#I’m trying to cope with the mass murder of objects

[drawingoddessy]

OK LEMME COOK FOR A SECOND

I got this very very unlikely theory looking at a comic from @ganillbanned

So what if the deleted contestants aren’t rlly dead, but in another place somehow?

And the only way we as a audience find out is through a major character death.

One of the main people I think would be considered a “major character” is Lightbulb

And through her eyes we see what exactly happens to the deleted contestants

[declanisms]

several hours to think abt this and gojo and geto would not go to the same afterlife. therefore gojo is not dead and just thinking while he regrows his body

[welllpthisishappening]

Heyooo could you do 6 and/or 9 for kiss prompts please? If you’re still doing them that is. :)

Alright, well, this got long. Let’s all act super surprised. And because you are an absolute delight of a human being, this is Will and Belle. Set in the Blue Verse, obvs. And also because I keep reading these hockey rom coms, so I am in a mood™. They were real fun to write. Particularly on their first date. This is their first date! At the Museum of Natural History! Prompts were: hand kisses and kisses in the snow.

————

This was a bad idea. 

Exceptionally bad. Stupid, really. Impetuous and instinctual and no, no, that second one wasn’t right at all. Agreeing to Ariel’s set-up wasn’t instinctual, was just—

Idiotic, maybe. 

Throwing her head back, Belle tried to find cracks in the ceiling. To match the obvious ones in her sanity. Only the Museum of Natural History did not boast any cracks. Couldn’t, she figured. Something about the structural integrity of the building and, she imagined, the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt. Who would very likely emerge from his statue out front if he realized there was any sort of looming threat to the dinosaur bones stored inside this museum. 

He’d get, like—those horse riders, probably. God, now she couldn’t remember the name for those horse riders, just a mess of facts about San Juan Hill and the Spanish-American War and she’d nearly paced her way onto several people’s shoes already. 

He was late. 

This hockey guy. Will, his name was Will. Scarlet, Will Scarlet. Played defense for the New York Rangers and every article she’d read in the last two days since agreeing to Ariel’s wholly ridiculous suggestion also suggested that Will Scarlet, professional hockey player, was very good at his job. Not quite championship-worthy yet, but it had been close that one season and he was—

Cute. 

Real cute. Had that slight curl to his lips in his headshot and if Belle spent a few minutes that afternoon meticulously examining his headshot then that was between her and her desk and her internet history. Which she should probably delete at some point. Tomorrow, she’d do it tomorrow. First thing, even. 

Would walk into the library and make sure to take care of any lingering evidence detailing all the proof that she was fairly certain there was a hint of something unnameable at the edge of Will Scarlet’s eyes and that was insane. 

She was on a roll, really.

He just—

Well, she thought he was cute. Didn’t have any looming warrants for his arrest. Hit people on the ice with a fair amount of frequency, per several other articles, but that was to be expected. She thought so, at least. Hockey was still a potential project for her. If this worked. 

She didn’t think it was going to work. 

Dating professional athletes was not her. Didn’t fit with her personality, or her possibly subconscious and entirely unfair prejudices, but this guy got paid to play a game and he likely had expectations and fans and a variety of people who fell under the umbrella of antiquated categories with vaguely offensive naming conventions, and there was also Belle’s consistent tendency to self-sabotage because romance had never really panned out all that great, but Ariel had promised. Was so sure. Belle didn’t have a choice. 

Agreeing to this was—

Instinct.

“God damn,” she mumbled, halfway through another lap around the lobby. Twisting between tourists, most of whom were trying to figure out how to store the bags they weren’t allowed to bring into the museum because it appeared most of them had been required to visit Bloomingdales at some point that day, she very nearly stepped on a few more toes and definitely on the back of one boot hell. 

Who immediately cursed. 

Not under his breath. Right out loud, drawing a few stares and one gasp from someone Belle figured had to be from Iowa, or something. 

That was an awful thing to think. 

Only she couldn’t bring herself to feel too badly when her stomach appeared intent on taking up residence in her throat, so as to avoid the acid and the wholly imaginary butterfly wings and he turned around. To stare at her. With that specific glint in his eyes. 

“Hey, can you—oh,” Will sighed, shoulders sagging and that was not great. Bad, even. Real bad. Blind date disaster sort of bad. Belle’s smile made her cheeks ache. “Are you planning on killing me? You look a little crazed. This is a very public place.” “Agreed to so you couldn’t kill me.” “Would hurt my minutes.” “I don’t know what that means,” Bell admitted. “Is your foot alright?”

His lips twisted. She was staring. Appraising, really. Tracing her eyes across a head that was at a slight angle now, and she was having an admittedly difficult time coping with his shoulders. Sloped and clearly muscled, even under the fabric of a well-fitted leather jacket that couldn’t be providing much warmth. 

“It’s cold out.”

Will’s smile stretched. “It is, in fact.” He stuck his hand out, fluttering fingers that weren’t showing any sign of frostbite when Belle didn’t do anything except keep staring. Like a complete psychopath. “If Ariel set me up with a murderer, I’m going to be really annoyed, fair warning.”

“That would be fair, yeah.” “And strangely not an objection.” “I’m really worried about your Achilles tendon.”

He laughed. Guffawed. Threw his head back and wrapped an arm around his waist, seemingly unaware of the glances and the few prolonged stares because he was a professional athlete and other people were probably more aware of that than Belle was. Another finger flutter. “Will Scarlet,” he said, “not a murderer, only a little concerned that you might be—”

“—You were late.” “And I apologize for that, but you can blame Cap. Who missed a wide-open breakaway three minutes before we were about to get off the ice and Arthur lost his mind.” “Sounds dramatic.” “You’ve got no idea. Are you going to shake my hand because my arm is getting kind of tired.” Belle lifted her eyebrows. Kept smiling. More like a normal person, she hoped. A semi-charmed person. Who almost forgot where they were standing and how long the line to pay whatever you want at the Museum of Natural History always was. His hand wasn’t nearly as cold as she expected it to be. 

That probably wasn’t important.

“Belle French,” she said, “shouldn’t you have better upper-body strength?”

His smile was a bit softer, that time. Not quite resigned, but she was struggling to come up with appropriate syntax and neither one of them had tried to pull their hand away. “I’ve got incredible upper-body strength,” Will promised, leaning forward and he smelled a bit like soap, “you should what I can do on skates, though.” Flushing was ridiculous. Blushing, too. Any synonym. 

Still holding hands. 

“Do you think this is working for you?” “I’m trying very hard.” “Yeah, I can tell.” “Oh wow,” he chuckled, finally disentangling their fingers, and that was fine. Totally fine. Belle didn’t notice the absence of warmth, at all. Not instantly, or anything. “That’s kind of a knock to my self-confidence, honestly. Ariel didn’t mention you were mean.” “I’m not mean. What else did Ariel mention?” To suggest that his eyes actually had the gall to sparkle would be crazy. They didn’t sparkle. Were biologically incapable of doing that. 

But Belle swore something else happened, and it might have just been in the general region of her heart. Stuttering and restarting, at double time. As if it were intent on impersonating a hummingbird. 

“You’re very smart.” “That’s true,” Belle agreed. 

“Modest, too.” “Obviously, yeah, yeah.”

She wanted to keep making him laugh. Wanted him to keep smiling at her and leaning forward, even if his hair wasn’t quite long enough to artfully fall across his forehead. She wondered if his shoulders looked as good when he wasn’t wearing the leather jacket. 

So, insanity was fun to experience, then. 

“This is the part where you tell me what Ariel said about me, babe.”

Belle’s eyebrows jumped. Soared. Flew off her forehead. “You really do thinking this working, huh?” “My self-confidence is a sham, Ariel thinks I’m lonely, my teammates are dumb, and I’m willing to pay full price for this museum so we can also see the 3D movie about the giant monster shark.” “Megalodon is a real thing that was part of a mass marine extinction, potentially caused by a supernova that really messed up the rest of Earth.” “Telling me that is not going to stop me from calling it monster shark,” Will promised. Belle thought it was a promise. Sounded like one. 

She was admittedly a little hung up on the lonely thing. 

“I can work with monster shark.”

Will beamed. Did something passably ridiculous with his eyebrows and the slight shake of his head, and neither one of them mentioned the hand thing. How they reached for the other on what already felt like habit, twisting between bags and tourists and it took less time to get in when they paid full price. Plus twenty-nine ninety-nine for the monster shark movie. Per ticket. 

And they walked. Wandered. Took their time through exhibits, conversation that wasn’t exactly ground-breaking, but was just as easy, tilting their heads back in tandem to stare at massive fossils and partially-finished dinosaur structures. 

“So,” Will drawled, not taking his eyes off the Tyrannosaurs Rex, “tell me something.”

“About?” “You’re a librarian, right?” Belle nodded. “Not like—well, there’s not a lot of story-times. More research and entitled doctoral students who think the world revolves around them.”

“Bet you think athletes are super great then, huh?” “Ariel didn’t force me here against my will,” Belle pointed out, getting another laugh for her pitiful comedic efforts. Pulling his gaze away from the exhibit, Will didn’t quite smile, but he wasn’t glaring and her stomach hadn’t returned to its correct spot yet. “Why’d you pick Museum of Natural History?” “I’m more than just a pretty face.”

She rolled her eyes. Continued to be very charmed. “I did work in a small town once, but it didn’t end great, lots of drama, lots of dead mom, overprotective dad, bad relationships.” “How bad is bad?” “Thinking of dropping gloves with my ex-boyfriend?” Twinkling eyes were impossible too, she was sure. Will’s appeared determined to prove her wrong. “You looked up terminology.” “Sounds suspiciously like an accusation.” “Nah,” he shook his head, “a cautiously optimistic assumption.” “For the life of me, I cannot figure out what icing is.”

He ran his hand over the back of his head. That wasn’t the first time, either. Belle might have been doing research. Keeping track, more like. “Not many people can at the start,” Will said, “have you gotten to offsides yet? My national championship?” “You won a national championship?” Narrowing his eyes wasn’t an explicit challenge. Felt like one, all the same. One Belle wasn’t just willing to reach for. Wanted to reach. And that was—strange, actually. She hadn’t felt like that in a very long time, had been sitting at the same desk for the better part of the last ten months, waiting for something worthy of researching and figuring out and she wasn’t lying about icing. Sometimes it didn’t happen? And that frustrated people? 

On the ice, and in the stands. Based on the videos she’d watched. 

That sounded psychopathic too. 

