing Strongfit? I am a humanist first. My goal has always been to find a way to help people. I saw the same patterns through sports and lifestyle of injury, discomfort, and mental anguish, over and over again. I knew there was something that could be done about it, so I took it as my responsibility to find better answers than what was already out there. How did you work out the rationale? I read very little about fitness… but I have an extensive background in strength and conditioning. I have spent many years actually practicing different training methods. It allowed me to develop a personal database of experiences— what works and what doesn’t. I get most of my knowledge from other fields like neuroscience, evolutionary biology and quantum mechanics. I search for patterns that I can connect to help people create positive change within themselves. So the rationale is found through countless moments of deep thinking and practice. And together, they create the beginnings of my concepts. I test all of my concepts thoroughly first, and then discuss my experiences with my second, Richard. If the ideas are working, we test even more. With a network of over 300 coaches, we continue to gather data from experience. If I receive a positive response by at least 30 percent of them, then I know I’m onto something. Do you see Strongfit as a rival to CrossFit or are they compatible? This is a huge misunderstanding I face constantly. I am not a competitor to CrossFit. On the contrary, I think the CrossFit training system has done incredible things- particularly for women. We’ve seen such an improvement not only in performance with women, but also their self esteem and body image, than we have never seen before. Our intentions with Strongfit are to enhance performance in things like CrossFit and other training methods, not replace them. It’s the individual that always comes first.

Why are you moving to Utrecht? I was invited to Utrecht for a Seminar by the owners of Unscared CrossFit. This was my first seminar outside of my own gym that I have ever held, and it’s what started my world tour. We arrived two days early to Utrecht, and within 24 hours, I had totally fell in love with the city and its people. I decided that one day, Utrecht was the place I would call home. What is your favourite place in Utrecht? I love looking for craftsmen. It isn’t so much the places that are my favorite, but the individuals inside that are always pushing past expectations and limits, and providing people with new knowledge and great experience. I love the Dutch culture. It’s a quiet city. It provides me with the silence to think critically, and views that inspire creativity. Does Utrecht as a city do enough for sport in general? Dutch people are super active. My daughter has found connections in various sports like hockey, dance, and mma training. The Dutch culture has been a great place to encourage her towards sports in an inviting way. Where I’d love to see growth is strength specific training for the women here. I see a lot of untapped potential there. What about Strongfit, are you made welcome? The neighbours of Strongfit HQ are at least entertained. I think some of our training methods, like carrying heavy yokes and pushing sleds are new to them, but they are welcoming and supportive of our endeavours. Our Saturday sessions that allow athletes to come and train have been well attended, so I think it’s been a great fit. Your new Gym, where will it be when will it open? It is not a gym. Our location is more of a laboratory. It is where I test my theories and breakdown my methods. I keep it closed to the public so that I can keep my focus on what I am testing, otherwise I will always default to coaching someone. Assessments and workouts at our location are by invitation only Read the full article

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 11

Literally and metaphorically, everything is on fire. Also newsflash: I’m still not over Rhuidean.

Chapter 11: The Death of Adrin

Who’s Adrin?

The Maidens seem to think Rand needs to be beaten again, and Aviendha is carrying rocks. So everything’s off to a good start.

Aviendha doesn’t understand why clouds are a bad thing. Someone introduce this girl to the whole world of pathetic fallacy. She also doesn’t understand why wetlanders complain so much. Someone introduce this girl to London.

There had to be some hidden honour in it. Perhaps the wetlanders exposed their weaknesses to their companions as a means of offering friendship and trust. If your friends knew of your weaknesses, it would give them an advantage should you dance the spears with them. Or, perhaps, the complaining was a wetlander way of showing humility, much as the gai’shain showed honour by being subservient.

She had asked Elayne about her theories and had received only a fond laugh in return. Was it some aspect of wetlander society that she was forbidden to discuss with outsiders, then?

Ha. It seems a bit silly, sure, but it’s not all that unrealistic. Some elements of culture and behaviour are relatively easy to explain or understand. Some, though, can be entirely unnoticed by those within that culture, and appear completely and inexplicably bizzare to those outside, and it’s all but impossible to adequately explain. So you can actually end up with something like this – an ‘outsider’ like Aviendha coming up with very defined, neat theories…and the people she’s theorising about looking at her like ‘what are you even talking about’. Because to them, it’s not even a part of their ‘culture’ the way something like, I don’t know, how to celebrate certain holidays would be. It’s not something they’d think about, or consider as a defining attribute, much less as something that serves a particular purpose. So when an ‘outsider’ does try to posit an explanation – or even ask a question – it can seem ridiculous. And yet when you are the outsider, it’s anything but. Culture is fun like that.

I live in a place where complaining is absolutely an element of ordinary conversation. We’re known for it and it’s weird once you’re aware of it. And then we start complaining about the manner in which other cultures complain, because as it turns out there are specific formulas for how a complaint should look. Except no one can actually explain what those are, and would look at you very strangely if you were to ask, because what do you mean we complain in a specific way? Huh?

I also lived in a weird multicultural bubble for a few years and oh man some of the conversations about ‘why do you do X’ and the responding bewildered looks. Not to mention the awkward dances that happened every time two people tried to greet each other.

So anyway, I’ve always rather enjoyed watching Aviendha’s attempts to figure out wetlanders. It’s also a good way to implicitly reflect back on or convey information about the Aiel, and to add some variety to the other characters’ thoughts about how strange and incomprehensible the Aiel are.

She still can’t figure out what the Wise Ones want from her, though.

She was growing frustrated – not with the Wise Ones, but with herself.

Except, Aviendha, maybe you need to grow frustrated with the Wise Ones, and trust in yourself. I think that’s very probably the point.

The Wise Ones were angry at Aviendha for not “learning quickly enough.” And yet they didn’t teach her. They just asked those questions. Questions about what she thought of their situation, questions about Rand al’Thro or about the way Rhuarc had handled meeting with the Car’a’carn. 

Aviendha couldn’t help feeling that the questions were tests. Was she answering incorrectly? IF so, why didn’t they instruct her on the proper responses.

Because she isn’t answering incorrectly. It seems like they’re basically treating her as a Wise One – asking her questions a Wise One would be expected to answer or deal with – and she’s not seeing it, and that’s the problem. She can answer their questions and understand these situations, but she doesn’t…see herself as a Wise One? So she thinks she is being punished for some fault, when really she’s being punished because she’s allowing herself to be punished. They’re trying to get her to…see herself as a Wise One, I think. Is that the deal here? That seems to be the deal here.

Aviendha wished for her spears back so that she could stab something.

Fair.

“Adrin?” one door guard asked his companion. “Light, you don’t look well. Truly.”

Uh oh.

The man reached up suddenly, scratching at the skin of his temples.

Beetles?

His eyes rolled up in his head and his fingers tore gashes in his flesh. Only, instead of blood, the wounds spat out a black charcoal-like substance.

That might even be worse than beetles. Though I suppose from the perspective of the one dying, it probably makes very little difference. But if we’re trying to measure entropy here (shut up, I’m a scientist), this is definitely worse, because there isn’t even a form this time. No order, just chaos and black fire.

Or black boiling tar. That works too. Um…yikes?

Aviendha shrugged off her shock, immediately weaving Air in a simple pattern to pull the unaffected guard to safety.

I kind of love how Aviendha is so good in a crisis when it involves someone else, but when it involves her she opens a gateway into a snowstorm on another continent.

“We…we’re being attacked!” the man whispered. “Channelers!”

This is like the ‘bloody ashes’ thing: seeing ‘channelers’ used this way is disproportionately jarring. It’s a small thing really, just a slight shift in phrasing, but it stands out and throws me out of the story more than some other – arguably larger – changes have.

I certainly wouldn’t say it’s an unforgivable error – after all, I tend to use ‘channelers’ fairly frequently because it’s a convenient noun, and there’s no particular reason the characters wouldn’t – and I don’t actually have a problem with it. At least, not in the sense that it’s something I would criticise, were I to focus on examining the differences between the authors. But I also can’t help noticing it, and so it becomes an interesting look at how such very small changes in diction or phrasing can stand out so dramatically. Maybe it’s because they’re easier to quantify?

I do wonder, though, why certain little things like this weren’t flagged in the line- or copy-editing stages. Again, not because it’s actually a big deal, but because it would help smooth out the overall ‘feel’ of the transition. As is, this kind of minor-but-noticeable change could essentially prime readers to be more wary of and less sympathetic towards other changes.

And now the house is on fire.

Magic fire.

Aviendha tries to smother it, because of course her first instinct would not be to dump precious water all over it.

In the distance, she heard people – perhaps the guard among them – calling for buckets.

Buckets? Of course! In the Three-fold Land, water was far too valuable to use in fighting fires. Dirt or sand was used. But here, they would use water. Aviendha took several steps backward, searching out the curling river that ran beside the manor.

