#that’s half of the thesis i worked on for literally months

[scotianostra]

On September 23rd 1880, John Boyd Orr, Nobel Peace prize winner, was born in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire.

John Boyd Orr's pioneering research led to millions of children across the UK being given free school milk from 1946 to 1971 when Margaret Thatcher, then education secretary, cut provision giving her the mick name Thatcher, "Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher”

Boyd Orr was born in Ayrshire into a religious and highly literate family, and it was perhaps inevitable that he should be destined for a career in teaching after studying theology. However, his studies at Glasgow University also opened up new avenues for him. He became interested in the theories of Darwin, and this led to a fascination with zoology.

When he graduated with his MA in 1902, he was assigned to a teaching position in the Glasgow slums to fulfil the obligations required by his scholarship. He lasted only a few days before resigning and going back home to Ayrshire where he was reassigned to a school in Saltcoats. There he completed his teaching but left as soon as he could, saying: "though I liked the children, I hated teaching them”.

Boyd Orr returned to university to study biology and medicine, and he graduated with a BSc in 1910 and MB ChB two years later. He only practised for one month before returning to university to undertake nutritional research. His MD thesis in 1914 was awarded the Bellahouston Gold Medal for the most distinguished thesis of the year.

On the recommendation of his supervisor, he was asked to be the first director of a new research institute in Aberdeen, which would later become the world renowned Rowett Institute. At the time of his appointment, it did not exist, but he would spend the next twenty-five years raising both funds and the profile of nutritional research to make it a reality.

The initial work to build the institute was, however, interrupted by the outbreak of war. Boyd Orr enlisted in the RAMC and saw active service on the Western Front where he was awarded both the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order. Later he would never wear the medals saying that the truly brave men had all died.

In the interwar years, he travelled widely and published extensively, emerging as one of the country’s leading experts in nutrition. He first came to national attention in 1936 with the publication of Food, Health and Income, a report of a dietary survey by income group, which revealed that the cost of a diet meeting basic nutritional needs was beyond the means of half the British population.

This led to similar studies being conducted in nineteen other countries and prompted the creation of a Commission of the League of Nations, which tried to formulate a global food policy. It became the forerunner of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Boyd Orr would become the Director General of the FAO from 1945-48. These were important years because the predicted European post-war famine was averted in part by policies put forward by the organisation.

Boyd Orr was no stranger to the challenges of developing and implementing food policies, many of which are still with us today. He spent his later career trying to persuade governments and presidents, organisations and companies to rethink the way they did things. However, he would often bemoan the fact that while he could persuade farmers of the importance of the nutrition of their animals, he could not stir their interest “in the food of their ain bairns, far less in the bairns of ither folks”.

His was a life filled with honours and awards, from Gold medals at University to military decorations to honorary degrees and more. He was elected Rector of Glasgow University and subsequently became its Chancellor. He was briefly a British Member of Parliament, and in 1935 he was knighted for his services to agriculture. In 1949, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Prime Minister Clement Attlee ennobled him as Baron Boyd Orr of Brechin Mearns.

Reading of Boyd Orr’s long career it seems he had a series of false starts and perhaps even failures. But he was no dilettante. He combined a powerful intellect with an admirable work ethic to achieve a mastery in everything he tried. That he chose to move from a career in teaching to medical practice, to research, to politics and then to governance and policy making was not evidence of mere restlessness but of a constant desire to do meaningful work.

Boyd Orr was at heart a man with an ambitious vision for the world, and he firmly believed that real peace and prosperity would only ever be achieved when no one was hungry.

The citation for the 1949 Nobel Peace Prize read: “for his lifelong effort to conquer hunger and want, thereby helping to remove a major cause of military conflict and war”.

[strangersatellites]

hello my phone friends !!! y’all hit me with literally like a thousand notifications in the four whole days i was logged off. rest assured i will be reading every single one of them like it’s the morning paper🫶🏼

[vox-fantasma]

i’ve just submitted my thesis… crying screaming throwing up shaking like a dog

[comicaurora]

What are your thoughts on guardians vol.3? (If you have watched it) I went into it, expecting it went to the garbage like the rest of the mcu, but I was pleasantly surprised by its creativity, trope subversion, and how it wrapped up the previously unresolved arks of its characters.

That's what I've heard!

The thing is, Guardians 3 could be the most transcendent work of cinema ever made, and I'd probably still feel little to no motivation to watch it at this point. It's not Guardians's fault - it's just suffering from the same problem that superhero comics have been struggling with for decades: no matter how good an individual arc or run is, absolutely nothing good lasts or matters in the long term, and the stories are shaped in such a way that "the long term" is the only thing anyone gets to build towards.

Whenever I complain about the MCU I get a handful of people loudly complaining about my complaining, with the general thesis that if I don't like it I shouldn't watch it or talk about it - if I'm not having fun, just stop engaging with it. And the thing is, I have. I am intellectually interested in why this massive franchise is fumbling the bag so hard, which is why I still check in on it sometimes, but I've long since stopped turning to the MCU for uncritical entertainment. And even the good movies or shows with a lot of interesting ideas - good character arcs, fun concepts, interesting planting for future payoff - don't draw me in anymore, because they're hooked into a massive moneymaking machine that will scrap and squander anything if they think it'll make them more in the quarter. It doesn't matter how good the writing is, because the writers are not allowed to tell a complete, finished story, and they have no control over what happens to their characters outside of their own script.

Captain America's arc was set up from literally minute one to answer one burning question at the core of his character: does a world without a war still need Captain America? After that incredibly basic tee-up at the end of First Avenger, half a dozen movies failed to come up with a reason to say "yes," and now Steve is retired for good after getting fumbled through four different storylines that couldn't even pretend that they needed him (the unused Chekhov's Phone from the end of Civil War still haunts me). The foundational arc of his entire character never happened because nobody bothered to keep track of it past a single movie.

Taika did something interesting with Thor in Ragnarok - take away Mjolnir, force him to recognize what it means to be the god of thunder, give him a very Odin-y missing eye - and the very next movie undid all of it. Just kidding, never mind, here's an eye and a new weapon and also his old weapon again, and in one more movie we're even gonna give him his hair back, probably as an apology for all the completely unironic fatphobia we're gonna slather him in for two and a half hours. I'm not even surprised Love And Thunder was such an overblown mess that barely took itself seriously - why would Taika bother trying to give Thor another arc when the powers that be will just roll it back in six months anyway?

I hear Rocket Raccoon has a fantastic arc in this movie. That's great, and demonstrates that he's being written by a writer that deeply cares about him. But he's part of the MCU, and the MCU doesn't let anything end, so if current patterns hold, Rocket is going to continue to serve as quippy plushie-bait for the next dozen movies and none of that depth is going to come through in the long term. Hell, since they're making Kang noises for the Next Big Threat and Kang's entire gimmick is rewriting timelines, literally none of this is guaranteed to matter. By next year, it might not have even happened anymore.

The MCU has successfully shaped itself into a paradigm where the bright spots of good writing are overridden and lost as soon as the writers room turns over, and that makes it really hard for me to muster up the enthusiasm to watch even a really good movie that's locked into the exact same grist mill as everything else. I'm glad people liked it, I hope it gets to stay good this time - I just have no desire to watch it.

[7-wonders]

To the world we dream about (and the one we live in now)

Calliope & Reader, Morpheus/Dream of the Endless & Reader

Summary: Being in the right place at the right time turns everything you thought you knew on its head when a woman, imprisoned and battered, is literally thrown into your life. Left with no choice but to do the obvious, you offer her shelter and support in her time of need.

Unbeknownst to you, said woman is a powerful and ancient being who now belongs to you in accordance with the old laws. This situation definitely won’t become complicated, right?

Word Count: 14.5k

Author's Note: A couple of months ago, I received an ask, seen below, and have not been able to stop thinking about it since. After a lot of brainstorming with the wonderful sender of the ask (not sure if they want to be named!), I finally sat down to write it.

So, here we are! This story took on a mind of its own the longer I wrote (perhaps the Muse Calliope paid me a visit haha), and it's genuinely something that I'm so proud to have produced. It's not necessarily an x reader fic—right now, though depending on reader reaction there may be future parts (including a Calliope/Morpheus POV of these events)—so I absolutely understand if you choose not to read, but I hope that you do. In the end, this is truly Calliope's story.

A story of empowerment, friendship, freedom, and self-discovery.

Content warnings for this work include allusions to sexual assault, general trauma, Richard Madoc, vomiting, kidnapping, realizations of inadvertent kidnapping, mentions of death, and Nightmare!Morpheus. Reader discretion is advised.

The man standing at the front of the room taps his fingers along the edge of his lectern, savoring the enraptured faces that stare back at him. For those in his class, this is expected of him—he always gets a dramatic air about him when he’s on the verge of making the point that he had been working towards for the entire lecture and looping it back to the thesis statement from the beginning of the hour. Though it was routine by now, practically tradition, the students still ate it up every time.

“The theme between all of these authors–the Fitzgeralds and the Hemingways, the Tolkeins and the Orwells–is that their words carry power and strength. While they may look like mere letters strung together on a sheet of paper, when read together, these words have a weight behind them. They can conjure up worlds, inspire the masses, make readers think critically; it’s a type of magic when you really think about it.”

He checks his watch before clapping his hands together in finality and smiling out at the room.

“Well, my friends, I’m afraid that’s all the time we have today. Thank you very much for joining me, and please make sure that you have your essays on the influences of World War One and its aftermath on the literature of the time ready for our next class. See you then!”

When your university announced that world-renowned author Ric Madoc would be a visiting professor for the semester, you immediately jumped on the long list of students interested in taking one of the three classes that were going to be taught by him. You had absolutely no hope that you would get into the class, not when it seemed like half the student body was also signed up, but you had to at least try. The Spirit Who Had Half of Everything was one of your favorite books of all time, and you’d be remiss not to attempt to learn from the master himself.

Somehow, much to your surprise, you had received an email informing you that you earned a spot in Madoc’s “Great Works of the 20th Century” class. The class had lived up to the hype so far and you were thoroughly enjoying it, even though it wasn’t exactly related to your field of study. In fact, you enjoyed it so much that you normally stayed behind with a group of students to continue having a discussion with Madoc about the aforementioned great works. Today, unfortunately, you couldn’t, having to rush out immediately after class was over to make it to your group project meeting in the library on time.

Of course, it’s difficult to get any sort of work done when one happens to be randomly paired with their best friend, but you’re trying your hardest.

“Psst.” You don’t look up, choosing instead to try and finish the sentence you’re writing, but a balled-up gum wrapper hits you smack in the center of the forehead. “Hey!”

After you’ve finished typing, you look across the table at Evie, your best friend. “Can I help you?” you ask.

“Do you wanna come out with me and a couple of others tonight?”

“It’s Thursday.”

She shrugs. “So?”

Points were made, and who are you to resist a good argument? “Convincing. I’m in! I just have to run home real quick and get changed.”

As you search through your bag, you start to feel your heart plummeting in your chest as you realize that you can’t find your keys. Digging through the contents furiously in the hopes that they’ll turn up yields no results, and neither does patting at the pockets you know are empty. With horror in your eyes and fear in your heart, you look back up at her.

“Fuck, I lost my keys.”

“Shit, dude. Do you remember where you last had them?”

“Um.” 

You have to think for a moment, mentally retracing your steps until you can definitively pinpoint the last time you saw your keys. They were with you in the parking lot, because you remember locking your car twice just to be sure that you did. From there, you would have been holding them in your hand as you walked to Madoc’s class. Considering you went straight from class to the library, there are limited options for where they could be. Either you left them in the lecture hall or you dropped them somewhere on campus. For your sake, you hope it’s the former.

On the syllabus, Madoc had given the class his work cell phone number in case of emergencies like being unable to make it to class or an act of God destroying your homework. Though you doubted you would need it at the time, you still saved it in your phone to be on the safe side. Now, as you pull up his contact and start a new conversation, you thank past-you for having such good foresight.

You: Hey, great class today! Did you happen to find a set of keys left behind in the lecture hall? I’m missing mine.

After a second of contemplation, you send another text with your first and last name when you realize he probably doesn’t know who it is texting him. It only takes a couple of anxious minutes before your phone chimes. 

Richard Madoc: Hello! Would these happen to be the keys in question?

Richard Madoc: Attachment

The keys are immediately recognizable as yours, thanks to the keychain of a possum wearing a cowboy hat that’s attached to them. You sigh in immense relief before glancing up at Evie, who’s been watching with bated breath the entire time. “I left them in Madoc’s class.”

“Oh thank god!”

You: They are! Any chance you’re still on campus so I can swing by and grab them?

Richard Madoc: I’m afraid I’ve already left for the day, but I live pretty close to the uni if you’d be willing to pick them up from my flat.

He sends an address in the following text, which you promptly input in your maps app so you can see where said address is located. It’s maybe a five-minute drive from campus and conveniently located in the direction of your apartment.

You: Will be there in a bit! Thank you :)

“He already left, I’d have to pick them up from his place,” you explain.

Evie immediately fixes you with a look, one that says she’s seen this particular move before (and she didn’t like the ending). “Do you want me to come with you?”

The unspoken words hang in the air between you: Do you feel safe going to an unfamiliar man’s house alone? Should I come to make sure nothing bad happens? It’s very thoughtful of her, and you consider saying yes for a moment.

But Evie lives in the opposite direction of you, and she doesn’t have a car. While you don’t know Madoc well, you’re also not expecting him to try anything on you, especially when it’s still light out. 

“I should be okay,” you say.

“You’re sure?” Evie double-checks, and you nod. “Call me before you get there, okay? Just…have me on the line, in your back pocket. It’d make me feel better about letting you go on your own.”

How did you get so lucky to have such a great friend like Evie? Of course, you would do the same for Evie in a heartbeat, but it’s so nice to have found a kindred spirit, someone who truly understands you and all your little quirks, so early in your adulthood.

“You’re not letting me do anything,” you tease. “But yeah, I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Thank you,” she says sincerely, sliding her papers and her laptop into her backpack. “Now let’s go. The sooner you get your keys, the sooner we can go and get drunk.”

It feels a little dumb to be driving such a short distance, from the campus to the address that Madoc had given you. You’re exactly the type of person that’s killing the planet with unnecessary carbon emissions when you could just as easily walk, you chastise yourself on the way over. 

But you had driven to class this morning, that being a distance actually too far to walk, and it would be stupid to walk to Madoc’s, get your keys, walk back to campus, and then drive home. So here you are, beating yourself up over something stupid and inconsequential while you try your best to parallel park in a respectable manner in front of Madoc’s little townhouse.

It’s exactly the type of lodgings you’d expect a university professor to have, yet almost the opposite of what you envisioned as a successful author’s home; a small, yet stately, townhouse with a little fenced-in front yard. Plants try their hardest to survive in the patch of dirt that’s probably supposed to be a garden, and there’s a small chair and table perfect for Sunday mornings sitting on the front stoop.

