#because its my responsibility to deal with them and dealing with psych stuff is hard and i shouldnt have to be doing all this right now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

4ragon · 3 years

Note

oh can we please hear the magatama essay??

Oh boy oh boy, let’s go

Ahem

How to Lie to the Magatama

An essay by JJsADragon

Unlocking Psyche-Locks with the Magatama is a really fun mechanic throughout the Ace Attorney series. It’s introduced in Justice for All when Pearl charges the Magatama Maya gifts to Phoenix with spiritual energy. She describes it thusly: “This is the power of the Magatama. Only you can see these "Psyche-Locks", Mr. Nick… The more someone wants to hide their secret, the more locks you will see. If it's only one, I think you can easily unlock it.”

Basically: If someone has a secret they don’t want to share, you have to present in-game evidence and break the locks. Things get a little more complicated with the introduction of Black Psyche-Locks, but the general gist of it stays the same. Someone has a secret they don’t want to tell you, and you can unlock that secret with evidence.

This, I believe, is fundamentally wrong.

Why do I think that? Well, I always really like picking apart these mechanics, both as in-game mechanics and how they would work in the real world. In particular, I think the most interesting way to see how something works is to figure out its shortcomings. What does and doesn’t set off Apollo’s bracelet? Why doesn’t Athena notice The Phantom’s whole deal? And, more to the point, when does the Magatama straight up get things wrong?

There are several moments I want to focus on. We have seen the Magatama fail several times throughout the series. Or, to clarify, we have seen at least one time when locks should have appeared where they did not, and several times where the chains did appear and the answers uncovered were either incomplete or just straight-up incorrect.

So, let’s find out how and why the Magatama fails us. First up:

The False Negative: Farewell, My Turnabout

Fortunately, I think this one is the easiest one to understand. The Magatama has one very clear false negative in Justice for All: Farewell, My Turnabout. Phoenix asks Matt Engarde if he murdered Juan Corrida, and he replies, “Just so we're clear, dude, I didn't kill anyone, and that includes Juan Corrida, OK?” And he’s correct. He didn’t kill anyone. He did not actively commit any murders. And on that technicality, the Magatama does not go off. He did not kill anyone, and he knows it. He believes it. He feels no residual guilt over it. His hands are clean. Hell, he seems kind of gleeful about the fact that he was ‘technically right’ when the truth comes out later.

So, why didn’t a Psyche-Lock appear? As I said, it was a technicality. He wasn’t trying to hide it from Phoenix, he just truly felt no responsibility for what happened. He felt no guilt about it. The Psyche-Locks don’t appear until Matt’s secrets come up.

This, of course, lines up neatly with our understanding of the Magatama. This instance very clearly falls within what we know about Psyche-Locks. If you’re not trying to hide it, if you truly believe what you’re saying, it’s not a secret the Magatama will alert you to. So, what about these other instances? Do these line up as neatly in the rules of the Psyche-Locks?

The Half Truth: The Cosmic Turnabout

This one is a little strange so I’m just going to touch on this.

In day one of your investigations for The Cosmic Turnabout, you run into a conflicted Bobby Fulbright. When pressed, two Psyche-Locks appear, and unlocking them leads you to three conversations: 1) The bomb threat before the launch, 2) Why Simon Blackquill was given permission to prosecute, and 3) The mysterious Phantom.

So why do I call this a false positive? After all, he is technically hiding all these things. And yet, a lot of how this Psyche-Unlocking goes down doesn’t really make as much sense when you consider that Bobby Fulbright is The Phantom. It really doesn’t make much sense how much information he’s feeding them about the situation, unlocked Psyche-Locks or not. Especially the way he goes about the whole thing.

We know in hindsight that The Phantom doesn’t actually care about Simon Blackquill or solving the crime that he committed. Every display of emotion is an act. So why does he make a big show of feeling conflicted? Why does the bomb threat that he made lead him to divulging all of these worries about Simon going after the Phantom? Was him revealing this information part of his game? Since we know he was trying to cover his tracks, was he feeding us half truths for a reason? Did he want to feed us this information?

If that’s the case, that leads us to a new problem. Since the question asked was “Why Are You Being Cooperative”, why wouldn’t the fact that he was the Phantom ping the Magatama? He was being cooperative so that he could feed you information, not because he cared about any of the things he was ‘troubled’ by. So why does the Magatama only pick up on half the truth? After all, the Phantom wasn’t knowingly tricking the Magatama.

(Also if you haven’t read this comic I thought it was a super interesting theory. Not sure I ascribe to it 100% but it was a really interesting take.)

I think it’s important to note in this example that, no matter how you interpret The Phantom’s actions, all signs point to him wanting to divulge this information for one reason or another. There was an intent about it. He may not have known a thing about the Psyche-Locks, but he very clearly was baiting the protagonists with an intent. And technically, without knowing it, he was also baiting the Magatama.

This means that, in the end, the information he actually revealed to the protagonists was not a closely guarded secret of the heart. Yes, you still needed to present evidence and draw it out of him, but I think The Phantom wanted the characters to draw it out of him. It’s not a secret that a bumbling detective was having trouble hiding, it was information that a spy wanted planted. There was intent here, no matter how you look at it. And that leads us to our third example.

The False Positive: The Stolen Turnabout

Unlike the previous two cases, this is the first time that someone has straight up lied to the Magatama. Trials and Tribulations: The Stolen Turnabout. I always get so mixed up by this case. It took me three playthroughs to finally get the hang of who was doing what where and when. And do you know why that was? It was because of one lie that Luke Atmey told us early in the investigation.

Phoenix: Detective Atmey... You were knocked unconscious by the thief, weren't you!?

Atmey: Ha ha ha! Surely you must be joking... You think that I, Luke Atmey, could be knocked unconscious so easily!?

Phoenix: This sword proves it!

Atmey: ...! Th-That's...

Phoenix: Before the theft, this sword was in the hand of the statue of Ami Fey. Furthermore... at that time, it was not bent.

Atmey: Aaah... Err...

Phoenix: ...There's only one explanation. You were struck on the head and knocked unconscious by this sword! Well, Detective!? What about it!?

Atmey: ...I'm impressed. You truly are an "Ace Attorney"...

Unlock Successful

Unlike every other instance, this is just a straight-up lie. This is not a technicality, like with Matt Engarde. This is not pieces of the truth, like The Phantom. This is just factually incorrect. Luke Atmey was not knocked unconscious by Mask☆Demasque. In fact, this not only is a lie, it’s a calculated lie. Without knowing about the Magatama or its capabilities, Luke Atmey used it to convince us that he was knocked unconscious by Mask☆Demasque at the scene of the crime to disguise the fact that he was Mask☆Demasque, which is even wilder when you realize later that even that was a lie! He was covering up a lie with another lie with another lie. It was not just a ploy to fool you into thinking he was attacked my Mask☆Demasque, it was also a part of him convincing you that he was Mask☆Demasque when he wasn’t.

So why the FUCK does the Magatama go off?!

There’s of course a meta answer. The writers weren’t thinking that hard about it. They just wanted to use the Psyche-Locks to make the story more interesting. But that’s boring. I want to go deeper.

Luke Atmey, like The Phantom later on, wanted information planted. But he couldn’t simply tell everyone he was attacked by Mask☆Demasque. After all, he knew admitting to it would put his credentials under scrutiny. So he needed someone to organically draw it out of him. Again, he wanted this information out there. Otherwise, him agreeing to Phoenix’s conclusions, hell, him setting up this scenario with the Shichishito wouldn’t make any sense. Plus, it was only behind one Psyche-Lock and led to him revealing a photo of the crime, one that he was very meticulous about taking to create an alibi.

So. What does this all mean? How are people confusing the Magatama? How are people lying? I think that the element that Pearl got wrong in her initial explanation is that the Magatama reacts to secrets that, deep down, a person wants to divulge. After all, with enough evidence, you can eventually draw all sorts of information out of a person. Some are certainly more closely guarded secrets than others, but in the end, I think the Magatama reacts to secrets that a character wants to share but is not willing to do so without that prompting. It doesn’t have to be real, it just has to be something the person is keeping secret with the intent of finding a way to plant the information.

This can even apply to Black Psyche-Locks. Unconscious secrets that are hidden even from the person hiding them? Those are deep hurts that I think drive a lot about these characters’ personalities and motivations, and I think things like that are the kinds of stuff that a character wants to confront but is unable to do so out of fear, so they push it from their minds.

Let’s look at a few more examples. In Bridge to the Turnabout, Miles demands info from Larry, and he’s able to completely circumvent the Psyche-Locks by divulging something completely irrelevant about his crush on Iris. When Miles realizes his mistake, he discovers a completely new set of Psyche-Locks. Or when Phoenix confronts “Iris” about the presence of another Iris at the crime, “Iris” (cough Dahlia cough) uses that to start planting these ideas about Iris as the original betrayer, as the one who had wronged Dahlia in the first place. I feel these are both things that the characters did want to share, despite not wanting to do it unprompted.

Anyway, uh, that’s most of what I got. Perhaps there’s a stronger answer out there for why the Magatama may react in places it shouldn’t. Maybe there’s some other hidden rule they haven’t mentioned. Or maybe it is just as simple as “The writers didn’t think that hard about it.” But hey, I think I like this interpretation better.

#ace attorney #spoilers #ace attorney spoilers #meta #j

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for-evans-sake · 3 years

Text

Dear Mom and Dad,

I know the past couple of years of radio silence from me have been hard. I have been working on a lot of issues that have brought up a lot of things. And while I am in no way ready to talk or meet, I wanted to give you a change to try and understand why I am staying away and what I am working through.

Before I start, though, I wanted to give you a warning. While the things I am going to talk about are not meant to cause any pain or place any blame, they could easily be misconstrued as such. If you are not ready for that you should stop here.

First, I just wanted to give you a quick rundown of the major issues I am still working through.

I have very poor self-esteem or self-worth. I have trouble accepting or trusting any type of praise or recognition. I have anxiety, to the point that I am unable to act or react. I am very impatient, especially with myself. I am overly aware of others actions or reactions as it relates to myself. I also have a great deal of shame and guilt for the most mundane of things, like making mistakes or talking about sex.

These are some of the things I have been working on with my therapist for the past couple of years. They are all intertwined and contected to one another, like a big gordian knot made of steel.

From what we can tell I am suffering from Complex-PTSD. It's not like the PTSD that you see in the movies, all flashbacks and stuff. But it can make living life difficult and at times very disorienting.

When you think about PTSD, you most likely think about soldiers being mental scared because of one or two major events. C-PTSD is not like that. With this it is lots of many small things. Things, that on their own, would be easily overlooked or brushed off. But over time, they can pile up. It's like a thousand papercuts to your soul.

For me, religion played a large part in creating these scars.

The concept of a loving but vengeful god, all powerful and all knowing, who is willing to punish people for an infinite amount of time for things they did in their finite lives will mess with a child's head.

The idea that this same all-knowing and all-powerful god is responsible for everything good that happens in all history and time, but that people are responsible for everything bad that happens in all of history and time, is likewise potentially very damaging to a child.

The idea that a god who is willing to love you, but only if you do exactly what he says. A god who will love you, but only if you are willing to give up everything you are. That, if a human parent said that to their child, would be considered abuse.

You are basically telling a child, who is still trying to figure out who they are, that no matter what they do, no matter how hard they try, they will never be good enough. You are telling them that for the crime of being a living breathing person, they DESERVE torment in the fiery pits of hell.

You are telling this child that if something good to them or through them that it didn't happen because of them, but in spite of them. That god made it happen and it had nothing to do with them.

I learned these lessons and learned them well.

I am broken and unworthy.

Nothing is ever good enough.

Perfection is not the goal, it's the only option.

Love is not something that is freely given and must be earned.

These are the things that I learned from going to church.

This is the constant drip, drip, drip that slowly drilled its way into my head and psyche.

So, when you or anyone else criticizes me, I feel like a complete failure and unlovable,

When I try to rest and take time for myself, I can't relax because it means I and not doing my best.

It means that unless I do something perfectly on the first try, I feel like a bad person. So, I never try new things.

There is a constant little voice in the back of my head that whispers things to me, like white noise. "Nothing you do will be enough", "if you can do it perfectly then you are not worth anyone's time", "You will always be a burden, always damaged, always broken, always unworthy.". And while you have NEVER said anything like this to me, that voice, that constant stream of negativity, sounds a lot like you.

So, for now I need to step back and focus on me. I need to see if I can learn how to find myself worthy of my own time, my own love, how to accept myself. I need to find a way to believe that I am enough.

Till then I hope you try to understand and respect my needs. I hope you know I love you.

#therapy #anxitey #trauma #religious trauma #deconversion #exfundamentalist #open letter #mental health #understanding

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one-leaf-grimoire · 4 years

Text

“triad”

Chapter 11: the waning moon

Summary: Lisa feels confident enough to try learning more about the Devils again. Bad things happen in this chapter- just a warning :)))

Ao3 link

Silence.

Nothingness.

Emptiness.

But this time, it’s not so bad. It’s not a void that I’m sinking down into. It’s a cocoon, wrapped firmly around my body like a warm hug. It’s safe.

“And… open.”

I open my eyes, meeting Adeline’s golden gaze as soon as I do. We stare at each other blankly for a moment before her plump lips break into a little grin. “That felt right, didn’t it?”

I nod quickly, excitement filling me. “Yeah… how long was that?”

“Let’s see…” Adeline scrambles to her feet and walks over to the clock. “One fifty three… so, 15 minutes!” She turns back around to look down at me, still sitting cross legged on my bedroom bloor. “That’s the longest yet… you really kept your mind blank that whole time?”

“Totally blank!” With a little difficulty, I rise to my feet. “Now that I can meditate for 15 minutes, that should be more than enough time for me to enter the Septad again.” The thought of attempting that again is still making me a little apprehensive, but not nearly as much as it did before. After confronting the things I hate most about myself, and a superficial image of Julius, I managed to overcome whatever it was that was holding me back. Maybe this is just a momentary high, but I need to take advantage of it while it lasts. “Adeline… thanks for all your help.”

Adeline turns to look at me, her eyes widening as I take her hand. I offer her a gentle smile. “I couldn’t do this without you, you know.”

She stares at me a moment longer, the slightly-shocked expression still on her face. “Oh… thank you.” Finally, she gives my hand a squeeze, holding on for a moment longer than she could have. “That means a lot… if I can do anything to help you, and- er, the Kingdom, I will!”

I can’t help but giggle a little at her awkwardness as she removes her hand. “You don’t have to be so proper about it, Adeline.” I give her a nudge before walking over to the table. “I want to become friends with you, you know…”

“Huh? Friends?” Adeline’s words follow me, causing my smile to widen.

“Yeah, if that’s okay with you.”

I haven’t known her long, but I can’t deny that I want her by my side all the time… she’s a comfort, a source of warmth that I desperately need. No matter what the source of these feelings are, I want to kindle that flame… I’ll let it burn away my grief and guilt.

“Here, I got some wine! You mentioned you liked Rose, right?” I quickly snatch the bottle off the table and hold it up for her to see. I have to suppress a cheeky grin. Hehe! I’m so smart, setting this all up for us~ I cried in front of her way too many times, I need to show her that I’m more emotionally stable than she thinks!

“OH! You remembered!” Adeline’s eyes sparkle at the sight of the bottle, but then, to my shock, narrow with skepticism.

“But… you won’t be drinking with me, will you?”

I blink a couple times, then realize that Adeline must be more observant than she lets on. “Oh… you noticed?”

Adeline nods quickly, her playful nature coming back. “Of course I noticed! You never have any alcohol at dinner, or when you have guests, or when you’re working. That’s so responsible of you! I really admire your willpower.”

“Oh… yeah. Thank you, I try my best…”

I gulp nervously, knowing full well that the reason for my sobriety isn’t because I’m responsible or anything… if I wasn’t pregnant, I know I would have drowned in whiskey by now. I guess it wouldn’t be much fun if she was the only one drinking- but it’s not like I have a choice- I get a momentary itch to tell her about the baby, but for some reason I can’t do it. Not now, at least.

“Well, I appreciate the gift! But I need to let you sleep! It’s nearly two in the morning!” Adeline is suddenly pushing me towards my bed with an admonishing tone. “Come on, you’re already wearing pajamas.”

“Whoa- wait-” I blush a little but don’t struggle. “Adeline, you know I don’t need to sleep as much as-”

“Yeah, yeah, all that Simulcian magic stuff-” Adeline cuts me off, very business-like. “Like I said, it’s my job to help the Kingdom, and the King! So go to bed!” She steps back and gives me a tired look as I sheepishly pull the covers over myself. My face is basically burning right now. Part of me wishes she would leave, but the other part…

… wishes she would stay.

“Honestly… you get up so early, too.” She shakes her head, but can’t help but smile smugly to herself as she looks down at me. What’s going on in her head?! Does she pity me? Or does she think I’m cute… “What are you even doing? I can never find you around the castle.”

“Oh, in the mornings?” My face brightens up a bit. “I’m training!”

“Training? But, aren’t you already the most powerful mage?” Adeline asks, curiosity peaked.

“Well, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I can defeat a devil. Look-” I sit up and reach over to my bedside table, picking up a heavy book. Adeline cranes her neck to see the cover. “That’s about the Heart Kingdom?”

“Yeah.” I start flipping through the pages, dust falling out and onto my bedspread. “The mages in the Heart Kingdom draw mana from nature… they have quite a few techniques for doing so, and it can greatly amplify mana. For instance, my fire magic-” I stop on a page, covered with ancient-looking writing, and point at an illustration of a hand with fire magic bursting out of it. The fire itself is surrounded by a ring of those runes. “You can apply mana writing to your magic… draw your mana from the earth… and turn Fire magic into True Fire Magic.” I glance up at Adeline to gauge her reaction. She’s intrigued.

“Amazing… so…” She tears her gaze from the page. “Have you mastered it yet?”

“Mastered? No, not quite… but…” I close the book and brush the dust off my lap. “I want to master it… soon, we’ll be sending our own Knights to learn the natural mana method. But before that, I want to show them how powerful it truly can be.”

I run my fingers over the ancient bindings.

“And then… I want to try and draw out even more power.”

That power… I want it.

True Time Magic.

With that… I wonder what I could be capable of.

“Anyway, goodnight Adeline.” I turn to smile up at her one last time. “I promise I’ll sleep in tomorrow for once… thank you for all your help.”

Adeline straightens up, her eyes lingering on my face before she turns away to leave.

“Goodnight! And it was my pleasure.”

The door swings shut, and darkness falls. I’m alone at last.

… I’ve cleared my mind. Tomorrow, I’ll go back to the village, and find the truth of the SImulcian’s history with the Devils!

Last time, I almost accomplished what I wanted, but I was shown something else, something unrelated, as far as I could tell. My grandparents, the last Dyad before me and Julius, standing there on the beach together in the sunset.

Our fate.

I wonder…

I close my eyes, drifting off as I curl up around Julius’s robe.

… if they were trying to tell me something.

-------------------------------------------

I keep my promise to Adeline, letting myself sleep in until around eight in the morning. My stomach is what eventually wakes me, a familiar pang of strong nausea attacking me again and again. “Ughh… settle down!” I groan, rolling over and balling up the robe/blanket in one of my fists. “You can’t be that big yet… So why are you so painful?!”

The baby, of course, can’t answer, not yet at least. Maybe in a couple years I can demand an explanation, but that’s miles down the road as far as I’m concerned. But for now, I have to deal with it.

Eventually, I drag myself out of bed and to the bathroom. Fortunately it seems like I won’t have to throw up, so I decide to treat myself to a nice bath. The hot water sends a pleasant chill down my back, and I sink down into the bubbles up to my neck. Ahh… that’s more like it! I smile and close my eyes, feeling more relaxed than I had the entire night. I’m itching to get up and get moving, to go out into the woods and get some training in before my first meetings, but it’s far too late for that. Marx is awake by now, and if I disappear, I’ll be getting calls every two seconds.