She deserves a lot of credit for this. Not everyone can take in, consider, and implement new information in the middle of a crisis. She’s just seen a man turn into a pile of black tar, and now she’s facing a fire and people inside are screaming, and she has the presence of mind not just to start dealing with the problem but to take in a suggestion as indirect as a distant call for buckets. They’re not even talking to her. And it’s not something she’s familiar with at all, this idea of using large amounts of water to fight fire. Many people would struggle even if they were directly told ‘use the river’, just because of the way panic usually works. It tends to narrow a person’s focus and ability to perceive – or rather, to analyse and interpret – information external to that narrowed focus, as well as causing people to either freeze or else fall back on familiar or instinctive patterns. So in the face of a burning building – and also, you know, creeptastic signs of the end of the world – the ability to hear a distant shout for buckets, make the connection from that to ‘oh, okay, people here would pour water on a fire rather than dirt and sand’, and then go ‘ah, yes, there’s a river nearby, I could use that’ and then to immediately start doing it is to be commended.

Aviendha wove a massive column of Air and Water, pulling a spout of crystalline liquid from the river and drawing it toward her. The column of water undulated in the air like the creature on Rand’s banner, a glassy serpentine dragon that slammed against the flames.

Of course, it helps that she is powerful enough to literally grab a river and throw it at the house.

Then there was a sudden explosion as another column of water burst from the river and slammed into the fire. […] The other column was being directed by weaves she could not see, but she did notice a figure standing in a window up on the second floor, hand forward, face concentrating intensely. Naeff, one of Rand’s Asha’man.

Cooperation! Unspoken cooperation, even. He saw what she was doing, and immediately joined in, and together they’ve put out the fire. An apt metaphor, all things considered.

Rand comes out of the now-damp mansion and goes full-on ‘old man yells at cloud’.

No, really.

He stared at the sky, shaking his fist. “I am the one you want! You will have yoru war soon enough! […] I will stop you” Rand roared, causing calls of fright from both servants and soldiers. “Do you hear me? I am coming for you! Don’t waste your power! You will need it against me!”

It keeps hurting those near him, and he is left…well, okay, I was going to say ‘unscathed’ but I think we can all agree that is patently false. Still… how many have to pay with me? Others always had to, even when he tried to pay alone. Or The whole world paid a price for his existence. He would die for it, but the whole world paid. Those thoughts have been with him for so long now, and it only gets worse. It’s a large part of why he’s so determined to turn himself to steel – not just so that he can do what needs to be done, but so that he can watch as others pay what he sees as the price of his existence.

And yet, the Dragon is one with the land and the land is one with the Dragon, and I have to wonder if these kinds of happenings are in some way worsened by the presence of a increasingly dark ta’veren.That would be beautifully and horribly ironic.

“Yes,” Aviendha said in response to the man’s question, “it happens often. More often around the Car’a’carn than other places, at least.”

Yeah. So. Feedback loop of tragic irony it is, then.

The Domani soldier is suddenly not so sure about his life choices.

And yet, through her bond with Rand, she felt no urgency. In fact…it seemed that he had gone back to rest! That man’s moods were becoming as erratic as Elayne’s during her pregnancy.

I’m not sure ‘erratic’ is quite the word I would use, though it’s not completely wrong. But this reminds me of when he killed the Asha’man in Far Madding and told Min about it and she was shocked and worried about how little she could feel through the bond. He has tried so hard to suppress his ability to feel. Added to that, this is his reality. He can’t let himself panic about things like this happening, because his entire focus is on Tarmon Gai’don. That’s all that matters.

Wow, Merise, condescending much?

“Your skill with weaves, it is impressive. If we had you in the White Tower, you’d have been an Aes Sedai by now. Your weaving, it has some roughness to it, but you’d learn to fix that quickly enough if taught by sisters.”

Listen, Merise, she just saved you all from a burning building; I might respectfully suggest shutting the fuck up.

It would seem Melaine shares my thoughts.

“To think, how we once regarded them!”

Oh, how things have changed. This is one I’m looking forward to seeing when I finally get to reread, because it’s a complete shift over the course of several books, but we don’t know the Aiel as well when it begins. Thinking back to how Moiraine was received, and how the Wise Ones were first characterised, and then to Dumai’s Wells and the resulting chaos, and then to everything after, there is a marked change. And it’s one that lies close to the centre of Aiel identity, in the sense that their earliest self-knowledge is as a group of people sworn to serve the Aes Sedai. That’s one of the few things that carried through while almost everyting else changed, even if it was muted and the reason for it was unknown to all but the Wise Ones and the clan chiefs. Now, that tie is broken as well, and it all felt so…natural as it was happening. Which is kind of the point.

“You have such great talent, child.”

Aviendha swelled with the praise; from Wise Ones, it was rare, but always sincere.

“But you refuse to learn,” Melaine continued. “There isn’t much time! Here, I have another question for you. What do you think of Rand al’Thor’s plan to kidnap these Domani merchant chiefs?”

There’s definitely a strong implication here of ‘we have nothing more to teach you’. The next step is one Aviendha must take on her own, and they’re pushing her to do it, but she still sees herself as an apprentice, as beneath them rather than their equal. So we get this pattern of compliment, question, praise, punishment. Telling her she’s ready, asking her questions that should allow her to prove to herself that she’s ready, and then punishing her for not realising it.

“I think the Car’a’carn should have spoken in terms of offering protection – forced protection – for the merchants. The chiefs would have responded better to being told they were protecting rather than kidnapping.”

“They would be doing the very same thing, no matter what you call it.”

“But what you call a thing is important,” Aviendha said. “It is not dishonest if both definitions are true.”

Never underestimate the power of semantics.

Also, this is a point on which Wise Ones and Aes Sedai would agree, though no doubt both would vehemently deny the similarity.

“Regardless, [Rand] needs to be reminded. Again and again. Rhuarc is a wise and patient man, but not all clan chiefs are so. I know that some of the others wonder if their decision to follow Rand al’Thor was an error.”

“True,” Melaine said. “But look at what happened to the Shaido.”

“I did not say they were right, Wise One. […] They are wrong to question the Car’a’carn, but they are speaking to one another. Rand al’Thor needs to realise that they will not accept offence after offence from him without end.”

Yeah. I have wondered where this was going to go.

The relationship between Rand and the Aiel is fascinating because in some ways it’s one of the most simple; he fulfilled their prophecies, and they declared themselves to him, and they will follow him to the ends of the earth, knowing he will destroy them. They’ve been arguably his most loyal followers and allies, dependable and competent and sure, asking nothing.

Except. They haven’t asked nothing. They just haven’t asked for anything in a standard ‘goods for services rendered’ kind of way. He didn’t buy their loyalty, he earned it through prophecy and effort and identity. But with that loyalty comes an understanding of reciprocity. They know that he will take you back, and he will destroy you, and instead of protection or riches or land, they want his acknowledgment and understanding. They want him to know them as his blood; they want him to understand what their loyalty to him means, and to understand the sacrifice they are making.

He understood, at the time, the importance of what he was doing. Not in its entirety and not in detail, certainly, but he knew ‘he needed people he could trust, people who followed from something besides fear of him, or greed for power’. He knew that would take something more than conquest, knew there was something different, something important, about this kind of loyalty. And as that progressed, he came to know them – not as well as they may have liked, perhaps – and thought about how he didn’t want to break them.  

Even later, after returning from Dumai’s Wells and facing the doubt of the clan chiefs, he knew the importance of maintaining this relationship, and understood some of the nuance of it: “Does it matter, so long as they obey?” “It matters,” Rand said. When the Maidens beat him, he understood why, even if it was difficult for him to actually accede to their demands. He did, for a time, and has acknowledged his obligation to them, as the only son of a Maiden any of them has known. And he has walked that line of balance and reciprocity.  

There has been a balance between loyalty and respect and duty and use, and it’s been a more complex dynamic than it appears on the surface, but it has never seemed truly in doubt.

But sometime between “the fifth, I give you” and “you are what I say you are,” Rand let that tenuous balance slip.

So much is fraying, and so much is held on the verge of falling apart, but this is something Rand cannot afford to lose. He cannot take the Aiel for granted, because as Aviendha says, they will not accept offence after offence. There is a breaking point somewhere, and he is dangerously close to finding it. But it has been too easy for him to slide into taking them for granted, precisely because they ‘followed him from something besides fear of him, or greed for power’. Others, he has to manipulate or command or threaten or coerce, as well as keep a close eye on. But the Aiel… they are there, and competent, and dependable. And fated to be his and to be destroyed. So, while he’s been hardening himself and withdrawing from feeling lest it break him, and trying to care about nothing except Tarmon Gai’don, it has been too easy to let his side of the obligation drop. Because his payment to them is made almost entirely of sentiment and understanding and empathy: things of which he is now barely capable.

I love how this is done, and how it’s timed, and how it plays into watching Rand spiral towards what seems to be a true low point on the horizon.

Did Rand al’Thor know how hard the Wise Ones worked behind his back to maintain Aiel loyalty? Probably not. He  saw them all as one homogenous group, sworn to him, to be used. That was one of Rand’s great weaknesses. He could not see that Aiel, like other people, did not like being used as tools.

