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tallmantall · 2 years ago

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#JamesDonaldson On #MentalHealth – Between Not Wanting To Live And Not Wanting To Die

I survived a soul-eating #depression. But how? By Jeffrey Ruoff Katrien De Blauwer If you are having thoughts of #suicide, please know that you are not alone. If you are in danger of acting on #suicidalthoughts, call #911. For support and resources, call the #NationalSuicidePreventionLifeline at #988 or text 741-741 for the #CrisisTextLine. Shortly after 2 p.m. on January 31, 2019, I left my Dartmouth College office to kill myself. It was 11 days after my 57th birthday. At my desk, I had written and torn up numerous letters to my wife, Glennis, and our daughter, the essence that they remained my be-all and end-all, above and beyond any actions I might take. I realized that no #suicide note could alleviate their grief, but—always a perfectionist—I kept polishing drafts. Then I texted and emailed my closest friends and family to say that I loved them, and sent Glennis a more explicit note, asking her to “come home to hold our daughter.” Ten days earlier, my #psychiatrist had emailed my psychotherapist to say, “Jeff appears very depressed with #suicidalideation, thoughts of jumping from something high.” Outwardly, I was surrounded by everything I could possibly want: a happy marriage, a rebellious #teenager, a stimulating job, a warm home in rural Vermont, friends near and far. I bathed in love and enjoyed #financial security, along with very good health insurance. I wouldn’t have changed anything, except my soul-eating #depression. By January 2019, I had lost all hope for recovery. So many treatments had fizzled. Clinical #depression and ordinary life stood across an impassable ravine. When well, I could barely imagine being depressed, and when depressed, I couldn’t remember ever feeling well. In Inferno’s final circle of hell, Dante’s sinners freeze instead of burn, trapped in an icy lake. #Depression feels like that. While in a catatonic stupor, I spent months doing crossword puzzles and watching tennis highlights. Anything that helped squeeze the hours forward—time marked by the death of the senses, a quashed libido, the same dirty khakis and T-shirt. It’s strange how much our minds can hurt us. Each night, as sleep overtook me, my last thought was the hope that I would not wake up again. Any way of dying that would hurt my family less than #suicide. But I did wake up, again and again. “In late January,” my medical record states, “Jeff had his first episode of #suicidalthinking and related #behavior.” From my office, I drove 10 minutes to the White River to throw myself off a bridge and into the ice-cold water. I grew up one of five brothers. In 2015, the eldest, Bill, killed himself. He was 60 when he jumped from a ledge into one of the gorges for which our hometown, Ithaca, New York, is best known. As kids, we loved to hike those gorges. We crossed the Triphammer bridge countless times—on foot, on bicycles, in cars, day and night, stoned and straight. I was 11 when someone stole my Schwinn bike, built like a tank, and hurled it off that bridge. The cops retrieved it from the gorge below, in fine condition. - For Bill, #suicide was the culmination of several years of spiraling #paranoia. He’d convinced himself that his wife of 30 years had had an affair, and they underwent a painful divorce. A year before his death, he left his job as a toxicologist in Colorado and transferred to a new position in Pennsylvania, alone. Setting up the empty apartment—all the bedding, furniture, appliances—was too much for him. In an email, he admitted, “There hasn’t been any food in this house in over a week.” On a street corner, the police picked him up during a psychotic episode. They took him to a hospital where he received a full round of electroconvulsive-therapy (ECT) treatments. These proved futile. After more than two weeks in the hospital, he was released with only a Post-it note with the date of a future appointment jotted on it. Pretty quickly, he began a death spiral. Read: Surviving #anxiety Bill first attempted #suicide the evening of his release, when he drank a 12-pack of Budweiser and took a medley of prescription drugs. The next morning, our brother Steve and his wife, Sue, knocked on his door. No answer. They got a key from the apartment manager and found Bill unresponsive on the floor. An ambulance took him to a second hospital. When he returned to his apartment, he made another #suicideattempt with identical methods and a similar outcome. This led to a third emergency stay at yet another hospital, with equally disappointing care and results. After quitting his job, Bill moved back to Ithaca, where he slept on a sofa in our parents’ apartment at a retirement home. His #psychiatric treatment waned. He called his 26-year-old daughter to ask her permission to kill himself, which she denied. In our last phone conversation, Bill told me that he was constantly obsessing about #suicide. (In retrospect, he had clearly returned to our hometown to take his life.) Helplessness blanketed all of us. It was spring when he jumped. He left behind two #children and four #suicide notes: “Please give these to my family. I can no longer endure this terrible pain every moment of every day and evening. I have no hope that I will get better. I do not wish to live a moment longer. Please respect and celebrate my life.” I wrote his obituary. At our #parents’ request, I made no mention of #mentalillness or #suicide. A #suicide in the family significantly increases the chance of a copycat performance. Four years after Bill’s death, I stood on the bridge over the White River. The winter sun couldn’t break through the cold. Was I crying? I can’t recall. I hesitated. Between not wanting to live and not wanting to die, there is a tiny platform, just big enough to stand on. But it’s like standing on burning coals. Glennis was at the airport, on the way to see her #parents, when she got my text message. She phoned me multiple times. I answered the fourth call. She asked where I was, and I told her. Sobbing, she begged me to go to the hospital. She promised me anything if I would just get off that bridge. I hesitated, and backed away from the edge. Did love ground me? Fear? Or some residual hope? Glennis stayed on the phone with me while I drove to the hospital, making one detour—at my office to shred the letter I’d written. At the hospital, I was stripped of any possessions I could use to hurt myself: coat, belt, watch, khakis. I could keep my iPhone, but worried: How to charge it? The rooms were like prison cells, and my dinner arrived with a cardboard fork. I convinced Glennis and my psychiatrist that I’d be better off at home than at that forsaken facility, and they reluctantly agreed. But I couldn’t be left alone—not even for an hour. So Glen and I clung to each other on our couch, as seconds crawled to minutes, days to weeks, months, impossibly, into years. My sadness dripped, like an open tap, eventually flooding all the rooms. How do you relax with a suicidal husband at home? When Glennis eventually had to take a trip, Steve came to be by my side. At Dartmouth, I continued to teach my courses in the department of film and media studies. I felt I was a fraud and an imposter, barely functioning, but my #students and colleagues seemed not to notice. Somehow I passed as a fairly normal faculty member on campus. My medical record from that first February reads: “The overwhelming feeling of despair has shifted to numbness.” In the days after my near-#suicideattempt, another one of my brothers started sending me postcards. I got one every day: from Texas, say, or British Columbia. On a postcard depicting “A Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm,” he wrote, “For the sake of all of us, you don’t have permission to go.” More postcards arrived—of New York, Florida, California. Wherever he bought the postcards, I know he didn’t travel to all these places. On the front of one, a city skyline; on the back, the promise that my pain would one day be “a distant memory.” A sunset complemented a quote from Marcus Aurelius: “Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matters.” An image of “James Bond Island” in Thailand accompanied a blunt insight: “Dad is fucking insane, plain and simple.” On the sixth anniversary of Bill’s #suicide, on a postcard of Mount St. Helens, he confessed that he still felt guilty that he hadn’t done more to try to save our brother. Probably nothing could have helped Bill toward the end, but I remained within reach. Katrien De Blauwer #James Donaldson notes:Welcome to the “next chapter” of my life… being a voice and an advocate for #mentalhealthawarenessandsuicideprevention, especially pertaining to our younger generation of students and student-athletes.Getting men to speak up and reach out for help and assistance is one of my passions. Us men need to not suffer in silence or drown our sorrows in alcohol, hang out at bars and strip joints, or get involved with drug use.Having gone through a recent bout of #depression and #suicidalthoughts myself, I realize now, that I can make a huge difference in the lives of so many by sharing my story, and by sharing various resources I come across as I work in this space. #http://bit.ly/JamesMentalHealthArticleOrder your copy of James Donaldson's latest book,#CelebratingYourGiftofLife:From The Verge of Suicide to a Life of Purpose and Joy www.celebratingyourgiftoflife.com #Mentalillness has ravaged my family for generations; nature married nurture and multiplied in toxic ways. My brothers and I grew up in a #white, Protestant, middle-class home, at the dead end of a suburban street. We enjoyed arcadian boyhoods, with woods to explore, animals to catch, forts to build and burn down. We also beat the hell out of one another. Parental love came with preconditions, namely educational achievement. We grew accustomed to our father’s response to an A grade: “Why not an A+?” Four of us completed Ph.D.s, including me. The fifth went into business, and made more than the rest of us combined; still, all her life, my mom lamented that “Stephen had slipped through the cracks.” I don’t remember my mom or dad ever saying a kind word to each other. I saw them embrace once: in the kitchen, Christmas 1969. For years, Mom slept on a couch in the living room, for reasons obscure to her sons. Well-intentioned but #anxiety-ridden, she mostly screamed at us. Her #childhood had its own troubles. Her mother was born in 1911 in Winter Quarters, Utah. Orphaned at 5, she was taken in by an aunt, who kept her home from #school to do housework and locked her in a root cellar, secured by a trap door with a chair on top. She told my mother that at 8 she had been raped by a bishop of the Mormon Church. In her 80s, my grandmother wrote and self-published a memoir, which passed over these #childhood #traumas. In it, she raves about her son but never once mentions my mother. Read: Can you cure #mentalillness? Two centuries of trying says no. My father grew up on a farm in Fort Wayne, Indiana. When he was a #teenager in the 1940s, his mother underwent ECT for #depression. Pioneered in 1938, ECT was being used more and more, but remained experimental, and I don’t know what effects it imparted, good or bad. As a man, my father had two obsessions: money and science. He was a well-respected engineering professor at Cornell, but he desperately wanted to be rich, and he desperately wanted to win a Nobel Prize, neither of which he achieved. What he did do was deliver a formidable share of #mentalillness to our table: the undiagnosed and untreated #bipolar condition that formed the jagged backdrop of our childhoods and young-#adult years. He gambled on high-stakes investments and mostly lost, terrifying our mother. He never showed emotions other than red-in-the-face anger. After many years of manic activity, my father finally slammed into his first #depression when he was in his 50s. His mother had #dementia and was accusing him of stealing her money. (Money, his beginning and end.) I was an undergraduate at Cornell at the time, and we met for lunch one day. I remarked that he looked “tired,” his eyes clearly worn by tears. Taken aback, he asked if his fatigue was so blatant. As he talked about his mother, he started to sob. A first. Unfortunately, my dad wasn’t the kind of #man who asked for help; he was in the grin-and-bear-it school of #mentalillness. It took two more decades, and a catatonic episode, before the family managed to push him into the arms of a #psychiatrist. He received a diagnosis of bipolar type I—mania with #depression—together with his first dose of lithium. Once on medication, my dad acted in comparatively normal ways—for him, anyway. In his 90s now, he’s nearly beyond language, beyond being hurt by the words of a recalcitrant son. So I can admit that, as far as I am concerned, he accomplished one cool thing when I was growing up. In his lab at Cornell, he made a synthetic diamond out of a dab of Jif creamy peanut butter, squeezing it under tremendous pressure. I still own that diamond. Who else can claim such a hard-edged heirloom? The first #psychiatric assessment in my medical record, from June 2008, reads: “46 y. o. M with h/o of #childhood #trauma and #anxietydisorder, with elements of GAD, OCD, and subthreshold PTSD, with depressed mood.” A little bit of everything: general #anxietydisorder, #obsessivecompulsivedisorder, #posttraumaticstressdisorder. In deference to my authoritarian father, it states, I am “bothered by loud noises, groups of strangers, cars in the rear-view mirror, in general potential ‘male aggression.’” There’s also a visual snapshot: “He is dressed casually in T-shirt and khakis, sneakers without laces. He wears rimless glasses, makes good eye contact, and is pleasant/cooperative, though sporadically tearful and dramatic.” Still today, the portrait stands. #Anxiety and #depression sleep together in my bed, but gradually #depression stole the covers. Over the years, I struggled with what came to be characterized as “major depressive disorder,” and took a cornucopia of medications. Nortriptyline, paroxetine, venlafaxine, buspirone, sertraline, citalopram, pregabalin, mirtazapine. None worked. Optimistically, I tried lurasidone, bupropion, and vilazodone, followed by aripiprazole, amitriptyline, and zaleplon, which also made no difference. Then Restoril, protriptyline, desipramine, escitalopram. Nothing. My #psychiatrist began to talk ominously about “treatment-resistant #depression.” Nonetheless, I carried on with fluoxetine, temazepam, triazolam, and trazodone. A perfectionist, I was appalled by my failure to get healthy. I almost came to despise the #patients who got relief from these medications. In addition to the pharmacopoeia, no #mentalillness would be complete without psychotherapy. I started with hypnosis, now forgotten. Eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) offered better results. EMDR involves recollecting traumatic events while tracing with one’s eyes the back-and-forth movement of, say, a pencil. Research suggests that this engages both hemispheres of the brain, allowing the left side to relieve the right, which somehow can help alleviate #anxiety. I also undertook #cognitivebehavioraltherapy, behavioral activation therapy, and acceptance-and-commitment therapy, and practiced mindfulness. Somehow, I never quite learned how to meditate. Like tennis partners, my psychotherapist and I lobbed thoughts across her coffee table. Jeff: I feel despondent about teaching this spring; I don’t know how to manage. My memory sucks. How can I teach if I can’t recall who directed Red Sorghum? Psychotherapist: Try to remember that you have taught these courses many times before … Trust that you will remember how to teach them again. At wits’ end, in January 2017, we decided to do ECT, often turned to when all other approaches fail. Still controversial, principally because of the resulting short-term-memory loss and the tenacious hangover from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, ECT provides a statistically greater success rate than antidepressants. I would receive 13 rounds, over a month. Thomas Insel: What #American #mentalhealthcare is missing During each procedure, as I dropped off to sleep, the #doctors would verify my medical-record number, 502400442-9, with the end mysteriously pronounced “two check nine.” Waking dazed and confused in the hospital always felt like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the astronaut comes upon himself in a faux French bedroom. Bit by bit, and then powerfully, ECT brought relief. After the last treatment, my journal reads, I “enjoy listening to music (Leonard Cohen live) for the first time in years.” I stood in our local grocery store in amazement and realized, “The coffee on this shelf is not in pain. And I am not in pain.” An epiphany in aisle two. The short-term-memory loss was temporary, but real. Behind the wheel, I negotiated our small town with difficulty. I forgot the addresses of friends; I drove the wrong way down one-way streets. At home, routine activities presented challenges. “I cook asparagus on the grill without olive oil and then don’t turn off the burners,” I wrote one day. But there were some advantages to short-term-memory loss, like the opportunity to see great movies twice, such as 20th Century Women and Manchester by the Sea, having no recall of the first viewing. At the same time, my long-term memory dramatically improved. Knowledge of French and Italian, suppressed by chronic #depression, flooded back. Che bello. I felt, suddenly, full of energy. I started spending hours on #Facebook, #Instagram, and #Twitter, divulging intimate details about my life. I got out of bed after four hours of sleep, refreshed, and drove to my office at 3 a.m. I coolly informed my friends that I was a “Renaissance man.” I dyed my hair red and got an ear pierced for a golden ring. I made connections wherever I went, filling my phone with new numbers. And my libido returned with a vengeance. Strolling in downtown Montreal hours before driving our #teenage daughter to the airport, I insisted that Glennis try on lingerie at a local shop. When she refused, I slipped into the store to buy some regardless. I kept a running tab of how often we had sex. These #behaviors added up not to #mentalhealth, but rather to hypomania, the flip side of a depressive mood. It includes euphoria, extreme talkativeness, inflated #self-esteem, excessive sociability, big increases in energy, little need for sleep, hypersexuality, recklessness, and grandiosity, as well as irritability and aggressiveness. I checked off all but the last one. #Depression manifests internally, with its ravages largely hidden from others. Hypomania is the opposite. I felt terrific, like a fish in water. My friends, who saw bits and pieces interspersed with mostly normal conduct, rejoiced in my improved state of mind. But my wife and daughter knew that something was wrong. When depressed, I had taken a rear seat as a #parent, and Glennis had picked up the necessary habit of telling me what to do. Now I became intent on having a greater role in the household, and felt either ganged up on or pushed aside when Glen and our daughter made decisions without me. Frustrated, I grew alienated from my family. They hadn’t even had the chance to process the collateral damage from my #depression, and suddenly I was behaving like a different person. And they felt scared. A month after my “recovery” with ECT, Glennis pointed out that I was easily distracted, repeating myself, talking excessively, and obsessively multitasking—all telltale symptoms of hypomania. She told my #psychiatrist that I was “not better.” One evening, after I went on and on about yet another day of walking on water, she screamed, “I don’t care how fucking fantastic your day was!” While flying high, I started to believe that she actually preferred me depressed. Read the full article

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bestpsychologistinpunjab · 2 years ago

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Does the Brain know what is the issue between neurology and Psychiatry disorder?

Psychiatric disorder is common in many Neurological disorder including Epilepsy, Migraine, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, and stroke. These co morbidities increase disease burden and may complicate the treatment of the combined disorders. Initial Studies of the co morbidity of Psychiatric and Neurological disorders.

The Reality of the Psychiatry - neurology distinction refers to the soundness of its theoretical basis. This might be best summarized by the following rule:

If a disorder in question is reliably associated with a recognizable pathological process affecting the Central Nervous System, then it is neurological.

If we take Schizophrenia there is ample evidence of quantitative regional change in the (Central nervous system). Thanks to the widespread use of structural magnetic resonance imaging, but only insofar as this is detectable at the group level against a control group and according to some more or less arbitrary statistical threshold. The same can be said of affective disorder but at rather lower statically threshold.

A study found that reduced gray matter in both anterior cingulated and insula-cortices to be common across all disorders. Concluding these, areas could represent a " Shared neural substrate for mental illness. It is interesting to note that the insula in this study was also

found to be a key psychiatric region, whereas it came out as associated with neurological disease. This ambiguity is perhaps not surprising given the large body of evidence with emotion processing, motor function and a true interface between mind and body- interception.

Read more: Top psychologist in Ludhiana

#Best anxiety doctor in ludhiana punjab #Sleep disorder clinics in ludhiana #Best psychiatrist doctor in ludhiana #Best psychiatrist for teenager near me #Best psychologist in ludhiana #Psychiatrist for adults near me

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artzychic27 · 3 years ago

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Artist Family 1991 movie?

All is more sullen than usual for the Artists. It’s the third anniversary of Rose’s disappearance

Juleka: *Solemnly staring at Rose’s empty room* Think of it That. For years we’ve attempted to contact Rose in the Great Beyond. And for years… Nothing.

Ever since Rose’s disappearance, Juleka has been looking through her spell books for other ways to contact her, but just can seem to find anything

For Marinette, she tries to cope the only way she knows how… Through torture.

Alix: *Tied up: Screaming through her binds*

Marinette: *Aiming an arrow at Alix* Don’t be a baby. I know what I’m doing.

Marc is more unhappy than usual… And it gets Nathaniel in the mood.

Nathaniel: *Watching Marc sleep* Look at him. I would die for him. I would kill for him… Either way, what bliss. *Marc wakes up* Unhappy, darling?

Marc: Oh, yes. Yes, completely. Nathan... The sun. Me atraviesa como un puñal.

Nathaniel: Oh, monochrome. That's Spanish.

Marc: Si.

Nathaniel: *Grabs a bucket of black paint and splatters it all over the window*

Marc: Mi amor... Last night, you were unhinged. You were like some desperate howling demon. You frightened me… Do it again.

Also, their neighbor, a well-respected judge, hates them because Marinette can’t keep her flaming arrows on the Artists’ property. Why does this matter? You’ll soon see.

Nathaniel: *Playing chess with Juleka while Marc snips the buds off of roses* It’s a milestone, Marc. It’ll be our third séance. All those years, gnawed by guilt, undone by woe, burning with uncertainty.

Marc: Nathaniel, don’t torture yourself… That’s my job around here. But, imagine if Rose did return. Half alive, barley human, a rotting shell.

Juleka: *Sighs* That’d be a sight.

Unbeknownst to everyone (Except Félix), Juleka has a crush on Rose.

Later, the Artists’ lawyer, Cecil and his wife Bridgette arrive to ask for a loan. (Wow. Asking for a loan from teenagers? Yeesh.) Why? Because they owe a loan shark.

Bridgette: Why did I marry you?

Cecil: Because I said yes!

While Cecil tries to work out a deal with Nathaniel, Bridgette collects expensive looking items for a charity auction from Juleka, Marc, and Félix

Marc: *As Félix pulls body bags out of a closet* Uncle Niknak's winter wardrobe. Uncle Niknak's summer wardrobe… Uncle Niknak.

Nathaniel: ‘The Rose Artist Off-Shore Retirement Fund’?… A tribute to thee. Some called her inhumanly evil.

Cecil: No!

Nathaniel: Only her parents before she fled her home.

And they make a deal… But…

Nathaniel: It’s going to have to wait, you know the rules better than that. Old business is old business and new business is new business. And this is new business and we do not discuss new business until… The next quarter.

After an unsuccessful attempt at stabbing Nathaniel with one of the many swords in the house, Cecil gives up until Nathaniel mentions going to get money for the monthly expenses from the vault

Meanwhile, Marc shows Bridgette a golden finger trap from the court of Emperor Wu

Bridgette: *Trying to not pocket it and run off* Oh, Marc, this is too extravagant, even for the auction.

Juleka: Let’s keep it.

Marc: Juleka, it’s for charity. *Bridgette gets her fingers trapped* Widows and orphans. We need more of them… Bridgette, about the séance tonight, why don’t you come? It's Nathaniel I'm terribly worried about. He won't eat, he can't sleep, he keeps coughing up blood.

Bridgette: He coughs up blood?

Marc: Well, not like he used to...

