#Anon you would make a great sock puppet | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

oh-hush-its-perfect · 3 years ago

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Wait a minute; you seriously think that dreadlocks are a racist characteriture? I know people tend to grasp for straws when looking to cry “racist!”, but this? Take your own advice and do some actual research before you virtue signal.

WOO this reply turned out way longer than I expected it to! But since I'm chosing to interpret Anon's question as earnest and their complaint as sincere (though I am giving them far too much credit), I figured we might as well do a deep-dive. The sentences that are in bold are the main ideas, and the sentences in large font are the wider takeaway.

Actually, it ended up being so long, I made an audio recording in case y'all have ADHD or dyslexia! The audio's not great and I mess up a lot while talking and I do have a speech impediment, but I hope it's helpful.

Again, I want to emphasize the fact that I don't think RR is a racist. He's just a guy with some unaddressed biases. Also, it's worth noting that I am not black, and someone who is could probably make a better argument (Black Riordanverse fans— if you feel comfortable, reblog with your own opinions please!)

That being said, yes, when you make non-human villains with features associated with black people, you are effectively dehumanizing and villainizing black people.

When writing books, especially high fantasy books (though RR's works are decidedly not high fantasy), people must draw upon real-world cultures for inspiration.

This can put authors in a moral conundrum. They can either a) take inspiration a single culture or continent, making the story deeply rooted in the ideas and elements of one people, or b) they can take inspiration from multiple places in the real world and make divisions as we do in the real world. For choice (a), take small-scale fantasy stories that take place in Medieval Europe, or stories like Raya (I mispronounce her name in the audio; please excuse me) and the Last Dragon, which nearly exclusively draws upon South-East Asian experience and appearance. For choice (b), take stories that involve massive battles and multiple cultures, like Star Wars. The risk that comes with choice (a) is that you can end up with a homogeneous people, and that necessitates the exclusion of other ethnicities. The risk that comes with choice (b) is that you can racially code your fantasy races/species.

Racial coding is a technique used either consciously or subconsciously by writers when creating fictional races. It occurs when authors draw upon real-world appearances and cultures to portray fictional appearances and cultures.

For example, the trope of the "Bazaar of the Bizarre" is widely prominent throughout media. It depicts a bustling marketplace, often full of oddities for purchase and theives. This trope is highly inspired by real life bazaars and souks and the like, and the correlation made in media between these marketplaces and debauchery instills in the audience a feeling of distrust towards these establishments and the racial groups with which they are associated. You watch a movie where a guy gets robbed on an alien desert planet while traditional Indian music plays, and then you pass a couple of guys listening to traditional Indian music, and you hold your wallet a little tighter.

Or maybe there's a fictional race that has medium-toned skin purple skin, small and slanted eyes, and straight black hair. Okay, we can tell from that description that these people are meant to be visually similar to Asian people. These characters are racially-coded. And say that this fictional race is also known for bad teeth and addition problems. These are negative stereotypes associated with Chinese people, and since we already see a visual correlation between Asians and these fictional purple people, that negative stereotype is reinforced. That's called negative racial coding.

Now back to Rick Riordan.

The Giants described in the Heroes of Olympus books almost all have non-human skin tones and hair described as being "braided," or, in Polybotes's case, "wild." "Braided" could mean cornrows or box-braids. Polybotes's "wild" hair is easily interpreted as an Afro or other natural black hairstyle. For Enceladus, no words were minced; he explicitly has "dreadlocks, braided with human bones."

There is no question about it; the HoO Giants have their hair in styles traditionally associated with black people.

So we visually correlate the giants with black people. Now that that's established, let's look at their behavior.

The giants are cunning. They are downright, unquestionably evil. They can be manipulative, or they can be brutish, but they are all destructive. Most importantly, they are inhuman.

The Giants' inhumanity is not just in their appearance (with their dragon legs and all) but in their treatment of humans. Enceladus in particular is a great case study; he is preparing to eat Tristan McLean if Piper does not comply with his commands. Cannibalism is a practice particularly associated with native African tribes, and it remains as a nasty stereotype that implies a lack of humanism in Africans.

I want to draw attention, too, to the fact that not only does Enceladus have dreadlocks; his dreadlocks have human bones in them. This little detail ties together (literally) the features Enceladus bears that relate to blackness and the absence of his compassion for humanity. His African hair is closely associated with his inhumane nature.

The effect here is that features that imply blackness are correlated to evil and savagery.

"Oh, but Jules!" you may say. "What about Orion? Orion is the only giant to be explicitly described as human-colored (the color of wheat-toast) and he doesn't even have braided hair like the other giants! His hair is short, and straight, and swept back!"

Oh, yeah. Let's talk about Orion, the exception that proves the rule. Orion isn't black coded. And that might have something to do with the fact that Orion is supposed to be physically attractive and human-like.

When your only handsome giant who could "pass for human" is the only one who doesn't have braids and who explicitly has a real human skin tone is white, and the rest are barbarous and black-coded, you have a problem.

(Concession— Periboia is described as blond, which may imply that her human half is white. We don't really know, because RR, like most white authors, has a habit of only describing a character's skin tone when they aren't white. However, the fact that she is a muscular, physically large woman, may be seen as enough to dehumanize her.)

And all of this is ignoring that a couple of the giants are explicitly described as dark-skinned black.

Like, "coal black." And HoO isn't the only series where RR does this; his Muspelheim giants are depicted the same way— though, to his credit, he does go out of his way to say that the "black one," Surt, is very sexy.

Now, let's talk about intention. I do not believe that RR set out to make black-coded antagonists. I think it just came naturally to him, and that's also worth examining.

This is a common trope�� so common that RR probably didn't question it. In fact, he was probably heralding back to the "great" authors of old.

Like I said in my original post, RR was not exactly the first author to make his villains with black features. There's an expansive history on the subject, and a lot of it can be traced back to J. R. R. Tolkien and his orcs. Here's a little excerpt from a novel written by Johnathan Coe (admittedly, another white author), The Rotter's Club:

"Surely he must have noticed that Tolkien’s villainous Orcs were made to appear unmistakably negroid. And did it not strike him as significant that the reinforcements who come to the aid of Sauron, the Dark Lord are themselves dark skinned, hail from unspecified tropical islands from the south, and are often mounted on elephants?"

Worth noting here that Tolkien's dwarves were also Jewish-coded, though that's somewhat off topic (unless we wanna start talking about Rowling again, who herself made Jewish-coded goblins).

Anyway, Anon, I am not "grasping at straws." And I have, in fact, done my research. The point of my original post was not to "virtue signal" but to bring awareness. In fact, I was actually defending Rick Riordan in that original post. Because, at the end of the day, this is a trap any author can fall into.

TLDR; Racial coding happens when a fictional species is given features that allude to a real-world ethnicity. Negative racial coding occurs when those features accompany negative stereotypes about that same real-world ethnicity. Rick Riordan (probably inadvertently) does this while writing the Giants in his Heroes of Olympus series. His Giants have hairstyles akin to black hairstyles, and are sometimes described as having black skin. Since the Giants are portrayed as ugly, evil savages, the subconscious message is that black people may be ugly, evil savages. This is a mistake a lot of authors make, though; it's not solely RR's vice.

#Anon you would make a great sock puppet #part of me wonders if you are actually an RR crit who wants to be like 'see?? there ARE extremely ignorant people who oppose us!'#though you're probably just a troll. lol.#RR crit #rr critical #heroes of olympus #hoo #i'm being too nice to RR again #riordanverse #rrverse #pjo #percy jackson

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roo-bastmoon · 2 years ago

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Sign your name to what you say

Initially I provided folks the option to send anonymous asks to me. I did this figuring it would allow people to express controversial concerns or their real opinions without fear of being attacked on main by the cult or gas-lit by folks who refuse to make room for different interpretations of things.

And some asks were really thoughtful, or really lovely. I enjoyed it.

But lately, trolls have been sending disingenuous doubts, or folks were writing to urge me to cancel/unfollow this or that account they find problematic.

And look, I know I'm not perfect. I'm open to constructive criticism and being questioned or challenged about whether I've said something wrong or made a bad call. For sure.

But it was getting really meanspirited, almost like bullying. To the point where I was dreading looking at my inbox. And this is my blog. It's my happy place.

I am 43 and recovering from uterine cancer. My complete hysterectomy this summer plunged me into full menopause and I get hot flashes and they make me GRUMPY AS FUCK. I have a busy, deadline-driven day job. I also have a freelance job. I also have a house to maintain. I'm also the caretaker of my visually impaired mom. I have people in my life whom I love that need me. And I do animal rescue work on the side.

This place is where I come to unwind, fangirl about BTS, maybe have some intellectually satisfying conversations.

I am not here to reenact Mean Girls. Take that high school shit outside.

So from now on, you are absolutely welcome to message me or submit an ask about anything you like--but you'll put your name behind it. If you create a blank sock-puppet account to speak to me, I'll just delete your ask.

Sign your name to what you say, and maybe what you say will be said in a better way.

I must say that it's working great thus far. Folks are DMing me very politely and we are having wonderful conversations and it's a lot less stressful. So I'll be keeping off the anon option for the foreseeable future. Sorry that the Ruiners have to ruin things, but that's what ruiners do.

And now, for a palette cleanse, here's Jimin to remind us all to be a good human.

Yours,

Roo

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green-blue-heller · 4 years ago

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CONFESSION: I tried to watch W*ker. (emphasis on “tried”) I was bored, it was new so I decided, “fuck it! Why not?” I watched the Pilot, and I barely paid attention. Found myself tabbing out to do other things. Tried to watch the next episode, it was only MARGINALLY better cuz it slowed down, but I still found myself opening Origin and replayed the Witcher 3 (I generously let the show still play in the background) but by the fourth episode, I gave up. I didn’t care about any of the characters and J*red still has the acting talent of a sock puppet (apologies to all aspiring sock puppet actors, blame J*red for giving you a bad rep 😢) If I am to say anything positive about W*ker, it makes for great white noise when you need to fall asleep? But even THAT fails cuz it’s so boring, it kept me awake, so I ragequit the browser and fell asleep to something else.

How much money changed hands to give it a SECOND season?

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I hope it had a better storyline than W*ker.

