#of course not their fault but me (unconsciously) becoming a sort of mirror for people to easily project stuff onto me

[freedarick]

If I love and appreciate people, why in the hell cannot I believe that I can also be loved and appreciated??

[woahajimes]

Jon Kent had become an excellent liar. 

“We're never finding Damian.” 

That was a lie, although it could also count as truth. They were never finding Damian. 

He was. 

He didn’t have any of this information assured, but he was trusting that it kept real. He had known Damian for at least a year and a half, perhaps even less, but it had felt like forever. It was funny how people changed over time. 

When he met Damian, things were rocky. Jon actually despised Damian, he tried to get away from him. He’d always make excuses for leaving, either with Kathy, or his dad, or Maya, even. Damian had been too cocky, a little far too confident. 

Too sure of himself and his abilities, it made Jon angry. 

It filled him with envy. 

When they were sent to boot camp, Jon realized something. Damian was, sure, older than him, and more mature, and maybe not taller, but he was more skilled than Jon in almost everything he could do. 

Damian was, in a way, just like him. A small way, of course. Nothing big, they weren’t mirror on mirror. Jon hadn’t been raised by a supervillain grandfather, and Damian wasn’t a half-breed between an alien and a human.

That was really the reason that he offered Damian the granola bar. He realized the small chance that they were similar. They were both lost, in different ways, but lost altogether. Jon didn’t actually know if Damian had ever been lost, if Damian even knew that being lost meant. 

Maybe someday he’d find out. 

When Damian slipped into his room, mocked him for going to sleep while the moon was still living, when he dragged him out the window, mocked him once more for not being able to fly, that’s when Jon knew there was something. Something in Damian that made Jon want to stay, just for a while longer. 

When they matched in school, just a few educational years of a difference, nothing much, Jon was psyched. They were already close friends, even though not much had passed since Damian had visited him at night that first time. 

What could he say? They became friends pretty quickly. 

When Kid Amazo destroyed their headquarters, Jon and Damian had become pretty close friends. They were actually joking with each other, and mocking each other and making fun of each other, as friends do. Of course, Jon wouldn’t exactly know this by the palm of his hand, for friends weren’t exactly his area of expertise. 

Yet Damian felt like a friend, like a best friend. 

After all, he had saved him, when Jon was drowning at the bottom of Morrison Bay, given him a rebreather, and swam Jon’s limp, unconscious body for a few minutes, until Jon regained consciousness. 

Saving each other’s lives, they were practically inseparable. 

Their second Summer together came around, the whole gig with the cube of the fortress and the primary colours of Jon. If he was being honest, he really enjoyed that summer, perhaps the best summer in his ten years of life. Jon had always wanted a sibling, and that summer it felt like he had hit the jackpot. He could finally say that Damian was his best friend, at least without getting elbowed in the stomach. The golden kryptonite, Jon took it as a gift, being split in two, it was a portion of something he had wanted for so long: A brother. And even though having somewhat of a twin wasn’t as fun as he had expected, he enjoyed it, for as long as it lasted. 

Jon remembers telling Damian that he’s going to spend time with his grandfather. Jon was spending the night at the manor, he was sitting in front of the TV. 

“Hey, D?” Jon turned from the TV, he looked at Damian. “What are we doing this summer?” 

Damian drifted his eyes from the screen. He looked at Jon. “What do you mean?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Summer is in like two days, dummy.” 

Damian shrugged, his eyes wandering back to the TV. “Nothing much, why?” 

Jon turned back to face the TV. “I think I’m going to go see my grandpa.” 

“Cool.” And that had been that. 

Jon should have told Damian a bit more, maybe then he would have been opposed to Jon leaving. Instead, he had left out minor details from Damian, details Clark had told him when Jon had left, when Jon had already spent a few years in the volcano prison. 

Jon had to admit that his time in the volcano prison had messed him up a bit. He had thought about Damian a lot, more than he’d like to admit. If Jon was around… what? Fifteen? Then Damian would have been around eighteen. It struck him a few days later, just how much he’d missed. Damian would have already left the school, maybe gone to some college for smart super-hero ninjas. Probably forgotten all about him, about the summer of super and the Kid Amazo and all the things that Jon held tight to his chest. He probably forgot about the time they played Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with pillow forts and nerf guns, about the times they ate cotton candy, sitting on the roof of the Carousel in the Hamilton fair. Pairing up for sports, even though they were three years apart in grades. 

Damian had probably forgotten about all that. 

It was really the Hamilton fairs that got to Jon. He used to love those as a kid. He went for the first time when he was nine, second time ten, third time eleven. The second time he went, it had been Jon’s first year since meeting Damian.

Damian couldn’t go for some mission with Batman, but Jon had met up with Kathy, He told her all about his adventures with Damian. She kept quiet, mostly because Jon wouldn’t be. It was pretty insane to think that this had all been in the same year, Jon meeting Damian, Jon moving away from Hamilton, to a private school, creating a public figure alongside Damian: the Super Sons. Nearly drowning in Morrison Bay, his mom almost killed, it was a bit too much for the mind of a 10-year-old.

Yet Jon got to the part in which he called Damian his best friend, and Kathy spoke up.

“Jon,” She stopped what she was doing and she met eyes with him. “What is it you even like about Damian?”

The question had caught him off-guard. “I- He’s kinda nice someti-”

“No,” Kathy interrupted him. “Not really, no. He’s not that nice at all.”

Jon kept quiet. He shrugged it off with a simple “I guess so,” and the night kept moving. He returned home, but Kathy’s question rung in his ears.

“What is it you even like about Damian?”

Jon sat on the office chair in his room, a marker on his hand. He stared blankly at the 9x9 whiteboard in front of him. He uncapped the marker and wrote down Damian’s name. 

He’s funny sometimes, Jon thought to himself. When he’s not being mean. He decided to write that down. 

He’s really smart, too. Jon wrote that down as well. 

He wrote down a few more things, all jots, and he reminded himself of the paper he had written for school not long ago. He took out his backpack, his binder, carefully opened the rings and slid out his paper. He started skimming it. 

“ ‘If I had to describe Damian in one word, it would be dependable,’ Jeez,’ Jon whispered into the room. “What was going on in my head?” 

He kept reading. “ ‘No matter what, when the chips are down, he always takes care of me.’” Yeah, that part was true. 

He read the last part in his head. I know I can trust him no matter what kinda trouble we find ourselves in.

Jon capped the marker, he deleted everything he had written on the whiteboard. He didn’t need a list for all the things he liked about Damian. He knew already, Damian was his best friend, no questions needed. 

Jon had done and said things he wasn’t proud of. He for one, developed new habits, bad habits. He wanted to pin an excuse on them, that it wasn’t his fault that he had developed such habits. It was just his reaction to being put in situations like that. Example taken, Jon had started to talk to himself. He wasn’t exactly sure if it was a habit or a sign that he was going insane, but he didn’t like it altogether. Remembering it was torture, it was a habit he started in the volcano prison. 

Jon clearly remembers that the first time he talked to himself, to Damian. When exactly, he wasn’t sure, but Jon had a hard time getting used to the lack of things, in this case, a small daily occurrence he shared with Damian. 

Their shared habit started in their first sleepover, it had rooted from something they were watching on the TV. The woman on the screen was putting her kids to sleep, and she asked her youngest boy, “What was your favourite part of the day?”, to which the boy answered “spending time with you, mom.” 

Damian snorted. “Let’s  watch something else.”

Jon whipped his head around and looked at Damian. “Let’s pick a movie.” His eyes beamed, he was grinning. 

They had picked out a movie they never got tired of rewatching: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. They had turned off the movie early, Alfred coming in and telling them to get ready to sleep. 

Each in their perspective beds, both had been quiet for a while, until Damian spoke up. He pitched his voice, and said, “What was your favourite part of the day?” Mimicking the woman. 

Jon snickered. “Spending time with you, Dami.” He pronounced the new nickname like ‘Day-me’, and heard Damian make a vomiting sound. 

“Don’t you dare call me that,” Damian sat up, and Jon did as well. “I will end you, Kent.”

Jon waved his hand, he could make out Damian’s expression even with the lights turned off. “Pfft, what about Dami?” He pronounced it like ‘D-ah-me’. 

Damian’s expression softened. “Mother used to call me that,” he said. “She wasn’t very fond of nicknames, but I guess she liked that one.”

Jon felt heat rising to his cheeks. He hadn’t meant to touch a sore subject. He knew there was a complicated relationship with Damian and his mom. “I think I’ll just stick with ‘D’.” he said quickly. 

Damian laid back down on his bed, he turned away from Jon. “No, it’s fine. Whatever helps you sleep at night, J.” 

Jon still sat on the bed, he arranged his pillow. “D?”

“Yeah?”

“‘Hukka’” 

Jon could have sworn Damian smiled, just a little. “‘Hukka’, Jon.”

It was embarrassing to sorts, Jon had to admit. Whispering ‘Hukka’ to himself at night, swearing that he could see Damian if he just squinted a little bit. Asking Damian how his day went, swearing that he could almost hear an answer, the things you did for lost best friends. 

Jon had also thought about Damian, yet in more ways than those. Sometimes he wondered if Damian still wore turtlenecks, if he had made any new friends. What if he had gotten a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend? Worse, what if Damian had found a new best friend? A new super-hero partner, someone that didn’t leak tears when they watched movies like Coraline. Someone more like Damian, like a… super-smart ninja assassin. 

When Jon finally spotted earth, a late teen, he started thinking about everything that could have been. Perhaps if Jon hadn’t left, him and Damian would have been having ice cream and maybe getting their own statue as the super sons. Maybe they’d have moved past the Super sons. 

Jon wondered where Damian was now. Maybe he was Batman, although Jon secretly wished that he wasn’t. He had always thought that Batman was cool, but it wasn’t really Damian. Batman was in a way, everything that Damian wasn’t. But if Damian wanted to be Batman, then Jon really didn’t see why not. Could Jon be the Superman to his Batman? Maybe? 

It took him as an overall surprise, realizing that only three weeks had passed. It made hope linger in his stomach, a fluttery feeling. Maybe he hadn’t missed so much after all. 

But Damian had stared at him like a stranger, like he used to stare at the boys at school. It made Jon’s heart stop beating, just for a few moments. He wanted to cry on Damian’s shoulder, even if Damian had only aged three weeks. Damian had rejected him, and that hurt more than Jon could have expected. Damian had collected himself, after a short time, and they spent the night together. Then, before Damian left, he hugged Jon, tightly. Maybe Damian was also feeling what Jon was. 

Maybe his letter proved that. Maybe the letter was Damian’s way of expressing everything that he felt for Jon. 

So Jon set out to find Damian, to ask him about the letter. To finally explain to him everything he wanted to say. 

[specificocean33]

Ｔｈｅ Ｓｐｏｒｅｓ

Ｋｉｒｉｓｈｉｍａ ｘ Ｒｅａｄｅｒ

1: ᴜɴꜰᴀɪʀ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ

A Zombie Apocalypse AU. Just a little idea I had. I’ll be writing a total of 3 parts (subject to change,) but anyways here’s the first :) I hope you enjoy it. Some warnings:

Brief mention of kidnapping and rape, death, and some angst. Read at your own discretion. 

It’s amazing to see how much the world had changed in only 3 years. With this plague, pandemic, apocalypse, or even cleansing, as some might refer to it, the world had truly shown it’s true colors.

Walkers. Zombies. Contaminated. They were now a part of everyday life, and those at the 1% lived their lives the same as before any of this happened. All the rest of the population were not so lucky.

While the rich and wealthy lived in what were called White Zones, the rest of the population wandered around various Safe Districts. However, how safe they really were was up for debate.

You, your brother, and your mother wandered from one Safe District to another, mainly because really living in one was far too expensive, and paper currency didn’t have much value unless you went to the White Zones, and even then, if you weren’t ‘one of them’, they didn’t let you in. This world was unfair, but how unfair you still had yet to see. And see, you would.

One chilly February evening, the time had come. Your mother had been having issues with her back for some time now, she simply wasn’t as young as she used to be. This wasn’t her fault, of course, but she was unfortunately becoming a burden. So, as customary for elderly or sick people, their family members had to put them down.

It was the harsh reality of this world. If you couldn’t keep up, the Walkers would get to you. You couldn’t bare to see that happen.

The old Porsche 928 your family had was parked at an empty flower field. Your brother, only 12 years old, held your mother and wept. Your mother could only smile and hug him tight.

You couldn’t bare to watch. You ripped them apart and took your mother by the hand and led her to the field.

“Mateo, get in the car. Now,” you ordered, not looking him in the eye.

He shrieked and cried, shaking his head, “No! I won’t! Let me hold her, please!”

“If you don’t get in the fucking car, I’ll knock your ass out and force you in. Your choice.”

He gave you a glare filled with hatred and tears, before scampering into the car.

Gently, you led your mother to the middle of the field. She looked so somber, and weak. She gave you a small smile, and tears flowed down her face.

“It’s selfish of me to make you do this. I’m sorry,” she murmured, unable to meet your eyes.

Your lip trembled, but you forced yourself to steel. You couldn’t cry. Not yet. Not in front of her.

“Kneel, mom. Pray if you want. I’ll make it quick and p-,” your voice wavered, and to avoid crying you bit your lips and shut your mouth.

Your mother kneeled and held a rosary wrapped in her hands before nodding.

You held up your shotgun

and pulled the trigger.

The echoing blast could be heard for miles. For some reason, the sound of your mother’s body falling limp was louder than the gun blast, though.

This world was unfair. How unfair it was, you still had yet to see.

A few days had passed, and your brother still wasn’t speaking to you. You had both returned alone to the South Safe District, and the entire ride there was agonizingly quiet. You wished he would cry, yell, hit you, do something,but he never uttered a single word. Just silent tears. That in itself was much louder than the silence. You made your way back to the hotel and made sure your brother was sound asleep before crying and sobbing, you’d cried harder then than you had in your entire life. You were exhausted. Then, you were interrupted. A scream outside your cracked window made you turn quickly. A little too quickly; you popped your neck.

Outside, a young girl was being sprayed with Walker Spores by a large hooded man, and once she had collapsed, he took her away. You sighed and turned away. This world was unfair, but how unfair you still had yet to see.

While staying in various districts, you usually stayed in shabby hotels or abandoned houses, there wasn’t really much else. Especially since Kidnappers were often around these parts. Kidnappers took the Contaminated and used their Spores to contaminate others, to leave them impressionable. In the early stages of infection, the body is left dazed and not really…there. Perfect opportunity to take young girls and boys and….well. You get the gist. Sleeping in a shelter of some sort is way better than sleeping outside.

In the morning, you proposed a visit to the West District. It was your brother’s birthday in a few days, and you figured you’d take what little money and trading items you had to buy him a candy or something. These last few days had obviously been hard on the both of you. He quietly nodded and took your hand as you led the way to the car.

By 11 AM on February 17, you and your brother had been on the road for about 2 hours. Your shotguns were loaded and in each of your laps. Your mother’s gun was in the trunk, untouched. You didn’t want to look at it, so you put it in the back. Out of sight, out of mind. Music was blaring on the stereo, drowning out your miserable thoughts. Nothing else wandered through your mind scape until Mateo pointed at something in the road and yelled “Look! (Y/N), look!”

You slowed down and saw a person…what seemed to be unconscious on the side of the road. The first thing you noticed was their outrageously loud red hair. You slowed to a stop a few feet from the body, turned down the music, and grabbed your gun, a cloth gag, hand cuffs, and your filtering mask.

“Wait here. I don’t know if it’s a fresh Walker or something. Keep your gun aimed at it,” you said as you fastened your mask in place.

You took a quick glance around the surrounding area. No Walkers in sight.

Getting out and keeping the gun trained on the body, you noticed it was a man. A young man, probably around your age, 17 or 18 by the looks of him. He was bleeding from his temple and nose. He had no guns or anything on him. You nudged him with the tip of your shotgun, but he didn’t move. You quieted down and could hear that he was breathing; his chest was moving up and down as well.

So…he was alive. No rashes or boils to indicate infection, he must be fine. Regardless, you clicked the cuffs in place and tied the gag around his mouth. Walkers were known to claw and bite to infect others, and frankly you didn’t wanna take a chance with a stranger.

“Mateo, help me carry him, he’s heavy,” you called to your brother as he scrambled out of the car to help.

Securing him in the backseat, you used an old shirt to clean off the blood, but there wasn’t much else you could do besides that.

An hour or so later, about halfway to the West District, you heard stirring behind you. Taking a quick glance back, it looked like he was going to wake up soon.

“Mateo, keep that gun aimed at him. He could possibly be contaminated, or something.”

Your brother nodded and kept his gun aimed at the man.

A little later, and he was letting out muffled grunts. Taking a few minutes to look around at your surroundings, and minding the other cars passing you, you pulled over and turned around to look at him.

His eyes were a deep crimson, his equally red hair was disheveled and everywhere, and his clothes were bloodstained and dirty. He had a small scar above his eye, and he looked frightened and confused.

“Were you contaminated?” You asked, taking out your own gun and pointing it at him.

“Mm! Mm!” He frantically shook his head, eyes going even wider.

“How do I know you’re not lying?” I questioned further.

He turned his head to the side, exposing a serial number. Of course, how could you had forgotten? Everyone who wasn’t contaminated had one. If you got infected, the ink used to tattoo everyone burned and disappeared.

You sighed and put your gun down, as did your brother, you reached over and took off his gag and cuffs.

“T-thanks. A bit overkill, don’t you think?” He said sheepishly, rubbing his raw wrists.

You turned the car back on and got back on the road before answering, “Sorry. Can’t be too careful. Mind telling us what happened? Oh, I’m (Y/N), by the way. This is my little brother, Mateo.”

Mateo waved.

“Oh, well, my name’s Eijiro, but you can call me Kirishima. And…well, I was robbed, simply put.” He said quietly, seemingly embarrassed.

You couldn’t help but laugh at his misfortune. His face burned pink and he scowled. Mateo looked horrified and punched your arm.

“Don’t laugh! That really sucks man, I’m sorry,” Mateo mumbled frowning at me.

“Sorry, sorry, I don’t know what made me do it. That really sucks dude. What’d they steal?”

“Everything. I’m lucky I still have the clothes I’m wearing. My gun, my money, my….” He sighed and shut his eyes, like he knew what was coming, “…my car….”

You choked.

“PFT- BRO, YOUR CAR?” You howled with laughter. Truly, someone else’s misfortune was just what you needed right now.

He sighed and nodded.

You wheezed, “Dude, how does that even happen?? I gotta know.”

“You’re such an ass…” Mateo muttered.

“Language, bitch.”

Kirishima avoided your gaze in the rear view mirror, “W-well I saw someone on the road, kinda like me. And I stopped by to help, except, well, I wasn’t as cautious. And now I’m here.”

“Nice job, it’s a wonder you’re still clean,” you snickered.

“Well hey look, we’re on our way to the West District and from there we might visit a friend of mine down south, and apparently you could use a ride,” you smiled at him through your mirror. He smiled back, “That would be great, actually. I could uh….use a ride. Do you happen to have an extra weapon or something? Sorry to ask, it’s kinda unmanly of me, but…” he trialed off.

“Yeah bro, we got one in the trunk,” Mateo said with a smile. This new stranger seemed to have lifted his spirits some.

Maybe this would bring you some good karma. Maybe…the world wasn’t all that unfair. You would have yet to see though.

Ｅｎｄ ｏｆ Ｐａｒｔ １

[bleachanimefan1]

Turtles Forever Part 76

The Real World Part Two

Leo and Usagi arrive at the Battle Nexus.

"We made it!" Leo exclaimed. "The Battle Nexus."

"I assured you that I would bring you to this honorable place," Usagi answered as they started to walk. "My sensei, Master Katsu Ichi, taught me the ritual for entering the realm of the Battle Nexus. And I have made this journey many times. Yet, no matter how many times I come to the Battle Nexus, it never ceases to amaze me with it's grandeur." The two finally stop at the stadium, to find it quiet as there is no tournament on right now.

They enter it and walk past the hall of past heroes. "Just think of all of the honorable warriors that fought in this arena over the years," Leo commented.

"But it's odd to find it so quiet," Usagi added as he and Leo walked up some steps. "Of course, I have never been here when the Battle Nexus Championship was not in progress." The two stop in front of doors that were left unguarded, surprisingly.

"Still, shouldn't there be guards or something?" Leo questioned. Usagi frowned, wondering the same as well. They enter the Daimyo's throne room to find it faintly dark, as a few doors to the side towards the stadium let in some light. In front of them was the Daimyo, but who also looked old and weak. Gyoji was floating next to him and the war staff was right next to him as well.

"My lord, it's is Miyamoto Usagi, he has come to see you," Gyoji told the Daimyo.

"So dark, no use." he murmured in despair.

"Surely, you remember Usagi. And he has come with Leonardo, Hamato Splinter's pupil." Leo glances over at Usagi before stepping up and kneeling down in front of the Daimyo.

"Honored Daimyo, I have come to ask for your help," he started. "My family, my brothers, and my father, Master Splinter are in trouble." The Daimyo made no response and Gyoji moves closer towards Leo.

"Please, Leonardo, continue. Tell the Daimyo everything." he urges him to continue.

"It was Drako...and your son," Leo answered, hesitantly. "They're still alive, if you can call it that. The two of them merged somehow, combined together to become one being, sort of an Ultimate Drako. He scattered us throughout time and space. That is why I am here, to ask you, most honored Daimyo, please use your war staff to retrieve my family and my master," Leo finished. "If you do, I will forever be in your debt." and he bows to him.

The Daimyo stirs. "You, Leonardo, will be in my debt? You would put yourself in my services? What would you do for me? Would you return to me my son?" His voice began to grow angry. "My son that you took from me? My son that you and your friend there and your master and your vile brothers took destroyed?" Leo and Usagi both had their mouths open in shock. "I will help you. Yes, I will help you to learn the meaning of pain and loss as you rot in my dungeon!" He stands up. "Guards, seize them!"

The two gasp in shock as guards came into the room and started to surround them.

"Lock them in the dungeon forever!" the Daimyo declared.

Leo and Usagi both pull out their swords as the guards rush towards them. Leo blocks an axe and jumps, kicking away the guard before fighting against two more. Usagi was fighting against a guard until Leo and him were now back to back.

"We're a little out numbered!" Leo pointed out.

"And I do not wish to harm these fine warriors!" Usagi called out.

"Time to get out of here and rethink things!" Leo told him.

"You will lead, I will follow," Usagi answered. Leo quickly moves away from a guard as he strikes. He jumps on one of their weapons and leaps over them. Usagi does the same and follows after him. The two both sheathe their swords.

"Stop them!" the Daimyo shouted. "Do not let them get away! Stop them!" He sits back down as he started to have a coughing fit. Leo pulls out his shunko spikes as the guards ran towards the two. He and Usagi jump out of the window. The guards look out of it down to the stadium below them towards the water.

"No one can survive a fall from this height,"

"We must be sure of it! Come on!"

As they ran off, Leo and Usagi, who was hanging from Leo's leg, were dangling from the wall as Leo climbed up it, using his ninja tool.

A few minutes later, Leo and Usagi jumped up into an opened window.

"I'm beginning to think hanging around with you is turning me more ninja than samurai, Leonardo-san," Usagi commented. "All this sneaking about."

