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monysmediareview · 4 years ago

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Hush Hush Saga Review

I am obsessed with the Hush Hush saga by Becca Fitzpatrick, so I suggest getting comfortable because this is going to be a long one. I first read Hush Hush during quarantine after picking it up off Facebook marketplace. I wasn’t expecting much from it but read through the entire thing in a day and then ordered the rest of the series immediately because I just couldn’t get enough. There’s a lot I want to cover when talking about this series, so let’s get into it.

Nora Grey

I have complicated feelings about Nora as a character but for 2009 she really beats out a lot of other female leads. I have a strong dislike for female leads in these types of stories who fall into the category of “not like other girls but also nothing special but for some reason this unobtainable, perfect guy is head over heels in love with her”. Some examples of this character type would be Bella Swan, Clary Fairchild, Elena Gilbert, etc etc. It was an especially popular trope in the early 2000s/2010s but Nora breaks that mold ever so slightly and it’s enough to make her one of my favorite fantasy romance characters ever.

To start, she’s got a brain of her own and isn’t overly consumed by her feelings for Patch. Initially she doesn’t even like him and goes to see him only so she can finish their project and get a good grade in class. She doesn’t try to pretend she doesn’t find him attractive but she’s able to separate that from being completely in love with him right off the bat, unlike the aforementioned heroines. This also allows their love story to feel more organic, but we’ll get into that later.

The thing about Nora, really, is that she’s smart. She has critical thinking skills. There are moments where she’s tricked and fooled but only in the way you can imagine a 16/17 year old girl is; she’s convinced the guy she’s involved with is hooking up with someone else, she’s tricked into thinking her father’s death was an accident (but realistically, she isn't the only one so who can blame her), she’s tricked into thinking her friends are lying to her. It’s nothing out there, like other female leads who are just blindly stupid to the world around them for no reason. I also think the difference is in the writing, where characters like Clary Fairchild/Fray, we read pretty much their every thought, we know where the story is going and even when it takes certain turns, the way that it’s written we can see it coming. When Bella thinks Edward left her because he didn’t love her all of a sudden, we as readers were angry because that was so clearly not the case. If, as a 10 year old reading New Moon for the first time I can realize that Edward was lying, then surely and 18 year old Bella should be able to realize the same. But everything Nora was tricked into, we were tricked into as well and that made the twists and turns equally as shocking to us.

Nora also makes bad decisions, but again, they’re decisions you could expect a young woman to make as she’s navigating a very insane world. These decisions don’t make her stupid; she’s not doing the wrong thing out of neglect for morality but out of ignorance. She sneaks out, she lies to her mom, sure, but that’s a normal teenage thing to do. She’s not making choices that are risking other people for no reason but she also never risks herself to be a martyr. Nora is smart and that makes the events in the series so much more interesting. I didn’t spend the entire time groaning at her being an idiot and making stupid decision or doing reckless things. I was on the edge of my seat because I would have probably made the same choices she was and seeing the consequences of that as they happen to her.

Vee Sky

Now, technically, Vee does fall into a type of character I’m also sick of seeing and that’s what I like to call “the slutty best friend who’s uglier than her virtuous main character friend”. Sometimes I refer to them as the “Caroline Forbes” characters. They’re very pro-sex and talk about their bodies a lot, they can often be described as wearing revealing clothes, hide things from their parents and it feels like finding the perfect boyfriend is all they care about. Often, these characters have something about them that makes them less desirable than the main character. In the case of Vee, her weight and height are constantly mentioned. She is always on a diet, trying to lose weight, and then giving up on it and even at the height of action her “colored foods” diet is still mentioned.

But Vee is her own beautiful character! One of my favorite things about her is that we don’t lose her as soon as Patch becomes a permanent fixture in Nora’s life. Vee is an active participant in Nora’s story. She has her own story line, too, that ties her into everything but she never gets lost in that the way characters like Caroline Forbes did in The Vampire Diaries.

Vee is a positive force in Nora’s life when everything starts falling apart. And in the end, learning that she’s also Nephilim is such a reassuring thing that she will always be part of Nora in a way. She does perpetuate some negative stereotypes of women hating other women and hating their own bodies but that’s also something very honest about being a teenage girl that I’m glad wasn’t hidden. It’s a rocky road with Vee, but overall she compliments Nora perfectly and that natural best friendship is comforting.

Patch is an Angel. Literally.

I mean, I guessed it based on the cover, but I love that we really don’t know what Patch is until almost the end of the first book. There’s so many hints to it but having read a lot of vampire love stories in my time, Nephilim was a nice change of pace. It meant that the clues to what he was weren’t so obvious and that gave him a way more mysterious edge than say, Edward Cullen.

Patch has super cool powers, too! The fact that he can talk to Nora telepathically is so interesting. It’s a different edge to a secret relationship. The dream visiting is also really crazy to me because when I’ve seen it used in other series, the girl being visited often thinks she’s just imagining things and it’s super secretive but Patch is pretty up front about that ability. They use it to see each other when they’re being kept apart because both parties have to be willing for it to work. And we love consent! It’s so refreshing to see a male romantic character to abide by consent and other socially polite things instead of the usual “bad boy taking want he wants when he wants because obviously every girl breathing wants to be with him”. I especially love to see this in series aimed at young audiences because of the precedent it sets for their own romantic relationships as they get older. If I’d read these in middle school, I could have probably avoided a few mistakes made because I was dead set on being with my own personal Edward Cullen. But I digress.

As a whole, Patch really cares for Nora’s well being and isn’t selfish about his own feelings for her. He sacrifices himself and never expects her to thank him or do the same, and in fact, even encourages her subtly not to do things for him. He is the best of bad boy meets boy next door.

Some Cheesy Tropes I Can’t Help but Love

This bit is going to horribly spoil the end of the series so if you don’t want to know, I’d skip it.

In the very beginning Nora’s birthmark seems to be super important. By the end of the first book we know that her relationship to her ancestor Chauncy, has something to do with that. And then the birthmark isn’t a huge part of the story anymore. It’s brought up a few times but it’s no longer a distinct factor of her existence because so much is going on. But then the end, when she can heal Patch and bring him back to Earth, to keep him from Hell, she’s told to cut her skin over her birthmark instead of her hand. That’s what makes him human. It’s cheesy but not something that we see often. I loved it.

I also loved the “he was sent to her on some sort of mission but fell in love with her and never told her about the mission” slipping into the “you hid something from me about how we met and now I’m mad at you for it” trope. It’s something I see a ton in fanfiction and even in movies and TV shows but I can’t think of a book or series that does it as convincingly or as interestingly as Hush Hush.

Immaculate Fantasy Vibes

Sometimes books like this either dive too far into the fantasy aesthetic and completely forget the real world or they don’t dip into it enough. This story doesn’t always lean into the fantasy world very much but you never lose the sense that it’s very real and not going away. This is mostly due to the set up of the story in the first place. We don’t start this journey in Maine with Nora we start it with Chauncy in France hundreds of years earlier. It sets up the plot for the book but also the vibe, the feeling, the aura of where we are. This is something that we don’t lose through all four books, which I think is fantastic.

Cool as Hell Powers

While we talk about the fantastic set up of this world, I want to touch on the powers that Angels and Nephilim are given in this series. Nephilim don’t have nearly as much lore as other supernatural creatures and when it comes to angels pretty much anything is fair game and Becca Fitzpatrick really ran with that.

Having the scars where fallen angel’s wings used to be is already pretty cool. Maybe self explanatory, but then she gives them power that if someone touches them they can see into their mind, their history, their deepest truths that they may not have wanted to share. It makes the connection that they have with the person who can touch them incredibly personal; they are left completely vulnerable in that moment.

It’s a power or ability or whatever that I have yet to find in any other fantasy novel or series of any kind and I must give credit where credit is due. As far as I’m concerned this is a completely original idea.

Marcie Millar

Marcie. Oh, Marcie. Why did Nora and Vee hate her so much? She was a bully, she was mean, she was judgemental but Vee and Nora never seemed to hate her for these reasons. They seemed to hate her because she was pretty and popular and a cheerleader and that really took away from these characters. I’m always disappointed by women hating other women for superficial reasons and this was definitely disappointing. It improved as the story went on for sure, but Marcie (and Dabria for that matter) could have been much better antagonists if they had real substance beyond being pretty and interested in Patch.

Marcie does end up playing a really important role in the end which I found interesting; it also proves the point that highschool popularity drama means nothing when it comes down to it.

Struggle between Good and Evil

A common theme in fantasy books like this is the struggle between good and evil. The morality of whether someone is inherently good or bad based on who or what they are rather than the way they act and treat others. Hush Hush is no exception to this but I feel that it’s presented differently than in other series.

In Twilight Edward is constantly struggling with his damned soul because he’s a vampire despite being a decent person in spite of that. In Hush Hush Patch is fully aware that he isn’t good enough to be an Angel and would rather be human, while also grappling with the fact that maybe being an Angel doesn’t mean you’re perfect anyway. It reminded me of the struggle Castiel has in Supernatural as well. It isn’t original by any means but it’s not a regurgitated trope like a lot of other stories of this nature and I appreciated that.

Friends

Something I feel like I see in TV shows but not in books are main characters who only have a handful of friends but aren’t particularly close with any of them. Nora only has Vee at the beginning of the story but she becomes friends with Marcie, Scott and a few other secondary and tertiary characters as the story goes on.

Scott in particular is one of my favorite characters in this series as well because he’s such a good friend to Nora, standing by her the whole time. Sure, it gets rocky there for a minute but all in all, that’s a really good friendship and they didn’t even have to sleep with each other to get there.

Hank Millar

Finding out that Hank is actually Nora’s biological father is utterly insane and I personally did not see that coming one bit. Nora has such a strong connection to the man she grew up with as her father and never once suspected that there was anything wrong with that. She’s so invested in finding out what actually happened to him that she never thought maybe one of the things he was lying about was being her father. Again, not a terribly original plot but it was employed in a way that made it feel completely new.

I’m so glad they didn’t make the movie

Well, the movie might still be happening, but in all honesty I’m really glad they didn’t. Looking at the cast that was chosen for this movie, the actors do not correlate to the way I pictured these characters at all. In my personal opinion, Nora is not white. I’m not quite sure how I pictured her, but certainly not Liana Liberato. I will accept Wolfgang Novogratz as Patch, but I think we could do better personally.

The only redeeming fact I’ve read about the movies being made is that it would be directed by Kellie Cyrus who has been a director for The Vampire Diaries and the Originals, both shows I thoroughly enjoyed. Also, bonus points for female directors!hush

#hush hush #hush hush saga #becca fitzpatrick #book review #media review #moneywrites

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deadvoices · 3 years ago

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[February 22nd 2022]

It seems, after all, that part of being sick is finding abnormalities in the ways of normal folk; wondering why they act a certain way, why they hurt a certain way, why they complicate things, or why they make no sense. The fact is that I make no sense, I am the exception, and they are the rule.

Being this kind of sick is a strange feeling at times. There is no other mode of being I comprehend, this is all I am and have been, and in the moments I stepped out of my mold, nothing felt right. One day I explain what it means to just be, and a professional points to a list of categories and fits me bit by bit into each I measure well with. I'm abnormal (i.e. out of the norm, what the human majority is like; not monstrous or heinous, despite how grotesque I look in the mirror tonight).

I believe loneliness is pain in being alone. I might be wrong, but if not, that means I'm never lonely and nearly always alone. I have been slowly digging myself more and more into a corner. So many people have put the effort to pull me out of my den, and all I do is bury myself deeper, so many inches below the surface. I know now why allowing myself to be near others eventually pushes us apart. I prefer being alone, and I am better alone, and others are better in my absence, because I am abnormal, and I am sick, although I don't feel sick.

I have to stop allowing myself to stay close to others again. I believe some of us need to learn this at heart. I'm good at fixing problems like a handyman, appearing for a few hours and vanishing after. That's my forte. Anything else is a waste.

#rambles #writers on tumblr #schizoid

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athenaquinn · 5 years ago

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Finally Free || Orion, Nic, & Athena

TIMING: 12:30-1am ish, October 20th LOCATION: Quinn Household, Harris Island PARTIES: @3starsquinn, @athenaquinn, and @bountybossier SUMMARY: Nic is a Dad. CONTENT: Physical and emotional abuse mentions

“Athena? Athena. We have to do something.” Orion’s world had so drastically shifted that he had no idea how to feel. His brain was going haywire, feeling sick to his stomach and angry one moment before shifting to terrified and on the verge of tears. It had been over twenty minutes now. Orion only knew because he had been staring at the oven slowly counting the time for him. Twenty minutes of Orion silently kneeling in the puddle of blood collecting around his parent’s bodies. Twenty minutes of listening to Athena filter through her emotions in a rapid fashion rivaling his own. Twenty minutes of waiting for the world to stop spinning or asteroids to fall from the sky or for the bombs to go off. The world had to be ending, right? His parents were dead, one of them taken by Rio’s own hands. How did anything continue to go on after that? How was Rio ever supposed to walk again? Was he expected to go to school? To meet up with Blanche before work or hang out with Ariana and Layla? How could he kiss Winston ever again? Rio couldn’t picture anything besides kneeling on this floor, watching the oven remind him that it had been twenty-two minutes since his life had ended. Twenty-four. Twenty-six.

Thirty-seven minutes later, Rio remembered that moment of clarity when he had taken the knife from Athena. How everything had finally made sense. There were no other alternatives here. If Orion hadn’t done it, his parent’s would have killed them both and continued to take the lives of innocent people. This action had indirectly saved lives. There had been no choice. Only what had to be done. As far as morals had gone, it was the closest Rio had ever come to agreeing with his parents.

As far as he knew, Athena still hadn’t responded. “Athena?” Orion tried again, moving or the first time in thirty-seven minutes to look over at Athena. She was like an entirely different person. Not a single feature seemed recognizable even though nothing physically had changed. But the Athena he was staring at wasn’t the same as any image of his sister that he had seen before. “Athena. We can’t- I don’t know what to do. You’re the one that knows what to do. Please. Tell me what to do. Please.”

Her brother’s words were fuzzy. Just like when they’d gone swimming as children and he’d called out for her when she dove into the water and tried to hold her breath too much because there was a certain thrill that came coupled with being underwater for just too long. Athena sat, arms wrapped around her legs as she stared at the refrigerator. There was a Christmas card on it, one from last year. Their whole family was on it, and Athena could smell the pine needles, could smell the gingerbread that she never wanted too much of but found herself devouring anyway. She could taste it now - burning hot - and she felt the salt from her tears dried against her cheeks. She couldn’t focus. Her parents were dead. Her parents were dead by her own hand. Her parents had wanted to kill her brother for at least three years now and she hadn’t seen that. She kept staring at the photograph on the refrigerator, as if that would make everything better.

She didn’t want them to be alive again. The thought crossed her mind in passing first, before becoming more salient, more solid. Athena didn’t want her parents alive. She found that thought to be overwhelming. She’d never thought of a life without her parents. They were strong, they had made her strong. That was what they were supposed to do. Except they hadn’t. You broke us down and tried to mold us like we were clay or something. Her brother’s voice cut through her thoughts again and she dug her nails into her thighs. She had saved her brother. She was born to better the world, and her brother was the most important person to her. She couldn’t let him die.

She did what she had to do. Athena finally focused in on her brother’s words, unsure of how many times he’d called her so far. She glanced over to him, but she didn’t make eye contact. She wasn’t sure if she could. “I - I’m sorry.” She whispered, voice wavering. Turning away again, gaze intensely focused onto the refrigerator. “I - I can’t, Ri.” Lips barely moving, she couldn’t bring herself to look back at him.

Athena wasn’t fixing this. Why wasn’t she fixing this? That was what she did. What she had always done. Athena always took charge, always knew exactly what to do. When Orion wavered and began panicking, Athena always stood strong and knew exactly what to do. For better or for worse. Even when Rio hated the answers that Athena had to give, at least she gave them. So why was she silent now? He pushed himself up, his legs asleep and wobbling beneath him as he stumbled over to the counter, grabbing onto a towel and wetting them under the sink. He started with himself, scrubbing desperately at the blood that stained his hands. Of course it wouldn’t come off. Why would it? Even dead, he couldn’t escape his parents. After he had done the best he could he moved over towards Athena, crouching down to meet her and gently pressed the wash cloth against her arm in an attempt to begin wiping the blood away. “What do we do then? If you don’t- What am I supposed to do then?” Rio tried asking again, closer to her than he had been since they were children. Both literally and figuratively. And yet, Athena couldn’t make eye contact with him. And the words he spoke seemed to rebound off of her completely as if they had never even been said.

Nothing. If she couldn’t do this, then Orion didn’t stand a chance. Would anybody believe that this was justified? There was so much blood. So much violence. Self defense only took the two so far. People would realize that this went farther than that. If Athena didn’t do something then they had no chance, right? “I’m going to check your stomach, okay? I can smell the blood from when you were pushed down.” Without a reply, Orion took that as an okay and slowly pulled the side of Athena’s shirt up and pressed the soaked, bloody towel against it. As he wiped away the blood an image slowly started to become visible behind the wound. A tattoo? Since when did Athena have one of those? It took another minute before he realized what the tattoo was of. A series of dots symbolizing constellations. Orion. Rio’s arm fell down to his side as he stared at it. It was… simple. Not the usual grandeur that Athena loved so much. It was smaller and tucked away so it wasn’t on view for all to see. It was for herself more than anyone else. Rio had always known that Athena held a weird sense of dedication towards him, but never thought that she had actually cared enough to do something like this. “I uh- I didn’t know you had this.” Rio pushed away from Athena and slid back across the kitchen floor, not stopping until his back ran into the door handle of a kitchen cabinet. He was out of his depth, he knew that much. He had no experience with this and definitely didn’t have the stomach for it. How could he fix something like this? The logical steps flashed in his mind. Clean the mess. Get out of the house. Find an alibi. All of that was easy to say and impossible to accomplish by himself. But he had to try.

For a brief moment, Orion considered the possibility of leaving. Just standing up and walking out. Allowing his sister to handle the fallout by herself. But how long would she stay silent? She would talk eventually. She would feel betrayed. Rio couldn’t risk it coming back to him later. Leaving wasn’t an option, but staying wasn’t either. He had to do something. If he didn’t, both of them were screwed. But he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He needed someone. His body functioned without him, taking control and scrolling through his phone. Of course, he knew exactly who he needed to call. Someone that he could trust and that might understand. Before he had a chance to chicken out, he dialed. “Hello? I- I’m sorry to call so late. I need your help. Please. It’s really bad.”

The more Nicodemus worried, the less he seemed able to sleep. And fuck, was he worried. About everyone and nothing all at once. It was a wonder he hadn’t been paralyzed with it, the way it bunched his shoulders and tensed his jaw. It was worry that had him answering the phone after one ring and a quick glance at the caller ID. “Hey kid.” He had answered and then his voice petered off into silence as he listened. I need your help. He walked out of his room and went for his keys. Please. It’s really bad. Keys in hand, he ran to his truck. Ran towards something rather than away. The hunter cursed the machinery for not going fast enough as he tore over the bridge that connected East End to Harris Island. The smell of copper slammed against him as he stepped towards the darkened home. Manners went to the wayside as he strong-armed the front door open. The smell of blood was thicker in his nose. On his tongue. His brow furrowed as he shook his head.

“Rio?”

Nicodemus called out as he did what he had been raised to do: follow the blood. Right toward the kitchen as the flooring creaked under his weight. Fuck, there was a lot of it. His eyes didn’t linger on the dead. He knew lethality when he saw it and it didn’t take long to put two-and-two together. Those were his parents. His gaze, heavy yet quick with concern, went to the living. He breathed in and out slowly before he went to Rio. His sister was there and there was blood on her too. Wherever she was looking, wherever she stared off to, it didn’t seem to be anywhere in the four walls. “Kid,” he said as softly as his gravel-laden voice could manage. Tentatively, he reached a hand toward him but did not touch him. “I’m gonna help but...the hell happened?”

“I’m in here,” Orion echoed when he heard Nic calling out his name. The scene hadn’t changed since Rio had called him and begged him to come over as quickly as possible. Rio had moved from the puddle of blood that his father had left behind and was instead making new blotches of blood on the floor beneath his stained jeans. He had moved away from Athena who had barely moved from her near comatose state. The image left two dead bodies and then two kids in fetal positions on the kitchen floor trying to do anything but stare at their parents. There was so much blood everywhere. Rio did his best to clean it off of himself and Athena, but there was only so much he was able to accomplish on his own.

Orion’s heart sank at the concerned look on Nic’s face when he got into the kitchen. Getting a genuine look of care and concern was so foreign inside of this house that it was somehow more frightening than the sight of his dead parents just feet from him. “I-” How did he explain this? This was self defense, at least in a way it had been. Maybe it wasn’t completely necessary at the moment, but Rio knew what his parents would have done if given the chance. The only reason that they had even gotten as far as they had was because their parents had underestimated them. “They were going to kill us.” Rio settled on, “We had to stop them and then- and then it was too late to stop and we-” Rio stopped talking so that he could grab onto the counter top and use it to pull himself off the ground and onto his feet. Tears were beginning to stream down his cheeks but he couldn’t do anything to stop them. He just wanted Nic to make things better, maybe a hug or two. But he was covered in blood and didn’t want to get it on Nic too. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to call. I didn’t want to drag anyone into this but I don’t know what to do.”

Blood tracked on the floor like something wounded had passed through. As Nicodemus looked at Orion, he supposed something had. Even surrounded by the smell of copper and death setting in, the stressed furrow between his brow eased as he looked at Rio. Waited for him to talk. It wasn’t something that could be rushed. As the younger hunter talked, the older one fought the urge to say that it was better that they’re dead. It wasn’t what either of the siblings needed to hear and even he knew that, as corrosive as he could be. He went to Rio, a steady hand held out as the young man hefted himself up. There was blood on Rio’s hands, his shirt, everywhere. Nicodemus didn’t pay attention to it as he tentatively rested a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t say that it would be okay or that it was going to be alright. In that bloodied house, it wasn’t right to say. “I gotcha, kid,” was what he said as he gently pulled Rio into a one armed hug. Not long ago, he had been there to assure another of White Crest’s youth that the world hadn’t ended. Nell. He didn’t have a blanket with him this time. When would this fucking town let them rest? “We’ll get this handled, alright? Not goin’ anywhere ‘til we do. Nothin’ to apologize for.”

