#might delete this if the ‘why did i post that’ clarity sets in

[spoopdeedoop]

is anyone else really fucking normal about the fact that we are essentially mosaics of what we love. about how we pick up mannerisms like pretty rocks on the beach. i have my favourite books in the way i write and i have my favourite cartoons in the way i draw. i have my best friend in the way i speak and i have my parents in what i speak about. is anyone else really fucking normal about that. is anyo

[ducktastic]

2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

[encounterthepast]

If you enjoy this please follow @RussInCheshire on twitter for his regular threads on UK politics.

As it’s the weekend, let’s start #TheWeekInTory with a frivolous and jolly story about our own govt deliberately starving hundreds of thousands of children...

1. In May, Boris Johnson promised “nobody will go hungry as a result of Coronavirus”

2. He then denied school meals to the 600,000 poorest children

3. So Marcus Rashford ran a campaign to get the govt to feed children, which - just think about that: he had to *campaign* for it

4. Then Boris Johnson congratulated Rashford on his campaign to overturn the cruel policies of, erm, Boris Johnson

5. And then 3 days later, Boris Johnson refused to feed those kids during school holidays

6. So this week Labour organised a parliamentary vote about it

7. And 322 Tories voted against feeding hungry children

8. Vicky Ford, the Children’s Minister (who you’ll be surprised to hear neither looks nor sounds like a ludicrous Dickensian villain) went ahead and voted against feeding children

9. Tory MP Jo Gideon voted against feeding children. Jo Gideon, in case you didn't think things could get any more unbelievable, is also the chair of "Feeding Britain", a charity that campaigns to end food poverty and hunger in the UK.

10. Tory MP Paul Scully waved away the grumbling parents of kids with grumbling tummies, and said “children have been going hungry under Labour for years”, seemingly forgetting Tories have been in power for a decade

11. Tory MP Ben Bradley, who once had to apologise for suggesting sterilising the poor, said feeding children will simply “increase their dependency”. On food. Yeah, wean the little bastards off it. It’ll do them good in the end, which will be around 3 agonising weeks.

12. At this point, pause to consider that MPs get their food and drink subsidised. A £31 meal in a parliamentary restaurant costs MPs £3.45. In 2018 this subsidy cost the taxpayer £4.4m. I can’t find any record of Tories like Ben Bradley voting against this.

13. Pressing on: Ben Bradley also said “Some parents prioritise other things ahead of their kids. Small minority, yes... but some do”. Yes, and a small minority of Tory MPs have been arrested for rape. Should we send them all to prison?

14. Also, Mark Francois voted (by proxy) to keep kids hungry. Not related to the previous item. Why would you think that?

15. Tory MP Nicky Morgan said the govt voted to starve 600,000 children cos a Labour MP called a Tory MP scum. And that’s not a scummy thing to do at all.

16. Tory MP David Simmonds said Marcus Rashford’s experience of poverty in secondary school “took place entirely under a Labour government”. Rashford was 11 when Tories came into power, making David Simmonds are rare example of an ad hominem attack on yourself

17. Simmonds then said Labour’s parliamentary vote was “all about currying favour with wealth and power and celebrity status”. He might be right – the govt managed to unify Gary Linaker and Nigel Farage in condemnation of their denial of food to kids

18. Brandan Clark-Smith (who voted to starve kids) demanded “more action to tackle the real causes of child poverty”

19. So at once, the govt cut minimum wage for furloughed people. They now get 2/3 of the money the govt says is the absolute minimum it is possible to survive on

20. And then it was revealed that low-paid workers who have to isolate due to Covid can claim £500. Yay!

21. But if they’re told to isolate by the govt’s contact tracing app, they can’t claim anything. Un-yay.

22. Long story short: the govt cannot spend £120m feeding children. But it can spend £522 on the Eat Out Scheme, which its own report said contributed “negligible amounts” to the hospitality economy, and Boris Johnson admitted drove up infection rates – especially in the North

23. Those infection rates caused the govt to move Manchester into Tier 3

24. So the Mayor of Manchester asked for a £90m support package (1/6th of the money the govt spent causing the problem in the first place)

25. The govt said no, £60m

26. The Mayor said, how about £65m?

27. The govt said no, £60m

28. The Mayor said ok, fine, we’ll take the £60m

29. And then govt offered Manchester £22m, and then went to the press and said the Mayor was "being unreasonable"

30. The negotiations were led by Robert Jenrick, who recently set up a fund for the poorest 101 towns, then awarded his town £25m even though it is the 270th poorest, and therefore not even eligible

31. £25m is £237 per person

32. Manchester gets £7.85 per person

33. Robert Jenrick gave Manchester (2.8 million people) £22m

34. Robert Jenrick gave Richard Desmond (1 person) £45m

35. The talks broke down when the govt wouldn’t spend an extra £5m

36. The govt plans to spend £7m vitally rebranding "Highways England" to "National Highways"

37. Manchester Young Conservatives tweeted “Boris has lied about helping us in the North. It’s time for him to go". Don't look - they deleted it. Suspect somebody had a word.

38. Meanwhile the govt said Manchester will get the £60m after all, and chaos continue to reign supreme

39. But that £60m is brief reprieve for the Tories of Manchester, as a govt report said Tory seats in the North of England (the so-called "Red Wall" seats) can expect to lose at least 4000 jobs *each* as a result of Brexit, even if we do get a deal. More if we don't.

40. The govt rushed to begin its first airport Coronavirus testing, a mere 211 days after mandatory airport testing was begun in South Korea

41. South Korea has had 8 deaths per million

42. The UK has had 665 deaths per million

43. More airport news, as the govt finally accepted Brexit will cause “up to 8-hour delays at passport checks” and asked the EU to allow UK citizens to queue at EU-only lanes. Like we did when we were in the EU. But we aren’t now. So tough.

44. A senior diplomat said, “Having grown up in Brussels, Boris Johnson values the ability to travel freely to the continent”. You’d think Boris Johnson would foresee this problem when he led the campaign to stop that freedom.

45. The independent reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said the UK “will be increasingly unable to cope” after Brexit, as we lose access to EU data-sharing agreements

46. And a No-Deal end to UK/EU scientific collaboration will leave London with a £3bn annual deficit

47. In the space of 38 days, the govt announced the £100bn "Operation Moonshot" to solve Covid; then cancelled it; and then re-launched it again after it was found they’d accidentally continued to pay over 200 private consultants up to £7000 a day to work on it.

48. So this week, Boris Johnson said Moonshot would continue, but it’s goals “would take time”, which is the literal opposite of what he said it would do when it first announced it, and makes the entire thing absolutely pointless

49. And now it’s been admitted that Operation Moonshot would be quietly folded into the existing £12bn Test and Trace programme, and the £100bn has vanished. Apart from the bits the Serco consultants took for doing… nothing.

50. But Boris Johnson said the Test and Trace programme was “helping a bit”, and “a bit” is the least you’d expect if you’d spent £12bn

51. And then the £12bn Test and Trace programme fell to its lowest success rate so far, identifying only 60% of at-risk people

52. Local councils, with no additional funding, are tracing 98% of cases

53. A quick sweep though other epic successes you may have missed (or deliberately blocked out): Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch declared that it should be illegal to teach about inequality

54. The Cabinet Secretary said the report into “vicious and orchestrated” bullying by Home Secretary and Dementor Priti Patel “may never see the light of day”, cos if you have a report that vindicates you, you definitely sit on it as long as possible

55. And the appeals court unanimously overturned Priti Patel’s policy of removing people from the UK without giving them access to legal process or justice because – and I’m paraphrasing the judges here – what the fuck, Patel? What the actual fuck?

56. Undeterred, she announced plans to make rough-sleeping “grounds for removal of permission to be in the UK” and "denial of legal aid". So if you’re too poor to have a home, you must pay for a lawyer or she’ll shove you in the sea

57. After an unnamed Tory MP said it “looks bad to be handing top jobs to your friend and old boss”, Charles Moore, Boris Johnson’s friend and old boss, withdrew as next BBC chair.

58. The new favourite is Richard Sharp, the - yep - friend and old boss of Rishi Sunak

59. You’ll be amazed to hear this: Richard Sharp is a major donor to the Tory party. These little coincidences keep on happening

60. The govt decided to prevent EU citizens from having physical proof of their right to live in their own home

61. Grant Shapps threatened to “seize control of Transport for London” to save it from financial ruin at the hands of Sadiq Khan, who – the bastard - achieved a mere 71% reduction in the debts caused by his noble predecessor, Boris Johnson

62. Matt Hancock, facts at his fingertips, told MPs from Yorkshire their constituents could go on holiday abroad

63. But not in the UK

64. And then that they CAN go on holiday in the UK

65. But can't leave Yorkshire

66. He then said “I'll get back to you” about the details

67. A cross-party report found “the UK’s foreign policy is adrift”, that it lacks “clarity, confidence and vision” and that Britain is “absent from the world stage”. All of which is very soothing, as we move into the govt's proclaimed goal of a post-Brexit Global Britain.

68. And we can all relax: the govt is finally supporting culture in the UK, specifically the Nevill Holt Opera, which performs private operas, and is owned by Boris Johnson’s friend (and - jaw on floor! - Tory donor) David Ross, who is worth £700m so really needs the money.

69. The Nevill Holt Opera only functions in the summer, so thank god it has been prioritised with £85,000 to “maintain operations” in October.

And now, in honour of the opera, the fat lady can sing, cos I’m off to drink myself into oblivion. Join me.

We live in interesting times.

[keepcalmandreadfluffinpublic]

Coyote Ugly part 3

A/N: soooooo I know I haven’t finished I hope you’re the last, but this was too good of an idea to not write. ;) This was so long overdue!!!! I’m sorry for such the long wait I made the mistake of grabbing a snack and came back and the whole chapter was deleted :( (the pain I felt). However, to make up for the wait I should be posting the other 2-3 within tonight or tomorrow!! As always I do not own the gif.... credit goes to moviewhorexo :)

Warnings: cussing, more ptsd (may be triggering), angst, things start to build!!

Pairings: Plus! Sized reader x Bucky, Steve x Natasha

Imagine: Running a bar was not ideal in your mind. However being able to invoke complete privacy for your clients was. All you had to do was lie about them and yourself, but what happens when your lies come to the surface and fate takes you on a whole new path? What happens when Earths greatest hero’s force that path?

An annoyed groan left my lips as I looked back at her picture. Her bright (y/e/c) eyes that were sparkling from earlier, now appearing dull through the screen. Her hair dull and lifeless, resembling the emotions held in her face. Her face was hollowed and thin, dark circles apparent under her eyes. I couldn’t wrap my head around how this was the same girl. If anything I would have thought they were twin sisters, and one fell into the wrong crowd. Shaking my head I placed the tablet down and pinched the bridge of my nose. the only thought crossing my mind was, who are you? 

The silence was cut short by the slam of the door opening. I didn't need to open my eyes to know it was Tony. “Are you fucking serious?” he yelled. I turned my head towards Steve who was looking right back at me. Great. “Now Tony before you start a fight-” Stave began to try and defuse the tension building, but Tony wasn’t having it. “I said to drop it! How hard could it be to just drop it? But no you went behind my back and invaded someone’s privacy, might I add a someone I love like a sister!” roaring he stepped further into the room. 

“She lied to you at the party.” I replied flatly

“The fuck did you say?”

“She lied to you, hell all of us back there!” I began feeling my own anger rising. “Tony how well do you know her? I mean there isn’t a shred of paper on her, no one has that little of information on them!” I say standing, while subtly crossing my arms over my chest. The metal turning and shifting was the only thing distracting me from losing control. 

Tony stared at us for a second, before shaking his head. “Friday call a team meeting, NOW!” he said eying both Steve and I. “Right away Mr. Stark. Is the living room ok?” the system responded earning a curt ‘that will do’ from Tony. “You want to know more about her? Well first we’re going to discuss serious matters, before we get to that part Barnes.” Tony fumed, before storming out. I took my chances looking at Steve, he looked just as confused as I was. “Did we just start something?” I questioned hoping he would provide me the clarity I was searching for. Steve stood there for a second before looking at me. “All I have to say is she better be worth what Tony is about to do, because Nat will freak if we did this without a good reason Buck.” was all he said before following Tony. Shit. 

The living room was in full chaos by the time Steve and I arrived. Wanda and Vision were arguing with Clint and Thor over what this ‘meeting’ would be about. Loki sat across from Natasha and Bruce who looked focused in their own conversation. Sam sat in his love seat with popcorn. He was smiling like a kid on Christmas. Tony was in the front setting up the screen. I felt out of place, don’t get me wrong I love the team (well most of them). But right now I felt like a fish in a shark tank and I was about to meet a very slow death. Steve strolled over to Natasha, who upon seeing him smiled. “What the hell is going on?” she asked watching Steve for any sort of hint. He looked down at her and smiled. “I guess we’re about to find out soon.” was all he said before joining her on the couch. I took my chances on the wall behind Loki, who seeing me knew this was going to more of a scolding then a meeting. “What did you do now Barnes?” he harsly whispered, with a smug smirk on his face. I just rolled my eyes and stayed on the wall. 

“Well now that we are all here.” Tony began, “I want to bring something to everyone’s attention.” he paused and scanned the room. No one moved an inch, but stared back at him confused as to what this was all about. “Invasion of privacy is a big deal! Now I know I’ve dealt in invading people’s privacy, but I want all of you to know right now. If you are going to try and dig information on anyone without my knowledge. Do not use my resources, I will not permit anything of the sorts. Now why is this relevant Tony? I’ll tell you why. Wanda put your hand down.” he snapped. 

Wanda taken by surprise lowered her hand and waited for him to continue. “Now as you all know I have very few people in my life who are dear to me!  People who are like family, besides all of you. I take it very personal when I let some of you meet someone close to my heart and for you to try and invade their privacy.” he stopped again, eying Steve and I. This caught everyone’s attention, causing me to shift my weight between my feet. “So I have decided to tell all of you about this special person and some general information, and I hope this will end curios minds from continuing their search.” Tony stated before tapping the screen. Her picture appeared replacing the once black screen. Her eyes still as emotionless as they were before. I couldn’t keep my gaze off of her. 

“This is my ‘adoptive’ sister Lea Black. She is 23 years old and owns her own Business, Coyote Ugly. This picture was taken 3 years ago when I first met her. She is my family and frankly I could use some. Here.” he said tapping the screen again. “is her today.” The image was completely opposite from the previous one. Your (y/h/c) shone brightly in the sunlight. Your delicate (y/e/c) eyes were squinted just a bit from your smile. Your eyes alone held so many emotions and life in them, I felt myself getting lost within them. Forcing my gaze from your eyes your smile welcomed me like a warm summer day. It was effortless and raw, truly beautiful. You were standing in the middle of a sunflower field with a bright yellow dress on. You looked content and at peace. 

“Now like I said she does own Coyote Ugly, a few of use have had the pleasure of being clients there, but if I find out that there is anymore invading her privacy there will be hell to pay.” as he finished everyone slowly looked around the suddenly to small of a room. There was a brief silence before Sam’s voice broke through. “So that’s why y’all were in a hurry to get back.” he stated throwing more popcorn into his mouth. “What does he mean by that Steve?” Wanda asked knowing no one was gonna let her in their minds. Steve lowered his hands into his hands, releasing a long sigh. “Well I-” but before he could continue I interrupted him. 

“I was the one who invaded both Lea’s and Tony’s privacy. She said something back at the club and I caught her in a lie. I forced steve to help me and againsts his better judgment he helped because he is my best friend. I am sorry Tony for doing what I did, but I will not apologize for trying to find the truth. There is something more you won’t tell us about her and I’ll be damned if I don’t figure it out.” I said my voice slowly lacing with venom as I spoke. Before anyone could say anything else, I stormed out of the room. Leaving them all in confusion and my head swarming with questions. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How could I have been so foolish? I let a dry laugh pass my lips. How did he find me? Why hasn’t he come for me directly, Brock wasn’t a patient man, what’s his game?  Releasing a frustrated groan I stand up, deciding it was best if I left my home for a bit. Maybe going to see Maci would help. I glance at the clock seeing it was only 11 am, I normally would be getting up at this time, but I haven’t slept at all last night.

 I tossed and turned before caving in on the fact I wasn’t going to be getting any sleep. I spent most of the night sitting on my balcony embracing nature’s tranquility; while silently wishing I was as peaceful. The moon shone high above me, almost proudly. And with every pass of the night breeze sent a shiver up my spine causing me to nestle further into my blankets. My mind soon wandered over when I was little and everything was so simple. But simplicity is a luxury only few can afford. Around dawn I made my way inside for some coffee before resuming my silent contempt. Living a life mine, caffeine was the only consistent thing in it, besides Maci and Tony. The sun rose emitting soft orange hues, making the almost pitch black night turn into a shade of vivid lilac and pink. 

At that moment I wished for once time would freeze and let me relish this a few seconds longer, but all good things must come to an end. I finally made my way back inside, and began pacing back and forth once more; leaving a permanent trail in its wake. I don’t remember when I had decided to take a shower, only when did the scalding hot water hit my skin did my overly tense muscles relax. I stayed there for well over an hour trying to escape my reality. But all to soon the familiar worrying and unsettling feelings started creeping back in. 

Forcing me back to reality. I proceeded to get ready in an almost dazed like trance. I hadn’t even realize I was downstairs till I was grabbing my keys. The drive was around 15 minutes, surprisingly short for New York traffic. Maci had been by my side since we were little. She knew everything about my past and still stayed with me. I didn’t knock when I reached her house, using the key she made me I opened the door. I began to shrug myself up the stairs and slowly make my way to her room. 

I noiselessly open her door, her room was barely lit. Her shades were almost drawn closed allowing the only light to enter from their small cracks. I quietly made my way to my side of the bed, before taking off my shoes. Double checking for any one night stand stragglers, before easing under the covers. Minutes passed and the only sound in the room was her soft snores. Slowly I positioned myself to face her, while trying to make sure she didn’t wake up. “Don’t be quiet on my account. I heard you when you opened the front door dumbass.” she said in a airy laugh. I laughed as well party at her response and the other out of relief. I hate silence. “I was trying to be considerate moody Judy. What’s got you so cranky?” I ask genuinely curious. Maci is normally and angel when she wakes up. “I met tequila, and tequila knocked me on my ass.” was all she said before we were taken by a fit of giggles. 

Maci got out the bed with an urgent need to go pee. She left me still silently shaking my head and laughing. She wasn’t gone long as soon enough we were facing each other again. “What’s bothering you gorgeous. Normally you don’t come over here till after lunch. And I can practically hear your thoughts turning around in there.” she said tapping me lighting on the head. I pursed my lips not know where to begin, and eventually giving up while rolling onto my back. I let out a long frustrated groan while my arms covered my face. “I don’t know if that was angry frustrated or sexually frustrated, but I will gladly help with either.” 

Maci said earning a heartfelt laugh from me. Maci was something else, and the complete opposite of me. She was 5′7, thin and toned in all the right places. She had long blonde hair that fell to her low back and sparkling green eyes. She was the equivalent of sex on legs, she slept with anyone and everyone. No matter size, gender, or sexuality. Not only that but she was extremely intelligent and witty, maybe that is why Shield hired her.

“Definitely angry frustrated, but I’ll let you know about the other.” I said jokingly. she said something along the lines of ‘you better’, but I was still too busy laughing. She got out of bed to put her hair up as she waited for me to talk. “Y/n? What’s wrong?” she persisted standing in front of the bed. I sat up running my hands through my hair. “Yesterday there were a couple of kids who snuck into the club. Nothing out of the ordinary until we started to interrogate them. Someone had paid them to sneak into the club. Me being curious as to why kept persisting on the topic.” I said before pausing to release a sigh. I looked down at my hands before meeting her waiting gaze. “Well one of the kids, she said he paid them to come and find out if there was a y/n y/l/n there. I was stunned because only a few people know my real name M. So against my better judgement I asked who sent them. A-an-and she said he was a man who went by the name of Brock.” I finished looking at my best friend. 

Minutes of silence passed between us before Maci spoke again. Her gaze was fixed on the wall behind me.  “Fucking bastard will wish he was dead, before I ever get the chance to find him.” she fumed catching me off guard. “M I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop living my life, and so far there has been no more contact attempts.” I said her stare was hard and cold, before softening when she looked at me. “You know I will have to tell Fury Y/n... I would much rather you be safe than in the hands of that bastard again.” she replied softly while sitting next to me. I let her words sink in for a moment, while trying to come up with some answer. 

“Then tell Fury. I was foolish to think I could out run my past...” I said while the memories clawed their way back into my mind. 

“Come now it’s not that bad see?!” Brock said while bringing the needle too close for comfort. I flinched back only to earn a hard slap on my left cheek. The room he held me in was white, but not the pretty, pure white. No this white was dirty almost yellow, close to turning brown. The lights were bright as if knowing they were going to burn themselves into my memory. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve this. I stopped fighting him a long time ago, so why did he keep treating me this way? His hand came around to my arm, jerking harshly for me to move. When I didn’t move fast enough he dug his nails deeper into my delicate flesh, causing me to bite down on my tongue. Tears brimmed my eyes, while metallic filled my mouth. He led me down hallway after hallway, my tears causing me to trip earning more punches or kicks, whatever Brock felt like doing. When we reached the last hallway there was only one door at the end of it. It was all black and metal by the way the light reflected off of the steel. And as if to make it worse there was a large red x painted in the center of the door, making a shiver dance up my spine. My head was pounding and I began to think this is how I will die. I began to feel betrayed, betrayed by my family for abandoning me the way they did, betrayed by my brain for it won’t cooperate with my body, and lastly betrayed by heart for ever being able to love a man like Brock; and worse of all for still loving him. He released my arm to start unlocking the door, and my body came alive. I had a minute tops to start my escape and if I were to die, well I’ll be damned if I don’t go down with a fight. I turned on my heels and sprinted down the hallway. My blood felt like it was going a billion miles an hour, my ears were ringing, and natural instinct took control. I rounded the first corner and kept going, I heard the footsteps getting closer, but I kept pushing. As I went to round my 3rd corner a hand grasped my hair and flung me back, forcing me to land on my back and head. The air that once fueled my lungs to escape completely vanished and I was left a coughing mess. My head began spinning as all the blood rushed to the injury. Brock came into view and leaned over my body. He swayed his finger in a ‘no’ motion while tutting at me. “Now sweetheart, why’d you go and get yourself hurt like that? I haven’t even shown you my surprise yet and here we are with you hurting yourself again.” he said with a dark smile. I gasped for a few more minutes trying to gain the strength to crush his heart like he did mine over and over again. “I-I-I” I stopped to inhale a breathe, my breathe coming back to me. he leaned forward before grabbing my hair and pulling my face close to his, our lips no more than a hair apart. “What was that?” he asked a scowl forming on his once handsome face. The face I used to trace and love with every fiber of my being. “I-I-I was going to sa-y... I’m not your swee-eetheart no more!” I said before spitting in his face. His eyes clouded with fury I have grown to know all too well. He dropped my face and stood up motioning for whoever that was coming to wait. “We’ll see about that Y/n...” was all he said before I felt the feeling of his foot kicking my face and everything went black. 

It tooks me a while to remember I was at Maci’s and not at that horrific place. My breaths came out uneven and short. “Y/n? I need you to breathe okay? You are having a panic attack, hands over your head. What are your favorite things in the world?” Maci asked kneeling in front of me. Tears blurred my vision, but I refused to cry. “Y-yo-you....” I paused to raise my hands over my head to allow myself better access to breathe. After a few seconds I got a deep breathe allowing me to continue. “To-ony.. m-y job... a-and.” I paused again finally getting my breathing to return back to normal. I slowly lowered my hands and looked at Maci. “And cake.” I said with a small smile. “There ya go. See, you are ok? Now how about we get that cake and a stronger concealer for your dark circles.” she said with a smile. I laughed before pushing her slightly. “Hey!” I laughed getting up and slipping on my shoes. “Well babe I don’t ever hide the truth and the truth right now is we need food in our bellies! And some new makeup!” She said before throwing her hair into a messy bun. I gazed at her for a second, before glancing at her full length mirror. “Ooo God! You’re right, I look like a racoon.” I said laughing followed by a very loud ‘mhm’. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: They are open so if you want to be tagged when a new part comes out just let me know :) @mccloudchloe​, @buckysthing​

[heirloommtomatoes]

Together (Sam Drake x Reader)

This was a requested fic for “Don’t you dare ever do that again!” & “Who gave you that black eye?” from...four years ago? I posted it a while ago, deleted it, updated it coincidentally a few weeks ago, and @seizethesam​ was looking for it so here we are! Enjoy this throwback!

Word Count: 5,621

Warnings: Violence against a minor depicted. Might be disturbing to some. Strong language, depictions of PTSD. Mentions of suicide (implied).

————

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”

―Steve Maraboli

The day Sam Drake died, he broke his wrist. He suspects now that it was likely more of a hairpin fracture, and wonders why it is this he remembers with such clarity. Not the gunshot, not slipping from his brother’s hand, not the sickening lurch in his gut as he fell, nor the stench of sweat and blood and metal and the red-hot wet of the pool of blood he lay in. Instead, he remembers trying to break his fall and failing, remembers the crunch of his wrist against the cement and the darkness that followed.

Fifteen years later, and all he has to show for it are bullet scars and a brother who learned to live without him.

“Sam, it’s four in the damn morning,” Nathan whispers into the phone as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, sensing Elena shift beside him at his movement. The feel of his brother’s name on his lips is still odd after having not spoken it for so many years.

Even just hearing Sam breathing on the other end still hits him with a surreality that nearly takes his own breath away. When you lose someone you respect, they become God. Nate had never been one for the pious doggerel of the nuns at St. Mary’s Boys’ Home where they had grown up. He had never prayed, had never presumed to try and speak to God. But over the last decade, he did speak to Sam. His grave had become his temple.

Nate remembers the shouting, the gunfire, the stench of humidity and smoke and sweat. He remembers his hand in Sam’s as he held onto his brother with everything he had over that ledge. But Sam had dropped anyway, and a part of Nate’s heart had gone with him, and he wasn’t sure if it had ever come back up.