- 🤖Cybernan anon

I never saw any of Walker, besides the memes and clips from Jared’s howl at the end of the pilot.

Honestly, I think it’s because so much went into Walker, and Jared being their golden boy, that they felt they HAD to give it a second season.

I mean, literally every early review said it was garbage. Lol.

But there were so many stans that it actually had good ratings for the first handful of episodes. Notice how quickly they got the renewal?

That was so it could happen while things still looked hopeful. Because if they waited, then they would have to admit they put their eggs in the wrong basket…

#cyberman anon #🤖 anon #anon #anons welcome #I’m gonna admit… I briefly considered using a TW for w*liked in the tags here…#🤣🤣🤣

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spade-riddles · 4 years ago

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Submission:

Hi there! I’m the anon who asked for a conversation about what we (as Kaylors) actually fear from Karlie and Taylor letting the world assume Jerk is the baby’s bio dad. Switched to submission format because the Tumblr word count is tiny and asks get eaten and muddled, which makes it really hard to express yourself properly 😅

First I wanted to say thank you for engaging in a mature discussion about this. I really appreciate it. A lot of other blogs have either stopped believing Karlie and Taylor are together any more, or are more idealistic and don’t want to even talk about a less than perfect outcome to this story. It’s frustrating because while I understand the need for optimism (I feel that need too!) I don’t want us living in la la land and feeling disproportionately upset if we don’t get our perfect ending.

So. I should probably lay out where I stand: I think there is a high likelihood Karlie and Taylor will let people assume the baby is Jerk’s, at least at first. My reasons are simple.

1) The baby is due very soon. Taylor is used to sneaking around and we’ve talked before about how she is able to live in secrecy. The pandemic has definitely made that easier for her. But a baby is a whole different ball game. It will be frankly exhausting to sneak around pretending she’s not a mom, hiding her baby. And the more she hides it, the higher the risk of it being exposed by social media and becoming a huge gossip story. Taylor Swift’s secret baby! Kissgate was bad enough, I don’t think Taylor would want to risk a Babygate.

For this reason, she’s going to move soon to incorporate Karlie back into her life. Probably as a new single mom friend who is staying with / spending a lot of time with her after her marriage break up. The story may even go out that the feud rumors were bogus all along and the girls were good friends the whole time, and Taylor gave Karlie the strength to leave her bad relationship. I expect Tay to be named godmother, which will allow her to be seen more with bub while the full picture is waiting to fall into place.

2) So Taylor and Karlie are being seen together once more. Taylor looks like a great friend, Karlie’s image is slowly being rehabilitated as Taylor goes on a charm offensive, and the baby is a fixture in Taylor’s life that people think is sweet, but don’t really question because she’s supposedly still with J*e.

No-one talks about J*sh at this stage. No-one interacts with him on social media, and they do their best to limit any media mentions of him as “Karlie Kloss’s baby daddy”. This is easier than it seems. Taylor has connections at Vogue, Karlie owns W, and Tree is an expert at shutting down unwanted stories. Any publication that wants future access to Taylor or Karlie will play ball, because why wouldn’t they? No-one is that invested in linking Karlie to a past beard forever, and no-one wants to bully a newborn child over a connection insiders will know isn’t even real. Sure, Scooter and his Page Six sock puppets will probably churn out articles stirring the pot, but that’s nothing new. The girls can ignore it or deflect attention, as they do now.

3) Stage three of the plan sees the resurgence of “Kaylor” as a thing people are shipping. Hardcore fans will obviously know they’ve been together all along, but the wider public will start to wonder if Taylor has deeper feelings for Karlie, or if Karlie left her husband because she hopes to “get back together with” Taylor and take another go at their 2014 relationship. People start to link past songs to Karlie and speculate that lingering feelings for her “best friend” are what has stopped Taylor locking it down with J*e. J*e is boring and only seen on miserable pap walks with Taylor, but Karlie is seen hanging out with her and their friends in happy, seeming domesticity. People begin to talk about how much like the old carefree Taylor Tay seems again. The sunshine effect in full swing.

4) Eventually Toe break up and Kaylor are revealed to be in a relationship. You’ll never please the homophobes but by now most fans are happy for Taylor. Taylor, who has de facto raised the baby since birth, jokes that she’s “daddy”. Karlie gives a more serious interview about what a wonderful parent Taylor is and how she has always considered her as much the baby’s mom as she is, because she was there all along and never gave up or walked away. She won’t be drawn on her ex husband but does make a statement about “what a great influence” Taylor is on their child. Etc etc. By now we’re a few years out from the Trump administration and J*sh is still known and disliked, but is hardly a household name. He was only ever “famous” (I use the term loosely) for being Karlie’s beard.

People can disagree with me on this. Yes, his family are odious and will be in trouble for years to come, probably. But J*sh has always been a fringe member. He’s not Jared or Ivanka, who people really know and hate. He’s more like his father - people know he’s shady like the rest of them, but most people couldn’t immediately pick his face out of a line up, and they don’t know the details. I’m sorry, but it’s true. The general public don’t care about Jerk half as much as Kaylors do. Once he loses his celebrity connections he’ll fade from public consciousness. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. How many people reading this right now would know if Dick Cheney passed them in the street? Not many, I’m guessing. Time passes and memory fades. People will “know” he’s the father, but in a fuzzy way, and soon enough it will fade to the point where this is brought up as surprising information. People won’t even remember she was married to him. It’ll become weird trivia that no-one really wants to talk about anyway, because it seems disrespectful.

5) At this point, people either assume Jerk has a private relationship with the child, or they notice how Karlie never ever talks about him and speculate that he’s estranged from the child. It’s likely Karlie and Taylor would then go down the route of having Taylor officially adopt the baby at this point, though a public marriage would probably predate that, and all these things take time to roll out and seem natural. Even U-Hauling it!

If J*sh is smart, he’ll keep quiet during all of this. If Kaylor were smart, they would have engineered reciprocal NDAs, where Karlie can’t reveal their marriage was fake, but Jerk can never speak about the baby in return. And I think he might go along with this policy of silence. Remember, what he was always getting out of the arrangement with Karlie was that he appeared straight. Why throw all that away? He won’t want any real involvement with the baby, because it isn’t actually his. But it suits him that people think he got a woman pregnant, and it suits him that he can pretend to be a dad. Just “a private dad” who doesn’t see his kid much. Yes, we might get some annoying stunts where he tries to pretend, but if Karlie and Taylor continue to never give him any oxygen, it’ll eventually reach a stage where people can choose their own version of reality. Some people will think he’s involved and some won’t, but most people frankly won’t care either way.

And I do think that’s the ideal scenario for both of them. Sure, Karlie could eventually leak gossip stories suggesting he’s not the dad. But that would be a hit to her reputation at a time when she is actively trying to rebuild it. WE might all be passionately anti-Jerk and gleeful at the idea of a cheating narrative, but I don’t think it would go down so well with the wider public. He may be from a scummy family but he’s always been viewed as “the one who’s not as bad”, and Karlie still made the apparent choice to marry him. Even if he was scum it would look bad to treat him like that after pretending she loved him .To say that she cheated with some meaningless random guy and got knocked up by him, and this other dude has never even been involved with the kid … . I won’t mince words here. It would make Karlie look terrible. People won’t be saying “ha ha he got what he deserved”, they’d be saying “ wow, Karlie is a sloppy mess”, “wow, how cruel to get knocked up behind her husband’s back”, and finally “wow, Karlie seems so unstable, she’ll treat Taylor badly too and bring trouble down on her head. She probably only even got back with her because she didn’t want to be alone. Taylor should RUN!“

This is NOT the impression they want people to have of Karlie. Which brings me to:

6) Karlie’s reputation has suffered enough, and Taylor knows it. Taylor is no stranger to pivots, and she’s no stranger to playing the long game. What’s most important to her at this stage? I think it’s that she gets to live a free and open life with the woman she loves and the child they’re raising together. I don’t think she cares who is assumed to be, basically, the sperm donor. She will be daddy with this plan, and that’s what counts. So yeah, I think she would go for it. It’s a sacrifice I think she would make.

And really, if he’s not involved in the baby’s life, is it even a sacrifice? We all talk about the “association” around here, but the child won’t have any actual contact with him and Taylor can freeze out any mention of him in the media. There is no actual threat to the child that I can see. Letting people assume he’s the father is NOT the same as letting him into the baby’s life. Kaylor not correcting people’s assumptions doesn’t mean they’re going to actively stunt with him. They can just choose to say nothing, the way they did with the “feud”.

What’s the worst that will happen if people assume the baby has K*shner DNA but is estranged from the family? Seriously, people. Give me answers.

Not just “I don’t want people to think Taylor’s baby has his icky genes”. Because genes don’t make a person and they don’t necessarily make a family either. Taylor’s love and parenthood would not be ANY less if it was assumed she was the adoptive mom with no biological link to the baby. The baby would not be assumed genetically evil for having a few chromosomes from that awful family. Tr*mp’s own sister has been one of his biggest critics, remember? Genetics don’t dictate your politics or your moral compass.Only a fool would actually seriously accuse an innocent baby of being some kind of devil spawn, just because they thought it was Jerk’s.

The K*shners can’t claim or take the baby. They can’t force Karlie and Taylor to stunt with them. So there’s no “using the baby to whitewash Jerk’s reputation”. There’s no putting the baby in danger. And the media aren’t going to bully the baby, because it’s poor practice and would make them look terrible, as well as costing them potentially lucrative future relationships with Karlie and Taylor.

Taylor isn’t “letting Jerk take credit for her baby” either. Not if they refuse to stunt and if it plays out the way I described. Taylor will eventually get recognition as the baby’s real other parent, while Jerk is phased out. Taylor is patient. For the end game I believe she could stand a few months of this.

I’ve turned it over and over in my head and this is the only realistic solution I can see. All our other theories - Karlie pretends to be Taylor’s surrogate, Karlie pretends she slept with someone else, Karlie and Taylor expose the fake marriage, all of those theories - they all seem like wishful thinking. They would never be credible outside our tiny fandom of people who want any memory of Jerk purged forever. (Not possible. The Jerklie history will always exist on the internet, just like Taylor’s supposed “relationship�� with Calvin.) We just have to let it go. Separate our heightened negative feelings from the actual likely long term consequences.