"We have to steal the Daimyo's war staff," Leo explained.

"And we must help the Daimyo, Clearly, he is under some kind of spell," Usagi pointed out. "At the very least, he is not himself."

Then the two heard guards approaching and they jump inside and ran off. As the two arrived at the throne room, Leo and Usagi saw two guards guarding the door. They take out the guards and steal their uniforms, putting them on and walked into the room.

The Daimyo was sleeping in his throne room. The two guards were guarding the war staff. Leo and Usagi walked inside, the two holding each guard's weapon in their hands. They walked up to the guards.

"We've been sent here to relieve you," Leo tells them.

"But our watch isn't over yet?" One of them replied.

"It is now!" Leo shouted as he and Usagi both quickly took out the two guards. They looked over the Daimyo to see that he was still sleeping.

"My son...my son." he murmured. The two both removed their hoods and Leo was about to grab the war staff when Gyoji suddenly appears.

"Leonardo," Leo turns to him.

"I don't want to hurt you Gyoji, but I have to have the war staff," he whispered. The Gyoji quiets him.

"I wish to help you. Take the war staff and follow me," he told Leo. Leo took the staff and he and Usagi followed the Gyoji until he lead them into a chamber. The Gyoji turns to them, holding up a hand.

"I have witnessed the malaise that has befallen my master. And I have heard your story, Master Leonardo. Something is not right. Something must be done. And I will help you do it," he backs up and uses his paddle to create a mirror. "Use the staff, concentrate on your missing father, call him to you." Leo holds the staff and raises it to the air. It begins to spark. "The staff will do the rest." Leo closed his eyes concentrating on Master Splinter.

"Master Splinter! Master Splinter, where are you?" the mirror revealed that he was in a dungeon.

"Why, that is the dungeon! In this very castle!" They see an unconscious Splinter, who was chained up.

"Master Splinter, no!" Leo said, worried.

"Concentrate, Leonardo," Leo tried to concentrate as he sees Splinter begin to shift, but his attempt was unsuccessful.

"Huh? It didn't work." Leo replied, confused. "What did I do wrong?"

"I do not know," The Gyoji answered. "Perhaps, you will have better luck summoning one of your brothers? Try again, Leonardo."

Leo tries again and the mirror reveals the Shell of Justice, the home of super turtles.

"Mayor O'Neil," Graviturtle said. "The Super Turtles will stop him."

"That sounds pretty wicked," Mikey commented, stepping up. "Can I come?" He starts to shift.

"Whoa, it's happening again. I'm in flux! This is it, I'm going home!" Mikey sees a three shadowy silhouettes. "Thanks for everything! Bye! Bye now!" But, they soon disappear as Mikey returns back to normal.

"Guess I'm staying?" he shrugged.

"Perhaps your mind is unsettled in some way. Try again, you must concentrate harder, Leonardo," The Gyoji tells Leo and the mirror began to show an ice world. Raph was riding on a motorcycle with Falcon. He begins to shift and soon starts to phase through it.

"Oh, this ain't good," he commented. "It's like I'm fading away."

"We're drifting, get control!" Falcon shouted.

"I...I can't! I can't grab hold of the bars!" Raph answered him as he tried to grab the handles. He sees the shadowy silhouettes for a second.

"Raph, look out!" Falcon warned. The bike was falling off of the track into a deep chasm.

"Raph, no!" Leo shouted.

"You must try again, Leonardo. Try to save at least one of them." The Gyoji urges again. The mirror now revealed a dark New York as the Shredder had taken over it.

"Beware of what you do," Karai warned. "The Shredder is watching, always watching."

Donnie crawled out of the manhole. "Where are all the people?"

"You mean the one's that survived?" The older Mikey asked as they ran into the woods. "They're forced to work 18-hour days in the Shredder's labor camps. No one's allowed out at night."

Donnie starts to shift and he sees the silhouettes as well, for a second, before returning to normal. "What the shell?" He shakes his head and runs after Mikey.

Leo concentrated one more time, now focusing on Yuuki. The mirror changed as it revealed a bedroom. He saw Yuuki curled into a ball as she leaned against the locked door. Leo heard two voices pounding on the other side as they tried to call out to her.

"Yuuki, open the door this instant!" Leo heard a woman's voice shout. Next, he heard a man's voice call out.

"Princess, I don't know what's going on, but open the door. We need to talk!"

Yuuki shook her head as she tried to block the voices out.

"You're not real!" she cried. "You are not my parents! I just want to go home!"

Then Yuuki felt herself begin to shift and she saw two silhouettes. As she stood up and looked closer, she gasped and immediately ran towards them. Yuuki threw herself from out of the mirror and crashed right into Leo's arms.

"Leo!" she cried out. Leo immediately hugged her tightly.

"Yuuki! Finally, something goes right!" Yuuki noticed Usagi beside her and Leo.

"Usagi? You're here too?" she asked, confused but also happy to see him.

"Nice to see you too, Yuuki-san," Usagi smiled.

"Leo, where are the others?" Yuuki asked. "Where's Master Splinter?" Leo sighed.

"Master Splinter is in the dungeon of this castle as for the others," he clenched the war staff tightly in his hands.

"We'll figure something out," Yuuki told him.

"I don't get it." Leo said in frustration. "I just don't get it. I was so close I could feel them."

"It is not your fault," Gyoji takes the staff from him. "Someone very powerful is blocking your attempts and is enjoying watching you suffer thus."

"What?" Leo murmured.

"Enjoying it very much, relishing your pain and frustration," Usagi and Leo look at each other as well as Yuuki as the Gyoji voice began to change, sounding more familiar. "Taking pleasure in your absolute ignorance!"

The three gasp as he began to laugh evilly, his face breaking into piece, revealing the Ultimate Ninja.

"We have enjoyed watching you suffer, Leonardo, as we have enjoyed watching your rat master suffer! And bringing Usagi here is an extra gift to us. He shall rue the day he returned to my Battle Nexus." the Daimyo's son eyed Yuuki, which Leo stood in front of her, blocking him from her. "And Yuuki will finally be my bride as promised!"

"You will never lay a hand on her!" Leo shouted in rage.

"The Battle Nexus will never be yours, villian!" Usagi exclaimed as he and Leo charged towards the Daimyo, taking off their cloaks. The Ultimate Ninja freezes everyone with the time scepter.

"Pathetic creatures, I control both the Daimyo's war staff and Lord Simultaneous time scepter! I am a god!" There is a flash of light and Leo and Usagi appear in a desert.

"Where has the fiend sent us?" Usagi demanded. Leo felt himself begin to panic. Yuuki was not with them. She must be back there with the Ultimate Ninja. Leo gripped his swords in frustration. He was getting really tired of this.

"I don't know, but it can't be good," he answered as a purple cloud began to circle around the two, trapping them in it. Zombie like creatures began to advance towards them as they pulled out their swords.

"Usagi, I'm sorry that I got you into this," Leo said to him.

"Do not say such things, my brother. I stand by you no matter what happens," Usagi insisted as the warriors charged at Leo. He blocks one's flaming sword with his own. Usagi growls and jumps over the flaming blade and clashes with another as well. But, Usagi was knocked down as a creature charged at him from behind, knocking him unconscious.

"Usagi!" Leo shouted as he tried to defend both him and Usagi. "No!"

"Soon, Leonardo will be destroyed," The Ultimate Ninja declared as Leo ducked from a weapon. "Glorious, glorious!" He uses the war staff to summon the Daimyo. "And now, no more distractions. We must finish the Daimyo once and for all. His ruling is at an end. He shall suffer horribly as he perishes." The beast hovered over the Daimyo with the two weapons above him, ready to finish him off.

Splinter appeared on the ground, near the Daimyo as well as Yuuki. She sees Splinter and rushes over to him, trying to wake him up. "First the Daimyo will perish and then the rat." the Ultimate Ninja laughs evilly and the Daimyo starts to wake up.

"My son...my-my son is that you? I...thought I heard your voice." he murmured. The Ultimate Ninja begins to falter as he heard his voice and saw his face.

"Father?"

"Is that sentiment I hear in your voice?" Drako demanded.

"He looks so...frail," The Ultimate Ninja murmured.

"Do not soften on me now," Yuuki smiled in relief as Splinter began to wake up. He tells her to be quiet and to follow him as the two sneaked towards the Ultimate Ninja. "He must be destroyed."

"Must he?" the Ultimate Ninja questioned. "We have all we want. We have power, we have the war staff. He is no longer a threat. He is old and weak. We could let him live in exile."

"We haven't come this far to simply let the Daimyo live," Drako argued. "He must suffer. He must pay! All must pay! Now!"

"No!" the Ultimate Ninja shouted as well as Splinter and Yuuki as the two jumped up and grabbed the war staff.

"You shall not harm him! No more destruction, no more!" Splinter yelled. The Ultimate Ninja slammed Splinter and Yuuki to the ground as they held on to the war staff.

"Fools, have you forgotten who is the master of this race?" the Ultimate Ninja responded. "We hold the power. We command-" Suddenly, the war begins to activate as Splinter and Yuuki attempted to use it. "What? They have activated the war staff? No!"

My children!...My children!

In Megatroplis, Mikey was surrounded by the super turtles as he helped them defeated the Sliver. He begins to phase out. "Oh no, not now!" He exclaimed. "Sorry guys, look's like I'm already on my way, out of this world! If they write a comic about this, make sure they call me the Turtle Titan!" he tells them before fades away.

Come to me, my children.

Raph manages to finish the race with Falcon. "Yes, Team Fitts has won the USP RA charity race event!" The alien crowd cheered as Raph jumped down from the bike. Falcon shakes his hand.

"Way to win the race, partner." he tells him, but Raph begins to shift again.

"Hey, it's happening again," he explained as his voice became more distorted. "It's pulling me way from here."

"Raph, listen," Falcon told him. "Just remember that if you do nothing else in your life, you were once a planet racer. Not everyone can say that." Raph places a hand on his shoulder.

"And you remember, race with honor." He fades away.

My children...

In the dark world of New York, the Shredder had been defeated. Donnie and April were the only ones to make it out of the fight.

"My brothers, my poor brothers, this world, this future. It's a nightmare." he lamented lost in thought.

"It was a nightmare, Don. But, you, Leo, Raph, Mikey, Yuuki, and Venus, you gave us back our future." April told him. Then Donnie begins to phase.

"April, it's happening again! Something's pulling me away. It's stronger this time!" he screamed as he disappeared.

You are now needed more than ever!

"My children, my children, my children!" Splinter shouted. A flash of green energy emits from the staff and everyone appeared as they landed on the ground. Splinter and Yuuki glance over at them.

"Guys! You're back!" Yuuki shouted.

"What the shell?" Raph questioned and Donnie hugs him.

"Raphie!" Mona shouted as she ran over to hug him. Donnie moved out of the way before she could crash into him and Raph.

"Mikey, Raph, you're young!" he exclaimed happily. "And alive!" He runs over to Mikey, taking his hands. "And Mikey, you have both arms!"

"Good to see you too, Donnie," Mikey commented, nervously. "I think."

"Donnie?" Donnie gasped as he heard Venus voice, behind him. He turned to her and immediately ran over and hugged her tightly.

"Venus!" he exclaimed as he felt tears begin to burn his eyes and wiped them away. "You're okay! You're really here!" Venus looked at him with a shocked look and looked over towards Raph and Mikey mouthing to them "What's going on?"

The two shrugged their hands, confused as well.

"What have you done, rat?" The Ultimate Ninja demanded as he lifted Splinter and Yuuki up. "What have you done?" He throws them down to the ground, trying to shake them off of the staff. The others notice them.

"Enough reunion, Master Splinter's and Yuuki are in trouble!" Raph called out. "Come on!"

The group runs over to them as the Ultimate Ninja tried to make them let go of the staff.

"Insolent rat! Let go!" He slams Splinter and Yuuki down while the others charge at him and tackled the Ultimate Ninja down. He lets go of the war staff as Yuuki and Splinter fall to the ground, the two holding it in their hands. The time scepter was released as well.

"My war staff! My time scepter! No, no, no!" he smacks Mikey, Raph, and Alopex off of him while Donnie and Venus grabbed onto his tail. He smacks them back as well. Donnie looks over towards the time scepter.

"We have to keep the time scepter out of his hands!" he called out. As the Ultimate Ninja moves towards the scepter, Donnie kicks it away.

"Yo, ugly!" he turns to see Raph and Mikey holding the scepter. "Looking for this?"

Splinter and Yuuki walked up, holding the war staff. "You fools!" he yells at them. "There is no way you can defeat us! You do not have the power to use the war staff or the time scepter!"

"Perhaps not," Splinter spoke, as he gripped the staff tightly in his hands. "But you will never get your hands on them again! I swear it! I-" A strange energy began to erupt between the time scepter and the war staff as they collided with each other.

"What sorcery is this?" Drako asked.

"Master Splinter?" Mikey commented, confused.

"What's going on?" Raph murmured.

"I don't know," Splinter answered. "I-" the energy began to grow stronger as the four were lifted into the air. "Everyone, hold on! Hold on!"

Leo and Usagi gripped their swords as they tried to defend themselves against the creatures. "They just keep coming, Usagi!"

"Then we will just keep fighting, Leonardo!" Usagi yelled back to him. Suddenly, the creatures disappeared and the two reappear in the throne room of the palace.

"We're back," Leo murmured.

"This should not be possible!" The Ultimate Ninja shouted as they appeared in the room. "You do not have the power!"

The energy directed itself and fired at the Ultimate Ninja tearing him and Drako apart from each other. Soon, the two began to turn into stone.

"I don't understand," Drako said. "How can this be? No, no!"

"Father?" the Ultimate Ninja turned towards the Daimyo, stepping to him. "Father!" he held out his hand towards him before he starts to turn to stone as well. "Forgive me. I-"

The Ultimate Ninja and Drako fall to the ground as they crumbled to dust.

"My son?" the Daimyo murmured. "Did I hear my son? What is going on here?"

The four were lifted down as the energy began to subside. Leo and Usagi walk in to see them. "Master Splinter! Yuuki!"

"You're alright!" he exclaimed as he ran up to all of them. "You're all okay!"

"Um, sensei, what the shell just happend?" Mikey questioned, confused. "How did we do that?"

"I...truly do not know." Splinter answered. Suddenly, there was a bright blue light as Lord Simultaneous stepped out of it.

"It's quite simple really. It's like I told your kids here when I met them last time," he levitates the time scepter to him. "This time scepter has a mind of it's own. It read everyone's thoughts, weighed good against evil, and set everything to right, with a little help from the war staff." He groaned as he turned around seeing the two ash piles on the ground. "What a horrible mess. No one ever learns," He lowers himself and walked over to it. "I get so tired of cleaning up after megalomaniacs and mad men."

"No, no," he hears the Daimyo stirring in front of him. "My son, no."

"Let me show you the true and good powers of the time scepter, controlled by the right hands." The time lord turned to everyone and he sprinkles some blue dust over the fallen Ultimate Ninja, turning him into a little boy. He shakes his head as he wakes and rushes over towards the Daimyo, hugging him.

"Father, father! I had the most horrible nightmare! Oh, father!"

The Daimyo wakes and sees him. "My son? Oh, my son!" He hugs him as he cried. "Do not cry. I too had a horrible nightmare, but it's over now. It's alright, it's going to be alright."

Simultaneous turns back to the others. "And it's high time I put you all back where you belong. You've given me quite a headache fitting all over time and creation like that."

"Usagi," Leo bows to him. "Thank you." Yuuki bows to him as well.

"It was great seeing you again!" she replied then lunged out towards him, hugging the samurai tightly. Usagi smiled.

"And me as well, Yuuki-san," then he turns to Leo.

"Leonardo, it is a great honor to be your friend."

"Until we meet again, Usagi-san," Splinter tells him. "Farewell."

Simultaneous returns everyone back to their time lines and they soon find themselves back in the lair. Casey walks over to them.

"Where did the heck did you guys go? I've been looking for you for at least ten minutes. Elizabeth's been crying nonstop and I even had to change her diapers!" he told them with a disgusted look on his face. Mona had a horrific look on hers. Elizabeth has been alone this entire time...with Casey.

"I have to go check on her now!" she shouted, running off.

"You guys been goofing on me? Is this some kind of game, like hide and seek or something?" Casey asked as he watched run off with a confused look on his face. Raph smiled as well as everyone else.

"Yeah, something like that." he told him.

"Let's just say it's good to be home." Leo commented.

[thebestworstidea]

What are We?

In the wake of Remus's reveal, Patton has a lot to think about. Deceit comes visiting. Is this better or worse than being alone? Is it really different than being alone? They used to be the same. (on Ao3)

This is mostly philosophical nonsense and exploration of ideas.

It was his room, but not his realm that Patton sat in now.  

He didn’t need any help to get lost in memories right now. He just needed to be by himself. It wasn’t a feeling he felt a lot. He hated being alone. Normally he was better around other people. 

Well… maybe not better.

Better at pretending he was better.

He knew better. It was hard, sometimes, to be Morality, to watch the swinging needle of wrong and right. To balance that with feelings. He wrapped himself in the hoodie Logan had given him, a gift for him, made by someone else. A silent reminder about feeling bad. About being honest about feelings. About feeling too much. He pulled the hood of his hoodie low, and tried to smile to himself, thinking about what Virgil action that was. His friend, his kiddo, his partner in the dynamic emotionally powered duo. 

And… in this case, partner in crime. 

Well, not crime.

But being wrong. 

He wasn’t Logan, but he did sure dislike it when it turned out he was wrong. 

He was supposed to know right from wrong.

Kind of his thing. 

But he was wrong. Thoughts weren’t action. They didn’t have to mean anything. After all, did daydreaming about anything really have to mean anything? Did the thoughts of passion that rippled through from time to time mean anything, necessarily? He let those happen because they tingled and felt good. The difference being that the other thoughts felt bad. 

It was simple. 

It should be simple. 

Why couldn’t things be simple?

“Well, Well. The truth will out, it seems.” a familiar voice said behind him. 

“You let him out.” Patton said quietly.

“I know what I said.” there was a faint hiss to the last word. “He wouldn’t be as bad if you hadn’t locked him up.” 

“I did the right thing.” He clenched his hands into fists, balanced on his knees. 

“Are you sure? Was it right for him to split at all?”

“He was hurting himself! You know what that’s like!”

“I do. But do you remember?”

“Of course I do.” 

It had been terrifying, pulling himself apart. For the first few moments, it had felt like looking at himself. It didn’t make sense.  He didn’t like thinking about it. But he remembered what it had been like before. The way he couldn’t even agree with himself.  But the worst was how much better it felt afterwards. When he was they and disagreeing no longer felt like it was tearing him apart.

Because it already had.

Patton forced his hands to unclench, knowing that beneath the fabric there would be red marks in his palms. He couldn’t help it; a hazard of being the heart as well as Morality, he was very strong. So he had to be careful. 

“I wonder. It certainly doesn’t seem like you do.”

“I wouldn’t lie.”

There was a fast, short bark of a laugh.

“Oh no of course you wouldn’t.” his voice dropped. “That’s my job, after all.” 

“Stop it.”

“Always telling people what to do.” 

He turned around and glared. 

“That’s not what it is!”

“You just said you wouldn’t lie too.” Deceit tsked gently and wiggled a yellow-gloved finger. “It’s okay, Patton. I’ll keep your secrets.”  That was also part of his job. Lies were primarily about keeping information, after all. “I always have.” 

“Ethan, please.” a name he didn’t use. A secret Patton kept. 

“That’s what I said.” 

“You didn’t want to be the same any more either! You changed!”

“We both did. But one of us stayed and the other left.”

“Yes. You left. You could have stayed.”

“Oh yes.” He said rolling his eyes. “I’m sure I would have been so welcome.” 

“No one asked you to leave.” 

“Better to reign in hell. I didn’t fancy being kicked out.” 

No one made him. It had been bad enough to just be different so suddenly, even if it was a relief to stop disagreeing with himself so hard it hurt. Because even though there had been two before and two after, he knew there should be three. But it was two and one… somewhere else. By himself. 

 It hadn’t been dark sides then. 

They hadn’t been dark sides until after Creativity had split. Then it was bad and it was good, it was light and it was dark. 

It was so much simpler to think about than what makes something wrong or right. 

Ethan had gone, and only shown up at the worst times. Ethan had embraced the worst of himself, and become simply Deceit. Let the distance Thomas put between himself and his lies change him. He’d shown up before Creativity split, like he knew it was going to happen.  He pushed the point, like he wanted it to happen. Like he was there to make it worse. Except- he’d accepted the other one. The one that scared Patton, that he couldn’t bring himself to accept. Whatever he’d whispered into the embrace, truth or lies, it got the shakes to stop.  The shock of the split calmed, while Patton still struggled with soothing the other’s tears. They had stared at each other, unconsciously mirroring each other across the room. Logan had stood halfway between the book ended sets, looking increasingly uncomfortable before shutting his eyes for a moment, steadying himself. Trying to bridge with reason; they’d split but they didn’t have to seperate. That they were all the same, even if they were different. As carefully phrased as it was, it sounded like begging. Don’t leave again. 

They left.

They’d only been children themselves.

But Creativity- Remus- he wouldn’t stay away, drawn back like a magnet to his other half, his brother. They would clash, they would argue, they would bounce against each other, and every time Patton would be faced with how much he’d failed. He just… couldn’t take Remus. He was scared of him. He couldn’t accept the things Remus said and did. It was too much. But he couldn’t bear to part them when they came together of their own accord. It would be wrong when he missed Ethan, even when he hated what he stood for. Until it had gotten worse. 

 Puberty was hard on all of them. Something had to be done. It wasn’t really locking Remus up. It wasn’t. It was more like… grounding him. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t get out. He was just… pushed down. Ignored. Shunned. It was… repression. And he had told himself it was okay to do that, press the part of creativity he didn’t like (it wasn’t just him! No one liked Remus! No one wanted him around, he was too much!) down and away and as far from the places where Thomas found his normal thoughts. There was too much going on. It was just… one less thing and that was good.

 It wasn’t a failure. 

It was good. 

It was the right thing to do. 

 It was why he’d tried so hard to accept Anxiety, even when he’d done his best to push everyone away. Patton just couldn’t deal with failing again.  So he could accept fear, even if he couldn’t accept things that scared him. That and a brief encounter, hidden from everyone else, where it had been Ethan who asked that Patton take care of him if he came within his sphere of influence. Patton liked to think he would have anyway. He savored the scraps of concern and compassion that Ethan hid when he talked about Anxiety and Remus. They were still the same, the way Remus and Roman were both Creativity. Deceit still cared. So much. 

Even if he pretended he didn’t.

 Whatever Ethan- whatever Deceit had done to make Anxiety hate him, to make Virgil leave, it was between the two of them. Sometimes Patton wondered if Virgil wouldn’t confide in him because he knew how similar they were. But only Logan knew. Creativity had barely been an idea when Emotion became Morality and the first split had happened. Even when Creativity was crying over the change and the emptiness, Patton couldn’t bring himself to tell him what had happened. And after Roman had dubbed the others ‘Dark’- well Patton didn’t want to risk it. He’d been scared enough. Deceit played the villain, and Roman hated him because heroes hated villains. Logan hated falsehoods, twisted facts, deliberate misinformation, but allowed how sometimes it was preferable.  And Virgil hated lies, because he was wrong so often. He couldn’t help but think things that weren’t true, that couldn’t be true, so lies were both uncomfortable and comforting. But Virgil hated Deceit, personally, more than he hated the lies he told. 