“What happened with the ex?” “He wanted to get married,” Belle said, forced casualness that didn’t do anything to the thin-type nature of Will’s eyes. “Dad wanted us to get married.” “And you didn’t?” She shook her head. “I’ve got things to do.” “Like read up on my national championship?” “Google black holes are real things.” “Oh, you’ll get no argument from me,” Will grinned, another chuckle and she was starting to pick up on the variety in his laughter. Genuine, now. “But searching your name only led to your Columbia faculty page, most of which I knew already from grilling Ariel because I was worried about getting stabbed in public, I’m real famous you know.” “Hockey is not as popular as you think it is.” His hand was too big, Belle thought. Could wrap all the way around her fingers, warm and somehow almost comforting, tugging her away from this massive dinosaur toward a slightly smaller dinosaur that didn’t eat other dinosaurs several million years ago. 

She didn’t pull away. “Anyway,” Will added pointedly, “your faculty page left a lot to be desired, but a slightly older article from the York County Coast Star informed me that you did Kennebunk High School proud once by winning Best Delegate at a Model United Nation’s Conference.” She’d have to stop blushing eventually. As it was, Belle’s face was blistering and her mouth had fallen open at some point. Likely right around the time that the ends of Will’s lips also started to quirk up. 

“Stalking is a serious crime.” “Curiosity, however, is not. Plus, A didn’t know about Model UN. What was your position?” “A lacks a bit of creativity on the nickname front, don’t you think?” Belle asked, not totally desperate to change the subject.

Will lifted a shoulder. “Usually we like to add an r to last names, or a y. Depends on the last syllable, more than anything.” “Who is this we exactly?” “Hockey players as a whole.” “Right, right, so that would make me—” “—Frenchy, yeah,” Will nodded. “Doesn’t seem to fit, though. Also possibly offensive?” Belle laughed. Giggled, a little. Kept blushing and ignoring the unstable state of her heart and she hadn’t been expecting him to be so—

Charming. Legitimately and entirely charming. Full of simple banter, like it didn’t require any extra effort on his part. She was glad for that. He kept rubbing the side of his hip, too. Probably took a check during practice. She’d really spent a long time researching terminology. 

“I served as a judge on the United Nation’s International Court of Justice.”

Letting out a low whistle, Will actually widened his eyes. With legitimate awe. She was going to combust before this was over. This date. This going very well date. “I’m sorry about the ex.” “You don’t have to punch him in the face.” “Good to know.”

She hummed. Looked back at the dinosaur in front of them so she wouldn’t be so tempted to ask about lonely and what that meant, and that lasted for all of twenty-six minutes. Give or take. 

Belle hadn’t taken her phone out of her pocket once.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He didn’t totally stiffen. They’d moved off the dinosaur floor, standing in an offshoot of the lobby and another long line with more kids than Belle expected. She should have. No one appreciated long-extinct monster sharks more than kids. 

So, Will didn’t totally stiffen. His lips all but disappeared, though. Became a thin line on a head that was back at an angle, with a tongue that poked noticeably against one of his cheeks. 

“College girlfriend,” he said, voice turning gruff, “dated the entire time I was there, wore my jersey to the title game. All that cliche bullshit. Graduated, New York had my rights, and suddenly the world was our oyster, right?” “Rhetoric?” He lifted the other shoulder. Than the one from before. Keeping track of that was crazy, crazy, easy. “A little,” Will admitted, “because New York had my rights, but not an immediate need for a defenseman, and the AHL is a grind. Shitty barns of arenas and not much glamor on multi-state bus trips. Game after game, trying to prove you deserve the call that’s gonna change everything, only it took too long for mine to come. Least for Ana. She wanted—well, fuck if I know what she wanted, really. But it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t waiting and there were plenty of other guys in the league who started at the top. Who also thought she had the prettiest smile of anyone in the room.”

Jealousy was not a normal reaction. And wasn’t really what was happening. Not entirely, at least. 

Belle would tell herself that at least forty-seven times in the next twenty-four minutes. Because her stomach was flipping, making it difficult to take a deep breath when she noticed the resigned look in Will’s suddenly dull eyes and he was supposed to be an idiot. Was supposed to be a stereotype, unable to find anything interesting about the Hall of North American Forests, but he made jokes about stuffed birds and was serious about seeing the monster shark and Ariel was going to be absolutely insufferable about all of this. 

“What’s the deal with your shirt?” Will’s head tilted even more. “Because it’s team-branded?” “Technical term?” “Now we’re going in circles, babe.” “Get more creative nicknames.”

The spark returned. Fluttered in the very center of eyes that met Belle’s without a hint of trepidation of concern regarding her potential murder tendencies. Not that she had any. He’d looked her up, too. “I’ll see what I can do,” Will muttered, “and it’s a real problem for me. Get free shirt, have to wear free shirt, see no reason to buy other shirts.” “Or proper sentence structure, it seems.” “This is working.” “Is it?” He nodded, following the line as it started to move into the theater. “I think so, yeah. You ready to learn about this giant fish?” “Sharks are fish, that’s true.” “See,” Will grinned, lacing his fingers through his, “totally working.”

Neither one pulled their hands away. Even as the theater lights dimmed, and she couldn’t remember the last time she wore 3D glasses, but the effects were at least fairly good because she jumped no less than three times, Will’s soft chuckle echoing between her ears each time. 

His thumb tapped. Found a rhythm against the side of her wrist that stayed even after the movie was over, and his excitement rivaled the loudest and most sugar-filled kids, an unspoken agreement to spend at least thirty-four minutes in the gift shop. 

He bought her a stuffed shark. 

“For intimidation purposes,” Will explained, thrusting an arm toward the sidewalk. Belle didn’t smile. She tried. Sort of. And the cab stopped almost immediately. “You’re impressed.” “Keep telling me how I’m feeling, please.” “This is New York, danger lurking on every corner and whatnot. Requirements of a gentleman mean I have to deposit the fair lady back at her door.” “Or you lose your membership card?”

“Matching jackets, God, keep up.”

She slid into the backseat next to him. And it wasn’t like she was expecting a kiss, honestly. Wouldn’t have said no, probably. But this was—

New and a little exciting, and Ariel was going to be so annoying. 

So, they sat. Kept talking, which was still somehow effortless. Even with the cloud of potential kissing and lives that weren’t remotely similar, and Belle still had a lot of hockey-based questions. About teammates and their opinions because Will had mentioned that too, but she wasn’t a total snoop or willing to be that level of stubborn quite yet. Maybe, like, second date stubborn. 

They were at her building, anyway. 

Stumbling out of the cab was not the picture of cool Belle had been hoping for. Snow landed on her shoulders and clung to the ends of her hair, a storm that started somewhere between Central Park West and East 29th Street, and she knew Will did not leave anywhere near here. He got out, anyway. 

Stood on the sidewalk before trailing her toward the door, her stuffed shark safe from the elements in the bag hanging from her shoulder. “So, that was—”

“I had a really good time with—”

Her shoulders sagged. Dropped in tandem with Belle’s sigh and the stretch of her smile, refusing to let her teeth dig into her lower lip. Will dragged his hand over the back of his head. “A’s going to be so annoying about this.” Tension disappeared. Melted faster than the snow was capable of, Belle’s teeth only appearing when she smiled that wide. “Because you think it worked, huh?”

“Working on that self-confidence, you see,” Will said, hovering on the bottom step and her lips were tingling. With anticipation and hope and the knowledge of how much a cab back uptown was going to cost him. 

He surprised her, of course. 

Flipping his wrist, Will’s fingers fluttered once. Silent invitation hung between them, and Belle didn’t think. Didn’t consider options or potential blow-ups, no sign of a pro and con list. It’d be weird to find one on her front step, anyway. 

She dropped her hand into his. 

Still warm, still capable of holding all of hers, the soft pull at the end of her arm didn’t stop until Will’s lips grazed her bent knuckles and stayed there. For the next eight seconds. She counted. Timed it up with the solid thud of her heart against her chest and the propensity of her knees to bend beneath her. In order to accommodate everything she was feeling. 

Too much. 

Not enough. 

“I had fun, ma moitié,” Will said, leaving her brain whirring for a translation. 

“This might be working.” He scrunched his nose when he nodded. “Smarter than I look, that’s why. Keep the shark guy nearby, he’ll make sure danger stays outside where it belongs.”

Belle wanted to say something. Wanted it to be cute and passably witty, enough that there would be a second date so she could be more stubborn, only her tongue wasn’t functioning and she was so close to falling over it was honestly embarrassing. 

Will’s eyebrows jumped again. 

Before he did. Off the steps and back to the waiting cab, taillights not much more than a reflection of snowflakes before Belle was scrambling for her phone. Her fingers shook a little. 

“Ma moitié, ma moitié, ma moitié,” she chanted. It turned into a gasp. As soon as Google returned with its translation. 

My half. 

Whatever sound tumbled out of her was neither cute nor entirely human, heart turning unstable again and the shark looked especially good sitting between the pillows of Belle’s bed. The same one she dropped onto with a laptop propped against her knees so she could figure out how the hell icing worked. 

[wantlonger]

𝐉𝐄𝐒𝐔𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐔𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑 (𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟎) 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒

content warning ahead for religion, murder, suicide, and other triggering topics. lost post, more lyrics under the cut.

my mind is clearer now.

i can see where we all soon will be.

you have started to believe the things they say of you.

and all the good you’ve done will soon get swept away.

you’ve begun to matter more than the things you say.

i’ve been your right hand man/woman all along.

and they’ll hurt you when they find they’re wrong.

my admiration for you hasn’t died. 

but every word you say gets twisted ‘round some other way.

and they’ll hurt you if they think you’ve lied.

i am frightened by the crowd.

we are getting much too loud.

please remember that i want us to live.

all your followers are blind.

too much heaven on their minds.

it was beautiful but now it’s sour.

he won’t listen to me.

what’s the buzz?

tell me what’s-a-happenin’.

why should you want to know?

don’t you think about the future.

don’t you try to think ahead.

save tomorrow for tomorrow; think about today instead.

i could give you facts and figures.

i could give you plans and forecasts.

why are you obsessed with fighting times and fates you can’t defy?

let me try to cool down your face a bit.

that feels nice, so nice.

