#string parsing is something else though

[raichett]

grian/boromir? 👀

Hehe, I knew this one would attract curiosity :D

Basically, this is a fun little AU that @definitelynotshouting and I cooked up in DMs (you know the type, just batting about ideas like cats with a ball of string, nothing too serious).

The folder is entitled "tossing watcher grian into lotr for fun and profit" and I think that honestly sums up the whole thing - there are a couple of different threads and versions of the concept, including one we only talked about where specifically Life Series Grian is thrown into Middle Earth, rather than Watcher Grian. Inside, I have two snippets actually written up: "spicy grian x boromir wtf" and "boromir voice - i'm dying". Yeah, we (and by "we" and mean "me") did in fact decide that shipping Grian and Boromir together would be very funny.

In both of them, I have tried to imitate the style of Tolkien, so the narration might read as a little strange, but with no further ado here are a couple of parts of what I have, set in an AU where Grian saves Boromir from dying and then the two of them essentially roadtrip across Arda trying (and failing) to catch up to where all the action is:

It is not right, Boromir knows, to kneel before any but his lord and king. And indeed he is not: he kneels not in allegiance or fealty, though surely his knees are on the ground by the bedside, but instead in nothing less than respect, awe, and no small amount of desire. Grian – a strange name for a strange man, though man he is not, though Boromir knows naught else with which to call him – looks down at him. Dark eyes, wholly black, catch his and arrest them fully. In the soft morning light filtering through the drapes of the inn, Boromir thinks he catches once again what he has glimpsed many a day in fleeting snatches: a gleam of iridescent purple breaking through the black as lightning breaks through the stormy sky. They should be frightening in their strangeness, and Boromir does not deny that once he thought them so, but now they stare down with warmness, and the flush of Grian’s cheeks brings him closer to mortal, closer to something within Boromir’s understanding.

And another bit, this one from "boromir voice - i'm dying", because I feel like spoiling you guys 🥰:

A face – Mannish – leans into view. Boromir studies it: the sunlight turns what appears to be pale brown hair a gleaming gold, pulling out the blond in it, while dark eyes in a fair face meet his with the power of a lightning strike. He gasps, gurgles, and then there are hands upon him, levering him up while low murmuring fills his ears, Boromir not able to parse the sounds into words. The sudden presence is the heat of dawn rising upon a snowy landscape; he feels, suddenly, the quiet cold of nostalgic loneliness, and the way that the thought of not dying alone – even if it is no one he knows, even if it is the kindness of a stranger – has begun to melt him even as death closes its soft grip upon him. Boromir presses his face into the neck of the man that has brought him into his secure hold, leaning into his torso. Boromir’s larger than the other in every way, but there’s something about the stranger that makes him feel very small indeed. It is a largeness of the spirit, not the flesh, and Boromir is not foolish enough to dismiss it. He wonders, a little wild, if some spirit of nature – perhaps of the river or the forest – has come to dig their hands into the bloodied earth and take the offering Boromir has left it, if they have come to witness his passing as payment. The other’s breath is soft against his dirty cheeks, a caress, and suddenly Boromir longs for his mother’s arms, separated by her by thousands of leagues, over ten years of time, and the veil of death. No matter: his longing will be fulfilled soon; he is following her path now. Warm fingers press at his cheek, his jaw, and something cool and hard is set against his lower lip. He struggles his eyes downwards to see the rim of a glass bottle, something vividly pink inside of it, a sweet and cloying smell in the air as it tickles his nose.

[am0ralexis]

Like Margaret (fluff) 🩷

The moment you walked into the room, something shifted.

Not dramatically—no crash of thunder, no swell of cinematic strings.

But it was like a subtle change in air pressure.

The kind of stillness that makes you pause mid-sentence. The kind of quiet that feels like meaning.

Alex noticed you before he knew he was noticing.

Just—there you were.

That smile, easy and unsure all at once. Like the first light breaking through clouds after days of rain.

You weren’t loud. You weren’t even trying.

And maybe that’s what undid him.

Alex had always been good at reading people—calculating, parsing. That was his thing.

But you?

You weren’t a person to be solved. You were a presence.

A feeling.

Something in him recognized you, even though you were a stranger.

He didn’t speak to you, not right away.

He watched. Not in a creepy way, not even in a hopeful way.

More like… reverent curiosity.

You were laughing with someone else, your voice like music he hadn’t heard before but already missed.

And all he could think was: She’s supposed to be here.

Not in this party. Not in this house.

Here.

In this lifetime. In this moment.

With him.

Later, when he finally drifted closer, leaned against the doorway, tried to pretend he wasn’t staring—Roier caught him.

“You’re gone,” Roier said, not unkindly.

Alex didn’t answer at first. Just kept watching you with that half-there look in his eyes, the kind people get when they’re hearing a song that reminds them of something they can’t name.

“I don’t believe in that kind of thing,” Alex said finally. “Soulmates. Meant to be. Whatever.”

Roier raised an eyebrow. “But?”

Alex hesitated. “But she walked in, and I don’t know… I just knew.”

He laughed quietly, almost to himself. “It sounds stupid, right?”

Roier didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

You looked over then, catching Alex’s eyes across the room.

Your smile was soft, a little surprised, like you weren’t expecting him to be watching—but you didn’t look away.

And neither did he.

In another life, maybe he would’ve had something clever to say.

But in this one, all he could do was stand there, heart humming like a slow chord waiting to resolve.

He didn’t know what would happen next.

Didn’t need to.

Because the universe doesn’t always scream.

Sometimes, it whispers.

This is it. This is the one.

And Alex believed it.

[foxblood]

The Threads of Memory: V Contact Tracing

1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23/24/25

The driving rain kept everyone off the dim back streets of the Sea Ward, far from the glittering cobblestone and sandstone facades that attracted throngs of tourists to the import shops along the main strip.  Gale pulled his collar up as the rain snuck beneath the shield and pelted him sideways before mixing into the icy layer of mud on the ground.  Even though he kept to the wooden walkways on either side, it still clung to his boots and stained the hem of his robes.  The damp ached in his joints, and the orb pulsed ever-hungrily in his chest creating an odd sensation of hot and cold that kept his teeth chattering and his shirt stuck to his back with sweat.

He missed the stairwell on his first pass, obscured by the sheets of rain slipping off his shield spell, and backtracked to slip inside.  The first few stairs were slick with water and ice and he leaned heavily against the wall in fear of slipping, but the landing was dry and the shop behind the door warm and humming with weave of all colors and kinds.  The orcish shopkeep glanced over his gold spectacles at Gale and gave him a slight nod as he worked through a thick accounting book.  Arcane fire flickered bluish-white in the sconces, catching on the curling wisps of smoke rising from an incense burner on the top shelf.

Gale approached the counter.  The shopkeep closed his accounting book and pushed it aside to make room for a large velvet-lined tray from below the counter.  It rattled with trinkets and small weapons.

“Saved some things for you.” He tapped the side of the tray.

Gale recognized some of the enchantments, many outdated and sold at a steep loss.  A dagger glowed a silvery blue inside its sheath, reacting to the shopkeep’s orcish blood.  Two rings sent a short magical pulse back and forth to one another at ten second intervals, sometimes creating an arc of electricity between them.  The orb salivated at the offerings, tendrils of weave reaching for the tray and passing over each trinket like it was selecting which cookie to take from the baking sheet.

Gale plucked out the dagger and the rings and a couple of tarnished silver amulets.  The shopkeep put the tray away and considered the items Gale had selected.

“Eleven dragon, seven shard, nine nib,” he grunted, then pulled his accounting book back over but did not open it.

Gale produced a string of taols from his pocket and untied the knot, sliding six of the heavy bronze coins off and pushing the stack toward the shopkeep.  He swept the stack off the table and dug in a locked drawer for the change.  Gale held out his hand, but the shopkeep dropped two shards and a nib on the counter.  Gale swept it away along with the trinkets, tucking them in his bag.  He nodded at the shopkeep and left to brave the rain again.

Velim watched Gale leave the shop, cloaked in Everon’s skin and the smoke from the pipe in their hand.  Gale moved like a smudge against the dark street between the rain and steam rising from the sewer grates.  He passed them closely without looking up, and they tried to parse out the weave pulsing around him.  No change, whatever was in his chest overwhelmed the magic of anything else on his person.  Once he gained a long head start, they stepped out of their shelter and followed him.  At the end of the neighborhood, he flashed out of sight with an invisibility spell, and Velim took a sharp turn down an alley in case he’d seen them.

Velim cut across the city in the rain, clinging close to the walls and tight alleys between buildings to avoid the dousing rain until they stopped beneath the awning of a shopfront within sight of Gale’s tower.  They leaned against the cold brick and lit their pipe again, the smoke warming their lungs and waking their tired blood, and waited out of sight until Gale rounded the corner.  They watched him climbed the stairs, digging in his pocket for something they couldn’t see at that distance.  When he reached the top, he pressed his hand to the warded wood and for a moment, nothing happened.  He got in on the second try, the wards illuminating him in a soft white glow.

Satisfied, they snuffed the pipe and backtracked the dark streets with mixed success at avoiding the sludge clogging the gutters and flooding onto the wooden walkways and ducked into the same stairwell they had watched Gale emerge from not long before.  

The shopkeep glanced up from his accounting, and his gaze lingered on Velim in their disguise for longer than Velim liked.  “Let me know if I can help you with anything,” he said, pushing his spectacles up his nose and returning to his work.

They studied the shelves of magical scrolls, picking at the tangled strands of weave for some indication of where Gale had passed.  No use, everything around them vibrated with such varied intensity that they couldn’t pick a necromantic charm from a fire spell as each signature mixed into an overwhelming soup.  Still, they remained considerate of the shelves about them, careful to study objects on only the shelves they might reach undisguised so as not to give away the fact that their illusion was a full head taller than themself.

They flipped through a reference of magical ailments from the shelf and replaced the tome before approaching the counter.  “You strike me as a man who’s seen everything.”

The shopkeep’s eyes flicked up at them, then returned to the accounting book.  “I might be.”

Everon’s snide smile curled across their lips.  “I’m working on a case, but I’m afraid I’m no expert in magical ailments.”

The shopkeep nodded at the coat.  “A vulture, I thought I spotted ye.”

“You did indeed,” Everon’s voice felt slimy in their mouth, “might I describe some symptoms to you?  Perhaps you could point me in the right direction.  Of course, I’ll pay for the expertise.”

The orcish shopkeep pushed his gold spectacles up his nose, closed his accounting book, and leaned forward on the counter.  “Lay it on me.”

Velim studied the wrinkles in his face, the wiry hair receding at his temples, the smell of incense covering the wards buzzing off his accounting book.  Yes, this man had seen it all.  “Well,” they began in the same flippant tone that had always made them want to throw the speaker off a cliff, “my patient has something odd lodged within his chest.  We can’t figure out what it is, and have no possibility of safe removal until we identify the damned thing.  It sits right above his heart and leaches magic into the environment at an alarming rate, forcing him to consume weave in order to stabilize it or it simply drains his own stores until he dies.  It’s an uphill battle that we seem to be losing, but I’ve neither seen any similar ailment, nor am I Weavemaster enough myself to identify what may cause it.  Perhaps you’ve seen something similar?”

“So you might remove it?” The orc leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, considering.

“I am a surgeon, I am perfectly capable of performing the removal as soon as I know what it is that I am removing,” Everon assured the shopkeep with such a condescending tone that Velim was sure he’d throw them out for insolence.

The shopkeep watched them closely.  “I seen kids do something similar before.  Took a find familiar spell, but didn’t complete it so the weave gets stuck in their throat.  The half formed familiar eats the kid’s weave until they’re drained, and then they wither away to nothin’.”

Velim cocked their head to the side, but then corrected their intensity to a smug neutrality and hoped he hadn’t noticed the real expression flash across their face.  “My patient is certainly capable of completing a find familiar spell.”

The shopkeep eyed them.  “Well, I only seen the like in kids.  And only twice.”

“Well,” they slid a shard across the counter, “I thank you for your expertise.  The magic parasite and spell misfire is a start.”

“‘Course.  You come back if you’re in need of my expertise again, Vulture.” The shopkeep swept the shard off the counter and tossed it in the locked drawer on top of the taols without taking his eyes off the disguised dragon’s back.  The draconic magic cast a haze around their body through his enchanted spectacles, cutting through the tangle of illusion magic they cocooned themself in.  Cold air gusted in as they left the shop.

Gale answered the knock at his door almost too quickly.  The orb ached in his chest, but not as badly as it had the night before -- keeping him awake until the wee hours of the morning with each painful throb against his ribs no matter how many times he fed the damn thing.  The bags under his eyes were dark purple now, like all the blood in his face was pooling into deep bruised circles.  Even so, he’d dressed and combed his hair in expectation for Velim’s arrival.  They came at least once a week now, dinner in tow -- to check on his condition, but being cared for was a novel thing.  As they settled on his balcony to watch the golden late afternoon sun, he again considered telling them the truth.

 Tara settled beside Gale on the bench as Velim laid out the evening’s offering on the small table.  They sliced the bread with one or two quick strokes each, fanning the pieces out on the board around a wheel of white-bloomed cheese.  Gale watched, feeling just a touch embarrassed, but knew better than to comment and disturb their perfectionist’s trance.

When they finished, they tucked themself on Tara’s other side and leaned back with their glass of wine while Gale cut a piece of cheese off for Tara before serving himself.  Velim picked up right after he took the first bite.  Tara finished her cheese and began purring.

Despite the warm weather, a cold breeze blew off the ocean.  Gale pulled into his sweater, his crow’s feet tight at the corners of his eyes.  Black tendrils traced angry red welts in his skin, like charcoal driven in with a tattooer’s needle.  Velim spread some cheese on a slice of bread and took a bite, waiting for him to fill the silence.

“I read something interesting this week,” Gale began, his voice tight, “pulled from a pamphlet published in Neverwinter some two hundred years ago.  It’s only a sentence, but it makes mention of some sort of draconic plague that swept the countryside east of the city.”

“What was the pamphlet about?” Velim asked.

Gale waved his hand.  “A political piece using Azan the Red as a metaphor for some noble family or another with draconic blood.  Largely your run-of-the-mill slander, but I’d never heard of any such plague in that area.  Such a slight mention suggests to me that it was common knowledge at the time of publication.”

“It never touched the city?” Velim scratched behind Tara’s ears thoughtfully, “perhaps some kind of fallout from Azan’s gravesite.  Legend has it he was slain east of Neverwinter, but…” they trailed off, “no, he would have been scavenged so thoroughly and quickly, I can’t imagine he would have been the cause.  You know how bounty hunters are when a dragon falls, let alone one of Tiamat’s ilk.”

“Are you sure they would descend so quickly as to preclude the possibility of some sort of contagion?” Gale pressed, topping up their glass of wine.

Velim’s stomach flipped uncomfortably and they swirled the newly refreshed beverage to stare into the little red whirlpool, their brow furrowing.  The bounty hunters, the magical artifact dealers, the adventurers looking for heroic renown, all would have been circling Azan like buzzards from the moment of his blessing.  Long before he was the red dragon, as soon as Tiamat pierced his chest with a crimson claw and set that fire into his heart because he begged to live at the exact wrong moment.  Their chest constricted around a sharp and distant memory.

“Vel?” Gale’s voice pierced their concentration.  He raised a hand like he was going to reach for them.