Yes, though I’m not sure it’s that he can’t see it so much as he won’t let himself. In part it’s to protect himself: he can’t be hurt by destroying something if he doesn’t care about it. And he did start to care about the Aiel, and the individual clan chiefs, and various others, but he didn’t want to let himself because he has known from almost the beginning that it is fated to end in sorrow. It’s also iin part because he is using everyone and everything, including himself, and he has reached a point where he can’t…pull back from that single focus enough to show compassion.

It’s a mess.

The clans were far less tightly knit than he believed. Blood feuds had been put aside for him. Couldn’t he understand how incredible that was?

I really, really love this. Because she’s absolutely right – it is incredible. But also…he is not Aiel, in truth, and as such cannot truly understand. He knows what he’s done, but it isn’t quite the same. There was a moment, when he brought water to the Waste – not at Alcair Dal, or by accident in Rhuidean, but when he made Rhuidean’s fountains run, just before leaving the Three-fold Land. In that moment, there was the sense of a true understanding, even if he didn’t consciously acknowledge it as such.

He saw their history through the eyes of Aiel, in Rhuidean, and while it certainly had an impact on him, it was not the same impact it would have had on one born and raised Aiel. He knows he is the son of a Maiden, and knows his obligation to them, but it is a struggle for him to accept it. He knows he has ended blood feuds and brought the clans together for the first time in memory, but he doesn’t feel it the same way they do. He changes the Aiel, and has felt sorrow at the knowledge of what the prophecies say he will do to them, but the changes he as wrought are not centred on him, and on the core of his self and identity, the way they are for the Aiel. It’s like…loking at something directly and seeing it at an angle, or through a filter.

So no, he can’t exactly understand how incredible it is. The problem, though, is that he has stopped appreciating it. Stopped acknowledging it.

Melaine stared blindly at the broken building. “A remnant of a remnant,” she said, as if to herself. “And if he leaves us burned and broken, like those boards? What will become of the Aiel then? Do we limp back to the Three-fold Land and continue as we did before? Many will not want to leave. These lands offer too much.”

Aviendha blinked at the weight of those words. She had rarely given thought to what would happen after the Car’a’carn was finished with them. […] But a Wise One could not just think of the now or the tomorrow. She had to think of the years ahead and the times that would be brought upon the winds.

A remnant of a remnant. He had broken the Aiel as a people. What would become of them.

This is lovely.

I know I say this a lot, but the way the entire story of the Aiel is done, through past and present and now hinting at future, is beautiful. A nation in exile since the Breaking of the World, fine threads of immutable identity against a history of constant change and breaking and resilience and loss. A story that continues, as the Aiel are once more without a true home and without a concrete foundation, finding a new purpose and yet trying to hold to who they are.

He broke them by uniting them.  By fulfilling their prophecy and reminding them of who they once were. That alone is such a wonderfully bittersweet way to bring a story full-circle. Yet it doesn’t end there at all. It’s like the idea of cyclical time and a Wheel of Ages, but in microcosm, repetition and variation shown through the history of a nation.

Where do they go from there? What will become of the Aiel? But there are no beginnings or endings, and this is a question that has been asked before throughout their past and present. Where do they go, what do they become, who are they?

And they keep coming back to those questions even as they move forward, as they always have, changing and seeking a place. A place of safety, a place of belonging, a place of purpose – the nature of the place changes, but the sense of seeking remains.

So they become characterised by exile and change, and beneath that a single note of determined identity – “I am Aiel!”

Part of what I love about it, I think, is how it’s just off-centre in terms of the main focus of the story. It’s ongoing – and has been since at least the Breaking of the World – but most who are not Aiel do not even see it. It’s an epic story in the true sense of the word, and it’s so central to the lives of so many, but this story is not their story. Not theirs exclusively, though they play a crucial and integral role. So that adds to the bittersweet and almost...ironic...nature of their story: a story of identity, largely unseen. 

I also like how Aviendha is now privy to this much more direct conversation, and these deeper questions and worries. She is one of the Wise Ones now – or will be, soon – and these are now her issues to think about, rather than something to be discussed only by the Grown Ups. Not only that, but Aviendha’s unique place as liaison between cultures, and the way her own character growth and struggle with identity parallels that of her people, puts her in an excellent position to be the character to consider this.

One day, I will stop butchering sentence structure.

Another thought occurred to her as she pushed that one away – a treacherous one. A thought of Rand al’Thor, resting in his room. She could go to him… No! Not until she had her honour back. She would not go to him as a beggar. She would go to him as a woman of honour.

Which is entirely understandable, and even admirable. But also frustrating. You could…oh I don’t know…talk to him? “Hey, Rand, you know I love you and I want us to spend time together but there’s also some shit I need to figure out first.” And then they could talk candidly about the things they’re struggling with and help each other and eat chocolate cake with sparkly rainbow icing and sing happy songs. Right.

Next (TGS ch 12) Previous (TGS ch 10)

[razieltwelve]

Negotiation: Part 1(Final Rose)

Claire took a moment to study the map of the Arendelle Empire in her office. It had always brought her a sense of contentment to know that the Empire had brought peace and prosperity to so many worlds. After this expedition, they’d have to expand it, and the thought brought a smile to her face.

However, her attention swiftly turned to the two people who entered her office. One was a tall man with blonde hair and blue eyes. However, he lacked the towering height and broad, powerful build of a man from the Villiers branch of the family. Instead, he was only a few inches taller than Claire, and although he had the build of a man well used to fighting, it was leaner and more compact than would be expected of a Villiers.

Jihm Nabaat - also known as Jihm Jahde Yun-Farron - was a descendant of Diana Yun-Farron and Jahne Nabaat through the line of their second daughter, Jahde. His Semblance was similar to that of Jihl Naabat of Remnant. It was a form of mind control and telepathy. Of course, his loyalty was beyond question, not that she had anything to fear from him. Saviour was impervious to mental interference.

The other person was actually an inch or two shorter than Claire. He was the head scientist of the expedition, Heilos Dia-Farron. Like most of his kin, he was a fox Faunus, and he had the same red hair and blue eyes as Raine Dia-Farron of Remnant, who was one of his ancient ancestors. His war hamster, Professor Hugborough was peeking out of a pocket in his lab coat while munching on some food.

“All right,” Claire said without any further preamble. “Commander Shepard and her associates will be arriving soon. I hope you both understand what we’re trying to do here.”

Jihm chuckled. “Indeed I do. I even have orders from Averia about how she would like this to be handled. I trust you’ve read the message I sent you earlier.”

“I have. I think it’s a good course of action.” Claire paused. “And I trust you won’t resort to any… unsavoury methods.”

“As easy as it would be to simply take control of their minds, I’ve been instructed to handle this as… peacefully as possible. Even if we have enough firepower to crush them, there’s no point in ruling over a giant graveyard. The most beneficial course for the Empire is for the various groups in this galaxy to see us as powerful but benevolent group.”

“I’ve also informed Blake and her command staff of this. She and some of them will also be present at this meeting.”

“Of course.” Jihm nodded gracefully. “It will be nice to see Selene. She is so marvellously devious.”

Selene was one of Jihm’s favourite verbal sparring partners. She was a descendant of Winter Schnee and Blake Belladonna and one of the few people alive who could keep up with Jihm when he really started scheming. 

“Try not to make too much trouble,” Claire replied. Her gaze shifted to the Dia-Farron. “Do you have the presentation ready?”

Helios cackled evilly. “Oh, you bet I do. I’ve prepared it according to your specifications. It’ll get them right where we want them - afraid but hopeful of our intervention.” He paused. “Are you sure you don’t want me to have that simulation ready too?”

“What simulation?” Jihm asked.

“It’s one where I show footage of what I think will happen to most of their worlds if we don’t help. There’s lots of death, harvesting, people being turned into Reapers...”

“People being turned into Reapers?:” Jihm asked.

“Yep. We’ve been stripping data from the captured Reapers, and it’s what they do. They can turn people into robo-zombie things, or they can turn them into this goo that gets used to make those big Reaper ships.”

“I think they can do without seeing that,” Jihm said dryly. “I imagine they’re worried enough.”

“I don’t know. It’s a very detailed simulation. Gruesome too.”

“No.” Claire sighed. “Just have the presentation I talked to you about ready.” She glanced down. “It looks like Blake and some of her command staff just arrived, and Commander Shepard and her associates should be here momentarily too. We’ll greet them in one of the hangars and give them a tour.”

Jihm smirked. “Shock and awe?”

“Indeed.” Claire’s lips curled. “We’re here to help, but we need to make it very clear that messing with us would be an extremely bad idea.”

X     X     X

Commander Jane Shepard nodded to herself and then did her best to smile at the four she’d chosen to bring along. Miranda, Liara, Garrus, and Mordin were the best at what they did, and she valued any advice they could give her. Plus, Liara, Garrus, and Mordin, while not official representatives of their respective races, could at least give her some idea of what their factions might want out of the deal she would be making.

“Their shuttle has docked, commander,” Joker said over comms.