[name], that is good.

she/he/they alone has tried to give me what i need right here and now.

it seems to me a strange thing mystifying, that a man/woman/person like you can waste his/her/your time on women/men/people of her/his/kind.

yes, i can understand that she/he/they amuses you.

it’s not that i object to her/his/their profession.

it doesn’t help if you’re inconsistent.

they only need a small excuse to put us all away.

who are you to criticize her/him/them?

leave her/him/them, she’s/he’s/they’re with me now.

try not to get worried, try not to turn on to problems that upset you.

don’t you know that everything’s alright?

we want you to sleep well tonight.

let the world turn without you tonight.

if we try, we’ll get by.

forget all about us tonight.

sleep and i shall soothe you.

why has it been wasted?

we could have raised maybe three hundred silver pieces or more.

people who are hungry, people who are starving, they matter more than your feet and head.

there will be poor always, pathetically struggling. 

look at the good things you’ve got.

you’ll be lost, you’ll be so sorry when i’m gone.

ah, gentlemen, you know why we are here.

we have not much time and quite a problem here.

listen to the howling mod of blockheads in the street.

tell us that you’re who we say you are.

he is dangerous.

we need a more permanent solution to our problem.

one things i’ll say for him/her/them, [name] is cool.

but how can we stop him?

i see bad things arising.

i see blood and destruction: our elimination because of one man.

fools! you have no perception!

the stakes we are gambling are frighteningly high.

we must crush him/her/them completely.

this [name] must die.

won’t you smile at me?

this common crowd is much too loud.

tell the mob who sing your song that they are fools and they are wrong.

they are a curse; they should disperse.

you’re alright by me.

why waste your breathe moaning at the crowd? nothing can be done to stop the shouting.

won’t you fight for me?

won’t you die for me?

did you see i waved?

i believe in you and god, so tell me that i’m saved.

there must be over fifty thousand screaming love and more for you.

you will rise to a greater power.

we will win ourselves a home!

you’ll get the power and the glory.

you’d see the truth but you close your eyes.

to conquer death you only have to die.

he/she/they had that look you very rarely find ... the haunted, hunted kind.

i asked him/her/them to say what had happened.

he/she/they never said a word, as if he/she/they hasn’t heard.

the room was full of wild and angry men.

i heard them mentioning my name and leaving me the blame.

roll on up, for my price is down.

come on in for the best in town.

take your pick of the finest wine.

name your price; i got everything.

come and buy; it’s all going fast.

borrow cash on the finest terms.

hurry now while stocks still last.

you, at least, are still alive.

name your pleasure, i will sell.

i can fix your wildest needs.

i got heaven and i got hell.

get out! get out!

my time is almost through.

after all i’ve tried for three years -- seems like thirty.

see my purse? i’m a poor, poor man.

i believe you can make me whole.

see my skin? i’m a mass of blood.

there’s too many of you, don’t push me.

there’s too little of me; don’t crowd me.

heal yourselves!

i don’t know how to love him.

i’ve been changed, yes really changed.

in these past few days when i see myself, i seem like someone else.

i don’t how to take this.

i don’t see why he moves me.

he’s a man, he’s just a man.

i’ve had so many men before. in very many ways, he’s just one more.

should i bring him down? should i scream and shout?

should i speak of love, let my feelings out?

i never thought i’d come to this.

what it all about?

don’t you think it’s rather funny i should be in this position?

i’m the one that’s always been so calm, so cool, no lover’s fool.

if he said he loved me, i’d be lost, i’d be frightened.

i couldn’t cope. i’d turn my head, i’d back away. i wouldn’t want to know.

he scares me so.

i want him so.

i love him so.

now if i help you, it matters that you see these sordid kind of things are coming hard to me.

it’s taken me some time to work out what to do.

i weighed the whole thing up before i came to you.

i have no thought at all about my own reward.

i really didn’t come here of my own accord.

just don’t say i’m damned for all time.

why are we the ones that see the sad solution -- know what must be done?

cut the protesting, forget the excuses. 

we want information, get up off the floor.

we have the paper we need to arrest him/her/them.

you know his/her/their movements, we know the law.

your help in this matter won’t go unrewarded.

we’ll pay you in silver -- cash on the nail.

i don’t want your blood money!

that doesn’t matter, our expenses are good.

i don’t need your blood money!

but you might as well take it -- we think that you should.

think of the things you can do with that money.

we’ve noted your motives, we’ve noted your feelings.

this isn’t blood money it’s a fee, nothing more.

i must be mad thinking i’ll be remembered.

i must be out of my head!

look at your blank faces! my name will mean nothing ten minutes after i’m dead.

one of you denies me.

one of you betrays me.

not i! who could? impossible!

cut the dramatics! you know very well who!

why don’t you go do it?

you want me to do it?

hurry, they’re waiting.

if you knew why i do it ...

i don’t care why you do it!

to think i admired you, for now i despised you!

you liar! you judas!

what if i just stayed here and ruined your ambition?

hurry, you fool, hurry and go!

save me your speeches, i don’t want to know! go!

you sad pathetic man/woman/person -- see what you’ve brought us to.

our ideals die around us, all because of you.

someone has to turn you in.

every time i look at you i don’t understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand.

you’d have managed better if you had it planned.

don’t disturb me now; i can see the answers.

knew that i would make it if i tried.

will no one stay awake with me?

will none of you wait with me?

take this cup away from me.

i have changed.

i’m not as sure as when we started.

then i was inspired ... now i’m sad and tired.

could you ask as much from any other man?

why should i die?

would i be more noticed than i ever was before? would the things i’ve said and done matter anymore?

if i die what will be my reward?

can you show me now that i would not be killed in vain?

show me there’s a reason for your wanting me to die.

you’re far too keen on ‘where’ and ‘how’, but not so hot on ‘why’.

alright, i’ll die!

why then am i scared to finish what i started?

i didn’t start it.

i will drink your cup of poison.

take me now before i change my mind!

must you betray me with a kiss?

we’re gonna fight for you!

put away your sword, don’t you know that it’s all over?

it was nice, but now it’s gone. 

why are you obsessed with fighting?

stick to fishing from now on.

tell me [name] how you feel tonight?

do you plan to put up a fight?

do you feel that you’ve had the breaks?

what would you say were your big mistakes?

do you think that you may retire?

did you think you would get much higher?

how do you view your coming trial?

have your men/women/people proved it all worthwhile?

come on [name], this is not like you.

let us know what you’re gonna do.

you know what your supporters feel.

you’ll escape in the final reel.

now we have him! now we have him!

[name], you must realize the serious charges facing you.

that’s what you say -- you say i am.

there you have it. what more evidence do we need?

thank you for the victim. stay awhile and you’ll see him bleed.

i think i’ve seen you somewhere, i remember.

you were with that man they took away. i recognize your face.

you got the wrong man/woman/person, lady.

i don’t know him.

i wasn’t where he was tonight -- never near the place.

that’s strange, for i’m sure i saw you with him. you were right by his side, and yet you denied.

it looked just like you.

don’t you know what you have said? you have gone and cut him/her/them dead.

i had to do it, don’t you see? or else they’d come for me.

that’s what he/she/they told us you would do ... i wonder how he/she/they knew ...

who is this broken man cluttering up my hallway? who is this unfortunate?

you look so small, not a king at all.

what do you mean by that? that is not an answer.

how can someone in your state be so cool about his fate?

please explain to me. you had everything, where is it now?

[name], i am overjoyed to meet you face to face.

you’ve been getting quite the name all around this place.

that’s all you need do, and i’ll know it’s all true.

you just won’t believe the hit you’ve made ‘round here.

you’re all we talk about! the wonder of the year!

oh, what a pity, if it is all a lie.

still i’m sure that you can rock the cynics if you try.

if you do that for me, then i’d let you go free.

i’d only ask things i’d ask any superstar.

what is it that you have got that puts you where you are?

i am waiting, yes i’m a captive fan.

i am dying to be shown that you are not just any man/woman/person.

has something gone wrong? why do you take so long?

hey! aren’t you scared of me!

you are nothing but a fraud!

take him/her/them away, he’s/she’s/they’ve got nothing to say.

get out of my life!

my god! i saw him! he/she/they looked three-quarters dead!

he/she was so bad i had to turn my head,

i know who everybody’s gonna blame. 

i don’t believe he/she/they know i’ve acted for our good.

i’d save him/her/them from this suffering if i could!

cut the confessions, for the excuses. i don’t understand why you’re filled with remorse.

all that you’ve said has come true with a vengeance. 

the mob turned against him/her/them -- you backed the right horse.

you’ll be remembered forever for this.

you’ve been paid for your efforts.

pretty good wages for one little kiss. 

but i only did what you wanted me to!

for i have been saddled with the murder of you.

i have been spattered with innocent blood.

i shall be dragged through the slime and the mud.

when he’s/she’s/they’re cold and dead, will he/she/they let me be?

does he love me too? does he care for me too?

my mind is in darkness now.

my god, i am sick! i’ve been used!

and you knew all this time!

i’ll never know why you chose me for your crime.

you have murdered me! you have murdered me!

we have no law to put a man to death.

talk to me, [name].

you’ve been brought here -- manacled, beaten by your own people.

do you have the first idea why you deserve it?

where is your kingdom?

i’m through, through, through!

there may be a kingdom for me somewhere if i only knew.

i look for truth and find that i get damned.

he’s/she’s/they’ve done no wrong -- no not the slightest thing!

this man/woman/person is harmless, so why does he/she/they upset?

he’s/she’s/they’re just misguided, thinks he’s/she’s/they’re important. 

you’ve got to be careful, you could be dead soon.

why do you not speak when i have your life in my hands?

how can you stay quiet? i don’t believe you understand.

you have nothing in your hands.

any power you have comes to you from far beyond.

everything is fixed and you can’t change it.

you’re a fool -- how can i help you?

you have a duty to keep the peace.

don’t let me stop your great self destruction. die if you want to, you misguided martyr! i wash my hands of your demolition!

die if you want to, you innocent puppet!

why’d you choose such a backwards time in such a strange land?

don’t you get me wrong -- i only wanna know. 

who are you? what have you sacrificed?

[name] superstar.

do you think you’re what they say you are?

tell me what you think about your friends at the top.

who’d you think, besides yourself, was the pick of the crop?

did you mean to die like that? was that a mistake?

they don’t know what they are doing.

where is my mother? where is my mother?

why have you forgotten me?

[atomicfilm]

The case for (maybe) being an INTP:

- Overanalyzing

- I try to establish my own opinion before engaging in conversations with others to gain their perspectives. However, I will engage in these conversations, but this is apparently a shared trait btwn the INTP/ENTP.

- I debate one person consistently, we’ll call her M, and most other people will give up when they talk to me and/or agree with me. I don’t argue with people to change their opinions, which I think is the ENTP way of doing it, I argue because I find logical fallacies in their arguments and believe they’re incorrect. Which just so happens to be all the time. I think this is why I thought I played Devil’s Advocate, and because I was thinking about 1 occurrence, but ignoring that a lot of the time I will end a debate simply because I agree with them.

- I feel uncomfortable with directly offensive jokes and offensive humor. It takes a lot of continual anger for me to generalize a group of people and write them off. 

- I like to think I’m an optimist but I’m more of a pessimist to my own dismay. I think we’re gonna die because of climate change but I suppose nature’s way is better than mass genocide. When I debate I always prefer to take the negative/con side, which may suggest pessimism.

- I require someone to provide evidence to back up every statement of theirs and I do the same. If you don’t have this evidence then you had better find some or I will not listen to you until I’m satisfied with your sources.

- If I don’t know much about a topic then I will either say “I don’t know, do you want to look it up together” (usually option A) or stay silent. I’m too much of a perfectionist to say something too illogical that I won’t be able to correct later.

