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toongrrl-blog · 4 years ago

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Perpetua: A Potential Heroine for our times.

Hi everyone we are going to rant about the Bridget Jones series once again and talk about a character, who I feel came too early before our current zeitgeist of bad bitch feminism and the #GirlBoss: Perpetua.

Perpetua is not intended to be likable. She is very posh, snooty, a bit arrogant, and demanding of Bridget and people she works with, greeting Bridget with a slight sneer as she comes into work and Bridget’s inner monologue voices a desire to staple stuff to her head for having gained a bit of power over Bridget in the publishing company Pemberley Press. Gee, let’s see what we have: entitled, snooty, fancy, having the attitude they are above it all, who has those traits? I’ll wait *sipping tea*

But we notice something about Perpetua; after Bridget’s relationship with Daniel implodes because he was using her as his side piece and decides to find a better job elsewhere, Bridget goes to Daniel to tell him she is quitting. Perpetua overhears and picks up on what has been going on (she is appalled at what she is hearing) and as soon as Daniel tries to beg Bridget to stay, Perpetua gets up to defend Bridget: “I want to hear this, because if she gives one inch, I’m going to fire her bony arse for being totally spineless!” To her smiling pride, she sees Bridget tell Daniel off and leave the publishing company...and that’s the last we see of Perpetua. Even after that (awesome) scene, my teenage self got the message that it’s better to be a Bridget over a Perpetua, a bubbly but insecure girl who tries to conform to the male gaze over a stoic and IDGAF woman who does what she wants. I also heard messages from people, like my parents, telling me how important it was to act and look a certain way to be “likable”; it was better to be insecure and conventionally feminine rather than to be confident not very popular but self-assured. Also Bridget was the rom-com heroine who had people fall in love with her, Perpetua was seen as stuck-up and she was thrown to the wayside. Who stood to reap the benefits of our society?

Looking back, I found out that after almost 20 years of trying to be a Bridget: the “relatable” insecure girl next door type who is vulnerable and needs the validation of those to find her desirable and “worth it” that I’m wasn’t the likable, conventionally pretty and feminine Bridget...I was Perpetua: not always likable, assertive, willing to put her neck out there, not always sociable, but assured of her intelligence and her ability to turn heads. Plus we have our signature style and know how to work accessories. While Bridget dresses basic and in miniskirts (she wants to blend in but also attract men), Perpetua stands out in her headbands, pearls, cardigans, and pie-crust collars combining the elements that I loved in a younger Hillary Rodham Clinton, Peggy Olson, Nancy Wheeler, and Raquel Rodriguez Orozco from Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish. Just a Power Preppie who figured out how to stick out and take her place in a male-dominated workplace, with no apologies.

After watching Tee Noir’s video on women who were declared to be problematic but upon second viewing and reading were raising valid points about their situation or the situations they observed but lacked the likability or popularity to be taken seriously, I was inspired to finally write this post. As Perpetua was a woman who showcased what it was like to live life on your terms and not ask for the permission of anyone to validate you. A woman who may have envied Bridget’s “bony arse” but didn’t let her size or peoples’ perceptions of her appearance get in the way of getting what she wanted from others.

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Here are some tropes and issues I will be referring to in this order, as they relate to Perpetua’s role in the films and books and how they regard her.

Fatphobia: Being Targeted by Internalized Hatred

“Ah. Introduce people with thoughtful details. Perpetua, this is Mark Darcy. Mark is a prematurely middle-aged prick with a cruel raced ex-wife. Perpetua is a fat-ass old bag who spends her time bossing me around.” Bridget Jones’s inner monologue, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

We all know that Bridget Jones is notoriously famous for obsessing over her weight (134 lbs. at 5′4″, which is pretty fine) and that there have been reviews of the books and the movies condemning her or passive-aggressively noting that she isn’t Hollywood Thin and how it was remarkable for she (with hourglass curves, wears a small to medium size, blonde and blue eyed, average pretty at her worst) to get Colin Firth and Hugh Grant (in their prime) to fight over her. Whether we go by the timeline of the books (her birth year being 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s death) or the movies (her birth year being 1969 in the first film, post Jayne Mansfield), we see that Bridget grew up in and became an adult in an age where the female standard of beauty had gotten thinner and thinner, with even models having their pores air-brushed away from their faces. To paraphrase a Mad Men fan when she was talking about the culture of the mid-1960s, when she was a kid and women wanted to look curvaceous as Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor, she looked like Twiggy; when she developed the voluptuous curves, everyone wanted to look like Twiggy. The 1970s and 1980s was an age of self-improvement as female empowerment (feminism co-opted by capitalism) where dieting and getting thinner was seen as “bettering” oneself. Suddenly it wasn’t cool for Bridget to strut her stuff in a pencil skirt a la Joan Holloway, it wasn’t enough to be a junior partner or to create your own safety net, even the irresistible Veronica Lodge worried about her weight.

*WARNING: Most of my sources refer to Fat Black Women but I feel like the arguments hold up here*

Then we go to Bridget and Perpetua, aside from their personality clash, Bridget is secretly envious and outwardly disgusted by how Perpetua can be much heavier than Bridget, yet wear curve-hugging clothes and go shopping and not give a shit about how her body looked. Perpetua knows that her boyfriend appreciates her good pussy under her gut! Bridget comforts herself by telling herself that happiness comes from reaching attainable goals....like changing one’s body rather than making money or procuring items....sigh Capitalism is a son of a gun. Clearly Bridget has animosity towards Perpetua for being plump and not feeling like she needs to hide for not looking like a supermodel. But why?

Fatphobia is one way of expressing internalized hatred against one’s body and their own self. In fact, Perpetua committed the sin of loving herself (or being neutral to oneself) as she is, and stands out from the rest of the cast who are obsessed with living up to certain standards to putting forward a certain image to the world that everything is fine. In a fatphobic capitalist patriarchy, it’s quite maddening that she would develop the arrogance and entitlement that she puts on display, especially because she is a...woman! Katie Wee, in her essay for Huffington Post, talked about how it was hard for her to play a fat-shaming exercise instructor in an episode of Shrill because she wouldn’t fat shame another person, but she had practice internalizing that cruelty. Wee talks about her history of eating disorders and over-exercising, all in a bid to become a ballerina, well into her twenties. Currently she works at a body-inclusive fitness studio and that Lindy West and Aidy Bryant were very encouraging in her performance. She also said:

When Annie writes her off, I made the decision that for Tanya this hits something much deeper. It’s as if Annie is saying Tanya’s life’s work is for nothing, or her religion is bullshit. Annie is feeling content in the body she is in, and for Tanya this feels like a personal attack. The subtext to what Tanya is saying is, “If I don’t get to be happy in my body, neither do you! Especially not you.”

This was also explored in the Room 104 episode “The Hikers” where college graduates and childhood best friends go on a hiking trip before they start working or looking for work. Megan (the fabulous Shannon Purser) is plump, freckled, down to earth and happy to have gotten a job offer right after she accepted her degree while her friend Casey (Kendra Carelli) is thin, has excelled on Instagram artifice, and hasn’t procured her own job yet but is triumphant over her past popularity. Yet a placed pebble in Megan’s boot reveals that Casey has been feeling disgust over how her fat friend would thrive in a larger body and not cover up and how she was burdened with making sure she was included in social gatherings growing up, soon Casey’s angry rant after Megan voiced her disgust over Casey’s sense of superiority over her reveals that Casey is angry that being conventionally beautiful and popular hasn’t made her any happier with herself or her own life, while Megan has excelled in their young adulthood in spite of her appearance and lack of popularity. Bridget is angry that Perpetua is thriving and content with her own life despite not looking a certain way while Bridget has been trying to get down to 110 lbs since she was a teenager and has been backing out of rooms after getting laid so the menfolk wouldn’t notice her behind isn’t scrawny (what would she think of Kim Kardashian’s or Nicki Minaj’s behinds?). Bridget, who poured energy into fitting an ideal of an adult woman, is miserable while Perpetua, who isn’t the “ideal woman”, is successful.

There is also some egocentrism on Bridget’s part: she is a heroine of a rom com so the story centers on her, with her friends being mere satellites. There has been a tradition of the fat best friend who exists to support the leading lady or gent who will fall in love while the fat person gets to sass and serve as cheerleader, with no insight on their inner life. Especially if they are Black. Tee Noir noted that most of the funny fat friends tend to be more engaging and likable or just plain compelling than the conventionally attractive main character, but their characterization is often neglected, to the point of sometimes even lacking a last name. In fact society, and even fat people, are internalized towards thinking that if you don’t fit the standard of desirability (thin, white, young-ish, cis, wealthy), you have to settle for less in your relationships and in entitlements, like how Annie in Shrill goes out with a boy who is too mediocre for her, all because she got the message that a fat girl like her shouldn’t expect a hunk or even a guy who is going to treat her decently and see her as a goddess. The show centered on Annie bringing out her inner fat bitch. Bridget hears constantly from her smug married male pals that women of a certain age shouldn’t be too picky because they aren’t as attractive and fertile as younger women (ring, ring, I am calling Tarana Burke on their asses, can I be the hype man?) and that triggers her insecurities about being single and 130 something pounds. Perpetua, who is a bit older than Bridget, medically overweight, single (but with a boyfriend) and less conventionally attractive than her...and is thriving in her life with no rush to the altar and she is free to voice demands in her relationship. I guess Bridget isn’t as nice as we were supposed to think she is, no shade, but be upfront about it Bridget (or writers).

But I can go easy on our hapless blonde, because Bridget (and probably Perpetua) internalized the notion that fat is disgusting and that women who aren’t thin enough have to shrink themselves and blend in, not causing waves. Perpetua lets us in on some hints that perhaps she is jealous of Bridget’s looks and figure, referring to her as having a “bony arse” for one, but it’s not a driving trait of her character. In her seminal book on female Baby Boom pop culture history, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, she noted that from a young age women were encouraged to see other women as competition, and if one woman is victorious in one area, we are defeated “And we had grown up with a notion of a female hierarchy in which some women---the Waspy, wealthy, young, and beautiful---were at the top of the pyramid and other women---the poor, the dark-skinned, the ugly, the old, the fat---were at the bottom and this is something that advertising (a source that sells Perpetua her image of wealth and sells Bridget’s insecurities) capitalizes on. Media in the 1970s have even applied the same dichotomy to some feminists where Germaine Greer (before she was all TERFy) and Gloria Steinem were held up as exceptions to the stereotype of ugly, nagging, and/or mannish feminists (something that Betty Freidan, Kate Millet, and the OG Bella Abzug got slapped with). It’s the ugly side affect of individualism.

One can hope that Bridget got the shameless and joyful spirit of that little girl who ran around the paddling pool in her underwear back.

Who’s Afraid of “Fat ass old bags”?: Backlash against non-insecure women

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you'll be criticized anyway.” Eleanor Roosevelt

Let’s be clear: arrogance isn’t confidence. I use the term “non-insecure” as an umbrella term for Perpetua and for confident women who have faced backlash for their lack of willingness to act like they are less than to appease the patriarchy. But...men get to be arrogant and admired for their drive and accomplishments, hell they don’t even have to accomplish much unless you count bankruptcies (look at who is President of the United States at the time of this writing). So why do women who act arrogantly, aggressively, cut throat, authoritative, or just plain assert their needs and personal boundaries are so vilified? So I will try to look for how we could all learn to be confident as Perpetua.

Ever since Peggy Olson was promoted to Junior Copywriter, and even before, women in the workplace have been scrutinized from the secretarial pool to even top positions as CEO or junior partner. Like McCann-Erickson in the final season of Mad Men, Pemberley Press is something of a toxic workplace where underlings fight to get noticed for their achievements in dull lighting, men like Daniel Cleaver and Mr. Fitzherbert (more like Tits Pervert, right Bridget?) feel free to sexually harass women who haven’t developed the skills to defend themselves and demand respect, and where the characters we are closest to, don’t really like her. Women in power tend to confuse a white cis male hierarchy with a pecking order where the men try to undermine her authority either because they find her too attractive or make her feel unattractive, sometimes other women would undermine women because their success threatens their own self-image as women. A toxic workplace can also be why Bridget cannot excel at the work she does (she jumps from one toxic workplace to another in the movie); this can also be why Perpetua comes off as a hardass, she has to put up a shield to protect herself and the years working at Pemberley Press have hardened her to the point where Bridget couldn’t relate to her.

Bridget, according to Daniel Cleaver and the viewers of the films, is likable while Perpetua is not. Bridget is very feminine, sexy, witty, self-deprecating, supportive, warm, and non-intimidating while Perpetua may be feminine (look at them pearls and long hair), she isn’t conventionally attractive as Bridget and her size and age have kept her out of the “sexy box” and while Perpetua is clever, the woman doesn’t ease her way into conversations at parties like Bridget pretty much demanding to be introduced and included in them and she walks with the ease and assumption that she belongs everywhere she goes. Perpetua just also isn’t cuddly, but men get to be aloof like Mark to the point of being insulting or irreverent like Daniel to the point of toxicity, why is Perpetua being judged so harshly for traits that we see in these two high-status men? Forbes magazine once quoted that women are affected by two types of bias at work: prescriptive and descriptive bias.

Descriptive bias is the labels we attach and associate with certain social groups and communities, and prescriptive bias is how they are expected to behave. And, when someone does not conform to these prescribed roles and behaviors they can be penalized or punished. Women, for instance, are traditionally expected to be caring, warm, deferential, emotional, sensitive, and so on, and men are expected to be assertive, rational, competent and objective. So, when it comes to promotion, these traits are sometimes automatically prescribed to people as per their gender without detailed information about their personalities, thereby a man, in general, is assumed to be a better fit as a leader.

The other side of this is prescriptive bias is when a woman does not fit the role that is traditionally assigned to her and attempts to claim a traditionally male position is seen as breaking the norm. So, when a woman is decisive, she might be perceived as "brusque" and "abrupt". Therefore, for the same kind of leadership behavior, women might be penalized while a man is commended.

Women who are traditionally feminine (passive, self-effacing, caring), are considered “likable” but not leadership material while women who display traditionally masculine traits (assertiveness, self-preservation, ambition) are considered ball-busters. Both women are less likely to get promoted because of both bias, while what’s “bossy” or, sometimes, “hysterical” for women, get’s men promoted (*cough* Brett Kavanaugh crying that he likes beer *cough*). Women who help out at work aren’t seen for what those caring and proactive qualities can benefit the workplace, it’s expected that a woman would be so domestic. Even female candidates for Head of State are subjected to the tyranny of likability....for a position where the focus has to be on achieving safety and stability for a nation, even if no one likes them, a position that will be decisive no matter what they do. The work can be done by women supporting one another and both genders checking their biases at the door. Men can call out another man for describing their appropriately authoritative female boss as a “bitch” and women can examine why other women demanding more in their relationships or being promiscuous is so threatening to them. Women can even decide who takes turns at office domestic tasks like making coffee and getting birthday cards signed, making it a universal effort by the work site and network with each other as they celebrate each other’s triumphs and different traits.

Bridget’s passivity doesn’t help her in being taken seriously at work by her male peers either. Whereas Perpetua is disparaged for being older, heavier, and less conventionally attractive as she is criticized for being authoritative, Bridget is reduced to her sex appeal by Daniel to her face and even described as “fannying about with the press releases” (hearing about this treatment incenses Perpetua to Bridget’s side), thereby reducing Bridget’s femininity into something frivolous and not a endearing trait that helps her navigate the world. Bridget has proved in a deleted scene that she can give a brilliant advertising pitch for a horror novel, sadly the assignment was for a children’s book but it was maddening that the men wouldn’t give Bridget that credit (watch it, I can see Peggy Olson smiling somewhere). Bridget is also hampered by what is called “Imposter Syndrome”: according to Wikipedia, it “is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a 'fraud'” despite have external skills and a number of accomplishments. Aside from her own appearance, Bridget puts her own abilities and intellect down, and it’s no surprise as how her society puts an emphasis on the physical appearance of women: “If you've grown up with messages that you're only valued for your looks and your body, not your skills or intelligence, you may end up getting a certain job or position and wondering whether you truly deserve it or if the hiring manager just thought you were a pretty face”, said clinical psychologist Emily Hu for the BBC (not to mention it’s much harder for women of color who deal with their cultural expectations and prejudice from a white supremacist patriarchy). Bridget’s own outrageous mother hasn’t passed down her bolder traits to her daughter and often makes Bridget feel small as she berates her for “not getting your colours done” or being unmarried.

In a world where tomboys and girly girls are pitted against each other, what would have happened if Perpetua and Bridget have let go of their preconceived notions of one another? Perpetua does seem to see Bridget as more than “blonde hair and big boobs”. It’s worth seeing that when the Bustle wrote about how to combat workplace misogyny, that they emphasized how important it was to support other women in the workplace as Perpetua did for Bridget at the last minute, alongside feeling free to disagree with men and demand a raise. Once again I want to note, Bridget and Perpetua are both white cis able-bodied women from upper-middle class backgrounds, so if their professional journey is fraught just imagine what it’s like for women of color.

Tough Women

“You can stand me up at the gates of hell. But I won't back down.” I Won’t Back Down, Tom Petty

Bridget learns, as we all do, and like Perpetua might have done that if she wanted to overcome her issues, she really has to confront her own discomfort and take risks as she demands more from life. Perpetua is a tough woman: she doesn’t appear to soften, even when she is greeting Bridget or Mark Darcy, who she is impressed by and she seems to encourage Natasha’s efforts to snatch him up. Granted a woman like Perpetua probably learned she had to tough, if she wanted to make it in a male-dominated workspace, I would not be surprised if she had parents who instilled a sense of ambition and toughness in her from a young age, or like Megan from Bridesmaids, she had to deal with a childhood of bullying and took that pain to transform herself into a formidable character.

We also see from her confrontation with Daniel, she isn’t afraid to get harsh with a powerful man especially after she finds out that he has been using a female employee sexually and been denigrating her worth at the office.

We don’t know Perpetua’s physical prowess and she clearly prefers pearls to combat boots, but she does possess traits that are associated with men: logical mind, firm, self-reliant, witty, sharp-minded, a professional in a cutthroat environment, and is flawed while being formidable. Perpetua is strong, a Shonda Rhimes character that Rhimes herself hasn’t created. Sadly like most Tough Girls, she isn’t her own protagonist and is there as an accessory to the main character, the Trinity to The Matrix’s Neo and she is often the lone woman that Bridget interacts with at work. Tough Girls are counterparts to more “typical” women: traditionally feminine women who are softer and more emotional...Bridgets. One thing I want to note is that Bridget is the protagonist instead of a love interest but yet she stands alone as her friendships are not that positive and her relationship with her mother is strained. Like Ripley of the Alien series, Perpetua is the lone smart and strong woman who has to deal with a environment where no one else wants to listen to her and everyone is ruled by their emotions (or their libido). She is Joan Holloway, who weathers the misogynistic waters with her razor-sharp observations and commentary regarding the absurdities of the people who are around her, while not being afraid to command attention and others, even at the risk at not being truly liked but “admired”. Not a phony. Perpetua is a privileged woman but like I stated before, she dealt with a combination of body-shaming and misogyny that toughened her...but why should a woman be tough and hurt? We could have had a scene where Bridget encourages Perpetua to reveal her vulnerabilities and open up along with Perpetua pushing her to be more resilient over a spa day with face masks, pedicures, beer, Milk Trays, pizza, Terminator movies, and hair makeovers while discussing how to hide Uncle Geoffrey’s body.

Strong Independent Women

“The watch I'm wearin', I've bought it. The house I live in, I've bought it. The car. I'm driving, I've bought it. I depend on me, I depend on me.” Independent Women, Destiny’s Child

Imagine trying to reconcile feminist principles of not depending on male partners and rugged individualism that insists the opposite of what John Donne’s quote about how one person is a party of a larger community. You have the Strong Independent Woman, who is used by capitalism to sell feminism and face cream/Spanx/sanitary napkins/Wonderbras/lipstick, who needs no man (or interdependence) to thrive in a still misogynistic world. This misogynistic world also abhors the independence, self-assurance, self-reliance, and self-love of women who choose to follow their path. Meanwhile the non-mainstream feminist and environmental movement have pushed for a culture of interdependence and for a culture that doesn’t base one’s value on how much money or genius or beauty (or what have you) an individual possesses; Bella Abzug noted that “Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel”.

But the image of the female individualist for one strong reason: women are still expected to perform the bulk of emotional and domestic labor while being paid less than their male peers for the same job, also because of ingrained sexism and perpetuated self-doubt, many women are still dependent on their spouses, parents, bosses, the opinions of others. It’s nice to see images of powerful, strong, often gorgeous women of wealth not have to depend on men for their worth or their livelihood. But we are flesh-and-blood human beings, not super beings or robots; even Perpetua shows some vulnerability when she refers to Bridget being a lot thinner than she and she is clearly looks crestfallen when she hears that Bridget has been belittled and used for her body by Daniel, we don’t hear much about her circle of friends in the movie aside from Natasha (in the book, she is friends with some same-minded women). Everyone needs an interdependent society of people supporting one another and helping each other grow.

Perpetua both upholds and subverts the tenets of the Independent Woman: she isn’t the supermodel-esque independent woman but Perpetua makes her own money and at lot of it, she dresses very well to project her authority in the workplace, she is bold, rejects the validation of male authority, and she isn’t afraid to be unlikable. She lives in a big city (because independent and single people don’t live in small towns or the suburbs *sarcasm*), presumably in her own spacious apartment or even a townhouse, she has found herself at some point before the story and has a strong sense of self, she works hard and has a strong sense of purpose because of her work ethic, and heaven help the dumbass that underestimates her or any other woman. She is a non-superpowered Carol Danvers: rather than waiting for someone to rescue her, she is quick to rescue herself from self-doubt or even rescue someone from injustice. She is noted to have a love interest, but she doesn’t revolve her world around him and is suggested to make demands for her needs in the relationship, showing she isn’t prone to fuckwittage as Bridget is (perhaps Perpetua learned to put a stop to that bullshit?). Of course because this is Bridget’s story, a woman who yearns for that fairytale ending of marriage, and this is a regressive, “post-feminist” (what sense does that make?) story, Perpetua isn’t a role model and is seen as a polar opposite to Bridget’s softness, ditziness, girliness, romanticism, and self-effacing persona.

I want to stop and say that I am so happy to be writing this essay in 2020, a year in which a large number of women (especially of color) have been elected to political office in record numbers with the Indian and Jamaican American Kamala Harris being elected as Vice President of the United States (and the first woman to do so). She is also independent enough to make her own money and develop her sense of self, along with a strong sense of agency and inter-dependent enough to credit the support and love she has from her blended family including her late mother. In fact the independent women of Broad City, Sex and the City, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Moana, Mulan, and GLOW (crossing self) all have inter-dependent systems of support and are one another’s family (hell even Bridget’s so-called friends are her “Urban Family”). I also want to say, it’s highly likely that Kamala was more a Perpetua and not a Bridget (or else she wouldn’t have been able to succeed like she has done in her career), thus her win as Vice President vindicates Perpetuas who have worked and lived before her.