Cecil returns to his office with a suitcase full of doubloons from the Artists’ account, no knowledge of how to get the vault open, and in his office is Ms. Craven, a loan shark and her familiar-looking daughter, Willow

After some intimidation from Willow, Cecil gets an idea of how to repay Ms. Craven the money he owes her when he sees how similar she looks to Rose

There’s thunder and lightning on the night of the séance. Perfect weather

Marc: Marinette, Alix, put down that antenna, and come inside.

With their plan in place, Cecil and Bridgette arrive

Bridgette: *Shows Marinette the finger trap still on her fingers* Could you help me? *Marinette removes it with ease*

Marinette: Push, do not pull.

Marc: *With everyone seated around the table for the séance* Harken all souls. Every year on this date, we offer a clarion call to Rose Artist… Alix, drop the cleaver.

Marinette: *Sees Alix aiming the cleaver at her* Stop it.

Marc: From generation to generation, our beacon to the beyond. All close eyes and join hands.

After a practical joke on Bridgette involving That, the séance continues.

Marinette: Let us ransom you from the power of the grave. Tonight, oh Death, let us be your plague.

Juleka: Rose Artist, ceoli couris, ferimani bo… She’s near. *Félix plays a dramatic sting on his organ* Rose! Gather your strength! And knock three times! *One knock… Two… Three*

Nathaniel: She’s at the door!

That quickly goes to unlock the front door. And there, much to the Artists’ disbelief and joy is Rose… Or so they think. And there with her is Ms. Craven, posing as a psychiatrist named Dr. Schloss

Ms. Craven makes up some story about how “Rose” was found in Miami, tangled up in a tuna net. There were psychological tests, and a bunch of crap.

Nathaniel: And now she’s back.

Rose: At least for a week. I’ve got things to do back at the Bermuda Triangle.

Marc: *Sighs* Oh, the Bermuda Triangle./ Nathaniel: The Devil’s Island./ Marc: The Black Hole of Calcutta

Nathaniel: Pardon me for a moment. *Kisses up and down Marc’s arm* Our fifth date.

Marinette: No one escapes the Bermuda Triangle. Not even for a vacation. Everyone knows that.

Any attempts Willow tries at getting a good night’s sleep, it doesn’t work because The floors are constantly creaking, Marinette and Alix keep staring at her from down the hall, and That keep sneaking up on her which causes her to scream.

Nathaniel: … My dear friend. I’ve got goosebumps./ Marc: I know./ Nathaniel: Screams in the night. It can only mean one thing./ Marc: She’s home.

The next morning, Marinette and Alix suspect something is up with “Rose”. Meanwhile, Nathaniel takes “Rose” to the vault

Alix: *As Marinette warms up the electric chair* Do you think that’s really Rose?

Marinette: Nathaniel and Juleka seem to think so. But I think Marc isn’t sure. Now let’s a play a game. Sit in the chair.

Alix: What game?

Marinette: ‘Want to meet God?’

And Nathaniel does take Rose down to the vault, via gondola in the catacombs of the Artist home, only this vault leads to a secret room… That also leads to the money vault when a certain vial of poison is lifted

During that time, while they’re down there, Nathaniel reveals to “Rose” that his jealousy over her catching the attention of conjoined twins Ali and Eli drove her off

~Meanwhile~ Alix: So, if that’s not Rose, then who is she?

Marinette: An imposter. Now give the chair a few more seconds to warm up./ Alix: Why?/ Marinette: So it Can kill you./ Alix: I knew that.

~Later at the charity auction ~

Auctioneer: *Presenting the finger trap on Bridgette’s fingers again* This piece is encrusted with rubies and 15 emerald chips. It was donated by Marc and Nathaniel Artist. Remember, over half our proceeds will benefit the elderly and the mentally disabled. The bidding starts at $5000.

Nathaniel: Five, hah! Not good enough. $25,000!

Auctioneer: I have twenty.

Nathaniel: Twenty-five! *To Marc* Meyn Ziskeyt?

Auctioneer: Twenty five.

Marc: Thirty. *To Nathaniel* My howling demon.

Nathaniel: *voice cracks* Thirty-five!

Marc: Fifty!

Auctioneer: I have $50,000.

Marc: Your turn, my ecstasy.

Auctioneer: Fifty thousand going once, fifty thousand going twice. Sold to Marc Artists for fifty thousand dollars. *looks disgusted as Marc and Nathaniel obscenely make out*

They bought it back as a gift for “Rose”, but… She doesn’t know how to take it off! The Artists are now starting believe that she really is an imposter

Marc attempts to break “Rose” and get her to confess by taking her to the Artists’ cemetery where he reminds her of the credo

Marc: "Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc." "We gladly feast on those who would subdue us." Not just pretty words… Rose. As an Artist, you understand completely.

“Rose”: … As an Artist, I do.

Seeing that everyone’s onto her, Willow calls Ms. Craven and has her pose as the psychiatrist to try and make the Artists none the wiser

Marc: Nathaniel, Juleka, why don’t you speak to Rose? She’s right outside the door.

Juleka: We would… If that were the real Rose.

Nathaniel: She’s an imposter! A charlatan! A sham! A counterfeit!

While wandering around the home, Rose sees Marinette and Alix sword fighting and practicing lines for something.

Ms. Craven successfully convinces the Artists that their reason for suspecting “Rose” is an imposter is due to displacement, and meanwhile, Rose helps Marinette and Alix out with their sword fighting scene for a play they’re in at school. A play she’s not allowed to attend but goes to anyway

Just a few minutes before the play, Mme. Bustier, asks Marc a question about Marinette.

Mme. Bustier: Now, the students did projects on their heroes. Alya Cesaire chose Lois Lane.

Marc: Have you spoken to her parents?

Mme. Bustier: And Marinette did her project on someone named Calpurnia Dupain.

Marc: Oh, her great aunt on her father’s side. She was burned as a witch in 1706. They say she danced naked in town square and enslaved a minister. *Unaware of Mme. Bustier’s horror.* Don’t worry, we told her university first.

And after so many horrible performances, comes the best one yet… Where Marinette and Alix splatter fake blood all over the audience.

Nino: … I suggested a evening in the park, but no. You wanted to see the performances.

Alya: *Spits out fake blood* Shut up.

Furious that her plans to get into the vault have failed since “Rose” decided to go to the play, Ms. Craven insists that “Rose” must leave again… But not before the Artists mark the occasion with a going away party where the entire Artist clan is invited.

Marc: *To Marinette who is dancing with Luka* Marinette, would you go check on Rose upstairs, please?

Marinette leaves (Not before kissing Luka) and overhears Willow and Ms. Craven going over their plan to break into the vault. She quickly runs to go get help.

Meanwhile, Cecil figures out a way to get rid of the Artists for good. And here’s where the judge comes in- He gets a restraining order agasint them so they can’t set foot on their property

After the party, the Artist family tries to find Marinette when they realize that she’s gone missing. But when they return with her, they find that they can’t get inside their own home. And when they attempt to appeal to the judge, he sends them away out of spite.

The Artists are now living in a motel. Nathaniel is in a state of depression knowing they’ve been betrayed, and Marc is just trying to keep Juleka, Marinette, and Alix from going crazy… Er.

Also, he gets a job as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant. Let’s see how that turns out.

Marc: And so the witch lured Hansel and Gretel into the candy house by promising them more sweets. And she told them to look in the oven. But, before she herself could push the children inside, Hansel pushed her, that poor defenseless elderly witch into the oven instead and burned her to a crisp as she writhed in agony… Now children. How do you think that feels? *The children cry* … Exactly.

That gets a job as a courier, and Marinette, Juleka, and Alix sell poison macarons.

Not able to stand the sight of his family in such a state, Marc returns to the Artists home to confront “Rose” only to be captured by Ms. Craven and Cecil. And unknown to Marc, That followed him.

Craven, Cecil, and Willow torture Marc so he can tell them how to access the vault means of torture, but he’s a total masochist and is loving every second of it

That returns to the motel and- through Morse code- tells the Artists that Marc’s been captured

Nathaniel: Mar... Marc... Marc? Marc is what? Slow down, That! It's terrible when you stutter!

*That starts tapping in Morse Code with a pen*

Nathaniel: Marc... in... danger... stop. Send... help... at once... STOP! *He runs out. That collapses*

Nathaniel arrives just before they can try and kill Marc, and engages in a sword fight with Cecil, which he gains the upper hand on, then loses when Ms. Craven has Marc at gun point. She forces him to show Willow the vault or she shoots Marc if they’re not back in an hour

Before Nathaniel can pull out the book that activates the secret door on the shelf, Willow pulls out a different book- A spellbook that projects It’s contents into reality and creates a storm. A bolt of lightning strikes Willow and launches Cecil and Craven out the window and into graves dug by Marinette, Alix, and Juleka

Alix: Are they dead?

Marinette: Does it matter?

Months later on Halloween, it’s revealed that Willow has been Rose all this time, and the story about the tuna net and the Bermuda Triangle were true. She just suffered from amnesia

Bridgette: *To Marinette* Dear, where’s your costume.

Marinette: This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac; they look just like everyone else.

While the others play a good game of ‘Wake The Dead’ Marc and Nathaniel stay behind because Marc has something to tell him.

Nathaniel: Monochrome, what is it?

Marc: I finally received a letter from my mothers, and… *Shows him an ultrasound photo* They said if it’s anything like me, they want us to have it.

Sequel

#miraculous ladybug #marc x nathaniel #nathaniel kurtzberg #marc anciel #marinette dupain cheng #alix kubdel #rose lavillant #juleka couffaine #félix graham de vanily #the addams family #addams family au #the artist family

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ravenvsfox · 3 years ago

Text

Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold

Summary: He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.

(Adam's perspective throughout Mister Impossible, as his worry reaches a fever pitch, and the two versions of himself begin to converge)

Word Count: 9.5k

Warnings: mi spoilers, death/suicide mention

A/N: batshit middle books my beloveds. adam pov or bust 😌

Read on AO3

In high school, Gansey would very occasionally call Adam in the middle of the night.

He would speak low and fast, his panic pinched between thumb and forefinger and held at a respectable distance. Adam would smother the receiver with his palm and step outside of his family trailer, listening hard for movement at his back.

The news was always the same: Ronan Lynch was on his latest rampage or bender, exercising his dark talent for bullying his way into people’s lives and then breaking down all of their windows and doors trying to get out again.

Gansey would fret and apologize, guilty for luring Adam out of his wolf-den, guiltier for neglecting his duties as Ronan’s warden. Adam would wait tiredly on the line for Gansey’s anxiety to exhaust itself, and then dutifully join the search party.

He would step into his beaten tennis shoes and pry his bike from the fence, silencing the silvery shock of metal on metal, and avoiding the reedy whir of the spokes by holding the whole thing aloft until he reached the gravel road.

From there, he would venture out into the abandoned Henrietta streets, the crunch of his tires cutting clean through the woolly midnight silence. He often circled the perimeter of the park nearest Monmouth, stepped through the great dark portal into St. Agnes, and nipped under the old bridge, squinting into the darkness for the challenging shoulders, the oil-slick BMW gleam, the slump of a body or clatter of bottles.

This is a part of Gansey that I admire, he would think. And with equal fervour, this is a part of Gansey that I resent. This blood attachment to Ronan, who was not even attached to himself. The insomnia that seized two heads of the lopsided Cerberus that Adam, Ronan, and Gansey were all part of, a restlessness on either side of him that shook him awake over and over again.

He chased Ronan’s shadow, hating him. Hating his thoughtlessness, his privilege, his chokehold on Gansey’s interests, his purposefully and continuously ruined potential, and yet bristling with anxiety at the idea of finding him bleeding.

They hadn’t known then that he was a dreamer, but they’d felt the ear-popping pressure of his grief, glimpsed the hulking animal of his self-loathing, urged onwards by the twin spurs of Declan and Gansey, the past and the future, digging into his sides.

Adam had seen Ronan, teeth bared, hurling himself at rock bottom, and he had rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled him back by the collar.

Things are completely different now, but he still finds himself sleep-raw and petrified, reaching after Ronan in the dark.

He examines himself in the mirror of the communal bathroom in Thayer hall. The overhead lights are an unflattering yellow, the sink has a long dark hair stuck to its basin, and Adam’s face is gaunt and bruised with lack of sleep.

He’s losing it, a little bit.

He takes his own pulse, focusing on the faraway burble of the ley line. Everything, lately, seems far away.

As if through a stranger’s eyes, he slips from the seafoam tiling and bleach tang in Thayer’s North bathroom to the accordion door of the trailer toilet, the creaky cubicle shower, his gawky, hurt reflection in the burnt-out light. This version of Adam had to watch his best friend’s best friend escape suicide watch and get screaming drunk in public, treading mud and malicious dreams all over Monmouth manufacturing.

He can still smell the salt tang from teenaged Adam’s ocean of disdain.

Now that he loves Ronan, his irritation has only gotten sharper, more deadly. Ronan performs each perilous swan dive into the unknown, each foolhardy act of self-sacrifice, as if the people who care about him aren’t gasping spectators. It makes Adam furious.

Perhaps neither of them have changed as much as they wanted to believe. As Gillian keeps advising the crying club—with the confidence of a seasoned psychiatrist—progress isn’t linear.

He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.

He slides fingers over his temples, smooths a knuckle over each eyebrow to ease the tension he always carries there. Sleep is a little knot of gristle lodged at the back of his throat; he can’t swallow it and he can’t spit it up. It never used to be this hard to put his problems to bed. He would worry the weight on his chest into small pieces, and go to sleep knowing that even the worst things about his life were organized correctly.

This time though, he’s out of sorts, divided, always busy but always spinning his wheels. He has a white-hot secret pressed to the roof of his mouth.

Every time he folds himself into bed, his subconscious helpfully reminds him that Ronan might be dead. And then a highlight reel plays in his head like an In Memoriam: Adam’s hand cupping Ronan’s nape, a barn silhouetted against a melancholy sky, a fistful of dreamt light, a dozen hard-won smiles and a hundred easy ones, a white handprint on a flushed thigh, a colourful joke to placate a brother, a kiss pressed to a dream’s forehead. All of that—gone. And Adam, at Harvard.

He highlights long patches of text in his sociology textbook, drinks a sensible amount of jack and coke at Eliot’s birthday party, declines Gansey’s calls by sending cheerful and conciliatory texts, and drifts through the library with his hand knotted in the strap of his satchel, looking for something that he can’t really articulate. He reads the same line of theory over and over and over and over, feeling like he’s scrying, like his focus isn’t his own.

He did all of this before Ronan went missing too, but now it’s a whole different class of performance. It used to be, I’m convincingly attentive, I’m sipping overpriced coffee on the way to class like a good Ivy leaguer, I’m making an impression on my professors, I’m forging friendships. Someday I will cash in these relationship tokens, and it all will have been worth it. It felt impossible that his life could be so simple and rewarding.

Now he thinks, I’m studying for finals and my boyfriend is being hunted by people whose job it is to kill him. I’m drinking a latte and the only people I’ve ever loved have left me, and I'm alone again. I’m putting my hand up in class and somewhere, Ronan’s life is changing, rapidly, dangerously, without me.

He lies to everyone, all the time, and tells himself that this life he’s building is more important than anything.

Once, as they cleared placemats and mugs full of stagnant coffee from the kitchen table, Ronan—still cobwebbed in his most recent dream—had detailed the sensation of hovering over himself afterwards. He was unable to manipulate his physical body or even really recognize it as his own, and his consciousness, detached, had its own limbs, its own intentions. He was like a parasite trying to wriggle back into its host.

Whenever Adam consults his double in a bit of glass, he imagines himself as a nimble dreamer, peering down, working to bring a fantasy to life. He can see his own outline, a slick college student with a flat, pleasant affect and a gaggle of soft-shelled friends. He plays his role impeccably well, but he can’t fit himself into it. If he passed himself in the hallway he would not stop.

Looking in the mirror now, he feels a red pang of fear, then a supercut of the ways he used to let himself love and be loved, then resentfulness hot on the heels of his worry.

His reflection withers, and he looks deliberately down at his hands. It’s a Tuesday, and he needs to sleep, or his tightly-scheduled Wednesday will be a misery. It’s a Tuesday, which means he hasn’t spoken to Ronan in—he stalls. Call me, he thinks, miserably. Just call me.

He can deal with a multitude of challenging and improbable situations if only he can see them clearly. Ronan is, for whatever reason, keeping him in the dark.

The not knowing is bad. It’s not how he functions. It’s not how they function. But instead of dwelling, he puts his back into the narrative that is now his reality: Impeccable student. Devoted friend-group. Tough break-up. Bright future.

Ronan isn’t here. Can’t ever be, physically, so far from the ley line. Adam has to be.

“Croissant, as ordered.” His gaze snaps up, connecting—not with his own image, but with clever, horn-rimmed Gillian. “They tried to foist it upon me without butter, if you can imagine that.” She deposits a crinkly brown and tan paper bag in front of him, and then two little plastic pots of butter. Adam regards the squashed shape of the bag’s contents with confusion.

It’s— “Is it Tuesday?”

“Wednesday,” Eliot corrects airily, licking jam from their thumb.

“My god, Adam. Whatever happened to your infallible circadian rhythm?” Fletcher asks. “You are the Swiss timepiece by which we measure our days.”

A terrible wave of vertigo strikes him, and he’s grateful to find himself sitting, at one of two conjoined wrought-iron tables in the courtyard near Thayer. He can feel the ley line breathing for the first time in a long time.

He must have gone to bed after his late-night breakdown in the bathroom. He must have. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. His hand strays to his hair. Wet. He’d woken, showered, and met his friends for breakfast, and he can barely remember it.

“Sorry,” he chokes. “Sleep deprivation is catching up to me, I think.”

“Aw, chicken,” Benjy says affectionately. “I’ve sung those end of term blues. The profs think we’re machines. Don’t even get me started on Dr. Fraundberg’s Lit Crit for assholes.”

“Whyever would we?” Eliot says. “We want to make it to class before noon.”

“Har-har. You wound me. Adam you’d better get a tissue ready, I’m about to tear up.”

“Also,” Gillian says, pointing her be-honeyed knife in Eliot’s direction. “Speak for yourself. I want to make it to class never.”

“Your presentation is going to be exceptional,” Fletcher tells her. “Your rough draft already drove me into paroxysms of jealousy. I don’t know why you’re so concerned.”

“I don’t just want to pass,” Gillian says. “I want to win.”

“Admirable,” Benjy sniffs.

“You’re being awfully quiet, Adam,” Eliot says, at length. He’s aware that they’re all trying very hard to act like they don’t notice how poorly composed he is.

“Can’t a man savour his pastry, Eli?” Fletcher rumbles.

“No, that’s fair,” Adam sighs. The four of them peer at him expectantly, eyebrows arranged into an array of benign and non-threatening shapes. “It’s possible I’m having a slight breakdown,” he says, adopting the grim hyperbole of a student for whom finals are the beginning and end of their emotional upset.

Everyone at the twin tables indulges in a bit of mild laughter.

“What a coincidence, so am I!”

“Well if it’s only slight, I’ll stow my concern.”

“Harvard or personal?”

He smiles faintly, and says, “kind of both. The personal is political, or something.”

He thinks he’s laying it on thick, but Gillian grins at him. “'Atta boy.”

Fletcher goes to take a sip of his tea, but chokes when his phone lights up with an incoming text message. “Criminy, is it eight already? Starting the day with a bang, as usual. I’ll meet you at Weld this evening, yes?” he asks, shaking out his tweed jacket and thrusting an arm through it, securing the remains of his bagel between his teeth with his other hand.

“Of course,” Adam says. Fletcher gives him a thumbs up, mouth charmingly stuffed, and sweeps away across the now bustling courtyard.

“Hey magic man,” Eliot says. “Will you do a reading for my sister tonight? The break-up with Margot is hitting her kind of hard. I’m pretty sure she just wants to be told she’ll find love again.”

Adam watches the juddering impact of Benjy kicking Eliot under the table.

He shrugs. “First come first serve, but I’ll give her the friends and family discount.”

“You’re a prince,” Eliot says, blowing him a kiss. Adam tries to imagine any of his friends from Henrietta doing such a thing, and can’t. “Come along Benjy. Bookstore or bust. They’re giving out discount computing textbook codes at sixty dollars a pop.”

A slip of paper for sixty American dollars. Adam’s head aches profoundly.

Gillian waggles her fingers at their friends as they depart, then she turns and fixes Adam with that familiar amateur therapist look.

“What?”

“Are you sleeping?” she asks bluntly.

“I’m a very good sleeper,” Adam says wryly. “Ask anyone.”

“But are you actually doing it?”

“Yes, Gillian.” Liar, liar. “Do you want me to keep a dream journal as evidence?”

“Oh, yes please.” That shark’s grin. “I’d pay to know what the fuck is going on up there.” She taps her own temple to indicate Adam's guarded mind.

He spreads his hands between them. “I’m an open book.”

She hums, only half-smiling now. “I dunno. That Southern charm. I’m never quite sure if I should trust a politeness that perfect.”

“On that note,” Adam says, standing. He’s relieved to find that he’s wearing matching socks, and his pant legs are rolled just so. There’s a tiny streak of yellow on one of his shoes, and with a jolt he realizes that it’s dream-crab guts. He presses on. “Thanks for the croissant. And the psychoanalysis. Send me the bill.”

She salutes him with her coffee cup. “You couldn’t afford me.”

He laughs, and turns, and then spends the whole walk to his 9 AM class trying to straighten all of the haywire compasses in his brain so they point due north.

His assignment is in his bag, pressed neatly into a navy blue folder. He has three classes today, a meeting with his supervisor at three, a study block set aside from four to six, then dinner, then tarot readings all evening—his phone rings. His treacherous heart leaps. Ronan.

He stops mid-stride, scrambling for his cell in the front pocket of his bag.