This is what will probably happen, if we’re being really sensible and honest with ourselves. We need to stop being so absolutist and thinking it’s the end of the world, because it really doesn’t have to be. It can be just a bump in the road instead. I think we’d all be a lot happier if we adjusted our outlook about this possibility, to be honest. This all or nothing way of thinking is creating so much unhappiness and stress, I hate to see it. We need to just breathe!

I truly believe we won’t get everything we want - but good things are coming.

This is so long, sorry! But I had a lot to say.

Yours,

let’s call me, Pragmatic Anon

#i am posting this only because you put a lot of time into it.#i said i was done with this topic #you ignore a critical part of this? Why should he get any credit for this child #why should this child be stained for no reason #there is absolutely no reason to put this burden on taylor or the child #none #he has nothing to do with it #i will be absolutely stunned if they use their child as part of a publicity stunt #no words #submission

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rivetgoth · 4 years ago

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I had this friend I met in the Hetalia fandom in like 8th-9th grade who was like, a lot older than me (I was like 12-13 when we met and she was like 17 or so), and we were REALLY close for a really long time, we'd talk and call every day and it got to a point where she was really dependent on me in this awful way where she would like constantly threaten suicide if I didn't answer her texts fast enough and shit like that. She was really rich cuz her dad was a doctor and one time she bought me an entire fucking Xbox One (I did not ask for it like... I'd always been a PlayStation gamer LOL) because she didn't have anyone to play Halo with her. My family still has it and uses it as a DVD player/Netflix machine.

Anyway the really batshit thing about this person (BESIDES the fact that she was like, definitely a pedophile who loved shota and frequently sexted me after she'd turned 18+ and I was like 14 and she also had both a bestiality and incest fetish that she'd talk to me about constantly — I was a kid I had no moral concept of anything and just liked being edgy and feeling mature) was that she was like. A chronic liar who constantly faked identities. And for years after cutting off contact with her I would look back and realize that she had faked even more than I had noticed at the time. The thing is, I knew for sure she wasn't lying about her home life -- Her address, what she looked like, her dad's profession, her age, her house, her pets, etc, were all things I had proof of. But when I knew her she was constantly remaking her Tumblr to escape drama she'd start, and she would constantly make side blogs under pseudonyms and pretend it wasn't her (sometimes it would be random shit like aesthetic blogs under different names or ask blogs for characters or smthn, other times it was like, callout blogs for people she had gotten into drama with where she would pretend to be someone else defending her). I assumed back then that I was always going to be in on it, because she would always tell me whenever she made one of these fake accounts, and sometimes she would encourage me to make a new account too as a sort of roleplay thing where we both pretended to be people we weren't... Until I learned that she wasn't always telling me. Every so often, I would become mutuals with a new account who would start messaging me about my interests and strike a conversation with me. Then something would slip and my "new mutual" would admit that they had actually been my friend all along... Which should have made me immediately cut contact because that's weird as shit, but I was young and she was a close friend, so I would just sorta accept it.

She ended up being like, horrifically transphobic. She got run off her blog twice for being specifically transmisogynistic, first insisting that she was allowed to headcanon canon trans women as feminine men and then on her next blog insisting that lesbians couldn't be attracted to trans women. I was still young and closeted and she was one of my closest friends and was constantly messaging me that the situation was making her suicidal and she was just wording things wrong and totally supported trans people and people just weren’t giving her the benefit of the doubt and she was still learning so I tried to just stay out of it without losing her. Then... I came out as trans lol. She stopped replying to me when I first came out and then made a bunch of vents on her tumblr about how much it upset her and about how “using he/him pronouns for AFAB people is triggering” for whatever fucking reason. She told me her “best IRL friend” who she had introduced me to once on Skype but who never logged in again after and who refused to ever do a group call or anything (definitely another fake account) said that it was irrational for me to expect my friends to respect my pronouns so soon after coming out and that I shouldn’t be upset if I get misgendered. Then she apologized but told me my name and pronouns would never fit me. As you can imagine, as a little baby trans kid who was closeted from my family and terrified of even having come to terms with being trans, I didn’t really have a great defense.

Soon she started being really woke like 2014 style Tumblr SJW to save face, she came out as nonbinary and told me in private it was because she felt bad when people called her cis during discourse (she absolutely wasn't nonbinary) and she coined a "new sexuality" that was "attraction only to people you perceive as feminine, regardless of how they identify" -- what this actually meant was "attraction to cis women and not trans women." She ran an aroace help blog despite not being aroace? And made a bunch of pride flags that I still see around sometimes to this day. She would start fights a lot and try to out-woke people and got into a bunch of drama with other SJW types of the day, got into a bunch of drama with TumblrInAction and Mogai-Watch and shit like that, and she claimed for a short while that she had a headmate (FWIW I totally believe DID is a legitimate thing but like. Trust me on this one.) who was transphobic and that it made her so sad, she told me that it was actually that headmate that had been transphobic before, and every so often her headmate would front out of nowhere and misgender me and use really abusive language like calling me a cunt or a bitch or whatever. She started making these "intersex nonbinary" OCs who she would constantly make porn of under the guise that they were representation for LGBT people who were just like, extremely fetishistic cuntboys and dickgirls (they were “intersex” to explain why they could be “girls with natal penises” or “boys with natal vaginas”).

At that same time, she somehow always managed to have these random, very sporadically active trans women mutuals who were apparently amazing friends of hers, who shared some interests with her but also would defend her when people brought up her past, with these long-winded “Well, I’m a trans woman and I think what she said is perfectly justified and everyone makes mistakes and she’s always been a good ally!!” Then one day some trans woman received an ask from her account where she claimed to be a “black trans woman” (she was, of course, a white cis woman) and she freaked out and claimed she had “been hacked by TiA or 4Chan to make her look bad” — I realize now she had just been sending anon messages pretending to be things she wasn’t and forgot to hit anon LOL. Late in all of this she also got into a bunch of hot water for being really antisemitic and saying she didn’t trust Jewish people because they were just like Christians and like, 5 seconds later she came out as Jewish and wrote this whole long sad vent about how she had had internalized antisemitism and then started going by a random Hebrew name LMAO.

In the end the final breaking point was when I found her secret TERF blog, where she had been making posts for months about how trans men are just insecure women who are trying to escape misogyny by stepping on the backs of “fellow women” and using me as a fucking example, and also saying that me not coming out as a trans man had been “basically rape” since she had been SEXTING me when she was 18+ and I was 13-14+ and that it was traumatic to know someone she had trusted was secretly identifying as a man LMAO. She was also obviously saying all sorts of transmisogynistic things, but also had these really bizarre fetish posts about wanting trans women to fuck her...? I confronted her about it and she literally fucking out of nowhere told me that she was in the emergency room with a mysterious illness that might kill her and she was allowed to have her phone but due to privacy laws couldn’t send a picture as proof. While “in the hospital” she deleted the TERF blog and her personal blog. I had known her for literal YEARS at this point (we had met when I was 12-13 or so and by the time we no longer spoke I was a few months from 17), and I was completely stunned to fucking hear this person trying to pull “I’m in the hospital with a deadly disease” at being confronted for some shit like that LMAO. I made a post about it on my public and another “trans woman friend” of hers logged in to vehemently defend her by saying that there’s nothing wrong with AFAB women being untrusting of trans people because female oppression is uniquely traumatic and that there’s nothing wrong with women expressing their sexuality by sexting minors as long as the minor consents and that I was the real predator for “hiding that I was a man” (remember, I’d been a 13 year old closeted trans boy), before never logging in again... 😭 One of the last times we ever talked was when she demanded I refund her for the fucking Xbox and I refused.

Anyway, the long-term aftermath of that is that a few people online (in some random cringe areas of the internet) who archived some of her antics still think that I also wasn’t a real person, since they caught onto how much she lied about too, so they think I was also a sock puppet and I have no interest in clarifying and making myself known to those people LOL. I have no fucking idea where she is now, she deactivated everything after her being a TERF came out. There’s like, so much more to that I could say because I knew her for YEARS and, like I said, she was one of my “closest friends.” Her parents had wildly expensive pure bred designer dogs that she would make Vines of. She wrote Beatles real person fan fiction. For her birthday one year I made her a shirt on Zazzle with an inside joke about one of her OCs... does she still have that? Either way, she was easily the most batshit person I’ve ever known closely online and I will forever associate the Hetalia fandom with people like that.

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mythgirlimagines · 4 years ago

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What do you know? Tuesday is here, and I’ve prepared a talentswap for you all! Grinding her way into the inbox, it’s Myth, the Former Ultimate Skateboarder!

——————————————————

BACKSTORY AND TALENT

Throughout Skateboarder!Myth’s middle school and high school life, Myth didn’t feel like she fitted in any of the niches that were provided at school. That was until, on her way home from school, she happened upon a skate park. Luckily, all of the regulars at the skatepark were willing to teach this aimless wallflower the ways of the board. With assistance from the skater boys and girls, Skateboarder!Myth managed to surpass all of them. Several videos of Skateboarder!Myth were uploaded on the internet, boosting both her fame and her ego. When she was invited to join the Hope’s Peak roster as the Ultimate Skateboarder, she decided to do a complete overhaul to her image, opting for a more punkish vibe for her look. She is willing to give out skateboarding lessons to those who simply ask. She kept the punk look and skateboard even to her college years and subsequent invitation to chaperone the new Ultimates on their Kibo-Con field trip.

——————————————————

RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Public Speaker

Myth knew Wyre back in her middle school days, where Wyre would regularly attend the school’s assemblies and give loud and passionate motivational speeches to all of the students. Wyre, in a way, was a bit of a role model in Myth’s life. So imagine her elation, when said role model, wounded up in not only Hope‘s Peak, but also was willing to chaperone the Ultimates alongside her.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Thief

For someone who’s talent revolves around stealth and silence, Scar, or as she christened herself, “The Host of the Portal Palm”, was loud and had a flair for the theatrics. But deep down, Myth can see a concerned teenager who was dealt a poor hand in life. The Host of the Portal Palm remains gobsmacked at how The Host of the Speed Spirals managed to see directly through her charade.

