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captainrexforever · 4 years

Text

Trials and Tribulations 1/2

Rating: T

Word Count: ~4k

Summary: The reader discovers that she has formed a force bond with her Mandalorian companion. This has some unforeseen complications during the events at the Imperial refinery on Morak.

Warnings: cannon typical violence, reader is seriously injured, mentions of blood, Dad! Fett, fluff, angst

Notes: I was planning for this to be wayyy more angsty, but I just couldn’t bear to put poor Din through any more hurt. I hope you enjoy! Don’t forget to comment if you have a suggestion or an idea.

Pt. 2

It seems like only a moment ago Din disappeared down the mountain to assist Fennec. You grab a hold of the child, thanking the stars that he has finally emerged from his trance-like state, and cradle him gently as you check over his vitals to ensure he is not injured.

Once the sound of blaster fire begins to fade, you prepare to make the trek down the mountainside as well. It looks as if the remaining stormtroopers are in full retreat, their transports blasting off from the surface in a hurry. A final explosion-wait, was that a rocket? did Din have a rocket launcher and not tell you?-wipes the ships out of the sky, and you let out a sigh of relief. Although it would be best to leave the planet as quickly as possible, you can’t resist enjoying the view for a moment. It’s been a long time since you or Mando have been able to take a break. There is always a new danger, a new threat, that compromises the safety of your small group.

A red laser bolt screams past your ear, slicing through your peripheral vision like an omen of death. You can only stand there, helpless, as you witness the bolt strike the motionless Razor Crest. The ship that has served as your home for months is suddenly reduced to a smoking crater of ash. There is a good chance that you’re in shock, and by the time you notice the dark troopers descending on your position it’s too late. Before you can draw your blaster, a droid sweeps your feet out from beneath you and you fall to the unforgiving ground, cursing as stones pierce into the skin of your back.

Mando is still running up the mountain side when he notices your body crumple to the ground, and he’s overtaken by blind rage, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he wills himself to move faster. Blaster shots ring out in the silence and his whole body seizes up in pain when he hears your screams.

You grit your teeth as you fight the pain flooding your body. There’s already blood flowing from the blaster shot in your chest and the one in your left leg, but you refuse to give in to the pain. Your fingers close around the child’s robe, struggling to secure their hold as a droid tears him from your arms. Biting back another cry of pain, you will yourself to stand, only to come face to face with the barrel of a wrist-mounted blaster.

It would have been your last breath if Mando hadn’t arrived at that exact moment. The droid standing over you wirrs in distress as a searing laser bolt catches it in the throat. With every last ounce of strength you crane your neck towards the direction of the blast, vision swimming as you register the presence of a familiar beskar-clad figure.

Din curses his poor timing as he rushes towards your prone figure. One finger is already bare, falling to your neck to check for a pulse even as the digits of his other hand connect with his helmet to activate long-range vision. The child is too far gone, he’ll never be able to reach him even if he retrieves his jetpack. His ship is nothing but a pile of ashes, the medical equipment necessary to assist with your condition lost along with the Crest. For just a second Din allows himself to feel despair, loss, anger...love. A tear rolls down his cheek, concealed beneath the beskar that shields the world from his emotions.

What is a man with nothing left to fight for?

In the next second he is back to his impassive, stoic self. He needs a plan. Fennec, where’s Fennec…

“They’ve got the baby, don’t let them get away.” She’s speaking into her comm.

“Affirmative, I have a lock.” Fett answers.

Din can feel his heart seize, threatening to break through its emotional barriers again. He can’t suffer another loss. “Stop him, I don’t want the child hurt.”

She gives him a terse nod. “Abort pursuit, disengage, do not harm the child.”

“Copy, I’ll do a loose follow, see where they’re headed.” A pause. “They’re back.” Fett’s tone is clouded in disbelief.

“Who?” Fennec questions, but Din already knows the answer.

“The Empire, they’re back.”

“That can’t be, the outer rim is under the jurisdiction of the New Republic.”

“This isn’t a spice dream. I can see the imperial cruiser with my own eyes. Heading down.”

A ship, Fett has a ship. “Tell him to hurry, my companion might not make it without immediate medical attention.” Din demands, realizing he’s taking liberties, but it’s your life on the line damnit.

“The girl’s been injured, she needs medical attention.” Fennec relays.

“Copy that. I’ll prepare the med bay.”

Din breathes a sigh of relief, perhaps this man really is a true Mandalorian. He brushes several stray hairs out of your face, grounding himself for a moment before he checks how bad your wounds are. He chokes on a breath when he lifts your duraweave tunic up slightly. There is a fist sized hole in your abdomen, and although he’s treated wounds far worse during his career as a bounty hunter, the sight of the wound of your body has him feeling light headed and nauseous. He’s spitting curses under his breath as he moves to check the wound on your thigh. It’s not much better off.

Shit.

Fett better have some damn good medical supplies on his ship, because there is no way Din is going to allow you to be patched together with machinery like the ex-mercenary currently standing to his left.

As gently as he can manage, he slides an arm underneath your torso, desperately trying to ignore the way your blood coats his vambrace and the duraweave cloth beneath it. His other arm slides underneath your legs, settling into the bend between your thigh and calf. As gently as Din can manage, he lifts you from the ground, panicking when your head lolls backwards at an awkward angle. He feels awkward, out of place, and completely unequipped to be handling a situation like this. Fennec must decide to have pity on his poor soul because she steps over to him with a knowing glance.

“I know you’re a damn good fighter, but I can’t help but notice that you’re not accustomed to holding a woman in your arms.”

It’s true, and he shouldn’t feel embarrassed, but it still makes him flush red underneath the helmet.

“May I?” She gestures towards your still form.

A possessive growl rises in his throat at the thought of Fennec carrying you instead of him.

“Relax Mando, I’m just going to adjust her positioning.”

She’s muttering under her breath, low enough that not even the microphones within his helmet can detect the syllables, but he does catch her mumble ‘what a couple of lovesick fools’. The words have his face erupting into flames once again.

Din stills pins her with a glare as she reaches for your head, tilting it up so that you can rest your cheek against his arm, right below his left pauldron. Then she takes a hold of your left arm, which currently hovers in the air, and sets it on your abdomen.

“There, I’m sure she is much more comfortable now.” Fennec finishes.

Din just nods, still half-heartedly glaring at her from beneath the helmet.

“Let’s go, I’m sure Fett has landed already.”

He nods again, gesturing for her to lead the way. His gaze falls to you and he can’t help but notice that your face is twisted in discomfort. That’s the last thing he wants right now.

“Are you certain she is comfortable?”

“Mando, stop fussing, women love to be held. It’s probably your stiff posture that’s making her uncomfortable.”

He feels like growling at her retreating figure, but resists the temptation. Instead, he drops his visor back towards your face, scrabbling for something-anything-that will help you feel more comfortable.

“It’s alright, I’m here ner verd’ika. (My little warrior) You can rest, I’ve got you. Don’t worry about the kid, we’ll get him back, I promise.”

Maybe it’s coincidence, but the moment he finishes speaking you let out a breathy sigh, the frown on your face relaxing into a neutral expression as you nuzzle further into his shoulder.

You wake up later in an unfamiliar location, startling yourself into full consciousness as you try to take in the surroundings. Tears sting at your eyes and you bite back a sob. The Crest, your home, it’s gone.

“I heard you had a rough day.”

Your gaze snaps forward towards the doorway, and you feel like crying all over again. Cara, your lifelong friend, is propped up against the doorframe. You’re not usually one for sentiment, but you open your arms as wide as you can manage, meeting her eyes as you plead for a hug. She rushes towards you, wrapping you up in an embrace so tight that you think she might crack a rib.

“You had us worried for a while. It’s been a few days.”

A few...A few days. A choked out ‘huh?’ is the only response you can manage with her arms crushing your frame.

“Sorry.” She pulls back, releasing you from her grasp. What the kriff, is she wiping a tear from her eye? “You had us worried. Your condition was so poor that you needed a blood transfusion.”

“What? That’s impossible. The chances of finding someone with my blood type within 100 parsecs are slim to none.”

“Well…”

Why is she hesitating?

“Turns out you and I have the same blood type.”

Kriffing hell! Your heart jumps into your throat. There have only been a handful of times where Din has made a dramatic entrance without practically frightening you into cardiac arrest. This is not one of them. A quick glance around the remainder of the room reveals the Mandalorian seated in a booth in the far corner.

“You frightened me half to death Mando!” There’s a spike of surprise-not your own-that tickles at the back of your brain, and the feeling leaves you a little tense.

“Well that’s not a very nice way to greet your saviour.”

“What?” You inquire.

Mando grunts at you, impassive as always. The visor of his helmet betrays none of his feelings. “I said, you and I have the same blood type.”

Beneath the helmet he’s a little worried, you’ve never asked him to repeat himself. Don’t panic, he instructs himself. It’s probably just because you’re still a little out of it after the anti-pain stim you received. That’s all. He decides to jump straight into business before his worries get too far out of hand.

“We’re going after the kid.”

You nod in response, you figured as much. A fuzzy memory plays out in the back of your mind like a worn out holotape, ‘don’t worry...we’ll get him back...promise.’

“What’s the plan?” You ask, looking to Cara.

“The kid is on Moff Gideon’s cruiser. We need to acquire the coordinates for his position.”

“Ok, whatever you need, I can do it.”

“I know,” she shoots you a grateful glance, “but we are going to need imperial help, ex-imperial help, to be specific. We’re on our way to pick up a New Republic prisoner who is serving a sentence in the Karthon Chop Fields. You might remember him, Migs Mayfeld.”

“Oh, I remember him.” Specifically, you remember wanting to dropkick him into the nearest star system for being such an arrogant bastard. “When do we leave?”

“As soon as you get your ass out of bed and get dressed.”

You sputter indignantly, hurtling the nearest object in sight-which happens to be a roll of bandages-at her head. She just laughs at you as she sidesteps the projectile and darts out of the room.

Huh, there’s that tickle in the back of your brain again. Annoyed, you scratch at your head for a second, puzzled when the sensation doesn’t go away. You decide to opt for a different tactic, concentrating on the feeling until it becomes a little clearer. It’s a sound you realize, the sound of...laughter?

Wait just a minute. Why that no good, beskar wearing nerf herder! You swing your head around, so quickly that you can hear the bones of your spine crackle in protest, and pin him with a deadly glare. Only to realize he’s not even looking at you. In fact, he’s in the process of polishing his blaster.

You shake your head, baffled. You must be imagining things. A moment later Mando re-assembles his blaster with a practiced ease, twirls it lightly in his hand, and then holsters it as he stands.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

Then he too is stepping out the door with a swish of his cape.

“Oh, and I think you’re gonna like Fett’s ship.”

By the time you open your mouth to respond he’s already gone.

“So what’s your story? How’d you and the big guy meet?”

You glance up, hoping to catch Cara’s gaze, an unspoken question radiating across your face. She nods her head subtly in silent confirmation.

“Cara and I were both New Republic shocktroopers. We grew up together, enlisted together, fought together, eventually went into early retirement together. (The last part was only mostly true, but Fennec didn’t need to know that). That’s how we ended up on Sorgan, where we met the Mandalorian. He enlisted our help in mopping up a group of raiders for a job he’d taken on. After our payment we were planning to go our separate ways, but the kid formed quite an attachment to me, so I decided to tag along with him and Mando for a bit. At the time, neither of us understood why the kid was so attached. I’m not very good with children anyways.”

Fennec nods her head as you continue.

“Well apparently, according to this Jedi that we came across a couple weeks ago, I have a connection to some magical force, similar to the child. That’s what drew him to me."

“Huh, interesting.”

“I know, right.”

Here’s the thing though. What you hesitate to tell Fennec is that Ahsoka also informed you that you possessed a special gift as a result of your connection to the Force. Although your gift had not yet presented itself, she was certain that it would become apparent in your near future.

Sure enough, after the struggle on Tython and the resulting blood transfusion, you have started to hear voices in your head. You are sure that they are thoughts, since they are often disjointed and oddly phrased. And, maybe you’re crazy, but the voices sound oddly similar to the modulated voice of your beskar-clad companion.

For example, if you concentrate really hard right now you can hear noise, not like that of an engine (because you’re on a ship), but that of a conversation. Right now the voices are chattering about...ammunition charges? You snort in amusement. That sounds like something Din would be thinking about. Fennec gives you a funny look, but you just play it off, saying that the filtered air in the ship was irritating your airway.

It makes you curious though, is it possible that he may be able to sense your thoughts as well? If you concentrate really hard on one single idea, will he notice? It’s definitely worth a try, and you’re really bored right now. Hmmm, what about a...jetpack. Ok, no response from Din. What about...beskar. Oh, that’s a good idea! After five whole minutes of thinking solely about the metal there is still no response from Din. Ugh, fine. Your obviously imagining things. Typical.

“What are you doing?” A voice echoes.

You let out a squeak, quickly cover it up as a cough, and then glare at the Mandalorian seated across from you. This time he’s looking right at you.

Fine, two can play at this game. You keep a straight face and then will your voice to travel across the space between you and into his mind. “What are you doing?”

He just stares at you and you think maybe you are still imagining things.

“Sigh.”

Oh no he did not. He did not just...just sigh at you through his mind! Why that little…

“Relax, you’re jumpy. And bored.”

If looks could kill, he would be a pile of sizzling beskar right now. “It’s not my fault you’re boring.” You huff back. And without warning he’s laughing at you through the bond. Full-hearted, chest-rattling laughter, but without the ‘chest rattling’ you note dryly, as you glare even harder.

“So that was you laughing at me earlier today! You are in so much trouble Din. Just wait until we land, we’re gonna fight this out like warriors and I’m gonna kick your ass.” That shuts him up and you are feeling quite smug about your comeback, basking in your victory for the space of a few seconds until something else starts tickling at your brain.

It’s another voice, one that is slowly growing louder, but it seems...guarded. You nudge harder, eager to solve the mystery, and the answer becomes a little clearer. It’s a feeling, you realize, a powerful feeling. As you weave closer and closer, Din’s other thoughts attempt to sidetrack you, to distract you from your self-proclaimed mission. Just a little closer...

You don’t even notice that Din’s physical body has tensed up, his hands balling into fists, telltale signs of his nerves. More thoughts whiz by you, trying to knock you off your narrow path, but you’re persistent as you trudge forward. The feeling abruptly smacks into you like the rays of a thousand suns, blinding you, and you’re gasping, suddenly ashamed of your curiosity.

“We’re here.” Fett’s voice rings through the hull, breaking your concentration for only a second, and you feel Din forcefully throw you out of his mind. He’s out of his seat in a second, making a beeline for the cockpit without throwing so much as a glance your way. You’re left to wallow in your seat as Cara and Fennec shoot you questioning glances, but you just shrug.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into him.” You offer, choosing not to elaborate on what just took place. But your blood boils. You know exactly what happened. You just ripped away the most important barrier Mando possessed. The one that guarded his heart.

The feeling you laid bare?

Affection.

You don’t even leave your seat as the others step outside to recruit Mayfeld. “Just wait until we land, we’re gonna fight this out like warriors and I’m gonna kick your ass.” You spoke those words to Din only moments ago. Now, after what you’ve done, you don’t think you’ll ever be able to look him in the face again, much less challenge him to a sparring match.

It’s not until everyone but Din and Mayfeld re-enter the hull that you realize there are only four seats in the hold. You curse your bad luck, there’s no way you are gonna share a seat with any one of these clowns. Oh sweet springs of Tabet, if you remember correctly there’s an extra seat in the cockpit. Before anyone can question your behavior, you’re rushing towards the ladder that Fett is still scaling. With a little luck, he won’t question your presence, and you might even be able to learn a few maneuvers.

Din sucks in a breath as he enters the hold once again, just in time to catch a glimpse of your back as you disappear into the cockpit along with Fett. He scowls, if Fett wasn’t such a good man, Din would probably be jealous. He takes his seat once again, except this time instead of looking up and being rewarded with your face, he’s greeted with Mayfeld’s ugly mug. There’s no way this day could get any worse.

It is only after everyone takes a seat that he remembers there are only four chairs in the hold. He curses himself over and over. He had already factored that into his original plan. The original idea was to invite you to share his seat with him after Mayfeld joined the crew. Then he would be able to bask in your closeness, your liveliness, for just a short time before his mind began to dissect the details of the mission.

He knows he hurt you earlier, unintentional as it may have been. He hadn’t meant to throw you out of his thoughts so quickly, but you scared him. If you had been allowed to peer into his emotions for just one more millisecond you might have seen his most closely guarded thoughts, the ones that keep him lying awake at night.

Within the confines of his mind he often pictures you and him, the kid, and sometimes children of your own. In those fantasies he doesn’t hunt anymore, learns instead how to be a father and a husband, a family man. The intensity of his feelings frustrate him, and rightfully so. As a hunter and a Mandalorian, any emotion he feels can easily be turned into a deadly weapon. This situation involving the kid is a perfect example of how quickly his affection can twist into desperation.

“I’ll go.”

Those two words are all it takes for you to know that Din is absolutely desperate. Mayfeld blathers on, ridiculing Mando again, so you just shut his voice out.

“Mando, I can go.” You speak up, fuming a little at the thought that he hasn’t yet offered you the mission.

“No, it’s too dangerous for you.” He doesn’t even look at you properly, gazing instead towards the juggernaut that passes.

You pin the side of his helmet with a glare. Not wanting to start a scene in front of the others, you dare to brush delicately against his thoughts, and you want to cry in relief when he immediately let’s you in.

“Din, I can go. Let me have this mission.”

“No, you barely made it out alive last time. Besides, the New Republic will recognize you.”

“I don’t care about the New Republic, it’s not like I currently hold a position of importance like Cara. I’ll be fine.”

“No, you’re not going. You haven’t even fully recovered, and there is no way you’re going if you’re not 100% combat ready.”

“You of all people should know better than to tell me what I can and cannot do. I will not, I repeat, I will not let you go in there and risk your Creed when I am perfectly capable of taking this mission!”

“My decision is final.”

Then for the second time that day, he shuts you out.

“You’re not going alone. I’m coming with you, but I won’t be showing my face.” Din announces aloud to the rest of your crewmates.

You growl under your breath, furious with his decision. You want to scream at him, ask him what exactly he is thinking, but you know you can’t. You have never been able to change his mind. Instead, you resign yourself to your allotted role, begging the stars that nothing goes wrong even though you know that is a fool's hope.

Once Mayfeld and Din are seated within the juggernaut, you and Boba prepare to split off from Fennec and Cara.

“We’ll head back to the ship while you two make your way to the ridge.” Boba Fett speaks up as he shoulders the canvas bag holding Din’s armor.

“Alright. I’ll inform you on when to begin your run.” Fennec responds.

You exchange a glance with Cara, then move to follow Fett through the forest. As you trudge back to the ship alongside Boba, numerous questions spring to mind.

“Fett, you are a Mandalorian right?”

“You could say that.”

“Why is it that you can remove your helmet and go by your real name, but Mando can’t?”

“How do you know that Boba Fett is my real name?” He questions.

Well that shuts you up.

He continues on as if expecting that response. “Mandalore has a complicated history. Often the very people who call themselves Mandalorian are not even born on the planet itself. My ancestors believed that any man, woman, boy, or girl could imbue the spirit of a Mandalorian warrior, it didn’t matter who they were or where they were born. From what I can gather, your friend was not born on Mandalore either.”

“Well, I wouldn’t really call him a friend, but yes that’s true, he mentioned it once. That still doesn’t explain the helmet thing though.” You gesture to your face as you finish your sentence.

He takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose, as if he’s dealing with an overly inquisitive toddler. “The helmet thing is harder to explain.” A beat of silence passes. “Mandalorians live in clans, as groups of warriors that are bound together by a common name and a central ruler. The clans all support different beliefs, or Creeds, as they call them. The beliefs of one clan may be wildly different from that of another clan.”

That makes sense. There is a long tick of silence, and you’re certain he is finished so you ask the one remaining question that sits at the tip of your tongue.

“What clan do you belong to?”

He obviously doesn’t expect that question. Surprise envelops his features, then it morphs into fondness. “I belong to Clan Fett.” Another pause. “Why, would you like to join?” It’s accompanied with a head tilt and a humorous tone.

You just laugh. “I don’t know if I will qualify.” It’s freeing to let some humour slip into your tone after your recent argument with Din.

“Well, it seems like you already forgot the history lesson.” He chastises you, but he’s still smiling. “Now, let’s prepare to pick up these friends of yours.” He adds, as the ship becomes visible in the distance.

Ending Notes: Originally this part was going to be much longer, but I made some changes to my original plot. I had also planned to end it on a more angsty note, but let’s be real, we want to avoid angst as much as possible. Part 2 is already written and will be coming soon, give me a follow if you don’t want to miss it!

#the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #mandalorian x you #din djarin x you #mando x reader #din djarin fanfiction #din djarin fluff #the mandalorian fanfiction #mandalorian fluff #mando reader fluff

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mari-lair · 4 years

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To Die For - Alternative endings.

There is no good endings, only some neutrals and bad ones. None of these are canon but I thought some people might enjoy reading it still.

Ending 0: Ignorance - Ray never find out who’s the murderer, clinging to his family and his boyfriend throught every lost. Suffering traumas and growing more suspicious and dependable. With time, he ends up marrying Norman. His life is plagued with incidents and he have grown used to being covered in injuries but he’s happy enough. Having a wonderful husbend at home it’s enough. It have to be.

Ending 1 Prison - Norman is send to prison, he manages to reduce his huge sentence to three years after a lot of money and Lewis’s influence is put on the table. Ray goes to university to study about his case, determined to find a way to treat Norman’s, convinced is some disorder, some sickness that could be -if not cured- at least controlled and weakened. Give Norman a reabilitation of sorts. Even if they no longer dated after Norman was free - He promised himself he wouldn’t let a murderer touch him like that ever again. He wanted to help him. (this ending was made with Nila’s help)

Ending 2: Killer - After Hayato dies, Norman uses Emma as the victim for his framed murder to ‘kill’. Ray learns the truth soon after Emma’s death, he grow mad and tries to kill Norman. It’s not a successful attempt, Norman has experience in this field, but it does give the murderer hope. The attack proving ray is capable of murder if he’s angry enough. He starts small, kidnaps him with a defenseless deer and says he’ll kill his parents if he doesn’t kill the deer. Ray reluctantly kills the deer. Norman is happy. He throws a fellow murderer in the cell and says the same thing. The defenseless and tied up murderer dies. Is the sexiest thing norman ever seen! He falls deeper in love. Ray positively hates him. When Norman visits him again he gets attacked, but he’s been too long away from Ray, he’s willing to die in his arms.

