#and are always very struck by his failures and laziness once I point it out

[itspileofgoodthings]

one of the things that continues to strike me on reread is how much the character of Darcy, and Austen through him, finds Mr. Bennet dead. And how much Elizabeth, in growing and changing and discarding her past blindness, has to move past her way of seeing her father and thus of seeing reality, because the two are connected! Darcy’s letter exposes her father’s flaws to Elizabeth in a way she’d never been able to see before. Most especially the way his laziness and neglect of his own gifts have hurt his family and that ultimately he doesn’t. care. Not enough to change. It literally says that she comes home from Hunsford and tries to laugh at her sisters’ and mother’s folly (the way she used to; the way her father has taught her to by example for her whole life) and she can’t anymore! It sticks in her throat. She is grieved by the failures that she sees in him, all the more so because she IS his favorite and she loves him! And the thing about Mr. Bennet is he never changes. The Lydia/wickham situation exposes to him sharply his own conduct and the consequences and he feels it! Because he is neither stupid nor unfeeling. But he, like everyone, has free will. And he chooses not to change when the opportunity presents itself. He even jokes about how quickly his feeling bad will pass and how soon everything will go back to normal, to his laziness and his selfishness. He is set in his ways and he serves as a contrast to Elizabeth’s personal journey because he embodies a version of a person she could have become and was in danger of becoming if her only goal at all times was to laugh at and judge people from the sidelines.

[asterekmess]

1-4 What the fuck is a true alpha? A recurring joke? A convenient plot armor? A desperate attempt to make an irrelevant character look ‘relevant’ despite canon showing otherwise? Scott/Posey Stans think that Scott McCall has a right to command and dictate everyone’s life because he is a tWuE aLpAhA; Scott has a right to play judge, jury & executioner with his “inferior” friends, and he has a right to determine what is wrong or right based on his own benefit and bigoted black and white mentality.

2-4 If you think that this sounds an awful lot like the Divine Right of Kings, you are absolutely right. An unearned (and undeserved) mystical superiority or blessing, a fabricated sense of purity, goes a long way in ameliorating Scott McCall’s Failures and Fuck-ups. And like kings who rule by Divine Right, he can do as he likes. Which is why Scott can patronize and lie to Allison and Kira to control them, assault Isaac and Jackson due to his own pathological jealousy and possessiveness,

3-4 use Hayden (Liam’s girlfriend) as bait against the Dread Doctors without her consent to play the hero, dehumanize Stiles and accuse Stiles of being a violent, dangerous, inhuman monster and serial killer for daring to accidentally kill his abuser in self-defense, sell Derek and his Pack to the hunters, refuse to tell his girlfriend Allison the truth about her mother’s death to look ‘good’ in her eyes,

4-4 plot/conspire with Gerard Argent and Deaton behind everyone’s back to violate Derek Hale’s boundaries, bodily autonomy and consent for his own benefit, claim that the Argents had a reason to slaughter the Hales (including HUMANS and CHILDREN) in front of Derek Hale and of his comatose uncle – and then Scott/Posey Stans will consider everyone kicking Scott’s whiny, toxic excuse of an ass to the curb and not giving an utter crap when Scott died in Season 5 as an act equivalent of treason

I put all your asks together so I didn’t get confused (which is v likely to happen) and I thank you for numbering them for me. <3

The concept of a true alpha...sigh. Look, I see the intention, okay? I see the goal, the idea that you don’t have to kill someone to become an Alpha. That there can be “Good” Alphas who haven’t killed anyone. But I also think it’s lazy writing. This is one the few instances where TW hadn’t actually shot themselves in the foot yet. They gave us so little information on werewolves that they never actually said that the only way to become an Alpha was by killing another Alpha. They could very easily have said “Also, you can become an Alpha this other way” (Be it by passing the Alpha spark down to children willingly, or being beaten in a special kind of combat, or through a ritual of some kind)

But they didn’t just want another way to be the Alpha. They wanted a way that didn’t take any effort. It would be too hard to introduce another Alpha that would give up their spark to Scott, or to have him put in the effort to do a ritual. They needed a way to make Scott an Alpha without any additional effort. Part of me honestly wonders if they did it because they knew they’d lost a lot of Scott fans by the end of Season 2, what with all of his betrayals and lies and what he did to Derek. They needed a way to reaffirm that Scott was the good guy, so they made up the True Alpha thing and said “Look! He’s so pure and goodhearted and he has so much good will, that he can’t even help but become an Alpha”

They demonized werewolves by reducing them to murderers who had to kill for power (In Derek’s case it was survival, and i’ll fight for him.) and then held Scott up as a saint because he managed it without killing.

Except that he had killed. Or at least tried to kill. How could he be this pure person they claimed if he spent weeks poisoning a cancer patient, lying to everyone around him, and he took Pleasure in it. He was Proud of himself for his lies and his tricks and for getting back at Derek by hurting him. That’s the kind of behavior we expect from Stiles, who is established as a morally gray character. You cannot have Scott do something like that and then make the claim that he is morally pure.

Once Scott finds out from Morrell that killing someone will take away his True Alpha status, he goes out of his way to avoid killing people even when it puts others at risk. This ISN’T an Avatar moment, okay? He doesn’t summon the power of his ancestors and render the villains completely incapable of harm. He just fucking lets them go! Deucalion gets his fucking eyesight back for fuck’s sake. He was MORE dangerous than before and they let him go! (I know Derek was part of that, but I’m pretty sure Derek was possessed by a pod person by that point)

He never said he’d behave. No one checked on him or watched to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone. They just let him leave. He could’ve just rebuilt a new Alpha pack. Could’ve killed dozens more people.

Jennifer would have too, had Peter not killed her.

Even better, he brings Ethan and Aiden into his pack. They walked right up to him and told him “Everyone is hunting for us because we killed a ton of people” and he just took them in? Gave them protection from the families of the people they’d slaughtered? All because they followed him around for a bit and said “We’ll only kill for you from now on.”

And this is why I get so frustrated about the blue eyes. The concept of ‘taking an innocent life’ is so fucking vague? Scott is indirectly responsible for countless deaths throughout the show. Whether by inaction or because the people doing the killing were acting on his orders, or whatever the fuck else I can’t think of at the moment. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t intended to kill anyone. He should not still have his True Alpha status. Period. But he does, so apparently Scott can kill as many people as he wants, actually, so long as he doesn’t do it with his own claws and teeth. Or maybe he just can’t kill a human who hasn’t killed anyone else? Who the fuck knows.

I’ll say it again. If The Alpha spark can be used to heal someone, why didn’t Scott use it to save Allison? She wasn’t cursed. She was stabbed. He could’ve done the same thing Derek did. Peter even said that it can be done on accident. All it requires is that he do the pain drain and not stop when it starts to hurt.

To be quite honest, I don’t blame Scott’s True Alpha eyes for his entitlement and his belief that he can do no wrong. He held that same notion way before his eyes ever turned red. The eyes are to blame for no one else calling him out for his actions. You’re told by the only fucking person who seems to know what’s going on in the supernatural world that this kid’s eyes turned red all on their own because he is meant to be an Alpha. That it’s because he is good and pure and it’s a sign of his worthiness. He literally was just gifted extra power, apparently because he’s the only one worthy of it. How the fuck are you supposed to deal with that? Are you supposed to be the one person who tells fucking Werewolf Jesus (technically Derek is Actual werewolf jesus what with the evolution thing, but before that Scott’s as close as it gets cus’ Peter’s just a zombie.) that he doesn’t know best? That he’s doing something wrong? If the Powers that Be made Scott an Alpha, what will they do to the one who tells him he fucked up? Everyone is just supposed to trust that Scott must be in the right. That his reasons are good enough. That he knows what’s best. Because if he doesn’t, then why the sudden Alpha eyes? Peter questions Scott often and happily, mostly because he doesn’t care if he gets struck by lightning or something. It’ll always be worth it to get that last quip in. Eventually Stiles starts to argue too, because he’s reached the point where he doesn’t care if he dies so long as everyone else important to him stops getting hurt. That’s when Scott starts cutting him out. When he stops believing Scott knows best.

And honestly, it’s like the first post I made that sparked this whole ranting binge. Scott cheats. He cheats and he uses his abilities to his advantage without ever thinking of what it does to other people. Except this time he’s not cheating at lacrosse. He’s not taking credit for bowling six strikes in a row. For some reason his eyes turned red, and everyone else is taking it as a sign that he must know better and he should be in charge, and he never disagrees.

Sure, he complains. “Why me? Why does it have to be my responsibility?”

Guess what buddy? It fucking doesn’t. If you stopped fucking ordering people around and admitted you don’t know what you’re doing to someone besides your MOM and you want someone else to take the lead? THEY WOULD. But because he will not admit any kind of weakness or that he isn’t sure what to do, he puts the weight on himself. He blames everyone else for the lead weights he tied around his waist. He doesn’t want to have to do the work, but he hates the idea of someone else being in charge. Of not being important. We’re told right off the bat that Scott wants to be important. He wants to be on first line not because he loves the game, but because he wants to be popular. He wants Allison to go out with him. This is just another way he wants to be important, and he won’t ever let go of it. He gives orders and makes calls on who gets to know what and who is worthy and won’t take responsibility for the failures, but happily takes credit for the successes. When he fucks up by not talking to people or by lying to them or making a bad call, he doesn’t admit it. He doesn’t tell anyone. He lets them think that he’s blameless so that when he actually says shit like “I lost them” someone will say “They’ll come back because you’re their leader” No. He’s not. He lost them because he pushed them away. It was his fault.

Whatever. I’m salty. *pouts* Anyway. True Alpha is dumb, and I’ve read a couple theories about how Deaton made it up, and tbh, I’d follow that logic. If you’re curious, I think I tagged it ‘true alpha’ or ‘deaton’ on my blog.

[goblin-alchemist]

Do you have any tips for getting a hang of characterizations? You always do so amazingly, especially with Gabriel!

Thank you!

I have talked about this with a few friends prior, so I'll see if I can put it into words again.  This might be redundant to those who remember discussing this with me before, but here we go.  I'll focus upon Gabriel since he seems to be the trickiest for people to write.  I'll also reference some of my stories to give examples.

Gabriel's primary motivation, in my mind, is Emilie.  I default everything back to Emilie.  If Gabriel gets absorbed in something and forgets his grief/goals, etc, I have him suddenly think “Man, if Emilie were here we would be able to watch Adrien experience these milestones together” or “I wish I could hold Emilie's hand like Adrien is doing with Marinette”.  And then he gets sad again.  It's an instant grounding focus for him, and thus leads to renewed determination.  “I am doing this because the ends justify the means.  I just want Emilie back.”  I kind of play with the sunk-cost fallacy with Gabriel, too.  At this point, he's put in so much to being Hawkmoth that he can't back out now.  (Until I slam something in his face that gets him to stop abruptly, like him discovering the heroes' identities).

So that's his primary motivation.  But now to address a lot of the rest of his personality.

The fandom likes to emphasize that Adrien is the face of the company and he has to put on a mask, and only when he's Chat Noir does that mask slip and he's allowed to be his “true self”.  I feel Gabriel is also in the same boat.  He's the head of his company.  He's expected to maintain certain social graces just like his son (if not more so).  He's quiet and reserved and polite, but he's not very forthcoming because of fears of industrial sabotage, or revealing a weakness to competitors that can be used against him, or getting taken advantage of (all of which as an adult, he should have experienced at one point in his life).  His stoic poker face was developed as a result of his life experiences.

However, we're shown he's not really reserved and in control.  Just like Chat Noir, we have canon evidence that Gabriel is as ham-fisted, emotional, and pun-filled as Chat Noir.  We see it in every single Hawkmoth monologue, in every time Hawkmoth transforms and gets giddy with excitement that he might win, and with every anger-fueled declaration of vengeance.  (The argument of 'are those Gabriel's legit emotions or does the butterfly miraculous emphasize those emotions from his victims?' is a nice angle to play with in fiction as well).

But as Gabriel, he's not excessively impulsive (Miraculous-stealing opportunities aside).  He lets people speak their case before forming judgment (more on this in a moment), but once the judgment is formed, it's hard to get him to change his mind.  He's stubborn.

So if I'm writing the story or scene from a third-person-perspective, like Marinette, I can't delve into his thoughts on paper.  I have to show the audience what he's thinking through other cues.  Since he's a man of little words, I'll have him silently scan a room before speaking.  He allows people to speak and give them the opportunity to screw up in his presence before he says a word as to his opinion.  Once that opinion is formed, however, good luck getting him to change his mind.  I have to show this using his glowers, frowns, squared shoulders, and clenched hands.

If something pops up that's great dramatic irony (when he was secretly overjoyed that Marinette designed a Hawkmoth-themed dress, for example), I'll show it as flashes of amusement in his eyes, twitching of lips, the relaxing of his posture, and the crinkling of his eyes.  The key here is to show subtle ways of expressing emotions without outright stating that's what's happening, because Gabriel schools himself and his emotions in front of others.

But when I write directly from his POV, that's where the fun begins.  There, I can describe his internal monologue, which is inspired by his actions as Hawkmoth.  I can have Gabriel sit silent, glowering at anyone who approaches while he observes and dryly comments on everything around him.  He won't say his sarcastic thoughts aloud, but he'll be thinking them, and here's my opportunity to channel the exasperation.  Somethings things will just slip out because honestly, is everyone around him an idiot?!  He'll recover and glower away any funny looks aimed at him, because his intimidation is as much a weapon as his silence is.

Frustrated exasperation is what I usually write Gabriel as a lot of times.  As Hawkmoth, he releases that frustration.  As Gabriel, it has to be kept bottled up inside and it only comes out in internal sarcastic remarks.

If I feel Gabriel strays too much into the OOC/cracky territory (which happens a lot in my stories, I admit) when I channel a bit too much Hawkmoth through his civilian form, I stick Nathalie in there as his straight man. She displays even less emotion than Gabriel and ends up being a really nice balance when I go a bit overboard on Gabriel's emotional outbursts.  A few pointed phrases or deadpan replies that juuuuuust touch upon inappropriate for an assistant to talk to her powerful boss, but she helps ground Gabriel into more of his realistic canon personality instead of complete OOC crack.

He's a man of few words as Gabriel, and he's used to being in a position of power, surrounded by yes-men (Nathalie and the Gorilla).  He isn't used to having anyone challenge him.  So, he doesn't need to explain his reasons to people.  When Marinette was rambling on about why he of all people was bidding on her dress design, he halted her mid-ramble and merely said “I like it.”  The end.  He keeps his cards close to his chest, and the only time I've actually seen him let down his guard is oddly, to Nooroo.  I'm certain this is just a narrative device for us, the viewer, but the fact is Gabriel is weirdly forthcoming to Nooroo and pretty much lays out his thoughts, plans, and analysis on the situation at hand.  I use that to my advantage in my stories when writing the Nooroo/Gabriel relationship, and how subconsciously, Gabriel might view Nooroo as a mentor (even if he disregards all of the advice Nooroo freely gives).

He's the head of his multi-million euro company.  He didn't get there by being lax and lazy.  He has super high standards, and isn't afraid to verbally rip apart his peers if it's warranted.  However, he's not entirely unfair, I don't think.  He allowed Marinette to defend her hat design in Mr. Pigeon before coming to a judgment on it.  He allowed Nino to propose his last-minute plan in Bubbler to throw Adrien a birthday party before he denied it (and then interrupted Nino and got angry with him only after the boy continued to push the point).  He allowed Marinette to explain how she stumbled across his Miraculous book before saying anything to her.

To me, the fact he actually went and met with these people in the first place shows a lot about his character.  He's willing to hear people out, but he makes fast judgments and doesn't budge from them. People have to get into his good graces right away or it's hard to change his mind later.  He has flashes of anger, but its not sustained, because he's already moving onto finding a solution to the problem (like in Volpina when he got that phone call about an issue with his designs).  Sometimes, I wonder how much of his anger and irritation is a result of his real thoughts and emotions, or just him seeing an opportunity to akumatize someone by riling them up further.

In this manner, he's calculating, very calculating, and if something reflects him in a poor light its probably for a reason (staging his 'temper tantrum' in Collector).  I ignore the canonical inconsistencies toward his waffling degrees of intelligence and treat Gabriel as very smart, but oblivious and arrogant.

I see him actually as very much like Marinette, only bitter and jaded.  She's clever and creative, and so is he.  The only difference between the two is that life has struck him down with angst.  He's lost his soulmate.  He's experienced the lows of being a starving artist.  He's encountered failure. Marinette has yet to go through any of that.

I could probably go on further and delve into different aspects of different scenarios (his wish, etc) but I think I've rambled on long enough and seems like I've jumped erratically between a bunch of different points  :)  Let me know if you have any additional questions and I hope this has helped at little at least.

[bossbyname-blog]

Growth Hack

Blogging is one of the best ways to get your message out as a small business. I have known this for some time, yet it is a frontier I have yet till now. My head starts to spin on this subject, and though I have read how to and what makes a successful blog, I have come to the realization that just starting is the best way to develop one's skills. Easier said than done. The fear of sounding well no other way to say it "Dumb!" about sums it up. 

So for me, I think I'll start where it began.  In a strange, probably algorithmic way, I began to find what would-be mentors, and here is where my dreams of business started.

I have always had dreams but lacked vision and inspiration to reach for the stars. It started on social media and with Bill Gates, and his story spoke to me.  It was Bill and Melinda Gates, and it didn't begin with  Microsoft; it started with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I learned about their story and how the richest man in the world became a philanthropist and how he had given seventy billion dollars if memory serves me correct. What struck me was not the money but the causes that they were committed to global health care, poverty, and education. Later I would learn about Melinda Gates and her pioneering work for global equality. 

I could go on, but the moment struck me, and my eyes were open. I want to say that I was off to the races and touting insider information that, in a sense, was true but not how my mind conceived it. What it did do is lay a foundation to where I wanted to take my dreams as malformed as they were at the time the fire of imagination exploded. 

I would later find gatesnotes.com, and I began to see the world, and though I think thinking globally though was always in my DNA, I now had just dipped if even a finger into global awareness, and I loved it!

I was on twitter one night, not my best showing by far, and I remember what Malinda Gates said, and I may be paraphrasing, "Until we are blue in the face, we believe poverty is curable." That has stuck with me, and even in the most doubtful hours, it rang true in my heart.

I would later learn that much hard work lay ahead, and that brings me a quote by Bill Gates 'I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.' Now that spoke to me, not for a reason cited but that it would become evident that a dream without action is just an idea without depth and weight.

The point I am getting at is I had the lazy part down. Somehow in my mind, I thought I could figure it out, and it should work. Wrong! That laid a long road and dismal learning curve. I don't recall that anything was attached to that quote that said unskilled dreamer and yes lazy would be his choice but I in the distorted reasoning in my mind not so much conscious or deliberate but never the less a long road was to follow. Yes, I have learned a lot, but mostly what not to do is the take-a-way.

Mentors are the driving force of what brought me to an awakened state. I need to say that I am a believer in faith and God, who does some of the greatest miracles through people. This is one of many attempts at blogging. Yes, in the past, I have blogged in it's most primitive terms but now is about how I see and how I came to this point and time.

 I think its important to show how you tripped and fell to finally be able to write about what you are finding the keys to success. 

Mentors is a great way to start! Now a word of advice, it does no good to find a mentor that ignites passion and dares you to dream what was once impossible but currently somehow reachable if you don't listen and apply the insight and knowledge.

With that being said, my first action, and still I'm guilty of it is oh-okay like, follow everything and anyone of success. Now you are talking total overload, and for me, that underpinned the big elephant in my mind. All go, and no know! What I would eventually learn is that all my mentor's men and women's common identifiers that I found intriguing and would later learn that if I want what they have and I'm not talking from a material standpoint.

Yes, it is good to find attributes that identify characteristics, but what I found s that the most critical fact that I overlooked was that again, yes, they were big picture people most are visionary but that they had discipline over the details as well. A quality I was lacking. This, I believe, unconsciously is what I was really seeking or and desperately needed. 

So here we are, and to become aware of this is vital in addressing the problem. Now the solution is known as the key to success but only if you use it. So again, my blog is in a very realtime scenario, and I wish I were spewing forth pearls of wisdom, but in reality, it is how not to utilize your mentor. Never the less no need to cry over spilled milk that would indeed be a sob story but rather to inform others the mind fields we set for ourselves.

If you have experienced any level of what I am conveying, then know the more essential and crucial lesson is never to give up! I've tried that too. The problem with that is you are always starting over instead of building upon, and if you are like me, you know you're not going to quit, but it costs you time. I got stuck in a cycle where I ended up in a perpetual state of starting and stopping but never complete anything. 

Today I'm trying not to finish what I start, and if I need to revamp better, that then has nothing to show for your effort. My mindset is that I would rather have completed failures than having nothing ever finished. I can fix the failure, but the unfinished work seems to just lye there and stagnate until I decide time and time again to start over. 

The five questions I ask myself about why I choose this person as a mentor.

What attracts me to this person and do they inspire me to be better. 

Am I willing to take action, or is it simple admiration?

What specifically is it that I hope to learn?

Am I in alignment with there goals and values?

Am I openminded to suggestions even if I don't understand why?

For me, these are key questions that I have asked myself, were usually in retrospect. Now I try to keep these questions at the forefront of my mind when looking to learn from someone.

I have many mentors, and each represents what I call an unrealized aspect of self that I hope to become.

So here is the abstract version of people (mentors) that what I hope to one day aspire to.

The mind-Bill and Melinda Gates through philanthropy has brought global solutions through a scientific approach to healthcare, vaccinations, education, and gender equality.

 Funnybone-Ellen Degeneres her humor yes, of course, but she is by far my favorite! She gives in a way that is, by definition, the heart of a cheerful giver. She taught me about finding acceptance in who I am and not being ashamed, and the sickness is in keeping the secrete.

Spiritual-Oprah Winfrey is a truth seeker and a light bearer, and she, with a host of others when I was barely sober and still not in my right mind, opened the door back to God and life.

Charisma, leadership, family values-President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama has all of the mentioned aspects of personality rolled into one. If there is one thing they taught me is empathy! I could list many attributes, but this quality above all and to say anything else would diminish the importance.

The power of faith and God-Joel Olsteen-and to live in the promise. Here is where I learned how to approach God and to believe in my dreams.

Attitude-Steve Harvey, I simply get his story and his answer and how he made his dreams come true.

Never Give Up-Larry Kims blog and posts are my favorite and always helped me never to give up!

Speaker of truth-Dr. Martin Luther Kings' words speaks to the humanity of man and has the strength of God in his words. To not stand in silence even at the risk of losing one's life.

The whole purpose of mentors to me is that I want to become the best version of myself, and I look outside myself to grow beyond the current version of self. It doesn't remove the work but points you in the right direction. The rest is up to me and a lot of hard work. 

I certainly have a long way to go, but at least I know I am going in the right direction.

[blasphemings]

ah sacré papa, dis-moi où es-tu caché?

où est ton papa ? dis-moi où est ton papa? sans même devoir lui parler il sait ce qui ne va pas

//

where is your father? tell me, where is your father? without needing to talk to him, he knows something is wrong

[stone ocean/ireneverse, kakyoin is stone free via stand resurrection, ~9.3k words, ao3 link]

I.

dites-moi d’où il vient

enfin je saurais où je vais

Jotaro Kujo was no stranger to being too late.

He had thought of this as his daughter snarled at him from across the table; how he had been too late to be her father, or really, to be a part of her at all. There isn’t a speck of you in my heart anymore, Jolyne spat.

That was a good thing. Probably. At the very least, it made sense. First person to be smart about that shit in a long time. She was taking care of herself. She would survive.

At least, she would have, if he hadn’t gone and let her get shot.

Too late, he thought in a daze during the too-long instant it took for time to grind to a halt, his eyes on the thick stream of blood flying from the hole in Jolyne’s chest. His heart plummeted like a chunk of ice.

Such a lazy excuse, to say things happened too fast, particularly given his circumstances. If he hadn’t been distracted—

Because of love?

