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vidreview · 3 months ago

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some thoughts on Action Button Reviews

[originally posted december 22nd 2023]

ANONYMOUS ASK: Not a recommendation because I know you've already seen it, but I remember you (this being like a year ago) calling Tim Rogers' action button reviews boku no natsuyasami something along the lines of "a triumphant demonstration of what's possible in the video essay medium". I was wondering if you could elaborate, provided it hasn't been too long. I recognise I'm blasting you from the past here lol. It was one of the few hours-long video essays that I didn't mind sitting through, though I'm still not sure it quite justifies its length. Tim's delivery helps significantly there, in a way that reminds me of Caleb Gamman's casual/improvised-feeling but thoroughly scripted shtick.

oh i still think Tim Rogers is hands down the best in the biz. i've watched the Action Button reviews multiple times, i've got a davinci resolve project with all his videos in, studied them under a microscope and taken lots of notes. i think his work absolutely does justify the length, because rather than trying to say Everything There Is To Say about a game, he instead focuses on digging into the game's relationship with his own hyperspecific subjectivity. i don't know how else to describe the Action Button reviews except as literary media criticism, using incredibly in-depth analysis as a jumping off point for discussing how these games shape us and the culture, the role they occupy at various stages of our life, and how who we are at any given moment is just as important to our opinion of a game as the game itself. sooner or later i want to do a full-on VIDREV on his stuff, probably in video essay form, but consider this a first draft overview of why i find his work so special.

there's little things. despite the length of his videos, he never fails to get to The Point (his term for the thesis statement) within five minutes of starting the essay proper. he is a talented and quick-witted tour guide, funny and clever and philosophically ponderous all at once. his work is clearly designed to reward multiple viewings, yet never fails to feel complete on a first watch. he writes with a precision of language that'll knock your socks off if you let it, especially if you're willing to go with him on his seemingly non sequitur tangents. but it goes a lot deeper than that.

i just don't think anyone else is putting nearly as much time, effort, and thought into the moment to moment particulate matter of his video essays than Tim Rogers. there are a ton of little mistakes that quite a few essayists make as a result of only doing one or two complete editing passes, or otherwise not sitting down and watching their video start to finish at multiple points in post-production. things like bad audio mixing, cut-off breaths and sounds that ought to be removed, stray frames from footage creating accidental jump cuts, flubbed line deliveries, misaligned overlay elements, sloppy compositing, the list goes on. it's no great sin to make these mistakes, mind-- no one's being commissioned, most essayists aren't professional editors, there's no quality control or review board or institutional best practices. it's the difference between giving the kitchen a quick once over with a rag and getting on your hands and knees to scrub every stain with a toothbrush. most people don't have the time it takes to do the latter, aren't getting paid enough, and the returns on putting the effort in are impossible to measure and therefore, practically speaking, nonexistent.

but as someone who tries to put that kind of work in (not always successfully), i can always tell when another essayist has done the same. longform video essays in aggregate tend to be messy, under-structured, rambling; they often arise out of an essayist's desire to say everything they could possibly say on a subject. not only is this an impossible task, it makes for a pretty dull viewing experience to boot. what i find so impressive about Tim Rogers' work is that despite their length, his videos are relentlessly structured. the attention to fine details in the moment-to-moment edit across the whole runtime is astonishing; that the script itself is so internally integrated never fails to make me furious (with professional envy). he always has a lot to say, not all of which is strictly speaking essential to the analysis, but nothing ever feels so indulgent that it drags the rest of the essay down in my estimation. he often repeats information, but he does so very strategically and in a way that's meant to help the viewer follow a thread from start to finish. i also think his presentation style goes a long way towards hiding how much effort he puts in, how relentlessly curated these things actually are in spite of their length. he's talked extensively about how much he cuts from these videos (most prominently is story 5 from the Cyberpunk 2077 review, which went from over an hour in length at first draft to, eventually, just over a minute), how he watches them back over and over and constantly makes fine adjustments. that work won't be apparent to everyone watching, but it's exceedingly apparent to me.

and then there's the cherry on top of it all, which is the fact that the Action Button reviews are constructed as being part of "seasons" that have a planned thematic throughline. taken as a whole, season 1 is a completely unique work of literary metacritical nonfiction, a series of six reviews (Final Fantasy VII Remake -> The Last of Us -> DOOM -> Pac-Man -> Tokimeki Memorial -> Cyberpunk 2077) that use specific games to talk about trends in game design, trends in gamer culture, the history of games development, all through an astonishingly earnest and open autobiographical document of Tim Rogers' own professional and personal life, which is given particular weight by his astonishing capacity for near perfect recall from early childhood. they are the clear result of a life spent thinking about and writing about and talking about games in between all the rest of his life, neither of which was ever truly separate. i know i'm throwing around a lot of superlatives here, but i really do adore these essays. i think a lot of folks doing longform games reviews try to achieve a sort of technical objectivity, limiting the scope of their analysis to strictly what's in the game (and often only that which involves numbers, leaving any narrative or thematic components to a brief aside at the very end). the Action Button method should fall into that category, and yet Rogers himself uses its technical objectivity as an anchor around which flows an endless and unquantifiable ocean of subjectivity, where game mechanics and thematic elements mix forever. each subsequent review drops a new anchor, and thus begins to compose a map whose purpose is as much a matter of self-reflection as it is pure education or analysis.

but i really do think it's with the first (and so far only) episode of season 2, his review of Boku no Natsuyasumi, that you can really see the cunning of what he's been up to all along. i often find myself thinking about his reflections on returning to Kansas ("it took me back to a place i had never never been"), on why people rewatch movies and replay games ("our memory only records the cold parts"), on the futility of trying to recapture the past ("places don't remember us"), on the screaming terror of our own looming mortality ("meanwhile our shattering animals"). i just know those quotes off the top of my head, man, that's how deep in it i am. the Boku no Natsuyasumi review is a masterpiece, and the ways it breaks from the style and approach of season 1's reviews only strengthens the choices he made in season 1, because suddenly we realize that they were choices. that's the artfulness of this series, in my opinion: it starts as, seemingly, a relatively bog-standard "i'm going to review some video games and make some jokes and tell some stories along the way" type joint, but slowly reveals to you essay by essay just how little of this project was automatic, unconsidered, arbitrary, and that its aims were never so miniscule as "tell you why a video game is good". there are themes running throughout the entire series, repeated phrases and ideas, theories of mind and play that build in the subtext, accruing like memories, subtly building mass until you look back and realize that what seemed like a random selection of topics was, in truth, premeditated with a conspiracist's attention to detail.

and yet despite all this high-minded gobbledygook, these videos are relentlessly watchable and entertaining. i don't always agree with his takes (i was particularly frustrated that his exploration of "every cyberpunk game" omitted the flood of relevant titles that came the indie sphere over the last decade, like Cloudpunk and Read Only Memories), but they're not the kinds of disagreements that would make me sour on his work overall, and anyway the experience is so much more valuable than something as rote and immaterial as an opinion. there's so much more i could say (and inevitably will say, someday), but there you go, that's a rough gloss on what i like about the Action Button reviews.

#vidrev #video essay #video essay review #video recommendation #tim rogers #action button

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nicklloydnow · 5 months ago

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“It was during the four or five years of moving around restlessly, concentrating on the 'distant horizon', that I developed the mental trick of brushing aside the worm's eye view. Van Gooh's affirmation-experiences were never subjected to logical analysis, so that he could never be sure, looking back on them later, whether they were not simply bursts of emotional euphoria, with no objective significance. Once I had got used to the idea that the insight had nothing to do with emotion—that it was always a vision of the same landscape—this kind of doubt ceased to be an important factor.

This 'vision' of my 'wanderjahre' period was not a consummation, like an orgasm; it always produced a strong sense that I was only at the beginning. The next problem was to map the landscape, to explain the mechanisms of consciousness and the way they can lead to affirmation-experiences or to morbid paranoia. This proved to be harder than I had anticipated, because ordinary psychology, of the kind created by Freud and Jung, proved to be quite useless. Existentialism provided a better starting point, but that was equally frustrating because the major figures—Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus—were as riddled with pessimism and the 'passive fallacy' as Beckett. Sartre's world-negation seemed to me as unperceptive as Graham Greene's, merely a sign of an inability to think clearly. He keeps confusing consciousness as a general concept with personality-consciousness. So that Simone de Beauvoir can write (in Pyrrhus and Cinéas): I look at myself in vain in a mirror, tell myself my own story, I can never grasp myself as an entire object, I experience in myself the emptiness that is myself, I feel that I am not', and imagine that she is describing a general characteristic of all consciousness, instead of ordinary superficial mono-consciousness. As soon as one reads Mile de Beauvoir's volumes of autobiography, or Sartre's Words, one can see exactly why they made this basic error; neither of them possess that capacity for poetic experience—affirmation-consciousness—that came so naturally to Wordsworth.

And the chief characteristic of the opposite of affirmation consciousness—I suppose one might call it depression-consciousness—is that when you are in it, it seems totally convincing; like a very brilliant liar, it can account for everything in its own terms. Aldous Huxley invented the rather useful term 'minimum working hypothesis' about religion—i.e. what can we state definitely about it without going off into 'faith' or speculation. Well, the minimum-working-hypothesis for depression-consciousness is that the world is real and permanent, and we are not very real and not very permanent. (One of the most convincing expressions of it in literature is Wells's Mind at the End of its Tether, that final work in which he thought the universe was falling to pieces.)

At this point, it might seem relevant to ask the question: What about death? Does this fundamentally optimistic philosophy have anything to say about the final problem? If not, then surely it has no right to condemn Sartre, Greene, Beckett and the rest for being short-sighted?

This is not quite so. Although I do not believe the question of death to be ultimately beyond human solution, it is not particularly relevant at this point anyway. Suppose I were a building contractor, and I say: I think it would take me about two years to erect a thirty storey building,' and someone replies: 'Oh no, because you might die at any moment', this would quite clearly be a logical non sequitur. What I am stating here is that the greatest human mistake is the belief that ‘the natural wakeful life of the ego is a perceiving'—in Husserl's phrase. It isn't. At least, the normal understanding of this idea involves a fallacy; that perceiving is a passive occupation, like sleeping. I have tried to show that this mistake arises from the efficiency of our human robot. This robot might be compared to a super tax-accountant, who is so efficient that he gets his hands on all your money before you receive it yourself, and deducts tax for you, so that you never have any tax bills. And when people mention tax, you say with sincerity: I've never paid any in my life.' The flat truth is that you are too stupid to understand your own business affairs. However, your invisible tax-accountant is completely dependent on you. If you stop earning money, he won't be able to support you. The same is true of the robot. The energy that sustains your everyday perception comes from you. So do those bonuses of duo-consciousness, that startle you as pleasantly as a tax rebate. What human beings will slowly develop, as we advance up the evolutionary scale, is a deepening consciousness of these transactions of the robot, so that the chance element disappears from the ups and downs of consciousness. And eventually the problem of death itself will come within the range of our self-knowledge for any doctor will confirm that the body's health depends, in some strange way, upon the mind. And, at the present stage, this is all it is possible to say.

To summarise. All great changes involve a doldrums period, a time of fallowness. When a backward country changes over from agriculture to industry, the immediate result is misery and starvation for farm workers. The human race has been going into a new phase of evolution at a steadily accelerating pace, and the end is now in sight. Man deliberately abandoned the warm richness of animal consciousness for something altogether bleaker and harder. He has not done it deliberately and determinedly, but in brief spurts, with many backslidings. His attempt to conquer nature and improve his position have made life so complicated that the old phrase about the 'gift of life' begins to take on ironic overtones. Laziness and timidity are no longer qualities that can be tolerated by the force behind evolution. Human beings of the 21st century will be born into a forbidding world: a civilisation that is immense, aloof, heartless and highly mechanised. Men of genius will find it a frightening world, for it will look so impersonal and vast that there will seem to be no room for individuality. Roads to the top will be well marked, but they will involve a discouraging amount of specialisation, of adjustment to the demands of mass-organisation. And since men of genius naturally hate to conform, it seems likely that the present tendency to negative revolt will increase, as they fire off blasts of loathing at the clockwork octopus that holds them fast. This will only make things worse, for nothing destroys the will quicker than the conviction that there is no point in willing. It looks like a vicious circle; there seems every reason to assume that human beings have chosen a self-destructive route to dominance, and that things are bound to get worse, until the whole miserable chaos explodes and we plunge back into a relaxing barbarism.