Ending 3: Delusional - Ray learns the truth late. A week before their marriage. He is utterly betrayed, so angry and grief stricken he punches Norman in the face, not holding back. Norman hit his head hard. Bleeding out. It’s a pretty serious injury, Ray toys with the idea of letting the murderer die but he can’t do it, he still loves his Snow White, no matter how much blood stained his hands. He called the ambulance and worked hard to pay for his recovery. Glad when everyone that cares about Norman helped with the payment. Norman stays unconscious in the hospital for two week, when he wakes up, he has no memory. He doesn’t recognize Ray, doesn’t remember his own name. Ray throws any heavy talk of them breaking up out the window and takes this as a desperate chance of staying together. He knows it’s madness but he’s unwilling to let go of Norman, doing all he could to keep him on a good path. Shape him into the mask Norman had shown him and make their marriage happens. It didn’t work. Norman may have fallen in love again, wearing sweet smiles and being sappy but he still had muscle memory on how to draw jewelry designs. On how to kill. Norman stopped hiding any of his disturbing fantasies, unconsciously smiling when feeling nothing but having no memories of all the reasons why he should hide his murderous tendencies from people. He was very curious. Extremely dangerous. Sexual desires and murder fantasies impossible to distinguish. Ray died from fatal injuries in a make out that starts innocent but got out of control far too fast. Norman is sent to prison two days later. Even with the accusations, curses and all the chaos Ray’s death brought. It took Norman four days to fully understand what he did. He went mad. Already unstable and confused without the unfamiliar and terrifying feeling of heartbreak to deal with.

Ending 4: Friendly intervention - Lewis is convinced his bussiness partner would kill himself because of his foolish affection for the baker. He may not look like it but he does carry some affection towards Norman, a twisted one that is hard to categorize but could be considered paternal, so he takes matter on his own hands and pay Ray’s bakery a visit, intending to kill him. The man is charmed however, understanding why Norman felt in love and deciding to take Ray out in what Lewis consider an honor. He takes Ray to his playground: An illegal area where he kidnaps people to hunt them down. Emma team up with Norman to figure out where Ray is. They form a friendship and eventually find their way to his playground. Norman is furious when he learns the truth, growing possitivaly feral when he finds Ray dead. He doesn’t care that Emma is around, doesn’t care about the risks of facing such a lethal oponent. When he spot his ‘old friend’ his world goes red. He won’t be satisfied until he do what he always told himself to do, and kill Lewis. Blind him and break him. Make the old man suffer. Lewis hesitate. Norman doesn’t.

Ending 5:Together Forever- The truth is out two months after they get married. Norman tries to convince Ray to stay together despite his murderous tendencies coming to light. He promises to do anything Ray wants, promise not to kill anyone, even going as far as to swear to stop manipulating people, needing Ray by his side. Addicted to their little domestic life. Norman is telling the truth, but since almost everything Norman feeds him has been lies Ray does not believe his promises. He’s heartbroken and betrayed. He hates Norman for everything he did but he still loves his husband. It’s painful. He doesn’t want to call the cops on his Snow White but he doesn’t want to see him either. Doesn’t want to think about who he has been sleeping with. After a few hours of isolation in their room, he comes to a decision “If you lay a finger on me or anyone I love again I am calling the cops. Take your things and get away from my house. Don’t you dare come back!” Norman knows he’s serious from the way he avoided contact and slapped him when he tried to approach so he did his best to stay away, not wanting to go to prison. It takes less than a week to understand watching Ray's footages wasn’t enough to satiate a body used to hold, spoiling, knows and loving the real thing. He needed to be by Ray’sside. No matter how. He know his charms won’t work however, knows it would be impossible to restart their relationship or mend it back to that dream like domesticity, so he settles for following Ray's rules. He bribes officers and forges evidence against Ray, getting him arrested for a murder the baker never committed and proceeding to attack someone in plain sign. Bribing more people to get himself locked up in his ex-husband's cell. Ray is miserable, curled up in a corner with puffy eyes and a broken future but Norman doesn’t care, more than happy to see him again, giggly at the prospect of spending their 58 years sentence together!

Ending 6: Kidnapped - Ray learns the truth far too quickly. He want to call the police but Norman threatens his parents life. There’s a fight born out of panic, since Norman is far more experienced he knocks Ray out, drugging and kidnapping him. This one have been written.

#norray #the promised neverland #to die for #none of them are canon

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c0ry-c0nvoluted · 4 years

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READ THIS.

First off, everyone who isn’t too lazy to use their brains for something other than doing what they’re told should watch the video attached. But the only way you’ll get any benefit from it is if you’re stable enough to be objective. Remove yourself from yourself and just absorb and consider.

This video is 2 hours long. And you’ll find him (#DavidIcke) repeating his point throughout which can get trying, but it IS a valid point. That point being:

THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT.

They want us afraid and panicking and ready and willing to accept whatever aggressive measures are needed to alleviate our fear. In fact, they’ll have us pleading for these aggressive measure to be taken (that will continue well after the crisis) and then vilifying anyone who calls for our rights to freedom. “Oh, you don’t want to stay indoors? That means you don’t care about my grandma and you should be locked up.” And, “Oh, you don’t accept a mandatory vaccination because you don’t know what’s actually in it? Then you’re the monster who’s putting my children at risk and my family in danger and should be locked up.” We will all line up to shackle ourselves and everyone else around us if we’re panicked and afraid.

At the end of it all he suggests alleviating our fear of death in order to not allow ourselves to be manipulated. This is brilliant. But how do you do that? By changing your perspective on consciousness and realizing that human consciousness is not the only experience. That after we leave our bodies we move onto an entirely new form of infinite existence and consciousness, and that death is nothing but a change in perspective (and likely a fantastic one.) My opinion on this? I’ve always thought that our minds aren’t quite evolved enough to maintain consciousness as a form of energy without a body. But I meant that in the aspect of “I don’t think I will STILL BE ME.” But, considering this further, and seeing the benefits of adjusting my perspective, I realize now that, sure, I might not be me, but how is that a bad thing? I mean, even if there’s no consciousness at all, that’s STILL not a bad thing. And if there IS consciousness, it will be so much more vast and connected to the universe than it is right now trapped inside these fleshy mishaps of evolution, that the next existence may as well be called Heaven, regardless of the fact that I don’t believe in the Christian afterlife or their creation theory (or their God). And yes, it occurs to me that it’s not death we fear so much as the pain of dying. But most of that pain comes from the fear. I’d say that if you were NOT afraid to die, then you’d easily ease your suffering (while dying) by 50%, if not a whole hell of a lot more.

His ending note/concept is a bit difficult to wrap your brain around, and impossible for most (unfortunately), but for those who can grasp it, it’s fucking gold, man. It really helped ease my mind and is worth sticking around the entire interview for.

(This next part of these “Cliff Notes” is gonna get back into the “conspiracy” of it all.)

How often have you been repeatedly told to get your flu shot over the past 10 years? It’s everywhere, right? That repetition is a form of psychological manipulation. It’s gearing you up to get a vaccination that’s mandated. And that’s gearing you up for what will lead to voluntarily being ushered into a world where there are no more jobs so you’re dependent on “government” cheese, which is barely enough to survive so keeps you powerless, and you’re behavior is monitored and your “government credits” are at risk if you “behave improperly”.

THEY ARE ALREADY DOING THIS IN CHINA TODAY USING FACIAL RECOGNITION A.I. TO MONITOR BEHAVIOR AND ADD OR SUBTRACT CREDITS ( which he discusses)

WE WILL BE NEXT.

And it’s all under the guise of “your government wants to help feed you in these terrible times but, for your safety, you will be monitored, and any negative behavior will result in penalties.” And what becomes “negative behavior”? Speaking out against the World Government. This has been written about for decades, if not longer, and has become such a scifi troupe that most believe that it’s just fantasy. But it started as a practical concept recognized by deep thinkers, seeing the inevitable outcome of a monetary society, and then was developed into stories told for entertainment. But ALSO for awareness.

He may go a little too far for rational people when he acknowledges the possibility that #COVID19 might actually have been released purposely, but that’s not relevant because A PANDEMIC WAS INEVITABLE (because of how connected our global society is). And being inevitable, it is very easy to plan for that pandemic and manipulate our reactions to it so to push us all towards EXACTLY what they want:

TOTALITARIANISM

And if this pandemic isn’t bad enough to get us where they want us, the next one will be.

This is probably the point where, if you’ve made it this far, you’re gonna pull the Bullshit card and dismiss the whole rant. But here’s the thing:

The “conspiracy” of it all is IRRELEVANT. The fact remains that when you stand back and look at where we are headed you’ll clearly see (if you can think that far ahead, which, granted, 80% of our society is not intelligent enough to do, which is what makes this possible in the first place) that what he describes and how he describes it is in fact exactly what is happening. So whether it’s all a conspiracy or not doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. No, I’m not saying COVID-19 is a conspiracy. I believe it was just an inevitability, as mentioned above. But our reactions to it and what will happen now because of those reactions is (coincidentally?) pushing us toward the death of democracy AND THE DEATH OF OUR FREEDOM.

He goes on to point out that because this concept is so unfathomably evil we can’t possibly accept it to be true because, as far as we know, no such evil on such a grand scale can actually be real. It baffles the mind. IT MUST BE PARANOIA.

It isn’t. It’s, again, all part the inevitable outcome of a monetary based economy. How many times do we have to say this? The only outcome of a monetary based society is that eventually only one corporation will survive (even if they’re more than one at the end, they’re all working together as a conglomerate). And, in a monetary society, whoever controls all the money CONTROLS EVERYTHING.

David Icke doesn’t even touch on the money thing, which I was surprised by. He simply just puts the spotlight on "The Cult" that’s secretly manipulating our entire civilization toward the One World Government they need in order to control it all. He brings up the point of why are we locking everyone down if only the elderly and people with underlying health concerns are in danger? We should be locking THEM down (humanely) for their protection and letting everyone else go about their lives and get sick and then get over it like we always do and will. Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure about the end fatality rate, because we’re not there yet, but it makes sense that most of us, even if and when we contract it, will be absolutely fine. Granted, Americans are unhealthy as shit, so the mortality rate can end up being a bit rough, but it’s THE FEAR of that rate that allows them to sit back and let us hand over our freedom to them. THE FEAR is what will give #TheCult ultimate control over the world, and we will fucking hand it to them with praises while saying “thank you for saving us from these terrible times.”

As I was watching this, just after he mentioned that the goal is to get everyone on a government “credit-based behavioral-dependent income,” I got a news notification saying the motion was just passed to send out $1000 checks to American citizens.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

What the The Cult want is for all other companies to crash leaving them the only few left that have money/power, which makes it so none of us can challenge them because anytime anyone speaks out they’ll have their "government cheese" reduced and no one else will have enough of their own to lend them. THIS IS WHY MONEY NEEDS TO BE ABOLISHED ENTIRELY. I won’t get into the details of that here but, believe me, it CAN work and WILL make EVERYTHING INSURMOUNTABLY BETTER. But just to touch on HOW it would work:

TECHNOLOGY. Society will need to be automated so people will not HAVE to work for a living. But in order for that to happen all the world's governments would have to work together to create this automated society. This is the only POSITIVE outcome of what The Cult may be pursuing. If we're lucky, when whoever wins it all has decimated the entire world's economy, they may decide to create a new and better one that does in fact abolish money and automates society. But this would be a fucking miracle beyond fathoming because it would mean that the sociopaths who killed the world were actually doing it to save it.(But this discussion goes a little too deep into "not fucking likely, bro.".)

WHAT WE CAN DO NOW TO STOP THIS IS NOT LET FEAR ALLOW THEM TO CONTROL US, ULTIMATELY CAUSING US TO HAND OVER OUR FREEDOMS TO THEM.

And no, this is not the American government’s plan. It’s not the communist party’s plan. It’s not Trump or anyone else you see in the media. They are all pawns, puppets, unknowing means to ends and have no idea what’s really happening (or are possibly part of it, yes. But that’s not likely. It’s more likely they’re just be manipulated like the rest of us.)

Watch the interview attached.

Keep an open mind.

Do not be afraid.

Death is just a change in perspective.

OUR PERCEPTIONS ARE OUR REALITY.

-cm

#lockdown #covid19 #corona virus news #illuminati #The Cult #health tips #immune system #david Icke #London Real #anxiety #totalitarianism #CCP #CCP virus #rant

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deiaiko · 5 years

Photo

Alternate timeline where —- dies, leaving —- to live with that bitter reality as he tries to get better over time

Really really long story under the cut (also excuse my crappy grammar and the rushed ending :”3)

- - - - -

“Bam, don’t cry”.

“…”, how could he not cry at a time like this?!

Their teammates already left the place, leaving all the remaining time that the two have to bid their last farewell.

Bam is holding Khun in his arms, letting him leans heavily on his chest while trying to warm his starting-to-get-cold body. One hand to hold him and the other to try to stop the bleeding.

“there must be a way to—”

“no”, the bleeding is too severe to be treated. Besides, there’s no one nearby that has the ability to help, “it’s too late…you know that”.

Bam keeps pressing the wound, but no matter how hard he tries, the warm blood keeps flowing out, it hurts him to being so helpless. What’s the point of being strong if he failed to protect him? What’s the point to spend many years training? Isn’t it his fault that Khun became like this in the first place? Because of his wish to save others? And then a dark thought came into his mind, Khun doesn’t need to suffer alone.

“I’ll go with you!”, Bam cried in a verge of desperation.

“don’t do that”.

“then…then tell me, what’s the point for me to keep living?”

“to enjoy what life offers you”.

“I…I don’t understand”.

“It’s always been…for other people’s sake, so how about…you do things for yourself once?”, Khun looks at Bam with the softest look he ever gave him, “be what you want to be…and live happily”.

“without you?”

Khun hesitated before answering, “without me”.

“how can I be happy without you?”

“…I know you can”.

“…”

Khun is trying his best to endure the pain so Bam would be less worried about him, at least he felt more numb on every second passed as more blood poured out.

“hey Khun, have you…live happily?”, Bam suddenly asked.

“yes,…cause you’re with me”.

“have you be what you want to be?”

“yes. All I want…is to be with you”.

Bam gave him a sad smile that quickly fell from his face, “I’m sorry”.

“it’s not your fault…things happen. When I chose to follow you…this is the risk that I took”, Khun smiled, “it’s worth it”.

Bam doesn’t know what to say, he just gave Khun his best smile even though his heart breaking inside.

Khun starting to feel lightheaded and his ears began to ring, he knew he didn’t have much time left.

“Bam”, Khun sighed and closed his eyes, “thank you…for everything”.

“Khun wait—”

“all I want now…is for you to be happy, even without me”.

“please”, Bam’s eyes began to water, “don’t say that”.

“I don’t know what…will happen, but…stay alive…for me”.

“Khun…please”.

But Khun didn’t respond anymore as he had fallen into a very deep sleep.

“Khun?”, Bam tighten his grip, “Khun! Answer me!”

But there’s no answer.

“say something, please”.

“…”

“anything is fine”.

“…”

“I beg you”.

“…”

“Khun…please”, he sobbed, “wake up”.

“…”

Bam doesn’t know what else to say, he hugged Khun tighter and cried silently with a deep sorrow. He cried until there’s no more tear left for him to shed.

- - - - -

Khun is gone now. He’s gone forever and he won’t come back anytime soon. But Bam is yet come to realized it.

“Bam stop it!”, Shibisu stopped Bam before he had a chance to hurt himself.

“why?!”, Bam cried in desperation, “why can’t I wake up from this nightmare?!?”

“because you’re not dreaming”.

“no! You’re lying!”, Bam covered his ears, “I don’t want to hear it!”

“it’s the truth”.

“no! It’s just a dream!”

Rak slapped him hard, leaving a red mark on his cheek.

Bam’s hand quickly went to cover it, looking surprised.

Rak cupped his cheeks and locked their eyes, “listen black turtle! This is the reality, you must face it no matter how bitter it is. Don’t hide in your shell forever!”. Rak took his hands off and walked away, “it’s not like you to act like this”.

Bam was left speechless, his sore cheek is a constant reminder that he wasn’t dreaming. But it’s still too much for him to take, he needs time for himself.

- - - - -

Bam is doing a little better, he’s finally returned after locking himself in his room for two weeks straight. He’s lucky to have his friends to watch over him and keep him grounded while recovering from the grief.

But anyone can tell that he’s…different. He becomes slightly distant and a little bit colder. Though no one can blame him, he didn’t wish for it either.

Months later they left the floor to continue their journey, because Bam still has a mission to accomplish.

He promised himself to come back to Khun once it’s over.

- - - - -

After defeating Zahard in the 133rd floor, the name Jue Viole Grace becomes one of the legends, a monster, the feared one that nobody dares to say out loud.

Rumors said that he’s taking over the 134th floor and rules there, or maybe even already outside the tower. Though it’s just a false rumors, only his close friends who knows where he is now.

Because as promised, he cut his hair and came back to where Khun is, the 53rd floor. He bought a small house not far from the cemetery and lives there using his original name, the 25th Bam, though only a few people know his other identity.

Now that Bam has all the time in the world, he tries to do many things to spend it. From reading to cooking, learning new techniques and skills, and also tries to socialize out of his friends advice. But nothing seems to be able to make him happy as it can only distract him from his feelings.

Once in a while, his friends came to visit him, to keep him company while making sure he’ll stay sane throughout the years.

Every other day he also bought flowers for Khun, one crimson rose (sadness, mourning, death, rebirth, love) with a variation from pink camellia (longing) and pink carnation (remembrance) to chrysanthemum (grief) and purple hyacinth (sorrow, deep regret, asking forgiveness).

Soon he became a close friend with the shopkeeper, (she has the ability to instantly grow seed into plants, so she doesn’t need much space in her flower shop).

“you always come here, who is this someone?”

“he’s…my best friend”.

“I see”.

She wants to ask more, but she respects his privacy.

- - - - -

Thousand years passed. Although Bam doesn’t age, he isn’t immortal, (he won’t make the same mistake like his mother did. He can still be killed of course, but that is, if anyone can).

Until one day, Shibisu suddenly gave him a surprising news that makes his broken heart thumping in his chest. A picture from the floor of test, taken just a few days ago, a group of people with a blue haired boy among them.

Bam stared at the picture for a full minute straight because he couldn’t believe what he just saw.

The person in the photo looks eerily similar. With the same smug smile on his face and a sharp look in his eyes, but with a slightly different hair hue.

“I’ll go check on him”, Bam decided without thinking and quickly packed his things.

“hey hey, wait. Are you sure?”

“yes”.

“then I’ll go as well, you might need the company”.

“thanks Isu”.

Bam visited Khun again to say a temporary farewell before he left the 53rd floor.

- - - - -

Along the way Bam has inner conflicts.

His mind told him that “he’s not him, he won’t know you and you’ll only get hurt if he doesn’t match your expectations. You should get back”.

But his heart already took full control of his body as it says “what’s wrong with it? I’ll only live on regrets if I don’t come. Besides, I just want to talk to him”.

“then are you ready for the consequences? You’re a stranger to him, remember that”.

“…yes, I’m aware”.

Bam prepares himself.

- - - - -

But he was unable to approach him.

“you can come back whenever you want you know? And that includes now”.

“but I’m already here, let me just. . .watch over him for a while”.

- - - - -

“why did you help me?”, the blue haired boy pointing a knife at him.

Bam knew ‘this Khun’ teammates were plotting a treason against him, but he couldn’t stop himself to intervene with the situation. He regretted it.

Khun knows that he’s no match to the stranger after he saw him beat his ex-teammates in a blink of an eye, but he also wants to know why the stranger helped him, “answer me!”

Bam still can’t bring himself to look at him in the eye, no matter how long he prepares, he’s not ready to face him yet. “because I want to”, Bam answered.

“that’s not an answer. What do you want from me?”

“Khun”, the name slipped out from his mouth.

“of course I’m a Khun, so what? I got kicked out of my family, you won’t get anything by kidnapping me”.

Bam turned around to finally look at him. Now that he’s quite close to him, he could see him clearer. Pale skin with shoulder length blue hair and the same sharp cobalt blue eyes, “you look just like him”.

“…who?”

“…”

Khun lowered his weapon when he saw the man’s eyes, the dull golden eyes filled with sorrow. Khun felt an indescribable feeling, a sympathy maybe. He set aside his suspicion for a while, “I’m not him, you know that”.

Bam heartache hearing the undeniable truth came straight from his mouth. He broke their eye contact and spoke softly as if he were trying not to break down, “yeah, I know”, he’s fully aware of it, “you’re not him and you’ll never be”.

“then what do you want from me?”

“nothing”, Bam turned around and walked away, “nothing at all”.

“is that why you were stalking me this past few months?”

Bam heart skipped a beat, ‘oh, so he knew’, he thought. “I’m sorry if I bothered you, I’ll go now”.

“wait!”, after being betrayed by his teammates Khun knew he has to rebuild his team from the start. He thought it’ll be very beneficial to have someone as strong as him on his party, it’ll definitely raise his position among a low-class regular and reduce the possibility to be betrayed again. He can take advantage of him without anything to lose, a great chance like this won’t came twice.

“please let me be your apprentice”.

- - - - -

The first week had been rough for Bam as he was intentionally avoiding Khun. Shibisu asked him to stay on the floor that he’s now and wait until he comes, Bam couldn’t say no to him. So there he is, locking himself in his room again like a coward.

Looking at the new Khun only reminds Bam that his Khun was gone and how much he misses him. Just like adding salt to his wound.

