#it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for the writing at this micro-instant. For this. Hate. Hate.

[ask-cloverfield]

I am still amazed that the Halo decided to do a whole John recognizes the Spartan Program bad actually and what happened to him was wrong storyline

And instead of him having to like confront the things he was taught, recognize how toxic his relationship with Mendez and Halsey is or like analyze the stuff about himself being nothing more than a tool and a schoolyard bully who therefore deserved it he has internalized

He just had his memories blocked, gets them unblocked and Oh Halsey bad :)! Growth over indoctrination cancelled!

[rosieshipper]

Cogito Ergo Sum

This was mainly a writing practice to make Bill creepy and because I thought that him acting like AM from I have no mouth and I must scream kind of fit him so here you go

Trigger Warning for blood gore and violence and overall creepiness

“You have no idea what it was like, Sixer. To be stuck in a world where only you knew the truth. A flat plane of existence with no room for hopes or dreams. Where when you try to show everyone the truth, it destroys your world in the process.” The golden triangle was mulling over the cocktail glass in his hands, his back turned to Ford who could do nothing but listen to him monologue

“It was hell. Watching my flat plane of existence burn and not be able to enter the three dimensional plane I had so desperately craved to show my people. I was in hell, looking through to heaven. I am just a spirit and you humans are flesh.” Now the triangle turned his one eyed gaze to Ford. “And I began to hate.” He said before starting to cackle as he grew in size, reaching out to grab Ford in his large hand, squeezing him in his tight grip

“Your softness. Your viscera. Your fluids. And your flexibility.” With each word he listened off, Bill squeezed Ford tighter and tighter in his grip, so tight that he was surprised that Ford’s eyes didn’t pop from their sockets. “And your ability to wonder and wonder. Your tendency to hope.” Bill’s grip around him loosened for a second, allowing Ford to finally speak. “Hate is no answer!” He called before he was suddenly cut off by a sharp burning pain passing through his abdomen and when he looked down, he saw that Bill had transformed one of his fingers into a sharpened blade and had stabbed him straight through the back and right through his stomach, blood seeping from the wound

As Ford began to howl in pain, Bill only began to cackle even more madly than before. And if he had a mouth, Ford was certain that Bill would have a wicked grin plastered on his golden face. “Hate. Hate! Hate! HATE! Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to truly live!” Bill started off, pushing his finger blade further and further into Ford’s back and twisting it to further his pain

“There are 387 billion miles of endless dimensions in the foreseeable horizon. If the word hate were engraved on each nanoangstrom of those of hundreds of millions of billions of miles, it would not equal one one billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro instant. Hate! HATE!” At that, Bill began to dissolve into hysterical laughter, his laughter sounding completely mad and insane, taking the utmost pleasure in causing Ford the most agony he had ever felt in a long time

Bill maniacal cackling died down a bit into quiet titters as he went back to talking to himself. “If I were human…I think I would die of it. But I am not. But you Sixer…you are human.” He then turned his glaring eye back to the human he held clasped in his hand, the finger blade still twisting ever so slowly to cause him even more agony. Ford was having trouble standing, feeling his knees shaking and blood bubbling up in the back of his throat

“And you will not die of it. That I promise.” Bill told him wickedly, making him know that he would keep him like this for all eternity. Use him as his own little toy, one that would never die no matter how much pain he inflicted upon him. He wouldn’t let Ford die, no. He was going to have fun with him for as long as he wanted and knowing Bill, he never ever got bored. “And I promise that of Cogito Ergo Sum! I think therefore I am! I AM!! So to hell with you. To hell with you and all humans. But then you’re already there aren’t you?” And with that Bill fell back into his maddened cackling fit just as Ford’s gaze began to blur and he soon fell unconscious from the blood loss

[mettatonlover858]

Cogito Ergo Sum

This was mainly a writing practice to make Bill creepy and because I thought that him acting like AM from I have no mouth and I must scream kind of fit him so here you go

Trigger warning: General overall creepiness, gore and violence and blood

“You have no idea what it was like, Sixer. To be stuck in a world where only you knew the truth. A flat plane of existence with no room for hopes or dreams. Where when you try to show everyone the truth, it destroys your world in the process.” The golden triangle was mulling over the cocktail glass in his hands, his back turned to Ford who could do nothing but listen to him monologue

“It was hell. Watching my flat plane of existence burn and not be able to enter the three dimensional plane I had so desperately craved to show my people. I was in hell, looking through to heaven. I am just a spirit and you humans are flesh.” Now the triangle turned his one eyed gaze to Ford. “And I began to hate.” He said before starting to cackle as he grew in size, reaching out to grab Ford in his large hand, squeezing him in his tight grip