Fusion Anon, Ultimate Class Representative

Apart from Fusion‘s repeated scoldings of “Don’t skate indoors!”, Myth and Fusion have quite the chill relationship. Fusion has this paternal air around him that reminds Myth of a couple of her skater friends back home. Myth and Fusion regularly exchange stories about their respective friend groups (Myth’s skater friends and Fusion’s class) , over a couple mugs of hot cocoa. But Myth could help but sense a bit of an inferiority complex in this strict, yet well-intentioned and kind-hearted class rep.

Fusion Anon II, Ultimate Stenographer

Despite their different talents, Myth and Fusion II winded up bonding really quickly, due to their similar laid-back and snarky personalities. They both are content with simply sitting on the sidelines and snarking at their eccentric comrades. Yet Myth can’t help but see a bit of her herself within Fusion II, which only makes Myth sympathise with Fusion II even more.

Just Anon, Ultimate Cadet

From the moment that Myth met Janon, Myth couldn’t help but chuckle as this kid an inch shorter than her tried to use his title to intimidate her. Much to the dismay of the diminutive drill sergeant. Myth regularly teases Janon for not only his tryhard and wannabe-edgelord personality and adorable appearance, but also for his apparent soft spot and protective spirit for the two Jr. Ultimates. But deep down, Myth can’t help but ponder how a life in the military managed to affect a kid his age.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Kickboxer

With Sparkle’s flashy and bombastic personality, and Myth’s laidback and sardonic personality, Myth and Sparkle have a relationship that can best be described as Sans and Papyrus. Myth regularly teases and pokes Sparkle’s buttons, but in the end, they have one of the strongest friendships, right up there with Myth and Wyre. What Sparkle doesn’t know, is that Myth has a recorded clip of Sparkle trying to use her kickboxing moves to kickflip, and ultimately failing.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Model and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Puppeteer

With Egg being one of the most famous NB models in recent history, of course Myth was bound to recognise them, much to the ire of Egg’s lesser-known twin, Wet Sock. Myth regularly flirts with Wet Sock as a bit of a confidence boost, because she knows that they need the ego boost, even if Wet Sock regularly denies it. Sometimes, Myth wonders just went wrong in the twins’ life to twist their minds to such cursed levels.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Tap Dancer

Myth found it easy to socialise with Curious, on account of their polite and courteous attitude. Myth regularly manages to convince Curious to say the weirdest stuff to other people with a completely straight face, all while she is cackling in the background. Myth definitely knows why the diminutive drill sergeant has a massive crush on them. However, Myth couldn’t help but shake her head at Curious’s density to Janon’s feelings towards them. Does she really have to be everybody‘s wingwoman?

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Soccer Player

Myth and Nerd have a “tease-tsundere” relationship, with Myth regularly saying stuff that gets Nerd all blushy and bothered. Myth also knows that Nerd‘s hostile and competitive personality is hiding a massive soft side, and she regularly tries to get him to show his soft side in any way that she can. The regular punches and cleated kicks she gets from Nerd would all be worth it in the end, when she manages to get Nerd to confess.

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Waiter

From the second that Eldritch and Myth met, Eldritch instantly didn’t trust Myth for whatever reason. Eldritch regularly yells out that he doesn‘t trust her and that she is hiding something from him. Perhaps Eldritch managed to pick up on Myth’s more intuitive side. Maybe being Eldritch’s wingman would manage to make Eldritch trust her.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Tailor

In contrast to Eldritch’s distrusting first impression, Dream was bouncy and cheery from the start. Dream regularly lets Myth model her self-tailored sportswear, and in return Myth gives Dream skateboarding lessons. Myth is currently trying to get the cowardly waiter to confess his feelings to the hyperactive and sunny tailor.

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Graffiti Artist

Iris really loves giving new paint jobs to Myth’s old and chipping skateboards, and you can totally bet that Myth gives Iris skateboarding lessons along with Dream. Iris’s hyperactivity and optimism managed to endear a lot of people, even if she regularly tags the walls and other people‘s belongings without consent. But Myth couldn’t help but feel as though Iris’s eternally-positive demeanour is hiding something traumatic beneath it.

Purple Anon, Ultimate Cellist

Even if Myth isn‘t much of a classical music person, she can’t deny that Purple composes some chill tunes on her cello. Regularly seen hiding behind Fusion, Myth can’t help but be reminded of her past self when she gazes upon Purple. So Myth has took it upon herself to make the timorous musical prodigy come out of her shell.

This talentswap series is basically about a smarter-than-she-seems skateboarder acting like a bit of a therapist for the various Ultimates, with all different types of hidden baggage.

——————————————————

APPEARANCE

Skateboarder!Myth has midback-length brown hair that is dying with several purple highlights. Her bangs cover her right eye and are pulled back on the left by a neon pink and neon green barrette. On her head, she wears a grey beanie that conceals an ahoge. She also hall four grey earrings and two gold star studs. She wears a dark blue denim jacket with several colourful patches and pins over a yellow band t-shirt, She has a purple skirt, held up by a brown belt with a golden buckle. In order to prevent accidental pantie shots, she wears pink torn leggings. On her feet, she wears black boots with gold soles. —————-—————————————

PERSONALITY

Skateboarder!Myth may act carefree, sassy and is basically a massive flirty tease. But in actuality, this personality is just a facade. Beneath her air-headed and laidback facade, Skateboarder!Myth is actually really intelligent, both academically and emotionally. It’s next to impossible to hide how you feel from Skateboarder!Myth, for she has amazing intuition and knows just what makes you tick. This makes her simultaneously an amazing friend, and a nightmare of an enemy. Despite her constant razzing and ribbing of the more easily-triggered Anons, she always knows what to say to boost your confidence up and she dispenses great advice to boot. And admittingly, she‘s still a massive nerd underneath all of that punk rock fashion.

——-————————————————

What do you think about Skateboarder!Myth as a series? Let me know what you think of this talentswap in your reblogs, and you could even expand on the AU if you want!

-Fusion Anon

#i really like this one fusion!#mobile wouldnt let me edit the text lol #i think itd be really cool to be a skateboarder #submission #anon #fusion anon #i speak #art #not my art #anon kg #talentswap tuesday

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cmweller · 5 years ago

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Challenge #02553-F363: Here There Be Sock Puppets

An enemy deathworlder, a xenophobe, constantly making life hell for the havenworlders around them. A general, proud, fierce, having suffered many tortures and never once broke, always escaped. But now, they were being held by humans. Pain meant nothing to them. When asked about the movements of new weaponry, the answer was always a snark and the spitting or words "Do your worst, I'll never say a word, you'll have to kill me."

The humans bring in what they call the 3rd degree. Several gasping, saying that's far too inhumane. How could they do that to any cognisant?? The humans reply they are running out of time and lives are at stake. The alien smirks, he'll never break, ever, no matter how much they strike at him, surely that simple brown box holds sharp blades and poisons, right? Then, as the box opens to reveal a simple doll, a puppet caricature of a lamb, and it's set right by the speaker leading into his prison, a song begins... "This is the song that never ends...it goes on and on my friends, some people started singing it not knowing what it was, but they will keep on singing it forever just because... this is the song that never ends... it goes on and on....." -- Anon Guest

[AN: Thanks, Nonny, for the Youtube link to ten hours of that nonsense. I only watched one loop for curiosity's sake so ner]

Good news, they captured a Vorax Ur-king. Great news, they potentially knew everything about his horde's movements and plans. Bad news, the Ur-king wasn't talking. They were closed-mouthed and arrogant with it. "I'll never talk," said the Ur-king, who wouldn't even give their name. "You will not get any information about my horde or myself out of me. Waste all your resources. Try subjecting me to pain. Waste every minute of every day. Deprive me of anything you can think of. It would be faster to kill me."

The attending Humans seemed unimpressed. The Havenworlders sighed and said, "Very well. Please remember that we did give you this chance." Then they left the Ur-king alone in a room with two Humans, who started to smirk.

"Well, well, well, Mx Jones... They said they weren't going to talk. We might as well skip ahead and subject them to Lambchop."

[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit steemit (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]

#instant story #just add prompt #amalgam universe #humans are space orcs #torture

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lucarioisinthevoid · 5 years ago

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*sexually assaults Henry*

Jesus Christ Anon. Are you okay? Is this really what you wanted to do to Henry?I won’t judge you, but boy you have balls. "Alright. That is enough." The attempt was cut short as Henry moved out of the way, stabbing a scalpel deep into the Anon's shoulder. Quickly he took it out again, for his next attack. "I was SO patient. I played along with ALL the torture attempts. I let you beings have it, so you may have something to focus your issues on. A way to voice your deep distain. The unspoken deal however was that I would not prevent all that, and you would not bother me in any other way. But you HAD to ruin it. Because something in your sick, twisted mind just never gets enough." Ah, right into the spine.Black liquid dripped out of the body as the Anon fell down like a sock puppet, not able to use his legs anymore. With a calculated, but motivated swing, Henry kicked it against the head. "I am not playing along for this one. My theory has been proven, there is NOTHING good enough for you. This is my line. You can torment, cut and curse me all you like... but you will not get to touch me like that." The impact was accompanied by a sickening crunch. "Look at you. Now you are forcing me to make my shoes dirty with your filthy, disgusting self. You cannot help but take. Do you do so in real life too? Are you simply sucking the joy of all those around you, like a parasite, thinking you are giving back, but just fooling yourself into thinking as much to justify your horrible acts of self-absorbed demand for praise-" Jesus calm down Henry. Why are you making such a big deal out of this? It is not like you haven't been pretty much traumatized before?"Boundaries need to be respected. We are already playing pretend, and I am disappointed. Trying my best to accommodate the Anons by taking all sort of shit, yet what do I get in return? More of it, worse this time." His jaw was clenched, he didn't even realize that he showed his teeth as he stared down at the Anon. "I wonder what these Anons are. I hope they are pieces of the souls that stand behind the messages. It brings me great satisfaction to think that I kill them bit by bit." The confusion in the room kept up and he sighed. "... you see, the problem is this: If someone hates me beyond anything and wants to harm me, that is something I can handle. It is acceptable, I can predict them. Knowing that, it gives me multiple strategies. Do I want to bore them? Do I want to force them to reflect on the fact that they will not get true satisfaction from hurting me?" He paused."Worst case, I will just provoke them to kill me. At least then it will be over. Either way, torment is NEVER lasting forever. Nobody has so much passion due to hate for that, it is simply harming them as well. I can make fun of that and I know there will be some things this person will not go after because it hurts their own integrity and disgust them too, so with a bold bluff I can make them back off. Opposite with someone who is attracted to me." At least the attraction was being assumed, because otherwise they would potentially traumatize themselves with the action of doing this to him. "There is nothing I can do. It is terrifying- here, I said it. The thought is beyond nightmarish! There would be no end to that. I could not play along, it would be just as good to the person, potentially. I cannot fight back, or that insane person will have a game out of making me comply. Not even death will be a good option, because the person has a far greater motivation to keep me alive. That is-" He shuddered a little. "- I cannot make them back off by pretending by being at my limit and close to death- because unlike a person who hates me, who would not want to be around me any further while being unable to hurt me and would let me heal by myself, giving me a chance to plan outside of their view, a person who also has... an interest... would probably not mind to "help" me heal." Looking lightly sick, he shook his head. "No, I would rather around someone that hates my guts for an extended amount of time than with someone who's willing to harm me, but also..." He trailed off. "They would be harder to manipulate than most other types. Probably right after someone who has a deliberate, impersonal, reason for keeping me." What a reasonable cause to be scared of something that most people ARE JUST NATURALLY AFRAID OF. YOU KNOW HENRY THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE A REASON FOR EVERYTHING, RIGHT?"... not my fault I do." He scoffed. Then one last time he gave the Anon a brutal kick into the chest, caving it in a little.

