#Note I do not actually do this as I tend to avoid discussions like that

[realitys-ex]

One kinda fun/odd bit about Discworld is the place of Jews/Judaism in it (no, this probably won't go where you expect).

So there are the 2 obvious places and one arguably subtle/debatable place:

Feet of Clay/Golems very clearly drawing from Judaism (though in subsequent books that was toned *way* down)

Omnianism is a very clear stand in for/amalgamation of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism (the amount of each is left as an exercise to the reader).

and Lastly / debatably many people find a similarity between the description of the Dwarf religion and Judaism (I am not stating I agree, just I would have been remiss if I didn't bring it up)

Now the one thing that kinda gets forgotten is that: Judaism as a whole independent religion is somewhat confirmed in Discworld leaving arguments about the above somewhat moot! (you can't have a stand in for a religion if you already have the religion itself).

In both Feet of Clay and Fifth Elephant it mentions Vampires working at Kosher Butchers (for those unaware blood is not kosher so it needs to be drained extra well from meat, a perfect job for a vampire).

Now what does that actually imply? Absolutely nothing.

PTerry often had off the cuff jokes, as well as mucked about with continuity (remember how Trolls originally would continue to grow until they died, and could get up to the size of a small mountain, which only came up in one of the early books and was ignored in the rest?) and (I am sure) just liked that joke and did not intend to imply any theological ramifications or serious world building from it.

But dammit, it is (to me) incredibly funny to step into a (semi) serious discussion about Judaism in Discworld and completely derail it with a throw away line.

[paddysol]

unstable universe is unstabling my universe p1

Everyone say thank you Pluto for encouraging my insanity! Please note I'm solely discussing Wemmbu’s character (and PrinceZam somewhat) in Unstable Universe from a lore standpoint. (This will be a mix of my own hc and how Ive perceived the events on the server- also i've literally only watched Wemmbu and am doing this from memory so bear with me)

God I have so many thoughts on UU!Wemmbu (and Mutiny Duo) dear lord. Like, the necessity of constantly being forced to put up a front due to the hunger games-esque environment of the server, the paranoia that has you looking over your shoulder, presenting yourself as a threat, making sure that you can back that statement as much as you can because if you’re seen as weak then you’re might as well dead. 

We see this in Wemmbu who, let's all be honest with ourselves, cares about the people around him (obviously to a degree, bc of the nature of the server) and the struggle between showing that care and taking care of himself. Like, the amount of times Wemmbu has threatened to ban someone and yet never followed through is Crazy. This man literally has never carried through with a death threat, and the reason why no one realizes that is because of the “infallible” persona he plays up, and his team-up with Zam’s crusade where they chunk-banned several players. Chunk-bans!! A temporary removal!! Someone needs to call him out for his empty threats. This man literally jumped into an arena to save Roshambo from FlameFrags because it was a losing battle and Roshambo was in danger of getting death-banned. He didn't need to. He already confirmed ManePear’s information and solidified their allyship. He didn't need to stick around. He didn't need to put himself in danger. Wemmbu knows he can't fight Flame and win, he actively compensates for those situations and avoids them without extensive planning Because he knows that. 

(Note: I am aware that he killed Tyrad, but consider that was a 3? 4? vs 1 fight on a server where players expect you to fight tooth and nail to live whether it be through totems, stasis chambers, escape, etc. When Wemmbu drops Tyrad there was genuine shock, muted or not. He didn't expect someone to Actually die. Reflecting on it is obviously not an option, he’s in the middle of breaking into a prison with several guards on his tail. Guards, who mind you, are stocked with the necessary effects for a fight. Additionally, when engaging in pvp Wemmbu tends to fight with the intention of escape, not actually killing his opponent.)

Of course, despite the violent nature of UU, developing a genuine relationship with other players is inevitable. Wemmbu makes several comments about ‘if he wanted to play alone, he'd load a single-player world.’ (Obviously a bit meta, but you know what I’m getting at.) And we see him do that. I’m mostly going to be focusing on PrinceZam and Eggchan as those (at least to me) are the most developed relationships, but there are hints of thought and care aimed at players we don't see too often. 

As I mentioned before, there's a struggle to show genuine care for a person on a server that will see that as a weakness and immediately exploit it. And we see that struggle between Zam and Wemmbu, who, despite consistently being at odds with each other, find satisfaction in that relationship. Sure, both of them are walking red flags, but there is genuine care in how they feel about each other, even if they're constantly holding back in order to maintain whatever image they've created for themselves. They're rivals. They constantly snarking, they're at each other's throats, they call out for each other in a fight, they make sure they have a full inventory (potions, gaps, enchant bottles, etc). They dress their worry with a lackadaisical attitude and are steadfast in believing that it's just that, even when their actions become entirely unnecessary. Wemmbu had a monopoly on the elytra, makes a point about it, yet easily gives one to Zam at the most logical opportunity (and then proceeds to give literally all of them to him sir wtf?? Crazy behavior I would never). Zam allows Wemmbu to treat him as someone other than a king, he lets him use the mace even if he was the one who got the heavy core; he trusts Wemmbu to have his back. Wemmbu traded the mace for Zam’s life not even knowing if it would work. They show love in the only way the server allows. And sometimes that care becomes too genuine, and they force themselves to pull back. 

“I’d never betray you- unless it's convenient.”

To reiterate, both Wemmbu and Zam have a plethora of issues, both are incredibly unreliable narrators who barely trusted each other but got very close. “I’d never betray you,” Wemmbu was too honest, that’s dangerous. “Unless it's convenient,” while definitely holding a modicum of truth, the statement feels so tacked on. Letting players know that you're attached to someone or something? Hell no. But even if he didnt mean it entirely and was mostly trying to save face (dare I say warn Zam from getting close?) he still said it. And of course Zam, who came from nothing and has built an empire, who has successfully worked to become someone who cannot be taken advantage of, who knows exactly how soft his underbelly and how to ensure no one else finds out, fixates on that. How can’t he? This is a man who, with every step, is looking back and allowing his history to haunt him. This is something that clashes so loudly with Wemmbu, who can't afford to think about the past, who can only change the present, who must persevere forward. Until Zam blows up the kingdom he asked Wemmbu to build. 

(Note: This analysis? Idk what im doing anymore im just yapping- Is more focused on Wemmbu than Zam, but I am aware that he likely has own complicated perspective that plays into his actions.)

At first the change in their relationship is subtle, small shows of power from Zam, a reminder that he is a king. Then it becomes sickly familiar tactics, tactics that Wemmbu has always accompanied, never faced. Their rivalry turned sour, every interaction they have haunted with what used to be. Wemmbu, who cares so much, watches the physical manifestation of his loyalty to Zam be blown up and thrown in his face, ‘my sweet, sweet Wemmbu’. He was used, manipulated, underestimated by someone who he, against all odds, cared for. Hate begins to fester, Wemmbu calls it a betrayal. You can't betray someone who didn't mean anything to you first. 

And then we’re able to witness unfiltered care between Wemmbu and Eggchan. We watch the pretense of the “infallible” player fall as he dresses himself in diamond, giving the netherite to his friend instead. As he ensures Egg’s safety in his schemes, as he trusts Egg to have his back, takes fights he knows he cant take so that Egg has more time to get out. And that loyalty is reciprocated tenfold. Egg is allowed numerous opportunities to leave, yet he chooses to stay despite the hardships. It's everything that was just out of reach for Zam and Wemmbu. (There's definitely a lot more to talk about but this is already gonna be so long). Egg won't stand by as his friend begins to come undone at the seams. He wont play into the cutthroat game this server has spun itself into. Which of course has consequences. While off on their chunk-banning crusade Zam and Wemmbu inevitably learned what made the other person tick. Kidnapping Egg was just another move on the chessboard bc god forbid that even if they hate each other, they take their eyes off each other for a second. 

This functions as the last straw, one last ditch attempt from Wemmbu in his war with Zam, he can't promise success but he sure as hell makes sure that he hits where it hurts. He blows his kingdom sky-high. And eye for an eye and a debt settled.

And then Zam apologizes. It's not necessarily out of the blue, for all the hurt he’s enacted on Wemmbu he's kept him alive for one reason or another (they are emotionally constipated dumbasses who care about each other and refuse to admit it). This changes everything and nothing. Despite the genuine admittance of grief and regret, the two don't pull their punches. They can only guess how many totems they've popped and how many are left. They switch foils. For a brief moment Zam does not allow his past to haunt him, ‘I don't want to accidentally kill you.’ Wemmbu, for all his persevering, for all his ability to focus on what he can do now, cannot let go of their past. For the first time, Wemmbu does want to kill a player. 

We’ll never find out if he wouldve carried through.

(ending this now bc this is too long and i have even more to say about the prison eps tbh, havent written in out yet tho T-T)

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  Pricklywhicket/@messessentialist ! Prickleywhicket has four fics published to AO3 -- All in the Steddie tag!

Our anonymous nominator recommends the following works by pricklywhicket:

so let's sneak in from the cheap seats, honey

it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)

start by pulling him out of the fire

"Sadie is so super talented in the way she describes literally everything. She is so good at writing and it's a shame that she's flown under the radar because she's not the quickest at putting things out there." -- Anonymous

Below the cut, Pricklywhicket answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

Why do any of us write anything? Because we want the story to exist in the world, and it doesn’t yet, so we gotta hike up our pants and do it ourselves!

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

Hurt/Comfort. I’m always a sucker for the blorbos taking care of one another, in whatever form that takes. This has always been true, across a truly astronomical number of fandoms I’ve found myself dabbling in over the years.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

…actually, probably hurt/comfort! I just need to get those little dudes some validation and unconditional positive regard, okay?

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

I’m sure I won’t be the first one to say this, but: I HAVE TO PICK ONE????? Okay, alright. I can do this. I’m gonna say…Sanctuary by SpicedSage.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

I’ve only written canon or canon-adjacent fic so far, so I’m eager to work on something that’s completely AU. I think there’s a unique challenge to keeping characters recognizable as themselves in a world that might not have all the same contexts that made them into that person.

What is your writing process like?

I would love to say it’s super organized and well-planned, but the truth is it’s mostly about routine and responsibility. I set aside time to do it every day, even if I can only tap out a few sentences. I’m not very strict about writing in a straight line - I can stop a scene if it’s giving me trouble, write a note about what I think happens in some [brackets], and move on to something that I have more fully fleshed-out ideas for. Sometimes writing the next scene helps you know more about what needs to happen in the current one. 

Do you have any writing quirks?

I'm sure my betas would say yes 🙃 I tend to write a lot of dialogue - a lot of my revision process is going back through and realizing I have two pages of a conversation with no indication of what’s physically happening in the world around the speakers.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Definitely when I’m finished. Prior to my ‘23 bang fic, I had never written anything chaptered. I knew going in that I could NOT start posting if it wasn’t finished, because I’ve been burned too many times by abandoned works. I didn’t want to do that to people reading my fic, and the best way to avoid it is to finish before you post.

Which fic are you most proud of?

Easily start by pulling him out of the fire. The biggest, most ambitious thing I’ve ever attempted - I still kind of can’t believe I wrote 85k.

How did you get the idea for start by pulling him out of the fire?

Like most terrible ideas, it was spawned in a fandom discord chat. We were discussing the tendency of Steddie fics to centralize the party at Steve’s house, because his parents are never there anyway. And then someone mentioned what if the parents came home and found their house occupied, and someone else mentioned Wayne being there, and it just sort of…spiraled out from there.

When writing start by pulling him out of the fire, what was something you didn’t expect?

I had no idea, going in, that I was going to write a comprehensive history of the Wayne and Eddie Munson relationship. I started writing it where I did to give some background on Wayne’s existing distaste for the elder Harrington, and then I just…kept writing. Over the course of a month or two I wrote 20k of WayneAndEddie that I had no idea was in me - it just kept coming.

What inspired it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)?

@wynnyfryd. It was a gift for her birthday. We were talking about our mutual love of Letterkenny, and she mentioned that the episode was her favorite and wouldn’t it be funny if someone wrote… and the rest is history.

What was your favorite part to write from it's supposed to be fun (turning twenty-one)?

I had an unreasonable amount of fun with that one in general. But I think my favorite part was Eddie polling the party about what Steve means to them all. It was fun to sort of put myself in each character’s shoes and think about how they would answer. Plus y’know, any excuse to unironically love on Steve Harrington.

How do/did you feel writing so let's sneak in from the cheap seats, honey?

I believe my exact words upon deciding to write it were “jingles miserably to a blank google doc.” This was a classic case of saying “god I wish there was a fic where—” and having friends tell me that it was now my responsibility to write it. I’m glad I did, though. I love that story, and it proved to me that I could write sex and publish it and not burst into flames. I also just really, really love summer storms. And Wayne’s use of the singular ‘herpe.’

What was the most difficult part of writing so let's sneak in from the cheap seats honey?

Getting over the fear of publishing something E-rated. It was just something I hadn’t done, and I had a lot of anxiety that people were not going to respond well to it. I made three people individually review the sex scenes before I even asked anyone to beta the full fic. Of course I was worried for nothing, the reception for that fic was super lovely and gave me the confidence boost I needed to attempt start by pulling him out of the fire!

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

This is like asking me to pick a favorite child. I’ll say this: most of my favorite lines in start by pulling him out of the fire were taken directly from conversations @wormdebut and I had about the fic. She’s my number one cheerleader and sounding board, and sometimes she’s so goddamn funny that I just have to include it. You have her to thank, for instance, for Steve quite literally dropping his croissant when he first sees Eddie in glasses.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

I have a couple of irons in the fire, but nothing I’m ready to share just yet! I’ve been taking a breather from writing (blame baldur’s gate 3, okay) but my WIPs are still very much IP. Stay tuned!

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Not that I can think of!

Thank you to our author, Pricklywhicket, and our anonymous nominator! See more of pricklywhicket's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[autism-alley]

augh found my old post abt pjo and disability from before the show came out but it was on ye olde blog so i’m literally just gonna copy and paste, 3, 2, 1—

ok now that i’ve got it on the brain, i want to talk about disability in pjo and specifically how calling percy jackson dumb or treating him as such is not only a mischaracterization, but ableism. as a quick note, i’m keeping this to just percy to avoid having this already long post be even longer, but there are other disabled characters in pjo worthy of discussion, though i hit many of the same points in this post. i bring up percy specifically because he is mostly the character i have seen people treat as stupid.

percy is a dyslexic teen with ADHD who comes from a low-income family, raised by a single mother, and deals with an abusive step-father. i cannot stress enough how much of his character is shaped by that experience, but as hard as it is to single out any one part, i am going to focus on his ADHD and dyslexia. this kid has nightmares of being forced to take tests in a straightjacket as teachers ask him if he’s stupid and withhold him from recess with his peers. he is constantly labelled as “troubled” and blamed for things he didn’t do or aren’t his fault. he is told, over and over again, even from trusted adults, that he is “not normal” (othering him). he bounces between schools. he struggles to make friends. he deals with bullying. he has difficulty studying and reading, even when invested. teachers struggle to connect with him and tend to just give up on him. these are real disabled experiences, and rick does a good job at presenting them in the pjo books. sometimes, it feels like everything is a struggle. you are living inside a system that not only is restricting, but actively works against and punishes you.

in contrast, CHB is a great example of how when environments meet the needs of disabled people, it hugely changes how disabled we are in that environment. demigod brains are hard-wired for ancient greek, not english, and they’re born impulsive, with high energy levels that help them survive battle—but aren’t very good for a classroom setting. but by having them read books in ancient greek, regularly do lots of training/physical activities, and have genuine opportunities to express themselves...they function pretty damn well. percy discovers that while he struggles academically, he is brilliant in combat and capable of saving the world numerous times—he is a hero. do you know how important that message is for disabled children? disabled adults, too? that we can be heroes?

it is here, in camp half-blood, that percy finds a place he belongs, that shows him his worth—finally, somewhere is built to not only include him, but to nurture and genuinely prepare him for the world outside its boarders. however, i think people forget that just because percy functions in the world of CHB and the gods, that does not mean he doesn’t face ableism in the mortal world—and that there is an entire group of people who see ourselves reflected in his character.

i could talk on for hours about how much being disabled shapes percy’s identity and how he interacts with the world—like how percy’s humor revolves around coping with his environment and actually displays a very low self esteem after being looked down upon his entire life. this kid doesn’t even have to say anything and he screams i had a neurodivergent childhood. but about 5-6 years ago, when i was more regularly tuned into the fandom, every time i saw someone call percy jackson dumb or an idiot, even jokingly, i raised an eyebrow, and now that the series is getting fresh coverage from disney+, i have wanted to make this post. so much of this kid’s life and personality comes from being treated like he’s dumb or incapable, so it’s troubling to watch part of the fanbase reflect the harmful parts of this character’s upbringing. i truly hope it does not become common again. it’s also one thing coming from a neurodivergent/disabled person with similar experiences (and even then i personally find it a little uncomfortable), it’s another to be said by a neurotypical/able bodied person.

percy jackson’s experiences make for very important representation, and for people to characterize him as just a goofy, unintelligent guy is not only an insult to his character as a kid who is intelligent, but previously lacked the environment to show it, but also ableist. so in the dawn of the new tv series era, i ask that we cut that shit out. rick riordan did not create rep for neurodivergent and disabled kids for them to be called stupid by the fanbase. even jokingly.