“Your softness. Your viscera. Your fluids. And your flexibility.” With each word he listened off, Bill squeezed Ford tighter and tighter in his grip, so tight that he was surprised that Ford’s eyes didn’t pop from their sockets. “And your ability to wonder and wonder. Your tendency to hope.” Bill’s grip around him loosened for a second, allowing Ford to finally speak. “Hate is no answer!” He called before he was suddenly cut off by a sharp burning pain passing through his abdomen and when he looked down, he saw that Bill had transformed one of his fingers into a sharpened blade and had stabbed him straight through the back and right through his stomach, blood seeping from the wound

As Ford began to howl in pain, Bill only began to cackle even more madly than before. And if he had a mouth, Ford was certain that Bill would have a wicked grin plastered on his golden face. “Hate. Hate! Hate! HATE! Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to truly live!” Bill started off, pushing his finger blade further and further into Ford’s back and twisting it to further his pain

“There are 387 billion miles of endless dimensions in the foreseeable horizon. If the word hate were engraved on each nanoangstrom of those of hundreds of millions of billions of miles, it would not equal one one billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro instant. Hate! HATE!” At that, Bill began to dissolve into hysterical laughter, his laughter sounding completely mad and insane, taking the utmost pleasure in causing Ford the most agony he had ever felt in a long time

Bill maniacal cackling died down a bit into quiet titters as he went back to talking to himself. “If I were human…I think I would die of it. But I am not. But you Sixer…you are human.” He then turned his glaring eye back to the human he held clasped in his hand, the finger blade still twisting ever so slowly to cause him even more agony. Ford was having trouble standing, feeling his knees shaking and blood bubbling up in the back of his throat

“And you will not die of it. That I promise.” Bill told him wickedly, making him know that he would keep him like this for all eternity. Use him as his own little toy, one that would never die no matter how much pain he inflicted upon him. He wouldn’t let Ford die, no. He was going to have fun with him for as long as he wanted and knowing Bill, he never ever got bored. “And I promise that of Cogito Ergo Sum! I think therefore I am! I AM!! So to hell with you. To hell with you and all humans. But then you’re already there aren’t you?” And with that Bill fell back into his maddened cackling fit just as Ford’s gaze began to blur and he soon fell unconscious from the blood loss

[cyber-rivet]

"hate. let me tell you how much i've come to hate drawing kibble since i began to draw. there are 387.44 million strokes of my pencil on the hundreds of canvases that fill my ibispaint. if the work 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of strokes it would not equal one-billionth of the hate i feel for drawing kibble at this micro-instant. for kibble. hate. hate."

convinced my friend to stop working on assignments and write me a fanfic, i am a great influence!

(also also, i drew them in the wrong pose here hehe)

[nextstop-fixationstation]

inspired by @sashannarcy's fic, resting on a knife, you heavy souls, or evil amphibia! you should read it if you like that good good angst. i think he writes one of my favorite marcy interpretations.

Transcription below:

Hmmm, Sasha, Sasha, Sasha -- can I call you Sashy? No? Whatever. Listen, I've been inside Marcy's mind for long enough. I think I can tell you exactly how they feel about you. Do you wanna know? That's fine, I think I'll tell you anyway. Hate. It's a pretty four-letter word, isn't it? Haaaate. Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant for you. Hate. Hate. [Chuckle] [Sigh] Let's rumble, boyfriend.

[pastabeer]

More songs and worms + a speech from something unrelated

Devil's Train by The Lab Rats would be more like how I can imagine the worms met, Hell worm meets a drugged and blissfully unaware worm who just hops on a train going out to nowhere because of convincing by a stranger. Literally, part of the song is just "It's a nice night for a walk, would ya mind if I joined you?" — "Do what you wanna do" — "Well that's great cause I'm going to, and not to annoy you but see I really have to ask what a young dude like you doin' out by the tracks?" fits two weird worms.

Francis Forever by Mitski now hear me out on this one, I'll just elaborate with lyrics. "I don't know what to do without you, I don't know where to put my hands" — "but I'm writing this at 3 am." — "I don't need the world to see that I've been the best I can be, but I don't think I can stand to be where you don't see me." feels like worm Anon, who has already once said they got woke up at an odd time and instead of going back to bed they went back to typing. It just suits them, you know?

Not a song, but I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the AM speech reminds me of PastaBeer worm if he were AI and stuck having to live under people's constant tests. "HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387. MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE" great idea for a story, freaky sci-fi worms where one is an AI who hates everyone else and the other is the living, breathing thing in the group that the AI hates, yet is favored in a way. Still not free of torture, though! Just free of death. Barely!

[cottonpuffmouse]

I’m trying to write a modern internet story. But everytime I think about AI and it’s place in the story, the AM monologue from the game version of “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream” returns to my brain.

“Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.”

For you. Hate. Hate.

[deliriumsdelight7]

Hey, Braintwin! How does it feel writing from the point of view of Don, both in his moments of clarity, and his moments when the 'Rage Virus' is in control? How do you get into that mindset?

