#it throws everyoing far out of balance

[therewas-a-girl]

Ppl thinking oliver queen would have been better - liked/treated/his issues better respected - by fandom, if he had been a woman has me laughing at the… is it called paradox? Blatant nontruth of the statement?

Here are some easy examples of how this is not so:

Laurel lance (lol most heatedly hated character of arrow for a myriad for reasons, at least half of them sexist bullshit the other ¼ shipper bullshit; had some shit writing which is always taken as a character trait and for which SHE is blamed for; had a depression arc, is an addict, after all the times shes been kidnapped abused and beaten probably has some form of lingering effect from all the… u know… trauma + the emotional upheaval that has been her life for the last 10 years. And yet - still loathed and her issues are negated and belittled at every turn. Always misinterpreted, rarely afforded the luxury of viewer empathy; favorite fandom strawoman usually)

Sara lance (ptsd from all the fucked up shit the league put her through amd that she went through before that, which was very visible when she was on arrow. Probably dealt with some for of sexual harassment/threats of violence/violence when she was on the Amazo, which we never explicitly saw thank god. A good portion of Olicity fans dispise her cause ship reasons, same with lauriver fans. Who is the REAL black canary discourse is still going strong btw, which inevitably generates hate on either of the lance sisters side. Saras bisexuality is constantly erased or denied or treated as sth tintillating for the straight male gaze; she is slutshamed at every corner; ppl hardly can be bothered to remember that she was actually suicidal at one point, that she thought she was not worthy of love or capable of love or of being with someone - HUGE CHARACTER MOMENT HERE - when she broke up with oliver usually dismissed/forgotten cause felicity walks in the room so most of the olicity fandom - big portion of arrow fandom - 9 times out of 10 doesnt bother to remember that sara was talking about herself here)

- yes shipper tendencies matter, they shape character perceptions.

Bonus: thea queen (neglected by her mother, abused physically and emotionally by her monster father, has some serious issues with violence, probably ptsd-related avoidance for it, the mask, her old life. Has utterly detatched from a whole side of her personality and history, something that was intrinsic to her for 2 years, and yet nobody sees that as eyebrow-raising worthy for some reason cause that is what a tots normal person would do. The almost oliver-like split of the sides of her life/personality is mentione…. how many times in fandom? The metas are where? Maybe ive just missed them. Okay. Oh i almost forgot - was stabbed and just about died. But she got over that, right? Which has nothing to do with the bloodlust, by the way. Thats from the Pit. Trauma outlasts the bloodlust. And yet whenever she displays behaviour that is consistent with some kind of post-traumautic symptoms/behaviour… she is bitchy or ungrateful or whiny or being a child again. Literally do not know how to go on with this one)

Extra bonus: felicity smoak. How much felicity’s trauma was aknowleged = she has all kinds of traumatic shit happen to her, including but not limited to near-death experinces, and yet the effect this had on her is nearly nonexistent in big fandom spaces. Sunshine felicity yay! Supporting and taking care of oliver. Yay. Always the light to guide his way. Untarnished. Y. A. Y. (Feel my burning enthusiasm for this interpretation. But thats my preference and of no consequence here.) And the moment it was “officially” aknowleged that a ptsd arc would be explored with her (which is, imo, still a euphemism, or a gross misusage of this very serious illness /that they cant be bothered to portray right on a woman/) - the same ppl that say ‘olivers mental illness is disrespected cause he is male’ were all about (paraphrasing here) “olivers LONG LASTING and X YEAR LONG ptsd is as valid as felicitys NEWLY CONCOCTED/FRESHLY CREATED ptsd” …somehow managing to insult the both of them and imply that the years one lives with an illness give u a sort of precedence and ‘elder card’ in the club. ‘Empathy should go first HERE where its mooore…’ more what? I just dont know how to continue this. needed? Valid? I dont know man. I mean, by works of logic the obvious non-truth of the beginning statement of this post is encapsulated by this last example. But lets be thorough.

Look there are layers. Olivers character deals with shit writing sometimes and horrifying demonisation of his mental illness FROM THE WRITERS OF HIS OWN SHOW. And there is a shitton of ableism in fandom about him.

But if he’d been a woman… my dude… my guy… my pal…. experience shows fandom generally, not as separate ppl but as a block unit, (fandom currents? Fandom tendencies?) have *lower* empathy for women and their narratives (e.i. a lot **less** 29596k word metas about why he does the things he does, trying to explain away the writing holes would be floating around). Lower patience for their fuckups. Lower imagination for their inner lives and even lower willingness to search them out. The show itself would have a lower interest in exploring these issues, as they have shown it to be the tendency with female characters.