“Hello?”

“I—oh—Adam! I didn’t expect you to pick up. How on Earth are you?”

“Gansey.” He exhales through his nose. “I’m just on my way to class.”

“Fantastic to hear your voice. How’s—not that one, Jane, the I-90—exactly. How’s Harvard? Are you batting away job offers yet?”

“Constantly. How are your nature hikes and hippie communes? Contracted any backwoods diseases yet?”

“Charming. I’m actually in remarkably fine form, health-wise.”

“Is that a brag?”

A guffaw. “More of a curiosity. It’s actually part of the reason I’ve been trying to get in touch. Have you noticed any surges of power from the ley line lately? I mean, of course you have, but do you have any idea what’s causing them?”

He frowns, pinning his cellphone between his good ear and shoulder as he heaves open the ancient door to the physics building. “I could give you my best guess.”

A beat, and then, “I’m listening, Parrish.” Something about the way he says it makes homesickness pulse painfully in Adam’s chest.

He finds a semi-secluded stone slab bench behind an empty stairwell, and slings his belongings across it before he replies, “Dreamers.”

“Dreamers,” Gansey repeats, but it sounds like he’s saying of course! “Plural?”

“At least three.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure yet.”

“Ronan hasn’t spoken to you,” Gansey guesses.

“Not—in a few days.”

“Is everything alright?”

He swallows, and is horrified to find tears burning at the back of his throat. There’s no pretending with Gansey. It’s why he never calls him.

“Adam,” he says quietly. “Is he in trouble?”

He struggles with his composure for several long seconds. “Possibly.”

A world-weary sigh. “I really wish you had called.”

“Yeah, well,” he says vaguely. He checks his watch. 8:23.

“So he’s playing with others. Why would Ronan want to do that?”

“I think—he’ll do anything not to feel powerless.” He understands as soon as he says it that it’s the pockmark in the windshield from which all of the damage is splintering outwards. “And people take advantage of that.”

Gansey makes a thoughtful noise, somewhere a thousand miles away, and it clicks in a lock and opens Adam’s shoulders up. Maybe he doesn’t have to be alone in this fight. How could he have forgotten careful, persistent Gansey?

“Well. He’s certainly not powerless. I almost feel back to my pre-Cabeswater self. Everything is pleasantly linear. And Blue is—lighting up.” In the background, he hears her say supercharged with relish. “I can only imagine what it’s like for full-blooded dream stuff, with all of that energy at their disposal.”

“I don’t know if I like it,” Adam says carefully. “It’s good for a while, helping all the Matthew’s of the world, and then what? Where does all of that diverted power end up? What makes dreamers qualified to harness it without their worst nightmares manifesting?”

“You’re worried about the Lace.”

The last time they spoke, Adam had told them briefly about his last scrying session, warning them to look out for the hateful, faceless thing that had pierced his cells and magnified all of his pain and fear until all he could possibly do was scream.

“I’m worried about Ronan. I know he’s in over his head, and I know he won’t believe it until it’s too late.”

“Sounds like someone I know. Don’t bite off more than you can chew with this, Adam. I know you’re enormously busy.”

It stings, a little. “I’m still going to—I’m obviously still going to make time for him. Especially when he’s—“

“Struggling. Yes. I understand perfectly.” It occurs to Adam that, unlike his well-meaning Harvard friends, he actually might. A needling murmur in the background, and then, “listen, Blue’s telling me that you should get in touch with the psychics, and Mr. Gray.”

He nods. The rhythm of problem-solving is soothing his frazzled nerves. “I’ve been considering it. I’m also pretty sure that Declan has been keeping his own tabs on things.”

“My money’s on yes,” Gansey says. Adam half-smiles. His money has been on a lot of things. “Poke around when you can. See what turns up. I’ll give Ronan a call, not that it’s ever done me much good before.”

“I’m pretty sure he ditched his phone.” He checks his watch. 8:24. It feels like it’s been much, much longer than a minute. There is so much day ahead of him.

Ordinarily, he would be compartmentalizing better than this. No feverish Gansey phone calls directly before class. No pleasure with his business. No finesse when logic will do the job just as well. But the subterranean, black-eyed Adam is still within him, tethered to the ley line and to his friends, and he wants very badly to fix this.

“Ah, Ronan,” Gansey sighs. “It’s always got to be him, doesn’t it?”

“I know,” Adam says narrowly. “If he’s not looking for trouble it’s looking for him.”

“You sound like Declan.”

Adam makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. Blue must be leaning across Gansey, because she says “that’s a new low,” almost directly into the receiver.

“I’m hanging up now,” he says flatly.

“Update me if anything changes? We’ll come home the moment things go south.”

He resists the urge to check his watch again. “Don’t cut things short on my account.”

“Well. Don’t disrupt your studies on Ronan’s. I’ve never known you to put your future on hold for anything.”

“I’m not—“ he stops. “Ronan is a part of my future.”

“Good,” Gansey says warmly. A test, then. And like most tests, there was never even a possibility that Adam wouldn’t pass.

______

It’s easy to tell when a dreamer is suffering.

As the energy from the ley line ebbs, dreamt creations judder and bolt like horses loosed suddenly from the service of a carriage, galloping towards safer pastures. If the dreamer is in more immediate peril, the dream simply folds its limbs into an agreeable shape and passes into sleep.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Adam lies awake in bed, dangling his hand between the wall and his bed frame, feeling along the subtle unfilled crack in the plaster. A flagpole casualty, from the day that everything stopped being enough for Ronan, and he slipped away on a dreamt current like a dark Ophelia.

He’s being dramatic.

He feels the drywall flaking, and digs his thumbnail into the split, wanting to rip the whole wall open with his fingers.

He keeps picturing Matthew’s half-lidded eyes, cloudless and blue as a wide prairie sky. The slouch of his posture, the tarnished golden head, the body briefly without a pilot.

Matthew had looked—Adam turns in bed, taking his chalky hand from the wall and fisting it in the sheets. He had looked like a faded old pillow, tucked unobtrusively into the chair by the window. He wouldn’t respond to Declan’s call, fluttering his drowsy lashes, and Adam had thought, ah. This is how I find out. His heart slumped over in his chest, dizzy with sudden grief. The tarot cards in his hands were dead leaves.

This is what happens when your life is tied to my brother’s, Declan had said, diverting his horror into scorn as he often did. The death of any one member of his family ensured the destruction of another. It had always been that way.

Matthew eventually roused, and Adam had closed his eyes and turned his face towards the ceiling until he could be normal again. He felt suddenly foolish for peddling lies to college students when magic was so obviously in the room with him.

Earlier, he had called Maura over lunch, and she vaulted right over small talk to ask him, with concern, about his loosening grip on his psychic inclinations. She’d said, “You do know that the ley line isn’t the source of your problems, right? Give yourself some credit. You can fuck things up in a completely non-mystical way.”

She pulled the Magician, reversed, and the eight of wands, and then, without further comment, passed the phone to Mr. Gray.

Unexplained weaponry, he’d reported. The Lynch brothers loosed on two separate worlds at the same time. Buttoned-up Declan for the first time unbuttoned, schmoozing with an array of dangerous and connected people, trading in secrets just as his father had. Purposeless Ronan for the first time with a purpose, wading out from the murky waters of his dreamspace and bringing the tides with him.

Bryde, the name in the corner of everyone’s mouth, joined all at once by Ronan’s and Hennessy’s.

Renegades, liberators of dreams, scorchers of earth. He could see, easily, why this would appeal to Ronan. A mission, finally. A father figure to guide his hand. A world that wanted his dreams, and wouldn’t crumple under the weight of his unusual ambition.

When they were teenagers, Aglionby was just another one of Adam’s jobs, but it was one of Ronan’s nightmares. He would go to school, a hooded bird of prey, seething with resentment and squandered ability. He longed for the Barns because of what they represented: the childlike belief that his family would never die; the possibility for creatures like him to roam free; a landscape powered by unconditional love.

Bryde, Adam knows, must be offering him the same relief. Exquisite flight, after the cage.

It’s not possible, is the thing. It’s a pipe dream. A Niall Lynch fairytale.

Foresight has never been Ronan’s strong suit. He gets it into his head that a solution is right up until the point that it falls apart in his hands. He throws himself entirely into belief. It makes him an extraordinarily loyal and trusting person. It also makes him stubborn, rash, and susceptible to manipulation.

He believes in one facet of something, and the rest follows. He can’t just take a sip—he downs the bottle.

Adam is a boy on a bicycle in November, needing to find Ronan alive so that he can hate him without feeling guilty about it. He never stops oscillating between resentment and love, reality and unreality, understanding and disappointment. He wants to be normal so that he can choose to be abnormal. Sometimes he wants the cards without the magic.

He closes his eyes and remembers a slumbering mouse against an angular cheek. He imagines Matthew like that, perpetually immobile, perpetually innocent, like a taxidermied puppy. The pieces of Ronan’s consciousness that will linger after his death, statues in a graveyard. Tamquam—tamquam—

What would Ronan be without his dreams? Here, Adam thinks. He’d be here.

He stays in bed for another wasted hour, and then stands up, disoriented, in the dimness of the room. Fletcher is snoring softly. Someone outside their cracked window is shuffling over the concrete stoop. His upstairs neighbour is playing tinkling soundtracks while he sleeps. Adam can’t be here anymore.

He plucks Fletcher’s laptop silently from its charging station, tucks his bare feet into stiff leather shoes, drags the cardigan from his desk chair, and lets himself out into the hallway. The glare from the overhead light pins him against the wall for a moment.

He shuffles half-blind down the hall and upstairs to the solarium, nearly losing one of his unlaced shoes in the stairwell in the process. The lights are blessedly shut off up in the attic, and he feels his way to the nearest of the tables hunched in the shadows. Aching with fatigue, he sits, unfolds his stolen laptop, and gets quietly to work.

He’s never had the time nor means to be truly proficient with technology, but he extracted a handful of leads from Mr. Gray, and he’s been in touch with a friend of Benjy’s—a computer science grad student and hacking hobbyist.

He chases key phrases down rabbit holes and assembles news articles, tracking Ronan’s movement by his “unexplainable” signature (code for mind-fuckery, joyful innovation, and dark humour). Adam is a practiced note-taker and serial obsesser, so it’s barely a strain to find Ronan—whom he knows better than anyone—cropping up all over the continental United States.

“What are you doing,” Adam murmurs. The sky lightens gradually to periwinkle. He has work today, but his shift doesn’t start until noon. His mouth is bone-dry, and his head feels cotton-stuffed the way it always does when he’s pushing his body to its limit.

When it’s late enough in the morning to be socially acceptable, he messages Benjy’s friend with the bare bones of what he’s looking for: a project under wraps, a lonely last name, a suppressed pattern. They correspond, remotely, until Adam is reading government files over watery coffee, wearing sweatpants, dress shoes, and a cardigan with cracked elbow patches.

He pores over it all, cross-referencing dates, and ignoring the widening sink-hole in his chest.

Industrial espionage isn’t at all Ronan’s usual brand of destruction. Highly controlled, not much up-front gratification. A little more political than Ronan usually leans. A lot more ambitious. Whatever their agenda, ley energy is flowing more easily now that it's unobstructed on such a large scale. Adam has been feeling its effects rippling all the way out to Boston, a persistent background pressure, unavoidable as a migraine.

It’s clear that the Moderators are desperate to eliminate Bryde’s party. Their reports are a comedy of close calls.

Slowly, Adam begins to understand the scope of things.

Billions of dollars in damages, manmade structures ripped from their foundations. Magical fugitives hunted by a team that specializes in murdering the targets they call Zeds. Visionary headlights pointed towards certain apocalypse. A world that is always awake, but always, always feels like it’s dreaming.

It’s pretty much exactly as he feared. Night terrors. The Lace. Beasts and legends. Adam holds his head in his hands. It’s more than what Ronan must be imagining. It’s more than Aurora waking happily in Cabeswater, powered by the swaying trees. It’s the indiscriminate waking of every incredible thing that’s ever been dreamed.

He’s struck by a wave of hopelessness that rushes all around him and tears at his hair. Ronan, dreamer of baubles that dispense music and light, cars that go very fast, and menageries of curious creatures, recruited to a cause that transmutes creation into chaos. Ronan, promising to wait, and then running full tilt at a future that can’t possibly keep Adam in it.

His dream half is going to destroy his human half, and he’ll take everybody else down with him.

If he could just see him, maybe—

His jaw creaks, teeth clenched tight against the emotional groundswell. The late morning sunshine strikes him, and he feel more like a vague, pale shape than a person. Like a dream, maybe.

Alter idem.

If Adam can’t reach Ronan, maybe the Moderators should.

He feels the weight of that awful thought burning a hole through his stomach lining. He can’t think about it. He needs to go to work.

_____

The next evening, he experiences a surge of power so acute that it nearly puts him in a coma.

It’s another Wednesday night, and another batch of his peers hitch polite smiles to his heels as he passes them by, winding his way up into the high, arched sunroom at Weld hall. They’re all wishing for magical solutions for their mundane problems, the opposite of Adam in nearly every way.

He bumps knuckles with Benjy and Eliot in turn, pulls up his chair, and knocks his last reading from Persephone’s deck, mostly out of habit. He consults his phone idly as his friends try to make pleasant conversation, holding up a finger when he finds a new batch of texts from Gansey.

John Amos power plant in WV shut down Monday

Intense. maura said she could’ve brought HER dreams to life afterwards

no word from Ronan yet? Leads from Declan? pls advise

I’ll assume no news is good news

He puts his phone in his satchel and fastens it closed. Every new scrap of information he gets feels like a stroll through Ronan’s security system at the Barns—hopelessness compounding and compounding until he staggers out the far end weeping.

He needs to focus on something productive. He nods at Benjy to start letting people inside, straightening the notebook where he usually scribbles his observations. Here, he is an adjudicator: powerful, organized, and reserved, tallying points and offering constructive critique.

His curious audience starts pouring in then, amateur wiccans and wannabe believers, aggrieved last-resorters and skeptics following friends’ recommendations. It’s a brighter collection of characters than Aglionby could ever have hoped to foster.

Gillian texts him to say that she just passed Weld and his line-up was out the door. He is a prim and unobtrusive con artist, a false prophet, and business is booming.

Eventually, a bespectacled girl who looks anywhere from five to ten years his senior sits across from him, tucking a bag armoured to the teeth with candy-coloured enamel pins between her feet.

“Hi,” she says nervously. “Anna.” She stretches her hands out in front of her, then thinks better of it and drops them into her lap. “I’m not sure how this usually goes, so you might have to hold my hand a little bit.”

“No problem,” he says smoothly, passing his deck across the tabletop. “Just go ahead and shuffle. Concentrate on what you want to ask the cards.”

She does as directed, struggling a little to keep the papery stack in check. Not a natural born card sharp, then. He studies her neat black shirt, tucked precisely into a plaid skirt. A Marilyn mole drawn on just above the corner of her mouth. A pride flag pin he doesn’t recognize next to a cat wearing a cowboy hat, and the word “rude” in cursive.

She holds the deck fleetingly to her chest, eyes squeezed shut like a child making a birthday wish, and then plops it in the centre of the table. A card slips near the top, slightly uneven, and Adam plucks it free.

He hums thoughtfully. “Eight of cups. Okay. So you’re having some trouble with letting go.” She frowns and nods once, quick.

He lays out the rest of a simple five card spread neatly between them. A couple of stray swords, the chariot, a wand.

“It seems like things are stagnating in your personal life. Maybe your friend group used to feel like your family, but you feel like they’ve lost interest in you. And you love them, but Anna, if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re pretty sure you were done with them before they even started pulling away. Right now you’re kind of just going through the motions. A couple of years overdue to convocate, right? Everyone else moved on to greener pastures.” He taps his thumb thoughtfully against the bones of his opposite wrist. “It’s not even the loneliness that gets you. It’s the not knowing. Are you supposed to chase after them? Is there another community out there for you? There is, you know.”

He notices another card spilling loose, and he grabs it without thinking. The Magician again. He thinks, huh, caught in the coils and dust of Persephone’s overturned cards.

And then the waking world disappears.

Adam is airborne, tumbling up into the atmosphere on a geyser of ley energy, whipped by branches and light. He throws his arms out to stop himself, but he’s only a projection, so his momentum doesn’t slow.

Something—Lindenmere? The cosmos?—shows him a series of images: an upturned nose made from oil and turpentine, a coiled old tree stump, a red-haired woman grinning toothily and then exploding, a rose the colour of warm dark skin, a pale scar-split hand cradling a silky head, the animal haunch of something black, a terrible voice booming turn back—

He skitters away, panicked, and bumps into his own body. Or not his own body. A double, blinking confusedly in the bathroom mirror.

His doppelgänger turns to leave, and Adam reaches after him, through the mirror, following himself into a version of Thayer which is not Thayer. Everything is alive, in this reality. Energy sings and saws its fingers together.

It’s a memory, but it’s also the present, and it’s also a nightmare. Wake up!

Obediently, the city wakes.

He gasps, although he doesn’t have a mouth. It’s the heaving first breath of a sleeping witch, like Gwenllian turning in her grave.

Adam struggles against the current of wild power, thick and pungent as gasoline. Everything feels more intense near magical artifacts, dream stuff, supernatural fault lines, and it is with great effort that he hunts for something familiar, something heavy enough to bind him. He was unprepared for this, and although everything around him is bitingly familiar, he's lost. He wheels around and around, reaching for his most trusted tethers—Gansey, Ronan, Blue, Persephone—

Persephone.

He follows the lingering perfume of her intuition, feeling blindly for those old handholds in her tarot deck, that familiar grip, like the hilt of a trusted weapon.

And then he finds himself looking again at the girl, Anna, her fate bunched around her narrow shoulders. And then at his own empty body, a glowing card clamped between his fingers. As soon as he’s aware of looking at himself, he’s looking out of himself, and he stands up quickly, overturning his chair.

“—Adam? Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

“What on God’s green Earth was that?”

A palm between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t touch me,” he chokes.

The hand retreats. A murmur: I’ve never seen him like this.

“Is it—is it bad? Am I going to be okay? Is it bad?” Anna keeps asking, horrified.

“You’re fine,” he manages to say. “I’m sorry.” The ‘o’ in sorry comes out a little wide and swerving.

“You went blank,” Benjy says, voice high with residual panic. “For like—ten minutes. Beyond hyper-focus.”

“I thought it was a gimmick,” Eliot says. “But a ten minute gimmick? What is this, Las Vegas?”

“I got carried away. I have to,” he swallows. “I need a minute. I promise everything’s fine.”

“Do whatever you need to do,” Eliot says quickly. “But, fair warning, I’m going to ask you a hundred questions when you get back.”

“And then I’m going to ask another hundred,” Benjy says. “Magic man.”

“A riddle, inside an enigma, wrapped in a sweater vest,” Eliot muses. He can tell they’re still shaken. He’ll have to deal with that, later.

“I'll be right back,” Adam says, touching them very lightly on the shoulder as he passes. The ley line is bursting, and he feels so flushed with its vitality that it almost makes him sick.

He stumbles past them, all the way out of the building and into the street. The winter air tears at his thin shirtsleeves, nips at his sock-less ankles. He shields his eyes against the sun, watching a bird swoop low overhead. A silvery, seagull-sized thing, but with knobby legs that taper into—he squints. Hooves?

He keeps moving, propelled by the mad urge to catch the bird, to pin the wild magic down so he can understand it.

Adam walks for what feels like a long time, trying to find the source of all of this haemorrhaging power. He spots a couple of fidgety-looking students, a few more curious creatures. Somewhere, faraway, there’s music crooning, and it sounds exactly the way a hot shower feels.

He stops in the middle of Oxford street, head cocked towards the natural history museum across the way, the orderly buildings, the sparse evening foot traffic. Business as usual. All of it screaming with energy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a parade of scuttling creatures marching towards an invisible destination. Frowning, Adam crosses the street, chasing the peacock blue shimmer from an unfurled wing. He slows, stooping in the alley to pick one of the strange insects from the stream. He peers through a nail-sized hole in its head. Its spindly legs wave fearfully for a moment, and then it goes limp in his hand.

The ley energy punches out of him, and he sits back on his ankles, winded.

Adam gazes down at the jewelled beetle in his palm, its siblings scattered out like shell casings around his knees. Dreams, all of them. Briefly, impossibly roused in a dead city. He stands, letting the beetle drop from his hand and bounce across the concrete. He kicks them all hurriedly behind a nearby bench, mind racing. Bugs from an exhibit next door, no doubt. Dormant animals, transplanted from their habitats and pinned in place for decades.

What kind of ecoterror was wrought to bring about a flash flood of energy in a drought? How must Ronan be feeling, out there in the world, wracked with waking dreams? What unimaginable monsters were just stirring in the shadows because of him? Is Bryde one of them?

His lives are merging. The distant rumbling of thunder is overhead now, and the downpour is rolling in. There’s no way he’ll be able to keep dry.

Standing in that alleyway by himself, drained and ordinary again, he feels terribly alone.

He weighs his feelings against his logic for several agonizing minutes, standing still and watchful as a predator. He recalls the jarringly clinical accounts of Ronan's most intimate dreams, the sparsely encoded language in those government files outlining the world-ending dangers of something Adam had, for a long time, shared a bed with.

If something happens to Ronan now, it might kill Adam. If something happens because of Ronan, it might kill everybody.

Another minute, and he has his phone out and ringing.

“Hello?” Declan answers. Oddly, it’s not his usual prickly greeting. He sounds almost jovial.

Adam looks out into the darkening street, feeling like a death omen, a shadow across someone’s doorstep. “We really need to talk about Bryde.”

______

It’s the worst possible time for Declan to be withholding information from him.