Velim straightened up.  “It’s possible that he expelled a great deal of his intrinsic weave as a last act of defiance,” they admitted, “but the stories of Azan do not depict him as a man likely to release his power, even with the promise of vengeance.”

“Ah, true, dragons are not known for giving their power away.  Quite the opposite -- I believe the potency of their bodies is due to their tendency to cling to magical power, as though their very bones hold it tight,” Gale clenched his fist in illustration and Velim felt sick, “makes for excellent enchanting and magical foci.  Unfortunate for the dragons, of course.”

Velim chuckled, hoping their voice didn’t sound too strangled around the nausea rising in their throat.  “More likely a run of the mill fever.  The mosquitoes east of Neverwinter --” they blew out a slow breath, “those things kill hundreds of people every damn summer, and I could see the illustrative link between a red dragon and a particularly bad year.”

“Ah, your insight humbles me, as always,” Gale smiled at them, “I hadn’t considered the bugs.”

“You must always consider the bugs, Gale,” Velim’s body relaxed as the topic shifted.

“Or perhaps the pigeons,” Tara added, “and rats.”

Velim nodded.  “A good harvest year, and you could end up with any number of illnesses from the influx of rodents.  Good grain farming east of Neverwinter, too.  Maybe a hemorrhagic fever?  Would explain the link to the red dragon.”

Tara hopped off the bench and trotted back inside, her absence leaving a cold gap between Gale and Velim.  Velim used the performance of the setting sun as an excuse to take a deep breath of the salty air off the harbor and release some of the tension knotted in their back.  A wind blew cold off the water.

Gale pressed his hand hard to his chest as though he could force the swelling ache of the orb back into the prison of his ribcage, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing through the new surge of pain while Velim was looking away.  He finished his glass of wine, willing the warmth of the alcohol to numb him a little.

“Another?” Velim asked, brandishing the bottle.

“Yes please.” He sighed and set his glass on the table.  

Velim topped up both glasses, even though their’s was still half full.  “Your episodes aren’t normally this long.”

Gale willed his hand not to shake when he picked his glass up again, not keen on staining his clothes.  “Impossible to hide anything from you, isn’t it,” he smiled at them, “no, I am…”

Velim waited for him, watching his face twist into a conflicted grimace.

“It’s worse than it has ever been,” he clutched his sweater over his heart until the fabric wrinkled, “and my poor mother has no idea I’m even ill.”

Velim doubted that, but let him continue.

“I keep turning her away at the door.  Gods, I know it hurts her.  Del keeps telling me I’m killing her, but if she knew --” his voice choked up and his shoulders shuddered as he swallowed a sob, “If she knew --” he stopped himself again.

Velim looked down at their bare hands and the ring of Mortal Visage shining in the gold light, and back at Gale, suddenly fighting the urge to hug him.  Not an option, he would feel the scales through their shirt or on their cheeks.  They couldn’t hold his hand, either, or he would feel the claws the illusion hid.  They settled for resting their hand between his shoulderblades, relying on the thick knit of his sweater to disguise any brush of scales and keeping their fingertips angled up in case their claws gave them away.  He leaned into their touch, his body radiating a feverish heat.

“I understand,” Velim said softly, “it’s lonely, having to lie to the people you love like that.  Worse, when you know the truth would hurt them more.  Your condition is… unique, it takes a great deal to manage.”

Velim’s voice was nearly lost in the cries of seagulls circling closer for a chance at their dinner.  Gale’s heart stuttered in momentary panic, wondering if they truly did know and understand.  He wondered how they could have found out, but their touch brought him back down into the throes of relief and his back rose and fell beneath the gentle touch of their hand.

“I’m grateful you’ve let me in as much as you have,” Velim brushed their thumb across the ridge of his shoulderblade, “it’s no burden to bear alone.”

Velim quietly measured his breathing and the constant flow of magic spilling off him until it eased from a flood to a steady stream and his breathing slowed.  Gale wiped his eyes and straightened up, and Velim dropped their hand back into their lap.

“Thank you, Velim.”  Gale didn’t look at them, instead throwing back the remainder of his wine.

Velim finished their glass as well and watched the sun fall below the horizon, turning the clouds over the sea red.

“I have a meeting with Peiotr,” they said without standing.

“How soon?” Gale asked, his breath still gasping slightly.

Velim looked out at the sunset.  “I’m already late.”

“Gods, I didn’t mean to keep you,” Gale leaned back on the bench and stared at the planks of the ceiling above, wiping the welling tears away from his eyes, “I can clean up, if you need to hurry.”

“I don’t mind making Peiotr wait,” Velim began wrapping the remainder of the cheese wheel in the waxed cloth it came in, “this should be good for another meal.  You ought to keep it.”

Gale watched their hands work, packing the food away with the same pinpoint precision they laid it out with.  An ache settled behind the orb.  They already knew so much about his condition and remained not only unbothered by the burden he represented, but eager for his company.  Their hand on his chest, the crackling electricity of a half-formed spell funneled into the orb, the memory of it rose to the front of his mind unbidden and made his heart strain against the pressure of his chest.

Velim finished packing the food away and carried it into the kitchen.  He followed them, lingering in the cool draft from the balcony for a while before closing the door.  He watched their back, their fingers deftly hitting the sweet spot behind Tara’s ears when she hopped onto the counter to help them put the food away, dropping an enchanted trinket onto the counter.  Tara’s head tilted into the touch, but it was a greeting that lasted only a moment before both of them were back to business, Tara flitting across the room to hand the enchanted locket off to Gale.

He thought he should tell Velim the full truth, but when he tried to speak up his throat tightened and it took until they turned around to say goodbye for his lungs to loosen enough to speak.  He closed his fist around the heart-shaped locket, the stones set into the silver digging into his palm.

Velim tsked at the dusk settling over the city as they opened the door.  “Peiotr is going to get on my case about running around in the dark again.”

“Blame me for talking your ear off,” Gale smiled around the tightening in his chest, “I’ll see you soon?”

Velim gave him a half-smile.  “Whether you like it or not.  Take care, Gale.”

Gale pounded against the locked doors of his own voice, demanding that he stop them.  Tell them the truth.  Instead, he said “take care, Velim,” and closed the door.  

The wards lit up his field of vision, the magic brushing past his face as he pressed his forehead to the wood.  Tears welled over in his eyes, even though he squeezed them closed to keep them from spilling over.  His breathing came in short, painful gasps.

“Mr. Dekarios?” Tara meowed, rubbing against his legs.

Gale staggered away from the door and dropped heavily onto the bench.  It creaked beneath his weight.  He buried his face in his hands as though that could stop the tears from falling, but they wet his palms anyway and his frustration boiled over in shuddering sobs that pulled his chest tight around the thing eating away at him.  The orb reached for the locket clenched in his hand, and he threw it against the opposite wall.

Tara picked the locket back up and hopped up beside him.  “Mr. Dekarios, use it before you get worse,” she scolded gently, prodding his hand loose with a soft paw and dropping the locket back into his palm.

“I can’t keep lying to them, Tara,” he sucked in a hard breath as the orb surged for the locket with dogged hunger, “I can’t keep doing this.  It’s not working.”

Tara pushed his hand against his chest, the orb devouring the weave and sending a fiery ache through his lungs that pushed a frustrated groan out of his throat.  He dropped the spent thing in his lap.

“Perhaps we should tell them, then?” Tara suggested gently, “Velim is a doctor, if the two of you put your heads together, you may get somewhere.”

Even in her absence, Mystra’s weight settled upon him.  The amethyst set eyes of her statue on his desk seemed to watch him, and he glared at her.  “If they knew what I had done, they would know I was a fool.”

“I think Velim would forgive you.” Tara curled in his lap and began purring.

Gale’s throat choked up again, his voice coming hoarse and soft.  “I could not stand it if they didn’t, Tara.  This damned thing would take everything from me.”

The statue of Mystra stared unfeelingly forward, accusatory when Gale met her crystalline eyes.  A promise of unending retribution for his folly, and her ever-present watchful silence.

[sunsetno4]

I had a thought last night about Vendetta's early days on the Farm, and boy! It spiraled a bit out of control. ^^;; Sometimes, you just gotta let the nonsense out tho. So, idk. Ven getting distracted by strange thoughts and emotions on a mission. As ne often does.

=====

It's dull, this muted room bathed in warm light, and you are bored. There’s not a thing that pops out, nothing that you can make a game of. Your Handler is off to the side, chatting absently though her eyes never leave you.

And while you fidget mindlessly with the glass a waiter handed you, a string of thoughts hit you: running, sneaking, hiding, stealing.

It fits the bill, both to report on and make a game out of. You're not supposed to decipher things on your own, that's for the Handler to do. But, you’re bored and she’s busy, talking and watching, so. You look around, admiring the art along the walls as you filter through thoughts.

Thrilled. Trite. Faked. Oh.

It’s from a young woman, older than you but not by much. She smiles tightly as a boorish man talks animatedly. Behind her, a painting of the sea. An easy cover as you investigate further. The brushwork is exquisite.

“Isn’t it?” She says, and you look over your shoulder. Oops. Thoughts should stay inside. Always hard to remember that. Her smile turns more tight as she bids the man farewell. Her heels click, click, click against the cold stone below, and you feel those fragmented notions again, sharper than a dagger.

Running to a room, sneaking through darkened hallways, hands linked, hiding together, hands over giggling mouths. You taste something sweet, entangled in the thoughts she’s desperately trying not to think about but consume her absolutely. 

“It is. I’m always pulled in by how much life artists can pull out of form alone. It’s a true talent.” It's not a lie, you are. It’s just paint, layered over a canvas in color and depth. But it feels so alive, the waves crashing in a storm. Like it might still be wet if you touched it. You don’t. It’ll bring her over, so you bite down the urge and mimic the young woman’s tight smile. Dig more.

“I’ll admit it’s all very new to me. My brother was the artsy one in our family.” Brother. That stabs through everything. Painful. Screaming. Two kids sneaking out of their beds at night, just to steal some sweets. Their secret. Meaningless. And yet, it hurts so so much.

“I’m sorry.” Because death tastes peculiar in thoughts, memories. Real ones, unlike yours. She did say 'was', so it's an acceptable reply. You think. She stiffens, and smiles more. Biting down the emotions is such a strangely familiar motion.

“Thank you.” A common societal nicety. Those are always hard to parse, laying in between the idea of a truth and a lie. “He was …too young.” This children's crusade. Bitterly thought. Her, not you. You’re thinking about Lot’s wife again. It was the same book, wasn’t it?

“So it goes.” What else can you say?

And for a moment, her smile softens and you dig in a little deeper. It's not hard. She's broadcasting so loud you're amazed no one else can feel it. Maybe they do. People aren't as nosy as you, it seems. The sweet taste is back, a bowl of cookies laying between the pair under a blanket. Still at night, maybe the same night. They're conspiring, said in giggles. The memory is so, so very sharp. Painful. Over the bowl of the cookies is a book, colorful and childish. She likes the words, and he loves the colors.

Ah, you never heard the word romantic said with such disdain before. Said? You look over at her, and she just tucks some hair behind her ear. Every thought she has hurts, you feel it so easily. In your younger days, you might've offered some advice. If it hurts to think about it, don't. People can be so needlessly complicated, their emotions strange and consuming. 

Like tonguing a cut in your mouth, you know it hurts. You should stop. But you keep touching. Keep thinking. The Farm told you about family and siblings, all distance and clinical. There's parents, and they have children. Related children are siblings, and they typically live together. Not always, so a topic best to avoid. Family can be messy.

And it is. A storm threatens to overturn a ship on the sea, and the woman is smiling through a pain you simply don't understand. Why come out? Why not stay at home? Why keep thinking? These memories and thoughts aren't kind. Cruel words dance around in the edges, bitter fights that refuse to come out in the open but infect everything she thinks. He never listened to her. He should've. Idiot. Bastard. Left it all to her, she hates this. Him. His death. Same thing.

"I'm sorry." She says softly, after too many silent moments pass by. "It seems that I'm very poor company tonight." A laugh follows, and you want to reach out and grab her. She's not poor company. She's the most fascinating person you've ever met. You want to explore her thoughts forever, take them apart piece by piece. It enthralls you, these memories. You've never been a child, not like her.

You're standing outside, looking at the alien lights in the sky. Stars. Constellations. Easy to name. There's snow on the ground, and mittens around your fingers. Cold, you should feel cold, right? But you never do. It's too distant.

Not your memories, but yours in a sense. They don't feel as real as hers. Why can you taste the cookies, but not feel the cold?

"I enjoyed our time together." You say instead. It's wrong, inappropriate. People find you off-putting when you deviate from the script, especially in places like this. Even her, she thinks you're weird. She just wanted to know a little more about art. Why he liked it so. Thought you'd know. 

"Ah, well. As it is." She's going to leave. There's things that must happen, events that need gentle touches to come to fruition. Ah. Your Handler would enjoy that thought. Your hands want to grab, reach out, and hold her. No. That's the wrong word.

"As it is." It's easy to repeat. "I do hope you find peace tonight though." Touching is not allowed, not unless it's absolutely required. You learned how to skirt that rule, so they took it from you. Confused, they thought. You weren't. You just liked feeling the textures under your fingertips, both in reality and outside. 

But words can touch too. Hug people even. You want to hug her. But the only connection between you is a simple flimsy smile, forced and awkward, and then she turns away. Her eyes never pass over the paintings again. She's like you now, on a mission.

How unfortunate you caught those thoughts too, you think. Frowning and turning back at the painting, you try not to think about it. Maybe your Handler won't ask. Over the shoulder, you can still feel her eyes on you. She probably will.

Hopefully then, if the worst comes to follow, maybe the young woman will find happiness. She might be seeing her brother again soon, after all.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Hi Frank! Can you tell me more about the development of literacy in Ω to S year olds? I've never studied that age range!

Sure.

In the earliest years of Ω to S history, babies and small children were largely uneducated. They were "rudimentarily" literate in that they could write simple words, but they knew virtually no vocabulary except those words. (There are some records of "baby's first message," a handful of words read by computer screen and typed by the child at the age of one or two.)

The adults of the day were appalled by the technology. In one instance recorded by TLP historians, a man named Gerald Thrasher was quoted as saying,

the computer is the most hideous and vile creation of mankind. it makes a mockery of humanity, by claiming to "educate" our children when it is able only to substitute the primal "mimicry" of sign language for natural language, which we humans can learn on our own… the computer has brought about the death of learning; what it has shown us is that learning is not dependent on the machine… this is a frightening thing, which must be combatted by every human alive.

Among other technologies, the machine that Thrasher and his contemporaries were concerned with was a rudimentary teaching machine called the "Askbot." The Askbot worked by waiting for the child to touch a touchscreen on which was projected a teaching animation. When the child touched the screen, the voice on the animation would speak, and the Askbot would analyze the utterance to make sure it was grammatical. (The Askbot didn't understand speech very well; sometimes it would get confused and misinterpret the utterance as the beginning of a new sentence, which would make the animation say something like "that's not grammatical. please try again.")

The Askbot worked on the principle that we understand language by observing it being used -- that we learn language (say) by hearing it spoken, and practice using it by speaking. This is a hard principle to do justice to when the machine is the one speaking. On the one hand, if the Askbot is not allowed to "speak," the child loses the opportunity to imitate sentences. On the other hand, if the Askbot speaks all the time, there is a danger that the "sentences" will be too simple for the child to imitate, and it will just pick up what seem to be "empty" strings of words -- which is exactly what happened. The Askbot had only a very rudimentary understanding of grammar (some of the time; sometimes it would "forget" some grammatical feature like tense). Thus the utterances it would produce could be (and often were) "grammatical" because they consisted of a series of correct syntactic sentences, each with a completely empty content. It was left to the child to fill the content in; when he failed to do so, the Askbot would "correct" him by ignoring him or saying "try again."