—if he had been focused.

She hung in midair, one arm thrown forward in surprise, the other behind her to break a fall caught in place. Her face barely registered surprise. She hadn’t had time to be surprised. It was his responsibility to catch threats in time. How could she have known?

Unless…

Jotaro narrowed his eyes. There wasn’t nearly enough blood. Not for a direct hit to the chest. He moved closer, fists still clenched at his sides, until he could see that it hadn’t been a direct hit at all.

Seeing the impossible up close like that was almost enough to convince him he really was dreaming.

The time stop gave him only seconds, but despite his best efforts Jotaro remained himself, and Star remained a force of nature, beyond fast enough to catch all the details, even those he might have preferred to remain ignorant of. He stared at the hand-shaped barrier that had caught the bullet before it could pierce Jolyne’s chest, and he knew that he had seen it before.

“It can’t be,” he breathed.

Thirty years. Nearly thirty years since the web of shimmering green strands had snapped, gleaming against the darkness, defiant to the last. He had only seen Hierophant’s barrier once.

This time the unbroken web held the bullet still. It appeared to be made of some sort of string, a different material and a different color, but the familiar pattern held steady.

Jolyne’s Stand stood at her side, arm thrown out in front of her where its hand had stopped the shot from landing. Frozen completely but still it seemed to stare straight at him, its face tilted in his direction with what almost looked like a smile. The Stand was blue and far more humanoid than Hierophant had been, and fiercer, tougher, from the look of it. But there was something about the planes of the face, the eyes behind the green—sunglasses?

He would almost have laughed, had he had the time.

“You made a net out of the strings,” Jotaro murmured. “And dispersed the power of the bullet. Just like a bulletproof vest…all in an instant.”

Star flicked the bullet away as time snatched itself away from him. It clattered to the floor forlornly, and Jolyne was thrown backwards by the force of a shot that had never landed, coughing and enormously confused. He had been right. She hadn’t had time to protect herself consciously at all. That was what Stands were for.

Jotaro stared at it, already beginning to dissipate.

It’s you.

It inclined its head slightly, a motion reminiscent of old mockeries.

Of course it’s me.

Kakyoin had used Hierophant to protect him, on one of the rare occasions on which Jotaro allowed himself to be caught off guard. The memory had proven stronger than others somehow, Kakyoin calm and vindictive, the way he had held himself with his arm thrown out in front of Jotaro to say let me handle it for once.

He had always been like that when he stood between the others and danger, his expression reading you don’t know what you’re in for but I’m about to show you, fierce and satisfied and so much more sure of himself when he was fighting for others rather than watching his own back. Jotaro had hated it, hated what Kakyoin was willing to step so casually into in his name. He had feared what might happen the day it finally proved too much for him.

II.

où est ton papa?

dis-moi où est ton papa?

Seems like you may be a little closer than you were a moment ago.

Amazing how much lighter he felt, he thought dazedly. Wasn’t this exactly what he had wanted, once? To be free of that impossibly heavy star?

That why I can see you now?

Unfortunately.

Inconveniently, however, whatever had been done to remove this particular Star did appear to also be killing him.

Jotaro tugged his coat closed in a useless attempt to hide his bloodied chest from Jolyne as her expression shifted from confusion to shock to horror. He glanced at the face that flickered into view at her side, the face that was and wasn’t Stone Free.

It doesn’t matter, he wanted to say. I was never going to make it out of here. It doesn’t matter.

She saw straight through him. His bluffs, lethal against so many, somehow had never had much effect when it came to Jolyne. She knew he would look her straight in the eyes and tell her exactly what he imagined she needed to hear. I’ll be home in a few weeks. I’ll catch up soon.

“You’re lying,” she kept repeating. “You’re lying.”

Get her out of here, he thought wildly, watching the young man who now appeared to him, half-corporeal and superimposed over the Stand that hovered beside his daughter. Isn’t that what you do? Protect her?

He had, for an instant, appeared to twitch in Jotaro’s direction at the moment the bullets were fired. They had met each others’ eyes for a split second, no stopped time to give them the moment they needed, but he shook his head as he was struck regardless, his eyes flashing bright with don’t you dare. He almost looked alive again.

It was possible that he was still protecting Jotaro as he had always tried to do, every time he stood between Jolyne and danger. It was possible that was what he had meant to do all along.

He leaned back against the cold stone in an attempt to catch the breath that still pulled shallow. She was in shock. She needed to move. It was only twenty meters. Why wouldn’t she move?

Would you?

Jotaro gazed blankly at Stone Free as Jolyne stared at the pendant he had pressed into her hand.

Would you leave a fight unfinished with a dying man as your rear guard? Let alone family.

He closed his eyes. This isn’t about me.

Isn’t it?

“But…I just…” Don’t cry, don’t cry. “You can’t.”

Last chance.

“I always…” Jotaro swallowed painfully. “I always cared about you.”

Jolyne stared at him as though he had slapped her.

“You’re lying,” she repeated hoarsely. “You covered me just now, and—and the other enemy stole something from you. That’s why you couldn’t…”

Her eyes, round and unblinking as a child’s, were focused on his chest.

“…dodge the…bullet.”

Shit.

Jotaro blinked rapidly, fighting the fuzziness that threatened the edges of his vision. It had been a long time since he had seen this much of his own blood, on his shoes, his coat, dripping to the floor, smeared on the wall. He noted distantly that the bullet appeared to have made a clean exit, wondering whether it would matter that it would likely be left embedded in the wall behind him. Unlikely that their attacker would care enough to track it down—he already had what he wanted. The bullet would stay behind, a monument either to sacrifice or to failure, depending on whether or not Jolyne would just move already—

“I’m…just bleeding a little,” he said softly. “I’ll catch up in…a b—”

“Your chest,” she hissed, ignoring him. “You—”

Stone Free shifted, glancing towards the end of the hallway. Strings unspooled from the tips of its fingers and the ghost’s face closed in on itself in a familiar look of concentration.

“Go—Jolyne—!”

“No. No, no, no, no, no.” Jolyne pointed at him shakily. “You…it can’t—be…”

“JOLYNE!”

Two voices shouted for her, but Jolyne seemed to hear neither as she froze in place. Her expression emptied out and the bullets’ trajectories twisted away, sending them flying harmlessly into the far wall.

Something hard and cold had replaced the devastation in her eyes. The bullets slid inches from her face and she stood unflinching, waiting for them to pass. The gunman stared at the strings hanging from his barrel, unable to comprehend the nature of the sabotage.

I do have one question.

What’s that?

For how long did you intend to keep underestimating her?

I’m sorry?

She’s your daughter. Did you think she was so unlike you?

More string wound towards his ankles as he angrily shook the first round from his gun, brushing it aside like a mess of cobwebs. Jolyne had hardly moved, still staring at her father.

I wanted to believe she could be.

“Shut up,” she said flatly. She almost looked bored.

Distractions that passed for defense or offense on their own merit had always been the most effective. Whether a fly with a taste for human tongues or a sniper, once they took the bait long enough to get pinned, they had already lost. The fly had torn apart like tissue paper, he remembered. For a moment he expected the strings to shoot straight through the man’s body and rip him into pieces.

“Right now,” Jolyne continued, “we’re going to escape out that window. And go to the beach.”

Jotaro couldn’t find the breath to argue. He hoped she would at least have the sense to drop him once his heart gave out. There was no possible benefit to dragging around a corpse that might slow down pursuers in any case, if she was smart enough about where she left it. Sentimentality had cost her enough time.

“Stay out of our way, alright?”

An hour ago he would have thought to warn her about Manhattan Transfer and the obvious lie of the man’s promise to drop his weapon. It no longer felt necessary.

Jolyne broke eye contact with her father to look at the skull she had just bashed in with vague disdain. “I didn’t say a single word about dropping it,” she said sharply. “Was just looking to see what the best angle for pounding you would be.”

She had, it appeared, inherited Jotaro’s preference for finishing the job with his fists.

“I think my favorite was when your chin was aiming a little more to the right.”

Kakyoin hadn’t been much given to that sort of thing. It was strange to see, and stranger to hear.

Using my line?

Not yours. Not mine, either.

His fingertips had gone cold, but watching Jolyne rip into the assassin with natural ferocity left him smiling slightly.

It’s hers.

Their rage was synchronized and deadly, the sound of cracking bones familiar as ever, and the way she moved as though she had never known any other way to be both broke his heart and filled him with impossible hope.

If Jolyne’s mind is this strong…then I’m sure she’ll survive.

III.

sans même devoir lui parler

il sait ce qui ne va pas

“Think I probably fucked up.”

Jolyne leaned back against the damp stone, trying to ignore the feeling that the cell’s walls were seeping into her skin. She barely knew why it was she was trying to talk to the thing. It had never talked back before. Why would it think to answer now, when she needed it so desperately?

When had anything ever been that easy?

They stared at one another silently. That was the threat inherent in solitary confinement, as it turned out. Not just being alone, but being alone with yourself in a way that only unconditional silence could guarantee. She doubted the gnawing feeling in her chest would have been half as strong had she been able to at least hear evidence of other prisoners. Footsteps, or sobbing, or a sneeze once every couple of hours. Even snoring would have been okay, she thought; annoyance was better than nothing. But nothing was what Jolyne had.

Stone Free gazed at her still, impassive behind the strange glasses she had never seen it without. Maybe there was nothing underneath them at all. She imagined reaching for them and taking them off, only to find blank smooth space where eyes should have been.

It probably wouldn’t stop her. Then again, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Jolyne hugged her knees to her chest. A memory flashed, unwelcome, to the front of her mind: her father, half curled up in his office chair, one long leg folded against his chest, the other underneath him. It was strange, she had thought, to see someone so large trying to make himself so small. Stranger still that he so easily fell asleep in front of a glowing screen like that, though it wasn’t exactly uncommon for him.

She had been young, seven or eight, but she still knew drying tears when she saw them, and how to recognize when she had been part of a moment that was meant to leave no witnesses. It was possible that he figured out who threw the blanket clumsily over his shoulders when his cramped legs finally woke him sometime before dawn, but if Jotaro knew, he had kept as quiet about it as she had.

“Something happened.”

She swallowed. Was she really talking to her own Stand? Was she talking to herself? Her father? Who was it she hoped was listening? Did she want anyone to hear her at all?

“Something happened,” Jolyne repeated softly. “It’s—something’s gone wrong, you know, and I think it’s—I think it’s my fault, that it’s all wrong. And, and I don’t know, I don’t know if I can do it. This. And I don’t know what’ll…I don’t know what happens if I can’t.”

She laughed angrily. “Like, this isn’t just, I don’t know, ‘oh, I’m so worried, I don’t know what happens next’ and then I’m about to get up and, and go save the day after I have my shitty little moment. I really feel like I might be fucked and if I’m fucked they’re fucked and he’s fucked and—and…”

I just got you back. You can’t leave now.

The sickly yellow light flickered overhead, threatening to fail altogether. Jolyne glanced up at it fearfully. Stone Free continued to stare at her until the moment passed, the glow reflecting green where it struck the pale blue surface.

“And I wish my dad were here,” Jolyne blurted. She made a convulsive motion as if to cover her mouth.

Not like there’s anyone here to hide it from. Her hands fell limply to her lap and she stared down at them in defeat. “I hate that I wish he were here. I hate it because I…God, I miss hating him, you know? I miss it when I hated him almost as much as I lo—as much as I cared about him. And I, I miss when I couldn’t even tell the two apart because I never needed to.” She shook her head. “I miss not needing to know the difference.”

It made her a little bit ill, to think of her father needing her. To think that Jotaro was even capable of something so soft as needing anyone at all. She preferred to think of him watching her, alert and strong as ever, from somewhere far away. It would almost be easier to think of this all as a cruel sort of test; it would have been easier to accept his nature being a callous one, rather than come to terms with the impossible presence of the warmth she had always craved, knowing it might now be lost to her.

Stone Free sat, cross-legged, still watching her closely, still silent.

“Right. You probably can’t even hear me. You never say anything.”

Jolyne paused.

“You remind me of him.”

She wondered if her father had ever wished his stand would just hit him for once. Fighting it would be easier than sitting here with it just looking at her and looking at her and saying fuck all.

“Just that stupid fucking ora ora shit,” she mumbled, wiping at her eyes. “That’s all you know how to do, isn’t it?”

If she was going to cry, she had to do it quietly. There was a reason for the oppressive silence of the solitary ward, and it didn’t just have to do with punishment by isolation. If any of the surrounding cells’ occupants heard her, even the faintest sob through the thick stone that separated them—I’m dead.

Dead faster than she already expected to be, in any case.

Jolyne buried her face in her arms, trying to crush the tears back down. Just like Hermes had said, right? I don’t think I have time to cry right now.

She wished Hermes were here. Hermes would get her sorry ass off the ground. Or Foo Fighters. Or her father, hell, even her mother, even her shitty ex-boyfriend might be able to piss her off badly enough to push her out of inaction—but Jolyne knew she was alone, more ultimately and completely than she had ever felt herself to be.

At first she barely noticed the hand on her shoulder. Only once the remarkable heat of its touch grew to be too much to ignore did she raise her head and look up at it with blurry eyes.

Stone Free gripped her arm. It peered down at her, and its expression, fixed as it was, seemed to soften.

The second presence, however, was harder to pin down. She didn’t quite see it so much as feel that there was someone else in that cell with her; the face seemed to flicker half into view only when she looked away, fading when she tried to focus on the features as though she were trying to catch the details of a sunspot. A face vaguely remembered from the faded photograph Jotaro used to keep on his desk, or a relic of childhood dreams she never seemed to remember in the morning.

Who are you?

Stone leaned forward, almost hesitantly, and touched its forehead to hers.

If an ordinary guard had passed by then, they would have seen only Jolyne, leaning into what appeared to be empty space with her eyes closed. If they were the right sort of person, or if they hadn’t slept for a day or so, or even if they simply turned away fast enough, they might have seen a young man with pale red hair and cherry-shaped earrings, holding her steady.

IV.

ah sacré papa

dis-moi où es-tu caché?

You should have dragged her out of there.

Kakyoin was silent as he watched Jotaro’s body disappear into the UUV. It was all too familiar, he thought.

I know you hear me. He knew the nature of bullets that refused to land far too well.

Isn’t it your job to protect—isn’t that what Stands do? Protect the user even when they damn well didn’t ask?

It’s my will that’s bound to her. Kakyoin shook his head slightly. It’s not my soul. Her Stand, her spirit.

She should have left me.

Kakyoin shook himself slightly, Stone Free dematerializing as Jolyne raised her hands above her head with a grim expression. Strange, the mannerisms that carried over in the absence of a body. Even Kakyoin, who had been without his now for longer than he’d been alive with it in the first place.

She should have left me, Jotaro repeated. I was already gone.

Kakyoin looked at him sharply. You’re not dead yet.

No? Then what do you call this?

There’s more to do. You’re the only one who can.

Well. He watched the shrinking horizon bitterly. Isn’t that how it always goes?

Whatever happens, happens. Kakyoin laid a hand on his shoulder. You won’t be going on alone.

A feeling he knew, although not one he had needed to remember in a long time. Lying on the gravel in Cairo, staring up at the stars, knowing the heaviness pinning his soul to his stopped heart belonged to someone else, someone whose own crushed body hadn’t yet gone cold on the rooftops above. It hadn’t been fair then and it wasn’t fair now.

Jotaro glanced at him. You always did know how to hold me down.

There is a limit to what I can do for you, I’m sure. But I will fight until the day I reach it. For both of you, Kakyoin added, looking towards Green Dolphin, dwindling rapidly now as the UUV sped away from it.

Why did she stay? Why wouldn’t she just go?

As I said. You completely underestimated her.

You don’t—

You underestimated how far she is willing to go for you. You underestimated how much like you she is and you underestimated how badly she needed what you couldn’t give to her until the very end.

She could have left me.

She was never going to do that.

Dusk turned to night turned to dawn around them. The sense of his body, somewhere far below.

She doesn’t want to lose you before she had the chance to have you in her life knowing that you care. So I don’t know what happens next. You have a lot of lost time to make up for.

I know. Jotaro looked at him, his shape still recognizable despite being so far away from anything it had been to him in life. I miss you.

I’m sorry for how things turned out, but you can’t stop yet. You owe Jolyne more than that.

V.

un jour ou l’autre on sera tous papa

et d’un jour à l’autre on aura disparu

Two steps.

His eyes in pieces, the world gone white-hot and dark.

You were late by two steps.

Had to be a mistake. They had done everything right.

Too late.

Jolyne had been brave—he had been proud—pulled him free from death, it couldn’t come again now—not yet—

Jotaro Kujo…

She understood. She had understood him. He had seen it in her eyes. There hadn’t been enough time. He needed to tell her—to tell her…

…your daughter is your weakness.

Had it all led to this? A weakness to be exploited?

All he had done could fall to nothing, and he accepted that, it was a risk he knew he took every time he stepped between bullet and target, but Jolyne was different. Her hope still blazed, searing, far more than enough to blind any of them. There was no justice in that strong heart suffering such a hopeless fate.

Jolyne.

The last of Dio’s cruelty hadn’t been dodged at all. It had only been flung through time. A strike meant for him thirty years ago, finally landed in the way of a nightmare; the knife was lodged in Jolyne’s side. She still had yet to see him fall.

You’re what matters.

As Jotaro’s vision darkened for the last time, his daughter remained until the end, bright as a dying star.

You always will be.

VI.

serons-nous détestables?

He could not remember landing, only falling, plummeting through an impossibly dark sky towards an ocean with no horizon. He touched down clumsily, the hand that caught him by the arm mid-stumble all that kept him from falling through the water.

“Jolyne—?”

Not Jolyne. Kakyoin blinked up at him with unfocused eyes.

“Your face,” he breathed, reaching for the thick line of light that stretched from forehead to jaw. He pulled his hand back as though he expected Jotaro’s wound to burn him.

“You’re still—?”

He shook his head. “I can’t—I don’t—”

Some distance away, Hermés and Anasui slowly got to their feet, feeling for the bright patches through which death had reached them moments earlier. Hermés paused, her arms folded, before looking up sharply to see a tall young woman with light hair racing towards her. When the woman flung her arms around her, she held her fiercely, cheeks glittering with tears.

Kakyoin staggered back with a gasp, his distant expression collapsing in horror. His form flickered once, then held strong.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I—I’m sorry, I couldn’t—she’s—”

“Hey. Hey.”

He looked down at Jotaro’s hands on his shoulders, unable to meet his eyes.

“I couldn’t save her,” Kakyoin murmured. “I failed y—”

“Don’t you ever fucking say that.”

Jotaro gripped him tighter until he glanced up reluctantly.

“Don’t ever,” he hissed, “say that to me.”

Unfamiliar lights twisted into place overhead, something close to stars but not quite in line with any memories of life. Kakyoin narrowed his eyes.

“Is it usually like that?”

He shook his head slowly. “I’ve never—”

She slammed into her landing too quickly for any attempt to catch her, throwing up curtains of black water that left no stain, rolling back onto her heels with the force of it as though she still expected to run from some unseen danger.

“Emporio—!”

Jolyne leaped to her feet, looking around wildly. Her eyes settled first on Hermés, in the distance, and finally, on her father. Her hand rested unconsciously on the patch of light shining from her side, marking the place where the knife had struck her. A single butterfly that had arrived with her fluttered away, drifting towards Hermés and her sister.

“Dad,” she whispered. “Dad…?”

He had her in his arms before he realized he had moved towards her at all, and she stiffened for only an instant before collapsing back into him. She shook with what felt like a sob, but when he looked down at her face, her eyes were open and dry, almost angry.

“Jolyne,” Jotaro mumbled. “Oh, Jolyne.”

“I’m s…I tried to—I think I—something’s going to…”

She stared up at the sky, at the lights that had appeared with her.

“Emporio,” she said softly. “I gave him…I did everything I—”

“You did beautifully.”

Jolyne flinched, looking back at him with wide eyes.

“I am so proud.” He shook his head with a smile she had never seen before. “I am so proud of you.”

“Oh, shut up,” Jolyne croaked. “Don’t make me—you’re such an asshole.”

She wiped her eyes on his coat and froze when she heard Kakyoin’s muffled giggle. He watched the two of them carefully, still keeping his distance, whether out of respect or hesitancy it remained unclear.

When she met his eyes, she could think only of the old framed photograph from her childhood that had rested on Jotaro’s desk like a tombstone. Jolyne had resented the picture for a long time, the way it took her father away from her. He would pause, put down what he was reading or look away from the screen, easily distracted from his work in a way he never seemed to be when it was Jolyne who wanted his attention. Jotaro went somewhere distant when he looked at that picture. He would still answer, when she called for him, but his eyes were glazed over, far away.

Still she had always wanted to be as close to him as possible, and she had spent enough time in that office to have the faces memorized, enough to recognize the young man standing before her. And yet she felt that she knew him in a closer sense; she not only recognized him, but remembered him.

“I know you, don’t I.”

Jolyne felt like a child again, peering over her father’s arm at that stranger who wasn’t a stranger at all. He blinked at her slowly, almost catlike, and his was a familiar silence.

Gently she pulled herself away from Jotaro, who was clinging to her uncharacteristically tightly, as though he feared she might dissipate if he let go. She squeezed his arm, a reassurance foreign to give, even more foreign to receive.

Facing him she imagined she saw two faces at once, her Stand flickering in and out much the way his face had seemed to that day when their places were reversed. It would have been surprising had she not turned to him already knowing the answer to the question she had barely needed to ask, though she had no words to give either of them that would explain why it was she knew it was true.

He smiled sadly. “Hello, Jolyne.”

Jolyne stared at him, dumbfounded, as he placed his hands on her shoulders. Standing next to her father had dwarfed him, but he was not a short man by any means, and she had to lean back in order to get a good look at his face. He was young, she thought. Too young.

He hesitated, then leaned forward and touched his forehead lightly to hers, and Jolyne knew exactly who he was.

“I wish we could have met,” Kakyoin said quietly, “under better circumstances.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Me too.”

“I’m sorry that I—I couldn’t—”

“Don’t.” Jolyne pushed him back slightly, and when she met his eyes this time she saw the bottomless guilt and grief that rested behind them.

“Don’t,” she repeated. “You…you did…so much. For me—us.”

“I tried to,” Kakyoin murmured. “I tried to—oh!”

He watched Jotaro stifle his smile over the top of Jolyne’s head, eyes growing round. Eternally the teenager far too surprised by affection, but he had known her well for the short time they had together, and he hugged her back after a brief pause.

“You did,” Jolyne said. “You did.”

“At first I thought it was just Jotaro.” Kakyoin glanced at him carefully. “That brought me to you. I was there, and he clearly wanted something to protect you, our wills had—we have been tied to one another for a long time. I assumed…that was all it was. Because it was what he would want.”

The newly born stars circled overhead, moving quickly enough now to leave streaks in the sky as day and night flashed into one another too rapidly to tell apart.

“You were always pretty good at taking care of yourself,” he said, addressing Jotaro directly. “But—I didn’t want you getting proved right again, about what happens to the people you love.”

“Yeah, well.” Jolyne pulled away, watching her reflection in the inky water. “That worked out, didn’t it?”

“Jolyne,” Jotaro said sharply. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.”

Kakyoin chuckled. “There’s something about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.” He spun in place absently, watching the ripples move away, towards Jotaro and Jolyne and then beyond them, to Hermés and Anasui, Weather and F.F. Hermés watched Jolyne, conscious of the moment she needed, but her face glowed with worry, nearly as brightly as the still-fading lines of light that served to echo the wounds on her arms.

“I’m glad it was you,” he said. “I’m proud of you. Whether I—whether it’s my place to be or not…I am.”

VII.

serons-nous admirables?

“Did we…fail?”

The strange black sun that had appeared only moments before began to dissolve as Jotaro watched. “I’m not sure,” he said slowly.

“What was the point?” Jolyne murmured. “Dad, what was the point?”