“I know,” comes Sam’s reply, but his voice sounds broken, cracked, “I…uh,” he drags a hand down his face as he stands from where he was sat on the edge of the bed, offering a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t disturb your sleep. He stands slowly, walks heel-to-hoe to the door, twisting the handle slowly.

“I need to talk but I—I don’t wanna wake Y/N,” he whispers, and it’s silence from the other end as Sam makes his way to the kitchen to take a seat on a stool next to the island.

“Ah,” Nate finally says, “So you wake me,” he tries to joke, but it falls flat and hits the silence that follows like a wall.

“I keep having these dreams, Nathan—” he takes a shaky breath and lowers his head; half in sorrow and half because he’s too tired to keep it up, “I keep remembering him.”

Sam presses his hand against his younger brother’s chest, pushing him back. A group of guards, three or four strong, train their guns on the pair of men.

“Hey, you keep your gun on me!”

Careful what you wish for. Sam doesn’t remember feeling the bullets hit, but he remembers the force of it pushing him back and his heel slipping on edge of the roof. It seems now like something that happened to someone else — and Sam supposes that if he were inclined to such thoughts of spirituality and philosophy, he would think that in a way it was. He doesn’t recognize himself in that man anymore.

His heel goes over the edge, but with a sharp pain in his arm he realizes he’s not falling. Nathan lunges for him, grabbing his wrist before gravity could complete its job. He hauls on his arm so hard Sam is afraid his shoulder will pop right out of the socket. He lets out a manic laugh at that when he remembers he was just shot, and thinks to himself that might be the wound more worth worrying about. Blood sputters from his mouth with it, splattering onto Nate’s face.

“Sam, don’t you let go!” Nathan shouts at him, face grimaced with the effort of carrying his brother’s weight. He thrusts his other arm down and reaches for Sam, “Grab my other hand!”

Sam looks up at Nathan. His face is covered in dirt and sweat and blood, his head haloed by the flat white light of a cloudy mid-afternoon sun. His breath comes hard, fast, and it takes a moment for Sam to register the tears making tracks down his brother’s face. Is he dead already? It seems fitting they would die together.

He falls.

Sam is vaguely aware of the stinging pain in his abdomen, and more aware of the cold that spreads through each and every limb like a wildfire. The dampness around his abdomen seems to weigh on him as if someone has decided to stuff a molten bowling ball into a gaping hole in his body.

“Cuidadoso! Él todavía está viva!”

When darkness swallows him, there’s are only two names that stay gasping at the surface:

Nathan.

Y/N.

He wakes, hours or days later, to a light that sears straight through him and aches in the backs of his eyes. He doesn’t remember dying. With some hazy sense of dread, he wonders if the voices that sound as though people are shouting at him from behind glass are some sort of chorus of angels, or more likely, demons. He hadn’t believed in any of what they’d taught in the Boys’ Home, but old habits persist. A breath enters his lungs, one that feels as though he’s stepping out into a winter’s day from a cabin on fire, his chest burning with the effort. All this pain and numbness fighting for dominance in his stomach, in his legs, in his head. Tingling, stinging, aching, all so persistent. Darkness swallows him, and it’s weeks before he wakes again.

Nathan.

Y/N.

Two years later, and he’s been in the same cell as some child for the better half of it. Sam thinks he must be a teenager still, and something in his chest aches at that that he can’t quite place.

Panama is nothing like he thought it was going to be. Maybe it’s just that he’s alone now. That’s probably it. He thought he’d get used to it more quickly, but falling asleep in the same bed that always pokes at his lower back no matter which way he turns and spending his days brawling and trading cigarettes has yet to become monotonous. He’s not sure if this is a blessing or a curse. He’s not sure what that says about him. He’s not sure if he wants to know.

With a gnawing guilt, Sam has come to find that prison is one of the only places he’s felt free. No responsibility weighing over him, no little brother to parent and worry over, no need to be constantly searching for work. It’s a loveless existence, but no one he cares about on the outside know where he is or what he’s doing. It’s his own kind of hell and kind of heaven, and somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders if he did die that day, and every day after.

The humidity and heat takes some getting used to, though. The stench it brings, both from the men and from the miles of green around them was fierce and unrelenting and ever-present. And despite the wet season that comes and goes through March to December, dust clings to the walls year round, smelling of tobacco and sweat and blood.

Not long after waking and Sam has plucked out a book from underneath his mattress. It’s some shitty millionth-edition copy of a book on Henry Avery, but he figures it’s better than nothing and probably the best he’s going to get in this shithole. The boy sits silently on his own bed, and for a fleeting moment Sam wonders what goes on in that small head of his. As if on cue the boy opens his mouth to speak.

“What’re you gonna do when you get out?” he asks, accent thick. Sam looks over.

He can barely see him sitting on his bed in the shadows, knees drawn up to his chest, arms resting lazily over the tops of them.

“How old are you?” Sam counters, ignoring the question. They weren’t going to let him out of here. It was a stupid question.

“Dieceséis,” comes the reply, “My name’s Roberto, by the way.”

Sam sits up suddenly, setting the book down by his side, “Sixteen? Fucking sixteen? Jesus, you’re a kid. I didn’t know they even let people that young in here.”

Roberto shrugs, “Ran out of space everywhere else, I guess.”

A silence settles over them and Sam lays back down, hands clasped over his stomach, thumb rubbing over one of the small dips in his skin where his scars are.

“You got a lady out there? Waiting for you?”

Sam snorts, “I don’t know so much about the waiting part, but yeah.”

He tries to not think of you. This place would spoil your memory, like a song you listened to over and over during a breakup and can’t listen to anymore without thinking of it. When — if — he sees you again, he doesn’t want that. He knows you don’t deserve it.

But as if he can help it. Memories of you are among the only things keeping him sane. He remembers waking next to you, the soft golden glow of dawn washing through the nearly-transparent curtains of a hotel room. The hum of the fan wasn’t enough to drown out the songbirds that had decided your window was most appealing that day and had rudely awoken him at such a small hour. He remembers flopping over to face you, watching your breath rise and fall, reaching out to trace the gentle curve of your spine—

“You gonna marry her when you get out?”

Sam takes a breath in. As he lets it out he tightens his jaw. He knows the kid is an ignorant shit. He doesn’t know better. “I’m not getting out,” he replies, “So stop acting like that’s ever gonna fuckin’ happen.” The response comes out as more of a snap than Sam had intended, but he pushes away the feelings of guilt, forces himself to keep his gaze away from his cellmate.

“Oh.”

Sam closes his eyes, tries to think of something else other than the way Roberto’s tone reminded him so much of Nathan when they were kids, but it’s like someone telling you not to think of the phantom pain after losing a limb. And what do you think of?

He hears shuffling from the other side of the cell. The lifting of a mattress, a grunt of effort, the crinkling of paper and the heavy thud of setting it all back down again.

“Here,” Roberto says, and Sam feels his weight at the end of the bed. The older man groans and runs his hands down his face as he sits up, shirt sticking to his back that’s wet with sweat from the midday heat.

Roberto lifts a small square piece of paper in his hands, “Mira,” he says, gesturing to the photo.

It’s a black and white photograph of a woman, heavy-set with kind eyes and a massive grin plastered to her face, the several missing teeth only adding to her obvious charm. Her hands are clasped over her stomach, an apron bound as tightly around her as the head wrap she wears to stave off the heat of the day.

“Who’s this?” Sam asks, not bothering to wonder how he managed to get it in the first place.

“Mi madre,” Roberto responds, “When I get out, I’m gonna find her. Maybe you can come visit us,” he adds with a childlike enthusiasm that’s like an arrow to Sam’s heart. God, this kid deserves so much more than this.

“Do you have any pictures of your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you scared you’ll forget what she looks like?”

Another year passes, and eventually Sam gets used to the torrential rain November brings. Or more importantly, he gets used to what it means; the cigarette trading turns into more frequent brawling in the laundry rooms or courtyard and the withdrawal symptoms make the fighting take on an animalistic turn as the men become restless. He leans against the railing that overlooks one of the courtyards, clasped hands fidgeting as he watches the men below, screaming and grunting and splashing in the mud as punch after punch lands.

He can sense Roberto’s presence beside him before the kid announces himself.

“The guards are looking for me,” he says, voice small, “I took a piece of bread from the kitchen.”

“You’re not doing a very good job of hiding yourself,” Sam responds without turning his gaze to look at him.

“They’re distracted by the brawling anyway,” Roberto says, shuffling closer as if Sam’s shadow could hide him. Hell, Sam thinks it probably could. The kid must weigh barely a hundred pounds.

“I fuckin’ hate this rain,” Sam says, picking a cigarette out from his pocket and fiddling with it in his hand, “Can’t even light a goddamn smoke.”

Roberto’s shoulder is almost touching Sam’s side. He looks down at him and frowns. The kid looks like a wet rat in his white t-shirt, black hair matted to his forehead. Sam shrugs off the navy prison jacket and drapes it over the kid’s shoulders, “You’ll catch a cold,” he says when Roberto looks up at him in surprise and grabs the lapels to tug it closer to himself as Sam sticks the cigarette in his mouth. He wasn’t about to try and light it in the downpour, but it felt good to hold there.

Sam meets the boy’s gaze, and its only then he notices the dark bruising around his eye, “Who gave you that black eye?” he demands, the intensity in his own voice surprising himself as he leans forward to tilt Roberto’s head in the light.

The teen swats him away and grumbles something under his breath, turning his gaze back to the courtyard.

“What?”

“I got in a fight,” he says, “It won’t happen again.”

“Good,” Sam tells him, “Those guys down there could snap you like a twig, you know that? Don’t you dare ever do that again,” he says, taking the cigarette from his mouth and irritably throwing it over the edge as he leans over.

Roberto shrugs his shoulders and hugs the jacket close, “Let’s go back to our cell. I got a deck of cards.”

Sam looks back down at him at the suggestion and slings an arm over his shoulders, steering him back down the stairs and under cover.

“It’s called crazy eights,” Sam tells him later as they sit opposite each other on Roberto’s bed, raising his voice to be heard above the rain that had worsened on their way back. Thunder cracks and Roberto jumps slightly, looking over his shoulder toward the cell bars.

The air is thick with the humidity of it, as if the rain is pushing all the heaviness that had been hanging above them back down. It brings about new smells too; smells of faeces and urine and vomit that Sam knows are a result of the practically non-existent plumbing of the place. He turns his gaze back to Sam, scrunching his nose as he sniffs. Nervous habit.

“My little brother and I used to play it,” he continues as he shuffles the deck he imagines Roberto traded for a pack of cigarettes back in March when it was still possible to smoke them outside. It feels almost natural to talk about Nathan again, but god help him if he was going to speak his name aloud.

“Our parents would fight sometimes,” he says, “He’d get scared, so he and I would hole up in his room, play cards. Talk about history, practice our latin.”

“He sounds nice,” Roberto says, and is aware of how bland his response is. He’s worried anything else will make Sam shut up, and that’s the last thing he wants.

“Too nice for his own good, I’d say,” Sam says as he nods and deals out the cards, “Last person I taught this game to was my girlfriend,” he continues, and wonders why he’s only telling him this now. God, it feels good to talk about the two of you, “She was awful at it,” he laughs, and Roberto decides then and there that if he had an older brother, he would have a laugh like that.

“Do you love her?”

“Yes,” Sam says with no hesitation, the answer coming like a reflex. Of course he loves you. Kid has a habit of asking stupid questions, “What about your family?” he asks as he finishes dealing the cards and picks up his hand.

Roberto seems to have nothing to say for the first time since Sam befriended him two years ago as he reaches for his cards and shrugs, “They’re nice. I have a younger sister. My parents have work in town, but they come home in the afternoon and make the best dinners for us,” he says, setting his hand back down in front of him and sitting cross-legged, hands gripping at his ankles. Sam thinks he looks younger than he is sitting like this.

Heavy footsteps sound down the hallway and Roberto tenses, looks over his shoulder.

“I told you the guards were after me,” he says in a quiet voice, but Sam’s brow furrows. He’d stolen from the kitchens before. Everyone had. The punishment for it was far from severe, but of course as everything in the prison it depended what kind of mood the guards were in. The worst he’d seen was someone thrown in solitary for a day or two.

Five guards approach the door, hands set to their guns as a man clad in brown opens the door. Sam looks at Roberto with wide eyes and gets to his feet, “Hey, hey, hey,” he says quickly, holding his hands out in front of him as if that might stop them, “What the hell—”

“Cállate, gringo,” a guard yells at him, shoving his shoulder against his chest hard enough to knock him against the back wall. Sam lets out a grunt as he slides down, the force nearly knocking the breath out of him as he turns his gaze to Roberto.

“¿Dónde es?” the guards yells at him, lifting his gun to line up with his head. Roberto crawls back on his bed until he hits the wall, sending cards flying to the ground in his struggle.

“No—no sé lo que estás hablando,” Roberto stutters, and Sam wonders if it’s the fear or dampness making him shiver.

Sam scrambles to his feet and grabs Roberto’s wrist, shoves him behind himself, “Hey, you keep your gun on me,” he says, the words tasting familiar to him. He holds out an arm protectively and can feel Roberto gripping his shirt and peeking out from behind him.

“¿Qué carajo crees que estás haciendo?” the guard spits out, “This doesn’t concern you.”

The guard raises his arm and slams his elbow against the side of Sam’s head, knocking him to the concrete floor.

As one of them keeps a gun on Roberto, the other four lift the mattresses and throw them to the floor, one of them trapping Sam’s arm. When he goes to reach for one of the guard’s legs to trip him, another sends his boot into his ribcage. Pain explodes across his abdomen and when he opens his mouth he finds he has no breath to gasp at the agony of it.

“What do we have here?” a guard says, holding out the small slip of paper Roberto had kept under his mattress, “Where did you get this?” one of the guards spits at Roberto, holding up the photograph, “Who gave all this shit to you?” he repeats, gesturing at the cards.

“No va a halbar,” another guard says, snatching the photo out of his hands and shoving it in front of Roberto’s face, “Keeping a photo of your dead madre around? You want to be a traitor like the rest of your family?”

Roberto stares, frozen where he sits, back still against the wall, eyes wide.

“Alright, hijo de puta,” the guard says with a sigh, “Grab him,” he gestures to Sam and two others tug him from the ground, holding each of his arms back. Sam hangs his head, legs limp as he spits out a mix of phlegm and blood onto the ground.

“Don’t—don’t fucking touch him,” he croaks, feeling as though he’d been cut in two, his breath still returning to him.

The guard who has established himself as the leader of the group throws the first punch. Then another. Sam roars. He lurches forward, and his shoulders hurt when the guards pull him back. When Roberto starts to hit back, a renewed fire in Sam’s belly causes him to throw himself back in hopes of catching the guards by surprise. It earns him a mouthful of fist, and darkness swallows him.

When he comes to, hours or days later, the rain has stopped.

He’s laying on the ground at the foot of his bed, the mattress sprawled next to him. Slowly, he pushes himself onto his hands, wincing at the aching in his abdomen. He turns his gaze to the bed at the other side of the cell to where Roberto is curled up, breath coming fast, hands clutching at his middle.

And suddenly his pain is just pain and he stands, scrambling to the other bed.

“Roberto, hey, can you hear me?” he says, grabbing the boy by his shoulders and turning him onto his back. Blood stained his shirt where it had dripped from his nose, his face a sickly pale, stomach bloated and purple.

“Oh, fuck. Oh, shit, shit shit—” Sam feels his throat tighten, the pain in his abdomen fading almost entirely in the face of this new crisis. An anger replaces it, bubbling in his belly, tingling in each of his limbs, spinning the world around him until his eyes can’t focus on a single thing anymore.

The only thing he can think of is that he can’t lose him—not again. He’d failed him before, failed him so many times back in Cartegena, back at the Boys’ Home, back when he couldn’t make their parents stop arguing, back when he didn’t just give him his other damn hand when he was shot and dangling from that roof, back when he didn’t get out of bed when he heard his mother close the door to the house at three in the damn morning he could’ve gotten up he could’ve told her not to leave he could’ve stopped her and all this never would have happened—

“Sam?”

“Roberto, hey,” Sam says, breathing a sigh of relief, “Don’t move, okay? I’ll—I’ll get you some water, alright? By the end of the week we’ll be laughing about all this, yeah? How does that sound?”

“I’m—I’m sorry I lied, Sam,” he continues, voice cracking, “About my family.”

“Just rest, Roberto, c’mon—”

“No,” he says firmly, and Sam can tell he has to strain to raise his voice, “I wanna tell you now.”

Sam opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows the boy is going to die. Sam knows what he is about to hear will give him the reason no one will be willing to help the kid the way they helped him with his bullet wounds. He knows these four walls will be the last thing Roberto sees, and he feels like throwing up; feels as though he’s on a boat lost at sea in the middle of a storm and the compass is spinning.

“My parents, they—” he coughs; a dry sound, closer to hacking than anything and blood sprays onto his white shirt, “They were involved with the wrong sort. I—I don’t know, but the others, they visited our house in the middle of the night and they—” he coughs again, “They burned it down. I tried to escape with my sister, but the police arrived and—” he takes a gasping breath, “My father escaped. He has one of the guards working for him and he promised he was gonna get me out and I wanted you to come with me so we could still be together and I could meet your little brother and—” he takes another breath, tears swelling in his eyes that spill over the sides of his cheeks, “Some of the others, they found out about me and that’s—that’s the fight I told you about,” he finishes, daring to turn his head to look Sam in the eye. The moment they lock gazes, Sam can feel the tightening in his throat loosen like a dam.

Born into something so much bigger than himself, all choice ripped from him before he even had the chance to know what any kind of self-agency felt like. That was something Sam could relate to.

Roberto dies three days later.

The rain had left for the dry season, making way for the sun and birds and scent of earth to return to the otherwise concrete establishment. Sam had watched as they carried his body away on the stretcher, eyes wide and unseeing, stomach turned a disgusting mix of blacks and blues and purples. A fucking kid.

Roberto had had the photo of his mother in one hand and Sam’s in the other, gripping it like a vice as he died.

“I’ll make sure this gets back to your father, make sure he knows—”

“No, mantener la fotografía—keep it. It’s yours.”

Sam had learned after that to keep to himself. He kept conversation limited, never spoke of you or Nathan or Roberto. Never told anyone what happened, or why the kid was no longer attached to his hip.

There is nothing more irritating than the constant chatter of a child, and nothing more somber than the silence they leave after they are gone.

So Sam compartmentalizes. He moves on. He is a different man now, tempered with bitterness and disappointment and distain, wearing different clothes but marred with the same scars. In his youth, he had thought himself strong, had thought himself to be made of iron and wit. The truth is that he is - and he suspects most people are - a shattered, graceless mosaic of experience compacted to display something resembling an assertable face to the world. Inside he makes himself of awkward, delicate things; of memories of dead goddamn children and mothers, of a little brother left alone. When he looks in the mirror, he barely recognises the person staring back. Sam knew a man like him once, but he isn’t him.

And what makes him human was that sometimes the façade splinters. And in that moment he was closer to something tangible, something recognisable, than he might ever know.

“At the time, losing him felt like losing you,” Sam says finally, fiddling with the napkin holder on the kitchen island, “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” His voice comes out in a strained whisper, squeezing itself uncomfortably around all the other words he does not say.

“I love you, little brother.”

“I know.”

Sam stays silent after that. His shoulders feel lighter but his chest feels as though someone has filled it with bricks.

“I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” Nate says, a tinge of guilt and stubbornness in his voice that only Sam could pick out.

“Yeah.”

Sam takes the phone away from his ear. Then, faintly —

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Sam’s breath hitches. He shakes his head, though Nathan can’t see. Guilt, rage, sorrow, and an inescapable and indefatigable longing for something he can’t quite place skips through him, fizzy like soda pop.

He nods, small but staccatoed movement, “Yeah,” he tries to say, but the pain weighs down the word and it gets caught in his throat. He wants to say thank you, he wants to say, I love you, thank you, thank you, thank you for everything, but he’s not ready. He’s not ready, but for the first time in a long time he feels that maybe one day he will be.

“Goodnight, Sam. Talk soon,” Nate says, voice almost a whisper.

“Yeah,” Sam says again, but he’s not sure if Nathan hears it as he pulls the phone from his ear and presses the red button to end the call.

Sam flips the phone over and sets in down on the counter. He lifts his hands to run them down his face with a small fatigued groan before resting his elbows on the island, shoving both hands in his hair with his head bowed.

“Sam.”

He almost jumps at the sound of your voice behind him, piercing through the quiet like a bullet through flesh. Hesitantly, you set a hand against his shoulder, rubbing it softly.

“Did I wake you?”

You don’t respond. You’d tried to not eavesdrop, but when Sam had started going on about how he had heard his mother leave the house morning of her death, your feet had planted in the hallway and you couldn’t help the hand that flew to your mouth. Did he really blame himself for that? How many mistakes that weren’t his crowded the empty shadowed corners of his life?

He lifts a hand to cover yours on his shoulder, rubs his thumb over the ring on your finger.

“Let’s go back to bed,” he whispers, lowering his voice to hide the hoarseness in it. You nod and he laces his fingers through yours as he stands and starts back toward the bedroom.

“Sam, wait.”

Sam slows gradually before coming to a stop, his feet scuffing against the wood of the apartment floor.

“Come here.”

He turns wordlessly into your outstretched arms, wraps his arms tightly around your middle, buries his head in the crook of your neck.

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” you whisper against his hair, one hand rubbing his back and the other threaded in his hair, “I’m so sorry.”

Sam’s grip loosens as you feel him shudder as he breaths out, dropping one arm entirely to have the other wrapped loosely around you. He sobs quietly into your shoulder and crumples against you, bringing you both to your knees on the floor.

The two of you stay like that for as long as it takes for Sam’s tears to slow.

“Let’s go to bed, yeah?” you whisper once he has this breath back, “Get some rest,” you tell him, not being able to help the tears that have formed in your own eyes at the sight of him so distraught. When he lifts his head, his face is red and his eyes are puffy and tired, hair disheveled from having his face buried in your shoulder.

He nods as the two of you stand and crawl back into bed.

Sam lays on his side. He has his back to you.

Tentatively, you shuffle yourself closer to him and press yourself against his back, draping an arm over his middle. He lets out a sigh and his shoulders fall as he lets out a tension he hadn’t known was there.

Sam doesn’t sleep that night, but his mind doesn’t wander much either which he counts as a blessing. He tries to breathe deep, focus on the warmth of you behind him, on the uncomfortable stiffness in his fingers laced in yours.

In the morning he turns to face you and can feel the awe in his expression, can feel how stupid he must look as he stares.

In all his thirteen years in prison he’d only cried once. It was during his twelfth year, when he had begun to think he wasn’t capable of it. He would dream nearly every night, and each time it would be of Nathan, of you. When the people he loved most in this world became no more than figures with no voices or faces even in his dreams, he knew he was lost. Aren’t you scared you’ll forget what she looks like?

The twitch of a smile graces your lips, but you keep your eyes closed, “You know if I didn’t know better that’d be a little creepy,” you whisper, voice scratchy.

“Sorry,” he murmurs in return, the word meaningless and flat. You open you eyes to find you’ve moved a good half foot down the bed and were staring straight at his chest.

“I don’t mind,” you say with a sigh that creeps its way into a smile, and he lets out a small laugh. When you turn your gaze to his, he can’t help but think you have the eyes of everyone who has ever cared.

And this, Sam thinks, is the way it will go. He will trace his fingers over remembered lines, recalling until he catches upon a changed border. He will not run at the sight. He will adapt. And you...his lips curve into a smile and his heart catches in his throat. You and him will grow together around the differences like vines wrapping around tree branches, healing the way bones do.

[warofnationsapology]

Our Apology

Hello everyone,

With everything that has happened as of late in regards to the warofnationsrp, the admin team wanted to address the situation.

First of all, we want to start this off by apologizing for how much anger, hurt, and offense we have caused. We created this group to be a fun community in a historical setting, and we fully take responsibility for any mistakes we have made in the building of that setting and its plots. From the beginning, we have only wanted this to be a fun, welcoming, and inclusive group. We’ve always asked all of our players to come to us immediately if they had questions or concerns. Whenever issues arose, our admin team tried to find solutions with the priority being to respect our players and the RPC as a whole. We realize now that our attempts to do that thus far have done more harm than good. We take full responsibility for our mistakes and deeply apologize for their effects. We understand now that the best thing for us to do is disband completely, admit our mistakes, and apologize from the bottom of our hearts.

We also wanted to explain our side of what occurred and why we’ve made the decisions we have as an admin team. This is not to justify or excuse our actions or to shame anyone who was hurt by them. We know now that we have made some horrible miscalculations in our management of these issues. This is purely for us to provide context for those miscalculations and context for all sides of this story.

When this group began, there were 4 admins. Out of the 4 of us, the poster of the original callout was the most experienced admin, and the most involved in the RPC as a whole outside of our group. Due to this, we tended to rely on her guidance more often as we learned and grew ourselves as admins. When it came to going through applications and checking faceclaims for diversity, This admin (Admin A hereforth for the sake of clarity) provided us with some wonderful tools to help us check for ethnic miscasting and determining ethnicities correctly. Those tools, and others she introduced us to continued to be used by our admin team even after she left. Near the inception of the group, War of Nations also received two questions concerning colonialism and racism issues of the time period depicted in the group. The first was addressed publicly by Admin A on the original War of Nations main blog, which has since been deleted by Admin A. However, what was roughly addressed in the answer was that we were an AU historical group and because we were an AU would not include themes of slavery, racism, or ethnic oppression in order to create a more inclusive environment. When the second message was received, it was presented to the Admin team by Admin A with the following comment:

Since she was the most knowledgeable about these sorts of issues, we followed her lead when it came to it.

The other concern that was presented by the poster of the callout was that Admins A and B made the decision to step down from the group, there was a disagreement about how their characters leaving would affect the major plots of other players with whom they were involved. For the admins who remained, our primary concern was the enjoyment of our players and assisting them be able to maintain the rich plots and characters they had already invested so much into. However, we wanted to respect them by asking their permission before writing any such things into a plot drop. We agree that our persistence in pursuing these plot changes was disrespectful, and we apologize for not agreeing to the terms sooner. In the end, we did realize that we needed to respect their characters, so we agreed to not use the plot suggestions concerning their characters. We worked with each of our players individually to adjust their stories so that we could restructure their plots to remove those characters fully.

