#which if anything is just a reflection of how three dimensional she is as a character | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chrystalwynd · 1 year

Text

Everybody Comes to the Black Hole

I don’t write a lot of sci-fi (or any, really. This is my first), but I like this setting and may use it again in the future. Sci-fi readers’ opinions appreciated here.

Everybody Comes to the Black Hole

words: 2700

mc mf ff md fd sci-fi

“Mmmmmm, look at you. Why don’t you come inside for a drink?”

She was a six-and-a-half-foot blue-haired beauty, with fingernails and toenails to match. Her breasts made all kinds of threats about bursting out of the leather corset that was straining to contain them, while the rounded cheeks of her ass moved like two bubble hovers trying to pass each other in a tight race. Her lips made promises her eyes had no intention of keeping, but her hips made promises that made the risk worth it. She was a three-dimensional wet dream.

“Don’t go away,” pouted the blue hair bird. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to work through the pain,” I said, pulling out a vita-cig and lighting it. I blew a stream of smoke through the hologram.

A figure moved next to me, setting off Blue Hair’s automated offer of a drink. A skinny berk stood there, looking like a rodent on the back nine of a bender. I’d known he was there even before Blue Hair told me, but he didn’t need to know that. Being a mindwire was my own business and none of his.

“Waller,” I said. “What’s the chant?”

“’Ello, Gar,” said the rodent, without moving his lips. A neat trick. “Tonight at the Black Hole. 2200 digital. Bring cash.”

“Bring what?”

“Cash, guv. Old Earth slang for money.”

“I see. You’re a man of the stars, Waller.”

“Shite, cutter. Just a berk trying to make enough shiny to get off this hunk of metal, savvy? Now how ‘bout providin’ some bounty, yeah?”

“Don’t be a tentacle’s ass, Waller. Half now, half if the meetin’ goes well.”

“I can’t be held vertical for a meeting that goes horizontal, Gar.”

“Relax, Waller. Just blowing your airlock. Mostly, anyway. Half now, half after they show.”

“It’s a fair pop.”

I worked my wrist tech-band for a few seconds. Waller’s band beeped in reply.

“There you go, Waller. Stay off the meteor dust and you’ll be off Port Kepler in no time.”

“Shite, cutter. Dust the only t’ing makes this rig bearable.”

I had nothing to say to that, so I nodded and Waller went on his way.

I started up the strip of shops and services that made up Port Kepler. The creaky space port had been circling Kepler B for so long, few people even knew it’s launch year. Everybody could, however, tell you to the day how long they’d been stuck here. There were far more berks than jobs and saving money to get that off-port ticket was every port resident’s dream.

But that was irrelevant at this moment. Tonight I was going to get something that would make my stay a little more tolerable as well.

*****

At 2100 digital I walked into the Black Hole.

The décor wasn’t, strictly speaking, a reflection of its name. While some sections were certainly darker than others- intentionally so- a colorfully bland motif was vaguely evident. But the effect was pale and the effort fell flat, and everybody knew the decorations were secondary to function.

Drinks and business. Anything else was comet-tail. A wretched hive of scum and villainy, to be sure, but whatever you needed could be found here. For a price.

I glanced around, doing a whom’s-who, then moved toward a table of figures donning brown hooded robes. The typical cutter couldn’t tell which was who, but I wasn’t a conventional.

A hood turned in my direction. “Bright night to you, neighbor. Do you seek a higher plane?”

“Bright night to you, brother abbot,” I said politely. The sensate monks were no one to screw with. “I seek a verbal with Brother Ivan about a previously placed order.”

The monk stared for a moment as I waited. Sensate monks were the source of the best narcotic chems on the station, but they were so formal and conservative that they barely believed in starlight. Getting saucy with ‘em didn’t score credits, either.

One of the monks stood, ending the suspense. I’d already known Ivan was there, but the abbot at the table didn’t need to know that.

Ivan and I wandered away from the table, moving into one of the darker corners of the bar.

“Bright night to you, Gar,” said Ivan. “Did my last delivery meet expectations?”

“As advertised, my friend,” I said. “It kept me awake for 2 cycles, as you promised. I needed every minute.”

“Marwake is a potent stimulant, neighbor, and it does so with few side effects.”

“What side effects? I didn’t notice any.”

“That’s because you used it as instructed,” said Ivan. “There are those who use it to stay away a week or longer. That never goes well.”

“Oh?”

“Hallucinations are the typical result,” he said, “typically followed by a further breakdown of faculties. For the first week, anyway. After that-“

I held up my hand. “Apologies, brother, but I have no digital for this. My clock is short tonight.”

“As you will, neighbor. How may I serve?”

“Street chant suggests you have a new product I might be interested in.”

Since he was wearing a hood, I couldn’t see his expression, but he somehow managed to convey surprise.

*****

That business concluded, I moved further inside the Black Hole. I soon came to a table with an attractive redhead. She wore loose-fitting leather pants and a sleeveless top that showed off her muscular shoulders and arms. Attractive women sitting by themselves in the Black Hole were usually automatic targets, but not this one. Everybody knew better than to test their luck with Vette. She was a merc and believed it was better to be good than lucky. The ones trying to get lucky with Vette usually found themselves at the med-unit.

I gave her a nod. “Evenin’, Vette. What’s the chant?”

She lifted a glass at me. “Hey, Gar. Just walkin’ and talkin’.”

She hadn’t thrown anything at me or suggested I self-procreate. Professional courtesy.

Vette used her glass to indicate the empty chair at her table. I sat down.

“I think,” she said, “that I’m going to get me some of Catamon’s thrall tonight.”

“The new one?” I said, suddenly interested but speaking casual.

Vette took a swallow of her drink. “Yep. No one’s tapped that yet. She’s good and Catamon’s getting cocky. Think I’m gonna get a piece of that and a stack of credits as well.”

“Be careful,” I said. “Street chant says this one likes to leave her mark on conquests. She doesn’t just win, she embarrasses her conquests.”

“Aww, your concern is touching. You jealous?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve been there.”

“Watch it, gonk,” she said, though without real heat. “You just got lucky with that royal flush. I’ll admit you weren’t bad, though. For a man.”

I felt like I was tiptoeing through a minefield. “Props to you for honoring the marker. Figured you to tell me to self-procreate.”

She took a swallow, then grinned. “Thought crossed my mind. But I ain’t javascripted that way. Word’s gotta count for something. Don’t get over yourself, though. You were good, but nothin’ to drop the ladies for.”

Vette finished her drink, then slammed both hands on the table and stood. “All right, time to delta. Gonna bang me some thrall.”

*****

Catamon smiled as Vette approached his table.

He was a large man, well over six feet, with green skin so dark it was bordered on emerald. Dressed in gold and silver robes, his presence radiated beyond the table. He was covered in gold and jewels. That wasn’t what made his wealth obvious, however. The true sign of his position was the woman sitting next to him.

Catamon was a Taur from Tau Ceti-D. An ability specific to Taurs was being able to claim and bond with Taurettes. This bond turned the Taurette into a thrall completely under the control of the Taur. By all accounts it was a very intimate, powerful, erotic state. The Taur could claim only one thrall and it wasn’t always voluntary. The Taur controlled all aspects of the thrall at that point. But the bond between them was powerful and they could amplify each other in ways that were still unknown to non-Taurs.

Catamon looked up as Vette approached. A large bowl sat in front of him, with piles of credits stacked within. When he spoke, his voice was a deep baritone.

“You bring honor to my table, Vette,” said Catamon, “and a certain level of erotic ability. Your last visit left my poor Wenni exhausted. She was days recovering from servicing you.”

Vette smiled. “What can I say? I work hard, I play hard. Now how ‘bout you screamsheet the stats on your new joytoy?”

Catamon smiled. “Were we on my world, Vette, referencing my vassal in such a matter would result in a challenge that would leave you with a collar on your neck, a true joytoy on my chain, servicing me as I wish.”

Vette shrugged. “You mean you’d try to put a collar on me. But that’s no bones here, ‘cuz we’re not on your world. Just give me the figure so I can get busy putting your girl to work.”

Catamon nodded. “Very well. Xarissa, stand.”

At his words, the woman next to him stood. Thralls from Tau Ceti were typically blue or green skinned. On rare occasions, red or orange skinned vassals might be seen. On extremely rare occasions, a white albino skinned thrall might be seen, although it had been years since one was seen here on Port Kepler. In this case, however, Xarissa was a black skinned thrall.

Not just black-skinned, actually. Her skin was so black that it verged on ebony. Her stark white hair was long and hung down to her exotically rounded ebony bottom. Her impossible curves were so erotically charged that her sensuality radiated beyond the table to the surrounding patrons.

Vette took out a number of credits and dropped them in the bowl. Catamon nodded and then spoke again in that deep baritone.

“For the benefit of all observers,” he said, “what is happening is that this young lady Vette has just made a wager on her ability to overwhelm my thrall Xarissa. What will happen is this. I will open a psionic connection between them. They will then psionically battle each other. Whichever one is victorious will then have control of the loser for approximately three hours. And should Vette win, she will also receive back her bet and an equal amount from me. Meaning that if Vette is victor, she will win both money and have the use of my thrall for the next three hours. Should she lose, however, Xarissa will have control of her for the next three hours.”

Catamon turned to Vette then. “I wish you no ill, of course, but that will prove most interesting. Most recently my Xarissa has taken to piercing the nipples of her female conquests with Taurian steel.”

Ouch. Taurian steel was the diamond of metals. There was no known way of cutting through it without travelling to Tau Ceti. It was essentially a permanent piercing.

Vette nodded her understanding. Her confidence was impressive.

They faced each other across the table. Catamon said, “I’m opening the connection…

…now.”

A small crowd had gathered now. That happened often here at the Black Hole and it was usually due to games of chance. This was no different.

For long seconds, nothing seemed to happen. Vette and Xarissa stared at each other, neither blinking. Vette right eyelid flickered and there was a murmur amongst the crowd. One of Xarissa’s bare shoulders moved then, jerking up.

Sweat was breaking out on Vette’s forehead now, but she showed almost no other sign of difficulty. Xarissa appeared to be almost relaxed.

I pulled my glance away from the tension of the table and took a viddy at Catamon. Suddenly I knew what he was doing.

Vette’s face still remained calm. Too calm. And then I knew why. She had lost.

Xarissa smiled and crooked her finger at Vette. Vette walked around the table and stood in front of the collared Xarissa.

“Be a good girl,” said Xarissa in a throaty voice, “and take off your top.”

And just like that, Vette was topless at the Black Hole.

Xarissa began kissing Vette then, running her hands over Vette’s body as if she owned it. And she did. And when she pushed Vette to her knees and told the redhead to lick her pussy, the crowd cheered.

I could have intervened sooner, most like, but I opted not to. I wanted Xarissa hot for the next act, so I chose to let the scene play out. Besides, while Vette may have preferred the top position, being the down for an exotic beauty like Xarissa wasn’t the worst thing.

The crowd had cheered itself hoarse by the time Xarissa lifted the enthralled Vette to her feet, using only her finger under the redhead’s chin. Vette’s nipples were rigid at this point and I suddenly intuited what was about to happen. The thrall was about to pierce Vette’s nipples.

“Before you go that route,” I said, “perhaps we could have a bit of verbal?”

Catamon rumbled. “You’ll verbal with me, Gar, and none other.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “This is such a fine digital that I’m inspired to throw my helmet in the quad. Before you let your joytoy javascript Vette’s nipples for perm, perhaps we could match first? I’ll put up double the funds with the conditional that if I win, Vette will be spliced to me as well for the remainder of her clock. Savvy?”

Catamon bristled at my use of ‘joytoy’, as I’d hoped. He should have known better.

“So if you’re victorious over Xarissa, you will have both she and Vette?”

“Affirmative,” I nodded.

“And if Xarissa wins, she will have both you and Vette simultaneously?”

“Also affirmative.”

“Very well,” said Catamon. “I agree to your wager. Place the credits in the bowl.”

I did so, then turned around to face Xarissa. To my surprise, her eyes were already locked on mine.

“When I defeat you, Gar, I want you to know one thing,” she said. “I will continue to use Vette’s body for my pleasure. You, on the other hand, will be pleasing Catamon. You will be pleasing him in every way you can. And after marking Vette as my conquest, you too will be marked.”

I smiled. “I guess that gives me something to look forward to, doesn’t it? Shall we begin?”

Catamon didn’t even give me a chance to get ready. He immediately opened the psi-link between us.

I nearly blinked. The sudden intensity of Xarissa’s psionic pressure against my mind caught me by surprise. Had this been a typical match, I might have lost it right then.

The problem for Catamon and Xarissa, however, was that this wasn’t a typical match and I wasn’t strictly playing by the rules. But I was fine with that, because neither were they.

I had realized that Catamon was using his psychic connection with Xarissa to boost his thrall whenever she got in trouble. So Vette hadn’t been just battling Xarissa. She’d been battling Catamon as well. And it’d worked for them, which was why Vette was standing there, her eyes glazed, Xarissa’s juices on her cheeks and chin.

Vette wasn’t javascripted to cheat. I, on the other hand, had no such reservations, as the willpower chem in my system- the one I’d acquired from Brother Ivan earlier- attested. And with my psionic willpower boosted, not only was I able to circumvent Xarissa’s defenses instantly, I was able to follow the psionic link from Xarissa’s brainpan to Catamon’s, catching them both almost simultaneously.

Catamon and Xarissa were finding out what happens when one attempts to take on a jacked-up mindwire in a psionic knife fight.

So was Vette, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t mind.

The crowd around Catamon’s table was murmuring now, beginning to realize what had just happened. My street cred had amplified without losing clock. A profitable night. And looking at Xarissa and Vette, a fun night. At least for the next three hours.

A fun night for me. A typical night for the Black Hole.

END

#mind-control #sci-fi #mindwire

23 notes · View notes

aegon · 2 years

Note

Sansa : calls arya horseface, mocks her skills, calls her ugly, hairy stupid, wishes for arya to die, tells arya everything is her fault, rubs her friends dreath in her face, makes her cry repeatedly, does her best to shatter aryas self esteem at every step.

Jonsas, and so called neutrals who are secretely sansa stans :

Its not her fault. Its westerosi society's fault. Its her parents fault. Its septa mordanes fault. Everyone but sansas fault.

As if ned and cat had told told sansa to treat arya like this. Or according to westerosi society every ideal kady must bully her little sister to death.

Istg nothing mskes my blood boil more than justification of sansas behavior towards arya. And the people who say dont pit sister against sister are the ones doing it.

And they only talk about it to justify sansa. From her perspective. Never ever from aryas perspective. They only focas on how sansa feels, how she is changed now, how she will do better now to she has never done any wrong?

They never talk about how arya feels. Imagine being on the receiving end of this. Being mocked for something which is not in your control like looks. Being told repeatedly that everything bad that happens is your fault. That even the murder of your friend whom you tried to defend is your fault. That you should die. Imagine how this child feels. The fandom has no empathy for this little girl.

This is labeled as 'normal sibling relationship' by them.

And what really shows their hypocrisy are these same people are up in arms against Margeary for not inviting sansa to tea parties like thats a grave crime. But not anything sansa did to arya, thats normal.

They are up in arms against robb for being inconsiderate to sansa and straight up call ned stark a villain, a villain! For what? For the crime of not worshipping sansa enough. (i even saw jonsas saying that robbs and neds death is justice. Seriously sansa stans are the worst scum in the fandom.)

Every minor inconvenience to sansa is a crime but arya should take everything and even forgive sansa and its 'normal sibling relationship' no fuck you sansa stansa, its not. Sorry to dump this on you. But this fandoms hypocrisy gets on my nerves sometimes.

it’s cool fam, the fandom can be incredibly frustrating and having an outlet with someone makes it a little easier to bear.

I’ve always found it strange that even though arya is missing, presumed dead by many, sansa still finds it in herself to call her unsatisfactory as a sister when compared to myrcella and doesn’t miss her nearly as much as the other starklings. Like…you’d think there would be a moment of reflection that maybe, just maybe, having your family torn apart would make one realise that their sister wasn’t actually that bad because you shared the same blood and the same love and the same home. I guess not?

