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embrassemoi · 4 years ago

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Surrounded by the Moon and Stars ✷ 26

Pairings: Sirius B, Remus L, [F]Reader CW: Language, prejudice against MB, blood/injury, sexism A/N: as always, unbeta'd

【 Masterlist: Previous Chapter | Next Chapter 】

Chapter 26: Human Anatomy

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May 4th, 1976

Following the Mary incident, there were two Death Eater attacks in Birmingham plastered all over the Daily prophet now clutched in everyone’s hand. Y/N watched from the sidelines as Lily gripped her copy so strongly that it began to tear where her fingernails were.

Distantly, she could hear Marlene and Dorcas attempting to distract them by fighting over the last Chocolate Frog. Y/N ignored them, her mood dampened from the news and played with her food idly. That was until she felt Sirius nudge her underneath the table, quietly placing the now stolen Chocolate Frog into her hand.

It was clear that she and Sirius reached a standstill. Ever since his outburst, he hadn’t been avoiding her — they still snuck around — but his witty and snarky comments were gone. He’d become more reclusive, shy, even, and couldn’t keep eye contact for too long. A few times, she even caught him entertaining other women and it caused her to stiffen up, laugh bitterly and chip away at any logic, reason — manifesting in irritation and resentment.

It was a game of cat and mouse and Y/N was the cat. So the gesture was surprising. She took it from him, smiling as she ripped open the package and split it into two, giving him the larger half. He gave a reticent smirk and went back to his desert.

Sirius Black was confusing.

She saw Remus had put down his copy of the prophet, who pressed his lips together to hide his amusement as he looked between the two. His brow rose; she looked anywhere but him.

It was nearing the end of dinner when James finally joined, just coming from his career consultation. He went over to Ravenclaw’s table first, talking admittedly with Emmeline before making his way over. He was uncharacteristically nervous as he sat down beside Y/N.

“Saved you a plate,” Peter greeted. A large plate of spaghetti hovered in front of him. Normally James would’ve dug in within seconds, but instead prodded at a meatball with his fork. Everyone noticed but ignored it.

“What took you so long?”

Sirius grinned. “I bet McGonagall was listing off the Quidditch teams that want him. Which one is it? Appleby? Puddlemere?”

“I call Ballycastle,” Marlene warned, “I want their spot!”

James remained quiet.

“Don’t tell us you’re going to live off your trust fund,” teased Remus, but it had a questioning tone.

James’s gaze flittered to Lily’s paper before he spoke.“They all reached out.”

Everyone gave a loud round of applause and cheers; Y/N ruffled his hair while Peter conjured one of the floating candles to explode into confetti.

“That’s amazing! Congratulations, Prongs! You deserve —” “I’m turning them down, for now.”

Everyone went still, smiles fading and utensils dropping.

Remus was the first to speak. His eyes glossed cautiously around the table before leaning in. “Want to go somewhere a little more private? To talk?”

James took a deep inhale, peering over to Mary’s empty seat. Still shaken up, Mary had been hiding away in her dorm. As Marlene liked to say, she was pulling a sickie, and nobody could blame her. Then James’ eyes strayed towards Y/N.

“I told McGonagall that I’m enlisting once school’s done.”

Peter placed a tentative hand on him, “What did you say?”

“Er… after everything that’s happened…” He took a deep breath, “I’ve been thinking… I don’t want to live in a world where the people I care about are judged — innocent people are being… slaughtered... I can’t — I can’t just sit here and let it happen! And the war won’t end — not unless people are there to fight.”

Lily ripped her newspaper as she snapped, “This isn’t the time for jokes, Potter. You can’t just say that and —”

“I’m not joking,” James states calmly yet firmly. “Quidditch can wait until the wizarding world is safe.”

Nobody spoke until Dumbledore dismissed dinner.

“I said the same to McGonagall,” Sirius added. Everyone’s head whipped towards him.

“Is this a sick plan you two haven’t told me about?” Remus scolded. His voice was laced in something Y/N couldn’t place but teetered on the edge of indignation.

Sirius shook his head. “No. Never mentioned it to him. It’s just… I want to fight people like… my… family.”

The phrase echoed in her head: my family… What did that mean?

“Then that’s what I’ll do too.” Marlene states.

Dorcas whipped her head towards her. “No, you won’t.”

“Potter’s got a point,” Marlene says. “What good will my influence — power and position I’ve got as a Pureblood do if I don’t put it to use? Besides, my brothers have all enlisted already. They help with the Ministry and Dumbledore.”

Y/N and Lily stayed quiet, both shared a look — the first time either made direct eye contact since their fight. It communicated worry and pure dread.

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May 14, 1976

“You pincushion. You’re going to break if you aren’t careful!” She’d been waiting outside the hospital wing for Remus who hobbled his way out with a pink flush.

The Marauders and girls were taking ‘partnering up’ seriously. The Marauders escorted any Muggleborns around the castle at night; James, Peter and Sirius using their blood status while Remus used his height and prefect title as leverage. Even Marlene made sure every first or second year was escorted safely too.

In particular, ever since the mention of enlisting and Mary’s attack, James and Sirius were ruthless — merciless to anyone that showed even the slightest allegiance to the other side. More hexes, jinxs and pranks ensued.

Remus tilted his head as his body shook with quiet laughter. “Just a tumble.”

“Clumsy giant.”

He ignored her, going to take her bag off her shoulder to carry.

“Now you’ve lost it — give it.”

“I’m fine,” he grunted, going to dangle the bag so she wouldn’t be able to take it. But Remus staggered forward a bit, having to stop walking and balance himself out. Y/N noticed, sighing as she linked her arm with Remus’, letting him lean against her for support as they walked.

He did seem peaky, she worried, he waved it off. The Marauders did say he’s ill…

“Are we picking up Butterbeer?”

“Mary and Marlene are getting it.”

“Oh… Mary… How is she?”

Y/N sighed as they turned and left through a secret passageway and into the yard. Today was the last Quidditch game of the year. “I’m not sure… we’re not exactly close and Marlene refuses to spill.”

“I’m glad she’s… okay — out and about. What about you?”

“Me?” She turned to Remus.

“No one has tried to hurt you, have they?”

“Nope.” Best to lie.

Remus loosen up at that. His head tilted to hear her clearer, body hunched over as if he’s trying to get closer.

His soft messy curls were strewn messily around like he just rolled out of bed. “Do tell if someone does. I know you can defend yourself but we all need to be there for each other.”

“Of course. You too?” He hummed.

The hot sun beat down against them as sweat began to form on her forehead. Remus wore a light sweater — just by looking at him, he made her feel uncomfortably warm.

“You’re not hot?” Y/N asked.

He dropped his head a bit and a sudden far-away look filled his eyes. “Erm — not really. I just prefer it.”

She instantly felt bad from his reaction. “Well, at least you look dashing.”

He nodded, smiling before making grabby hands. Y/N glanced sideways, already fishing out her cassette player from her pocket.

“All you do is use me for this thing.” “Hush.”

They walked together down the path, arm in arm, over bumps and dips. Both laughing at the other before Y/N noticed a fairly large ball of black trailing on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. It was as tall as Flitwick and as long as Marlene’s broom.

Y/N felt herself stop, pulling away from Remus who was about to open his mouth. A rush of excitement filled her. “Is that a dog?!” She already let go of Remus, motioning him over as she dashed off into its direction.

The dog must’ve heard her footsteps before she came to a stop in front of it. Now, slowly walking up, her hand stuck out and waited for the dog to approach.

“Hi there, buddy!” She smiled largely as the dog sniffed her. There was the slightest hesitation before its head rubbed against her hand, moving happily as its tail wagged. Its head bowed, presenting its neck as a sign of submission. It even nudged her. She rubbed the side of the dog’s body. Its fur was shaggy, matted with a bit of dirt which had her nose wrinkled.

Remus eventually appears, watching them but once the dog notices him, it goes rigid, pulling away from Y/N, even going as far to growl at her. Although it’s weak, she still rips her hands away as the dog keeps its gaze on Remus.

“No! Please come back?”

The dog stopped growling, letting her pet him again but bared its teeth to Remus. Remus doesn’t seem to care as he watches the scene intently, a smirk crosses.

“I didn’t know Hogwarts had a dog!” Y/N scratches behind its ears. “You must be Kettleburn’s, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, he’s been around,” said Remus.

“Oh yeah? You seem like such a good boy!” Y/N then stands, picking up a stick before waving it, throwing it far. The dog bolts to retrieve it. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a dog?”

“I’m more of a cat person.”

The dog comes dashing back, stick in mouth as it runs circles around her. She goes to bend down, fingers gliding through its matted fur before getting caught. “You’re kind of disgusting.”

The dog looks at her, its eyes adjusting to open wider while Remus bursts out laughing. Y/N glances at him, questioning his unusual behaviour before reaching to grab the stick from its mouth. She transfigured it into a dog brush and went to work.

"... Kettleburn has really been neglecting you."

Remus’ hands go up to wipe his happy tears before dropping down to sit beside her. She can even feel his body shake with laughter. “You sure you don’t want to leave this mutt be?”

The dog growls at him, Y/N giggles.

“I don’t think he likes you much.”

His face level with the dog. “Don’t like him either.” The dog barks and Remus practically howls.

“So…” he has a sly smirk that tells her he’s up to no good. The light catches onto his eyes, glinting with golden specs like they were infused in him. “You and Padfoot have been chummy lately.”

The wagging tail halts and Y/N stops combing as they both stare at him. The dog pulls away from her grasp and growls at Remus. This time, it’s guttural and deep, sounding like a warning and losing its playful tone.

“I — ugh —” She falters, mentally slapping herself. “We’ve been getting along since Oats. Studying, spending time together… I got tired of fighting.”

“Mmm, I bet.” His voice is condescending. “I heard you want to be a Healer.”

“Yeah?”

“Say then, do you guys study —” The dog goes and bites down on his jeans, tugging harshly, drawing her attention but Remus continues to study her.

“Look at me, not at him,’” he says cockily. He leans in a challenging manner that has her flustered. He repeats, “Do you guys study… I don’t know… human anatomy?”

The dog barks madly — so loud that they’re getting stares from passing students. Y/N swore she could’ve died there while Remus bellows with laughter: his question answered. She bolted up, remaining silent and marched away from him who hobbled behind her, yelling out false apologies.

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Gryffindor, unsurprisingly, had another amazing win against Ravenclaw. James had improved as Captain drastically — confident with his position and team. Marlene improved too, she was almost as fast as the Snitch itself and never let a single Bludger slip past her while James scored goal after goal.

She and Remus still stuck by each other, walking down the rickety wooden stands as they observed the sea of red robes swarming the pitch. James pulled Emmeline into a kiss before he was holstered up by the Gryffindor team. Sirius was cheering him on while Peter was missing, having to leave right after the match for detention.

James then glanced back, along with Marlene, who waved while the two students grinned widely, sticking their thumbs up, fist-pumping in the air as a sign of congratulations.

But it wasn’t long until trouble came their way. Y/N wasn’t sure how Remus knew, but he suddenly went mute, his head perked up and swivelled around. In a fluid motion, he grabbed her wrist, pulling her flush against him; his hand wrapped around her protectively as he shifted his body to cover her and then bucked down; just before a Bludger came barreling their way.

Remus whipped his wand out, pointing at the Bludger that was hurling back, turning it into a balloon.

“The fuck?” Remus breathed out.

From where they stood, they were obscured by the shadows and wooden stands. The crowd couldn’t see them and the Gryffindor team was too occupied to notice. Cackling sounded from one of the exits. It was Crabble, Snape and two other Slytherin’s she didn’t know the names of.

“How cute! Ickle Lupin protecting his Muggle bitch!” Crabble said, flashing a dark smile.

“What did you call me!” Y/N shrieked, still in Remus’ hold before he finally let go.

“Watch what you’re saying,” Remus cautioned, voice dropping low. He stood tall as waves of authority emitted from him while he held his wand tightly, stepping in front of her. His broad shoulders squared. “Thirty points from Slytherin. You don’t want detention, do you?”

“That’s all you got? House points?” Snape taunted. “Loopy Lupin — acting tough in front of his girl.”

“Heard she’s fucking Potter,” the Slytherin said. He had blue eyes and dirty-blond hair.

“I heard differently,” the other nameless Slytherin blurted. He licked his lips in a snake-like motion. “Have you seen the way she and Black are around each other so much now? A Mudblood and a whore!”

She drew her wand.

“Aw, trembling itty, bitty baby!”

“That’s enough, Barty,” drawled Snape. Barty held his wand, toying with it before he lifted his wand, ready to cast a spell.

“Expelliarmus!” Remus shouted at him. Barty’s wand flew from his grasp but wasn’t lucky before the unnamed boy shouted, “Levicorpus!”

Instantly, Remus was grabbed by the ankle, hauled up into the air. Y/N saw him wince, all his belongings thudding to the grass.

“Aw, Rosier,” Snape said coolly. He took a few steps in a twitchy manner, “Stop playing with the poor mutt!”

But before the Slytherins had an opportunity, Y/N shot a spell at Remus, floating him down gently while Snape and Crabble directed a spell at her.

“Protego!” She cried as an invisible shield expanded between her, Remus and the Slytherins. The barrier was so powerful that they all stumbled as Remus went to retrieve his wand.

“Lupin can’t even protect himself! You had to let a girl do it too!” Crabble shouted.

“A Mudblood and a Half-breed! A match made in heaven.”

Angrily, Remus stood, a black ball of light shot out from the tip of his wand at the feet of the Slytherins. A small boom rumbled the ground, sparks of fire emitting but not enough to start a fire. They jumped back and Snape threw another spell.

“Ad sectis!”

Y/N barely had time to block it as a gust of wind knocked them back. It wasn’t a spell she knew of. Remus sent another hex at them but was blocked.

“Dangerous bloke, that Loopy Lupin,” Snape jeered, directing his words at Y/N while the Slytherins laughed. “You ought to be careful who you run around with. Let alone your boyfriend.”

“Shut up!” Remus shouted. “Shut the fuck up!”

“Where do you think he goes every month?” Snape taunted before backing up from them, rejoining the other Slytherins who left, all bellowing, “AHH-WOOOO!”

The reverberation from Remus’ spell drew the Marauder’s attention as they arrived. James saw them, marching up side by side with Emmeline and Sirius. He wore a large smile as he pressed several kisses to the side of Emmeline’s head. “Whiskers! Moony! Did you see that score!”

Remus and Y/N breathed in deeply, dazed and shocked. Remus stumbled over but she clutched his arm to keep him upright.

“Don’t listen to anything they said,” implored Remus.

“Wait… James,” Emmeline said, “I don’t think somethings right.”

“Moony, you’re awfully pale…”

“Shit! Are you guys bleeding?”

Y/N’s eye travelled to a large slash that travelled up Remus’ jaw and leg, blood seeping out at an alarming rate but the cut was shallow. Y/N in turn only then realized the damp liquid was now travelling down her arm. Her arm was also slashed, not deep, but the amount of blood was concerning.

All their voices began chatting over the other as the girls arrived by now; Dorcas rushed up to Y/N, prying Remus off of her as James and Sirius took Remus and sat them on a nearby bench.

“— happened?”

“— Y/N — Remus —”

“Lift your leg —”

“— get to the wing —”

“Merlin’s beard!” Lily shouted. “Give them some space!” Her eyes were on Remus but shifted to Y/N. Hesitantly, Lily walked up to her and bent down in front of her but still kept her distance.

“Okay, we need to get you patched up.” James stood, looping an arm around Remus and stood up.

Marlene rubbed her shoulder while Lily spoke, both James and Sirius doing the same for Remus. “Would you like us to come?”

She shook her head as the girls reluctantly left, but clutched Lily’s wrist as she stood. In a small voice, she asked, “Stay?”

Lily nodded her head and bid her goodbyes with the girls.

“Right, okay. I’ll see you later?” James said to Emmeline who pressed another quick peck to her cheek. Instead of the hospital wing, Remus asked, and was very adamant, about being brought to his dorm where they hauled in Y/N and Lily.

Sirius managed to get the bleeding to stop and worked on Remus before going to patch up Y/N who sat in James’ bed. The curtains were drawn just close enough for them not to be seen while Lily and James feverishly spoke to Remus.

“Ah!” She hissed as Sirius wrapped her arm carefully. Her free hand went to grip on his arm and he looked up at her apologetically.

“M’sorry — and we’re done.” Sirius tosses a quick smile, “You did amazing.” Sirius placed his material to the side and went to hold her hand gently. “What happened? Don’t you dare tell me a lie because this is serious.”

“I thought you were Sirius.” That joke never got old

Sirius broke out into a grin before it quickly vanished again. “Who did this?” He urged voice hardening yet kind. “Please, trust me.”

And she did.

Y/N reluctantly retold the story. Sirius went stiff. She grabbed his arm to bring his attention back to her. “Don’t do something that’ll make it worse. Don't you dare go looking for revenge. Promise me.”

He nodded his head but looked conflicted. At the same time, James pulled back the curtains; Y/N ripped away.

She looked around the room. “Where’s Lily?” “I told her to leave,” Remus cuts in. “I didn’t think that she would’ve liked to hear about the Snape part.”

Her eyes locked with James who wore the same expression as Sirius; he knew. And so she repeated herself, enunciating every word to the boys. “Don't. You. Dare go looking for revenge.”

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tagsecretsanta · 4 years ago

Text

From @Gumnut-Logic

to @such-a-random-rambler

Sorry for the wait Random-rambler! I hope you enjoy it :) And a humongous thank you to Nutty for jumping in to help <3

Secret Santa does not own this work, full credit to the author above!

Title: Tactics

Author: Gumnut

Spoilers & warnings: None so far.

Author’s note: This one has been fun to write. There will be more. Theoretically, only one more chapter, but who knows with my muse.

The prompts were:

Fight in the snow, snowball or otherwise

Hat/gloves/scarf

Suits

I’ll let you work out which I included :D

Many, many thanks to @tsarinatorment for the extensive plotwork to stimulate my migraine fogged brain and to @scribbles for reading ::hugs you both so much:: Couldn’t do it without you. Also, thanks to @tagsecretsanta for all their hard work putting this challenge together.

Merry Christmas to you and a safe and well new year as well ::hugs::

I hope you enjoy this :D

-o-o-o-

It was ever so quiet.

Gordon slipped between the snow-laden pines on silent feet. Dressed head to toe in white, he was a ghost against the landscape.

The mission was simple. Get in, nab the target, get out.

He had the training and experience and he had an intimate knowledge of his opponents.

A sudden movement off to his left and he froze. His eyes darted between the trees.

A snow hare bounced off into the distance, throwing up puffs of white powder.

Gordon shifted the pack on his back, his gloved hand armed and ready at moment’s notice.

But there was no notice.

The first volley hit him from the opposite direction. How the hell? But he didn’t get a chance to ask as he was pummelled to the ground.

-o-o-o-

It went against his grain, but Virgil was desperate. He knew he was considered the weak spot in this campaign and honestly, he was. But there was value in his knowledge and while he wasn’t really known for a lack of confidence, his lack of military experience niggled at the back of his mind.

His brothers certainly valued his skill set, but he knew they thought he was a softy…and rightly so. He was going to make the attempt anyway.

After all, his skill set was definitely useful in any situation and it gave him a chance at least.

So, his first victory meant a lot.

He shifted the weapon and stepped forward, his exo-suit whispering, his massive snowshoes compensating for his weight. It had been a fifty-fifty gamble on whether he should use his exo-suit for this or not. The advantages had slowly outweighed the disadvantages when his new weapon came to mind.

He smiled just a little to himself as he shifted the gun on his shoulders and made his way towards his target.

And thanked every defensive process he had put in place when he was suddenly attacked from the air.

-o-o-o-

Alan was having the time of his life.

He let out one hell of a whoop as he dove at his second eldest brother, launching a massive bomb of snow at just the right point to topple him in his exo-suit. The man was like a bug on its back, flailing in the white powder. Why Virgil thought the clunky thing would be useful in this scenario was beyond Alan.

His astroboard on the other hand was definitely an advantage and he had just proved the point.

Looping for a return volley and to make his grab for his brother’s flag, he wasn’t prepared for exactly why Virgil was garbed in metal. A wide-ended barrel was suddenly pointing directly at him, tracking…

The sudden rain of snowball machine gun fire hit Alan hard, toppling him into a spin that had him blessing not only his collision avoidance software, but his electrostatic grip on his board. If he let out a yelp, he wasn’t going to admit it. After all, he was a veteran of both Halley’s Comet and the occasional asteroid belt. This should be a piece of cake.

But yeah, he yelped and darted away as the stream of snowballs followed him.

Okay, perhaps Virg wouldn’t be as easy as he thought.

But this was no different from a video game, really. Regroup, grab more ammo, attack again.

After all, there were three other brothers to take out.

Alan grinned.

-o-o-o-

Scott Tracy was used to being in the know. Knowing the exact situation, and knowing what he needed to do next.

The lack of a connection to Thunderbird Five rankled him more than he realised it would. He missed his eye in the sky.

He needed a strategy, but in order to build one, he needed to know the players.

Of course, he could just barrel on in and play it by the seat of his pants, it wouldn’t be the first time. But the stakes were too high. Far too high.

So, he opted for reconnaissance first.