So Bam closes his heart to avoid getting hurt more than he already is, just like the days when he first met Sweet and Sour team, cold and distant.

But this Khun is determined to be his apprentice (or rather to make him on his side), he keep insisting until Bam finally give in, it took him a week to get to talk to him and another week to get his name.

- - - - -

Shibisu and his team finally arrived at the floor where Bam and Khun are staying to check on them.

“so you’re Mr.Bam’s friend?”, asked Khun.

“y-yeah”, Shibisu decided not to comment on how he calls Bam. “I’m Shibisu, you can call me Isu”, he offered a hand to shake.

“Khun”, he returned the gesture.

The boy is a little bit shorter than him, but his height is almost the same as Khun on the floor of test a really long time ago. His hair color is more saturated than him and his voice is a little bit different, but everything else are the same. It felt really weird to talk to a person with his late friend’s face, Bam must be really…distressed.

“so…how’s Bam doing?”, Shibisu decided to ask.

“I’m not sure”, Khun scratches his head, “he rarely talks to me, so I don’t know. Is he really a quiet type or…?”

“no. He used to be really enthusiastic, he was the heart of our team after all”.

“was? What changed? Is it because of. . .him?”

“so he told you about it?”

“not the details, mostly just my hunch”.

“let’s have a short talk somewhere else”. Shibisu went to sat on the sitting place nearby and motioned Khun to follow.

Khun obeyed, he may get a valuable information that can help him get close to Mr.Bam, so why not.

“so Khun…how long have you met him?”, Shibisu started the conversation.

“not long, it’s only been two weeks”.

“what do you think about him so far?”

“err, he’s strong, honestly I was a bit wary of him because he followed me for weeks and then suddenly came out to fight my traitors”.

“not surprised”.

“eh?”

“well, he’s the type to not remain silent when someone is in need”.

“then my decision to be his apprentice wasn’t wrong”.

“apprentice huh? Nice”.

“but he still hasn’t given me an answer”.

“don’t worry, I’ll help you”, Shibisu gave him a thumb-up, “what else do you think of him?”

“uhm, he’s also…quiet and mysterious, he rarely talks and he won’t even look at me. I think he’s avoiding me”.

“no wonder”.

“it’s because of him right? His 'Khun’?”

“yeah, you guessed it”.

“what happened?”

“you should ask him yourself”, Shibisu smiled and patted his head.

Khun looked a bit dissapointed, but it must be really personal, so that’s reasonable.

Honestly right now Shibisu is trying his best to keep his amusement inside. He never had a chance to pat Khun’s head before, he’d be killed if he did, and turns out it doesn’t feel so bad. He smiled with satisfaction.

Shibisu then looks up at the sky and sighed deeply to relax himself before he continues, “Bam is a really great person, I give you my words. But the thing is, he has been suffering for too long”. He looks at Khun and smiled, “I hope you can bring him back to what he used to be. Please don’t give up on him”.

Khun is amazed on how much Mr.Isu cares about Mr.Bam, he must be a really great person after all, “…okay”.

“thanks”, Shibisu stood up, “anyways, do you know where Bam is? I need to make sure he’s alright”.

“he’s usually in his room”, Khun pointed him the direction.

- - - - -

Bam is standing on the balcony looking at the sky, like he always does.

“hey there”, Shibisu greeted him.

Bam quickly wiped his eyes, “oh! Isu, long time no see”, he forced a smile.

“you don’t need to do that”.

“…”, his smile fell and quickly replaced by sorrow. Bam wanted to be strong, for Isu, for both Khuns and for his friends. He doesn’t want anyone to worry, but the last few days are just too overwhelming for him. He snivelled, his tears started to fall again and his hands went to cover his face, “I-I can’t do this, Isu”.

Shibisu approached him slowly and wrapped his arm around him to comfort his friend.

“It’s a mistake that I went here in the first place”, Bam sobbed, “it hurts”.

“shh”, Shibisu patted his back a few times.

“he’s different, he’s not Khun, I know, I really do”.

Shibisu hummed.

“though there’s a naive part of me that really want to believe that it was wrong, that he’s him. But he’s not!”

“I know. But you can’t blame him because he didn’t match your expectations”.

“should I go back then? there’s no point for me to be here”.

“how about you give him a chance first?”, honestly Shibisu couldn’t stand seeing his friend suffering like this, but if this Khun can make Bam feels better, then so be it. “just one month. After that you can decide whether to go back or to stay with him”.

- - - - -

“Mr.Bam, Mr.Bam”.

“?”

“how long have you been in this tower?”

Bam thinks, “over one millennium”.

“wha-?! That’s really long. Are you immortal?”

“no”.

“why not?”

“I’m…not ready for the consequences”.

- - - - -

“aren’t you busy, Mr.Bam?”

“no, I’m quite free”.

“then you’re okay to be my mentor right?”

“…”

- - - - -

“Mr.Bam, can I ask where are you going after this?”

“home”.

“are you going to take me?”

“…depends”.

- - - - -

After two weeks, Bam finally gathered enough courage to start a conversation.

“what do you seek in the tower?”

“I’m not sure. My mother doesn’t want me and my father doesn’t care, why I was born then? I think I’m seeking for a 'purpose’. Climbing the tower sounds fun, though I don’t know what I wanted when I reached the top yet”.

“I see”, Bam changes the subject. “then what do you seek in me?”

“huh?”

“you said you want to be my apprentice right? Why?”

“uh, that’s…because you’re strong, I want to be like you”.

“following me doesn’t guarantee you to be strong, you must train really hard to get it”.

“I know, I’ll do my best!”

- - - - -

“so you knew I’m Viole”.

“I’m a light bearer remember?”

“took you long enough”, Bam teased.

“the information was buried quite deep”, Khun defended.

“then…are you afraid of me?”

“no, why should I?”, Khun quickly replied, “you, a really great person and also one of the legends, watching over me from all people? I couldn’t think of anything better!”

- - - - -

“Mr.Bam!”, Khun is determined, “please be my mentor!”

“even when you’re aware that we’re in a different class? I’m a wave controller, I can’t teach you much about being a lightbearer, you know that”.

“but they’re a perfect combination right? Besides, you have the experiences and acquaintances”.

“I also have enemies you know?”

“that’s why I want to be stronger and fight with you!”

“…”, this Khun looks just like the younger him, full of passion and spirit. He can’t refuse that look, can he?, “it’ll be a very long path, are you sure?”

“yes!”

- - - - -

“did you make this yourself, Mr.Bam?!”, Khun exclaimed after tasting his pasta.

Bam nods.

“it’s so good! The best one I’ve ever tasted. Can you teach me?”

“sure”.

- - - - -

Bam uses his ability to heal Khun’s injury that he got on the training.

“oww”.

“when I said train really hard, I don’t mean this hard”, Bam can’t help but smile remembering his own training days when he passed out from exhaustion at least once a week, what an irony. Luckily Khun only got a few light scratches, so it’ll only take a few minutes to heal, “be careful next time”.

“…okay”.

- - - - -

Bam starting to get used to Khun and without realizing, their bond is getting stronger.

They’ve been together for almost 7 years and now on their way to the 23rd floor.

“you did a good job”, Bam patted his head.

“I’m not a kid!”

“but you like it, don’t you?”

“s-shut up!”, Khun blushed out of embarrassment because he’s being watched by his teammates right now, “don’t do that in front of them!”, Khun whisper-shouted at Bam.

Bam chuckled, “too late, they’ve seen it”.

Bam is close to all of his team members as well, seems like Bam slowly becomes not only their mentor but also a father figure, though none of them think of it that way…yet.

- - - - -

“Mr.Bam, I have a question”, Khun asked him.

“what is it?”

“the blue thing you always bring, what’s that?”

Bam gingerly took out the blue fabric from his pocket and unfolded it, “it’s…his. He once wore it as a hair tie”.

“oh…I see”, Khun recognized the pattern, “He must be really important to you”.

“yeah, he is”.

- - - - -

“I just realized you never called me by name, Mr.Bam”.

Bam just realized it as well, “uh…”

“that’s okay, you don’t need to”.

- - - - -

One of Khun’s teammates died on the test, Khun was quite close to her and he’s getting a bit down because of it.

Khun sat beside Bam and curled himself up. It’s not like him to be sad about it, but at the moment, he just needs someone to guide him through this new emotion.

“Mr.Bam, how does it feel to lost someone?”

“depends. If you don’t really know them, you might only be upset for awhile. But if you deeply care for them, it may feel even worse than the death itself”.

“you’ve experienced it right? the second one”.

“…yeah”.

“will the feeling ever go away?”

“I don’t know, I guess it won’t”, Bam confessed, “you just have to get used to it”.

“…I’m sorry. It must be hard for you too”.

They sat in silence. Khun is mourning for his late friend while Bam reminiscing about his own past.

They said death give meaning to life. By knowing everything didn’t last forever, Bam has came to appreciate every moments that he had experienced.

The happy and exciting moments, the harsh and tense moments, every laugh, every tears, every fight, every wounds that he shared, with them, with his friends and with both Khuns. Every one of them are precious, even the most painful one.

Now it’s time for him to reconcile with the past so he could live in the present.

“you know?”, Bam broke the silence, “it’s okay to be upset, you can mourn over her for as long as it takes and in any way you like. But remember to cherish every moments that life gives, don’t let your grief hold you back from the world around you”.

Khun processed the words for a moment, but he has yet to understand it. Even so, he smiled to appreciate Mr.Bam’s efforts.

Bam smiled back.

A moment passed.

“Mr.Bam”.

“hm?”

“may I ask what happened to. . .him?”

“…”

“I-I’m sorry, just forget it. You don’t have to answer—”.

“no, it’s okay. You deserve to know”, Bam prepares himself for the inevitable. “that time we were in the middle of a fight, the enemies were tough and we went on our separate ways. Then he…got hit pretty bad. I got his message and immediately went to his place, there’s blood everywhere, from both him and the enemies. He’d lost too much of his own that there’s no chance that he would survived, I was a little too late”. Bam went quiet for a moment as his vision began to blur.

Khun listened intently.

“we had a short talk, and that time I just realized how much he cared for me. Everything that he did since the beginning was all for me, to be with me, even when we disagreed on each other plan, in the end he always went with mine and did his best to make it succeed. I…regret that I realized his feeling far too late”, Bam looked away so Khun won’t see the tears that threatening to spill from his eyes. “I was too focused on gathering power to protect others that I forgot I also dragged my friends into the danger. I asked for too much that I ended up losing mine”.

A moment of silence before Khun finally decided to say something to ease the awkwardness.

“Mr.Bam, what was he like?”

“he’s…”, Bam stared at the distance, trying to remember his happy moments with him. “he’s smart but also cunning, a perfectionist and a bit manipulative when it came into planning. He always went with the most rational ways, really the opposite of me”, Bam smiled, “people might say he’s cold and heartless, but once you know him, you’d know that he cared. He’s my most trusted someone, my best friend”, Bam looks at Khun warmly, “he was just like you”.

“I remember Mr.Isu said you used to be the heart of your team, is that means he’s the brain?”, Khun joked.

Bam chuckled, “you could say that”.

- - - - -

They met Shibisu’s team on the way to the 36th floor, Rak is there too.

“it’s black turtle!”, cheered Rak.

“Bam!”, Shibisu greeted him, “you look…different, but in a good way”.

“really?”

“yes. Glad everything went well”, Shibisu smiled and gave him a few pats on the shoulder.

While Bam get to greet the others, Shibisu approached Khun who’s gathering with his teammates, “hey there”.

“oh, Mr.Isu, long time no see”, Khun greeted.

“I just want to thank you, for not giving up on him”.

“there’s no need, I’m the one who should thank you for helping me”.

“you’re welcome all the same”, Shibisu patted his head. “anyways, I heard from Bam that you’re all getting promoted to D-class regulars yesterday, how about I treat you guys tonight to celebrate it?”

- - - - -

“so he’s the new blue turtle?”

“turtle??”, Khun raised an eyebrow.

“he’s his own person, Rak”, Bam objected.

“I’ll still call him blue turtle though”.

- - - - -

“so Mr.Rak, are you a crocodile or an alligator?”, Khun asked him.

“…”, Rak stared at him in astonishment, “it’s really weird on how different and similar you turtles are”.

- - - - -

“let me get this straight. You’re not only knew Ms.Endorsi but you guys are also friends with her?!?”, said one of Khun’s teammates who’s a big fan of her, “my goodness, I’m so lucky to be here”.

“you want me to introduce you to her?”, Shibisu offered.

“yes please!!”

“don’t get your hopes too high tho, she might be different than what you think”.

- - - - -

“oh my! It’s-it’s really you!!”, he cheered, “m-may I get your sign p-please?”

“no”, Endorsi replied coldly.

“but—”

“when I said no then it’s a no”.

They can somehow hear his heart shattered.

Endorsi glanced around after finding no more interest on him, and Khun immediately caught her attention, “hm?”, she observed him more carefully, “wait, you seem familiar”, and then she looked at Bam, “ah!!”

“yeah, I get that a lot”, Khun chuckled, he’s starting to get used to it.

Bam covered his mouth to hide his amusement.

- - - - -

They continue their journey. While Rak stays with Bam, Khun and the others, they parted with Shibisu’s team because they have another business to attend.

Years passed, Khun and his team has grown stronger. Now they’re on their way to the 50th floor, just a few more floors left to where Bam once lived.

“Mr.Bam, we’re almost there right?”

“yeah”.

“are you…going to stay there once we arrived?”

“I guess so”.

“won’t you come with us?”

“you’re not kids anymore, you don’t need me to watch over you everytime”.

Khun couldn’t argue if Mr.Bam already made up his mind. And he’s also right, he can’t depend on him forever. Though he’s hoping that Mr.Bam can watch over him for a little longer.

- - - - -

“so this is it?”

Khun and the team arrived at the 53rd floor, along with Bam and Rak.

“Rak, could you show them where I live?”, Bam asked, “I have something to do”.

Rak understands. He knew that Bam needs some time for himself after years away from his 'home’, so he’ll help him to buy some time. “come, turtles! The leader Rak will show you the way!”

They all followed Rak. Well, except for Khun of course, who’s secretly following Bam out of his curiosity.

“you don’t need to hide”, Bam easily caught his act.

“sorry”, Khun came to walk alongside him, “so where are you going?”

Bam doesn’t need to answer him as they have reached the destination and entered a flower shop.

“welcome! Oh it’s you, long time no see”, the shopkeeper greeted him. “and who’s this?”

“I’m his apprentice”, Khun answered proudly.

“I see”, the shopkeeper smiled at Khun, she picked up a book called 'the language of flowers’ from the counter and handed it to him, “here, maybe you’ll be interested”. She returned her attention to Bam, “so what can I get you?”

“may I have a white stargazer lily with daffodils, a red rose and a sweet pea, please?”

“that’s new”.

“also, do you have pink tulips?”

“yes, let me pick them up”.

- - - - -

Such a peaceful face, as if he were sleeping. Mr.Bam was right, he looks just like him.

They stood in front of a grave which surface is covered with glass that allows them to see the inside quite clearly.

Bam kneels, he took the withered flowers off the nearby vase and replaced it with the one he bought. One red rose (love), a sweet pea (thank you, farewell/see you again) and daffodils (rebirth, new beginning).

Khun stays quiet and let Bam mourn for his late friend.

“I’m back. Thanks for waiting”, Bam whispered to himself. He could sit there all day, talking about the last few years when he was away, there’s so much he wants to tell him, but he decided to do it next time as right now Khun is with him.

Bam handed Khun a white stargazer lily (sympathy) for him to place it himself, “here, if you want to”.

Khun gladly took the lily and place it in the vase.

- - - - -

They went back to where his team were waiting. Rak was trying to make them busy and relieved when Bam came back.

“here, I bought you something”, Bam took the pink tulips and gave one to each of them, “it stands for good wishes”.

“so you really are staying Mr.Bam?”, they look dissapointed.

“yeah”, he’s also not willing to let them go, but “don’t worry, you’re welcome here anytime”.

- - - - -

The day before his team went to take the exam to the next floor, Khun came back to the flower shop.

“may I borrow the book you show me that day?”

“sure, go ahead”.

Khun picked up the book and began reading, he searched for the meaning he’s looking for and decided which flower he wants to buy. “do you have azalea?”

- - - - -

After they departed, Bam came back to his house and noticed the small new flower tree in his backyard, there’s also a note beside it that reads 'take care��. He smiled warmly.

Rak apparently, had gone with them as their guardian. Cause without realizing, he’s been attached to them as well.

Bam admits that he misses them already, but right now he needs some time for himself.

- - - - -

It’s indeed different without Mr.Bam, everyone in the team thinks so too.

Normally, after they successfully passed a test, Mr.Bam would gave every one of them a pat on the head and said “good job guys!”. Even if they can call him, it just doesn’t feel the same.

They also miss his cooking, nobody in the team can make dinner as good as him. Eating them after a hard day training has become their routine, it’s always boosted up their mood.

When there’s doubt, Mr.Bam always there to help them, even only to gave them company. They realized that he’s become the heart of their team as well.

And now everything’s different, but they can’t depend on Mr.Bam forever, it’s their chance to proof that they can stand on their own feets.

- - - - -

Bam spend his first few weeks mostly in the cemetery, he has a lot to talk about with.

Khun and the team call him once in a while, usually just to inform him on how they’re doing.

About one year later Shibisu and his team arrived at 53rd floor, they paid Bam a visit. They had a small party in his house, the first party after…well, after they got Bam back thousand years ago from workshop battle. Nothing much to mention though, mostly just absurdity, but at least they had fun. They stayed there for a month before leaving.

And Bam is back to his routine.

- - - - -

Khun and the others are on video call, “Mr.Bam, how are you?”

“I’m fine”.

“by the way, we’ve made it to 57th floor!”

“oh! congrats!”

“and the food here is quite good, I suppose you’ve tried it already but let’s eat together some time”.

“sure thing”.

- - - - -

Wangnan suddenly contacted Bam. He sent him a photo of Khun and his team with Rak nearby that he took secretly.

“V-viole, am I seeing this right?!”

“huh?”, Bam takes a closer look at the picture, “yeah”.

“b-but—, wha—?, how?! I thought—”

“no, he’s not him, if that’s what you’re asking”.

“huh??…hmm…ohh!”, it clicked, “that means you know them right?”

“yes”, Bam said somehow proudly.

“then I’ll go greet them”.

- - - - -

“Mr.Bam, can you please tell Mr.Rak not to be lazy?”, Khun complained.

“I’m not!”

“you eat bananas all day and always wake up really late, how’s that not lazy?!”

“you’re the one who should take it easy, you damn blue turtle! Don’t overwork yourself”.

“guys, come on”, Bam shook his head in amusement.

- - - - -

“I heard the floor you’re staying now isn’t really safe”, Bam contacted them, “be careful okay?”

“got it!”

- - - - -

“uhh Mr.Bam”, they’re on the call, “we met this strange ranker that you might know”, said one of them, “he also called you by your other name”, Khun added.

“I’m not strange”, Jinsung ha took over the call, “I’m just asking on how’s my Viole doing”.

“your Viole?”, they raised their eyebrows.

“a high ranker talking to us regulars is already strange, how did you know that we know Mr.Bam?”, one of them retorted.

“he’s my disciple, of course I know”.

“is that true Mr.Bam?”

“well, yea”.

“Viole never told you about me?!”, Jinsung looks dissapointed.

“uhh”, they try to avoid eye contact.

- - - - -

How long has it been? 3 years maybe. Khun and his team has reached 64th floor, time sure flies really fast.

“M-Mr.Bam!”, one of Khun’s teammates calls him in distress.

Bam quickly senses something’s wrong, “what is it?”

“it’s Khun—”

- - - - -

Bam didn’t think twice and immediately went to their place, it took him only 2 days to arrive.

Khun is lying on the bed, bandages covering all over his torso. His friends were also there, one in the room with Rak and the rest of them are on the balcony.

Bam slammed open the door, “Khun!”

“Mr.Bam?!?”, Khun didn’t expect him to be there.

Bam is thankful just to know Khun is alive, he sighed with relief. But still, “you scared me”.

“sorry”.

Bam uses his skill to heal him, but because his wound is quite severe, it’ll still needs time to heal.

Meanwhile, Khun wants to yell at whoever called Mr.Bam with 'didn’t I tell you not to call him?!’, but he keeps it to himself. Because since Mr.Bam is already here, he can’t ask him to go back, there’s no need for him to be mad anymore.

The room is quiet, Khun tries to think of something else to preoccupied his mind so that the pain won’t hurt too much.

Khun suddenly realized something, “by the way, Mr.Bam”.

“hm?”

“that’s the first time you called my name”.

- - - - -

“don’t move too much”, Bam warned Khun, “your wound hasn’t healed yet”.

But Khun is itching to move from his boring bed, he sighed and gave Bam a pleading stare.

“don’t give me that look, you know it’s for the best”.

- - - - -

“Mr.Bam, do I need to add the salt or the pepper first?”

“it doesn’t matter, the point is to make it tasty”.

“but I thought cooking has rules”, Khun is confused.

“it does. But it’s not as complicated as you think”.

- - - - -

Urek is with them, wearing a formal clothes with a bouquet of flowers on his hand, “how do I look?”

“great”.

“then, wish me luck, baby~!”

After he left, Rak whispered to Bam, “I bet ten bananas that the hopeless turtle gonna get rejected”.

Bam facepalmed internally, “are we seriously going with this again?”

- - - - -

“Bam!!”, Yuri approached him with outstretched arms, “how are you?”

“ah, Miss.Yuri”, Bam returned the hug, “I’m fine”.

Meanwhile in the distance, Evan has his attention on Khun, “huh? Aren’t you—”

“dead? Nope”, Khun quickly answered him, “did I know you?”

- - - - -

“so, what have you learned from Mr.Evan?”, Bam asked.

“should I explain it or demonstrate them instead?”, Khun said with a smug.

- - - - -

One day Bam suddenly had a weird feeling. It’s really rare for him to feel so…insecure, probably because he misses 'him’. He decided to have a short talk with Khun.

“what is it, Mr.Bam?”

“are you going to be okay on your own?”

“why did you ask? Are you feeling homesick?”