But in a way, that’s one of the things I like about book!sansa’s character. There’s clearly a complexity in that she’s framed as the archetype of a lady, and ladies are always courteous and good-natured, and sansa does exhibit those qualities, but she’s incapable of showing them to her own sister and that erodes the image of the perfect lady and makes her a far more grey character who’s capable of such casual cruelty and coldness as she is courtesy.

But sansa being a grey character with flaws isn’t something many of her fans want, even though that’s what makes asoiaf such a compelling series. Like you said, every slight against her is a crime. Every flaw is actually a strength. Every character except sansa has to rise above their weakness and get on her level, because she’s so amazing and flawless and character development only matters if it means she gets to be queen in the end. Barf. What shitty writing.

They’ve taken a three-dimensional character and made her a dull, two-dimensional stereotype and it’s such a butchery of literature. And so so boring like gross, go read some YA novels.

#anonymous #answered #fandom wank #long post #anti sansa stans

37 notes · View notes

somedayillbepeterpan · 1 year

Text

just almost a week had gone by but i am missing Chiyeol and Haengseon so much

my final finale thoughts after reflecting over the whole series for a week.

i finally realised what i was frustrated with after mulling over all the different arcs over and over.

reading some of the reviews on this tag, i feel like the most common complaint was that the murder plot wasn't necessary in which i disagree with after simulating what the whole story would have been like if mr. ji wasn't part of the whole plot. or mr. ji didn't do the things he's done.

i came to the conclusion that the drama would have been good but wouldn't get the same sensation that it is now if not for the murder plot.

read below if interested.

one of my previous posts was me wondering if this whole story started with the murder plot-- meaning, did the writer start developing this drama revolving around mr. ji's character? i've since learned from the writer's post-drama interview that she actually started with the "star teachers" of the academies which made sense given that this drama was meant to be a commentary on the korean educational system.

if coming off that premise, then mr. ji's story was vital to the story. the problem lied on the parallels to his story. the whole thing was a precarious balancing act from start to finish and i think the writing team bit off more than they can chew.

it was very evident that they were seesawing from wanting to make a statement and making a slice-of-life drama while also highlighting a romantic-comedy. given the writer's past works, she does have a penchant for serial killer plot lines (see oh my ghost). the genre whiplash was so powerful that i learned what that expression meant cause i needed to name the dizziness i was feeling while watching episodes 12-15.

the only thing that was constant in the whole story was the one they wrapped so quickly and disappointingly which was ji dong hui and his descent to madness. his story was the crux of the commentary. the students' arcs (sua, seungjae, and haeyi) wouldn't have been any different from every other usual kdrama student plot line if not for the parallel to jeong seongyeon/ji dong hui and suyeon's story.

if not for ji dong hui, there wouldn't be a choi chiyeol, the star math teacher. his manipulation, corralling chiyeol into what he thought was what a "trusted adult" should be, and his creepy worship, made choi chiyeol, as a character, three dimensional.

the story wanted a hero, a villain, and a damsel-in-distress. ji donghui was the villain and he needed a hero opposite him which we were made to believe is choi chiyeol. now comes nam haengseon, a fierce dedicated woman whose goal in life was to give her pseudo-daughter and brother a life they deserved. she's fearless, she's unashamed, and she's a forgiver who never held a grudge on anyone not even her horrible sister. she was the hero this story deserved and the story needed her to clash and face the villain, ji donghui.

out comes choi chiyeol, who i discovered is appropriately called a wet pathetic cat of a man, the damsel-in-distress, who had a huge flaw. see, while i adore choi chiyeol (and will die for this fragile man), he was the one main character who had no clear "motivation".

take out the wealth, take out the psychological trauma, and most of all, take out ji donghui/jeong seongyeon, and you'll find just another teacher who is exhausted with the system and but is not doing anything about it. after simulating the whole story and taking out each of the character arcs, you could have taken choi chiyeol (and minus the "romance" part of the story), and you would have a more linear story enough to present a reflection of how the current educational system destroys the health-- the particularly the mental health-- of young students and its repercussions to adulthood.

while watching chiyeol and haengseon's universes collide, the numerous plots/character arcs became more and more far apart from each other. it also suffered from having too many characters who started another thread to an already convoluted plot. like, i love geonhu's character but why introduce him to add a love triangle in nam haeyi's story line when she's already as three-dimensional as a character as she already was? another thing, i thought that the characters of seungjae's mom, dad, and brother were all horribly misused. i also thought that there were too many "scandals" that they tackled. i understand that that was supposed to be the central theme to the story but they have seesawed from the premise throughout the show.

if felt like some episodes restarted the whole plot causing the genre whiplash.

putting a red herring made the murder plot longer than it should have been and having such a short confrontation scene between chiyeol and donghui at the end left the resolution of the plot unsatisfactory. having such a small trial scene about the whole thing felt like that particular plot was unresolved.

i thought the murder plot could've been solved maybe between episodes 9-11 and then we could've seen chiyeol go through the grief which haengseon and her whole family supporting him, getting the experience of a family he deserved since he didn't have anyone when he was grieving his dad's or suyeon's deaths.

having already been so invested in the characters of choi chiyeol, nam haengseon, and her whole family, i think the plot wouldn't have suffered so much seesawing if it focused mainly on the four people and their collided universes. i honestly felt like chiyeol's character was suffering a character change when donghui died that he felt a little irrelevant to the last arc of the show. i would have loved more exploration into chiyeol and haengseon's parent mode.

the most unnecessary plot of all, which i think we all agree, was haeyi's mom coming out of the blue with such weak motivation. she was an end to a mean-- for us to have that one last pity for this poor young girl and root for her to have the family she deserved. which we already knew. we know her character well enough that she was never going to leave haengseon and jaewoo.

crash course in romance is now part of my all time favorite kdramas (i don't watch a lot anyway) and will watch it over and over. i don't think i will get over the frustration of the genre whiplash. rewatching some of the episodes these past few days really made me realise that i wished they just focused more on chiyeol and haengseon. i mostly frustrated that haengseon never told chiyeol about the ep. 10 kiss so i am now trying to write a fanfiction about it.

i believe they hit a jackpot in getting jeon doyeon and jung kyungho for this drama. their chemistry might not be sizzling hot (e.g. binjin couple or songsong couple) but it was powerful enough to get ccir a place in korean entertainment industry.

after all of this rant, i still say thank you to the whole crash course in romance team.

i'll give it a grade of b minus if i'm allowed to.

#see what i did there #i gave it a grade #crash course in romance #jung kyung ho #choi chi yeol #일타 스캔들 #nam haeng seon #jeon do yeon #ccir #kdrama #tvn drama

5 notes · View notes

exhibitionfairy · 1 month

Text

Lydia Corbett, Sylvette David: A Retrospective

Lydia Corbett (née Sylvette David) is someone whose image as Pablo Picasso’s ‘Girl with the Ponytail’ will have at points, preceded her. But, her retrospective currently on show at Penwith Gallery in St. Ives, shows that she is beyond a muse. Lydia is herself an artist with her own vision of the world, a vision that informs the paintbrush in each stroke. Lydia is her own muse. When you look at her work, you put on her shoes, you obtain her vision, and just for a moment, are transported into a moment in time captured within a frame.

The exhibition opened on March 8th, which is also International Women’s Day. I thought this was very appropriate for this show, as themes of womanhood, motherhood, and reclamation of one’s image are represented throughout the chosen works. Made famous by a man’s representation of her, it is refreshing to see how Sylvette sees the world, and sees herself, after years as the object of other’s interpretation.

Perhaps an overused word, but I found the exhibition deeply inspiring. Walking through this gallery space with a huge array of different works in different mediums (the pieces here being only a fraction of what Lydia has created in her life, such the amazingly prolific artist that she is) I found myself reconnecting with a deep feeling that I think all humans have within them; which is to create, and to make art. To take the world that you know around you, and translate it through your lived experiences onto canvas, pottery, paper or board – anything you have to hand. The final creation itself becomes can become a by-product of the action of expression in search of understanding and grasping the world around you.

The influence from Picasso in Lydia’s work is clear; the dual profiles and bold colours featured in works like Sylvette in Toby’s chair, La Galloise, Vallauris, 1954, and the arrangement and connection between different objects and faces seen for example in Dance, Dance, Wherever You May Be and Memory of Picasso is characteristic of many of his works, and pays tribute to someone who became a very important part of Sylvette’s life. However, the difference in this work is that the muse herself is the one with the paintbrush, herself alone being in control of how she is presented. Whilst she has in some works painted herself in a similar way to how Picasso did, there is a different ambience to the work. Here, we get to see the Girl with the Ponytail as she sees herself, and as what’s important to her; her dreams, hopes, and values.

From left to right: Sylvette in Toby’s chair, La Galloise, Vallauris, 1954, Dance, Wherever You May Be and Memory of Picasso

A personal highlight of the arrangement of this exhibition is when fist approaching the space, you are unavoidably greeted by Lydia herself in 7.24 Sylvette and child, a comparably small and at first unassuming bronze piece compared to the works that lay beyond her, but she is placed front and centre of the exhibition as a greeting into the space. Here, Sylvette is freed from the canvas and becomes three-dimensional, with a baby in her arms, reminding the viewer of her role as a mother and woman, as well as artist and muse. This is who she is, and she is the artist.

7.24 Sylvette and child

The gallery space itself that is temporarily home to Lydia’s works is a space that encourages reflection, emphasised by the architecture that lends to a church-like feeling within the space. Along the left wall as you first walk in are four alcoves, each with their own themes and connections between the works within them. The colour harmony in each separate alcove radiates through into the space, almost like stained glass that you would find in grand cathedrals. The act of looking into a smaller separate space with its own distinct arrangement of pieces thoughtfully and purposefully put together highlights the vast amount of work and all the different themes and motifs that Lydia has explored in her prolific career, like mini exhibitions within the wider show. As I said before, whilst the amount of works in this retrospective are only a small portion of everything Lydia has created, this exhibition is almost like a microcosm of an entire lifetime of work. You can see pottery, watercolours, portraits and still-lifes all within one room in one exhibition, and Lydia and Sylvette’s essence is woven through all of them unquestionably.

I have been three times so far to see this retrospective, and each time I have noticed something new, and felt something different. It speaks volumes to the depth of skill an artist has when the same pieces in the same arrangement can be seen differently with each new visit. By the third visit I was seeing pieces that I thought were new, but from looking back at my photos I realise they were there all along. I am excited to see what I discover the next time I go and see it.

I was very fortunate to have the pleasure of meeting Lydia and her daughter Isabel Coulton, herself also an established artist and author. Their immense generosity and kindness was beyond encouraging to me as a budding writer and creative. Just being in the company of these wise, experienced and talented women sent a shockwave of motivation through me, and is the reason I am typing these words. The exhibition itself is deeply stimulating and planted this seed of incentive within me that only flourished upon meeting the wonderful woman behind it all. After this experience, all I want to do is create, and I encourage all those who may also struggle with motivation, or with finding the answers to questions, to go and immerse yourself in this exhibition; all of the answers to your questions are within these works.

Lydia Corbett, Sylvette David: A Retrospective is on display at Penwith Gallery until Saturday, April 6th.

#Sylvette David #Lydia Corbett #Pablo Picasso #Picasso #exhibition

0 notes

inthiseternalmoment · 8 months

Text

The Patio and JK Ultra’s Ayahuasca Experience

Closing out this Labor Day weekend with a relaxing 333 patio picnic and 3 YouTube videos from JK Ultra on her Ayahuasca experience.

9/4/2023

The act of writing anything is pure creation. Yes, it’s a smaller version of creation when compared to the act of living a life, but there are levels to this.

“Levels of perception,” as I had coined for myself the last time I was high 😶‍🌫️😮‍💨

With this journaling practice, I am actively tapping into the creation field around me – maybe that’s the Unified Field or morphogenetic field of everything around me that Ashayana Deane keeps referencing – and pulling down information from a higher frequency vibration (as a thought form) and into a lower frequency vibration (a journal entry in the 3D).

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m understanding more and more information about the world around me, dimensionality, spirituality, and the ways in which creation mechanics work. That was probably redundant – it’s all one and the same 🤭

Alongside the above “understandings,” I also feel like my body is incredibly exhausted, verging on sick, as if to tell me to slow down and not work myself too hard doing.

We took today easy and ordered food to have on the patio. Yet again, I was reminded of childhood as I sat and watched the clouds go by. I saw butterflies, flies, dragonflies, bees, and a spider. Even in my fatigued state, I felt this sense of one-ness with all of these creatures. I understood that they exist in the same way that I do, so there was no need to fear them or shoo them away. Aprille and I even talked about how maybe they were drawn to us precisely because we wouldn’t do those things.

The food and the view 😚

Later that night, we watched the 3 videos that JK Ultra (AKA Jen) put out about her ayahuasca experience, and it was incredible. Just like with a few other spiritual “influencers,” I’ve been following Jen since my early awakening days a couple years back. To see her journey from where I picked up with her to where she is now is inspiring.

I knew I liked her energy back when I myself was first getting into David Ike’s work, and now to see her truly understand the idea of Oneness that we all are and share her take on it so eloquently has been such a gift. We’re all simultaneously transmitters and receivers of information (as frequency) which is why it’s so clear to me that when I follow a creator from year to year, it’s because some aspect of my spiritual journey mirrors theirs.

Back when I first encountered her, I did not have this same understanding of oneness that she has now – in other words, I wouldn’t have been able to fully receive this information until right now, with all the work that I’ve done.

I would say the exact same for Britney Bento. Watching her go from dowsing rods with her grandfather to now direct channeling of her guides and spirit (in a very open and vulnerable way) has been so rewarding for me because it reflects back to me why I resonated with these creators. She has expressed how any concern people have about her new content is purely a reflection/projection (which is one and the same) of their own limiting beliefs, and I agree 100%.

I don’t think I could have possibly accrued all this knowledge (AKA accreted all this frequency) in just 1 day/week/month/year because it would have both overloaded me and I wouldn’t have understood 99% of it.

That’s why awakening is a journey, and not a destination.

At this speed I’ve been going, I’m so excited to see what more I can learn about life by the end of the month/year.

I’m sure everything will look very different, and I welcome that 😋

Also, life update: I booked a tattoo consultation with Felipe de Sousa, so this Thursday I’ll be discussing the idea for my last three tattoos on my neck with him! I’m really happy that this is all coming together so perfectly. Looks like I’ll be traveling to Japan with a turtleneck now 🥴

#personal #september #2023 #9/4/2023 #27

0 notes

nevermindirah · 3 years

Note

Do you have any thoughts on the use of AAVE for Nile (or lack thereof) in TOG fanfiction? I've been reading some Book of Nile fic and some writers seem to write her as a Millennial™ (using words like "fave" and "woke") but never acknowledge her Blackness in her patterns of speech. I know we don't see her use as much AAVE in the films, but I would argue she's in situations where code-switching would be valued (first in a "professional" environment in the army, then around a group of non-Black strangers).

Hi anon! I have many thoughts on this and I'm honored you asked me! But I should start by saying I'm white and any thoughts Black fans and especially Black American fans have on this that they want to share would be beyond lovely. (I'm not gonna tag anybody bc that feels rude but please add onto this post if any of y'all see this and want to!)

The main reason I personally avoid AAVE for Nile in my own fics is because I'm not Black. But Nile-centric fics by Black writers tend to avoid using much of it too, at least from what I've noticed/understood, and my guess is it's largely for the reason you mention, that she's in situations that encourage code-switching.

In movie canon Nile is highly competent at tailoring her language to each situation she finds herself in. This fantastic linguistics analysis meta shows how skillfully Nile chooses her vocabulary and grammar to meet her goals with different conversation partners in different contexts. In comics canon Nile had a bunch of different civilian jobs before joining the Marines, so she would've had experience code-switching in the ways that made sense for all those different contexts as well as the Marines and her family and high school and wherever else she spent her time before we met her. And now she's spending her time with a handful of immortals none of whom are native English speakers and a fellow Black American but one with a Queen's English UK accent whose professional experience is in the CIA where high-status code-switching is often an absolute must for success or even survival.