It’s a shame, because I just found the perfect place to train. I stumbled upon a ravine, completely by accident, in the middle of the woods one morning. It was so deep, I couldn’t even see the bottom. But, I could feel mana radiating out of it in waves, beautiful, natural mana: just what I needed. So… I jumped in.

I never did find the bottom, but I found a nice ledge to sit on while I fired off all manner of spells. Just being down there, bathing in it all… it reminded me of my youthful days spent in the woods, sitting by the stream, and honing what little magic I had.

One day… I’ll reach the bottom of that ravine. But for now, it serves a purpose. My handle on True Flame magic is developing quickly. I smile a little as I think about it before lifting my hand up out of the water. Within a moment, blue flame erupts from my fingers, condensing before twisting into letters. Ancient runes: Mana words. The basis of the Heart Kingdom’s mana method, and the key to unlocking the potential within my magic.

True Time Magic…

Suddenly, my flame flickers out. I don’t even have a chance to be surprised before it hits me.

Pain.

It’s like a light; blinding, searing its way into the left side of my head. All my other senses dull, drowned out by the sheer potency of this feeling.

Pain.

Am I screaming? I have no idea. I can’t hear. I can’t feel.

Oh… this…

The light gets brighter and brighter. Fire burns into my mind, shards from a shattered ego piercing every inch of my psyche.

This is…

And suddenly, it’s over.

My whole body goes limp, having convulsed and tightened up more than I realized during the episode. With a shallow gasp, I fall backwards, and hit my head hard on the porcelain edge of the tub.

By the time I wake up, the water is cold, and someone is knocking on my door.

“Are you in there?!

Every cell in my body protests as I sit up again, faster than I should have, but it’s not like I have a choice. What the hell was that?! I think, shakily standing up, using the wall as a support. “I-I’m in here! I’ll be right out!”

With a little difficulty, I pull my bathrobe on, glancing at myself in the mirror before doing a double take. “Oh no… not again…”

There’s dried blood coming out of my nose, dripping down my chin.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Hold on one second!”

I wet a towel and wipe away the blood, then throw it into the sink before running to my bedroom door. Whatever just happened, I don’t have time to worry about it. Even so, pain like that… the last time I felt it, was during the first few Dyads with Julius. Back when I was weak, and almost died from the force of his mana. But, Julius is dead, the only Dyad that exists is between me and a tiny shard of his soul.

Is it something pregnancy related? Or…

It doesn’t matter. I have to get through today, then I’ll go see Owen.

“Thank god- what are you even doing in there?” Marx scowls up at me as I open the door. “I’ve been knocking and knocking- everyone’s worried about you, you know!”

“Oh? Well, I’m coming out now. Uh-” I glance over and see my cape laying on the ground, and quickly scoop it up. “There!” I throw it over my bathrobe and give Marx a grin that he does not reciprocate. “How do I look.”

Marx’s scowl only deepens as he rolls his eyes. “Put on something better! You don’t look like the Wizard King in… that.”

“Actually!” I give him a smirk. “I can’t not look like the Wizard King, technically…”

My voice trails off, leaving an awkward silence between the two of us. But right as I think the joke has fizzled out, Marx’s scowl melts into a smile, and a little chuckle manages to leave his throat. “I suppose you’re right… well, in any case, you might get a bit cold.”

“Hehe, I knew you were just pretending to be mad.” I slip on some shoes and follow him out, already forgetting about the still-full tub in my bathroom, clouds of blood still dissolving away into the way. “I promise I’ll be done with my work early today, and then I’ll change. After all, I want to go back out to the village today.”

“The village?” Marx’s eyes widen a little as we walk. “You think you’re ready?”

“More than ready!” I grin, but stop short when I realize that Marx has fallen behind. He stares at me with a weird look in his eyes, but his lips still hold a curious smile. “What?”

He doesn’t speak for a moment, then slowly shakes his head.

“I don’t know… it just… you seem happy.”

… happy?

Marx lets out a sigh, almost relieved as I don’t immediately try to dispute his observation. “I’m happy for you…” His smile becomes a bit more sly as he moves again, passing me. “Whatever the source of that happiness might be…”

I turn and follow him with my eyes, before I realize what he’s implying.

“OH! Uh- Marx!”

He raises an eyebrow as I run up next to him, almost frantic. “Me and Adeline- er, there’s nothing going on between us, I swear!” I let out a nervous laugh, but start to panic when I feel heat rushing to my cheeks. Oh god- “I mean, we barely know each other, and-” I try not to remember how I tried (and failed) to get her to stay longer last night. “Well- um… er…”

Marx pulls me from my frenzy as he lets out a giggle. A sound so foreign, coming from him, that keeps me from panicking further. “I wasn’t trying to imply anything… in any case, I’m happy for you, alright?” His hand comes up and squeezes my shoulder, his smile becoming genuine. “That’s all I want.”

The heat fades, and I find myself smiling back. “Thank you, Marx…”

I reach up and squeeze the hand on my shoulder.

I don’t know how to say it… but I can never replace you. Marx… my dearest friend.

If being happy makes his pain even a little less… then I will try my best to stay that way.

------------------------------

“Look who’s back! Look who’s back!”

The sun is dipping low by the time the three of us land back at the Simulcian village, and a crowd greets us at the outskirts just like our last visit. “Hey everyone!” I smile and wave still feeling both excited and pumped for the experiment to come. “I hope I’m not dropping in at an inconvenient time?”

“Not at all!” five of them chorus in unison. “We knew you’d be back soon… would you like to come inside and meet your septad again?”

I exchange a glance with Marx, who still looks a bit nervous. Then, I turn to Adeline, who gives me a nod, her eyes determined. That determination fills me as well.

“Absolutely.”

The crowd ushers us through the street and to the “town hall,” where our last synchronization occurred. On the way, we pass the giant statue of Simulcia, and I see that they’ve painted more of her wings. I smile a little at the sight, the whitish-blue reminiscent of the mana I produce. But at the same time…

The orange sunset streaks across the wood. But her eyes remain as black and empty as ever. She’s just a statue, yet...

There’s something… deeply ominous about them.

The door closes behind me, and once again I’m standing in front of a group of six women: the sextad. It’s as if they knew I was coming! I think to myself, gulping nervously once before stepping towards them with a smile on my face. “Uh, good evening, ladies. I hope this goes better than last time…”

Despite the fact that the prior fiasco is still very much fresh in our memories, they all return my smile and bow a little. “Of course it will! You’ve been practicing, right?”

“Yep!” I grin, coming to a stop as they turn to form a circle, this time with me at the apex. Their marks are glowing slightly on different parts of their body: right hand, left hand, chest, stomach, right knee, left knee… and mine is on my face. I guess, when the seven of us come together, we create a replica of Simulcia… and that’s how we can dive down into their memories. Thinking about the mechanisms behind this makes my head spin, so I stop.

“Ready?”

“Ready!”

I pull out my Grimoire, letting it flip open to the correct page. The paper makes a soft fwip with every page, and I take that last moment to lock eyes with Adeline once more. She offers me another confident smile, but I can’t ignore the worry that’s now seeped onto her face as well.

Is this going to work?

There’s no way she can hear me, but my thoughts reach her.

Of course. I believe in you.

“Alright… here we go.”

I turn back to the others, and close my eyes.

“Dyad Magic: Septad Creation.”

Mana builds up. It’s moving, fast, an endless cycle between our minds, bodies, and souls.

Please… work.

Please-

I cease to exist, and the seven of us become one. Memories fly by, faster and faster, a stream of consciousness long forgotten and left broken in the dark. My own memories are mixed in, memories of light and love, but this time, I don’t let myself remember.

Silence.

Nothingness.

Emptiness.

I open my eyes, and the septad is mine. Once again, I stand in the dark void, the only sounds being that of seven hearts pumping at once.

I did it… everything is stable.

Now…

Show me the devi-

Before I can even finish my sentence, something looms out of the darkness. It’s tint is even deeper than the void, something so unearthly and terrifying, something that shouldn’t exist.

There’s giggling around me. I turn around, and realize that more of these creatures, of varying sizes and shapes, have surrounded me, all jumping around in place, laughing and shooting toothy grins at me. They’re terrible, and every hair on my body starts to stand up. The ground trembles under my feet with fear.

Stay calm… this is a memory. Not reality.

There’s a dull pain in the left side of my face. I ignore it.

“You… fool.”

The deep voice catches my attention. I whirl around to see a creature looming above the rest, their red eyes narrowed in their face. Four horns curl and curve up out of it’s hair, imposing and evil.

...who are you?!

“Do you really think… this is worth it?”

When his lips move, I can see the sharp teeth lining his gums. The teeth of an apex predator.

“You can’t possibly… defeat us all.”

He raises his hand, and the world crashes down on me.

“What could possibly be worth it?”

Crushing weight hits me, but before I can feel any pain, it’s over. I blink a few times as a bright light envelops me, and I realize that I’m once again standing on the beach in Raque. Shit! Not again! Stop bringing me to this recent time-

However, one look up the shore, and I see that this is not the same scene I saw before. It’s noon, probably, the sun high in the sky. There’s no buildings, the resort is nowhere to be found. Huh… this is the same beach, but a different time? Then, why-

I look down, and realize that I’m not alone.

A man is standing there. His clothes are simple, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved for a week. His hair is dirty, salt clinging to each strand pulled back into his ponytail. He’s shorter than me, significantly, and a fishing pole lays on the ground at his feet, where he just dropped it.

He’s… frozen. His feet are glued to the ground, but his hands shake. He looks almost poised to escape, but he can’t bring himself to.

But…

His eyes are wide, but they hold no fear. The look within them is deeply familiar.

Excitement… boyish excitement.

He’s smiling.

Why…

… why would you look at something like me… with a smile?

And why… Why do I already know who he is?

Without thinking about it, I reach out. And, like a mirror, he reaches out (Well, up ) as well.

Why does this feel like the most important moment of my life?

He takes my hand in his, and suddenly, the beach is gone. Now, I’m looking up at him. The air is chilled with the water from the stream, and the wind blows through the bank covered with white cornflowers.

He smiles.

But before he pulls me to my feet, I let go. I let out a strangled cry and turn to run away. Memories are pouring in after the still of that quiet moment- memories of him, his face, his touch, his voice, everything, over and over and over-

He’s gone, he’s gone, HE’S GONE-

The world is shaking again, screams and cries echoing through my head. The pain gets worse, something bisecting my very soul.

Stop it, stop it, STOP-

“Breathe.”

The screams pause as the soft voice wafts through my mind. Ever so faintly, I can feel a warm hand on the small of my back, and a head resting on my shoulder.

“There’s nothing… nothing but your breath. Focus.”

No… that’s wrong…

There are new memories now; soothing memories. Adeline’s smile, the way she could ramble on for hours about the stars. How warm her hugs were, how she stroked my hair when I cried. Her hands are so soft… and her lips… they look soft, too.

Adeline… there’s nothing but you.

Everything is still, the warmth enveloping me like a cocoon.

There’s nothing… nothing but-

“NO”

A voice rocks through the world, echoing and screeching all around me. With a cry, I fall to my knees, pain erupting once again on that side of my face. I cover my ears and grit my teeth, tears starting to squeeze their way out of my eyes. I look up slightly to see a pair of people floating above me. Hand in hand, their eyes glowing bright white.

They are my grandparents, the Dyad that came before me. A blue moth flutters around them, lazily, but still gives off the same vibe as a shark circling its drowning prey.

“There is nothing… but Julius.”

I open my mouth to respond, but I can’t. The pain spikes, and I collapse, face first, onto the ground.

“You are a DYAD… and that’s all you can ever be. Don’t you understand?”

The only sound I can make is a gargled scream. I can taste blood now.

“You have been blessed, but now it’s time for your life to end.”

What?! What are they talking about! I weakly make a fist, my hands trembling uncontrollably.

“A Dyad is supposed to die together… it is bound so tightly by fate, that is the only option. This pain you feel… it is your soul , trying desperately to die.”

No… no! That can’t be it, why is this happening now-

“It is only a matter of time… before it succeeds.”

They start to disappear. Panic rises like a tsunami within me, and I prop myself up before they disappear. “WAIT! You can’t just say that then leave- why-”

They’re gone, nothing but screams in their wake. With a frustrated yell, I ball up my fist again and slam it into the ground.

Die… my soul is dying?

The ground cracks like glass, and I fall. This time, I tear my eyes away from the light above, that warm, soft light that could have pulled me out. This time, I look down into the abyss, and it smiles up at me. I belong to it, now.

Somehow… I knew, didn’t I? I’m nothing… nothing but half of something beautiful that once existed.

I can’t accept it… I can’t! I’m more than Julius, I’m more than the Dyad, I’m the Wizard King!

But, it’s not up to me, in the end. My magic, my whole life, my power… it’s all because of the Dyad, and the person I made it with. It was a blessing, and now…

A curse.

No matter how hard I tried, I could never find closure. I could never separate myself from him.

I am nothing. I am a broken ego. I am inhuman.

Silence.

Nothingness.

Emptiness.

But this time, they’re cold. They are dead.

And they are inevitable.

Oh god oh fuck. Next time!!! Chapter 12: the death of a world. Nobody would take that news well... and unfortunately, neither does our dear Lisa. Will she give into temptation? Or wait for her inevitable death quietly?

#JSDKLFJDSKL #Oh god I'm cryn a lil #poor lisa oml #triad #fic #black clover #oc: lisa

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star-anise · 5 years

Note

I think I am having vicarious stress about how immagrint families are being treated at the American border too. Also other horrors happening in America though I live in Canada. How do you cope with that? If this question is annoying or personal you dont have to answer. Is it weird to feel post election stress after the 2016 election although I am not American? I heard American college kids had almost ptsd levels of trauamtic stress after the election in America.

It’s funny, today I was on the phone with a grad school friend who does front-line crisis mental health work in the USA, and grew up being heavily involved in the Democratic Party. She said, “I have such an issue with this rhetoric now, like, ‘don’t look away.’ Bitch, I haven’t looked away for two years. I’m fucking exhausted.” Because things like that are intended for the people who do look away, who are conservative and apathetic, but often they only reach an audience that is already engaged with the issue, and they land like hammers on people already trying their hardest.

And yes, freaking out about the shit that goes down in the USA is a fine old Canadian tradition. To quote Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 comments to the US president at the time: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

(And Canadian politics are definitely negatively affected by the USA. My province just lost its NDP government because its Conservatives “aren’t as bad as those crazies down south!” and I have a sinking feeling the Cons will cakewalk to federal victory too in October)

You might also notice that on my blog, I post about political issues in only a small number of cases: 1) I have a unique observation I think needs to be added to the world, 2) It’s an issue I genuinely haven’t seen covered yet, and I know people who would want to know; 3) It’s a feel-good story meant to comfort people who are fighting the good fight; 4) It’s advertising an immediate, low-barrier thing people can do right away to directly affect the situation; 5) It’s a resource to help those fighters be better activists. And I do my best to always tag political posts with a standard set of tags to let people ignore them, so if somebody wants, they can follow me and just get my cats’n’fandom content.

The audience I usually have in mind when I blog are people like my friends: Smart, compassionate people committed to social activism, but without limitless amounts of money, health, time, or attention. Some of the people who follow my blog are DC lobbyists directly fighting the Trump administration’s policies. Some of them are crisis workers and EMTs and librarians and deal with the ragged edges of human existence in today’s society. I know I don’t have the nerves or capacity to be their news source; they can follow anyone else on Tumblr for that. So what I try to be is the friendly cat cafe they can go to at the end of a long shift to relax.

My response is really guided by a blog I followed a lot when 9/11 happened; I was following it to learn about getting published as a fantasy author, but its authors were New Yorkers and socialists and military veterans, and they had a lot to say about the false witch hunt for a justification for starting a war in Iraq in 2003 and the slow erosion of rights and freedoms of Americans and “enemy” POWs and the incredible damage the American war machine does when it gets going.

They’re not blogging as much now, but when Trump was elected, they released two posts that I found to be deeply useful:

Defense in Depth - Tl;dr: It is important that those of us in resistance to the world’s outrages don’t attack each other for having different priorities, because we need a diversity of targets and approaches.

Taking It Back - Tl;dr: Our enemies WANT us to be overwhelmed and horrified and frozen in shock and catatonic. That is a deliberate tactic they use. Whenever we seem to catch our breath, they create a new outrage for us to get upset over. We need to learn how to set our own pace, resist the lie that you have to be upset and horrified all the time, and focus on taking care of yourself.

I’m also really affected by Rebecca Solnit’s book “Hope in the Dark” where she points out that activist movements have two effects. The first is to influence whatever issue they’re actually agitating about. The second is to give people the tools and experience they need to become citizens who change their societies in deep and enduring ways.

One part of the problem is finding ways that you can make the world better that feel really concrete and achievable. That’s a whole other discussion, that depends a lot on what you’re good at, what your resources are, what you’re capable of. People feel a lot less terrified if there’s something they know they can do.

But even once you’ve figured out how you’re fighting to make the world better in some small way, you probably can’t do it 24/7; you’ve got to keep mentally resilient the rest of the time.

So what do I do to cope?

I focus on easy-to-do, ordinary hobbies that bring me joy, especially ones that get me off my computer and out of my head. I garden; I just bought a bike; I’m getting my sewing room back in order so I can go back to making costumes and working on the @betterbinderproject.

I make sure I keep social connections where we can relax and enjoy each other. That means being codependent with my cat, babysitting my nieces and nephews, exploring my local bi/pan meetups, going to historical re-enactment events, texting with my friends about Tumblr drama, talking to my colleagues during slack moments at work, and enjoying the fandoms and fanworks that bring me joy.

I do my best to look after my physical wellbeing. Which for me means stretching, yoga, taking my psych meds and vitamins, taking painkillers, looking after my cuticles, using moisturizer, braiding my hair, getting massages, and always making sure there’s a cake in the kitchen. My emphasis isn’t whether I’ll get some disease 30 years from now; it’s making sure that inhabiting my body today is the least unpleasant that it has to be.

I try to look after myself; I go to therapy, look for jobs, keep up on my business paperwork, budget my money, work on upgrading my skills, and develop my 5-year plan. I work really hard on doing this without being stressed, because my habit of procrastinating and only getting around to this stuff when I’m in abject terror isn’t good.

I also, and this feels weird to say or suggest, try to educate myself on issues that are not the crisis du jour. I watch TV shows about the Russian revolution, listen to books about Indigenous language reclamation, read the diary of a World War II servicewoman. This isn’t an attempt to expand my list of crises to worry about, but because I find my ability to cope with the present immeasurably helped by knowing that people have faced other, different crises, and how they dealt with them. It’s… background research in resilience. With the added bonus that it helps me stay intersectional and aware of when we might be only seeing the most privileged part of a crisis situation.