The gate creaks when you open it, and even more when you close it behind you. At the last second, you remember that you promised to call Evie, so you pull out your phone and do just that. 

“Hey, you there?” Evie answers her phone.

“Yeah, just got here. Putting you in my pocket now.”

Even though the idea felt a little like an overreaction, you can’t deny that you feel safer now knowing that Evie’s listening on the phone.

You knock on the dark blue front door once, twice, three times before taking a step back and waiting patiently. After about thirty seconds, you start to worry that Madoc’s not home. But no, that wouldn’t make sense; you talked to him maybe half an hour ago, and he knew that you were on your way to pick up your keys. Frowning, you knock again, followed by holding your ear to the door to see if you can hear anything.

He’s definitely inside. Though the sound is muffled, you can hear what sounds like him yelling at somebody through the door. Who the source of his ire is, you can’t say, because there’s nobody saying anything back to him. Maybe he’s having a really heated conversation on the phone? If that’s the case, it’s a pretty inconvenient time to launch into a virtual argument.

You don’t want to be rude and knock for a third separate time, but you really do need your keys, and you’d prefer to not be kept standing out here waiting. Begrudgingly, you knock yet again, putting a considerable amount of force behind it this time. 

“Mr. Madoc?” you call through the door, raising your voice enough that you’re sure he’s heard you. By the way that he suddenly falls silent, you’re assuming that you’ve been successful. Pulling back from your position right up against the door, you wait for him to appear.

When the door is yanked open, you’re shocked at what you see. Gone is the confident lecturer who stood at the front of your class this afternoon. The man in front of you looks positively haggard. His eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, and his bottom lip quivers almost as furiously as his hands shake. His hair is a mess, as though he’s been pulling at it, and his shirt is weirdly rumpled like he fell asleep in it.

You take a big step back when his eyes land wildly on you without really seeing you. Your hand goes to your back pocket, hovering just above your phone in case this encounter goes south and you need to have Evie do…something. Call the cops? Yell at Madoc through the phone? Scream? Whatever it is, though, she’ll do it for you.

“Hi. Um, you–”

Madoc shakes his head back and forth and begins to mumble something, completely ignoring you and your presence. He reaches one of his hands further inside the house, grabbing at something unseen. Your body tenses, preparing to fight this man that, up until two minutes ago, you had believed to be completely sane and rational.

His hand comes back into view, tightly gripping a woman’s upper arm. She’s barefoot and clad only in a thin silk nightgown, and you can see the goosebumps already appearing on her skin.

“A city in which the streets are paved with time,” he mumbles a little louder, allowing you to hear what he’s rambling about. “A train full of silent women, plowing forever through the twilight. Heads made of light. A small piece of blue cardboard. A plum, sweet and tart and cold.”

“Mr. Madoc, are you alright?” 

Instead of answering you, Madoc throws the woman across the threshold and towards you. You catch her in your arms, both of you stumbling backward, but you let go when you notice how she immediately tenses at your touch.

“She’s your problem now, I can’t do this anymore!” Madoc begins to pull at his hair, so hard that you think he might end up pulling it out of his head. “I refuse to be tortured any longer!”

“What are you talking about?” 

He’s lost his damn mind, you think to yourself as he continues to spout the most random of ideas. You thought that you had properly calculated the risks of coming over here on your own, but apparently, you’re bad at math.

“A were-goldfish who transforms into a wolf at full moon. Griffins shouldn’t marry. Vampires don’t dance.” Madoc shakes and smacks himself multiple times as if to try and snap himself out of whatever he’s gotten into. “A man who inherits a library card to the library in Alexandria. A rose bush, a nightingale, and a black rubber dog collar!”

You’re so thrown off by what you’re witnessing that you don’t even realize he’s closing the door until the sound of it hitting the doorframe reminds you why you’re here. You bang your fist against the door and yell at him, “Hey! Give me my fucking keys!” 

Madoc opens the door just enough to throw your keys at you, which you fumble and nearly drop until catching them by the stupid cowboy possum keychain, before slamming it shut again. From within, you can hear several locks clicking shut loudly in quick succession.

The speed with which this entire interaction has occurred leaves your head spinning, and you have to take a moment to realize that yes, what you just experienced was real. Even then, you stare at the door bemusedly. “What the fuck?”

“I do not believe he will be coming back,” an accented voice says from behind you.

You can’t stop the little scream of surprise that leaves you when you whip around to face the woman who, until this moment, you forgot had been kicked out of Madoc’s house. She stares at you, just as warily as you’re probably staring at her.

She’s otherworldly beautiful, with olive skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. But what stands out the most is just how visibly scared she is. She watches you like you’re a predator readying to attack. You hate it because you’d never do anything like that to anybody, but especially her. What had Madoc done to cause her to have this reaction to a stranger?

Evie’s voice rises tinnily from the phone in your back pocket, loud and panicked, and you remember that she’s been on the phone this whole time. You pull your phone out and hold it up to your ear, having to put a little distance between it due to how she’s yelling.

“—I swear, I’m two seconds away from calling the cops! Please just let me know you’re okay!”

“Evie, hey, I’m here,” you say, making her cry out in relief.

“Oh my god, are you okay? I was scared when I heard yelling!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m alright. Pretty sure I just watched Madoc have a mental breakdown?” Is that what that was? You can’t say for certain, considering this is your first such occasion.

“Seriously? Well, did you get your keys, at least?”

“After he finished rambling about were-goldfish and plums.”

“Jesus Christ. Are you going to call somebody?”

“Who would I call? And anyway, maybe this is normal for him.”

“If that’s normal, I’d hate to see what abnormal is.” She sighs. “So, I’ll see you soon?”

“Um,” you trail off, looking at the woman. “Y’know, I might take a rain check, if that’s okay. I’m a little shaken up by everything that just happened.”

“I bet, that sounds like it was really scary. We’ll miss you, but take care of yourself. If you do decide to come out, just text me and I’ll tell you where we’re at.”

“Thanks, Ev. I’ll, uh, talk to you soon.”

You hang up the phone, and now you and the woman are left awkwardly staring at each other. How are you supposed to approach a situation like this? Sliding your phone back into your pocket, you hold your hands with the palms facing out so that she can see you’re not holding any weapons and decide to just start from the beginning.

“Hi.”

She nods back in greeting, trying to hold herself with as much dignity as she can in this situation. The chill of the night and her lack of proper clothing leave her trembling in front of you, though some of that is likely from fear too, and you can see bruises in various shades of healing up and down her arms. Worse, there are visible fingerprint-shaped bruises ringing her neck. Though you’ve never been particularly violent, you’re tempted to break down Madoc’s door and do unto him what he’s obviously done to this woman.

“Are you cold? I have a spare jacket if you want it.” You point the hundred or so feet to where your car sits. “Here, let’s go over to my car, I’m just parked on the street right there.”

The woman attempts to gauge you and, presumably, your intentions. Though this is her decision to make, you give her a friendly smile in the hopes of convincing her that you have no ill will toward her. After a moment, she nods hesitantly.

You take the lead as you walk down the front path to your car, mainly to show that she holds the power here. There will be nobody sneaking up on this woman or trying anything, and she’s free to run far away from you if that’s what she chooses. 

Still, she follows you, and waits patiently while you dig around in your back seat until you finally come up with the light jacket that you had tossed back there after an outdoor movie night. You hand it to her and she shrugs it on, holding it tightly around her and trying to hide within the cotton fabric.

You don’t want to ask the question that’s on your mind, but you know that you have to. You need some sort of context for the situation. “Was…Madoc keeping you locked up in there?” She nods, and you feel your stomach roil with sick nausea. “Okay. We need to call the cops, so they can come and arrest him.”

“No!” she says firmly, a departure from how soft-spoken she previously was. “Please, I beg you, no authorities.”

“But…” 

Maybe he hadn’t kidnapped her like you found yourself assuming at first. Perhaps this is a severe case of domestic violence? Regardless, she looks like the poster child for abused women, and you’re not about to disrespect her wishes when this is probably the first choice she’s been able to make for herself in a long time.

“Okay,” you agree. “No cops.” 

“Thank you.” She sounds so relieved that it makes you want to cry.

An idea begins to form in your head, but one that you’re not sure how to begin to broach. After all, the woman in front of you has absolutely no reason to trust you. “I’m guessing you don’t have anywhere to go?”

She shakes her head. “No, I have…nowhere, and nobody.”

That settles it. You’re not about to leave a battered, formerly-trapped woman to fend for herself on the streets. “So listen. I have a spare room at my place, and you’re completely welcome to it for as long as you need.”

“Oh, I could not impose.”

“You wouldn’t be!” you assure her. “Please, it’s the least I can do. At least until you get back on your feet.”

She studies you again. Though you don’t know what she’s looking for, you can tell that she’s the kind of intuitive person that sees beyond that which is only skin-deep. Finally, she says, “Alright.”

You grin and open the passenger side door, gesturing for her to get in. “Alright.”

After getting the car started and the heat turned up all the way, you watch as the woman fiddles with the airflow of the heater until it’s blowing directly on her delicate hands, which she holds in front of her to warm up. She looks at you as if realizing for the first time that you could betray her trust much in the same way as Ric Madoc had. To prove to her that you won’t, you unlock the doors when they try to lock automatically in response to you putting the car in ‘drive’.

You tell her your name, and for the first time, she smiles. It’s a small thing, barely a quirk of the lips, but it’s there. “I am Calliope.”

“Oh cool, like the Muse!” Her smile widens until she’s actually smiling, leaving you delighted. “Your parents were into Greek mythology, then?”

“Something like that, yes.”

As you drive to your apartment, Calliope turns in her seat and watches as Madoc’s apartment grows smaller and smaller behind your car. Even after it’s disappeared behind turns and other buildings, she still watches, perhaps waiting for him to come back to his senses and come after her. But there will be none of that tonight, or ever again. Not as long as you have anything to do about it.

When you get home, you continue the routine of taking the lead and allowing Calliope to decide whether or not she wants to follow you. Calliope lingers in the entryway of your apartment, taking her time carefully cataloging everything that she can see as you work at getting the lights turned on and trying to clean up a little bit—after all, you hadn’t exactly expected a houseguest when you left for class this morning. 

She runs her fingers along the walls and the frames of artwork that you’ve acquired at festivals and flea markets. She feels the coats on your coat rack, and her dark, inquisitive eyes scan over the battered toaster and soft fruit in your kitchen. As she walks further into your home, she takes care to take up as little space as possible until she reaches where you stand in front of a closed door.

“My old roommate moved in with their girlfriend a couple of months ago, and they don’t know what they want to do with her furniture, so they’re just storing it here until they can figure it out,” you explain as you open the door and flick on the light switch to reveal a bare bedroom. It’s sparsely furnished, with just a full bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and a desk and chair. “Now, it’s yours.”

“Mine?”

“For as long as you need it,” you repeat.

Hesitantly stepping inside, Calliope looks over the room before nodding in satisfaction. You can only hope that she had a space of her own in Madoc’s house, but by the way that she looks around like she’s never seen something so wonderful as an empty bedroom before, you’re left with a sinking feeling that this wasn’t the case.

“So! I’ll grab some sheets and a blanket from the linen closet and get the bed made up for you. Um, all of the doors lock on the inside, so feel free to keep yourself and your space private. Do you want to take a shower? Because you definitely can. Avery—that’s my old roommate—left some of the clothes they didn’t want behind, and they’re about your size, I think.” You’re rambling, but you just want to make her feel as welcome as possible. 

“A shower would be…nice,” Calliope decides.

“Awesome! The bathroom’s right through here, c’mon.”

In the bathroom, Calliope watches as you grab a couple of towels from the closet, along with the sheets and blanket you mentioned earlier. You set the towels down on the closed toilet lid next to the shower.

“Feel free to use any of my stuff here, it’s totally fine,” you explain, pulling back the shower curtain so Calliope can see your haircare products and body wash.

Instead of looking over that array, she simply stares at the chrome of the shower faucet in confusion.

“Oh yeah, the shower’s a little weird here. All you have to do is turn the handle, and then pull the plug on the faucet for the shower.” You show her as you explain it. “Turn the handle left for hot water, and right for cold. Got it?”

“I believe so.”

“Alright, I’ll leave you to it, then. Just yell if you need anything from me.”

You close the bathroom door behind you and after a long moment, you finally hear the lock turn.

Good. In the meantime, you’ll make a quick meal for her, in case she’s hungry. Plus, you need to keep your hands busy. It will help take your mind off of the horrors you’re trying desperately to forget that you witnessed.

•••

Four days later, Evie runs up to you on campus when she sees you and wraps both of her hands around your upper arm before pulling you towards her. “Did you hear?”

“What?” You’re more focused on not falling over your feet at the sudden change of pace you’ve been forced into than you are wondering what you did or didn’t hear.

“You were right. Mr. Madoc had a complete mental breakdown! Somebody called in a welfare check on him, and the cops found him curled up in a ball mumbling gibberish. He hadn’t moved for days. You know the worst part, though?” 

You shake your head. 

“He covered every single wall of his house with the most random words and phrases, and they were all written in his own blood.”

You reel back. “Jesus!”

“I know, totally gory.” By her laugh, you can tell that she enjoys the gore.

It’s at this moment that you realize that you haven’t told Evie anything about what happened after you hung up with her that night. It certainly wasn’t deliberate; you’ve just been so caught up in the sudden change in your living arrangements that you haven’t had the time to text or call her about what you went through.

With that in mind, you say, “I have something to tell you.”

Evie’s eyes immediately light up at the prospect of gossip. “You do?”

You nod. “That night, when I went to his house? He grabbed this woman from inside his house and just threw her at me, saying that she was my problem now. She was all bruised and wearing nothing but a nightgown, and he treated her like she was his property. Evie, she said he kept her trapped there.”

“What the fuck.” Evie stares at you in horror. “Is she okay now?”

“Physically, yeah. She’s staying with me.”

“At your apartment?”

“Where else? Her name’s Calliope. I’m letting her stay in Avery’s old room until she gets back on her feet again.”

Evie whistles lowly. “I can’t tell if that’s kind of you or stupid of you.”

“Probably both.”

“Yeah, probably.” 

As you walk, an astute observation comes to your mind. “Y’know, it makes sense that he’s such a piece of shit. Now that I think about it, the only authors we ever discussed in class were white guys.”

“Hmm, typical white man.” Evie rolls her eyes before she grins. “Hey, can I meet her?”

“Calliope?”

“Who else?”

You have to think about that for a minute. Would she be comfortable with meeting new people and putting herself out there? While you think that your friends are great, especially Evie, you just don’t want to force her into anything before she’s ready.

Evie seems to sense this hesitation, and explains, “She just seems like she needs some friends. A support system might be good for her while she tries to get her life back!”

“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll ask her if she wants to do something like that.”

“That’s all I ask,” Evie says. “In the meantime, is there anything that I can do to help? Like, does she need clothes? Kiara’s aunt owns that boutique, and she would probably be willing to help out.”