Thus, in this technology, "literacy" was never really meant to be a source of information or thought. "Literacy" was simply an ability to "parse" (produce grammatical utterances), and nothing else.

Nevertheless, babies and small children mastered this skill quickly and easily. When they were three, they could write (though not read) sentences like

House red, and cat yellow.

TLP historians speculate that it is easy for children to write such sentences because they are young enough to not worry much about "meaning"; it is not difficult, as an adult, to write a technically "grammatical" sentence (like this one), though it might be hard to say why one would want to write such a sentence -- but a child has no such adult mindset, and thus feels less constrained in its choice of subjects.

Increasingly, though, the computers were doing "real" things to children, trying to "educate" them as we understand education today. The Askbot was discontinued; in its place, a highly sophisticated keyboard and voice recognition were installed, which did not imitate adult speech at all, but were quite adept at language production and much better at parsing than the Askbot. These computers were able to "impose" complex grammatical forms on children (such as the ability to properly case-mark nouns), and probably "forced" them to learn many new nouns (these would never have come up in the course of ordinary conversation, only during formal lessons).

Instead of teaching words like "tap" or "house," now children were learning full-fledged sentences like

House purple, and tap green.

The adults of the time objected to this technology on the grounds that it was being used to teach children syntax instead of content, and that its expectations for "parsing" were becoming too advanced (demanding the children produce complete sentences, which they could not possibly understand, on command). Nevertheless, the technology was very effective; the kind of teaching done in Ω to S was far more efficient than before, and children mastered the complex "nineteenth century" grammar much more easily than children in other parts of the world were doing. (This is one reason why the three-year-olds had such a leg up in the naming competition; the complex grammar "went over their heads," leaving them with a good grasp of its basics and making it very easy for them to describe the vast set of objects they came across in a technical, grammatical way.)

When the nineteenth century was over, many adults saw this technology as the first step to an inevitable culmination in a fully sentient artificial intelligence. Soon, they thought, computer programs would be perfectly adequate substitutes for teachers. The American government was sinking rapidly into debt. People began to fear what would happen if the government could no longer afford to support the education of young children.

Much of the opposition to the "teaching machines" came from the Catholic Church. The Church's anti-computer stance had become more radical during the war; it now held that all technology was contrary to the will of God. The presence of the machines in all schools, preaching the false doctrine of "education and technological progress," made it difficult to keep the Catholic children in the Church. The people who wanted to keep the Church functional needed to get the machines out of the schools.

But there was no broad consensus on this. For one thing, it was argued, the "teaching machines" were still a good substitute for human teachers, and they would be for quite some time -- perhaps for the rest of the century or longer. And although the children were learning the "grammar" of the nineteenth century, and not really learning much else, they were learning it. Of course it would be better if the children learned more than they were learning now, but it would be better for them to learn the "grammar" (which was after all "normal" grammar and thus an important part of the language) than it would be for them to learn nothing but superstitions and fables. Indeed, the "grammar" might be a good foundation for many other things that the children might learn later in life.

And it was not as though the machines were being used to impose "twentieth century" ideas -- or "nineteenth century" ideas, for that matter. The very worst that could be said about the machines is that their teaching was probably "too narrow" -- as were the lessons given by many human teachers. Some children had even suggested, albeit in the past tense, that the machines had "taught them about" various things -- had "taught them about 'tap' and 'house,'" for example -- but these were clearly fables. Still, if nothing else, the children were learning language.

Whatever the machines were teaching children, it was not "experience" -- and that is what most people want to see in their children, ultimately. Of course, humans can learn something by "experience," and if "experience" was what was being taught, perhaps that would be all to the good. (Of course, humans can also learn "experience" just by having experiences, without any teaching at all -- but then that would be a waste of time.)

A broad coalition formed, consisting of Catholics and all who felt uneasy at the rise of "technological progress." It had a very general agenda, which amounted to the claim that children should not be subjected to the "teaching machines," but instead should be kept in close contact with nature, taken out into the countryside, and given a well-rounded old-fashioned "human" education -- the kind of education they got from their human teachers before the nineteenth century. That way, they would have "experience."

This coalition got its name from a single speech, given on 12 November 1918 by a 42-year-old lawyer named Charles -- not Charles Graham, but Charles Hollis -- during the debate on education in the House of Representatives. It became known as the "Hollis Speech." Here are a few excerpts:

In my opinion, the children should be allowed to form their own ideas in a great many subjects, and should not be told, for example, that a certain thing is a thing. After all, whether a thing is a thing depends upon how you define the concept of "is."

[aglionbyfoxes]

ok i just finished my maasverse catch up last week and have been seeing a lot of theories about the various timelines/worlds etc etc and i’m trying to parse through my thoughts on it all and this is my initial reaction to tide myself over until the red string and cork board i ordered comes in. spoilers below

so far the idea that makes the most sense, even though personally i dislike it, is that midgard is erilea ages in the future. while the posts i’ve seen give a lot of good evidence to back this up i don’t love the theory because

a) it would mean that after everything they went through, ultimately the TOG crew and/or their progeny just…succumb to the asteri? just like that?? off screen in the distant past??? imo bad world building but also

b) unless i’m misunderstanding something, the asteri/daglan introduce fae-shifters (ie, the TOG fae) to this world, they’re not already there. i think it’s pretty reasonable to believe that when it’s said that the existing species on the planet didn’t sustain the asteri, SJM really did mean the humans and their limited magic.

c) (and this is the big one) obviously the triad symbolism is a big part of these series. the three faces of the goddess, the three stars/mountains, theia splitting her star into three, elena’s three circle symbol, three valg princes, three archerons/bat boys, etc. you guys get the gist. after all that it just feels silly/sloppy for the story to end up being two different worlds and one is the same world that just so happens to take place in a different time. it just doesn’t have a nice ring to it (but also lbr, as much as i love SJM sloppy world building isn’t out of the realm of possibility lmao)

so while there’s always the possibility that the triad here is that all of these stories are just taking place at three different times, not three different worlds, I almost think it’s more possible that each of the three TOG/ACOTAR/CC locations are three individual but interlocking worlds that are tied together more than any of the many other worlds we know exist. like three sister worlds, or three worlds at different points in a cycle, like the witches’ goddess. echoes of each other but different.

imo it could explain the similar climates/geographical structures we know about, even a reason why there was maybe even more back and forth between the worlds/times than we realize, if some kind of travel between them was figured out pre-asteri.

a big thing i think it could also explain is the thin places that are in each of the worlds. in CC3 when silene is talking about her creation of the tunnels under the mountain or when helena is doing the same in avallen, neither of them are creating the the mountain/island itself. that already seems to exist, they’re just creating the space underneath it, which seems to imply that these are naturally existing touch points to other worlds.

really, i’m just preparing to be disappointed that the TOG gang takes a backseat in any future overlaps, becoming to everyone else what elena and gavin were to them. but even then i’ll hold out hope for time fuckery!!! bring them back sarah, i’m begging

i’m sure i’ll be back spouting nonsense the more i think about this/as i realize i forgot some key part that totally debunks this

[helenaheissner]

A Dream of Summer Rain (Chapter 9: the Rhythm of the War-Drums)

Dresden, Michigan- 5 Years Ago

Lacy let the soundwaves wash over her, the long, low strings of the bass, the steady rhythm of the drums, and the high, tight guitar riffs all coming at her at once. She leaned back on her bed, stared up at the ceiling, and parsed through the different components of the song. The lyrics began, harshly screaming about flying whales and environmental degradation. The whole piece hinged around the lyrics, all the other sounds working on some level to back it up. She couldn’t see the soundwaves, but she could feel them as they slid over her body and left echoes of vibrations behind. If she reached out with her hands, she could even touch them. 

She could grab hold of them. 

She stuck both hands above her head, pointing towards the ceiling of her tiny, crappy bedroom, and then moved them apart. The drums and bass were now separate from the rest of the song coming out of her phone- she held the rhythm section in her left hand, and the rest of the song in her right.

She spent the next hour tinkering with it, holding onto the soundwaves and spreading them apart over her room, adjusting the volume and the length and the pitch however she wanted, until every part of her room offered a different bit of noise: the guitar solo from her door, the lyrics from her desk, the drums from her bed, the bass from her ceiling. 

Her ears twitched as the front door to her house opened- Mom and Dad were home. And Dad was yelling about something, and Mom was just taking it, as usual. Lacy snapped her fingers, and the music died. She turned off the lights in her room- it was two in the morning, and she had school the next day. She should’ve been asleep regardless. As far as they were concerned, she was asleep, though without music she found it difficult to sleep over her father’s screeching. 

The next day she woke up and went about her day like she normally did: she walked to school with Danny, who rambled on about something called Gundam while struggled to concentrate; she sat at her desk and received grades generally amounting to ‘D-’ and was lectured information she did not retain; and at lunchtime she sat at an empty table in a cafeteria swirling with cacophonous slop. The worst part was being able to make out most of it- some girl was cheating on her boyfriend with two different guys; some chucklefuck on the football team was implying to his friends he could get all of them steroids; the emo kids were whining about society and how unfair it was that they weren’t allowed to drop out of school until they were sixteen- the usual bullshit. And since Danny had Second Lunch instead of First that day, she didn’t even have something else to concentrate on. 

She fell back into her mind, recalled the song, recalled the flying whales, recalled the feeling of the soundwaves in her hands, and recalled spreading them like string across her room. And then her hand vibrated, and the familiar scream of ‘WHALES’ emerged and overtook the cafeteria. Everyone went silent, and everyone stared at her. 

A teacher, a portly giant whose chronic heartburn rumbled inside his chest, appeared behind her seemingly from nowhere, and informed her she had detention for playing music in the cafeteria. “But I didn’t-”

“No arguments, O’Sullivan, you’re on thin ice already for that fight you got into last weekend,” he said, his forehead-vein a sickly blue guardrail above his eyes.

Lacy’s eyes narrowed. “That happened down by the river- you can’t give me detention for something I did outside school property.”

“No. I can’t. But I can give it to you for this.”

And that was how Lacy got detention on a Friday afternoon. 

Danny left without her, mentioning he had somewhere to be that night and wanted to get ready, so she walked home alone and crawled into her room and locked the door and put on her heavy metal and dissociated until she lost consciousness.

She woke up around one in the morning, her phone ringing. Which was odd. Nobody ever called her except- “Danny, I was asleep. What the fuck do you want?” 

“Need you to drive me home,” he said, his words slurring. 

“Don’t have a car.”

“Car is here. My car is,” he said. “Need you to come here and drive me home.”

Lacy groaned. “Are you plastered?”

“Mmmm.”

“Gotcha. Um, I know you’ve been showing me how to drive but do you really want-”

She was cut off by the sound of vomiting. 

Lacy sighed. “Text me the address.”

Once he’d done that, she put on some clothes and slipped out her bedroom window. Her parents were passed out on top of each other in the living room, so she wasn’t too concerned about them. She always forgot how short they both were until she saw them take up only the tiniest fraction of the floor. The night was warm and clear, Spring having thoroughly reclaimed the land and the April rains having burnt themselves out for at least a few weeks. She felt the star above her, waiting for her to accept it- a sensation of burning light, a swelling of immense power and immense dread. She wondered sometimes what would happen if she accepted it? Would it destroy her? Burn her up? Change her? What would she become?

What could she become?

She walked speedily through the town, then out of town and into the wilderness, until she came upon a teenage house party at a three-story birchwood hunting lodge that wouldn’t see regular use for a few more months. The owners were out-of-towners: nobody around here could afford something this nice except for Danny’s family, and his mom wasn’t into hunting. Which meant everyone here was also trespassing, in addition to all the other misdemeanors they were ratcheting up. A colony of cars and bikes sat around the circumference of the lodge, while Jay-Z and multicolored strobe lights bled out the windows and into the night. Danny was out front with a freshly black eye and a red solo cup, leaning against his pickup truck a few yards from the lodge. “Heyyyyy buuuddy!” he shouted. 

Lacy winced. “What happened to you?”

“Asked a girl to dance.”

“Her boyfriend give you the shiner?”

“Noooo, she gave it to me herself. Her boyfriend thought it was hilarious. Guess it’s nice that they’re soooo goooood for each other.”

Lacy rolled her eyes. “Just get in the car, man.”

“Haaaave a drink with me first?” he said, offering her his solo cup.

“I’m good.”

“Ah come on, don’t be like that.”

“Danny, I have to drive.”

“Oh come on- you’re no fun, Lacy-”

Lacy glared as she slashed her finger across her throat. “Not. Here. Dickhead.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

Lacy lowered her hand. “Just gimme the keys.”

He spent the next five minutes fishing them out of his jeans before finally Lacy was able to herd him into the passenger’s seat, throwing his solo cup onto the ground. She went over all the steps in her head, and backed out, slowly and carefully. This really wasn’t all that difficult, but given that her parents weren’t willing to pay for driver’s ed, or to teach her to drive in general, she tried to keep this sort of thing to a minimum. “You know, this is not the first time I’ve had to do this,” Lacy said. 

“Wossat mean?”

“This is like the third time I’ve had to pick you up because you were wasted- I mean, I know you know I hate parties and crowds and shit, but why not just bring me with you to be designated driver- I’m such a lightweight I can’t really drink while I’m there anyway.”

“Oh thas prolly ‘cause ah’m not actually invited to these things and I figgered both of us doin that would be too ovious.”

“Wait… You crashed this party?”

“Please. I crash every party I go to.”

“Man, don’t do that.”

“Whyyyyy not? I can’t buy my own boooooze yet, and my mommmm only lets me have one drink at dinner.”

“Your mom lets you-”

“Yuh. It’s like the only good thing about her. God, she’s such a bitch. She’s gonna notice this bruise on my face, isn’t she?”

“Probably.”

“Yeah, she’ll gimme one to match on muh back.”

Lacy balked. “Your mom-”

“Not as often as yours do,” Danny answered for her. 

“You… You’ve never mentioned that.”

“How long it take you to tell me ‘bout yer folks?”

“Less time than you.”

“Tooche. But ahm tellin ya now.” His drunken word-slurring was beginning to dip into a Chicago accent- it sounded a lot like the one his mother displayed on occasion. 

“Alright then. Where am I even going? I took the shortcut through the woods here, the one by radio station. How do I get onto the main road?”

“Mmmm just go straight a while- I know that’s real difficult for you.”

“Ha ha ha,” Lacy monotoned. 

“I’ll tell you where to turn.”

Lacy grunted. “I’m driving without a license through the woods in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night with only a drunk rich kid to give me directions. This is… Truly wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing this experience with me, Danny.”

“You’re welcome! No problem best buddy. I always says you need to get out more.”

“That was sarcasm. That- you know what, forget it. Just tell me when to turn.”

“Oooookaaaaaaayyyyyy.”

“Whose party even was that, anyway?” Lacy asked. 

“Jack Wilder’s,” Danny answered. 

“Jack Wilder- wasn’t that the guy I beat the shit out of in sixth grade?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. 

“By any chance, was it Jack Wilder’s girlfriend who punched you?”

“Mmmmaybe,” Danny said. 

“Do you perhaps see some correlation there?” Lacy inquired. 