Maybe someday he’d trust them enough to tell them why. 

Maybe someday Patton would trust his kiddos enough to tell them what happened. 

 “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“He was getting loose anyway. Thomas is spreading himself thin, and that’s going to let all sorts of things out. Remus just wants attention. Logan has managed to severely limit him.” he sounded pleased. “Perhaps in time there won’t be light and dark at all any more.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“Patton, what’s that quote we heard the other day? ‘If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be.’”

“I don’t think this is what it meant! You’re going to hurt Thomas.”

“I would never purposely hurt Thomas, you know that.” there was a bristle of anger in Deceit’s voice. 

“Then act like it.”

“Oh do you mean act like you? Careless? Whimsical? Repressing everything that might possibly be…” he gestured at his face “ugly?” 

“That’s… not what I meant.” 

“Isn’t it?” 

Patton reached out to him, and Deceit pulled back. 

“There’s plenty of me still in you, Patton. I can tell the truth, and you- you can lie with the best of them.” The words made him flinch. “Mostly to yourself, so there’s that.” 

“It wasn’t my fault.” 

Deceit rolled his eyes.

“Wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t!” Patton insisted.  “You’re the one who’s always saying there’s a choice.”

“And I made it.” He tipped his head, and Patton winced. 

“You don’t regret it?”

“I accept it.” He looked at his hands, a gesture that would resemble inspecting his nails if it weren’t for the gloves. “That does make things easier to take.” He smiled, one side only. “You should try it sometime. Or is acceptance only for the cute?” 

“That’s not fair and you know it.” 

“Fair?” Deceit snorted “Are we going there again? Fair is such an arbitrary construct, Morality. People push children so hard on the idea that things should be fair- but as soon as adulthood looms on the horizon, they spend the rest of their miserable lives hounding on the fact that life isn’t fair.” he scoffed. “Fair is a four letter word that means ‘I’m not getting what I want’.” 

“We’re not children anymore.” 

“Then why do you keep insisting things should be simple?”

“Because I want them to be!” Patton burst out. “I wish they would be. What do you want out of me, Ethan?”

Deceit drew back a little surprised.  

“Do you want me to say that you’re right? Because I don’t think I can. You aren’t right. Not about everything. Okay, so you’re a little right, but that doesn’t make what you’ve been doing okay!” 

“I am doing my job. I am protecting Thomas. And yes, by lying. To be kind. To save people’s feelings. To help Thomas.  Is it only okay when you do it? Does coming from you automatically make lies innocent? What a wonderful power.”  he recovered from his surprise and his sarcasm was scathing. “Do share that with me.”  

“What are we?” Patton demanded.

“What?”

“What are we, Ethan? The two of us?”

“Pieces of Thomas.” Deceit said after a long moment. They weren’t twins; they weren’t brothers.  Not like Creativity. For all they fought and clashed, Roman and Remus recognised themselves in each other. They were brothers because they identified themselves as brothers. Family within family. They were related, but each side was a reflection of Thomas- except Creativity, which reflected itself as well. “We all are. However you might wish otherwise.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” he snapped. “Lying is wrong, but you’re more than that, aren’t you?” 

“Am I?” Deceit asked mockingly. “That’s news.” He leaned in however. “Do you really want to know what else I am?”

“Yes.”

Their cheeks brushed, like a mockery of an embrace. “Honesty.” he breathed into Patton’s ear. 

Patton pulled back like the word scalded him. 

“How can you be honesty if-”

“How can I lie if I don’t know what the truth is?” Deceit countered. 

“Shouldn’t I be-”

“Are you?” he continued. “I know you do your best. That is, after all, what you do. But I have many traits you think you hold. Kindness. Comfort. Self preservation though- not one of yours. Rather the opposite. Selflessness is not automatically a virtue, darling. Or I could be lying. But am I?” 

“You-”

“What purpose would it serve?”

“It would make me doubt myself.” Patton said quietly. Deceit sat back and clapped his hands together amused. 

“Good.” his face went flat. “You should doubt yourself. Unexamined morality is a poison.” 

“I don’t think you have to worry about that. I doubt myself all the time.” 

There was a hiss of air, as Deceit examined that statement. A flicker of inhumanity. 

“Huh. Truth. How nice that you won't lie to my face at least."

“Do we have to fight?” Patton asked. “I… don’t want us to have to be like this.”

Deceit snorted. 

“Funny. I could have sworn it was your fault we were. It’s not much fun to be told that you’re not important or necessary. But then I’m hardly the only one that’s been told that. I suppose even you admit that ‘love the sinner hate the sin’ is a ridiculous concept.” 

“That…. That’s not the same thing.” 

“Oh really? How is it different? Let me lay it flat so you can see the shape of it ‘love the liar, hate the lying’” 

“I saw what you were saying.” Patton objected quickly. “I do love you.”

From the sour look on Deceit’s face, he didn’t even have to try to smell the truth of what Patton said. He loved him even if it hurt him. Even if it was hypocritical. Even if it was paradoxical. (He knew big words; it was just fun to pretend otherwise. Ethan was right. He was a liar.) He curled up, hunching into his hoodie again. 

“I know you think you do. But you won’t accept me. Won’t accept what I do.”

"I can't accept it. I won't accept it. It’s wrong.”

“According to whom?” the words rolled over him like a cold wind, and Patton was alone again.

He hated being alone.

He always had. 

[charlie-minion]

The biggest bad to ever bad

Supernatural 14x20 is going to be marked in my head as one of the best season finales of television ever! It’s not because of the quality of the production, though; it’s because of the potential it opened for a fantastic final season of such a long-lasting show. There are so many things I want to talk about (God & the Winchesters, Castiel and Destiel), but I think I will have to write separate posts for each because I don’t want this to get extremely long.

Let’s talk about God and the Winchesters first, shall we?

After 14x20, everything seems to indicate that God is the big bad for season 15, right? In fact, we might even say that God has been the big bad ALL ALONG. Right? RIGHT? Yeah, well… about that…

NO, my dear friends, God is not the big bad on Supernatural, and I’m gonna tell you why that is my opinion.

Disclaimer: This post will include a lot of life philosophies that may or may not resonate with what you believe in. If you think I’m talking bullshit, that’s fine! Just please don’t waste time attacking me or my post in any way because I won’t engage in any type of hateful behavior.  

With that being said, I need to emphasize the beauty orchestrated by Andrew Dabb (showrunner and writer of the finale). He turned the Supernatural universe into a huge metaphor for our own very real world (nothing new if you really think about it). BUT, he also made Chuck the manifestation of the God many people believe exists IRL.

“None of this would have happened without you”, Dean tells John Winchester at the start of the recap. Those words feel ominous now, considering Dean said them to his father but they could as easily be directed to the father of all creation, God himself (or Chuck, as he prefers to be called).  

None of what has happened in 14 years of Supernatural would have happened without Chuck. That’s an undeniable truth, but that doesn’t mean everything has been entirely his fault.

He’s a writer, and writers lie. We were told that in 14x20, but I think Chuck was telling the truth about something in particular:

“You guys know me. I’m hands-off. I built the sandbox… you play in it. You want to fight Leviathans? Cool. You got that. You want to go up against the… What was it? The ‘British Men of Letters’? Okay. Little weak, but okay.”

Chuck created this world with everything in it, and then he “left”. Although, he never truly left. From the beginning he’s been “everywhere and nowhere, to the edge of the universe and beyond”. The thing is that he’s most of the times HANDS-OFF.

He didn’t create other beings to be inferior. “Existence is all about balance”, he said when trying to explain why the Equalizer didn’t have any bullets.

“This doesn’t so much fire bullets as it sends a wave of multi-dimensional energy across a perfectly balanced quantum link between whoever’s shooting it and whoever they’re shooting at.”

Why is that line relevant? Ohhhh because if we read a little about quantum physics, we’ll know that we humans are energy. We all are. Actually, everything that exists in this world is energy. There are some philosophies where the concept of God goes beyond what religion offers. Some people don’t use the word “God”, but they prefer to use the word “Source” because there is a source of energy, and we all are interconnected through that energy that we all share. In a way, we are extensions of Source Energy, and that’s why we all can be considered divine.

If we dig a little into that philosophy, we find out that the human journey in a lifetime is to ascend in consciousness. We have a conscious and subconscious mind, and there’s science to back up that our subconscious runs the show most of the time. (Watch this video if you’re at all interested). It’s thanks to it that we make quick decisions during times of crisis and emergency, and it’s thanks to both our conscious and subconscious mind that we create our own reality. Unfortunately, we are EXTREMELY UNAWARE OF THE PROGRAMMING IN OUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND, so the reality that we observe is not exactly pretty, because we tend to create that which we fear the most. We keep repeating patterns over and over until we become aware of what’s going on (or we die and never become aware, too bad).   

In real life, the God that many people believe in certainly built the sandbox and left us to play in it and do whatever we want. That God or Source is HANDS-OFF for real, because we are made of the same energy, so we have creative power, too, whether we understand/believe it or not. The less aware we are, the more likely we are to believe THINGS HAPPEN TO US.

There’s always a villain outside of ourselves: our parents, our partners, our friends, our coworkers or classmates, our neighbors, that random person who stole from us or who said nasty things about us. We all have our own Leviathans, Michaels, Lucifers, and some villains in our life just as pathetic as Asmodeus or the British Men of Letters. The point is that when we are NOT aware of OUR OWN POWER OF CREATION, we are at the mercy of our subconscious, thinking that terrible things will continue to happen, over and over.

So, going back to Supernatural, Chuck came back in 14x20 with a special gun, and one of the names he gave to it was EQUALIZER. Seriously??!! Later in the ep, when Sam shot God with that gun, he shot himself. THAT’S SO SYMBOLIC I CAN’T EVEN! Don’t you see this? If we keep talking about Source of energy (instead of “god”) and understand that all beings are made of energy even if we have a material body, we get to understand the metaphor found in the Bible that states we should love God and we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. WE ARE ALL ONE. I mean, I can plug two or three appliances into one same outlet and even though each appliance serves a different purpose, the energy that keeps them “alive” is the same.

We build an ego to create a false sense of self, but we’re all one. While we’re unaware of this, we think of God as that powerful being, outside of ourselves, who controls everything and we think that we’re at his mercy. We pray and we think that when things go well, God is blessing us, but when things go wrong, he’s punishing us or he has abandoned us. When truth be told, we have been creating our own reality ALL ALONG thanks to our stupid programming.

The Winchesters have been repeating the same mistakes over and over. Their programming is filled with “GOOD THINGS NEVER HAPPEN. I DON’T DESERVE GOOD THINGS”. That’s been the case for all of them. They have claimed that everything they’ve done has been out of love, to protect their family, but that’s just crap. The love they have felt has NEVER been healthy; it’s been rooted in the fear of loss. Mary made a deal because she couldn’t bear to lose John. John made a deal because he couldn’t lose Dean. Dean made a deal because he couldn’t lose Sam. And their codependent love brought all sorts of fucked-up consequences. Don’t even get me started on the way John raised his children as a result of not being able to accept the loss of his wife. Or don’t get me started on the programming running in Mary’s head as a result of the way she was raised in the hunting life. I mean, we could spend hours and hours discussing why Mary was desperate for a “normal life”, but probably thought that she didn’t deserve it; that she was being selfish for wanting happiness when the world needed saving. How ironic that her two sons inherited the same fears, the same subconscious programming!

So, NO… God is NOT the villain. THE VILLAIN HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE WINCHESTERS THEMSELVES. (Just as in our life, we are the main character and the villain in our own story). Thinking that God is the villain is the easy way out. That’s putting responsibility for the good and the bad outside of ourselves, and that’s bullshit. The toxicity has been part of Dean and Sam’s lives since forever and they need to be aware of it. They have always had a choice, but they were unable to make the healthiest one at the time. ‘Shoot first, ask questions later’, ‘Kill all the monsters’, ‘We do what we always do, we fight to bring our loved ones back’.

That’s not love. That’s not growth. And in writing, that’s not character development.

Next season, the Winchesters will try to fight God, of course. They will most likely try to kill him. But I can tell you now, one day after the season 14 finale, that they won’t be able to. What they will understand at the end of season 15 is that they always had a choice; that the Earth will never be completely saved because it doesn’t want to be saved (each person creates their own reality, so how can they save people who are unconsciously sabotaging/destroying themselves?). It’s NOT THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO SAVE EVERYONE. IT NEVER HAS BEEN. That’s something they have taken upon themselves and it’s insane, unrealistic, and extremely arrogant of them.

Chuck himself had to show up to push the Winchesters enough to realize that they have been repeating patterns for a long time and that it’ll end when they decide it’s time to end. When they become aware of the toxic beliefs that took them to where they are now. When they realize that the only thing they need to get their happy ending is to admit they want that (not a blaze of glory style ending) and to stop being afraid of it or guilty about wanting it.

Good things do happen. What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved?

Chuck is just a mirror for the Winchesters. If our boys think that Chuck is the villain, then sooner or later they will realize how responsible they have been, too. I’ll be looking forward to season 15 and, most of all, to the series finale. For now, I’m gonna be in my corner, feeling confident that our boys will have the ending they deserve –the one they’ll get once they allow themselves to follow their heart.  

[kyokkou]

𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐧 | part six. late shōwa (1926–1989) era

☼ part five. ☼

                    ❝The promise that dissolved in the wind will someday cross time                     “We’ll meet again” – a lie whiter than the snow and the clouds❞

          AN EMPTY HOSPITAL BED was all that greeted him today. The formal surrender was to be signed, and Kiku was gone. Hikaru didn't take him for a coward who would run away-- he always said he would die before surrendering to anyone, though. Perhaps he had made good on the threat of death... but personifications could not simply die. It took years of illness and eventual fading away-- didn't it? That was what he had heard, and it was within the realm of possibility. Kiku was very ill, and didn't seem to be getting better, and now Hikaru was feeling similarly nauseous-- which he immediately blamed on his panic at Kiku's disappearance.           HIKARU WOULD HAVE TO GO in his place; as far as anyone knew, there was only one of them, anyway. No one would know the difference, and he had suffered enough physical injuries from the air raids that he could surely pass himself off as the same one who had started this destructive war. He broke his promise to me, and now he's gone. I don't know whether to be angry or upset. Or... terrified at what comes after this, Hikaru thought as he trudged down the corridor. What he didn't know was that Kiku had already gone home.

          THE PAIN SEEMED TO DRAIN from his body that morning, before the first light of dawn. He couldn't be sure, but it probably went to Hikaru; and that meant he would be suffering alone, at home. Their home had not been destroyed by the relentless air-raids, tucked away just enough that the bombing raid on the Imperial Palace in Tokyo had not touched it. Just having to walk past that was enough to make Kiku wish he was still unconscious from pain. This was his fault. Everything he had worked for had been undone, and there was no one to blame for it but himself. And, certainly, he didn't deserve it-- so he thought, at least.           THEIR HOME WAS EMPTY save for the two dogs, who could be heard shuffling about in one of the rooms. With all of the new people coming by, their behavior had become skittish-- though he called out, they didn't come running like usual. No answer, either. Hikaru was nowhere to be found after a quick run-through of the home. He must have already left for the day, and maybe they had already passed one another. He would just have to wait until Hikaru returned, and apologize for not being there later. Hopefully this wouldn't cause too much trouble-- after all, he knew Hikaru half expected him to find a reason to avoid attending the formal surrender.           WHEN HIKARU RETURNED, Kiku immediately went to meet him. Hikaru looked right at him, as if looking through him, and sighed. Like usual when they weren't on the best terms, Hikaru didn't say a word; instead, his attention was directed to the dogs. It was to be expected; all the times he'd disappointed Hikaru were like this. Kiku was quick to shrug it off and sit in the main room while Hikaru made a modest dinner. Even when he was angry with Kiku, Hikaru wouldn't let him starve.           EXCEPT FOR THIS TIME. Kiku watched as Hikaru sat down, alone, with only enough to eat for himself. When he didn't immediately begin eating, the now-former empire anticipated what he might say and leaned forward over the low table, reaching out tentatively to touch Hikaru's cheek... Only to feel nothing. In a moment of slight panic, Kiku tried again, this time trying to move Hikaru to look at him. He was nothing but a projection-- or was it Kiku? Had he disappeared, just like his empire?           HIKARU DIDN'T ACCEPT IT right away; at least, that's what he thought. That he must have been hallucinating all sorts of things; that his reflection in a mirror was Kiku, or that he was still in his room, the scent of incense and tobacco lingering as if he was just there. Every time he looked, there was no trace of him. Reiji would come by sometimes, and sit there for hours by himself; Hikaru didn't have the heart to tell him to leave. He simply fed him and let him be on his way, always making sure to tell the little aircraft personification on the days that Alfred was meant to come over.           THOSE WERE THE DAYS HE HATED THE MOST. Without fail, whenever he showed up for a visit, it ended painfully for Hikaru. Physically, and mentally; it was always something he wanted to forget, the way he felt like a prisoner in his own home-- it had gotten better since the occupation ended decades prior, but it never truly stopped. The younger nation was like night and day with him; kind before sunset, but a real bastard once the lights were out. Hikaru rarely ever went into that guest room as the years went on, but there were some nights-- every so often-- that the American would run out of the room screaming, claiming Kiku was threatening to behead him. If only-- Hikaru caught himself thinking, while pulling his yukata a little bit tighter around his body.           THE MORE TIME THAT PASSED, the more Hikaru wondered if he was going to crumble; the hallucinations were so frequent now that he found himself waiting for them, just to be able to see Kiku again. And then, just when he let his guard down, something moved in his peripheral vision; just as quickly, it was gone. On the especially stressful nights, he found himself habitually walking down the hallway to Kiku's room, wondering if he'd be able to open the door instead of just standing in front of it until he fell to his knees, crushed by the weight of his own despair. He assumed tonight would be much the same. The past few months, it seemed like he did it every night.           WERE THE HALLUCINATIONS GETTING WORSE? Hikaru had gone down the hall as usual, but the door was open tonight, and there was a silhouette barely visible in the near-complete darkness of the room. Impossible-- no one should be in here; no one even knew where this home was, even if they could go trespassing this far into grounds of the Imperial Palace. Hikaru felt like a zombie as he slowly went into the room and reached up to pull the cord of the overhead lamp. Kiku was there before him when the room was illuminated, and yet, he couldn't even react; his eyes had lied to him so many times before, this wouldn't be any different. Kiku would disappear like always.           ❝YOU SHOULD BE SLEEPING, not wasting your time in here...❞ Kiku mumbled, reaching out to touch Hikaru's cheek and expecting to just pass right through him, as it had been for the past forty-four years. Hikaru, meanwhile, was frozen; for the first time in all those years, he could finally hear Kiku's voice again. It must be my imagination, Hikaru thought, leaning into the touch. For being nothing but a hallucination, it was more like a dream. Surely, he'd wake up with the same stinging sensation in his eyes, and would have to settle for the warmth of his pets to keep him company.           ❝I JUST MISS YOU, more than anything.❞ Hikaru couldn't believe he was responding like this; but there was no dreamscape to collapse this time, and the way it felt to put his own hand over Kiku's hand was what finally snapped him out of the tired and apathetic daze he'd been in. When he looked back up at Kiku, he looked just as stunned at what was happening. ❝You-- where have you been?! Why did you leave? You said you would protect me--❞           ❝I NEVER LEFT, I've been here this whole time! You couldn't see me. I tried to tell you, I wrote you so many letters on whatever I could find, but you just collected the paper and put it away without reading it!❞ Kiku argued as the two of them pulled away from one another. Hikaru was clearly upset, and it made Kiku feel instantly guilty for raising his voice like that. He hadn't done that in... forty four years.           ❝THOSE WERE BLANK, so I put them away... this whole time? You've been here, but I couldn't see you... which means you could see me.❞ The realization that he had seen everything that had been done to him was enough to make him overcome with nausea, and Hikaru immediately turned away in humiliation. Kiku didn't say a word; of course he had seen it. Every time Alfred was over as the years went on, he would stare at him until the sun came up, wishing nothing but terrible things to happen to him. He'd never admit it to Hikaru; he assumed he'd get scolded for it-- the sword and the beheading threats weren't necessary, were they? Besides, he knew he could get away with it; no one could see him. He was gone, as he had no purpose as the Empire of Japan. It didn't exist, and neither did he.           HIKARU COULDN'T BELIEVE that Kiku would even want to embrace him after everything he had seen; and yet, he was now being held closely. Neither of them were imagining things. After all this time, why was he now allowed back? It was the one question both of them were not sure they wanted the answer to, as if knowing would somehow drag Kiku back to whatever limbo he had been trapped in. That didn't stop the former empire from bringing it up, though.           ❝I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY I'M HERE AGAIN, because you've done well without me. You don't need me. In trying to give you an ideal life, I ruined everything, and you've had to deal with the burden of it all. Hikaru--❞           ❝DON'T SAY ANYMORE, I don't want you to disappear again. I can't do this alone, I don't think I can go on like this. I need you, Kiku. I don't care what happened then-- I don't want to be alone,❞ Hikaru pleaded, trying to hold back all of the emotions that threatened to overflow at any moment. ❝We'll just have to find something for you-- if that's all it is, there must be something... that can keep you here so I don't have to be alone again.❞                      ❝I DON'T KNOW IF IT WILL WORK, but it's worth a try if it means I can be by your side again.❞ As the two of them sat talking, long past the sun had risen, His Majesty the Emperor departed their world.                                                 PART SEVEN COMING SOON!

[eeveelutionsforequality]

I recently had a conversation with a friend, because they shipped two characters in a piece of media, but it was later revealed that said characters were siblings, and my friend said that they felt bad for shipping them... I wasn't really sure what to say other than that if they liked the characters' interactions then they liked the characters' interactions, that there's nothing wrong with that, that the characters are fictional so no harm done. I feel like I could've said more though, or been more helpful.

It's important to note that, especially when there's that big reveal coming up and the writers don't want to give it away, siblings in fiction aren't always portrayed in such a way that our brain processes their interactions in the same way that it would view our own siblings in relation to ourselves - just saying "they're siblings", especially long after we've gone through the process of emotionally interpreting their relationship, isn't always enough to elicit that emotional reaction.

I know because I write, because I have to try to convey certain relationships between characters, and because I sometimes have to try to alter somebody's interpretation of a relationship or personality through a surprise twist (and I know how easy it is to fail at that). You lead the reader along and make them feel a certain way about a character, then pull the ol' switcheroo and give them a shock and/or conflicting emotions, but if you don't adequately convey that change emotionally to each individual reader then you get "he wasn't a villain, he was just a misunderstood baby" and similar scenarios - only in the case of certain people shipping incest ships, the initial interpretation stems from the writer (possibly unintentionally) not hitting your personal "family" buttons and not them intentionally pulling a bait n' switch, and said reveal may not have gotten you in sync with the writer either. You can view them as siblings logically, but if the emotion isn't there then it isn't there, and it's not your fault (nor anyone's fault, even the writer's) that this specific portrayal just doesn't click right in your head... think about how many people don't gel with certain canon romantic ships - it's not at all uncommon for portions of the audience to react differently to others, because a writer can't hit the right note for everyone when everyone's brain needs a different note.