Oliver queen is human, he fucks up, he has a deep inner life and his trauma has far reaching shockwaves. All those are characteristics we assume him to have, as default, cause hes a WHITE MALE presented as straight. Who has to contend with bullshit ableism, sure, and fandome expectations colored by toxic masculinity, which canon doesnt even support. But he would have faaaar more prejudices to contend with if he were female. All those assumptions - of hidden logical reasons, depths, triggers etc - up there wouldnt even go halfway if hed been a woman, or not white or, god forbit, a woman of color.

(Dude can u imagine the shitstorm of slutshaming that would hit a female!oliver for sleeping with a *fraction* of the number of ppl oliver has slept with??? In canon he has always had emotional ties or reasons for sleeping with every single one of his partners whether fandom likes it or not, and STILL he is called a manwhore, as if he only thinks with his dick. Even oliver isnt afforded brains and emotions when it comes to sexual agency. It baffles me.

But im willing to bet that it would be worse if he were a woman because the reason for dumbing him down would go from ‘i want to belittle all these other relationships he has so that THIS ONE SHIP shines thru’, to straight up sexism and womens agency over their bodies and emotions. Case in point ppl were calling felicity a plethora of disgusting epithets for sleeping with ray (ONE MAN) when she was a FREE BEING WITH AN INDEPENDENT WILL tied to !!!nobody but herself!!!, just cause she didnt plant olivers name on her ladyparts from the moment she first saw him. (Lets also admit that shipper reasons are present here too but the difference is that in olivers case, his sexing up other ppl lowers olicity’s value cause hes not devoted enough and whatnot. In felicitys case, her sexing up other ppl lowers *felicity’s* ‘value’ because… do i rly need to explain why here? Hint - It ties back to the ‘pure felicity oliver’s light’ argument and the dehumanization of her character by making her the literal object of olivers salvation and therefore nullifying/ridiculing her choices if they make her path deviate from olivers.) Ppl are saying Laurel would be betraying tommys memory by loving oliver still - TOMMYS MEMORY. a man whos been dead for *four years* matters more than a live womans feelings. Just… christ…)

[scarlettlawyer]

Part 4 of my commentary of @renegadewangs‘ fanfic series Phantoms and Mirages.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Now, onto Haunted Specters! God, I love Haunted Specters.

It’s such a pivotal and crucial stepping stone. Just about all the major actors on the playing board, and in fact, the playing board itself all get rearranged in a careful balancing act that sets the scene anew.

It is, or at least it was, SUCH an incredible struggle for me to reconcile the phantom from the previous fic with the phantom we see in this one (and subsequent instalments, even) upon taking a step back, and with good reason, although for me the divide ran a little deeper, as it completely boggled my mind how this was somehow the same character being written by the same author, let alone belonging to the same fic series that somehow had a line of continuity where it made sense for these characters to end up in these situations – this situation.

I don’t merely refer to the phantom’s characterisation – what’s so great is that you can totally get away with writing him in this manner and have the audience accept it, seeing as he’s suffered a traumatic brain injury from the fall. It allows for a great amount of freedom for what direction to take the character in that would have been absent before.

No, I also refer here to (of course) the dynamic he shares with the other characters, the way he is portrayed and positioned by the narrative, and lastly, my own personal approach to reading and my feelings towards – level of investment in the character as he is in this series. As I’ve rehashed many times, I wasn’t very absorbed in or on board with this series’ version of the phantom for a lot of the previous fic when I first read it, at least until the end. But now, going into this fic, I was fully invested in especially seeing and learning what changes and impact the fall had made on him, and there was a new, thrilling level of unpredictability attached not only to the character, but to the plot itself.

By all accounts, the series so far had set me up to want to see how Blackquill and Bobby were finally going to take down the Big, Bad, Evil Phantom once and for all. How they would, against the odds, track him down and apprehend him against his will in what was bound to be an epic showdown. I was ready for that. It’s what I wanted to see. When I previously mentioned wanting – yearning for a “slightly lighter take” in my first post? That was gone now. I was ready for some pizza, at last. It’s what I had been conditioned to expect so far, so I was like, why not? I was like, heck yeah, let’s do this.

And yet, the narrative didn’t hesitate to seem to want to throw all of this out the window altogether. My expectations completely and utterly thwarted, I found myself realising I really had no idea what direction this could possibly be going in (or why my expectations had been thwarted so thoroughly like this). I well and truly had no idea what would happen next most of the time, because I couldn’t fathom where things could possibly go, and that had me hooked to reading, so eager to know what would happen next since it was such a mystery.

Rereading Chasing Phantoms as I have done for these commentary posts was helpful in truly establishing in my mind that yes, that was the same phantom, the same phantom, the same man that is present continuously within this series. That needed to be reconciled not just with regards to portrayal, but also my own misconceptions outside of that about how the story and character were constructed back then.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, so let’s start off with looking at the first few chapters.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 1

…You know, right off the bat, I know/figure this series was mostly (if not wholly) written prior to the release of SOJ, and yet. I could be wrong but it looks like all of the provided dates still seem to match up in order to make it remain fully compliant to ace attorney canon. As in, there’s nothing directly contradicting it. And if that really is the case, well that’s just pretty damn awesome all around. AA7 will surely come along in future and ruin the fun of that I’m guessing, but for the time being, you can’t tell me all of this stuff wasn’t happening in the background even as AA6 was going on. AA6 all seems to take place prior to chapter 1, anyway. God bless timeskips!