Fics featuring Nile are charged with extrapolating from that to how it might show up in her use of language that she's coping with a traumatic separation from her family and her career and pretty much everything she's ever known and now she needs to be able to make herself understood to people who seem to care about her and each other but are super duper in crisis, three (soon to be four) of whom predate Modern English entirely and the only one who's anywhere near her contemporary she's not supposed to talk to for a century. All of these people are telling her that pretty much any contact with any mortals poses an existential threat to her and the rest of the group. How the FUCK is she supposed to cope with that, like, generally? And would it be a more effective way for her to cope if she talked to Andy Joe and Nicky using the speech patterns that she used to use with her mom and brother, to at least retain that part of her identity even if it means having to do a lot of explaining, or would it meet her needs better to prioritize Andy Joe and Nicky understanding what she means with her words over using the particular words and grammar forms she used with her family?

I've seen several fics, both Nile-centric / BoN and otherwise, explore this a little bit in how/whether Nile uses Millennial™ speak. It's often a theme in Nile texting Booker despite the exile because of the popular headcanon that he as The Tech Guy is the only other immortal who understands memes. But Nile's much-younger-than-Booker mom probably uses Boomer and/or Gen X memes and Andy has been adapting to new communication styles for forever as evidenced by her canon high level of fluency with standard-American-accented English.

Which brings us back to people avoiding AAVE because they're not Black and they don't want to make mistakes (or they're not Black and they don't want to get yelled at for making mistakes, though I think many people overestimate how much they'll get yelled at while underestimating how much these mistakes can hurt). I can imagine some Black fans hold back from using much AAVE in fic because they don't want to share in-group stuff with white people who are likely to then adopt and ruin it, as white people so often do with Black cultural stuff. Some links about this including a great Khadija Mbowe video. I'm saying this gently, anon, because you might not know: woke, an example you cited as Millennial™ speak, is AAVE, and that's gotten erased by so many white people appropriating it and using it incorrectly online.

And also there's the part where fandom is a hobby and you never know when you're reading a fic that's the very first thing someone's ever written outside of a school assignment. This cultural considerations of language shit takes a level of effort and skill that not everybody puts into every fic, or even could if they wanted to because they haven't had time to build their skills yet. It's definitely easier for non-Black fans to project our millennial feels onto Nile than to do the layers of research and self-reflection it requires to depict what Blackness might mean to Nile, and it's not surprising that often people sharing their hobby creations on the internet have gone the easier route. There's not even necessarily shame in doing what's easier. It's just frustrating and often hurtful when structural white supremacy means that 3-dimensional Black characters are rare in media and thoughtful explorations of them in fandom are seen by the majority of fans as not-easy to make and therefore Nile Freeman, the main character in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood, has the least fic and meta and art made about her of our 5 main immortals.

I've been active in different fandoms off and on for twenty years and I barely managed to write 5,000 words about Sam Wilson across multiple different fics in the 7 years since I fell in love with him. There's an alchemy to which characters we connect with, and on top of that which characters we connect with in a way that causes us to create stuff about them. Something about Nile Freeman finally tipped me over the edge from a voracious reader to a voracious writer. It's not for me to judge which characters speak to other individuals to the level of creating content about them, but I do think it's important for us to notice, and then work to fight, the pattern where across this fandom as a whole Nile gets way less content, and way less depth in so much of the content that's in theory about her, than any of these other characters.

Anyway, back to language. My two long fics feature Nile with several Black friends — Copley and OCs and cameos from other media — but all of those characters except Alec Hardison from Leverage aren't American. It's very possible I'm guilty of stereotyping Black British speech patterns in I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore. I watched hours and hours of Black haircare YouTube videos in the research for that fic and I modeled my OCs' speech patterns on what I heard from some of those YouTubers as well as what I've heard people like John Boyega and Idris Elba saying in interviews, but the thing about doing your best is you still might fuck up.

I'm slowly making progress on my WIP where Nile and Sam Wilson are cousins, and what ways of talking with a family member might be authentic for Nile is a major question I need to figure out. For that, I'm largely modeling my writing choices on how I hear my Black friends and colleagues talking to each other. I haven't overheard colleagues talking in an office in a long-ass time, but back when that was a thing, I remember seeing a ton of nuance in the different ways many of my Black colleagues would talk to each other. Different people have different personalities! And backgrounds! And priorities! A few jobs ago my department was about 1/3 Black and we worked closely with Obama administration staff many of whom were Black and there was SO MUCH VARIETY in how Black people talked to each other, about work and workplace-appropriate personal stuff, where I and other white coworkers could hear. There are a few work friends in particular who I have in my head when I'm trying to imagine how Sam and Nile might talk to each other. From the outside looking in, God DAMN is shit complicated, intellectually and interpersonally and spiritually, for Black people who are devoting their professional lives to public service in the United States.

One more aspect of this that I have big thoughts on but I need to take extra care in talking about is the idea of acknowledging Nile's Blackness in her patterns of speech. There's no one right way to be Black, and Nile's a fictional character created by a white dude but there are plenty of real-life Black Americans who don't use much or even any AAVE, for reasons that are complicated because of white supremacy. (Highly highly recommend this video by Shanspeare on the harms of the Oreo stereotype.)

Something that's not the same but has enough similarity that I think it's worth talking about is my personal experience with authenticity and American Jewish speech patterns. My Jewish family members don't talk like they're in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I've known lots of people who do talk that way (or the millennial version of it), some of whom have questioned my Jewishness because I don't talk that way. That hurts me. Sometimes when another Jew tells me some shit like "I've never heard a Jew say y'all'd've," I can respond with "well now you have asshole, bless your Yankee-ass heart," because the myth of Dixie is a racist lie but I will totally call white Northerners Yankees when they're being shitty to me for being Southern, and this particular Jew fucking revels in using "bless your heart" with maximum polite aggression, especially with said Yankees. But sometimes I don't have it in me to say anything and it just quietly hurts having an important part of me disbelieved by someone who shares that important part of me. The sting isn't quite the same when non-Jews disbelieve or discount my Jewishness, but that hurts too.

Who counts as authentically Jewish is a messy in-group conversation and it doesn't really make sense to explain it all here. Who counts as authentically Jewish is a matter of legal status for immigration, citizenship, and civil rights in Israel, and it's my number 2 reason after horrific treatment of Palestinians that I'm antizionist. But outside that extremely high-stakes legal situation, it can just feel really shitty to not be recognized as One Of Us, especially by your own people.

It can also feel really shitty to be The Only One of Your Kind in a group, even if that group is an immortal chosen family who all loves each other dearly. Sometimes especially in a situation like that where you know those people love you but there are certain things they don't get about you and will never quite be able to. I'm definitely projecting at least a little bit of my "lonely Jew who will be alone again for yet another Jewish holiday" stuff onto Nile when at the end of I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore she's thinking about being the only Black immortal and moving away from the community she'd built with a mostly-Black group of mortals in that fic. Maybe that tracks, or maybe that's fucked up of me.

Basically, this got very long but it's complicated, writing about experiences that aren't your own takes skill which in turn takes time and practice to build, writing about experiences not your own that our society maligns can cause a lot of harm if done badly, it can also cause a lot of harm when a large enough portion of a fandom just decides to nope out of something that's difficult and risky because then there's just not much content about a character who deserves just a shit ton of loving and nuanced content, people are individuals and two people who come from the exact same cultural context might show that influence in all kinds of different ways, identity is complicated, language is complicated, writing is hard, and empathy and humility and doing our best aren't a guarantee of avoiding harm but they do go a long way in helping people create thoughtful content about a character as awesome and powerful and kind and messy and scared and curious and WORTHY as Nile Freeman.

#nile freeman #linguistics #TOG POC Love Fest #nileweek2021 #tog meta #tog #long post #mine #antiblackness #jewish things #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really want to talk about it

229 notes · View notes

j4gm · 2 years

Text

I’ve been thinking about Lumpy Space Princess today and how much I like her despite being presented as an intentionally insufferable character. Her arc is never the focus of the show, but it is nonetheless an arc, and I want to talk about it.

She obviously starts as a one dimensional teenage brat, about three years older than Finn, and on the surface she stays that way for the rest of the show. The Elements miniseries even makes a point of telling us stubborn one-dimensionality and resistance to change are her primary character traits, which is what allows her to oppose the changes brought about by the other elementals and save Ooo from a candified dystopia. But as a result, LSP shines when she is allowed to break that mould and let a little humanity seep through the gaps in the (gross purple) clouds.

I think the first time this properly happens is in Bad Timing, one of my favourite season five episodes. (I wouldn’t say Gotcha counts. It’s a good episode, but it felt more like LSP was being used as a caricature to parody the story’s own moral about inner versus outer beauty than a genuine attempt to give her depth.) In Bad Timing, after some typical dramatic shenanigans, we see a sudden shift in LSP’s presentation where she spends a good few minutes just being entirely normal. She goes to a bar, meets a nice boy she recognises from high school, makes a few goofy jokes with him, and ends up spending the night at his house. All without once freaking out or playing up the romantic tension of the situation into something scandalous, as would be her usual style. Of course, shortly after this she car-bombs the Candy Kingdom because she thinks PB is trying to steal her man, but that’s besides the point.

We see more development of LSP’s character in Be Sweet, where she projects her guilt about staying at Tree Trunks’ house and failing to properly look after Sweet P. Up until this point we’ve assumed that she chooses to sleep in the woods as some act of teen rebellion against her parents, despite the fact that she always has the option to return to Lumpy Space and live comfortably in their house. And that’s probably true. But this episode provides an alternative take; LSP stays in the woods because she doesn’t believe she deserves anything better. She is aware of her own flaws; something which we have known since her first appearance, but which has not obviously reflected in her behaviour until this revelation.

Finally we have Summer Showers, which I feel was mostly conceived to make sure every pup got at least one solo episode, but which also contains some interesting LSP stuff. In a moment of uncharacteristic sincerity, LSP describes to Viola how she enjoyed spending time on her own when she was a kid, and that she felt she could not longer do that. She feels stuck in this outgoing and abrasive personality that’s been pre-defined for her by the fact that she’s the Lumps Elemental.

So at first glance it’s true that LSP seems like a shallow brat. But the show presents plenty of evidence that she is a compassionate person with a desire to change. She is held back from doing so because her elemental nature demands stubborness and inflexibility to outside influence. LSP’s story is a tragedy, because she will never be allowed to become the person she wants to be.

#adventure time #lsp

77 notes · View notes

whentherewerebicycles · 3 years

Text

wow okay i am skipping the lingerie party lol and am instead going to just briefly jot down some thoughts before i go to sleep and wake up at 5 for my flight tomorrow morning. jesus christ i have ONE MILLION thoughts and feelings about this weekend. i want to preface this by saying that on the whole, it was a fine social experience! it was nowhere near as awkward or painful as i was expecting. or like, parts of it were painful, but it was 100% to do with my own complicated feelings about literally every part of this tradition and the wedding industry in general lol, and not anything to do with the people themselves. the other women were friendly and very welcoming, i made an event best friend who was wonderful company, and it was really fun to get to spend time with both my sister-in-law and her older sister, who was so charming and wonderful. i’m glad i came even though thinking about the $$ i spent on this trip makes me physically gag.

but okay i want to just record some THOUGHTS that maybe i will continue unpacking with some distance. i feel likeeeee okay here are my thoughts.

the social norms around femininity are just a fucking minefield and i feel like i really just gotta keep walking back the impulse to judge other women for the choices they make as they navigate around the manifold traps and snares and half-buried landmines that constitute the landscape of being a woman. like jesus christ. it’s so fucked up, it’s so fucked up, the received and socially enforced norms of femininity are just so fucked up. I think ALL THE FUCKING TIME of this margaret atwood poem i love so much, which was REALLY on my mind this weekend:

How can I teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone’s voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.

I feel like the first bit was very much on my mind throughout the weekend, but those last three lines have come to the forefront over the course of this last day, as i have tried to do some Thinking about what i observed/experienced/felt this weekend. whether or not this is what it means in the context of the poem, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it, expresses something of my complex feelings: I don’t know that I can tell the truth about femininity because I don’t know that I can see it. i am both too close to it/still emotionally entangled in it and too far from it to know which parts of it are ‘real’ and which parts are just performance.

i feel like one thing that struck me this weekend, in ways that i don’t know if i’ve noticed as much before, was that so much of the things women say to each other or do in these social contexts is performative, and they know on some level it’s a performance, but we are all going through the motions of doing and saying the expected things anyway. that has not always been clear to me. i have spent so much of my own life as a woman thinking that other women perfectly, seamlessly, naturally embodied the norms of femininity, and i was the only one (or part of a group of only ones) who couldn’t remember my lines, or kept fumbling my cues, or felt so painfully, self-consciously aware that i was playing a role that i could never deliver a convincing performance. but this weekend, after the initial social panic had passed, i started trying to get out of my own head a little bit and look for things that disproved the very strong theory i had brought into the weekend. and of course then i started seeing more and more of the little moments where women say one thing and do another, or profess one belief/conviction but then the whole corpus of their lived experiences and choices contradicts that stated belief, or whatever. and also just like, moments of pathos, where someone i had judged harshly at the beginning of the weekend offhandedly revealed something about her past that really changed my perception of her, or at least made me think like, ah god, i have to have empathy for and with this person, because i think she might be a complex person just like me, with an intricate inner life that her performance partially reveals and partially occludes from view, and agh, it sucks to have to think of people as complicated instead of as safely two-dimensional & easy to dismiss, and the reason it sucks is because then it forces you to realize that you share more with this person than you’d like to admit, and that some of your wounds are the same, even if you dealt with those wounds (the wounds of girlhood, or rather the emotional wounds that our culture inflicts upon girls, which then become tangled up in complex and painful ways with the lived experience of girlhood itself) in really different ways.

but also ugh. we are all performing gender norms but there is just something that does not feel playful at all about embodying conventional femininity. i can’t think of a better way to phrase that right now but it’s like.. the performance isn’t fun. it doesn’t seem to be fun. i don’t know that anyone here was having fun doing it, even if they were having fun being with each other. but it was like doing the intensely gendered social rituals was like, the price of admission? like it was the toll we had to pay to be together spending time in the company of other women? i don’t know man but it fucking exhausts me. like i can push myself to stretch my genuine empathy and sense of solidarity with other women much further than my knee-jerk judgmental reaction, but i can’t ever get to a place where i find any of those social rituals anything other than fucking exhausting. they feel so fucking joyless. they feel like things that many women have internalized as ‘things we must do in order to have relationships with other women.’ (please do not even get me started on how exhausting heteronormativity is i think i could write an entire other essay on how women use these bachelorette party-type rituals to spend time with their closest female friends, but the whole event is still implicitly organized around men, and these women’s male partners are still positioned as the priority in their lives, and the whole event is framed as like, a last burst of intense closeness between women before the bride is delivered over to her husband. like i KNOW that this is not how women think of it but all the RHETORIC of the bachelorette party, the little events and rituals and games, the little comments everyone makes all fucking weekend, good fucking lord, my jaw is so TENSE.)

anyway god i just AGHHHH. idk sorry this is definitely not coherent at ALL because i’m tired and still need a bit more distance/time to process some of this. i guess here is one last thing i want to register before i sleep. i am in my 30s now and i am living a life that is so, so far removed from the social world i grew up in. marriage is not a norm among my friend group, almost all of my female friends are queer women, many women i know are not partnered and have no interest in being partnered, and the friends who are in heterosexual relationships tend to be in very gender-balanced relationships or slightly nontraditional relationships where it feels like both partners have engaged in conscious reflection about what they want their relationship to look/feel like. also i now date women, am out as a lesbian, and spend most of my time teaching/working with queer- and trans/nonbinary-identified kids.