He let go of Rio and crouched down by Athena. Nicodemus’s voice teetered toward soft as he spoke. “We gotta get rid of the blood. D’you…” His words trailed as he glanced back toward Rio. “Ain’t gonna rush but we gotta get started somewhere. Might as well start with you two. Sound good?”

She could hear voices. One of them was familiar - her brother. She knew that she would recognize his voice anywhere. Maybe it was a twin thing, or maybe it was just the general familiarity that came along with knowing someone for twenty-one years. Athena couldn’t place the other voice. Their parents were dead. She couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t sure if she could even talk, right now. She still had blood on her hands and on her shirt, despite the work that her brother had done. She could feel his steady hand against her ribcage, against her hip. She was supposed to help him. Why couldn’t she?

The back of her throat burned, and she wondered for a moment if she was going to be sick. She was so used to blood - used to anything others must consider macabre. Heck, she’d been perfectly fine in every single biology class she’d taken, and had been more than okay with watching her father perform countless surgeries. Athena couldn’t deal with the red on the floor now. Then the other voice was louder and right by her ear and she felt her hand fly up to her mouth, catching a would-be scream. “I - who - I…” she trailed off again. “Okay. I - it’s so red.” Goodness, what kind of first impression was she making? Could you consider it a necessity to make a good first impression when your parents were dead on the ground? “Yes. It’s important to take things one at a time.” Her voice sounded practically robotic even to her. “I’m - you know who I am, right?” She looked between the man and her brother, not quite making eye contact with either of them. “We have soap by the sink and more in a closet just down the hallway.” She went to go stand up but couldn’t, her legs far too heavy to move. She was supposed to be the one light on her feet, always. “I - can - Ri?” She looked over to her brother, making eye contact for the first time in she didn’t know how long. “You - can you?”

Without Nic here, Orion honestly wasn’t sure he would have been able to do anything. Dragging him into this was not what Rio had wanted at all, but it had felt like a necessary evil. Or maybe that was just selfishness. The part of him that knew what this could mean if the police had found out. The Quinns had been well respected around town. Rio had always been the weird, quiet one. Would it have been that much of a stretch to think that he had snapped one day? Rio had only just finally found a life worth living in. For once, when he was in danger he wasn’t ready to accept his death. He had too many people in his life that he lived for now. He had to try to protect that. Nic was one of those relationships that Rio found so precious. It was only strengthened further by the man’s quick arrival and agreeing to help just based on the small amount of information that Rio was able to relay. When Nic pulled Rio into a hug, Rio wanted to cry. It didn’t matter how the length or size of the hug. It meant everything to him. He couldn’t tell if he was repeating his thanks in his head or if he kept telling Nic thank you on instinct, but it was all that ran through his head.

Athena spoke, a complete sentence for the first time since their mom had died. She wasn’t herself, that much was painfully obvious. Who knew that when worst came to worst, Orion would be the functioning sibling? Of course, this situation was far different from any other that the twins had been through together. “Yeah- yeah of course I’ll grab it.” Rio grabbed for more rags and soap, turning the faucet on and leaving it on as he went back over towards Athena and Nic. “I- uh.. I’m sorry in advance, Nic. It’s not always a pretty sight.” Any hunter that had been working long enough would have their fair share of scars. But any hunter worth their salt would easily be able to tell the difference. Athena’s usual hunter wounds were different than they had been before. Rio could tell when he tried to tend to the hip wound she had. Without Rio there, they had taken out their frustrations elsewhere. Her wounds would be a mixture of battle scars from Fae and other creatures and their parents. Rio’s entire body was a mixture of scars and burns caused by the cruelty of two parents dissatisfied with a child’s behavior. His wrist still stung, but Rio gingerly worked his hoodie up and over his head. The long sleeve shirt beneath was wet from blood soaking through it. After a long moment of internal debate, Rio decided to discard that as well, crossing his arms together afterwards to try to cover as much of his torso as he could. He needed new clothes. Athena did too. But first he needed to keep wiping blood away.

Worry came in at the eyes as Nicodemus looked them over. Wounds and wounding. He knew the two well. And he liked to think he knew Rio well enough to know that he wasn’t big on the latter. As he took soap and rag in hand, the hunter looked at the bodies of their parents. His eyes narrowed and it wasn’t a Christian thought that passed through him. Then again, he hadn’t been much of one for a long time. It didn’t linger long. “Rio,” he said as he looked back. “Ain’t nothin’ to apologize for, kid. You or her.” There was no way to describe Athena other than shell shocked but she seemed to be making do. As much a child could after doing away with their parents. Hunter children had that way about them. Making do with the crosses they were born to bear. Older hunters hadn’t done shit all to fix that.

Cleaning blood wasn’t strange to him and he took to it easily enough, working through the spatters with what could have been a troubling efficiency if he wasn’t numbed to it. “You two weren’t here,” he said as he looked at Rio, then at Athena. He waved his hand and ignored the pink tinge his fingertips took on. “An alibi, alright? Gonna make y’all up one. You weren’t here. That sound okay?” It would have to be, he thought with a grimace.

She could hear their voices but they still barely registered to her. Everything was a haze and her head felt far too heavy for its own good. Her eyes flickered up at the sound of her brother’s name - though the voice was still unfamiliar. How did Ri know all these people she didn’t? Athena brushed her hands against her skin where her hip had hit the table, tracing the growing bruise. She could feel his gaze on her for a moment and she looked up, nodding. They couldn’t be here. She wasn’t involved in the law by any means but she knew enough about it. Knew how to skirt it to some degree, because some people found fondness in the creatures she killed, and if she wasn’t careful she could get into trouble that batting her eyelashes and pouting to the school principal or any number of her teachers wouldn’t get her out of.

“Okay. We were not here. We were - we - Ri doesn’t live here anymore.” She looked at Nic, right in the eyes, looked at her brother too, but she didn’t register the eye contact. “I have friends. I can -” she winced for a moment as her fingertips found a particularly tender spot of skin. Athena took in a shaky breath. “I’ve never had an alibi before.”

Orion wasn’t sure what he would have done with Nic’s help here. He didn’t know how to handle Athena like this. He was pretty sure that she was in a state of shock which was understandable. All things considered, Rio probably should be. Though as the initial shock had begun to wear off Rio had found himself feeling increasingly... normal. If anything, the overwhelming feeling that took hold inside of Rio’s mind was relief. But he wasn’t quite sure how concerned he should be about that yet.

“Right. Alibis are a good idea.” Orion nodded in agreement, already thinking who he could ask. It was crazy thinking about how many people came to mind, and how much had changed since he had lived in this house. He had Nic or Blanche or Winston to fall back to after this. He knew immediately that they would do anything for him, though he hardly wanted to put that stress on them. “It’s going to be okay,” Rio turned towards Athena in an attempt to comfort her, “We’ve had alibis our whole life. Covers for why we had to go home right after school and why we would disappear on weekends. Our twenty-first birthday just ended. It would make sense that you were out somewhere celebrating rather than at the house. Just find someone that you can trust, okay?” Tip swung back towards Nic, “I don’t know what the police are going to think of this. A home invasion, maybe?” Rio crossed his arms in thought as he pondered exactly what this scene looked like, because it looked personal. “In the basement. When police investigate they’re going to realize that my parents aren’t who they said they were. It’s... it’s pretty grim down there. Maybe they’ll think it was revenge?”

Nicodemus had barely ever needed to establish an alibi for himself, let alone for a pair of kids that had just murdered their abusive parents. Murdered. That was a word that had his heart thrumming wildly as he took in deep breaths to calm himself. It wasn’t murder. Self-defense. But he didn’t know how that would fly in White Crest. Rio didn’t deserve to have his life cut short because he protected himself. Neither did Athena. Not when they had severed the blood ties that tried to dictate how they were meant to live. What their lives meant. He met Athena’s eyes but could tell she wasn’t quite looking at him. That was fine. For now, distancing themselves from this however they could would work.

“Your birthdays?” The question came out slow. Uncertain. “Jesus fuckin’ Chri--Sorry, sorry.” Nicodemus didn’t swear in front of Rio. It had gotten easier over the months but with the smell of dead and blood in the air, it was hard. “Neither of you were here because you were out with friends doing birthday stuff like...like kids do. You weren’t here at all and hadn’t been most of the day.” They aren't kids anymore, he thought as he looked at them. They hadn’t been for a long time, he supposed. Childhood had a way of dying the moment your small hand curled around a knife hilt and you were told that death was the way of living. He knew he was a hypocrite to think it. “Can make it look like a home invasion, yeah. Kick the door in, break some stuff. Everyone has enemies. It looks enough like it’s personal.” Violent. Another word for it. A brow lifted as Rio mentioned the basement. “What’s down there?”

She wanted to back away from her brother’s touch, but she couldn’t. He was safe, and she had to believe that. He was all she had, in the end. Athena nodded again. “We’re twenty-one.” They were twenty-one, so why did Athena feel more like a vulnerable child than she’d felt in years? “We - Ri always - we always stay up in the last moments of our birthday together.” She shook her head, still not quite making eye contact. Athena wasn’t entirely sure if she could handle that. Someone she could trust. Her brother was the person she trusted most, but that wouldn’t work. The two of them would be too tied together, were that the case. Ariana. That was the only other option. She couldn’t come looking like this to her sorority house, and she and Ariana had a pact - to always be honest with one another. “I have someone.” She blinked, letting her breath slow down. Looked at her brother and mouthed - Ariana. Just so he would know. Just in case.

“Our parents…” wouldn’t have enemies, she wanted to say. Could Athena realistically say that right now? She wasn’t sure. She wanted to say that they were good, to say that they wanted to do good, and perhaps they had, in a certain way, but she also knew that they had just wanted to kill her and her brother, and had planned to try to kill her brother years before. That much she couldn’t forgive. “Down where?” She shook her head. “It’s - nothing. It's my dad’s - our dad’s workspace. He experimented. It’s - we watched, because it’s important to learn through practice.” She looked over to her brother, making a facsimile of eye-contact. It wasn’t quite there, not yet, but it was more there than it had been.

Athena seemed a million miles away. Orion didn’t know how to feel about that. The two of them were both victims, Rio knew that. But still he had always felt like the black sheep. Like his isolation was somehow worse or lonelier than hers was. But maybe that wasn’t completely the case. Rio didn’t have many friends growing up like Athena, but that meant that he didn’t have people in his life that he had to keep his entire life a secret from. That must have been just as lonely. Tonight, her ramblings seemed to speak to no one in particular. She spoke to Rio and Nic, but her voice drifted off as she said the words. By the end, when she talked about her parents it felt more like the same useless lines they had heard their entire lives rather than an actual explanation. Rio shifted eyes, meeting Nic’s before switching to give a concerned glance at Athena. Maybe Nic could help her get to wherever she was going after this. Rio was pretty confident that he could get back to his house safely and quietly.

Ignoring what she had said, Rio decided to explain himself. “My dad is- er well was a surgeon. He liked to… learn about Fae. Werewolves too, but mostly Fae. He would examine them. Try to find new weaknesses and ways to kill them. It wasn’t pretty. And there’s no way to clean it up. There’s a whole operating theater down there.” Rio didn’t want to clean up their mess. He wanted people to see them for who they actually were. Monsters. “Break some stuff…” Rio’s voice trailed off, imagining ways to sell the home invasion look. “Hold on.” He left the kitchen, sliding around the hall and into the garage, coming back with golf clubs that Athena and his dad would use when they went golfing together. Rio gripped one tightly in his hands, the only part of his body that seemed to feel much stress. Otherwise, he was eerily calm. “Where do we start?”

Athena seemed to be slowly coming back from wherever she had wandered to. Nicodemus thought it best to save any birthday wishes for a later time. Right then, with blood and scars out in the open, it didn’t feel right. None of it did but they were dealing with it as best they could. It is what it fuckin’ is, he thought. “Can get you to ‘em.” He nodded to her. They could figure it out later, when the scene was set and they were making their quick exits. As Rio explained what it was that was in their basement, his expression flattened. He had heard stories of hunters like that, the kind that liked to pick species apart in order to learn. He couldn’t say much. He picked them apart for a profit. So he didn’t say a thing. Not until Rio came back with a golf club in hand.

“Start from the outside in,” Nicodemus said. “I’ll go out, alright? You two can stay in here. Be back in a minute, alright? Ain’t leavin’ you.” The discomfort that filled him when he glanced at Rio and Athena, recalled what he had seen, was immeasurable. It wasn’t kind to wish ill upon the dead but he did and didn’t feel bad about it. Didn’t feel much at all as he wrapped a towel around his hand and opened the back door. The home looked like a home. The idealized kind. The kind that movies and television showed. The furrowed skin between his brows smoothed and he began to break. Quiet as he could but just as harsh.

“No - I can - I can drive.” If she was going to go to Ariana’s house, the very last thing she wanted was to bring another hunter there. As much as he was willing to help Athena and Orion, she didn’t know what kind of hunter he was nor anything else, and she didn’t wish to further compromise him by having him be seen with her outside of the home. “Thank you, though.” She added. It was critical to be polite to those in a position of authority. Her gaze found her parents’ bodies again and she seized up, coughing for a moment before she could refocus. That’s not respectful, a voice in the back of her head, one she didn’t recognize, told her. That’s a scandal. They only cared for you. “They wanted to murder my brother.” She spoke in response, her hand finding her mouth as she did so. That wasn’t supposed to have been spoken aloud.

“Okay.” She pressed her thighs together, the pressure reassuring in its own way. Watched the golf clubs come in, watched the other man pick one up, hand wrapped in a towel. No fingerprints, then. She felt herself jump as the sound of glass permeated the too-quiet air. Athena looked up at her brother, staring at him in much the similar way that she had when they’d been children. “He - how do you know him?”

Orion glanced at Athena when she spoke aloud, seemingly to herself. Everything about her demeanor was making him incredibly nervous. For anyone else, this was a totally normal reaction for someone whose parents had just died. This was the sort of shock and retreat that Rio expected himself to feel if he had ever been forced to take a life. It was how he felt when he had killed that troll. Was something wrong with him that a troll elicited a greater reaction from Rio than two human lives? But Rio knew what Athena was experiencing. That voice inside of her head feeding her self doubt. How did Rio try to fix that? He owed it to her after all, didn’t he? She was in this mess because of him. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe she owed him now. Not that it mattered.

Even though Rio knew it was coming, he still jumped when he heard glass breaking. He breathed a heavy sigh, gently placing his hand on Athena’s shoulder to offer the only amount of comfort he knew how to give. “He saved me once. From a vampire. Since then we stayed in contact.” Nic meant way more than Rio could ever find the words to explain, especially to Athena. How did he explain to her that he had filled the role of a parental figure Rio had so desperately needed to his sister, who had spent her entire life idolizing two people they had just killed? “He’s a really, really good guy. He’s always there for me if I need him. And he’s here to help us.” Rio removed his hand, opting instead to grip tightly onto the gold club with both hands. He moved slowly towards the living room area and shrugged towards Athena, “Here goes nothing I guess.” Then he swung at their television, shattering the screen. But he was far from finished.

He nodded in understanding at Athena. The older hunter didn’t know what reassurances he could offer. Through words, at least. Those troublesome things Nicodemus had always been shit at. So he stuck to what he knew. Silence and breaking. Shattering. The art of leaving nothing behind when the next step was taken. It was the most he could offer the twins, other than his presence. Between it all, he couldn’t help but hear Rio. A good man. He had heard that before. Recently, even. He supposed good men helped cover up murders from time to time. Maybe that was how it worked. The concept of right and wrong was skewed, easily swayed. He went on breaking out the windows that led to the backyard. Broke them inward so the glass spewed out onto the floor. He climbed in and stepped over the pieces carefully. Looked over his handiwork and frowned. With heavy steps, he came to stand by Rio. Glanced over toward Athena.

“You’re...good too,” he said slowly. He took in a heavy breath. He glanced at the bodies again. They were likely starting to go cold. “Even with…” Nicodemus trailed. Shook his head. “You just are. Nobody gets to tell you otherwise. No one can take it away from you.” Their parents had tried to, he reckoned. Wanted them to be something righteous in the way that blood was shed. He frowned. Righteousness didn’t have a place in what they did or what they were. They just were. The way others just were.

She couldn’t help herself - each time she could hear the golf clubs collide with the glass she felt like jumping. She did her very best to avoid that, but the sound reverberated in her ears. This will help, this will turn suspicion away from us - she reminded herself, the mantra hardly reassuring. The sooner Athena got out of all of this, the better. At least Rio had known someone to call. Her mind flashed briefly to Oscar and she felt like she was going to be sick all over again. “He’s here to help.” She repeated. She was going to have to lie to Oscar, because this would be all over the news in no time. She admired him, but what would he think if he knew what she’d just done? He doesn’t know what my parents did to me and my brother, Athena reassured herself. Everything will be okay.

She finally pushed herself up and off the ground, making her way over to the cabinets. Grabbed one of her favorite childhood mugs. Grabbed one of Orion’s, too - ones that they’d used for hot chocolate around holiday times. She threw each of them against the tiled floor, the shattering of china more satisfying that she would have readily liked to admit. Athena, for good measure, grabbed a few other plates and bowls, letting them fall over. “Collateral damage,” she murmured, “just for good measure.”

Breaking things came easily to Orion. Unsurprisingly, it turned out Rio had a lent of pent up anger to take out against the house that he had been raised in. Smashing things came way too easily to him, shattering the glass tv stand and the pictures and plants they had within the living room. It was completely destroyed within minutes, the shattering sounds from the kitchen proving that Athena had been able to help. They would have to do this to everything. They couldn’t leave their rooms untouched, or the basement. It would be a methodical process, but an important one.

When Nic came back in, trying to remind Orion that he was a good person, Rio could only nod. He didn’t feel like a good person, though he rarely did. “Thank you. Seriously, I don’t know how I could possibly repay you. Even if you won’t let me.” Rio smiled at him, a genuine one even if the mood didn’t exactly call for one. “I think we should move my dad’s body to the basement. If people think it’s a revenge plot then it may make sense for him to be down there. I don’t know this isn’t my forte, clearly.” Rio sighed. “Whatever we do. We need to get out of here sooner rather than later. Just to be safe.”

It was surreal watching Orion and Athena take to their childhood home like small storms. How often had Nicodemus thought of doing just the same damn thing? Of ripping through stone and crosses and molded wood like something unrestrained? Every day, he reckoned, if the wind went by just right and the sun was where it should be. One day. Maybe. His own storm might come calling home. The smile he returned to Rio was small. Tired. “Ain’t gotta worry about that right now. I’ll help you get ‘im down there,” he said quietly. “And then we better get. Ain’t tryin’ to rush but…” He glanced down at the bodies before he started to lift up the father. “Been here long enough and y’all ought to get somewhere safe.”

“You - I…” she felt her voice break as Athena heard them discuss moving the bodies. She really was going to be sick. She could count the tiles on the floor. She could feel her rings against her fingers. She avoided thinking about the smell. That wasn’t going to help anyone out. Her gaze found the Christmas photo on the fridge again and she felt a shudder crawl through her whole body. “We need to get somewhere soon. I need to - I have to pack a bag before I go. Not too much. We can’t - people are going to ask questions. We -” She bit her lip, pleading with herself to actually form coherent thoughts. God, what was she going to tell Ariana? She had to tell her the full truth, even though she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to explain any of this. “You - just don’t - be careful with the blood. If too much tracks people can tell that you moved a body.” She could hear her father repeating some of the same words, back when they’d trapped a fae together, the satisfaction and eagerness she had with the knife too much. Be careful, Athena, acting rashly may satisfy in the moment but will only serve those we seek to eradicate in the long run. “The police will search for that. So just - be careful, please?”

Orion nodded at Nic. He was right. The neighbors wouldn’t be awake for a few hours, but they were nosey. If they got up to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom they’d notice the lights on and remember it when the police started showing up. These people gossiped like crazy. Moving to help Nic, Rio heard Athena talk and paused. “Yeah- Good point. You’re right.” He moved towards her and lowered his voice. Not because he didn’t think Nic would be able to hear, clearly he could. But because Athena didn’t look like she could handle any higher volume, “Hey. You should go. Seriously. Nic and I just have a couple more things to do and then we are going to get out of here. Ariana lives farther away than I do. It’s going to take you some time to get there. Okay? We’ll talk later.” That wasn’t a promise so much as it was an unfortunate fact. The two would be called in and questioned by the police once the bodies were discovered. Rio and Athena would be seeing more of each other sooner rather than later. Giving a small wave and nod, Rio turned away from his sister and back to help grab onto his father’s body, already hoisted up by Nic. He avoided looking at his father’s body by studying Nic’s expression. Rio could never repay this man, but he hoped that Nic would still be able to see Rio the same. “Okay uh- let’s wrap up here so we can get out of here.”