...Wait, wait, coming back to edit this much later: scrap that. Apollo’s presence throws a spanner in the works. Ah, well. We can work around that, I’m sure. I’m gonna play around with it in my mind until it fits, somehow. :P Even later edit: Oh also Gaspen.

When Simon left the office, he couldn’t quite keep the broad grin from his face, nor the light skip from his stride.

This is so cute oh gosh happy Simon!

Save it for a more appropriate time- that was what his therapist had taught him.

Oh? Oh really? Is that so? Who might that be? No one important? Oh you mean? You mean the courtroom sniper? Is that right? You mean the phantom’s future

Boyfriend?

Nah, that can’t be right. Carry on then.

Hah, don’t worry, I’m not complaining. Lang Zi says: A man who cannot keep his own affairs in order lacks the competence to be having affairs.” “… No offense, Lang-dono, but at times the suspicion dawns on me that perhaps you’re making some of these sayings up as you go.” “This coming from the man who has a thousand and one prison anecdotes to share?” Lang paused for a moment, then his voice took on a much more serious note. “Anyway, I’m not calling for idle banter.”

“Haha, yeah, good one, so anyway, there’s a good chance your boyfriend might be dead.”

Haunted Specters, Chapter 2

“No! Hold it! Mr. Butz had no reason to kill anyone!”

I WAS WONDERING IF THE DEFENDANT WAS SOMEONE WE KNEW SKNJSDNKJ

“So tell him to hold off on ordering another useless gravestone with my name on it. In fact, tell him to stop looking for me while you’re at it.”

ANOTHER- god I love how completely wack some of these characters’ lives are/have been.

“… I gave him your regards. I gave him your regards, and then some.”

Me, known phantom fangirl trash: OH GOSH IS HE OKAY???

Me, knowing full-well that Bobby would be 100% justified acting in self-defense against a known emotionless killer, therefore also with somewhat mock concern: OH BOBBY PLEASE TELL ME YOU DIDN’T HURT HIM

(Oh, but he didn’t. I needn’t have worried.)

Ah, I’ve been sitting here, wondering what I can say to this. How his assessment is completely aligned with reader expectations and further sets them up only to be subverted, how far off his guesses are… I just… “even the tiniest glimpse of him” they’re… they’re sharing an apartment… Yeah. We’ll get there. I couldn’t find an appropriate reaction image to the above block of text, really.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 3

Okay this is extremely pernickety, and I apologise, but…

And, mind you, I usually pay no attention whatsoever to these things, and it honest to goodness makes no difference at all in the end – if the narrative says it’s Tuesday, then it’s Tuesday. Simple as that. I merely looked it up out of curiosity and because I’ve annoyingly taken it upon myself to micro-analyse everything in this fanfiction series like a little pest. I also kinda figured because you are picking out the dates and actively calling attention to the day of the week, that you would have some kind of system that you are sticking to for it (and the vast majority of details added into your fic was done so meticulously). And maybe Google is off on the calculation and you got it right, heh. But yeah, I definitely paid no real mind to this at all when reading it the first time around.

But then… Even if Fulbright was now avoiding help from the people close to him, that didn’t mean there weren’t any people close to him. Similarly, the Phantom could never quite work alone.

Okay, okay. I know this is a direct lead-in to re-introducing Domestique into the mix, but… oh my gosh. You really just went right ahead and… Hm! The phantom can never quite work alone. He is working with Bobby right now, as a matter of speaking.

Also. I really like Domestique’s dialogue when he’s forced to face Simon, gosh. Just so unabashedly in-your-face, so dotted with swears, it’s kinda great, really.

I ESPECIALLY LOVE THIS LINE FROM HIM:

Because honest-to-goodness, it’s kinda funny how direct it is (and the “THAT’S TWO DIFFERENT COUNTRIES” asdgd), but also rings really true in a “this is exactly what someone like this would say in this situation” way – exactly how they’d phrase it.

…

Oh, I love. This meeting between Bobby and the phantom at the end of the chapter. It’s – aaah. Very good. With the way it’s set out, you’re somewhat kinda like, oh, huh, is it really him though? Could it really be him? But the narrative goes right ahead and keeps dropping explicit hints. It still doesn’t outright confirm it, leaving the slightest hint of plausible deniability that perhaps this is a New Character we’re being introduced to, but… :D

Haunted Specters, Chapter 4

Even the revelation that the Chief Prosecutor had helped uncover a mole who’d been hiding right by Lang’s side was a story that’d spread through hearsay only.