This is why it has become so important that we grasp what is happening. Human consciousness has been on half-rations for a long time now; but in an important sense, this is by our own choice as a man might fast to lose weight, or save money to finance a business. A point has arrived where we can afford to reap the first harvest. Because we have not permanently forsworn the warmth and richness of animal consciousness. We have set out to develop ways in which we can have the enrichment without its dis-advantages: laziness, incompetence, lack of purpose. We chose purpose, and accepted the sudden drop in the pressure of consciousness that went with it. The east always found it easier to achieve ecstasy than the west, because the eastern temperament tends to be less purposive (this may not continue to be true, though), and so far, that has been the equation that governs human existence: purpose and the tightening of the belt, or happiness and drifting. But expressed in this way, we can see that it does not have to be so. We left purpose to the robot, because consciousness had to be economised: we had to use it for immediate problems. And now a time has come when it is not only true that we can afford to relax—and take the horse out of its harness—but when it has become a matter of urgency that we do so. The new complexity of our civilisation demands a more leisurely, enriched type of consciousness. The old obsessive energy must be turned into self-knowledge, the attempt to illuminate the realm of the robot, to gain conscious control of its vast resources of power.

For I must repeat the assertion with which I began: we possess such immense resources of power that pessimism is a laughable absurdity. Yeats's old Chinamen are gay because they know. They have broken through. They no longer suspect—as Faust does—that knowledge may be the death of us, by revealing new vistas of futility, and the ultimate impossibility of knowing anything at all. They have pushed knowledge further still: and what they now know fills them with a tremendous, quiet satis-faction. That is why 'their ancient, glittering eyes are gay'.

Why do I believe that this is the crucial point in human evolution? Why not in the year 2000 or 25000?

There are two reasons, and I have already discussed the first: that we can choose when we shall turn the questing intellect that has built the cyclotron and the moon rocket to the scientific exploration of man's inner being. And now is a good time to choose—now that there is more leisure available to more people than at any time in history.

But I also believe that the inner forces of history are pushing us towards the moment of choice. Man has been having 'mystical' experiences for as far back as written records extend; but they were restricted to a few rare souls. In the 19th century, we suddenly discover what can only be called a mass hunger for mystical experience that is, for rejection of the imperatives of everyday existence and for an intenser form of inner-experience. Romanticism is the expression of a deep instinctive desire for the life of the mind, and we are still in the midst of the romantic period. The stomach of the romantic rejects everyday existence as Bombard's stomach rejected the squashed fish; but he has no clear idea of an alternative to it. Like Wagner, he believes that the world of the mind is based upon 'wahn', illusion, and that to reject "life' is the same thing as choosing death. What he is failing to grasp is that human beings are the only terrestrial creatures for whom the word 'life' has two distinct meanings. For an animal, 'life' is what it sees when it opens its eyes in the morning; that is all. But even a fairly unintellegent human being—let us say, a provincial lad on his way to see the Cup Final in London—can say 'Eh, lad, this is life!', and mean that he suddenly perceives that 'life' means something bigger than his individual life. Human beings are the only creatures with some ability to grasp 'life' in this bigger sense. And this is the aim of our evolution, the purpose for which we rejected animal 'oneness' with nature. We are capable— in theory—of living 'life' in the broader sense.

The trouble is that our habits are against it. Imagine a soldier from Napoleon's army, returning from the Russian campaign to his small village where nothing ever happens. He sees clearly that these people are wasting their lives by living so narrowly; he knows 'life' is bigger. But if he stays in the village for six months or so, he too will forget this broader life, and allow his senses to shrink to the confines of village gossip. The problem is to stretch the mind 'beyond immediacy', and our chief defect is that it takes crisis or misery to make us do it. And yet we possess a power possessed by no other animal-this power called imagination—and its purpose is not—as I have already remarked—to allow people to live in 'a world of imagination', but to enable them to point the mind towards the broadest possible meaning of life'. In the 19th century, the impulse became so powerful in the higher types of human being that it outstripped their interest in the narrower sense of 'life'. In the 20th century, this disgusted rejection of 'life' has become stronger. Wagner and Tennyson represent a rich autumn; Kafka and Beckett a bleak, grey winter. It is impossible for rejection to go further; the turning point has to come.” - Colin Wilson, ‘Poetry and Mysticism’ (1969) [p. 92 - 97]

#wilson #colin wilson #philosophy #poetry #mysticism #optimism #literature #existentialism

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upsilambic · 6 months ago

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👻Which KHR character is your spirit animal?

🩸You have been dragged into the Varia. Why? Well, the pay is great and there's excellent eyecandy. So! What would be your go-to murder method?

omg I'm sorry. This got so long!

👻 Lambo! There's that duality to Lambo with his present/future selves I feel like I resonate with, disregarding the fact he's five, and I'm...not. Most of the time, I go about the day in my reasonably enthusiastic, if largely disorganized way. Some days I do wonder how I am managing at all. Then something will come up that must get done, so Practical and Efficient Kitt swoops in at the last minute to save the day. Of course after that, I go back to being my disaster self. Also, grapes. If you're going to eat fruit flavored candy, grape is a good, safe bet. There's no trusting banana or watermelon.

Not spirit animal, but for those times when life feels like it is barely restrained chaos, and I am expending all of my energy herding cats, that's when I will channel Squalo. Just without actual violence or murder.

🩸 What do I do in the Varia? Well, for starters, I don't have a weapon. I am a weapon, but possibly not in the way you are thinking. It's definitely not in the "martial arts human weapon" way. I tried martial arts once, and well...Well, I tried. Once. I wasn't allowed back. Anyway. No, I am like a weaponized Rose from the Golden Girls. You know that one character who tells all the stories that tend to get kinda convoluted? Yeah, that one. Now imagine Rose with cloud flames.

They don't send me out into the field very often. It's pretty close to never. My talent is put to use when they need someone for interrogation or torture. It's set up like the old good cop/bad cop routine. I walk in and start chatting. Pretty soon they're like, "Holy shit! Was that a 300 word run-on sentence?" And I'm like, "You bet your sweet tushy it was. Now buckle up, Buttercup because I'm about to create a labyrinth of tangents and non sequiturs that will leave you wishing you could get lost in one of Mammon's nightmare mind scapes instead."

Actually, that happens kind of a lot. Them wishing for something like that.

I don't notice it, but I'm told the cloud flames make things sort of intense. I know I'm on the right track when the eyes of person in the chair glaze over with an overwhelming sense of doom once they realize that I'm still talking and no one else is going to walk through the door to torment them. The room suddenly feels smaller, there's a primal urge to gnaw off a limb to escape, and finally the body decides the best course of action is to self destruct and that's when the organ failure starts. The executive officers are really good at stepping in just before that point to get the information they need.

Honestly, it's kind of a hit to the self-esteem to see the person in the chair light up like a Christmas tree when an officer comes in. You know, as if the guy with all the knives is their personal savior. I'm not the one whose gonna slice you to bits. Just saying.

But, um, to get back to your question, no I'm not in HR. They're farther down the hall four doors on your left.

#khr ask game

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exploring-in-space · 1 year ago

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I've finally written for the first time in months! I feel inspired and hopeful that I can share a story after so many months of feeling uninspired and burnt out. I want to share what I've written so far and welcome any feedback!

It's a little lengthy so I'll put it under a cut ☺

Aaron calls on an inconspicuous Wednesday afternoon.

Robert had missed the call because he’d been in meetings all afternoon with clients. When he’s back in his hotel room and sees the missed call, his heart momentarily stops. Anxiety and consternation fills his veins at the sight - a feeling he hasn’t felt in years, when he still depended on the bottle to get him through the days. Why was Aaron calling him?

He rubs the screen of his phone absentmindedly as he runs through the possible reasons Aaron could be calling after all these years. But as he’s contemplating the why’s, the phone abruptly starts to ring. It’s Aaron again. The reality of seeing the phone ring with a very old picture of Aaron on his screen startles Robert enough to drop his phone instead of answering.

By the time he picks the phone back up, he’s missed Aaron’s second call, and Robert is not above admitting the relief he feels. But the relief is short lived when a text comes in seconds later.

Robert, its Aaron. Pls call. Its important.

It’s important. What could be important between them after years of silence? The curiosity of it starts to outweigh the trepidation, and so Robert presses the call button, and brings a shaky hand up to his ear. The phone only rings twice before Aaron’s voice abruptly ends the ringing, “Robert.”

“Hiya, sorry about earlier, I was-”

“Mum and Paddy are dead,” Aaron interrupts the flimsy lie that was on Robert’s lips. Aaron’s announcement stuns Robert into silence. Of all the things Aaron could have called about, this never crossed Robert’s mind. He thinks of the last time he saw Chas - in a hospital bed as she glowered down at him.

You’ll ruin him just like you’ve ruined yourself

“Robert?” comes Aaron’s voice, noticeably watery now that Robert can contextualize Aaron’s voice.

“Sorry…I mean, Aaron. I’m so sorry. What happened?” Robert winces at the words. They don’t feel nearly enough.

“Car accident. They were driving from Leeds back home. It was rainy and dark, and-” Aaron cuts off, but Robert can guess what happened next. The thought of Chas and Paddy dying so anticlimactically disturbs Robert. He always thought they were so boring and they’d live well into their old age with a brood of grandchildren.

“What about Eve?” The thought of hypothetical grandchildren reminds Robert of their own very real daughter.

“She’s here. I’m at the pub. I was babysitting when I got the call.”

“Aaron, I’m so sorry.” Robert feels like a broken record, but what else could he say?

“I-I just needed to tell ya. I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but Vic talks about you all the time. And I just…wanted you to know.”

Aaron’s words, for the first time since they’ve spoken, brings the telltale prickle to Robert’s eyes. The last time they weathered a hardship together, they’d been engaged and in love. Now it’s been three years since they last had spoken, and Aaron is the bigger person to call Robert. He’s always been too good for Robert.

“I’m in London,” Robert says, but before Aaron can respond to the non sequitur, he continues, “but only for a work trip. I can come to Emmerdale…if you want me to be there for you. And Eve, of course.”

You’ll ruin him just like you’ve ruined yourself

There’s a pregnant pause, before Aaron says something. “I’d really like that,” he whispers, and the pesky tears in Robert’s eyes fall down his cheeks.

“I can be there by tomorrow morning,” Robert promises, mentally juggling all the meetings he will have to reschedule.

“Okay.”

“Aaron?” Robert holds his breath, knowing the conversation is over, but desperate to continue to hear Aaron’s voice. “Despite the terrible circumstances, it’s good to hear your voice.”

There is a long pause that makes Robert want to snatch the words back and to apologize for the crassness of his statement. But just when Robert is going to say something, Aaron quietly says, “Me too.”

Any sort of trepidation that Robert had been feeling slowly evaporates and they say their quiet good-byes shortly afterwards. Robert pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at the photo of Aaron trying to cover his face because he was tired of Robert taking photos. It was the day they had gotten engaged, and despite Aaron trying to shield his face, there was a smile on his face.

That photo was taken only three months before Robert walked away from Aaron for good. He idly wonders if Aaron has smiled like that since.

Robert slumps in the chair he’s sitting, and for the first time in years, he wants a drink.

#i initially thought this would be a chaptered story but because i have so many unfinished chaptered stories atm #I think i'm going to make this into a one shot instead #this is unpolished and not proofread so pls be kind lol #but i feel jazzed and want to share #my writing #robron #Icagw

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wirewitchviolet · 1 year ago

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That thing where bigots accuse trans people of things and then when pressed for examples name people who aren't trans.

The other day I had some random youtube video going in the background because I needed background noise and I don't have TV or a radio, and someone got into an aside about one Jimmy Savile. That name rang a bell, because oh yeah, that's that name that TERFs are always incoherently shouting. I had never heard this name in any other context before (this may be surprising to British people but for real nobody in the vast world outside your tiny bigot-ridden island has heard of ANY of your celebrities outside of like, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Monty Python, Mr. Bean, and the leads from Doctor Who in 1980 and 2008, plus some people who got famous on American TV) so I started paying attention, but the person talking was kind of talking around the subject. So then I looked him up on wikipedia, and first of all, yikes, but also yeah this guy doesn't have the slightest thing to do with trans people, so what the hell?