Working Women Do’s and Don’ts

“You're just a step on the boss man's ladder. But you got dreams he'll never take away.” 9 to 5, Dolly Parton

As established, Perpetua is happily single (but also partnered), she fulfilled in material comforts, she is unafraid to confront men about their bullshit (she has a hard time trying to get Fitzherbert away, I bet), and she has high standards. To paraphrase Charlotte Pickles, to thrive where she works she has to “eat, breathe, and sweat self-esteem” and she does. This is something that Bridget lacks and something I feel Perpetua can help her with. Sadly we never got that chance: the gentle and feminine Bridget and the stern and neutral Perpetua bonding in a mutually beneficial kinship. I’m sure that Perpetua wishes she could talk back to men like Julia Sugarbaker of Designing Women and that her role models came after some viewings of Working Girl, Baby Boom, and Murphy Brown and perhaps by the privileged and successful men (and a few women) in her family. It must be said that despite being referred to and clearly existing, we never see Perpetua’s boyfriend and that’s because pop culture has long depicted women in managerial and supervisory positions as lonely, ice-cold, unfeminine, and hard. Meanwhile more feminine women like Bridget don’t get the respect that Perpetua has and demands, and Perpetua lacks Bridget’s likability (Bridget of the many men and one woman who fall in love with her). While I wouldn’t consider Perpetua to be politically progressive (she is a woman of privilege and Sloan Rangers are considered Tories) but she isn’t a woman who is willing to exploit others for her own bottom line (or the corner office). We do see that she is quick to defend Bridget from slut-shaming or having her worth denigrated by Daniel, which leads to a rare scene of comcaderie between her and Bridget. I get the sense that Perpetua isn’t merely interested in ruling the workplace, but she wants to change the workplace enough to be less toxic (getting rid of Daniel and Fitzherbert).

I can find some similarities to Perpetua in three fictional characters known for their drive in the workplace: Dr. Christina Yang (Grey’s Anatomy), Peggy Olson (Mad Men), and Princess Carolyn (Bojack Horseman). Christina Yang, like her creator Shonda Rhimes (if you are reading this Ms. Rhimes or someone writing or interning for her, please feel free to take ideas for a film or show about Perpetua, I need cheddar), is proudly childfree, dominant, blunt, up for a good time, and voraciously sexual and ambitious. Like Perpetua, she doesn’t aim to please others and very performative in her actions and words along with being caring and brusque (and snarky, especially about the terrifying Mr. Blobby). Also like Perpetua, Yang finds comcaderie with a bubbly young blonde who is sometimes reduced to her beauty (Izzy as played by Katherine Heigel) and tries to lift her girl friends up. While Perpetua has been working in a post Cold War publishing company, Peggy Olson is a young woman from Brooklyn working at a advertising agency in the 1960s, with different struggles from her more “sexier” counterpart (Joan is a more confident Bridget after all, and Peggy has some BJ traits). Peggy is also a trailblazer for assertive working women of today and paved the way for Perpetua across the pond, setting an example from the ground up (partly observing the men above her) when she wasn’t able to find much female role models that didn’t rely on their sexuality or follow a traditional path. Women during that time didn’t have reproductive freedom, equal pay (still, sigh), and working women were shamed for wanting to follow a different path. Peggy also deals with fatphobia in Season One (she was actually pregnant) and divorced herself from her sexuality temporarily (but she experiments with sex and drugs throughout the series). Like Peggy, Perpetua isn’t crippled by Don Draper’s self-loathing (Bridget) or lack of discipline (Daniel) and Perpetua had to learn to believe in herself rather than merely rely on the validation of others. Princess Carolyn is a pink, perky, girly girl cat but like Perpetua she has a relentless drive, is intelligent, hard-working, can sell something (a celebrity image or books), and knows how to positively influence certain people around her. All these women have lived by their own self-definitions and owned the struggles they endured to get ahead.

Can’t Be Tamed

Walter Stratford: Hello, Katarina. Make anyone cry today?

Katarina Stratford: Sadly, no. But it's only 4:30. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Rom Coms (such as Bridget Jones’s Diary) have a nasty habit of wanting to tame, soften, tone down, settle down an independent woman with her strong mind, sharp tongue, active sex life, and own money to matrimony. Then we have heroines who are allowed to fly their freak flag and find their own tribe (or leading man). That is Kat Stratford, the teenage feminist protagonist of 10 Things I Hate About You, a girl that Perpetua would have been at that age if she were American with blonde, pretty privilege. After all Perpetua has been perceived by Bridget (a Bianca without wit or spine) as a “heinous bitch” as delivered by the fabulous Allison Janney; they are perceived as difficult women who rain down their parades with their truth and don’t suffer the foolishness of arrogant men. Such women are supposed to be tamed, which has several meanings. The negative being to “tone down” or “dominate”; an alternate definition has been offered by The Little Prince’s fox “to earn one’s trust”.

We don’t know if Perpetua has anyone, romantic or platonic, to complement her personality and balance her out as Natasha seems to have Perpetua’s negative traits. This is where she and Bridget could have developed a friendship, combining vulnerability and a disdain for the fickle opinions of others and keep from having to choose between love and career, between relationships and financial independence. We could have seen a closer relationship blossom over the story just as Bianca and Kat grow closer to one another in the film. Maybe Bridget demanding more from Mark at the end, telling him that just because he bought her a new diary it doesn’t mean that he can get away with walking away from her and that it makes up for how tight-assed he can be with Perpetua cheering her on and another scene where Bridget smiles and let’s Perpetua squees over something in excitement.

Like Kat, the Perpetuas can find their own tribes or mates.

Women of Privilege in Media

Rich bitches, girl bosses, sassy queens, matriarchs, as Christopher Rosa noted about these women (which includes Perpetua): "They're rude, they're loaded, and we love them for it.” In a world that hates empowered women, as bell hooks bluntly noted, these Regina Georges, Cheryl Blossoms, Alexis Carringtons, and Perpetuas take back that slur and wrap it up in designer couture and fabulous accessories with nary a hair out of place. They own the negative stereotypes and manicure it into an image of fearlessness. They reject the social pressures placed on women to be nice no matter what, likable, fade into the background, and talk themselves down. Rich bitches indulge themselves with no apology and wear their strengths as boldly as their statement jewelry. But what if you don’t want to be bitchy all the time, what if you want to channel that fierceness into something constructive?

#Girlboss is an atom and a half: traditionalists argue that she isn’t a proper “feminine” woman who loses out on heterosexual love and children (”true womanhood”) while many feminists argue that she simply advanced to a seat in the patriarchy and doesn’t give a damn about the little people below her enough to truly make positive changes. Pop Culture has four flavors of the this character, as noted by The Take: the Bitch Boss, the Pre Code Boss who acts the way we think women started acting like after 1968, the Feminine Boss, and the social media savvy Girlboss who starts companies with cutesy names like WAHAM or WEEMAN or GOOP and they are often white and conventionally attractive. The last flavor exploits feminist phrases while selling out to capitalism and patriarchy for women to buy more shit and willing to step on people’s heads while building her empire. Sometimes she’s Charlotte Pickles, a somewhat ruthless but loving mother and CEO who loves angora sweaters, is glued to her phone, and can effectively hit the roof of a overturned boat with her high heel. Perpetua may seem standoffish to care only about her bottom line or take on traditionally masculine traits like Ruth Chatterton in Female or Diane Keaton in Baby Boom, but she proves to be a Leslie Knope when she stands up for Bridget in a heated moment. Perpetua has no necessity for large pink letters or catchphrases to prove she is a powerful (and empowered) woman, she simply is. One can see Perpetua taking over Pemberley Press, first Daniel’s job and then ousting Fitzherbert and taking his position, thus ousting misogyny from that workplace and using her power to uplift more voices in writing.

Bridget and Perpetua, meet, Betty and Veronica (respectively). While the Bridget the Nice Girl avoids her issues (and Betty can be in danger of being subsumed by them), Veronica and Perpetua make their rules and are willing to break them. Like Perpetua, the teenage Veronica wears her posh prep clothes proudly with a string of pearls and headbands holding her shiny hair. Veronica is also confronting a system (and family legacy) that taints America and makes living so impossible for people who have no boots to pull the straps from and handicaps her to a pedestal. Perpetua seems to want her friend Natasha to snap up Mark Darcy (remember she knows nothing of Mark and Bridget) like Veronica in the CW reboot wanted Betty to do with Archie. Both want to work hard and be recognized for their merit, not wanting to depend solely on Daddy’s money, bucking long-standing patriarchal expectations of upper-class young women who were expected to marry a man from a similar class and have children to inherit the money. Perpetua and Veronica show a willingness to get down and dirty while being allies to their less privileged and/or more passive female comrades. They also wield their power to take down over-puffed authority figures who abuse their privilege and have attitude when a woman gets slut-shamed or otherwise mistreated. Remember Daniel and Mr. Titspervert, Perpetua’s specialty is ice.

Legally Blonde and Bridesmaids, etc.

Vivian Kensington. Elle Woods. Professor Stromwell. These women showcase an alternative where cold but supportive women befriend our plucky blonde protagonist in a Playboy bunny suit and a douchebag ex-boyfriend (before ending up with a lawyer who comes off as uptight). Legally Blonde gifted Elle camaraderie with these women while Perpetua was left at the wayside and Elle was given a circle of supportive friends while Bridget had friends who negged her and were a poor influence on her confidence. Where Delta Nu gave Elle their time to help her practice for the LSATS, Bridget’s friends openly wonder out loud that Mark Darcy said he likes Bridget as she is, ditziness and unfashionable (of the time) curves and non-airbrushed looks (really?). We also see Elle add more people to her friend circle, like the working-class Paulette who proves to be mutually supportive of Elle and has been empowered by her to stand up to her ex and then we focus on two women who stand in for Perpetua: the steely Professor Stromwell ( the Mrs. Sarah Paulson, Holland Taylor) and the preppy Vivian Kensington (Selma Blair, la diva). Vivian and Elle start out as rivals for the handsome but douchey Warner Huntington III, who categorizes these women as the wife material Jackie and the fun and hot-tubbing Marilyn, but slowly upon finding out that their professor is a sexist who demands his young interns get him coffee and that Warner lacks Elle’s integrity find some common ground. Vivian is horrified and takes back her previous behavior upon hearing that their professor has sexually harassed Elle, reducing this intelligent and savvy young woman to her sex appeal. Also Professor Stromwell puts Elle on the spot on her first day of classes at and has a reputation for making her students sob, but it’s implied that Stromwell sees a bit of herself in Elle and wants this young woman to succeed and that means challenging her to do the hard work in Harvard. In the climax of the film, when Elle discusses quitting Harvard because of people undervaluing her intellect and being sexually harassed as a final straw, Stromwell turns around in her salon chair and tells Elle: “If you let one male prick ruin your life, you’re not the girl I thought you were.” Stromwell gets credit in Elle’s valedictorian speech at the end of the film. We see here that while Elle upholds girliness and finds new love in a established lawyer, unlike Bridget she has a support system of women (and a few men) who encourage her to kick ass and challenge the perceptions of others and celebrate her triumph in defending someone from a life-altering sentence.

I feel that in 2001, either Annie Mumulo or Kristen Wiig watched BJD and found the relationship between Bridget and Megan wanting as well as I did, this likely spurred them into writing Bridesmaids, a film that centered on women fighting over a best friend rather than a man, where the male love interest listened to the protagonist vent about her friend issues, and where an overweight and unconventional female secondary character pushes our insecure everywoman protagonist to start fighting for her goals and her sense of self, or rather her “shitty life”. Annie (Kirsten Wiig) is a former owner of a bakery that fell victim to the 2008 recession who is hitting rock bottom as her childhood best friend gets engaged and starts befriending her fiancee’s boss’s preened to perfection wife Helen (Rose Byrne) and then finds comfort and motivation in the form of the fiancee’s wacky sister Megan (Melissa McCarthy). Annie gets loonier as the movie goes on (ahem) until Megan persuades her to channel that spirit more constructively; Megan is proud of her hard-earned achievements and is confident but also kind enough to adopt several puppies and see Annie at her lowest. Megan earns her own money and demands more from her relationships than the other women in the movie (unhappy marriages, lack of communication, lack of trust) and emboldens Annie to grab life by the horns, thus starting a new friendship. It’s notable that this film is about post-college aged adults and the role of friendships in their lives.

Perpetua’s Potential

The 2010s have shown more narratives that focused on women’s relationships with one another and have even re-defined what “happily ever after” looks like and as a result of the #MeToo and #TimesUp Movements, women have examined how toxic their culture is to women and finding that the harassment and assault of women to be terrifyingly normalized and it has been for a long time. Millennial and Gen Z women have even questioned the issue of pitting women against each other, one of which is the “not like other girls” attitude that pits the cool babe or the weird girl against the high-maintenance girly girls that easily conform to society (even rewriting these types as friends or lovers to one another).

So what does that mean for Bridget Jones’s Diary? Well we could see a B Plot on Mark Darcy and his divorce from his Japanese ex-wife and she’d be given her own inner life and complexities, Perpetua might have to reconcile her relationship with Bridget and Natasha (the latter who is hostile to the former), we could see Perpetua strike up a friendship with her polar opposite Bridget and the narrative could focus on Bridget helping Perpetua open up her softer side while Perpetua gives Bridget the encouragement to stand up to her (admittedly) trashy family and friends and demand more from her relationship with Mark (or even dump him). We can even see them include Rebecca Gillies, the beautiful trust fund baby that works for Mark and finds Bridget to be desirable as she is (without being backhanded about it Mark!). We can see Bridget become stronger as she has one friend who challenges her to be better and another friend who finds her supremely wonderful and gets her to see it.

Maybe we can see Uncle G die, a girl can dream.

The Rise of the Perpetuas or what happened after Bridget drank some of Perpetua’s Juice

#MeToo, #TimesUp, #BossBitch, Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Hillary Clinton, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, the Notorious (and late) Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jacinda Ardern, Michelle Obama, Jameela Jamil, Mindy Kaling, Tiffany Ferg, Kimberly Nicole Foster, Dahvi Waller, Gretchen Whitmer, #BlackGirlsAreMagic, Mothers of the Movement, CaShawn Thompson, Intersectional Feminism, Black Feminism, Mad Men, Mrs. America, Insecure, The Baby Sitters Club, Amy Schumer, GLOW, Emma Gonzalez, Candice Carty Williams, Malala Yousafzai, Kamala Harris, Meghan Markle...all of them have grappled with issues like Bridget and Perpetua and have even expanded the conversation about women’s day to day lives and the small (and large) ways society is misogynistic and have gone further to question why it’s so commonplace. We even see a talk about body neutrality (as opposed to the sanitized body positivity), which one can easily see Perpetua practicing. We also see women being held up in social media as being “stanned” for being difficult, wonderful, achievement oriented, sassy, fierce, outspoken, demanding, and fashionable...all things that Perpetua was put down for.

“I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm 100% that bitch

Even when I'm crying crazy

Yeah, I got boy problems, that's the human in me

Bling bling, then I solve 'em, that's the goddess in me” Truth Hurts, Lizzo

To paraphrase Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?: All this time, they could have been friends.

The year 2020 has been a dismal year for women’s careers as women are swamped with the demands of domestic life and bosses have shown that they won’t cut their employees slack for having kids in the background. People even explored how the pandemic has revealed cracks in society from economic disparity, how women are ultimately shouldered with the burdens of home that men aren’t expected to, how vulnerable marginalized communities are in systems with poor health care and systemic bigotry, and the lack of a social safety net. These are challenges I see Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z women pushing back against (I will show up, pussy hat and mask on my person). One can even see Bridget, the ex Mrs. Darcy, Perpetua, and Rebecca marching in their Women’s March or even the global Black Lives Matter marches as they cheer on (or help) “tipped” over statues of colonizers and slave traders. We’d even see them attend virtual seminars on how to be better allies to BIPOC and listen as ex Mrs. Darcy talked about her difficulties as a East Asian woman in a predominantly white society and Bridget promising to call out her mother for her racist comments. There’d be no good woman/bad-woman dichotomy being perpetuated as they embrace each other’s differences.

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thegreengeneral · 5 years ago

Text

Ouroboros

He eyed the region behind the nebula, all too aware that the third day of the main battle had started in earnest. There would be need for healers there, as the Enemy left grievous wounds filled with a festering darkness to any who survived an encounter with it, and yet he was here, not there. Him, and any member of his personal unit fit enough to brave front lines.

This wasn’t the front lines however, and while his Liege had protested him diverting his personal attention and casualties mounted in the absence of his Healers, this was too important.

The young Oracle of Stars had told him what would come to pass should a force make its way through here – and one would make the attempt – and the Azure Dragon general had chosen to stand in its way.

There was nothing beyond the nebula. Not a speck of light nor a ripple of stellar wind, not even an echo of a whisper of a distant star.

They were finally here, then, for the best of them wreathed themselves in their own secretions to pass undetected. The general whispered a command to the soldier next to him, and a shift came over the feel of magic in the air as word was passed on through the company. It was time.

May Light allow it to be enough.

With a Word the nebula blazed with light, fuelled by the power of every celestial in his direct command, and as the darkness burned away to reveal the enemy, shrieking in rage. Seiryu led the ambush charge at them.

It was chaos, a vortex of light and dark, death and life, violence and sheer terror curtailed by grim determination. Though he led the charge, Seiryu had to fall back, to trust his charges to hold their own as he poured out all his magic to empowering them. To rendering them impervious to the enemy’s claws and teeth, if only for a limited time. It was the only way to ensure an outcome even slightly better than mutual destruction.

And he had sworn to return.

Time lost its meaning as he channelled the ley magic – every celestial in the battle connected to him, every wound felt, every strike guided. Every step steadied, every death a blow against him personally. Every fallen enemy a wave of hope so strong it was intoxicating. With this, the war would end. It had to end. Please, let it end.

Finally, even the great conduit that Seiryu was petered out, the flow of magic slowing to a trickle before stopping just shy of weakening his ability to move unaided. Torn shreds of disintegrating darkness floated lazily in the interstellar winds that had picked up from the force of the clash. A handful of lights yet stood. A mere handful.

But they had won.

The civilians behind the main force would not be hit.

The main force would not be stuck between two enemy forces.

The Enemy would not be reinforced.

And as it stood alone, it could be beaten.

“It is... done. Light forgive me, but it is done...”

“Sire?” A young celestial, dressed in his colours. It took a moment to recall the man’s face; a newer recruit, but talented with more mundane healing. Distinguished in two battles before this one.

The young man repeated his word.

“At ease, Healer...” He cast his eyes around the battlefield, seeing most his remaining troops checking on each other. Something nagged at him about it. So few had survived, mainly those with the greatest gift for magic, and those with barely any. “We must make haste back to the main force.”

“No we don’t, sire.” The young man spoke, an odd cadence in his tone.

There was something off about the pairs of healers... each low magic one helping an exhausted high caster. Paired off like clockwork. Like it was planned...

Realisation dawned too late, in tandem with the young man’s words registering, and the feel of a sharp, standard-issue blade sinking to his side.

How long had darkness been sending their creatures to fight on the side of Light until commanded otherwise?

The wounded general struggled free, blasting the young man – no, the creature, across the ruined field of battle, as all around what few celestial Healers he had left fell to the weapons of beings that had masqueraded as their brothers and sisters in arms.

There were too many for him to fight, wounded and with barely any magic. But he had to make it back. If so many of his specialists were infiltrators, how many assassins were in his Liege’s personal guard?

In desperation he reached out instead of within for magic, calling for an instant transversal elsewhere along the ley lines. And for the first time in his existence, he was denied. There were no lines to travel, only fragile husks drained of their magic for millennia.

The enemies surrounded him, and he willed his wound to close if not heal and drew his sword once again. He would simply have to fight his way through the more straightforward way.

He had sworn to return after all.

…

His magic returned in increments with movement away from the battleground, but it was far too late, as all it served was to start mending the wounds he’d accumulated fighting for his life. Or what he’d thought was a fight for his life.

The truth seemed... far worse. Five frozen stars kept him suspended in nothingness between them, void-black chains of something that burned at his limbs and ate away at the returning light locked to his wrists, ankles and neck. Their presence alone spoke volumes... just how many of its own had the Enemy thrown away to capture him? For what reason? And why now, when they’d all but lost?

Why did he have value alive?

“We’re here. We have him.” One of his remaining captors called out into the dark in an oddly sweet voice. He could recall that voice humming soothing lullabies to soldiers delirious with fever. She’d been with the healers since the beginning. When had the celestial been lost and replaced? Or had she been a monster in hiding all along?

“BRING HIM.”

The voice, the sound that responded from the darkness was the stuff of nightmares. Why was it here? How was it here? The green star struggled against his bonds as his escort moved, but only caused a caustic hiss and a flash of burning pain as more of his skin came to contact with the horrid shackles.

And then he was brought close enough to it for his muted light to chase away the darkness. It sat, shaped at a glance like a celestial but its joints at off angles, on a mound of corpses in the liveries of the four other armies. Seiryu wanted nothing more than to pay heed to them, to seek and not find friends and loved ones among them, but his eyes were inescapably drawn to the seated yet looming form of the Enemy instead.

The Defiler.

Herald of the Void.

Corpse Lord.

Lightless.

“STEP DOWN.”

There was something in the way its mouth moved as it spoke. Something in the unnatural evenness of its skin. Cracks. Blemishes. Even as Seiryu’s escort backed off, leaving him no less helpless than before, if not even more so, he watched the Enemy. Tried to understand what he was seeing.

Damage, not yet healed.

“You lost.” The sheer wave of relief coloured his words with a tinge of almost-disbelief. It hadn’t all been for naught. His liege and his remaining companions had triumphed. The Enemy had been beaten, even if not slain. Its troops diminished to numbers that couldn’t threaten population centres.

Its face split to a too-wide smile for a flash, vertical cracks tearing open all the way to its blood-red eyes.

“THE BATTLE? YES. THE WAR? LIGHT MAY THINK SO. AND NOW I HAVE YOU. OUR SECOND BEST OPTION.”

The chill he could feel had little to do with the lightless location and the presence of so many frozen stars just out of sight, or even their uncrowned King standing from its throne of carrion and regarding him face to face. The Enemy had been aiming for him. The Enemy had some way to make use of having him to stop the war from ending. The green star threw a prayer to the Light, even in this place where its presence was denied, and steeled himself.

“What use am I to you?”

“YOU’LL SEE.”