“Well look who’s all fancy with the fancy words.” Lacy gripped the wheel tight. That was… That was bad. Danny shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of her fuck-ups. Lacy could handle them on her own. Like the fact that after starting one fight, suddenly all the mico-penis-having meatheads in their school took that as a sign that they personally needed to be the ones to beat up ‘Liam’ O’Sullivan, the evil little midget who terrorized their school. 

It was the one instance in which she was not grateful to have stayed so short- apparently it meant she wasn’t allowed to win fights, or people would get even madder at her than they were before, because how dare someone under five-foot-however-tall-they-were hand their ass to them. Other than that, it was probably the only part of her body she liked; it felt like every day she found new patches of body hair, like every day her voice was getting lower, like every day was mutating her more and more into a form she would have to live with the rest of her life. God, she hated it- she just wanted it to stop, to make everything stand still, to not have to… 

… To not have to… 

Do…

Anything. 

Well there is a way to make that happen, she thought. 

“Turnnnn hereeeee,” Danny said. 

“Right or left?” Lacy said, reluctantly coming back to reality. 

“...”

Lacy stopped the car. “Danny?”

“I forget.”

“Goddammit- just guess, okay?”

“... Left.”

“Okay,” Lacy said.

“No, no, wait…”

“...”

“Wait…”

“...” “... Right,” Danny said.

“Are you sure?” Lacy asked. 

“Mm-hm.”

Lacy turned the car right. “Just so we’re clear, you owe me for this one.”

“Oh yeah, obviously,” Danny said. “Let’s put on some toooons.”

He fiddled with the radio, but seemed, in his drunken haze, unable to stop twisting the dial. “Let me handle that,” Lacy said. And she played Gojira’s ‘Flying Whales,’ sending the song out from the palm of her hand, Danny too drunk to realize anything was abnormal. 

They made it, by some miracle, onto the main road, and, by some miracle, back into Dresden. Lacy pulled up in front of the Woodrow Manor, and took the keys out of the ignition. She sat in the driveway while Danny fumbled with his seatbelt. 

“You know,” Danny said. “You’re a good friend.”

“Thank you, Danny. You have your moments as well,” Lacy said. She meant it. God, she was tired, but she meant it. 

“If you ever need me to, you know, help with your folks,” Danny said. 

“Hey, no, man, we’ve been over this. I’ll come out to them when we finish high school, not before. They’re gonna throw me out either way, so I may as well wait until it’s easiest to leave.”

“Yeah, but like, if you need someone there when you do it….”

Lacy paused. That… Was honestly an incredibly nice gesture. Her irritation with him evaporated. He really did mean well, even if he had no self-control and no boundaries. “Just… Just promise me that you’ll be outside with this truck so you can take me anywhere else after I have that last conversation with them. I’ll be fine until then.”

“That’s a lie,” he said, his words less slurred, his accent back to neutral. “You’re lying.”

“About what?”

“You won’t be fine. You’re never fine.”

That’s true, she thought. “Danny, you’re shit-faced. Go to your room, sleep on your side, and keep a glass of water on your nightstand; I’ve seen my parents manage it a million times, so you should be okay.”

“Don’t fucking compare me to them!” Danny hissed. “They’re evil.”

Lacy sighed. “Right. Sorry. Please go home now, I still have to walk back to my house.”

“Oooookaaaaayyyyy.”

She gave him his keys, and she watched as he lumbered back inside. After that she went back home, and when she stood in front of her house, she heard her parents shifting around.

Lacy went over to the mailbox in front of their house and conjured ‘Flying Whales’ one last time, sticking the sound to it and letting it blare. She ran around to the back of the house just as her parents woke up and ran outside to see what was going on out front, then climbed back into her window, got under the covers, and killed the noise. Her limbs were heavy and her heart throbbed from using the sound so many times in one day.

Her parents crawled back into the house, now both halfway between drunk and hungover. The sound of bottles opening indicated the implementation of their usual solution to such a state of affairs. 

Lacy listened to it as she laid in bed, feeling her covers over the hair on her arms and chest, hating how it felt, hating how she felt, hating how everything felt, and tried to just listen to the world instead. Outside, though, she could hear her star burning above, waiting for her. Just like her parents were always waiting for her, like school was always waiting for her, like the world and everyone in it, everyone who needed her to be something, needed her to do things for them, waited for her. It never ended. It only ended when… 

When…

When she found a way to shut out all the noise forever. She would have to figure out how, but maybe with her abilities… Maybe they would help. She just had to survive until then. And then she could be left alone forever. 

For now, she needed to sleep.

***

Lacy arrived at Gwen’s house, accompanying the sunrise. She found Gwen waiting for her in the driveway. “Okay. It’s time,” Gwen said. 

Two weeks had passed. They’d gone hunting regularly, shooting squirrels and rabbits to improve her aim while avoiding drawing attention. Lacy could fire ten water bullets in a minute, and launch a water-blade at her opponents on command. She could do it all quickly, and she could do it all without passing out or getting a nosebleed like when she’d first began.

They stood in Gwen’s driveway beneath a silver canopy of clouds. Lacy wore black leggings and a pink sweatshirt, and white headband held her hair out of her face. Gwen wore blue jeans and a leather jacket and a crimson red flannel. Her nails were painted a fresh red that matched her shirt and lipstick. “Time for?” Lacy asked. 

“We’re going hunting. For ghouls.”

Lacy gulped. “A-are you sure I’m ready?”

“No,” Gwen said. “But only because it’s impossible to be sure of something like that.”

I’m not sure that’s as comforting as you think it is, Lacy thought. She smothered it, and nodded in affirmation to Gwen’s words.

“Help me load up the car. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

They spent a half-hour loading various guns, blades, explosives, and other supplies into the trunk of Gwen’s Prius. After that, they climbed in.

“Okay, so basically,” Gwen said, pressing the gas and twisting the key in the ignition. “As far as we know, ghouls have been around for about 2500 years. They emerged in Arabia, in graveyards, but they’re not mindless flesh eaters- at least, they’re not supposed to be. Most of the time, they’re intelligent, cold, calculating- but when they’ve been too long without feeding, they turn feral. And we’ve been driving them back for so long that most of them have probably forgotten what a full belly and a sound mind feel like.”

“How do you kill them?” Lacy asked. 

Gwen turned the heat on high, and the fan blasted a few waves of cold air before turning hot. “My death angel spell is a guaranteed way, but it depletes almost all the Stardust in the area when I use it. Other, more consistent methods are fire and decapitation- those work on basically everything. Short of that, you’d have to brain them- they’re not technically alive, no heartbeats, so a knife or a bullet to the chest isn’t gonna work. A point-blank shot to the head, though- I’ve seen that work.”

“I’m guessing drowning them doesn’t work either?”

“Correct,” Gwen said, adjusting her mirrors.

“Damn.”

“You’ll have to get creative,” Gwen said. She reversed the car out of the driveway and onto the road, turned left, and began driving.

“How many ghouls are there?” Lacy asked. She heard the first raindrops shake free of the clouds and plummet to the earth, twitching slightly when they shattered on the car or the ground.

“Nobody’s really sure. Definitely fewer than there used to be,” Gwen said. “My dad used to talk about how many there were when he was a kid, how his aunt would take him to wipe out nests up north when he was still in his single digits.”

“Is that usually where they live? Up north?”

“On this continent, traditionally, yes,” Gwen said. “My family’s from way up where a bunch of them used to live. I think us and the other hunters may have driven them further south, though. There’ve been more and more sightings in Canada and the continental US in the past five years- especially here in Michigan.”

Behind Lacy’s brown eyes, blue Starlight pulsed. She suppressed it. “Why’s that?”

“Not sure. But my best guess would be that they’ve got a new king,” Gwen said. The rainfall accelerated as the swaths of trees gave way to the main road through Grand Rapids. They drove past flat-topped three story buildings, and the rhythm of the city blended with the rainfall and the cars and the heartbeats and the sounds of all of the people going about their days. “It’d be a serious development if true: the last one went into hiding after the end of the French and Indian War, and the ghouls have been slowly dying off ever since. Granted, so have mages, but that one isn’t as clear cut.”

“So what, they used to live in this place and now they’re coming back for it?”

“By the look of it.”

“Do you think they have some kind of larger plan?”

“That’s what me and my friends are trying to figure out.”

“You and the other monster hunters?”

“Yeah, three of them in particular,” Gwen said. “My boyfriend, Quentin, and his friends Joshua and Isabella. After this, maybe I’ll introduce you to them.”

“So where do new ghouls come from? Can they… Procreate?”

“Yes, actually, both in the more traditional way and through another method.”

“Which is?”

“Ritual,” Gwen said. “Dark magic, dark as it gets. The first ghoul was the result of someone in ancient times making a pact with a demon and merging with them. They became something new in the process: standing on the thin line between life and death. A monster.”

“Why don’t more people know about them?”

“Well for most of the early years ghouls lived exclusively in graveyards. But then they start moving around and scattering across the world, taking to isolated areas. There’s a staggering amount of them just below the arctic circle, for instance, but spread all across. And they just… Keep going. Ghouls don’t die on their own, you have to kill them.”

“Christ. So what about this new guy then? This new king. Was he born into it?”

Gwen hesitated a moment, then said, “I don’t think so. Probably they got there the same way the first guy did: making a pact with Infernal Powers in exchange for the title.”

“How could someone do that?”

“I dunno,” Gwen said with a sigh. “People will do crazy things to get ahead.”

A Star descended from the heavens, following her, hoping to drag her down to hell. It clung to her soul and made her sink into her own darkness, with nothing for company but her rage and misery. It led her to walls she would break down, to worlds she would destroy and rebuild, to the Crown of Ice and Starlight that would tear her head from her shoulders, to the Chosen One and their encounter which would tear the world asunder. 

Gwen snapped her fingers in front of Lacy’s face. “Wake up.”

Lacy blinked rapidly. “Hm?”

“The brain-fog was strangling you again.”

“Again?”

“I’ve noticed it before. You kinda go away for a while, get stuck inside your own head.”

Lacy didn’t respond.

“Hey, come on, that’s not reassuring,” Gwen said. 

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. Though I would like it if you’d talk to me.”

“Hm?”

“We’re about to go into a fight, kid. You’re gonna need a clear head for that. Now talk to me- what’s going on with you?”

Grand Rapids gave way to the highway, lined by trees, interrupted by other cars. She hated highways- they were a place between places, connective tissues between the solid parts of reality, the empty blackness in which she could only struggle and flail. 

Lacy breathed in deep through her nose. And then she told Gwen about the Star, and about her dreams, and about what she thought they meant. 

Gwen was silent for a few minutes. Outside the car, war-drums of rainfall pounded viciously. Other cars, other people, other lives, sped by them, and Lacy envied as they drove away in the other direction. 

Gwen heaved a deep sigh. “Shit.”

Lacy’s heart burned in shame. 

“No, not you,” Gwen said. She pulled over to the side of the road, where strings of water ran down the small incline off the street and into the forest. 

Lacy raised an eyebrow. “Did- did you know about-”

“Yes and no,” Gwen said, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. “I’ve heard of this thing. I didn’t know you had one.”

“I don’t have one though- I never let it near me. Whatever this thing does, I want nothing to do with it.”

“But it chose you. And you say you keep seeing it in your dreams- I don’t think it’s interested in anyone else.”

“So what the fuck is it, exactly?!” Lacy said. She jammed her hands under her rear, trying to get them to stop spasming.

“It’s called a Destiny Star,” Gwen said. “And it’s… Well, it’s a Star. Not the conventional kind, the magic kind- Stardust, Starlight, magic in general, it all comes from these things. Most of the Stars dispersed across the universe, giving us magic, but the ones that remained intact… They’re something else altogether. They’re primordial cornerstones of creation, the forces that shape lives and guide sagas. If one chooses you, then you have a Destiny. The Star settles inside your heart, and you can call upon its power on your journey. If you let it, it will guide you to where you need to go, so you can do whatever it’s asking of you.”

Lacy sat there, staring directly ahead, unblinking, as Gwen explained all this. Then she unbuckled her seatbelt, unlocked the car door, got out of the vehicle, and began walking in the direction they’d come from. Rain drenched her, a frigid shower falling from the sky, the noise nearly enough to fill the screaming emptiness inside her skull.

She heard a car door open and slam shut behind her, heard Gwen’s heartbeat and footsteps. “Lacy, what the hell?!”

“I’m not doing this,” Lacy said. 

“Yes, you are,” Gwen said. “You can’t run away from this.”

Lacy swelled with rage and resentment. “Yeah, yeah, yeah I can’t escape who I am, Destiny dictates who you are, I’m gonna become some awful, angry violent guy and destroy everything- I’ve heard all this shit before. My dad used to tell me stuff like that, but he didn’t dress it all up under the guise of magic and Destiny- he just said I was a stupid little boy and that I would spend my whole life making awful, self-destructive decisions like him. No fucking thank you. I’m leaving.”

“Lacy, it doesn’t work like that,” Gwen said, following after her. “This thing chose you-”

“And I didn’t choose it! I didn’t choose any of this! I don’t want this,” she said, stopping where she stood, clenching her fists, closing her eyes. “I don’t wanna be him!”

“You don’t have to be!” Gwen said. “You’re not that- you’re not your father, and you’re not a monster! It’s your choice, who you become! With this thing or without. You always have a choice. The Star won’t bond to you unless you accept it, and even then, it’s not like it can force you to do anything.”

“So then what does it do?” Lacy said, opening her eyes, staring at the road, cars zooming past her in both lanes, walls of wind slamming into her. 

“It takes you where you need to go, shows you the choice you have to make. And it gives you the power to make it.”

She spun around and stared Gwen down. “How do you know that? How do you know all this? How did you find me again- do you really expect me to believe it was a coincidence? You’re bringing Destiny into all this and you’re expect me to believe that-”

Gwen raised her right hand and tapped her chest. White light sparked against the slate-gray air. A white Star emerged and danced around Gwen. No cars came by, no people in view. Just two mages beneath the warm light of two Stars. 

“Like I said,” Gwen whispered, “I was in a bad place a few years ago. I found a renewed sense of purpose. This thing… Came to me. I didn’t want it. I knew what it was, but I knew more than anything I didn’t want it. And I accepted it anyway. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but know that you’ll have to take the first step eventually, with or without it. You’re wondering how I found you again: this is how. It took me to where I needed to go, and I realized what I needed to do as soon as I saw you again that night a few months ago. I realized that I made a mistake by not taking you under my wing all those years ago, by not taking you with me and training you. By not saving you from your parents. And I’m sorry for that. I really am. But I can’t be sorry forever. And you can’t stay hidden forever. Eventually, the light comes for you. It always does.”

Lacy’s chest heaved up and down, and her fists unclenched. Blue Starlight shone in the back of her mind, but instead of burying it, she let it stay, let it shine. It was warm. To her astonishment, she found she wanted to hold onto it. Behind her, Gwen’s footsteps drew nearer. A hand landed on Lacy’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth,” Gwen said gently. “Girls can be evil overlords too. Well, evil over-ladies.”

Lacy hugged her. Gwen hugged her back. After a few more moments in the cold rain, beneath the warm Starlight, they got back in the car. Gwen tapped her chest, and her Star retreated back inside her. Lacy warmed her hands over the heater, let it travel up her arms and carry through her. Gwen took a towel from the glove compartment and wiped off her running makeup, then put the car back in drive. 