“I…”

He wanted to give her a better answer. He wanted to tell her about a different ending, one where something underneath the myriad of ways in which he had failed her gave all of it meaning, if not an undercurrent of hope.

“I don’t know.”

Hope had never been Jotaro’s strong point.

“Look at you.” Kakyoin shook his head, almost smiling. “Look at you. Look at both of you.”

Curiously he held his hand against the light and watched as pieces of his form tore away, somehow leaving him no less complete, but not quite solid either.

“All that love. You…you really think it was all for nothing,” he said. “You can’t believe that.”

“Then what…” Jolyne hugged her father harder, her voice muffled now by nature of her face being buried in his coat. “Then—what was it?”

“He’s your father,” Kakyoin said simply. “He’ll be your father again.”

“Noriaki—”

“Next time,” he continued, ignoring Jotaro, “next time, I think, you’ll find each other faster. You may not remember what you—what you did. For one another. You won’t. It won’t be real for you there. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen at all. What you’ve…your lives, whatever they may become, they will have to be a testament to the way you fought. For each other. That’s all I can say with any certainty, but I know it. As well as I can know anything.”

“And what if he leaves again?”

Jotaro stiffened. He closed his eyes, resting his chin on the top of his daughter’s head. It won’t come to that ever again.

Times like this he wished he were a better liar. He never could bluff against Jolyne, after all.

“If I leave.”

Kakyoin watched him with a strange expression that could almost have passed for pride.

“If I leave,” he repeated slowly, “no matter how many times I leave, there will be…I want to believe there could…if there are this many answers…”

Stars tugged gently but insistently at the edges of his form, but he held tight to Jolyne. Last chance to say it, to say any of it, no matter what he allowed himself to believe.

“If there are this many futures,” Jotaro said, “I have to believe—hope…that in at least one of them I worked out how to stay.”

“Do you promise?”

“Jolyne—”

“Dad.” She twisted free from his arms and glared up at him. Jolyne hadn’t cried in front of him like this since she was a child, since she broke her arm falling out of the apricot tree, since the day he left her there in the driveway. She had clung to her mother’s skirt then, hiding her face, but this time it was her father’s sleeve she clutched at, and she looked at him, unhesitating and defiant, as though she were daring him to confront the depth of the love with which she had lived and never had anywhere to put down.

“I’m asking you—” Jolyne swallowed angrily. “You promise me. You promise you’ll catch me when I get there.”

“I can’t…” Jotaro took a deep breath, unable to meet her eyes. “I don’t know—”

“No. Not—look at me.”

Green eyes. He had never thought to remember the last person to make a habit of asking him for impossible things when he looked at her. If he allowed himself to feel his memories whenever they surfaced he would never have been able to move at all.

Kakyoin smiled to himself, unnoticed by father or daughter.

“I will come,” Jotaro said slowly. “I’ll be there.”

“Promise.”

“I…promise.”

Surprising to find it barely felt like a lie. Jolyne smiled at him, and for a moment, he saw not a young woman, but a little girl, waving at him from the far end of the beach as she shouted at him to hurry up.

I don’t want to go in the water without you.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

She looked over his shoulder at Kakyoin and mouthed thank you. Kakyoin winked.

“Good luck,” he called.

“Wait—” Jotaro spun towards her. “Jolyne—!”

She didn’t jump so much as fall; she didn’t fall so much as allow the light to take her. Jotaro may have had an intimate knowledge of being too late, but it was Jolyne who knew when she had locked eyes with a lost cause.

Her smile lingered after her form faded, as though he had looked for too long at a star shining far too brightly for the world in which it had been permitted to exist.

“I’ll see you there,” he whispered. “I’ll come.”

When Kakyoin wrapped his hand around Jotaro’s, he looked down to see an old school coat, his own frame somehow both lighter and heavier. It made sense that Kakyoin would remember him as a teenager, that he might be momentarily defined here by such a thing. Maybe it answered more to his own memories of what they had been to each other. Laws he had no comprehension of and would not have time to come to understand.

“Kind of thought you’d forget how to get scared after being dead this long.” He glanced at Kakyoin, who clung to him in a way that might have cut off circulation if he’d still had it. “You hang on too tight when you get like this.”

Present tense, he realized. Maybe he really had sunk into the past, here at the death of the future.

“I’m not scared to go,” Kakyoin said slowly, his eyes straight ahead. “Wherever it is we’re…wherever we’re going next. I’m not scared to go there.”

“Then what—”

“I’m afraid I won’t…know you there.”

Jotaro stared at him. “You didn’t seem too worried about that when it was Jolyne you were trying to talk down.”

“I was trying to talk you down too.” He chuckled sadly. “She’s your daughter. You’re her father. I think that’s different, I don’t…I—”

“We don’t have time for talking in circles."

The roaring in their ears grew ever louder as the storm’s eye shrank around them.

“We just as easily might have not met at all, Jotaro, you know that?” He shuddered again. “I might have just—one wrong step—or I guess, right step? Might have never, Dio might never have—at all. None of it. Would have just lived and not ever known you.”

“Most people don’t sound so bitter about the concept of not dying before they were out of their teens.”

“Most people aren’t choosing between living and knowing you.”

“I—Jesus Christ, Noriaki.” Jotaro laughed, amazed. “You can’t just say that shit.”

“You asked.”

“Guess so.”

“I…say I get a life back. Sure. Fine. I jump down there, and, and I’m me again, and I get a life back, but it’s not mine, it—it won’t be mine because I, because you won’t be in it. I’ll never even—never even know what’s missing. Just live the whole thing with a hole in my heart.”

“I’ll find you.”

He looked up at Jotaro, startled by the sudden intensity in his voice.

“I’ll find you,” he repeated. “Doesn’t matter if I don’t remember you. I’ll know you. I’ll always know you. And I swear that I’ll find you again.”

Kakyoin stood very still as their universe tore to pieces at his back, staring at Jotaro as he held tightly to his hands.

“Do you believe me?”

He paused and found himself confronted with flashes of lives both past and future, fated and impossible, infinite realities cracking open before him. There must be at least one where we were happy, he thought.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I’ll meet you there.”

VIII.

ca doit faire au moins mille fois que j’ai compté mes doigts

“Oh—I’m sorr—”

Their heads smacked together with a sharp crack. He had meant to reach for the pencils the other student had dropped when they first collided; the boy, it seemed, had had the same idea. He shook his head, trying to chase the stars from his eyes.

You had this look in your eyes, like you had just realized that nothing would be okay ever again. And you tried to smile, you tried to smile at me so that I wouldn’t be afraid, but you were staring at the sky and your hands were shaking and I had no idea what to say to you. I had always been the one to tell you that things would be all right. You got so angry when I tried to tell you that, but I meant it. Every time, I meant it, which was why I couldn’t say it then. No matter how badly I wanted to take your pain away, I couldn’t lie to you.

I felt like I was watching a meteor coming towards the earth, bigger and bigger until it swallowed up the sky, and there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted to tell you that I was afraid for you, and I was afraid for me. Were those things I was even allowed to feel? Am I allowed to be afraid for myself even now? Is my life my own to fear for?

The boy laughed nervously. “Should’ve watched where I was…sorry.”

“Not a big deal. Been hit harder by stray footballs.”

He smiled.

All I ever wanted was to keep you safe.

All I ever wanted was to keep you safe.

“Here.” He handed over a drawing pad, careful to keep it face down. “You an artist?”

“When I want to be.” The boy took it and blew loose red hair out of his face, looking at him curiously.

“What?”

“I—well, most people try to look. At it.”

“Well.” He shrugged. “Figured that’s your business.”

Is it selfish of me, to be glad that it’s me who’s going first? Is it cruel to feel relief? I don’t want to leave you alone. But I don’t want to be alone, either.

We should have had more time. I should have been able to give us more time, I should have been able to give you more time. You were supposed to come home with me on that train. I wasn’t supposed to have to do this alone. Not after knowing what it’s like not to be.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” he said.

“Probably not. I just transferred.”

“Oh.” He offered his hand. The red-haired boy hesitated, then allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. When he saw his face, it took everything he had not to recoil.

The light of dead stars won’t falter when their lives flicker out. As long as there’s someone to see it, that starlight will always find them, as I will always find you. When the stars reach for you from a million miles away you will remember how it felt to be home.

I never wanted to have to learn how to remember you. I always had a shit memory for faces. This isn’t right. It isn’t fair.

“Are you—?” The boy’s face fell, sensing his distress. “Are you okay?”

What could he say? I think I’ve dreamed about you? That he knew his face from nightmares? That he had seen him with his guts punched out, seen him smiling and laughing and dying, with clarity that belonged more to a memory than a dream?

He looked down at their hands, still wound together.

It was never going to be fair.

You lying bastard. You promised.

“Yeah,” he said, forcing a smile until it felt real. “Sorry. Tired. I’m Jotaro. Kujo.”

The boy smiled back with a familiar gentleness.

“My name’s Noriaki,” he said. “Noriaki Kakyoin.”

It was not recognition, when they looked at one another, but the feeling of an echo, the answer to a promise made in another lifetime. They stared at each other curiously, each struck by the sense that this, the first time, was not the first time at all; that this moment had come a million times before and would come a million times again.

You will never be alone. You will never be alone. You will never be alone.

They knew exactly what to expect, and at the same time, knew nothing at all.

IX.

où t’es papa où t’es? où t’es où t’es où papa, où t’es?

Irene stared at the ceiling and waited for her heartbeat to slow. A cool breeze reached her through the open window, and she shivered a little when the goosebumps rose on her shoulders, unwilling to pull the sheets she had kicked off in her sleep back up lest she disturb the notoriously light sleeper at her side. Irene had asked her to close the windows before bed, but she found it difficult to be irritated in any sort of meaningful way.

“Mmmmh.”

“Sorry,” Irene said. “Tried t—”

“Not your fault,” Hermés mumbled, rolling over. She looked blearily up at Irene. “Had the dream again?”

“You can tell.”

“Pulse’s going nuts.”

“So?”

“So it—you know, that’s what woke me up.” She leaned back on her elbows and rolled her neck. “You okay?”

“Sure. Fine.”

“Don’t be a dumbass—hey!”

Irene giggled as Hermés tried and failed to block the pillow with her wrist mid-swing. She wasn’t above banking on things such as morning slowness.

“You’re annoying,” Hermés declared, sinking back down to pull the blankets over her head.

“You love it.”

“I tolerate it.”

“Yeah.” Irene stretched, wincing when her shoulders popped. “Are you gonna want coffee?”

“That shit makes me crazy.”

“You—like, you do understand, you say that every morning and then come over and drink mine anyway.”

The blankets muffled her snort. “What was that you just said about loving it?”

“Oh, fuck yourself.”

“Isn’t that your j—don’t hit me with that thing again!”

Irene laughed and dropped her pillow. “You’re the worst.”

“Yep,” Hermés said proudly. “Don’t ever forget it.”

“Like I—like you’d let me.” The hardwood floor was cold against her feet, still bare despite her father’s repeated stating that if it bothered her so much she should be wearing slippers. On paper Irene was holding out for carpet. If she was honest with herself she knew he was right about cold floors helping her wake up faster, but she certainly wouldn’t have dreamed of saying that to his face.

She leaned over her discarded pillow to kiss Hermés on the cheek.

“Love you,” mumbled Hermés. “Whatever.”

Her smile lingered as she stepped into the quiet hallway, careful to avoid the creaky floorboards just outside her door that had betrayed her so often as a teenager before she learned to sneak back in through the window if she wanted to avoid both her fathers and the consequences of being caught. These days she avoided them out of habit as much as consideration for the others.

She ran her hand absently over the photographs that lined the wall as she passed, stopping to straighten the frames she found crooked. Hermés had made it up there a little over a month ago, represented by a half-stained Polaroid that was treated with the same reverence as the wedding photos that hung above it. She grinned out at Irene, her arms around a disgruntled and very sandy Emporio, though he had only allowed the corner of his face into the picture.

Emporio and F.F. weren’t much for photos, but at least they didn’t make an effort to duck out of frame like Weather did. It certainly wasn’t enough to dissuade her stepfather in any case.

Why’re you so into pictures? she had asked him once, waving a developing photograph gently in front of her face.

He shrugged, smiling. I like to make copies of my memories. You never know how much time you’ve got.

Kinda grim.

I don’t think of it that way. I think we should be proud of living so much that’s worth remembering.

“You’re up early.”

She glanced at the kitchen clock, still persistently running six minutes too fast. Jesus. “Didn’t realize.” Silently she thanked Hermés for not being more ornery about the six a.m. wake up call. “Where’s Noriaki?”

“Still asleep.” Jotaro glanced up from his book. “Water’s already warm.”

“You’re great,” she mumbled. “He got back okay?”

“Mm. Just a little later than he expected.”

“How’re they?”

He paused. “Apparently they might actually…get married. Legally, I mean.”

Irene nearly dropped the mug she was holding. “Are you fucking with me?”

Jotaro chuckled at her expression and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Mohammed said they’ve been talking, but. Likely means it’ll be years before they’re ready to make a decision, you know—forget acting on it.”

“Christ,” she muttered. “I’m gonna lose the bet.”

“The…?” He laughed again. “You made a bet?”

“I thought—well, I thought it wouldn’t happen at all. I mean, we were all, it was crazy enough when they admitted they were together.”

“I remember.”

“They were living together for, like, how long? Before that?”

“Five years. Give or take.”

“You see—!”

Jotaro closed his book carefully. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” he said. “Just remember what I told you about making bets. Never—”

“Never bet something you aren’t ready to lose.” Irene rolled her eyes. “Pretty standard advice, you know.”

“For good reason.”

The smell of cut grass wafted through the open window, accompanied by the early morning chill. It wouldn’t be burned away by the sun for another few hours at the very least. Irene moved to close it, but the salty ocean air stopped her, coaxing her into accepting a little cold in order to let it through.

“You’re still tired,” Jotaro said, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

Irene shrugged. “Fucked up dreams.”

He nodded. “Remember any of them?”

“Not really,” she lied, shaking out the coffee grinder with more than necessary force. “Just didn’t sleep great.”

“Hermés still here?”

“It’s just for another night,” she said quickly. She shifted uncomfortably. “She had, like…she didn’t really tell me. I think probably some, a fight with her sister or—”

“Irene.” Jotaro shook his head, smiling. “She can stay as long as she needs. Just wanted to know.”

“Right. Yeah.”

She glanced at the long, thin birthmark that stretched from her father’s forehead to his chin.

“You ever heard of that shit that’s like—you know, that’s like your birthmarks are how you died in the, in a past life?”

He rested his chin on one hand, eyes on her back. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Kind of fucked up, right?”

“I guess the….”

Irene turned to face him.

“…it would depend on the birthmark,” Jotaro said, scratching unconsciously at his forehead. “You’d have something serious to account for, I think.”

She snorted. “And you wouldn’t?”

“I don’t exactly…put stock in it, I suppose. In things like that.”

“Not enough cited sources, huh?”

“Something like that.” His smirk faded. “I think—well, I…it’s not important.”

“I’ve been having dreams about it,” Irene said quickly, before she could lose her nerve. “Like, seeing shit happen to all of us. With the birthmarks.”

She gestured vaguely in his direction. “Your face. Getting. I…yeah.”

Jotaro narrowed his eyes. “Nightmares?”

“I guess.”

Childish to say that they felt more like memories than dreams, or that she often woke up feeling cold and sad, dissatisfied in a way she couldn’t quite explain. Staring at her side in the mirror, at the patchy blotch of a birthmark she’d had since childhood, trying to shake off the phantom feeling of a knife. Recently, but less frequently, she had found herself watching her father more closely than usual just to be sure that his face was still in one piece.

The chair creaked when she dropped heavily into it and she froze for a moment, waiting for the telltale sounds of feet on the hardwood.

“You know,” Jotaro said slowly. “I used to have those.”

Irene blinked. “You mean nightmares?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Was about your age. A little younger, I guess.”

“They’re a pain in the ass,” she muttered.

“Used to dream I was seeing Noriaki get punched clean through.”

She paused, hand frozen mid-nervous tap on the table. “…Really.”

“Mhm.”

The star-shaped discoloration that took up the better part of Kakyoin’s torso that had fascinated Irene ever since she was a child. She held on to old memories of Jotaro half-heartedly telling her not to stare and Kakyoin laughing brightly when she poked at his stomach.

“Did you ever…tell him?”

“Not at the time.” He shook his head. “We had just met. Would have been a little strange to tell my new friend ‘hey, I’ve been dreaming about your disembowelment’.”

Irene laughed. “If there’s anyone who would take that in stride—”

“—it would be him, I know. Which is—I did tell him. Much later.”

“Tell him what?”

“Dreams.” Jotaro allowed Kakyoin to lean on his shoulders, wincing slightly when elbows dug into his back. “I told you not to sneak up on me.”

“Not my fault you don’t hear me coming,” Kakyoin said. “We aren’t all huge and loud.”

“I’m not loud.”

Kakyoin raised his eyebrows at Irene over the top of her father’s head. She looked away to hide her smile.

“I thought you didn’t buy into that dream reading stuff.” He squinted at the mug in his hands, unable to make out the text. Irritating to need glasses for that sort of thing, but he often expressed that he knew things could be worse. “Jotaro, which one is this?”

“Aquarium. And I don’t,” he added. “Doesn’t mean I can’t talk about it.”

“Sounded like you were talking about your old ones.”

Irene glanced at him and Jotaro shrugged.

“They were…well, you know.”

Kakyoin nodded and yawned. A bird wailed outside, song too shrill to make out a melody.

“You ever think about birthmark reincarnations, Noriaki?”

He blinked. “The—the what?”

“Birthmarks are how you died in a past life.” Irene took a sip of coffee and grimaced. She had been too distracted to remember sugar. “That’s what I’ve heard, I mean.”

“Oh, God, no.” He shuddered. “I mean—I hope not. Look at your dad’s face.”

“Me?” Jotaro stared at him. “What about you?”

“Well…I guess.”

Kakyoin fell silent, watching cream spread like a cloud through the dark liquid. It drove Jotaro crazy, usually, that he rarely bothered with stirring it at all.

“I just don’t like,” he said slowly, “the idea of it all having happened before.”

“I don’t really mind it,” Kakyoin mused. “Second chances are nice.”

Jotaro smiled, shaking his head. “You would look at it like that.”

“And what—what does that mean?”

“Nothing bad—Noriaki!”

Kakyoin grinned and ducked out of the way, winking at Irene. Little surprise that she had developed a fondness for throwing pillows at Hermés, after learning how to be in love by growing up with the two of them.

Jotaro shook his ruffled hair like a large and disgruntled dog.

“I’ll be outside,” Kakyoin told them, pulling his coat from a crowded rack near the door.

“Aren’t you—” Jotaro glanced at the glittering frost only just beginning to melt away from the windowsill. “Isn’t it cold?”

“Well, of course.” He stopped, hand on the doorframe. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“‘There’ll be time to be comfortable when I’m dead’,” Irene said.

“That was…” Jotaro groaned, getting to his feet. “That was about something different.”

He did take up an amazing amount of space, Irene thought. She had always found it comforting.

“Dad,” she said. “Thank you.”

Jotaro set his half-empty mug on the counter. “For?”

“Just—I don’t know. Thank you.”

He paused, turning to watch her with a strange expression that slowly became a smile.

“You’re what matters,” Jotaro said. “You always will be.”

[zamancollective]

The Constructive Agony of Talking Politics at Shabbat (Or How to Survive a Debate with Your Relatives) 

By Gabriella Kamran  

Illustration by Sophie Levy

I wasn’t yet 20 years old and I had already forgotten what it felt like to join my relatives for Shabbat dinner and eat brisket without a side of political commentary. Was that a new phenomenon? Was I too busy spitting tomatoes into napkins as a child that I didn’t notice the moral axioms being thrown above my head? Regardless, charged conversation after charged conversation gradually emerged from background noise while I chewed to a dynamic that captured my interest and charted the course of my intellectual development. 

It seems accurate to say that I entered the fray around the same time I started buying my own clothes. These were the early teenage years: I was testing the waters of feminism, experimenting with political Facebook posts, and learning that not everything I believe to be true is, in fact, the truth. Every young person has a moment of realization that adults can sometimes be profoundly wrong. Mine took place gradually over a series of weekly dinners, as my male relatives argued and I felt an arsenal of my own opinions weighing in my chest. 

I will say with no qualifiers that it is difficult for a fourteen-year-old girl to wedge herself into a conversation with several adult men. First, there is the issue of a quiet voice, not yet amplified by the support of social affirmation. Then there is the matter of being taken seriously — that is, the unspoken surprise that I was not in the living room talking to my girl cousins about nail polish. 

(The aunts, for their part, either ladled soup in the kitchen or listened at the table, inserting a comment when appropriate. For a long time, I interpreted their disinterest as ignorance or resignation to gender norms, but with maturity one gets better at recognizing weariness. I remember once my jaw dropped when a cousin’s grandmother expressed a political opinion out loud- something about Hillary’s foreign policy. I hated myself for being so shocked that she’d have something to say.) 

I learned quickly that family debate is rocky terrain. The post-meal discussion usually unfolded as follows: 

Man 1: This ObamaCare is going to put doctors out of business, I’m telling you. 

Man 2: Just awful. The liberals are pushing us towards socialism. Aunt: We’re just giving more and more money to the lazy bums. Me: What about the majority of poor people who aren’t lazy and were born into poverty? I don’t think anyone genuinely wants to be on welfare. 

Man 2: Oh, no. We send our kids to the conservative schools and they still get brainwashed by liberals. 

Man 1: Question everything your teachers tell you, Gabs. They have an agenda. An agenda. 

Alternatively, the “elders” card was pulled and the conversation stopped short: 

Me: I don’t think you should call people _____ 

Relative: You can’t speak to me like that. How can you disrespect your family?

The more politically conscious I became, the more these dinners began to wear on my nerves. At school, I was learning so much I could almost feel my mind growing into itself. The classic teenage practice of finding oneself was in full force for me as I wrote school newspaper op-eds in my successive editor positions and defined myself in the lines of my rhetoric. Dinner with relatives sucked this pride out of my chest and pulled the plug on my budding confidence. I oscillated between righteous indignation that prompted me to sit firmly in place when the political debate started during our meal and outright fear that anyone would ask me at any point in the night about something of more import than my week’s activities. Family dinners became a matter of fight or flight.  

I took refuge in journalism and books. They seemed to possess more certainty than my relatives’ armchair sociological analyses. I read Betty Friedan, Ta Nehisi Coates, Ari Shavit… and the fact that I considered these all to be radical texts is indicative of how intimidated I felt in political terms. My progressive ideals were no longer inclinations; I could use words like “neoliberal” and “reactionary” to match my relatives’ rhetorical skill. Vocabulary aside, however, a gulf persisted between me and some of the men in my family.

What was this gulf, exactly? Was it a generational gap? Surely an ideological divide existed between every new crop of cousins, fathers and daughters, uncles and nieces. Common wisdom dictates that naïve youth will always be more progressive and open-minded than their older counterparts. It seemed to me, though, that something more was at play here. These Shabbat dinners meant more than a blasé tidal shift in opinions, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. 

The time came for me to go to college, and I was surrounded for the first time by a collection of politically conscious people who had enough intellectual acuity to rigorously critique the elder generation’s values. 

I met friends who told me their grandparents were “hella liberal” and still smoked weed on the weekends, and I beheld these friends in awe. This must have been the diversity they extolled in admissions brochures, the expansion of horizons — but which one of us was living in a bubble? Then there were the students who seemed to have swallowed their relatives’ platitudes like pills, rolling their eyes when they passed a student protest or snickering at T.A.’s requests to state our preferred gender pronouns. These students made me the most uneasy.  

Mostly, though, college brought me a network of friends who shared my experience. By this time we had all developed standby strategies to deal with opinionated table talk: some blocked out the rhetoric and ate their khoresht in peace, and some, like me, often ventured back into the weekly scuffles like moths to a partisan flame.  

