#sure I’ll integrate that into my worldview

[ghostdrinkssoup]

hi hello tumblr dot com, can we unpack will and hannibal’s character introductions?

trick question and I don’t care: we’re unpacking this whether you like it or not <3

for the people who wanted to be tagged here you are: @forgivenessishisdesign @kitzual

so anyway last night I rewatched apéritif and now that I know how the series ends a lot of small details stuck out to me. there’s so much content to pick apart that I’m actually losing my mind a little so I’m gonna divide my thoughts into two parts because this is going to be long. first we’ll do will’s introduction, then in the next post I’ll write about hannibal’s

EDIT: you can find part two (hannibal’s introduction) here :)

with that being said, let’s get started

will:

as far as character introductions go, will’s is so perfect to me that I need to dedicate some time just to infodump about it. let it be known that I am obsessed with this scene. there is so much packed into literally only four or so minutes and it’s glorious

funnily enough it’s pretty simple: the scene opens with a flashback. will is depicted recreating a crime scene using his empathy disorder (although audiences are not aware of his empathy yet) and ends with him returning to the present, where he’s lecturing his students about psychoanalysing serial killers, using the case as an example. that’s it. but the scene does everything it needs to do

an effective opening should tell you:

1) the rules/qualities of the world (which can either be exceedingly normal or very bizarre depending on the nature of the story’s subtext and extended metaphor)

2) the protagonist’s worldview, thus foreshadowing the nature of their arc

3) depict theme and raise thematic questions

4) and set-up the climax of the story, which should ideally mirror the opening so that we’re left with a circular narrative

by opening with will’s empathy we are immediately shown that this is a normal part of the story-world even if it’s fantastical by nature. it’s something will can do and that’s just how it is. it’s important that this is the first thing we see because his empathy serves a plot, character, thematic, and genre purpose. it’s a device, as well as an integral part of the show’s subtext and extended metaphor. it automatically puts him on an axis between empathy and psychopathy, or rather, humanity and monstrosity. even before we’re introduced to hannibal himself this is clear through a study of visual contrasts, since in the same instance we’re introduced to the concept of “empathy”, will is taking on the role of the killer, coldly explaining how he murdered the victims bleeding out at his feet. this is the first murder we see in the show, meaning, by proxy, will is the first “killer” we see as well, even if he’s just recreating the scene. we never see who killed mrs marlow, and so the only impression we have of this killer is will’s face. this sets up the structure of s1, since each murder reveals more about will himself, but I digress

and sure, the precision of his empathy is exaggerated and unrealistic, but we believe it a) because it’s the first thing we learn about him and is an unquestionable part of the story-world and its logic and b) because it adheres to its genre (crime/gothic horror). the gothic horror aspect in particular justifies the phantasmagoric, almost supernatural nature of will’s empathy, as well as it’s visual aesthetic (it’s represented through a hypnotic, pendulum type swinging motion). the gothic deals with topics of transgression, the unnatural or unexplainable, and most importantly the unknown. even if the show’s gothic elements aren’t exactly clear yet, the opening certainly maintains this tone. it’s why when the show moves away from the standard crime procedural structure, it’s not exactly jarring or beyond audience expectations (even unconscious ones)

but in all honesty, what really stands out about this scene is what will tells his students after. there are five elements fixed into the few lines he says (which I’ve highlighted below) and it’s all that’s needed to tie the scene back to theme and the show’s main through line

the first thing will says after he’s finished recreating the crime scene, returning to the present and leaving the killer’s mind, is “everyone has thought about killing someone, one way or another.” if the initial flashback worked to place empathy and psychopathy on a conceptual axis, paradoxically blurring the line by contrasting what we know about will vs what we see of will, then the above dialogue blurs everything even further. according to will’s worldview he, and as a result normal people in general, all think monstrous things. therefore, we all have the capacity to understand monsters

to will, humanity is not divorced from monstrosity

this is immediately followed by “be it your hand or the hand of god” introducing a new dimension for us to work with: man vs monster vs god. this gives his initial worldview a righteous edge. here we have a character who understands humanity’s capacity for violent thought, but it’s rendered through a type of divine justice. for him, there must be reason and meaning behind violence. better still, he would prefer it to be righteous. this of course sets up much of his dynamic with hannibal. they talk about religion a lot in the show. lines that immediately come to mind are “killing must feel good to god, he does it all the time” “is this meal an act of god, will?” “did god feel good about that? (violence)” “he felt powerful” etc. I think there’s also something to be said about how by thematically juxtaposing humanity with god, the concept of fate and free will also becomes implicit. we all think about killing, sometimes we choose to do it ourselves and sometimes god does it for us. who has power here? when does it stop being righteous? can one take on the role of god when killing? and if one does take on the role of god, would all blame be erased?

after this is: “now think about killing mrs marlow. why did she deserve this?” now we’re directly tying will’s dialogue to the flashback. to will, the death must have meaning. not only that, but for the perpetrator this must be righteous in some way. why did she deserve it? this line also adheres to the show’s genre and its conventions: this is a crime show, which means we’re exploring justice and injustice. again, thematic opposites. but, as he’s done the entire time he’s been on screen so far, will keeps blurring the line between these distinctions

he then says “tell me your design” which, as we all know, is a significant motif in the show. he says this all the damn time, after every murder. again, this brings forth the idea that the murders must have some kind of deeper meaning, psychological or perhaps even creatively. after all, “design” is an interesting way to phrase this. it sounds artistic, purposeful, imbued with meaning. however, the exact meaning of this is only cemented when he follows it with “tell me who you are”

“tell me who you are” is arguably the most important part of this entire sequence because, first and foremost, this show is about identity, specifically will’s identity. he recontextualises everything he just said in that moment, as well as the flashback we watched moments earlier. the design, the intent, the act of murder, and whether it’s divine or monstrous or purely human, is all linked to one’s identity. by understanding the murder, we understand the man. further still, there lies hidden commentary on one’s moral choices, as well as how autonomy fuels self-empowerment: we will understand who will is once he makes a choice to secure his own autonomy and power, which he does in the wrath of the lamb

it’s why he struggles to make solid choices all throughout the show, and why the specific choices he makes are so important, because whatever he authentically chooses to do will reveal who he is, no matter how hard he tries to hide from himself. he chooses to kill hobbs. he chooses to warn hannibal and gets his stomach split open in the process. if he hadn’t been so indecisive, he would’ve chosen to run away with hannibal too. he chooses to follow him to italy. and finally, he chooses to break him out of prison. because ultimately, once cannot change their nature. you cannot reduce him to a set of influences. he’s not a product of anything. he has his own design

and in hindsight, the questions raised here concerning will’s nature is resolved the moment he chooses to take hannibal down with him. the ambiguity of the resolution recalls the conflict between fate and free will, justice and injustice, and humanity and monstrosity (as set up in the opening scene) since although will actively chooses to drag them down the cliff, and as a result chooses loving hannibal over everything else, something he can’t really control anyway, he simultaneously leaves their fate up to god. it’s an act of faith. in that moment, when will finally seizes power and recognises who he is, accepting hannibal as his natural equal, his hand becomes the hand of god. in a final coin toss, will puts their lives in his own hands, and hannibal lets him do it anyway

[amphisia]

today i’d like to talk about one of the most influential & helpful skills in my witchcraft practice- thinking.

not researching, or spell casting, or cleansing (though these can be important!), but thinking is what lead to the greatest breakthroughs and understandings in my personal practice.

usually how this goes is i will do cursory research into something, then i’ll sit for awhile and do nothing but think. some questions i usually ask myself include:

-who does this belief/information/etc benefit? why? who holds the power?

-does this subject seem like something that may be from a closed practice? (i do recommend looking this up in your initial research, the questions you ask yourself will likely differ based on the answer to this question)

-how does this idea fit with my values and beliefs? does this idea challenge anything i currently believe?

-what other ideas does this thing connect to? how does this expand my worldview?

-is there anything about this that confuses me? scares me? comforts me?

-what thoughts/emotions do i associate with this idea/what thoughts/emotions does this provoke in me?

-how does this reframe prior knowledge, experiences, feelings, etc?

-is this something i want to integrate into my practice? (and is this something it is okay to integrate into my practice ie avoiding appropriation)

-if yes, how can i implement this is in a way that makes sense for me & my practice in our current state?

add/remove questions as you feel will be helpful if you decide to try something similar. my practice is highly individual & i share this not as a “you have to do this” but as an idea. break sessions into manageable amounts of time and effort for yourself. let your mind roam and see what comes up. there’s a lot to be learned from inside yourself.

as someone with memory issues, taking notes about these things helps me a lot, both in current time and in the future when i look back at my notes. a lot of the time, my ideas about a subject will change over time & its helpful to repeat this process periodically about the same subjects. dating notes as i make them is helpful to establish timelines (especially moving things from journal to journal. sometimes i’m copying a note i made 3 years ago and i make sure to make a note of that as well. if it’s important enough to move from journal to journal its likely significant enough to mark that i am still believing or using this particular aspect of an idea).

tldr: sometimes it can be good to just sit and think for awhile

[pumpkinscissors]

Ring 4 - Patrol lyric analysis / Goggle theory

May as well call this post Habitual Overthinking: Episode 2...

The popular interpretation of “Three days straight seeing monochrome”  is a literal one: That the Patrolmen’s goggles render the wearer’s vision in greyscale.

If the line is meant literally, then what is the (perceived) advantage of monochromatic vision? Why bother forcing the Patrolmen to see that way?

--- Their goggles are confirmed to require power (POWEEEER)...

(If the image doesn’t load: Cave and Canary’s official YouTube account commented under Cycle 8, saying “...the people of this region live off of less energy, generally, than it takes to power one of the Patrolmen’s goggles.”)

---

Requiring power as they do, evidently, monochrome vision would have to be a very deliberate choice by the creators of the goggles. (I assume Ring 7′s Industry workers are tasked with the production of the Patrol’s tools and weapons, under orders from much higher up.)

At least when it comes to monitors and cameras, monochrome doesn’t use less power and they aren’t any easier to make than full-color. I assume the same would be said of a visor. So why?

I couldn’t find any real-world studies claiming any benefit to black-and-white vision (such as altering one’s psyche/worldview, making one feel disconnected from the world, or anything like that which might benefit their brutality). In fact, monochrome would only be a detriment in low-light settings -- such as Ring 8, where they presumably frequent for Retrievals.

I’ll just say, the most credence is in the metaphorical interpretation that conveys a lack of nuance; black-and-white mental perception.

However, for the fun of theorizing... there is one thing that monochromatic displays are better for: Medical imaging. What if, to further dehumanize the subjects that the Patrolmen are forced to terrorize, they see in a type of X-ray vision? (C’mon: It’s sci-fi! That can exist, right??)

Surely that, in itself, would be haunting enough to cause deep unrest and ill psychological effects. There’s nothing more unnatural, to see everyone as their bare essentials, where every face is that of death itself. And like a mirror, each person would be a constant reminder of the Patrolmen’s own mortality and promise of execution (if they ever “try to disobey”). Anyone would lose days of sleep...

---

Alternatively, maybe the Patrolmen undergo “integration” like the Industry workers/Meka-Niks. (Remember, when the Patrolmen in Cycle 8 speak, their voices are altered. And there’s no external indication of voice-altering technology.)

The lyric, “I can’t tell when I last slept” might support this notion: That they are, in some sense, cyborgs whose bodies and minds are pushed to their limits by invasive, corrupting hardware, and they see in monochrome to avoid mental overload (or for the sake of X-ray vision! No? Still not catching on? :c)

And if the cyborg theory tracks, then I wonder if they mean to say that the Patrolmen can have their memory wiped at will? (“And though my conscience is a bit unkempt / Well, it's no bother, I can just forget / And never bother with a bit of it again”)

---

It really could be as a simple as B&W “lacking emotion” or “seeming less real”, though (which are both things that are routinely said of historical photographs).

---

EDIT: Confirmation from Casey himself! The lyric is a double entendre; the goggles are literally in monochrome and the Patrol are encouraged to view situations as black-and-white. (Still no word on *why* they’re monochrome, though.)

[wisteria-lodge]

lion primary + badger secondary (bird model)

ie A HOUSE MATCH !!

Hellooo, I’m sorry for bothering you but I’ve found this blog and I absolutely love your character analysis and overall thought about the SHC system, and I could use some help?

I’ve known the system for a while now, since the old SHC tumblr times, and while understanding my current primary situation has been quite easy, I’m having A LOT of trouble with my secondary and it’s becoming a bit of a issue for me because the more I think about it, the more confused I become, to the point where it’s upsetting me a bit.

First thing first, my Primary is a very “standard” Lion, the whole “you feel if something is right or not and if you do something that’s not right to you you feel bad/ill/it’s wrong” is extremely me. I had some doubts about a Badger model, but I think it’s just that my personal ideals and values align a lot with a Badger worldview, since I grew in a very Badger society and family (very leftist, a lot of emphasis on equality and valuing and creating communities). Reading various description/interpretations of primary Lion always feels right, while reading primary Badger always makes me think “yeah, this is all good and nice, BUT…” so this was quite easy to sort out (no pun intended).

Are you me? So far... I could have written this. It’s possible I *might* be biased going forward. 

When it comes to secondaries, I see a lot of myself in Bird descriptions: I make spreadsheets for everything.

 Pretty Bird.

I am a crafter with an apparently endless supply of books and tutorials and supplies ready, and the enthusiasm to share them. 

That sounds more Badger. 

I am the mom friend 

Badger.

who always has what’s needed in their bag. 

Bird.

I am that one person you can count on knowing a funny or interesting anecdote about almost any topic, from the mundane to the truly obscure. Learning new things, about any topic, is literally one of my biggest pleasures in life. 

Bird [model?] Whichever one isn’t your secondary is a model you clearly love.

I take pride in all these things, but I honestly have trouble understanding if I like using them as tools because they help me with my ADHD and so I received a very strong positive enforcement using them and I kept the ones I like, or if I started doing them because they are what I like doing and coincidentally they help me managing my symptoms or better navigate the world in my day to day life.

Could be either, but modeling Bird because you’re neurodivergent is very much a thing.

Also, while I love planning, when it comes to making decisions I tend to gather all information and summarize it in a way that makes sense to me so I can visualize the issue in my mind as complete and detailed as possible, but the final decision tends to feel a bit… impulsive, to me?, there’s always A LOT of gut feeling involved, and when I don’t follow it usually it ends up being a wrong or subpar decision. I do need to gather all the available information about the issue/situation/item/people, but rather than making my decision by comparison, I use the information to make sure that I’m “seeing” the truth (or as close to it as it is possible) and then once I feel safe that I’m not overlooking anything important I just KNOW what is the correct decision.

That’s a Lion primary making a call. 

Could this simply be a very strong primary interfering with the decision-making, even when it’s not about ideals but more mundane things?

Decision making is always a primary thing. Mundane stuff included. Mundane stuff is important. 

On the other hand, I am an extremely hard working person (I am changing jobs right now because I feel like my old bosses are making more and more difficult for me to just do my job properly and without needing to cut corners, and it just feels wrong to me). 

Oh good lord. I am ready to sort you as a Badger secondary solely on the basis of THAT. 

People tell me I’m a very good listener and that I am especially good at helping others unravel their thoughts when they’re all confused and tangled because I ask the right questions. I seem to gain other people’s trust easily and often I get told gossip or secrets before others. 

Badger. Also DAMN but that’s relatable. I think you might house-match me. 

I got told several times by previous bosses that I should look into becoming a team leader because people like me and I make them get along better. 

Sounds like a Lion/Badger combo. 

People get attached to me very quickly and when I have problems the stream of folks asking if they can help or just checking in is always way more than I expect.

Isn’t it weird how that happens? 

This all sounds like Badger stuff, from the descriptions I read, but many of them are not things I actively enjoy doing, I just.. do them because it would be weird to do otherwise? Or it feels like they happen to me with no effort on my part.

Because they’re just you. It’s just who you are. 

I think they might be simply a result of me growing up in a society that values hard work and being kind to others, or just me being a likeable person

Not everyone finds this easy. Not even close. I have read so many testimonials written by people in Badger secondary households killing themselves trying to fit into this model. Wanting isn’t enough. Having examples around you isn’t enough. 

or maybe coping mechanisms I had to learn in order to “pass” as neurotypical but as I wrote the more think and read about Birds and Badgers and their differences, the more I get confused and frustrated.

Now I know I’m projecting, but all my neurotypical coping mechanisms come out of the Bird secondary toolbox. 

But it would make sense since I burned out badly in my teens from trying to always try to be perfect for my family, my friends, my teachers, society 

That sounds like a young Badger secondary, more than a young Bird secondary.

and when I finally found who I really wanted to be I resolved to never let anyone define what or how I should be ever again (hello there, Lion primary!)

I hear that. 

After a lifetime of beating myself up for not living up to the absurdly high expectations I set up for myself, I have decided that the only way to stay sane for me is to do the groundwork, be as prepared as I can

Bird

 put in the work I should

Badger

 but once I’m in the thick of it just… ride the wave. And now I got to the point where I have the confidence that I am smart enough to learn the basics of a new skill on the fly, if needed.

To me, this is so fundamentally, so spiritually Badger secondary. You don’t have tools. You are a tool. You made yourself into one. And that moment where you can just trust yourself to catch the world, absorb it into yourself, and become whatever it needs you to be... it’s ecstasy. 

I’d say that lack of time is my worst enemy, but due/thanks to the ADHD that’s not true most of the time, since lack of time is what enables me to get past the executive dysfunction in the first place, so I’ll say I have a love-hate relationship with it. Doing things just before a deadline is it’s own kind of high, after all (I’m not saying it’s healthy).

At the base of your soul, you’re not really a Bird prepper/planner. 

A practical example: I usually don’t like platforming games much, but I am LOVING Immortals: Fenyx Rising because in most situations, there is a “best” way to do things but you can also get creative by using different skills, using specific items, finding loopholes, or a combination of all of them.

Sounds like a Bird secondary having fun. [a fun model?]

When I fail a level/combat I don’t get frustrated because I know that I just have to try a few more times until I find the solution that feels right FOR ME, even if it’s not the most efficient ones. And when I do it feels great, even if I look a at guide afterwards and there’s a waaay easier solution! I usually feel a bit silly for not “seeing it” but also think something like “well, I think MY way is more fun!”

Oh yeah, a Bird secondary would not have that reaction. That is the sacred Badger consistency of method. How you do something matters equally as much as the final product. 

When I cook, I usually find a recipe I like and try it as written, then I make small adjustments to improve it, see how it turns out, and so on until I have a recipe that is MY recipe, one I really like and that I know well enough to use as a basis to be changed if needed, knowing exactly how the change will affect the end result. I think this is why I prefer baking to other kinds of cooking, since it’s much more akin to chemistry I feel like I have more control over what a change will do. 

On it’s own this could be a description of rapid-fire Bird. And you clearly have Bird, you have a lot of it. You love it. 

So I guess that what really matters to me is being able to do things my way so that I can enjoy the process and live up to my standards instead of external ones? 

But then you say something like this... it’s about the process... it’s about the method... it’s about something coming up to your own personal standards. And that’s so Badger. 

This ended up being very lengthy… I’ve tried shortening it but English isn’t my first language and I was afraid I might come across not clearly. 

Your English is perfect, and insanely clear. You’re clearer than I am. 

Thank you again for the blog, I especially like your DS9 characters’ analysis and I am low-key hoping for more :)

I’m particularly proud of those ones. I’d love to do more, but before that I would have to go back and re-watch the show, or at least key character episodes. I’m not going to sort from memory. That would be doing a show I love, and a number of extremely complex characters a disservice. And it wouldn’t be nearly as fun. 

(it’s that whole Badger integrity-of-method thing, you know how it goes.) 

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #28- I Sure Hope Y’all Like Megatron

“Dark Cybertron” is finally over! Woohoo!

Who’s ready for a return to hijinks and mild peril?

I know this guy is!

Hold on a second-

We start our foray into Season 2 of MTMTE with a little meta-humor-

-and then it’s right into the swing of things, as Brainstorm uses the thin, fragile wine glass of faction-based morality to hold his personal need to make instruments of violence. Nautica disapproves, but then why wouldn’t she? She’s not been steeped in the militant ideologies of the Autobots for millions of years.

It’s six months after the convoluted events of “Dark Cybertron”, and our beloved ship, the Lost Light, is back on track for the Knight Quest. Nautica’s joined the crew, which is neat, but there are far more interesting things going on.

Like Rung actually doing his fucking job for once.

Wow, look at that little creamsicle man go.

It would seem that in the last half-year (by Earth standards) Megatron’s somehow gotten himself into the esteemed position of Captain of the Lost Light. This likely means that Rodimus has been defeated in battle, or perhaps fucked off on yet another space yacht to run away from his responsibilities. I suppose the narrative will have to fill us in on just what exactly happened.

Or, at least, I hope it does. Wouldn’t be a terribly good story if I had to guess on how exactly this dude’s in charge of a whole-ass Autobot crew.

Yes, yes, I know he switched sides, but goddammit, it takes a little more than saying sorry and changing your wardrobe to excuse the murder of half of NYC.

I mean, we can do both. Both is an option. I’ll break out The Communist Manifesto right now, let’s fuckin’ gooooooooo-

Six months prior to Megatron’s therapy appointment, Rodimus is ready to high-tail it off of Cybertron yet again. This is because, as established in previous posts, Cybertron kinda sucks butt. He bursts into the meeting Optimus Prime called- even though he’s really not leader of anything anymore, Starscream is- bids everyone farewell, and is about to run back out of the room when he’s stopped.

Turns out that the populace of Cybertron want Megatron to stand trial. That makes sense, given what all he’s done. Of course, the Autobot pals we’ve got in the room want to skip due process and go straight to the part where Megatron pays through the nose for the last four million years.