That’s a good idea and one that you hadn’t even considered. Obviously, Calliope’s going to want some clothes of her own instead of Avery’s hand-me-downs. It’ll probably help her to feel more like a human being, one with choice and agency over herself.

“Oh, would you ask her to talk to her aunt?” you ask. “That’d be great.” 

Evie nods. “Definitely. I feel like that’s, like, the least I can do.”

“I wish there was more that I could do,” you admit.

“You’re doing what you can, and that’s what matters. Hell, most people wouldn’t have even offered to let a woman in Calliope’s situation stay with them. You’re a good person, you know that?”

“Thanks.”

“Eh, what are friends for, if not to reassure you that taking in a random woman on a whim is the right idea?” You huff in mock anger, and Evie laughs. “Anyways, you’ll never guess what the university is trying to do about the whole Madoc situation now…”

•••

Calliope doesn’t come out of her room when you’re around, not that you blame her. If you had gone through even an ounce of what you suspect she had, you’d want to be safe and alone for a long time, no matter how nice your new roommate is (and you like to think you’re pretty nice). You hear her sneak around when she knows that you’re in your own bedroom, as quiet as a mouse, and every night without fail, she takes a long shower. Other than that, it feels like you’re still living alone.

Since you don’t know how often she’s eating, and she doesn’t leave dishes or any sort of indication that she’s getting food for herself, you leave meals out in front of her door for her, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sticky notes accompany them, because you have things that you want her to know and this is the only way to communicate with her right now.

“Feel free to grab food from the kitchen whenever you want!”

“I have great books, and you’re more than welcome to them.”

“If you find yourself wanting to watch TV, the remote is on the coffee table!”

Each message is signed with a smiley face, and each one is gone when the empty tray is returned outside her door.

The empty trays and, eventually, the books that go missing from your bookshelf are the only signs of life that you receive from Calliope. 

When Calliope finally emerges while you’re home and not in your room, it’s six days after Ric Madoc threw her into your arms. You’re sitting on your couch reading fanfiction, a random YouTube video playing in the background when Calliope’s door creaks open and she peeks her head out hesitantly. Immediately you pause the video, smiling brightly when she notices you looking at her.

“Hi!” you greet.

“Hello.” She slowly exits her room clutching the book she’s been reading, as skittish as a feral kitten, and you slide over on the couch before patting the now-empty other side in invitation.

“You can come sit if you want. I’m just reading.”

“What are you reading?” Calliope asks, perching on the edge of the cushion as though she’s preparing for escape at any moment.

The smile freezes on your face. Just because you’re happy your new roommate is here doesn’t mean you’re about to out yourself as a fanfiction reader. “Oh, just a fantasy book.”

“Why do you have that…television on, then?” Calliope says this as though she’s still unfamiliar with the concept of television.

“I like the background noise of putting on shows that I’ve already seen. Helps me focus.”

She looks at you like that’s one of the oddest things she’s ever heard. Maybe it is, but it’s your little habit, and it has been for so long that it’s normal now. You hit play again, and Calliope starts a bit as sound comes through the speakers on the TV. Funnily, even though she seems to not understand your reasoning, the sound itself helps her to relax enough that she’s sitting on the couch with you instead of hovering like she’s preparing to bolt at any moment.

You don’t say anything, not wanting to make her think that you’re dictating what she can and cannot do. Eventually, Calliope decides to follow your lead and open her book, though she keeps getting distracted by the TV and eventually forgoes the book entirely in favor of watching the show.

“The tall one does not believe in ghosts, but the little one does?” Calliope asks out of the blue. You swallow down your laugh at her description of the hosts and nod.

“Mhm, and that’s what makes the show so good, is that dichotomy between the two hosts. One is so serious about everything they do, every noise that they hear, and the other is just dancing around and begging the demons to possess him or whatever because he thinks they’re not real and so saying this stuff can’t hurt him.”

She watches silently for another few minutes before asking, “Why are they searching for ghosts in the first place?”

“Well, because people love trying to solve the unsolved. And I think ghosts and the question of their existence is one of the ultimate unsolved mysteries.” She nods in satisfaction and turns back to the show, and you decide to turn off your phone and join her.

Calliope, as it turns out, enjoys television, if only for the strange concepts of some of the shows. You’re more than happy to show her all of the strangest and best shows, with the bonus of getting to see them anew through her eyes, which seem to be watching everything for the very first time.

•••

It’s mid-afternoon, and instead of being outside on what’s turning out to be a beautiful day, you’re stuck doing homework.

Everybody had assumed that Ric Madoc’s classes would be canceled after his abrupt admission into the Saint Dymphna Mental Health Hospital. The university, however, not wanting to just give out automatic passing grades without merit, had scrambled to try and find professors to teach Madoc’s classes. Somehow, they had succeeded, and you were now once again immersed in the world of 20th-century authors. Though your new professor didn’t have the ability to truly capture a room in the same way Madoc had, she was a fine replacement, and she devoted a good chunk of class time to women authors.

It’s too nice of a day to not take advantage of, though. That first true spring day after a long, harsh winter has finally arrived, and you won’t let it pass you by. All of the windows are open to allow the stale air of the apartment to dissipate, and as you write, you listen to the birds chirping and people doing yard work. Maybe, if you finish quickly enough, you’ll be able to take a walk yourself. 

Calliope would probably enjoy that as well, you think.

The woman in question knocks on your open bedroom door, and you look up at her with a smile from your desk. She clocks the computer and the notes spread around you and grows sheepish.

“I’m sorry, you are busy. I’ll–”

“No, don’t worry! Just finishing up an essay for a class. Got a crazy burst of motivation for it, and ended up knocking it out in a couple of hours. It’ll be good to look away from the screen.” 

Calliope gets that funny little smile on her face, the one that says that she has found something amusing but is going to keep it to herself. She waits patiently as you stretch, wincing when she hears the way that your shoulders pop and crack after hours of stagnancy.

“What’s up?” you ask. “You seem like you want to ask me something.”

Calliope points out of your bedroom. “What is out there?”

You stand so that you can see what it is she’s referencing, and find that she’s pointing to your sliding door.

“Oh, it’s a little balcony. I don’t go out there much right now, still a little too chilly, but it’ll be nice to sit out there once summer comes. Here, I’ll show you.”

It’s the first time this season that it’s been nice enough to have the door open, which is probably why she’s only just now realized it’s there. You open the screen door and lead her out onto your balcony. It’s small, but you spent last summer adding to it and making it a comforting place to relax. Now, there are lights strung up above your heads, and there are two chairs with a table in between them. Planters sit lined up along the iron of the balcony railing, ready to be filled when planting season comes around.

Calliope gasps, and you’re about to ask what’s wrong (part of you is worried that a snake managed to find its way up to the third floor), when she tilts her face up to the sun, leaning over the railing to try and get as much of the light on her as possible. She looks like a painting come to life, probably with a name like “Muse Bathed in the Sun”, because truly, Calliope seems like the type of person to inspire every person lucky enough to make her acquaintance. 

“Helios,” you hear Calliope whisper reverently. 

It’s obvious that she isn’t aware that she said that out loud, and you start to feel embarrassed before she turns back to you with a true smile and tears running down her face.

“I have not been outside in the sun in so long.” 

She explains this simply and factually, as if she’s talking about why the sun is where it is and not about all that she was deprived of during her captivity. Madoc didn’t even let her go outside. It’s a good thing that he’s under secure watch 24/7, because there have been many times over the almost-three weeks that Calliope has lived with you that you have wished to be able to go and inflict upon him a modicum of that which he did to Calliope.

Now tears are running down your face too, and you wipe at them harshly with the backs of your hands. This is Calliope’s moment, Calliope’s joy, and you won’t have her feeling sorry for making you experience such happiness and broken-heartedness by watching her.

“It’s here no matter what. Even if it’s a little cold, bring a blanket out and sit whenever you want. Soon, we’ll be able to plant some stuff. You can help me if you want!”

Calliope’s back to facing the sun directly, but she still nods to let you know that it’s a good idea. Quietly, you back up into the apartment and close the screen door behind you, letting her have this time of reconnection to herself.

Most mornings after this rediscovery, you find Calliope already sitting on the balcony by the time you wake up, a blanket around her shoulders, a mug of something hot in her hands, a book on her lap, and the sun bathing her skin.

•••

“Y’know what, I’m gonna give that one a three.”

“A three?” Calliope tuts. “That is cruel. His performance was at least a six.”

“C’mon Cal, you’re just saying that because you see the best in everybody! The rest of us saw a douchey frat bro drunkenly singing ‘SexyBack,’ which earned him a three. And that’s me being generous.”

Calliope and your friend Ethan are, of course, judging the karaoke performances of the bar patrons brave (or stupid) enough to sing in front of others. They, along with your friend Kiara, take this tradition very seriously. For every performance, the three of them have detailed notes and a rating out of ten to go along with it. 

You had finally given in to Evie’s pleadings and decided to broach the subject of going out in public to Calliope. Much to your surprise, she accepted when you first invited her to karaoke night with your friends at the group’s favorite bar. She accepted when you offered to bring her to trivia, and she accepted when your friends finally got around to doing a book club meeting—which was mainly just drinking and eating appetizers while you talked about the books you’d read, but it still counted. 

(Taking Calliope to her first drag show quickly became one of your favorite and most cherished memories)

She took to your friend group like a duck to water, and in return, they embraced her wholeheartedly. Now, none of you could imagine a life without her in it. 

And slowly, it seemed as though Calliope began to start to heal. With every bar meetup, movie night, or random coffee date, you saw a bit more light return back to Calliope. Flashes of the woman that she once was, vibrant and funny and elegant and wise, begin to become more frequent as the days pass. Every time she allows for a hug or every time she smirks into her glass after saying something that has the group erupting in laughter, she becomes more and more herself.

“Oh my god, it’s our turn!” Ethan yells suddenly after the karaoke emcee calls his and Evie’s names. He stands and holds his hand out to Evie, who happily takes it and jumps up with him. “Let’s go knock some socks off.”

This will either go one of two ways. They’ll either perform their serious song, “Bennie and the Jets,” which they’re surprisingly good at, or they’ll go funny and perform the Sharpay and Ryan version of “What I’ve Been Lookin’ For” from High School Musical, which they’re also really good at. By their tipsy giggles, you’re guessing it’s the latter.

The second they both start doing the Sharpay and Ryan hype-up routine, Kiara sighs and grabs her drink and phone.

“I promised these dumbasses I’d film them the next time they performed this,” she explains before going to work as an unpaid videographer.

Throughout their entire routine, Calliope’s enthralled, as she should be. It’s a good performance, of course, but Evie and Ethan together are a true comedic duo. The matching jazz squares during the instrumentals truly bring the whole piece together, and you’re in tears from laughter by the end of their routine. When they return to the table after a rousing standing ovation from the patrons of the bar, Calliope gives them her own round of applause and beams.

Naturally, she bestows upon them the highest ranking one can receive during karaoke nights. “Now that was a ten.”

Ethan bows as Evie kisses Calliope’s cheek. “Thank you, m’lady,” he says proudly.

“When do you get the time to practice this?”

“Nights like this, usually,” Evie explains before Ethan interrupts.

“Though we have been known to skip a class or two when we were trying to work out the kinks in our performance.” Ethan picks up his drink before frowning when he sees there’s nothing but melting ice cubes in the glass. “Well, apparently I need another drink. Anybody else?”

Everyone at the table shakes their head, but Kiara reaches into her jacket. “No, but I am gonna go hit my pen.”

“Ooh, I’ll come with you,” Evie volunteers cheerfully.

“Weed thief,” Kiara teases.

“Are you telling me no?”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“That’s not a no!”

Your friends go their separate ways, leaving you and Calliope to sit alone at the table. The next singer has already started, and you grin when you hear what it is.

“Oh, I love this song,” you tell Calliope before singing along. “‘Cause I’m dreaming of you tonight, ‘til tomorrow I’ll be holding you tight!”

Beside you, Calliope grows a little gloomy. She’s frowning a bit; even if it’s barely there, you can always tell because it completely transforms her beautiful face into something so sad. You stop humming and look over at her, watching as she slowly swirls her straw in her drink repeatedly to give her something to do.

“Having fun?” you ask, slightly worried at the sudden melancholy that seems to have draped over her like a shroud.

“Yes,” she tries to assure you, but it sounds clipped, like she’s holding back.

“You know you don’t have to come just because I invited you, right? You can do whatever you want.” You never want her to feel as though you’re forcing her to do anything, and even though she’s been having fun up until now, there’s still that anxiety that tells you that she’s just going along with it because she feels like she owes you.

“I know,” Calliope assures. “But I enjoy you and your group of friends. You make me feel…welcomed, and accepted, in a way that I have not felt in a long time.” 

“They’re your friends now too. Pretty sure they decided that the second they met you.”

“I consider them friends as well. I consider you a friend as well, though I hope you know that by now.” She smiles down at her drink. “Besides, I quite like the karaoke nights.”

“I can tell. You never sing with us, though.”

“I don’t need to, I just enjoy listening. The people singing, and enjoying themselves, it reminds me of my son. He, too, loved to sing, and he was gifted with such a beautiful voice.”

“You have a son?” This takes you by surprise. Though Calliope seems to be very maternal, she’s never mentioned anything about a child until now. The fact that she talks about him in the past tense has your heart sinking into your stomach from the implications.

Calliope nods. “My sweet boy, my Orpheus. He was beautiful, and heartbreakingly sweet. He had a voice that could bring even the gods themselves to tears. He was taken from me…far too soon, and I miss him every day, with every fiber of my being. Being here, among so many people happy and making music—I see his face in all of theirs, and it brings me some sense of peace, to know that I can find pieces of him here, in the most unlikely of places..”

It’s sweet that she kept the Greek mythology theme going with her own son, you think, though it’s tragic that he suffered the same fate as his namesake.

“He was so lucky to have a mom like you, Calliope. Any child would be.” You lick your lips and taste the sweetness of alcohol on them as you ponder what to say next. “His life might have ended too soon, but he knew that he was completely and truly loved until the very end, which is such a gift.”

Tears well up in Calliope’s eyes, and she dabs at them with a napkin grabbed hastily from the table. “Thank you,” she chokes out. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

“Ah, now you’re gonna go and make me cry too. Can I hug you?” 

You always, always ask for permission before hugging her or touching her. She doesn’t seem to mind anymore when friends do it without asking, but you can’t break yourself of the habit. 

Not after seeing what you saw the night that you met her.

She doesn’t give you an answer in the form of words. Instead, she simply falls into your arms, both of you clinging to the other.

From behind you, Ethan whispers, “Uh, are we interrupting something?”

•••

Evie has a date tonight and is naturally freaking out about it. She doesn’t know what to wear, she doesn’t know what she’s going to say, she doesn’t know if she’s even going to like the girl. Though you can provide her with all of the moral support in the world, there’s only one problem that you can currently help her with, which is how she ends up rifling furiously through your closet on a random Wednesday night.