#staranise original #long post #my problems with sj let me show you them #us politics tw #concentration camps tw #cdnpoli #abpoli #dragonsarecoolassparklesare #food mention

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albatris · 4 years

Note

Hello hope you're well on this Saturday may I ask what the deepest fears of each of the ATDAO cast members is, thank you and goodnight

oh you’re just gonna dive right in with the hard-hitting questions I see

thank you for the ask!!

under the cut because rambles, of course, I literally do not know how to be concise I’m so sorry, you probably already knew this was coming HAHAHA

Tris’s deepest fear aside from Literally Everything In The Universe would be uhhhhh....... being somehow responsible for harm coming to the people he cares about? either directly or indirectly. I think on a big scale the whole concept of the butterfly effect stresses him out hahaha. on a small scale, he spends a lot of time stressing about his friends and family, he has a lot of intrusive thoughts about what horrible things could potentially happen to them, he worries about accidentally hurting them, etc. etc.

n I haven’t really talked in depth all that much about the specifics of Tris’s psychosis, but there’s definitely aspects of it that become pretty intense and aggressive in terms of commands and orders and “some terrible and/or violent thing will happen to your friend / sister / neighbour if you don’t do this thing”, lots of prickly parts of it that like to make threats to his safety and the safety of the people around him if he attempts to ignore or resist them. so even on good days he’s got this constant background-hum anxiety that if he chooses to disobey something or if he misinterprets a sign or if he steps out of line, his loved ones are going to be punished for it, which is just.............. a lot

a fear of helplessness and a lack of control also factors into it, like, ever since he was very very very small he’s had this idea ingrained that you can do literally everything right and the universe can still squash you like a bug at any second, n he had absolutely no way to even begin processing that in a healthy way so it just manifested in the fact that he pretty much only ever feels safe when he’s accounted for every tiny detail and is following very specific routines and has left as little room as possible for anything unexpected to catch him off guard. he’s got these rules and systems and rituals he clings to ‘cause they offer him some illusion of safety and control even though they kind of........ won’t actually do anything to stop the universe fucking his shit up

Noa’s is................. I’m not sure if “being left behind” really covers it

if we’re talking in a real broad big scale sense, I think it’s a fear of being forgotten or brushed over or not being seen, or more, people refusing to see her? it’s a fear of, like, fighting her hardest to make noise and be seen and the world just completely and utterly turning its back on her. she’s spent a whole lot of her life trying to carve out a space for herself and make her voice heard, n between illness and financial difficulties and a piece of shit dad, she and her mum have struggled to stay afloat in systems that have just consistently, consistently failed them and whose best advice is “just try harder” and “we can’t help you if you don’t help yourself”

and, like, Noa’s very full of rage about it and has made some restless peace with the fact that she has to look out for herself and the people she cares about, because no one in any position of power is gonna throw them a stick, but it’s not something she’s comfortable with and it’s a horribly alienating and frightening experience

n I guess a fear of being left behind does play out on an interpersonal level too, though it’s not really in the same vein as the other stuff? I’ve talked a lot in the past about how she’s resistant to people getting close to her ‘cause she’s got a lot of paranoia and fear and doesn’t wanna be vulnerable, but there’s also just............ a whole lot of impostor syndrome in the friendships she already has, she’s always on some level convinced that she’s somehow tricked people into liking her and one day they’re gonna wake up and realise she’s not all that special or that nice or that fun to be around. I don’t think she really views herself as someone who’s allowed to be loved just for who she is, or that “who she is” is someone who already has value or anything to bring to the table in terms of friendship

Shara’s deepest fear is the idea that there really is Absolutely No Meaning To Any Of This

that the universe is all just chaos with no purpose and no direction, that there are no bigger forces at play, that there’s nothing good and right and loving at the centre of it all, that it’s all just chance and machinery and completely unfeeling

I think one of the main ways she processes the world and is able to feel safe given the collapsing nature of reality is her desperate and adamant belief that There Has To Be An Answer, that it’s all something that can be untangled and solved, and that if she can manage to figure it out then she’ll be able to make some peace with it and things will make sense again

there’s a lot of stuff from her past that she has no real closure for, particularly the loss of one of her close childhood friends as a result of some unfortunate interdimensional fuckery, and she’s still trying to sort out her feelings about it and find a way to live her life in relation to it, she’s still trying to find a way that something so cruel can make sense

Kai has............................ a lot of fear. many many fear. I will not talk about all of it. I will talk about two of it

one of the main ones is this idea that the only reason they try so hard to care so much and help people and have a positive impact on the people around them is because deep down they don’t actually care at all, that they’ve kind of just fooled everyone into thinking they’re a good person when in reality they’re the worst, they’re a liar and a fraud

which is just kind of......... I mean, they’re not really someone who’s ever considered their own mental health at length so they haven’t really got any point of reference for what’s happening to them post-time-loop, which is basically just. panic attacks, dissociative episodes, blacking out for days at a time, not recognising themself in the mirror, feeling completely numb, not even fully convinced that this is even real life. all very understandable reactions to what they’ve just been through

but definitely the thing that hits them the hardest is the fact that they can look at the people they’re supposed to love and care about and just not feel anything at all, which fuckin terrifies them. they spend a lot of time in crisis about it, feeling like they’re an actor trying to play the part of their own life, they’re doing what they think they’re supposed to but they’re just completely disconnected

(they eventually open up to Noa about it in a full breakdown and are like “I’m a terrible person” and she’s just like “you’re traumatised you fucking dumbass let’s get you some therapy”)

and on equal footing to this and one that deserves a mention is the fact that they’ve been psyching themself up to Go Back Home for the past year and then psyching themself out again, repeat x infinity. A Lot Fucking Changed in the years Kai was gone, and their family had a funeral for them and mourned them and had to deal with all the grief and the fallout of losing their sibling / child / family member and their mum broke down in a real bad way and they’ve all spent the past seven years trying to claw their way back to anything resembling a normal life

and Kai is kinda A) unsure whether it would be selfish of them to try and re-enter their lives now, whether it would be disruptive and confusing and more pain than it’s worth given how much work they’ve put into trying to move on and create a new normal and B) fucking terrified that they won’t even know these people anymore because they’ve all changed so much and Kai hasn’t, they’re not going to fit here or be welcome anymore, and that no matter how much they try to return to normal they’re never going to have a home again

and that is just

kind of a :( note to end on but here we are, at the end

thanks for coming to my ted talk?

!!! thank u for reading if you read this far in my rambling please have an excellent night

#i was gonna do marrick and jacob too but i feel like this got too long already HAHAHA #i've talked about jacob's fear once before i think #and marrick. well. that's a post and a half #probably a post i should make at some point!#but not right now maybe #anyway this was. hm. a lot #also since i know in my atdao posts i talk a lot about these themes of like #''uncaring cosmic machinery''#i wanna emphasise that the message of this book is absolutely not ''the universe does not care about you''#whether or not the universe cares is up for debate and i'm not gonna go into it #i have no comment on the universe one way or another beyond #there's meaning in the lives we create for ourselves and there's meaning #in the meanings we give each other #love and connection and hope can be the good at the centre of it all #basically the entire moral of atdao comes down to #THERE IS LOVE AT THE CENTRE OF EVERYTHING #which is valid of me i think #tracle0

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blog-sliverofjade · 4 years

Text

Hearth Fires 10: The Meaning of Pack

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary: Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas.

Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female Changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself.

While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.

Word count: 3318

Content warning: Contains racial assault on an interracial (human and changeling) gay couple. Singh doesn't mention homophobia iirc in the series, so I left that possible element out because I felt that I couldn't include both adequately. I wrote Stian as submissive because I'd like to see more of them- and a dominant would've pounded the humans into paste- not because he's gay.

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the transcendent pandabearer

“Lo’el!” A cheerful cry pulled her from daydreams of apples crisp, tart, and bright green baked into galettes and strudels. She turned from the pie display she was re-stocking in time to catch a tiny whirlwind in her arms.

“Hi, Jojo.” The girl’s deep brown skin was flushed with excitement. Her black hair was pulled back on either side of her head, French braids running along the top, and terminated in two high bobbly buns that looked somewhat like ears. Operating on deep-seated instincts, she hitched the girl on her hip. The warm weight of her little body tucked against her own felt right in a way she’d never experienced before and she allowed herself to take comfort in the sensation. “What’re you doing down here?” she asked.

The small downtown park was bustling with shoppers looking for fall produce, pumpkins, or in the case of the highly organized, holiday gifts. It seemed like the whole town came out to enjoy one of the last open-air markets of the season before moving to a smaller indoor version for the winter.

“Pun’kins!” She flung her arms in the air like gourds were the best thing ever and Lorel quickly put a hand on her back to help steady the girl, but she needn’t have worried. Jojo was a cat and had the requisite balance.

“Are you here to get pumpkins or were you hoping I’d giving you something that looks like a pumpkin?” As she talked, she turned to check on her newest employee, Irena, who was already competently handling the steady stream of customers. Her predecessor, a cousin of the blonde Madison, had quit after the Incident, as Lorel was calling it, in solidarity with her relative. Crows weren’t considered birds of prey and therefore exempt from the rules regarding predators sharing territory.

Jojo’s eyes slid to the sugar cookies cut in the distinctive shape and decorated accordingly. Long, angelic lashes batted beatifically up at her and she had to fight a smile even as her heart melted in the face of such cuteness.

“Careful, if you feed them they’ll never go away.” Angel, the unbelievably handsome man from RainFire, strolled up in Jojo’s wake. A boy not much older than Jojo orbited him, looking like a miniature version of the man in matching jeans and a red flannel shirt. He even had tiny coordinating work boots. The combination of gorgeous man and darling munchkin was too much for one poor bystander. Lorel winced in sympathy when the other woman walked into a pole.

Taking the teasing warning as permission, she gave cookies to all three of them, received unprompted thank yous, and she happily participated in the routine exchange, knowing that consistency was important for cubs. It took her a second to correct her mental wording to the more appropriate “kids.” Hanging out with changelings was giving her bad habits.

“No cookie for you?” An adorable frown from Jojo. Lorel’s poor heart couldn’t take it, she cast about for some excuse that wouldn’t plant the seeds of body image issues in a young psyche.

“I don’t want to spoil my lunch.” That appeared to mollify Jojo, finally taking a bite of the treat, and she jumped out of her arms. Lorel’s heart stopped for a moment. The organ stuttered back to life when the girl landed easily and lightly on her trademark purple boots. She and her friend wandered to investigate the blown glass suncatchers at the booth a few feet over; Angel turned to keep them in sight, his stance relaxed, but she had no doubt that he’d turn lethal in an eyeblink at the sign of any danger.

“Did you come down for the market?” asked Lorel when she could properly breathe again.

“The pack has a booth.” Angel nodded his head towards what she assumed was its general location. “Jojo had to come say hi to you, probably because she’s figured she can scam you out of cookies.” He shot her a smile that would have made any other woman swoon, but Lorel liked her men a little rougher, less pretty and more rugged.

“I’ll have to be careful in case she tells all her friends and they decide to gang up on me for the mother lode,” she laughed. The ocelot, which was sedate to the point of laziness for once, laughed at the idea of being swarmed by cubs nearly as big as it was, and they’d probably love it, too. “What do ya’ll sell?”

“Pumpkins, mushrooms, leafy green stuff, things people have made. You focus on local vendors?” She followed his gaze to the sign on the table that proclaimed as much. “If you’re looking for a supplier, we have berries, too: blue, black, elder, currants... I’m sure we could cut you a deal.”

Damn cats were worming their way into her life.

The boy wandered back and tugged on Angel’s pant leg, who crouched to hear what he had to say. A man across the way stared at what must have been an exquisite derriere because he spilled the sample of apple cider he was pouring for a potential customer.

“Can we go play in the water?” The boy twisted his body back and forth the way that kids do when they need to lay the cute on thick to get what they want.

“I suppose it’s the quickest way to clean you cookie monsters up. Or I could just toss you in the river.” Using his thumb, he wiped an orange crumb off the boy’s chin, who giggled at the teasing

“Can Lo’el come, too?” asked Jojo.

“Oh honey, I have to stay here and help Irena,” she began, gesturing at the crow who was refilling a sample plate

Twin pairs of innocent eyes stared up at her in appeal. Seriously, they should be considered deadly weapons and she was looking down a double barrel. Looking to Angel for help did no good, he just tucked his hands under his armpits and shook his head with a grin. It looked like she was on her own.

“And who are these cuties?” Having come over at the sound of her name, Irena eyed the trio of cats, stopping on Angel and then coming back for seconds. Apparently, she preferred her men pretty.

“Irena, meet troublemakers one, two, and three. Known aliases are Jojo, Angel, and peeshwank,” Lorel pointed at each of them in turn. She didn’t know the boy’s name, but she’d overheard Remi call him that the other night. Sometimes having acute hearing was actually useful.

“I’m Darin! Only Remi calls me peeshwank,” he giggled and revealed a missing front tooth.

“They’re trying to get me to play hooky.” Hands on her hips, she mock scowled. None of them appeared the least bit fazed. If anything, the kids turned the charm factor up a notch, something she wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Go play with the cublets, I’ll be fine here. Like you said, the breakfast crowd’s already come through so I won’t have to beat off the ravening hordes,” the traitor smiled reassuringly and made shooing motions with both hands, then leaned in close to whisper, “As long as you get me his phone number.” The slender brunette pulled away with a wink.

Lorel sighed in feigned resignation and held out her hands like she was about to be handcuffed. Two soft, little hands took each of hers and dragged her into the throng of shoppers, Angel close on her heels.

“Don’t worry, I won’t give her anything without your say so,” she said to him over her shoulder. Bumping into someone, she had to return her attention to where she was going.

“Thank you,” came the quiet response.

Where the kids’ smaller size allowed them to dodge easily, she was pulled into obstacles, but she didn’t let go for fear of losing them. The thought that they might get lost or hurt had her tightening her grip and bracing herself against the jostling.

While she was just over five feet tall, she was far from slender and never would be, to her grandmother’s chagrin. She was acutely conscious of her ample hips knocking into people and she did her best to make herself as small as possible. Each bump, no matter how brief, had her ocelot snarling in irritation and it took all of her concentration to remain in control. The crowd pressed in around her until all she could see was Darin and Jojo in front of her. Her palms grew clammy, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. A dull roar filled her ears, allowing only the loudest sounds through, and those were sharp and intense. Throat tightening, she fought for each breath.

The ocelot pressed hard against its cage, sandwiching her between it and the pressure of the crowd. How she managed to arrive at the splash pad, even though it was only fifty meters away, without going clawed, she had no idea. More than anything, she was glad that her tiny guides didn’t have so much as a scratch on them. Angel probably would have torn her to pieces for harming them. And she’d let him.

The kids stripped down to swimsuits underneath their clothing. Darin was so eager he forgot to unbutton his flannel shirt and ended up stuck with it around his nose.

“Help!” he pleaded, turning to Lorel, his arms above his head and his face obscured by red-plaid.

Moving automatically despite the strange sensation of not feeling fully present in her body, she crouched and carefully helped free the boy. Once released, he beamed and wrapped his soft arms around her neck. She froze with one hand tentatively curving around his back. A wet kiss against her cheek and he was off to run through the water spraying from colourful flowers sculpted from metal. Some of his packmates were already there and greeted him with shrieks of welcome, their happiness no longer piercing to her senses.

A large, warm hand settled on her shoulder. It felt strange and soothing all at once and she couldn’t bring herself to shrug it off. Angel helped her to her feet and opened his arms wide in an offer of a hug.

The leopards were so relaxed and comfortable with one another, sharing platonic hugs and kisses, casually holding hands. It hurt to look at them like they were a blazing fire and she was stuck out in the cold darkness, looking in. And now one was extending that comfort to her.

Although she wasn’t raised to accept casual physical contact, even platonically, from men, she stepped into his arms. It was like a long, cool drink of water after working for hours in the hot sun without a break. The sudden absence of a deep-seated pain she’d learned to deal with long ago made her nearly sag in relief.

This had nothing to do sex. She didn’t feel any attraction either to or from him, yet she needed the chaste affection and she soaked it up as long as he would allow her.

“We aren’t meant to be alone. Sure, some of us are more solitary than others, but we’re not meant to be cut off from our kind entirely. I can’t think of a worse life for a changeling.” He rubbed large circles on her back and she fought back a purr.

“Maybe it’s a nature vs. nurture thing. If you’re raised in a pack, of course you wouldn’t do well on your own.” Even she didn’t believe her own words.

“And how do you know you won’t be better off in a pack?”

A knot of packmates moved out of Remi’s way as he burst into the emergency room. The triage nurse took one look, recognized him, and hit the button that unlocked the security door that led into the depths of the department. The door shut behind him with a metallic click as he strode down the sterile, off-white hallway to where Theo stood guard outside of a cubicle.

A lean blonde man lay on a narrow bed, his normally bronzed skin was ashen and spattered with carmine. Catching sight of Remi in the doorway, he gave a crooked smile around a split in his lip and raised his hand in greeting.

“What the fuck happened?” Remi growled at the sentinel. The bad-tempered demand earned him a sharp look of reproach from Finn as he worked on the injured male in the treatment room; the wounded non-dominant didn’t need any more stress, least of all from his fucking alpha.

It seemed like his vocal chords were stuck in a semi-shift for the past two weeks and everything came out a snarl. That was part of the reason why he’d been running along the eastern border, channelling excess energy and inspecting the new security precautions, instead of sleeping.

Taking a deep, calming breath, he forced his voice into a more normal register. “What happened?” There, that sounded a little less like he was about to go on a murderous rampage.

“Stian and Leandro were leaving Acapella when they got jumped.” The lounge was popular with most segments of the population, even the psy who were exploring life outside of the emotionless discipline of Silence. While the telepathic race couldn’t drink since alcohol wreaked havoc on their abilities, Acapella was known for their extensive mocktail menu. The trendy venue was hardly known for drunken brawls. As far as Remi knew, the most violent incident that had occurred there was a spat two years before between a couple of drag queens over stealing someone’s routine.

“There were four or five human guys.” All RainFire members were trained in at least basic hand-to-hand combat. Five human men shouldn’t have been able to take a leopard, even a non-dominant. And Leandro, while human and untrained, was bigger than Stian.

“First one jumped out of the alley and hit him in the face with a baseball bat, breaking his nose. The wind was blowing the wrong way for him to catch a scent.” Claws pricked at Remi’s fingertips, the urge to hunt boiling to the surface.

“This was planned.” That time he didn’t bother to keep the cat out of his voice. “A group of drunks looking for a fight don’t use tactics designed to circumvent our sense of smell.”

“And they weren’t playing baseball at one in the morning, either,” agreed Theo. The man who was gentle with their most vulnerable and loved to play with the cubs was gone; only the lethal predator remained. A passing nurse started to admire him until they caught the dangerous aura he emanated, then quickly scuttled past even though his eyes hadn’t even flashed cat. The hindbrain of every creature knew how to recognize a predator no matter what skin they wore. “They took him down while he was stunned. One kicked him, possibly with steel-toes, while the other used the bat, and the rest went after Leandro.”

“Leandro, he ok?” The human male wasn’t one of his, but he was important to Stian. Finn did something that eased the grimace on Stian’s wan face and Remi’s urge to kill something eased down a tick.

“A little beat up, but he’s ok.” Theo blew out a breath and scrubbed an eyebrow with a thumbnail, then his quiet bass dropped to barely a whisper too quiet for Stian to hear. “You know his family wasn’t thrilled he was dating a changeling? This was too much on top of that, apparently.”

Remi turned the air blue. “Any witnesses?”

“No descriptions, either,” Theo shook his head. “Dark, non-descriptive clothing and hoodies obscured their faces on CCTV footage.”

More cursing.

“Thanks.” He clapped the sentinel on the shoulder. “We’ll talk later, this shit ain’t your fault. Go, be with the others before they storm the place for an update.”

“It’s not your fault either.” He fixed Remi with a firm look and then strode down the hallway, pressed the button that released the door for those exiting, and went to give an update to the waiting packmates.

Maybe not, but he could’ve at least fucking been there when Enforcement was getting his statement instead of brooding in the woods in the middle of the night like a fucking wolf. Next thing he knew, he’d be howling at the goddamn moon.

Cell reception could be spotty in the mountains, texts were the best method of communication once he was within range. Theo’s message had come in when he was on his way back, which meant Remi made it to the hospital soon after Stian’s statement had been taken. The distance, the adrenaline, and the fact that there wasn’t a bloodbond between the two of them combined meant Remi hadn’t felt the assault. Although he definitely felt it when Finn pulled energy from him to heal the worst of Stian’s wounds.

An alpha was supposed to be there for everyone in his pack.

Comforting others didn’t come easily to him; it was difficult to give something he didn’t have much experience receiving. With the cubs it was easy since they were easy to love and care for, the same way he’d been loved and petted when his mother was still alive. Steeling himself, Remi rapped on the door frame of the cubicle as he entered.