But, of course, it was more than righteous indignation that pulled me back into the tides of argument. The supposed radical leftist hegemony on college campuses gave my relatives plenty of dinner table fodder on the nights when I made the ten-minute journey from my dorm to their dining rooms. They particularly liked to raise an issue with my chosen minor, Gender Studies, which they denounced as man-hating. As they prodded me about my professors in order to attack their liberal agendas, I felt the familiar nagging anxiety: Was the leftist haven I found in college making me tone-deaf, insular under the pretense of high-minded morality? I felt obligated to listen to every dismissal of Hillary Clinton, every racial slur, and every condemnation of Islam. This was my internal protest at their accusations of narrow-mindedness. 

I still wondered what was really new in our political conversations. Topics had changed — Obama and McCain became Hillary and Trump, Al Qaeda became ISIS, gay became LGBTQIA+ — but the emotions I had as a young progressive facing several elder conservatives were constant. What were we all feeling during those semi-heated exchanges? We one-upped each other and attacked arguments at weak points, but what was the seed of all this debate? Perhaps it was a sense of familial betrayal. 

We swear to keep family and business separate but there is no such promise when it comes to politics, although we know they are equally divisive. “The personal is political” is also true in reverse — to disparage someone’s worldview is an affront to their world. Political standpoints are currents that run deeper than the surface waters of opinion. Debate is healthy and insult is not, and the line between them is fine. 

One August night before my freshman year of college, one family member reminded me once again to question everything my professors would tell me.  

“These are a different kind of people. Really liberal. They don’t think like us.” 

I wondered briefly what he meant by “us,” considering our often radically divergent opinions. He had been at the dinner table all these years — could it be that he never truly listened to me? 

My cousin leaned toward me, interrupting my thoughts. 

“Or you could come back from college a flaming liberal, and we’ll still love you.”

 I was struck by the resonance of my cousin’s joke, and I still think about it often. By the very merit of calling one another family, we make an implicit promise to stand by one another and love unconditionally – that is, regardless of ideology. When we sit across the dining room table, embroidered white tablecloth stretching between us, and launch attacks intended not to teach, not to strengthen, but to change, there is a sense of combat that doesn’t belong in a family. These mealtime political debates are not a leisurely pastime but a battle driven by an attempt to win, and to win means to vanquish. Hovering over the platters of chicken and tadig is an intention to change one another, and the promise of loyalty feels contingent upon your next comeback.  

Isn’t that what families do, though? We change each other. Any amateur psychologist will tell you that our personalities begin at home. Parents, and to an extent other relatives, are charged with the responsibility of edifying their children. It takes a village, and a large part of this is the admonitions and proverbs of the villagers. Perhaps my relatives feel this weight of social obligation propelling them forward as they critique my beliefs. They crave my confirmation that they are succeeding in their efforts. Maybe when I push back and hold my own, they feel some kind of failure. 

There’s a Jewish parable in which a sage, faced with a crowd of scholars who disagree with his judgment, asks God to determine who is correct. God declines to comment. The wise men debate and eventually move forward with a decision. From heaven, God laughs with joy: “My sons have defeated me!” 

The goal of true mentorship has never been indoctrination. Young people look to their beloved elders to create some kind of safe space to learn to walk, to stumble, to mess up. The goal is that eventually, the pupil becomes the teacher. A student who recites their teachers’ talking points is a student lost.  

Through the ages, a 7 p.m. roundtable over plates of freshly-cooked dinner has been the family’s classroom. The curriculum is set by the routine inquiries of “What did you learn at school today?” and, “How was work?” Some families study in groups of three, and some are lucky enough to learn alongside dozens. I should hope that men in my family take enough interest in my growth to stretch my mind and challenge my thinking. So, too, should they hope I prove them wrong sometimes. 

[calleo-bricriu]

Aberforth is the FUN Dumbledore.

(( Another one I meant to consolidate into one post ages ago and forgot about until, oddly, I got to the part in Hogwarts Mystery where you meet Aberforth Dumbledore.

Sadly, I'm pretty sure @theotherdumbledore​ has disappeared; they were away once for a few months and came back, then disappeared again. :(

Of course, if they ever do come back, I'd love to pick this one back up.

Edits for spelling, grammar, clarity, etc...have been done where needed.

Somewhere in the distance, I’m sure @lamentedhope​ either has another massive headache or is just doing the screaming internally thing.

The start ))

“Look mate, I’m next door. I heard you. Your… noise. Last night.”"

“Oh! Right, sorry about that; it all went a bit sideways at one point and I lost the silencing charms, two windows and about a third of the Southern wall,” Calleo laughed, “I’d call the fire damage minimal, but I keep finding bits of it everywhere so I can’t necessarily get an accurate gauge of that right now.”

“It’s probably all right–ah–did I wake you, then? Reckon I owe you a drink if I did.” Smooth. Offer the man who owns an entire pub a drink.

Aberforth frowned and looked at the other man, both curiosity and vexation in his eyes. “What were you even doing? Some experimental magic or what?” he grunted, lifted his wand and stepped inside the room.

He started to repair the damage while waiting for an answer, waving his wand in circles to gather up the pieces of broken window.

“I thought that you could use a hand. And you don’t owe me anything. I was just… Worried” he grunted again, shrugs like it was no big deal to him. Like he actually didn’t care.

“Exactly that!” Calleo replied with a grin, “It’s one hell of a hobby. Usually doesn’t go too badly, sometimes causes something or other to explode, light up, or melt. Wood melts into liquid if you screw it up badly enough. Or succeed. Which it is would depend on how you look at it.”

He waved his own wand, both to check for remaining fire and to clean up bits of debris, “I’ve never really liked calling anything a failure, though; it usually isn’t, it’s just a success in a way you hadn’t considered as a possibility before seeing the result.”

“Failure,” Calleo picked up a few books that had fallen, “is just a way to talk yourself out of a path that might be potentially more interesting. Unexpected success is a much better turn of phrase.”

He tilted his head slightly at the mention of worry, and met it with a smile and a shrug of his own, “Ah–right, well, I never do mind a hand, but there really is no need to worry. I am careful, despite what the room might indicate at the moment. Haven’t died yet, at any rate.”

Calleo stopped to consider his last statement, “Been close a few times–closer than I’d generally like to be, to be honest–that that’s bound to happen.”

If any part of him had stopped to consider that maybe he could be a bit reckless at times and should probably take some steps to control that sort of impulse, it faded quickly and he very cheerfully asked the other, "Do you? Experiment with magic, I mean.”

“Failure is when you screw up so badly that you get yourself homeless. Or killed. Failure means you should slow down and give another thought to the whole project. And this,” Aberforth gestured to the room, “was a failure.”

“Are you sure this experiment is worth your life?” He sighed and lifted up couple of fallen paintings. “ I can’t even imagine what this spell of your should have done if this was the unexpected solution. What you were trying to do?”

When Calleo asked about his history with experimental magic, Aberforth chuckled a little. “Well, actually, I have made couple of spells and brewed some unique potions during the past few decades.” He smiled a little smile, feeling proud of himself.

He also resumed repair the wall, rocks banging together when they land back to their places. “It was a long time ago but I really enjoyed it. It made me feel smart, you know? Maybe…” A hesitation. “

“Maybe I could help you out? I’m not very good but I’m sure that I won’t blow down your house or anything.”

Aberforth silently hoped that Calleo would say yes. He had been lonely for the past couple of weeks, customers were gone and Matey was sick so the goat slept a lot and Abe didn’t want to disturb him.

“That–is also an accurate interpretation of failure, though, in fairness, homes can be rebuilt or moved. Death is slightly more permanent, but still not technically a failure. I view it more as a potentially unexpected shift in priorities of where one spends the majority of one’s time.”

“I’d prefer not to die, if given the choice, but if it happens it happens,” Calleo added with a lazy shrug.

“This,” at the question of what he was trying to do, Calleo perked up noticeably, “was not technically experimental magic but more experimental tying together of two existing spells; I have a slight problem with being told something is impossible and often like to try and prove that it isn’t.”

“What I was trying to do was to tie a chaser to a curse that’s legitimately not anything I’d ever use against someone; just wanted to see if I could couple the two and get around that ‘requires line of sight’ limitation. And to see if it’d work.”

“It took it just fine, oddly enough, it was more that I…didn’t. I mean, I did, but only for a few seconds before it required a bit more control to remain under control, if that makes even the slightest bit of sense,” he laughed, “Pulled the chaser off and managed to grab control of it again before it fully hit the wall we’re currently repairing. If I hadn’t, honestly, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world but it would have been the end of that wall.”

Calleo waved his wand again, sending more pieces of debris back to their proper places, “Took less than five seconds total, despite how long winded I just was about it.”

He stopped speaking entirely when Aberforth mentioned that he used to experiment a bit and offered to lend a hand.  It was, if nothing else, an interesting proposal and the other Wizard hasn’t just called in authorities, which was also a nice bonus. Never fun to deal with the Ministry when experimental magic went off the rails. Despite his position there, and that it was in the Department of Mysteries’ Research Wing, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement could still be a bit of a hassle.

“I would, I think, enjoy that immensely!  I can’t promise that I’ll listen if you tell me I’m doing something stupid or high risk, but I will take it under advisement and give you full rights to say, 'I told you so.’ if the outcome is a bad one.”

“Could be fun, dragging that ’used to’ out of retirement, yeah?” This time the grin was significantly more playful than cheerful.

“Oh!” Calleo snapped his fingers as a sudden thought struck, “If cursing’s not really a thing you’re into, just let me know; it’s easily avoidable."

Aberforth listened while the other Wizard talked and thought to himself, "How the hell he is able to talk so much?" It’s not a bad thing, he just wasn't used to it. His pub was more a quiet ‘let’s-just-drink’-kind a place.

Calleo's babbling made him smile, though. It reminded him of home, of Ariana’s talking while they were feeding the goats.

He looked at the repaired wall and nodded to himself before he started to clean the candle wax off the floor. He was pretty sure that some of them had been on that wood before the accident happened. Calleo seemed to be that kind of a Wizard who would burn the candle at both ends when his mind was on something.

“You don’t have to avoid anything. I have seen and done much  worse things that you could even think of.” he sighed and waved his hand.

“I may be little rusty, it has been so long I have done everything experimental but it would be nice, yeah. Tying two spells together doesn’t sound so difficult, though. It depends on the curse, right?” he looked at Calleo over his shoulder before turning to face him.

“Let’s try it again. I want to see what we are working on here. You need a proper target to your tests, I can make a counter spell. Maybe we can figure out what went wrong.”

Maybe this was the new liquor talking, but Aberforth was really enjoying this. Talking with someone who didn’t seem to care about his reputation or his brother, making something new with them outside of those two all too common contexts. Before this Matey was his only experimenting partner and his ideas and opinions were hard to understand.

“Yeah?” Calleo answered cheerfully, “Ever hit a living thing with Nihilus? I have–not a person, just a rat that a friend of mine found in his office at work.”

“Still,” he shook his head, still smiling somehow, “can’t say I’d recommend it. It’s also why I cap myself at maybe two drinks. Turns out if I throw all inhibition out the window I don’t much like what I’m capable of doing in that state.”

“BUT,” Calleo clapped his hands together once, “we’re not dealing with that curse and I wouldn’t trust it on a chaser anyway, it’s hard enough to control by itself. This time I was just toying with its messier cousin,” Calleo busied himself tidying up again. It seemed almost impossible that he could be either still or quiet.

“Aside from one time I hit a mouse with Excidium, I wouldn’t use it on anything living; wouldn’t even hit the mouse again if given the chance again. All the punch of Nihilus with meat bits splattered so widely across a room that it takes weeks to find it all. Same end result, though,” he shrugged.

Now and again, Calleo glanced over at Aberforth, not for a reaction so much as it was just to see if the poor man was trying to get a word in edgewise.

“Usually, it’s just a line of sight sort of curse, right? It doesn’t even take aim very well unless you’ve got one hell of a grip on it; I use it for practicing maintaining high levels of control and it’s started to be a bit too easy. Always goes where I tell it to go, doesn’t even try to wrench away anymore.”

“It’s a lot harder to force it to attach to a chaser and follow a moving target; the chaser itself can’t get a strong enough attachment to direct it, so there’s an element of manual control. Lose that, the chaser snaps off and goes out, and that particular curse doesn’t just keep on the path it was on, it tries to circle back to whoever cast it. The only reason I caught the mouse was it was running in a fairly straight line.”

“I can catch it if it breaks loose again–or at least before it hits anything; the last one didn’t hit anything hard enough to go completely off, I just caught it and detonated it mid-air, which is what made most of the noise,” he added sheepishly.

“Ah–if I’m talking too much just hit me with a silencing charm or something. Can’t promise I won’t brush it away and keep going, but it might help get the hint across.”

Aberforth had to sit down while Calleo explained his tests and studies so he could keep up with the train of thoughts. It all sounded so magnificent and interesting but, as he had said, the last time he had done any experimental magic had been long ago.

If he was being completely honest with himself, he had hardly used any magic in months.

“Oh, you’re not talking too much.” he groaned and shook his head. “It’s nice actually.” he almost whispered, smiling to his beard. Realising that he had been staring at his shoes and smiling like an idiot was likely not making the best ‘I-really-can-help-you’-impression, he coughed and stood up, walking next to a crack on the floor and filling it up with splinters.

“Let’s fix this place up so you can continue with your studies.” he nodded to himself and gave Calleo another quick look over his shoulder.

“But you are saying that you need a moving but not-living target for your tests, right? Have you tested it on a patronus or some spell like that or try moving an object with a spell? You need more room as well, I don’t want to have to fix the walls again…” he rubbed his chin and scratched his beard while thinking.

First, Aberforth considered the cellar of his bar. It was quite roomy and quiet and he is certain that no-one would ever come there to investigate magical experiments.

But there was that risk of blowing the ceiling of or breaking the painting of his dear sister or spilling the liquor all over the place. And he had done a lot of work with those bottles. So maybe the tavern is not the best place. But it was the only place he knew and…

Wait.

He knew one another place, with lot of space, peace and quiet. He just had tried to forgot it, all about it.

He lifted his eyes to Calleo. “I think I know a place were we can practise and test those spells of yours without worrying about the Ministry or lack of space.”

Well, he hadn’t been hit with a silencing charm. That was always a good sign. Being told it was nice, however, caught Calleo completely off guard, considering the subject matter and that he’d nearly completely (accidentally!) destroyed a room in the middle of the night.

“Nice is–not exactly the answer I was expecting, but I’ll definitely take it. Beats most of the alternatives!” He added with a laugh.

“Most people mind. Not necessarily the damage, more what caused the damage, and then they start lecturing me as if I don’t know exactly what it is I’m playing with; and it really is playing, it just happens to fall in line with my actual job as well more often than not. I just get paid to play with it during the week. Been told I play ‘too rough’ by more than one person anyway.”

“Moving and non-living would be best, I’m not really ever completely on board with the idea of killing things if it’s not absolutely necessary. I can, it’s just unpleasant, even more so when using something like Excidium.”

Calleo paused and shook his head, “Death is one thing; something dies, it either moves on or remains behind as a ghost, but it still exists. It’s not gone, it’s just somewhere else. Completely removing all aspects of a living thing from existence itself is–another, and not one I’d care to experience again.” Calleo shrugged that line of thinking off quickly, re-focusing on putting the room back together and on the rest of the conversation.

“I haven’t tried it with a patronus, primarily because I’ve never bothered trying to cast one. Never had the need for it which, before you say it, I know damn well isn’t an excuse.”

Calleo finally stopped standing there and just watching Aberforth repair the damage to the room and got to work on it as well, “I should think trying to blast a patronus into oblivion might make it not–return the next time? Or at least not want to.”

And then, came an offer Calleo would never have expected.

It was a jarring enough offer to cause him to stop mid-repair of a section of the wall and just sort of stare at Aberforth in mildly stunned silence for a minute.

Aberforth had a reputation, and it was the sort of reputation that got people barred from the premises sometimes for just looking at another patron the wrong way or mentioning anything about the goat in the building, no matter how benign.

And Calleo had nearly blasted an entire room of the building apart using a notoriously dangerous, very lethal curse, and–had not only not been kicked out, he’d been invited to a presumably better place to continue messing about with it.

That should have raised every possible alarm but, Calleo being Calleo, ignored all of that and flashed a bright grin at Aberforth’s suggestion, “Brilliant! I’m in. So–when are we leaving? If it’s now, just go ahead and grab me. Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s done that and dragged me out somewhere else.”

Aberforth had been sure that this would be the moment when Calleo coughed awkwardly and told him that ‘Well, come to think of it, I think I’m better off alone, but thanks!’ So, when he got excited instead Aberforth’s mouth just popped open.

He couldn’t believe it. Was he actually interacting with another human being successfully?

Weird.

“Are you serious? I mean, we can leave right away if you don’t need anything with you. It has been long time since I have used apparition but I think I can still do it…” he mumbled, putting his wand to his sleeve and walking over to Calleo.

“I’ll try to be careful,” he smiled and grabbed Calleo's arm before he closing his eyes and the two men disappeared from the room, leaving only a cloud of dust in the air.

They reappeared in the middle of an oat field, or at least it once had been an oat field; Golden plants had turned into grey twigs, weeds had used all of the nutrients from the ground and under the weeds are years worth of true grass crops so the ground feels soft and bouncy under the feet.

One could see a wooden house and a little barn in the distance. The house looked abandoned, like no-one hadn’t been there in centuries and the roof of the barn has collapsed, probably because of heavy rains and the weight of snow. Aberforth looked at the house and smiled sadly.

“The neighbour lives couple of kilometres away so we should have peace and quiet.” he said, finally remembering to let go of Calleo’s arm and took couple of steps closer to the barn.

“I think we still have our old buldger in the barn, we could try that… Or I can use Leviosa to some objects if you want to have more steady and predictable target. Don’t mind the fields, they are practically mine so we can destroy them as much as we want.”

“So, do you want to wait the sunrise or start right away?”

When they reappeared, the first words out of Calleo’s mouth were, “No need to be careful with me, mate. My job alone puts me in close contact with things designed to injure or kill, not to mention I occasionally make it a point to make terrible things even worse just to see if it’s possible, and that’s before even getting into the sort of people I end up dealing with on a regular basis! I stopped counting the amount of times on any given day when I should have died but didn’t several years ago.”

“Awful people, for the most part, you should see the records of some of them; but networking is networking.” Calleo casually looked around the area, more to get an idea of what was there than to find out where they were. Where they were was obvious enough: A field with a couple of abandoned buildings. Nice, open, and nobody else around to disturb.

“It’d be nice to live somewhere with the nearest neighbour a few kilometres out. I don’t live in the largest town, but there are still a few hundred people and it’s oddly all packed together for as small as it is. All Muggle too! So, I get to be extra careful. With everything.” Calleo added with a laugh.

“I’ve been told my house is lit up like a prison to anyone who can see the warding. Always disagreed with that, as it’s not designed to keep anything in so much as it’s designed to keep anyone who isn’t invited out.”

Lazily, Calleo flicked his blackthorn wand out and in a sweeping motion, putting up a wide spread of silencing charms anyway, just to be on the safe side.

He then turned its aim toward the ground and spread out a rather large layer of protective warding over the plants, “I don’t want to–hit any of them. Or anything living under the grass. Thing is, plants have–I’m not sure if it’s souls or what, but I’ve got the ghost of one that I’m fairly certain is spitefully hanging about my garden. Knowing that, I’d feel a bit awful if I blasted any of the living ones into oblivion. If the aim goes off it’ll just chew up the warding and not what’s underneath it.”

“There!” Finally, he finished with the cheerful babbling explanation of what he was doing, “Now then! A bludger could be interesting, since those things are pretty well charmed to chase after people. That’d add one hell of an incentive to keep things under control–oh! And you’d get to see the colour change that curse does as it approaches and moves away from living things. Goes from yellow to red. It’ll still hit the bludger either way. Do you mind an exploding bludger?”

For a few minutes, Calleo seemed to be considering the question as to whether to wait or not and eventually shrugged, “Doesn’t matter to me, really; daylight makes things easier to see, but also gives a less spectacular light show when that curse is trailing something.”

“It’s interesting when it gets close; if you’ve ever had a killing curse just miss, you probably know the cold rush of air it leaves in its wake. This one is–” Calleo paused, “It’s different. Colder, and somehow burning hot at the same time.”

“I’m not a fan of Quidditch so an exploding bludger is okay with me.” Aberforth shrugged idly and lifted his wand, turning his eyes toward the collapsed barn.

“Accio trunk!” he yelled and the sound of pieces of the roof to lifting and turning before eventually collapsing again when the heavy wooden trunk dug it’s way out temporarily shattered the quiet.

“I think it would be interesting to see that light show of yours so let’s start right away. We can sleep in the house when the morning comes."

"You can stay as long as you want, nobody misses or needs this place anymore.” he nodded to himself and opened the trunk. He stared at the balls, tightly tied to their own places.

They were covered in dust and splinters but seemed otherwise intact and functioning. The bludgers had already started to struggle, trying to hit the man who was looking at them.

There was other equipment as well such as a helmet, a pair of thick gloves and a bat lying in the bottom of the trunk. Aberforth stared at the pieces from his past and smiled.

“Ever had a killing curse just miss?”  The smiled faded at Calleo's question.

He remembered how it felt. The coldness, the reaper trying to get a grip from the heart. It had felt like a dark, heavy cloud had tried to swallow him. But, the feeling when it missed it’s target was much more terrifying. He felt the pain of looking at his collapsed sister, the numbness and coldness that surrounded him.

The silence was the worst. Not crying, not cursing, just silence. Like the world had stopped to witness it.

“Cold and burning hot at the same time, you say? Hmm… It sounds like the feeling when you try to take the cauldron from the flames: it’s so hot that brains think it’s cold.” he murmured and took the bat from the bottom of the trunk, put the helmet on and crouched next to the trunk.

“We can try the snitch as well if you like. It’s trajectory it’s much more difficult to predict so it would be more difficult to hit as well. Not to mention the size and color difference between it and the bludger…”

Suddenly, in a blink of an eye, the first bludger’s old, rusty chains gave up and let the black ball loose.

It flung itself through the air, gathering up some speed and power before heading straight towards Calleo.

“The scoring system is completely irrational,” Calleo frowned at the trunk, as though it were somehow the fault of the Quidditch balls inside, “If you can only win the game by catching the Snitch, why have goals for anything else at all? Just send everyone after the damn Snitch!”

He laughed and shook his head, “One of my friends at school was on the Slytherin team as a Beater; I once asked him to, after the Keeper had the Quaffle, knock the Keeper through the goal to see if it counted as a point.”

“It did, if you were curious,. I don’t know if that’s in the rules or if Professor Dumbledore just thought it was creative enough that it deserved a point,” he eyed the struggling Bludgers warily. He’d never been hit with one as he’d never played the game, but he knew full well that they were capable of causing some pretty extensive bodily harm. He’d definitely had people sent to the hospital wing at school after asking his friend Braxford to whack someone in the head with it.

Calleo had intended to elaborate on the hot-cold topic and on using a snitch as well when one of the bludgers broke loose and headed at him. Whatever he said must have been some sort of profanity or, at least, was meant as one as he ducked out of the way and hit the ball with a spell just to knock it back. Way back. Back far enough that it wouldn’t be coming at his face in an instant at least, and cast the coupled spells.

The chasing charm itself held no particular look to it or, if it did, it was eclipsed by the vivid yellow of the curse as it began to chase its wobbly, weaving target. For the moment, Calleo kept it just slow enough to not immediately catch it and blast it into tiny pieces; the point, after all, was to make it chase the bludger and keep control of it, so he purposely put some brakes on it.

He kept it close, within a centimetre or two of the ball, but didn’t let it connect just yet.

The bludger, being a bludger, soon circled back toward the two the curse trailing it changed. The closer it got, the easier it became to see that it made no hesitation or attempt to conceal its desire to stop chasing the bludger and slam into one of the two living creatures in its path. In the dark, the colour change was obvious, brilliantly frightening, and lit the entire area shifting from the vibrant yellow, to orange, to–as Calleo narrowly dodged being hit in the head with a bludger–a bright, searing red. As it passed with its target, and more distance was created, the curse slowly shifted back through orange to yellow. In its wake, it left the feeling of nothing.