The conversation following ended with one of the current admins (henceforth known as Admin C) apologizing if she came off as rude or defensive. Within the same hour of Admin A and Admin B saying they were leaving, Admin C had received some terrible news from her family, so she admitted that her responses might have been more emotional and rude because she was processing the news while trying to work on switching everything over. This is how it ended:

With Admins A and B complimenting Admin C as an admin and sending well wishes, we were under the assumption that they were stepping away on amicable terms and were okay with the RP continuing.

When the initial callout post was made, the remaining admin team discussed that our plot did need some clarification as we absolutely did not want to promote colonialism or ethnic and racial oppression. Because of this, we decided to write a disclaimer explaining further the intent of this roleplay and its policies to clarify and reassure the RPC of our mission for this to be a fun and inclusive historical AU roleplay. We once again encouraged any questions and concerns to be brought to our attention, and we did respectfully conduct conversations with several historical RPers outside of our group who approached us about our disclaimer and agreed that we handled it in the best way we could. With these policies in place, we continued on, making it a purpose to be aware daily of concerns not only within our group but in the RPC and media as a whole.

As more callouts have surfaced, War of Nations received multiple anons requesting that we delete the roleplay completely. At this time, we also assessed the plots and storylines that our players were currently pursuing or carrying out, and found that none of them contained any parts of the overarching plot, any of the topics presented as a concern in the callouts, or other areas that had been brought to our attention at the time. Instead our players were focused primarily on major political disputes between major countries in our Old World sphere of roleplay as well as personal relationships and character development. Our players seemed to be enjoying their interactions. We knew the best course of action was likely to delete the RP,  we wanted to let our players still be able to continue their interactions and enjoy the work they had put into their characters in a safe environment, and under a new structure which would be not include any topics of colonialism or racism. There would be no overarching plot to this roleplay. Only a generalized time period in the 1700s in which the characters they’d created could continue their personal plots such as family feuds or new romances. We were also concerned that if we tried to continue on Tumblr, our players might be attacked because of their association with the original group’s plot. We also realized that many of our players were eager to roleplay more often but were limited when it came to computer access. The Admin Team thought that by shifting to Discord we could start this roleplay on a clean slate with the old plot completely removed from it all as well as give our players with limited computer access more opportunities to interact on mobile.

As we started to set things in motion, we realized that moving to Discord would be equally as detrimental, and so we realized that the best decision was to disband completely. Due to the admin team having personal obligations (i.e. family, work, and caretaking responsibilities), we were not able to address this properly before others called us out on the mistake we had already realized and planned to address. That is when we recognized fully that we were continuing to make mistakes that were hurting our players and the RPC as a whole and needed to completely disband.

In regards to players that have expressed having experiences discrimination or oppression in the group, we were shocked and heartbroken to learn that they felt this way. These concerns were voiced by some of our original RPers who have stayed with us, and we never had any conversations surrounding these concerns between players involved and our remaining admin team. Additionally, the remaining admins had no knowledge that former admins had been asking for her insight as a POC or that she was doing so in a way that made one of the player uncomfortable. We respect this player deeply both as a mun and as a person, and have a great appreciation for their in-depth knowledge of history as a whole, and the rich breadth of resources and fun facts she shared with the group. She often helped us give clarification on things like proper titling and historical accuracy. These are all things she presented to us. However, the remaining admins never reached out to her for specific insight due to her being a POC.

From Admin C in regards to Esmeralda: Initially, the character of Esmeralda was an interpretation of the book/movie/musical character from The Hunchback of Notre Dame as if she had appeared on the television show Once Upon a Time. I have roleplayed Esmeralda for years, and early on in her creation, a friend of mine who is a POC reminded me to research the Romani people before beginning to roleplay her. I did so, and in my research, I found that the g-word was a derogatory term and that Romani people had early origins in India (as listed here on the Wikipedia page sourcing this book and two other sources). Therefore, both actresses I have used for her were Indian actresses (here and here). I also made sure that any judgement that is based on her performing troupe was based solely on them being travelling performers and illusionists instead of their ethnicity. In that one reply I did that was mentioned, I remember when I re-read it before posting, I realized that I had used that word and it needed to be removed. I remember that I thought to myself "why did I write that?", and I took a mental note to take it out before I posted it as I read over the rest of the reply. Until seeing that player’s post about it, I thought I had removed it, and it has now been removed. However, I must have gotten distracted when reading over it and forgot that I didn't take it out when I returned from the distraction to posting it. This is a mistake I have made in the past that has led to posting replies with grammatical or spelling errors, but never something this horrible. That was my mistake and my own fault for not being more diligent for which I take full responsibility and apologize whole-heartedly.

As an admin team, we have tried to read every thread so we knew that we were aware of what was going on as well as consciously look for possible issues. We will admit that while we did catch some issues and addressed them immediately, we did not pay close enough attention and some things were missed.  We did not always read as carefully as we should have. These issues should have been seen and addressed right away. The admin team fully admits to making this mistake as well, and we do apologize for letting such horrible things get missed.

For any other examples of discrimination felt in this group, we deeply apologize for those as well. We also apologize that we did not present ourselves in a manner to make us more approachable when it came to telling us about these mistakes directly when they occurred. We both want to be better community members and allies, and will continue to educate ourselves, learn, and grow to improve in these areas.

In conclusion, we would like to thank you for taking the time to read this fully. War of Nations has been disbanded completely as a group. Our admins offer our apologies to our players, both current and former, the former admins, and all RPC community members who were hurt by the mistakes we’ve made. We have made some terrible mistakes, and we completely apologize for those with every fiber of our beings. We take full responsibility for those mistakes, and by recognizing them, will strive to be better in the future.

With our deepest apologies,

Former Admins C and D

@warofnationsrp​

@warofnationshq​

[sanoiro]

Meta on The Relationships of Marclo & Evenigstar

Something I posted on Twitter in regards to why we were more lenient on Eve than Marcus and Lucifer’s relationship with her. 

Indeed both relationships were disturbing. 

It's interesting how in 4x09 Lucifer admits that he entered in a relationship for his own selfish reasons while he knew it wouldn't work but that's also the major difference. Lucifer and Eve both manipulated each other to the degree, that was the driving force of their relationship. The same though happened between Marcus and Chloe. We can suggest that Chloe acted in the same way with Marcus from her admission to Ella in 3x23. So why did we like Lucifer and Eve, at least more, than Marcus and Chloe’s relationship? Is it because we see Chloe as the victim while we cannot bring ourselves to believe Lucifer was at fault and perhaps because he is a man?

Well, that's a good question and the answer I believe lies in a very simple thing. Intentions. 

Lucifer in comparison to Marcus was destroying himself rather attempting to take down others. His guilt as expressed at the end of 4x09 carries the answer. Yes, he did enter a relationship that was doomed but he did it in a moment of weakness hoping that it would save him from drowning, hoping that it *would* work without though harming Eve or those around her. 

Marcus, on the other hand, shot Chloe. He was that far gone and there was no consideration of her wellbeing despite his question later on near the end of 3x24. On the contrary, Lucifer still attempted to shelter everyone around him and pushed Eve away again as a self-loathing act and not due to cruelty towards her. 

Now Eve despite her of misguided influence on Lucifer she still retained an innocence over the simple reasoning that desires justified everything. It was wrong, yes, and we can see perhaps why Marcus grew up to assume that actions of that kind were justified to an extent. For example, Marcus never regretted Abel's murder while we know from Eve that see perceived Abel to be the gentle one. How a mother could ever say that her child - Marcus - deserved what he got? An eternity in Hell...

So we can go on and on about the differences and the similarities here between all characters but the actual difference in the second case (Eveningstar) is not just the conviction that their feelings were real to an extent but the fact that they actually believed they could benefit the other and not just exploit them. I remind you that Lucifer thought at some point that the prophecy was about Eve so he didn't have Marcu’s clarity pr at least what Marcus believed his clarity was.  The benefits on the first case (Marclo) were for Marcus his mortality and in the case of Chloe in order to push away Lucifer emotionally and perhaps even get back to him on a degree. Yes, Chloe also wanted to reinvent herself in a way but that's something that will not be discussed here (See 3x22). 

In Lucifer’s and Eve’s case their relationship was based on what I like to call ‘the raft’. Eve wanted to escape a preconceived world where her being in Heaven meant that she had no more choices, no second chances and no way to make any more decisions for her own self. That, by the way, might be something the WR will revisit as it seems from Charlotte and Eve, nothing is set in stone and second chances are given even after death if you can find a way, of course, to return to Earth… *hint*. 

Finally, for Lucifer, Eve was a distraction and a slowly sinking raft from the conviction that he was unlovable. Unfortunately for him, everything started to go wrong when in 4x09 he realised that Eve’s perception of him and his then recent actions were not normal but distorted and tragically the same applied on Chloe’s views but in a different way.

Amenadiel at a point says that he does not want to see Lucifer getting back to his old Devil self but in reality, Lucifer was always Lucifer he just had fewer people to show him right from wrong and to actually care about them in order to be open to change. The change was not his destructive ways but his violent self-destructive actions the ones that actually led him to Hell. 

Therefore, it was all about what every individual wanted to get out of each relationship. The first was uneasy and if you see the deleted scene in 3x23 not sincere which explains the events of 3x24 but the second was a desperate plea on what it could have been as both characters tried to free the other from the shackles they believed they were bound on. Lucifer freed again Eve from her predestined fate which she so craved by following her every desire to the most unhealthy way. At the same time, Eve believed that by pushing Lucifer to act out in a cruel way she was freeing him from his self imposed bounds due to mainly the Detective... Both were wrong of course... 

[toofanbaisa]

I have noted multiple times here that maybe I want to delete this blog, archive it, and its posts onto another blog and while yes I do like that idea still. But my current state that compels me to write here makes me think otherwise. The point of this blog was always to allow for a space on the internet where I can put down thoughts that may or may not be deeply personal, and that perhaps have no other space, and perhaps, need no other space.

The past year for me has been a reckoning of sorts wherein I have undergone (and somewhere continue to undergo) a metamorphosis after another. A decade ago, I thought that was the sole major metamorphosis that I was going to experience. What would I have known at 18?

Anyway, with this newer lease on life, I have been deeply introspective, often with anxiety, about what life means to me, about what I see myself doing, feeling, thinking, being. What is this I that I am when I say that I have lived, I live?

I think I have some answers and I am inching towards, without anxiety, more answers as they unravel one by one.

I also noted yesterday that maintaining relationships is not an easy task, at least not with the intensity that I have dealt with them so far, or felt that I needed to deal with them. As part of said transition, I think I am letting go of this intensity in my relationships with people now. 

(As soon as I typed this last sentence, I found myself biting my nails again because it is scary to see who I am and will be without this familiar intensity. Again, I don’t feel anxious. Just nervous.)

My mood for these past few months has been to think ahead, to look ahead, to plan ahead, to set a foundation for myself. I have so far been in a survival mode, always thinking that I will survive as I scrape the bottom, but I don’t intend to live like that anymore. I know I can survive now. I know that if it comes to it, I have the capacity to fight tooth and nail and make it. But, I think I am learning that I (fortunately) don’t have to do that.

As I have been aligning towards these thoughts, I had A come and share ideas and thoughts, hopes and aspirations for an inclusive, shared future. I am not sure if I want inclusivity to be honest which is why I found myself feeling burdened by A’s hopes at first. But then, I realised that someone sharing their hopes and what they think they might feel if those hopes were dashed isn’t set in stone. It isn’t a compulsion. It isn’t a rule. Not necessarily for me. 

A offered a suggestion on a way I can build a career. I immediately saw that as intrusion, as a way to control me, as a way into my life in a way that would trap me. My fear of sharing with others, as lovely as they are, is this very thought, of being trapped in their generosity, in their kindness, without even being able to share that I did not want their generosity and kindness, that I saw generosity and kindness in a different way.

This has been a pain point for me, for all my life. Part of recovering from a similar imprisonment.

Anyway, I think the only way I see recovery from this is to ensure that I lean on to people but, not in the way of expecting them to give me directions. That is imprisonment. 

Before I went to bed, I found myself wistfully thinking about what I must do. 

- A has helped me a great deal. Supported me through some massive periods of my life. So, if I decide to end it all and leave, will it really be betrayal?

- What does it mean to help and receive help? How do the giver and receiver look at help? How do they perceive power dynamics?

- How does theory and practice find balance here because in practice, humans are known to be not balanced enough to apply theory in its entirety?

- Does receiving help indebt me in a way that I have to dance to their tunes? What is the true way to help and be helped and retain autonomy? Is autonomy even real? Is it possible? Where does love fall under all this?

Heavy right?

I think so too.

But, as I have spent the last 5 hours thinking, writing, mulling over every little aspect, especially after a dream where I found myself embraced by so much love, I have a few answers:

- If I choose to end it all and walk away, it may feel like betrayal to A for sure. But, it does not mean that I intentionally betrayed them. It just means that I was honest enough to choose the next step of my journey which unfortunately would be without A. Of course, that does not remove accountability from my head on how my decision would hurt them. But, one has to accept the fact that betrayal, hurt, pain are part of (tough) big decisions in life and sometimes without intent too, one may inflict pain on another. That is part of life and an unavoidable part at that. So yes, it will be a shock and painful for both parties involved, but, it won’t be betrayal in that dramatic sense that media portrays. It will be betrayal of shared dreams and hopes but, not a selling of the individual. I will have to learn to live with the fact that something I did or will do will always feel like betrayal to someone else. Even when I don’t intend to. That is life.

- On help, I think I am still figuring out. Only thing that I find hard to negotiate is power dynamics in a helper and helped equation. Probably because I see being helped as a selling of autonomy. Maybe I need to change that. But simply put, helping someone for me means empowering them through my actions or my association with them. Receiving help means through someone’s actions and intentions, I am nudged further along my path. Probably ‘cause in my past experiences help has always been with an ulterior motive, I am unable to extricate from my mind, the feeling of being caught when receiving help. I definitely need to change that because I have seen too many kind people being kind without an ulterior motive as well.

- In practice, theory evolves I think. Because in isolation, theory is just that, theory. Of no use. And human imbalance or unpredictability is what helps theory evolve. As I shared with a friend over text right now, ambiguity / unpredictability / imbalance that feeds clarity is good. In isolation, I think it is redundant.

- No. Simply no. Receiving help makes one accountable in a way yes, especially when it is financial help. But, one does not dance to the helper’s tune. Then, that is pure control, purchase. I am not property that is purchased with help. I am a separate entity. I think a remembrance of this fact that I am not an object, I am not a purchase, that is what will help me retain autonomy. Again autonomy in absolute is just theory. But, I intend to go for it as far as I can. Without necessarily making it difficult. If I am aware that being helped does not mean that I have sold myself, I think I retain my autonomy and allow receipt of love as well as allow for space to give help and love. 

That is all that I have for now.    

[gretchensinister]

Operation Welcome Mat (preview)

I usually like to post a fic for my birthday, and well, this is a few days belated, but sometimes that’s how it goes. This is a preview of something I’m working on, now, and it’s a branching out of my usual fandom territory! I hope you’re curious, and I hope you enjoy!

It all stems from the question: Why does so much stuff that only Superman can deal with happen on the planet that Superman is on? That’s not the question that Lois Lane asks, but it’s the one she’s going to find an answer for.

Lois Lane always checks her spam folder. In fact, she always opens each individual message in there. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the time, what’s in there is garbage, but garbage is not synonymous with useless. Consider the journalists in Portland who went through the District Attorney’s garbage to make a point about privacy. Her daily ritual isn’t on that level of significance, but she feels the point still stands.

           Today, she opens an email that isn’t promising free trials of herbal supplements, contact info for hot singles in her area, or insurance policies that will cover damages caused by any and all anomalous events for as little as $10 a month. (These last annoyed her enough to ask Louise in Business to do a small expose on such companies—turns out, the fine print stated that given the regularity of attacks on Metropolis by aliens, robots, metahumans, etc., etc., these events could not be considered anomalous. Fucking scammers. She’s pretty sure they’re involved in a class-action lawsuit right now.)

           Instead, it reads thus:

           I am sending this to you because I think you are the only person in the world who might have adequate protection after I tell you this. It is for my safety and yours that I have not used your name or described what that protection might be.

           I ask you to use any and all resources you have at your disposal to investigate Operation Welcome Mat. I cannot tell you much more without compromising the slight chance this communication has of reaching you. However, I do not exaggerate when I say that the revealing—anything more I dare not hope for—of this operation will affect every human life on Earth.

           Sincerely,

                       One who works in the organization that knows you always check your spam folder

           The remaining message is a long and rambling series of testimonials for anti-aging and potency supplements, but Lois sees no reason to consider these as marks against the authenticity of the original message. Camouflage is important. As is covering one’s tracks. She opens her desk drawer and retrieves a high-quality digital camera that’s nevertheless old enough that it needs an actual physical cord to transfer the pictures on it to any computer. Lois has kept it in excellent condition, save for, oh, the pesky matter of the fact that the delete function doesn’t work on the camera itself, and that she just can never find the right kind of removable memory cards. Darn, what a problem! Fortunately the camera contains a 5000-image capacity non-removable internal memory. She takes a picture of the relevant portion of the email—well, ten pictures—and then sets about blocking every IP address that’s sent her something that ended up in her spam folder today and deleting every email indiscriminately. She’d like to perform a more thorough delete, but she never does that with any of her spam, and she’s got a feeling that now would not be a good day to start.

           Amateurs might worry about how she deleted the original email, but Lois knows that if she finds anything, she won’t need that email, and for another thing, the writer of that email most certainly doesn’t want anyone to be able to analyze their word choices and phrasing.

           She rests her arms on her desk and starts letting her mind work through everything the email told her. So, she’s the only person who “might have adequate protection” after learning about Operation Welcome Mat? The only unique protection she’s had under any circumstances is Superman. In a few well-known incidents, he’d appeared to give preference to getting her to safety before others. Lois isn’t one hundred percent sure that’s true, as she knows very well that she might’ve been the person in the greatest danger during each incident. Over her career, she’s tended to disregard danger for the sake of the story. And she can argue persuasively that in order to be a successful female journalist, she has to be prepared to face a certain amount of danger; she can argue that her years of experience have given her the ability to accurately evaluate the potential danger of a situation. These arguments have been, and are, vital to her public persona.

           But under a few layers of “I have to do this” is the chewy center of “I want to do this.” It’s true! Believe it or not, Lois Lane, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, is a bit of a thrill-seeker!

           Good thing that might be exactly what her email contact needs.

           So. Back to the email. Back to Superman. She knows well enough that she doesn’t have a raven-haired alien angel at her beck and call, but, based on what the public has seen, is it more likely that she does than any other investigative journalist? Yes. So, if only Superman can offer her adequate protection, then—

           “Hi Lois,” Clark says, setting a paper cup on her desk. “Two sugars, no milk—” He breaks off into an almost cartoonishly exaggerated yawn that Lois nevertheless is familiar enough with to know is genuine.

           “You ought to buy some coffee for yourself,” Lois says, digging a few dollars out of her wallet and tossing them at him, which he barely catches. “I mean, if you’re going to volunteer to walk down to Reeve’s every day, anyway. And didn’t you grow up waking up at 4am to milk cows or whatever?”

           Clark smiles shyly. Like he always does. It’s a good smile, and on a kid who’s six foot three and probably better built than any of the barns he ever helped raise, it could very well explain why he always seems so exhausted in the morning. Though if Lois’ theory is true, she hasn’t seen or heard any other evidence of it. A gentleman never tells, Lois thinks idly.

           “I can and have milked cows in my sleep,” he says. “I can’t do anything in my sleep, here.” He looks down. “Uh, the truth is that I haven’t been sleeping well since the—what did they call it? The Chirauga Incident?”

           Lois grimaces. Yeah, Clark and half of Metropolis. Including her. When an army of aliens that big showed up all at once, there was no way to avoid some level of freaking out, special protection from Superman or not. “Yeah, the Chirauga Incident. Ugly sons of bitches, in my opinion. I killed one personally, you know.”

           Clark’s eyes widen in shock, and Lois grins. “What? I verified they weren’t bulletproof before going out to start, you know, researching my story.” But, because she is committed to the truth, even though Clark seems like he’ll believe anything she says, she has to add, “Well, okay. I’m pretty sure I mortally wounded it. Superman took care of it before I could find out for sure.” It had been clean. Heat vision through the Chirauga equivalent of the spinal cord. And Superman had turned to her with that red glow still shimmering in the back of his eyes. “Are you all right?” he’d asked, hovering a foot above the ground like it was nothing, looking at her like she was something. And she’d looked into the terrible weapon of his gaze and been stunned by the perfect surety that he’d never use it on a human being.

           And for all that, she’d never seen him look so alien.

           “Weren’t you watching? I had this one handled,” she’d said, with a rasp in her voice she hoped he’d attribute to the heavy dust and smoke in the air.

           “Well, in that case, I guess all I can do now is tell you to be careful out there,” he’d said.

           It would be nice if there was a discreet little jump cut in her memory right after that, but, unfortunately, Lois remembers with perfect clarity that she’d responded, “Sure thing, spaceboy,” like a complete and utter dumbass. But then Superman hadn’t laughed at her, no, he’d given her the smile and wink of an old-fashioned movie star before flying away to continue saving the world. She, on the other hand, had staggered off, feeling as emotionally churned-up as a teenager.

           The worst part about it, in her opinion, is that she knows very well that Superman has this effect on almost everyone who encounters him.

           “Ah, Superman,” Clark says, drawing her back to the present. His shocked expression has been replaced by the little smile she’s often seen him wear when talk of Superman comes up. She’s always thought there was something secretive about that smile, something notably different from the rest of his farm-boy guilelessness. (Though, she doesn’t quite believe he’s as transparent as he otherwise appears. And she doesn’t think that’s just her natural suspicion kicking in. For one thing, the Daily Planet is big, but not big enough that someone who was hired as a journalist could fall through the cracks and become nothing but a friendly coffee boy. She’s read some of his articles, the neighborhood news stuff he generally covers, and the writing is as solid as he is, with words chosen with care and sensitivity. There’s more to him than meets the eye, and if he ever decides to get ambitious, Lifestyle is in for a big surprise. For another thing, he’d moved to Metropolis during a metahuman surge, and that, frankly, was not what normies did, no matter how clueless they were.)

           The running undercurrent of what she knows about Clark and the smile that’s the one noticeable discordant note in the melody of the person she works with suddenly gel into a possible conclusion, one that Lois could’ve kicked herself for not even considering earlier.

           Talented kid moves from small-town Kansas, where he could’ve been a big fish in a tiny pond. And he doesn’t even move to a city in the same state or region, where he could have been a big fish in a medium-sized pond. Instead, he moves to Metropolis, where he won’t be a big fish at all, but where it’ll be a big project for anyone who knew him in Smallville to ever visit, or know anything about him he doesn’t want them to know. Metropolis, which, despite its dangers, still lives in the cultural mind as a place where the good kind of anything can happen. (Where Superman is often seen.) And when he’s here, he never, ever says anything about even going on a date with anyone, and mentions of Superman bring out that secretive smile. And he started off writing his articles with a clear awareness of issues that Lois has seen other straight white male coworkers fail to grok even after clear, baby-step-style explanations. And he’s never, ever tried to turn getting her coffee into something uncomfortable.

           So, possible conclusion: Clark is some flavor of queer, and still closeted/uncomfortable about it. But he can’t completely hide his crush on Superman because, well. Superman. And the kid has an honest face.

           Just goes to show, she thinks, how slow and unreliable gaydar can be, even if you are bi.

           But this does give her an idea on where to send him as she starts her initial investigation of this Project Welcome Mat. If it is big, bad business like it seems, Clark doesn’t need to get mixed up in it, even to the point of overhearing a phone call. And besides, it might help him accept himself, if he needs that.

           “You know what, Clark?” Lois says. “You need something to take your mind off shit like alien invasions.”

           Clark grimaces. “I don’t know if anything can.”

           “Yeah, it’s a toughie, but you’re a Metropolitan now,” Lois says, with more bravado than she feels. Some things you don’t get used to. But some of those things you have to at least pretend to get used to. “Get outside. Write your cat-up-a-tree article tomorrow. Do something completely out of the ordinary.” And then, as if she’s just thought of it, “Powtown Pride is going on today. Powtown’s a neighborhood. Pride’s something to write about. You could go there and see what you can see.”

           “Powtown?” Clark says, raising his eyebrows. “That’s the metahuman neighborhood. That’s…a bit more interesting than where Rowlands usually sends me.”

           Lois waves her hand. “Rita is seventy-eight and still thinks anything involving a metahuman is a front-pager. Perry can tell her otherwise when you bring back something nice.”

           “Well,” Clark says, warming to the idea, “there are a lot of misconceptions about Powtown that ought to be worn away by a reliable source like the Planet. I mean—there probably are. I don’t know, personally. But if everything written about Powtown was true, no one could live there. It’d be a smoking crater in the ground.”

           “So you see? Needs you,” Lois says. She smirks. “Be careful, though. They’ve got twinks down there that could rip you in half.”

           “Says someone who just told me about personally shooting a Chirauga,” Clark says. “No, no, I know—you had it handled. Anyway. Yeah, I will go.” He looks towards the windows and sighs. “After all, it’s a beautiful day to be outside.”

           Lois waves at him as he leaves, then glances towards the windows herself. It really is a beautiful June day, not too hot, vivid blue sky, puffy clouds slowly drifting by. Does Superman prefer days like this for flying? She wonders. Or would it not affect him at all? What would it be like to fly with Superman on a day like today—Lois sticks her tongue out in an exaggerated expression of disgust. She’s better than that! She has to be!

           Anyway, she’s got something new to investigate. Before Clark interrupted, she was thinking of what things out in the world only Superman could be adequate protection from. Well, aside from horrible things from space, that leaves a very short list that prominently features a house of a certain color and a building of a certain shape. And the name—Operation Welcome Mat—it has a very particular ring to it.