“All right.” Jane took a deep breath. “Here were go. Remember what we talked about. We need to put up a unified front. We want their help, but we need to offer them something in return. Let’s go.”

They made their way down to the airlock and waited for decontamination and other processes to run before the doors opened.

A group of towering figures in exoskeletal armour were there to greet them. One of them, in more elaborate armour than the others, stepped forward. The faceplate of the armour turned transparent, and they found themselves looking at the face of a middle-aged man.

“Good evening, commander. If you’ll just come aboard, we can get started.”

She nodded quickly. “Thank you.” She strode into the shuttle and then paused. There was a strange device in the middle of the chamber. It looked like a projector of some kind. “Is that a data projector?”

The soldier grinned. “It’s how you’ll be reaching the Fury. It’s a teleportation gateway.”

“Fascinating.” Mordin immediately moved toward the device. “Method of operation?”

The soldier took the question in stride. “I can’t give you the exact specifics, but they told me you might be curious. I am authorised to say that it uses a variant of quantum entanglement to essentially switch the acknowledged positions of particles - or in this case, people and objects. It hasn’t got the range of something like a wormhole portal, but it tends to be less energy consuming, not to mention easier on the stomach.”

“Clarify?”

If the soldier was bothered by Mordin’s questions, he didn’t show it. Instead, he gave a chuckle. “Oh, the Dia-Farron are going to love you.” He smiled. “Worm hole technology links two points in space using wormholes. Travel takes place through what is a sort of intermediary dimension. Not all life forms take such transitions well. Headaches and vomiting are not uncommon symptoms of wormhole travel, at least the first few times. Since this will be a diplomatic meeting, I’m sure you can understand why we’d try to avoid that.”

Jane could. Vomiting on the shoes of the people they were meeting wasn’t the least bit diplomatic. “Is it safe?”

“It sure is.” The soldier nodded at one of his fellows. A column of light shot up from the device and hung in the air. One of the soldiers walked through it without hesitation. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t ask of myself or the soldiers under my command. Now, if you’re ready…”

“Of course.” Jane shrugged. “Let’s get on with it.”

Jane stepped forward into the column -

There was a split second of dislocation, of not knowing where or when -

And then she was standing in the middle of a vast hangar. It was lined with craft of various kinds, and there was a formation of hundreds of armoured soldiers waiting, all of them standing in perfect alignment and discipline. Shepard immediately straightened, surreptitiously checking that her uniform was in order, as the others stumbled through the gateway after her. As they all looked around in awe - the hangar was far, far larger than anything they’d ever seen on a ship, to say nothing of the craft it contained, and the other advanced technologies it hinted at - she saw Garrus give a nod of appreciation at the ranks of armoured soldiers waiting patiently in front of them. The Turian could appreciate the discipline it required.

There was movement from the back of the formation, and immediately, the whole group of soldiers parted ranks, seamlessly moving to form a path for three people and the small escort that travelled with them. Jane immediately recognised one of them. Claire was tall for a woman, and she moved with an economical grace that seemed almost machine-like. Her hair, a lush pink, was tied up into a bun, and her blue eyes seemed to take in the whole hangar at once. Alongside her were a blond man and a red-haired man with fox ears. Not for the first time, she wondered if the people with fox ears were a different species or perhaps an allied race.

“Good evening, commander.” Claire stopped in front of them, her gaze flicking to the others. “I hope the trip here was not uncomfortable.”

“It was… quick.” Jane settled for that. “It’s a pleasure to be here.” She nodded to the others in turn. “These are members of my crew. Dr Liara T’Soni, Garrus Vakarian, Miranda Lawson, and Mordin Solus.”

Claire acknowledged the introductions with a curt nod. “My associates, Jihm Nabaat and Professor Helios Dia-Farron.” She gestured with one. “Shall we proceed? We have a conference room prepared, as well as refreshments.” She smiled faintly. “We can take a little tour along the way too. I’m sure you must be curious.”

“That would be fine.”

[anxiously-articulated-art]

It’s been awhile...

I float between jotting my thoughts down in a journal and clicking key strokes here on this digital blog/journal I’ve created. Honestly depends on my mood. Today was a doozy. I woke up happy, smiling at the day with it smiling right back at me. So many beautiful people surrounded me with love and positivity. And then I decided to ruin all of that by looking. And when I looked at the profile, I saw my photo. Headline and center. My artwork is almost like a gateway into knowing how I view an individual. And my god is my work of her absolutely stunning. Probably the best work I’ve ever done. But I can’t look at it without a deep thundering ache that resonates in my soul. I haven’t been able to pick up my camera since. I don’t understand. She wanted a new life, a different life. One without me in it. And she made that very clear. Yet my name and my beautiful art is plastered everywhere on her social media. She has barely posted any photos of her new life, yet continues to post the photos from the memories we created together. She even reached out regarding my message to be cautious concerning past events only because I didn’t want anything legal to come of it. Still radio silence on my end. I can’t bring myself to have a conversation with her because I fear that I am still angry inside. Still broken. And with this distance. This silence. It is what is holding me together. I’ve been alone with my haunting thoughts. No one to distract me mentally or physically. No one too divulge into. No one to saturate myself with. I’ve had to face this deep aching pain by myself. And learn to keep a level head. And learn to forgive and let go. Some of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do because I still struggle with those same tasks, I know I could never trust her again. At least that’s what my brain and heart are telling me. But I know I still have love for her in my heart that she doesn’t deserve. My friend pulled me aside at the beach one day and told me that it is okay to love someone till the day you die even if they aren’t good for you. Even if they hurt you. And that with that love existing, you are allowed to love others beyond measure. It’s okay to love myself enough to take that broken love and gently place it in a box at the back of my mind where it cannot be disturbed or release. The dreams are constant about her. I think apart of me hopes she realized she made a mistake. Realizes that our love was infinite. Difficult because of our need for growth, but infinite nonetheless. That achy love part of my heart just wants to hold her and Lincoln in my arms again, holding them tight as if it were the last time I’d get to hold my little family again. Then the other part of me, the broken side- angry and distant. Emotionally closed off, wants her to come crawling back just so I can say no and see the pain in her eyes, the same pain she caused me. That’s the angry irrational side of me. But truth be told, I don’t know what I would say or do if I saw her and was put in a position where I had no choice but to speak with her and acknowledge her presence. I guess my response would entirely depend on her intentions. Would she be speaking with me just to find a way to keep a toe in my life. So she could keep tabs on me and try to side burner me again when her hot flames die down. Or would she be apologetic- just wanting to clean up the mess we created. Or apologetic enough to ask for a “Do Over”. Or better yet, to just be angry with me and continue telling me how worthless I am:

 ”Logan, you would be nothing without me.”

“I’m a lesbian I’m not sure if I could date someone who is transgender.”

“I never even wanted to be with you! I never even wanted to go down on you.”

Now I know it takes 2 to tango in a relationship. And I’ll admit, I was not the perfect boyfriend. But god dammit, I was trying so hard to be perfect for her. Everything she needed. I tried to take care of the daily things, the adult errands to ease her work load. Since her and I both suffer from significant mental illnesses. And I took on employment that I didn’t know if my head space was ready for. I was dealing with being newly sober from drugs, without professional help. And no one really understands why addiction is such a difficult thing to deal with. The drugs are always at the forefront of your brain.

Do you need to get high?

Can you handle this without getting high?

Is there anything close by I can sneak a high from?

If I just curb it this one time, I won’t totally relapse. 

And then the relapse hits and I will use whatever money or belongings of value around me just to get the next hit. It doesn't matter who I hurt at that point. As long as I got my fix. It becomes a cataclysmic downward spiral. And I didn’t want to be that man again. She is the reason I was able to break that cycle in the first place. She is the reason for the first time in my life I wanted to get clean. Because I never wanted her to question her place in my life. That she would always be #1 right next to Lincoln. 

So there was that at the forefront of my brain, day in and day out. And with the pressure of NEEDING to make at LEAST 80k from my first year at this job, unearthed years of anxiety that i didn’t know existed. Anxiety was very new to me and I had no contingency plan in place to handle that unearthing. I wasn’t even sure I totally recognized it let alone what triggers it or how to deal with it. Any time I saw prices or dollar signs, my mind would just lose it and go into a perpetual spiral of “you will never be able to afford to date her. You will never be able to financially afford to marry her. Or raise kids with her. just give up now.”And with the insurmountable amount of love I have for her, those thoughts tormented me to suicidal tendencies that she never knew I had, and probably to this day has no clue I had them/sometimes still do. The amount of times I almost didn’t come home from work because I would rather slam my car into a median at 80+mph with no seatbelt, in hopes I would be ejected from the vehicle and end up impaled on steel pole where i die upon impact....I had the plan down perfectly every time. But what stopped me from doing it, are the texts she sent me telling me how much she was struggling and needed me. And my god I love her so much that I needed to be home to take care of her. I needed to make sure she was okay. 

But my love didn’t fill her the same way her love filled me. She still needed something more. Something that I couldn’t give. I could say it was because I was transgender or it was because of the money, but the truth is- I will never know.