Cold, but wrong.

Completely wrong.

The sort of wrong that, to Calleo at least, gave the distinctly loud impression that one should immediately leave the area.

And, then, it was back, circling toward them with the bludger. Another streak of light, another streak of cold, and it was gone again.

“When I don’t have this chasing something, I often toss it back and forth in my office like a horrid little ball. It’s much easier to control that way. Just push it back and forth–did you notice how, whenever it gets close, it tries to wrench itself away from the target and come at me?” Calleo laughed, which may not have been the most appropriate reaction, and spoke to Aberforth as though they were back at the pub chatting over drinks instead of--this. Throwing beyond lethal curses to chase old Quidditch equipment, with nothing but respective skill and control standing between either of them and complete destruction.

“It does that in general, you know; this spell is designed to destroy the one casting it if they can’t manage the mental wherewithal to do what they claimed they wanted to do in the first place.”

“Good thing I have no trouble destroying a bludger, I guess!” Calleo let it loop back toward and past them one more time before letting go of the restraint he’d kept on the curse once the bludger was at a distance far enough that being hit with shrapnel was unlikely.

When it hit, it was less spectacular than one might have imagined. The curse seemed as if it engulfed the bludger rather than slammed into it despite the result being tiny pieces of bludger scattered around the field.

“I don’t think I’d want to know the sort of person who could successfully hit another person with that, you know,” Calleo slowly lowered his wand and started toward the impact area, “it was hard enough hitting a mouse, and I still feel terrible about that. I don’t even like mice.”

After a moment of inspecting the debris that was there yet somehow not there at all, Calleo sat down on the ground, leaned back on his hands and tilting his head in a vaguely bird-like manner so he was looking mostly at Aberforth again, “Let the Snitch out.”

The light show on something that moved as erratically as a Snitch would probably light up the remaining night sky better anyway.

[sserpente]

A/N: Request from @pegxcarter. I changed it from Christmas to New Year’s Eve but here we go! Also, I started Season 3 of Lucifer last night, it’s so damn good.

Words: 1590 Warnings: implied smut

“I’m neglecting a case for this, so it better be good.” Chloe Decker appeared stressed out, to say the least, when she arrived at the Lux.

Lucifer’s shit-eating grin widened when she descended the stairs and came to a halt next to the bar. “Come on, Detective, it’s New Year’s Eve!”

“It’s not until I’ve solved this case, Lucifer. A case which you promised to help me with,”

“Yes, I know, I’ll be getting to that but this is way more important. You do remember (Y/N), don’t you?”

Chloe raised an eyebrow, anticipating his next words. “That girl Maze was dating?”

“Is dating,” the demon tossed in, swinging herself over the bar with a bottle of Vodka in hand. “She’s been my girlfriend for a whole year, Decker.”

“It will take me some more time to get used to that. So why did you call me here, what does that have to do with me?”

“I need your help. How exactly do people on Earth get married?” Maze flicked her tongue, wiggling her eyebrows at her.

“Married? You want to get married? Are you going to propose to her?”

“At midnight, to be exact, thought that would be awesome. So what do I do, do I get on my knees, do I…”

“Maze, that’s great! But… you know that marrying someone means you’ll spend the rest of your life with them and don’t have sex with others anymore, right?” Chloe interrupted, her gaze scrutinising and suspicious.

“Yes, Decker, I know that,” Maze rolled her eyes. “We’ve had threesomes before, our relationship is flexible. So what do I need to do?”

Chloe hesitated, ignoring her sexual comment. “Why didn’t you just ask Lucifer, I mean…”

“Lucifer is the devil.”

“Of course,”

“And he doesn’t know how a woman wants to be proposed to. You’ve already been married once, how did Dan do it?”

Lucifer hissed, faking a hurt expression. “Maze, you might have noticed but the Detective’s first marriage was a failure. And I can be very romantic!”

“Yeah, thank you, Lucifer.” Sarcasm was dripping from Chloe’s voice when she continued. “You buy her a ring and at midnight, you get on one knee and ask her to marry you. Are you absolutely sure about this? Marriage is a serious step.”

“Yes, Decker, I’m sure.” Maze nodded, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Then just… be yourself. I’ll be here tonight if you need me. Lucifer, are you coming?”

Lucifer hesitated, his lips parting. “Are you sure she should be herself? It’s Maze we’re talking of.”

The demon only shook her head when Chloe wrapped her hand around his arm and dragged him outside to get that case done.

It wasn’t the first time Maze texted you some last minute instructions as to how you would spend the night. This time, she asked you to wear that ‘fancy black dress that brings out your boobs’ and meet her at Lucifer’s club at 9PM, three hours before midnight.

She’d told you she’d be there earlier to help him prepare everything for a legendary New Year’s Eve party, but since you had some chores you wanted to get done before 2018 anyway, you didn’t bother.

It was rather exhausting, being her girlfriend. Believing she was an actual demon from hell and morally coming to terms with that had been a hell of a huge step for you, especially since Lucifer himself was supposed to be the devil but somehow… you were still here. You had fallen for a demon girl who had stolen your heart.

It had all started with a one-night stand. So many orgasms… you swallowed thickly, putting the last plates in the dishwasher. That wasn’t the point. The point was you had met her again and again and again until you had proposed a relationship and, much to your surprise, she had agreed.

Mazikeen could be adorable if only she wanted to. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would cuddle with you and watch a cheesy movie but rather spent hours finding new ways to have sex, like that one time when she cuffed you to her sex swing but then accidentally lost the keys but she certainly made up for it by trying. Her cooking was getting better and last time she did the laundry, it hadn’t come out in new colours.

A whole year had passed since you had officially started dating, a year full of amazing and adventurous sex and the realisation you loved this crazy demon girl. She hadn’t said it back yet but that was fine—she’d need more time and you were willing to give it to her.

It was almost 9PM when you finally arrived at the Lux by taxi, your black dress barely covering your body. Even in LA it was way too cold for your liking at night and you instantly regretted not bringing your vest.

“Hey, Baby.” Maze possessively grabbed your waist and pulled you close, your freezing forgotten. You hadn’t even noticed her approaching until you felt her hands around you, her lips demanding a sweet kiss before she led you inside.

As usual, the club was full. Loud music roared through the vast room, the bass vibrating in your chest and the many lights blinding your sight for a second. Maze instantly dragged you over to the bar where she handed you a red drink and forced you to clink glasses.

“Maze, I don’t wanna be drunk just yet, it’s barely ten o’clock.”

The demon girl pursed her lips. “Trust me, I do. You look hot by the way.”

“Thanks, so do you.” You absolutely loved her clothing style. Tonight, she wore a black corset with rivets, a tight leather skirt and high heels, with her dark hair was falling over her shoulders seductively. It made you wanting to pounce on her and lure her to one of those empty rooms in the back. Even the restroom would do for a quickie—she really had depraved you somewhat.

“I can’t wait to get you out of this dress though.” Maze continued as if she had read your thoughts, emptying another shot. A naughty grin crept up on your face when you reached for her hand, ensuring you two would have a lot of fun tonight.

It was shortly before midnight you finally found Lucifer and Chloe in the crowd of people dancing like the planet would stop spinning in 2018. Strangely, it seemed like they were both trying to read your expression, awaiting something you didn’t know anything about yet.

Smiling, you shrugged it off. As for now, you wanted to celebrate with this crazy demon girl beside you and when the clock finally struck midnight and the guests in the club cheered and screamed and yelled, clinking glasses and hugging, you turned to Maze to give her a passionate kiss.

“You know, maybe I can get used to it. She looks really happy,” Chloe remarked over the audacity in the club, her arms crossed.

“(Y/N)… I need to ask you something.” Maze started when you pulled away, both your lips swollen and your lipstick smeared across your chin.

“I know I’m not always easy to be around. I hate chores and I hate cheesy movies and lazy cuddling on Sundays.”

“I know that,” you giggled. The alcohol was taking its toll on you but you were safe to say you were sober.

“I’ve been with a lot of men… and women since I came here and it’s been fun, really… but none of them was you.” She continued nervously. You had never seen Maze nervous. Alarmed, maybe but never nervous. What was going on?

“Maybe being herself works out for her after all,” Lucifer murmured, earning him a gentle slap on the arm from Chloe to get him to shut up.

“We’ve been together for a whole year now. I didn’t ever think I could be with the same person for so long but with you I can. You told me you loved me. And I…” She took a deep breath. “I love you too.”

It was then your heart skipped a beat. Mazikeen gracefully got on one knee, pulling a velvety little box from her pocket. You knew exactly what she was about to say when she opened it and presented you the most beautiful ring you had ever seen.

“Will you marry me?”

2018 was going to be the most amazing year yet, full of love, hope and this enormous step you would make—with Maze, your… fiancé.

“Yes! Yes, Maze, yes!”

“Now that’s more like it!” Lucifer shouted when you knelt down to kiss her yet again, allowing her to slip the piece of jewellery on your finger. They all clapped around you—Lucifer and Chloe and the guests who had noticed what was going on.

“That’s such a cliché. Proposing to me on New Year’s Eve…” You murmured when you pulled away, your words drowning out the explosions of the fireworks outside. “I love it, I love you.”

“You got me sweating there for a second. I love you too. Damn, it feels good to say it. I love you.”

No one asked where you went when you left the club and hid in one of the rooms you had spoken of earlier. It was easy to guess and—it was a hell of way to start a new year.

[creativitytoexplore]

Everything Old Is New Again: An Interview With Co-Web Editor Adam Soto https://ift.tt/2WdSDbp

Writer and editor Adam Soto has long been a part of American Short Fiction‘s editorial team. As one of our assistant editors, he regularly read submission to the journal, wrote copious feedback for authors, and helped determine which stories would ultimately appear in our print edition. So, when we made the decision to bring on another web editor this spring, Adam was a natural choice for the role. This month, he joins our longtime web editor Erin McReynolds as our website’s co-editor, and together, they’ll determine which stories are published here at ASF Online. I recently emailed with Soto to ask about his work, his approach to editing, and his aspirations for the magazine.

—

Nate Brown: Adam, we’re so thrilled that after having served as an assistant editor with us for so long that you’re stepping up to the plate as a new web editor who’ll be working alongside web editor Erin McReynolds. While we know you around these parts—you’ve been a member of Austin’s literary community and of our team for years—I want to start by asking you about your own fiction writing. You’ve got a novel coming out next year. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Adam Soto: Joining ASF was one of the first things I did after coming to Austin, and it’s really been like being part of a family, so I’m really grateful for all the time I’ve had with organization, all the stories I’ve read through the years, and I’m really moved to have the opportunity to contribute more to what the journal is doing, which is something special. 

The novel is called This Weightless World, and it’s out on MCD/FSG fall 2021. It’s a sentimental sci-fi, a kind of Contact for misanthropic millennials. January 1, 2012, Earth detects an alien signal from a planet 75 lightyears away and a group of characters—a Chicago Public School teacher; one of his students, a musical prodigy; and his ex, a programmer who dumped him for a gig at Google—anticipate a major paradigm shift, an alternative to late stage capitalism, the neighborhood’s cycle of violence, an escape from their own personal guilt. I mean, aliens are supposed to be game changers, right? Habit, human nature, laziness, and fear, however, prove to be a greater obstacle than the 75 lightyears between us and them, and when the planet suddenly falls silent, leaving us alone in the universe once again, collapsing the distance between who we are and who we hope to be feels harder than ever. While the characters sort out their lives, our planet’s biological clock keeps ticking, our dependence on technology distorts our sense of reality, and our most vulnerable continue going mostly ignored. If all of that sounds too depressing, I should add that there are also loving pen-pal letters and lyrical dispatches from deep space woven throughout.    

NB: It’s funny, Adam, but I remember you from back in your Iowa City days, when you and my wife, Thea, were MFA students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Was this a project you were working on back then, or is the novel more recent than that? And how does the novel compare to the work you were writing then? 

AS: I remember the two of you as well. I started the novel on January 1, 2012, so, right before the start of my last semester at Iowa. Marilynne Robinson was going to be teaching a novel workshop in the spring, we’d all been in a novella seminar with Peter Orner, so all of my friends had suddenly pivoted from writing short stories to writing novels, and I thought, I wanna get me some of that!

I was staying with my parents for the holidays, and I had a dream featuring an image and a wordless interpretation. I saw this fuchsia-colored planet and felt that not only I but the whole human race was being shunned and shamed by it, like the planet was Earth’s twin and we just weren’t going to be friends. With absolutely nothing else to go on, I set up my laptop in my parent’s kitchen, took a look around the room, and typed the first thing that came to mind. “So, this dude wakes up on Jan. 1, 2012…” Most of my work, up to that point, had focused on alienating readers. They were mainly plotless, kind of nihilistic, and tried really hard to redeem themselves with lots of catchy sentences. It had never occurred to me that I could cut back on my affect and keep alienation as subject matter. It took me three whole drafts (re-written, top to bottom) and four years to figure out what the story was about, three years working with my amazing agent, Marya Spence, to turn an 800+ page sprawling tome into an actual novel, and it’ll be another year and a half before my editor, Danny Vazquez, and the rest of the team at MCD/ FSG and I turn it over to the public.

NB: Did you have any particularly great workshops or instructors at Iowa? What ideas about writing have stuck with you? And for those considering an MFA program, do you have any advice on what they should expect to take away from the experience? 

AS: My very first workshop there was with the late James Alan McPherson. He was so funny, sage, and generous, and my workshop group became my best friends. Peter Orner was also very inspiring. He taught me a lot about teaching and reading. Teaching and writing were the natural byproducts of reading and paying attention to others for Peter, and this has proven vital to me as a middle-school English teacher. Michelle Huneven, however, changed my life. The way I saw it, I was just this kid who got into this really nice writing program for one reason or another, but, somehow, Michelle took me seriously and told me to take myself seriously. There’s no shortage of people taking themselves seriously in MFA programs, so, I guess my advice is to expect to find something out about yourself. A lot of people find out they don’t like teaching; hell, some people find out they don’t like writing that much, at least not enough to spend the rest of their lives trying to get published. Either way, no matter your age, or where you’re coming from, you’ve got to let the MFA years be formative in some way.

Back in the day, there used to be this expectation that you could join a program and graduate with a book deal, or at least a “cushy” teaching gig that’d hold you off until you got a book deal, and because it was more of a rite of passage, these programs could get away with being deeply unfeeling. I felt nurtured and supported, but I know a lot of people who didn’t and who don’t. But I think if everyone comes in expecting more, and if everyone is willing to accept that that something more probably isn’t going to be more book deals—taking on publishing is a whole other nightmare—then I think a lot of the criticisms of MFA programs could be addressed, and not just by faculty and directors but by the student communities that hold them accountable. Because there’s no real promise for what you can expect, especially from program to program, until you start laying out those expectations. For starters, funding and diversity.

NB: In addition to writing, a big part of editorial work is reading submissions. What kind of work grabs you? What excites you? What do you love coming across in submissions? 

AS: I like something that commits. Something that assures me that it wants to tell me something, even if it’s reluctant to, even if it fails to. Commitment is huge. To voice, a structural procedure, a deep study of character, a memory being pulled apart, a woolgathering.  

NB: Our web exclusive stories have long been capped at 2,000 words (though this is changing), and I’m wondering what you think the short form—whatever you may call them: flash fiction, micro fiction, short-shorts—offer that longer works do not? What are the advantages of really short work?  

AS: Whenever I get a new album, I always start with listening to the longest song. With short story collections, I always start with the shortest story. This is something I’ve done forever. Whatever they’re called, I’ve always been attracted to these brief things, and, over the years, reading them, writing them, I’ve come to appreciate their different intended effects. You read one of Babel’s Red Cavalry Stories and the story’s length isn’t really the first thing you notice. Similar to your feelings after a shorty by Chekhov, you’re struck by the wholeness of the experience, the funny asymmetry, the dropped details—as in the details the writer does and does not drop. Compare that to a sprint by Thomas Bernhard, one of Lydia Davis’s illuminating punchlines, or a haunting by Peter Orner, and I think you get a mixture of dedications to singular things, which is rare in our Wikipedic, FOMA world. And the fact that that one thing can be so many different things—grief’s manipulation of time, light’s impression on a memory, an anecdote, extensive alliteration—is really a gift. Such dedication taken to greater lengths is often awkward or dull until it ventures into the obsessive and becomes genius again.      

NB: Are there writers whose stories you find yourself returning to over time? If so, who are those folks, and which stories do you think demand re-reading? 

AS: Mavis Gallant, constantly, and especially her early and long story “The Cost of Living.” I love that long story for its failure to commit, for dragging out what it means to say for pages and pages, for pretty much being a 36-page novel. Leonard Michaels’s Nachman stories and his list story “In the Fifties.” Anything from Joy Williams’s Escapes, but especially “White” over and over again. Andrey Platonov’s “The Motherland of Electricity” (it teaches you how to build a generator), James Alan McPherson’s “The Silver Bullet,” and, more recently, Sara Majka’s “Saint Andrews Hotel,” “Especially Heinous” by Carmen Maria Machado, and Brandon Taylor’s ASF story, “As Though That Were Love.”  

NB: Jesus, there’s so much good work in there. That Brandon Taylor story has really stayed with me. I taught it at Johns Hopkins last semester, and it made a couple of students (and me) cry. Taylor has so much to say about loneliness and the unbridgeable spaces that exist between people, even those who are dear friends. Come to think of it, the Williams, McPherson, and Majka stories you mention are sort of about that, too. Would you say that the tension between isolation and collectivity, between personal spaces and social spaces are of interest to you? Based on what you’ve said about your own novel, that seems central in that work, too.  

AS: Yes, definitely, definitely, the isolated and the collective, isolated collectives, and, now that we’re all getting a taste, the collectively isolated. And that tension, too, I think you’re right, between the singular and the collective, I’ve always been fascinated by where it pops up, how places and moments of intimacy can leave us feeling so isolated, how fractured our alliances and coalitions can be, how hard it is to come together behind a common goal. But most of all, over the years I’ve become obsessed with characters who, against their better judgment, still seek community, and I’m really attracted to the tensions that arise when those seekers interrogate their intentions or test the authenticity of their communities. One of the unique features of our world today is our ability to not only witness but quantifiably measure the efforts being made by ourselves and others as we vie for each other’s communion—it’s something both beautiful and grotesque. And that reality really takes the characters in TWW for a ride, from pulling them out of their recessional depression to overloading them with worldly concerns to leaving them feel completely isolated. 

NB: American Short Fiction has been around since 1991. Why do you think that journals like ours—large and small, from all parts of the country and the world—abide? What role do you think we play in the broader literary culture, and has that role changed over time? 

AS: Like the few healthy corners of the internet, lit journals are places for spaceless communities, folks looking for a common thing; in our case, a certain flavor of fiction. With every issue, you’re excited to share in the discovery of someone new, eager to read someone familiar, and happy to sustain the practice of an old art form. And before the internet, and now through the internet, lit journals have always offered deeply reflective but also relatively immediate reactions to the worlds we live in, which is something I’m excited to play a part in as a web editor. As a utility, we broaden the spectrum of representation in culture, and although our nets require wider and wider casting, what we discover here increases the expectations we have for other literary institutions, as well as the world at large. 

    Adam Soto is a co-web editor at American Short Fiction. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a former Michener-Copernicus Foundation fellow. He lives with his wife in Austin, TX, where he is a teacher and a musician. His debut novel, This Weightless World, is forthcoming from MCD/ FSG fall 2021. 

[meenasmoon]

Electric Love

Hello Lovely anon. You were persistent and it paid off. I consider this one of my best works. it was a joy to write and I love it with all of my heart. By the way the sone is electric love by BORNS. I recommend giving it  listen while you read this little fic. Enjoy, Enjoy.

The rain came out of nowhere, like it always did. The clouds seemed like they were in the distance and then suddenly she was fighting to get through the rain to her crime scene. Meena took a deep breath and turned up her radio, hoping that it would provide some kind of inspiration or magically change her mood, but instead the rain got harder so she got off the freeway and began to make her way through the streets of LA towards Beverly Hills. She flipped on her SUV’s siren so that she could more easily weave through the other vehicles that congested the roadways.

  When she pulled up to the hotel all sense of urgency disappeared in a flash of dread. The director had pulled her from out behind the stacks of the paperwork that created makeshift protective barriers around her desk, gifts from her lazy coworkers, graciously bestowed upon her each day. She had been shaking with terror, convinced that she was finally going to get fired and then she would have to go back to waitressing just to be able to keep her apartment. Suffice to say she had been a stuttering, anxious mess when she had entered that office but the director had almost immediately struck her silent by assigning her a case, her very first case since her screw up in Venice.

The case was the grisly murder of a public figure in a Beverly Hills hotel, across town and very important. If she screwed this up, she would not have any more chances. This was it. And it was that thought that froze her outside of the hotel, surrounded by sirens and police officers desperately trying to contain crowds of gawkers.

Meena’s hands were shaking visibly as she gripped the steering wheel of her SUV, her hands so slick with sweat that it was hard to believe that she could keep her death grip.   Her chest was aching with anxiety and she could feel her breath speeding up as her past failures seemed to suffocate her and the car began to close around her like a big metal prison.

Her reverie was broken by a loud rapping on her window that literally made her jump in her seat. Her curls bounced around wildly as she whipped around to stare at the confused looking detective staring at her through the window. She was sure that she looked a mess, her curls wild as usual and her eyes wide and frightened.

“Ma’am? Are you alright?” He asked, his kind, grizzled face staring back at her in concern. Meena frantically collected her bag and practically fell out of the car in her rush to look official. The officer hovered worriedly as she struggled to put on her bag and stumble towards the entrance of the hotel.

  “Yes! Yes I’m fine.” She stuttered and hurried through the exit, the officer watching her go in amused disbelief. Once inside Meena realized that now was she not only frazzled but she had inadvertently soaked herself in her hurry to appear stable. She whimpered, her dress pants and black suit jacket now dripping all over the marble floors of the lavish lobby. Mourning the loss of her favorite jacket she quickly shed it and put it on a nearby chair. She rolled up the sleeves of her purple button up and made her way towards the elevator, her pants still dripping slightly as she walked.

When she got into the elevator she took a deep breath, pushed her wet curls out of her face and began to actually gather herself. She took a couple deep breaths, shook herself out a little bit and then closed her eyes. She didn’t open them again until the elevator dinged, letting her know that she had arrived at the penthouse. She hurried down the hall, wringing her hands desperately and mumbling to herself.

“Ok. it’s okay. You can do this. You can do this Meena. You just gotta…focus. Yeah focus. Focus…is key. It’s the key to… to su-“ Meena had been watching the ground as she walked rather than the horizon and ran smack into one of the detectives that were swarming the room. She stumbled slightly and flushed in embarrassment when the detectives stopped what they were doing and watched as the FBI agent, the highest ranking investigator on scene, proceeded to knock over a detective and stumble into the room.

Where she took one look at the scene and threw up into the nearest trashcan. Meena retched into the can, inwardly berating herself as she did so. When she finished she was shaking but still determined to do her job. It felt like a million eyes were on her with the rest of the detectives watching so when she finally was able to stand she straightened out her shirt and put on her best authoritative look. It was barely intimidating.

“C-Could I have the room please?” She asked a little shakily, doing her best to keep her composure. The detectives exchanged looks before slowly emptying the hotel room until Meena was standing alone in the room, a mutilated body spread over the entire sleeping area in various parts. Meena glanced back at it and felt her stomach churn angrily. Quickly she turned away from the massacre and walked into the living area. She collapsed onto the couch and put her head in her hands as shame washed over her like a tidal wave.

She let out a choked sob, her eyes welling up with tears of frustration as the veritable tornado of emotions that had been brewing in her since she arrived. Luckily her emotional breakdown was interrupted by a man falling unceremoniously through the window to her right.