Second reference to the Her 👀 (yes, I’ve been paying attention to that on this readthrough).

“Coupons. Ambassador Palaeno sends me a considerable package of these things every year, yet I find no use for them. They’re redeemable only in Cohdopia itself, so I’m sure you see my problem.”

Bro. Bro you keep making vague references to characters only for them to actually become super important and plot-relevant later on. I’m blindsided every time.

Me, reading this for the first time: Haha nice reference to a minor ace attorney character, yes, Edgey would totally still receive coupons from him. I can see that. He’s totally unrelated to this story though.

Me later: THIS SUCKER WAS ALREADY BEING REFERENCED AT THE BEGINNING OF FIC 2.

The Chief Prosecutor received gifts from the Cohdopian ambassador? Honestly, everyone was intertwined in one way or the other, weren’t they?

Good work. This is very true of the ace attorney universe and it’s cool that Simon takes note of it here like this. But it’s also very true of this fic series as well, helping reiterate that fact. Oh, Simon, you don’t even know yet how intertwined everyone even is…

You set the scene so well upon Simon arriving in Cohdopia. Really depict the atmosphere and everything super well!

So then, Simon arrives at the address, and he finds… Bobby? And it’s like, wait, wasn’t that supposed to be the phantom’s address? Why’s Bobby here? Aint that hugely coincidental…? How did Bobby find… Well, he did cross paths with the phantom, so I guess he also managed to track him down to this place somehow and he just so happens to be arriving at the same time as Simon (?!) and then some other stranger that Bobby seems to know arrives and…

…

…What?!

I love how there was still plausible deniability up until the very moment Bobby says it outright. Like, the phantom’s apartment might have been abandoned years ago, and this “stranger” is completely unrelated, and took up residence there some time after it was abandoned. Yeah – a stranger that will be an important ally and help them on their quest to bring the phantom down! Right? But Bobby’s behaviour, and then he… that’s… that stranger is no stranger at all…

Simon waited, all sorts of hypotheses dawning on him, each more ludicrous than the next. As it turned out, one of the theories he’d dismissed almost immediately on grounds of being too farfetched turned out to be truth.

LITERALLY ME

Haunted Specters, Chapter 5

“I warned you, Simon. Now back away,” Bobby hissed, grabbing him by the arm to pull him away from the faux Cohdopian.

“Faux Cohdopian”… Well,

Anyway. Well. Wow. What can I even say about this chapter? Most of it’s all contained in Simon’s POV narrative itself.

First off, you have the obvious, “whoa, this is how the phantom is being formally re-introduced to the narrative? I really don’t know what I expected but it sure as hell wasn’t this.”

This chapter, this situation, the characters, are all so incredibly volatile and it plays out, it really plays out with that constant volatility.

I, kinda immediately suspected that something was off in that the fall had done some damage to the phantom’s mind in an important, meaningful way.

Bobby’s behaviour is so surreal. Just like it is to Simon. There’s so much going on, so much to process all at once.

“I think that even you, Phantom, would agree this is nothing short of folly.”  A moment of silence followed. Sam didn’t so much as blink at the question. He merely downed the pill he’d been given by draining the water in one go. “… Sam doesn’t speak English,” was all Bobby said.

Now THINGS LIKE THIS, are what made me think, well, the narrative seemed to be encouraging this viewpoint that maybe, at this point the phantom doesn’t actually remember being the phantom. Maybe he lost all his memories, and he’s just wandering around as some poor confused amnesiac who genuinely thinks he’s Sam Specter. (That doesn’t explain a couple of things, but it was only a temporary thought of mine as I read through). But this viewpoint allowed Bobby’s behaviour to make sense in my eyes. It raises a very interesting dilemma. That the phantom is still despicable and needs to be brought to justice and what have you, but how? The phantom is completely absent now, if this man has no memories of any of that. If he genuinely thinks he’s Sam Specter, an innocent civilian who has done no wrong, and for all intents and purposes is trying to live his life as such, reacts as such? Then Bobby would probably bear no ill will against “Sam Specter”. That perhaps, well and truly up until a certain point, “Sam’s” act was not an act. Or it, at the very least, was much less of an act than it would usually be. It’s… quite convincing. In which case, Bobby wouldn’t want harm to come to innocent civilian “Sam Specter”, even if he used to be the phantom. But now? Now he’s just some weak, frail man with a serious mental condition.

The attempts to affirm the personhood, to what extent there is one, of “Sam Specter” is a very interesting point of contention.

With this in mind, as Simon went after the phantom trying to get him to come out, I kind of expected it to consistently not work. That Simon would just keep pushing and pushing to be faced with that murderer once more, only for “Sam Specter” to never break character, perhaps because there is no real character to break from at that point, so caught in a delusion. For Bobby to want him to stop because at that point he’d just be needlessly harassing “Sam Specter”.