See to hear TERFs tell it, the world was all sunshine and rainbows forever until the ever-moving target of "just a few years ago" when trans people suddenly started existing and you can't trust them, especially around kids, and then, yeah, they incoherently shout "Jimmy Savile!" Every so often one will be in an interview or something and not just shouting slurs at you in an unmoderated forum and there'll be some followup where they mutter about having absolutely no idea and being totally shocked but again like, none of that holds up? Trans people have been around for the entirety of human history and never actually caused any problems of any sort for anyone, this creep people claim to have had no idea he was a creep until after he died in 2011 had songs (plural!) on the radio about his well-known to anyone who ever interacted with him serial sexual assaults on children as far back as the the mid-1980s, and the particular TERF I most often trying to make some sort of connection here absolutely knew I was trans back when he was apparently trying to get into my pants in 2014, well after they I guess started scrubbing this creep's names off buildings and apparently before trans people existed according their weird sliding timeline.

Being, apparently, quite a few years older than all recorded human history, I also remember that bit where before really going all in on "corrupting our innocent children" BS and dropping other weird angles, there was this desperate flailing about where trans women were like, using our vile shapeshifting powers to sneak into locker rooms and punch people or whatever? In particular, I'm recalling the bit where it first became apparent to the last few hold outs that Rowling's an unhinged bigot, and some of those people had the presence of mind to ask her WTF it was she had against trans people anyway. To which Rowling responded with this non-sequitur about her ex-husband being a violent abuser. I remember at the time a lot of people were surprised, because they had no idea that Rowling's ex was trans. But see, people had no idea about that, because it's not at all true. Like the next day someone dug up the ex in question and asked him, "hey, are you actually a woman or something?" and he responded with a rather confused no.

And like, there's SOME logic to responding to the question "why are you making unfounded claims about a whole group of people being violent?" with "oh I know this person who's violent and I hate him," there's just this unspoken "and I feel like that's a pretty universal reaction, so being violent struck me as a good thing to claim about anyone I want people to hate," ditto with the CSA stuff, but it can't just be rational people with any clue what they're talking about like me who see these totally unrelated claims and go "OK wait though. If trans people are guilty of all these horrible evil things, why is it you literally don't seem to be able to name a single one, and keep just bringing up people who aren't trans?" Happens with sports too! They'll shout about trans people being super athletes and then when they can't actually find examples they point at random cis athletes.

I don't really have a larger point here, just, you know, it's a weird freaking tactic, and people don't call it out the way they should. So I guess I'll just awkwardly transition into begging for money again.

Patreon link.

#terfs #baseless accusations #I feel like I should be more specific here but the whole point is inventing an overlap between innocent people and awfulness

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super-powerful-queen-reyna · 1 year ago

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Fanfiction to cope with The Shibuya Massacre:

Satoru faced the curses, alone. The volcano's hand ignited with cursed energy but it did absolutely nothing. He tried again, and again.

"Dam..." Satoru purred, amused. "Was it supposed to do something?"

"It was," a voice from behind intervened. "But I stopped it."

A figure emerged from the shadows.

"Because I am the strongest." she said.

A white streak cutting her long blonde hair in a warrior's braid, clad in a golden armor, the woman's hands glowed with a blue fire. The fire hit the curses and turned them into frogs. It picked them up and threw them in a trashcan.

"That wasn't badass at all, Miss I am the strongest! " Satoru teased her.

"I literally sent them to another universe!" She replied, falsely shocked.

"Oh really?" Satoru continued.

She slapped the trashcan's lid.

"This bad boy sent crazy demonic objects in another universe. Then a space cow got possessed by the objects and I had to face her and I won thanks to my planet friend." She proudly explained. "It was made by my great-great uncle."

"Wow, impressive!" Satoru whistled.

"So," she started. "Is there something I should know about the dark thing outside?"

"It cuts all communication. It lets everyone in, but no one except jujutsu sorcerers out" He succinctly said.

"You're a jujutsu sorcerer?" She asked.

"Exactly!" He laughed.

"I just have to change every nonsos's magical signature to a jujutsu sorcerer's to teleport them out of here..." she whispered to herself.

Satoru tilted his head like a puppy, confused but excitedly waiting for how she was going to do that. He watched her deeply concentrate for several seconds. Her feet got off the ground as she glowed in a bright navy blue light. It reminded him that every time Megumi watched Attack on Titan, Satoru liked to brag he could kill Titans easily. This time, he faced someone that could actually kill every single Titan at once. That would kill him in a matter of seconds. He even saw universes in her eyes, which was supposed to be impossible. And She unleashed her power and the non jujutsu sorcerers disappeared. Satoru realised he forgot to tell her about something.

"Where did you send them?" He yelled, more puzzled than ever, except for this one time.

"Outside." she brutally replied. "Now are you going to exorcise every curse or what?"

"Didn't you sense the people turned into monsters?"he buzzed with anger, mostly at himself. "They're going to kill everyone!"

"Why do you think it took me more than five seconds?" she snapped. "I turned them back you idiot!"

"How was I supposed to know that?" He asked, shaken up.

"I don't know, by keeping up with news from Otherworld like it was said in the treaty we made with Tengen." She scathingly replied.

"He never told anyone!" Satoru protested."Why are you so angry at me?"

"You were angry at me first!" She shouted. "I hate it when people get angry at me when I help. Ok you're worried but I don't joke about me being the strongest. The only stronger people are me with my planet friend or me with this guy or me with the Zendra Star or me with the demonic objects. Give me your number."

"What?" He exclaimed, confused by the non sequitur.

"So I can send you videos of me doing extra powerful things!" She explained.

"Man I wish I could do that!" He said, disappointed because the Jujutsu world is not visible in regular videos. "It's (03)-0212-0322."

She tapped on her wrist for like a minute and then Satoru got a notification. He clicked on the videos and what he saw was beyond what he could ever imagine. So many things had happened to her, and she overcame it all! He heard the sound of a body hitting the ground but he did not pay attention because in the video she was literally teleporting even more people than there were in Shibuya then closing a black hole as easily as breathing. Without even being tired because she had asked for help at the right time! He looked at the rest of the videos, fascinated, and squishy sounds could be heard. Not from his phone, but it didn't really bother him.

He looked over at her and what he saw made his heart skip a beat. Not the brain in a jar, but Suguru. Suguru was there. His six eyes told him it was true, and his soul recognized him.

"Is it him? Is he..."Satoru whispered, hope and love exceeding the hard truth that he killed him , almost a year ago.

Suguru coughed, finally breathing. Satoru threw himself at him and hugged him tightly but not too much, to let him breathe.

"Yo, Satoru. It's been a while." He weakly said.

Satoru had missed the way he softly talked to him.

"How are you alive?" Satoru asked.

"Kenjaku. But mainly thanks to your new friend." He replied. "What's your name by the way?"

"Tara Duncan. You know, if you don't want to eat, I can always use my trashcan." She gently said.

"How did you- nevermind. Satoru, can you do my hair like you used to? I'm feeling a bit dizzy." Suguru asked.

"Yes, I will. Who's Kenjaku by the way?" Satoru asked gently.

Tara and Suguru both pointed to the brain in the jar. If this were a cartoon, interrogation marks would've floated above Satoru's deeply concerned and confused face.

"Oh, I don't know how that works for jujutsu sorcerers, but I transferred some of my blood to you. It might have positive effects on you. Can you try to do magic?" She addressed Suguru encouragingly.

Blue fire appeared in Suguru's hands, and he projected multiple swirly tendrils of light. Those tendrils went stiff after a couple minutes, then they got absorbed back in Suguru's hands, like a dog's leash rolling back into its container. The remaining curses were tied to the other ends, as well as two teenage girls and jujutsu veil stuff. Tara swiftly turned all he brought that were not teenage girls into frogs and threw them in her trashcan.

"Nanako! Mimiko! " Suguru exclaimed.

"Geto-sama!" The teenage girls excitedly yelled.

They had a family hug. Satoru smiled fondly and Tara averted her gaze because she was aware that she wasn't concerned by the family reunion. She also took advantage of the moment to seal the trashcan and put it into her pocket.

"Satoru! Will you be their dad?" Suguru happily asked.

"Only if you'll be Megumi's mom!" Satoru replied with the biggest smile you've ever seen in your entire life.

They looked tenderly into each other's eyes, both laughing like idiots in love.

"Who's Megumi?" Nanako asked, confused.

"I guess it's Satoru's kid." Tara replied.

"Don't you know him?" Mimiko asked, even more puzzled.

"I never met this Megumi and I just met Satoru on my aunt's orders. How could I have any more information than you?" Tara explained.

Nanako picked up the jar.

"Ewwww!" Mimiko commented.

"I've got a jar of diiirt!" Nanako smirked.

Tara smiled stupidly, recognizing the reference. Then Satoru helped Suguru to get up and they giddily strutted or traipsed towards the jujutsu sorcerers rendezvous point. Everyone looked at them, shocked.

"What about the people he murdered?" Nanami asked, deeply concerned.

"What murdaaaaaa?" Satoru jokingly replied.

Horrified looks from everyone in the room but Satoru's only looking at Suguru. Tara got from her pocket a quartz rectangle.

"More seriously, here's your honeymoon itinerary and therapy schedule." Tara handed the rectangle to Suguru. "Also, my domain in Omois is big enough for you and your kids."

"Wow, thank you Tara!" Suguru said, touched by the attention.

"Wait... Tara, as in Tara'tylanhem T'al Barmi Ab Santa Ab Maru T'al Duncan? The heiress of Omois?" Takuma Ino intervened.

"Yup. Don't add any more information." She threatened.

He gulped. Now if you've read anything about her, you know that if you provoke her there's a good chance you'll spend the rest of your life as a fly-liking amphibian. Like any sensible person, he did not want that. To keep it rocking, he didn't say anything more.

"Sooo... Do you still want to kill me?" Maki boldly asked.

"Meh." Suguru replied. "I've realized that killing people is actually boring. I like to kill annoying people, but it's even more annoying to get rid of the body. And I can't not do it because I don't like the smell. So now I think I'll find out how to teach people to manipulate cursed energy to get less curses. Or just find Ladybug to make some lucky charms to give to people."

Immediately after he said that, Satoru passionately kissed Suguru on the mouth. When they made out for more than ten minutes, Tara got sick of it and teleported them to the aforementioned domain. She appeared back, then they all got into the cars back to Jujutsu Tokyo school.

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notsocheezy · 2 months ago

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Brain Curd #200

Culture Shock - On the Origin of NotSoCheezy

Brain Curds are lightly edited daily writing - usually flash fiction and sometimes terrible on purpose. Today we celebrate two-hundred days straight (me? never) of writing every single day by exploring the history of my creative exploits - and bringing the total Brain Curd word count up to one-hundred thousand!

I was not the most ambitious child from the get-go - and why would I have been? I lived in a desert, my parents were divorced, and outside of school I spent all my time sitting in my bedroom, playing video games, reading books, or watching cartoons. I didn’t make anything. Unless you count microwaving Kid Cuisine.

One fateful day, however, my third grade teacher recommended a book to me that he thought I’d like - Captain Underpants. I read it and loved it, but more importantly, I saw these two kids making comic books all by themselves and thought, “I can do that.”

I took two characters I’d come up with after discovering slugs and snails living at the edge of the grass field at school - Oofus and Doofus - and threw them into a comic strip. I’d spent a lot of time reading collections of Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and The Far Side, but not so much with superhero comic books, so this was the logical thing to do: I’d make enough of these comic strips to fill ten or so pages. Unfortunately, I did not know how to structure a three-panel joke.

I couldn’t tell you for sure what the first one I made was, because my childhood self decided that the canonical first strip involved Doofus hypnotizing their worm friend into thinking he was Jerry Seinfeld - an amusing non-sequitur at best. I was satisfied by this workflow, for a time, but then I heard someone else was making comic books.

This kid named Edgar had come up with a superhero character, and he was cranking out comics like there was no tomorrow. I asked to read one, and I was relieved to see they were much worse than mine. I couldn’t make out the words through his penmanship, and the plots were incomprehensible. The snarky brat I was, I decided I would start making full length comic books with my characters, under the ‘publishing’ label of Better Than Edgar’s Comics. The logo was his superhero character inside a ‘prohibited’ circle.