#wickedswriting #c orion #c nic #chatzy #finally free #emotional abuse mention #physical abuse mention #// more soft!!!#lora and cody are delights #rio and nic are perfect

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coralsheart · 5 years ago

Text

cigarette smoke and the smell of weed

reading books by philosophers and pretending i know what they mean

fake it til you make it:

i am good, i am great, i am coping;

i love myself, i am hot shit,

am doing better.

staring daggers down at my body too much for that to be true

as if there is something of value to be found there

if they are sharp enough and my hate is vicious enough

i can mold myself into something better

going over all the places i have been

trying to justify

how i can get drunk and be loud and kiss people i shouldn’t

i am never, ever loud

it’s the same every time, really:

poorly stuffed couch i never know quite how to sit in

tissue box i’ll never dare use, motel art i’ve memorized instead of looking her in the eye.

the first time i saw a therapist i was eleven years old

after my father had thrown a plate across the room and smashed a mirror to pieces

i forgot about this the moment i left the building and remembered it today

my mother never left, not once

when i am twelve my therapist tells me that girls in abusive homes go on to mirror their mothers’ choices in partners

so i wonder what kind of legacy i am carrying

already i am starving myself just like momma

i wonder what else becomes of a little girl from a broken home

there are certain things that haunt me

“sickest of the sick” is who gets help

i don’t want recovery and i don’t want my eating disorder

to stay stagnant is to say fuck all possibility , fuck all hope

i try to understand that the universe depends on my existence

try to make that okay

to stay, anyway.

looking so hard for a moment of peace

trying to justify

that moment of peace

UNABLE TO JUSTIFY

that nothing i can ever say will be perfect

diagnostic manuals and notches on tape measures pulling me in with magnetic force,

the sun i have revolved around for too long.

i am sitting under the sun and i am not warm. i need to find something new to worship.

it has been the search for something greater to lean on

that has made me a stranger

to myself

i search endlessly for something to take

or take away

to make it all feel okay

i have longed for somebody to hug me

be a home to me

i never thought to lean on myself

wrap my hands around myself

make a home for myself and come back to it everyday

to find god not in the bottom of a beer bottle or empty stomach or proclamations of sickness,

no trophies reside at rock bottom;

to say,

this is not the hill upon which i will let myself die,

i don’t know where to find it next, something better, but to say,

i will keep searching.

as a child i looked out at the world insatiable and now everything is collapsing inwards,

a masochistic slippery slope that spirals,

smaller smaller small alone in the eye of the needle

i watch my body shrink and grow

i am acutely aware of the workings of my physical being

i forget what has happened to me

nothing outside me is real

i am in the eye of the hurricane and i do not even notice all that i have ever loved flying over my head, expanding, ever outward as i shrink farther and lose them all.

to say I AM GLAD TO BE ALIVE

or, I DON’T WANT TO DIE, NOT NOW, at least,

is to bring your gaze back out,

is to hell with all the times i sat on the bathroom floor and accepted this is the end.

is to flush all your razor blades down the toilet and all the promises they gave.

to justify

all that has happened to you as what has brought you here

to make peace with what is so terrifying:

that you are here

that you are not toilet bowls and bathroom scales

that the sun is hitting my own face and i am allowed to thaw and be warm

to accept the embrace instead of curling away, retreating from all that is good

to hold onto myself,

tight.

#poetry #spilled ink #writing #writers on tumblr #writers #spilled words #prose #spilled thoughts #poem

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thewadapan · 5 years ago

Photo

in the grim darkness of the far future there is only cred

(This is a complete archive of the @Ask_Triton Twitter account created for April Fools’ Day 2020, based on my previous comics “PASS” and “The Beast Within (My Pants)”. A behind-the-scenes commentary is included at the end of the post.)

triton ebooks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

autobot code sparknotes

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

wikihow cred acquisition

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

toyhax insignia stickerfixer

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

wait *hit i thought this was google

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

hi. my names triton. and the great war was the best thing to ever happen to me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

rodimus finally convinced springer to let me join the rockers. rock and roll

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

springer is giving each of us a special nickname. were supposed to call him springax 219.31 alpha. apparently im now tritus 717.25 beta. wonder what he meant by that

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

shut the *uck up road buster

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

roadbuster be quiet challenge

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

triton can have little a cred. as a treat

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

hey whirl do you wanna play im a spy? wait *hit

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

if anyone ever finds out im a decepticon im gonna get *ucking shot. thats cancel culture baby

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

no cred? no thanks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

boy am i glad impactor ate *hit and died. that guy was not *ucking around

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

YEAH uh huh YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

no whirl this is not a poncho you *ucking cyclops

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

starting to think the special rockers assignment springer gave me and whirl was just a clever ruse to get rid of us. like theres no way all of the empties we just shot were decepticon moles

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

when you triton your best but you don't succeed

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

whirl no offense but theres absolutely no way im hitching a ride with you back to autobase. no its not because my arms are too weak to hang onto your landing skids for that long. no see this is your problem youre just *ucking annoying end of story

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

got that sinking feeling again lads. wait no i just forgot to transform before jumping into the sea

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

sky of blue im a green / and a yellow submarine

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

10,000 hics under the sea

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

sometimes underwater. always undercover

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

yeah springer can drive and he can fly but he sure can't bob around the sewers like a piece of *hit can he

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 1, 2020

felt cred might delete later picture cred: @ikkadkarf pic.twitter.com/cQKer3asaW

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 2, 2020

ultra magnus just held a door open for me. his magnusnimity knows no bounds

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

if you think you know where im going with this tweet your wrong but what you were thinking of is probably more good

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

3000 kilograms? yeah thats me. triton

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

you wear a mouthplate just to hide your face and you wear it because you think your cooler than me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

met scattorshot in the hallway. he was like "i never heard of an autobot who was a submarine" and i said "im not" and he said "what" and i said "a submarine". clutch save

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

springer just got back from patrol and says hes finally killed all the decepticons. good thing he doesnt remember that time we got absolutely spannered at maccadams and i got up on a table and start shouting im a decepticon

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

yeah weve all heard of the last autobot but what about the last decepticon. just something to think about

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

actually this reminds me of a funny story about how the word spannered came about. it all started when straxus decided he wanted to cross this body of water. i said id carry him but he just gave me this weird look and said he had a better idea

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

thinking of getting a massive flame painted on my chest. just kidding who do you think i am clodimus prime

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

not MY prime

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 3, 2020

stop talking about me behind my back. im not talking to anyone in particular. dreadwind

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

yeah im going through a bit of a phase right now. phase six

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

its hard being a double agent. its hard and nobody understands

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

sometimes i wish i was a car robot

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

just got tackled by sandstorm. had to scream at him to get him to move his rotor away from my throat. thought it was a funny hat not a deadly weapon. most terrifying experience of my life aside from when computron stepped on me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

im horny

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

bots with no rights: horny people and decepticons. lucky for me two no rights makes a right

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

i have discovered the secret of combiner technology. step one. stand up straight with your shoulders back

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

why wont afterburner combine with me

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 4, 2020

springer is *ucking ugly. who even paints themselves green and yellow. piss off

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

im like dropping hints that im a double agent

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

TR-8N

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

inside you there are two faction symbols. one is an autobot the other is a decepticon. you are triton

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

not faction-swapper! dont like that term. freelance double agent. for certain social remuneration of course

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

hnng megatron im trying to sneak around but the clank of my *ss cheeks keeps alerting springer

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

you think cred is your ally? i was born in cred. molded by it

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

springer put me in the inhibitor harness again

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

sick of being a loser nobody. wish my life could have an issue 0 where i was actually the man of iron all along

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

it isnt easy being green

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

this planet isnt relevant to my interests anymore

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

better dead than no cred

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

just called roadbuster an idiot. back on top

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

im springers oldest enemy but he hates roadbuster more

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

Yo waspinator, is everything allrignt??

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

its like people dont even remember my name

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

sometimes its hard to reconcile the continuity error of my life with the established canon of me being a huge *ucking ledge

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 5, 2020

im the first in a new generation of transformers. introducing the credacons

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

tritons in disguise

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

more ton meets the tri

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

if i hit broadside on the back of the neck hard enough either hell turn back into a boat or just *ucking die. either way i win

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

join the TCC today. Triton's Cred Club

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

got cred?

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

just found out about the beast. damn that *hit sucks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

if i was there with the beast i wouldve stopped it. rip to megatron but im different

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

lol i remember telling megatron i wouldnt go native but look at me now not a single capital letter in sight

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

pictured: me and the other great decepticon leaders beat the *hit out of rodimus prime pic.twitter.com/6ShZrPgV8l

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 6, 2020

for *ucks sake lightspeed stop trying to correct my grammar you mechanical throwback. i know how to use *ucking apostrophe's

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

mucho cred

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

mucho mucho man

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

nosecone keeps asking me to follow his account. at drill or something. what a plonker

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

desperately trying to think of a funny joke to make ultra magnus and the rest of the gang laugh

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

Leader Class Triton With Triton Master Triton

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

excuse me roadbuster who said youre allowed to laugh at my jokes

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

hate how i always have to be triton. sometimes i want to be tritoff

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

topspin and twin twist should legally change their names to blue and white. wait *hit theyre both blue and white *uck *hit i didnt think this through

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

richard starkings stop sending me to voicemail

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 7, 2020

i am triton. the last living decepticon and incognito espionage specialist amongst the autobots. ask me anything

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

Anything?

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

pass

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

hey nosecone ive got a favour to ask. so ive been thinking of getting an upgrade lately. basically what i want is to be able to fly away from this place by means of large quantities of gas expelled at high velocity from my rear. now allow me to explain how you fit into all this https://t.co/Mt9ELmLNLU

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

we get it. you strafe

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 8, 2020

had the nightmare again. the one where springer figures out im a decepticon. i try to use the waterways as an escape route but when i get there broadsides fat *ss is blocking the estuary pic.twitter.com/XMZbkZsYs0

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

squad goals pic.twitter.com/PkI92HCHCn

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

in my dreams im always fighting my new friends. everyones super ripped. oh and impactor is there for no reason pic.twitter.com/Uzl9asiZCY

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

when im staring down the barrel of the gun im *hitting myself and i always thought that was stupid because if you die in the dream then you dont die in real life you just wake up. but now im wondering if thats what im afraid of. having to go back to pretending pic.twitter.com/fEZbfu81nf

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

primus forgive me but its time to go back to the old me pic.twitter.com/hh1vXZO5WS

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 9, 2020

Triton: A Transformers Story

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

few can remember how the war started. fewer still can now make the distinction between good and evil. but everyone will remember this particular day. because this is the day the war ended

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

are you tired of being nice. dont you just want to go *hit

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

all I wanna do is BANG BANG BANG BANG and a *transformation noises* and BRAAAAP

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

first you fard. then you *hid. then

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

cybertronian vandal

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

uh oh! stinky!

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

just saw blurr speedwalking to rodimus primes office at mach 2

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

you are about to enter the courtroom of judge rodimus prime. the bots are real. the cases are real. the rulings are final. this is judge roddy

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

Autobot Leader Gives Road Buster 11,453 Stern Looks

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

first one to talk gets to stay on my planet

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

getting flashbacks to that time unicron attacked. he picked me up between his fingers and vored me. i barely escaped with my cred

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

not on your life. its a fake. total fiction. it didnt happen. not fact. im innocent

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

it could be you. it could be me. it could eVEN BE

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

GHAA!

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

my Rash Action has led to a Fatal Consequence

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

i used to think that my life was a tragic. but now i realise. its a comic

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

now i understand. he who smelt it dealt it. i have been a smelting fool

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

ultra magnus i dont feel so good

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

dont reveal the shield. i said dont

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

the decepticon high command on cybertron have judged this account to be anti-decepticon and the firecons have been despatched to Earth to incinerate all copies. in order to thwart the firecons make sure you fill out your credit card details below

— Ask_Triton (@Ask_Triton)

April 10, 2020

Notes

The Ask Triton tagline, “in the grim darkness of the far future there is only cred”, is the tagline of Warhammer 40,000 except it replaces the word “war” with “cred”.

I’ve got no idea when I started working on this project, except that it was many months ago. I opened a note on my phone and wrote the words “triton ebooks”, and thereafter whenever I thought of a Funny Joke™ I’d crack that bad boy open and slap it in there. I wasn’t entirely sure when or how I’d ever release the material; I could copy my direct inspiration for the account, @prowl_ebooks (and its own ancestor, @Horse_ebooks), by making a bot that’d periodically post a random tweet, but felt like there was some degree of serialisation in what I was writing. Despite the content of its tweets frequently being utterly absurd, and completely at odds with its source material, the genius of prowl_ebooks is that it manages to paint a picture that somehow feels like an accurate reflection of IDW Prowl’s canon self. Seriously, I’ve seen many of the tweets this bot pumps out countless times, and they still crack me up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live up to that, but I had other tricks up my sleeves.

The Autobot Code originated in Simon Furman’s comics for Marvel UK and featured more prominently in James Roberts’ stories for IDW Publishing, where it was presented as a laborious tome of rules. SparkNotes, meanwhile, is a well-known site hosting CliffsNotes-like study guides used by students primarily to avoid having to read assigned literature in full.

wikiHow is an infamous encyclopedia devoted to tutorials, which often feature illustrations using a distinct style and deliver questionable advice.

Toyhax is the company that produces “Reprolabels”, effectively stickers for Transformers figures designed to replace vintage labels or to enhance newer figures (though I personally find the results to be pretty questionable). At one point they sold a product called a “Stickerfixer”, which I think was basically just a pen of glue? Anyway, Triton presumably wants one to (re)apply his fake Autobot insignia.

Google is a popular search engine for the world wide web. Its inclusion on the account was last-minute, and I was uncertain that Triton would actually have any understanding of what Google was, but figured if he was already using Twitter I could stand to show exactly how far I was planning to stretch disbelief from the outset, and that it’d work to explicitly tie together the intent behind the opening salvo of tweets.

Though I couldn’t be bothered tracking down an exact quote, “hi. my names triton. and the great war was the best thing to ever happen to me” was a reference to narration from Netflix’s Daybreak zombie-apocalypse series. I wrote a single paragraph about that series, specifically focused on that line, in an article which probably requires far more context than I’m able to give here. Of course, the general phrasing there is a common enough trope that this probably serves as a reference to any number of things. The halting style of dialogue used in Ask Triton, where full stops are the only form of punctuation, was a product of necessity, but it’s significantly at odds with the run-on-sentences used in the original comic. By my count, this is the fourth piece of media set in the “PASS” universe, but there’s no singular consistent presentation of that canon; every time I’ve revisited it, I’ve extrapolated and reinterpreted aspects of what has come before in ways which simply don’t match the original intent of the work. It’s kinda like the Star Wars expanded universe, where throwaway beats of the source material spin out into entire stories, ones that obviously don’t match the intent of what those beats were implying in the first place.

The Wreckers’ catchphrase is “wreck and rule”. I can’t find the exact tweet, but somebody recently realised that it’s supposed to be a play on “rock and roll”, which blew the minds of me and a whole bunch of other people. Hence, “the rockers”.

Ask Vector Prime explored the concept of “universal streams”, categorised by the multiverse-observing TransTechs using arcane identifiers. Springer’s nicknames are plays on these, substituting “Primax” for “Springax” and “Malgus”/”Iocus” for “Tritus” and encoding the dates 25/07/2017 (the original release date for “PASS” on Summer Meme Sundae) and 31/02/2019 (the date of its rerelease here) as 717.25 and 219.31. Springer uses the last part of the identifier, a Greek letter, to label himself as an “alpha” and Triton as a “beta”.

I’m not sure where it originated, but “x be quiet challenge” is a phrase which people sometimes use on Twitter when they effectively want someone to stop posting for once. I think I was probably introduced to the phrase when someone addressed it to Makin, then-owner of the Homestuck Discord server? Suffice to say, that probably informed its usage against Roadbuster.

“Cats Can Have Little a Salami [...] as a treat” was a Google preview of the article “Can My Cat Eat Salami?”, which became a snowclone on Discord and Twitter.

“I spy” is a famous guessing game where someone picks an object they can see and answers yes/no questions about it until another person is able to identify it. I have not played this game in a very long time.

“Cancel Culture” is a phrase used unironically mostly by assholes, in reference to the practice of “cancelling” problematic individuals in the court of public opinion on social media. I wish somebody had cancelled Triton.

For the life of me I cannot discern what “no cred? no thanks” is a specific reference to - there are probably many words you can substitute “cred” for in order to obtain an existing joke.

The phrase “eat shit and die” is one I enjoy using way too much, mostly in contexts where it’s absolutely unwarranted. What’s that? Someone said hi to me in the street and I didn’t say hi back in time? Well, guess I’ll eat shit and die then.

“YEAH uh huh YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow green and yellow” is just Wiz Khalifa’s “Black And Yellow” only with green instead of black. Somehow I mostly associate this song with its usage in The Lego Batman Movie.

A poncho is a loose bit of fabric worn over the torso. Speaking of Lego, I was probably thinking of the poncho worn by this Mariachi minifigure, which resembles the triangular shape of Triton’s armour more closely than an actual real-world poncho. A cyclops is a one-eyed giant from Greek myth. Look, I know I don’t need to tell you all these things, but I wanted to really drive home just how pointless this venture is.

The “special rockers assignment” was a last-minute addition to the account; the tweets were posted in a completely different order to the one I’d written them in, with many thematically-related tweets collected into threads, and I needed a way to tie together several of the early ones into a clear narrative throughline. The Empties are fuel-starved unaligned Cybertronians from the Marvel comics. I considered having Springer’s ruse claim that they were all Robosmashed, but figured the cartoon reference was kind of at odds with the canon’s source material, and that it’s somehow funnier if Triton legitimately believes all of these robots are incognito like he is for just long enough to murder them all.

I think the goof of Triton substituting his name for vaguely-similar-sounding words references a habit developed by Chang in Community. “When you try your best but you don’t succeed” is the much-memed opening line to Coldplay’s “Fix You”. When I went to get that link, I realised that I do actually quite unironically like that song. Could it be wooorse...

Again, I wanted to make explicit that Triton was returning to Autobase, where the rest of the story would unfold, so Triton refuses Whirl’s help and uses his submarine mode to return home.

Triton’s alt-mode was suggested to be a submarine by Dreadwind in the letters’ pages of the Marvel UK comic. Triton reacts to this piece of Word of God in a later tweet.

“sky of blue im a green / and a yellow submarine” is a rewrite of the lyric “sky of blue sea of green / in our yellow submarine”, from The Beatles’ famous song “Yellow Submarine”.

I substituted the Cybertronian unit of length “hics” (roughly kilometers) into the title of Jules Vernes’ story 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which I only now realise took place 20,000 leagues under the sea, and not 10,000. Perhaps if it wasn’t for my crippling fear of sea monsters, I would be better acquainted with this story. Wait, shit, I told myself I was going to break my crippling tendency to mention my crippling fear of sea monsters!

A common simile used in Homestuck is “like a piece of shit”, hence its inclusion.

The profile picture of the account was cropped from a piece of artwork drawn by my friend Ikkad, who also created the artwork that inspired/was-inspired-by my short story Dendrochronology. He posted it in the TFWiki Discord server on 07/03/2020, and it immediately galvanised me to prepare to launch Ask Triton, but the subsequent mass outbreak of Coronavirus led me to decide to delay the launch until April Fools’ Day. I coloured Ikkad’s lineart using colours taken directly from the scans of the comic, which didn’t result in a perfect match to how it looks in print but is close enough. At Ikkad’s suggestion, I replaced my first attempt using flat shading with a softer paint-like style that better matched the tone of the original comic. For the profile picture, I flipped the image so Triton faces the text of the tweets; I used a version with a blue background (flipped again to accommodate a status indicator) on Discord as a way of promoting the account. I’ve yet to decide whether I want to keep it on a more permanent basis. “felt cute might delete later” (the exact wording varies but I like this one best) is a snowclone usually posted alongside terrible selfies, or alongside bad pictures of fictional characters. Naturally, the tweet including the full artwork wasn’t planned in advance.

Substituting Ultra Magnus’ name into “magnanimity” is another terrible Chang-esque name pun. Ultra Magnus’ old AtoZ profile describes him using the phrase “top-notch geezer”, which was prominently used in a sketch show made by a friend of mine.

The line “if you think you know where im going with this tweet your wrong but what you were thinking of is probably more good” is a rewrite of the final narration box from “PASS”, which reads “believe me if you think you know where im going with this your wrong but what you were thinking of is probably better”. The joke is that you expect the tweet to end with “better”, and not “more good”, except I’m sure literally nobody who saw it remembered the narration box, because why would they? See, the thing about Ask Triton - arguably the crux of the whole thing - is that it exists in a fictional world where "PASS” and its related materials form the whole basis of an entire fandom, one which presumably documents its deep lore in the same exacting detail as we do, and for which the account’s jokes are actually funny.

A “ton” is a unit of weight which varies somewhat but can be basically used as a shorthand for 1,000 kilograms. Hence a “triton” is 3,000 kg. I am very smort.

“you wear a mouthplate just to hide your face and you wear it because you think your cooler than me“ is a minor rewrite of the lines “You got designer shades / Just to hide your face / And you wear them around like you're cooler than me” from Mike Posner’s “Cooler Than Me”. As you can tell, I mixed up the words slightly, moving “wear” forward and using bits of the line “And it's probably 'cause you think you're cooler than me.” from later in the verse. On the one hand, this goes to show that I should’ve done more research (indeed, there were a fair few other misquote flubs like this which I did correct in time for publication), but at the same time for crying out loud why is this paragraph not over yet.

Triton’s implied to be afraid of Scattorshot, whose AtoZ profile described him as the kind of person that says hi by sneaking up behind you and putting you in a headlock - if you’re thinking that’s a little specific, yes, I have had not one, but two friends like this. The word “clutch” is used by Gamers when they pull off something precise; a “clutch save” is usually a difficult last-second move made to win a game.

Maccadam’s Old Oil House, or just Maccadam’s, is the name of a bar on Cybertron which first appeared in Furman’s “Target: 2006″ Marvel UK comic storyline, which introduced the Wreckers. It’s risen to prominence in the 2000s, appearing in multiple stories, with Maccadam himself recently being explicitly revealed to be one of the legendary “thirteen original Transformers”. The tweet which mentions it was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing I wrote to better set up the one which follows it in the thread.

“The Last Autobot” is another some-time member of the Thirteen, introduced by Furman towards the back end of his Marvel run. The phrase “the last Decepticon” crops up multiple times in the original text of “Peace”. The phrase “just something to think about” comes from SCP-2293, which I know entirely due to the fact that my friend jenny in the TFWiki Discord quotes it incessantly. She was the one who asked me to make this commentary, which absolves me of responsibility entirely, because I totally wasn’t already planning on writing it. The form of this very commentary is inspired by her annotations for Ask Vector Prime and TFWiki’s notes sections, which I think plays nicely into the idea of an alternate universe where “PASS” is an official piece of source material and Ask Triton is funny. I also like being able to mix these kinds of thematic tangents into banal observations about bad memes with wild abandon.

Again on a whim, I chose to make explicit the inspiration behind my use of the word “spannered”, an oblique reference to the US comic “The Bridge to Nowhere!”, which revealed that Decepticon Lord High Governor Straxus’ new space bridge was in fact constructed using the still-living body of the unaligned scientist Spanner. This was probably the closest the account ever got to genuine stream-of-consciousness.

Rodimus Prime expresses some level of indecision over his paint job in PASS, which Triton mocks by pretending he’s considering getting a flame painted on his chest. There’s a line in Rodimus Prime’s AtoZ profile which is interesting in light of what we learn in “The Beast Within (My Pants)”, where he’s described as “the oldest AUTOBOT”. I guess he’s the oldest in terms of age, but Optimus Prime’s the real leader? Weird.