#henry miller

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voidwaren · 5 years ago

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TW Anon back again~ Saw you posted that drabble! I have a proposal for more flowing juices: hurt Stiles. Just hurt him. Make it Sterek for bonus points.

welcome back! ♡ sorry this took a second, anon. I started writing hurt!Stiles and then… well, got really carried away. needless to say, I’ll be making a much longer fic out of this one at some point. there’s none in this particular bit, but Sterek will be happening (eventually), don’t worry. also, since I like Allison and co., it’ll be an AU of sorts.

I’ll just drop this 6k starting point since it’s the only cohesive part so far (everything else is disjointed scenes, as usual).

sorry, Stiles!

[Scott]

Scott could hear Stiles from a mile away.

His voice is so distinct, echoing just the right amount of decibels above anything else Scott was familiar with in the relative area that even at the harsh mutter Stiles was projecting his frustration in, fed up with the venture they were currently on, Scott can easily pick out what he was saying.

“Find the selkie, he said.”

A too-quiet forest didn’t hurt (or help) anything, however, and Scott thinks this to himself as he slinks around a tree and hears the sound of Stiles’ sneakers from slightly southwest of the position he was actually supposed to be in. Stiles was breaking the uneasy silence without doing anything more than being, well, Stiles.

“It’ll be easy, he said.”

“Deaton just wants us to check the area and make sure she didn’t encroach on possible hiking trails where people could find her,” Scott explains quietly, not for the first time, as he emerges from the underbrush and startles Stiles enough that he clutches his chest for a moment, eyes wide with panic. “Sorry,” Scott tacks on sheepishly. Stiles glares, clearly bitter about more than just the sudden mission they had been sent on. Scott feels the inkling want to press it, but knows now is seriously not the time, so he doesn’t.

“Since when do we have to be the forefront of investigation when it comes to these things?” Stiles asks. “Why can’t Deaton go looking himself? Isn’t that his job, to protect the werebabies in the area?”

“Hey!” Scott protests, stopping in his tracks just to rebuke this particular insult, because he is an Alpha, for God’s sake, and not even remotely a “werebaby”, regardless of what age he might have been brought to power at. He had a pack. He had a good pack, even if it wasn’t necessarily made of up werewolves. He took pride in his banshee, ex-Hale-Beta, and sometimes-hunter mishmash of a pack. Even Stiles, their token Ordinary Human, pulled way more than his own weight when it came to things. Exhibit A being now, hunting down this creature on Deaton’s orders while everyone else was busy studying for finals and second-guessing their decisions to go to college across the country.

(Except Lydia, that is, but try dragging her through the woods on a possibly-fruitless search when there is prestige to be had in the research department instead. Yeah. Not going to happen.)

Point is, his pack was pretty fuckin’ spectacular considering what he had to work with. Stiles’ insult was totally uncalled for.

“I’m just saying!” Stiles retaliates, effectively punctuating his response with a particularly loud branch-snap. Scott cringes, but Stiles ignores it, too intent on riling himself up with the topic at hand. “I don’t recall this being our job. Yes, I know we’ve had to face a few freaky fucks over the past couple months when tensions got just a teeny bit too high and someone crushed that tender camel’s back,” Stiles says in a long, rushed breath when Scott opens his mouth to defend his boss and confidant in all things too supernatural for him, “but searching for something that might not be here? This isn’t our job, Scott! You should be home, studying for your finals! They still count!”

Scott has to admit Stiles has a point. He had been accepted into the nearby community college and hadn’t taken his chances elsewhere, deciding to further pursue his veterinary degree while he was getting everything settled in Beacon Hills and knock a few cheap credits out of the way in the same blow without losing Deaton, but it still wouldn’t look great if he showed up having bombed his finals.

He shrugs, unable to muster up a good argument to counter his friend. “Deaton’s busy right now, and it can’t wait.”

“I never thought I’d miss having Derek around so much,” Stiles mumbles, and then effectively ends the conversation by barreling on ahead through the brush, taking the lives of a few saplings with him. Scott follows behind after a beat, brow furrowed with worry, the niggling feeling that something was completely off and it had nothing to do with the sudden memory of a warning his advisor had given him about surprise evaluations based on his final grades.

Well … not totally.

They find the selkie.

She’s resting in a stream a few miles north of the high school; her pale, sleek lower body submerged in the flowing water and her topless upper-half resting on the grass and rocks, head already cocked to look at them once they managed to locate her by failing to notice her presence until basically walking right into her. Mostly because Stiles was too busy not giving the mission proper attention and Scott was too busy focusing on Stiles not focusing to remember to focus on what he was supposed to actually be focusing on.

Yeah, it wasn’t going the smoothest. Her giggle had been the thing to alert them both of her presence, her actual appearance not clicking until a beat later.

Upon laying eyes on her, Stiles looks as if he suddenly can’t remember his own name, his eyes zeroing in on the most improper body part they can find. Scott is only slightly more fortunate in both departments.

“Oh,” is all he says. Stiles echoes him with a choked-off “fuck”, mouth remaining open in a less-than-attractive gape. She flashes a smile at the two of them, and Stiles dissolves into a puddle of uselessness, nothing but a pale imitation of some reject Gumby, all jellied limbs and dopey smile. Something in the back of Scott’s mind tells him this is bad, very, very bad, but he can’t seem to focus in on it long enough to act. He grabs Stiles’ arm, but then forgets why he was so urgent a moment before. It takes him a long few seconds to gather his bearings, to force himself not to look at the beautiful creature too long once it clicks for longer than a partial second that she’s causing the fog in his mind. It takes a long time, honestly, but he manages to pull himself together, watching her out of the corner of his eye as she watches him.

She seems almost … docile, despite the sharp, dagger-like teeth that she keeps showing off every time Stiles sinks lower and lower into a pit of repulsive love-drunk reactions. Realizing now was probably the best time to knock some sense into his best friend before something they’d both regret manages to take place, Scott grabs Stiles’ collar and yanks, sending him into the dirt below.

“Ow!” Stiles yelps, pulling his face from the moist earth and leveling a glare at Scott.

“Did that snap you out of it? Jeez, Stiles. Your tongue was becoming one with the ground with how long you had it dragging out of your mouth there.”

Stiles frowns at Scott, then glances at the selkie, snapping his eyes back a second later. “Oh, god. Scott,” he chokes, strained. His eyes water slightly with how wide he has them pried open. “Scott, I want to look at her. Holy shit, I want to look, but my mind, it just … It …”

“Goes blank, I know.” Scott gives her a tiny side-glance. “I saw it. It was incredible. You had the motor skills of a sock puppet.”

“Ahem.” A tiny, clear voice interrupts them, sounding like the trickle of a stream with the omen of a hurricane all at once. Scott and Stiles both stare at each other, suddenly a few shades paler. “I can hear you just fine, you know. I am right here.”

“Oh,” Stiles whispers, blown pupils boring into Scott’s, “fuck us.”

“Fuck us,” Scott agrees weakly, his heart sinking.

“What are we supposed to do?” Stiles croaks, his voice rising in pitch. He’s losing calm rapidly, splintering Scott’s ability to keep his eyes from wandering back to the soothing sight of the selkie. Scott resists the urge to press a hand to Stiles’ mouth, knowing that would only make it worse.

“I don’t … know. Something. Just—just give me a minute, okay?” Scott drops his head into a palm, thinking. They could leave the selkie there, yeah. Sure. They could leave, not look back. Not come back. Just leave.

They could definitely just leave.

They could …

Leave?

Why?

Why would they leave?

“Dude.” Stiles’ voice breaks into Scott’s thoughts. Scott looks to him, and only just notices the grip Stiles has on his upper arm. It’s so tight, it almost hurts. “Scott. Did you tell anyone we were out here? Right now?”

Scott looks at Stiles blankly. “Uh—Allison. Allison knows.”

Stiles looks a bit more relieved at this, but it’s not by much at all. “Allison will save us if we can’t get away.”

“You feel it, too?”

“Scott,” Stiles starts, but is cut off once again by the laugh of the selkie. The realization of how screwed they are hits Scott all over again, and he struggles to think of why exactly they’re in so much danger from a creature so beautiful and soothing to be around. Why exactly his instincts are screaming so loudly in his head to get away get away grab Stiles and get away get the fuck away now now now.

Despite their sudden coherence at the severity of the situation, Scott would later recall that, no, neither Stiles nor Scott had been fully aware of their surroundings thanks to the hold the creature kept on them. If they had, they would have noticed something off about the ground, such as the way the color was slowly fading from it. Or how the torso of the selkie was lengthening, her hair growing into ropes and her teeth losing their shine. Or how the selkie wasn’t really a selkie at all.