But then he does break character, so that theory kind of goes out the window.

He’d been cornered, faced with the truth and forced to drop the charade.

But. It’s still not revealed to what extent the phantom was impacted by the fall. And I kind of got the impression that the phantom was “holding onto” the act… more than usual. More than he usually would. He only broke character under duress, so there are still a whole bunch of questions raised here about just how much he was immersed and caught up in the role of Sam, exactly. Also. Yes. On a second readthrough he reacts fiercely and breaks character specifically after the asylum comment and I just – oh my GOSH.

Also: Peacekeeper Bobby…

Bobby’s gaze moved from the broken glass to Sam Specter, who was once again cradling his head with both hands. Who was rocking back and forth on the couch, muttering to himself. Obviously not listening to a word they were saying.

Oh gosh, he really… Yeah. A fall from an apartment building can certainly do that to you.

Haunted Specters, Chapter 6

What if… What if this was a mistake? What if he’d just freed a common criminal?

Well, UM.

“Oh. Oh, right. That makes sense.” A moment’s pause. “…Wait, wouldn’t I be walking backwards then, making your six my twelve?” “…” “Or uh… I’ll just turn the clock around and make my twelve six so it’ll still be right side up for you.” “… I doubt this conversation would be any different if I were having it with a young child.”

Oh my gooosh. He’s really like this huh. He’s really just Like This.

“Oh. … Well, that’s good! That nobody else is stuck here, I mean, not the… the selling.” “Stop wasting time on such trivial sentiments and prepare yourself.”

“Trivial sentiments”… I just… He’s really always Like This. Your version of the phantom is so talkative, something I noticed pretty early on, but I love it, honestly. He could have easily just ignored the statement and continued to tend to the task at hand here, not saying anything, and Bobby would have easily taken that cue and also started to focus more and not really said anything further, but oh, no, the phantom just had to throw in some kind of remark. Not replying would have conveyed the same meaning, but this guy? He’s absolutely gonna say something. He didn’t have to equate Bobby to a child either, easily could have chosen to say nothing. BUT HERE WE ARE. I love it.

Two strangers, guarding each other with their lives on the gamble they’d both make it out in one piece.

Incredible. Incredible!

“What…? Friendship?” For the first time since they’d met, the man’s voice showed more than a stoic nature. Some sort of subdued confusion. “… Wasn’t it… justice?”

THIS MOMENT IS GOLDEN. Yes, YES.

And, you know, his brain’s all muddled, he’s missing huge chunks of his memory… And he really is kind of blurting this out at this point? Like a knee-jerk reaction. He’s reaching for a – for a memory that just comes to him even if he can’t quite put it in full context, or even if he CAN, he really says this without thinking. Because even if he was suffering from this confusion, I am very certain that he would not just blurt it out like that under normal circumstances. No. This man is half out of his mind! He must know that Bobby doesn’t recognise him and he has no real reason to tip him off otherwise right now (because it could backfire very easily if Bobby freezes up or freaks out as a result!), to ask him like that... Haaah. I’m so here for really-not-all-there phantom.

Still, even through their little exchange, Sam looked blissfully lost. As if he truly didn’t understand what they were discussing about the Phantom. About him. What a pathetic little farce.

This really did have me genuinely uncertain what to think. Like, how much of “Sam Specter” is a farce? How invested was the phantom into that role? The phantom understands English perfectly, but because Sam supposedly doesn’t… Was it possible at all that selective hearing was truly at play? That the phantom gets so deep into the role that he tricks himself, his brain, into not really understanding English properly – refusing to process it? At least, that’s what I thought at the time. Bobby makes the requests for the phantom in Cohdopian, after all. He doesn’t just casually sit there and say “hey phantom, come out” in English. Switching between “Sam” and “the phantom” evidently takes… some effort for him. And mind you, I was putting all of this (selective hearing etc.) down to the results of the fall as well. I mean, if the phantom was “Sam” under normal circumstances before the fall he’d be able to understand English perfectly well, he’d just pretend he couldn’t, and also that he’d be able to switch in and out and between personas quite easily. But that the fall did things to his mind to make it all more difficult, for him to now be able to engage in this selective understanding, is what I figured.

But… maybe Simon’s right. Maybe he still really does understand everything they say, and is just faking it. He’s such a good actor that it really is hard to tell.

And maybe the simple fact is that it’s still easy for the phantom to switch between personas, it’s just difficult to switch out of them since he has so little sense of self. And maybe that’s just the way it always has been and the fall didn’t actually change that.