so like, the world i live in now is just so different from the world i grew up in. and sometimes it is easy for me to kind of downplay the intensity of my own gender distress as a teen and young adult, or to sort of - act like it was a phase in my life that had much more to do with me than with the social environment i lived in. i don’t mean ‘phase’ in a dismissive ‘those feelings weren’t real’ kind way, but more like, ‘oh that was just part of the normal growing pains of figuring out who you are and what kind of person you want to be as an adult - everybody pretty much goes through some version of that.’ it’s true that everyone DOES go through some version of that, as just like, part of the process of individuation in that age range. but also like. idk man. being back in this environment - straight white women from the midwest and south, all engaging in the rituals of heterosexual white femininity - was just so intense and so MUCH, and it brought back a flood of feelings and visceral memories that i feel like i will need to spend some time sorting through over the next few weeks. like, what i experienced back then really WAS gender distress, and it was so, so distressing. i spent the years from age 11ish to 24ish existing with this constant lowgrade baseline feeling of wanting to claw my own fucking skin off because my own gendered body felt like such a prison, and i sometimes felt like i literally wanted to destroy my own body because i could not yet conceive of an alternative to inhabiting that body or playing the role that had been handed down to me. until i started reading queer memoirs and inhaling lesbian media and (especially) reading about queer femme identities, i literally did not have an image or any kind of felt sense of what another way of inhabiting my own body might look/feel like. i literally could not imagine it!!!

and that is why the distress feels so distressing, and becomes internalized in such violent ways, i think. because it’s the blind, mindless panic of a trapped and wounded animal. except that you lack any real understanding of the larger social forces at work, or any language with which to describe or conceptualize what social norms are or how they’re enforced. so in your mind, the only thing you can see wounding you is your own gendered body, or the way that gendered body is socially 'read’ by others. and that is why you want to claw your own fucking skin off, just literally dig your nails into your own flesh and claw it the fuck off. because you can’t see a norm, but you can see your gendered body, and you can see the ways that it causes other people to react to you, or treat you, or hold you to a certain set of expectations, and so in your mind you are like: this must be destroyed. in your mind you are like, the only way out is to get out of this fucking body, but that’s impossible, surely, you can’t get out of your own body, so you have to settle for starving it and self-harming it and ruthlessly punishing it in a thousand terrible ways, because you might not be able to leave your girl’s body behind, but you can make it suffer and pay for what it’s done to you.

i am old enough now, and have spent enough time thinking and writing about those feelings, to identify them when they arise again, and to get the necessary distance from them so that i can say, what i want to destroy are the norms themselves, and the distress they cause, and not the body that has done nothing to me but be me. so i am not quite as sucked under as i used to be. but i think that there is something about the violence and intensity of those feelings that i forget sometimes, or misremember with age and distance. it’s easy to be a little bit patronizing to my younger self (or by extension to my younger students sometimes), because i now live in a social world that is largely arranged in ways that minimize rather than intensify or amplify gender distress. but when you have no choice in how to arrange your life, and no language with which to understand what is happening to you or what you are experiencing, and no frame of reference to help you understand that this is a period in your life and not forever, and no models you can look to in order to discover alternative ways of inhabiting your body or arranging your life... my god, that’s quite different from being an adult with a wide range of experiences and with much greater autonomy over your own body and life. anyway idk i need to keep thinking but now i must go to bed and try to sleep five hours before the plane.

#how can i teach her some way of being human #that won't destroy her!!!#gender #mw #to think further #girls I have been

23 notes · View notes

stolensiren · 2 years

Text

day at the diner // cass & abigail

TIMING: a few days before cass and marley's run-in with the hunters PARTIES: @morbidlycuriousabigail & @stolensiren SUMMARY: cass meets abigail to try to help her name a recent painting. they talk about comic books and supernatural alignments and they're both super normal about these topics. CONTENT: none

The diner wasn’t exactly crowded, but it was a public enough space that Cass didn’t think it was too big a risk to meet Abigail there. It was a sketchy situation, sure — someone inviting a stranger to come look at their art was always a little weird — but Abigail knew Metzli, and that was enough to make Cass a little more trusting than she otherwise might have been.

Still, she got there early. She scoped the place out, she mapped out escape routes. It was always best to be prepared, she figured.

She was halfway through a cup of coffee when the person she assumed was Abigail entered the cafe, and she waved the other woman over with a grin. “Hi!” She greeted when Abigail arrived at the booth. “I’m Cass. Obviously. Here for… painting inspection?” She wrinkled her nose slightly at the self-assigned descriptor. “Okay, full disclosure, I know nothing about art, but I can definitely help you think of some titles, at least.”

When Abigail entered the cafe, she both looked, and sounded exactly like one might assume from her online interactions. She dressed mostly in black, wearing a sleeveless black turtleneck, a dress coat, and a pair of black dress pants, as well as combat boots. Taking a seat next to Cass, she began to respond, speaking in a monotone and dull manner. “Hello. I’m Abigail Varcroft. Yes, you are.” She pulled a large black reflective object from her bag, opening the top to pull several un-framed paintings from the sleeve, which was intended to protect the paintings from light.

“I’m not too surprised about your amount of knowledge on the matter, but as I’ve said, if Metzli trusts you, I can trust you enough not to ruin my art.” She promptly ordered a coffee and a breakfast for herself, before turning to look at Cass, staring into her eyes as her tone became dark and extremely serious. “If you spill anything on these pieces, I will erase you.” Her change back to her original temperament was rather sudden after she spoke, offering the first of the paintings to Cass.

Abigail certainly looked the part. Her aesthetic was just like her online persona, and Cass had to admire how easily she pulled it off. She was the kind of person Cass imagined had a flawless sort of cool about them, the kind that didn’t try to be anything other than what she was. And Cass always envied people like that, just a little. Anyone who could embrace those parts of them definitely had something Cass didn’t. “Nice to meet you in person, Abigail,” she said with a grin, watching as the painting was removed from the sleeve with a curious expression. She was excited to see it, in spite of her lack of knowledge about arts. She didn’t always understand the symbolism behind it, but she could recognize a cool style when she saw one.

“I promise I won’t ruin it. I won’t even touch it, swear. But I am really pumped to look at it.” She nodded adamantly at Abigail’s threat, because it was a fair one to make. She’d probably worked hard on this painting. If Cass messed it up with a clumsy mistake, she’d probably deserve to be erased. Whatever that entailed. Taking the painting, Cass looked at it with wide eyes. It seemed almost three-dimensional on the canvas, with depth and shadows that she could only imagine trying to create. “Whoa,” she breathed. “I get why you said it might be disturbing, but… This is seriously awesome.”

Upon scanning Cass over further, Abigail couldn’t help but note how she seemed to carry herself. She spoke with the unapologetic genuine kindness of somebody who had a very solid moral compass. Not only that, but Abigail couldn’t help but feel completely opposite to this person, just because of how she spoke and acted in the short interaction they’d had so far. “Thanks. It’s.. nice to meet you too, Cass.” She kept her arm extended as she responded, keeping the painting presented to the stranger with an expectant gaze.

“Good, finger oils may affect the paper or the paint, you can never be too careful.” Abigail watched Cass examine the painting, feeling anxious for only a split second, before she snuffed that feeling out. She knew her art was good, and she hoped Cass could at least see how good it was. Abigail felt like she needed to be confident and calm to keep control of this situation, not that the situation needed to be controlled in the first place. Exhaling quietly in relief once Cass commented on her art, she was genuinely relieved that her art stood up to this stranger’s standards. She hated that feeling of relying on others for validation, but it seemed inescapable to her. “I told you it wasn’t pornographic.” She joked, although her bland, unwavering tone made it difficult to tell.

Cass flashed Abigail another smile, nodding her head. “Totally knew that,” she lied, punctuating the statement with a wink as she immersed herself in the painting. Art, she’d heard, was supposed to make you feel things. She’d never been good at that, had spent hours looking at paintings and drawings and sculptures trying to feel what she was supposed to feel, but it never turned out quite right. It always felt like something was missing, like she was doing it wrong. But… maybe she’d been looking at the wrong kind of art, all that time. She didn’t feel nothing when she looked at Abigail’s art, even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was she did feel.

“You did tell me that,” she agreed with a laugh. This certainly wasn’t what she’d been expecting, that much was for sure. In spite of Abigail’s promises, part of her had anticipated some nudity, albeit the artistic kind that you saw in museums. And this certainly wasn’t that. “Did you decide on a title?”

Abigail sat the painting atop the sleeve after her coffee arrived, taking a quiet sip from the steaming hot beverage. “I doubt it, no offence.” She quickly calmed down, the high from the compliment passing over rather quickly as she was questioned. “I don’t have a name yet, but I was thinking something like ‘disembodied’, or something along those lines. I’ve never been good at naming art, most of the ones I come up with are either too blunt or too boring to work properly.” Abigail took another sip of coffee, staring down at the painting, seeming to be racking her brain for another name for the piece, but she came up with nothing. “I am unsure if this piece is even close enough to perfect for it to be given a name.”

“No offense taken. You’re right to doubt — I absolutely did not know that.” Cass offered Abigail a playful smile with the words. She had admitted to knowing next to nothing about art, and the wink at the end of the statement had made it pretty clear that there was little seriousness to it, so Abigail’s doubt was completely fair. She nodded as she studied the painting, worrying her lip between her teeth. “That’s a pretty good one. Kind of a pun, yeah?” Her eyes snapped up at the last statement, meeting Abigail’s in an expression of disbelief. “Seriously? Come on, this is awesome. You’ve gotta give it a name. It definitely deserves a name.”

Nodding, Abigail continued staring down at the paper as she sipped her coffee, thinking on it for a moment. “I didn’t intend for it to be a pun, but that meaning would also make sense I suppose.” She looked over to Cass, speaking bluntly about her work. “It is one of my best, but.. I worry it could still be better. I feel that I should hold myself to a higher standard than what others would call ‘decent art’.” For Abigail, art was one of two things that gave her meaning in life, the other being the eternal power climb she’d been on the path of, but she couldn’t exactly talk about that with a stranger at a diner. She could, however, talk about her art with this stranger. Her need for perfection had been something she’d struggled with for a long time, especially when it came to making her own art public. Abigail would hopefully never admit the amount of courage it took to show anybody, that was something she hoped to take to her grave. “I suppose it does deserve a name, one better than what I’ve been calling it thus far. I think I will call it… ‘Pulchritudo mortis’, meaning the beauty of death.”

Abigail wasn’t satisfied with her work. Cass figured no one ever really was. Everyone’s harshest critic was themself, and artists tended to fall especially hard to the habit. Cass had seen it in a few of her foster siblings over the years, in Metzli a time or two. “I think… you probably hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone else does. You might look at this and think it could be better, but everybody else? They just see how good it already is.” She hoped the words of encouragement would help a little, even if she knew they weren’t much. Everybody needed a little something sometimes, even if Abigail truly seemed like the last person who’d ever outright ask for it. Cass grinned when Abigail gave the piece a proper name, nodding her head appreciatively. “I think that’s pretty perfect!”

“I hold myself to a higher standard because if I do not stand out in some way, I might as well not hold myself to a standard at all.” Abigail explained in her usual emotionless tone, sliding the painting back into the sleeve and setting it aside. “You can order breakfast. As I said, it’s my treat.” She then turned to one of the people working behind the counter, ordering a simple breakfast for herself, and a refill of coffee. “I think that’s a pretty normal feeling though, the need to be more than others, whatever that means for them. Otherwise, you fall to the wayside and become a complimentary character in your own life. Those who settle are not deserving of praise or greatness. Don’t you agree?”

“I guess that makes sense. But… It’s okay to give yourself a break sometimes, too. Even if it’s hard.” Cass had never been particularly disciplined, something that got her in trouble more often than not at whatever foster home of the week she was at. But Abigail was different. Abigail held herself to a high standard, wanted herself to be the best. And Cass respected that, even if she didn’t understand it. She flashed Abigail a grin when she spoke, ordering a breakfast that wasn’t simple but wasn’t elaborate, either. She’d learned to jump at the chance of someone else buying her food without guilt, but she didn’t want to take advantage, either. “Yeah, I think that’s a fair enough assessment. You gotta shoot for the stars every time, right?”

“I suppose so. If I don’t keep busy, I get antsy, though. Breaks rarely go well.” Abigail spoke mostly truthfully, withholding the incriminating half of her situation. It wasn’t exactly something to be conversed about over breakfast at a public diner. She was indeed her harshest critic, but acknowledging that didn’t make it go away. That would take time and effort, and Abigail had more important business to attend to. “So, what is it that you want to excel at? You must have a hobby or a passion of some kind.” Abigail glanced over at Cass while she spoke, raising her eyebrow curiously.

“I feel that, too.” When Cass gave herself a break, which was far more often than it ought to be, it tended to have just as many consequences. She excused the bad things she did because she told herself she’d earned that, told herself she deserved it. The people she stole from didn’t miss the things she took from them, and they made all the difference in the world to Cass. And it balanced itself out. She helped people, too. That made it all okay. Still, she shifted under Abigail’s gaze, because the answer to her question wasn’t a simple one. Cassidy’s passions were kind of… sketchy at best, after all. “I, uh… I like comic books,” she settled on. “Reading them, anyway. I’ve never tried writing one. But it’s — I like those a lot.”

“What kinds of comic books?” Abigail asked with genuine interest, although it was difficult to tell through her blank speaking tone. It didn’t feel natural for her to feign emotions or express emotions in an outward manner, so she didn’t bother. “I like manga, horror mangas specifically.” Once her food had arrived, Abigail picked at it slowly and sporadically, not seeming that hungry but still wanting to eat something to stay busy and stave off boredom. “Perfect Blue’s a great one. I like The Drifting Classroom too.” The hustle and bustle of the restaurant slowly started to seem more and more loud to Abigail, making her entire body feel tense and uncomfortable, no matter what position she was in. She didn’t let it show, but every little thing felt so overwhelming, for seemingly no reason. Abigail hated when it got like this. After a few moments of silence, it became clear that she was a bit zoned out and unfocused.

“I mostly read superhero stuff,” Cass replied, perking up a little when Abigail mentioned she, too, read similar stories from time to time. “I’ve read some manga, too. Kind of exhausted the library’s supply on it, which isn’t saying much, and I definitely know more about American comics than manga, but… I’m always open to suggestions?” In contrast to Abigail’s picking, Cass ate her food wholeheartedly, unwilling to waste a single bite. She nodded at Abigail’s suggestions, making a mental note to look for them both at the comic store on her weekly trip there. But… then Abigail stopped speaking. She seemed to withdraw into herself a little, and Cass shifted. “Abigail? Are you all right? Do you want to step outside or something?”

Hearing her voice being called, Abigail suddenly came out of her daze, blinking a few times and taking a sip of her coffee, breathing deeply in and out of her nose to try to calm herself down. “Yes, I’m alright. I’m fine. Just tired.” She was lying, mostly because she felt weak because of her problems, and she refused to allow others to see her weaknesses. It still felt too loud in here, but she was able to force herself to stay in the moment. “What were you saying? Superhero stuff?” Abigail tried to change the subject quickly, rubbing her thumb along the outside of the coffee mug handle, doing her best to ground herself and keep her breathing even. These ‘episodes’ were common, and got worse when things were going well in her life. “I haven’t read many superhero comics, but I’m open to recommendations if there are any good ones that you would recommend.”

Abigail seemed to startle out of her daze when Cass said her name, and Cass shifted in response. Uncertain, uneasy, unsure what to do. There was no real change to Abigail’s tone when she assured Cass that she was fine, but Cass felt the lie anyway, felt it settle on the table between them like a centerpiece. Cass could have poked at it, could have pushed the subject more, and maybe she should have. Maybe a better person would have. But Cass only shrugged, nodding her head at the question. “Superhero stuff,” she confirmed with a grin that was mostly forced, mostly false. “I can definitely give you recommendations. Just, you know, you have to be ready for a big list, ‘cause I’ve got a lot I like.”

Abigail had no desire to linger on the previous moments, responding quickly to Cass. “I’m ready for a big list. I will let you know what I think if I ever check them out.” Staying in the moment always worked best for Abigail. When she started thinking or panicking, it was best to just keep going and ignore it, at least that was what she thought. She would probably think otherwise if she wasn’t as afraid of her own thoughts as she was. “I’ve heard Watchmen is an entertaining superhero comic, have you heard of it?” Abigail noticed the fake smile, she knew fake expressions like the back of her hand. “Don’t fake a smile though. I can tell, and I’d rather you not waste the effort at the very least.”