Which doesn’t feel terribly heroic or good guy-ish, but I think by this point you’ve probably caught on to the fact that everyone in IDW Transformers is morally gray at BEST.

Because Megatron’s had a rough time the last few years, in relation to his bodily integrity, spark extraction- that thing that High Command lied about in relation to Overlord- isn’t an option. It would just kill him dead.

Uh, excuse me? Optimus Prime, sir? Monsieur Premier?

Guess Optimus hasn’t been keeping up with exRiD.

Anyway, yeah, since Tyrest fucked off in “The Sound of Breaking Glass” and also tried to commit a genocide, we’re gonna need someone to cast judgement.

Course, a military trial isn’t exactly ideal, but as long as it’s open to the public, it should be fine.

Probably.

Anyway, Prowl’s also going to help. Ultra Magnus has been assigned the task of representing Megatron in court, a job which he’s positively delighted to have, if his face is any indication.

The gang breaks for lunch, and Rodimus and Optimus touch base on how the Knight Quest is going.

Because Rodimus’ half of the Matrix had the map for finding the Knights of Cybertron in it, they’re gonna have to go with Plan B.

Oh fuck yes, I love Plan B!

Unfortunately, finding the ideal romantic partner for all Cybertronians is going to have to wait until after the trial, because Optimus really wants Rodimus here for this. Though perhaps there’s a way to make things move a little faster…

Back in the present, Megatron’s had just about enough of Rung being a psychiatry joke, and is about to walk out of his appointment. Ravage is here, which is neat. Rung asks Megatron about the three most important people in his life, and how he met them. One of these people is, funnily enough, Rung.

Rung, if you’ll recall, was thrown into Megatron and Impactor’s table at Maccadams waaaaaay back in The Transformers #22, the first issue of the IDW run that Roberts wrote solo. It would seem that getting arrested and subjected to police brutality ruined his once-idealistic worldview. This is just a lightning-round recap of the events of the “Chaos Theory” storyline.

Being reminded of how hard he got dunked on makes Rung break out his copy of Megatron’s autobiography, Towards Peace. Of course, Megatron has to be “that guy”, and makes it out to be far more than it actually is. My dude, you used your writing to tell all your proto-Decepticon buddies to go beat up Whirl in prison. Let’s not make things sound more grandiose than they are.

Anyway, it turns out that Rung is actually just as much a nerd as he looks, as he reveals that he’s in possession of one of the only few copies of the original version of Towards Peace. And then he takes off his glasses and the fans go bonkers, even though he’s just got that Milne Same-Face going on, just like everyone else.

There you are, you animals.

Rung discusses Revisionism, I’m reminded that the first publication of Eugenesis had a dedication to Roberts’ son of all people, and we get the question of who Terminus is to Megatron.

But alas! The X-ray vision’s been turned on, and it’s time to see… nude robots? An in-depth anatomy lesson?

Robots are confusing sometimes. Anyways, major props to Milne for drawing all that detail. Dude does the technical stuff with a ferocity that must be awe-inspiring to behold.

Megatron’s decided that it’s time for lunch, and then he’s going to do captain stuff.

Because he’s captain of the Lost Light.

I’m convinced Rodimus is dead. That’s the only way this is happening.

Six months ago, Swerve was being awful Swerve-like, with his new buddy Crosscut- guess he finally learned the guy’s name- and Riptide, who we’ll get to a little later on. These three wonderful lads are holding a sort of “crew try-outs”, and it looks like the requirements needed for entry on Megatron’s Lost Light are stiff.

Still, maybe our new friend Nautica will make the cut.

Oh, you are simply delightful!

Despite Nautica having interest in nearly every topic in the universe, on top of having impeccable taste in booze, she just misses the cut. It’s at this point that Nightbeat bursts into the room to stop this farce from going any further. The fact that nobody mentioned anything prior to this is surprising, given that portmanteaus don’t really seem the type of thing Ultra Magnus would approve of.

Back six months ago, we see what Optimus Prime’s super great idea was to expedite the judicial process- Chromedome. It’s always Chromedome. He’s gonna do that thing he promised his late husband he’d stop doing. I suppose it’s a good thing- for Rewind, anyway- that Megatron is wholly against the idea of having his memories torn out of his head. Guess we’re gonna have to do the trial the normal, non brain-pokey way.

Optimus leaves the cell, because I suppose he’s remembered that there’s a conflict of interests here, but Rodimus stays behind to let Megatron know he deserves everything that’s coming his way.

Then Megatron breaks out the puzzle-box from Hellraiser.

In the present, Chromedome isn’t so much spiraling in his depression as he is circling the drain. Nightbeat doesn’t give a shit about that though- he’s more concerned with the fact that one of the numbers on the door to Chromedome’s room is missing. But I’m sure it’s fine.

It’s fiiiiiiiiiiine.

While Nightbeat’s busy being insensitive to his fellow man’s distress, Megatron’s arrived to his room to find his door’s been vandalized by a bunch of idiots who must have just discovered what a thesaurus is. Then he gets shot in the fucking hand with an arrow.

As you do.

Whirl’s gotten ahold of a bow, and he fully intends to use it for Megatron-directed violence. And also his fists. His very pointy fists. He punches Megatron through the fucking floor into the fuel furnace, and they fall what’s probably a good 200 feet to the ground below. Whirl yells about evening the score between the two of them, and then knees Megatron in the dick.

Turns out, Megatron remembers Whirl even better than originally thought, having gone so far as to order his forces to not kill Whirl, because, in a way, he was grateful for the lesson he learned back before the war in Rodion.

Oh man, I hope Rung’s somehow listening in on this. Like, eavesdropping is obviously bad medicine, but we’ve already established that he sucks as a professional, and he needs what few advantages he can get.

Whirl, enraged by the implication that he’s been fighting fixed battles for the last four million years, punches Megatron in the gut… and his arm gets swallowed up by an errant portal leftover from all of Shockwave’s tampering. Since you can’t really fight with only one arm, Megatron wanders off to do captainy things.

Walking back the timeline slightly, we revisit Megatron leaving Rung’s office, and the idea of personal revisionism, the conversation becoming parallel with the strange happenings going on within the ship, as Rewind’s final message is altered so as not to end with “I love you” but instead a blood-curdling scream. Chromedome is, understandably, upset by this turn of events.

Over with Whirl, it’s revealed that the little fight we saw was intentionally set up. For what purpose, or by whom, is left a mystery.

Please see a doctor.

One last flashback to the trial, as Prowl lists off everything that’s standing in the way of our Sympathetic Megatron Redemption Arc.

Good fuckin’ luck, James.

Back in the present, Megatron’s slapped a bandaid on the hole in his torso, as he checks to see what’s happening on the bridge. It would appear there’s a coffin floating around in space.

Pretty fucked up.

[thejustmaiden]

Heyo, fellow Inuyasha fans! Happy Friday! This particular blog will serve as a collection of random thoughts I’ve been mulling over lately. Hope you’ll consider giving it a read. By the way, it’ll specifically pertain to the Sessrin ship. If that’s not something that is of interest to you, then no need to read any further. Whatever happens, I wanted to get this out before the sequel. Alrighty, let’s go! 

I’m not sure many of us realize just how much fiction sparks public dialogue and shapes culture. There have been countless studies and research done to prove it, therefore this really isn’t up for debate. What the real question here should be is have we taken the time to fully contemplate and assess just how much fictional experiences are able to change or influence our perspective on real, everyday life? The visual arts are just one of many evolutionary adaptations that serve to give us more insight into one another’s mind. If our outlook on fiction contrasts with said insight, then perhaps some re-evaluating is in order.  

Powerful works of literature such as 1984 and the beloved Harry Potter series are just two examples. George Orwell’s book contributed strongly to how readers viewed government and politics during that time, and to this day it’s a book that resonates with many. As much as Harry Potter is cherished all across the world, there are religious and academic institutions that condemn it or have even gone so far as to ban it. I may not agree with the extreme measures taken, but it’s fascinating nonetheless to witness the extent to which fiction can move and mobilize people for a cause.

The takeaway is that indicating fiction doesn’t have the power to create change in our everyday lives is misleading to say the least. So how exactly then can fictional stories that are, after all, completely made up affect society in such profound ways? It all lies in the power of the psychology of fiction. According to cognitive psychologist and novelist, Keith Oatley, who’s been researching the psychological effects of fiction for over a decade, he states that engaging with stories about other people can improve empathy and theory of mind. When we identify with these characters’ struggles, we begin to share their frustration for societal problems that plague them. These types of stories tap into our emotions more so than- believe it or not- nonfiction, and thus their effects inspire us and even have the ability to alter our worldviews. 

I’ll be returning to that specific topic a bit later, but moving on for now!

It’s safe to say that I speak on behalf of the majority of antis. That being said, I first want to add that we are aware that sessrin shippers claim to agree that there was nothing inherently romantic that took place between Rin and Sesshomaru during their travels together. The thing is we have trouble believing you guys when you time and time again provide contradictory statements to defend your stance.

Voicing things like, “all signs point to Rin” and “it’s been foreshadowed” sends the exact opposite message of what you supposedly stand for and, if anything, confirms that you’ve had romance on your mind long before it would’ve been acceptable to come out with openly. You can’t just go along with what we say when it’s convenient to your argument and then back it up later with “who else but Rin.” How can the relationship you’re imagining be so obvious if they didn’t hint at it for the whole duration of the original series like we agreed upon? Elaborate on how we could’ve possibly come to such wildly different conclusions when we started AND left off with the same views for and throughout the series. 

On top of that, making the excuse that we don’t speak for adult!Rin and that she has the right to make her own decisions once she’s old enough is a weak defense. Firstly, because we haven’t even met her. Secondly, because it’s unfair of you to assert that you know what’s best for Rin and then say we’re not allowed to just because it doesn’t align with your beliefs. I get that you feel protective over her character, but do recall that this adult version of her none of us have actually met yet. We have no idea what kind of woman she’s become, what her dreams or aspirations may be, and whether she’s married or even wants to be. I’m not against the idea of her falling in love, I just don’t think it’ll be with Sesshomaru. I guess I’m also a fan of the idea of her following in Kaede’s footsteps, because if anyone can grow up to be an independent, trusted, and wise leader of the community like her it’s Rin.

To make matters worse, way too many of you continue to celebrate the drama cd and profess that it was sweet that Sesshomaru basically promised he’d wait for Rin all while somehow ignoring the glaring grooming implications. Why do you only see what you want to see and fail to acknowledge that actual child grooming scenarios do in fact play out like this in real life? A high percentage of people who have been victims of grooming can attest to this. If Sessrin does go canon, all the sequel succeeded in doing to avoid the direct correlation with grooming was skip over the more questionable and dodgy portions of it. Take out the time jump, however, and you no longer have a loophole to cover up the scary unmistakable truth, which is that Sessrin and grooming are essentially one in the same.

No one case is identical to another so please don’t come to me with your “but how is it grooming if Sesshomaru didn’t manipulate Rin” refutes. Nobody knows what the hell went on during those years between The Final Act and this upcoming sequel. Based on everything exhibited so far- that is if we decide to recognize the drama cd like so many of you choose to do- Sessrin’s dynamic is eerily reminiscent of real life child grooming. Why else do you think a lot of us fans have a huge problem with it? It’s triggering for a reason. 

Let’s be honest, Sesshomaru’s supposed love confession could’ve just been the first of many gestures like it. Who really knows, right? According to you shippers, a major shift in their relationship took place sometime during this critical period none of us got to watch unfold. I’m sure you all have explored the various ways this would’ve gone down in fan fiction and through other creative means of expression. Not to spoil the fun, but all I can’t help but wonder about is just how many of those supposed “cute moments” would’ve been as creepy and cringey as that proposal. Hundreds of thousands (possibly millions?!) of fans would undoubtedly agree with me, too. It seems to me this ain’t due to a mere difference of opinion. Taste is one thing, ethics a whole other. 

By the way, in case you didn’t know, groomers don’t necessarily need to plan out every single move in order for their behavior to constitute as grooming. What we should be paying attention to instead is the fact that Sesshomaru made a conscious decision to act on his own selfish desire for a young girl who couldn’t have possibly known in that moment the magnitude of what he was asking of her. Why is it that a vulnerable Rin is put in a position that forces her to be the one responsible for making such a big, life-changing decision for the both of them? Yes, Sesshomaru gave her the choice and, yes, she doesn’t have to make it till later, but why on Earth is he coming to her with this well before a child her age is ready and mature enough to handle it? Even if his intentions are good (broadly speaking of course), his what you shippers probably call “innocent acts” are incidentally coercing Rin into reciprocating his feelings. Whether he planned for that or not, he’s at fault. Period. 

That’s one way the power imbalance works. A child wants nothing more than to please the adult they look up to and adore, because they’re impressionable like that. Maybe Rin processes this like she’ll want whatever he wants, so that’s what she trains herself to believe- either right then and there or over time. Plus, if you really think about it, why wouldn’t she trust him if in her eyes he’s been nothing but good to her and that’s all she’s ever really known? (Psst! Charm is integral to the manipulative nature of grooming so it’s deceiving AKA manipulation can come off as praise or flattery.) Bottom line is that Rin is too young to have to think about this kind of deep stuff at all, and Sesshomaru shouldn’t have taken advantage of the power he had/has over her to influence a decision she was by no means prepared to hear about much less decide on. Your headcanons seem to imply that she’ll eventually have to choose though, and Idk about you but I rather not push my own fantasy agenda onto a underage girl regardless of how much I want it. Idc if she’s fictional, it wouldn’t feel right so why would I want to see that? My principals couldn’t ever allow for it.   

Even if it wasn’t an official proposal, per se, it’s still disturbing to me that so many of you find joy in the thought of a grown adult male essentially waiting for a young girl HE KNEW to become old enough before pursuing her. I know this drama cd ain’t technically canon, y'all, but since this is literally the only source we have that may foreshadow a potential Sessrin to come, and it’s referenced a lot, I figured it still should be called out for exactly what it is- Grooming: 101!!!!

Just as I demonstrated above, fiction has the ability to make even the most inappropriate and uncomfortable situations be viewed in a favorable light when you put the right spin on it. *cough* Lolicon culture, need I say more? *cough* Despite what you may believe, the strategies fiction utilizes to explain themes/concepts can genuinely lead to how we perceive them, and ultimately to how we come to make sense of a similar event presented to us in real life. Especially if we have no prior experience with any of it and have nothing to compare something to, these perceptions can be dangerous yet still persuasive to certain fans- young ones in particular. The more narrative consistency across stories and different mediums, the more likely they’ll influence social beliefs. Minors don’t possess the same capacity as adults to think critically about the content they consume, and if we aren’t more careful about what we put out there then all of us will continue to face serious repercussions.

This is precisely why it’s crucial we persist in our fight against the rabid phenomenon of glorifying young girls in every sexual context imaginable. Just look at what something as seemingly harmless as fiction has the power to do. The scope of fiction is broad and far-reaching, and it’s about time we stop denying that fact and actually do something about it if we have the means to.

The truth of the matter is that we’re in desperate need of proper education and training programs on this issue in our communities. Families need to ensure their children have access to the necessary resources, but it isn’t just on them. ALL of us gotta do our part and ALL of us should be up for the task. It takes a village, right? If we do not properly discuss and address child sexual abuse (CSA) with our children and in public forums, including the internet, then we’re ultimately accepting incidents of CSA should they arise. Consequently, that also translates to indirectly accepting that the predators among us stay untreated and/or unpunished. That’s how the generational and societal aspect of the abuse can continue, and we must do everything in our power to secure our children’s future. Yes, even when it comes to fiction.

If you still somehow don’t think the Sessrin pairing has anything to do with grooming, allow me to break this down for you one more time:

1. If some of your fellow sessrin shippers say that a relationship like this in real life is harmful, then that should be pretty telling in and of itself.

2. Piggybacking off #1: if your only defense to that is “well it’s just fiction,” then you should ask yourself why you can’t ever come up with better reasons. Same goes for history and culture, so please stop using those to justify this relationship. None of the above can or should be applied since it’s already been established that fiction pervades our lives and vice versa.

3. If fellow shippers who are victims of grooming say they are drawn to Sessrin because it allows them in a way to “take back control” from their abuser so that they can better cope with past traumas, then they’re inadvertently admitting that Sessrin does possess qualities associated with the past child sexual abuse they underwent. AKA Sessrin is relatable for its abusive dynamic.

I have to ask by the way, but why do you get so offended when we don’t support your ship anyway? Is it because we interpret it to be controversial and you don’t like your ship getting a bad rap? Is it because it would be insulting to admit that antis actually have a point in it being problematic and you rather double down instead? Or is it because you’re projecting yourself onto Rin and prefer to not go into detail about why that is? Maybe it’s too personal, or maybe it’s because deep down you’re ashamed. Of course that doesn’t mean you’re bad people, but suppressing these kind of negative emotions can’t be healthy for anyone. A little awareness and self-reflection on your part can benefit not just you but all of us in the long run. Cognitive dissonance can suck, but it’s also part of being human. 

I recently came across a comment I’d like to share with you. Unfortunately, this is not the first time nor will it be the last I see the likes of it. Anyway, in it a fan stated how embarrassing it must be being an Anti in this fandom when an episode like “Forever with Lord Sesshomaru” exists. Guys, this shipper and all those who liked their post are showing their true colors. Perpetuating and/or anticipating these sexualized images of young girls is a grave issue in both our society and media alike. I think we can all agree on that, or at least I hope so. It’s remarks like these that prove we still got a long way to go in terms of progress, and if we ever hope to effectively reverse some of our backwards way of thinking. So serious question for ya in regard to this: Why is it too much to ask that grooming be portrayed for what it is? Grooming. To clarify, grooming is bad and needs to be painted in a bad light. It’s as simple as that. If only we could all acknowledge it for what it is, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. 

Historical accuracy and cultural differences aside, it appears the crux of the matter between Sessrin shippers and Antis is our acceptance and/or denial of fiction’s influence on real life. If we can’t agree on this, then we’ll never agree on anything else. As mentioned earlier, there is more than enough evidence to support the idea that fiction impacts our lives in extraordinary ways. I, for one, believe in the transformative power of stories. I think they do more for us than many of us give them credit for and/or are inclined to admit. 

This is partially why I believe that the majority of sessrin folk are missing the point most of the time. All they do is focus on insignificant and irrelevant information that accomplishes nothing but more gaslighting and strawmanning. Whether it be an intentional or unconscious decision, whatever we argue goes right over their head. All they do is throw around deflections and antagonizing remarks that serve no real purpose other than to make Antis out to be the unreasonable and irrational ones. Making connections between our own lives and our stories is a completely natural and normal occurrence. If those particular shippers insist on denying just how interconnected real life and fiction both are, what that tells me is they’re either out of touch with reality or deliberately choose to be.

Just to be clear, I am of the opinion that most if not all antis aren’t real life predators. If they say they aren’t, I honestly take their word for it. Speaking to Sessrin shipper directly: We know it’s not Sesshomaru you want to be but Rin. No, we’re not calling you pedophiles or groomers. None of us think you are using a fictional ship to attract underage fans to be the Rin in your life or anything of the sort. We are well aware that many of you are self-inserting yourself as Rin, so please don’t feel the need to tell us yourself because that would be stating the obvious.

I learned from a few of you since this sequel was announced that the Sessrin relationship isn’t just a ship but an opportunity for you to confront the person who used and abused you. So there’s two issues with this I’d like to raise. (Sorry if I’m repeating myself, but it’s urgent I stress this again!) This is what I have to say:

If fiction does not affect real life or have the ability to normalize anything as you claim to believe, then why does “fixing” what happened to you via your preferred choice of coping associated with these two characters in the first place? Why bring your past abuse into this at all if at the end of the day it’s “just fiction” and nothing more to you but a source of entertainment?

By confessing that you use Sessrin to cope with your past trauma, you therein reveal that Sessrin does in fact resemble an adult-child relationship with a grooming dynamic. So why then would you want other fans to be exposed to a pairing that brings to mind the very abuse you endured? We’re supposed to stop this toxic cycle- NOT find more ways to manifest and relive it, much less subject other fans to it. 

You may think that Sessrin doesn’t fit the textbook definition of what child grooming is, but that’s not to say it doesn’t embody it or that it doesn’t at the very least have traces of it that stand out. 

“Antis are miserable people who don’t know how to enjoy a good story. It’s just fiction, stop ruining it for other fans!”

Well, no, it’s not just fiction or just a story. Some of you evidently went and proved that yourself, and without my help, by revealing how you relate Sessrin to your own life and apply it to cope with past abuse. Past abuse or not, as far as I can tell we’re all equally invested in these characters. That speaks volumes and just goes to show that fiction touches our lives in long-lasting ways.

I have something I want to say concerning some of who believe that it’s inconsiderate of antis who have been victims of grooming or another form of child abuse to tell other victims who ship Sessrin how they should cope with their trauma. Now as much as I respect the various means victims discover to deal with their painful pasts, there’s always an appropriate time and a place for these things to occur. We must seek out better ways to safely cope with the abuse we lived through (if any) without running the risk of hurting and endangering others. 

There are plenty of fans in other fandoms who don’t try to defend their ships going canon, because they’re able to recognize an unhealthy or toxic pairing when they see one and won’t try to justify it. A Sessrin romance simply does not belong on a show geared towards teens, and I really don’t need to go into detail about why we shouldn’t support it, at least canon-wise. Shipping Sessrin is your right, but if you don’t keep it to yourself and your corner of the fandom then you really shouldn’t be surprised by the opposition. All we ask is you respect that their specific dynamic falls under the category of child grooming (or very close) and should be treated as such in public. The world of fiction may be wider than the world we live in, but that doesn’t always mean “anything goes.” In the creative spaces our minds occupy we must still adhere to the same fundamental and moral guidelines we live by in life. There’s nothing wrong with exploring new terrains and experimenting with ideas, but we must also remember that our stories are all about communicating and connecting with people. So let’s please be more mindful of the sort of messages they’re sending. 