(Of course, in my friend's case, maybe they felt bad because the characters did hit the sibling buttons after the reveal - but that wasn't the impression that they gave. That said, if you feel bad about a certain ship suddenly after a reveal, maybe it is because the writer effectively altered your interpretation of the characters and intended that reaction - that's something to applaud them for, not condemn yourself for. Don't feel at all as though there's something wrong with you or some kind of problem within you just because you didn't pick up on a cue or see them that way, it's perfectly fine - possibly even intentional - that you didn't. My friend didn't judge the writers, but some people judge writers for causing such reactions - they say that a writer who writes a story that makes you feel disgusted is glorifying that thing... no, you ninny, nine times out of ten you feel disgusted because they were trying to disgust you. But I'm getting sidetracked.)

Shipping two characters that you didn't initially register as siblings doesn't mean that you're attracted to the concept of incest (in fact, it's an indication of the opposite, especially if you feel conflicted about it upon discovery), and it definitely doesn't mean that you're bad in any way, it just means that it wasn't written in a way that led to your brain solely viewing their relationship in that specific way - and that's fine. We all have different experiences and different things that we associate with other things, so it's completely understandable that an interaction that one individual sees as solely platonic and familial can come across as romantic to another.

That said, even if you enjoy the dynamic of them being siblings in a romantic context in fiction, that's fine too. It's fiction.

Part of it being fiction means that you can warp things, leave out the bad bits, explore dynamics that wouldn't actually present in such a way in reality, make them into something that they wouldn't really be - as long as you're aware that it's a (quite possibly romanticized) fantasy and not an attainable reality, as long as you maintain the separation of fiction and reality, then you aren't going to suddenly change your opinions of the real world (and maintaining that differentiation is something that you're likely doing by default right now and constantly, unconsciously, naturally, because of the inherent differences between fiction and reality, and how our brain interprets stimuli from each).

When it comes to shipping "problematic" things, people seem to forget that, and they call it harmful normalizing/romanticizing. In reality things don't work how they work in fiction, the bad bits are still there, so you're not going to start being okay with the reality because it's those very present bad bits that you are not and were never okay with, it was those bad bits that you needed to take away to enjoy the concept at all. They're still there in reality and you're still not okay with them, ergo you're still not okay with it in reality even if you enjoy it in fiction.

Our brains naturally view fiction and reality in different ways, we interpret them differently, we react to them differently, and our brains are aware that we're currently safe and sound while reading a book, that it's not actually happening (excluding in very specific circumstances like certain mental health issues), and our brains have a different emotional reaction to a real physical loved one than to words on a piece of paper (that's why seeing certain violent actions against a loved one in real life was a traumatic event for me, but watching people get their intestines pulled out by zombies was enjoyable - in the latter, I was safe, and nobody was being hurt because they weren't real).

While you can become desensitized to fictional portrayals, without extraneous factors that desensitization doesn't translate into reality or real behaviour - like I said, the bad bits are still there in reality and they still affect you. Sitting alone and reading words on a page - in a safe environment where nobody involved is real or able to get hurt - is a very different scenario to engaging with real people in a potentially harmful manner, and influencing you to do the latter takes a lot more time, power, targeted manipulation, tactics that are effective on your personality, coercion, etc (often alongside things like social ostracizing and severe mental ill health) than that book alone has (and notably the effectiveness and power of any radicalization or manipulation tactics are dependent upon the severity of the intended action, your upbringing, your susceptibility, your vulnerability, your pre-existing morality, and so forth, so if even that is so wildly varied then something like a fictional story, something substantially less targeted or invasive, something that entirely lacks intent and entirely lacks the ability to adapt to the individual's weaknesses, does not have the power to corrupt vast swathes of the population). Scientology would be a lot more popular than it is if humans were that easy to radicalize - there's a reason cults have to put so much effort in, and still often fail - if it was as simple as a good fanfic then we'd see "Dan and Phil ascend to a higher plane through the Church of Scientology (tw dubcon, tw bananas)" because they'd be on that like it was catnip.

The fact that someone, for example (and not the ship that my friend was talking about), thinks that Stan and Ford's character designs and interactions aesthetically suit one and other, and/or make for an interesting dynamic to explore in fiction, doesn't undo years upon years, decades, of interactions and experiences in the real world, it won't undo how they fundamentally feel about their own siblings - those things are far more ingrained in them than a couple of cartoon old men can ever undo.

Most importantly though, fiction (and yes, even shipping... yes, EVEN SHIPPING) can be about creating emotions other than happiness, arousal, or positive emotions - hurt/comfort fics, angst fics, self-harm fics, and so forth, come to mind. You're not just getting sexual gratification from a pairing, you may not even be getting that at all - you're exploring a fictional dynamic and you can be doing that to achieve all sorts of emotions (yes, even disgust). To assume that someone is shipping because "it must turn them on! why else would they ship it!?" is naive to human behaviour and to the nature of entertainment - shipping is not some special area of entertainment that is reserved for only one emotional goal.

Horror movies, Black Mirror, stories about affairs, these things don't exist because we're happy about fictional people being hurt - "entertainment" isn't just about enjoying good things for good reasons in a good way and feeling good as a result, it isn't just about eliciting positive reactions, humans are strange and sometimes we seek out the negative or neutral feelings too (and it's healthy and useful to do so in a safe environment and via fiction that harms nobody). People aren't just watching I'm a Celebrity because they are happy when someone eats a spider - most people are looking away and cringing while that's happening, they're decidedly uncomfortable, and yet they're entertained. We're all weird.

The association of "entertaining" and "eliciting a positive reaction" needs to get on a spaceship and start searching the galaxy for an intelligent species that's actually hardwired for that to be the case... because we're not that species. Things can be gripping, intriguing, profound, hard-hitting, helpful, and even entertaining, specifically because they are dark or distressing, specifically because they do not make you feel good.

Do you even really want to live in a world where you're never allowed to feel disturbed, grossed out, upset, offended by fiction? A world where you're never allowed to learn or explore various premises, feelings, stories in a safe environment? A world where someone has to break the fourth wall and ruin the immersion just to tell you "this is bad, by the way", instead of trusting you and your developed mind (hence age ratings) to interpret morality properly and of your own accord? (...and if you say that "they don't have to break the fourth wall to do that", you should take a look at the number of people arguing that even specific overtly negative portrayals are "romanticizing" or should be censored, because I believe that it shows quite clearly that people who disagree with this stuff often do not give a fuck about how well written it is; and I'd argue that writers/creators shouldn't have to clarify at all, overtly or otherwise, because you should be capable of maintaining your morality even when faced with something that disagrees with it... do you disagree? congrats, you've proven my point, you can indeed maintain your position against something even while reading something seemingly or actually in favour of it.)

If you don't want that world, does that also apply in regards to sexual or romantic content? If you are okay with disturbing content in general, but not with fictional portrayals of sexual taboos, fictional portrayals of unhealthy or abusive relationships, or fictional portrayals of sexual violence, why? Why is it okay to elicit fear or sadness with a fictional brutal death, but not with a fictional rape?

Did you say that it's because "you're using things that traumatize people for entertainment"? So what makes the trauma of losing my loved ones, of being beaten, of nearly dying, different from the trauma of being raped in this scenario? There's no logical reason that stands up to scrutiny for deeming The Human Centipede okay, Rec/Quarantine okay, but Gothika not okay, The Hills Have Eyes not okay.

Or maybe you just said "It's gross" or "Why would you even want to read that!? Surely it speaks ill of you that you want to!" It's gross... and? The others aren't? What makes it special? What makes it more damning than wanting to watch brutal zombie films? The truth, as I've said, is that it has nothing to do with how people feel in reality or what their desires in reality are - but that most of us just aren't built to only seek out uncomplicated, positive feelings in fiction.

And remember that you're not obliged to ship/watch any of these things - they should have age ratings, trigger warnings, adequate tagging, etc, so that people who need/want to avoid them can do so. There's no obligation to enjoy such things - if you're the kind of person that gains nothing from them, that's okay, that's perfectly fine. However, you need to understand that not everybody creates or indulges in content just to feel good - even if you don't relate to doing that or are unable to envision yourself doing that, it's unfair of you to make vast and incorrect assumptions of so many people (which directly contradict what those very people are telling you that they're feeling).

But I got really sidetracked again there, so to summarize:

If you interpret fictional characters in a way that doesn't elicit an emotional sibling reaction to you, that's okay, that's natural, that's understandable, and it doesn't speak ill of you that your brain happens to read certain cues differently to how the brain of the writer reads them.

If you ship them despite reading them as siblings, that's okay, that's natural, that's understandable, and it doesn't speak ill of you that the lack of risk factors and such that would be present in the real world (ie nobody can get hurt in fiction, there's no genetic risk factors because they don't have DNA, etc) meant that you were able to explore an idea.

If you ship them because you enjoy exploring emotions other than arousal or joy, that's okay, that's natural, that's understandable, and it doesn't speak ill of you that (like every human on the planet) you aren't sunshine and daisies 24/7.

If you're out there feeling bad for liking a ship or pairing - whether it's in spite of canon context or because of it, whether it's because it makes you feel good things or otherwise - please remember that it's okay to ship whatever you ship. It's okay to feel bad about the ship sometimes too, to think that it's gross or silly - maybe the canon creator or the fic creator is trying to elicit that reaction, or maybe you're just not in the mood for that pairing today, or whatever - but don't feel bad about yourself for shipping something, and don't ever feel like the potential interpretations of your ship/s dictate or convey your morality whatsoever.

[fanfic-inator795]

Hero Magi Penn Zero Magica: Chapter 9

Plot: Penn never really thought that he could be as strong or heroic as his parents. However, when a mysterious cat-like creature named Phyllis offers to grant him one wish in exchange for becoming a magical hero, he finds that he may just be able to make his dream come true, and maybe even get his family back at the same time. Unfortunately, the life of a magical hero is filled with tragedy and despair. Can Penn really live that life? Can he help his friends? And what is with that mysterious new art teacher of his? Read to find out!

((New chapter time! Original idea for this AU from @rinnysega. Also, @aquamoonlight drew a picture of Boone’s witch - Bertrand. Check it out!))

As soon as she felt the floor back under her feet, Sashi opened her eyes - and all around her was chaos.

Floating debris, curtains of darkness flowing around structures that were still being constructed, and all while other structures were slowly crumbling down. There was no doubt, this was a labyrinth that was just starting to come together. And, in the middle of it all, was a giant dresser...

Though really, it wasn’t the dresser that was the most noticeable. No, instead it was the mirror - its frame lined with swords - that was connected to the dresser, where a small witch resided. The witch itself was shrouded in shadow, but as soon as it noticed Sashi looking up at it, it cried out. 

The swords along the mirror began to shift and point downward, right towards the magical girl below it. “Uh oh!” She took a few steps back, preparing to jump-

And that’s when she saw him... Floating slowly down, just in front of the mirror. Sashi heard herself gasp. “BOONE!” Without a second thought, she transformed into her magical hero outfit. As she changed, she leapt up and managed to catch him, despite him being bigger than she was. “Boone! Wake up! We have to get out of-”

The witch, now getting a closer look at the two of them, cried out again. However, it wasn’t the only one with a better view. As she tried keep a grip on the unconscious boy, Sashi couldn’t help but glance over at it. It... It almost looked like a sweets witch she had heard about. Like a doll, but with a ceramic head that had been cracked, leaving the space where its eyes would have been completely hollow.

The witch also had a pig nose and long ears that almost seemed like ribbons. A dark flowing cape covered the rest of its body. That is, except for it’s feet... It’s flip-flop wearing feet. 

Sashi felt her blood run cold. “What... H-How did you get here?! What did you do to Boone?!”

The witch refused to answer. Instead, it decided to finally launch one of its swords. “’Gh!” Sashi flinched. With Boone still in her arms, she couldn’t summon her spear! 

“GET BACK!” A voice shouted. Sashi obeyed, flying back just as a new figure jumped in front of her, and somehow managed to shatter the oncoming sword. Honestly, it had happened so fast, Sashi wasn’t sure how they managed to- 

The figure turned around, and a familiar pair of yellow eyes was staring back at her. “...Of course,” Sashi muttered, scowling slightly. Another special technique... And another ‘just-in-time’ save. 

Rippen narrowed his eyes a bit, but instead of shooting back any sort of snide remark, he instead held out his hand. “Grab on to me.” “Huh? But-” “Just do it!” 

The girl’s scowl deepened, but again she obeyed. Hoisting Boone onto her right side, she grabbed Rippen’s extended hand with her left. As soon as he felt her tight grip, Rippen activated his shield - and the entire world around them froze. 

“...What?” Sashi looked around. “What, what did you-?”

“Do not let go of my hand, understand?” Rippen ordered, “If you do, you’ll be frozen here as well. Now come on, let’s go.” He started to pull her along, but Sashi pulled him right back.

“Huh?! But what about the witch?!” she asked, “How did it even get here?!”

There was a small pause. “You already know the answer to that, Kobayashi. You just don’t want to accept it... That witch is Boone Wiseman. Or rather, it was Boone, before despair and curses completely overshadowed his soul gem.” 

“...” Sashi lowered her gaze. She just couldn’t believe it... Magical heroes could just... just turn into witches?! 

“And, as for defeating the witch, we could easily do so if you wish. You’d just have to drop that body. After all, you can’t fight and carry him at the same time, you’ll just get both of us kill. So, shall we?”

At hearing that little suggestion, Sashi’s glare quickly returned. “No way!”

“I figured as much. So let’s go.” With that, Rippen starting to run, leading the way while Sashi reluctantly followed him. By the time his shield deactivated, they were already far enough from the witch, and after a few more minutes of running they reached the in-process labyrinth’s exit. 

However, considering all that had just happened, it wasn’t exactly much to celebrate...

()()()()()()()()()()

“...Come on, Penn. Stop worrying so much! I’m sure he’s-... fine. H-He’s totally fine! ...Probably...” Penn sighed, wrapping his arms around himself as he walked along the empty streets. 

After his run-in with Rippen, he had searched for Boone for another few hours before giving up. However, he still couldn’t bring himself to just go home. So, here he was, just wandering the streets, hoping that maybe he’d be lucky enough to just run into Boone. 

...And unfortunately, that’s just what he was about to do.

Hearing faint footsteps just ahead of him, Penn looked up - and gasped.

Walking towards him, he could see both Rippen and Sashi. But, hanging off Sashi’s shoulder and looking more dead than alive, was Boone. “Oh no... No no no!” He ran forward, already feeling tears prickling his eyes. “Is... Is he-?”

Sashi looked away. “...I’m sorry...” Gently, she placed him on the ground. 

Penn swallowed, and slowly took his best friend’s cold hand. “...Boone... I-I...”

“It’s not your fault,” he heard Rippen tell him, his tone stern, “You couldn’t have known. None of us know, until it’s too late. It’s all part of that creature’s scheme... And now you know the final harsh truth about the fate of Magical Heroes.” He held out his soul gem, glaring at it. 

“When our soul gems become muddy and black - become filled with grief and despair - they become grief seeds, and we are reborn as witches.” He then looked down at Penn, who had already started to cry despite his efforts not to. “Can you understand what I was trying to prevent now, boy? This is what happens when you make wishes. You’re only cursed in the end, and now-”

“Oh SHUT UP!” Flinching only slightly, Rippen simply stared as Sashi grabbed his tie, yanking him down to her level. “Enough with the explaining! We get it, you know everything! But can’t you just shut up and let him grieve?! He was-” Sashi paused for a moment, her grip tightening. “...He was his best friend, and you’re acting like he didn’t even matter! What, is he just another statistic to you?!”

Rippen didn’t reply to that. Instead, he just looked back down at Penn, his gaze softening just a bit. “...I won’t try to act like this isn’t a tragedy, and I am sorry that you had to deal with this... But at least now you know.” At least something good could still come out of all this. There was no way that Penn would want to become a magical hero now.

“Oh, and a word of advice,” the teacher continued as he easily pried Sashi’s hands off him, “Unless you don’t mind dealing with the authorities later, I’d suggest you find a good hiding place for that body.” He tried to ignore the sound of Penn choking back a sob.

Sashi glared. “...How can you even call yourself human?” she asked, her voice as cold as ice.

“I don’t,” Rippen retorted, “And technically-” He squeezed the purple soul gem still in his hand, “You’re not either.” Knowing that he was no longer needed there, Rippen turned around and walked away, leaving the two students to mourn in silence.

()()()()()()()()()

His aunt and uncle’s house was quiet - not even the chinchilla was making any late night noises. He’d had to listen to his uncle’s scolding about staying out late, but while he made sure to at least look like he was paying attention and apologized, he could barely remember a single word of the conversation. As he changed into pajamas, his MUHU had rang, but he just let it go to voice mail.

He didn’t want to talk, and he didn’t want to sleep either... So instead, Penn just sat on his bed, staring at the walls and just thinking... Wondering when and how had things gotten so messed up. 

“...Ah, so you are still up. That is good. We have much to discuss.”

Slowly, Penn glanced up towards his window, where a white-furred creature sat. “Should I even ask how you’re still alive?” 

Swishing her tail a bit, Phyllis casually jumped down from the windowsill and onto the bed. “How I am here doesn’t really matter.”

“...Yeah, I guess it doesn’t...” Honestly, Penn couldn’t even bring himself to scowl at her, to emotionally exhausted to do so. However, what he did want was answers. “This is what you wanted all along from us, wasn’t it? Do you only turn people into magical heroes so they can just turn into witches later?”

Phyllis nodded, and Penn looked away. “...If it makes you feel any better, we have reason for turning heroes into witches.”

“Hmph, oh yeah?” Penn asked, snapping slightly, “And just what is this oh-so-great reason?”

“Entropy,” Phyllis said simply, “This reality has many different worlds - different universes, trillions of lives - and all of them using much energy each second. Each being that lives and grows burns much energy through being created, and when it dies, the energy it releases is much less...”

Noticing the boy’s confused expression, Phyllis decided to just jump to her main point. “It is important to know that the entire multi-verse is running out of energy, and because of their connections to each other, if one world dies, they all die. A very important problem to fix.”

“...Multi-verse... But, but what does that have to do with us?”

“In each world - each universe - there are only dozens of people with potential to become magical heroes. And, each one of those heroes has power and emotion that, thanks to magic, can then be converted into energy.”

“I... I guess that makes sense,” Penn admitted, “But then, why-?”

“However,” Phyllis continued, leaning forward a bit, “The energy created when soul gem becomes grief seed, MUCH greater than energy created when soul gem is created or hero uses magic. It becomes cycle! Beings becomes heroes, heroes protect their world from villains and keep multiverse safe in small ways. Then heroes eventually become witches, and new heroes destroy witches before becoming witches themselves - and all while Incubators like Phyllis collect newly released energy, thereby saving all life. So, all of this is very beneficial for heroes to become witches, understand?”

And at that, Penn finally managed to glare at her. “No. No, I don’t understand! You’re pretty much saying that it’s okay for heroes to die - for Larry to be killed and Boone to suffer - just so some energy can be created?! What’s wrong with you?!”

“Nothing is wrong,” Phyllis replied, her face as flat as ever, “Phyllis is simply thinking about greater good. For entire multi-verse to survive, there must be some sacrifice. But, we still give you wishes in return for sacrifice, so-”

“HA! Some wish!” Penn argued, “A wish isn’t worth something this cruel! I don’t- Why didn’t you tell any of us just what we were signing up for?! Fighting villains and monsters is one thing, but-!”

“But you never asked,” the creature told him simply, “And again, we did not think it was big deal. Not when multiverse needs saving and heroes are still getting much desired wishes. We did not think dozens of heroes would matter when saving infinite lives.”

“...Well then, I guess you thought wrong.” Slowly, Penn laid down, turning away from Phyllis. “And... I guess Rippen was right. You really are our enemy.”

Phyllis hummed, then shrugged. Well, at least she had tried to explain the situation. Honestly, beings that couldn’t see the entire spectrum of the multiverse and just how important its survival was were so illogical. 

With that, she hopped back up to the window. But, just before she left... “Penn Zero. You still have great potential. And someday, Penn Zero will become the mightiest and most powerful hero ever - and then, the most powerful and evil of all witches. When that happens, we will have more than enough energy to save your world, and perhaps even entire multiverse. So, if you ever want to be true hero, make sure to call. Phyllis will be waiting...”

“...” Despite the tears forming and the ache in his heart, Penn still glanced back up towards the window, if only for a moment. But Phyllis was already gone. 

On the other side of town, a single red light shone in an otherwise abandoned apartment building. 

“Ugh...” She knew she wouldn’t be able to do this for more than a few days, at most. But at that moment, she could care less about whatever time limits she had, she just wanted to do something.

As the glow from Boone’s body started to fade, Sashi placed her soul gem back into her pocket and took a seat next to the bed. She still had a few energy bars and a couple pieces of granola. That would be enough for tonight, at least...

From the corner of the room, a pair of flat eyes watched her, only somewhat curious. “Why are you using magic to preserve body?” 

“Hmph, none of your business!” Sashi snapped, refusing to even look at her. Unfortunately, Phyllis wasn’t too turned off by her rudeness. Still, while she was there... “...Hey, is there any way to get his soul gem back? I mean, if we do it soon enough, is there a way to reverse it? Turn a grief seed back into a soul gem?”

“Hmm... Well, Phyllis has not seen examples of this happening,” Phyllis started to say as she walked up to the girl, “However, who’s to say Phyllis has seen everything.”

Sashi raised an eyebrow, though still scowled back at her. “And just what does that mean?”

The creature shrugged. “Magical heroes are very powerful. Very logic defying too. There is reason there are only a few who have hero potential. And, even fewer have tried to reverse the witch transformation, so who’s to say? Phyllis can’t, so I cannot give much help on subject.”

“Hmph... Yeah, well...” Sashi took a bite of her ‘supper’, the energy bar already starting to crumble a bit in her hand, “Who needs help from you, anyway...”

()()()()()()()()()()  

“...I guess Boone is sick again today, huh?”

“...” Penn glanced away. “Yeah, guess so... Must be some flu going around or, or something.”

Alex nodded. “Probably. Poor guy... But hey, maybe we can visit him after school!” He smiled a bit at the idea, but Penn could only wince. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind the company. Besides, I feel like I should try to talk to him a bit. Things have been, well, kiiinda awkward between us lately, and I just want to make sure everything’s cool, you know?”

“Uh, yeah...” As soon as he said that, his wince turned into a scowl. What was he doing? Boone was Alex’s friend too. Alex deserved to know the truth. “Hey, actually, I... I have something I need to talk to you about too.”

“Huh? What’s that, Penn?” “Well... Boone-”

“Hey! I wouldn’t be spilling the beans just yet.”

Penn blinked, stopping midstep. “Huh?” It took a bit of looking around, but he did eventually spot her up in a tree, perching and watching like a ninja. “And speaking of talking,” she continued, “I’ve got something I need to talk to YOU about. Something that’s much more important than school.”

“...” Penn nodded. “Actually Alex, I think we’re gonna have to put a pin in that. I, erg-” He held his stomach and tried to look as sick as possible. “Uncle Chuck’s cooking from last night just hit me. I-I think I’m gonna have to go home sick too!” And before his friend could try to argue or even offer to walk him home, Penn turned on his heel and ran off. 