It grasped a hold of his chin and kissed him, and everything inside him screamed.

…

He was weak. Weaker than he’d ever been. What magic seeped into him from the closest ley lines pooled deep within in an attempt to keep him alive. Coherent. It ignored wounds less than lethal almost entirely.

How long had it been? Hours? Days? There was nothing to tell the passage of time by since the Defiler had given its court leave to toy with him as they pleased and departed. The cruelties blended to each other, though there seemed to be some invisible line no frozen star would cross and the bliss of unconsciousness eluded him.

Every time it drew near he was left alone, curled onto the now vacated throne of his slain fellows. Chained to it, his limbs broken and useless, his shackles weighing him down and burning into his skin, his face and chest cut for the beasts to marvel at the gentle drip of light from his veins onto the macabre seat.

That he could think of it as a seat at all was already bad enough. He wasn’t thinking straight. Movement around him made him flinch. Yet this much... this much should have been nothing. Would have been nothing. If not for...

It had drained him. Torn out so much of him. He felt frayed. Like a soft breeze would make him unravel.

And then it had gifted him to the lesser ones, most of whom had decided to steal a taste as well. He had... not known a frozen star’s kiss could be less than final. Somehow, this was worse.

Somehow, they were making him fragile.

Unable to think of good things.

Unable to hope.

Unable to even escape within himself and let them only damage his shell.

Unable to pray.

Unable to, eventually, hold onto the physical shape he’d forged for himself, the one he’d chosen to appeal to the aesthetic preferences of his Liege. His beloved.

Where bare skin was shredded or eaten into by burning cold metal, hard scales sprouted in its stead to shield him. Where legs attempting to kick at his torturers were broken again and again they melted away, melding around the shackles and into a sinewy, whip-like tail to lash out with. Wings formed in an attempt to escape, were shattered and torn, and shifted back to arms that could still attempt to shield his face. Again and again and again, and yet all he gained for his efforts, his instincts, was the cold mocking laughter of the frozen stars.

When it returned he didn’t at first notice, only dimly realising all activity around him had ceased and waiting for a beat before carefully peeking up to see the reason. They may have not taken his eyes yet, but that didn’t mean they would not.

But it wasn’t a trap. It was the Enemy, returned. It stood there, next to the mummified heap he huddled on, tilting its head slightly as it regarded him with cold, red eyes. A too-perfect looking mirage. Like a picture instead of a real thing. A monster wearing the stolen skin of a celestial. There was no sign left that it had ever been wounded in the first place, save perhaps the barely noticeable lines tracing from its eyes toward its mouth.

He could recall... dimly... those having cracked open. Like a mouth with too many corners. At some point.

He blinked slowly, too numb for anything else.

“GOOD. YOU’RE READY.”

He flinched at its voice. It sounded... happy? Hopeful? Anticipatory? Whatever the tone was, it didn’t belong in a voice like that. Not in something otherwise so hollow. It tilted his head up, with the tip of a finger this time, and he shuddered.

“NO DEFIANCE THIS TIME?”

“You........ lost........” The words were a mere whisper, but they felt like something important. A significant thing. Something he shouldn’t lose, even as he lost pieces of himself to the frozen stars.

“YES. BUT SO DID YOU. AND I ONLY HAVE TO WIN ONCE.”

There it was. A sense of triumph in its words that made him nauseous. Because it was true, wasn’t it? The Void was always there. The Void kept spawning monstrosities, and any child of Light that fell to those monstrosities had the potential to join them.

The number of celestials who could hope to go against frozen stars by themselves was a dwindling one.

The number of frozen stars had only been growing ever since they first appeared.

The Void only had to win once, because if it lost there would always be a next time.

The captive celestial was shook from his spiral of despair as the Enemy moved. It retrieved something from the shadows. Something that drew attention and held onto it even more than its eyes. Something the size of a child’s skull and slightly tapered. It was a seed, but at the same time...

He felt violently sick, and scrambled to back away as far as his chains let him, barely wincing as the corrosive dark metal bit into his burnt skin, too focused on the horror before him. Something about that seed was making his blood scream and curdle. Something about it bent light wrong, bent space wrong. The wrongness of the Defiler was nothing compared to whatever that seed was.

He knew what the seed of a world tree looked like. And this was definitely not one.

“ENJOY.”

It lowered the seed onto his lap, gently, and he flung the horrid thing away as hard as he could, numbly watching as it barely rolled over onto the stained seat from the force. Or... flickered there. Not moving as something its size should. Or its shape. Or weight. His hand tingled where he’d touched the seed pod, in a not entirely unpleasant way that disturbed him far more than its resistance to force.

He slowly peeked at the Enemy. It must know what it was doing. What the seed was, and what it was for.

“FIND US WHEN IT IS DONE. T̳H̺͈͢A̱̟̤̦T̗ Ĭ̖̘͍̰̬̗̗̋̓̿̃ͬ͜S̟̪̾ͫͅ Ā͂ͫ̓҉̣̻͜N̻̗̲͎̯ͣ́̔ͯͦ̏̅̒ͅ Ȱ͊͋̍͋̈̀̿ͭ̔̃ͭ̃ͣͮ҉̵̺̼̹̫͍͓̜̖̩̹͚̯̲̰̱̜̭̠̲͢͠Rͫ̄̚͞͝҉̙̻͓̹͟Dͭ̏͆��̲͔̖̭̻̝̞̠̫̺̅̎͞Ę̨̼̠̳̭͉͉͕̮͗̄̄̌ͨ̎R̛̽̂̑̊̓ͭͩͥͨ̀̊̃ͦ́͗̊̊́̚͏͚̮̝̮̙̖̱̻̖̗̖̗̼̰͖̝̩͕.”

The words hurt, they wormed into the holes that had been left in his very being and echoed inside him until he relented and curled up small to try and stop them from doing more damage to what had already been shredded beyond recovery.

When the echoes finally died down, he was alone. The frozen stars were gone, not just out of sight. All that was left was the heap of corpses he curled in the corner of, the seed of wrongness in the other corner – how was it there when it had barely rolled off his lap? – and his chains. His horrible, unbreakable chains.

For a moment, he attempted to simply focus on recovery. If the frozen stars weren’t here, then perhaps... but no, he could feel it. He couldn’t pull on the ley lines. Something within was damaged. Pieces missing from his soul. What little he had was everything he’d get.

He could... feel something else though. A vast wellspring. But not of life. Of something he couldn’t comprehend. Something that didn’t belong. Invasive. Insidious.

His aimlessly wandering, harried gaze landed on the seed and he shivered.

It should not exist.

How dangerous was it, that the frozen stars had left him alone with it? What did it do? Fighting rising bile and cold sweat he reached out toward it.

And felt it reaching back.

He slithered back as far as he could and fell over with a cry, unhealed bones making their presence known through the numbness once again, now that the oppressive wait was confusing his fight or flight instinct. Somehow his eyes snapped back to the other side of the platform of corpses again, focusing on the seed.

It was closer. He hadn’t touched it, but it had moved. It had come closer when he wasn’t looking.

The Enemy had been certain something would happen. Something would ‘be done’. And that afterward he’d be able to find the frozen stars.

Able... and willing.

He stared at the seed, eyes never fully able to focus on it and watering from trying to comprehend something existing and being a negative of itself in the same space and time. Why a seed? Why specifically a world tree seed?

What was inside the seed? What was something that the Enemy would be willing to wage an entire war as a distraction for?

An icy spike of terror pierced his chest as he thought of one possibility. A parallel. Something so outlandish no one had seriously considered it.

The power within the seed reached toward him on its own and he recoiled, mentally and physically, the latter only bringing more pain and the acrid sizzle of starblood boiling as it seeped onto the shackles. It brushed against his mind, cold yet warm, impossibly vast yet promising he could wield it all at once should he so wish...

He grasped all the magic still within him into a spiritual barrier, circulating it in a stuttering but stubborn stream beneath his skin as he shivered uncontrollably.

A seed of the Void.

The enemy had wished to make their Maker manifest. And he was the offering. A vessel made to contain immense power, emptied for pouring into. Made unable to refill from its own source.

The Enemy had called him their second best option. Of the servants of Light, only his Liege could match him in spiritual prowess, though Huanlong lacked the fine control that allowed Seiryu to do much of his duties. Somehow, knowing that at least that much had been denied from the Enemy was comforting, however slightly.

But how to prevent them from triumphing even with lesser materials... there was no hope of escape in time. He... had to accept that. The seed was actively probing what little defence he’d managed to give his soul, waiting for him to tire. And he was exhausted, having last had proper rest... when? The night before the first day of battle? The night before that? He couldn’t remember.

The shackles weren’t helping either, made of material he couldn’t recognise and eating into his strength, burning and consuming a portion of his light with every movement.

...and if he did escape, would the seed still germinate? Would it grow roots into the corpses and grow into a twisted mockery of a Tree of Life? Consume magic and life from the cosmos until it could manifest on its own?

It had to be destroyed.

Try as he might, he could think of only one thing that could work. And once the seed germinated, whether in a living thing or a corpse, it would be beyond even that.

If only he could be sure, if only there had been someone to run the numbers by when he’d first firmed the thought. When he’d considered if there’d have been value in the enemy bringing celestials to their side. If he was right, it would. But only for the truly desperate. For those willing to go to any length to achieve their goal. Willing to sacrifice even their death.

Supernovae had always been one of the most destructive Light-aligned events in the cosmos. And there was a way to induce one. He just... couldn’t know whether what magic remained within him was enough.

A splitting pain burst in his head. The seed was getting impatient. He had to act before it was too late. Even if...

He’d sworn to return.

He couldn’t act. Frozen in place as the Void tore at his defences. His hands stilled by that oath. A pleading voice to return home. To swear on his Name he would come back.

Something cracked, and a dam began to crumble in his head. There was no time.

He had to be able to return after.

In some shape.

Any shape.

Any at all.

Racing against the tainted stream in his mind and the crumbling, he dipped a fingertip in the luminescence of his blood and hurriedly began to scribe sigils on his skin. Containment. Entrapment. Locking. Amplification. Purification. A closed circuit.

One left missing deliberately. Glowing lines drawn in air with magic tinged with the Void by now, bypassing the bleak hunger of the shackles, vein to vein. There was no time left. No way of double checking the spellwork. No second chances.

He flicked the tip of his broken tail to his hands and took a breath. If this worked, there would still be something with the ability to return.

He prayed it would die before it could.

Ouroboros to complete the cycle. Endlessly feeding on itself. I... am sorry, beloved.

He brought his tail to his mouth and took the first of many bites.

#warnings include:#noncon elements #torture #suicide (implied)#self cannibalism (implied)#but honestly it's not as bad as these make it seem #my writings #headcanon

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sweetsmellosuccess · 5 years ago

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The Sátántangó Experience

How exactly does one prepare to watch a 7.5 hour film? A bit like what you might do in preparation for major surgery: Pack a bag of necessities (in this case, water and protein bars), kiss your loved ones goodbye, and try to make peace with your god. Or, maybe less dramatically, treat it as you would a long train journey, one that takes you through some harrowing terrain on half a rutted track before depositing you to your eventual destination.

Of course, this sort of conception of time is entirely relative: If you have to drive somewhere that takes half an hour, it feels unduly long; but if the trip were normally three hours long, and you somehow found a shortcut that would cut the time down to 30 minutes, you would be flying on dulcet wings for that amount of time, and think you were blessed by angels. In other words, spending an entire standard work day watching one film might seem excessive, but it all has to do with your expectations.

In my case, I was at Philadelphia’s newly renovated Lightbox Theater at the University of the Arts to take in Béla Tarr’s magnum opus Sátántangó, all glorious 450 minutes, in a new 4K restoration (it’s currently playing at select theaters across the country). Armed with my snack survival kit, and safe in the knowledge that we would get intermissions at roughly 2.5 hour intervals, I settled in to watch what has been described as a masterpiece in cinephile circles, and currently resides at number 36 in the most recent Sight & Sound critics’ poll.

Tarr’s beyond-bleak film is broken up into 12 segments, each having to do with a failing farmer’s cooperative in Hungary during the last throes of communism in the late ‘80s. Each section has its own feel and perspective — some of them are more lighthearted, others are desolate beyond measure — but all expertly shot in low-contrast black and white (by Gábor Medvigy), which renders the people and landscape in various tones of drudgery grey.

It originally opened in America as part of the 1994 New York film festival, at a time when Hungary was undergoing a transformation from Communism to shaky democratic capitalism, so it served as a kind of epigraph to the era, a showcase, as it were, as to the imperfections of a political system built on a promise of human egalitarianism that proved to be depressingly difficult to put into practice.

The landscape makes up a lot of Tarr’s vision, the flat, moody farmland upon which the collective has been toiling, and the unceasing rain and wind that constantly pelts the characters as they venture outside for one business or another. As the film opens, the collective — made up of three couples; a curious “doctor” (Peter Berling), who spends his time spying on the others, making copious notes in his stacks of file folders, and daily drinking his considerable body weight in Palinka (Hungarian plum brandy); and the cagey Futaki (Miklos Szekely B.), who has to walk with a cane from an unspecified accident, but seems a bit more shrewd than the others — is anxiously awaiting their annual wages, which come all at once and is meant to get divvied up amongst the members equally.

Early on, there are various halfcocked plans from individuals to try and steal the small fortune for themselves, reflected in much idle talk about meeting that evening and decamping for parts unknown, but that ultimately come to nothing. However, when word reaches the group that the mysterious Irimiás (Mihály Vig, also the film’s composer) is, in fact, not dead as they had been told, but alive, and returning to the collective he started, the group dynamic is thrown akimbo, with various members fretting for their future, and, one, the owner of the local bar (Zoltán Kamondi), furious at the thought his business will be taken from him.

Just why they respond like this remains vague. In ensuing segments, we see Irimiás, along with his associate, Petrina (Dr. Putyi Horvath), navigating through a police interview — where the local Captain informs them they will be working for him now in ways unspecified — though it appears the collective had very actively planned on not having to include their former leader (and his right-hand man) in their financial arrangements. As for the non-collective characters, including the aforementioned barkeep, and various prostitutes sitting idly around, the collective is virtually their only business, such as it is, so they, too, await this potential flood of cash eagerly.

As the segments begin to collect, they also begin to fold upon themselves: Scenes that we see from one vantage point in an earlier segment are revisited later on, from the perspective of a different character, enabling a thrilling moment of realization that the stream of time we’re following has breaks, jumps, and hiccoughs throughout. Never more poignantly than a moment with a young girl peering into a window of the bar — one of the only lit buildings in the otherwise dismally dark countryside — watching the adults inside drunkenly dancing and cavorting.

About that girl. Easily the most emotional moment of the film involves her, but not first without the audience paying a heavy price, depending on your empathy for other creatures. Before the film screened, during its introduction, we were made aware that there was a scene of animal cruelty involving a cat somewhere in the proceedings. The sympathetic presenter, himself a cat lover, suggested looking away for parts of that segment, though a friend of mine in attendance who had seen it before assured me looking away wasn’t really an option. Fortunately, he also told me that the cat in question wasn’t actually hurt, and was still alive at the time of a 2012 interview with Tarr.

Needless to say, my worry about this poor cat dominated my experience in the early going: Every time I saw a feline in the background of a scene, I worried that it was coming up, such that it was almost a relief when it finally happened. The situation is this: Estike (Erica Bók), the young daughter of one of the local prostitutes, caught up in her world of half-fantasies after being sent out of their apartment by her working mother, holes up in an attic with a grey tabby. At first, she pets and cuddles him, but eventually, she desires to control him, bend the cat to her will. To the cat’s increasing discomfort and fury, she grabs him by the front paws and rolls around with him, all the while muttering how she alone can determine its fate. Looping up the poor fellow in a net bag and hanging it from a post, she goes downstairs to mix a batch of milk with some rat poison powder and force feeds him until he dies (though in actuality merely tranquilized).

Wandering around the farm that night with the stiffened body of the cat tucked under her arm (a prosthetic, the director assures us), Estike runs into the doctor, shuffling outside to refill his giant jug of brandy, shortly after peering through the window of the bar. Eventually, she lies down amongst the deserted crumble of a bomb-blasted church and takes the poison herself.

As gruesome as the segment becomes, its haunting evocations permeate the rest of the film (though not immediately: in a jarring juxtaposition, the very next segment takes us back to the bar, where everyone is still dancing wildly about to a loopy accordion refrain — only towards the end of this extended scene do we see the face of the soon-to-be-dead Estike peering inside). Eventually, Irimiás does indeed return, in time to give a moving eulogy for Estike, while at the same time transitioning the group towards his next vision, a new farm some distance away where he assures them they can finally live freely and thrive. All he needs to achieve this goal for them is the money they just received from their previous year’s efforts.

With nowhere else to go, and no other plan on the horizon, the members of the collective dutifully deposit their wages on the table in front of their leader. He sends them out to pack their things so that they may meet with him in a couple of days at the new farm he’s selected.

Gathering their miserable belongings, the group reassemble and trudge down the muddy road on foot, as the rain pelts down on them without ceasing. Distressingly, the members don’t have any proper rain coats — in an earlier soliloquy in the bar, Kráner (János Derszi) laments that his leather coat is so old and stiff he has to bend it in order to sit down — so they wear their woolen winter coats, which do little to keep them from getting soaked in the heavy fall rains.

As they make their way to this new destination, it’s clear that Irimiás is up to something. Most obviously, he could make off with their wages and move on, but it turns out his scheme is less direct than just taking their hard-earned money for himself.

Towards the second half, Tarr’s penchant for long, elegantly composed shots gives gradually away to more adventurous camerawork, including a single steadicam shot in the woods that’s like something out of a Sam Raimi film. There are extensive elliptical shots with the camera spinning slowly on an axis, this particular effect never more effective than when after the group arrives at their new farm, yet another dilapidated series of box-like concrete buildings. Once they dump their belongings and lie on the floor of the unheated, broken-windowed main house, trying to sleep, our narrator makes one of his occasional VO appearances to describe in intimate detail the dreams each character is having.

It’s a shot that could have served as an excellent final salvo, one would imagine. Indeed, by the last hour of this opus, time and again, Tarr arrives at what might be considered a conclusive moment — in this, the confusion is aided by his particular style: It turns out many films end on a superbly composed, static long shot — only to keep the narrative flowing, circling back, eventually to the original farm, where the doctor, having just returned from a stint in a hospital, begins to narrate, again, the original opening lines. Such is the perfection in this device (the segment is titled “The Circle Closes”) that once you finally arrive there, it’s clear there could be no other ending that would have sufficed.

When finally the film ended, it was later in the evening. I met up with my compatriots also in attendance, and the three of us ventured back out into the city, heading to a bar where we could nurse a beer and attempt to articulate the tangled mass of feelings and impressions of the previous nine hours. In one of the very few bars in the city that still allows smoking, appropriately enough, we debated about the film in an atmosphere swirling with the poisonous fumes of an earlier era. It seemed hopeless, but still necessary, somehow; like bidding farewell to someone already in a coma.

#sweet smell of success #ssos #piers marchant #films #movies #satantango #bela tarr #hungary #communism #Mihály Vig #philadelphia lightbox theater

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kisuminight · 5 years ago

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Rainfire

Sometimes you remember something you watched when you were a kid and then you go look it up. And then you get ideas.

This story addresses the idea that never gets covered in the Spider Riders anime that the Inner World might (and probably does) have very different diseases. And Hunter, being Earthen, has no immunity to them.