One’s drones had a stealth mode and built-in camo, so he was using them to his advantage. Hunkered down in his chosen lair, he deployed them across the landscape, their holographic readouts projecting from his wrist control.

His frown was causing his forehead to ache.

He located his first opponent quite easily. He wasn’t bothering to hide, much. But that was typical. Virg played his games on his sleeves, pretty much like he did everything else. He wasn’t much for stealth.

But then he made up for it in brute force. Just look at his ‘bird. There was no way he was going to discount his second eldest brother. He watched as Virgil pulled himself out of a snow drift with his grapple and swung between the pine trees like some kind of mechanical monkey.

He was very surprised when he found what looked to be Gordon. It appeared he had already encountered one of the others and was sitting on his butt in the snow.

His frown increased. Now that was unusual. He had expected that brother to be troublesome and certainly not taken out already, much less by Virgil.

Hmmm…over confidence perhaps?

But then Gordon got up and started moving again. Hmmm, perhaps not as down for the count as he thought.

Heat signatures danced about the hologram as the drones skimmed across the top of the forest.

But only three brothers.

One was notably absent.

Scott’s frown threatened to rupture a blood vessel. That was a serious concern. The fourth was not to be underestimated.

It almost distracted him enough to miss the incoming bogey.

Shit.

He had dug himself a snow cave in the hope to hide from the technique he was actually employing, but then Alan...it had to be Alan, he could spot his flying style from a mile off…obviously had his own ways of gathering intel.

Scott grabbed his bag and slipping out of his cave took a running leap and shot up into the air, jetpack flaring.

Better to offend than defend.

Alan literally cackled as he swooped in, a massive chunk of snow in his hands.

Scott grit his teeth. The astroboard was faster and more manoeuvrable than his jetpack, but Scott spoke atmosphere while Alan spoke space.

The eldest darted into his little brother’s flight path and forced him to dodge. Alan squawked and spun in the air, but recovered quickly, flipping in a loop-de-loop that brought him back onto Scott’s tail, snow bomb still at the ready.

Alan cackled as he bore down on him.

Over-confidence, little bro, over-confidence.

Scott curled himself into a ball, killed his jet pack and let himself roll into a drop.

The wind whistled in his ears.

Right angle, right position just above the tree tops, and he kicked his jet pack back in and shot off in the complete opposite direction.

He grinned as his brother squawked again.

Gravity, little bro, gravity.

But Alan was smart and he recovered quickly again, this time using speed to his advantage.

Faster than Scott.

It rankled.

Really, it rankled.

Scott dodged, but Alan had the vehicular advantage.

Scott had experience, but Alan learned damned fast.

By the third time he had had to defensively dodge, Scott was mired by both pride in his little brother and a little desperation. He really needed to up his game or he was in some serious trouble.

Killing his jet pack again, he let himself drop enough to get a good view of the underside of Alan’s board before he swooped to follow Scott down. Grabbing his grapple gun and slapping a pack in with practised ease, Scott aimed and fired at his brother’s astroboard.

There was a satisfying clunk as the grapple secured.

Scott held back a smirk as he let himself swing like a pendulum from the underside of Alan’s support craft, throwing out its balance and sucking away some speed.

Of course, he wasn’t enough to slow it down much…well, until he got himself into the right angle and fired up his jetpack again.

Then it became a tug of war.

With the grapple clipped to his belt, he was at leisure to direct where his pull was coming from and although the astroboard had more guts than his jetpack, it only took a little physics and angle calculation to really throw the board off its flight path.

Of course, if this wasn’t his brother and this wasn’t a snowball fight initially instigated by Gordon nearly drowning John in tree snow, he would have already taken the astroboard rider out of the equation. But this was Alan, they were daring but not stupid, and really, it was just a training exercise.

An extreme training exercise.

Didn’t stop Alan from reaching under his board and dislodging the grapple.

Scott’s eyes widened. How the hell??

But he had bigger things to worry about as he was suddenly hurtling towards the nearest tree.

Experience, experience! And that was all that saved him from a pine needle faceplant.

His grapple retracted with a swift zip as Alan darted off into the distance.

Okay, perhaps he did underestimate his little brother just a bit.

-o-o-o-

“Eos, location on Alan?”

“He appears to be retrieving more ammunition.”

John’s fingers poked at his tablet, his bolthole lit up by flickering hologram. “Making more snowballs?”

“Large ones.”

“And Scott?”

“Has returned to the surface, but appears to be…pacing.”

John looked up. “What?” Another poke at his tablet and he brought up the drone’s display and sure enough Scott was walking a groove into the snow he was standing on. He had seen that movement many times before. Scott was thinking, scheming…planning. “Keep an eye on him. Let me know if he makes a move.”

“FAB.”

John returned to his tablet and the multiple displays from all the technology deployed by his brothers. Scott’s drones were definitely the most useful, giving him the eye in the sky he was forbidden by the rule of no Thunderbirds.

Gordon could be seen scampering away from where Virgil had torpedoed him into a snowdrift. Virgil was on approach again, snowball machine gun at ready. It would be interesting to see who would win that encounter. Gordon was military, but Virgil was stubborn to the extreme.

And Virgil was the challenge.

His engineer brother knew him too well and had pretty much hack-proofed his equipment. John was sure he could get in given enough time, but as always, time was a consideration. He had no doubt that given that time, Virgil would track him down and bust into his little hidden fortress and then John was screwed. Virgil the big softy or no.

So, he was relying on his brothers to take Virgil out.

He had no doubt they would and he just had to stay put in the meantime.

Easy, really.

-o-o-o-

Two brothers targeted, neither captured.

Virgil grit his teeth.

The word was definitely out about his snowball cannon now so the element of surprise was gone. That would likely be bad. He had hoped to take down at least one brother with that surprise, but no go.

No matter. He still had the cannon and it was very effective.

He made it back to where he had pummelled Gordon, but there was no sign of his aquanaut brother. Alan was likely still in the air and Virgil had no doubt that Scott was probably using a similar tactic. So, bar finding Gordon who was likely on the defensive already, John was the next obvious target.

The question was how to find him.

The terrain assigned to this exercise was quite large. The land was part of a complex owned by Tracy Industries in Canada. Their family often came up here for vacations in the snow, usually around Christmas. While they generally couldn’t shut down International Rescue on Christmas due to the collective idiocy of the human population of the planet, Grandma did demand that at least one weekend in the months of December or January be put aside for the family to celebrate.

Scott hated to shut down IR, but he certainly agreed that they did need time.

Virgil was grateful that he did. At least the Medic didn’t have to take on the Commander head on to get him to stop.

This year had been particularly stressful with finding Dad and the medical and emotional fallout from that expedition having lasting effects on all of them. So, Grandma had called it and they were off for a week and as far away from the Island as possible.

Which meant a white Christmas, a pristine lake and plenty of time for a healing family.

Until Gordon took his pranks one step too far and half buried John in tree snow.

Admittedly, it had been funny and Virgil had been hard put to frown. John hadn’t been wearing a hat at the time – it had been in his hand as he was about to put it on – and consequently his hair had been plastered to his scalp in a most undignified way.

Red hair really stood out against white snow.

Also, reportedly the Voice Who Not Only Answers But Can Swear In Multiple Languages ended up with snow melting down his back and ‘Gordon was going to get it’.

Gordon being the occasional idiot he was, took that up as a challenge, daring their genius brother to come whip his ass.

The visuals accompanying that thought had Virgil rubbing his cold face.

The entire encounter had devolved from there, a rare moment where John lost his cool and a sign of exactly how stressed they actually were. It took Virgil a good tug on his astronaut brother and Scott dragging Gordon away to separate them.

Virgil cornered John and wrapped an arm around him, trying to draw him out, to find out what was bugging him, but no. Fiery turquoise was already plotting revenge and Virgil feared this was going to escalate to something ridiculous.

There was a reason why most brothers didn’t anger John. He was an easy target, but the fallout was apocalyptic.

Like never being able to communicate electronically for the rest of your life kind of apocalyptic.

So, it was with some trepidation that Virgil suggested this training scenario.

No Thunderbirds.

Personal equipment allowed - hence the training name of the game and not the all-out death match it was tempted to be.

Snowballs the only weapon - to stop his brothers from killing each other.

Virgil had no doubt that both Gordon and John were quite capable of burying each other in snow. Alan literally started bouncing. Probably because he immediately realised he could bomb from the air.

And Virgil set himself up to be the sacrificial lamb. Well, the one wearing an exo-suit and carrying a snowball machine gun.

The caricature that came to mind at that thought was quite amusing so he stored it away for later scribbling.

But anyway, just because he was the most likely to go down first, didn’t mean he had to go down easy.

Hopefully both Gordon and Alan realised that now. It didn’t hurt to make a point.

The ultimate goal was to nab each brother’s flag – a patch of fabric attached to their hip. Colour coded and numbered appropriately, Virgil’s green number two fluttered as he moved.

But the puzzle still remained: how to locate John.

His brother always liked to be on high with a view. Be it on the roof of the house, up a tree or in space itself, that was a characteristic that turned Virgil in the direction of the hillside.

Sure, John could be up a tree anywhere in the forest, but these were pines. A mix of tall, straight up monsters with few lower branches and squat dense walls of needles. John might have shimmied up one of the taller ones, but Virgil didn’t see the point. No security or camo.

No, it was more likely that John had a bolthole up on the hillside. It might be natural or he might have built it himself, but it would be hidden and secure.

Virgil respected his brother’s skills immensely.

And acted accordingly.

His suit whispered as he moved. Trying to find a way to quieten his movements had been far harder than building the snowball gun.

It had taken multiple adjustments to its hydraulics and several lubricants, but he’d managed it to a passable extent. Enough to sneak up on Gordon at least.

Virgil smiled to himself.

Now that was an accomplishment he wasn’t going to let go for a long time, no matter the outcome of today.

His snow shoes kept his extra weight stable on the soft powder as his reached the slope and began to climb. The hill became quite steep quickly.

Perhaps it was the change in terrain, or perhaps he really was just bad at this, but he had no warning when a grapple shot across his path and embedded in a huge tree to his left.

He had just enough time to gasp before the high tensile cable was wrapping around him, pulling him towards that monster of a tree.

It snared him about the waist and chained him there before wrapping around him again.

But he managed to keep the cannon free and he made some serious use of it, shooting at a flying blur that could be no one but Scott.

He rained snowball hell upon his brother.

But the daredevil pilot was fast and had more than one grapple pack.

Moments later the gun was as tied to the tree as Virgil was.

Scott certainly knew how to secure a rescuee when necessary. Virgil found himself splayed against the tree like some human-metal sacrifice.

If he had his laser, maybe. But he didn’t.

He still struggled.

And he kept on struggling, straining cables even as Scott came to an elegant landing in front of him.

Despite it all, his eldest brother’s eyes were apologetic. “Hi, Virgil.” A small smile. “I’m sorry, bro, but you have something I need.”

He reached in and with a flick of his wrist, nabbed Virgil’s green flag.

-o-o-o-

TBC

#thunderbirds are go #Thunderbirds 2015 #tag team secret santa #secret santa 2020 #Scott Tracy #Virgil Tracy #John Tracy #Gordon Tracy #alan tracy

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classpectcurse · 4 years ago

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class pairs: seer - mage

key words: perceiving, knowing, understanding

(why bother with a preamble when i can just jump right in to the interesting stuff)

these things are monsters, watch out

seer: passive

they understand their class, can perceive it with greater clarity and thoroughness than others. this tends to be an intellectual, brainy sort of understanding. it errs on the side of theoretical rather than practical knowledge. seers are head thinkers: they are able to come up with plans, ideas, solutions, about their aspect that others might not. they understand and have a VISION of their aspect. they can be relied on to direct others, come up with the best strategy, to explain the topic clearly and make others understand the thing.

however, on the flip side, if unchecked, it makes them rather idealistic and naive, and often arrogant. they can be blinded by their own knowledge. because their knowledge has a limit.

as a passive class, they are best served in a passive role; they work best when guiding others, teaching, directing, or strategising, rather than putting themselves on the front lines. by being head thinkers, seers tend not to think emotionally, and thus end up lacking a sense of boundaries when it comes to executing their own plans. this can lead to them taking things too far, morally speaking, or failing to be cautious due to overconfidence in their own abilities.

in fiction, a seer that oversteps his role is often punished by the narrative. they go too far, and engineer their own downfall. their hubris brings their own demise. they must learn to step back, take on the guiding role for players better suited to direct action, and they will see the best results.

the seer class is obviously based on the mythological seer archetype. think, the oracle of delphi in greek myths. the seer’s role is often to passive guide, to direct the heroes towards what they need without directly interfering in events. seers are often used as a narrative device by authors to deliver exposition; occasionally this use might be so egregious as to change a character who is otherwise NOT a seer into a seer by function (looking @ u jkr :/).

(important note that in fiction/mythology, the seer role has an unpleasant gender aspect to it, in that seer is an easy role to shove a passive woman character into, to give her something to do/say in the plot without involving her in any action. this is still unfortunately true of a lot of fiction today, but this doesn’t work irl bc gender is fake. beware of assigning gendered fictional seer characteristics to descriptions of the seer class.)

a great example of a fictional seer arc is mdzs wei wuxian. (SPECIFICALLY the mdzs version, not the drama version. cql!wwx is a different story.) through his ingenuity and creativity, he becomes the founder of demonic cultivation. however, he is arrogant in assuming that he knows best, that he could control the yin tiger seal, that his path was the only path to follow. the result is, the narrative punishes him for his arrogance. he loses control. he watches his loved ones dies. he dies a horrible death.

but in his second life, after his resurrection, he properly steps into the seer role. he solves the mystery, he guides and teaches the juniors, he steps away from the demonic path. and through embracing his role as a seer, he is finally able to achieve his happiness.

emotionally speaking, seers aren’t very complicated? if the time is right and the circumstances align they’ll confess their feelings etc. they might lack a sense of shame about it, in fact that seems an alarmingly consistent pattern. they kind of just don’t place on the emotional constipation scale. though they might be bogged down by logic and stuff and won’t examine their own feelings properly until later.

identifying traits of a seer: - wordy. good at explaining things; smort - very much a head thinker as opposed to a heart thinker; likes to think of things intellectually - can seem a bit emotionally cold? not that they’re cold people but just that they tend to be a little less overtly emotional, simply due to the nature of their class

examples of seers: namjoon (RM) from bts, wei wuxian (MDZS only), jing beiyuan (qi ye), rose lalonde (Homestuck), terezi pyrope (Homestuck)

prospit/derse: fairly straightforward, both types of seers still tend to be up there in terms of energy and chattiness, but derse seers are just more pretentious about it ngl.

mage: active

on the flip side to seers’ cerebral understanding of their aspect, mages have an intuitive, experience-based understanding, and they function best by employing this understanding directly.

mages, in a team dynamic, essentially serve as the talented weirdo/grumpy uncle who is extremely competent at their job, as long as nobody asks them to explain what they’re doing. mages understand their aspect supremely well, but they CANNOT, for the life of them, explain what the fuck goes through their head. it just comes out a bunch of confused, jumbled rambling that doesn’t really help anyone else. everyone knows that, without a doubt, this guy is a genius, but it’s useless to ask them to teach you because they can’t. they can’t explain shit.

their understanding of their aspect is not, NOT intellectual. it’s just that it comes from a place of instinct, rather than of deliberate, calculated thought. mages work best when they don’t try too hard to rationalise their understanding, but instead allow themselves to operate according to how they feel is best.

mages don’t really have a specific character arc? it’s more just about consistently trusting their instincts, maintaining the relationships around them, and retaining the trust of the people in the team. mages really need to do their own thing, and so a team is best off when they point the mage in the right direction and let them do what they feel is best, because they’ll often do a better job going off instinct than any plan could.

mage characters often come with some kind of tragic or mysterious backstory. because mages learn from experience, this backstory often serves as an explanation for their level of expertise. but irl this isn’t strictly necessary for mages. nevertheless they retain an intuitive understanding of their aspect which can be traced to their personal experience of it.

the thing to know about mages to identify them is just, they give off weird gremlin vibes. like, weird cousin in the basement vibes. like, coffeeshop uncle yelling about the government vibes. like on the surface they might seem respectable and shit, but deep down?? they’re some weirdo gremlin and that cannot shake the weirdness even if they’re in a law firm or a full tailored suit.

i used to think mages were really emotionally constipated but honestly they’re not that bad? they like to put things off, emotionally speaking. like they want to just leave that stuff for later, maybe never, bye, but they do get to it eventually. there’s a lot less active agonising going on, they just don’t like to think about the Feelings thing. when they do confront it, it’s usually just a, OK I SAID HOW I FEEL, CAN WE SKIP TO THE PART WHERE THINGS AREN’T AWKWARD ANYMORE. it’s funny but it gets the job done i guess.

identifying traits of a mage: - grumpy, crabby, whatever you get the vibe - gremlin energy. they’re just kind of weird - know their shit but cannot explain it, like maybe they can explain it a bit but it’s really not their talent and they are more likely to confuse someone than teach them anything - don’t like talking about their feelings if they can help it, but they’re not like, awful at it ig

examples of mages: yoongi (suga) bts, edward elric, meulin leijon (homestuck), sollux captor (homestuck), zhou zishu (tian ya ke, word of honor)

prospit/derse: prospit is edward elric. derse is bts suga. idk what else to tell u. it’s angry weirdo vs vaguely apathetic weirdo. both are weird with gremlin vibes.

#glossary tag #im just posting this so i STOP ADDING THINGS #dear god i have so much stupid information stored up in me #by the way im writing all this in one sitting #like i am sitting here. butt stuck to the chair. writing thousands of words off the top of my head #fuckin HELP

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notsosensational · 5 years ago

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This is my classpect master post for Danganronpa 1! I just replayed the game so it’s fresh in my mind, and I tried to keep these fairly short so I cut out some of the smaller details. Feel free to tell me what you like or what you don’t. I will be reblogging with thoughts about Touko and Genocider Sho. Also check out @jinjojess post about the DR1 classpects! I compared a lot of my thoughts with theirs!

Naegi Makoto - Witch of Heart

-actively manipulates feelings and sense of self. He is not very confident in himself, we know this from the beginning, and I think that manifests as acting as a Seer of Mind pretty often. It gets him pretty far in the trials, but his true talent lies in getting people on his side. Sayaka was into him before she even talked to him, and throughout the game people come to him for help concerning things to do with emotions and sense of self (Touko & Byakuya, Kiyotaka & Mondo twice). Not to mention, he’s labelled “ultimate hope”, which is due to him being able to boost everyone’s spirits (change their mood).

Asahina Aoi - Sylph of Hope

-passively heals positivity, possibilities, and beliefs. I really wanted to go with life for her, but while she’s full of energy, she’s not all that concerned about growth or overcoming obstacles, she just wants things to turn out well and that’s more in the realm of positivity and possibility. When Sakura’s secret was out, Aoi was most concerned with how to get the rest of them to believe her and to believe in Sakura; she needed to heal the group’s faith. She consistently believes in everyone, even though she is frequently disappointed, and the only exception to this is Byakuya and Touko after they insult Sakura.

Togami Byakuya - Prince of Life

-actively destroys growth and energy. His manner is very, very prince-like, “I’m the best and I can’t understand why no one else sees that”, not to mention he’s basically a literal prince of his family. He’s very quick to shoot people down and destroy their spirit, their energy, and during investigations he’s either no help at all, or antagonistic. All of the life players we’ve seen in HS have been on top of the food chain, the Peixes blood color and Jane’s Crocker corporation, which are both comparable to the Togami family. Before the killing game, he was most concerned with growing stocks, owning businesses, and obtaining knowledge he will use when he is the monarch of his family, which all seem life-like.

Celestia Ludenburg - Heir of Void

-passively changes misfortune and secrets. Originally I had her as light, but she doesn’t really care about information, only keeping secrets. She doesn’t use fortune to her favor, instead she just *is* luckier than the others, i.e. changing everyone else’s misfortune. She’s not actually that active though- she doesn’t do it on purpose and she doesn’t do a lot in general as she prefers to get others to do stuff for her. But she does play into the heiress persona, changing her name to seem like nobility and wanting dozens of servants.

Fujisaki Chihiro - Page of Doom

-actively exploits and is served restrictions and suffering. She is very clearly doom, as she is very empathetic due to her suffering in life, in addition to being a programmer when doom is linked to coding. I really can’t see anything else. Her being a page is also pretty clear- a slow growing class that tends to put up a facade, and is linked to a servant archetype when Alter Ego was basically the team’s servant. Her main desire is to help the rest of them even after her death through the restrictions that Alter Ego has.

Yamada Hifumi - Rogue of Light

-passively steals information and substance. I considered a number of possibilities for him, settling on light first. He has the rambley, self-important dialogue of a light player, he collects information about his interests in anime and fanfiction, and he creates fanfic. While creation isn’t light specific, taking the info and substance from an anime and rehashing it into his own stories sounds like a rogue of light. He is later a servant to Celeste, who feeds him lies and misfortune; he could be called a Page of Void at that point, which is fitting with Celestia’s void aspect.