- But I also won’t agree with someone just to agree with someone because that’s the biggest piece of B.S. I’ve ever seen.

- I can spend all day googling random things instead of talking to people. And I mean all day.

- I prefer writing over talking any day. I famously like to say that I’m good at debate and terrible at speaking, refer to an earlier post of mine. I like to have the time to painstakingly process all of my ideas, weed out which ones I can’t support effectively, and then take a while to present my ideas. I teamed up with guy I really hate to pitch my film script ideas once because I’m not a good salesman.

- I think I can play the character of an ENTP really well. It’s not hard. It’s stereotypical vine material combined with a little intellectualism. One of my friends had said that I hadn’t done anything “crazy” in a few years and that I didn’t seem like myself, and my response to her was like “that’s not me, that’s a character”. It’s also the same as an INTP but more exaggerated. Now, I think ENTPs play lots of characters too generally, but I think I’m being very meta and playing an ENTP.

- A lot of people used to think that I partied hard/was a drug dealer but I mostly write and watch murder mysteries with my cat all day while contemplating the modern human’s relationship to early homo sapiens.

- I can be loud but that’s because I know how to put on a show, if that makes sense. I usually have a flair for the dramatics when I’ve decided I have a crush on them and it’s not a light one. With light crushes, I will ignore a person’s existence. The end. Otherwise, I can be silent as a mouse for months and the only person in the room who will know I’m smart will be the teacher/my bff/my mom/whoever. Likewise, the narcissism thing is totally fake. I don’t think I’m hot, I just say that because you’re supposed to believe it eventually and also because it’s some big societal upheaval for women to be confident.

- My default mode is accidentally flirty. Lots of sex jokes. Unless I like you, then any time you mention sex I will say “ew” or “cooties”. Apparently, I’m good at giving this look that says “hey stranger, come on over” but then I’ll scoot away because you’re a stranger and hello, personal space. I can be very friendly when I get over the fact that you’re a stranger talking to me though (but I had to develop this as a job skill). 

- I think I’m blunt and direct but I’m actually not usually directly blunt. For example, there was this guy at my school who kept sexually harassing me and to him, I just glared at him all the time and kept moving away from him because I didn’t want to start shit, but I told his best friend about it and was like “I hate the dude”. Dunno if this points towards being an ENTP or an INTP. I’m very blunt but not in a personal way, if that makes sense. I can be like “this is why I think that’s wrong” and openly criticize an idea, but I don’t openly criticize people I know.

- I’m not totally oblivious to other people’s feelings. I understand where they come from sorta. But I don’t really understand them themselves. If that makes sense. I can be like, oh she is hurt because I said this and now she has a lowered her eyelids. But then I’m like, okay, but I wouldn’t respond the same way emotionally so why did she? 

- I’m naturally basically a hobbit. I actually hang around a lot of very stable people (shoutout to ISFJ) and usually I leave behind friendships/relationships because they have upset this state of comfort by being toxic. I like to eat the same thing every time I go to a place, I like to do the same activities. But I like a little adventure, I like to have new conversations and try on different styles (but my go-to style is classic), I like to listen to new songs (but I have a soundtrack of songs I will sing over and over).

- I cannot handle authority. If you are an authority member and you raise your voice at me, I will cry, and those will be real tears.

- In middle school, people used to get mad at me for being afraid to do a lot of things like ziplining, so basically I force myself to go out of my comfort zone because I know that as much as I hate to do it and as much as I will procrastinate to do it, there’s a chance it will better my life. This could be where my ENTP character comes from. It could also be from being in theatre and imitating the average theatre kid. Either one.

- I hate stages. I hate them. I hate being in front of people. I hate talking to people a lot of the time. But I just do it anyway because it will hurt me if I don’t even if I’m about to throw up.

- I can be a loud person but I can also be extremely quiet. And when I observe people I usually think they’re being way too loud for my poor ears. 

- I’m not a true leader. I take a lot of leadership positions but really I’d prefer to be an individual but have recognized the need for a guide and no one else has taken it on. I also hate group projects. I have done 0 group projects (outside of AP Bio because I worked w/ my best friend who’s very capable) in the past three years of high school that I can remember. I don’t like carrying the deadweight of other people.

- I hate liars. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. And they’re easy to spot. It’s my biggest pet peeve and I frequently say it when I’m judging someone’s character.

- Likewise, I’m very good at spotting psychopaths. My friends made a game out of this using their blocked-out forensics textbook. I think this is also an ENTP thing.

- Theoretically, I think I do think very similarly to an ENTP. For example, I can buy into existentialism, but I think there’s a basic starting point for morality that’s universal. I.E. murder is inherently bad. Slavery is inherently bad. Y’all can look at my older posts. An ENTP, however, really and truly does believe that a universal morality doesn’t exist and furthermore, that they don’t have an innate moral compass. This is one of the big red flags to me and part of the reason why I started looking into INTPs (I had initially been comparing myself w/ ENFPs but I ruled that out). I do immoral things, but I think these things are immoral and I feel guilt for them. I follow laws, but I don’t think laws are inherently moral and every once in a while you’ll come across a law that shouldn’t be followed because it infringes upon natural rights.

- Again, with reflecting on the past a lot of ENTPs don’t think their past is a concrete thing. And I logically agree with that. So many of our memories are made up and distorted, some people even steal other people’s memories and adopt them as their own. But I think of my past as a part of me all the same and I recognize that I’ve gathered as close to an objective understanding of it that I can.

- I think I naturally act like an INTP without any intense external stimuli. Which is to say, I’m an INTP and appear like one unless I feel like looking like an extrovert will aid me somehow.

- Every time I say I’m an extrovert to anyone they’re like “no, you’re definitely an introvert”. This was another red flag. I don’t put much value in other people’s perspectives of me typically but figuring out where I get energy from has been a long process. It turns out, I don’t get lasting energy from people or from being alone. I do get short-term energy from having really good conversations with people and I like to be near people but not necessarily speaking to them all the time (I’d rather fall asleep on them most of the time). They drain me out so fast too. My family was just in town for a few weeks and it will take me a few weeks to cope. Most of my energy comes from dance. It might not make sense to most people, but it’s true.

- And then I learned that some people think being an extrovert means you’re focused on external stimuli. Well, this certainly isn’t true for me. I think so much in my head that one day I decided to focus more on the outside world because it was just too much for me to handle emotionally.

- I socialize like an introvert. Even in a crowd of people, I find one person to pay attention to and they get all of my attention.

-  I’m slow to decide if someone is friend material. You may think we’ve been friends for five years and I’ll be like “dude, I know one thing about you and I don’t trust you”.

- I used to be very oblivious to social cues but then I researched them and practiced them so now I’m pretty good at them.

- Si wise, if you say an adjective I can remember my associations with it very easy. This makes reading horror novels a gruesome experience. I’m a pretty nostalgic person sometimes. I’m not too sure about this one but I think it’ll be the deciding factor in whether or not I’m an INTP.

- INTPs – > small pictures within a bigger picture. When I start learning about a subject, I find a nuanced part of it very quickly. Mass incarceration for example. When I started researching about it, I became very focused on teenage drug abuse among impoverished groups in the Northeast and case studies of police planting drugs on teens to arrest them.

- I will waste 12 hrs. fixing my typos in a script. I wrote a 40 pg. script in about 8 and the rest of the day was just making sure that every word was the perfect one to use.  

- One of the videos I watched said that INTPs like to intellectually support others and bring them up to their standards. This is very true for me. I’m always the friend that people ask to explain a concept to. I don’t mind taking the time to explain anything that I know about. I just want you to learn so that you can go on to have a great conversation later in life.

- When I meet other ENTPs I don’t really see myself in them a whole lot. I do relate to their need for mental stimulation. But the INTP I know and I have been told we have the same personality on more than one occasion.

- I have 3 friend groups, so technically I have a lot of friends, but I really only hang out and talk to 2 of my friends regularly. I have go-tos for my rants.

- My friend just called me and my response was “hello, why did you make me charge my phone for this when I could have texted you on my laptop instead” . I do like talking on the phone, but the act of calling someone and having to think of things to say makes me nervous. 

- I have three main intellectual focuses. Human rights, zoology, and cinema. Outside of those, I usually feel like I don’t know what to say until I take a hot second to learn everything about that subject ever written.

- I do have a kind of dark sense of humor but it’s delivered in a light-hearted way. And really dark stuff makes me super uncomfortable. I also don’t show this dark humor to anyone but close friends.

- When talking about poverty or other social issues I do use my own experience (INTP) on the subject rather than using universal hypotheticals (someone thought this was more of an ENTP thing)

- Don’t like being touched/cuddled that much but do like cuddling other people and taking care of them.

- I think my friends Jake and Sebastian are ENTPs, in which case, we click really well and I’m one of the few people who don’t get mad at them. But I will call them out for being offensive. And a very notable difference between us is that Jake will challenge everything anyone has ever said ever. I will only challenge it, once again, if I disagree with your foundation of logic.

- When I’m around over three people I don’t really know what’s happening aside from the people I’ve focused on.

- I think in my head so much that it tires me out to exhaustion. I remember one day deciding that I wasn’t going to think to myself so much and instead focus on external things because I was just tired of contemplating things without having concrete information to make a definite answer. 

- I feel alone in large groups and like to latch on to one close friend. 

- I feel like I can “adopt on” other people’s personalities but it’s not really true. I’m always myself I’m just sometimes more talkative. 

All that being said, I don’t think I’m a stereotypical INTP if I even am one. I think I probably am more emotionally developed than a lot of rational types and I’m learning how to be there for people and just be empathetic. People are constant works in progress and I consider myself a constant work in progress.

I’m externally very dynamic (or at least appear to be) and open to my opinions being challenged, but I’m also very stubborn and static unless I arrive to those logical conclusions too.

I really thought when I started saying I was an ENTP that my INTP tendencies were just the depressed version of me. But I’m not currently depressed and sometimes the evidence becomes too big to ignore. But I wouldn’t mind hearing other opinions since I’ve only been into MBTI for a month and recognize that there are other, more experienced people out there.

- It’s 12:29 AM I have been working on this post for 2 hrs. so I’m definitely an NT.

--- 

There’s not a whole lot of information out there distinguishing between ENTPs and INTPs without relying on stereotypes. But I have seen a lot of what is out there and I will personally be typing myself as an INTP for now. 

I really have never wanted to be an introvert,  and maybe I’m not one, but I think I’ve been too biased against it to act objectively. 

@confusedinfj I’ve taken this off of private mode so you can take a gander. 