“How ya feeling?” he placed a hand on Stian’s shoulder, grounding him with the touch of pack, of his alpha, while Finn continued stitching up a cut on the other man’s side.

“Like hell.” A faint smile that didn’t disturb the deep purpling bruises that mottled his face.

“You look like it.” Yeah, it was definite: when it came to compassion, he definitely was the worst. “But you’ll be back to your pretty surfer boy looks in no time.”

Snorting, Stian scratched at his close-trimmed beard where a patch of dried blood stained the blonde hair rust red. Pale, almost colourless, eyes dropped to the blanket tucked around him.

“I’m sorry about Leandro.”

“Yeah, well, other fish in the sea,” he shrugged, then winced when his body protested the movement. “I can’t really blame him, the garbage they were spewing…” He shook his head. “Those assholes called him an ‘animal fucker’ and ‘race traitor’ like it’s 1982 and not 2082! But I can blame him for breaking up with me in a text message.”

Remi placed his other hand over the male’s, which was fisted in the blanket; small nicks, scrapes, and more bruises from defending himself marked his lightly tanned skin.

“I can’t even tell you what they looked or smelled like. I’m s-sorry.” Big fat tears that he’d been holding back spilled over to roll down his face and soak into his beard. The salt in his split lip had to hurt like a sonuvabitch, yet he didn’t wince. “T-they were wearing d-dark hoodies.”

“Hey, look at me.” Keeping his tone gentle, Remi moved his hand from Stian’s shoulder to the side of his neck. Those icy blue eyes filled with anguish turned to him. “They used tactics to avoid identification, they were prepared. You survived, that’s all you had to do.”

“I c-couldn’t protect him.”

“That bastard didn’t deserve it anyway.” A laugh that was part sob. “At least, tell me they messed up his face, too. Lark’s coming to keep you company. I told Angel to stay home, having him around right now would be adding insult to injury.” More shaky laughter in nervous relief.

“Whatever you need, you ask for it, ya hear me?” Remi clasped Stian in a careful hug and wondered how he was going to hunt down the fuckers who’d done this. He fucking hated feeling helpless, especially when one of his people were hurt, but he could do nothing less because otherwise that meant he couldn’t protect his own.

And an alpha who couldn’t protect was no alpha at all.

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perfecting-procrastination · 5 years

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Hotel - Zabdiel (Part 2)

I am sooo sorry guys that I took so long, I thought I would have loads of time but I have been at work nonstop and have been feeling ill lately tooo. I have plans for a 3rd one and I’ll try my best to get it done as soon as I can! Anyway hope you like this part 2, I love being a tease so I hope the ending doesn’t kill you guys ;).

Word Count: I don’t know mate fucking long

Warning: 18++

"I don't believe you, you are lying to me. THERE IS NO WAY Y/N!" Victoria said in shock, processing what she just heard come from your mouth. You laughed, "Its hard to believe but yeh, it happened and he wants to see me later too". Victoria was in so much shock she had to sit down and take a moment. Whereas, you've been sat on the bed ever since Zabdiel left, you could barely stand after what just happened. That orgasm literally sent your legs into jelly. "Well, what are you going to do? How are you going to act later?!", you went in a daze and thought [She was right how am I supposed to act, like what am I expected to do after hes left me like that]. Victoria then shouted "WAIT SHIT I'VE JUST REALISED SOMETHING", scaring the shit out of you. "Jesus Vicky, quiet down haha" you uttered. "Sorry, I just realised that if we go backstage which is probably where he is going to take us. Does that mean I am gonna meet them too. Do I have a chance with some Ecuadorian dick, because YES PLEASE" Victoria said with a devious grin on her face. "To be honest if Zabdiel can finger me in my hotel room then anything is possible. So.... GO GET YOURSELF SOME ECUADORIAN DICK B", you screamed with enthusiasm [Vicky deserves to get some action after her dickhead of an ex anyway]. You both laughed and carried on chatting about tonight and what could happen, the excitement was unbearable and you both just wanted it to come sooner.

A couple of hours later...

"Right are we ready to go, we need to get there early if you want to get a good space in line" said Victoria rushing me in the process, as usual. You started doing your final checks in the mirror, placing your hands on your waist and turning to the side to see if your outfit makes you look big in the mirror. You tend to get like this before you go out, you worry about your figure most days as you are not shaped like most girls. You were curvier and thicker for sure, and it sometimes took a toll on you. [I really hope he likes the outfit, I hope he doesn't forget me. There is gonna be so many pretty girls there, I could get easily forgotten surely]. You place your hands on the dresser looking up at the mirror in front of you, [Ergh fuck sake why do I do this to myself]. Victoria could see you were getting lost in your thoughts, "Y/N are you okay?". You took your hands off the dresser and faced towards Victoria, "Yeh, I'm alright. I guess I'm just nervous. I should be happy and I definitely am but what if he doesn't even bother talking to me at the show. Like I know this is obviously just a hook up but like still. Ergh I don't know what I'm saying" you sighed. Vicky walked closer towards you and placed a hand on your shoulder, "Sis, lets recap okay. Zabdiel De Jesus came in your room fingered you, without asking for anything back or even to do more stuff. Then after asked for YOUR number. He obviously might not be completely head over heels for you right now cause he obviously doesn't know you well enough but maybe tonight might give him that opportunity. So don't bring yourself down, cause tonight might be the night sugar. Just have fun because that's the most important thing." Victoria said with a wink just after. A smile began to spread across your face as you realised that Victoria was talking some sense. "You're right, I am a beautiful curvy woman and Zabdiel would be dead lucky to have my fine ass tonight. I'm gonna show him who's in control tonight" You said with a flick of your hair. Victoria and you began to laugh and head for the door. You were excited and fully confident for tonight's event.

In the Queue...

"They are gonna walk past any second now, I CANT FUCKING WAIT GIRL" Victoria screeched in excitement. You were having so many thoughts going through your mind that all you could do was respond with was a fake smile. The bus arrived and the door slowly opened. [Jesus hes about to come out, fuck fuck fuck]. Joel firsts walks out and is rushed through with security, he takes photos and hugs a couple of lucky fans on the way. Erick then steps out with Christopher closely followed behind him. Christopher gave Victoria a little wink in her direction on his way inside, it nearly caused Victoria to drop to the floor but she managed to get herself together. Then walked out Zabdiel and Richard, [God Zabdiel looks so hot, this is difficult. I just want to take him somewhere and rip off all his clothes]. While Zabdiel and Richard were walking inside, you see Richard whispering into Zabdiel's ear. They looked very engaged in a conversation, until you see Richard look over at you and say to Zabdiel "¿Es ella?". Zabdiel looked towards him and nodded his head, "Damn, she nice bro" Richard said with smirk. Zabdiel laughed in response, then finally his beautiful brown eyes made contact with yours. His stares were always so intense, it consistently made you weak every time you looked into them. You bit your lip as you felt the heat between your legs get damper. He moved his eyes towards your lip, all he could think about was those pretty lips wrapped around his dick and the image could not leave his mind. "Zabdiel, come on man" Richard shouted while grabbing Zabdiel in his direction, causing the loss of eye contact between you and him. You sighed, [God, I just want to fuck him already]. "I saw that, you two were vibing and he DEFINITELY wants a piece" Victoria said while nudging you. You laughed and responded with "Mmm I hope so haha".

30 mins later...

You and Victoria began to approach the security and the ticket desk, After security check your bags and you both walk towards the desk. The lady behind the desk looked away from her computer and towards us, "Hello, could I see your tickets please". You look through your bag and quickly pass the tickets over to the Lady, "Here you go". She looked through at the ticket and scanned the barcode, the lady then looked shocked as she saw something pop up on the screen. She paused for a minute and signalled a guard to come over. Victoria then faces towards you with a panicked look. The lady then looked back at you both with a smirk, "Well girls it says here that you have been granted VIP and backstage passes. So let me give your wrist bands and ill let George here from security take you backstage. Does that sound Good?". A smile spread across both of your faces followed with a more than compliant nod to her response. She placed the wristbands on both of your wrists and you follow the guard. You noticed other fans watching you go somewhere else with a guard, some either assumed you were in trouble or a new possible groupie for CNCO. But only you and Victoria knew which one you both were going to be and the excitement was only building as you got closer and closer to backstage. You then finally arrived at a room and the security opened the door for you, "Here you go girls, there's refreshments inside and someone will come over soon to give you a tour". You both smiled and Victoria responded with "Thank you George! You've been great". He then walked away and you both walked in the room. It was stylish and it had some sick food and drink, so you were both pretty content. "Oh my God I can't believe were here. it does not feel real at all" you say still astonished from all of the events of today to where you are now. Victoria grabs your shoulders shaking them and saying "GIRL, you can fucking say that again". You both giggle while moving towards the sofa to sit down and have a chat while you wait for the backstage tour guide.

10 mins later...

*knock, knock* You both look up to notice a lady standing there with 2 lanyards in hand, "Hiya girls, my name is Lisa and ill be showing you round. Are you ready for the tour?". Victoria and you smiled and walked over to Lisa to introduce yourselves. After you all got acquainted, you both were given your lanyards and followed Lisa around the building. She showed you different sections behind the backstage area, showing where the guys chill and explains to you what they do before a performance to get psyched up. You both were looking all around, eyes wide taking in all the scenery. "God its so big in here" Victoria observed. It really was huge and they was so much going on behind stage, and none of it looked easy to deal with. You really do forget how hard the staff and the boys must work to make the performance so perfect. You then uttered, "It really is, Jesus". "Si, mi preciosa", the words were whispered into your ear from behind by a low deep voice. You turn around instantly to see that beautiful tall blonde god, and you couldn't help but smile. You were trying to hold in your inner crazy fan girl but it was hard. You look up to him and whisper, "I've been waiting for you". Zabdiel bites his lip and says "So have I". He looks behind you and then look backs at you. You look at him confused and question "whats wrong?". He then smiles back at you and says "I think Christopher likes your friend". You furrowed your brows and turned around to see Victoria giggling with Christopher, who was flirting majorly with her. You then feel a light squeeze on your hand, you turn around to look at Zabdiel "Cmon I want to take you somewhere, we can leave them in peace". You turn to him with a mischievous smile and a raised eyebrow, "Oh yeah where do you want to take me". Zabdiel sends a wink your way and pulls on your hand, leading you down a hallway. He then reaches this door that labels 'Staff only', he drags you in and closes the door. You look around and notice a desk and some boxes around. [Must be an extra office or something?]. While your eyes were wondering around the room you hear the sound of a click and turn around to notice Zabdiel locking the door. “Planning to kill me?” You said with a smirk. Zabdiel laughs and comes up real close to you “Hmm well you’ve been killing me all day, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since our last meeting.”. You look up towards him and flutter your eyelashes, “Why is that baby, do I make you hungry?”. Hearing those dirty words come out of your innocent mouth made Zabdiel go crazy. And you were right, he was HUNGRY and he wanted you so bad that he was struggling to contain himself. Zabdiel picked you up causing you to instantly wrap your legs around his waist. The whole movement was quick and it all fitted perfectly like you two were meant to be connected with one and another. He moves you towards the wall and starts kissing you hungrily, he wanted you and he couldn’t wait much longer. You ran your hands through his beautiful blonde hair, giving it light tugs at points. Making him moan slightly, Zabdiel began moving his lips down your neck while gently squeezing your thighs. A few moans began to escape your mouth only exciting Zabdiel further. You then pulled Zabdiels hair back, causing him to look back at you with a surprised look. You move your lips slowly towards his ear and whisper “It’s your turn, papi”. You hop out of his grip and shove him against the wall. Zabdiel looks at you in shock, not quite sure what is happening as he is normally the one being dominant. But he most definitely is going to roll with it. You lower your self down and get on your knees. Zabdiel then moves his hands downwards to undo his belt, you then slap his hand off. “Ayy mami, what was that for” he responded. You look up at him while slowly undoing his belt and say “I’m in control this time, not you”. This made his eyes go wide with desire, he wasn’t used to this feeling but he sure did love it. Your eyes were finally met his boxers, you slowly shimmied both his jeans and boxers down. You knew Zabdiel was going to be big but god you weren’t expecting that. It only made you even hungrier for him that your mouth began to water. You positioned one hand on the base of the shaft and placed light kisses on the tip. You then moved those kisses up and down the shaft just to tease him further. Making Zabdiel moan uncontrollably, “Nena, por favor. Stop teasing me”. You look up to him and mutter “Do you want me bad baby, do I make you weak?”. He moves his head back and nods. You look disappointed, “use your words, otherwise I stop” you demanded. He looks at you with his mouth open in shock, “I want you so bad it’s killing me”. You smile deviously and move your mouth onto his tip and start slowly swirling your tongue around it. You start moving your other hand up and down his shaft, creating a steady pace. Zabdiel was losing his mind he was struggling to function with all that you were doing. His dick began to pulsate and you could tell he was getting increasingly closer to reaching his high. You began to pick up the pace and move your mouth all the way down his base, so far that the tip was hitting the back of your throat. Tears started to fall from your eyes and Zabdiel was on the edge. His hands were intertwined in your hair and he was tugging hard only making you wetter. “I’m about to cum baby, fuck” Zabdiel moaned. You went in harder, constantly swirling your tongue around as you went up and down on his big shaft. He was so close, but then you suddenly removed your swollen lips from his member. He looked down at you disappointed, wondering what your next move was. “En serio? I was so close princesa” Zabdiel huffed. You smirked deviously back at him and then stood up, removing your jeans and unclipping your bodysuit in the process. You tugged on his shirt leading him towards the desk and hopped on it. You opened your legs, granting zabdiel access. You opened your eyes really wide and look towards Zabdiel, “I just really want you to fill me up papi”. He didn’t think it was possible for you to make words that sound so dirty sound so innocent. But he definitely loved it, Zabdiel grabbed your thighs and brought you in closer. Zabdiel aligned his hard cock with your dripping core, he slowly pushed the tip on the outside of the entrance. Earning a moan of pure frustration from you, “Please papi, Fuck me”. Zabdiel could tell he was driving you crazy so he decided to take it further. He moved his hand up to your throat and lightly applied pressure, “mami, you need to be more patient. Can you do that for me?”. His hand around your throat while his tip was just sitting at your entrance was destroying you. You needed him and you needed him now. You tugged at your bottom lip and nodded your head. Zabdiel then slightly moved only the tip in, stretching you out instantly. It was just the tip but it was almost enough to send you into an orgasm.

*buzz* *buzz*

Zabdiel and you looked at eachother wondering where the sound came from. You both noticed the sound coming from his phone which was on the floor. Zabdiel removed his tip from you leaving you empty and extremely frustrated. He picked up the phone and noticed it was Richard calling. “Que pasa Richard?” he mutters. You couldn’t hear clearly what he was saying but he didn’t look very impressed for sure. He pauses, “Okay okay I am coming now”. Zabdiel then hung up the phone and looked towards you, “I have to go nena, we need to prepare for the show”. Zabdiel began to put on his boxers and jeans. You look at Zabdiel disappointed, “erghhh okay, please tell me we are going to have the chance to continue this later”. Zabdiel laughed and came up close to you, he lifted up your chin with his finger and whispered into your ear “I am not finished with you yet mami”. Zabdiel then opened the door and paced over to the boys to prepare for the concert. You got up and got dressed. You felt so frustrated but you knew you had to wait for Zabdiel. You wanted him so badly and this day has been nothing less of a surreal experience. You exhaled and opened the door, going towards where you last left Victoria. Hoping to find her somewhere backstage. But truly the one thing that was on your mind was Zabdiel.

#cnco #cnco smut #zabdiel smut #zabdiel fic #zabdiel de jesus #zabdaddy #cnco fanfic #zabdiel de jesus smut

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fourwingfries · 5 years

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Notes about self-typing.

I don't see enough people talking about this, but these points have been crucial in my own journey of self-typing and typing others, so here we go. Before you type yourself, consider:

The degree of stress you're under right now: Stress greatly influences how you view yourself, or if you have enough objective self knowledge to have an honest assessment of your own type. While a normal amount of stress brings people into their strengths, continued stress actually pushes you into the worse parts of your personality, and this experience can last anywhere from a few hours to (in borderline-traumatic cases) decades. And it's not an objective assessment of your type if it is only decided based on how you are at your worst. your type is a mixture of your general thought process, your worse tendencies, AND your better choices.

Possible general or trauma-induced dissociation: A lot of people have a general tendency to dissociate for internal or environmental reasons. it's WAY more common than we think, and it happens in varying degrees of "this trait upsets me so i pretend i don't have it/this trait makes me happy so i own it as a defining part of my personality" to "i do things that enrage and/or surprise me, i don't know where these thoughts and behaviors come from, and i'm helpless in controlling them so in my good days i pretend that they don't exist and get shocked/upset when people point them out to me" cases, counting out DID since that one is the obvious case. People tend to have more dissociation towards the parts of their psyche that resides in the [MBTI] tertiary and inferior functions, or the [instinctual variants] blindspot, oooor [in an enneagram sense] the parts of us that keep us from achieving the ideal image we aspire to have, but this isn't always the case. And to have an honest view of yourself, you have to keep in mind that at all times you're a little, or a lot, dissociating from parts of you that is unpleasant/scary/sad to think about, and that it's not only okay, but necessary to be open to feedback, new experiences and new insights regarding yourself. Fear is an inseparable part of self discovery, so before trying to type yourself, you have to learn to be comfortable with fear and be able to sit with it and learn from it. You don't have to 'accept' whatever comes your way and whatever new thing you discover, but you have to be able to entertain possibilities and get comfortable with the uncertainty and complexity that comes with being a human.

Mental illness: this one kinda goes without saying, but mental illnesses of all kinds (or generally being stuck in fear responses) narrows your focus on a very limited number of mental tools you have learnt since childhood for dealing with a shit life. They make it very hard to be present to your whole personality, not what you constantly resort to in times of (perceived or real) crisis. It's not impossible to type yourself when you have mental illnesses, but it makes the process longer, and you need to have more patience and compassion towards yourself.

Your gender: It actually really fucking matters, how you're raised based on your actual or perceived gender, or even the gender your caretakers proffered you to be like. Your own personality and preferences are only a small part of the choices you make throughout your life, and another part of that process is how others react to you and the choices you might make. In some cases, even though your preferences are right there, you may make different choices because there's more reward and acceptance for that choice, even though it's not your actual preference. Or you may make choices because the consequences you'll face for not making them are so high and dont seem like they're worth it. A lot of women don't entertain the possibility of being a thinker because as women they're conditioned to think that they suck at rational decisionmaking and have a natural knack for emotions and dealing with them. As a byproduct of that conditioning, many thinker women have higher emotional awareness and are more in touch with their emotional side than men of the same type - simply because there is a lot of social shaming and pressure on women to be sympathetic and considerate and to be able to emote. A lot of feeler men actually have less healthy thought frameworks and tools around emotions then women of the same type, as society does not expect men or train them for emotional intelligence and thought frameworks generally associated with femininity and women stuff. SO blind women are often more accommodating and mindful of how they're perceived than SO blind men, SP blind men often have more attention to SP and develop more tools in dealing with SP-related works, etc etc, the list goes on forever. The thing to keep in mind is, toss out the stereotypes. Don't dismiss different possibilities simply because "you're not as emotional as the feeling type descriptions suggest" or "you're not as edgy as the SO blinds you've seen" or “you have some hobbies you love dearly so you must be a SX variant”. Different descriptions are written with the majority of that type in mind. They're ripe with stereotypes, and for a good reason. But you don't have to fit with stereotypes to be a type, you just have to share the thought process and the inherent preferences that create its mindset.

With all that said, what is the best approach to self-typing?

Observe yourself when you're in flow state. When you're content, happy, feel safe, and are surrounded with people who accept you and love you for who you are, no matter what it looks like. If you cannot find a context in which you feel like that, imagine yourself 5 years from now, in a context that gives you those feelings. What would you look like if you were surrounded by accepting, loving, sincere people who accept you no matter what and find you enough in and of yourself? imagine that scenario in full details and make note of the choices you would make in that context.