Ishimaru Kiyotaka - Knight of Time

-passively exploits and serves through time. He’s very strict about time, being on time and using time wisely. Not just for himself though, he wants everyone to hold the same policies he has. He wants to have an environment where everyone is able to give it their all- he wants to exploit the time he has in order to serve everyone. His inversion is Thief of Space, and I think we see this in “Kiyondo Ishida”, as he seems to steal Alter Ego’s creation to add another dimension to himself. And- this is just my opinion- I also think he ghosts his inversion pretty often even before that, due to the impact of the disreputation of his grandfather and his vehement dislike of “geniuses”.

Kirigiri Kyouko - Maid of Mind

-actively creates and heals logic and decisions. She eluded me for a while tbh. I thought light first, but while she focuses on finding the truth, other information isn’t as important, and she doesn’t seem to match any other markers of light. Instead she seems more like Terezi, a mind player who likes law and detective work. Kyouko creates a path of decisions that surround a crime, and she uses logic to help Makoto make the right choices. She is outwardly cold and focuses on controlling her emotions, which makes me suspect she ghosts her inversion as a Bard of Heart due to her lost sense of self.

Kuwata Leon - Rogue of Breath

-passively steals and relocates freedom and direction. I understand him to have only come into himself recently. I think for most of his life he was ghosting as a Page of Blood, getting served bonds and obligations that he didn’t really want but exploiting them so he was free to do things other than study. When he was accepted at Hope’s Peak, he finally took his freedom and decided that he was going to do what he was driven to do, which is pursuing music. Rogue also fits into the outcast archetype of his alternative/punk style of clothes and personality.

Oowada Mondo - Bard of Blood

-passively destroys bonds and obligations. Blood is everything to him, his brother and his gang are most important, and his word and his promises are solid. But his brother died for his recklessness, he lied about it, he killed Chihiro which exposed her secret even though he tried to cover it up, and he broke Taka’s spirit when he died. He destroys the bonds around him passively, without meaning to, and his secret and his act of killing were both fairly out of the blue. No one really expected that of him- certainly not Kiyotaka, and that fits a bard’s MO.

Oogami Sakura - Maid of Blood

-actively creates relationships and bonds. She is defined by her bond to her family and her bond to her destiny. She is devoted to growing stronger, which made me think life, but she’s growing stronger to fulfill her duty and keep the respect of her family, not to overcome obstacles. That aspect though, the desire to help everyone else become stronger too, that’s very maid/sylph. She’s fairly passive, but definitely not passive enough for sylph, and she tends to focus more on creating new bonds especially regarding ones with herself, rather than healing preexisting ones.

Maizono Sayaka - Mage of Void

-actively knows misfortune and secrets. She tells Makoto that she’s known from a young age that she will have to do anything to reach her dreams, and she acts on her understanding of that misfortune which leads to her death. She focuses more on the misfortune and nothingness part of void, acutely understanding that if she falls out of relevancy, she’s done for. She also jokes with Makoto about being a psychic, knowing his unheard thoughts, which plays into the prophet archetype of a Mage, and knowing the unknown.

**Fukawa Touko & Genocider Sho - Page of Heart & Bard of Heart

-actively exploits and is served emotions and self-identity. Touko… has some issues. She is very concerned about herself, who she is, and how she’s perceived, which is the trademark of a heart player. She is actually good at using emotions to get what she wants. She gets people to stay away from her but also be concerned about her at the same time, not to mention she managed to get Byakuya to let her tail him around which I still don’t understand how. She keeps a strong facade up due to her insecurities and necessary caution due to Genocider Sho.

-passively destroys sense of self and emotions. Sho destroys emotions in a literal sense, by killing anyone she “crushes” on, and she destroys Toko’s sense of self through emotions by leaving her to come to at murder scenes, therefore forcing her to stay paranoid and keep a huge secret. Doesn’t really do it intentionally, as Sho tells Makoto that it’s the same thing as a soccer player kicking a ball, it’s just nature.

Hagakure Yasuhiro - Seer of Hope

-passively understands possibilities and beliefs. Even when he’s pessimistic, he’s optimistic by everyone else’s standards. He is always able to see some better possibility… whether it’s true or whether others believe him remains to be seen. He definitely fits the somewhat far-fetched but unshakable beliefs profile that Hope players have. And he’s definitely knowledgeable about his, uh, profession in a way that seers usually are.

Ikusaba Mukuro - Knight of Space

-passively exploits and serves through space. This was a hard one, partly because we don’t see a lot of her, so it’s long; I used a lot of process of elimination and, well, vibes. Space is about physical matter, size and location, creation, and beginnings. At an early age, she ditched her family in Europe in order to join an elite mercenary group in the Middle East. She is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand, melee, and ranged combat, though she admits that she was never good at planning ahead and strategizing. She was also able to accurately portray Junko, the Ultimate Fashionista. Those three things point me towards space, as her past is about location and beginnings, ranged weapons are about distance, planning ahead is about time which is her opposite, and acting as her sister is an act of creation and physicality, not to mention that clothes have a link to the space aspect as well. Most of the classes don’t really fit her, but the little personality she has is devoted to serving her sister, serving her organization before that, and in DR IF, serving Makoto. Knights are also fighters, obviously.

Enoshima Junko - Thief (Lord?) of Rage

-actively steals rage and limitations. Junko is a lot. Just, a lot. I’m actually leaning towards giving her the “Lord” title because honestly, the level of embodiment that she has over the rage aspect is unparalleled. But I just don’t know enough about the master classes for me to feel comfortable enough with that. So I’m going with thief instead. She definitely gets off on everyone else’s despair and sets them up so they have limited possibilities in the killing game. She takes from them and takes from them and leaves them with some hope just to finally steal that too.

#danganronpa #homestuck #classpects #danganstuck #danganronpastuck #drstuck

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fuckyeahharryhart · 5 years ago

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PART 2 HARRY HART FAN FICTION Because they better give him a good story for the last Kingsman. In case they don’t, I wrote something myself.

PART 2

FAN FIC

KINGSMAN III: REDACTED

MULTI PART SERIES:(My version of Kingsman 3)

Harry Hart x Original Character

Warnings: Reference to violence

Word Count: 5,900

OVERVIEW: After the events of Kingsman, The Golden Circle, Harry, Eggsy and the rest of the survivors rebuild their agency to it’s former level of integrity. A new player arrives unexpectedly, carrying memories of the past that will change the future of Kingsman.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Harry and Eggsy try to discover who this new players is, how they were at the right place and the right time, and what they know about kingsman. A marksman of that caliber isn't someone to take lightly.

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Bloody hell. Harry's hand was still stinging with heated pain from having his key fob, of all bloody things, shot out of hand. His knee was out of sorts from dropping, face down, to the pavement. Hearing gunshots ring out from, not one, but two different directions did not improve his mood or his state of mind. Continuing to roll as he hit the ground, he switched to his side so he could draw his weapon. But first, he turned toward the direction of the original fire. That was the shooter who caught his interest. A marksman with the precision to shoot a key fob from that distance, within centimetres of his hand without (well without significant) injury was someone not to underestimate. He could make a shot like that. He had plenty of times at the Kingsman shooting range. But that was aiming at a non-moving target in a controlled environment, under the best of circumstances. The only other time he fired a shot that exacting was in Cambodia. While wrestling a certain Agent Whiskey for control of a firearm, he was able to free Eggsy from a lasso looped around his neck by shooting clean through the rope. He assumed landing that shot was 1/4 luck, 1/4 technique and 1/2 his sheer force of will.

Very few marksman possessed the natural talent, training and skill to land that shot. Even less in London proper and he was almost certain that all of those individuals even close to that level, were under Kingsman’s employ.

Under the cover of shadows and partially hidden by a gate column, he spotted the shooter. At the same time, the shooter spotted him and they made split second eye contact. Obviously, the shooter did not want to be witnessed judging from the displeased look that he had noted. But rather than ducking out of view, they kept their stance, provided cover fire until the area was cleared and the threat was gone. And then, without a moments hesitation, the person holstered their weapon and turned abruptly in the opposite direction and began to walk off with long, measured steps. He and Eggsy dusted themselves, gestured to the other, nodded and made off in opposite directions in the attempt to cut the person off at the path. As he smoothed down his suit and adjusted his cuffs, he was quite certain that he was never going to enjoy a peaceful evening again.

——

She didn’t waste valuable seconds checking her phone, grateful that she took the extra time to map her locations in her head. Quickly referring to her orientation, she saw three viable options. Directly in front of her was the Royal Academy. Though it was vast and beautiful and filled with courtyards and eaves, arches, doorways, ideal to drop a tail, it was also closed and quiet. There was no crowd to get lost in. A single person moving in that space would surely be noticed.

She weighed her two other options against each other. Both were about equal in distance. No more than a 10 min walk in either direction. To her right was Mayfair. Situated in the heart of the city, it was one of the most expensive and exclusive areas of London with swanky five-star hotels, shops, restaurants, bars and pubs. Bond Street was sure to be packed with people enjoying the nightlife. Perhaps in another lifetime she could enjoy an evening out in such a place. Not at the moment.

On the plus side, the streets were more random, intersecting at odd places, without the usual grid format. That gave her more exit options. They would less likely follow the same path. Downside, as much as she would enjoy an elegant evening out, she was not appropriately attired. Of course, there would be the usual strong of tourists and visitors that would be similarly inappropriately attired. Even though she would blend in with part of the crowd, she didn’t want to stand out in anyway. Plus, if she needed to tuck into a shop or a restaurant, she wanted to blend with the locals and not the tourists. And she wasn’t going to do that with her nondescript outfit. Or, she would find herself in a situation where someone would ask to take her jacket. She would have to politely refuse because of her shoulder holster and her gun. They would insist. Then it would become an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved. Awkward and uncomfortable would be hard NOT to notice.

A ten minute walk to her left would drop her in ever trendy Soho. A little louder, a little more rowdy and relaxed, Soho was more happy hour than cocktail hour. The way there would have more traffic, both car and pedestrian, but it was also more direct and brightly lit. More importantly, she would be able to blend with the locals, not just the tourists. Maybe even slip into a pub or bar for the glass of wine she so desperately could use. There would be more viable places to manuever, evade, and find cover. More opportunity to lose a tail. And less likely for a messy confrontation.

Though she didn’t stick around long enough, she was fairly certain that the two men were following her. She kept in mind that they were trained with the same skills and likely had the same natural talent and instincts as she did. Part of her plan was to move slightly against instinct, find the ideal move and then, proceed with something slightly different. But they had to be thinking the same thing.

Shit. The shooters might still be in the area. Depending on whether or not they had backup, if this was an isolated threat on a personal level or if was on an organisational level, she couldn’t be sure that the coast was clear in that direction. When in doubt, take precaution. There were too many unknowns, too many unanswered questions and her preference was to get away without further contact. Since she couldn’t do it clean, she wanted to avoid any additional messiness.

Typical, she thought, making her way through the last of the shoppers and the first of the evening revellers. At the moment she was making progress and feeling more in control of her circumstances, some prick with a gun comes in and has to spray bullets over all the blocks that she spent the last month building. With care and precision, she arranged and rearranged, stacking and re-stacking, until she had created a platform where she could make her move. All her variables were in place. She calculated the possible outcomes and was so close to having a plan. There was some satisfaction, knowing that she had put an equal damper on their scheme, but when success of their plan meant the death of two people, and her plans would only work if those two people were alive, It didn’t leave her much of a choice.

Evasion was as much about mindset as it was movement. She took a mental pause, reset her outlook. Plans only fail if you allowed them to fail. Plans change and hers just did. Focus on clearing out first and then she could regroup and consider her options. If she let her frustrations distract her, she would end up missing details and she had not come this far to make bad decisions. Even in the smallest circumstances, she learned how to turn off emotions, cutting off thoughts and inconvenient emotions. Unfortunately, it was usually the thoughts about the situation she was in, that caused troubling emotions, such as her frustration at the turn of events. But if she walled off those thoughts for the time being, she would be more likely to operate with logic and clarity.

To her advantage, she had a head start, she knew the situation she was dealing with, two known variables on her tail, one unknown threat that could possibly be armed and still in the area. Likely, all three of them knew the area so there was no upper hand in that case. Two would be on foot, probably split to cover more area. It was to her disadvantage that there were two of them, but would be easier to confront them individually if it came to that.

She assumed that they also saw her as a threat. Regardless whether or not her actions had saved their lives, she was still an unknown, an armed and dangerous, one at that. She had to expect hostility, possibly aggression if confronted. It was a situation she would prefer to avoid.

Her steps were light and relaxed. She paced herself neither too fast, nor too slow. Rushing would call attention. She avoided looking around overtly, but she used her periphery to scan the people and places around her. On the plus side, two handsome men in Saville Row bespoke would definitely turn heads. Especially the tall one, who stood inches over the average person. They couldn’t take off their suit coats either. Not with their own weapons and shoulder holsters.

She took a quick left off the main road. A few blocks over and then she could make another turn toward Soho and break up the straight line she was currently traveling. Maybe stop in Central for a quick diversion. Stay on the move. Be aware of her surroundings. Those were her two priorities. Casually checking her 360 along the way by using any reflections she saw, footsteps, noises she heard, neck stretching every few steps to check blind spots. And for a little while, she did just fine.

That is, until she found herself caught in a standing rear choke hold. Fuck.

———

Wherever the hell this person had materialised from, Harry thought, these were not the customs of a novice agent. From weaponry, tactics and evasion, their actions were one hundred percent on point. They should be only a suggestion in the wind by now. The single reason he was able to catch them unaware was because of new Kingsman tech. Just developed, airborne nano GPS trackers. Designed to mark a large group of targets from a distance, they were tiny particles, almost invisible by the naked eye. Programmed to navigate toward the wavelengths of infrared radiation emitted by the human body, specifically at the signature of 12 micron. Best for outdoor use, or in large open spaces, these capsules were broken and released into the air where the prevailing wind would transport the nano GPS transmitters and attach to the nearest known radiation signature. The tracking range could vary depending on the windspeed, air density and how many capsules were released. They were handy to track large crowd movement, not typically used to track a single person. But it was all he had on hand. Since the street was empty at the time, they had a good chance that some GPS attached. Using the process of elimination to rule out unintentional attachments, they could isolated the movement they were looking for. They were looking for someone who moved like a spy.

This person, whoever they were, made all of the decisions that he would have and then added some surprise evasion tactics that he wouldn’t have thought of. They surely would have gotten away if not for the trackers. It wasn’t absolutely necessary that they locate the person. But they were an unknown entity. He wasn’t sure if they were an adversary, an ally, or a neutral player. Neutral players were not known for being experts at tradecraft. That left adversary or ally. With the events of the past two years and the most recent destruction of Kingsman by the Golden Circle, unanswered questions usually returned on their own, carrying an unfavourable answer. Granted, the person saved their lives, but they already knew too much of Kingsman. Knew of threats of which Kingsman was not aware. So when chance invited him to make a move, to quietly sneak behind the person at the last second, he took it.

——

This is not why I spent four weeks planning, she fumed silently. Her mood was grim. Of course it would be at this exact moment that she registered the slightest contact from behind, like a passing breeze brushing against her. But she knew displaced air when she felt it. Based on her position, facing forward, added to the position he was in, directly behind her, also facing forward, that would have to equal a rear standing choke hold. Instantly, she countered, dropping her chin to her chest like it belonged there, denying him the chance to press his forearm against the front of her neck. A chokehold had two purposes, either to crush the windpipe, resulting in death. Not the outcome she was looking for. Or, to cut off blood to the brain via the carotid artery, leaving her unconscious. Which wasn’t much of a consolation prize. Either way, she had just about 12 seconds to act. Since both options were less than desirable, she shielded her throat as best she could and waited for the window were she could counter like a small, but fierce animal.

The strength of his grip said that he wasn’t going for either option, but told her he using the hold as a restraint. So, she had that going for her, she thought darkly. Yet, he still had the capacity to follow through on either option. There was no give to his grip. Twisting out of the hold was not an option without more leeway. Not one to be held in a vulnerable position, her goal was to escape. Several ways presented themselves, few of which incorporated an unrestrained elbow or kick to the groin. Her aim was not to incapacitate, regardless of how satisfying that may be, but to extricate herself.

Based on sheer size and strength, she was highly disadvantaged. But, as a woman in the field, only relying on your strength, you’d get beaten every time. Women didn’t have to fight harder. They had to fight smarter. Not only did she have to use her size and weight to her advantage, she had to use his size and strength against him. With the obvious discrepancy in height, not that she was short. Five foot nine made her taller than average, but at 6’ 2”, he was also taller than average. Her best option? Leverage. Literally. Use him as lever. It was the move where he would be at a disadvantage and she would have the clear advantage. There was some consolation to be found, knowing they were also expert spies, but not enough to spare herself the embarrassment of being caught. Summoning her nerve, one deep inhalation, she thought, and she would be ready.

He smells nice.

The thought landed without warning. It didn’t merely land. It hit her. It hit her hard and with feeling. Her concentration stuttered. It was the scent of wood, leather, spices and a hint of something warm, rich and slightly sweet, like a velvety dark chocolate. And then there was a breath of something unexpected. A note she couldn’t identify. It was him, she realised. That was his smell. It was a good smell. A masculine smell. She was suddenly aware of his wool suit against her chin. She noticed the pinstripes against a navy as dark as the sky. The crisp white of his French shirt cuffs and the gold of his cufflinks that held them in place.

Her senses were wide open. They always were on hyperdrive when she was out in the field. That was expected. She relied on them to send her signs that she didn’t have the time to look for. But now, they were receiving all the wrong signals and sending all the wrong messages. Intensely. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the shadow of his hand. His large, wide palm was warm on the back of her neck. By pressing her neck forward and down, it was this hand that locked the chokehold in place.

What the hell? she thought. She felt the strength of his forearms underneath her own palms. Her hands were gripping him so tightly she could feel the cords of muscle through his sleeve. Suddenly, her body became all too aware of his own. The sensation of him, the entire length of his body against hers, awakened her own. He wasn’t just standing behind her, he was bearing the whole of his body into hers. Thus, she was counter balancing with equal force. Generating heat and pressure between them. Realising how close, how intimate, how physical, literally, their contact was at that moment, overwhelmed her reason, her logic, her objectivity. And most of all, she was aware of the man behind her. Not as a target, or a mark, or a tail or a problem to be solved. It was him. It was Harry Hart.

He must have sensed a slight shift in her energy because once that random, startling thought struck home, she didn’t dare move until she knew where it was heading and what she was going to do with it. She probably stopped breathing. Maybe that’s what he noticed because all of a sudden she felt dizzy and lightheaded. Maybe he was holding her a little tighter than she thought. He must have noticed a change because just as suddenly, his grip loosed by a fraction, not enough to escape, but enough to jar her back to the present. He was confusing her and she was angry at being confused.

She was on pause and someone had just hit the reset button. Instantly, she made her next move and she went into action fully committed. There was no hesitation in a move like this. To her advantage, their height difference meant that he had to lean down slightly to get his forearm around her neck, which shifted his center of gravity slightly forward. With his tight grip, she pushed against it, creating the energy of opposing forces to gain momentum. With her neck guarded by her chin, she quickly dropped down to one knee, gripped tightly onto his wrists and forearms, leaned back into him to get the tiniest bit of additional momentum, and then bent forward as sharply as she could from her waist, throwing the full force of her weight into the move and tucking in as tight as possible. Sure enough, with his weight already off center, using her body as a fulcrum, a pivot point, and using his height as a lever, she forced him to tumble over her head.

Normally, after a move such as this, that put her at a tactically advantageous position, she would either evade or go in for an attack move and neutralise the threat. This was not the way she wanted to introduce herself to these two men, but it looked like fate wasn’t giving her any options. She was not prepared for this situation. She didn’t have claim over the next move. It could be either of theirs. Brushing her hair away from her eyes, she cursed herself for not having a hair tie, of all things. She paused for a moment. Her cap got knocked off during her manoeuvre. Wonderful, all these identifiers, now facial features, and the damn hair. She should handover her passport and smartphone and just get it over with. How did this evening turn so sideways?

She took a mental pause. Footsteps. His colleague. Who didn’t know what he was walking into. She quite certain it did not look like afternoon tea.

When she heard the brushing noise of a weapon being pulled out of its holster she went back on high alert. They had most definitely past the “direct contact” portion of the evening. As much as she did not want to do them harm, she was more than willing to talk, she equally, did not want to be on the interrogation end of a gun. She had another split second to decide her course of action. Two was much more complicated.

All three of them knew the rules of weaponry in the field and in engagement. Never pull a gun in a circumstance you’re not willing to use it. Never aim at a target you’re not willing to shoot. It wouldn’t have been her first choice, but when she had a lethal weapon aimed in her direction, it left her with few options.

She never had an opportunity to use it before, but it was ideal for this circumstance and what she had planned. She palmed her carbonfiber graphene tactical knife, short, less than 5”in length, from its discreet sleeve at her hip. It’s description stated, “A device for specific close quarters combat manoeuvres in very focused special circumstance scenarios with high impact.” This circumstance would fall under that category, she thought.