[bountyman]

Name any three things about the rpc that bother you.

the be honest meme || x || accepting

Hum… 

1) Definitely the sort of hive-mind / mob mentality that sometimes rises up in the RPC. I’ve been fortunate to never experience it first-hand, but I’ve seen some roleplayers (genuinely nice ones!) get absolutely hounded by people for small mistakes, slips, things they’ve already apologized for, and even just false rumors. It’s scary how some folks will see cal.lo.ut posts, blindly agree, and then jump on the hate bandwagon.  I think I’ve mentioned this kind of thing before on my blog, but it’s happened enough times that it just sticks out so sorely in my mind. Observations of a few really bad and unfounded cases are the biggest reason why I’m so against call.ou.t / cancel culture. I know some of them are done with good intention, but honestly it just strikes me as childish and I’ve only ever seen maybe 1 instance in almost 10 years where it was ever justified.2) Roleplay groups that clog RP tags with ads, promos, and submissions!! Lord have mercy, I think I’ve blocked more RPGs than po.rn bots. I’m not against RP groups but wowee I can’t scroll through #marvel rp / #dc rp / #disney rp / any big RPC tags without getting flooded with ad after ad from RPGs. I think all the submission and application posts are the most annoying, though. It makes it so hard to find other indie blogs and definitely doesn’t make me want to join their group. 3) This is likely unpopular, but how villains or morally grey muses are treated within the RPC / people trying to equate mun and muse. I only write two bad guys right now and so far I’ve had decent luck with no one trying to police them, but I’ve had experiences in the past where people have tried to tell me that I couldn’t write something because they didn’t agree with it, or they became upset when my villain muse lashed out at theirs. If you’re going to write with a serial killer muse (for instance) or a muse with an aggressive personality… maybe don’t get offended when your muse pushes them and they strike back?

Additionally, it’s just really weird to me what people try to tell writers they can’t write. I’m mostly talking about villains here, but this could be applied to any kind of character. 

For example, there are muns out here getting dragged for writing dark topics like r.ap.e, but no one cares if someone writes about murder or torture? Now, granted, I’d never write a ra.p.e scene. Personally, that makes me extremely uncomfortable, but I also don’t really care if someone else writes it providing that both muns are consenting and it’s properly tagged. Why does one dark topic get a pass, while another equally dark (or in some cases objectively less dark) doesn’t?

You could argue that fiction has an affect on people and, sure, I won’t argue with that. Fiction is powerful. Fiction can change how people think and feel. But censorship is arguably more dangerous and I can’t agree that just because something is dark or taboo means that it shouldn’t be written at all. Fiction is a safe way to explore the dark, the macabre, and the violent, and for some people, it’s a way to cope with the horrible things that have happened in their lives.

A writer shouldn’t have to worry whether or not they need to babysit people or explain why a topic is bad, or worry whether or not the content they’re writing is “too dark”. The reader is responsible for what they view, and if those things truly do tempt them to do bad things, they shouldn’t be on the Internet at all. If someone writing a torture scene makes you want to go torture someone, that is not normal. Get off the Internet and go get help. But don’t blame the writer. And absolutely never assume that whatever is being written equals condoning that thing. Mun never ever necessarily equals muse.

Let villains be villains. Let characters do morally grey or straight up wrong things. It’s always good to write respectfully and to use your own discretion, but… also? This is just tumblr roleplay. No one is out here getting published. No one is preaching to the masses and trying to flip the world on its head by writing something questionable or dark. 

Just let villains be villains. A mun who writes a serial killer (or whatever!) doesn’t make them a serial killer, any more than a mun writing a four-headed platypus makes them a four-headed platypus. 

[kingofthewilderwest]

The Second Call

A/N: My end of an art trade with the illustrious @inhonoredglory! Thanks so much for doing this trade with me. I love engaging in creativity together and seeing what your mind produces. May there be more adventures as these in our near future!

I know Mustang was still in the East and hadn't transferred before Hughes died. I also know that Hughes probably didn't walk far from Central Command to reach the phone booth, and thus anyone who found his body would be able to report to the military without disturbing anything. THAT LOGIC ASIDE! Who doesn't want to imagine Mustang, after hearing Hughes' silent call, rushing out to find his friend? Finding Hughes' body first? And… with no other phone around to report the murder… well. Suffering through THAT unpleasant reality.

He reached out his hand to pick up the phone. And felt blood.

In some ways, it was a familiar sensation, the subtle stick of thick fluid gluing his hand to what he held. Injuries happened, bodies bled, blood stuck to skin and surfaces: this was nothing new. But he'd reached for the receiver expecting a cool, slick surface – not the warmth of splattered death.

God, it's still warm.

Wet warmth and metallic cold intermingled in his hand as he exhaled a shaky breath, a startled breath, a pained breath. He had to release something – either phone or breath – before the horror of the circumstance broke through to him. For now, the situation's surrealism was enough to numb his mind. He couldn't think, couldn't process, couldn't sense his own deadened thoughts – just the buzz of thick, thick fog. And now he took advantage of it, stifled himself here, where sensationless he could be detached enough to cope.

He forced himself to keep his hand on the receiver. The sooner he finished this, the sooner he could step outside the phone booth. Leave. But it felt like he stood inside an upright coffin. For a moment, there were not one but two dead souls inside.

The body leaned against his legs. He was trying to straddle his feet around it, impossible to do in such cramped quarters, and any shift at all bumped him against that solid, unmoving mass. If he looked down now, he would see the late night shadows of that corpse slumped against the booth's back wall; and if he shifted to the side, the light of a streetlamp outdoors would sneak through the windows, to reflect off the surface of rectangular glasses lenses.

In that light, it'd be enough to see the body.

Face, already paling.

His best friend:

Dead.

"Hughes… I'm. I'm… sorry…"

Roy stood inside a phone booth with the corpse of his best friend, hand holding onto a phone drenched in the blood of his dead best friend, a bloody phone, a still-warm phone – the last warmth he'd get from Hughes would be the feeling of that blood on the phone – in the midst of this reality he couldn't afford to believe this was reality. Roy couldn't handle glancing down. Couldn't handle holding the phone. Couldn't think. Couldn't call. Couldn't respond. Couldn't report the crime. Couldn't wait. Couldn't stay. Couldn't stand. Couldn't think. Couldn't meet with the coming MPs to bear witness. Couldn't process. Couldn't answer. Couldn't speak. Couldn't think.

And yet… that's what he had to do.

He exhaled a second time. This breath was shaky, too. But it was enough to find impossible internal strength inside him, and dial.

Mustang didn't remember choosing to speak, but he heard himself talking. Reporting. Admitting he'd marred the evidence, but that there was no other way to call and report. It hopefully sounded objective to the military listening on the other end.

And then the chore was done.

He could leave the booth now, escape the claustrophobia of sharing nine squared feet with a dead man. Ongoing experience would fade way to past memory.

But like any memory… the stains of that experience would affect him onward.

The blood still stuck to his hands, and when he stepped away, footprints drenched in red trailed him out of doors.

[chirpingtiger]

I really have no way to reply to this much stupidity within the given character limit, so I’m doing it here.

I’ll start by saying wow, @shaymore, you sound bitter as hell.

This post wasn’t discussing who was the better hero, it was criticizing the methods used to recruit and train two of the younger, less experienced members of the team. At no point was this about who was more effective or “better” as a hero.

A lot of what determines who is the better hero winds up being opinion rather than fact based, so there’s really no point in discussing such, but I’ll point out that they are both young, they have both made mistakes, and they both found themselves in bad combat situations that resulted in lots of property damage.The main difference is that Peter’s big confrontation with Vulture came at night, on a deserted beach, whereas Wanda’s took place in the middle of a crowded marketplace, surrounded by tall buildings, in the middle of the day.

Peter didn’t have to worry about risking collateral damage.

Wanda was surrounded by it with no way out.

If the plane crash had happened during the day, when people were out crowding the beach, there would have been dozens of deaths.

It was pure luck that everything took place at night.

As to your second point, Wanda is no more an ex Nazi than any of the other Avengers are, including your precious Tony.

They all signed on with SHIELD. They all found out that SHIELD was actually HYDRA. They had all been working for the Nazi group unknowingly.

Steve Rogers put an end to that in Winter Soldier.

I don’t see you calling Tony a Nazi for actively supplying HYDRA with tech and Chitauri weaponry for years while thinking he was handing it over to SHIELD. I don’t see you getting mad at Tony for helping design the Triskellions that were going to murder 2 billion people. And yet a desperate teenage girl who signed on with “SHIELD” to help protect her country from attack is a Nazi?

The fact that you and all of the other Tony stans on this hellsite keep trying to portray a traditionally Jewish character as a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer is incredibly gross. It is shown time and time again in canon that she has no idea who she’s really handed herself over to. She was never actually put in the field to do work for them.

She signed up for a procedure that she was told would help her protect people, and she and her brother left shortly after they got their powers.

She was never working “with” Strucker. She was allowing him to make her stronger, and then going right back to what she was originally doing - protecting the innocent people of Sokovia from the war that was ravaging the city and providing for the poor through whatever means necessary.

She never helped HYDRA do anything.

She’s done less for HYDRA than any of the other pre-Winter Soldier Avengers.

But again, that’s not the point.

This wasn’t about who recruited who. This was about the other Avengers respecting Wanda’s opinions and decisions as a human being, and offering her not only the choice of whether or not to join, but the support she needed once she’d made her decision.

This, as opposed to Tony bribing, coercing, and blackmailing a young boy into an international superhero confrontation with the promise of becoming an Avenger, and then ditching him cold once he had no immediate use for him anymore. This was about Tony treating Peter like an object rather than a human being.

Peter, thankfully, had an active support system of friends and family to help him, (unlike Wanda who is the only one out of all of her her family and most of her friends who’s still alive) and he was able to do enough just in the nick of time to come out victorious. Wanda and the rest of the Avengers got stuck in a very bad situation with a terrorist bomb that Wanda mitigated until she ran out of strength, and Tony and the UN swooped in and dismissed the terrorist’s actions in favor of putting all of the blame on Wanda’s head, casting her aside as worthless, dehumanizing her and locking her away, and reducing her to a weapon of mass destruction instead of a human.

But no, please, go off about how Peter’s a better hero.

“I hope Thanos kills her to death. I hope he murders the hell out of her.”

Whatever you need to do in order to cope, dear. As immature and pathetic as it may be.

Though I have to ask...If you're so concerned about Nazis, why are you hating/wishing death upon on one of the only traditionally Jewish characters in the Marvel universe?

[rain0205-blog]

Terminal State

Summary:  She tried leaving, submerging herself in work to escape the horrors she had seen. The horrors she kept seeing. She never wanted to go back to that life. But when the Empire takes her home, she’s forced to face her past. Can she move on? Can she cope? Or will she require a bit of help? still bad at summaries, still working on it. ever so slightly more than slight AU gadioxoc

Misinformation

...