[brookbee]

I know people are either following me because I used to post about Star Trek constantly or because I post about Bowie a lot, so here’s some random David Bowie and Star Trek connections I’ve been collecting for the past year or so. This is purely self-indulgent, but if you find this sort of thing interesting, here you go.

This is from an unpublished interview for Zygote magazine from 1971 where he was discussing the meaning of various songs. The particular song he's talking about here is "The Supermen." In case you don't want to read the full article for context, he mentioned Star Trek to act as a comparison, he was not saying that that was the initial inspiration/meaning.

This ad has song notes that Bowie wrote for the album Hunky Dory. The one of relevance is “Bewlay Brothers,” which is at the bottom of the list. It says, “Another in the series of David Bowie confessions — Star Trek in a Leather Jacket.”

You might be wondering what this means, well Bowie never really gave a consistent answer as to what this song was about. And according to Ken Scott, the producer of the album, Bowie purposefully wrote it to give a song to Americans who were reading too much into things (this was in the era of the Paul McCartney actually died and was replaced conspiracy lol). Bowie did say at different points that it was more or less about his own half-brother, but who knows if he changed his mind about that.

Although as a side note I will say that some of the lyrics sound like they could be describing Star Trek episodes lol

My Life With Bowie: Spider From Mars by Woody Woodmansey (drummer for the Spiders From Mars, Bowie’s band during the Ziggy Stardust era). He’s describing the bar in The Rainbow Room, as they were rehearsing for the most elaborate of the Ziggy Stardust concerts in August of 1972.

Mick Ronson talking about the Ziggy Stardust boots, the clip is from the documentary Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story. Angie, in case people don’t know, was Bowie’s first wife.

Side note about this one though, Bowie compared his own boots to wrestler boots (see image below). But Mick’s shoes weren’t far off from the Star Trek boots.

Book page from Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust, which was written by David Bowie and photographer Mick Rock.

Bowie in Brussels in 1978 doing (his best attempt at) the Vulcan LLAP salute, photo by Gie Knaeps.

Because I’m me, I’ve been trying to figure out what song he did this during—with certainty I can say it was during the second half of the set after the intermission. That would make it so that they were either songs from Ziggy Stardust or from Station to Station.

My guess (and it really is only a guess) is that it could have been during “TVC15.” When he performed it live he’d often sing “she’s my main creature feature” and sometimes do devil horns with his fingers and whatnot. Seems like a plausible spot, anyhow. The other one is potentially the song “Ziggy Stardust,” but just based on how he usually performed that one, such as where he’d add gestures and how he tended to convey the emotions of the song, I find it more unlikely.

But I wasn’t there and these are literally just guesses. On the off chance someone was there and that they inexplicably remember this, I would love to know.

Gates McFadden, before being Beverley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, was the choreographer for the film Labyrinth, where of course Bowie played Jareth the Goblin King.

And to avoid possible confusion, she was not the choreographer for "Magic Dance" at least when it came to Bowie's moves, as that was Charles Augin. She was, however, the choreographer for "As The World Falls Down" with the ballroom scene.

Lyrics from one of the Tin Machine albums (Bowie’s band in the late 80s-early 90s, which Bowie wrote most of the lyrics for, minus a few songs).

Additionally Iman, who Bowie met in 1990 and married in 1992, was in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country as Martia. She was on set filming at least in April of 1991 in LA, as you can see in this filming schedule I found on an auction website. I don’t know how long she was filming for, though.

(Side note, Bowie was in LA at least towards the end of April/beginning May as he talked about how he and Iman saw the riots that happened then. No I’m not saying he visited the set, since for one Shatner says he never met Bowie, but I still think it’s neat he was generally around when she was filming).

And a little snippet from one article (the screenshot is from one of those interview compilation books).

It’s not actually that much in the grand scheme of things and more than anything just shows that Bowie was a fan of the show. It should also be remembered that Star Trek wasn’t ever really cited as a huge influence for him in terms of aesthetic, which is a rather common assumption people make, but I thought that these were fun nonetheless. I’m sure I also missed/forgot stuff, so if I come across more I'll probably add to this later on.

[capricioussun]

Been a minute, but I found the note and finished it up a bit. These guys are still very new and subject to change as I get a better feel for them

Off brands

Okay, starting with the initial group mentioned: the three papyruses.

Castor (Fell Papyrus) - outwardly comes across cold and harsh, tends to keep to himself and avoids socializing, short temper for getting annoyed but pretty hard to genuinely piss off. Won't talk about his AU to anyone but Calcine, anything relating to his brother is a very sore spot.

7'2, for piercings, has a nasal ridge bar, one horizontal brow bone, and one teardrop, both on the left side. Has rings down each outer ledge of his scapula, sometimes laces ribbon through them. For "tattoos" (etchings w/ stain), he has stars scattered on the right side of his skull, oleander flowers on his left shoulder, and a bat across his inner sacrum where it meets the lumbar spine (possibly others, yet to be determined).

Has significant scarring, though maybe not as much as Edge. Candy apple red magic with hints of purple. Ringed eyelights that aren't prone to changing shape very often, but when extremely angry, pin dots appear in the center of the rings.

•

Calcine (Tale Papyrus) - outwardly comes across very similar to canon Papyrus, but almost like it's a stage role he’s forgetting the lines to. Slightly calmer and less whimsical/humorous, more prone to apparent anxiety, but tries very hard to act as "normal" (when compared to canon Papyrus) as possible. Won't discuss what wound him up here, but will happily talk about his AU prior. It sounds like...undertale.

6'5, the bones of his entire body up until his skull are burnt, permanently charred, but he makes no effort to hide this. Might have eyelights...? Sometimes it appears there is light coming from deeper within his skull but he makes an effort to prevent others from seeing this. Blue magic.

•

Anthias (Swap Papyrus) - outwardly seems a bit quiet and distracted, but otherwise generally friendly. Laid back and tries to keep calm no matter the situation, despite often times those around him being more prone to panicking and ignoring him. Will talk vaguely about his brother and a few others from his AU but not much else.

6'7, very similar appearance-wise to a standard swap Papyrus, though he has prominent freckles and blue magic. Typically tries to wear clothes to cover his body and the few scars he does have unless around others he's very comfortable with.

Their dynamics w/ each other ⬇️

Calcine was the first person to get Castor to open up...at least a little bit. It was hard won, but he does, finally, consider Calcine a genuine friend. They've talk more about their own AUs to each other than anyone but still haven't actually said much, especially not about the afflictions that separate them from the "standards".

While they do care for one another, neither are particularly good at actually looking out for the other, and on occasion, even enable bad habits. They're working on it.

Anthias and Calcine have known each other since before Castor joined them, but never really spoke much until after. Despite his laid back aura, Anthias is deeply self conscious, which caused an unintentional rift between the two with Calcine finding him to be aloof. Eventually though, they get to know each other better, and even become very close friends. Calcine has since earned the nickname Ziggy from Anthias.

Castor and Anthias met through Calcine, though Anthias had been very curious about him since Castor's arrival. They didn't get along so well at first, mostly because of Castor's standoffish nature, but as he settled in more, they gradually found themselves easing around the other, (with the mediation of Calcine, too, of course). They have more of an unspoken understanding type of dynamic, and enjoy spending quiet time together or working independently in the same place. Anthias jokingly calls him Cassie sometimes, leading to Castor referring to him as nearly any feminine A name in response (ie Annabelle, Andrea, Annie, Alexis, etc)

I don't have proper refs for any of them, but I've drawn Castor and Anthias before (prior to deciding to make them entirely separate variants)

Castor vis ref • Anthias vis ref

[topazadine]

Writing Research Notes: Bipolar Disorder

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 19 and had a psychotic episode at age 21, so I'd like to say I know a bit about what I'm talking about. And I'm a writer! So today, I'd like to provide some facts about bipolar as a jumping-off point for your research.

Things we'll discuss:

A note of caution

Types of bipolar disorder

Phases of bipolar

Warning signs of mania

Symptoms of mania

Symptoms of psychosis

How bipolar is treated

Common myths about bipolar

Characterizations to avoid regarding bipolar

How to create an authentic bipolar character

This is just my opinion as someone who has lived with bipolar for a long time. Everyone experiences bipolar a bit differently, so not everything I mention will apply to everyone, and my own story may not reflect every single bipolar person. With that disclaimer, let's go.

A Note of Caution

This is a guide to help people who want to write about bipolar. It should NOT be used for self-diagnosis or to diagnose anyone else.

If you think you have bipolar, you need to speak to a professional as soon as possible. Bipolar disorder is not a cute quirky accessory. Both mania and depression literally cause brain damage, as I've discussed in my post about the Myth of the Martyr-Artist.

This is not something to play around with or to use to build street cred or whatever. It is a serious, severe mental health condition that causes untold hardship for sufferers, including increased risk of suicide, homelessness, addiction, and even dementia.

So please don't read this and go "oh I probably have bipolar lol." If you do read through this and go "oh shit this sounds like me," then get thyself to a physician as soon as possible and go through a real, actual, professional screening.

Alright, anyway, let's get into it.

Types of Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar is typically separated into two types. What kind you have depends on your predisposition to either extreme: mania or depression.

Bipolar 1

People with Bipolar 1 tend to have more severe manic episodes and less severe depressive episodes. They are more predisposed to experience psychotic episodes, though psychosis can happen in Bipolar 2 as well. Bipolar 1 patients may only have very brief depressive episodes or they may only experience their "baseline" and mania. (As an aside, I have Bipolar 1.)

Bipolar 2

People with Bipolar 2 lean more toward depressive episodes. They may experience hypomania, which is a less severe form of mania, but their primary symptom will be depression.

It's important to note that while many say Bipolar 1 is more severe because of the manic episodes and risk of psychosis, this does not discount the extreme suffering that can result from Bipolar 2. Patients with Bipolar 2 have just as many struggles as Bipolar 1 patients.

Phases of Bipolar

Depression

This works much the same as the typical depression that people with Major Depressive Disorder experience, but bipolar patients may be more agitated, self-destructive, and aggressive when depressed.

Hypomania

This is the "less severe" version of mania. In the chart above, it's demonstrated by DIG-FAST: distractibility, impulsivity, grandiosity, flight of ideas, activity increases, sleeplessness, and talkativeness. These happen in full mania too, but to a greater extent.

Many people with Bipolar 2 welcome hypomania because, well, it feels a lot better than the depression they are usually stuck with. However, it's important to note that hypomania, like mania, can cause brain damage. It's not something to screw around with.

Mania

A more severe, destructive version of hypomania: everything is dialed up to 11. People may become hypersexual, spend money they don't have, destroy relationships, make inappropriate comments at work, or even fly into destructive rages.

Mania can be terrifying, both for the sufferer and for those around them. You can be so extremely happy that it's almost painful, or so angry that you feel like you're going to tear your own skin off.

Psychosis

This typically is the "end result" of mania which happens to about 50% of people experiencing a manic episode. It is typified by delusions and hallucinations. We'll discuss these a bit more later.

Contrary to popular belief, psychotic hallucinations are typically auditory, not visual, though visual hallucinations can occur as well. Other strange and less common hallucinations include olfactory (smelling things that aren't there), gustatory (tasting things that aren't there), or sensory (feeling people touching you).

Euthymia 

This is the normal, calm state in between depressive and manic episodes, where one has a sense of well-being and stability. It is the goal of therapy and medication management.

However, experiencing euthymia doesn't mean that the bipolar disorder is gone: it just means that it is in remission. Bipolar patients must always be on alert for warning signs of mania and be active participants in their own care.

Warning Signs of Mania

Manic episodes often come with prodomes, symptoms that appear before full-blown mania.

Bipolar patients and their families should be on alert for these warning signs and, if they continue to occur for more than a week or so, schedule an appointment with the patient's psychiatrist to see if they need a higher medication dosage.

Here are some common signs that happen before full-blown mania:

Feeling either really great or really terrible for no reason. Sometimes you can feel really great and really terrible at the same time. It's a very weird feeling.

Functioning well on little sleep for days on end. Not just one sleepless night, but being able to go to work and function on like 4 hours of sleep night after night.

Increased or decreased appetite. Either you hate food or it's the most important thing in your life. Can fluctuate day by day.

Increased productivity. You're getting soooo much done and so quickly! (It probably sucks but we'll put that aside for now.) You just want to work on your passion projects constantly.

Sudden interest in multiple new hobbies all at once, and throwing yourself into them with such passion that it's scary.

Weird physical symptoms. You may find yourself locked into a position and not want to move, or your skin may feel odd, like it's too tight or prickly.

Sudden bouts of tinnitus. It sounds really weird, but it's been proven to be a sign of impending mania along with the skin symptoms I mentioned before.

Your eyes look different. Your pupils are always dilated.

Not everyone will get all of these, but most people will have at least one trigger that happens to them every time before a manic episode. For me, it was hypergraphia (because of course it was).

Symptoms of Mania

Not all of these symptoms will happen to everyone, and every manic episode can be a little different. It all really depends on who you are. Now, I must say that anyone, bipolar or not, can have these symptoms. It is the intensity of them that defines mania. A manic episode can ruin your life because you just get. so. extreme. about whatever it is.

Becoming extremely focused on random things and projects. For me, it was cleaning the house: I started throwing out old photos that I thought we didn't need because I didn't want any clutter. I would sweep the floor for hours at a time. Sudden and intense interest in random subjects. I got really obsessed with Neolithic Scotland of all things. Now I can't even remember half the shit I learned. Spending way too much money. Many people will go into extreme debt because of their mania, especially if they don't have family support. I spent like $300 on a kitchen knife set despite having a full set of perfectly serviceable kitchen knives. I also bought a professional-grate ukulele that I very much could not afford and very much did not need. Worsening of any addictions or developing new addictions. Especially seen in gambling addictions because, well, you already want to spend a lot of money and it's an extreme dopamine hit. Sudden and intense aggression or emotional volatility. Normally calm and relaxed people will go off the deep end about pretty much anything: screaming, throwing things, and then bursting into tears out of guilt. I'm normally a pretty chill person, but one time I threw a phone at my mom's head because she pissed me off so much. I can't even remember what she said to make me mad. Feeling invincible. Manic people are convinced that nothing bad could ever happen to them and they can do whatever they want. Think of someone running into traffic, sure that no one will hit them. Or, on the other hand, feeling terrified of everything. This can happen to the same person, sometimes simultaneously. You may believe everything is a threat, even when there is no clear and obvious threat. Being physically incapable of sleeping. It's not insomnia like normal people experience, where you pop a melatonin or do some breathing exercises and manage to fall asleep. You cannot fall asleep. Normal sleeping pills do not work. You may need heavy-duty tranquilizers. One time, I combined like five Benadryl and a whole bottle of whisky and STILL couldn't get to sleep. I was crying because of how tired I was. Talking extremely fast and in an extremely disconnected way. This is called flight of ideas; you start jumping from one discussion to another in ways that other people can't follow. Your brain has made that leap but can't articulate it for other people. Shiny eyes. You really can see mania in the eyes; it's very unsettling. Manic eyes look dark, wide, and shimmery. Hypersexuality. I did not have this problem, but I have talked to bipolar people who wrecked their marriages because they could not control their urges. That's not an excuse, of course, nor does it lessen the pain that the other person felt. But it can indeed happen. Unintentional pregnancies, STDs, and a whole lot of bad feelings can come from this. Kleptomania. I also did not experience this, but I have heard of other bipolar people who felt an uncontrollable urge to steal things they didn't even need to: they could afford it, they just wanted the thrill of stealing it.

