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heymrsandman · 8 months ago

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Wanna Try Star Trek? 4 - Bad Makeup and Bad Acting

John Startrek reporting in for our newest entry of Wanna Try Star Trek, where we’ll be looking at The Next Generation for the first time. TNG ran for seven seasons between 1987-1994, and was a genuine cultural phenomenon. The Original Series was more of a cult success, and the movies were certainly successful, but it wasn’t until Picard and co started boldly going that Trek truly entered the cultural mainstream.

So far we’ve had some fairly high concept shows, but TNG’s setup is quite simple. There’s a ship. It’s called the Enterprise. There are people on it. They have adventures.

Our story today is Too Short A Season, from Season 1, which was 26 episodes in total. I dunno, seems long enough to me.

So, whether you’ve boldly gone down this path before, or you’re just Star Trek-curious, get yourself a cup of Earl Grey, hot, and join me on this journey.

We open with Captain Jean-Luc Picard narrating his Captain’s Log, that the Enterprise has been assigned to pick up and escort Admiral Mark Jameson to negotiate a hostage crisis on the planet Mordan IV.

Jameson is an 85 year old wheelchair bound man, being played by a 30 year old man in a pretty shoddy makeup job. To be honest, I’m not very interested in critiquing that aspect. I’ve seen enough shoddy sci-fi effects to find them kinda charming. A much fairer criticism is of Clayton Rohner’s old man acting, where he’s engaging in just about every cliche of a young actor playing an old character. It’s a little much, even for me.

With Jameson on the bridge, Picard mentions that he’ll need to undergo a medical procedure, which Jameson isn’t fond of, but Picard insists it’s a routine procedure. Gee, I wonder if this is foreshadowing. The governor of Mordan IV, a man named Karnas, calls the Enterprise and says that if Jameson isn’t present, the terrorists will kill the hostages. Picard discusses the call with Jameson and his crew, with Counsellor Troi saying that she detects that Karnas is holding something back. Here, Jameson shows his shrewdness by giving a pretty incisive read on Karnas. Don’t underestimate your elders, kids, they’ve picked up a few things.

Medical Officer’s Note: Troi is a Betazoid-Human hybrid. Betazoids look almost to humans, save the eyes, which certainly helps keep the makeup budget down. They’re also telepathic, which would be a super handy power for a counsellor to have. Sadly, Troi lacks this due to her human heritage and instead possesses an empathic sense. Luckily, it can even span lightyears if she’s having a space zoom call.

Now, time to repeat the previous scene in a new location. They’re in Picard’s ready room, a little office just off the bridge, talking about what the terrorists could want. Lt Commander Data posits that they’re unhappy with Karnas’ leadership, and want to join the Federation. Jameson instead suggests that they want the Federation to arm them so they can restart the civil war that devastated their planet. A civil war, you say? Gee, I wonder if that’s foreshadowing.

Jameson goes back to his quarters where his wife Anne is waiting. She notes that he’s looking stronger and healthier since they came onto the ship, but Jameson gets a sharp pain in his chest. Anne wants to call sickbay, but Jameson insists that it’s a complication of his medical condition, although Anne doesn’t seem completely convinced. Gee, I wonder if this bit is getting old yet.

Speaking of sickbay, Doctor Crusher (who is Picard’s situationship, to make an understatement) has an important issue to bring to Picard’s attention. See, Jameson sent over the results of a medical examination from two days ago, so clearly he doesn’t need a checkup. Except, these results are two months old, not two days. Picard suggests it could just be an age related slipup and accidentally insults Crusher, before backpedalling and asking her to observe Jameson from the bridge for the next few days.

Back on the bridge, Picard offers Jameson the chance to pilot the ship for a while, and Jameson surprises everybody by getting up and walking the length of the bridge to the Conn. He puts this down to some new therapy he’s been doing lately, but Crusher takes Picard aside and says that’s simply not possible. Jameson’s condition is irreversible, and there is no therapy that can roll back the effects.

That night when he returns to his quarters, Jameson’s not only up and walking about, he’s trying to get frisky with Anne. She remarks that he’s even looking younger, which he is, thanks to a relaxed makeup job. Before they do the do though, Jameson’s pain flares up again and this time Anne does call sickbay.

Crusher is flummoxed, and tells Picard as much. Jameson must have ingested some kind of wonder drug that’s not only reversing his ageing, it’s also cured his incurable Iverson’s Disease.

An even younger Jameson, swaggering about his quarters with the energy of youth, tells Picard just how he managed this turnabout. He visited the remote planet of Cerebus III in search of a mythical drug. Turns out it’s real, and Jameson procured two samples, one for him and one for Anne. There’s a few caveats, however. You have to tailor the doses to the individual, and take them over the course of months. But when Jameson got the call, he decided to take both samples as is.

Anne hates that he’s kept all these secrets from her, and gone to such extremes just assuming that he’s right. Picard is more concerned with why Jameson felt it so necessary, which Jameson pointedly doesn’t answer.

Later, from a darkened meeting room where we can’t see Jameson’s face, Jameson calls Karnas to ask more questions about the terrorists. Pretty quick, Jameson starts to realise there are no terrorists, and Karnas is the hostage taker, wanting revenge on Jameson for some unspecified reason.

He goes to the bridge, looking quite young by now, where he orders the ship to speed up. This is, notably, Jameson overstepping his bounds. See, something I glossed over earlier is that they make a point of saying that Jameson is in charge of the mission and any away teams, but Picard is still in command of the ship itself. So Picard pushes back, and Jameson tells him he plans to personally lead an armed rescue team to free the hostages.

We transition to a shot of Jameson in the captain’s seat as he goes through his plan with Picard, who urges a more cautious approach. Jameson’s ego, anger, and magic space drug induced mania are clearly driving his actions here.

Anne, meanwhile, is talking to Troi & Crusher about how hurt and betrayed she feels. A particular sticking point for her is that Jameson gets to live his life anew, while she’s still an old woman. Crusher has to break it to Anne that, actually, the drug is killing Jameson.

We’re in another darkened meeting room now, with Picard coming to get some answers out of Jameson. See, Jameson had previously negotiated a hostage crisis on Mordan IV, where he famously talked down none other than Karnas himself. While Jameson did manage an impressive victory, the planet soon descended into 40 years of civil war with Karnas as one of the leaders.

At least, that’s the official story. Karnas wanted Federation weapons to wipe out his rivals with. Jameson agreed, but then secretly armed the other side with the same weapons. This was his interpretation of the Prime Directive - though he had interfered, he’d left the situation equal. Unfortunately, those weapons formed the core of the bloody civil war that engulfed Mordan IV. That’s Karnas’ motivation, revenge against the man who made their war quite so bloody.

First Officer’s Note: The Prime Directive is a very important and famously inconsistent piece of Star Trek lore. It’s actually two directives - 1) do not interfere with the development of a culture that has not reached a certain level of technological development 2) do not interfere with the internal affairs of civilisations that have reached that point - the problem is that it’s never kept consistent, and characters and stories will interpret it wildly different over the years.

Picard tries to mollify Jameson’s guilt, even though he’s clearly in the wrong. Jameson, rightfully, realises that the deaths of millions are on his head, and says he sees this as his do-over. So this time, he’s going in guns blazing.

With the away team ready to beam down, Picard makes it clear he’s not happy with this plan. Tough titties, Jameson says, you can’t stop me. I can’t, Picard replies, but I can go with you. So Picard beams down with Jameson and the team.

They arrive in a series of tunnels underneath the city. Jameson insists that he knows a direct route to Karnas’ palace, but Data says their scans show no such passage. Jameson insists, and when they reach a dead end where an open connection should be, they’re forced to cut a hole in the wall with their phasers to proceed.

Karnas predicted something like this, however. Gee it’s almost like he’s a leader with forty years of wartime experience or something. A large group of soldiers set on the away team, forcing a firefight. The team is pinned down, and Jameson’s pain returns. Picard takes charge and orders an immediate transport back to the Enterprise.

On the bridge, Karnas calls up, livid over the attack, and says he’ll start killing hostages if Jameson isn’t beamed down in ten minutes. Jameson is dying, but insists he be sent down to try to set things right.

Karnas, of course, doesn’t believe that this shaking and shivering young man really is Jameson, and Picard has to try to convince him. Even with Jameson’s intimate knowledge of what happened 40 years ago, it’s a no-go.

Crusher says that Jameson is fading fast, and Anne should beam down so they can say their goodbyes. Picard allows it, and tries to show evidence of Jameson’s regression, in the form of a series of still photos. Somehow, this doesn’t work. Nor does a great big Picard speech. What does is Karnas insisting on seeing “the scar”, which Jameson shows him.

Instead of shooting him, Karnas decides that letting him live out his life in this terrible pain is much more fitting. It takes maybe a minute or two, and Jameson gets to spend a few sweet moments with Anne before he dies.

Karnas releases the hostages, and Jameson is buried on Mordan IV.

So, did y’all realise that the entire plot changed partway through there? Jameson’s ageing turning him manic and arrogant goes completely out the window when he calls Karnas, and instead becomes a story about war crimes and redemption. It’s an odd switch, and one that doesn’t work.

Either approach is fine, and fertile ground for a Star Trek story, but trying to do both means that one story doesn’t get an ending and the second is underexplored.

There’s not a lot for anybody not named Picard or Jameson to do in this story, it’s less an ensemble piece and more a story all about its guest. I mentioned Picard, Crusher, Data, and Troi, but I didn’t even mention Worf, Riker, La Forge, or Yar, who all do appear in this episode and do get a few lines.

The other major problem is that, when it does turn into a political drama, it’s curiously unwilling to take a firm stance. Our lead, Picard, tries to defend him, and Karnas is shown to be in the wrong, if only in his actions if not his feelings. It’s a very late 90’s “end of history” viewpoint.

Common wisdom is that every Trek show from this period has a weak first two seasons. It’s hard to refute that, but for all its flaws, Too Short A Season is still one of the better stories of this inaugural season. While it’s not a waste of your time, there’s certainly a lot better you could do with this franchise.

Like, hopefully, our next episode. Great Wheel of Trek, don’t fail me now.

Ho boy, we’re gonna have to talk about Chakotay.

#star trek #tng #next generation #wanna try star trek #picard

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thiscatiscreepy · 2 months ago

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Damn it's over a year old.

Anyways pasting the entirety of the unfinished Black Mold fic under readmore so you can also enjoy how weirdly I wrote it.

I hope I can rewrite it better at some point.

Raphaella had recently finished a quite entertaining book on various plagues and maladies, and went to Ivy's to return it. Her room wasn't locked - a good sign, the archivist was in an agreeable mood and could even help her find something new to read. Walking into the large library, Raphaella pronounced a sing-along "hi", but the only answer was a faint echo from exposed metal walls. Ivy wasn't talkative, it seemed, or was simply too busy to afford being able to hear. Raphaella closed the door behind herself and strolled to the "reception" desk, where the archivist kept the book borrowing list. Before signing the return box, she looked through what the others had; Ashes had taken a poetry collection, which they had brought back a day later, Nastya was reading her favourite Cyberian novels again, and Marius had finally started the trilogy she'd been recommending him for several decades. Raphaella left her signature in the list and set off to find where the book belonged in the library.

Turning a few rows of bookcases, she discovered Ivy sitting in the reading area of her room; a clearing in the labyrinth of shelves with some comfortable furnishings and refreshments. The archivist was gripping a book and clearly hard at work in her head: her gaze was unfocused, the jaw tense, her breathing slow and methodical, the gears in her skull whirring loudly. However, her eyes darted more than usual, her hands were trembling slightly, and there was some strange ticking coming from her. Maybe she was combing through a particularly corrupted transmission. Raphaella waved at her, calling out her name, but Ivy didn't pay her any attention. Not wanting to bother the librarian any more, she moved on with her task while examining the shelves for anything that might pique her interest. There were several such books: one on medical radiation, a second on mosses, and a third one on venoms. She put her returned book on its place, and perused the library some more.

