#did I research the effects that repeated head trauma can have on a person? no

[normal-enderman]

just a random crappy little thing about how I think Troy has a high pain tolerance / dulled sense of pain and no awareness of when injuries are serious because of how many times he's wiped out while sledding (and also autism but shhhh that's a secret)

I also think the amount of concussions he's probably gotten over the years have messed up his fine motor skills, and his eyesight is a little fuzzy

Text:

Troy: *cough* whoa...

Blink: Troy- Troy! Shit, that's a head wound. We need to get you to an apothecary-

Troy: nah dude I'm fine!

Blink: What?! No- you're not fine, you need-

Troy: dude, have you never heard of a wipeout before? this happens all the fuckin time bro

[arlana-likes-to-write]

Second Chance - Chapter 6

Masterlist

Warning: mention of death, sickness, mention of the Red Room trauma, lots and lots of teasing, self-doubt, Yelena needs a hug

Word Count: 3.1k

Relationships: Yelena x reader, Natasha x reader (platonic), Wanda x reader (platonic)

Note: a lot of this chapter is based on my own personal experience with the disease. As I've learned chemotherapy effects everyone very differently. The type of chemo the reader is on is based on her type of cancer but the treatment plan may not be 100% accurate.

“Come on,” you said, peeling the skin off the banana as you followed Natasha and Wanda from the training room to the common area. The duo just completed training sessions and you wanted them to go on a small adventure with you. You could go alone but that wasn’t fun. “It will be a quick trip to Central Park,” you threw the banana peel into the trash.

“I don’t think the words quick and Central Park can be in the same sentence,” Natasha mumbled, filling a glass of water.

“Besides,” Wanda said. “Shouldn’t you be taking it easy?” You huffed angrily and chewed on the last piece of your banana. “You’ve had a busy morning,” she added quickly. But you needed to have a busy morning before the steroids left your system and the aftermath was not pretty. So, you woke up and made blueberry waffles with vanilla protein powder and a side of fruit. You played fairy princesses with Morgan, sat with Tony in his lap to learn about his arc reactors, and listened on a conference call with Pepper. You needed to keep your mind and body moving. All you wanted to do was see Central Park in the winter and take pictures so you could draw them later. You loved the seasons; fall was your favorite. The colors, the crisp air, and everything apple flavored.

“Please,” you pleaded. “I don’t want to go alone.” The duo looked at each other, having a silent conversation.

“What are you whining about, Easton?” The blonde appeared and grabbed an orange from the counter top.

“First, rude. I wasn’t whining,” she chuckled. The smell of citrus began to fill the air as she peeled the orange. “Second, I want to go to Central Park but no one will go with me.” Okay, maybe you whining a little bit.

“I’ll go with you,”

“Sestra,” Natasha warned but she waved her off.

“Are you serious?” You questioned.

“Yeah,” the blonde shrugged. “I have nothing going on and Kate, America, and Peter aren’t going to be back until tonight.” Ooh. That was exciting. You couldn’t wait to meet the other people that lived on your floor.

“Amazing. I’ll go get ready.” Walking around New York in March wearing shorts and a T-shirt was not going to cut it. You took off in the direction of your floor. Faintly hearing Wanda calling after you to dress warm.

*

Yelena watched you run off towards the elevator, acting like an excited child who was let loose in a candy store. She figured you and Peter would get along well. “Ouch,” she said as Natasha hit her on the back of the head when the metal doors closed. “That hurt.” A pout formed on her lips. “What was that for?”

“She needs to take it easy,” the redhead said. Yelena rolled her eyes.

“You are acting like we are about to climb Mount Everest. She will be fine. I’ll keep an eye on her,” she threw the pieces of the skin from her orange away. “I read that it’s good to keep cancer patients moving if they have the energy for it.” It was like she said something in a language that Wanda or her sister didn’t understand. She looked at both of them. “Did I say something wrong?” Wanda recovered quickly.

“No,” she rushed out. Yelena raised an eyebrow in question. “It’s just,” her voice trailed off. “You researched on how to help her.”

