fanfoolishness

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what a season finale!

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Reblogging this fic from S1 again now that canon confirmed Mark was fired for showing up drunk to teach 😭

the rewards (spoilers for Severance)

Spoilers for up to The We We Are: set prior to Mark undergoing Severance. Mark messes up, but a possible way out reveals itself. ~1500 words. Angst, grief, alcohol abuse.

"You tried to go back to teaching three weeks after she died... it was a disaster."

-

“I’m sorry, Mark.”

The man in the chair across from her shrugged, the movement jerky.  He did not meet her eyes.  His suit, normally trim and neat, hung rumpled and dirty on his lean frame. 

His mouth worked as if trying to make a sound.  Nothing came out. 

She filled the silence. “We’re all so sorry about what happened.” She didn’t meet his eyes, either. 

Mark rubbed a shaky hand across his face.  “Yeah?  Me too,” he said hoarsely.  His breath reeked of stale alcohol, and her nose twitched at the exhalation wafting across her desk.  

“We all loved Gemma so much,” she tried.  There’s no use for it.  It has to be done.  “But you can’t be here like this.  We -- we have to let you go, Mark.”

He straightened up in his chair, glaring at her.  She hazarded a glance at his eyes and wished she hadn’t.  They were swollen, puffy, red-rimmed.  

“Now wait a minute,” he blustered, his finger out as if driving home a point in one of his lectures.  “Okay.  Okay.  Maybe it’s too soon, maybe you have a point.  I just need a little more time.  I can come back next week -- I can do this, Cheryl -- this is my work --”

Cheryl laid her folded hands on top of her desk, brushing the pile of paperwork she would need him to sign.  She remembered her training.  Be compassionate, but firm.  It was all in the handbook.  “We have truly appreciated your time with us, and we are sorry that it has come to an end.  But you came to class intoxicated,” she began.  “I have forty student witnesses stating that your behavior was incredibly erratic --”

“I just needed some time to get my bearings --”

“They said you screamed at them when they tried to offer their condolences --”

“I was trying not to think about her, but they wouldn’t shut up--”

“No one expected you not to think about her, Mark, but --”

“I need to work,” he begged.  “Please.  She wants -- she, she would have wanted --”  His breath hitched raggedly, tears running down his cheeks.  “She’d want me to keep going --”

“Mark!”

The sharp tone froze him, and he stared at her, eyes wide and wet, the blood draining from his face.

“Mark, you were sick all over your desk,” she said gently.  “You nearly blacked out.  I’m not even sure you’re sober enough to be having this conversation right now, but they wanted me to try.”

He sank back in his seat, limp and boneless.  “I just -- I can’t be alone in our house anymore,” he whispered.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

“I know.”  She sighed.  It really was such a shame.  “Mark, I have some things for you to sign, all right?  We’ve already called your sister.  She should be here by the time we’re done to take you home.”

He wordlessly reached out a hand to pick up a pen as she slid the papers toward him.  This part was simpler.  She pointed, there, there, and there.  He signed each one, his initials neat and crisp despite the way his hand trembled.  He dropped the pen on her desk and let it roll.

The office door opened.  Rick, the security head, stood ready and waiting.  The fluorescent lights glinted on his badge.  “I’ll wait with you, Professor.”

“My -- my things,” Mark mumbled, looking back and forth between them.  “And Gemma’s office.  I should pack things up, shouldn’t I?”

“We’ll take care of all that,” soothed Cheryl.  “We can deliver everything to your home for you.  We know it’s a difficult time.”

“Right.  Right.”  He nodded, swallowing, and then gave her a miserable red-nosed smile.  “Well, uh… I mean, at least that’s one less part of my dead wife I’ll have to box up.  It’s always good to look on the bright side, right?”  

He laughed.  It was a horrible sound.

***

Later.

He was not looking at the bright side.

He was sitting in the dark, light from the end table lamp spilling over boxes in the living room, and whiskey clung to the back of his throat.  He was as far away from the fucking bright side as it was possible to be.

“Fired,” Mark chuckled.  “Sorry, Gemma.  I really fucked things up this time.”

Not as much as some things -- 

Her hand swollen and cold in his, tubes and beeping and white white lights, the doctor talking, Devon saying she was so, so sorry --

He shivered.  Sat there and shivered, colder than he’d ever been, head pounding, stomach churning.  He took another swig of whiskey, cherishing the burn.

“Well, what do we have here?” he slurred, tearing open the nearest box.  He stared blearily at stacks of old books and new, hastily paperclipped scholarly articles, piles of junk mail.  It was all thrown in together.  “Guess they couldn’t wait to get rid of us, could they, honey?” he asked the empty house.