I made a good few of these, but since I didn’t know how to use a Xerox, they remained exclusive to my possession. I allowed people to read them on request, however, and eventually word got back to Edgar. He wasn’t a big fan of my trademark infringement.

Authorities got involved, there was much back and forth, and though I argued that I was building a brand and a name change would adversely affect that, we eventually settled that I’d change the name and there’d be an option for a crossover in the future (this failed to materialize).

So now I needed a new name, and I already sort of had one. Sometime prior, I’d come up with Not So Cheez-e Animation as a candidate, but discarded it when I realized comics were in fact not animated, deciding that I’d save it for my future television channel. Still, it had the Treehouse Comix-esque charm of misspelling a simple word, and I had no better ideas, so Not So Cheez-e (un)Animation was born. I designed the very first logo for the label, purposely making it overly complicated as first logos were supposed to be. After a few more issues, I redesigned it to roughly the isosceles triangle with holes that it is today.

Oofus & Doofus continued through approximately twenty issues and several spinoffs, most of which have never seen the light of day but remain safely stored with my grandmother. Over a few years, my storytelling, artistic ability, and (most importantly) handwriting improved substantially. I'm still reasonably proud of some of those comic books.

In sixth grade, I got bored in class and started making a flipbook with the characters. It was nothing complicated - Oofus waving, Doofus slithering, just simple cycles. But I struggled to get a satisfactory result from flipping the pages since they were so small, so I unstapled them and scanned them into the computer, animating them with Powerpoint and Movie Maker. I realized that I was legitimately making an animated film, so then added some lip-synced dialogue. I didn’t have a microphone, though, or a budget for voice acting, so a silent film it was.

There was very little meat to it, but it was undeniably a cartoon - even if more than half of the runtime was a credits sequence with the waving loop on repeat. There was no way for me to show this off at school - I didn’t have a smartphone, of course - but if I put it on the internet, maybe I could tell people where to watch it, or show them on library computers.

Enter YouTube. I wasn’t technically old enough to make an account at the age of eleven (almost twelve, though), but I did it anyway because I didn’t give a heck about the rules. Oofus & Doofus - Now We're Movin' was unleashed to the world on March 3, 2011, on the brand new channel, NotSoCheezyAnimation. All one word, as was the style at the time. I figured I’d earned the name.

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After that, I made a few more channels: NotSoCheezyFilm, NotSoCheezyGaming, and NotSoCheezyTech. That’s right, I had a quadfecta before MatPat stole my thunder. Not that I did much with them, but NSCF was to be for non-animated content (since I couldn’t fathom putting such things on the original channel), NSCG was to host a Minecraft let’s play series, and NSCT was for a prospective tech news show. The latter two never made it past the concept and logos stage.

NotSoCheezyFilm became the de-facto main channel thanks to series such as Tiresome Reviews and Thank You Dr. Steve Brule which were just about the only things I made during my early high school years. You might find it very interesting to watch the former, by the way, as I was really leaning into the baritone part of my vocal range at the time, and at this point it’s downright uncanny to listen to. I’m not sure I can do that anymore.

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Meanwhile, I started writing short stories - first as part of a class assignment, then just for fun. They weren’t initially good, but they got the storytelling bug back in me after years away from comics. Though the execution was rough, Everyone Has Their Price is a highlight of that era. It’s still on my website, but don’t read that version of it.

In 2017, I became the lead actor in I Found My Love In Avalon, a short film produced as an extracurricular. I had a decent amount of input on the outline (we had no script since there was no dialogue) and even directed a shot or two, though I was mostly in front of the camera. It was, to that point, the most complicated shoot I’d done.

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I found that I really enjoyed filmmaking, so when I came out as trans, I did it with a bang. 3-31-19 was written over the course of a year and filmed and edited in a span of three months. It was released on the titular date and I forced everyone I knew to watch it. Much easier than one-on-one chats with everyone in my graduating class of high school.

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After that, I decided I was done playing my main channel as second fiddle. It was high time for a rebrand, I figured, so I put my nose to the grindstone and refreshed my logos. The name of the game was color - gradients, mostly. For once, I was actually making my logo more complicated. Thus, my active channels became NotSoCheezy and NotSoCheezy ². Just in time for me to spend twenty minutes recording a Weezer shitpost to entertain my friends and inadvertently releasing unto the world the most popular thing I’ve ever made.

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Let’s stop there - I think you can figure out the rest.

Please comment, reblog, like, and follow if you enjoyed- I'd love to know what you think! Can we make it to 200 notes?

Stay tuned for the top ten one-offs of the second hundred Brain Curds!

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danglovely · 4 months ago

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Regrading Taskmaster: S06E10 He was a different man.

*Score changes noted in parenthesis.

Series finale! Honestly, this season was a slog as evidenced by how slowly I got through it. Series Seven is a lot better (and one that a lot of people consider to be the best of all time).

That said, I've come off my Taskmaster fixation a bit. I'm still enjoying new episodes when they come out (including Australia and New Zealand), but now that I've stopped obsessing through these write-ups, it's getting harder. I at least want to get through Series Eight because it's my favorite, but this project might be naturally reaching its end.

Still, it's not like I'm on a deadline with this. I can always come back to it when I feel like. Anyway, let's wrap up Series Six.

Prize Task: The Least Appropriate Accessory For a Wedding Anniversary

How are you going to accessorize that?

Liza does a sandwich board stating "I Love Tom Hanks." Humor is subjective, but even as far as non sequiturs go, this is pretty weak. Russell does gift vouchers for a divorce lawyer. Pro - on topic. Con - a gift card that definitely isn't real because divorce lawyers don't give gift cards.

Alice thinks the mother of the bride should bring a positive pregnancy test. I fully agree. "She'll wear it as a corsage." Asim brings num-chuks. Even as non sequiturs go this is pretty weak.

Tim does a bunch of puns about bees! A for effort. B for execution.

Alice: 5 (+2) Asim: 2 (-3) Liza: 1 (0) Russell: 3 (-1) Tim: 4 (+2)

VT 01: Knock over the fewest skittles. You may place one item on each of the three ramp sections, or you may place two items on one of the ramp sections. Your items must be found on this table and may not include either you or the table. You may not tamper with the balls or the ramp.

What's that finger thing for?

Alex showed there was a right way to do this on YouTube! The only thing to evaluate here is whether anyone broke the rules. Possible trip-ups: (1) Wrong number of items in the section. (2) Items didn't come from the table. (3) Tampering.

Asim and Liza genuinely struggled understanding the rules. Alex's logic tracks that something that constitutes a singular form while it's on the table is an item. Asim narrowly avoids disqualifying by completely flubbing the task.

Alice, Russell, and Tim certainly seemed a bit smarter about it. It did seem like their attempts would have better results. Okay, maybe not Alice's banana peels. All said, this task was graded correctly.

Alice: 3 Asim: 3 Liza: 4 Russell: 5 Tim: 1

VT 02: Blow the candle out from the furthest distance. You may not relight the candle.

It was like an unhelpful Narnia.

This is going to be mean and people could call me incorrect about this, but it is brought up on the show and it should be taken seriously. Asim doesn't blow the candle out by any definition of the word. He knocks it over and it goes out.

Everyone else's score remain the same (+1 if you didn't get disqualified). Asim didn't complete the task.

Alice: 4 (+1) Asim: 0 (-5) Liza: 0 (0) Russell: 3 (+1) Tim: 5 (+1)

VT 03: Tell the Taskmaster you love him in the most meaningful way.

It was so . . . in me.

Liza wins. There's nothing to say about it. You have to see it and if you don't understand why Liza wins, I can't explain to you why Liza wins.

Russell gets one. He didn't do anything.

Asim's serenade was good enough to win the five in most instances. This wasn't one of those instances. Tim made himself Greg's mom which I thought was pretty inspired. Alice wrote, as Greg described it, a "heavily caveated declaration of love."

Alice: 2 Asim: 4 (-1) Liza: 5 Russell: 1 Tim: 3

Live Task: Display a number. You get one rosette if your number is higher than the person's on your right and one if its lower than the person's on your left. If you display the same number as someone else, you lose them all.

I am a creature of habit!

The only interesting part of this game (that is supposedly taking the world by storm) is that Alice asks Alex twice to let her pin the rosettes on herself.

There may be a game theory discussion to be had about this, but that's definitely not happening here. The scores remain unchanged.

Liza and Russell didn't get anything, but by rules I've set in the past -- zero is a number, so you do get points.

Alice: 5 (0) Asim: 4 Liza: 2 (+2) Russell: 2 (+2) Tim: 3 (0)

F I N A L

Episode --

Alice: 16 Asim: 13 Liza: 12 Russell: 14 Tim: 16

Alice and Tim TIE, which I took away from Alice in the past so I'M GIVING IT BACK TO HER.

Series --

I'm sure everyone's just as interested as me to learn who really won the series so let's math it up . . .

Alice: 133 Asim: 151 Liza: 149 Russell: 174 Tim: 179

Lost a hook, but won our hearts, it's Tim.

Actually surprised Liza didn't win it after calculation, I think odds on she was my favorite contestant this series. That said, good riddance to Series Six. I like you, but I don't like you.

Series Seven, let's go.

#tm regrade #taskmaster #tim vine #alice levine #asim chaudhry #russell howard #liza tarbuck #alex horne #greg davies

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apparitionism · 2 years ago

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Decalogue 5

I’ve been chipping away at this “story” for three years now—it’s more a conceit that got out of hand, really, but ten years’ worth of regular fanfictional postings can send the conceptual car into some unreasonably esoteric cul-de-sacs. This one, as the title makes clear, has to do with ten commandments—not THE Ten Commandments, but one for each year of the Bering-and-Wells situation (I started this excursion on the tenth anniversary, intending to finish it soon after and wind up the ten, but...). Part 1 covered years one through five, with commandments as follows: one, meet at gunpoint; two, thou shalt not touch; three, suffer in silence; four, make mistakes; and five, thou shalt not hold grudges. Part 2 was year six: Thou shalt not damage. Part 3 dealt with year seven and instructed, “Thou shalt take nothing for granted.” Most recently, part 4 yielded year eight’s “Remember the anniversary,” which is always good advice, so here’s year nine, which via time’s-arrow shenanigans and bizarro chapter-math is part 5, being posted on the thirteenth anniversary.

Decalogue 5

Year 9: Calm down.

It would of course have been wise for Myka to have applied such a directive, spiritually, throughout most of her years with (and without) Helena. It would have been wise for her to have applied it throughout most of her interactions with Helena... and if anyone had asked her, she would have said she’d tried to do so. But apparently her efforts hadn’t met the universe’s expectations: such that by their ninth year, said universe saw fit to insist, insistently, that she work much, much harder at it.

That insistence came over time to manifest as an incessant tapping against her consciousness... naturally (or was it artificially? and was there a salient difference?) everything that happened served as a commentary on everything else that happened, for Myka would over the course of the year come to understand the heavy significance of a particular tapping sound.

Circumstances began to converge—though Myka didn’t realize they were converging, and that in itself ended up being salient—when she and Pete were driving home, late at night, from a retrieval that hadn’t mattered at all. Late at night, though: that mattered. Nearly midnight, in fact, which mattered most.

“Helena hasn’t called me yet,” she said. She hadn’t really intended to say it aloud, but there were only five minutes left in the day. And when Helena and Steve were away on a mission, Helena called Myka at some point during each and every day: a compromise, one designed to mitigate Myka’s urge to smother, at least as far as Helena’s health and safety were concerned. It wasn’t that Helena wouldn’t call, left to her own devices. But Myka was able, was allowed, to expect it. To rely on it.

Pete snorted. “Charlize Theron hasn’t called me yet, but you don’t see me checking my phone every ten seconds about it.”

Myka had given up trying to explain to Pete what a non sequitur was. Instead, she asked, “Why would Charlize Theron call you?”

“Why wouldn’t she? It’s like you’ve never looked at me. But also: get it?”

“I think there’s a significant difference with regard to roles in lives.”

“Only because Charlize hasn’t got the memo on her destiny with me. Don’t be acting snooty just because you and H.G. got all the memos. ‘Agent Bering,’” he pronounced, high-voiced, “‘we’re forever destined to meet at gunpoint.’”