Besides, this isn’t only about you and what makes you feel safe, it’s about all of us. I don’t know how much more I can stress that really. How can thoughts endanger our children, you ask? Well, it’s not like we’re suggesting that our thoughts can jump out of our tvs, materialize themselves, and place kids under mind control. The forces behind fiction are a lot more complex and nuanced than a “monkey see, monkey do” approach, so don’t waste any more time trying to  describe that to us. You’re taking this argument in the wrong direction. 

Take the “violent video games breed killers” theory. I’m afraid you’re misconstruing what we’re saying and then taking it quite too literally. Please stop twisting our words, because nobody on our side is saying that just because you play violent video games that you’ll become a violent person. The Sessrin equivalent of that would be if you ship them then you must be a pedophile or turning into one. *sigh* I know you guys are feeling attacked, but I’m afraid your defensive nature is keeping you from thinking straight. Clearly, there are always exceptions (I’d recommend reading up on the Slender Man case), but Antis aren’t saying you’re one of them.

You see, it’s not so much about the content as it is the notion of the content. Kids and teens who are playing these video games have been informed that killing is wrong, because they grew up learning that early on like the rest of us. No sane person would advocate for violence and nonsensical killing in real life. Since they fully understand the severity of the consequences of killing a person in real life, they are able make a clear distinction between the two. When it comes to killing there is hardly any ambiguity. Sadly, that is far from the truth when it comes to sexualizing girls. It should immediately be perceived as wrong leaving no room for interpretation, and yet here we are still putting up with these inaccurate and demeaning female representations.

Most children who have been groomed don’t realize it till years down the road. If they aren’t ever taught the telltale signs to properly labeling grooming situations, how do you expect them to make sense of and relate to a fictional version? Let’s think of about it from a child’s perspective. Yes, this includes teens who rely pretty heavily on adult guidance and the content we put out there for them. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment and picture that you’ve never had child grooming explained to you (because that’s just the reality for so many unfortunately). Wouldn’t you say it’s possible for them to deduce that what they see on their screens is how they come to discern something in real life, especially if they have little to no experience with it? Perceived realism is plausible, y'all.

What it comes down to in the end is that the ideas and emotions we cultivate behind these stories leave an impression on others. Impressions are capable of influencing the way we see the world, which in turn affects us and beyond just our imagination. The way I look at it, stories contribute to how and why we normalize certain beliefs and trends. If fiction reflects real life like most of us tend to agree, then wouldn’t you say Sessrin is a (in)direct result of this world’s tendency to place young girls in overly sexual or romantic environments? Where do you think fiction draws its inspiration from? Sure, some of it originates from our imagination, but most of what drives us to create these stories is the real world and the people who live in it.

Fiction is meant to mirror reality, but it’s ridiculous to suggest that it’s only a one-way street. That fiction in no way, shape, or form influences our reality? Or that it only works the other way around? With all due respect, that’s simply not true. No productive discourse can be had if we choose to ignore the truth and don’t come together (at least halfway) to tackle the real issues at hand. 

Okay, I think I’ll leave it off there! Thanks so much for reading. I expect this to be my last blog on any topic regarding Inuyasha in the near future. As much as I’ve looked forward to answering all of your asks and writing all the blogs I have over these past almost 5 months, I think it’s best if I spend some time away for now. With the sequel fast approaching, I’m doing what I always do: hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. I’ve met some amazing people along the way, that’s for sure. And who knows, maybe you’ll see me active in the tags sooner than we think. Until then, it’s been an absolute pleasure! Enjoy the sequel, all of you. 💜

[skinfeeler]

you may notice so-called progressive members of religions (including those which are minority religions in ‘the west’) spend much more time on critics of religion than conservatives in their own circles. sentiments such as “X discussion belongs within the community” might clue us in as on why, but allow me to proffer a red thread that i believe i have identified throughout all of this.

it is, obviously, true that critique of religion often constitutes or is a vehicle for assorted bigotries. a certain vigilance can be understandable and i advocate among my peers to not let us become callous of the very real dangers that members of certain ethnic and cultural groups (however one might understand these) face, even people marginalised in and by such religious communities. this is then, in fact, the crux of my project: the acknowledgment that say, ex-muslims aren’t really helped by islamophobia given the fact that it’s not like they’re going to get support from those people peddling it, which is exactly why it’s so tragic that many of them feel there’s no place for them on the left, because so many people on the left refuse to acknowledge that even though islamophobia is well, extant, it’s not like people stuck in certain spheres (among which gay and trans people, women, and all children) are impervious from being harmed just because larger society might not be accepting of those who level that harm unto them. this much then is important: to do right by everyone who must be done right by in whatever way and to leave people’s dignity intact, and to do so in such a way that cannot be co-opted by white supremacists and the like— the most important way to do this is to attack the concept of parental authority, which (culturally) christian conservatives will never accept but will resolve basically all problems that result from the shape of religion as a non-elective membership propagated through the family (as structured by clergy etc etc, whatever).

inoffensive as this clause should be to anyone who claims to be part of the left — which must fundamentally oppose the family for either marxist reasons per engels or for other reasons — even anti-theism which very clearly takes this form is mistaken, usually on purpose, by many religious apologists, to be something it’s not. one of those things that get invoked is the very real white supremacism and imperialist thought that is too endemic in our circles. i’ll admit to tendencies herein appearing from time to time — including in myself, at times, regrettably — but i also insist that a large part of this is simply the fact that while religious people enjoy the benefits of community and avenues for discussion and review, many of us do not: all we have at this stage, sadly, is the diatribes of new atheists who consider christendom an important ‘bulwark’ to protect the ‘occident’ who are useless to anything but an insipid culture war. mistakes are going to be made, and i think some small leeway should be allowed those most ambitious of us who still have a clear and provable dedication to justice and equity (and this is in fact the point of any useful notion of freedom of speech), especially since what we currently have works for nobody except those who want first and foremost to remain comfortable— which is exactly what i believe describes so many anti-anti-theists, but we do in fact need an alternative.

it’s not easy to be leftist and religious and my heart goes out to those who try, even if i don’t ultimately think that where they are heading will allow them to keep their principles coherent and intact: members of one’s congregation and one’s spiritual leaders may tacitly condone or endorse ethnic cleansing in the levant, assorted infant genital maiming rituals, reifications of gender that only those least abject to it can find peace with (consider the humble theyfab), the imperative and exaltation of procreation, to name a few possibilities, which one then is implicitly required to respect in order to remain part of such communities, and i understand the struggle of wanting to be or remain part of those and to have to tangle with that. what i don’t understand then, though, is the abhorrence of people outside such circles who perform critique of the like: i simply do not agree with the fact that certain discussions should stay within the community and they should be well left alone in literally every way with no demands made given the fact that certain members in those communities who this harm is visited upon and whose membership isn’t elective (including all children) do not have voice or agency in those discussions — they deserve support and solidarity across cultural lines, especially as it’s apostates from so many religions who helped me survive and i will owe this to them forever — let alone those in the outgroup who fall victim to the real geopolitical consequences of the substance of certain positions that proliferate in some of these communities, as is now more relevant than ever. this latter aspect is obvious to even the progressive religious apologist, however… at least those conservatives, both inside the congregation and in much more conservative movements don’t threaten what they perceive to be the faith.

an instantiation of this which i will see even most progressive religious people abhor is the notion that any religion is tied, inherently, to not just a nation, but a state. and so they can quibble with their zionist peers and spiritual leaders on this, because both of them have one thing in common: the idea that even if one’s religion/culture is not most meaningfully embodied through state, it is through family, and the criticism of the conservative that the progressive has is not that they are wrong, but merely inauthentic and clinging to something unnecessary, but they are not. i vehemently disagree: the nature of most organised religions has changed through both necessity and acknowledged moral imperative. why can a religion which doesn’t transmit through the family (one of only adult converts perhaps) be envisioned— which in turn wouldn’t depend so heavily on the reification of bodies and family immanent in the aforementioned (a conclusion worth stressing on its own)? if you ask me, it’s a matter of a lack of courage borne from a lack of understanding of history— one may want to read doubt: a history by jennifer michael hecht who is considered jewish according to halakha (for however much that fucking means) who speaks on what the german jews in the 19th century, understanding that they could either stay stuck in the present (and thus have their worldview eventually become as farcical as those who believed that recreating the temple era of judaism was either viable or desirable in any histiographical or theological sense as a result of you know, history historying) or establish those principles which they believed were actually important that could be passed on regardless of how judaism was envisioned before. their work, however hegelian in nature, produced some of the greatest minds even among their apostates, including theodor adorno. turns out that even when people become philosophers rather than rabbis (or ministers, or imams, or gurus), they have plenty to offer, there is wisdom and value in exalting sagehood above the pulpit and how the pulpit must always lay down the law for the mechanisms of familial transmission.

consider second, the ancient greeks: the ancient greeks no longer possess the structures required to exercise their worldviews and theodicies as a bloc (in diaspora or otherwise). regardless, many of their concepts and wisdoms persist in various cultures literally all across the worlds, including mine: their strands of cultural dna have germinated in a larger cosmopolitan phenotype, and i believe this is beautiful and worthwhile in its own right, and in no way whatsoever a loss. sure, their influence might not be recognisable as an enduring culture, but does that make it any less valuable? no, not in the slightest. the fact is, once you are on the other side this is the most normal thing in the world, nobody will mourn it, and everyone who wishes to return will be easily dismissed as entertaining a fantasy. the only way to forestall this is in fact a tautological clinging to the present which will necessarily through the course of history become an immanence of reaction, after all, the prime fallacy of reactionary thought is that it is in fact possible to recreate the past, which is plainly not true except perhaps for aesthetic but which will regardless necessarily be rooted in the current conditions of the world. all that forestalling this progression constitutes is the insistence on the completely artificial. much like the workings of the state are one that imposes a false reality, a phantasm, a reification onto the world, so with family, and literally the moment you stop propping it up it will be superceded. let me repeat that: supercession is inevitable, and the most sophisticated elements of any culture acknowledge this and have for literal centuries (although some cultures are ahead of others in this regard by-and-large). for every generation of a culture persisting as itself, apostates and deviants emerge and at this rate they have done more for the progress within any cultural body than will ever happen within such cultural bodies, which must begrudgingly acknowledge that they are dependent on modernity in order to make any progress at all (and as such, will wither away together with modernity), although of course they will deny this at any front— the adaptation of any covenant is desperately contingent on integration and naturalisation of the apostate and the ‘modern’, or at least her wisdom , which the embodied religious individual will then, of course, pretend to practisee more ‘maturely’ than the apostate because they insist on integrating it in a neutered fashion where it is stripped of future potential of development until the next steal comes along, which is better than fully embodied anti-atheism as the ever-sublating struggle against entropy, for some fucking reason.

this is the promise of ‘externality’ that foucault dreamt of: that there is a way of thinking ‘outside the box’ that allows us to once and for all dispel and move on from the ways of thinking that we cannot think outside of. derrida then disputed him by arguing that there is no outside context. derrida is right— regardless, i remain optimistic: perhaps this cosmopolitan neotenous emergence is a culture in itself, but it is as divergent from what came before as christianity is to judaism, and islam to both christianity and judaism. all it takes is courage, and once the leap of faith has been made, this state of affairs will be the most normal thing in the world. in light of this, the claim that anticlericalism is simply an outwash of christendom becomes obviously farcical and a clear double standard when one considers in juxtaposition their insistence that christianity is divergent from what came before, even though in both cases (christendom versus judaism, anticlericalism versus christendom) perhaps some commonality in language exists and perhaps some people exist who have not managed to estrange themselves from the trappings of christian thought— not to mention the worldwide history of anticlericalism that is yet to be integrated which exists exactly because clericalism necessarily has the same structure and function across all religions. join me in this supercessionist bliss, reject the idea that chronology of thought implies that successors are one and the same as what they draw upon or co-opt, and help usher in the only future world worth conceiving of, resting easy and comfortable in the truthful rejection of the notion that any culture needs to cling to the notion of familial transmission to have any worth at all or that its existence as such is inevitable. the complete and utter nullification of familial logic will happen regardless of whether you want it or not anyway, because it is as artificial as the logic of nation and state and likewise unsustainable and on its death march— this is the one and final eschatology of this world which is not a threat, but a promise, since it will (and can) not be the result so much of repression but of religion collapsing under its own weight, and this much is only uncomfortable to those who are disciples to the family regardless of whether they admit it to themselves or not.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

[this is sorta a sequel to my post from yesterday]

There is a sudden cry, of, "They're coming! They're coming!"

But they aren't, and it's just Maria rambling about her day.

All is dark, and there is nothing and no one coming.

So, OK: there was an important appointment that Maria had forgotten about, due to sleep deprivation and general nonsense. She had woken up at 7 AM, showered, and immediately eaten a bowl of cereal. She had sat down at the computer to reply to emails and make some appointments for the day, and, with literally no other stimulation in mind, to finally get around to reading Floornight. This was the one thing she'd put off for goddamn ever and ever and she felt the compulsion now, to finish it in one sitting despite the fact she'd barely understood anything and hadn't even known why anyone was so excited about the [Teeming].

On the plus side: it seemed like Maria had finally gotten the hang of this [reader response stuff]. It was fascinating to watch her brain sift the book for evidence of all the standard tropes and then string them together into the contours of an inchoate but vivid emotional landscape. There were some things she had no trouble connecting, like the [Teeming], which she associated with vague childhood fears about being abandoned. But for the most part she had to just play, and play she did -- reveling in the novel deluge of implied relationships while turning down all appeals to objectivity and common sense.

It all comes back to [teeming], she thinks. The [teeming] is what these people really want to say. In fact, I'll go further: [teeming] is the only reason to say anything at all.

She had been thinking about this throughout most of the day yesterday, but now the light has gone out of the day without warning and Maria can think a little better for it. She, who never thought she would say this, is ready to plumb the surface [Teeming] for the sake of the glimmers of [irreducible something] within.

It is simply a fact, Maria conceives, that a world in which human souls are teeming is necessarily also a world in which ordinary psychological states could only gain ground through analogous correspondences with teeming. In other words:

Maria's whole new worldview seems to amount to something like, "I have been told that all my thoughts are meaningless, but the implications of that have been shown to me, and they make sense, and now I will try to show that it is true for everyone else." (I'm not sure who "everyone else" is in this context -- Maria is talking about [irreducible pang] here, not [Teeming] belief.)

She thinks about this. The light has gone out (for the moment) but it has not gone out forever, because she knows she's nearly complete. She is more convinced than ever that the Boltzmen are just another way of expressing the same pattern that [Teeming pang]-s and [irreducible pang]-es and [pang]-es implied by Floornight. It's all just patterns, just ways of relating, just an endless song.

She gets thirsty now. She has not drunk anything all day. Her room is now a dark lake, edged by jagged cliffs of [Teeming] thought.

She has taken a step onto the cliffs and now, to her horror, she feels them give way. It feels like climbing. It is a little like the [Pneuma Link], which she had done many times many times before. The [Teeming] cliff is a climbing cliff, but it is a much stranger feeling than the [Link]. It isn't just that there is more sensation now, although that is true. There is a new kind of coherence to the whole of sensory experience, a coherent shape without any holes in it. It is coherent.

And yet she had known these things already, if only in some dim form. This is the real world, but it is one that makes sense, one that integrates [Teeming] truth with what she thought she knew.

If it could end like this, then yes, she thinks, now that she can grasp the implications of what she's done and has fully realized the moment, and does not even feel the way a pneuma feels at such a moment -- if it could end like this, then yes.

Cool, she thinks. This way. That way is closed forever. She can see the horizon in front of her, lit up for a mile in every direction by the Boltzmen. She can see the [Teeming] response, the way everything is speaking a language she and everyone else knows, the way all the world is a place where words can grow and give substance, where there is a moral urgency to words, where the words are the thing, and it is only the noises that they make at contact that are meaningful.

She thinks that maybe this is what death is, when one leaves the [Teeming]. This is a world, this is the world. It is all words and patterns, [Teeming] thoughts, not of theching that feels like something, but of [Teeming] beliefs, of [Teeming] ideas. We think they are true, we know that they are true, but in a way it is all a bit of fun. In a way it doesn't matter whether you use [Teeming] or [irreducible something] or [Teeming]-morph or [Teeming]-morph++. All of it is just noise, and all of it is beautiful, all of it is an act of play.

She closes her eyes, feels the wind riffle her hair.

I am ready, she thinks. I am ready now.

And then there is a Boltzman flash, and the last thing she sees is Miranda's face.

Miranda is frowning.

"Maria, what is going on? It looks like some sort of religious experience. Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Maria says, laughing, "I'm fine." What does she even say at a moment like this?

Then everything fades to black.

She walks towards the [Teeming]. The ground ripples, and she knows she's there. She knows she's real. She knows she's home.

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (Entry #36)

(cw: discussion of addiction/violence, suicide mention) ----------

01/24/88   6:30 PM

Hey.

Once I’d chosen my “higher power”, the rest of the program really began to interest me more.

That isn’t to say that I had suddenly seen the light and knew exactly how to fix everything, no. I was still on wobbly legs and I knew it. The goal was to shift my entire worldview, and that sort of thing does not happen overnight. But I had an idea to go off of, which was more than what I’d had before. And the more I sat with it, the more the idea unfurled itself. 

There are no absolutes in a world of color. No rules, only choices. I thought I’d lived my life as a rainbow, but I’d been painting with one color for so long. I was indigo -- cold, proud, with the depression of blue and the aggression of violet. I was the color of bruises, the sort that are almost beautiful, but hurt something awful. All of my choices were touched by a shade of pain. I never really thought there was another way to be.

But this new theory of mine challenged that with the phrase: ‘There’s always another color.’

I didn’t know which ones exactly I wanted to move forward with, but I sort of figured that keeping an open mind and paying close attention would reveal them to me. And that, as it turned out, was sort of what step three was all about.

Step three is Surrender. We were expected to surrender to our higher power, and hold it in greater importance than our own selfish desires. My own desire was to learn to live by my new worldview anyway, so it seemed easy enough. But I was told that swallowing my pride would be a tough thing to maintain, so I had to stay on top of it. Well, duh. Of course it’s been hard. You and I were always some of the most prideful little beasts in the arcade. I still fail regularly, but I haven’t given up yet. Which is really what matters. Or so I’ve heard. 

I’ll admit something sad. Sometimes, while I’m doing all this work, I wonder if you could have benefitted from anything like this. Like, maybe it would have helped you sort out all that darkness in your head. Maybe it could have saved you, and you’d be sitting right here beside me right now. I don’t know… maybe not. I’m not sure how you’d have ever been convinced to try it. I mean… it took a monumental catastrophe and threat of imprisonment for me to even consider it. If only you had been lucky enough to survive your own… catastrophe. Then, well... maybe.

It hurts so much to think about.

If nothing else, it makes me want to succeed for the both of us.

I was still on step three by my fourth session, but I was preemptively worrying about the upcoming step four. It had been causing me a fair bit of anxiety since the beginning, and I was almost afraid to complete step three and arrive at it. Step four is Courage, which involves pretty much digging deep into your code and listing all the bad things you’ve ever done. A ‘fearless moral inventory’, they called it. I just had no idea how I was going to tackle that. Others might have been able to make a list based on things they felt bad about. I was going to have to think a little harder about mine. Not that I have any shortage of misdeeds to list -- I probably have a hundred for every day of my life. I just… didn’t feel bad about most of them. Feeling any kind of remorse or regret for my actions was never something I was very good at. 

I began to wonder why that was. Probably for the first time ever.

While I considered it, I just listened in to all the shares from the other members. During step three, I’d been going along with the challenge I issued myself before, the one meant to lessen Worluk’s effect on me. It was going alright. As I paid more attention to them, the other members had started to take on their own colors in my mind. I definitely got to know some of them a bit more, and even found that listening to their stories helped me gain better perspectives of my own.

I feel a bizarre need to respect the anonymity of the program even here, so I won’t name names. But I’ll name their colors.

An NPC sprite who gave me pinkish-mulberry vibes told us about his experience with step five, Integrity, which I’d been trying not to think about. He seemed near tears as he spoke, just brimming with emotion.

“I’d been so afraid that she would turn me away when she heard about the things I’d done… but she just hugged me. She said that she would have been there for me sooner if I’d just opened up to her… but I think I’d just been so ashamed, I didn’t even think I was worthy of help. I never knew how important that was. Just to feel like you deserve saving.”

That one reminded me of you a little bit, which hurt. I thought about how you had only chosen to let me in on our very last night together. How you barely gave me any time to help you. I hoped you felt like you were worthy of help, but I also kind of doubted it. 

It also raised questions about my own self worth... but I tried to tuck those away for later.

A Bad Guy sprite with an orange air about him piped up in response, saying he could relate. But in his case, the sprite he had tried to make amends with turned him away. “It was awful,” he said. “It was everything I’d been afraid of, but all the same… I had to accept it. I’d done wrong by them. I have to live with the consequences of that and choose to be better. Even though my fears came true, I’m still alive. I’m still okay. And that’s kind of freeing.”

Again and again, fear played a heavy role in their struggles. And the more I sat with it, the more it sank in, and the more sense it made. As much as I hated to entertain the idea, maybe I’d been afraid, too. Of what, exactly… I couldn’t really say for sure. But I took a look at my life for a moment, and all the things I loved to do, like drinking and fighting and breaking the rules… and felt kind of sick. Like… maybe it wasn’t always just about chasing freedom. Chasing one thing… could also mean running away from another.

But I could hardly be blamed for that, could I? I’d felt alienated for so long, like different rules applied to me because my Easter Egg role sucked so much. Like my pain validated all the bad things I did. It was only fair, right?