Raphaella noticed the poetry collection Ashes had borrowed and fluttered up to take a look at the contents. It wasn't a very good book. The poems were too long, more style than substance, and all about broken hearts and dreams. She couldn't recall Ashes ever talking about poetry, and reasoned they'd wanted to branch out their interests. This was definitely a bad first impression. Raphaella mused on some poetry about teeth and vivisection that had made her cry, though she couldn't precisely place why. Ashes probably wouldn't like it, too visceral. Walking along the shelves, she thought some more, and her mind stopped at the anthology she and Marius had once read. It had all kinds of poems; from morning coffee to spirituality. That could be a good starting point to help Ashes find poems to fit their tastes. She couldn't locate that same book but she did find a poetry magazine, and, skimming through some entries, she declared her search complete.

While on her little quest for good poems for Ashes, she ruminated on what book she should burrow next and decided she couldn't choose just one. In the end, she plucked all three and, beaming, went to the reception desk. She passed by the reading area on the way back and looked at Ivy.

The archivist was bleeding freely from her nose, the blood staining her clothes, the book she was still gripping tightly, the table, the chair and even the carpet. She was open-mouthed, her body was heaving with every rapid breath. Her face was contorted into the mask of abject terror. There were cluttering noises coming from her. It took Raphaella a moment to believe what her eyes were showing her, another moment to realise that this wasn't normal, and a final moment to shove her books on the table and rush to the other woman, calling her name. Only then did Ivy finally acknowledge her presence, laying trembling eyes on the scientist and producing a low, gutteral sound, something between a groan and a roar. As Raphaella tried to touch her, she recoiled violently and bared bloody teeth with a hiss. She moved her lips, but no sound came. Raphaella leaned in closer out of instinct to hear Ivy utter "leave" and "myself" before getting slapped in the face by a bloodied book. She staggered sideways, and the archivist tried to turn away, but the other woman grabbed her arm and pulled, forcing Ivy off the chair. She collapsed almost immediately, shaking her head and trying to free herself. Raphaella went on her knees to turn her on the side and support her head, which was burning to the touch. Now she could clearly hear the noise Ivy's brain was making: grinding, snapping and rattling of metal.

"What's going on?!" she cried out.

The archivist shook her bloody head and tried to form words, but all that came out were gasps and hissing. Raphaella shouted Ivy's name. Something in her head popped. She grabbed at the scientist, her eyes enormous.

"Knowledge," she breathed, "eats me."

Her skull snapped and she resumed to shake her head and wail. Raphaella stared helplessly, and her eyes begun to burn. What was she supposed to do? Something was wrong with Ivy's mechanical brain, it was deteriorating by the minute, and the scientist didn't know how how fix it. It would be too risky to leave to get help, and Raphaella shouted to the Aurora that Ivy was unwell, hoping someone would come. Ivy's head produced a loud crunch and she screamed hoarsely. The scientist hugged her tightly and sobbed. Pressed close, she felt her heartbeat, rapid and uneven, how much blood was pouring out of her, felt how cold her skin was, how desperate the breaths were, how weak her movements grew. She was dying, and Raphaella didn't know what to do.

Minutes passed, Ivy never stopped bleeding, but something in her skull clicked, she trembled and gasped, and her breathing steadied somewhat. Raphaella noticed that, touched her head; still hot, but not burning. She couldn't afford to relax yet, but she sighed a relief all the same. At that moment, someone barged into the library. Nastya, breathing rapidly, appeared before her and frowned upon seeing the bloody scene.

"What happened?" she asked, bending down to examine Ivy's mechanism. Raphaella only shook her head.

"I think," the scientist swallowed her tears, "I think she's getting better. We need to get her to the medbay."

Nastya nodded and lifted Ivy out of Raphaella's arms. She was deathly white, her eyes were dark and sunken, she was shaking, still bleeding, still throwing around, still grunting. They walked swiftly, not minding the blood staining the metal floor. Raphaella relayed what happened the best she could, from Ivy's unusual initial stage to her cryptic words. All the while the archivist's head kept cracking and clicking.

"Do you know what could have caused this?" Raphaella asked Nastya, "Did she tell you anything similar?"

The engineer shook her head, frowning even more. Behind, the women heard quick footsteps.

"What happened? Is Ivy okay?" Marius asked, out of breath. He got his answer when Nastya turned around to look at him, revealing the ghostly, wide-eyed archivist in her arms. He stared at her, for a moment unable to move. Her skull popped, and she exhaled heavily. The doctor ran ahead to the medbay to get everything ready, and Raphaella joined him.

She told Marius the same story of what happened, and asked the same question, if Ivy'd ever spoke of this to him. He shook his head, though his mind seemed preoccupied with something else. In the medbay, the two prepared a bed, as well as some wet towels and a bag of the archivist's own blood. Marius was getting cotton swabs and alcohol when Nastya walked in.

"She stopped bleeding," she said, and put Ivy on the bed. Raphaella hooked her up to the IV, while Marius put a wet towel on her hot head. He checked her pulse, still irregular. Her skull snapped, and Ivy hissed, her expression getting more determined and her body tense. Her head produced more clanks and clicks, until it popped one final time and grew quiet. The archivist relaxed her muscles, sighed, and reluctantly closed her eyes. She ceased moving, causing a momentary panic.

"She's still got a pulse," Marius weighed in, "I think she passed out."

Indeed, Raphaella could now see her faint, even breaths. Her struggle had concluded, and she thought Ivy would appear calm and resolved, but instead the abundant drying blood and her almost snowy face made her look like a brutalised corpse.

Marius took the wet towel off Ivy's head and began to gently rub the blood off her face. The cloth became soaked in seconds, and there were still thick streaks of crimson on her cheeks, but at least she looked like a living person again. He offered the towel to the other two women. Nastya took it and quickly wiped her hands and arms, then demanded a clean one for Raphaella. The scientist was briefly taken aback, but then recalled how long she'd held Ivy in the library. She looked over herself and saw her entire outfit turned to red, with only small patches untouched by blood. She couldn't even imagine how her face and hair looked at that moment. She took the fresh towel and wiped it vigorously against her face, it came away with bits of crusted blood.

The three sat fidgeting, watching as color returned to Ivy's face. At one point the door to the medbay opened, and Ashes walked in, following the trail of blood. They walked over to the archivist, looked her over, and turned to the others for an explanation. While Raphaella told the story for the third time, Ashes put the back of the hand to Ivy's head, their face tense.

"You look after her," they commanded at Marius, who nodded briskly. After taking a final look at the archivist, they left.

Nastya squatted next to the bed, trying to see the inside of Ivy's mechanism. She even reached for a flashlight in her pocket, but thought better of it. She touched her metal scalp from different angles, hummed and stood up to leave.

"You're not staying?" Raphaella asked.

"She'll be fine, she's strong," the engineer stopped in the doorway to say. "She's been through worse."

That left only Marius and Raphaella in the medbay. The doctor occasionally checked Ivy's pulse and temperature, and even finished cleaning her face. The archivist breathed more noticeably now, and turned in her sleep. How long had it been since she'd been brought into into the medbay, an hour? Raphaella felt that just a few minutes ago she'd thought Ivy would die in her arms, and now she'd been brought back to life in no time at all. Looking at her bloodied clothes, she still felt that chilling fear at watching her bleed out from an unexplained cause. It made her clench her teeth and tense her fists. Why didn't Ivy tell anyone that could happen, that her brain could betray her in that way?

"She'll need to explain all this," Raphaella said to Marius when he sat down next to her. She hoped he'd nod or hum, or show any sign he shared the bitter anger and worry the scientist was feeling. Instead, he pressed his lips tight, brow furrowed.

"Are you okay?" She asked, tension in her body shifting to confusion. The doctor's face drew taught, he scratched his beard.

"She asked me not to tell," he mumbled, then sat silent. Raphaella had several questions on her mind, but couldn't choose which one to ask first, and in her baffled silence, he spoke.

"Something happened a few decades ago. We, Ivy and I, were sorting through some books and she got a nosebleed."

Raphaella tensed again.

"She froze completely when she realised it, didn't respond to her name, just stared at something with those huge eyes," he continued, "she recovered after a few seconds, wiped the blood and told me not to mention that to anyone. But her face in that moment was the same as today: pure, genuine horror."

Raphaella knew what he meant. Ivy had a hard time hiding her emotions, everything she felt showed unfiltered on her face. If she'd had such a reaction, she was truly afraid. But of what?

"And you just didn't tell anyone?" she ended up asking. Marius threw up his arms.

"It was a nosebleed! They're embarrassing! And how was I supposed to know it could lead to this?" He gestured at the prone archivist.

Raphaella searched for words, but had to agree; she herself didn't act when she first saw Ivy acting off. Shame prickled her chest.

"How is she?" she asked.