#NotMyPresident was a hashtag that got circulated on social media following the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Wow, I regret this sentence. Wow, I regret this project.

Speaking of problematic jokes, the line “yeah im going through a bit of a phase right now” refers to “It’s not a phase mom”, a phrase used to mock kids making life choices perceived as questionable. It’s combined with a reference to Furman’s six-phase “infiltration protocol” from his IDW comics; Phase Six sees the complete annihilation of whatever planet the Decepticons are sneaking around on.

“its hard / being a kid and growwing up / its hard and nobody understands” is a line from Homestuck spoken by Eridan to Kanaya, which gets called back to multiple times later in the comic. This is another case of me misremembering a quote, as I forgot the “and growing up” part. I previously namedropped Eridan in the commentary for “The Beast Within (My Pants)” as the inspiration for my version of Skids, but I think it’s safe to say that he informed my versions of Triton and Grimlock to some subconscious extent.

Car Robots was the Japanese name for the 2001 series Robots in Disguise. The phrase “car robots” itself was used in the opening narration for “PASS”, hence its inclusion.

Triton describes Sandstorm’s propeller as a “funny hat”, in reference to propeller hats. Sandstorm’s characterisation in his AtoZ bio was a play on his The Punisher-like murder spree in IDW’s comics. The incident Triton recalls about getting stepped on by Computron is phrased in reference to this I-guess-meme (the lines between sincerity and insincerity increasingly blurrr) where people say they want their crush to “step on” them. The crude mapping between combiners and relationships began in “The Beast Within (My Pants)”, which slotted surprisingly well into the “restraining order” gag from Computeron’s AtoZ bio (written to make up the numbers for a neat grid of sixteen), and I flipflop between thinking it’s the funniest shit or just thinking it’s legitimately fucking awful, but canon is canon.

Sadly, this theme doesn’t stop there. “im horny” is a terrible innuendo referring to Triton’s horned helmet.

Triton tortures the “two wrongs make a right” fallacy by mixing it with the common refrain “horny people have no rights” (which perhaps originated in this tweet but for fuck’s sake I’m not wasting any more time looking this up).

This continues when Triton claims to have “discovered the secret of combiner technology”, which is a phrase that seems to crop up in various places in 21st-century Transformers comics. It turns out that Triton’s solution is the first of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, “Stand up straight with your shoulders back” (ugh, thanks, Spotify Discover Weekly). Jordan Peterson’s this asshole with a rabid following of straight white guys; my impression is that he uses a lot of overwrought pseudoscience to justify his ideology, but I personally think his twelve rules are actually pretty solid, which seems to be a perfect example of wrong-working-right-answer.

Afterburner’s AtoZ profile written as backmatter to “PASS” described him as “Cybertron’s bicycle”; Triton wonders why he refuses to combine with him and god this is fucking stupid.

“I’m like dropping hints that I’m single / I’m single” is a pair of screenshots from one of Kim Kardashian’s shows, which frequently see the word “single” substituted for various other things.

“TR-8R” was a nickname given to a Stormtrooper that appeared in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, famous for his funny weapon and his loud accusation that one of the protagonists, Finn, is a “traitor!”

“Inside You There Are Two Wolves / One Is Gay / The Other Is Gay / You Are Gay” (the exact wording and concepts used vary) is a snowclone most commonly associated with various images of a black wolf and a white wolf.

“Not bounty-hunter, yes? Don’t like that term, understand? Freelance peacekeeping agent, yes? For certain financial remuneration, of course” is dialogue spoken by Simon Furman’s character Death’s Head in his sort-of-debut appearance in issue #113 of the Marvel UK comics.

“Hrrrrnnggh Colonel, I’m trying to sneak around but I’m dummy thicc and the clap from my ass cheeks keeps alerting the guards” was a tweet written from the perspective of Metal Gear character Solid Snake which turned into a snowclone and got so big that the actual voice actor for the character did a dramatic reading of it.

“Oh, you think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, moulded by it” is famous dialogue from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

The “inhibitor harness” is a piece of technology namedropped in Nick Roche’s Last Stand of the Wreckers, used to restrain Triton and the rest of Squadron X. It was itself a reference to the inhibitor claw and inhibitor band from Furman’s Marvel UK comics; I chose “harness” both because of its explicit connection to Triton and because it’s a funnier word.

In Simon Furman’s Transformers ‘84 issue #0, a prequel to the Marvel comics, he made a number of retcons, one of which revealed the identity of iconic Marvel UK character “the man of iron” to really have been the character Fastlane, who wasn’t conceptualised until 1987.

“It’s not easy being green” is a famous song sung by Kermit the Frog.

“This chat isn't relevant to my interests any more.” is the rare quote used in Ask Triton which comes from a completely arcane source, being the punchline to an anecdote someone told in the Worth the Candle Discord server. The channel where it was told is currently archived and inaccessible, but it centered around somebody leaving a group chat of friends in spectacular fashion, something I thought was apt considering the events of “PASS”. Anyway, I guess this is my excuse to tell you to go read Worth the Candle, as is obligatory of me.

“Back on top” is the punchline to a series of Limmy’s Show sketches.

One of the handful of replies received by Ask Triton over the course of its run simply read “Yo waspinator, is everything allrignt??” Suffice to say I was pretty baffled by this, as I’ve legitimately got no idea at what point my own profile picture got presented to that person, or whether they just genuinely mistook Triton for him.

The Maximals and Predacons of Beast Wars have occasionally been described as a “new generation” of Transformers, though I didn’t track down any kind of exact quote.

Robots in Disguise and More than Meets the Eye were the two famous ongoings launched by IDW Publishing in 2012, written by John Barber and James Roberts respectively.

One minor plot beat in More than Meets the Eye revolved around the notion that if you hit a Cybertronian in a certain spot, they’ll transform involuntarily. Broadside was noted in his “PASS” AtoZ profile to have transformed very rarely, causing great inconvenience in the process.

“TCC” is an acronym for “Transformers Collectors’ Club”, a fan club run by Fun Publications from 2005-2016, the logo for which was frequently placed on Transformers packaging.

“Just found out about racism...damn that shit sucks...” was a Tweet that turned into a snowclone.

The same goes for “if i was at chernobyl i wouldv stopped it / rip to ur gradma but im different”.

The Decepticons (and Roadbuster (hmm)) all speak with proper punctuation and capital letters; a minor retcon implies that Triton used to speak this way but lost his “accent” over time.

The image of the Decepticons surrounding Highbrow and Rodimus Prime is Dan Reed and John Burns’ inside cover artwork for the 1989 Annual which included Peace; the characters in the image are drawn from that book’s comic strips. I like the way Triton implies that frikkin’ Apeface, Snapdragon and Mindwipe are “great Decepticon leaders”.

Lightspeed's AtoZ bio (like Nosecone’s) is based around an inversion of the Technobots’ typical characterisation as being generally intelligent, claiming “A broken clock is right twice a day. LIGHTSPEED wishes he could be that clock.” This implies that he’s wrong about everything, but I thought it’d be funny if the one time we hear about him doing anything he’s actually right, i.e. he’s right once a day.

As mentioned in the commentary for “PASS”, “mucho cred” is a meme phrase amongst readers of the superhero web serial Worm, which I strongly recommend but not as much as Worth the Candle.

“Macho macho man” is a phrase from “Macho Man” by Village People, which I only now realise actually already included the phrase “mucho” a bunch. I only wrote the tweet referencing it off-the-cuff, thinking the phrase “mucho cred” wasn’t quite funny enough in a vacuum.

At a certain point, I decided I wanted to namedrop every single character that appeared in “PASS”, so in a Man-of-Iron-like twist, noted idiot Nosecone is implied to be behind the famous twitter account @dril.

The line “desperately trying to think of a funny joke to make ultra magnus and the rest of the gang laugh” came to me at some point while I was sitting staring at the note on my phone. In a way, it’s a mission statement for Ask Triton. I don’t think “PASS” was ever written with the metaphor of social media in mind - it was instead a story about pointless tragedy, and of giving up too much in pursuit of some fantasy ideal of social standing. In retrospect, I most strongly see it as a story about... falling out with people, of the disconnect between the things people say and the things people think, and the breaking points where people start saying “actually, I’ve always hated you.” At the same time, however, it’s kinda just a funny joke comic, one that didn’t have a complete clarity of purpose at the point of its creation, so sometimes I wonder if by talking about it in these terms I’m acting against the spirit of the thing. Regardless, Triton is the perfect character for telling a story on social media, as he’s all about facades and the hit of dopamine that comes when someone smashes the mfing cred button.

“Leader Class Triton With Triton Master Triton” is written like the kinds of online solicits we got for Titans Return, where each figure included a “Titan Master”.

I’m not sure this entirely needs explaining, as it’s not really a reference, but the idea of a person being “always on” usually implies that they’re putting on a persona of some kind, most often by trying too hard to make everything they say funny.

The interchangeability of Topspin and Twin Twist formed the basis of their shared AtoZ profile. Seriously, the name “Topspin” is so dumb, he’s not a frikkin’ helicopter!

Richard Starkings wrote “Peace” under the pseudonym “Richard Alan”. He’s most famous for founding Comicraft, the first major computer-lettering company. I have not attempted to contact Richard Starkings in any capacity. Please do not tell him I exist.

I knew going into Ask Triton that it needed something else going for it, as it was both derivative of prowl_ebooks and less funny than it, and so drew inspiration from the one bit of official Transformers fiction to significantly use social media: namely, Ask Vector Prime. I predicted that I wouldn’t get much in the way of interaction, because I never do, but figured I could pitch Ask Triton directly down the middle and lean more towards “roleplay ask blog” or “shitpost bot”, depending on which way the wind blew. My friend gearshift observed towards the end of its run that “if it was meant to involve external engagement like AVP like the name suggests rather than just being something fun to look at, the format of him rattling off to himself 99% of the time makes it a little difficult to know where to step in and interact”, which I think was spot on. As one last-ditch attempt to solicit interaction before heading into the story’s finale, Triton reintroduces himself by saying “ask me anything” in a way that’s probably most famous nowadays via the r/IAmA subreddit. I took quiet pleasure in drawing a comparison between those threads and Ask Vector Prime.

Sure enough, only one question came in, simply asking “Anything?”. This was brushed off with the reply “pass”, in reference to the title of the comic, a goof that became even funnier to me as it became clear that no more questions were incoming.

To my surprise, gearshift sent me something that completely blew me away - a digibash of Earthrise Blast Master as Triton. To hear her tell it, she’d just picked out a recent figure that was “adjacent” to a submarine, but I immediately drew more connections that formed the basis of the eventual tweet. She sent me four different variations on the colour scheme: one “perfect” deco to match Triton’s colours in the comics, two different decos that’d require about the level of paint complexity of Siege Rung (above average for a retail toy), and finally one deco that seemed realistic for what could be achieved on a retail budget. We agreed that the last one was the best, but I bumped the saturation waaay up on it to better match the inks used in the comic (the digital scans don’t do it justice, the printing in the annual is stupidly saturated).

“We get it, you vape” (perhaps more commonly “We get it, you smoke weed”) is a snowclone posted alongside images containing smoke of any kind. It mostly serves to mock people who are perceived to have no character traits beyond vaping (for an astonishing examination of this archetype, check out the ongoing serial masterpiece Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation). Strafe’s AtoZ profile states that his only character trait is loudly broadcasting the fact that he can fly.

Again in reference to his AtoZ profile, Broadside ends up blocking a route. (In response to the tweet in question, one of my friends who goes by the name Broadside remarked “i do indeed have a”, which made me laugh.) The thread continuing from that tweet was written when I realised I had an opportunity to drill down a little deeper into Triton’s character, and to incorporate the handful of pieces of official art depicting him; the first is Andrew Griffith’s cover to Sins of the Wreckers #2, while the rest are Nick Roche illustrations inked by Griffith. All of these pieces are coloured by Josh Burcham, lending them a nice consistent tone for the dream sequence.

“Squad goals” is a phrase posted alongside images of people that the poster’s group aspires towards. By posting it alongside an image of Squadron X, Triton expresses that he wishes his current friends were more like his old ones.

“You die in the dream/game, you die in real life” is a conceit used across countless stories by this point. The word “pretending” was chosen as an oblique reference to Pretender technology; Triton isn’t a Pretender, but hey ho, I just thought it fit.

“Lord Forgive Me But It’s Time To Go Back To Tha Old Me” is a snowclone mostly posted alongside edgy pictures of cartoon characters. Triton’s referring to his time as a Decepticon, but the accompanying image shows him as a corpse, bluntly foreshadowing his death. Evidently, this thread landed; a friend of mine remarked “Jesus wads that bit about dreams was grim / Poor Triton :(”

I could’ve sworn that Bumblebee was referred to as Bumblebee: A Transformers Story at some point, but I’m probably just mixing it up with the likes of Solo: A Star Wars Story. EDIT: Locoman informs me that the movie was at one point called Transformers Universe: Bumblebee, which is definitely what I was thinking of.

Narration from “Peace” was added last-minute practically verbatim purely as a way of making up the numbers: “few can remember how the war started. fewer still can now make the distinction between good and evil. but everyone will remember this particular day. because this is the day the war ended“. I could probably have changed this into a joke but I figured the melodrama that comes with taking it into this context was enough of a joke as it was. Sue me. (Richard Starkings, please don’t sue me.)

“Are you tired of being Nice? Don’t you just want to go ape shitt” is a famous Yahoo! Answers post. Naturally, Triton’s most interested in the very last part of that sentence. This was another last-minute addition.

“All I wanna do is-*BANG BANG BANG BANG*-and a-*cash register noises*-and take your money” is the chorus line from M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”. “Brap” is onomatopoeia for a fart, used in shitposts.

I refuse to explain what shidding and farding is. Fuck you. God, this was in such poor fucking taste. What the hell was I thinking.

The second season of American Vandal centered around somebody putting a powerful laxative in a school cafeteria’s lemonade. I actually genuinely recommend this show, it’s got a lot going on.

As proof that I was legitimately getting tired of the poop jokes, the phrase “uh oh! stinky!” was used, referring to this one gross-ass video making fun of the style of humour.

Blurr’s AtoZ profile was the hardest to write, because he’s got a couple of lines in “PASS” (hence I couldn’t invent characterisation whole-cloth) but doesn’t have anything in the way of personality beyond his use of the word “ayy”. In retrospect, I guess his characterisation ended up being based on Gamzee from Homestuck, this creepy stoner. History repeated itself when it came to writing Ask Triton, as I realised I’d namedropped every character except Strafe and him. I was barely able to sneak him in under the wire; I considered having some Shattered Glass-style joke about him being really slow, but ended up deciding that the phrase “speedwalking [...] at mach 2″ (twice the speed of sound) was funny enough to carry a tweet.

The introduction to reality TV show Judge Judy goes “You are about to enter the courtroom of Judge Judith Sheindlin. The people are real. The cases are real. The rulings are final. This is Judge Judy.” Its inclusion was an oblique nod to another time I’ve used it, in a Transformers non-fiction work which might see release soonish, but this is definitely one of the weakest jokes on the account, written for the sake of numbersNUMBERS.

The video which introduced me to YouTube comedian Gus Johnson was titled “Man Gives His Cat 11,453 Stern Looks”. Another late reference which I found by going into my playlist of random videos to use in community streams.

Having forgotten I’d already referenced the movie, “First one to talk gets to stay on my aircraft” is a line from the infamous opening scene to The Dark Knight Rises. I made a comic adaptation of that scene using Marvel’s terrible Create Your Own editor, which is kind of an inversion of “PASS” in that it keeps the text of a story but substitutes the visuals. I’d previously used that editor to create the original Spider-Man comic Everything Is Red Now.

I just saw the word “vored” in here, so it looks like I’m going to have to plead the fifth again. Let’s talk about Unicron instead. Unicron is an Orson-Welles voiced character from The Transformers: The Movie, who appears in Worth the Can- WON’T SOMEBODY MAKE ME STOP?

“Not on your life. It’s a fake. Total fiction. It didn’t happen. Not fact. I’m innocent.” is from the Kevin James/Neil Cicierega video “Beyond Believability: FACT or False”, which parodies the Johnathan Frakes reality show Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction.

“It could be you. It could be me. It could EVEN BE-” is an iconic line (but then again, which of these lines aren’t iconic?) from the Team Fortress 2 short “Meet the Spy”. This foreshadows Triton’s imminent death.

“GHAA!” is Triton’s parting word in both “Peace” and “PASS”, a rare bit of text to go completely unchanged in my version.

In the supplementary material for Nick Roche’s Last Stand of the Wreckers, the Rash Action and Fatal Consequence were two different ships aboard which Triton was second-in-command.

“I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realise it’s a comedy” is a line from the infamous movie JOKER, featured prominently in its teaser trailer.

“He who smelt it dealt it” is a textbook response to somebody calling attention to a fart. “The Smelting Pool!” was the Marvel issue, featuring a torture device of the same name, that led into the aforementioned story “The Bridge to Nowhere!” Like “Peace”, it’s a Marvel story prominently known for introducing and killing a comic-only character.

“Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good” is an iconic line spoken by Peter Parker at the end of Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War.

Reveal the Shield was a subtitle used for a Transformers toyline back in 2010, which referred to the heat-activated rubsign insignias of the toys (the gimmick being that you supposedly wouldn’t know which side the toy was on until you took it out of the package and got your grubby fingers on it).

The first page of the 1989 Annual begins “The Decepticon high command on Cybertron have judged this Annual to be anti-Decepticon, and the Firecons - Sparkstalker, Cindersaur and Flamefeather - have been despatched to Earth to incinerate all copies. In order to thwart the Firecons and protect your Annual, make sure you fill out the special Autobot citizenship card, below, with your name and address. The Firecons will only dare to attack Annuals if they are sure the owner is not under Autobot protection. This card could save your annual...” This page left quite the impression on me as a child, and (to what I can’t decide is my shame or my pride) I did in fact take a pen and fill out the card in my copy.

Towards the end of this project, I realised that there’s a certain symmetry between Ask Triton and the very origins of “PASS”, in an old meme page I once ran. Effectively nobody followed that page, and it was mostly me shouting into the void; like Ask Triton, many of the posts consisted of things which resembled jokes, where all the individual pieces fit together in some logical (if impenetrable) fashion, but when taken in aggregate none of them were really funny. Like Ask Triton, it turned into an attempt to tell a story using a medium utterly unsuited to storytelling. This time around, I think I succeeded, even if the story being told is one that already existed. Ask Triton consisted of 111 tweets. If I ever finish and release the epilogue for my old meme page, it’ll consist of 111 posts.

“PASS” has made the rounds on Twitter twice now, and each time the response has astonished me. On a pure numbers level, it’s nothing, but the people who share it around seem to derive so much joy from it. I made a handful of print versions for the comic to give out at TFNation 2019, and everyone there seemed to love it, so if TFNation 2020 goes ahead (god, I hope it does) I’ll make sure to print off some more. It’s something that’s torn me in two directions, where I want more people to see it, so they can get something out of it, but I also don’t want to run it into the dirt. As such, this ended up being one of the rare projects of mine nowadays not to receive any prereading (aside from a couple of the conventionally-funniest jokes being sent off to close IRL friends, to their amusement/bemusement), in the hopes that the whole thing would be a pleasant surprise rather than an uncertain slog, and I think that decision paid off.

In the TFWiki server, phrases like “shot on the spot for being a don” crop up frequently, with a handful of emoji cropped from the comic seeing a lot of use. It’s weird to be confronted with your own work so often, especially when that work was something that you threw together in an afternoon back in 2017, before you’d even started interacting properly with online Transformers fandom. At the same time, it’s nice to feel like one of the things I made genuinely mattered to people, at least ones who don’t know me.

If you’ve made it to the end of this notes section, then I’m sorry, but someone with as much cred as you simply cannot be allowed to live. Report to the TFWiki Discord server for your immediate execution.

#Transformers #Marvel #Ask Triton #PASS #Triton #The Wadapan #10/04/2020

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dew-line · 5 years ago

Text

Life, death, and rebirth – developing and redeveloping a personality on a progressing timeline

So. I had a little fun today. The last task on the psychology course was to write an essay on personality development based(ish) on Mischels theories about personality development. The guidelines were a tad loose, and I choose to run with it. The text below is what I submitted, hopefully I’ll get som feedback on it tomorrow or in a few days and I’ll keep you posted on that. :D //Jimmy How does one begin to describe, in any relatable fashion, the development of one’s personality, especially as it is a work of perpetual process? One must, I assume, begin at the beginning: I was born. Then there was nothing until I developed a basic sense of self awareness and the ability to define myself in relation to other people and objects. In that very moment I created the world; but you may rest easy, for I am a humble god. Especially so since I stopped demanding the immediate satisfaction of my basic needs and allowed myself to be shaped into this present form by the mold created by my parents and by society; by boundaries drawn by cultural and linguistic traits Thus, like the Christian God I was made flesh and blood – now writing before you as this maculate conception, ever learning as I progressed over the years, constantly striving to fill out this rudimentary sketch of “me” drawn by my parents with ever more content and subject matter. I learnt of poetry and philosophy – the power of word and thought, and thus, in my late teens, I entered a new phase. Let it begin with these words from the gospel [abridged] of St. Charles the Inebriated.

”Born like this

Into this

Into these carefully mad wars

Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness

Into bars where people no longer speak to each other

Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

Born into this

Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die

Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty

Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed

Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

Born into this

Walking and living through this

Dying because of this

Muted because of this

Castrated

Debauched

Disinherited

Because of this

Fooled by this

Used by this

Pissed on by this

Made crazy and sick by this

Made violent

Made inhuman

By this

[…]”

Charles Bukowski – ”Dinosauria, We”.

Now, I may not have turned out quite as bitter and fatalistic as the aged Bukowski, but I do confess to a certain faiblesse for the absurd, in Camus’s use of the term, that existence is without meaning and purpose, and that beauty lies in –the absurd– meeting between this knowledge and continuing to striving too, despite this knowledge, fill life with love, beauty and personal meaning.