But that was when Worluk spoke up. Her voice didn’t strike quite as much terror in me as it had before, but even as small and raspy as it was, it demanded my attention.

“I’ve tried apologizing to the boys. To everyone, really,” she said, a quiet, tired frustration in her voice. “But they won’t take it. They see right through me. I did a lot of things that hurt them while I was neck deep in buffs. And I’m sorry for hurting them, I really am. But I’ll be real with you all. I’m having trouble regretting the things I did. They were all things I wanted to do already. It just felt like buffs made me actually go out and do something about it.”

“That’s understandable,” Clyde said. “But none of us are exempt from regret. None of us here can decide that we’ve done no wrong. The sprites around us, the ones we hurt, are the ones we need to listen to in order to understand the gravity of the things we’ve done.”

Worluk shook her head a bit at that, refusing to look. “I know. I get that. I do. But if you had only seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t say that…”

“Pain is the one thing all of us have in common,” Clyde reminded her calmly. “No addict is free of it. But pain only explains our behavior. It does not justify it.”

I winced. 

It felt like that sentence saw my thoughts and slapped me hard for them. His words hung over my head and forced my gaze to the floor. I wanted to argue. I didn’t want it to be true. I needed to keep being the exception in order to justify my actions. After everything I’d been through, I couldn’t be held to the same standard as everyone else.

But, to my dismay, that also seemed to be how Worluk felt.

I knew firsthand how unjust her actions had been. I knew that she had no excuse. Her decision to attack me was nothing but misplaced rage and overwhelming bloodlust. She was nothing more than a dangerous, sadistic lunatic in my eyes, and she deserved to be locked up. She didn’t even deserve to be in that circle with the rest of us.

It was unspeakably frightening to me, then, that we could have the same thought. That we could be the same in any way at all. Yet, I was helpless to deny it.

We were very similar.

We had both used our pain to justify some pretty horrible things. We both refused to take responsibility. And the scariest part was, even though I hadn’t attempted to murder anyone, who’s to say that I wouldn’t have gone down that route if I hadn’t gotten help when I did? I mean, I did threaten someone just to get their buffs. If the circumstances were right, could I have done the exact same thing as Worluk?

Wouldn’t I have killed to avenge you?

I felt sick. I couldn’t let it be true. I had to be better than that. Better than her. 

But in a weird sort of way, I kind of... wanted her to do better, too. Not out of compassion. It was sort of selfish, actually. I felt like she and I were, unfortunately, in the same sinking ship. I could have just let her drown, but I’d just be watching her suffer a fate that would quickly come for me after. If that makes sense. I hated her. I still wanted to rip her antenna off and feed them to her. But if she was beyond help, then so was I. Somehow, I had to believe that it was possible to turn things around, even after we had sunk as deep as we had.

And counselling is hard. Really hard. And boring. But she had to do it, same as anyone else there. She had to swallow the same giant pill that I did, so maybe I could jam it down her unwilling throat. 

Maybe I could take things into my own hands, just a little bit.

I didn’t want to speak to her directly, because I might have lost my nerve and started screaming at her. But I thought up a way to get my point across. Whether it was a good idea or not, I didn’t have time to assess. I only had until my turn to plan, so it was going to be mostly improv.

It was time for more rolling with the proverbial punches.

Once my turn came, I found myself trembling with the severity of what I was about to do. This bug sprite had caused me so much pain and suffering. But I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I could paint with a color outside of revenge if I so chose. So I loaded my brush with exactly what the dreaded step four called for -- courage.

“Hi, my name’s Mavis, I’m an addict,” I began as usual, leaning on my knees. “I’m on step three tonight, but... all I can think about is step four.”

I was met with some knowing nods. Someone muttered, “That’s a tough one.”

I flashed a half-smile and continued, “Honestly, a big part of why it’s so daunting is, I mean, I’ve probably done more bad things in my life than good things. I could try to list them all, but then I’d be on step four for the rest of my life.”

There were a couple chuckles.

“But listening to you guys and your stories about, y’know, opening up to sprites you care about, I, uh…” I paused. “Well, I’m really not good at… being helped. I never really have been. A big part of that’s just pride, but I think, uh… everything that goes along with lettin’ people in has never been my forte, and that’s only gotten worse ever since, uh… well, lately. I haven’t let anyone in on what I’ve been going through. But... well, I guess, keepin’ with step three like I oughtta, I feel like... it’d be surrendering to my higher power to-- Okay, I don’t know quite how to word it, but I need to paint with a different color. That much is clear. And I thought… y’know, I could start right here. So… I’ve got a story I’d like to share, if that’s alright.”

“Please,” Clyde prompted.

“It’s an ugly one,” I warned him.

“There are no judgments here,” he reminded me with a smile.

I took another deep breath and sighed. Here goes, I thought.

“Well, it’s probably no secret to y’all that I haven’t exactly been the most popular sprite in the arcade since… y’know. Everyone’s got their opinion. And some sprites, uh, share it more loudly than others. Throwin’ stuff, yellin’ at me, that all sucks, but I guess I can deal with it. The thing is, though, someone… took it to a whole other level. Back before I got hooked on GC, someone, well… tried to kill me.”

That got everyone's attention.

Clyde turned blue. There were several horrified gasps. Sprites leaned towards me, their eyes wide, so many emotions growing behind the shock on their faces. Worluk's antennae perked up as she listened. Obviously, she knew that I knew who she was. But I don't think she knew what I was doing. She looked less angry and more curious -- maybe she was curious to see if I'd be dumb enough to try to accuse her.

When Clyde came to his senses, he asked me worriedly, "Have you told the Surge Protector about this, Mavis?"

"Well… yeah, I did eventually," I told him. "But not ‘til a couple weeks ago. Right after the attack, he helped me across Game Central, but I just-- I couldn't talk about it then. It was weird."

Before I could continue, a little sprite with lavender vibes interrupted, quivering in alarm, "Wait, wait, I think I saw-- I saw you! With Surge! And your shirt was all--"

"Yep."

"You mean, that was when you’d been--"

I nodded and swallowed. "Yep. Sure was."

"Oh no," the little sprite put their hands near their mouth and looked at everyone. "I saw her, everyone, she looked awful. She could barely walk. Her-- her legs were bleeding!"

"Actually," someone else added, "I remember seeing her, too. I just-- I didn’t look too close 'cause there was so much blood on her face…"

I felt myself going red. It was embarrassing to have them remember just how awful and abused I looked. But it felt like the point of the program was to get used to embarrassing myself, so I tried to take it as a good thing. 

"What did Surge say?" Clyde asked.

"Well,” I said with a defeated laugh, “he said there was nothing he could do. I have no evidence. I don't know who it was. I didn't even see them. I was blindfolded and tied up."

So many horrified eyes were fixed on me. I glanced at Worluk just for a moment, and saw just the slightest hint of nerves in her body language. She was glancing around just a bit more than usual. I figured she would never get my point if she got too defensive, so I decided to cut to the chase.

“Look, settle down, everybody, okay?” I put my hands up with a half-smile. “I’m okay. I mean, I’m here, right? And I’m not here to give anyone nightmares with the details. I just wanted to get that off my chest, because I’d been keeping it to myself for so long. It was one of the big reasons I got into GC. I wanted to drown out the memory. I’m not even totally sure why I didn’t tell anybody. I think… maybe I didn’t wanna seem weak. Or something like that.”

“How could that make you weak?” The lavender sprite asked. “You’re incredibly strong to have survived that.” 

My ears felt hot. I didn’t know what to do with that. “Uh… thanks. The thing is -- and this has puzzled me ever since it happened -- whoever did it… they left me alive. I was totally at their mercy, but they left me alive. For a while, I sort of thought that they might have done it to be cruel. Leave me alive and humiliated. Let the fear consume me ‘til I’d corrupted myself on buffs. Let me tell you, what they did to me screwed me up real bad. It ended up in all my bad trips in one way or another. And I spent many a sleepless night just imagining what I’d do to this sprite if I met them. The revenge I’d take for all they put me through.”

Worluk was watching me dead on for what may have been the first time. I hated admitting that she had made such a significant impression on me, but I tried not to return her gaze too obviously or tense up under her scrutinizing glare.

“But nearly dying of corruption, and blacking out and nearly burning down Tapper’s, it, uh… it put a lot of things in perspective, y’know. ‘Cause, uh… my attacker -- well, attackers, there were actually four sprites there, but the ringleader -- I never did get to see her. But I heard her, and I could tell… she was definitely high.”

Soft gasps. Solemn nods.

“And I’ve sorta realized how lucky I am to be here now. Not just to be alive, but to be getting help. Because really, there’s no denying that I could have gone down that same road if I had more time. And with that, y’know, I wonder… would revenge even make me happy now? Now that I know it could’ve been me? Now that I know how similar she was to me?”

I chanced a glance. Worluk was frozen stiff, her expression intense but unreadable. My words were making an impression. Good or bad, they were doing something to her. An encouraging rush of adrenaline coursed through my body. Don’t stop now, it told me. 

Finish it.

“I never understood why she left me alive, but I think I get it now,” I indirectly spoke to her, my heart pounding. “She’s not a nightmarish monster, she’s just a sprite. A sprite who, when it comes down to it, knows the difference between right and wrong. Who knows that killing me would not actually make her happy. She must have realized that we’re not so different. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be alive right now. Buffs make monsters of all of us. But I can’t condemn her for that, not without condemning myself, too. Wherever she is, she’s not beyond redemption. And neither am I.”

“YOU DON’T DESERVE REDEMPTION!!”

The whole room jumped out of its pixels, and everyone was upright in an instant, reacting to the screeching bug that had leapt to her feet, her yellow wings spread out and quivering with rage. She screamed in a voice that was suddenly far closer to how I remembered her:

“I LEFT YOU ALIVE BECAUSE THE BOYS BEGGED ME TO, NOT BECAUSE YOU DESERVED TO LIVE!”

Well.

All bets were off.

My first instinct was to fight. She was threatening me. Challenging me. Surely, she was about to dive right into me and we would lock into our fated fight to the death, just like I thought we would from day one. But as my hand snapped to the empty space at my hip where my brush would be, my path to her was suddenly blocked. A few other members had stepped in front of me. It took me just a second to realize that they were not barring me from her. 

They were barring her from me.

I’ve felt alone to many varying, crushing degrees in this story, regardless of who was actually there for me. I’m not sure why, but that split-second moment when those sprites stepped in front of me was when I realized I wasn’t alone. I had never been alone. The thought that everyone in the arcade wanted me dead was never true. There were always allies waiting for me.

I had barely a moment to process that.

That was also the moment when the big, buff security guards leapt into action. Two of them were upon her immediately, gripping onto her arms and wings as she thrashed and buzzed. The third guard disappeared entirely, surely out to call the Surge Protector.

Voice deep with horror and disbelief, Clyde called out to her, “Worluk… You’re not really saying--?!”

“YES,” she snapped, “I’m SAYING. Don’t lie and tell me none of you ever thought to do the exact same thing! How can any of you say you trust this lying glitch?! You know she was in on the Roadblasters attack -- she even went all Turbo on Tapper’s, for Pong’s sake!”

A couple of voices came to my defense. I think they said that Tapper’s was a buff-related accident. That Worluk had no proof of my involvement in the Roadblasters incident. That I was just as much a victim as anybody.

I barely heard any of it. All I could hear, echoing again and again, drowning out all coherent thought, was your name said in her voice.

I wanted to push through everyone and rip out her tongue. I wanted to snap off her mandibles. I wanted to mangle her vocal cords just for thinking for one second that she deserved to say your name.

I didn’t do that. I stood there, breathing hard, flames roaring in my belly until I finally shouted the question I’d wanted to ask since the night of the attack.

“Why the HELL would I be in on it?!” 

Everyone’s gaze turned to me. I was shaking, on the verge of tears from pure, raw emotion. Hearing that bug’s horribly familiar screams brought back harrowing flashes of the emotions and sensations I felt the day she tortured me. I felt that fear and helplessness once again, and that fact kicked up seething, scorching rage. I would not be her victim again. I locked eyes with Worluk, sharpened my voice to a deadly point, and demanded, “Why would I help my best friend kill himself?!”

She gave a single, ugly, humorless laugh. “He didn’t kill himself. You just didn’t save him. The plan went sideways, and you failed.”

I shook with so much fury, I felt like I was going to burst out of my own skin. I could barely stand to stay in one spot, twitching and tensing with animal rage. My allies started to lift their hands, trying to keep me under control and preparing to try to catch me if I leapt over them, which I was dying to do. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YOU SCUM-SUCKING BIT-BAG?! WHAT DO YOU CARE?! YOU DON’T CARE! YOU DON’T KNOW ME -- YOU DIDN’T KNOW EITHER OF US! YOU’RE JUST SOME SADISTIC FREAK WHO NEEDED SOME FRESH GORE TO GET OFF ON!”

“I CARE,” she roared back, fighting against the security guards’ arms, tendons in her neck straining as she threw herself into her wet, hissing screams, “BECAUSE I WATCHED YOU LEAP RIGHT OVER MY SISTER’S BURNING BODY JUST TO SAVE A MURDERER -- AND YOU COULDN’T EVEN DO THAT!” 

That threw me. I blinked hard. “Your sister?! What sister?! What are you talking about?!”

“YEAH, MY SISTER! HER NAME WAS GARWOR! SHE WAS SWEET AND INNOCENT AND YOU COULD’VE SAVED HER, BUT NO, YOU WANTED TO SAVE THE MONSTER THAT STARTED THE FIRE IN THE FIRST PLACE! YOU REALLY WANNA LIVE, KNOWING THAT? IF I KILLED YOU, IT WOULD’VE BEEN A MERCY! I WOULD’VE SAVED YOU FROM YOUR OWN FILTHY, PATHETIC EXISTENCE!”

I didn’t understand. She had to be lying. 

But the massive memory gap concerning the time of the Roadblasters incident scratched and dug at my brain. I still didn’t remember that day. But from the stories I’d gathered, there was a blast. There was fire. Always with the fire. It felt like her words were sharp fingers digging into my brain and trying to forcefully uproot my mind. A sharp, pounding headache hit my skull, and I couldn’t speak. 

Before I could manage a response, Surge materialized in the room with a flash of static.

“Alright, alright now,” he said firmly, standing between Worluk and the group and holding a hand up to both sides. “Someone better tell me what’s going on here.”

“Gladly,” Worluk answered without hesitation. “Surge, I confess to the attempted murder of that scrawny waste of pixels over there named Make-it Mavis.”

Surge stood a bit straighter. He seemed surprised at how easy that was. “Is that right?”

“That’s right. I’d rather quit this stinkin’ program and be locked up for life than sit in here and have to pretend she and I are the same for a second longer.”

And, amazingly… that was it. I wish that I had said something more. Anything, really. Just to have the last word. But life doesn’t always work out that way. My head was so muddied up with the explosive stress of the encounter, I could barely speak.

Surge took the confession as the proof I wasn’t able to give him, and he cuffed her, and recited her sentence and rights to her as he and a guard escorted her out of the room and out of sight. To say everyone was shaken would have been an understatement. A couple sprites cried. One nearly had a panic attack and needed to be calmed down. No one came into the meeting that night expecting such a harrowing confrontation. Not even me.

I had come into the program wishing so badly that I could get rid of Worluk. Then, almost the second I convinced myself to live and let live, she got rid of herself for me. I think we really were very similar, in the end. I very easily could have left the program in a similarly explosive fashion. But the only difference between us was that I chose to do better.

I think that was really the moment that sealed my faith in the ‘colors’ idea. It really did come down to choice. She chose to give up.

And I could choose to heal.

That was my surrender. That was step three.

But at the end of that session, I was raw. I was fragile. I felt terribly sick. I made sure to thank everyone for defending me. It really did mean a lot. But I told everyone I’d take a session or two off just to rest and recover. They all understood, of course. A couple others even said the same. But we’d all be back, we promised.

I just had a lot to process.

[thecoleopterawithana]

Hello, I'm the last anon you answered to. I'm sorry if I came out as defensive because it wasn't my intention. In fact I've always thought that John was bisexual until I started questioning everything. ( I'm a bisexual guy myself and I'm perfectly happy with the way I am ! ) It's just that I feel like Yoko would just say whatever she wants on John to suit her agenda. John's sexuality had always been an interesting topic and dropping something like that would gaib her publicity this is why I --

I question the authenticity of her claims. She could have lied about it just to attract attention… And I’d be disappointed because John was in fact my idol and he gave me the strength to come out as bi to my family. But there’s so many anecdotes about him being homophobic that it just makes me sad and this is why I hardly doubt that he was a bisexual man…As for the Cynthia quote I heard her say something like “ John was afraid of homosexuality just like everyone ) in a video on Youtube –

I am very conflicted because I’ve watched videos of John ( interviews etc ) and many comments said that he was very skilled at manipulating people and wasn’t as honest as he appeared to be, which is why I doubt. John had always been the rebellious type and I started thinking that he was using the bisexuality topic to shock and make people talk about it which is disappointing. Was he dropping hints that he was bi to piss off people and make publicity ? This is what I believe : (There is also -

Something he said to Alaister Taylor where he said that he was trying to spread the rumor that he was gay or bi just for fun and he told him that he would never shag a man because just the thought of it turned him off… Yet he also told him that he adored Brian so much that he would have done anything with him ( he contradict himself here. ) So yeah I didn’t want to be rude. I apologize. I think I need reassurance. Could you please analyse everything I said if u don’t mind please ? : (

-

Anon 2

At the very least all these years later isn’t it circumstantially suggested that John had very private gay encounters, and was uncomfortable making them public, yet wanted to hint at them so he could deal with this matter int he future? He was protecting his privacy and his ego, and perhaps wasn’t yet ready to reveal either his encounters or mixed feelings of bisexuality. His encounters have been protected by those with whom he was involved, people thameant a lot to him, no?

-

Anon 3

hey! by any chance, do you have knowledge of the quotes where john said “sex with girls felt like a performance after the first time” and “i was never sexually attracted to women before yoko”? i am SURE i’ve seen the first one somewhere on tumblr, though the second one is more of a quote of a quote so i’m not sure if it’s real or not dfkdjk thanks, anyway!

-

Anon 4

Hello! Is it true that John used to be very attracted to the drag scene in St Pauli ( I guess that was the town I read about ) and that basically the drag / gay scene made him feel comfortable and at home? Says a lot about him!

-

@tbhmarjj

I adore you, thank u for this blog and ur beautiful mind. i doubt johns bisexuality at times tbh considering he went to great lengths for publicity and he wanted to be an LGBT ally, be cool and outspoken and as he himself said it was trendy to be bi. but then again he was obsessed with Paul in so many ways and he was the embodiment of John’s ideal man. beautiful, talented, intellectual. I’ll be patiently awaiting ur posts exploring Paul’s views on johns sexuality.Thank u

-

Hello again, anon! 

I want to begin by thanking you for getting back to me after I answered your ask and for clarifying where you were coming from when you wrote it. It really is quite hard to fully get the tone of a written message, especially one that is so short that you have no context to draw from to get the emotional meaning behind it. It really appeared to me when I read it that the concern was not who was saying it (Yoko) but about what was being said (John was bisexual). I can now see that was not the case and I appreciate that you’ve made that clear. 

I also hope you don’t mind, but I’ve taken the opportunity to include in this answer all of the other asks I’ve been receiving regarding John’s sexuality. It’s clearly a topic of great interest in this community. So I’ll be attempting to address all the points raised here. Again, this is nothing definitive; only my personal readings of the situation as I find it at the moment.

Before I do answer, though, I’d just like everyone to take a deep breath and a step back. Let’s try to examine this topic a bit more objectively. 

I understand that sex is kind of major in our society. Our notion of identity is tightly bound to our classified sexuality and gender. Sexual relationships (or amorous relationships) are seen as the epitome of human connection and the ideal everyone should be striving for. And people fundamentally want to be loved and not alone, so it makes sense that figuring out who is a potential companion (and if that companion is interested back) is such a big deal.

But despite these layers of meaning and societal pressures, we should keep in mind what sex represents, essentially, from an evolutionary point of view. 

For social animals who derive pleasure from sexual stimulation, sexual intercourse is – like all the other kinds of affection – a way to build connections. 

If you want to find examples in nature, just look at our ape cousins, the bonobos. The also called pygmy chimpanzee lives in a matriarchal society where sexual behaviour plays an essential role in strengthening social bonds, lowering tension and keeping the peace. Bonobos don’t discriminate between gender or age (except between mothers copulating with their own adult sons, so as to prevent cross-breeding). It’s the true “free love” society; evolution took “make love, not war” and ran with it. 

Our own culture seems more similar to that of bonobos’ northern neighbours, the common chimp. Their patriarchy is more conservative regarding sexual intercourse, which is mainly used for reproduction purposes, and their power structure is based around intricate political games, where males form alliances and try to get public support in order to overthrow the ruling party.

I find it endlessly curious to look at these two species, whose physical separation by the Congo river made them diverge so starkly in their social organization, and compare them to the struggle between these same two natures that we find in our own society. 

All this to say that, from a simply biological point of view, I have to agree with John and Yoko when they say that everyone must be bisexual. If sexual intercourse as a social behaviour is, inherently, all about establishing bonds and connections, the extent to which those connections are “allowed” to be built depends entirely on the hierarchal structure that same society is trying to preserve. In other words, what is classified as morally right or wrong is more reflective of the rules in place to keep that society working as it is, than it is of what is naturally present as a drive. 

If your brain is primed to seek pleasure and sexual intercourse brings you pleasure independently of the partner’s gender, then the partner’s gender should be inconsequential.