Sam’s personhood hinges on how “conscious” the phantom is while Sam is in place. The less the phantom is actually present (selective hearing etc), the more “Sam” is just Sam. But it’s later implied (more than once I think) that the phantom really is just, conscious while he is Sam, and that being “brought out” is not such an immense struggle as it otherwise could be. And yet, at the same time, the narrative seems to want to tilt us in favour of acknowledging Sam as a… a person, his own person. Of sorts. And… I guess it makes sense(?). During the whole of Dual Destinies, even if every action taken by “Bobby” was consciously chosen by the phantom… Those actions were all taken for a reason, all matching up to the consistent persona “Bobby Fulbright”. Both “Bobby” and the phantom would make a choice or engage in a behaviour for the most part, even if the reasoning was different at times they were united on the action itself. Sam is… kind of the same? He is the spitting image of what used to be a real human being, all of his outward actions and behaviours (are intended to) replicate that human being. By cobbling together some approximation of a real person like this, it is perhaps easier to treat them like a real person if they behave in all intents and purposes as such. Especially considering the circumstances. There’s a constant duality going on which I guess is what we’re supposed to settle on? The phantom never really goes away, he’s always there behind the scenes. But Sam’s there too, and we gotta treat him as real or things kinda just fall apart, really. There’s also much to be said for how Sam’s personhood is as much constituted to the extent that it’s acknowledged by those around him, too. We can’t just look at it on its own. It’s also something that’s made more “real” by others treating it and to an extent acknowledging it as real. Even if, in the very end, there might be nothing truly behind it.

THERE IT IS. Right off the bat, I just gotta say: the phantom is really channelling his inner Franziska. XD. Addressing characters by their FULL NAMES. I noticed it quite a bit in the sense that it is, very consistent within his speech pattern, almost making it a kind of “character trait” of a man who himself claims to have no real character. But of course – it makes it stand out all the more when switching to “Prosecutor Blackquill” instead.

”If you attempt to lay a hand on Sam Specter a second time, I will not hesitate to interfere and protect him.”

Here it is, the phantom himself almost treating Sam like a completely separate person… I… don’t think he would have taken this approach before the fall. Hmm. BUT ALSO. Here he’s also implying that he is conscious enough while behaving as Sam to be able to “not hesitate to interfere and protect him”. Hmm!

“Watch your tongue before I cut it off,” he hissed. “I would never lay a hand on Fulbright.” “… See that you don’t.”

Me: I WELL AND TRULY DO NOT UNDERSTAND AT ALL, WHAT IS GOING ON, the phantom is protective of Bobby, well and truly his brain was influenced by that fall.

Simon really is/was in the exact same boat, honestly.

Now we have the smuggling ring brought up, the March 2019 exposure referenced, another reference to how there was a mole in interpol before… And I was kind of like, “hm! You know! There’s a certain character this brings to mind, yet unfortunately they’re nowhere in sight. Kinda really sucks they’re not a character in this fic series, honestly!” Yes, such a shame, really.

”[…] That’s why we need to expose the involvement of Lex Luster […]”

Me, reading this for the first time: Wait. Lex… Le…x. Huh. That’s… for some reason, that name rings a bell. Ah – that’s right. This “Lex”, he’s quite an important character, isn’t he? From what tiny random scraps of information I’ve seen about this fic series (from years ago!)… Yes. I’m pretty sure that this “Lex” character will be showing up quite a lot going forward.

...Well, I wasn’t wrong.

[thelunar-halo]

This morning about 2 until 4.30 am, i had a conversation with Vennie. She slept over at my house, with Yessi too but Yessi was sleeping.

We talked about love like girls always do at the first. She was so in doubt with her love story. She loves a man for long like 5 years but they don’t have any status for it. Its her first love. The first time she knew whats love and he’s the first man but now he’s far gone. Vennie is also the first woman i know in my life that believes her intuition hard. She believes in connections. And she believes he’s the one she’s been waiting for to come. The arrival, the moments, some things about this guy she found out she just already knew before he said it. She felt like she has known him forever. Their meeting was like reunited. One side, she has faith on it, thats why she keeps on sticking only for him no one else but him. But the other side she felt unfair. The non existance of the status and contact made she thought its only one sided feeling, its only her falling in love with him and he’s not, she thought she was just for him having fun with. She couldn’t control herself, her feeling her bad thoughts. The broken heart brought her to breakdown years. Once she thought love hurt her, love also broke her life. She has no desire right now about her life. It’s interesting. She has that faith, but she’s broken of it. She said deep inside her heart, she want to keep waiting for him to come because of this connection. But sometimes she kinda realize “Ah it’s just my imagination to have him falling in love with me." She knew it was her need of possession that broke her down. She lost the feeling of pureness and giving with no intention.