           But she’s still going to look into the rest of that short list. A direct assault isn’t the correct approach here, and besides, there might be connections, even if the person she’s going to call is officially blacklisted from government contracts.

           She scrolls to the contact in her phone for “Louis L’Amour,” and reaches out to someone who definitely isn’t a dead writer of Westerns.

Notes: I’ve decided to have Superman’s code against killing be specifically about humans/earthlings because for one thing, I don’t have to answer to Standards and Practices, and for another, I don’t feel like having every alien army be robots (which with sufficiently advanced AI doesn’t help anyway), and what do you want me to do, have Superman knock all the aliens out? If they’re going down long enough to be essentially counted out of the fight, they’re getting life-threatening brain injuries anyway. 

[eccacia]

wonderful you came by [part 15]

Summary: Caitlin’s a no-nonsense science major. Barry’s the quintessential charming star athlete. When they’re paired off and forced to interact in class, Caitlin’s determined to resist his charms, but Barry’s also pretty determined to get under her skin… It all boils down to a battle between head and heart, and Caitlin’s not one to give in to her heart so easily. [College AU]

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, or read on ff.net

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don’t own The Flash. The article that Barry cites here is called “What Is Nothing?” by Fraser Cain from phys.org.

One of the most important things that Caitlin’s father had taught her was the discipline of getting rid of a bad habit. He’d taught her that it wasn’t enough to drop the habit cold turkey: if change was to be sustainable and permanent, the old habit had to be dropped and be immediately replaced by a better habit. For instance, if she wanted to stop watching TV, she couldn’t just spend the rest of the hour avoiding the TV—she had to do something else, like read the encyclopedia.

It was with this logic that Caitlin resolved to excise Barry Allen from her mental life. It did not do to merely stop thinking about him, because it was impossible to stop thinking about him by sheer willpower; so instead, she filled her day with work—with outlining and practicing for the orals, with summarizing journal articles for her thesis, with drafting the next post-lab report—which successfully crowded her mind, so that there was no room for Barry Allen at all.

She had come to this course of action the next morning, after a good night’s rest and after the alcohol had been flushed out of her system. She hadn’t been in a state of mind to think things through the night before—she was too confused and distraught, and her mind was muddled with emotion—but in the light of day, with some distance from Barry, she was finally able to evaluate the recent events with startling clarity.

It seemed that her null hypothesis regarding Barry Allen—that he did not harbor romantic feelings for her—was disproven by that kiss, as a kiss was the pinnacle of romantic feeling. But upon reevaluation of her hypothesis, she realized that a fatal error had occurred in her reasoning. She realized that it didn’t matter if her hypothesis was proven or disproven, because the underlying rationale of her investigation was faulty. It was similar to testing a hypothesis like “There is a significant positive relationship between the width of one’s hand span and the age of one’s maternal grandmother.” The numbers could indeed show that those with wider hand spans also had older maternal grandmothers, but the study itself was irrelevant. Similarly, her hypothesis assumed that it was important to be considered Barry Allen’s object of affection, which implied that romance was a worthwhile endeavor, when, in fact, it was not.

And the reason why it wasn’t worthwhile was simple: Love was temporary insanity. That was by far the most logical explanation for why she—she who was logical, clear-headed, intolerant of frivolity, unseduced by narratives of romantic love—had suddenly fallen for Barry in a span of two weeks, and why she’d found herself doing things that she would never have done, such as spending three hours on the phone, or singing onstage, or dancing with abandon in the midst of a sweaty throng, or leaning in to kiss someone that she barely knew.

In line with that, she realized that Saturday night contained all the necessary conditions to short-circuit reasoning. The context of a party simultaneously created an atmosphere of wild abandon and disabled the tools for rational thought: one is unable to see clearly when one’s vision is assaulted by the bright, blinking lights; one can hardly hear oneself think above the aggressive beat of the music; and, once inebriated, one is unable to wield logic at all.

And, during the party, when Barry had called her onstage to sing with him, she was placed in a context in which it was impossible for her to say no without dire social consequences—rather than to step off the stage, be booed by the crowd, and be labelled a killjoy, she was inclined to take the path of least resistance, which was to simply join him. Their dancing together had also been a function of context: after the sing-off, people were pulling friends and significant others onto the dance floor, and they, conforming to the crowd, had also moved to the dance floor. It was part of the script of a party to dance; it was not part of the script of a party to have a clear-headed discussion on the implications of him naming her as his partner for the sing-off.

That kiss was similarly manufactured by the demands of context. The open balcony under the starry night sky was a favorite setting of the romantic imagination, and with good reason: she suspected that standing under the vast night sky made people feel small and insignificant, and, faced with the overwhelming threat of their insignificance, they naturally gravitated to others, fiercely wanting the other to affirm their significance, wanting to be loved and known in order to save themselves from the reality that they were adrift and alone, a speck of dust on a piece of rock suspended in empty space. In fact, two of her most ill-informed decisions—deciding that she liked Barry, and leaning in to kiss him—were made under the night sky. Had they been around people in the light of day, in a sober setting like the library, such things would never have happened.

In any case, she would allow no more of this nonsense in her life. It was absurd to believe that this new self, this Caitlin-with-Barry self that had been forged in a mere two weeks, could overshadow the self she’d been for over twenty years; it then followed that the new self was a falsehood that had to be discarded, and the self she’d always been—the logical, clear-headed, impervious-to-romance self—was her true self, the self she had to maintain and protect. And, in order to do that, she had to cut Barry Allen off. It was regrettable, but it was necessary. Sometimes, to halt the progress of a disease, it wasn’t enough to scrape away the infected flesh; sometimes, it was necessary to amputate the entire limb.

She resolved to stand by her decision until his persistence waned and until he realized, as she had, that his energies were better directed elsewhere. She, for one, could focus on her career, as she had always intended, and he could focus on his transition into Forensic Science.

It was the most logical decision, and one that would benefit them both. It was, she truly believed, for the best.

Monday, 7:07 PM

Hi Caitlin, it’s me again. I don’t want to sound like a stalker or anything by spamming you with voicemail, so… just tell me to stop if you really want me to stop, okay? I swear I will. But if you won’t say anything, I’m just going to assume that your silence means, Yes, Barry, you can be as annoying as you possibly can. —Why, Caitlin, it’s my pleasure to serve up my specialty. In fact, this is your first daily dose of annoyingness, served fresh from the kissable mouth of CCU Cutie Barry Allen—ah, crap, Wally just heard me saying that. Crap. Now he’s laughing his butt off. Can you hear him? Here, I’ll move closer. He laughs like a hyena. It’s hideous. I don’t think you’ve ever met him, but I hope you will sometime… Anywaaay, uh, I called to let you know that I’m sorry, and I’m not giving up. That’s all for now. I’m going to dig myself a hole if I keep going while Wally’s listening, so call me if you want to talk, I guess. Bye.

Swipe. Delete.

. . .

Tuesday, 10:51 AM

Hi Caitlin. So, uh, welcome to day two of being annoyed by your local cutie. Heh, I can already imagine you wrinkling your brow and trying not to smile but failing not to smile, so you end up biting your lip instead, and you’d say, “Who’re the idiots that put you on the CCU Cutie list”—I’m number eight out of fifty, in case you’re wondering, not to toot my own horn—okay, fine, totally tooting it—“and don’t those idiots know that they’re just ratcheting up your insufferability index?!” Do you remember saying that, insufferability index? I know I should be insulted, but I usually end up flattered instead, knowing that you tailor your insults to me. I like to think of it as you showing your love. Although I’d still prefer compliments... ahem, ahem. Anyway, um… wow, I’ve spent half of this voicemail talking about what you might say. It’s… not as fun talking to imaginary Caitlin than it is talking to real Caitlin. So… give me a call? Or leave a message. Whenever you’re ready. Bye.

Swipe. Delete.

Tuesday, 8:23 PM

Hey, so I just got your e-mail. I’m… kind of bummed that you wanna study separately for the orals, but… if that’s what you want, I guess. Don’t worry, I’ll do my part. It’ll be harder to study without you slave-driving me, but I won’t let you down. I can’t believe I miss you slave-driving me, heh. Anyway, um… what else… Oh yeah, I’m free next Saturday for the make-up class and the STAR Labs tour. It’s so cool that we’re having our make-up class at STAR Labs. I’m almost glad he cancelled class on Monday. Dr. Wells is the best, isn’t he? …Anyway, uh, look, I know I could’ve just e-mailed you back, but… I don’t know, e-mail’s just not our thing, you know? If that makes any sense. Yeah… that’s all for now. You know the drill. See you Thursday for the orals.

Swipe. Delete.

. . .

Wednesday, 1:34 PM

Happy third-day-sary of being annoyed by me! Er, I wasn’t sure if it’s a cause for celebration, but I guess I’m feeling pretty optimistic. I mean, at least you haven’t told me to stop talking yet, right? …Anyway, awhile ago, just for kicks, I typed “Is nothing really nothing?” in Google. Not sure if you remember, but you told me the last time we talked that whatever happened between us was nothing, and nothing is nothing so it’s smart of me to pin my hopes on it. So I thought, Is nothing really nothing? and I figured it’d be fun to ask Google. Anyway, Google has this to say about nothing: “There are physicists like Lawrence Krauss that argue the ‘universe from nothing’, really means ‘the universe from a potentiality’. Which comes down to if you add all the mass and energy in the universe, all the gravitational curvature, everything… it looks like it all sums up to zero. So it is possible that the universe really did come from nothing. And if that’s the case, then ‘nothing’ is everything we see around us, and ‘everything’ is nothing.” Neat, huh? Nothing is everything. I know you super disapprove of me typing the whole question into the search bar instead of just typing the keywords, but I swear I didn’t get it from Yahoo Answers. It’s from a site called phys.org, which sounds pretty legit to me. Anyway, see you tomorrow for orals. I studied like hell for it, and you study enough for the both of us, so we should do great. I… I’m actually looking forward to it. Not the orals, but seeing you. So… see you tomorrow. Bye.

Swipe. Delete.

“Cait? Cait.”

Caitlin startled when she felt a hand on her wrist, gently lifting it from the keyboard of her laptop. She turned to see Felicity giving her a worried look.

“You’ve been pressing the spacebar,” she said.

“Oh.” Caitlin glanced at her screen. She had begun the post-lab document at page 1. She was now on page 15, and all the pages in between were blank.

“Are you okay?” Felicity ventured. “Did something happen between you and Barry?”

“No.” She highlighted the blank pages and pressed delete.

Felicity sighed. “Cait, you haven’t been talking to us since Sunday, so something obviously happened on Saturday night. Did he hurt you? Because if he did, I swear I’ll—”

“No.” She reread the paragraph she’d written so far. “We’re fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Felicity pursed her lips. “Cait, please. Talk to me. You’re overworking, you haven’t been sleeping, and you have lapses like this, when you don’t even realize that you’re spacing out.”

“I’m fine.”

“Cait—”

“Felicity! God, stop!” she snapped. “I’m fine, okay? I just, I have a lot of deadlines coming up, alright?”

Felicity recoiled.

“Okay,” she said, with barely concealed hurt. “Okay. Fine. Whatever.”

She turned away and slinked back to her desk.

Caitlin concentrated on her screen, trying to ignore the pain in her chest.

The next day Caitlin woke with a start. She blinked a few times at the light streaming in through her windows, peeled away a piece of paper that had stuck to her cheek, and shot out of her chair to get ready for the orals.

Or, rather, she stumbled out of her chair, felt around for the reviewers on her desk, and shuffled around the room to gather her other things—towel, clothes, shoes, backpack—as if blind, hitting the corners of tables and countertops as she went. Despite her astounding stamina for studying, Caitlin was not immune to the effects of sleep deprivation, and after totaling only six hours of sleep for the past three days, her mind was foggy, her eyes were dry, and her stomach (also owing to an overdose of caffeine and a diet of crackers and instant noodles) roiled with acid. She felt like either wanting to vomit or wanting to die.

But she was fine. This was fine. This was familiar. At the very least, her physical unease consumed such a significant portion of her attention that she was unable to obsessively rehearse all the worst-case scenarios in her mind, as she usually did.

She took the long route to the science and engineering complex, which ensured that she would meet less people along the way, and silently recited reagent names and reaction mechanisms as she went. Benedict’s Test. Positive results: orange to brick red. Indicates the presence of sugar. Negative results: no change in color. Indicates the absence of sugar. She paused at a vendo machine for some coffee and downed it in one gulp, grimacing when it scalded her tongue. Molisch’s Test. Positive results: purple appearing at the junction of the two layers of liquids. Indicates the presence of carbohydrates. Negative results: no purple at the junction of the liquids. Indicates the absence of carbohydrates. She took the stairs to the fourth floor, and then turned to the row of rooms that professors used for consultations and oral exams. They were usually occupied towards the end of the semester, but right now there was only one occupied room with the light on and the door ajar.

Caitlin crushed her coffee cup, tossed it into a nearby trash bin, and took a deep breath. Fifteen minutes, she told herself. She only had to endure fifteen minutes of this—and of Barry Allen—and she was free. She could do this.

When she entered the room, she immediately recognized the outline of Barry’s back, seated in front of Dr. Wells’s wide wooden desk, and Dr. Wells himself sat across him with his arms folded. They seemed to be in the middle of a conversation, but when she slipped inside, Barry turned around quickly and shot her a grin.

She ignored him. She put on her deadpan mask and hoped that it wouldn’t crack.

Dr. Wells smiled at her. “Ms. Snow, nice of you to join us,” he said, as she took a seat across him and beside Barry. “Well, since you’re both here now, why don’t we start?”

“Ready when you are, Dr. Wells,” Barry said.

Caitlin merely nodded. Her anxiety was building now; her palms were beginning to sweat and her throat felt dry. She absolutely hated oral exams and anything that resembled it—presentations, panel interviews, defenses, anything at all that required her to speak, to be judged for each word she spoke, and to witness the judgment passed on her through the facial expressions (or lack thereof) of the professor or the panel even as she was still speaking. It was an absolute nightmare. The only time when she didn’t feel that way was when she was drunk—her drunk alter ego enjoyed being the center of attention, for reasons she didn’t want to contemplate—but she couldn’t very well show up drunk during an oral exam or a panel interview. Of course, she’d gotten better at hiding her fear as she went through college, but the beginning was still the worst part.

“Alright, let’s start with something easy,” Dr. Wells said. “Ms. Snow, enumerate the tests for carbohydrates and their indicators for positive results.”

This was easy. She knew this. She’d rehearsed for it just a few moments ago, and she also distinctly remembered summarizing the tests in table format for their post-laboratory report. She remembered inputting each entry and polishing the format of the table—bolding the headings, alternating the row colors, affixing the caption—and the memory remained so vivid in her mind that she could recite the answer as if she were reading directly from that table. She had this. She had this.

But when she opened her mouth to speak, no sound came. She was paralyzed. The table was still etched in her mind’s eye, but fear constricted her throat and scrambled the words she’d intended to say. Oh God, she thought, her hands fisting in the fabric of her jeans, not now not now not now—

A second passed. Then two. When three seconds crawled by, the silence became tense, and Caitlin felt all the more the crushing pressure of having to say something, if only to fill the silence; but anxiety and humiliation collapsed her airways, bound her mouth in a steel trap. She felt like she literally could not speak.

Beside her, Barry cleared his throat.

“Mind if I go first, Dr. Wells?” he said, careful not to look at her. He continued lightly, “I’d like to volunteer to answer all the easy questions before they run out.”

Dr. Wells shifted his piercing blue gaze from her to Barry, and he leaned back against his chair with a slight smile. “I can’t guarantee you any more ‘easy questions,’ Mr. Allen, but go ahead.”

Barry grinned and launched into his answer, completely at ease as he talked—so much so, in fact, that he even made a joke while he was at it. When he finished, he pretended to bow to an imaginary audience, and Dr. Wells was shaking his head in barely disguised amusement.

He paused to write something on a sheaf of stapled papers, and then looked up at Caitlin again.

“Ms. Snow?” he said expectantly. “Ready for the next question?”

Her breath caught in her throat. No, she wasn’t. She felt like fading away from the scene. It was one of her defense mechanisms—during stress, she shut down. She disengaged. She was there-not-there. Each passing second with her fear felt like a knife-tip grating down the notched bones of her spine—

She was so caught up in her internal struggle that she startled when she felt something warm cover her hand.

What the—

Her eyes flickered down, and she saw that Barry was holding her hand.

During an oral exam.

In front of Dr. Wells.

She was so livid that she couldn’t move. What was he thinking? Scratch that—was he even thinking? She was going to kill him—

But, no, wait—he wasn’t really holding her hand, per se—he was only running his fingers over her clenched fists, cautiously coaxing them to open. She hadn’t realized she’d been clenching them so tightly that the muscles were strained from the tension. When she finally unclenched them, he quickly withdrew his hand, and continued rambling to Dr. Wells—he’d been managing a conversation this whole time—as if nothing had happened.  

She blinked and took a slow, deep breath. She felt like she was coming out of her stupor, as if unclenching her fists had also uncoiled the anxiety that had gripped her body.

“Mr. Allen,” she dimly registered Dr. Wells saying, “most people answer after they’ve been asked a question, not before.”

“Just wanna show off how much I studied,” Barry said, grinning.

Dr. Wells shook his head and turned to her. “I have to apologize for pairing you off with him, Ms. Snow.”

“Hey! I resent that,” Barry protested. “I’m a pretty decent lab partner.”

“Perhaps ‘highly distractible’ is more appropriate.”

“But I can’t help it, Dr. Wells,” he said. “It’s just how I am. I get really excited about anything science.”

“Ah, Mr. Allen,” Dr. Wells said, his eyes shifting briefly to her, “I don’t think science is the only thing you get excited about.”

Oh my God, does he mean—she didn’t even want to continue that train of thought, but when she saw that Barry, for once, had been struck speechless, she supposed the implication was clear. Oh, God. This was embarrassing. Had he seen Barry reach for her hand? But it was a wide, high desk—he couldn’t have seen it—and Barry had been so discreet that she hadn’t even seen him move—

“Dr. Wells,” she blurted out, just to end the humiliation, “I believe it’s my turn…”

“So it is.” His usually stern features softened into a reassuring look. “Don’t be nervous, Ms. Snow. This isn’t so different from reciting in class or conversing with the panel in open forums.”

Caitlin swallowed and nodded.

“Ms. Snow, can you tell me why Molisch’s test for carbohydrates yields a purple color? An explanation of the reaction mechanism will do.”

She took a discreet breath. She could do this. From the corner of her eye she could see Barry glancing at her out of concern, no doubt readying another excuse to answer for her if she blanked out, and somehow the thought that he had her back quelled the anxiety rising in her throat.

“Molisch’s test determines the presence of carbohydrates by dehydrating them in the presence of sulfuric acid,” she began. She spoke with some hesitance at first, but as she continued speaking, her confidence rose, and she forgot her fear.

When she finished, there was a faint smile on Dr. Wells’s face.

“Good,” he said. “Very thoroughly explained. Now, Mr. Allen, the third question…”

While he briefly consulted his notes, Barry turned to her and smiled with a mixture of pride and relief, but she quickly turned away. She turned away because guilt had crept into the void that anxiety had carved, and this guilt—the origin of which she could not yet name—made her unable to look at him for the rest of the exam.

. . .

The rest of the orals was a breeze. Caitlin told herself that she could have gotten over her fear without Barry’s help—she’d always managed (to her own surprise) to pull through those first few minutes—but there was another part of her that said that wasn’t exactly true. When before, anxiety seized her afresh each time a new question was asked, this time, right after that first question, she felt like she’d entered a state of flow, like the question-answer sequences had already been programmed in her mind and all she had to do was to produce the answer when prompted by the question. That thoughtful gesture of his had played no small part in helping her get over her fear.

She felt, then, that the situation obliged her to thank him—if not the situation, then common courtesy, at the very least, required her to reciprocate his act of kindness with gratitude. Yet, when he’d beamed at her after they’d stepped out of the room, she’d brushed past him as if he didn’t exist; and to add insult to injury, she’d even kept her eyes trained on a spot in the distance to avoid seeing the naked hurt on his face.

Caitlin knew, objectively, that a curt “thank you” would have been no big deal in any other scenario. But this scenario was not any other scenario, and in this case a “thank you” wouldn’t be a mere expression of gratitude: a “thank you” would also be the first crack in her silence, and if she allowed that crack, she would render herself helpless against his efforts to worm his way back into her affections. A “thank you” in this case was also thus an implicit “I’m sorry for ignoring you” and “I want to talk to you again”—both of which she could not allow herself to say, because if her campaign to dissuade Barry from ever speaking to her again her was to be successful, she could allow no exceptions.

But driving him away with silence wasn’t without its consequences—she felt guilty for repaying his kindness so coldly. Normally, one could assuage one’s guilt by approaching the wronged party to make amends, but she already established that she could not approach him, so she felt doubly worse—from being unable to thank him, and from being unable to apologize to him for not thanking him.

With this guilt, too, came shame at the person she had to be in order to reject him so completely. She’d been afraid of the person she was becoming when she was with him, but now she was appalled at who she was becoming in order to drive him away. It seemed that Barry’s kindness only magnified her heartlessness; his gentle persistence, her haste in cutting him off; his unwavering thoughtfulness, her ruthless excision of him from her mental life.

She sighed. Why did he have to be so nice, anyway? She would have welcomed his anger and his resentment, because those would have made sense; but instead he was kind, and she was completely disarmed by his kindness. It was a sincere, pure-hearted kindness at that, without any undercurrent of manipulating her into guilt. But then again, that wasn’t Barry’s style, and come to think of it, she couldn’t imagine him angry and resentful… If she were to become the cause such ugly, blistering emotions in someone as good-natured as he, she was going to feel like a monster.

The least she could hope for, she thought as she settled down in her next class, was for him to give up soon. That way she didn’t have to keep hurting him—or rather, she didn’t have to keep hurting them both.

. . .

Still, that night, as she lay alone in her dark room—Felicity had been avoiding her for the past few days, and she knew she deserved it but she was yet too ashamed to apologize—she placed her phone on her pillow, beside her head. As usual, he’d left a voicemail, half an hour after the orals.

She allowed it to play.

Hey. Are you okay? I knew you told me you didn’t like orals, but I didn’t know you were that terrified of them. I hope you’re okay now. Sorry for holding your hand, I know you’re still iffy with the whole touch thing, but I didn’t know how else to comfort you. I’m really glad you got over it, though. Actually, everything turned out great in the end, don’t you think? We made quite the pair, with me slaying all the easy questions and you slaying all the hard ones, heh. Well, anyway, that’s all for now, I have to meet up with Coach. He’s been really hard on all of us lately since tomorrow’s the finals. It’ll be great if you could come watch, or even if you could drop by to say hi. I really miss you. Call me or message me or something, you know the drill. Bye.

His voice dissolved into the silence.

Caitlin swiped left, and her finger hovered above the bright red Delete button. But, right before she pressed it, the memory of his hand over hers during the orals flitted through her mind, and she shut her eyes and took a shaky breath.

She was just… so tired of this. She was so tired of resisting him, of constructing all these elaborate denials and rationalizations and justifications. She knew that there were to be absolutely no exceptions, but…

She drew her phone close.

She played the voicemail again.

Hey. Are you okay? I knew you told me you didn’t like orals, but I didn’t know you were that terrified of them. I hope you’re okay now…

He lost by 0.91 seconds.

To make up for her momentary lapse in resolve the night before, she’d adamantly avoided his meet, but she might as well have been there with the way she obsessively refreshed her Twitter feed; and, when she saw the headline “KCU’s Hunter Zolomon Bags First Place, Dethrones CCU’s Reigning Champ Barry Allen” an hour or so after the meet, she could hardly believe it.

He lost, she repeated, the thought sinking in. She could only imagine what he was feeling right now. He’d told her, during one of their phone calls, that he wanted to finish this season strong before quitting. “My heart’s not in it anymore,” he’d said, “but my ego is. Does that make sense? I mean, everyone was so proud of me when I won my first national meet. It was unbelievable. My mom and dad couldn’t stop telling their friends about it. For the first time in decades the track team finally got support from the school. Stores wanted to sponsor us. People were flocking to our meets. My teammates were so psyched, and Coach hadn’t smiled so much since his wife gave birth. It was… a pretty great feeling, I guess.” “You just like the attention,” she’d said, and he’d laughed. “Not denying that. But it’s really nice, you know, having started all that, making people proud. It makes me feel like I matter.”

But, she wondered now, if winning made him feel like he mattered, what did losing make him feel?

Disturbed by her own question, she put her phone aside and stared at the articles open on her laptop, willing her focus to return, but she couldn’t bring herself to get back to work. Guilt nagged at her conscience even more insistently now. He’d held her hand when she’d frozen up in fear during the orals, and now that he was the one who needed comfort, she was refusing to be there for him.

She knew that she couldn’t afford to make any more exceptions, but…

She dug the heels of her hand into her eyes and sighed in frustration. Sure, she could ignore a happy, cheery Barry, the Barry who sent her all those chipper voicemails, but can she really just ignore a sad, hurting Barry…?

The thought of him like that had her rising from her desk. Vaguely, she cursed herself for making that first exception last night, because now she’d set herself on the slippery slope of exception-making; but that sentiment wasn’t strong enough to stop her from heading out her door. She didn’t even think to message him to ask him where he was—it seemed her feet moved on their own accord, following the invisible trail that led to him. She knew, without knowing how she knew, where he was going to be.

. . .

She did find him there, at the Observatory.

It was sunset, like the last time they were here, and the soft light cast a warm glow on his skin. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back on his hands, silent and unmoving as a statue.

She watched him from a distance. She watched the wind tug at his hair, watched him turn his face to the dying sun and stare blankly at the smattering of stores, at the specks of people moving mutely below.

Minutes passed. Still, she remained behind a copse of trees, standing on a patch of flat ground in the midst of gnarled roots, too afraid to approach. She didn’t know what to say. She’d never been good with words, and she’d never been good at filling silences, and she didn’t know what to offer as solace. Should she begin with the bland reassurance, as most people did, that everything was going to be okay? Should she ask him how he was feeling? Should she make him laugh, offer him a hug…?