Fuck.

Was he crying again?  

Water beaded on one of the books.  He wiped the cover off, tears smearing in the dust.  At least this one must not have been important, if Gemma had let it get this dusty.  He let out a shuddering breath and ran his hand over his face, snot clinging to his palm.  

Well, if you couldn’t have a mental breakdown when you’d just lost your wife, when could you?  It only seemed fair.

He reached back into the box and came away with a fistful of mail.  The upcoming spring course catalog.  A cheerful pink envelope with the top ripped open and a birthday card months old inside.  She always did open her mail like a barbarian, ripping jaggedly through the adhesive with letter openers.  She had more letter openers than any person should.  He dug his hand into the box again, wondering if he’d find the one shaped like a ferret: maybe he’d find the t-rex, or the curling vine.  

He rummaged with his dominant hand, the other consigned to holding his whiskey.  Priorities.

“Ow!” he muttered.  “Always with the paper cuts.”  He pulled out the offending paper, a glossy brochure with a bent corner.  

LUMON INDUSTRIES: SEVERANCE AND YOU.  Achieve work-life balance like never before!  A man’s self-satisfied face grinned psychotically back at him from the brochure.  He wanted to punch it.  That severed shit was --  

He turned the brochure over.  Cheery bullet points dotted the back, mixed with pictures of people looking impossibly at ease.  How anyone still remembered how to smile in the world he’d found himself in the past few weeks, he didn’t know.  

He took another drink of whiskey, then winced.  It was the bottom of the glass again.  

He glanced around.  He’d left the bottle in the kitchen, like an idiot.  Slowly, achingly, he got to his feet, the brochure still clenched in his hand.  He padded back into the dark kitchen and traded the brochure for the bottle, pouring himself another glass.  

He’d regret it in the morning, probably.  Like he regretted most things, now.  But it was the only way to get a chance to evade the dreams --

Her voice -- her laugh -- her double sneezes --

Her scream -- her breath bubbling in her throat -- her tired smile -- her blood on his hands --

He shook his head, panting, and drained the glass.  He gagged at the end, swallowed it back down.  He was gonna regret that.

He set the glass down on the brochure, squinted to read the words through the glass bottom.  Increase your productivity and your free time.  You’ll never have to worry about work again!  Your Innie will do the work, your Outie will reap the rewards, the rest, and the relaxation!

He wobbled on his feet.  “So…”  There was something there, something he was trying to put together.  He attempted the math.  It buzzed in his brain.  “One of you still has to live in this shithole…”  He gripped the edge of the counter, his head swimming.  “But one of you… gets to forget all about it.” 

His hand scrabbled at the brochure.  He closed the distance to the fridge, clumsily raised his hand, searching.  He found something.  One of Gemma’s goofy little magnets.  This one was a goat with a bow tie.

Fuck.  He was crying again.

He sniffed, slapped the happy little goat on the brochure, and fixed it to the refrigerator.  It hung askew next to the door handle, nevertheless secure.  He nodded, clearing his throat.  “Huh,” he said.  “Huh.”

He retraced his steps back to the couch, yawning, his head swirling, the boxes at his feet blurring.  He’d deal with them in the morning.  

He’d deal with the morning, in the morning.  

He tried to pull his socks off, lost his balance, and fell back against the couch.  It was soft and spinny.  He closed his eyes, shivering again, and hoped he’d earned another dreamless night.

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Another hidden detail that you can see only with fly cam: Rook comforting Lucanis while Illario makes his "Scar speech"

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“... the only person that he feels that for is standing behind him and and so that’s ultimately the direction that he goes. And it’s a moment where he, you know, it’s a choice between two loves, but it’s also a choice between two identities and two wives, and it’s him saying, you know, my love and thus my existence is valid and is as important as that of my outie.” — DAN ERICKSON

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Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.

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I finally figured out the Mortis arc.

(I've watched this story at least four times, and it bothered me a little on most rewatches because it seems a lot of the interpretation surrounding this story involves the Light/Dark Sides following yin/yang principles, and this contributes to the (incorrect) idea that "balance" means a balance between numbers of Jedi and Sith. Thing is, that interpretation goes against what George Lucas has said about the Light/Dark Sides; and The Clone Wars was created as Lucas-based canon before the Disney buyout. It's one thing to change from the 2D version of the Clone Wars story to the cartoon version; it's another thing to rewrite the fundamentals of the Light and Dark Sides!)

So, here's how I now understand it.