About one sided love; I’ve ever been in what i thought one sided love. I thought it was only me that loved him but he didn’t. The idea of one sided love in relationship exist real lasted for long in my head. Until one day i stop believing it. There’s no one sided love in relationship and no one ever gonna stop loving someone he used to love. Why? It was the interest made you one, the habit of togetherness, the feeling of needing, the intense connection. The want of giving the best for each other and make it the best for each other. I used to call it love. And the love is never gone but it blend in with another emotions and because we feel it everyday, we feel just normal. There is no sparkling anymore because it become normal feeling just like happy and sad that we’ve been known for long. The sparkling is only for ‘new’ feeling, new person. We think we stop loving but we’re not. The connection never gone. The connection never come from one person, it happens because both feel the same. But the portion never the same accurately. Some people will be more the other one a bit less. And the feeling will be different for each person you meet. So if your heart said you had a connection with someone, trust it because it's real. But then am i a narcistic to think like that?

We then pull one perspective of love and the possesion; the love is surely pure but we position it, we intreprete it wrong. Love better should be what you give to others without the expectation to get it the same way. Love should be what supports you, give the clear vision of yourself and the world you want it to be, it should be what makes you bring out the best of you. Since the soul of the universe is love. It’s everywhere. Just take it and spread it.

If you do have the expectation of get it the same way as you give to other, you’re not wrong either actually. As long as this love doesn’t make you manipulate yourself and others. In the process of love, you must have a great self control. Because sometimes it can be driven by obsession and the need to fill yourself up. That’s why sometimes you make tricks, you play games to get it. Sometimes you chase it, you think about it hard, you cry over yourself to sleep everynight and in another stage you count your efforts and label yourself is the one’s hurting then stop. While in our recently thought; the need to possess is real. Chase the love is positive but in other side, it won’t make you forget the essence of loving. You should be happier, greater, warmer when you feel love. And you believe in God’s time and oneness with universe. Not the opposite of it. Not forcing it.

We all have been there. We all have been pure and wrong. But that’s not wrong either. This life is supposed to be the journey of finding out every secret and finding out the deeper side of what we’ve thought we’ve already understood. They say the path of the journey is spiral; we keep coming back to the point we were before to see deeper truth and deeper meaning. It means we will always learn to love all of our life. So do with everything. Its dynamic, our perspective could change anytime.

From this point, we started to questioning again; is actually the love real? Or what if actually love is not real thing, turn out its the unity of every emotions and the characters of human being? I mean like; we have happy, sad, angry, excited etc and we need to feel it and it united with the needs of belonging to complete ourself, the need of socialize with one another, the need to prove ourself, the need of place to throwing away the emotions out. It’s the need to our ego. Wait what, till this point i started to feel this mind getting wild and i started to confused and doubting. I was surprised it came out from my mind from my mouth. I started to think another side of what i’ve been believing for long. And now i got a new task to find it out. What’s the meaning of love for real? Now i’m ameen-ing what i’ve believed of life; to find out everything. And this leaded to the conversation of “What this life is for..”

Nobody could give the rightest answer that everyone in this world could agree in seconds. Some people said life is about waiting for death. Some: life is about doing the best you could to others. Some: life is about practicing yourself to the realest life beside God. Some: life is a trial. Some: life is about only yourself and you. Some: just live and follow the rhythm until we find out. Some desperate: life is to suffer. Life is not what i want. And many more definitions. And we all are right. Life is what you believe. Life is not fix defined. You define it by yourself. I believe, Vennie believed life is to find out. I believe, life is not once. Life can be hundreds time but in different universe. For me life is a spiritual journey. Everything in life is vibration and energy. We have pieces of stars inside our body; we have naturally chemical in our body that also exist in the space and world. We all are pieces, and this energy, this chemical things and this vibration has one big source. The biggest greatest source. I define it as God. And life for me is to be connected to this super source, to God. But to know where to God is, we have no clue. We have to find out. We meditations, yoga, exercise, learning new things, improve hobbies, balance the body and the mind, we do everything to highten our vibration to connect to all vibration in everything in this Earth, to find out and connect with the universe inside my body. Every thing that related to it to find God. I’m an hopeless romantic person that believe in magic, fairy tales and dreams. In other side, this belief leads me to the invincible things by eyes that can be felt only by heart. I believe dreams and magic are real in somewhere out there far away from this world. This thought always keeps me alive. When i believe in other world, another powers, it also make me the details on this Earth. Which i couldn’t put into words well. But the point; i see feelings of other creatures, i see plants differently, i see no difference between every creatures, i believe in no coincidences, i believe in no time exists, i notice everything differently. But this is not final vision, it’s still a task for me to dive deeper. And there was Vennie sitting in front of me and agreed. In that time our minds getting wilder but felt content and needed many more. In seconds we become hopeful and excited. In the process of finding God, we also finding ourself. And it’s amazing. Life is incredible experience for us. Till this point, material things doesn’t matter that much. We have everything inside this body and this world.

Now what about death? What is death?