Adam had graciously tipped his hand and Declan was, infuriatingly, holding back, as if this was a low grade in Ronan’s high school algebra class, and not the cataclysmic fuck-up of a powerful dreamer.

Declan, so uncannily like his brother in vulnerable moments like this, had thought of Matthew first. A world where dreams could stay awake, he’d marvelled. As if they could afford to think so small.

Once, Adam had awoken to find his arm glued to the bedspread. Ronan had dreamt a bee-less hive in the night, and it was oozing a steady stream of honey into the sheets between them.

“Score,” Ronan had said, when he’d rolled back into his body. “Sting-free. Fucking vegan.”

“What happens when we don’t want any more honey?” Adam had asked, critically. Ingesting dreams always felt like a slippery subject. “Does it shut off like a faucet?”

It didn’t. Ronan filled a dozen amber jars full, and then abandoned the hive in a dusty kiddy pool in one of the barns near the back of his family property.

A month later, Opal had crept in through a window looking for trouble, and emerged, shrieking, in a viscous flood of syrup.

Combing the mess out of Opal’s fur, her little legs slung across his lap, Ronan had complained about the magnitude of the clean-up job he would have to do, the special honey hoover he would have to create, what a waste of a dream it would be. Adam reminded him of his faucet idea.

“Too late for that, Parrish,” he’d griped.

It was their pattern. A marvel, too good to be true. Adam, the skeptic. Ronan, too in love with creation to care about consequences.

Eventually, it will all be too late.

Ronan will pursue this liberation fantasy, this golden daydream, even if it never stops oozing. Even if it makes the whole world uninhabitable.

______

That night, Adam tries to scry for the first time in months.

He gently pushes the crying club—only tenuously placated after the tarot incident—to have drinks without him, claiming stress-induced fatigue. He leaves his study notes open and blinking on the bed, lights a sad little tea light, and casts himself out into the ether.

Straining hard, he searches for the familiar contours of Ronan’s dreamspace, plucking the distant strings of the ley line and listening for the particular timbre of Ronan’s consciousness.

He doesn’t like walking this tightrope without a net, but Harvard isn’t exactly flush with psychic spotters. He keeps a delicate balance, far from his body, inching closer and closer to Ronan’s mind, the safe plateau at the end of this rope.

Eventually, he finds himself in a grey bedroom. It's full to the gills with water, there's a toy sailboat bobbing past at chest height, and storm clouds huddling nervously on the ceiling. Adam’s hair plasters instantly to his scalp.

“Ronan?” he calls, sloshing through the curiously luminous water. It starts raining harder. A familiar, curly-headed child stares at him through the darkness, eyes sharpened into silver points in the moonlight. “Ronan?” he asks again, gently this time.

A muffled sentence, a sad, crumpled expression, and then Adam is staring at a closed door.

“What—let me in! Ronan!” He pounds at the door. “Come on!” He can still feel rainwater, unnaturally warm on his neck.

A voice in his head, not Ronan, whispers, turn back.

“No,” he snaps, knocking harder. “Just let me—“ A sudden gust of wind in his sails, and he’s ejected from the dream altogether.

He pinwheels for a horrifying, weightless moment, struggling to tune back in to the feeble light from his stubby candle, and then dragging himself, hand over fist, back to his dorm room.

“Fuck, Lynch,” he says, when he has a voice. “Don’t be stupid.” He recrosses his legs, shaking off the pointless, clinging feeling of rejection.

When he tries to reach out again, searching, searching, Ronan’s expecting him. He never makes it past the threshold.

Back in his body, he knocks his candle over, relishing the controlled destruction, the spill of wax, the sizzle of the squashed wick. A fire he can actually put out.

______

The next time Adam scrys, Ronan looks like himself. Maybe a little scruffier, with what looks like a tunnel piercing on his right ear, and a rare openness to his posture. He’s lounging in a pasture up against a sleeping cow, boots up.

As Adam watches, he tips his shaved head back into its mottled hide, and the sun makes his eyelashes into lit matchsticks. He loves him very much. He’d almost forgotten.

“Don’t lock me out,” he says quickly. Ronan opens his eyes, and when he sees him he smiles instinctively.

“Adam,” he says, vaguely. And then he locks him out.

“No,” he cries. “Would you listen to me.” He feels for the fissure in space and time, the pocket where Ronan is dreaming, sweetly and inaccessibly, about the only home Adam has ever known.

Nothing gives. Nobody replies. He crawls back to Harvard, weak with misery.

In the next dream, Ronan is older, driving a boxy jeep over a foreign landscape. Rolling Irish hills, skies humming with artificial energy. A woman who can only be Jordan Hennessy, chattering in the passenger seat.

Then it’s Ronan with his head in his dead mother’s lap, stroking the downy wing of a black swan.

Then Ronan and Hennessy again, opposite one another in a sunny gallery. One of them examining an impressionist portrait no bigger than a postcard, the other examining the exit.

Then Ronan, discovering Matthew’s corpse in a dim hallway, blinking furiously at the stranger crouched over his prone body. “What did you do?” He sounds like a kid reprimanding his sibling for getting them both in trouble.

Every time Adam gets close, some defence mechanism stops him, like a firm hand against his chest, pushing him away again and again.

He doesn't know what to do except keep trying.

______

Blankly, he looks down at a sink full of tinfoil and uneasy water. In pieces, he becomes aware of his surroundings—green stalls and laminate countertops, a row of hundred-watt lightbulbs, and somebody rattling the locked doorknob.

“Adam, are you in there?” Fletcher. “We’re going to be late. It’s nearly ten. Adam?”

“Just a minute, sorry,” Adam slurs. He stares closely at his face in the mirror until he recognizes his own features. He has an exam at 10:30. He glances down at his watch. 9:52. He had been so sure that he could just drift for a few minutes, maybe catch Ronan before he woke up. That was almost an hour ago.

He drains the sink, hands shaking, cuffs getting damp. The lightbulb filaments float behind his eyelids when he blinks. He throws his satchel over his shoulder, smooths his hair up and out of his eyes, and rubs the bags under his eyes until they hurt.

When he lets himself out of the bathroom, Fletcher is directly outside, tapping a nervous rhythm on his hips. His hands fly from his body and into the air at the sight of him.

“Adam! Thank god. I’ll cancel the search party.”

“I got lost in my notes,” Adam says, as they both make for the stairs.

“Of course you did,” Fletcher says warmly. “A supremely Adam move. I just hope you’re taking care of yourself. Gillian thinks you might be—well—not spiralling, but—“

“I’m handling it.” He takes several mental paces backwards. “Uh—poorly, clearly. I’m sorry Fletcher, I didn’t mean to snap.”

Fletcher, to his credit, recovers quickly. “I can’t imagine going through my first semester of college and a break-up at the same time. You’re a stronger man than I.”

Adam rather doubts that Fletcher can imagine going through a break-up at all, but he nods conspiratorially. They hop down the last few steps and out into the chilly sunshine together.

“You’d be amazed what one can do out of necessity.”

“Too true. We all have our hidden depths, don’t we,” Fletcher says thoughtfully. For a moment, Adam considers telling him—something, looping him into this tangled web with him, but then he says, “now, chapter twenty-three wasn’t on the outline, was it? I beg you to say no. Lie, if you must.”

And Adam is a student again. He doesn’t have out of body episodes. He doesn’t carry wads of tinfoil in his trouser pockets. He doesn’t keep deadly secrets from people whom he is mostly pretending to like and understand.

They walk onwards, towards a test which Adam will rouse himself for long enough to ace. Then he will think of the next thing, and the next. Appease these school acquaintances of his. Tinker with finicky car engines. Make flash cards. Drift into the beyond using one of Fletcher’s three-wick candles from pottery barn. Text Declan, who activates Ronan’s accountability in a way that Adam does not. Call Gansey, if he can bring himself to face his disappointment.

And clear away his feelings, which keep pouring out of him like so much honey.

______

Ronan hangs up on him, and Adam holds himself in the biting wind outside the library for a very long time.

He’d thought, if he could only speak to him, that he could begin to undo Bryde’s poisonous influence. They know each other. They’ve known each other. Ronan would listen to Adam’s fears as he always does. Adam would appeal to Ronan’s heart, which tends to ache for helpless things. They would see how lost they had become without each other. Adam would be allowed back into Ronan’s dreams, and Ronan would be allowed back into Adam’s future.

Why didn’t you text back?

As if they’ve been suspended in time since Ronan’s last tamquam, and none of it—the running away, warding his dreams against Adam, abandoning his phone, trusting a complete stranger over his friends and family—had ever happened.

It’s absurd. He should have expected it. Ronan was searching for a reason to stay, and when he looked for his reflection, his second self, Adam wasn’t there. For a single moment, he wasn’t there, and now he’s paying for it.

Impatient, wrathful Ronan. Leaping from the moving vehicle because Adam was going the speed limit. Going rogue, and then calling Adam with all of these stinging accusations, like he was the one who’d been abandoned.

He thinks again of Bryde manipulating Ronan, preying on his loneliness, his love for his brothers, his fear of himself. This big bad rumour, older and crueler than the Lace itself.

And Ronan letting himself be manipulated, putting on blinders, using Adam’s brief silence as an endorsement for a glorified joyride with unthinkable global ramifications. Self-destructing because things got a little too quiet.

Adam feels hot rage taking ahold of him with its sticky fingers.

Then he thinks of Ronan saying I need to see you, his thin, frightened voice finding Adam from somewhere out there in the city, and his anger goes clammy.

There’s no way Ronan will call again. Negotiations were off as soon as Adam refused to house them both from the Moderators.

And now, without Hennessy, Ronan is the last arrow in Bryde’s quiver. He’s going to be the explosive that brings everything down. He’s going to be buried at ground zero.

If I'd replied an hour sooner, would he really have waited? If I’d gone to school closer, would I have noticed him disintegrating? If I explained that my dream isn’t what I thought it would be either, that he’s the only thing that feels real, would he have said it back to me?

After everything that’s happened, am I going to be the one who gives up on Ronan Lynch?

Everything is so fucked.

He calls Declan.

He picks up on the first ring. “Parrish—”

“He hung up on me,” they both say at the same time.

“Mother of God,” Declan moans. “Then there’s no hope. He thinks I sold him out to the Mods.”

“Did you?”

“No. I did exactly as we discussed. I negotiated for his safety. I thought—I mean, you said it yourself, Adam. Being anti-apocalypse is a pretty solid platform.”

He shakes his head. “Ronan won’t see it that way. He’s not like us. He doesn’t want to be moderated even a little bit.”

“Believe me, I know that. The way he was talking—about the world screwing them over, all of them, dreamers. That’s not the way my brother thinks. That’s all Bryde. And now he’s taken him—Christ—Christ knows where.”

“He wanted to see me,” Adam feels compelled to say. “He was trying to come here.”

“He said that? That's good,” Declan says, relieved. “Where—“

“I let him get away,” Adam says, through numb lips. “I let him go.”

______

He texts Gansey, things have gone south, and then he turns his phone on silent.

His puts his fingertips to the floorboards, a knobbly hand on either side of a scrying tableau: the leaping flame of a candle, a well-organized pile of cards, his overturned phone and discarded tie. He’s just finished crying, and he feels volatile and ill-prepared even as he ties himself to the flickering light.

His mind races through the night like a skipped stone. Vaguely, he pictures a vast body of water and a glittering mountain range, with no horizon line in-between. Darkness reflected in darkness.

“Ronan,” he calls. The dreamspace whirs and grinds its gears and won’t reply. “You know this is wrong. You know, or you wouldn't be hiding from me.”

It’s all water out here in this sublime mirror-space, but it’s also warm, like the steam rising from a hot spring. Something is moving, changing things on a chemical level.

For a moment he thinks he sees himself, a wan doppelgänger with its hands raised. But it’s not Adam. It’s Bryde. Cool, sturdy, a pale Atlas holding the dream together on his back. He recognizes him instinctively.

Adam deliberately throws his mind closer, into the terrible heart of this fire Ronan is creating. Smoke whispers and catches all around him, and it’s even harder to tell the difference between things now. No horizon, no seam, no reality, no death.

What have you done? What are you doing?

The heat is quickly becoming unbearable. Adam is stretched too thin, and the fire is fraying him, eating through each fibre of his connection to reality.

Ronan, please, I need you to stop. I’m losing my grip. Listen to me.

And then, without any warning at all, he collapses on his dorm room floor.

He hacks and retches, lungs full of phantom smoke. Everything feels very wrong. He thinks for a second that he’s blind, but it’s not his vision, it’s another, less tangible sense, it’s—

He scrambles backwards on his hands, heaving. He tries to pull himself up onto his bed, head first, then chest, but he has to stop with his face buried in the comforter.

Ronan is—he must be—he’s—

“God, no, oh my god, no, no.”

He needs to throw up. He needs to call somebody. There’s complete silence in his head.

He was slingshotted back to Cambridge, swatted back along the zipline to his body, because there was nowhere else for him to go.

He’s sure, in a very non-magical, intuitive way, that every dream in the world has just collectively collapsed. Adam staggers to his feet. There’s a smoke alarm going off, somewhere. A background hum of electricity groaning as it shuts off. A high, scared voice.

As if in a trance, he goes to the window.

There are five dead lightbulbs in the nearest row of street lamps, what looks like a sleeping child out in the middle of the square, and a woman clutching her chest and sitting slowly on a bench.

Panic is deadening his senses, crawling blackly into his mouth and nose and eyes. He thinks of Matthew sitting weakly by the window. Opal slumped over a stump in the woods. Chainsaw falling from the sky like a stone. Gansey’s Cabeswater heart decaying in his chest. Ronan, either dissolving into nightwash or felled by a Moderator’s bullet, dead, lost, or powerless.

Every morsel of magic, every innovation, every cherished friend, every sacred place, turned off like a faucet.

The world outside, drooping and disconnected, is now exactly as ordinary as Adam has been pretending it is.

The ley line is gone.

#mister impossible #the dreamer trilogy #mi spoilers #tdt #adam parrish #trc #trc fanfic #pynch #mine #my tfc besties...... soon #in the meantime. here's some adam pov please clap

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hexalt · 4 years ago

Text

CW for discussion of suicide

- She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - What? No, I'm not. - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - That's a sexist term! - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - Can you guys stop singing for just a second? - She's so broken insiiiiiide! - The situation's a lot more nuanced than that!

There’s the essay! You get it now. JK.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the culmination of Rachel Bloom’s YouTube channel (and the song “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” in particular where she combined her lifelong obsession with musical theatre and sketch comedy and Aline Brosh McKenna stumbling onto Bloom’s channel one night while having an idea for a television show that subverted the tropes in scripts she’d been writing like The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses.

The show begins with a flashback to teenage Rebecca Bunch (played by Bloom) at summer camp performing in South Pacific. She leaves summer camp gushing about the performance, holding hands with the guy she spent all summer with, Josh Chan. He says it was fun for the time, but it’s time to get back to real life. We flash forward to the present in New York, Rebecca’s world muted in greys and blues with clothing as conservative as her hair.

She’s become a top tier lawyer, a career that she doesn’t enjoy but was pushed into by her overprotective, controlling mother. She’s just found out she’s being promoted to junior partner, and that’s just objectively, on paper fantastic, right?! ...So why isn’t she happy? She goes out onto the streets in the midst of a panic attack, spilling her pills all over the ground, and suddenly sees an ad for butter asking, “When was the last time you were truly happy?” A literal arrow and beam of sunlight then point to none other than Josh Chan. She strikes up a conversation with him where he tells her he’s been trying to make it in New York but doesn’t like it, so he’s moving back to his hometown, West Covina, California, where everyone is just...happy.

The word echoes in her mind, and she absorbs it like a pill. She decides to break free of the hold others have had over her life and turns down the promotion of her mother’s dreams. I didn’t realize the show was a musical when I started it, and it’s at this point that Rebecca is breaking out into its first song, “West Covina”. It’s a parody of the extravagant, classic Broadway numbers filled with a children’s marching band whose funding gets cut, locals joining Rebecca in synchronized song and dance, and finishing with her being lifted into the sky while sitting on a giant pretzel. This was the moment I realized there was something special here.

With this introduction, the stage has been set for the premise of the show. Each season was planned with an overall theme. Season one is all about denial, season two is about being obsessed with love and losing yourself in it, season three is about the spiral and hitting rock bottom, and season four is about renewal and starting from scratch. You can see this from how the theme songs change every year, each being the musical thesis for that season.

We start the show with a bunch of cliché characters: the crazy ex-girlfriend; her quirky sidekick; the hot love interest; his bitchy girlfriend; and his sarcastic best friend who’s clearly a much better match for the heroine. The magic of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that no one in West Covina is the sum of their tropes. As Rachel says herself, “People aren’t badly written, people are made of specificities.”

The show is revolutionary for the authenticity with which it explores various topics but for the sake of this piece, we’ll discuss mental health, gender, Jewish identity, and sexuality. All topics that Bloom has dug into in her previous works but none better than here.

Simply from the title, many may be put off, but this is a story that has always been about deconstructing stereotypes. Rather than being called The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where the story would be from an outsider’s perspective, this story is from that woman’s point of view because the point isn’t to demonize Rebecca, it’s to understand her. Even if you hate her for all the awful things she’s doing.

The musical numbers are shown to be in Rebecca’s imagination, and she tells us they’re how she processes the world, but as she starts healing in the final season, she isn’t the lead singer so often anymore and other characters get to have their own problems and starring roles. When she does have a song, it’s because she’s backsliding into her former patterns.

While a lot of media will have characters that seem to have some sort of vague disorder, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend goes a step further and actually diagnoses Rebecca with Borderline Personality Disorder, while giving her an earnest, soaring anthem. She’s excited and relieved to finally have words for what’s plagued her whole life.

When diagnosing Rebecca, the show’s team consulted with doctors and psychiatrists to give her a proper diagnosis that ended up resonating with many who share it. BPD is a demonized and misunderstood disorder, and I’ve heard that for many, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the first honest and kind depiction they’ve seen of it in media. Where the taboo of mental illness often leads people to not get any help, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend says there is freedom and healing in identifying and sharing these parts of yourself with others.

Media often uses suicide for comedy or romanticizes it, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend explored what’s going through someone’s mind to reach that bottomless pit. Its climactic episode is written by Jack Dolgen (Bloom’s long-time musical collaborator, co-songwriter and writer for the show) who’s dealt with suicidal ideation. Many misunderstood suicide as the person simply wanting to die for no reason, but Rebecca tells her best friend, “I didn’t even want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. It’s like I was out of stories to tell myself that things would be okay.”

Bloom has never shied away from heavy topics. The show discusses in song the horrors of what women do to their bodies and self-esteem to conform to beauty standards, the contradiction of girl power songs that tell you to “Put Yourself First” but make sure you look good for men while doing it, and the importance of women bonding over how terrible straight men are are near and dear to her heart. This is a show that centers marginalized women, pokes fun at the misogyny they go through, and ultimately tells us the love story we thought was going to happen wasn’t between a woman and some guy but between her and her best friend.

I probably haven’t watched enough Jewish TV or film, but to me, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the most unapologetic and relatable Jewish portrayal I’ve seen overall. From Rebecca’s relationship with her toxic, controlling mother (if anyone ever wants to know what my mother’s like, I send them “Where’s the Bathroom”) to Patti Lupone’s Rabbi Shari answering a Rebecca that doesn’t believe in God, “Always questioning! That is the true spirit of the Jewish people,” the Jewish voices behind the show are clear.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues to challenge our perceptions when a middle-aged man with an ex-wife and daughter realizes he’s bisexual and comes out in a Huey Lewis saxophone reverie. The hyper-feminine mean girl breaks up with her boyfriend and realizes the reason she was so obsessed with getting him to commit to her is the same reason she’s so scared to have female friends. She was suffering under the weight of compulsory heterosexuality, but thanks to Rebecca, she eventually finds love and friendship with women.

This thread is woven throughout the show. Many of the characters tell Rebecca when she’s at her lowest of how their lives would’ve never changed for the better if it wasn’t for her. She was a tornado that blew through West Covina, but instead of leaving destruction in her wake, she blew apart their façades, forcing true introspection into what made them happy too.

Rebecca’s story is that of a woman who felt hopeless, who felt no love or happiness in her life, when that’s all she’s ever wanted. She tried desperately to fill that void through validation from her parents and random men, things romantic comedies had taught her matter most but came up empty. She tried on a multitude of identities through the musical numbers in her mind, seeing herself as the hero and villain of the story, and eventually realized she’s neither because life doesn’t make narrative sense.

It takes her a long time but eventually she sees that all the things she thought would solve her problems can’t actually bring her happiness. What does is the real family she finds in West Covina, the town she moved to on a whim, and finally having agency over herself to use her own voice and tell her story through music.

The first words spoken by Rebecca are, “When I sang my solo, I felt, like, a really palpable connection with the audience.” Her last words are, “This is a song I wrote.” This connection with the audience that brought her such joy is something she finally gets when she gets to perform her story not to us, the TV audience, but to her loved ones in West Covina. Rebecca (and Rachel) always felt like an outcast, West Covina (and creating the show) showed her how cathartic it is to find others who understand you.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the prologue to Rebecca’s life and the radical story of someone getting better. She didn’t need to change her entire being to find acceptance and happiness, she needed to embrace herself and accept love and help from others who truly cared for her. Community is what she always needed and community is what ultimately saved her.

P.S. If you have Spotify... I also process life through music, so I made some playlists related to the show because what better way to express my deep affection for it than through song?

CXG parodies, references, and is inspired by a lot of music from all kinds of genres, musicals, and musicians. Same goes for the videos themselves. I gathered all of them into one giant playlist along with the show’s songs.

A Rebecca Bunch mix that goes through her character arc from season 1 to 4.

I’m shamelessly a fan of Greg x Rebecca, so this is a mega mix of themselves and their relationship throughout the show.