Here's the thing: the Light and Dark Sides both exist. They always have existed that we know of, as far as we can tell they're always going to exist. That's a given. But people don't have to give in to the Dark Side and act on their darker impulses for balance to exist. The Dark Side itself, as George Lucas himself says, creates imbalance. Personally, I have framed it as the Light Side following the will of the Force - whether the Force wills life or death, gain or loss, etc. - while the Dark Side tries to wrest control away and bend the Force to its own ends.

And the Mortis arc actually depicts this.

✨ The story does indicate that in terms of actual light/dark, night/day, creation/destruction - all this must exist in balance. And the Force DOES keep all these factors in balance.

There is a distinction, however, between light/dark as natural forces of nature, versus the Light Side and Dark Side in terms of Force mythology. This is best seen by viewing the story in its LITERAL sense: the Father/Daughter/Son are powerful Force users who have gone into exile on Mortis. The Daughter tends toward life/creation, the Son tends toward death/destruction, the Father keeps a balance between the creation/destruction. They all, as Force users, can be tempted by the Dark Side of the Force just as any other Force wielder can be (indicated by the fact that the Son is spoken of several times as "giving himself over to the Dark Side," not that he is the Dark Side itself). There's also the fact that the Father/Son/Daughter all die, but the Force itself obviously doesn't die, so in the end these characters literally are what they say they are.

There are multiple layers to this story, of course, so there's more than just the literal to account for.

✨ If we are to take the Father/Son/Daughter as archetypes, we have the Father as a representation of the Force itself. The Daughter represents the Light Side, and the Son represents the Dark Side. Both the Daughter and the Son exist as the Light/Dark Sides exist, and the Father is the authority over both of them. Throughout most of the story, it is heavily implied that the Daughter follows the Father's lead (the Light Side seeks to align with the will of the Force). Meanwhile, the Son bucks against the Father's authority (the Dark Side tries to exert its own control) - and this creates imbalance.

The Dark Side is imbalance.

✨ It becomes even more interesting if we take the Mortis story as a depiction of the current struggle between the Jedi and the Sith. In this case, the Father, being the one who maintains balance, could be the Chosen One. The Daughter represents the Jedi, as they strive to adhere to the Light Side. The Son represents the Sith, as they act on the Dark Side. The Daughter strives to follow the will of the Force; but when the Son becomes more and more of a threat, the Daughter makes a critical mistake by doing what has been forbidden - namely, releasing the dagger - to kill the Son, and ends up losing her own life. The Father doesn't succumb to the Dark Side himself, unlike Anakin; but, like Anakin, he does keep looking to others to restore the balance. Ultimately, however, realizing the Son is out of control, the Father sacrifices his own life and takes the Son with him. In a similar fashion, throughout the millennia, the Jedi - by striving to act on the Light Side - seek to follow the will of the Force. But when the Sith become increasingly powerful and practically back the Jedi into a corner, the Jedi end up making critical mistakes and resorting to previously unthinkable methods to try to restore balance, and that ultimately results in their downfall. And while various attempts by others to fight back against the darkness are important, in the end, Anakin (the Chosen One) has to sacrifice himself and allow himself to die in order to end the Sith and restore balance.

----------

So anyway, those are my takes on the Mortis arc now. I firmly believe Lucas's views on the Dark Side itself creating imbalance remain intact. The Dark Side exists and the temptation to fall to the Dark Side is always there; but balance in the Force is NOT achieved by people acting on the Dark Side and/or wiping out the Light Side adherents to be "equal to" the Dark. Rather, balance is achieved by the Force itself when people strive to follow the Light - namely, by acting selflessly, letting go of possessiveness, and letting the will of the Force take the lead.

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Latest work.

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In which my cat does NOT like the Severance season 2 finale

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Shant elaborate

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nick told me to repost this because i dont know how tumblr works . season 2 makes me INSANE

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A locket of her mother possibly 💀

every day i am haunted by the question of what little harmony cobel had to break in order to graduate from her wintertide fellowship

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A man with a plan

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When someone reblogs your pro-Veilguard post to a community of anti-Veilguard rants and you can’t make the notification go away even by blocking them because it’s in a community 🙄

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He’s still going!!! 20 hours in!

NJ Democrat senator Cory Booker takes the floor in protest of Trump/Musk, "saying that he will keep going “'as long as I am physically able'.”

“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said at the outset of his remarks. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy. “These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.” -source

I am posting this at 2:30am EST. He has been speaking since 7PM EST. This link (at this moment) is to a live stream.

FUCK YEAH, JERSEY!

So very proud of my state at the moment.

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Happy birthday trans people!!!!!! ✨💞🥰💙🫶🌟💕🦎🏳️‍⚧️💞the world is better with you in it ❤️