Gladiolus raced out of the diner not two seconds after Athenacia had. There was no sign of her on the streets, lost in the crowds no matter which way he craned his neck in pursuit. Frowning, he brought his arms to cross over his chest, still keeping an eye out. How did she do that so quickly? His frown deepened while in thought, walking back to his car. There was a small chance she had walked back there but somehow he doubted it. While he walked he kept his eyes and ears open, not really shocked that she didn't stand out in the slightest outside of the workplace. Once he arrived at his car he wasted no time in getting in, pulling out his phone with the intention to call her but stopped as his amber gaze met him on the black screen. What would he even say? The Shield knew that approaching the subject of her past was suicide, Athenacia very adamant about running away from it. What was she running from? What did that Pius guy even mean? The Glaive was definitely implying she was someone who slept around, after someone named Grun. It didn't fit, Gladiolus saw no signs of promiscuous activity. Hell, he had spent weeks chasing her just to go for a simple beer.

"Why didn't you just let him die?"

"Because I'm not the monster everyone thinks I am!"

The conversation he had with her in the Citadel a while back, after she had been attacked. Gladio was so hurt by her actions he completely ignored her what she said then. It became clear now that she was referring to something like this, what a Glaive might say about her in public. The Shield stared at his phone, firing off a quick text to Ignis. It was about time he dug into that past she barricaded away from herself if he planned on continuing to pursue her. Starting his car, he decided to head to the Citadel. Athenacia had just finished a sixteen-hour shift, was up all night. It was plenty of time to gather the information before he would stop by the hospital later when she worked and figure this all out then.

...

Gladiolus finished his work out and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fresh towel. Sitting on the bench, agitation settled in at the silence of the phone he fished out of his bag. The Shield was getting a little impatient waiting around, never doing good with sitting and waiting - he was a man of action. Grunting, he tossed his phone aside before cleaning up his mess. After the events of the morning, Gladio was careful to avoid anyone in order to clear his head. Evening had settled in, the time going about unknown while he impatiently waited for word from either Ignis or Athenacia. His oldest friend was the best to gather information, Gladio wouldn't even know where to start and he was sure his rage would otherwise deter anyone who spoke ill of Athenacia. So, he found someone more objective to figure out what this secrecy was all about, and then he could finally get to the bottom of this in order to proceed properly. He was sure that these were rumours, made up out of cowardice at her person. Whatever it was, he knew that it was the reason she stepped back as a Glaive and submerged herself in her work.

As he left the training room, his phone chimed in his hand. Ignis wanted to meet up with him, having acquired all the information he could it seemed. Gladiolus replied quickly before heading to his car. The Shield wasted no time in taking off, absently aware of his speeding but was a little sick of waiting around. As he pulled up to Ignis's building, mildly surprised that the man was at home, he tapped his foot impatiently while he waited for the elevator to take him to the desired floor. Gladio didn't knock, he walked right in and found Ignis sitting on his couch with a cup of ebony. The Shield nodded at the man, before taking a seat across from him in the chair. They sat in silence, the bespectacled trying to collect his thoughts as Gladio waited impatiently.

"Well?" the Shield asked.

"It's a bit obscured, but the consensus is relatively the same," replied Ignis.

"What's up?"

"Athenacia Virum was the youngest Glaive to ever see battle. She was revered for her excellent and precise combat skills and underwent personal training with the Marshal. That caught the eye of many, they appeared to have a personal relationship. Where she came from no one is quite certain on that. Perhaps the Marshal knows, I dare not question him. She went on to battle and accelerated quickly in the ranks. Eventually, her commanding officer at the time gave her a unit to work with. This is where things grew troublesome. The defence mounted against the Empire was a catastrophe. She was the only one to return alive, though just barely. Cor immediately took action in her favour. She was relieved of duty and granted a position in her current place of work. The Marshal would not speak of the events that took place, nor would she.

"But the rumours took a life of their own. In the end, other Glaives speculated that the only reason she survived is that she's an Imperial spy. Her troupe somehow retained that information and she had them all killed. Given that her origins remain a mystery, it was an easy thing to believe. She's a murderer and a spy," explained Ignis, taking a sip of his ebony as if he were discussing the weather.

"And she's after me now that Cor dismissed her," said Gladiolus dryly.

"That's the news now though, she was relieved of duty at her own insistence. She was positively adamant about never seeing battle again, nor the inside of the Citadel."

"Funny road to go for a spy."

"Precisely."

"And Cor?"

"Absolutely refuses to engage in conversation about those events. In fact, anyone is severely punished for even bringing it up."

"Which means he's protecting her from something."

Ignis nodded, "Whatever happened that night, the truth only lies with Dr. Virum. I suspect she had been silenced both willingly and as a command."

Gladiolus frowned in thought, turning over all of this inside of his head, "What about Grun?"

"He was her commanding officer. The two had a history, though that was shattered after her battle. No one knows the true nature of their relationship, however, he turned against her before he was killed in action."

Gladiolus grunted, "So the thought is, lay low and then get involved with me in order to pick up more secrets for the Empire."

"More or less, after this morning's spectacle."

"I don't buy it," said Gladiolus at once.

"It does raise concerns," agreed Ignis.

"Cor trusts her. He has to have a reason behind it, even if he won't tell anyone."

"The Marshal does exhibit a renown judge of character. Still, I cannot help but wonder why all this secrecy if there is in fact, nothing to hide."

Gladiolus frowned in thought again, Ignis's words striking a nerve within him. If anything, he was more confused now than when he started. He just hoped that his intuition was right this time as it had never really let him down before.

...

Athenacia drunk probably her third beer of the evening, sitting in her living room and having called in sick to work for the first time ever. Gin was overly suspicious but the doctor silenced her simply. She didn't want to talk about this morning, she hated herself for even engaging with that asshole. The fatigue caused her to react, so sick of people looking at her like she was some kind of monster. Sick of their accusatory implications, sick of being judged by the ignorant. So yeah, she was sick, but not in the traditional way. The girl wanted nothing to do with today and was upset that she even let any of this get to her in the first place. The scene would surely have people around town talking. After she had left the diner in a rush, she blended into the masses of civilians on the street and headed toward her home. Athenacia didn't have her car at home and didn't feel like using public transit to get to work in order to get it. Instead, she just came come and collapsed on her bed, catching a couple of hours sleep before her nightmare woke her up as it always did. The doctor didn't even bother to bathe or anything just ordered food and added to her mountains of garbage.

Most of the day was spent stewing in her apartment at her windowsill and looking out over the city, her view of the park perfect. Athenacia checked her phone, not even sure why she looked at the damn thing. She had called in so work wasn't going to need her for anything, she didn't have any friends, so there was no worrying about anyone getting a hold of her. Gladiolus hadn't even messaged her since she ditched him this morning and it stung, but she should have seen this coming. Imperial spy indeed! This was the main reason she stayed away from Crownsguard and anything to do with any of it. If she was being honest with herself, she was sad things had to end this way with him, she had really liked him. A smile finally found her face, thinking about the amount of effort he had put into chasing her around. It made her feel like a normal girl, almost like she could take a step away from the burdens of her past and live a normal life.

But she was wrong.

No matter what she was destined to be alone, because no matter what her past would trail her wherever she went, ruining any sort of relationship she had with anyone. There would never be peace for her, it seemed that no matter how many lives she saved, Eos would always be against her. Not that she threw herself into medicine just for redemption, she truly wanted to help people. It just seemed that there was no end to her suffering no matter how much good she did. The world was cruel and unfair, and she wished that she had the power to cure all suffering but alas, she was just a lowly citizen. Athenacia sighed, finishing her beer and grabbing another before perching herself back into her spot, the sun invisible behind the storm clouds as it began to set. Alone in the dark, lightning illuminating her apartment for mere seconds before thunder followed after it. The doctor absently watched people scurry out of the unforgiving rain, as it pelted down the streets through the magical barrier. Tipping her head back to finish half the bottle, the effects of her consumption wasn't felt at all. Makeup smeared over her face as she rubbed her tired, puffy eyes, her appearance far from her mind while she moped. It wasn't like she was going out today anyway. Why did the world suck so bad?

Athenacia was brought out of her thoughts by her phone buzzing. Groaning, she finished her beer and tossing it in one of her garbage piles before picking up the device, almost dropping it in the process. The brightness of the screen caused her eyes to squint, trying to make out the text before her. Thunder roared outside, while she was able to read that she had a message. It was from Gladiolus. Her heart started to thump in her chest, nausea settling in while her body bubbled with anxiety. Athenacia put her phone down, holding her head in her hands. After sulking about not hearing from him all day, now she had her chance and her mind was totally blank. What would she even say to him? Taking a deep breath, she picked up her phone again, feeling tears well up in her eyes as she opened the message.

We need to talk.

Another wave of anxiety flowed through her.

Can't, I'm at work.

The doctor sent back her immediate response, not liking the idea of talking about anything. Athenacia knew that he would respect her work time, wanting to avoid any of this conflict. Her phone buzzed again and she picked it up instantly.

No you're not.

Shit, he had already gone there. Panic flooded through her, the idea of having this conversation right now threatening to make her vomit. She just couldn't... Her phone buzzed again and she looked at it, wiping her tears and sniffling.

You owe me an explanation.

Damn. Those were the only words the could force her to meet with him. Athenacia sighed. Gladio was completely right, she did owe him after what happened this morning. Running a hand through her hair, a heavy, quivering sigh escaped her with a fresh stream of tears, trying to compose herself.

Okay.

What else was there really to say? The phone fell from her hands, replaced with her head while she shook in her sobs. Her stomach flipped as her phone buzzed again. She picked it up, sniffling again.

Pond in the park near your place. Half hour. Don't be late.

Vision blurred with tears as the device once again fell from her hands. The storm that was raging over the city was starting to let up, thankfully. Rubbing away her tears and sniffling one last time, she got up and walked toward her bathroom. Once she turned on the light she was able to see the true mess she was. Her hair wasn't terrible, but her face was a wreck. She did not wear crying well, her eyes bloodshot and puffy. The sleep deprivation was a norm for her, probably attributing to her poor appearance. Leaning over the counter, the weight of everything she was about to do settled in and left her light-headed.

Athenacia took in another deep breath, forcing herself to look back into her mirror. She was a soldier, a Glaive, assistant manager of the emergency department. She wasn't a coward, that's why she had threatened Pius, she was a warrior and she wouldn't let this get the better of her. Wiping her eyes for the last time, she began to fix herself up. There was less than half an hour to make herself presentable. Luckily, she only really had to fix her face, washing off the old smeared makeup from this morning and reapplied it, noting that it didn't really do much to hide her pale complexion. The messy hair had a brush run through it and then placed into a low ponytail. It wasn't her best work, but she didn't really care. Gladiolus would just have to deal with since he was probably going to break it off with her anyway. Athenacia was going out with her head held high, her past be damned!