You and Calliope sit on your bed, watching as Evie grabs different outfits and either critiques them herself or holds them up for you to do so. This is a tried-and-true routine for you, but Calliope’s experiencing the joys of helping a friend in need pick out a first date outfit for the first time. As a result, she puts far more thought into her responses when Evie asks for an opinion.

“You know, I believe I may have just the shirt for you in my room,” Calliope says after the outfit rejections have reached double digits. “Come.”

Calliope has truly made her room her own in the almost two months that she’s lived here, which makes you so happy to see. She’s decorated with items found antiquing (Calliope always manages to come out of an antique store with a haul—you think it's her superpower), and her room has an actual personality now.

She goes to her closet and begins searching through it before finding what she’s looking for; a white blouse with bell sleeves and delicate embroidering along the cuffs and collar. It’s beautiful, and exactly what Evie was looking for. Her attention, however, is drawn to something else in the closet, and she grabs at one of the hangers after approving Calliope’s choice. To your surprise, Evie comes up holding a cream-colored, silk nightgown.

“Wait, Cal, you still have the nightgown you were wearing the night you got away?” you ask.

It would be cruel to say anything more than the most vague descriptions regarding Calliope’s imprisonment. Nobody particularly wanted to remind her of that dark time in her life, so great care was taken to make it the least bit triggering as possible when it needed to be brought up.

She nods. 

“Why?”

Calliope thinks about that for a moment. “I am not sure, to be honest. I certainly do not want to keep a relic of such a terrible time, but throwing it away does not feel…right.”

Evie perks up. “Ooh, y’know what we should do? We should burn that bitch!”

Calliope looks perturbed. “I thought you said that he is still in a mental hospital? Besides, I believe that immolation is still a crime.”

You and Evie both laugh when you realize that Calliope thought she was talking about Madoc.

“Not that bitch, though you’re giving me great ideas. I meant that we should burn the dress. I saw it on TikTok; these friends did a ‘burn and release’ ritual. They had a fire going in their backyard, and they all wrote down and talked about things that they wanted to release before burning it and physically releasing themselves of that. It looks like it’s super empowering, and it might give you the closure that it seems like you’re looking for.”

She doesn’t say anything, but you can tell that she’s intrigued. 

“We’d participate, too,” you chime in, Evie nodding along with you. “I think we all have things we want to burn so that we can give ourselves permission to move on.”

“I would like that, I think.”

Evie smiles. “Perfect. Leave it to me.”

It only takes Evie a couple of days to coordinate everything. Her parents live just outside of town, and they happily offer up their backyard to their daughter and her group of friends. When you and Calliope arrive, there’s already a fire pit set up with a ring of camping chairs surrounding it. Kiara waves from one of the chairs, a bag of marshmallows sitting in her lap, as Evie works at getting the fire going.

“Yay, you made it!” she says when she can finally trust the fire to not go out the moment she looks away from it.

Calliope nods graciously. “Thank you for hosting us this evening.”

“You’re so formal sometimes! If anything, I should be the one thanking you for going along with my crazy idea.”

“I do not think it is crazy at all,” Calliope assures.

“We’ll see, won’t we? Anyways, pens and paper are over in the empty chair next to Kiara, and there will be drinks and snacks momentarily.” Evie turns to you. “Wanna help me grab said drinks and snacks? I need an extra set of hands.”

After helping Evie with procuring and setting out a few bottles of wine, plastic cups, and a bunch of different snacks, the four of you each pick up a pen and paper and begin to write. Calliope writes furiously, her pen seeming to fly over the paper as she jots down her thoughts, and is done first as a result. The rest of you take a bit longer to write, needing to stop and think about what you want to put down before you do so.

In a group chat, you, Kiara, and Evie had decided that one of you would automatically go first, to make Calliope feel comfortable about participating. When you’ve all finished writing, Kiara stands and clears her throat.

“Well, guess I’m first up,” she says.

In hindsight, you should have guessed how emotional a night of talking about things that you need to release and then burning them as a physical manifestation would be. Still, the teary eyes from everybody when Kiara finishes reading her letter to her ex-best friend and tosses it, along with a small box of mementos, into the fire catch you off-guard. Though you said that everybody had things that they needed to release the night that Evie first brought this up, you just didn’t realize that everyone was carrying their own burdens that, to them, are just as heavy as Calliope’s is to her.

You volunteer to go next, reading about how you release all of the expectations that you’ve had about your life and where it’s meant to go. Even before Calliope arrived in your life, you struggled with the idea that your life was not going according to the plan that you had in mind. You weren’t hitting milestones that you had plotted out, and your life “schedule” kept imploding time and time again. Now, you hope to be rid of that, and the constant feeling that you’re failing yourself and your life. 

As you watch the paper burn in the flames, you try to convince yourself that all of those feelings are burning along with it.

Evie follows, with a big “fuck you” to her biological dad, who she recently found out only tried to form a relationship with her so that he could get money from her. It’s such a terrible situation, and though she’s handled it with her classic brand of humor, you can all see the hurt that she carries with her. Her letter is funny and biting and makes you all laugh, but she’s openly crying by the time she tosses it into the fire, and she gets a long hug from each of you after.

Finally, it’s Calliope’s turn, and she takes a long moment to stand. She’s been holding your hand since you finished reading her letter, and you give her a comforting squeeze before letting go so she can properly hold the letter. After taking a deep breath, she looks around the fire at the encouraging faces before her before she begins.

“I have often lived my life in the service of others, though most of the time, it was something that I willingly and happily did. That choice was removed from me when I was stolen from my home and bound to a truly vile and horrid man. He took everything from me. My thoughts, my inspiration, my—” Calliope’s voice breaks. “My body. Nothing was mine anymore, and I was told that that was how it should be, that it was the natural order of the world. He beat me down, physically and emotionally, to the point where I started to believe it. 

“Though I had long since lost hope, I prayed for some sort of salvation, and I prayed to whomever I could think of. Nobody answered, either because they could not or would not, and I believed myself truly alone. Eventually, my former lover, Morpheus, was the only one who could, or would, help me, and even then, there was only so much that he could do. I do not fault him for that, because he did the most that was possible for him to do.

“And then one day, somebody knocked on the door of my prison and demanded their keys back.” She looks at you with a wobbly smile, and you sniffle in an attempt to hold back tears. “I know not why that was the tipping point for my captor, and frankly, nor do I care. He threw me out like trash, but I was not really in a place to question a gift such as this. And it truly has been a gift for me. In the two months since I escaped captivity, I have been able to heal, slowly but surely, even though I did not think such a thing was possible. I have found my laugh once more. I am free to do whatever I want, whenever I want. To sit in the sun, or read a book, or be with my friends.”

Calliope picks up the nightgown from where it sat next to her chair. “With this, I release every last hold that my captivity has had on me. From now on, when I think about that time, I shall think about survival, and how I refused to be kept down. I am free, and I shall remain forever free.”

She tosses the dress and the letter into the fire, watching intently as the flames catch the fabric and begin to work through it. Then, she laughs. Her laugh is beautiful and like the peals of bells, and it’s infectious too. Soon you’re all laughing, and you all have the same idea to hug Calliope. It turns into a group hug, the four of you laughing and hugging and watching as the smoke of the fire carries away that which you do not want to carry with you any longer.

•••

Calliope takes her time getting out of the car when you arrive back home, still basking in the euphoria of emotional release. When she turns to look at you, you already know what she’s going to say.

“Go in without me.” She sighs happily and looks up at the moon. “I wish to remain outside for a moment longer.”

You squeeze her shoulder before letting go. “Alright. The door’ll be unlocked whenever you decide you’re finished.”

You hum while unlocking the door, kicking your shoes off and hearing them thump against the wall of the entryway. Fumbling, you curse under your breath as you try to find the light switch—really, you’d think that after living here for almost a year, you’d be able to turn the lights on on the first try.

Light finally floods the room, and your humming resumes as you head into the kitchen to grab a drink. There’s a chill in the air, more figurative than literal, that causes goosebumps to rise on your skin. Your heartbeat quickens as you remove a glass from the cabinet, like your reflexes are trying to warn you of some unseen danger. Nervously, you hum a little louder while filling your glass up in the hopes that you’ll feel better. 

You don’t. How could you, when you look over the kitchen island into the living room and see a figure standing silhouetted against the back door? In fact, you feel much worse than nervous; now, you’re scared out of your wits, enough so that you scream upon realizing that there’s actually a man in your home, a man who is most definitely not supposed to be here.

You scream.

“Hello.” 

The man’s voice is deep, deeper than you think you’ve ever heard before. If he wasn’t currently in the act of breaking into your home, you’d think about how nice of a voice it is. Right now, it’s simply disturbing.

His eyes seem to twinkle in the darkness before he takes a step toward you, thus putting himself in the light. He’s paler than any living being you’ve ever seen, with long, unkempt black hair and cold blue eyes that seem like they can tell everything about you just from looking at you. He’s dressed in all black, with a long black coat completing his ensemble.

He’s not human, that much you’re sure of. You’ve spent enough time around Calliope in the past couple of months to guess that she is something more, and this stranger is the same. Power radiates off of him in waves, the same as it does with Calliope. Both are ethereally, sharply beautiful, in a way that lets lesser beings know that these are the true apex predators.

Even though it probably won’t help (now that you have the barest idea of what you’re dealing with), you pick up a kitchen knife from the dish rack and brandish it in front of you, thankful that you had cut up an apple last night and thus had needed your largest knife to do so. 

“Get the fuck out of my apartment!” 

He doesn’t move, choosing instead to just keep staring at you with those piercing eyes. You come out from behind the island, still holding the knife towards him. 

“Seriously, leave or I’m calling the cops,” you threaten, pulling your phone out of your pocket with your free hand.

This decision quickly has the situation going from bad to worse. The man seems to cross the entire room in a single step before slamming you against the wall, one hand wrapped dangerously tight around your throat. You gasp at the sudden violence, as well as the strength that he possesses under his lean figure, and both the knife and the phone fall from your hands as you try to figure out what to do. 

“Be quiet, mortal,” he spits venomously, his hand flexing around your throat. You attempt to grab at his hand to get him off of you, but he doesn’t budge. When you try to kick at him, he just leans more of his weight against you and renders you virtually immobile. “You are keeping a woman here, against her will. You will release her immediately, or suffer the most dire of consequences.”

“What? No, I’m not!” you argue.

Is he talking about Calliope? If so, he’s about two months too late in coming to her rescue. The only one that was holding her against her will was Ric Madoc, and he’s facing his own set of consequences for what he did.

Speak of the devil. Calliope chooses this moment to come in from her nighttime sojourn. You and your attacker both stare at the door as Calliope enters the apartment. She’s humming, much as you had when you first came in, completely in her own little world.

“Cal!” you cry out helplessly in an attempt to warn her, the only sound you can make before the man’s hand tightens again and cuts off all but a bit of your air supply. If given the chance, you’re not sure if you would tell her to run or ask for her help.

She takes stock of the situation before her with calculated eyes. Instead of surprise, shock, or fear, Calliope just looks…angry. Her bag drops to the floor next to her feet, and she makes sure to shut and lock the door behind her.

“Let them go, Oneiros,” Calliope commands, her hand landing on his shoulder.

Wait, Calliope knows him? Internally, you chastise yourself; obviously, she knows him, she called him by name! Still, you find yourself confused. She hasn’t mentioned having any contacts in the area. In fact, you distinctly remember her saying that she had “nobody” that first night you met her.

The intruder—Oneiros, apparently—does as Calliope asks, and you slide to the floor without his interference keeping you upright. Calliope slides down with you, landing on her knees in front of you as she looks you over with her big, brown eyes.

“Are you alright?” she asks, using her thumbs to wipe away your tears, tears that you weren’t aware you were shedding.

You nod. “I–I think so.” 

Despite your reassurance, your hand goes to your throat, and you try to rub away the soreness that’s already settling beneath the skin. When she begins to rub her hands up and down your arms, you realize that you’re shaking violently. Calliope stands and briefly leaves the room, leaving you and Oneiros in awkward silence until she returns with a blanket, which she gently wraps around you.

After she’s completed this task, Calliope wheels around to point accusingly at the man. “You are a fool, and you allow yourself to act without first thinking far too often.”

“Calliope–” he tries to interrupt, but Calliope shakes her head.

“What are you doing here?” she demands.

He scowls. “You called for me again, did you not?” 

“I did no such thing!”

“Really?” he questions with a raised eyebrow. “You did not write my name down prior to burning it?”

Calliope falls silent, because apparently that’s exactly what she did.

“I thought that what I had done to Richard Madoc worked, Calliope. Why did you not come to me sooner to tell me that he had sold you off instead?”

“Nothing of the sort has happened!”

“Then how did you end up bound to yet another mortal?”

“It is not what it looks like, Morpheus.”

“Explain it to me, then,” he pleads.

As the two continue to bicker above you, you feel increasingly like you’re interrupting in your own home. You shift uncomfortably, and Oneiros—Morpheus? Seriously, how many names does this guy have?—turns his sharp gaze upon you.

“You. How did you come to bind the Muse Calliope? What spell have you used to bewitch her?” He demands answers that you don’t have, and your shaking becomes worse under the full brunt of his stare.

“What?” You scramble to your feet so that you can at least pretend to be on the same ground as the two others here. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please, let us sit down and discuss this civilly,” Calliope interrupts, gesturing both of you towards the living room. 

After a moment of consideration, Oneiros/Morpheus nods tersely and walks in the direction that Calliope had pointed as though this is his home and not yours. You try to get your legs to move, but they steadfastly remain stuck to the spot you’re standing in. Calliope notices this and loops her arm through yours before gently guiding you into the living room.

“Why did he call you a Muse?” you whisper to her.

She presses her lips together in a thin line. “I will give you answers, I promise. It is…complicated.”

Though you’re not exactly satisfied by this answer, you trust Calliope, so you nod and silently agree to wait.

You don’t have to wait for long. Once everybody is seated (you in the chair perpendicular to the couch, with Oneiros/Morpheus on the couch and Calliope sitting next to him while simultaneously acting as a buffer between you), Calliope takes a deep breath and begins to explain everything. About who, and what, she is, how she came to be bound by a writer named Erasmus Fry, and how she was basically bartered for by Ric Madoc. She explains what they wanted from her, and she explains, unflinchingly, what they did to her to get it. Though it’s horrific, you listen to all of it. After all, if she’s willing to give, it’s only fair that you be open to receiving.

Calliope’s words seem to hang in the air long after she’s finished. The three of you sit in silence; Oneiros/Morpheus with a stony expression, you crying (you think you’ve cried more today than you’ve cried in a long, long time), and Calliope waiting calmly for you both to digest what she’s said.

In the end, it’s you who speaks first. “So you’re a goddess?” you ask.

“A Muse, yes,” she says.

“Like, of the Greek variety.” You need to confirm this for some reason, even though you already know the answer.

She laughs. “Yes.”

“A literal Muse is my best friend and roommate?”

You think that you might be going into shock right now

Oneiros/Morpheus scoffs, and you glare at him. “You have something to say?”