I’m in a TV group where we wrote essays on our favorite shows of the 2010s, so here is mine on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I realized I forgot to ever post it. Also wrote one for Schitt’s Creek.

#crazy ex girlfriend #crazyexedit #cxg #ceg #crazy ex gf #writing #mine #mental illness #bpd #mental health #spotify #music #playlist #essay #*

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rhinklibrary · 4 years ago

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College Rhink Top Fics

Hi Readers! We’re so excited for our first official list! This week is one of the most popular genres in our fandom - College Rhink.

Please note these are all based on the dates of completion and/or the last update. While most are completed or are WIPs, you might come across an uncompleted fic. This list also does not include writings exclusively on Tumblr, or other sites, so please send us those recs!

Below the cut, you will find the top five kudos’d fics from the years 2015-2020. At the end you will also find our librarians’ recommendations.

Happy reading!

2015

#1 I’m Not Scared, Man, You’re Scared - thenthekneehits - [Teen and Up] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 3122

College, Cohabitation, Fluff without Plot, Fluff, Cuddling & Snuggling, Awkward Boners, Sharing a Bed

In which two stupid boys turn weak, there is a spider, and no cuddling.

#2 Pierced - Isra/ @mythical-rhink -Rhink - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 5301

College, First time, Piercing, play piercing, Blood, D/s, Kink, BSM, Alcohol, Profanity

Rhett’s in college and wants to try something new, and of course he’s going to bring Link along for the ride.

#3 Rewritten - Chellan_Nicollares - [Explicit] - Chapters: 8 - Words: 16,040

Alternate Universe - College/University, Pining, Angst, Jealousy, Metafiction

If you have the power to rewrite reality, how far would you go for love? Rhett has already answered the question, but his actions might lead to his undoing within the very same day.

#4 Encounter - Chellan_Nicollares - [Teen and Up] - Chapters: 10 - Words: 9280

Alternate Universe - Past lives, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Strangers, Transmigration, Supernatural Elements

This is a prologue to their life-long love and companionship. A mysterious encounter on a hiking trip gave Rhett some new perspectives. What's meant to be is meant to be.

#5 Grown Up Giggles - thenthekneehits - [General Audiences] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 269

College, Slice of Life, Growing Up, Self Confidence Issues, Cohabitation

Prompt: “I like your laugh.”

2016

#1 Whale, whale, whale - rhincoln/ @bloodbros (orphaned) - [Explicit] - Chapters: 4 - Words: 25,602

Friends With Benefits, Epic Friendship, Hand Jobs, Alternate Universe - College/University, Mutual Pining, Masturbation, Blow Jobs, First Time, Semi-Public Sex

During the day, it’s all sunny beaches and warm touches and the ocean. At night, strange noises can be heard from Rhett’s bunk. And why did Rhett bring a stuffed Shamu to the beach resort anyway?

#2 What Do You Want Me To Say? - @remembertherandler - [Mature] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1311

First Kiss, Kissing, I’m dead move, rhink, young rhink, college!rhink, Light Angst, Cute, Touching

So you’re horsing around with your roommate in your dorm room...big deal? Someone saw you? Oh…

#3 Slight Altercations - notasponsor - [Teen and Up] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 4790

College AU, Sorta Enemies to Lovers, Look they just bicker a lot, and they don’t know each other rly before the fic, Studying then cuddling, Fluff

Link glares, “You’re insufferable.” “No, I’m Rhett.” “Asshole.”

#4 Enough - chaoticliv - [Teen and Up] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 2296

Angst, Teenagers, Pining, Pining Rhett, College, Childhood, First Kiss, Kissing, Rhett POV

They were best friends. That was always enough for Rhett.

#5 The Laws of Thermodynamics - MythicallySnappy/ @RatchetRhink - [Mature] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 2819

Recreational Drug Use, Alcohol, Fluff, First Kiss, College, Artistic interpretation of math and what an industrial engineering degree actually entails

Link finally lets loose in the midst of exam season, and Rhett’s smiling and no matter how hard Link tries, he can’t calculate the meaning behind it.

2017

#1 A Perfect Arrangement - rhincoln/ @bloodbros (orphaned) - [Explicit] - Chapters: 15 - Words: 93,859

Fake/Pretend Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Best Friends, Alternate Universe - College/University, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Public Display of Affection, Pining, rhink, Masturbation, Jealousy, Drunken Shenanigans, Angst, Mutual Pining, Mutual Masturbation, Porn, Idiots in Love, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Sickfic, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Grinding, Sex Tapes

In order to win the body and soul of Miss Perfect, a girl they think they’re obsessed with, Rhett and Link figure they first have to win the keys to the coolest place on campus - something that is offered to them out of the blue, with only a single catch: only couples could get to move into the lush apartment. Rhett and Link would do anything for the space, for the girls - even pretend that they’re romantically involved. As true best friends, together they start off on the ambitious quest for love. What happens is its own story.

#2 No Touching! - rhincoln/ @bloodbros (orphaned) - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 5701

Friends to Lovers, Alcohol, Jealousy, No Homo, College, Semi-Public Sex, Rhink

Gregg decides to to take the duo out to a gay clup for a lark. It’s all fun and games, until Rhett thinks it isn’t. (In other words, until Link gets hit on.)

#3 Writing Love On Your Skin - @magicbubblepipe - [Teen and Up] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 3723

Pining Rhett McLaughlin, Injured Link, College, Rhink, Fluff, caretaker Rhett

When Rhett and Link share a bed, there’s a certain game they play.

#4 Lincoln In Distress - meirenyu/ @mei-ren-yu - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 3577

College!rhink, Butt Plugs, Rimming, Anal Fingering, Internalized Homophobia, Fluff, First Time

Rhett’s awoken from a great dream to find Link in dire straits in the top bunk of their dorm.

#5 Over the Phone - tvmoviemaniac/. @galacticnocturne - [Teen and Up] - Chapters: 14 - Words: 28,044

Rhink, Alternate Universe - College/University, College AU, Alternate Universe, Teen Romance, Depression, Awkwardness, Loneliness, Anxiety, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Mention of abuse, Homophobia, First Time, Sexual Encounter

Link Neal, a sophomore in college, finds a remedy to his existential problems and depression in an unlikely relationship he forms over the phone with a stranger - Rhett McLaughlin

2018

#1 Lovers in the Backseat - Matrimus - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 4883

Alternate Universe - College/University, Public Hand Jobs, Link is a little shit, Exhibitionism

Rhett offering his lap as a seat had sounded like a good idea at the time. It doesn’t take long for Link to exploit it.

#2 Forget Me Not - Matrimus - [Teen and Up] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 3404

First Kiss, Temporary Amnesia, Internalized Homophobia, College

After breaking his pelvis in a snowboarding accident, Link suffers from temporary amnesia. He knows he’s in hospital, knows he’s hurt his hip - and knows Rhett is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

#3 The Naked Truth - @missingparentheses - [Explicit] - Chapters: 8 - Words: 22,786

College, Fraternities & Sororities, Light Angst, Dorm Room Sexytimes

After a night of drinking at a frat party, Rhett and Link wake up naked in bed together with no memory of what happened the night before. They set out to piece together the details of the night and see if they can find out what happened, how they feel about it, and if they want it to happen again.

#4 Hungry Ghosts - MythicallySnappy/RatchetRhink - [Explicit] - Chapters: 7 (Incomplete) - Words: 20,241

College, Underage Drinking, Alcohol, Boys Being Idiots, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Angst, Smut, the holy trinity of fanfic

It’s the summer after freshman year and Rhett and Link are back at home in Buies Creek. An uncomfortable experience at a party flips Rhett’s world upside down and Link is there to help him build a new one

#5 Sofa Symphony - @santamonicayachtclub - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 2321

College, Couch Sex

“C’mon, bo,” Link urges, husky-voiced. “Do me like you’re paying for it.”

2019

#1 Live Connection - @linkslipssinkships - [Explicit] - Chapters: 115 (Incomplete) - Words: 87,022

Porn Watching, Camboy!Link, Risky Behavior, Alternate Universe - College/University, Modern AU, Short Chapters, Stream of Consciousness, First Person, Loss of Virginity, Mutual Pining, Angst, Long Distance Relationship, Sex Work, Consenusl sex work, Sex work related slurs, Anal Sex, handjobs, Jealousy, Mentions of Infidelity, First Relationship

Rhett’s just a college kid looking for some good porn. Link is a camboy looking for loyal fans and good money. When Link goes live, the pair feels an interesting connection.

#2 Untethered - Its_mike_kapufty/ @its-mike-kapufty - [Explicit] - Chapters: 32 - Words: 109,097

Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College, Slow Burn, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Alternate Universe - Demons, demon!Rhett and human!Link, Vomiting, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Master/Servant, Praise, Biting, Oh No He’s Hot, Marijuana, Drinking, Mutual Masturbation, Supernatural Illnesses, Churches & Cathedral, Abuse of Authority, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Vigilantism, Blow Jobs, Police, Guns, Anal Sex, Hearteyes Rhett, Obsessive Behavior, Matter of Life and Death, Blood and Gore, Near Death, Happy Ending

Link would’ve never guessed that the price of fucking up his entire life is approximately 5¢.

#3 Lucidity - Its_mike_kapufty/ @its-mike-kapufty - [Explicit] - Chapters: 31 - Words: 103, 027

Porn With Plot, College, Sensory Deprivation, Ice Play, Frottage, Mutual Masturbation, Stuffed Toys, Scent Kink, Phone Sex, Blow Jobs, Reading Aloud, Intercrural Sex, Sex Toys, Double Penetration, Glory Hole, Protectiveness, Clothed Sex, Anal Sex, Babbling, Feeding Kink, Sex Toys Under Clothing, Under-Table Blow Jobs, Fight Sex, Orgams Delay/Denial, Lingerie, Multiple Orgasms, Humiliation, Free Use, Rimming, Animal Traits, Marijuana, Public Sex, Pool Sex, Bladder Control, Milking Machine, Smoking, Angst, Exhibitionism, Clone Sex, Love Confessions

Rhett doesn’t know why this is happening. Thank Goodness Link doesn’t know it’s happening at all.

#4 Everyone but Me - Its_mike_kapufty/ @its-mike-kapufty - [Explicit] - Chapters: 11 - Words: 46,790

Alternate Universe - College/Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Jock!Rhett, Internalized Homophobia, House Party, Drinking, Cigarettes, Sthenolagnia, Kissing, Blow Jobs, Bars and Pubs, Social Media, Pining, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Denial of Feelings, Piercings, Bets & Wagers, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Heart-to-Heart, Nude Photos, Masturbation, Basketball, Post-Game(s), Marijuana, Vomiting, Concerts, Slow Dancing, Slurs, Protectiveness, First Time, Anal Sex, Self-Doubt, Pride Celebration

Rhett can fit in anywhere, make small talk with anyone. He’s one of NC State's best players, after all. If he can’t dazzle strangers with his records and status--if he’s not the perfect example of the masculine standard--then who is he?

#5 The Elephant in the Dorm - @goodmythicalghoulboy - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1 - Words: 4940

College, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Mutual Masturbation, Porn Watching, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Barebacking, Comeplay, Dirty Talk, Spanking, (just the teeniest bit of it though), Boundaries? What are boundaries?, Daddy Kink

Rhett thinks he’s finally got an hour to himself to really take his time and indulge in a little self love. He’s sorely mistaken, but it all works out for the best.

2020 so far

#1 Big Man on Campus - @fanbabble & @mythicaliz - [Explicit] - Chapters: 16 - Words: 41, 973

1990s, Dorms, Roommates, Alternate Universe - College/University, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Sharing a Bed, Strangers, Basketball, Arguing, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Angst but it’s gonna get better, Alcohol, Underage Drinking, Body Shots, Masturbation, Frottage, bed sharing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Forbidden Love, I’m dead move, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Anal Fingering, Voyeurism, Public Blow Jobs, Gay Bar, Jealousy, Coming Out, Anal Sex, First Time, Shower Sex, Semi-Public Sex

1996. NC State University. Syme Dorm, Room 24. Two roommates with very different dreams. One wants to play basketball and make his family proud. The other wants to make movies and explore his new found freedom. But there’s a problem… there is only one bed!

#2 The Roles We Play - sassandpanache/ @sass-and-panache - [Mature] - Chapters: 16 - Words: 31,238

Alternate Universe - College/Universe, Theatre, Basketball!Rhett, TheaterKid!Link, Enemies to Friends, to Lovers

Rhett’s failing his theater class so in order to save his grade, he joins the crew of NC State’s fall production of ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’. What he doesn’t realize is that the next month will change his life.

#3 Tell Me About It - Its_mike_kapufty/ @its-mike-kapufty - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1, Words: 7261

Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Sex Toys, Masturbation, Phone Sex, mentions of internalized shame

One of the biggest drawbacks of being incomplete without your best friend is the (very intense) fear of missing out.

#4 Taking Turns - @apparentlynotreallyfinnish - [Explicit] - Chapters: 1, Words, 2465

Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends With Benefits, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Pining

It didn’t take them long after starting college to get to this. One night of too many drinks and too few enthusiastic sexual partners available had lead to an awkward, fumbling experimentation in Rhett’s bunk. Rhett’s not sure anymore which one of them brought it up first, but somehow, in their inebriated and horny state, they’d realized that they could easily help each other out.

#5 Learning to Crawl - DarlingLo/ @darling-lo [Explicit] - Chapters: 5/6 (WIP) - Words: 33,081

College, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Alternate Universe - College/University, First Time, First Meetings, Angst, Enemies to Friends, Sexual Tension, Internalized Homophobia

It took Link four hours to learn his roommate’s name. And those four hours are all that was needed for him to absolutely hate him.

#rhink library #rhink fic #rhink fic recs #mod post #top fics: college #college rhink #college!rhink

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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years ago

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Survey #465

“the old man then prepares to die regretfully / that old man here is me”

Did you have a boyfriend in kindergarten? No, but I had a guy who wouldn't leave me alone since pre-k. Did you ever read the Magic Treehouse series? OMG I forgot about those!! I loved them!!! Did you ever watch The Land Before Time movies? AHHHHHHHHH yes!!! :') Did you collect anything when you were a kid? Stickers. My dresser was COMPLETELY covered in them. Who did you look up to most as a child? Steve Irwin, 100%. He was my hero. Did your parents let you drink soda when you were little? Some, yes. I wish they hadn't, with the dependency I have now. Did you ever watch The Powerpuff Girls or Dexter’s Laboratory? Of course! I strongly preferred the former, though. Did you watch Blue's Clues? HOW TIMELY. :'''') I did! My little sister and I loved it. What was your favorite kind of cake as a kid? Just gimme a good 'ole double chocolate cake and I was one happy kiddo, ha ha. Did you ever want to grow up? Sure didn't. I was smart. How often do you listen to classic rock? It varies, really. Sometimes I'm in the mood for it and binge it, other times I want newer music. What about country? Just about never. What is the most amount of money you have ever lost? Not a whole lot. I'm very careful with money. Have you ever hurt yourself just to get attention? No. Whenever I did it in the past, it was always to relocate the pain I was experiencing, and because I felt like I deserved it. Last person to get on your nerves? I'd rather not give it the time of day. Are you in any pain right now? No. Last thing you ate? It was one of those chocolate chip Clif Thins things. I HATE every Clif product I've ever tried until these, so they're a good option if I really want something sweet that's actually decently healthy and doesn't taste like I'm eating pure fiber, like most of their products. Name three things apart from trust and loyalty that you need in a relationship. Open, honest communication, similar interests as well as morals, and pro-LGBTQ+, if I'm just naming three. How far away are you from the place that you were born? Like... not even ten minutes. Do you live near anybody who creeps you out? Nah. Then again though I know pretty much nobody in my neighborhood. Is there anywhere that you are too afraid to go to alone? Where? Hm. If for whatever strange reason I had to, I would absolutely not want to go into a men's restroom alone. Would you be upset if you had a child who decided to make “adult films?” Despite the fact I don't negatively judge porn stars if they are smart, cautious, an informed about what they do and how to stay safe... I think I'd be very, very scared if my child wanted that, especially if it was my daughter, because she can actually get pregnant. Yes, abortion's an option, but... still. I don't want her to have to be faced with that decision. I also would be terrified of my hypothetical son getting someone pregnant, especially because he's then not the one with say on what happens to that child. So ultimately, if I was ever in this situation, I feel like I'd need to be alone with my partner to just cry for a while and then talk with them and look at the situation factually and with regard for my child's happiness. What pizza topping would you never, ever, EVER eat? Sardines. /gag What annoys you most about your computer? The microphone is broken. Do you prefer to read blogs or watch vlogs? I'm not huge on either, but watch vlogs. Do you know anyone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas? No. Do you own a snowglobe? I wish I did, they cute. What was the last thing that upset you? It was more disappointing than upsetting, but I was nevertheless super bummed that my bf had to scoot us hanging out a day back today when I was v excited for it. What is something you are behind on? It sounds unbelievable, I know, but I am IMMENSELY behind with Meerkat Manor: Rise of the Dynasty. Like, I'm somewhere around four episodes in. It's so hard to explain: like, I want to watch it badly, but I don't want to set aside time to sit in front of the TV to actually do it? It makes very little sense. I'll catch up eventually, I just... haven't yet. Who DO you go to for advice when you need it? Mom, Sara, my therapist... Will you go caroling this year? God no. Never have, never will. Would you ever be friends with someone who was suicidal? Bro what the fuck, of course I would. Would you rather have a daughter or a son? Daughter. Did you get bullied more as a child, a teenager, or an adult? I'm very grateful that I was never truly bullied. If you’re female, would you feel uncomfortable having a male gynecologist? FUCK YES. Are you allergic to your favorite animal? I wouldn't know; I've never been near one. :( What’s your favorite country besides the USA? Lol what a presumptuous question. Probably Africa. Did you get senior pictures taken? No, even though I wanted them. :/ I don't remember why I didn't? How often do you like to have sex? I don't care. Whenever it feels right. Are you any good at math? OH MY GOD NO Do you like Dairy Queen? I fucking love Dairy Queen. Ever had their Oreo Cupfection? *chef's kiss* If you had to get advice from someone of the opposite sex, who would you go to? Girt. Or my psychiatrist. Really depends. Does talking about sex make you feel uncomfortable? GODDAMN RIGHT IT DOES. Few things make me MORE uncomfortable. Are you more scared of going to the doctors or dentists? Doctors. Dentists are ezpz for me. At the doctor, meanwhile, I'm scared of them finding something seriously wrong. Do you get along with your significant other’s friends? I've only met one, and that was YEEEEAAARRRRSSS ago. He was chill, though. Do you enjoy the sound of crickets at night and birds in the morning? omfg YES Do you enjoy board games? Not really. Do you need a haircut? I actually just got one the other day. It's shorter than I would've liked, but it's whatever. Hair grows back, and mine does fast. Do you feel bad when you kill bugs? Yes. They've got the same right to be here as we do. What’s the longest stretch of time you’ve spent completely alone? A week or two when my mom and sis went to the beach (I think?) for a dance competition. Have you ever been in a situation where you needed a lawyer? Yes, when I presented my disability case. Do you know anyone who has been evicted? My mom, sister, and me because we couldn't keep up with rent. What’s your favorite macaron flavor? Never tried one. How often do you have friends over to your house? The only "friend" that comes over to my house is my boyfriend. Have you ever done a flip on a trampoline? Front flips, yes; never back flips, because I was scared of breaking my neck. What about a flip off of a diving board? No. Does your country have free healthcare? No, but it fucking should. What is your sexuality? Bro I don't even know anymore lmao. I just say pansexual. "Queer" might fit me best, though. I really don't know, but it doesn't really matter. What’s the last show you watched? Attack on Titan w/ Girt! I'm actually keen to see more of it. The darkness and heartbreak of it is right up my alley. How is your road rage? I don't really experience road rage because I'm too engulfed by terror to focus on anything else, honestly. Do you have any facial piercings? Yeah; I have a vertical labret in my lip. Have you ever been to a rehab center? So this is dumb as shit, but all the psych hospitals I've been to doubled as rehab centers. Which made NO goddamn sense because those who are suffering with mental illnesses leading to suicidal thoughts/tendencies are unique from those dealing with addiction; both require individual treatments and should not be grouped, imo. How long did your shortest relationship last? Not even a day. What would your life be like if you had married your first love? That's... scary to imagine. Sometimes, that was all I wanted. But seeing as he left because of my depression... it probably would have been catastrophic. He was the only person I ever wanted kids with, so there probably would have been children involved in all that madness, which no little one deserves. Him leaving ultimately led to my healing, too, so I don't know where I would've been mental health-wise if he stayed. What is the most difficult or time-consuming thing you’ve ever cooked? Would you make it again? I don’t cook. I need to learn, though... Have you ever had a platonic friend that everyone insisted you should be in a relationship with? He's my boyfriend now, ha ha ha. Is there anything about a person’s sexual past that might stop you from wanting to date them? Yes. I'm too lazy to get into that stuff rn, though. If someone asked your closest friends/family members what career path might suit you best, what do you think they would say? I'm almost certain they would all say veterinarian. How did you and your significant other celebrate your last anniversary? Slow down buddy, we haven't even been together a month lmao. Who was the last person to make you a home-cooked meal? What did they make? Mom, but I don't recall the last thing she made from scratch. Girt is doing that tomorrow, though! :') He's making grilled chicken stuffed with jalapenos and spinach and something else I can't remember and it sounds BANGIN'. What’s the weirdest, rudest, or most ridiculous thing a guest has ever done in your home? Hmmm... I'll have to get back to ya on that. Has anyone ever told you you’re manipulative? I think someone has, yes. Do you know anyone who owns their own business? Yep. Who was the recipient of your very first kiss? Jason. Do you prefer shrimp or crab? SHRIMP. Crab is mushy and disgusting. Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction books/movies? I strongly prefer fiction. Have you ever seen an eclipse? Plenty of lunar eclipses, yes. Who is your favourite video game character? Pyramid Head, Spyro, Cynder... I have a lot, those three are just panning out as strong contenders. Are you the type of person who knows exactly what they want in life? lol Do you have commitment issues? Not at all. What was the last thing you felt nostalgic about? uhhh Does anyone in your family smoke? My dad. Have you ever had a pet escape and run away? OMG one time in his prime, Teddy got loose on a snowy night and went on a full-blown adventure. I was SOBBING. My dad had to chase him down. Do any of your exes know each other? Juan knows Jason, Jason knows Juan and Girt, and Sara knows Girt. What’s an opinion you find impossible to take seriously? "Vaccines cause autism." Fuck out my face. What was the very first election you voted in? This most recent presidential one.