Cass offered Abigail a smile, not mentioning the lie, not mentioning any of it. It was easier, she thought, to ignore that sort of thing. It was easier to move passed it, to pretend everything was fine. If you pretended long enough, you could fool anyone. Even yourself. “If you like horror,” she said, shifting in her seat, “you’d probably love Moon Knight. Ghost Rider, too.” She nodded at the mention of Watchmen. “That one’s great! Totally a classic.” The forced smile faded, and Cass wrinkled her nose. “Sorry.” She wanted to make Abigail feel more comfortable, but it didn’t seem she was doing a very good job at it.

“Ghost Rider, that sounds interesting. What’s that one about?” Abigail tilted her head a bit to the side, finishing off her coffee after asking her question. She watched as the smile faded from Cass’ face, a tinge of guilt arising within. Abigail wondered if it would have just been best to let Cass keep thinking she was helping. “Don’t apologize, you did nothing, it’s a natural human response. I’m just better at telling than most. In my presence, you do not need to force yourself to smile, just as I do not for you. Understood?” The tone she spoke with wasn’t upset, or guilty, or containing any emotion at all. She spoke only facts, like she was trying to free Cass from her own expectations and preconceived notions of how this conversation should go. “I won’t be mad or nervous, never have been.” Those were both lies, but she did her best to continue speaking in an honest-sounding tone.

Cass lit up at the question, always excited to launch into an explanation on her favorite medium of entertainment. “There are a few different versions of the character, but most of the time it’s about a guy who makes a deal with a Spirit of Vengeance to save his own life. He gets to go on living, and the demon gets to use his body as a vessel. It, like, sends bad guys to Hell. And he drives a really sweet motorcycle. Or car, depending on which one you read.” Abigail spoke, and a faint smile returned to Cass’s face, genuine this time. “Understood,” she agreed with a nod. It was a strange concept, the idea of not being required to put on a show for someone. She’d been putting up a front her entire life, and typically when she stopped, people lost interest. Abigail seemed the opposite. It was refreshing. “Thanks, Abigail. I really appreciate that. You’re really cool, you know?”

Abigail listened closely, not breaking eye contact and occasionally nodding as Cass spoke on the subject, one she was clearly passionate about. "So is it a demon or is it a spirit? Or is it both?" Her genuine curiosity was piqued by the conversation, it seemed like a popular and interesting form of media, just not one that she'd ever looked into before. "There are multiple versions of the same character? Within the same medium? That sounds like an interesting concept. It sounds like there is much room for artistic expression and character design in superhero comics." Abigail hadn't expected her genuine nature to be appreciated by this person, it felt oddly pleasant. "Thank you, I don't think I've ever been called 'cool' before, but it feels good. You are cool too, just for future reference." The smallest hint of a smile pulled at the corner of Abigail's lips for a moment, made more noticeable due to the fact that her normal expression was the same during the entire conversation so far.

“It’s kind of both, I guess?” Cass considered the question with a hum, pausing a moment before nodding. “Yeah. It’s both.” People didn’t usually let her talk about her interests for extended periods of time like this, much less ask questions and engage in the material. It was fun, she found, to discuss it with an interested party. “Yeah! It’s, like, different people who take on the same name. Like you’ve got Johnny Blaze, the original. Danny Ketch, too. Uh, Alejandra Jones. Robbie Reyes… They all have their own unique style. It happens a lot in comics. It’s part of what makes the medium so much fun. You can usually find a character you vibe with, no problem.” Abigail looked happier now, and Cass felt happier seeing it. “Thanks,” she replied. “That really means a lot coming from you, because you seem like a good judge of that kind of thing.” Abigail didn’t seem the sort to hand out compliments easily, so getting one made it feel all the more sincere.

Abigail nodded in understanding, absorbing the knowledge as it was given to her. This new thing sounded more and more interesting, she’d definitely have to check it out when she went home. “I think I understand somewhat. So, a spirit and demon with a ‘sweet’ vehicle uses their powers to enact vengeance upon any and all who deserve it? And the ‘Ghost Rider’ name is actually a mantle of some kind. Is that correct?” A small flicker of hope glinted across her eyes as she waited for a response. As always, she thrived off of what others thought, as much as she refused to acknowledge it. “It sounds very interesting, I can understand the appeal. It would be interesting if somebody like that comic character really existed in the real world.” Abigail paid no mind to the other customers at the diner at the moment, automatically tuning them out due to her investment in the conversation. It was a welcomed escape from being stuck in her head. “I am a good judge of that kind of thing. I’m great with people.” Abigail spoke in an empty, prompt tone, but she paused for a moment as if expecting something, before quickly speaking once again in clarification. “That was meant to be funny. Just for reference.”

People usually stopped her when she got like this. Cass could go on about comics forever if the person at the other end of the conversation allowed it, but they usually didn’t. Abigail was different. She wasn’t just willing to listen, she was willing to engage. And there was a thrill that came with that. “Yes!” She confirmed, a little too much excitement in her voice. “That’s exactly right. It’d be cool, yeah, but… Maybe not for that person. I mean, having something else use your body half the time, not being able to call the shots about what you’re doing… I don’t think that would be much fun.” It was a terrifying concept, really, to lose your agency entirely like that. It worked better in fiction, where you could separate yourself from the implications of it. Cass grinned at Abigail’s joke, nodding her head. “I got you,” she said, tapping her temple before pointing to Abigail. “That’s a good one. But, you know, I think you’re better with people than you think you are.”

The inadvertent yet admittedly very close to home call-out made by Cass sent Abigail for a loop. As much as she tried not to let it show, her visible pause from being taken aback by Cass’ words made it obvious that something she had said meant something to Abigail to some degree. “..yes, I agree. That would be very unfortunate and horrifying, but of course, if you could differentiate your actions from the actions of your other half, wouldn’t it make it more bearable?” Stopping herself before she spoke too much, Abigail cleared her throat softly, breaking eye contact to order coffee from a passing waitress, her face back to completely blank and undisturbed. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I seriously doubt that. According to my old therapist, I am severely socially stunted for several reasons, so… her and all of my former employees would disagree with you. Still, I really do appreciate the sentiment.”

Abigail seemed taken aback for a moment, though Cass couldn’t imagine why. She shifted in her seat, shrugging as the other woman spoke. “I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. “I think it would make me feel… more powerless, in a way. Knowing that somebody else was doing things with my body, that I wasn’t in control of it. I don’t think it would help much, even if I could separate it in my head.” It was strange, watching how Abigail steeled herself. Stranger still since Cass had no idea what she was steeling herself against. She glanced to the waitress, offered her a smile as she tried to ponder what might have caused the reaction. “Well, I like talking to you. You’re good enough with people to make me have fun in a conversation. That’s gotta count for something, right?”

“I can’t disagree with you. Not like they have much of a choice though, the most that the person with the spirit in them can do is make the best of the situation.” Abigail grabbed her now-full cup of coffee, taking a small sip and letting out a quiet, deep exhale for a moment, before looking back to Cass, reengaging with the conversation. She didn’t want to think about the difficult situation she was in, nor did she want to think about what she’d done from a moral standpoint. That would make things much, much harder for her. “Anyways, heroes typically have villains, yes? Who is the main enemy of this ‘Ghost Rider’ character?” She was quick to return the conversation to a lighter topic, and it was painfully obvious that she was hiding something, even if it was difficult to tell what. “Thank you, Cass. I don’t hear that very often, but I am glad that you’re enjoying the conversation.” Offering a sincere nod, Abigail glanced towards the extremely shiny and reflective napkin holder for a moment after catching a glimpse of something odd. Spotting the reflection of the person sitting across from her, Abigail didn’t let on what she’d seen just yet, simply gesturing towards the napkin holder with her coffee cup. “By the way, from friend to friend, you should be more careful.”

“That’s true,” Cass agreed with a nod. “I guess if you’re possessed by a Spirit of Vengeance, it doesn’t do you much good to think about how much it sucks all the time.” Even if it would probably be hard not to. Cass tried to be an optimist, but it was hard at times. “Mephisto is probably his big bad. He’s… Kind of the literal Devil. So, I guess it makes sense.” Cass wrinkled her nose as she said it, a little amused. If there was one thing you could count on with comic books, it was a certain level of ridiculousness lurking beneath everything. That was the best part, for Cass. The ridiculousness made the stories easier to bear, even when they were dark. Cass smiled at Abigail, blinking curiously when the other woman’s eye seemed caught on the napkin holder between them. She glanced down at it, breath catching in her throat at what she saw. What should have been her reflection looked… inhuman. More like a bird than a person. Cass quickly grabbed the napkin holder, putting it in the seat beside her and out of sight. “I — I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she muttered, straightening her back. “But I’m glad that we can be friends.” It wasn’t a smooth transition, but… She glanced down at the napkin holder again. Sometimes, smooth transitions weren’t possible.

Abigail watched as Cass quickly moved to hide the reflective surface, a light smirk on her lips as she made a zipping motion with her hand, a gesture she intended to mean that she would remain silent about this little secret. “Sure, I don’t know what I’m talking about either, I suppose. Must have just been a trick of the light.” Sipping yet again from her coffee mug, Abigail’s coy attitude remained as she returned to the lighter side of the conversation, as if the elephant in the room hadn’t been splayed out before them, making the air a bit more tense. “As am I, but just as I said you need not pretend with your emotions, you also need not pretend when it comes to your.. situation. Surprisingly, I can be rather understanding, so long as you’re on my good side.” Abigail’s eyes glanced over at Cass, gazing sideways at her and trying to read her to see how uncomfortable she was. That was usually a good gauge of how she was performing in a conversation. “But I must warn you, there’s a chance things won’t go so smoothly between us now, depending on your alignment. I have a similar, but different affliction, at least from the limited information I have about you so far. Do you understand?”

Cass was tense, her shoulders tight and her hand trembling where she held it in her lap. She resisted the urge to glance down at her reflection again, terrified of what she’d see there. Instead, she stared straight ahead, focusing on a spot just over Abigail’s shoulder to keep from having to look her in the eye. A cowardly move, maybe, but better than facing something she’d been avoiding for a while now. “I’m not pretending. I don’t — It’s just not what you think it is.” She shifted, suddenly nervous for more reasons than one. “I don’t have any alignment. Or affliction.” Gripping her purse, she chewed her lip. “Look, this was fun. I really want us to be friends, and I liked talking to you. But I should probably get going. I’m meeting a friend later, and she’ll worry if I’m late. You know?” It was a lie, but one Cass hoped could stop the uncomfortable direction of the conversation.

Abigail accepted the check from their waitress, scanning it over briefly and placing payment in the clip attached to the check, wanting to quickly return her attention to Cass. “I’m sure it’s not, I don’t even know what I think it is. But everybody has an alignment of some kind, good and evil, chaos and law, right and wrong, even I am aligned with something.” Pulling a card from her pocket, she handed it to Cass, looking in her eyes even though she didn’t do the same. It appeared to be a business card without any business information, just Abigail’s first name, last initial, and some contact information on the back, all in a plain black font. “Then we can be friends, and we don’t have to talk about whatever that was, but I can be more understanding and more knowledgeable than you may assume me to be, Cassidy.”

It was a fight to stop her hand from trembling as she reached out and took the card, but Cass managed it. Just barely, but it counted for something. “I’m just trying to — to live my life. That’s all.” It was both true and untrue, both a fact and a lie. She wanted to do good, wanted to be good… most of the time. But right now? Right at this moment? All she wanted was for this conversation to be over. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to talk about it. “There’s nothing to understand. And nothing to talk about. I’m sorry to rush out. I, uh… I’ll be in touch.” She held up the card, pushing herself to her feet. “I like the painting. You should have Metzli put it up in the gallery. I’ll come see it.” And then, she turned on her heel and practically ran for the door. In the seat beside her now-empty chair, the reflective paper towel holder sat, light bouncing off it. Cass didn’t look back.

#morbidlycuriousabigail #abigail: day at the diner

7 notes · View notes

be-ready-when-i-say-go · 3 years

Text

Inked

Still on hiatus. But I found an old piece of writing and I revamped it just a smidge! It was originally published in 2018 on calumh-excess. Which is now deactivated. Hooray for finding pieces!

Calum's been watching Jay for a while. She's cute, talented, but a bit of mystery. Should he really give into her? What will it take for him to admit he has a crush?

Enjoy my masterlist (on hiatus)

______________

He watched her sometimes for far too long. The way her tongue stuck out as she pulled the skin and her hand worked steadily with the needle made it hard for him to resist. Her face always seemed to catch the harsh fluorescent lights and reflect it back so that it twinkled against her skin. A slight sheen, but nothing just of ethereal. He wasn’t even interested in any new ink, not seriously anyway. He had slowed on the ink train, but the shop his tattoo artist owned was a nice place to hang out sometimes. When he wanted to get out of his house but didn’t want to actually go somewhere, he could hang out here, listening to the buzz of the tattoo gun, poke his hand at trying a design here or there. They weren't great. He hadn't considered him this kind of artist, but the shop felt like a second home.

Besides, having her around was a more than welcomed bonus.

He wasn’t even sure what it was about her. She showed up about a year and a half ago, under an apprenticeship. Calum’s artist was unsure of her, much like everyone else that asked to work under him. A hazard of the job, according to the job, according to Calum's artist. However, her drawings spoke volumes; the colors and line work were impeccable. She had talent and knew it without being cocky about it. Well, sometimes she wasn’t. Calum watched her run into the occasional asshole that tried to belittle her; she always put her foot down in those situations. He didn’t fault her.

Today’s no different. When Calum walks in, he greets the guy at the front desk, eyes searching for her. He spots her in the back with her oversized frames creating a small glare over her brown eyes. He never quite got the appeal of the grandma-shaped glasses trend, but on her, they worked. She looked wise but soft. The glass pulled him in, felt like she was seeing into his soul. Maybe she was; maybe the pain made people more vulnerable than they anticipated--entrusting someone, a stranger in some ways, to permanently mark you and not fuck it up. Whatever the reason, looking at her felt timeless. Like she had seen it all, and you are just waiting for you to spill all the secrets.

“You finally going to get some new ink?” Calum’s artist teases.

Calum shakes his head, turning his attention away from her. “You finally took her training wheels off?”

“Your girlfriend’s got mad skills. I couldn’t baby her forever. Jay works hard on each piece, learned fast. Got a steady ass hand and pretty gentle for handling a needle.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Yeah, because you haven’t hardly even talked to her. Go for it, you wuss. What’s the worst she says? No?”

Calum exhales a chuckle. "I mean, the worst she stabs me with the tattoo gun. But considering the ink I'm already sporting, I doubt that's really all that bad.”

“Jay would not do that unless you asked for it, ff course. But really, go on, ask her out.”

Calum glances back at Jay. It’s a nickname. No one in the shop calls her by her full name. The only reason Calum heard it was when a client came asking for her. Jay was quick to correct them.

She wipes, clearing excess ink, before dipping back into the small cup. Jay smiles up at her client. Calum's sure they appreciate the reprise. Getting tattoos weren't always fun, but bearable enough to forget about it and get more.

Calum turns his gaze away. “I recommended you to a friend,” he says, hoping that he’ll escape the teasing. It’s not likely to happen. But at least he tries to minimize the ridicule.

"I appreciate it. Are they a first-timer?"

"A second-timer, but they're visiting town and want some new ink. I figured best not to fuck them over."

The two men laugh before Calum's escorted back to look through some new designs. Just in case something sparks his interest. Calum's visit is supposed to be short, but there's not much else on his to-do list for the day. He could kill a few hours here.

When Calum comes out from the back, after spending too much time pretending art was ever a talent of his, he looks for Jay again. She’s not in her corner, nor is she at the front. Calum shrugs, figuring she might have gone for lunch, or home depending.

As Calum walks to his car, he checks his phone. Nothing major's happened.

“Leaving so soon?” A voice states. Calum knows that voice, a little gravelly, mostly sweet. He’s dreamt of it every so often. He prays to hear it when he visits the shop.