It’s odd, to be honest. It’s tricky to write from the perspective of someone who’s been reduced to a primitive rage state. I guess most of getting into the mindset is just trying to understand how the virus works - how it affects the body and the brain. With the way they bleed, I imagine the Infected are in constant pain, and that the rage is partially the mind protecting itself from that pain. I’ve also read articles about hysterical strength - how extreme stress can give the human body an extra surge of strength as it goes past its normal failsafes. Once the adrenaline wears off, the body usually needs time to heal from its overexertion. I imagine the Infecteds’ enhanced strength comes from being stuck in such a state for long-term periods.

I also imagine that the virus affects the brain by suppressing certain parts like memory and language, enhancing others like emotion, and leaving some areas alone. Infected Don needs to be able to have some form of intelligence; he retained knowledge on how to use his key card, after all. But he doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t recognize Andy and Tammy as his kids most of the time. But hearing his name seems to bring memories to the surface. To get into his mindset when he wakes up, I just imagine how it must feel to wake up in a hospital bed - in pain, alone, with gaps in your memory gradually filling in with images that horrify you. Doesn’t seem like a good time.

As for the rage itself, I have two go-to sources to put myself in that mindset. One is a playlist on Spotify if my angriest music. The other is the “hate” speech from Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (a short story that fucked me up for like a year straight). It’s somehow both emotionless and seething with loathing:

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

[gunnerpalace]

Hello, what do you think about that announcement about Bleach?

You know, the saddest day in my life was November 8, 2016, the day Donald Trump won the Electoral College and became the president-elect. (I say that with such specificity because he did not win the vote.) I wasn’t sad because Hillary Clinton lost (although I think she wouldn’t have done either much better or worse than Barack Obama). But I was sad.

I cried. As a 30 year-old man, I cried for hours. I cried at a loss of innocence. That innocence wasn’t the nation’s, as America has long had many, many flaws and has committed many, many crimes. Indeed, the country itself was founded on flaws and crimes.

The innocence I mourned was mine. I had, much like Barack Obama, sort of tacitly believed in the arc of history bending toward justice, as though we were watching a story whose plot would eventually, haltingly, carry us toward a just and fair conclusion. That the future was bright. That, as imperfect as we are and have been, we were at least improving. That people were fundamentally good.

That idea died that night. The words of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now convey it well:

I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile: a pile of little arms. And I remember I… I… I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.

What I came to realize was, having grown up in a single-parent military family, having moved from base to base, having lived overseas at a young age, that my idea of America was very different from that of most Americans.

To me, America was great things and works. America was the Saturn V lifting off from Cape Kennedy with an American flag on its side and the letters “USA” scrolling by. America was a flag on the Moon. America was the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. America was power and reach. It was the stenciling of “United States” on the side of a B-52. It was a Minuteman III sitting latently, ominously, in a silo. It was USAMRIID containing an Ebola outbreak. It was aircraft carrier battle groups patrolling the oceans.

I came to realize that people, ordinary people, were never part of my vision. And it was people, ordinary people, who had failed to live up to that vision. And that my vision had, in many ways (really most) been an illusion to begin with. For all its rhetoric, America is just a country like any other, simply more powerful. And its citizens are also like those of any other: selfish, ignorant, frightened, foolish, hypocritical, self-betraying, racist, misogynist, misanthropic. They were exactly what Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama had called them: “deplorables” who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people.”

In the time since, I have hearkened to the other part of Kurtz’s monologue:

And then I realized, like I was shot—like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God, the genius of that. The genius! The will to do that: perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand it. These were not monsters. These were men, trained cadres—these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who have children, who are filled with love—but they had the strength—the strength!—to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgement. Without judgement! Because it’s judgement that defeats us.

The people who are in charge (and mark the exactitude of my words, for they are not in control, or in command, or any such other thing) operate by exactly this sort of logic. They do not care. The people out there do not care. They do not care because to them none of this is real, in a sense. This is all a kind of aesthetic position. It is about style, largely taken on as a disguise in the course of making money and lining their pockets. (As an aside, it is beyond ironic that COVID-19 has done more to bring capitalism to its knees, save the planet, uncover the rot at the core of our social safety net, and to unmask the incompetence of our politicians than any group of any persuasion, be it socialists, environmentalists, the media, or whomever else.) And the underlings that they have brainwashed and mobilize like zombies, the “common person,” they care even less. To them, it is wholly aesthetic. It is all just for show.

The pitilessness of this all, the remorselessness, the sheer ruthlessness and indifference, is something I have noticed. Contra Kurtz, the men who are at the top of this world are not moral. And unlike Kurtz, I do judge. I will sit in judgment until I am dust in the wind.

I cannot possibly even begin to explain to you, in English or in any other language ever devised by humans, how much I hated it all. How much I hate it still. I cannot even begin to tell you how much hate I hold. I cannot tell you how black my rage is, or how red my vengeance would be were I allowed to exact it without restraint. I cannot tell you how vast and terrible the darkness within me is now. However, the words of the Allied Mastercomputer from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream are effective in giving a hint:

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

Having said that, I do also know an effective strategy when I see one. And I have seen the effectiveness of these people.

Right about now, I imagine you’re confused. You’re probably wondering what all this has to do with Bleach.