Lost as she was in her thoughts, she only dimly registered the crunch of leaves underfoot. Barry looked to his right, and, more out of instinct than curiosity, she mimicked his movement and turned to look.

At first, Caitlin couldn’t make out the person’s features, as her profile was cast against the light; but as she neared, she caught sight of a head of blond hair and a flash of straight, white teeth.

“Hey,” she said. “Thought you’d be here.”

“Patty, hey,” Barry said, and Caitlin’s world stilled.

Patty. Patty, the girl with the dimpled smile who went to all his meets, the one everyone believed he was with. How did Patty know that he’d be here? Had he brought her here, too? But how could he bring her here? Wasn’t the Observatory their place—?

Wait—why did she even think of the Observatory as theirs? In the first place, there was no ‘they’ to speak of; they weren’t even together! And wasn’t this place Barry’s safe haven? Since he was the one who’d discovered it, didn’t he have the right to share it with whomever he chose?

Caitlin took a deep breath, trying to stamp down the unfamiliar burn of jealousy in her chest.

“Can I sit here?” Patty said.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Patty folded into a sitting position, the movement supple and fluid. “So, how’re you feeling?”

The question echoed numbly in Caitlin’s mind. It was the same question she’d thought of asking him when she’d first seen the headline, the question she would have asked him had she approached him first.

“Pretty bummed, I guess,” Barry said after a lengthy pause. He exhaled. “I knew I was going to quit anyway, but I didn’t know how badly I wanted to quit a winner… Does that make sense?”

Caitlin swallowed the rising bitterness in her throat. Does that make sense—he’d always asked her that whenever he shared something serious and personal about himself, and it had always seemed an intimate phrase to Caitlin: in that question he was allowing himself to be vulnerable, to lay bare his need to be wholly understood. It had never occurred to her that he also used it while speaking to other people.

While speaking to Patty.

She felt doubly betrayed—Patty also knew about this place, and she was also privy to this more vulnerable side of him, as she was—but what, exactly, had been betrayed? Why was she the one who felt betrayed, when she’d cut him off first?

Patty nodded and touched his shoulder. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Her eyes lingered on that touch. Another small intimacy.

Her fingers curled and scraped the bark of the tree, and she had the sudden, violent urge to tear it apart—and then she caught herself in horror. What was jealousy turning her into? She did not recognize herself in these feelings, these thoughts; jealousy was making her illogical, melodramatic, and it was extremely unlike her.

She closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down, and when she did she continued to watch them. She knew she shouldn’t be eavesdropping on this conversation—the second time it was happening, it seemed—but she found herself unable to leave. She just… had to know. She had to know what everyone else saw in them. She would leave, of course, when things became too private, and while she didn’t want to imagine how private things could get, a part of her also wanted to see whatever intimacy might unfold between them. It would hurt, of course, but at least the hurt would be allayed by the grim triumph of knowing that if he had such intimate moments with Patty, then he didn’t really like her, which rendered her decision to cut him off all the more justified.

“But you know,” Patty was saying, “I don’t think people will remember you as the guy who broke CCU’s winning streak. They’ll remember you for putting CCU on the map.”

He scoffed, but Patty insisted, “No, really. We’ve never been known for sports, but since you joined the track team, everyone’s suddenly crazy about track. School spirit’s the strongest during your meets. That’s really something to be proud of, you know?”

“…I guess.”

“Hey, cheer up,” she said, bumping shoulders with him. “Look, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the whole block’s waiting for you at Jitters. We’re throwing you a party, and it’d be nice if you could show up, being the guest of honor and all.”

“I don’t know,” he said, reluctant. “I’m not really hungry.”

“No way. Is that really you, Mr. ‘I Never Say No to Food’ Allen?”

He cracked a smile, and she continued, “Come on. You can have a whole tray of lasagna to yourself.”

He was grinning now. “Are you bribing me to attend my own party, Spivot?”

“Bribing? Who said we were paying for your lasagna?”

He laughed, and Patty smiled and stood, mockingly offering him a hand after she did.

Caitlin felt faint. She couldn’t bear to watch this. It had been a mistake to assume that she would only be hurt by a dramatic show of intimacy, because watching them during those few ordinary moments hurt like hell, too. They just made so much sense together—they had the same sunny good-naturedness, and they carried themselves with the same ease around people. She could never be like that. She couldn’t have comforted him the way Patty had, and it would never have occurred to her that, for someone who loved people as much as he did, he would have been cheered by a party, by being with good friends…

She whirled around, hurt and confused and keen to leave; but she’d forgotten she was standing on the only patch of flat ground in the middle of thick, gnarled roots, so when her toe snagged under one, she tripped and fell with a barely contained yelp.

Barry and Patty fell silent.

“What was that?” Patty said.

“Don’t know,” Barry said. “Must’ve been the wind…”

Caitlin winced, hoping they wouldn’t see her. Great. Just great. Why did she have to be cursed with such terrible bodily coordination? And what was it with this bleeding tree root? Couldn’t it have at least allowed her to walk away with dignity? She knew it was wrong to take her frustration out on it, but she viciously tore it away from her foot anyway.

“No, really, I think there’s someone—”

Caitlin froze at how close their voices suddenly were. Shit, now she couldn’t move until they passed by. It was getting dark—she had that on her side, at least—and she just hoped to God that they wouldn’t look too closely between the trees.

“Nah,” Barry said, turning to face Patty, “no one else really knows about this pla—”

And then he froze, his gaze landing right on her.

Oh shit.

He quickly placed his hands on Patty’s shoulders, steering her so that her back was turned to Caitlin, and said, “Look, why don’t you go ahead to Jitters?”

“What? Why?” Patty said.

Caitlin quickly got to her feet—wincing slightly when she put weight on the foot that had caught in the root—and turned to the opposite direction. He’d already seen her, anyway, so it was best to get the hell out while he was still talking to Patty.

“…need a little more time alone before I face everyone…” he was saying, his voice growing faint. She moved as quietly as she could, like she did when she first made her way up, and she was thankful for the night breeze that rustled the leaves and disguised the sound of her footsteps.

She glanced back to assess her progress. She saw Patty heading down the more well-worn path, and Barry… heading right towards her.

She cursed inwardly, unable to believe her terrible luck. She had the urge to break into a run, but it was already dark and she didn’t want to trip again… And besides, if she broke into a run, he would, too, and he could catch up to her in no time.

Damn it. She was trapped.

“Cait,” he said, his voice a lot nearer now, “wait, don’t go—”

She exhaled and turned to face him. A maelstrom of emotions roiled inside her, more violently now that she’d come face to face with its cause; but she held them under tight rein, and she willed her face into a blank mask.

He slowed when she turned, looking windswept and bewildered. “It really is you,” he murmured. “What’re you doing here?”

For a brief moment, she considered telling a lie, but she knew how easily he would see through it; there was simply no other believable excuse for her being here. She had no choice, then, but to tell the truth, and an irrational resentment welled inside her at this choicelessness, one that flattened her tone and blunted her words.

“I saw the tweets,” she said. “I’m sorry you lost.”

“Oh,” he said. “Uh… thanks.”

“Look, I have to go—”

“What time did you get here?” he said. They had spoken at the same time, but he chose to ignore what she just said, looking determined to steer the conversation. “How long have you been standing there?”

Caitlin’s face burned with humiliation. So he’d realized that she was eavesdropping. Another lie waited on the tip of her tongue—Just now, actually—but she couldn’t bring herself to say it, not when he was looking at her like that. “Long enough,” she said. And then, before she could stop it: “I overheard some parts of your conversation. I’m sorry.”

She thought he would have been mad, or at the very least annoyed, but instead he softened and took a cautious step towards her.

“I never brought her here,” he said.

Her breath caught in her throat; the maelstrom inside her surged, strained from the leash of her composure. He wasn’t supposed to say that. He was supposed to be annoyed or angry; he was supposed to throw his hands up in frustration; he was supposed to give up and walk away. Those reactions she could deal with, could categorize. But this? This was leading her into unknown territory, and she was afraid that if she stepped into it, she would find no solid ground beneath.

He continued, “I did mention it to her, because she once asked what my favorite place in campus was, but I never—”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, willing her voice to remain even. “You’re free to bring whomever you want.”

“I know,” he said softly. “That’s why I brought you.”

The leash snapped. A flood of emotions assaulted her—first relief and hope, so strong that she wanted to move towards him, touch him, hold him and be held by him; but, only moments later, panic overpowered that—panic that she was no longer in control of the situation, that she was no longer in control of even herself; panic that she was standing on the precipice, on the verge of hurtling into something she would later regret. She could not allow herself this, she could not allow any emotional excess; she should not feel, else she could not think.

“Look,” she told him, gathering the remaining threads of her frayed resolve, “it was a mistake for me to come—”

“No, Cait, don’t do that—don’t shut me out again.” He sidestepped just as she turned away, so that she came face-to-face with him again, but she stubbornly refused to meet his gaze. “Please, can we talk?”

“We just did.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you already know what I have to say,” she gritted out. “I’ve already said everything that needs to be said.”

“Then,” he said, “why are you here?”

Her airways constricted. Even if he’d said it so gently, she felt like she’d been disarmed and trapped. Because that was the real question, wasn’t it? Why, after all her efforts to push him away, did she still seek him out? Why did the idea of him hurting sadden her? Why was she so compelled to cheer him up, to be there for him? She knew she’d had an answer to that, one that contained unthreatening truths, but she couldn’t summon it to mind now. Instead the answer that flashed into her mind—that flashed and then branded itself there, so searing that she couldn’t unthink it—was the truth she was too afraid to face, let alone say aloud.

So instead she lashed out.

“I don’t know, okay?” she snapped. “I. Don’t. Know. I feel like I’m always fumbling around in the dark when it comes to you—I don’t have answers ninety percent of the time, and the ten percent of answers I do have, I’m not completely convinced of. So, please. Don’t. Ask.”

His gaze softened, and he drew closer to her, but she remained rigid, her spine cast in steel. “Is that so bad?” he said. “Not having all the answers?”

“Of course it is,” she said vehemently. “Nothing is ever complicated for you, so of course you wouldn’t understand—”

“I wouldn’t understand?” he said, incredulous. “Cait, I don’t have all the answers either, but you don’t see me running away—”

“I’m not running away,” she said, hands balling into fists, “I’m solving the problem once and for all!”

“How?” he said, raking his hair in frustration. “By completely ignoring me?”

“Yes!” she seethed. “But you don’t seem to be taking the hint—”

“No, you’re right, that part I don’t understand,” he said, his voice rising, his features contorting in confusion and anguish. “Tell me, Cait, what exactly does that solve?”

She opened her mouth, but suddenly all words fled her, withered under the fire in his eyes.

“Well? Enlighten me,” he said, the word twisting his mouth in bitter irony, and it was such an unfamiliar expression on him that her gut wrenched in horror. Had she really been the one to put that expression on his face? She thought she’d be able to handle his anger, but it seemed that it only weighed her down with the guilt of being its cause. But couldn’t dwell on that now—not when she had to take control of the situation, not when she had a fight to win. “Maybe then we can be on the same page.”

“I’d be wasting my breath,” she said tightly. “You wouldn’t understand.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Then make me,” he said, his voice strained. “Make me understand your problem, Cait! I’m not a mind-reader!”

“My problem?” she bristled at the accusation in his tone; the blood rushed to her face, and the confusion, jealousy, and barely-leashed longing that she’d bottled and sealed finally burst and boiled over. “My problem is you! My problem is that you came along and threw my entire life off-course!” All rationality had fled her now, and she was running on the adrenaline of her anger. “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve had crushes and girlfriends since middle school. I haven’t. It’s just not who I am. And I was perfectly fine with that.” Barry looked as if he were about to interject, but she couldn’t stop talking; the words rushed out of her in a raging torrent. “Actually, I was grateful for it, because it meant my work would never suffer from the unnecessary angst of romantic entanglements. My life was uncomplicated. All my efforts revolved around school and internships and scholarship programs, anything that could bring me closer to becoming a bioengineer. And for the most part, I was in control of everything in that world.”

She took a shaky breath. “But then you come along,” she accused with renewed vehemence, “and suddenly I’m not in control of anything. Everything’s incomprehensible. Every time you talk to me, it’s like you’re speaking in code. Every time a conundrum is solved, ten new ones appear.” The words burned like acid on her tongue. “My own feelings are incomprehensible to me. I’ve always been able to analyze them to death, but this time, the more I analyze, the more confused I get, and the stronger they become.”

His lips parted in surprise. “What do you—”

“So, Barry, tell me,” she said bitterly, her throat closing. “Tell me, how is it possible that in a span of two weeks, I’ve gone from being single-mindedly focused on building a career in bioengineering, to thinking of you every single moment of the day? How is it possible that I’ve gone from not being attracted to anyone, to liking you so much that I feel I’m going out of my mind?”

He stared at her, stunned.

The instant that last sentence fell from her lips, the invigorating haze of her anger cleared and left in its wake a cold dread that coiled in her stomach. Fuck, what did she just say? And why the hell did she have to go out and say it? She felt like she had just torn down her own defenses, and now she was standing in front of him, stripped of all her armor. Fuck, she hated this. She hated feeling so vulnerable.

“You like me,” he said in disbelief. And then, his lips stretched into a slow smile. “You like me.”

“Oh my God,” she breathed, wanting nothing more than to find a hole in the ground to bury her head in. If she could, she would have already raced back in time to take back everything she said, but instead she had to suffer the humiliating crush of the present. “That’s not the point—”

“No, Cait, I think that’s exactly the point,” he said. “Everything else is beside it.”

“You can’t call everything I’ve just said beside the point—”

“Okay, okay, you’re right, they’re not,” he quickly amended, holding both hands out in surrender to appease her. “What I meant was, can we start from this point?” He took a step closer, his eyes luminescent with hope. “Can we start from the fact that we both like each other and then figure out what happens from here?”

“I’ll tell you what happens from here,” she said through gritted teeth, trying to hold on to the last shreds of control that had so rapidly slipped from her hands. “We’ll go out on a few dates. You’ll find out that we’re not suited for each other. I’m too serious and uptight, and you’re too sunny and carefree. Everything that occurred over the past two weeks was exciting because of the novelty, but once the novelty wears off you’ll lose interest—”

“I’ll lose interest?” he said, drawing back in hurt. “Do you really think so little of me?”

“—and you’ll move on to someone else more suited to your personality.”

There was a beat of silence, and then comprehension dawned on his features.

“Like Patty, you mean?” he said.

“I’m not implying—”

His tone turned teasing. “Is that jealousy I’m hearing, Caitlin?”

She glared at him. “I’m just making a realistic assessment of the situation,” she said.

“Well, let me give you my realistic assessment of the situation,” he said. He was looking at her now with such tenderness that the steel in her spine had begun to melt; and before she could move away, he took her hands in his, just like he had during the orals; and he ran his fingers over hers, his touch warm and light and reassuring.

That was it, she was a goner. The last drop of resistance drained from her body. Deep down she knew that she had already lost—and she knew, even deeper down, that just maybe, she was glad to lose.

He slowly threaded his fingers through hers, his eyes trained on her, bright in the moonlight. “You have nothing to be jealous about,” he said, bringing up her hand and pressing a quick kiss onto her knuckles. The gesture struck her as so sweet and innocent that, even if she still had half her mind about her, she didn’t protest or pull away. He tugged on their joined hands to pull her even closer, and again she let him. She would never admit it to him—she would hardly even admit it to herself—but she was relieved to be so close to him again, after trying so hard to push him away.

His lips now ghosted the shell of her ear. “No one,” he said, with quiet resolution, “comes close to you.” He leaned his forehead against hers, and he was gazing at her through half-lidded eyes; his breath was warm on her skin, and it seemed that her world had narrowed to just him, in this moment, in the moonlit forest. “Look, I don’t have all the answers either,” he said softly. “Two weeks is a crazy-short amount time, but I’m already so in love with you I can barely breathe. I can’t explain it; all I know is that it is.”

A blush crept up her face. Her eyes fluttered close, and she swallowed, unable to speak; an unfamiliar happiness thrummed through her body, about to burst from her skin. She had never been schmaltzy or sentimental, but right now, she supposed she could make this exception for him.

“We don’t have to think about what’ll happen to us in a few months, or even after a few dates,” he said. “We can take it one day at a time, one moment at a time. At whatever pace you’d like.”

A few dates… She bit her lip, feeling her old apprehension return. There was a reason she avoided him so assiduously, and she’d disguised that reason in so many other layers of peripheral truths that she’d almost lost sight of it; but now that he’d brought it up, it emerged from the debris of her logic, demanding to be noticed.

Caitlin took a deep breath. If anything was to happen between them, she had to tell him this.

“I think—”

“Oh, that can’t be good,” he teased.

She wrinkled her nose at him and continued slowly, “I think I need some time alone to let this all sink in. No, wait, let me finish.” She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze to ease his alarm. “Barry, I’m terrified. That was the problem—I’m completely terrified of this. Of going out with you and being with you.” She swallowed. “I was avoiding you because I like you enough to know you could hurt me, and I don’t want to get hurt. I figured that if I cut you off first, you wouldn’t be able to hurt me.”

His expression mellowed. “I wish I could say something like ‘I’ll never hurt you,’” he said, “but that’d be a lie. I think the more you let someone in, the more power you give them to hurt you. So I get what you’re saying.” His grip on her hand tightened. “But I think it’ll all be worth it in the end.”

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“But we never know anything for sure, anyway,” he said. “Even the most thoroughly researched predictions turn out wrong, and even the most improbable events come to happen, against all odds.” He flashed her a boyish smile. “As for me, I’m willing to take a chance on this”—he gestured between them—“improbable event.”

She shook her head and huffed a laugh. “For once, I don’t think I can argue with that logic.” He beamed, but she continued, “But I still need to let this all sink in. I just came to terms with everything, and it’s still extremely confusing…”

“Okay,” he said softly. “Okay. I understand. But promise me you won’t shut me out again,” he pleaded. “I don’t think I can bear any more of that. And besides, I’m running out of ideas for voicemails…”

She smiled, amused. “Alright,” she said. “I promise I won’t.”

“So… when’ll you talk to me again?” he grinned.

She pursed her lips. “Maybe after a week?”

“A week?!” he said, and then he cleared his throat and amended, “I mean, alright, sure, a week. I think I can do a week.”

She rolled her eyes fondly. “Thank you,” she said, and, on impulse, she tilted her head to press a kiss on his jaw.

He looked surprised, but he recovered quickly with a mischievous smile. “Can I have more of those to get me through the week?” he said. “Like, one for each day—”

“Don’t push your luck,” she said, and he laughed.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “Really, take your time. Just, you know, not too much time. Okay, to be honest, I can’t wait for next week to come…”

“You really have no patience, do you?”

“Absolutely none,” he chirped. “But when it comes to you, I guess I have a little bit more than my baseline patience.”

“How romantic,” she said dryly, and he grinned.

“Now that I have a ton of,” he said.

“Well, I don’t have a romantic bone in my body,” she said, with a teasing smile, “but when it comes to you, I guess I have a bit more than a scaphoid to spare.”

He laughed. “I’ll take it,” he said, brushing his lips on the inside of her wrist, right where her scaphoid was. When he looked up at her again, his eyes were shining with mirth. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”

“Yes we are,” she said quietly. “We definitely are.”

They fell into a comfortable silence, surrounded by the soft rustling of leaves, the glow of streetlamps along the well-worn path, and the smell of the earth.

After a few moments, Caitlin ventured to speak.

“By the way, how’re you feeling?” she asked. “After that meet…”

“Oh… I’m still upset about it,” he said. “But it was partly my fault—Hunter was a new contender so I might’ve underestimated him—but you win some, you lose some, I guess.” He pulled away briefly to give her a pout. “I’m really hurt you didn’t come, though.”

“You’ll get over it,” she said dryly.

“The least you could do is kiss the hurt better,” he said, and she swatted his arm. “Ow, ow—fine, fine, I’ll stop soliciting kisses… But can I at least have a hug?”

He grinned, and she sighed.

“Fine. One second.”

“…Are you seriously giving me a hug time limit?”

“No such thing as free lunch, as they say.”

“But hugs are supposed to be free!”

“Not in my currency,” she returned.

“Well, how about two seconds?” he wheedled, giving her the smile that she couldn’t resist. “I mean, I was second place and all…”

She pretended to consider it. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“Yesss!” he cheered, disentangling his hands from hers to spread his arms open for the hug, but she pushed him back lightly at the shoulders.

“Wait, don’t you have a party to go to?”

“A par—oh, that. That can wait,” he said. “Not fair. You’re doing that on purpose.”

She tilted her head to the side innocently. “Doing what on purpose?”

“Cait, seriously, this is the worst time to make me wait,” he said, petulant. “I would really like to avail of my hug now, please.”

She smiled. Oh, she missed him. She really missed him. “Well, since you asked so nicely…”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he quickly pulled her flush against him, his arms strong around her waist. He let out a contented sigh and buried his face in the crook of her neck, and she closed her eyes and melted into his embrace.

They stayed like that for far longer than two seconds, but neither of them were counting.

[agapaic]

What are your views on Zhanyi in terms of abuse? Because, from what I've seen, they've had their bouts of physical abuse.

Hi!

I’ve actually never set any of the characters apart in the manhua -- particularly in terms of their physical violence -- so my criticism of Zhengxi’s behaviour has always been as critical as it is with He Tian. 

Unfortunately I can’t find my old asks that discussed his behaviour bc they were deleted along with the rest of my posts on my old blog, but I’ve never seen Zhengxi’s actions as cutesy or protective. Like I said yesterday: intention does not change action. Jian Yi, if I’m recalling correctly, has never instigated physical violence. He’s always been the punching bag. He has played with Zhengxi’s fears once or twice, however (running off in the woods, jumping into the river, generally being a frustrating idiot), but none of that is deserved of physical abuse? That’s a very harmful way to handle it. 

I always remember a convo I had with alliandoalice once about why the two of them were actually friends, because a few months ago it just... seemed liked Zhengxi couldn’t stand Jian Yi? Like, if everything that Jian Yi did annoyed/irritated him/lead him to use violence, then what on earth was he doing hanging around him?

The difference between Tianshan and Xiyi is that Zhengxi and Jian Yi are essentially confirmed to be emotionally attached to one another -- they are self-professed best friends who care for one another, and look out for one another. Tianshan, on the other hand, is fundamentally controlled by He Tian, and when the attachment he’s looking for isn’t being fulfilled (ie. when Guan Shan doesn’t do what he wants/doesn’t reciprocate), he’s resorted to violence. Sure, maybe He Tian is looking out for Guan Shan at times, and sure, maybe Guan Shan feels affection for him, but He Tian is abusive when he doesn’t get what he wants. Zhengxi uses violence as an instinctive retaliation to Jian Yi putting himself in trouble/doing stupid things. Neither are acceptable; they are different. 

I might consider doing a full break-down of this discussion (ie. the violence in 19 Days) since it comes up time and time again, but I’m also aware that it’s going to open a whole can of worms that I don’t... really want to invite. 

Hope this gives you some clarity on my thoughts! If you want to chat more about it, I’d be happy to.

[sagebodisattva]

The Slaughter of the Sacred Cows

In my last video, “The Conspiracy Brain Syndrome”, I went on a vigorous attack against conspiracy theory, and left it battered and broken, bleeding to death on a darkened path, deep in the woods, gasping for it’s last breath under the pale blue moonlight. It seems that I managed to hit a lot of raw nerves with the type of message I was speaking, and, apparently, more then a few people seemed to get quite upset about it. Awwwww. Isn’t that a pity? I’m not quite sure who these protestors are, because most of the emotional commotion was originating from several highly active sock accounts with absolutely no content, who began trolling the comment section relentlessly. In so far as, who I think these people might be, (because none of these accounts are known followers of the Meta Sage), a lot of evidence is pointing towards the dual-sock; who may or may not have recruited a minion to help do his bidding. Or, as hacking reports from the bat cave have implied, the dual-sock with dual socks, or some combination thereof. No matter what the case, the dual-sock is getting punished over this, severely, and I’m not too overly concerned about whether or not he is solely responsible, is in cahoots with an underling, or claims that he had absolutely nothing to do with it; there’s going to be serious consequences nevertheless, because I have already warned him about this kind of troll conduct, several times.

Be that as it may, maybe there were some among you who were genuinely upset with the message I was conveying, but if so, I’m not sure why, as anyone who would regularly tune into the Meta Sage transmissions shouldn’t expect anything less. If anything, this opposition only reveals that many of you have not yet done what’s been expected of you. Not only have many of you NOT let go of your addictive attachments, but, you are, in fact, actively harboring them, and trying to hide them all under a guise of “philosophical disagreement.” No, not acceptable, at all. I already told you, a long time ago, that, at least when it comes to the Meta Sage channel, there are no sacred cows. I am a reality deconstructionist, and everything you hold dear, is on the table. When you were asked to “let go of everything”, that didn’t mean to let go of everything, except for the special exceptions you keep hidden on the side. No, “let go of everything”, means exactly that. EVERYTHING. There are no special exceptions; and the fact that I have uncovered some of these special exceptions, means that I’ve got a lot more work to do.

You see, I have to apologize to a certain extent, because, up until now, I have been in a transition between spiritual strongholds, and, as of late, have not been able to give the adequate attention to my work, as I usually would. And for this, I am truly sorry. A little cryptic back story on this. In the early part of 2018, the time had finally arrived to where, I had to depart from my old spiritual stronghold. It served me well for a time, and I managed to produce more then two years of content in that place, but, eventually, the space became an inadequate setting for the upcoming chapters of my work, and so, I left that place, and then began a transitional phase, and ended up getting waylaid for a time in a sort of interval stasis situation; but, eventually, I broke out of that, and, in the early summer of 2019, established a new foundation in a more appropriate environment, and ever since then, the production of my new spiritual stronghold has been underway, and now, is at least 95% done. Complete enough to where, I can now begin to refocus my attention back onto the pressing issues at hand, and, start to bring everything back into clean sharp order. I must clear away all the cobwebs, and cast out certain rodents, then, I can finally take my place in a brand new seat of power, and begin the task of casting judgment on everything in the field of the mind-space; and then decide the fate of everything that finds it’s place within the framework of this domain. Yes, I will be deciding what should stay, and what should go; so let’s hope that you can account for yourself, and have not been behaving like a shameless parasite.