I was born into a classical working class home at 09:28, December 25th 1974, the first child of a young mother and an alcoholic and controlling father; two parents that had the unusually common sense for their time to realise that they should not be together, and thus early becoming a child of separation – my parents were not married. I was doomed to the life of bi-weekend migrations between families – as this was long before the enlightened era where parents manage to handle child care in an adult fashion and share the weeks equally – a conduct that, in my case, created a feeling or rootlessness and a sense of drifting rather than establishing solid connections within either family – my mother and my father’s new families respectively. This rootlessness in turn created the foundation of a lifelong fear of abandonment and also of a shyness that manifested itself in an extroverted way – acting like the class clown, hiding emotions behind first erratic behavior and later, as I grew older and developed an arsenal of wit and amassed at least a modicum of knowledge – in early attempts at humor. I also developed the foundation of a contrarian mindset that is still present to this day. I despise the consensus – mainly because a consensus promotes a lack of progress and a lack of progress is the base definition of death. However, when I was a child the main reason for causing disruption, even if I was not aware of it at the time, was that it is easier to hide where there is disorder. Being judged by one’s behavior was far more preferable to being judged on who I actually was.

It was at this age, around the age of seven or eight, that I came to the conclusion that religion was not the answer. Being introduced to a light version of Christianity in an after-school setting, being taught the core concepts of the New Testament, I promptly told the teacher that it was nonsense and, if I recall correctly, was not invited back for the second semester. Much to my mother’s dismay, I presume. By this time, we had left Uppsala and moved out into the countryside, a move that lead to an increased isolation on my behalf – this suited me perfectly as my main interests, especially as I started fourth grade, turned into literature and music. My mother had always read out loud for us when we were little, and I have always had a strong imagination – making the immersion into literature both smooth and welcome. Music also became an important present at this early age – literature and music has followed me ever since. The main part of the eighties was spent in my room reading and listening to music.

What beautiful time it was.

Reading has had a huge impact on the forming of the person that I am today. All adults that I was surrounded by, in a formative sense – part from teachers – lacked any higher education and we did not really discuss much at, particularly not on my mother’s side, where I spent most of my time. My father, on the other hand – and this is based on long term memories, I cannot vouch for the validity of these memories as I have not spoken to the man in over 20 years – had a creative side – he tried to keep up to date, enjoyed certain intellectual activities. And whisky. And to listen to music. And whisky. And occasionally to beat his kids. Personally, I can’t remember to have ever being beaten by him, that seem to have developed later. My two brothers on my father’s side got to take the brunt of it as I can remember, however – he also had a knack for the words and was happy to share his opinions on how useless we were. That one has stuck with me. As I grew up and became older, and also stronger, this abuse increasingly became a greater and greater problem for me – culminating in me eventually starting to step between my father and my younger siblings when he got ”into the mood”. Eventually, however, I came to the point where I could not keep doing this and as I neared adulthood the relationship with my father and also my father’s side of the family slowly ebbed out. Initially, and for some years I felt that I had let my siblings to fend for themselves, but that feeling is long since passed. I have processed this, and I have moved on. It had to be done.

I once asked my mother why they did not put any pressure on us when we were younger. Why they never pushed us to do better in school or had any opinions on what we choose to study in high school. The answer was that they wanted to let us choose for ourselves, that we should study what we wanted. The guidance counselor, I remember, told me to look find a job in a warehouse. Packing vegetables at the COOP. The direct result of that was that I ended up studying for two years to become a bricklayer. I had no ambitions. I choose what I knew, since my stepfather and my father both worked in construction. I should not have been there. My only proper skills after being through the Swedish school system in the 80’s and early 90’s was a decent grasp of English. There were no jobs for me in construction, nor would I have been interested if there were any. If change was to come it was not through family, the school system or anything else. It was through me.

Looking back, however, it is interesting to see how much my life has been formed from the experiences of these formative years. I have no friends or acquaintances from before I started studying at university for the first time in 1998. Non whatsoever. I was social, I had friends – but I have never been sentimental – and I would rather let friendships run out from time or distance. No strong ties, no risk for emotional trauma. One might say that I started to reconstruct my life in my early twenties, I got into a new profession, I applied and got accepted into Grythyttan, Sweden’s premier hospitality industry education, a higher education under the management of the university of Örebro. This pretty much meant everything. Getting away from Uppsala and then – by the slight detour of three years in Grythyttan – to Stockholm meant everything. There is a reason why the Stockholm tends to draw people to it: the chance to rebuild yourself, to turn you into the person you want to be, to let yourself take center stage, if you will. Those were the formative years. They were great years. Working in the restaurant business in Stockholm in the early 2000’s was a smorgasbord of hedonism; food, wine, spirits, drugs. The sky was the limit. What a time to be young. And had not an underlying feeling that there must be more to life kept on nagging me I’d probably still be there today, standing on the brink of being a burned out wreck – but instead I got out, I diversified and got into wine import, into copywriting, photography – always searching; and I think that I am finally starting to get an idea.

I woke up one morning in December 2018, taking stock of my life. What I had done, where I had been, where I was and what I wanted to do. The same day I applied for a late admission course at Södertörn and started studying the very next month. I am very curious to see where I will end up.

#the DEW line #psychology #mischel #essay #forfunsies

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ratjamtime · 5 years ago

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Day 1: Magic

When Sonic was younger, the idea of a soulmate grossed him out. He was 5! He didn’t wanna get married! That was for Sonia, who eagerly awaited to get her first soulmate dream at thirteen.

Sonic and Manic snickered at Sonia’s lovesick sighs and doodles of lovesick fantasies.

Sonic laughed until there was no one there to laugh with or at.

And then all thoughts of a soulmate were momentarily lost in a blur of childish fury. It’s a bit embarrassing to remember, running and crying and just generally being a wreck. Then again, he was just six.

It wasn’t until Sonic was twelve and an older brother that he remembered it.

A soulmate! What exactly did that entail with his lifestyle? Could he even afford a soulmate? He had enough issues with Tails as is. Sonic wasn’t sure if he could handle more people he cared about getting kidnapped, he was already getting grey quills from Tails!

On the other hand, maybe it’d be fine. It’d be nice to have more people around. People who wouldn’t think he looked weird or that Tails was a freak or anything like that.

It was a common reaction on Christmas Island and the islands around it. So far from the mainland, normally common mutations were few and in between and looked down upon.

It hadn’t been easy being one of three on Christmas Island. It hadn’t been easy being one so hard to get along with. It’s why he had snatched up Tails, young age and personal bad attitude withstanding. It was why he was excited to meet his soulmate.

A soulmate could change that. Who cared about romantic attention, he just wanted a friend. He just wanted someone to care about him and worry about Tails with him. He didn’t care if it was romantic or otherwise.

He was getting real sick and tired of taking care of himself and Tails alone.

“But Sooooonic! I don’t wanna go to bed!” Tails whined as Sonic tucked him into the tree, wriggling like a worm. “I wanna stay up and see your soulmate!”

Sonic chuckled, forcing the two tailed 6 year old into the hollow.

“Buddy, that’s not how that works. I’m gonna meet them in my dreams. Unless you’re a mind reader, staying up won’t let you met them sooner. Look, if things go well, we’ll plan a meeting as soon as possible. But I gotta meet 'em first."

Tails pouted but relented to that knowledge, curling up in the tree hollow.

"Hurry up and go to sleep then!" Tails cried out, pushing Sonic away. Sonic chuckled.

"Okay, okay, just remember as long as I'm asleep…"

"I stay in the knot hole!"

Sonic nodded and climbed up the tree, getting comfy on one of the branches.

It didn't take long to fall asleep and to slip into a dream. Geez, his soulmate bond was just as impatient as Sonic was.

The world looked hazy, as if he was standing in a cloud. Green eyes scanned the area, looking around for another figure.

Than there they were.

He couldn't see them clearly, their form a strange blobby shape.

"H-Hey!" Sonic said, raising a hand in greeting, anxiety coming through his voice. "I'm Ogilvie Maurice Hedgehog, but my friends call me-"

His soulmate backed away, shaking their head vigorously. Sonic felt a chill shiver down his back. He stepped forward towards them.

They backed up, shaking their head harder.

"....No! …..Soulmate…..monster! A monster!" Sonic couldn't hear his soulmate well but the few words he heard felt like a jab in the heart. Were they talking about him? M-Maybe he misheard?

They turned and ran.

"Wait-!"

Sonic woke up at 4 am with an ache in his chest.

His soulmate didn't want him.

Elise realized with horror that as soon as she hit the pillow, the world grew fuzzy and she knew she was having her first soulmate dream.

No! She wasn't ready! She didn't have a speech prepared or anything!

Elise wasn't ready to reject her soulmate yet!

When she was young, a soulmate was all she thought about, notebooks full of plans for when she met the one.

Then her mother died.

Then her father died too.

Than she learned why exactly she wasn't allowed to cry.

Than she realized her soulmate would pulled into the biggest mess this side of the mainland.

Elise had determined that no one, no one, would be forced to deal with her mess. Not even her soulmate.

Elise turned and there they were, as foggy and as vague as the rest of the landscape. She vaguely noticed they were blue. Probably a mobian.

They seemed to be saying something to her, a name maybe? Anyway, Elise shook her head, backing away.

She could do this. She could save them from herself.

They froze before following after her, hand outstretched. Elise shook her head violently.

"No! I can't be your Soulmate, I'm a monster! A monster!"

Her soulmate froze again and Elise couldn't stand to be there anymore. She turned and ran.

Elise woke up in her bed, a heat in her chest and tears in her eyes. She wiped them away before they could fall.

She did it. She saved her soulmate.

She couldn't cry.

She wouldn't cry.

So Elise pressed her face in the pillow and screamed.

"Sonic, if I may ask, do you have a soulmate?" Elise questioned the hedgehog, fiddling with lace gloves. Sonic froze, fingerless gloves going up to tug anxiously at his scarf.

"Uh, why do you ask, Princess?" Sonic questioned, a blush in his cheeks.

"I-" Elise hesitated, chewing her lip. "I need your advice."

Oh.

"Ah, I see!" Sonic said, smiling up at her, trying not to let the hurt show. "Finally had your dream?"

"Well ...no."

"Huh?"

"It's…complicated. It's why I wished to speak with you." Elise admitted, looking away nervously. "I had my dream when I was 13. I was afraid that I'd ruin their life with my existence so I ran away."

Sonic frowned, placing a gentle hand on top of hers.

"Elise….."

She smiled in gratitude at his support and continued onward.

"I understand now that was a mistake and I wish to repair the relationship that I fear I ruined. But…" Elise blushed. "I am already in love with someone else and do not know how to rebuild this lost bond and keep my heart for the one I already love."

"Elise, not every soulmate bond is romantic. If they can't respect your feelings, they don't deserve you." Sonic told her sternly, holding her single hand in two of his. "Please understand that."

Elise smiled and nodded.

The silence between them was comfortable for a moment.

"You never answered my question." Elise said suddenly, turning her head back towards him.

"I…" Sonic hesitated. "I kinda blew any chance of anything with my soulmate. They didn't…"

Admit it, Sonic, just say it, Sonic thought furiously at himself.

"They didn't want me."

Elise gasped.

"What?! How horrible! Are you certain?!"

"Yeah," Sonic nodded. "I'm certain. They-they called me a monster. They couldn't even see me, didn't even know me and they already hated me."

He laughed dryly, a sarcastic grin on his face.

"Crazy, right? I didn't even care if it was romantic or platonic, I just wanted someone to have by my side. Someone who would love Tails and laugh at my jokes. I didn't care who. And they didn't care. They- they-"

Elise's hand brushed something wet off of Sonic's cheek and he suddenly realized he was crying.

Elise looked at him with a look of sympathy.

"Oh, Sonic….."

"I'm sorry," Sonic sniffled, wiping his cheeks harshly. "Here I am trying to cheer you up and I start blubbering like a toddler."

Elise just pulled him into a hug.

"You're fine, Sonic," Elise reassured him. "You're as justified to your feelings as mine. Have you tried speaking to them since?"

"No."

"Well, maybe it was a misunderstanding! Try talking to them, get some answers! If they really are that horrible, I'll kick their butt!"

"Tell ya what," Sonic chuckled."I'll talk to my soulmate if you talk to yours, deal?"

"Deal."

Sonic took a deep breath as the world blended into cotton candy colors, the land blurred and vague.

They looked around, fiddling with his gloves when he saw them.

And they saw him.

Elise stared at the blue blob, steeling her nerve before marching towards them.

Sonic's eyes widened as they approached, forcing himself to stay in place. He would not be the one to run.

The closer Elise got, the less vague her soulmate looked. The blob seemed to mold into a small, familiar shape.

Sonic frowned as they approached, realizing just how tall- and familiar- they were…..

The two stared at each other.

"Sonic?"

"Elise?"

It took a moment before they started laughing, relieved, face splitting grins covering their faces.

"I can't believe it's you! I ran away from you!" Elise guffawed.

"And I thought you called me a monster!" Sonic snorted, shaking his head. " 'A misunderstanding', no duh!"

A moment passed and their laughter faded, leaving contented smiles.

"I'm glad it was you."

@soneliseweek2019

#soneliseweek19.....2!!#went with Soulmates!!!#those are magic!!!

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faketextsfromlastmight · 6 years ago

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Best of tags #4

A compilation of my favorite reactions to this blog.

@kumaoftheforest on Mirio inheriting One for All : (Link)

I honestly feel like Mirio’s clothes would get blown off every time he’d us OFA

Best Jeanist could take him on as a sidekick: he repairs clothes, Mirio destroys them. Don’t forget to recycle, kids!

@utsushimi-camie on All for One being an illegal experiment on a live subject: (Link)

#this hilarious to me because i joke about quirk ethics laws all the time

Oh god, I would pay good money to watch a courtroom drama set in a super-powered universe. Can you imagine how busy the jurists must be in a society where people have different abilities yet supposedly are equal in the eyes of the law? They would have to write new rules whenever a new quirk manifested. Complete juridistical nightmare. I think Pixar’s “The Incredibles” kind of touched on that with citizens suing superheroes for destroying buildings while battling supervillains, but it’s framed as them being whiny. It’s a cop-out, in my opinion. The concept of superheroics is deeply problematic from a political and legal point of view, not to mention the issue of secret identities.

Granted, Horikoshi does seem to imply that the laws of BNHA’s universe are indeed complicated. There’s a lot of red tape in place to prevent people from using their quirks in key situations. Shinsou was not able to integrate the hero course because his quirk doesn’t work on robots, but one has to wonder if the entrance exam wasn’t planned to exclude people with mind-control quirks on design. It’s tough determining in which situations people ought to get robbed of their free will, so my guess is that U.A. High saved itself the headache and made sure people like Shinsou failed the exam. Shady.

It’s also apparent in the Stain arc when the police conveniently decides to cover up the way Todoroki, Iida and Midoriya illegally used their quirks. It’s completely absurd that these young people would be punished for arresting a serial killer, so law enforcement agrees to look the other way. But that implies they also do that in certain circumstances for some of their men, which has unfortunate implications. Do the policemen in BNHA’s universe routinely use their quirks even though they’re not allowed to? Urgh.

There are a LOT of things wrong with the superheroic system as it stands today. Gran Torino even admits that he got his hero license so he could use his quirk more freely and that he doesn’t do actual hero work. Apparently no one is supervizing him. The more you look at it, the more you realize that people like Endeavor and (early-series) Bakugou are not exceptions. They’re the extreme examples of the worst behaviors the system encourages.

@meowmeowmin on Todoroki trying to bond with a fly: (Link)

Flies only live for 24 hours

Don’t tell him that! Do you want the entire area to get frozen?

@bandanagiggle on Kaminari buying a vuvuzela: (Link)

Ms Joke sold it to him

The fiend! Worse part is, she told him to serenade Jirou with it.

@iputthepaininpainting on a Todoroki/Bakugou household wife swap: (Link)

Actually I can see this being very good. Bakugo's dad has a nice cup of tea w/ Todoroki's mom so they can talk about how much they love their sons while Mitsuki puts the fear of god in Endeavor!! Good stuff!!!

Let’s hope the children aren’t involved in this, actually. Shouto is very reserved so Mitsuki would always assume he’s sulking or hiding something. Bakugou’s constant temper tantrums would also be difficult for Rei to handle given her aversion to violence. Or maybe I’m being too harsh on Bakugou? He canonically knows she has mental problems, so I imagine he’d make an effort to be less abrasive around her.

That being said, Mitsuki may make Endeavor even worse. The last thing he needs to learn is how to replace his illegal, horrific abusive behavior with socially accepted, casual corporal punishment. Mitsuki is problematic but only insofar as the way she treats Bakugou is something society accepts. Bakugou is violent because he was raised in an environment where violence is a tolerated form of expression. The way she educates her son is terrible but it’s fair to remember that no one really taught her any better (not even her husband).

@pikazuku on Bakugou’s hug deception: (Link)

#This could go two ways#I don't know which one is the true route

When I wrote this I intended Bakugou to actually be sick. So he’s contaminating Deku on purpose and sparing Kirishima. It’s funnier that way, at least in my opinion.

@jukeydragon on Toga being the only girl in the League of Villains: (Link)

#but#uraraka#what bout magne?

I’m assuming you haven’t read the later chapters of the manga.

LIGHT SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4 OF “MY HERO ACADEMIA”:

Without explaining things in too much details, the League of Villains experience some changes in staff management to the point that Magne is no longer considered part of the League. That’s why Uraraka referred to Toga as “the only girl” in this post.

@pinkcandyphoenix on Midnight curing Eraserhead’s insomnia : (Link)

#Actually a Eraser head and midnight friendship would be really cute and wholesome#Bnha#I am tempted to write about it

As a dominatrix, Midnight is tough on crime and punishes any misbehavior in the strictest way imaginable. Eraserhead would definitely respect that. She falls into the same mold as Present Mic in that she looks like a buffoon but is actually very efficient and professional.

@hotforhandman on All For One being a better father figure than Shigaraki: (Link)

#😂😂😂 I don’t think afo is a good dad but this is funny

If All For One were a good dad, he would have told Tomura Shigaraki about chapstick. Joke aside, I do think that the worst aspects of Shigaraki’s personality (namely his petulance) were actually encouraged by All For One. He needs him to remain in a child-like state because his arrested development is deeply rooted in his devotion to his “Teacher”. The risk being that if Shigaraki matures, he might develop ideas of his own.

That’s probably why All For One is secretly satisfied to be in prison right now. Now that they’re separated, Shigaraki can grow as a leader without any risk of disagreeing with his mentor. In fact, his efforts to free All For One from prison will only make him more devoted. All For One needs Shigaraki to idealize him, not to see him for the piece of garbage he really is. Throughout the series we see that he actually remains pretty distant and communicates with Shigaraki through conference calls, which might be on design. He can’t let his pupil too close to him or the illusion of “good parenting” might be broken. The distance keeps Shigaraki yearning for his approval and affection.

@zerounitrgb on my answer to @eva-white-11‘s criticism: (Link)

I am... really tired of people interpreting everything as romantic/friendship. They didn’t choose their pairings, they stayed together because who splits up during an attack, and you’re right, Toko would probably go crazy for anyone that saved him and got hurt in the process. Not to mention Shouji is training to be a hero so he... you know... did his JOB.

Yes. That’s also why I have my own difficulties with Ochako/Bakugou and Todoroki/Yaoyorozu. I recognize that both boys acknowledged the girls were very good in combat and clever, but that’s not a compliment, that’s a fact. They’re just giving credit where credit is due. Although in Bakugou’s case Horikoshi was probably making a commentary on sexism (with Bakugou treating Ochako as an opponent first and a girl second), people tend to interpret them as him teasing a possible romantic connection. And that’s what unnerves him, actually; that our culture is so sexist that a man acknowledging a woman’s competence is automatically interpreted as romantic interest, because why would a guy compliment a girl on anything if he wasn’t trying to get into her pants?

My gripes end there. I actually like both ships, I just have issues with people presenting these interactions as “canonical” proof that Horikoshi is teasing anything romantic between these people. Characters compliment each other A LOT in “My Hero Academia”, it takes more than that to establish a relationship.

#mha #my hero academia #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha bakugou #bnha katsuki #bnha midoriya #bnha izuku #bnha kirishima #bnha eijirou #bnha kaminari #bnha denki #bnha tomura #bnha shigaraki #bnha todoroki #bnha shouto #best of tags

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mdelpin · 6 years ago

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To Kill A Dragon - Chapter 10

Previous: Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Next: Ch 11

Chapter 10: First Steps

Igneel stirred in the part of Natsu's consciousness where his soul resided. He looked around in confusion, trying to determine what had caused him to wake. There was something, it felt like another presence hovering near him. Not quite defined, but powerful and definitely there.

"Is someone there?" Igneel called out softly.

"I'm here," The presence answered in a voice that sounded like it belonged to a youngling.

"Who are you?" Igneel's curiosity was growing in leaps and bounds. How had this presence made its way inside of Natsu?

"I don't know. I wasn't, and then I was," It replied simply.

"How did you get here?" Natsu's body was certainly getting very crowded these days. Dragon seed, demon seed, dragon soul and now this, whatever it was.

"How did you?"

"I arrived here by casting a spell called Dragon Soul."

"Where is here?" The voice asked, its voice trembling a bit.

"We're inside my son's body."

"Does he know we're here?"

"No, but we're safe," Igneel tried to make his voice sound comforting, but it was still a bit rough around the edges.

"That's good. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be here. I'm waiting for something to grow."

"Grow?"

"Yes, my vessel is not yet ready to house me. Can I see what you look like?" The presence asked nervously. It was still weak, not much more than an idea or a dream at the moment.

Once it became aware, it had felt lonely and had gravitated towards the strong presence it had sensed sharing this space. It had been surprised to be detected at all.

Igneel projected an image of himself for the presence to see. He made sure to make it look non-threatening.

The presence didn't know why, but it felt warm and safe as it looked at the image of the red dragon. Was the dragon here to protect it until it was stronger?

"What about you?" Igneel asked curiously.

"I'm not sure. I think I'll have more than one form. I'm still mostly potential, but I think I'll look something like this." The presence projected an image of a small pink haired boy with slightly droopy dark blue eyes.

Igneel gasped, excepting the eyes, its features looked very much like Natsu as a child. He thought he was beginning to understand who the presence was.

He held back his anger not wanting to scare it. Igneel was going to have to tread very carefully, but if it was still mostly potential, maybe he could help mold it into something unlike the goddess that had created it.

"What other form do you think you'll have?" Igneel asked with interest.