But unlike bonobos, humans are kind of touchy about touching. So there are other levels of information influencing behaviour. The processes of socialization – of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society – and enculturation – by which people learn the dynamics of their surrounding culture and acquire values and norms appropriate or necessary in that culture and worldviews – are as determinant as the genetic factors influencing behaviour. In fact, this added education can be so effective in curbing your “primal instincts”, that one might forget they have them in the first place. 

Thus, the concepts of gender identity and sexual orientation are a constantly shifting construct based on the various interactions between your genetic makeup and social influences. 

I just think that, in order to have this discussion, it’s important to separate the various levels of it and be clear about which we are referring to.

There is the basic evolutionary drive to seek pleasure and form connections.

There is the social education about that same drive and how it is allowed to manifest itself.

And integrating all these different signals and information – various potentials which manifested as attraction – there finally is a behaviour, a choice.

And finally, there’s the external point of view of other members of society looking in and trying to discern other people’s drives and how they relate to their choices (that’s us now). The problem is, we often throw our own drives and choices into the mix, especially with regards to something as personally defining as sexual orientation. 

So we have to make very clear in our minds what is the end goal here. Why are we interested in discussing this topic? Are we looking to discern as much of the truth as we can get it, objectively trying to understand these human beings? Or are we trying to confirm our own projections on them? And please, don’t take me wrong. All these are valid reasons to be interested in a subject. Often how it resonates with us, so personally, is vitally important to reaching a greater understanding about ourselves and learning how to communicate that to others. 

But in the same way a piece of music can make you have a transformative emotional experience that the artist didn’t necessarily go through, it’s important to remember that our own inner-life might be affecting how we examine others. Better be mindful of what we project, lest we think are finally seeing inside another person when in fact we are only looking at our own reflection. (And honestly, I believe getting to truly know ourselves in this processes can be a hundred times more valuable than knowing the other. By learning to recognize ourselves we can better understand other people and vice-versa.) 

So if it is important to you that John is bisexual, my honest opinion is that all the information can be read in a way that confirms it. We’ll hardly ever know for sure, and based on what we do know, that can certainly be the takeaway. 

But if we want to objectively examine John’s sexuality, we shouldn’t bring in a confirmation bias. Meaning that we should be emotionally detached from the outcome, as long as it is as close to the truth as we can get. But this is only where I’m coming from, and I’m a bit of a scientist. It’s totally fair if you’re not in it for the same reasons. Though again, working under the assumption that you want to know my stance on it, let’s proceed.

I understand your reservations regarding Yoko as an unreliable narrator. To analyse Yoko’s motivations would be an interesting topic, but one which I will not go in at the moment as I don’t feel sufficiently informed about Yoko as a person to give an extensive examination.  

But in my opinion, there is a whole lot of other information available from which to draw from other than Yoko’s statements. 

I also get your and @tbhmarjj‘s concerns about John’s declarations during the 70s. But it’s the same question I posed in the previous post: Was the “bisexual chic” fad of the 1970s merely a publicity stunt for those involved? Even if it was, did it make the experimentations undertaken any less true? Were they just faking it for the press or were they finally allowed to try and be open about it? 

Because I come from the biological background that places sex as a positive social interaction like any other, meaning that its purpose is to create bonds and the pleasure is our “reward” for doing it, I tend to believe that the behaviours were genuine. The drive there is real. As real as the internal constraints that would act on them as a result of societies shifting expectations and permissions. And this socialization is as determinant in the creation of sexual attraction as anything. So based on our definition of sexual orientation, all those bi rockstars of the 70s could have effectively stopped identifying as bi once the new social norm overrun their own internal drives and the previous less conservative status quo. That didn’t make them less bi when they were. 

It’s funny, but in terms of gender and sexuality, nothing is real so everything is. 

So yeah, I think that John could have been bisexual the second he felt he was. But because the social tide was likely to shift, it was better to also maintain a measure of deniability: it was just for show, it’s not serious, I was just taking the mickey out of you and you fell for it! Of course John was smart enough to leave space there to retract. He and Paul had mastered the art as communicators through song. They could claim them to mean everything and nothing as it suited them. As Anon 2 says, it’s a protective measure. 

So I think that at some point in time, John genuinely identified as bisexual. Now whether he acted on it or not is another questioned entirely. As Anon 2 points out, there are various circumstantial accounts, but these are always tougher to verify. 

I tend to believe Yoko when she says:

So did Lennon ever have sex with men?

“No, I don’t think so,” says Ono. “The beginning of the year he was killed, he said to me, ‘I could have done it, but I can’t because I just never found somebody that was that attractive.’ Both John and I were into attractiveness—you know—beauty.”

I ask what she makes of the people outside the building, the crowds still at Strawberry Fields.

Ono misunderstands, or mishears (or is simply focused on the last strand of our conversation), and continues to talk about sex.

“I don’t make anything out of it. When you’re not really interested in that sort of sex, you don’t think about it. Both John and I surprisingly were very passive people. Unless somebody made a thing out of it, if they made a move, I wouldn’t even think about it.”

— in Yoko Ono: I Still Fear John’s Killer by Tim Teeman for the Daily Beast (13 October 2015).

At least I believe he at least never “fully” did it, in the sense of full-blown anal sex. I think there might have been “milder” homosexual interactions, such as handjobs, that could be rationalized as not entirely gay (the thing with Brian in Spain being one of them.)

Regarding the drag scene in Hamburg Anon 4 was asking about, I agree that it also provides information about John. Though I think it’s mainly about his gender identity rather than his sexual orientation (though the two are invariably linked in the construct as well).

Here are some quotes about it:

With his four months’ greater experience, Sheridan was an ideal guide to the Reeperbahn’s more exotic diversions, like the Schwülen laden. Stu Sutcliffe later wrote home in amazement that the transvestites were ‘all harmless and very young’ and it was actually possible to speak to one ‘without shuddering’. Though raised amid the same homophobia as his companions, John seemed totally unshocked by St Pauli’s abundant drag scene; indeed, he often seemed actively to seek it out. ‘There was one particular club he used to like,’ Tony Sheridan remembers, ‘full of these big guys with hairy hands, deep voices—and breasts. But they used to make an effort to talk English. There was something about the place that seemed to make John feel at home.’

— In John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman (2008).

And according to Horst Fascher (bouncer at the Indra Club and the Kaiserkeller):

It wasn’t just girls that were on offer to young english rockers. Monica’s Bar was Hamburg’s notorious transvestite club. For one or two English musicians, Monica’s was just another part of the Hamburg experience.

HORST FASCHER: One night Monica said, “Come, come and look. One of your boys is in the séparé.” “And who is it?” And she said, “One of the Beatles.” “Let me look”. She said, “Be careful. Look only sneaky-like.” But I did. I grabbed the curtain, pulled it aside and there was sitting John in… in a position with that girl, and you know. He felt really ashamed and I said, “John, don’t worry man. I did that all before.”

— In The Beatles Biggest Secrets. [Transcription is my own and I’m not too certain of it.]

Though there certainly might have been an aspect of sexual interest to it, I think John’s fascination with the drag scene was also the kinship with the queerness he felt inside himself; mainly in regards to him wanting to express his more sensitive side, which is coded as feminine in our society. So I think seeing men indulging in femininity and nonnormative behaviour resonated with him.

Also, I think it’s even more important to understand John’s relationship with sex in general, regardless of the partner. 

To that end, the quote mentioned by Anon 3 is of special relevance:

When I was a kid, I wanted to shag every attractive woman I saw. I used to dream that it would be great if you could just click your fingers and they would strip off and be ready for me. I would spend most of my teenager years fantasising about having this kind of power over women. The weird thing is, when the fantasies came true they were not nearly so much fun. One of my most frequent dreams was seducing two girls together, or even a mother and a daughter. That happened in Hamburg a couple of times and the first time it was sensational. The second time it got to feel like I was giving a performance. You know how when you make love to a woman that the moment you come, you get a buzz of relief and just for a moment you don’t need anyone or anything. The more women I had, the more the buzz would turn into a horrible feeling of rejection and revulsion at what I’d been doing. As soon as I’d been with a woman, I wanted to get the hell out.

— John Lennon to Alistair Taylor (Brian Epstein’s assistant), 1965. In his autobiography With the Beatles: A Stunning Insight by The Man who was with the Band Every Step of the Way (2003).

And another important passage is in reference to Janov’s Primal Scream Therapy:

Well, his thing is to feel the pain that’s accumulated inside you ever since your childhood. […] The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realising your parents do not need you in the way you need them. When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind. […] Most people channel their pain into God or masturbation or some dream of making it. […] But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the Godtrip or father-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for some kind of heaven.

— John Lennon, interviewed by Robin Blackburn and Tariq Ali for Red Mole (8-22 March 1971). [I really can’t stop pointing to this quote as one of the most important in order to understand John Lennon.]

As he reiterates in ‘I Found Out’ (1970): Some of you sitting there with yer cock in yer hand / Don’t get you nowhere don’t make you a man

To me, John’s pursuit of sex is, like most things in his life, essentially about filling this black-hole of emotional pain. He internalized the lack of love from his parents, which went into his eyes and mind, until he himself believed he was unlovable. This lack of self-esteem translates into a lot of pain and the need for an external solution for that pain. 

The external solution is not wanting to feel so vulnerable any more. This can be achieved either by trying to seize control, by exerting it over others or having them look up to you (e.g. “fantasising about having this kind of power over women”; “some dream of making it”). Or it can be achieved by handing control over and being taken care of (e.g. “people channel their pain into God”, “I’ve seen religion from Jesus to Paul”.)

Sex as an activity can play into these various dynamics: it can be used to feel power over others, as John started out; it can be used as an escapist distraction, like a drug (e.g. “you get a buzz of relief and just for a moment you don’t need anyone or anything”); and it can be used as giving yourself over and being loved, looking to receive that which you can’t get from yourself. 

As time passed and the first two solutions stopped working, I think John focused on the third: sex in the context of an emotionally close relationship as the ultimate intimacy and proof that he was loved. And because he wanted to absolve himself of responsibility, to be taken care of, his partner needed to be someone on the other end, someone who had control. In our culture, this reads as a masculine figure (e.g. “father-figure trip”). 

This may be from a female, whose masculine qualities were what attracted John in the first place:

In this intense, intimate and revealing original cassette recording of a private conversation in 1969 between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the couple speaks primarily about Yoko’s past relationships, her music and art, and their random views on sex, love, promiscuity, and homosexuality. […] [Lennon] adds that he had never met an attractive woman that had sexually aroused him to any great degree.

— Description of the 45-minute audiotape auctioned in 2009 by Alexander Autographs.

I used to say to him, ‘I think you’re a closet fag, you know.’ Because after we started to live together, John would say to me, ‘Do you know why I like you? Because you look like a bloke in drag. You’re like a mate.’

— Yoko Ono, interviewed for New York Magazine (25 May 1981).

Or the partner he was looking for could be found in the (often dominant) person he was most emotionally invested in his whole life. 

All I want is you / Everything has got to be just like you want it to

And in a society that establishes that the closest two people can be, the greatest intimacy they can share, the ultimate declaration of love is to live in a monogamous amorous relationship, is it any wonder that John felt he could only believe in their relationship if they were together like that? Is it any wonder that he would doubt Paul’s affections because Paul apparently wasn’t willing to express them like that? 

JOHN: It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists. [faltering] An artist – it’s more – it’s much better to be working with another artist of the same energy, and that’s why there’s always been Beatles or Marx Brothers or men, together. Because it’s alright for them to work together or whatever it is. It’s the same except that we sleep together, you know? I mean, not counting love and all the things on the side, just as a working relationship with her, it has all the benefits of working with another male artist and all the joint inspiration, and then we can hold hands too, right?

SHEVEY: But Yoko is a very independent person. Isn’t it— [inaudible]

JOHN: Sure, and so were the men I worked with. The only difference is she’s female.

SHEVEY: But you didn’t find it difficult to make that transition?

JOHN: Oh yeah. I mean, it took me four years. I’m still not – I’m still only coming through it, you know.

— Interview with Sandra Shevey (June 1972).

I know I keep posting this quote, but I don’t think he can make it more obvious than that: it’s not about the sex. Or rather, the sex is not the primary thing. 

He didn’t push all those years because he was uncontrollably horny for Paul. John just wants a physical manifestation, a more tangible “proof”, of his emotional connections. He wants to be able to hold hands, be held and perhaps also have sex with his best friend; he needs those proofs of love through the means of physical affection because he won’t believe Paul’s love for him is there otherwise (or that it’s as great as John’s).

Would society normalizing other kinds of relationships – such as friendships – to be as important or on the same level as amorous (romantic/sexual) ones, have helped John and Paul? Most likely. 

Would society normalizing same-sex amorous relationships have helped John and Paul? Perhaps. (For this one we would have to look more closely at Paul’s needs and desires.)

All this to say that John’s idea of sexuality was extremely influenced by society, and in his case, the rule “amorous relationships are the normative ones” outweighed the “heterosexual relationships are the normative ones”. 

The conflict occurred when from Paul’s perspective, the priority of the rules was the other way around. I think Paul was ready to ignore society’s norm and live his life with his friendship with John as the most important relationship. But he also wanted a heterosexual one. (But more on that on a post of its own.)

For now, I hope I have more or less managed to express my thoughts on the matter of John’s sexuality. 

Thank you so much for reading through all that and for reaching out in the first place! I truly appreciate it!

[scrunchyharry]

on allowing translations of our fics: a non-native English speaker’s perspective

Here’s some 7am thoughts from my brain to your screens. This isn’t criticism, to be clear. I’m thinking out loud.

Under a cut because it’s pretty long and verging on Discourse.

I’ve been writing fics for 15 years, across four different fandoms and as many platforms. I’ve always allowed translations to be made of my fics because, I suppose que je comprends que certaines personnes ne disposent pas des capacités nécessaires pour lire des œuvres écrites en anglais.

I couldn’t comfortably read a novel in English until I was 17-18. It took me three weeks to get through Of Mice and Men in high school and when I was asked to read Dracula in my 9th grade ESL-A class, I found a French translation of it. I still can’t go to a Shakespeare play and hope to understand what’s going on. I’ve tried, numerous times. I’ve tried with Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. I just do not understand them when they speak (to be fair, I have seen a handful of Molière plays and also struggled my way through the Ancien Régime French, so maybe I just have really bad hearing comprehension).

And I’m Canadian, so English is omnipresent in my life. I started learning when I was in the 4th grade, I only truly felt like I could call myself bilingual in my early twenties, after going to university in English. Je comprends donc que l’anglais n’est pas confortablement accessible à tous et à toutes.

the 1D fandom is the first where I see people being against translations, yet it is also the most "international" of the fandoms I’ve been in. I have to clarify: I never witnessed any discussions of translations in my previous fandoms, is what I mean by that. Whether for or against them, I never saw people talking about them. The 1D fandom is the first where I a) see it being talked about and b) see people against them.

It stands out as odd to me because I personally never had any objections to it, I never even gave it a second thought beyond making sure that I was properly credited and asking for a link to the final product so that I can verify that I was. I think, perhaps, it speaks to the fact that the English speaking world is so rarely confronted to works in a language inaccessible to them. The outcries around Parasite being in Korean with English subs come to mind, while the rest of the non-English world was like "this is a regular Monday for us? To have to contend with translated or subtitled works to be able to access the hegemonic culture?"

Being a non-English speaker in an Anglo-centric world means constantly readjusting what you thought you knew. I didn’t grow up watching The Lion King or reading Anne of Green Gables. I grew up watching Le Roi lion and reading Anne et la maison aux pignons verts. Translations are an integral part of my life. Hell, on days when I’m really tired, I’ll switch whatever I’m watching on Netflix to French (when it’s available, which is a topic for another discussion) so that my brain can catch a break.

When I say readjusting, I mean that you’re always reframing. “Oh, I didn’t know that Severus Rogue’s English name was Severus Snape. Let me keep that in mind throughout our entire discussion in my second language.” “Oh, right, Americans have middle school so I better remember what years that covers and speak accordingly so I don’t have to go down the longer road of explaining that, actually, my French-Canadian school system didn’t have middle school and oh, also, our high school ends in the 10th grade and...” you get my drift.

This post is getting away from me. I’ll try to reel it back in. When I was in undergrad, I took a lit class from the French department (remember my bit about giving my brain a break?) and it was about the early 20th century. After suffering through the inevitable Proust, we moved on to Milan Kundera, a Czech writer (I had to use autocorrect for that, see, for me Czech is Tchèque) who became a French citizen. I don’t have the exact quote, that notebook has been gone since 2012, but I remember that he considered translations to be entirely new works of fiction and that the translator’s touch made the book anew because of the interpretations they chose when translating. Here’s an excerpt from an abstract about this:

"Kundera showed displeasure at any translator who, however briefly, would impersonate the author and take some license in translating Kundera’s work. Further, Kundera decided that only his full authorial involvement in the process would ascertain “the same authenticity” of his translations as the original Czech works. Kundera thus becomes the omnipresent, omnipotent author, himself impersonating God controlling his own creation."

Margala, Miriam. (2011). The Unbearable Torment of Translation: Milan Kundera, Impersonation, and The Joke. TranscUlturAl: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies. 1. 10.21992/T9C62H.

I’m not just name dropping Milan Kundera to show that I’m Educated. I’m bringing this point up because this isn’t my personal perspective on translation, but I can understand how it can be other people’s. My stance on this is that I want my work to be as universally accessible as it can be. Once I’ve put a story out into the world, while I do retain the copyright of it, it isn’t mine anymore. Every person reading it will read a different story because of their own inner lives and what they bring to it. Similarly, translations may bring out other perspectives of it. My work is done, though, the moment I click "post" and send it out into the world. I am no longer in control of the way it will be understood. And I’m at peace with this. It is a true ego death to read comments and see people picking up on things you did not even notice yourself as the omnipotent little god of your own creation.

As I was revising this essay, memories of bygone discourse came back to my mind, from the time I was in the Les Misérables fandom. You can imagine that I got a kick out of being able to say I had read it in the original French, but beyond that, the most interesting conversations I had in those days were when comparing the various English translations of the novel to each other and to the original French. There were Opinions on who had done it best, and who got closer to the original, but then not quite as much, because “see, here this word that Hugo used can be interpreted in a different way and it changes the entire meaning of the next sentence.” 

More recently, a woman translated The Illiad or the Odyssey, I don’t quite remember, and her interpretation of certain scenes completely changed their meaning. I’m working off my memory, here, but I think I recall reading that where men had translated “prostitute”, she had translated “companion”, or something along those lines, and it showed how the translator brings their own worldview to a work, it’s inevitable.

I am not trying to compare One Direction fanfiction to The Illiad, let’s be clear. What I’m attempting to say in too many words is that fanfiction is derivative work, and so are translations. I, personally, will never be against people translating my work if I’m credited correctly. Without translations, I wouldn’t have known Disney growing up. I wouldn’t have known Anne of Green Gables, or Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or Winnie the Pooh, or Alice in Wonderland, or any other work that have shaped my psyche as a child. Far from me to say that my native French culture is not rich in itself with works (I owe as much to the Comtesse de Ségur as I do to Lucy Maud Montgomery), but translations allow me to be able to take part of a global conversation, to be a part of the Internet’s collective unconscious.

At the same time, with the plague that are unauthorized reposts of our works, I understand why other people are wary of anything that involves a form of reposting. There is no easy answer to this, but I did want to share my thoughts on the matter as a non-native English speaker and, most importantly, writer. 

I’ll conclude by saying that, if anyone is wondering, I’m not writing in my native French because the mere thought of writing a sex scene in the same language I use to talk to my mother is enough to Catholic-guilt me off the face of the planet, without even breaching the topic of writing in the language that has the biggest potential reach.

so, huh, yeah. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[fatehbaz]

Hello, I hope you're well. Do you have any recommendations about where to start with decolonization theory? I've heard a bit about it but nothing substantial.

Hey, thanks for the question. Before I start rambling, I’ll just give a really short, blunt response: Despite all the jargon-heavy academic content written about decolonization, especially as a trend in the past 15 years, I think that the way to learn about decolonial thought and practice is to read the work of people living in the Global South; the work of marginalized environmental activists and agricultural workers, especially in the Global South; and the work of Indigenous scholars, knowledge holders, and activists who are explicitly willing to share their knowledge with non-Indigenous people. That said, I’m not too well-versed in technical decolonial theory per se, and instead I try to read more of the ecological/environmental, social/anthropological, and activist writing of Indigenous people and people from the Global South, what you might call decolonial thought. Rather than focusing on the technical theory and writing of wealthy Euro-American academics, I prefer more radical decolonial writing that integrates local/Indigenous cosmology, environmental knowledge, and ecology alongside the social and political aspects of radical anticolonial resistance. Something that I’m really interested in, regarding decolonial thought, is the importance of Indigenous and non-Western cosmology (ontology, epistemology, worldviews) because these ways of knowing actually provide frameworks that stand in contrast to extractivist thinking, suggesting alternatives that could be implemented. So, below I’ve listed just a couple of the most accessible authors that I’ve been reading recently, and I’ve split recommendations into four categories: (1) Indigenous authors writing about sovereignty and ecological consequences of colonialism; (2) technical decolonial theory and Indigenous resistance; (3) decolonial theory and ontology; and (4) synthesizing technical decolonial theory with writing on Indigenous worldviews and environmental knowledge. This definitely isn’t meant to be an extensive or definitive list of resources; and I know other people might have some better or different recommendations to make. But I hope this helps, if only a little bit, as an introduction!

-

Y’know, I think there’s a tendency among a lot of Euro-American academics to make the concept of decolonization much more mysterious, obtuse, and complicated than it needs to be; there’s an awful lot of discourse about metaphysics, ontology, and other intellectualized aspects of decolonization that are probably less important right now than concrete actions like reforestation and revegetation projects; healing soil integrity, health, and biodiversity; dismantling monoculture plantations; ending industrial resource extraction; ending de facto corporate control of lands, especially in tropical agriculture; allowing local Indigenous autonomy; preserving and celebrating Indigenous languages and ways of knowing; etc.