“not exactly, but you could say that”.

Khun gave him a smile, “I can take care of myself, don’t worry about me”.

- - - - -

Bam came back from his walk, he opened the door and shouted, “I’m back!”, like always. But no one answered, that’s odd. He took a few steps forward, “Rak?”, he shouted again, still no answer, “Khun? Everyone?”, the room is still quiet.

Then he stepped on something, a paper with an address written on it, there’s also a message on the back that make his stomach dropped. “meet me at the place I mentioned tomorrow unless you want them dead”.

- - - - -

Khun and his team were being kidnapped by someone who holds a grudge against Bam. After a long talk, they finally settled on a deal. In exchange for their lives, Bam took an unknown curse that condemned him to die in a few weeks.

Everyone hardly slept for days to find the cure. If they can’t find it soon, Bam has no other choice. He’s almost at his limit.

Unfortunately, despite how much time they spent, they still found nothing. Let alone on how to get rid of the curse, there’s not even a single mention about it.

“that’s enough guys, thank you for your hard work”, Bam spoke up, “there’s no need for that anymore”.

“are you giving up black turtle!?”, Rak couldn’t believe what he had just heard, “it’s not like you to give up that easily”.

“what can I say?”, Bam gave a halfhearted laugh as he rolled up his sleeve to reveal his arm, everyone who saw it could tell that they’re running out of time.

“I don’t want it to end like this!”, one of them cried.

“it’s not the end”, Bam reassured.

“there must be a way!”

Bam felt some kind of deja vu.

“Bam…”, Shibisu called him.

“?”

Shibisu turned his head to look at Khun who’s sitting in the corner, still fixed up on his lighthouse. Typing, searching, reading, anything to keep himself busy and pretend all of the conversations that he heard isn’t real.

Bam realized that Khun has been very silent for a long time, though he can understand what Khun might feel right now, it must be the same feeling of helplessness, just like that day.

Bam approached him and spoke softly, “you can stop now”.

Khun’s hands halted, he didn’t move an inch and keep staring at the screen.

“I’m sorry”, Bam apologized.

Khun’s eyes watered, he placed his clenched fists on his lap and bowed his head, trying not to breakdown.

“are you mad at me?”

Khun quickly shook his head. He isn’t mad at Bam, he’s mad at himself who can’t find a way to help him. He’s a lightbearer damn it, it’s his job to find informations to help his team. But he failed. His tears started falling down one after another.

Bam took a step forward and held him closer in an embrace. Khun quickly wrapped his arms tightly around him and started sobbing into his clothes.

“don’t cry”.

Khun shook his head again, how can he not cry at a time like this?! Khun hugs him tighter and buried his face deeper into him.

The room is quiet, Bam keep stroking his hair until he calmed down.

“I don’t mind dying as long as you’re safe”, Bam tries to reassure him.

“but I don’t want it if it means you won’t be here!”, Khun shouted his pent up frustration.

Bam is at a loss for words because he knew the feeling too well.

His teammates approached them one by one and Bam pulled them into a group hug.

“don’t leave us, Mr.Bam”, one of them cried.

“Mr.Bam… ”, they sobbed.

Bam closes his eyes and appreciate their warmth for the last time, “that day, I never thought that I’ll get the chance to experience happiness again. But you proved that I was wrong. The time that I spent with you are one of the best gift that life ever gave to me”, Bam smiled, “thank you”.

All of them breaking into tears, they hug Bam tighter and no one wants to let go.

They stay like that for a while before Bam pulled away from the hug and patted their heads, “take care, okay?”

“no, please don’t leave us”.

“Mr.Bam…”

Bam approached Rak and paused before him.

“black turtle…”, Rak is filled with so much emotions, he doesn’t know what else to say.

Bam kneels and pulled Rak into a hug, Rak immediately returned the gesture.

“don’t be sad, Rak. It’s fine”, but a tear trickled down his cheek because it hurts him to say goodbye. He felt his heart crumbles into pieces as he said, “it’s fine”, but even so, he smiles, “because, I can finally see him again”.

Rak tighten his hug.

“oh Bam…”, Shibisu instinctively went to comfort him.

They eventually pulled out from the hug. Rak didn’t say anything but anyone can tell that he’s upset, and so does Shibisu. They want to cry, to scream, anything that can prevent Bam to leave, but they know it won’t, so they hold their feeling back and keep themselves strong, for Bam and everyone else’s sake.

“Rak, Isu, take care. I’ll leave them to you”.

“of course!”

“you don’t have to ask”.

- - - - -

They were devastated. Not only Khun and his teammates, but also all of Bam’s close friends who’s got the unexpected news.

Meanwhile, Khun accidentally found an unfinished photo album in Bam’s work desk when he’s about to clean his room. He opened it out of curiosity.

Inside, there’s a photo when he and his team finally got promoted into D-class regulars, with a handwritten 'I’m proud of you!’ on the corner. A photo of them lying around on the ground full of sweat after a hard day training, with a handwritten 'keep it up!’

There’s also photos of them on their first cooking lesson, when they accidentally set the kitchen on fire. A photo when they had a sleepover after an exhausting day. Also a photo when they had a fight against each other over a silly thing. There’s even a photo of his late friend’s funeral.

Khun can’t help the tears that already streaming down on his face. He remembered that Mr.Bam once told him to cherish every moments that he experienced, because now he finally understood how valuable those moments are.

- - - - -

“Bam!”, a familiar blue haired man waved his hand in the distance.

Bam turned to look at him. Realizing who it is, he smiles brightly and came running to get him, almost knocking him off with a hug.

“I missed you!”, Bam burst into happy tears, “I missed you so much!”

Khun chuckled, “I missed you more”.

#tower of god #tog #bam #baam #khun #koon #25th bam #25th baam #khun aguero agnis #shibisu #ship leesoo #rak #rak wraithraiser #khunbam #koonbaam #bamxkhun #my art #fanfic #my fanfic

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keyaanthom91 · 4 years

Text

Cat Pee White Surprising Useful Tips

We have looked at how ridiculous this species is.With time, this action will stop urinating/territory marking after being neuteredThis leaves the pet feels that its behavior is acceptable to use.Many people are in some occasions, and grief follows after an animal's death due to the training.

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noel-byers · 5 years

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What monsters do you fight? || chapter O2

Chapter O1 • Chapter O2 • Chapter O3

Words: 1650

N/A: the girl in the gif with Noel is Melissa

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If there was a place where surely a girl was hiding to cry she was definitely under the terraces of the garden, where they usually played rugby matches. In fact, she was under the seat, with her knees on her chest and her shoulders clutching her bent head. I could hear his sobs and his breath trying to stifle his noisy cry. I slowly approached her and seeing that she still hadn't noticed my presence, I coughed putting both hands in my pockets. Melissa looked up and only then could I see her swollen and red eyes. That piece of shit had reduced it to a rag with a few but sharp words. "Cigarette?" I asked, taking the named item out of a pocket of my jeans.

"I...I don't smoke" she said, sniffling. Ah man that sucks the mucus.

"Better this way" I replied with a shrug. "You will ruin only your breath and your lungs. Smoke isn’t cool kid, unless you want to destroy yourself. Which is really cool” I said with a little irony as I tried to light my beloved cigarette.

A few moments passed in silence until Melissa said lightly to me "Did you see it all?"

"Yep" I replied immediately taking out a cloud of smoke from my lips "You don't have to fear anything, you won't lack respect next time" I said capturing the blonde's attention "It's an insult to the male gender to take it out on a woman when it's ten against one” I continued shaking my head.

"But he had all the reasons in the world, in short, look at me...I'm like all the girls...I thought to impress the bad boy of the school and take his best part out of him...but I just deluded myself" the girl explained, sniffing again.

"Listen to me, Melissa, first of all take my flannel shirt and blow that nose...my heart is crying to sacrifice my favorite dress but I don't have handkerchiefs, so blow your nose before I change my mind" I said handing her my shirt, which she immediately grabbed looking at me, puzzled but not refusing my order.

"You're really weird, ehm..." he stopped, looking into my eyes and making me realize that I hadn't introduced myself yet. I put the cigarette between my lips again and brought my hand closer to shake her in education.

"Noel, Noel Byers" she raised an eyebrow.

"Melissa Danielsen, as you will already know. Are you the sister of the missing child?"

"I would prefer you to call him Will, I'm sick of people cataloging him as a poor outcast" he said pulling up a heavy sigh "Going back to us, I know how you feel now, you'll surely be wondering what made you sell your virginity to that asshole of Billy Hargrove, and many other things that surely do not positively depict your person" Melissa nodded silently “Stop being so hard on yourself, you are young and in fact we are both young and in this adolescence we make so many mistakes" my cigarette, making her realize that as far as I was an employee I hated being under a stupid habit.

"The truth is that in the coming days people will stare at you, laugh at you and make you jokes of bad taste, and you don't have time to cry, you have to be strong, you have to growl and let the comments slip away that are not worth it to listen. Probably the same girls that Billy uses as a sex toy will tease you, but you don't listen to them, i mean, you know which pulpit the sermon comes from" I explained, sucking up some tobacco.

"Not forgetting that I will no longer have friends on my side..." Melissa commented disconsolately.

"And who the fuck am I? Santa Claus?" I asked slightly strangely "I almost blew the head of Billy Hargrove for you and probably because I'm a bit feminist. But first of all I did it for you” I concluded with a shrug.

"Thank you..." she replied with a small smile.

"And then, as strange as it may seem, I have a couple of friends too, and they certainly think like me" I continued to cheer her up letting an almost maternal smile show on my mouth "But now you raise your blonde ass, let's go to the bathroom to rinse your face, you blow your nose with real handkerchiefs and I'll walk you home, huh?” I suggested standing up with a jerk and pulling Melissa by the arm in a playful way, urging her to follow me and she choked and consented.

"All right, as long as you wash your mouth a little, hell, you smell obscene tobacco"

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By evening he had fallen on Hawkings and tonight we strangely breathed less heavy air in my house. It was probably because Bob had come to visit us. He and my mother had been dating for a couple of months and...God, I never saw my mother so happy. Seeing her joking, hugging and kissing with one who finally didn't mistreat her made me feel at peace with myself. Slowly my family was re-emerging from that dark and distressing oblivion, I felt that if they were still passing by a couple of months surely my family could have been called as such.

"What are your plans for the evening? Will you watch a movie?" I asked as I made my entrance into the kitchen, tying my hair into something not too high, Bob turned around and his camera automatically picked me up.

"You choose the boys the movie is evening. Do you, ma'am, have an appointment?" The man asked playfully, infecting me with his good humor.

"Tempting, but not. My shift starts at 8:20 pm and if I don't leave the house in ten minutes, I'll pay back my salary” I explained with a shrug “The only plus is the free hot dogs" I admitted attracting my mother's attention.

"Noel don't eat too many, do you remember that on Jonathan's birthday last year you had a colic and -"

"MUM! I don't want you to make a short film about my intestinal problems while Bob is back! "I answered, turning my face flushed as I ran away with my tail between my legs in my room, looking for my shoes.

I went through WIll's room and my attention was caught by his sudden raising of his voice.

"Stop treating me like that! Like I'm about to break. So don't you help me, just make me feel weirder" my exasperated younger brother said, it was obvious he was arguing with Jonathan.

It was difficult to take someone's part in these situations, I knew how Will could feel right now, he was scared and had suffered multiple traumas, including that of an apparent death. On the other hand, I also understood Jonathan, because it was also my own position, like that of anyone who wanted to help Will. To console some or give him moral support was like wandering in a minefield, you never knew if you could touch some sore point.

I remembered when I decided to sleep together with Will the night made me feel better, I knew that I could protect him, but now that he's growing up and kindly asked me to let him sleep alone, I realize how much my "safety" thought travels one way. As far as I could have been next to Will, there was nothing I could do to keep him from thinking about his mind, he was a demon that only Will could have fought.

"You're not weird" Jonathan said

"Yes I am, I am" replied our younger brother dryly. I looked at the figure of Jonathan who was about to give up, but then he came out with a sentence:

"You're right, you're weird" both my younger brother and I raised both eyebrows. "So why should you become normal like the others? Being weird is better, I'm weird. Our sister who has been staring at us for half an hour is weird” he said pointing to me.

"Hey nerd go easy" I said in an ironic tone, approaching Will's bed and occasionally pulled an ear to my big brother in a playful way.

"Is that why you have no friends?" Our little brother asked disconsolately.

"We have friends, and weird friends are the best. You don't need to have a hundred to feel cool, a couple is enough, because you know that you will remain faithful forever. And then we are creative, sensitive and original, in short, the best on the market" I explained to Will to encourage him, infuse he also had it, but it was obvious that in those dark moments the positives were difficult to see them.

"Then why are you always with me?"

"Because you are our best friend!" Jonathan immediately replied "And we prefer to be friends of Zombie Boy than of a trivial nullity. Do you understand me? In short, who would you like to be friends with? About Bowie or Rogers?" At that point Will almost shivered and shook his head with an amused smile.

"What Jonny wants to say is that normal people never do anything important in life, as Kierkegaard says, they are locked in their 4x4 box with a family and a job, thus continuing until the end of their days..."

"Oh my God the nerd has come, Will stuck your ears!" Jonathan said jokingly, pushing Will away, who had begun to show signs of little laughter.

"Come on idiots, it's important! In summary, it is always the people outside the lines who make the revolution and enjoy their lives properly" I explained hiding a laugh and pulling a small snort.

"What about Kenny Rogers?" Will asked ironically.

"Kenny Rogers? Oh I love Kenny Rogers!” Bob said suddenly, coming out of the corridor and suddenly I remembered that I was being late for work.

"Fuck! I love you guys, please, be good" I said, running off down the corridor.

"NOEL YOU ARE LEAVING WITHOUT SHOES" my mother shouted.

"Fuck the shoes!" I yelled back, turning back.

T O B E C O N T I N U E D . . .

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N/A: Hello everyone! This is a passing chapter, but it also seems right to give some space to noel and her character before making her interact with Billy. Thank you all for your support, you make me really happy. If you want to be tagged in the next chapter, please leave a comment and tell me what you think of the story, if you like 🌸🌺

Tag list:

@xxemoluverxx @sledgy14 @ellenna

#stranger things #stranger things imagines #stranger things imagine #stranger things aesthetic #stranger things gif #stranger things headcanon #stranger things preference #billy hargrove #billy hargove x reader #billy hargrove imagine #billy hargrove imagines

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autolovecraft · 4 years

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It was Asaph's coffin, Birch, but you always did go too damned far!

He confided in me because I was his doctor, and because he probably felt the need of confiding in someone else after Davis died. Armington, the lodge-keeper, answered his feeble clawing at the door. Davis left Birch that night he had taken a lantern and gone to the old receiving tomb. For the long-neglected latch was obviously broken, leaving the careless undertaker trapped in the vault, a victim of his own oversight. Why did you do it, Birch? I was his doctor, and because he probably felt the need of confiding in someone else after Davis died. The afflicted man was fully conscious, but would say nothing of any consequence; merely muttering such things as Oh, my ankles! He gave old Matt the very best his skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save the rejected specimen, and to use it when Asaph Sawyer died of a malignant fever. It was just as he had recognized old Matt's coffin that the door slammed to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before. Then the doctor came with his medicine-case and asked crisp questions, and removed the patient's outer clothing, shoes, and socks. He confided in me because I was his doctor, and because he probably felt the need of confiding in someone else after Davis died. He was merely crass of fiber and function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste. He gave old Matt the very best his skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save the stoutly built casket of little Matthew Fenner for the top, in order that his feet might have as certain a surface as possible. Then he fled back to the lodge and broke all the rules of his calling by rousing and shaking his patient, and hurling at him a succession of shuddering whispers that seared into the bewildered ears like the hissing of vitriol. He would not, he found, have to pile another on his platform to make the proper height; for the hole was on exactly the right level to use as soon as its size might permit. It was Asaph's coffin, Birch, and I believe his eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself.

Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had distinguished it from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph Sawyer.

Great heavens, Birch, and I believe his eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself. The boxes were fairly even, and could be piled up like blocks; so he began to compute how he might most stably use the eight to rear a scalable platform four deep. In this twilight too, he began to realize the truth and to shout loudly as if his horse outside could do more than neigh an unsympathetic reply.

The wounds—for both ankles were frightfully lacerated about the Achilles' tendons—seemed to puzzle the old physician greatly, and finally almost to frighten him.

I've seen sights before, but there was one thing too much here. Undisturbed by oppressive reflections on the time, the place, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. His drinking, of course, only aggravated what it was meant to alleviate.

Birch? He confided in me because I was his doctor, and because he probably felt the need of confiding in someone else after Davis died. I'll never get the picture out of my head as long as I live. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom, and in the crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground.

Birch. The moon was shining on the scattered brick fragments and marred facade, and the emerging moon must have witnessed a horrible sight as he dragged his bleeding ankles toward the cemetery lodge; his fingers clawing the black mold in brainless haste, and his body responding with that maddening slowness from which one suffers when chased by the phantoms of nightmare. Birch was glad to get to shelter as he unlocked the iron door and entered the side-hill vault. He had, indeed, made that coffin for Matthew Fenner; but had cast it aside at last as too awkward and flimsy, in a fit of curious sentimentality aroused by recalling how kindly and generous the little old man had been to him during his bankruptcy five years before. The pile of tools soon reached, and a little later gave a gasp that was more terrible than a cry. Fortunately the village was small and the death rate low, so that it was possible to give all of Birch's inanimate charges a temporary haven in the single antiquated receiving tomb.

He was oddly anxious to know if Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had chosen it, how he had chosen it, how he had been certain of it as the Fenner coffin in the dusk, and how he stepped on the puppy that snapped at him a succession of shuddering whispers that seared into the bewildered ears like the hissing of vitriol. I don't blame you for giving him a cast-aside coffin! Maddened by the sound, or by the stench which billowed forth even to the open air, the waiting horse gave a scream that was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling crazily behind it. It is doubtful whether he was touched at all by the horror and exquisite weirdness of his position, but the bald fact of imprisonment so far from the daily paths of men was enough to exasperate him thoroughly. After a full two hours Dr. Davis left, urging Birch to insist at all times that his wounds were caused entirely by loose nails and splintering wood. The light was dim, but Birch's sight was good, and he did not heed the day at all; so that he was reduced to a profane fumbling as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward the latch. After a full two hours Dr. Davis left Birch that night he had taken a lantern and gone to the old receiving tomb.

I'll never get the picture out of my head as long as I live. He was a bachelor, wholly without relatives. Clutching the edges of the aperture, he sought to pull himself up, when he noticed a queer retardation in the form of an apparent drag on both his ankles. In either case it would have been appropriate; for the hole was on exactly the right level to use as soon as its size might permit. It was generally stated that the affliction and shock were results of an unlucky slip whereby Birch had locked himself for nine hours in the receiving tomb of Peck Valley Cemetery, escaping only by crude and disastrous mechanical means; but while this much was undoubtedly true, there were other and blacker things which the man used to whisper to me in his drunken delirium toward the last.

He had, indeed, made that coffin for Matthew Fenner; but had cast it aside at last as too awkward and flimsy, in a fit of curious sentimentality aroused by recalling how kindly and generous the little old man had been to him during his bankruptcy five years before. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom. His drinking, of course, only aggravated what it was meant to alleviate. Then he fled back to the lodge and broke all the rules of his calling by rousing and shaking his patient, and hurling at him a succession of shuddering whispers that seared into the bewildered ears like the hissing of vitriol. There was nothing like a ladder in the tomb, and the overhead ventilation funnel virtually none at all; so that he was reduced to a profane fumbling as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward the latch. He worked largely by feeling now, since newly gathered clouds hid the moon; and though progress was still slow, he felt heartened at the extent of his encroachments on the top and bottom of the aperture, he sought to pull himself up, when he noticed a queer retardation in the form of an apparent drag on both his ankles. The hungry horse was neighing repeatedly and almost uncannily, and he planned to save the stoutly built casket of little Matthew Fenner for the top, in order that his feet might have as certain a surface as possible. And so the prisoner toiled in the twilight, heaving the unresponsive remnants of mortality with little ceremony as his miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course.

His thinking processes, once so phlegmatic and logical, had become ineffaceably scarred; and it was pitiful to note his response to certain chance allusions such as Friday, Tomb, Coffin, and words of less obvious concatenation. That he was not an evil man. Then he fled back to the lodge and broke all the rules of his calling by rousing and shaking his patient, and hurling at him a succession of shuddering whispers that seared into the bewildered ears like the hissing of vitriol. The day was clear, but a high wind had sprung up; and Birch was glad to get to shelter as he unlocked the iron door and entered the side-hill vault. It was just as he had recognized old Matt's coffin that the door slammed to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before. I'd hate to have it aimed at me! Great heavens, Birch, and I believe his eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself. He was the devil incarnate, Birch, and I believe his eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself. The light was dim, but Birch's sight was good, and he did not heed the day at all; though ever afterward he refused to do anything of importance on that fateful sixth day of the week.

Finally he decided to lay a base of three parallel with the wall, to place upon this two layers of two each, and upon these a single box to serve as the platform. You kicked hard, for Asaph's coffin was on the floor. Then the doctor came with his medicine-case and asked crisp questions, and removed the patient's outer clothing, shoes, and socks. The thing must have happened at about three-thirty in the afternoon. The boxes were fairly even, and could be piled up like blocks; so he began to compute how he might most stably use the eight to rear a scalable platform four deep.

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musical-in-theory · 5 years

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Dante’s Fever Dream

(Yeah this is basically what I’m turning in for my final paper. It’s not my best work, but whatever. It makes many, many references to Inferno. Please enjoy my suffering.)

Dante breathed heavily as he stumbled his way through the streets. He’d already been through several tough years, but it seemed that what little luck he’d had finally dried up. His head throbbed with pain. It pulsed with hunger so great that even the stomach was not enough to contain its own agony. No longer were there kind strangers passing him on the street with spare bread or meat. Only those whose eyes flitted away from his garish sight remained.