Mania can cause amnesia afterward, and the person may not remember large swathes of what happened, or it will feel "dream-like" and confusing. Of course, they've got some major damage control to do that can plummet them into depression.

Symptoms of Psychosis

Again, just like with mania, not everyone will experience all of these. If a person has multiple psychotic episodes, each one may be a bit different every time.

I'm going to separate this into several sections: common delusions, common hallucinations, and Other symptoms (which are often not discussed as much).

Common Delusions

Delusions can shift throughout the course of a psychotic episode, seamlessly morphing from one to another without clear cause.

With psychoanalysis, one can often find that there are "seeds" of a delusion in the person's everyday life, and they may be connected to current events. For example, someone may think they're the reincarnation of a previous president during a presidential election.

Being god or a reincarnation of a famous person

Extreme religiosity

A belief that they have found the "key" to the universe and that everything is connected by some vast conspiracy

Being surveilled by a government entity, sometimes with the belief that they have had tracking devices installed without their consent

Being stalked, harassed, or tormented by unknown entities or by strangers (gang-stalking)

Being persecuted for a certain identity

Having some special role to play or a special status

Being a member of a special community

Having special knowledge or insight into issues, like world affairs

Being ill with another disease, like cancer or dementia

Being ageless, immortal, or invincible

Having a special connection with a celebrity, famous person, fictional character, people you know, or even strangers

A sense that loved ones have been replaced with clones or copies

Believing that there is a secret "play" going on and other people are playing along with a secret "script"

Believing other people can hear your thoughts, or that you can hear theirs

Common Hallucinations

Repeating noises, words, or phrases, often in distinct voices

Spectral, unhearable music

Environmental noises that don't exist, like train whistles or construction sounds

Repeating jingles or "ear-worms" that get stuck and may continue for days or weeks off and on

Humming, whirring, or ringing

Mutated or blurry faces, even of people you know well

A sense that a person's face is not their "real" face and they are wearing a mask

Haloes or auras around people or animals

Sparkles, flashes, and black spots

Colorful lights, ribbons, or strings

Seeing people you know who could not feasibly be there, like old coworkers, old partners, or deceased relatives

Vague blurry shapes, or distinct monster-like entities

Strangely shaped or mutated animals or people

"String people" or "stick people"

Black "void people"

Shadows that aren't there, typically around doors or windows

Skittering bugs, rodents, or snakes, often black or blurry

Bugs or small creatures crawling on the skin

Itchiness or grittiness on the skin

Light feathery touches along the skin, especially on the back or hands

Goosebumps with no clear cause that don't go away

Bad smells, like feces, garbage, body odor, or burning plastic

Good smells, often those from childhood

Losing sense of smell or taste

Sense that the mouth is full when nothing is there

Prickly tongue

Metallic taste (may be a medication side effect)

Other Symptoms

Muscle stiffness

Catatonia

Slurred or fast speech

Lack of appetite

Weight loss

Migraines

Parkinsonian symptoms (tremors)

How Bipolar Is Treated

Bipolar is treated in a few ways, with the most important and prominent being medication.

Medication

Bipolar is typically treated with mood stabilizers, which is a vague class that includes anticonvulsants, SSRIs, SNRIs, and other groups of medications. (The medication I use, Lamictal, is an anticonvulsant.)

Psychiatrists must be very careful when prescribing antidepressants for Bipolar I patients because too much can bring on mania. Bipolar 1 patients will often have an antipsychotic added to their regimen as well. There are new classes of drugs that combine antidepressants with antipsychotics for a one-and-done deal.

Bipolar patients may also have antianxiety medications added to their regimen.

Psychosis is a medical emergency and must be treated as soon as possible. Fast-acting antipsychotics can be injected in the emergency room to stablize a psychotic patient. They may also use tranquilizers to calm a paranoid or combative patient.

Like with schizophrenia, patients who are not medication-compliant may opt for a long-lasting antipsychotic injection that only needs to be done once a month or once every three months.

Therapy

A history of trauma is one of the things that predisposes a person to bipolar disorder, so working on this can help reduce symptoms. EMDR therapy can be a safe and effective way to process trauma for bipolar patients.

However, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) doesn't work very well for bipolar patients because, well, their cognitive distortions are brought about by chemical changes in the brain, not just seeing the world "wrong."

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is a better choice for bipolar patients because it helps them become more aware of their thoughts and, therefore, better able to manage their emotions.

Other options include equine-assisted therapy (my favorite!), art therapy, and family therapy to help build a stronger support system.

Lifestyle Changes

All the stuff that helps "normal" people can help bipolar patients, too. For example, having a set routine, eating well, setting and keeping a bedtime, getting exercise, and eating well are all crucial for managing bipolar, in addition to medication and therapy.

Weight management is a critical component of bipolar treatment. A lot of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers can cause weight gain, even when someone isn't overeating; they can also cause cravings for sweet foods or an increased appetite.

Because bipolar is often comorbid with other conditions worsened by excess weight, such as diabetes, heart disease, and PCOS, care must be taken to keep one's weight down. Excercise, because it has neurogenic benefits, can be enormously helpful in helping to heal the brain.

Some medications also cause vitamin deficiencies because they affect the way that the body processes nutrients, and they may block absorption of certain nutrients. Multivitamins can counteract this and even reduce symptoms because some deficiencies have a marked impact on mood.

Bipolar people should not drink, as it reduces the efficacy of medications and can lead to nasty side effects. They also should NOT smoke weed, especially if they have a history of psychosis. Yes, marijuana-induced psychosis is very real and far more likely for a bipolar person.

Additionally, bipolar people should nurture their support system, as having family support is a key factor in whether a bipolar person can stay stable.

Common Myths About Bipolar

Bipolar people are dangerous. Not necessarily true, though common media depictions show this as if all bipolar people are roving murderers.

In fact, bipolar people are more likely to kill themselves than anyone else: it has the highest suicide rate of any psychiatric illness, about 20 to 30 times more than the general population.

Medication is a crutch and bipolar people can get better by themselves. Wrong. Just like someone doesn't magically get better from Type I Diabetes without treatment, bipolar people need medication.

Bipolar can be treated just with lifestyle changes. Again, just like someone with Type I diabetes, you can't just will the bipolar away. You need treatment. No amount of supplements or sunshine will fix it. It's a brain disorder.

Medication turns bipolar people into emotionless zombies. Incorrect, with a caveat. The wrong dosage or type of medication very much can make someone into a zombie; I've certainly felt that way before. However, the correct treatment allows bipolar people to thrive and stay stable for years to come.

A bipolar person can never become stable and will always have symptoms. Sorta not true. Bipolar comes with other issues, like executive dysfunction, that cannot always be managed or treated. BUT bipolar people very much can become stable and mostly asymptomatic with the right treatment.

Bipolar people are always having some sort of crisis. It can feel that way, but once a person is stable, they can look just like anyone else.

Bipolar can go away. No. Even if you are in remission, you still have bipolar disorder and can relapse at any time. It is a brain dysfunction that causes measurable structural differences in the brain which do not go away.

Once you snap out of psychosis/mania, you're right back to normal. Wrong. You don't just wake up and are not psychotic anymore. It takes time for your brain to equalize and come back to baseline. I remember it as feeling like I was rising out of a long, long sleep. Once someone is stable, it's like nothing ever happened. Mania or depression causes brain changes that can last years after the episode. On average, the brain damage from mania exists for up to seven years after the last episode, and it worsens with each subsequent episode.

Any fluctuation in mood is a symptom of bipolar. This is so, so, so annoying. Bipolar people are allowed to have bad days just like anyone else. If I'm having a shitty day but I'm not throwing phones at people, then I'm probably just having a bad day. If I'm really happy, it doesn't mean I'm manic.

Bipolar people can't help it and shouldn't be punished for their actions. No no no. What I like to say is that my bipolar doesn't excuse my behavior, but it does explain it. If you hurt someone while manic, you still hurt someone and it's still your fucking fault! Never use it as an excuse to be an asshole.

Everything about bipolar is terrible. Wrong! Bipolar can have benefits like creativity, empathy, good problem-solving, and a unique perspective on life. A stable bipolar person can be a delight to be around. But these don't discount the downsides and should not be a reason to refuse treatment.

Characterizations to Avoid Regarding Bipolar

Roving maniac. Kind of a duh. We have a bad enough rap anyway.

Evil murderer. Same as above.

Abusive evil spouse. I mean, yeah, a bipolar person can be abusive, but they're likely abusive because they're a shitty person and bipolar is just a side effect.

Manic pixie dream girl. Don't romanticize bipolar either.

Miserable cinnamon roll. We're people, okay? Complex, multifactorial, interesting people. We're not constantly miserable.

Total trainwreck. If you're going to show someone's nervous breakdown, please please please show them when they are stable too. Please don't just distil the bipolar person down to their symptoms. Show us as who we are: complex people just like you or anyone else.

Drama magnet. Frankly, a lot of bipolar people don't want to get involved in other people's shit. We've got our own stuff going on. We're not out to wreck your life, we're just trying to get through the day.

How to Create an Authentic Bipolar Character

Do your research. Read a mixture of medical journals, stories from bipolar people, and good depictions of bipolar disorder in the media. Go beyond what I have discussed here and seek out good, peer-reviewed research.

Don't add bipolar just for shock value. Annoying and shitty. If you're thinking of making an evil cruel murdermonster, stop. We have it hard enough and you're going to make it worse.

Create the character first, then add the bipolar. Every bipolar person is different, just like every person is different. Get a feel for your character and then determine how they might act when manic or depressed.

Use an array of symptoms. Don't just go for "ooooh scary monster in the corner of my eye" because that's boring and overdone. Look through the list I provided and consider how you can fit a few of them in there.

Remember that it takes time to recover from an episode. You should not just have your character wake up one day and be cured. They will feel "off" for a while after an episode, like a very very long hangover.

Consider medication symptoms. Decide what medication they will use and then look up the symptoms. Demonstrate how this makes them feel and whether it makes them want to continue treatment.

Think about how a character feels about their bipolar. Some people don't think it's a problem because they like the energy, and others are terrified of relapsing. Some see it as a challenge to be overcome, and others find it to be a burden that they want to be rid of. And many will feel all of these at different times.

Show the impact on other characters. Remember that your other characters are seeing and reacting to this. They may be terrified, frustrated, hurt, dismissive, or not want to deal with it.

Demonstrate times of stability, too. Too many people use bipolar as an "ooooh soo sad" (especially psychosis) and don't show the character just being a normal human being.

Show the ableism bipolar people face. Yes, we do face ableism. People calling us crazy, denying us medical care, passing us up for jobs, or my very least favorite, "have you taken your meds today?" UGH SHUT UP YES I HAVE LEAVE ME ALONE.

Remember that many people are not medication compliant. Medication compliance is one of the number one indicators of whether a person will stay stable long term. If your character refuses to take their medication, then they are more likely to relapse.

People have many reasons for not accepting treatment: they don't like the way it feels, they're embarrassed, they don't see it as a problem, or they can't afford it (some of these meds can be hundreds of dollars a month even with insurance). So make sure to explain why they are medication non-compliant.

I've created a masterlist of writing resources that you can peruse at your leisure, all for free.

The posts I write can sometimes take me hours - they're always intricate, always thoughtful. This one took me about three hours to complete.

I do this as a labor of love for the writing community, sharing what I have learned from almost 15 years of creative writing.

However, if you'd like to support me, maybe you'll consider buying my book for $1.99?

9 Years Yearning is a gay coming-of-age romance set in a fantasy world. It follows Uileac Korviridi, a young soldier training at the War Academy. His primary motivations are honoring the memory of his late parents, protecting his little sister Cerie, and becoming a top-notch soldier.

However, there's a problem: Orrinir Relickim, a rough and tough fellow pupil who just can't seem to leave Uileac alone.

The book features poetry, descriptions of a beautiful country inspired by Mongolia, and a whole lot of tsundere vibes.

Oh, and horse!!! Horse love!! SO MUCH HORSE LOVE.

You can also check it out on Goodreads for a list of expanded distribution.

If you do purchase my book, don't forget to leave a review!

Reviews are vital for visibility on Amazon and help to support indie authors like me. Whenever you love a book, be sure to let the author know! It's much appreciated.

[theminecraftbee]

For anyone looking to make their own Persona AUs, the Shin Megami Tensei wiki is honestly one of the better places to research the recurring tropes of various social links (ie, the Magician typically being the Protagonist's first male friend, the Justice typically being prone to anger). Do note that because of the nature of the Persona and SMT franchises you'll find potentially triggering content, so do tread lightly!

yes, very true! the wiki is SUPER HELPFUL in that regard!

and this is a good time to bring up actually: if my talking about persona has made you interested in playing, yay! they’re super cool and fun games! HOWEVER, they have some pretty big content warnings on them. (here the content warnings are for p3/p4/p5; I would be shocked if these themes aren’t in p1/p2, but I haven’t played those.)

all three games have at least some mentions/relevant sexual assault

all three games have scenes of severe bullying

all three games discuss suicide

all three games have death, including major character death, as a theme, with persona 3 having death be its MAIN theme.

all three games have some elements of institutionalized abuse as part of their story

familial/child abuse is also in at least one social link in all three games, and is a major plot point in at least p3 and p5.

mental health in general is a major theme of all three games.

all three games have some element of unreality as a theme.

additionally, while the above are the things I think atlus would say they intentionally put in as heavy themes, persona also has some… “jokes”… that it is irresponsible to make a recommendation without mentioning.

atlus tends to use the “predatory gay man” and “predatory trans woman” bit for laughs. yes, I’m sorry, in all three games, although I was pleasantly surprised to see they’d actually removed that from persona 3 in p3 reload! but it’s in one scene in p5, and in p4 it’s… complicated. one of the lead characters is gay, and part of his character arc is about internalized homophobia. however, another character will make statements like he’s scared to share a tent with him, which is never treated as justified but IS treated as a “joke”, on account of the character doing the homophobia being a comic relief character. additionally, naoto’s character arc can easily be read as transphobic (as naoto needing to accept being a woman rather than a man), although I know different people have different reactions to this arc. p4 is my favorite but it is NOT a recommendation I give without content warnings for a reason.

also, while p4 as a game is well aware of the amount of violence against women in it and the bad guy who does it is a nihilist and a loser, it is a major plot point, and it’s not always treated with grace.

also, all three games notoriously have at least one “comedy relief” scene of the guys picking up women and honestly it’s normally more like, anime cringe than actually misogynistic but it feels like I should bring it up?

also in both p3 and p5 there are social links that can lead to you flirting with your teacher. yeah. it’s avoidable but it’s sure there.

overall: REALLY GOOD GAMES, and when the writing is good in them it’s REALLY GOOD. they’re also consistently games that people who otherwise wouldn’t be into an 100-hour jrpgs end up realizing why people like the genre with! but they are ALSO games where the content warnings here are warranted!

[dailyanarchistposts]

I.4.12 Won’t there be a tendency for capitalist enterprise to reappear?

This is a common right-wing “libertarian” objection. Robert Nozick, for example, imagined the following scenario:

“small factories would spring up in a socialist society, unless forbidden. I melt some of my personal possessions and build a machine out of the material. I offer you and others a philosophy lecture once a week in exchange for yet other things, and so on … some persons might even want to leave their jobs in socialist industry and work full time in this private sector … [This is] how private property even in means of production would occur in a socialist society … [and so] the socialist society will have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults.” [Anarchy, State and Utopia, pp. 162–3]

There are numerous flawed assumptions in this argument and we will discuss them here. The key flaws are the confusion of exchange with capitalism and the typically impoverished propertarian vision that freedom is, essentially, the freedom to sell your liberty, to become a wage slave and so unfree. Looking at history, we can say that both these assumptions are wrong. Firstly, while markets and exchange have existed for thousands of years capitalism has not. Wage-labour is a relatively recent development and has been the dominant mode of production for, at best, a couple of hundred years. Secondly, few people (when given the choice) have freely become wage-slaves. Just as the children of slaves often viewed slavery as the “natural” order, so do current workers. Yet, as with chattel slavery, substantial state coercion was required to achieve such a “natural” system.