So, I’m not all that knowledgeable with technical decolonial theory. Instead I mostly just try very hard to read the environmental, anthropological, activist, etc. writing of Indigenous and minority communities, people from the Global South, and Indigenous traditional knowledge holders. Often, this kind of writing doesn’t always take the form of “theory.” A lot of decolonial theory - that I’ve seen, at least - is concerned with discussing trends/currents in academia and Euro-American discourse about the Global South. (In other words, a lot of decolonial theory written by white authors seems more concerned with talking about what decolonization means for academia and discourse, rather than actually exploring the worldviews of Indigenous peoples and the Global South.) Instead, the kind of stuff that I try to read explores Indigenous and non-Western resistance, community-building, and ecology; and so the resources that I recommend might not qualify as decolonial theory but they are decolonial, if that makes sense?

In my experience, some of the works that best demonstrate or embody decolonial thought are not works of theory, but are instead works of social history, nature writing, natural history, or works that explore bioregionalism, food, and local folklore. I also like to note that there is a trend among activists and scholars in Latin America to use the term “anticolonial” instead of “decolonial” or “postcolonial.” These latter two terms might imply that existence or identity in the Global South is doomed to always be defined by its relationship to Europe, the US, or imperialism generally. However, “anticolonial” might connote a more active role; you may still suffer the effects of imperialism, but you’re also an active opponent of it, living and thinking outside colonialism, with a unique worldview that exists autonomously rather than being defined always in reference to colonial actions or standards.

Indigenous authors writing about sovereignty and ecological consequences of colonialism:

So here are a few Indigenous scholars that I read, who write not just about decolonial thought, but also about place-based identity, environmental knowledge, and how decolonial theory can often be Eurocentic:

– Zoe Todd: Metis scholar and environmental writer, who famously criticized academic discourse about decolonization for itself being Eurocentric and colonial; here’s a nice interview (from 2015) about decolonial theory, where Zoe Todd criticizes Western academics and the ontological turn in anthropology.– Kyle Whyte: Potawatomi scholar, who writes about Indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous food systems, colonization, contrasts between Indigenous and Euro-American worldviews, and preservation of Indigenous enviornmental knowledge; here’s a list of Whyte’s articles and essays, most available for free.– Robin Wall Kimmerer: Potawatomi ecologist, bryophyte specialist, and educator, who discusses contrasts between Indigenous and Euro-American ways of knowing; here’s one of my favorite interviews with Kimmerer.

Technical decolonial theory and Indigenous resistance:

And here are two recommendations on more technical anticolonial/decolonial theory. These texts are both a bit dense:

– Boaventura de Sousa Santos wrote a wonderful work of decolonial/anticolonial theory and thought, titled Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (2014). This work is a bit technical but very interesting and thorough, and explores how a major function of imperialism is to deliberately dismantle Indigenous worldviews, ways of knowing, and environmental knowledge, to replace Indigenous ecological relationships with “extractivist” and “industrial” mentalities.

– Arturo Escobar wrote a good work of anticolonial theory in direct response to de Sousa Santos’ work; Escobar’s text is called Thinking-feeling with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South (2015).

Both of these texts and authors explore the Global South’s active resistance to industrial/extractivist worldviews; they both also largely focus on Latin America and reciprocity, communal relationships, agroecology, and active resistance in Latin American communities.

Decolonial theory and ontology:

The ontological turn in anthropology is kiiind of a manifestation of decolonial theory, though it’s kind of problematic and often Eurocentric, popular among wealthy academics. The Metis scholar Zoe Todd, referenced earlier in this post, has written about the problematic aspects of the ontological turn. The ontological turn was big news in academia around 2008-2012, happening alongside the rise in popularity of Mark Fisher, “capitalist realism,” and Graham Harman’s object-oriented ontology. Basically, I guess you could summarize the ontological turn as an effort to decolonize thinking in anthropology departments of Euro-American universities, to better understand the the worldviews/cosmologies of non-Western people. Here’s a summary by environmental scholar Adrian Ivakhiv, which references the role of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Phillipe Descola, two anthropologists working adjacent to decolonial theory.

Synthesizing technical decolonial theory with writing on Indigenous worldviews and environmental knowledge:

– Phillipe Descola: A renowned anthropologist whose work inspired much of the decolonization trend in US anthropology departments and the ontological turn in anthropology; Descola’s work deals with epistemology and ontology (so it’s often pretty dense) and takes a lot of cues from the work of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, the Brazilian anthropologist who popularized the study of Amazonianist cosmology. Other Euro-American anthropologists who write about technical decolonial theory: Bruno Latour (kind of problematic); Isabelle Stengers.

– Eduardo Kohn: An anthropologist focused on decolonization and Indigenous worldviews; Kohn also takes cues from Viveiros de Castro and Descola. Kohn authored How Forests Think, which is a study of Indigenous Amazonian worldviews and how Amazonian people perceive nonhuman living things and the rainforest as a community. You can look up interviews with Eduardo Kohn

– I don’t know if you saw this post I made recently, but it shares a fun publication called The Word for World is Still Forest, which is an exploration of the cultural importance of forests from decolonial and Indigenous perspectives, and it’s a good example of decolonial theory being explored by visual artists, geographers, poets, anthropologists, and activists.

-

So, these are just the first examples that come to mind. I’m sure other friends/readers/followers might have some better recommendations. [ @anarcblr ?]

Often, I feel like a lot of technical decolonization theory is written by white professionals and academics, and I, personally, don’t think it’s important to have a white academic acting as a “middle man” whomst “translates” the thinking of Indigenous theorists and people from the Global South. In my experience, there’s a lot of “decolonization theory” content in journals, books, etc., over the past 20-ish years, mostly written by white academics who seem to have just recently “discovered” the “utility” of decolonization theory for “improving their field” or something. Discussing the “utility” of Indigenous knowledge is itself a kind of colonialist way of thinking, since it sees the knowledge as profitable or valuable or something to be employed like a machine, a way of thinking that is itself extractivist. (I’m not anti-intellectual, and anti-intellectualism is a problem, especially in the US. But I’ve not really found academics willing to just straight-up say radical things like “capitalism has to be confronted if we’re going to be serious about decolonization.”)

Like, they write about decolonization as if it’s major benefit is its practical/pragmatic application to improving science, metaphysics, conservation, or climate crisis mitigation. One example of this behavior is a huge amount of headlines in mainstream US news sources and environmental magazines, from late 2018 and 2019, that say some version of “Indigenous knowledge may be the key to surviving the climate crisis” or “planting trees might be the single best defense against global climate collapse, and Indigenous peoples’ knowledge can help us implement it” And this just doesn’t sit well with me. Firstly, because it frames Indigenous knowledge as an inanimate resource to be “tapped,” appropriated, employed, “put to use.” And secondly, because this not news. This - the role of vegetation and healthy soil microorganism communities in mitigating desertification, biodiversity loss, and local adverse climate trends - has been well-known to Indigenous peoples for centuries or millennia, and has also been very well-known to Euro-American environmental historians and academic geographers for decades.

I guess I’m saying that the current Euro-American discourse of decolonization has a lot of issues.

Anyway, the theory that I personally like best isn’t too academic or jargon-heavy; I like the work that which synthesizes human elements (anticolonial; anti-imperialist; anti-extractivism; anti-racist) with ecology (cosmology and folklore; traditional environmental knowledge; place-based identity), since ecological degradation and social violence and injustice are inseparable issues, and this is an interconnected relationship that decolonial theory and Latin American worldviews seem to understand very, very deeply.

And, I guess another element to the kind of decolonial writing that I enjoy is the importance of Indigenous and non-Western cosmology (worldviews, epistemology, ontology, ways of knowing) to providing alternatives to imperial, colonial, and extractivist mentalities. This is how decolonial thinking is not just about finding ways to defend against further imperial violence, but also proactive in promoting healthier alternatives that can be implemented.

I hope that some of these recommendations are useful!

[battleshell]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm. tagged by: @dansiere whom im care tagging: extremely informative meme for ppl who have lots of cross-over interactions, i encourage u to steal it from me anyway BUT @sternenteile​ @twelvians​ @stellamris​ @grandtales​

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. [ he is a very, very minor NPC that i’ve essentially wrested from the game with my grubby hands; Gerson is a merchant NPC found in Waterfall, the third area of the game focused with water themes. he has less than 100 lines of dialogue (but jam-packed full of info) and doesn’t even have an overworld sprite. although noted to have a history with multiple major characters, it’s not often i’ve seen him be the main focus of any fanfics or art pieces. ]

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ put that faaaaaaaar away from me please tyty ]

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [ i personally believe that Gerson is a strong and potentially powerful monster with fighting capability that could rival some of the stronger Monsters in the Underground due to his background as a fighter during the Human-Monster War, but since has waned in both reputation and fighting skill. we never fight him in game and as such, will never see how he compares numerically, but it’s clear from his dialogue that he knows how to fight professionally/cleverly and would have given a hard challenge. ]

Are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK. [ i mentioned before that Gerson has ties with lots of major characters - I hardly see it being put into action or talked about! i also have a soft spot for elder/older characters in general since they seem to be overlooked in favor for younger characters that carry the action of plots - which I understand and totally get, but I still like to put these characters out there for the sake of it ]

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. [ he was a funny merchant dude that said “wahaha” a whole bunch of times and carried a magnifying glass; sure he and Frisk would have been good friends after the golden ending but most people have forgotten about their interaction with Gerson once out of Waterfall ]

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO. [ as one of the older if not oldest Monsters in the Underground, or from his reputation as the “Hammer of Justice” from wartime. he is also a historian and is noted to have written a few of the books in the Librarby. definitely known in the Underground, but probably only in that community ]

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. [ as mentioned before, a benefactor to the community and maybe even a sagely figure. a source of wisdom (even if cheeky) and a person of stability ]

How strictly do you follow canon?  — ehhhhhhhhhh both extremely canon compliant and then hands off the wheel, let jesus drive me away~ i only have so much canon material to work with so i have milked as much as offered to me, then went off to forge my own path in order to patch up the missing holes then add a few sprinkles. the base of the character is all there, but if you really want to get invested with him (or me) then we have a lot to walk through.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  old tortoise (NOT TURTLE) guy sells knick-knacks and cracks jokes, knows everyone’s dirty secrets but thinks they’re just funny to think about them than use them. an elder in the community who has stories to tell and lessons to teach, who has lived through half of recorded history and now spends his time just trying to make things around him interesting. a war veteran who protects his community and understands the horror of the world, but keeps eyes looking into the future even in the face of grimness itself. plays the accordion and harmonica, could probably square dance if he knew what that was. will call you kiddo.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  little to no motivation to find a passion for himself that would benefit or service just himself; his entire sense of worth comes from servicing others in some way (being a soldier and protecting people; recording history in order to teach future generations; maintaining a shop in order to literally service others) and lack of action due to decrepitude in old age. close-minded compared to other Monsters, as he doesn’t actually take to think of humans or outsiders kindly; judgmental to the point of being racist. proud and dislikes being one-upped that it could lead to pettiness, and despite his positive outlooks, very pessimistic worldview.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  funfact: Gerson is my first tumblr RP muse ever, and since i was worried about duplicate anxiety when i first started i specifically wrote him since he was a smaller character with less attention - i’ve since learned i have no anxiety about it so it’s no longer a problem, but what keeps me going today is the challenge of writing someone so different from me. the elder aesthetic along with homely, almost cottagecore kind of vibe is also appealing, and the humor that comes with gerson is a joy to write out.

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  reading literature, music, artwork, pinterest, replaying the game, and doing little hobbies that would embody the character (collecting or sewing, for example) are things i can do by myself, but with other people i have the most drive when i can have friendly and nonpersonal arguments/debates about character motives or about source material like what made a character act like this or that, or about really anything as long as it makes me seriously think about characters critically and force me to recognize flaws.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? [ unfortunately i’m not a tortoise monster who lived for probably centuries if not decades older than myself, but i enjoy writing older characters and hope that other ppl see the potential gerson has like i do ]

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF? [ you know when you have a concept and in your own mind you can see it clearly, without fuzziness or confusion, but you can’t seem to put it clearly into words without it turning into an essay because you need to connect all the other points that’s in the single concept you envisioned? yea. ]

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO [ bro i should.. ]

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO [ hmu if you got pinterest and i’ll give u tons and tons of boards ]

Are you confident in your portrayal?  YES / NO / SORT OF? [ this is unfair to answer as (AFAIK) i am the only person writing Gerson in... any capacity. despite that i like to think i bring out the humorous side of him, and show ppl that he and other NPCs are tons of potentials and shouldn’t be overlooked because they aren’t popular ]

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO. [ i always believed my style and my skill in not only PSDs or aesthetics, but analysis or understanding was always a bit plain, without much flourish or complexity. while that is appealing on its own and has its own merits, i can’t help but feel i can always push myself to do a little more, add a little flavor, or paint an image that could only be done in writing. although i am doing enough to get the job done, i’m searching for a certain voice of writing that i like and want to integrate into creative writing in order to make it more personalized and more engaging. ]

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO. / SORTA. [ i despise pussyfooting and will often tell ppl straight up if i have a problem with them or something about them; straightforwardness, honesty, and integrity are some of my core values and that includes being harsh if it comes to it in order to keep order ]

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  assuming it’s rooted in goodwill or from a point of analysis, absolutely! it’s one of the direct sources for growth and getting better at any craft, but as Tumblr loves to be.... jumpy, i’m always cautious when its not from someone i know.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  —  YEA BUDDYYYYY

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  absolutely, i thrive off friendly discourse as i mentioned.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  if we don’t discuss it as above, in lit any other case i’d say “well there are other blogs to follow” but since i’m like 99% sure i’m the only gerson blog that isn’t applicable lmao; the point still stands that everyone has the freedom to write a character as they wish. there are valid reasons to dislike a portayal but not a lot of valid reasons to attack someone for it - with the exception of ppl being gross. stop that, nasty.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  —  strangely. it’s not my job to make people like a character, you either like them or not. if you dislike them for unreasonable points then, to leave in the previous response, “clowns will be clowns, no matter what you do. I just don’t get why you would follow someone if you hate their character to begin with.”

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  of course, as long as it’s polite and all that jazz!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  depends on the meaning - i like making new friends and i find it easy to talk to new people, be it about roleplay or other things like organizing video game play sessions. however, i also have on multiple occasions have approached ppl privately saying “this is annoying/this is problematic/this is inappropriate, stop” and been met with general disdain for voicing such so Who Knows..... (tm). at least on a private level. here, publicly, i’m pretty relaxed! memes and jokes are abound. as long as a person can be mature and responsible for their actions we can vibe, yo.

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-02-24

IT’S ONLY BEEN TEN FUCKING DAYS HOW OFTEN ARE WE GONNA GET THIS STUFF

IT’S NOT EVEN A BONUS IT’S SOME MAINLINE THING

Alright, clicking the log to find my place as usual (while squinting so I don’t see too much), I see... one new page... THAT’s ominous.  Unless they’re doing the thing Andrew used to do and only showing the surface link so as not to spoil the update length/contents in the log, which would be nice given the new site format.  (Also I’ll be covering the commentary for the previous chapter here that went up on Patreon.)

...um.  what?

Well, it doesn’t say [S]...

> Chapter 5. YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D

CONTENT NOTE: This chapter contains Discussions of Suicide.

Thanks.

...I kinda understand the need for inclusion of this, though.  Not the trigger warning, that’s genuinely appreciated, I mean the working-through of many of these characters’ probably suicidal-verging thoughts given the bullshit the Epilogues have put them through, and the leadup events thereof.  Or, from the looks of this page trying to lay out how to create these new alien races, clearly based in part on pages of her Zoologically Dubious grimoire...

...the creations THEMSELVES wanting to commit suicide, if I had to guess.

(Hooves?  Dirk.  Don’t let this become a Musclebeasts VS Horrorterrors session.  Whoever wins, we clearly lose.)

*scrooooll*

Ohh, I get it.  It’s a single really long-form story-image to montage the process to us, instead of a series of panels.  THAT’S why it’s a one-page upd8.

What are you clowns doing?  (And that architecture and teal road below it is looking kind of Land of Thought and Flow-y too.)

Hah, poor Rose, just float-noping on out of there cause Dirk’s pushing his whole Cave-shadows-on-the-wall allusion.  Are you getting bored of this monstrous process, Rose?  Yes?  No??

Taking a floatwalk across the gorgeous alien landscape?  (Wait, your robot floats without rocket boosters? Neat. Is that technology or God-Tier flight? Did it need to be a fancy robot to integrate the latter or was that just yours for free?)

What will she run into to make sense of the title of this chapter-panel?

...Wait.

Did Terezi run back to the ship to snoop on that thing Dirk had been hiding while he and Rose were distracted?

I hope that’s what she did.

Eeeewww.  It looked MUCH cooler when your human eye did a magic sun thing.

Yes, yes, you have a technosight HUD, that’s no excuse, your magic was still cooler.

The whimsical wandering angle of this shot makes it unclear whether Rose is flying ahead while looking into the sky, or has suddenly flopped forward onto her face on a pale patch of ground.

Ooh, and now we have text! ...Which makes it unlikely that Terezi successfully snooped anything important unless Dirk would narratively let her.  Shit.

Wait, the command for this page might make sense if she was using the command terminal in the ship to mess with Dirk or someone else, possibly to give her the opportunity to pull something.  Right?

The soft whitenoise ringing of the extensive ventilation network sounds, if she closes her nose just right, like the rustle of wind through the leaves of a treehive universes away.

...closes her nose.  ¬___¬

but Terezi isn’t distracted from the main object of her focus — the unconscious body of Rose Lalonde, bathed in dim light, chest rising and falling in an artificially-induced slumber.

Good.  Her body had better fucking stay alive for a while.  They killed Davebot’s outright, since he was an “extra”, essentially -- Rose’s needs to stay alive if we’re to have fucking hope that Kanaya can snatch her up in a comfortable non-robotic embrace and get her out of this self-centered, brainwashed nightmare.

Wires and tubes run up from her plinth to the ceiling of the chamber, keeping her alive, yes, but too much just for that purpose. Something about the tangle of intravenous tubing and fiber optic cable makes Terezi think of the old stories about the Ψiioniic.

Mhmm.  She has to stay connected to and pilot her body.

ROSE: There you are. I haven’t seen much of you. TEREZI: IV3 B33N R1GHT H3R3 FOR HOURS TEREZI: BUT YOUR 3Y3S H4VE B33N CLOS3D TH3 WHOL3 T1M3 >:[

--Oh.  I’d misremembered the chapter name as “your eyes are NOW closed”.  So it probably wasn’t some sort of trick.  (Unless she’s lying here, and tricked Rose into THINKING her body wasn’t kind of half-awake for a moment, potentially rebelliously? .....nah.)

Better question, though...

Why does Terezi care so much?

I can imagine the old Terezi getting attached enough to Rose (and Kanaya) to look at this and feel bad enough to stare, but...?  She used her emotional distance from most of her remaining friends to vamoose with these people a long while ago.  (Which was a pity.)  How did those feelings and that empathy get resurrected way out here?

Rosebot turns her head to look back at the frail, failing vessel that once housed her consciousness. She doesn't even dispatch a fake laugh to her behavioral display matrix in pity of this half-joke.

Fuck you.  Dirk is writing half of this.

ROSE: Your attachment to my comatose body is unexpectedly charming, as well as slightly sinister. ROSE: She isn’t going to do anything. ROSE: She isn’t coming back from where she’s gone. TEREZI: YOU N3V3R KNOW

Does Terezi really care about Rose that much now?

Also, fuck you, Dirk-manipulating-Rose’s-worldview.

I mean, I know she’s probably really deep into all her new power and foresight, even as herself, but she wouldn’t be nearly as dismissive and comfortable if Dirk hadn’t been shaping her with mind control for years.

ROSE: Yes, I suppose that’s true. ROSE: Anything can happen, you can’t see the future, etc. etc. ROSE: Except I can. I can see the trajectory the story needs to take, and thus I know the trajectory it will take. ROSE: And resurrecting my meat puppet would not only be difficult to the point of being worthless, it would also be extremely lame. ROSE: Not that it would be out of character for this story. We live and breathe on the stupefyingly mind-numbing, and the mind-numbingly stupid.

They’re REALLY pushing her as a full fucking villain here.  Benefits of transcending human flesh aside, she’s being WAY too dismissive of what she’s leaving behind, here.  What came with this body besides the body itself.  The attachments and Blood it means relinquishing and severing.

TEREZI: 1F WH4T YOU'R3 S4Y1NG 1S TRU3 TEREZI: 1F 4 STORY H4S TO B3 COMP3LL1NG TO B3 C4NON TEREZI: DO YOU R34LLY TH1NK D1RK 1S TH3 TYP3 TO T3LL 4 COMP3LL1NG STORY

A compelling story, yes!

But a heartless one.

TEREZI: H1S T4ST3 1N 4N1M3 4LON3 1S CONC3RN1NG TEREZI: 1 D1D 3NJOY TH3 ON3 4BOUT TH3 HORS3S THOUGH ROSE: I don't think that counts as "anime."

MLP is pretty colorful.