"I will also be a dragon, but my form is not yet certain. The one I see the most clearly has five heads, but I also see the possibility of one strong red one."

The presence had felt the dragon's distress to the form he had shown it, and it was curious about what it meant. "Why did you react like that when I showed you my form?"

Igneel thought about Natsu as a child. A small child with pink hair appeared before them. He had olive colored eyes that exuded warmth and a big smile that made the presence feel instantly happy. The child chased after a big red dragon.

"Who is that? He looks like me," The presence asked in wonder. It felt instantly drawn to this image, like the boy was somehow a part of it.

"That's my son Natsu when he was a child. I think he might be your father."

The presence absorbed that information greedily. It had a father!

"Does that mean you're my grandfather?"

"Yes, I suppose I am."

"Is my father strong?" It asked, and Igneel smiled at the concern he heard in the creature's voice.

"Your father is a dragon slayer. He flies with the dragons." Igneel said proudly. He showed it images of Natsu riding atop himself as well as Atlas Flame. He also showed it images of Natsu using his Fire Dragon Slayer magic.

The presence watched the pictures of its father fighting in awe. Strength, power. These were things it instinctively wanted. It thought it liked its father very much. If its grandfather had taught all these things to its father, maybe he would do the same for it.

"Can you make me strong like him?" It asked with hope.

"I will make you even stronger so that you can fight at his side some day," Igneel purred at him.

"I'd like that. Can I stay here with you, Grandfather?"

"You can stay for as long as you like, youngling."

Igneel had already decided he would train this being into a force for good. He refused to let Tiamat bring any more destruction to this world.

xxx

Natsu woke up to the sound of screams vibrating in his ears. His body was covered in sweat, and his heart was racing so fast it felt like it might burst out of his body any minute.

It took him a second to realize the screams were coming from him. He'd been trapped in a horrible nightmare. Tiamat had come to the guild to return him to his cell, and no one from Fairy Tail had been able to stop her.

Like some kind of sick parlor trick, she'd copied all of his Nakama and used them to torture and humiliate him. His friends had laughed and yelled out requests as to who Tiamat should be next.

Not a single one of them had tried to help him. Then Tiamat had morphed into that freaky five headed figure and roughly taken him over and over until he couldn't scream anymore and he wanted to die.

He shuddered, and the meager contents of his stomach tried to fight their way back up his digestive system. He looked around the room and tried to convince himself he was safe. He wasn't in his cell anymore, he was back in the guild.

"Holy fuck, Salamander! What the hell was that?" Gajeel stared at him with mounting concern. He'd fallen asleep while sitting with the Salamander in the infirmary, and he sure as hell hoped to never wake up to something like that again. His heart was still pounding.

"I'm sorry, I had a nightmare," Natsu's eyes looked around the room wildly. Gajeel saw that Natsu kept looking at him nervously like he couldn't entirely trust that Gajeel was there. "Can you just talk to me for a bit?"

And maybe get someone else to come in here with you?, Natsu thought to himself while trying to get his racing heart under control.

He was still having trouble relaxing when there was only one person with him. It made him question whether he was in the infirmary at Fairy Tail or back in his cell, especially if he was just waking up. He couldn't even rely on his senses to help him tell the difference, Tiamat had been able to imitate people's scents. The one thing he did know was that if there were multiple people around, he was safe. He had taken to asking people to show him their magic if he was left alone with them.

"It might help if you talked about what happened," Gajeel said in the most pleasant tone he was capable of, "You've always been too stubborn to back down from a fight. Why start now?"

"I'm not ready yet."

"You've been saying that for days. You're never going to be ready, Salamander. The longer you put it off, the harder it's going to be. Just talk to them already. This is hard on them too, you know."

Makarov was still keeping most everyone away from Natsu. The dragon slayers had taken it upon themselves to guard his room, and at least two of them could usually be found in the infirmary at any given moment.

Without Natsu's cheerful countenance or his capacity for getting up to mischief, the guild was but a ghost of itself, and it was very unsettling. A lot of the members had been taking more jobs of late to avoid the gloominess that had taken hold of the guild hall.

Others had joined the research efforts in the guild library. Natsu's team, however, could not be convinced to leave at all. They hadn't taken a job since he'd been returned a week earlier, and Lucy had not mentioned the word rent once in that time. They just sat around waiting for the moment they would be allowed to see their friend.

Gajeel and Natsu could only stare when the door to the infirmary burst open and Gray and Erza ran in. Erza was wielding a sword and looking around the room, trying to find the enemy that must be lurking within. Gray took a defensive position in front of Natsu's bed.

"Natsu are you okay? " Erza yelled at him with urgency, "Where are they?"

"He's fine, Red. He just had a nightmare," Gajeel sighed as he looked at Natsu. His hands had started shaking when Gray and Erza entered the room. Gajeel was getting very tired of this. Some tough love was clearly required. He braced himself for what he was about to do and sent a silent apology to the boy in the bed.

Erza looked at him in disbelief. "Those screams were from a nightmare?" Her expression softened as she looked at Natsu huddled in the bed.

Gajeel got up and stretched. "Well, I'm done babysitting this asshole. I'm going to go downstairs to eat something and let the others know Salamander's fine. You two mind taking over? Great."

He left the room before Natsu had a chance to protest. He knew the Salamander was going to be furious with him for abandoning him with those two, but he needed to talk to them at some point. Might as well do it now.

They stood in uncomfortable silence as Natsu steadfastly refused to look at either of them. Erza requipped into her nurse's outfit and began to try to make him comfortable while Gray chose to sit in the chair that Gajeel had just vacated. Natsu relaxed a little when he saw Erza use her magic, Tiamat had never used his friends magic.

Gray stole a look at Natsu. He looked better than the first time he'd seen him, but he was still in rough shape. Those screams! That must have been one hell of a nightmare. From downstairs it had sounded like someone was being murdered in cold blood. Gray had been afraid of what they'd find when they burst into the infirmary.

He'd had his share of nightmares over the years, you couldn't be a survivor of a terrible event and not have them, but nothing like that.

"I'm sorry."

Was he talking to him? Natsu looked up at Gray in confusion. "What are you sorry about?"

The pain he saw in Gray's features made him look back down with great speed.

"I was there. I saw you leave the guild, and I followed you. I wanted to have a fight, but then I saw you with Erza, well I know now it wasn't Erza, and I didn't want to interrupt. By the time I realized what was happening, I wasn't able to keep her from taking you." The regret in his voice was very raw. It made Natsu uncomfortable.

Great. So if I'd just waited a few more minutes at the guild, none of this would have ever happened. Thanks for telling me that, Ice Bastard, Natsu thought sarcastically. Ugh, his emotions were all over the place lately.

What exactly had Gray seen? Natsu wondered, embarrassed as he remembered some of the things that Erza had been doing. He cringed at anyone seeing that, but Gray most of all.

"Don't worry about it, Ice Block. There was nothing you could've done. I still don't know what she did, everything just went black."

Erza noticed his discomfort and changed the subject. "Everyone's been worried about you," She said warmly.

"They would really like to see you," She moved to get a towel and some water and set about wiping the sweat and hair off his face, trying to ignore the way he flinched at her touch. "Are you hungry? I could ask Mira to make you some food."

This was the first time Erza had been able to see him, and even though she'd been warned of his injuries, she was still surprised that it was taking Natsu so long to recover.

He'd always been able to bounce back from his injuries swiftly, usually while waging a full out war on Porlyusica in the process. It was unsettling to see him like this, it somehow made what he had been through more real to her.

Natsu didn't know what was worse, watching his teammates tiptoe around him like he was an injured animal or feeling like said animal. These were his friends, they would never hurt him.

That's it! He fumed.

Natsu refused to let that bitch have control over him any longer. Gajeel was right, he'd never backed away from anything before, and he wasn't about to start now.

He would heal, he would recover, and when the time came, he would be ready to fight. His first battle began right now, and he would win it by doing what he did best. Attacking it head on. He would tell them what had happened. Maybe then, they could all start going back to normal.

"Erza, can you please go get Lucy and Happy?"

Preferably before I chicken out, Natsu thought to himself grimly.

The requip mage nodded and hurried out of the room. Gray sat quietly, waiting for the others to arrive. He tried to keep his expression neutral. There were a lot of things he wanted to talk to Natsu about, but he didn't want to be interrupted or overheard.

"Happy told me you've been taking care of him, thank you," Natsu conversed awkwardly.

"It's no problem, the little guy was devastated when Porlyusica told him he couldn't stay with you. It's actually been kind of nice having him around."

They sat in silence, and Natsu began to get antsy. "Can you mold something for me?" He asked. Now that he was alone with Gray of all people, he felt the panic begin to gnaw at him. Gray had been nice before too until he wasn't.

Gray looked at him strangely until he remembered they were alone. He'd heard about this from the others. That must be why Erza had made a point of requipping into her nurse's outfit.

He thought for a moment and then brought his hands together and molded a small figure of a young Natsu riding a dragon. He handed it over and saw Natsu relax almost immediately.

"I'm sorry, I get nervous when there's only one person with me." Natsu held the figure in his hands, admiring Gray's usual attention to detail before placing it on the nightstand by the bed. It made him feel wistful for the child he'd once been. "I just needed to make sure."

"Don't be, I should've thought of it myself. I imagine it's even worse when it's me," Gray said with a sad look on his face. "I really hate that you thought it was me doing those things to you."

"They weren't all bad," Natsu tried to reassure Gray.

What the hell did you just say? Natsu yelled at himself.

'What does he mean by that?' Gray thought in surprise.

Their conversation was thankfully interrupted by Erza returning with Lucy and Happy. Makarov and Porlyusica had tagged along as well. He was relieved that he would only have to go through this once. Happy immediately flew to the bed and cuddled up to Natsu.

He petted his Exceed absently as he started his story. He saw the concern on Gramp's face and tried to keep all emotion out of his voice, he couldn't let himself feel any of it. He hoped they'd let him get through it without any interruptions.

"I left the guild that morning to walk around the city. I was bored, and there was no one around to brawl with. That's when Erza found me and started acting strangely. She kept trying to touch me, and she was saying weird things."

He paused as he decided what was relevant, "I thought that someone must have given her something to make her act that way, so I tried to bring her back to the guild. Next thing I knew I was in a cell with magic sealing cuffs on my wrists and ankles. Erza came in, and I asked her to help me get the cuffs off so we could escape, and that's when she told me she'd put me there herself."

"I finally figured out it wasn't really Erza sometime later. She wanted me to give her some information. Since I wouldn't tell her what she wanted, she took out a dagger and worked me over with it until I passed out. The last thing I remember was her covering herself in my blood."

He really hoped to someday rid himself of that image or at the very least have it not affect him as much. He purposefully didn't look at Erza, not wanting to see her reaction.

"I woke up sometime later and smelled Gray in the room with me, but I was so weak from the pain that I fell back asleep thinking I'd imagined it. The next time I awoke, it was to Lucy whipping me. She was acting weird too, so I knew right away it wasn't her. She kept whipping me and then she left."

Natsu heard Lucy's intake of breath as he described her actions. He quickly decided that the only way he was going to get through the telling of his capture was by not looking at anyone and ignoring all of their responses. This was hard enough without worrying about how they would react.

"I was out again, and this time, I woke up to Gray cleaning up my wounds. He told me that he'd come to rescue me, but he'd gotten captured instead. He stayed in the cell with me and took care of me."

Makarov noticed that whenever Natsu mentioned anything to do with Gray, his voice automatically flattened in a way that he didn't do when talking about Erza or Lucy. He looked at his brat sadly.

Tiamat was sadistic and cunning. She'd hedged her bets by using all of Natsu's team members against him, sensing that one of them would be the one she needed to further her plans. Her methods were despicable but making Natsu think that Gray was real was the worst of all.

"The next morning Gray gave me something to drink and then...he left," He said hurriedly. No way in hell was he telling them that part or anything that happened after.

"A woman I'd never seen before walked into the room. She was wearing a cloak that had the symbol of the Penta Dragons on it. She told me her name was Tiamat and then launched into a story about Igneel. She said she'd tried to make him her mate, but he'd rejected her.

She blamed him for the dragons dying out saying he'd betrayed dragon kind and that she wanted to punish him through me. The last thing I remember was Gray coming back and beating me until my body gave out. Then I was here."

He'd done it! He'd gotten through most of it, and he did feel a little better. He looked at the faces of the people that had just listened to his story, and his heart sank.

Erza looked angrier than he'd ever seen her look before.

Lucy was trying to hold back her tears but was failing. Big, fat tears were running down her cheeks.

Gray was the worst. He'd made his face as smooth as his ice, his eyes unreadable, but Natsu could almost feel the blast of the ice mage's emotions slamming into him in waves. He really hoped Gray never found out about the part he'd left out because he didn't think the ice mage could take any more.

Makarov cleared his throat to get their attention. "I need to ask Natsu some questions. I know that this is a lot for you all to take in and he can probably use some time as well. Why don't the three of you take Happy downstairs for a while? You can talk to Natsu later if he's feeling up to it."

He personally thought that Natsu should have waited longer for this, but he was proud of his courage and desire to move forward. He expected nothing less from the Fire Dragon Slayer.

He waited for them to leave and saw Laxus standing outside the infirmary. He nodded at him to let him know to stand guard and keep everyone else away from the room. He gave Natsu a few minutes to regroup before he began questioning him.

"Gray was the one who gave you the solution wasn't he?" Makarov asked gently. He knew the questions would need to get more intrusive from this point onward, but he would start slowly.

Natsu gazed at him, dreading the questions he knew were coming.

"Yeah, I trusted him, so I didn't even think to smell it. It wouldn't have mattered, Tiamat would have found another way to force me to take it."

"I'm sure you're right," Makarov said, his voice soothing, "Did Gray do anything else before Tiamat came in the room?"

"He told me we would get out together, and then he kissed me," Natsu mumbled.

"What was that?"

"He kissed me," Natsu repeated a little louder.

"Was that something you wanted?"

Natsu didn't answer, and Makarov didn't push.

"Did she tell you why she wanted you to drink that solution?"

"She said it was to induce my first heat. She was going to make me her mate to punish Igneel for rejecting her."

"Did you have sex with her?"

"Yeah, Tiamat said that since it was my first time, she'd let me pretend to be with my true mate, but I had to cooperate. Otherwise, she would use one of her avatars to claim me. She said it was a one time only offer. That was the only time she shapeshifted in front of me," Natsu couldn't meet Makarov's gaze, "I knew it wasn't the real Gray, but I went along with it anyway."

"Natsu, I will say this as many times as you need to hear it. That woman raped you. She forced you to do something you didn't want and tricked you into thinking you wanted it because it was the better of two horrible choices. She might have been able to get your magic that way, but that's still rape in my book."

Natsu frowned, he had a hard time accepting that. Hadn't he let it happen? And he couldn't deny he'd enjoyed it, a part of him hadn't wanted it to end.

"Gray is your true mate ?"

Natsu hugged himself and refused to look at him.

"Natsu, look at me." He waited until the fire mage finally met his gaze. "You don't need to be ashamed. It doesn't matter to me that your mate is a man. Do you think you're the only one who's ever felt that way?" Makarov said kindly, he wanted to touch him, to offer him comfort in some way, but he knew it was a bad idea.

"All I've ever wanted for any of you is for you to be happy." He peered at the boy in front of him who suddenly looked very young to his eyes.

"Does he return your feelings?" Makarov pried gently.

"I don't think so, Gramps," Natsu replied truthfully.

Makarov thought back to the way Gray had been acting since Natsu had disappeared and came to the conclusion that it was very likely that he did indeed feel the same way about the fire mage, but they'd need to figure that out on their own.

"I understand why you kept some things to yourself, but someday, when you're ready, you should tell Gray the rest of it," Makarov advised quietly.

Natsu tensed up immediately, and Makarov frowned. He knew it would be difficult, but he firmly believed Natsu and Gray needed to discuss the full extent of what had happened if they stood any chance of reclaiming their friendship or if things worked out like he thought, becoming mates.

Still, he knew better than to push, this had been a big step after all. He smiled at Natsu and changed the subject.

"So, now that you told them what happened, how do you feel?"

"A little better."

Makarov smiled at him. "Shall I tell them they can visit you later?"

Natsu nodded and smiled. "I think I'd like that."

xxx

A/N: So rather than do a typical mpreg I think I'm going to go with this instead. Hopefully, people will find it interesting. Natsu made his first big step to his mental recovery (yay!). I hope you liked it. Let me know if you did.

#fairy tail #gratsu #ftlgbtales #fanfiction #update #tkad #chapter 10

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sumukhcomedy · 6 years ago

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Should We Silence Bad Comedy?

I stopped writing in this at the end of last year mostly because I was sick about writing about comedy. This is time-consuming and I had other things to work on and the criticism and opinions of comedy have started to feel far more hack than comedy itself can be. But going on the road and doing comedy this past year, a number of different comedians and audience members brought up this blog and so I figured that, when I felt like it, I’d still post in this again. As you’ll see, given the numerous links to previous essays I’ve written, I’m writing yet again about topics I’ve already written about before but it’s only because comedy, comedians, and the mostly meaningless debate over it continues to get worse.

The most recent debates conjure up what continues to be the crux of comedy’s biggest current issue with simple terms like “free speech,” “PC,” “woke,” etc. just being thrown around with little care for an in-depth analysis of what these mean and how they mean different things to different people. This rears its head yet again with the recent Netflix specials of Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr and the firing of Shane Gillis by Saturday Night Live. It’s a strange moment in which those at the top of stand-up comedy and certain comedians on the rise are being lumped together over these issues and it’s created a muddied mess. The perspective I have and that I wish others had was that we should all think deeper on this and fall somewhere in the middle.

I’m not going to get much into the Shane Gillis situation mostly because I don’t care. I didn’t read much about it and I got the gist of what happened and that’s all that’s really needed at this point in a case of creating something likely very stupid that masks itself as comedy. If you’re in comedy long enough, you understand that it’s a business like everything else. For as “unique” or “alternative” or “fearless” as your comedy may be or you perceive it to be, it still will be scrutinized by corporate interests. SNL still has to abide by the cultural phenomenon it has become and that it is part of a corporate juggernaut. All Gillis had to do was play the usual card that comes with public relations and apologize in an appropriate manner. As most stories do, this would have all blown over and been forgotten about in a week or less. He chose not to apologize appropriately. He was fired as a result. That was his choice to double down on what seems to be both his past and his present and his support of what I can only perceive to be bad, unfunny, and uncreative comedy.

Chappelle and Burr are at a different level because they’ve earned it and, unfortunately, they get a huge brunt of it because they are famous and the expectations associated with them are so high. Why Chappelle doubled down on making jokes at the expense of the trans community or why he did a hack impression of a Chinese man in his most recent Netflix special is beyond me. Why Burr chooses to rail yet again at audiences being offended by what he says is beyond me as well especially when he’s mentioned this in a previous special in a much funnier manner. It seems only like they’ve lived at the top in comedy for so long and are now irritated by unnecessary criticism. In some sense, it’s understandable. But, for the most part, it seems just as unnecessary as the poor criticism. Why create uninventive comedy based out of anger towards audiences that, for whatever reason, don’t like you anyway rather than create comedy that’s observational and hilarious and was what made you considered the best in the business? I have no clue but this is at least where part of the material in Chappelle and Burr’s recent specials are at.

Sprinkle some crack on this impression.

But the types of individuals that seem to draw the ire of Chappelle and Burr and went after Gillis as well are equally bizarre to me. The fact that our culture has some sort of desire to tear down comedy or that it should fit some sort of “good” and “sensitive” mold for all is strange as well. It speaks to these individuals not actually having a knowledge of how comedy, business, and most of this country operates. Forcing someone into experiencing how comedy should be experienced and what kind of comedy they are allowed to like doesn’t change them. Making an effort to “cancel” a person simply because their comedy is in poor taste doesn’t particularly resolve anything other than to embolden those that support such bad comedy. This, to me, isn’t the way to change minds, implement diverse perspectives, or educate people in comedy. But, I’m not the loudest person in the room or a part of the masses of either side in this issue. Most sound and reasonable comedians and audience members aren’t a part of this conversation because we’re, shockingly, creating and enjoying good comedy.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Chappelle is one of the greats to me. Killin’ Them Softly was one of, if not the, most influential comedy specials on me. I still love him and thinks he’s hilarious. It doesn’t mean that I support his jokes about the trans community or find them funny. It doesn’t mean I understand why he did or talked about some of the things he talked about in his most recent special. As friend Curtis Cook put it best on Twitter, “Dave Chappelle is kinda my idol ‘cause it’s always been my goal to walk away from 50 million dollars after realizing audiences are laughing in a way that belittles the struggles of my people then return a decade later to make that money back by belittling the struggles of others.” I can’t explain why Chappelle said or does what he does on a stage now but it’s his right he’s earned and there’s certainly a lot of money involved in it.

Regardless, I also laughed hard at certain parts in his special. The stuff about R. Kelly, gun control, and Jussie Smollett were vintage Chappelle to me. Is it his best special? No. Is he becoming old and detached? Likely. Does it mean I dislike him and kick his entire comedy to the curb? (No, or at least not yet unless some horrible, illegal stuff comes out about him). The same goes for Burr.

Gillis, on the other hand, was fired for statements he said that have been around for as long as comedy has existed. Bad comedy that punches down, is uninventive, and involves slurs will persist. I can say that because I have traveled the country for over a decade doing stand-up comedy and the audiences for that are there. They are there because people’s perspectives on comedy still are mostly in that realm either because they haven’t been exposed much to quality, creative comedy, they haven’t gone out of their comfort zone in life or comedy so bad comedy is all they know, or they are, frankly, just dumb people. But, as I mentioned, I don’t think you have the potential for changing people with comedy by forcing a certain type of experience on them. You change them by providing them with a different option and hope they enjoy it and learn from it. In many cases, they do not, but when they do, it’s far more rewarding as a performer to do that than to spend time making sure some guy you don’t know who probably sucks at comedy anyway gets fired from a job.