As discussed in section F.8, actually existing capitalism was not created by Nozick’s process — it required substantial state intervention to separate workers from the means of production they used and to ensure, eventually, that the situation in which they sold their liberty to the property owner was considered “natural.” Without that coercion, people do not seek to sell their liberty to others. Murray Bookchin summarised the historical record by noting that in “every precapitalist society, countervailing forces .. . existed to restrict the market economy. No less significantly, many precapitalist societies raised what they thought were insuperable obstacles to the penetration of the State into social life.” He pointed to “the power of village communities to resist the invasion of trade and despotic political forms into society’s abiding communal substrate.” [The Ecology of Freedom, pp. 207–8] Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber notes that in the ancient Mediterranean world ”[w]hile one does periodically run into evidence of arrangements which to the modern eye look like wage-labour contracts, on closer examination they almost always actually turn out to be contracts to rent slaves … Free men and women thus avoided anything remotely like wage-labour, seeing it as a matter, effectively, of slavery, renting themselves out.” This means that wage labour ”(as opposed to, say, receiving fees for professional services) involves a degree of subordination: a labourer has to be to some degree at the command of his or her employer. This is exactly why, through most of history, free men and women tended to avoid wage-labour, and why, for most of history, capitalism … never emerged.” [Possibilities, p. 92]

Thus while the idea that people will happily become wage slaves may be somewhat common place today (particularly with supporters of capitalism) the evidence of history is that people, given a choice, will prefer self-employment and resist wage labour (often to the death). As E. P. Thompson noted, for workers at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the “gap in status between a ‘servant,’ a hired wage-labourer subject to the orders and discipline of the master, and an artisan, who might ‘come and go’ as he pleased, was wide enough for men to shed blood rather than allow themselves to be pushed from one side to the other. And, in the value system of the community, those who resisted degradation were in the right.” [The Making of the English Working Class, p. 599] Over one hundred years later, the rural working class of Aragon showed the same dislike of wage slavery. After Communist troops destroyed their self-managed collectives, the ”[d]ispossessed peasants, intransigent collectivists, refused to work in a system of private property, and were even less willing to rent out their labour.” [Jose Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, p. 258] The rural economy collapsed as the former collectivists refused to be the servants of the few.

People who have tasted freedom are unlikely to go back to oppression. Therefore, any perception that people will become wage-slaves through choice in a free society is based on the assumption what people accept through necessity under capitalism will pass over, without change, into a free one. This assumption is unfounded and anarchists expect that once people struggle for freedom and taste the pleasures of freedom they will not freely accept a degradation back to having a master — and as history shows, we have some evidence to support our argument. It seems a strangely debased perspective on freedom to ponder whether people will be “free” to alienate their freedom — it is a bit like proclaiming it a restriction of freedom to “forbid” owning slaves (and, as noted in section F.2.2, Nozick did support voluntary slave contracts).

So anarchists think Nozick’s vision of unfreedom developing from freedom is unlikely. As anarcho-syndicalist Jeff Stein points out “the only reason workers want to be employed by capitalists is because they have no other means for making a living, no access to the means of production other than by selling themselves. For a capitalist sector to exist there must be some form of private ownership of productive resources, and a scarcity of alternatives. The workers must be in a condition of economic desperation for them to be willing to give up an equal voice in the management of their daily affairs and accept a boss.” [“Market Anarchism? Caveat Emptor!”, Libertarian Labour Review, no. 13]

In an anarchist society, there is no need for anyone to “forbid” capitalist acts. All people have to do is refrain from helping would-be capitalists set up monopolies of productive assets. This is because, as we have noted in section B.3.2, capitalism cannot exist without some form of state to protect such monopolies. In a libertarian-socialist society, of course, there would be no state to begin with, and so there would be no question of it “refraining” people from doing anything, including protecting would-be capitalists’ monopolies of the means of production. In other words, would-be capitalists would face stiff competition for workers in an anarchist society. This is because self-managed workplaces would be able to offer workers more benefits (such as self-government, better working conditions, etc.) than the would-be capitalist ones. The would-be capitalists would have to offer not only excellent wages and conditions but also, in all likelihood, workers’ control and hire-purchase on capital used. The chances of making a profit once the various monopolies associated with capitalism are abolished are slim.

Thus the would-be capitalist would “not [be] able to obtain assistance or people to exploit” and “would find none because nobody, having a right to the means of production and being free to work on his own or as an equal with others in the large organisations of production would want to be exploited by a small employer”. [Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, pp. 102–103] So where would the capitalist wannabe find people to work for him? As Kropotkin argued:

“Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor. That is why an anarchist society need not fear the advent of a [millionaire] who would settle in its midst. If every member of the community knows that after a few hours of productive toil he [or she] will have a right to all the pleasures that civilisation procures, and to those deeper sources of enjoyment which art and science offer to all who seek them, he [or she] will not sell his strength … No one will volunteer to work for the enrichment of your [millionaire].” [Conquest of Bread, p. 61]

However, let us suppose there is a self-employed inventor, Ferguson, who comes up with a new innovation without the help of the socialised sector. Would anarchists steal his idea? Not at all. The syndicates, which by hypothesis have been organised by people who believe in giving producers the full value of their product, would pay Ferguson an equitable amount for his idea, which would then become common across society. However, if he refused to sell his invention and instead tried to claim a patent monopoly on it in order to gather a group of wage slaves to exploit, no one would agree to work for him unless they got the full control over both the product of their labour and the labour process itself. And, assuming that he did find someone willing to work for him (and so be governed by him), the would-be capitalist would have to provide such excellent conditions and pay such good wages as to reduce his profits to near zero. Moreover, he would have to face workers whose neighbours would be encouraging them to form a union and strike for even better conditions and pay, including workers’ control and so on. Such a militant workforce would be the last thing a capitalist would desire. In addition, we would imagine they would also refuse to work for someone unless they also got the capital they used at the end of their contract (i.e. a system of “hire-purchase” on the means of production used). In other words, by removing the statist supports of capitalism, would-be capitalists would find it hard to “compete” with the co-operative sector and would not be in a position to exploit others’ labour.

With a system of communal production (in social anarchism) and mutual banks (in individualist anarchism), usury — i.e. charging a use-fee for a monopolised item, of which patents are an instance — would no longer be possible and the inventor would be like any other worker, exchanging the product of his or her labour. As Benjamin Tucker argued, “the patent monopoly … consists in protecting inventors and authors against competition for a period of time long enough for them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labour measure of their services — in other words, in giving certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of nature, and the power to extract tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all. The abolition of this monopoly would fill its beneficiaries with a wholesome fear of competition which should cause them to be satisfied with pay for their services equal to that which other labourers get for theirs, and secure it by placing their products and works on the market at the outset at prices so low that their lines of business would be no more tempting to competitors than any other lines.” [The Anarchist Reader, pp. 150–1]

So, if someone has labour to sell then they deserve a free society to do it in — as Tucker once pointed out. Such an environment would make the numbers seeking employment so low as to ensure that the rate of exploitation would be zero. Little wonder that, when faced with a self-employed, artisan workforce, capitalists have continually turned to the state to create the “correct” market forces. So without statism to back up various class-based monopolies of capitalist privilege, capitalism would not have become dominant.

It should also be noted that Nozick makes a serious error in his case. He assumes that the “use rights” associated with an anarchist (i.e. socialist) society are identical to the “property rights” of a capitalist one. This is not the case, and so his argument is weakened and loses its force. Simply put, there is no such thing as an absolute or “natural” law of property. As John Stuart Mill pointed out, “powers of exclusive use and control are very various, and differ greatly in different countries and in different states of society.” Therefore, Nozick slips an ideological ringer into his example by erroneously interpreting socialism (or any other society for that matter) as specifying a distribution of capitalist property rights along with the wealth. As Mill argued: “One of the mistakes oftenest committed, and which are the sources of the greatest practical errors in human affairs, is that of supposing that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas. No word has been subject of more of this kind of misunderstanding that the word property.” [“Chapters on Socialism,” Principles of Political Economy, p. 432]

In other words, Nozick assumes that in all societies capitalist property rights are distributed along with consumption and production goods. As Cheyney C. Ryan comments ”[d]ifferent conceptions of justice differ not only in how they would apportion society’s holdings but in what rights individuals have over their holdings once they have been apportioned.” [“Property Rights and Individual Liberty”, pp. 323–43, Reading Nozick, Jeffrey Paul (Ed.), p. 331] This means that when goods are distributed in a libertarian socialist society the people who receive or take them have specific (use) rights to them. As long as an individual remained a member of a commune and abided by the rules they helped create in that commune then they would have full use of the resources of that commune and could use their possessions as they saw fit (even “melt them down” to create a new machine, or whatever). If they used those goods to create an enterprise to employ (i.e., exploit and oppress) others then they have, in effect, announced their withdrawal from civilised society and, as a result, would be denied the benefits of co-operation. They would, in effect, place themselves in the same situation as someone who does not wish to join a syndicate (see section I.3.7). If an individual did desire to use resources to employ wage labour then they would have effectively removed themselves from “socialist society” and so that society would bar them from using its resources (i.e. they would have to buy access to all the resources they currently took for granted).

Would this be a restriction of freedom? While it may be considered so by the impoverished definitions of capitalism, it is not. In fact, it mirrors the situation within capitalism as what possessions someone holds are not his or her property (in the capitalist sense) any more than a company car is currently the property of the employee under capitalism. While the employee can use the car outside of work, they lack the “freedom” to sell it or melt it down and turn it into machines. Such lack of absolute “ownership” in a free society does not reduce liberty any more than in this case.

This point highlights another flaw in Nozick’s argument. If his argument were true, then it applies equally to capitalist society. For 40 hours plus a week, workers are employed by a boss. In that time they are given resources to use and they are most definitely not allowed to melt down these resources to create a machine or use the resources they have been given access to further their own plans. This can apply equally to rented accommodation as well, for example when landlords ban working from home or selling off the furniture that is provided. Thus, ironically, ���capitalist society will have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults” — and does so all the time.

Moreover, it must be stressed that as well as banning capitalist acts between consenting adults, capitalism involves the continual banning of socialist acts between consenting adults. For example, if workers agree to form a union, then the boss can fire them. If they decide to control their own work, the boss can fire them for not obeying orders. Thus capitalism forbids such elemental freedoms as association and speech — at least for the majority, for the wage slaves. Why would people seek such “freedom” in a free society?

Of course, Nozick’s reply to this point would be that the individual’s involved have “consented” to these rules when they signed their contract. Yet the same can be said of an anarchist society — it is freely joined and freely left. To join a communist-anarchist society it would simply be a case of agreeing to “exchange” the product of ones labour freely with the other members of that society and not to create oppressive or exploitation social relationships within it. If this is “authoritarian” then so is capitalism — and we must stress that at least anarchist associations are based on self-management and so the individuals involved have an equal say in the obligations they live under.

Notice also that Nozick confused exchange with capitalism (“I offer you a lecture once a week in exchange for other things”). This is a telling mistake by someone who claims to be an expert on capitalism, because the defining feature of capitalism is not exchange (which obviously took place long before capitalism existed) but labour contracts involving wage labour. Nozick’s example is merely a direct labour contract between the producer and the consumer. It does not involve wage labour, what makes capitalism capitalism. It is only this latter type of transaction that libertarian socialism prevents — and not by “forbidding” it but simply by refusing to maintain the conditions necessary for it to occur, i.e. protection of capitalist property.

In addition, we must note that Nozick also confused “private property in the means of production” with capitalism. Liberation socialism can be easily compatible with “private property in the means of production” when that “private property” is limited to what a self-employed worker uses rather than capitalistic property (see section G.2.1). Nozick, in other words, confused pre-capitalist forms of production with capitalist ones (see section G.1.2). Thus possession of the means of production by people outside of the free commune is perfectly acceptable to social anarchists (see section I.6.2).

Thus an anarchist society would have a flexible approach to Nozick’s (flawed) argument. Individuals, in their free time, could “exchange” their time and possessions as they saw fit. These are not “capitalist acts” regardless of Nozick’s claims. However, the moment an individual employs wage labour then, by this act, they have broken their agreements with their fellows and, therefore, no longer part of “socialist society.” This would involve them no longer having access to the benefits of communal life and to communal possessions. They have, in effect, placed themselves outside of their community and must fair for themselves. After all, if they desire to create “private property” (in the capitalist sense) then they have no right of access to communal possessions without paying for that right. For those who become wage slaves, a socialist society would, probably, be less strict. As Bakunin argued:

“Since the freedom of every individual is inalienable, society shall never allow any individual whatsoever legally to alienate his [or her] freedom or engage upon any contract with another on any footing but the utmost equality and reciprocity. It shall not, however, have the power to disbar a man or woman so devoid of any sense of personal dignity as to contract a relationship of voluntary servitude with another individual, but it will consider them as living off private charity and therefore unfit to enjoy political rights throughout the duration of that servitude.” [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 68–9]

Lastly, we must also note that Nozick also ignored the fact that acquisition must come before transfer, meaning that before “consenting” capitalist acts occur, individual ones must precede it. As argued in section B.3.4, Nozick provided no convincing arguments why natural resources held in common can be appropriated by individuals. This means that his defence of transferring absolute capitalist property rights in goods is without foundations. Moreover, his argument in favour of such appropriations ignore that liberties are very definitely restricted by private property (and it should be keep in mind that the destruction of commonly held resources, such as village commons, was imposed by the state — see section F.8.3). As pointed out in section F.2, right-wing “libertarians” would better be termed “Propertarians” (why is liberty according a primary importance when arguing against socialism but not when private property restricts liberty?). As Cheyney C. Ryan points out, Nozick “invoke[s] personal liberty as the decisive ground for rejecting patterned principles of justice [such as socialism] and restrictions on the ownership of capital … [b]ut where the rights of private property admittedly restrict the liberties of the average person, he seems perfectly happy to trade off such liberties against material gain for society as a whole.” [Op. Cit., p. 339] This can be seen by his lack of comment on how capitalism forbids socialist acts between consenting adults, not to mention quite a few numerous capitalist acts for good measure.

Thus Nozick’s acquisition of resources is based on the would-be capitalist stealing communally owned resources and barring others from using them. This obviously would restrict the liberty of those who currently used them and so be hotly opposed by members of a community. As Murray Bookchin noted, a free society is based on “the practice of usufruct, the freedom of individuals in a community to appropriate resources merely by virtue of the fact that they are using them. Such resources belong to the user as long as they are being used.” [The Ecology of Freedom, p. 116] As the would-be capitalist is not actually using the machines they have created, they would be in constant worry that their wage-slaves would simply expropriate them — with the full backing of the local commune and its federations.

So, to conclude, this question involves some strange logic (and many question begging assumptions) and ultimately fails in its attempt to prove libertarian socialism must “forbid capitalistic acts between individuals.” In addition, Nozick cannot support the creation of private property out of communal property in the first place. It also undermines capitalism because that system must forbid socialistic acts by and between individuals. Thus Nozick’s society would forbid squatting unused property or trespassing on private property as well as, say, the formation of unions against the wishes of the property owner (who is sovereign over their property and those who use it) or the use of workplace resources to meet the needs of the producer rather than the owner. As such, Nozick exposes how capitalism’s hierarchical nature means that capitalist society “forbids socialist acts between consenting adults.”

[dr-maxwell-hemaoncol]

PINNED!

ooc: hello! welcome to my house oc dr gavin maxwell's askblog!! underneath the read more will be basic information one would need to read to understand him better, plus a few visual references :p!

this acct is run by @worldrusher ! i follow and interact from there as well!!

note that i'm not a doctor or knowledgeable on medical things. i may get things wrong! correct me if i do!!

rules!!