It would be far too late by the time someone would notice, and later still when the creature would shoot from the stream, barreling directly into Scott and knocking him yards away into the solid trunk of a tree, leaving him to reach the floor of the woods by gravity’s will alone.

Wheezing, Scott tries to reach for his throat once he can grasp any oxygen at all, but can’t feel his arms. He tries to do something, anything at all, but the paralysis is too great. His whole body is numb, stunned, frozen. His mind is wavering, his conscious splintering

Scott is slowly slipping away, the blood leaking from the back of his head slicking the bark behind him in a metallic tang of scent that he only just barely manages to register at all.

The last thing Scott is aware of before blackness engulfs him is a shattering scream accompanied by the distinct cracking sound of snapping bone.

He only has a moment to register the horror of realization that his best friend is being killed before he slips uselessly away into unconsciousness.

This, Scott knows, is something he’ll blame himself for, for the rest of his life, no matter what anyone would tell him.

He would never forgive himself for any of it.

[Stiles]

When they took him from Scott, he’d been whole. Maybe not in the clearest sense of the word, but a few snapped bones hadn’t really been that bad. The whole “being dragged away by a swampy black horse” thing was way more traumatizing, but he’d been in one piece until he’d reached the intended destination.

When he left the clearing that day, he was whole, in as much of a way as he could have been given who he was.

He comes back broken.

Shattered, splintered, fractured. Cracked. Devastated.

Pick a synonym; they all fit.

The fun part was it was all literal. The brain game had taken a hiatus this time; laid its cards down and left the building for another monster to take its place. Stiles had been broken. His bones had separated in various places; his skin had torn and rolled and split, unable to accommodate what was happening to him.

Stiles was broken.

A body to match his mind? To fit what the demon had left behind?

Hah, no.

No, this was worse. He was pretty fucked up in the head after all that had happened to him, sure. The Nogitsune had left no prisoners. But this—this was more. His mind crawled in a way his skin now couldn’t with the knowledge of what had been done to him. His heart tried to stop dead in his chest when he thought too hard about it, the memory of the pain slamming into him only long enough to incite a reaction before fading away behind the wall his mind immediately built up to protect him.

“That bastard,” Scott had snarled once Stiles had been coherent enough to recount what had happened to him, wolfing out more than just a little, much to his mother’s frantic dismay. She had tried to shepherd out everyone who had rushed in the moment Stiles could form a proper sentence (it being a proud, if heavily slurred, “The fuck?”), all trying to get his attention first and hear all the details they were in the dark about—which, of course, ended up being almost everything.

Unfortunately for Stiles, only a handful were dismayed and rebutted from the scene; the rest stubbornly refused to budge. He loved Scott and Lydia more than he had words to express, but he wasn’t sure he could handle what telling them would do to their expressions, to their emotions. It hurt more than the wounds, their guilt, and he knew they still felt it, weeks later, even when he didn’t think they needed to anymore.

He gave the recount, skipping as many of the gory details as he could simply because these were the people he cared about, he didn’t need them worrying about things that had passed. He had survived and now had scars to tell his tale for him, he could spare his father and Scott and Lydia a few things here and there. He knew from the looks on Scott’s mother’s face that she knew he was holding back, but, bless her, she didn’t do more than frown deeply.

Stiles appreciated Mrs. McCall more than he could put into words in that moment. He made a mental note to pick her up some flowers and lunch once he was able to walk normally.

Or, you know. Move. At all.

… Whenever that’d be.

He’d been in a coma for nine days, he’d been told. When the information had first hit his ears, he’d done nothing but stare at Mrs. McCall, like he hadn’t quite heard her right.

Nine days. A week and two days. Two-hundred and sixteen hours.

Holy shit.

Scott had broken him out of his thoughts by calling Stiles’ name then, and he had given his head a little shake to further clear it and then tried his best to be blasé about it. It didn’t quite work, but Scott and Mrs. McCall—and Stiles’ father, who had been sitting quietly in the chair ever since he had been brought in, looking like he was watching a ghost and had already made his amends, and was now too scared to go back … which did things to Stiles’ heart that he refused to linger on too long, lest they consume him—politely ignored it and let Stiles have his charade. Mrs. McCall stuck him with something, then added something to his IV before grabbing Scott and making a quick abscond to leave Stiles with his dad and have that conversation that needed to be had.

Which … could have definitely gone better. Stiles’ dad had continued to stare at him, pale and clearly showing signs of sleeplessness, lost and broken in his own way. That was Stiles’ fault, he knew, and he felt the weight of it immediately.

Insert sharp knife straight to the heart. Ow.

Stiles had cleared his throat, opened his mouth to say something, anything, just something to clear the air and maybe make it all okay without having to go through the long process and the motions and all the things he didn’t want to amend for after getting himself fucked over and hurting his dad every damn step of the way—and instead let out a choking, wordless sob. It caught the both of them so off guard that neither of them had moved for a moment, Stiles trying desperately to blink away the tears that were now streaming down his face like they’d been there from the start and his dad watching with that blank, frightened look someone has when they’re not sure if they’re still asleep and dreaming. Then, something floods his dad’s gaze and he shoots from the chair, scraping his hand into Stile’s hair and curling into him in a way that kept them from really touching anything that could hurt while Stiles lets out noises he had thought for sure he’d be able to hold back until he got home and back in his room.

It wasn’t okay after that, but it was better. And better was good.

Not great, but they were getting there. They were getting there.

Slowly.

It had been a step in the process.

The next step was getting healed enough to take a real, physical step.

Flash forward to the current moment, the moment of self-assessment. Where Stiles has to realize yet again that those fuckers had given him so many different breaks in his body, most of them being ribs and arms and legs, with multiple lines in close proximity to one another, that there wasn’t a general consensus between the doctors who had cared for him to really go by. It was a miracle he hadn’t punctured a lung or had some form of internal bleeding, he had been told. Surgery, to stick a metal bar into his leg and realign his kneecap properly, had been the most he’d been put through, and he’d been unconscious for the beginning of it.

He’d been so lucky, they’d told him. And Stiles had listened at the time, but he doesn’t feel lucky right now, lungs intact and bleeding only coming from the outside.

He just feels guilty.

Stiles grimaces not for the first time that night, taking in the sight of himself yet again in the bathroom mirror of his hospital room. He might as well have been shut into a full-body cast with the amount of bandages and plaster that already adorned his person. Two leg braces, a metal rod shoved between the flesh within one and a recovering kneecap held in the other, one arm cast and one splint that went right up to his armpit—he was looking much worse for wear. Not to mention the layers and layers of gauze and medical tape that wound around almost every inch of exposed skin.

Stiles had, quite literally, been chewed up and spit out. Torn to shreds. Ripped up and thrown away.

But he was alive. Somehow, he was alive. He couldn’t have asked for more.

(Okay, not true. He could seriously go for a burger worthy of a heart attack right now. If only because he’s strictly not allowed to have one.)

He’s on so many medications he couldn’t name them all if he tried, and each one comes with its own restrictions and rules. Stiles hates it—suddenly, desperately misses his Adderall and the simplicity of its construct.

The thing he hates the most about the whole ordeal, though, is the fact everyone has suddenly turned into a reincarnation of his mother on some sort of maternal steroid. It’s like they were pumped with the shit and knew full well it would bother the absolute hell out of him at a time when he can’t run away from all the hugs and the hair combing and the attempts at feeding him his own damn dinner, complete with airplane noises on Allison’s end.

Hell, he can’t even move his fucking pinky toe, forget sudden ninja removal from his hospital bed, complete with a fairly decent smokescreen he had been concocting right before being put in this position.

It sucks. Stiles just wants to go home.

He’s forced to stay for as long as it takes for him to learn to walk again, and that’s a process he doesn’t even want to think about, let alone mention to anyone who questions him once he’s free from the restraints and palpable boredom the hospital had given him. It takes a long time, and, as if it’s not bad enough that he has to learn how to move his feet properly all over again despite having learned all this back when he was a toddler, the entire process hurts. Even while he’s pumped up on some of the finest painkillers the hospital has to offer, he can feel the way it aches.

Some of it are small aches and slightly numbing throbs that he feels resonating from within his recently-fractured bones, and other times it’s sharp and stifling and the only thing he can think of right in the moment it exists—but it’s never too much. He never lets it be too much, even when he almost starts to cry after biting his tongue in shock at the knife of pain in his knee the first time he tries to put weight on it. He can’t.

There was no room for pain, not in the world he’d made himself become a part of.

He pushes through it all, like he pushes through everything else; because, to him, there’s only forward. He learned that from the pack, and he’d be fucked sideways by a butt ugly Satan-spawn if he’d let them think he wasn’t strong enough for this.

He was one of them, and even after he’s out of the hospital and still using crutches to get around, he makes sure they never forget that.

Stiles can’t help the small groan escaping his lips as he pulls himself to his feet, breath huffing from his chest involuntarily at the sharp lick of pain that races along more than one limb. It was more shock than anything, in reaction to feeling something more than the dull ache he’d become accustomed to thanks to his beautiful cocktail of drugs. He’d been given enough to help him along the recovery route from the safety of his own bedroom, in the form of pills big enough to make him feel like a horse, but it wasn’t the same as the steady stream of the shit that had been plugged snugly into a vein at the crook of his arm. He’d have to get used to these breaks between doses.

If he’s being honest with himself, though, he has to admit it made him feel more alive than he’d felt since the moment before he’d been admitted to the hospital.

Stiles scrubs a hand over his head and clutches the side of his nightstand with the other as he waits for the worst of the jabs of pain to ease off, wishing he’d been allowed a haircut upon getting home as his fingers snag in tangles he didn’t have the equipment to eliminate. He didn’t like having long hair—it was just something else to get a grab on, something else to paralyze him at a moment when movement was crucial. Plus, it was more work than a buzzcut, and Stiles was all about efficiency. It’s why he never bothered to match his socks.

A soft knock at his door brings his attention to it before he’s ready to move, and Scott pokes his head in through the already-cracked entrance, wide-eyed and half-grimacing. Stiles holds up a finger the moment Scott opens his mouth to say something, cutting him off just as he’s pronouncing the first syllable of what could either be a greeting or an apology, and Stiles doesn’t dwell on which it might have been.