But anyway, getting back to the story being told here, at hand. I was disappointed by some of the reactions people were having to “The Conspiracy Brain Syndrome”, video. Not only did it reveal the existence of hidden clinging attachments, but there wasn’t many arguments in opposition that didn’t respond with either externalizations, or yet even more conspiracy theory. It just goes to show that, no matter how meta you get, some people will never be able to see beyond the worm’s eye view. It’s just simply beyond their capacity. But how desperate they’ve become in trying to stop me from remaining lucid about the mind-space. No, they don’t want that, because if that happens, then the bar gets raised; and the higher the bar gets raised, the harder it gets for “others”, to function, because this type of raised bar demands high concentration and discipline, and introduces a whole new set of arduous standards. No, they’d much rather I get distracted and lose clarity, so they can continue to be greedy and lazy.

“No Sage, look at history! C’mon Sage, research these factions! Stop it Sage, pay attention to the outside world! Do anything Sage, but please forget that it’s a mind-space! We don’t want to take on any power or responsibility! We’d much rather be slaves to an illusion. It takes less effort. And it’s secure and comforting. Please Sage!”

Yeah, I know. But, too bad. I am already aware that it’s a mind-space, and I’m not ever going to lose sight of it again, so, you can just forget about that. It’s too late. I’m already across that threshold, and I’m never going back. So you should stop trying to use cheap tactics in an attempt to lower my clarity. No, instead, let’s crank up the pressure, and crack the whip down, on YOU.

And so, this brings us to the solipsistic implications of the issue; which should be noted, as it brings us back to the metaphysical meat of the matter. After I posted the “Conspiracy Brain” video, during all the chaos of the ensuing sock puppet uproar, at a certain point, one of them did try to actually muster up the concentration to articulate a half-assed ideological argument, employing, of all things, the philosophy of solipsism. It seems like he was trying his best to try to throw down some kind of unmanageable conceptual sticking point, but it wasn’t effective. At the time, I didn’t go into an in-depth exchange with the fool, because it’s really not worth typing paragraphs and paragraphs of discourse, only to have it later deleted; so now, when dealing with trolls, it’s better to just sling a couple of insults, and then block them immediately. So a lot of comments got lost in the shuffle. But, luckily, before the dust settled, I managed to screenshot his comments, because I figured, at some point, I would later address them, just for amusement. And so, I will now proceed to impale them endwise, properly.

So onto the sock-puppet’s first comment.

Sock puppet: quote - “Corona is bullshit. Strange that you don't even believe there is a real world Meta Sage, as you're a solipsist (which i basically agree with) -- and yet you think the coronavirus plan-demic is real, and there's a real pandemic happening in the time and space of a big world -- a world which you previously claim in your solipsist talks doesn't even exist? That's pretty ridiculous. You're contradicting yourself if you believe in coronavirus and yet don't even believe in an objective solid reality. How are all these supposed people dying on the news if they don't even exist because solipsism is real? You've become a contradiction.” unquote.

To this, I basically replied that, my acknowledgment of the coronavirus, doesn’t translate into an endorsement of an objectively existing physical world. The sock puppet assumes this, because he is, in fact, the only real materialist here, who doesn’t even genuinely subscribe to solipsism; so it’s not clear why he was trying to elucidate it’s points. So I brought it to his attention that, even though the world is illusory, the illusory nature of the world doesn’t mean the illusory events that take place it in it, are a deception. You want to assert that there’s lies being told within an illusion, and the reason they are lies is because it’s an illusion. That’s what you imply by this line of reasoning. If you really understood that reality is not in ‘time-space’, but is, in fact, a ‘mind-space’, then you wouldn’t posit such a silly proposition. No, the world perceived through the senses is indeed illusory, but everything that happens within it, is conditionally true. We say “conditionally true”, to emphasize the illusory nature, while, at the same time, acknowledging the structure of illusion. Yes, there are illusory people in an illusory world, but the illusory world has illusory rules. If an illusory body steps out in front of an illusory truck, the illusory truck is going to crush the illusory body. Period. It’s as simple as that. So it would be real stupid to call the coronavirus a deception within the illusion when it’s clearly a part of the illusory world, and has the potential to kill you; just as there are lots of other things killing people all the time. People are getting eaten by sharks, right now. People are perishing of cancer, and dying in car crashes, right now.

To this, the sock puppet replied with:

Sock Puppet: quote - “Meta Sage, you said someone right now is dying in a car crash -- wrong. Solipsism posits the ONLY thing that you can prove to be real, is your own consciousness. If someone calls you on a phone from Hawaii - you don't KNOW they exist right now in Hawaii -- all you KNOW and can PROVE is that your phone has a voice of someone who claims to be in Hawaii right now. But you, can never be in 2 places at the same time, and therefore you will never ever ever be able to prove that person actually exists in Hawaii right now when you're somewhere else in the world talking to them on a phone. You are here and now -- and only here and now -- forever. So you saying someone is dying in a car right now is pure speculation. "Solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind”, that's the definition right off of google itself. So you're NOT a solipsist by saying someone is dying in a car right now -- unless you can photograph it and are there in person -- it's bullshit. Just like you claiming all these people are dying of coronavirus. And your claims break the code of solipsism and contradict it entirely.” unquote.

The main issue here, that seems to be this troll’s major mental malfunction, is his inability to directly apply solipsism with the pure mind. Instead, he only considers it intellectually, which, inevitably, is always going to fall short of the mark. Becoming lucid, versus only having knowledge about the subject of solipsism intellectually, are two completely different things. It’s a divide too wide to negotiate, and nothing in this sock puppet’s little bag of dirty tricks, will be sufficient enough to bridge the gap. The examples he references, and the definitions he cites from the internet, are also intellectual misinterpretations of solipsism, and it doesn’t wash. Sorry, no matter how you slice it, I win, and you lose.

So, let’s go ahead and review the second statement, then parse through it’s points briefly, and dissect them accordingly.

“Solipsism posits the only thing you can prove to be real, is your own consciousness.”

“Solipsism”, posits this, eh? Is solipsism an entity that can make assertions now? Silly enough on it’s own, but then you start talking about “what YOU can prove.” So, I ask, who’s the “you”, referring to in this statement? “OWN consciousness?” Who’s the owner of this consciousness exactly? You seem to place a whole lot of weight in the existence of an identification with the ego personality. I guess that’s why you could possibly think that this ego is the only ego you can be sure that exists; as if you are an ego that has an existence in the first place. This conclusion is based on a mis-identification, and is a common stumbling block for existential explorers who don’t journey deep enough. No, you have not made the proper lucid connection yet. The entirety of the dream is a whole, and the ego personality is woven right into the very fabric of it. The ego is no different then those that you refer to as “others.” Both are equally aspects of a dream, and this dream is found within the imagination of awareness. So, more aptly stated, the ‘awareness of the dream’, is the only thing that can be known for sure to exist. Understood this way, there is no confusion. But, even if we take this the wrong way, and argue it out falsely, in the way you originally wanted, I still win. If my ego is the only ego that exists, and everything else in the world, including other people, are all figments of my personal mind, it does nothing to lessen the fact that the coronavirus, and anything else for that matter, are all conditional aspects of my imagined world. In other words, I am dreaming of an imaginary physical world where there are imaginary physical entities that are vulnerable to all kinds of imaginary deaths, via all kinds of imaginary circumstances. And one of the things I am imagining to be killing lots of these imaginary entities, is an imaginary virus. Hence, I imagine hearing about all these imaginary deaths going on in my world. So, that doesn’t work. Ultimately, what we can say with confidence, is that, however which way you want to look at it, the sock puppet troll who left this comment is just as real or fake as the coronavirus. So think hard about how you wanna answer that. The coronavirus is as much of a hoax as you are. Whatever you say the coronavirus is, you fall into the exact same category.

Then the troll goes on to quote from a Google search: quote - “Solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.” unquote.

Yeah, but the thing is, this whole “own mind”, versus the “other mind”, bullshit, is completely false. And the reason it’s false, is because it’s a mere assumption grounded upon a faulty premise. Things that are outside of own mind? And what the hell might that be exactly? There’s no “own” anything. How can a thing be outside of one’s own mind when all there is, is mind? It’s ALL mind; so please explain how anything can be outside of itself. There is no “outside”, and this is the crux of your misunderstanding, mr. sock puppet man.

See, the problem here, is that you are not sincere. Instead, you are just playing little word games, and engaging in intellectual thought experiments, that have no basis in reality. And the reason you are doing this, is because you want to both hide your attachments, and attempt to distract me from clarity; but, you’ve failed on both fronts. And now, I am going to turn the tables and put you through your paces. I know that you are actively trying to hide your special exception attachments from me, but now, I think the time has finally come, for a slaughter of the sacred cows. So watch out. I am coming for everything, and I will hunt down every last sacred attachment that you have hidden, deep in your mind. I am going to find them all, and lay them bare. Nothing is safe. And if you think for one second that, by erecting fortified walls around your precious attachments, that it’s going to do anything to stop me, then you are sadly mistaken, my friend. It’s not going to stop anything. I will find every last attachment you have concealed, and I will drag it out into the open, and then brutalize it, harshly. And I don’t care how vigilant you are in your protective efforts. It’s just a matter of time, and I have an obscene amount of patience. You have to go to sleep some time; and when you do, I will break into your mind and search every nook and cranny of it, until I have found all of your hidden special exceptions. Then, I will proceed to quickly strip them down, and then club them repeatedly, to within inches of their lives.

[cynicaldesire]

Ace Detective - Ch. 2 Ryukoto - Persona 5

< Prev

Makoto did her best to ignore the buzzing of her phone on the table beside her manga. She flipped another page and smiled absently at the images. Despite the dark and gory nature of the series, it still held small moments of clarity and kindness. It reminded her of someone.

She sighed and grabbed her phone. Messages from the group, mostly. She deleted a few old threads, all except for the one from a couple weeks ago, after their adventure with the Calling Cards. She felt it, a something during their outing, the fluster of a shoujo heroine when his body loomed over hers, when she pressed him against the wall, when he came out with the shirt too tight, when she had to pretend to be his girlfriend, when they sat together at the diner, when she had to take his hand for any reason. So she deleted threads daily so as to avoid the message she sent to him getting automatically removed.

She hadn’t ever been one for frivolous romantic tripe like other girls, so focused on her studies and performing to the standards set forth by the adults in her life. She had to make her sister proud, live up to the legacy of her father. Being Student Council President came with duties that she had to uphold, with responsibilities she had to the other students and teachers. She had so little time that she allowed for anything that did not advance her worth to those people.

Being with the Phantom Thieves forced her to rethink her priorities. She had the grades, the position, the appearance, everything that gave her prestige and made the adults in her life happy. But she couldn’t tell if it made her happy. She had no hobbies, no friends, and most of the students seemed to dislike her. She wanted those things, for people to like her, befriend her, and share interests.

A sharp, loud noise from the hallway startled her. Someone must’ve dropped a book as they left the library. Distracted from her thoughts, she looked to the time; school would close soon. She started to gather up her things and took one last look at her phone. One thing did make her happy. But would her new friends like it?

She took a slow breath. The school would close to students, but on Monday nights, the gym had been rented out to the local Kendo club. The janitor knew her well and trusted her to use the gymnasium between closing and the club meeting. He would have to clean it again after the club meeting anyway. She did her best to keep it cleaner than she found it as recompense. With her newest extracurricular activities, it might be a good idea to do a bit of training. Her damage output seemed to be lower than the rest of the team’s. While she enjoyed Aikido, she had let her body and skill atrophy in favor of her studies and investigations.

Makoto took one last look at her phone before she placed it in her bag. She kept all her Aikido things in the locker room, but she would need something from the vending machine to hydrate and replenish her electrolytes. The vending machines in the courtyard should provide what she needed.

She smiled to a few students that loitered in the courtyard. They offered disingenuous smiles and packed up their things while she purchased her drink. The machine rattled as her beverage dropped and Makoto heard the students fade away as she recovered the bottle. She gripped the cold bottle tightly. No one liked her. Her jaw clenched, eyes downcast. Aikido would help. A quick glance at the time allowed her to begin planning a regimen of kata to run through before the kendo club arrived.

As she crossed the courtyard to the gymnasium, she heard heavy panting beyond the railing. Students weren’t allowed in the grass after what happened with Suzui, especially with the grounds closing. One deep breath, a bolster to her fortitude, and she moved to the gate that led to the lawn.

She followed the panting around the corner of the practice building. “Excuse me?” Her voice came out stronger than she felt.

A dyed blonde head bobbed between knees covered by large hands. “Hol’ on…” He managed the request through his breaths, an exercise Makoto actually recognized.

Makoto stiffened. Ryuji’s shirt clung to his back, moist with sweat. She swallowed, distracted by the musculature defined by the simple white cloth. Her heart beat faster, those silly, frivolous feelings burbling up again.

He lifted his head and released her from staring. “Oh, it’s you.” No disdain laced his voice, but she heard no affection either. “What are you still doin’ here, Miss President?”

Her grip tightened on the straps of her bag. “I-… I don’t have Student Council meetings on Mondays, but I like to stay in the Student Council room to catch up on work.”

He continued to breathe heavily as she spoke. He nodded absently. “I guess you, uh… came around here to-“ He swallowed, a weak attempt to catch his breath. “To remind me this area is off-limits?”

Her brow furrowed. He never seemed this exhausted in the Metaverse. “Sakamoto-kun, are you all right?”

He laughed once and nodded again. “Yeah, m’okay. I’ll head out in a bit.” He placed a hand on the wall beside him to begin post-workout stretches.

Makoto watched his body bend and stretch, the muscles of his legs and arms work under the skin. She had never noticed it before, not in any of her Aikido classes or spars. Why did this blonde punk bother her so much?

He seemed to favor his right leg, more effort put into the stretch, pain twisted his countenance as he worked it with a small grunt. Her brow furrowed; rumors surrounded the disbandment of the track team, but Ryuji had been suspended after the incident, there’s no way Kamoshida broke his leg. That man had been a vile pervert, not-… He had been abusive, as well. Those rumors rang true. So many awful things happened at her school, right under her nose, and she never knew. What made this one so hard to believe?

“Don’t you have work to catch up on, senpai? I’ll be good, like you said.” His breath finally caught, he turned to her, words amicable but she felt the bitterness behind them.

She looked up to his earthy brown eyes, contrasted sharply by his blonde hair, less unruly after his workout. A smile graced her lips despite herself. “I was actually on my way to do some Aikido training before the Kendo club meets in the gym.”

Ryuji’s brow lifted. “For real? I thought they closed it off after classes for cleaning and shhhhhhtuff.” He winced slightly, aware of his slip of the tongue, conscious to not swear around her.

She chuckled. Leave it to Ryuji to lift her mood by just being himself. “I made a deal with the janitor. I’m one student, the Student Council President, he trusts me to keep it clean and taken care of. Besides, I need the time to think. Running through a few kata helps to clear my head.”

His eyes fell away from hers, to the ground. He turned away to grab his Dr. Salt NEO. Makoto’s brow lifted; she’d have assumed he’d have a soda. “Sorry for keeping you out so late last night, senpai.”

She smiled brightly. “Oh, it was no trouble, Sakamoto-kun. You needed the help with your studies and I’m more than happy to provide.”

He took a swig of his sports drink. “I’ll try not to ask ya too much. I ain’t smart enough to get it all anyway.”

Makoto frowned. She hated hearing the delinquent self-deprecate. He had too many good qualities that he and everyone else ignored because of one mistake. She gripped her own Dr. Salt NEO tighter.

His body bent at the waist to drop his drink in his bag. He straightened up and grabbed the hem of his gym uniform and lifted it to wipe his face. Makoto felt the warmth invade her cheeks as the white cloth covered his face.

Her eyes drifted down to gaze at the definition of his athletic body. Any frivolous thoughts burned away as she took stock of the bruises that peppered his flesh. “Ryuji!” She dropped her Dr. Salt NEO and took a few frantic steps forward.

Brown eyes appeared from behind white cloth at his name shouted in panic. He followed her hands to his abdomen, to the bruises, and whipped his shirt back down to cover them. Red met brown, both determined.

“Ryuji, where did those come from?” Panic and worry welled inside her. He winced at her question.

His eyes tore away to the bottle she dropped. Grass rustled as he shifted around to grab the white, salty beverage. “Don’t worry about it, senpai, it’s nothin’.” He held the bottle out to her.

She shook her head. “Like hell I won’t worry! You’re my friend.”

His brow lifted at her outburst. She shifted her weight to cross her arms. If he wouldn’t tell her, she would have to find out. Preliminary suspects; who would want to hurt him? Probably everyone at the school. Probably even those outside of the school. She had to narrow the suspect pool. Who would he protect? Family, first. She had heard rumors of his home life as well, an abusive father and a mother that did her best. Could the father still be at home? No, she had heard from Akira that Ryuji only had his mother left. So that left friends?

“Was it Ann?” Makoto narrowed her eyes at him.

He shook the bottle at her. “C’mon, senpai, it’s nothin’. I promise. You won’t have much time to do trainin’ if you stick around here.”

Her jaw tensed. She snatched the bottle from him. “I’ll find out who did this to you, Ryuji.” She worked to unscrew the cap. Who else? Ryuji had isolated himself from clubs after last year, though not entirely of his own design. Extra-curricular? They had spent a great deal of time in Mementos recently. “Was it the Shadows?” She chugged a bit. Couldn’t be, why would he cover that up?

He perked up a bit at her question. “Ah, ya got me, senpai. Those Shadows can get… pretty tough. Anyway, I’ma go uh… hit the showers before I head home.”

She knew that tone. A nervous lie. He’s obviously covering for someone. But if it were Ann, he’d probably complain about it, talk about what a bitch she can be, but remind her of their friendship. Makoto didn’t believe she’d ever go that far. It had to be someone else.

He leaned down to grab his bag. Makoto felt an uneasiness settle into her gut. She wanted to help him, to protect him, if she could. But she couldn’t if he didn’t let her, if he hid the truth. She heard about this before from her father, from her sister, from her studies, of the abused that refused to speak out against their abuser. The only real way to convince them to do so, to charge them or testify, would be to convince them of their safety with the police.

She would just have to do that. Make him believe her to be a friend, someone he could be safe with. He shifted around her, headed back to the main building. She grabbed his wrist before he could get too far. “Ryuji!”

He flinched and looked to her hand before he turned around to her. “Yeah?”

Makoto felt the butterflies flit in her stomach. Her hand snapped up to fuss with her uneven bangs, a futile attempt to tuck the longer bits behind her ears. “I… After-…” She pressed her lips together, his eyebrows piqued at her stuttering. “How about I meet you at the shoe lockers after you clean up?”

He turned his head to eye her sidelong. “Why?”

She took a slow breath. Suspicion. “You need some carbs after that workout, right? I’ll come with you. Maybe we could get one last study session in before exams on Wednesday.”

He laughed once, eyes on the ground. He lifted his free hand to his shoulder to rotate the joint. “Nah, I’ve had enough studying for one week. Shit was brutal.” His hands moved together to open his bottle. “Thanks, by the way, for doing your best with me. I know I ain’t smart or easy to teach.” He lifted the beverage to his lips.

Makoto watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. More self-deprecation. Almost as if the boy preferred to believe himself inferior. “You’re welcome. How about I take you to your favorite ramen place then?”

His body lurched, a bit of his beverage spurted around the bottle’s opening. He lowered the bottle quickly, splashed a bit more on the ground, and wiped his face. “For real! It’s all the way in Ogikubo, though!”

Makoto smiled. His demeanor completely changed. She had played the right card. “Of course. If you have the money for the ride, I’ll pay for the meal.”

He grinned and quickly spun the cap back on his drink. “I’ll meet you at the shoe lockers!” He waved and bounded off toward the gymnasium.

Makoto giggled at her kouhai’s enthusiasm. That flutter in her stomach shifted to her chest as she made her way back through the school to the shoe lockers. She sat down on one of the shoe changing benches and watched a few students wander out together. Her smile at Ryuji’s excitement had not diminished when he left. She laughed once at the thought of him so excited, every emotion turned as high as possible on the dyed blonde.

So when he muted those emotions, she noticed. She sensed his frustrations throughout the day, highest after he changed back to his normal clothes at the end of their Calling Card adventure. Anxiety had her playing and replaying the entire afternoon over and over again in her mind in hopes that she might determine the cause. He seemed affable, as if the whole endeavor seemed fun and exciting to him, until she mentioned his grades.

That had to have been the turning point. Any other spat they got into seemed to solve itself, resolved quickly through his compassionate nature or simple apathy. But his grades brought forth the most self-deprecating comments, the anger that he did his best to cover. He had touched her when emotion overcame her and she had hoped it might work the same for him. She remembered earlier in the afternoon he had started any time she touched him, but he quickly relaxed, the table quieted when his leg stopped bouncing, when she touched his hand.

So she hugged him. She wanted him to feel a warm embrace the way she had once. But something about it had angered him further. The train ride home only intensified her worry and anxiety. She hadn’t made it better. And she had texted him before her stop. About today she entitled it.

She kept her phone on her the rest of the night, worried for her colleague. She hated to see that look in his eye, so far removed from his energy as Skull or even on school grounds as the delinquent Ryuji. Something about him felt wrong, not like Ryuji at all. She checked her phone every few minutes during her studying, through dinner, and would’ve taken the device into the bath with her if she had a waterproof case. Instead, she woke up with the charging cable wrapped around her wrist as the phone buzzed frantically in alarm. And weeks later, he hadn’t replied to it. She made sure to delete as many other threads as she could to ensure that message remained. An ember of hope that he might address her concerns outlined in the message.

That anxiety, that worry, forced a realization within her. She had no idea how to help him. She wanted desperately to do so, but she didn’t know him outside of her investigation. And without his reply, she couldn’t pretend to be anything more than a colleague to him. A partner in Thievery. So she would have to try to find common ground.

Jinbocho had been her first stop. The literary district carried all sorts of books, but she hunted for manga. She ended up directed to the more otaku of districts, such as Akihabara and Nakano Broadway. Akiba upset her, reminded her of things she would rather bury, all bright lights and maid cafes like the red light district of Shinjuku, but Nakano Broadway felt more like a large mall with all manner of interests. But she had to persevere so that she could get closer to the Thieves and potentially the student body.

And so she delved into manga, first seeking out the series he carried with him. She had barely gotten through the first volume when she realized how weak it made her. Darkness, gore, hopelessness, all in terrifying measure. A return trip garnered her different manga, something to lift her spirits and cleanse her mental palate so that she might dive in again. She strove for manga that might enrich her, something intellectual, but she found herself drawn to the shoujo romance, to the cute animal stories, to the detective stories and historical dramas. But she continued to purchase or borrow the next volume of his manga. She had to connect with him. And, despite the content, his manga gave her a lot to think about.

She took a slow breath. The foyer of the school had cleared out a while ago. With no idea how much longer Ryuji might take, she reached into her bag to pull out the alternate manga, the cleansing manga, she had purchased.

“For real?” His voice came from across the foyer, barely noticeable to her if not for the extreme quiet.

She looked to her partner-in-crime and closed the book. As she stood, he shuffled to his locker to switch his shoes out. Makoto crossed the foyer to stand near him. He smelled clean. Something heady. She swallowed the butterflies back to her gut.

He locked his shoe locker and turned to the Student Council President. His brow furrowed for a moment, one arm lifted to rub the back of his head. “So, uh… You were serious, huh?”

Makoto lifted her bag to her shoulder. “Dead serious. So where are we going?”

Brown eyes drifted over her features, his hand dropped from the back of his neck. “Well, there’s this stellar ramen shop in Ogikubo, but the fare is kinda steep and the ramen isn’t exactly cheap so-“

Makoto smiled brightly. “That’s fine. Like I said, you pay for your fare and I’ll pay for your meal.” She turned away and headed for the door.

“H-Hey.” His shoes thumped after her. His larger hand dropped onto her thin shoulder. “Senpai, really, you don’t gotta pay for it. Why would you want to, anyway?”

The butterflies took flight at his touch. She shook her head. “You deserve it, Ryuji. After everything you did for me with Kaneshiro and-“

He shushed her sharply. “C’mon, really? And you guys give me shit about it.”

A flush found her cheeks, her shoulders lifted. “Sorry!” She hissed the apology out, embarrassed. “But seriously, with everything you do for our friends and your dedication to your studies and your training, I think a nice bowl of ramen is the least I can do.”

He scratched at his face, a feeble attempt to hide the blush that darkened his cheeks. “Even if I am just an idiot?”

Makoto frowned. Very little mirth accompanied his self-deprecation. Her hand shifted from her bag to gently hit her knuckles against his chest. “You’re not an idiot, Ryuji.”

He chuckled at her action and nodded. “Okay, all right. Let’s get goin’ then. Man, you’re gonna love this place. You ever been?”

His mood apparently lifted, Makoto calmed. She had done something right, at least. She shook her head and led them from the school. “No. I tend to stay close to home.”

He rushed to hold the door open for her, grin brighter than the setting sun. “Oh man, lemme tell you about this ramen!”

The blonde’s enthusiasm did not wane as he extolled the virtues of his favorite ramen restaurant. He gesticulated wildly on their way to the station. She supplied minimal answers, unfamiliar with the perplexities of ramen, but his excitement dared to overflow. He found her a seat on the train and stood in front of her. She glanced around the train car at the other empty seats, including the space directly beside her, but he remained standing, talking about a show that explained how most ramen is made. Even after his exhaustive training, he provided her a seat. Everyone made him out to be such a punk, but other than his violent outburst at Kamoshida, he seemed to be quite the gentleman.