In my approach to comedy, I want to experience as many different types of audiences as possible. That’s just me. Comedy has always been segregated because our nation is still unraveling from a history of segregation. And I can at least say, having the opportunity to perform in a variety of different places, that there are equal amounts of bad comedy in all of them. There is bad comedy in comedy clubs (most of it). There is bad comedy in small towns (most of it). There is bad comedy in corporate events (most of it). There is bad comedy in alternative rooms (most of it). There is bad “ethnic” comedy (most of it). Maybe my comedy is bad to you, too! That’s just part of it all. And as we supposedly attempt progression in society, through the Internet and this discussion and debate on comedy, we are actually segregating ourselves even more than how segregated comedy rooms already are.

Look, I’ve been shit on for my race and who I am my entire life. I’ve been told by bookers that my material will “sail over their audience’s heads.” I’ve also been booked where I watched my comedy “sail over an audience’s head” and bomb horribly. I’ve also been booked and appreciated immensely by audiences. I’ve had the opportunity to headline really great rooms and open for really great comedians that I respect and that are now friends. All of that doesn’t happen without allowing myself to experience all aspects of comedy, take some shit and unnecessary criticism in life and comedy, and be better personally for it. Whether audiences will be better for it is up to them. Whether my fellow comedians choose to do this and try to be better is up to them as well. But, right now, we’re just in a vicious circle (thanks Dane Cook!) over this topic of bad comedy and the defense of bad comedy that makes all of comedy look dumber than its audiences. From my perspective, we shouldn’t silence bad comedy. It only energizes those that love and defend it. We should actually be continuing to create better comedy than it and hope it can change others. It probably won’t but whatever. It’s better than bitching constantly about the same topics over and over again but, then again, that appears to be what we’re fighting over in comedy: the ability to tell hacky stuff in our specific comedy room of choice and defend those we don’t even know to be able to do the same thing.

Laughter is a unique thing because it’s an emotion we can all have as humans. We all can experience it in whatever way we like and we’re bonded together by it. What prompts laughter for each person is different just as what leads to our other emotions are different as well among each of us. We shouldn’t condemn people for laughing just as we shouldn’t condemn them for crying or getting angry at a moment they likely shouldn’t have. We should try to educate them or make them laugh at something better just as we try to make our other emotions like sadness or anger better in other parts of our lives. If trying to make better comedy or these types of people laugh fails, then we move on. They’re left to live in whatever hole they would like with comedy. But there are plenty of people open to being better with comedy. Unfortunately, for now, comedians and their audiences are so caught up in a defense or condemnation of comedy in its most uncreative forms that they aren’t actually looking at why they appreciate comedy to begin with.

#dave chappelle #bill burr #shane gillis #snl #comedy #stand up comedy #pc #hack #woke #free speech #comedy special #netflix

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insanityembraced · 6 years ago

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Abnormal, Different, and Sometimes Extraordinary But Not Defective or Degenerate

I suffer from borderline personality disorder. It drastically influences my thoughts, actions, and understanding of the world around me. My perception, is and will always be altered by my, some say warped, I say realistic and unnaturally insightful, evaluation of emotional energy.

My personality disorder, label, or peculiarity, to me is a gift and makes me exceptional, not broken or in some way dangerous to leave unsupervised amongst non-afflicted personalities that perceive the world in a bland, underwhelming, and arguably are disordered, because they have lost or failed to attain enough focus or mental dexterity. In fact, the more we allow rigidity to limit man kinds ability to feel, sense, and accurately understand the emotional forces that bond us to each other and create the vivid colors of passion, creativity, and intensity only strong emotional tethers can sustain.

Sometimes my intensity and extrasensory ability is overwhelming and manifests in ways society labels as disordered, but in reality it is extraordinary and has mostly served to save rather than hinder my ability to navigate life. However, not every cloud is bright and humanity will always struggle with self control when faced with uncertainty and inesacapable animalistic urges that test our ability to get perspective in a world that never stops changing and evolving.

The following are some things that give insight into the extraordinary or even completely debilitating effects of my borderline personal perception of a world others see differently than I am capable of understanding:

I am insanely fickle. I can change my mind over and over and often times drastically reimagine my understanding of people and how we have shaped this globe or domed furmament into a prison with imaginary boundries created by hate and fear continuously infused into every fiber of human understanding.

As humanity becomes more and more oblivious to pure unadulterated empathy our sense of self blurs and society begins to eliminate diversity by allowing humanity to be silenced by fear built atop a drift of sand in the desert. However, even after the mirage has been unveiled as an invasive and aggressive sickness that has spread over the world consuming the rage and ignorance created by destroying pure empathy and viciously ripping humanity apart.

The more I explore the reaches of human understanding the less I believe we are even capable of understanding anything with certainty. Those who have attained great knowledge should have also gained an openness to the existence of many different kinds of intellectual perception that transcends traditional understanding of fact, fiction, or hypothetical scientific "certainty". Now I am convinced that the only thing I know with absolute certainty is that knowledge is currently to vast to contain within the limitations of our perception.

One thing that plagues those allegedly inflicted with a sickness so pervasive it has apparently permanently corrupted our souls and left us with scarred and impossibly broken personalities that now defines us entirely. Civilized, brainwashed, and fluoridated masses, given an instinctual fear of people labeled as mentally I'll. This instinct is based on a indistinct and uneducated manipulation of the different types of intellectual dexterity that can bless, awaken, and be a source of harmonious unification; instead the talents that I possess give me a different perspective on nearly everything. Different does not mean wrong. Failure of other humans to understand me or grasp the fiber of what makes me decipher the world in a different fashion that transcends even our sense of culture or language to create a group of individuals who consistently perceive stimuli from feeling, emotion, electrical charge of ions affected by forces not understood by those who close their mind to bothering with the difficult task of trying to think with other parts of your brain, even if it is unnatural or difficult.

I believe all intellectual or sensory talents are of value and should be developed in different environments that foster the use and improvement of our naturally occurring talents in says that create harmony and richer depth of understanding once we have opened our minds to different sensory observations that do not prove I am insane. All your label has done is help me to understand myself in a deep and intensely critical fashion that has helped me truthfully identify things I need to work on controlling and I also have had the opportunity to evaluate my triggers, identify signs of irrational or destructive thinking. This has allowed me to develop and institute coping mechanism and other internal and external tools to keep myself from allowing myself to overload my sensory system, not because I am permanently and invasively altered by psychic dysfunction that renders me a rambling, irrational nutcase unworthy of being trusted, believed, and people labeled borderline or who are labelled as having a personality disorder are just blessed with different sensory sensitivity that does create distinct differences in observation and unless there is effort exerted to understand and effectivy communicate with individuals who have a spacial or coordinated dexterity that can traslate into movement fluidity or accuracy that I am not natuRally blessed with and need help understanding and fostering such talent since I have an actual natural tendency to manage to fall inexplicably without warning or even applicston of outside force, but simply an internal lack of balance and a long term battle with my ability to see and thus manage my four dimensional space with grace.

All of this introspective personal reflection and growth should be a part of every human being on earth. Then those who suffer from similar difficulty in adjusting to certain triggers do not need to be defined by their diagnosis. The diagnosis is just how we find people who understand why my perception is differently aligned. We do not have to be feared, send to bedlam because of fear, or an irrational fear I will suddenly and violently embody my Hollywood stereotype and fatal ataction someone because I have been labeled and my internal bomb has been officially triggered.

Of coarse that is ridiculous and even people with the same disorder or same perspective still live life with shifting social, financial, qwwd many times has lead even similar differently abled souls to different ways to use our gifts to hopefully work towards harmony and unxersdnsign. 0⁰

t at your own understanding of the things you percieve. f we could acceptinstead of trying to force humanity into a mold f different talents and maybe even extraordinary abilities understanding with our surroundings. efear fear my extra personality have particularl feared the intense s have a history of failing to comply with medications and I am not good at consistently maintaining routine of anykind. I can only maintain a routine for days, occasionally weeks, and rarely have I ever maintained a consistent routine for more than six months.

I am capable of liking or becoming interested or disinterested in anything without warning. I consume myself with a fiery intensity for things that I will let consume me until I burn out. I have completely abandoned interests, hobbies, people, or career paths in a moment. The thing that I wanted to do every minute for the last 6 months, like when I fell in love with painting, instantly and without warning become unfulfilling, tedious, and inferior to a new and exciting passion to focus my obsessions on. I feel so intensely that I cannot enjoy or contain my energy in any repetitive or monotonous activity.

I unintentionally attract emotional disfunction; I have an uncontrollable urge to save certain dysfunctional or misunderstood humans; I become particularly enraged by the self designated elite, and often intellectually inferior humans, that intentionally exploit the weak, poor, uneducated, or disenfranchised; I cannot always protect myself from the emotions of others, human emotion produced by strangers can be so powerful I have literally fallen to my knees, began crying uncontrollably, or even been unable to breath based on proximity alone; pure emotion can be released from the body like a shockwave, but only if the emotion is genuinely produced; I cannot always distinguish liars, but I can always spot people who really are devoid of any kind if emotional depth, and they are the truly dangerous, because they dont care, feel, or empathize with humanity at all; I am intensely impulsive, particularly when I am having difficulty understanding and communicating with others; I am bad at maintaining relationships because of paranoia, constant fear of abandonment, and an inability to truly understand individuals; I only understand emotions and emotional energy, but fail miserably at understanding or anticipating actions driven by selfishness or purity of evil intent; I am unpredictable, even I cannot understand or predict all my begavior; once I cross the line into a psychotic episode, I lose all control, awareness, or ability to understand reality; I will black out entirely, and have absolutely no memory for hours or even days; when I gain control of my sanity the blackout lifts slowly like a thick fog; the lingering fog of psychosis is like a mental sedative that makes even simple tasks impossible, like remembering your name, or knowing if you are awake or asleep, or being able to understand basic human conversation; overwhelmingly emotional, and I have occasional breakdowns peppered with forced hospitalizations. Mental hospitals, particularly those that restrain the liberty of people who aren't capable of faking the numbness society expects of us all; are ineffectual, uninspired, and often the patients are treated without feeling, dignity, compassion, interest, competence, respect, understanding, and often staff not only refuses to listen, observe, or address any of the specific problems facing an individual. Instead the psychiatrists often do not even pretend to do their job and blindly medicate those they do not understand until they become someone else's problem.

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vanitysruin · 6 years ago

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06. Never mind.

There were plans to be made for Eulmore but they did not need her presence for them yet.

She was in poor shape to contribute, besides: since the mines, it had been that much harder to focus. Sleep had become all but an impossibility. She could not describe it, the way the light slid and swam behind her lids, a borealis that stained everything through and through. Even her hands seemed more star than flesh, interrupted only by the dark silver band around one finger. Her mind was occupied besides, and her heart was tugged back into Rak'tika. The Viis, if they were tracking her trespass, did not reveal themselves to her. Not even the automatons, such strange configurations of stone and magick, did little to impede her way back into the Qitana Ravel.

A voice inside her balked at the thought that she might take comfort in being in such a place: damp and relatively dark, stinking of moss and loam and the faint reek of dead magick. It was a far cry from Ala Mhigo, to be certain, and she would find no material comforts there. Her feet made small, padded sounds as she paced in slow, strained circles. Only the steady dripping of water provided her company. That, and her thoughts.

The murals itched in her memories. Y'shtola's analysis seemed to make sense enough, but it was not enough for whatever madness it was that grew inside Delial. Zodiark, Hydaelyn, there had to be more, even more than what her star-smeared vision could parse from those aged murals. Emet-Selch's words loomed in her thoughts, monumental in a way she could not explain. They remained as yet another source of frustration, a pool of knowledge so vast and dark she could do little but stare down and wonder at just how deep she could go before it drowned her.

She scarcely noticed his arrival. He said nothing at first; the Ascian, too, seemed prone to moods and had grown reticent more often than not. She recognized the cycles in herself: that for all his theatrics, it was merely that, a show to keep his little heroes on track, to keep them on edge, to keep them suspicious but all too intrigued. Typical of him, she thought with such casual dismissal that it nearly shocked herself. When had she become so familiar with him?

Indifferent to her want for solitude, Emet-Selch paced into place beside him, with hands folded at the small of his back. "I take it you have actually given thought to what I've said."

"I know what you are doing," she said.

"Is that so." He sounded bored looking up at the murals, stooped just enough to give him the shape of a man far too old for his skin, his flesh, his bones. "Yes, I suppose you might. Humor me, then. What is it you see?"

Delial could not bring herself to look at him. The image of a city drowning in fire rippled, animated vibrantly through the light in her eye. "You have no reason to lie, so you do not. The truths you feed us are but crumbs of something greater. It would change nothing, in the end. We will see it or we will not. They will not trust you one way or another."

"Hm. And what of you, hero? Are you not a part of them?"

"What a stupid question." That got her a glance out of the corner of his eye. She wondered if the twitch of his lip was annoyance or if he, too, saw how dangerously she shone. "I am convenient and I am tolerated. What a dreadful hero I must be. Not at all what they wanted."

"And yet you serve."

Delial grinned. "And yet I serve."

"You did not quite answer me," Emet-Selch chided, cocking his head just enough to regard her with a single golden eye. "I know, I know, how very rich coming from me. What of you? Do you trust me?"

The mantle of Warrior of Light was a heavy one. She did not say it much if at all but she was truly grateful for the Scions, as much as she grated on them and they grated on her. The matter of trust was an ever delicate balance of nerve and determination and there were times where they left one another wanting. In the end, they supported her in their way. From Primal to Imperial, they guided her hand, for in the end she was by some inexplicable blessing the strongest among them. Champion of Hydaelyn, Blessed of her Light. The eldest and most powerful of Primals.

Twinned gods mirrored one another overhead, painted black and white. Was it ever so simple as that? Had they been doomed to hate from the start?

"No," Delial whispered. He waited, as if anticipating her hesitation. When had he become so familiar with her? "But I wonder now if it is because I see myself in the things you do, or if it because Hydaelyn loathes you through me."

In another image, Hydaelyn loomed over a fallen Zodiark, the Light besting Dark by tearing its very existence apart. Delial did not notice her vision abruptly growing cloudy or the shaking in her limbs, so stricken was she by a terror that left her heart frozen in her chest. The pieces of her youth were scattered, fragmented, stitched together by Imperial design that she had embraced wholeheartedly, knowing nothing else. It had taken nearly the entirety of her life to shake off the things she knew, to see her country for what it had become, so much so that she could not so much as stand within Ala Mhigo's walls without feeling sick with shame. She bore it all, silent in the wings of Lyse leading the people in song, but she did so thinking it was by her own choice. To consider it and all that had come before it anything but...

Emet-Selch confessed it so plainly. It was a matter of course to be tempered by a god of his own making.

"It cannot be helped," she heard him say. It was all too much, these enormous things the Ascian lead her towards. Her cheeks burned where tears had fallen and Delial swiped at her eyes with her thumbs, foregoing any attempt at subtlety, desperate to reach for the familiar comforts of anger to pull her out of her shame. If Emet-Selch would judge her for that, too, as he had for so many other things, then she would let him have her weakness. To his credit he made no move, and when her eye was clear enough to catch a glimpse of him, he was looking away to the same portrait of Zodiark's fall.

"What do you want from me?"

"The same as anyone else, I wager."

It would have taken everything and more to bend and wrench herself back under control, to try and mold herself back into collected creature she was made to be. He had withdrawn again, sunk deeper into the well, far beyond her reach. It felt petty and infuriating that a man so ancient and powerful as he could behave as such. To make things worse, Delial could not tell exactly why it angered her so. "Tell me plain," she snarled, flinching from the rise in her own voice. "What am I to do with any of this?"

He did not look at her but his head tilted down as his eyes dropped near the cavern floor. She full well expected him to vanish as he often did, slipping away into the dark with a snap of his fingers. He did not. Instead he said, with a calm that only incensed her further, "Survive."

Delial did not realize she had moved until he was boring down at her again, with his lip curled into a snarl of his own. She had dared intrude upon him, to grasp at an arm she did not even know she could touch, to force him to look down at her. She wondered if it burned him to be so near, to be faced with a vessel so overflowing with light she was moments from ruin. "And will I? Can I?" Fury tore through her, burning up every thing she'd kept in check, mere kindling to a fire that could not hope to last for much longer. "They all dance around it! Around me! I want-- I need to know the truth. You know it as well as I do, don't you?"

There was nothing kind about Emet-Selch and he did not deign to pretend otherwise. Even retrieving Y'shtola from the Lifestream was but a transaction, albeit one given in good faith. There was no kindness in his eyes, narrowed and calculating. It was foolish to think she might garner understanding from an Ascian, from an ancient thing moved only by the whims of his broken god. She could not allow herself to think the pained grimace that bared his teeth as anything but annoyance. "It depends upon you, hero," he spat in measured, sullen tones. Then, abruptly, he was gone. Her hand gripped nothing, her stare met Hydaelyn's, her caricature on the stone.

"And for what little it may be worth," came Emet-Selch's voice from behind her. "I pray that you do. It is what you do best, is it not?"

And then she was alone.

#ffxiv #shb spoilers #5.0 spoilers #these vain reflections #wol!delial #writing

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yourdlmatchmaker · 7 years ago

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I think this one is the longest match up I’ve answered so far… :’)

“Hello there, this looked fun. Could I have a long match-up please?

1. Physical appearance: 5'4" (163cm) 100lbs (45kg) very long dark reddish brown hair, dark brown eyes, olive skin (Mix of Thai, English and German) My look has been compared to a scaled down (in height) fashion model – that is long legs, very skinny, high somewhat hollow cheek bones, narrow face and a high forehead with almost no bust to speak of and a teeny tiny waist, I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

2. Personality: Oh my, where do I begin? Well, I’m definitely an extreme introvert. People usually seem to think I come across as very professional and aloof. I try to be kind and courteous to everyone I meet, but if they do or say anything that bothers me I can be a little prickly and sometimes downright vicious. Little do they know though that I’m like that, because I’m terribly shy around strangers and have a very strong desire to make people happy and protect them. I fear getting close to others, because I don’t want to hurt or be hurt and have a very hard time finding people I can bond with in both an intellectual and emotional way, so I hide behind distance and politeness. Just because I’m shy at first though, doesn’t mean I won’t be a chatterbox once you get to know me though. Once I’m comfortable with you I’ll share (almost) all of my ideas, random musings and gripes, if I think you’ll be receptive towards it anyways. That takes a very long time though and so far only two people have gotten to that point with me. For people that I’m friends with normally I tend to act in a sort of motherly way, giving them advice and helping them with their problems – sometimes admittingly to my own detriment. As well as taking care of them when they are sick or having emotional issues. I don’t like to help people, but on some level I feel like I must do so especially if I know them.

I’m normally a very logical person, so much so that I will occasionally say the wrong thing or offer ideas or advice when it’s not what the other person is looking for, which I realize after the fact but because I really like to just ‘fix’ things I have a hard time understanding that sometimes people need to emotionally vent, and I often just get confused by it. I’ll try to “be there” for them despite that but it is still difficult.

Despite my size and shy disposition I’m actually extremely hard to intimidate and will stand up for myself and other people very quickly. It doesn’t matter who my opponent is or how big, strong or powerful they are, I will stand my ground possibly to the end if I believe in my cause strongly enough (though because of my protective nature it is very easy to make me back down by threatening other people). No matter how many feminine things there are that I love, for some reason I always feel like I end up coming across as a bit too masculine and I often feel a bit more male than female. This isn’t necessarily out of a desire to be male, but rather I feel like I have more masculine than feminine qualities and also feel like I am sadly bereft in the supposedly more girlish personality traits of my sex. Despite this though I have no real desire to change my personality or sex, I am who I am after all. Nevertheless I remind people more of their brothers and sons, and my tiny social circle is all boys (at the moment.)

3. Scorpio (Sun), Gemini (Moon), Gemini (Rising) (The last two are important because despite having almost all of the Scorpio traits, once you get to know me I never shut up. ^_^;)

4. Hobbies/Interests: Drawings, painting (I like both fine art and illustration and can work in several different mediums – acrylic, watercolour, marker, ink and even digital art. Fantasy art, Surrealism, Manga and Impressionism are examples of styles I can do, and I’m still working towards improving my hyperrealist style.) I’ve been obsessed with making art since I was a very small child and at this point it’s really become my life’s work. I dedicate so much of my time, energy and resources to this that I forget to eat or sleep and become a bit of a shut-in. Reading: (Most of my books are non-fiction, though I do enjoy some older fiction on occasion – The Silmarillion, The Great God Pan and pretty much anything by H.P. Lovecraft being some examples. My library contains field guides, books on botany, mycology, medicine, artbooks, anatomy, geography, geology, microbiology, mythology, occult/witchcraft, religion, linguistics, phrasebooks, particle physics, cartography, calligraphy, history, psychology, genetics (…probably a lot more but we’ll be here for far too long.) Gardening: I love growing all sorts of things, but especially herbs and flowers. My living area is full of plants of many different kinds and I devote a significant portion of my time and energy to them. I also like to grow tropical plants from the seeds of fruit that I buy at the grocery store. Manga and Anime: I don’t seem immediately like the sort of person who would love popular culture, but the fact that I can enjoy some fun stories while reading or watching in a language that is not my native tongue has always been the main motivation behind this obsession. I’m also madly in love with cute things and ink drawings. Video Games: Another thing people probably wouldn’t expect by looking at me but… I have a HUGE collection of games (on my computer) of many different kinds. Like with anything else I do, I have to play everything in it’s original language (it’s more fun and respects the artistic integrity more.) I mostly like JRPGs and Visual Novels now, but I used to love Sierra games when I was younger, and some FPS like Doom. There is no type of game I won’t play. Though gaming is generally the lowest thing on my list of priorities these days. Cooking: I like to cook, can can do many different styles. Mostly Thai, but also frequently Japanese (both traditional and modern), Italian, German, English etc. I can cook pretty much anything though I don’t like baking as much. (I’m not super fond of sweets, except on the rare occasion when I must have them.) Fashion and Makeup: I am completely unable to leave the house without makeup and sunscreen and always have to make sure my clothing is at least presentable and neat. I actually enjoy applying makeup and like experimenting with it (I hate doing my hair though, the length is too much so I usually bun or ponytail it.) I also like a few Jfashions, Mori-Girl, Otome-kei and Classical Lolita especially. Unfortunately I’m also a very active person so I usually end up dressing in a more Korean style instead (tight high-waisted jeans, long sleeved tight black shirts and heeled boots – is running in heels a skill? XD), but when it’s practical to do so I love wearing the frilliest dresses I can find with a very poofy petticoat, a bonnet and floral designs. Hiking: I like to forage in the forest for mushrooms and plants when I can. I find that the fresh air and beautiful scenery calms me down and energizes me. Studying Languages: I haven’t had as much time for this lately, but it’s a side hobby. Unfortunately Japanese is the only one I’ve gotten particularly far in… (There are not enough hours in the day or night.)