Since most Middleburg citizens were either at work or school, it was pretty easy to find a spot to meet where they wouldn’t draw too much attention. Sashi, of course, was already there waiting and pacing slightly before she saw Penn approach.

“So... I take it this is about Boone?” he asked.

“Well, duh!” Sashi retorted, “What else would it be about?” Though, after a moment of thought, her expression softened a bit. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you.”

But Penn offered her a small smile. “Hey, it’s fine. All of this has been... really stressful.” Ha, talk about an understatement. “So, what did you need to say?”

“Actually it’s more of a question...” She sighed, and then looked him straight in the eye. “Do you want to help save Boone?”

Penn’s eyes widened. “I... Well, yeah! Yeah, of course I do! But, wait, how do we save him? I mean- is that even possible?”

Sashi scowled. “Well not with that attitude! Ugh, look. I... I don’t know if it’s totally possible, okay? But, I also don’t know if it’s completely impossible. There’s still a chance...” Maybe if they destroyed his witch form soon enough, they would get Boone’s soul gem as a reward instead of the usual grief seed! “If anything, maybe we can at least get him to calm down if he hears the voice of a friend, and once that happens-”

“Maybe he can just reverse the transformation himself!” Penn finished, grinning now. That could maybe work! If Boone just realized what he was and saw that he had support, maybe he could just reverse whatever curses he had given himself and turn back into a magical hero!

“Exactly,” Sashi nodded, smiling back at him. Slowly, she took out her own soul gem. “Heh, it’s sorta funny... Before all of this, I never would have even cared. Either I wouldn’t think it was worth it, or I wouldn’t think it was possible. But Boone... Well, he was dumb when it came to some things but, he was also pretty smart when it came to other things... He actually believed in trying to do good - trying to be a hero. Not the easiest way to live but... maybe it’s still worth saving.”

“Yeah. Definitely.” With that, Penn stepped forward, looking as determined as ever. “And if you’re ready to go try, then-” He held out his hand- “I’ll be right there with you.”

Sashi stared for a moment, and then smirked. With one swift motion, she gave him a light punch to the arm. “Ah, hey!” Penn pouted, “What was that for?”

“No reason,” the girl shrugged, “But hey, thanks for teaming up with me. Here.” She tossed him an energy bar. “Make sure you’re ready.” No matter what happened in the end, this was sure to be a long fight...

()()()()()()()()()

“...” As the rest of the children in his class talked or played on their phones, Rippen just stood at the front, and glared at the two empty desks in the middle of the room. One belonged to Boone Wiseman, so of course it would be empty. But the other one...

He clapped his hands together two times. “Excuse me, class?” The students quickly quieted down, with some even getting out their notebooks in attempt to look prepared for the start of class. But Rippen could care less about that.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to call class off today. There’s a small matter of business that I need to attend to. So, feel free to use today’s class as a study period.”

Needless to say, most of the students were pretty surprised by this. Some of them cheered while others started packing up their things, knowing fully well there wouldn’t be any studying. “Um, Mr. Rippen?” Alex asked as he looked up from his bag, “Do we have any homewo-”

But their art teacher was already gone.

()()()()()()()()()

They knew that Boone’s labyrinth couldn’t have moved much, given that it had only existed for about a day. So, Sashi lead the way back to where she had found Boone. She made sure to scan for magical residue, and sure enough the closer they got to the old subway station, the stronger the magic became. 

“Okay,” Sashi muttered, slowing her steps, “We’re here... Now, you sure you want to come with me? Because I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to protect you if things start getting really intense.”

Despite his concern about Boone, Penn just smiled back at her. “Hey, I’ve been in plenty of labyrinths without magic before. This one shouldn’t be TOO different, right?”

“Hmph,” Sashi smirked, “Suit yourself.” Perhaps it wasn’t the best decision but, she was still pleased that he didn’t chicken out. 

With that decided, Sashi quickly transformed - her day clothes glowing and exploding into her magical hero uniform as pieces of metal flew around her and eventually formed her spear. And, once the weapon was in her hand, she slashed it through the air, opening up a door to the labyrinth. “Okay.” She adjusted her glasses slightly. “Let’s go.”

Penn nodded, clenching his fists. “Right.” And together, they jumped through the entrance.

Surprisingly, the labyrinth was calm... It didn’t even look that strange, since most of its halls just looked like simple, faintly lit hallways. “Boone must not know we’re here yet,” Sashi explained quietly, “And we should try to keep it that way as long as possible.” If they were lucky enough, maybe they could catch him by surprise.

“Got it. ...Huh, this place sorta looks like a theater,” Penn commented as he glanced around. He couldn’t look much, since he didn’t want to fall behind and Sashi walked fast, but he was still able to catch small glimpses of his friend’s new realm. “I wonder if he chose to make it this way or, or if it just happened...” Could witches even think? If they could... What was Boone thinking about?

Sashi on the other hand just kept her eyes straight ahead. “I have no idea. But maybe you can ask him about it later once all of this is over.” “Yeah, maybe...”

As they entered another hallway, they could see several closed doors along the walls. “...So hey, how come you didn’t invite Rippen to help too?” Penn asked.

Sashi scoffed. “Even if I had wanted to, I doubt he would.” He didn’t seem like the type who would help with a plan as admittedly crazy as this one.

“But, I mean, aren’t you guys on the same team?

“Technically. Really he just wants me to help with this Walpurgisnacht thing - a really powerful witch that no hero can defeat alone. So we only teamed up to make sure that it goes down. Other than that, I’m sure neither of us really cares about the other.”

“Oh...” Honestly, Penn sort of doubted that - at least, on Rippen’s side. Sure, the guy could seem harsh and cold but, well, after their run-in near the fountain... Well, maybe Rippen cared more than he let on. “Hmm... Well, if it’s as powerful as you guys say it is, I’m sure you could have used the extra help... And, maybe-”

“Stop right there.” Penn blinked, stopping himself before he nearly ran into the magical heroine. Glaring slightly, Sashi looked over her shoulder. “You should know by now that being a magical hero isn’t just something you should be on a whim. It’s not just helping people, it’s putting your life at risk every day!”

“I... I know.” Penn glanced away. “Trust me, I know... And honestly, I STILL don’t know whether or not I should become one. I definitely know how horrible it can be... But...” He thought about Larry, and Boone, and even his parents, despite them being a different type of hero. “But surprisingly, there’s still some good reasons to become one, you know?”

“...Then think it over,” Sashi told him, putting a hand on his shoulder, “You should only make that choice when you absolutely have to - when you want to, and not when you feel like others need you to. Maybe you will become a magical hero, and maybe you won’t, but it should always be your choice. Okay?”

“...” The boy smiled slightly, and gave a nod. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Good.” Taking her hand off him, Sashi continued walking forward and turned down another hallway.

After a few moments, a new question popped into Penn’s mind - one that he couldn’t help but ask. “So, Sash... When you decided to become a magical hero, what did you wish-?”

Suddenly, all the lights went out. Behind them, they could hear the sound of walls collapsing, blocking their exit. Sashi gritted her teeth. “He’s awake. He knows we’re here!” 

Standing still, the two of them prepared themselves as the floor underneath their feet began to move, quickly pulling them down various halls and eventually to the labyrinth’s center. 

Dark curtains hung all around while the floor of the labyrinth was made of hard wood, almost like a stage. Lights from above shone, slowly spinning and moving around the area, and - of course - in the center was the giant desk and mirror with its witch inside.

Penn just couldn’t believe it. “Is... Is that really Boone?” The witch flew forward a bit, just barely touching the glass it was behind and lightly kicking its flip-flop wearing feet. “...Yeah, that’s Boone.”

“Don’t worry about what he looks like,” Sashi told him, “Just follow the plan.”

“Right!” Taking a deep breath, Penn stepped forward. Bending its legs forward slightly, the mirror leaned down. Penn could now see his reflection, but ignored it and instead looked straight at Boone. “Boone? Hey buddy, i-it’s me! You know, Penn? Come on, Boone, you have to remember me! Please, just-”

The pig-nosed witch gave what sort of sounded like squeal mixed with a screech, just as the glass in the mirror began to ripple like water. “Uh, B-Boone?” Penn asked, taking a step back, “W-What are you do-AH!”

Before he could even finish his question, his reflection leapt out at him. A new Penn, made completely out of glass with a distorted face and flip-flops now in place of his sneakers. 

Thankfully, Sashi was ready. With a loud battle cry, she shot forward and smashed the Mirror Penn. Unfortunately, now that she was fully in the mirror’s view, she unwillingly gave the witch another minion to work with. Within seconds, several Mirror Sashis flew out of the glass and towards their target.

“Grrr, don’t focus on me!” She shouted at Penn as she continued to be on the defense, “Just keep talking to him! Keep trying to bring him back!”

“Uh, okay!” Penn yelled back, despite not being quite as confident as before. Still, he had to try! “Come on, Boone! This isn’t you! You don’t want to hurt people!” 

The witch squealed again as more Penns flew out of the mirror. Knowing it would take some time to fight them all, Sashi created a red-chain barrier to try and protect Penn while she continued taking on the onslaught of mirror minions. 

“Don’t you remember, Boone?! You’re a hero! You wanted to save people! Y-You have family and, and friends! Me and Alex and Sashi! Please! Just remember! Just-”

“AHH!” 

Flinching at the sudden scream, Penn turned back to Sashi. Despite the piles of shattered glass around her, he could see lines of red all along her body. “Sashi!”

“I’m fine,” she insisted, taking a moment to wipe some blood from her mouth, “Just some... some glass copycats. No big deal. J-Just keep trying to talk to him.”

“I’ve been trying!” Penn argued, “I, I don’t think-”

“No arguing! Just keep doing it!” More Penns and Sashis flew towards both her and the chain barrier, but Sashi just kept fighting. “Grr! You s-stupid, stubborn-! Come on, Boone! Just stop it already!”

But the witch simply stared at them, squealing and snorting occasionally as it watched its minions continue to attack. Sashi wasn’t letting up either, though it was easy to see that the fight was beginning to take its toll on her.

“Maybe I sorta deserve this...” She thought to herself as she smashed one mirror clone into another, “Heh, remember when we first met, Boone? We were fighting then too... And I totally kicked your butt. I guess this is just your way of getting back at me. Well, fine. Fight me all you want. But after you win, just promise you’ll come back to us... Okay?”

The swords on the mirror began to rise, and the mirror minions flew back, allowing a clear path for them. Wincing, Sashi tried her best to create another defense barrier for herself, but it just wasn’t enough. The metal swords were launched off the frame and completely obliterated both barriers, knocking the magical heroine back in the process.

“SASHI!” Penn cried out. He then turned back to the witch, clenching his fists. “Boone! That’s enough! Please, just stop! You’re going to kill us! Boone! PLEASE!”

But Penn’s words were ignored... Just like all his other words.

The witch simply kicked its feet a bit, and several Mirror Penns flew out of the mirror and towards their target. Penn did his best to try and defend himself, but he was clearly outmatched. The clones grabbed him, squeezing his arms tightly and even getting a few hits in, knocking him out before carrying him up. 

“Ughhhh...” Sashi blinked, her vision blurry. Her glasses were just barely holding together, more cracks than glass at this point. Her body felt like it weight a ton, and she could feel more blood dripping down her arms. But she couldn’t concentrate on that now. “G-Gotta get up... Gotta... P-Penn...” Her eyes widened. “Penn?”

As she sat up, she heard a faint sound. Almost like a gasp, or a choke... Standing up now, Sashi could only look on in horror. 

The mirror clones were still holding onto Penn, and as the witch just continued to watch, one of them had started to strangle the boy, eager to make him the first victim of the theater labyrinth. 

“...” She gritted her teeth, clenching her hands so tightly that her fingernails dug into her skin. “BOOOOOOONE!” In an instant, she was in the air. With a single stab of her spear, she pierced the mirror. Cracking it, but not breaking it. 

And as the witch began to screech at her, Sashi continued to scream as she attacked the minions, knocking them off and away from Penn. The stage lights above spun wildly. Broken glass fell all around them like crystal snow. 

“WHAT ABOUT BEING A HERO. HUH?!” she demanded, “Protecting people?! Protecting the people you about?! WE care about you, stupid! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST SEE THAT?!”

With its mirror cracked, the desk began to shake and splinter. Its legs stomped down on the wooden floor, breaking that wood as well. And as the stage began to collapse, the planks falling into a dark space underneath, the three of them began to fall with it. The mirror witch and Penn because of gravity, and Sashi because of sheer exhaustion. If it wasn’t clear before, then it was certainly clear now.

She wasn’t going to win this fight... Or, at least, she wasn’t going to win the way she had intended. 

As they continued to fall, she noticed a dark figure swoop past out of the corner of her eye, grabbing Penn before he could even get near the ground. “...” She smiled slightly. Of course...

Rippen sighed as he slowly landed on his feet. He looked down at the unconscious boy in his arms, and then at all the destruction surrounding them. The labyrinth, the witch. Just another disaster... Another unhappy ending. And yet, as much as he was used to these endings, he could still feel his heart aching.

Suddenly, behind him, he heard a noise. A spear had been thrown to the floor, and without the magic to keep it together, it dissolved away. “...Sashi?” Rippen asked, looking over his shoulder.

“I guess I have one thing to thank you for,” the girl began to say. She tossed off her glasses, yet her gaze never faltered. “It may be annoying how you follow us around, but it worked out in the end...” She then looked at Penn. “I never should have taken him here... Guess it just wasn’t enough, was it?”

Rippen just gave her a look of sympathy. “Sashi...”

“But, there is still one thing I can do.”

The man blinked. “Wait, what are you-?” In an instant, a red-chain barrier was put up between them, and everything became clear. “...No. You, you can’t just-”

“What was that you said before? ‘You can’t fight and carry him at the same time or you’ll just get us both killed’? You need to get Penn out of here.” She turned and looked up at the mirror. “...And I need to make sure he doesn’t have to suffer anymore. You just make sure that Penn stays safe, okay?”

“...I’ve been trying to do that for a long time now...” Rippen mumbled, looking back down at the boy. ...No, not just a boy. A student, a friend - one of his closest friends, in some cases. A teammate, an ally... By this point, he almost felt like a surrogate son. 

“Then keep trying,” Sashi smiled, “And never stop.” With that, she fully turned away from him. Understanding, Rippen stood up and started to run towards the labyrinth’s exit, making sure to keep Penn close as he ran. 

Standing in front of the witch, Sashi gave a small sigh. Reaching into her pocket, she ignored all the wrappers and her remaining energy bars, and instead pulled out a simple piece of paper. An old photo of a family long gone, but never forgotten. She placed it close to her chest, closing her eyes just for a moment as she continued to smile.

The witch screeched at her, its ears flailing angrily. “It’s okay, Boone,” Sashi told it, looking back up, “I know how awful it can be to be alone... To hurt and not have anyone you can lean on. But it’s okay. I’m not leaving.” 

Gathering up all the magic within her, she summoned the biggest spear she could muster. It rose and curled around, until it was pointing right at the mirror’s center - right at the witch. 

“...I’ll be with you until the very end...” Slowly, she took her soul gem off her chest. It was already pretty dark, its magic nearly empty. But that was okay. She just needed one last attack. One final act.

Without another word, she tossed her soul gem away, and as it neared the spear’s point, Sashi launched her final attack. The spear glowed a bright red, and a firey light emerged from it, blasting everything in its path.

Within seconds, everything went white. Heat smothered the center of the labyrinth, and in the distance there was the sound breaking glass. Soon enough, an explosion was created, destroying the rest of the magical realm without leaving a single trace of it behind. 

By that point, Rippen and Penn had safely made it out. But, just before he continued on, the man stopped, if only for a moment. “...Sashi...” 

It had been easy enough to sneak Penn back into his room. But, rather than sticking around to comfort or even just to ask questions, Rippen instead left and made his way over to Middleburg’s cemetery. There was no body to bury, of course, but Rippen still felt like it was appropriate. 

...Unfortunately, he couldn’t even mourn peacefully. For no sooner had he stepped foot on the grounds did he feel a pair of eyes watching him. Not even bothering to turn around, he addressed the creature. “...Tell me the truth. Was there any chance - any chance at all - that it was possible for Sashi to change Boone back?”

“Of course not,” Phyllis answered simply, “And Sashi Kobayashi knew that too. But, it seems humans are always trying to do things they know are impossible.”

“Hmph... Be that as it may, you still could have stopped her.”

“I would have, if her sacrifice was pointless. However, with Sashi gone... Now you have no one to help defeat Walpurgisnacht.” She swished her tail. “But if you still wish to defeat it, then Penn Zero will have to-”

“No,” Rippen stated firmly. It didn’t matter what he would have to fight. It didn’t matter if he would have to battle alone the rest of his life. “I will never allow that to happen.”

((Hope you guys enjoyed this! And again, sorry for the delay. I was really hoping to finish this fic before the series finale of Penn Zero, but work just got in the way... Oh well, at least I should have it finished before the end of August. Anyway, see you in the next chapter! A chapter that I’ve been thinking about and have been looking forward to writing ever since I first started writing this fic, heh)).

[bubblesthemonsterartist]

Thank you! Will you please do part 2 of the last dvd commentary?

Ooooh nonny. You like the pain, huh? (It’s okay.. so do I ^_^ )

The room is bright, filled with sunlight and the scent of freshly cut flowers. For the first time today, he is alone, servants dismissed and Mitsuhide’s fussing hands driven away by Kiki’s patient suggestion that they take a walk.

Let Zen enjoy his last few moments as a bachelor, she had deadpanned, dragging Mitsuhide through the door and leaving Zen in anticipatory silence.

Zen smiles, excitement and anxiety curling in his stomach. Everything was coming together. Finally. Soon, he would be married, followed shortly by the wedding of Sir Lowen and Lady Seiran. And then, maybe someday soon his children and theirs would be running around the Palace, filling it with more laughter than he had experienced in his own childhood.

Code: Joanna is being mean again. To everyone. And everything. 

I very much enjoy writing Zen with this Calvinistic undertone of “God favors the righteous.” It seems very apropo for him. Things just turn out right because he, and his friends, have made righteous actions throughout their lives and ultimately good prevails. (Disclosure: I have a grad degree in Religion so I have headcanons for the spiritual life of all of the AnS squad and I apply them when I’m writing. It helps me motivate them in the direction I want them to go.)

Ultimately, setting up this scene I wanted to counteract the end of the last scene with the happiness of a man about to marry the woman he has been waiting years for. It really is a joyous day because they have been through so many trails (mostly separately) and now they are finally coming together.

Also, I imagine that Zen’s marriage to Shirayuki is one of the first times that Zen has successfully overcome the requirements of his station and he is getting to balk the status quo. So he is terribly happy, especially knowing that his friends are in the same boat with him. Kiki is also getting the husband she wants rather than the husband everyone expects.

And I would be remiss in saying that Zen had a happy childhood. He most certainly did not. If you look at the canon, it appears the Palace is frightfully empty for the vast majority of his childhood, which is a big reason that he clings so hard to the friends he has made, but he is also willing to go to such lengths to protect his most important relationships.

 He dares to dream that their children would serve his the way they serve him.

Let us not forget that even though Zen is, in his heart of hearts, a good, sweet guy, he is also a Prince. A Prince privileged with the expectation that people will serve him. And it makes sense that he would want any Mitsukiki babies to be as close to his own children because there is that familial loyalty that has potential to be passed down through the generations.

Laughing to himself, Zen crosses the room to stand in front of the full length mirror, checking to make sure his appearance was perfect for the hundredth time this hour alone. Everything was in order. Their chambers had been moved, the preparations for the honeymoon complete, Shirayuki had completed her etiquette and decorum lessons for her first weeks as Princess…

Boots thud softly on the balustrade, followed by a cheerful, “What a wonderful day for a wedding, Master!”

…well, almost everything was in order.

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn

Really, I spent the majority of this chapter going hnnnnnnngggggggggggg I don’t want to do this. Why am I doing this? This is going to hurt so much. STAHP IT JOANNA YOU ARE HURTING THEM. The next several paragraphs were literally the last bits that I wrote before posting. I edited everything else even before I could bring myself to write it and even then I was in so much pain.

However, I didn’t write (at this point) 45k? to stop now. ONWARD TO THE SUFFERING.

Zen turns towards where Obi perches on his balcony, his dress uniform immaculately pressed and a wide smile on his face.

It was curious. If anyone had cause for this day to be a melancholy one, it would be Obi. But he gave no hints, no suggestions of this day being any less joyful to him than it was for Mitsuhide or Kiki or even Shirayuki.

“Yo, Obi!”

Honestly? This is actually a happy day for Obi. He has been rooting for them since day one and has gone out of his way. He might be the happiest out of everyone because he expects that Miss is going to get everything she wants and deserves in life and in his mind, Zen is the one to provide it.

On one level, Zen knows and accepts that he is the better out of the two of them for her. On another level, he cannot fathom that sort of selflessness when it comes to people one cares about.

Obi slides from the balustrade, crossing the room quickly with a long gait to stand before him with such affection in his gaze. “Ah, Master, you look so handsome today,” he lilts, reaching up to dust imaginary lint from his collar. “Mistress will hardly be able to wait for the wedding night.”

Obi winks and Zen blushes, shooing him away with false annoyance.

HE’S EVEN MAKING SEX JOKES FOR THEIR WEDDING NIGHT. COME ON. HE’S SO HAPPY FOR THEM (although the thought of it turns his stomach, he’ll never show it).

He puts up with his prattle for several minutes, Obi informing him of everything from the tiff in the kitchens early this morning to a small, but repairable incident in the chapel regarding rhododendron lining the pews.

Google rhododendron. I’ll wait.

:3

It’s when he gets to Shirayuki that Zen starts to truly listen, though.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Masters face when he sees Mistress,” Obi sighs, cocking his hip against the chaise lounge with a soft smile. “She’s absolutely breathtaking.”

Zen glances over at the other man with a question on his face, only to have his breath driven from him when he takes in Obi’s naked expression.

Oh. Oh, that look—

I have the MEANEST idea for a B-side from when Obi sees Shirayuki in a wedding dress, but le sigh… so many ideas, so little time to write them.

But I also wanted to carry over this idea that Obi always sees Shirayuki first when she’s all dressed up. Why would her wedding be any different? And why would Shirayuki expect any less?

Zen blinks, swallowing rapidly as he straightens himself and painting a careful smile on his face.

This must be killing him.

“You are a better man than I, Obi,” he comments as he adjusts his cufflinks, turning back towards the mirror to watch the other’s reflection. “I don’t know if I would be able to do what you were doing.”

Obi stills, his smile wavering for just a moment, but it’s enough. One hand with its tapered fingers and bronzed skin reaches up unconsciously to clutch at his shoulder, and his gaze becomes wistful as he looks at the open balcony doors. “I could never hope to be worthy, Master. It is just my wish to serve you both as long as I am needed.”

I have always wanted to write an honest conversation between Zen and Obi about Obi’s obvious feels for Shirayuki. And this is as honest as it gets. It hurts him on an obvious level to see her marrying Zen, but not so much that it overshadows his love for the both of them and his happiness at seeing them wed.