When she was as satisfied as she could be, she put on her purse, boots and her trademark black and grey striped fingerless gloves. Pulling on a black jacket with a grey hood, closed the door behind her and raced to the elevator. As she stepped out the front entrance, she was happy that all the rain had stopped, leaving a fresh scent in the air though she could still hear rumblings of thunder and the sky still flashing with lightning. Athenacia began her trek, walking faster than she needed to. She just wanted to get this over with so she could go back to stewing in her apartment alone and try to move on with her life. Sighing, she stopped on the cement path and pulled out her phone, noting she was about five minutes early. No one was here, she was the only one. Taking a quick look around told her that no one was really there anyway.

Gladiolus could have just as easily stood her up. And why not? After the way she reacted this morning, she was surprised he even wanted to go this far. What did he even want from her anyway? He was a Crownsguard, the Shield to Prince Noctis, it wasn't like he couldn't figure out what happened in her past. Athenacia doubted she'd be able to tell him much, she was sworn to secrecy by the King himself. None of it was common knowledge, all her and Cor ever said was no comment. The Marshal was adamant about keeping to themselves and she welcomed that, only wanting to focus on the future ahead instead of living in her past. Not that she ever had the chance to move on but she could at least work and try to forget.

The doctor was pulled out of her thoughts when she heard footsteps. Another wave of panic surged through her, the wind rustling the leaves and bringing the promise of another storm. A large shadow was spotted approaching and after the last time she was walking around at night, she immediately tensed up. Once it drew closer, she recognized the silhouette as Gladiolus and relaxed a little. Externally anyway, internally all the resolve she had gained in her apartment had vanished upon seeing him. The hard look on his face made her breath catch in her throat, her heart beginning to race the closer he was and their eyes met.

"Gladio... I-mm-"

Athenacia was cut off from anything she was about to stammer out of her mouth. In a few short strides Gladiolus had closed the gap between them, but he didn't stop there, swiftly reaching for the back of her head and pulling her toward him. His lips crashed upon hers, his other arm wrapping around her back and closing the gap between their bodies. Her hands were on his chest, eyes wide in shock at what was happening. He threw her completely off guard and she wasn't sure how to respond. A tear fell down her face as her eyes closed and she gave into him, losing herself completely in their first kiss. Pulling back only a small distance, his amber gaze was upon her the entire time. The hand behind her head was placed it on her cheek, gently wiping her tear with his thumb while she searched him for answers to his behaviour. Her face was so small it could fit entirely in it and she let out a breath, sniffling again. The doctor didn't even know what to say to him anymore, his entire demeanour throwing her off. Raindrops slowly fell sporadically on their heads, going unnoticed by the confused girl in the large man's arms.

"I don't care," he said finally, "Whatever you did, have done, I don't care. I know what I see, and it's not what's been said."

"You don't think I'm a murderous spy?" another tear rolled down her cheek and he was quick to wipe it away.

"No. I chased you down and if that was really part of your plan then so be it," he said, holding her gaze.

The girl almost laughed as more tears streamed down her cheeks. The rain grew heavier, beginning to thoroughly soak them to the bone. They didn't care and he pulled her in for another kiss. This time she welcomed it, feeling relief sweep through her knowing that he was here for her. Her arms snaked around his neck, pulling him closer as she was standing on her tip toes just to reach him. Gladio still had to bend down but he didn't mind in the slightest. They separated, tears still falling down her face though hard to notice while the rain pelted her pale skin. Athenacia was still shy, trying to push past her utter shock of his reaction toward her. His own face wore a loving smile as he looked down at her and then a loud crash of thunder snapped their attention.

It became very evident that they were standing in the middle of a thunderstorm. Athenacia let out a shiver, breaking their embrace. Gladiolus grabbed her hand gently and led her back toward her building. The wind began to rage again as lightning shone in the sky, a large crack of thunder following. It didn't take long to get back there, she was practically running just to keep up with him. When they were safe inside the lobby she was out of breath, trying to keep herself composed as they watched the storm outside, soaked to the bone. Her hand was still in his own and she wasn't really sure where to go from here but as the cold settled in, it caused her to shiver. Almost like a reflex, he brought her back into his arms to try and warm her up. His proximity had her warm alright, just not in the way he was aiming for. Biting her lip nervously, she walked toward the elevator and called one to her. Gladio watched as she pushed the seventh floor and waited patiently for the door to close. The ride up didn't take long and he walked with her down the corridor, stopping in front of her door, 708. It was at the end of the hall, a corner unit. The door wasn't locked, opening with no issues before she turned on the light and instantly regretted it. Shit.

Gladiolus was a bit shocked as he walked into her home, closing the door behind him. The foyer was mostly clean, there wasn't much there aside from a mountain of shoes, and he politely added his own to the pile. When he walked down the hallway he stopped in his tracks, brows raised in shock at what laid before him. There were laundry piles and garbage all over the place, take-out food containers and beer bottles littered along the kitchen. A thick layer of dust blanketed everything, only a small pathway from the foyer to the bedroom was visible. The Shield looked down at her expectantly and she was at a loss for words.

"I'm sorry I..." she was thoroughly shamed, "I'm never here and when I am it's just to change and then head out..." she explained, her face turning bright red at her own embarrassment.

The longer he stared at her the more flustered she became, causing him to grin. Finally, he roared with laughter at her.

"You're a slob," he said lightly.

"I-I, I'm just busy!" she sputtered as he continued to chuckle at her.

"Sure, Doc," he grinned.

Athenacia sighed, smiling at him again before laughing at herself. Leaving him standing there, she quickly scurried down the hall to her bathroom, closing the door behind her and grabbing towels out of her closet. From there, she went through the second doorway into her bedroom and closed that one as well, rummaging in her closet for a change of clothes. Swiftly pulling on grey sweatpants and a black tank top she put all of her soaking clothes in a pile before gathering them up. On the way out of the room, Athenacia caught sight of her herself in the stand-up mirror, noting her makeup was running again. Sighing, she pulled the tie out of her hair and grabbed an extra towel to clean up her face and then dry her hair off a little. Keeping the towel around her neck, she grabbed the spare, put her phone in her pocket and left the room, coming back to Gladiolus and handing him the towel before continuing to her laundry room. Once there the dryer was open and she tossed her clothes inside with a load that was left over from who knew when.

"These to," she heard Gladio behind her.

The doctor grabbed the ball of clothes he handed her, throwing them in and slamming the door shut before starting a fresh cycle. Satisfied, she turned to leave but stopped dead in her tracks once she caught sight of the Shield standing in her doorway. Athenacia swallowed, her heart beginning to hammer in her chest to the point she was sure she was on the brink of cardiac arrest. Hazel eyes rolled over a glistening chest, perfectly defined and chiselled chest. Further down, he was only wearing her towel dangerously low around his waist and she could see the definition of all his muscles, crafted by all of his training. The breath she didn't know was holding escaped her, mouth going dry. A burning desire filled her, something he must have felt too.

Gladiolus captured her lips, hungry this time. Athenacia allowed him to lift her effortlessly off the ground and sit on top of her dryer so that she was closer to eye level with him. A hand ran up her back underneath her shirt, pulling her closer to him. The towel was tossed aside, replaced by his large hand that deepened the kiss. A sigh left her, tiny arms holding on for dear life. Gladio felt something vibrate against his left hip where the inside of her thigh was touching him. It was ignored, Athenacia breaking her connection with him for a mere moment while her shirt was hastily thrown away. As soon as her skin touched his she felt aflame trying to ignore yet another vibration from her pocket. It was to no avail, the buzzing in her pocket continuing relentlessly and she pulled away from him in order to check her phone. Gladio kept his hands on her hips, holding her in place with his lips ghosted along her cheek, hot breath making it hard for her to focus.

"They want me at work," she said sadly.

"Didn't you call in?" he asked.

"Yeah, but this is the night shift now. There was no replacement for me tonight and they want to know if I'm good enough to go in."

The Shield sighed, leaning back a few inches but moving no further as he kept his gaze on her.

"You should probably go," he conceded, his voice heavy.

"Yeah..." she smiled sadly. And then it hit her, "I don't have my car, it's still parked in the staff lot."

"What's it doing there?" he asked.

"You picked me up..." she looked up at him nervously.

"Right. You walked home?"

"I needed to clear my head."

He nodded, "You can take my car."

"What? But-"

"Clothes aren't dry. You'll be back in the morning right?"

"Well, yeah but-"

"So take my car."

Athenacia hesitated, "O-okay."

Gladiolus nodded at her, stepping away and letting her down. Shaking out of her shock, she grabbed her shirt, putting it back on and leaving the room with him behind her every step. The doctor quickly grabbed her things, her purse and a pair of socks before slipping on shoes and then putting on a dry jacket. When she was done, she turned to face Gladiolus who was just watching her the entire time, something that she was completely aware of.

"My bed is untarnished by my mess, you can sleep there," she said.

Gladio nodded, handed her his keys and using that opportunity to pull her in for another kiss. At this point, she was considering telling her work to fuck off but she knew that she couldn't now. He was smiling at her as they broke apart.

"Go save some lives."

Athenacia returned his smile, nodding at him before turning to leave. Gladiolus took a look around him, wondering if Ignis was upstairs or not.

[theerased]

Mercurial

mercurial / adjective 1. characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood 2. having qualities of eloquence, ingenuity, or thievishness attributed to the god Mercury or to the planet Mercury

Finding my way into telling a story is always the most difficult part. Getting into someone else’s headspace, determining their actions and thoughts relative to extraordinary circumstances, that’s what someone in my line of work needs to sit down and do. Once I’ve got a concept in my head, I can usually let it run wild. It’s something going on in the background processes of my brain—stray thoughts about characters or plot points lead to notes on my phone that somehow connect to an overall narrative. Eventually I’ll let it pour out, but it’s very slow going. This isn’t the greatest way for a writer to put out work. Completing something takes years, patience, and dedication to getting it right.

That also means a writer without a lot of published material.

That probably sounds bad. Writing for me isn’t about creating easily digestible plots and characters that can be sold to the masses. Selling is low in the list of priorities. No, writing is a compulsion—it’s something I have to do. It’s part art and part therapy. So I guess the problem is in putting it all together.

Let’s flashback to 1996. I was a sophomore in high school deeply infatuated with a senior, trying to make sense of the world. I suffered, and still suffer, from severe anxiety and depression, and had a penchant for putting words together about my dreams, my friends, and the social order in which I found myself. I wrote a short story and submitted it to the school’s annual literary magazine. The story was called “Nausea” – a reference to Jean-Paul Sartre that no one got – about a high school boy who attempted suicide because of a girl, because he couldn’t vocalize his feelings, because the world was just too painful. That boy’s name was Alex Graves.

Alex became a way for me to cope—to fictionalize my experiences and desires. He’d act out in ways that I never could due to my anxiety. In some short stories, he was meek at the mercy of the world around him. In others, he was a terrible antichrist, bent on burning the society that plagued him. He wasn’t a consistent figure except that he was me.