  She yelped in fright and leapt up off of the couch, scrabbling to get her gun out of her holster. It clattered to the floor just as the man rose to his feet and registered that he was not alone in the room. Meena dove for the gun, and from her kneeling position pointed it shakily up at the intruder.

  The very handsome intruder who was smirking down at her, his hands held in the air half-heartedly. His skin was perfectly tanned and his jet black hair was messy but at the same time perfectly spiked. He was wearing a scratched up black leather jacket, a clean white shirt and faded dark blue jeans and on his feet was a well worn pair of converse shoes. Meena did her best to glare at him but she couldn’t help but be a little starstruck. I mean for god’s sake the little patch of sunlight filtering in behind him from the window practically gave him a halo.

Candy

She’s sweet like candy in my veins

“F-Freeze.” She murmured, slowly getting up from her knees so that she was level with his chest. Damn him for being so tall, for having such broad shoulders, for being so muscular, for distracting her. Meena shook herself and resumed glaring at the man in front of her. Then he spoke.

"Woah there love. Let’s talk abaht this.” His warm, musical voice almost made her lower gun, almost, but then she realized that this man, beautiful as he may be, had just broken into her crime scene.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Meena demanded, still pointing her gun menacingly at his chest, though her grip was shaky and her finger wasn’t even on the trigger.

His hands slid down into his pockets and his smirk widened into a cocky lopsided grin. "Wite. abaht that. I’m a private detective of sorts.” He shrugged and leaned forward trying to peek around the corner at the crime scene but Meena just shifted so that he was met with her face again. He just winked in response and startled her.

“Name’s Johnny Bannerton and I want in on this case.”

Baby, I’m dying for another taste

Meena just gaped at him, her blue eyes wide with disbelief. She tensed up when he suddenly leaned towards her, cupping her cheek in his hand. She was mesmerized immediately by the comforting scent of motor oil and rain and the depth of his warm brown eyes.

“Especially if the bleedin’ lead on this case looks loike ya do.” He whispered just above her lips and then he was gone, practically sprinting gleefully into the other room. Meena stared at the space that he had once occupied for a few minutes, completely floored by the words that came out of his mouth. She tried desperately to process what he had said but her brain caught up with the fact that he was traipsing around a crime scene first.

And every night my mind is running around her

“Hey!” She raced after him and immediately balked when the stench of blood and rotting corpse assaulted her senses. She slowly returned to the room to find Johnny leaning carefully over the corpse, meticulously examining the lacerations on the corpse.

“Get away from the body. You’ll contaminate it!” She yelled frantically and hovered nervously over him when he ignored her. It was just her luck that her very first and last chance at getting back out in the field was being crashed by this gorgeously annoying detective.

“Daan’t worry sweet’eart. I’m a professional.” He winked at her again, disarming her immediately, and then went back to examining the body, Suddenly he jumped back, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a pair of tweezers.

Thunder’s getting louder and louder

“Can ya grab me an evidence baggie from over there?” he gestured towards a bag that the crime scene investigators had left behind when they had cleared the room. Meena stared at him like he was insane.

“A what?” Johnny just shot her a smile and gestured to the evidence bag once more, the urgency in his voice a little more apparent now.

“An evidence baggie please.” Meena dazedly walked over to the bag and retrieved a small evidence baggie from it. She walked over to where Johnny was leaning over the body and murmuring to himself.

“Looks loike someone ‘ d a lil’ too much fan wif this wahn." He shook his head and dropped a delicate, blood-covered brown hair into the evidence baggie that Meena was holding out for him. “ ‘E’s finally tripped up.”

“A hair on the body.” Meena murmured to herself as she watched him put the hair in the baggie. She glanced at what was left of the victim only to find that he was a blonde. Her excitement mounted as she considered the implications until she realized what Johnny had said. She looked up at him in confusion and trepidation.

“What do you mean ‘he’s finally tripped up’? Do you know who did this?” She questioned him and Johnny threw his hands up in surrender once more.

“I’ve been chasin’ this particular freak for time na.” He snatched the bag out of Meena’s hands and slipped it into his pocket. He looked her over for a second and that flirty smile that made her heart stop dead in her chest appeared on his face once more.

I can’t let you go now that I got it

" ‘Owabaht I tell ya aw abaht it over sum pie. I kna a great lil’ diner by me office.” Meena went back to gaping at him, her brain shorting out when she realized that he was asking her out… wasn’t he?

“What? Why me?” She finally blurted out, her cheeks coloring as soon as she realized what she had just said. Johnny wasn’t fazed at all, rather his smile grew larger and he took another step towards her, invading her personal space bubble again. He cupped her cheek, this time stroking it delicately with his thumb.

“Cause ya look loike ya could use sum pie love.” He chuckled and then leaned in a little more, just enough that Meena stopped breathing “Plus I daan’t fin’ i’m ready ter stop lookin’ at that pretty face of yours.”

Meena let out a breath shakily and tried hard not to melt in his arms. She managed to hold herself back from physically melting into his arms but that didn’t stop her from whispering, “Ok.”

And all I need is to be struck by your electric love

“Awesome. Let’s go.” He pulled away, grabbed her hand and lead her out the door, past the crow of detectives and down to the street where the rain had ceased for the moment and his a big black chopper was waiting patiently on the side of the street. He hopped onto the bike with no problem but Meena remained on the sidewalk, staring at the bike apprehensively.

Baby, your electric love

When Johnny realized that she wasn’t on the bike behind him he reached back towards her, his hand extending out as he waited for her to take it. Meena regarded him nervously, glancing at her safe, boring SUV and then back at this intriguing, handsome man that had literally broke into her life. Every inch of her being was urging her to retreat to where she knew things would always be safe, be certain. Why did she need mystery in her life? Why did she need danger? She’d survived just fine without it up until this point very much.

But that was just it. She was surviving, not living. And for some reason this man had come into her life intent on dragging her along to live with him. Who was she to resist an offer like that?

And so, giddy with energy and excitement she took his hand and let him pull her onto the bike.

Electric love

The bike roared to life and Meena tightened her cautious grip around Johnny’s abdomen. Through his shirt she could feel every inch of muscle that was hidden behind those layers. She let out a nervous little giggle that turned into a joyful laugh as Johnny sped off, the hotel quickly disappearing behind them.

Johnny expertly weaved in and out of cars as Meena maintained a stubborn death grip on him, her face buried in his jacket, letting his scent wash over her. Slowly she began to get used to the movements of the bike, the wind that whipped at her skin, promising speeds that she’d rather not imagine, and the thrum of the engine.

She slowly withdrew her face from his jacket to look at her surroundings, watching in wonder as cars fell behind them and the sun that was slowly emerging winked at her from behind the clouds. Is this what freedom felt like?

Drown me

You make my heart beat like the rain

They roared through the street of Los Angeles and Meena found herself not really caring where they were going. In fact, she rather hoped that they never had to stop. If they stopped would the spell be broken? Would he see her for the boring, timid screw up that she was? How could he not?

As if sensing what she was thinking one of Johnny’s warm hands came down off the handle bars to rest comfortingly on her clasped hands. Meena felt a jolt of warmth seep into her bones, lingering with little tingles of happiness that made her want to throw her head back and sing, scream, do something to release everything that seemed to well up inside of her when she was with him. To think it had only been less than an hour.

Surround me

Hold me deep beneath your waves

The bike started to slow down and Meena finally began to actually look around the area where they were stopping. it definitely wasn’t Beverly Hills anymore, that was for sure. It wasn’t exactly the ghetto, or gang territory, but it wasn’t that far above. The diner that they pulled up to was smack dab in the middle of a strip mall parking lot, as if the owner had decided that he’d rather stick out than fit in, even if that meant sticking out in a parking lot.

Johnny rolled the bike into a spot and the rush of wind, the sounds of the city were suddenly replaced by the insistent pounding of Meena’s heart in her ears like a countdown to the inevitable. Meena shakily got off of the bike, frantically trying to flatten out the wrinkles that were appearing in her pants, to no avail.

Still her heart pounded like a death march as it slowly squirmed out of her chest and up her throat, rendering her silent in her anticipation. She turned around to find Johnny leaning up against the bike and regarding her with an unreadable gaze that made her stomach churn and her heart pound harder and louder, deafening her to everything except its insistent rhythm. Until Johnny made it stop.

And every night my mind is running around her

Thunder's getting louder and louder and louder

“Ya know… ya look real good like that.” He mused and Meena nervously fiddled with her chaotic curls, trying to smooth them into some semblance of control. She froze when suddenly Johnny’s hand caught her wrist and gently pulled her hand away from her head, down to her side.

“Daan’t do tha’ love. Wouldn’t want ter ruin them gorgeous curls of yers.” Meena gulped inaudibly and opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out. How was it that he struck her dumb every time they touched? She wondered but she just let it happen, secretly, or not so secretly, enjoying his attentions.

Baby, you're like lightning in a bottle

I can’t let you go now that I got it

“Let’s go get sum pie nah, yeah.” He released her and led the way into the diner, Meena scrambling to catch up to him, her brain reeling as it tried to resume some kind of normal function in the wake of Hurricane Johnny. Meena decided it was impossible when they had made it all the way to the table and she couldn’t even remember the code to her locker at work.

Meena daintily slid into the booth that was snuggled up in the corner of the restaurant against the warmth of the sun-filled windows. She picked up her menu and glanced through the vast selection of pies that the diner boasted. In truth she saw none of them, her brain consumed with the analysis of the situation. She had always been a brilliant analyst, but here she was stumped.

She peeked at Johnny over the top of her menu, watching curiously as he looked through the pie list like it was the meaning of life. He looked cute like that, eager and childlike in his desire for something as simple as dessert. She was musing about the dimple that snuck its way onto one of his cheeks when he looked up and his brown eyes locked with her blue ones.

It was like electricity danced between them, there was so much said in that one look.

And all I need is to be struck by your electric love

Baby, your electric love

Electric love

Johnny was the first to break the silence when his eyes slowly moved towards her menu, which she had stood up almost like a fort for her to hide behind, “Sooo… wot are ya gonna get?”

Meena looked at him in confusion and then she realized that she was supposed to have been looking a the pie selection while she was staring at him. Hoping that it didn’t seem too suspicious, she slowly put down her menu, revealing her pink cheeks and her tentative, trusting smile.

“I think I’ll have cherry.”

“Fantastic choice.” Johnny winked at her and Meena was sent back into space, her eyes glazing over slightly as the world melted away to reveal only Johnny. He was surrounded by that halo of light again and Meena felt like her heart was jumping up and down in her chest, doing its best to pop out and declare how she felt for the entire restaurant to hear. Thankfully, she managed to hold it in.

  Rushing through me

Feel your energy rushing through me

Feel your energy rushing through me

Moments later their pie arrived and Johnny dug into his chocolate creme pie like it was his last chance to survive. Meena giggled and took a small bite of her cherry pie. Johnny had been right, it was delicious. But before she could say so, Johnny took a break from inhaling his pie to actually deliver on his side of the deal.

Suddenly she was embroiled in his tale of an elusive serial killer that Johnny had tracked to the United States and was determined to take down. Meena listened rapturously, hanging on his every word, while at the same time admiring the way that his jaw clenched and his eyes hardened with determination as he spoke about his self-proclaimed nemesis.

Halfway through the tale it hit her like a ton of bricks. Johnny was a brilliant detective, who had discovered a case-breaking clue in her crime scene. As always she was just along for the ride, rather than contributing to his path, she was hindering it. The light faded from her eyes and her mind raged with a sea of shame, regret, and sadness.

  She would never be a good enough detective for a man like this. He deserved a woman who was his match in every way. Meena wasn’t that woman, she was sure of it. And yet every part of her, even the little rebellious side demanded that she keep him for herself.

“Wha do ya think?” Johnny’s voice cut through her indecision and melancholy like a knife and suddenly Meena was staring back into his compassionate eyes, her own dim with sadness. Even though he had asked her a question, Meena felt like her doubts and her thirst for solid answers as to why he brought her along could not hold back any longer.

Baby, you're like lightning in a bottle

I can’t let you go now that I got it

“Why me?” She blurted out and Johnny started at the sudden change in topic, looking at her in utter confusion.

“Wha’?” He asked, setting down his pie fork and pushing away the half eaten treat. Meena looked down at the table, took a deep breath, and let it all out.

  “Why did you choose me? I’m just a boring FBI agent who hasn’t been out in the field in years. I screw up every case I’ve ever had and I’m only good for doing paperwork. I’m a pushover, I have no confidence whatsoever and I am plain. I’m so plain it hurts. Why would you, the most dynamic and electrifying person that I have ever met choose me to come with you?” She panted slightly as if she had been running and tore her gaze away from the tabletop up to his face.

Some part of her wanted to see his realization, his rejection so that she could tamp down that rebellious little voice that demanded for him to recognize that she was special in every way, even if she didn’t believe it herself. Every one else had realized it, why not him?

And then Johnny reach across the table, cupped her face with one hand and gripped her free hand with the other. Meena stared up at him in shock as his eyes hardened with that familiar determination and lit with a new kind of fire.

  And all I need is to be struck by your electric love

Baby, your electric love

Baby, you're electric

“Yer so much more than tha’ Meena.” He insisted as he leaned across the table and gently pulled her to meet him in the center, their faces mere centimeters away from each other. Johnny gav eher that lopsided, cocky grin and his brown eyes softened once more to reveal a new, vulnerable piece of his puzzle.

“Yer… the electrifyin’ one. I loike that. Alot.” he whispered and then dove in for a kiss, their lips meeting in a crash that reverberated in shockwaves through their hearts.

And just like that, sparks flew.

[warnercreations]

“Ignorance is bliss ‘tis a folly to be wise”

These words by Thomas Grey referred to the inevitable suffering that resulted from “growing up”, he urged youngsters to stay innocent as long as possible.

But this is no Neverland, here we DO enter adulthood.

I love reading, but I am also a huge movie fan, and in my personal collection I own copies of “The Matrix” and “Pleasantville”. If there are any who have not watched both of these movies, then I would urge you to make a plan to do so. I was recently inspired to write a blog entry based on “Pleasantville”, but I’ve made dozens of false starts with this entry, and the words have not flowed… Then I realised something the other day, “Pleasantville” and “The Matrix” actually share a common theme.

Let me start closer to the beginning of this story;

I’ve been sorting out my life, reducing the clutter, organising those things that I choose to keep. I’m sure everyone who lived in the era of film photography has a box of photo prints lying around? Mine has been with me since the last photos I had taken somewhere around 2001, many of them have been water damaged during my homeless times, and others were of memories that up until recently retained enough painfulness for me to shy away from exposing them often.

But things change, and I’ve got to the point where I don’t mourn the loss of those “good times” as much as I enjoy the memories of them, so I started organising them into collages, and as I did I took photo’s of some of them and shared them with friends on social media.

Many people responded with “you looked so happy then”

I immediately got on the defensive!

It was my self analysis regarding WHY this got me on the defensive that led to this train of thought.

“You looked so HAPPY then…” ;

These days we have a camera embedded in a little device we carry with us all the time, not only that but the pictures it takes are of a high quality, instantly available and free! Back in the Jurassic Era I grew up in, cameras were not always on hand, film was expensive and so was processing that film into prints, and to top it all off, one waited a week for the film to be processed after handing it in at the newsagents or pharmacy. So having a photo taken was an occasion! And you only really took the trouble to carry the camera when there was a REASON to. And no, we didn’t take a photo to show how miserable we were! So largely old photo’s were a record of the good times! This accounts for a proportion of the apparent “happiness”…

In my reality MANY of the “occasions I refer to above were the times spent with my now ex-wife as we progressed from dating, to courtship and into marriage. She and I were separated by 1,100km (700miles) for the first 7 years of our relationship, not only that, but the cult religion she and I were born into forbid dating among those “not yet ready for marriage”; so for much of that time we conducted our relationship in secrecy. We would spend a few weeks together every six months during school vacations, and obviously these were wonderful times as we made up for the months of pining and misery in-between, and we took photos during those happy times to remember them and each other. We didn’t take photos when we cried during farewells, nor of the stress and worry inflicted on us by the punishment from the church elders for indiscretions like “holding hands”. So many of these photo’s were of short periods of intense happiness separated by months of misery and despair.

But, eventually we married, and set up home together, we progressed in our respective careers, we accumulated material possessions, and took full advantage of the glamour and entertainment available to a pair of yuppies in Cape Town during the 1990’s. We drove sports cars and motorcycles, we lived with a sea view, we dined at some of the finest restaurants in the world, we frequented the theatre, the Opera House and the music concerts. We hobnobbed with the rich and the famous, the beautiful and the talented. There was little reason NOT to be happy!

Some people pursue that lifestyle their whole lives, they sail through mild seas and keep close to the shore, where life is easier and safer, and more secure. They come home to the boring spouse and hide the secret lover, they live cautiously and retire comfortably. There is nothing WRONG with these choices, except that these individuals generally lack the imagination to empathise with what the “other people” go through.

I speak from experience here, I used to judge others harshly, as compared to my own frame of reference. I knew a girl who had had an abortion while she was a teenager, illegal back in the puritan “Old” South Africa, she lied to her parents and the authorities and claimed to have been raped by “a Black man”, which of course ensured a legal abortion. My then Wife and I were extremely judgemental towards her and her morals. I would publicly attack smokers whose smoke intruded into my space. I would proudly assert that our Christian morals and stance against blood transfusions made us immune to the AIDS epidemic of the time. I judged those who were unfaithful to their spouses as hypocrites and sinners. I believed that only those of my Religious Sect would be saved from imminent destruction! Those who were not able to pay their monthly bills were wasteful and undisciplined.

When my wife admitted to having had an affair, I felt somewhat less invulnerable to STD infection. When I was comforted by that same woman who had had the abortion and ended up in her bed, I felt less self-righteous. When the divorce blew down the house of cards of my debt-based finances, I felt less fiscally disciplined. When I got hooked on tobacco during a drunken party I felt ashamed of how I shouted at those whose smoke drifted my way. When I ended up in a relationship with a separated, but still legally married woman, I felt hypocritical.

Unlike Neo in the Matrix, I never made the conscious choice to swallow the Red Pill, someone must’ve slipped it into my drink while I wasn’t watching!

“Spirituality” is somewhat of a fad at present, people wear it like a religion and they believe that “Spiritual Awakening” occurs wearing Yoga Pants, sitting in the Lotus Position chanting Ohmmmm.

In my case it came disguised as depression and self-destruction.

For Me, “Spiritual Awakening” wasn’t building a temple in the mountains, it was tearing down and setting fire to everything I owned so that something new could be built on the scorched earth left behind.

I found a major flaw in much of the teachings of The Law of Attraction, it is this concentration on consumerism. Much of the focus of many of the teachers is on Material Wealth…

Actually, maybe that is all as it should be, because again, I must correct my line of reasoning, The Law of Attraction is of itself not about spirituality, it may borrow from many of the practices of Spirituality such as Meditation, and entering into elevated states of consciousness, but at the root of it all, it is about manifesting change in our lives, rather than about embracing change in our lives. Do you pick up the difference? MANIFESTING change is about making a choice as to what we choose, EMBRACING change is about adapting to changes in our lives.

We live in a global society that has manufactured a set of standards to which we are expected to conform. This I guess is what we refer to as our “civilisation”. Consumerism is the central ideology of this global civilisation, and it is imposed upon us from the moment of birth, some may argue that it begins even before that.

The best neo-natal care and nutrition creates physically superior bodies

The best educational toys creates superior intellectual abilities

The best dental care creates an attractive smile

The best juvenile nutrition ensures a pattern of healthy eating

The best schooling ensures qualification to attend the best Universities and Colleges

The best Universities and Colleges ensures superior earning potential

The best Looking, best educated and higher earning individuals attract the best Looking, best educated and higher earning spouses.

The best Looking, best educated and higher earning couples have the potential to breed superior offspring…

The unfortunate results of the rutting of the less privileged start life with a disadvantage…

And how do we show that we are successful in this civilization? By what we own, by what we drive, by what we wear, by whom we mate with.

A year ago, I found myself in a very dark place. I was chronologically in the middle of a conflict with a family member, what started out as a simple disagreement over taking sides in a couple’s divorce escalated as neither of us was prepared to back down. Insults were traded until eventually he struck the blow below the belt that knocked me for the count… He asserted that I am a failure in life, and while I intellectually knew that to be rubbish spouted by an ageing narcissist, I saw myself through his eyes and that was very painful for me.

For some time now I believe that I have seen through this whole Zeitgeist, I see how we are manipulated into what to wear, and how to act, who to have sex with and where to live, what to drive and where to drive to. I came to understand how we are manipulated into religious, nationalistic, racial and cultural divisions so that we can be controlled and played like the pawns that we choose to be.

Once you understand these things, then clothes become something to keep us warm and protected, covering our nakedness because the alternative is legally and culturally unacceptable. A vehicle becomes a tool, a means to travel and transport goods from place to place. A cellphone ceases to be a status symbol, but becomes a communications tool and portable computer. A dwelling becomes a shelter. A life partner is chosen on merit rather than the standards of physical beauty created by the fashion industry.

But this person asserted that I was lazy, that my “messing around building furniture” was not an acceptable vocation, that my vehicles and my appearance are a disgrace. More than that he announced these things on public forums from where I conduct business.

Now as I said before, INTELLECTUALLY I understand that all of what this person was accusing me of was based on his own desperate clinging to the illusion he believes to be reality.

“Those still invested in the illusion hate those who have woken up” – Kim Warner

But my own self-esteem was fragile enough to take this to heart, and I did!

Healing was a slow process because as ones self-esteem is damaged so things collapse, and no matter what we may or may not believe about the Law of Attraction, when we feeling bad about ourselves, bad things seem to happen to us.

Self-Love is not vanity, that was something I had to teach myself ever since my mother and her Cult indoctrinated me to the contrary. No, Self-Love is vital, it it taking care of yourself first because when you give everything to someone else and have nothing left for yourself, then no one is there to help you. Self-Love is taking a vacation so that you become recharged. Self-Love is spending the money to go to the Doctor and the Optometrist so that you can function better. Self-Love is building something beautiful for YOURSELF

Self Love is making Collages out of your old photos so that you can remember the happy times.

This brings me back to those two movies, The Matrix was about seeing through the artificial, superficial illusion that we are conditioned into believing to be real. Pleasantville is about two modern teenagers who are transported back into the black and white world of a 1950’s television sitcom. In Pleasantville, everything was “pleasant” the Fire Department’s only task was rescuing cats out of trees, because fire did not exist, sex didn’t exist, art didn’t exist, not as a form of expression anyway, music was “pleasant”, everybody was “pleasant” to each other and even the weather was “pleasant” all the time, it never even rained in “Pleasantville”.

As these two teenagers interacted with these “pleasant” people they caused a chain reaction. The girl, played by Reese Witherspoon was a stereotypically sexually promiscuous cheerleader, and she introduced the “Pleasantville” teenagers to sex, Tobey Maguire, who played the nerdish boy introduced the citizens of “Pleasantville” to such concepts as art appreciation and taught the Fire Department how to extinguish a fire…

As people were influenced, they appeared in full colour, some were ashamed of this and tried to hide their “colour” behind makeup and clothing, others flaunted it. Life became less and less “Pleasant” in “Pleasantville”, adultery, rioting, fires, mob-justice, segregation all became part of life in “Pleasantville”, but the other side-effect was that people grew, that while life was no longer always “pleasant”, it could also reach heights of bliss and valleys of despair.

The hero of “The Matrix” chose to take the Red Pill, and as a result he was ejected from the comfortable illusion and subjected to the harsh life of a resistance fighter. Like me, the residents of “Pleasantville” never got to consciously choose, but each of them grew exponentially as a person.

I reacted SO defensively to “you looked so happy then”, because that was the bliss of ignorance, not the satisfaction of being fully awake in a world of sleepwalkers.