Another thing she’d given up: getting offended and telling him his Helena impression was atrocious. Instead, she said, “I really wish Claudia hadn’t told you about that.” She did wish it. But she knew it was—

“Pfft. Water, bridge, under,” Pete said, reading her mind. “I really wish you’d quit checking your phone every ten seconds. You’re making me nervous.”

“You check your phone constantly!”

“But not for a reason.”

“I just want to know why she hasn’t called yet,” Myka said, hearing herself sound not a little desperate, aggravated that she hadn’t scrubbed—apparently couldn’t scrub—all that evidence from her voice.

Pete didn’t seem to care. “Maybe she’ll tell you when she calls. Or hey, I just realized, phones work both ways.”

That wasn’t the deal, but with three minutes—no, now two—to go, Myka gave in and called. Straight to voicemail. She then went entirely in-for-a-penny on it and called Steve, who picked up quickly, only to say, “Can’t talk; call you back when—”

And then the phone went dead.

Myka’s throat wasn’t really closing in panic, was it? It couldn’t have been. Through the obviously nonexistent clutching choke, she said to Pete, “I called Helena and she didn’t answer and then I called Steve and he said he couldn’t talk and he’d call me back but the line went dead. What do I do now?” She wasn’t really looking for advice, but she had to ask to at least try to force her heart back down.

He didn’t turn his eyes from the road. “Here’s an idea: calm down.”

“I’m very calm,” Myka lied.

Now he did look at her, with an eyeroll of oh please. “Another idea: quit lying.”

“As ideas go, you should quit Steving. And answer my question!”

“I don’t remember the question.”

Myka exhaled with purpose. “What do I do now?”

“Finally an easy one. Wait till Steve calls you back.”

She didn’t have much choice.

Myka had always taken pride in being practiced at simulating calm; that kind of fakery was practically part of an agent’s job description. But she was being forced to learn (and resisting being forced to learn) that such simulation wasn’t enough to resolve every situation... or, more broadly, that appearances unfortunately weren’t reality.

Not until nearly two in the morning—after Myka had showered, changed into her pajamas, pretended to read some pages of Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time (she and Helena were mutually bookclubbing that), and finally given in to doomscrolling news, because at least that didn’t require an attention span—did Steve call and say, “Everything’s fine. She’s about to call you, but I told you I’d call you back, so I am.”

Helena opened her own call by saying, “Via miscalculation, I broke our deal. I know it, and I apologize.”

“Miscalculations happen,” Myka said, because of course they did. Then she said, “I’m too rigid,” because of course she was. Probably.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Helena said, with a fervent affection.

“By calling twice tomorrow?” Myka asked, her own affection rich.

“It’s already tomorrow, and I’ll be home then. Or now: it’s today.”

“You make no sense.”

“Be that as it may, and it may, but: how was your appointment with the physician yesterday?”

Myka had figured that was going to be on the agenda, whenever this call happened. Earlier in the day, she’d been happy enough to put off talking to Helena about the results of her physical; now that wish for postponement returned full force. “Better than your retrieval, I bet,” she hedged, hoping that Helena might just... drop it. Drop it and regale Myka with retrieval exploits.

That was a vain hope, of course: first, Helena had an uncanny ear for reluctance and would seize it and shake it till it yielded a why; second, a full physical, with its palpations, percussions, auscultations, and analyses of the living breathing body, was jam-packed with the sort of trackable data Helena found endlessly enthralling.

“Steve and I are fine,” Helena said, of course declining to elaborate on the mission, of course dashing Myka’s hopes. “Are you?”

That was without question a shake in search of a why. “Do I look unhealthy to you?” she countered.

“I can’t see you. This isn’t a video call.”

“If the answer’s yes, just say it.”

“The answer is that to me, you look reasonably healthy. I’ve certainly seen you look far less healthy.”

“You have?” Because Myka had hardly been sick at all, these past several—

“I suspect you’d rather I didn’t talk about that.”

“I would?”

A breath. Then: “Boone.”

Stupid mistake, Myka chastised herself. You should have understood immediately. Should have understood—which still often took the place of “did understand”—even now, after so much time. She breathed out heavily, trying for that elusive calm. “Okay. Yes.” They had talked, at first poorly, about the cancer. Talked, continually poorly, about Pete’s role in making it go away. Talked about—argued about—who had the right to, who deserved to, save whom. “I can’t change the fact that he did,” Myka had said.

To which Helena had said, not enraged but resigned, “I can’t change the fact that I resent his doing what I couldn’t.”

“Because you didn’t know,” Myka had tried.

“For which I blame myself,” Helena had gloomed in response.

“Blame both of us,” Myka had tossed into the breach. Before, she would have said “you should,” but she’d seen how time could stretch the boundaries of fault, of responsibility, for so many acts. In this case, she’d made sure to push those boundaries herself. On purpose, hard and away. “Blame the Warehouse. Blame everybody everywhere. There’s so much blame to go around...”

Now, Myka was at least able to follow up with, “I can honestly say I’m glad I looked worse then. Because comparatively, this is not a big deal.”

It wasn’t. At any rate, it didn’t seem to be. Her primary care doctor, whom Myka trusted because he’d steered her through the non-Warehouse parts of the cancer without making any of it weird, had been factual: “Most everything looks fine, but your systolic blood pressure falls in a range we refer to as ‘elevated.’” He then perked up, like he’d been itching for an opportunity to have something to do, in these years she’d been untumored: “In younger people like you, this generally results from lifestyle issues, so I’ll link you to some articles in the portal outlining changes, steps to take so you don’t develop dangerous hypertension.” Myka had thought he’d sounded overly enthusiastic on the word “dangerous”... but she’d hoped that was a figment of her hyperactive imagination.

“And yet you’re telling it to me,” Helena said, after Myka explained what he’d said, trying to downplay it, omitting in particular his use of the word “dangerous.” Trying and failing to downplay it, apparently, despite the omission, because Helena followed up with, “And you sound a trifle agitated, most likely a bit about my failure to call as I should have... also a bit about the diagnosis itself. But perhaps something else as well?”

She was discerning, Helena was, reading Myka not like a cipher, rendering a single message, but like a novel, allowing for varying interpretations. What could Myka have done but reward her by telling the truth? “He wanted to know about family history,” she said. “I had to call my parents. Well. My mom’s blood pressure’s fine. I mean my dad.”

“Ah. A still-fraught proposition.”

“A useless proposition,” Myka said. “I got myself all geared up for it, but he wouldn’t tell me much of anything. Like I was trying to pry military secrets out of him.”

“You two do often seem to be at war.” And Helena added, as if she’d seen Myka’s immediate nod of agreement, “In keeping with that, perhaps you should try another sortie.”

“I’ll need to gear up again. Which I guess is in keeping too.” She harrumphed. “Won’t be good for my blood pressure, I bet.”

“Nor is being awake at this hour of the morning. We should end this call, and you should sleep.”

“But you’re on this call, and so am I. I don’t want to end it.”

“Nor do I, but you should sleep.”

“So should you,” Myka said.

“Lost cause. But we’ll both sleep better tomorrow night. No, tonight. It’s today.”

“You make no sense,” Myka accused again, but drowsily.

Helena rewarded her with a low chuckle. “And you make nothing but sense?”

“You wouldn’t know,” Myka said...

They continued on in that vein that for some time, until they finally agreed to end the call at a three-two-one same moment. Myka felt grateful, as she often did, for the way in which her life with Helena gave her access to some very typical experiences, ones that she probably wouldn’t have appreciated if she’d had them as a teenager. As an adult was better. As an adult with Helena was better still.

But just as Myka was about to slip into sleep, her mind began to race: she realized that she hadn’t asked Helena again about the retrieval, which had to have been more than a little fraught, and while she knew she wasn’t supposed to smother, she berated herself for what must have seemed like a total absence of real concern.

Thus when Helena and Steve arrived home, met by the cadre of Myka, Pete, and Claudia, the first thing Myka said, with a carefully calibrated mix of casual interest and earnest apology, was “I should have asked you before: what was the artifact, anyway?”

Helena didn’t say anything, but she glanced at Steve.

“You... what?” he said. Their imperfect communication—but communication all the same—reminded Myka of herself and Pete. What they’d had before they got it all wrong... what they were ever closer to fully getting back.

Helena shrugged, the very picture of resignation. “Go ahead.”

“It’s Nikolai Korotkoff’s sphygmomanometer—his Riva-Rocci cuff, they called it in his day. He’s the guy who discovered the sounds doctors listen for when they’re taking your—”

Myka’s knee-jerk response, she had to admit, was not ideal: exasperated, she interrupted, “This was about blood pressure? You’re kidding. You’re actually kidding.”

Steve turned to Helena, and while he wasn’t exactly panicked, he was clearly unsettled. “I want to tell her I am. I really want to. I feel like it would make your life easier if I do.”

Helena shrugged again. “Well. ‘Easier.’ Sorting out life’s relative ease, moment on moment, is a tricky business.”

“Is that a dig?” Myka snapped. “Why didn’t you say something last night? Or no, I mean this morning, because it wasn’t last night, which doesn’t matter now, but...”— she glanced at Helena, in a little apology for the snap—“...did. Look, if this thing lowers blood pressure, wrap it around my arm right now.”

That got her an eyebrow. “As someone tends to intone: not for personal gain.”

“Wouldn’t it be personal loss here though?” Claudia asked, with a surprising absence of snark.

That made Myka laugh, and she applauded, a triple-clap for emphasis. “See, this is what the Warehouse needs: a Caretaker who knows a loophole when she sees one.”

Claudia’s jaw dropped. “Who are you? The Myka I know and mostly love but am also driven nuts by because she’s such a rule snob hates loopholes.”

Obviously Myka was going to have to rethink her relationship with rules, if only to get some benefit from... something. “You know what? I’m just going to say—to postulate—that the Warehouse owes me one. Or several. I think it owes me several.”

Helena said, “Keeping score with the Warehouse is the very definition of a fool’s game.” That was her you are overreacting voice, rarely deployed except for when they were in Colorado. “But more importantly, that isn’t the cuff’s effect. It matters not at all to the one being measured, but rather to the measurer, in whom it increases sensitivity to, and the ability to interpret, diagnostically informative bodily processes. Hence our difficulty persuading the doctor who relied upon it to... relinquish it.”

Myka, reacting poorly both to the news and to the tone in which it was delivered, said, “It absolutely figures that the Warehouse would ping out something completely useless at a time like this.”

“Ping out?” Claudia asked. “Do we say that now?”

“I will say what I want. Stupid artifact,” Myka muttered.

Pete and Steve had been notably silent during all this. “Um,” Steve now said. “I feel like something’s out of proportion here, for reasons I’m not getting.”

Pete, apparently similarly confused, said, “Since when are you weird about blood pressure? Used to be anything about H.G. was your trigger, but now mostly it’s anything you think triggers her. So what gives?”

Myka was tempted to let him go hard on painful nostalgia, just to avoid having to talk about this ridiculous medical situation. But Helena gave her a look, one that said both “your reaction is out of proportion” and “you can’t hide this forever and certainly not if this is your response to related stimuli,” and even though Myka would have much preferred to hide it forever and was pretty sure she could if she worked hard enough, regardless of stimuli, she had to acknowledge that the whole thing was about what could stay hidden but would probably have adverse consequences if it did. So she grumped out, “My blood pressure. Is elevated. It’s a term of art,” she added, to try to forestall—

“Wow. That’s a biggie,” Pete said.

Oh well on the forestalling. “No it isn’t,” she told him.

“Except it is.”

“Except it isn’t. This is just a preliminary-warning type of thing.”

“A ping!” Claudia shouted. “Ping out!”

Steve said, “You sound a little too enthusiastic about that.”

“Kind of like my doctor,” Myka said, “who started going on about ‘lifestyle issues.’ I would like to state for the record that I do not have ‘lifestyle issues.’”

“Except for isn’t stress a thing? Working here’s a big part of your lifestyle,” Claudia pointed out, unhelpfully.

“And... you know,” Pete said. He nodded toward Helena, who spread her arms in an angelic “who, me?” gesture.

“‘Lifestyle’ is a stupid word,” Myka grumbled. “So I guess I’ll quit my job and break up with Helena, so I can live to a ripe old age and be broke and miserable. Excellent ideas. Thanks for the help.”