I started to think the essence of death differently. After we found out what life is, we started to live the life by this belief. When you believe life is journey, you keep on walking and finding out every secret and the universe supporting you. You keep looking until one time you say to yourself : i’ve done. I’ve found out. I’m satisfied and now i’m ready to find another journey. Then you ask God to take you and it happen. Its not philosophy, its physic; when you match the energy with the reality you want, it happens. For those who decide life is only to follow the rhythm, they put the energy in to it and it happen exactly like the want, they found it, the meaning. Then their time is finished. Then they leave the world. So i think now we leave the world after we have decided the meaning of living itself. It makes sense when we see some wise men that leave the world without any fear of pain like they’ve already predicted when their time finish is. Fuuuuh it blew our mind again. Once again; its our theory. The more we talk, the more definitions and perspectives come out.

Remember when Bg Fadli said “My mom told me, faith is not what you’re looking for when you’re looking for something. Faith should be your guidelines. It should be there first before you step.” It gave another perspective; While you’re looking for the meaning of life and death or love, or everything, the first time you must have faith. One guideline. So whenever you lost, you know what to hold on to. I’ll learn it again, okay.

We stopped this topic and went to the topic; Okay but this is our world, the world inside our head. And everyone is not in the same page on us. We can’t ignore the existence of another world in another heads. How can we survive in society while we are on our journey? The answer easily pop up in my mind; build the castle of you inside your mind. Where you’re the queen, you rule, you trick, you manage. Build a figure what you want to show everyone you are. From this, build your character, because this is what makes them treat you later. It’s okay to fake it at the first until it become your habit and yourself. Have a great self control. It’s all our self defense. We still never know what might happen next and sometimes yourself can be your biggest enemy too and it’d be great if we can control ourself first. Castle is for people out there to define your home but in your own home you’re free you wanna be who. Back to the realest you. I never demand people to be fake, but fake can be good as long as you don’t manipulate for benefits or hurting people and that's okay. But behind everything, being kind and pure is not the choice, it’s the most important thing to do. Don’t ever lose it.

Value. Is what we have to hold on to. Value is what we see of ourself. Has no need to prove to anyone. No need to impress anyone else with it. This vision of value would help us to choose what we deserve from people and what we do for people.

Based on Dr Carl Sagan quote; our body contain the star stuff. What inside the body is whats on the cosmos. To find the essence of cosmos is within ourself. Then now we know we are incredible creature right? God said human being is the perfect creature ever and we relate it with brain and knowing what's wrong or right. But animals have them too, plants too. The more modern way of thinking we believe even the chair, the table also have energy and they are living. Awesome right? As now we know we are incredible creature and life is wonderful why we have to focus only on belonging, material thing, person, bussiness? I mean they are important but what's most important is within ourselves we have everything. Just dive in and find out. I always love physic, its just wow. It can explain everything with dynamic thinking.

And Adzan started to sound, we know it was time to stop talking and get rest. But the last thoughts pop up in my mind; Are we real? Is everything we said real? How’s if it only in our imagination? Like there's nothing real include us? Or am i freak? Do i only have anxiety? Or i have another mental illness to belive it all? Or everyone of us have mental illness? Or actually the ones that believe in physic and psychology are the sick people? Am i crazy without i realize it? Looks like everything’s normal but it’s not normal? So what’s another definition of this life? And My God, i think i have another tasks to do. To find these out. Venny only sat there and smile “No Runi, we have to stick in this mindset then we find out.....”

It’s the easiest come out conversation ever and meaningful. For years we’ve been talking but i never came out to her with my wild thinking. And i never knew she could be that dark too like me. It’s only some of the points, actually we talked much more detail than this. Til i looked at the mirror and felt my self was not that simple myself anymore and Vennie felt different.

It was 5.30 am we finally tried to sleep. And i woke up at 8.30 to go work. I never felt this strong and have enough power to walk the day than ever and it’s been so long i’ve ever been in deep curiosity. All i want to today is just to open that big book, dive in internet and just focus one day long to read and read. I feel so powerful even get lack of sleep.

At the final, It’s all only discussion, not guidelines if anyone else need to learn. You don’t have to believe. You can make your own theories, make your definitions. We are free human being, we have brain to think, we are free to develope the thought that’ve been there.

I’m so happy to have Vennie exists in this world and be one of her closest people. It’s always interesting talking with her. When i’m in my problem, she’s there completing my missing sentences. When she says something, i find myself easily to agree. She get my trust, she get my approvement, she always get what’s on my mind without asking. The telepathy between us is quite wonderful. Many words of Vennie i keep it in my mind; she the first one ever said to me “we are one with the universe.” That’s exactly what made me think she’s perfect as the partner to discuss. Beside, she’s a great listener, a good communicator with good attitude, she’s a learner, she’s free thinker and great companion for party. In my free time we always visit each other, having wine time. Or sometimes just beer time in front of Circle K and talk.. With her it’s always quality time. I have her and my life become more completed.

I’m waiting to another discussion with Vennie.