“Hey, man,” he greets Scott instead once he’s able to let go of the end table, the hand blindly searching for his other crutch while his eyes stay on the sad sight Scott is making in the doorway. The boy wilts instantly at the recognition, and Stiles readies himself for what he knows is going to come.

But Scott surprises him by keeping his mouth shut, instead moving forward to grab the crutch Stiles had been searching for and slipping it under Stiles’ armpit for him, gentle enough that Stiles barely feels the tic of pain that comes with the full-body bruise he’s become. “Hey,” Scott greets back softly once Stiles has his hand on the crutch and is standing on his own again. “Your dad let me in.”

Stiles frowns at him. “Did you lose your house key again?”

“Misplaced is a better word,” Scott says sheepishly. Stiles groans.

“I can’t believe you. At this rate, I might as well just make you use Derek’s emergency entrance and forget the whole key deal.” Stiles doesn’t care if Derek had only done that, like, twice—he was absolutely never letting that die, because it had scared the shit out of him both times it had happened, and Derek’s reputation was too much fun to poke at.

“No, that’s not fair. I know I left it somewhere. In my room, probably. Or maybe Mom’s car. It’s somewhere!” Scott protests in a whine when Stiles rolls his eyes.

“You’d better find it, or you’re condemned to the life of stalker-level creeper who doesn’t know how to knock.”

Scott mumbles something along the lines of “I know how to knock” in a sulky tone, but Stiles is already hobbling around him on his crutches, trying to keep his breathing under control to hide how much even moving is hurting him. It’s such bullshit.

He must not be very good at it, though, because a few moments after he’s passed Scott, the pain abruptly eases and then vanishes, and Stiles turns to give the sudden hand on his shoulder a sharp look.

“You don’t have to do that,” Stiles argues sourly, watching the black veins pulse and disappear under Scott’s sleeve. “I have drugs to take care of that for me.”

Scott, if possible, manages to look guiltier. He doesn’t remove his hand, though. “Yeah, but I can help until those kick in.”

Stiles wants to argue with him, but the sweet relief of Scott’s touch prevents him from opening his mouth and doing so. Instead, he sighs, and Scott perks up a little as he’s allowed to continue with what he’s doing. They stay like that for a minute or two, Stiles with his back to Scott and his eyes closed against the sweet relief of his weird pain-sucking power and Scott steadily inching his way closer and closer to Stiles, the tic to his eye the only indication that he feels any of what he’s taking from Stiles.

He feels when Scott stops taking his pain away—but not by the sharp bite that existing now brings him without his drugs. Instead, a dull ache blooms, and Scott’s palm slides down the center of Stiles’ back before removing itself completely.

“Thanks,” Stiles mumbles quietly, and Scott only returns it with a grin before reaching up and flicking a lock of hair that covers Stiles’ ear. He flinches away from the movement, but it’s not from fear (thankfully—he didn’t want to see Scott’s reaction to that), it’s just from plain annoyance.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with such long hair,” Scott tells him, his expression amused. “I don’t think you could even gel this into anything, it’s so long.”

Stiles huffs and swats at him with the nub of his cane end. Scott doesn’t even wince. “I’m not going to be doing anything to my hair while I’m like this. I have enough shit to do in the daytime without having to worry about making my hair socially acceptable. I’m so far behind on studying that it’ll be a miracle if I can pass any of my finals when they let me take them. Haircare can wait.”

Scott wrinkles his nose. “Are you going to stop showering?”

“What? No, ew. That applied to my hair only, I’m just not going to bother with styling. I’m not turning into a hobo.”

“You’ve got the look down already, I thought you might go all the way.”

“Gee,” Stiles quips sarcastically, starting up his hobbling again, “that sure makes a guy feel like he wants to go back out in the world. Thanks, Scott.”

“Anytime,” Scott replies cheerfully, following Stiles slowly out of the room. When they pass the bathroom, Scott stops at its entrance and peers inside, his face falling into his thinking expression. Stiles notices and waits, knowing that pushing Scott usually doesn’t lead anywhere fast.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, and Stiles looks up to find Scott smiling at him with his dopey, lopsided half-grin. “Let’s just cut it off.”

It takes Stiles a moment to process what Scott is getting at, what with his drugs kicking in and the previous conversation lost the moment they had crossed the threshold out of Stiles’ room. “Oh, my hair?”

“Yeah. I can buzz it off for you with the clippers, like you used to wear it.” Scott glances back at the bathroom, excitement building in his shoulders. Over cutting hair. Or maybe it was just because he thought he had a really good idea, Stiles couldn’t be sure. “You still have the clippers around, right? That’ll make it easier.”

Stiles has to admit Scott is right, and he had only just thought of it himself just before, when he had mentally been complaining about his hair. Actually buzzing it hadn’t crossed his mind, and he blamed that on fatigue and minute withdrawal he’d been experiencing since leaving the confines of his hospital bed.

Stiles mimes a shrug in response, then nods his head in a way that shows he’s proud of Scott’s line of thinking. Scott’s grin widens at the reaction, and he hops into the bathroom excitedly. Stiles can hear him rummaging around while he makes his slow way back, and finds Scott shoulders-deep in the cabinet beside the sink when he makes it there.

He whacks Scott gently with one of his crutches when he passes him to sit on the toilet, but, aside from a muffled yelp of “Hey!”, Scott doesn’t slow in his search.

Five minutes later, and Stiles is sitting sideways on the toilet; his back is against Scott’s torso while he leans to keep from getting too tired trying to stay upright, and Scott holds him in place with a hand at his shoulder, the other hand slowly stripping lengths of hair from Stiles’ scalp as the clippers buzz their path of destruction.

It’s a quiet process. Soothing, really. The warmth of Scott’s werewolf-heated hand firmly curled over Stiles’ shoulder and the smooth stroke of the clippers as they sheared off god knows how many week’s worth of hair growth.

(Stiles had stopped counting—he’d lost all the time he’d had when the Kelpie had taken him, and no one would be up front with him when he tried to pry the details out, so he decided, at least for now, that it didn’t matter. Someone would slip up eventually. They always did.)

The rhythmic buzz fills the bathroom, and it’s the only noise up until Scott’s phone dings not once, but twice, in quick succession, and immediately everything about Scott tenses up. Stiles feels the way his fingers are suddenly, but still gently, digging into the sinew of his shoulder, and he takes that immediately to know something is up, and it has nothing to do with his hair.

“You gonna answer that, big boy?” Stiles taunts once the clippers don’t start up their path of destruction again. Scott starts slightly, like he’d somehow forgotten what it was he was doing in, uh, Stiles’ bathroom. Stiles knows Scott well enough to understand that’s how Scott handled secrets, and then, from there, realize that Scott was hiding something from Stiles, and those texts had something to do with it. Whatever it was Scott was doing at Stiles’ house (because Stiles has a feeling it has nothing to do with just checking up—and he should have known better, since Scott had fallen back to mostly texting the moment Stiles had been discharged, and showing up unannounced was strange, even for Scott), it was something Stiles wasn’t going to like.

God dammit, Scott.

“All right,” Stiles starts with a sigh, reaching up and smacking Scott’s hand with his opposite one. Scott’s fingers relax. “Just spit it out. Tell me while I’m nice and blissed out from drugs, don’t make me suffer more.”

It’s a slightly low blow. Stiles understands this. He also doesn’t really give a shit.

He can feel the way Scott wilts, and then the subsequent cool scrape of the clippers again as Scott starts back up.

Scott doesn’t say anything right away—biding his time and mulling over his word choice, Stiles thinks, taking long enough that Stiles starts to feel the exhaustion of simply being alive while healing to the extent he was—but eventually he heaves a surprisingly sad sigh and speaks.

“You’ve gotta leave,” Scott finally says quietly as he cuts another stripe of hair away. He’s so quiet that Stiles barely hears him over the sound of the clippers, and immediately thinks he’s heard Scott wrong. It’s his saving grace from losing an ear, because he would have certainly jerked his head away had he heard Scott correctly.

“Say what?” he asks instead, half-mumbled, the back of his head inches away from pressing into Scott’s chest where his neck was giving out from the exhaustion.

“You’re going away from Beacon Hills.” Scott doesn’t raise his voice, but Stiles can understand him easily now that he’s listening. He severely wishes he couldn’t.

He reaches up slowly and grasps Scott’s wrist, easing the buzzing clippers, which had already been pulled away from his scalp the minute Stiles started moving, further away. Stiles turns and looks up at Scott, and is startled to realize Scott’s eyes were tearing up.

“It could come back, Stiles. Kelpie track their prey, and we don’t—” Scott chokes, nearly drops the clippers. It’s only when Stiles’ grip tightens around his wrist that Scott even bothers to turn them off. Scott takes a deep breath, a bright flush blooming across the high points of his cheeks as a tear threatens to spill, and Stiles nearly loses it right then and there. “We don’t know why it gave you back.” Scott’s free hand reaches up and scrapes the trail of wetness away. Stiles still can’t move. “What if I lose you again?”

Not we, Stiles realizes with a jolt. I.

What if I lose you again, Scott had just said, and immediately Stiles understands so much more than he wishes he did.

“Dad—” he chokes in a whisper and then stops, the shock that he was being sent away burning a path back and forth across the forefront of his mind. “Dad would never agree to that.”

Scott doesn’t answer immediately. He’s set the clippers down on the edge of the sink at some point, though Stiles had apparently blacked out at some point, because he hadn’t seen him do it.

“It was your dad’s idea,” Scott mutters, like a scolded child.

Another blow. If Stiles weren’t already sitting, he’d be on the floor. As it is, he sways on the toilet seat, and Scott’s hands fly out and steady him.

Stiles realizes with some sort of numb realization that he can’t seem to breathe. After a few moments of hesitation, Scott surprises Stiles out of some of his shock by cradling Stiles’ head against his chest in a move Stiles would expect more of a competent parent and not an eighteen-year-old who sometimes forgets how to cook pasta correctly.

“Where?” Stiles finally chokes. He can’t look at Scott right then, fearful he’ll either scream or break down crying if he does. “Where am I going?”

“Alaska,” Scott whispers, and Stiles does look at him then, too startled by the information to stop himself. “Derek has connections up there.”

Stiles’ mouth works, but all he can manage to say, in a tone far too high for someone who had already gone through puberty, is, “Derek?”