The upper hand was all she needed to gain, to have a moment where they would be forced to listen to her. Grace, eloquence… She tossed those out the proverbial window. Her words would have the hardest strike. The most impact. Not her knife, not her gun, not any weapon. Now was not the time for finesse. Once again, she had to turn shitty odds in her favours before the man she just flipped could reorient himself. She wanted to be sorry that it had come to this, but she was just making her counter move. It didn’t matter if it was personal or not. This part, at least for her, was the business aspect of her work. Similar to negotiating a deal, but using weapons and lives as bargaining points.

The knife firmly in her grip, she raised the blade and held its lethal edge against his carotid artery with enough pressure to be VERY uncomfortable, and almost, but not break skin. He was smart and followed the direction guided by pressure of her blade hand and rose with her to a standing position. She stood behind him, angled slightly toward one side. He knew that any counter move on his part, which there were many he could take, and in this case his strength and mass would be at his advantage. She was in a very vulnerable physical position and he could take her down easily. If it weren’t for the knife at the side of his neck. The blade was very small, very light and most of all, it was very, very sharp and designed for close, personal combat. Easy to handle, low pressure point. Which meant, whether or not his move disabled her he would, no doubt, be pulling away with nothing less than a very serious neck wound.

“Stop.” she called out firmly. “Gun down on the ground.”

The man who was under her knife, indicated, Do what she says.

He placed his gun on the ground and stood with his hands in the air.

She knew he was weighing his options, just as she did her own.

Her voice was clear and just loud enough so he could hear her where he stood.

Seriously, like this was what she needed. Did they really have to go through all this fuss? Spies could be exhausting.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

She kept her voice conversational. Of no consequence or concern and certainly not threatening.

“Do you have enough time to disarm me and get help for your friend, Harry, before he bleeds out?”

She felt the slightest flinch when he heard the sound of his name. Not Arthur or Galahad. His given name.

“You’re quite fast, Eggsy, but not that fast.”

Now Eggsy’s turn as his eyes narrowed both suspicious and surprised. Not Galahad. Not even Gary, but Eggsy.

Ok, making progress, she thought. She had just shown her first card. She knew exactly who they were. Not just their code names. Their real ones.

To drive her point home. “Just the tiniest amount of pressure on his carotid artery, thats all I need. 68 seconds until he loses consciousness. My knife, which you probably can’t see from where you are standing, but he can certainly feel,” she nodded her head toward Harry, “is designed to pierce fast and deep. If I had a regular blade, he might come out clean, but not with this one. Please, sincerely, think twice, for his sake, about making any sudden movements.”

Good. Neither of them made an attempt to move. Not even a twinge. She continued. She didn’t know how long the odds would be in her favour. At this point, she was playing fast and loose. Something she rarely did and she was not used to. One of her biggest strengths was her ability to prepare. This was not a scenario that she had imagined.

“I know either of you could disable me, but not without me doing a fair amount of damage first.”

It wouldn’t be her first choice to do harm, but she was in no mood for additional fuckery and she wanted to make it abundantly clear that, though she was no match for them in terms of brute strength, she had plenty of ways to dominate a fight using strategy. She wasn’t stronger, but she could be smarter. She wasn’t above shedding blood to prove that she was not to be underestimated.

“I didn’t start this fight, but I’m more than happy to finish it.”

She added, “You see how well trained I am. You should be asking yourself why i haven’t killed him, or either of you, already.”

Did they really have to be so obstinate? Obstreperous. Truculent? They should have been asking themselves that question after she took the first shot. They could very easily be dead right now if it were not for her. She needed to prove to them she was not a threat to their lives. Against all of her training, she laid her second card down.

“And ask yourself,” she repeated. “perhaps why, then, I would let him go.”

Very carefully, very slowly, and very deliberately, she softened the pressure against his neck until the blade was no longer making contact. She continued to draw it far away from him, far enough to clear so not to do any damage, before she began to lower it. She took a few steps back, hands up, the knife still visible in her right, but with a carry hold, not an active grip.

Imagine her surprise when Harry turned on her, twisted her wrist until she had to drop the knife. Not without force. She resisted the split second she saw what was happening. She knew in this case, she didn’t have an immediate out, but that didn’t mean she had to make it easy for him. Rather than conserving her energy, she fought him and fought him with force, until she saw his face grimace with the effort.

Good, she thought.

She made some pretty satisfying contact before he was able to push her all the way back against the red brick warehouse. The wall gave her less room to maneuver. She landed one last, very satisfying kick to his shin. It wasn’t a fancy move. There was no technique involved. She just put all her grit behind that single kick and the connection she made was very gratifying, despite her situation. She hoped it left huge bruise to remember her by. It was obviously painful and hurt him enough that he shoved her away fairly hard. The back of her head knocked into the bricks with a force that she wouldn’t have considered gentlemanly.

Well, she did have a knife to his carotid just a few moments ago, she countered. She supposed turn about was fair play. This time, he was able to get his forearm across her throat and braced his right wrist with the circle of his left hand. Standing arm bar hold. She had no counter this time, seeing since Eggsy had his gun again and it being much harder to escape a bullet than a choke hold. So, that move did not have the impact that she thought it would.

She knew they had to have this conversation, but she was pissed. At them, but she admitted, begrudgingly, that she was mostly pissed at herself for letting her guard down. To be fair, they really had no idea who she was. And until they did, she would remain a threat. But she still had one more card. She was just waiting for the chance to use it.

——

What the bloody fuck had just happened? Harry Hart was not one to get caught off guard. But he was miffed that it happened this evening. Not only once, but three bloody times, and he had just quite enough of whatever fuckery was happening around him. First, the key fob, then the chokehold, then the bloody knife. Well, my dear, he thought, two can play this game. He wasn’t above fighting dirty. Sometimes the situation insisted on it. It seemed as if this was one of those times.

As soon as she let down her guard sufficiently enough for him to act, he twisted her arm, forcing her to drop the knife. But she wasn’t making things easier for him, or for herself, for that matter. Even though he clearly had the upper hand, she fought him the entire time. She, too, apparently wasn’t above a little dirty dealing when she landed a kick to his shin. A very hard, directed kick, not meant to disable, not in an attempt to escape, a kick just purely meant to cause him pain. A bit more than cheeky. He finally pushed her, maybe just a tad harder than he anticipated, until her head knocked back and hit the warehouse wall behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eggsy had taken the opportunity to retrieve his gun and provide cover. Her eyes quickly darted in the same direction, confirmed the same thing that he saw and then stared at him furiously. Whether the fury was directed toward him or to her change in circumstance, most likely both, he could not be certain.

Making sure his arm bar would prevent any further roughhousing, Harry spoke, adopting almost the same conversational tone as she had. She wasn’t sure if he was matching her tone to respect her or mock her. This time she felt free to show as much aggression as she felt like. There was no consequence at this point. She tossed her damn hair out of her face.

——

As she flipped her hair to the side, Harry, by instinct, began to document her features so, if needed, he could provide a detailed description of her should it ever become necessary. Tall, 5’ 8 1/2 - 9. Slim build, but athletic, lean muscular rather than simply thin. Age was hard to determine, she looked both very young, but her eyes, they were both wise and melancholy. A look that only came with time and experience. Her eyes seemed to say that they had already seen too much. She was anywhere from mid twenties to mid thirties. He noticed that her eyes were grey. Grey, and they had a slight almond shape to them. Tilted just enough to give her an air of mystery. Dark lashes, dark hair and much of it. Long. Wavy. It was shiny and looked very soft. Dusky fair skin with just an undertone of warm olive. Cheeks pink, with displeasure, he thought, or embarrassment, certainly not because she was flattered by the attention. Her mouth was small and delicate, her lips pressed together in a firm line. Also pink. She was quite becoming. Beautiful even. He tried to determine her ethnicity, but found himself unable to place her exotic, yet subtle, delicate features.

Harry caught himself. He wasn’t just documenting her features. It wasn’t bloody like him.These were not the most appropriate thoughts for the moment.

She noticed him noticing her. She didn’t know what he was noticing, so she grew even more frustrated. She obviously didn’t care about keeping her expressions to herself any longer. It was quite loud and clear what she was thinking. It was written all over her face.

He came back to his words. In his calm, deep voice, he asked her three simple questions.

“Who are you? Who do you work for, and why did you shoot at us?”

A firm set to her jaw and with equal composure, she answered his questions without hesitation, but in her own order.

“I” she emphasised, “didn’t shoot at you.” she added under her breath, “I was aiming for your key fob.”

“I work for no one.” She halted, her eyes pulling their full attention to hers.

She laid down her last card.

“My name is Gwendolyn Mycroft.” she took a meaningful pause. “My father saved your lives.”

Glancing between the two of them, she saw that, as she intended, she had hit home. She added.

‘So, I suggest you release me, and let us go to a place where we can discuss this in a more civilised manner.”

She saw that both of the men were in a state of shock. She could understand. The evening hadn’t gone the way she expected either. She waited for a response that was something other than a blank stare.

“Do you like scotch?” Eggsy asked.

Well, that was a good of a start as any.

-----

If you made it this far, Thanks for reading!! Comments, questions, likes are always appreciated. Always feel free to reblog.

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afterthelastreset · 4 years ago

Text

Rules Of One’s Soul Ch19 Date P3

(mak belongs to @wasted-church)

He barely remembered the rest of that night, it was just a blur of Jevil smothering him in love and affection until the Rudinn left and hadn't stopped even when the loon noticed he did. But he eventually stopped and giggled at how flustered and embarrassed the worm was, too angry to sputter anything out other than "WORM!", making him laugh more. Thankfully he did leave, but not before giving a sly wink to the already melting man. Oh! How he was going to scold him a new one when he showed up tomorrow...

Except. He didn't show up the next day.

Rouxls had woken up from another dreamless slumber, odd he's been having those a lot lately, without the banging on his door, or the shaking him awake, or the shock of someone coming in while he was sleeping. But considering Jevil could teleport and Seam could teleport furniture it wouldn't stop either of them most likely, and especially liked to point out cruel loopholes of his logic that had nothing to do with the rules. But at least his lock was fixed so intruders no longer stole anything from his home. Thank goodness. But it didn't explain the silence he felt when he woke up and found no one there, he found it a relief but also strange. So he went through his usual morning routine of his morning beauty process, and opened up his shop for business. Flipping the sign open and unlocking the newly installed lock with a satisfying click. He was sure the moment he sat down behind the counter, that Jevil or Seam would stroll through the door any minute now that the shoppe was open.....But none came. The silence was a refreshing change of pace for him at least, but he looked over his shoulder every so often out of habit. But there was no yellow eyed smile there, which was odd. He tried busying himself with small things around the shoppe. Shifting through the two giant bins of 'darke candy', and shifting about any other small items he thought looked out of place-.....And suddenly noticing that some of his diamonds and other precious stones were missing from the display case under the counter. He scowled and made a mental note of asking Seam about it later.

But absolutely no one came in today.

...Ok. Not a big deal. Jevil was probably busy with his job back and Seam had a shop and child of his own to take care of. But he naturally couldn't help but be a bit suspicious and paranoid about this, old habits. The next day-...Haled the same results. He woke up without any other spooks and all alone like the night before....Ok. This was alright. He felt more curious than paranoid this time but his suspicions never went away. After a few silent hours of just sitting there in anticipation waiting for something to happen, he threw his hands up in defeat and stood from his comfy stool. In just a few moments, he was already flipping the closed sign in the window and marching his way down the path towards the Sheap just down the road. It's not like he was being over anxious or anything- He just happened to remember he still needed to return Seam's old burlap sack, yeah. That was it.

The old doll was waiting for him when he walked in. His already tired and smile became just a bit wider upon seeing the figure of the Worm duke peel back the flap door and stick his confused face in. "Welcome, Duke. What brings you to my humble home today?"

The worm gave a quick glance around the sheap and tilted sideways to glance around the cat and into his room in the back, just to see no one. His eyes blinked back to the ever patient cat who was smiling at him. "I..uh...*Ahem*" He straightened up and held a hand out holding the old sack. "I have cometh to return thine satchel. I-I haveth no need for it anymore."

Seam slowly held his hand out and grabbed the bag from the duke and dragged it under the counter before smiling back up to Rouxls. "Thank you, Friend. I was wondering where it had went." Rouxls made a hum and gave another look around the sheap, Seam tilted his head at his silence, "I take it you're looking for something as well? Perhaps I can help you find it."

"...Perhaps thou might." He turned his eyes back to him. "Where tis thine comical c-companion?"

"Oh, Jevil?" Rouxls didn't seem to flinch or anything at the name this time. Good. He shrugged. "At work most likely. If memory serves me right, King Hearts has been going over a few surprises for the big celebration next...week I think. And of course that promise to help watch out for the young King he made to you. But-..." He button eye spun as his one good eye looked him over. "Hehehe. He did mention wanting to let you relax a few days of your vacation before you go back next week."

Rouxls blinked...and stared confused at the smiling feline in front of him. "...Next week?"

He chuckled. "Well it's been six days counting today. I could've sworn you're break was ten days. Or not, I might be miscounting in my old age."

Rouxls's eyes widened slightly as he stared at the cat. A-All of this....EVERYTHING THAT HAD HAPPENED!! Had happened within a span of six days?! It felt like a lifetime! He stumbled and had to grab onto the counter to keep from falling, Seam quickly reaching his arm out to catch the worm's shoulder and staring at his dumbfounded look with concern.

"Whoa there, Friend. Are you alright?"

"I-I-..." Rouxls blinked and shook his head, "Y-Yes. I just hadst...n-no clue how long I-it hast been."

Seam slowly leaned him back onto his feet and gave a smile. "Well I think we all have been a little distracted the last few days. It's perfectly understandable to lose track of time. "

"B-B-But...How waseth I not able to notice thine time? I amst always on top of thine schedules!" He gave Seam a disbelieving look. "How couldst I not know about this?"

Seam hummed before pointing at him. "Perhaps your mind and body really did know how much you needed this break?" A paw was placed onto his shoulder and gave a few reassuring pats. "Don't worry about anything right now. Heed my words and rest, Dear Duke."

The walk back home was filled with him scolding himself for not being on top of the time, and beating himself up over how Lancer must've been so lost without him to help him right now. I mean who else would know just how to make him fried worms and meatballs he loved so much? Or read him his favorite Hide and Seek with Fluffy Bunny book before bedtime? Or helped him with running his part of the kingdom?! .....Or keep him from the dungeon? O-Or be his father...Surely no one was more qualified than him right? He's been there from the very beginning and certainly going to be there until his end. ....But he would be lying to himself if he didn't say he was curious about this whole 'plan' Jevil had put together. Oh he better had been keeping his word about Lancer this entire time. If he found so much as a hair misplaced on his fuzzy little head, he'd be sent back to the dungeon faster than you could say 'Chaos'.

The rest of the day had been pretty quiet as well. Not so much as a guard stopping in and saying hi. Wow. It really had been a while if he wasn't used to the usual quiet of his shoppe. He decided he might as well heed Seam's words and 'relax' as everyone kept telling him. So the very next day he decided to do just that, still woke up fairly early out of habit, but his body was strangely more...less tired? If that even made any sense. Perhaps everyone was right. Maybe he did need a rest- Those thought were quickly shaken away and replaced with 'Well, If I really need a break then I could've just easily taken one at anytime if I wanted too. Lancer still needs me.' 'Yeah, well considering nothing tramatic has happened that says a lot about your boy huh?' 'Oh shut up!' 'What Jevil said about giving him some room from you was probably true, but you keep denying his truth. Just like you keep denying your feeli-"

"Ok. That tis enough self monologue this morning!" He quickly escaped the warmth of his bed and stood up. Time to start the day.

During the next two days, the shoppe was filled with relaxing music played from a small record player in the corner, it's owner sitting behind the counter knitting away or rereading his calligraphy books on poetry, some he might've written himself and wasn't too bad. If he said so himself, who could write poetry better than him?~....King Hearts but that's besides the point. He still looked over his shoulder every so while but that was just force of habit. Speaking of habits, he tried really hard not to think of Lancer or the eventual 'date' he accidentally agreed to with Jevil. The endless possibilities of what that little loony would do made him shiver, hopefully he'll be more aware of his own boundaries.

The third day was his next to last one for break if he remembered right, oh he could taste the sweet relief of seeing his sweet little boy again. His smile and giggles were to absolutely to die for. The thought made him get into a better mood, momentarily making him forget any worries and putting him into a better mood. The one guard who finally came in had the pleasure of having a smiling duke winking at him. Sold a good few diamonds and dark candy that day. But he didn't expect the next morning to be filled with his head pounding from a headache. So groaning and tossing his head under the pillow seemed a good way to start his morning.

KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK!!

Grumbling, a blue face surrounded by white mess bedhead rose from under the comfy pillow and blinked tiredly. How..What was- More knocking sounds came from the other side of the shoppe and he lazily turned his gaze in that direction. It sounded like a bloody rabbick was knocking it's way around outside. Wouldn't be the first time those little rodents tried to break into his food supply. So with a grumble and annoyed look, the worm forced himself out of the comfy warm bed and onto the cold floor. Shuffling his way over towards the door, the knocking was still coming on strong and it was starting to get annoying.

"Alrighteth! I amst coming. Keepest thineself down." The knocking seemed to halt from his shout and was silent as he reached his hand around the doorknob and pulled the door open. ...The sight before him wasn't what he was expecting.

"Why hello, hello.~" A familiar smile and yellow eyes peered up at him from the ground. Long tail wagging behind him. The faint smell of candy came at him full force and dull purple and red suddenly flashed across his vision. "Hehe. For you, you.~"

Rouxls had to blink and take a step back to take a good look at the smaller man in front of him. ..He still half believed he was asleep by what he saw. Jevil The Jester....Wasn't wearing any jester outfit as per the norm. Instead his body was adorned with a purple suit with a comically large orange bow, and same clown shoes. His hand was holding up a couple small tree branches, covered in small dark black flowers that would've been candies soon if Jevil hadn't broken them off the branch. They were all tied together by a small red ribbon tied in a bow. Jevil was standing there with a beaming smile and seemed to be waiting for his reaction.

He slowly blinked and looked at the strange bouqet of branches in front of him. It shook a bit when Jevil pressed it a little closer to him, he slowly brought his hand up and lightly grabbed it from him. He gave it a confused look over, a few leaves falling from the twigs. "Um....Thank thee."

Jevil's tail wagged a little faster and he let out a couple more giggles before looking back up at him. "Are you ready, ready?"

"Ready...for what?"

"Our date, date silly, silly Rouxls.~"

Rouxls full on stopped and stared dumbfounded at the smaller man. One could see the wheels turning in his tired mind before his eyes widened and his brain finally snapped back like a rubber band to reality. "THAT'S TODAY!! R-RIGHT NOW!?"

Jevil giggled and reached a claw over to gently poke Rouxls's pajama pants. "I see you're late, late. Did you forget?"

"NO!...*Ahem*" He quickly stood back up and cleared his throat. "O-Of courseth not! I nay forgot about this event. I just...w-wasn't expecting thou to arrive so soon...*sigh* Cometh in and wipe thou's feet." The duke turned and trudged back into the shop and in followed the bouncy happy purple menace behind him. The bell dinging as the door closed behind them. The tree branches were placed onto the counter as the tired worm walked around it and gave Jevil one last look before disappearing into the back. "Wait here please."

He egerly nodded and watched him disappear behind the curtain before chuckling to himself. PERFECT!! Part one of his plan was already complete! He got Rouxls to agree with his idea and he had already accepted his token of his affections. Now the next step was to wow him of course! And he had plenty of practice from the plays he and Seam used to script together and perform for the Kings! Just take some of those old romance scenes and play them into real life. Genius right? OH! Seam wouldn't stand a chance against him now! Because he had a secret weapon on his side in the form of a very round boy and the very hopeless romantic that was the King of Hearts! The boy provided the game stats on the Duke and his majesty gladly gave him all the romantic advice he could give for his help in the ball restorations. Everything Seam didn't even know about Rouxls.

Now all he had to do was just keep his cool and keep this plan on track. After all. HE COULD DO ANYTHING!!

His head snapped up towards the curtain as it flapped open again and the worm appeared in all his suited up glory, making Jevil's tail wag out in glee.

"*sigh* Showest me what thou has planned for me today, Worm."

#fanfic #jevil #rouxls kaard #seam #deltarune #seaxls #rouxls kaard x seam #rouxls kaard x jevil #jevil x rouxls #jevil x seam #seam x rouxls #seam x jevil #rouxls x jevil #rouxls x seam #jeam #seavil #rouxlvil #rouxvil #nosuit

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thedarkstrangeson · 6 years ago

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When you put one(1) Gay Panic in a laser tag arena

Read on ao3

Pairing: Roceit

In which: Roman, Logan, Patton, and Virgil have met up for laser tag. Roman spots a cute guy. Gayness ensues.

Warnings: Its laser tag so theres lots of fake guns, kissing, remus mention, let me know if there’s anything else I should put in.

Word Count: 1955

Simply put, it was a Friday. One of the best Fridays to date, in Roman’s not-so-humble opinion. This particular Friday was the last one of the month, which meant the big get-together with his friends! They hung out at other times, of course but tried to plan something a bit more exciting every so often. Last month’s was go-kart racing, in which Logan absolutely destroyed all of them, including the other walk-in players. Something about “racing lines”, was his explanation. Roman wasn’t quite sure, but he could respect Logan’s skill nonetheless.