If I could go back and do things differently, what would I change? I’m not sure that there is any specific moment or action I could have changed that would have prevented the demise of our relationship. I do know I would have advocated for myself more. Made more time for therapy so I could genuinely work on my flaws with depth and dedication. I didn’t want any of my anger to transpire into that relationship. I didn’t want any of my short comings or failures to infect the precious love I have for her. Maybe I would have held her in my arms more. Not that it would have saved our relationship but just so I had a more permanent feeling of her embrace to remember. I would have asked her to sing more because her voice did nothing but calm my chaotic soul. I would have tried to make her laugh more because Jesus Christ her laugh was the best sound in this world. I would have focused on myself more, making myself more of a rock; sturdy and strong for her to hold on too while she figured out life. I would have wanted to get my issues sorted out so she wouldn't have to battle those with me. 

Take the cheating away. Take the horrible things she said away. And honestly I would have never walked away. I would have continued to fight for her and love her. I didn’t care about the things that consumed her mind and soul. Borderline Personality disorder? Alright baby we got this. Let’s do this. It would have never changed my love for her, in fact I would have loved her harder. And I think that’s why I still love her. She could gain 200lbs and be batshit fucking crazy and I still would have gone to the ends of the earth for her. I would have figured out a way to give her that life she was looking for. But I needed more than just a year. I needed more time. And most of all I really needed her support. I really needed her to believe in me. Because fuck I believed in her. I still do. But here I am, over 1000 miles away from my “would have been family”. Thinking about them. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. And I want nothing more than the last year to not have existed. Because then her and I would be right back to when things were good. When we would just gaze at each other with the cheesiest grins and heartfelt giggles. When the kisses were soft, loving and passionate. When all I wanted to do was take pictures of her. Look into her eyes. Hold her hand, kiss her forehead and hear her heart beat. I would give anything to get those moments back.

But here now in the future, things were said and things were done that incinerated bridges. That I’m not sure that even purest of apologies or forgiveness could fix. But god if they could be fixed I would catapult myself across that broken bridge just to hold her and love her again. And the kicker to all of this is, I haven’t a single clue if she ever really loved me. The same love that still makes my heart ache today- months later, miles away. I have no clue what I truly and honestly meant to her. I know I need to let go and I promise I will. I already have let go quite a bit. It’s been radio silence on my end. She would have to physically show up here on my door step to get an answer from me. 

I just need to learn how to lock this part of my life away. Because at least for right now, what I am feeling in this very moment. I’m always going to love her with every fiber of my being and soul. And it will probably be like that for a very, very long time. And I need to remind myself that it’s okay to still love and mourn the loss of my “would be family”. So I can allow myself to make room for new more fulfilling love. And this is where I need to love myself enough to know that right now in this life time, her and I were never meant to be regardless of how hard the universe tried pulling us together. She made that clear, 

RIP:

L+D+L+R+H

The would be Bakers

[itsfinancethings]

On the cusp of Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial in January, Val Demings went to dinner at a Washington seafood joint, the Salt Line, with her colleague Hakeem Jeffries. The two Representatives had recently been chosen, with five other House Democrats, to present the case to remove the President from office–the first two Black presidential impeachment managers in American history. As they discussed the weight of the role, Jeffries, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, made a prediction. “When this is all said and done,” he told Demings, “you’re going to be on the short list for Vice President.”

“Get out of here,” Demings said.

“I just have that feeling, Val,” Jeffries insisted. “The world is getting ready to see what we here in Congress already know about who you are.”

Jeffries was right. This summer, Demings, 63, has shot up the list of candidates to be Joe Biden’s running mate. Her rise began with the impeachment trial, where she turned complicated arguments about Trump’s conduct into straightforward language. It has accelerated in recent weeks amid the nationwide racial-justice protests following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. As Biden faces pressure to add a woman of color to the ticket, and to repel Trump’s claims that he’s soft on crime, Demings may be a match for the moment: a Black woman from the battleground of Florida who capped a 27-year career in law enforcement by becoming Orlando’s first woman police chief in 2007. In one USA Today/Suffolk poll conducted at the end of June, 72% of Democrats said it was important to them that Biden choose a woman of color.

Biden has confirmed that Demings is among nearly a dozen women on his list. But her candidacy faces challenges as well. Biden, 77, has said he’s looking for a running mate who is “ready to be President on Day One.” Demings is only in her second term representing Florida’s 10th District, a short political résumé for national office. And to some of the Black voters whom Biden is counting on in November, her career in law enforcement is not an asset. Demings was “a leader within an institution that is inherently violent, racist, patriarchal and protective of capitalism,” says Charlene Carruthers, an organizer in Illinois with the Movement for Black Lives. “It’s not simply enough to have someone who looks like me as the vice-presidential nominee. I’m interested in someone who shares my values and is aligned with our vision.”

Joe Burbank—Orlando SentinelDemings at the scene of a mass shooting in Orlando’s Gateway Center in 2009

Demings rejects the proposition that her record in law enforcement might be a liability in this political climate. “I have no regrets about the career paths that I’ve taken,” she says from her Washington apartment in a June 25 interview with TIME. But her chances to become Vice President rest in part on whether Demings–and Democrats–can reconcile her identity as a former cop with that of a Black woman in a country where Black people have the most to fear from police. Some on the left see her as a symptom of the problem, not a beacon of progress. This raises some hard questions for Americans. How much should we expect our politicians to account for injustices that are bigger than any one person? Is it fair to ask public servants how their own experiences with racism or sexism guide their approach to fighting such forces stacked against them? And are those who have found success within existing structures an extension of systemic failure or the ones best equipped to fix them?

When Valdez Venita Demings was tapped as Orlando’s police chief in 2007, the announcement reached officers in the department by pager. She was the first woman to hold the role, and kudos poured in–flowers, phone calls, emails. But it didn’t take long for Demings to notice something odd: Congratulations, well-wishers would say. You know that’s a big job.

It was. But no bigger than it had been under the seven male chiefs Demings served under before taking the position. None had been challenged on whether they could do it. The implicit sexism wasn’t a surprise: as she climbed the ladder in the department, she recalls being quizzed on policy by subordinates to see if she knew what she was doing. “When you are a woman and a Black woman,” Demings says, “when you walk into the room, unfortunately, men and women sometimes determine what they think you are capable of.”

Demings was born in Jacksonville, Fla., one of seven children crammed into a two-room house. By age 4, she’d been called racial slurs. Her mother was a maid; her father worked as a janitor, and mowed lawns and picked oranges on the side. Sometimes he had to ask his employers for advance pay to foot the bill for his children’s class trips. Demings took her first job as a dishwasher at 14, and later became the first in her family to graduate from college.

Her first career was as a social worker, working with foster children. In 1983, she left Jacksonville for Orlando, where she joined the police force as a way to save money for law school. But she stayed, drawn to a job where she believed she could help people who needed it. “Every job that she did, every position that she held, she did it with finesse, she did it completely,” says Renita Osselyn, a retired Orlando Police Department (OPD) school resource officer and close friend of Demings’. In 1984, when Demings was a first-year officer and he was a detective, she met her husband, Jerry Demings, who is now the mayor of Orange County, Florida, which contains Orlando.

When Demings became chief, Orlando’s crime rate was at an all-time high, the Great Recession was just around the corner, and the Black Lives Matter movement was still several years away. She set to applying her social-work background to her new role, creating a community initiative, Operation Positive Direction, that paired at-risk youth with mentors. The department also partnered with GED programs, sending officers to homes to check on those who had missed class. Demings says she imposed an early-warning system in 2008 that triggered reviews of officers who showed patterns like those of force, absence and citizen complaints. She says that she saw arrests as short-term solutions and preferred instead to address the root issues that cause “decay” in communities. She boasts of reducing the crime rate in Orlando 40% during her tenure.

At work, Demings was known as a good communicator. Terrell Fawbush, a retired officer, says that when two of Fawbush’s children and a niece died in a car accident in 1995, Demings, then a lieutenant, served as a department liaison to help her through the tragedy. Demings did everything from driving Fawbush to the funeral home to making sure her family had meals figured out. “She knew what was best for me to keep me going,” Fawbush says.

Asked if she regrets anything about her time in law enforcement, Demings says she wishes she could have done more. “Could I have saved one more life? Could I have saved one more officer’s career? Could I have protected someone in the community more? Of course, I would never say I was perfect.”

It’s a careful answer, similar to a job applicant saying their greatest weakness is trying too hard or caring too much. But it’s difficult to imagine she does not have specific regrets. Like the time she left her vehicle unlocked and had her department-issued firearm stolen. Or the 2010 incident in which an officer, Travis Lamont, broke the neck of an 84-year-old veteran, Daniel Daley, while performing a “dynamic takedown,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. At the time, Demings, who left her post as chief in 2011, found the technique to be “within department guidelines” but ordered a review of the policy. Daley was awarded $880,000 by a federal jury. Demings says that as a result of the ensuing policy review, the department modified its policies “to require the engagement of second officer to more effectively manage individuals during disturbance calls.”