Steve—being his wise, confrontation-avoidant self—said, “I think I’ll just take this little artifact to the Warehouse so it can settle in.”

That had the unfortunate effect of reminding Myka of the artifact’s identity. “Did we all get whammied a long time ago with something that makes everything that happens in our lives rhyme in the most annoying way possible?” she asked. “Or was it just me?”

“I think it’s more repetition than rhyme,” Steve said, though in an I don’t want to be implicated in this way.

“Repetition with variation, however,” Helena said, and Myka wanted to be able to want to smack her.

“Right,” Steve said. “Would that be reprise? Maybe? Or am I thinking of something else?”

“None of this is lowering my blood pressure,” Myka informed them. Pointlessly.

Steve, to his credit, hotfooted it out of the situation, but Pete said, “You should look into stuff that would.”

“ON IT!!” was Claudia’s response.

Myka tried to head off whatever that was going to be with, “I’m supposed to check the online portal for links to what the doctor rec—”

“Links?!?” Claudia enthused. “I got all the links! Let’s run through some together!”

“Let’s not,” Myka said. Pointless again.

“Here’s the first one: ‘Lose extra pounds.’”

“She’s a pretty skinny drink of water,” Pete said. “Not much extra.”

“I guess,” Claudia said, sounding disappointed. “Next one: exercise regularly.”

Helena tilted her head a bit and said, “The regularity of her exercise is indisputable.”

“Come on,” Myka said. “I try really hard not to wake you up when I leave for my run.”

“I was not referring to your run.”

Claudia’s face pinked, and she said a quick, “Okay, okay! Moving on! Next really good idea: Eat fewer processed foods.”

That was patently ridiculous. “When was the last time I ate a processed food?” Myka asked.

“When I made bean dip in the food processor,” Pete said.

Myka sighed. “Look, this isn’t helping.”

Claudia nodded, despondent. “Yeah, you’re also supposed to quit smoking.”

“Like I said,” Myka agreed.

“But wait, here we go,” Claudia said, perking up, “like I said: reduce stress! And there’s a whole list!”

Myka waited for enlightenment.

For once, Claudia didn’t seem inclined to read aloud; in fact, she perked back down. “These are just... tips. Life-hacky,” she said, frowning. “How’s ‘plan your day’ supposed to do anything? And this one totally contradicts it: ‘Don’t experience future pain.’ Aren’t plans all about future pain?”

“Myka’s sure are,” Pete said. “So she’s doing everything right and wrong?”

“This is not a surprise,” Myka said.

“Maybe what’s next is simpler,” Claudia said. “Like, philosophically: ‘Make time to do the things you enjoy.’”

At that one, Pete leered, Myka groaned, and Helena objected, “I am not ‘things.’”

“I should’ve seen how that would go,” Claudia said, managing to refrain from turning red this time. “Okay, but this last one’s for all of us, except Steve, king of zen: practice gratitude.”

“Huh,” Pete said. “You know, I could probably stand to work on that.”

“I as well,” Helena agreed.

They all looked at Myka. “Fine,” she said. “I could too. In that spirit, thank you, Claudia, for caring enough about my blood pressure to find at least one thing that might lower it.”

“Score! And thank you for understanding how helpful I am.”

“Steve might not approve of your mixing gloating and gratitude,” Helena told her.

“No, no, I’m grateful for the gloating: it means we’re done,” Myka said.

Claudia said, “The internet’s a big place. I could find more!”

“Let’s end on success,” Myka said. “For everybody.”

She didn’t actually do very much practicing over the next while, not until she one evening received a surprise call from her father, right before she was ready to head upstairs to bed. She was tired—tempted to fend him off with “I’ll call you back tomorrow”—but it was a ready-made, if challenging, opportunity to practice. So she said, “Hi, Dad. Are you okay?”

He said an expectedly brusque “fine,” but then: “So, about what you were... asking about. The other day. I don’t like to talk about this kind of thing.”

Myka couldn’t quite hold back a dry “Really.”

“Don’t get smart with me,” he said, but with far less snap than he would have in the past. “Sorry. Look. Your... wife. Convinced me I should be a little more up front.”

“She... okay.” That presented a truckload of issues to process—and, she had to admit, to be grateful for.

First, the word “wife.”

That was new, as a word that applied—newly, quietly, it applied.

“I don’t want a wedding wedding,” Myka had said to Helena, once they’d got down to talking about the actual logistics. She knew it was likely to be a problematic position: knew and felt a powerful anxiety rise as she articulated it.

Helena had said, “Claudia does, and—”

“I know,” Myka began, her rebuttal at the ready, “but—”

“And,” Helena had interrupted. “Yet. While we owe her a great deal, that does not include dominion over how we enter into a legal union. And given all I’ve come to understand about modern weddings, I agree with you.”

Thus small it was, with Steve and Claudia—who continued to insist that she was, in fact, the flower ninja—their only witnesses.

Small, yet legal. About which Helena had evinced something very close to wonder: “A binding contract,” she had said, after words were pronounced and papers signed, as if the idea had just struck her.

“You’re the one who proposed,” Myka had reminded her, floating, light; she was in a bubble of something like wonder herself.

“I beg to differ,” Helena reminded back.

“The one who intended to propose. I have to believe you knew about that binding-contract endpoint of the proposal process.” That they could be these people. These word-trading, contractually bound, wonderstruck people.

“Of the proposal process,” Helena agreed. “Endpoint. Yes. But otherwise: beginning point.”

She’d said that last part quietly. But in the silence that followed, it swelled to a clarion.

Steve cupped his hands, as if to have and hold a bit of the air in which the words resonated.

“And here I was worried this—” Claudia had said, gesturing around the small conference room, which they would soon need to vacate for whoever was solemnifying next, “wouldn’t be enough.”

“Enough for what, darling?” Helena asked, though Myka was pretty sure they all knew the answer.

Now Claudia gestured at the two of them. “This.”

A decent enough word for it all, as words went.

Word-wise, and more salient to the present phone call, “wife” was new as a syllable her father would willingly pronounce of someone who was Myka’s. So: gratitude. There was also the matter of Helena having “convinced” her father of anything, although Myka was really unsure about where to place any appreciation for that. Further... well, no, that about covered it.

Her father then said, “I told you numbers. Befores, afters, but not what I did to move them.” He paused, and Myka had no trouble picturing his facial reluctance at having utter whatever might come next. What did come next: “Meditation.”

Not a word she’d ever expected to hear him utter—on a par with “wife” in its new application.

“Your mother makes me,” he said. “Thirty minutes a day, strictly enforced. You could try it.”

“Could,” he’d said, not “should.”

She knew she ought to have appreciated the call for what it was: seemingly sincere, part of an overall positive trend. But instead she worked herself up to offense, marching upstairs to find Helena—brushing her hair, innocent of any intent—and demanding, “You called my dad?” Petulant. An uptight whine. Definitely not her finest hour.

“I did not,” Helena said, not pausing her strokes for even a millisecond. “He called me.”

“He did?” So she’d climbed up to offense for no reason. The climb back down involved an awkward reset of her face and her breathing, but she did it, ending on a cringed, “Sorry.”

“He wanted to know if you were well,” Helena said, still conducting the stroke, stroke, stroke. “This was after he called your sister and asked her the same question.”

“He told you that?”

“No. Your sister did. When she called me to warn me that your father would be calling me, because she had told him she had no information on the point but that I most likely would. I asked her if she wanted me to tell her anything about said point, and she said no, that she would get it from your mother after your father told her what he found out from me.” Now she stopped the hair show and turned in Myka’s direction, brandishing the brush. “Your relations seem to take comfort in communication that is as indirect as possible.”

“I can’t even begin to argue with that. I sort of hate that everybody in my family—but especially my father—likes you more than they like me. But obviously I’m grateful for it too. It’s a slow-motion relief.”

“If your father’s concern for your health is any evidence, he likes you a great deal. I’ve never heard him inquire about my health.”

“Then again, maybe he doesn’t like you,” Myka said. “He thinks it’s your wifely duty to force me to meditate.”

“Coercion seems antithetical. And yet I do have every intention of fulfilling my wifely duties, including such new ones as arise—including this one. Given that it... has?”

“I guess it has. And I appreciate the intention. It’s important. Required, even. I honestly have a hard time believing this particular one’s going to have any tangible effect on the future, but I appreciate it.”

“Well, the future. What did Claudia say? ‘Don’t experience future pain.’ You should experience future effects—even pain, if necessary—when they happen. Not before.” Helena turned back to the mirror. She set the brush down and watched herself breathe in and out, very deliberately.

“Are we still talking about me?” Myka asked.

“I confess I’ve had to put effort into... braking trepidatious anticipation. With regard to effects.”

“Effects?”

“I can, for example, report that my blood pressure is fine.”

“Of course it is,” Myka groused, because of course it was.

Helena ignored that. “Fine for now, that is, which I know because Dr. Calder keeps a close eye. As part of her unplanned, yet obviously necessary, case study of the long-term effects of the Bronze, which she records as I... experience them.”

Myka felt her pulse speed at the thought. Not helpful.

Nor was the overall fact that the future, whatever pain it would or wouldn’t deliver, was unknowable.

“I try—often unsuccessfully, but more successfully with the passage of time—to remain securely in the present moment,” Helena went on. “Steve’s a great help.”

“Pete wouldn’t be,” Myka said immediately.

Helena turned fully around to face Myka; she leaned forward and said, “Wouldn’t he?

“Of course not,” Myka said, because the idea of Pete being helpful in some mindful pursuit of present-ness? Helpful like Steve would be? Preposterous.

“I believe you’re mistaken. Pete has many habits that vex every one of us, but you of all people should know that he does not fret. Certainly not about the future.”

Myka had to think that out for a minute, then a minute more. “You’re... right,” she said. “If something’s unknowable, he doesn’t try to know it. He forgets about it and reads a comic book.”

“A lesson for the both of us?”

“I don’t like comic books,” Myka said. “And neither do you.” But formulating this basic fact about her partner sparked Myka to think of her childhood, the way she would turn to a book in order to soothe herself, so as to simultaneously leave and fully inhabit as many present moments as possible... to Helena, she admitted, “It is a lesson. I used to be able to... lose myself. More. Better.”

A very small smile ghosted its way onto Helena’s face. “You lose yourself quite well.”

That was welcome, if (still, even now, a bit) embarrassing. “Thank you? But for the purposes of peace, maybe not ideal.”

“Well then, I suppose I’ll have to force you to meditate,” Helena said, and was that enthusiasm in her voice?

“Now?”

“No time like the present.”

Myka allowed herself to be manipulated toward the bed, then to be situated there cross-legged, even as she complained, “It seems like it’s going to take up a lot of time. Like the present. Thirty minutes a day, my dad said, but wasn’t one of Claudia’s tips about making time to do things I enjoy?”

“You just now rejected that,” Helena said. She put out the light and joined Myka on the bed, facing her, sitting similarly cross-legged.

“You’re just lucky ‘Things’ isn’t your new nickname. But come on, when you think about it, half an hour’s half an hour. Wouldn’t it just be stealing time from, you know, us?”

“Stealing present time—minimal present time—yes. But to increase the likelihood of maximal total time. For, you know, us,” she concluded.

It was a low blow; Helena knew how susceptible Myka was to having her own speech patterns mimicked by that voice. Nevertheless, she tried, “Didn’t you just say there’s no time like the present?”

“I did, and I was correct. Now focus.”

“Fine.” She closed her eyes. Then she cracked one open. “On what?”

Helena gave that some consideration. “At the risk of adding insult to injury, we might try Korotkoff sounds. I’ve been thinking on them since encountering Mr. Korotkoff’s instrument. We didn’t know them in my day... we could have produced them, used them for diagnoses, at any time. Yet to us, in our ignorance, blood moved ever silent.”

“My ignorance too. I’ve had my blood pressure taken a million times—and there’ll be a million more, and now more often—but I don’t know how it works. Tell me.”

“One imposes pressure by inflating the cuff around the arm, then one releases it, slowly, and listens. Silence at first, then five distinct phases of sounds, telling sounds, emerge as blood begins again to flow. The phases, the sounds. The same in all bodies. Yours. Mine. Everyone’s. Five. In succession.”