"Good. All good," Marius said grimly, "as if nothing happened."

~~~

Ivy was stirring from a strange and painful dream, and desperately tried to hold it together long enough to remember as she woke up. It was crucial that she remembered what was revealed in her sleep. But then the wave came, centuries of information crashed down on her memories and tore them like a tornado would tear a butterfly. The wave rushed to fill her head to bursting, forcing itself down her neurons and lashing violently against her nerves, loud as thunder. She had probably screamed, because someone was touching her. She shook them off, she didn't know who that was. Wait, no, she'd seen them somewhere, in the tsunami of information. Doctor baron Marius von Raum, doctor of the starship Aurora. What was "starship Aurora"? Not "what", but "who", the ship was sentient, and she was in her medbay, covered in blood. Who was "she"? Ivy Alexandria, the archivist and navigator of the starship Aurora.

Gradually, she came to understand her surroundings and could finally focus on what Marius had been saying.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

She could not feel anything hurting physically, so she answered affirmatively.

"Is your mechanism working okay?" he followed up.

She felt her face scrunch in a frown, and tried righting the muscles into a neutral position. She wouldn't had been alive if her brain wasn't functioning properly, but she ran a scan to confirm.

As she suspected, all was in order, and she answered affirmatively.

"Are you sure?" Marius asked, concern on his face.

She scanned again and reaffirmed her answer, but that didn't quiet his worry. She waited for him to explain himself, and when be didn't, she asked him herself.

"You," the doctor seemed to struggle to find words, "you had a bad nosebleed."

For a moment, she squinted at him and looked at herself, and saw her clothes almost black with blood. Not unusual after a violent encounter, but a nosebleed? She began to wonder what could have caused such blood loss, but her mind jerked, she tripped on a giant, unmistakable warning wailing of the dangers that lay beyond. She stepped back from that point in her brain. She seemed to have jumped, as Marius was holding her again.

"Are you okay, is it happening again?" he asked.

Again, the warning flashed in ber head, brighter than a supernova. She shook her head, trying to not to think about that place.

"Stop talking about it!" she yelled and calmed her furious expression. "I'm fine."

She stood up from the bed and almost fell over, grabbing at a cabinet. Marius tried to steady her, but shot a glare at him and he stood back. Ivy reached in and discovered her stabilisation was off, she took a moment to recalibrate it. She made a note to thoroughly check the rest of her brain, and wondered what had caused it, but was again met with the imposing warning signs. She shook it off and headed for the exit.

"Do you need help?" Marius sounded behind her. She replied a sturn "no" and didn't let him ask another question.

There was blood trailing the floor outside the medbay. Ivy didn't have to guess its source, and she took a second to calculate how much blood she'd lost on her way to the doctor. The result made her shiver. She almost wandered into the sealed off part of her mind again, but managed to steer away. She needed a strategy to analyse the warnings and what they were guarding without causing another meltdown, but the sight of blood was dragging her to that forbidden territory. She closed her eyes, pulled up the map of the Aurora, put a hand on the wall, and walked to her room.

She wished she could truly navigate the ship with her eyes closed, but the organic body produced inconsistencies in gait and speed that she couldn't master. There were many occasions on which she still tried to walk aided only by her mind, which ended in her breaking her nose against a metal wall. She envied the Toy Soldier and Brian in those moments. She could only imagine how joyous it would be to have a body that obeys your orders precisely and tirelessly, that doesn't strain from repetition, ache with hunger or run out of breath mid-sentence. She would barely hesitate to give away the pleasures of nerves and muscle for that. But for now, she relied on walls to tell how far she'd traveled and where to take turns.

Soon, Ivy reached her room and opened her eyes. She knew the blood trail would continue into the library, but it was barely visible. Someone had tried to clean it off the floor. The archivist crouched to examine the residue, and the smell alone gave away the secret custodian; Raphaella, with her favourite blood detergent. Ivy remembered hearing the scientist's voice, but it was faint and unintelligible as though she talked through a wall.

Wait, it hit Ivy, she could recall something from the incident. She searched around some more. She remembered laying down, being carried, laying down again. She dug deeper, and found moments of lucidity, where she saw Raphaella and Nastya. Deeper still, she recalled the book she was reading last, sitting in her favourite chair. She poked around, and was deafened by warning sirens all around her. She cringed, retreated, and sighed.

Ivy heard the door open, and saw Raphaella with thick gloves and bottles of milky liquid. The scientist gasped and dropped everything to rush to the other woman.

"Ivy, are you okay? Everything working normally?" she asked. The archivist answered affirmatively.

"What happened?" Raphaella followed up, her voice lower.

"I don't want to talk about it," Ivy spoke almost automatically.

"You almost died! You said strange things, it was horrifying!" the scientist raised her voice.

"I don't -" Ivy began to repeat herself, but stopped. "What did I say?"

She felt her face tense, but couldn't help it. Raphaella probably saw that, because she hesitated her answer.

"You said... the knowledge was eating you." She almost whispered. "What did you mean by that?"

The archivist let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "I don't want to talk about it," she reaffirmed, and urged Raphaella to let give her some space. The scientist tried to argue, that she wanted to finish cleaning up, but Ivy was firm on being alone for a while.

For a few seconds the archivist stood still in her library, thinking over what she'd learnt. This had definitely been going on for a while, and her past self had deemed it dangerous enough to implore such violent warnings. Ivy trusted herself to only erect these concrete spikes when absolutely necessary, but she needed to understand what they guarded, and how it'd incapacitated her.

Since the direct confrontation had proven fruitless, Ivy attempted to observe the warnings sidelong, on the periphery of consciousness. Indeed, they didn't blind or deafen her when payed little attempted to. The archivist discovered a wall forming an irregular closed area, and she just then noticed a slight but insistent current pushing her away from its edges. A smart way of deterring a wandering mind, she commended her past self.

She nudged herself against the current hard enough to surpass it, like one might push a paper boat. She flowed past the fence, feeling its hot urgency phase through her. He did it, she conquered her mind back. The triumph, however, was brief, as she almost fell into an abyss that lay just behind the warnings. Ivy made a quick check of the area to find several thousand data nods gone from her memory. Not erased, or transplanted, or wiped clean, ready for new data, but entirety, irreversibly gone.

Ivy kept everything she'd ever read, seen, heard, touched, spoken and felt. She didn't dare throw away any data, however tempting that may be. She'd tried once. But for something as self-referential as the human brain, the absent memory shocked her like an electric jolt. Any time she'd veered close to that section of her mind, Ivy'd run along its pathways and had broken against a dead end, horrified that her brain had already started decaying. The momentary terror subsided once she'd remembered that the absence was of her making, but the endless pit in the intersection of data still made her distressed far more than any pain that memory had held.

And so to see not just a pit in her mind, but an abyss; unfathomably vast, infinitely deep, made Ivy retch.

She didn't want to even think about it, but the horror almost pushed her towards it, to look into it, to count how much information is gone forever. She ran against it, towards the fence, but found the guarded place more difficult to escape than intrude into. The warnings were even brighter and louder on the inside of the wall, tasing her very heart as she screamed and clawed out, back into normality. She might have shrieked in her library, Ivy couldn't tell, she was too lightheaded and exhausted, her brain hot enough to make her eyes burn from the inside. She needed a respite for a bit.

Ivy looked over herself. There were peeling streaks of crimson on her skin. Her clothes were heavy and rough from dried blood. It was in her hair too. She smelled of iron, salt and alcohol.

She took a hot shower, watching the water turn red and disappear down the drain. The smell of iron grew stronger from the heat. It felt like something trickled out of her nose, and she touched it warily, but it was just stray water. Ivy wanted this shower to last longer, to wash away the abyss as easily as the blood, but her mind wandered back to the wall and to the cold emptiness inside, as if they were the only things in existence. She stepped out and dressed. There was still one more thing to check on.

Coming into the reading area of her library, Ivy found what could pass as a murder scene. The furniture was pushed violently, and a single book lay torn and blood soaked on the floor. More blood was sprayed everywhere and collected in a black pool on the rug. She sat in a clean chair and looked at the ruined carpet. She liked that carpet. It had an intricate tangle of roads on it, and Ivy'd followed them when she'd wanted to concentrate. Now, all these roads, winding and crossing, eventually disappeared into the dark red void.

Ivy's head throbbed and she buried it in her hands, ignoring the heat. Too many reminders, too many things pushing her back to the explosive warnings, to the abyss. She felt like tearing her hair out. Instead, she briskly stood up and left the library.

Walking through the Aurora's corridors, Ivy examined the ship's blueprints, identified the alloys of her metal panels, logged malfunctioning lights, and gradually her head cooled. Subtly, she reminded herself of the rug and turned sharply to Ashes' quarters. They kept a collection of antique furniture that they'd burn in a pile when planetside, to look pensively into the fire. Before meeting that demise, the pieces were available for trade, and Ivy didn't doubt Ashes had a rug she'd like.

When the archivist got to her destination, she knocked and entered. Ashes' room seemed to look different every time she came in: the armchairs were red velvet instead of black leather, the large painting above the decorative fireplace was replaced with tree smaller ones, and even the wallpaper displayed a different pattern. The quartermaster was sitting in one of the armchairs, looking up at Ivy from their book and giving a nod. She nodded back and walked to them.

"You good?" Ashes asked as she approached.

Ivy almost recoiled at the question, but she answered affirmatively. They smiled faintly and nodded. She noticed they were reading some poetry journal. It confused her, she thought they didn't like poetry.

"Do you know what happened?" they followed up in a sturn tone.

The archivist briefly gritted her teeth, wishing these questions would stop. But, as the ship's quartermaster and, in the absence on an elected captain, the defacto leader, they had the right to know of the crew's problems and how to deal with them in the future. Ivy sighed.

"I'm looking into it," she answered.

Ashes nodded. "Do you know what caused it?"

"I'm looking into it." Ivy repeated. "I will report to you with results."

They nodded again with a smile and went back to their reading.

"What'd you need?" Ashes asked with a more casual tone.

"A rug. My current one's unsalvageable," the archivist said.

They hummed but didn't answer for a while, eyes in the book. Ivy could hear a grandfather's clock and the creaking of the ship in the silence.

"Okay, let's see." Ashes layed down the poetry and strode to their storage with their guest.

The room looked like a furniture store, with everything organised into little sets or stacked neatly against the wall. Ivy stopped several times to inspect some antique armoires and intricate silverware while Ashes walked on nonchalantly. There were octokittens sleeping on a torn sofa, and she pet them thoroughly. After getting her fill, she jogged up the the corner with carpets of all shapes and sizes.

"What kind do you want?" the quartermaster asked, unfurling a massive teal rug with ocean motifs. Ivy took a moment to look it over, wide-eyed.

"Something geometric, similar to my current rug." She said. "Preferably with a labyrinth as a pattern."

Ashes hummed and looked at their collection thoughtfully. After a second, they unrolled another rug, earthly red with layers of intersecting rooms and halls, like the map of a dungeon. Ivy's eyes began following its corridors almost on their own.

"How about this one?" they asked.

Ivy nodded enthusiastically, "this is perfect, thank you!"

Ashes smiled at her and rolled the rug back up. The two then tied it and made handles out of rope for easier handling.

"Do you need help with it?" the quartermaster asked as Ivy weighed the roll in her hands. She shook her head, it wasn't a terribly big rug, and her room wasn't too far, she could carry it by herself just fine. As she left Ashes', they reminded her to bring the old one to them. Ivy nodded and set back home.

At first, she was full of energy over the excitement of something new in her library, but gradually the rope started to dig into her palms and the weight strained her arms. She tried to walk faster but the roll beat heavily against her legs, and she had to take breaks. The exercise made her realise she hadn't eaten since waking up. While crossing an intersection of corridors, Ivy saw Nastya, who was inspecting the seams of the metal walls and muttering in Cyberian, too low to hear. The archivist's mind wandered off for a split moment, and she stumbled over the rolled carpet, drawing Nastya's attention.

"You alright?" she asked after looking Ivy over.

The archivist remembered Nastya's voice in her clouded memory of the incident. She sighed, veering herself away from the abyss, and dropped the carpet, her arms sore. She answered affirmatively.

"Do you need help?" Nastya nodded to the rug.

Ivy looked at her palms with burning red stripes where rope pressed against her skin. She massaged her hands. Her stomach ate at her. She answered affirmatively.