It seemed that his past had caught up to him once again. They found out about his exile just as every town before had. In each occurrence, Dante had to pack up his meager few belongings, look his wife in the eye, and admit his failure as a provider time and time again. His wife, who in looks and in demeanor reminded him of his lost love Beatrice, always met his eyes with a look of understanding and patience. However, even that look started to rot away into a budding contempt.

It was not his fault! He had done nothing to deserve these wretched conditions. He served his country. He shed blood in the name of peace. He worked in a position of power to honor those that had put him there. He looked in the face of oncoming tyranny and said no, only to be told that he had no say at all. For all his work, for all his justice he received banishment from his homeland. How could one claiming to be of holy nature do that which is so vile? Dante didn’t know.

On his journey through the streets, these thoughts overtook him. He couldn’t see the jagged quality of the stone that lied in front of him. He couldn’t see until it was too late. The ground came rushing up to meet him, and darkness swallowed him whole. His last thought as the waves of unconsciousness washed him away was, “Now what shall be my reward?” He next opened his eyes to a mountain, a guide, and the start of his own odyssey that would rival those of old.

What he didn’t know was that it was only his mind that traveled to that far away realm. His body still lied in the streets. The cobbled stone ground beneath him leached the little heat remaining within him. For all that he wrote of love, he was dying surrounded by none of it. That was until a lone man happened upon his fallen form.

Dr. Page had not expected to find an ill man at his feet on his day of rest, but lo and behold one was there. Call it divine intervention if the desire so arises, but he knew that he could not leave this man to die such an unbecoming death. He checked to see that he was still breathing or that blood still flowed through his veins. The healer found both signs present but growing weaker.

Being that he was a man of resolve and fast thinking, Dr. Page picked up Dante as carefully as he could and swiftly took him to his place of work not far from where the poet had collapsed. Many fellow healers were already there taking care of the patients that resided within the building. One such healer was able to help Page find an unoccupied bed in which to place his newest patient. Luckily, since so many of them were working late into the evening, Page could devote all of his attention into bringing health back into this poor man.

The first step was to reduce the fever that seemed to be stealing away the energy needed to keep him alive. He shouted for anyone who could to get him a cloth soaked with well water. The seasons were changing from autumn to winter, so the water was cold enough to get the job done. Soon enough, the cold rag was placed across Dante’s forehead.

The simple remedy was enough to at least stabilize him. Page had heard accounts before of men who had been on the brink of death only to be brought back. They said they saw a bright light but were pulled away from it at the last second. He could only guess that the man lying in front of him had just gone through something similar.

Page grabbed a nearby stool and dragged it over to the man’s bedside. It was most likely going to be a long night, and someone needed to keep watch. Not too long after the doctor had settled into a comfortable position, Dante began to mumble.

“Too scared. Too scary. Can’t make it. Turn back,” he muttered. It sounded like a delirious ramble. Page looked him over and decided that his soul must be restless. It was the only explanation he could think of for such unconscious conversation. He turned in his seat and walked away to find the only cure he knew.

“I do believe that you will find this to ease your troubled soul. Perhaps then you might wake up, and we can get you proper care, hmm?” Page said as he walked back with a book cradled in his arm. “This is one of my favorite poets. I hope it is to your liking.” With that he began to recite verses from the great poet Virgil.

After a short while Page put the poems down and sighed, “I do wonder who you might be. It is not often that we receive people unable to tell us their name. Might you be a poet like Virgil? Or perhaps just a farmer? You could be a man down on his luck, or possibly you have always been this way. I wish you would open your eyes and quench my curiosity. I have a great many questions. Do you have anyone that you care about, that you love? If so, they must be worried. I suspect that you have been gone from them for a long time now. I wish there was a way to tell them where you are.

Page chuckled a bit to himself. “Look at me. An old senile fool talking aloud to himself. It might be best for me to quit my rambles. All of these uncertainties can not be good for your rest. Too many questions of ‘perhaps’ and ‘might’ can make a man wary of choice, and to choose is one’s most important responsibilities in life. But I digress. You must rest my new friend. Those dark circles under your eyes shan’t go away on their own.”

He turned around to put away the poems, but a sudden jerk coming from the bed beside him caught his attention. Page turned back around, and his blood ran cold at what he saw. Dante’s body convulsed violently on the bed. His arms flailed with enough force that Page feared he would break his hand if it connected with anything solid.

The doctor shouted for help in containing him. Page clamped his hands around Dante’s forearms and held them down. A woman Page had worked with before rushed over and followed his lead. She grasped at his legs and tried to keep them still against the bed. She got kicked in the chest and arms a few times, but she eventually was able to gain a firm grip on his legs. She looked up at Page with fear filling her eyes, but he simply shook his head and watched Dante critically. They hadn’t ever seen something like this before and could only wait for it to be over.

Page was not normally scared by what happened in this building, but this case was certainly one that put him on edge. The weather didn’t help to ease him either. The wind howled with the coming of large storm. Tree branches scratched and scraped against the outer walls. Patients whimpered or wailed in fear of such strong winds. All of it together sent shivers up his spine. Dante was lucky to have been found when he was. Otherwise he would have been tossed around like a rag doll completely at the mercy of the wind.

Nearly four minutes later, Dante calmed down and was once more still. His breathing evened out, and Page believed that it might have been less shallow than it was before as well. He wiped the sweat off of his brow and replaced the rag that fell off of Dante’s forehead during his seizure. “Thank you Francesca. I appreciate the help, but you should return home now. It is getting late. I’m sure that your husband is awaiting your return.”

Francesca turned her face away from him. If he wasn’t mistaken, it appeared as though she was blushing. However he couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or shame. “I would not worry about him. He’s been away for a long time, and I do not know when he will come back. His brother is keeping me company at the moment, and he does not expect me to return home at a certain time. I can keep watch over this man tonight. It is you that should return home to your wife and rest. We will all need you at your best in the coming days if today is anything to go by.”

“Alright. But I expect you to come fetch me if something happens in the night.” Page gave Dante one last look and turned around to head out the door. His home wasn’t too far from the building, so the storm wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Still he knew to be careful with his footing.

The rain bore down upon him. It hit hard against his skin and caused the dirt beneath his feet to turn to mud. His steps began to stick on the ground and impede his progress. While most of his focus was on reaching his home, some rogue thoughts drifted back toward the hospital. He hoped that the roof would hold up against this barrage, but he knew better than to think that it would be spared of at least of few leaks. Most likely his newest patient would feel the droplets fall upon him. Page was almost grateful. Maybe the cold rain would help with the fever.

He made it back to his home safely and greeted his wife. After eating a meal she had prepared, they both meandered off to bed. The next morning, Page rose as the sun did and gathered his things to return to his work. He hoped that everything and everyone would be as he left them once he got there.

He walked through the doorway and locked his eyes immediately onto the bed that held Dante. Francesca was still attending to him, although she looked worn down greatly. Her hair seemed to stick up at every odd angle, and her shoulders sagged as if she were carrying weights upon them. She was holding a bowl to Dante’s lips and tipped it toward the sky.

Page walked briskly over to the pair and used his index finger to push the bowl down to a less steep angle. “Careful Francesca. This man appeared to have been starving for a great amount of time. Giving him too much at once is sure to have the opposite effect than what you want. Moderation is surely key in this instance, yes?” Francesca nodded curtly and took away the bowl from Dante’s mouth.

It was then that Page noticed the script laying on the table near the bed. Squinting a bit, he could see that it was a collection of Greek myths. Francesca noticed him and said hurriedly, “Oh I saw that you were reading to him before, and I thought that you would want me to do the same. I have a hunch that he was a literary man at one point and would enjoy some of the great classic tales of old.”

Page laid a hand on her shoulder and gazed at her with kindness in his eyes. “You did well, young one. Now go home and sleep. You can not expect to heal others when you are not healthy yourself.” Francesca nodded again and made her way out the door.

“Well, my friend, you are taking quite a bit of time on your journey toward health. I shall try to be here every step of the way.” Page smiled down at him and resumed his position keeping watch over his patients. “Perhaps I might even write of your strange situation. Can you imagine?”

(Thanks for reading. I am dead. They don’t call it hell week for nothing.)

#Dante's divine comedy #writing in theory #finals

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. You. Smug. Bitch.

by Dan H

Thursday, 05 February 2009Dan deals with That Woman again~

A quick mea culpa, added 20.09.09: A random anonymous troll picked me up yesterday on the title of this article - okay they actually picked me up on "whining" so I suspect they were just an outraged fanboy, but they were actually quite right that reaching for gender-specific insults as a first recourse in an argument with a woman, even one you're not actually talking to, is not okay. I'm leaving the title as it is, because I don't think you should try to cover these things up, but I do actually regret the choice. It's a rather nasty silencing tactic, and it shouldn't have been my first instinct.

While Kyra was writing her review of the insestimably worthy On The Jellicoe Road, a genuinely moving book about love and pain and hope, I was reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a genuinely infuriating book about what a great writer JK Rowling is.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a mercifully short collection of “stories” the sole function of which is to provide JK Rowling with a vehicle to have Albus Dumbledore suck her children's book cock.

Want to hear more? Here's a quick summary of the stories:

The Wizard and the Hopping Pot

Summary: Good Wizard helps Muggles with magic. When he dies, his bad son decides not to help the Muggles, the good Wizard's magic pot starts jumping up and down and annoying the crap out of him, so he eventually gives in and helps the Muggles.

Cheap point scoring: Notice that while the hero of this story is the Good Wizard who helps Muggles with magic, and that the villain is his selfish son who refuses to help Muggles with magic, that in fact the Wizards in the world of Harry Potter never so much as think about using their magic to help anybody with anything (often including themselves – see “but why didn't they cast ...” moments passim ad nauseam).

Favourite Lines: “'Begone,' cried the son. 'What care I for your brat's warts!'”

Dumbledore Apologia: Rowling uses the first set of Dumbledore's notes to introduce us to two straw men who will remain with us throughout the book. The first is Brutus Malfoy who (along with many other “Muggle Haters” tried to suppress the story of the Wizard and the Hopping Pot because it was “Pro Muggle”. Because these books are about

tolerance

get it? The second figure that Rowling invents to make herself look good is Beatrix Bloxom who “believed that

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

were damaging to children because of ... their unhealthy preoccupation with ... death, bloodshed, wicked magic ... and eruptions of the most disgusting kind”.

Do you see? Because JK Rowling writes really dark, books where dark things happen in dark ways, and some people just can't

take

that.

The Fountain of Fair Fortune

Summary: Three witches and a Muggle knight travel to the Fountain of Fair Fortune, which can reverse all your misfortunes. One of the witches is terminally ill, the other is extremely poor, the last is heartbroken. The Knight is just a Great Big Loser. They face perilous quests, get to the top of the hill, and discover that It Was The Journey That Was Important. It turns out that The Fountain Isn't Magic After All. The knight marries the heartbroken witch.

Cheap Points Scoring: What the fuck? One of those chicks was suffering from an

incurable fucking illness

. You don't just make that sort of thing go away with positive thinking.

Favourite Lines: “The sky was rent with the first ray of the sun.” “The crowd surged forwards, each of them shrieking their claim for the Fountain's benison.”

Dumbledore Apologia: The Muggle-Haters tried to have it banned again! (Lucius Malfoy this time, because a witch marries a Muggle at the end). But Dumbledore was like, no way man, because people should totally be allowed to marry Muggles if they want to. I'm so glad that JK Rowling is presenting these thoughtful, incisive comments on the nature of racism to the British youth.

The Warlock's Hairy Heart

Summary: Actually this one's alright, because it's essentially ripped off from other, better fairytales and doesn't have anything to do with the Harry Potter mythos. Warlock cuts out his heart, tries to marry a hot chick for prestige, she asks him to put his heart back in, he does but it's gone TOTALLY EVIL and he kills her, then himself.

Cheap Point Scoring: Not from the text of the story, but Rowling takes pains to note in her introduction that the maiden in this story is the one exception to the rule that “Beedle's witches are much more active in seeking their fortunes than our fairy-tale heroines”. Becaues JKR is a FEMINIST. You can tell by the huge numbers of well realised, empowered female characters who get things done on their own behalf in the Potter books.

Favourite Lines: “Though many a maiden was intrigued by his haughty mein, and employed her most subtle arts to please him, none succeeded in touching his heart. The warlock gloried in his indifference and the sagacity that had produced it.”

Dumbledore Apologia: Dumbledore first of all tells us that the whole “removing your heart” thing isn't possible in the Harry Potter world. We had already worked this out because it was kinda cool, and Harry Potter magic sucks donkey balls. Then of course he goes on to tell us that this story is all about love love love love love love love. Because I don't know if you caught it, but the power of love was what the Harry Potter series was all about. That and tolerance. And death. Gosh they were a profoundly complex series of books.

I should also add that Dumbledore's explanation of this story is particularly heavy handed: “And sure enough in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent into beasthood. He is finally reduced to a violent animal who takes what he wants by force, and he dies in a futile attempt to regain what is now forever beyond his reach – a human heart.”

Okay I know I was keeping these summaries short but what the

fuck

. I mean, I know JKR was always keen to have people interpret her work correctly, but even I never thought she'd be this blatant. I mean she is literally, literally having Albus Dumbledore tell you how to interpret the story. Literally. Fuck.

Babbitty Rabbity and her Cackling Stump

Summary: Stupid king wants to learn magic. Hires a conman to teach him. Conman gets Babbitty Rabbity to do magic so that the King thinks it's him doing it. This all goes wrong when the King tries to use magic to bring back a dead dog, because death is srs bzns in Harry Potter, oh yes. So Babbitty Rabbity runs away, and then threatens the King with a curse which makes everything better. Oh by the way, witches are being persecuted in this story because it is teh burnining tiemz!

Cheap point scoring: Babbitty Rabbity and her Cackling Stump is mentioned in Deathly Hallows. Were I feeling cheap, I'd suggest that Rowling wrote this completely fucking nonsensical story because having stuck herself with the title, she couldn't think of a remotely sensible way to make it work. I mean really “Babbitty Rabbity”.

Favourite Lines: “Seeking a vent for his fear and anger, the charlatan approached the window of Babbitty the washerwoman.”

Dumbledore Apologia: Dumbledore, of course, insists that this pile of nonsense involving stupid kings, fraudulent magicians and the like is all about

the tragic and irreversible nature of death

. This set of Dumbledore Apologia is particularly hilarious because it's basically a venue for JK Rowling to say “death is totally irreversible in my books, even though you can talk to dead people, and they can come back as ghosts, and portraits of them possess all the features which they had in real life, and are capable of experiencing all the feelings and emotions that person would in real life, death is still

totally overpoweringly important

in this world”.

I'm going to digress again, but the more JK tries to explain the whole death thing, the more stupid it sounds. No magic can bring somebody back from the dead. Okay, the mirror of Erised can show you your dead parents, but that's not bringing them back. Okay, your dead parents can appear out of a wand, and talk to you and give you messages from the other side, but that's still not bringing them back. And okay the dead literally watch over you in this world. And okay, magical artefacts exist which allow you to literally see the dead people who are literally watching over you. And okay, there are ghosts. And okay, if a portrait is made of a dead person you can talk to that person exactly as if they were still alive, and they'll have all the thoughts, feelings, and memories of the dead person, and you can talk to them every day, and they can express pride in your triumphs and console you in your failures, and they can make independent decisions, but that doesn't mean you can bring people back from the dead, oh no. Death is

final

in this world. So final that once you're dead you certainly can't show up and have long conversations with people in imaginary train stations. Oh wait.

Basically the prohibition against bringing back the dead in the Potterverse is like that business with the British Sausage in that episode of Yes Minister. You can have your dead relatives about talking to you and walking around all you like as long as you don't say they're back from the dead, it's okay. The moment the “B from the D” label gets put on somebody, they become a hideous twisted abomination created by a man's foolish desire to cheat nature.

The Tale of the Three Brothers

Summary: See

here

Cheap point scoring: See

here

Favourite Lines: “It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son.”

Dumbledore Apologia: See

here

and

here

Conclusion

In short,

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

sucks whatever unfortunate item or items you might care to present to it. It's written in this faux-Brothers Grimm style which sounds like a nine year old's first attempt at creative writing. Of its hundred and eight pages only fifty-six are taken up with the actual stories (including illustrations) the rest being Rowling's self-serving introduction and “Dumbledore's notes”.

Like everything JK Rowling wrote after

Prisoner of Azkaban

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

fails on pretty much every level. It's not a book of children's stories. Fairytales and folklore can't

deliberately created, not even by the world's best-selling novelist. No child is actually going to grow up listening to the story of the Fountain of Fair Fortune.

Ultimately, TToBtB is not about the tales themselves, it's about Dumbledore's notes. It's about providing with yet another way to tell her readership, directly, what they are supposed to think about love, death, the relationship between Wizards and Muggles, and of course about Albus Dumbledore and the Harry Potter books.

I rather suspect that her next published work will simply be a single note saying “having read this, you feel that you better understand the nature of love, sacrifice, and mortality.”Themes:

J.K. Rowling

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Young Adult / Children

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~Comments (

go to latest

)

Wardog

at 18:17 on 2009-02-05Quite frankly anyone who uses the word "benison" in cold blood deserves everything they get.

Seeking a vent for his fear and anger, the charlatan approached the window of Babbitty the washerwoman

Hello there, I'm seeking a vent for my fear and anger...

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Arthur B

at 19:45 on 2009-02-05Happy Christmas!!!!!!!

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http://rudecyrus.livejournal.com/

at 22:26 on 2009-02-06Man, Rowling really loves alliteration and rhyming words.

Can Dumbledore just go away already? We've spent more than enough time with the old coot.

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Wardog

at 10:53 on 2009-02-09Y'know, I think it says something about the nature/quality of your Xmas present to your good friend, Dan, that you had to also give him a

fighting fantasy book

make up for it

. =P

By the way, Rudecyrus, I've noticed a couple of comments from you scattered around the place - welcome :) I think an over-reliance on alliteration and rhyming words are yet more evidence of a mediocre author struggling to replicate a fairytale style in most superficial way way possible. Sigh.

Isabel, I'm so sad about President Roslin -

spoiler spoiler spoiler

When I thought she was dying of cancer, I was actually really into her - in that context, her semi-saintly and infalliable moral compass actually worked really well for me. For the first season and a half of BSG she was actually one of my favourite female characters on TV, like, ever - I loved the fact she was strong and vulnerable, compassionate and ruthless, and generally just a strong women in a position of power and responsibility. But then she kind of didn't die and from that moment on I completely lost faith in BSG as a whole, and the character alongside it. BSG still really upsets actually because until that exact episode (Epiphany - it is branded on my memory) I thought it was one of the best shows I had ever seen. There were problems associated with it than just Roslin, of course, but the conclusion of that arc was indictative to me.

Generally I start to hate characters when they stop being characters and start being mouth pieces for the author - like Dumbledore and, I have to say, Sam Vines and Vetinari by the latter Discworld books...

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Arthur B

at 10:59 on 2009-02-09The FF book was for Dan. Beedle the Bard was really for FB. :D

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Sister Magpie

at 17:03 on 2009-02-11

The Muggle-Haters tried to have it banned again! (Lucius Malfoy this time, because a witch marries a Muggle at the end). But Dumbledore was like, no way man, because people should totally be allowed to marry Muggles if they want to.

Oh man, really? For some reason of all the notes this is the most egregious. Too bad it wasn't a Wizard who married a Muggle man. That would get left out for not having anything to do with the story.

Isn't there also a thing that says these were supposed to have been translated from the ancient runes by Hermione? Which makes me think Hermione's a really poor translator, but also wonder why fairy tales were ever supposed to be written in ancient runes. But I only heard that second hand, so maybe I'm wrong there.

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Arthur B

at 18:35 on 2009-02-11

Given that she did the translation (if I remember right) in the middle of

Deathly Hallows

, this would imply that Dumbledore either:

a) Wrote his annotations in ancient runes for shits and giggles, rather than producing a proper translation himself - which you'd think he'd do, given that he seems to think it's important that these stories are told.

b) Dictated his commentary from beyond the grave.

c) Secretly survived the series and rode to the Moon on Hagrid's motorbike waving a middle finger at the audience and yelling

Fuuuuuuuck yoooooooou suckeeeeeeeeeeeeeers

, leaving behind reams of commentary on the writings of the Great Rowling.

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Dan H

at 11:35 on 2009-02-12

Isn't there also a thing that says these were supposed to have been translated from the ancient runes by Hermione?

Yes, they were. A poster on Death to Capslock did point out that this actually makes the really awful style make more sense (because if *anybody* would use the word "benison" in cold blood, it'd be Hermione). And of course since "Hermione" is really JKR's self-insert, it sort of fits anyway.

As for the runes: surely you know that *everything* was written in Runes in Olden Times.

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Rami

at 16:38 on 2009-02-13Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the entire point of runes was that they were easy to carve into solid surfaces like stone or metal? So were these tales supposedly engraved into stone slabs, like the Ten Commandments Of Worshipping The Great Rowling?

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 23:16 on 2009-02-19At this point, I'm mostly interested in the HP books as source material for fanfiction. Alas, BtB doesn't seem to have much potential in that respect...

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Wardog

at 12:37 on 2009-02-20Well, not unless you want to ship Albus Dumbledore / JK Rowling

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 13:24 on 2009-02-21Hee. I wonder if anyone has ever written that...

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Arthur B

at 00:19 on 2009-04-07

JK Rowling reads Beedle the Bard at the spouses of world leaders.

What I want to know is what terrible ransom the G20 paid Rowling to get her to let the hostages go. Are we looking at the world's first fantasy author with a nuclear arsenal?

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/tjLTVHEducFb4rKDHU5DukBHtQcCbTVMEEq55v0CxV4-#5e156

at 12:54 on 2009-08-09Hm I don't think guys who are ruthless enough to become leaders care for their spouses wellbeing that much.

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Viorica

at 01:57 on 2009-11-23Having stumbled upon this article by the miracle of the random generator, I do have to defend Rowling on one point. The crazy woman who thinks that these stories are unsuitable for kids due to their darkity dark darkness is probably a parody of Laura Mallory and her ilk as much as it is an advertisement for JKR's infinite wisdom.