Third Person POV, centered on Igneous. Adds a couple book elements and headcannons. Notes at the end.

~~~

“Oh, and Igneous? Sparkle won’t be able to make it to your afternoon training session today. Rainfire.” The way the Prince waved away gathering concerns with a smile and half-lidded eyes was all-too indicative of his own. Even if this method of informing the other Spider Riders was mostly an excuse to dodge his paperwork again.

Still, “It’s not exactly bad news.” Everyone knew that if you didn’t catch Rainfire young, it got much worse the older you were. In fact, “The Princess is almost a little overdue, isn’t she? How’s Hotarla doing?” His manacle felt warm on his wrist; a dry, soothing heat over his pulse point, Flame’s warm regard. They hadn’t been chosen yet when Igneous himself fell ill, but they’d already been friends; Flame had been nearly as worried as Slate, more so, even.

“Hotarla’s dealing better than Uncle Hop.” The protective fury and duty-born anger faded from that name long ago. It helped that Grasshop had always been hard to hate, even immediately after he’d defected. “Part of it is how Rainfire interacts with Insectors. Apparently, it’s inverted for them.”

Oh. Igneous thought about what it might mean if Rainfire struck the young hardest, and even Flame’s reassurance couldn’t ease the sudden chill. The Princess suddenly seemed much to young. “Aqune and Potia are in Insector territory at the moment; they would come if we called.

Most Insectors trusted the pair more than the other fourteen. Understandable, given the generations-long war, ut it still rankled. Spider Riders were supposed to be heroes, after all.

“No, it’s fine. Textbook Rainfire, right down to the crystal formation. I’m just glad she didn’t come down before…” Mantid. The name still felt cold on everybody’s tongues. Irregular, the way nobody knew how to say it now, and tangled up in unprocessable emotions.

“I’ll see if I can reschedule with Corona and Hunter. If they’re determined to be battle partners, they’ll need to learn teamwork with Shadow and Venus instead of just as part of their own pair.” Not that Hunter and Shadow did particularly well off the battlefield, given the arguing (even if it had lost that edge of cruelty as time wore on). Today had been surprisingly quiet.

“Hey! I heard our names mentioned?” Corona, greeting them with her left hand leading and manacle gem shining in a subtle indicator of Venus’ presence to the observant.

“Training session, this afternoon. Hunter and Shadow, too. Do you know where they are?” Probably not in the castle.

“He and Princess Sparkle were supposed to be doing something this morning.” That didn’t sound particularly likely.

But Corona’s manacle flashed in the shadow of her wrist, and Venus projected to the group, “He pestered Shadow into helping him wake up. He was very serious about helping Sparkle and Hotarla.”

But, “The Princess is down with Rainfire. She couldn’t have met Hunter this morning,” Igneous protested.

“He wouldn’t have slept through breakfast, and he wouldn’t have missed breakfast if he was awake.” The Prince’s smile turned wry and more than a little amused. “Well, I’m sure you’ll solve this mystery; I’ve got to go check on Sparkle.” Amazing how he could make Sparkle sound like Grasshop, who’s going to panic and maybe accidentally set the room on fire.

Corona shook her head, eyes pensive and deep after they waved the Prince off. “Now I’m worried. Neither of us have heard from Shadow, either.”

Igneous curled his fingers across his manacle, and offered a quick prayer to the Oracle fro patience. “Alright. We should use their room as a starting point, just for organizational purposes.” Flame’s opinions weighted on him, unsaid as they were, and Igneous felt the smile touch his lips under his spider’s approval.

So, Hunter and Shadow’s room: located a couple floors up and three hallways over. Rather than climb six flights of stairs (and also because they were, perhaps a little, worried), “Flame, Spider Out!” The jump to get him on Flame’s back slipped away from his memories, more habit than conscious act. Igneous held out a hand to Corona, catching her as she, too, leaped aboard.

Flame waited patient as a stone, for both riders to settle in their stances before he leaped, balcony to balcony in the clear, open space King Arachna III deliberately designed into the architecture, leaving more room and load-bearing capacity for the sake of the Arachnian Kingdom’s Battle Spider allies.

Dismounting at the floor they wanted, Igneous took a minute to lean into Flame in a stoic, silent geture of trust and gratitude. “Flame, Spider In.”

“Thank you, Flame,” Corona added, her manacle glowing in a manner that suggested Venus privately asking her Rider to rely on her, next time.

At a brisk walk, Igneous and Corona set out. Three hallways over put them near the outer wall, all the doors leading into large-windowed rooms. Hunter and Shadow’s was near the end of the hall, if not quite the corner room. Next to Magma and Brutus’ if Igneous remembered correctly, though that pair had taken off to check on the harbours, now that peace seemed to be settling over the land with the war declared at an end and the embargo on the Insectors lifted.

Unsurprisingly, the door was closed. Corona knocked lightly. “Hunter, Shadow? Are you two in there?” Not entirely expecting a response, she tried the doorknob. Locked.

“Corona?” Shadow’s voice through the wood, but thin and thread with something Igneous couldn’t quite place. “Can you come in? Please?”

Wrong. Utterly wrong, in the way that would’ve sent Igneous into a panic if they’d still been fighting, under constant threat of something that could completely corrupt the mind (Mantid had never used a mask on more than Aqune and Portia, thank the Oracle). Sent him into a panic anyway because even for Corona and Venus, Shadow never used that word, never uttered it in a way more begging than confident.

Lips pursed, Igneous motioned Corona out of the way. He didn’t ask about the lock; as good a companion as a Battle Spider could be, they mostly got through locked doors by smashing them down. Besides, Shadow hadn’t mentioned it, meaning he had enough faith that they could get around it anyway. Fortunately, Igneous trained his skill with locks enough to subvert all the ones in the Palace.

Maybe Igneous would bother the Prince less about paperwork if he’d at least fill out the forms to increase his own security.

Kneeling, he examined the lock. A standard type three, nothing too special. Corona brushed a hand across Igneous’ shoulder as he retrieved his lock picks from his boot. “We’ll go around by the window.” Slipping into an unused room, he heard her call Venus even as he managed to get the first pin to click.

Second.

Fourth.

Sixth, and Igneous nearly threw the door open in his haste. Oracle, he was worried enough to spend the rest of the day lecturing the pair, never mind afternoon training with Corona and Hunter—

Hunter.

So admittedly a lot of the angriest thoughts had focused on Hunter. They hadn’t heard his voice and he’d just remembered the windows in this room couldn’t fit a fully grown Battle Spider, as evidenced by the way Corona had to vault into the room, leaving Venus hovering outside—some of the really dark ones accused Hunter of leaving Shadow in a room he couldn’t easily exit, the sort of childish disregard some of their arguments inevitable devolved to. But it hadn’t prepared him for this.

Hunter lay in bed, face flushed nearly as red as his hair and brow sweaty. He’d kicked the blanket off so they could see the golden droplets of crystal that had formed dancing patterns across his skin, deceptively beautiful. The most dangerous were an almost-collar spiking up about his throat and a heavy scale-like pattern putting far too much pressure on his ankle for safety’s sake.

“I thought we could deal with it. It’s just Rainfire, but then I realized something was wrong and I couldn’t call for help or get out.” Too quiet. Quiet and exhausted and not like Shadow at all. Igneous didn’t know what to do, how he could make this better. You couldn’t fight disease with a lance.

“It can’t be Rainfire. He’s too old for Rainfire.” Intellectually, Igneous knew it did happen. Those were usually the fatal cases. “Why didn’t he get it until this late?”

“Earthen,” Corona breathed like a revelation and a doom curse in one. “What if they don’t have Rainfire? What if they don’t have anything we have?” Meaning Hunter might not have any vaccinations, not even for the truly deadly diseases like Corpse Script or Weblung.

It was hard to even wrap his head around it. Corpse Script? Sure, fine, that one only had a case or two per year. But Rainfire? How could anywhere not have Rainfire? The crystal sickness was practically inevitable.

“What are you talking about? It’s Rainfire, I can’t think of anything more harmless.” Well, at least Shadow was starting to sound like himself again, if with more of an edge than usual.

“The crystal sickness is different for humans,” Venus scolded gently. “Do you have anything to keep the crystal projections from blocking his airways?”

“They’re not too tough in spikes like that; I can break them off without harm.” Thrown full-on into her task, Corona pulled out a clean cloth probably meant for cleaning weapons. She wrapped it around the points of the not-collar, steadily pulling away to try and remove the crystal from Hunter’s skin.

With tired determination, Igneous let Flame anchor him in their hearthfire as he dove into the still-gowing web of the current generation of Spider Riders. There was Brade-and-Dagger, a hollow gaping hole, Lumen-and-Ebony whirling gears-inside-gears, the currently-dim sun of Sparkle-and-Hotarla, Corona-and-Venus’ deep ocean of conviction, Magma-and-Brutus’ mountain-strong determination far away, and father still the mirror-and-ice palace of, “Aqune.”

Call initiated, he brought his manacle closer to his face and tried to ignore how Hunter-and-Shadow’s riotous jungle of a presence had felt more faded and threadbare than the presence of Brade-and-Dagger who were both gh—alternately present by the grace and thoughtfulness of the Oracle.

“Igneous,” Aqune responded promptly. “Is there something wrong at the castle? Any Spider Rider issues?” Igneous liked Aqune despite their history; always professional, he couldn’t help but liken her to the training master he and Slate had shared when they first joined the Arachnian Knights. Portia, too, reminded him of Flame, though she had less of a temper.

“Not quite. How much to do know about Rainfire in humans? We’ve got a fairly serious case.” One advantage of the manacle connection—enemies couldn’t listen in, or even see the picture of light and movement that formed on the manacle’s surface. Not that Buguese was an enemy, exactly, but his entire demeanor, while honorable, left him harder to trust than Grasshop’s goofy sincerity and joy with the Princess or Portia and Aqune’s own acceptance of their actions under the mask.

“Not so much about humans, but I’m sure you’ve guessed that some of Mantid’s policies meant we’ve had serious before.” Right. Because the lack of the Oracle Sun meant more inhospitable weather and less food, on top of a lack of medicinal herbs and vaccines being a primarily human export. That sounded uncomfortably close to a breeding ground for epidemics and plagues.

Igneous leaned on Flame’s solid presence in his manacle. “No, I hadn’t guessed.” He felt an oncoming headache; at least Hunter and Shadow weren’t totally responsible for it, this time. “I—look, sorry, right now we need help with Hunter. But when you get back, I’ll help you corner the Prince for some talks on policy.” Much, much needed talks on policy.

Wait. The Prince had said something before, something about—“Grasshop. Is he going to come down with something, too?” Because that would be a great omen for their budding peace.

“No. He’s had Rainfire before, and he’s Big Four.” Because Mantid wouldn’t want to lose one of his top four generals to something preventable, right. “So, first rule of Rainfire: keep the airways clear.”

“Corona’s on that already.”

“Okay. Next, keep them hydrated. Try water flavored with fruit, thin soup, or broth. Rainfire sucks the body dry.” Listening to Aqune’s voice list all of the things he could do, ways he could help, eased something inside him, the feral, snarling thing that lived in the deepest corner of his mind and so rarely rose to something louder than a hum—and only when helpless, like that first time facing Stags with Corona and nearly watching both she and Venus die, or when Insector Commander Scarab had laid hands on both the Prince and the Princess.

“And lastly, you can crack the crystal with hammer and chisel if necessary, but always hit from the side, and never straight down, and only with a denser cloth in place from the other side to protect from possible shrapnel.”

“Thank you, Aqune. I think we’ll be able to handle it from here.” He let a wry smile creep onto his face, chasing away what he knew to be a grim, worried frown. “Why is Hunter always the troublesome one?” More background than proper attention, Igneous heard Shadow huff out an almost-laugh.

“Talent,” Aqune returned, equally dry. “We’ll be back by tomorrow, in any case. Good luck. The Oracle is with you, that a chosen bond not be cut so soon.”

“Safe travels.” The connection cut, and Igneous hopped that we only meant Aqune and Portia. Even if—when Hunter got better, Igneous didn’t trust that he wouldn’t be too frazzled not to act snippy at Buguese.

“Do we really get another case of divine intervention?” Skeptic, but hopeful, and Igneous turned with Shadow to look at Corona.

“Um, maybe?” Corona paused to press a hand to her heart, closing her eyes. “Not a big one, like with the Oracle Keys, but it feels like the standard blessing that you receive when a manacle chooses you.”

“There’s a blessing?” Shadow sounded lost and a little embarrassed.

“Yes? There are plenty of Spider-Human pairings, but the manacles are the Oracle’s blessing to the ones she favors. They’re why we can transforms, and they help speed up our healing after and during battle, just a little.” She smiled and shook her head, pinning them both with her gaze. “I forget you and Hunter don’t necessarily know these things.”

“I suppose that means you and Hunter will be sitting history lessons with the Princess and Hotarla from now on.” Igneous sighed, forcing his body to relax. They would be able to attend those lessons. They would.

“I’ll go fetch the things Aqune recommended. Will you and Flame sit with them?” Igneous bit down his protest. If he felt useless in this situation, how much more so did Corona feel?

“Go ahead.” Igneous scanned the room, looking for a chair he could move to Hunter’s bedside. He couldn’t call Flame out in such a small space; the room barely fit three humans and a Battle Spider as it was. Yet, the presence of his partner eased some of the longing. “Bring some ice if they have any in the kitchens.”

Corona stepped out the window to Venus, and together they disappeared downwards. Climbing down the side of the building always sped up movements more than taking the stairs and hallways inside—normally Igneous didn’t allow such a thing, but this was something of a minor emergency.

“Don’t worry so much,” Igneous told Shadow as he scooted the chair across the room and tried not to make it more reassurance for himself. “He’s strong. Do you honestly think he can’t deal with a little Rainfire?”

“Venus said they’re different, though.”

“A lot of things are, it seems.” Igneous reflected on the tidbits the Prince had dropped, Aqune’s frank admission of things that shouldn’t have been a surprise if he’d bothered to think, and Shadow’s own startlement. “And while the lack of knowledge about them is understandable, it is not acceptable. Tell me how Battle Spiders view Rainfire.”

There was a stilted feel to Shadow’s legs as he thought; Igneous may not be able to read Shadow’s every thought in the microcosm of body language as Hunter would eventually and had previously shown signs of, but he thought the Spider might’ve taken too much chastisement out of a simple request for more knowledge.

“Shadow, I’m angrier with myself more than anyone else. I am an Arachnian Knight and a Spider Rider. Not knowing such crucial details about our greatest allies is an inexcusable failing on my part, not yours.” No, for all that Shadow was older than Venus, he seemed much less experienced with humans than his battle partner.

Tense mandibles relaxed. “…Rainfire isn’t rare, but it’s not common, either. I’ve never heard of any Battle Spider dying from it, but the legends say that only the strongest even get it. Proof from the Oracle that they are the strongest.” Hesitating, Shadow’s voice seemed to linger over his next thought. “I had it, once.”

Ah. “It’s not your fault Hunter is sick. He most likely got it from the Princess.” Or the Princess had gotten it from him. They’d both been out in that nasty storm last week; this shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all. “Rainfire is a little different with humans. You can only catch it once, and it tends to be milder the younger you are. For all our fussing, Hunter is still thirteen and otherwise healthy. It’s safest for him to catch it now.”

Igneous just wished that they’d been prepared for it.

“We’re back,” Venus announced as she used her webbing to help Corona maneuver—had they stolen the entire pot of broth from the kitchen? “It’s vegetable, carrot, sunpeas, and vinenut.”

“I hope you left some for the Princess.” Not much of a joke, but not as bleak as he’d thought it would come out. “Did you bring any dishware, too?”

“Right here. And the hammer and chisel.” Corona lifted a package of three half-bowls and some towels with suspicious lumps, bound up with spider silk. “I’ve got some bread, too. Can you believe it’s past lunch already?” Was it? He hadn’t been monitoring the time, just the heavy oppression of Shadow’s mood and the liquid flow-freeze of Rainfire’s signature crystal.

Rising, Igneous left the chair to Corona. Taking a towel from the pack of them after a short fight with Venus’ webbing, he unwrapped the plain stone mason’s wooden-hafted hammer and iron chisel. Carefully, he eased the edge of the towel underneath the edge of the crystal formation around Hunter’s left ankle; there was still a little space to wiggle the whole thing into position, but not much. Not enough.

They needed to get this off, now.

Ankles were important parts of footwork, and without good footwork, a Spider Rider was crippled. So, mindful of Aqune’s warnings, Igneous placed the chisel at a forty-five-degree angle. The fell of cool, lifeless metal felt very different from the sunlight-and-hope of his lance. Worried, Igneous switched hands. Flame felt Igneous’ fussing and stirred in the manacle; the outpouring of gentle warmth increased, suffusing his skin, and it felt better. Not right, just better.

Picking up the hammer in his other hand, he touched the head to the chisel. Then he pulled back slightly and tried to swing as gently as he could. Metal met metal, but the chisel only chimed softly off the crystal despite the vibration ringing up his arms. Too gentle.

Igneous swung a second time, worrying that it was too hard even as a crack in the crystal opened up with a sound like an Insector machine’s cannon. Hands almost numb, he set down hammer and chisel to pry at the crack with his fingers until he could pull away whole chunks. Held up to the light, they sparkled; beautiful and potentially deadly.

Would Hunter know the tradition of keeping a piece to mark your survival? Probably not. And the Earthen boy had learned to fit in well enough that learning what he knew, and what he was clueless about could no longer be divined with a simple look at his face.

Suddenly more exhausted than he’d ever been before, Igneous accepted a miniature loaf of bread and a half bowl of the broth from Corona. He had to set it on his knees to keep his trembling hands from spilling it all over the floor. Even dipping the bread into the broth didn’t provoke his appetite, and the bite he took anyway tasted like ash on his tongue.

“So now all we have is monitoring duty.” Hurry up and wait. It grated on his need for solutions now just as much as it had when his and Slate’s training master had first thrown the phrase in his face.

“Shadow, Venus, and I can stay, if you want to go train.” Corona’s offer was genuine and well-meant, as always, but Igneous didn’t need the sharp temperature flare from his manacle to know she’d annoyed them both.

“We’ll stay.” Curt, just a little, and disappointed. But he’d curled back the jagged edge of his temper to keep from snapping at her.

“Okay,” Corona accepted, and that was that.

The light from the Oracle Sun shifted the sky’s hues as the day wore on. Hunter continued to sleep (typical, but better than awake and hallucinating), but his fever fluctuated up and down. Despite proving he had the capability to enter and leave manacle space at will, Shadow stayed out. Venus, too, perched outside the window like a friendly, soothing guardian. Corona and Igneous switched places fairly often, and occasionally paced when the tension spiraled too high. Twice more, the hammer and chisel were necessary.

Only when the oracle sun had gone deep purple and the sky a velvety black, fading to green not dissimilar form Brutus’ coloring around the city and the distant horizon-lights made by watch lanterns did something finally change.

Igneous had lit the candles and was contemplating finding a firepot to re-heat the broth and provide additional warmth when Hunter stirred. A low moan started it, followed by a shiver that turned into a full-body shudder as he struggled awake.

“Wh—Corona? Igneous?” Hunter blinked hazy green eyes at them, slowly resolving towards clarity. “Sparkle! Shadow, why didn’t you wake me—”

“He tried.” Igneous leaned against the wall and allowed his shoulders to drift downwards into something less likely to be considered confrontational.

“Huh?” His gaze drifted to the window, past Venus’ silhouette. “That’s not morning, is it? Why’s it so late?”

“Both you and Princess Sparkle caught Rainfire. You’ve been sick all day.” Corona reached out, squeezing one of his hands in her own. “We’ve been really worried. Here, let me help you.”

“Sick? Why am I covered in this stuff?” With more active participation, the crystal began crumbling away in larger sections. “Is this like an Inner World cold or something?”

“No. You only get Rainfire once in your life.” Colds were the bane of every Arachnian Knight and Spider Rider—or just anyone who wanted to do anything productive. It was hard to do anything with a stuffed up nose and only able to get three words out between coughs and sneezes.

“So like chicken pox then?” Presumably. Hunter would know Earthen diseases better than anyone else. “Can’t you get vaccinated for it? Ah, vaccines—”

“We have them. And you’re getting them. But Rainfire has always been the one big exception.” Igneous sighed, straightening up to roll his shoulders. “You should get some more sleep, hunter. Tomorrow is a free day for you, Shadow, the Princess, and Hotarla. You can reschedule your training for a later date.”

With a short, cordial nod, Igneous stepped out of the room. He closed the door behind him and leaned on the frame, bringing his left wrist up to rest the manacle on his forehead.

“What was that about?” He heard Hunter hiss, despite the closed door. “I thought we were getting along better than that!”

“Igneous always acts like that after you’ve really worried him, is all. It’s second stage after the fussing.” Corona sounded a breath away from giggling. “You should’ve seen him after my first official mission as a Spider Rider. Right, Venus?”

“Even that wasn’t as pad as this, today. He picked the lock, you know.”

“Igneous can pick locks?”

“Yes? I mean, he doesn’t normally carry them because they don’t carry through the transformation.” More soft laughter. “Usually he just uses them to get into Prince Lumen’s study to wrap a blanket around him when he falls asleep doing paperwork.”

“Huh. And Sparkle and I, we’ll be okay? I’m kina dory we missed our training session.”

“You’ll be fine with just a bit more rest.”

“Of course Rainfire can’t keep you down. You’re as tenacious as kudzu.”

“Hey, bug! I didn’t explain that reference so you could use it on me!”

As Hunter and Shadow started arguing, Igneous let a little laugh of his own escape him. Everything would be all right. His team would be alright. At true ease for the first time since this morning, Igneous left to find his own bed. After all, he and Flame would need to be well-rested if them wanted to wrangle the Prince tomorrow instead of letting him slack off to hover around Sparkle, twice as attentive as he’d denied this morning.

~~~

Notes:

Rainfire is a little like chicken pox (childhood disease, can only get it once). It causes mild paralysis when you have it, which is why Hunter wakes up when the disease runs it’s course. Like with sleep paralysis, if you wake up/open your eyes while paralyzed, you may hallucinate something nightmarish preventing you from moving.

I always found it interesting that Igneous is the only Spider Rider who has military training. Yes, Corona and Venus have training, but Igneous is specifically also an Arachnian Knight. He’d be trained to be strong and patient, even though we can see (in the episode with the play), that he does have a bit of a temper/high strung personality. I think this training would also make him accept Aqune and Portia; they were only doing their duty until they weren’t, but that is mind control and not their fault.

In the books, the Spiders were telepathic. I’m incorporating this a little bit, but less outright telepathy and more Igneous and Flame don’t talk because they know each other so well that they don’t need to talk.

All the manacle stuff is head cannon. This includes the idea that when Spiders speak from inside the manacle, they can pick and choose whether it’s just their Rider who hears them, or everyone else, too (based on a bit of information that Ebony is supposed to be surprisingly chatty with Lumen, and yet we only ever hear him speak 2-3 times at all).

I also wanted to explore how the manacles could “call” each other, and I used that to do more of the Spider Riders have a profound bond with their spiders bit. This is also where the “only another Spider Rider can hear this call,” because they didn’t really seem to be afraid of using it, even when there might be (and rightly should have been, given that they were at war) enemies/spies around.

The bit about Shadow being older than Venus but less experienced with people is because he seems experienced with the Inner World (certainly more so than Hunter), but he’s been off fighting Insectors, and probably didn’t hang out around villages much.

I wish we’d seen more Spiders than the ones who had Riders. Otherwise, how else would people have even known in the first place that a spider-human pair = Spider Rider way back in the beginning of history? So I headcannon that spider-human pairings aren’t rare, but Spider Riders are (only being eight) and that makes them special (preserving main cast importance). The bit about blessings/healing--it’s a shounen with a bunch of magical girl overtones. How else could they have survived some of the faintly ridiculous things that happened?

#my writing #fanfiction #spider riders #spider riders fanfiction #igneous #flame #hunter steele #shadow #corona #venus #lumen

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queenlua · 6 years ago

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trusting fiction

tl;dr: wow, uh, this got long. literary musings ahead, if that’s your thing! but the upshot is, this manga is really good so far and someone should read it with me :P

“Trust” is a word you hear thrown around a lot, when readers talk about particular authors. Le Guin once wrote about her first time trying to read José Saramago’s Blindness:

“. . . I began to get scared. The story was, to put it mildly, a nightmare. Tough-minded thrillers I’d read were custard sauce to this. The idea of everyone in a city suddenly going blind, not all at once but at random over several days, is fairly horrible in itself; Saramago’s even, quiet narrative tone brings the horror home as he describes it through the eyes (all too literally) of one ordinary person after another. Despite or because of governmental efforts at control, the city soon begins to break down—cars driven by blind drivers, fires in homes, panicky soldiers faced with panicky citizens. A disused mental hospital where the early blind are locked away very soon becomes a hellish concentration of the worst that terror and weakness can bring out in people—bullying, enslavement, gratuitous cruelty, rape... At this point I stopped reading the book. I couldn’t handle it.

To read on, to be willing to read about terrible cruelty, I had to trust the author unquestioningly, the way one trusts Primo Levi. I had to know that Saramago was not merely putting on a horror show, exploiting his power over his readers. I was quite ready to admit the power, his Dostoyevskian gift for communicating suffering, but I needed to trust him enough to let him tell me this fearful story in the confidence that he’d make it worth enduring. The only way to find out if he deserved such trust was to read his other books. So I did.”

He did end up earning that trust, by the way.

I most recently heard about this “trust” in a different context—a notable editor for a short story magazine said that a really good first page, even a really good first paragraph, can make you trust the author, make you say: damn, they are going someplace, someplace good, and I know they’re going to take me there.

Firstly because it’s competent writing—no grammar errors, no words badly out of place. But mere competence doesn’t earn trust. (That was another interesting bit from this editor; rarely does he get story submissions that are obviously lacking. But you can’t get a story published that’s just fine.)

Rather, the trust is usually bound to some keen and startling detail, some striking turn of phrase, or something that makes you laugh—a thing that convinces you an author has absolute command of their story.