The two women held the rug under their arms and attempted to walk, but the difference in height and gait made the roll sway and push them into the walls. After some trial and error, they managed to match their walking and got the carpet to Ivy's room in no time. But they couldn't start working yet, the archivist was starving.

She rushed to her pantry to get tea and some snacks. She asked Nastya if she wanted anything, and heard a "no" as the engineer retreated into the library. Eager to get the old rug out, Ivy ate quickly and went after the other woman. Nastya was holding the bloody book and looking solemnly into the black pool in the reading area, kicking the edge of the carpet.

"Is the table heavy?" she asked, nodding to it.

"Approximately 320 pounds," Ivy stated almost on impulse, taking the book for the restoration pile. Matte blood ate a hole in the polished wooden surface.

Nastya clicked her tongue. "I need your help to move it."

Ideally, they'd drag it off the carpet entirely, but the rug was large, almost the entire size of the reading area, and the rows of shelves were too tight for the table to squeeze through. Instead, they'd just have to pin it against a shelf and kick the rug from under it. With this in mind, the women grabbed the table and lifted it, just enough to move. The weight pressed back down on Ivy's body, digging her feet into the carpet. For a moment she didn't move out of fear her limbs and spine would break if she did, but Nastya's firm push made her budge. Soon enough the table was against a shelf, the other furniture was moved as well, and the old rug was rolled. Beneath the black pool, some of the blood had seeped into the scratched metal floor. They couldn't get it out.

The chair Ivy had been sitting on was also damaged; its scarlet padding bore the discoloration of drying blood. Ivy dragged it behind as the two women moved the rug to Ashes'. They had to take breaks on their way. Seeing the bloodied chair, the quartermaster insisted on giving Ivy a new one, and she had to find a seat that suited her library best. She ended up choosing an antique chair with leafy green padding, to compliment the new rug. Nastya carried it to her room. Back there, the engineer spread the new carpet, and Ivy couldn't help staring at it while cleaning her own blood off the table. Finally, the two women moved the furniture onto the rug, following the previous arrangement only loosely.

After the hard work, both of them sank into chairs. Nastya sighed deeply and closed her eyes, as if ready to fall asleep right then and there. The snack Ivy'd had was replaced with new, exhausted hunger. This time, she wasn't in a hurry, and could eat properly.

"Do you want tea?" the archivist asked Nastya, who hummed and shook her head.

"I've got work to do." The engineer stood up, stretched, took one last look at the new reading area, and strode to the exit, bidding goodbye.

Ivy had to tear herself away from the renewed space to prepare food, and she sat there again to eat. Such trivial adjustments - a clean carpet, a new chair, shuffled furniture - had made the reading area almost unrecognisable. The archivist stood up several times during her meal to simply walk around and take in all the new patterns in it. She realised she'd been smiling that entire time. It made her giddy, she wanted to sort new books and dust and clean the floors and even restore some damaged tomes. But, her eyes kept drifting to the spot where the new carpet covered up her own blood, and coldness struck her chest. She needed to continue looking into her mind, past the blaring warnings, into the abyss, to make sure her mechanism wasn't compromised. At the same time, she despised that she had to ruin her mood so suddenly. She couldn't put off her internal investigation for too long either; once she went to bed, she'd forget its urgency. Eating, Ivy thought. Ideally, she could stay awake for three days before her body to give out. Realistically, it took less than 18 hours for her mind to become less sharp and prone to drifting, and she couldn't afford swaying on the edge of the chasm. Her body shuddered involuntary and her meal urged to get out of her stomach. She wished she didn't have to think about it.

And it struck her: indeed, she didn't. She didn't need to penetrate the wall or stare into the abyss. The data just outside the guarded perimeter was just as valuable as that on inside, and could clue her to the nature of the thing being held there.

Ivy walked around her library as she circled the wall, examining data nodes closest to it. Coordinates of a dead colony. Information on a specific species of ant. Advice for camping in hot humid weather. Short story about a town on a lake. Paper on the biodiversity of a freshwater area. Description of a snail species. History of a dead star system. Myth of an underwater city. Lifecycle of saltwater fish. Book about different fungi. Another fallen civilization. Mistletoe. Oceans. Death. Fungus.

Ivy caught herself walking faster and barely skimming the information. It simply didn't add up to anything. She stopped, allowing herself a moment to seethe at the discordant data. The back of her eyes felt warm, and Ivy massaged her temples. After a few deep breaths, she looked over the wall's periphery again, and stepped away from it, to more distant information. There she found old manuscripts on dealing with mold, a paper on sudden fall of an ancient empire, and more lowly animals. Suddenly, she encountered a data node dedicated to "memetic hazards", and let out a loud groan.

The term singlehandedly relapsed Ivy into annoyance and anger, and she paced fast through her library. She despised the notion of memetic, or information, "hazards", as it wasn't an actual defined concept, but rather a word people threw at everything under the stars; from propaganda and instructions on making a bomb, to mind crashing pictures in horror stories and nonsensical thought experiments. Ivy stepped out of her mind to try to calm down. Her understanding of the thing within the wall was barely formed as it was, she didn't need senseless words thrown into the mix. Still, if the node was that close to the abyss, it had to have relevance.

After a moment, Ivy returned to the node, looking around for justification for its place in that part of her mind. As she'd expected, she found the usual stories of various objects and creatures who imploded the brains of anyone who dared look at them. But, an adjacent data node made her still for longer than she'd admit.

Parasites. How were parasites, of all things, close to "memetic hazards"? They were real, tangible creatures for one thing, not a formless concept. She could define and list thousands, millions of organisms using another one as both home and food. And it hit her, all other seemingly disparate data around the wall crushed together into a wave of coherence; the invertebrae submitting to fungus and worm, the isopods settling into a fish's mouth, the blood sucking bugs, the civilizations fallen to hubris and madness.

Ivy had parasitic knowledge inside her.

The thought sprung into her mind fully formed and frighteningly familiar. Her stomach dropped, all the air escaped her lungs, she felt weak. She swayed and hit a bookshelf with her shoulder, grabbing at it to keep standing. The muscles of her face stretched and tensed uncontrollably, and she couldn't parce what it'd contorted into. All the blood in her veins seemed to have momentarily frozen, while her brain heat up enough to make her eyes water. She couldn't think, all her thoughts dissolved into the words "parasite" and "knowledge", and her mind conjured images of leeches crawling out of a freshly cracked skull. Ivy stood completely paralysed, barely conscious, for a minute that stretched far too long.

Shakily, she walked along the bookshelves to her new chair, sat, and attempted to think. Her head was still burning, unbearably loud, and she unscrewed the sides of her mechanism to let it breathe. Her hands shook on her knees, and she grabbed white knuckled at her skirt. Her heart beat rapid against her ribs, and she tried breathing slowly to calm it. She needed to think, to analyse, to draw conclusions, but her body betrayed her, cowering in fear, distracting her. Objectively, she knew that the risk of her succumbing to parasitic knowledge is extremely low, yet the shock of it rocked waves inside her, drowning calm logic. If she kept all her distress locked for any longer, it'd boil her.

She doubled over and clutched her head, making a sound between a sob and a groan. For a second, she let go of her iron reason and allowed the worst thoughts to flood her mind. She swore. Something was eating her from the inside. If it'd gotten out once if could do it again. It could fry her brain, kill her, make her claw her eyes out, force her to crash her head against metal walls. She swore again and again. She imagined the parasite escaping and spreading itself through her lips. She shuddered. More horrible possibilities appeared in her mind: the knowledge growing too big for her skull, cracking it from the inside; it making her mechanical brain grow throughout her nerves; her body walking and talking by itself while she was a mere observer.

Ivy despaired for several minutes, until the tide of panic was only ankle-deep. It still lashed at her legs, but didn't cloud her head. She took a breath and dared to think about the living knowledge objectively.

Firstly, it was apparent to her that she'd lived with the parasite for a long while, evident by the abyss, the wall, the warnings, and the warding current. From that, it wasn't unreasonable to think that she had constructed other protections against the knowledge, it was just the matter of finding it. Perhaps it was one of such secondary defences that had malfunctioned. She pinned that thought.

Secondly, the others on the crew didn't appear to recognise the violent incident, therefore there weren't such massive outbreaks before. That points to the quality of security Ivy had set up in her mind, and an extremely low likelihood of it happening again. She pinned that as well, if only to quiet her fear even further.

Finally, and she hated to come to this conclusion, there was more to learn about the parasite inside the wall. The abyss was surely created to limit Ivy's possible exposure to the knowledge, but she'd had to curate the data about it. She was sure there was useful information left by her past self. After hesitating for a moment, she shakily stood up from her chair and left her newly remodeled reading area for the front of the library. There were no carpets, dear books or valuables items, just a few basic wooden chairs and tables on a bare metal floor. Ivy sat where one of the Aurora's cameras can see her, and preemptively leaned forward, so that if the incident repeated, she would bleed on the floor instead of herself. She took a moment to ready herself and turned to the wall.

It appeared less imposing now, its warning sirens not nearly as loud or blinding. Even the outward current wasn't as insistent. Ivy pushed almost too effortlessly past the wall and tried not to acknowledge the chasm beside her.

The nodes around the abyss were damaged horribly; some senselessly, clawed and maimed, torn and scattered, reduced to a mess of ones and zeros. There was nothing left in them. But there were some outliers: data with clear cuts and careful transplants of syllables. It reeked with intent and intelligence. Ivy leaped away from it, her heart pounding wildly. It took her a moment to fully realise that her parasite could manipulate information inside her mind, her archive. Her brain was just as fallible as any other. She put her head in her hands to calm down.

From that moment she looked over data nodes only briefly, to see if it was salvageable. None were, and she couldn't risk reading into the rearranged words. She walked on, and almost missed a path leading into the centre of the abyss. Her heart stopped as she imagined a squirming animalistic mess rushing down it, catching Ivy in its trap. But nothing came, save for dread as she realised she needed to go there, over the bottomless pit. The connection wasn't random, wasn't a oversight by her part self. It was deliberate and it was hers. She readied herself for several minutes before walking it.

There was nothing beside the path, no other data breaches, or islets of information in the void, just this tightrope to a singular point. It felt cold, empty and fatal, like being stranded in an arctic forest with no fire. Ivy couldn't allow herself to think about anything but the slim path over the fathomless emptiness. She knew what could happened if she fell, and shuddered at distant memories of her brain trying and failing to process nothingness.

Soon, she came to the single data node in the abyss, about two thirds of the way to the centre of the chasm. Right where the centre of it would be, was an island. Ivy swore she could hear something from it, it was so tantalisingly close. If she willed it hard enough, she could just bridge the gap. But she knew better.

She took a breath and looked at the data node. It was surrounded by modified malware protection that was clawed and beaten but intact. It required a series of riddles and visual tests to access the information inside, and Ivy felt like she'd done them easily many times before. It opened up, and she could feel her heart beat like a hammer on her ribs. There it was, the most concrete piece of information on the parasite that had almost killed her.

"Several".

And that was it. No name, no origin, not even a more precise number. Just the knowledge that there were several of them in her mind. Ivy stayed at the node for a while, trying to calm her racing heart, listening to distant whispers in languages she could almost understand, and reveling in a sick satisfaction that the things that had razed her mind were tearing at one other like rabid dogs.

Ivy reset the protection on the node, filling it with new riddles on random, and left. After crossing the chasm and the wall, she retreated from her mind and found it burning again.

She wanted to stand up, walk around, cool her head off, to think about what to do next, but instead she sat and stared at the floor. After what she saw in the abyss, an enormous calm washed over her like a great wave. It wasn't the calm of relief, but of acceptance, of inevitability. She felt like a child learning that their sun would explode several billion years from then. How could she stop that?

Reread Black Mold (fic) and damn this bitch DIDN'T know how to write.

#cat talks #long post #i guess #if you secide to rb it. cause it unfolds the readmore

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tucute-senpai · 5 years ago

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you know the hellsite may be horrible, but at least it wont be on the same level as the fish fans on twitter going through the following list of my account thats been up for four years and tell me 13 year old me was a pedo by default cause i dared to say i dont like the fish