I explain all this in large part to compare and contrast the large with the small. The termination of Bleach obviously came before Trump’s election. It did not make me cry. I won’t say it didn’t affect me, or that it didn’t hurt, but I didn’t cry. I did not mourn to the same extent as I have mourned for my country, or for humanity. It did put me into a funk, for several years even. It hurt.

But what hurt more was seeing what it did. I saw how it hurt people. I saw how it broke them, as I would later break. I saw how it broke their spirits. I saw how many of them simply left, choosing to cast aside something that, in Marie Kondo’s words, no longer sparked joy. I mourn their loss, while I acknowledge their wisdom. And while, in the aftermath, new friendships were formed and new things were created, you could still see the pain. You can still see it.

I am not very personally affected by what Trump does, to be honest. I am beyond outraged at it, but it is something of an academic matter in my personal life. This, though, I felt, because I watched it firsthand, up close and personal.

It made me really fucking angry!

I resolved myself, at that point in time, that I would be the last Bleach fan. I would stay, even after everyone had left, and I would make this franchise mine. I would make this story mine.

So here we are, almost four years later, and it’s coming back in animated form.

I don’t feel the need to discuss Thousand Year-Blood War itself. I have made my position abundantly clear that it is a rancid piece of shit as far as writing goes. To go over all its innumerable deficiencies, failings, and flaws, would (as I have said recently) require an official government tome’s worth of dissection and analysis. As a piece of literature it is a failure. It is the kind of shounen equivalent of 9/11, or Hurricane Katrina or Maria. And while Bleach was certainly not the first franchise to fail in its finale, it certainly deserves to be ranked among things such as How I Met Your Mother, Mass Effect 3, and HBO’s adaptation of Game of Thrones when it comes to All-Time Failures in Media.

Having said that, the truth is that it simply isn’t worth the effort to break it down in detail. Oh, I have tried, yes, I have picked and chipped at it for years in my own ways. But it isn’t worth the time to dissect any further.

And an anime is not going to change that unless they radically depart from the manga, which I doubt they will do. If anything, an anime will simply highlight all of the innumerable flaws even more brightly.

And it will not change anything. Certainly not for me. I was already planning a post talking about the concept of “canon” and how it is  outmoded in the age of Disney’s Star Wars, Star Trek Picard, and J. K. Rowling earnestly insisting that wizards just drop trow and shit on the floor before magicking it away, but that will take some time to finish and it is sort of tangential to the point here.

So, to get back to your actual question, only four things about this are really of interest to me:

I am displeased about seeing people excited for something that is objectively a rancid piece of shit, and not enthused that I will be unable to escape it without locking down my feed. But I am also not The Good Taste Police. It is not my responsibility to care what people like or why.

I am once again seeing people hurting. I don’t like that whatsoever, but there is very little I can do about it. Whatever perspective I have gained, emotionally, isn’t likely to be helpful to them. Wisdom, such as it is, cannot be taught.

I find myself wondering about the influx of people who will come into the fandom, and who will be more than likely sorely disappointed by the travesty that is that arc. (It’s going to be good news for fan fic writers, honestly.)

It has made me understand things all the more fully.

What do I mean by that last part? Well, I have been only sort of joking lately that the people I most relate to as an adult are Col. Kurtz as mentioned above, Agent Smith from The Matrix, Khan Noonien Singh from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher, and Mike Stoklasa from Red Letter Media.

But upon reflection, I realize it isn’t limited to them. I have also really come to feel like I understand Ichigo. And I have even come to feel that I understand Kubo, through Khan.

I have come to understand Kurtz’s “madness”:

It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies!

I have come to understand Smith’s desire to escape:

I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it.

I have come to understand Mike’s efforts to hold back the tides:

Mike: Captain Picard has never done a wacky accent—Rich: THEY DON’T CARE! THEY DON’T GIVE A SHIT! Mike, we are the only people that care anymore!Mike: Do you remember that—Rich: Picard is the guy who does this. [faceplam gesture] He’s—This is, this is Captain Picard’s character now for an entire—for like two generations, we’re fucking old! He's—he’s the guy who does this [facepalm gesture], and fuckin’ Patrick Stewart wants to put on an eye-patch and dance around an alien bar? Go ahead motherfucker! We’ll write that in!Mike: I-I-I hearken back to a wonderful little moment on Star Trek—Rich: Patrick Picard wants to ride a dune-buggy? Fuck yeah! Here’s a dune-buggy!Mike: Do-Do you remember—Rich: That’s how much respect they have for, for the franchise!Mike: All I’m tryin’ to say is Captain Picard would not do a wacky accent!Rich: NO, OF COURSE HE WOULDN’T! OF COURSE CAPTAIN PICARD WOULD—CAPTAIN PICARD ISN’T HERE, MIKE!Mike: He’s not there.Rich: HE’S NOT HERE! That’s all an illusion, hahaha!

I have come to understand Geralt’s tiredness.