#survey #surveys #random questions #lyrics: ''the unforgiven'' by metallica

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in-this-body-of-mine · 4 years ago

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To The Bone (2017) - Analysis and Charting

Let’s go! I’m NOT excited because life is hard but what better way to distract myself than to do this kind of shit. No one cares, anyways.

Since this is the first one, let me tell you what we’re gonna do here. I’ll include the IMDB summary, a summary with spoilers, the placements in the chart, we’ll go over each item (also, spoilers abound) and finally my review and final thoughts. Yes, it’s gonna be long. Read at your own risk.

IMDB summary: A young woman, dealing with anorexia, meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

Summary with spoilers: Lily Collins plays Ellen/Eli and from the start of the movie she is on the brink of her disease. She was just kicked out of a recovery center and she gets an appointment with a ~cool unconventional doctor~ played by Keanu Reeves. She goes into ANOTHER inpatient treatment home to be treated by him. Shit happens, she seems to be getting better somehow, but then she spirals down, runs away, and after a... near death experience (I wish this was an euphemism) she decides to try recovery again and goes back to the treatment home. That’s where the movie ends.

Chart placements!

Now for each item:

White: Ellen or Eli is played by Lily Collins, who once played Sandra Bullock’s daughter in that movie were she was a Karen. It doesn’t get whiter than that.

Female: She changes her name to Eli mid film (which is how I’ll be calling her here bc we respect chosen names in this household) but she still seems to identify as female and be referred to as such, so here we have it. We do have a guy in the treatment home, but we’ll come back to him later.

Teenager/Young adult: I’m pretty sure she is 19 but every review I see says she’s 20. Either way, she dropped out of college even though she just started it. The actress, however, was 28 at the time the movie was released.

Wealthy/seemingly well-off: Her family has the money to send her to inpatient a bunch of times, and they make a point to mention how they have connections so she didn’t have to wait in line to see this new doctor. Case closed.

Skinny actress from the start: As we know, Lily Collins is already thin and she did struggle with anorexia in the past. Why, however, did she lose weight for this movie? They said it was her decision “to make the character more authentic”. As if not being skin and bones wouldn’t be enough. As if eating disorders don’t come in every size. They shouldn’t let her. The need to shock people is a very dangerous sign to me.

No distinctive personality or hobbies/interests: I’m glad Eli has a thing she loves. It’s not super present, but it’s there, and it’s plot relevant. She loves art and in the story, she had a tumblr (look, it’s us!) where she shared drawings related to her ED and a girl liked her drawings so much that, when she killed herself, she mentioned Eli by name in a note. But that isn’t really explored too much and I kind of got disappointed by that.

Good student: We don’t really know about that... and I don’t think it matter, it’s ok.

Seemingly irrelevant love interest: Why? Just why do we need Luke? Luke is the only guy in the home, and we can SEE that he’s only there to be Eli’s love interest. He wasn’t needed. None of the important plot points have anything to do with him. Make her date a girl. Make her date NO ONE. This is about eating disorders. She could have closer friends in the house. Why was this necessary. Her whole speech about how love is a lie could come from a friendship but no. They had to shove pretty white boy there.

Daddy issues (sometimes coupled with mommy issues): I find this extremely funny but her dad isn’t in the movie. At all. He’s alive and well, but he makes a point to never come home when Eli is even awake. I don’t think they cast an actor for that. As for mothers, she has three, and it’s a trip. Her stepmom on her dad’s side is very out of touch but she wants what’s best for Eli, but she really hates Eli’s biological mom. Bio mom, in turn, is described as a “bipolar lesbian” and the stereotypes are just... ugh. Bio mom has a wife and she is a bit weird too. They sent Eli to live with her absent dad bc “they couldn’t deal with it anymore”. This brings us to a great scene where we can see Eli shrinking in her seat and when the psychiatrist asks her what she is feeling she says “I’m sorry I’m not a person anymore. I’m a problem.” And that’s great to see. But at the same time, I hate that her whole issue in this movie seems to come from her family and anorexia is just a thing that happened, with some vague references to control.

*Triggering event*: We never see it and it’s okay - but I kind of wanted some more explorations of motives because we have ZERO.

Anorexia as diagnosis: As I always say, what is even the point of making a cool looking movie about EDs if your protagonist is not only anorexic, but also terminally anorexic? Ugh. That’s the only portrayal of anorexia that happens in media and I’m fucking tired.

Checklist of habits (manual for those looking for one): I mean, I mark this down but as I always say: everything is a manual if you’re looking for one. But if you’re doing more than not eating or purging or exercising I’ll judge it as a new tip. A lot of us already thought of/did most of them probably. But the marking remains.

Inpatient treatment (or extended hospital stay): As I said, she is kicked out of one treatment center and goes straight into another. What fucks me up is that the movie HAS other characters with other diagnosis, but we never see anything about them. We don’t see their journey. We only know Luke is a dancer bc he is the love interest. We only know Megan is pregnant and then she’s not bc this sends Eli in a spiral. We only know Kendra is not straight bc she makes a joke about it (and Doctor Beckham follows with a horrible joke about conversion therapy). Did you notice Ciara Bravo was in this movie? I didn’t on first viewing. She has like two lines. The whole movie is centered around Eli and every scene in the house feels like all the other patients only care about her too.

Emotional tipping point: Megan loses her baby and for some reason this affects Eli. Luke kisses Eli and for some reason she’s pissed. At that point, I was annoyed. She has a bad session with Doctor Beckham who basically tells her to grow a pair and stop complaining (which is insensitive as a doctor, but as a person I wanted to do the same) and she decides to quit and leave. She has to go to her mother’s home and I’m supposed to care. Stepmom is mad but doctor says she needs to hit rock bottom. She weights like 70 pounds dude. Rock bottom was about ten pounds ago, next stop is a coffin, mate.

Mom hugs: And here we have the emotional turn around of the movie and it’s just... make it make sense. She goes to her bio mom’s ranch. Her stepmom # 2 tells they’ll have therapy with horses (?). Eli goes sleep in a tent and bio mom cries and says she accepts if Eli wants to die. Very supportive I guess. They have this weird bonding moment where the mom feeds her a bottle like a baby and look, if you liked that, good for you, but I don’t get what I was supposed to feel about it (but that’s mom hug #1). She goes on a hike next morning and... dies? Either way she has an out of body experience where she talks to Luke and sees how she looks - which is weird to me. Didn’t we go over this in the beggining of the movie? Didn’t we establish that she does know what she looks like and doesn’t care? But still she seems shocked and they have a cryptical conversation and she wakes up. And just like that, she’s ok now. She meets up with the other stepmom (mom hug # 2) and goes back to the home.

Happy ending: In the last scene Eli is back to the home and we understand she’s going to try to recover for real this time. I’m okay with that specifically, I think it would be bad if they pretended she just got better with no relapses and everything is fine, but it’s a hopeful ending. Despite the fact that we have no idea if she won’t have a fit and leave in two days and that we never know anything about anyone else and Megan, who lost the baby, never comes back. It’s fine. At that point, I didn’t expect much.

Analysis: I was hesitant to be critical bc this movie was based on the real life experiences of the director and Lily Collins. But fuck it, this is my circus and I’ll clown as much as I want. While I do understand that, I have a lot of thoughts.

Mainly, I need to say that while I understand this is her story, this is a story that was told so many times. I’m tired.

The general public that wants to defend the movie says “well you can’t tell ALL stories”, and while I agree, these people probably only saw this movie about the subject. If you HAVE (or had) and eating disorder, you probably saw tons. And they ALL tell the same story. Which is why I started that chart in the first place.

This movie does have good moments. I do like the acting, I saw people complaining about Keanu Reeves performance - but I do know these were people who disliked the movie entirely. I think his performance was great, Lily Collins performance was great, and their chemistry was great. The best scenes in the movie happened between the two of them. The one thing that I LOVED was their first interaction when he calls her on her bullshit. “You’re not thin, you scare people, and I think you like that.” YES. I never heard anyone talk about that. And I guess I’ll never will, bc the movie itself never talk about this again either. Also when she justifies the tumblr where her art triggered a girl so much, she says that she was just drawing what she knows, he calmly tells her that she can draw, but she doesn’t have to share it online tho. I liked their interactions because often ED patients are treated with silk gloves (is that the expression?) and sometimes there is a need for some though love. I also love Liana Liberato who plays her sister and that’s about it.

The problem with the doctor ends up being: what’s his method? How are you going to cure her? The method makes no sense. I don’t see the reasoning. I don’t think anyone does. And somehow it works and she goes back there.

I think my major problem with the movie is that it has the same issues every ED portrayal before it. It’s the same story again. I think it shines the most in the whole “it’s not about food, it’s about control!”. It IS about food though. For a lot of people, it is. Maybe not for this director or for Lily Collins, but for so many people it is about food. It’s about control as well, and it is possible that there is other factors related to it, but you can’t chalk it all up to a control issue and pretend it’s just whatever. If the food didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be an eating disorder.

Because of that, we have this heavy focus on her family issues and nothing to do with food. We have people trying to rationalize - maybe it’s bc your mom is a lesbian, maybe it’s bc i didn’t bond with you as a baby - and all that does is to make her lesbian bipolar mother seem like a crazy asshole and her dad seem like an absent asshole as if this is the only factor here. Give me SOMETHING. Any connection to food. Any sense. Nope. She just won’t eat bc her family is fucked up. Hoe, that’s all of us.

And I think the movie unintentionally DOES glamourize anorexia. Subtly, yes, but it does. Eli has SUCH an easy time refusing food. She doesn’t seem to think about food as much as she thinks about herself and her family and Luke and being annoying. She knows a bunch of calories and she overexercises. Idk. Not to mention that moment when Kendra asks her about purging and she says “it’s not her thing”. I mean. It is no one’s thing. No one likes it. It’s a compulsion. And if you have anorexia that severe and you are not with a feeding tube, you do eat every now and then, and you do have purging mechanisms. If she had said she prefers overexercising as a purging mechanism than to throw up, I would believe her. But the movie acts as if she just never eats ever and somehow she’s still standing. Give her a feeding tube then. It would be more believable.

I know it sounds kind of ranty, but my point here is: this extremely anorexic girl, that looks like a sack of bones, and gets that by never eating and doing crunches all the time, it is the wet dream of a fatphobic society with a 71 billion weight loss industry. This is the dreamy and frugal idea of anorexia that people have when they are deep into the illness - not when they recovered as the people involved say they did. I get that this is a very personal project. But it’s flawed. It doesn’t do anyone any favors. It just tells the same story, for the millionth time, but since this time it was in a big platform, more people saw it, and it was better done, with a better budget and with a good enough resolution so I can see every bone in Lily Collins body.

Anyway, that’s it for today. If you read all of that, thanks. Since this is Netflix, I’m assuming everyone saw, but the other movies are out there and if you need liks, hit me up. Be back soon.

#eating disorders #eds #pro ana #not pro and you know the rest #to the bone #thinspo #thinspiration #ed things #eds in media #thinsppi #anorekcia

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modernidolater · 4 years ago

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TW: Violence, dark humor, all that jazz. Go no further, angry shit, yadda.

So, yanno...i'm just gonna yell into the void about something.

When i was very young, I read a lot of encyclopedias. Most of my knowledge of the world was attributable to the Encyclopedia Britannica, which my mother kept because well, a home should have a nice, impressive looking set of books. Along with a bunch of other old books that just...really weren't the best choice for a regressive anti-technology apocalyptic fundamentalist cult, but then, as we used to joke, my mother doesn't have to make sense, she just has to make decisions.

So, I eventually started plumbing the depths to try and figure out "what the hell is wrong with my family."

While i didn't get an answer about my family in general, I did note that i seemed to be oddly suited to the definition of "psychopath," minus the whole "being a problem for society at large" thing. Asocial, low empathy, lack of guilt, inability to plan cohesively, difficulty conceptualizing consequences, near total lack of emotions except curiosity and rage, both of which are carefully stifled, aggressive tendencies...frankly, I look at my younger siblings and i can definitely assure anyone that asks that had I not been raised quite far away from society, or if I'd stayed in the cult, I would most definitely have been a problem for society.

But psychopaths are *monsters,* you see. They're so, so bad, you see. Everyone assured me, at great length, that I couldn't be that, no, no sirree. I was too nice. Too kind. I didn't punch people nearly often enough (largely because I don't like being punched outside of sex, and I like to be in charge of where I'm being punched, and even that mostly cause I'm kinda badly out together physically, but that's aside the point.)

I wasn't *hate-able.* My empathy was too high.

On that last note, I have spoken elsewhere and i believe here regarding my empathy. My empathy is specifically a learned skill picked up by reading Edgar Allen Poe's Auguste Dupin stories. Dupin explains his near preternatural ability to get inside people's heads by his learned skill of micro-mimicking body and facial language and then analyzing what he feels when he copies someone else. Works absolute wonders, particularly as up to that point (i was 8-9), I was using the classical technique of provoking and hurting people around me to experimentally figure out how other people worked. Admittedly, it's somewhat like recording a speech and listening to it at the lwvel of a whisper in a crowded room, but then mimicry is far less likely to get you punched, and see previous for my feelings on getting punched.

But now i had, for all intent, a system to demonstrate empathy. Thanks to my mother's abuse, I had a complete paranoid delusion aping guilt. I could check plans past others, and once I got my hands on Google at 14, I had the capacity to directly look up what the general, societal consequences of most actions were and model behaviors that achieved my ends. I further had 18 years of direct training in mind control and manipulation, thanks to my cult.

You may notice that what you just read sounds like the origin story of a serial killer. Ape people around them to avoid detection, paranoia making them scrupulous enough to not get caught, and careful study of laws to find the lines, plus a hyper manipulative persona.

Roll with me here. This continues forward.

So, i'm out and about, 2, 5, 6 years free of my cult. I have married a self avowed psychopath who actually HAS been diagnosed with antisocial disorder thanks to a teenage habit of theft and punching people. He is fairly sure I am not one, since I perform guilt and empathy fantastically, by rote at this point. I literally have days that my face hurts from faking emotions for too long, i am slowly developing agoraphobia because there are far too many people to mimic in a retail job, and my guilt subroutine is just a voice chanting in my head, "they're coming to get you, don't fuck up" 24/7 to the point that i am developing hallucinations, but yeah. It's definitely not psychopathy. At this point, that's just ASPD, and i'm just too darn social. Never that. I'm no monster, you see. I'm "nice."

About this point, I have learned to use mind control techniques to help people, carefully applying them with direct permission to help people open up and discuss problems. My near preternatural ability to get into people's heads, my ability to find information, and my absolute lack of fucks about morals (thus making me wildly nonjudgemental), makes me the go-to confidant for many of my friends. This neatly surrounds me with people that can smooth my life out, but you can't tell people you're friends with them cause the world is made of grey paste and you're deathly bored 24/7 and being allowed to pick through people's minds and help them optimize is the closest you get to not wanting to shoot yourself or others. Or that you carefully maintain contact with people so you can check and make sure you're not doing anything jail worthy. Or that a large group to mimic lets you blend in easier, and finding one that also is transgressive, but socially permissable (thanks, kink) blows off some steam.

Of course, people that don't know me find me deeply off-putting, as I am at this point rapidly learning to turn off the mimicry when not immediately interacting with people. This results in me appearing utterly emotionless, but as soon as people talk to me, bing, back on. I had also joined the kink subculture, giving my hedonistic and transgressive sides an outlet.

I'd also gone to the trouble of getting a multifaceted degree. Ostensibly, my degree is "multimedia journalism." If you aren't aware, this means I have a degree in research, interpersonal communication, public speaking, written communication, mass communication, some psychology, critical thinking, media creation and analysis. In short, I have the literal perfect degree for figuring out, communicating with, and functionally understanding people, as well as a vastly enhanced ability to locate obscure information.

Fast forward again. Three mental breakdowns, four years of therapy, poking at my gender, figuring out a lot of mental health problems, and a rotating series of diagnoses, life is...slowly improving. I've left a toxic marriage (toxic on both sides), moved to a completely new place, started over. I have sort of resigned myself to focusing on my (admittedly annoyingly complex and wide ranging) physical disabilities.

And it comes up, in talking to my partner, that his adoptive mother displayed (she's dead) quite a few signs of ASPD. And he asks curiously if there's any connection between ADHD, autism, and ASPD, mainly cause the "personality disorder" part. PD's can, with long or early exposure, sometimes be passed on, you see.

Guess what's being studied, right now? Not a connection between ASPD and ADHD. A connection between psychopathy and ADHD. Wait, but I thought psychopathy wasn't a thing, says I? I thought there was only ASPD, now?

Ah, but for you see, the DSM is a load of horseshit. And i have heard that from multiple communities with different relations to it, and from multiple therapists, psychiatrists, professors...as a general rule, when the people who use it, the people it's used on, and the people who teach it all agree that a document is manure, I get a touch distrustful. I get more so when current studies use umbrella terms disavowed by a document known for being reductivist and that has been noted as having a great number of entries that were manipulated deliberately to make them as narrow and unusable as possible.

So anyway.

Turns out that while no, ADHD and Autism don't make you a psychopath, there's a distinct overlap. Empathy issues are a possiblity in all three, though both ADHD and autism can create *hyper*empathy. Inability to navigate social constructs is another point of overlap.

But really, it's the serotonin deficiency that hurls it across the line for me. And the genetic factors. Can psychopathy result from environment? Yeah, seems so. But there does seem to be a genetic and neurochemical component. Which is...curious for a disorder presented as purely a traumatic abreaction that creates dangerous amorals.

I then looked it up. And wouldn't you know, psychopathy is only pathologized as ASPD/APD, and DPD? The former is the sort of psychopathy that is characterized by violent amd criminal antisocial behavior, and the other an inability to understand and perform social mores at all. But this is the DSM, so these are of course diagnosed by problems caused for others as a first line.

Violation of societal norms, lack of emotions other than rage, aggression...it's almost like the same people that named a serotonin and function deficiency Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to enshrine the disorder only by those aspects that make neurotypical people uncomfortable rather than seeking to help the neurodivergent person, the same people that invented torturous behavioral correction therapies to "fix" the neurodivergent person? Those strike me as people that might possibly have looked a serotonin deficiency that causes rage, limited emotions, impulsivity, difficulty conceptualizing consequence, and potentially a hell of a lot of other fun side shit and decided to call that "Doesn't get along with others well" disorder.

What really kicks it in the teeth for me, however, is that psychopathy used to mean more than "a social pariah." You see, Theodore Millon, the guy that wrote the book on personality disorders, noted between 5 and 10 subtypes. Do you know what they are?

Nomadic

(including schizoid and avoidant features)

Drifters; roamers, vagrants; adventurer, itinerant vagabonds, tramps, wanderers; they typically adapt easily in difficult situations, shrewd and impulsive. Mood centers in doom and invincibility

Malevolent

(including sadistic and paranoid features)

Belligerent, mordant, rancorous, vicious, sadistic, malignant, brutal, resentful; anticipates betrayal and punishment; desires revenge; truculent, callous, fearless; guiltless; many dangerous criminals, including serial killers.

Covetous

(including negativistic features) Rapacious, begrudging, discontentedly yearning; hostile and domineering; envious, avaricious; pleasures more in taking than in having.

Risk-taking

(including histrionic features) Dauntless, venturesome, intrepid, bold, audacious, daring; reckless, foolhardy, heedless; unfazed by hazard; pursues perilous ventures.

Reputation-defending

(including narcissistic features) Needs to be thought of as infallible, unbreakable, indomitable, formidable, inviolable; intransigent when status is questioned; overreactive to slights.

(It should be noted: the features listed above are simply what each presentation is most likely to display if disordered. A reputation-defender may not display narcissm, a risk taker may not be histrionic. A malevolent [what a terribly judgy name...] could be negativistic, or avoidant, or histrionic. And so on.)

Now, ya may be going, "wait, hold up, narcissism is on there! We still have that! Schizoid is on there, we have that! Sadism, paranoia, we got all those things!"

Flash quiz: do you know what a personality disorder is? It's a series of learned behaviors that require moderation and unlearning.

Why yes, they did spin multiple neurotypes off into diagnoses that require behavioral therapy to "fix." Why on earth would you think they wouldn't? They're still trying to use reparative therapy on auties. Hell, near as I can figure, histrionic got spun into Borderline Personality disorder. You know what the therapy for that is? DBT, aka, "it IS your fault and you SHOULD feel bad."

Beyond knowing there used to be different flavors, did you know that there is about a millionty scare articles about how psychopaths are everywhere? Guess why.

What do you get when someone has an absolute need to see what's on the other side of the hill and no real fucks to give about how you get there? You get scientists, explorers, people utterly driven to find out. Think about how many of our science and exploration heros are noted as deeply weird and off-kilter. We have whole stereotypes about this. There are books and articles devoted to the transgressive personas and behaviors of famous scientists and explorers.