5. I like: Tea (Especially Earl Grey, must be high quality or I get a stomach ache… yeah I know, its true. @_@), coffee (espresso in lattes or specialty black coffee made in a French Press, no drip :P), Self discipline, Quiet time, Nature, Music (all kinds, though especially symphonic metal), WalkingI love: My cats (though I get along quite well with all felinekind and animals in general (save humans :P), Plants (I mean every kind of plant, though trees and flowers stick out a bit), Fungi (even molds, though not when they’re growing on my food), Beautiful things, Art Supplies, Bright and pastel colours, Antiques, Books, Art, Paintings, Illustration, Shopping for art suppliesI dislike: When people look untidy, Foul smells, People that bore me, Small talk, Sloth, Loud noises, Erratic behavior, Selfishness, People who act overtly friendly and try to get close to you too fastI loathe: Cruelty (especially towards animals and children), Cowardice, Deliberate ignorance, People who complain a lot, Irresponsibility

6. I was unable to bond with my sole caregiver due to extreme child abuse and neglect on their part, In addition to that I was not allowed to attend school until my teenage years (I was educated very strictly at home, supposedly because I was too advanced to fit in at school – though it might also have been to keep me prisoner at home all the time. >_<). Due to this I have had a very hard time fitting in with society as my childhood was mostly spent alone, reading, drawing, playing computer games, spending time with the cats that I lived with and going out into nature (I made friends with a couple of squirrels.) Much of what I knew about people and the world was gleaned from books, magazines and the internet – although I was allowed to associate with a few family friends on occasion. I did have a very good intellectual education (though often held to impossible standards), but because I was so cut off from more normal ways of socializing I still have a very hard time relating to other people.“Relationship-wise” I’m umm… actually extremely submissive in private (^_^;) (Not something most people would expect as I seem very proud and dominant normally). I’m also very easy to embarrass as I’m not very comfortable talking directly about certain sorts of… umm… “romantic” things and avoid almost all forms of public affection. Above all else I look for people who can understand and relate to me via interests and experiences and who I can also relate to in the same way. Probably the same thing most people look for… but figured I should mention it. Would rather not be paired up with Ruki, I have a huge personal grudge against him that dates back to More Blood – and a part of me still plots his doom. (I apologize deeply to all the Ruki fans though.)

Hope this wasn’t too long, I feel a bit silly. (^_^;)

Take your time and have fun with this.

Could I please be anonymous?”

Admin Abi: Oh my~ what a long and detailed match up!! I really enjoyed reading it and I NEED to say that I felt identified with many parts!! Well~ I hope you get to see it “anon-chan” ;D and I thank you for the long wait. Long reply for a long match!

*finishing your match up*

Your romantic match is…

Reiji!

I must say/confess…I seriously I thought I was reading Reiji’s female description! I don’t intend to offend you and I apologize if I did. But you see…I want to explain myself a little more as to why I said it…

I'll tell you how you two met! After some time that you were studying in a school, you just wasn’t able to fit. Your parents then decided to change you into a more private school. They even changed you into a night-time school. During that time of the day, they thought you would be able to fit more since there would be less students as well as to keep your high level of education. They sing you up to this school and to be honest you weren’t very sure or excited about it. It would mean to adapt one more time and start all over again. Adapting to the time, education system and…met new people once again. On your first day you had a hard time finding your classroom…you were lost and let’s say you didn’t know exactly how you ended up in the chemistry laboratory. You knocked and…a handsome and elegant man opened. He seemed somehow annoyed, but he asked you what is that you wanted. You showed him your schedule and asked him where you could find your class. He gave you the directions and you thank him. This encounters seem to happen constantly since you seemed to always cross paths. He was always polite (and annoyed) and gave you instructions whenever you needed. One time you asked a girl of your class if she knew him so you could thank him properly for all his help. She was surprised and told you that he was no other that Reiji Sakamaki, the most popular family in school. She was more surprised that you get to be in good terms with the second eldest of the brothers.

“Reiji is well known to be the perfect gentleman…but he is unrechable. He’s cold towards everyone and thinks of himself above all. No one has see him dating any girl and he just closes himself in the chemistry laboratory, yet he is the top student in school. I really think you shouldn’t try to catch him, you’ll end up rejected” the girl told you. It’s not like you had those intentions with him in the first place, you just wanted to thank him. The next day you went to his class and simply left him a small note telling him how greatful you were. He was impressed? You couldn’t tell to be honest. You kept having encounters with him, you discovered that he was a little more open when you both were alone. He showed you his perfectionist nature as his sadist part. Yet…you seem to be unavoidable attracted to him. You of course were polite and a lady at first and that gave you extra points! He never confessed to you directly? He just simply let know that you now belong to him~.

He can’t believe how many things you both have in common. Just like you Reiji has an interest in botanics and science. You both have created a small garden with all types of herbs and a small section with flowers. You two sometimes have disagreements since you both are very logical, so you tend to discuss about some things. There were times in which you had troubles with him since he can’t stand being told what he should do (I mean it wasn’t your intention to offend him…you just tried giving him some advice!). Yet…even Reiji had it difficult to make you afraid…you were so difficult to intimidate, how you do it?.

He also had some troubles accepting or at least trying not to change you that much about your preferences. He sometimes have problems dealing with your more masculine nature…but well no one is 100% perfect. He sighs loudly and you know that you are doing something that is bothering him. He also doesn’t like that you tend to hang more with men that girls, yet he knows that even though you are nice and such with them…no one could provide you with the things he offers for you like a deep connection both mental and emotional. He also don’t mind the fact that you have social problems…I mean he manages to keep you with him almost all the time. He’s pleased whenever you dress like a lday or all cute just for him…it makes him feel good with the fact that he gets to know you better than anyone.

He understands what is like to grow alone and being force (in a way) to always give your best and being the best. He felt like he needed to have you all by himself and you fekt the same. You had someone to care for (well not literally but as a target to your attentions and love) and so has he. He always take care of you no matter the circunstances, he has found you and has no intention to let you go…never!

Your dates are mostly staying at his room, having a nice cup of Earl Grey tea (of the highest quality, who you think he is?) and discussing for hours about deep and serious topics. He enjoys your vast knowledge in literature, sciences, botanics, medice, linguistics, witchcraft (which he also has used), gentics…man, he can talk to you for hours and just like you said there are times you both wished the day had more hours to keep going. Even your drawings, pieces of art and knowledge in general never cease to stop to amaze him (he won’t admit it though…his biggest attempt to praise you, would be telling you “you did a good job” or “Indeed you are right about this”). Your interests are so vast that is incredible to make you both stop (Reiji is the one that always stops the conversation in order to go to sleep). Reiji sometimes have problems with your huge invest of time in your video games…but he accepts that a break once in a while is important. You small walks also doesn’t bother him that much…he has one of his familiars keeping an eye on you at all moments so he doesn’t have to worry and can concetrate on his chores and experiments in peace.

Reiji is a true gentleman: he always remembers the important dates, the things that you like and those you don’t. I can tell you that he knows perfectly that you are rather new when it comes with romantic things, so he doens’t push you into hand holding or kissing since he, himself, doesn’t like it. Your submissive nature with his dominant one makes a great combination, he feels so proud that he gets to see your true nature…and that you show it just for him…not just in a “pervert way”, but also as the chatty and even your akwardness. Because that true self with imperfections and all…is what makes you perfect to his eyes. You are so perfect together: YOU TWO HAVE SO MANY THINGS IN COMMON THAT HE SHOULD THANK HEAVENS FOR SENDING HIM SOMEONE AS PERFECT FOR HIM AS YOU!!

I hope you liked it and that I made sense? I feel that in some parts I wasn’t very clear or…maybe that was just my imagination…?

Either way hope you get to see it and like it of course…and thank you for your patience again!!

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fectless · 7 years ago

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3. Pragmatic: Penguins Sledding, Booby Traps

The snow glistens in the fading light, reds and golds contrasting with the deep blue shadows in the way that the landscape usually does when twilight occurs. The sunsets are long now and the actual days and nights short, but Katara can recognize this particular place regardless of the lighting. The area she stands in now is one of the few places in her childhood that had remained unsullied by her mother's death- mostly because this is the first time she's been here since then. Her mother had often found Katara here with her brother- sometimes she would even join them. But Katara no longer plays.

(Katara can remember the last time she had been playing with Sokka- the last time she had felt like a child, and it hadn't been here. No, it had been closer to home on that last day. That last day- the day when joy ended and Katara might as well have become Koh himself for all the bad luck she seems to bring.)

All the same, Katara knows this clearing. In fact, if she were to crest the hill, she is certain that she'll see some child from the village holding a small smoked or salted fish (pinched from the storehouse) aloft, trying to entice penguins into carrying them around. She can almost hear the children giggling.

No, wait. She can hear laughter.

“H-Hey,” a voice calls jovially, “come on, little guys. Wanna go sledding?”

But that voice doesn't belong to one of the village children. That's Aang. And she's responsible for him, too, so she needs to go make sure he doesn't cause the animals to stampede and get himself hurt. So Katara steadies her breathing and makes her way over, just in time to watch the strange boy lunge for an otter-bird and miss. Aang gets to his feet and smiles at her.

“I have a way with animals,” he laughs, proceeding to make a weird “nark-nark-nark” sound and waddle after the penguins.

A smile tugs at her lips as she watches.

It's been a long time since she got to see a child having so much fun. Even now, the mothers don't really like it when she watches the children, often only allowing her to do so when it's time for them to lay down for a spell or if one of them (one of the mothers) is sick. And otherwise, she has so many chores to do that take her from the village or leave her by herself and can only watch from a distance as Sokka tries and fails to mold the younglings into warriors.

So watching Aang try to catch a penguin is a treat. Right now, he's trying to hold one, but the many-limbed otter-bird just drags him along as he grasps at its feet.

The words leave her mouth before she can think to hold them in, “That's not how you catch a penguin, Aang.”

“Really?” He lets go and rolls over to stare at her.

She swallows. He looks so trusting, she can't help but think, so relaxed. Even the children back in the village don't look at her with so much trust, and Sokka and Gran-Gran never... Katara's face goes blank. “Yeah. Here,” she says, forcing away her other thoughts and unthinkingly slipping into one of the few stances that helps her bending, “I'll show you.” And she plucks a small fish from the water.

Immediately the animals start swarming.

But the boy doesn't focus on them. “You're a waterbender!”

Katara's face remains carefully schooled. “Yeah. I am.” Because there's no point in denying it, really. Because she has waterbended without thinking, again, and put someone in danger, again, and obviously she should have known better because even this strange airbending boy from within the ice would know that a Southern waterbender is nothing but bad luck and now he's going to avoid her too.

But instead he says, “That's so cool! I've never met a waterbender before!”

No, I don't suppose you would have, all things considered.

She blinks. “Well, you're looking at the last waterbender from the South Pole.” Nothing much to look at really. Nothing good comes of being a waterbender these days. For her and those nearby especially.

Aang looks so confused. “But a waterbender has to master water. How can you do that if there's no one to teach you?”

(And Katara remembers then: discussions between her parents when she ought to be asleep. How great it is that the South has a bender again; how proud they are that she's theirs; how they'll find someone for her, because a bender has to learn to bend. Then: discussions between her father and Gran-Gran and the rest of the tribe when they think she's out of earshot. How terrible it is that the raids have started coming more frequently; how terrible that a waterbender has attracted firebenders again and caused so many deaths just as things were getting better.)

Maybe I shouldn't.

(Waterbending is a bad thing. A very bad thing.)

She shrugs, throwing the fish at one of the younger-looking penguins and watching as it is chased around.

“What about the North Pole? There are other waterbenders there, right?”

Katara blinks because, yeah, there would be other waterbenders at the other pole, wouldn't there? But she wouldn't really know- doesn't know if there is a North Pole still. “They're pretty far away. We haven't heard from our sister tribe in a long time.” Not since they refused to send aid at the beginning of the war.

And here Aang smiles, his whole face lighting up like an aurora. “But you forget,” he says, pointing at himself, “I have a flying bison. I can personally take you to the North Pole. Katara, we're gonna find you a master!”

She doesn't know what kind of face she's making right now. “That sounds-” There's no way that could happen. But to leave- to go somewhere where her bending isn't a curse, somewhere where she isn't hated or looked down on or known only as misfortune. To be free-

Would mean abandoning everyone that Mom sacrificed herself for.

“I mean,” her hands come to grasp each other and she realizes for the first time that she has lost her gloves. “I don't know, Aang.” His face falls and she feels so guilty. So she throws him a phrase to placate him, much like throwing fish to penguins: “I've never left home before.” Not without meaning to come back. And if she leaves the South Pole, she isn't sure she would ever return.

He still sounds a bit upset, perhaps disappointed, as he says, “Well, you think about it. In the meantime, show me what you did with the penguins again?”

Katara forces a smile onto her face. “Alright. Watch closely.”

And then the penguins mob the young boy as she bends a fish into his hands.

Shortly thereafter, they stand at the top of a cliff, two penguins following them around in the hopes of obtaining more food.

“Let's do this!” Aang hops on the penguin before she can give him one final warning about sledding, and she has to follow along.

But she enjoys it.

The wind pushing the hood of her parka back and whipping her hair-loops around her face; the churning of her stomach as the otter-bird speeds and swirls around in the tunnels of ice and melting snow without care for the destination; the weight of her responsibilities falling away as the penguins soar with no fear of falling... This is the closest to free that she has felt in ages.

So of course the ride ends on a sour note.

The birds slide to a stop on an icy plain and squawk nervously, struggling to rise from under the two of them. Katara pales as she realizes where their reckless sledding- and Aang does, too, though he only stares in confusion at the sight ahead of them.

“W-What is that?”

“A Fire Navy ship and a very bad memory for my people.” Jagged spires of ice hold the metal monstrosity up, the ice around it so solid that Katara cannot see the ocean below despite being mere feet from the water. “It has haunted my tribe since-” she forces the words past the blockage in her throat, “since Gran-Gran was young.”

The air here... Katara shivers. It almost feels as though Father and Lady Tui are just barely holding back a longnight storm.

Movement from the corner of her eye draws her attention. “Aang, wait!” The boy keeps moving. “We're not allowed near it- it could be booby trapped.”

Finally, he pauses, looking over his shoulder at her and grinning. “To be good a bender, you have to let go of fear.” And then he begins climbing the ice to find a way into the ship. (No, ship is too gentle a word for this giant, metal beast. It's too tame to describe what was one of the first strikes against her people.)

She disagrees- to be a good bender is to know when not to do something stupid. But she's responsible for him, which means that if he goes in there and sets off a trap she will be blamed for it. “Aang! Wait- don't.”

Koh take his face! The boy ignores her, just like everyone else does, and she is forced to follow him.

He pauses for only a moment to help her through a hole in the metal thing's side. The boy is easy to spot as he wanders through the monstrosity- his bright clothing contrasting against the dark walls, his steps echoing.

She has to get him out of here. “This was one of the Fire Nation's first attacks.”

Finally, he stops in front of a weapons shelf. “Okay, back up. I have friends all over the world, even in the Fire Nation. I've never seen any war.” He lifts one of the metal spears, a frown forming on his face.

Katara's blood turns to ice. Never seen any- Friends in the Fire Nation- “Aang... How long were you in that iceberg?”

“I dunno-” Katara can feel her feet freezing to the metal beneath her. “-A few days, maybe?”

“I...That doesn't...” Her breath mists into the air. “I think it was more like a hundred years, Aang.”

“What!” He nearly drops the spear as he finally turns to face her. “That's impossible! Do I look like a hundred twelve-year-old man to you?”

“Just- Think about it. The war has been going on for almost a hundred years; you don't know about it- you would have had to have been in there the whole time. It's- it's the only explanation.” The only one that makes sense, at least.

(The spirits play tricks on people, some of them at least, but Lady Tui and Father are too compassionate and serious, Agni too proud, and the patron spirits of airbenders and earthbenders could never be bothered to move someone through time. And lesser spirits aren't powerful enough to do such a thing.)

“A-a hundred years?” The airbender backs away from her, until his legs suddenly give out and he nearly slams against a wall. He holds his head in his hands, hiding his wide, wild eyes from her. “I can't believe it.”

She kneels down beside him, ice melting into cold water, a hand raised to touch him- to offer comfort. But she draws back. Words, too, fail her; she doesn't get farther than a weak, “I-” Because she has lost her mother, her family, her tribe, but the last two are alive still. He has lost his entire people, his home is destroyed, and all this to a war he had not even known existed. Words cannot make things better; and touch from one such as her- a Southern waterbender, of all people, would only make things worse.

They sit in silence until he draws himself to his feet. “There is a bright side to all of this. I know it.”

Katara's heart twists because, A bright side? Truly, this boy before her is so young. Maybe it's good that he can think that.

He at least has Appa. He has made it to her tribe instead of falling into the hands of firebenders who would only try to kill him. Perhaps, if there is a bright side to be found, the good he is able to see stems from those two things.

Aang staggers from the room. She rises to follow him. They have forgotten which way the entrance is and, while they look for it, his foot catches on a wire that had been hidden in a pile of snow and he winces. Katara freezes again.

Bars slide over the door, hissing fills the chamber. She can hear something being shot into the air with a high-pitched whine and Aang asks, “What was that you said about booby traps?”

For a long moment, they stand still, staring at each other with wide eyes. Then they nearly explode into a flurry of motion as they rush to get away. Aang shouts, “Hang on!” and she has to hold back an instinctive flinch as he grabs for her, even as it becomes clear that he is only using his bending to help them escape from the metal monster before something else can go wrong. She stumbles when he sets her down, and even as she leads him back to the village, she can feel her frozen fingers and toes breaking, feel suddenly unsteady limbs shaking as she struggles to breathe. Her heart is beating too hard and too fast and she can almost taste blood in her mouth.

It isn't until she begs, Father, help me, please, that the sensations begin to fade.

(The taste lingers.)

-.-.-.-..-.-.-.-

Katara can see that the village has gathered at the gate as she and Aang crest the last hill. The children cheer as they spot the airbender, rushing out to meet him with smiles and embraces and she can only wonder, What did he do?

Because they clearly like him. Even the shy Xuehuu, who hangs back by her mother instead of rushing forward with the others, looks relieved to see him safe.

They like him almost as much as everyone hates me. The thought is mean, edged with hurt and tinged with the color of La's depths in the midst of a storm; she pushes it away. (Or tries to. It stays like the metallic stain of blood on her tongue, and she does not quite know why that hurts more than having had the thought in the first place.)

As excited as the children are to see their new airbending friend, the adults and Sokka are clearly not.

Her brother rushes forward, face darkening with every step. In his eyes, she can see the reflection of the monstrosity's flare slowly falling from the sky. “I knew it! You signaled the Fire Navy with that flare- you're leading them straight to us, aren't you?!”

Katara can feel the blood of the people surrounding her again; she's going mad. “No,” she mutters. Sokka's head snaps towards her, his heart pumps a little harder. She refocuses. “It was an accident, Sokka.”

“Yeah! We were on the ship and there was this booby trap and, well, we boobied right into it.” His posture and voice are a study in regret; Katara stands firm and cold, body language showing no such signs. Though she does wish he hadn't spoken up.

Here Gran-Gran steps forward, a stern look on her face. “Katara! You should not have gone on that ship.” She stares back at the old woman, unflinching. But her grandmother continues, “Now we could all be in danger.”

The words “because of you,” aren't spoken, but by the look everyone but Aang sports, Katara knows that the tribe is thinking them.

Aang rushes to defend her- tries to take the blame upon himself- and that is when she looks away, because the only one who believes Katara to be blameless is not only wrong, he is not of the tribe. He is a stranger that she is responsible for, that she has brought into the village, a warrior, or the Air Nomads' equivalent- based on his tattoos, and he is honor-bound to defend her, if only for those reasons. Blame for his actions rests with Katara and only Aang himself does not know.

“Aha!” Sokka finger points at the airbending boy, but she feels his eyes rest on her. “The traitor confesses! Warriors,” he calls to the children, “away from the enemy. The foreigner is banished from our village.”

Aang looks heart-broken at this, but Katara- Katara feels only fury. Always, she thinks. Always.

“You're making a mistake,” she says without inflection. She can feel every molecule in her body agreeing with this. The snow beneath her hardens into ice, creeps up to steady her feet. “Aang is not our enemy.”

“No, I'm keeping my promise to Dad. I'm keeping everyone safe.”

Am I included in that “everyone?” Another thought to be dragged away by the tides of her mind and frozen out of reach.

She turns away from her brother, trails her eyes over the crowd, and feels her anger drain. “Gran-Gran, please.” She is so tired, suddenly.

But Gran-Gran shakes her head. “No, Katara, you knew that going on that ship was forbidden.” But she hadn't. Not really. Katara had never been told not to go on the ship. Quite frankly, no one had cared where she went until the men left and more hands were needed to keep the village from starving. More than once, one of the warriors (actual warriors, not the children going through Sokka's attempts at training) had even encouraged her to do something that would probably kill her. “I think it's best if the airbender leaves.”

The airbender. Not Aang. No, because he is a bender, and the South has no use for those.

“Fine,” Katara says. Perhaps Sokka can feel a hint of what Katara means. He is the only one who looks at her, the only one who does not turn away as she and Aang stand on the other side of an invisible line drawn in the snow. She has had years to practice burying what she feels, but this... This has been a long time in coming. “Come on, Aang, let's go.” The ice around her feet thaws; the ice around her heart solidifies. She begins walking towards Appa.

“Katara! Where do you think you're going?”

She stops but doesn't turn around. “The North Pole.”

“You would choose him over your tribe- over your own family?”

Her eyes close. Her mouth opens-

“No. Katara,” Aang interrupts, “I won't come between you and your family.” The airbender says goodbye, hardly letting her get a word in edgewise: “It was nice meeting everyone.”

One of the girls rushes forward, begging him not to leave. Katara can't even look at them.

“I'll miss you, too,” he says.

And then he's gone.

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#cynical!katara #pragmatic #avatar the last airbender #atla #katara

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