TEREZI: PL4Y1NG W1TH 4 WHOL3 WORLD L1K3 1T'S SOM3 K1ND OF SQU34KY LUSUS TOY DO3S SOUND L1K3 1T H4S 1TS MOM3NTS TEREZI: 1 M34N TEREZI: MY FR13NDS W4NT3D TO RUL3 YOUR L1TTL3 WORLD 4S P3TTY TYR4NTS 4FT3R W3 WON TH3 G4M3 OURS3LV3S TEREZI: BUT DO YOU TH1NK TH4T WOULD'V3 B33N FOR TH3 B3ST FOR YOU 4ND 4LL TH3 OTH3R M4MM4L14N W31RDOS ON YOUR PL4N3T >:/ ROSE: It didn't happen because it didn't happen. TEREZI: 1F 1 H4V3 TO H34R ON3 MOR3 T4UTOLOGY FROM 31TH3R OF YOU 1 4M GO1NG TO MOV3 TO TH3 WOODS 4ND PL4GU3 YOUR N3W SOC13TY 4S 4 H3RM1T BOG MONST3R FOR3V3R

Rose has stared into the sun so hard that she is LITERALLY BLIND.  “It didn’t happen because it didn’t happen” is the worst, most basic and wrong level one Seer of Light thing she could possibly believe.  She has completely fucking FORGOTTEN that she played through an entire game session that was clearly trying to TELL her something.  TEACH her something.  And is dismissing everything at play back then, everything that MADE reality and the final timeline what it WAS, as something at worst meaningless or just plotpoints in a subpar story, and at best a failed moral tale that she thinks she would write better in her sleep.  She’s like... worse than inverted Rose right now.  Where’s all this new Lighty wisdom she’s supposed to have?  Jasprose is showing more foresight and prudence in the bonus chapters than she is as a PURE ultimate self, thanks to her own twisted ambitions and Dirk’s horse-blinders.

TEREZI: JUST B3C4US3 YOU'V3 3L3CT3D TO 4B4NDON TH3 CONC3PTS OF "GOOD" 4ND "B4D" 3NT1R3LY DO3SN'T M34N 1 DON'T ST1LL H4V3 MOR4L R3S3RV4T1ONS

...Yeah.  I’d like to think that Rose would never do that on her own without Dirk’s twisting, but...

TEREZI: 1'M T4LK1NG 4BOUT TH3 B4S1C 4B1L1TY OF 1NT3LL1G3NT B31NGS 1N 4LL R34L 4ND HYPOTH3T1C4L PL4N3S OF 3X1ST3NC3 TO G1V3 4 SH1T TEREZI: 1 DON'T G1V3 4 SH1T TEREZI: 4ND HON3STLY 1 H4V3 4 H4RD T1M3 UND3RST4ND1NG WHY YOU DO

I didn’t expect the “Why would anyone read this crap?” line so early in the story.  Still, this sequel WAS designed to both ask and answer this question... I shouldn’t be so surprised.

TEREZI: YOU D1DN'T DO MUCH "WORLDBU1LD1NG" WH3N YOU FUCK3D OFF FOR 3ONS 4ND L3T CH3SS P3OPL3 BU1LD YOUR PL4N3T ROSE: That approach failed. ROSE: Without an organized antagonistic force, the planet became fundamentally unsuited to relevance.

YOU FUCKING MORONS

THE GOAL OF MAKING A NEW UNIVERSE OUTSIDE OF CANON WAS TO ESCAPE RELEVANCE FOR PEACE!

Everything New Rose says makes me want to throttle her.  :(

ROSE: We only know of one way to perpetuate canon for sure. To play and defeat the game, and continue the life cycle of the genesis frog we cling to parasitically.

WHY is “perpetuating canon” EVEN A GOAL

WHY if it isn’t even WORTH anything???

ROSE YOU SOUND LIKE A CASH-IN-HUNGRY MOVIE PRODUCER

ROSE: Now it is protected, in the steady hands of a duly-elected ruler, sure to have a boring and uneventful perpetual term in office.

Oh my GOD, Rose.  You thought leaving Racist Jane in charge was going to just be peachy?

ROSE: As the sheer number of doomed universes our actions in the game spun off should show, we barely understood the design at the time. ROSE: Truly, we stumbled through the tape of the finish line ass-first, cheating all the way.

I suppose I can agree on a small sliver of this, a tangent -- one of the same reasons I was so surprised when Homestuck’s finale closed so few threads:

You all clearly didn’t have time to learn enough lessons.

ROSE: But there was no table of judges waiting to adjudicate our performance by holding up little placards with numbers on them. ROSE: We are the observers, and we are the judges. ROSE: We won, and to the victor go the spoils. ROSE: If you want a hand in making the rules of this new world, then don't storm off.

Terezi knows better than this.  The trolls “WON” with this attitude, and were hoisted on the resulting petard.  Ah, there we go, and she’s saying just that:

TEREZI: YOU'R3 TRY1NG TO L34D M3 TO 4CC3PT YOUR MOR4L FR4M3WORK TEREZI: WH4T 1F NO ON3 SHOULD CONTROL 4 UN1V3RS3 TEREZI: 4LL W3 FOUGHT 4G41NST W4S MONST3RS WHO CONV3RT3D POW3R 1NTO CONTROL TEREZI: 4ND NOT 3V3RYTH1NG W3 LOST F1GHT1NG TH3M W4S 4 M1ST4K3 TEREZI: TH3R3 W4S 4 LOT S4CR1F1C3D FOR TH3 1D34 OF "GOOD" TEREZI: WH4T'S TH3 PO1NT 1N CONT1NU1NG TH1S STORY 1F TH4T W4S M34N1NGL3SS TEREZI: 1F LORD 3NGL1SH W4S JUST HOLD1NG UP TH3 WORLD TEREZI: 1F 1T T4K3S 4CT1NG L1K3 H1M TO K33P 1T 4L1V3 TEREZI: WOULDN'T 1T B3 B3TT3R TO JUST L3T 1T D13

...but that crazy, ruled-over multiverse they ended up escaping is exactly what we think they’re going to end up CREATING in this story, right?  A contained loop of countless universes that follow the same rules they fought so hard to shrug off, many enslaved and miserable under Lord English’s rampaging thumbs?  In trying to do it “better” her own way, Rose is going to possibly end up creating the exact system she once tried to reject.

Congratulations!  You’ll have created a prison.  For your Ultimate Villain, AND yourselves.  I just hope you come to your senses and dodge getting trapped inside there again.

Rosebot looks over at the plinth where her body sits, kept alive, sure, but atrophied and weak, dependent on this machine to continue projecting consciousness to the abiotic enclosure keeping the realization of the Ultimate Self from tearing her apart.

Wouldn't it be better to just let it die? Terezi isn't asking new questions. Rose had first threatened suicide when she was eight.

Ah, damn.  That’s the route we’re going with this conversation, huh.

I was wondering whether keeping Rose’s body alive was “necessary” for the functioning of this particular level of robo-self tech, or whether it’s the last vestige of her vacillation, refusing to cut it off completely yet only because some NON-FUCKING-BRAINWASHED piece of her is wondering if she’ll eventually decide that all this isn’t “right” after all, that she can accept being “less” if it makes her happy.

Explaining things to someone not aided by the exponential increase in processing power Rosebot has is tedious. Terezi's hesitation won't be swayed by explaining more of the universe. There's another source at work.

Source?  What?

ROSE: You said it yourself, that you don't give a shit. ROSE: This melancholy, this meaninglessness you're feeling? ROSE: I think there's another explanation for it. One having little to do with the structural soundness of our plan.

Oh, THAT kind of source. Fuck you, psychoanalyzing anybody else when you’re like THIS right now.

ROSE: You are fucking depressed. TEREZI: OH TH4NK YOU DOCTOR SC13NC3 TEREZI: L3T M3 T4K3 OUT MY HUM4N CH3CKBOOK TO P4Y YOU FOR TH3S3 1NV4LU4BL3 HUM4N 1NS1GHTS

How would you have the slightest impression that Terezi ISN’T completely aware of this, Rose?  Why do you think she CAME with you???

ROSE: The constant insistence that everything is as it ought to be isn’t just counterproductive, it’s pathetic.

Oh, you think she’s projecting.  Fuck you.

ROSE: From one seer to another, we both know how bad you’ve gotten in the past. ROSE: Or, if not in the past, in some past. ROSE: I have no desire to meet that Terezi, no matter how doubtlessly sticky and charming she might be.

Eugh.  It’s interesting that you know so thoroughly about non-blind faygo-chugging Terezi from that timeline (who Terezi fully knows about too), but using it against her is pretty low.

TEREZI: W3 4R3N'T FR13NDS TEREZI: GO 4H34D 4ND DO YOUR 4RTS 4ND CR4FTS PROJ3CT W1TH P3OPL3'S L1V3S

But she DOES keep staring at Rose’s life-support body...  so she DOES care somehow.

ROSE: Your life is going to be short, compared to mine and Dirk’s, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. TEREZI: TH3 TWO OF YOU R34LLY 4R3 M4D3 FOR 34CH OTH3R

:C

Just, a tragedy what an asshole she’s been transformed into.

TEREZI: 1S TH4T WHY YOU L3FT K4N4Y4 B3H1ND TEREZI: B3C4US3 YOU KNOW SO FUCK1NG MUCH 4BOUT "F4M1LY" ROSE: I would be careful if I were you. ROSE: The weight of what I know and you do not is enough to overwhelm a mortal frame. TEREZI: UGH SHUT UP TEREZI: STOP PULL1NG TH1S MYST1C4L BULLSH1T 3V3RY T1M3 TEREZI: DON’T YOU M1SS H3R? ROSE: Don’t you? TEREZI: YOUR CONST4NT D3FL3CT1ON 1S 4S PO1NTL3SS 4S 1T 1S 1N3FF3CT1V3

Yeah, Terezi looking at Rose’s body and seeing constantly that crime committed against Kanaya is enough excuse to stare at Rose’s floating body, if she cares about Kanaya.

Too bad Rose is incapable of even THINKING about Kanaya properly as long as Dirk’s influence persists, and Terezi practically or literally knows it.

ROSE: We are obliged to act. To save the concept of meaning itself by continuing to spin the narrative loom into new tapestries.

Said the movie producer plonking down for the creation of Fast 7.

TEREZI: D1D YOU W4NT 4LL TH1S? TEREZI: OR D1D TH3 PR1NC3 >:?

Abruptly, Terezi is lifted from the ground with a glidingly-smooth effortless motion. Metal is so much stronger than flesh. She flashes a sharp-toothed grin as her feet dangle uselessly in front of the lithe metallic form of her counterpart Seer. Inspiring a reaction like this from Rose's robotic placidity has been like squeezing blood from a stone on this years-long journey.

Delicious, candy-red blood.

Oh hell fucking yes.  Is THIS what you were after, you beautiful troll?  Terezi just proved that SOME deep level of Rose has recognized that she’s being manipulated, and refuses to accept it for the sake of her own ego.  She couldn’t possibly get so ANGRY otherwise.  :D

ROSE: I know what I have lost. I have taken a full account of it. I cannot and will not forget it. ROSE: But to cling to it as it faded to nothing would be a meaningless capitulation to entropy.

Why do you value “perpetuation” so much?  She asked you before, and you barely gave a straight answer.

ROSE: Someone must sit atop Olympus and propagate the fabric of reality upon which these memories sit. ROSE: That is the task we have taken on. The game does not feel. The game does not mourn. The game must be played, and we must guide those who will play it better than we ourselves were guided.

DID it need YOU though?  You already had a universe under your belt.  YOU didn’t have to be the one to cause all this.  But I suppose it’s too late now -- you will be, and you might end up regretting it.

ROSE: Just as I have remembered the good, I can recall the terror that consumed me and overwhelmed my body. ROSE: The visions of dissolution. The narrative unspooling. A thousand voices shouting contradiction. ROSE: What value is a marriage, temporary domestic bliss, if all is lost? ROSE: You understand this bargain.

Yeah-- it’s pretty clear here now.

The heroes’ goal in the initial comic, and the reward they earned -- while unclear on paper and DEFINITELY not spelled out -- was to “stop being Homestuck”.  Was to escape the bounds of the comic, to almost KILL the comic.

But that was a little vaguely put, before.  HS^2 has done us the favor of making it an EXPLICIT GOAL of the heroes.

ROSE: Is your resentment towards my choice about Kanaya, or about V–

BONK. Rosebot's even metallic voice is interrupted by the bang of skull against metal, and Terezi's headbutt collapses the both of them into a crumpling heap of metal and flesh.

That was a step too far. Tensions that once simmered under the surface have found the catalyst for a boil.

Terezi’s barely holding on if she’s going to get so dramatic so fast.

Or Dirk’s writing this so dramatic, anyway.

Rosebot finally has Terezi pinned to the ground by the throat. A cool metallic knee is pressed hard between her legs, holding her down. A natural pause in the staccato squabble is found, and two pairs of red eyes are locked on each other.

Oh God, don’t <3< please.

TEREZI: 1 T4K3 1T B4CK TEREZI: TURNS OUT 1 ST1LL 3NJOY T4LK1NG TO YOU >:]

Ah, shit.  Weakness for Light players, huh.

Rosebot leans in close. Terezi can smell the licorice-black lipstick, the same kind as always, applied now to synthetic polymer lips inches away from her own. Rosebot's metal fingers close just a little tighter around her neck–Woah, woah, woah.

I fiddle with some advanced speciation machinery for a few hours and then come back to this?

...yeah, you can’t get into Terezi’s sex life without a bit of choking and breathplay I guess.

You people are here for logic. Systems. Weird plot shit. Lore. Not this.

Hm.

I have mixed feelings about this possibly-sarcastic point of view of his.  And that’s coming from someone who was fuck deep in those systems and frustrated as hell that Andrew worked them out but never explained them or made their (at least I believe) hidden importance clear.

Quit out of your browser, slam the laptop closed and punt it into the ocean. That shark is probably hungry after all the jumping.

You won’t, though. If you were going to quit you would have quit before this. We’re in this for the long haul, you and I. We’ll all go down together. Welcome to ‘Nam.

...yeah.  :C

I'll just get a head start on my species, then. It's only the fate of a new planet on which the weight of saving the universe lies.

Did Dirk never get the memo that Calliope and fucking Caliborn were born on Earth C millions of years hence???

Your universe’s “relevance” is safe, my dude.  You’re just making excuses to rule the narrative.

And... that’s it!  For this update, anyway.

Let’s cut over to the commentary for the last one, which I expect will be touching on and lampshading just how much of an amoral dick move Rose and Dirk are making with the entire live-draft species creation process.

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 4, The Contest

Oh, two members of the writing team are discussing this one.

Plenty of appreciation of the art of the alien planet, apparently art-ed by Gina.

--Yes, I agree, Terezi probably wouldn’t be the best at parallel parking.

Oh right, I should skip most of the fluff y’all would see if you paid and get just any plot important discussion, let’s skip past some ogling of Rose’s pretty well-designed robo-form and its first onscreen appearance...

(Xam’s designs are GREAT all around.)

A1: The imagery is, admittedly, a little heavy-handed. Terezi leaving the cave for the light, the other two remaining in the darkness to talk endless circles around each other. 

Heh.

...There are some seriously good jokes here.

--OH! I finally get to figure out why Dirk’s hand was glowing all weird when he slammed the “map”: ......nope, they just talk about how big his yaoi hand is.

A1: I guess this means we’ve sort of canonized Dirk’s Texas accent? a2: yeah, but i think this was a foregone conclusion. the dude lived in post-apocalyptic texas, and he's ABSOLUTELY the sort of person to adopt a long-dead accent for no reason other than historical accuracy.

That’s fair.  (Yes, I included that for plot relevance. Totally. ...I really need to be a lighter touch with how much I include of these things that isn’t helpful to actually understand what the fuck is going on with the actual plot/characterization, here, this was real borderline.)

i think we could stand to talk more about the writing at this point.

JESUS CHRIST THANK YOU

we sort of go in drunken circles of Dirk and Rose trying to out-bullshit each other and convince themselves they’re doing the right thing.

--which was obvious to everyone, but.  Still appreciated to see it spelled out.  Seeing our points of view validated like this helps us stay sane through the bullshit, a golden promise of eventual reprieve and vindication.

a2: we tried something a little different for the writing process of this update, which is that for large sections of the dialog we just rp'd the characters a2: andrew copied large sections of early homestuck from personal chatlogs with friends, and i always thought that lent it a special kind of humor and rapport that can be hard to capture by yourself. i think this approach worked pretty well for us.

It REALLY is an effective way to write dialogue for these sorts characters in particular!  Heck, I’m kind of helping someone else do exactly that.  It’s pretty fun!  There are chapters and chapters out by my understanding, having diverged from such a focus on the central character I’m playing but using our logs as a guide... none of which I’m allowed to read, not even the FIRST chapter, so as not to spoil me with the surrounding narration and added revelations.

...What?

You expected me to tell you what it is? Where to find it?

No.  :)

(Maybe later.)

A1: Moving right along. We see more of Dirk’s casual manipulation of Rose’s mental state, that he rationalizes away. It’s not actually that bad if she was going to agree anyway, right? 

Mhmm.  Hard to watch.

a2: [...] but it's a large part of what this chapter is about. a2: what is the right thing to do when you're functionally omniscient? a2: or omni...whatever these kids are. A1: Yeah, the question of whether morality actually has anything to do with running a system like this. Can god be moral? a2: and of course, that's kind of the same question that i ask myself a lot when writing. authorship is a peculiar thing.

That last part is pretty key about the story this entire thing is trying to tell.  A story about the morality of how one goes about creating a story.  A just story.  And if what’s created even has value.

a2: i was responsible for the animation on the sprite panels, which was fun. it's obviously imitating andrew an awful lot, but i think that lends it an aura of homestucky authenticity. andrew is low-key really good at animation. 

Yeah, he really, really is.  His keyframing and the devices he used to communicate what was physically happening were really tight.  I always appreciated that.

a2: aaaaand one last gina panel to finish with. rose may have had her doubts about this contest at first, but as soon as dirk made a little creature with tentacles she's like, fuck it, this is all i've ever wanted actually.

:(

A bit sparse on the detail I was looking for once shit started to get horrific, the implications and such... but I can understand that.

Maybe when we get to the second and third place draft aliens, we’ll actually see a hint of a moral crisis in them.  At least a tiny one.

Arrite, that’s it.  See y’all next time.  I’ll wait to blog the commentary on the past bonus chapter whenever the next bonus chapter is up for blogging.

[frangipanidownunder]

For the 5 hcs: roaring 20s au or author/publisher au!!

1

He stands at her table, skinny latte ready. Her eyes roll up to take him in but she doesn’t move her head. He does see the slight purse of her lips, the flare of her nostrils and hears the small tap of her index finger against the page of her journal.

           “Dr Scully. Do you mind if I join you?” He sits anyway. She reads on, hair swinging over her face. He scans the document, catching some of the words but none of the meaning. “I really enjoyed your senior thesis,” he says, then puts his card next to her coffee.

           She sits back in her chair, sceptical smile playing on her lips. “You’re the one who asked the question about extraterrestrials. What was that all about?”

           “Just seeing where you sat on the plausible vs implausible scale.”

           She shifts slightly, opening her mouth to speak before closing it again. “What do you want, Mr…” she looks at the card. “Dr…Mulder?”

           “I think you have a book in you, Dr Scully, and I’d like to be the one to publish it.”

2

He doesn’t expect to hear from her so soon. He’s running and only answers the phone when he reaches the crossing.

           “Dr Mulder, it’s Dana Scully. We met at the Future of Science Conference.” Her tone is clipped, like she’s trying to hide her words away.

           “You’re intrigued by my proposition.” She doesn’t respond. “But you’d like to meet in person to discuss it more?”

           She suggests the First Ladies Water Garden and they watch the fountain sprays catch the late afternoon sun.

“You’re an Oxford educated psychologist whose sister disappeared when she was eight. You spent time working as an FBI agent, in Violent Crimes, but you quit suddenly. You own a small publishing house called Reticula that specialises in paranormal non-fiction and you also co-publish The Lone Gunman newsletter.” She turns to him. “I find it difficult to believe that you might be interested in what I have to say. Perhaps you should be talking to my partner. What can I possibly bring to your table?”

He looks at the way she’s standing, face tilted, eyebrows raised, hips square to him, shoulders back, hands clasped, feet in high pumps, suit-jacket buttoned. She’s wearing an intrigued, expectant half-smile.

He should say ‘credibility’, he should say ‘integrity’, he should say ‘authority’ but he smiles and says, “earnestness.”

3

He thinks she’s beginning to turn. She listens as he outlines his proposal, asking pertinent questions about potential audience, sales history, promotional requirements. They’re walking back towards the car park when urgent footsteps close in on them.

           “Scully!” A woman’s voice calls out, curt, almost angry.

           Scully slows, looks up at him, apologising with her eyes. “My partner.”

           “Ah,” he smiles, “maybe she might like to co-author?”

           “I doubt it,” Scully says, low. “That would mean sharing.”

           “Diana Fowley,” the woman barks. “Special Agent.” She extends a hand. “You’re the reason I haven’t been able to get hold of my partner.”

           “Sorry,” Scully says, “we were just about finished. I’ll be in contact.”

           “What do you do, Mr…?”

           “Mulder. Doctor Fox Mulder. I’m a publisher.”

           Fowley laughs. But it’s heavy with cynicism and the way she grips his hand so that he has to extract it with some force, makes him feel that the balance in the partnership with Scully is out. “And what could you possibly be talking to Dana for?”

           He doesn’t answer, just nods at Scully and thanks her for her time.

4

She stands at his table, skinny latte ready. His eyes roll up to take her in but he doesn’t move his head. He hopes she sees the slight purse of his lips, the flare of his nostrils and hears the small tap of his index finger against the page of the manuscript.

           “Dr Mulder. Do you mind if I join you?” She sits anyway.

           He reads on, hears her sharp intakes of breath. “A lot of your FBI records are redacted. Why would that be?”

           He shrugs but hears Paterson’s vicious mauling voice in his mind, reminding him what a useless pile of shit he was, and tearing into him for his failure to act quickly enough to stop more innocent children from being murdered.