He turns to Jay, who leans against the bricks. A vape is wrapped in her fingers. “Gotta get some dinner, maybe make a run to the grocery store," Calum returns. "I've gotten lazy."

She nods. “This reminds me that I can't survive off BLTs forever," she laughs.

"You could try, but I think you'd need other vegetables and some fruit in that mix too."

She pushes up on her glass with a nod. "Ah, yes, gotta get the whole food pyramid." It goes silent between them and Calum gives another nod, raising a few fingers to signal his departure while still keeping his phone in a secure enough grip.

"Hey, wait!" Jay calls out again, taking a half step forward. Calum turns to her. "Can I give you something before you leave?”

Calum nods, not trusting his voice. What would she give him? She nods back to the front door, taking back that initial half-step. “It's inside. Give me like two minutes.”

She disappears inside and Calum stands, his phone still in his hands, staring at the spot she once stood. Just as quickly as she disappeared, Jay reappears. In hand is her portfolio. She flips through before stopping and slides the heavy-duty drawing paper out.

Calum stares down at the green and black drawing. It’s his face, for the most part, that stares back at him. It’s distorted by a crystal ball that glows green. Inside are some instruments and something else, but right now he can’t really put it all together. His eyes keep moving over the lightning bolt, the crystal ball, the uncanniness of his face on a piece of paper, his three-dimensional face somehow translated perfectly into a 2-D space.

“Holy shit, this is amazing,” he breathes. “Thank you,” he says looking back up to her.

She shrugs with a smile. “You’re welcome.”

“Seriously, this is so fucking awesome. I’m going to frame it,” he gushes. He’s too excited to be nervous, or be embarrassed. "What are the dimensions?"

“I'm just really glad you don’t find it too creepy. I was watching you a couple weeks ago when you stopped by. It just sort hit me, the image of the crystal ball and lightning bolt; I had to draw it,” Jay elaborates. "And it's 8.5 by 11--standard printer paper size."

Calum shakes his head, staring over the drawing again. It feels so delicate suddenly in his hands. It’s almost like Jay recognizes the change in his handling. She shuffles her load in her hands and pulls out an empty plastic over. “Here,” she laughs handing it over. “So it doesn’t smudge or anything if you're worried."

Calum slides it in. “Thank you. Again. Seriously.”

“You’re welcome, Calum. Good luck with your grocery store trip and dinner,” Jay nods and then heads back inside. Calum watches the way the denim stretches across her hips, the way her hair billows just a little in the breeze of her strut.

For a moment, Calum can't move. The weight of the paper in his hand is hardly ounces, but it holds him--traps him to the point of the sidewalk. Jay thought enough of him to draw him. What did it all mean? Should he have found the courage to ask her out? He could walk back inside. But what if she didn't like him like that? Would it be too weird?

Calum blinks up into the hardly settling sun and thinks to himself, the second he can come back here, it better be with a bit more courage and possibly a gift certificate. No one can be made about free food, right?

It’s months before Calum can visit the shop again. The tour is a whirlwind and he only gets a few days off between legs. Not long enough to get back home or feel like he had any energy to drive out to the shop. But now that he's settled back in at home, he knows exactly where he's going.

It’s not his typical practice to just walk in and ask for a tattoo. But given the ink already on him, worse things could happen. When he pulls open the door, he notices it's kind of slow. Jay greets him at the front desk. “Hey, stranger,” she grins.

“Hey, how are you?” he asks in return.

“Pretty good. How was it? The tour? See any cool places?”

He nods. “Yeah, got to explore a few cities.” He taps his fingers against the wooden desk. “Do you have an appointment anytime soon?”

Jay shakes her head. “My 2 o’clock had to reschedule. I’m here until 4 before I see anyone. Why? What's tickling your fancy?”

“I was wondering if you could do a tat for me? I know this is very last minute and if you need me to come in another day this week, I totally can.” His words run into each other; his palms start to sweat. He wipes them on his jeans.

Jay laughs, holding up a hand. “Whoa, pump the brakes. One, what are you looking for?”

“You know that drawing you did for me?” She nods. “I was kind of hoping you could create something with just the crystal ball and lightning bolt. I know the drawing itself is kind of big.”

A grin lifts her cheeks; Calum’s heart settles for a second. “I think I can do that. Where are you thinking to put it?”

“Inner bicep.” He watches her gaze land on his arm. The t-shirt is baggy, he at least thought about that with enough advance.

“Give me 30 minutes to come up with some sketches.” Jay pushes away from the front desk and heads to the back, but not for calling to the shop to watch the front desk.

Calum slides into the seat at the front, leg bouncing as he settles down. This isn’t even his first tattoo, but the nerves flood his body. His scalp tingles. The thirty minutes move by too fast, but also too slow simultaneously. The seconds feel like hours but move by milliseconds.

Eventually, Jay resurfaces, waving him over to her. He walks back and looks at the sketches she places out in front of him. There are two different ones. One’s a bit more minimalistic, which is her style, with the lightning bolt in the background and a simple crystal ball at the point. The other is a bit bolder, the ball has a slightly warped edge where it connects to the bolt. It looks like the bolt is melting the glass ball.

“I can whip up more if neither one of them are quite right. But I wasn’t sure if it wanted something a bit more crisp and sharp or not,” Jay explains.

Calum admits that most of his tattoos are more cleaned up and sharp. He likes the idea of playing with a new style. “I like the second one,” he says, tapping it.

“You sure?” He nods, he’s never been more sure of something in his life. “Which bicep? Let me line it up and make sure it’ll fit.”

Calum lifts his left arm up for her. Laying the stencil over his skin, Jay notes she has to make a couple small tweaks. But after that, she’ll be ready. They discuss full color, or just outline, or shading, price, and a few other details before Jay concludes with, “Hop in my seat. I’ll be there soon.”

Calum nods and walks over to her station. Her stuff is already laid out, probably for her canceled 2 o’clock. It’s about five more minutes before Jay returns with the final stencil. Calum rolls up the sleeve of his shirt before she places the stencil. Happy with the placement, he stretches out on the table.

Jay gets herself ready before she brings the needle over his skin. The first puncture always makes him jolt a little, the first jab of pain causes his heart to race. “Do you plan on relaxing now that you're back home?"

"Yeah, for a little bit. I might go see my family, but I know we'll be back in the studio soon. Anything exciting happen while I was gone?"

"I mean exciting things happen every day at this place. But it's not like I could recall them all now."

Calum hums, acknowledging her statement, but not quite sure what to say next. Luckily, Jay's faster to fill in the silence. "You do realize you didn’t have to get a tattoo to have a real conversation with me?” Jay teases, pushing up her glasses.

Calum’s cheeks heat. “It’s not like that,” he chuckles.

“Well, that’s how it seems.”

“You were always busy when I stopped by. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Not always,” she laughs. “But it’s alright. You’re going to have plenty of time while I’m stabbing you to say all those things you didn’t.”

A chuckle escapes him; of course, Jay would have this sense of humor. “Wow, I can’t believe I’m paying so much for people just to stab me and act as a therapy. Maybe I am a masochist.”

“So are a lot of people. Sometimes you just take the emotional pain out in the physical realm.”

“I always imagined people that worked in a tattoo shop to be more heavily tatted,” Calum hums, taking in scattered ink across her arms and one pokes out from the V in her t-shirt.

“I focused it more on my back and legs and not so much my arms. I’m getting there. So, why this one today?”

Calum goes to shrug, but stops himself as he hears the gun nearing his skin again. “Not really sure. It looked cool. I guess it also serves to remind me that fate isn’t linear. There’s going to be twists and turns, maybe some trouble. And that’s okay. Don’t be afraid of the journey. Also, it's really fucking cool art.”

Jay hums her laugh, “Why thank you. Wise brain you got there. Besides, it seems like you also have people you keep close to you.” She eyes the initials and the name under the bird. “Whoever they are to you, I hope you all stay close.”

“Those are my parents' initials,” he explains. “And my sister’s name. They’ve been with me through it all--I love them dearly.”

“So sweet. I wish my parents and I were closer. I tattooed my brother’s jersey number on me. It was my first tattoo.”

“What did he play?”

“Soccer, or for your kind, football.”

“Hey now, it’s played with the feet, it makes much more sense.”

Jay laughs, wiping off excess ink. She cocks her head to the side a little, then goes back in for the black ink. “I’m only teasing. Us Americans are so dumb sometimes. Like why is our football not called something else? Literally, the only thing that happens with the feet is the running. We carry the fucking ball.”

“I’ve wondered that as well!” he laughs. "Does your brother still play?"

“Yeah, the whole knucklehead still plays for his college.”

“What position?”

Jay laughs. “I'll have you know my job as the older sister is to show up and cheer him on. Something defensive? I don’t remember off the top my head.”

“I’ll give you credit for that. I’m sure he appreciates it.”

“He does until he sees with me in face paint on and then he’s acting like he doesn’t know me. Oh, oh wait, I think remember what he does. It’s defensive,” she pauses, lips pursed together, “something fielder.”

“Defensive midfielder?” he asks.

“Yeah, that. But like I said, I show up when I can and scream. That’s it. When he’s old enough, I’ll buy him a beer after his games too.”

“How old is he?”

“Nineteen, we’re three years apart.”

“The only sibling you have?”

“Nah, got a baby sister too. She’s fifteen. If you’re impressed by my eyeshadow thank her. Because she’s the one that taught me how to do it.”

Calum finds himself staring at the red and gold coloring her eyelids. “It looks really nice,” he breathes.

“Why thank you.” She pauses to bats her eyelashes. “I even managed to get those godforsaken falsies on right too. They look good, but the raise hell.”

“I think you’re the first woman I’ve met in LA that’s not obsessed with makeup,” he notes.

“Oh, you were doing so well. There are a lot of people of who aren’t huge in the makeup scene.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he tries to backtrack. “I’m sorry. In my experience, it’s not like that. They’re hiding the fact they aren’t wearing makeup--embarrassed by it or something.”

Jay nods, pushing up her glasses yet again. “Yeah, it’s not easy. We’re told to be perfect, but in reality, we’re just like everyone. We’re human, imperfect and flaw-full and beautiful.”

“Not in spite of, but because of.”

“Exactly,” she chuckles. Silences settles in around them. Calum wonders why she said she was closer to her family, but the way she talks about her siblings doesn’t match. She’s cheering her brother on at his game; she’s sitting down to learn makeup with and from her sister.

“Can I ask a bit of a personal question?” he asks.

“What kind of personal? Do I get a lifeline?”

Cal exhales a laugh. “You can always say no.”

“Hit me with it.”

“Why say that you’re family isn’t close but you clearly take a lot of pride in your siblings?”

“An observant one on my table, I see. It’s my parents. They don’t like that I’m pansexual, say I’m going to hell. My siblings don’t fucking care. I’m still the crazy-ass sister that loves and supports them.”

With a hum of acknowledgment from Calum, it goes quiet again around them for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He knows it doesn’t really fix anything for her; it doesn’t take away the potential years of her suffering. It’s the only thing he can offer her though. It feels right to say.

“Oh, no need for you to be sorry. It’s not like you threw me out of the house.”

“Ouch. You’re making it though right?”

“Yeah, now that I work here, things are on the up and up.”

“That’s good; I’m glad.”

“Thanks.”

“Favorite tattoo you’ve done?” he asks, wanting to hear her voice again.

“This one,” she laughs. “Though I had someone ask for a pin-up witch, which was also pretty fucking cool to do.”

Calum remembers seeing that on her Instagram. “That one was amazing! Her lips looked so good; I know that’s a strange thing to admit.”

“Don’t worry. I am quite proud of that myself.”

“Do you have a favorite tattoo on you?”

“The blue jay on my shoulder. My parents would take me on walks when I was still an infant. According to the legend, while they were sitting on a park bench a blue jay landed on me. I didn’t cry; it didn’t hurt me. It just landed for a second and then flew off. They called me Blue Jay ever since. I just shortened the nickname as I got older.” She gives one more wipe. “Finished. Check it out.”

Calum sits up, walking over to the mirror. He grins seeing the melting ball sitting against his skin. He grins over to Jay. “It looks amazing. Thank you.”

“No problem.” They head back over to her station. Jay cleans it and wraps the fresh ink. Calum carefully gets his sleeve back down with a little help from Jay. He pays their agreed price with his card, but slides two fifties over to her. “You do know that’s more than double a twenty percent tip right?”

Calum shrugs. “Is it? I’m bad at math,” he grins. “Treat your sister to a new palette or something. Treat yourself to something.”

“Thank you. Now next time, you come by, I hope we don’t talk while I’m stabbing you repeatedly.”

Calum shakes his head, a grin still on his face. Of course. He had forgotten to get the gift certificate. But possibly asking Jay to dinner wouldn't be such a bad idea. “Give me your number and I can promise the next time we talk, it won’t in your chair.”

She holds out her hand, waiting. He hands her his phone, after unlocking it. She puts her number in. She goes to hand the phone back but just before his fingers touch it, she draws it back. "I mean it--actually text me. I adore memes, dogs, TikToks, your favorite songs."

"I'll actually talk to you. I promise."

Jay hands over his phone with a smile. Calum steps outside the glass doors. Why should he wait? He could do it now. For fuck sake, the last hour had been the groundwork for a clear sign a date was absolutely an option. His fingers hovering over her name. He taps it, and then presses for a call. Holding the phone to his ear, he listens to it ring for a second.

“I can still see you, you know?” Jay laughs.

Calum turns around, catching her leaning against the front desk. “I told you the next time we talked you wouldn’t be inking me.”

“What can I help you with, Calum?”

“Dinner, tonight-- I may have ordered too many appetizers for just little old me."

Her laugh trickles in over the speaker. She drops her head, giving it a shake before looking back up to him in the afternoon sun. “I think I can help you with that. Give me the time and place."

Calum rattles off the name of a restaurant that he had been wanting to try. Nothing too upscale, but not something that would be too casual. "How does 8 sound?"

"I love it there. I'll see you at 8."

“Bye, Jay.”

“Bye, Calum.” As he walks to his car, his phone buzzes yet again. This time a text from his artist, I’m being fucking replaced, I see. I can’t be too mad since it’s Jay. Calum laughs as he slides into his car. Maybe he is getting replaced; maybe he’s not. Calum’s not sure. He is sure that he needs to figure out if he can make reservations and what to wear for tonight.

#calum hood #calum hood fanfic #calum hood blurb #calum hood imagine #calum hood 5sos #calum 5sos #5sos fanfic #5sos imagine #5sos fic #calum hood fic #5 seconds of summer #5 seconds of summer fanfic #5 seconds of summer fic #5 seconds of summer imagine #h writes

47 notes · View notes

that-random-chaos-entity · 3 years

Note

How does your OC display love? What are some habits your OC has picked up?

Forgive me as this is a LONG post, but I felt it would be better to show, rather than tell, this one:

Words could not describe how awkward Perturabo felt being back in the Emperor's palace. It would have been bad enough if it were just his deadbeat father, a half-rotten corpse sitting in an overglorified golden life-support casket, ignoring him as per usual. But it wasn't just his father; so many of his brothers had come for this... ...this Sanguinala... ...in many ways it almost felt like the Heresy had never happened.

Vulcan, Corvus, Fulgrim, ROGAL FUCKING DORN, Magnus.... ...hell, even SANGUINIUS had come back from the dead. Raised by the same mysterious chaos entity that had turned Perturabo's world and soul inside out. Made him live his own life over and over again, through the eyes of the people around him, until he got the point. The people he impacted. The people he used, abused, and destroyed without a second thought. The people he...

...Perturabo shook his head, the physical action somehow dislodging the poisonous psychic tumor from his soul. Even though that parasite was long gone and the Eye of Terror no longer loomed over him, it had been feeding on his twisted spirit for so long that its blasted and withered hide still bled for it. Casting his self-destructive thoughts into the warp. This was a good thing (or so the Lanky Llama said). Though sometimes, when he started to brood and sulk, things would get... ...gummed up. He could shake any errant clots loose himself, but nobody helped the darkness bleed out of him like Nehetari.