This time around, they were going out for Laser-Tag. Roman was under the impression that he was good with a laser gun (a weapon wielded in the name of good would always bring him fortune), but that would soon be put to the test. Logan would be there to pick him up in only half an hour, and his makeup wasn’t even started yet. Never mind that laser-tag was in the dark, a prince has got to slay! He ended up playing around with his new white eyeliner, hoping the blacklights of the arena would make it pop. Too soon, the doorbell rang and they were on their way.

After picking up Patton, then Virgil, Logan pulled into the parking lot not a moment too soon. Roman was just about to burst from the excitement.

“Ready to defeat whatever foul foes may oppose us?”

“Ooh! Let’s make sure we are all on the same team!”

“Let’s try to get purple. I’ve never lost a game while playing on purple team.”

“Virgil, superstitions like that won’t help us win, it will be stealth and true aim that will lead us to victory. Those laser-blasters...”

Roman rolled his eyes affectionately as Logan continued to explain the best way to hold a blaster and use the mirrors situated throughout the course. This one was sci-fi themed, with everything lit up in neon greens, pinks and purples. As they walked into the lobby, the others still bickering about the pros and cons of various hiding techniques, Roman scanned the room to size up their opponents… and his gaze locked right onto another’s across the room.

He was tall, sandy blond hair just barely obscuring sharp green eyes. He leaned casually on the check-in counter, a friend beside him purchasing tickets. Twirling a quarter across his knuckles, he kept eye contact with Roman for a long moment before offering a sly wink and turning back around.

Roman finally realized he’d been staring, and blushed deeply at having been caught. So much for keeping his cool.

“Roman! Hey, you’d stopped responding whats-” Patton stopped, as Roman had now turned around, face still flushed, “-Oh!” Patton giggled. “Bit of a gay panic there, my friend?”

“-No,” he said, “He’s just. Attractive, is all. Its fine. I'm fine. Its fine.” Patton smiled indulgently at that, but Logan interrupted any further comments.

“We’ve got tickets for the 3:30 game,” he said, “Until then, you’ve each got 10 quarters.” Any laser-tag arena worth its salt had some arcade games to entertain guests before and after. This one had better games than most, so they had to play. Logan quickly passed out everyone’s quarter allotment, and then left to try the claw game. Logically, it was rigged and he wouldn’t win anything. But that made it the most challenging, so it would be fun to try.

Patton nudged Roman in the direction of the handsome stranger from earlier, now starting up one of the classic hunting style games. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

“Hey!” Roman tried to object, but Patton had already slipped off with Virgil to the opposite end of the arcade, leaving him with seemingly no choice but to try to strike up a conversation. He took a deep breath, trying to even out his frayed nerves before striding quickly over to the man.

“Mind if I join in?”

“Of course, you’re welcome to try to beat me,” his voice was silky smooth, the teasing leaving him just as flustered as before.

“You’re on.”

-----------------------------

They were interrupted about 5 minutes later with a call for the next game. Roman’s opponent hissed in frustration. Leaving the game like this would waste valuable quarters, but a better game was calling.

“Well done, for an amateur. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Roman faltered at the compliment. He had been beaten soundly, ending several thousand points behind. But eventually, words started to form again. “Uhh, Roman. And you are?”

“Ethan. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I trust I’ll see more of you inside?”

“Definitely.”

With a quick nod in response, Ethan swept away towards the beckoning attendant.

I’m screwed.

-----------------------------

Roman rejoined his friends for the safety presentation, finding that Logan had miraculously won himself a unicorn plushie from the claw machine. He seemed absolutely overjoyed at it, even as he tried to contain his excitement. Virgil quickly proclaimed it to be the team’s good luck charm and mascot, and Logan did not even try to object. They all sat as patiently as they could through the presentation, anxious to get into the arena. There was the explanation of the arena layout, the three different goals, power-ups, the colors on the vests, how to fire the laser how to put on the vest how to walk around and not run so you don’t trip… all that useless good stuff.

Roman found it all tremendously boring, and instead opted to sneak glances at the man- Ethan - across the room. He was determined to get the better of Ethan in-game. Call it revenge for being beaten in the Arcade or just really aggressive flirting, either way he was definitely intent on defeating his new sworn enemy.

The attendant led them into the prep room, the walls lined with glowing vests sorted by their color. Virgil made a beeline for the purple rack, waving them all over. Next came one of the arguably most important parts of the game: choosing your nickname. This particular establishment had all of the vests named after various superheroes. So, the best strategy was to check every gun for the best names and go from there. Logan didn’t bother with this irrational ritual, he just went for the first vest he picked up, Doctor Strange (He secretly found this to be absolutely perfect). Virgil ended up on Raven, because everyone needs to be an emo half-demon occasionally. Patton, very much out of the loop on superhero lore, found Mr. Fantastic to be his nickname of choice. Roman chose Captain America, because Superman was already taken and who doesn’t want to have America’s ass.

Across the room, Ethan was doing up the straps on his friend’s vest. The guy was practically vibrating with excitement, saying something about “shooting people’s heads off”, as though that was possible. Ethan just laughed, grabbing another vest from the green rack and buckling it in place on himself.

“Everyone ready? Let’s make a game-plan,” said Logan, always the strategist of the group.

“Spreading out is our best bet, so that not everyone can get tagged at once,” said Roman.

“Yes, but we get a 30 second grace period in the beginning, so I think we should dash to the green base first to take it all together,” said Virgil.

“Sounds good. We can spread out from there to cover the most area,” said Logan.

“How about we do pairs so we can watch each others backs at least?”

“Agreed. Is everyone in accordance with that?”

When everyone had nodded, Patton put his hand in the middle. “We’ve gotta have a team cheer!”

“Umm. Alright. Laser Tag on three?” Logan said.

‘Why not! One, two, three!”

A very much not-in-time chorus of “Laser Tag” rang out, leaving everyone involved vaguely confused but overall enthusiastic about the effort.

“LASERS!” A cry came very belatedly, from the green team’s side of the room.

“Remus, what the heck,” said Ethan, “You can’t just copy the opponents!”

Before the green team could get their act together to create a real team cheer, it was time for the match to begin. The attendants opened the door and 12 screaming adults flooded into the battlefield.

Purple team split off as one, taking a left towards the orange base. Logan took point, leading them purposefully into enemy territory.

“Here.”

They split to opposite sides of the path, concealing themselves behind walls and checking out the area for any other players. The timer on the grace period counted down the last 5 seconds.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now!”

“Yeet,” said Virgil quietly, as he stepped out and dashed towards the base, firing continuously. The orange team was lying in wait though, so Virgil went down quickly. He stepped back to let his vest come back online, and his teammates went on the offensive. Trading shots, the purple team soon took over the base. 3 seconds of capturing later, the base went down to Patton’s blaster.

“Yes!” Patton pumped his fist in the air, before exchanging high fives with his teammates. “Time to split up.”

“Virgil, with me?” asked Logan.

“You’re on. See you at the end of the war, you guys!”

They departed quickly, leaving Patton and Roman to head off in the opposite direction. From then on it was a desperate clash of missed shot and curses, hits and cheers, everyone battling for the top. After one particularly hectic exchange, Roman found himself sheltered behind a wall for a moment to catch his breath, Patton nowhere to be found. Then, footsteps approached and Roman readied his blaster. A figure rounded the corner, but they had on purple lights. He lowered his gun, even as the figure solidified into an urgently moving Ethan.

“Wait I thought you were-”

“Shhh, there are people coming.” Ethan silenced him, and crouched close to get in behind the wall. Roman could feel him pressed close to his side, breathing heavily from all the running, and it took him a moment to get back focused on the game.

Some orange team players rounded the bend, but they hadn’t exposed Ethan’s and Roman’s hiding spot yet. The walked past, laughing, until Ethan stepped out behind them and cleanly shot them both in the back.

“What-”

“Let’s go!” Ethan grabbed him and pulled him to his feet, running off away from the now incapacitated orange players. Roman soon found himself dragged into another hiding spot, Ethan standing in front of him.

“Nice makeup. Doesn’t exactly help you hide though, does it?”

“I’d say it helps me slay the opposition.” Roman was quite proud of himself for that one, considering how hard it was to form coherent sentences right this moment.

“Oh, now does it?” Ethan chuckled, “Well, you certainly slay me.”

He leaned in, and Roman felt his breath catch.

“May I?” It was whispered, low enough for only him to hear.

“Oh. Sure.” That’s what he went with? Sure? You just said sure, Roman? Of all the idiotic-

His thoughts didn’t last long, because at that point he was pushed up against the wall and Ethan’s mouth was on his, hot and insistent. In just one moment, he was left breathless, what a surprise and starstruck, before Ethan was already pulling away.

The lights on Ethan’s vest changed, blinking green as his spy power-up timed out.

“Oh-” Roman came to the realization that he was, most definitely, screwed.

In one smooth movement, Ethan stepped back, raised his blaster and shot him, aiming right over his heart. He winked, barely visible in the dark, before turning on his heel and disappearing around the corner.

“I am so fucked.”

Back in the lobby, a new line appeared on the scoreboard.

“Captain America was shot by The Winter Soldier, 25 points.”

#roceit #ts sanders sides #deceit sanders #roman sanders #laser tag #dark strange writing

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relationships-world · 4 years ago

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Relationship rewrite method

https://relationship.healthbrzee.com/

read following points:-1) Unlock His Love with The Power of Conversational Storywhen does he think of you? When your name pops up on your man's phone, what do you think goes through his head? Is he excited to talk to you? Does he feel compelled to respond right away? Does he read your texts but then leave you waiting for a response until most of the day has passed? Or does he completely ignore the messages? The truth is, A LOT is going on in his mind when it comes to you. Memories, emotions, anticipation of the future (is this going to be a good interaction or a bad one?)... All these things flash through his mind in the blink of an eye. And his response (or lack thereof) is more of a gut feeling than a well thought out decision. The same is true when it comes to how he views your relationship in general. If you're having a hard time getting through to him, chances are he feels bad about the relationship. It probably isn't a conscious thing, but a bunch of factors make him instinctively feel like the relationship is more a source of pain than pleasure. We'll get into this more in a minute, but at the end of the day, "pain VS pleasure" is the ONE factor that determines whether he wants to be with you or not. In other words, if he has a gut feeling that your relationship is a source of pain, then no amount of logic, convincing, or begging will change his mind. His mind is already made up--from the inside out. We need to change that. We need to make him instinctively feel drawn to the pleasure of a relationship with you. If you can accomplish that ONE thing, he will be the one chasing you. So let me show you how I've helped women all over the world pull it off. watchvideo presentation2) The Movie Trailer Method.Your mind is an anticipation machine. The human brain is marvellous and complex, but its most amazing feature is its ability to experience the future before it arrives. In fact, getting what you want in life really comes down to one simple thing: The ability to see the future in your mind's eye before it actually happens. This skill, above all else, separates those who get what they want in life from those who don't. Why is this skill so important? The answer is simple. The more detailed your mental map of the future, the easier it is to see which paths to take to reach the outcomes you desire. The more detailed your mental map, the more powerful you become. Like a master chess player, you can anticipate traps and sidestep them before they fully form. You can also try out dozens of moves in your mind's eye before choosing the best one. But I'm talking about real life, not a game. People who learn to use this skill live charmed lives. Everything just seems to unfold in their favour. Is it luck? Is it magic? No. It's simply an enhanced ability to play out various possibilities in the mind's eye and recognize the choices that will bring the most pleasure and the least pain. But here's the tricky part. Seeing the future is not like skipping ahead to the last page of a book to see how the story ends. Your future is not a single, linear path. Rather, there are a hundred different ways your future could unfold. Changing just one variable in your life can have a cascading effect on every other variable. Things can get confusing fast. It's hard to anticipate how all the different variables will interact. Fortunately, I have a solution. It's like a shortcut that gives you most of the benefits without the headache of trying to anticipate how every little thing will interact. What is this solution? It's knowing which variables to focus on. Knowing where to focus your attention is the key to getting more of what you want in life. When it comes to relationships, there's one variable I want you to focus on. I want you to become an expert at noticing this one variable. And I want you to learn how to manipulate this variable so you can have the relationship you want. Ready? Okay, here it is: I want you to become an expert at triggering the right kind of mental movie trailers other people have playing in their heads. We are all running mini-movies of the future in our mind. People do it automatically all the time. They don't practice the skill intentionally. They even take it for granted. Most never bother to question the super quick movie trailers that pop in and out of their thoughts all day long. That's good news for you! Because it gives you a tremendous advantage when trying to change the way someone feels about you. The fact is, no one's in the director's chair. No one is controlling the mini-movies that blip in and out of your man's mind. Since no one is directing this movie, you can waltz onto the set and change the storyline. And you can do this anytime you want. Why These Mini-Mental Movies Matter So Much Have you ever received a social invitation and immediately decided you have no desire to attend? How does that happen? How is it that you instantly know you don't want to go? Simple. In a fraction of a second, you played a mini-mental movie of the entire experience. Actually, that's not quite right. It wasn't the "entire experience". In reality, it was more like a movie preview. Just little clips showing the highlights. And like a good movie trailer, each clip pulled at your emotions. You saw a super-speed version of what it would be like to accept the invitation. You pictured yourself feeling bored. You picture yourself walking back to your car when it was over, wishing you had spent your free time doing something else. Your mind created a mini-movie to help you make a decision. It happened lightning-fast, and mostly outside your consciousness. But you were left with a distinct FEELING that turned you off to the idea. Your mind is remarkably good at this. It's the process by which we decide what we want. If you are a person who struggles with anxiety, you may not love this feature of your mind. You may prefer to be more like a cat who is blissfully at peace with the present moment, not concerned about things to come next year, next month, or even tomorrow. Neuroscientists who study the concept of memory tell us the marvellous ways our minds encode, store, and retrieve life experiences. As we learn, we generate increasingly complex and accurate models of the future. You could say the purpose of our memory is to allow us to predict the future. If I remember that chocolate cake tastes better when it's moist, my brain anticipates a better experience when I choose to eat it now rather than letting it grow stale. However, if I remember that chocolate cake is my weakness, I may cut the serving in half and put the other half out of sight to remove the temptation, using better judgment for my health. If a large dog chased me on my way home from school as a child, I may still anticipate negative emotions from the idea of approaching a large dog even twenty years later. Here's my point. Memories give us the ability to anticipate what is coming next: pleasure or pain. You may not see where this is going yet but stick with me. These concepts are critical to understanding. They are simple concepts, but things I need to remind you of, to "activate" your mind so they will be fresh concepts as we dive into the foundational methods of this course. 3) Human MotivationHumans are motivated by many things. But almost all motivation comes down to either the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. Your ex's decisions are no different. He is motivated the same way. But how does he know which decisions to make to pursue pleasure and avoid pain? Memory. His memory creates the movie trailers he uses to "see" the future. His brain is an anticipation machine. It is automatically making judgments about what he should do next to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. The reality of your current situation is that the movie trailers his mind is playing are showing him potential pain or a lack of pleasure in being with you. We've got to change that! Now for some good news and some bad news. Bad news first: We cannot go back in time and change his memories. But the good news: We can alter his feelings about the future without changing memories from the past. Certain trigger points cause people to re-evaluate old memories in a new light. Basically, we're going to change the theme of the mini-movies in his head that affect his feelings about your relationship. We're going to change the soundtrack. Change the lighting. Selectively choose clips that highlight the fun, the exciting adventure he could have if he chooses to make you the most important person in his future. Allow me to provide a few examples to get us on the same page. We are talking about "aha" moments that change his perspective. The memories have not changed, but the way he SEES them can change dramatically. Here's an example from my own experience: I was once hired as a consultant for a company that provided relationship advice. The owners of the company were highly complimentary of me. During our work together, my self-esteem began to inflate considerably because of their frequent recognition of my "unusual talent." It was nearly six months later when I discovered their long-term plan to sell me their entire business (at a highly inflated price). This dramatically shifted my perspective! Suddenly, I replayed all the discussions about my talents for running such a business. At the time, I had been surprised they would admit I could run the business as well - if not better - than they could. Now, looking back, I see the ego-stroking as false flattery designed to make me want to buy their business. That eye-opening moment changed my view on our relationship and the game I was involved in.4) True Actions and IntentionsI'll offer another example. Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice," (which has been made into multiple movies over the years) tells the tale of Elizabeth, a young woman who can barely stand the sight of Mr Darcy. Throughout the story, Elizabeth is under the impression that Mr Darcy is proud and selfish. This is based on several reliable things she had seen and heard. However, at the end of the story, Elizabeth discovers she was wrong. She had misunderstood the actions and intentions of Mr Darcy. Suddenly, she recognizes his true valour and goodness. She sees that he is more interested in the well-being of others than his own reputation. In the end, it wasn't Elizabeth's memories that changed. It was her understanding that changed. It shifted in a way that caused her to anticipate great pleasure from being with Mr Darcy in an intimate relationship. And of course, they lived happily ever after as a married couple. 5) Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It: Your mission is to tamper with the anticipation machine running in your ex's mind. Specifically, your mission is to change the mini-movies that play in his mind when he thinks about spending time with you. You're going to get those mental trailers to work in your favour. There is no other way. You have no chance of restoring your relationship unless he seeks a relationship with you as a path toward pleasure, absent from any level of pain that would cancel out that pleasure. Fortunately, The Relationship Rewrite Method was designed as an answer to this complicated problem. This system helps you find a way to be the leading lady in your life. To convince your ex - not only to let you play a part but also to make you his star. You see, a memory is just a form of anticipation based on past experience. Most people think of memory in the form of stories to be remembered and shared. That is what psychologists call "declarative memory." But there is another kind of memory called "implicit memory." Implicit memory is the kind you use when you get on a bicycle and instinctively recognize (or remember) how to balance. Implicit memory is not something you can put into words. You just know how to ride a bicycle. Declarative memory can be transferred to another person in the form of a story. But you can't transfer the implicit memory for how to balance on a bike. In other words, your ex can tell his friends, "First she did this, then I said that and then we got into a big fight." That's declarative memory. Implicit memory cannot be transferred using words. He cannot transfer the memory of what it feels like to kiss you. Your job is to change the implicit feel of the mini-mental movies that automatically play when he glances down at his phone and sees your name. We have to start small and gradually rebuild his gut-level emotional reactions to you. It's possible that seeing your number come up on his cell phone causes an instant twinge of anger mixed with fear and regret. Those are implicit memories triggering the wrong kind of response. The fights or strained relationship that led to your breakup may still dominate the mental movie that plays in his mind when he considers picking up the phone to talk with you. We need to change that mental trailer so your name brings the same excited anticipation Hollywood tries to create with a really cool movie preview. We're going to rewire his expectations and help him see a new future with you. By the way, are you enjoying this free report so far? If so, you would love my relationship course. It has laser-targeted advice in a 6-step formula to win back the affections of your ex and make him yours for good.Use the Power of Story to Touch His Emotions"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." ~ Chinese proverb 6) The human brain is wired for story. Lisa Cron, a highly-acclaimed writer, wrote an entire book on the subject. Hailed as a "story guru," Cron has explored the brain science behind the power of stories. She teaches other writers how to hook the human mind from the very first sentence. There is something special about how a story causes the human mind to pay attention. Cron proposes that from the earliest times, humans have transferred information primarily through a story. Stories are so memorable they can be used to transfer wisdom and knowledge from one generation to the next. Stories prevent humans from making the same mistakes as those who came before them. Stories also shed light on the way humans persevere and succeed in various circumstances. Perhaps the most powerful way a story can be used is as a tool for changing someone's opinion. Stories don't require effort to pay attention. Our minds are designed for stories. We naturally focus when someone transfers information to us in the narrative form. In Paul Smith's book, "Lead with a Story," he makes the case that business leaders can "captivate, convince, and inspire" using stories in the workplace. Smith relays hundreds of instances about influencing the minds of others by telling a simple story instead of relaying facts and information.7) The Power Of Stories Smith and Croon have recognized the power of stories to transfer knowledge. But here's what I want you to understand. Stories make it easier for you to influence people. They are more effective than trying to convince people with arguments, logic, facts, or begging. I have experienced this firsthand. I once attended a fundraising event for people living in the impoverished nation of Burkina Faso. I was unmoved by the statistics presented on how many children go hungry and how many families lack the basic necessities for good health. Then the presenter told the story of two little girls who had been struggling together to survive the hardship of their lives, I was suddenly hooked. I understood their plight on an emotional level. I immediately cared enough to take out my wallet and sacrifice what I could to help with the relief efforts. Think for a moment about the variables of a court case. Think of all the factors that determine if a defendant will be found guilty or innocent by jurors in a trial. Experts work diligently to narrow down the list of variables to those that will have the most powerful influence on the outcome of the trials. Can you guess the number one factor that influences the jury's final opinion of a defendant? Experts tell us it's not the facts of the case. They say it's not the evidence presented. Rather, it comes down to who tells the most believable story. If jury members can picture themselves in a vivid story and imagine the events unfolding the way the defendant claims they did, they will find the defendant "not guilty." If the prosecuting attorney tells a more convincing story, the defendant will most likely be found "guilty." How can I use this information in my everyday life, you ask? Here's how: we will craft a special kind of story to influence your ex's perspective. Stories evoke emotion and change minds.I want you to tell your ex the story of your relationship in a way that causes him to automatically begin to root for your relationship. Did you ever see The Italian Job, The Saint, or Ocean's Eleven? All these movies are about thieves trying to pull off big-time heists. They are stories about criminals. And yet, as you watch these movies, you begin to root for the criminals to succeed. You want them to get away with the loot and live happily ever after. Doesn't that seem strange to you? Why do we root for thieves to succeed at stealing other people's hard-earned resources? It's because their life experience was presented to us in the form of a story. The protagonist is the hero figure in a plotline - the person about whom the story is written. There can be more than one protagonist in a story, as there is in William Shakespeare's classic story, Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, we root for the relationship of this young couple. Sure, we care about Romeo and we care about Juliet, but the relationship itself becomes as important to us as either character. As you read or watch Romeo and Juliet, do you find yourself wishing they would just forget about each other? Don't you want them to put their own safety first and move on with their lives? After all, if you really cared about Romeo and Juliet, wouldn't you advise them not to put their lives in peril by pursuing the romance further? Of course not. That's not what you root for. (It's not what I root for either!) We want them to be together.9) We root for the relationship! We see the beauty of life unfolding in the way they discover one another, and our hearts want them to be happy. We understand the risks they take to breathe life into the new passion they discovered through love at first sight. Here's the point. By making your relationship itself the hero of the story, you can cause him to root for the relationship. Do you remember Allie and Noah from Nicholas Sparks' novel-turned-movie, The Notebook? The story of their relationship was a powerful tear-jerker. As an 80-year-old man, Noah reads to his wife, Allie. She has developed Alzheimer's and does not remember, yet she roots for the characters in the story of her own life as Noah reads from her journal. The story Noah reads to Allie is powerful. It is so powerful we pay money to participate in this story by going to a heater or purchasing the book. Using the power of story is only one of 6 powerful steps that will help you reconnect with your man, even in the worst situations. Bring him back. Save your relationship. Get the happiness you deserve. Always on your side, James Bauerhttps://relationship.healthbrzee.com/

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wisdomrays · 4 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 223

ACTION AND COINCIDENCE

It is not easy for people living today to believe that every object, every law and every incident in the universe is planned in a very detailed way. However, it is a fact that there is a seen and unseen algebraic reality to everything moving in the universe. This situation amazes the distinguished scholars roaming on the lace of science.