Go Forth and BE AWESOME

All My Love

Kim

Happiness and the Illusion “Ignorance is bliss ‘tis a folly to be wise” These words by Thomas Grey referred to the inevitable suffering that resulted from “growing up”, he urged youngsters to stay innocent as long as possible.

[holmesoverture]

The Telegraph Boy, Chapter 1

A/N Here, have the first Sherlock Holmes story I ever wrote in all its overwritten glory.  Does this count as Throwback Thursday?

Life has afforded me no greater honour than allowing me to chronicle the career of Sherlock Holmes, and I would no sooner cease writing about him than I would strangle him.  The latter deed is one in which I have been sorely tempted to indulge on multiple occasions and have always successfully refrained from, so I believe I am well-qualified to state that I’ll not be retiring my pen at any point in the foreseeable future.  I pray this fact has been made sufficiently clear, else I fear the following paragraphs will read as little more than frivolous whinging.

The act of writing is a largely independent one, involving many solitary hours interrupted only by mealtimes and by prying questions from one’s fellow-lodger.  The act of publishing is its polar-opposite, with a dozen or more hands of variable skill clawing to fix and improve the writer’s handiwork.  I understood the necessity of altering certain facts and dates and titles to protect the innocent, and I could be forgiven for manufacturing great swaths of dialogue due to the limitations of mortal memory, but certain other revisions left me as befuddled as Holmes’ cases ever had.

“But why do you allow yourself to be so affected by this?” Holmes once asked me.  “Miss Morstan has never voiced an objection to her portrayal and she has certainly got the worse of it.  Imagine spending one’s life shackled to such a lazy, feeble-minded fellow as that Watson character.”

“She could do worse.  A detective, perhaps, one who is unhealthful in his personal habits and whose acerbity is outweighed only by his chronic unsociability.”

He tapped my head with the bow of his violin in playful reproach and spent the next hour improvising a series of cheery little melodies.

The events related in The Sign of the Four are largely accurate with one egregious exception: the nature of my relationship with Miss Mary Morstan.  Perhaps the circumstances of another universe may have directed our amiable feelings for each other into something more passionate, but I did not inhabit such a world, and Mary and I instead continue to enjoy a close and comfortable friendship.  If I do have any complaints about our relationship, it is that I do not see her with as much frequency as I might prefer as she is quite busy establishing herself as a consulting detective in her own right, but that is a story best left for another time.  Suffice to say, if I had deserted Holmes, he would have been thrown out of his quarters within the month, either due to his failure to afford the rent or his fondness for malodorous, toxic, or otherwise objectionable chemicals.  

The blame for my manufactured marriage to Miss Morstan lies solely with my editor, who insisted that such a grisly tale should end with a dash of the romantic so as not to depress my readers overmuch, and I capitulated, to my everlasting regret.  While such whirlwind romances may befit other men and cheap novels, I personally find a mere handful of hours to be an insufficient period of time to accurately determine whether a lifetime together will bring felicity or despair.

At the time my editor placed me at my sudden nuptials, Holmes and I were rambling through the Kew Gardens, a sprawling series of botanical exhibitions in Richmond upon Thames.  I had persuaded him to let the cocaine bottle alone and instead accompany me there for the afternoon.  Sulking about my editor had never been on the itinerary, but there was nothing for it now and I tried to put it from my mind as we came upon a selection of ferns, each more hideous than the last.

Holmes took my arm as we ambled along, occasionally feigning interest in something I said or pointed out.  He cared little for the art gallery or the Temple of Bellona but had a most wonderful time informing me with which plants he could kill me if the mood struck.  He then became embroiled in a passionate exchange with a member of the Royal Botanical Gardens Constabulary, who mistook Holmes’ enthusiasm for malicious intent. The sun had long since abandoned us to our fates by the time we were allowed to take our leave.

“I don’t recall having any special expectations for our outing, but I suspect that if I had, they would have borne a strong resemblance to today’s events,” I said during the ride home.

“You will not be wanting to go out with me tomorrow then.”  He looked exceedingly hopeful and I took no small pleasure in liberating him from such deceitful optimism.

“If you haven’t got another case by tomorrow,” I said firmly, “I shall take you elsewhere.  How do you feel about the National Gallery?”

“Depressed.”

“Excellent!  We leave at nine.”

“I may be in error, but I seem to recall your mentioning once or twice that you are in the medical profession.  Does that not require you to tend patients on occasion?”

“Your memory is as infallible as ever.  I am in point of fact tending one of my patients at this very instant.”

Holmes stared at me for the duration of the cab ride and for most of supper, though with what motive I could not divine.  I suspect he was searching for a crack in my resolve and, finding none, turned his keen eyes away from me and refocused them upon the paper, most probably in search of a mystery that would deliver him from my enforced outings.  I prayed he would find one so I might return to my usual routine, but if he did not, I would have to hope Jackson would be willing to take my practice for a second day.

We passed the remainder of the evening in snug silence and retired very late, and I looked forward to rising very late as well.

I do not under any circumstances consider five-thirty in the morning to be late, yet that is the hour I found myself aroused by excited knocking from downstairs, followed by muffled reprimands from a justly irritated Mrs. Hudson.  By the time I stumbled into a dressing-gown and entered the sitting-room, Holmes was already there, conversing with a lad of about seventeen, eighteen at the outside, with mahogany brown hair and eyes, and rough but well-kept raiment.  His face was marred by wide eyes and a clammy, nervous pallor.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“That is what he is about to tell us,” Holmes said of the boy, who shook so violently that his knees nearly buckled twice as he crossed the room and collapsed into a chair.  I rubbed the last shadows of sleep from my eyes as Holmes, completely alert and damn him for it, sat across from our visitor and lit his clay pipe.

*

Chapter 2 Be Here

*

Notes of Interest

Jackson would take my practice – Jackson is a doctor who tended to Watson’s patients whenever Watson was busy gallivanting around London with Holmes.  First mentioned in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Crooked Man.

[thewishingcap]

Hello. I noticed in the section titled "about fleets" that you are an INTJ. I am an INTP and I'm interested in what it's really like to be an INTJ, since of course the stereotypes aren't very accurate and the testing sites don't always get the full picture. Also, if you can, could you please list what you think the types would be for the characters you write about (besides Vaati)

Hi there anon!

(this… this turned out to be super long. I’m self absorbed apparently. aha)

Hmmm. What it’s like to be me huh. I’ve taken the test at least 5 times spread out across years and I’ve always only scored INTJ and agree with a lot of the descriptions haha. It uh… it kind of makes me sound like an ass. And I guess I am, and I’ve said that before, but I got comments telling me people didn’t believe me. But I’m an ass, and, well, more on that on the last few paragraphs but first: 

I think the part that struck me the most when reading the descriptions of INTJ was that we don’t think things are impossible. Nothing is impossible to achieve, though some things might be difficult. It’s not straight up idealism, just… I guess a sort of arrogant logical truth. If I can’t achieve something, it’s because I was lazy, or didn’t think the effort to get there is worth the result (like, if I really wanted to be an astronaut I could find some way to do it. Going to space sounds totally cool, but would I actually expend effort in it? Well, no, given that my baseline capability, my financial situation, and my mental health among other things… i wouldn’t be able to reasonably handle it. But possible? With enough time? Absolutely. Or I want to be a pro basketball player even though I don���t have the height for it? Will it be hard to succeed? Well hells yeah I’m starting with a disadvantage that I have no control over that other people don’t have to deal with. But impossible? Not if I try hard enough and take advantage of every advantage I could possibly find). 

… not saying people should agree with me on the above, but that’s just my approach to life in general and served me well so far. 

I guess the most important idea to me is that, if I’m not doing something, it’s not because of some outside forces that I wasn’t able to do it. It’s because I actively chose not to do it. It brings the responsibility of both my successes and failures onto me, alone, and even if it sucks sometimes I like the concept. 

And telling me I can’t do something is absolutely the way to get me to think of a way to do that very thing. 

I like rules. I like logic. I don’t like making situational rules that have no basis of fairness. I enjoy seemingly illogical contradictions that still, on some level, follow some kind of rule (even random-seeming characters that I write still have their own personal rules that make sense to them). I also like situations with loopholes that aren’t explicitly covered in the rules (kind of going back to point 1… sometimes solutions are there if you’re creative enough or a dick enough to find them. Does it seem fair? Not always. Is it fair? Absolutely, according to the rules, and I expect the rest to adhere to the same kind of dickery because it’s equally available to all, not just myself). 

Also I don’t do social. At least, I only do it on my own terms. Invite me to a party I hadn’t planned, and I’ll probably bail. I almost always have some kind of schedule on when I’m doing what, and for how long, and I tend to plan this days or even weeks in advance (and because these don’t include social hangouts, usually, unless I was the one to plan it, accepting these invitations tend to give me more stress than anything). Another thing I agree with the profiling: I’m unapologetically blunt, to both strangers and friends alike, if they do something I’m not fly with. People might get butthurt but they know where I stand.

One thing I disagree with on most of the descriptions from INTJ tests is that they often say INTJs ‘think carefully before they speak,’ or ‘are intelligent,’ or ‘present carefully constructed thought out answers to questions.’ I don’t see myself as any of these things. I usually say the first dum thing that comes to my head. 

Last… I’m highly critical, of myself and, I hate to say it, of others. Most folks on tumblr see my self-critical side, since I often lament about stuff I could have done better and my uh… cringe… regarding the stories I wrote that I once thought was passable. I can’t honestly let myself say “I love what I did, it’s perfect and great,” because I can always think of something I could have done better? But I don’t say this in any negative way, just… recognizing it as truth by logic, and self reflection so I can do even better the next time. 

I adhere to others’ works with the same critical eye, which tends to bite me in the butt. Usually if no one personally asks me for help on improvement, I’ll leave it alone. They’re having fun and having a good time, I won’t ruin that: I know my own self-critique is always on High Mode that’s probably not reasonable and maybe a little too harsh, and even if I welcome that myself not everyone does. All of what I said so far, above, I only hold myself to unless…

If they ask for help…? If they lament that they want their situation to change? That’s when I’ll bring that criticism mode on high, what I have set for myself. And… sometimes people are shocked my critique went from 0 to 100 in under 2 seconds. Case in point, had a student who wrote really good assignments for the level of the class. Good grammar, good ideas, thoughtfully written etc. The class wasn’t particularly hard, and it was a first year class so it was more about giving students the confidence to move forward, and while I wrote some comments about improvement here and there, I didn’t ink the entire page red. That scares them. And it’s unnecessary inking for such a small assignment.Same student asked me to proof her personal essay for an application. Now, I knew this application was extremely important, and also part of a very difficult admissions process to which I knew the major folks who would be making the decisions. She asked my help, I want her to succeed, I know how to get her to succeed because by now I know the ins and outs of the admission committee. What do I do? I ink the entire essay top to bottom in red, everything I could possibly think of that could improve. 

She didn’t take that well at all, and probably expected a review that had been more or less what I’d given on the class assignments (but, to me, a 15 minute 1 page weekly assignment is not on the same scale as a 5+ hour 2 page admissions essay). Didn’t bother fixing what I suggested she fix, and what do you know she doesn’t get admitted, and she sends me back an email saying she doesn’t know how she possibly couldn’t have been admitted when she had straight As and good rec letters. Seeing people fail when they could have succeeded, especially when they didn’t do everything I feel they could have done to elevate their chances of success… and they still complain about their situation after the fact 

And that’s why I’m an ass. I had a friend describe me saying that I have a problem with putting myself and others on a “pedestal of perfection.” I’m chill on a lot of things, but that’s only because I don’t find a lot of things important to me. If I look like I’m chill about something, that’s probably why - I just can’t be bothered to try my very best bc it’s not very high on my own scale of importance (also p chill towards others’ shenanigans unless i have a personal stake in whatever it is they’re doin’). In line with that, I’m good at admitting and accepting losses. I tend to make a hierarchy of things that are important, and I’ll let go of the ones on the bottom of my list even if there’s an initial sting to do so. I’ll get over it. 

I’m all about efficiency. Expending the least effort for maximum payout.

The few things that are important, I have zero chill (group projects I have zero chill), and will unintentionally drag people down to my own personal hell of zero-chill when that was never what they wanted. My hyperfocus is real and you can sometimes see it when I post 5 chapter updates in the span of 5 days >_>;;;

ahahaaaa sorry this got out of control anon. When you say characters aside from Vaati, were you thinking of OCs or other characters I’ve written in stories, or my opinion on canon characters in general?

[setaripendragon]

Familiar Strangers - Five: Kakashi

One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six - Seven - Eight - Nine - Ten Bonus scenes: Five-Point-Five - Seven-Point-Five The inside of Kakashi’s head is an ouchy place. You have been warned. (Also a warning that most of my knowledge of his backstory comes, as per usual for me, from wiki and fanfiction, and I never got that far in the actual anime. I hope I don’t make too many stupids ^^”)

Kakashi spent so much of his time at the memorial stone that sometimes, he found his feet taking him there when he’d meant to go somewhere else. It was routine, it was ritual, and that was comforting, even if standing there in front of the grey stone that was as close as he could get to his best friend also laid a heavy grief on his shoulders every time he stepped up to it.

He talked, when he was here. Not always out loud, because it wasn’t always private, and other shinobi came here too, but he always talked. To Obito, to Minato-sensei, sometimes to Rin, if he felt strong enough. He did not feel strong enough today.

I hope Naruto and Sakura come back from their mission alright. It’s always risky, when they go after information on Sasuke, you know. They’re bound and determined to bring him back, but he’s bound and determined not to. He’s got his sights set on Itachi, and anything that gets in his way has to go. Do you remember Itachi, Obito? You probably do, even if the clan wasn’t particularly friendly to you, there’s no way you could have missed the Clan Heir. I wish I’d seen it coming, you know, him breaking. He was on my team once or twice, in ANBU. I should have seen it. But, then, that’s just another item on my list of people I should have saved, isn’t it, Obito?

His internal monologue was interrupted by a prickling on the back of his neck. His eye snapped up to scan the treeline, looking not for anything obvious, but scanning the patterns of the leaves, the way they moved with the wind. Or, the way they didn’t, when someone too near them was trying to stay too still. There. A good way away, not approaching the clearing, but not leaving either. Someone waiting, then, for him to leave.

Kakashi could understand that. Mourning was a private affair, and for those like him, who had no body bury and no gravestone to stand private vigil over, the memorial stone was the only option. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave just yet, and the other shinobi could wait just a little while longer. Privacy or convenience, they couldn’t have both.

He looked back down to the memorial stone, finding Obito’s name with the ease of long practice and searching for the thread of his thoughts again. Itachi, he remembered, and couldn’t decide whether the surge he felt was anger or grief. Another failure, but that one was, at least, not solely his. There were at least half a dozen other people who should have noticed. Shisui, Fugaku, Mikoto. The Hokage, his other ANBU Captains.

You would have noticed, Obito. You were good at noticing people who needed help. I’m not. I’m blind to it until it’s too late, and I reach out anyway, and my hand closes on thin air. I failed Itachi, and then I failed Sasuke. I should have seen what was happening in his head. I should have known he was heading for self-destruction. But I thought he was more like me than he really was. Naruto is so like you, you know. He’s a cheerful idiot, always tripping over himself and flailing his way through ninja training on sheer stubbornness, and he cares so damn much. I don’t know where either of you found the strength to care that damn much about the whole damn world. It would kill me. It is killing m-

An ice cold warning flare of chakra flowed down his spine like liquid lightning. Kakashi jolted out of his slouch, staring at nothing as he tracked that reaction back to its source. It was a tripped ward, an alert that a perimeter had been crossed by one-not-of-our-blood. Someone – some very foolish, soon to be very dead person – was trespassing on Hatake lands.

A shunshin took Kakashi to the edge of the training ground. He leapt up into the trees, glancing back only once, when he felt a presence at the memorial stone. A figure dressed all in black was crouched before the stone, fingers running over the names. Then Kakashi was in the trees, leaving the mourner to his business. He moved as fast as he could, which was very fast indeed, letting the violation of his family home curdle like ice in his gut.

He hopped down off the branches at the edge of Hatake lands, and prowled across the property line. It was the first time he’d stepped across it in over two decades. The land still carried the faintest scents of pack, of home, and it stabbed like a kunai to the chest. But the idea of coming here and smelling other, smelling not-of-my-blood, was even more repugnant.

The house was still dark, but as Kakashi circled it, he saw that the front door was open. The paper seal that had locked it shut was carelessly torn aside, and the sliding door was just a little wonky in its frame, as if someone had flung it open carelessly and jammed it. Kakashi slipped in that way, silent as a ghost, to avoid alerting the intruder to his presence by opening another door or window. There was no movement from deeper within the house, but Kakashi spotted a trail of light – barely there, but still there – footprints in the dust, leading through the hall, into the living room, back out, and into the front room.

Kakashi felt his breath turn to ice in his lungs, even as an aching rage seared up the back of his throat. He had no desire to step into that room again, but the idea of anyone else disturbing the room his father had died in set his blood boiling. He stepped into the open doorway, keeping a careful lock on his killing intent until he was sure he wanted them to know he was there, and stopped.

Naruto looked up jerkily from the bloodstain on the floor, and met Kakashi’s eye with the sort of hollow-eyed stare Kakashi had never expected to see on the boy. He swallowed hard, and Kakashi noticed just how pale he looked, even in the sunlight streaming in through the large windows overlooking the front garden. “I’m sorry.” Naruto whispered, hoarse and shocked. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. All his rage had drained away, leaving only sick grief and a tired sort of bitterness behind. He couldn’t even scrounge up a mask of lazy indifference for Naruto. It just wasn’t there. “What are you doing in my house?”

Naruto mustered up an attempt at a smile. It fell massively short, wobbling on his lips and not getting anywhere near his eyes, which still seemed far too empty for a boy like him. “Looking for you, of course.” He said, and at least he didn’t try to sound cheerful. Kakashi didn’t think he could stand that. Not here, not when Naruto was standing over all that was left of his father’s legacy. Blood and shame, seeping into the floorboards.

“You know full well I don’t live here.” Kakashi reminded him, deadpan. If Naruto thought a flimsy excuse like that was going to fly, for something like this, he had another thing coming.

Naruto’s hand leapt to the back of his head fingers tangling through the base of his ponytail as he grimaced sheepishly. “Oh, right. Yeah.” He said, but Kakashi wasn’t listening. Naruto had a ponytail. His hair was still Minato’s shade of sunshine blonde, but it was longer, long enough to pull back into a tail that reached his shoulders. He was still wearing orange, but his coat was ankle length and decorated with black stripes at the hems and bold black swirls – Uzushio spirals – on each shoulder. He had claws on his hands and feet, but there was no hint of the kyuubi’s chakra in the air.

Feigning laziness, Kakashi propped his shoulder against the door-jamb and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Felt like a change of style, did you?” He asked casually, nodding in Naruto’s general direction.

Naruto shrugged, hands flailing a little bit for emphasis. “Yeah, sort of. I guess. I got bored.” He grinned, and even if it was slightly subdued, it was still Naruto’s grin, bright and infectious and so much like his mother. “This is more dramatic, don’t you think?” He asked, and struck a pose.

“Mm.” Kakashi agreed sceptically.

Naruto yelped, offended. “It is!”

“Right. And what, exactly, are you doing in my house?” Kakashi asked again, putting weight behind his words and letting his gaze sharpen from lazy stare to a pin-point glare.

Naruto shuffled in place, looking distinctly sheepish. “I was gonna prank you. I know-!” Naruto went on swiftly, when Kakashi narrowed his eye. “I know you don’t live here! But I thought it was like, like just an old family house that was too big, so you shut it up so you weren’t wasting funds or whatever, not-!” He glanced sideways at the bloodstain Kakashi was trying so hard not to look at, then grimaced. “I didn’t- What happened?” He asked in a whisper.

Lie, find a good lie, Kakashi thought desperately, but he came up blank. The bloodstain was large enough that there was no excusing it with an accident, but maybe a deflection. “I have no idea. Maybe some idiot genin thought they could sneak into an empty house and paid the price.” He suggested ominously.

To his surprise, Naruto didn’t take the bait. “It smells like-” He paused, then shrugged awkwardly.

Kakashi sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. He knew how that sentence was going to end, even if Naruto didn’t have the training to apply words to what he could sense through the kyuubi. It smells like you but not you, it smells like Hatake blood. His father’s blood on the floor, and Minato-sensei’s blood standing before him, with an echo of Kushina’s drama in his every movement, and Obito’s depthless kindness in his eyes.

Too many ghosts. There were too many ghosts in this room, and Kakashi couldn’t breathe. He turned, sharp and not caring that he was showing a bit too much of everything he usually kept so well hidden. “My father committed suicide.” He tossed the words over his shoulder like he would a kunai, flung them at Naruto with the intent to wound.

He heard a choked off sound, and then the scramble of bare feet padding over dusty floors as the boy hurried to catch up with him. “What? Why?!” Naruto demanded. Kakashi almost felt guilty at the amount of pain he heard in those two words. Naruto hadn’t known the man, but he was an empathetic soul, at his core, and he’d obviously picked up on Kakashi’s decades old grief, and decided to carry it with him, because he could, because he was there.

Too many goddamned ghosts, Kakashi thought, as Obito’s eye burned under his hitai-ate.

Through the hall, out the door, into open air, and Kakashi stopped to breathe past the lump in his throat. When he thought he could manage words that didn’t bite at the world like his summons could, he tried another deflection. “So, how was your mission?”

“Weird.” Naruto stated with emphasis, coming up beside him and peering at him through squinted eyes, as if that might help him make sense of the world. Kakashi felt a stab of unkind pity for the poor boy’s naivety. Another deep breath, to help him shove those feelings down deep. They weren’t fair. Naruto had lost just as much as Kakashi had. He knew just how little sense the world could make when it wanted to be cruel, and he was still trying.

“Oh? Weird how?” Kakashi prompted, clinging to the conversation that had nothing to do with ghosts like it as a lifeline.

Naruto screwed up his face as he thought. “It was just weird. Like, like that genjutsu that makes you think your enemy is moving just a little bit after they actually do?” He offered, scratching at his head. Kakashi was fairly sure Naruto wasn’t hinting that he was under a genjutsu, but he reached out and sent a little pulse of his chakra through the air and Naruto’s system anyway. There was no tell-tale shattering of foreign chakra.

“No genjutsus here.” Kakashi told him, with a decent attempt at cavalier brightness.

Naruto nodded. “That’s what Sakura said as well.” He agreed.

Sakura. Not Sakura-chan. Kakashi took another look at Naruto, considering what the boy had said. Like a genjutsu, but not, and he’d been feeling this while he was on the mission, in enemy territory, spying on one of the Sannin. And the first thing he’d done when he’d gotten back – because he couldn’t have been back long, with the expected timeframe of the mission – was break into the Hatake clan compound. Well, no, the first thing he’d done had been to change his appearance, and then he’d broken into Kakashi’s childhood home.

Compulsion seal?

Kakashi pressed his lips together and shook that thought, examined it from all angles. He’d been seeing a lot of ghosts today, so there was every possibility he was just jumping to conclusions, seeing yet another ghost where he didn’t actually have reason, but… But if he did have reason, and he missed it, just because he didn’t want to seem paranoid, he would never forgive himself. Especially since it was Naruto, the one who carried all those other ghosts of Kakashi’s.

He needed to test the compulsion. The only action of Naruto’s that seemed dangerous, and not just a subtle cry for someone to notice that something wasn’t right, was the breaking and entering. It was plausible that Naruto had just wanted to prank him, but for him to do so only hours after returning from a mission was unlikely. And Kakashi had found him in that room, when he’d already searched the living room, and possibly the kitchen, too. Later, Kakashi would check to see what had been disturbed. He really didn’t think he was going to find pranks.

“How about we get some ramen?” Kakashi suggested. “My treat.” His wallet was going to hate him, but it was for a worthy cause.

“Yeah!” Naruto enthused, punching the air. “Come on, come on! Hurry up!”

“Maa, slow down, Naruto.” Kakashi retorted, deliberately slowing his pace to a lazy stroll. It earned him a stink-eye, to which he responded with an oblivious eye-smile. “So… why do you want to know about my father?” He asked, when he gauged that Naruto’s guard had been suitably lowered.