I actually read a series of (fanfic) stories about Hermione telling Ron about Muggle fairytales, and Ron trying to puzzle out their logic. Unfortunately, I've lost the link . . .

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Rami

at 06:09 on 2009-11-23

probably a parody of Laura Mallory and her ilk

Er, Laura Mallory? Who's that?

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Dan H

at 11:01 on 2009-11-23

The crazy woman who thinks that these stories are unsuitable for kids due to their darkity dark darkness is probably a parody of Laura Mallory and her ilk as much as it is an advertisement for JKR's infinite wisdom.

Like Rami I've never heard of Laura Mallory, but yeah, I do get that the HP books have come under attack from people who insist that The Children Must Be Protected.

The problem is that Rowling *also* likes to deny (implicitly rather than explicitly) the existence of other works of children's literature which are *far* darker, *far* more mature and *far* more disturbing than her own. There's a kind of recieved wisdom grown up in the last few years that JKR is some kind of benchmark for the handling of serious themes in Childrens' books.

I actually read a series of (fanfic) stories about Hermione telling Ron about Muggle fairytales, and Ron trying to puzzle out their logic. Unfortunately, I've lost the link . . .

Oh come on, how OOC is that. Since when has Hermione *ever* shown an interest in her Muggle heritage...

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Arthur B

at 13:56 on 2009-11-23Google tells me that Laura Mallory is the person who claimed that the culture fostered by

Harry Potter

books pressures people into joining Wicca and causes school shootings. Best sources I can find for her views are a

carefully-written Daily Mail article

of the "we're giving this person coverage because she's crazy, but we're not going to call her crazy to her face" variety, and an

Encyclopedia Dramatica

writeup (watch out, potentially NSFW banner ads).

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Rami

at 16:35 on 2009-11-23

Oh come on, how OOC is that

Just want to confirm -- I'm guessing OOC == Out Of Canon?

Best sources I can find for her views are a carefully-written Daily Mail article

Hehehe, carefully written Daily Mail article.

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Arthur B

at 16:38 on 2009-11-23

Just want to confirm -- I'm guessing OOC == Out Of Canon?

I'm guessing either that or Out of Character...

Hehehe, carefully written Daily Mail article.

Well, written with sufficient care to make sure she doesn't notice they're making fun of her. Not written with sufficient care to make the reader not feel talked down to. ;)

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Rami

at 16:55 on 2009-11-23

I'm guessing either that or Out of Character...

Seriously, people, the TLA namespace is crowded enough already ;-)

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/gNLVidA.xeLuPiOU_2B_USM.HYNFjA--#b0b6b

at 15:13 on 2010-08-26Hi there, hope you don't mind a late and admittedly ranty comment. I only just got around to reading Beedle, and by god you're right: it is so smug and sanctimonious and badly-written and just plain

infuriating

I actually detested The Warlock's Hairy Heart a bit more than the others. In all her gushing and spewing about how wonderful and almighty Love is, through this story (maybe not so much in the actual HP series) JK seems bent on specifically endorsing the heterosexual, happy-ever-after 2.3 kids and a white picket fence kind.

It seems so because, at the outset, this baddie does nothing remarkably bad beyond deciding that the life and duties of a husband and father are not for him. But by the story's logic, this points him towards the Dark Arts and *

wham

* - he has become a SERIOUSLY EVIL WIZARD.

Later in the story when the Warlock reinstalls his heart and cosies up with the witch, his feelings are described in unmistakably sexual terms - like his being suddenly aware of the witch's smooth, silky skin and all that. This is what the reader is expected to recognise as Love.

But of course there's no change possible for Dark Wizards: he goes and kills the girl, because

of course

he was just repressing himself all these years, and everyone knows that abstinence turns people into the most horrible sexual deviants.

While Dumbledore's commentary on this story is as unenlightening as usual (his powers of literary analysis do not impress me, and neither does his deep familiarity with a single quote by Alexander Pope), it does perhaps become a bit interesting when you consider it against Dumbledore's own non-heteronormativity and brush with the Dark Side. As you've pointed out elsewhere, it seems quite clear that the two go hand in hand in Rowlingland. It also becomes apparent that Dumbledore is a flaming hypocrite.

We might make concessions for Beedle himself, who was writing in a different era, and for all we know maybe wizards traditionally had no role for celibates in their culture. But for Dumbledore to esteem Beedle's late-Medieval values as some sacred, universal truth frankly boggles the mind. Jodel on the Red Hen website writes viciously about the gaping lack of a sense of history in the Potterverse, and to me it shows here very starkly indeed.

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Dan H

at 15:26 on 2010-08-27I was okay with the Warlock's Hairy Heart as a fantasy archetype (although you're right that in the context of Rowling's wider worldview it's annoying).

What're Jodel's articles? There's a whole lot of stuff on the Red Hen and I thought I'd take a look, but can't find the article you mention here.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/gNLVidA.xeLuPiOU_2B_USM.HYNFjA--#b0b6b

at 07:58 on 2010-08-28Yeah, I see what you mean. I guess what gets to me is that the whole hairy heart thing ought to be recognisable as a fairy tale archetype, but instead it comes across as Family Values being hammered over the reader's head.

The article I'm referring to is

The History of Magic

. Rather long, but very interesting stuff.

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http://ipslore.livejournal.com/

at 00:54 on 2011-06-03'Fairytales and folklore can't be deliberately created, not even by the world's best-selling novelist.'

'Oh,' says Neil Gaiman. 'A challenge.'

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Arthur B

at 08:29 on 2011-06-03Neil Gaiman,

creating

folklore? I think you need to look again. ;)

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Michal

at 00:42 on 2011-10-13

Fairytales and folklore can't be deliberately created, not even by the world's best-selling novelist.

Ahem,

Ruth B. Bottingheimer disagrees.

So does Suzanne Magnanini.

(On whether fairy tales can be deliberately created, that is. I don't think either would give much merit to J.K. Rowling). Both books were assigned for my Fairy Tale & Folklore class back in uni.

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Shim

at 07:24 on 2011-10-13I'd be interested to know what fairy tales are actually discussed (the only one I saw mention of was "Puss in Boots", which I'm not sure I quite consider a fairy tale for some reason.

Anyway, without reading the books I'm not sure if they do actually disagree, but if they did I would disagree back. I mean sure, many traditional stories, including many fairy tales were deliberately invented out of whole cloth, rather than developing from fragments through many different storytellers. But when those authors were writing them, were they actually deliberately creating fairy tales, in the sense we think of them, or just writing stories? I mean a fairy tale to us is quite a specific thing and a bit hard to define; they're fantastical but not just fantasy, they have certain types of characters and roles... lots of things written around that time are probably not considered fairy tales (bet there's loads of stuff in Grimm's nobody cares about). And I'm not convinced the category of "Fairy Tales" existed in the same way at in the 16th century. I would expect that they were really just writing stories, and somehow some of those stories came to be what we now call Fairy Tales. It's a case of evolution over centuries. Whereas someone sitting down now, in a completely different literary environment, where authorship is known and protected, and you can't easily reuse someone else's material and change it about, and it hasn't had a few hundred years to get filtered and adapted... surely they're just writing a story. It's like the old "mythology as fantasy" "Beowulf as fantasy" thing.

It just strikes me as being like trying to invent a national pastime or traditional song. You might invent something popular, but the way things achieve those particular statuses is arbitrary, mysterious and impossible to control. Also it takes a long time.

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Orion

at 07:59 on 2011-10-13But the flaw with the "Beowulf as Fantasy" meme isn't just that Beowulf is old; it's that it's largely uninterested in the things fantasy books are interested in and not addressed to the same audience. You can point to a great many differences in function between a quasi-oral poetic epic and a strictly literary prose fantasy.

I'm not confident a similar gap exists between "stories about fairies written for print by individual Europeans from a few centuries ago" and "stories about fairies written for print by individual Europeans today"

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Arthur B

at 08:59 on 2011-10-13But fairy stories created by authors for print are an exception, the likes of Andersen and Morris arising as a response to collections like Grimm's which collected together stories originally recounted as an oral tradition. And only a very few fairy stories cooked up from whole cloth for print - most of them Andersen's - ended up feeding back into the oral tradition. (Chances are you didn't read Andersen's original text when you were little, you listened to someone paraphrasing them.)

And the point that I think Dan was trying to make in the article is that you can't artificially design something specifically to make that jump from being a story printed in a book to a part of an oral tradition retold and paraphrased and adapted by storytellers for generation after generation. The fact that Andersen's stories managed it was in many ways an incredible fluke; the prospect of Rowling's stories doing it is remote, not least because there's very little reason to be interested in them unless you've already got hooked on Potter.

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Michal

at 18:31 on 2011-10-13Shimmin, I hate to say "now that you put it that way", but...now that you put it that way, I'm not sure those books disagree, either. The audience for Straparola and Basile was not the same as the perceived audience for fairy tales in the 19th century, though you could argue that they were at least attempts at imitating oral traditions (namely, the

1001 Nights

). I think we can blame hyperbolic book-jacket blurbs for this one, since both books contest the original source of what would become fairy tales read to children; neither claims that this was what the authors deliberately set out to write.

(In regards to authorship,

Wikipedia

surprisingly has a good list of what made it from Straparola's

Facetious Nights

into

Grimm's Fairy Tales

. For anyone who cares,

the entirety of Facetious Nights is available online.

And if you want to see what fairy tales are discussed in

Fairy Godfather

and

Fairy-Tale Science

, Google books has a partial preview you can take a look at.)

The point about fairy tales today is also a good one, since the term

pretty ill-defined. I hauled out my

Spells of Enchantment

collection (edited by Jack Zypes, who's the big name in fairy tale scholarship and all) and its got stuff from Aurelius to Straparola to Voltaire to George Macdonald to Lord Dunsany (and even Jane Yolen!), which seems maybe a

bit

too large a net.

I hae no desire to read

Beedle

, since I didn't even like

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

back when I was 11 and I don't submit myself to books I know I'll hate. Maybe someone could fill me in: what does J.K. Rowling claim? Is it just a background book going "here's the folklore traditions of a world I created", or is she actually deliberately saying "this is a book you should read to children, with helpful notes in case your kid misinterprets what I wrote?"

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Michal

at 18:34 on 2011-10-13Side note: despite the title of her book, Magnanini seems to prefer the term "wonder tale"for what she's talking about.

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Dan H

at 18:57 on 2011-10-13

Maybe someone could fill me in: what does J.K. Rowling claim? Is it just a background book going "here's the folklore traditions of a world I created", or is she actually deliberately saying "this is a book you should read to children, with helpful notes in case your kid misinterprets what I wrote?"

I'm not sure she claims anything, which I think is sort of the problem.

When I said "Fairy-tales and folklore can't be deliberately created" (which was, I freely admit, a poor choice of words - as a couple of pointed out Hans Christian Andersen managed to do exactly that, and a lot of fairy stories do in fact have a specific author) I think what I meant (and it was a long time ago now) was that you can't sit down in the present day and write an original story which will be read by a modern audience in the same way that they would read a story passed down to them as traditional, unless you deceive your audience about the story's origins (what I actually said implies something stronger - that no consciously authored story can become traditional, and that clearly isn't true).

Beedle the Bard doesn't work as children's stories, because the stories only make sense in the context of the Harry Potter books, and the Dumbledore's Notes sections are as much part of the text as the actual stories (this also raises questions about how the book is supposed to be read - a book of fairy tales can be read in any order, whereas ToBtB seems designed to be read straight through).

The book is probably best viewed as a simple tie-in. It's not supposed to be enjoyed for itself, it's supposed to be enjoyed as a companion to the series, the pleasure of reading it comes almost entirely from recognition of familiar concepts from the Potter books. It's like Quiddich Through the Ages and Magical Beasts and where to find them, it's all about the novelty of somebody producing a "real" version of an in-world text.

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http://gx1080.livejournal.com/

at 21:59 on 2011-10-13That "History of Magic" article seems like a very long way of saying:

"The protagonists do the exact same shit that the bad guys do and they are never are called on their hypocrisy"

Which sounds like yet another fall of hack writing.

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Sunnyskywalker

at 22:41 on 2011-10-13There is certainly a lot of that in the Potter books and the Red Hen article. That, and "the wild guesses the protagonists make about some people a thousand years ago based on a few scraps of hearsay should be considered factually correct and not missing any essential details." Mixing up what the characters could reasonably be expected to know and understand accurately with what the author knows about the backstory, and expecting readers not to notice the difference: also hack writing.

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Andy G

at 23:51 on 2011-10-13Anyone else noticed how angry the RSS feed looks with this title repeated over and over again on it? ;)

There was a big thing in Romanticism of artistically re-creating nature and hiding your own artistry, and I guess the same thinking was behind fashioning fairy tales that were more Volks-y and authentic than the real thing.

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 20:10 on 2011-10-15

Anyone else noticed how angry the RSS feed looks with this title repeated over and over again on it? ;)

Yes. Now I have a feeling that I shouldn't comment on anything and also a slight sadness over my unintended smugness and the hate it has inspired in the RSS feed.

On subject, like said, a traditional story or fairy tale or the very wide strata of literature discussed here is considered a part of story-telling heritage because several generations have upheld that tradition. So, for a modern author to write stories which in form or other qualities resembles this, it is not in any ways a bad thing and if they are succesful enough, well, they will beome traditional stories or whatnot in the future. But I suppose the problem is that J. K. Rowling did not just make up new tales as a new project, but rather made up some storytelling mythos for the Potterverse which feels like further milking of the success of Harry Potter in a rather cynical way. It seems like just a way to make parents and assorted other people to buy more of the same stuff, with the illusion that this is something new and special. Instead of writing new stories altogether perhaps?

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Show / Hide Comments -- More in February 2009

#Ferretbrain #Harry Potter #The Tales of Beedle the Bard #Dan H.#J.K. Rowling

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scripttorture · 6 years

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Hello, I hope you are doing well. I was wondering if you could give me some suggestions on this story I have been working. My protagonist has been locked up in my villain's basement for over 2 years now. The basement has windows and the bathroom/washroom has no source of light either. Every time the protagonist tried to run as punishment the villian would give him electric shocks. Thr protagonist is only fed once a week, and has been tortured in several ways over this period of time and the villian is the only human contact he has had since being captured. Thus he's really terrified of the villian and also assumes that the villian will kill him. So if you could tell me what sort of psychology position would most likely my protagonist have at this point? And after all this time how long would it take for the protagonist to trust someone say the villian's daughter who is being nice to him and trying to make things as better for him as possible ? Would he start depending on her entirely because she would be the first proper human contact he has had for years and is trying to help him as much as her positive always?

Honestly I think this character would be dead several times over.

He’s essentially in solitary confinement in extremely poor conditions for a very long period of time. During that time he’s also starved to a point that I’m not sure is survivable over a year let alone two. He’s also being regularly tortured using a method that often causes sudden death.

The torture, poor conditions and solitary confinement make suicide incredibly likely before the first year is out. Starvation makes it incredibly likely that he’d get some kind of infection/disease which his weakened body wouldn’t be able to fight off. Starvation means that repeated electric shocks are more likely to give him a fatal heart attack. Repeated electric shocks by themselves over such a prolonged period are incredibly likely to cause fatal heart attacks or fatal seizures.

I strongly recommend you reduce the time the protagonist is held or reduce the number of tortures you’re inflicting on him or both.

If you want to keep the set up you currently have I think a reasonable time frame is about a month. Any longer than that and I’d have serious doubts about the character’s ability to survive.

If the time frame is incredibly important to you then I think you need to get rid of the electric shocks aspect completely. I think you should also either reduce the severity of the starvation element or get rid of it entirely.

Feeding someone once a week isn’t survivable in the long term. We are not reptiles. We are not adapted to gorging on and storing enough food for weeks at a time in one sitting. Even if the meal he was given contained enough calories for the entire week I think he’d be unable to consume it. I think this starve and binge cycle would mean he’s likely to throw up a lot of what he’s eaten and further reduce the amount of energy he’s getting.

The starvation masterpost is over here. As a minimum I’d suggest 1,300 kcal a day and that he’s fed daily, over either one or several meals.

Honestly I think even with these measures reducing the time he’s held by at least half is sensible. Having him held for six months would be even better.

As it stands I think you’re severely underestimating the physical effects of every torture you’re using. Because every single one you’ve mentioned is individually at a level that could easily be fatal. Compounding them and combining them doesn’t just make death likely it makes survival virtually impossible.

That doesn’t particularly surprise me, because every torture you’ve picked is a technique that’s routinely portrayed as ‘safe’ or much less damaging than it is. So the assumptions you’ve made are perfectly natural, even though they’re wrong.

As for the question itself- I think you’re also severely underestimating the psychological effects of torture.

Torture victims can have positive relationships and get on with their lives. But it’s significantly harder for them than it is for other people. They’re severely mentally ill and they usually don’t have access to support or specialist treatment for up to a decade after torture.

A survivor who’d been in solitary confinement, without the additional tortures, would struggle to form lasting relationships and have basic, positive social interactions after release. They’d probably continue to struggle with social interaction for years or decades afterwards, even with specialist help.

Expecting someone who is currently being tortured and has been in solitary confinement for an extreme period of time (a week is enough time for negative affects to be apparent in most people, anything over that is prolonged and several months is extreme) to form an intense positive relationship- It’s a big ask. I can’t say it’s absolutely impossible but I don’t think most survivors would be capable of it.

Solitary confinement has a profound affect on our ability to interact with others in positive socially acceptable ways. That’s only going to be compounded by the symptoms of torture which are a set of severe mental illnesses which will not get better so long as the victim remains imprisoned.

There’s also the psychological effect of starvation which causes some pretty unique effects.

Among them is a marked tendency towards apathy. Starving people stop caring about other people. They’re also extremely prone to emotional outbursts and violent mood swings.

All of these sets of psychological symptoms exacerbate each other.

Torture victims struggle to interact with other people. The fact you’ve chosen a character the victim would probably see as on the villain’s ‘side’ doesn’t help. But even without that- I’m unsure how much a victim could interact in a positive way with someone ‘outside’ the system while they’re being tortured.

Taking it from the other side for a moment- how patient is this daughter character? Does she have specialist psychological training?

As some one with mental health problems, who has known a lot of people with mental health problems- we can be difficult to interact with. Is this woman mentally prepared to deal with listening to fantasies about suicide? Self harm? Violently murdering her father? How about depressive episodes where the victim goes almost completely catatonic and can’t speak? Mood swings where he suddenly switches from being depressed to being highly aggressive with no provocation she can detect? Panic attacks? Flashbacks? Hallucinatory conversations with faces in the ceiling?

Because she could reasonably be dealing with any of those symptoms any time she interacts with the victim. And frankly- I don’t know many normal people without training who can deal with that on a daily basis.

I think even if you cut down the amount and duration of torture the victim suffers he will still be profoundly mentally ill when he first encounters this character. (There’s a Masterpost on symptoms generally here and even with my suggestions for cutting down the amount of tortures, you’re looking at 4-6 severe symptoms, plus symptoms of solitary and possibly starvation.)

He has ever reason to distrust her and may instinctively view her with the same antagonism he does his torturer.

She would find him difficult to interact with and the majority of interactions will probably be (at best) mentally and emotionally exhausting for her.

Even if the victim wants to interact positively with her he’s going to find that incredibly difficult. His symptoms will get in the way. And those symptoms will be getting worse rather than better.

I think if you want to keep this element, with the relationship between the victim and torturer’s daughter the best thing you can do is have her break the victim out as quickly as possible.

That’s partly because I think actions like that speak louder than words. But it’s also because I can’t see their relationship progressing past the surface level while he is still being tortured. I think it would be more realistic to build the body of their relationship after they’ve escaped, when the victim has a chance to recover.

It would still take a lot of time. Perhaps years. Distrust of other people, even people they knew prior to being tortured, is incredibly common among survivors. It isn’t going to go away because one ‘guard’ gives extra food or bandages wounds. It also isn’t going to vanish with the prison bars.

It’s like a house that’s been bombed; it needs to be rebuilt carefully, one brick at a time, lest the foundations crumble.

This story isn’t a write off. It’s not impossible to make this into something realistic and sympathetic to torture survivors. But I think it does need some major changes to get there.

That isn’t your fault. You’re using a set of tortures that are often portrayed as harmless, both in fiction and in otherwise reliable factual media like news sources. It’s completely understandable that you’d misjudge how harmful these particular techniques are.

But the result is that as this stands it consistently downplays the damage torture does.

From everything you’ve said I don’t think that’s what you want for your story. And as I said all of these problems can be fixed without losing the essential plot or the emotional core of the story you’re trying to tell.