#pearl.txt #ask to tag #i think i got somebody telling me i was suicide baiting fish #when all i did was just not believe the explanation thread cause it ended with guilt tripping his fans #and followed by making haha funney posts about callouts because thats how you handle it #i guess it was some sick twisted 'you cant say it if it applies to you' bullshit when my account says im a minor #and clearly shows ive been there for quite a few years #fuck twitter discoursers man

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calliecopper · 2 years ago

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Something I wonder about The Quarry is how long all the counselors have actually known one another. I know Kaitlyn and Jacob have known each other since middle school or younger, but I wonder if other characters have links outside of this particular summer, aside from Laura and Max obviously. Like, Ryan clearly has been a counselor many summers in a row for him and Chris to have the bond they do, which I think is mentioned, so is there a possibility any of the other counselors are also returning-counselors and not new to the job? Idk how camp counselors are employed or how that whole process works but I wonder if these characters, particularly the couples, have some built up relationships over the course of a few summers. Like if you kiss Nick as Abi, and you get the "Nick is falling for you" pop-up, it feels pretty quick assuming they don't have any prior relationship/friendship prior to this summer, so do they know each other from years of working at the camp together? Dylan mentions once being a camper at Hackett's Quarry, so has he maybe been a returning-counselor as well.

I'm just absolutely fascinated by the potential relationships that could form from that

#the quarry #like laura and max are clearly first year counselors seeing as they get lost and ryan doesnt recognize them #emma is also probably a first year counselor seeing as she is so technology and internet centered #but the others i can see having a couple to a few years under their belts #idk how the summer camp thing works ive never been and never looked into it #is it a summer job where you show up every year until you quit is it a thing you have to sign up for each year or is it volunteer thing idk #i can feel my hyperfixation steadily shifting to this game #i can feel the headcanons taking shape

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sanstropfremir · 4 years ago

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what do you think makes someone have good stage presence? do you think it's something that can be taught or something one just naturally possesses?

i read your answer to the other ask. and re. super m, i like lucas. don't get me wrong. he's very much a hong kong beauty that i love (sm is really missing out by not putting him in more editorials).

but in terms of stage presence, he isn't a standout to me? maybe that's because he's in a group with, in my opinion, two of the best performers (taemin + kai). i put him in the same category as baekhyun. like you mentioned, he doesn't stand out but makes up for it by screaming. but for lucas, he's not the best rapper or vocalist and isn't given a lot of lines.

also, what do you think about nct's infinite concept? this is a bit random but wanted to group together since we're talking about nct members. nct2020 was a whole mess for me (as someone who absolutely LOVED nct2018 concept wise and thought maybe, hey this could work). watching nct2020, it seems... asjhdakjhlgds for a lack of better words. like if i was a member and wasn't taeyong/mark/ten/lucas/doyoung, i would be :/ there's definitely a reason why sm pushes them the most because they're just better in capturing the audience. the other members feel like glorified background dancers.

in my personal opinion, stage presence is how well a performer can convince the audience that they are alive, and that they belong there. the stage is an artifice. it isn’t real, nothing you do on it is real, all performance is just that: performative. a human being’s natural state is not on a large platform being stared at, obviously anyone put in that situation is going to find it difficult to act in a natural way. why do you think people hate public speaking? why stage fright is a thing? those of us that can make it over that initial hurdle of being looked at have dual challenges; we as the audience know this whole scenario is fake; what makes it real is our willingness to be convinced that it is real, and the performer’s ability to make us believe that it is real. a huge part of this is making their bodies move and respond in a way that we recognize. this includes making facial expressions. it also includes exuding the confidence that you belong on that stage. that we should be looking at you. this is no place for timidity or nervousness. yes, i do think this is something you can learn, it’s acting and anyone can learn to act. do some people have an advantage over others? absolutely, it's the same with any skill. are there some people that despite being on stage for years never learn? also yes. i don’t think it's a ‘you have it or you don’t’ scenario, like with all reductivist binary statements, it belittles the effort of the people that work extremely hard to get where they are. this is the fallacy of mozart***; those with a high level of natural talent cannot coast by just that talent alone - a true artist is dedicated to pushing their own boundaries and skills regardless of what others deem you as. no one is born a genius, but we all have predispositions that, if applied cultivation, can become fully fledged ‘genius’ level skills.

i’m gonna put the rest of my responses under a cut because i got extremely deep in the weeds on that one, whoops.

i can totally see why lucas and baekhyun would fall into the same category for you, that's valid. obviously a lot of how effective someone’s stage presence can be is pretty subjective. my standards have a slightly different skew than the average kpop fan, since my life has been working and making performance for over a decade. yes, lucas doesn’t have the same presence as taemin or kai, and yea he's not the best rapper or best vocalist by far, but i think he carries himself extremely well despite that. he's got advantages from the start; he’s the tallest in the group and he’s pretty, but the few times that he is in center i am absolutely paying attention to him. ‘im the other one chilling with them other ones’? no idea what the fuck that means but i absolutely believe him. honestly i can't even remember any other parts of that song. if sm ever decides to give him more parts i think we’ll see a uptick in his skills. he really knows how to work a camera; his expressions and body language are already really strong and he exudes confidence like an overeager puppy.

i think nct’s infinite concept is ridiculous and a bit disrespectful to the original members who’ve done the lion's share of the work building the brand. obviously i understand why sm did it, when you have an established brand that you can keep plugging new members into you essentially never have to take the risks involved with debuting a new group ever again. plus with nct’s whole.....new culture + technology thing, they’re primed for any of the weird awful tech updates that are inevitably coming in the next decade. no shade on the girls in aespa, i just find the idea of debuting a girl group with overly sexualized ai robot versions of themselves into a world where the boundaries between idol and fan are already constantly violated uhhh...........distasteful. to put it mildly. i also think the concept is disrespectful to the new members that constantly get added in; because they get added into a system that has a clear working structure based on those original members, who are going to be in every iteration ever. because they’re the proven selling points. at least when you debut a totally new group you’re giving those idols a clean slate. any of the new nct boys will never really have a chance to truly establish themselves outside of that context. plus they will forever be plagued by exclusionist stans. if you’re lucky and charismatic and pretty like lucas you might get the chance to get beyond that (he made it to superm after all), but for pretty much everyone else? anon you said it not me.

*** i know this is not actually what the mozart fallacy is. hence the wording change. but as far as i'm aware there isn’t actually a name for this phenomenon so i'm calling it like how i heard it first described, which was using mozart as an example.

#i am absolutely not tagging this as nct because i value my life #a good example of an idol with the fledgling start of a good stage presence is felix #hes pretty hes got a unique skill and hes clearly dedicated to being an idol #hes just young and SO nervous that you can feel that he's never quite settled on stage #its been fairly obvious for kingdom i think because its a new experience but even in skz music show stages you can see it #give him a few more years to shake the most of those nerves and grow some more confidence #and he'll be even more of the powerhouse than he already is #i feel like maybe i didnt cover everything i wanted to here but for the life of me i cant really figure out what to add #i know i talked about acting and dance a while ago but i dont think ive ever fully elucidated exactly how much of kpop is acting #(the answer is all of it)#but yea tldr everything in entertainment is performative and everything performative is acting and acting isnt real #art is fake #dont believe anyone who says otherwise #every time i say that i get a flashback to my tutor's face when i said that to her in a tutorial #and i instantly knew no one had ever said that to her before #my grad school experience has just been continually questioning and upsetting the contemporary art school standards #ANYWAYS #kpop question #kpop analysis #text #Anonymous #group analysis

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kuroshika · 2 years ago

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back on my bullshit with an addition to this post.

so, i established why i believe hannibal still cannibalizes people after he kills them, out of honor for his sister. and that's why he wants to eat will, etc.

but ive been thinking about how that further pushes the whole "we are conjoined" narrative. because hannibal does it out of necessity, will does it because he wants to. will has no reason to eat human flesh and organs and enjoy it at all, he just does it because he likes it.

obsession cannot exist without desire - hannibal's need to consume cannot survive without will's wanting to be consumed. hannibal's need to honor cannot survive without will's desire to be seen and loved as he is.

i think it just plays into will being hannibal's dark mirror; a reckless, self-destructive man with the urge to be accepted and welcomed without question as opposed to a put-together, calculated one who spent years refining himself and creating a different part of himself that solidified his place in society.

im sure somewhere, deep down, hannibal sees will as his opposite, but still as his equal. he met hannibal's needs with the part of himself that wanted to know what those necessities felt like, what being perceived beyond the public eye would look like.

it makes this odd codependency in both men - hannibal needs will to want him and will wants hannibal to need him. that's why hannibal being rejected by will and giving himself up in spite of that was so much harder on will than it was on hannibal.

hannibal knew will would come for him. he was very, very sure of the fact. will, on the other hand, did his very best to distance himself from it all. he married and had a child, a perfect suburban life that his appealed to his projection. but he wasn't fulfilled, he wasn't complete. there was something missing. he couldn't tell if hannibal needed him anymore. he'd promised not to think of him again, but he wanted someone to need that part of himself that he repressed so badly that it was nearly impossible.

hannibal had already proved without a doubt how much he needed will, and that's what will wanted. he wanted to be needed, to be useful for nothing but companionship, to be loved by someone desperately, and he got that from no one.

alana saw him as a broken teacup, something for her to try and fix. jack and beverly saw him as a tool to close cases and help the forensics team. margot saw him as someone who could give her an heir. molly saw him as only the projection he showed her, and didn't ache for the other parts the way he needed.

nothing fulfilled that ache quite like hannibal "it took divine intervention to stop them" lecter.

will wanted hannibal to need him. he wanted to dine with hannibal. he wanted to step inside him and think with his brain, see with his eyes. hannibal was drawn to the fact that will wanted that, from him, and the obsession stemmed from will's first few words to him - i don't find you interesting, dr. lecter. his need for will to want him was brought on by will very clearly beginning to reject his becoming in their earliest meetings - hannibal needed will to want more of him and will wanted hannibal to give him more.

i think that's why, furthermore, that hannibal wants to try and protect/honor will the way he couldn't mischa. the worst thing he can think of in regards to losing will is not death, but being unwanted.

that's why the cliff scene makes sense too, hannibal letting will push the two of them off the cliff instead of pulling will down with him - it was will's choice. he could die with hannibal or he could let hannibal go.

and he chose hannibal.

@lesbian-hannibal @craqueluring @7x16pm @shatteredlesbian

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devilfic · 3 years ago

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❝where two are joined, relentlessly❞

IV. nameless.

parts: previously / next plot: bruce thinks back on who he was before he met you, and the unraveling thereafter. pairing: battinson!bruce wayne x gn!reader cw: angst, canon-typical nosy bruce, drifter!bruce, first meetings, mentions of violence, depictions of violence (blood, stabbing), threats, bruce making alfred sad. words: 6.6k.

a/n: this is an origin story of sorts for you and bruce taking place through his POV. this one was quite complicated and heavy to write, but I hope you all enjoy a look at younger bruce (and younger you) all the same.

4 years ago.

Bruce doesn’t know why he bothers with it anymore, all the sneaking around in the dark. He hears the stirring from upstairs, his father’s study, and on the nights when he’s particularly careless, there’d be breakfast waiting for him in the kitchen. There’s only the two of them, after all. Why wouldn’t he notice?

Bruce hasn’t even gotten his boots untied before Alfred is turning around the corner. He looks tired, and Bruce isn’t so heartless as to not feel horrible about it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t irritate him, “I told you to stop waiting up for me.”

If this was the first or maybe even the tenth time Bruce had snapped at him like this, Alfred would’ve balked. Instead, the older man exhales deeply, something more than tired. “I would, but you don’t tell me where you go.”