Make notes of what you have generally thought most of your life, before you had mental illness. Be open to any and all thoughts that might come up.

Learn to love yourself before you try to self-type. It's hard to type yourself correctly if you're consciously or subconsciously fighting against parts of you that you consider weak/unacceptable/not enough/boring/problematic/wrong. Be open to your own thoughts and other's feedback and before you try to decide what type you are, decide that whatever comes up is okay, is cool, is enough, and there's nothing wrong with it. Shame and judgement is the enemy of objectivity. consciously decide to accept and offer compassion to yourself. If you cannot seem to do that, imagine an anxious dear friend of yours, and write down how you would treat them and what you would tell them. Now do those stuff for yourself to the best of your abilities, and tell those things to yourself.

Move beyond typing. Ask yourself why do you want to type yourself, what does it offer you, what purpose do you have in trying out these labels. Do not self type when you feel insecure, sad, depressed, isolated, rejected. Labels are not what you need in those moments, it's kindness and acceptance of who you are.

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thegoldendice · 5 years

Text

Love Is A Battlefield

Fandom - American Horror Story 1984

Pairing - Xavier Plympton/Reader

Rating - Explicit

Warnings - Suicide, Violence, Mental Heath Issues, Sexual Content, Language, Religious Content

Chapter - 4/12

Read on - ao3, ff.net

Fic Summary - The year is 1984. You're a poor student living alone in L.A., plagued by your problematic relationships with a false friend and a disturbed ex. You meet Xavier Plympton, an aerobics instructor with a dark past, at the gym where you’ve taken a reception job. You quickly develop feelings for him, and you learn to your relief that he likes you too. Soon a deadly series of events befall you and the people in your life. Overwhelmed by tragedy and with your blossoming romance cut short, you are left a wreck. Six years later you discover that while Xavier is dead, he hasn’t quite departed. You soon realise that if you are to be with him and finally achieve true peace and happiness, you must take your own life and become a Camp Redwood ghost.

Chapter Summary - Your recent knowledge of Xavier's porn career leaves you feeling intimidated. Xavier is able to reassure you, however, and you are powerless to resist his charms. Scott deals you another blow, threatening to destroy Xavier's reputation and your budding romance all at once.

You watch Xavier as he chats with Montana. He flashes his teeth at her and reaches out to touch her arm. Certain things he does, certain movements he makes, could be taken as flirtatious. And yet, you’ve seen him behave similarly with Chet, or Ray, or any number of other people. Recently he flirts with you. Thinking about other things he has done with you lately, you find it difficult to believe he’s gay. If anything, he likes both guys and girls. Right now you only care if he likes you. Despite that, you have to admit that the thought of Xavier’s porn career is posing a problem for you.

You made Scott explain himself over the phone after he let you in on the so-called secret. Alex, Scott’s roommate, has been out for a number of years. If Alex is to be believed, Xavier has starred in gay porn. The instant Scott’s words reached you, you remembered the look on Alex’s face when he saw Xavier. It was recognition. Scott seemed to take delight in your silence, but he misunderstood what it was that had stopped you short.

The vision of Xavier having kinky sex with Amy, the vision that haunted you the night of their date, had come back to you, forcing its way into your psyche unbidden and unwanted. You cringed inside at the knowledge that your very limited sexual experience would appear pitiful to someone who had starred in porn. Xavier would surely laugh at your lack of prowess, having had a vast range of wild sexual experiences.

You had hung up on Scott while he was still laughing cruelly at you.

You try to concentrate on work, but Xavier takes up your every thought. When he inevitably speaks to you, you don’t quite know what you will say to him. Maybe if you focus on your inconceivably boring stock checks, you will look so busy that he will leave you alone so you can put off telling him what you know.

No such luck.

“Hey Y/n.”

You glance up. Xavier is leaning across your desk, facing you as if his whole body is eager to touch you. He looks particularly cute right now, with his little backpack over one shoulder. Seriously, nobody else in here could pull that thing off. You have to smile despite the worry that lurks in the pit of your stomach.

“Hey, you.” You attempt a smile. Xavier appears so pleased at your affectionate greeting, you feel a pang of guilt knowing you’re about to ruin everything. “Do you have a minute? I was kinda hoping we could chat. Maybe somewhere private though?”

Concern creases Xavier’s brow. You know your tone was less than cheerful.

“Okay, uh, my car?”

“Sure.” You nod.

Screw work, this is important.

Xavier’s eyes are on you, you can feel it. You’re sitting alongside him in the front of his car. Silence fills the space between you. The intoxicating smell of his cologne is so intense in here, you’re finding it hard to concentrate.

“So I uh, I thought we should talk because I... I got a call from Scott last night and he told me about... the porn.” You look up in time to see Xavier’s eyes widen. His face is pale. He takes a shuddering breath as you plough on. “I want you to know, your sexuality is not an issue to me. I grew up in a very liberal environment and—”

“I’m not gay.” Xavier cuts you off. “How the hell does Scott know, I don’t tell anyone? My acting career would be over if it got out.”

Xavier is blunt. You have to wonder if he is angry with you. You can think of nothing worse.

“Alex, Scott’s roommate. The guy he came here with. He’s seen it.”

You watch Xavier’s face as he processes the information. His eyes close and stay that way for what feels like an hour. When he opens them, his expression is hard.

“I’m tied into a... contract, of sorts. I’m trying to get out of it, but it’s proving difficult.”

“So you’re not doing it through choice?” You frown. “How is that fair? What kind of contract is it?”

“Let’s just say I made a deal with the devil.” Xavier lets out a hollow, humourless laugh. “I need to smoke, I’ll go outside.”

Before you can say another word, Xavier exits the car. You sit still, trying to figure out if he’s pissed at you. Surely he can’t be, you’re just the messenger? Before you have any more time to question the situation Xavier gets back in beside you, bringing a cloud of smoke in with him. He begins talking almost immediately.

“I want you to know, I’m always careful.”

“Huh?” You look at him blankly, not understanding at all. Xavier shrugs slightly. He looks a little embarrassed.

“I always use condoms, I get checked out regularly. I’m totally healthy.”

You feel your face colour. This is the hard part. The part you didn’t want to face. Xavier’s exciting and varied sex life. Although you have to admit, it doesn’t sound all that great now that you know the details.

“Thanks. For telling me.”

“Sure, I mean if we’re gonna date, you should know. That is if you still want to?”

You can tell that Xavier is trying to appear nonchalant, but it’s not working. The concern he feels is written all over his face. It suddenly occurs to you that you may not be the first person to find out about his secret.

“Is this why you and Montana broke up?”

You realise that you haven’t answered Xavier’s question yet, but it suddenly feels imperative that you know what happened to end his previous relationship. Xavier takes his time answering.

“Regardless of the porn, Montana and I are not good for each other. She has this way of bringing out the worst in me. I think I do the same to her. She’s one of my best friends, but... I don’t see a future with her.” Xavier looks away, avoiding eye contact with you for a second before bringing his gaze back to settle on you. “I want to be with someone who makes me feel good, and whole, and happy.”

Xavier reaches his hand towards you and tucks a strand of your loose hair behind your ear. It’s such an intimate gesture that your breath hitches, your heart beating faster. You can tell that he wants to kiss you.

“Xavier, there’s something that’s actually been worrying me.”

He pulls back slightly, waiting. You take a deep breath.

“This is hard for me to admit, although I don’t know why. It shouldn’t be but...” You shake your head, trying to stop yourself from getting off track. “I’m not very... experienced, with sex stuff. Knowing that you are, it makes me feel... intimidated. I’m sorry.”

You force yourself to watch Xavier’s face. He doesn’t look angry, much to your relief. If anything he seems slightly confused.

“But, it’s all fake Y/n. Seriously, not a single bit of it is real. There’s no emotion, no connection. I fucking hate it!”

Xavier’s voice breaks. You pull him to you, dreading the thought that you might have inadvertently made him cry. Your heart breaks for him.

“I can’t believe you’re stuck in this situation. There must be something you can do?”

“No,” Xavier mumbles into your shoulder. “There’s nothing. All I can do is run. I’m leaving for the summer, I got a job at a camp. I was planning to tell you tonight.” Xavier draws back to look at you. “I wanted to ask you to come with me but, I understand if this porn thing is too much.”

You look at Xavier’s face. His beautiful features are marred by sadness. In this moment you’d do anything to make him happy. You know you can overcome your shyness after realising there’s nothing to be intimidated by. If anything, Xavier’s situation is to be pitied. You squeeze his hand.

“It’s not too much. I understand everything. I was unsure before but now I’m not.”

Xavier leans in to kiss you. You push your tongue past his lips hungrily, taking possession of his mouth. The emotional roller coaster you’ve been riding for the past twenty minutes has left you overwrought. You cling to Xavier, using his kiss to numb the ache inside you with complete disregard for propriety. He breaks away, panting.

“We can’t do this here. Come home with me tonight?”

You nod eagerly, separating yourself from him in order to calm down before heading back inside.

Xavier lifts your shirt up and over your head in a swift, unbroken movement, throwing it to the floor of his lamplit bedroom. He’s already topless. You can’t help but notice that his muscles seem too perfect, as if they are carved from marble. You inhale sharply as your nipples rise to greet the cool air. You feel gooseflesh spread across your shoulders and back. The sensation elicits a small shiver from you. Xavier’s beautiful, full lips curve upwards in a slight smile as his eyes rake over the sight of your naked torso. You feel nervous at his unabashed approval. Glancing down shyly, you can’t help but notice the size of the erection straining against his shorts. The desire to touch him overwhelms you and you reach to softly brush the tips of your fingers along the length of his cock.

In response, Xavier bends his head and takes the lobe of your ear between his front teeth, biting down ever so slightly. You shiver again as a creeping sensation travels down your spine. Xavier moves to kiss your neck, licking and sucking just hard enough to be pleasurable but leaving no mark.

Your fingers make their way to the waistband of Xavier’s shorts and pull down, allowing his cock to spring forth. His heady, potent scent reaches your nostrils, sending a thrill through you. You allow yourself a second to regain composure before gently taking him in your hand. His skin feels like velvet as you begin to rub him. He moans into your neck, his fingers sliding through your hair. His other hand is occupied, cupping and massaging your breasts.

Xavier detaches his mouth from your neck in order to lick his thumb. He focuses his attention on one of your nipples, tracing wet circles around it. When he squeezes it between thumb and forefinger, a pinprick of sensation travels right down to your clit, where you feel the tiny jump of a pulse. You know you must be getting damp. You begin to feel ashamed, but you shut down the feeling. You remind yourself it’s not shameful for your body to respond this way. You are going to let yourself enjoy this.

Xavier grasps the nape of your neck and lifts your head to meet his. You respond open-mouthed, happy to welcome his tongue with your own. You taste the slightest hint of whatever he’s been smoking. Kissing him like this feels electric. You wonder what it would feel like if his tongue touched your pussy. You’ve never had anyone do that to you before. Scott wanted to, but you were always too shy. You decide that if Xavier asks to do it, you’ll agree. You feel safer and more comfortable with him than you ever have with anyone else.

Xavier breaks the kiss, panting heavily. You’re still stroking him.

“Should I lie down?”

Your voice is roughened by arousal. Xavier nods and you quiver with excitement, backing up until you feel the bed behind you. Xavier hovers over you as you lie back onto the pillows. His cock presses hard against you as he leans down to suck at your neck once again. He grasps your skirt, halting any other action until it’s completely removed. He wastes no time in also helping you relieve yourself of your underwear. Instinctively, your hand flies to cover your intimate area. Xavier watches you. His eyes come up to meet yours. They are full of hazy lust, but he’s not lost himself entirely yet.

“Will you let me watch you touch yourself?”

He sounds almost reverent. It’s as if watching you masturbate will be a religious experience for him. You can’t find your voice to respond, so you nod instead. You proceed to open yourself up, dipping your forefinger inside slightly to wet it before circling your clit. Xavier sits right beside you, his chest rising and falling faster than normal. You feel close already and can’t help the soft moan that escapes your lips. Xavier’s eyes roll back, closing and opening again to fix on yours.

“Fuck, I want to taste you.”

You nod as you spread your thighs, releasing quick, shaky breaths. Your stomach muscles clench involuntarily as Xavier positions himself between your legs. His tongue on you feels exquisite. He knows exactly what to do, circling your clit, lapping at your juices. When he repeatedly licks the entire length of you like ice cream on a cone, you know it won’t be long until you come. The sensation builds inside you, exploding aggressively when Xavier works in a finger, tickling the places you’ve never been able to reach. You can’t help but run a hand through his hair. It’s not as stiff as you expected it to be. You grasp it lightly as your orgasm begins to disperse, sending warm sensations all around your body.

You release your hold on Xavier’s hair. He is placing small, delicate kisses onto the inside of your thighs. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him look happier. You stroke his face, bringing it gently up towards you. You look deep into his eyes.

“I want you, Xavier.”

His breath hitches slightly.

“You’re sure?” It’s almost a whisper.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

You smile at him in a way that you hope is reassuring.

“I’ll be right back.”

You sit up slightly and watch as Xavier grabs a condom from inside a set of drawers across the room. This sort of thing used to embarrass you, but now it feels completely natural. His back is to you as he puts it on. Your eye is drawn to the curve of his ass. His skin looks golden in the lamplight. You imagine sinking your teeth into that perfect, peachy roundness. Blood rushes to your cheeks. These are not normal thoughts for you to be having. Xavier turns, bringing your attention back to his face. He looks at you intently as he climbs back onto the bed, settling between your legs. He crashes his lips against yours. You moan into his mouth, anticipation building. You can’t wait to feel him inside you.

Xavier stops kissing you, concentrating on wetting his cock, brushing it up and down your pussy. You still feel sensitive, little bursts of sensation streaking through you each time you feel pressure on your clit. Xavier brings himself to your entrance, slowly pushing inside. You relish the fact that there is no resistance as he fills you up. You squeeze slightly with your inner muscles, eliciting a delighted smile from him.

Xavier kisses you again with relish as he begins to thrust, establishing a steady, controlled pace. You surprise yourself by digging your heels into his back, wanting to feel him even deeper inside you. As if he can hear your thoughts, Xavier leans back, grabbing one of your legs and placing it on his shoulder. This new angle allows Xavier to hit your inner walls in a way you’ve never experienced before. You groan loudly at the sheer intensity of what you are feeling.

“Fuck, if you keep making noises like that I’m gonna come.” Xavier manages.

He’s breathing heavily now, beads of sweat appearing on his brow. His hair no longer looks perfect. His mouth finds yours again, his kisses messy. You feel him quicken his pace as he lets your leg back down. You wrap your arms around him, pulling him in as deep as possible. He does nothing to temper the volume of his groan as his climax consumes him, collapsing onto you as gently as possible. You feel a tiny hint of regret, knowing that the condom stopped him from spilling inside you.

Xavier stays perfectly still for a minute before rolling off to one side. You feel the loss of him inside you instantly. He breathes deeply as you kiss his forehead, tasting his salty sweat. He strokes your cheek in response, smiling blissfully. His eyes, the colour of an icy blue sea, are only slightly clouded with pleasure.

“You’re amazing.” It’s a whisper, but you hear it loud and clear.

“I didn’t do anything.” You breathe.

Xavier shakes his head infinitesimally. His earring catches your eye for the briefest second as it flashes in the lamplight.

“It’s not about what you did,” Xavier replies. “It’s about who you are.”

You wrap yourself up in the soft, warm blankets as he goes to clean himself off. You feel ecstatic, too languid to make the effort to get clean yourself. When Xavier returns he switches off the lamp and climbs into bed behind you, pulling you close against him and nuzzling his face into the back of your neck. This is the way you both fall asleep.

You feel like you’re floating rather than walking as you make your way around your apartment tidying things away. You absentmindedly plan out the rest of your day in your head but it’s easy to become distracted. Last night couldn’t have been more perfect. You blush, remembering. You’ve never felt this way before.

You are about to head into the kitchen to make yourself something to eat when you hear a brisk knock at the front door. At night you don’t answer, but during the day you see no reason to be afraid, besides, on the off chance it is Scott, his plan has failed. He can’t hurt you now.

Or so you think.

You open the door to the smug face of your ex. Before you can stop him, he charges into your apartment.

“Get out!” You shout, not caring who can hear you, you want Scott as far away from you as possible. “I’m calling the police if you don’t leave, now.”

Scott lifts up his hands, his smirk is infuriating.

“Calm down Y/n, I’m not staying. Something occurred to me last night, so I’m here to share it with you. Then I’ll go.”

“What is it?” You decide to bite, hoping that if you play along Scott will leave.

“Well, I realised that I really miss you Y/n. I don’t want to see you with anyone else. I want you back.” Scott’s voice takes on a mocking tone. “I’m going to make you deal. You agree to come back to me, and I won’t tell everyone Xavier’s little secret.”

You stare at Scott, horrified. What the hell has happened to him that he would resort to such a disgusting threat? You know deep down that he would happily destroy Xavier, and it terrifies you. You struggle to respond. Scott doesn’t wait for an answer.

“Tell him the two of you are over Y/n, or his life as he knows it will be.”

You stare at the door after Scott has slammed it shut behind him. Tears roll down your cheeks unchecked. A chill runs through you at the knowledge that you are entirely trapped.

“Xavier, it’s me. I’m so sorry I’m leaving a message and not speaking to you in person, but I have to leave town urgently. I got bad news from back home. I won’t... I won’t make it to Redwood. At least I don’t think I will. Anyway, I wish I could have seen you to tell you but like I said, I have to leave. I’m leaving right now so... goodbye. Have a great summer Xavier. I... I’ll miss you.”

You watch from the shadows as Xavier, Montana, Chet, and Ray close up the gym. Xavier slings an arm around Montana’s shoulders as they all descend the stairs together, piling into Chet’s car. You make yourself a promise. You will see Xavier again. You will deal with Scott, he will get what’s coming to him. Then you’ll find Xavier and tell him the truth about Scott’s threats and why you had to lie.

Notes: I’m hoping to follow this up with something post-canon but will need to wait and see what happens with the show!

#xavier plympton #xavier plympton x reader #xavier plympton x you #ahs #ahs xavier #ahs 1984 #american horror story #american horror story 1984 #fanfic #ao3 #ff.net

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alphawave-writes · 5 years

Text

Evil actions and good intentions Chapter 7: Giving in (Sigma x Harold)

Synopsis: Harold Winston is preparing himself for a life on the run after surviving an attack that nearly cost him his life, but Sigma does not want him to go. A mysterious stranger brings both a solution and a problem.

You guys can read it here or on AO3. If you like my stuff please do consider supporting me on ko-fi.

Vishkar shows its true colours suddenly, and almost violently. In the aftermath of the shootings, they campaigned for their continued presence in Oasis. They have highlighted security deficiencies, traffic congestion, and infrastructural issues as reasons their presence is necessary within the city. There are other points they bring up, but those are the important ones that the news bring to attention when Vishkar and the Ministries begin their talks in a private forum.

Protests are enacted all throughout the city, the ranks largely consisting of disgruntled University students. They argue that Vishkar’s presence ruins the fundamental rights of Oasis’s citizens, that it distorts the original purpose of the Ministries’. Having an outside company stay within the city, especially one with such a shady reputation, spells trouble.

All this is meaningless to Sigma. It’s just an extra annoyance he has to deal with.

He is sitting in a corner of Moira’s lab as she writes her notes. Another psych examination, he was told. Moira must have caught wind that Sigma was a participant in the attack, that’s why she’s checking up on him so soon. It’s the only logical explanation.

He can’t help but let his lips purse. He’s got so many questions now, especially with the protest running rampant about the university. Usually he dares not ask questions because he respects Dr O’Deorain’s privacy, but this is something he simply cannot ignore.

“How are the talks with Vishkar?” Sigma asks.