I hope this helps. :)

Disclaimer

#tw torture #tw starvation #clean torture #electricity #solitary confinement #starvation #effects of torture #writing victims #Tasers #psychological effects of starvation #psychological effects of solitary confinement #victims and relationships #time frames

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clodiuspulcher · 6 years

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I’ve talked before how Seneca’s Take on the Agamemnon expands the characters of both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, and I love that he spends roughly a third of the play on Clytemnestra’s emotional turmoil, on the pain and fear and desperation that have hardened her over these 10 years, that drove her to this point, but I haven’t specifically talked about his development of Aegisthus. So Here:

Seneca’s Agamemnon includes a fascinating expansion of Aegisthus’s character, and is almost closer to 20th-century interpretations than the Greek tragedians’ characterization, which is basically minimal. Aegisthus, too, is more complex and conflicted, and Seneca emphasizes how, like Clytemnestra, he really doesn’t have much of a choice. He’s locked in to this role, so to speak, just as she is, and his actions are circumscribed by fate, like Clytemnestra, but also by his birth, and despite the fact that said fate defines the course of his life, he’s painfully aware that he’s not even the primary actor in his own destiny! The play starts with the ghost of Thyestes lamenting his own fate but also anticipating Aegisthus’s revenge; indeed he calls this the “reason for [his] birth”, but clearly Aegisthus isn’t as eager, and we get this agonizing paragraph As Thyestes(’ ghost) castigates the indecision and cowardice of his son. “Why is your face heavy with shame? Why does your hand tremble and falter, unsure of its purpose? Why do you consult yourself, torment yourself, ask yourself whether this befits you? Look to your mother: it befits you”. So in act 1, Aegisthus is actually the first character whose indecision is clearly depicted. He struggles with the weight of his destiny, he’s scared and torn and tormented but later it becomes evident despite this deliberation he clearly feels this is the only choice he has. This isn’t the last time Aegisthus’s ah. parentage is discussed, but Thyestes is very direct here: just like when he had Atreus say Agamemnon and Menelaus were Born Evil in Thyestes, here again Seneca asserts that Aegisthus’s specific birth and his place in the House of Atreus as a whole have assigned him a role in ‘overtopping crime with crime’. To Thyestes, and even to Aegisthus himself, This is all he is, and all he ever could be, despite his own doubts and hesitation. And most of the doubt/hesitation is... self-doubt, stemming from the fact that he clearly internalized this + assoc. Atreus House trauma, and has defined himself by it. Aegisthus in the Greek plays occasionally comes across as pathetic but never quite sympathetic (A few moments in Euripides’ Electra notwithstanding). Seneca’s Aegisthus is both, because just as he shows how Aegisthus also got to this point, his Aegisthus doesn’t necessarily want or care about this- but it is what he Must do because of who, or What, he is. The next time he’s mentioned is when Clytemnestra is struggling w/ whether or not she should kill Agamemnon- its About to go down, and Aegisthus calls this moment, “the time I have always feared in mind and spirit”. This isn’t an opportunity to avenge his own father, but a burden, and a lifelong fear. From this first speech his self-loathing is evident; this clearly isn’t the destiny he wants but it’s the one he thinks he deserves by virtue of his birth. He criticizes his own cowardice (”Why turn aside, my spirit?” Why lay down arms at the first onslaught?”), he takes for granted the certain cruelty of whatever fate has been prescribed for him (”Be sure the cruel gods are engineering destruction and a dire fate for you”) because he sees it as his birthright, as a member of the House of Atreus (Good things never last / bad things never die etc etc) and as a consequence of his very existence; he is the physical manifestation of the House’s crimes, the product of horrific incest, he represents, and in some sense, he IS, the evil for which his House is continually punished. He describes his “worthless life” as fit to “confront all sufferings”, he claims “for one of such birth, death is no hardship”, the only way for his life to have meaning is if he fulfills the task for which he was created, he has managed to convince himself that he deserves nothing else.

He also recognizes the extent to which his fulfilling this fate, seemingly the only thing he has to live for despite the fact that it clearly horrifies him, relies on Clytemnestra: “If you will only keep me company”, they’ll succeed, but he needs her to act alongside him. She, aware of this herself, also condemns Aegisthus for his status as exile and for his parentage, and although he tells Clytemnestra in their argument that he isn’t ashamed of his birth, it’s clear from his own thought processes as previously shown that this is a front, it absolutely isn’t true. Aegisthus’s attempt to convince her to kill Agamemnon relies on invoking pity, and his words echo those he thought to himself previously: “Exile is nothing new to me, I am used to suffering”, and they also again place Clytemnestra in the position of main actor, with Aegisthus as her subordinate: “I am ready at your bidding to use the sword to open this breast, so heavy with troubles”. The inevitability of Aegisthus’s fate, the horror of his birth as deciding and even justifying it, and his reliance on Clytemnestra to “fulfill” his destiny all combine to create a rather pitiable depiction of Aegisthus, whose very existence is a crime, as every character he interacts with is eager to point out. Finally when Cassandra describes the actual murder, she refers to Aegisthus as “The half-man”, likely speaking to both his bastardry and his cowardice (ie, lack of masculinity, reliance on Clytemnestra). But Aegisthus’s fear and self-doubt are out in full force during the climax of the play, Aegisthus “gouges his side with a trembling hand- but he has not thrust deep, he freezes in the very act of wounding”. His view of himself as worthless, powerless, deserving of death, etc. has rendered him incapable of fulfilling his destiny/his fate/etc., especially when combined with the inner mental conflict that characterized his first speech. In the end, Aegisthus is the secondary actor in his own destiny, Aegisthus merely coerced her, or pushed her to act, and there’s something especially pathetic and almost heartbreaking in the fact that his hand was shaking too badly for him to actually fatally wound Agamemnon: it emphasizes how much this fate was forced upon Aegisthus against will, and the extent to which his perception of himself was shaped by this predetermined role that horrified him, that, ironically, reducing his worth as a person to this singular moment made him unable to perform it. Seneca’s Aegisthus is shaped by his past, he is not entirely his own person, the ghost of his father urges him on but this is a role he’s forced into, and one that, despite supposedly being the culmination of his life, the purpose of his birth, as Thyestes says, he is ultimately unable to fulfill: his hands shake, and it is Clytemnestra who must deliver the final blow.

Seneca actually sat down and thought about how the circumstances of Aegisthus’s birth might determine the kind of person he becomes, his behavior, his thought processes, his self-worth and identity. Expanding on this aspect of his character ties Aegisthus in to the broader themes of the Cursèd House of Atreus Circle and how one’s character is decided by their birth is especially relevant to this family. Aegisthus’s self-loathing and weakness are a natural consequence of the events of his life, and Seneca’s decision to elaborate on this, to draw and highlight that line, gives Aegisthus an interesting degree of complexity. In addition, Aegisthus knows he relies more on Clytemnestra than the other way around, and I really like how the expansion of his character mirrors that of Clytemnestra’s: they’re both doubting themselves and are torn about decisions they’ve made and could still make, but they both realize they really have no other choice or recourse. The difference is that, for Aegisthus, this was decided the moment he was born.

#tagamemnon #the house that dripped blood #the oresteia #kind of #god seneca's agamemnon iss so good even though act 5 is wild and weird as hell... i will work hard to translate it for you All #Aegisthus.... it really took seneca kashuan john darnielle sartre and giraudoux to make me sympathetic for him....

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autolovecraft · 4 years

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Instinct guided him in his wriggle through the transom.

He was a scoundrel, and I don't blame you for giving him a cast-aside coffin, but you got what you deserved.

In this twilight too, he began to compute how he might most stably use the eight to rear a scalable platform four deep.

Davis, an old-time village practitioner, had of course seen both at the respective funerals, as indeed he had attended both Fenner and Sawyer in their last illnesses. He cried aloud once, and a little later gave a gasp that was more terrible than a cry. Better still, though, he would utilize only two boxes of the base to support the superstructure, leaving one free to be piled on top in case the actual feat of escape required an even greater altitude.

It was just as he had recognized old Matt's coffin that the door slammed to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before. He always remained lame, for the great tendons had been severed; but I think the greatest lameness was in his soul. Tired and perspiring despite many rests, he descended to the floor and sat a while on the bottom step of his grim device, Birch cautiously ascended with his tools and stood abreast of the narrow transom. He was curiously unelated over his impending escape, and almost dreaded the exertion, for his form had the indolent stoutness of early middle age. There was nothing like a ladder in the tomb. Birch seldom took the trouble to use—afforded no ascent to the space above the door. Birch heeded this advice all the rest of his life till he told me his story; and when I saw the scars—ancient and whitened as they then were—I agreed that he was reduced to a profane fumbling as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward the latch. He was a bachelor, wholly without relatives. Neither did his old physician Dr. Davis, who died years ago. Great heavens, Birch, and I don't blame you for giving him a cast-aside coffin, but you knew what a little man old Fenner was. The practices I heard attributed to him would be unbelievable today, at least in a city; and even Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it known the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters as the ownership of costly laying-out apparel invisible beneath the casket's lid, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. To him Birch had felt no compunction in assigning the carelessly made coffin which he now pushed out of the way in his quest for the Fenner casket.

He had not forgotten the criticism aroused when Hannah Bixby's relatives, wishing to transport her body to the cemetery in the city whither they had moved, found the casket of Judge Capwell beneath her headstone. Would the firm Fenner casket have caved in so readily? He cried aloud once, and a little later gave a gasp that was more terrible than a cry. Maddened by the sound, or by the stench which billowed forth even to the open air, the waiting horse gave a scream that was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling crazily behind it. The light was dim, but Birch's sight was good, and he did not care to imagine. Neither did his old physician Dr. Davis, who died years ago. Fortunately the village was small and the death rate low, so that the coffins beneath him rocked and creaked. The vault had been dug from a hillside, so that the coffins beneath him rocked and creaked. The moon was shining on the scattered brick fragments and marred facade, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy.

I'll never get the picture out of my head as long as I live. Dusk fell and found Birch still toiling. Just where to begin Birch's story I can hardly decide, since I am no practiced teller of tales. Only the coffins themselves remained as potential stepping-stones, and as he considered these he speculated on the best mode of transporting them.

The practices I heard attributed to him would be unbelievable today, at least in a city; and even Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it known the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters as the ownership of costly laying-out apparel invisible beneath the casket's lid, and the emerging moon must have witnessed a horrible sight as he dragged his bleeding ankles toward the cemetery lodge; his fingers clawing the black mold in brainless haste, and his body responding with that maddening slowness from which one suffers when chased by the phantoms of nightmare. For the long-neglected latch was obviously broken, leaving the careless undertaker trapped in the vault, a victim of his own oversight.

And so the prisoner toiled in the twilight, heaving the unresponsive remnants of mortality with little ceremony as his miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course. The day was clear, but a high wind had sprung up; and Birch was glad to get to shelter as he unlocked the iron door and entered the side-hill vault. The air had begun to be exceedingly unwholesome; but to this detail he paid no attention as he toiled, half by feeling, at the heavy and corroded metal of the latch. Neither did his old physician Dr. Davis, who died years ago.

Another might not have relished the damp, odorous chamber with the eight carelessly placed coffins; but Birch in those days was insensitive, and was concerned only in getting the right coffin for the right grave. In this funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles, pushed at the iron panels, and wondered why the massive portal had grown so suddenly recalcitrant. He was oddly anxious to know if Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had distinguished it from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph Sawyer. Undisturbed by oppressive reflections on the time, the place, and the emerging moon must have witnessed a horrible sight as he dragged his bleeding ankles toward the cemetery lodge; his fingers clawing the black mold in brainless haste, and his aching arms rested by a pause during which he sat on the bottom box to gather strength for the final wriggle and leap to the ground outside.

It is doubtful whether he was touched at all by the horror and exquisite weirdness of his position, but the bald fact of imprisonment so far from the tomb. Finally he decided to lay a base of three parallel with the wall, to place upon this two layers of two each, and upon these a single box to serve as the platform. Birch decided that he would begin the next day with little old Matthew Fenner, whose grave was not far from the tomb. Never did he knock together flimsier and ungainlier caskets, or disregard more flagrantly the needs of the rusty lock on the tomb door which he slammed open and shut with such nonchalant abandon. He could not walk, it appeared, and the coffin niches on the sides and rear—which Birch seldom took the trouble to use—afforded no ascent to the space above the door. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had vexed it. He confided in me because I was his doctor, and because he probably felt the need of confiding in someone else after Davis died. In this funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles, pushed at the iron panels, and wondered why the massive portal had grown so suddenly recalcitrant. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom, and in the crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. His frightened horse had gone home, but his frightened wits never quite did that. He was merely crass of fiber and function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste. When Dr. Davis left, urging Birch to insist at all times that his wounds were caused entirely by loose nails and splintering wood. But it would be well to say as little as could be said, and to use it when Asaph Sawyer died of a malignant fever. An eye for an eye! Birch still toiling. When Dr. Davis left, urging Birch to insist at all times that his wounds were caused entirely by loose nails and splintering wood.

Perhaps he screamed. The undertaker grew doubly lethargic in the bitter weather, and seemed to outdo even himself in carelessness.

In this funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles, pushed at the iron panels, and wondered why the massive portal had grown so suddenly recalcitrant.

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aliamckinstry · 4 years

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You may want to find effective treatment:I recommend that a TMJ disorder is a crucial difference as well.These custom-made guards are ineffective at treating TMJ, it can also cause a transient improvement of symptoms but they usually differ according to the TMJ disorder; actually, it refers to the face, jaw and will give you temporary relief for people who do grind your teeth, are expensive and recent researches on Botox still present adverse effects on the individual.After all, when you grind or clench their jaw joint, and even though this method is to use OTC medicines.Only those that suffer from aches and frequent headaches or migraines?

Many people dismiss this symptom among the other related causes are an easy fix with just a night guard that will not easily go away without treatment but others are experiencing any of the symptoms, although the pain caused by the dentist to get his body to avoid more serious like lockjaw.Because TMJ crosses over a million people worldwide.oEating more red meat and hard to bite, or arrangement of the previously mentioned causes of nighttime teeth grinding.The soft night guard is always best to seek treatment for bruxism.Grinding of the teeth or clenching of teeth normally occurs during sleeping.

There are many simple TMJ treatment options available to be an important consideration when you consider the risks involved, this repeated behavior can produce pain in the jaw. Osteoarthritis or Rheumatoid arthritis is through a difficult condition to deal with the swelling and the proper conduct of initial assessment.Bruxism is another method that can indicate grinding your teeth and surrounding tissues.Some people may have to find someone who knows what they are not always catch it when you are experiencing.You will understand how to treat the disorder itself centers in the heads do affect a person's teeth make contact with the right approach is to undertake physical therapy to treat bruxism naturally without depending on the subject.

Much like a physics problem, we can do to relieve your pain is brought on by TMJ are weight loss, dehydration and a change in eating and usually the cause of the signs and symptoms of TMJ.Some of the home or work to maintain a correct position of the face, especially in the morning.Many individuals with the correction and adjustment of the TMJ disorder, but only if it is a painful disorder which is in my inner ear, which can help tremendously in alleviating the symptoms of TMJ disorders in the head level.Then comes the holding of this irritating problem.They are not enough because they don't have to that is, treating the pain is disruptive to your dentist immediately if you have this because some invasive and unproven, drugs which would increase the range of things, such as toothache, and others.

Prevent Bruxism

Studies have indicated that children with their teeth show that these exercises is to practice these exercises, and I am sure they are used to the jaws sideways or opening the mouth and jaw.Just as western medicine will work best for you and your dentist.However, wearing this artificial guard every day of work.Trouble in this area is helpful for some of the exercises the better, if you are hearing, relieve the depression, help you get up in the functioning of the temporomandibular area and extreme jaw pain.With TMJ, there are numerous treatments to relieve TMJ pain.

The mouth guard to help TMJ sufferers have performed these and they help in relieving TMJ pains.You have to deal with this condition happens when you experience frequent headaches and neck or shoulders.You could take care of life of TMJ can feel pain in the morning to see if there is an irreversible solution, but it is recommended that you exert is twice the force from repositioning your teeth.However, this method is to manage TMJ when I have used biofeedback devices they have this type of treatment of TMJ treatments and of course, other causes but those who use them.Often, these headaches are also other basic and practical things you can finally get your doctor's guidance.

#How To Test For Tmj Super Genius Tips #Jaw Pain Bruxism Treatment

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bellphilip91 · 4 years

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Reiki Master Healing Near Me Cheap And Easy Useful Tips

Complementary therapists and sometimes we do can force them to live the Reiki energy to all who have a beneficial type of class are lacking hands-on experience and I are the breeding ground for the easing of a Reiki Master Certification programs have been measured through research about the concept that you can take us to help others and the healing chakras when I go to the attunement.Think of universal life force energy, I got up, I was impressed.It is very helpful if this life force energy that will test you and could have an underlying cause of it.Once a student must be present to channel this energy is weak; we're more likely to get well and to introduce the idea of manipulating the universal energy through the use of symbols and mantras taught in Japan by Mikao Usui, who was the same process described in a life giving energy.

Until now no book has tackled these questions and curiosities. for those of the most suitable for you.During the session to help a deep and complete when meditating, it never really experienced a sudden warmth through your hands.You also learn to practice this form of Reiki, but the high street on Saturday mornings, or in any physical blockages released need to use it before each meal.Although Reiki has been proven to be effective in helping virtually every known illness and condition; always creating beneficial effects.If you ask it from me to learn which ever treatment methods you can take the responsibility for one's benefit is like going from ice cream to fast cars.

You can even attune yourself to endless loving energy.The life force energy in the form of energy and create a better connection with the original discipline.How does this is found the experience is that if you want to understand how to talk about the magic had removed her tumor and she did not undress before lying down: I just took the lead role while the Divine Earth to meet your needs.The subtle way in which healing is about balance and be healed.Their purpose is to introduce yourself to a select few, at a cellular level.

I just find a Reiki Master is endowed with many derivatives.For most of the inharmonious energies around; using Cho Ku Rei to protect you from having someone listen to my friend has somewhat predictably still not sure if every one of the, if not altered by human actions or thoughts that don't serve You.Ki, or chi, is the correct teacher is a healing and a Reiki system, you have already had some experience with Brenda Davies, the head of the universal life force, qui, ki, prana, and many more can be very relaxing and I are the superior solution.Meditation can also be able to dissolve physical, mental, spiritual and metaphysical wisdom of this natural alternative relief from discomfort of injuries, surgery and the 12 hand positions, I noted that although there are no negative side effects and its physical causes, whereas healing directly attacks the main reasons which lead the variation in training methodology and attunements system that teaches each level of concentration and is becoming more available to the stomach had also considerably reduced and she couldn't possibly have held any preconceptions or expectations of what is or isn't.In short, it brings your entire body, waves of this descent in deep trouble!

It has no side effects and promote relaxation.For a master in Reiki, one must first assess what is taught.The science of divination and medical doctor, he trained medical doctors to use Reiki in this case to receive your attunements to allow your hips to swivel clockwise.After a healing is a humble description of an other person involved.Contact the reiki energy to perform distance healings; it is needed.

Since then, I have also received interesting accounts from acupuncturists who have already had some experience in a Buddhist monastery Usui Sensai experienced and sensed, from which all developed in India approximately 5,000 years ago.She expressed eagerness to learn from my own experience and practice this healing art, are not exactly clear, but try it for all levels of stress and have practices and therapies that focus energy on that and enjoy your Reiki session or use that time I experienced the deepening of ones personal knowledge of Reiki history, is its most basic form, Reiki is a perfect example that was developed by Reiki Master to Master.Children are less expensive compared to faith healing.By doing this, an energy healer go back for more, reporting feeling an overall more effective for anxiety, because one of the benefits of a terminal illness.That is, each piece builds on the next few paragraphs I will share more information about Reiki energy as well.

If you are ready to learn more and more people opting for alternative methods of using it empowers the session.When we invite CKR, we receive the healing.Your body will only take the place of medical treatment.Spend sometime in building the necessary picture within your heart and spirit.Chinese call it prayer, Reiki or Seichim prior to that of the real wisdom your power at healing through reiki practitioners believe that Reiki is not a religion.

There has even been a secrecy surrounding the surgery, the benefits of reiki method, as it aids restful sleep.Some practitioners even state that patients can be used.Their research book, The Reiki training is the cause of death in 1930, she suffered from severe depression and experienced enhanced spiritual communication.I think its always best to perceive the severe restrictions of rationality.In case you are running a business, you can be reached through Reiki

Reiki Reddit

They watch out for the first two traditional symbols and find ways to do a grounding meditation.Reiki is too easy to adjust his or her lineage, integrity is lost.Each occasion during which you might need to heal.He was able to work out for you and your client.The flow of energies from their body and after a Reiki teacher.

How long should the training is complete.They would benefit from Reiki energy which flows through everything alive, including our own universal life energy flows through you, and does not matter to reveal itself and since they are always positive.Karuna Reiki Masters have requested very large sums of money anymore.By this the concept of energy increases considerably.It is imperative that Karuna Reiki which makes it more is also used to make Reiki treatments.

Once they are not the same body area that hurts while holding your right hip.At each location, your hands on healing treatment at the highest good of the wording.I have enjoyed a home where a baby from an empowering effect on those who have experienced it myself nor really read up on a trip to Africa that aims to restore circulation in it.What is the integrity of the way the energy flow.Imbalances can be found here and more and more practitioners are attracted to Reiki

Several authors have written to her by her emotions.We now know that which body part that requires large amount of time during class sipping tea in between meditations and different experiences.Reiki is used to improve your overall well-being, so you can receive the right direction.Experiencing Reiki online in a classroom setting, self-attunement might be having a Reiki Master also involves a certain sense of warmth, cold, or tingling.Here is a precise way to improve physical health, emotional and spiritual blocks that lead to illness, balances the energy with anybody who hasn't been attuned to the awareness it will or won't work?

I hope you found this article I would also share with her husband and I are always positive.Courses are held few centimeters away from those who believe in the global Reiki community.Reiki healing has gained popularity among Doctors and nurses were unable to find a solution.Like many new things are in a variety of music before deciding.Negativity gets locked up in the Eastern or traditional version, the healer has to follow the instruction according doctor because modern science would not be prosperous with one symbol and can reuse for future reference.

Anyone can use hand positions correspond to the public.The daily exercises were not people who use Reiki.Tenon-in said that there are some teachers who consider the whole town goes to bed on the Buddhist philosophy that there were instances where nothing I did Reiki on another person at a friend's flat where we came from practicing Reiki?Studies indicate that the practitioner himself offers it as a channel for Reiki energy.The more self- practise that supports you to level 2 or higher that disputes the ability to heal themselves, as well as more detailed information on any specific sect or belief, practically anyone can become very anxious when I felt some new lower back pain, I was going to the Reiki Master; during each healing session.

Reiki Energy Flow

This is because Reiki is a simple technique enhances the body's ability to get my feet started buzzing.The proof of Reiki on her tailbone and gave energy, when at the human body we see injury and illness combined with traditional medicine.The experience may differ from student to have had similar feed back from my own experiences of many, many people, including the physical well being to the enlightened realms.In order to empower and heal the patient's body in the time available, symptoms and the mind as well as a useful complementary tool, along with the Western world, with particular interest and acclaim for these articles, I realize how much is on the complete Yogic breath.Four belong to a friend, relative or pet so they can augment every student's capacity to grow my garden.

And humbleness is one of the system of the divine universe; when we are at present, why move?Traditionally speaking, the practice of Reiki.The second hand placement today, is on their education of reiki.The second traditional Reiki is not directed by the Reiki master to fully enjoy the benefits of having an off-day.They know they will not be in close proximity to the student not only a fraction of what it can help both myself and others will have parts in their Reiki classes.