Everywhere, Bruce thinks, everywhere they are.

Bruce is certain that Alfred regrets what he’s taught him. When he goes out at night to stalk the shadows, enacting justice that wasn’t his to enact, Alfred is at home wondering if he’s taught him enough to survive. He’d tried to stop him in the past to no avail. Bruce is a brick wall, taller and stronger than Alfred is now. When he was younger, Bruce could be reined in by the scruff and a stern talking to. He couldn’t do that now.

“Are you hurt?” Alfred knows better than to start an argument this late, anyway. He’d rather Bruce be pliant enough to let him patch him up.

Bruises didn’t bother him, cuts were more inconvenient than painful, and everything else he slept off. His no-shows to board meetings were few and far between so long as he protected his face, which was helped when others couldn’t see him coming. It was important to never let opponents see him bleed, as was the same in business. He owed Alfred that much peace of mind. “Nothing bad. I’ll take painkillers before bed.”

“Warm shower, too? You’ve been out in the cold all night.”

“Bath.”

Alfred frowns. It wasn’t hard for Alfred to put together that he’d had a rougher night than he was letting on. “I’ll run it for you if you get those boots off the rug.” Bruce considers it, then bends down and sets his muddy shoes off to the side. That’s enough to please Alfred for the night.

“I think you should take a break from the fighting,” Alfred proposes the next morning, mouth full of french toast, “and start exercising your brain before all those concussions kick in.”

Bruce snorts, pushing around egg in a puddle of syrup. He looked worse in the morning light now that Alfred could see him clearly, but all the butler could do was feed him. On the days that Bruce would actually sit down and eat something, it settled the tempest in Alfred’s chest. “You calling me stupid, Alfred?”

“No, but all the punching in the world won’t stop crime. Real crime. If all you’ve got is your fists, you’ll find yourself at a crossroads one day with no idea where to go.” Alfred reaches forward and taps Bruce’s plate with a fork, making the younger of the two glance up from his fiddling.

“What do you suggest I do? Get another degree?”

Alfred shakes his head, although he would’ve liked that. Bruce stuck in lecture halls all day, nine months out of the year, forced to stay safe again. He could never make him do that, but it was a father’s heart that yearned for it. “I think you should work on your people skills.” Alfred all but loses Bruce with that. “Let me finish. People skills are more than just talking, they’re observing. Collecting information. You wanna go out every night and fight crime like some vigilante? Fine, I’m far past stopping you. But at your core, you are a Wayne.

“You’ve grown up living a life untouched by most of the grittier parts of this city, and that’s good. That’s what your parents wanted for you. That also means that you’re far removed from the people you’re fighting and trying to protect. Go out. Take a walk in the park. Have morning coffee at a mom and pop shop. Listen to the people nearby, pay attention to their faces. You don’t have to do much. Just observe.”

Bruce’s eyes widen, mouth pressed into a firm line. The idea wasn’t as detestable when Alfred put it like that. While his internal clock had begun to shift toward the evening, he could maybe force himself to get up early sometimes. Being around lots of people filled him with discomfort, but it was no more dangerous than his current hobby.

Alfred takes Bruce’s silence as a solid “maybe”, and it’s more than enough for him to finish breakfast in a diplomatic mood.

The morning thing doesn’t end up working, but Bruce does try. After a few failed attempts, he finds that going out at night is still preferable, but it’s not midnight and he’s not dressed to fight.

He can’t go out completely casually, though. He relies on sweatshirts with hoods that cast shadows over his eyes, neck gaiters, and sunglasses on the off chance no one finds him sketchy-looking enough already. It’s not much different to what he wears at night on his excursions (with the exception of a lot more padding and brass knuckles), and the hyper-vigilance he’d bred into his subconscious doesn’t go away, but he forces himself to put it to paper instead.

There’s a semi-popular café on the side of town he frequents, 24 hours with a patio out front. Bruce takes his sketchpad and drawing materials outside and sketches what he sees, occasionally ordering a coffee or something sweet to keep him alert. He starts out cautious, drawing the drizzling rain rolling off the patio umbrellas or cars he admires at stoplights. He doesn’t have the confidence yet to draw people that he doesn’t know.

It was pretty funny; Bruce was fine beating up the odd mugger, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at anyone long enough to draw them. It felt invasive. The longer Bruce thinks about his pathology, the more he wants to laugh. Instead, he draws a cat perched nearby, licking its fur clean of its late dinner.

Sometimes, he felt even worse when he listened in on conversations. They could be mundane or personal, and it was always a toss-up for Bruce on whether he should listen to the latter, but it wasn’t like he stored away the personal details. He’d jot down places he’d never heard of or languages he needed to brush up on and try to make himself feel less creepy. Once, he’d told Alfred about this. His butler’s best advice was “don’t be creepy about it, then”.

He doesn’t mean to make it a routine, to always come here specifically, but he finds himself on this same patio nearly every evening. He orders whatever is appetizing and gets to drawing. By this point, the wait staff knew him by voice, even if not by name. Any attempts to catch a glimpse of him were easily thwarted by sketching more intensely.

Because his place here was a routine, it also meant that there were regulars. Not of the café, but of his.

There was the elderly woman who lived in the high-rise across from the café and would walk her tiny dogs by the storefront in early evenings. Another was one of the waitresses, who’d meet her boyfriend by the entrance and share a few words about their day before embracing and parting ways. The boyfriend would always wait outside until her shift ended, so Bruce drew him too.

He hadn’t realized that you’d become a regular in his sketches until he found himself following the curve of your jaw by memory. You were there, drink in hand, walking with a woman who looked like an older version of you. Bruce had put together that she was probably your mother, though you rarely spoke to her like Bruce used to speak to his. You joked around more like friends, and that meant that most drawings of you were of you smiling. He didn’t see a lot of that around here these days.

Your conversations were usually trivial, good for building his familiarity: what menial tasks they had you perform at work, the million different places one could go for dinner, gossip about landlords and the like. It changed often but he could sometimes piece together things you’d discuss coming his way. Sometimes, you both would stop right outside the café to chat, and he’d get to hear you excitedly regale your day’s adventures at work. On one of those days, he’d learned that you worked for Wayne Enterprises.

The picture wasn’t that clear. You’d been working there for the last few years, or at least long enough to deserve a promotion with the way your mother insisted you try for one. He tried not to listen to any of your conversations about work after that, to respect your privacy.

His other regulars were never as entertaining as you, though. They talked, sure, but you had a way of telling a story. If he wasn’t careful, he might find himself openly staring after you as you talked about some incident on the subway, hanging onto your every word. He’d told Alfred about that too, but didn’t get a response.

“Can I get you anything else, sweetheart?” Betty—the waitress with the boyfriend—asks Bruce.

He shakes his head and she’s on her way, leaving him to his devices.

Bruce’s nightly brawls had dwindled down to once or twice a week in favor of visiting the café. What money he did spend on himself went to circulating the menu, and what money he didn’t went to hefty tips for Betty. The waiting staff had fought over who would get to wait on him, but Betty was the only who didn’t try peeking under his hood. He’d assumed the others might’ve had it in their minds that he was a celebrity, and perhaps he was by their standards, but he appreciated the privacy.

Since he’d begun this hobby of his, Bruce had filled out several sketchbooks worth of drawings, so much so that they were spilling over in a pile by his desk at home. Alfred didn’t say anything when he came home with art supplies instead of wounds, but Bruce could tell he was sleeping easier.

Today, unfortunately, Bruce’s muse was asleep as well.

No matter how many sketches he tried to start, each one felt more lifeless than the last. Forced to give in to the lack of creativity, Bruce doodles along the pages, keeping his ears open for anything new. He’d heard several people discussing the most recent mayoral election since morning, and even though the topic bored him, it was less torturous than listening to the debates on the news. The discrepancies between news commentators and the people of the city had drawn a clear line of preference for him.

Absentmindedly, Bruce decides to doodle the foam swirls settling on his coffee before he’d inevitably ruin them. If he was an artist that used color, he might’ve focused on a rich enough brown to imitate the milky latte breaking through. Instead, his mind is allowed to wander.

“Well, is she stable?”

Bruce’s drawing is all at once abandoned. His pencil stays pressed to the page, but his attention is solely on the voice he recognizes mere feet away, leaning against the fencing of the patio. You’ve got your phone between your shoulder and ear, and while he can’t see your expression from here, the exhaustion is clear in your tone.

“I can come to the hospital now. I just got off work so it’ll take me 20 minutes if I catch a taxi. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever she needs. I understand... she’s my mother, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

His eyes widen a fraction. Something had happened to your mother? He hadn’t seen you in a while, your status as a regular overwhelmed by new faces over time, but when he did see you, you tended to be alone.

It wasn’t like he could ask you, either. You’d never looked at him and he didn’t want you to, but one thing Alfred hadn’t prepared him for was the routine of this. In a city as big as Gotham, one would think that you’d never see the same face twice, but there were lives that repeated everywhere. Regulars of street corners, ATMs, and cafés like this one.

It was much easier to drift by enacting vengeance when there was nothing to hold you back. Night after night, he saw crimes, not people. Learning names and faces made you care. Had Alfred known that all along?

He sees you flag down a taxi, looking more dour by the second, and Bruce’s mind goes to the worst case scenario. Your mother had looked perfectly healthy the last time he’d seen the two of you. Was it something sudden? Or was it something else altogether?

He’d stopped enough muggings in the city to know who the most vulnerable were, and picturing your mother as a victim on an empty street while Bruce sat here and drew pictures made his stomach churn. Even after you’d pulled away in the direction of Gotham General, the guilt had brought up a feeling he’d only recently managed to suppress. He had no proof that he could’ve stopped it, whatever it was that he thought had happened, but knowing that he could’ve... He was having a hard time seeing what good all this observing was doing.

The surveillance session is cut short for the night. Bruce is in and out of the penthouse in minutes, leaving before Alfred could register being back to square one.

You disappear from Bruce’s life again, replaced by new faces with the natural ebb and flow of life. He learns their quirks in the same way he’d learned yours and your mother’s, but the conversations don’t interest him the same.

You weren’t the only one who’d started to break routine. The little old lady from across the street no longer walked her own dogs anymore; some child with more energy had taken her place. Bruce wondered if she’d gotten too old to do it and tossed bits of his food to the dogs when the boy wasn’t looking. They didn’t look as happy anymore; they could use the pick-me-up.

The café itself wasn’t untouched either, Betty had told Bruce as much one night. She’d lingered after delivering his coffee and looked a little melancholic as she said it, “I’m moving to Metropolis next week.”

Bruce looks up, his gaiter bunched under his chin, “Metropolis?”

She nods, “Thought I’d tell you. You come here all the time and you’re always generous with your tips, so... I actually wouldn’t be able to move at all if it wasn’t for that generosity. So, thanks.”

Something warm settles in Bruce’s chest, soothing to the guilt he’d been trying to cure in the alleyways at night. His help wasn’t always comforting, an unfortunate side effect to his brand of heroism. Seeing that he could bring happiness to someone like this made things a little easier on his conscience. He didn’t need thanks... but it was nice. He wouldn’t get used to it.

“Metropolis is sunnier.” And safer, Bruce decides against adding that part on. What amount of disappointment he felt at losing his usual waitress was replaced with relief. She was one less person to worry for, one less face to wonder about if she went missing from the crowd.

“Yeah, lots,” Betty laughs, “nothing like Gotham. I’ll have to get used to it.”

It feels odd talking to her like this, as if the two were friends. At most, they’d only exchanged pleasantries and orders, never crossing the bridge even with small talk. Bruce wouldn’t have even minded if he’d learned of her departure through a co-worker. It felt a shame that this was the longest they’d ever spoken to one another, and would likely be the last time.

Betty notices that he has no intentions—or maybe no idea how?—to continue the conversation, so she prepares to make her leave. “By the way, can I ask you for something?”

Bruce nods, hesitant. He hopes it isn’t a name.

“Do you sell your drawings? I just see you drawing all the time and they look really nice. I’d love one of the café to take with me- if you take commissions, that is!”

Bruce... isn’t sure what to say to that. He glances down at the skeleton of a car he’d been working on, one that didn’t exist, and thinks about anyone ever wanting to own his work. He’d never given anyone his art. They stayed in his room to collect dust at most. The café, though...