You can probably think of such a moment, in something you’ve read. I think of the finest short story I ever had the pleasure of workshopping in college, centering around an arranged marriage in Hassidic Jewish community in New York City—a culture and a city that I knew nothing about—but they portrayed it with such keen detail (they either had firsthand experience, or researched the shit out of the subject) and such tenderness, that by the time the central couple spoke their first words to each other as a married couple (and those words were so perfect—awkward, and nervous, and kind), I realized, by God, this is gorgeous, it’s only been a few pages but I want so much for these humans and I’m going to read every other page about them that’s here.

(...I wonder if she ever published that, now that I think of it. Hm.)

I think very dense or inventive fantasy/science-fiction has to earn your trust, in a similar way, and it has to do it before your bafflement overwhelms your trust. I remember reading Too Like the Lightning, a novel with ridiculously dense worldbuilding—and I remember laughing so hard at a relatively early bit, where deep in the midst of a tense multinational political discussion, I realized one character was panicking in Lovecraftian manner over a doomsday prophecy in the form of a damn mathematical economic model! That’s probably the moment when Palmer “won” me—this is the kind of book that blurs the fantastic and the mundane so smoothly that I may not even realize it until I’m halfway through a chapter, and it’ll make me laugh—though she won me over in a hundred other smaller ways roundabout there. (I’m far from the first to comment on the whole “I don’t know what you’re doing but you have me in your clutches” allure that book has.)

((Similarly, shouts to Cat Valente’s Silently and Very Fast, which won me over the second I realized the super-AI had once been a house built by an eccentric genius on the coast of Shiretoko, with foxes and bears snuffling in the night outside. How oddly, charmingly specific. It helped that I’m in love with Hokkaido, of course.))

Anyway.

I was thinking about all this, because I’m trembling with excitement after finishing volume one of “Go with the Clouds, North-by-Northwest,” a manga I bought on total impulse this weekend, because I was at a local store and the shopkeeper was nice and there were birds on the cover.

It’s not trust—at least, not in any of the senses that I mentioned above (the author being horrific but not gratuitous, the author convincing me via some crucial detail that this story is going someplace solid, the author convincing me if I just “go with” the worldbuilding it will pay off beautifully). It is probably far harder for a manga/comic author to earn my trust, probably takes far longer, because even if the art is gorgeous—and my God, the art in this volume is gorgeous—well, we’ve all read our share of comics that were visually gorgeous but ultimately proved hollow, and failed to connect.

For me, the thing that will earn my trust is the story, and since comic panels move more slowly than the written word, it takes longer for me to feel like I really know any given character, or the shape of the plot, well enough to trust them. I managed six volumes of Pluto, for instance, before I gave up, realized that it just wasn’t my thing.

The feeling I got out of this manga wasn’t trust, exactly—much more like the feeling of a giddy, nervous, but overall-splendid first date. It helps that he’s good to look at (did I mention the art is gorgeous? and such a fun setting; I’ve never thought overmuch about Iceland, but the vast panoramas of windswept grasses and winding roads we see made me want to go there, badly). The story’s primary conceits (our protagonist’s grandpa can talk to birds; the protagonist himself can talk to machines) are subtle so far, and border on magical realism—it’s not like the car talks back to the protagonist, not in any way we can see. But he banters as he drives, as if to no one in particular, but afterwards just knows things about the car, stuff he couldn’t know any other way. He leverages this little talent into a knack for finding shit for other people, teenage-detective-style.

There may be other characters with similar knacks, too—we get a hint of it in the last chapter—but it’s hard to know for sure, and I like it that way. I don’t want it to veer into supernatural shenanigans; I like the idea of lots of only-very-slightly-magical people making sense of what their sixth senses are telling them. But that subtlety means I need to watch it longer, so I can see where it’s going with all this, quietly-oh-so-quietly.

There’s a bit of the haha-grandpa’s-kind-of-a-pervy-old-man humor going on in this volume. Mercifully very little, but still, sigh. (It’s a first date and his sense of humor seems a little immature—is this a triviality to be overlooked? or a sign of deeper trouble?)

And, as is all-too-common in manga, the first volume ends just when I feel like we’re digging into something meaty—what’s the deal with his younger brother?—and now I’ve gotta either wait until August or go scrounge up a fan translation to read what happens next.

So no, I don’t trust North-by-Northwest absolutely yet, but it got a lot right, and I’m just thrilled by the possibility of this thing, this serendipitous gorgeous little book. I smile when he texts the next day, I’m rereading the pages of what just happened, maybe it just ends up being a weirdly-paced standard detective manga, or maybe he’s The One.

Meanwhile I trust that next Friday it’ll give me a good time, something new to change up the pace a bit.

#writing about writing

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dopecoffeetimemachine · 6 years ago

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So this will be an incredibly long blog post.

This is my story. It’s like 3 pages, so take your time to read it if you are interested. It is the reason I need people to be aware of sexism and vow to stand up against it. Please join me here and irl, my next posts will be short ;)

Hi! I started this blog, because the past few days I started to feel obligated to educate the people around me about sexism. How do you do that? And when is the right time to stand up against these kinds of situations? I decided to write about the daily sexism I experience in my life to make the situation of mankind a little bit more clearly for those who don’t (want to) see this side of life. Male, female or other, I hope we can all see the world a little bit clearer and not get discouraged, but empowered to stand up. So one day, sexism will be unfathomable to our kids. Or even ourselves.

So, first things first, what is my story? Well, my story is not like that of anyone else (or at least anyone’s I’ve heard of). One of my parents is from a family with a lot of abuse. Amongst other things, they were sexually abused from a very young age, as were their siblings. As they went on in life, each of them chose different ways of adapting to deal with the cruelties that were done to them. It now so happened that one of my parents brothers started to have some feelings for children that he didn’t want to feel. Having a kid on his lap made him feel sexually aroused, among other things. Horrified as he was by these things that he felt, but didn’t want to feel, he did the thing that makes him one of the most courageous people I know: he told my parents. He felt that the only way of making sure that he wouldn’t commit such a horrendous crime as was done to him in his youth, was to warn the people that were his closest family. He wanted to protect their children at the chance of being thrown out of the family. But my parents didn’t do that. They chose to love him as the victim he was, but at the same time never let me or my brothers alone in a room with him. We never went over to his house, never had sleepovers, we were always with our parents when he was around. They tried to give him a chance to heal from the assault he suffered, while at the same time protecting their children. They loved, but they were not naïve.

However, something went horribly wrong. You know how sometimes people say: when I was a kid for a long time I thought life was like this or that, because I didn’t understand the grownup world and I reasoned like the small kid I was and I totally misunderstood? Well, I had that, but in a funny anecdote kind of way.

Because I was a very affectionate child, my parents decided to explain to me why I couldn’t hug my uncle anymore like I used to. They said: “You know how you always hug your uncle when he comes visit us? Well, you can’t anymore, because when you do that, he feels things that (I don’t know exactly how they explained it, but my six-year-old self knew they were talking about sex).” Of course, I was shocked by this and firmly promised that I would never do that again. I mean, no six-year-old wants to be involved in anything sexual ever. After this, we never spoke about the situation again and this knowledge started its own life. You see, even though the explanation of my parents could be interpreted the way they meant it, it was very vague. What I got from it was this: 1) you shouldn’t hug men, because you will make them feel sexually aroused; 2) you are the one that should take the responsibility not to make them feel aroused. Otherwise, if something happens to you, it’s your own mistake; 3) you are not safe within your closest family or with the people you love and trust. Could my parents know that this would happen in my mind? Probably not. Should they have spoken more about this situation (more extensive, talk about it at other instances, etc.)? Maybe. But as one of them was a sexual assault survivor, it is not very hard to understand this was a tough topic to guide their children around. It still hurts, though, because it could have prevented so much pain.

Anyway, as time went by I got more and more scared of men (I think this is the one and only advantage of the very heteronormative surroundings I grew up in: I never thought women could feel sexual attraction towards a girl). Now someone who doesn’t see the sexism surrounding us might ask: why would you? They didn’t assault you now, did they? No, they didn’t. But here’s the thing: NOTHING IN SOCIETY SPOKE AGAINST THOSE ASSUMPTIONS I MADE IN MY HEAD! I was told to sit up straight, because it would be weird if I lay down on the couch on a birthday (Why? Boys can lay down? Is it too sexual?). I wasn’t supposed to wear clothes that were ‘too tight’ or ‘too revealing’. Did my clothes make me a risk for my own safety? What is wrong with the female body that I cannot show a little cleavage but my brother can wear tank tops that have armholes so wide the only thing you cannot see is his belly button – at least until he bends over? Apparently boys didn’t get raped for having a body. Why was I not allowed to bike home alone from a school dance when I was 15, but it was okay if my 12yo brother with a bowl cut (sorry bro), horrible braces and barely reaching my shoulder accompanied me home? He definitely couldn’t defend me, however much he would try (love you man), so it just had to do with the fact that I was a woman?

All these things confirming that solely being a woman was enough to be unsafe in this society and that it would be my own fault too, resulted in behavior that can only be described as distorted. As I grew up, I refused to wear my hear in any other way then pulled back. Wearing your hair down is sexual, we all know that. As soon as I started growing boobs, I started to wear shawls. The bigger, the better (the shawls I mean 😉 ). At some point I had more shawls than pants or shirts. When I was older and started to work in a supermarket, I never made eye contact with any male customers. If one of the male customers smiled at me, just being friendly, nothing weird, I felt terrible. Why did I do that? Now there was an even bigger chance he would feel like he could take me!

All this time I didn’t know this shit was shit. And I was scared of every man in my life. The only person I was not scared of was my dad (and maybe two friends). Notice that not even my brothers are on this list. I remember one time I was like 12 and me and my younger brother were having a good time, as you do as siblings between yelling how much you hate each other. He has always been a very loving sweetheart, so he wrote me a note that said: I love you sis. It scared the shit out of me. I threw it back into his room, screamed at him and locked myself in in my own room. As I grew up, I was scared of my friends, my brothers, my teachers and most of my family. And it could be that way, not only through the horrible things that were done to my parents family and the trauma that followed from that, but also through the casual sexism ever so present in society.

Around the time I was nineteen, I was lying in bed, thinking about the world as one does, and suddenly realized that none of my female friends were scared of their uncles. I had been to their birthdays and they just laughed with them, hugged them, played rough house. It started to dawn on me that my situation wasn’t the usual. Not all men were like that. And that might mean that I have been thoroughly misunderstanding a lot about life.

Realizing that this might become a huge shifting point in my life, I decided to push it away. It had to wait until the holidays I had planned with my best friends. These girls are my safe house and I knew I would need them when this was about to go down.

The first day of that week I gathered all the courage I had, not knowing if I was stupid or overreacting or actually mentally disturbed or whatever. So I told them about all my fears and how I was not sure if they were normal and what they thought about it. And they were the sweetest, most caring and loving friends I could have ever asked for, supporting me in every way. They hugged me, were understanding, cried with me as I started to realize how fucked up my mind was and how all these years of fear were for nothing. They promised me one of the most helpful things anyone had ever done for me to help me recover: I could tell them all my fears and disturbing thoughts and they told me if they were true. Now I could wave goodbye to the fear of being snatched away and raped by that man standing behind me in the crowd. I didn’t need to be afraid of making eye contact, no normal man would take that as a sign that he could have sex with you even when you’d fight him. I started to gain perspective and that helped me to discern my thoughts when I was alone, so I could keep fighting this battle in my mind. It has been a terribly hard fight, with many (mis)understanding counselors, shocked but supporting friends and many other people along the way.

And it made me think. How could I protect other girls, growing up in this world, trying to understand this big thing called life? How could I make sure they had no reason to be afraid of the loving, good men around them, thinking their safety is at risk at all times and that it would be their fault? Of course, I can’t make sure no one ever grows up in a family with victims of sexual assault.

But I can work at a world where sexism isn’t natural anymore.

No (implied) inequality, sexist jokes, different expectations and standards, no ignorance. So I will do that through this blog. It might not be read by people not actively looking for this content, but it will remind me to speak out to the people around me, and maybe it will do the same for you.

Feel free to react!

#feminism society change abuse girls metoo equality sexism masculinity #standingupforyourself #and for others #feminism is for everyone

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fire-emblem-heroes-supports · 7 years ago

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Niles/Leon C-S Support

Written by starciti

C SUPPORT

Niles: Well, hello, handsome.

Leon: Oh? And who might you be?

Niles: Most call me Niles. Though, I wouldn’t mind being called something else, if it’s coming from a mouth as pretty as yours.

Leon: My, aren’t we forward? You know, where I come from, I know some people who wouldn’t hesitate to strike you if you said something like that to them.

Niles: Is that a promise?

Leon: It most certainly is. Though, unfortunately for you, apparently, I’m not one of them.

Niles: Hmm. How disappointing.

Leon: Sorry, Niles. If you want to be beaten, you’ll have to take it upon yourself. Or perhaps ask (y/n)? The Tenth Stratum shows mercy to no one, or so I’ve heard.

Niles: You know, most would think it cruel to help someone wound themselves.

Leon: I’m just looking out for you, dear. Besides, I’m not one to judge; we all have our preferences, yes?

Niles: Yes, I must agree… you are very interesting, do you know that?

Leon: Ha! I’m not sure if that’s a compliment, but I’ll thank you anyways. You’re quite the character yourself, you know.

Niles: Oh, I know. But I think you’re far more interesting than I. Tell me, what’s your name?

Leon: Flattery, huh? That’ll get you… somewhere, I suppose. My name is Leon. You’ll want to remember that, I’m sure.

Niles: Oh, believe me, I won’t forget. I’ll be saying your name quite a bit, tonight.

Leon: Ha! You have fun with that. Listen, I have some things to get around to, but this has been fun. I’ll see you around, Niles.

Niles: Hmm… Interesting…

[Niles and Leon have reached support rank C.]

B SUPPORT

Niles: Well, well, if it isn’t Leon.

Leon: It’s nice to see you again, Niles. Though, it looks like you’ve worked up quite a sweat there. Working hard?

Niles: You could say that. (y/n) hasn’t been going easy on us when it comes to training, lately.

Leon: Well, can you blame him/her? The Training Stratums may be difficult, but the Tempest Trials are another story entirely. Even I needed some training, and that’s saying something!

Niles: Hmm. I can’t argue with you there.

Leon: You know, Niles, I’ve noticed something interesting, recently.

Niles: Oh? Do tell.

Leon: Well, you’ve been more… tame around me, as of late.

Niles: Would you prefer my tongue to be sharper? I can make that happen.

Leon: Oh, I don’t mind either way, really. I just find it interesting.

Niles: Oh?

Leon: Well, you’re crude to a fault around most, and I’m sure you know it. Did I not hear you harassing our poor (y/n) about the ‘provocative shape’ of his/her weapon, the other day?

Niles: Ooh, that was fun… But, yes, I’m well aware that I have a… colorful vocabulary. There’s just a reason for it.

Leon: Really? I just assumed it was a personality trait of yours.

Niles: Well, you’re not entirely wrong. It is a trait of mine, it’s just one that I’ve developed on purpose. I had an, ah, interesting childhood, to say the least; I’ve no room in my life for people who lack compassion, you see.

Leon: I do see. So, you make most of what you say provocative to see how people react, and if they’re too put off by it, then you don’t bother with them.

Niles: You’re smarter than I thought, Leon. But, yes, you’ve got it; the more people I offend, the fewer I have to put up with.

Leon: An interesting way of doing things, but an effective one nonetheless.

Niles: All save for you, that is. I hardly ever find myself putting up with you. Daresay, I might even enjoy your company.

Leon: Well, of course you do. Still, it’s nice to know I’ve passed your test, Niles.

Niles: You should feel good about it. But as much as I love your company, I’m afraid I have to get back to training. I’ll see you later, Leon.

Leon: You as well, Niles.

Leon: …

Leon: Hmm. There’s something he’s not telling me…

[Niles and Leon have reached support rank B.]

A SUPPORT

Leon: Ah, Niles! Just the man I wanted to see.

Niles: Well, isn’t someone excited? To what do I owe this pleasure, Leon?

Leon: I’ve been thinking, lately, about a conversation we had. I think I’ve figured something out about it, and about you.

Niles: Oh? Do tell.

Leon: You lied to me.

Niles: I do a lot of lying, Leon. You’ll have to be more specific.

Leon: That’s… a little worrying. Either way, I’m talking about the other day — when we were talking about your, ah, vocabulary.

Niles: Oh? If I remember correctly, I told you the reasoning behind it. None of that was a lie, Leon. I’m afraid you might be mistaken.

Leon: On the contrary, my dear friend. You told me that there was a reason behind your crude words — when there’s more than one.

Niles: That seems a little nitpicky to me. But go ahead, go on — you’ve gotten me all interested.

Leon: Niles, you told me that you offend people so that you don’t have to deal with them. But I don’t think that’s the case; or at least, it isn’t all of it.

Niles: Mhmm…

Leon: Niles, I think that it’s not that you don’t like dealing with people; it’s that you don’t like dealing with losing them.

Niles: Wh- Excuse me?

Leon: Your reaction tells me that I might be right. You spoke of having a difficult childhood, didn’t you? You didn’t say more than that, but one can make assumptions. Niles, you don’t shut yourself away because you prefer to be alone; in fact, it’s because you fear it.

Niles: …

Leon: Niles?

Niles: Since when do you know more about me than I do?

Leon: You sound… angry. Niles, what’s —

Niles: Forget it. This isn’t an intervention. I don’t need to admit anything to you. Good day, Leon.

Leon: Wh- Niles, wait!

Leon: … Ugh. Well, that could have gone better…

[Niles and Leon have reached support rank A.]

S SUPPORT

Leon: There you are. Niles, I wanted to apologize for the other day.

Niles: Is that so?

Leon: Absolutely. I never should have tried to get under your skin like that. You’re the only one with the right to your past; I shouldn’t have pretended that I had it.

Niles: Well, it’s good that you’ve realized that. But it’s nothing to worry about, really; I wasn’t exactly nice to you, either.

Leon: You had every right to be rude to me, Niles.

Niles: Normally I would take advantage of that, but I really didn’t. Especially considering that nothing you said was wrong.

Leon: Excuse me?

Niles: You heard me. I hate to admit it, but you were right, Leon. My childhood… I spent it alone, on the streets, starving to death and praying for a release that never came. Those that I did interact with would use me, most of the time, for things less than savory; and when I had served my purpose, they discarded me, like a toy.

Leon: Oh, Niles… I’m so sorry. I never should have tried to assume anything.

Niles: Well, your assumptions were correct, if that means anything. I was under the service of Lord Leo for years, but in the end, I was discarded so that I could be summoned here, even if it wasn’t his choice. I can only assume I’ll end up being thrown away from here as well.

Leon: Don’t be so eager to jump to conclusions, Niles. Things could always change.

Niles: You’re optimistic in thinking that, Leon, but I doubt it. I’ve lost every person I’ve ever worked for or spoken with. Nohr was cruel to me, and Askr will be no different.

Leon: Seriously, I wouldn’t be so certain. But if I truly can’t convince you… then I suppose that now is a good time as any to give this to you.

Niles: Wh- Leon, is that — is that an engagement ring?

Leon: Ha, it certainly is. Do you like it? I had it made just for you.

Niles: I mean, it’s… it’s lovely, Leon, but— I still can’t wrap my head around this.

Leon: Oh, I thought you were smarter than that, Niles… Is it not obvious? I want to marry you. I’ve been told in the past that my standards for men were unreachable, but you’ve gone above and beyond them. Beneath those innuendos is a kind, strong, and certainly handsome man — you’ve brought interest in my life, and managed to capture my heart along the way. How could I not want to marry you?

Niles: …

Niles: Heh. You are something, you know that? You know how to see right through me. Past my lies, past my cruelty, and right into my heart.

Leon: So, does this mean—

Niles: Yes, Leon. I accept.

Leon: Wonderful. You’ve made me very happy today, Niles — I hope I can do the same for you.

Niles: I don’t doubt that you will. But if we’re to be married, I hope you know that I won’t censor myself any longer.

Leon: Ah, of course not— it’s who you are, Niles, I wouldn’t have you any other way. I love you.

Niles: And I, you. But now that we’re together… let’s have some fun, shall we?

[Niles and Leon have reached support rank S.]

#fire emblem fates #fire emblem shadows of valentia #male heroes #submission #niles #leon #niles x leon #leon x niles #i don't even like the characters from sov but this was really REALLY cute #congrats!! and thank you for this

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trentteti · 5 years ago

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A Look at the September 2019 LSAT

The scores for the September 2019 LSAT were released this Monday, a cause for celebration and consternation for those who took that test. But, for disclosed tests like September, score-release day is also test-release day. On these days, LSAC releases this exam to the public. Us LSAT instructors can marvel at a shiny new object, revel in the new games and passages as we journey through the exam, and attempt to identify trends that can help us discern what future exams may behold.

We’ve just journeyed backwards and forwards through the September 2019 exam, and we’ve just come out the other side with hard-won knowledge and a newfound fear of flowers (seriously, we’ll get to that flower game soon). And, as is our wont, we’ll now accompany you through another journey through this exam. But beware: these posts are always a long and windy road, a veritable field trip through the questions that confronted September test takers. So grab your sack lunch, get your parent or legal guardian to sign the permission slip, and jump into this poorly chaperoned school bus as we put the … ahem … petal to metal and drive through the September 2019 exam.

Logic Games

• We usually start these field trips with Logical Reasoning (we abide by bird rules at Most Strongly Supported — the largest bird section gets first spot in the pecking order), but the talk of this test was the Logic Games section. Boy, did people ever hate the living guts out of this LG section. We were pretty eager to take a look at this section, given the opprobrium thrown its way. So how did it stack up to supposed infamy?

It was definitely a hard section. That much we cannot deny. However, none of the individual games can bang with some of the hardest games of recent exams. Nothing here really touched game four of the July 2019 test, or of the December 2017 test — to say nothing of the curveballs thrown on some of the 2014-16 exams. Heck, there wasn’t even a rule substitution question in this section, which would be a rare treat on a more typical games section. Two things made this games section a little troublesome, though: (1) there wasn’t an outright easy game — the one that warms up your analytical reasoning muscles (wherever those may be located) and builds your confidence for the rest of the section; and (2) the order of the games was a bit unusual — which I imagine compounded test takers’ frustrations.