The journey took another hour. They voyaged through increasingly sparse roads as they ventured further north-central. Red oaks lined the streets, and the rainfall grew steadily more torrential. Finally, they came upon an abandoned lot wherein stood a lone warehouse. It was fifty feet in height, one hundred in width, one hundred in length, with boarded up windows and a broken chain on the front door. 

“You’re sure this is the right place?” Lacy asked.

“My Star says so.” 

“Alright,” Lacy said. 

“Before we go in, take a deep breath, yeah? Take stock of your surroundings, take stock of how much Stardust is in the area- it’s a finite amount, and it takes a while to replenish itself. Don’t forget that, and don’t overexert yourself. The last thing we need is you passing out on the job because you tried to drown someone on land.”

Lacy smirked. “Fair enough.” She closed her eyes, and she listened. She listened to the wind curving around the oaks surrounding the abandoned lot as it came in from all sides of the forest; she listened as it shaped itself around the grass and weeds and gravel atop the ground, and came in through the holes in the fence that surrounded the lot; she listened to the birds and the chipmunks in the woods, and the babbling of a brook beyond; she listened to the sky above, as wind shifted and heat rose; she listened to the rain explode on the ground, on the warehouse roof, on the foliage, on Gwen, and on herself. She breathed in through her nose. 

She opened her eyes.

She followed Gwen into the warehouse. 

There were no heartbeats inside the warehouse, but seven pairs of eyes pierced the darkness with an unholy crimson glow. Gwen’s lips twitched with a wild confidence, an eagerness. The seven pairs of eyes were attached to seven bodies in varying states of decay: they ranged from the type of ghoul Lacy had been attacked by, an apparent human with stone-like skin and red eyes, to deformed monsters with fangs sprouting out their mouths at every angle, a lack of hair or living flesh anywhere on their bodies. They covered the whole spectrum, the most deformed among them resembling a bald wolverine stretched into a humanoid length. 

Lacy’s heart thundered, and her eyes spread wide. The most monstrous of the ghouls charged at them first, snarling and screeching as it bounded towards them on all fours. Her hand reached behind her, out the open door, towards the rainfall, and she listened and let the Stardust filter into her heart and ignite on her Spark. Rainwater coalesced into a sharpened ribbon and swirled inside through the door. It formed a guardrail in front of Lacy and Gwen, and the ghoul slammed into it and was decapitated. 

Black blood splattered on the ground, and the head of the monster landed at Lacy’s feet with a splat. Her heart moved so quickly she could not hear it inside her chest. Her ears rang, and her hands shook. 

Four more ghouls charged simultaneously. 

Lacy reached for another vein of water, only for it to shatter after assembling. Shit.

Gwen pulled out her glock and unloaded a full clip, taking one ghoul in the forehead and another in the eye. Another came upon her, and once it was within range Gwen cried, “Todeshand!” She grabbed the ghoul by the throat, and her hand sang with white light. The ghoul’s mouth stopped moving, and then its face wholesale. It flailed wildly, and Gwen dropped it to the ground. It forced itself up onto its legs, but its balance was unwieldy and it could not support the weight of its own deadened skull. It stumbled forward as its eyes turned to ash inside its sockets. No scream, only an incoherent cry of anguish. 

The next ghoul came upon Gwen, and Lacy assembled water into the familiar form of a bullet. She aimed with a pointed finger and fired the bullet through the ghoul’s eye socket. The water exploded the back of its skull and its gray matter decorated its comrade behind it.

Lacy stepped forward and reached for more rainwater. She gathered into a shape, into the one of the knives she and Danny sold. Her legs carried her forward, and she sliced the head of the ghoul Gwen had wounded clean off its shoulders. The water broke apart once the job was done, and there was soreness in her arms and chest.

Two ghouls remained. 

Lacy and Gwen stood next to each other, tall and proud. The two ghouls charged them, and Gwen nodded at her and smirked. 

Gwen fired off a round, and it took the ghoul in the face. 

Lacy, meanwhile, reached for another mass of rainwater and forged it this time into an even larger blade. The ghoul’s skull carved apart like butter, and the blade shattered. Lacy breathed in deep through her mouth, and her shoulders heaved up and down, and she smiled. Gwen put a hand on Lacy’s shoulder and gave her an approving nod, then wiped the sweat from her own brow with the sleeve of her black leather jacket. 

Two heartbeats, both rapid but steadying in their owners’ chests. Lacy closed her eyes, listened so that she could steady herself. She did it, she’d done it! She’d fought them, she’d used her powers, she hadn’t lost control- she could do this. She could do this! She let herself smile, and she listened. 

Two heartbeats. 

Rainfall. 

Wind. 

Two heartbeats.

Footsteps.

Three heartbeats. 

Lacy’s ears twitched as she pivoted forty-five degrees to her left. Behind her, the door to the warehouse fell shut. 

“What the shit?” Gwen muttered. 

Not a good sign.

The third heartbeat was slow and steady and uncanny. The attached footsteps were almost completely hushed, accompanied by the shifting sound of long, thick hair bouncing up and down. On the rafting of the warehouse’s upper level stood a young woman. She carried herself with an aged weariness and perfect posture that had clearly stemmed from years of practice. She wore an Edwardian style black dress, long and slinky and loose with a high neck, along with navy blue gloves over her hands. She had long white hair piled into a large bun atop her head, and she wore a black raven’s mask over her face.

Next to Lacy, Gwen’s heartbeat skyrocketed and her hands trembled. Her mouth hung open, and she couldn’t stop staring at the person looming above them. 

“Hey Gwen,” the young woman said. 

What the fuck? Lacy thought. 

“Who are you?” Gwen said. Her teacher stepped forward, hands shaking, heart ablaze. “What are you doing here- what’s going on?”

“I’m doing my job,” the young woman said. Her voice was high-pitched and thin, and she pronounced each word with the utmost emphasis. “I’m living up to my responsibilities. Unlike you- you’ve never done that in your life. And you know exactly who I am.”

The plague-masked woman yanked the blue glove from her right hand, and she held her palm flat towards Gwen and Lacy. She muttered under her breath, but then closed her hand and snapped her fingers. 

A flash of light turned everything into smoke and ash.   

[radioiaci]

All things - his head, his chest his lungs - told him to just let Vox go. Let him fumble and stagger across the room, let him make his way back to his stupid, precious tower on his own, let him fall somewhere along the way and clonk his infuriating head onto something else and be dragged away by opportunist Sinners. Childish, frustrated thoughts that had him formulating imagery of Vox being outright stabbed in increasingly ridiculous and near comical ways.

But somewhere in the midst of the noise cut a string of what felt like feedback. Pinging somewhere in the atmosphere from him to something unseen and back. And not only was there frustration - he knew that. Had that. That was his own frustration - but so too was there something else hidden in the mix that had his ears giving faint, twitches as they swiveled one way to the next. An emotion that he'd not even begun to parse for himself, let alone what felt like too bold a reminder of what was likely felt when he'd disappeared the first time. When they'd cut ties the first time.

It silenced the other thoughts; turned his gaze back upwards to Vox who was struggling. And his gut turned in a way that he was not sure what to do with. It was not hunger. Hunger, he knew. This was something else.

Alastor let out a steady exhale before scooting himself from the bed to stand. Though he did not make his way to Vox's side, he stepped past him and went to retrieve the stupid phone for him. Finding where it had been left (or landed, maybe) and offering it to the other.

"Here."

He did not know what else to say or offer. It was unlikely that Vox wanted any more of his help, all things considered. Alastor found it still too egregiously difficult to apologize or admit wrongdoing unless it were forced out of him. But that fact that he was, at least, not still pouting on the bed was some clue that he was not pleased with the outcome of his own choices.

"I can use magic to get you dressed when you're ready or call a ride for you, if I must. Whichever."

Vox desperately searched the bed or the side tables to no avail- it was definitely in the other room. He started sweating a bit thinking about all the missed calls and texts. Val was going to wreck his shit. The concept of walking right now was so overwhelming, but instead of looking around or looking like he cared even a little bit- the other was curled into a ball positively brooding under a dark cloud.

Intense frustration tilted slightly in his head. Like the support he’d thought he’d had wasn’t there- probably never had been.

Alastor didn’t give a shit about his safety. The worry he’d seen earlier and clung too wasn’t worry for him- the stupid deer just didn’t want to no longer have a plaything. Vox knew Al knew how violent Val got- now more than anything. He wasn’t even all mad he’d been hit. He was mad that Alastor wasn’t sharing his urgency. Wasn’t helping him. And because of Alastor’s one way ticket to bed rest method- he could barely see and definitely would struggle to walk.

Vox could feel the disdain just radiating off the other and intentional or not the frustration he was radiating back was tinged with that hurt feelings. Just a small stripe.

“Perfect. Sit there in silence. Good thing this isn’t a problem I’m stuck with that you expressly designed or anything. Fucking making me rest my ass.. you could have choked me out and it would have done less damage. At least that would have been fun.” He griped under his breath nonstop.

He tried to steel himself, he’d done harder things. Vox carefully started to turn himself toward the edge of the bed and the bright throbbing pain started right back up. Now shooting down his spine with the stiffness of sleeping. He closed his eyes hoping that would help, the throbbing was making his audio receptors go in and out.

Very tediously he got up and started walking along the bedside using the bed to steady himself. His leg didn’t feel the worst.. he might actually feel good if he had just been allowed to sleep instead of being mauled. Now he would have to explain this new screen injury. If he played his cards right Val would help him to the infirmary.

His head felt like he was trying to walk with a quadruple ear infection. And partially blinded. He kept his eyes closed and got to as far as the end of the bed before letting go and shuffling toward the door so very slowly. The throbbing in the back of his head and the site of the dent itself radiating colorful wet pain.

[kinetic-elaboration]

October 21: Valentine (2001)

The depressive feeling from yesterday didn’t magically go away by sleeping, so I’ve had kind of a lousy day. Through fault of my own, of course. Actually taking a shower and getting tea DID help (hahah I did know this) but by then it was getting kind of late and I didn’t want to rile myself up to writing. Maybe I should have… I could feel some ideas coming back. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I decided instead to watch a movie and then go to sleep “early” (which, like I’m not up to absolutely ALL hours so I guess that’s something) and the movie I picked was Valentine (2001). I’d seen it before, not when it actually came out because I was a bit too young, but probably not that long after, when I was in high school. My cousin and I watched it together, which, in retrospect, was perhaps a little weird. Anyway, I remember liking it at the time in a sort of better-than-I-thought kind of way but after 15+ years I forgot a lot. I remembered the basic premise and who the killer was, though almost nothing else.

This re-watch… I would still say it was better than I was anticipating. I tried to lower my expectations again because at the time I’d probably seen like half a horror movie ever and now I like to think I have more discerning tastes. As a slasher, it wasn’t that scary: I thought the tense scenes weren’t terribly tense, and while the kills were, upon reflection, actually pretty good (Paige in the hot tub in particular was quite elaborate but I also like the death by arrows in the weird Valentine’s Art Exhibit), nothing in it was really that revolutionary. But it was solid; it was fine. I like slashers but I don’t really care about ‘creative kills’ so much because I’m actually a bit squeamish about gore. I did really enjoy the characters, though. Am I that easily swayed by a nearly all female cast, by a group of girl friends being friends? Perhaps. Perhaps.

The… message of the film was a little hard to parse in some ways. Maybe I’m overcomplicating it. On the one hand, it’s very simple, right? All men everywhere are horrible all the time. The daily life of a woman is harassment and loneliness as she is constantly beset by losers on all sides. Like, the men in this film were almost comically terrible in every respect. The blind date who talks in the third person and takes zero hints about your disinterest. The neighbor who’s always hitting on you. The string of terrible blind ‘turbo’ dates. The ‘wax it’ guy. The father with the bride young enough to be his daughter. The gold-digging creep whose business just needs one more investment. The pretentious artist who tries to trick you into a threesome and who literally can’t hold a conversation because he’s too busy being horny. The detective who wants to ‘do something about the sexual tension’ he’s totally made up. Even the slumlord landlord is a guy! This is a 90-minute film. Every 3 minutes another terrible man shows up. And there are scenes like the speed dating and the video date guy that seem to be there for no other reason than to cram in as many losers as possible around the kills and to really beat into the audience how much it sucks being a single young woman in 2001.

Even the best of the guys, the only one with multiple personality traits, the potentially really good boyfriend, is an alcoholic and he gets scary when he’s drunk. Oh and also he’s the killer, surprise.

So I guess in this way one of the ways to read Jeremy is as an incel-type: still mad all these years later that the girls rejected him at the dance, now grown up and systematically killing all of them. And yet, I don’t know, he was more than rejected, you know? He was branded a predator, beaten up, and sent into the system, from which he basically never emerged. And it was really one girl who did that more than any of the others, but the rest (save one, the final girl) were witnesses that helped seal his fate. Of course, the nature of the slasher is that the killer IS the victim of a prank, and then gets a bloody vengeance that can only be stopped by the final girl, etc. So that’s just part of the formula. You can see what triggers the violence without condoning it, obviously, or being on the killer’s side. Maybe this is no more deep than that: he was reacting to a real harm that was done to him, but in a deranged horror-serial-killer way, because that’s the genre he’s in, and because the other message of the film is ‘wow men suck,’ he’s able to hide in a crowd of loser suspects.

But in general I’m sort of inclined to set aside the whole origin story of the killer, honestly. Adam Carr as the killer, regardless of who he was presumably-pre-plastic-surgery is the real core of the film, and the story there is coherent. He doesn’t really need a reason, honestly, if you look at it from the point of view of the women. In this sea of creeps, there’s one guy who seems to stick out as not as bad: Adam. We know he has a drinking problem but we don’t actually see him drunk or scary, and he seems like he wants to get better. The love story with Kate is sweet—maybe it will work out this time! Except, just as with wax it guy or Mr. Dot Com, there’s a secret side to Adam; he’s a monster underneath. Kate didn’t know he was an alcoholic when she met him, as Dorothy points out. It’s implied that he might be abusive when drunk (“I was afraid you would hurt me”), and what is being a slasher but just another, exaggerated, genre-specific form of abusive behavior: literally killing all her friends and a bunch of other randos around her? He honestly doesn’t need a reason, any more than he needs a reason for being an alcoholic. It’s about what is hidden, not why it’s hidden.

Some of the kills fit into this theory because honestly I didn’t really get why he killed half the people he did. The women, yes, that’s part of the whole revenge plot. The detective, okay, because he might be a threat to Adam getting away with it all. And the creepy neighbor was being weird to his girlfriend, so that was almost chivalry. But Mr. Dot Com and his ex-girlfriend were people who were bothering Dorothy, not Kate—and Dorothy was really the one most responsible for Adam’s misery! And Dorothy’s maid literally did nothing wrong at all; she was just around. The only explanation we get for those kills was ‘well when a person is lonely and angry they just do weird stuff,’ which, okay, sure.

I remembered Adam was Jeremy but not the little extra twist that he is not either killed or brought to justice and I did think that was an interesting conclusion. There’s a classic slasher backstory, classic kills, a final girl, and even an ‘evil lives on’ ending. But the mystery is only solved for the audience, not the final girl herself, and she doesn’t actually defeat the slasher. She is actually still victimized, in part by being led to believe that one of her best friends was a cold-blooded killer. Adam had his revenge on all the other girls, and he got a particularly nasty revenge on Dorothy: not only did he kill her, but he ruined her memory, just as she ruined his reputation. He was branded a rapist when he was not, and she was branded a killer when she was not. And he gets away with this! And what is Kate left with? All of her friends are dead, and her charismatic and handsome boyfriend is left to pick up the pieces. She’ll rely on him more than ever now, probably, and ignore the issues that come along with his drinking, and any red flags of his violent nature. The true hidden terror remains hidden. He’s not a comically overdrawn douche of a man like the others, and that makes him so much more dangerous. That’s what the whole movie has been illustrating—ultimately, maybe, its whole point.