He flips back a few pages, thumbing through faces and high-rises. Eventually, he finds it. Betty takes the drawing into her hands as if holding a delicate flower. “It’s... the detail is incredible. And that’s me, isn’t it? Working the counter. It’s so lifelike.”

“I’ve practiced.”

“Are you sure I can have it?” She beams over the paper. How could Bruce even say no when being looked at like that? He gestures for her to take it with her. “How much?”

He can’t help it. He laughs, and it stuns more than just him. “Save it for the frame.” Betty looks poised to argue but Bruce doesn’t give her the chance. He turns back to his work in progress, “And... stay safe.”

Betty smiles out of the corner of his eye. “You too.”

Bruce looks up only to watch her leave, really, and at the same time something catches his eye coming toward him on the sidewalk.

It’s you.

You look significantly worse off than the last time he’d seen you, weighed down with every step you took. Your mother was still nowhere to be found, and a bit of anxiety grows at the thought that maybe the situation had been worse than he’d anticipated. If the way you looked was related to it, it had surely worn you down. It looked like if you kept going for another block, you’d collapse.

But that wasn’t even his biggest concern.

Bruce saw a lot of shady figures in the city. Hell, he looked just like them, moving too fast to be seen and blending in to the shadows so no one would give them a second glance. The creep following close behind you looked just the same.

You don’t seem like you’re aware of your surroundings, let alone aware of him. It keeps you from noticing Bruce as he stares after you and the creep weaving in and out of foot traffic to keep pace with you. Bruce gets an inkling that something isn’t right, followed by that guilty twisting of his stomach again. Was it a pattern? A curse that was following you? First your mother, now you?

Would he have even noticed if he didn’t notice you so much? Would he have looked the other way, never putting two and two together, too focused on the crimes he could see?

You end up at the crosswalk, heading across the street. If anything, the creep speeds up to get closer, mere feet away from you now. It was obvious to him even if no one else could see it: something bad was going to happen to you.

Bruce makes a choice to leave everything behind as he throws himself over the patio fence, dropping down onto the sidewalk with expert ease. He can just see you turn down another street across from him, the creep still hot on your trail, and Bruce books it across the street to keep up. Horns blare, cars nearly running him over, but Bruce can only focus on getting to you before things head horribly south.

It takes him much longer than he’s comfortable with to get to the other side and when he does, he curses the time. It’s Friday evening. The streets are full. Everywhere Bruce turns is another person to run into. He’d hunted in crowds like this before, but he was never the one in a hurry. The longer it takes him to get you back in his sight, the more he panics.

By the grace of someone’s god, Bruce breaks through the throngs of people just long enough to turn the corner... but you’re nowhere to be seen. Had he taken too long?

He couldn’t be everywhere, try as he might, but he needed to be right now.

Bruce’s pace is practically breakneck speed, looking down every alley and checking the crowds for anyone that even vaguely looked like you. He’d drawn the shape of you enough times to recognize it.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God. I’m sorry. Please.”

The shaking voice is faint, and had Bruce not become familiar with the sound of it before, he might’ve missed it completely over the noise of the city.

But there you were, a ways down the alley nearest him, down on your knees. Bruce takes a tentative step into the alleyway, unsure where the creep had gone. You sound distressed still, muttering the same pleas over and over as his panic rises even higher. The closer he gets, the clearer the scene before him becomes.

You’re hunched over and muttering incoherent words now. Your arms are stretched before you, pressing against a dark lump on the ground... the dark lump is the creep who’d been following you. The smell hits him before he can even see the guy’s face in the dark.

You hear Bruce’s boot disturb a puddle ahead of you, making your head flicker toward him. Tears are running hot down your cheeks. You gasp out, using all your will to speak clearly, “Oh God, it’s not what it looks like. It was an accident!”

The accident in question lays before the both of you: there’s a knife sticking out of the creep’s- no, man’s side, and that’s where your hands are shaking nervously, unsure if you should remove the blade. Those same hands are dripping in blood that continues to pour from the wound. Bruce tries to piece together what could have possibly occurred in the time it took to find you for this to happen.

Carefully, as to not scare you, Bruce lowers himself to the ground to check the man’s breathing. He places a finger under his nose and feels slow breaths on his skin. That was something of a good sign. “What happened?” Bruce asks, assessing the full damage.

You don’t look anywhere near in the right mind to give him a straight answer, but he’s thankful that you try your best, “I-I was walking home and I didn’t notice him behind me... he pushed me into the alley, trying t-to mug me. I wouldn’t give up anything so I pulled out my knife—to defend myself! Not to kill him—and he kept... moving, trying to grab me. I just meant to cut him... oh my God, is he okay?”

Okay would be too generous, “He’s alive. You did good not pulling the knife from the wound,” the picture of your attack was making Bruce feel sick at what could’ve been, “but he won’t last like this.”

You nod quickly, “Can you carry him? I think there’s a clinic down the street.”

“Can’t move him, it’ll just aggravate the wound.”

You cringe, realizing he was right. “Okay, okay. I’ll call an ambulance.”

It takes a few moments for Bruce’s mouth to catch up with his mind, but when he sees you shakily dialing 911, your finger slipping across the screen from the blood, he manages to bark out, “Don’t!”

You freeze, thumb hovering over the call button, “...What?”

Bruce had been prepared to fight. The adrenaline was still pumping through him, the spark that would ignite the first punch. He’d been prepared to take this man down the way he did countless others and drag you to safety before anything worse could happen to you. That wasn’t what was needed this time.

He didn’t need to fight, not now. He needed to be strategic. He hadn’t been in any way prepared to think. It embarrassed him to be so far behind the moment.

I need to buy some time, but this man could die any minute. “Think about it,” he starts, almost talking to himself, “what are you going to tell them?”

“That it was an accident.”

“With your knife buried in his side? Do you really think they’d believe you?”

“He’ll tell them.”

You couldn’t really believe that, could you? “Yeah? You said he was trying to mug you. If he wakes up in the hospital with a stab wound and they ask him what happened, what makes you think he’ll tell the truth? That’s only if he survives.”

“But you’re here, you’re my witness.”

“What good’s a witness who didn’t actually see anything?” Your confident expression withers, “Even if I lie, what if he lies better? Says that he wasn’t trying to rob you, that he was just trying to talk to you, but you escalated the situation?” And if he found out Bruce Wayne of all people was involved, there was no doubt he’d sue him for all he was worth. It’d be ugly.

Your eyes flit from your knife to the man’s skin growing paler by the second. Bruce didn’t enjoy scaring you like this, but he had to make you saw the bigger picture, how easily someone like you could have your good deed turned against them. Call him cynical, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

“So what do I do?” You ask, timid.

Bruce glances around, cogs turning in his mind in an attempt to string together a plan. You couldn’t be anywhere near this, he knew that for sure. “Wash your hands in that puddle over there.”

You glance back and see a shallow, grimy puddle, frowning as you frantically wipe your hands clean of the blood. It wasn’t perfect, but it did the job for the most part. Your hands looked free of the evidence. “Now what?”

“Go home.”

You blanch. “You can’t be serious.” Bruce grabs the end of his shirt and reaches over the man’s body, carefully rubbing away the fingerprints on the handle without jostling it too much. You catch on rather quickly that he is being serious. “I’m not leaving him!”

“It’s better if you do,” Bruce persuades you, glancing back at the crowds down the street where he came from, oblivious to his distress, “go out the other end and find another way home before anyone sees you.”

You shake your head, “And what will you do? Will you run, too? What happened to not letting him die?”

“He’s not going to die if you stop wasting time.”

“Answer me!”

Some people walking by the alley turn to look, but they don’t care to watch for long. Unfortunately, the man between you both stirs, waking out of his pain-induced sleep. A quick look at the wound tells Bruce that it’s starting to get dicey. He has to think faster than this.

Bruce grabs either side of the man’s collar and lifts his head inches off the ground, crowding in his space until the man’s woozy, terrified gaze sees Bruce and Bruce alone. He must look terrifying with how much larger he is, hulking in the darkness, because the man instinctively cowers. Good, Bruce thinks, he’s afraid. “Does it hurt?”

His question is mocking, punctuated by Bruce’s knee digging into the man’s thigh. It’s as close as he can get without causing irreparable damage to his organs. The man cries out weakly, thrashing and regretting it when the feel of the knife in his side jostles too much. “Wh-Who-”

Bruce shakes him, “Do you want to die?”

The man’s eyes widen like a doe’s, shaking all over. It’s fascinating the way one’s base instincts to survive could overpower all else. Minutes ago, his arrogance had propelled him into this alleyway, and now his life was hanging on by a thread... a thread that Bruce had wrapped around his finger. The man shakes his head with all the power he has left in his body.

“I never want to see you around here again. If you even think about putting your hands on anyone ever again, you’ll wish this was the worst pain you’ve ever felt.” It’s unintentional how Bruce’s voice falls until it reaches its lowest register, gravely in its timbre, but it comes almost naturally, “I could’ve done a lot worse than a little stab wound.”

The man’s eyes flicker with puzzlement, and if Bruce would’ve looked to his side, he would’ve noticed you looking at him exactly the same. “I don’t... where did you...?”

To further muddy the events in his mind, Bruce reaches one hand down into the puddle of blood on the ground before grasping the man’s chin between his bloody fingers. The smell must overwhelm him with how his eyes nearly roll back with nausea. Bruce shakes him once more, his final act, “You will never see me coming. Pray you don’t have to.”

The man’s head drops back against the pavement, dazed, but doesn’t see you cowering off to the side. Bruce’s job is done.

Bruce is up and on his feet fast, wiping his bloody hand off on his pants. They were dark enough to hide the stain, but Alfred would kill him when he got home. “Call that ambulance and go home.”

You gawk at him from the ground. “Why did you do that?”

This was the second time tonight that Bruce had wanted to laugh, but he manages to catch it. It didn’t feel right trying to escape his mouth. He worried it might come out like a sob.

He’s wasted enough time. Bruce notices that the man has barely minutes left and starts to plead, “If you want him to live, call and leave.”

You must recognize how dire the situation is. How you feel about this turn of events doesn’t matter. Shakily, you push yourself up on wobbly legs and dial 911 again, backing down the alley as you do. The operator on the other line’s voice filters through your speaker, “911, what’s your emergency?”

Bruce is out of the area before you can give them the location.

The moon was still high by the time Bruce returned home.

After a brisk shower, Bruce returns downstairs to find Alfred at the stove making tea. Even with such a small appetite, Bruce thanks him for the warm cup and drinks it all. Every drop he forces down is a little weight off Alfred’s chest.

Alfred didn’t question the late hour, even as he searched Bruce for answers on the faraway look in his eyes.

In fact, he hadn’t said much other than checking him over and worriedly asking if the blood on his hand was his. That would have shattered Bruce if he hadn’t gathered what little restraint he had left to tell him “no”.

“I’ll tell the board you’re feeling sick in the morning. I’m sure there won’t be anything important that you’ll miss, but I’ll keep you updated.” Alfred announces, not looking up from his own teacup.

“I can come.”

“You haven’t slept all night.”

“I usually don’t.” Bruce argues, lightly, with no real intention to anger Alfred. He’s careful to watch him in case he does.

Alfred looks across at him and for the first time in a long time, there’s a severity there in Alfred’s tired eyes. The last time Alfred had ever looked at him like that, Bruce had broken his wrist after getting into a fight at school. It had taken every ounce of Alfred’s patience not to scare the boy into submission, but it was clear even to this day that the only thing Alfred thought was worth getting mad over was Bruce’s safety. He could only imagine what years of this recklessness had done to that patience, “Something happened to you tonight and you won’t tell me. Now, I do my best not to pry because you’re your own man and I can’t protect you forever, but if you’re not going to tell me, the least you could do is...”

Bruce shrinks in on himself all at once. Somehow, this guilt was heavier than all others. “I... I’m sorry.”

Alfred breathes evenly, “Stay home. Just for tomorrow. Where I know you’ll be.”

Bruce doesn’t fight it, doesn’t have the strength or the will or the cruelty to fight it. He owed Alfred that much. He owed him so much more. “Okay,” he nods, “I could use the sleep.”

1 year ago.

“Ah, the prince springs forth from his cave,” Alfred declares from the breakfast table, a stack of folders in hand and Dory at his side. Bruce fights the urge to dart past them and up to his room, “come, sit. I need you to look at these.”

“It’s seven in the morning.”

“Well, I’d wait, but the sooner it’s handled the better.” Alfred waits until Bruce takes a seat at the table before setting the folders in front of him.

Each folder is spilling out with pages of information. When Bruce flips open the first one, he’s met with the face of a sprightly looking man, flanked by a wall of text on his life. Name, age, nationality, marital status... Bruce’s brain is unfortunately moving slow this morning, “I thought we agreed that arranged marriage was a last resort.”

Dory snorts, nearly spilling the tea she pours into Bruce’s cup.