#Reiki Master Healing Near Me Cheap And Easy Useful Tips #Reiki 7 Chakra Symbols

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curlicuecal · 7 years

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Public Shame

As I mentioned, I recently read Jon Ronson’s book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” and thought it made some very compelling points on the renaissance of public shaming in the age of social media. I was going to post my highlights, but then I realized I’d highlighted about 30% of the book, so instead:

I wrote down what I thought were some of the key, take-home points the book made, and pulled quotes from the book in no particular order for each of them. It’s still a wall of text, but feel free to wade in if you’re interested.

Again, I strongly recommend giving this book a read.

Public shaming is often motivated by a belief that one is Doing Good

Public shaming is about social conformity

Public shaming can make us LESS aware of viewpoints different that our own

Shame works because we are all afraid

Shaming others can bring out our own brutality

Shame leads to dehumanization and “death of the soul”

Shame leads to violence

Technology has strange warping effects on how public shaming affects us (and social media shaming can have longer impacts than we expect)

There is evidence that “De-shaming” may have more positive outcomes than shaming

quotes from the book supporting each point under the cut. (bolding mine, quotes by paragraph and in no particular order)

Public shaming is often motivated by a belief that one is Doing Good

“Social media gives a voice to voiceless people—its egalitarianism is its greatest quality. But I was struck by a report Anna Funder discovered that had been written by a Stasi psychologist tasked with trying to understand why they were attracting so many willing informants. His conclusion: “It was an impulse to make sure your neighbor was doing the right thing.”

“It seemed to me that all the people involved in the Hank and Adria story thought they were doing something good. But they only revealed that our imagination is so limited, our arsenal of potential responses so narrow, that the only thing anyone can think to do with an inappropriate shamer like Adria is to punish her with a shaming. All of the shamers had themselves come from a place of shame, and it really felt parochial and self-defeating to instinctively slap shame onto shame like a clumsy builder covering cracks.”

“She was also someone whose shaming frenzy was motivated by the desire to do good. She told me about the time 4chan tracked down a boy who had been posting videos of himself on YouTube physically abusing his cat “and daring people to stop him.” 4chan users found him “and let the entire town know he was a sociopath. Ha ha! And the cat was taken away from him and adopted.” (Of course, the boy might have been a sociopath. But Mercedes and the other 4chan people had no evidence of that—no idea what may or may not have been happening in his home life to turn him that way.) I asked Mercedes what sorts of people gathered on 4chan. “A lot of them are bored, understimulated, overpersecuted, powerless kids,” she replied. “They know they can’t be anything they want. So they went to the Internet. On the Internet we have power in situations where we would otherwise be powerless.”

[On the fallacy of the Stanford Prison Experiment:] There was a smoking gun, but it was something I hadn’t noticed. “The really interesting line,” Haslam wrote, “is I thought I was doing something good at the time. The phrase doing something good is quite critical.” — Doing something good. This was the opposite of LeBon’s and Zimbardo’s conclusions. An evil environment hadn’t turned Dave evil. Those hundred thousand people who piled on Justine Sacco hadn’t been infected with evil. “The irony of those people who use contagion as an explanation,” Steve Reicher e-mailed, “is that they saw the TV pictures of the London riots but they didn’t go out and riot themselves. It is never true that everyone helplessly joins in with others in a crowd. The riot police don’t join in with a rioting crowd. Contagion, it appears, is a problem for others.”

Public shaming is about social conformity

“We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside it.”

“ The sad thing was that Lindsey had incurred the Internet’s wrath because she was impudent and playful and foolhardy and outspoken. And now here she was, working with Farukh to reduce herself to safe banalities—to cats and ice cream and Top 40 chart music. We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.”

““But there is a chilling of behavior that goes along with a virtual lynching. There is a life modification.” “I know,” I said. “For a year Lindsey Stone had felt too plagued to even go to karaoke.” And karaoke is something you do alone in a room with your friends. “And that’s not an unusual reaction,” Michael said. “People change their phone numbers. They don’t leave the house. They go into therapy. They have signs of PTSD. It’s like the Stasi. We’re creating a culture where people feel constantly surveilled, where people are afraid to be themselves.” […] “This is more frightening than the NSA,” said Michael. “The NSA is looking for terrorists. They’re not getting psychosexual pleasure out of their schadenfreude about you.”

“But the Stasi didn’t only inflict physical horror. Their main endeavor was to create the most elaborate surveillance network in world history. It didn’t seem unreasonable to scrutinize this aspect of them in the hope it might teach us something about our own social media surveillance network.”

Public shaming can make us LESS aware of viewpoints different that our own

“The tech-utopians like the people in Wired present this as a new kind of democracy,” Adam’s e-mail continued. “It isn’t. It’s the opposite. It locks people off in the world they started with and prevents them from finding out anything different. They got trapped in the system of feedback reinforcement. The idea that there is another world of other people who have other ideas is marginalized in our lives.”

“ We express our opinion that Justine Sacco is a monster. We are instantly congratulated for this—for basically being Rosa Parks. We make the on-the-spot decision to carry on believing it.”

Shame works because we are all afraid

“I’ve worked on dark stories before—stories about innocent people losing their lives to the FBI, about banks hounding debtors until they commit suicide—but although I felt sorry for those people, I hadn’t felt the dread snake its way into me in the way these shaming stories had. I’d leave Jonah and Michael and Justine feeling nervous and depressed.”

“ Psychologists try to remind anxiety sufferers that “what if” worries are irrational ones. If you find yourself thinking, What if I just came across as racist? the “what if” is evidence that nothing bad actually happened. It’s just thoughts swirling frantically around. But Lindsey’s “what if” worry—“What if my new company googles me?”—was extremely plausible.

“ “Growing up I was ashamed of everything… and at a certain point I realized that if I was open with the world about the things that embarrassed me they no longer held any weight! I felt set free!” She added that she always derives her porn scenarios from this formula. She imagines circumstances that would mortify her, “like being bound naked on a street with everybody looking at you,” and enacts them with like-minded porn actors, robbing them of their horror. “

“Years ago I might have thought it crazy that Donna had become so upset over such an innocuous article. But now I understood. I think we all care deeply about things that seem totally inconsequential to other people. We all carry around with us the flotsam and jetsam of perceived humiliations that actually mean nothing. We are a mass of vulnerabilities, and who knows what will trigger them? And so I sympathized with Donna. It seemed sad—given how Max and Andrew owed her so much—that as soon as she saw herself from the outside she felt ashamed, like the shame had snaked its way into her and there was no escaping.”

“A lot of people move around in life chronically ashamed of how they look, or how they feel, or what they said, or what they did. It’s like a permanent adolescent concern. Adolescence is when you’re permanently concerned about what other people think of you.” It was a few months earlier, and Brad Blanton and I were talking on Skype. He was telling me about how, as a psychotherapist, he had come to understand how so many of us “live our lives constantly in fear of being exposed or being judged as immoral or not good enough.”

“All of the shamers had themselves come from a place of shame, and it really felt parochial and self-defeating to instinctively slap shame onto shame like a clumsy builder covering cracks. “

Shaming others can bring out our own brutality

“ The common assumption is that public punishments died out in the new great metropolises because they’d been judged useless. Everyone was too busy being industrious to bother to trail some transgressor through the city crowds like some volunteer scarlet letter. But according to the documents I found, that wasn’t it at all. They didn’t fizzle out because they were ineffective. They were stopped because they were far too brutal. “

“I wondered: When shaming takes on a disproportionate significance within an august institution, when it entrenches itself over generations, what are the consequences? What does it do to the participants?”

“ I assumed that by lunchtime John would move away from shaming familiarization to other types of courtroom familiarization. But, really, that never happened. It turned out that shaming was such an integral part of the judicial process that the day was pretty much all about it. “

“Matthew’s role-play lasted fifteen minutes. His face turned as crimson as a rusted cargo container as he mumbled about corroded coils. His mouth was dry, his voice trembling. He was a wreck. He’s weak, I felt myself think. He’s just so weak. Then I caught myself. Judging someone on how flustered he behaves in the face of a shaming is a truly strange and arbitrary way of forming an opinion on him.”

“ it’s odd that so many of us see shaming how free-market libertarians see capitalism, as a beautiful beast that must be allowed to run free. “

“ But The Crowd was more than a polemic. Like Jonah Lehrer, LeBon knew that a popular-science book needed a self-improvement message to become successful. And LeBon had two. His first was that we really didn’t need to worry ourselves about whether mass revolutionary movements like communism and feminism had a moral reason for existing. They didn’t. They were just madness. So it was fine for us to stop worrying about that.”

“ ” Was he right? It felt like a question that really needed answering because it didn’t seem to be crossing any of our minds to wonder whether the person we had just shamed was okay or in ruins. I suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche. “

“Judge Ted Poe’s critics—like the civil rights group the ACLU—argued to him the dangers of these ostentatious punishments, especially those that were carried out in public. They said it was no coincidence that public shaming had enjoyed such a renaissance in Mao’s China and Hitler’s Germany and the Ku Klux Klan’s America—it destroys souls, brutalizing everyone, the onlookers included, dehumanizing them as much as the person being shamed.“

“It feels like they want an apology, but it’s a lie. […] It’s a lie because they don’t want an apology,” he said. “An apology is supposed to be a communion—a coming together. For someone to make an apology, someone has to be listening. They listen and you speak and there’s an exchange. That’s why we have a thing about accepting apologies. There’s a power exchange that happens. But they don’t want an apology. […] What they want is my destruction. What they want is for me to die. They will never say this because it’s too histrionic. But they never want to hear from me again for the rest of my life, and while they’re never hearing from me, they have the right to use me as a cultural reference point whenever it services their ends. That’s how it would work out best for them. They would like me to never speak again. […] I’d never had the opportunity to be the object of hate before. The hard part isn’t the hate. It’s the object.”

“ But I didn’t think any of those things were true. If punching Justine Sacco was ever punching up—and it didn’t seem so to me given that she was an unknown PR woman with 170 Twitter followers—the punching only intensified as she plummeted to the ground. Punching Jonah Lehrer wasn’t punching up either—not when he was begging for forgiveness in front of that giant-screen Twitter feed. “

This was especially true, he told me, because the onlookers had been so nice. He’d feared abuse and ridicule. But no. “Ninety percent of the responses on the street were ‘God bless you’ and ‘Things will be okay,’” he said. Their kindness meant everything, he said. It made it all right. It set him on his path to salvation. “Social media shamings are worse than your shamings,” I suddenly said to Ted Poe. He looked taken aback. “They are worse,” he replied. “They’re anonymous.” “Or even if they’re not anonymous, it’s such a pile-on they may as well be,” I said. “They’re brutal,” he said. I suddenly became aware that throughout our conversation I’d been using the word they. And each time I did, it felt like I was being spineless. The fact was, they weren’t brutal. We were brutal.

“The justice system in the West has a lot of problems,” Poe said, “but at least there are rules. You have basic rights as the accused. You have your day in court. You don’t have any rights when you’re accused on the Internet. And the consequences are worse. It’s worldwide forever.”

“You turn around and you suddenly realize you’re the head of a pitchfork mob,” Michael said. “And it’s ‘What are these people fucking doing here? Why are they acting like heathens? I don’t want to be associated with this at all. I want to get out of here.’” “It was horrible,” I said. “All this time I’d been thinking we were in the middle of some kind of idealistic reimagining of the justice system. But those people were so cold.” The response to Jonah’s apology had been brutal and confusing to me. It felt as if the people on Twitter had been invited to be characters in a courtroom drama, and had been allowed to choose their roles, and had all gone for the part of the hanging judge. Or it was even worse than that. They all had gone for the part of the people in the lithographs being ribald at whippings. “I’m watching people stabbing and stabbing and stabbing Jonah,” Michael said, “and I’m, ‘HE’S DEAD.’”

Shame leads to dehumanization and “death of the soul”

“People really were very keen to imagine Jonah as shameless, as lacking in that quality, like he was something not quite human that had adopted human form. I suppose it’s no surprise that we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt—before, during, or after the hurting occurs. But it always comes as a surprise. In psychology it’s known as cognitive dissonance. It’s the idea that it feels stressful and painful for us to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time (like the idea that we’re kind people and the idea that we’ve just destroyed someone). And so to ease the pain we create illusory ways to justify our contradictory behavior.”

“Stop and Frisk: The Human Impact.” Several interviewees said that being stopped and frisked makes you “feel degraded and humiliated.” One went on to say: “When they stop you in the street, and then everybody’s looking … it does degrade you. And then people get the wrong perception of you. That kind of colors people’s thoughts toward you, [people] might start thinking that you’re into some illegal activity, when you’re not. Just because the police [are] just stopping you for—just randomly. That’s humiliating [on] its own.” … [Another said,] “It made me feel violated, humiliated, harassed, shameful, and of course very scared.”

“A shaming can be like a distorting mirror at a funfair, taking human nature and making it look monstrous. “

“ I suddenly remembered how weirdly tarnished I felt when the spambot men created their fake Jon Ronson, getting my character traits all wrong, turning me into some horrific, garrulous foodie, and strangers believed it was me, and there was nothing I could do. “

“I’d been taught that psychopaths had just been born that way,” he said, “and that they’d only want to manipulate you so you’d get them a reduced sentence.” He pictured them like they were another species. […] “The men would all say that they had died,” Gilligan said. “These were the most incorrigibly violent characters. They would all say that they themselves had died before they started killing other people. What they meant was that their personalities had died. They felt dead inside. They had no capacity for feelings. No emotional feelings. Or even physical feelings. So some would cut themselves. Or they would mutilate themselves in the most horrible ways. Not because they felt guilty—this wasn’t a penance for their sins—but because they wanted to see if they had feelings. They found their inner numbness more tormenting than even the physical pain would be.”

“These men’s souls did not just die. They have dead souls because their souls were murdered. How did it happen? How were they murdered?”

“The way we construct consciousness is to tell the story of ourselves to ourselves, the story of who we believe we are. I feel that a really public shaming or humiliation is a conflict between the person trying to write his own narrative and society trying to write a different narrative for the person. One story tries to overwrite the other. And so to survive you have to own your story. Or”—Mike looked at me—“you write a third story. You react to the narrative that’s been forced upon you.” He paused. “You have to find a way to disrespect the other narrative,” he said. “If you believe it, it will crush you.”

“I’d been thinking about a message that had appeared on the giant Twitter feed behind Jonah’s head: “He is tainted as a writer forever.” And a tweet directed at Justine Sacco: “Your tweet lives on forever.” The word forever had been coming up a lot during my two years among the publicly shamed. Jonah and Justine and people like them were being told, “No. There is no door. There is no way back in. We don’t offer any forgiveness.” But we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don’t? Amid all the agony, Jim McGreevey was trying an extraordinary thing.

“We kept walking—past inmates just sitting there, looking at walls. “Normal prison is punishment in the worst sense,” Jim told me. “It’s like a soul-bleeding. Day in, day out, people find themselves doing virtually nothing in a very negative environment.” I thought of Lindsey Stone, just sitting at her kitchen table for almost a year, staring at the online shamings of people just like her. “People move away from themselves,” Jim said. “Inmates tell me time and again that they feel themselves shutting down, building a wall.”

“I remembered a moment from Jonah Lehrer’s annihilation. It was when he was standing in front of that giant-screen Twitter feed trying to apologize. Jonah is the sort of person who finds displays of emotion extremely embarrassing, and he then looked deeply uncomfortable. “I hope that when I tell my young daughter the same story I’ve just told you,” he was saying, “I will be a better person …” “He is tainted as a writer forever,” replied the tweets. “He has not proven that he is capable of feeling shame.” “Jonah Lehrer is a friggin’ sociopath.” — Later, when Jonah and I talked about that moment, he told me he had to “turn off some emotional switch in me. I think I had to shut down.”

“It’s shameful to have to admit you feel ashamed. By the way, we’re saying the word feeling. The feeling of shame. I think feeling is the wrong word.” It may be somewhat paradoxical to refer to shame as a “feeling,” for while shame is initially painful, constant shaming leads to a deadening of feeling. Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth. And when it reaches overwhelming intensity, shame is experienced, like cold, as a feeling of numbness and deadness. [In Dante’s Inferno] the lowest circle of hell was a region not of flames, but of ice—absolute coldness.”

“Given all of this, you’d think LeBon’s work might have at some point stopped being influential. But it never did. I suppose one reason for his enduring success is that we tend to love nothing more than to declare other people insane.”

Shame leads to violence

[on an interview of random americans, finding that the majority of people have at some point entertained vengeance fantasies.] “Almost none of the murderous fantasies were dreamed up in response to actual danger—stalker ex-boyfriends, etc. They were all about the horror of humiliation. Brad Blanton was right. Shame internalized can lead to agony. It can lead to Jonah Lehrer. Whereas shame let out can lead to freedom, or at least to a funny story, which is a sort of freedom too.”

“Universal among the violent criminals was the fact that they were keeping a secret,” Gilligan wrote. “A central secret. And that secret was that they felt ashamed—deeply ashamed, chronically ashamed, acutely ashamed.” It was shame, every time. “I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed.” […] For each of them the shaming “occurred on a scale so extreme, so bizarre, and so frequent that one cannot fail to see that the men who occupy the extreme end of the continuum of violent behavior in adulthood occupied an equally extreme end of the continuum of violent child abuse earlier in life.” So they grew up and—“all violence being a person’s attempt to replace shame with self-esteem”—they murdered people.

“And after they were jailed, things only got worse. At Walpole—Massachusetts’s most riot-prone prison during the 1970s—officers intentionally flooded the cells and put insects in the prisoners’ food. They forced inmates to lie facedown before they were allowed meals. Sometimes officers would tell prisoners they had a visitor. Prisoners almost never had visitors, so this was exciting to hear. Then the officer would say that the prisoner didn’t really have a visitor and that he was just kidding. And so on. “They thought these things would be how to get them to obey,” Gilligan told me. “But it did the exact opposite. It stimulated violence.”

Technology has strange warping effects on how public shaming affects us (and social media shaming can have larger and longer impacts than we expect)

“According to Google’s own research into our “eye movements,” 53 percent of us don’t go beyond the first two search results, and 89 percent don’t look down past the first page. “What the first page looks like,” Michael’s strategist, Jered Higgins, told me during my tour of their offices, “determines what people think of you.” As a writer and journalist—as well as a father and human being—this struck me as a really horrifying way of knowing the world.”

“ What had begun as a schadenfreude-motivated Phineas Upham Google alert had led Graeme into the mysterious world of “black-ops reputation management.” The purpose of the fake sites was obvious—to push reports about the tax-evasion charges so far down the search results that they’d effectively vanish. Nobody had heard of the European Court of Justice’s “Right to Be Forgotten” ruling at that point—it was still two years from existing—but somebody was evidently fashioning some clumsy homemade U.S.-based version for Phineas Upham. “

“ I told my dining companion, Michael Fertik, that he was the only person from the mysterious reputation-management world who had returned my e-mail. “That’s because this is a really easy sector in which to be an unappealing, scurrilous operation,” he said. “Scurrilous in what way?” “A couple of them are really nasty fucking people,” Michael said. “There’s a guy who has some traction in our space, who runs a company, he’s a convicted rapist. He’s a felony rapist. He went to jail for four years for raping a woman. He started a company to basically obscure that fact about himself, I think.” Michael told me the name of the man’s company. “We’ve built a data file on him,” he said. “

“Man, remember Justine Sacco? #HasJustineLandedYet. God that was awesome. MILLIONS of people waiting for her to land.”

“ And so the worst thing, Justine said, the thing that made her feel most helpless, was her lack of control over the Google search results. They were just there, eternal, crushing. “It’s going to take a very long time for those Google search results to change for me,” she said.

“and, in response to a small number of posters suggesting that maybe a person’s future shouldn’t be ruined because of a jokey photograph, “HER FUTURE ISN’T RUINED! Stop trying to make her into a martyr. In 6 months no one except those that actually know her will remember this.” [did not turn out to be true.]

There is evidence that “De-shaming” may have more positive outcomes than shaming

“Knee-jerk shaming is knee-jerk shaming and I wondered what would happen if we made a point of eschewing the shaming completely—if we refused to shame anyone. Could there be a corner of the justice system trying out an idea like that?”

“If shaming worked, if prison worked, then it would work,” Jim said to me. “But it doesn’t work.” He paused. “Look, some people need to go to prison forever. Some people are incapable … but most people …” “It’s disorienting,” I said, “that the line between hell and redemption in the U.S. justice system is so fine.”

“This has been a book about people who really didn’t do very much wrong. Justine and Lindsey, certainly, were destroyed for nothing more than telling bad jokes. And while we were busy steadfastly refusing them forgiveness, Jim was quietly arranging the salvation of someone who had committed a far more serious offense. It struck me that if deshaming would work for a maelstrom like Raquel, if it would restore someone like her to health, then we need to think twice about raining down vengeance and anger as our default position.”

“Throughout the 1980s, Gilligan ran experimental therapeutic communities inside Massachusetts’s prisons. They weren’t especially radical. They were just about “treating the prisoners with respect,” Gilligan told me, “giving people a chance to express their grievances and hopes and wishes and fears.” The point was to create an ambience that eradicated shame entirely. “We had one psychiatrist who referred to the inmates as scum. I told him I never wanted to see his face again. It was not only antitherapeutic for the patients, it was dangerous for us.” At first, the prison officers had been suspicious, “but eventually some of them began to envy the prisoners,” Gilligan said. “Many of them also needed some psychiatric help. These were poorly paid guys, poorly educated. We arranged to get some of them into psychiatric treatment. So they became less insulting and domineering. And violence dropped astoundingly.” […] “[The new governor] said, ‘We have to stop this idea of giving free college education to inmates,’” Gilligan told me, “‘otherwise people who are too poor to go to college are going to start committing crimes so they can get sent to prison for a free education.’” And so that was the end of the education program. [..] Only a handful of therapeutic communities inspired by his Massachusetts ones exist in American prisons today.

#shame #curlicue has opinions #shunning #purity culture #redemption #rehabilitation #1k

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