Her voice was slow. Lulling. This might not be meditation, but it was an easing. “Tell them to me,” Myka said. She closed her eyes again, imagining a wrapping, enveloping density, an inflating push of an determined cuff... yet even as she did so, a tendril of unease slipped its way in, an instinctive pre-flinch of discomfiture at what the release of pressure might reveal. She reheard “you lose yourself quite well”—felt the reflexive, nervous rise of self-consciousness—but she pressed against it, willing it down, down and away.

“In phase one,” Helena began, “the blood signals its return with clear taps, low but clear, knocks of announcement.”

Myka reached for the lull again, working to hear the silk-low voice both for itself (to be here) and for what it gave (to be elsewhere).

Helena thwarted her for a moment, becoming less hypnotist than lecturer as she said, “The pressure at which phase one occurs is the top number, that troublesome number of yours.”

Eyes still closed, Myka reached her hands out, feeling for Helena’s body, reaching her arms, and at the contact Helena seemed to understand. “In phase two,” she said, slow again, “the knocking softens, joined by a new sound, a swishing, soft, long, the blood taking its time, finding its way...”

Myka let her hands move, just a little, wayfinding.

“Phase three,” Helena said, with a small hitching throat-clear. “Here the knock returns, insistent now, the blood knowing its way, impatient to resume its course, pushing itself to phase four: an abrupt muffling, as if reassembling for a final push of sound.” Her hands now met Myka’s body, grasping her arms, tightening as she said, “But no, no final push, for phase five is the disappearance of all sound, the reestablishment of what the doctors of my day knew only as unrevealing silence. Yet not so unrevealing after all: that restoration is the diastolic pressure, the lower number, completing the diagnosis, culminating the story of how the blood speaks as it relearns to move: sound to less sound to more sound to no sound.”

That repetition of “sound”... it rang in Myka’s head. Sound, sound, sound...

She opened her eyes. Her hands were at Helena’s waist, and Helena’s hands had moved to her shoulders; now they were locked in the pose, statues waiting for a spell-break.

Myka willed herself not to move her hands as she said, “I didn’t meditate.”

Helena wasn’t moving either, but it seemed to be taking just as much effort. “I’m grateful,” she said.

“Are you calm?” Myka asked.

“Not at all.”

“Good.”

But later, later, in the still: yes. Calm. No sound.

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Decalogue #part 5 #I very nearly didn't finish this part in time #and it's less cohesive than I'd prefer #but it's yet another mark of time #my personal observation of occasion #apologies for the obsessive focus on the sounds #but they are quite striking #(no pun intended)#and honestly I think there's a sad lack of awareness #of how bodies are medically understood #such discoveries #and their revelations

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gnarlyeddy · 2 years ago

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Thank you for the free snacks

I think that they all live together. Karla, Ryu, and Taichi are Paul’s parents at the same time because nobody knows where the hell his parents are (or if he even has parents at a certain point.) Paulisded1fish’slittlebrotherandIwilldieonthathill

Paul, met Marina and Warabi through a series of events that boils down to “you’re an octoling and a DJ? You’re just like me fr”. In the Splatoon 3 times they hang out almost every other weekend using Zoom (which is cannon to the Splatoon universe)

Karla gives me extremely strong they/she energy I can’t explain.

Ryu enjoys going on hikes as a hobby. He usually goes alone but sometimes manages get a few of his bandmates or his rainmarker team to tag along.

Tachi originalled pinned Paul as “tiny and awful” because they were extremely irritated at the fact that the only person who ever reached out to their ask for a vocalist wasn’t a vocalist and was also a 10 year old child. He warmed up to his presence in the band extremely quickly and the other bandmates tease him for that.

Karla was a denizen of the deep. One day they just decided to leave. Nobody really knows why (they might not even know either)

All of them are on surprisingly good terms with Pearl. She definitely taught Paul how to say fuck though

Ryu regularly gives out extremely bizarre and strange anecdotes about his life that are non sequiturs to a conversation and then just…never elaborates.

Oh yeah also he’s a roller main. He just looks like a roller main.

Raian and Paul are friends. They met at a concert one day (around 2020ME) and hit it off due to their shared special interests in music production and ancient history.

Tachi is in a knitting club. That are his extra activities outside of the band. How does he knit with no arms? Well he plays the guitar with no arms so…uhh… shrug(?)

They all know how to cook to various degrees and they take turns cooking dinner, Paul getting to join in when he got older and stopped eating raw spaghetti or whatever 10 year olds do.

SashiMori I miss you sm you made one of the best songs in the game and then dipped

THESE R ALL SO TRUEEEEE do we all just share a braincell cuz i swear i mentioned Ryu being a hiker before.. it's just so fitting !! And taichi being globally accepted as the worried and caring parent is the best thing ever ... Karla is so interesting because while knowing nothing of them (perfect choice of pronouns btw) it's so obvious that she would also care for Paul in their own way (i think their preferred bonding activity is exploring abandoned buildings... Much to taichis demise

Honestly these are so good I'll have to sketch them out somewhere proper (.... Like school. I'll draw them w shading at school) but let me tell you I LIVE for these. Everyone please read

#asks #sashimori #spamming tags rn but tbh im feeding content ok

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hekate1308 · 2 years ago

Text

Leaves That Before The Wild Hurricane Fly, A Destiel Advent Calendar, December 3

Masterpost

Read it on AO3

The Fae. Castiel had never known much of the Fae. They mostly stayed amongst themselves, and tried not to get into trouble… but that could be sad for most creatures, if you thought about it.

“Anyway, means I got a pretty good connection to Nature and all of Her treasures” Dean said happily, as if this was normal and he was explaining it to someone who was just a little bit confused. “So opening the shop was just logical. Plus, I genuinely do love arranging flowers… living ones of course.”

“Living ones” he repeated rather helplessly.

“Yeah, you better not ask me to kill them by cutting them. That’s not how it works.”

That was exactly how it worked, at least where Castiel came from, but he wouldn’t say anything against it now, when he’d probably saved him from hypothermia.

“Anyway, have to keep this at a sensible temperature for the plants, that’s probably what drew you here.”

“I think it was an accident” he told him honestly.

“Fair enough” Dean shrugged. “But still… wanna tell me what you were doing out on a night like this?”

“Like I said, I got lost. I was on my way home.”

Dean took a large gulp of his tea and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think it’s more complicated than that. For us, it usually is.”

“I’m human” he said because certainly, the rules didn’t apply in the same way if one just happened to stumble into a place because it was cold and one happened to be disorientated.

“That may be” Dean said cryptically then changed course, “Anyway, how are you feeling?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“Knew my tea would help. It always does. Oh, if you’ll excuse me; I need to water my wisterias.” And with that he jumped up to look after one of the plants. He certainly hadn’t looked at his watch or anything else, so that Castiel had to assume he either knew everything there was about caring for his plants at heart or he had felt it through the connection he had mentioned.

Either way, he reminded himself, it didn’t matter. He was leaving soon anyway, never to return. He didn’t belong here, with this beautiful man in this colourful room, where everything seemed to vibrate with a joy of life he had never experienced.

For this what it was, he couldn’t help but notice whenever he turned his head. And it wasn’t just the plants – no; everything here was so… cozy, as if someone had decided they were going to be comfortable now matter what. What a difference to his own small empty apartment, especially now…

“So, you just decided to walk home in a snow storm?” Dean asked, letting himself fall down next to Castiel again as if he belonged there.

(which he didn’t, of course. Someone like Castiel could never belong with someone like Dean).

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“Why do I get the feeling that’s not the full story?”

No one had ever just asked him something like this before – if anything, it had been Castiel who had been too direct, too strange, too different from other humans… and it was that more than anything that made him answer. “I’m about to be let go at work.”

Dean whistled. “That sucks, man. Especially with things going the way they are.”

He nodded. “I guess I got lost because I was upset.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He was getting rather used to the non-sequiturs, but then, this might just be because he found it hard to talk to other humans, whereas it almost seemed natural to talk to Dean. “I… thank you” he finally said. “Again. I can’t –“

“Anyone would have done the same thing.”

No, no they wouldn’t, Castiel knew from experience, but he didn’t say anything because it seemed innate at this point.

“Huh” Dean said, glancing out the window, “I don’t think it’s going to get better any time soon.”

And indeed, if anything, it seemed worse than before.

Castiel immediately felt anxious. “I can’t possibly –“

“Nah, don’t even think about going out” he interrupted him. “I won’t have that on my conscience. You can have the guest room.”

“You don’t even know me” he said helplessly.

“So? You clearly needed help, and now you need a place to stay. That’s enough for me.”

It wouldn’t be for most. It shouldn’t have been for Dean, either. And yet it somehow was.

Castiel swallowed.

“And really, things will look brighter tomorrow” Dean told him, grinning once more. “There’s an old saying – mornings are wiser than evenings. Trust me on this.”

Against all odds, Castiel found that he did.

“Well then, don’t worry about a thing, Cas. I’ll just get you something different to wear.”

He got up.

Cas?

#my writings #destiel #advent calendar #dean winchester #castiel

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nirikeehan · 2 years ago

Note

HAP FRI NIRI I beg for some Pravinquisition PLEASE, perhaps with ❛ why is it whenever we see each other, you’re covered in blood? ❜???

HI MER so this one kinda got away from me. It's a continuation of this fill that I posted last week. Enjoy Pravin and Cullen and their bad ideas. And we're both writing about Cullen hitting things tonight, which I love. 😊

As always, Pravin belongs to @monocytogenes

For @dadrunkwriting

WC: 2903

CW: Violence, blood, some light torture

---

Cullen squinted at his reflection in the looking glass. The dark circles under his eyes he had long since considered a permanent feature, much like the vertical scar above his lip. Although he deemed his hair presentable, he’d once again lacked time for a proper shave. The stubble clung to his jaw and chin, giving him a vaguely disheveled visage. And the collar of this infernal uniform was still too tight. He watched himself tug at it, once, twice to no avail, the ire growing on his face.

Sighing, he looked down at the notecards in his hand, scrawled with the shorthand for tonight’s speech. He’d memorized Varric’s words a week earlier and had been practicing them ever since, but still feared he’d take a singular glance at the crowd of sycophants tonight and forget every one.

The knock was a welcome distraction. “Come,” Cullen called, straightening. The heavy wooden door to his room at the Gull and Lantern slid open, and in slipped Fidencio Frye — no, scratch that. His name was Pravin Talavera, and in one of many strange twists in Cullen’s life as of late, the Antivan was actually the Inquisitor’s third cousin.

Or was it fourth? Tracing noble bloodlines gave Cullen a headache.

He did not fully understand why Pravin and Thalia had decided to keep this fact a secret for months. However, given Pravin’s line of work, Cullen could not begrudge him the desire for anonymity. He had proven a reliable advisor, tempering Leliana’s more… straightforward approach. Whatever Pravin’s true identity, Cullen considered him a friend. (Which was more than could be said for some who still served the Inquisition despite inconvenient identity reveals.)

“Have you come for a last minute rehearsal?” Cullen asked. The damn speech had been Pravin’s idea, and the bard had spent much of the previous week coaxing a passible delivery from Cullen’s lips. “I hate to tell you, but unless Corypheus crashes the party tonight and I need to rally the troops, this is as good as it’s getting.”

The joke fell uncharacteristically flat. Pravin seemed distracted, a frown etched below his waxed mustache. He ran fingers through the pointed chin hair, lost in thought. “A situation has arisen.”

“What is it?” Cullen asked, dropping all pretense. His gaze darted to the nearby bureau, on top of which he’d put his scabbard and sword. In truth, he was almost relieved.

Pravin looked at Cullen from under the brim of his hat, his green eyes glittering in the shadow cast upon his face. “How much do you know about Thalia’s tattoo?”

Cullen blinked, surprised by the non sequitur. “I… very little. She doesn’t like speaking of it. It’s something related to her time at the Circle, I understand.”

When Cullen met Thalia, he’d assumed the face tattoo to be a statement piece, much like that of his friend Rylen. Something en vogue across the Free Marches, perhaps. When Thalia told him it had been mandatory for all Ostwick Circle mages to get, Cullen had been taken aback. The Gallows had had more than its fair share of institutional troubles, but at no point had any Kirkwall Templar suggested they permanently mar the faces of all their charges.