When I began going to college in 1999, I started writing a manuscript that took another seven years to complete, centering on Alex Graves. I commuted an hour back and forth to school, which wasn’t great—it left me isolated and lonelier than ever before, at a time when I should’ve been socializing and trying new things. In this manuscript, I concocted Alex going through a Network-like scenario. He’d have a nervous breakdown as a DJ for the college radio station. Instead of getting him the help he needs, it would springboard to notoriety and fame. Eventually, he would wake up to find his girlfriend dead beside him (very Sid Vicious) and be convicted of her murder, even though, of course, he didn’t do it. I called the manuscript The Union Forever, a reference to Citizen Kane.

It was terrible.

Once it was finished, somewhere around 2006, it was a gigantic tome the length of Moby Dick. Trying to reread the early section from when I was a disconnected 18 year old was nigh impossible. How could I get it edited into something manageable, let alone, get it published? Everything I’d been working toward seemed out of reach, the last seven years of work wasted. The story of Alex Graves was my great failure.

In 2007, I started writing a story called The Erased, leaving Alex behind in favor of a nameless narrator living in a science fiction dystopia inspired by the Nine Inch Nails Year Zero alternate reality game and the works of Philip K. Dick. I know, I know—I wear my inspirations on my sleeve. Very #onbrand. By the time it was finished in 2011, The Erased had become a work I was proud of. Maybe I could be a genre author. Over the last several years, self-publishing e-books had come into fashion—I could go the route of traditional publishing, sure, but there was something so attractive about the DIY, full control method of self-publishing. I decided to ask another author friend to edit the book, and I released it myself using Amazon and Smashwords.

Reviews of The Erased were positive, but some readers found it jarring to jump from one narrator to the next from chapter to chapter when each was speaking in the first person. George R.R. Martin mitigated this problem by using limited third person narration for each of his point of view characters—each chapter identified by an identified POV character. I’ve always been more comfortable in the first person, if only because it feels that much more personal. (I’m also not nearly as good a writer as George, but that’s beside the point.)

What should I do next? I was published. I had a work out there in the world. People were actually reading my words.

There was that terrible manuscript, sitting on the shelf, still bothering me.

I started to write a story about the aftermath of a prison riot, where a high-profile inmate just vanished. Could’ve been an escape, a breakout, or he could’ve just been murdered. I decided the inmate was named Alex Graves.

This time, I’d approach Alex’s story from the outside and maybe from multiple vantage points. I put the words to paper and suddenly had something. I was following the track of three narrators—the reporter investigating the riot/disappearance, a spy who may have been responsible, and Alex himself, who had morphed into a Billy Pilgrim kind of character. Billy, in Slaughterhouse Five, was infamously unstuck in time; Alex would be unstuck in reality. What would your life be like if you could jump around into different versions of yourself? Which one would be the real one, if there were a real one? And what if you could inflict those versions on the world?

Still, something wasn’t quite clicking the way it did with The Erased. Jumping from point of view to point of view was still jarring, but seemed narratively necessary. What if I separated each point of view out? Told one line of the story, then went to another, then another, and eventually came back around to the first? This seemed like a unique way to tell the story, which also changed my method of writing it—instead of working chapter to chapter, I’d follow one storyline to a stopping point, then return to another. I also felt more comfortable in points of view that were not Alex—Betsy on a hero’s journey or Berlin as a Wile E. Coyote figure. The whole point of the story was to get into other people’s heads, because they were different versions of me. That eventually led to the conclusion of the story, where multiple people see alternate versions of their lives.

And each perspective could be a different genre. You could follow the detective thread of Tyrrell Garrett, the spy thread of Mr. Berlin, the science fiction thread of Alex Graves, or the grounded protest thread of Betsy. It was all an experiment in storytelling—see how they all connect, how they interact with one another, and how their combined story impacts the world.

The title of the series came from something Alex kept saying about how he experienced reality. “I am mercury,” he said, “I am my own hyperfiction.” It meant that his identity was fluid from moment to moment, that he could construct his identity to match the circumstances he found himself in, which is something we all do everyday. And it’s definitely something an author needs to do in telling stories believably from other points of view.

We’re living in a world where objective truth is less and less important than one’s own point of view. One’s subjective experience has become the end all, be all, as though each of us lives in our own little echo chamber snow globe. We could despair at this, or we could channel our frustration into something creative. The job of the author is to help the reader into someone else’s shoes, to enact our own empathy on to others. Perhaps the lack of empathy and rise of solipsism is the fault of storytellers relying too much on the familiar instead of venturing into unknown worlds and helping others step into unknown shoes.

I’m hoping the future is filled with writers who can look past their own four walls and walk through them, for the betterment of their readers and themselves. That was what I had to do to turn the rotten old manuscript into something new.

[pixel3dhack62d2iy-blog]

How to mod Pixel Gun 3D?

How to get a lot of coins in Pixel Gun 3D 2015?

The neatest thing relating to this mode would it be work out the players primarily for the challenges. Try and get 3 celebrities about them and find like a lot XP since you can through them.

In addition to the objective is usually in order to seize a clear total involving senses in get or even a selected quantity regarding a flag with seizing the banner. Dodging is usually a well known Pixel Gun 3D Guide. You'll be able to very easily participate in this specific game with Windows, iOS, in addition to Android.

Pixel Gun 3D is well suited for older children with parental direction. Presently the only real identical game is naturally, Pixel Gun 3D. Pixel Gun 3D online hack is to survive alert along with indicate your very best weapons for the enemies. The wins tend to be 3 to help 5 wins on a certain map.

Coins will be the prime currency on the game. Hey there all, at home for the Pixel Gun 3D Guide. This particular guide is through stage 1 on the supreme height for you to quit father anyone person with out to unease on in-app obtains.

You could possibly be contemporary as well as rusty but I’m gonna teach you gentleman what we should start off out with. Right here you can shoot men and women perfectly without having a alarm regarding moving attacked. The most effective issue about this mode could it be exercises the gamblers initial for the struggles.

How to hack Pixel Gun 3D with cydia 2017?

Perform Pixel Gun Apocalypse 2 liek Minecraft could bring to mind affections of enjoying Minecraft, nevertheless tend not to get fooled, because here you might feel far more action than throughout previously referred to Minecraft. It truly is at the moment mysterious if the related game will probably be formed or not necessarily. The very first thing you'll want to resolve is enter into Experience subsequently check out Campaign. You might likewise have to cope with zombies with this mode other than the enemies.

It is normally employed seeing that shorthand figure to the word Chief, standing for the Creator in the Band they're here. The the Gratitude offer Quiche with a faster flaming rate plus faster take a trip hurry! If you’re unclear which in turn individual weapon an individual must be in Pixel Gun 3D, anyone must have this just one plus you’ll find it irresistible. You'll find these status in the map to make an area in which you'll be able to concentrate on enemies without possibly walking yourself during thought. The real maker of this particular game is Alex Kransov, along with Cubic.

The initial thing I really do is finish gamer definition the everyday journeys, they comprise regarding triumphs, wipe out, along with objectives. However, for sensible persons who recognize how in order to hack Pixel Gun 3D, this can be the most exciting mode.

After you’ve completed every one of the campaigns you can gain competing multiplayer. Enjoy the latest multiplayer shooter in a beautifully designed and style 3D world combined with friends and family. About large supplies as well as makeup which often might be enhanced through coins become. Headshot murders in addition to 4 period glide creates that an ideal allrounder of which you are able to use within channel selection to take eat an enemy steady in addition to popular extensive goes it is successful about like a sniper weapon! The most effective weapon within this classification would be the Witch Broom furthermore the easiest method to tell it really is. The Pixel Gun 3D app is a mass world shooter along with conflict royale game.

[atimeofmagic]

Mass Book Review Pt. 2

People Like Us by Dana Mele: 3.5 stars. A cute boarding school murder mystery, but not anything groundbreaking. I loved that the main character was sapphic! And reading it with the lens of the #metoo movement gave it a little extra relevance.

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire: 3 stars. So. Boring. A book about a hitchhiking ghost who was killed on her prom night? Sounds so good! Unfortunately, the fact that it was originally written as a series of short stories showed. The narrator, Rose, repeats the same information again and again. The number of times she called the highway a palimpsest...

Sex Object by Jessica Valenti: 5 stars. A #metoo movement memoir. I read it during the course of a single (long) plane trip. It documents, among other things, the different times in Valenti’s life when she’s been made to feel like a sex object. It’s personal and moving. Highly recommend.

A visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan: 3.5 stars. Experimental, but boring in places. Each chapter follows a different character, and while some characters are fascinating, others are less so. The book does have small, very true moments that in some way touch on the human condition. Perhaps part of the problem is, despite liking music, I’m not very interested in the music industry, to which most of the characters are connected.

You by Caroline Kepnes: 4 stars. I can’t remember why I gave this 4 stars and not 5, but that’s what I put on Goodreads. You is a ridiculously fun book from the point of view of a stalker. Joe Goldberg has a habit of forming obsessions with certain women. Now, he has decided he is in love with Guinevere Beck, a patron at the bookstore he helps manage. Kepnes skewers each character perfectly, delicately pulls their flaws out into the open for us to see.

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson: A Journey Through the Madness Industry: 4 stars. A fun pop-science read about the “madness industry”, Psychopath Test researches different fascinating forays made into the human brain. Different stories include a psychopath who lied his way into incarceration, serial killers forced to drop acid together, and a very odd book.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado: 3.5 stars. A book of queer feminist short stories. Like most short story collections, some stories were better than others. The ones that were good, though, were really, really good. Machado’s insights on rape culture and sexism were cutting. Some stories were also more heavy-handed than others (in one, women quite literally fade away).

Brightness Falls by Jay McIrney: 5 stars. I love reading about the publishing industry, so I almost had to love this book. It takes place in New York in the ‘80s and follows the “perfect couple” Russell and Corrine Calloway. While Russell schemes to take over his publishing house, Corrine falls deeper and deeper into a feeling of dissatisfaction. It’s charming, fascinating, and fun. 

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Daniel Mallory Ortenberg: 2.5 stars. I expected better, Daniel! His Toast articles were hilarious. I’d often laugh out loud while reading them. Merry Spinster is derivative, tiresome, and boring. I found myself actively trying to enjoy what I was reading, always a sign that a book isn’t going so well.

Any Man by Amber Tamblyn: 5 stars. Brilliant. Breathtaking. Tamblyn is originally a poet, and her prose is gorgeous. Any Man follows a group of men who have been raped by the same woman. They all cope in different ways, and the road to survival often seems an impossible journey. I cried so many times reading this. Each man felt entirely real, and it’s clear they felt real to Tamblyn too. Without her dedication to conveying the fullness of her characters’ stories, Tamblyn wouldn’t have been able to write such a beautiful book.