Physicists study on the biggest and smallest physical measures, on the strongest and weakest forces, and they have calculated the ratio between some of them and attained results close to 1040 several times. For example, it has been proven that “strong nuclear force,” which keeps protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus together, is 1040 times stronger than the force of gravity. Although some consider this situation a result of coincidence, there are also some people who have shown the courage to question the accuracy of this result and open it to discussion. Since then, obtaining the same number several times has inevitably led to the belief that the number was determined and calculated before. This situation resembles the situation of a chess player who hears somebody telling him the opponent’s next move, or the situation of a composer who hears a melody from upstairs that perfectly fits his lyrics while he is trying to write the melody for his lyrics. Is it not amazing when somebody says what is going to be especially at a time when you least expect such a vision? Questions emerge: Have all actions and incidents in the universe and the values corresponding to them been determined in advance? Is there a certain logic behind the behavior of materials without intellect or consciousness?

Perhaps when Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) started to do research into probability calculations concerning falling matches and needles three centuries ago, he did not think that he would make such an astonishing discovery. According to his calculations, the probability of dropped needles hitting a pair of parallel lines that are drawn a certain distance apart is proportional to the number pi (π) (Figure 1–2). When the distance between the parallel lines are drawn the length of a match, this probability becomes exactly 2/π. This was a theoretical result that was calculated on paper, but trying it out would raise interesting results. In other words, when a certain number of tests were conducted, it could be expected that a number of matches equal to the number that was found through the theoretical calculations would hit the lines; and, indeed, that was what happened. In addition, mathematicians found another way to calculate pi by using this method since the ratio of the number of matches or needles that hits the lines to the total number of matches or needles should give a pi-proportioned number. In 1901, Mario Lazzarini threw one needle 3,408 times and, as a result, got the ratio 355/133 or 3.1415929; the difference between this value and the real value is only 0.0000003.

The experimental proof of this fact is not difficult. When the experiment, which has been conducted thousands of times up to today, was first tried by a group of mathematicians dropping 3,000 needles, the number of the needles that touched the lines was close to 1,900, which was the desired result, and the result was amazingly found to be proportionate to pi.

Although the real relation is like the equation given in, when the length of the needles and the distance between the lines are equalized, the desired ratio becomes 2/π. What does this mean? Does the number pi, which was created with the universe and which we meet in different fields, play a role in showing the manifestation of the Majestic Will about where an object will fall-through having a result that can not be explained by coincidence? Is falling not an ordinary incident?

While this reality makes even falling an extraordinary incident, it opens a perspective on understanding the reality behind the verse: “…it was not you (O Messenger) who threw but God threw,” which was revealed about the Battle of Badr in the Qur’an. Actually, it is impossible even for a leaf to fall without the knowledge and the calculation of Our Lord, who is closer to us than our jugular vein.

Let us think about a group of creatures that lives with different physical laws in a different universe. Assume that they live on a flat, circular world and their steps get longer when they come close to the center. For this kind of creature, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line as it is for us (A–B). Since their steps get longer as they get closer to the center, they travel close to the center. Yet, since they make the way a little longer in this way, the shortest distance would be an oblique line that takes these two variables into account and that passes by partially approaching the center. So, what would we think if we saw these creatures walking in this way all the time? Or if we knew that the creatures acting in this way were inanimate beings? In these circumstances, we might wonder whether these beings are very intelligent or whether One who knows and sees everything, and is present in every place at every time, directs them.

For a soccer forward to find the best time to attack when he is facing the goal keeper or for a tennis player to choose the best timing and position to hit the ball requires a fine calculation. In tennis, the player sometimes approaches very close to the net to meet the ball. In this way, the player gains great advantage since, by his or her positioning, the player reduces the area into which the ball can fall to the minimum, and increases his or her own chances of returning the ball. Nevertheless, since the ball reaches the player faster and harder, there is also a raised probability of the player’s failing to return the ball. Therefore, advancing right up to the net may not always be advantageous. Thus, the best position for the player may lie at any point between the net and the baseline when area and speed variables are considered. Similarly, the most advantageous point for the goal keeper lies between the attacking forward and the goal line, at a point which depends upon the variables of the speed of the ball and the area.

Naturally, we do not find tennis and soccer players’ positionings as described above strange since we expect them, as reasonable people, to play in this way. Yet, how would we interpret and explain it if we saw inanimate things acting in the same way? There is a phenomenon that applies this logic consciously but itself does not have consciousness. A phenomenon that astonishes people: light.

Let us think of a rectangular racetrack with points A, B, C, D. While the shortest distance for a horse that will run from one end of this racetrack to the other is the AC diagonal when the ground is homogenous, there will be a reroute if the ground is not homogenous. Assume the length of the racetrack is 80 meters and its width is 60 meters. Half of it is grass and the other half is sand. Also, assume the horse’s speed on the sand is half of its speed on the grass (it runs 10 meters in 1 unit of time on the grass). Under these circumstances, the horse will run the AC diagonal in 15 units of time while it will run AEC route in 14.5 units of time. The ABC route is much longer. Thus, any route which passes between these two routes will be shorter than these two. The point O, which the shortest route (AOC) passes, will be between the points M and E. When we look carefully, we understand that this is the route light follows as it enters environments of different densities; for example, the route it follows when passing from air to water (see a spoon’s broken image in a water-filled glass). As you see, light finds that specific mysterious point and follows that particular path. In other words, while entering different environments of varying densities, it finds the shortest way and follows it in an amazing way.

All these detailed calculations and functioning with great wisdom show that even inanimate beings and atoms are in the hands of a Majestic Will.

Every atom contains two truthful testimonies to the Necessarily Existent Being’s Existence and Unity. Despite being powerless and insentient, it bears decisive witness to the Necessarily Existent Being’s Existence by carrying out important duties and functions as though it were conscious. It also testifies to the Unity of the same Being, Who owns all material and immaterial dominions, by conforming to the universal order in general, and to the rules of each place it enters in particular. It settles in every place as if it were its homeland. All of this shows that the One Who owns the atom owns all the places it enters. By carrying out very heavy duties incompatible with its size and weakness, the atom shows that it acts at the command and in the name of One with absolute power. (The Thirtieth Word, Second Point, Risale-i Nur Collection)

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amostheartman · 6 years ago

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Be honest with me. (us? The TP/BotW community? idk.) What do you think of the BotW2 trailer, and do you think there's even a sliver of potential for the Twili to return? I've been dying to know your answer, Amos. By the way, thanks again for the Midlink art piece. Doing a smart here by being off anon for this ask lol.

My My, Quite the question

*TP Link

First off I’m pretty sure Twilight Princess Link is done as far as canon in-game appearances go. Wolf Link was a pretty dope add-in for Breath of the wild and could be added in for BOW2, but that’s really all were gonna get I’m afraid. :/

well sorta at least.

I mean we got TONES of Amibo and in-game TP stuff like the Twilight tunic, TP Epona (the only Epona in this game mind you), TP Zelda’s Light bow, TP Ganondorf’s Sword, Midna and Zant’s helmet, mention of Prince Rails on the path to Zoras Domain, the somewhat homage to the Bridge of Eldon and of course the famous side quest “A Fragmented Monument” being an obvious nod to the Mirror of twilight.

but even with all this TP stuff It’s no indication that Nintendo has any plans to bring TP Link into the mix.

...

That said... Between you and me, Nintendo just won’t let go of Twilight princess Link.

TP Link got the hi-rez treatment a few years ago for promotional stuff, and as much as I love it and want posters of the full version there really isn’t a reason for Nintendo to be using him to promote things.

They could have use any other Link, but they picked him specifically.

I mean, Skyward Sword Link was technically the latest in the usual green tunic design(although it was basically a simplified TP tunic), Ocarina of Time and Toon Link are the “fan favorites”, and Breath of the wild Link is the brand spanking new one that broke records.

Yet, TP Link is still getting promoted.

Whats even more interesting is the the rest of the Nintendo Tokyo banner.

Breath of the Wild Link and Zelda are both there, but so is TP Link and Ganondorf!

And get this, TP Link is the one in the smaller more common banner!

I love it, but I can’t explain it!

*This is from the 2019 Nintendo Tokyo game show btw*

So as much I have my doubts about TP Link showing up in BOTW2 or ever having a real return of any kind Nintendo sure isn’t making it easy for me to keep believing that.

Almost like they're toying with me. :(

Is TP Link gonna show up in Breath of the wild 2? probably not. at most heel be a non-cannon amibo wolf companion like in the first one.

Is there gonna a new game with TP Link in it? doubt it.

Is there gonna be a port of the HD Version of Twilight princess to the switch? Could be... but highly unlikely.

Will they do a complete remake of Twilight Princess with these dope re-rendered models with a gameplay style like the Wii U tech Demo of the spider boss!!??? GOD I WISH BUT I KNOW IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!!!!! ( ͡ಥ ͜ʖ ͡ಥ)

But logically it’s probably that TP Link is the best looking and most Marketable out of the Link bunch. :/

Anyway, you were asking about Breath of the wild 2 right. lol

*BOTW2

the trailer is interesting... like really REALLY interesting.

Its looks waaaaay darker and shaping up to be the Zelda story we never knew we wanted.

I mean com’on whats not to love about dark Zelda stories!? Zelda is always at it’s best when its pushing the edge a bit.

I even did my own break down of it.

I think I posted it here already but I can’t remember so here it is anyway.

This is pretty much what I gathered from the trailer.

Dark, mysterious, somewhat hopeless and tragic, our heros are in over their heads, everything is on the line, I love it!

Sadly, I really don’t wanna think about it too much because I got my hopes up last time and Nintendo has a bad habit of playing it safe when they should go all out. :/

Straight Up though we’re gonna be seeing Zelda in a much more involved role so that much seems apparent. to what degree? I have no idea.

She might be playable as a character you switch off to for puzzle solving or Goddess powers since shes using the sheikah slate.

All I ask it that she not be an exclusive cutseen character. I wanna see my girl doing things in game.

that said, I know people want Zelda to be the the main playable character but she really isn’t suited to fill Links role as the adventurous warrior type.

She’s really more of a sage type character on top of being a book worm and not really fit for direct combat.

Ironically enough playing as Zelda would change things so much it wouldn’t be a Zelda game. lol

Or heck, she just might be the playable character its hard to tell honestly.

but what about Link?

Link on the other hand (no pun intend) is still gonna be the player character I think.

I imagine the thing going on with his arm is going to replace the sheikah slate’s function with some added combat stuff.

Kinda like Nero’s arm from DMC or the Shinobi prosthetic from Sekiro.

It would be pretty cool to see Links combat and exploration open up because of a nifty arm. :)

or it could be killing him and we gotta find a way to cure him so he can defeat Ganondorf. (that would be rad!!!)

All-n-all that just depends on what the arm is doing and waht the game wants to be like.

I hope and pray for a combat system like in Twilight Princess and a return to the Temple / Dungeons puzzle and bosses system from the other 3D Zelda’s with a breath of the wild spin.

Golly, just picture exploring a Dungeon with Zelda doing logic puzzles and switching off to Link to handle the combat segments doing a back and forth between the 2 leading up to a boss fight they have to work together to defeat.

THAT WOULD BE SO RAD!!!!!

Man this is getting long.

I’ll just say that I have high hopes for BOW2, but going in with zero expositions is always the the way to go.

I trust Nintendo took the feed back from the first game and is adjusting t something that will hopefully satisfy the fans.

I apologize if this was all over the place, I had to do work in between.

I had others ask me slimier questions if you’re that curios and want a fresher take on my thought for BOTW2.

* thoughts about that BotW sequel trailer

* how much Hyrule has changed

thanks for the question, hope I answered it properly! lol

-Amos :)

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urlology · 5 years ago

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How Netflix Reinvented HR

https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr

Patty McCord

From the January–February 2014 Issue

Sheryl Sandberg has called it one of the most important documents ever to come out of Silicon Valley. It’s been viewed more than 5 million times on the web. But when Reed Hastings and I (along with some colleagues) wrote a PowerPoint deck explaining how we shaped the culture and motivated performance at Netflix, where Hastings is CEO and I was chief talent officer from 1998 to 2012, we had no idea it would go viral. We realized that some of the talent management ideas we’d pioneered, such as the concept that workers should be allowed to take whatever vacation time they feel is appropriate, had been seen as a little crazy (at least until other companies started adopting them). But we were surprised that an unadorned set of 127 slides—no music, no animation—would become so influential.

Netflix culture slide deck

People find the Netflix approach to talent and culture compelling for a few reasons. The most obvious one is that Netflix has been really successful: During 2013 alone its stock more than tripled, it won three Emmy awards, and its U.S. subscriber base grew to nearly 29 million. All that aside, the approach is compelling because it derives from common sense. In this article I’ll go beyond the bullet points to describe five ideas that have defined the way Netflix attracts, retains, and manages talent. But first I’ll share two conversations I had with early employees, both of which helped shape our overall philosophy.

Crafting a Culture of Excellence

The first took place in late 2001. Netflix had been growing quickly: We’d reached about 120 employees and had been planning an IPO. But after the dot-com bubble burst and the 9/11 attacks occurred, things changed. It became clear that we needed to put the IPO on hold and lay off a third of our employees. It was brutal. Then, a bit unexpectedly, DVD players became the hot gift that Christmas. By early 2002 our DVD-by-mail subscription business was growing like crazy. Suddenly we had far more work to do, with 30% fewer employees.

One day I was talking with one of our best engineers, an employee I’ll call John. Before the layoffs, he’d managed three engineers, but now he was a one-man department working very long hours. I told John I hoped to hire some help for him soon. His response surprised me. “There’s no rush—I’m happier now,” he said. It turned out that the engineers we’d laid off weren’t spectacular—they were merely adequate. John realized that he’d spent too much time riding herd on them and fixing their mistakes. “I’ve learned that I’d rather work by myself than with subpar performers,” he said. His words echo in my mind whenever I describe the most basic element of Netflix’s talent philosophy: The best thing you can do for employees—a perk better than foosball or free sushi—is hire only “A” players to work alongside them. Excellent colleagues trump everything else.

The second conversation took place in 2002, a few months after our IPO. Laura, our bookkeeper, was bright, hardworking, and creative. She’d been very important to our early growth, having devised a system for accurately tracking movie rentals so that we could pay the correct royalties. But now, as a public company, we needed CPAs and other fully credentialed, deeply experienced accounting professionals—and Laura had only an associate’s degree from a community college. Despite her work ethic, her track record, and the fact that we all really liked her, her skills were no longer adequate. Some of us talked about jury-rigging a new role for her, but we decided that wouldn’t be right.

So I sat down with Laura and explained the situation—and said that in light of her spectacular service, we would give her a spectacular severance package. I’d braced myself for tears or histrionics, but Laura reacted well: She was sad to be leaving but recognized that the generous severance would let her regroup, retrain, and find a new career path. This incident helped us create the other vital element of our talent management philosophy: If we wanted only “A” players on our team, we had to be willing to let go of people whose skills no longer fit, no matter how valuable their contributions had once been. Out of fairness to such people—and, frankly, to help us overcome our discomfort with discharging them—we learned to offer rich severance packages.

With these two overarching principles in mind, we shaped our approach to talent using the five tenets below.

Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults

Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get better results, and at lower cost. If you’re careful to hire people who will put the company’s interests first, who understand and support the desire for a high-performance workplace, 97% of your employees will do the right thing. Most companies spend endless time and money writing and enforcing HR policies to deal with problems the other 3% might cause. Instead, we tried really hard to not hire those people, and we let them go if it turned out we’d made a hiring mistake.

Adultlike behavior means talking openly about issues with your boss, your colleagues, and your subordinates. It means recognizing that even in companies with reams of HR policies, those policies are frequently skirted as managers and their reports work out what makes sense on a case-by-case basis.

Let me offer two examples.

When Netflix launched, we had a standard paid-time-off policy: People got 10 vacation days, 10 holidays, and a few sick days. We used an honor system—employees kept track of the days they took off and let their managers know when they’d be out. After we went public, our auditors freaked. They said Sarbanes-Oxley mandated that we account for time off. We considered instituting a formal tracking system. But then Reed asked, “Are companies required to give time off? If not, can’t we just handle it informally and skip the accounting rigmarole?” I did some research and found that, indeed, no California law governed vacation time.

So instead of shifting to a formal system, we went in the opposite direction: Salaried employees were told to take whatever time they felt was appropriate. Bosses and employees were asked to work it out with one another. (Hourly workers in call centers and warehouses were given a more structured policy.) We did provide some guidance. If you worked in accounting or finance, you shouldn’t plan to be out during the beginning or the end of a quarter, because those were busy times. If you wanted 30 days off in a row, you needed to meet with HR. Senior leaders were urged to take vacations and to let people know about them—they were role models for the policy. (Most were happy to comply.) Some people worried about whether the system would be inconsistent—whether some bosses would allow tons of time off while others would be stingy. In general, I worried more about fairness than consistency, because the reality is that in any organization, the highest-performing and most valuable employees get more leeway.

The company’s expense policy is five words long: “Act in Netflix’s best interests.”

We also departed from a formal travel and expense policy and decided to simply require adultlike behavior there, too. The company’s expense policy is five words long: “Act in Netflix’s best interests.” In talking that through with employees, we said we expected them to spend company money frugally, as if it were their own. Eliminating a formal policy and forgoing expense account police shifted responsibility to frontline managers, where it belongs. It also reduced costs: Many large companies still use travel agents (and pay their fees) to book trips, as a way to enforce travel policies. They could save money by letting employees book their own trips online. Like most Netflix managers, I had to have conversations periodically with employees who ate at lavish restaurants (meals that would have been fine for sales or recruiting, but not for eating alone or with a Netflix colleague). We kept an eye on our IT guys, who were prone to buying a lot of gadgets. But overall we found that expense accounts are another area where if you create a clear expectation of responsible behavior, most employees will comply.

Tell the Truth About Performance

Many years ago we eliminated formal reviews. We had held them for a while but came to realize they didn’t make sense—they were too ritualistic and too infrequent. So we asked managers and employees to have conversations about performance as an organic part of their work. In many functions—sales, engineering, product development—it’s fairly obvious how well people are doing. (As companies develop better analytics to measure performance, this becomes even truer.) Building a bureaucracy and elaborate rituals around measuring performance usually doesn’t improve it.

Traditional corporate performance reviews are driven largely by fear of litigation. The theory is that if you want to get rid of someone, you need a paper trail documenting a history of poor achievement. At many companies, low performers are placed on “Performance Improvement Plans.” I detest PIPs. I think they’re fundamentally dishonest: They never accomplish what their name implies.

One Netflix manager requested a PIP for a quality assurance engineer named Maria, who had been hired to help develop our streaming service. The technology was new, and it was evolving very quickly. Maria’s job was to find bugs. She was fast, intuitive, and hardworking. But in time we figured out how to automate the QA tests. Maria didn’t like automation and wasn’t particularly good at it. Her new boss (brought in to create a world-class automation tools team) told me he wanted to start a PIP with her.