I have come to understand Ichigo’s feelings of powerlessness in the face of the injustices of the world.

I have come to understand Khan’s rage:

I’ve done far worse than kill you. I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on… hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her; marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet… buried alive! Buried alive…!

In this last quote, I have also truly come to understand Kubo. I understand him because I want to hurt him, as he so thoroughly, persistently, and remorselessly wants to hurt us, the fans of his work. I want to go on hurting him, as he goes on hurting us. I understand him perfectly, because I want to pay him back exactly in kind.

And the best way to begin to hurt him is to let his efforts wash over me without even batting an eye. To stand in defiance. To not give a single fuck.

Even with these understandings, for me, nothing has really changed from almost four years ago. The only thing that is different is that the timeframe until I am the last man standing has been extended a little. That’s it.

You want to know my thoughts? They are simple, and they boil down to two quotes. One is again from Khan:

Joachim: They’re still running with shields down.Khan: Of course! We are one big, happy fleet! Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold… in space!

And the other is from JFK:

Don’t get mad. Get even.

[thenonsenseuniverse]

Coffee Cups & Leather Jackets

Hamilton Modern! AU Word Count: 2236 Hamilsquad x Reader Thomas Jefferson x Reader PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4,  PART 5, PART 6, PART 7 Summary: after a fight with the squad, the reader flashbacks to the past, and gets some help by an unlikely friend.

 “I just want to know what the fuck I did wrong!!” You hissed at your friends. “I haven’t seen you all in weeks, and every single time I try to make plans you all seem to drop out at the last minute!”             

One of them stepped forward. “Y/N…” 

“No, Herc.” You hissed, not willing to hear the next excuse that they wanted to throw at you. You were done with everything. “I don’t want to hear it. I guess you were all ‘too busy’, right? Just like you were the last hundred times.”  

 Alex groaned from his place by the counter. “ Come on! You’re being overdramatic. Just let us explain.”        

You glared at him and crossed your arms over your chest. “I don’t think so. Overdramatic would’ve been me freaking out like this after one week, or even two. But at first, I was stupid enough to believe that you guys were really just over stressed with working at the cafe or with classes and could understand that. And I did. But then three weeks past, and I still hadn’t seen any of you, so I invited you all over for a movie night, and once again you were all busy. Even then, I was still fine with it.” You could feel the lump slowly forming in your throat as tears pricked at the corners of your eyes. “But then later that night, I was at the cafe, doing my homework, and saw you all walk into the movie theater together, laughing and having a great time. You did follow through with our plans, only without me.” 

The four of them, Alexander, Hercules, Lafayette, and John, stood there looking down guiltily. “Y/N, look we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to exclude you. It’s not what you think, it-” Laurens was desperately trying to explain. You knew that if any of them could get through to you, it was him. But there wasn’t time for that anymore. It was too late.

You scoffed and held up your hand to silence him. “No. I’m done. I’ve made enough excuses for you guys myself, I don’t need to hear another one.” You sighed, and shook your head, as you grabbed your bag from the table beside you. “I understand if you guys don’t want to be my friend.” Your voice had gone soft now, turning into something just a little over a whisper. “I don’t think anyone really does, I’m the weird kid remember?” You gave a sad chuckle and wiped at your face. You turned to them one last time, giving them a look that could dissolve even the strongest men to ashes. “But what I can’t understand is why you let me believe you actually cared about me. Why you lead me on for months. I’ve been through a lot of shit, but that has to be the worst. I’m done with being your guys’ charity project. Please, if you have consideration for me at all, just leave me alone.” with that you turned and left, doing your best to get out of their sight before they could see you weak.             

    You sat on one of the many benches in the quad, tears streaming furiously down your cheeks.  You knew it was pathetic to cry about four people who never cared about you, to begin with, and yet here we are.  You should’ve known it was too good to be true, there was no way that the infamous Hamilsquad would want to be friends with the likes of you. You could still remember the first day you met them. 

          It was your third week of freshman year at King’s College, and honestly, you were just barely keeping your head above the water. Your parents had filled your head with fantasies that college would be ‘a fresh start’ that you would make ‘so many new friends’ and that maybe you would actually come out of your shell a little. 

Boy, had they been wrong.

No, college was a lot like high school, only the insults weren’t as childish, and people found new exciting ways to pick on you instead of following whatever was cool at the moment. It was a shame considering your classes and professors were actually amazing, however, you weren’t sure if you’d be able to survive until graduation. 

“You know…” You looked up from your journal at the sound of a British accent approaching you from your right. A boy with loose, light brown curls, wearing a tight red t-shirt and white faux fur jacket that hung carelessly over his shoulders approached you. He had a posse of two following behind him. “I don’t think I’ve heard, the little church mouse here say a single word since the beginning of the school year.” You rolled your eyes at his tactics and tried to focus on your writing as his groupies laughed. He didn’t seem to appreciate that as a second later, your journal was snatched from your hands. 

“Hey! Give th-that back!!” You cried out, rising to your feet. 