“He’s renting a house. It’s isolated up there enough that any disturbances should be picked up faster than somewhere like here. Derek would be able to notice.”

“Derek?!” Stiles parrots again, sounding manic, his voice somehow managing to crack over the short name. Scott looks at him, looking every bit the forlorn puppy Stiles always refrained from calling him for the sake of cringe after the whole “sourwolf” fiasco, but Stiles can’t find a single fuck for that expression right now.

“It’s only for a little while,” Scott tries, but Stiles is too far lost to care what Scott’s trying to do.

He was being shipped to Alaska, for fuck actually knows how long, with Derek Hale.

Derek Hale.

And his dad had approved of this?

Stiles thinks he’s officially lost his goddamn mind.

#Teen Wolf #Sterek #there's a lot of platonic Sciles too because BROTP #stiles stilinski #Scott McCall #drabble #prompts #asks

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internutter · 5 years ago

Text

Challenge #02553-F363: Here There Be Sock Puppets

[AN: Thanks, Nonny, for the Youtube link to ten hours of that nonsense. I only watched one loop for curiosity's sake so ner]

"Well, well, well, Mx Jones... They said they weren't going to talk. We might as well skip ahead and subject them to Lambchop."

#instant story #just add prompt #amalgam universe #cruel and unusual punishment #it's for children

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astranemus · 6 years ago

Note

So then what do you think time is and how it functions then, if not linearly? (Different anon, and i agree that time is non linear but im curious of your thoughts)

Apologies for taking solong to answer this anon, things have been fairly hectic with mystudies recently and I wanted to give this question the attention itdeserves.

So I think to begin it might befruitful to examine the image of temporal linearity itself. We imaginetime to be linear, certainly, but interestingly, we take thatlinearity to be horizontal, and running from left to right. This is alargely arbitrary assignation, of course – there’s no reason wecouldn’t talk of time running from right to left, or down to up, orvice versa. Yet these strike most of us as deeply unintuitive, I’dimagine. I suspect this may result in part from our use of language,and more specifically, the written word – much writing,particularly in the West, is written and read from left to right;this may implant some kind of temporal ordering into our minds whichmight otherwise not be present, that that which comes “before” is“to the left of” that which comes “after”. I’d be interestedin reading up on notions of temporalisation in pre-literate culturesor individuals, or cultures which do not conform to this left-rightstructuring of writing; I know Arabic reverses this, and some Asianlanguages occasionally write vertically. So I am perfectly open tobeing entirely wrong on this point, but I think it gives a littlepeek into the constructed nature of our time-as-linear metaphor as anice starting point.

We could alsofruitfully imagine time to be vertical, instead of horizontal. Inthis way, the past lies beneath the present, beneath our feet –both metaphorically and literally. The sediment-layer of the presentvanishes as it passes into the past and is covered over by thenow-present. Memory is thus an archaeology – a matter of diggingbeneath the surface of the now to find the traces of the past whichstill exist within the present, buried, compressed and distorted bythe passing of time, the piling of layer-upon-layer of the now-present upon theonce-was-present. Here we have time-depths; that which is mostdistant from us in time is hidden deeper in the darkness of the pastbeneath the visible layer of the present. At this point, however, itmight be worth noting that the “past” does not have to be a realthing at all on this model –instead of the past being a real timewhich is other-than-present, we instead have a progressive layeringof present-upon-present, whereby the “past” which is theinvisible present of earth-beneath-our-feet conditions the visiblepresent as the surface upon which we walk; the topography of thepresent is informed by the presenceof the “past” - nothing ever vanishes entirely but instead comesto constitute the non-visible portion of the visible immediacy of ourexperience.* Past things and events do not continue to “exist” inany meaningful sense as past,but remain present in altered form, as other than that which we taketo be presently-existing objects and events; the past is the hand inthe sock-puppet of the present, to take a ridiculous example I justthought of – both are present, one is simply removed from view andfrom that hidden place directly influences the shape of the visible surface which we take to constitute the totality of the present.

(This is quite long, so more below the cut.)

Whatis worth noting at this point is that all of these metaphors areinherently spatial.This, of course, leads us to general relativity and the notion ofspacetime. We know for a fact that observations of more distantobjects are in fact ghosts of those objects – the light receivedfrom a distant star actually occurred in that stars distant past; thelight may already have gone out. Space and time are thus inextricablylinked, for to be distant in space is also to be distant in time. Butspace, and thus time, are relative to the observer – the closer Itravel to the speed of light, the less the Earth appears to be aglobe and the flatter it becomes, in actuality, to me. Thus I cantravel distances in durations of time which, for me, are less than should bepossible judging from my velocity and the distance I travel foranother observer; time slows locally/space dilates for observers travelling athigher relative velocity. (See muons in relation to relativity for some illustrations of this.) Thus, spatial location, temporal durationand relative motion within the spacetime structure appear to beinextricably linked – space and time both warp as I travel faster,what is “Now” for me is not “Now” for you if we are at greatdistance or travelling at greatly variant velocities.

Whatthis tells me is that both space and time are functions of being anembodied entity existing within the world. My “Now” is onlymore-or-less congruent with your “Now” because we are nottravelling at dramatically different speeds, are not particularly farapart, and exist within the same gravity well (since gravity alsowarps space-time). In other words, what appears to be the reality ofthe situation is collective bubbles of “Nowness” which occuraround different celestial objects – there is a “Now” ofrelative Earth-time, a “Now” of relative Sol-system time, and soon.** The greater the size of the “Now”-bubble, the less coherentthat “Now” appears to be, whereas if we collapse this“Now”-bubble down to the smallest possible point, we arrive atthe presence of an observer for whom “Now” is simply theimmediacy of experience. To use another spatial illustration, “Nowness” on this account is radial, rather than linear - what is further from the centre of my experience-observation is more distant in both space and time, less immediate and real for me; “Now” does not move along a line nor do I travel through a separate time-dimension, but “Now” is simply that which is most immediate in my experience. What is not present for me has no causalimpact upon me – it simply does not exist for me, Hereand Now. That star I see exists for me, here and “Now”, while if I were “there” Iwould know that it has in fact gone supernova, and did so some timeago. Any and all implications of that fact of the star’s “actual” non-existence can only evertravel at the speed of light and are therefore not immediate for me “Now”, thus we are restricted to “Now” asa reality constituted by a bubble of space-time localised upon my centre of observation within whichchanges will meaningfully affect me in a relevant time-frame – whathas no effect on me, what is not observable, is not “Now”, not “real” in anymeaningful sense of the term.

This notion of a relevant time-frame is an important one, however. Wemight imagine an entity for whom a thought occurs every thousandyears, at which point events which appear distant (spatially andtemporally) and “unreal” to us, such as a supernova somethousands of lightyears away, would have a perceptible impact uponsuch an entity’s immediate experience, as it would occur relativelyquickly within such an entity’s relative time-frame. Meanwhile,things which move at a faster pace at a closer proximity would belargely irrelevant and equally “unreal” to it; anything whichoccurs at a resolution finer than the grain of perception of such abeing would simply not register as really existent, somewhat as we donot notice the moments of temporary blindness which occur as our eyesflit from point to point in saccades.

Theupshot of all this is that there is no absolute time dimensionthrough which everything moves at a consistent rate. What is “Now”in one place and time is many years distant for those places whichare also many lightyears distant in space, or moving at great relative velocity.There are only localised bubbles of Nowness which occur around largegravitational bodies or rapidly moving observers – in other words,time is the way an observer parses change in the local environmenti.e. the way a mind interprets re-arranging circumstances. Time islocalised because perceptible change is localised, which is truebecause we are embodied beings existing at a particular nexus ofspace-time with limited sensory capacities which operate at a givenfrequency (given by the movement of your particles); we can onlyobserve the small circle of Now which our senses allow for. Time is change, the movement of particles at a given frequency; up therelative frequency of your particles and the world slows down relative to your perception, reduce the frequency and theuniverse flies by. Dive into a black hole and watch the universe endbefore your eyes (assuming you’ve worked out a way not to be torn topieces); since the rate of apparent change is a function of your frequency as the relative movement of your particles, entering deeper gravity wellsexerts a greater pull upon your particles, slowing them down and thusslowing your frequency, making everything else appear faster.

We exist within arelative Here-Now space-time bubble, and the further you move in yourobservations from this centre, the less “present” thingsbecome for you. Each relative gravity-well has its own relativeHere-Now, from person, to planet, to solar system, to galaxy, tosupercluster, to the universe in toto. The only point of view fromwhich everything happens simultaneously in an absolute peresent isthe point of view of the universe, and from that perspective,everything has already happened – an absolute Now is a finality; having no localised perspective, everything simply occurs all at once, ending in an instant.The only point of view from which time flows at all is anembodied one situated within the space-time matrix, at which point,Now becomes a relative concept directly tied to Here, both of whichonly have meaning because of “I”; I am Here, Now. No observer, no Here,no Now, no time, no motion, no space, no time. Nothing. The presenceof the observer is what makes the observable possible – time is notan absolute, linear dimension through which we move or which movesthrough the present, but it is a direct result of our beingperceiving beings which exist in the world; time is part of theprocess of sentient life, not an objective feature of the universe.

*I believe David Abrams discusses this in his book Spell of the Sensuous - the past is the present which is refused (unavailable, inaccessible, beneath our feet) whilst the future is the present which is withheld (behind, the “other side” of an object) accessible by motion and change. It’s a great book which I very much recommend reading.

**(Therewould also be relatively localised “Now”s for observerstravelling at great relative speed within these bubbles; say I’m zoomingaround at near light speed within the solar system - if I do this fora year and then stop, far longer than a year will have passed outsidemy movement-induced Now-bubble.)

P.S. Forthe more scientifically minded amongst you, I highly recommend thislecture by Carlo Rovelli, The Physics and Philosophy of Time. WhilstI haven’t studied physics for some time and may be misunderstandingand/or misapplying some of his concepts, I believe the account I havejust described is relatively consistent with the current science ifnot being its direct implication. He does a good job of not being over-technical but the nature of the subject requires a certain degree of familiarity with physics from what I remember.

Apologies also if I’ve butchered any of the science - feel free to correct me, physicists!

#ask #anon #feel free to send me more essay prompts lmao

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