I replied, “Why bother? We know how this will play out. You’ll write up objectives and deliverables for her to achieve, which she can’t, because she lacks the skills. Every Wednesday you’ll take time away from your real work to discuss (and document) her shortcomings. You won’t sleep on Tuesday nights, because you’ll know it will be an awful meeting, and the same will be true for her. After a few weeks there will be tears. This will go on for three months. The entire team will know. And at the end you’ll fire her. None of this will make any sense to her, because for five years she’s been consistently rewarded for being great at her job—a job that basically doesn’t exist anymore. Tell me again how Netflix benefits?

“Instead, let’s just tell the truth: Technology has changed, the company has changed, and Maria’s skills no longer apply. This won’t be a surprise to her: She’s been in the trenches, watching the work around her shift. Give her a great severance package—which, when she signs the documents, will dramatically reduce (if not eliminate) the chance of a lawsuit.” In my experience, people can handle anything as long as they’re told the truth—and this proved to be the case with Maria.

When we stopped doing formal performance reviews, we instituted informal 360-degree reviews. We kept them fairly simple: People were asked to identify things that colleagues should stop, start, or continue. In the beginning we used an anonymous software system, but over time we shifted to signed feedback, and many teams held their 360s face-to-face.

HR people can’t believe that a company the size of Netflix doesn’t hold annual reviews. “Are you making this up just to upset us?” they ask. I’m not. If you talk simply and honestly about performance on a regular basis, you can get good results—probably better ones than a company that grades everyone on a five-point scale.

Managers Own the Job of Creating Great Teams

Discussing the military’s performance during the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, once famously said, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” When I talk to managers about creating great teams, I tell them to approach the process in exactly the opposite way.

In my consulting work, I ask managers to imagine a documentary about what their team is accomplishing six months from now. What specific results do they see? How is the work different from what the team is doing today? Next I ask them to think about the skills needed to make the images in the movie become reality. Nowhere in the early stages of the process do I advise them to think about the team they actually have. Only after they’ve done the work of envisioning the ideal outcome and the skill set necessary to achieve it should they analyze how well their existing team matches what they need.

If you’re in a fast-changing business environment, you’re probably looking at a lot of mismatches. In that case, you need to have honest conversations about letting some team members find a place where their skills are a better fit. You also need to recruit people with the right skills.

We faced the latter challenge at Netflix in a fairly dramatic way as we began to shift from DVDs by mail to a streaming service. We had to store massive volumes of files in the cloud and figure out how huge numbers of people could reliably access them. (By some estimates, up to a third of peak residential internet traffic in the U.S. comes from customers streaming Netflix movies.) So we needed to find people deeply experienced with cloud services who worked for companies that operate on a giant scale—companies like Amazon, eBay, Google, and Facebook, which aren’t the easiest places to hire someone away from.

Our compensation philosophy helped a lot. Most of its principles stem from ideals described earlier: Be honest, and treat people like adults. For instance, during my tenure Netflix didn’t pay performance bonuses, because we believed that they’re unnecessary if you hire the right people. If your employees are fully formed adults who put the company first, an annual bonus won’t make them work harder or smarter. We also believed in market-based pay and would tell employees that it was smart to interview with competitors when they had the chance, in order to get a good sense of the market rate for their talent. Many HR people dislike it when employees talk to recruiters, but I always told employees to take the call, ask how much, and send me the number—it’s valuable information.

In addition, we used equity compensation much differently from the way most companies do. Instead of larding stock options on top of a competitive salary, we let employees choose how much (if any) of their compensation would be in the form of equity. If employees wanted stock options, we reduced their salaries accordingly. We believed that they were sophisticated enough to understand the trade-offs, judge their personal tolerance for risk, and decide what was best for them and their families. We distributed options every month, at a slight discount from the market price. We had no vesting period—the options could be cashed in immediately. Most tech companies have a four-year vesting schedule and try to use options as “golden handcuffs” to aid retention, but we never thought that made sense. If you see a better opportunity elsewhere, you should be allowed to take what you’ve earned and leave. If you no longer want to work with us, we don’t want to hold you hostage.

We continually told managers that building a great team was their most important task. We didn’t measure them on whether they were excellent coaches or mentors or got their paperwork done on time. Great teams accomplish great work, and recruiting the right team was the top priority.

Leaders Own the Job of Creating the Company Culture

After I left Netflix and began consulting, I visited a hot start-up in San Francisco. It had 60 employees in an open loft-style office with a foosball table, two pool tables, and a kitchen, where a chef cooked lunch for the entire staff. As the CEO showed me around, he talked about creating a fun atmosphere. At one point I asked him what the most important value for his company was. He replied, “Efficiency.”

“OK,” I said. “Imagine that I work here, and it’s 2:58 PM. I’m playing an intense game of pool, and I’m winning. I estimate that I can finish the game in five minutes. We have a meeting at 3:00. Should I stay and win the game or cut it short for the meeting?”

“You should finish the game,” he insisted. I wasn’t surprised; like many tech start-ups, this was a casual place, where employees wore hoodies and brought pets to work, and that kind of casualness often extends to punctuality. “Wait a second,” I said. “You told me that efficiency is your most important cultural value. It’s not efficient to delay a meeting and keep coworkers waiting because of a pool game. Isn’t there a mismatch between the values you’re talking up and the behaviors you’re modeling and encouraging?”

When I advise leaders about molding a corporate culture, I tend to see three issues that need attention. This type of mismatch is one. It’s a particular problem at start-ups, where there’s a premium on casualness that can run counter to the high-performance ethos leaders want to create. I often sit in on company meetings to get a sense of how people operate. I frequently see CEOs who are clearly winging it. They lack a real agenda. They’re working from slides that were obviously put together an hour before or were recycled from the previous round of VC meetings. Workers notice these things, and if they see a leader who’s not fully prepared and who relies on charm, IQ, and improvisation, it affects how they perform, too. It’s a waste of time to articulate ideas about values and culture if you don’t model and reward behavior that aligns with those goals.

The second issue has to do with making sure employees understand the levers that drive the business. I recently visited a Texas start-up whose employees were mostly engineers in their twenties. “I bet half the people in this room have never read a P&L,” I said to the CFO. He replied, “It’s true—they’re not financially savvy or business savvy, and our biggest challenge is teaching them how the business works.” Even if you’ve hired people who want to perform well, you need to clearly communicate how the company makes money and what behaviors will drive its success. At Netflix, for instance, employees used to focus too heavily on subscriber growth, without much awareness that our expenses often ran ahead of it: We were spending huge amounts buying DVDs, setting up distribution centers, and ordering original programming, all before we’d collected a cent from our new subscribers. Our employees needed to learn that even though revenue was growing, managing expenses really mattered.

The third issue is something I call the split personality start-up. At tech companies this usually manifests itself as a schism between the engineers and the sales team, but it can take other forms. At Netflix, for instance, I sometimes had to remind people that there were big differences between the salaried professional staff at headquarters and the hourly workers in the call centers. At one point our finance team wanted to shift the whole company to direct-deposit paychecks, and I had to point out that some of our hourly workers didn’t have bank accounts. That’s a small example, but it speaks to a larger point: As leaders build a company culture, they need to be aware of subcultures that might require different management.

Good Talent Managers Think Like Businesspeople and Innovators First, and Like HR People Last

Throughout most of my career I’ve belonged to professional associations of human resources executives. Although I like the people in these groups personally, I often find myself disagreeing with them. Too many devote time to morale improvement initiatives. At some places entire teams focus on getting their firm onto lists of “Best Places to Work” (which, when you dig into the methodologies, are really based just on perks and benefits). At a recent conference I met someone from a company that had appointed a “chief happiness officer”—a concept that makes me slightly sick.

During 30 years in business I’ve never seen an HR initiative that improved morale. HR departments might throw parties and hand out T-shirts, but if the stock price is falling or the company’s products aren’t perceived as successful, the people at those parties will quietly complain—and they’ll use the T-shirts to wash their cars.

Instead of cheerleading, people in my profession should think of themselves as businesspeople. What’s good for the company? How do we communicate that to employees? How can we help every worker understand what we mean by high performance?

Here’s a simple test: If your company has a performance bonus plan, go up to a random employee and ask, “Do you know specifically what you should be doing right now to increase your bonus?” If he or she can’t answer, the HR team isn’t making things as clear as they need to be.

At Netflix I worked with colleagues who were changing the way people consume filmed entertainment, which is an incredibly innovative pursuit—yet when I started there, the expectation was that I would default to mimicking other companies’ best practices (many of them antiquated), which is how almost everyone seems to approach HR. I rejected those constraints. There’s no reason the HR team can’t be innovative too.

A version of this article appeared in the

January–February 2014

issue of Harvard Business Review.

#Business #work

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draw-you-coward · 6 years ago

Text

Hi! How is everyone? I wanted to talk about the Scions. Specifically, the Archons. Major spoilers for Shadowbringers!

I think what really helped me come to these conclusions was seeing all of them actively work together. specifically, seeing urianger in a context where he’s an actual character and not a deus ex machina! (side note: he’s honestly amazing in this expansion and i. love him??) I hope they keep this dynamic whenever it’s realistically possible!

So mostly, I want to talk about how the scions individually react to possibly groundbreaking events that have the possibility of changing their worldview. im speaking mostly about emet-selch’s “hydaelyn and zodiark were the first beings akin to primals” revelation. or more specifically, their separate reactions to that revelation. i think it’s very telling on how they each individually digest information. we, the players, may arrive to our own conclusions at our own pace, but we have to remember that for these characters, this is their world. their world view, being shattered. they all, to some degree, react negatively. they just show it differently, even if it’s not all that obvious.

i think that shadowbringers overall did a very good job of establishing their individual character dynamics, or more importantly, the idea that their major strength is also their major weakness.

let’s start with thancred. right away, his major flaw is apparent. in fact, a lot of people have gotten (rightfully) mad at him for it, although i think when he gets over himself and turns it around, it’s a lot more subtle. but i digress. with thancred, what he does with information he doesnt like is look at it, says “okay, i dont like that,” shoves it to the back of his mind to not think about, and tries to focus on whatever he wants to focus on in the immediate present. of course, it manages to bleed through regardless, and that’s where his doubts come from. and because he refuses to confront them head-on to deal with them, he has a very difficult time letting them go.

the actual first time when this comes to mind for me isn’t with ryne, it’s with the word of the mother in 3.X. (yes, it’s there with lahabrea too, but executed in a less clean manner, and people have already talked about that to death.) what he first sees is minfilia, the girl he’s attempted to look after primarily because of a sense of guilt, the girl who means the world to him, and whom he feels like, we know now, that he has never been sufficient enough for. (that theme of him feeling like he isn’t good enough is repeated multiple times with him, and it makes me wonder if it’s because of his manner of thinking.) but minfilia’s different now, in a strange and new and maybe not altogether comfortable way, and she’s drifting away from him now, and he can’t catch up to her to make up for all his regrets. he realizes this, realizes what’s going on, very, very quickly. in fact, i’d say that out of all of them, thancred is the one who is the quickest on the uptake. but he shoves his logical side away, and reacts emotionally, because he doesn’t want to acknowledge what he knows is true. in shadowbringers he does the same thing; he acknowledges minfilia’s words, and it is clear that he dwells on them despite himself, but he wants to react emotionally, in the moment. he is a very, despite his apparent distance, emotional person.

when he finally begins to get over himself accept the situation, it is in the tone of someone who is moving on from the loss of a loved one. he talks about how they met, how she grew up, what she liked. this is because he’s finally coming to terms with what he knew this entire time: that the real minfilia, his minfilia, died in that tunnel. the version of her that he is clinging onto in heavensward, in shadowbringers, is not her and all she used to be. it is not the “word of the mother” or the “oracle of light” or whatever she has turned into. it is but “minfilia,” but a memory, and he’s finally let it go enough to see it as such.

woo! okay. so moving on to how this works out for him in the best. honestly i dont think people acknowledge this enough, but he displays it time and time again? thancred is the one that is best equipped to deal with the present. to confront problems head-on without worrying about what may or may not happen, and without getting lost in the possibility of failure. he is by far the scion with the best ability to keep a level head. this is most apparent, to me, in aumarot. everyone one else is confused and lowkey freaking out or what have you, and thancred is the only one who has decided that no, what they really need at the moment is not to panic. what they need is calm, and confidence. and he is that. and you know what? he was right. and i think for me at least, he’s the biggest reason why I calmed down some at that point in the story.

next: y’shtola! I have less to say about the other scions, mostly because i wasn’t following their character arcs as closely or at all, but I do love them still!

y’shtola is the one who most visibly is struggling to handle emet-selch’s revelation. (you can talk to her now, at the time of the quest, or check your quest journal for confirmation of this). where thancred realizes things in a far more round-about manner--that is to say, figures them out, shoves them to the back of his mind, and tries not to think about them--she takes them by the horns and tries to confront them head-on. this gives her, in a way, tunnel vision. she is the loudest about her opinion, and the most direct. when emet-selch makes them by association question hydaelyn, she is the one who speaks up to defend her and their belief system. she is stubborn. it takes her a while to eat through something enough to 100% accept it.

but because of this, her conviction and belief in anything is strong. when she truly believes in something, she believes in it the most. she is the strength when the storm is finally over and she’s had time to build herself up. she isn’t afraid to force other characters to see the flaws in the way they are viewing things, or confront them when she knows she is in the right. yes, she can be harsh sometimes, but she is sorely needed. someone has to be sure of something here! in this way, she too is comforting. when thancred is calm, you know something is bad. when yshtola is calm, you know that whatever you have to worry about is surmountable.

urianger! my poor often-shafted elf giraffe man. he’s the one i had the most trouble puzzling out, so i may be completely wrong! but i’ll try my best :>

urianger is the one who has had this constant theme of showing up at the last moment to present something that he has thoroughly and completely thought about so he can be entirely certain of it. urianger’s way of dealing with things is to listen, listen some more, maybe go digging, and finally, only come to a conclusion when he knows every bit of information he can. he’s willing to work with ascians, he’s willing to go double-dipping in terms of sides, he’s willing to risk his friends’ trust. he is willing to take a long, long time to achieve a goal and know things only in full, and he has the patience to do so. he has the patience to deal with thancred in shadowbringers, to listen to what the exarch tells him to do, to bear with the whole plan, even as he sees things objectively keep getting worse. he’s not easy to rile up, he sees things as a whole instead of in parts... all of this really makes him a good teacher! it makes him a kind man. but.

he waits a little too long. what happens when you finally kill vauthry and emet-selch ruins everything? urianger’s carefully-laid plans go awry. suddenly, everything has gone wrong and he has no backup, because he never thought to make one. he has such conviction that his passivity is for the best that he stands by, barely intervenes, and decides to let things run their course even when warning signs are flashing in front of him. when things go wrong he fumbles, and doesn’t know what to do, because he isn’t used to that happening. up until shb, he’s taught himself that the path of inaction and support is the best one to take, and i am glad that he is finally being confronted with the realities of that. even with thancred and ryne; he can clearly see that their initial dynamic isn’t healthy, but he does absolutely nothing active about it. in the end, it is his very opposite force--entropy, chance--that fixes things with them. it’s interesting he became an astrologian, i think, because divination is something so abstract and vague that it allows him to stay in his comfort zone of not doing much to change things. fate is a fickle mistress, yes, but he leans a little too heavily on how things should be that he fails to see that everything in the present is in flux; that it is, in fact, dependent on the uncertain.

okay, that’s it! i think the three of them complement each other nicely with their respective strengths and weaknesses, and that’s why i hope they’ll keep that dynamic in the future! of course, if you disagree or want to correct me, please feel free; this is purely my own opinion, and i am very much putting myself in a position to be (respectfully) disagreed with by posting this. on the other hand, if you want to elaborate on something or add something, please also feel free! i’d love to hear your thoughts.

nae

#ffxiv #urianger augurelt #thancred waters #y'shtola rhul #urianger #thancred #y'shtola #shadowbringers spoilers #hhhhhhhh #discussion

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ardenttheories · 6 years ago

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So do you hate the epilogue or love it? Also I feel like the exposition provided on Hope was interesting in Candy. Besides that I’m curious as to what your full thoughts are

So, I’m still kind of torn on this. I’ve tried to think it over a few times, to really chew on my thoughts while I was reading the two Epilogues into a singular coherent idea, but all I’ve really come up with is a sort of mushy, oversweet mess that’s pretty indistinguishable from roiling confusion.

I still stand by my mentality that the Epilogues are really well written. There’s something about them that, although it sometimes doesn’t read like Homestuck used to, still really comes across as enticing and interesting. Even when the characters are at their worst - and even though a lot of them have had weird character developments or evolutions - the actual characterisation within the foundation of what’s been set in the Epilogues is believable. I can believe that a Dirk who acts like Meat!Dirk does would think and feel that way; that a Roxy who’s under the sort of narrative pressures of Candy!Roxy would end up as demure as she does. It’s believable, in the same way a well written fanfic is believable - which is, ultimately, the point.

But do I like it? As an English Literature university student, yes. Oh, yes, I love the Epilogues. There’s so much to think over, to sink your teeth into, to really and thoroughly enjoy on a literary level.

The inter-connectivity between the texts is fantastic. You can get an idea from both on their own, but only when they’re put together does the full picture come out. Knowing that Alternate!Calliope has influence over the narrative in Meat gives you a good chance to realise that she’s bringing canonicity back into Candy well before she even confirms it herself.

For instance, the reason Roxy’s so wildly offbeat that even John notices it is that they’ve departed so far from canon that her canonical developments and foundations have become worthless. She doesn’t bother going through her identity stuff because there’s ultimately no point in focusing on it; character development doesn’t matter anymore, and without anyone to help her focus on it, there’s just no reason for her to think about it. It’s only with the presence of Alternate!Calliope that things slowly start to get better. It’s why, when Alternate!Calliope is at her most present, Roxy starts to become herself again - why during her conversation with John she’s able to stand up for herself and admit that something has been wrong the whole time. Alternate!Calliope brings them back towards a faux sense of canonicity, and as a result, Roxy’s development suddenly becomes relevant again (even if it isn’t allowed to flourish fully, because that goes against what Calliope is trying to do).

The sort of narrative theory it brings up is incredibly interesting, too. Having to read both sides of the same story isn’t exactly new, but this sort of interconnectivity is incredibly rare. The way that Meat and Candy work as concepts are also beautifully interesting; as I’ve said before, Dirk’s logic on Meat is that without a plot, there’s no relevance or importance in anything that they do, but the inhabitants of Candy frequently remind John that even if what they’re doing is inconsequential to the plot, it still matters to them. Maybe Jane being a fascist in Candy isn’t going to have a rippling effect on Paradox Space, but it matters to every single inhabitant of Candy’s Earth C. Calliope sees the importance of these moments; Dirk doesn’t. It brings about a firm point that if you try and make a story too plot-focused, you’ll ultimately make a story that’s too much of a slog to read, too depressing, to heavy - but if you try to make the story too fluff-based, then nothing of relevance will happen, you’ll have characters that never grow or develop down a natural path, events will happen in ways they were never meant to or don’t happen at all, and might be interesting but won’t be enough.

Plus, just reading through how A!Calliope explains the narrative voice and how it can be used is phenomenal, and I think a lot of literature should start to question that. Even in a text without a specific narrator, is the text completely without a narrative speaker? She basically explains what Dirk does in the sense of the boiling frog; he allows the narrative to seem like it’s speakerless so that everyone he’s whispering in the minds of don’t recognise that something is wrong until it’s too late, and he’s fully in control. He puts everyone in the cool waters of nonbiased narrative and slowly turns up the heat of his own opinions and inflections until he’s boiling their self identity and independence and free will alive with biased narrative.

In that sense, I love the Epilogues.

For thoughts on the actual story, though… I kinda love it.

For what it is, it’s incredibly interesting. The dichotomy of Dirk controlling Meat while Alternate!Calliope controls Candy, being the respective narrators, is oh-so incredible. A!Calliope even says, in her dialogue to Aradia on page 40 of Candy, that sometimes narrative voices don’t bring themselves forward; sometimes the narrative is speakerless, sure, as we think Candy is - but that sometimes the speaker of the narrative simply doesn’t want to show herself. As much as Dirk overtly influences the events of Meat, I think A!Calliope influences the events in Candy - she just hides her narrative voice, and lets us figure out if it’s actually her doing the talking, or if there’s no narrative voice at all.

It’s clear that in Meat, Dirk is the only reason there’s any sort of canonicity. He’s forcing events to happen to keep everyone relevant in the way they’re not in Candy - and Candy is what he actively fears, because Candy is A!Calliope’s answer to Meat. Dirk needs plot and relevance to exist; A!Calliope specifically needs that void of plot and importance for her plans to work - and both directly influence the other. Dirk is literally so scared by the concept of Candy that he over-controls in Meat because the idea of irrelevance just doesn’t work in his mind. There has to be some bigger picture, something to work towards - but for Alternate!Calliope, the simple concept of existing and allowing things to play out naturally, without interference, is the better way, even if there’s no bigger picture to strive towards, and irrelevance is left in her wake. Both Epilogues happen side by side to allow both narrative players their chance to reach their full potential, to present what they think is the best form of narrative. Meat is Dirk’s answer to Candy; Candy is A!Calliope’s answer to Meat.