“Fine,” Moira replies curtly. She’s still writing on her pad, her face completely blank.

After a few seconds of silence, Sigma frowns. He knows Moira keeps to herself most of the time, but recently she has been unusually tight-lipped. For some reason, it doesn’t sit well with him. “I assume because you are friends with Mr Korpal,” he continues. “You must be campaigning for Vishkar’s presence in Oasis.”

“It’s a natural progression of events. The city has become stagnant. A bit of outside help would do it wonders.” Her eyes look up from her pad, narrowing on his face. “This session is supposed to be about you.”

“I know.” He sees the curl of her lips and soon, the melody of the universe plays. Danger, danger, it sings. He grits his teeth. He doesn’t know why, but every time he hears Moira’s name or sees Moira’s face, the whispers always croon their awful tune. There must be a reason, but he can’t imagine why. His eyes stare at Moira’s right hand, wrinkled and purple.

It looks so much like Harold’s skin when Dr. Williams attacked him. Harold was so fragile back then, lying there on the ground, weak and helpless and so very old. And then afterwards, when Sigma kept Dr Williams up in the air, Harold’s angry shouts shake him to the core, threatening to unravel him from the inside out. He’s become used to the moniker of ‘Sigma’, but from Harold’s lips it sounds like a demon in disguise, a twisted monster that knows only death and destruction. He never wants to hear Harold call him ‘Sigma’ again.

Sigma tries to calm himself down but it’s too late. The items on Moira’s desk begin to rattle for a second before stopping. It does not go unnoticed by Moira, who gives them a quick glance before turning her attention back to Sigma. Her gazes sharpens.

“How have you and Dr. Winston been?”

“Fine.” His throat feels so dry all of a sudden.

“You do not have to be shy around me. I understand he is very important to you.” Her lips quirk up. “It’s good to have a companion.”

Sigma cannot count the nights Harold’s spent in his bed. Even when Harold was allowed back to his own room, he continued to stay with Sigma, reading his books, using the shower, sleeping side by side in the bed. Every morning without fail, he curls up next to Sigma and smiles dreamily. Every morning without fail, Sigma contemplates kissing Harold on the lips and knowing for sure if the passion he feels is reciprocated. It’s too late, he tells himself time and time again. Even if they love each other, it’s not meant to be. Harold is going to leave soon, prepared to live a life on the run. Sooner or later, Harold will go away, and they will never see each other again.

A part of Sigma wants to stay in Oasis. As expected, he has acquired the position in the Ministry of Physics, and it will not reflect kindly on him if he just up and leaves, especially so soon after acquiring the position. But then there’s the other part of him that wants to throw caution to the wind and be by Harold’s side till the end of time. For a while he thought that Harold needed him. Now he knew that the opposite is true.

A small sigh escapes his lips, his only response to Moira. Her smile softens but her gaze is knowing.

“It’s something more,” she remarks. “Perhaps you would like to tell me about your feelings for Dr. Winston then, Sigma?”

When did his name sound so wrong? When did the name that he took from his captors start sounding so foul? What are those discordant notes in her voice that clash horribly in his ears? Why have the dark whispers returned when his mind is so clear?

Sigma suddenly stands up from his chair. He feels queasy and wrong. Something is so wrong. “I…I-I think that is enough, Dr. O’Deorain. I should get back to my research.”

But Moira stands in front of him now, sizing him up. Her tone almost sounds sympathetic. “Are you alright, Sigma?”

“Don’t call me that!” He snarls. A wave of gravity ripples through the lab, bottles and beakers suspended in the air.

Moira blinks slowly, the only one unaffected. Her polite smile fades away, daggers darting from her eyes. Danger, danger, the whispers say. The items slowly float back down to Earth.

“I-I’m sorry,” Sigma grimaces. He clutches his head in his hand. “I-I need to go.”

“Stay,” Moira’s blackened hand grips onto his wrist tightly.

But for once Sigma disobeys her, pulling his hand free and exiting her cool, dark lab for the sweltering middle eastern sun. The sweat that sticks on his skin is a reminder that he is alive, and he is breathing, and that this truly is reality. He does not dare gaze over his shoulder. If he did, he might have seen Moira’s lips twist into a scowl.

It’s late in the afternoon when Harold comes by Sigma’s lab in the Ministry of Physics. It’s easy to tell it’s him because of the soft glide to his gait, the walk of a dancer or a royal. He stands by the entrance, his smile as warm as the inner core of a star, and just as bright. In his right hand is a bag with three shawarmas. He takes one out for himself and drops the bag right in front of Sigma’s desk.

They’re delicious, Sigma knows from previous experience, and the scent drifts ever so delicately in the air, but for some reason he’s not hungry. He’s not in the mood. “Bedankt, Harold, but I’ll eat later.”

“You don’t want to eat shawarma? Who are you and what have you done to Siebren?” Harold teases.

Sigma stares at him meaningfully. Harold’s lips dip into a frown.

“Oh,” he mumbles. He shuffles awkwardly on his feet. “You want to talk about it?”

There’s a part of him that wants to tell Harold his fears. It niggles in the back of his mind, telling him something isn’t right, that something is very wrong. It speaks of ceaseless violence and unending sorrow and a harness that breaks its shackles. It scares him, and the fact that he’s scared makes it all the more unnerving. But there’s no math formula to help him here. No equation that can tell him why he feels this way. All he knows is that he feels safe with Harold. He’s the one thing anchoring Sigma to the Earth, preventing him from floating up to the stars.

“I’d rather not,” he says finally. “Some other time.”

“Fair enough,” Harold sighs, taking the seat right next to Sigma. He unwraps the shawarma and takes a bite. It’s hard for Sigma not to stare. When he eats, it’s like poetry in motion. Prim and proper, without a mess or spill to be seen. Symphonies could be written to the rhythm of Harold’s Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, lips smacking together in satisfaction. Only Harold Winston could make eating look like a fine art.

Harold suddenly glances up, gazing back into Sigma’s eyes. As of late, nebulae sparkle behind his dark irises, glittering in prismatic colours. Sigma’s seen it before, back when he was Siebren. Back when they were very much in love.

“Do I have something on my face?”

Sigma averts his gaze back to the scattered notes across his desk. “No,” he says. “Not a speck on you.”

Harold frowns. He looks almost disappointed. “Good…” he murmurs.

“Indeed…”

Sigma goes back to his whiteboard and stares at the equations. Or at least, he tries to, but not even math can hold his attention today. He’s done absolutely no work since the psych examination with Dr. O’Deorain earlier today. His thoughts are on Talon and Oasis and Vishkar and Lucheng Interstellar and Harold. They fight for dominance over his brain. He almost misses the voices that fight for control in his mind. Almost.

“You know, I’ve prepared my stuff, Siebren. Could go any day if I wanted to,” Harold says.

Sigma can’t help but frown. “So you will leave soon then.”

His eyes glance down at his barely-eaten shawarma. He nods slowly. “Just need to figure out where to go from here.” His lips dip microscopically. “Would be great if you came along.”

“You don’t need me to protect you. You are more than capable.” You’ve proven time and time again how strong you really are, Sigma thinks but never says.

“I’m not. You saw what happened that day, I nearly died if you didn’t save me. If Tempest has a device to jam my nanobots, there must be more of them out there. And she’s still alive to tell the tale.”

“You told me not to kill her,” Sigma says pointedly.

“I know,” Harold grimaces. Quieter, he says, “I know. It’s my decision. I knew the consequences and I still chose to spare her because I’m a coward who can’t kill people. And it’s because of my cowardice that I’m even in this predicament.”

Sigma doesn’t know what to say. He can’t comfort Harold, because they both know it’s true. It could have been so easy to disguise her death as a fatal accident. It could have been so easy for Sigma to make sure she feels the same pain and suffering that Harold has felt for years. He’s killed before, and he will do it again. For Harold, he could do just about anything.

Harold stares at Sigma with cold, sad eyes. He already knows what will come out of those lips before it’s even said. “Siebren, come with me. Please.”

He expects it, but it still hurts. His heart feels like it’ll leap out of his chest. “You know I can’t,” Sigma sighs.

“Why not?”

“I’ve finally found my calling here. Under the Ministry of Physics, I can make a difference once again. Harness the harness. Learn about the mysteries of gravity.” He summons the hyperspheres in his hand. “With my abilities and their connections, I might finally unveil the universe’s true melody to all.”

Harold frowns. “But will you be happy?”

With a wave of the hand, the hyperspheres disappear. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You haven’t thought about just…retiring?” Harold asks. “You’ve already been through so much pain.”

“And joining you on a life on the run won’t put me through pain?”

Harold’s lips dip low. “I’m just thinking about your happiness, Siebren.”

“What do you know about what makes me happy?” Sigma spits.

Harold stares at Sigma for the longest time. A lifetime of love and lost flickers through his eyes before he scowls to himself, leaving only the dark emptiness of space.

Sigma forces himself to turn away. He can’t bear to look at Harold. Not now, not when the memories of their romance still linger in his mind. Not now, when he knows all too well that he will never know happiness again the day Harold Winston leaves him for good. He’s already said his final goodbye once. He doesn’t want to say it again.

“We’re different people now, Harold,” Sigma says slowly. “We’re not lovers. Haven’t been for decades.”

Harold nods microscopically. “I know,” he whispers. “We’ve changed, but…not enough. I won’t have to go on a life on the run if I had.” Harold drops his food down on the desk and approaches Sigma. “You wouldn’t let me be this close if you did.”

Sigma freezes in place. There’s a hand reaching out for his cheek, running down his neck before lying on his chest. Harold’s so close now, two smoldering embers gazing at him with the intensity of a black hole. Sigma takes in a shuddery breath, a meteor shower crashing into his chest. He can’t push Harold away, not anymore. Every instinct of his body tells him to pull him closer and never let go. It’s only by the fractured shards of his mind that he doesn’t give in. He can’t give in.

Something buzzes loudly, interrupting the moment. It’s an opening, and Sigma takes it before he may commit to one final mistake. He scrambles to his desk, running his hand on the surface wildly before he finds the culprit: his beeping phone. A message has been sent to him from the Ministries. A warning to all Ministry of Physics staff that maintenance of one of the labs will be conducted at a specific time during the weekend. It’s utterly irrelevant to him, but it’s enough of a distraction for the music to fade away on a deceptive cadence.

Harold stands there for a few seconds before turning to his half-eaten shawarma. He picks it up, frowns, then drops it into the bin by Sigma’s desk.

“It’s getting late,” Harold says finally, sounding far less confident than normal. “Might as well eat the other two shawarma on the way back.”

Sigma does not dare say a word. His quivering throat is still full of emotion. If he speaks, Harold will know all about the pain and regret that he’s kept to himself. He might even lose himself again.

They walk in silence out of Sigma’s lab. To his relief, his shawarma is still warm in its paper, preserving its taste. Apart from the sounds of Sigma’s messy chewing, it’s oddly quiet in the university courtyard despite the time of day. There’s a side of him that fears that Lucheng has already made their move, or worse, that another fatal incident has occurred without his knowledge. But as they head to the main courtyard, he sees that it’s something far worse. There are protestors outside Dynasty Hall, where the Ministries and Vishkar are currently having their talks. Vishkar’s bodyguards stand in front, photon blasters holstered on their side, stoic amongst the frenetic chants of the protestors.. The tension is thick in the air, and it stinks of violence and hatred. One small act of aggression, and there will be a fight here.

“Let’s go around,” Harold says.

But Sigma doesn’t move. He hears the whispers in his mind talking to him. Go forth, they say, observe. Slave to the voices, he walks into the crowd, the people parting to let him through.

At the front of the crowd, Satya is flanked on both sides by bodyguards. She is conversing in furtive tones to someone in an aviator jacket over a sports jumpsuit. A strange device is over her chest.

Listen, the voices insist.

Sigma’s seen her face before. But where? Why are the whispers talking to him now? What do they know?

“You have no place here,” Satya declares.

“I’m just poppin’ round, love,” the stranger smiles.

“If you are here, the reports must be true. Overwatch wants to reform itself.” Satya murmurs to herself before catching herself. Her gaze sharpens on the stranger. “Why are you here?”

“Just on the lookout. Never said anything about Overwatch.”

“Do not play games with me.”

“Overwatch?” Harold whispers beside Sigma. “I thought they’re gone.”

The crowd is murmuring in Arabic, probably about the stranger’s appearance and the potential return of Overwatch. Many are eager. Most sound concerned. They’re all staring at Satya and the stranger.

“Your presence has already disrupted harmony.” Satya waves her hand toward the crowd. “How do I expect Overwatch to bring order amongst chaos? That is why it is Vishkar’s job to bring order. Not Overwatch.”

“Perhaps Overwatch’s time is over, but the world could always use more heroes.” From her person, the stranger takes something and clasps it into Satya’s hand. It’s too small to see what it is from this distance, but it’s enough to make Satya stiffen visibly. She gazes upon it, and a myriad of conflicting emotions bubble up to the surface.

It takes Satya a while to recover her voice. She grips his fist tight, obscuring the mysterious object from sight. “You did not answer me before. Why are you here?”

The stranger’s carefree smile falls. “Ever heard of an organization called Talon?”

Satya’s eyes are as wide as saucers. The stranger nods solemnly.

“You do,” she murmurs. “Then you know why I’m here, love.”

Satya still doesn’t speak. She cannot speak anymore. She makes a gesture at her bodyguards, who push forward, barricading her from the stranger’s sight.

The stranger takes a step back, momentarily startled before springing back with a smile. She turns around and gives a two-fingered salute to the crowd. “Cheers, love. The cavalry’s here.”

Most of the crowd cheers loudly. Some mutter in disconcert. Whispers about Overwatch’s return are everywhere, clogging the once-clear air, but all Sigma can think about is her strange words. What does she want with Talon? What does Talon have to do with Overwatch?

The stranger turns around, ready to join the crowd when she suddenly stops in her track. She stares wide-eyed in their direction. It’s then that Sigma recognizes where he saw her. She was in that newspaper clipping with Winston, hugging him tightly in a friendly manner. She had a name, but the newspaper called her ‘Tracer’.

She takes a step closer, and then another, her body in a complete trance. By his side, Sigma can feel Harold quiver. Tracer’s staring at Harold, taking in every detail, comparing him to a photograph in her mind.

“You’re…Winston’s dad?” Tracer whispers, barely audible above the dim of the crowd.

Harold grips onto Sigma’s wrist tightly, pulling him away as he takes a few steps back. Sigma barely has time to give one final glance behind his back at Tracer’s confused figure before he’s led away by Harold. He can’t concentrate on the swirling emotions that must plague Harold’s mind. His thoughts are all on the hand over his wrist, impossibly warm like the sun, heating him up from the inside out.

Harold doesn’t stop until they’re back in Sigma’s room. He paces circles around the floor, staring at a blank spot on the wall. His fists are clenched by his side. His expression is pained, conflicted. Sigma moves behind Harold, ready to surround him in a hug, but he stops himself before he can commit. The tension from earlier in the lab hasn’t completely dissipated. All he needs is one little push before he succumbs once more.

“She said Winston’s dad,” Harold whispers quietly. “Not Dr. Winston. Not Harold. Winston’s dad. That’s what she called me.”

Sigma approaches slowly, carefully monitoring the distance between their bodies. “You’re…crying.”

Harold blinks rapidly before harshly swiping his fist over his eyes. He forces a smile. “S-sorry. This must look so stupid to you. I shouldn’t be crying over such a little thing.”

Sigma quells the desire to wipe Harold’s tears away himself. He wants to place a kiss on Harold’s closed eyelids and make him smile. He wants to make Harold forget that sadness is an emotion, make him forget that pain and strife run rampant in the universe. He wants to hold Harold in his arms, but he can’t. He can’t give in, no matter how much it hurts. The pain he’ll feel if he commits will be far greater, he assures himself.

Harold takes a few moments to breathe in and out. “He told that young lady that I was his dad. And she’s trying to rebuild Overwatch?”

“Sombra told me that Winston is leading the charge. Rumours say he issued a recall to all former Overwatch agents, to band together in defiance of the law.”

“So a group of vigilantes, led by the gorilla that calls me his father, is looking for recruits?” Harold chuckles, shaking his head. “This sounds too good to be true.”

Sigma frowns. He knows what Harold will say if he asks, but he can’t stop himself. “So does that mean you will join them?”

“If they’ll let me. I mean, I’m not affiliated with Overwatch at all, but I am a scientist in my own right, with my own secrets about Lucheng. If they want to resurrect Overwatch, I’ve got valuable information. If they’re a group of vigilantes, they might be able to keep me safe at the very least. There’s no better place to hide. It all depends on if Winston will accept me or not.” Harold suddenly scowls. “It’s been so long though. What if he thinks I faked my death on purpose? What if…what if he hates me?”

“Harold, you’re overthinking it,” Sigma sighs. His eyes go cloudy as he recounts their shared past. Despite his best efforts, his lips curl up into a half-smile. “I remember how much you cared for him all those years ago. You doted on him like he was your flesh and blood, like he was human. And if you tell him the truth about your disappearance, he should understand.”

A small smile peeks out from Harold’s lips. “I don’t know how to get in contact with him though. Or anyone from Overwatch.”

Sigma contemplates telling him about Sombra’s backdoor access to Winston. All he needs to do is send her a message and Harold will finally be able to talk to Winston. They will cry happy tears when they reunite. They will tell each other the story of their lives and Winston will tell Harold what to do so he’s safe. Soon after, Harold will leave Sigma’s side and they will never see each other again for the rest of their lives.

He wants to be possessive. He wants to keep Harold here. He wants to hold Harold close by his side and protect him till the end of their days. He wants Harold to stay with him so finally, finally, he might bask in the sunlight of their love once more and know happiness.

He wants Harold to be his. But more than that, he wants Harold to be happy.

Sigma lets out a shaky breath. “…Sombra told me there’s a way to contact him,” he says slowly. “She can set it all up for us, if we tell her. She can organize a video call so you can be in contact with Winston. You two will be able to talk to one another again.”

Harold’s eyes tear up once more, reflecting the world in the droplets, and suddenly Sigma is pulled into a passionate kiss. Arms wrap around his body, pulling him down so the distance between their bodies shorten. The time when their lips touch is short, but it feels so much longer.

When they separate, Sigma sees the lines of gravity connecting them together. It pulls and pulls, desperate for the distance between their bodies to close, desperate for the fatal collision that will change the course of his fate forever. The music has returned with a thunderous crescendo, but it’s still quiet compared to the breaths that leave Harold’s lungs, heavy with emotion.

Harold stares into his eyes, and Sigma sees nebulae and galaxies glittering amidst the dark backdrop of space. He can’t look away. He doesn’t want to look away.

Harold places a hand on Sigma’s cheek and rubs circles with his thumb. A crimson blush stains his cheeks, eyes flickering down to Sigma’s lips. Sigma can feel himself uncoil and unfurl, can feel gravity threaten to leave its shackles. His body is no longer his own. He’s gone beyond the event horizon, sucked in with no escape.

“Don’t,” Sigma whispers.

“You’re smart,” Harold says. “You know what I’m thinking. You know how I feel.”

“You’re smarter than me,” Sigma admits. It’s a truth he’s acknowledged a long time ago but he’s never said aloud before. To this day, he has yet to encounter a person smarter than Dr. Harold Winston. It’s his intelligence that earned Sigma’s respect. It’s also what earned Sigma’s affections.

“I’m not,” Harold insists. “I’m nowhere near as brilliant as you.”

His breathing is a sonata, his lungs and heart a concerto. He’s made of beautiful melodies and chords that piece together to create a heavenly song. Sigma’s heard this song before. It’s the dramatic violin vibrato before the crash of the cymbals, before the world shrinks down to the two of them. The moment before two heavenly bodies collide.