What do you get when someone is belligerent, paranoid, truculent, violent, fearless? Snipers. Literally. The army has openly stated they like psychopaths quite a lot. Someone that can look at a map of human lives and commit calculus with the phrase "acceptable losses" makes a damn fine general, wouldn't you say? Hunters, too. Make a good king? Or bounty hunter. Or, if we're going to be honest, a martial artist. Hell, think of all the ways our society accepts violence in real terms and symbolically. Management. Video gamer. Espionage. Actuary. Pest control. There are THOUSANDS of of societal uses for people like this.

Covetous? Well, banks are openly quite loving towards psychopaths. CEOs are indicated here. Businessmen. Fandoms with collection as a function have any number of anecdotes of individuals who have an intense drive to get more. "Focused on the chase, rather than the victory, to the exclusion of all else" is considered a positive, laudable personality trait. To put it in other terms, "can't stop, won't stop, never done." Sports players, yes? Football, rugby, hockey...

Risk takers are the real standouts, in terms of societal love. Doctors. Firemen. EMT's. Skydivers. Extreme sports players. Equipment testers. The list goes on. Society loves risk taking psychopaths. Hell, look at the diagnostic criterion up there: it's mostly traits with high positive connotations.

Reputation defending? Politics. Law. Advertising. Acting. Writing. Religion. Leadership of any kind.

I'm not talking out my ass here. All those fields have been noted as friendly towards, attractive to, and having a high representation of people who fit the behavioral model of psychopath.

But only if they're useful. Like literally every other non-normative neurotype.

Society loves ADHD and autistic people when they're displaying savant abilities or when they can mask well enough to use their sensory and cognitive differences to societal ends.

And if they're a problem for people around them, that's treated. The underlying difficulties? The societal structures that punish and harm them? The pain of adapting their entire neurobiome to do all the work of interfacing with different neurotypes while being driven to harness anything useful and discard the rest of their brain? No, we don't treat that. That's just the price of doing business. "Pull yourself up and don't be a problem."

And here's the problem, in plain terms: psychopaths who learn to cope, to mask, to adapt like I did are never diagnosed. I have spent most of my life fairly concerned about the fact that I seem not to have emotions or compunction, that i am always consciously working to figure out and connect to people around me on the most basic level, that I am constantly working to keep an active model of social norms going at all times. And I don't mean "shake hands, eye contact." I mean I have the same mental conversation regarding "don't shoot that person" and "use a turn signal." All prosocial behaviors, all social behaviors period, are a struggle to understand.

The funny thing is, it also makes antisocial behaviors difficult. Shooting someone seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Regardless of whether I care about getting caught or not, shooting somone will interrupt my day.

Not shooting them also seems remarkably inconvenient in many cases. Yes, it'd be a pain in the ass to shoot them, but then again, if I do it correctly, I only have to do it once.

But again, "correctly" is a wildly unfixed variable, and the whole question won't come up if I always ensure I fail the "do i currently have a firearm" step. And I don't. Ever.

That's how my brain works. Y'all go on about moral and ethical and legal reasons. That's an exhausting conscious mental conversation to have every other day, so my shortcut is:

"Should I shoot them? Oh, right, I don't have a gun. Guess not. Should I get one? No, cause I might shoot someone, and that'd be a pain in the ass. Welp, no shooting people."

And so it goes. I don't understand any social norms. Good or bad. I have all the problematic issues still, mind you. Environmental factors. I mimic and I was raised in an apocalypse cult in Oklahoma. I spend a lot of brain space sorting between prosocial behaviors and the violent antisocial behaviors I was taught were prosocial.

Because, you see, I can't really understand the prosocial behaviors, but I can see they work. And antisocial behaviors don't, really. Have i impulsively pocketed something? Couple times. Even got away with. Can't steal a house, though. And theft gets boring, for me.

Ok, except piracy. I may quite enjoy piracy.

Cooperation with a larger whole can and does yield benefits. Forcing myself to sit through mind numbing gratification delays does seem to yield results that are beneficial, though I really try to keep that one to a minimum. I refuse to be bored if I can help it. Making nice talky sounds gets me shit faster than making angry talky sounds.

Possibly this is a result if being raised manipulative. No idea. Kinda don't care.

Point is, I'm one of the psychopaths that, while not immediately useful, is also not actively a problem. So no-one will listen when i talk about everything being gray and cold and exhaustingly complicated because people make no sense and almost all my emotions are dialed so far down it's a joke i lack the ability to laugh about.

No one has believed me that the one emotion I have in spades is rage and that i have to literally consciously work out from first principles why violence is a bad option as my sole method of controlling that, my ONLY EMOTION OF ANY STRENGTH, which I cannot allow myself to feel for any length of time because I start losing sight of that consequence model and I worry i'll make a mistake I can't unmake. Or that it took me two decades to learn not to smash things I need when someone looks at me funny. Or just smash them.

Or that i have to keep my hands in my pockets and chant "don't steal" in my head some days. That I wear tight clothing with shallow pockets to make stealing harder so that, like guns, I simply can't do it easily and therefore short circuit my behaviors.

People are more than happy to hurl me at any problem that requires a lack of emotion, but if I dare to be less than appropriately emotional on a date? At a wedding? Funeral? If I make an error and don't diagnose it myself and perform contrition appropriately, regardless of if I knew there was a social or personal rule there? Well, I'm fired/broken up with/punished/evicted.

But I am not actively a problem for society. So none of those things are worth diagnosing. Or helping in any way.

And those that are useful? Are often fed utter horseshit and encouraged to break society. Bankers creating recessions. Generals commanding useless wars. Cops. Doctors that uphold a broken system. Politicians that pursue a broken society.

I know, I can see, that ASPD people catch a shit ton of shit cause they get blamed for "useful" psychopaths mistakes, and none of the benefits when said same psychopaths are lionized. Looking back at what it was, and what it is now, pathologically speaking, it makes perfect fucking sense for the asshats that designed a diagnosis to only include the people they don't like as the "sick" ones, and label the "good" ones as "heroes." Makes a nice distinction there between people we want to demonize and people we want to lionize for having the exact same chemical imbalance, and neatly creates a fall group when any of the "heroes" trip up. Silence those who can't cope, elevate those that can, treat neither effectively, and if an elevated one stops coping, we can just "realize" they were "sick" all along, and oh, yeah, those sick people are so bad, you guys, nothing like those heroes at allllllll.

I am...so tired of this society bullshit.

So anyway, I'm a psychopath. Paranoid, some schizoid. So whatever grains of salt you feel like taking, grab 'em, I guess. I'd mostly like for people like me to stop being weaponized, lionized, or punished for having a different neurotype. I'd like to be able to talk to a doctor about that and for there to be some options beyond "stop that," "get locked up," "have you considered the army" (yes, a doctor actually asked me that as a teenager) or "you seem fine, tho."

And if you resonate with this, well...I'm 32, never been arrested, mostly managed to avoid terrible shit, and I've got a life, couple partners, and I'm surviving, so like. You can do this. Lotta people wanna tell you you can't have this or that cause "you're not bad, tho." They're stupid. Y'ain't evil, just different. Don't let them get to you.

And (this is a joke) if you decide to shoot someone, do it once, correctly. Saves time.

#actuallymentallyill #vent #tw violence

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larry-lutsky · 3 years ago

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Burying the Past

George Martin finished his miserable shift at the usual time and took the same bus that made 23 excruciating stops until it reached his station in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. Then there was the 14-block walk in the blistering July heat until he reached the humble, bungalow style house he had inherited from his mother a few years before. The house was aging and crumbling much the way he was at 57-years old. He looked and felt a lot older than his years. Forty years of manual labor will do that to a man, as his craggy, weather-beaten face will attest to. After forty years, he didn't have much to show for it, staying as the same job he started as a teenager. The kind of job usually done by immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean who were generally, much younger, faster and stronger than him. It was only a short matter of time when he couldn't do it anymore. Then he would have really nothing left, no family, friends, or money to live his few remaining years in dignity. “I may as well just end it now,” he thought to himself as he started the long trek from the bus station to his home. He already had the plan in place after he bought the gun on the street a week ago. This was going to be his last day on earth.

After entering his house, he turned on the light, closed the blinds, and took the revolver out of the top drawer of the credenza. He opened the chamber and checked to make sure he had a full complement of bullets. After all, he figured, the first bullet may misfire or he might flinch and miss his head even at point blank range. Better to have spare bullets so he wouldn’t have to get up and reload and maybe lose his nerve. He placed the revolver on the table next to the chair and sat down. Then he picked it up and pointed it at the side of his forehead, closed his eyes, and slowly squeezed the trigger. Buzzzzz! The door buzzer was always way too loud, and the unexpected noise jolted him out of the chair. His mother had made the buzzer extra loud as she was hard of hearing, and he never bothered figuring out how to lower the volume. After all, almost no one ever buzzed his door. Who the hell would be buzzing it now at 7 pm? George walked over to the window beside the door and peered out. There was a well-dressed young man standing in front of the door; it was not someone he recognized. George tapped on the window and gestured to the young stranger, but he could not hear what George was saying through the window. The young man pointed to the door and seemed to mouth “please.” George went back to the table and put the revolver back into the drawer. Then he walked back, reluctantly opened the front door, and said, “Yes?” “I’m so sorry to disturb you,” said the young man. “Are you George Martin?” George looked him up and down and replied. “Yes, I am. What do you want?” “I would like to talk with you for a few moments in private,” the man replied. “Talk with me about what?” George asked with a hint of irritation in his voice. “I can’t talk out here,” the main replied, nodding in the direction of his next-door neighbor who was sitting on his porch within earshot. “It’s something important, and I promise not to take up much of your time. Can I please come inside?” George shrugged, stood to the side, and stretched his arm out, pointing the way inside. “Fine. Suit yourself.” The young man sat on the couch while George sat on the chair. “I’ll get right to the point,” the young man said. “My name is Ralph Mercado and I have reason to believe that you are my father.” George sat in stunned silence for a while, studying Ralphs’ face. Indeed, the shape of his face was very similar to his own, and he had the slightly hooked nose and the same kind of wavy, brown hair. In fact, Ralph was the spitting image of how George looked when he was in his early 20’s. George did briefly have a girlfriend named Veronica Mercado about 23 years ago, a Dominican beauty, with long flowing hair, and a model’s figure. She had a volatile temper and mood swings that made it impossible to maintain the relationship. George finally broke the awkward silence. “Is your mother Veronica? When Ralph nodded, George continued. “She never told me she was pregnant. I never knew she had a kid.” “My mother always told me that my father died so I never tried to find you,” Ralph said. “She didn’t want me to know you. Then after she passed away eight years ago, I Ivied with my aunt for a while, and she didn’t tell me anything about you. More recently I found evidence that you are alive, and from information I managed to piece together from other relatives I traced you to this address.” “I’m sorry to hear that your mom passed away, but what do you want from me?” George replied. “If you want money, I don’t have any.” “No, no, no,” Ralph practically shouted back. “I don’t want money. I just wanted to meet you and maybe have some sort of relationship. I’ll tell you what. I’ll write my name and phone number on a slip of paper, and if you want, you can call me sometime and we can talk or maybe meet somewhere. If you are not interested, that’s OK. You will never see or hear from me again. It’s entirely up to you.” Ralph wrote his number of a slip of paper, handed it to George, and started walking towards the door. He briefly stopped, turned around, and said, “It was nice meeting you. Perhaps we will talk again. Good night.” After Ralph left, George walked over to the drawer, looked at the revolver, and thought, “Can’t do it now. So much to think about. Maybe another day.”

George met Ralph at their preassigned location in a bar on Surf Avenue near where Ralph lived in Coney Island. It was a warm, humid day, but the gentle sea breeze provided some relief. George found Ralph sitting at a barstool in the back, sidled down next to him, and ordered two Heinekens. Ralph seemed glad that George showed up. George sounded so hesitant on the phone when he called that Sunday morning to arrange the meeting that that Ralph had his doubts. After making some small talk, George had a contrite expression on his face when he admitted he had a confession to make. “I lied when I said I didn’t know that Veronica was pregnant. She did tell me. I didn’t want a kid and I paid her to have an abortion. Obviously, she did not go through with it. I wonder what she did with my money.” Ralph had a disturbed look on his face. “Did my mother not want to have me?” he stammered. She showed me so much love and she was a religious Catholic who would not approve of abortion. She never missed a Sunday mass.” “She went back and forth on it,” George replied. One week she wanted to have the baby; the next week she did not. Back and forth, back and forth. I don’t know if you know this about your mom. I went with her to the psychiatrist because of her crazy mood swings – this was early in the relationship - and he diagnosed her as bipolar. She took her medication at first, but then she stopped because she said it made her sluggish. Later she had the delusion that there was nothing wrong with her, and maybe her moods were due to devil possession. She thought she could deal with it by praying and lighting candles in church. She even went to a woman who claimed she could cure her with an exorcism. Needless to say, none of this worked.” Ralph sat silently taking this all in. “Well,” he said, “she was certainly very moody, but she never told me about the diagnosis. Her religious views were kind of nutty, though I didn’t think she would go as far as seeing an exorcist. I’m glad you told me. Now I have to make a confession too. It’s not true that I don’t want anything from you. The truth is that I’m dying and I’m hoping you can save my life.” George looked shocked. Ralph looked like the picture of health. He was tall, muscular, and energetic; he seemed to exude good health. “What’s wrong?” George asked. “I have a congenital condition,” Ralph continued. “The result of this condition is that my kidneys are totally shot. If I don’t find a donor soon, I’ll be dead in 6 months. I can’t find a donor with a match and the waiting list is too long for me. I’m hoping you as my dad will be a match.” “But can’t you be kept alive with dialysis?” George replied. “Yes,” Ralph said, “but I refuse to live that way. If I don’t get a donor in 6 months, I’m refusing the dialysis. I won’t be hooked up to tubes for 3-4 times a week for years and years. I would rather die than live like that.” George put his arm around Ralph's neck and said, “Don’t worry son. I’ll go for the test, and if we are a match, I will donate my kidney. It’s the least I can do. You’re too young to die.” George woke up in the recovery room still groggy from the anesthesia. The transplant surgery was scheduled just two weeks after finding out he was a suitable match to become a donor so there was little time to think about the operation beforehand. He was glad for that because he had made up his mind to be a donor and didn’t want to think of the consequences or what may go wrong. Now there was just the long wait to find out how the operation went. Finally, the surgeon walked in, looked down at the chart, and then at George's eyes. “Hello, Mr. Martin, how are you feeling?” the doctor said with a faint smile. George grimaced and said, “Very tired and a lot of pain on the lower right side of my back.” That’s normal,” answered the doctor. “The operation went very well. I expect that you will be up and out of here in three days.” “That’s great,” replied George. “How is Ralph doing?” He could see by the doctor's expression that something was wrong. The doctor’s smile faded and he hesitated before replying, as if to collect his thoughts before proceeding. “Ralph has some complications,” he started and paused again. His congenital condition has caused more problems than just with his kidneys so this is more difficult than the usual transplant. In addition, for some reason his body is rejecting the implant. We are doing the best we can with immunosuppressant drugs and we have to run some more tests to see what can be done. Right now, I just want you to rest as much as possible and we will give you updates as his condition changes.” After George was released from the hospital, he would get daily updates from the hospital on Relph’s condition. His condition was touch and go; sometimes there were hopeful hints that there was improvement, and even when an infection set in, he seemed to respond well to antibiotics. But now it was a week later and the caller ID indicated the doctor was calling at an unusually early time, 7 AM. George had a lump in his throat as he picked up the phone. This couldn’t be good news. Indeed, it was not. Ralph, his only child, who only recently came into his life, had succumbed to an infection that had rapidly become septic. His aunt told him that Ralph requested cremation and that there was be a memorial service as soon as it could be arranged. Later he would learn that Ralph changed the beneficiary on his life insurance policy at work and that a check for one-hundred thousand dollars was on its way. That would be enough money for him to quit his job and finally retire with a modicum of dignity. “It’s strange,” Ralph thought to himself. “I couldn’t save my son’s life, but somehow in trying to save him I ended up saving myself instead.” He could feel the dread that plagued him for so many years lift from his shoulders. He slowly walked to the drawer where he kept his revolver, pulled out the gun, opened the chamber, took out the bullets, and dumped them in the trash can. Then he took it to his small backyard with a trowel and started digging a hole. When the hole was deep enough, he dropped the gun into it and covered it up. It felt like he was not just burying the gun, but burying the past as well. George got up from his crouch and slowly walked back to the house while wiping his hands from the dirt. There were many more miles to travel and a memorial to plan.

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cecilspeaks · 5 years ago

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162 - “Alpha”

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Fear makes the heart grow louder. And death makes the heart grow flowers. Welcome to Night Vale.

Amelia Anna Alfaro was always the best at everything. On the day she was born, she was named the healthiest baby at Night Vale General Hospital. The doctors had never seen a healthier baby. “What a healthy baby,” they said from behind a bullet proof two-way mirror, as they operated the robotic arms that carefully held the infant aloft. The doctors high-fived each other, missing slightly. The trick, by the way, is to keep your eye on the other person’s elbow. That or glue high-powered magnets to each person’s hand. And all of the nurses cheered from dozens of feet down the hallway, where they were playing with a standard Tarot deck, common in most neonatal units. This cheering was unrelated to Amelia’s birth. The nurses had drawn the ten of swords, which is everyone’s favorite card. It features a relaxed man receiving acupuncture by a river.

Amelia learned to walk at 4 months, and to talk at 6 months. She read Plato’s “Republic” for the first time at age 4. She taught herself German and began to write sonnets in that language at age 7. At age 10, she won her first engineering competition after designing a concrete canoe that could float even on the most turbulent water. There is no body of water in Night Vale, so she had to prove her work using a software she wrote that generated three-dimensional models to corroborate her advanced mechanical physics formulas. She even won the state spelling bee five years in a row, from ages 9 to 13. Her streak was only broken when the spelling bee was canceled, after the sponsors lost their dictionary.

Amelia was always the best, and her mother knew it. Her mother was proud of her daughter, or rather, her mother was proud of herself for producing such a daughter. Or rather, she was proud of both, in a way that was difficult for them to untangle. Amelia’s mother was named Yvette. Yvette could not afford much for her daughter. She worked long hours to earn the respect of her bosses, which (-) [0:04:32] her promotions and larger paychecks, but Yvette had hit the glass ceiling. She did not want this limitation for her daughter. Her daughter would need to be smarter, more talented, and more driven than she. Yvette wanted Amelia’s value to the world to be so great that no one could deny her success.

Yvette recognized Amelia’s specialness and pushed hard to make her even more special, signing Amelia up for athletics and adult learning classes and piano lessons. Amelia sometimes pushed against this. “Mother, I don’t want to” was met with, “But you will, Amelia.” “Why?” was met with, “Because I said so.” “I hate you for this” was met with, “You will love me for it later.”

Begrudgingly, Amelia fulfilled her mother’s wishes. It wasn’t because she understood her mother’s motivation to secure her child a better life, nor was it because Amelia did not have the stomach to fight back. No, Amelia did it because it all came so easy. She was a black belt, a sharp shooter, an academic decathlon champion. She wrote her first novel at age 12, it was called “A Golden Age for Parachuting”, in which an all-Jewish female parachute team wins Olympic gold in 1936 Berlin in front of Adolf Hitler. In the publisher’s rejection letter, the editor said the novel was “immaculately written, however parachuting stories are out of vogue. Do you have anything about magical baseball players?” Amelia did. It was a novel called “One Last Swing for the Tuesday Boys”, but she had written it in German and did not have time to translate the “Dienstag Jungen” manuscript, because she was currently taking a course on bird husbandry.

Yvette enrolled the teenage Amelia in night classes at the community college, where she took English 113, “Sonnets are for lovers”; structural engineering 212, “Buttress is a funny word”; and meteorology 301, “Clouds y’all, amirite?” She earned all As and scores for college credit before she even graduated high school. None of these challenges were difficult for Amelia. She was the best at everything.

But her life was not perfect. Because of the voices. It was the voices that made life hard for Amelia. From birth, she heard the constant chatter of dozens of people. None of the voices spoke directly to Amelia, they just talked and talked about their lives, and Amelia was afraid of the voices and what the voices might imply about herself. She found solace in puzzles, crosswords, nonograms, acrostics, cryptics, Sudoku, which I think is the one where you have to catch a bunch of marbles with a lever operated hippopotamus. Her mother hated Amelia’s puzzle vice. If she caught Amelia doing puzzles, Yvette would make Amelia go practice archery or write poetry or at least listen to classical music. Amelia’s favorite was Van Cliburn’s masterful 1961 record of Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto nr 13: Knuckles on the Black Keys”. When she was thinking through the solution of a puzzle, the voices did not speak to her. All was silent. It was her only time of peace. It was the only time her body could rest and curl up comfortably into her own thoughts. Anything that took her away from her logic problems including music, no matter how soothing, invited the voices back into Amelia’s thoughts.

Amelia was accepted to several top colleges across the country, including MIT, Stanford, Rice and The University of What It Is, but she wanted to stay near her home town and her family, so she went to State. Hey, that’s where my brother-in-law went! Go State! [chuckles] Ahem. She was elected the youngest president of the student body ever at age 17, and graduated valedictorian two years later. Her friends, her professors, her mother all knew the world was Amelia’s. She could become poet laureate or a senator or a supreme court justice or a quantum physicist. But she became none of those. This is not to say Amelia was not successful or that she amounted to nothing. It is to say, the semantics of success were her own and no one else’s. Amelia became an air traffic controller. The voices never told Amelia to become an air traffic controller, they were never that specific. The voices did not tell her to do anything, they simply talked about first dates, about apartment hunting, about their grandmothers’ improved health, about a bad movie they sort of loved. None of the voices talked directly to her, it was simply as though she overheard conversations from lives lived somewhere else. Other people and their quotidian hopes and worries and interests. She tried seeing therapists and psychiatrists. She tried medication to stop the voices, but nothing worked. Eventually she decided they were not harmful voices and that she was not dealing with schizophrenia. She simply heard people talking at all hours about all things, having nothing to do with her. And they never told her to become an air traffic controller. Amelia chose her own career, her own path. Others though the reason was that it was the fist job opportunity to present itself for her. Maybe it was her admiration of aircraft, maybe a moral sense of serving humanity through public safety and comfort. In fact, it was none of these reasons. But it should not be surprising to know that Amelia was very good at air traffic control. She was calm, clear, and efficient. The Night Vale international airport, although when Amelia started it was just a commuter hub, has never had a high volume of plane traffic and almost all of those are departures. There are very few arrivals. My husband Carlos, he’s a scientist and he is also very good at his job, tells me that it’s impossible to have far more departures than arrivals, but I told him, not everything has to make sense all the time.