The Daley incident was highlighted in a 2015 Sentinel investigation that found the OPD used force more than twice as often as other similar-size agencies. Most of the time period covered by the report was after Demings left the OPD. But critics say that as chief Demings failed to address the department’s cultural problems. “Val Demings is part of the establishment here in central Florida,” says Lawanna Gelzer, a community activist in Orlando. Asked whether the OPD has systematic failures when it comes to use of force, Demings demurs, saying that “every agency has a responsibility to always look within itself and try to improve.”

Shortly after retiring in 2011, Demings set her sights on politics. She ran for Congress in a Republican-leaning district in 2012, coming within 4 points of the GOP incumbent. In 2016, she ran again, in a redrawn district that favored Democrats, and won.

In January, Demings was the only nonlawyer among the team of impeachment managers. Trial days ran late, after which the managers received packets they needed to be ready to discuss by early morning. Demings was battling bronchitis. But she made a mark. At one meeting, recalls Ashley Etienne, an adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, several of the lawmakers were discussing the day’s material. Demings interrupted. “I just think it’s really simple,” she said. “It’s right vs. wrong. And what the President did is wrong.”

In early May, weeks after he’d committed to picking a woman for the role, Biden told a Florida television station that Demings was one of “close to a dozen really qualified and talented women who are on the list” of potential running mates. Perhaps the biggest question for Biden’s team is whether Demings’ record in law enforcement is a boon or a burden in this political environment. She has responded to the protests by saying that if she was still an officer, she would be out taking a knee with protesters, and wrote a Washington Post op-ed asking her “brothers and sisters in blue: What in the hell are you doing?” She has called for reviews of law-enforcement hiring policies and police training standards.

“If the argument is going to be she’s not Black, she’s blue, then God help us all,” says John Morgan, a Florida attorney, Democratic donor and longtime Demings backer. “I don’t know where it ends.” But progressives point to her 2018 support for the Protect and Serve Act, which makes it a federal crime to knowingly assault law-enforcement officers, as a troubling sign. She’s not the only Democrat who’s come under scrutiny for her record in law enforcement. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a former Minnesota prosecutor, dropped out of the vice-presidential running after Floyd’s death in response to criticism of her record. Progressives have challenged Senator Kamala Harris over her criminal-justice record.

Biden has cast himself as a transitional figure, someone grooming the next generation of Democratic leaders. Whomever he picks as a running mate could be a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination as early as 2024. For Demings, that would be a meteoric rise. In our interview, I asked her whether she would be prepared to become President. “I’ve chosen tough jobs in my lifetime,” Demings says. “Regardless of where this path takes me, just as I’ve been ready before, I’m sure I’ll be ready again.”

–With reporting by MOLLY BALL and JULIA ZORTHIAN

[ecotone99]

Humor [HM] Fantasy [FN] Chapter 3 - Bards, Shrooms, and Zombies Cadorna Keep - A Dnd GameLit

One of the two great doors of the gateway hung broken and tired at a possibly impossible angle. The other lay more certainly upon the ground, straggly grass curling up and over its edges in a grasping and wispy grab for sunlight. The place was in rough shape.

Ya know, Yenrab thought, shading his eyes from the glare of the overhead sun, it doesn’t look that dangerous. It just looks sad . . . and in need of a fix up!

They all stood clustered about the opening in a mob with Bern Sandros watching the right flank and Wex monitoring the left as Yenrab sheltered the spell casters Tracy and Carric in the center. They all stood in awe, mouths open and drooling.

An open air dungeon! Yenrab enthused, trying to put a positive spin on his earlier thoughts. No cobwebs, no goblin zombie lords or skullator gem monsters under tons of rock and dirt. Just a brisk jaunt through a disaster 20 years passed. We don’t need that stupid fireball spell. We’ve got this and then some!

The rest of the party EoTtHUaARB must have come to a similar conclusion because they oohed and aahed along with him at the adventure complex before them. They oohed because it lay completely deserted, filled with old and uninhabited buildings strewn throughout and peppered by thin reedy stalks of grass. They aahed because each and every one of them imagined individual specific treasures within each of those buildings, somehow ungotten by that legendary adventuring troupe, SOG. Then they shivered because the wind blew mournfully as if sad about the place’s tragic past. A shutter banged on warped hinges, turning smiles to frowns and giving the place a bit more character than any of them wanted it to have.

Yenrab stared daggers at Tracy as his emotional arc finished its rollercoaster course. He was back to feeling a mite grumpy about the needless waste of powerful magic.

“Tracy, ya know, we might well have needed that spell,” he nagged to the unlistening hippy from Freemeet. “I’m pretty certain the SOG didn’t all get lost. It’s not a big island.”

Tracy looked about, his goatee a blowing a little in the wind. He threw out his arms in an exaggerated gesture and scrunched his face in tremendous confusion.

“You hear anything?” Tracy yelled to no one in particular. “Because I sure don’t. I’ve got this thing, this curse, where I can’t hear nags or even recognize that they are there.”

Bern watched on with a small half grin playing at his lips. From the other flank of the group Wex snorted and then laughed, enjoying Yenrab’s discomfort.

The big half-orc sighed. Jerks he thought fondly, thinking over all they had already been through together.

“Well, someone tell Tracy to be careful anyways. We need to keep tactical,” Yenrab announced to them all, authority surrounding him. Then he paused and looked off for a bit. “Pillion isn’t around anymore to show us the ropes and, ya know, you all made me captain so let me captain us. Tracy stay in the middle, Carric move to the rear, Wex stay left, Bern stay right, I’m gonna stay as the front. Let’s move together and everyone keep a look out. Someone tell Tracy to tell someone to tell me since he can’t hear or even recognize that I’m here.”

“Maybe someone should tell someone to tell that nag that I can’t heat that maybe he needs to apologize?” Tracy stated to the sky, stroking his goatee in philosophical thought.

“Mates, maybe I should sneak around a bit and see what I can see?” Bern Sandros asked, a greedy glint in his eye.

“And deal with some accidentally summoned monster or demon for our troubles? Again?!” Carric laughed. “Once is enough of that, good sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. I work for a living,” Bern retorted.

“Power to the people!” Tracy agreed.

Doesn’t that power to the people stuff ever get old the Gamer Chief asked at some celestial table far away. Never replied the Gamers with a laugh.

“Look,” Carric said, his face now serious, “this place is strange and I don’t believe for one second that it is empty. Let’s listen to Yenrab and stay together. My bard powers work better with a group anyways. Maybe you can do sneaky rogue stuff when we get to the actual keep up ahead.”

He pointed to the far end of the complex. There the keep stood solid despite its age, grey stones with grey mortar for the gaps, nary a crack in sight. Only its gates looked warped and bowed, but they stood closed and were perhaps stout. It was hard to tell from this distance.

“Ag, man. Shame. Alright mate. I guess I can hold my horses til then,” Bern Sandros agreed. “We stay tight for some bliksem then I sneak when we get close. Got it.”

“Rattle ya dags, bro!” Wex stated, looking back behind them, where the plant life was slowly meandering over to where they stood. “Else we’re gonna cark it.”

“Um, right?” Carric agreed. The common tongue his friends used was sometimes quite foreign to him. But he thought he understood the context. “Let’s move on and let those plants lose interest then, shall we?”

With Yenrab in the lead the five of them headed forward, all tense and at the ready. Ahead the gloomy and fire blackened yet sturdy barracks houses of the immediate garrison hung dark and gritty, their very visage a warning to would be seekers of fortune. The shutters clacked again against their sides in the freshening gust of lake born wind.

“Maybe Bern really should go ahead and scout things out,” Wex suggested with a mask-hidden grin.

“Sard-off mate,” Bern chuckled. “If you thought it’d be safe you’d volunteer yourself off next to me.”

Carric smiled, “Sounds like neither of you has the guts to go forward.”

“Ya know, if I were mocked by a bard,” Yenrab nodded, to Carric’s drooping face, “I’d feel the need to push ahead and prove myself.”

A staccato of more distinct Gamer voices blasted into hearing. The party members winced.

That’s cruel, man.

Nah, that’s realistic. Bards suck.

You suck.

Your mo-

Guys stop it. Look, how about Carric goes forward and shows us what guts really are.

Okay, I guess I will!

“I, uh, I feel like I should have a bit more choice in this matter,” Carric protested to no one in particular. “But I guess it’s my turn in the forefront.”

“Carric! Carric!” Tracy cheered on in support. The bard gave him a panicked shush and hurried himself forward to get it all done with.

***

Carric stealthed ahead as well as he could. He couldn’t hear his own steps, so that was probably a good thing. The wind gusted again, briefly, as if in response to his brave foray forward.

This is not good. Not good not good not good he thought to himself in fright. He looked back at the party, growing a bit smaller as they got more distant. Tracy danced and waved.

He was next to the first of the two military structures. They weren’t that big, really, but he imagined that soldiers were like clowns in that they could all pile into those tiny enclosed carts in impossibly compact knots of people encompassing a hundred or so individuals. He certainly wasn’t looking forward to clacking a shutter fully open against the walls and poking his head in.