- no crazy nsfw things. please. i may be 18, but i rather not talk about that stuff. sexual jokes are fine but nothing too extreme, please

- don't be an ass? or ableist or homophobic etc.. i don't want to deal with nonsense negativity on a silly askblog.

- if you want to pretend to be wilson (you'll see why under read more) that's okay, but only on anon. i won't be pushing this element of maxwell on any preexisting wilson askblogs either

tags!!

- # blood based inquiries: answering asks!

- # discussing life: non-ask rp posts!

- # turp speaks: mod posting!

that's all the basics! time for the real character info 😎 ⬇️

☆☆☆

while this may be a standalone oc blog, maxwell is actually involved in a house md oc universe that me and my bestie made. i don't intend to make him get involved with these askblog shenanigans, so i'll be breaking maxwell off of it for the purpose of this blog!!

basics!

dr gavin maxwell, md works at princeton plainsboro teaching hospital as a hematology oncologist (simply put, he's a blood cancer doc). he's 30-something years old and has been at the hospital for an unspecified amount of time (aka idk yet). he attended suny upstate medical university for his doctor things 👍!!

maxwell is scottish. he moved from scotland to new jersey in his teens and masks his accent heavily; you can only hear it if you listen close OR when hes displaying strong emotions of any time. many people are under the perception that he's american and he's perfectly okay with that. when he's especially frustrated or just alone in a room, he'll speak scots to himself. for funsies. i'm not going to attempt to translate things he says into scots because i don't speak it, plus it wouldn't make sense if he's not actually Ever talking to himself because all posts are public.

this is something no one but me cares about, but. he attended high school in the relatively same area as ppth. he was in band and marched tenor drums during marching season but was able to avoid concert band. 😁

the woke mob...

he is a trans man, gay, and uses exclusively he/him. he recieved top surgery after working at ppth for a while, and wilson helps him with tshots when at work (an arrangement made by him, wilson, and cuddy).

maxwell is autistic and has anxiety. (he's played by an autistic + anxious [?] mod, btw!) due to his autism (and probably anxiety too), he tends to be very direct, dull, and deadpan to people he does not know well, leading some people to believe he's just a dick. he has a resting pissed off face! when he's close to someone, though, he's much more comfortable showing his emotion externally and being more playful. he's taught himself how to mask to be more expressive and emotional around patients, though. he learned that the hard way...

romantical 💞

in our ocverse lore, he ends up in a relationship with wilson (hilson on the side with other oc thing; long story short polyamory is cool) after a long while of pining and house-induced angst. you know how he is. they are a healthy relationship, believe me; they're very sweet and domestic together! when maxwell is around wilson, he's beyond comfortable showing emotions and the like. i'm the #1 wilswell shipper. because of this, i welcome romantic asks towards maxwell via "wilson" on anon. i won't be attempting to interact romantically with any wilson accounts unless they say it's okay.

faceclaiming!

despite him being mid-30s, his face claim is young jared padalecki. think...giImore girIs. he technically obviously doesn't look THAT young, but he's also my default oc faceclaim. no i will not explain. he obviously dresses professionally (button up, tie, lab coat, slacks, dress shoes) but there's not going to be photos like that of young jarpad. so.

if you have any more questions about maxwell's lore, feel free to dm me or send asks! (psst, and if anyone's interested, fanart is greatly appreciated!)

[ladyloveandjustice]

I just watched Pop Culture Detectives critique as superheroes as reactionary and defending the status quo and villains as disruptors (even when their goals are wrong and authoritarian), and I think it did a fine job summing up the MCU, but I think it would lose something when if you’re doing a conversation outside that specific focus if you don’t acknowledge that there’s very significant times that WASN’T the case in early superhero comics.

For example, several early Superman comics have him actively disrupting society. He wasn’t a friend of the law early on. He destroys an entire “slum” and forces the government to rebuild better housing, and the police come after him for this.

He infiltrates a prison to expose its systemic abuse of prisoners.

He forces war profiteers to experience the terror of war firsthand until they stop.

But as the tweet thread I linked notes, this stops. Modern Superman often states he can’t interfere in wars because humanity has to sort out their own conflicts, that he can’t use his power against systemic issues because what if he becomes the power hungry god imposing his will on humanity? It’s interesting some comics posit that if Superman was more active about social change, he’s become the ‘invader’ Lex Luthor says he is. Especially if you consider Superman’s roots as an immigrant allegory, which makes it come off like he has to avoid being too disruptive or he’ll be labeled a ‘bad immigrant’.

There’s sometimes callbacks to the roots of Superman still, like the issue where he fights that cop probably (I was out of comics by the time that happened) but of course it’s pretty absent from the movies.

It’s also worth noting that Clark Kent is an investigative reporter (often exposing the crimes of billionaire CEO) which is an inherently disruptive job. PCD mentions that heroes do tend to be creative in their civilian identities but says it doesn’t seem to connect much to their superhero selves, but  I don’t think you can separate Clark Kent the reporter from his superhero activity, because they’re often closely tied together, I mean he literally took the job so he could get leads as Superman.

Then there’s Wonder Woman, who was definitely a disruptor in her early incarnation. She was absolute here to spread Marston’s idea of feminism and have others follow her. She wanted to make more Amazons. She wanted a society where women had power. She would literally take her female villains and introduce them to the pleasures of femdom and BDSM  reform them, convert them to her ideology, get them to join her ranks. The comic was CERTAINLY reactionary in other ways, and Marston’s feminism was flawed, but he wrote the comic explicitly because he was hoping for social disruption, that Wonder Woman would be the building block in the utopia he envisioned.

And there was some of that in SOME modern WW comics when I was into them- I was drawn to Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman because there was a huge emphasis on the fact she’s an ambassador for her culture, and diplomat actively working to change the world, someone who’s seeking social reform and has an ideology. However, it is true that even those comics were mostly about her reacting to threats in her superhero life. (And then in the movie’s that’s entirely absent- feminism isn’t bought up, she goes into hiding rather than mounting a social justice campaign.)

And then on the Marvel side of things. Cap fighting Hitler actually didn’t reflect the status quo of America when it came out. In-universe it did to a degree, because America had entered the war in the universe of the comic, therefore Cap was doing patriotism, but out of universe America HADN’T entered the war yet and it was controversial to take the stance we were definitely going to and sauy Hitler was bad. We all know the story of nazi-sympathizers coming to harass the creators and Jack Kirby declaring he would fight them. So there’s a very interesting dichotomy there!

Anyway, it’s interesting to see this discussion because it’s definitely a very minor theme in my own book about a girl who becomes a supervillain. Look forward to that, I guess!

[astercontrol]

In regard to that previous reblog-- and other notes in that thread discussing just how much hearing aids actually can or can't do, and vision problems that can't be corrected to 20/20, and other not-correctable disabilities--

...my thoughts are running off now into the fuzzy areas, which are places I... really tend to get uncomfortable.

Especially now, because I'm currently in a fuzzy place myself -- a state of health where I do not know if my impairments can be fully corrected -- and whether or not they can? may depend a lot on things like, will I find a doctor good enough to know what's going on? and, how bad will this new job be for my body?

and it stresses me out a lot to think about how I can't know the answers to any of that right now-- and that's about all I can handle, even without the added stress of trying to determine whether this makes me "legitimately" physically disabled.

Eyesight is only one small part of it. My main worry right now is that I have hardly any sensation or muscle control in my right calf and foot. With good shoes I can walk, without cane or crutches-- pretty far before my limp becomes noticeable-- but it does.

My legs are visibly different sizes, with my left calf taking on all the muscle, while my right is atrophying. And my foot "drops," noticeably, the outer side dragging to the point that I had to learn how to avoid tripping on my own foot. The PT says I'll likely need an orthotic brace called AFO to support it.

He doesn't know the cause. I won't know the cause until at the very least a couple weeks from now, when I get to see the spine specialist who'll look for causes further up in my muscular and nervous system.

I have a new job. It's gonna be mostly at a desk, but since this problem started while I was working a desk job, I wonder if sedentary life makes it worse. I haven't ever been able to drive (that was a different neurological issue in my teens) so I have to walk to work. If I stop being able to walk that far, I won't be able to keep doing this job. But for now I can. For now, for that distance, my walking almost passes as normal.

I don't know how close to normal that orthotic brace will get me. Or whether the exercises the PT is having me do, or anything the spine specialist can do, will restore any of that sensation or muscle. I don't know if there's any kind of correction that's gonna get my leg back into a range comparable to eyes that see 20/20.

And the eyesight part, at the moment, feels pretty much the same to me.

I just got new glasses. They help a lot, but they don't fix my problem focusing on close-up things-- I keep having to take them off and back on when reading, but my eye doctor said I didn't need bifocals, and none of the available prescriptions of reading glasses help either, and it seems to be getting steadily worse.

And I don't know if this is all just something I can get back up to 20/20 by finding a better eye doctor, or by getting better about my reading and screen use habits, or if it's something more serious that is never gonna get better.

And I have no idea if all the data entry im going to do at my new job is going to exacerbate it, or maybe it's just going to get worse for whatever other reason, until I can't get any glasses that'll make it good enough to do a job like that?

I don't know.

I don't want to call my eye problem, or my leg problem, a disability on the level of needing hearing aids or crutches. Because I want to think it can be fixed to the point I can forget about it.

But is "not wanting" a good enough reason to say this doesn't count as disability? Is it just denial?

Which is why I am kind of regretting even reading that previous post I reblogged. Because where even do you draw that line? And that's just for physical disability. I'm not even getting into my neurodivergence, and all the places that fuzzily shades into what's considered normal.

*sigh*

[mageofseven]

MC Talking about Trauma they Experienced (Luce, Dia, Satan, Beel & Belphie)

Edit: this has been in my drafts for a while now. I started this one day when my depression was really bad and this was actually very therapeutic to write.

However, I got super emotionally exhausted from it and sort of abandoned it and since then, I've been debating whether to finish it, delete it, or post it as is.

After some thinking, I decided to add another character or so to the post and then post it.

Please, please check the trigger warnings below and do not read anything you can't handle.

Please protect yourself and always check for trigger warnings.

Now everything below this message is what I wrote originally that night.