• The first game was probably the second hardest of the section, which is very unusual. The first game is typically the aforementioned calisthenics- and confidence-boosting one. This game was one of two combo games on this exam (tough break for our in-house prognosticator, by the way, who predicted there wouldn’t be any combo games on this test). We had to select five of eight kittens and puppies– given legitimately aww-inspiring names (seriously, I didn’t know the test writers had this level of charm in them) like Jaguar and Scamp and Wags — to display at a rescue shelter’s adoption event. So that’s the grouping element. But there would be five sequentially numbered pens, one through five, in which we’d place the five chosen pets. So that’s the ordering. Plus, since we were dealing with both kittens and puppies, however, we had to also create a tier of slots in our set-up, which was a lot.

Many test takers complained about this game being super time-consuming. I imagine many of those people rushed headlong, like a puppy to a postal carrier, into the questions. It did take me a long minute to determine the best way to construct scenarios in this game — I ended up making a set of scenarios based on whether two very constrained puppies were selected or not. But these scenarios made the questions super easy. That said, the novelty of the game, the complexity of the set-up, and the hidden cruelty in the tableau (seriously, why not take all the animals to find their forever home at the adoption event?), made this an inauspicious start.

• Next up was a rare “circle” game. And, goodness, do test takers lose their marbles at the sight of a “circle” game. It happened in July of 2018. And it happened again in September of 2019. If you, dear reader, were alarmed by the sight of this circle game, or if you are trembling at the thought of receiving a circle game on a later exam, I have an insider secret to reveal. Lean in close to your monitor, so you can see the next italicized paragraph as clearly as possible. Read over it a few a times if you need to. Absorb it into the very fiber of your being …

Literally no one is forcing you to make your set-up resemble a circle on a “circle” game.

Seriously, just set up so-called “circle” games like a normal 1-to-1 ordering game. Now, you do have to remember that the last slot is “next to” the first slot. Maybe draw an arrow from the last slot to the first one. But the biggest barrier of entry to these circle games is just the novelty of the set-up. So why not just use a set-up you’re familiar with?

Once you have a basic, familiar set-up, you’d realize that this was a fairly straightforward ordering game. There was a block, which apparently could only go in five places. Once you made a set of five scenarios with that block, you’d realize the block could actually only go in three places. You’d answer the questions quickly with your scenarios. Unlike your fellow test takers, your mind would not be spinning in circles.

• As I mentioned earlier, I heard a lot about the so-called “flower game,” which came third. Literally every test taker I spoke to — and most test takers who regaled their experiences online — mentioned this game. Usually with a twinge of trauma in their voice. So I was super excited to check this game out. Based on descriptions, it seemed like it a game without precedent. A sui generis creation. Something that perhaps an LSAT instructor could, from afar, admire as a beautiful and unique creation, but for the test takers who had to grapple with it, a thorny, tear-producing thing — um, not unlike a flower. As a fan of flowers both real and metaphoric, I was pretty excited to check this game out.

This game, however, wasn’t quite the unique creation many claimed it to be. It was, a few twists aside, a fairly standard underbooked stable grouping game. A game in which you’re given a certain number of groups, each with a defined size. In this case, we had five people making flower arrangements, with each arrangement containing exactly four flowers. But, since the game only provided us with four different kinds flowers to use, this game was severely underbooked — certain flowers would recur not only in different people’s arrangements, but sometimes an individual would use a flower more than once in their arrangement. Such games have been a staple of recent exams, having appeared on the June 2019, June 2018, June 2017 and December 2015 exams. They’ve been so prominent that even our frequently wrong predictor was able to accurately predict that the third game would be an underbooked stable grouping on this exam.

There were a few things that were weird with this game, though. For one, the fact that there were five people and four flowers may have led some test takers to believe that the flowers were the groups and the people the players (usually the more numerous variable set should function as “the players” and the less numerous the “groups” in your set-up). But, since we knew how exactly how many flowers would be contained in each person’s arrangement, that variable set had to be the groups. Additionally, the fact that some flowers could go more than once in an individual group is pretty unique on these types of games. Finally, a rule that required each person to have three different types of flowers in their set-up was an added complexity that did, truly, make this game more difficult.

But this game shared some similarities with many recent games — such as the first game of the November 2018 LSAT, the fourth game on the June 2018 LSAT, the first game of the December 2017 LSAT, and the fourth game of the June 2017 LSAT — in that you had to make methodical, restriction-based deductions from the rules. The limited number of flowers to choose from meant that once you were able to determine that one or two types of flowers couldn’t go in a person’s arrangement, you’d have a pretty good idea of what that arrangement looked like. And mostly these deductions came from knowing what the words “exactly” and “at least” mean. And like almost every recent game, there was a rule that created a couple of super solid scenarios.

If this game wrecked your September test day and has induced flora-based nightmares since, please don’t take all this the wrong way — this was still a quite difficult game! And of course, it’s much easier for someone to figure a game out in a comfortable and untimed environment than it would be during the mad dash of test day. But — and this was also true of the preceding “circle” game — games like these are always easier if you assume you’ve done something like it before (you probably have) and use a set-up you’re familiar with. Assuming the contrary — that the game is completely novel, without precedent — tends to lead test takers into an unnecessary spiral.

• Like an aged rock band on a reunion tour, the September LSAT closed things out with a classic — a scheduling combo game. We had three days of the week — Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (and I would not be the first to note that this would be abbreviated to “WTF” in your set-up) — and a morning slot and afternoon slot on each day. This game was fairly straightforward rendition of an LSAT standard — there was a very constrained player whose placement led to four very helpful scenarios — not the sort of over-the-top craziness the “WTF” promised.

• So what can we take away from this games section? Well, once again, this section continued the trend of scenarios being helpful on every game. This has been true, in my opinion, on almost every recent exam. And on the recent sections in which this hasn’t been true, scenarios have been helpful on only three of the four games. So, not to state the obvious, you should be studying up on how to make scenarios, practice making them during your studies, and then actually construct them on test day.

But this exam also illustrates how important it is to trust your experience on these games. If you study extensively — and anyone reading this treatise on the September exam is presumably studying quite extensively — you’ll have almost certainly seen some variation of every game you confront on your exam. Test takers err when they panic — when they assume that the game is completely unfamiliar. But remember, these entirely unique games on the LSAT are few and far between. Honestly, in this millennium, I think there has been precisely one truly unique game (the computer virus game from the September 2016 exam). Everything else has at least some precedent. So try to approach each game using the set-ups, tools, and experience gained from older games. Even if a game seems unique — as the circle and flower games may have here — it’s important to interrogate it, to see if there’s a way to make it familiar. There pretty much always is.

Logical Reasoning

• Onto Logical Reasoning. Here’s how many of the different question types appeared across both LR sections, compared to the average number of appearances per test since the December 2013 test:

• As you can see, this was a pretty balanced set of questions included. No single question type dramatically exceeded or fell short of its average frequency. That’s pretty normal on a September test, by the way. For whatever reason, September exams have — for want of a better word — a pretty “normal”-feeling Logical Reasoning section.

• If there was anything peculiar about these Logical Reasoning sections, it was the distribution of the difficult questions. Like the narrative thrust of the classic three-act drama, the difficulty of a Logical Reasoning section typically starts slow, gradually rises, climaxes, then recedes in a dénouement in the final few questions. Both of these sections started with some mild questions, and coasted on that setting throughout the entire section, until question twenty-one or so. And then there was a gauntlet of brutally difficult questions.

• Two very difficult sections stuck out to me: questions twenty-four and twenty-five in the LR section with 26 questions. Question twenty-three was a Weaken question that argued that experiencing a traumatic event might stimulate the production of cortisol — a steroid hormone produced by the pituitary gland, but that’s not important. To support that claim, the argument showed that people who experienced a traumatic event but did not develop PTSD have higher cortisol levels than those who have not experienced a traumatic event.

So classic correlation to causation issue, right? On a typical Weaken question, the correct answer would weaken such a causal claim with an alternate cause (something else that may trigger the cortisol production in those non-PTSD-afflicted individuals), showing the cause frequently appears without the effect (perhaps by showing that people who experienced a traumatic event who did develop PTSD did not have higher cortisol levels), or showing the effect frequently appears without the cause (perhaps by showing that, contrary to what the stimulus said, people who have not experienced a traumatic event frequently have high cortisol levels). This, being an atypically difficult Weaken question, did not feature any of those in the answer choices.

The right answer presented what could be considered an alternate cause or cause without the effect only if you looked really, really closely at it. That answer choice claimed that the high cortisol levels in the people who did not experience PTSD helped those folks not develop PTSD. So it wasn’t the traumatic event that produced the high cortisol levels — it was a defense mechanism that produced the cortisol (which would be an alternate cause). Or, we could say that the answer choice introduces the possibility that those people who experienced a traumatic event and did develop PTSD do not have high cortisol levels (which would be the cause appearing without the effect).

But this question would probably have been easier to understand if we understood that it was also committing a sampling fallacy. In order to establish that traumatic event increases cortisol levels, we’d have to compare a representative sample of everyone who has experienced a traumatic event to a representative sample of everyone who didn’t. By only including people who didn’t develop PTSD, we were looking at an unrepresentative sample of those who experienced a traumatic event. The correct answer, then, shows just how problematic it is to only rely at the people who didn’t develop PTSD — they probably had abnormal levels of cortisol, compared to those who developed PTSD, if the cortisol helped them stave off PTSD.

The take-away from this question? It’s important to remember (memory, incidentally, is aided by cortisol) that sometimes difficult questions commit more than one fallacy. Focusing too closely on just one may make it difficult to find the correct answer. It doesn’t hurt, then, to try to take inventory of several fallacies that may be committed on a difficult Flaw, Parallel Flaw, Strengthen, Weaken, or Necessary question that appears towards the end of a section. Doing so might make these questions less of a traumatic experience.

• In a cruel twist, the very next question was another super difficult one. Question twenty-five was a Must Be True question that involved proportional reasoning. OK, imagine I told you I ordered a pizza, all to myself, both yesterday and today (if you know me, this shouldn’t be difficult to imagine). But let’s say today I ate a way higher percentage of my pizza than I did today. Let’s say I ate half of the pie yesterday, but I ate all of the pie today. But what if I also told you I ate same amount of pizza, by weight, today and yesterday. So I ate a greater percentage of the pizza today, despite the same amount of pizza today. What could you conclude about the relative sizes of the pies I ordered, yesterday versus today? Well, it must be the case that I ordered a smaller pizza today (today’s pie would technically be half the size of yesterday’s), if I ate the same amount of pizza but got through more of the entire pie.

OK, now replace “eating pizza” with “commercial fishing in all the world’s oceans” and “sizes of the pies” with “the total number of fish in all the world’s oceans,” and you have question twenty-five. That question told us that after 1995, commercial fishers were catching the a greater percentage of the fish in the world’s oceans year after year. But also, after 1995 they were were catching the same (or a smaller) amount of fish, by weight, year after year. From that, we could conclude that the total population of the world’s fish was declining, year after year.

If you understand the basics of proportional reasoning, you’d be able to get this question. But this type of reasoning is rarely invoked on the LSAT (and when it is, it’s usually in the context of flawed arguments), so it probably stumped more than a few test takers. In the rare event that this type of reasoning recurs on a later LSAT, here’s all you need to know. And since I am definitively not a math person, I can only convey this info through a pizza analogy.

Three elements define this type of reasoning: percentages (this would be how much of the pizza pie you ate), amounts (this would be how much pizza you ate, by weight), and the total size (how large the entire pizza is). When you have information on two of these elements, you can usually make a valid deduction about the third. So if I told you that today I ate a smaller percentage of the pizza pie I ordered, but I ate the same amount of pizza both yesterday and today, you’d be able to conclude that today’s pizza was larger. Or if I told you that today I ate more pizza than I ate yesterday, but the pizzas were the same size both yesterday and today, you’d be able to conclude that I ate a higher percentage of the pizza today. These questions will in all likelihood not involve pizza, but the logic remains the same.

• These, and a few other questions aside, neither of these Logical Reasoning sections were all that challenging. It’s unsurprising that most test takers’ ire was reserved for Logic Games and not to LR or Reading Comp.

Reading Comprehension

• In what was a welcome respite from recent exams, this Reading Comprehension section wasn’t as distressingly difficult as recent sections. Apparently, it’s not just pop music that’s feeling nostalgic for the early 2000s — this section was a throwback to that era’s milder Reading Comp sections.

• The first passage argued that Great Zimbabwe — a flourishing, enclosed city-state from the ninth through sixteenth centuries (think Qarth from Game of Thrones) — owed its prosperity not to gold, as previously thought, but to cattle raising. The questions were detail-heavy, but — unlike the large-scale efforts the ruling class of Great Zimbabwe to harness cattle and mine gold — not particularly demanding.

• Passage number two was the comparative passage; passage A argued that historical fiction requires the telling of effective lies (such as modernizing language, and inventing characters and dialogue), while passage B argued that autobiographical fiction is sometimes enhanced by false, but vivid and emotionally resonant, memories. These passages had a more direct and discernible relationship than most recent comparative passages, and the questions were accordingly a tad easier than most recent comparative passages.

• The third passage was the inevitable science passage. It involved a sort of terrifying discussion on how a microbiologist discovered that cholera could exist in a dormant state in sea water, contrary to the previous belief that it could only be spread by human hosts, and that cholera was consequently much more prevalent than previously believed. The questions featured a “resolve” question — fairly common in Logical Reasoning, but super rare on Reading Comp. Even with this rare question type, this passage was a tad less challenging than many science-based passages. Less stomach-churning than a cholera infection, at least.

• The final passage was the inevitable law passage, on international environmental law. This somewhat hectoring passage argued that nations don’t quite practice what they preach, given that most nations profess to accept the norm that they do no harm to other nations’ environments, but do all sorts of things that spread pollution to other nations. The author argues that scholars of international environmental law should reckon with this fact. This was probably the most challenging passage, but each of the correct answers were well-supported by the passage.

The “Curve”

• Here’s a chart listing how many questions you could have missed on the September 2019 exam and still earn a given score, compared to the same figure for other recent exams:

• You, frankly, love to see it. As we discussed before, we were expecting a generous curve on this exam. And, at least for the higher scores, we were correct. It’s been a while since we’ve had a -13 curve for a 170 score — June 2014, in fact. And we haven’t had a -20 curve for 160 since December 2017. A forgiving curve for those high scores means that test takers who score in that range had a harder-than-usual time with difficult questions, passages, and games. With some of the invectives test takers threw at that flower game, we didn’t exactly need the curve to confirm that fact.

You’ll notice, however, the curve starts normalizing once you start looking at the 155 and 150 scores. Given that there were many mild Logical Reasoning questions and a relatively moderate Reading Comp section on this exam, this also makes sense — your “average” test taker scoring in the low- to mid-150s would have had a fairly normal time with those questions.

What to Expect Moving Forward

And thus ends our long field trip through the September exam. And, as in the field trips of our youths, we have to kind of wrap things up with a “what did I learn” essay. So, what did this LSAT teach us about what future LSATs, like the upcoming October and November LSATs?

Maybe not a whole lot? This LSAT is fairly anomalous in terms of the distribution of difficult questions. Most recent LSATs have featured much more difficult Reading Comprehension section than this one. And most have featured a greater number tough and brutal Logical Reasoning questions, rather than the few brutal questions this exam featured. And there hasn’t been a Logic Games section this novel, or this difficult, since the September and December 2016 exams.

So if for whatever reason this was an especially difficult test for you — and if you’re planning on taking the upcoming October or November LSATs — I wouldn’t expect to see an LSAT that looks exactly like this. Keep studying Reading Comp, because in all likelihood those exams will feature a tough RC section. Practice a broad range of Logical Reasoning questions, because those exams will likely feature more tough and brutal LR questions than this one. That said, it never hurts to be over-prepared — so if you want to tangle with some incredibly difficult games on the off-chance those exams might feature some brutal games as well, we encourage you to do so.

A Look at the September 2019 LSAT was originally published on Blueprint LSAT Blog

#logic games #Logical Reasoning #LSAT #reading comprehension #september lsat #trent teti #lsat

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cinenthusiast · 6 years ago

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Previous Top Ten By Year lists: 1935, 1983, 1965, 1943, 1992, 1978, 1925, 1969 1930

Previous Top Ten By Year: 1949 Posts: Top Ten By Year: 1949 – Poll Results 100 Images from the Films of 1949 What I’ll Remember About the Films of 1949: A Love Letter #10. The Queen of Spades (UK/Dickinson)

Diametrically opposed visions of postwar French youth: the dreamers and the delinquents. Two unknown films by two well-known directors (Jacques Becker and Julien Duvivier). I couldn’t choose between the two; they belong together. ———————————————————————————————— Rendezvous in July (Becker) is about twenty-year old kids who can see the Eiffel Tower from their windows. It is a light spring breeze that is on-the-move, because there are places to be and dreams to achieve. We’re first introduced to a family we’ll never see again. This is a pattern that continues through the first fifteen minutes. Our main characters are all introduced alongside their parents, illustrating how markedly different these proto teeny-boppers are from their elders. Collectively, these adults cover all the bases of your standard generational gap; they have practical jobs and adhere to custom, and they mostly disapprove of the instability of artistic endeavor. But these kids are idealistic, and pretty, and talented. They are aspiring actors, playwrights, cinematographers, documentarians, and musicians. They are riding the high of the postwar Americanization boom; they wear pants, love jazz, and smoke American cigarettes (a character offers one to his dad who disdainfully replies with “Keep em”). What makes Rendezvous in July special is its intense possession of the perky energy we’d soon associate with the phenomenon of 50s teeny-bopperdom. I can’t think of an earlier film that depicts youth with the kind of modern immediacy that would become commonplace in the upcoming decades. It must have felt so new watching these characters congregate and flit from place to place, cavorting as a group entity with all the, as the Grinch would say, noise, noise, noise, noise! These kids dance fast to fast music, but Becker speeds up the frame rate all the same.

The centerpiece of the group’s carefree whimsy is the Boat-Car Shark, (because a river can’t stop these kids from getting where they need to). It is one of your rubber bath toys made life-size and fully operational, with Keith Haring-esque hieroglyphs (eyes and octopi that recur on other costumes and decor) and headlights for eyes. It floats across the Seine while passersby look on, noting that “they sure have it easy”. They drive up and out onto the cobblestone, dropping everyone off at their various classes and odd-jobs, a communal vehicle that can provide them with the shortcuts needed to keep up with their pace.

They are at an age where anything and everything is possible as long as you’ve got talent and idealism. For all the bounce in this film’s step, there is just enough space made for us to observe that the bubble is burstable. There is no place in the film for people potentially going nowhere, and no tolerance for any irreparable steps taken towards the workaday life.

Lucien (Daniel Gélin) finally gets the funding he needs for an anthropological study. He excitedly tells his film crew they are due to leave within two weeks. But the crew can no long go; they made various job commitments in order to earn steady wages. It is a deep betrayal; he becomes petulant and has what can only be described as a tantrum. He calls them, among many other things, pathetic slobs. Lucien’s disparaging plea that his friends don’t sell out so young is sympathetic — to a point. That choice is so often the point of no return, where you cross over and become just like everybody else. But the more you get to know Lucien, the more incapable he seems of registering anybody else’s feelings. I can’t tell if Becker intends (or even sees) for the character, or if it’s just apparent to me. However, Lucien’s speech to his friends goes on long enough that it settles into something purposefully ugly. But while Lucien and others take steps towards success and opportunity, a girl named Christine suffers a series of humiliations.

As much as I love Rendezvous in July, it probably wouldn’t be here without Christine. Jacques Becker sees her but her peers do not. He and Nicole Courcel (her debut film) let us see. This is a clique where identity and emotion are defined by your talent and passion. The plight of realizing you don’t have talent, and its unfortunate companion deep insecurity, is an unforgiving thing, especially with friends that don’t recognize or relate to said plight. She is seen by the group as a bit of a vindictive femme. To a degree she is, but it all stems from the fact that she sees beauty as her one sure thing.

At first we see her as her friends do:

In an early scene, she calls Therese (Brigitte Auber, also her debut) to tell her she has a part in Rousseau’s (Henri Belly) new play (her brother is the playwright, getting her in the door). Therese is disappointed about this, and it’s the exact reaction Christine was hoping for. A smirk spreads across her face when she hangs up.

When the time comes, Christine is too nervous to audition for Rousseau; she puts his hand to her chest so he can feel her heartbeat. Sexuality is the only hand she feels she’s got to play in that moment.

She is bad in the play and she knows it. She didn’t need further proof, but during the curtain call the audience gives it to her anyways; a limp round of applause meets her when she steps forward, the opposite of Therese’s lively reception. Audience members share an exchange: “She’s pretty, eh? “Pretty, but very bad”. In the dressing room, she is chastised by Rousseau (who she lost her virginity too) for being sad: “Your dress is great. You look lovely. What more do you want?”.

Every single scene shows how thoroughly unseen this girl is. She is viewed as inferior to Lucien (her romantic interest), told she has no heart; she is even slapped. The list goes on. Some of the men also make selfish decisions (out of pure selfishness as opposed to coming from a place of pain like Christine), and then blame her for their choices. Rousseau chose to cast a girl who doesn’t cut it, only to scream at her for — guess what — not cutting it. Lucien is impulsive and proposes to Christine after making her feel like scum. When Christine is led astray after feeling worthless, just like before, it is she that receives all the disgust. That this girl feels everything is never considered. Indeed, nobody ever shows actual concern for her, or sees her very apparent sadness. A girl who acts out because she feels less than is constantly misunderstood as dumb, not worthy of Lucien, a bad actress, and heartless. Nicole Courcel pours a deep melancholy and ache into this girl looking to be valued, using the only tool she thinks she’s got (the how and who of that be damned). She is the only one with nothing at the end. I think about Christine all the time. Everybody else, with their bubbly spirits and camaraderie, will be fine by virtue of the fact that they are in this film. Except Christine. Christine has more in common with the girls of Au Royaume des Cieux.

The girls of Au Royaume des Cieux don’t have the luxury of dreams, or even hope. They are just trying to survive in the Haute-Mère reformatory. They are in a far-off and desolate landscape, a place that can only produce rain and mud (another French film from 1949, Such a Pretty Little Beach, uses a very similar landscape as its existential center). There are so many girls — all of them abused, thrown away and/or forgotten. They often huddle together and jam up the frames; it is a crowded and imprisoning space. Most have dabbled in sex work and some have murdered (viewed by society under the same criminal category). They are a rowdy bunch full of pent up lust and the nerve to still act rambunctious despite being beaten down by life.

They have rare allies in a couple of the authority figures, but that is threatened right at the start. A sudden death puts Mademoiselle Chamblas (Suzy Prim) in charge as director, a position she has craved for 20 years. She is the repressed headmistress archetype think Lili Palmer in The House that Screamed (1969)), misogynistic in nature and conception. This is a film full of transgressive streaks of eroticism; talk of same-sex exploits is a near-constant. While the lesbianism and sadism are not conflated, they are linked to establish a place that makes taboo happenings and histories part of the everyday. These girls have no hope that they can or will exist in the outside world, but at least the reformatory is a safer space than they’ve known. With Chamblas as director, all of that disappears and they are thrust into yet more worthless cruelty. But as Chamblas ascends, a girl named Maria (Suzanne Cloutier) enters. It is her purity and goodness that will gradually mobilize everyone into a revolution.