“You say that Calliope is your best friend. Then why do you not set her free?”

“Set her free? She’s a person, she’s free to do whatever she wants.”

“No, she is not. Calliope is bound to you, by the old laws.”

“Morpheus,” Calliope says sharply, a warning, but the man continues.

“You are enslaving a goddess and calling it friendship.” The disgust is clear on his face. “How can there be any sort of friendship when she is unable to leave, to do anything, without your say? You have complete and utter control over her, and you force her to pretend that it isn’t so. This farce that you’ve concocted must end now. I implore you to free her before I am left with no choice but to take further action against you.”

The room begins to tilt, and you shake your head in disbelief. “No…”

“They don’t know, Morpheus!” Calliope snaps.

“Cal, you—” 

You feel sick, and you genuinely think that you’re about to throw up. All this time, you thought you had helped to free her from her prison. Instead, she’s remained trapped, bound to you just like she was bound to Madoc and, as you’ve now learned, Erasmus Fry. These men took everything from an unwilling goddess, a Muse, and you’re basically no better than them. 

Swallowing down the bile that rises in your throat does nothing, so you close your eyes to take a couple of deep, shaky breaths in an attempt to calm down. That doesn’t work either, and you rise shakily to your feet before rushing over to the trash can in the kitchen and throwing up the wine and snacks that you had eagerly partaken in at Evie’s.

It’s humiliating, doing something as base and human as retching in the presence of two godly creatures. Everything about this situation is humiliating, if you’re being honest with yourself. You’ve unknowingly extended Calliope’s incarceration and deluded both of you into believing that it was friendship. How could you be a part of such a heinous act? Truly, are you no better than Madoc?

When you’ve finally thrown up everything in your stomach and then some, you’re full-on sobbing as you clutch at the trash can. Your knees give out, but Calliope catches you as you fall to the ground and wraps you in her embrace. She soothes you and murmurs words of comfort as she runs a hand through your hair, letting you cry in her arms when it should be the other way around. You don’t deserve her comfort, you think to yourself.

Once you finally have enough breath in your lungs to be able to talk, you gasp out between hyperventilating, “I’m so sorry. I–I didn’t know, and if I did, I would have never–”

“Shh,” she hushes you, grabbing your hands in hers. “My sweet friend, you have done nothing wrong.”

“But I–”

“I am the one who chose not to tell you. I trusted you in the beginning, and I trust you now. You have not failed me or abused me, or been a captor to me. Do you hear me?” She holds your face in her hands to make you look at her, and she waits until you nod to hug you once more.

“How do I free you?” you ask her. “Please, let me free you.”

“You must say that she is free,” your uninvited guest speaks up, making you remember that there’s a whole other person here. “And mean it.”

“Calliope, you’re free. You’ve always been free,” you say immediately, looking at her earnestly and hoping that she can see in your eyes how sorry you are.

Nothing physically changes. No burst of light envelops her, and she doesn’t undergo any sort of transformation. Yet, something in the air changes and becomes lighter. That inner glow that Calliope’s always carried seems to beam brighter now. Her shoulders look less weighed down now, no longer burdened by her forced captivity.

“Thank you,” Calliope says profusely.

“Don’t do that,” you say, feeling sick all over again. “Don’t thank me for something I should have done the second that Madoc threw you at me. I should have been smarter, more observant than I was. God, you deserve so much more than anything I can ever begin to give you.”

She’s not happy about your self-deprecation, but you will not be the source of her rage tonight. No, as she helps you once more to stand, her anger lands squarely on the man who barged in here and turned everything on its head.

“Apologize. Now,” Calliope demands. “What you have done here tonight is completely unacceptable and a new low, even for you.”

After thinking for a moment, perhaps to consider if he did transgress against you, he nods and stands like some sort of gentleman to properly address you. “The lady Calliope is right. I have acted deplorably towards you this evening, when you have done nothing but offer shelter and companionship to one needing it. I sincerely apologize for the pain and anguish that I have caused you.”

You nod warily, still tucked into Calliope’s side. “Thank you,” you say quietly. 

Truthfully, you do appreciate the apology. If he’s as powerful as you think he is, then he could have just as easily decided that you weren’t worth the breath it would take to form words, and that would be well within his right.

“Well, now that we’re all close to being on the same page here.” Calliope gestures to the man. “Allow me to introduce you to Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, King of Dreams and Ruler of the Nightmare Realms, et cetera, et cetera.”

“You’re a god too?” you ask.

“Not a god. I am Endless, one of seven anthropomorphic personifications of natural forces. I am far older, and far more powerful, than any god, and will remain long after all of your gods are dead and gone,” Morpheus explains.

You try to ignore the fact that one of the most powerful beings in the universe is currently sitting in your living room, lest you start to have an existential crisis in front of him. Now that Calliope’s told you his name, it rings a bell. “Wait, is he your ex?”

Morpheus looks at you both in surprise. “You have spoken of me?”

“Only tonight,” Calliope assures him. “When I…accidentally summoned you.”

The longer that you can think clearly without the threat of bodily harm, the more the puzzle pieces keep clicking into place for you. “He’s Orpheus’s dad, isn’t he?”

Calliope nods, and so does Morpheus, though he’s far more reluctant than she is. You don’t notice that, though, too caught up in your thoughts.

“Ha, Morpheus and Orpheus.” Maybe all of the crying has made you dehydrated, which in turn has left you a little delirious. That’s the only reason why you say this train of thought out loud. “What, if you had a daughter were you going to name her Alliope?” 

Calliope snickers at that, though Morpheus doesn’t share her amusement. “His name fit him perfectly, even though it was quite the coincidence that it was one letter off from that of his father’s.”

“God, I’m so stupid,” you bemoan. “How did I not know you were a goddess? I literally said, ‘Oh cool, like the muse’ when you introduced yourself! You must have thought I was an idiot.”

“It is difficult for the mortal mind to comprehend that which it believes to be fake. To you, that was the only connection that you subconsciously deemed possible,” Morpheus explains. Though he does it to make you feel better, it feels a little patronizing when it comes from someone as powerful as him.

“I wish you would have told me. Did you think that I wouldn’t have freed you? Because I would have!”

“I know that,” Calliope says. “Truthfully, I…forgot to tell you.”

“You forgot?” Morpheus says in disbelief.

At the same time, you ask, “How the fuck do you forget to tell someone that you’re accidentally bound to them?”

“At first, I was scared. That it was a trap, that you would be worse than Madoc. Of course, that lasted about twenty minutes.”

“What made you realize I was different?”

She smiles. “When you told me that the doors only locked from the inside. You cared about my privacy and that I was feeling safe, and I figured that you had no clue about anything that had happened, or about who I was. From there, it just wasn’t something that I thought to bring up. I was too frightened to leave the apartment, and I had been cut off from the world for over sixty years. Frankly, the idea of going out without you terrified me. As I began to regain control of my life and heal, it just became something that I thought about less and less. You are my best and dearest friend, and we do everything together, so why would I think about a bond other than the one that formed naturally?”

It’s very sweet of her to say, but you still have questions. “So you were just going to continue to live like this?”

“I did not have a plan, but I suppose so. I was happy here, with you.”

“Okay, but what happened if I got married one day, or like, had kids?”

“I would just be the fun aunt that lived with you and your family?”

“Jesus Christ,” you groan before sitting up suddenly. “Wait, is Jesus Christ real too?” 

Calliope and Morpheus share a look, and you’re suddenly frightened of the answer.

“No wait, don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know.”

You really, really don’t want to have an existential crisis until you can be alone in the comfort of your room.

Thankfully, Calliope and Morpheus take over the conversation from there, because you don’t think you have the mental capacity to try and further any conversation right now. They obviously have a lot to catch up on, since it seems like the last time they saw each other was when Calliope broke down and asked him for help escaping Madoc.

Instead, while they converse, you take a moment to zone out and try to process just what has happened in the past hour. The stranger that broke into your apartment turned out to be the powerful, eldritch nightmare king ex-husband to your roommate, who’s actually a goddess that was unintentionally bound to you. For reasons beyond your comprehension, he thought that she needed rescuing, and that you were the one that she needed rescuing from.

Your thoughts chase each other like a cyclone, and you try not to panic as you think about all of this. God, you need a drink right now.

When Morpheus and Calliope both rise, with Morpheus saying that he really must return to his kingdom, you rise with them. After all, how will you ever feel at ease if you don’t ask him what’s on your mind?

“Are we good now?” you ask. “Like, you’re not gonna hurt me or curse me? I promise I had no idea about any of this.”

“Yes, I know that now,” Morpheus says. “I will not harm you. If anything, I should be offering you a boon, for being such an immense help to one such as Calliope.”

“You owe me nothing. Neither of you do.”

Calliope leans in and kisses Morpheus on the cheek, so gently that you wonder if she even made contact. “Fare you well, Morpheus.”

He bows his head. “Goodbye.”

Between one blink and the next, he’s gone as though he was never here at all.

•••

That night, you dream, and for the first time, you’re aware of the fact that you’re dreaming.

You don’t know where you are, but it’s the greenest, lushest meadow you’ve ever seen. Wildflowers dance lazily in the breeze, and you can hear the low rush of a river behind the treeline. You’re tempted to lie down in the impossibly soft-looking grass and watch the clouds drift overhead, but before you can, you see them standing next to you.

Morpheus looks just as he did when you saw him in your apartment, only a lot less like he’s ready to murder you. The main difference is that he now sports robes fit for a king instead of his coat. His eyes, you also notice, are black pools of stars.

On the other hand, the Calliope you see before you is a complete departure from the Calliope you know and love. She’s wearing a white chiton that’s belted at the waist and her hair, which normally falls in curly waves, is braided back intricately. She shines, in a way that you’ve never seen, looking every bit the goddess that she is.

“Is this real, or am I dreaming?” you ask.

“Dreams are real,” Morpheus says with the slightest of smiles.

“Of course, my bad.”

Though it’s a picturesque dream, it’s stained with strokes of melancholy. On some level, you know what’s going to happen, and what Morpheus has brought you here for.

“You’re gonna leave, aren’t you?” you ask Calliope.

Selfishly, you’re hoping that she’ll say no. That she’ll tell you that your home is her home and where she’s meant to be. Yet even as you foolishly hope, you know that your ordinary apartment, your ordinary life, is no place for a goddess. No, she deserves far greater than that.

She smiles sadly, and that’s all the confirmation you need. “I think I must, at least temporarily. There is…much for me to do, back home on Olympus. I wish to reconnect with my sisters, for one. And though it is lofty of me, I wish to change the old laws so that we may never be enslaved on the whims of mortals ever again.”

“If anyone can change laws that are thousands of years old, it’s you.”

“Thank you…for everything these past two months. Truly, I do not know how I can ever properly thank you for what you have done for me.”

“You don’t have to do anything; just knowing that you’re safe and happy is enough for me. I’m so proud of you for taking your life back after everything you went through. You deserve all of the happiness and goodness that the world has to offer you.”

“I would not have been able to do it without you, you know. No matter how we came to know each other, I am glad that we did. You saved me.” She says it so earnestly, needing you to truly understand your impact on her recovery.

“You did that yourself, Cal. I was just along for the ride.”

“You have my utmost respect,” Morpheus says. “Not many would have taken in a stranger needing help from off the streets with nothing but the purest of intentions, and fewer still would have offered them friendship. Your bravery and kind heart shall not be forgotten.”

“You have my respect too, for what it’s worth.”

He looks at you in surprise. “Why?”

“Calliope told me that you didn’t end things on the best of terms. But still, when she called for help, you answered with barely a second thought, and did all you could to help.”

He stares for a moment before nodding and turning to gaze out across the meadow. To your unabashed delight, his cheeks tint a light lavender in embarrassment, unsure of how to take your compliment. You bite your lip to stifle your laugh and decide to not tease the King of Dreams…for now.

Though you’ve been putting it off, some sixth sense tells you that your time here is nearing an end. You turn to Calliope again, who already is trying desperately to keep her tears unshed. When you meet her eyes, she holds out her arms to hug you, and you gladly accept.

“I’ll miss you,” you mumble.

Calliope kisses your forehead before pressing hers to yours affectionately. “I shall miss you as well, more than you can even imagine.”

“Call me if you need anything, okay? If–if your sisters are ganging up on you, or if you need someone to watch the best movies of the two-thousands with you, or if you’re missing going to karaoke with the gang. I’ll drop everything and go to Greece, just say the word.”

She laughs, the sound uninhibited and joyful. “I know you will.”

“Goodbye, Calliope." You have no choice but to finally, reluctantly say the words you've been dreading to say. If you weren't to do it now, you know you'd never let go of her.

Calliope pulls away just enough so that she can look you in the eye. “May fortune go with you, my sweetest friend.”

•••

Calliope’s gone when you wake up, her belongings the only sign that she even existed here in the first place. Though you cry, they’re not tears of sadness; rather, they’re happy tears, because how could you not be happy for Calliope? She’s found her freedom and the strength to return home, to try and make a better world for herself and her fellow gods and goddesses. Truly, this is all that you ever wanted for her.

On her nightstand sits a folded-up note, your name written on the front in Calliope’s ornate script. You open it up to read it, and when you finish, you hold it to your heart.

I will always be close by in your heart, as you will always be in mine. No distance can change that. Should you need me, you need only pray to me, and I shall hear you. Continue to make the world as bright as you.

-Calliope

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 70 – American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

I’m honestly not sure I ever would have gotten around to reading this on my own, but ended up buying it through the ‘blind date with a book’ thing a bookstore in New York was doing when I was visiting (incredible gimmick, for the record). The fact that it then took me a solid three months to actually finish probably tells you something about how genuinely difficult a read I found it. Not in the sense of being bad, but just legitimately difficult to stomach at points. Overall I’d call it a real triumph of literature.

Not that anyone doesn’t already know, but; the book is spent inside the head of Patrick Bateman, high-flying wall street trader and Harvard blueblood at the close of the Reagan era. Also a serial killer. The story is told as a series of more or less disconnected vignettes, jumping from dinner conversations at one exclusive bar or club or another to the brutal torture and murder of a sex worker to several pages of incredibly vapid pontification on Nina Simone’s discography. The story vaguely tracks Bateman growing ever-more alienated and out of control as the year goes on, but there’s very much not any real single narrative or cathartic climax here. - most stuff just happens (stuff that’s either incredibly tedious or utterly nauseating by turns but still just, stuff).

So yeah this is an intensely literary work (obviously), a word I’m here using to mean one that is as much about the form and style of the writing as about the actual events portrayed. Bateman is a monster, but more than that he’s just an utterly boring and tedious husk of a man, traits which are exaggerated to the point of being fascinating– if you told this story in conventional third person narration without all the weird asides, it would be a) like half as long and b) totally worthless. The tonal whiplash of going from an incredibly visceral depiction of Bateman cutting out the eyes of a homeless man to six (utterly insipid) pages on the merits of The Doors is the selling point here (well actually I think Ellis goes back to that specific well probably one time too many, but in general I mean).