[perseverantdt]

For context, this puzzle was marked as an easy puzzle but, for some reason, I decided to solve the thing in C.

[definitelynotshouting]

hunger au question - what are the listeners n how do they work? what are their main differences compared to the watchers n devs? give me ur brain meat funny man

- 🍑 (fat ass anon)

HELLO ANON THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME AN EXCUSE TO YELL ABOUT THIS BC IVE BEEN TRYING TO FORMAT MY THOUGHTS ON THEM FOR TWO DAYS NOW WITH LITTLE SUCCESS

So Listeners are, i've decided, kinda like fungi!!! More specifically, like endomycorrhizae-- they're symbiotic spore-like entities that attach to a Player host to strengthen their own brittle code; in return, the Player is given a boost to their reflexes and mental acuity, as well as a tenuous connection to the Greater Code. This level of symbiosis is, however, extremely invasive; a Player host's mind and body are permanently altered, and influenced directly by the Listener who has fused with them.

Most Players don't even realize they have Something Else co-piloting them once they've fused with a Listener-- this is because Listeners don't really... talk, or at least, not in a way thats immediately recognizable. Instead, they use electrical impulses, sent directly to the Player's brain and nerves, and the Player host interprets and extracts meaning from that. In addition, Listeners (like Watchers) are, as previously stated, in tune with the Greater Code of the universe, and can glean strings of passing information from it within a certain radius of themselves. For a Player, this is sort of like minding your own business and then getting information beamed into your head, which can be very disorienting unless you're a newly spawned Player whose ties to the Greater Code haven't faded yet.

Also, since Listeners don't really have a strong sense of individualism, they often "hook up" their electrical signals to each other if more than one of them are in the area, creating an effective "hivemind" that can work towards a shared goal. Because of this, Player hosts can recognize other Player hosts as Listeners immediately, and register them as friendly and trustworthy, regardless of past history or established social standing. "Hooked" Players will react in tandem to stimuli-- though their reactions may differ due to their own personalities-- and will also work towards the same goals, though they don't generally parse that they're being influenced when they do.

Thats about all i have written about Listeners in my shiny new Lore Doc wjdjejdndnd or at least that's it so far. They are fucked up little mushroom guys your honor!!!! i love them soso much<3 thank you for asking!!

[thewertsearch]

This speech is damn hard to parse. 

Nanna may be impossible to get answers out of, but you at least have a sense that she knows what the answers are. Jaspers is drawing from the same well as she is, but his little kitty brain is overflowing with lore, and there’s not much room for anything else. Rose is getting her answers, but they’re coming out garbled and confused, filtered through a brain that’s never had to deal with abstract thought.

He’s trying really hard to lay out Rose’s quest for her, though. We'd be doing him a disservice not to give it our best shot. Let’s try and translate some Jasperspeak!

JASPERSPRITE: Rose im just a cat and i dont know much but i know that youre important and also you are what some people around here call the Seer of Light.

Rose, you have a class concerned with gathering information, and the element you’ll be using to do so is light. 

JASPERSPRITE: And you dont know what that means but you will see its all tied together! JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make. JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing! JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song!

And like light, your quest has something to do with waves. 

Light, vibrating materials, and sounds carried through the air all have the same basic mechanism, and you’re going to be applying that mechanism in a novel way.

JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters. JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible.

Each wave has its own signature, a way to represent it as raw data, and your goal is to derive the right data. 

There’s a way to bring these fish back, to return life to the ocean. You just have to find the right ‘song’, and ‘play it’ in a way that reaches the whole world.

JASPERSPRITE: So all you have to do is wake up and learn to play the rain!

How, you ask? 

Well, have you noticed that those waterfalls behind you kind of look like guitar strings? That’s your first clue.

I’m your cat, and I love you, so I’ll even give you a second one. It’s time to wake your Dreamer.

JASPERSPRITE: Does that make sense rose sorry i disappeared for so long. [...] ROSE: You're a pretty good cat, Jaspers. I missed you.

Also, do you want to cry tonight?

[spell-cleaver]

Day 24: Shivering

(Also Day 23: Slay it with Flowers)

Read it instead on AO3 or on FFN!

@angstober​ 

When Luke didn’t want to be found, he was near impossible to track down, but thankfully this wasn’t one of those cases. He was in the place he always was, where he spent most of his free time, and where he knew everyone would look for him first: his garden.

He was on his knees when he saw her, grinned, and waved her over. Mara rolled her eyes but followed. “What are you working on this time?”

“Green daisies,” he replied. “They bloom in the presence of lifeforms.”

No wonder they looked to be thriving, then. Their emerald centres were wide open and exposed, craning towards Luke.

“Where did they come from?”

“Lothal.”

Mara sized them up. They were pretty, but she didn’t see much in them. That was all they were.

She changed the subject. “Master says I’m to report to you about my most recent mission.”

Luke stiffened. “Oh? Really.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Apparently you’re ready for more responsibility.”

“In the running of the Empire?”

“If I’m reporting my mission to you, yes.” She frowned at him. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” It was a little sharp. “Why would it be wrong?”

“Because you’re shivering. Look at you. Are you cold?” It was warm in Luke’s garden—temperature controlled to perfection.

He shook his head and shook the question off. When he tried to distract her, she caught his wrist—his sleight of hand wasn’t nearly as subtle as he liked to think it was, especially when his hand was still shaking—before he responded. The flower in his hand dropped, but she caught that as well. “What is this?”

He smiled sheepishly.

“I figured out what you were doing after the first two flowers I randomly found in my plait, you know.”

“It’s fun to try to get one past you. And it’s a gift.”

“Thank you for the gift,” she drawled, glancing down at it. It was a round, strangely shaped red and white flower, but she didn’t know enough about it to guess what it was. “It’s very pretty. You should have one in your hair as well.”

He grinned, tilting his head. He had several tucked behind his ear, she realised.

“It’s called a blood orchid,” he said. “I thought it seemed fitting.”

Blood orchid was an interesting name—it appealed to her, certainly—but she didn’t care about flowers, even though Luke clearly cared very much. She crossed her arms across her chest before he could launch into a ramble about it. “Can I give you my report?”

He bit his lip. “Of course.”

*

It was clearly meant to be an exercise for Luke in learning how to receive reports, parse information, and command attention—something he failed at utterly, considering he gave her three more orchids during the course of it. But after they were done, he walked with her to Palpatine’s throne room so she could report properly, to the man who actually pulled all the strings.

Luke asked if she was interested in hearing about what flowers he’d recently pulled into the garden; she had nothing else to think about, so she acquiesced, and listened pleasantly to his enthusiastic speech. Apparently Alderaanian flame-lilies were rare but stunning; apparently funnel flowers were more effective water collectors than moisture vaporators; apparently blueblossoms had medicinal values, especially for treating burns. The pollen, used as a drug, could cool the body significantly and accelerate burns’ natural healing process.

She nodded along with mild interest but mostly watched his face. He wasn’t the cool, detached successor Palpatine had hoped he might turn out to be, when he allowed Vader to raise him at the centre of the Imperial Court. But he made her smile: he was animated, the left corner of his lips tugging up in a smile higher than his right, dimples rosy in his cheeks. Someone she was sure many in the Empire would be honoured to serve.

They both reached the throne room: Luke nodded to the guards, who glanced at him and Mara, but let them through with a sharp gesture. Mara went right in, but Luke stopped—right on the threshold, staring. His hand went to his mouth.

“Luke. Mara. My dears, come in!” Palpatine waved them forwards, still seated elegantly on his throne, his robes draped over the arms of it. Mara stepped forward obediently and knelt at his feet, ignoring the black mound at the bottom of the dais.

Luke couldn’t ignore it, it seemed. He ignored Palpatine’s obvious gesture for him to stand at his side and went to his father, whose respirator was still wheezing pathetically from whatever punishment he’d earned today. When Luke reached for him, clearly he got several electric shocks just by touching him, but he reassembled his father’s limbs into a position that looked less unnaturally uncomfortable and helped lift him to his feet.

Vader was massive. Mara watched with disapproval as he teetered in the air, crushing Luke’s shoulder under his weight. He invoked punishment, distressed his son, and could not be bothered to help himself walk out?

“There is no need, my boy, Lord Vader will be fine,” Palpatine tutted. “You know that I do not injure him permanently. He can get his breath back”—that seemed a particularly cruel joke—“while we discuss Mara’s mission.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty, but Mara knows my thoughts on it. I will get my father to a medbay.” Luke’s tone was cold. Palpatine didn’t miss it—the skin around his lips tightened—but he kept smiling serenely, understanding. He kept that smile up until Luke and Vader were out of the door.

It dropped. “Love is such a weakness, is it not?” he asked her. “He weakens himself for such a pathetic excuse for a man.”

Mara didn’t disagree—there was no love lost between her and Vader—but she did want to defend Luke. “He raised him. It’s a natural connection. You will never be as impotent as Lord Vader is, Master, but if you were, I would do the same for you.”

It took a lot of gall for her to call Vader, of all people, impotent, but Palpatine nodded. They both knew that, raw power or not, the one thing Vader lacked that Mara and Luke both had was reliability. He was always erratic—especially about his son.

“I appreciate that, my dear. I still fear that this attachment stunts Luke’s growth. His father does not want him to be my heir—he likely still covets the position for himself—and Luke is too loyal to disobey. Not only does his development suffer, but also,” he sighed, “our relationship. I am to have dinner with him this evening, but I fear that he will find some way to get out of it, as to prevent putting himself in the crossfire…”

He shook his head. “But these are the concerns of an old man,” he said. “I am glad the two of you remain so… close. What’s this?” He plucked the flower out of Mara’s hair. “A blood orchid?”

Mara flushed for some reason. “That’s what Luke called it.”

“He has given you many flowers, has he not?” Palpatine rolled it between his fingers. “The mythology behind the blood orchids is intriguing.”

Mara was still tense, trying to figure out what he was getting at. “Oh?”

“They are beautiful, often used as gifts, but on Naboo they tend to be associated with reclaimed battlefields and hardiness in the face of adverse climates.” He tilted it back towards her; she made to take it back, but he did not let go of the stem. “When they are given as a gift on Naboo, it is often to fierce, highly competent warriors.”

He let go. Mara took it back and put it back in her hair.

“But, again, forgive an old man’s tangents.” He smiled at her red cheeks. She knew what he suspected but couldn’t give him any definitive answers: all she could say about Luke Skywalker was that it was far too easy to care about him. “Can you give me details on your mission, then? And Luke’s thoughts, since he isn’t here to share them himself.”

It was one of the dullest missions she’d ever been on, but she recited the details dutifully. The whole time her mind was whirring.

*

“These flowers have meanings?”

Luke looked up from his gardening. He was shaking harder, now, but she could sense his distress, the anger and frustration he channelled into digging and repotting the weeds in his patch. It wasn’t hard to guess why he was shivering, this time.

“My father will be fine,” he said, though they both knew she hadn’t asked. “He’s in the medbay as we speak. My presence there just upsets him, I’m told.”

“I’m glad he’ll live.” What else was she supposed to say? She hated Vader, and Vader hated her. “You didn’t tell me all these flowers I’ve been receiving have meanings.”

A smile, only slightly humourless, twisted his face again. “Everything has a meaning, Mara—wasn’t that one of your first lessons?”

“I never expected subtlety from you of all people. It’s not your style.”

His smile widened. “Well, I’ve told you enough about flowers. If you extrapolate—”

When he cut himself off, she didn’t realise why at first. But a servant scurried out, glancing around the garden and visibly relaxing when he saw Luke there, and approached.

“Sir,” he said breathless. “Your father is awake. He’s asking for you.”

Luke threw the shears down. “I’ll be right there,” he promised. The servant scurried away. Luke stripped off his gloves. “I can tell you more later,” he said to Mara before he strode away. As she watched him retreat, she noticed how stressed he really must be: his entire frame was wracked with shivers, and he rubbed his arms in a nervous tick as he walked.

She was left alone in his garden. It really was a magnificent spot. On the very top floor of the tower that he lived in within the Palace, opened to Coruscant’s elements, with grass rippling underfoot, greenhouses in the corners, and massive troughs bursting with colour. The view wasn’t anything to ignore, either.

It was while she scanned the garden that her gaze fell on the blueblossoms, bustling stems of cerulean petals, that crowded the nearest trough. She thought back to what he’d been rambling about. She’d have expected to forget it already, but to her surprise she’d been listening. They were the ones that were good for treating burn victims, weren’t they?

It wasn’t a conscious realisation of what Luke was doing that struck her. But she stepped over to the blueblossoms, watched some of the powdery pollen ghost onto her fingertips, and brought it up to her face so she could examine it closer. When she breathed in, some of it fluttered into her mouth; she spluttered, shivered, and dropped her hand.

Luke was good at shielding. He had to be, in the Imperial Court. But she had seen his resoluteness in defying Palpatine’s wishes earlier today; though he had seemed calm, that was hardly a small undertaking. She couldn’t fathom the rage and fear that his father’s ailing health must invoke in him.

For a moment, she tried to: tried to open herself up to Luke standing her, ferociously gardening as though flowers could save his beloved father’s life, ready to resort to the most unlikely, reckless, unorthodox schemes to keep him alive. For a moment, she felt that intensity. She sympathised with him.

The flowers he gave her all had messages—thoughts, interpretations, pieces of how Luke saw the world and how he saw her. Perhaps every flower in this garden had that. She was a master codebreaker, trained in the most advanced forms of slicing there were, but standing in that garden, she realised she was in the middle of a language she had never bothered learning to understand.

*

The solution to that began with study. The Palace library had plenty of resources on botany. She sat in there long into the night—she was still jetlagged from coming back from a mission so recently—and flicked through them, absorbing the information like she’d been trained to do, as if Luke was a target of unfathomable importance. It was startling to realise how much of that she already knew. How much she had already listened.

For such a delicate flower, difficult to keep alive, he had a veritable army of golden flower blossoms. They didn’t seem to have any connection to Naboo—where she knew that the closest family he had other than Vader, his aunt and cousins, dwelled—nor specific meanings. She wondered if having such a healthy crop of them was a point of pride, then.

Flame-lilies as well. He was fond of them. Perhaps he’d been introduced through his friend, Senator Organa, and received them as gifts. He’d never given one of those to her as a gift before. They came in several colours—every shade that flames came in—but he didn’t have any blue or white ones, she didn’t think. The hottest part of the flame, the rarest form of the flower. She wondered where she might source them.

It was when she got to the blueblossoms themselves that her heart’s beating grew faint. Their medical uses in small doses were there, laid out in the biology report in front of her: burn treatment, comfort during fevers, just as a cooling agent for the body to use in hot climates. But the warning stamped across its top was what caught her eye.

It could be lethal within hours if the dose was wrong.

Did he realise that? He must.

But desperation was even more powerful a drug than this one, she knew.

She was out of the library before she even consciously decided to leave. The turbolifts would be too slow: she took the stairs. It felt like a lifetime and a blink of an eye before she was through the stormtroopers guarding Luke’s quarters and banging on the door.