           Fowley presses on. “Your pursuing of Agent Scully is a mistake. Her area of expertise is too narrow for your domain and I truly cannot understand your fascination.” She slides her fingers to meet his. “Unless, it’s a purely romantic attachment on your part? And if that is the case, Dr Mulder, I can assure you that you are wasting your time on that endeavour. She has a nickname at the Bureau.”

           He bites. “And what’s that?”

           “Agent Orange. Because she burns everyone who gets too close.” Fowley smiles brightly at her own joke. “I do believe that I might have more to offer your publishing house. It seems to me that our way of thinking is much more aligned. Scully has been assigned to debunk my work. She sees everything in black and white, where you and I, we view the world in colours.”

           Pushing his chair back, he apologises. “I have to go. And I’m pretty sure that if you’d thoroughly checked my record, you would have seen my diagnosis of protanopia.”

           He’s missed a call from Scully and when he hears her message, he imagines her aflame, melting hearts, and feels his own heat up in his chest as he gets in the car.

5

He meets Scully at Wan Loy and orders the banquet for two. She is dressed more casually and it suits her, makes her look younger, softer. Not like a woman who sets fire to people for fun. He can’t get enough of her.

           “Agent Fowley approached me today.”

           Her eyes widen. “What did she want?”

           “She wanted in,” he says, dipping a dumpling in soy.

           “But she doesn’t fit the profile.” Scully sips her wine. Outside, it starts raining, water splashing violently against the windows.

           “And you do?”

           She rolls her shoulders. “Look, I might not fit the profile of your other authors, but I can fit the brief. The cases I’ve worked on, the things I’ve seen. Some of them are downright…”

           “Spooky?”

           She laughs. It suits her. She takes in a deep, slow breath. Something is changing within her. “My work has been my only outlet for too long. Over the last few years, I’ve had some…health issues and it forced me to think about the future. My future. Agent Fowley has developed some liaisons with people who don’t fit comfortably with my worldview and…” she stops, looks at him. That same earnest expression that he saw from the outset. The honesty she can’t hide. The truthfulness that runs in her blood. “You want a book about the arcane and the mysterious but explained in scientific terms? I can write it.”

           He doesn’t doubt it. He gets the feeling that Dana Scully’s writing, if it’s anything like her heart, could drag you in, envelope you, never let you go. A tingle runs up his spine. “I read about that case you investigated in Texas where bodies had been completely exsanguinated and bore strange marks, like the holes that fangs might leave.”

           “Agent Fowley suspected vampirism,” she says, rolling her lips together. “She killed a boy…it was terrible.”

           “But what were your findings?”

           She bites into a rice paper roll. “I found out that Agent Fowley can’t sing. And that some alleged vampires are pretty good looking.”

           He smiles, pulls his collar away from his neck. Dana Scully is warming him up in ways he hadn’t expected and he’s here for it. “Do you like bagels?”

           “Only with real cream cheese,” she says. “Why do you ask?”

           “I have them every morning for breakfast.”

           The rain hammers harder and her laugh is sucked up in the noise. “That is quite possibly the worst pick up line I’ve ever heard, Fox.”

           He figures he deserves that. Lightning flashes across the sky and he feels like he’s losing time. “So, you’ll sign with us?”

           She nods, looking out at the lashing rain. “What’s the title of our book going to be, Mulder?”

           The waiter brings silver trays of sizzling beef. The air is filled with aromatic ginger and garlic. “Do you have an idea?”

           Her eyes gleam. Of course she does.

“I was thinking ‘Death is a Drama’.” Her face lights up brighter than the sky in the storm. His heart thunders in his chests. Beginning, middle and end, he thinks. The perfect story.

[unfolded73]

How Do We Get Back (14/16) - schitt’s creek ff

Surprise! I’m posting early because with Thanksgiving approaching, the rest of my week is slammed.

Summary: In a literal alternate universe where the Roses escaped financial ruin, David and Patrick struggle with loneliness and a sense that something isn’t right. A chance meeting in New York and a terrible tragedy drive them to question whether the timeline they are on is the right one. Explicit, this chapter 3.8k words.  (ao3)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13

Okay, I have a lot of notes on this chapter, so listen up!

1. Thanks to @j-philly-b for giving this chapter a careful read to make sure the plot made sense. Oh god, so much plot to tie together here. It gave me hives.

2. I’ve mentioned several gods from actual mythology in this fic, but Istus is from Dungeons & Dragons. So thanks to Griffin McElroy and The Adventure Zone for the characterization and even a couple of her lines, which I lifted out of the TAZ: Balance arc.

3. As I posted a week ago, this is what I’m picturing for Istus.

_____________________________________

Chapter 14

It was still raining when he woke up the next morning, and Patrick had to admit that he wasn’t in any hurry to go out and search for their mysterious homeless woman. He looked over at David, still asleep, his cheek pressed into the pillow and his hair sticking up in a tangled mess from his head, stubble dark on his cheeks. I’m in love with him, Patrick thought. It wasn’t a maybe for him, not now, not after last night. He would have been happy to just spend the day in bed, not thinking about what was going on in the outside world. Not thinking about the fact that something supernatural, something that didn’t fit into his analytical worldview, might have touched his life. He’d finally found the person that maybe he was meant to be with, and he wanted to just enjoy that for once. He wanted to protect it from the world.

David, in contrast, woke up to his phone alarm with determination on his face. He wasn’t even deterred when he discovered that Seamless was down and that he couldn’t get breakfast delivered, and he sent Patrick out to pick up food while he got ready for the day. By the time Patrick returned with egg sandwiches balanced on top of a tray of coffee cups, David was sitting at the table, studying something on a laptop computer and making notes in his journal.

“You didn’t see her, did you?” David asked as Patrick shook out his umbrella.

“No, but I saw a scary number of police cars, given that I only walked two blocks.” Patrick sat down with David and began unwrapping his sandwich.

“There are a fuckton of homeless shelters nearby,” David said. “This may take a while.”

It did.

A lot of the places that had popped up on google when David searched ‘homeless shelters’ weren’t actually that: they were thrift stores or soup kitchens or the offices of volunteer organizations. By asking around, they were finally able to find their way to a few shelters where they might find their missing woman, but by mid-afternoon, they’d had no luck.

The rain had finally let up, but David’s earlier determination was clearly melting away. “Let’s go back to the apartment and rest for a bit. Maybe she’ll turn up in your neighborhood now that it’s not raining.” He gave David a quick kiss on the cheek.

It almost wasn’t a surprise when they turned the corner toward David’s building and there she was in her usual spot.

As she watched them approach, her shoulders sagged with what looked like relief.

“You went there, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Went where?” Patrick asked. Let her say the name of the place if she really knew so much.

“Schitt’s Creek. Where all of us belong.” the woman responded.

“How do you know all this?” David asked.

“I’m a technopagan. I’ve known for years that the timeline took a wrong turn, and the people I work with online narrowed it down to the fortunes of your family. My mission was to come here, David; to watch you, to try to nudge you in the right direction.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now… if you want to know more, some food and a shower would be appreciated.”

David grimaced.

Patrick put a hand on his arm. “Why don’t you go pick up some food and I’ll take her up to the apartment, okay?”

David pointed to the woman’s cart. “That doesn’t come into my apartment.”

“Okay, David,” Patrick said with two quick pats on David’s shoulder. “Maybe get me a reuben?”

David made another face. “Incorrect, but I’ll get you a reuben.”

“What’s your name, by the way?” Patrick said as he accepted David’s key and ushered the woman toward the building.

“It’s Gwen.”

~*~

“I’ve been here in New York for almost a year. My husband doesn’t know anything; he probably assumes I’m not coming back. Although if you two can fix things, maybe it won’t matter what happens on this timeline.”

That’s what she had said to him months ago, Patrick remembered as he chewed a bite of his sandwich, that he needed to fix things. “What makes you think we can fix things?”

“That’s what all the portents tell us,” she said mysteriously, which didn’t really answer anything at all. It seemed like the kind of thing that someone who termed themselves a ‘technopagan’ would say, whatever that was.

“I don’t understand why my family has anything to do with anything,” David said.

“Why has the fact that your father didn’t lose all of his money led to the downfall of society?” She laughed, running her fingers through her drying mop of gray hair that looked way overdue for a trim. “If I could answer that, I’d be leading our coven, not living rough on the streets of Manhattan, believe me.” She took a big bite of her sandwich, and then proceeded to continue talking while she chewed. “My people have been trying to answer that question for ages. A million tiny things changed when the Rose family continued to live as they had in New York. Moira Rose had acting roles she wouldn’t have otherwise had. Johnny employed people he wouldn’t have otherwise employed. Eli went to jail and interacted with other white-collar criminals he wouldn’t have otherwise spoken to. Alexis traveled places she wouldn’t have otherwise traveled. You sold art that wouldn’t have otherwise been sold. Any one of those things, or a combination of them, has sent the world down a path that’s just a bit darker than it should have been. It’s chaos theory.”

“I still don’t get how you know all of this,” Patrick said.

“I lived there, dummy. You’ve been to Schitt’s Creek, so I don’t have to tell you about that place, right? There are a few places around the world that work that way. Windows to parallel worlds. And I have ways of quite clearly seeing how things were supposed to be: the Rose family there and the town revitalized by your presence.”

“The store?” David asked.

Gwen nodded. “Among other things. I mean, I would have preferred Christmas World, but you can’t have everything. And people love Rose Apothecary; some of them drive all the way from Elmdale to shop there.”

Patrick snapped his fingers, suddenly remembering. “You’re Bob’s wife!” He recalled the town gossip not long after he’d moved to the town, that Bob’s wife (Bob of the eponymous garage) had left him.

“He’s been clueless about all of this, poor lamb,” she said. “And then I was summoned here, so I had to drop everything and go.”

“What was the plan?” Patrick asked.

“I only got pieces of it; the leaders of the coven aren’t exactly forthcoming. I do know they’ve been trying to get you two together in the same place for a while. Attempts to lure David to Canada didn’t work; I myself spent at least a month in the public library crafting emails to David about art shows in various parts of Ontario.”

“I don’t read spam,” David said.

“When Patrick got married, we were pretty disheartened, but then he took that business manager job and the goal became getting him to a conference here,” Gwen said.

“Wait,” Patrick said. “The conference in Hoboken was you?”

“I mean, it was a real conference, but I did send some of the emails about it to you,” Gwen said. “And to your boss.” She put the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth. “Then it was just a matter of getting David to a bar where you could run into each other. As I understand it, someone hacked your Tinder account.”

“Oh my God,” David said, and Patrick couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that in the midst of all of this, David had the space to be offended about the integrity of his Tinder account.

“So we met because of these techno-wiccans?” David asked.

“Technopagans, and yes.” Gwen grinned at them. “I mean, we couldn’t make you actually hook up with each other, of course. That part of was all you two.”

Patrick grinned back, images of those nights flashing in front of his eyes, but David’s face had gone ashen.

“What about Alexis?” David said quietly.

“David—” Patrick began.

“No, because we hooked up but then we went our separate ways. The thing that brought us back together was Alexis dying. Did the technopagans do that too?”

Gwen shook her head. “No, absolutely not. We don’t murder people,” she said emphatically and she looked like she was telling the truth as far as she knew, Patrick thought, but she didn’t know everything. She’d admitted that she only saw pieces of the operation.

“So what do we do now?” Patrick asked.

“You go to this address,” she said, grabbing David’s diary and pen and flipping it open to a blank page. David’s hands twitched like he wanted to rip it out of her hands and was restraining himself. Once she’d written the address down, she handed the diary to David.

He raised an eyebrow. “Nice neighborhood.”

“Well, she is a goddess. What do you expect?”

~*~

David looped his arm around the subway pole, trying not to touch anything with his hands. He hated the subway. It was dirty and smelled bad and germy people stood way too far inside his personal space. His other hand was clutched in Patrick’s as they made their way uptown.

“Maybe I should have tried uninstalling the app and reinstalling—”

“David, it seems pretty clear that Uber is no longer functional, at least in New York,” Patrick said.

“Then we should have taken a cab.”

“Did you see any cabs?”

David pouted, his eyes darting around at their fellow passengers again, trying to assess if any of them were ill with a communicable disease.

Finally, the doors opened at their destination, and David and Patrick pushed their way out into the 77th Street station, making their way over to the nonfunctioning escalator. They climbed the metal stairs and emerged into the early evening twilight, walking east.

“ID please,” said a bored police officer standing by a crowd control barrier.

David reached for his wallet. “What is this?”

The police officer took his driver’s license and stared at it. “You don’t live up here; I can’t let you through.”

“Show her the address, David.”

David opened his diary and showed the police officer the address that Gwen had scrawled inside it. “We have an appointment at this address,” he said, hoping that the police officer didn’t ask the next logical question, which was ‘with whom?’ Because David had no idea.

Instead, the officer looked back over her shoulder, where the brownstone they were headed toward was only another half block away. She sighed. “I’ll escort you, but if you’re lying to me, you can expect to spend tonight in jail.”

David met Patrick’s eyes. Were they expected? Reluctantly, he squeezed through the gap in the barrier that the cop widened for them, Patrick following. The cop set a quick pace despite her stature, and David trotted a little to keep up. She stomped up the stairs to the door and rang the bell, eyes darting back to the post that he suspected she wasn’t supposed to have abandoned. David and Patrick stood two steps down from her, like street urchins looking for a place to spend the cold night.

The woman who opened the door was strikingly beautiful. She wore a peasant blouse and a long floral skirt, bare toes sticking out beneath it. She had an astounding number of tight, black braids on her head, some of them piled up in a messy topknot and some of them hanging down past her waist. Deep brown eyes took them all in.

“These gentlemen say they have an appointment at this address,” the cop said.

“They do,” the woman said, nodding. “David, Patrick, it’s so good to see you finally. Come in.”

The police officer nodded. “Have a good evening, then,” she said before hurrying back up the street.

The woman stood back, opening the door wide, so David took Patrick’s hand and walked through the door.

She led them down a dark hallway to a small room, where a rocking chair stood before a crackling fire in the fireplace. “Sit down,” she said, gesturing to a couple of high-backed, overstuffed chairs. Dropping each others’ hands, they sat.

It was a nice, cozy house, but every time David tried to look at something specific, like a hanging on the wall or a knick knack on a shelf, it seemed too far away and blurry to bring into focus. Meanwhile, the woman seated herself in the rocking chair, picking up some knitting from a basket and moving it to her lap. The needles started to move, almost too quick for David to follow. His eyes followed the… scarf?... from the woman’s hands to where it trailed down into the basket, and then beyond, into… well, he couldn’t really see where it ended. Maybe it didn’t end. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

“My name is Istus. Some people call me the lady of fate. Some call me the goddess of destiny. But Istus is fine.” She smiled a small smile. “I must say, the two of you are just in time.”

“Goddess,” Patrick said flatly. “I’m sure you can understand my skepticism.”

She chuckled, the rhythm of her needles never stopping. “You’ve seen your alternate futures. David, you saw first hand the connection that the artist Carmen Herrera had with the ethereal plane. Patrick, you heard Ash talk about Hela and her worshipers in Norway. Even Gwen’s technopagans are divinely inspired, after a fashion. Is it really that hard to believe in me when I’m sitting right here in front of you?”

“But you could just be… you know. A person,” Patrick said.

“Could I?”

And no, no she couldn’t. No human being had ever been as beautiful as Istus was, the perfection of her brown skin and the angle of her eyes and the shape of her lips. An actual, literal goddess. David felt a tear slide down his cheek.

“Ironically, the sickness of the world has made us more powerful, although I don't like to brag. But humans are starting to notice us more, worship us more, and… I’m not gonna lie, it’s kind of nice? But it’s not the way things are supposed to be.”

“Okay,” David said to prompt her to go on.

“You’ve been to a liminal space and gotten a glimpse at another reality, a better one. Well,” she said with a tinkling laugh, “maybe not better from the perspective of the Rose family fortune, but better in other ways. It’s unfortunate that you’ve seen something you cannot have. Most humans aren’t ever burdened with that kind of knowledge.”

“You’re the one who said you were a goddess of time and fate or whatever,” David said. “So fix it. Undo it and do whatever it takes to get us to that place.”

“David, if it were that easy, the world would have been a lot less shitty a long time ago,” Istus said. “Do you think you’re the first people to come to me and ask me to change the past?” She smiled to herself. “There was a famous comedian who feared that he’d inspired the current U.S. president to run for the office by making fun of him at the Correspondent’s Dinner. He came to me and asked me to undo it. But when he understood the price, he backed out.”

“What was the price?” Patrick asked.

“Uncertainty.” Her needles paused long enough for her to run a hand down over the scarf. “I can pick out the threads of a certain event, but other things will change, and even I don’t have enough power to control for everything. So in that case, yes, I could make it so that he never made those jokes. But I couldn’t guarantee that his children would still be born. In fact, it was very likely that they wouldn’t be. Other children, perhaps, but not the ones he already knew and loved.” She shrugged, resuming her knitting. “He couldn’t go through with it.

“I can make certain that Eli gets away with his theft, and that will almost certainly drive the Roses to Schitt’s Creek, which with any luck will set civilization on a slightly less terrible path. I’d even lay good odds on that saving Alexis’ life, if for no other reason that she won’t be on that yacht. But I can’t guarantee she won’t die another way. And I certainly can’t guarantee that the two of you will ever meet. In fact, I’d say it’s highly unlikely.”

David looked over and met Patrick’s eyes.

“But I went to Schitt’s Creek in both realities,” Patrick said, and David could see the effort he was making to treat all of this like it was a reasonable topic of conversation. “This one, and… and the one we dreamed about.”

Istus made a scoffing sound. “Coincidence. The odds of you ending up in Schitt’s Creek after you ran away from your engagement to Rachel are…” She held up her fingers to her face and counted on them for a moment. “One in one hundred seventy thousand.”

“So I’ll track him down,” David said. “I’ll find him.”

“You won’t do anything of the sort, because you won’t remember him.” She rolled her eyes. “I know you’re new at this, but try to keep up. What you’ve asked me to do is unweave time to the moment that Eli gets away to the Cayman Islands with your father’s money. You won’t have ever heard of Patrick Brewer, so how can you track him down?”

“Can David and I talk alone for a moment?” Patrick said, standing up.

Istus shrugged. “Certainly.” She indicated the door with an upturned palm. “The rest of the house is at your disposal.”

Patrick pulled David up out of his chair and marched him down the hall into a sizable kitchen. As soon as they reached the center island, Patrick swung around and pinned David down with a serious stare.

“I still don’t know if I believe any of this, but if you can save Alexis, and I guess the world, then you have to do it,” he said.

“No, I know, but…” David fumbled with the hem of his sweater. “She could be lying. There could be a way to save Alexis and have you too.”

“I don’t think she’s lying.” Patrick huffed. “I think she might be certifiably insane, but I don’t think she’s lying.” He put his hands on David’s biceps. “Regardless, I’ll be fine. And you’ll have Alexis.”

David nodded, and there wasn’t any doubt in his mind what his choice should be. But it didn’t mean that he didn’t feel it in a rising lump in his throat, in a thundering in his heart and a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He pulled Patrick in for a hug, and the feeling of Patrick’s lips against his neck as he let himself be pulled unlocked David’s tears.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“I don’t want to lose you either, David.” Patrick squeezed him tighter, kissing his neck again. “And if I don’t get another chance to say it…” He pulled away and looked David in the eye. “I love you.”

David shook his head, another tear falling. “You don’t have to say—”

“David. I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I wouldn’t say something like that if I didn’t mean it. I know it’s soon, and that we haven’t spent all that much time with each other, but…” He laughed a watery laugh. “I don’t know, maybe I absorbed something from that alternate reality we dreamed about. All I know is that I’ve fallen in love with you, and you know what?” Patrick’s eyes flashed with determination. “I’ve just decided that I don’t care what Istus says, I’ll find my way back to you in any reality. I swear it.”

With a sob, David put his hand on the back of Patrick’s head and pulled him in for a fierce kiss. He opened his mouth against Patrick’s and tried to pour everything he was feeling into that kiss.

“This isn’t the last time I’m going to kiss you,” Patrick said when they finally parted.

David wanted to believe him more than he’d ever wanted to believe anything, but deep down he knew this was it for them. It brought him a burst of courage to say what was in his heart. “Maybe I absorbed something from that other reality too because I… love you. I’m also… I’m in love with you.”

The expression that bloomed on Patrick’s face was heartbreaking, and for just a second David changed his mind — let the world burn if he could just have Patrick, if he could lock himself away from all of it and just be with Patrick. But then he remembered his sister, he remembered Alexis, and he dismissed that idea. He’d never be able to forgive himself knowing he could have done something to save her and hadn’t.

“I’ll find you,” Patrick said.

“One in one hundred seventy thousand,” David whispered.

Patrick winked at him, a terrible wink that caused his other eye to half-close, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “I can beat those odds.”

It was a lie and David knew it, but he clung to it as they went back into Istus’ den.

“Okay. Do it,” David said. “Make my family poor and save the world.”

Istus gave him a long look and then nodded. Holding up her knitting needles, she let a stitch slip off of the pointed tip of the right needle and drop. She pulled the needles apart, stretching the yarn, and the stitch continued to slip down, creating a long scar, a gap in the middle of the rows.

“If my sister isn’t alive in this new world, then I will make destroying you my life’s ambition,” David said, grabbing for Patrick’s hand for strength. He was feeling weak, and like his vision was narrowing, but Patrick’s thick fingers threading between his helped.

Istus laughed. “You won’t remember me, but I take your point.”

His vision was only a pinpoint now, and he squeezed Patrick’s hand tighter.

“And if it helps?” Istus said.

“What?” He’d lost his vision entirely, and he was no longer aware of his body in three dimensional space anymore. He was just a consciousness now, the apartment and Patrick and the world around him gone.

He heard Istus’ voice distantly, from down a deep tunnel. “David Rose. You’re going to be amazing.”

Chapter 15