Bateman is a tedious, unstable monster, but as far as the book has an obvious thesis it’s that he differs from the rest of his social milieu only in degree. A symptom of a fundamentally rotten society, not a heroic devil among sheep. The book’s climax, such as it is, involved Bateman getting into a drug-fueled gunfight with the NYPD, shooting multiple people in the middle of the street, and then stumbling home and leaving a rambling confession to every crime on his lawyer’s answering machine – but despite very clearly wanting and trying to get caught and face some sort of consequence or justice, people just refuse to believe that someone like him is capable of anything like that. (It’s not, it must be said, an especially subtle book).

There is, as far as I can recall, not a single character who gets enough screentime to give an idea of their personality who I’d call likeable. Sympathetic, sure, but that’s mostly because it’s pretty much impossible not to sympathize with someone getting horrifically tortured and torn apart (at one point a starving rat is involved). The upper crust of New York yuppie-dom is portrayed as shallow and vapid, casually bigoted towards quite literally everyone who isn’t identical to them, status-obsessed to the point of only being able to understand the world as a collection of markers of class and coolness, and totally incapable of real human connection. Bateman is a monster not because of any freak abnormality, but just because he takes all of that a few steps further than his coworkers.

The book is totally serious and straight-faced in its presentation, and absolutely never acknowledges any of the running gags that are kept up through it. Which shows impressive restraint, and also means that none of them exactly have a payoff or a punchline – it’s just a feature of the world that all the expensive meals at trendy restaurants everyone competes for tables at sound disgusting when you think about them for a moment, or that the whole class of wall street trader guy are so entirely interchangeable that ostensible close friends and coworkers constantly mistake each other for other traders and no one particularly cares. Or – and I’m taking this on faith because fuck knows I’ve got no idea what any of the brands people are wearing are – that the ruinously expensive outfits everyone spends so very much time and money on for every engagement all clash comically if you actually looked up what the different pieces looked like. The book’s in no way really a comedy, so the jokes sit a bit oddly, but they’re still overall pretty funny, at least to me.

I like to think I have something of a strong stomach for unpleasant material in books, but this was the first work of fiction that I had genuine trouble reading for content reasons in I can’t even remember. I’m not sure it’s exactly right to call the violence pornographic in a general sense, but as far as American Psycho goes the register and tone Bateman uses to describe fucking a woman and torturing her to death are basically identical (and told in similarly explicit detail), and all of Bateman’s sexual fantasies are more or less explicitly just porn scenes he wants to recreate, so. Regardless, the result’s pretty alienating in both cases – his internal monologue never really feels anything but detached and almost bored as he relays what he does, sound exactly as vapid and alienated as when he is carefully listing the exact brands and designers every person he ever interacts with is wearing at all times, or arguing over dinner reservations for hours on end with his friends and lovers (though both those terms probably deserve heavy airquotes around them). He legitimately sounds considerably more engaged when talking about arguing over sartorial etiquette. It all adds up to a really strong alienating effect.

Anyways, speaking of sex and violence – perhaps because my main exposure to the story before this was tumblr making memes out of scenes from the movie, but I was pretty shocked by just how explicitly awful Patrick is ‘on screen’. The horrible murder, sure, but also just the casual and frequent use of racist and homophobic slurs, the pathological misogyny, the total breakdown he has at the idea of a gay man being attracted to him and thinking he might reciprocate – all of these are entirely in character for an asshole Wall Street ‘80s Guy even if he wasn’t a serial killer, but it’s still oddly shocking at first to see it so thoroughly represented on the page. It makes how comparatively soft-pedaled the bigotry and just, awfulness, of villains in a lot of more modern books stand out a lot more, I suppose? I have read a lot of books that are in some sense About queerness and/or racism in the last year, and no one in any of them holds a candle to good old Patrick Bateman.

Part of that is just the book being so intensely of its time, I suppose. The New York of this book is very much one of the late ‘80s, incredible wealth living side by side with social rot and decay, crippling poverty everywhere and a society that has to a great degree just stopped caring. Absolutely none of which Bateman or any of his peers care one bit about, of course – they’re too busy showing off the latest walkmans and record players, going to the newest clubs, and just generally enjoying all the fruits of Reagan’s America. Recent history has made the fact that Bateman’s personal idol is Donald Trump almost too on the nose to be interesting, but in 1991 I’m sure it was a bit more subtle in how telling it was.

Anyway, yeah, horrifying and exhausting read, triumph of literature, my god did Easton Ellis hate America (this is a compliment). Now time to go watch the movie!

[everything-fine-n-peachy]

chrysalis (l.jn) pt. 1

pairings: lee jeno x reader genre: angst (read: longing, so much longing) summary: arts high school au where dance major jeno works with creative writing major y/n for his senior recital. she falls first but he falls harder

You almost regret falling for Jeno. Almost. 

No matter how many times you try and scold yourself, it always works for a little while until you feel breathless from laughter at his jokes, light-headed from being under his gaze, and warm from the smile he would give you every time he executed the story into choreography, and for a few moments you think, you can’t regret something beautiful like that not even when you knew this was all fleeting. 

You remember your professor’s quirky expression before he assigned you to work on the project. 

“the story needs a little fixing here and there for the stage, but I think this is right up your alley,” your professor explained as he handed you the manuscript.

“Chrysalis?” you asked. “Like being in a cocoon?” 

“It’s a bit dark though, morbid if we’re stretching it and,” he paused for a second, “well, just don’t get too caught up with Jeno.” 

For all the opinions the entire campus had about Jeno being cold, too serious, and careless about other people’s emotions, you think, he was so much more than the Casanova archetype that everyone was projecting onto him. 

Watching him make the studio his playground, soft movements, slow tempo, then all at once fiery, intense, and swift, you discover this man is as much an oxymoron as his carefully curated piece. He was driven and relentless for sure, but he was also very considerate to the younger dancers on his team, polite to the staff, and very much kind to you. 

The more you got to know him, the more he let bits of himself slip into the conversation. Suddenly you know about his pet cats, the chocolate stash he has hidden under his bunk, and even his guilty pleasure, gaming. Later on, he’s talking about how he adores his mom’s cooking and how he dreams of being able to see the world and perform everywhere. 

And so you find yourself spending more time at the dance studio, preferring to work on your own final project there and staying late after rehearsals were done to watch Jeno polish his jumps. 

Much like today, you relish in the quietness of the moment. You’d like to think nothing else mattered. Not your feelings, not graduation, not anything. Just laying next to Jeno.  You close your eyes and take a big breath. You feel the hardwood floor beneath your back and the breeze on your face from the open windows. 

“Hey, did I lose you?” 

You turn your head slowly, opening your eyes only to find him already staring back. His index finger finds its way to your open palm right next to his, tracing circles on them, an unconscious habit he’s formed in the past months you’ve been working together. Jeno begins to say something but you’re already looking away so the words die in his mouth.

“Nope, I just realized that your final recital’s in a week,” you answer with a tiny smile. You feel the excitement in the way his eyes crinkle at you. The way he visibly squares his shoulders with a knowing smirk. 

“Are you proud of me?” he says playfully, shifting his body weight off the floor with his arm supporting him as he half hovers above you. “Say you’re proud of me.” 

Your head shakes in disbelief and try not to look too long into those deep pools of black because the last time you did, you almost did something really stupid. Almost. 

You chuckle making it a point to push him away, sitting up with your legs crossed. “Of course I’m proud, I mean you’ve worked hard.” 

“It’s your story though, I’m just in it.”  You turn at the sound of his voice, looking back at him still splayed on the floor with his arms cushioning his head. 

“This is literally your thesis, Jeno. I just helped you write the stage play.” Smiling, you reach over to boop at his nose. Unexpectedly he catches your wrist before you can pull away. You aren’t sure what to make of the way he’s looking at you, only that it makes your heart beat a little faster than it was a second ago.

You think it’s ironic, the way your penchant for finding meaning in the most mundane of things is what brought you to Jeno and yet it's the very same thing that keeps you in a loop of suffering.

Ever since you were a child, you’d made a home for yourself within the bedtime stories your mother used to tell you, falling in love with secret worlds and strange creatures. And so you grow up to build yourself your own realm of metaphors, stanzas, and rhythm, content to be whoever you wanted to be and go where you wanted to go, at least in your story. 

You never expect to meet a lonely prince on top of a mountain, the world at his feet. His kingdom, a campus full of pretentious teenagers, too dumb for their own good, who were either afraid of him or in so much awe they forget that he’s only a boy. It’s quiet and the silence is heavy with something yet to be spoken of. You watch him rub patterns on your wrist with his thumb. He closes his eyes and a contented sigh escapes his lips. You can’t deny the number of times you’ve wanted to just give in to the inexplicable pull you felt, to just lean in and kiss Jeno. For the umpteenth time, you find your body moving on its own accord and you jolt your head back, whiplash taking over. 

“It’s getting late,” you murmur, pulling away. Jeno blinks, confused at your suddenly icy tone. 

This is nuts, you think. You almost did it again. Hastily, you stuff your belongings into your bag, eager to put a healthy amount of distance between you and the boy who made your chest feel like it was about to explode. 

Maybe if he wasn’t receiving offers from schools so far away, you’d actually give this a chance. But you knew better than to kid yourself into thinking that you were part of Jeno’s world. His was a realm of glittering lights and roaring crowds. You were just part of the chorus of applause. 

You feel Jeno, instead of hearing him approach. The warmth behind you feels like a siren’s call. And so you try to distract yourself.

“I just remembered that I need to talk to Mr. Kim about…” you huff in exertion trying to pack your things as fast as possible. “The senior book launch is also in a week and-” 

Before you know it Jeno pulls you in, to face him. You’re too shocked to register what just happened. Your mouth hangs agape but before you can even say anything Jeno is the first to break the ice. 

“Why do you always pull away?” you feel his palm coming up to gently caress your cheek and feel the urge to smoothen the frown that’s formed on his regrettably handsome face. It’s a mistake to meet his gaze because when you do, you realize they’re expectant of something you don’t know or rather, are too afraid to actually name. 

You close your eyes instead, trying to at least regain some rationality. Jeno breathes out an exasperated sigh before leaning his forehead against yours. His scent, a mix of mint and Jeno, inevitably fills your lungs with the proximity. You feel yourself relent a little, leaning into his touch wanting so badly to just stay this way for a little longer. 

Everything about this boy was tempting. The crescents staring back at you when he was laying his head on your lap in between rehearsals, the way he was so attentive to your input during the entire process and the feel of his hands on your waist as he taught you certain parts of the choreography, insisting it was part of the creative exchange. 

You find yourself glancing at his mouth, transfixed by the way he runs his tongue against his lips. He stares back at you with hooded eyes and you’re about to close the distance when a shrill yell from the outside douses you like cold water from an ice bucket and you quickly extract yourself from Jeno. 

You grab the last of your things, not even bothering to put them inside your bag before heading for the exit. “I have to go,” you mutter before walking past him.

Jaemin smiles at you, clueless about the exchange that just took place seconds ago. He greets Jeno with a big bright hello which dies in his throat as soon as he sees how crestfallen his best friend looks.

But you don’t have time to think about that. You’re already running out of the studio, thoughts churning at the rate of light speed. You had almost kissed Jeno. Almost.

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

*extremely deep sigh*

I am begging, can we stop making fun of Victor for being a "college dropout" as if it was a personal failure on his part? Because considering the historical and plot context that is literally not what happened.

The post might be less well-structured than previously intended but Tumblr managed to erase the whole thing before I could post it and I'm too tired to spend more than a couple minutes on rewriting the whole thing, anyway

First of all, Victor has not spent two months, four months or a semester at Ingolstadt before starting to work on the Creature, he has been there for two years studying primarily chemistry. In those two years he, quote:

"...improved so rapidly that at the end of two years I made some discoveries in the improvement of some chemical instruments, which procured me great esteem and admiration at the university. When I had arrived at this point and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay."

In two years he managed to learn every single thing the university had to offer and even improved on their methods. Had he wanted, he could have gotten a doctorate in two years which is less than anyone with a bachelor's degree could ever hope for. And he would have learned more but the university did not have the capacity to teach more.

Mind you, back then there was no pressure to actually get a degree as there is today. Very few students actually got a degree, most of them went to university simply to learn stuff and to gain experience, which is something I really wish was still a thing today because I would love to go to uni just to learn stuff and then leave when I'm no longer interested, without it being treated as a failure and a waste of time but alas, gotta have a degree and a career, that's all universities are good for I guess.

After those two years he switched to biology (universities back then weren't strictly split into majors and you could go to whichever lectures you wanted anytime) and in about half a year he learned all of the information he needed to begin working on Creech. In half a year he learned enough to build an entire fucking person from scratch. Another half a year he was busy gathering materials and then spent the following year actually working on the project. This entire time his teachers were aware of this, so it was not like he "dropped out", they knew he is doing his own project.

After the November night it took about half a year for him to recover from his stress- and exhaustion-induced illness, and after that he spent roughly a year and half studying languages and literature with Henry. Only after this he did leave university and that's only because of the literal death of his baby brother, which is something most people would at the very least take a gap year for. Yes he never came back to uni but can you really blame him considering everything that happened since then?

To summarize, in six years he has mastered two majors and was well on his path to master a third one and was forced to leave only due to tragic events in his family. This was in an era where a degree was in no way something expected or all that frequent to get.

So can we please stop shaming Victor Frankenstein for being a "loser college dropout", I am begging you, I'm tired

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk, gonna go work on my own thesis now

Bonus detail I found while doing research for this post:

"Professor Krempe often asked me, with a sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on, whilst M. Waldman expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress."

Krempe called Victor Cornelius Agrippa as a nickname

[witchmd13]

listen there’s only so many times things can go wrong in the lab before you start being superstitious. for example, during my undergrad there was one guy who always had the worst luck. from faulty cables to always having the worst supervisors, after two years all of us (including him) would say he was cursed. then when he was my lab partner things went well…too well. we got cocky. we joked that this would be the time he broke the curse. the next week the lab was shut down due to covid and we never finished the project and had to do supplementary work for our grade. also when he was working on his thesis and was finally ready to use his samples (that took months to make), the building lost power and because his samples needed to be stored at -80C he had to re-do the whole thing.

I'm so sorry I just saw this in my inbox when I opened desktop tumblr and the timestamp says it was sent 4 days ago. I must've missed it on the app 😭

Oh gosh I agree 100%! I get so superstitious when it comes to scheduling/doing my experiments even though I'm not in my personal life. For me, it started with using the confocal microscope. literally one day it would be working fine and the next I can't image a single slide. So now when I can't get anything from the first slide, I just switch the microscope off and call it a day cause I just know it'll work the next day just fine. I might be superstitious but it worked so far.

My master's thesis supervisor used to say "if you pray, you better start doing it now" whenever we used a calcium measuring device at the lab lol (he was only half joking) because it literally had a mind of its own.