To borrow from the previous ask, “In his suicide, Dirk destroys the last piece of narrative importance in the Candy Epilogue. He is the narrative importance in Meat after all; with him gone, there is no narrative entity to keep it going.” Without Dirk, the characters slip so far away from canon that everything becomes meaningless. All those foundations the characters are based on disappear, and they become horrific caricatures of themselves. A!Calliope brings stability back to this unstable, noncanon world. This is why Roxy’s gender reveal ends up being less “I’m able to decide who I am, and I am more comfortable using he/him pronouns and presenting as masculine” and more “I’m not feminine, and I don’t need to cling to the feminine gender; my body is a machine of flesh, and nothing more”. She still comes to the same sort of conclusion, but it’s only half way there - because A!Calliope isn’t bringing a full plot back to that timeline. Just enough to stop it from self destructing.

Additionally, the fact that the black hole wasn’t so much of a black hole as a wormhole from canon into non canon. That brings up so much interest. Does Dirk even realise that’s what happened? I don’t think so. He seems to think that Davepeta really did complete a suicide mission, but if the same thing happens to them as happened to the troll ghosts then all that’ll happen is they’ll come out the other side, still clinging to Lord English, into the Candy timeline. Does Dirk realise that he’s been played? He essentially set into motion what needed to happen for A!Calliope’s plan in Candy to work. But maybe that’s the beauty of the duality? They’re opposing each other, but they also rely on each other for their own parts of the Epilogues to work.

I’m interested in seeing where this goes. At this point, I’ve read enough to be invested. I’ve gone on about some of the Meat aspects in depth, so I won’t really go over that much more, but I love Candy’s portrayal of relevance. How fatalistic John becomes when he realises that everyone’s just completely fake - fake to themselves, fake to who they were, fake to what they could become - and how (Vriska) goes on to talk about John’s overall importance - that he’s probably one of the most powerful beings going because he has the ability to decide the entire fate of canon without even realising he’s doing it (as we’ve seen in Meat and Candy; both are a direct consequence of actions he taken without realising the dire effects it will have on the timeline).

But do I love it as a fan?

I definitely enjoyed the exposition on Hope. It essentially confirmed a theory I had on this blog ages back; that Hope’s Belief was sort of the other side of the coin for Light’s Truth, and that the Belief of something to a strong enough degree is ultimately what makes it True. Maybe that’s why everyone was acting so fake? John believed with his whole heart that everything was wrong, and fake, and impossible, and he let that overwhelm him. Of course, the fact of the matter is that these things really were taking place, but I’m at least 87% sure that it was worsened by John’s own morbid attitude towards his fate and the lives of everyone around him.

There are some parts I definitely liked. Confirmation about Jade’s weird gender situation in Candy, confirmation that Callie is they/them and Roxy is he/him in Meat (and that, regardless of the timeline, he’d always recognise that he has some sort of issues regarding his gender and figure out some way of understanding himself and his identity), the canonisation of DaveKat in Meat (although I firmly believe it could have ended up as DaveJadeKat if she’d still been in the picture, but a much healthier version than we see in Candy), the relationship between John and Terezi, the exposition we get on Candy!(Vriska) (finally realising a lot of the things fans have said about her for a while, especially in regards to (Vriska) in the comic), and now that I’m coming to terms with it, the plot’s pretty okay, too. For what it is, and the route they went down, I’m getting through the stages of grief to reach acceptance.

But no, I don’t really like the Epilogues.

Fundamentally, I hate the route they chose. I hate that after three years, rather than just be told “you can decide whatever you want, because even the noncanon things have validity and we’re well aware that we can’t please everyone, so making your own ending to suit your needs not only works best but also fits the theme of Homestuck well”, they went to all this effort of making a plot and characterisation that ruined so many of these characters we love.

I have a lot of issues with Dirk. It’s bad narrative crafting to set a character so far back in his development. I can understand how the development works in the way that they’ve done it, but I’m also very aware of the fact that this, in no way, had to be canon. For all that Bro is a splinter of Dirk, and that emotionally stunted Dirks must also exist across Paradox Space, there are also plenty of other splinters and versions of Dirk that must have gone through beneficial emotional development. Out of every outcome that Hussie and the team could have chosen, I’m disappointed and upset that this is the route they took - after three years of waiting.

This was an outcome that could happen, yes, but it didn’t have to be the official outcome. Regardless of how much anyone prattles on about canon and non-canon, people are always going to regard something that’s official as The Most Canon. If the point of these Epilogues is “you can make your own, valid ending”, then it’s overshadowed by the notion that this ending, these endings that we’re being given, are the ones that Hussie himself devised, and sees as most plausible. You can’t scrub the Official ™ mark from the Epilogues. You can’t get rid of the connotations of canonicity that comes from that.

It’s a bad ending to Homestuck. No matter how you look at it, viewing just Meat or just Candy or both together, it still sucks as a fan to try and reconcile with the idea that this is how Homestuck’s officially going to finish. I’ve got no doubts that there’s more to come - cliffhangers like these are just begging to be finished, and if Hussie’s going to this much effort to make an interconnected story then it’d be weird to leave it hanging - but I’m still slightly bitter about the fact that this is what we get. Two relatively unhappy, upsetting, triggering endings that really give across a good statement, but not as much of a good conclusion to the people who have been following this story along for ten years. They’re hard to read - emotionally and physically - they’re unpleasant to try and get through, and although I’ve read both and am glad I did… I’m well aware of the fact that I could have not read the Epilogues and probably been better off.

I actually go more into this aspect of it in a few other posts. I’ll link them below, so please give them a read, because they’re more eloquent and definitely explain what I mean a bit more. But that gives the overall gist of how I feel. I’ll also be including a few posts that explain how I feel a bit more, not written by me, because hell yes I want to share that good shit.

So, yeah. I’m accepting of the Epilogues at the moment; I love them in a literary sense; I hate them as a fan.

“Thoughts On The Upd8; Honestly Strikes Me As A Cop-out” - Kienansidhe

“The Dirk Thing And Why It’s Bad Storytelling” - Stormsbourne

“A Common Defence Of The Epilogues” - Unionhack

My thoughts on Candy

Why I hate the Epilogues (3 year drop)

My thoughts on Meat

#Anonymous #long post//#ardenttheories out of theory #homestuck epilogues #homestuck ramblings

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sunflowerspectre · 5 years ago

Text

The Backwaters | Commission Piece

This is part of a long commission piece for an anon, who commissioned for a long-length, full fanfiction.

Commission Info | Also on A03

Title: The Backwaters Summary: As an agent of SHIELD, Shuri’s assignment is to find and rescue Wanda Maximoff who disappeared in the backwaters of West Virginia. But her training is put to the test when the town’s mechanic Bucky takes a liking to her. Aged up! Shuri Warnings: Omega!Verse, Beta/Omega/Alpha Dynamics, OOC

<< Previous Chapter | Final Chapter >>

The Backwaters | Chapter Nine Word Count: 3241

All Shuri can think of is when to make the call. It has been one full day. That should be enough time for Wanda and Natasha to have warned the other girls stuck there, enough for them to prepare, but should she give them one more day? Should she risk one of the girls exposing their plans? She didn’t expect to face this type of dilemma, she wanted to call them as soon as she saw Wanda, but things changed. She saw the chance to tell Nat and Wanda, to let them tell others so that they can prepare and know that there is still hope, to live for just a little bit longer, and she took that chance.

She wasn’t specific when she talked to Nat and Wanda, but it would be easy for the idea of ‘escaping’ to be tracked back to her. She knows Nat would never rat her out, but Wanda is scared, she’s used and on the verge of breaking down entirely. If Paul pushes her enough, Wanda might spill and Shuri couldn’t bring herself to blame her if she did - or any of the other girls who might spill the beans that someone is planning an uprising due to fear, torture, humiliation, or any of the other abusive tactics that these sons of bitches use.

Though, by that logic, could she really blame any of the women who may spill because they don’t like the idea of everyone getting arrested? The women who have lived here for decades, who are scared of change and too brainwashed to realize the abuse in front of their eyes, the ones who bury themselves in denial to be able to live their lives as normally as they could.

Or did any of them actually believe it if they did hear? Did the women from that church - the ones with hollow eyes and babies on their knees - know that help is coming or do they refuse to believe it because they’ve had their hopes for escaping dashed too many times like Wanda?

Shuri sighs and rests her back against the cold, wet, shower wall of Bucky’s cabin. She thinks about the Sheriff, the non-consensual wife he took from her home, and wonders if she got word. She wonders if she was able to pack up what she needed while looking after a baby at the same time.

She can’t risk it, she can’t risk any of these bastards getting away because they bullied and abused someone into giving them a heads up. She has to get the women out of there.

She presses her bracelet together, signaling Coulson, and whispers her plan. She didn’t contact him yesterday, with too much at stake to risk Bucky overhearing her, but now all the information she’s learned comes out as whispers that are muffled by the running water of the shower.

She tells him all that he missed, including the exact directions needed to get to both her cabin and to Paul’s, going over exactly what beaten path to follow and which tree to turn at.

“Sheriff has eyes everywhere, Coulson. Cameras at each of the welcome signs on the edges of town and helicopters may get spotted. May need to send in a discreet squad with the ATVs to get down here until you get your cuffs on the sheriff yourself.”

“Well, avoiding cameras isn’t exactly anything new for us… What about this Nat woman? Do you think she’ll spread the word discreetly or will she rat us out before we can get there?”

Shuri remembers the determination in Nat’s eyes, the motivation in her voice, the firmness of her decision to get out and to get as many of the girls out as they can along the way. It was the only time Shuri saw something other than sadness from the woman. It was like an old fire had been reignited and the amount of hope, trust, and belief that Nat looked to Shuri with - despite the hesitation and caution, Nat looked like she wanted to believe Shuri as much as Wanda wanted to.

But she doesn’t say that to Coulson - she can’t - there’s no way you can explain those types of looks to someone. Besides, a part of her knows that he’s right, as much as Shuri does believe in Nat, there is never a guarantee that she isn’t going to warn anyone to get them out before the raid.

“Second guessing my skills, Couslon, I must say that is rather bold for you,” Shuri teases, her voice light and forced.

“-Hey what’s that supposed to mean? We’re supposed to be working together and I wouldn’t be a good partner if I didn’t remind you of SHIELD 101.”

“- don’t trust anyone but yourself,” Shuri says, her voice echoing over Coulson’s own, as she rolls her eyes with amusement.

She could hear Coulson chuckling a bit before he pauses, deep in thought, before he finally speaks up. Despite the situation, Coulson never has been this chatty mid-mission before a raid, but she can only imagine how human-deprived he is in a tent all by himself with a little bathroom shovel.

“...What about Wanda though? Is she ready to go?”

Shuri thinks of the the dull, lifeless eyes that looked at her with so much helplessness. Her lips thin, “She’s not just ready, she needs to get out now. Send some of the paramedics to her location with some of the agents.”

She pauses and then continues, “ - and a good utility knife.”

“- a utility knife?”

Shuri thinks of the beaten leather collar that was marred with fingernail scratches, the thick leather of it and how it will take more than a pair of rusty kitchen scissors to get off.

“Yes - a good one or a rotary cutter may get the job done. They’ll know what to do with it when they find her.”

Shuri continues to go over the plan with him in hushed towns, exactly how he needs to have the squad come into town, which players they need to take care of first - Wanda and the Sheriff taking priority. Wanda due to her physical and mental condition and the Sheriff due to his powerful influence over the town. She has no doubts that if they take him down first, then the others will crumble like the cowards that they are.

She gives strict instructions to not worry about her, to come get Bucky last, that she will stall him until they get here. Something that will be easy, Shuri believes, until she ends the conversation, finishes getting dressed, and steps out of the bathroom to see Bucky standing on the other side of the door with dark eyes, his arms crossed against his chest.

“Who were you talkin’ to you, doll? Thought I heard your voice in there.”

Shuri gives an easy smile despite the pounding in her chest, dancing on her feet to get around him with grace.

“Myself, of course. Not a crime, last I checked, to get your thoughts out for yourself and talk to yourself in the mirror. Good confidence boost.”

Shuri walks down the hall, wanting to get them to a more open space, to add distance between them. She keeps an eye over her shoulder, watching him follow her with hesitation and furrowed brows. She doesn’t miss the way that he glances into the bathroom before he follows, as if he may be able to catch someone hiding behind the curtain or stuck in the small window.

“What do you want for dinner tonight? I was thinking of doing some hash, something simple, but filling.”

She tries to keep the conversation light and natural, not wanting him to focus too much on any one part of her sentence or think too hard about what he thinks he heard her say in the bathroom.

She could, honestly, beat herself up at the moment, her throat tight and her mind spinning. She can’t have him of all people ruin this for her, all because she didn’t pay enough attention to the door. She can’t have this entire mission ruined over one rookie mistake and one stupidly handsome backwater cowboy.

They stop in the living room, as Bucky’s pace behind her slows. She spins around to face him, grin plastered on from cheek to cheek. She wishes that she had brought her shoes into the bathroom, just to have something between her toes and the wooden floors - shoes would offer a chance to run, add more strength to any kicks, and lessen the chance of her getting any splinters from just walking down the beaten hall.

Bucky hardly seems to be paying her any mind, his eyes lost in thought, arms crossed back against his chest with a tight frown.

“You know, darling, I’m beginning to think that this is just one of the few things that are just not quite addin’ up for me.”

He meets her gaze and doesn’t flinch, he stands tall with his head high. His eyes become hooded and shadowed as the furrow on his browns deepen. Shuri, despite that there are many other things that she should be thinking about at the moment, can’t help but think that the look on his face seems to break the illusion of a ‘handsome cowboy.’ The frown just highlights the creases at his mouth and eyes, making him look older, darker, more serious.

She can finally see the resemblance between him and Steve Rodgers. She can also see that he is definitely starting to get closer to her, his figure starting to shadow over hers. She takes a step back for every step forward he takes. She raises her hands as a sign of peace, smile still on her face, and hears Coulson’s whispered tone through the bracelet that the raid has started. He has Wanda - and the Sheriff.

Which means that all she has to do is stall him until someone comes by to arrest him - if she doesn’t knock him out first. It means that she doesn’t have to play nice anymore, but she can play with him and enjoy every single moment of this.

“I know that something ain’t right with how I woke up on the couch and it took me a minute to realize why. You’re a smart girl, darling, smarter than some of ‘em others up here. But I didn’t smell a lick of liquor on me. Wasn’t too sick ‘neither. Then I smelled it all in the sink. I’m figurin’ that you dumped it all down the sink and staged it to make me think I just drank myself out. I don’t remember too much of that night, don’t know if ya finally found the drugs and drugged me or what.”

He takes another step forward, her grin doesn’t falter as he gets too close to her.

“But I do remember what I asked ya that night - askin’ you to come to bed.”

She takes pleasure in dodging the way he lunges for her, ducking around him with ease and a small laugh. She hears the way that he growls, grumbling and cursing at her under his breath, but he turns to go after her again. While her grin is predatory, it’s mysterious, mirroring a cat playing with its mouse. His, however, looks like the big bad wolf - hungry, angry, ravenous, alpha.

But she doesn’t falter. She is fully prepared to let him huff and puff all he wants, but when by the end of this, she won’t be the one going down.

“I didn’t have to ask you know,” his hands wave around, flaunting about the room before he starts to gesture toward himself, “I could have taken you, you know. Didn’t have to ask or nothin’. Could have waited until you were sleepin’ like I almost did the first night you were ‘ere. Could’ve drugged ya. Could’ve done a lot of things, but I’m a nice guy.”

He takes a deep breath, rolling his shoulders, and he looks at her with a feign calmness - a mask that’s cracked, forced, and she sees right through it. It mirrors her own, but it’s unpolished, untrained, and not perfect like the mask she’s had these past few weeks.

“But I’m just very done being nice, sweetheart and if you don’t tell me what happened and stop all this nonsense, I am going to put you over my knee and spank you just like the bad girl you’ve been.”

Oh a threat. Delighted and amused that he really thinks that he can threaten her, she sits on the armrest of the couch, crossing her legs with a smile as she swings her feet almost innocently. He takes a step back, unsure of how to respond to her lack of reaction, but Shuri can see his fists clenching, his nails making indents in his palm.

“I have been a bad girl, haven’t I,” her eyes twinkle, her tongue darting out to lick her bottom lip, “But I like being bad, Bucky, so bad one could say I really am good. So good in fact that I took you down like you the coward you are.”

She glances at her nails, raising her hand up casually as she does so. A part of her wonders if they’re sharp enough to do damage, the other part wondering if she should get a manicure when she gets back home. Oh maybe I could take Nat and Wanda. A spa day after all this trauma. I’m sure Fury wouldn’t mind me charging SHEILD’s credit card for it if it’s for recovery. She glances back toward Bucky, almost forgetting that she’s ‘supposed’ to be taking him seriously right now.

“I’ll take you down again, you know,” Shuri’s eyes burn in the lowlight of the cabin, lighting up her face brilliantly, “If the others don’t get here first, you know? Had to call them in after I saw the state Wanda was in yesterday, but they already told me that they have her. Paul too, I’m sure, and he’ll be getting what he deserves. Just like the rest of you will be.”

Her grin is dangerous, serious. Untamed and slightly unhinged with sharp edges.

“You really think you lot could be doing what you’re doing up here without SHIELD eventually taking notice?”

That makes Bucky stop - if for a moment. He tenses, freezing as he processes what it is that she’s telling him. The name SHIELD causes all the hair on the back of his neck to go straight up, goosebumps starting to pop up over his thicker arms.

Shuri’s feathers fluff at his reaction, taking in great delight the way it makes him shiver in his boots, that he’s quaking in fear like the lowlife he is.

It is a justified reaction, she knows. SHIELD has always been the boogey-man that everyone’s warned about. The ones that come in and take you out before you knew that they were even there - the ones that have the spies, the heroes, the villains, all under their thumbs. No they weren’t the boogey-man.

They’re everything that the boogey-man is afraid of.

She is what the boogey-man fears.

“No,” Bucky shakes his head, as if finally coming to his sense, a grin back on his face as he takes a step forward, looking her over as he laughs, “No, not a little thing like you. Don’t go throwin’ names like that around ‘ere, darling. ‘Specially when you don't have any idea what you’re really talking about.”

He grins and he raises his hands to pop his calloused knuckles, a visible threat that doesn’t phase her.

“You’re delusional darling,” the laughter is still in his voice, “Absolutely batshit. I thought you were a spitfire, but this? Really? Thinking that someone is gonna be bustin’ in to save you? Thinkin’ that SHIELD even gives a rat’s ass about this place? About you? If you’re that crazy and unreasonable, looks like I’m gonna have to beat you to reason. Beat that crazy right out of ya.”

His grin is crooked, she notes with a laugh, just like him. The more unhinged he gets, the more it shows and the more she wonders why she ever let a man like that even touch her. It’s like watching a glass of one of mirror mazes shatter right when you’re in the middle of it, destroying the illusion before your eyes. She doesn’t see a handsome, or charming, farm boy. She sees a crazed man. A backwater bully who is the real delusional one.

She wonders just how many of the girls in town are watching that glass shatter. She wonders how many of them are getting cut trying to pick up the pieces of it, to build it back up, and how many are taking it as a chance to finally get out of this never-ending maze.

When Bucky lunges for, she yawns and her dodge is graceful, but lazy. As he runs after her, she avoids him like it’s muscle memory. His moves are frantic, crazy, strong, and impulsive. Hers are strategic, thoughtful, light on her toes and come as easy to her as breathing as he struggles to figure out how to catch her.

She’s getting bored playing with him now. It was fun to break him a bit, rattle him the way he deserves. But she wants to get to town. Help settle the crying women who are losing their husbands of ten or so years and don’t know how to break out of this delusion. Fix up the beaten ones. Carry the babies of the girls’ whose arms are too weak or too young for the weight of a babe. Check on Nat and Wanda for herself.

“Honestly, just how long are you going to keep this up,” Shuri stretches, a bored expression on her face that infuriates Bucky as he lets out a cry and lunges for again.

Tired and wanting to end this, she lets him get in close this time. She steps away at the last moment, sticking her toes out just enough to trip him up. When he tumbles toward the ground, using his arms to support his weight, she jumps and lands on the crook just above the elbow with the ball of her foot.

His arms crumble, the one she landed on breaks from the force, and she steps off of him with an off-hand thought of how much better (and easier) it would have been in heels. She can hear the sirens now and the rumble of oncoming agents. As he nurses his broken arm, she uses her feet to push him onto his back. He rolls without much resistance, his ears ringing.

She rolls onto him, her side just below his neck. Her back faces him while his arms are pinned in front of her own. Her elbow presses on the floor with her other arm wrapped just below his elbows, free to stop anything he may try. With her weight and position, no matter how he begins to wiggle, he can’t shake her off. When he tries to stand, she knocks his knees with her free hand and he goes down again.

The door to his cabin opens. He can’t see who it is, while Shuri turns her face toward the door with a bright grin.

“Coulson,” Shuri greets with a chirp, “We were having a grand time waiting for you.”

#marvel #alpha beta omega dynamics #alpha omega dynamics #alpha omega beta #omega #beta #fanfic #commission #thebackwa #the backwaters #myworks

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