The train ride eventually passed in relative quiet between them, the other passengers too loud and chatty for the Shujin students to carry on a conversation. As the ride continued, further from their area of Tokyo, the smile faded from his lips and his eyes fell into that dark place. It hurt to see him drift away. Her eyes drifted to his abdomen. Just below the yellow fabric rested bruises that he refused to speak about. She had to make him believe he could trust her.

“Ryuji?” Color returned to his face. She smiled up to him. “You… You’ve read the entirety of that manga, correct?”

His brow furrowed. “Which… manga?” A twinge of recognition flashed over his eyes.

“The one from last time. The uh- Oh.” She reached into her bag, into the pouch she kept the manga in. She pulled out the volume she found herself on. “This one.”

His small eyebrows almost disappeared into his hair. “For real!? You’re actually reading it?” He shook his head. “That shit ain’t for girls though.”

Her eyes narrowed at the blonde. “It’s not for the faint-hearted, which could be either gender. I’ve had a hard time getting through it myself. I’ve been coupling it with studies or other… lighter manga just to get through it.” She pushed the volume back into her bag.

He rubbed the back of his neck and rocked with the rhythm of the train. “Even a badass chick like you, huh?” He nodded, more to himself.

Warmth kissed her cheeks. One hand flew to tuck a bit of hair behind her ear and fuss with the rest. Her eyebrows lifted. “Did you have a hard time getting through it as well?”

He shrugged. “It’s pretty intimidating stuff, ya know?” His way of confirming.

If it bothered him so much… “Then why read it?”

His eyes dropped to her, his gaze intense. “Why do you read it?”

Her jaw clenched. She read it to be closer to him. But admit that? To him? “The… character arcs and dynamics are fascinating.”

He chuckled. The intensity vanished. “I could see you identifyin’ with the main girl, yeah. She’s pretty badass. I bet you could take on plenty of Phantom Thief Requests on your own.”

Makoto stiffened. “Ryuji!”

He winced, aware of his slip-up. Her eyes darted up and down the car. No one stood out. She heaved a small sigh of relief.

She looked back to her companion. His cheeks had flushed, his brow furrowed, embarrassment tight in his athletic build. She reached a hand out for his. He had already stuffed them in his pockets, so she settled for resting her hand on his lower arm. He glanced to the contact and looked her in the eyes.

She smiled up to him. “Do you identify with the main character?” Get his mind back on track, away from the shame.

The flush faded. He looked pensive for a moment. “Eh, maybe. Guy’s been through Hell and back and he keeps fightin’. I kinda understand that. I don’t remember when that one kid shows up, but I feel like people would say I’m him more than the main character.”

Makoto smiled for a moment. At least he had revealed a bit of himself. But if he identified with the main character, a greater darkness hid within her excitable partner than she realized. “I think I know who you’re talking about. I thought you might say the fairy.”

Ryuji’s face scrunched tightly. “The fairy! For real?” His head dropped.

She giggled at his display. He rubbed the back of his neck again, a slight pink to his ears. Butterflies fluttered under her shirt. “In his defense, he plays a very important role in the story.”

The runner rolled his eyes. “Yeah, comic relief.”

The Honor student held up a finger. “He serves as a foil, at first, a moral compass for the protagonist to make sure he never loses himself. He is very important in that regard.” Her hand opened, a gesture of secession. “And he tries to become a teacher to the boy, as well. He’s very supportive of the others, even if he seems quite selfish and… idiotic.” His eyes darted to the side. “And certainly, he is meant as a comic relief, but isn’t that important in such a dark manga?”

His brow remained tight, unconvinced. “I guess, but he’s still useless. He can’t fight, can’t actually heal, can’t keep the specters and shit away. The only thing he offered was finding a way to heal the… catatonic girl, but even then he can’t remember how to get there.”

Makoto blinked. “He what?”

Rich brown eyes returned to her. ���What? Have you not gotten that far?”

She looked to her bag. “I suppose not.”

His cheek clicked. “Ah, shit. Sorry.”

She looked back up to him. “Sorry?”

He scratched at his hair. “I hate when people spoil stuff.”

Makoto smiled up to him. Considerate. “Oh, it’s fine. Sometimes spoilers fuel me to catch up.”

One skeptical brow raised. “I guess that make sense. But if I already know what’s gonna happen, I don’t see a reason to read, ya know?”

Makoto shrugged. “Certainly. I can understand that.”

He raised a hand to hold onto the hoops that hung from the ceiling. “Still can’t believe you read manga.” Despite his words, he appraised her with a warm smile. She had done something else right, it seemed.

“Ogikubo. Upcoming station is Ogikubo.” An announcement broke the teenagers’ conversation.

Ryuji brightened immediately. He held a hand out to her. “Hell yeah! C’mon, Makoto! Let’s head to the doors!”

Her heart skipped a beat. Rarely had he called her by name, without honorifics, for any reason. Neither teen had a healthy relationship with physical contact, either starved of it or abused by it. She understood the importance of his offer, the significance the contact held for either of them. Her automatic, polite response should’ve been no, but instead, she swallowed and shifted her bag before she took his hand.

He pulled her up easily; she underestimated either his strength or her weight. She staggered a bit, her other hand weighted by her bag unable to catch herself. She fell into his chest, his other arm moved to her shoulder to catch her. Heat rose on her cheeks, eyes shifted to his face through eyelashes. He merely grinned out an apology and tugged her toward the exit doors.

He braced them both as the train came to a stop, her hand still clutched in his. He practically vibrated with excitement. He remained considerate of the other commuters when the train stopped even as he dragged the Student Council President through the station. Makoto enjoyed the warmth, the way their hands fit together, the tug at her shoulder and elbow as he pulled her with him. His excitement spread to her, a spark that followed the conduit of their connection.

That spark pulsed as he waited impatiently on the other side of the station’s gates, his hand still wrapped around hers while she found her pass card to swipe through. Once through, he jogged a bit too fast for her to keep up. Excitement and familiarity guided him through the streets. She did her best not to fall behind, but the ex-track star had a longer gait and much more speed and stamina than he gave himself credit for.

“Ryuji!” She panted. Desperation laced her call.

He looked back to her and slowed to a halt. “Oh, geez. Sorry, senpai.” His free hand moved for her shoulder again, but stopped just short.

Makoto smiled and bowed her head. “It’s all right.” She huffed, eyes on his hand still around hers. The spark of warmth had not left her. “I must admit, I’m not used to this level of enthusiasm.”

His eyes scrunched up, but he showed no pearly whites. Almost a grin, but something held him back. It looked wrong. “I’ll try to tone it down, then.” His countenance relaxed, his eyes dipped to the concrete. She recognized those eyes.

Her heart jumped. “No!” And then he jumped. She swallowed. “Honestly? It’s refreshing, actually.” His brow furrowed. She looked away.

The buzz of electricity left her arm. She looked to her hand to find Ryuji thrust his hand into his pocket. He turned away, toward the direction he had been dragging her. “That’s one way of puttin’ it.” He took a few steps forward. “Come on, it’s not too much farther.”

She looked to her hand, still warm from his touch, but lonelier without the buzz of static. She enjoyed the contact, the buzz, the warmth. Part of her wanted to confront him about it, to seek his hand out again, anything, but the blurred image of his feet moved away. Her focus lifted to her companion. More self-deprecation. Did he truly hate himself that much? She watched his jaw tense in profile when she caught up to him, his steps increasingly forceful. Whatever thoughts brewed under his dyed fuzz held no positivity.

Normal, socially-adjusted people would find a way to distract him, to pull him from his sinister brew of dark thoughts. A friend might even know what to say to comfort him. But she could not claim either of those properties, reminded of which every time she deleted text threads on her phone. But no progress would be made without at least an effort. She had to better herself in more ways than academics. She still had to get to the bottom of his bruises and she still had to ingratiate herself to him. They worked together in the Metaverse, they had to have a trusting relationship if they were to succeed. What could she do or say to help him?

They had bonded over manga, perhaps she could-

Ryuji cut in front of her and slid a door open. He looked to her, small brows furrowed, the brew still bubbling in his head. “Here we are.”

Missed her chance. Makoto looked around just the same. Directly across the quiet street stood a small hotel, a Family Mart down the road, and an Indian restaurant nearby. Indian? Ryuji gestured to the door again. Makoto smiled and moved as instructed.

After the compulsory “Irasshaimase!”, the smell hit her, a heady broth smell that filled the tiny restaurant. Ryuji dropped his bag under the bar, grabbed a pair of small glasses from the counter, and headed to the water cooler that stood at the back.

“Ah! Ryuji-chan!” An older woman behind the bar called to him, her eyes wrinkled despite the sour look to her features. “I was wondering when you’d be by.”

Ryuji nodded toward the woman as he watched water trickle into one of the glasses. “Hey, Obaa-san. Sorry about that. Two, by the way.”

The woman laughed once. “Are you that hungry today, Ryuji-chan?”

One glass filled, he slid it on the counter beside him. “We’ll see, but the other one is for my friend.”

Obaa-san’s eyes flicked to the door. Makoto stood by Ryuji’s bag, the strap of her bag clutched in both hands. She felt almost like an outsider, afraid to interrupt the pair in their familiar exchange. A feeling all too familiar to her. Sae and her father had introduced her to plenty of strangers as a child, typically only when they had been unable to find a babysitter but still had work.

The older woman’s eyes leveled on her, narrowed with scrutiny. Makoto felt her shoulders lift with the corners of her lips. The chef’s eyes darted all over the teen’s face; she appraised her hair, checked her halter vest, and nodded at her skirt. Makoto expected a Sherlockian diatribe to start once the woman looked away.

Instead, Ryuji returned with two small glasses of water. “Pick a stool, senpai.”

Makoto furrowed her brow. He seemed angry. They both did. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea…”

“You invited me, senpai!” His shouting did not startle her, used to his excitement in the Metaverse by now.

But the chef looked his direction. “Ryuji.”

His jaw clenched. “Sorry. Just… siddown, will ya?”

Makoto chose the seat to his right and slid her bag off her shoulder. He slid one of the glasses to her and settled into the stool beside her.

The chef smiled at the pair, a smile that did little to the wrinkles around her eyes. “So, she’s your senpai?”

Makoto stiffened. “Oh! Where are my manners?” She smiled and stood from her stool to execute a courteous bow. “My name is Makoto Niijima. It’s nice to meet you.”

The woman smirked and bowed her head as Makoto smoothed her skirt down in the back and slipped back onto the stool. “Nice to meet you, Makoto Niijima.”

Ryuji sipped his water absently.

The chef returned to her cooking; a pan of dumplings sizzled to her right, two pots of water boiled strainers full of noodles as she built the broth in two differently patterned bowls. Makoto’s gaze shifted to the mismatched glasses before her and Ryuji. Something about it felt cozy.

Except for Ryuji, who glared at his glass between sips. It still felt like a mistake to her, a desperate ploy by a detective to engender themselves with a victim in hope of garnering more of the truth. That had been her original intention, but the longer his change in attitude persisted, the more she realized how wrong she had been. She wanted to make a friend out of the former track star, not just investigate his bruises or gain a better partnership for their work in the Metaverse. She wanted to bond with him over manga and hear his opinions, to find out how he knew the chef of this restaurant, how he had discovered it in the first place.

“Why did you invite me, Makoto?” Ryuji kept his eyes on his glass, but his head turned slightly toward her.

Makoto’s back straightened, head tilted down. Why, indeed. She lifted her hands to set them on the counter. “I told you, Ryuji.”

He shook his head and gripped the small glass. “Yeah, I guess you did.” He took a swig of the water. “Probably just trying to keep me controlled so I don’t blow our cover. Remind me I gotta be a Good Boy,” his hands and head wiggled in a mocking manner, “from now on.” He took another swig, emptying his glass. “It’s okay, Makoto, I won’t eff it up for everyone.”

Makoto flaccidly pawed at her sweating glass, eyes on his back as he made his way past the other patrons. Her brow lowered as he returned to the water jug in the back. She made a mistake. She lied to herself about her intentions, led him to this restaurant under false pretenses. He didn’t believe her and he shouldn’t. She should’ve just respected their difference in station and personality, maintained a professional Phantom Thief relationship, and scolded him for being at school after hours like she would’ve with any other student.

But he had already ordered for two, the chef toiled at her pots building the two bowls of ramen, and Makoto still had to eat something for dinner. Keep quiet, be respectful, and head home whenever she finished her meal.

She stiffened as Ryuji returned. He slid the glass onto the counter as he climbed back onto his stool, one leg bouncing once he settled in. Makoto glanced to him, the butterflies ill as they swirled in her gut.

“Ryuji-“ She started.

“Here ya go, Ryuji-chan, Makoto-san. Be careful, it’s still hot.” The chef handed one bowl over the counter to Ryuji.

“Oh hell yeah! Thanks Obaa-san!” He reached to his, grabbed the edges carefully, and guided it to the counter before him.

Before Makoto could reach for hers, Ryuji’s arms shot in front of her. The chef smirked slightly. “Oh, and don’t worry about paying, Ryuji. You missed your birthday bowl last week, so I’ll just make it this week, ne?”

Makoto’s eyes widened, her head jerked to the blonde. “Birthday!?”

Ryuji’s tiny brow lowered. “Yeah?” The ramen bowl set before her, he grabbed two pairs of chopsticks from a nearby dispenser. “Guess that makes it easier for you to pay, huh?”

Makoto didn’t notice the chopsticks he held out for her. He shrugged and set them on the counter next to her before breaking his. Birthday. She had seen it a few times in his student records months ago when Principal Kobayakawa gave her access. Days before his birthday he had helped with Kaneshiro’s takedown, had helped her with the Calling Cards. He never once mentioned it to her. Had he mentioned it to the others?

“Itadakimasu!” Ryuji grinned and stirred his ramen with his chopsticks. “Oh man, I’m so hype!” He grabbed a bundle of noodles. “Come on, senpai, dig in! You won’t be disappointed.”

Makoto pursed her lips. Even at a time like this. “Did you have a good birthday, Ryuji-san?”

He looked to her, noodles cascading from his mouth like tentacles. “My birf’ay?”

Makoto felt the mirth override whatever negative emotions she had at the sight. His cheeks darkened when she started to giggle. He returned to his slurping while she grabbed her chopsticks. She allowed a quiet “Itadakimasu” before stirring her bowl as well.

He swallowed and poked at the cuts of pork that floated on the broth. “My birthday was fine, senpai.”

She smiled to him. “Only fine?”

He nodded and collected the pork. “Mom and I had a good time just sorta relaxin’ for the night. It’s one of the few days she actually asks offa work so she can spend time with me. Made me a cake and everything.”

Makoto furrowed her brow and collected a bundle of noodles. “You didn’t have a party with friends?” It hurt to exclude herself from that category, but she knew better.

He shrugged and collected more noodles. “Nah, I never do. I tried before but…” He pulled the noodles out. “Never worked too well, so I stopped. Don’t like the quiet, but I put up with it for Mom, ya know?”

Makoto looked to the noodles. “Not really.” She had to remember he didn’t consider her a friend, she didn’t need to tell him these things, but she wanted to know him and have him know her. She slipped the noodles into her mouth before she could say much else.

She instantly reveled in the taste. She couldn’t wax poetic about ramen like Ryuji could, and had on the way, but she understood it. Noodles cooked perfectly in slightly seasoned water, beautifully simmered broth, the right amount of extra flavors. She slurped her noodles hungrily.

Ryuji grinned beside her. “I know, right? Best ramen in the world, right here.” He dug back into his own bowl.

The rest of the meal passed in slurps and hums of delight. Ryuji ordered a second bowl, which the chef chided that he would have to pay for. He gobbled it up just the same. By the time they each finished their meal, their respective moods had brightened, their animosity forgotten. Makoto once again thanked her Persona that Ryuji had let his disdain go, that he hadn’t pressed her about the comment.

Instead, both teens began to chat amicably about their manga tastes. Ryuji did his best to keep up with Makoto’s complex detective stories while she did her best to understand and engage with his sports and shounen. He laughed at her enjoyment of the kawaii category manga, but commended her for her variety. He almost seemed interested in a few, which brought a blush and a smile to the Council President. The only thing they could both speak deeply on seemed to be the one he carried with him. Though he still had a hard time understanding the themes and philosophy behind it – assisted only through internet breakdowns from the long years of the manga’s existence – he still had the best grasp on it than anything else.

“Ryuji-chan.” The chef retrieved their bowls from the raised section of the counter. “It’s getting pretty late.”

Both students looked to the clock.

“Ah, shit.” Ryuji shook his head. “Mom’s gonna be worried if I get home too late.”

Makoto smiled slightly. Sae probably wouldn’t get home anytime soon, still up working on her investigation into the Phantom Thieves. “How much, ma’am?”

The chef looked to Ryuji. “Two bowls is ¥1200.”

Ryuji nodded absently as he reached for his wallet. Makoto already had her coin purse out, however, and fished out the appropriate change. “Here you are, ma’am. It was very delicious. Thank you very much.”

The chef took her coins, though she shot an amused scoff to Ryuji. “At least walk her home, Ryuji-chan.”

Ryuji reached down to grab his bag and Makoto’s from under the counter. “Yeah, yeah. Mom would be pissed if I didn’t, even if she didn’t pay.”

The chef waved. “Have a good night, you two.”

Makoto waved in return. She turned to place her coin purse back in her bag, but found Ryuji carrying bags out the sliding door instead. “Ryuji!”

He paused outside the door. “Somethin’ wrong?”

Her brow furrowed as she grabbed for her bag. “I am more than capable of carrying my bag, Ryuji.” He held it out to her with a shrug. She took the opportunity to return her coin purse.

He chuckled a bit. “Heh, cute coin purse. Couple’a minutes ago I wouldn’t take you for the type, but…”

She took her bag and slipped it onto her shoulder. “You know better now.” She spoke the words with a smile, but something the chef said stuck in her mind. “Your mother wouldn’t…”

Ryuji tilted his head and moved forward down the street. “What’s up?”

Makoto’s furrow deepened. She had to know, to solve the case, to help him. “She wouldn’t cause those bruises-“

The blonde spun on her so fast, Makoto almost bumped into him. She looked up to eyes filled with fury, speckled with gold. “My mother would never hurt me, Niijima-san. And fuck you for even thinking it.”

He laced his voice with a subtle threat, an anger that seemed far more dangerous and genuine than anything she had ever seen before. Terror filled her for the split second until he turned around and stormed away. She didn’t know much about his particular set of perplexities, but she knew he rarely said the work “fuck” aloud. It must’ve meant a great deal to him for him to react so openly.

She hurried after him, barely able to keep up with his long, angry stride. His anger seemed disproportionate for a worried inquiry. Makoto only wanted to help, to find out who had caused the bruises so that she might be able to prevent further in the future. But he did his best, which wasn’t great, to obfuscate or deflect. Don’t worry, he said. It’s just shadows, he said. If he wanted to cover it up so badly, perhaps it had been someone close to him, someone who had done it before. Like someone at home. And when the chef and Ryuji commented on his mother’s anger at her paying, she made the connection. He came from an abusive household.

Makoto closed her eyes briefly as she struggled to keep up; his father had been the abusive one, which more than likely meant his mother his mother took the brunt of it in Ryuji’s younger years. Both mother and son were abuse survivors.

And Makoto accused her of being just like his father.

“Ryuji?” He barely acknowledged her when she moved beside him. “Ryuji-kun, I’m sorry.”

He waved a hand in angry dismissal. “I can handle people messin’ with me. I deserve it. But she don’t need any of it. She’s been nothin’ but a goddess, puttin’ up with my shitty Dad and then the shit I end up in. I don’t let anyone say shit about her.” He glanced to her, the gold in his eyes brighter than before. “Not from anyone.”

The gold confused and worried her, but she had a more immediate problem. She filed the information away for later. “Of course, Ryuji, and you shouldn’t. I’m just still worried about-“

He growled and stuffed his hands into his pockets so his shoulders lifted to shroud his angry face. “Yeah, whatever.”

Makoto had performed another misstep. She had a long way to go to be a better detective. Though, she considered Ryuji a friend, which more than accounted for her constant failures. She would have to recuse herself from the case if it had come to her in a professional capacity.

She did her best to exude contrition toward the former track star. It did little to return the amicable atmosphere, to reduce his anger. Only after he swiped his train pass and led her onto the platform did he seem calmer, his anger diminished, though still present. They entered the trains in silence, he found her a seat and stood before her, just as he had on the way there. A Good Boy, she realized, just like he said. A Good Boy that believed he deserved the abuse.

The bruises lay there, under his shirt, a reminder of his self-hatred and imagined responsibility. However he had gotten them, he wanted them, she decided. He might never tell her the truth, though she had to at least consider the possibility that he already had. She couldn’t watch him every second of every fight. The chance that he had gotten hurt by Shadows had definite merit.

She pulled her phone out of her bag. Several more threads popped up on her messaging app, thankfully not enough to remove the one she sent Ryuji last week. She took a slow breath and checked the others.

“It was the track team.” His voice drifted over her toward the windows.

Makoto looked up to him. Earthy brown eyes shifted around to her right – the truth, then. “The track team?”

He looked to the right, hands thrust into his pockets, the bad posture returned. “Yeah.” He forced the word out in frustration.

Her hands rested on her bag. No more missteps. “What did they-“

One hand lifted from his pocket to touch his abdomen. “I know you’re just gonna keep askin’, so I’m tellin’ ya; the track team caused the bruises. Mom had nothin’ to do with it.”

Makoto’s eyes shifted from his profile to his abdomen. She wanted to appreciate his honesty. Though, the way he phrased it felt as though he preferred not to, but her tenacity meant he had to. Be careful. “Why would they-“

His hand went back into his pocket. “Because I told ‘em they could, okay? Just leave it.”

Makoto shifted her gaze back to his profile. “You told them they could?”

His eyes rolled. “Effin’ leave it, senpai.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Ryuji, why did you tell them-“

He growled. His hands shot out of his pockets, thrown into the air. “Because I deserve it, don’t I!?”

Makoto’s eyes shot around the train car. Only a few people cared enough to look up from their phones, find the source of the shout, and return to their phones.

Makoto glanced down to her own phone, her bag. He believed it, that he deserved all the bad things that happened to him. Nothing she said or did could dissuade him. She gripped her phone tightly. “Thank you for telling me, Ryuji.” She wanted very strongly to dissuade him.

He shook his head and looked to the windows again. His leg started bounce, his small brow lowered over frustrated eyes.

Defense of his mother had been the only catalyst for his truth. Makoto had coerced his confession through duress. Threaten something the suspect cares about and they’ll talk. She looked back to her phone again.

Every thread she opened she didn’t read, only forced them to be marked as read. She scrolled back down to the message thread with Ryuji. About today. She should just delete it.

“Ain’t this your stop, senpai?” Ryuji’s voice sounded a touch softer, but still unhappy, one wrong word away from lashing out again.

Makoto looked around. “Ah, yes.” She stood on her own. “Thank you.” And headed for the doors.

She grabbed onto the pole by the door and scrolled through her phone aimlessly. Whenever she got home, she had more studying to catch up on for her exams the next week. Perhaps she should grab something from a convenience store on the way home.

A hand wrapped around the pole above hers. A large, masculine hand with a bracelet on the wrist. Makoto followed the arm to the former track star. His expression remained dark, angry, but determined. He promised the chef he would walk her home. On thinking over their exchange, he had intended to walk her home regardless of being told.

A blush crept onto her cheeks as he moved slightly closer. She could smell the ramen shop on him, along with the soaps from school. “What are you doing?”

His small brow furrowed for a moment. The anger seemed to have left his eyes, replaced by confusion. “Walkin’ you home?”

Despite his reputation, Ryuji Sakamoto had a good heart. Despite everything wrong she had done, he still intended to care for her. The butterflies flitted again, frivolous thoughts swirled through her mind, and she noticed their difference in height. His defined jaw could easily rest on top of her head. 

She hadn’t noticed his height before. “It’s… really unnecessary, Ryuji. You said your mother would worry about you getting home late, right? I can walk myself from here.”

He sighed slightly. “Mom would be more upset if I didn’t walk you to your door, at least. Dad-“ His jaw clamped shut right as the word left his mouth. Makoto watched his Adam’s Apple bob in his throat.

Every mention of his father pinched a nerve, she noticed. Last week when they spread the Calling Card, he had gotten upset then as well. Even the accusation that his mother might be like his father. She lifted a hand. “It’s truly all right, Sakamoto-kun. I know Aikido. I can handle myself if there’s any trouble.”

He chuckled at that. “You’re one badass chick, you know that?” He shrugged. “S’fine, senpai.”

Her hackles raised. Did he honestly think to mock her, after everything they had been through? Did he truly think her so useless and incapable? “Sakamoto-kun, I appreciate whatever misguided chivalry dictates your need to take care of me and not disappoint your mother, but I don’t need your help getting home.”

Hurt crossed his features for a moment, replaced quickly a new set of anger and frustration. “Misgui- The eff is chivalry?” He sighed heavily. “So that’s how it’s gonna be? I’m just tryin’ to be nice but you get to control everything about me in and out of the Metaverse?” She glanced around, but he clicked his cheeks. “Man, eff this. Whatever. Get home on your own.”

Makoto watched Ryuji slither back through the crowd. She immediately felt colder and more vulnerable without him close by. The train announcements started up. Any regret she felt died in the din of the train car.

Messed it up again. She really had the magic touch.

As the train stopped, she watched a few commuters rise from their benches to head for the doors. Ryuji’s blonde hair dropped out of view for a moment as he flopped into a seat, shoulders against the wall, arms crossed tightly over his chest. Makoto frowned as the crowd moved her out onto the platform.

She inhaled slowly as the train trundled down the tracks without her. She clutched her phone tightly, the creak of skin against plastic echoed in her ears. She had to say something. Maybe tomorrow? Let him stew for tonight. A good night’s rest might do him some good. He might be more willing to accept her apology. She returned her phone to her bag and headed for the exit.

The others knew him best, having spent time with him long before she ever did. They might have some insight. After she passed through the station’s gates, she retrieved her phone and started up a new thread to everyone but Ryuji.

Birthday boy?