During my training to use the ultramicrotome, the first thing the technician told me was to stop the whole thing if the first specimen doesn't work and just come back the next day.

My experiences might not be as extreme as you anon, but I'm not changing this habit until I'm done with this degree lol.

(I hope you still see this, anon)

[prettytothink-so]

march review

(i did actually write one of these for february but i got too in my head about it, and i wanted to focus on getting it done over publishing it, so i made it a private post)

march was another month of very ambivalent outcomes. by the beginning of the month i was confident i wouldn't meet my measurable goals for the quarter, and while it's not the end of the world, i was disappointed in my failure regardless no matter how much i reminded myself that the point was just to be present instead of achieving something. i purchased the "look back, plan ahead" zine from the underbelly shop and highly recommend; even though it wasn't at the calendar year, it was super helpful for a reset, and i'm seriously considering buying it in bulk to use for the rest of my life

my goals for march included finishing rouge and death valley, reading all's well and milk fed, and reading both the satanic verses and joseph anton. i did the first part, but didn't get through the satanic verses and so i didn't even start joseph anton; i'm about 50% of the way through, though, so i've got joseph anton on the backburner now. also: my thought about how melissa broder just writes depressed characters better than literally anyone else panned out. milk fed was so much better than death valley (or the pisces) but goddamn those are hard headspaces to put myself in. i don't know which awad book is my favorite, but it's definitely not rouge, and could be all's well.

april plans

i sat down and really nailed down exactly how i want to approach my goals for quarter two. you can read more about my writing goals over at my writeblr @catchingbigfish, but i have very specific plans for how to approach my other major goals for the year, which are yoga related and a kind of amorphous "mindfulness" goal:

* i'm going to work through the elemental tracks + the inversion track on the underbelly by the end of june, so for april, my goal is to finish redoing the air track (which i did two years ago, probably?) and get through at least half, if not more, of the earth track (which is where i stalled out);

* my amorphous "mindfulness" goal stemmed out of a morning pages goal, and while trying to nail down exactly what it was that i was getting out of it, i decided journaling would be the best way to put that, so journaling for 10-15 minutes a day on as many days is possible is my focus; i also got a very cute moon phase journal from the underbelly, so my specific goal for april is to journal for each of the big moon phases;

* and i also have some reading-related goals, but as my semester ramps up and it becomes time for me to write my seminar paper, i'm going to let myself shift focus there for a while. these are some of the specifics:

finish the satanic verses (stretch: read joseph anton and knife)

re-read the grip of it (kind of cheating, as that's what my seminar paper will be on, but it still counts! i even counted my critical theory textbook towards my number of books read this year)

read one of the other classic haunted house books (since that's the subgenre i'll likely do my thesis on at the end of my degree), like rebecca or the turn of the screw

[rhyssands]

june 05 - still i won't clot the wound pt 2

prompt: block party rating: not rated wordcount: 2,897 characters: Sans, Papyrus, W. D. Gaster warnings: past character death; flashbacks; grief/mourning prompt from this post, read it on ao3 here

——

Half an hour later, give or take a couple of minutes to account for traffic, Papyrus walks in the door with two pizza boxes balanced on one hand and a two-liter bottle of cola under his other arm. Sans, who was waiting for him in the living room, really isn't sure how he got the door open like that.

He doesn't ask.

Somethings in life aren't mean tto be made sense of.

Instead, he grabs the pizza boxes with blue magic and wanders into the kitchen with them. Papyrus doesn't comment, but when Sans catches a glimpse of his face he looks both pleased and concerned. he always was an accomplished multitasker.

"You seem..." Papyrus begins, slowly, as he sets the cola down next to the pizza boxes Sans has placed on the kitchen table, "Remarkably present today, brother. Significantly more present than you've been in quite some time, in fact! Did something happen?"

Instinctively, Sans grimaces at the reminder. It's not a surprise to him that he's a hypocrite, he already knows he is, but it still aches like a bitch. It's still a little (a lot) disheartening to know he resented Gaster for exactly this sort of behavior, for always being more involved in his projects than he was in their lives. Now, he's spent seven months paying no attention at all to Papyrus or the world around them.

All that mattered to him was the Machine. A solution to a problem he could see, waiting just out of reach, somewhere beyond his scope and if he just kept working...

Suddenly, he wonders what Papyrus has been telling people if and when they've asked about him.

Papyrus isn't generally a liar, so he's probably told them the truth, or as close to the truth as he could get. As far as everyone else probably knows, Sans has been absorbed in a project for seven months. His reputation as a lazy good-for-nothing will never recover from that.

"... Nothing happened, exactly." He says, slowly, avoiding Papyrus' eyes.

Honesty isn't really his bag, especially where emotions are concerned — thanks for that, G —, but Papyrus goddamned well deserves the truth. He's lied to him about enough things. He's kept enough secrets.

And, worse, he knows he'd hate it if the roles were reversed. He knows he would hate knowing that something was wrong, or is wrong, and that his brother won't tell him what it is. He'd feel awful, thinking that he'd done something to make Papyrus think he couldn't be trusted with the information. After all the other things he's kept from Papyrus, he can't imagine his brother isn't sort of starting to feel that way, too.

He bites the bullet, so to speak, and says, before Papyrus can prompt him, "I just... Realized how long I'd been working on the Machine. I had no idea it'd been months. A couple of weeks, maybe, but..." He shakes his head, sighs, and continues, "It freaked me out, and I don't think I could zone back out if I tried right now."

"Oh," Papyrus says, immediately, totally nonplussed, "You did that when you were writing that dissertation thing for your thesis paper, too. It kept you very busy."

Well, at least Papyrus doesn't seem to be holding his emotional absence against him.

Small mercies.

Still, he says, "... Sorry, Paps. I didn't mean to check out like that, especially not for this long."

"Bah!" Papyrus waves a hand in dismissal, "You're forgiven, you terrible creature. But one must wonder what had you so focused. And by 'one', in this case, I mean me."

Sans grimaces again.

Reluctantly, he says, "... The first night I went down to the shed to work on the Machine, it was because, uh... I thought... I thought I saw G. I'm not sure if I did or not. I checked him, but I don't really know if you can, heh, hallucinate that or not. It made me want to try to bring him back, so..."

Papyrus nods, taking it in stride. He doesn't seem the least bit bothered by the fact Sans has just admitted to possibly hallucinating, aside from some very slight worry hidden away under something more positive in his expression. Sans doesn't go digging much further than that, he never does, but this is hardly the first time he's ever wanted to.

"Well," Papyrus says, "If anyone could figure out how to resurrect a monster, it would probably be you or Dr. Alphys! I'm sure you can manage, you've always been very smart."

Sans blinks, then feels himself start to smile. "... Thanks, Paps."

Trust his little brother to weaponize his faith in him to turn his mood right around.

"Of course! Lack of intelligence has never been a problem for you, brother. Merely a lack of common sense and ability to take care of yourself without consistent prodding to remind you that you're a living creature that needs food and sleep!"

Painfully accurate, as Papyrus often is. He can't help laughing.

He shakes his head, then takes a seat at the table, to Papyrus' clear joy. "Alright, let's eat, and then... Maybe you can come down with me to take another look at the Machine? Could use a fresh set of eyes."

Papyrus perks up further, taking a seat as well. "I'd like that! I'm not sure how much help I'll be, as my skills don't so much lie in strange science machines as they do in puzzle and traps, but I'll certainly do my best."

"Your best is pretty damn good," Sans tells him, popping one of the pizza boxes open and plucking out a couple of pieces. "so I imagine you'll be a lot of help anyway."

As it turns out, Sans is really, really hungry.

He devours half of one of the pizzas by himself, getting a lot of disgusted but pleased looks from Papyrus in the process. If he had to guess, he'd say that complicated emotional reaction is because Papyrus is glad he's eating, but horrified that he's stuffing his face like a feral animal, graceless and messy.

When he and Papyrus are both finished, there's still one pizza and a liter of cola for later. Papyrus puts the pizza away while Sans gives himself a much-needed scrubbing at the sink to clear away all the grease. He'll need a shower tonight to take care of all the sweat that's no doubt caked onto his bones after who-knows how long without a shower. He's certain Papyrus has forced him to take a few, he remembers it, but he can't remember when the last one was.

They head back down into the basement together, and Sans doesn't complain when Papyrus turns the radio on and lowers the volume until it's only background noise.

Conversationally, Papyrus says, "I wish I had a CD of music you like. You may use this more often if it wasn't just my favorite bands, which are of course great."

"... I think I got a Sinatra CD up in my room." Sans says, thoughtful, "But, uh, nah. It's fine, Paps. I like your music."

He probably does need to use the radio more often. The music might keep him mentally present while he works, or better yet let him focus better because of the inherent comfort of hearing Papyrus' favorite bands while he works.

When he glances over, Papyrus looks very pleased with himself.

Sans gets back to work, and Papyrus comes closer to observe, pointing out one or two things to ask about them. Sans isn't surprised he's picking up on all the less-than-stellar engineering that went into it — Gaster was a genius, even in engineering, but this is still a prototype. It's only the second of its kind, and the first iteration that actually worked. It's shoddy work, because getting it functional was more important than making it pretty.

"Were all of G's inventions so..." Papyrus seems to struggle for words, probably trying not to sound rude when talking about their older brother who he doesn't remember properly, "So..."

"Poorly constructed?" Sans suggests.

Papyrus winces, but nods. "Yes. Precisely that."

"Not usually," Sans assures him, tugging the blueprints down and spreading them out on the floor so he can examine them again. "The CORE's nowhere near this badly built. The rest of the stuff in the lab that Alphys didn't build is almost all his work, and it's all better built than this, but almost all of that is... Well, fourth or fifth generation prototypes. This is second gen."

"Ah," Says Papyrus, like that makes complete sense to him, "so it working at all was the goal, at that point. Another few generations of prototyping and it would probably be much better. I do the same thing with my puzzles."

That's true, Sans figures.

He can guess exactly where Papyrus got that tendency from. The coffee machine in the Lab when Sans started college was, after all, a concerted effort by Gaster and a freshly-into-engineering Papyrus. Ugly as hell, first generation prototype that they never bothered to refine before G's accident, but damn if it didn't make an excellent cup of joe.

"... So! Speaking of this being second generation," Papyrus says, kneeling down next to him to examine the blueprints as well, "do you think that maybe moving onto a third prototype may help with fixing what went wrong with this one?"

"I have to figure out what went wrong first." He admits, with a frown, "Building another one from the ground up from these blueprints may result in the exact same thing happening, and I don't think we can chance that right now. Of course, that's assuming the Machine breaking has anything at all to do with G's accident..."

He mumbles to himself for several moments, going over possibilities as he examines the blueprints. It could be this, or that, or maybe both of these, or possibly even just one small unrelated thing over here, and, hm, maybe...

Papyrus doesn't interrupt. When Sans realizes he's been listing possible problems for possibly upwards of five minutes, he stops and shakes his head.

"How did G construct it the first time?" Papyrus asks, when he's gone silent, "There may be something in the construction stage that could help you figure out what broke."

Sans pauses, considering that. He actually never thought to retrace their steps. It seemed silly to just go over the construction again when he already knows how it all goes together.

... But it's like coding. Sometimes talking out the problem helps, even if the other person doesn't have any real input to offer. If he goes through the whole thing... And if he's careful to mostly talk around Gaster's direct involvement so as not to jog any memories that could make Paps glitch, then this could actually work.

He opens his mouth and starts in on recounting it all from the start.

—

Knelt on the floor of the Lab, Sans taps a distal phalange against one of the lines of Gaster's neat, precise symbols. "About this," He says, "are you sure this is an efficient enough method for venting the heat? Entropy engines put off a lot of excess heat, this may not be enough to mitigate the possible heat damage to the wiring."

Two hand constructs float into view. At his side, Gaster continues to stare down at the blueprints, but the constructs speak for him.

"It should work well enough for a test run," He says, "In the meantime, I will be considering other possibilities for venting the heat, and perhaps replacing the engine with something less volatile."

Sans nods along, humming in understanding. That makes sense, all things considered. Getting a first prototype functional in the first place is a lot of trial and error. They can work out the kinks later.

He looks over the blueprints in their entirety as the constructs float away, plucking up tools and various fastenings. It's a fascinating little thing, a machine meant to be able to track distortions in the timeline, as well as potentially bridge the gap between their timeline and others.

Admittedly, he's not entirely certain how this is going to solve the Barrier issue. He knows that's Gaster's primary goal with it — being able to sidestep the Barrier, or otherwise find a way to get the last soul they need in order to break it. It's just that this all seems... Maybe a little too science-fiction, to him.

And not even the good kind of sci-fi, either.

No, instead it's like... The shlocky kind where they have laser guns and faster-than-light transportation, but for some reason still have to use fossil fuels to power their space ships.

Worse, he thinks, is that this is just Gaster's latest preoccupation. It's not the first thing he's focused in on like this, not by a long shot, but it's definitely the first one that's kept him working as often as this one does.

Sans hasn't seen him outside of work at all in weeks. He doesn't even eat with he and Papyrus anymore.

He doesn't let it hurt. He can't.

He focuses back in on the blueprint instead, and he doesn't let himself sigh, either.

—

Sans has never been more delighted to eat a plate of scorched pasta.

Papyrus being there to keep him from getting too caught up in work helped a lot, although he did still have to be pulled almost bodily away from the Machine. Still, he actually made it out of the basement in time for dinner, and as it turns out he's still fucking starving, so he's on his second plate of bad spaghetti already.

"So!" Papyrus says, watching him eat with visible delight. He doesn't seem disgusted this time, probably because Sans is eating like a civilized person for once in his life. "Tomorrow afternoon, after summer school lets out for the day, Lady Toriel and King Fluffybuns are hosting a little party outside of the Embassy. Something about celebrating our time on the Surface and inviting more humans to come and interact in a moderated environment? I'm not sure, Lady Toriel was rather vague about it, but I was wondering if perhaps you wanted to come with me?"

"Sure," Sans says, immediately.

He doesn't have to think about it. Even if he didn't actually want to go, holy shit he needs to get out of the house. He's been locked in the basement for seven months. He can't remember the last time he spent time in the sun, let alone talked to anyone but Paps and Gaster, the latter of whom is possibly not even real.

Still, a little shindig up at the Embassy sounds nice. A chance to get out of the house, see folks he hasn't seen in a while, and spend some time with his brother without being working while he does it.

Distinctly pleased, Papyrus says, "Oh. Well, good. I was expecting to have to metaphorically twist your arm to get you out of the house!"

"Not this time," Sans half-sighs, half-laughs. "I need to get out of here for a while. I dunno when I left the house last, to be honest with you. Should be good to see everybody again."

Papyrus nods along, "Of course. Our friends have been worried about you! I'm sure they'll be relieved to see you more or less back to your usual self. Dr. Alphys especially — she was very troubled to hear you were working on something in the basement for as long as you have been."

Sans grimaces. That's not surprising.