The bard took a quick stroll around the building, giving himself a quiet sigh as a gift for such bravery. Then, again in the eyes of the party, he fully opened one of the shuttered window apertures and peered inside.

The interior was filled with broken and splintered wood, the remains of the bunks and chests of the original defenders. They were indeed stacked together quite tight, perhaps capable of holding thirty defenders? It was hard to tell, though, because the place looked well smashed up and looted.

The bard looked back and yelled out to them.

“It’s well clear you bunch of yellow-bellied chickens. You are welcome.”

Yenrab started laughing, striding ahead in eager pace. There was some distant muttering, and also the loud cheering of Tracy, as they all moved forward.

That’ll teach them to besmirch my honor he chuckled to himself. Shown up and mocked by a bard?! How pathetic!

***

The party checked out both of the barracks buildings from the outside quite thoroughly before readying themselves for the interior. Whether it was the shame of being shown up by a bard or perhaps a lack of things to say nobody could tell you, but Wex and Bern kept their mouths shut through the whole process. It wasn’t until they were standing before the actual door to one of the structures that Bern, the noisier of the two, finally spoke.

“I’ve checked it this way and that, mates. Free from traps, good as platinum in my pocket. If there is anything dangerous here, it is going to be spooky and not at all in my department of things to deal with.”

Yenrab stretched and Carric swung his harmonica bar across his face, its burnished surface catching in the sun for a momentary bit of glare. Next to him Tracy rolled his hands in slow purpose around a dim and pulsing ball of flame. It was a definite zeroth level cantrip but something probably useful against all manner of spooky things.

“Well I guess now might be a good time for us to go in then?” the barbarian asked them all, looking back and forth between those on either flank.

Tracy shimmered by in rainbow-glittered robes, taking an advantageous angle. “Let’s do this,” the sorcerer grinned, glowing orb pulsating more brightly, possibly leveled up from its earlier state.

“Right. Yeah, ya know, I think I’d like it better if this place were full of zombies,” the big man complained in response. He reached one meaty hamlike hand forward though despite his reluctance and threw open the door. But there was nothing.

“Bro,” Wex whispered, “this is spooky.”

Then he found himself stumbling into the room, shoved by some unseen force. He looked back in panic and saw Bern Sandros stifling a laugh. The glee of the merry man was infectious and Wex smiled back while digging about quickly and thoroughly for hidden treasures. The rest swarmed in to do the same.

“I found a button,” Tracy called out in glee.

“Yuck,” Carric called out, holding a moldering scrap of soiled underpants.

“Well that’s enough of that,” Yenrab affirmed, waving everyone out. “We’ve still got a whole keep to search.”

***

The buildings closest to them were the stout and stone castle-like kitchen, some lanky and disused stables, and what looked to be the remains of a silo, one that must have been quite tall a few decades ago. At present, what was left of it was stunted, the majority of it having collapsed during the battle for the keep or soon after. It was at a distance but they could see that the silo was bereft of anything but a field of large mushrooms, growing through bare earth and out of the cracks of broken rubble.

“Jol!” “Mean as!” “Sweet!” the bard, the rogue, and the cleric all yelled at the same time, then laughed, making a beeline for the silo.

“Oh no,” Yenrab moaned, shaking his head slowly as the party hunched over their find, daggers in hand, ready to prune. “Not again,” he added, giving a bit of mystery to the interested reader as he or she or they hunched over the flickering light of their dying kindle, or the stout pages of the published novel.

Tracy eyed them over, the Gamer rolling enthusiastically as he tried to figure out what it was. The 20 sided die clicked and rolled off of the cosmic table.

“Noni Moss,” Tracy said, a 13 blazing in his mind’s eye. “Not a real moss, but one in name. Eating it makes you a bit wiser and have a good taste in novels for a while, but it’s not gonna get you all high.”

“Are you being straight up?” Wex asked, his eyes suddenly empty of their former joviality. “Brah, I really thought we had something here.”

“No worries, mate, this stuff here sounds good regardless,” Bern opined, to Yenrab’s nodding approval.

“Yeah, I bet we can sell it big at some market somewhere and use that money to get the good stuff,” Carric laughed, making the barbarian frown all over again.

The big guy didn’t stop them though from gathering all they could, stuffing one small travel pack and then the other full of the delicious-looking fungi. He too could hear the clink of gold coins in his head as the useful fungus was bottled, bagged, or otherwise stored.

Indeed, so absorbed were the party in the collection and perusal of the task at hand that they didn’t realize it when the ground behind them tore open, silent and deadly. Nor did they hear the click of bones and the rasp of dead flesh as zombies and skeleton crawled on out to do battle. They only realized their danger when Carric screamed, punched in the back of the head by a skeletal fist. He stumbled, but he did not fall.

Roll initiative! a distant voice called in their heads.

“To arms!” Yenrab yelled, fumbling with his axe straps in surprise.

Chapter 1 = https://www.reddit.com/r/shortstories/comments/edngy6/humor_hm_fantasy_fn_cadorna_keep_chapter_1_a_dnd/

Chapter 2 = https://www.reddit.com/r/shortstories/comments/eecc7d/humor_hm_fantasy_fn_cadorna_keep_chapter_2_a_dnd/

submitted by /u/damienleehanson [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2MHs1LX

[travelxbritt-blog]

7 WAYS THE BELLEVILLE THREE CHANGED THE MUSIC SCENE FOR E-V-E-R

THE MUSIC SCENE FOR E-V-E-R

Have you ever heard of Detroit ? The motor city? You’ve probably heard about the city’s tough economic circumstances with the American automobile industry. Now have you heard of The Belleville three? Regardless of the fact that Detroit has so much complicated history, it is a very special and noble place in the music world.

3 men from Detroit by the names of Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Derrick May form the Belleville three. Not only was it groundbreaking what the Belleville three did and continues to do, it was also monumental in the music scene.

From the mid to late 80’s, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, and Derrick May changed the game of techno music forever. From the US to European dance floors, the Belleville three opened doors for the next generations to come in the music world. They put techno on the map, giving it a voice, and a very important introduction to the world.

So where does the name Belleville three even come from? All three of them grew up and went to highschool together in Belleville, Michigan. That name to identify them has stuck around to this day.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF TECHNO

Being that i’ve personally gone to Detroit twice, I’m a bit familiar with the birthplace and history of techno. However, there is always room to learn. Prior to going to La Riviera in Madrid last Friday to see them perform, I watched this documentary named “Hi Tech Soul.” Instantly I thought I have to put this on people’s radar as this is a great documentary to really learn how all of this magic started. You can even tell it’s such a raw documentary from 2006 by the quality. It’s main thing is about the message, not the imagery. I love and always appreciate rawness and authenticity!

Undoubtedly, there are infinite reasons we can say these 3 legends changed the music scene forever, but here are 7 things we absolutely have to shine light and give them huge credit to.

1. CREATING A NAME AND IDENTIFYING THE GENRE

Juan Atkins gave the name of the music genre Techno. Why this is SUCH a key factor is because before he named it techno, nobody was identifying this music as “techno.” Techno music goes way back but it’s musical identity started with Mr. Atkins. Originally Juan wanted to name his first compilation of their early music “the house sound of detroit.” Yet the first track Juan submitted within his music network was named “Techno Music.” After getting feedback from Virgin UK hearing the compilation, they changed the compilation’s name to “Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit.” Europe took a major role in this album’s success as the track “Big Fun” by Inner City (Kevin Saunderson and Shanna Jackson) went number one in the UK.

The Belleville three states to have inspirations from Kraftwerk, Soul Sonic force, and Giorgio Moroder to name a few. Though techno is still an incredibly young music genre, we can thank The Belleville three and everyone who came after for giving this music genre SO much light and giving it the exposure it needed from the mid to late 80’s. Furthermore, they gave it a name and a genre to become something unique.

BIG FUN youtube link -  https://youtu.be/Gr-zG-IXDyo

2. THE BELLEVILLE THREE MADE A NEGATIVE SITUATION INTO A POSITIVE ONE -

Detroit has been a tough and unstable city since back in the day. Though Detroit still struggles today, the Belleville three was able to make music and bring positive attention to Detroit. This is remarkable because who in the 80’s would really think to create something so unique during such a complicated economic crisis? Those old abandoned warehouses came to use when they were looking for venues. It brings so much history into the picture when your throwing parties at an old, abandoned, factory. It combines techno, a brand new sound, with the raw industrial history of Detroit and America.

The complications of this era really shines light on how creative and innovative The Belleville three and other Detroit artists were at the time. They came together and created something sustainable for themselves. Instead of just hoping Detroit’s abandoned buildings would occupy, they formed musical experiences and parties in these abandoned warehouses for people to come together to bond over this music.