Maria hasn’t been convicted of any crimes, but pervasively unsafe living arrangements have kept her running away from various homes. Like the other girls, she is seen by society and its systems as the problem, punished for daring to endure, retaliate, or do what is needed to get by. Along the way Maria did find love. Real love. And he is coming for her. At first it seems like Au royaume des cieux is going to be about Maria and Pierre (Serge Reggiani) making their escape. Thankfully, it’s about a lot more than that (love and respect to Maria and Pierre who are sweet, but also too sweet). The couple, with their optimism, devotion, and will, come to represent hope for the girls. At first there is much animosity and infighting, but they eventually unite for a bigger cause — themselves. With their secret ingredient (resident anarchist Camille) acting as final inspiration, they riot and take control of Haute-Mère.

Duvivier’s camera singles out the girls as individuals during key moments. We get a brief reckoning glimpse of each; they get the frame to themselves, as if the camera is taking their photograph. It happens when Maria tells them about Pierre. The more she talks about him, the less it seems like a poor girl’s naivete. Some believe she’s either delusional or foolish. But most become convinced. You can see the hope breaking through on their faces. Love is possible. It’s not all manipulation and lies and violence. It happens again when the girls go on a hunger strike in retaliation of Chamblas’s new policies. Days into their starvation, the school director rolls a gigantic steaming pot of soup to the middle of the room where they all sleep, taunting them with the smell to give up their protests. The camera whip-pans back and forth, soup-to-girl, girl-to-soup, through each and every one of them. We feel the whirlwind of individual temptation and suffering, allowed to register that power lies in numbers, but that those numbers are made up of human beings pushing themselves to the brink for the rights they deserve. —————————————————————————- Diametrically opposed visions of postwar French youth: the dreamers and the delinquents. Two unknown films by two well-known directors (Jacques Becker and Julien Duvivier). I couldn’t choose between the two; they belong together.

Top Ten By Year: 1949 #9 – Rendezvous in July (Becker) & Au royaume des cieux (Duvivier) (France) Previous Top Ten By Year lists: 1935, 1983, 1965, 1943, 1992, …

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hallofmybeginnings · 8 years ago

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(A time stamp series on A03 dedicated to my readers by their request. Starting with:)

The Light of Your Eyes. The Warmth of Your Smile.

This would never have happened in Hannibal Lecter’s kitchen. Particularly if he had been cooking alone. Even when he had hired help in the past for dinner parties, all of those under his employ followed his exact and explicit instructions. He exercised control in all things.

(Most things. He saw no good reason why Will shouldn’t bind his wrists with a necktie, bend him over the desk belly down, and receive several rounds of arousing swats from a leather belt when the younger man was having a stressful day. He was, after all, rather fond of demanding fingers yanking on his hair while he looked up into powerful eyes with a mouth full of cock.)

In this instance though, he had both unwillingly and utterly, lost control of the situation. It was chaos. Anarchy. Anarchy with pouting lush lips tossing about his hours of hard work and he would not stand for it!

“Would you kindly desist!” Hannibal roared as a puff pastry flew over his head.

“Catch!” Will called, three more pastries cupped in the palm of his hand.

Lilac eyes grew impossibly large as Elias lunged after the trajectory of the pastry in question and snatched it out of the air with pearly teeth. The priest flopped on his back, chewing, beaming up from a blanket spread out on a sandy beach. He snuggled deeper inside a sea foam hoodie, toes wriggling in the sand. Dimples deepened then flushed.

Now how on earth was he supposed to reprimand the boy? He was practically the physical embodiment of Aether and the spirit of Dionysus. He turned his attentions to the root cause of all their troubles. His own god, Eros, of bittersweet cruelty and playful trouble making.

“William, you are a horrendous influence!” The older man scowled, scrabbling to get his last few pieces of dessert away. “Stop encouraging him.”

Hannibal managed to wrestle Will to the ground, a knee on his chest and one wrist pinned, but not quick enough. The puffs were jammed in a grinning mouth, white sugar powder the only evidence remaining on a pink cheek.

“Corrupting is more like,” The younger man hounded with his mouth full, blue eyes sparkling in lamplight. “And aren’t we a little grumpy today.”

Appalling… He hadn’t even had the opportunity to try one. Hannibal swiped a thumb through powdery white and brought it to his lips. But delicious.

The younger man started laughing then coughing. Hannibal rocked back still straddling a slim torso, crossed arms, and considered letting him choke to death. He was of course distracted by the gauzy powder blue Henley shirt hitching up a heaving ribcage. The older man reconsidered. He couldn’t let him choke. What kind of host would he be? Well, not to death anyway. He could have Will choke on parts of his anatomy later on, which would be an entirely better punishment. Oh. And he loved the sneaky, infuriating, reckless little minx of a man. Even if he did sometimes make his life hellishly frustrating. For no apparent reason, good or otherwise. He relinquished his hold and folded legs under himself once more, sifting through the war torn picnic basket.

A broad pale hand slapped, with more force than absolutely necessary, against a back with a growl. “You had better mean that in a less sexual way, Will, as corruption is currently my job.”

“From…” Will coughed a few more times, curled on his side then rolled on his back to catch his breath, searing gaze sliding over. “…what I hear you are doing adequately so there’s no need to discuss replacing you just yet. Hey!”

The younger man ducked as a succession of ice cubes from a chilled wine bucket were thrown his direction before raising a middle finger directed at where they came from.

"If we're going to play the game of who corrupted our Father Elias more then I might remind you he was a man of faith before he met us."

"Technically..." A tiny nose scrunched. "I still am?"

"He was a priest when I met him," Peter countered briskly. "And that was long before either of you. He shared my bed first."

Peter was stretched on his stomach, feet swinging in the air, with one hand running through short sandy brown hair and the other idly flipping through a G.Q. magazine next to the electric lamp. His translucent pearl skin was cast in a haze of blue, long blonde hair coiled at the nape of his neck.

"I-I-I. We never-" Elias sputtered turning bright red, lowering watering eyes.

"Enough," Hannibal commanded sharply. "The both of you. You know better than to tease the sparrow about his past." He pressed a chaste kiss to a forehead. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, little dove. Your choices are your own and they do not reflect ill of you in any of our eyes. You are welcome here. And they owe you an apology for their crass behavior. You know better than to pay either of them any mind."

"Sorry, mon petit chou, you are my world. I love you."

"Me too. I didn't...I didn't mean it like that. Please don't cry?"

Grey eyes flicked up, page crinkling as it turned, then rolled distastefully. Will stuck out his tongue. Elias looked conflicted and then giggled.

Hannibal turned his gaze to the midnight sky of the heavens. Do you not see what I have to endure?

“Dessert—“ The older man turned in time to slap a hand away from the picnic basket fishing for another snack. “–cannot precede dinner, and there will be nothing left if the three of you keep stealing it!”

“Yes, but—“ Elias sat up to protest.

“Oh hush.” Peter pushed the priest back against the blanket, wriggling fingers beneath a hoodie, tickling until legs and arms lashed out in a fit of laughter. “No one wants to hear your excuses.”

A pout trembled. “But I was hungry.”

“You are always hungry, amour. And yet so very lovely and petite.”

Hannibal found himself flat on his back a moment later. His white half apron unraveled as Will stripped him of it, palms spread on his chest, leaning forward with a wicked smile. He supposed he could manage not breathing, at least for a little while, and the view was exquisite. It would be a good way to die.

“It isn’t stealing if we found it, love,” The younger man informed in a low drawl. “And what about the time you had café liégeois a full two hours before we were to join Peter and Elias for dinner? You hardly ate anything after.”

The neckline of gauzy material gaped open exposing a gold toned chest and rose nipples chilled by the night air. He lay back and imagined how they might taste on his tongue. He ran hands up well worn denim jeans and hooked them around hips, lazily tracing where cloth met skin.

“Or the time you invited us and Hannibal was having crème fraiche at one o’clock in the afternoon?” Elias chimed in from where he was snuggled on top of Peter, half asleep, eyes barely open.

There was a snort. “If you would knock—“

“Between your thighs if I recall.” A French accent rolled off a tongue thick with teasing. “And you gave us a key, Will.”

“Hmm…” Hannibal closed his eyes, recalling the afternoon mentioned in perfect detail, sighing as a mouth moved from his jaw to the taut stretch of his neck.

“Jealous, Peter?”

“Hardly.”

The picnic basket rustled. It was a trap.

“Will!” The older man’s eyes snapped open, heaving up right, and smacking a sneaky hand once more and then a backside for good measure. “Leave my profiteroles alone this instant or find something else to do with your time.”

“What I normally do with my time happens to be scolding me…” Will reminded with a lazy roll of hips against a thickening interest with a smirk. “He also is very fussy about blowing him in front of company.”

“You Americans and you’re rules. How dull it must be for you with all these standards of conformity and politeness.”

Peter rucked up a soft cotton hoodie, exposing a frail ribcage, kissing a freckle on the priest’s stomach until he giggled then flushed a furious shade of red.

“Elias and I have no such reservations.”

“We know,” Hannibal and Will groaned in unison.

It was a wonder there was a sanitary surface left in their house.

Mischievous blue eyes met lilac ones. Will and Elias began to smile, a slow spreading thing like honey. Flip flops slipped on to feet. They stayed perfectly still. For a whole three, blissful seconds.

“Go!” Will whispered snatching a bottle of wine and tossing it.

Elias dove after it, hit the sand, then scrambled up and was off running down the beach in a flash. Will lunged for a handful of pastries, laughing endlessly as he too chased after a blurring figure. Hannibal saw the flash of a knife and jumped to his feet—

How dare—

—and then the two of them were drinking straight from the bottle. His wine!

“William Lecter! Elias Svendsen!” Hannibal got to his feet, shouting, throwing hands up in the air in dismay and frustration. "Come back this instant!"

A cork popped free directly down and to his left.

“Peter!”

The young man looked up from where he lay, magazine traded for a corkscrew and wine bottle, one blonde brow arched curiously.

“You will relinquish that bottle of eighteen eighty six port if you know what’s good for you.”

“I don’t…” A lazy smile rippled on Peter’s face, locking eyes with Hannibal as he lifted the bottle and took a long, slow swig, before nodding in the direction of Elias. “Never have. I leave all such afterthoughts of morality to God.”

Laughter had him looking up. Will and Elias were attempting to catch dessert like dogs chasing frisbees once more. They traded the wine bottle back and forth, arms linked as they meandered down the shoreline, perfectly uncaring at the danger lurking on the beach. With a low growl, Hannibal stalked across sand, pausing once to roll his trousers up to his knees. They were his good cashmere ones too. Then he started to run.

“This will not end well for you! Either of you!”

Three dogs lifted their heads from where they slumbered, tails wagging furiously scattering sand, and took after the three men chasing one another on the beach with delighted barks and bounds.

“Come on, sparrow!”

Will grabbed Elias by the hand with a toothy grin, eyes sparking bright blue on the horizon, and they took off once more in a rush of sand and ocean waves. They were spry and light on their feet. But Hannibal had sheer strength and years of tracking prey on his side.

“Shit, he’s gaining on us!” Will huffed, before jogging backwards, both hands cupped over his mouth calling, “You are remarkably fit for an old man.”

“An old—“ Hannibal stopped his tracks, running a tongue over sharp teeth, growling.

Oh, he was going to pay for that. One way or another.

Pupils dilated. “Fuck! Go!”

The pair raced away in a splash of ocean water. Hannibal nearly upon them when a flip flop got stuck in wet sand and Elias stumbled, reaching to free himself. The older man grinned, tipped forward and ran faster, teeth glinting in the light.

“Will, wait!” The priest cried. “My shoe!”

“Forget the—!” Will wheeled around, eyes going wide, and snatched both Elias and the flip flop he was clinging to out of the air and scooped the squealing boy into his arms, grinning. “Oh for—it’s a good thing I love you, you know! Ready to fly? Hold on tight!”

The older man felt his outstretched hand fall through a mist of ocean spray right where the two of them had been just a second ago. His heart and lungs burned with a playful heat. Dogs flew passed in a raucous clamor of barking, sending water every direction. Hannibal was soaked from the waist down. Will was now a good ten meters ahead of him, running off with Elias in his arms, laughing and laughing at his good fortune and the stamina youth provided him. He chased after them with a growl of determination, gaining on them. His clothing alone deserved retribution.

“Will! Will, run faster!”

“Go, go!” Will set Elias on his feet, pushing the wine bottle with what little contents remained into outstretched arms, and sent the priest scampering off with a push. “Take this with you. Hurry now or the big bad wolf will--Christ!”

“William!”

Hannibal threw both arms around a smaller waist, lifted Will off his feet, and heaved him upward, caging him in with a harsh grip around thighs.

“Yes, angel?” The younger man asked innocently from above with a lopsided smile.

The moon cast a halo of silver over long drooping curls, sending jewels of a quivering ocean crown sliding down a pleased looking face. The older man’s breath hitched and he forcefully reminded himself to exhale.

“You have been a willfully disobedient boy…” He warned, voice dipping low and hoarse.

Absolute content replied as Will twisted, wrapping both legs around a waist. “Uh huh.”

His hands moved along the distraction of muscle flexing against his torso and curved up to knead an ass. Low laughter pressed against his mouth, tongue flicking in and out of his own.

A murmur was lost to another dip of a tongue. “I ought to punish you right here.”

“Oh yeah?” A silky voice purred against his ear, palm sliding between their bodies. “In front of all these people? Maybe Peter will make a progressive of you yet.”

Nimble fingers brushed up the length of his cock. His thoughts sputtered like a flooded engine. Peter. His wine. Elias. His pastries. Something about anarchy. And Will. Devious trouble maker bent on wrecking his entire life one powdered dessert at a time. Where had he been going with that train of thought again?

Sand crunched lightly. Maroon eyes flicked to the side to catch Elias sneaking closer and closer in an attempt to retrieve Will from his evil clutches no doubt. Hannibal pushed at a chin with his thumb until lips slid apart, leaning back, and flashed teeth up at Will.

A body stiffened, sensing danger. “H-h-hann, don’t you even—“

What else could he do? Hannibal threw Will into a crashing ocean wave, watched his lovely mop of hair plunge beneath the surface, and grinned victoriously. Dogs descended on their sputtering master a second later. Then he lunged and chased after Elias, wicked laughter booming in the silence. He caught the wine bottle tossed his direction and dropped it in the sand.

“Nooo!” Elias squeaked, fleeing towards the refuge of the picnic blanket. “Will! Peter! Peterrr!”

Peter was too busy drinking, phone in hand taking photos, and laughing to be of any use to anyone. He was not a very good prince to sacrifice his loving little damsel.

And sacrificed he shall have to be.

Lilac eyes darted over a shoulder. “Hannibal, I didn’t—“

Hannibal descended upon the fluttering sparrow, snatched him up, and carried him off thrown over his shoulder. He hurled him in the direction of his accomplice. Will had just surfaced, soaking wet, sputtering only to be knocked back down beneath another crashing wave as he caught Elias mid-flight. The older man walked back up the shore, retrieved the bottle, and drained its contents. He watched Elias and Will struggling to free themselves from the ocean. By the time they stumbled up the banks, dramatically supporting one another, they were shivering. The younger man was fuming. It was his turn to laugh. So he did.

“You know very well…” Will howled, stripping off his shirt and wringing it furiously. “I didn’t bring a change of clothes for any of us!”

“To be fair…” Hannibal licked his lips, letting eyes rove over exposed skin draped in sea foam and black of the night. His own personal siren ascending to tempt him to his death. “I think both Peter and I might find that advantageous. Particularly if it means you willingly strip out of them to keep warm.”

Steely blue eyes narrowed, shirt hurled to the sand. “You had better run, Hannibal fucking Lecter!”

Fire crackled and snapped on twigs and logs until it grew brighter in an orb of warmth.

“I would advise you to—“ A growl rushed out in a stuttered breath.

Will flopped down on the beach, ruffling a hand through soaking curls. “Ah, so much better.”

A threatening groan drew a sweet smile across his mouth. Will glanced down. He was sitting on a chest. One belonging to a man who was currently buried two feet deep in sand with nothing but his neck and head above the surface.

“Welcome to your reckoning, Doctor Lecter.”

Maroon eyes narrowed, lip curling. Will pat a cheek and smiled.

“You are useless, Peter!” A tiny voice cried petulantly.

Elias sat down in a huff, chest bared and legs crossed, pouting. Peter shrugged and laid out the soaking wet hoodie next to Will’s shirt beside the fire. He had been trying to dry off the priest with a corner of his dress shirt. To be fair, he had been doing more touching than drying. Out of the four of them the man seemed to always come away from their antics unscathed. It was vexing.

“The view is just so very distracting…” Peter murmured, settling behind Elias, drawing him in arms to sit between impossibly long legs. He kissed along the seam of a neck down a shoulder. “It is it truly my fault for being incapable of focusing on anything else?”

Elias squirmed, pouting for several more seconds while pretending he was able to remain mad, and wasn’t about to kiss Peter with all the forgiveness in the world. Which he did. Of course.

Will rolled his eyes and took a drink from a freshly opened bottle. “This wine is fantastic.”

“It truly is,” Peter agreed, passing a pink moscato to the priest.

Elias hummed, curling against a chest, seemingly on the verge of sleep. “Mmhm.”

By the fuchsia hint of his cheeks alone Will could tell he was already drunk and hid a smile behind his hand.

“Yep. This wine is just really, really good. Too bad I can't find anyone to thank for bringing it.”

The sand beneath him struggled and shifted. Will looked down to find the head of Hannibal Lecter glowering death threats up at him.

“Would you like some?” The younger man tipped the neck of the wine bottle near lips, grin flashing, keeping it just out of reach. “Or are you too preoccupied with schemes of revenge to be bothered down there?”

The older man sulked as the wine bottle vanished. “I cannot feel my limbs.”

Christ. You shouldn't be so kissable when you're pissed at me.

“Oh? Really?” Will shifted, setting the bottle down, feign of concern rippling deep on his forehead.

There was a spark of hope in blood red eyes. He could see the gears turning in the older man’s head. Saw the events of a kiss turning in to sweaty, languid romp on the beach after he was freed. As if Will would forgive him as easily as Elias forgave Peter. Peter, however, had not chased them across the beach and then tossed them gleefully into the ocean. Granted he had not helped either. Something would have to be done about that.

Plunging his hand through sand, Will groped until he found a knee, slid his palm between thighs and squeezed until he felt a cock stir. He rubbed until Hannibal’s mouth fell open, eyes closing to slits, and then retrieved his hand and sat back down. On his chest. Grinning.

“Still there.” A wink scattered hopes and dreams of freedom and make up sex. “Promise.”

Elias swayed lazily inside of strong arms, warmed from the inside out at last, chewing thoughtfully on a crisp gold marshmallow on a stick. He had never had this particular dessert. He liked it. It was simple and gooey. And he was certain he was going to have a stomach ache from eating too many sweets. A risk he was willing to take.

“Mine were far better…” A voice grumbled.

Three sets of eyes rolled, voices answering as the same time. “We know!”

The priest giggled as Hannibal sulked, freed from his sandy cage after half an hour, bent on knees and glaring down at the strange ‘food’ suspiciously. He looked ridiculous. His clothes were soaking wet from when Will and then Elias had wrestled him down, held him beneath the waves, and then dragged him up the shore kicking. His hair was sticking up at every angle imaginable. He had never seen a cuter pout, except for possibly his own.

Will had one arm around Hannibal, the other busy twisting marshmallows on a stick in flames, squinting in mental effort to make sure they were evenly cooked. The older man lay his head on a shoulder, eyes drifting closed. Ever since the ceremony Peter had watched them become closer with every passing day, watching the shadows recede from their eyes. They were content in the company of one another. The rest of the world faded.

They deserve to be happy...

“Eat your burnt marshmallows, you grumbling heathen,” Peter commanded, passing a twig back to Will for more gooey confection.

Elias hummed, pleased by the prospect of his fiancé feeding him more marshmallows and kissing him between sips of wine. He tasted sugary. He loved sweets. He loved Peter. More so now that he tasted like his favorite desserts.

“There is sand permeating every fiber of my clothing,” Hannibal complained after a fleeting minute.

Peter replied dryly. “You don’t say?”

“We could throw you in the ocean again,” Elias piped up between bites.

Will snickered, popping a whole marshmallow in his mouth. “It might even be therapeutic.”

“It is appallingly rude to be this out numbered,” The older man growled, shadows creasing lines in his face, frown deepening. “By miscreants no less.”

“I believe the words you’re searching for include being bested and tortured by several very, very pretty men.”

“One whom enjoys fucking with you and fucking you.”

“He should count his blessings.”

“Right?” A lovely smile flashed. “See, we finally agree on something, Peter.”

Hannibal pushed to his feet, arms crossed, staring down the sharp peak of a nose. “How very nice for you both.”

“Stop teasing Hanni…” Elias implored, standing and slinging his arms lovingly around a torso. “He looks miserable.”

“At least one of you still upholds human compassion.” The older man bent and placed a kiss on the top of a head. “Decency. And far more empathy than I thought one of us possessed.”

“How much you whine when you don’t get your way.” Will teased, running a tongue over a smile. “Poor baby.”

“I am going to bathe.”

With that announcement, Hannibal dislodged a half sleeping priest and started walking towards the inky black waves.

Blue eyes strayed up. “Where are you going to…”

Elias chimed in and skipped off. “Me too.”

“Pardon?” Peter sat up abruptly.

The older man had divested of his dress shirt and halfway shimmied out of trousers when Elias streaked by him, stark naked, and leapt with a delighted shout in the waves.

“Keep those eyes in your skull where they belong, Will.”

“What happened to progression and us getting along, Peter?”

“It’s never going to fucking happen.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Two figures stood at the edge of waves crashing against the shore in drying trousers, shoulders touching, gazing up at the stars. The taller of the two slipped an arm around a thin waist and pulled close, placing a tender kiss against a forehead tipping against a shoulder.

“What do you think they see?” Peter asked quietly taking the wine glass offered.

“I believe…” Hannibal sat nearest to the fire dying down, sharp angles of his face caught in flame and dark, sipping, gaze thoughtful and soft. “They see every good intention of souls lost and found in the starlight blanketing the world in darkness.”

“What do you see?”

“I imagine we share the same vision.” The older man smiled at him. “The men who love us unconditionally and without reason.”

He slung back his drink, letting it burn his throat and settle heavily in the pit of his stomach. His eyes stung. He looked at Elias leaning against Will in the distance, heart dimming, and let a thread of conversation sweep through him.