Ignoring him completely, Alfred taps the photo of the man for emphasis, “I’ve gathered the best candidates for the PA position.”

Oh, that made a lot more sense.

The conditions that Bruce had set had been rigid, unyielding in the face of even long-term employees loyal to Wayne Enterprises. It had ruled out nearly every upper-level employee in the company during the first round of interviews, and Alfred had stressed that they might have to compromise somewhere if Bruce didn’t let up.

It wasn’t his fault. It was Alfred’s. Finding someone nearly as good at their job as Alfred was nothing short of a Herculean task. “And you’ve decided?” Bruce asks, flipping through the next folder.

Alfred shrugs, “Can’t pick.”

“So you’re making me choose your assistant?”

“They’ll be assisting you too,” Alfred corrects, and then takes a long drag of his tea, “they’ll be here day and night, practically. You’ll probably have to tell ‘em about the...uh...” At this, he gestures vaguely, “You know.”

Bruce cringes at the thought. Besides Alfred and Dory, his secret was as good as unknown. He liked keeping the amount of people aware of his nightlife to a minimum. He hadn’t even told Lieutenant Gordon, and they saw each other near nightly. To have some stranger so close to home, working so near him in what he considered his own safe haven... he shuddered to think any more about it. “They won’t need to know.” He assured, not sure at all.

Alfred looks on, expectant, so Bruce is forced to be serious. He really wished he’d saved this for when he was more awake.

The first candidate is a man with very little hobby, and all the special notes on his life mentioned an almost religious dedication to his job. Alfred had mentioned that his interview was the most stiff. “Clean, but jumpy. Might be skittish.” Alfred’s notes read. Bruce couldn’t imagine working in close proximity to someone like that, it’d make him nervous.

The next folder was of a younger woman with a fierce glare. Her accomplishments in the workplace left Bruce a little winded, and he struggled to find much flaw in her file. Alfred’s notes changed that completely, “Will get the job done. Might try to replace me and you while she’s at it. An early retirement doesn’t sound so bad.” The last thing either of them needed to worry about was losing the company.

The other files had been similar levels of disappointing. In every category on paper, they ticked the box, but when it came to Alfred’s interview notes, they all seemed to fail in the personable department. It felt hypocritical to say, but none of them seemed normal. At one point, Bruce had stopped to ask Alfred if he even liked any of these choices. “Maybe one or two,” Alfred had answered, “I’m wondering if we’ll agree.”

Eventually, he landed on one. His recognition wasn’t as instant as he’d like to admit.

There, smiling wide for your company-mandatory ID, was you. He’d know that face anywhere, even though it had been years.

The first thing he reads is your name after the initial shock wears off. It suited you, having a name. He could’ve laughed at the situation. You were around his age, not as much of a surprise, and you’d had an impeccable history at the company for being so young. A part of him that hadn’t seen the light of day in years felt relieved that you were still in Gotham. You had no spouse and no children, but one dependent. Alfred’s notes expounded on you, “Friendly, smart, a little nervous. Good with numbers. Due for a promotion.”

“This one,” Bruce points to your photo and Alfred leans over to see who he’d picked, “did you like them?”

Alfred squints behind his glasses, then nods. “Oh, yeah. Real sharp. Their mother’s been battling illness for the last few years, so they’ve requested a day off each week to care for her, but they’re willing to work long nights and weekends. All around good choice.” Your mother was ill, not hurt. No gruesome mugging had taken place after all. It explained so much that he’d flown past considering in his guilt.

Dory peeks around too, endearingly nosy, “They look kind!”

Bruce was still reeling on the chances of this, trying his best to set your folder to the side and give the other candidates a chance, but his mind kept drifting back to you and that night. How had you been since then? Did you still remember it as vividly as he did? Did it haunt you? The fact that he could ask... he could tell you...

No, he couldn’t. He shouldn’t. You didn’t need to know him then and you certainly didn’t need to now. You’d moved on with your life, out of the shadows. The shadows were where he belonged, not you.

He finishes procrastinating on the other candidates only when Alfred asks for his honest opinion.

Unsurprisingly, his hand drifts toward your folder. Alfred breaks out into a smile that borders on knowing, though Bruce is certain there was no way for him to know. “Great. I’ll call ‘em and let ‘em know. Clean up, you’ll be meeting them this afternoon.”

He’d be meeting you. Again. Face-to-face, in the light of day.

Dory pats Bruce’s shoulder, observing him in that way that tells him she’s about to say something sentimental. “Don’t fret, Master Bruce. You might end up liking them too.”

#bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne scenarios #bruce wayne imagine #bruce wayne #batman x reader #batman scenarios #batman imagine #the batman #battinson x reader #mjwrites

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sassycordy · 3 years ago

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What is the sga debacle?? Did he do something specific?? I only know that he also made the shows Dark Matter and Utopia Falls which both have diversity and representation so that makes me hopeful for the same treatment in a new stargate series.

hi! whew im so sorry im just getting to this lmfao. truthfully ive been rly busy and this is such a serious topic that i wanted to make sure i chose my words carefully and laid everything out in the best way possible.

disclaimer section! im not the best person to speak on this topic ahha. I just got into the fandom last year and it was only a few months ago that i started to hear some of these issues that existed previously (so if any veteran stargate fans wanna hop in on this and explain things in greater detail, please do)! also this is not a call out post or canceling thing. this is simply a hey-these-things-happened-and-maybe-we-should-be-careful-with-who-we-interact-with-and-trust type thing. anyways without further ado, here’s some of the sketchy shit that went down behind the scenes of stargate atlantis! (all sources are posted in the comment/replies btw)

> let’s start with the decision to kill off carson beckett because thats where the first weird comment pops up. now a lot of people claim that this was a move made by writers & producers to shake up the show and “make the actors feel less secure.” i’ve never been able to find that direct quote although ive heard people say that someone openly admitted it on the audio commentary/bonus features on the atlantis dvds soo take that however you like aha.

> after the sudden exit of paul mcgillion, tori higginson left the show a few episodes later anddddd ok this is where things escalate. this is an interview she gave where she openly talks about everything that went on behind the scenes. but to summarize, the writers ignored all of her input and refused to grow the character further when she had clearly outgrown the “Hammond” role. joseph mallozzi states in his blog post that brad wright himself was very fond and loved the weir character and he claims that the decision to write her out was because of “just simple logic.”(1) however, torri tells a different story. (2)

“Honestly? I found that quite shitty, to be honest (laughs).Oops. But I found out, because I kept going to them, I kept going up to them saying ‘I have a feeling my character, you’re not doing anything with me, and you guys have me for six years and I don’t want to, you know, be here not doing anything. Let me know what’s going on.’ And they kept saying “no, no, no, it’s great. We love you. We love you. Things can be great.’ And I said ‘well, if that’s the case, can we do something with her’ and they kept reassuring me that nothing - and the very last day of filming season three, as I finished filming the last scene on the last day I was called up to the office and was told that my character was going to become recurring if I chose to be. So, I thought that was not very, um, dignified, way to deal with it, and I was a bit surprised. So I was—so my reaction was one of yeah, I was a little bit surprised. I was a little bit upset by how it was dealt with. But I wasn’t upset at the decision because I understood it. I kept going to them saying ‘I get, I get what’s going to happen, just give me some notice so I can pack my apartment and move back to L.A. Really. So I wasn’t upset with the decision. I was upset with how it was handled.”

she was led on and told her role would be reduced after the filming of season three which is uh. absolutely insane to think about considering she’s the main female lead of the show. And this is just my personal opinion but i think its interesting timing that as soon as brad stepped down, joseph mallozzi and his writing partner, paul mullie got rid of her. It’s also pretty telling that there was some bad blood behind the scenes because she didn’t even reprise her character in season five for the ghost in the machine aka the episode where they “kill elizabeth” off. although i do wanna mention that since then, jm has posted that he believes elizabeth would actually still be alive today and is just in stasis somewhere waiting to be found …which is nice. i guess. maybe they shouldn’t have fired her in the first place but hey whatever.

and to end the torri section, here’s another quote that i think is the real reason she was let go from atlantis.

Question: And now Amanda Tapping seems to be doing exactly the same… just filing an episode. Torri said “Well, no. I understand that it’s a club, and you know, some people.. .you know. I think they didn’t like me constantly rapping on the doors saying ‘excuse me, why aren’t there any women writers or any women producers on the show?’ I think it bothered them. And so, Amanda, bless her, just had a kid so... bless her, man, she needs that gig more than [me]… you know what I mean? So I have no issues with any of them. I understand how it works. It is a bit of a political game and… I’m not very good at politics (laughs). I’m like Weir. I just want to act.”

> now this is where the joe flanigan of it all starts to come in. he’s been vocal about defending torri higginson and openly saying how bad of a decision it was to kill her off. (3) and his interview with dial the gate was enlightening on a few topics. (4)

his character didn’t get a backstory until season 3. tptb literally told him, “john likes ferris wheels” and called it a day. which is actually mind boggling. they gave him nothing to work with and somehow he turned it into gold.

he’s also said many times and in different interviews how terrible it was that the writers carried over from sg1. the cast would pitch ideas but would be shut down because they would sound “too much like an sg1 ep” which is ridiculous considering how many atlantis scripts are just a rip off of sg1 eps anyways.

> and finally the whole whispers debacle. now i don’t really know a lot about this, so I'll just link the tumblr post that first brought this to my attention! (5) there’s also the whole “the writers stopped taking notes from the cast after season 3 and specifically started to shun joe out” thing (which is very obvious in seasons 4 and 5) so i’ll also link another great tumblr post because they explain it so much better than i can. (6)

> there’s also the fact that once it became clear that universe was not doing well, both bw and jm turned and blamed it on atlantis and even sg1 fans.

“I don’t think if we, for any reason, go away, it is an issue necessarily of the quality of the product that we’ve been making. I think getting moved on the schedule has hurt us. And the fact that some of the fans that liked SG-1 and Atlantis were so angry that they have deliberately hurt us, which is unfortunate.” (7) Brad Wright.

Jaso967060 writes: “Heck I think alot of people from “that other site” could be won back if some changes are made. (Finding out the Destinys Mission and the crew working together more instead of tearing each other down…and having more action…changes like that.)”

Answer: Disagree. Given that their deluded mission statement is to see SGU cancelled in order to pave the way for an SGA return, I doubt that very much. (8) Joseph Mallozzi

this post is getting too long so i won’t go into the whole “stargate atlantis viewers were not the right demographic the writers wanted” thing. because yes this may have been said by one of the writers (i don’t have a source but so many people bring it up and it makes sense considering the type of show universe is). also joe flanigan talked about how the writers and producers disrespected atlantis fans and he sorta mentions this quote too so im gonna link it. (9) also i would just like to say huge shoutout to joe for not caring to be diplomatic lol.

but yea. please take this post however you would like. all of this happened years and years ago so one can only hope people have learned from their mistakes. and if a fourth stargate show is ever made, I just pray they'll finally have women and poc writers/producers/directors as main contributors. also joseph mallozzi has done so many interviews with dial of the gate in recent years, so i would check those out if anyone would like to hear his current thoughts on stargate. (if you do, please message me because i would love to know if he acknowledges any of these topics ahah).

and to end this lovely post, let's reminisce on that one time joe flanigan called the writers of atlantis “rodney mckays” <3

“Because the writers are all McKays – they are the collective Rodney McKay. It’s a whole load of little McKays running round up there in the offices.” (10)

so sorry this took a million years to respond to ahha. and i may have gotten a bit sidetracked but i hope i answered your question !!

#sassy cordy responds #this is a literal essay kdnkds #also I cant speak on his other shows bc I don't remember anything about dark matter and I haven't seen the other one sorry about that >.<#also the mistreatment of every character that isn't a man or white is a huge problem in atlantis and frankly every fucking stargate show #but thats for another day me thinks #also rodney baby I love you so much #but an entire room of rodney mckays in real life would scare the crap out of me #NO WONDER HE ENDED UP WITH KELLER LMFAO??? they were all collectively living their weird younger blonde girl fantasy through him ... ew #stargate atlantis #stargate sg1 #stargate universe #Joseph Mallozzi #brad wright #stargate franchise #torri higginson #joe flanigan #behind the scenes #my posts have been so serious recently pls

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