If you ever get to visit Detroit, you will definitely experience this grungy, rawness, that there is to the city. When I went for Movement all the venues for the fiestas almost look haunted. It looks so old and historical, like the venue itself has so much to say. Throw some good music in there and it’s one hell of an experience back in time. When my friends and I went to check out Moody Man, it was almost in a secret place. It was in the basement warehouse of a jazz club and a restaurant. Something you would never guess nor combine if you were to look at the place. If you really pay attention, Detroit overall is a very unique and quirky city that looks like it’s almost completely abandoned outside of the city center.

3. THERE WAS A GOAL TO MAKE TECHNO MAINSTREAM

This was not only for economic or personal reasons. The Belleville three mixed and experimented with multiple different types of sounds and mixed it into a unique one to put it on the map. This wasn’t for them to only gain an income, this was because they really genuinely wanted the music to get exposed. It was their goal for people to experience new music. They wanted people to listen and for it to become something else other than underground and grungy. Derrick specifically really wanted it to be extremely accessible to his audience.

The Belleville three has done a great job at bringing techno music into society. The music is taking itself to its next level with the second wave of Detroit and all the artists that came after and are still up and coming. Being so passionate and supportive to each other about growing is inevitably a contributor to their success. This was a big moment for the Techno movement as they were able to strategize and network with the right people eventually.

Neil Rushton reached out to Derrick May and it was all uphill from there. Once Derrick met Neil Rushton (former British dj and reporter), a lot of doors opened for the Belleville Three and their social circle. They were individual but worked as a team so all of them privileged from meeting Neil. Once they started working with him he created a business direction. It also led to major gateway for their music to get exposed in a brand new scene, Europe. It was a home run for everyone considering, The Belleville Three had top talent and knew of other artists that were just starting out, and Neil knew where to take the music.

TAKING MUSIC AROUND THE GLOBE

They were able to take music across the world. Things blew up and blossomed quickly. One thing that is SO interesting that the documentary “Hi Tech Soul” talks about is that the music scene is so big and different in Europe compared to the US. Taking things to Europe is what actually caused a lot of success for their music. The Belleville three and other djs are considered celebrities in Europe where in the US it is possible not everyone would even recognize them. In the US, techno is so off the grid and underground that you merely cannot compare it to the music scene in Europe.

Why is techno so big in Europe and not as much in the US? I’m not sure, in my opinion I contribute this to culture just because Europe’s dance scene has been so big and established for years. Anyways, combining British and American forces, Neil and the Belleville three were able to take music across the world and make techno more mainstream.

4. BROUGHT NEW LIFE TO THE CITY

With the efforts of many people such as George Baker, Alton Miller, Frank moore, and the Belleville three DJing, they were able to create a musical experience as a party they named “The Music Institute.” They sold memberships to a lot of teenagers and other young people, and would rent out abandoned warehouses in the innercity of Detroit for these parties from 12am -6am. They contribute “The Music Institute” to bringing techno to the next level. They were extremely innovative musically, they were techno innovators.

The music was new to everyone. At a time where most clubs in Detroit were playing punk, top 40, or alternative, it rocked the nightlife seen. People loved it and it was a major success. This was home to one of the only places at the time that you could hear that kind of music, techno. It became such a success that people talked about it like wildfire even with limited promotion. Yep, that means nobody was putting money behind promoting and marketing, yet this movement was so strong that it attracted the right people and created a powerful experience for so many.  Derrick May has actually mentioned that there has never been a place he has performed like the Music Institute. This was a very simple venue that actually didn’t even sell liquor nor allowed smoking to keep police at bay. Meaning, it was always about the music.

IT WAS PURELY ABOUT THE MUSIC

These weren’t raves with fur and glow sticks with attendees who had no idea what music was playing. It was a very simple dark venue with good music and a strobe light. Simple, yet effective. There were hardcore fans. Once this ended, it was really depressing for some. People like Richie Hawtin used to go to the Music Institute. This place is super historical and monumental. I mean just think of these musicians and djs who came up listening to this music.

Where would they have gone if things like the music institute didn’t even exist back then? One other thing I find so interesting is that Richie Hawtin states in “Hi Tech Soul” that the Music Institute reminded him of Berlin and the dark European dance floors. I can definitely see the comparison as both Berlin and Detroit are super grungy cities with such a tough historical background. If you want to learn even more about the music institute, you can go here.

5. SUPPORTED EACH OTHER AND BROUGHT NEW LIFE TO THE NEXT GENERATION

Stacy pullen, Jeff Mills, Carl Craig. These people are actually each others competitors but its remarkable how they talk about the team work and the efforts to help each other in this documentary. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if anyone got greedy with success? A clear reminder how powerful things can become if we support one another.

Imagine if Juan Atkins tried doing all of this alone? That would’ve been tough! Juan Gave Derrick May the confidence to make music, he was like a mentor for everyone. Juan also got into the music scene as early as his Highschool years. His dad’s background also came from music as he was a concert promoter. He took music courses at Belleville highschool and eventually met Rick Davis at Washtenaw Community College where they created the music group Cybertron.

Some other big support systems were “ The Electrifying Mojo” who was a mysterious DJ and radio personality who wasn’t traditional. He would play all the hottest tracks on the radio. Including the Belleville Three’s and other talented artists. If it was hot it was on his station, if it was not, he wasn’t playing it, no matter the $. Which again goes back to the fact that this movement was solely for people to find out about good music. Mojo is another important aspect to this Detroit movement as he was able to really show people a lot of up and coming artist’s music.

He went against modern society and played something different even though he was targeting African Americans. He wanted people to listen to something new. Some people even contribute Mojo to a lot of how Jeff mills (used to be known as) the wizard was discovered, Mills used to play as a guest on WJLB radio.

6. KEVIN BEING MORE EXPERIMENTAL AND EXPLORING WITHIN CERTAIN GENRES HELPED HIM REACH MORE COMMERCIAL SUCCESS

All 3 of them are very successful yet Kevin definitely differentiates himself because he has the most commercial success out of them. The documentary credits it to him being experimental and that incorporating a lot of unique sounds helped him attract a much larger crowd. Derrick and Kevin got into music together. Funny story they actually had a fight before they even became the best of friends. Word on the street in the film is that Kevin knocked Derrick out. (How ironic right? Too funny!).

So what made Kevin so different? You can say the house music, the more dance music vibes, the vocals, and overall just being more experimental. It also seems like he had a bigger vision for commercial success and for a different sound. All members of The Belleville Three had a role. Kevin as the elevator, his job was to make sure everyone’s music in his circle got to the masses in other words.

With a lot of eyes on Kevin, this task was simple for him. He sold a whopping 6 million records of Inner City. In the film he states some of his influences were dance, disco, and music having a consistent pulse. His group, Inner city is also coming up with a lot of new fun things being that his son is now involved in and they are making more music. If you are interested in checking out their website, click here.  Just a heads up, there’s music automatically coming from the website so don’t get startled if you hear tunes randomly coming from your computer.

7. ALL MEMBERS OF THE BELLEVILLE THREE HAD THEIR OWN SEPARATE ROLES IN THE MUSIC’S SUCCESS.

They call Juan the originator, Kevin the elevator, and Derrick the innovator. So who was responsible for what? Juan who’s the originator – changed lives. He put all of the complicated ideas together and kept everyone on track. Him making music influenced Stacy pullen and so many others to make music. It is like a revolving circle of how all of these amazing musicians inspire one another. Juan also was the first one who wanted to really put techno music on a level for people to know what it was, somewhere it existed.

Derrick who was the innovator, knew Juan since 9th grade. They were both into the music and would have late night dance a thons. (How freaking cute!) Derrick was also the member who brought the artistic aspect to it. He wanted to make it commercial and went about that in unconventional ways with his attitude and persona which really worked.

The film also talks about Eddie Fowlkes having a big part of Techno but he for some reason seems to always get miscredited. Not sure, seems like that is up for debate for the crew’s personal reasons.

Kevin – the elevator. His role was to make sure the music got in front of people. As someone who had a bit more commercial success, he was on the radar and was able to connect these musicians to where they needed to go.

SECOND WAVE OF ARTISTS

As the first wave of Detroit Techno grew, I have to talk a little about the second wave of Detroit artists. To name a few these are Carl Craig, Jeff Mills, Underground Resistance, Richie Hawtin, Stacy Pullen, Mad Mike Banks.

There are an infinite number of artists in the second wave, i’d be here all day to write them all. Anyways, my point in naming some of these artists is that the second wave was also very important as they started to break techno up into sub genres. These artists experimented and made their own sound. Jeff mills for example, woke people up to a harder scene. Actually in the film he mentions that when he finished “Your time is up” with Mike Banks under underground resistance he went back home and his mom said it was good but it needed more bass. That’s just charming. Way to go mom! Mom’s always right. Anyways, he went back and remixed it and made a killer track!

THE TIME IS UP youtube link -  https://youtu.be/L-W6HfKZCRU

It’s remarkable to see and learn more about such talented individuals that had one goal in mind, bring people together over music and to make and expose new music. At the end of the day, It’s incredibly powerful how music connects us all. #fortheloveofmusic.

Here’s the link for Hi Tech Soul! https://youtu.be/1E7ROANO630

See you on the dance floor - XO,

Britt