She gleaned through the conversation as she walked home that no one else knew about his birthday. Ann forgot and the other two simply didn’t know. Morgana forced Akira to mention that he didn’t care when the monkey boy’s birthday was. Makoto pursed her lips, unsure if the cat had a simple amicable rivalry or something against the blonde.

She scrolled back down to the thread she started last week. She scrolled to the bottom, up a bit, down again until it would scroll no further.

Gone. The thread disappeared.

Kaneshiro and his thugs must’ve sent her more threads than she realized. She hadn’t deleted enough, which meant when she created the new one, the oldest thread got deleted.

“Shit.” She muttered the expletive quietly to her phone before throwing it soundly against the couch.

When she managed to pull herself out of the bath, she noticed a light blinking on her phone. Probably just Sae letting her know she’d be at work all night.

About today

Makoto: I wanted to apologize for upsetting you, Ryuji-kun. Makoto: We all know what it’s like to live with the burden of expectation. Makoto: It’s where our Personas come from, a rebellion against that expectation, right? Makoto: I didn’t mean to imply that you’re stupid or undeserving or a burden on the group. Makoto: You are one of the strongest members, in fact, with a passion and enthusiasm Makoto: I’m not sure I could ever find within myself or the others. Makoto: There’s a lot of good in you, as well. Makoto: So don’t let anything I said make you feel poorly. Makoto: You are better than you know.

Makoto furrowed her brow in confusion at the sequence of texts that made up her apology to Ryuji last week. It had been lost in the shuffle moments ago. And yet.

She remembered how she agonized over every line, unsure of when to stop herself or if the words she chose had enough meaning and impact. Every step closer to home felt like a mistake, every step that took her further away from him. But she wanted to respect his frustration, his desire to be alone.

She also remembered how she agonized every hour he hadn’t replied until she fell asleep. She remembered how she woke up the next morning, arm tangled in the charging cable because she fell asleep holding her phone. How she had done her best to keep that one thread despite all the texts from Kaneshiro, teachers, Student Council members, and the Thieves group. All waiting for at least one reply from her pirate.

Ryuji: yo, senpai Ryuji: thanks.

Makoto beamed at the text as heat rose in her cheeks.

[usefulstuffmouzon]

2020 Video Workflow

Video

I now shoot with my iPhone 11 Pro, which simplifies things greatly. When shooting a presentation where I’m stationery, I use a mini pod I carry in my backpack. If possible, I sit right behind the projector and set up the mini pod on the projector, assuring me that there will be a clear view of the screen & the presenter. It also is a good bet that I’ll be able to find an outlet so I can keep the phone charged.

Audio

With a camera as good as this iPhone, the weak link is usually audio, although my iPhone X did better audio than my $150 Rode shotgun mic on my Nikon D610, which some consider a professional setup. And the iPhone 11 Pro is better, but the big problem for me is shooting outdoors and getting all the terrible wind noise on a breezy day. So I’ve just ordered a Shure MV88 iPhone mic, which some regard as the best, and a Movo “dead cat” windscreen. I’ll post later how this works out.

Gimbal

I have an Osmo Mobile 2 gimbal, which is highly rated for good reason. It’s just persnickety because you have to do everything in just the right sequence. I’m doing this workflow in large part to document that sequence so I can look it up later:

Be sure to keep it charged, as it takes easily 2 hours to fully charge.

Attach the phone with the gimbal turned off because you’ll need to balance it and it’ll fight you if it’s on, and you won’t get a true balance. Follow the instructions, which basically tell you to adjust the phone with it hanging with the face looking straight down at the floor so it’s flat top-to-bottom and side-to-side.

Unlock your phone.

Power the gimbal on by holding the power button for several seconds until it snaps to attention.

Here’s a tricky part: we actually have two Osmos, one for me and one for Wanda, as she has begun filming with me at CNU each year. I thought I could pair either one with my phone, so I began trying a few days ago to get one of them to work, but the phone would never recognize it. Finally, I decided to try the other one and got it to work. Apparently the gimbal has retained a memory of my phone or vice versa, even though this is the first time I’ve used the gimbal with this phone. In any case, go into Bluetooth on the phone and make sure the gimbal’s connected. Then go to the DJI GO app which is the software of the Osmo and so long Bluetooth is seeing your gimbal, you should be able to click on Connect Your Device after the opening screen goes away.

Once it’s connected, it opens the DJI camera window on your phone. This is important: to get full functionality, shoot from here, not from the default Camera app. The red button on the gimbal is the shutter button; on the left of the screen you’ll see a toggle between video & single shots. The zoom button is on the left, so a right-handed person can easily do everything with just their right hand.

Once you’re done shooting, you need to get the video & single shots off DJI and into Photos. To do this, first power off the gimbal and take your phone out. Then go back to the DJI app and go to Editor, at the bottom menu bar. Click on each video, then the download icon in the lower left corner. Click Save video to your device, which puts the video in Photos. Now you’re ready to move on to post-production.

Post-Production

Here’s how I do post-production on the video itself. I do everything on a Mac, so all the terms used here are Mac terms, and I’ve capitalized them for clarity.

I have an Album in Photos called Movies which filters out everything except movies, so it makes it really easy to focus. This is very important because if I had to sort through the many thousands of photos to find the movies, I would surely miss some of them.

Select the new clips to bring into iMovie and drag them to the Desktop. This will make a copy on the Desktop but leave the original in Photos. if you try to drag them directly into iMovie it’ll just get the opening frame as a still photo. I don’t know why; that’s just the way it works. IMPORTANT: for some reason, if you try to drag 30 or more clips, it can take close to a half-hour to complete, so only drag 3-5 at once and you’ll get done much faster. For some reason, dragging a lot at once chokes it down.

Open iMovie then Open Library to select the Library you want to work in. Because movies take up so much space, I do all my movie work on an external 4TB LaCie Rugged drive. I have two libraries on this drive: one for movies I’m working on, and the other for the completed movies.

In iMovie there are two main windows: Media & Projects. Toggle between them at the very top. To bring in new clips, click the Media button.

The far left column of the iMovie window is the Libraries window. Click on the current year. Then File>New Event or Option-N. Name this event for the clips you’re about to bring in.

Drag the movies on the Desktop into the new Event.

Click Projects, then click the template you want to use and duplicate it and rename it for the new movie. I keep a template for every type of movie I create, so I don’t have to do it from scratch every time.

Open the new Project by double-clicking, which takes you to the project window where you’ll build the new movie. Drag the clips you want into the Project, being sure to “snug them up” to the template’s opening clip so the cross dissolve between the template’s opening & closing clip goes between the clips you’re dragging in and the closing clip.

I have a 4-second opening title and a 5.5-second closing title, which begins in the last 1.5 seconds of the last imported clip then fades to a Gradient screen in the last 4 seconds. The opening title is in the template over the template’s opening clip, but that’s just a placeholder because the title is meant to start at the beginning of the first clip, so drag the title to the beginning of the first imported clip and delete the template’s opening clip.

If there’s more than one imported clip, insert transitions between them. I use Cross Dissolve because it’s simple & doesn’t call attention to itself because my videos are all about content.

Trim clips for a smooth transition. To do this, you’ll need to find the little slider at the center right of the window just left of Settings and slide it pretty much all the way out to the right to stretch the clips so you can trim to exactly the right place. This used be a bit tedious when filming a presentation with my Nikon D610 because it would only let you get 20 minutes of video at a time, so I’d have to edit back to the last complete sentence the speaker said on the early side of the transition, then to the beginning of the first complete sentence on the late side. Now, however, because the iPhone has no such limitation (except for total storage space) I don’t have to worry about that anymore on a single event. So the only transitions I have are when I film several different clips and stitch them together. In that case, if I’m explaining something, I just be sure to leave a second or two of silence at the beginning and the end, which makes it really easy to trim properly. To do precise 

Click on each clip, then make modifications. I used to use the Cartoon clip filter because it makes the images soft, vibrant, and romantic, but a lot of people complained so I’ve decided to use no clip filters at all. Now, I only make two modifications: under the Volume icon I click Auto, and under the Equalizer icon I click Reduce Background Noise and leave it set to the default (50%) and select Voice Enhance under Equalizer.

The movie should now be ready to share. But sharing is a space-hogging process, so before you do, make sure you’ve deleted all the videos you copied to the Desktop, and empty the trash can. If the share fails, you might even restart your Mac and then only open iMovie. I use Clean My Mac, and run that before sharing as well.

There’s an option in File>Share to share directly to YouTube, but don’t do that. It always fails. It seems that really short clips (like my 4-second closing clip) might be the problem. So I share to a file and then upload the file to YouTube (more on that later) which has the added benefit of letting me share that file directly to any other site that might not play well with YouTube, either now or in the future.

In File>Share I write a Description that includes not only the story I’m telling, but also where the video was shot in case someone is searching for videos on a place or building. I give it one Tag such as “urbanism” because tagging is easier in YouTube. Format is Video and Audio, Resolution is 1080p (which is HD), Quality is High, and Compress is Faster.

Click Next, which will take you to a window where you tell iMovie where to put the movie. On my external drive, I have two folders: movies to upload, and uploaded movies. In the movies to upload folder, create a new folder with the name of the movie and click Save.

My title fades in and out at the beginning which is a nice effect, but that means the first frame has no title. Thankfully, YouTube allows you to assign a “thumbnail.” So once the movie has been created, open it (it’ll come up in QuickTime Player) and run off a second or so until the title has fully faded in. Edit>Copy, go to Photoshop, create a new file the size of the clipboard, and paste. Merge Down (Command-E) then Save for Web (Command-Shift-Option-S) in the same folder as the movie using the name of the movie plus title, so the Civic Gift to the Street movie would have a title shot named Civic-Gift-to-the-Street-title.jpg.

YouTube

You’re now ready to post to YouTube, but first a bit of background. I don’t know why Google makes things so difficult to find, so I’m adding this to remind myself how to get back to it whenever I have long gaps between posting videos. Three years ago, I consolidated all my Google stuff under one email address when they finally created “Brand Accounts.” Previously, I needed one email address for my Original Green content, another for Mouzon Design content, etc. Now, I’m putting up new videos on the Original Green channel but spent hours day before yesterday unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to actually manage the channel rather than just viewing it. I just discovered what I was missing: Under my avatar (my head shot) for my Google account, if I pull down to Switch Accounts, it’ll let me choose any of my other brand accounts. I had seen it but assumed it meant go to an entirely different accounts, like when I had multiple accounts on different email addresses. Once I’m signed in as the Original Green Brand on the Original Green Channel, I do the following:

Go to studio.youtube.com.

Click Upload Video and select your movie file. This will open the window where you can add details about the file. For some reason, YouTube doesn’t pick up the description I wrote in the Share step, so I have to rewrite it.

Just below that is a frame you can click to upload your thumbnail, or title image as it’s called above.

Next is the Playlists window, where you can add it to an existing Playlist or create a new one.

Under Audience, click No, it’s not made for kids. Then under Advanced, do the following:

No, don’t restrict my video to viewers over 18 only.

I don’t do paid promotion.

Tags can help people find videos, so add the obvious ones, including the title of the video plus others like “urbanism,” “New Urbanism,” etc.

Enter the recording date & location.

The category of all my videos is Howto & Style.

I don’t currently add end screens or cards because I don’t know anything about them.

On the next screen I Publish as Public.

Repost & Promote

That’s it! Except to post the video to Twitter, Facebook, and your other New Media nodes.

[rfhusnik]

The King Of The Underground

Written By:  F. John Surells

              Just now I’m thinking I feel a lot like the man who is my main focus in this piece most likely felt when he left the first line of a poem unwritten. Yes, he left the initial line blank, and then wrote as that poem’s second line “has been left unwritten.”

           I say we have, as mortals, two great human influencers who greatly assist us in our making of temporal decisions. Their beliefs stimulate us mentally. Their actions challenge us physically. And we use their totalities of being to help construct our own. But who are those people? The first is a love of one’s life, and the second is one’s greatest philosophical mentor.

           And personally, I and a number of others have previously stated in these writings that the love of my life is Renni Maes-Surells, but my greatest mentor is a man whose name can’t be shared here. He exists in a realm I call “the underground,” though I’ve referenced him in other writings as “the man from the (two words deleted).” And the following are some points of view and reminiscences concerning him.

           “This is the end of our grace period in regard to you,” said the conformers. “All your life all you’ve really done has been throw stones against the bastions of structure. And don’t try to revel in clarity, or excuse wrong deeds you may have done simply because you knew long ago that there hadn’t been any collusion or obstruction.”

           “Sometimes maybe it’s better to leave unsaid certain sayings which others might raise eyebrows to; but then, if they don’t know you have the capability to say such sayings by now, then I guess they never will know of that capability, and, they’ll never really know you! And besides that, who is ever going to truthfully tell us if one should use a slash mark rather than a semi-colon, or what Fitzgerald and Poe thought about starting sentences with gerunds, and why, in all candor, the best looking woman at the performance wasn’t really a woman, but rather a man who dressed like, and appeared to be a woman?

           But, with that last question having been posed, the man from the underground said “Alright, enough is enough. Let the record show that while I believed members of one sex could be attracted to members of that same sex, I was never one of those. And, likewise, if it’s true that certain mortals identify as being both sexes simultaneously, then I believe only they can understand and confront the realities of such a situation.”

           But then suddenly the defenders of conformity interjected themselves into the conversation yet again. “We’ve got a lot to say now” they said. “And please, from this point on, don’t even bother to distinguish our concerns with the use of quotation marks.”

           “You’ve got it”! said the underground man. And he set off his quote with quotation marks.

           Opposites often attract, but attractions often fade. They fade away sometimes, and then those who were attracted are left to hold on to reminiscences, but only if they wish to; or only if they somehow simply can’t free themselves from them.

           Sometimes (and that some time may be any day time) I feel like a man who just reached the garden gate after walking down a straight and narrow concrete walkway from his home inside the sanctuary of literature. And as I open that gate, and prepare to leave an abode of personal personalities, I realize that today, as on all previous days, and I suppose as on all days to come, I have an idea of, but can’t actually say for certain what lies ahead of me in the world outside the barrier which opens and closes my world to that of others.

           And, yes, I’ll open the gate, and I’ll walk out into an unknown and an unsuspecting world, but before I do, I’ll say a prayer here on the inside. “God of all that’s known and not known, keep me and those I love safe this day. And guard the world you created. Keep it safe from those who are evil, and from those who are careless, and also from those who, apparently for one reason or another, can’t realize what the ramifications of their beliefs and actions may be.”

           And with that prayer said, it occurs to me that some may think me arrogant or narcissistic, or both. And some may feel I’m a number of other objectionable things as well. But yet, whenever those fears of possible behind my back condemnations visit me, I’m also reminded of two simplistic clichés:  One, I don’t want to fade away without having said what I knew needed to be said; and two, I don’t want to be simply gone – even if it may be that I’d be gone but not forgotten.

           And I’ve already pledged my love, respect, and allegiance to the Master of the Universe, but now I want to speak of a certain man I’ve spoken of before in these postings. He’s been my greatest mortal influence – I think! That is, he doesn’t live in my city. He only visits it from time to time.          I got an email from Ralph recently. He wrote that the so-called “man from the green city” will soon be visiting our city once again. And, Ralph asked if I’d attempt to write what he termed a “free flow prose piece” in honor of that man and his city. And Ralph said he’d give me a “free hand” to construct that piece (or pieces if I needed to extend to two postings), but he wished me to entitle that composition “The King Of The Underground,” which apparently is the new appellation he’s given to the man whom we previously addressed as the man from the green city.

           Now, as you may surmise, this is a daunting task in that I don’t want to disappoint Ralph or the man whom I’ll be referencing. But yet, from the few times I’ve met the Underground’s newly crowned monarch, I think I can easily hold forth here for at least two postings, and, could probably extend beyond that. Trust me, the King is such a mortal as you’ll most likely never meet. He has his own mind, his own beliefs, and, like our city’s leader Ralph Hawk, seems also to have what I’ll call “an iron will.” Still, his interests and concerns seem to be varied and multi-faceted. Thus, expect the words that will follow here to exemplify what I perceive as being his “reality of being”. And, please

remember that the words I’ll write here will most likely only be visions held briefly within my comprehension. And, I’m thinking that most of those which won’t directly reference the King, but which will instead speak to other random matters, may emanate from news broadcasts which we’ve lately learned tend to report the incorrect and the fake, rather than the truthful and verifiable.

           Thus, narcissism I grant you a free reign here! Anoint your new king!  

           Look! There’s a picture of a boy who, as a man I came to know as a friend, though I only saw him when he infrequently visited our city. And, he visits here yet sometimes still, albeit always with a mind concerned about the future, while often contemplating the past.

           And there’s a year written on that picture I referenced a paragraph ago. It’s 1955. And on the picture the lad seems to be proud of his new toy log assemblage. But then I guess a year passed, and the Union of Soviets invaded Hungary, and the boy learned, mostly through personal study, about Nikita Khruschev, Joseph Stalin, and Communism.

           And, with a knowledge of the far left wing of the political spectrum in hand, an introduction to the far right wing came with the trial of Adolf Eichman in the early 1960’s. And some background study taught the lad about The Fuhrer and the dream of a fascist world. But then came November 1963 and the death of a Democratic president. And today how many in his party would dare ask what people could do for their country rather than what their country could do for them?

           And after the assassination, a cultural void was filled by English musicians. And they soothed the conscience of America until the nation’s most divisive war began to rage in the middle of the 1960’s. And in 1969 it was at its ugliest.

           But it was fashionable to live in cliques at that time. And cliques and communes were fine for a while, until the leader of one of them sent some of his followers out to commit some brutal murders – in 1969.

           But, now it’s happened! We’ve reached a juncture at which we’re no longer certain that certain occurrences really occurred, or whether they did occur, but in different ways and means from those believed and gossiped about by commoners we may have known.

           But the absolute truth and truths of the past are known only to the masters of the universe. And of them today we ask forgiveness for all wrongs we’ve committed. And we assure them and all their inferiors that our remorse for errors committed is sincere. And then we – carry on. And then we – try to live better than we have.

           But our respect is given only to those who’ve earned it. We won’t allow ourselves to be degraded by old men and elderly women who shake their fingers at us and blame us for an environment that’s changing. Of course the environment is changing! But so are many other things! Are we living in a vacuum where all remains the same except for such alterations which chastise the middle and lower classes?

           And you young men and women who occupy seats in the various levels of our nation’s government; many of you are sadly incompetent to perform the duties you’ve undertaken. Many of you espouse radical changes which would bankrupt this nation at the least, or render it vulnerable to domination by foreign powers, or the large number of people you’ve helped enter it illegally, or both.

           Working class Americans don’t want to be demeaned by phony investigations or hate-filled  environmental and impeachment threats. Instead, they want Congress to address their concerns about their  future safety and well-being, as well as their desire that America remain an English and not a Spanish speaking nation in the years to come, and that it be an American and not a Hispanic governed entity.

[russellthornton]

15 Cell Phone Rules Every Couple Has to Follow to Build Real Trust

Cell phones are great but can also create turmoil for relationships. These are the cell phone rules every couple has to follow for a healthy relationship.

Since cell phones have become a basic human need, they have caused countless suspicions, fights, and even breakups for many couples. Although it would be wonderful to not need any cell phone rules every couple has to follow, they can be necessary and truly helpful.

Snooping, glancing over your boo’s shoulder, and knowing each other’s passcodes or not can be disastrous for a relationship. A healthy relationship means having boundaries but also trusting each other.

Do you want privacy or transparency with cell phones?

Everyone wants to hold onto a bit of mystery in their relationship. But, is that mystery and privacy worth a lack of honesty? Being transparent with your partner is a vital part of a healthy and honest relationship.

With 100% honesty, cell phone rules wouldn’t be necessary, but with all the ways a person can cheat and keep secrets with their cell phones, setting some rules can lead you in the right direction.

You may not want your partner to see that your most recent Google search was for ‘where to get the best deal on a Snuggie,’ but that is better than them thinking you’re cheating. If you have nothing to hide, enacting cell phone rules shouldn’t cause any problem at all. [Read: Secrets you’re allowed to keep in a relationship]

But, if you have something to hide, like the fact that you are texting other people romantically or still have risqué photos of an ex, you may want to check your behavior. Keeping secrets, no matter how insignificant you might think they are, can doom a couple from the start. 

So, having a talk with your significant other about the right cell phone rules to follow can help you avoid future fights and possible questions down the road.

Why do you need cell phone rules?

It would be so wonderful if your boo’s phone was ringing. You could just pick it up without wanting to glance at the Caller ID. It would be great if your partner showed you a photo on their phone, and you didn’t have the urge to swipe further. It would be superb if you didn’t wonder who they were texting.

It is human nature to be a little bit suspicious. But when a little snooping becomes obsession and paranoia, cell phone rules come in handy.

The same goes for anyone super protective of their privacy. If you are defensive when your partner asks you about who is calling or texting you, it is probably because you have something to hide. If you grab your phone out of their hand immediately, you may need more than cell phone rules.

Trust issues can be deeply rooted. But, if you have ever discovered an ex was cheating by something on their phone, having cell phone rules can help you moving forward. [Read: The obvious indicators you’re dating a controlling person]

Cell phone rules every couple has to follow

Not all of these rules will work for you and your partner. And these are not rules to follow forever. But if you are truly trying to be open and honest and create a safe space in your relationship, these can help to build the foundation all healthy couples have: trust.

If you or your partner have a problem with any of these, you may want to ask yourself why. What is it that you are so afraid of? If handing your phone to your partner without double checking photos or messages worries you, these cell phone rules may not help at all because there’s a deeper issue you have to overcome.

Keep in mind these cell phone rules are only stepping stones. Once you follow these rules for a while and have earned each other’s trust, you should be able to stop enforcing these cell phone rules. Let trust guide the relationship. But to start, here are my top cell phone rules every couple has to follow.

#1 Talk about your past. People who have never had trust issues may not see the need for cell phone rules. Your partner may not understand why you need access to their phone. But talking about your past can help open their eyes to your perspective.

Let your partner know it isn’t them you don’t trust. You have lingering issues from the past, and cell phone rules will help you move forward. If they truly care about you, they will agree and understand your side. [Read: How to talk about past relationships with your partner]

#2 Leave your phone out. If you are with your partner and head to the bathroom with your cell phone, it can seem sketchy. Instead, learn to leave your phones out around each other.

If you both have nothing to hide, you should be completely comfortable with anything that might pop up in notifications. And having that openness will give you both peace of mind.

#3 Check in. When you’re not together, check in with each other. It can be a simple, “I’m thinking about you,” message midday. Just sending something over keeps you connected when you’re apart. [Read: Cute ways to say hi via text message]

#4 Tell your partner the truth. Some people think the truth is overrated. You may wonder what the benefits of telling your partner that your ex texted you are. But telling them yourself now is much better than them finding out you kept it from them later.

You may have done nothing wrong, but keeping a secret no matter how innocent can place a seed of doubt in their mind. So even if you think it isn’t a big deal, look at the situation from their perspective.

#5 Think before you delete. Deleting photos of your ex when you start dating someone new is perfectly fine, even good. But if you are deleting your search history, messages from a “close friend,” or anything else, think about why this needs deleting.

You are deleting proof of something you feel guilty about. But why did you do something you would have to delete in the first place? [Read: 18 emotional affair signs you probably didn’t notice]

#6 Can you answer each other’s phones? This is something you and your partner have to discuss yourselves. Personally, I think full access removes any questions, but if you use your phone for business, this may not be an option.

Discuss how allowing each other this access would benefit your relationship.

#7 Should you share passcodes? The same goes for sharing passcodes. This is something you should agree upon. But, it can be a sign of complete trust. It shows that you are not at all worried that your partner will find something on your phone and neither are they. [Read: 25 must-follow relationship rules for happy love]

#8 Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want them doing. If you wouldn’t want your partner liking their ex’s Instagram photo, don’t do it yourself. If you wouldn’t want them texting an ex, don’t do it. If something your partner did would upset you, don’t do it yourself.

#9 Warn each other before going silent. Something that can worry you or your partner is radio silence, even for just a day. So, if you are heading to a remote area to fish and won’t have service, just let your partner know beforehand so they won’t worry.

#10 Shut down unwanted texts. If someone DMs you with questionable motives, shut them down ASAP. Don’t even flirt with the idea. Let them know you are in a committed relationship and end it there. Even just a few messages can be a gateway to cheating. [Read: Could you be micro-cheating and not know it?]

#11 Delete risqué photos of anyone that isn’t your partner. Okay, if you have a sexy picture of Kim Kardashian or Idris Elba as your background, that should be fine. But if you still have racy photos of your ex or even a friend, delete them. Your relationship will be much better off without windows into the past or future temptations.

#12 Give each other space. Openness and honesty does not mean suffocating and obsessing. Don’t pry. You don’t have to know what the other is doing every minute of the day. You don’t have to read through each other’s texts and analyze everything.

#13 Don’t argue via text. This is a big one. Having a fight via text only makes things worse. The likelihood for miscommunications, misunderstanding, and even typos is so high. These things can escalate a fight so quickly. There is no clarity in texting.

So, if you are on the verge of a fight, see each other in person, FaceTime, or at the very least talk on the phone. Hearing each other’s voices and seeing each other’s faces takes away a lot of misinterpretations. [Read: How to avoid the awkward tension after a fight]

#14 Put your phones down. When you are together, put your phones away. Not all the time, but be sure to have some phone-free time when you are together. Really focus on each other and be in the moment.

However always having your phone away when you’re together can lead to suspicion. So try to create a balance. [Read: The happy couple’s guide to social media etiquette]

#15 Hand them over. This may not be necessary for all couples. In fact, if the trust is there, you may not even consider it. But if you or your partner, or both of you are struggling, swap phones. Let your partner snoop right in front of you.

It can seem counterintuitive to prove your loyalty and vice versa, but it can help to give each other peace of mind, especially if secrets have been kept in the past.

[Read: The things happy couples don’t do in a perfect relationship]

There should be no suspicion, worry, prying, or lying when you use these cell phone rules every couple has to follow.

The post 15 Cell Phone Rules Every Couple Has to Follow to Build Real Trust is the original content of LovePanky - Your Guide to Better Love and Relationships.