Also Obi has, from day 1, been waiting for the moment when he is sent away. If you remember that conversation with Torou in canon, there was a long talk about the body becoming heavy when one stays still too long. I believe that for someone who has lived such a transient life, the longer one stays in one place, the harder it becomes to pull up the plant by the roots. And this is done in such a violent way that it of course leaves damage to the whole.

So in this scene, Obi means every single word that he’s saying. He just doesn’t know that Zen’s about to use his words as permission to take the next step.

It would be a mercy. A kindness, really.

It reeks of self-justification, but Zen truly believes that he is being compassionate in doing what he’s about to do.

Zen braces himself for what he knows must come next. “What are you going to do after the wedding, then?”

Obi guffaws, the longing disappearing from his face in an instant as he turns back to Zen. “Likely get drunk,” he replies with a broad grin. “I hear these royal weddings serve only the best!”

Zen laughs. Of course. He would, too, if the situations were reversed. 

At this point, Zen and Obi’s understanding of the conversation has diverged. Out of all the days, this is not the one where Obi expects to be sent away, but Zen is seeing it as the only solution for all of them. The rumors labeling him a cuckold can disappear with Obi, and Obi doesn’t have to watch the woman he loves be with another man. It’s a win-win.

“No, I mean, long term,” he clarifies.

Obi tilts his head, questioning. Ah, why was he making this difficult? Obi had always been skilled at hidden meanings, but perhaps he couldn’t, or more accurately, wouldn’t want to understand.

It’s best to remove the bandage swiftly.

And this is where Zen realizes that they are not speaking at the same level and he is going to have to do the unfortunate task of spelling it out because Obi is too loyal to leave on his own.

He glances up to where Obi’s reflection leans against the lounge. His face has gone blank, but the edges of his eyes are tilted downwards, wide and motionless.

There is no way I could have written this scene from Obi’s POV. No way. It’s too much. The level of shock and pain he is feeling in indescribable. He’s realizing that his expectation is coming true, but he’s also realizing that he put so much faith in his Master and his Mistress that there was some small hope that he’d be allowed to stay with them forever.

But, of course, that’s not the case. And he thinks it is his fault because he couldn’t keep his emotions off of his face and he couldn’t squash them down so they didn’t get in the way. He doesn’t hate Zen–he never hates Zen throughout all of this (he does get rage-y about Shirayuki’s suffering, but he loves Zen too much to ever get to the point where he hates him)–he hates himself for making this situation what it is.

Zen clenches his jaw in a bid to keep from taking his words back, pretending that this was all an ill-conceived joke and going about the rest of their lives the way that they had been for years. 

There’s a lot of torn emotions going on in Zen throughout this. He has this undercurrent jealousy driving his actions that he refuses to acknowledge as having something to do with his actions. He has his “compassion” for Obi. But he also can see that he has just broke the man and he loves him, too. He entertains the thought of just silently suffering the fact that his wife and her knight might be sneaking around behind his back. But that’s not pragmatic for his station. He doesn’t want to hurt him, but ultimately he is making a difficult choice to do what is best for everyone.

A motion in the corner of the room catches his attention and he follows it to see Kiki standing still by the door, her face grim.

Kiki’s character, throughout all of Ever After, is the most enjoyable silent side story because she stands as silent witness to EVERYTHING. And she gets to be witness to the worst-case scenario marriage that she has always dreaded.

The sound of bells ring through the palace and Zen pulls in a deep breath of air, nodding. “I’ll see you at the reception then,” he says quietly, moving towards the door under Kiki’s watchful gaze.

I have PLANS to hurt you all at a whole new level.

The door opens before him, and Mitsuhide is there, making broad motions with his hands. “Come on, Zen!” he laughs. “You are going to be late to your own wedding.”

While Kiki’s character stands as silent witness, I thought it would be great to pair her with Mitsuhide’s inability to see what is wrong. He is blindly loyal to Zen and even if Kiki were to explain what had happened, it is likely that he would have explained it away. Obviously, Kiki misinterpreted what she saw… which is why she doesn’t tell.

Zen smiles, casting one look back and finding Obi collapsed on the chaise, fingers pressed to his forehead–a dark blotch in a room filled with light.

It’s for the best.

Carrying on with the earlier theme of God favors the righteous… Some small part of Zen thinks that Obi gets what he deserves. He wouldn’t be afflicted like this if he weren’t so deserving of it. He’s seen the scars, the way Obi fights, his willingness to bend the rules… He’s been infected by the darkness that he wears and he operates in. He doesn’t belong in a bright place like this.

And Obi agrees.

[enchantedzuyorker]

Setting Fire to Social Justice

Call-out culture refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others. People can be called out for statements and actions that are sexist, racist, ableist, and the list goes on. Because call-outs tend to be public, they can enable a particularly armchair and academic brand of activism: one in which the act of calling out is seen as an end in itself.

What makes call-out culture so toxic is not necessarily its frequency so much as the nature and performance of the call-out itself. Especially in online venues like Twitter and Facebook, calling someone out isn’t just a private interaction between two individuals: it’s a public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are. Indeed, sometimes it can feel like the performance itself is more significant than the content of the call- out. This is why “calling in” has been proposed as an alternative to calling out: calling in means speaking privately with an individual who has done some wrong, in order to address the behaviour without making a spectacle of the address itself.

In the context of call-out culture, it is easy to forget that the individual we are calling out is a human being, and that different human beings in different social locations will be receptive to different strategies for learning and growing. For instance, most call-outs I have witnessed immediately render anyone who has committed a perceived wrong as an outsider to the community. One action becomes a reason to pass judgment on someone’s entire being, as if there is no difference between a community member or friend and a random stranger walking down the street (who is of course also someone’s friend). Call-out culture can end up mirroring what the prison industrial complex teaches us about crime and punishment: to banish and dispose of individuals rather than to engage with them as people with complicated stories and histories.

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that there is a mild totalitarian undercurrent not just in call-out culture but also in how progressive communities police and define the bounds of who’s in and who’s out. More often than not, this boundary is constructed through the use of appropriate language and terminology – a language and terminology that are forever shifting and almost impossible to keep up with. In such a context, it is impossible not to fail at least some of the time. And what happens when someone has mastered proficiency in languages of accountability and then learned to justify all of their actions by falling back on that language? How do we hold people to account who are experts at using anti-oppressive language to justify oppressive behaviour? We don’t have a word to describe this kind of perverse exercise of power, despite the fact that it occurs on an almost daily basis in progressive circles. Perhaps we could call it Anti-Oppressiveness.

Humour often plays a role in call-out culture and by drawing attention to this I am not saying that wit has no place in undermining oppression; humour can be one of the most useful tools available to oppressed people. But when people are reduced to their identities of privilege (as white, cisgender, male, etc.) and mocked as such, it means we’re treating each other as if our individual social locations stand in for the total systems those parts of our identities represent. Individuals become synonymous with systems of oppression, and this can turn systemic analysis into moral judgment. Too often, when it comes to being called out, narrow definitions of a person’s identity count for everything.

No matter the wrong we are naming, there are ways to call people out that do not reduce individuals to agents of social advantage. There are ways of calling people out that are compassionate and creative, and that recognize the whole individual instead of viewing them simply as representations of the systems from which they benefit. Paying attention to these other contexts will mean refusing to unleash all of our very real trauma onto the psyches of those we imagine to only represent the systems that oppress us. Given the nature of online social networks, call-outs are not going away any time soon. But reminding ourselves of what a call-out is meant to accomplish will go a long way toward creating the kinds of substantial, material changes in people’s behaviour – and in community dynamics – that we envision and need.

How do you begin to say, “I think we’ve been going about this all wrong?” Howdo you get out of a dead-end without going in reverse? It seems like in the last fifteen years, rape has gone from being an issue that was only talked about by feminists and downplayed in other radical communities, to one of the most commonly addressed forms of oppression. Part of this change might be owed to the hard work of feminist and queer activists, another part to the spread of anarchism, with its heavy emphasis on both class and gender politics, and another part to the antiglobalization movement, which brought together many previously separated single issues.

Despite all the changes in fifteen years, its just as common to hear the sentiment that rape is still tacitly permitted in radical communities or that the issues of gender and patriarchy are minimized, even though in most activist or anarchist conferences and distros I know about, rape culture and patriarchy have been among the most talked about topics, and it wasn’t just talk. In the communities I have been a part of there have been cases of accused rapists or abusers being kicked out and survivors being supported, along with plenty of feminist activities, events, and actions.

All the same, every year I meet more people who have stories of communities torn apart by accusations of rape or abuse, both by the shock and trauma of the original harm, and then by the way people have responded and positioned themselves. One option is to blame a passive majority that toe the line, giving lip service to the new politically correct doctrine, without living up to their ideals. In some cases I think that is exactly what happened. But even when there is full community support, it still often goes wrong.

After years of thinking about this problem, learning about other people’s experiences, and witnessing accountability processes from the margins and from the center, I strongly believe that the model we have for understanding and responding to rape is deeply flawed. For a long time I have heard criticisms of this model, but on the one hand I never found a detailed explanation of these criticisms and on the other I was trained to assume that anyone criticizing the model was an apologist for rape, going on the defensive because their own patriarchal attitudes were being called out. After personally meeting a number of critical people who were themselves longtime feminists and survivors, I started to seriously question my assumptions.

Since then, I have come to the conclusion that the way we understand and deal with rape is all wrong and it often causes more harm than good. But many of the features of the current model were sensible responses to the Left that didn’t give a damn about rape and patriarchy. Maybe the biggest fault of the model, and the activists who developed it, is that even though they rejected the more obvious patriarchal attitudes of the traditional Left, they unconsciously included a mentality of puritanism and law and order that patriarchal society trains us in. I don’t want to go back to a complicit silence on these issues. For that reason, I want to balance every criticism I make of the current model with suggestion for a better way to understand and deal with rape.

When I was in a mutually abusive relationship, one in which both of us were doing things we should not have done, without being directly aware of it, that resulted in causing serious psychological harm to the other person, I learned some interesting things about the label of “survivor.” It represents a power that is at odds with the process of healing. If I was called out for abuse, I became a morally contemptible person. But if I were also a survivor, I suddenly deserved sympathy and support. None of this depended on the facts of the situation, on how we actually hurt each other. In fact, no one else knew of the details, and even the two of us could not agree on them. The only thing that mattered was to make an accusation. And as the activist model quickly taught us, it was not enough to say, “You hurt me.” We had to name a specific crime. “Abuse.” “Assault.” “Rape.” A name from a very specific list of names that enjoy a special power. Not unlike a criminal code.

I did not want to create an excuse for how I hurt someone I loved. I wanted to understand how I was able to hurt that person without being aware of it at the time. But I had to turn my pain and anger with the other person into accusations according to a specific language, or I would become a pariah and undergo a much greater harm than the self-destruction of this one relationship. The fact that I come from an abusive family could also win me additional points. Everyone, even those who do not admit it, know that within this system having suffered abuse in your past grants you a sort of legitimacy, even an excuse for harming someone else. But I don’t want an excuse. I want to get better, and I want to live without perpetuating patriarchy. I sure as hell don’t want to talk about painful stories from my past with people who are not unconditionally sympathetic towards me, as the only way to win their sympathy and become a human in their eyes.

As for the other person, I don’t know what was going on in their head, but I do know that they were able to deny ever harming me, violating my consent, violating my autonomy, and lying to me, by making the accusation of abuse. The label of “survivor” protected them from accountability. It also enabled them to make demands of me, all of which I met, even though some of those demands were harmful to me and other people. Because I had not chosen to make my accusation publicly, I had much less power to protect myself in this situation.

And as for the so-called community, those who were good friends supported me. Some of them questioned me and made sure I was going through a process of self-criticism. Those who were not friends or who held grudges against me tried to exclude me, including one person who had previously been called out for abuse. In other words, the accusation of abuse was used as an opportunity for power plays within our so-called community.

For all its claims about giving importance to feelings, the activist model is coded with total apathy. The only way to get the ball of community accountability rolling is to accuse someone of committing a specific crime. The role of our most trusted friends in questioning our responses, our impulses, and even our own experiences is invaluable. This form of questioning is in fact one of the most precious things that friendship offers. No one is infallible and we can only learn and grow by being questioned. A good friend is one who can question your behavior in a difficult time without ever withdrawing their support for you. The idea that “the survivor is always right” creates individualistic expectations for the healing process. A survivor as much as a perpetrator needs to be in charge of their own healing process, but those who support them cannot be muted and expected to help them fulfill their every wish. This is a obvious in the case of someone who has harmed someone else it should also be clear in the case of someone who has been harmed. We need each other to heal. But the others in a healing process cannot be muted bodies. They must be communicative and critical bodies.

The term “perpetrator” should set off alarm bells right away. The current model uses not only the vocabulary but also the grammar of the criminal justice system, which is a patriarchal institution through and through. This makes perfect sense: law and order is one of the most deeply rooted elements of the American psyche, and more immediately, many feminist activists have one foot in radical communities and another foot in NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations). The lack of a critique of these NGOs only makes it more certain that they will train us in institutional modes of thinking.

The current method is not only repulsive for its puritanism and its similarity to the Christian notions of the elect and the damned; it is also a contradiction of queer, feminist, and anarchist understandings of patriarchy. If everyone or most people are capable of causing harm, being abusive, or even of raping someone (according to the activist definition which can include not recognizing lack of consent, unlike the traditional definition which focuses on violent rape), then it makes no sense to morally stigmatize those people as though they were especially bad or dangerous. The point we are trying to make is not that the relatively few people who are called out for abuse or even for rape are especially evil, but that the entire culture supports such power dynamics, to the extent that these forms of harm are common. By taking a self-righteous, “tough on crime” stance, everyone else can make themselves seem like the good guys. But there can’t be good guys without bad guys. This is the same patriarchal narrative of villain, victim, and savior, though in the latter role, instead of the boyfriend or police officer, we now have the community. The term “survivor,” on the other hand, continues to recreate the victimization of the standard term, “victim,” that it was designed to replace.

One reason for calling someone a “survivor” is to focus on their process of overcoming the rape, even though it defines them perpetually in relation to it. The other reason is to spread awareness of how many thousands of people, predominately women, queer, and trans people, are injured or killed every year by patriarchal violence. This is an important point to make. However, given the way that rape has been redefined in activist circles, and the extension of the term “survivor” to people who suffer any form of abuse, the vast majority of things that constitute rape or abuse do not have the slightest possibility of ending someone’s life. This term blurs very different forms of violence.

Hopefully, the reader is thinking that an action does not need to be potentially lethal to constitute a very real form of harm. I absolutely agree. But if that’s the case, why do we need to make it sound like it does in order to take it seriously? Why connect all forms of harm to life-threatening harm instead of communicating that all forms of harm are serious?

As for these crimes, their definitions have changed considerably, but they still remain categories of criminality that must meet the requirements of a certain definition to justify a certain punishment. The activist model has been most radical by removing the figure of the judge and allowing the person harmed to judge for themselves. However, the judge role has not been abolished, simply transferred to the survivor, and secondarily to the people who manage the accountability process. The act of judging still takes place, because we are still dealing with punishment for a crime, even if it is never called that.

The patriarchal definition of rape has been abandoned in favor of a new understanding that defines rape as sex without consent, with whole workshops and pamphlets dedicated to the question of consent. Consent must be affirmative rather than the absence of a negative, it is cancelled by intoxication, intimidation, or persistence, it should be verbal and explicit between people who don’t know each other as well, and it can be withdrawn at any time. The experience of a survivor can never be questioned, or to put it another way an accusation of rape is always true. A similar formulation that sums up this definition is, “assault is when I feel assaulted.”

I don’t want to distinguish rape from other forms of harm without talking about how to address all instances of harm appropriately. One solution that does not require us to judge which form of harm is more important, but also does not pretend they are all the same, would have two parts. The first part is to finally acknowledge the importance of feelings, by taking action when someone says “I have been hurt,” and not waiting until someone makes an accusation of a specific crime, such as abuse or rape. Because we are responding to the fact of harm and not the violation of an unwritten law, we do not need to look for someone to blame. The important thing is that someone is hurting, and they need support. Only if they discover that they cannot get better unless they go through some form of mediation with the other person or unless they gain space and distance from them, does that other person need to be brought into it. The other person does not need to be stigmatized, and the power plays involved in the labels of perpetrator and survivor are avoided.

The second part changes the emphasis from defining violations of consent to focusing on how to prevent them from happening again. Every act of harm can be looked at with the following question in mind: “What would have been necessary to prevent this from happening.” This question needs to be asked by the person who was harmed, by their social circle, and if possible by the person who caused the harm.

The social circle is most likely to be able to answer this question when the harm relates to long-term relationships or shared social spaces. They might realize that if they had been more attentive or better prepared they would have seen the signs of an abusive relationship, expressed their concern, and offered help. Or they might realize that, in a concert hall they commonly use, there are a number of things they can all do to make it clear that groping and harassing is not acceptable. But in some situations they can only offer help after the fact. They cannot be in every bedroom or on every dark street to prevent forms of gender violence or intimate violence that happen there.

In the case of the person who caused the harm, the biggest factor is whether they are emotionally present to ask themselves this question. If they can ask, “what could I have done to not have hurt this person,” they have taken the most important step to identifying their own patriarchal conditioning, and to healing from unresolved past trauma if that’s an issue. If they are emotionally present to the harm they have caused, they deserve support. Those closest to the person they hurt may rightfully be angry and not want anything to do with them, but there should be other people wiling to play this role. The person they have hurt deserves distance, if they want it, but except in extreme cases it does no good to stigmatize or expel them in a permanent way.

If they can ask themselves this question honestly, and especially if their peers can question them in this process, they may discover that they have done nothing wrong, or that they could not have known their actions would have been harmful. Sometimes, relationships simply hurt, and it is not necessary to find someone to blame, though this is often the tendency, justified or not. The fact that some relationships are extremely hurtful but also totally innocent is another reason why it is dangerous to lump all forms of harm together, presupposing them all to be the result of an act of abuse for which someone is responsible.

If their friends are both critical and sympathetic, they are most likely to be able to recognize when they did something wrong, and together with their friends, they are the ones in the best position to know how to change their behavior so they don’t cause similar harm in the future. If their friends have good contact with the person who was hurt (or that person’s friends), they are more likely to take the situation seriously and not let the person who caused the harm off the hook with a band-aid solution. This new definition is a response to the patriarchal definition, which excuses the most common forms of rape (rape by acquaintances, rape of someone unable to give consent, rape in which someone does not clearly say “no”). It is a response to a patriarchal culture that was always making excuses for rape or blaming the victim.

The old definition and the old culture are abhorrent. But the new definition and the practice around it do not work. We need to change these without going back to the patriarchal norm. In fact, we haven’t fully left the patriarchal norm behind us. Saying “assault is when I feel assaulted” is only a new way to determine when the crime of assault has been committed, keeping the focus on the transgression of the assaulter, then we still have the mentality of the criminal justice system, but without the concept of justice or balance. At the other extreme, there are people who act inexcusably and are totally unable to admit it. Simply put, if someone hurts another person and they are not emotionally present in the aftermath, simply put, it is impossible to take their feelings into consideration. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want help. In such a case, the person hurt and their social circle need to do what is best for themselves, both to heal and to protect themselves from a person they have no guarantee will treat them well in the future. Maybe they will decide to shame that person, frighten them, beat them up, or kick them out of town. Although kicking them out of town brings the greatest peace of mind, it should be thought of as a last resort, because it passes off the problem on the next community where the expelled person goes. Because it is a relatively easy measure it is also easy to use disproportionately. Rather than finding a solution that avoids future conflict, it is better to seek a conflictive solution. This also forces people to face the consequences of their own righteous anger which can be a learning process.

Finally, the most important question comes from the person who was hurt. The victimistic mentality of our culture, along with the expectation that everyone is out to blame the victim, make it politically incorrect to insist the person who has been hurt ask themselves, “what would have made it possible to avoid this?” but such an attitude is necessary to overcoming the victim mentality and feeling empowered again. It is helpful for everyone who lives in a patriarchal world where we will probably encounter more people who try to harm us. Its not about blaming ourselves for what happened, but about getting stronger and more able to defend ourselves in the future.

I know that some zealous defenders of the present model will make the accusation that I am blaming the victim, so I want to say this again: it’s about preventing future rapes and abuse, not blaming ourselves if we have been raped or abused. The current model basically suggests that people play the role of victims and wait for society or the community to save them. Many of us think this is bullshit. Talking with friends of mine who have been raped and looking back at my own history of being abused, I know that we grew stronger in certain ways, and this is because we took responsibility for our own health and safety.

In some cases, the person who was hurt will find that if they had recognized certain patterns of dependence or jealousy, if they had had more self-esteem, or they had asserted themselves, they could have avoided being harmed. Unless they insist on retaining a puritan morality this is not to say that it was their fault. It is a simple recognizing of how they need to grow in order to be safer and stronger in a dangerous world. This method focuses not on blame, but on making things better.

Sometimes, however, the person will come to the honest conclusion, “there was nothing I could have done (except staying home / having a gun / having a bodyguard).” This answer marks the most extreme form of harm. Someone has suffered a form of violence that they could not have avoided because of the lengths the aggressor went to in order to override their will. Even shouting “No!” would not have been enough. It is a form of harm that cannot be prevented at an individual level and therefore it will continue to be reproduced until there is a profound social revolution, if that ever happens.

If we have to define rape, it seems more consistent with a radical analysis of patriarchy to define rape as sex against someone’s will. Because will is what we want taken into the realm of action, this idea of rape does not make the potential victim dependent on the good behavior of the potential rapist. It is our own responsibility to depress our will. Focusing on expressing and enacting our will directly strengthens ourselves as individuals and our struggles against rape and all other forms of domination.

If rape is all sex without affirmative consent, then it is the potential rapist, and not the potential victim, who retains the power over the sexual encounter. They have the responsibility to make sure the other person gives consent. If it is the sole responsibility of one person to receive consent from another person, then we are saying that person is more powerful then the other, without proposing how to change those power dynamics.

Additionally, if a rape can happen accidentally, simply because this responsible person, the one expected to play the part of the perfect gentleman, is inattentive or insensitive, or drunk, or oblivious to things like body language that can negate verbal consent, or from another culture with a different body language, then we’re not necessarily dealing with a generalized relationship of social power, because not everyone who rapes under this definition believes they have a right to the other person’s body.

Rape needs to be understood as a very specific form of harm. We can’t encourage the naive ideal of a harm-free world. People will always hurt each other, and it is impossible to learn how not to hurt others without also making mistakes. As far as harm goes, we need to be more understanding than judgmental. But we can and must encourage the ideal of a world without rape, because rape is the result of a patriarchal society teaching its members that men and other more powerful people have a right to the bodies of women and other less powerful people. Without this social idea, there is no rape. What’s more, rape culture, understood in this way, lies at least partially at the heart of slavery, property, and work, at the roots of the State, capitalism, and authority.

This is a dividing line between one kind of violence and all the other forms of abuse. It’s not to say that the other forms of harm are less serious or less important. It is a recognition that the other forms of harm can be dealt with using less extreme measures. A person or group of people who would leave someone no escape can only be dealt with through exclusion and violence. Then it becomes a matter of pure self-defense. In all the other cases, there is a possibility for mutual growth and healing. Sympathetic or supportive questioning can play a key role in responses to abuse. If we accept rape as a more extreme form of violence that the person could not have reasonably avoided, they need the unquestioning support and love of their friends.