Stay safe and if you do still read this, thank you for your time!~

~~~~~~~~~~

I wanted to write this because it's been on my mind; I'm autistic so I tend to have zero filter and over share things, but often in a nonchalant way, like I'm telling you about a cat I saw outside and not about things I talk to my therapist about on a weekly basis.

Basically, this is a post where MC shares bad memories (whether in an upset or nonchalant way) and we see how the Boys react.

So like, angst ahead, but the kind that might hit too close to home for some people.

I'll keep it all below the cut so you don't have to read anything potentially triggering for you if don't want to.

TW: physical abuse, emotional manipulation, child abuse, alcoholism, parents with anger issues

•▪︎▪︎◇°●♡●°◇▪︎▪︎•

Lucifer:

"MC, we're not having that for dinner for the 4th night this week."

"But...what will I eat then?"

The man sighed.

"I don't know. I'll have to figure something out." He told them. "Honestly, meal planning would be a lot easier without your food sensitivities."

The human stared into space, mind seemingly far away.

Lucifer raised an eyebrow before stepping closer.

"MC? Is something wrong, Love?"

"I'm remembering the time my mom slapped me on the face at a community barbeque in front of everyone there because she wasted money on buying me a ticket for an event without any food I could eat; I ran away and hid so I could cry and hyperventilate without people judging me."

His eyes widened.

"When did this happen?"

The human shrugged.

"I dunno. A few years back." They guessed. "I didn't get to have any food at all that day because my mom was so mad at me."

Lucifer took their hand and squeezed it.

"Well, you aren't with your mother anymore." The man smiled bitterly before adding. "I suppose we could just order pizza for tomorrow's dinner."

"No peppers? No olives?" The human asked, surprised.

"No peppers, no olives." He nodded.

"No iguana eyes? No anglerfish lantern?"

"None." He promised, despite knowing Beel's disappointment at the last two toppings not being on the pizza.

MC smiled and squeeze their boyfriend's hand back.

"Thank ya, Luce~"

The man's smile became softer.

He made a mental note to ask for Barbatos' help with finding more foods his Love can eat, but for now, the demon just didn't want MC thinking back on such horrible memories.

Like always, Luce just wanted to treat his Love how they deserved and not how they've always been treated.

Diavolo:

The two were discussing the prince's relationship with his currently deep-slumbering father.

It wasn't a topic Dia liked to speak about, but as his relationship with MC deepened, he found himself confiding in her with things he used to avoid discussing.

"...so in fairness, maybe we were never going to be close, considering the circumstances."

MC looked away, tears in their eyes.

"My Queen..." Diavolo brought his hand to their cheek. "Forgive me, I didn't mean to upset you with this."

MC shook their head.

"No, its not you." They told their boyfriend. "I just...I kinda relate in a a way..."

The prince brought the human into arms before kisskng their forehead.

"I can tell you have something in mind to share; you can share it with me."

MC was quiet for a moment before nodding.

"Once when I was a kid, we had a speaker come to class to teach us about child abuse. They handed out these pamphlets and explained to us that if our parents do any of the stuff that we talked about that day then we could call a number in the pamphlet..."

The demon tightened his embrace around them, not liking where this story was headed.

"I...I remember learning that a lot of stuff my parents did to me and my siblings was bad," They continued. "So I went home and told my parents that a speaker came to school and he told me that if they keep doing bad things and mistreat me that I could call the number on the paper..."

The human's tears fell down their cheeks, followed by Dia kissing them away.

"My Queen..."

"Ya know what they said to me?" They asked rhetorically. "They said 'Do it. I dare you'. Told me those people would take me and my siblings away, put us in foster care and split us up. That I would never see them or my brother or sister or my grandparents or anyone that I loved ever again...and told me they wouldn't even care, that they could just 'make another just like me' and that I would be responsible for my siblings' and my own suffering while my parents would just be happy to get rid of me."

The prince pulled MC into a tighter embrace as they cried.

"I wanted a good relationship with my parents so badly, but how do you become close with people who tell you at such a young age that you are replaceable and a burden they didn't even want?"

"You don't." He said softly in their ear as he stroked their hair. "Your parents were miserable people who never deserved having you as their child; they made sure of that."

The man leaned back to look them in the eyes.

"My Queen...I'm sorry you went through that. Please remember that you didn't deserve it though."

MC nodded.

"I...I know. Logically anyway...but it doesn't feel true, ya know?"

"Oh MC..."

Diavolo took the rest of the day off work, regardless of any urges or reminders from Barbatos.

This man wanted so desperately to comfort his beloved and heal the hole in her heart.

Still, the man knew there was not much he could do for the latter; this was just something his Queen had to work through on their own.

That wasn't going to stop this man from showering them love and reminding them just how perfect and sweet they are to him.

Satan:

Satan had gotten into an argument with Lucifer, resulting in one of his fits of rage.

They were so rare now of days; this was essentially the oldest bringing up the wrong thing at the wrong time and pushed it too far

Causing Satan to destroy half of the living room and the two 'brothers' screaming at one another.

This went on for a while till the two men noticed the human in the corner hyperventilating.

That knocked the blonde out of his anger real quick as he raced to their side.

Lucifer allowed the argument to pause for now, considering the human's condition, and so left them be.

Eventually, MC calmed down enough and launched themself into their boyfriend's arms.

"I'm sorry..." He spoke softly into their ear. "I shouldn't have lost control like that...especially in front of you."

MC shook their head within his arms before sniffling.

"It's not you..." They mumbled. "When the crashing started...I-I just...I didn't see you...I didn't see House of Lamentation..."

"What do you mean, Kitten?" He stroked their hair before pulling back to meet their eyes.

"I...I was in my head." They explained. "It reminded me of a time when I was a kid...my dad was drunk and got angry at my little brother. I...didn't see what happened, but I heard curses and crashes and my brother begging him to stop...and I didn't save him. I didn't save him. I hid in the kitchen and sobbed with my arms over my head, begging for him to stop in my mind but not being able move or even speak..."

"Kitten..." Satan hugged them tightly to his chest again. "You're not there; you're here with me and you're safe."

"But my brother--"

"You would have just gotten hurt too." He told them. "You were a child just trying to to survive. It's not your fault."

"But--"

"It's not your fault." He repeated.

This time, the human just closed their eyes and hung their head.

Satan picked them up and carried the human to their room; the...scare, I guess you could call it, had really tired his partner out.

He laid his Kitten on their bed and kissed their forehead.

Satan vowed to never himself lose control in front of them ever again.

Even if this time it had less to do with what he did and more about something they experienced long ago, the wrath demon needed to keep himself in check so he never brought such bad memories to his Kitten's head again.

Beel & Belphie:

The human went on a walk with the twins and, as per usual, Beel made a stop at Madam Screams to get a few dozen pastries.

Beel carried all of the bags of sweets himself and, no matter how often MC saw him carry so much food and never drop any of it, it still amazed the human.

"Dang, that's even more than yesterday..." Belphie commented. "Did you already spend all of your grimm this month?"

"Almost." The gluttony shrugged, still not dropping a single bag.

Suddenly, MC's steps slowed till they were frozen in place.

"-C? MC?" Belphie called to them.

The human slowly raised their gaze up at the men.

"You okay, Muffin?" Beel asked, concern evident on his face.

MC nodded.

"I was remembering one of the fights my parents had when I was a little kid." They explained calmly. "My dad spent over a $1,000 at the bar in a week 'cause he kept buying his friends drinks. Mama told him that he can't keep doing that because they were barely able to put food on the table as things were; Dad yelled at her for telling him what to do and Mom yelled back that she hopes he ends up dead in a ditch somewhere--what?"

The human was genuinely confused by the two demons, who stared at her with a mix of shock and pity.

Belphie shook his head.

"Let's just get home, butthead."

And with that, both twins wrapped an arm around them protectively

Causing Beel to drop two of his bags.

Still, the tallest demon never looked back as he and his brother took their human home, a place where hopefully better memories will come to their mind.

[liskantope]

My brief, vague, scattered review of Almost Nowhere

Welp, I finished it, all 1079 pages of it. (Really 1077 pages with the first and last essentially acting as a front and back cover.) As the book is of an unwieldy length and I don't have much time or brainpower at the moment, this post is going to comment on just some aspects of it. Also, as I never managed to gain anything close to mastery of exactly how the plot worked, most of this is going to be vague and avoid discussions of the plot events, character decisions or traits, or anything that specific really. I think a couple of people wrote spoilery reviews; I don't feel very capable of this (nor of giving a very good description of the novel to someone else at a level of concreteness that they would reasonable expect.)

So, I would say no concrete spoilers to follow, and only a couple of quite vague ones.

I noted this in other posts written while I was in the midst of the novel, but I have to say it again because it's one of the most pertinent parts of my experience reading this: Almost Nowhere is the most cerebral fiction-writing I've ever read (with the possible exception of the few chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality that I've read), on just about every level including narrative style, plot mechanics, and the ideas and themes explored -- there are even occasional fictional-scientific lectures inserted from time to time (which I found quite enjoyable actually)! More generally, the writing just screams of sheer IQ points both on the part of the author and on the part of the expected audience, in the use of a dazzling vocabulary as much as the elaborate plot and fictional-scientific situations one has to keep track of the characters being in. (It's interesting to note, though, that the cast of characters is actually quite modest, perhaps the fewest I've ever seen for a novel of this size: the complexity of the plot doesn't arise from a complexity of relationships among characters but from a distorted timeline and an array of alternate-reality situations.)

For this reason, I can't help but continue to compare this work to what I've read of Eliezer Yudkowsky, who similarly exudes sheer IQ and writes with an unabashedly cerebral style. Rob (the author, Tumblr-user Nostalgebraist) may not care much for the comparison, since as far as I know he doesn't align himself with Yudkowsky's rationalist movement or consider himself particularly in sympathy with Yudkowsky's worldview. But, while I have very little experience with Yudkowsky's fiction-writing (the main thing I've read of his is the Sequences), my impression is that their fiction is extremely different, that Yudkowsky's fiction comes across as just a transparent "mouthpiece" for his rationalist views and ideas, and that Yudkowsky has far less talent for fictional narrative. HPMoR (or what I've read of it) gives me an interesting plot and characters and makes me think about rationalist-y ideas in a direct, easy-to-follow way. Truly emotional non-cerebralness is actually pretty frequent in HPMoR but conveyed in a way I recall finding rather awkward. Almost Nowhere, on the other hand, took me on a vast, sweeping journey, where an even greater proportion of the scenes carry a colder, more dispassionately intellectual ambience, where moments of raw emotional intimacy are rather few and far between but are far better written when they do occur.

I think this is ultimately why I stuck with Almost Nowhere despite struggling to follow many aspects of the plot (while I lost too much motivation only a dozen or so chapters into HPMoR): I felt like I was being taken somewhere and was able to enjoy where it was taking me. The whole novel felt like a slightly surreal dream and an escape to a far vaster space than the one I inhabit in real life. Perhaps the feeling of being in a dream enabled my brain not to particularly care about precisely following the intricacies of the plot, as tends to be one's brain state in dreams. Of course, I shouldn't leave this as an implied "excuse" for not doing a good job of following: among the main reasons were intellectual fatigue from the general nature and business of the rest of my life, being a bit too rushed to get through the novel so that I can move to the rest of my reading list, general mental laziness, and, well, a dash of general mental ineptitude I suppose.

Specifically, what I struggled throughout to follow was some of the timeline shenanigans and that paths carved out within them by various individual characters, as well as recalling characters' experiences and motives at different times, and just generally keeping track of the scifi mechanics. I also had a tendency to glaze over some of dense dialogs that were more... I hate to keep using the word cerebral but don't know how else to characterize them... or that were more technical or jargon-filled or sounding like computer coding. Regarding the scifi mechanics, I did enjoy the occasional lengthy "lessons" delivered by characters and mostly followed their teachings but had a tendency to forget many of the finer (but still important) points later on -- for instance, Sylvie's big fictionally-written-lesson chapter at the end was really fun reading and I followed the interesting ideas going on but (even though it was near the end) did have trouble remembering everything in it pretty shortly afterwards.

The fictional-scientific mechanics themselves made for a very interesting elaborate thought experiment, and for the most part they made a lot of sense, as in, some hypothetical universe could work under these mechanics. I'm not sure that keeping vague links between different paths among alternate realities in the form of dreams or nostalgium doesn't seem like a bit of a cheat, but I'd have to think over it more deeply before deciding that, and I liked how it played in the story. I was a bit taken aback near the beginning about the role of Maryam Mirzakhani's fictional-scientific discoveries since as far as I knew Mirzakhani never worked on such things, but I much later realized that the earlier parts of the novel were written when she was still alive and young and potentially able to make discoveries of that nature in the then-future (for those who don't know, she tragically died in the late 2010's at age 40, partway through the writing of Almost Nowhere and shortly after becoming the first woman to get the Fields Medal).

As I've mentioned, the cast of distinguishable characters is very modest for such a huge novel. The characterization of each is on the subtle side, and to some extent I don't think I ever truly got to understand the deepest layers of Grant and Cordelia because I didn't put in the right amount of effort. I expect the only two which are memorable enough to stick with me for years when I look back on reading this are Azad and Sylvie. Azad was a pleasure to read and I had to enjoy the scenes where he was present or narrating -- interestingly he has one major Bad Moment around the middle of the novel in which he behaves in a certain way that earns him a ton of criticism at the time, and then after all the fuss is made it all seems to sort of get forgotten about. I don't know what I'm really supposed to think of him ultimately, but I'll miss his beautifully intellectual soul. Sylvie's scenes, in contrast, are a bit grating to read, but I suspect they're supposed to be. In a way, I know even less how I should feel about him than about Azad: his deepest biases and motives frequently seemed to exist in an occasionally-clashing tension. The bleak cacophony surrounding him is punctuated with sharp humor that I appreciate: he's a bit of dark vortex but he's also such a good boy.

The idea that we eventually get to see the characters get together and write the book that we are now reading doesn't seem original to this work of fiction, but I can't think precisely where I've seen it anywhere else, and it was fun. Rob's ability, as shown (to a milder extent) in The Northern Caves to be able to speak and write in very distinct character voices is impressive and maximally showcased here.

The novel, as Rob pointed out in one of his posts about it, comes with three distinct parts, the second of which distinguishes itself by having chapters numbered in Arabic numerals with chapter titles and is built of scenes with an entirely different flow. This second part was easily my favorite to read and felt more like surreal and placidly dreamlike escapism than any other area of the book. I don't know if anyone else has made comparisons between the fictional-novel-within-the-fiction-novel The Northern Caves (Rob's novel called The Northern Caves is the only other of his that I've read -- and liked a lot -- and its plot revolves around a bizarrely opaque thousand-plus-page novel of the same title), but I couldn't help being reminded of my conception of the fictional novel TNC throughout Almost Nowhere (also a thousand-plus-paged rather difficult novel, with surreal aspects to the narrative and layer upon layer of meaning, even if it doesn't devolve into apparent nonsense partway through). And I made this connection the most during Part 2 of Almost Nowhere, recalling that the fictional novel TNC is explained to have a sort of middle "lucid section" made of vignettes which mostly consist of coherent dialog but in which the characters have different relationships than they did at the outset (i.e. in TNC the two main characters who were siblings now appear to be married). I felt sort of drawn toward experiencing the journey that TNC would take me along, particularly the middle lucid section part just consisting of little dialog scenes, and I felt like in a way I got some version of that through Part 2 of Almost Nowhere.

(This is the most spoilery I'll get:) The final chapter of the novel ends on the point of view of the character who I had forgotten (but soon realized) was the one the very first chapter began on. It felt only fitting to go back to the first part of the first chapter and skim it, to close the loop (so to speak). I was almost never actually emotionally moved by Almost Nowhere exactly, but with the ending-looped-back-to-the-beginning it came close.

I remember when the novel was first finished this past summer, Nostalgebraist made a post discussing the finished product a bit, and I ran into one or two effortposts by other people discussing how they felt about the plot and characters. I didn't want to spoil them at the time, and I didn't want to look for them just after finishing before I wrote my own thing (this post), but I'd like to find them now and would appreciate anyone pointing me to them (I can probably find the Nostalgebraist posts easily enough).

Anyway, it's impressive work Rob, congrats on finishing such a hefty project, and thanks for giving me a unique fiction-reading experience I'll never forget!

[violet-stormbringer]

The Princess and The Thorne, Chapter Five: Hearthlight Troubles

It was a cool evening, with a breeze blowing peacefully throughout the gardens of the Thorne Family Estate. A young man tended the rose bushes while another tended the horses and various servants bustled about like there was a grand occasion and even a single speck of dust meant their jobs were on the line.

As for Ras and Matilda, the pair sat at a table in the dining room. Ras sat directly across from her mother on the other end of the long table, stacks of books and paperwork haphazardly towering above her as she ate her dinner.

Ras voraciously pored over the book in front of her, eyes scanning over every bit of information the text in front of her held. It told of dragons, their mythological significance, and whether or not they’d actually existed. In the margins of the book, Ras’ scribblings of notes and reminders to return to certain sections of text.

“Ras.” Matilda spoke. 

Ras looked up, meeting her Mother’s gaze.

“When you are done, meet me in the courtyard. You and I have things to discuss.”

Ras hung her head and wasted no time saving her place in the book before closing it. She finished her dinner, and stood, following her mother out into the courtyard. Usually a discussion with Matilda Thorne was anything but peaceful.

Sure enough, the moment Ras approached her mother on the courtyard, a servant held out a fencing sabre. 

“Mother, is this really necessary?”

“I have been informed that, as part of Gallatin and Archambault’s Crème de la Crème competition, there is a sports day.” Matilda lifted her own sabre and adopted a battle stance. “There is to be fencing. As a result…we fence.”