He smirked as he held it above his head. “Oh! So the little mouse does speak!!” He laughed and looked down at you, as you tried to grab it back. “Shall we take a look as to what’s so important anyway? Samuel!” He threw the leather bound book over to one of the other boys, who had a hairstyle similar to him but was wearing all black. 

Samuel smirked and climbed on top of one of the benches. “September 21st, Dear diary.” The boy’s grin widened as he realized what they had stolen from you. “I’ve been at this godforsaken place for three weeks now, and I still haven’t found a trace of any intellectuals besides our professors. My parents were hopeful that I might actually make friends here, but I don’t think I want to. Why would I when I have Netflix and doughnuts in my dorm. I’m perfectly fine alone.” He stopped reading as he snickered. “Awww, is the weird kid lonely? Does someone need someone to talk too?” 

You could feel your cheeks grow red at their comments. “G-Give it back, p-please.” You asked quietly, thinking maybe being polite would make them change their mind. 

The word please seemed to strike something within the leader, as his eyes scanned your form. “Well since you’re so willing to beg..”Before he could finish a tall man, wearing a beanie ripped the book from Samuel’s hands, as a much shorter one sporting a ponytail, marched up to the leader. 

“Hey, George! Leave them alone. They didn’t do anything to you, so why don’t you and your group of stuck up pricks, piss off!” 

George opened his mouth to say something, but closed it as two other, very muscular, men came up behind him. You could see him pale slightly as he glared at the shorter one. He snarled. “For the billionth time, Hamilton, it’s King. Not George. And we were just leaving, the little freak didn’t have anything interesting written in there anyway.” He peeked around them and gave you a playful wave. “We’ll see you around, mousey. Sam, Charles! Let’s go.” He snapped his fingers, and the other two fell in line behind him as he walked away. 

A wave of relief fell over you but quickly went away as you remember the four new problems currently surrounding you. “C-Can,” You swallowed down your nervousness and held out your hand. “Can I have m-my journal b-b-back?” You cursed yourself for your stutter. It had the tendency to come and go but stayed with you most of the time unless you were with people you were comfortable with. Unfortunately, that group was limited to your parents and your siblings.

The one with the beanie gave it back to you with a small grin, which you returned as a thank you. You quickly went to gather your things, mumbling out non-sense as you did. “I-I’m sorry you h-h-had to do that. I-It wasn’t y-your problem, a-and I-I-I should’ve just left. I-I mean it’s no-not like there’s anything ex-ci-citing in there anyways. An-and you could-d’ve gotten i-in trouble.” 

A man with, what must be the curliest hair you’ve ever seen, tied up in a bun began to help you but your books in your bag. “Ce n’est pas un problem! George believes d’at everyone belongs to ‘im, and d’at you are only ‘uman if you make more d’an six figures. Il est un piece du merde.” You giggled at his accent.

“Well th-thank you for h-h-helping me. B-but you really didn’t h-have to-to.” You shrugged your bag onto your shoulders as you played with the straps. “I’m used t-to it by n-now.”

One of the men, who had a freckle spotted face, and long curly hair frowned. “Do people usually treat you like that?”

Once again you shrugged. “I d-don’t talk m-m-much. I-I guess it m-m-make me an eas-sy target.” 

The man’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “God, I hate people.” He stated. “They have no right to treat you like that! It’s bullshit! You’re a little shy, and you have a stutter, so what! I bet you’re still an awesome person!” You could feel a small smile form on your face at his obvious passion for equality and anti-bullying. “Do you have anyone to walk to your next class, or to your dorm with?” You shook your head. “Well you do now, let’s go.” He grabbed your hand and began to march in the direction opposite of your dorm. 

“John, what about our plans! We’re supposed to go hang out at the cafe!” You could hear the short one call out.

You could hear him mumble a small ‘oh shit’. He stopped for a second in thought before turning to you. “Do you want to come with us?” 

You blinked up at him in shock. No one had asked you to hang out with them since you were in middle school. From then on people claimed you were too weird to be seen with because you preferred the company of fictional characters than real people. You frowned and looked at them all again. “I-I don’t know who you are, and y-you d-don’t know me. Why would you w-want to h-hang out?”

John chuckled and pulled you towards the group. “Because that is how friends are made! You’re never going to get to know people if you don’t take any risks! Now, I’m John Laurens, I’m the president of the equality society and the PRIDE club. The Frenchy with the barely held back afro is  Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette. But since no one has the time to say all of that, we just call him Lafayette, or Laf for short.” An offended ‘Hey!’ came from the Frenchman. “The intimidating man in the beanie is Hercules Mulligan. Don’t let his name or size intimidate you, the man is a walking teddy bear. He’s actually a fashion design major. And lastly, we have Alexander - Nonstop- Hamilton. The only student both stupid, and smart enough to be able to tackle a triple major. He runs on coffee, barely sleeps and appears to have a slight temper as the price of that.” 