When Sigma takes the plunge and kisses Harold, he swears he can hear the angels sing their perfect choir song as the universe condenses into the space of this single-bedroom apartment. His body fizzles with electricity, and his heart is leaping out of his chest, and he hears the distinct rattle in the air when he knows his emotions have made him lose control of his abilities once again, but Harold is gliding in the air with him, smiling against his lips and kissing back with equal fervor.

With the last remnants of his willpower, he pulls them down so they are finally standing. They gaze upon each other for just a second before Harold gives Sigma another kiss, and another, and then another, and countless more after that, on his lips and cheeks and neck and everything in between. When he’s done, he rests his head onto Sigma’s shoulder, his fingers clinging onto the fabric of his shirt.

“Be with me,” Harold breathes, his words so quiet and fragile. “Stay with me. Please.”

Sigma cannot reply. His lungs don’t work like they used to. Even if he could, he doesn’t know what to say, what he wants. Instead, he leads Harold to the bed, traces his fingers over the tubes on Harold’s skin, and presses his lips onto Harold’s eyelids. With every second, he feels himself melt just a little bit more

As they lay in bed, caressing each other with the utmost reverence, Sigma feels the twinkling stars chime in unison within his body. They tell him that this is right, that this is where he belongs, by Harold’s side. That he can have this if he throws caution to the wind and speak the truths the universe can never say for him. He curls into Harold, taking in his melodies. Every gasp, every moan, every sweet nothing, they are all songs that Sigma’s heard before decades ago, but it still brings out the same emotions deep within his chest. Harold still sings so beautifully, he thinks, as his fingers glide over Harold’s stomach.

The choir chant his desires. The universe hums in his ears. Harold smiles as brightly as the sun. The fragments of his mind drift away into the dark void as he gives himself up completely to Harold. He gives in, whole-heartedly, eagerly, desperately.

Just for that night, the man known as Sigma is gone. In his place, Siebren de Kuiper returns, a phoenix rising from the ashes. For the brief moment he resides on Earth, his sole mission is to make up for all the years he spent without Harold Winston by his side.

#Overwatch #Sigma #Siebren de kuiper #Harold Winston #Sigrold #THEY FINALLY KISS #Well...technically they kissed before #In the previous chapter #And also a lot in the past #BUT THIS IS THE PROPER KISS #Things are going to come to a head in the next chapter #You guys gonna wait and see #If you like my stuff please do help me out by reblogging

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beatrice-otter · 5 years

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The myth of the “good” master

TW for talk about slavery and racism.

For those of you who don’t follow Star Wars stuff, @fialleril has lots of really good meta and stories fleshing out Tatooine slave culture and how that shaped Anakin and Shmi and Luke. And one of the parts of that culture is a hatred of “Depur,” the master(s).

Somebody just sent them an ask about if there are any stories about good masters on Tatooine, who freed their slaves and provided cover for formerly enslaved people to do whatever, or who sold their slaves and got out. (Asker replied to the response with an apology for using the word “sold”) Fia had a good reply explaining why there wouldn’t, but I wanted to use Fia’s tags as a jumping off point for what I have to say about the myth of the “good” master, which is really prevalent in the US. And shows up in fiction (written by White people) a lot, and it’s always really, really bad. So let’s talk about both the problems with the myth, and the problems with the suggested stories about “good” masters. First, Fia’s tags:

#slaves don't tell stories about 'good' masters

#it's the masters themselves #and their descendants trying to feel less guilty #who tell those stories

#i mean this ask is in the context of fiction and that's important

#but i'm also aware that i say this as a white person in america #and i remember hearing all sorts of stories about 'good' slave masters as a kid

#but you know what? #white people are the only ones who tell those stories #it's a way of trying to get around the sense of collective guilt

#so i actually could see stories like this cropping up in a future gffa #where tatooine has been free for a couple decades

#but you can bet it's not going to be the descendants of slaves telling those stories

I’m white, but I’ve studied US History and read books by Black people about slavery. Black people today do not tell stories of "good" slave owners. Just like Jewish people don't tell stories of "good" Nazis. I've heard Black interpreters at living history exhibits talk about how horrifying and exhausting it is to deal with White people trying to find a way to make the slave owner a good person. They just keep asking and asking and posing what-if after what-if and trying to find SOME WAY that it's okay to participate in the system of slavery. Some way to excuse what their ancestors (or the ancestors of their culture) did. Some way to exonerate the ones we came from. And the black re-enactor has to deal with this crap, and it is horrifying for them. It is some of the most degrading emotional labor I can imagine. At its heart, the insistence on “good” slaveowners comes from a place of arrogance and privilege and selfishness. It’s saying “My desire to sweep my ancestor’s sins under the rug and pretend the evil they did was not evil is more important than the pain and suffering they caused, and it’s also more important than the pain and suffering I’m causing the Black people around me by trying to justify the people who hurt their ancestors and would hurt them too if they’d lived back then.”

Pretty much every study of slavery in the US I’ve ever read that went into any detail found that slavery was an intensely corroding social mechanism for everyone at every level of society who participated in it, willingly or unwillingly. To participate, you had to either actively degrade and abuse other human beings, knowingly allow other human beings to be degraded and abused, or be degraded and abused yourself. Not all slaveowners thought the system was right; not all slaveowners were vicious to their slaves. But even the ones who disliked the system and were not personally vicious depended on the threat of selling their slaves to others who were worse than them to keep their slaves in line. And if you were a slaveowner, even one who consciously believed that slavery was wrong, well, human beings are terrible at admitting when we’re wrong. There are all sorts of ways in which you slip down the path to justifying your actions. “Yes, it’s wrong, but...” “Yes, I’m a slaveowner, but I’m not like those other slaveowners,” “I’m a good slaveowner, so my slaves should be grateful to me because I’m so nice to them.”

Women, do these justifications sound familiar to you? It’s #notallmen! That’s what it is! Except there really are men who treat women well and don’t perpetuate rape culture and the patriarchy, and there is no way to be a slaveowner without being part of the slave system. Yes, all slaveowners did evil or facilitated evil or profited from evil. Some of them just chose to use others to do the dirty work. Owning slaves is inherently degrading and oppressive and abusive. There’s no way around it.

Probably the best exploration of the “good slaveowner” myth I’ve ever seen is the 2016 movie Birth of a Nation by Nate Parker, about the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831. The film is mostly about Nat, of course, but it also deals with the family that owned him, a “nice, good” White family. They’re nice people. Good, by the standards of their society. They are a stark contrast to the horrifying evil of the slaveowners around them. And yet ... they participate knowingly in that society. They know it’s wrong and they still want to be respected by their neighbors whom they know do evil things. So they themselves keep saying and doing things that get worse and worse, things that they know are wrong, because they choose fitting in to an evil society over doing the right thing. It’s very accurate to the choices and reactions of most people we would label as “good” slaveowners, and in a lot of ways it made them more horrifying than the slaveowners who delighted in torturing their slaves. The torturers were twisted and evil but they didn’t know any better. The “good” slaveowners knew better and still did it anyway.

For decades there has been this idea (among White historians) that, even for those who accepted that there were no “good” slaveowners, White women whose families owned slaves could still be “good” slaveowners because they didn’t directly own slaves (married women not being allowed to own property) and were powerless to do anything to stop it. A Black historian recently challenged this by showing that there were all SORTS of legal workarounds for this, and many married White women routinely owned their own slaves; many were given their first slave as a child and owning slaves was part of their identity. In the places she’s studied, about 40% of slaveowners were women. Interestingly enough, by comparing various primary sources by and about specific White women slaveowners, some of them seemed to be consciously creating the myth of a “good” slaveowner whose treatment of their slaves is a net benefit for the slave. These women she’s pretty sure, knew that was false, but they wanted to be seen that way. They know it’s purely selfish, but they want to be seen as altruistic. So they lie.

The ask suggested a “good” slaveowner who freed their slaves and let them do whatever as cover. The thing is, someone who frees slaves is, by definition, NOT a slave owner. They are not maintaining power over any person. They are not benefiting or profiting from owning people in any way, shape, or form. The idea that they could then pretend to be a slaveowner and use the privilege it gives them in order to cover for the actions of escaping slaves is bogus. There is no way to maintain a position of power in a slave society without participating in enslavement. Why? Because the other slaveowners will notice if all your slaves disappear. And they will not be happy. And they will, at best, exclude you and not trust you. If you free your slaves, you lose all status. Unless, what, you free them and they keep working for you as cover for being a stop on the underground railroad? There's easier and cheaper ways of setting up stops that don't involve formerly enslaved people having to act like slaves. Can you imagine what that would be like? You could not really be free, not inside your head, because you would have to keep playing that part. It would be incredibly corrosive to the psyche of both "slave" and "master." Because when we repeatedly do or say something, our brains incorporate that as right or good or natural even when we know better. That's how brainwashing works. If you repeat a lie often enough, even knowing that it is a lie, you begin to believe in it. Formerly enslaved people setting up ruses that involve pretending to be enslaved for a brief mission is one thing. A former master setting up something where the formerly enslaved people have to re-enact their enslavement ... yikes.

If we were talking about a real-life situation, would it be possible for it to happen in a way that was not bad? Maybe for short temporary skirmishes into slaveowner society. But given how much racism is wrapped up in the “good slaveowner” myth in American society, how much we cling to that myth and how much damage it does to real black people here and now, this is not a story we should be telling. If a Black person wanted to write that story, okay, fine. I highly doubt any would, because like Fia said earlier, Black people really do not tell stories of “good” slaveowners. But in the here-and-now, given how much racism is wrapped up in the myth of the “good” slaveowner, I guarantee you that any White person trying to write such a story--even set in a fictional universe like Star Wars!--there’s pretty much no way for a White person to tell that story in a way that doesn’t reinforce current-day racism and slavery justifications. And that goes for pretty much any story set in any fantasy, SFF, or alternate universe where slavery is present. Not all slaveowners have to be mustache-twirling villains. You can do complex things with them and relative moral states. But if you ever start thinking of any of them as “good” stop right there and take a step back and take a good, hard look at what you’re doing.

OP also suggested a master being “good” for selling all their slaves, which they later realized was a stupid thing to say. I’m glad they realized it, but I’d still like to address it. "Oh, poor me, I have realized that it is wrong to treat people like property! Boo-hoo! I cannot own them any longer! But if I free them, I will lose money and status! So I will sell them to other people! They're still slaves, but I'M such a good person because I have realized it's wrong to own people and now I don't any more!" The slaveowner realizes that slavery is wrong and SELLS their slaves instead of FREEING them. That does not make them a good person, that makes them a selfish person more concerned with feeling good about themself than actually doing something to reduce the harm they are causing. This is a common thing humans do; “I don’t want to feel bad about having done this bad thing, so I’ll stop doing it in the way that has the least consequences for me, even if that screws over the people I’ve already screwed over.” And it’s far more likely in situations where we think, consciously or subconsciously, that the people they screwed over are not their equals or not really people or don’t really matter. When we realize we have hurt people we are biased against, we are often more concerned with salving our conscience than restoring the wrong we did. This sort of conscience-salving is not the same as actually doing good, and it’s something we should all be on the lookout for in ourselves. It can be very effective in a fictional character, as long as you don’t buy into the character’s self-justifying BS.

Please don’t dogpile the OP or abuse them. I’m pretty sure it’s just a Clueless White Person who’s heard the story of Good Slaveowners all their life and bought into it. Correction is one thing; dogpiling is another.

#slavery #racism

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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December 21st-December 27th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from December 21st, 2019 to December 27th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

Without heavy spoilers, describe the worst thing you’ve put one of your characters through?

carcarchu

for a comic i haven't released yet (this happens in literally the first chapter so i don't really consider it a spoiler) the main character in this story has a rough life. she's saddled with enormous debts and gets fired from her job, then when things finally start looking up for her she gets hit by a car and "dies" the whole premise of the story is that people who die and get brought back to life by doctors (dead for just a few seconds) get powers

Cronaj

Hmmm.... I won't say whose, but probably the death of their child, and I've done some awful things to my characters. For some reason, all the pain and suffering in the world does not amount to the loss of one's child. To be fair, I don't usually consider it my fault that these horrible things occur in the story, because I couldn't change it if I wanted to. To do so would feel like a lie. These stories exist in my mind independent of what I want, and I'm simply telling them to the world. But yes... that child is the saddest creature I've written.

eli [a winged tale]

Torn apart, watched their friends die, forced to live forever... you name it, we got it In all seriousness, I also like focusing on the small (but not insignificant things) like not having your love reciprocated and questioning your worth. Sometimes it’s the small things that can collectively be destructive.

Capitania do Azar

In some ways, I think I have already done the worst I possibly could to my characters (war, being unable to help and losing their loved ones in darkness and loneliness). But on the other hand, I do plan to extend the mechanics of mind intrusion to the point of completely mangling up people's psyches, so I guess I'll have to wait and see which one feels worse

FeatherNotes

So far in GJS, we've had a character go through some, well, explosive limb loss There's quite a lot of hard things the chars go through / will go through, but i def see the brutality of the leg loss as something pretty huge for the character!

taterviking

I threw my main character under a semi, off a cliff, and shoved a tree branch into his brain. And then when he woke up I gave him long term memory loss and stole 80% of his memories from before he was 12

Kelsey (Kurio)

Boy am I glad none of us are gods heh

taterviking

I kind of treat writing like the Sims: which one am i torturing and which two did I build specifically to get naked together.

eli [a winged tale]

Omg Tater that’s a perfect analogy (edited)

taterviking

the only difference is that I can follow them to work and they're alllllll the money slave/work horse

Also, Viking is my father's name, you can call me Tater ;P

snuffysam

the worst thing that has happened to one of my characters canonically is something i have not and will not describe in-comic, so i'm not about to describe it here. there are certain... types of trauma... where even if a story depicts things realistically, respectfully, and with properly directed condemnation, fans romanticize the hell out of it. and i want no part of that. so, like, i'm keeping this stuff in the character's backstory, because i want to depict living with and growing past traumatic experiences, but i refuse to actually describe/depict what happened so fans don't get the wrong takeaway. the important thing isn't what happened, it's how she deals with it. as for things that actually happen in the comic - one character does get tortured by a government for information?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh boy. So I am rather known for torturing my characters. I don’t even know what the worst thing is, but ‘dying horribly’ or ‘very dark and tragic backstory involving abuse and/ or terrible loss’ describes 95% of my casts.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Several of my characters get horribly bitten/eaten by hungry spirits. If they aren't already completely wrecked by the attack, the resulting cursed bite leads to quarantine and ostracization. Even little kids get abandoned or sent away. And those who are eventually totally consumed by the curse... basically become half-dead. ...Yeah, I got a lot of 'worse than death' stuff going on

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Won't say who, but i don't think i could do much worse than giving a character the perfect life and then taking it and everyone they've ever loved away from them in one fell swoop, leaving them to wander aimlessly.

Deo101

I've put all of my characters through different things that I think aren't really comparable as far as saying one is "worse" than the other. Though, I think that I'll probably say making one of them essentially live through a genocide is pretty undeniably the worst thing, and also the only one that I've really canonically discussed.

DanitheCarutor

I'm lowkey into character torture porn, so I like putting my OCs through some shit. Apollo probably has the most cushy life of every character I've ever made, the spoiled brat! The worst thing that will happen, in TGtaHR at least, will be related to death and/or near death. Not so much the subject in itself but how it is used, which may or may not be the worst thing from a reader perspective, but from the character's perspective. I mean...? I guess anything relating to death is pretty bad, but I've kind of seen situations where the person would have considered it a luxury, soooo. I don't know where I'm going with this!(edited)

Deo101

sounds like you're going towards "my comic is the meanest thing I've put my characters through"

you big meanie.

DanitheCarutor

Ah! I'm such a bully! Nothing like putting your characters through the worst to make the positive payoff more worth it.

khkddn

is psychological or physical pain more impactful to readers? prolly depends heavily on the context huh

anyway for my comic I think it is a tie between a psychologically hurtful thing and a physically hurtful thing

the psychological one is a little something I like to call The Dress Arc, and the physical one is called Cold Swiss Cheese

Deo101

Incredible

khkddn

what is the point of having painful scenes if one does not give them cool names amirite

Deo101

Absolutely. You know whats up

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I’d say psychological pain is much worse. A broken leg can heal in a month, but trauma stays with you. Of course, the former can cause the latter, but I always find it much more emotional when the character is feeling internally tortured rather than externally.

DanitheCarutor

I'm no expert but from personal experience with my comic, it's kind of depends on the reader? But physical is more universally comprehensible. A lot of the pain depicted in my story so far is psychological, with a little physical, and I've noticed people who have experience and/or are educated with the psychological aspect are more impacted by that than people who have never experienced or learned about it. Or to be more straightforward, people who have never experienced or have no knowledge of mental/emotional abuse have no idea what's going on in the story. Although when I had a scene where my frail, mentally unstable MC got punched in the face, everyone flipped out equally.

Of course this is just relating to abuse, when it comes to other stuff relating to pain I can't really give an opinion. I would say it's similar, since most people generally need to have a certain level of understanding of something to be impacted by its depiction of fiction, but I have no idea. Lol(edited)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

No, you make a really good point. People generally can’t comprehend a pain they haven’t experienced, so I admit it would make sense to only feel empathy for physical pain if you’ve never known psychological trauma.

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, it's a douchey thing to do since this is subjective (there are people who have experienced trauma who lack the ability to empathize with others who go through something similar and vice versa), but I like to make a game out of figuring out who has and hasn't been in a really bad relationship based on how they respond to my comic irl, and online to an extent. Admittedly I'm hardcore into getting feedback half due to wanting to psychologically evaluate my readerbase.

Kelsey (Kurio)

Wait what?

DanitheCarutor

"What what" what? Don't worry, I don't do anything or judge based on stuff like that since it's so little info, I just like psychology... even if I may not be very good at it.

But yeah, I'm kind of a creep.

DanitheCarutor

Oh yeah, don't be scared to go back to posting in this channel? Thing? I won't be hanging out here, unless someone talks to me directly. I just responded originally because I had a tiny bit of knowledge on the subject asked.

Cronaj

I get that. I'm also kind of creepy. Plus, I kind of feel like webcomics are a bit of a social experience to begin with, which often involves a lot of studying the readers' emotional responses to the story.

keii4ii

Human beings automatically judge each other alllll the time, so part of it is inevitable. I think the most important thing is to acknowledge that you can be a little, very, or even totally wrong. ...The other important thing is, I do think there's a difference between subconsciously judging others and actively looking forward to it? If you are actively looking forward to judging others, that sort of turns your comment section into a social experiment of sorts, and I don't feel comfortable about that. If I knew the creator of a comic I follow was like that, I would be like "uhhhh you do you, but I want no part in that" and never comment.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Just.... ideally should be consensual?

I know some people who actually enjoy that kinda stuff, like even if they found out, they'd be like "ohhhhh SMART! :D"... Then there are people who would feel upset if they found out. So yeah, ideally this would be all consensual so people can opt in or out, but I don't know how you can do this while fully informing prospective participants.