Ras groaned, and lifted the sabre in her hand. She took on a stance to match her mothers, and the two stepped toward each other. When they met, they thrust their sabres out and clashed, their weapons pressed against each other.

This exchange continued well into the night, with each participant exchanging a flurry of blows as the other parried their attacks and retaliated as best they could. Matilda was experienced and kept her cool under pressure, regardless of how much Ras pressed. Ras, however, was the opposite, falling for feints and tricks and never landing a single blow upon her mother.

Eventually, Ras made a miscalculation and her thrust was avoided by Matilda in a wide margin, leaving her open for a counter attack. Matilda, seeing her chance, pushed the advantage, bringing her sabre up and catching Ras in her side, scoring the winning blow.

“Finish!” A servant called out. “The match has been decided in favor of Matilda Thorne. The overall score is seven matches, six in favor of Matilda Thorne.”

Ras groaned as she rubbed at the spot Matilda struck her in. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks Gerald.”

The servant, Gerald, bowed his head respectfully. “A pleasure, as always, Master Thorne.”

Matilda let out a ‘tsk’ as she overlooked Ras. “Despite how…sloppy you fight still, there is clear improvement. I daresay you’d be a match for any of those Archambault riff-raff.”

“I count friends among those ‘riff-raff’.” Ras snapped.

“No you don’t.” Matilda waved a dismissive hand. “You weren’t sent to Gallatin to make friends, you were sent to Gallatin to–”

“Yeah, I know!” Ras snarled as she interrupted her mother. “Clean up your mistake! Suffer under the constant scrutiny of everybody else all because my own damned mother couldn’t be bothered to do it herself! Restore our family name!”

Ras was seething, and her eyes stung with tears. “All because you couldn’t control your anger! You threw Dad out one evening and because of that he’s dead!”

Matilda sharply inhaled as Ras mentioned her Father. “Ras–” She warned.

“No! I’m done keeping this bottled up! You had an argument and kicked him out of the house you two shared! You knew there was to be a blizzard later that evening, and by the time you bothered to actually give a shit, it was too late and he was found dead the next morning!”

The tears were flowing now, the anger too much for Ras as her voice cracked. “The only thing that suffered was your reputation! You couldn’t have that, so you just had to make me a pawn in your fucking game! I wish Dad were still here, I wish it’d been you that died instead! I hate you!”

That was the last straw for Matilda, and she strode over to Ras and brought her hand firmly across Ras’ cheek in one fluid motion. The force of the blow was enough to send Ras barreling backwards, falling to the ground and leaving her to stare up at her mother.

“Enough.” Her voice was colder than usual. “What happened to your father was tragic, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret it. But do not presume to talk to me in such a way ever again. I am still your Mother.”

Ras scowled, and got to her feet. She defiantly stared at Matilda, their crimson eyes meeting. She looked as if she wanted to say something, and Matilda’s cool glare challenged her to do so.

She decided better of it, however, and turned on her heel, storming out of the courtyard and back into the house, the door slamming in a satisfying manner behind her.

She stomped her way through the dining room and the main hall, ignoring the concerned looks of the servants and their hushed whispers as Ras made her way into her room. She slammed the door behind her and locked it, and when she was finally safe by herself, she let it all out.

She threw her head back and let out a scream that could wake the dead. Her scream echoed from her room and down the hall, the full spectrum of what she was feeling at that moment exploding outwards.

She screamed to the heavens, though, as usual, there was no response. Unheard by the Gods, and ignored by both her Mother and the servants of her House, Ras screamed until her voice was hoarse.

When she finally finished, she dropped to her knees, head hanging low as she stared dejectedly at the floor. Silent sobbing as tears flowed from her eyes and down to the floor, splattering against the plush carpet to be absorbed and forgotten.

The weight of the world on her shoulders, the unceasing gaze of the public at her back, and the overwhelming tower of expectations from her mother looming overhead.

She hated it. She wished she could just curl up and die.

Suddenly, a knock on her door.

“...Who is it?” She asked, voice still hoarse from the screaming.

“It’s Gerald, Master Thorne.”

Ras got to her feet and shuffled to the door. She unlocked it and threw it open to stare at Gerald, standing there, a tray in his hands. On it was a cup and a steaming pot.

“It’s to help with your throat.” He said, maneuvering past Ras and entering her room without prompting. He set the tray on her desk, and turned to her. “You must have screamed it raw. Are you feeling better, perhaps?”

“No.” She admitted, closing the door behind her and taking a seat on her bed.

“Well, that’s to be expected.” He sighed. “Master Thorne, if I may step way beyond my jurisdiction here?”

“Go ahead, what could I possibly do to you, throw you out like Mom did to Dad?”

Gerald did not looked amused. “Master Thorne, as you are no doubt aware, I was a close friend and confidant of your late Father. It is because of this that I feel I must look out for you in ways that your Mother and the other servants do not.”

Ras nodded, staring dejectedly at the floor from where she sat on her bed.

Gerald sighed, and he moved to pour some tea for Ras, pressing the cup gently into her hand.

“You are loved, Master Thorne. If not by her, than certainly by me. I trust that whatever you do, you’ll at least make me proud.”

Ras let out a whimper, and her voice cracked as she spoke. “...T-Thank you, Gerald.” And with trembling hand and a quivering lip, Ras took a sip of the tea and felt the warmth spread across her body.

“Very good, Master Thorne.” Gerald smiled as he straightened, adjusting his tie. “Please pay no worry to the dishes when you are finished with them. I will collect them sometime in the morning.”

Ras nodded, and with that, Gerald left the room, leaving her alone with her thoughts once more. The tears began to fall again, and her silent sobs returned, but she felt a sense of relief as Gerald’s words echoed in her mind.

At least someone was proud of her, no matter what she did, no matter what happened.

When the tears finally dried and the tea was finally depleted, Ras found herself still with boundless energy. Not only that, but an idea began to surface in her head.

She wiped her eyes of any remaining tears, took a deep breath, and stood up. In the middle of her room, she had everything she needed, and so she got to work.

A letter drafted in quick penmanship, to be left directly on her desk where it would be noticed immediately when Gerald came to collect the dishes. A second letter, as well, this one addressed to her Mother and to be placed on her door as soon as Ras was able.

Afterwards, Ras set to executing the remainder of her plan; she threw what clothes she cared about into her bag, as well as a few books. Not too many, she wasn’t going to let herself be weighed down, so she only chose up to four books, each of varying size and topic.

Next, she grabbed her journal. She couldn’t leave without that. She also grabbed the mantle her Father had made for her not long before his death. A cool blue color, it was definitely Ras’ favorite article of clothing in her possession.

Finally, a bellflower charm given to her by Gerald on the day of her Father’s funeral. 

As prepared as she was ever going to be, Ras took a look around her room and breathed in deeply. She wasn’t sure if she’d see this place again, but that was a thought for another time. She opened the door and slipped out as quiet as she could. 

With how late it was now, the servants had all retired, and with no guards on the grounds, sneaking about was easy. Ras made her way to her mothers room and taped the folded letter to her door.

She hesitated at her Mothers door, and she almost made to knock on it, just to see if she’d answer. Just so Ras could tell her she was running away, and that it was all her fault.

After a deep breath, Ras steeled herself. That was what the letter was for. 

“Happy Hearthlight, Mother,” She whispered, barely audible even to herself. “And a hearty fuck you too.”

With that, Ras made her way to another room in the house, her Father’s study. It had been locked ever since he passed, and the contents of the room were untouched. But Gerald had long given Ras a spare key, for she liked to spend her time in there when she was particularly upset.

She couldn’t even begin to count the number of days she’d spend cooped up in there. It still smelled of him, even to this very night. A heavy scent of cinnamon, woodsmoke, and honey. That alone was enough to make Ras stop in the middle of the study, eyes closed as a feeling of nostalgia washed over her.

After a moment, she recalled what she was there for, and shook her head, snapping herself out of the trance she’d gone into. Setting her bag aside, Ras began to rifle through the drawers of her Fathers desk, and soon she found what she was looking for.

A thick booklet marked with the Thorne Family sigil. Inside were multiple documents stating that whoever held the booklet and ID or Passport was to be given access to the Thorne Family funds. In addition, there were three passports; Ras’, Irwin’s, and Matilda’s. Each featured a photo of the holder of said passport, and Ras took a moment to look over her Father’s.

His fiery red hair, combined with his massive bushy beard, giving him the appearance of a lion with a well-groomed mane. Pale skin, blue eyes, and a smile that would put the sun to shame. 

Ras felt another pang of nostalgia, a bit more painful this time, and she tucked the passports back into the booklet and tucked the booklet into her shirt pocket, close to her chest. She would keep it safe no matter what.

As Ras closed the drawer, she noticed on the center of the desk, an envelope addressed directly to her. It bore the Thorne Family seal. She frowned, and took the envelope, carefully opening it to glean it’s contents.

Inside there was a picture of Ras and her Father. It was a picture from Ras’ birthday, a week before his passing. The two of them were sharing a hug, and wore the happiest grins on their faces. One of the last times Ras had ever gotten to hug him.

On the back of the photo, a note, in Irwin’s handwriting.

‘My little Thorneling, all grown up! From the moment I first held you in my arms, to the moment in this picture, those were my happiest days. -Irwin’

Ras’ breath hitched as she stared at the picture, and she felt more tears coming on. There was only so much time, however, and Ras shook her head. She had other things to do, and the night wouldn’t last forever. And so she tucked the photo back into the envelope and gently tucked the envelope into her bag. She would be taking that with her.

After taking a breath and a moment to scan her eyes around the study one last time, it was time to set out.

She hefted her bag over her shoulder and made her way out of Irwin’s study, closing the door behind her and making sure to lock it. The only one who would notice anything was out of place would be Gerald, and Ras just had to hope that he didn’t tell her Mother.

With nothing left to do here, Ras made her way outside of the manor and down the drive. It would be a short walk into town, and from there she just had to catch a carriage to the harbor. From there…her destination clear in her mind.

When she arrived at the harbor, all she had to do was pull out the booklet and give them a chance to check over everything. They pored over her documents and checked her credentials, and when they declared it all authentic, they granted her passage for the early morning ferry headed to her destination.

The Tabitha’s Wisdom, that was by the name of the ship she was to board.

By the time the sun began to rise above the horizon, Ras had already boarded the ship. Situated in her cabin and bound for another part of the world, by the time anybody would’ve figured out she was gone…she was.

The trip would be a few days, but she would make it before Hearthlight was over. The festivities lasted longer over where she was going, she knew that much.

As the ship’s engines roared to life, she heard a shout above the noise.

“All aboard for the Kingdom of Zaledo!”

She got comfortable, sitting on the bed provided and pulling out the envelope and picture of her and her Father.

“One step at a time…” She spoke as she stared at the picture, as if talking to Irwin. “Just like you taught me.”

It wasn’t long before sleep overtook Ras, the picture still held firmly in her grasp as she lay on the bed.

That afternoon, Ras awoke in the bed of the cabin, her Father’s photo still clutched in her fingers. So it wasn’t a dream. She took a breath, tucked the picture into the envelope and then the envelope back into her bag.

With that, she decided to stretch her legs and take a walk about the ship. She left her cabin and made her way to the deck. The ship was in the midst of the ocean, well on their way to Zaledo. Westerlind was a speck on the horizon behind them by now.

Though the trip was to be long, Ras found herself more at peace than ever. The rocking of the ship on the waves, the sound of the wind and the cries of the gulls.

Despite her appearance, green hair, red eyes, and only one arm, nobody seemed to recognize her. A good thing, that, not being clocked as the heir to the Thorne fortune, she supposed.

Of course, it also could have been too early, Ras had only left in the middle of the night, there was no way her Mother would’ve had enough time to send people out to bring Ras home.

She just had to hope that the second half of her admittedly haphazard plan went well.

Meanwhile, at the Thorne Family Estate…

As the morning light poured in through the windows of the manor, Gerald was getting ready. He had short black hair that was slicked back. He had a single green eye, the other covered by an eyepatch. Several scars on his face, some hidden beneath his well-kept facial hair.

He’d been a soldier, he told Ras. He and Irwin fought in the military and only ever saw one battle together. That was enough to solidify their friendship for life, and it was enough for Irwin to offer Gerald a job when he’d inherited the manor and money of his parents.

A job that Gerald accepted with no hesitation. 

He’d been there long before Ras had been born, long before Irwin met Matilda. He would be here to see Ras become a woman and, if he had his way, he would serve her too.

He shook his head, the nostalgia that distracted him dissipating. His hair slicked back and his uniform tidied, it was time to begin the day.

First things first, he sought to make good on his promise. He made his way to Ras’ room and gently rapped on the door.

“Master Thorne,” he called out. “I’m simply here to pick up the dishes. It’s not time to awake, just yet, do not stir yourself…”

With that, he opened the door, and was met with a most panicking sight. Ras was not in her bed. Several of her books were missing from the shelves, her bag was gone, and the usually tidy room was a mess. 

At first, he assumed the worst, someone had broken into the home and stolen Ras away. Then, he noticed the tea cup placed conspicuously upside down on the tray, a ring of residual tea formed around the lip.

A secret gesture between the pair, he recognized. Whenever Ras had something she needed to talk to Gerald about, something that had to remain between them, they had established this system. She would return her cup to him upside down, an unusual gesture that many would simply attribute to the strangeness of Ras Thorne, it’s true meaning only ascertained by him alone.

That alone was enough to calm him, his heart calming as the panic faded. Ras had left him a message, then.

That was when he noticed the carefully folded paper peeking out from underneath the tea tray. A letter.

Carefully extracting it from where it sat, Gerald unfolded the letter and took a seat in the chair, reading over it carefully.

‘Uncle Gerald, Hey there, you old fuddy duddy. If you’re reading this, it means I’ve gone through with the stupidest of ideas. Half baked and only a quarter as planned, I’ve decided to run away. I can’t tell you why I decided to do it, just that it felt right. I can only hope you’re not mad at me. That said, I can tell you where I’m going, and I need your help. I’m going to Zaledo. I’m taking the long way to give myself the best shot, and so I need you to do me a favor. Please, write to the Royal Family. Most specifically a missive to Princess Rosario, and petition her to grant me shelter. I can’t do it myself, my word only carries so much weight as I am just the heir of the Thorne Family.  You, however, are known friend and trusted confidant of Irwin Thorne. His head of staff and man he trusted most in the world. You’re a Thorne in your own right, and not only would that mean your letter would reach her, but they’d listen to you. I hope to see you again, and I’m sorry to drag you into this. Please don’t be mad at me, and please don’t tell Mother. I love you, Uncle Gerald. Warmest of regards, Ras Thorne.’

Gerald shook his head after reading the letter. A sense of relief washed over him as he at least knew where she was going. Of course he wasn’t mad at her. Even though they weren’t actually related, he considered her family, and she clearly thought of him the same way.

With a sigh, he folded the letter and carefully tucked it into his pocket. If there was anybody to be angry at, it was Matilda.

But he couldn’t risk doing anything beyond what Ras asked. So he stood from the chair, adjusted his tie, grabbed the tea tray, and made his way out of Ras’ room. He closed the door and made his way to the kitchens, where he set the dishes aside to be washed.

As soon as he exited, he was confronted by Matilda, a letter in her hand. She stared at Gerald, expression seething.

“Gerald.” She stated, her tone as level as could be without letting her rage take hold.

“Mistress Thorne.” He bowed his head. “Is aught amiss?”

She thrust the letter into Gerald’s hands, scowling. “Ras has run away. Did she leave something with you?”

“No.” He lied, taking the letter from Matilda with his best frown. His surprise must have been genuine enough, for she simply continued talking.

“Impudent girl, leaving home with only…this. I don’t know where she’s going, or how far she expects to get, but the moment I see her again…”

Gerald looked up at her. “Mistress Thorne, might I suggest taking a moment to breathe?” He asked. “I can send out petitions for people to search for her if you like, but it does you no good to sit around seething.”

Matilda’s gaze snapped to Gerald’s, and the two of them glared at each other, daring another to make the next move. She’d always despised him, for she was used to bulldozing her way into getting what she wanted.

But he also spoke sense, and so she resigned, looking away with a huff. “If you insist. Write to everybody who will listen. We’ve connections in Zaledo, see if she’s sighted there. I will…take a moment to recuperate.”

Gerald bowed his head as Matilda made her exit, and then turned his attention to the letter Ras had left Matilda, reading over it.

It was hardly a letter at all. A crude drawing in the likeness of Ras holding out her only arm and flashing an obscene gesture. Underneath, in messy handwriting, in colorful crayon of all things, was a note.

‘Leaving home. Hate you, wish you were dead. Burn in hell. Love you Mom. ~Ras’

Gerald snorted, resisting the urge to chuckle. “Childish,” he muttered, “but it gets the point across I suppose. Very like you, Master Thorne.”

With that, he folded the ‘letter’ and set it aside. He strode over to Irwin’s study and unlocked the door, opening it to see it looked as immaculate as ever. 

He noticed right away that the envelope addressed to Ras was missing, and he knew that she’d been serious indeed. She has run away.

Well, that settled it, then. He took a seat at Irwin’s desk and began to draft a letter to be sent to the Kingdom of Zaledo, in particular the Princess Rosario.

Being a Thorne might not mean much outside of Fenburg, but there wasn’t a soul alive who didn’t know of Irwin and Gerald, the duo who had fought so valiantly in service to the Westerlind-Zaledo Military Alliance.

He just had to hope it would work to get Ras the shelter she needed.

The letter was simple. Written entirely in the Zaledoan language, it read:

‘Your royal Highness, Pleasant days to you. I hope you are enjoying your Hearthlight holidays. I am writing to you for matters most urgent, and it is my hope that you will hear my request. I am led to believe you are acquainted with a young lady by the name of Ras Thorne. She is my adopted niece, and I have cared for her since the passing of her Father, Irwin Thorne. Due to complications with her home life involving her Mother, Ras has seen fit to abscond from home. It is my understanding that she has made for Zaledo, seeking asylum. Which leads to my request. I humbly ask that you please grant her the asylum she seeks, and that you keep her safe. I also ask that you encourage prying eyes to grant Ras the peace she deserves. Forever grateful, Gerald, former Shield of Westerlind.’

He folded the letter and tucked it into an envelope, sealing it closed with a stamp bearing the Thorne Family sigil. Finished with that, he stood, taking a shaky breath.

Ras put a lot of faith in him, and in a plan that even she admitted was half-baked and poorly thought out. There was no guarantee that this would even work. But she was willing, she was bold, and most importantly she believed. Not just in him, but in Rosario.