Naruto did the smallest of double-takes. “I… thought you didn’t want to talk about that.” He said finally, quietly, unlike himself.

Was that another clue, Naruto sneaking around a compulsion seal to tell Kakashi not to tell him what happened without going head-on against the seal? It wasn’t like Naruto to come at things sideways like that, but on the other hand, if it was the only way for him to fight the seal – it wasn’t the only way, but Kakashi prayed Naruto didn’t figure that out – Naruto would throw himself headlong into finding ways to say what he meant, even if he couldn’t say what he meant.

“I don’t.” Kakashi acknowledged. “But I am curious as to why I found you there, today of all days.”

Naruto blinked. “Today? Why is today special?”

“It’s the anniversary.” Kakashi lied. It would do no harm if Naruto was fine, but if he had a puppet master, feeding them false information couldn’t hurt.

Naruto winced and looked down. “Shit. I’m sorry. Is that where you were, before I-” He coughed and looked away, embarrassed. “At the grave, I mean, paying your respects?”

“Mm. Does it matter?” Kakashi asked lightly.

The look Naruto gave him was sceptical. “Well yeah.” He insisted. “That was shitty of me.” He paused, then offered Kakashi a tentative smile. “Maybe, after ramen, we could go back?”

“We?” Kakashi echoed.

“Yeah.” Naruto nodded, looking hopeful. “I’d like to pay my respects, too, you know.”

That was hard to believe, honestly. Kakashi turned that over in his mind. First the scene of his father’s death, then his father’s grave? Why was Naruto trying so hard to investigate all that was left of Hatake Sakumo? “Why?” Kakashi asked bluntly. “It’s not as though you could have known him. He died long before you were born.”

Naruto looked away at that, shrugging awkwardly. “He raised you, didn’t he?” He asked, though it sounded more like a deflection. Like he was avoiding a straight answer, for some reason. The main reasons to avoid giving straight answers were if you didn’t know the answer, or if you wanted to lie and didn’t want to get caught by someone who helped out at T&I on the weekends.

And Naruto can’t not know the answer, because that question was about his own motivations, Kakashi thought. So perhaps this wasn’t a compulsion seal after all, but an imitation. Someone had gotten a hook in Naruto, enough to know how he behaved for the most part, but this wasn’t Naruto. It was someone else, who needed to lie about their reasons for wanting to visit Kakashi’s father’s grave.

“Oh, well. Perhaps after ramen.” Kakashi agreed, just to close the subject. It might even make a good excuse to stop in at the flower shop and let Intelligence know something was wrong. He could probably use some backup on this one, since he’d never really been a spy. Konoha’s Copy-Nin was just a bit too high-profile for that kind of work.

That wasn’t to say he couldn’t do it. And he would. He certainly wasn’t going to let Intelligence shuffle him out of the way and tell him to leave it to them. No. Someone – or someones – unknown had used Naruto to dig into his father’s history. That was stepping on just about every last button Kakashi had, that made it personal, and Kakashi wanted a leading role in finding them, wringing the truth out of them, and then disposing of them in a highly permanent manner.

[thiscrimsonsoul]

What did the mun think of Endgame? I was, sadly, very disappointed... They ignored Loki, Vision, Heimdall... Thor's depression and ptsd... no comment. They gave Tony a family just to kill him and including IW, they killed the two main women of each team (Gamora and Natasha) in the exact same way, same music, only to add that "Girl Power" moment later. Wanda fights a Thanos who didn't take anything from her. Whilst fighting this Thanos, they weren't the Avengers; they were the preventers!

{out of parikash}  So… I had a lot of problems with Endgame, but not as many as you might think or the ones you might think. This is gonna all be random, so let’s just get started, haha.

First of all, yeeeeah, I agree with you. No mention of those characters at all. Or Pietro after Ultron. So it struck me upside the head like a two-by-four to realize that some people seriously dislike or even hate Wanda because they think Pietro and Vision died and she didn’t care. Like… the fact that Pietro and Vision were never mentioned again in the MCU after their deaths (unless you count two seconds of his name on a baby’s shirt for Pietro and one indirect and possibly not even a reference to him at Tony’s funeral for Vision) are taken by some people as IC insensitivity from Wanda. Like… they think SHE doesn’t care. And that just like… hurts. Because she does, she cares a shit ton. See… I never ever took that as IC, or even real, haha. My brain automatically filled in like well okay… she does mention them, they do have funerals, she does cry for them… it just happened off camera between movies or during downtime where we didn’t get to see. That was 100% what I always assumed. So to learn that some people actually blame Wanda IC for not reacting at all to their deaths after their movies ended… that really shows the gross mishandling of their characters that MCU has engaged in, in my opinion. Yes, I went there. XD So yeah… I loved the way they handled Natasha’s and Tony’s deaths, but other characters also deserved such attention.

The portrayal of Thor’s depression and PTSD was… absolutely disgusting to me. I’m just gonna lay it out there. My heart broke for him, and he’s not even a favorite character of mine. To have a character break down that much and have it be perceived by other characters as annoying, crass, gross, funny, pathetic, or somehow negligent on his part and placing blame on him… was just… a slap in the face to anyone who has ever been broken down by trauma or grief in their lives. It sent the message that, if you react this way to trauma in your life, you’re lazy, no one will like you, you’ll be a failure, you’ll be a walking joke. And that is really not forgivable, Disney. Like honestly. What the flying fucking pancake. I would never treat any character I have ever written anywhere the way they did Thor. Boo. Not cool. Not acceptable.

Okay… Tony and Natasha’s deaths… here is where I’m going to lose followers haha. Let’s take Tony first.  I… was… never a fan of Tony until after Endgame, and I really didn’t understand him until I recently watched the first Iron Man movie. Yes… I haven’t seen 2 or 3. Yes… I didn’t watch any of them until after Endgame. I had no interest. I didn’t like the man at all. It wasn’t until Endgame that his death made me rethink him. His death, the way he interacted with Morgan, his message at the end… they all made me stop and go hmm a bit. In watching Iron Man, I suddenly realized that he had a very similar personality to and functioned mentally in the same way as a character I created over a decade ago. That character was also loud, crass, ran at the mouth, jokes that were funny, overly defensive, a little off, drank too much, the whole shebang… and it was because he had been traumatized during a war. Other characters around him accepted and understood that he was this way and why he was this way, and they gave him a lot more leeway and understanding than they would someone who had not been traumatized. To still other characters looking in, it was confusing as to why this totally abrasive asshole was being given all these free passes by his friends. Anyway, my point was that as soon as I realized that Tony was at his core the same type of character, I suddenly understood him a lot better, and that helped me to like him more.

In writing Wanda, that made me consider the nightmare/premonition she conjured in his mind in a different light. If you remember in Ultron, right after he wakes from his dream, Wanda is there and she looks… surprised. It’s canon that she saw all their nightmares, Lizzie said it so I buy it, haha. I have actually used her mulling over what she saw in Tony’s head as the bass for IronWitch (which I know is an extremely controversial ship, but somehow I make it work… off Tumblr though, I don’t need that kind of anti-ship hate on her blog), because Wanda was expecting something far more selfish and petty from Tony than what she got. And she doesn’t just see visions, she experiences what they’re thinking and feeling too. So she felt a lot of unselfish things from him that day that really confused her. The man who murdered her parents because he doesn’t care who he kills or he’s so rich that he doesn’t care who he sells his weapons to… which is who she thought he was… wouldn’t have had the kind of vision that he had. It changed her opinion of him, and I headcanon that that’s why she was able to tolerate him a lot more easily than Pietro.

Anyway, my tangent in going into this was that… his death actually made me, a late-comer to the movie-verse of Marvel, really examine his character and the core of his values and soul. In a good way, heh. I thought his death was good. BEFORE YOU KILL ME LET ME EXPLAIN, HAHA. I don’t mean I’m glad he died, because I’m not. That sucked, Morgan’s sad face sucked, everything about that sucked, haha. But… the way in which he died, the sacrifice he made, the way in which he was loved and honored afterward… I liked that. From a writer’s point of view, it felt like a very honorable and virtuous ending for a character who always had strived to be such and felt like he fell short. Well that time, he hit the bar, heh. I liked it. BUT I WILL COME BACK TO THIS ONCE I’M DONE WITH NATASHA SO HOLD THIS THOUGHT, haha.

Natasha… Okay, just like Tony, I didn’t overly like her until she died, haha, but whereas with Tony it was because I had misunderstood the character, with Natasha it was more a case of her completely flying under my radar. Bitch had been making me like her for umpteen number of movies and I hadn’t ever REALIZED it until she went and DIED on me and then I realized I LOVED her. XDDD I shit you not, I was literally like oh no I think I liked that character that just died, haha. It was a weird feeling. But not necessarily bad. What was bad, was the fact that it didn’t need to happen. I mean… was there a problem with just reversing our own timeline and grabbing the stones before Thanos snapped? I feel like there was a reason why we couldn’t’ do that, so I’ll let that one go, but even so… could we not have gone back to maybe when Thanos got the soul stone and taken it from him? Or I mean, my point is there were other options. Of course that would have screwed Gamora fans, haha, but I’m sure there was another way of getting that stone. But… that aside… new paragraph because long…

…as with Tony, I thought her death was well done. It was an emotional, honorable, brave way for again… a character who had often thought she wasn’t good enough or that she had too much red in her ledger. Well it all got erased at that point. It was a great venue, I thought, to showcase her and Clint’s relationship (which incidentally, have you ever seen a more beautiful display of platonic love in a really valid way before? Just ugh, it was amazing), to show how much they loved each other and how much that they were equally willing to sacrifice to set things right. Their commitment to saving the world regardless of what it meant for them was incredibly profound, poignant, and I thought the whole scene was really well done. If she had to die, I think it was a good death deserving of everything else we saw from her up until that point.

If… she had to die. If… Tony had to die. Here’s… where I start to get pissed off, haha. As I said, I feel like there were ways around Natasha dying. And with Tony… I mean… again, it was for an IronWitch thing… but I wrote a little ficlet off Tumblr about Wanda continuing to power the arc reactor herself after Tony did the snap. Now… granted… she couldn’t hold it forever and eventually got tired and distracted by her emotions and Tony ended up dying anyway and it was super sad, BUT… lol… the point was… I believe Wanda could do that. I believe Carol could’ve done that. Or, hey, you’re telling me they couldn’t find any kind of a temporary power source to fuel the arc reactor until they can fix or replace it? how many freaking times did Tony almost die from removal or failure of the arc reactor in Iron Man alone??? I’m not buying this, Marvel! Okay, maybe he died of a combination of the reactor failing and that he got fried by the power going through his arm and torso and head. Okay, that I buy. HOWEVER… HOW MANY OTHER CHARACTERS DID THEY BRING BACK IN SUCH RIDICULOUS WAYS BEFORE TONY AND NATASHA, AND YOU’RE TELLING ME THEY’VE GOT NOTHING THIS TIME? Some seriously ri-DONK-culous shit has happened in order to bring characters back in the MCU. I don’t buy for a second that there’s no way to do it. I just don’t. I personally can’t think of a way to do it, short of just grabbing another Tony and Nat from another reality into this one, haha, but I’m sure one of those giant brains at MCU could have thought of something.

Okay I ranted about Tony and Natasha enough. Now on to Steve. First, let me expression  my deepest sympathies to Captain America fans everywhere. They did him so wrong. I mean oh my holy gracious gravy pants, what the hell even was that?! First of all, in my opinion, someone who would selfishly go back in time to get what they want from a woman who otherwise had moved on and had a family and a life of her own and passed away already peacefully… was not worthy to wield Thor’s hammer. Worthy… to me… means… some kind of higher justice or morality that extends beyond self and into the greater good. There was nothing good about what Steve chose to do. It was selfish, it was really inconsiderate to this woman he claimed to love, and so much for all that junk about not being able to alter too much in the past or in alternate timelines, we have to just do pointed things and get out. Well Steve completely altered HIS OWN TIMELINE. Like. So why can’t  we go grab a mind stone somewhere for Vision? Huh? Why can’t we yoink a Nat or a Tony into this timeline? Why couldn’t we have brought back Pietro? For someone who was supposed to lead, keep order within, and direct prudently a team of people who have all lost and suffered and regretted things… he basically just said to them well nuts to what you want but Imma get what I want so see ya suckers. It was such a shitty thing to do and honestly I pretend like it didn’t even happen. Because no. Steve up until that point through umpteen number of movies would never have done what he did at the end of Endgame. He would have wanted to. He would have thought about it. But he would not have done it. That’s what makes him worthy. He doesn’t do what he wants, he does what serves the greater good, or truth, or justice. MCU dropped the vibranium shield on that one big time.

Okay all morality and character development that got trashed aside… sending Steve back to his timeline would have… changed… a lot more… than him just growing old? He wouldn’t have been encased in ice. Wouldn’t have been found decades later as a young capable person to help out with all the events of later movies. Civil War would never have happened. Lots of things wouldn’t have happened or would have happened differently because Steve would not have even been there. By all rights, when he came back old, everyone else there but Bucky should have been like… who the hell is this guy? They would not have had the history with him anymore. Am I wrong on this? I would love someone’s opinion because this really bugs me that they let this big of a plot hole go.

Now about Wanda... I do understand why that had to be set up that way, but as her mun, I can’t tell you how infuriating and heartbreaking it is getting inside her head at the moment at which Thanos casually tells here “I don’t even know who you are.” Like… here is a girl full of pain and grief and rage who has been so wronged by this guy… and he’s like… who dafuq even r u? At that moment she must have felt like exploding. Her feelings and pain were completely invalidated in that moment. Just… ugh, so painful for her. BUT THEN… MCU ROBS HER OF THE CHANCE TO KILL HIM. Wanda had Thanos. She was going to kill him and basically win things for everyone. But nope. We can’t have a woman do it, we gotta save that honor for Tony, heh. No offense to Tony, it’s just irritating to me heh. LET HER DO THIS, MCU. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? LET WANDA BE THE STRONG VENGEFUL WOMAN SHE IS AND KICK THIS PURPLE RAISIN’S ASS. It was like they felt they had to do the fans a service of having that confrontational moment but then decided no okay lol but we have a better ending for Thanos so bye bye Wanda. That’s honestly what it felt like and I really hated it.

Aaaaand I have ranted ENOUGH about this, haha. I’m so sorry, I kindof let loose lol. Hope I answered all your questions though!

[topicprinter]

Hi. This is a post for everyone still using traditional adsense ads on their sites or intend to monetize their sites with ads someday. I see positive mentions of Ezoic every once in a while on this sub but I feel none of the posts on this sub so far explain elaborately about Ezoic or its potential to a layperson unfamiliar with Ezoic or dabbling with Adsense for the first few times. And that is evident by the questions & dilemmas that pop up as posts & comments from time to time on this sub regarding Adsense and Adsense alternatives like Ezoic, Adthrive and Mediavine (adsense parters actually) when it comes to non-affiliate monetization methods.This post details my experience with using Ezoic on my sites so far and an AMA of sorts because there seems to be a lot of doubts and questions that you guys have when it comes to Ezoic. So feel free to ask. There are not many detailed reviews of these platforms on the Internet besides a mention by bloggers posting how they are making big bucks from these platforms in their monthly income reports. So I have documented my experience with Ezoic so far which spans a little over a year and I have attached screenshots where I've felt necessary but feel free to demand more. I do have an experience of using Adsense a couple of years until then but overall I still consider myself a beginner so I am always open to suggestions and criticisms.CASE STUDIES:I currently have three websites running in three separate niches and all of them run Ezoic ads. Combined they make me around $500-$800 a month. I cannot estimate what significance an extra $500 to $800 of income a month holds to first worlders but for someone like me who comes from the third world and with that sweet conversion rate, that income let's me live a happy life the way I want to without having to resort to a soul crushing 80 hour work week or occasionally life-threatening work and for that I will forever be grateful to Ezoic because without them it would not have been possible for me to make an earning & living online.Here's my personal income report from Ezoic so far. Ezoic earns me 4x to 8x the revenue from my sites compared to what having plain regular Adsense ads on them would earn me.On site A where I used to earn $1.25 per thousand views on Adsense, I now earn $5 - $8 for the same number of views on Ezoic. This site is in the niche of women's style and fashion. This is one of my very first sites and not a very proud one. I hired cheap writers and this is a buzzfeed style listicle website.On site B, I directly put on Ezoic and I get between $10-$12 per thousand views. This site is in the education niche. This site is way cleaner, good SEO and I have written the content myself. I was pretty happy with the jump in revenue I saw for the previous site so I never bothered with Adsense for this one. I directly applied to Ezoic for this. Got approved quick and had Ezoic running on it. Unlike the previous site, this site has been set to run 'balanced' number of ads, that is fewer ads on it. So getting $10-12 EPMV on it makes me more than happy. (EPMV = earnings per mille [thousand] visitors)On site C where I used to earn $0.25 per thousand views under Adsense, I now earn over $2 for the same thousand views thanks to Ezoic. This site is in the children's and parenting niche. I consider this site a failure for two reasons. I chose a bad niche with low ad rates and a third world majority audience. Because this means that even if I get a 100,000 views, I can only make say $200 dollars from this site. Second, the site despite being good in quality seems to be struck down by the recent Google update and the traffic has tanked hard and I'm making next to nothing on this. We'll I learned important lesson atleast and it doesnt cause any losses of time and money to run so will come back to this site later in 2020. But despite this, I'm glad with the jump that Ezoic has provided for this site because the revenue despite being low, jumped from $0.25 to $2. Confirming my faith in Ezoic.Why I joined Ezoic in the first placeI feel those numbers by themselves are a good no reason why anyone using Adsense currently should immediately upgrade to Ezoic. But for me one of my main reasons to join Ezoic was to not infringe on Google policies and have my Adsense banned. If you remember up until the longest time barring the past few years, Google had a restriction of 3 or 4 ad units to be placed atmost on a webpage. Google was kind enough to lift this restriction but was a bit vague by saying that the ads need to be proportional to the amount of content that is present on the webpage. Which makes sense but I always found myself second guessing as to whether I have too many ads on my page and risked getting banned or too few and risked leaving potential revenue on the table.This is where Ezoic stepped in. You just select all the prominent placements on your site where you could put ads and Ezoic uses its algorithm to decide the appropriate number of ads per page and incessantly tests the number of units, placement and sizes of the ads to test which gives the maximum revenue while still adhering to all Google policies and guidelines. Manually A/B testing Adsense ads was also a big problem and simply not feasible for me. I knew I was leaving revenue on the table by not constantly A/B testing my ads back when I was with Adsense but was too lazy and it was simply not feasible for me time-wise to test it out. Maybe some Adsense experts on here would know of ways to A/B test just using the Adsense dashboard and a few shortucts but for someone like me it would be days of work, months of tracking, hundreds of ad units and still I would be constantly doubting myself. Ezoic now automates that entire process for me.And that's pretty much it. Just a fantastic platform which uses its algorithms to completely automate your ad testing and tweaking which not only increases but multiplies your revenue for you. I will answer some common questions that have come up on this sub so far.What are the requirements and how difficult is the sign up process?They require your site to have atleast 10,000 visits per month. Visits and not pageviews. And second, to be overall compliant by Adsense standards and policies. If you meet this requirement, just sign up and soon someone from Ezoic's side will get in touch. They will verify your analytics and you will set up either using Ezoic's Wordpress plugin or by pointing your site's nameservers to Ezoic. They will also provide you an account manager to help you out with anything.Am I bound to them by contract? Do I have to sign a contract?No. No contract and you're not required to sign anything. You can discontinue any moment you feel like.Payments?Paypal, US Bank Transfer via Payoneer, International Bank Transfer via Payoneer, Prepaid Card via Payoneer, Check (Rec. USA and Canada Only).How does it compare to Mediavine and Adthrive?So for the unaware, Mediavine and Adthrive are also Google ad partners offering similar services. I have no experience working with either Mediavine or Adthrive though. I applied to Mediavine on three separate instances for two different sites but was rejected all the three times. Adthrive supposedly is even more tougher to get approved for. So my opinion on them is from what I have heard and read so far.Mediavine: Mediavine has a traffic requirement of 25,000/sessions per month and a US majority traffic. Ezoic has a requirement of only 10,000/session per month and doesn't demand a US majority traffic. Mediavine seems to be a better fit for female blogger niches like gourmet, writing, crafts, ettiquetes etc but also extends to travel, budgeting, online business etc. From dozens and dozens of Mediavine income reports that I have read, they seem to pay around $10-$15 per thousand visits. Since, my site B with US majority traffic earns in the same range, it seems to be at par with Mediavine. Here is what I would recommend to everyone so far. Apply to Ezoic the moment your site crosses 10,000 sessions and have them up and running on your site. Once your site crosses 25,000 visits you can apply to Mediavine if you feel your Ezoic EPMV is not good enough.Adthrive: Adthrive has a traffic requirement of 100,000/pageviews per month and from what I heard it seems even tougher to get qualified than Mediavine. They also have a waiting period of a couple of months and if I'm not wrong require you to get in a contract with them and require a 30 day notice before their ads be removed from your site. Out of the three, Adthrive will put the most number of ads on the site. From what I have read so far from in blogger's income reports, it seems Adthrive pays less than what Mediavine pays. So with these conditions, it doesn't make much sense to join Adtrive.What is Ezoic customer service like?The customer service is phenomenal and unparalleled. For a platform that deals with AI, I'm shocked at how good their customer service is and no I have not been paid to say this. Whenever I have contacted them on their general email for any support, I have got back a reply within a few minutes to a few hours but never longer than that. Never have I had to even wait a day. Each account is also provided an account manager who assists at literally everything. My previous account manager would reply almost instantly whenever I contacted him for support but there have been delays with the new account manager assigned to me. Sometimes taking a couple of days or more for a reply. But overall I would say the humans working at Ezoic are fantasticAmazon affiliate vs Ezoic/ad based sitesThat would be a separate post altogether. I feel the disdain for ad based sites is reasonable. I have made a post in the past saying how I feel the revenue I'm generating is quite less compared to the traffic I am getting. And hence I myself am looking to gravitate more towards affiliate sites or having my own products. But at the same time, not all sites can link to affiliate products. For a lot of sites, ads are the only option. This post is for them. Or for those currently using adsense on their sites. Or for those getting a decent traffic on their website but not high enough affiliate conversions.What else?There is a seasonal change in revenue. The EPMV varies month by month. Usually the ad rates are low in the beginning of a quarter and then shoot up towards the end. Christmas is usually the time of the year with the highest ad rates so right now is a good time for you to join in, although somewhere around October would have been even better because by then your initial testing would have been over and you could have cashed in on the high ad rates for Christmas. Nonetheless, now is still a good time to join in. You will notice sharp fall in ad rates in Jan and Feb though but it picks up again after that.Initial testing period: When you install Ezoic ads for the first time, there will be a period of a week or two where the algorithm will try out various permutations and combinations of ads to see which ones performs the best. During this period, your revenue will lower and not a true reflection of what you could be making with Ezoic once everything is optimized. It would still be multiple times more than what you were making with Adsense but speaking from my experience it should nearly double once everything is optimized in the coming weeks.Lot of free and useful one-click apps: Their 'app store' has a great bunch of free one-click-install tools that I found to be very useful. From displaying the privacy policy disclaimers to adding ads.txt or the placeholders for the ads, everything can be done with one click installs. Really useful.CiaoI guess that's about it. When I started out a year ago with them, besides an occasional mention in blogger's income report, there was literally maybe one single review post about Ezoic on the entire Internet. So just wanted to do my part and help out any fellow blogger's still using traditional Adsense ads on their blogs or websites. If you have any questions, please ask them below and at the same time let me be transparent and do a plug. If you found this post useful please consider signing up using my referral link. (I will get a tiny recurring bonus each month).In return, I will personally answer all your questions and also do my best to help you set up with Ezoic. Ezoic sign up hereThanks.