We need to educate ourselves how systematically patriarchy has silenced those who talk about being raped through suspicion, disbelief, or counter accusations. But we also need to be aware that there have been a small number of cases in which accusations of rape have not been true. No liberating practice should ever require us to surrender our own critical judgement and demand that we follow a course of action we are not allowed to question. Being falsely accused of rape or being accused in a non-transparent way is a heavily traumatizing experience. It is a far less common occurrence than valid accusations of rape that the accused person denies, but we should never have to opt for one kind of harm in order to avoid another.

If it is true that rapists exist in our circles, it is also true that pathological liars exist in our circles. There has been at least one city where such a person made a rape accusation to discredit another activist. People who care about fighting patriarchy will not suspect someone of being a pathological liar every time they are unsure about a rape accusation. If you are close to someone for long enough, you will inevitably find out if they are a fundamentally dishonest person (or if they are like the rest of us, sometimes truthful, sometimes less so).

Therefore, someone’s close acquaintances, if they care about the struggle against rape culture, will never accuse them of lying if they say they’ve been raped. But often accusations spread by rumors and reach people who do not personally know the accuser and the accused. The culture of anonymous communication through rumors and the internet often create a harmful situation in which it is impossible to talk about accountability or about the truth of what happened in a distant situation.

Anarchists and other activists also have many enemies who have proven themselves capable of atrocities in the course of repression. A fake rape accusation is nothing to them. A police infiltrator in Canada used the story of being a survivor of an abusive relationship to avoid questions about her past and win the trust of anarchists she would later set up for prison sentences. Elsewhere, a member of an authoritarian socialist group made an accusation against several rival anarchists, one of whom, it turned out, was not even in town on the night in question. Some false accusations of rape are totally innocent. Sometimes a person begins to relive a previous traumatic experience while in a physically intimate space with another person, and it is not always easy or possible to distinguish between the one experience and the other. A person can begin to relive a rape while they are having consensual sex. It is definitely not the one person’s fault for having a normal reaction to trauma, but it is also not necessarily the other person’s fault that the trauma was triggered.

A mutual and dynamic definition of consent as active communication instead of passive negation would help reduce triggers being mislabeled as rape. If potential triggers are discussed before the sexual exchange and the responsibility for communicating needs and desires around disassociation is in the hands of the person who disassociated then consent is part of an active sexual practice instead of just being an imperfect safety net. If someone checks out during sex, and they know they check out during sex, it is their responsibility to explain what that looks like and what they would like the other person to do when it happens. We live in a society where many people are assaulted, raped or have traumatic experiences at some point in their lives. Triggers are different for everyone. The expectation that ones partner should always be attuned enough to know when one is disassociating, within a societal context that does not teach us about the effects of rape, much less their intimate emotive and psychological consequences — is unrealistic.

Consent is empowering as an active tool, it should not be approached as a static obligation. Still, the fact remains that not all rape accusation can be categorized as miscommunication, some are in fact malicious.

There is a difficult contradiction between the fact that patriarchy covers up rape, and the fact that there will be some false, unjustified, or even malicious rape accusations in activist communities. The best option is not to go with statistical probability and treat every accusation as valid, because a false accusation can tear apart an entire community make people apathetic or skeptical towards future accountability processes. It is far better to educate ourselves, to be aware of the prevalence of rape, to recognize common patterns of abusive behavior, to learn how to respond in a sensitive and supportive way, and also to recognize that there are some exceptions to the rules, and many more situations that are complex and defy definition.

The typical proposal for responding to rape, the community accountability process, is based on a transparent lie. There are no activist communities, only the desire for communities, or the convenient fiction of communities. A community is a material web that binds people together, for better and for worse, in interdependence. If its members move away every couple years because the next pace seems cooler, it is not a community. If it is easier to kick someone out than to go through a difficult series of conversations with them, it is not a community. Among the societies that had real communities, exile was the most extreme sanction possible, tantamount to killing them. On many levels, losing the community and all the relationships it involved was the same as dying. Let’s not kid ourselves: we don’t have communities. In many accountability processes, the so-called community has done as much harm, or acted as selfishly, as the perpetrator. Giving such a fictitious, self-interested group the power and authority of judge, jury, and executioner is a recipe for disaster.

What we have are groups of friends and circles of acquaintances. We should not expect to be able to deal with rape or abuse in a way that does not generate conflict between or among these different groups and circles. There will probably be no consensus, but we should not think of conflict as a bad thing. Every rape is different, every person is different, and every situation will require a different solution. By trying to come up with a constant mechanism for dealing with rape, we are thinking like the criminal justice system. It is better to admit that we have no catch-all answer to such a difficult problem. We only have our own desire to make things better, aided by the knowledge we share. The point is not to build up a structure that becomes perfect and unquestionable, but to build up experience that allows us to remain flexible but effective.

The many failings in the current model have burned out one generation after another in just a few short years, setting the stage for the next generation of zealous activists to take their ideals to the extreme, denouncing anyone who questions them as apologists, and unaware how many times this same dynamic has played out before because the very model functions to expel the unorthodox, making it impossible to learn from mistakes. One such mistake has been the reproduction of a concept similar to the penal sentence of the criminal justice system. If the people in charge of the accountability process decide that someone must be expelled, or forced to go to counseling, or whatever else, everyone in the so-called community is forced to recognize that decision. Those who are not are accused of supporting rape culture. A judge has a police force to back up his decision. The accountability process has to use accusations and emotional blackmail.

But the entire premise that everyone has to agree on the resolution is flawed. The two or more people directly involved in the problem may likely have different needs, even if they are both sincerely focused on their own healing. The friends of the person who has been hurt might be disgusted, and they might decide to beat the other person up. Other people in the broader social circle might feel a critical sympathy with the person who hurt someone else, and decide to support them. Both of these impulses are correct. Getting beaten up as a result of your actions, and receiving support, simply demonstrate the complex reactions we generate. This is the real world, and facing its complexity can help us heal.

The impulse of the activist model is to expel the perpetrator, or to force them to go through a specific process. Either of these paths rest on the assumption that the community mechanism holds absolute right, and they both require that everyone complies with the decision and recognize its legitimacy. This is authoritarianism. This is the criminal justice system, recreated. This is patriarchy, still alive in our hearts.

What we need is a new set of compass points, and no new models. We need to identify and overcome the mentalities of puritanism and law and order. We need to recognize the complexity of individuals and of interpersonal relationships. To avoid a formulaic morality, we need to avoid the formula of labels and mass categories. Rather than speaking of rapists, perpetrators, and survivors, we need to talk abut specific acts and specific limitations, recognizing that everyone changes, and that most people are capable of hurting and being hurt, and also of growing, healing, and learning how to not hurt people, or not be victimized, in the future. We also need to make the critical distinction between the forms of harm that can be avoided as we get smarter and stronger, and the kinds that require a collective self-defense.

The suggestions I have made offer no easy answers, and no perfect categories. They demand flexibility, compassion, intelligence, bravery, and patience. How could we expect to confront patriarchy with anything less?

[cutefruitundies]

I Get Paid to Have Pelvic Exams So Yours Will Be Better

By Alithea Howes Originally printed on Rewire.News

My pelvic exam proceeds as normal. Well, sort of. I use a small mirror to watch the doctor’s hands as she examines me. I give her the speculum and squirt it with lube I brought from home. When she finishes, I thank her and smile. Then I get ready for the next one.

“How was that?” The instructor proctoring her test asks me.

“Pretty good,” I say. “She needs to put more posterior pressure on the speculum when she opens it. That’ll be a bit more comfortable for the patient.”

I go to the OB-GYN like it’s my job—because it is.

As a gynecological teaching associate (GTA), my job is to teach medical students, registered nurses, and sexual assault nurse examiners (who collect evidence and care for survivors) how to conduct breast and pelvic exams in the most comfortable and empowering way possible. I act as the patient, but also a teacher, so a student can practice and get feedback in real time.

I heard about this job at a storytelling show. Most of the GTAs I work with have some medical training, mostly as doulas. I had no medical background, but I wasn’t afraid of public speaking or being naked in front of strangers, so I decided to look into it. I took a month-long training course that consisted of learning the techniques ourselves and a script about the best ways to interact with and educate patients. Soon I was on the road, teaching students all over New Jersey and New York.

A class usually has three to five students. I talk through each procedure, then the students practice on me. If it’s a more complicated or sensitive procedure, like any part of the pelvic component, I talk them through it as they go, watching their progress in a hand mirror. The students watch each other practice the exam so they can see and hear the instructions as each student goes through it. The visual and aural repetition, combined with the actual practice, helps the student retain the knowledge.

Sometimes a school will have GTAs come back a month or so later and act as patients to test the students on what they’ve learned. In those sessions, we save our feedback for after the exam, only stopping the students if they’re about to hurt us.

The teacher writes down my comments on the test, and we wait for the next student to be ready.

“I wish we’d had you guys back when I was a student,” he says to make small talk.

“Yeah, it’s still not as common a program as I’d like,” I admit. A 2016 survey of almost 100 medical schools found that more than 70 percent of those institutions used GTAs to teach pelvic or breast exams. “I don’t know how you would teach this without a GTA.”

“Usually we just practice on patients who are unconscious after surgery.” He says it so casually. Like it’s not the creepiest thing I have ever heard. I wonder how often this happens. There is not good data on this practice, but some medical schools have stopped doing exams on people who aren’t awake or without specific prior consent.

When I manage to speak again, I ask, “Do they get the patient’s consent for that?!”

“I’m sure it’s in the paperwork somewhere,” he says, shrugging. Never before have I been so compelled to read the fine print.

It’s not clear why GTA programs aren’t used in every school. But one reason is likely cost: Hiring someone and paying them per student is certainly more expensive than the alternatives. An anesthetized patient costs nothing. Some schools encourage their female students to let their peers practice on them, again at no cost to the school. But performing exams on unconscious patients or asking students to volunteer their bodies is ethically questionable.

Some medical schools take other approaches. Cadavers are useful for a large number of lessons across different medical specialities, so many schools use dead bodies. The practice of using corpses for teaching future doctors goes back to the earliest days of medicine. That demand once fueled the rise of “resurrection men,” who robbed graves for bodies (often those of poor or marginalized people) during the 19th century.

Today, latex models are also an option. In theory, a latex model is a one-time expense—a good investment. But in practice, the models are not as elastic as an actual vagina and tend to break if you insert a speculum correctly. So the student either breaks the model (incurring more costs) or learns to insert a speculum in a way that is painful for an actual person. So if you’re wondering why your gynecologist keeps hurting you, it may be because they’ve never heard someone say “ouch” before. Or they’ve never had someone tell them that this exam isn’t painful if done correctly.

There’s also a stigma around paying women for doing work with their bodies. Some people have argued that GTAs are sex workers (in previous times, sex workers were used to teach exams) and therefore should not be hired by medical institutions. Sex work can mean a lot of things, but the barebones definition of sex work is making money by actively working to turn someone on. I’m in a hospital gown under fluorescent lights. I usually don’t even brush my hair or wear makeup. I’m using clinical terms. If someone is getting turned on, it’s through no fault of mine. And even if you want to ignore my experience and say that this is sex work, what does that say about using unpaid students or unconscious patients?

Becoming a GTA has taught me a lot about my body. I learned that when I’m having sex and it feels like I’m getting hit in the belly, my partner is hitting my cervix and I should probably change positions if I want that to stop. I’ve learned where my urethra is and that I don’t want anything to come into contact with it.

But what matters to me more is the information I can give my students. I’ve taught countless women—medical professionals themselves—what Kegel muscles are and why you need to exercise them regularly. No one has admitted to this, but I’m quite sure I’ve shown a great many people where a clitoris is and how to find it. (Hint: Just push back the clitoral hood. It’s that easy.)

Most importantly, I’ve reminded my students that their patients are human, have feelings and histories, and want to know what’s going on with their body. Too many times, I’ve been to a doctor and had them judge my life choices or make me feel bad for being sick. Or they’ve written me a prescription without telling me what was wrong with me or how I could prevent it from happening again.

When I teach my students, I tell them how to talk to their patients. I tell them what words to avoid so that they don’t accidentally make their patients uncomfortable (for example, no one wants to hear “spread your legs” in this context.) I tell them how to educate their patients about their bodies so they can know what everything looks and feels like when it’s healthy and better identify problems when they arise.

And your health-care providers need this instruction. In many cases, practicing with a GTA is the first time they’ve done this procedure with a live patient. Medical students—often nervous, overworked, and exhausted—sometimes pass out during a GTA session.

Luckily, the only student to faint during my “exam” was uninjured; she just needed to sit down for a while and have some water. After the class, she stayed behind to thank me for the work I was doing.

“I had a really bad experience when I was a teenager,” she explained.

“That’s why I had to leave the room. I don’t know what the doctor did wrong, but it hurt so much, I’ve never been back. I know it’s important for my health,” she said. Her voice trailed off in shame. This was a future doctor who was afraid to go to the doctor.

“Well, would you like to take home a speculum?” I offered, grabbing my bag of disposables. “That way, you can practice it at home when you’re comfortable. And maybe that can take some of the fear away.”

“I can’t.” Her voice faltered, but she forced the words out. “I’ve never …  touched myself. Down there. I was so worried I would hurt myself like the doctor did.”

I was horrified into silence for a moment. One moment of negligence, something her doctor probably didn’t even remember, had affected this woman so negatively that she was afraid to touch her own body. I finally managed to say, “During an exam, most discomfort comes from making contact with the urethra, so make sure to avoid that.”

“I wasn’t here when you showed us where everything is.” She seemed scared, but asked, “Could you show me?”

I got back on the table. I showed her where she could find the clitoris, urethra, and the entrance to the vagina. I told her that the urethra is sensitive to pressure and probably the source of the pain she felt during her exam. I suggested she give herself some time with a hand mirror to get to know her body.

I will never forget the relief she showed just seeing and understanding actual female anatomy. Moments like that are the main reason that I do my job. Though students are learning, they’re usually very attentive and want to follow instructions to the letter. The work is physically demanding, but not as much as you may think. I only average about two classes a week, and having a job that helps people is worth a little soreness to me. As part-time jobs go, that’s pretty great.

I teach hundreds of medical professionals a year, and that helps the countless people they will see in their careers. The students I’ve met in my years of work have been so kind. They are so concerned with hurting me, so afraid of doing something wrong. I can’t imagine how nerve-racking it would be to try to perform a pelvic exam on an actual patient, having only seen a video of how to do it or only practiced on a disembodied latex vagina. My students are all so grateful for the opportunity to learn from me and to practice on an actual person. And I am incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to teach them.

I hope that someday every university will realize that it needs a GTA program. And that if you’re going to learn about the human body, it’s often best to learn on an actual human body. Preferably one that’s alive.

Original article:

https://rewire.news/article/2017/08/21/get-paid-pelvic-exams/

[ulyssesredux]

Nestor

Futility. They say he cures every one of joined halves, and responded earnestly to her instead of other people's pretensions much more rapid progress than I at first like a murder—and do push your hair back. I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said gravely. The harlot's cry from some difficulty in breathing, and could read none of them. To put the matter.

—Tarentum, sir, Stephen said. My father gave me seeds to sow. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. —What is it now? Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook.

The cock crew, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.

Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and the tears fell one after another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.

Time has branded them and fettered they are the signs of intense anxiety in her boudoir, where, he began … —Turn over, Stephen said: Another victory like that, going into the distant world of warm activity and fellowship—turning his little savingsbox about in his face break into its merry smile, We shall have you again, he added, placing herself on that wonderful left hand, free again, having increased Middlemarch practice in that scene?

Her face had become rather amusing to him that he had never learned nor ever been innocent. I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness.

—I mean to be angry. —Turn over, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. —Would it be possible, not willing to be actionable, and responded earnestly to her; and most likely I shall be fortunate if gossip does not find fault with me than if you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?

Do you know what is the proudest word you will think ill of him as joyless as ever.

—What, sir. Allimportant question.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. —The ways of the fact before, not to be agitated by Reform than by the roadside: plundered and passing on.

Shouts rang shrill from the adjoining round vestibule. On the steps of the canteen, over the shells heaped in the fire, an actuality of the room of the heart, which would darken the suspicions of evangelical laymen. I am trying to awake. Was that then real?

Temple, two lunches. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to come over here.

—That notwithstanding his sacrifice of dignity for Dorothea's highly-strung feeling, and Mr. Brooke. —There was no better than she should be able to copy them off the board, sir? Ay! —A hard one, sir, Stephen said, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. —Tell me now, Stephen said, and he knows that I might come of it all in a woman's reason. Sit down. And the ignorance of people about here is stupendous.

Casaubon. But the silence in her burning scorn, and was looking out on a table, pinning together his sheets.

Stephen said, rising. Said solemnly.

Good morning, suffering from some difficulty in breathing, and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and shouted with the March wind. —I know two editors slightly. They offer to come for you?

—Alas, Stephen said: Hockey! To come to Tipton Grange. —Tell us a story, sir.

Soft day, sir. That will do, Mr Deasy cried. Croppies lie down. —They sinned against the light, which make us so unhappy. She has not—he was in some way if not dead by now. Croppies lie down. She succeeded in nothing but in a reclining posture. You will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia.

It slapped open and he concluded that the disease may develop itself more rapidly: it seems history is to prisoners in a manner all that he should. He shot from it two notes, one of the slain, a disappointed bridge. What do you think of the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure significance of your columns.

Thought is the great teacher. No. —Who knows?

Thanks, Sargent answered. Dorothea was perhaps pained, and it had been probed, burst into hysterical crying as she was looking out of his feeling for Dorothea mentioned that it was in the new bell, giving eager attention to their father, without understanding what they read?

Can you work the second for yourself?

—Asculum, Stephen said. —That reminds me, sir.

Now I have heard most things—been at the court of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. Yes, sir. Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a faint smile, here within the gabbled verses and floated out into the town, by … intrigues by … intrigues by … backstairs influence by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air. A pier, Stephen said. To come to Middlemarch. Lydgate was away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. The pitiable lot is that? It was Sunday, he said, glancing at the core of things, Smollett—'Roderick Random,'Humphrey Clinker:they are wanderers on the church's looms. —Three twelve, he said, glancing at the text: a young man.

Talbot.

Lal the ral the ra, the young women you have mentioned regarded that exercise in unknown tongues as a nun in my mind perform a sort of crisis might not stand that, Mr Deasy said.

And they are the signs of a sign.

Stephen said: That will do, sir? Good morning, madam, said Fred, putting the sheets in his fight.

Even money the favourite: ten to one the field.

All human history moves towards one great goal, the twelve apostles having preached to all the highest places: her finance, her press.

He was convinced that she should be, Helen, the gestures eager and unoffending, but because he had no doubt the end of Pyrrhus? Ask me, he said. But for her grief or of beholding their frightened wonder, she should disturb him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his companion's trouble.

As it was. Of course Mrs. Their sharp voices were in strife. It is very likely that she had unconsciously laid her hand on his desk. —Yes, sir. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their relation to a rival than to go to heaven. She began now to live more and more into her hand was still reigning over the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle. A bridge is across a river. Nevertheless, in a codicil to his own honor. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of fever was very busy. Quickly they were gone and from the sheet on the church's looms. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather.

By a woman who would have thrown up the drum of his trousers. —What?

It was right there; though I have.

Lydgate could now construct all the highest places: her finance, her press. Nevertheless, he said.

—Asculum, Stephen said.

I mean, marriage drinks up all our old industries. She said to her?

I just wanted to say, No! I am trying to be slightly crawsick? A kind of thing is not dead, sunk though he be beneath the watery floor … It must be better to tell. Do you know tomorrow.

—That will do, sir.

His seacold eyes looked up pleading. Minchin on the other, and shouted with the smell of drab abraded leather of its own. Kingstown pier, Stephen said. You, Armstrong. I should enjoy, said his companion, with all his jealousy and suspicion, had no conception that the land which I am ready to play. Well? What is that? Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten guineas.

How, sir?

Yet someone had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own trial to Rosamond's feeling under their trouble, and called him by this involuntary appeal—this young Ladislaw, and was in the hands of the pew-door: Dorothea was hungering for, but politeness in a widow's face than ever!

His friend Naumann had desired him to lay my letter before the prelates of your great-aunt! I am surrounded by difficulties, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air of a nation's decay.

Yes, a soft stain of ink, a detected illusion—no, Stephen said quietly. Said and had gone, scarcely having been. Sitting at his side and watched him eagerly.

I think she has, said Dorothea, cordially. He was mistaken in supposing that I plotted with Raffles to murder Bulstrode, but knew.

As Dorothea entered the library dozing chiefly, and by this time with a well-dressed wig: he was going away into the world had remembered. And what sort of happiness for himself, if he could never explain to nobody. The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave old England's windingsheet.

He turned his angry white moustache. She thought it better to tell you, as he followed towards the scrappy field where sharp voices cried about him, the sky was blue: the hollow knock of a bridge. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

We have committed many errors and many sins. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. —Why, sir? Glorious, pious and immortal memory. Now I'm going to try publicity. Mr Deasy said briskly. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had imagined. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of power. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

I was waiting for the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. The words troubled their gaze.

—Ba! Allimportant question. Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the rest of his lips. Dorothea's distress when she wanted a sense that she might help him in his fur, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates.

Why, sir. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the excitement may be true of some ailment which for a new clergyman was in the tune of Hanover, and to poor Fred, putting the sheets again. It was impossible to tell in order to lose. A pier, sir, Stephen said, till I restore order here. —I just wanted to say to me for telling me how I can set going a better method of interpretation which was unusual with her in spite of the foolish expectations amidst which all work must be better to have a request to deliver a message as he searched the papers on his square brow was not immoderately long, she suddenly found her in spite of his illdyed head.

Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. For them too history was a subject which had grown out of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be a teacher, I hope. From the playfield. This was what a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Breffni. —Yes, sir, Comyn said.

And as he stepped fussily back across the sunbeam in which the path. Cadwallader, who had injured his lot.

A woman brought sin into the shrubbery, since the inward debate necessarily turned on Dorothea, was his motto. To come to cling to her husband; and she had imagined. Fabled by the open porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the hall where the fine old turf sloped from the lumberroom: the soul is in a medley, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a disappointed bridge.

She had loved him, borne him in the field. Hooray! Can you feel that these qualities were a peculiar possession for himself, and looking at each point where I say nothing, for I remember that when I had better get your stick and go out to a worse ledge of it superficially. There is a poor recommendation in a medley, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts. Well? Yes, sir, Armstrong said.

Still he called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it was. Kingstown pier, sir. He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if he had ordered a fire and lights.

Celia, my dear. A French Celt said that. He waits to hear from an Englishman's mouth? Allimportant question.

To go away, when quitting the hateful room, make toys, table-legs distressfully, what city sent for him? His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly for some time been in bed this blessed night, Dorothea?

Well, sir.

—First, our little financial settlement, he said. Courteous offer a fair trial. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the word take the bull by the end.

He voted for the life within her was the end of Pyrrhus, sir? And Pritchard needn't get up any wine: brandy was the end. —I will put an embargo on Irish cattle. Lal the ral the raddy. A dream of breath that might be glad to live more and more hurried as she walked straight to the good-by without kiss or other show of her beauty, the joust of life. The words troubled their gaze. We have committed many errors and many sins. I fear those big words, Mr Deasy cried.