And holy shit did he wish she were here right now. When she and her robotic people were around... ...the Lord of Iron actually felt like... ...himself. Or the version of himself that he wanted to be, anyway.

But no, "No xenos allowed at a family gathering," the Emperor had said. Not that it even would have mattered if they were; it was one of those weird weeks where the lanky llama disappeared on him and holed up in her room by herself. Something about a "Necrontyr biological cycle," that would, "likely make her act inappropriately," or "embarrass herself and him," but she would say no more on the matter.

Of course it would happen over the day when he needed--erm could have used her presence the most.

"Aren't you going to open your gifts, brother?"

Perturabo snapped out of his brooding to see Magnus looming beside him. It took him a second to process what he said, but when he did he scowled.

"Gifts Magnus? Really? Do think anyone here would ever give me a gift?"

"Excuse me! What am I, grox manure!?" there was no real irritation in Magnus's voice. He gestured to table in front of Perturabo, where three gifts sat that he could have SWORN were not there before. "And if you must know, you're the only brother here I saw fit to even GET a gift for."

"Aside from Sanguinius."

"Well... ...yeah..." the Crimson King shuffled his wings awkwardly. Both primarchs stole a glance at the MOUNTAIN of gifts that their brother had received. "...b-but he doesn't count."

Perturabo sighed. He didn't feel like feeling jealous of Sanguinius right now. Instead he grabbed the first package; it was obviously Magnus's gift. Whatever was in it was so warp-touched that it levitated a solid three feet off the table and changed size randomly. It turned out to be a small inter-dimensional rift that contained a book of arcane engineering, one that Perturabo had surprisingly not seen before. He thanked his brother; something that drew a surprised look from Magnus and a complimentary hug that Turbo awkwardly returned. The second gift was from Sanguinius, as it turned out, and when he opened the box he saw his own face, reflected in a simple yet elegant mirror. After a moment of wondering if this gift was actually meant for Fulgrim (clone fulgrim), he saw the inscription on the box lid which read, "to my big brother: it brings me joy to see happiness in your eyes now. I hope with this you can see it too."

Perturabo swore under his breath and slammed the box shut, furiously hoping that Magnus hadn't heard him sniffle just a tiny little bit. It was a moving gift to be sure, but after everything that had happened... ...somehow it just made the Lord of Iron feel like garbage. Well... ...more so than usual.

Thankfully, quick-thinking Magnus directed his brother's attention to the third gift. In fact, if he didn't know better, Perturabo would have sworn Magnus seemed even MORE excited for him to open this gift than his own.

"What is... ...is this from...?"

"MHMMM!" Magnus's enthusiasm was all-consuming, his grin audible in his tone. "She asked me come and pick it up from outside her door earlier this morning."

Perturabo's melancholy dissipated into a wave of curiosity. What sat before him was a perfect cube of blackstone, though if he knew anything about Nehetari, he knew that wasn't all there was to it.

Sure enough, when he picked it up, glyphs flashed along its side.

"Is... ...that..."

"Necrontyr," Perturabo murmured in deep concentration. "...and not just any form of Necrontyr; this is Ksakhemet Script."

"What?"

"Think of it as our high gothic. Except it's as if we had a high, HIGH gothic. Only the three Necrontyr kings and their families even knew how to speak this script, let alone how to read and write it. It is ancient, according to Nehetari... ...it's from a time even before the Necrontyr first started their galactic expansion."

Those statements alone were like a different language to Magnus, but his lust for ancient knowledge ignited like a blazing inferno. He would absolutely have to grill both Perturabo AND his xenos companion for more information once she was.... ...*ahem* no longer indesposed.

Perturabo turned the cube over and over in his hands, reading the ornate lettering as best he could. He'd only just started learning how to read Ksakhemet; he couldn't speak it properly because he lacked the extensive Necrontyr vocal range, but the lettering started to make sense the more he plied his fantastic mind.

"It is... ...a puzzle cube. I believe."

"D'AAWWW... How sweet...!"

Perturabo punched his brother in the shoulder, but it phased through his immaterial form.

"Shut your mouth!" He could already feel the heat creeping up his neck and he HATED it. Although he had to admit he was a little touched, if amused, that Nehetari had put together such a... ...thought-out gift.

And well-thought-out it was indeed! It became clear to the Lord of Iron that this wasn't just some slide and lock, physics based puzzle toy for mortal children. It was a custom-made testing tool designed to challenge his understanding of spacial compression, sub-atomic energy transfer, and even Necrontyr cultural theory. Each segment was challenging, unique, and soon he found himself absorbed. Magnus tagged along for the ride of course, and his respect for Nehetari grew each time he heard his brother growl in frustration, or give a small "...Ha! So that's it..."

"She has... ...quite the impressive mind. Especially for a xenos."

Perturabo grunted his affirmation. "...you don't know the half of it. She makes the Hrud look like a bunch of children." With a click the puzzle changed shape in his hands again, "...I would even say she has a mind similar to ours."

"...you don't say..."

"Hmph, she's DEFINITELY smarter than Dorn. I know that for sure."

Magnus chuckled. Of course she was.

The Lord of Iron didn't realize it immediately, but the puzzle cube was meant to serve another function, not just being an intriguing mental exercise. The more he fidgeted with it, the more time passed. Not by some technomantic power or magical means; he was just so absorbed in Nehetari's gift that he didn't notice his brothers packing up their gifts and starting to drift around and away from the throne room. Magnus, realizing he wouldn't be much help with this exercise, had taken notice of the custodes' Captain General (the one they call "kitten") and had begun to chat with him. Sanguinius was now at the Emperor's side, trying to pacify an impatient and belligerent Angron who just wanted to go celebrate Khornnuka with Lotara and Kharn. Corvus had dissapeared to... ...somewhere, and Vulkan was... ....had he somehow jackknifed himself into the psychic fireplace that the Emperor created!? Russ was laughing at him and drinking himself stupid (not that he had many IQ points to lose in the first place), but thankfully nobody was paying any attention to Turbo. Huh, who'd have thought; Perturabo was actually HAPPY that he was being ignored right now.

With a satisfying ding the cube shifted again, and to his surprise, glyphs flashed indicating that this was, in fact, the final challenge.

"Let's have it then. I'm ready..." the Lord of Iron grinned. He flicked the raised pad below the text and the final task scrolled across blackstone. Surprisingly, this time it was in High Gothic.

"...who is... ...my... ...favorite... ...human?"

He stared at the screen, dumbfounded. "Really? After all that, the last puzzle, is 'who's my favorite human?' Really?"

But wait... ...was the answer actually as easy as it appeared? Perturabo wanted to put his own name, but what if he was wrong? What if he wasn't her favorite human? He was hardly even "human" in the first place. Maybe she meant a true, normal human? But if this was supposed to be a present for him, why would she blatantly make him answer that her favorite human WASN'T him. What if...

"Hey nerd, the answer's obviously you."

Perturabo jumped to see Leman Russ passing him.

"What the-! Whe-how did you... ...you can't read!" Perturabo stammered. There was no way Leman just waltzed over here...

The Wolf Lord grinned, "Hey, ye nerds aren't the only ones who know how teh learn things. If I taught meself teh read Fenrisian runes, I can teach meself teh read some wolfin' High Gothic!"

"..."

"...that and I may or may not have used some of meh own psychic powers to read yer mind. You know, teh fill in teh blanks."

Considerably less impressed, Perturabo grumbled as he keyed the letters of his name into the cube. With another ding and a flash of green light, previously invisible cracks along the cube's surface began to glow and the cube began to shift one last time. When it finished, a tiny black tray was left in its place, revealing... ...a letter? And a pict?

"What's all this now?" Leman reached towards the tray.

Perturabo snatched it away, "Fuck off Russ! This is MY gift!"

"Oooh, is this from yer GIRLFRIEND!?"

"SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!!"

"Hey fuck you Leman!" Oh boy, here comes Magnus, "Like you could ever understand the subtlety and genius that went into that puzzle box! Let him enjoy his gift in peace!"

"LeT HiM eNjOy HiS gIfT iN pEaCe!" Leman crooned. "Shut her trap and go back teh yer boyfriend, yeh big red canary."

Magnus puffed up in outrage and looked about ready to turn Leman inside out. When Perturabo noticed Sanguinius inbound, no doubt to dissolve the impending battle, he took his chance to dip out. And by "dip out" I mean grab the tray and its contents, and duck under the table. It would hide him for all of a second, but that would be as long as it would take him to read the letter.

Or it would have, if Leman hadn't, SOMEHOW, been able to reach the tray before him. He snatched up the letter, practically from between Perturabo's fingers, and with utter horror the Lord of Iron watched as his brother brandished the page, cleared his throat, and began to read:

"Perturabo..."

"FUCK YOU LEMAN THAT'S NOT YOURS!!" Magnus howled. Perturabo roared in fury. Both brothers made a mad lunge at the Wolf Lord but he dodged, shit-eating grin on his face as he continued reading.

"...Perturabo,

I'm sorry, but I...."

"....failed you?"

At the mention of the word "failed", Perturabo's onslaught faltered, as did Magnus's. Leman's grin died on his lips as he read the next line, his eyes widening for a moment before they squeezed shut. He then passed the letter back to Perturabo, mumbled a barely audible apology, turned, and without a word walked off.

"That's not what I... ...uh... ...expected?" Magnus muttered. "He looked like a kicked pup. What did that letter..."

Perturabo clutched the paper looking the most feral Magnus had ever seen him.

"...you know what, never mind. That letter's meant for you anyway." He added quickly. "I'll be in the library if you need me, brother."

And just like that, Perturabo was alone. Well, mostly; the Emperor was still there, but he was oddly quiet. Sanguinius was watching him too, but from a discreet distance.

The Lord of Iron backed up into the corner of the room, still riled up but looking a little less crazy. Once he was satisfied that NOBODY ELSE would attempt to confiscate his stuff, he finally began to read what Nehetari wrote for him.

"Perturabo,

I am sorry, but I failed you. You said you wanted your brothers' appreciation for a Sanguinala gift, but of all the ones I interviewed asking for an appreciative memory they have of you, the only ones who gave me a response were your brothers Magnus and Sanguinius. So instead I instigated a situation to make one (please reference the included image). If your brother's expressions are to be believed, then I believe they all enjoyed attacking your snow bunker. I certainly enjoyed helping you defend it.

May you have a somber and pleasant celebration,

The Mehlrose,

Nehetari of the Szarekhan Dynasty.

Heir to the Silent Throne."

...Perturabo couldn't believe it.

He's asked for that as a JOKE. He hadn't actually been serious. When she's approached him, asking what he wanted as a "Sanguinala gift," he'd been in the middle of a complicated programming script and had said that just to get the point across that he didn't want to be bothered.

Slowly, and with a shaking hand, he lifted the pict from the tray and turned it over.

And she was right. This shot must have been taken by one of her tunneling scarabs. Or maybe one of her guard as they were circling the perimeter, hurling snow and distracting Russ. But however it was taken, somehow it was able to get a perfect shot of every primarch, including himself and Nehetari, hurling fucking snow or getting completely dunked on, but every single one of them had varying degrees of stupid fucking grin on their faces. Even Corvus was smiling!

It struck him: had that been her plan all along?

Minutes passed, and finally the Emperor himself spoke up. "My son, you're shaking like a Dark Elder nightclub on a Tuesday."

Perturabo didn't hear him. It took everything he had just to hold the pict in his trembling hands.

Why? Why. Why would she bother. How did she... ...why, why, why WHY? HOW!? When did she even have the TIME to plan this out!? There was no way. And not for him. Why? Why for him? And ALL OF THEM. How could she have known they would ALL come?

"Brother, are you ok?"

Perturabo snapped out of the loop to see the Angel standing beside him with a hand on his shoulder. He hadn't realized just how loudly his two hearts had been thundering, how BADLY his whole body had been shaking, until he felt that steadying touch. Instinctively he tried to regain control over his mind and body, and stowed the pict away in his belt.

Sanguinius asked no questions; he simply nodded.

"I'm going to find her..." Perturabo's voice sounded like sandpaper. He could feel the tears rolling down his neck, but he ignored them. "...I don't care if she FUCKING KILLS me; I am going to find her. She has no right.... ...she had no right to... ...to..."

"...go ahead brother." Sanguinius's smile was warm with understanding.

Salvaging what little dignity he felt he had left, Perturabo straightened up, turned on his heel, and walked shakily out of the throne room. He disappeared into the darkness, leaving his father and his brothers to stare after him in wonder.

(Sorry this is such a long post, but I started writing it and just went to town. I wanted to SHOW, rather than just tell, the kinds of things Nehetari does for the individuals that are important to her)

@gracia-regina @ask-a-scheming-sorcerer @luwupercal

#perturabo #nehetari #sanguinius #magnus the red #the emperor of mankind #leman russ #if the emperor had a text to speech device #tts #tts universe #necrontyr princess #warhammer 40k #wh40k #more oc shenanigans #asks #fuukonomiko

35 notes · View notes

jurassicparkpodcast · 3 years

Text

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous Season 3 SPOILER Review!

The Third Season of Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous has arrived – meaning we’re bringing you some more content around the show, including our spoiler thoughts on how the third season did when compared to the first two. If you haven’t seen Camp Cretaceous Season 3 yet then click off this article now, as we are going to be discussing some of the key set pieces in this series which make it by far the best one to be released to date. Let’s get into it!

We’ll start by summarising the third season – and, in particular, it’s story. The story of the Campers attempting to get off of the island whilst uncovering that a terrifying new hybrid has broken loose is interesting, with plenty done to explore more of Isla Nublar and, indeed, the terrifying work which Doctor Henry Wu was doing in the shadows of the former Jurassic World. Although the kids ultimately escape the island, this isn’t without a few interesting sequences sprinkled in throughout – including direct tie-ins to Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom, and also hints at the future of Mantah Corp and their research into InGen’s work. The third story feels incredibly well balanced – with lots of fantastic set pieces balanced with meaningful storytelling and interesting characters alongside brand-new dinosaurs. The third season brings us a much more grounded story which aims to fill some of the canonical gaps left by Season Two – creating a story which feels satisfying and fulfilling.

The third season maintains the same cast of characters – with each of them getting plenty of interesting development. Darius, for example, spends some time earlier in the season filling the holes in his notebook – giving us a fun look at a Dilophosaurus drawing indicating he encountered this animal on the island at some point. Kenji struggles with the kids liking him and feels the need to use his wealth to impress them, whilst Sammy worries about what Mantah Corp may have done to her family back home. Each character feels three dimensional in the third season – with some great development showing how they have adapted to their environment. Of note here in particular is the character of Yasmina, who selflessly heads across the island in search on an anti-serum when Sammy is poisoned by the quills on the Scorpios Rex. This animal itself is handled incredibly well – with the kids feeling genuinely in danger at some points throughout the story.

The other dinosaurs in the story are good too – including surprising appearances from both the Ouranosaurus and the Monolophosaurus. These animals do go against the pre-established canon of the island a little bit, with neither of them ever mentioned as being present on Nublar, but it is possible that the prior existing list was only ever intended to reflect the public-facing dinosaurs. These animals get some interesting sequences throughout the story – although there are a lot of the Monolophosaurus at one point in the story. Beyond the small canonical issues here, the only other real issue I had with Season 3 was the fact that the Scorpios was developed before the Indominus Rex. This does retroactively go against a lot of the pre-established timeline in things like the viral marketing – but it is possible that the Scorpios was hidden from existence altogether given it was seen as a failure by Simon Masrani. It is interesting to note that the Scorpios was able to reproduce asexually – suggesting a second E750 which is present in the show was able to grow to maturity incredibly quickly. Perhaps this can be explained by the enhanced growth Bumpy also inherits, however. These small issues aside, Season 3 took big strides to fix my issues with Season 2 of the show – creating a much more well-rounded experience which fits better within the universe of the films.