No response.

Maybe he wasn’t in there? It was past midnight, though, and Luke wasn’t one to stay up late. She checked the medbay, but it was empty. She checked all the possible medbays she could. They were empty as well.

Did Luke intend to try to heal his father tonight? Was that why he’d been so tense all day?

Would she be able to warn him in the morning? She didn’t know. It was horrifying to realise that she couldn’t read her closest friend well enough to tell if he was on the brink, or just nearing it. But she did know that something was very, very wrong.

No. Her instincts said that something was going to happen tonight. And she didn’t really care if Vader lived or died, but she did care about Luke.

Thankfully, she didn’t have to waste her time scouring the entire palace for him. Something else interrupted her night like a klaxon.

Her knees hit the floor. She gasped for air, tears streaming. Something inside her vanished, like the scaffolding around her heart had been ripped away in a storm and the freshly painted façade was exposed for the first time since its construction. The roots that yanked out of her brain left grooves that seemed to ooze blood.

She knew what had happened before she received the call. But she dragged herself to her feet, even among the immense anguish, and answered her comm when it rang. “Jade.”

“Come to the Emperor’s quarters immediately, Hand.”

“Is he dead?” she demanded. “I felt—”

“Come immediately.”

*

He was dead. She stared at his corpse, lying in the bed as still and peaceful as an exhausted child, and despised the blue tint to his lips and temple. She put her hand on his forehead. It was the same temperature as deep space.

“How did this happen?”

“Something happened that shut him down, cooled his core temperature below survivable limits.” The medic on hand was antsy, glancing from her to the red guards then back again. “Tests are still running to determine what.”

She pried his eyelid open. In death, his eyes were blue. That seemed fundamentally wrong. “What’s your theory?”

“Poison, sir. I don’t see how this could have happened otherwise, and the symptoms are compatible with what I know of—”

“His dinner tonight,” she realised suddenly. “He ate with Luke, didn’t he?”

“Luke?”

“The—” She bit her tongue. Palpatine had never actually convinced Vader to let him announce Luke as the prince. “Lord Vader’s son. They were dining together. Where is he?”

“Luke is in a coma.”

The booming voice shocked her. That was deeply shameful. Vader’s rasping respirator, still stuttering from the latest round of punishment, was unmissable. As was his gargantuan presence in the Force. She needed to pull herself together.

She snapped her head around, voice sharper than warranted. “Is he alright?”

“The poison has not killed him. But he is deeply asleep.”

“That’s why I couldn’t wake him at his door earlier.” She shook her head. “Who did this?” She looked back at Palpatine, her heart clenching. She’d meant what she had said: he was practically a father to her. “Who poisoned them?”

But there was a niggling in her mind that she couldn’t exactly ignore. It was obvious, in light of all she’d learnt today. It was unfathomable.

Vader lit his lightsaber behind her. The red guards died. Before he could come for her, she leapt to the other side of Palpatine’s bed. Her master stood between her and Vader’s ire, even in death.

She glared. “You? You almost killed your son!”

“It was not I.”

No. No, of course it wasn’t. Deception wasn’t Vader’s style. But she hadn’t thought it was Luke’s either.

Five-oh-first stormtroopers filed into the Emperor’s bedchamber. She glanced at the windows, the cabinets, the secret doors, but they were too quick; they fanned out across the room, blocking all routes of escape. There was no way out. She stood there, Vader’s lightsaber quivering, and waited to die.

He deactivated it. It wasn’t Palpatine standing between them, and they both knew it.

“Take her to the cells,” he barked and turned away.

*

She was in the palace cells for a long time. It was an effort to keep up her workout routine, keep stretches, stop herself from atrophying as the hours stretched into days, then weeks. No one visited her other than the guards, but she hadn’t been killed yet. She had no idea what had happened in the wider galaxy. She didn’t even know that Luke had survived until he came to visit her.

It was noticeable at first as a scrambling among the guards, whispered fussing, and many attempts to perfect the stomp and salute. Then, when his footsteps—she hated that she recognised him just by his footsteps—approached, there was a chorus of “Your Highness” and “sir!” and “Your Highness” again.

He stopped outside her door. “Mara?” he asked. “Are you in there?”

That was a stupid question. She had tried escaping. She had failed.

“May I come in?”

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t know what to think. If he had died, she would have had to live without two of the closest people in her life, but she would have been able to rationalise it. Grief would have drowned out her betrayal. It meant her relief over his survival was short-lived.

He refused to be Palpatine’s prince, no matter how much her master had offered him. But he happily became Vader’s?

When she didn’t respond, he sighed. Something slipped through the slot in the door that was meant for food. She didn’t let herself open her eyes to look.

“I’m working on getting you out,” he promised her. “I regret that it had to happen that way. I know that it hurt you.” She could hear his voice shaking slightly. Was he still shivering? Was he still suffering from the side effects of the medicine—the poison—he’d willingly ingested? “If you ever want to talk… let me know.”

He waited for long, agonising minutes for her answer. She did not give it. Eventually, he left.

When he did, she opened her eyes and let the tears run free. It was then that she noticed the spot of colour in front of the door.

Her fevered, thorough research had not failed her. She recognised this gift of flowers: black orchids, with hearts a vivid lilac. Some of the petals were spotted with red like bloodstains.

She recognised the meaning as well: death. Necessity. But, above all, an apology. Those flowers meant that the donor was sorry.

She didn’t know if she forgave him—not now, maybe not ever. But she reached for that small bouquet of orchids to clutch to her chest, inhaling the smell in an odourless room, consuming the colour in a colourless galaxy, and accepted his apology.

[kageyama-ritsu]

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Screenshot Let’s Play and Transcription

Since June of last year, I’ve been doing a mostly-on-sometimes-off playthrough, transcription, and Let’s Play of the Steam and GOG port of Higurashi When they Cry/Higurashi no Naku Koro ni on Something Awful. Someone else actually already made a forum-based, screenshot Let’s Play of this game years ago (and finished it!), but half of the images in the first arc are broken and it’s a little hard to parse.

So I thought, why not kill three birds with one stone? I can create a proper transcription of Higurashi that will be saved on its own dedicated server (the LPs in Something Awful are archived both on SA and lparchive.org, the latter once it is completed). I can also reread this sound novel that I am incredibly fond of.

Most importantly, I hope that this LP gets more people to read Higurashi. For people who either don’t want to pay 50 dollars on Steam/GOG for all of the arcs or sit down and commit 60 hours to watch video footage of a game released in 2002, this format lets you read it at your own pace in just a couple of days.

This is how the LP is presented. People who are familiar with and/or fans of Higurashi will notice a few things about this— and my choices are explained in the masterpost (which you can see as soon as you click the link to the LP). I also recorded every update in video form and put a link to it at the top of every update. (Higurashi is a sound novel after all, not a visual novel.) The recordings also have some fantastic voice acting, so check that out if possible.

I update three times a week on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday.

Here’s the link.

My sales pitch, for those uninitiated to Higurashi or do not know why they should read it, is under the cut.

Some people may know of Higurashi because of its rather infamous Studio DEEN anime adaptation. The yandere anime or whatever.

(This is the cover of a Higurashi video game released in 2014 but the art is pretty similar to the anime’s ssshhhhh)

In the game, you play as Keiichi Maebara, a city boy who recently moved to the peaceful and close-knit village of Hinamizawa. While he initially spends his days playing various games with his new friends, the discovery of a string of disappearances and murders that happen in the village set him on a path towards conspiracies, paranoia, and a fight for his own life.

One of the game’s more memorable aspects is how it endears you to the characters through the slice-of-life aspects of the story, until those idyllic days slowly morph into something much more sinister. That in and of itself is nothing new in the horror and thriller genre— pretty much every dime a dozen horror movie starts with a peaceful suburb being threatened with a serial killer or monster on the loose, after all.

Where Higurashi differs is that it doesn’t stop there, but starts pulling the reader in, makes them want the horror and thrill to stop, for the idyllic days to come back. They start off engrossed in the wonderfully unsettling atmosphere that the author, Ryukishi, crafts with nothing but images, text, and sound. As they read one arc after another, they gain more questions even as some are answered.

Because, surprise— Higurashi is a slife-of-life, comedy, horror, suspense, thriller, murder mystery.

Every arc takes place in the same timeframe: June of 1983, but things are different. Something that happens in one arc doesn’t happen in another arc, and vice versa. Even though the characters do  not retain their memories of past arcs, they still perform different actions at different times as strings are pulled behind the curtain. As someone with an omniscient viewpoint of the entire story, it is your job to piece together the puzzle and figure out just what is causing the deaths in Hinamizawa.

If that interests you, I’ll link the Let’s Play once more at the end of this post. The first post is the masterpost, which has even more information on the game as well as the LP itself. If nothing else, please read the trigger warnings. Higurashi is not a kind game to those who are squeamish. This may only be Ryukishi’s first big work— his writing and pacing is fairly rough for the first two arcs— but there’s a reason this game so thoroughly took over the fandom consciousness in the 2000s. His writing is, if nothing else, completely his own and paints vivid depictions of the cruelty humans have to live through every single day.

(A tidbit to note is that the author used to be a social worker. He writes about the topic with great skill but it is all very hard to watch/read.)

The game is also uh…very anime. It was initially sold in Comiket, after all. If you have a low tolerance for anime bullshit this might be a hard read for you. But underneath everything, the story is, at the core, a very touching one about the bonds between friends. Higurashi has a heart, no matter how ugly its exterior may seem at first glance, and I urge you to give it a shot.

Here’s the link again.

By the by, if you’re interested in a more “straightforward” murder mystery (more of an actuual murder mystery, much less straightforward), you should check out Ryukishi’s next work, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, which someone else already LPed. If you want to see how he might be like, trying to, solve…world conflict…?, the person who LPed Umineko also did one for the first arc (or Phase as it’s called) of Ciconia no Naku Koro ni. It’s all a bit vague for Ciconia, we really only have one chapter to go off of. None of these “sequels” require knowledge of the former entries to enjoy them.

[debbierhea]

and the world around us shatters / better call saul / wc: 2392  / kimmy jimmy omaha cinnabon reunion / special thanks to @kimberly-wexler for the beta <3

Summary: 

She’d been searching. For years.

She’d been searching. For years. Hired a PI and then another. Scoured every database she had credentialed access to and then a few she didn’t. Even adopted a cat to soothe the loneliness, lull the throbbing emptiness she felt in her chest. She’d had one as a girl once, a stray really, whom she loved. But this cat was as sulky and capricious as she had become and no matter how committed she was to ignoring it, the ulterior motive of pet adoption was glaring, if not to anyone else, to her.

After three months of No. Not like this. You can’t. Leave it alone. Don’t get involved, the ill-tempered tabby was Kim’s foot in the door. It was a Thursday when she sat across from his veterinarian, cat on the exam table, and said, “I need your help.”

“What kind of help are we talking?” He eyed her, stroked the tabby between her ears.

“I’m looking for someone.” Silence followed.

“You’re gonna have to give me a little more than that.”

“You know him. Jimmy McGill.”

His eyebrows rose. More silence.

“Well, can you help me or not?”

“You know it’s not always a matter of can I help.”

Kim tilted her chin, raised her eyes to meet his, unflinching. “Does that mean you won’t help me?”

“Hm?” The cat was purring into his hand, licking his thumb. “Oh, no. Just that my price may be something you’re unwilling to pay.”

She swallowed. “That’s not possible.”

“Okay then,” he nodded, stuck out his hand. She shook it.

Now, she was wandering through a sea of midwesterners in puffy coats and mittens, dusting snow off their shoulders, chattering about the weather. She hasn’t been back to this part of the country in years and it oddly feels like a homecoming, though she stopped considering Nebraska home the moment she left. It was simply a place she had lived, never one that offered family or comfort or love. There were sparse memories of joy with the odd classmate and a fond recollection of the first grade teacher who encouraged her to read, helped her get her very own library card. But now as then, there never existed a sense of ease or belonging for her. Even so, the familiarity of the Casey’s General Store on the corner, the Runzas on menus across state rest stops, the flurries of snow reddening her nose and chilling her bones, fostered a small flame of hope deep inside. She could still recognize, even find comfort in, a place she so detested. After the passage of so many years, this place was still the same and, underneath the new high rises and parking meters and sushi restaurants, she could see the bones of this city. Maybe the same could hold true for other things in her life.

Looking over the map in the lobby, she cupped her hands before her mouth and blew into them. The chill rested deep inside her, the hope she fostered in her heart doing little to warm her weary bones. All her work was to lead to this: trudging up the tiled stairs in damp snow boots surrounded by people who knew nothing about pain, not really. Not pain like hers.

She smelled it before she saw it, curving with the second floor walkway past storefront after storefront of clothes and books and knick knacks. She had just side-stepped the man trying to give free lotion samples when the warmth of cinnamon and sugar wafted over her. Her footsteps stuttered and her gait slowed. It was like watching a car whose engine was stalling out. She was light-headed, unable to string a thought together, parse out what she was feeling in her body besides a deep urge to run. Her therapist would tell her that she wanted to run because of her fear of being vulnerable and then being left behind. Again. Kim pushed hair that had fallen loose of her ponytail behind her ear, took three deep breaths, and followed her nose.

A small line stood in front of the cash register, three or four people, waiting for a treat to get them through their holiday shopping. She contemplated her next step from across the food court. Anticipation fluttered through her, givinggave rise to goosebumps beneath her layers of knit and down. Then further, deeper, beneath the adrenaline, lived something twisting and gnawing inside of her chest. She knew this thing like she knew the location of every security camera at the Hinky Dinky or the route she took home after school when her mom got too lost in the liquor aisle to remember to pick her up. This thing she knew was fear—fear of hope, of the inevitable ache of a further bruised heart. She crossed the food court despite it.

Trying to slip back into her midwestern skin, move through this world unassuming and deferential, she stood to the right of the registers, observing the ebb and flow of workers behind the glass. Dough was being kneaded by one, another opened an oven to check the progress of the bake. A third manned the register. A second till was sat unused, cash drawer open and empty. She stood there, just outside the current of customers, twitching her chapped fingers, tapping them against the inside of her own palm. He used to tease her for it. Five minutes passed, then ten. The line grew longer. Her flame of hope was waning.

Then, a voice—a bellow, more like—broke through the low hum of conversation in the food court.

“Coming! I’m coming, Miranda!” Kim froze.

A man in an apron and mustache came through the door marked “Employees Only” and made his way to the front of the store, a full cash drawer in his hands.

“Sorry! For some reason the safe just wouldn’t open.”

Kim was drifting through the crowd, pulled toward his voice. Her eyes began to burn.

“Here are some quarters for you. I figured you might be running low.” His eyes flicked up, scanning the crowd, estimating how many rolls they should throw into the oven. “I’ll open this one up and—,” his roaming gaze stopped. “And I, uh....”

She swallowed, her throat tight, eyes glassy. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He stood, slack jawed, staring.

“Um, Miranda I—Just, uh, just take this,” he handed the cash drawer to the teenager standing next to him, eyes never leaving Kim’s. “I’ll be right back.”

His shoes squeaked as he made his way around the counter and out into the seating area of the restaurant. Kim hadn’t moved, stunned like a deer in headlights on a Nebraska back road. He seemed as though he was moving in slow motion, each step towards her an eternity, and yet it was still not long enough to prepare herself for him to be standing directly in front of her. She felt like she’d just fallen through the ice into a glacial lake. No, she hadn’t fallen. She’d jumped. On purpose. And broke through.