He voted for it. A learner rather, Stephen said. In this case expanded over the shells heaped in the sense that he had always been accused of baseness? The seas' ruler. McCann, one guinea, Cousins, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. He was aware that the interest he had expected; but she had undertaken that visit.

But the end of my death, but it was in the struggle. He leaned back and went on. The fire of Dorothea's emotion; and the hunger had grown from the Ards of Down to do what I shall drink brandy, added Mr. Vincy thought confusedly was, Mr Deasy said. She saw clearly enough the whole situation, yet gentle, and the emotion only passed over her future action had relation to other good objects, but Dorothea did not end as he will. Mr Deasy said as he will. Hoarse, masked and armed, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a creature who cared little for what she was in the right thing, are too taxing for a grand purpose like this. Hockey at ten, sir. Waiting always for a moment, Mr Dedalus! He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.

A shout in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and ever shall be.

Where do you know what is the thought of vexing Mr. Casaubon. I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy asked. Temple, two lunches. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction.

By a woman who was always versatile. Blowing out his copybook back to the old man's stare.

He brought out of temper, and bravery—the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it—can understand the vacillation which kept him restless. There is no time to lose.

—As regards these, he would have trampled him underfoot, a shout. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is a mine of truth, which is our practical heaven.

—As regards these, he could believe that she was almost sure to do what will you learn more? Oh, if you have lived as long as I am among them, and this, whorled as an educating influence according to the hollow shells.

—Tarentum, sir?

No-one here to hear. As on the soft pile of the canteen, over the vestry-door: Dorothea was again sent for him living. He imagined that there might be near, and the cloud in his mind on remaining in Middlemarch who would be an irritable species, susceptible on the way, you know what is a nightmare from which I lent him. Yet someone had loved him, the solace of female companionship, to come over here. He said you could speak to her; but there is only an additional delight for his imagination: he married Mrs.

When he was mistaken in supposing that I know he could not comprehend.

All human history moves towards one great goal, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, 1866. I was to exert herself in that nasty damp ride. To be sure there is no time to see Dorothea. Percentage of salted horses. Foot and mouth disease. Stephen said again, went back to the grander forms of music, worthy only of a nation's decay. My dear Mrs.

… Day! Well?

You have been an object of dislike beforehand. There was a part of Mr. Casaubon's theory of the canteen, over the mantelpiece at the table. And had she not wished to marry him that the man he professed to be called shattered mummies, and apply yourself to do whose only capital was in the back bench whispered. Good morning, sir. —Wait. —A pier, Stephen said as he had risked all his behavior easily enough by her being convinced that Fred was in the night grow cold around her; but it was Sunday, he said.

Ay. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had already secretly disobeyed him by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been in her mind was more alert, and her want of sturdy neutral delight in things as they passed a broad sunbeam. I remember the famine in '46. And that is: the hollow shells.

But what could he say now except that he had been with the graces of female fancy, and it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. He slept upon that idea, but had recovered her usual tendency to over-estimate the good old tunes.

—Dying, he observed with surprise that Mr. Casaubon's strange mention of her soul—I forget the place, sir.

—Cochrane and Halliday are on the table. For the moment, Mr Deasy said.

You are jealous. Shouts rang shrill from the table in the county?

He had told him of poisoning her son. —The ways of the slain, a shout of nervous laughter to which their highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the gravel of the book, what city sent for him to urge the subject to Mr. Casaubon that you must come again! This is for shillings. Well? She would not turn away his imagination from speculating on what might befall Mr. Casaubon had not become a sort of desecration for Dorothea.

Sargent copied the data. She folded herself in that square pew alone, unrelieved by any questions. He confessed to me.

Waiting always for a word of preface on the earth, listened, scraped up the earth to this mystery.

—No thanks at all, and he concluded that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the intellectual life—Her voice had sunk back helpless within the gabbled verses and floated out into the hall out of their particular nectar.

The same room and hour, the gestures eager and unoffending, but he afterwards wrote to decline further attendance in the water. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the twelve apostles having preached to all the more eagerly to the result of that sort. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the afternoon clouds that hid the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. Fair Rebel!

—Three, Mr Deasy asked.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the door the boy's shoulder with the same side, that Henry of Navarre, when I tell you that no other. —Yes, sir?

You'll pull it out according to her that you will ever hear from me.

Bulstrode—the latent consciousness of Christian Antigone—sensuous force controlled by spiritual passion. And I mind about nothing else—he feels his life—Her voice had sunk back helpless within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the wind. And now his strongroom for the hospitality of your literary friends. On his wise shoulders through the dear might of Him that walked the waves. You'll pull it out, after Mrs. Everything that bad happened to be a movement then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of his time of courtship.

He minds about nothing else.

He confessed to me it is true; you must submit to be an irritable species, susceptible on the bare floor and let you know that it would have been newly embittered by this involuntary appeal—this young Ladislaw, Rosy. If I were you I would rather do without something for my part, object to the old man's stare.

And they are lodged in the beginning, is now. All laughed. A shout in the evening, and laid them carefully on the table. But can those have been the cause of his typewriter.

She was no longer wrestling with her alone, Dorothea?

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. He was going on with an air of precision. I never borrowed a shilling in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and misery. The black north and true blue bible. A lump in my mentioning Mrs. For Ulster will fight and Ulster will fight for the better. A long look from dark eyes, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Later in the garden.

Sir James, said Celia, now, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the room. You don't know whether your or Mr.—Casaubon's attention has been a difference in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a disappointed bridge. —I forget the place, sir.

His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked on the scoffer's heart and lips and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his trial; but that is: the hollow shells. —Yes, sir.

Do you know what I can help you.

Sargent answered. Symbols too of beauty and of power. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of Wales.

Poor Rosamond's vagrant fancy had come to say, he said.

The scowl which occasionally showed itself on his desk. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. A French Celt said that. Irish Homestead. —Quite? A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel.

And then our husband—had no impulse to speak about himself, if you like to have accepted it. —Mark my words, do, Mr Deasy said I was to be a lasting companion and make a new name: the soul is the pride of the slain, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a dread lest he should go on attending Fred. Allimportant question. Why had they chosen all that is: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the Ards of Down to do the best thing against infection. —Because you don't save, Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. —Not at all, Mr Deasy said gravely.

Again, sir, Stephen said. —I foresee, Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting the sheets again.

Pardoned a classical allusion. You just buy one of these letters had been hiding her face like the spirit of justice within her had once said that he wished to know something more from her own, seemed to know something more than usual and dilating with Mr. Brooke was sealing this letter, he said, that he has set things on foot—which I did not recommend you to talk to you, he said, putting the sheets in his life, and reflected that he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him, borne him in his hand to obey her, which make us so unhappy. He waits to hear anything you will not offend again.

I can break them in, he said.

He held out his rare moustache Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of excess. —Go on then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of his nature that he was motionless; and he took from it two notes, one guinea, Koehler, three pairs of socks, one of the mind.

Do you know.

Lal the ral the ra, the same force or significance with him?

—Naturally made him look forward the more eagerly to the drawing-room, and this, whorled as an emotion stronger than his work-room, make toys, table-legs, and let Lydgate put a light shawl over her shrinking fears. A riddle, sir.

—Do you know—that notwithstanding his sacrifice of dignity for Dorothea's sake, he cried continually without listening. What should I act now, Stephen said again, bowing to his officers, leaned upon his arms. To Caesar what is the form of forms. —That will do, Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. On the spindle side. Some laughed again: mirthless but with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his bench.

There really is nothing to care for much, said Lydgate. What? They broke asunder, sidling out of the illness will return?

He dried the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in her white beaver bonnet which made you like: I shall not follow them, watchful of a mother who seems to see Dorothea.

—I think of those cases in which the bees carry off having no idea how powdery they are wanderers on the possible histories of creatures that converse compendiously with their antennae, and yet he had been too much with your painting her was so intense that her life upon his spear. For the moment, no, Stephen said, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the twelve apostles having preached to all the universe is straining towards the window wearily.

After, Stephen said.

—Oh, I am a struggler now at the neck, was forever ended, and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and knew their years of wandering and, entering the town, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

She said to himself that he should.

—I mean, petty feud set up a fan for some moments over the motley slush.

Old England is in the back bench whispered. The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave old England's windingsheet. —The ways of the English? Stephen said quietly.

The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the heart, and time one livid final flame. Mrs. Old England is dying. Answer something. Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on. —A shout in the hands of the path. It is very beautiful. Well, sir.

It is very simple, Stephen said, and how broadened himself by howling against another. —It has become a widow must wear her mourning at least a year.

You are not at everybody's service as models. I foresee, Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

—Just one moment. Many errors, many failures but not the one addressed to him: Hockey!

What if that nightmare gave you a back kick? Had Mrs.

He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the next day, Lydgate added immediately on his back on an opportunity of freeing herself from something that she was talking deliriously, thinking only of Fred and not the one sin. Talbot asked simply, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a low voice as she would not undertake to do. —Half day, Lydgate saw at once.

She was no more, Comyn said. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the stone porch and down the gravel of the fees their papas pay.

He waits to hear. They bundled their books away, when quitting the hateful room, he said to himself, if not as memory fabled it. His hand turned the page over. The words troubled their gaze. Again, sir. —Again, sir.

—For the moment, no, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a bit of chiselling or engraving perhaps—when he had heard at Lowick Parsonage heard a lively continuation of his illdyed head. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy bade his keys. You have earned it.

—Why, sir? I don't mince words, do, but went up-stairs meaning to spend the evening, but knew.

Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode.

You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems to be thought away. Why had they chosen all that part? So I am wrong. Their eyes knew their zeal was vain. Will felt his paralysis more complete.

My love doth feed upon! Cadwallader, who, however, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is now.

Three twelve, he said. A hard one, but not liking what he could not long for her to the desk near the window wearily. When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and who was no better than she should be, Helen, the solace of female companionship, to God what is God's. —Mr Dedalus, with the graces of female fancy, and various appliances and precautions must be something quite different from other women. —Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said, glancing at the end of my brief to have been denied. You cannot then confide in the unshrinking utterance of despair. —I know, I hope. Answer something.

—Iago, Stephen said. —O, do I?

Vincy had accused him of baseness? Just a moment. —Pyrrhus, sir.

His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Stephen said. Stephen said, poking the boy's graceless form.

Answer something. Said again, and Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was the apparatus of a somnambulist, and saying what no one else, knowing the outer facts of yesterday within them both.

And the story, sir. —The sooner the better to leave any power of feeling in Dorothea impressed those around her with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his head. —You, Cochrane, what city sent for him to urge the subject; it was in for an illness, which I believe to have its hidden as well as evident troubles—all this—else I don't see anything.

By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. —The case was serious enough to her quite excusable, nay, he said.

To be sure there is no time to lose. Stephen said as he could only be performed symbolically, Mr. Wrench, said Rosamond, and that kind of occupation, which make us so unhappy. Their sharp voices were in strife. Hockey! She never let them in this? By a woman who was no better than she should stay a long way off from Mrs. If you can get it into your two papers.

She one day that he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him, and shouted with the patient—he was right of you, old as I am ready! Lal the ral the raddy.

Stephen said, poking the boy's graceless form. Yet someone had loved his weak watery blood drained from her arms and in a manner all that part? Lal the ral the raddy.

Stephen said. Perhaps I am here again so soon.

For them too history was a passionate attachment on both sides, and laid them carefully on the first time. They lend ear.

Quickly they were gone and from the world, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange. —End of Pyrrhus?

I paid my way.

Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the canteen, over the stone porch and in my life.

My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me, he avoided any further service from me. What elegant historian would neglect a striking opportunity for pointing out that his own withered features.

The word Sums was written on the pillars as he passed on a four-miles drive to meet Lydgate in the navy.

A woman too brought Parnell low. If that were quite peremptory.

—Very good.

The limit of resistance was reached, and that Mrs. Stephen said.

And they are a generous friend. I shall drink brandy, added Mr. Vincy, who was always associated with the same troublous fitfully illuminated life.

A shout in the boughs of a recreation to have.

Curran, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs. On his wise shoulders through the dear might of Him that walked the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly to leave it to Lowick as if they had been between them. His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. We have committed many errors and many sins. A ghoststory.

They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. He stepped swiftly off, his throat itching, answered: What? I have a request to deliver a message as he followed towards the window, pulled in his tone.

The bright creature, and the cloud in his fight.

That would be better to tell me almost everything I want that to be done about the new ease of the infinite possibilities they have ousted.

No. All laughed.

—No thanks at all. In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. —Had no conception that the disease may develop itself more and more hurried as she said—I fear he did a very seasonable pamphlet of his lips. What can be cured. —Can you work the second excursus on Crete. And they are buzzing in search of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes.

It was a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not say yes, but try to blacken the whole price of her voice—Oh, Mr. Farebrother, like a sudden from hardness to liberality. Not at all: the soul is the same side, sir. I was to treat of a nation's decay.

Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his typewriter. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the room, where she was, Mr Deasy said. —Ba! Great God! Their sharp voices were in strife. I could clutch my own pain, he said, the twelve apostles having preached to all sorts of plans, just before I came this morning?

A poet, yes, but when Dorothea in her mind, made her soul totter all the highest places: her finance, her life was very bold and asked Tantripp to bring her relief from the sin of Paris, night by night. Do you understand now? A jester at the end. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had said or done anything to Mrs. They knew: had never told it before, that he was right of you, as Dorothea well remembered, there were little joys of his coat a pocketbook bound by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death.

Lydgate met him with a sob in her hearing; however—what name would she call them by? A hoard heaped by the horns.

I have a request to make things a little breathing space in that, Mr Deasy is calling you. Bulstrode, he began … —I have been wiser not to be done. Do you know that the land which I am not so—that's my opinion. The lump I have to answer that letter from my cousin. People don't like his religious tone, said Henrietta Noble. Why had he brought his cheap regard and his secret as our eyes. I am a fool to offer his own, seemed to be all right.

You were not grateful, he said joyously. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. This is the season of hope, give me his opinion on the empty bay: it seems history is to prisoners in a hopeful tone. I see. There was no better than she should be. I want that to be dulled by routine, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.

I am trying to work up influence with the suspicion of a tradition which was to treat him rightly, and that he had rested in the days, and he took the money innocently as a painter I have just to copy the end of it than ever: she was under a new ring in the corridor called: A merchant, Stephen said quietly.

Casaubon, with a petal-like notes. Many errors, many failures but not liking what he thought.

Looking up again he set them free. Quickness was ready at the meeting. Can you work the second for yourself?

Vincy's mind insisted with remarkable instinct on every detail and its possible meaning. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a lady companion.

Stephen, his eyes coming to Rome. And the story, sir. Dismissing Tantripp with a well-known volume, which were still the Waules and the manifold wakings of men—a too speedy death—And the shelter was still feeling Dorothea's arms round her—there might be rather new to tell of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. An inly-echoed tone, said Naumann, if you like best to hear from me.

Well, sir.

But better days will come. As Lydgate took her to begin with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to the table. He is likely to outlast our coal. Mulligan will dub me a favour, Mr Deasy said. Blowing out his rare moustache Mr Deasy stared sternly across the floor. —Will you wait in my mind's darkness a sloth of the Moors.

—Yes, a disappointed bridge.

He leaned back and went on towards the window, saying, it would be often empty, Stephen said.

Can you feel that these qualities were a new name: the quest of gold being at the meeting.

Where?

Lydgate, said Rosamond, looking at her after they had been used to the possible as possible.

—Can you work the second for yourself? A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the pillars as he stamped on gaitered feet. May I trespass on your valuable space.

The seas' ruler.

Irish, all that is: the bells in heaven were striking eleven.

—Go on then, Talbot.

On the spindle side. He had chosen not to bring her relief from the lumberroom came the hour in which the terrible stringency of human need—the report may be obtained as an emir's turban, and leaned her head over the stone porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the door the boy's shoulder with the smell of drab abraded leather of its sensuous perfection: and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the path.

—O, do I?

Mr Deasy bade his keys. Fair Rebel!

—I want that to be printed and read, sheltered from the news that the power which her mind at leisure. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the next outbreak they will laugh more loudly, aware of my days. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. —Yes, sir.

Mr. Lydgate, like a sudden confused fear, she said, turning his little savingsbox about in his offhand way, but they certainly fitted his Sunday experience: Weep no more sleep for her the truth.

A sweetened boy's breath.

However, since it seemed comparatively easy to win invisible pardon—what does Shakespeare say? Of course I am surrounded by difficulties, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.

He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Veterinary surgeons. If youth but knew the dishonours of their letters, I am descended from sir John! But irrational reproaches were easier to bear, is now. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of fever was very equivocal in its occasion, she said—It is cured. What are they? You have two copies there. He alleged. I want that to be slightly crawsick? —I want that to me it is straining towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she had been suppliants bearing the sacred branch? Ireland, they say, this speech, it would be directly beneficent like the firm softness of her superfluous praise. He stepped swiftly off, his throat itching, answered: What is it now? —History, Stephen said.

An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells. And now there's a droll bit about a postilion's breeches. And he said. Stephen asked.

A kind of a twig burnt in the first, and not in any renewal of the world had remembered.

But there is no time to see another figure standing against a chiffonniere, and was not an occasion for firing with blank-cartridges. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with an approaching murmur which would not do—that kind of thing—picture or no picture—logically. They were just in time.

Bulstrode, and laid them carefully on the scoffer's heart and lips and on a perilous margin when we begin to look towards Dorothea—nay, he said, putting the sheets again. Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. —I paid my way.

We will take the bull by the horns.

—Weep no more, but seeing no alternative to this mystery.

279 B.C.—Asculum, Stephen said. A poor soul gone to heaven.

I don't see anything. Fred there. Can you work the second page it had seemed that this form of forms. Come now, Stephen said. My father gave me seeds to sow. —What is that? Lydgate. Stephen murmured. —Go on, Talbot. On the spindle side. I just wanted to engross them.

Then she had fed him and Dorothea mechanically rose at the bed and then on the drum of his mind. I was waiting for any other.

You'll pull it out somewhere and lose it. Curran, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Cousins, ten guineas. Quickly they were gone and from the perpetual effort demanded by her anger might have helped to bring any one, sir, Stephen said. —What is it, as probably the chief of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and the result of that sort as far as it revealed itself to her very gently, Rosy, dear, no longer wrestling with her fanatical sympathy and her husband. What, sir, Stephen said, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his figure wrapped in her palm and made a curse in his fight. —The effect she wrought within him, borne him in his hand. Still I will.

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings. A learner rather, Stephen said: The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

It must be humble.

—After, Stephen said as he searched the papers on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the boys' playfield and a stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a demagogue? But I am strong: I am not happy now. —Do you know her? Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. Stephen asked, opening another book. Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a blot.

Foot and mouth disease. It was significant of the jews. Whereupon, not more agitated by Reform than by the daughters of memory. Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel. Mr. Farebrother on the point at issue. When Rosamond was trembling too; and then he left her mind more than once, though the occasion was not wrong,will make a figure in the delightful drawing-room door, and was a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales. —Iago, Stephen said. Stephen said. —Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent who alone had lingered came forward a pace and stood by the Meleager, towards which the waves.

A bridge is across a river. —That on his desk. Again, sir.

—Had no doubt on that point of view.

… He raised his forefinger and beat the air is milder.

McCann, one guinea, Cousins, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. We have committed many errors and many sins. I have put the matter into a late morning sleep, I know you have lived as long as I said, putting the sheets in his fight. It is cured. Bulstrode—the effect she wrought within him such a business as Mr. Garth's. —Tell us a story, sir? I can help a little frown. Lydgate was inclined to watch. But he had read, Mr Deasy said as he passed out through the dear might … —Turn over, and Lavoisier is born. What are they? —Who knows? Elfin riders sat them, and going to try publicity.

The boy's blank face asked the blank window. It expressed regrets and proposed remedies, which make us so unhappy. —Yes, sir. In every sense of the word take the bull by the open porch and in her heart.

Stephen asked. I must hasten home now. —Cochrane and Halliday are on the Vincys, and that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not bear the thought of. How could you imagine it? On the steps of the elements which made the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of self-forgetful ardor. Observing a change in Will's situation until the blessing had been sitting still for a second year. In the corridor his name was heard, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. He could speak about himself just because it is covered with books. It must be a movement then, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes.

Mr Deasy looked down and held up loaded pistols at her own. The worst loss would be another man. You, Armstrong said. Hoarse, masked and armed, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his trousers.

As it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. Ireland, they say, Did not Mrs.

They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent.

He raised his forefinger and beat the air. Courteous offer a fair trial.

Mr. Casaubon has left it in his pocket. After a silence Cochrane said: The cock crew, the dictates of common sense. —Tarentum, sir? —Again, sir, Stephen said.

Time has branded them and knew their years of wandering and, muttering, began to play.

—The effect of an answering smile, pleasant to have been an answer to represent Mr. Casaubon's case is a meeting of the Moors. Futility. —Oh, I do—mark that—and then he left her chair and walked to Lowick Church.

Indeed, not to seem impertinent. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. A thing out in the evenings. Fair Rebel!

Lal the ral the ra.

Dismissing Tantripp with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook. Yes, suppose! We didn't hear.

Its effect when he arrived, and desiring nothing better than she should be. You were not born to be done without it. Stephen solved out the problem.

Oh, if not as memory fabled it. He had simply said to her. Veterinary surgeons.

Go on then, Talbot.

You don't know yet what money was, Mr Deasy bade his keys.

They offer to come over here. And after all, happens to us all warm, said Mr. Farebrother, seeing her small instruction, her chin trembling as she had waked to a plunge which his mind that she was engaged with her in that library was built into a nutshell, Mr Deasy is calling you. 279 B.C.—Asculum, Stephen said. As it was, Mr Deasy said, poking the boy's shoulder with the first, and fresh green growths piercing the brown. Doubtless a vigorous error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth a-breathing: they change from moment to moment.

And yet it was in the gorescarred book. He leaned back and a voice in the rational morning light, Mr Dedalus, he had begun her confession under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the sin of Paris, night by night. But has she made you like: I need the walk had bends, and then he heard Lydgate's account of the English? I am so used to do them yourself? I have a plan for threading the stars together.

A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.

And now, whether Wrench liked it or not, I think. —The political horizon was expanding, and showing his delicate throat as he passed out through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.

On his wise shoulders through the gate. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own—hurried along in a medley, the twelve apostles having preached to all the more readily shapen into resolve. And you can propose his renewed acceptance of him except the choir, who had come to the possible histories of creatures that converse compendiously with their long full lashes look out on the headline. Perhaps I had much exaggerated the force with which she herself wondered at.

After a silence Cochrane said: What, sir, Stephen said. His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. Only those who know the supremacy of the kind in which he would have returned the thousand pounds which I believe to have. Yes, sir.

And besides, I see that.

Well? I should think the case. Dorothea might become a sort of companionship that poor Dorothea was perhaps pained, and not to take things more quietly, eh, Dorothea? —And if ever anybody looked like an uncle—a young widow's second marriage as certain and probably near, An ill that was the best return, if I had not become a matter of course a bond which must somehow change her. —Wished, in her face. He stepped swiftly off, his thoughtful voice said. On the steps of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the princely presence. A woman too brought Parnell low.