He had never succeeded in learning more about the practice. Not even recently, when he’d felt compelled to kiss every inch of the ornate design across her face. He’d stopped when he tasted the salt of her tears, horrified. Cullen sensed that he had tapped into a deep well of pain — a phenomenon all too familiar to him. She hadn’t wanted to talk, and he hadn’t wanted to push.

His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Why?”

Pravin paced the room with a strange, frenetic energy. “Evidently, at some point before her time at the tower in Ostwick, some Templar came up with the brilliant idea that face tattoos could act as a backup security measure to mage phylacteries. I’m certain you know more about this than I do, Commander, but this Templar was not satisfied with the idea, thinking that such things could be lost or broken. He also fancied himself something of an artist. He devised the design himself. By the time she came to the Circle, he’d had many years to perfect it.”

Cullen felt nauseous. He braced himself against the stone wall. “Thalia told you all this?”

Pravin nodded. “I assume,” he said, voice soft, “this was not standard protocol among the Templars?”

“Maker, no.” Cullen shook his head vehemently. “The phylacteries were always considered the least invasive way of making sure every mage was accounted for.”

“That’s what I thought.” Pravin took a slow breath. “It’s very painful, I’ve been told. Tattooing that close to the bone. And takes hours, for work that intricate.”

Cullen felt a deep, seething rage rise within him. Such anger hit him sometimes, red-hot and mean, with a potency that scared him. “Pravin, what’s going on?”

“It seems,” his friend said carefully, enunciating each word as if he were on stage, “the man responsible, someone named Algernon, is present in Redcliffe tonight. He must have left Ostwick to join the Mage-Templar war, and is how skulking about the Hinterlands, not having the grace to die when he had the chance.”

“He’s here,” Cullen said, stunned. “Right now?”

“Indeed. And had the absolute gall to approach Thalia this evening, when she was taking petitioners. I chased him off before he could try anything, but she’s pretty shaken up about it.” Pravin grinned tightly. “A couple of your soldiers need a reprimand, by the way. They stood right by and let it happen.”

“Andraste have mercy.” Cullen leaned against the window frame, glaring out into the night, as if he could catch a glimpse of the knave by sheer chance. The soldiers he could discipline later. “So he could be plotting to return as we speak.”

Pravin’s mouth twitched. “You always get right to the heart of an issue, Commander. I like that about you.”

Cullen paused. In the window glass he saw his reflection — jaw set at a sharp angle, eyes narrowed. He barely recognized himself, although he knew he must look like this often, when about to give an order with lethal consequences. “Are you proposing we do something to cut off his plans?”

“He can’t have gone far, and Redcliffe’s not that big.” Pravin gave a casual shrug. “I have a few contacts among the refugees I could ask. Probably won’t take long to find him.”

Cullen looked up, meeting Pravin’s eyes. “And what exactly are you proposing we do about it? The Inquisition has limited jurisdiction for law and order here. All that falls to Arl Teagan.”

Pravin waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Oh, I don’t think Arl Teagan need get involved. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

Cullen leaned his back against the wall, crossing arms over his chest. “So you are suggesting vigilante justice.”

Pravin narrowed his eyes. “That’s a strong term for it.”

“But an accurate one,” Cullen countered. “If the Inquisition’s Commander and one of its most trusted advisors are caught sneaking about the slums of Redcliffe on some petty quest for revenge—”

“If we’re caught. I have no intention of letting that happen.” Pravin sighed. “Think about it, Commander. Think of how much damage this man has caused, under the banners of a corrupt Order. Think of how it must have felt for Thalia.”

The fury crept up Cullen’s throat, coiled and waiting to strike. He thought of all the complaints that crossed his desk in Kirkwall, the official accusations and the anonymous rumors alike, how they were often appalling to even behold. And all the times he brought them up to Meredith, only to have them dismissed, the papers cast aside, forgotten. It’s not your job to advocate for these unfortunates, Cullen, she told him, more than once.

Then what is it? he’d snapped at her, finally, near the end.

Her blue eyes had never seemed colder. To keep them where they are.

“This man.” Cullen’s voice was raw. He felt an abrupt, maddening desire for a hit of lyrium. “This — Algernon, you said his name was?”

Pravin nodded.

Cullen thought of Ser Alrik, the spate of Tranquil mages, the stack of complaints sitting untouched on Meredith’s desk. He ignored the tremor in his hands. “Did Thalia say whether he… did anything else to her?”

A knowing silence passed between them. Pravin’s face hardened into a mask to rival that of Orlesian nobility. “No,” he said softly. “But she was fourteen years old, and he apparently ‘really seemed to enjoy himself.’”

Cullen closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. He felt, rather than heard, a roaring in his ears. He strode to the bureau and grabbed his scabbard, pretending not to see the azure haze at the edges of his vision. “Let’s go pay this Algernon a visit.”

Slowly, painfully, Pravin smiled.

---

The row of rotting cottages along the Redcliffe docks was notorious for housing degenerates. So went the wisdom of Pravin’s contacts, who eagerly accepted his sovereigns in exchange for the information. If someone like Algernon was to be found, it would be there.

Two cloaked figures kept to the torch-lit shadows, the shorter and slighter leading the way. Cullen felt as though his heart might burst out of his chest following behind Pravin.

The first two houses were abandoned, containing only damp barrels and the scent of fish. The third gave shelter to a handful of former Templars. They sat on the grimy floor on their bedrolls, passing around contraband lyrium bottles. None answered to Algernon and no one claimed to know him. Cullen was grateful for the hood on his cloak, and that Pravin had insisted they both change into more discreet clothing. He stared at the sunken faces and haunted eyes, and did not want them to know that he felt the pull of the cerulean song as strongly as they did.

The fourth house had a collapsed roof and no way to get inside. The fifth possessed a window that glowed dimly with the light of a lantern. When Pravin knocked and called the man’s name, the door opened.

He was raggedy, taller than them both, thin and spindly like a scarecrow. Limp hair sat on either side of his temples, and his eyes were a dull, washed-out blue. “Can I help you gentlemen?”

Pravin kept his head bowed in darkness, but Cullen found it impossible not to look the man square in the face. He pictured his spidery hands on Thalia, holding her down to be restrained, imagined his grotesque face leering close to hers, delighting in causing her pain.

“Are you Algernon, formerly of the Ostwick Circle?” Cullen demanded.

The man’s beady eyes darted from Cullen to Pravin and back, his grip tightening on the doorframe. “Who’s asking?”

Cullen turned to Pravin, catching his friend’s one green eye visible under the shadow his hood. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. Cullen surged forward, catching the door before Algernon could slam it in his face. With a hard kick, he sent it flying open, nearly breaking off its hinges, and Algernon backed away with a yelp.

“Please, sers, I don’t know what this is about,” Algernon groveled as Cullen and Pravin stormed the premises, “but I don’t want any trouble.”

“You chased trouble yourself tonight when you approached the Inquisitor,” Cullen growled.

Algernon’s eyes widened. “That? I was just being friendly, I swear! I wanted to see an old— friend, let’s call it.”

“That runs rather contrary to what we’ve been told.” Pravin spoke for the first time — a soft, menacing tone that rivaled the near shout Cullen had achieved. He closed the door to the one-room hut, dragging a stray barrel in front of the entrance.

“You.” Algernon pointed at Pravin with a trembling finger. “You were there. Her… cousin. Listen, whatever she said to you, y-you mustn’t trust it. Mages have such a loose relationship with the truth—”

Cullen balled his hand into a fist and struck Algernon in the face. The blow caught him by surprise; he gave a yelp as he lost his balance and fell to the earthen floor. Cullen stood over him, knuckles stinging, chest heaving. He felt rage and disgust and exhilaration all at once.

“Nice shot,” Pravin deadpanned, stepping beside Cullen. “Shall I get him up for you?”

Cullen nodded.

“Wait, wait please! Whatever it is you want, I’ll do it. I’ll— I’ll apologize to the little miss, I’ll—”

Algernon shrieked as Pravin bent down and grabbed him by the back of his loose linen tunic. As Pravin hauled him to his feet, he tried to twist away, and Cullen saw just how emaciated he was. The life of a former Templar refugee was not kind.

“That ‘little miss’ is the Herald of Andraste, and the leader of the Inquisition,” Cullen said, while Pravin forced the man’s arms behind his back. His jaw was already beginning to swell, and fear danced in his pale eyes. Cullen’s voice dropped to near a whisper. “And you hurt her.”

“Please, you have to understand, it was for the good of the Circle! For her and everyone,” Algernon pleaded. “I was just doing my job.”

Cullen shook his head, flexing his hand and aiming another jab, this time at Algernon’s mid-section. The air escaped his lungs in a choked gasp.

“You weren’t,” Cullen said. “I know exactly what duties are in the Templar job description, and disfiguring the faces of children isn’t one of them.”

Algernon slumped forward, coughing and sputtering. “I-I’m an artist,” he rasped. “I— I only— wanted to practice my art…”

Recoiling, Cullen hit again, two sharp jabs in the jaw. The man gurgled and heaved, spitting out saliva mixed with blood and white bits that might be teeth at Cullen’s feet.

Cullen leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath. The knuckles on one hand had split, and the other tingled with pain. Yet he wanted to lunge forward, punch Algernon again, and again…

“Did I hear right?” Pravin asked, calm. “Did he just call himself an artist?”

“He did.” Cullen felt ill.

Pravin shoved Algernon in his direction. “Hold him for me, will you?”

Algernon stumbled, head lolling. Cullen caught him, seizing him by the elbows, a technique born of habit of subduing apostates.

“Not like that,” Pravin said, pulling down his hood. His mussed black hair shone in the dull lantern light. “You’ll want to hold him very, very still.”

Cullen frowned, the primal elation quieting as he took in Pravin’s unsettling serenity. He advanced on Algernon, hand slipping under the hem of his doublet and returning to his side. The motion was so subtle Cullen didn’t see what he held until the blade glinted orange.

“Whoa, hang on,” Cullen said as Pravin raised the long stiletto. “This isn’t what we agreed upon.”

Algernon saw the knife and began to struggle anew; Cullen had to grab his torso to keep him from escaping. Algernon let out a scream. “Help! Help, they’re going to kill me!”

“Shhh,” Pravin murmured. He glided closer and held the point of the stiletto under Algernon’s chin. “I’d think very carefully about your next movements, if I were you.”

Algernon fell into terrified silence. “Pravin,” Cullen insisted. The thrill of exacting revenge was rapidly wearing off, replaced by a growing alarm that perhaps the two of them had come here with different agendas. “Summary execution is not—”

“Oh, do relax,” Pravin chided. “I’m not intending to kill him. Merely give him a memento he’ll never forget… just like Thalia.”

Pravin grabbed Algernon roughly by the shoulder and kneed him in the groin. He cried out in pain and fell limp; Cullen staggered and dropped him. He backed away, grasping the wall for support. Pravin fell on top of Algernon, who lie face down on the floor. Straddling Algernon’s back, Pravin asked, “Is this how you did it? Is this how you held her down?”

Algernon was weeping openly. “No, no, please…”

“Pravin,” Cullen warned, but stayed still as if transfixed.

Pravin grabbed a clump of Algernon’s hair and lifted his head. “This man calls himself an artist, but it’s clear he’s never suffered for his art.” With his opposite hand, Pravin pressed the stiletto tip to the man’s cheek. “Let’s see how close I can get the design to Thalia’s, shall we? I suggest you lie still if you want to keep your eye.”

Algernon began to scream. Cullen felt light-headed and strange, clapping his hands over his ears. He knew he could stride closer, insist Pravin cease, knew he should. He sank to his knees instead, finding it difficult to breathe.

The door burst open then, the barrel rolling impotently out of the way. Standing there was Cassandra, looking aghast. “Commander?” she demanded in concern, locking eyes with him first. Then, aghast, her gaze fell to Pravin and his victim. “Fidencio!” she cried, drawing her sword. “Get away from him at once!”

Pravin pulled back, getting to his feet. Algernon stayed face down on the ground, sobbing and retching, his face a patchwork of red. Much of it had splattered on the front of Pravin’s clothes and cloak. “How did you find us?” he asked evenly.

“Never mind that,” Cassandra snapped in disgust. “Why is it whenever we see each other, you’re covered in blood?”

#cullen rutherford #pravin talavera #cassandra pentaghast #pravinquisition #fics #dragon age drunk writing circle

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