“Does he still dream?” Peter looked away, clutching his wine glass, voice dropping, nearly lost to the waves and fire. “I still dream sometimes. I wake Elias sometimes. Shouting in the middle of the night. Screaming I think may be more accurate. I know I used to wake you and Will when I first came.”

“He dreams far less than he used to.” A murmur replied, reassuring hand settling on his shoulder. “You have been a great comfort to him, Peter, for that I am grateful. He needs someone to speak to who understands from experience.”

Experience. Peter grimaced against the sensation of touch and conjured images of his past, brutal and violent and cheap. It had been nearly a decade. Years since he had been forced to do that kind of work. But he still saw their faces. Heard the chatter of his teeth biting back and choking down screams. He never gave them the satisfaction. Never made a sound. Not even when was alone. Or when he cried.

“He has you…” Peter said, patting the hand once affectionately before pushing it away.

The older man was watching the profile of his face, gaze falling to the white knuckles gripped around glass, calm voice flowing over him. “Someone more likely to become enraged by the very mention of what was done to him finds it difficult to be maintain objectivity. In that respect, I am ill equipped and ineffective at providing the kind of comfort he needs.”

Peter lifted his gaze once more to the wisp of the man who could be carried off by a strong ocean breeze. Elias could have taken flight. Stranded somewhere between the tender press of his small hands and the vile memories coiled against his spine in the night. He stayed. For some reason he stayed. Peter wasn’t worth staying for. Even when they quarreled and he caused his delicate angel to weep, desperate to understand, to be whatever Peter needed him to be. They retreated to their counterparts. Elias ran to Hannibal for comfort and guidance. And he trudged with muttered curses to Will, who was more than happy to met his frustrations with physical altercations, and patient enough to hold him when it subsided and he began to sob uncontrollably. They would talk then, for hours, when the storm passed. Counseled one another on how to cope. Then he would take Elias home, thumb at the tears on his cheeks, and beg for his forgiveness inside a veil of heat and skin.

It hurt him to hear ‘I forgive you, I always forgive you’ whispered with such utter devotion against his mouth in a rush of tenderness.

“There is something to be said about standing beside a man who believes he has lost everything, all of himself, to an event he could not control. To love him throughout the fits and the nightmares, even when he struggles, fights to stay alone…” Peter bit at trembling corners of his mouth, voice rough. “You are good to him. And to the sparrow. And me. I am grateful. I owe you everything.”

Hannibal and Will had tracked him down. They had brought him here. Back to Elias. Opened their doors, their lives, and shared their home to him. A complete stranger. But most importantly, in his absence, they had taken care of the love of his life. They had given him and Elias a house of their own. But they were always drawn back to the warmth of a fire and talks in the evenings after a meal between friends.

“You owe us nothing,” The older man said firmly. “It is enough you possess gratitude and take care of our family. You are family.”

“I’m even grateful for Will…though he is a remarkable pain the ass.”

“Yes, well…” Hannibal choked on wine, laughter rising. “You eventually come to learn that is part of his charm.”

“An asset?”

The older man beamed at the pun. “I knew I was quite fond of you, Peter.”

“Sorry? What about my ass?” Will was peering at them over his shoulder quizzically, ears pricking at the hum of his name. “See, sparrow, you could do so much better.”

Blank grey eyes tipped to the side. “Do I have your blessing to throw your wretched sea nymph back into the ocean from where he came from?”

“If you must.” There was a dramatic sigh and then a pause. “But bring him back relatively unscathed.”

“N-no…hey, hey, hey! Hannibal! Hannibal! Hann—“

There was a great splash. Then another. And another. Curses turned to smiles then laughter. Three flashes of moonlight wrestled against one another for the softened touch of the moonlight above. The fourth watched safely beside a fire and considered what he had done to deserve the love of a good man, to find his home by the sea filled once more with family.

“Come on, come closer. For fuck sake pretend like you like each other.”

Will was sitting in Hannibal’s lap. Elias was balanced between them, entirely too drunk to sit up straight on his own. An Iphone caught the light as Peter tried to fit them all in the frame of the digital screen.

“Closer. Closer. Ah, yes! Now smile and try to look less murderous, Lecters.”

There was a click and bright flash. They all blinked at green and yellow spots fuzzing their vision.

“We do not look murderous,” Hannibal grumbled, arms curving around Will as he leaned over to look at the photo.

Will’s eyes were screwed shut, laughing at the last minute. Hannibal was caught between amusement and frowning. Elias was smiling from ear to ear. Peter had put bunny ears behind the priest and was kissing a ruddy cheek.

“That’s really just how his face looks.” Will noted with a snort.

Hannibal pounced on the younger man in an instant, tickling him ruthlessly until Will was breathless and flushed pink from face to chest.

“Okay, okay, okay! I concede, fuck, Christ!”

“Remind me, why do I keep you?” The older man cupped palms underneath cool shoulder blades and chased after pink skin with light fingertips.

“Can’t live without me…” Lashes swept over crystal blue eyes as Hannibal kissed him, hands sliding in silvery hair to hold on, murmur trailing off. “…and who would look after the dogs?”

“Peter!” Elias crowed, tugging on dark curls, clinging to both Peter and Will. “Peter, I want a kiss too.”

With another pull their lips parted. Hannibal wrestled with the automatic sensation he now knew was jealousy. Will turned his face, bright eyes lifting as Elias tipped forward on knees, cupping the back of a head sweetly.

Peter had no such reservations. Or had them in spite of an earlier claim.

A low growl and possessive hands dragged Elias away before Peter pinned him to the blanket. “My mouth, petit moineau, is right here…” Two fingers pointed at rosy lips inching closer. “…least you have forgotten.”

With a wet slide of tongue and lips, Elias forgot all about Will. And Hannibal. Slender fingers clenched and pulled until blonde tresses loosed, falling over shoulders. Peter smiled against the teeth nipping at him, settling comfortably between thin legs dragging him flat against the body beneath. The priest moaned against a tongue, tugging clumsily at buttons on a shirt.

“Jeeesus.” Will glanced over and groaned. “If you are going to fuck could you at least be polite enough to do it in the back of the car?”

“The Bentley is not a cheap motel,” Hannibal informed firmly, before rolling the younger man on his side and curled up against his back.

A fist thumped on his thigh. “You’ve made love to me in that cheap motel, thank you very much.”

“And on it.” Elias chirped. He clamped a hand over his mouth, the rest of his slurring muffled. “Not that…I know anything…about that.”

“Elias! Why do I tell you anything?! How the fuck did you make it through confessions?”

“Good question.” Peter smirked and kissed at the back of a hand until it relinquished the mouth he was searching for. “If you didn’t share, Will, we would have nothing to shame and humiliate you with in the future.”

“There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Is that it?” Dark brows rose high on a forehead.

“It is very difficult to concentrate with your voice droning on.” Peter was fully engaged beneath a hoodie now, palms holding down hips, and kissing his way from collarbone to sternum.

“Good to know. I’ll just keep talking then,” Will replied flatly, jabbing a thumb his direction and glanced up at Hannibal. “Why do we keep him? He would make a much better entree.”

The older man began to open his mouth to reply.

Breathless sighs rose. “He makes me happy.”

“The things I do for you,” Will slurred wearily, settling against arms around him.

“Excuse me.” Peter popped out from beneath the hoodie, glaring at Will and then his flushed fiancé. “The things I do for you. And to you.”

"Well, yes, but Will-"

"Will, nothing. I don't want to hear it, traitresse!"

"I'd like to hear it, sparrow. Tell me all about how much you appreciate me."

Hannibal muffled a chuckle against a shoulder blade, slinging a leg lazily around a waist and pulling Will closer, breathing in the scent of ocean and skin. He traced the patterns starlight left across his skin. He was beautiful when he was happy. Will glanced back with a smile. His heart ached from the sight.

“I’m cold,” Elias whined, bereft Peter was glaring and not burrowed beneath his clothes.

“Should we head back?”

A wristwatch flashed in the dimming firelight. “We could stay a few more hours and watch the sun rise.”

Elias mewled several more times, eyes struggling to stay open, before he rolled over and wrestled his way into Will’s arms, curling up with a sigh.

“Little dove…” The younger man looked down at Elias, nose pressed against his chest, and then up at Peter who still staring at the spot Elias had been just a second ago. “Normally I would have no problem with being so blatantly used for my body warmth, but I don’t think…”

Soft snores reached their ears.

“Elias?” Will shook him lightly, bewilderment creasing his face. “He’s asleep.”

“Disturb him and you will never hear the end of it.”

“He is cross when he doesn’t get enough sleep. More so when he has a hangover. I hope one of us had the good forethought to bring coffee or we are all doomed.”

Peter flopped on his side, frowning and muttered, “And withholding.”

“Something else you have in common,” The older man murmured with a yawn, eyes slipping closed.

“Shut the fuck up before I bury you in the sand and leave you here for seagulls to use as a docking post.”

Hannibal snorted and held closer, pressing his cheek against the slope of a neck, and smiled. Will was never more charming than when threatening his life. He would punish him later. If he remembered. If Will didn’t distract him.

“Seeing as how I would like to continue having adventurous sex with my fiancé, I will let him stay where he is. This time,” Peter growled in a low whisper, inching closer, sliding fingers over a delicate waist until the priest was cradled between himself and Will. “If I hear anything about your hands wandering though, we’re going to have a problem.”

“So…” There was a minute long pause, throat clearing. “…morning wood is fine so long as I don’t grab his ass then?”

“You are an unparalleled dick and I wish I had never met you, Will.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Will brushed his hand over the one at the priest’s waist, squeezing lightly. “Love you too, idiot.”

Low drawling murmurs and the caress of the ocean carried them all off to sleep beneath the expanse of stars hanging in the night sky.

#hannigram #fic #fluff #will and hannibal #elias and peter

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abutterflyobsession · 8 years ago

Text

Doctor Who AU: Part 16

prelude/one/two/three/four/five/six/seven/eight/nine/ten/eleven/twelve/thirteen/fourteen/fifteen/ao3

“What about this one?” Roland stepped over the twisted wreckage of the smashed painting and indicated another canvas that had been concealed behind the picture of the Doctor, “ring any bells? Rustle any leaves?”

“That's . . . Dawn?”

Bog figured that keeping Roland talking helped delay the creation of an evil plant army and, more importantly, any more personal suffering on Bog's part. Bog was just too tired to consider the abstract thought of a plant army attacking the world for no discernible reason except for Roland's twisted amusement.

The painting did look just like Dawn. Fluffy yellow hair and energetically cheerful face.

“Wrong!” Roland waved a rebuking finger at Bog, “This lovely young lady, full of sunshine and love, is obviously my buttercup.”

“That is obviously Dawn.”

“I'm telling you it isn't. My buttercup and her sister are identical twins, you buffoon.”

“I have met them, you know. Noticed that they aren't. Aren't identical. Not in the least.”

“You've met them as they are now. This girl of bright-eyed wonder was the lady who ended up in the Time War. Breaks your heart, doesn't it? Thinking of that poor little thing caught in all that messy fighting. Then she died.”

Roland knocked the painting off the wall and it landed face-down on the floor. He walked along the wall to the next painting, treading on the fallen canvas as he did.

“And so innocence is lost to the cruelty of the universe and the shattered remains of a once radiant youth are packed up and sent home with accolades and medals for valor. Like a purple heart with a new face thrown in as a bonus.”

The woman in the painting was nothing like Dawn—or the Doctor's supposed first face, that is. She looked to be at least in her mid-thirties, as compared to Dawn's early twenties.

Also, this woman was Indian.

“Look,” Bog said tiredly, “I've kind of lost a lot of blood so I'm not very quick on the uptake right now, but . . . what?”

“Why must I be plagued with the tiny, ignorant brains of lesser beings?” Roland implored the ceiling before turning his gaze back to Bog with a look of deliberate condescension, “When a Time Lord dies they regenerate. If you're off wandering around on a battlefield there's no way to stabilize things when your genetics get put through a blender and things can get a little off model. So, new face. New brain. Old memories. Very simple.”

“Of course it is.”

“This broken little soul comes home to the loving embrace of her family. The family who had wanted to tuck her safely away with her sister, but instead she ran off to play soldier and got herself killed. There were reconciliations, hugs, all manner of touching emotional slop. Even her darling, dearest husband had come home. And like she was a changed woman, he was a changed man.”

“I'm hoping I pass out soon, honestly.”

“The war was ended, the lovely lady goes spinning off into the universe with reckless abandon, burning through face,” Roland knocked down the painting, “after face,” he knocked down the next one, “after face.”

He made his way around the room, knocking the paintings off the wall one by one until they were all laying on the floor.

“Trying to make a fresh start. To shake off the past, the fickle lady that she is. Me, I prefer to maintain a standard,” Roland gestured to his face, “the highest of standards. Everything she ever wanted me to be and yet she still discards me. For you, of all primitive creatures!”

“I'd say you lost me but I wasn't really following to start with. I met the woman like five minutes ago and I'm not exactly enamored of the consequences so far.”

“Fixed point in time,” Roland went on, punctuating his narrative with dramatic hand gestures, “Boy meets girl. Girl tells boy about his roots and he ends up doing glorious things for his plant peers. Boy and girl fall in love, get married, have 2.5 kids. Well, maybe not the last part, but you get the point. It's a tale as old as time and it's a disgusting cliché.”

“To be honest, I'm not exactly keen on the Doctor. So let me go and you can get back to your obsessive stalking without having to worry about me.”

“Please,” Roland pressed his hand to his chest, “I've worked myself to the bone to prevent you two meeting. It's tied into her sister's release somehow so I arranged for plenty of danger to come my sweetheart's way. A few daleks here, a cyberman army or two there. I knew she's get herself out just fine, clever little thing, but it convinced her it just wasn't safe to wake up her dear baby sister. But she ended up doing it anyway and—ugh! You make your entrance.”

“I really don't want to be hearing about your relationship problems. Have you ever considered that the lady just isn't interested in you anymore?”

Roland stared at Bog with total incomprehension.

“No,” Roland laughed away the idea, “No, before you came along it used to be her and me, rocketing around the universe, playing our game. She might have amused herself with you little mayflies, playing at friendship and humanity, but all of them passed. I was still the most important one in her life, her one, real companion throughout all of the universe and all of history. But then this glorified potted plant comes along and for some reason her head is completely turned.”

“Look, I haven't even known her a whole day and I would hardly imagine her head as capable of being turned by anything less than than blunt force trauma.”

“Yes, because you haven't gotten to that part yet!”

“Right.”

“It happened, but then I made sure it didn't happen! I made sure that your happy, fluffy little meeting never happened. Then time went all to pieces and kept trying to shove you two together some other way. She knows, my buttercup knows that something isn't right and she's been trying to get to the bottom of it, but I've kept her distracted. Yet somehow you end up meeting. But I'll fix it. I'll change it.”

“I'm totally up for going home and losing her phone number.”

Something pinged softly.

“Hm, results are in.”

A console rose up in the center of the room. It was a sleek thing, a far cry from the patchwork console in the Doctor's TARDIS. This one was white with reflective silver trimming. Bog wondered if that was so Roland could catch glimpses of his own face while he worked.

“How frustrating,” Roland said after a brief study of a screen's readout, “I'm still having trouble cracking the code.”

“You tried your best. Guess it's time to call it a day.”

“It would seem that there is not only a genetic lock on it. It's recognized you as admin and has decided that only your genetic code and your mental profile can unlock it. Hm, dear, dear, I was so hoping I could kill you now.”

“Too bad.”

“I'm sure I can make it work.”

“Lovely.

The Doctor frowned at the readout from the vortex manipulator.

“Why were you skipping around 1960s America for a week?”

“I thought we were working on a plan to save Bog,” Dawn sighed, “not prying into my activities.”

“I was checking the charge.”

“It was an accidental excursion. We got back as soon as we could.”

“What were you doing all that time?” the Doctor asked suspiciously.

“Oh, this and that. Caught some concerts. Partied with some celebrities. Tried to process that my sister is eight hundred years older than I thought.”

The Doctor dropped the vortex manipulator and crossed the room to rummage in a dented tool box. This conveniently placed her so that she was facing away from Dawn.

“I'm not mad. Well, I'm not boiling in a red-hot fury of indignant rage anymore. I'm still not happy with you, but I've calmed down enough to listen to whatever you have to say. And to hear the story of . . . what happened to mom and dad.”

Oh, little rising star, Dawn's sister had said, I tried. You have to believe I tried. But I couldn't save them.

Then the cloister bells had tolled and the discussion was shelved.

Dawn had run out of the TARDIS, shoving the words out of her head, refusing to accept them. She had fixed a smile on her face and ran like mad toward the next adventure. And she had kept running, headlong into the 1960s, right until the third day of their involuntary stay there when it all became too much to hold inside and she spilled the whole story out to Sunny.

He had been teaching her to climb trees at a park. Not an important park that showed up in the history books. Just a park somewhere with ducks swimming in a pond. A few of the ducks were actually an alien species, but Dawn figured they were close enough not to make much of a difference.

“I figured out pretty quick that I was better at climbing and acrobatic stuff because I was small,” Sunny was telling her, “I've got a good center of gravity. The advantage of being short is that my legs aren't so long that I get tangled up in my own feet. I was in all these gymnastic classes when I was a kid and my mom was always talking about how I'd end up going to the Olympics but that was just her bragging it up to her friends. I've always thought of it more as a survival skill than anything else.”

Sunny had climbed up the tree so fast and so easily that Dawn couldn't see how he had done it, so she made him come down and do it twice more. Then she tried to copy his moves and slammed her head into a branch.

“Usually it's my sister who ends up needing medical attention,” Dawn grumbled once they were finally in the tree, sheltered among the thick growth of spring leaves.

“Heh, every family has one of those. My mom likes to say that my brother Josh broke three arms.”

“I'm assuming he didn't actually have three arms?”

“Nope. He broke his left, his right, then his left again. One time by falling like three feet into soft sand.”

“When we were ten my sister broke her leg when she tripped in the middle of an empty room with a perfectly level floor. Even she wasn't sure how she did it, but she insisted for years that it had been invisible aliens and we both researched every kind of race and species with invisibility and camouflage abilities and got so interested that when we went to the academy we coauthored a paper on the subject. I wanted to call it something like “Exposing the Hidden Enemies” but my sister said no one would get the joke since most of the races we discussed in the paper were rather shy and not at all violent.”

“But they did break her leg. That's pretty vicious.”

“That was my exact argument! It nearly swayed her, too.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“Just the two of us. You have six brothers, right? That sounds . . . crowded.”

“Totally. The family joke is that there was no space for me to grow, all my older brothers had filled it already. They're all taller than I am. I got used to being randomly picked up by my brothers just because they thought it was cool that they could.”

“What about your parents?”

“Both taller than I am. I'll forever be their 'little boy,'” Sunny wiggled his fingers to make air quotes, “Mom's a welder and dad runs a little Cajun catering business. Mom used to be a backup dancer for a whole lot of different bands, but after she had my oldest brother she decided welding was steadier work. I get all my moves from her. We all do. You should see us at family reunions, we have a whole hip hop routine.”

“That sounds . . . amazing . . .”

That was when Dawn had started crying and told Sunny that her parents were gone, that they had been dead and dust for centuries and she hadn't even known until that day. Just a little while before she had been looking forward to seeing them again and telling them all about her adventures rattling around in an obsolete TARDIS.

For a little while she cried and hated her sister for lying.

Now, back in the TARDIS, watching the stiff set of her sister's shoulders, Dawn was ready to hear the story.

“After we save Bog, like the foliage in distress that he is, you have to tell me what you've been doing. Eight hundred years, that's a lot of adventures. Or misadventures. No wonder this TARDIS is such a wreck. Have you even been doing maintenance on it or do you just wait until something explodes and sets the room on fire?”

“You'll want to leave,” the Doctor said without turning around, “Once you know everything you'll want to leave.”

“You don't--”

“You think I'm still the same inside. Still your happy, kind sister. But there's nothing left of her but some old photographs.”

“Well, we'll see.”

“I am super uncomfortable listening to this,” Sunny called from the other side of the console room.

“Why did you bring your date back here?” the Doctor grumbled, “didn't you do enough kissing on your little excursion? What are you keeping him around for?”

“I might want to kiss him again,” Dawn grinned.

“Doesn't that get tedious?”

“Nah, Sunny is a good kisser.”

“I am going to die,” Sunny groaned, “I hope that I die.”

Bog had fallen into a haze of exhaustion, too uncomfortable to sleep, but too tired to stay awake. He watched in a detached way as some sort of electronic device was assembled, cables snaking between it and him. Roland's voice rose and fell in smug tones but Bog couldn't wake himself up enough to listen.

A hitch in Roland's smooth voice sparked a tiny bit of interest in Bog, but not enough for him to try and force his eyes full open.

“You really need to moisturize more often. Winter is murder on the skin,” a familiar voice said close to Bog's ear, the breath of their words touching his face. A bottle was put to his lips and water poured into his dry mouth. He almost choked before he remembered how to swallow.

“Took you long enough,” He said when the bottle was empty and his eyes focused enough to let him see the Doctor's face floating in front of him like a dream, “I can feel myself getting uglier by the second.”

“You're looking good, marsh man. The calvary is here.”

“Finally!” Roland's voice rang out, “I thought you were never going to show up, sugar! Now, before you go fiddling with any of those cables please be aware they're jacked into his nervous system and if you pull them out he'll flat line immediately.”

“What is this? What have you done?”

Bog felt the Doctor's fingers touching where the cables had been attached to his arm, driven in through the hardening bark of his skin. The sonic screwdriver whistled and glowed, but she needn't have bothered, Roland was eager to share the details of his project.

“I've turned him into an interface for his precious primrose. He's hooked up to my computers and I've got full access. The AI program is functioning, he template for the army has been complete and growth is beginning outside. Within the hour I'll have an army big enough to take this city. Within a day . . .? Probably enough to take the country.”

“Turn it off!”

“Sure thing, darlin'. Here's the switch.”

A small white box with a red button on it was tossed into the Doctor's hand.

“Just, before you press that you should probably know something: I've worked it out so that if you turn off my program you turn off your chia pet.”

“Explain.” the doctor grated out the order, button clutched in her hand.

“It's simply, dearest, really. If you want to stop my army then you have to turn off the program. But if you stop the program you hit the kill switch on the plant as well. You can either stop my army or save him. You can't do both. Now, think it over, but don't take too long. But I'm sure you'll decide quickly. We both know how good you are at making hard decisions.”

The smile he gave was vicious.

#strange magic #spread the lofe #butterfly bog #potionless #strange magic doctor who au #doctor who au #my writing fanfic #I'm too tired to do a better job I'm sorry

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