Alphys doesn't remember Gaster, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't remember Sans going on days-long engineering benders when they were in college. Of course she's worried to hear he's been on one for seven months straight.

He's honestly more surprised that she hasn't tried to come and drag him out of the basement herself. She smacked him, once, in college, although he doubts she remembers doing it since he was on day three of no sleep and so was she. Dragging him out by the hood of his jacket isn't beyond her, no matter how anxious she is.

She knows Sans.

... Then again, a lot has changed since college, hasn't it?

Hm.

He and Papyrus finish up dinner, and Sans sticks around to help with dishes for the same of soaking up a little more time with his brother.

When he gets upstairs, he again stalls in his doorway. Gaster is in the same corner as the first time he appeared, expression much warmer now than it was then. He's smiling.

"... Hey, G," Sans says, still struck hoarse by the sight of him. He doesn't CHECK him this time. "Y'mind if I hit the hay? Not much more I can get done today. I really need some sleep."

Gaster's dripping, hunched body shakes. His eyes squint. There's the faintest rasp of sound, a scrape of Gaster's laugh. Sans' soul aches.

"... Rest." Gaster utters, sounding amused.

"Okay," Sans answers. His sockets itch like he's about to burst into tears. "Night, G."

Gaster laughs again. He holds up one hand, shaky and slow. The sign he makes means 'I love you'.

Before Sans can return the sentiment, choked into silence by how much it hurts, Gaster is gone.

He swallows the pain, the way he wants to cry, and he goes to bed.

[notalotgoingonatthisinstant]

Hi Karina, I love your writing. I wondered how do you go about deciding what to write? Like you recently posted the Easter section of your series. How did you know you were writing that next and what plot points you'd hit? Hope it's cool to ask about your creative process. :)

Hey, hi, hello, thank you so much 💜💜💜 It's absolutely cool to ask about my creative process. Here ya go, babes.

For the whole HRFH series, it comes around because of my headcanons. In a lot of fandoms I've been in, I naturally develop many headcanons, and for the most part I like to stick to what's possible in canon and rooted in that universe's world. This time, I wanted to justify to myself how on earth Simon would ever agree to join the monarchy to fulfill my hopeless romantic self, and thus the first story was born.

From then on, my mind worked overtime. It came up with headcanons for the littlest things, and I felt the need to have it written down by parts. When I wrote the pre-wedding one, my mind already knew how some of the proposal would pan out, even if I only posted the proposal over a year later (checked the dates for this and omfg wtf do u mean a year). It all fits together because my mind likes to have one Main True Headcanon™ to fixate on.

I was not planning on an Easter proposal though hahahaha. My mind just decided that they would be engaged for fourteen months and would get married in the royal wedding date in June, so yeah, the math points to an engagement in April, but I didn't connect the dots until I sat down to write it and was like - what if... omg what if it's literally over Easter? And omfgggg Easter is about resurrection and rebirth and shit and that's kind of so meaningful for this, holy shit???? I started it in January, with no intention of waiting till Easter, but then my thesis happened and I only finished it in March, so I decided to make it *extra* and wait till April. The funny thing is that the baby fic I mentioned has been half-written since I wrote the wedding, because my mind has the headcanons down in stone and I just have to make them work in real life.

I have a few scattered one-shots in the YR universe that are scenes that wouldn't leave my head when I watched/rewatched the show, and those are pretty much spur-of-the-moment fics without much preparation. The creative process is get this idea out of my head.

Lastly for this, in the YR universe, my beloved Simon gets injured fic (I literally get whiplash every time I see the stats on that, because holy fuck, but ANYWAY). This one got inspired by real life. I rarely ever weave my medical background into fics because it mostly feels forced, but I just had dozens of bruised brains around me at work when Wilmon invaded my thoughts and I found a way to make two of my passions coexist. It's not about one single case, but more like a few of my patients put together like puzzle pieces, with an extra dash of drama for the story's sake. I want to finish the sequel to get it out there because I feel like it touches on the subject of recovery from something like that - how a situation in a random moment can snowball into a condition that you'll likely have for the rest of your life. I see many people with post-traumatic epilepsy - many young ones, my age, younger than me - and their story deserves to be told. I might just borrow Simon for that.

[uwusillygirl]

i could read 10k words from you about gender and performance and/or being a pervert with contradictions!!!!!!!!!!

if only i trusted the internet enough, i could give y'all my published Real Girl work on this matter that probably far surpasses 10k at this point!!! this is my bread and butter!!! it's why they pay me the very small bucks!!!

i will talk about any facet of this literally whenever, though, it's my favorite. my overarching thesis for all gender performance, sex, and perversion is that we're given two general political takes which are 1. a sort of like militancy/demand that any person in a marginalized group be a monolith and not do the shit they like if it isn't for "the cause" -- no kink, no femininity, no even playing at subjugation/power dynamic within a relationship or sexual structure and then 2. capitalistic "choice feminism" goo of like "you can do whatever without any interrogation into your choice! you just really like spending four and a half hours a day on your look and love having your hair pulled in bed, girlboss! don't think about it too hard! don't let 'em get you down!"

and i think that neither are true or possible for a person living pleasurably! i think that i am a woman who owes my fellow women (and everyone, but we're talking gender here) time, focus, sacrifice, commitment to liberating what womanhood "looks like". i also think that if we lived in a social structure genuinely made fully equal i wouldn't be shaving my legs and spending an hour at the nail tech twice a month getting plastic put on; that is not inherently liberating. but it feels superficially, erotically good to me, just like when someone i find sexy buys me things to wear that they think i'll look sexy in, or if i do something in bed that isn't perfectly aligned with my value system. but this is me being a human person, not the idea of an "ideal woman".

and that's not even talking about how i got into all this in a midst of a ptsd diagnosis! life is so weird!

anyways my dream world is my inbox filling up with thoughts on sex and performance and gender and perversion and kink so... whenever anyone wants!

[tchaikovskym]

My advisor sent me a fresh new grant info and there is nothing stopping me from applying but I honestly feel like I'm not going to make it, taking in account their criteria lol:

Publications in Scopus/Web of Science: a total grand sum of 0 🤺

Publications in like conference combined theses with and ISBN: I mean there was one conference which I did not attend but my advisor did and I was the author and I got like a citation in my uni portal but I have no idea how to actually access that lol.

Participation in conferences: I think I can say 3 taking in account the one mentioned above. This isn't that bad actually.

Leading/teaching a study course: do like those 2 months count when the Other uni didn't have any teachers bc covid ended and they didn't have anyone to come to work and they hired a literal 1st year masters student to teach students who probably knew as much as I did?

Created study materials: an attractive number of 0 🫦 (although maybe I can get my Other work to help me here - I have participated in creating scenarios? Hmmm)

Mobility experience: barely fitting in their 5 year time plan with my bachelor's semester abroad

Following my study plan: yeah well. That's. That's. Going. It's not my fault half the courses they offered weren't implemented lol ☠️

Existing finances: I'm currently doing my phd on department's non-existent budget and literally asking favors 🤠

Supervised a student: does my one (1) highschooler count 🫠

Progress on thesis: I... I have some data... and initial results... living in folders on my pc 😭😭😭

[vveakfish]

re: tags on lrb

thinking abt the journey and a half my DC hyperfixation has been.

I was a DCAU only girlie for so long. (BTAS, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans, YJtv, GLtv). I enjoyed the DCEU too, but i was WAY too wrapped up in MCU brain-rot to dive too deeply into those. But that was it. Zero interest in comics themselves as a lil squirt.

Eventually I stopped caring abt the DCEU entirely. (around WW’84, tho it had nothing to do with that movie, i just never saw it — and didnt see any of the movies that came after). And got WAY into Marvel™. And i kinda just rode that wave.

When Marvel started branching out into shows i was HYPED — esp since they started that shit off with WandVision. I’d always loved Wanda, and the fact that they brought Billy and Tommy in was all i needed to push me into reading comics

i tore through the young avengers (UGH i miss them <;/3), and other titles associated with them, and was having a blast. At some point around the season finale of Loki (good show, this was just also how the cookie crumbled) I just fell off Marvel in general. A lot of this probably had to do with school ramping up around this time — but i stopped reading comics & watching their shows and movies almost entirely.

Around this time tho, bc i Missed reading comics — i started reading webcomics. And as much as i enjoyed reading Marvel comics for that short period of time, webcomics were what made me fall in love with Comics™ as a medium.

6th semester ended, i was elbows deep in world building for my own webcomic project, and started watching anime while working on it. Again, anime was always one of those things i enjoyed (Digimon, Sailor Moon, and Pokémon were some of the most influential pieces of media in my entire childhood), but my love for it as an art form was really solidified during this time

[side note: can you Tell i was dealing with art school shit during all of this? couldn’t turn the critique brain off literally Ever, so anything i enjoyed got put under the art student lens]

But my interest in anime stayed entirely on the animated side of things for a Long Ass Time. It wasn’t until Jujutsu Kaisen that i got shoved headlong into manga. God that stupid fucking anime changed my life, ANYWAY.

I finished the anime (umm maybe like. 5 times), and then HAD to know what happened next. So i devoured the manga. Every spare moment i had was spent reading it, until i was Done. then i was like orz. what do u do now ??

The answer was do the exact same thing with Demon Slayer. which was ALSO a life changing experience. read 鬼滅の刃 pls pls pls

Now. When i finished KNY, i was also like *head in hands* how do i even keep on living?? But this was also while working on my thesis project, and still doing a lot of work on the side as far as my own comic was concerned. (like… 60k words worth of world building & drafting scripts + designing characters), so its not like i had all that much free time.

anyway — i finished up my 8th semester, and barely gave myself a chance to breathe before i threw myself into working on my comic practically full time.

I was working on a one shot to submit to a contest for Webtoon, and they were asking for a pretty substantial amount of content (60+ panel Action comic one shot. and I, as always, love to make things harder on myself, so i think in one of the later drafts it ended up having over 100 panels).

needless to say, i Did Not finish the oneshot in time (its still not done to this day T~T i’ll come back for you forge, dont worry). But, toward the end of that… 3 month span of feverishly working on this project, i found myself falling in love with DC all over again.

I mentioned YJtv before, but that show was Also something that changed my life as a 10 year old.

(its really funny to think about that show now & how it’s release date lines up with the beginning of the N52 continuity, and how both the show & that particular reboot are so strongly disliked by a vast majority of DC’s fanbase — but thats a post for another day)

I’ve rewatched the show at least once a year since my roommate let me start using their HBOMax login. I know seasons 1 and 2 like the back of my hand bc of how much i watched them growing up, and i like season three well enough. But the thing was that on this unsuspecting summer night, i was about to discover that there were New Episodes.

Dude i was hyped, i was losing my shit. I had resigned myself to the knowledge that this show was never coming back. I was okay with it too. But here it was, alive and kicking after what felt like forever.

Heres the thing tho. They killed off Kon.

okay not really, but at the Time boy boy was Dead, and i was devastated. Thats My Boy. He had been my favorite character from the jump, and i did not know how to process him being gone. So i took a break from the show, and turned to ao3 instead.

At this point i was Not an avid fic reader. I wasn’t an avid reader period – outside of manga – but i had read a few really good fics recommended to my by some of my JJK pals. So i looked at the Kon-El | Conner Kent character tag on ao3 and just scrolled until i found something interesting.

In this case: a Timkon fic (this one in particular).

I knew who Tim was before this (He shows up in YJtv. He's there in BTAS), but I had never thought about him and Kon as... anything really. In the versions of them i was familiar with, they don't interact all that much. They're from different generations of heroes, but i was like, hey, what the hell this sounds cute. And man oh man, it was all down hill from there.

I read more TimKon fic, and just fell in love with them. But i was also... confused. Like... why do these two guys have such a robust fanbase... wheres the link.

THAT is what pushed me to start reading Detective Comics Comics for the first time. I wanted to get to know these guys For Real, and the only way to do that was by digging into the source material.

This post is So long oh shit. I have thoughts about How I got to know the kiddos & how the comics i read (as well as the order i read them in) have influenced my understandings of these little guys. But i think thats a post for another day. I have other things to do than write out a post about my media consumption habits

o7 signing off.

[gremlinasis]

18 - I've been wandering

Two years and a bit later and I'm in a completely different life.

Short summary: I stayed with my ex after she cheated, we got over it but the feeling she had that she wasn't ready for a serious relationship loomed over us. Beside that I was progressing through my studies and I graduated with honors in July of 2022. Quickly after I took an an engineering job at a multinational.

The job didn't really match with me and I was constantly out of the country and away from my friends and my ex. It weighed a lot on me and my relationship, which was going through more downs than ups at that point with me being in a bad place generally and her still longing for her independence from a partner. It got better for a while in the beginning of this year, but she left on a semester abroad in February and that's when things started changing.

She didn't want me to stay too close during that time, she was too far away for me to be able to visit without preparation and she didn't want me to plan any visits or really to talk to me too much. For the first two months I kept a daily sort of diary for her about my life with short notes about things I would love to tell her that day, reading it back now it's heartbreaking because you can see me falling apart slowly. After a few months it all cracked. Me sending her that I loved her would make her cringe and just in general anything that referenced us as romantic partners would make her close off.

At that point my mental health started shattering. I hated my job and I knew I was losing my relationship. Because I was away so often it was also hard to get support from my friends, I was living far away from them and I was too lonely to get myself out of it. So I started to go to a therapist.

Slowly I worked on understanding myself better, to give myself the space to think and to process what was going on in my head and my heart.

Once my ex came back it was clear we were done. It took about a month and a half where I saw her maybe 4 times before we finally sat together and told each other we couldn't do this anymore. From her perspective she couldn't be in a relationship right now and from mine I couldn't be someone that was the worst part of someone's day. It was destroying me to be actively unwanted, not necessarily for who I am but for simply filling a role that she didn't have room for. So we ended it after three years together.

A week later I sent an e-mail asking about PhD positions to my thesis promotor, three days later he responded that he wanted to look into it with me and I went to pride and kissed my friends (I had a situation with one of them after that also broke off, which is a whole other story), four days after pride I booked a meeting with my promotor and quit my job. Three weeks later I got a PhD position which is what I'm currently spending my days with.

Life is still difficult to navigate, but I need to be grateful as well that I'm here now. If the me of April this year would see me now, I think she'd cry. I'm not where I want to be yet, not professionally, personally or mentally, but I got myself out of my lowest point.

I'm dealing with a lot still. My ex and I still talk and it's clear that we still haven't finished this completely. There is a lot of love left there from both sides and it's not clear to me where my romantic life is going to head. I want to be loved well though, I understand now that I need to be actively wanted. I need a partner that wants me around as their standard, I want to be with someone that wants to take steps with me (in due time), someone that wants to move in together, that wants to have a life together, so we aren't just updating each other about our separate lives, that we live a part of each others life as well.

But I also think I need to literally & figuratively fuck around a little before I can try doing that again.

My next step is moving out of home, I don't know when that will be, but I'm working on it.

So yes, a lot has happened as of late, curious to see where next my life is gonna lead.