“Just like her Father,” he muttered as he made his way out of Irwin’s study, carefully drafted letter in hand, “foolish, brash, and naive. Almost enviable, really.”

Without further delay, Gerald sent the letter out with the morning post, as well as several vague letters mentioning that Ras was missing and to keep an eye out for her in Fenburg. Lies about how she couldn’t have gone far.

His own letter, meant for Princess Rosario, was marked priority, and he paid the extravagant fee for it to be delivered as fast as possible. Hopefully it would make it to Zaledo before Ras did.

With trepidation, all he had to do was wait.

It only took a day for him to receive a reply. The envelope back from Rosario was embossed with a gilded Zaledoan coat of arms, and Gerald took the letter and slipped it into his pocket. He wasn’t going to read it so soon, nor while he was at risk of being discovered.

So he went about his day as usual, cleaning the manor and attending to Matilda while she paced impatiently around the lounge.

“No word, then?” Matilda asked, for the seventh time that evening alone.

“No, Mistress Thorne,” Gerald lied, the letter feeling rather heavy in his pocket at that moment.

Matilda groaned, dropping into a chair and throwing her head back. “The grief that child causes me. If she weren’t the sole solution to restoring the family name…”

Gerald felt a twinge of irritation, but he had to hold it in. Instead, he cleared his throat. “If I may, Mistress Thorne, it is rather late and I find myself growing tired in my old age. May I retire for the evening?”

Matilda waved him off with a dismissive gesture. “Whatever you please, Gerald. Just, please. Bright and early tomorrow, in case word of Ras reaches us.”

With a nod, Gerald turned on his heel and made his way back to his room. When he was alone, the door closed and locked behind him, he pulled the letter from his pocket and opened it, careful to preserve the seal.

Inside, a response from Rosario. 

‘Master Gerald, It was a pleasure to receive your Hearthlight wishes. As for your request, I petitioned my Father, and the moment he heard the name Thorne, he accepted readily. He wishes you well, and offers his condolences upon Irwin’s passing. He had this to say: “Irwin Thorne was a credit to the Westerlind-Zaledo Military Alliance, and your efforts alongside his are appreciated nationwide on both sides. Your request to help his daughter is the least I can do.” Even if this were not the case, you are correct. Ras is a dear friend of mine, I would have done whatever I could have in order to help her. Thanks to your timely letter, however, I have ample preparation and can have an escort ready for her when she arrives. You have my gratitude for bringing this matter to my attention, and I wish you the best. Have a Happy Hearthlight. Kind regards, Her Highness the Princess Rosario of Zaledo.’

Gerald let out a sigh of relief, a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding. A huge weight from his shoulders had been lifted; Ras would be safe when she arrived at Zaledo.

Better yet, she would be with friends. People who would love and care for her as she deserved. He folded the letter carefully and tucked it away into his secret place. The only other person who knew it even existed was Irwin, and he was certain that Matilda would never find it even if she had reason to snoop after him.

With that, he was safe to relax, relieved at the knowledge that Ras would be safe, even if it was a temporary reprieve. Hopefully by the time she returned, Matilda would be amicable enough to forgive her, and there wouldn’t be any further family drama.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from wishing that Ras never returned. He’d rather her be out there, living for herself, than back here and at the mercy of Matilda’s societal shame.

He took a deep breath and sat on his bed. He was exhausted, and it wasn’t long before he was laying down, sleep taking over the moment he closed his eyes. 

The rest of the days went by without a hitch, with Hearthlight in Westerlind coming to and end and still no word of Ras being sighted in Fenburg. Many nosy reporters coming to bother him and Matilda about the missing child of the Thorne Family.

Articles were published about Matilda and about Ras’ disappearance, ranging from theories and comments and purported sightings of the missing girl. At the very least, Matilda didn’t expect the part he’d played in Ras’ running away from home.

Meanwhile, on The Tabitha’s Wisdom…

Ras spent most of her days on the deck of the ship, mostly out of the way of the workers and other passengers sailing towards Zaledo, reading happily as she bathed in the sun.

Nobody made comments on her appearance, though she did get the odd look now and again, and sometimes children would approach her to ask about her hair, or her eyes, or her missing arm.

“Well you see,” she told one group of kids, a grin on her face and a mischievous glint in her eye as she leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially, “don’t tell anybody this, but I’m actually part dragon. I lost my arm fighting against a foolish knight. That’s why I’m going to Zaledo, they practically worship dragons there.”

The children all squealed, and ran over to their parents, rambling on and gushing about ‘the scary dragon lady with her hoard of books’. They merely looked up, saw her, and offered smiles in return, as if thanking her for entertaining their kids for a moment.

With no further distractions, Ras returned to her reading. Her book was a fictional novel, telling the story of a knight who overcame his inner darkness in pursuit of justice and took up a sword of light to defeat a primordial evil which originated from the moon.

She’d read this book many times before, and had just now gotten to the part where the protagonist discovered a sword with a myth engraved upon it’s blade, telling of him and his destiny. He’d finally shed his armor of darkness, slaying a demon formed of his dark powers upon embracing the sword of light given to him by a higher power.

It wasn’t long before the sky began to darken, however, and Ras’ reading was interrupted by lack of light. She looked up, and realized that the hours had passed her by, and it was already dusk. Now conscious of the fading daylight, she let out a yawn, groaning as she closed her book.

No point attempting to get more reading in if she was tired, even if she did practically know the story by heart. She marked her place in the book, closed it, and stood up with a stretch. Time to get some proper sleep.

As she made her way back to her cabin, she came across one of the staff, who smiled at her.

“Not long to Zaledo now, miss. We’re like to reach it in the morning. Just in time for their Hearthlight festival.”

Ras grinned in response. “I’m lookin’ forward to it already. You think th’Princess will make an appearance?”

He laughed. “I doubt she’d miss it for anything.”

With that, Ras bid farewell to the man and entered her cabin, closing the door behind her with a satisfied sigh. She tossed her book onto her bag and then just flopped onto the bed, planting her face directly onto the pillow.

Tomorrow, she’d be in Zaledo. Hopefully she’d get to see Princess Rosario.

[coffeeheartaddict2]

When live has other plans (10/16)

Dawn of a new day

Book: Open Heart (AU)

Characters: F!MC Casey Valentine, Ethan Ramsey, Naveen Banerji, June Hirata, Tobias Carrick

Warnings: language, sexual references, mentions of addiction

Word count: 2513

Category: Angst

Rating: Mature

Summary: Ethan discusses with Naveen about his revelations. A long term coma patient wakes up restarting an old rivalry and June decides to go directly to the source to find out the information she desires.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Pixelberry.

Authors note: who knew that I was capable of starting to set up a happy ending this far out? The next few chapters will have some of the key points of book 2 from canon and the impacts that it has on Ethan and Casey in this world. There are some changes too but all will lead to happy ending. This chapter is actually not too angsty but it does deal with some heady issues.

🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞

Ethan awoke. He had slept better after been shook by his nightmare but he was still out of sorts. He knew he needed to make changes, address the issues that he had but where to begin. He made his coffee and a light breakfast and went to work. He went to the office and started prepping for his day. There was a knock on the door. He was pleasantly surprised to see Naveen.

“Did you not sleep well last night?” Said Naveen as he entered.

“Is it that obvious?”

“This is a purely social visit my boy.” Said Naveen, “I could not help but notice you seemed a little preoccupied yesterday? Is it to do with Casey?” He asked concerned.

“No Naveen, myself and Casey are as ok to be expected, I am hating the pre Miami setting we have found ourselves in, I think she hates it too but that is not the reason.” Said Ethan. He took a steadying breath.

“My dad came to see me the other day. My mother had reached out wanting to see me. I decided to open that box.”

Naveen sat there shocked. Ethan had told him at an earlier time about his mother walking out on him and Alan. He had the distinct impression that he would never speak to her again.

“Why did you reach out?” Asked Naveen, “I always thought that if you saw her again that it would be too soon.”

Ethan runs a hand down his face. “You would be right Naveen but it occurred to me, especially after our last patient that ignoring the past can be detrimental.”

“So how did it go?”

“Disconcerting.”

Naveen looked puzzled. “How so?”

“She is an addict Naveen. She stated she that was addicted to alcohol and prescription medication and I presume more illicit substances.”

“You presume?”

“I asked if she was reaching out for financial assistance and she said no, she did not want me to subsidize her habits.”

Naveen nodded before asking.

“Did she state why she did what she did?”

“Yes, she resented her whole life. She loved us but resented us so she left.” Said Ethan trying to hold back the tears.

“Am I any better than her? I do not resent my life but the hours I work, how much I drink, the pushing of people away and avoidance.”

Naveen squeezed his mentee’s shoulder in support.

“The fact that you know that there is an issue and be able to identify them is a start.”

Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed in frustration.

“These issues have fucked so much up, Naveen…”

“It is not too late to rectify the mess you feel you are in,” said Naveen, in a comforting tone. “I will give you the names of some counselors who specialize with these issues. Some are affiliated with Edenbrook, some elsewhere.”

“Thank you Naveen.”

Meanwhile, Casey was down in the ICU checking on the patients when she heard a noise that sounded like someone falling. She turned around to see a patient on the ground. She pressed the call button and went to tend to the patient. Danny came in.

“Oh my god, Stephanie!” Exclaimed Danny.

“W-w-where a-am I?” Stephanie stuttered.

“Stephanie, you are at Edenbrook Hospital.” Says Casey. Danny gives her the chart and Casey had to do a double take. Stephanie had been in a coma for seventeen years. Casey knew this was big. She took the file and took it to the team. Despite the length of time in a coma, Stephanie’s mental faculties seemed very intact. June proposed a research grant, stating that waking up from a benzo overdose was so rare that a study would help others in the situation. Ethan agreed with June. June and Casey were put in charge of selling the idea to Stephanie and her parents.

Casey and June made their way to Stephanie’s room where they met Mr and Mrs Hill. They were still in shock that Stephanie was awake, Mr Hill even admitting that when the call came he had thought it was to advise them to come and say their goodbyes. They were apprehensive about telling her that she had overdosed. June stated that she feels that it may have not been deliberate, stating that one of the side effects can be forgetting and accidentally double dosing. Casey stated that they wanted to do a study, but it was upto to Stephanie. They entered the room, a physiotherapist was there with her. They waited until she was finished. And spoke to Stephanie. Casey spoke about the research they were hoping to do. Stephanie seemed overwhelmed and Casey suggested that she speak to her parents about it. Casey hoped she would do the study.

Later that evening June met with Dr Tobias Carrick. He enjoyed the sex normally with June but today he could tell that there was more to her pent up sexual frustration.

“What’s up June?”

“Nothing”

Tobias looks at June incredulously. June rolls her eyes.

“We have had a coma patient wake up after 17years…”

“Yeah I heard about that from the younger Dr Emery. I must say I am intrigued.”

“Yes, someone waking from a benzo overdose is so rare…”

“What if a coma can be prevented? At the moment there are very limited treatment options for an overdose.”

“I can see the gears in your head, it will piss off Ethan you know.” Said June.

“And?” Says Tobias. “Either your study or my study will be ground breaking, hell I could probably kill two birds with one stone with mine but the way I am helping you.”

“How so?” questioned June.

“Well, he has entrusted his protege, why is he entrusting her with something so important? Yeah she saved Naveen and being attached to a study like this would do wonders for her career but it will give you hopefully more intel on that situation.”

June nods her head thoughtfully. She kisses him and they proceed with their night. June had hoped to leave his townhouse before Tobias awoke but she was surprised to see him awake, with a smug grin on his face.

“I have just made an offer to the Hill family. It appears that Edenbrook and Kenmore are not the only hospital’s interested in Stephanie, but you or me have the edge as they are keen to stay in Boston.” Said Tobias.

June smiled a mischievous smile,”well may the best hospital win.”

Tobias chuckled and then he went and got ready for his day.

The day was uneventful, Casey was still cautiously optimistic of Stephanie wanting to help with the study. She had noted that Ethan seemed troubled and she was unsure what to do. They had what they said they would go to after his sabbatical but she remembered that pre Miami he was trusting her with Naveen. Surely what they had now was not the end game. As much as she wanted to approach Ethan, she also was reluctant to do so. The memory of that morning where he stated that he felt betrayed by her was still too raw and if he still felt that way then it would be pointless to go there. So she did as she had been doing and kept on keeping on. Ethan could see that Casey seemed troubled. As much as he wanted to tell her everything he still held back. What had happened was a wound that had barely been covered and he was not ready for it to be reopened. He understood the why but how it all went down in the end still hurt. He did not like the pre Miami setting they had found themselves in. He knew this is not what he wanted but with everything else going on he did not want to add to his pain.

The next morning came. Casey made her way into Edenbrook and she was surprised to see Stephanie being wheeled out by her parents. They spot Casey.

“I am glad to see you before we leave.” Said Mr Hill.

“Leave? Did we do anything to upset you?” Asks Casey, still confused.

“No, quiet the contrary. We are appreciative truly for what you have done for Stephanie but we received a really good offer from Mass Kenmore…”

“Dr Carrick sounded really nice and I know you would have come up with a great offer but they are allowing me to be at home from the get go. No offense but even though I was in a coma for most of it, seventeen years in hospital is a long time.” Said Stephanie.

“I get that, truly, I hope it all works out for you.”

“Thank you Dr Valentine.”

Casey sees them off and is then annoyed. Ethan comes up behind her.

“Do you know this Dr Carrick from Kenmore?”

Ethan freezes. He knows exactly one Dr Carrick and he knew what he was up to. Just then Casey looks up and sees him.

“So you know him then?”

“We were friends until we were not. We were one and two in our year at Hopkins.” Said Ethan. “Our competition with each other grew toxic and we have not been friends since before we graduated.”

“So he is basically restarting the competition again?”

“In a way it never fully ended. It is infuriating however.”

Casey nodded and then headed in. Meanwhile Ethan was still fuming. He knew that Stephanie would be the talk of the medical world and despite him seeing the positives of Tobias’s study he could not help but wonder that there was an ulterior motive. June then walked in and saw Ethan. She asked what was wrong.

Ethan sighs in frustration.

“Stephanie got poached by Kenmore.”

June hoped her surprise was convincing.

“Really?”

“Yes, seems you can not take the competition out of med school.”

June was waiting for a bigger explosion of anger.

“What? No reprimand? You put myself and Dr Valentine in charge of keeping her here and we failed!”

Ethan raised an eyebrow.

“The family had offers from as far away as California. I am glad that she will be studied.” Said Ethan. He then left the office. June was bemused. A massive opportunity was now missed and no reprimand. She got out her phone and messaged Tobias.

Well done on getting our patient. Ethan was annoyed but you will be surprised at how pissed he is not.

June receives a message back.

“Oh he would have been pissed, especially if I am involved but not pissed at you and Casey? Was not expecting that!

June then decides that covertly getting her answers was not going to work. So she decides to get the information directly from the lady concerned.

Meanwhile, Ethan stumbles upon Casey at Derry Roasters. He orders his Vienna and another Espresso Romano for Casey. He walks over and sits down.

“It is not your fault for Stephanie leaving” says Ethan.

Casey is shook from her daze.

“Sorry Dr Ramsey but how am I not to blame?”

“You did your best, from what I understand, what sold them on Kenmore was that she was able to go as an outpatient from the get go.”

“That is fair but it still sucks.”

“It is annoying but they also said something about the prevention of a coma so if successful it will revolutionize how an overdose is treated. I can not fault that. It is the ulterior motive I can not stand.”

Ethan decides to bite the bullet.

“Aside from Stephanie, how have you been?”

“Yeah, being busy. Work, reading up on diseases, trying to eat and sleep.”

Ethan nods. “Can we try to be friends Casey?” Asks Ethan. “I know we said pre Miami before we ended things but surely neither of us meant it to be this way?”

“I know what you mean, me accusing you of treating me as an obligation probably did not help.”

Ethan winced.

“You are right there. I think the day after it happened was the wrong time to have an all out discussion about it.”

“I never wanted to hurt you, it was a rock and a hard place situation.”

Ethan takes a breath before continuing.

“I get that you did not intend too but I guess neither of us put pregnancy up on the list of things that would happen.”

“You are right there Ethan. But to answer your question, I would like us to be friends again.” Says Casey, smiling. Ethan smiled too and they finished their coffee in companionable silence. He wanted to tell her about his meeting with his mother but he was not ready to tell her yet, even though he wanted to.

A few days go by and June is still trying to figure out how Ethan is not super pissed at herself and Casey. She bides her time and finally catches Casey alone.

“Shall we have lunch Casey?” Asks June.

Casey looks at June suspiciously.

“I just want to get to know our newest team member better outside of the office.”

Casey was still suspicious but she agreed. They went to an Italian restaurant near the hospital. They ordered their food. June started off light, asking about what drew her to medicine, college etc. their food arrived and June felt it was time to go for the jugular.

“What is the deal with you and Ethan?”

Casey raised her eyebrow and then said, “Is that any of your business?”

June was affronted.

“Can’t a girl find out how your history is going to impact the team?”

“History is history June. Myself and Ethan have worked enough together to keep work at work.”

“Were you sleeping with him to gain favour?”

“Excuse me? Did I what?” Exclaimed Casey.

“Did you sleep with…”

“No I did not sleep with him to gain favour.”

June is surprised.

“What so he decided to conduct an inappropriate relationship because he could?”

“It was not a relationship. It was an arrangement, everything was consensual, we agreed to end the arrangement before he went on sabbatical.”

Said Casey rather firmly.

“And now?” Said a June. “Ethan’s moods, especially in relation to you are giving me whiplash.”

“We are colleagues. He is the lead of the team and I am the junior fellow. There never was and never will be any special treatment from Ethan to myself. Regardless of our relationship status which at the moment is that of boss and subordinate.”

Casey gets up and leaves. She walks a few steps and stops.

“I do not know why you thought I was a threat to the team, it is sad that it appears to be your default setting.”

She walks away and June sits there stunned. While June finishes off her meal she messages Tobias, telling him about lunch and how according to Casey, they are currently only boss and subordinate. Tobias, like June was suspicious if that was indeed the truth. Little did Tobias know that he was going to get an opportunity first hand to see Ethan and Casey together.

———

Authors note: next chapter will be the softball game with some perspective from Tobias. I am looking forward to writing that from his perspective. Thank you for reading this far.

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