DanitheCarutor

It sounds like a lie, but really, I don't judge. I make up fantastical concepts of what kind of person this is based on the little info I get from body language, facial expressions, what they say, and tone of voice but it's all thrown out the window because people are more complicated than that. At the end of the day I'd rather actually get to know the person before I truly judge their character. Also when it comes to normal comments I don't analyze unless the commenter is analyzing, usually the "judging" is when I ask for feedback... like, more than a couple sentences worth to get a good idea of how the story is mentally processed by that person. For example when I was asking for feedback after finishing chapter 4. While I was asking for critique, I also wanted to know how the story affected that person, get a vague idea of what kind of people the story draws in or what kind of people it drives away, etc. And yeah, I kinda go the extra mile with it because that's just how my brain works, it just runs all the time. I assume that person consents to me analyzing them and their experience when they respond to me asking for their opinion, but I dunno. Maybe I'll just... teach myself to not think when it comes to my comic or audience, I don't want to scare people off just because I'm an overly analytical weirdo. <_<'

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

I like when you use the physical pain for psychological pain. like someone is in heavy dangers, and comes out with only a broken leg. the other characters can feel guilty, hurt, etc other feelings. For me, physical pain is not enough, it is the reaction it sparks

DanitheCarutor

Oh uh, also @keii4ii, I can vouch that being analytical doesn't make you smart. My dad is like that and he's a complete moron, also I'm not the brightest bulb in the box either, I'm just a slave to my thoughts. Sorry, just wanted to clear things up to make myself look less bad.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I can understand that side of analysing. I’m often curious about my readers because I don’t have very many; my comics tend to be quite niche. So I wonder about what sort of demographic I’m attracting. From the people who have commented and shared a bit about themselves, it seems to be a lot of European and American adults in the 20-40 range who have received higher education (med students, professors, people in STEM, etc), which to me is kind of wild because I’m not writing ‘smart’ comics. There’s no real science or anything in my dark and morbid fantasy comics, so I’ve wondered what about them appeals to this demographic. This isn’t counting my new WT audience I’ve gained over the last couple of years, which is a very different demographic from those who follow on my site, but it’s really interesting to think about ‘What kinds of stories appeal to certain groups of people?’.

keii4ii

@DanitheCarutor Oh, I didn't mean to imply it was a bad thing. I apologize if that's how it came across. I meant it as a "thing I want vs thing I don't want." Just because I don't want a thing for myself, doesn't make it a bad thing.

Re: demographic analysis, more power to you if you're naturally into it. I'm like 'no..... let me just sit here and make this comic in peace.........' and even that's hard enough!

I do think about that stuff from time to time, but when I do, it's usually because I'm sad and am trying to think of non-worst-case-scenario explanations. So yeah, not something I enjoy pondering.(edited)

DanitheCarutor

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) Same, even though my comic has gotten more readers than I imagined, it's still niche. Honestly don't know the age range, but I've gotten a range from psychology and medical students, or people with PHDs to normal 9to5ers who've been through similar experiences. (People who live with schizophrenia or clinical depression, or who have been in bad toxic relationships.) It's really interesting too because some of the readers who comment are very open about sharing intimate stuff about their lives without me even asking, which I'm not sure is due to the type of comic it is or because they relate to it? Either way I don't mind, it's kinda nice that someone feels comfortable enough to share that kind of info despite me being a total stranger. That's really interesting with your comic, though! Like, it's cool the types of people your work can attract, maybe your comic is smarter than you think. Lol

@keii4ii Yeah, but I don't want to discourage readers from interacting with my comic just because I'm into that stuff. Even though the work itself is far from safe I want people to feel comfortable enough to leave comments or discuss amongst each other.

keii4ii

Yeah, I think that's the dream for pretty much all of us, cultivating a comment section where everyone feels comfortable and welcome to interact

keii4ii

Getting back to the question, I really don't think I could answer, given the theme of my comic: "your pain matters, even if it doesn't affect the fate of the world/ even if it seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things." I don't have it in me to go against that and say to my characters, hey, guess what! Your pain pales in comparison to [this other character]'s!

Cronaj

That's an interesting thought. I mean, I spoke of what I consider the saddest scene, but really, in regards to the characters, they might not see it that way. That scene makes me cry, (and probably the character(s) directly involved), but the other characters have other sorrows weighing on their hearts, and those sorrows are also powerful in their own way.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble #comic tea party #ctp

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etudias · 6 years

Text

(Edit: I am aware of the typo in the title, it should be experience)

Hi there, my name is Alessandra and I am going to tell y’all about how the whole college application process went for me. I think my experience ended a little differently than most, or at least most that people will share. It honestly took a lot for me to feel comfortable posting this so I really hope that it will help someone out there. It is however a very long post, so I am going to break it up into sections, feel free to read only what you need/want.

1. Researching Schools

I got excited for college. I was excited to go to college for as long as I can remember and was looking up different schools on site’s like the college board one, bigfuture, which by the way, I recommend, since probably 10th grade. So come Junior year I had a bunch of schools I was interested in. I ended up visiting a few in Boston over spring break that year. I visited Harvard, MIT, and Boston University (clearly my sights were set high). I did not really think it was that important to visit colleges, and that I should just visit the ones I got into to help decide (I now know that college visits can actually really help you get into a top school). The summer before senior year I worked hard to narrow down my list. I ended up with 12 schools that I applied to. This may seem like a lot to some, or not many at all to others. Most people I know applied to more like 5-8, but I know some people who applied to 20+, you gotta do what’s right for you. I wanted to apply to more honestly, but based on costs that is the number my mother and I agreed upon.

2. The Schools

Okay so in alphabetical order here are the schools I applied to:

Barnard College

Brown University

Carnegie Mellon University

Case Western Reserve University

Duke University

Georgia Institute of Technology

Harvard University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stanford

University of California - Berkeley

University of Georgia

University of Pennsylvania

So, some reasoning on my choices. I heard someone say something that I fully agreed with, and after everything still do. That you should apply to as many reach schools as you can because it raises the chances of getting into just one. So with that I applied to a bunch of reaches, a few meets, and 1 safety. The one safety school I decided on was because it was in state and in my state if you have a 3.75+ GPA and some other requirements, you get full tuition to in state schools and I knew that given the money, there was really no other school that I could consider a safety school that I would choose over it. I still stand by this choice.

3. My Stats

You are probably going to ask this and I’ve decided to be upfront and tell you because why the heck not. I sent in ACT scores, not SAT (although I did take it). I got a 32 (33 English, 33 Reading, 35 Science, 28 Math), I should have spent more time studying for the math as that score never changed, but it was my 3rd time taking the test and I was over it, my goal had been a 33, but to me that was close enough because I was tired. My GPA was a 3.875 unweighted and a 4.063 weighted. My school did not offer many AP courses, I took all that I could with the exception of 2 history courses that I had strong reasons for not taking and when I had my Harvard interview and I talked with the lady about it, she wholeheartedly agreed and said that as the counselor of her private school she even made her school stop offering those courses, so yeah I feel pretty valid about that. (Ended up taking 7 AP’s if you are curious about which ones, they are on my about page) I basically got all A’s in my academics, my B’s came from some arts classes and health, I know, I know. I’m going to briefly mention my school in this section because it is sort of related. I went to a public arts high school that is ranked number 2 in the state for academics and 75th in the nation. It was extremely rigorous.

4. Extracurricular’s and other application stuff

I was very involved. I participated in theater for all 5 years (my school was 8-12). I did technical theater and by 10th grade was crew head for shows and in 11th grade I worked every show (which at my school was a lot). Senior year I became a stage manager which is a big responsibility and sort of like being a president of a club, but even more responsibility. I calculated the hours I spent with theater junior year alone, 300 hrs. I was also very involved in orchestra, all 5 years. My school has 4 orchestra levels, the first two comprising the lower orchestra, 3&4 comprising the higher level orchestra, based on skill level, not age. I was in orchestra 2 for 8th and 9th grade, orchestra 3 for 10th and 11th grade, and orchestra 4 for senior year, orchestra 4 was a big deal, with only 11 members and you played not only in the higher level orchestra but also the touring orchestra. Lots of hours. I also played in my county’s honor’s orchestra for 2 years. I was on the executive board (basically president) of my schools National Honor Society (our school only opens it to seniors, so I was only in it for 1 year). I was part of Beta Club for 4 years. I was a math tutor. I founded a Girls Who Code club at my school and taught it. I was in our award winning mock trial for 2 years. I was a member of my schools Gay Straight Alliance. I babysat all throughout high school. I did more than that but this is already long enough and you can tell that basically, I was a try hard.

Let’s talk about summers. The summer after 10th grade I went to a 7 week long summer immersion program for coding called Girls Who Code. The summer after junior year I went to a week long orchestra camp, then my states Governor’s Honor’s program, which in my state is very prestigious and hard to get into (I think its like a 10% acceptance rate). I was a software engineering major and a math minor there. (Those are really the summers that count, but all other summers I went to orchestra camp)

More application stuff, I had a fair amount of school awards as well as the aforementioned Governor’s Honor’s. I got recommendations from my pre calculus teacher, who I founded a Girls Who Code club with, and my world history/ap psych teacher. They both loved me and I’m sure wrote great recommendations (with the exception of UGA where I did not send any). All the schools I had interviews with went extremely well. I was a legacy for Duke. I had an alumni friend write an AMAZING letter of rec for CMU. I felt my essays were strong (and checked by 3 or so people).

My major: I basically applied everywhere as a computer science major. I felt good about this with the way I spent my summers, some of my extracurricular, and classes I chose to take. I wrote a fair amount of essays about this and I feel as though my applications demonstrated the work I had put into bringing more people (especially women) into STEM, specifically cs, and my interests and knowledge of cs.

5. The Decisions

Finally the good part right? Well at least for you readers. I’ll go in order of the decisions (although towards the end I forget the order a bit because it was tech week and show weeks for my schools biggest production, I was busy) and add some commentary on some. (All regular decision unless otherwise noted)

MIT (Early Action) - rejected, it hurt a little being my first, but not unexpected

Case Western (Early Action) - deferred, then waitlisted, then rejected, everyone from my school got the exact same decisions from them and there were people from the bottom of my class to the very top lol

University of Georgia - accepted, oh boy I cried because finally thank goodness somewhere at least

Georgia Tech - waitlisted, then rejected, this one still stings, people with all around weaker applications from my school got in that applied early. the acceptance rate dropped from 40% to 8% between early and regular, biggest regret is not applying here early, once I was waitlisted here I felt for sure I wouldn’t get in anywhere else

Barnard College - waitlisted, still waiting to hear. at this point i just felt like I was getting waitlisted everywhere

Harvard - rejected, expected as are basically the rest of these

U Penn - rejected

Brown - rejected

UC Berkeley - rejected

Duke - rejected, but damn that letter I’m still mad about, like the fact the I got rejected was unsurprising at that point, but they sent me 3 long paragraphs of rejection bc I was a legacy saying how sorry they were and how many times they reconsidered my application. One sentence would have been better.

Stanford - rejected

CMU - rejected, and man I knew it was coming but it was the last school I heard from, my last hope, and it was closing day for my last school musical, this was a bad day, not so much for this one school but just the process in general

6. Reflections

So I got into 1 school, yup just 1. My safety school that’s it. Let me tell you I was devastated, not over any particular school, but that I didn’t get into any others. I ate 4 donuts and cried a whole lot the day of that last rejection. I got really REALLY stuck on the fact that I would only ever read that one acceptance letter, that one congratulations. I moped around and was sad and upset with my self and full of regrets like why did I not apply to more schools, it was a bad time. But let me tell you that time really showed my what good some friends could be, friends really helped me through that. Even though I had only one school I waited till the last minute to commit. So yes, fall 2018 UGA here I come, go dawgs! (and really its not a bad school, especially the honors program) I worked really hard to get myself excited for this school and as much as I am, with the major I want to go into, I know it is in my best interests to transfer, no matter how much I do not like the idea of transferring (its a good school don’t get me wrong, just not the best for my major). I am still trying to come to terms with the idea of transferring and honestly this whole process in general. I do not think I would have done things much differently, I put my best into my applications, honestly if I changed anything I would have just applied to more schools and probably only more reaches or meet/reaches at that. I have come to accept the decisions (mostly, I still get quite down about it from time to time). It was an odd year for decisions at my school in general. We usually send a good amount of students to top top schools like ivies and the equivalent, but this year no one got into any, heck our valedictorian is going to UGA too. (I think it has something to do with our class being super strong overall, 50% had a 4.0+ weighted, so therefore none of us really stood out) So yeah it really freaking hurts only getting into one school, I’m pretty sure I went through all the stages of grief, but now I am in acceptance and just getting excited for college!! and I am SO EXCITED

If anyone has any questions about this process, my inbox is open.

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houseofvans · 6 years

Photo

ART SCHOOL | Q&A WITH DAVID CHUNG (THE CHUNG)

Artist David Chung’s paintings, drawings and sketches are filled with colorful anthropomorphic characters from sword wielding pandas to rainbow spilling landscapes where skeletal heroes battle fuzzy cute creatures. Drawing from his own experiences and psyche, David’s uses his adorable and hilarious creations to help deal with the everyday stresses of life and as a form of catharsis. We’re excited to feature the work of David and talk about his art, his work as an Art Director at Dreamworks TV, and what new projects he’s got in the works!

Find out more about David Chung by taking the leap below!

Photography courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself? My name is David Chung, but a lot of people might know me as The Chung!! I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the past 11 years now, which technically makes California the longest place I’ve ever lived in my entire life. During the day I work in animation, currently as of this interview, I’m an art director at Dreamworks TV, but at night, I’m my own artist, free to do whatever I want!

How did you get into painting and art as a kid? What kinds of things were you influenced by? I’m not really sure how I got into art as a kid. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. Much like all kids, I’ve always just enjoyed drawing and making art. I realized early on that I could be as weird as I wanted to be in my drawings, and that was a really liberating feeling. Earlier in my childhood I was raised in Hong Kong and Taiwan but my highschool years were spent in Upstate New York, where I graduated from. I pulled a lot of my influences from growing up in Asia and having a Chinese background, but the subjects and humor mostly came from living in the States.

How do you describe your work to folks who’ve never seen it before? I might describe it like watching an animated kids’ movie with a lot of jokes your pervy parents would appreciate.

You have various creatures and characters throughout your work that we love. Storytelling and humor are elements in your works as well. Can you tell us a little about how each piece evolves? What is your general artistic process like? I’ve been finding myself creating new characters based off of new ways I need to deal with my life at the moment. The characters that are in my work are compartmentalized parts of my psyche or emotions. Being able to take the everyday stresses of life and make cute characters go through it in a more harsh and humorous way is a really effective form of catharsis for me. About 90% of the subjects in my work are autobiographical. The humor in my work is just another way for me to prevent myself from ever taking myself too seriously. If I can’t laugh at my own work, then what’s the point.

Do you have a main protagonist in your work? And who or what is it? How did it come about? It really depends on what I’m going through at the time of my life when I paint my characters. For example, my XiongMao (Panda) character was created during some pretty rough times. He represents my persistent side to survive. Grimothy (the little reaper dude) and Xiaguai (his little chinese demon friend) are my two mischievous daydreamer characters that are all about ditching their responsibilities to have fun adventures. Pouty Pig is the side of me that throws silent tantrums anytime he is unhappy about a certain situation, which apparently is a lot. These are just some of the few recurring characters in my work depending on how I’m feeling. I even have a few recurring antagonists such as the Happy who are pink soulless zombie-like creatures who roam the earth seemingly always happy, but they feed off of people’s energy like vampires. If you ever let them get a whiff that you’re not happy, that’s when they attack. I think we all know people like this. Right?? They’re the worst. I hate them.

What was your last adventure that showed up in one of your work, thematically or just visually? I do these sketches in my Instagram feed called “Procrast-O-Sketches” that usually follow my most current adventures. The overall sketches can be interpreted however you like, but for myself, friends and family in my inner circle, the subject matter is pretty esoteric.

A pretty straight forward Procrast-O-Sketch is from Sept 21, 2018. We just moved into our new house in the beginning of September, and about 2 weeks after moving in, my 2 year old kept crying that there is a monster living in the house. He keeps saying it’s a shadow man that “kind of looks like Daddy” but sometimes it turns into a dog-like creature. He’ll be playing and being super happy, then all of a sudden he’ll see his shadow man, then will let out a terrified scream, scramble over to myself or his mom and cry that “The man is back!!” We’ve been trying to turn it into a game now by going monster hunting together, which seems to be helping. At least helping him... I’m terrified as shit now.

What is your favorite thing to draw or paint? I love drawing or painting creatures and characters in familiar situations that are way worse than my own.

What are your favorite tools? Currently, I always have my little Pentalic Traveler Pocket Journal, a kneaded eraser and a good clutch pencil with me just in case I need a quick therapy sketch session to take out any frustrations. I feel like brands and mediums change all the time, but a good ol’ fashioned pencil and a sketchbook are always constant.

What’s a medium you have yet to try and would love to take a stab at? Oh man, there are way too many mediums I’d love to try one day. I would really like to try oils again. I haven’t messed around with oils since I was in college. I also really want to try out ceramics and bronze casting.

Not only do you draw and paint, you also work as an art director and designer at DreamWorks by day? What’s that like and how did you find yourself working for such a cool company? Dreamworks is a pretty awesome company to work for, and I’m not just being paid to say that. They’ve made me sign a contract to say that. But you know, overall it’s pretty awesome because of the people. I love being able to collaborate and riff off of other artists every day. All of whom are working toward the same goal of making the best looking product possible. I’ve been working in the animation industry for about 10+ years now, and over the past decade, I’ve met some really great people who I know I’d work with again and again like I have in the past. So when a lot of those people who felt the same about me ended up at Dreamworks, I was brought on over, and I’m super grateful for it.

How do you balance your work life with your artistic life? Or are they sort of one in the same? It’s actually pretty easy and difficult all at the same time. I deliberately try to separate my work-life from my art-life because what I do after work, is mine and mine alone. This keeps me from taking anything too personally when there are ridiculous amounts of notes and revisions to be made at work. Nothing is personal, and I’m totally okay with that. My job is to provide them with the work that they want. It’s a lot easier to make revisions when I know that as soon as I go home, I can start working on my own personal stuff that nobody can say shit about.

The hard part is finding the time to have an art-life after work-life. It usually means eliminating good health. Fortunately passion usually wins out over sleep, but unfortunately, “usually” isn’t always. Typical days at work can last 10-14 hours, and when I get home, I still want to be able to hang out with my wife and kid, which means I won’t even be able to get started on my own stuff til around 12-1am. Especially lately, due to the monster keeping my son up all through the night.

What are you constantly inspired by? And who are some of your early and current art influences? I’m constantly inspired by life and all of the little idiosyncratic behaviors we have. Human life is so interesting even at its most mundane moments. There’s always inspiration to be pulled from who we are. When I was in the second grade, I saw Alien for the first time in my life on TV. It fucked me up. I needed to know what this monster was. Then I found out about H.R. Giger when I got a little bit older. It wasn’t necessarily the style that inspired me, but the way the he created. It seemed like an obsession that he turned into a profession. I didn’t even know being an artist for a living was allowed! Lately I’ve been super digging Travis Millard (IG: @theotherfudge), Alex Solis (IG: @Alexmdc) and I was recently introduced to Kamila Mlynarczyk’s (IG: @Woodedwoods) work which is pure insanity and I love it so much.

What do you do when you are not painting or drawing? Lately it’s trying to spend as much time as I can with my family and soak as much of it up as I can before it slips away. While doing that I’ve been messing around with photography and filmmaking as a hobby. Filming my son doing weird shit is super fun. He makes a great subject.

What advice would you offer to an aspiring artist who might wanna follow in your footsteps? You gotta want to do it. And not just because you think it’s a good way to make money. You have to want to do it because you love it. That’s really where it all begins. Next step is to just go fucking do it.

What’s your best Art School tip that you want to share with folks? Could be technical or just advice. This is a continuation of my previous response, but it’s important, after you “just go fucking do it” expect to fail. Don’t even just expect it, LET yourself fail. As long as you learn something from it and never stop trying, you’re totally allowed to fail all the time!

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t an artist or doing anything art-related? This one is difficult, everything I can think of that I’d possibly be doing is art related. I’ve always wanted to be a fiction writer or a filmmaker, but those can be very creative. The other thing is to start my own business producing products for creative enthusiasts.

What are your favorite style of VANS? Every time I end up buying a new pair of VANS, I always end up getting the Authentic style. You can never go wrong with them!

What’s coming up for you the rest of the year that you’re super excited about? I’m super excited about two new toys that are currently in production with Martian Toys and Wetworks. Also there’s a bunch of new stuff I’m trying to launch on my own that I’ve been pretty excited to work on, I just need to find the time!

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#Art #Vans #Vans Art #Art School #David Chung #The Chung #interview #animation

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