There were a few moments throughout Season 3 which stood out to me as building on the critiques on Season 2 – the first of which was the Ouranosaurus Attack at the dock as the kids attempt to patch up the damage which Tiff’s boat has sustained. I loved how the ambience in this sequence felt reflective of sequences in both The Lost World novel and in Trespasser – with some fantastic, tense sequences utilising natural fog and darkness to really elevate the stakes and create something which felt darker and scarier in tone than anything beforehand. We don’t often see herbivores as direct threats for the human characters in Jurassic, so the attention to ambience and atmosphere throughout this sequence really helped to make the Ouranosaurus feel more intimidating when they eventually attacked. I also loved how this sequence is later explained as the animals behaviours changing due to the ecosystem being tilted off-balance by the Scorpios Rex – a fun note which perhaps suggests that the Spinosaurus may have had a similar impact on Isla Sorna. This was a really fun sequence and one which I thought was worth highlighting here as I really enjoyed it.

Next up I wanted to talk about a sequence which hits the nostalgia factor and tones it up to eleven – with the pair of Scorpios Rexes hunting the campers through the original Visitor’s Centre. A lot of the sequences in the centre feel very similar to those in 1993’s Jurassic Park – with sequences in the kitchen, in particular, recreating shot-for-shot some of the moments from the kitchen sequence in the first film. I really liked these call-backs as whilst they were quite overt, they felt as though they fitted with the show, and worked incredibly well. I also love how the series initially shows Blue nesting in the Visitor Centre before she heads to the Ford Explorer, as this underpins how much of this animal’s present-day existence is nested in Henry Wu’s past work at Jurassic Park. The Visitor’s Centre is also ultimately destroyed by the Scorpios Rexes during this sequence – with both animals buried by the rubble. Whilst some fans may be upset to see this location destroyed, I loved how it underpins a very core concept moving forwards – highlighting how Henry Wu’s arrogance and continued ignorance in the implications of his science has ultimately destroyed the legacy of the work that both he and John Hammond attempted to do.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that the third season features two bonus episodes – with the final two episodes tying directly into the Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom opening sequence. After Season One of the show, I tweeted one of the writers asking him if there was a chance we’d see reference to this in the future, so seeing this recreated shot-for-shot in the show with the kids watching on as the Indominus sample was extracted was awesome. It was also really cool seeing how Wu’s additional mission was to retrieve his laptop – noting that without it, the work he needed to do on the Indoraptor would take years and not months. This perhaps explains why the animal we see during the Lockwood Manor auction sequence is only a prototype – as Wu ultimately leaves the island without this information. It is interesting seeing some of Wu’s dialogue with Brooklynn throughout these episodes – with the character perhaps showing some small semblance of remorse. Ultimately, however, he leaves the kids on Nublar – reinforcing his status as a character with a questionable moral compass moving into Jurassic World Dominion. I have to admit – the way this tie-in played out was handled masterfully, and I was really happy to see things unfold in the way they did. I genuinely screamed out loud at my screen with happiness at one moment – emphasising how much work went in to nailing this crossover. It’s clear that the team working on Camp Cretaceous went to great lengths to smash the third season – and the result is some fantastic crossover which pays off and builds the lore of Wu’s work in meaningful ways without any of the massive contradictions I was worried these sequences may introduce.

The Series ends with the Campers finally escaping the island – heading off in a repaired boat, although we do see at the very closing moments that something else is on-board and hidden in the lower decks. This poses an interesting question in its own right, as it has been pre-established that Scorpios can self-reproduce – so is it possible a third hybrid existed on the island? If so then this could pose a grave risk to people on the mainland when the campers return there. We also know that Mantah Corp may potentially still be at play – with a quad-copter drone observing the Scorpios Rex on the island. Is it possible this shady corporation may now recover the carcasses of the dead hybrids for their own experiments? And what happened to the pilot of the Helicopter which the kids crashed in? She didn’t appear to have been eaten – but we never see her again after the crash sequence. These are just a handful of the questions we were left with at the end of Season 3 – implying there is more story to be told, even if the third season felt like it reached a nice natural ending for the series as a whole.

Overall, the third season of Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous is fantastic. Do not sleep on this season. It adds a lot to the lore of Doctor Henry Wu and his research, and it builds out a lot of interesting lore for the experiments which were happening on Isla Nublar. It also sets up some interesting plot threads for the future without them feeling overly intrusive and detrimental to the wider story telling in the Jurassic universe. Season 2 of this show left me feeling a little deflated, but Season 3 left me feeling reinvigorated. This wraps up the story of E750 and the wider universe in meaningful ways, and is a fantastic and more mature Jurassic adventure which adult fans will enjoy. I can’t wait to see the reception to this season – and how it informs Jurassic content in the future.

Written by: Tom Jurassic

#article #camp cretaceous #camp cretaceous season three #camp cretaceous season 3 #tom jurassic #tom fishenden

18 notes · View notes

jungshookz · 4 years

Text

CHAPTER SIX; The room.

(1) it begins; (2) a cry for help; (3) the investigation; (4) the basement; (5) the dust

Player has chosen: [B] Stay and fight!

“no, no-!” you press yourself up harder against the door, the knob now rattling from how hard you’re twisting and pulling at it

She’s coming for you

and She’s coming for you now.

your breathing starts to quicken when the shadow leaps closer and closer to the front, and the boys part so that she has a direct path to you

running away will be useless because the house might change its structure while you’re running and could lead you straight back here

so it looks like you’re going to have to go with the only other option you have

because if you’re going to die tonight…

then you’re going to go down kicking.

you sprint forward, taking advantage of the fact that most of the boys (jimin still has his eyes on you with his face pulled into that horrific grin) are facing away from you - that baseball bat was yours to begin with and you definitely need it now more than ever

as soon as you get your hands on the bat, taehyung’s head snaps back around with a sickening KRACK! and for the first time since all of this bullshit started, you finally let out an ear-piercing scream at how much more terrifying he looks up close

his eyes are stretched open so wide that you can see the perfect spherical shapes of his eyeballs and the decaying, black flesh under his eyelids

“give me the fucking-!“ you yank the bat from his grip in one swift movement before hurling it up over your shoulder and immediately swinging so that it collides with the side of taehyung’s head, “take that!”

you feel a little bit of pressure from the impact but you’re highly disappointed to see the bat swing right through his head, the dust particles dissipating before reforming once again

“wh- what?!” you give taehyung another hard whack, watching a chunk on his shoulder disappear for a brief second before the dust flutters back into place, “are you kidding me?!”

…you probably should’ve run away while you had the chance.

you start to get all of the boys’ attention at this point, their heads snapping back to the front one by one

“shit, shit, shit-“ your eyes flicker back and forth as you try to come up with a game plan as quickly as you possibly can when they begin to approach you slowly, taking one large step forward together at a time

you’re not sure where She went off to but it seems like it’s just you and the boys again, which brings you a strange sense of relief

at least you don’t have to deal with Her anymore!

you just have to deal with SEVEN other supernatural beings!

“…there’s no use, y/n… you cannot defeat Her…”

jungkook’s voice echoes around you once again and you freeze when the others stop while he continues to inch towards you with his hands clasped behind his back

he tilts his head and you find yourself tilting yours too

...

in a flash, he’s lunging forward in an attempt to grab you and you manage to dodge him only to collide right into namjoon’s chest

“…even if you leave this house, She will follow… She will cling to you…”

namjoon wraps his arms around you but you drop to your knees before he gets the chance to trap you

you scramble back up to your feet, “get away from me!” you roar, swinging the bat at namjoon only to see it glide right through his body

fuck!

“…She will live in the darkest depths of your mind…”

as each second ticks by, their faces start to become more and more distorted, their bodies becoming more disfigured

you feel your stomach turn when you watch yoongi practically unhinge his jaw, his pale, bony fingers reaching up to-

crack-crack-crack

“every dark corner, every shadow, every speck of dust in the air, She will be there…”

dark dust begins to swirl around in the air and you instinctively squint as to noT get any of it in your eyes

even through the haze, you can see that the corners of everyone’s mouths are now basically up to their ears

you can see their flesh started to rip at how hard their skin is being pulled

“…the brief moments that your eyes are closed are the moments that She will appear…”

“shut- shut up!” your breathing starts to quicken when you realise that you’re being backed into a corner, and you stick your bat out to try to keep them away from you, “don’t come any closer!”

“…She’ll wait for you to turn the lights off every night… wait until you’re just starting to fall asleep…”

“is that all you’ve got, you dusty sons of bitches-?!” you cough, now drowning in flurry of black dust, “if i had a vacuum cleaner, it’d be over for you freaks-”

you feel your grip loosen on the baseball bat as your head starts to spin

oh god

this is it

“no matter where you go… She will follow you. She will be there.”

the last thing you see before you completely pass out are seven wide grins

and then everything goes black

…

it’s… cold.

why is it cold?

you open your eyes slowly, your vision blurry and completely out of focus

your body is aching

your head is spinning

your ears are ringing

your throat is burning

a pained groan slips past your lips as you struggle to get yourself up off the ground

the smooth marble feels cool under your palms as you push yourself up slowly

“oh, god…” you whisper, reaching up to press the back of your hand against your forehead, “where… am i?”

the room is completely empty

no furniture

no loose papers

no clothes

no tools

no one

nothing

a single beam of moonlight shines down on you through the cracked hole in the ceiling and you raise your hand to shield your face before squinting

huh

full moon

and then it hits you

are you back on the top floor of this stupid house?

“are you kidding me?” you groan quietly, getting up onto your feet

you look up at the hole in the ceiling, wishing more than anything you could somehow jump and just bounce right out of this house

you’d give anything to get out of this place

you huff before placing your hands on your hips, taking a step back and looking down-

x marks the spot

suddenly, everything floods back into your mind at once

the drawing

the drawing in that journal

the one of the-

that.,., that weird octagon shape with the red x in the middle

you didn’t think anything of it when you first saw it because you thought it was just,.., well you though it was just a random journal with random scribbles and stuff but-

you look around quickly, your eyes widening to see that this isn’t just a regular room with regular walls

oh HELL no

mirrors?

this is just a room full of mirrors?!

“no, no…” you rush over to one of them before placing your hands flat on the cool surface, “oh my god, get me out of here-!” you smack your hand against the mirror before pressing your forehead against it

your face crumples slightly but you manage to keep yourself from completely bursting into tears

okay!

you know what

this is fine

it’s a good thing you’re in here, because that means that no one can get you now, right?

you don’t have to fight off any dust-boys or any creepy, three-dimensional She shadows

you’re safe in here!

you swallow thickly as you walk backwards to the centre of the octagon, looking around and watching your reflections doing the same

“guess it’s just me… and me, and me, and me…” you joke weakly, placing your hands on your hips before taking a look around at all of your reflections

…god, is that really what you look like from the side?

eugh

this certainly isn’t the right moment to be thinking this, but have you ever considered a nose job?

you know that they have those non-surgical ones so you don’t even have to-

you freeze upon noticing that one of your reflections - the one directly in front of you, to be more specific…

it’s not facing you.

that’s not right

this is… this is a mirror

you should be staring right back at your own face right now, so why are you… why are you staring at your back?

god

this house is really something, isn’t it?

disappearing corridors and random spiralling staircases and now even the damn mirrors don’t work right

you tilt your head curiously, watching the reflection tilt her head as well

you raise your left leg before wiggling your foot, watching as she does it too

“must be a trick mirror.” you mutter to yourself before squeezing your eyes shut

this is just because you’ve been up all night and you’re currently in a very anxiety-inducing situation

and it’s also because this house is cursed

it’s making your mind play tricks on you!

you peel open your eyes slowly once again and…

ah!

there we go

you smile in relief when your reflection smiles back at you

you lift your right arm before waving your hand back and forth gently and your reflection does the same

see?

it was all in your head

“all in my head.” you snort before glancing over your shoulder to look at the mirror that your back is facing, wondering if that mirror is messed up too

nope

that one’s working just fine because you’re staring at your butt right now

“alright, well… might as well try to find a way out of here.” you mumble to yourself, turning around fully to walk towards the back mirror

you walk up to it before gripping both sides of it, leaning over a little and feeling for any trick buttons or little levers or anything

you’re sure that one of these mirrors has to be a door or something

there has to be a way out

if there wasn’t a way out, then how did you get here in the first place, right?

your eyes flicker over your-

your heart skips a beat when you notice that the mirror that should be showing you your back… well, now you’re staring at your front

you turn around quickly, feeling the blood draining from your face when the reflection directly in front of you is the only one that doesn’t move

it’s just… frozen

that’s not right

a second ago, your reflection was doing exactly what you were doing even though it was facing the other way

it was tilting its head

it was raising its leg

it was waving its hand

you take a step forward cautiously, keeping your eyes glued on your frozen reflection

you raise your arm slowly to wave your hand again, but this time, it doesn’t do the same

also

if this is your reflection, it’s supposed to look like you, isn’t it?

somehow… that doesn’t look like you at all

the you in the mirror…

she’s much paler than you are

her hair is longer, darker, more matted

she’s wearing the same clothes as you are, except they look dirtier and more tattered

but the one thing that’s freaking you out the most?

she has no mouth

it’s just smooth flesh in place of where her mouth should be

you stay as still as you possibly can and watch in horror when she raises her right arm and-

tap

her finger drums gently against the glass in three slow knocks, and you press your lips together tightly to suppress the scream that you feel bubbling up in your throat

“what… what do you… what do you want from me?” you whimper, although you already know the answer to that question

jimin’s words from earlier suddenly ring in your mind

She wants your smile

she tilts her head, the apples of her cheeks suddenly plumping up

and your smile, She shall get

she digs her two pointer fingers underneath her cheeks before pushing upwards and you find yourself pressing up harder against the back mirror when her eyes widen and her fingers shove up more aggressively into her flesh

you shake your head no and her hands quickly drop from her face

her eyes soften as if she’s mocking the terrified expression you have on your face right now before she takes a step back

to your surprise, she leaps over to the next mirror, twirling around delicately before suddenly slamming herself right up against the mirror

her eyes have gone back to their widened, frenzied state and you can’t help but let out a whimper

she leaps into the next mirror and you find that you’re frozen to the spot and that you can only turn your head so that you can keep track of her prancing from mirror to mirror

she reaches up to grip at her face, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her cheeks before she claws down her face and drags the skin under her eyes downwards

“god, please… please, no…” you shake your head no again but she nods her head yes

your eyes begin to well with tears, your chin starting to tremble

she pushes herself up off the mirror before spinning around to the next mirror, flinging her arms up into the air carelessly

she’s getting closer and closer to you

you manage to pry your feet up off the ground before stumbling over to the other side of the room as far away as Her as possible

you turn back to look at Her to see that she’s now in the mirror that you were just leaning against

from here, the light is shining down on you but making the other parts of the room look especially dark, yet you can still see the whites of her eyes as clear as day

you see the smooth flesh of where her mouth should be stretching taut, her eyes going impossibly wide

she raises her arm again, only this time, her fingers are curled into a tight fist

you let out a scream when she suddenly pounds against the mirror, and she seems to take delight in your fear, raising her other hand and starting to pound furiously on the glass-

What do ÿ̴̧̭̝́͂͆o̶̫͇͓͂̂̇u̸̺̟̟͆̋͘ ̵̞͊w̴̠̦̹̓̏a̶̜̱̾͋̑n̵͔̖̰̄̈́t̵̥́̔͝ ̷̥̜́̆tS̵͖̑ḧ̸̖͗ē̵̲

> wi ll [A] g ive her y our sm il e[̸͓͇̕e̶̥̿r̷̼̈́͘r̸̹͂͘ȍ̶͖̥̑r̵͎̻̒]̶͈͛̈́

> [Bf ind] s hatte r the glas s[̶̻̔ȩ̸̠̈̈́ ̸̢̀̔r̵̳͎͠r̵̮̀o̴̥̓̾r̷͕͎̕͝]̸̳̾͜ ̸̳̊

yo u ã̷̧̱r̶̟̐e̴̡̐ ̴͕̬̈́̃? in c o ntrŏ̷͓͛l̴̤̏͐.̸̲̳̓͋

your vote ḥ̵̗̀̑̄ẽ̸͓̻̾̇r̸̮̿͘e̶̙̐.

#choh2020 #choh2020 drabbles

84 notes · View notes