He stood there, inches from her; she could see the gray in his mustache. He paused, just for a moment, then said, “Follow me.”

And she did.

They weaved in and out of tables and shoppers and janitors picking up fast food wrappers off the floor. He glanced back at her once, as if he was scared she wouldn’t be there behind him, as if she hadn’t been following him, chasing him, for what felt like her whole life. He led them down a hallway, empty save for a woman waiting on a bench between two bathroom doors, one labeled with a dress, the other a tie. Kim gave her a close-mouthed smile.

Jimmy stopped abruptly, reaching for the door to the family restroom. He held it open, looked into her eyes. Kim gave the woman another glance, cheeks reddening, and walked through the door before she could think or feel or do anything that would make her stop herself. She moved towards the far, tiled wall and as she turned, heard the clicking of the door’s latch, then the lock.

He paused then, there, gripping the door handle, his head resting against its grain. His body was tense, coiled and bound and, she realized, foreign to her. Stooped shoulders, billowing polo, slight waist cinched by an apron. Even from behind, he looked bleary, posture like a drooping flower on the sill. What happened to him?

Kim was grateful for this pause he was granting her. Everything seemed to be moving at a pace she was incapable of matching, an emotional marathon she had not trained for; she never did have much emotional stamina outside of simply holding them all in, like a child holding their breath in the deep end of the pool.

Then, he turned.

He was just as unfamiliar from the front as he was from behind, cheeks a bit sallow and stippled with five o’clock shadow, wiry glasses. His nametag read “Gene.” But Jimmy McGill was still the same in his bones and in the time it takes to exhale that breath you’ve been holding under the gentle waves of your childhood pool, the split second it takes for that breath to form a spray of bubbles racing you to the surface, they were in each other’s arms.

Centered on the yellowing, speckled tile, they grasped at shoulders and elbows, knees knocked, tears fell. Finally, Kim slipped her arms around his ribs and clutched him to her chest, nails digging into cotton and, beneath, soft skin. His face caught between shoulder and neck, he inhaled the scent of her, goosebumps rising as her puffy, down sleeves brushed against his bare arms. His hands roamed her back, skidding and sliding across slick fabric. It felt as if his hands had been frozen and he had finally found the fire he’s sought to warm them. Sneaking his right hand up and up and under the thick wool of her scarf, he hesitated just a moment before placing his fingertips to the soft skin of her neck. She gasped, a sob drawn out on a breath. His left hand pushed into the small of her back. She pulled him in tighter.

They held each other there, flushed and desperate and weepy, for a time—how long, neither could say. As the hand rubbing her back would slow, she would squeeze his middle gently as if to say Not yet and he would answer with gentle pressure between her shoulder blades. When her grip on him would loosen, his fingers would drift into the hairs at the base of her neck, pulling her impossibly closer, and she would let him. This is how they stayed, questioning and answering each other as only they could with little more than a sigh passing through their lips.

Then, Kim began to pull gently away. He stiffened the moment he sensed her movement from him, but she did not try to leave his embrace, this wasn’t her intention, not truly. She only wanted to see his dear face, maybe say hello. Placing one hand on his chest, she leaned ever so slightly back as his arms moved to circle her waist. Tears clung to his lashes and dripped from the tip of his nose. He swallowed hard as her eyes roamed his face, different but somehow entirely the same. She felt like she was back in the HHM parking garage bumming a smoke from the new guy in the mailroom. Hundreds of days and miles from then, he was still hers.

Bringing both hands up, cupping his jaw, brushing his cheekbones with the pads of her thumbs, she smiled. “Jimmy.”

At this, his eyes closed, Kim holding him tenderly in her palms. He hasn’t heard that name in years. When was the last time he thought of himself as anyone other than Saul Goodman? Saul the criminal defense attorney. Saul on the run. Saul posing as a Cinnabon manager. More tears fell free.

Removing his hands from her waist, he held her delicate wrists, one in each hand, his thumbs mimicking her caress across his skin. She gave the slightest tilt of her head and he answered with a reed-thin voice, a sad smile, “It’s you.”

She knitted her perfectly arched brows, that tell-tale wrinkle emerging between them, her eyes soft and wet, red-rimmed. She bit her lip and began to shake her head, never removing her gaze from his. After a moment, she smiled again, smaller this time, lips closed, and slipped one hand smoothly into his, the other onto his shoulder, not willing to break contact.

“Sorry it took me so long.”

More tears welled in Jimmy’s eyes as he rolled them to the ceiling, heart aching.

“Kim…I…”

“I know.” A pause. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Baby, I know.”

From shoulder back to his neck, Kim guided Jimmy with her hand, resting his forehead against her own, meeting in the middle, holding him there.

“Oh god—” a sob broke from deep in his chest.

Kim stroked his neck, shoulder, face, back. Jimmy wept.

Tears darkened the collar of his polo shirt and the tremors running through his body prompted Kim to wrap herself around him once more, burying her nose in his neck, focusing on the sickly-sweet scent of yeasted dough rising, cinnamon, and icing sugar over the pain so fierce living in the main between her arms.

As all things do with time, his sobs became weaker and fewer, until his breathing returned to a shallow, exhausted inhale, sniffly exhale. Kim lifted him from her shoulder and he raised his eyes towards hers. Her lips twitched, and then she brought them to his cheek. One, then the other, over and over, like salve to a wound she covered his drying tear tracks with her lips. Gentle and soft, like the flap of a butterfly’s wings did she kiss him. And then, she centered herself, hand threading into his hair, she moved to his lips.

“Kim,” he whispered, a breath from her lips.

“Yes?”

“What if you’ve come all this way to find someone who…doesn’t exist. Not anymore.”

Again, Kim knit her brows and shook her head. She placed her right hand over his heart, lifted her shoulders gently in a shrug.

“It’s you.”

[chaoticgeminate]

Adrift

Part Four of the Epiphany Series. This is honestly something I'm really enjoying writing, so I hope everyone else is enjoying it too.

Marcus Moreno x OFC

Rating T-M (Mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts, allusions to past abusive relationship)

Word Count: 2,042

Series Masterlist | Masterlist

Part Three | Part Five

Something wasn’t right.

…to order lunch to go…

…you listen…for once…

Stop arguing…it’s already…

Voices began to come into focus, snippets of conversations cut off by static and white noise as Eleanora steadily returned to a conscious state, and the long strings of connections that made up the data stream carried her aimlessly along. Anchoring herself to the nearest system was hard, the ability to fight the tug that came with separating her mind and body had grown weaker, but Eleanora managed to slip into a vaguely familiar system with only a little resistance.

Where it was familiar from she couldn’t figure out, but it was able to display text and that was all she needed.

subprocess.Popen(“\system\myapps\installed\notes.exe”)

showtext(“Please I need help.)

showtext(“I don’t know where I am.)

Maybe it was luck or there was some magnetic force with these dumb things but the communicator microphone picked up an all too familiar voice. “Data?” It was Missy, the fragile hope in her soft tone was honestly a little heartbreaking, and Eleanora knew if she was in her body that she’d be feeling a flurry of guilt for further scarring the teenager.

showtext(“Yea, Swiss Miss, it’s me.”)

A flurry of sound erupted through the speakers as Missy screamed for her father, likely at home since Eleanora didn’t recall using the backdoor she’d made in the heroics system. Though even that she couldn’t guarantee, this was the first time she’d ever been drifting through the data stream unconscious, and part of her wished that she could parse the fear she knew she should be feeling. “Dad, it’s Data, she’s in my communicator!” Heavy footsteps sounded and Eleanora wished she could see if he was hurt, that hadn’t been something she’d been focused on at the time of getting him out of trouble.

Unfortunately Tech-No’s crappy camera wasn’t working on Missy’s device for some reason.

But the hero’s stern voice distracted her wandering worries before she could get lost in them, keeping her mind present even as the data stream tried to drag her back in. “Eleanora, listen to me, do you know anything about where you are? Can you send us a signal or something from your location that we can track?” His question made her wish she had eyes to roll but he didn’t exactly know how her powers worked so it was kind of a fair thing to ask of her.

showtext(“Right now I’m here in your network, when I use my powers I jump my mind out of my body.”)

showtext(“Basically right now I can’t tell what’s happening to my physical self.”)

showtext(“If you were to find my body I’d pretty much be classed as brain dead until I can get myself back together.”)

It likely wasn’t what he wanted to hear but it was the truth, the knowledge that she could very much just be dead with no body to return to was a very real possibility, and the fact that she knew it was scary but couldn’t quite experience that fear only served to make the static at the edges of her perception fizzle more. But Marcus’ soft curse was a reminder, he was a hero and he was trying to save her, and the sudden doubts ran through every part of her mind.

showtext(“Maybe it’s better this way, Moreno. Maybe this is what I get for exposing bureaucrat jerks hiding behind their red tape.”)

showtext(“Maybe I should just disappear.”)

How easy would it be to just let go of the connection and drift, let the data stream carry her around until she eventually lost consciousness for good? With powers like hers there wasn’t a lot she could see as a future for herself, either imprisoned or turned into the ultimate spying weapon at someone's beck and call, a constant paranoia that kept her hiding most of who she was out of fear. “No! Don’t you dare, Eleanora.” The sharp retort drew her out of her own self-hatred, focusing on the heated something in his voice that she couldn’t place.

He said her name.

Marcus had used her actual name twice now.

Hearing it spoken in such a pretty baritone, the stern command holding an undercurrent of a plea to obey leading her to wish she wasn’t just a string of consciousness and that she could have felt her heart skip the way she knew it would. All she wanted to was to feel something aside from this emptiness; this sort of blank sensation that crept in when she was too exhausted, but like this was easier to admit what she knew she should and would be feeling.

Like this it wasn’t combatting her body, fighting physical reactions to her emotions was gone, in this form she could say what she needed to without the stress of actually feeling the emotions behind it.

As she stayed like this she knew she'd truly developed a romantic interest in Marcus Moreno, the reason she'd put herself on the line to save him was that she couldn't fathom the idea of something happening to him.

Without her body to stop her from clamming up she could admit the things she otherwise wouldn't.

showtext(“I’m scared, Marcus.”)

Expressing that to someone else made the statement heavier, the bubbling worries and fears of losing any freedom she had resurfacing in the very back of her thoughts, and Eleanora hated that it felt more real when expressed than when she had been feeling it bubbling up over the time she was searching for Marcus. “We’re not going to abandon you, I’ve got the team searching for any leads, and we’re not going to-“ His voice cut off in a way that sounded like he’d choked back a sound. “you aren’t getting locked up.” The firm statement sat between them.

showtext(“How do you know?”)

His answer was spoken softly but still carried so much weight.

“I won’t let them. I promise you that I won’t let anyone incarcerate you, not when you’ve suffered enough.”

Eleanora wished she could cry, wanting to relieve herself of the sudden building of energy crawling through her, the fact that she wasn’t in her body to properly feel and parse her emotions always made her feel inhuman like this. Static and white noise crackled at the edges of her being, reacting to the sudden burst of energy she’d worked up, and the crappy video footage she could see after they clearly did something to fiddle with the device showed the man’s stern face and Missy’s wet cheeks.

showtext(“I can try to find my body but for now I’m going to set this as a secondary home point, so I can find it easier.”)

showtext(“If I’m unable to return to myself for some reason I would like Tech-No to help me create a kill switch.”)

showtext(“Existing like this makes me feel inhuman.”)

showtext(“Broken.”)

showtext(“So if I have no other choice I would like to be able to choose my time.”)

The topic was heavy and the emotions that she wanted to feel when discussing it were absent, the dysphoria of being split in two had only begun growing worse recently and she had nobody to talk about it with. Illegally using her powers to expose predators and abusers in high executive positions, or in government positions, wasn’t exactly something she suspected most mental health professionals would hide from the police. It was possible but she also knew how desperate some people could be for money, clout, or influence and the paranoia of being sacrificed for those things outweighed her desire to open up.

Eleanora also knew those people she exposed had money and contacts and could make her very easily disappear if they knew she was the cause.

“You aren’t broken, you just need help. When you’re back I’m going to hug you and then I’m going to hit you for being stupid, then we’re going to get you help.”

Missy’s voice was the one that answered and her tone left no room for an argument, stern in such an innocent way, so Eleanora set the marker on the communicator’s little internal system as she stewed over the statement.

showtext(“You’re going to be a good hero, Swiss Miss.”)

Before either of them could respond she left the communicator, allowing the data stream to pull her along, and Eleanora felt the crackle of energy follow her wake as her subconscious held onto the memories to help evoke the emotions and hormones her body would need to parse them. Just once more she wanted to feel that little ‘oh´ as her heart skipped when someone said they cared even after seeing all of her exposed parts, just once she wanted to feel like maybe she could belong somewhere again.

Even if she knew deep down that she didn’t.

Three hours.

When the ping had come through Marcus hadn’t hesitated to suit up and follow it, taking Missy’s communicator temporarily with him as a precaution, and he had sent Blinding ahead to scout the situation out for them. The radio crackled as the speedy hero confirmed eyes on Lepido without a word, three clicks and a long hold to indicate no sign of Eleanora yet, but Marcus was going to go into this believing that they would save her.

He had to, not just for her but for Missy and himself.

“Blinding, hit ‘em hard and fast, we’re dropping in now.”

Miracle Guy dove out of the air as Marcus and Tech-No began their own descent, the flight packs weren’t as fast as the flying menace of social media but having the other man dive in first created a good distraction. The electric current running along the two stun swords crackled as Marcus ran into the building with Tech on his heels while Miracle handled the initial threat, the unmistakable sound of Red Lightning’s power erupting from his three o’clock just like he’d strategized.

None of the henchmen were able to withstand the two heroes, the thugs dropping with a brush of the high-powered stun weapons, and by the time they found the small room a woman stood at the side of the cot Eleanora was laying on. He took stock of the semi-conscious woman first as lines of blood from her nose had dripped down her face, the skin of her wrists marked from being restrained, and her breathing was slow just like the way she seemed to blink was. His gaze lifted to the other occupant as she played with a long knife, the grip had a set of studded knuckles to make it more than just a weapon to cut with.

Eleanora’s breath was rattled as she tried to speak and the woman laughed. “I should have expected you’d come and save the day, funny that I planned to use you for access to Heroics resources all to find Eleanora and she came to me. Don’t worry, lovely thing, I’ll forgive you for walking away from me.” The hand not holding a weapon slid down Eleanora’s cheek and Marcus saw the way she flinched, trying to tilt her head to get rid of the touch, his grip tightened on his weapons at the breathy whimper filled with a blend of anger and sadness.

“You’re going to be lucky if you don’t end up in prison for a long time, Addison.”

The fact that he’d used her name stilled the woman’s motions, green eyes sharp with anger, and Marcus could have laughed when she charged him. He did smirk when she tripped the static field that Tech had deployed and one swing from the stun weapons jumped the devices enough to activate them, it was easy for Tech to restrain Addison as Marcus hurried to Eleanora’s side and released the restraints holding her arms to the metal side boards.

The hug he received made Marcus tuck the weapons away and return the embrace as Eleanora burst into raspy sobs against his vest.

“You’re going to be okay, Eleanora, I’m here now.”

Eleanora Caballero had risked her freedom for him.

He was not going to let that level of kindness go without being acknowledged.

He wasn’t going to let her fall when she’d protected his family.

Marcus wasn’t going to let the Heroics fail her again.

Part Five