So, in some ways, air traffic control in Night Vale was easier for Amelia than just about any other class or job or task she’d ever attempted. It appeared from the outside to be far below her capabilities. She held that job for 20 years, even taking over as president of the Night Vale chapter of air traffic controllers’ union. In 2004, she was featured in the cover of “Afformative”, a monthly trade magazine for air traffic controllers. The headline of the article was “You’re cleared for success”. In 2006, she was asked to deliver the keynote speech at the annual Roger Con, a conventional for air traffic controllers and fans of air traffic control. It’s a huge deal, held every year in Orlando. People dress like their favorite airline pilots and wait in long lines for autographs from top flight attendants. There are even panel discussions about everything from the best textiles for seat cushions to secret first class meal offerings. Amelia was the best at what she did. She probably would have been the best poet laureate or senator, but this was the path she chose. She chose this path because of the voices, not from what they said, but what they didn’t say. When Amelia was in the control tower, when she was communicating with captains and co-pilots and navigators, her head was clear. All was silent. It was like those many nights, sneaking a copy of the crossword from the newspaper on the kitchenette and solving it by flashlight under her covers. She became an air traffic controller to be by herself, to become her own person. Her mother was disappointed, but loved her in spite of it. Her professors were let down, but still had many fabulous of their greatest student. Her friends were just happy she was happy.

Things changed on June 15, 2012, when Delta flight 18713 made radio contact. In her tall tower, at her tiny airport, in the middle of a vast desert, in the middle of the American Southwest, an airplane appeared on Amelia’s radar. It was carrying 143 passengers and 6 crew members and was flying from Detroit to Albany over the great lakes of the American Northeast. It appeared briefly, the green dot blinking in and out of existence like the sun glinting off a water ripple. It was almost unnoticeable. But everyone noticed it. Later, Amelia was the only one who admitted to noticing it. The radio transmission was equally brief, a surge of static and only one word, difficult to discern but she heard it. “Alpha” was the single word. The letter A in the Nato alphabet. It was garbled, so maybe it wasn’t that word, maybe it was some more adult variation of “Oh fudge”. Alpha. Oh fudge. It was unclear. Amelia requested identification of the aircraft. She requested further communication, but nothing came. As soon as it had squawked, it had gone silent. But while the radio communication was silent, the voices were not. On June 15, 2012, upon hearing a word that sounded like “alpha”, these myriad conversations returned. No one else in the tower could hear them, but Amelia Anna Alfaro could. And for the first time in her life, she began to speak back to them. Everyone else in the tower could hear that. The voices did not cease. The voices continued for days and days and Amelia tried to talk back with them. As one voice said: “I have an interview on Monday,” Amelia would ask “for what job” or if a voice said, “We went to Palm Springs on vacation,” Amelia would say, “Did you also travel out to the Salton Sea?” But over and over, no response. The voices did not affect the quality of Amelia’s work, but it did affect the perceived quality of her work, and her colleagues became uncomfortable with and distrusting of Amelia.

A month later, Amelia heard that word again from one of the voices. “Alpha”. The same voice that radioed in June. But upon hearing it again, she realizes that they didn’t say “alpha” at all. What they said, coming up.

But first The weather.

[“Skinchanger” by Skeptic skepticdeath.bandcamp.com]

The voices said “Alfaro”. The word had been truncated just as the airplane’s appearance in Night Vale had been truncated. The voice saying the word was the captain of the aircraft, and he had been trying to tell Amelia something. The pilot was trying to tell Amelia that he knew her, had always known her since her birth. He didn’t know how he knew her, just that he did, and he wanted to tell her he had found her. And she should find him. “Where are you,” Amelia asked the captain. “No Where,” the voice said. “Did you land?” Amelia asked. “Yes,” the voice said. “Were there injuries?” Amelia asked. “Minor,” the voice said. “Do you hear the other voices too?” Amelia asked. “Yes,” the captain said. “I’m with them right now. Find us, Amelia.” “Where are you?” Amelia asked again, louder, more scared than before. “No Where,” the voice said, not like the vague concept of in no place but No Where, two words capitalized like the name of a specific place. Amelia felt a tap on her shoulder. It was another air traffic controller. “Uh, boss wants to see you, Amelia,” they said. But Amelia did not go to see the boss. She knew. She knew her time in the tower was done. She grabbed her belongings and walked to the elevator, out across the tarmac to a shuttle to a parking lot and into her car, and no one saw her again. Her friends said she always talked about going back to school to get an advanced degree. Maybe she went to Stanford. Or Rice, or The University of What It Is. Other friends said she had lost all touch with reality, talking to people who were not there, and maybe her mother checked Amelia into the Night Vale asylum.

Yvette says Amelia knew too much, that agents from a vague yet menacing government agency had been to their house and that Amelia must have been taken to a secret location. Representatives from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau in Washington, DC, came to Night Vale two months ago to investigate the disappearance of flight 18713. They are on an undercover mission inside the Night Vale asylum right now, on a tip from Sheriff Sam, to discover more clues into this mystery. Perhaps Amelia is in there too. But I don’t think so. I think she went to find the plane. I think the voices were the passengers on Delta 18713. I think she set out looking for them. Perhaps wandering the desert, the great No Where, to find the people who had been a part of her life since birth.

Amelia. Anna. Alfaro. was always the best at everything. And if anyone will find the plane, she will.

Stay tuned next for our new investment advice show “Billionaire Roulette”.

And as always, Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Love means never having to say “you’re a werewolf”.

#welcome to night vale #wtnv transcripts #episode 162 #alpha

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shinobirain24 · 4 years ago

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Water and Ice- Chapter 5: Petrified Huntsmen

The huntsmen continue their trail the next morning. Drey had to put out the fire to not attract any enemies behind. It was very quiet on their trail. Neptune and Weiss at some point had left their teams for something personal. Since both of them are looking for their older siblings. The last thing they wanted is to greet them with welcome arms. Neptune keeps looking at her without paying attention to the path ahead. After what happened in the previous night, he felt the need to make up for scaring her.

He may be a flirt as a teenager, but his one goal is to find his brother and bring him back home. But the trouble is, is the man in the photo really Jupiter? Or is he just imagining things? Either way, he has to find out himself.

Both began to see their fellow huntsmen teaming up. But they don't where to blend in since they already took off from their teams. So Neptune walks over to Weiss to see if she can use some assistance. "Hey, Weiss." He spoke. She did not bother looking back at him as she remains at focus to finding the Black Thunderbolts. "I was thinking, how come you're not in a group or something?"

"This isn't a training mission, Neptune. This is serious, if the Thunderbolts are on the island according to rumor, then they must be up to something and I just have to find it. Besides, this is something personal so I can't tell yet."

"Didn't you say that because your sister is missing, they might have something to with her gone?" Neptune recalled.

"Oh, right. What about you? Is there any reason you left your team?" She asked.

"I have my reasons, but I can't say." He replied. Not wanting to reveal the fact that there is a possibility that Jupiter was hidden for a while and joined the Thunderbolts for any explanation. Weiss stared at him without a word.

Is this about the nightmares you're having last night? For all I know, Sun would look after him like a brother. But now that he's here alone. There's a chance that I can find out why going solo. Weiss thought back about the night Neptune waking up in a shock calling out the the name she never heard of. Jupiter? Just who is he? A relative, maybe? Poor Neptune, something must be bothering him.

"Look Weiss, I'm sorry about last night. Just having weird dreams. That's all." Neptune apologized. Not wanting to make it look like he's having personal problems.

"It's fine. I shouldn't have snoop around in the first place. I was just startled by you screaming."

"Do you really have to bring that up?" Neptune inquired grabbing the back of his head in embarrassment. Then roll his eyes to her. "Say, do you wanna team up with me? Because everyone else seem to know each other and we both left out teams." Weiss looked down to the ground to have second thoughts. She wanted to handle the mission alone, but never expected to have this many huntsmen to take the mission. But it could've been a fair share of lien. But why this many huntsmen. Usually only one or a team of huntsmen and huntresses can apply for a mission requests on their scrolls which is now an app. But she hated being alone in some ways. "Alright, you can come. At least it's better than tagging along with those dolts." She gestured at Rick and Drey who're busy punching each other's shoulders, which she finds them annoying. Even as adults, they still acted like children to find the way out of boredom.

"No kidding. Trust me, these are not the type of people you want to get friendly with." Neptune agrees. "When they throw you off the pier."

"I've taken you've known these two?" Weiss asked.

"Yeah, they tried to drown me once. And we were just kids."

"They did what?"

"They failed anyway. Sun already gave them a taste of their own medicine anyway." Neptune chuckled.

"Still, they shouldn't have done that a long time ago. You're lucky you're still here if Sun haven't came by." Weiss exclaimed. She then turned to Rick and Drey when they looked back with a death glare. Weiss began to notice something isn't right about the two. But she looks away to avoid suspicion and pulled Neptune along. "Come on, we have a lot of catching up to do." Walking faster away from their fellow huntsmen. Neptune is confused for why they're walking away. "Hey, wait a minute!" Weiss then found a private cave where nobody can see them. She checks outside if there's anybody listening or hidden. But no one. "Okay, listen. Can you keep this a secret?" She asked. Neptune was mentioned that he was too gullible to be keeping secrets. But this one, it seems to serious for her to keep it to herself. Since he's a nice guy, he'll have his chances of finding his brother for any theories.

"Sure." He nods.

"Have you seen Rick and Drey have been looking at us and the other huntsmen with us, lately?"

"Not that I know of. I tried not to cause a scene with any of them."

"There's something not right about them. Just when we left the camp, they started to write things down every time they're observing us. Just last night after we woke up, I noticed them taking notes on their next move. And these notes, is the list of names of those taking the mission, including us. Then reading our huntsmen licenses."

"Whoa. Talk about an invasion of privacy."

"Clearly. I think they're up to something, which is why I am telling you this. All of us could be at risk if we keep going."

"I never took them for a couple of spies. Now that you've mentioned it, I don't like the looks of things. We should tell somebody. Anybody."

"We're not sure who to trust, yet. Unless somebody is selling us out, you're the only one I can count on, can I trust you on this one?" Now Neptune began to grow suspicious of Rick and Drey since they arrived at the island. They gave him the same glare since they were in their early teens, and they also have given the same look like he's their primary target. Saving the other huntsmen to say the least.

10 years ago.

In Mistral Hospital, a young Neptune was bedridden after fainting, and still hasn't woken up. While his mother, Lydia, and his father, Saturn, are sitting in the waiting room. Saturn holds Lydia into his arms as she not only worried for their younger son, but also mourning for the loss of their oldest. Sun was forced to wait outside of the room since he's not a family member, but keeps pacing back and forth, lamenting himself of how he has talked his best friend into sneaking out on a mission. And caused him to inadvertently create a disaster. While Neptune's sister, Ceres, a doctor who graduated from a medical school, cares for her unconscious little brother. She then saw her brother opening his eyes, while his heart rate is still normal.

"C-Ceres?" He began. While still feeling lightheaded as he had been passed out for 6 days. Not having eaten enough, but having a tube to keep him alive.

"How're you feeling, buddy?" She asked in concern.

"I don't know. How long had I been out?"

"6 days. Do you remembered what happened before you got here?"

Neptune thought back about the mission he and Sun snuck into. Then the image dawned to him when he remembered the cold feeling in the depth of the seas where Jupiter tried to reach him. The snapped back to reality.

"No, Jupiter!" Neptune tries to get up to look for him, but Ceres held him down to keep still. "Neptune, no. You need some rest." Said Ceres. But he keeps fighting it to be released from her grip. But Ceres isn't giving up this easily.

"I have to, he could be alive! He has to be! This is all my fault, I'm the one who messed everything up! I'm the reason he's gone!" He shouted.

"Somebody get the sedatives, stat!" Ceres called out to the staff. As one of the nurses hands her a needle while two other staff held him back down. Ceres gently injected the sedative onto his right arm. "Calm down, Neptune!" She pleaded while still injecting until she pulls off the needle.

Neptune keeps pushing his arms out until the drug have seeped into his veins, giving him a headache. His eyes are giving up to stay opened. His vision got all blurry. That is when his whole body limp from the injection.

"Jupiter..." He said before passing out once again.

10 years after.

Survivor's guilt, that's what everybody have been told when one individual or two survives and the other doesn't. That's what psychiatrists can say to one after the other patient. Neptune would always deny that he isn't afraid of the water, but when near it, he cannot touch it. Whenever he sees it, he gets taken aback. Other times, he sees his older brother. But was he really here, or is it a figment of his imagination. Either way, he was always here, giving him the silent treatment. And a single glare into his eyes. The same eyes that he and Neptune would eventually turn away. A reminder of the day he made a mistake. While he and Weiss are still walking to the east side of the island, Neptune looks up and sees the same blue-haired man with the scar, just as he remembers. But he still isn't sure if it's him standing on a rock. He then shook his head and looked up again, to find him gone.

"What's wrong?" Weiss asked.

"Must be my imagination. Thought I saw something." He replied.

"Maybe you're right..." Weiss paused when she bumped into something, or rather someone without looking. "Ow! Watch where you going, you..." She paused again when she saw a statue of a man with hair tied down, a cowboy robe, hat and black boots. They both immediately recognized him as one of the huntsmen who joined the mission. But how did he get petrified into stone in the first place? What did he saw in his moments before this happened? It frightened Weiss very high, she screamed in terror. Neptune then looked at the statue and looked horrified as well. "What the?!" It's not just him, but four more of them have been turned to stone.

"How did this happened?!" Weiss exclaimed. Neptune observes the petrified huntsmen, and began to realize something.

"Call me crazy, but I think there has to be someone on this island. Someone with a semblance capable by turning people into stone."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Like I said, it's going to sound crazy. But there's somebody I knew when I was younger. Somebody who I thought was dead."

"You're right. That does sound crazy." She sighed. Then they heard rattling like a snake's rattle tail. They then pull out their weapons. "Who's there?! Show yourself!" She demanded. Then landed a woman with green hair, with a rattlesnake tail on her bottom back. Her lips seem to possess some fangs while her tongue hissed with delight for more victims. She has black visors, a leather jacket with a lightning bolt emblem on, and a leotard underneath. "If you're not careful, that's where you'll also die." She said cunningly.

"Who are you?!" Neptune demanded. Then another huntsman charged at her without thinking of what she's capable of. "I've got you now, Thunderbolt! Argh!" He yelled, letting his pride get the best of him. But she turned to him and lifted her visors up to her forehead. Her eyes glowed red, staring at him dead in the eye before he can slash her with a sword. Just 7 inches close, and the huntsman. He gasped when he saw death have came, but not in a real way. Instead he was turned to stone. She then called on her scroll for another person to call. "Roth, you're up."

"Wait a minute...Roth?" Neptune then began to put his finger around his chin, as the name "Roth" came back to him. He may not know him much, but someone his brother knew for a time being as a Haven Student. Then he put two and two together. The real reason for why she wears sunglasses in the first place. Jupiter have warned him about looking into her eyes. Red as death and blood itself, once you saw her eyes, you'll see nothing but black. "It can't be...Zerena?" Weiss glanced at him with shock that he managed to recognized the mysterious woman. "You know her?!"

"How surprising, you have us all figured it out." Said Zerena. Roth then attacked from behind. Before he could hit, Weiss bounced him out of the way with a glyph. Zerena then lifts off her visors again. "Watch out, look at her and you'll be turned too! Shield your eyes!" He warns, Weiss did not hesitate to cover her eyes, and so does Neptune. She have been blindfolded before when her sister had her to practice her senses by hearing. "Well then, it looks like I'll have to teach you both a lesson." Zerena stretched out her whip and lashed it at Neptune then tumbled out of the way and does it again when she came at him way too fast. Her whip isn't just any other whip, but it can break anything harder then stone. Which is what men feared most about her. Roth then moves at the same speed as Weiss. Neither of them would wince an inch of a scratch. Making zig-zag moves to cross blades. When Roth lunges forward to put his sword in the ground to make a huge blow. But Weiss uses her glyph to leap high from the attack before it can strike.

Knocking him out with a slash from the air. Neptune still tries to figure it out on how to take Zerena down without getting struck or be turned to stone. So he managed to get close to her in order to knock her away, but she already recovered back to her feet. Putting her whip back and blocks every swing he makes and jumps back to grab her whip again and swung it on his Tri-hard. Wrapping it around very strongly as she pulls with with her might. But Neptune pulls back while the fight continues.

"What's the matter, coward?! All you need to do is fight back!" Zerena shouts.

"No! This isn't you! Whatever it is you're doing, it ends today!" Neptune said.

"That's what they all say, but face it, it doesn't end here!" Zerena snapped.

"Tell us, did Drey and Rick have anything to do with you?!" Weiss said. While avoiding Roth. But they aren't answering.

"Why would we give a damn, when we're being used? You don't know what it was like the whole world." Snarled Roth.

"Looks like they aren't giving up this easily."

"What happened to you guys over a few years? You have to tell us!" Pleaded Neptune. "Is my brother, with you?! Is he involved in this?!" Weiss is shocked to hear that he has a brother and never mentioned this to anyone else. She could see why he took this mission without Sun, Scarlet, Sage and Nolan. "Answer!" But they aren't responding. That is, until a spotlight appeared. Forcing Zerena to cover her eyes. Putting her shades back on. "Dammit! They found us! Roth, call Jupiter and Tyler! We need to retreat at once!" Ordered Zerena.

"And those two?"

"We'll let them be...for now." They escaped before the authorities from Atlas arrived. "Hey, wait! Get back here!" Neptune tries to go after them, but Weiss pulls him back. The ship has landed and six of the Atlesian soldiers including a militarized woman with white hair tied to a lower bun and icy blue eyes, just like Weiss. With a stylized cap with a silver pin of the symbol representing Atlas. And a trench suit. To her surprise, it was her sister, Winter. But how was she present after the rumor was spread? Did she make that up to lure any criminals in sight?

"Winter, you're alive. I am so glad you're safe. I was beginning to worry. When I heard that you ran from Atlas. I was worried something bad must've happened to you." Weiss sighed in relief. But Winter didn't seem to react to those words. She may be a serious type of person, but not in a coldly manner. Since the battle in Atlas. But she then glared at Neptune and turns back to her younger sister. "Weiss, I am sorry that I worried you. But the mission you took right now is a trap set for the individuals responsible for the embargo sinking. This however led me to him." She then walks over to the blue-haired huntsman. Which made him nervous considering how female soldiers have a streak of dignity. Weiss is confused for why she is talking about him.

Winter then pulled out a hair sample in a plastic bag that has a similar color. And show it to him. "Are you certain it was him?" She asked to one of the soldier and nodded. "DNA evidence doesn't lie, sir." Then looks back at him.

"Very well. Neptune Vasilias, you are hereby under arrest." This shocks them both.

"Wait what?! What for?!"

"For the interference of the dust exportation, 12 counts of kidnapping. And 178 counts of murder. Including thievery." Winter replied. Weiss stands in front of him for his defense. "Winter, wait. You can't just accuse someone for something he didn't know. Why would you think it was him?" Asked Weiss.

"Stand aside, sister. This hair sample has his DNA left behind in one of the sunken ships for the delivery to Vale. On top of it. It was a match." She then turned to one of the soldiers.

"Restrain him." She orders pointing at Neptune. "And escort my sister to the ship."

"Yes, sir." Before they can handcuff him, Weiss grabs Neptune's wrist and formed multiple platforms to speed up and escape. Saving themselves from conflict. "Weiss!" Winter calls but it was too late.

They stopped by another bay in hopes to escape. They stopped to catch their breathe before Weiss glares at him. "So that's why you took this mission alone. You never mentioned you have a brother. Now he's out there making you the fall guy here! If you have had your team with you, none of this would've have happened!" She scolded. But Neptune isn't listening. He walks away, but she catches up with him grabbing his wrist once again to stop him from getting himself killed. "Where do you think you're going?!" She demands, but he didn't look back.

"Going to find my brother." He replied without a second thought and tried to pull away. "Alone. I cannot risk anyone else I cared about, not you, not my team. Or our friends. It's best if you can go back to Atlas with your sister."

"No way, I am not going to let you get yourself killed!"

"I have to! It's my problem, not yours!"

"Let me help you!"

"No!"

"Why not?!"

Neptune then snaps back turning to her. "Because I'm a coward! Okay?! Everything that Jupiter has done, was because of me! I'm the reason he's been declared dead and him going rogue!" This shocks Weiss as she steps back in response to the tone of his voice. He panted for exhaustion of rage and anguish. "What has happened to you?" Weiss teared up. He then calms down for a second time. Then looks at her sympathetically, "I'm sorry. I don't want to put anyone in danger because of me. Just do me a favor and go back to Atlas, for your sake." He turns away and never looks back again. Weiss stares at him, worried that something will happened to him if he doesn't refrain himself without thinking.

#Iceberg RWBY #Icy Seas #weiss schnee #neptune vasilias #Arctic Ocean #jupiter vasilias #winter schnee #weiss x neptune

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