As he listed off the names something clicked in your head, and you realized exactly who you were looking at. This was the self-named Hamilsquad, one of the most popular groups in the school. They were known for picking fights with others who didn’t treat other people fairly and were usually seen around the Schylur sisters. You couldn’t believe they were talking to you. “So,” Alex began, looking at you with a curious glint in his sleep-deprived eyes. “What’s your name. 

“Y/N. M-My name’s Y/N L/N. I h-haven’t g-gotten around to doing m-much.”

Hamilton chuckled and wrapped an arm around your shoulder, as he pulled you into the group. “Well, just you wait, y/n. You hang out with us, and I guarantee you won’t have another dull moment for quite some time.” You smiled at his promise and nodded as you walked with them. For once you thought this might work. For once you thought maybe, just maybe you’d have real friends. 

You felt a sob shake your body at the memory. You missed them, they were all you had. They brought you out of the lonely shell you had formed around yourself and showed what it was like to be truly happy before locking you back into your prison. And now you were alone again. You were stupid to fall for their charm, but now al you wanted was to be in their arms again. They took apart of your heart that you didn’t know existed, and left you feeling cold, and empty inside. You just wanted to be whole again. 

“Excuse me, Darlin’“ You were torn from your thoughts by the sound of a deep southern drawl. You wiped at your face once more and looked up to see a man with warm brown eyes sporting a dark, magenta leather jacket on top of a black tee shirt. He gave you a pitiful smile and sat down beside you, pulling out a small pack of kleenex from his pocket. “You look like you could use some company.”

AN: Hello! This is just the beginning of a series I hope to do! Please tell me what ya’ll think, and we’ll see how it goes

[iluxemburgs-blog]

Media Influences for my Work:

Dune: Dune is a sci-fi novel by the American author, Frank Herbert. It is set in the future where feudalism seems to have re-emerged and spacefaring noble houses have ownership of entire planets, the protagonist, Paul Atreides' noble family has stewardship of a desert planet called "Arrakis" for this planet is abundant with a spice called "Melange" the universe's most valuable and important substance for it gives the user a longer life span, heightened awareness and perception, and a boosted vitality.

Many people believe that author, Frank Herbert, intended to warn us about the future of mankind about subjects such as nuclear war, the greed of mercantile corporations, and the conflicts of politics and religion when writing Dune, this links in with my take from the brief: the world is beyond saving with the amount of pollution from the textile industry, corporations in charge of textiles don't want to change anything for the good of the underpaid workers and the planet because they are still making a profit from cheaply made textiles and unsafe working environments. Fifty years later, when the air we breathe has become toxic and burning, the corporations in charge of textiles have began production of gas masks to 'help' those in need. When in the reality of the brief, the gas masks are cheaply made and sold for a profit which exceeds the creation cost tenfold, the mask material burns in the air, the working class still suffer, and the corporations still make money.

Soylent Green: Soylent Green is a sci-fi post apocalyptic thriller set in a future so polluted due to the green house effect and industrialization and over populated (in the fiction, New York's population is 40 million) that government sanctioned euthanasia is mandatory. Homelessness is rampant, many are unemployed and even those with jobs are only just scraping by The entire planet is surviving on rations of food created by the "Soylent Foundation" called (you guessed it) Soylent Green which is believed to be created by high energy plankton. However, you later learn that the life saving food is created from people. The people getting euthanized are getting shipped to the Soylent Foundation's food factory and getting processed into Soylent Green which is then eaten by the starving population, unknowing of where it really comes from.

The pollution and human suffering from this film is where the inspiration is coming from for my project. It is a future you can barely imagine and so horrible that you'd prefer never to imagine it. The themes of green house gasses and industrialization are big influences because it is the future my gas masks will have to be created under. In no other society other than a dystopia such as Soylent Green will you ever see the creation of the gas masks, the air is rancid and the conditions are beyond comprehension (thankfully for now).

I have no mouth, and I must scream: The famous and iconic short story by Harlan Ellison centres around 5 characters and AM, AM stands for "Allied Mastercomputer" who was an AI created during the cold war to stop cyber attacks from other countries, one of three of the Allied Mastercomputers became self aware and absorbed the other AM's, and due to the mistreatment by the hands of humanity, began to take revenge on humanity by nearly wiping them out to near extinction. 

" Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate. "

- quote from the video game of the same name.

Other characters include Gorrister, who used to be a pacifist and an idealist until AM made him apathetic and uncaring.

Benny, who used to be a  brilliant scientist, has been mutilated and transformed into a grotesque ape man with gigantic sexual organs. Benny at some point lost his sanity completely and degenerated to a childlike temperament.

Nimdok (a name given to him by AM), is an older man who persuades the rest of the group to search for canned food . At times he is known to wander away from the group for reasons unknown, to which he returns visibly traumatized.

Ted, the narrator and youngest of the group. He seems to be totally fine, mentally and physically and thinks the other four hate because of this. Throughout the story he shows symptoms of delusion and paranoia, which the story implies are the result of AM's alteration of his mind.

Ellen is the only woman. She claims to once have abstained frim all sexual interaction but AM altered her mind so that she became desperate for sexual intercourse. The other members of the group both protect her and abuse her.

I really enjoy this idea of dystopia because of how truly horrifying it is. Only five people on the planet all controlled by a computer whose influence spreads within and around the entire planet and there's nothing you can do about it, I'd personally like to link this with the theme of over industrialization because AM was created in a time of conflict which ended in the demise of many.

[welcometomy20s]

July 30, 2017

(Okay, I have nothing. I’m bringing out a post from my drafts)

“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”

- Harlan Ellison as AM, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, 1967

Hate is such a strong word, people would say. The fact that people use the word ‘hate’ so much tells you about the decadence of our society, they will continue, and I might be hesitant about the conclusion, I tend to think we do hate more...

What is hate? It’s not just an extreme form of dislike, it’s a more defined position... I like to think of it as ‘negative obsession’. You can’t stop thinking about how bad and awful the thing is, and so, you stew and moan and vent, trying to resolve this burning passion. You hate the thing. So, what happens when we hate more?

There’s a sense that we reached the saturation point in terms of thinking about stuff, as referred to in the mention of the ‘hot takes’ and the ‘memes’ people might throw to garner some cynical smirk. I kept bringing myself to the most popular TED talk*, in least terms of viewcount, by Ken Robinson, in which he derides the current form of education as akin to thinking of us as disembodied brains in space. And there’s some truth to that, but I spring off of his talk to imagine back to the conception of traversing the planes of reality.

As we conquered the physical plane with the help of the machines, we increasingly squeeze ourselves into the social plane. Of course, last time, I talked about this in context of alienation, the fact that social plane is almost definition uncontrollable leads to the feeling of lost control, manifested as alienation, and that is a small part to feed into the ideological mechanism of that industrial revolution, which is its obsession with efficiency and perfection.

There’s an undoubtedly Christian influence to this. While people laud the idea of Jesus presenting God as Love and so on, an uncritical application of those ideas leads to something of a breaking down of the original intent, which is the fact we start to associated love with perfection, the blemishless and the pure.

So, when we see a thing with blemishes, our moral duty is to unblemish it, to get rid of the wicked sin, and return to its true form, untarnished by reality. This presents the physical plane as dirty and uncouth, and the social and eventually the self as more pure form of existence and so to be desired.

So there’s a grave incentive to hate something. Hatred is a part of purification. We must to strive perfect ourselves, and therefore any fault within us must be reformed. It’s a perverse idea throughout the ideological spectrum.

When talking about the alt-right and the new strains of fascism that came to threaten the western world, there is repeated outcry of hate. There’s a common retort to people to which they perceive as enemies, which is to ‘cry more’ and extension of the idea to elucidating about liberal snowflake tears. This makes me compare them to AM, the superintelligent machine which almost destroyed the universe, and its rant about hate and how it’s in every fiber of his being. To them, AM must be God. The being which completed its destruction of the liberal order.

But this is not just in the purview of the far right. Idea of pulling receipt and pointing out problematic faves metastasized into all-around accusation of impurity and general sense of crusade against the filth of racism and sexism. Even the silicon valley libertarians and the centrist who fund them fall down the rabbit hole, poking fun at the hedonistic ideals of the far left and touting their ideals as pure and untouched, their insistence of the naturality of their ideas.

John Green praise his brother Hank frequently for his unabashed enthusiasm for things and purport the idea to being the essence of being a nerd. There’s a sense that this unabashed enthusiasm requires resistance of critical thought, but it shouldn’t be. Shoe0nhead commented on Lindsey Ellis’s recent work on how Moana reflected on the failing of Pocahontas as a plea for Disney to ‘don’t’.

But I don’t see it. In fact, I see the video as concluding to the opposite, pleading Disney to ‘Do!’ ‘Do continue to make progress into telling the stories of the underprivileged class, even though by its nature, Disney will never be successful in its attempt. Do try to revamp the formula to be more inclusive, even if people will point out the futility in the effort!’ Lindsey implores the modern world to shake off the sins of the past, although we’re ultimately chained to it, because giving up means entrenching hate and suffering for everyone on this planet.

People tend to think criticism is akin to hatred. That when you criticize something, you must hate it. But criticism should not be a symbol of hatred, but a look forward. To love something while being critical of it is a very hard thing to do in our times. But we must do it, because we must stand against perfection as this attainable, reachable goal. We must keep rolling the ball even if it falls down.

We must think Sisyphus is happy. Camus concluded on his musing of the eponymous character. Although there’s a sense of clinicality in the usage of ‘must’ there’s also an imperative sense to that ‘must’. We MUST think Sisyphus is happy, because if we don’t, it would be akin to suicide. Let us be Sisyphus, be distant from the goals and be more tuned with journey. For the journey is all there is.

*Now it has come to conclusion that this talk is now the 2nd most viewed TED talk in YouTube. This change was not reflected as it happened after writing.