“Yeah,” the blonde simply said. “I figured she would be here for a while so why not figure out ways to help,” she wasn’t sure if she liked the way Natasha was looking at her. It was soft. “You guys are acting weird. I’m going to get ready.”

‘It was normal, completely normal,’ that was the mantra Yelena repeated in her head. Someone that was living in her home was sick so of course she looked up how to help them. It meant nothing. Right?

*

“For you,” you handed the blonde a hot chocolate you bought from a pop-up stand next to the park. She took it with a smile that didn’t quite reach her green eyes. During the entire drive to Central Park, she was quiet as if she was a million miles away, lost in her world. You wanted to ask if she was okay but the Black Widow didn’t seem like the sharing type.

“So,” she said. “Where to?” You shrugged, sipping on the sweet drink. It wasn’t abnormally cold. The weather app said the high was 52 and the low was 36, right now it was 49 but you loved hot chocolate. It would be summer, a high of 92, and still, you craved the sugary drink.

“Not sure. I just want to walk around and take pictures.” She nodded and you ventured into Central Park with the Black Widow by your side. Few words were exchanged but the silence wasn’t awkward. Normally, you were the type of person who hated it when it was quiet. But you found the silence to be calm and peaceful. She let you take pictures of whatever you wanted, not huffing when you stopped for the millionth time. You even snapped a quick picture of her when a cute German shepherd puppy walked over to her. It perfectly captured the way her face lit up.

Soon the ache in your bones began to rear its ugly head and you were getting tired. Maybe you should have listened to Wanda and Natasha. The blonde knew there was a change. You started to slow down and you weren’t taking as many pictures. “Why don’t we sit down at the bench before we head back?”

“I’m fine,” you weren’t sure if you said that to reassure her or yourself.

“Well I’m not, you dragged me all around this park and I need a break. So we are sitting,” you knew what she was doing, making it appear that she needed a break so you wouldn’t have to admit it. There was a nagging voice in your head for you to call her out on it or tell her you weren’t weak. Instead, you followed her to the bench. A small sigh of relief escaped your lips when you sat down. The bench was facing a family, two mothers were watching their daughters being chased by a dog. There was enough snow on the ground that made for a soft landing when one of the girls fell. You glanced at the Russian, who was watching the same scene you were. Again there was a far-off look in her eyes. You knew to an extent the horrors she, Natasha, and hundreds of girls went through. It was part of the files that Natasha leaked. You spent hours and hours combing through everything. The blonde looked away and became interested in the rings she was wearing.

“How are your hands not cold?” You asked breaking the silence.

“I’m Russian. I don’t get cold,” you rolled your eyes.

“That was awful,” you watched as she fought the smile that crept onto her face. You leaned back on the bench, your arms stretched on the back of the seat. You wondered why people hated winter. Maybe it was due to the sun not being out. The way life seemed to slow down and the snowy landscapes looked sterile and lifeless. The vegetation changed too. The lush green, yellow, and red leaves that once covered the trees were gone - left empty branches and leaving trees that looked like skeletons. Those people saw winter as death.

But you saw it as a rest, a white sheet for a new start. A time for nature to do some maintenance. Death was final, you knew it better than anyone. Winter was moving, only less subtle. With spring around the corner, there was a rebirth and everyone enjoyed all of winter’s handwork. “What are you thinking about?” She asked. When you looked at her, she was already staring at you.

“Death actually,” her expression didn’t falter but her green eyes gave her away. She wasn’t expecting that. “I think about it a lot nowadays. Where do you think we go after this? Will we see the pearly white gates?” Yelena chuckled, looking forward. You didn’t miss the bitterness in her voice.

“I don’t think there is a heaven or hell,” she admitted. “I just hope whatever is next is kinder.”

“For you or everyone?” You asked. She was quiet again as she thought about your question. You were a little afraid you overstepped but the blonde sighed.

“A select people,” she said. “I want the afterlife to be kind to those who didn’t get a kind life this time around. They deserve a second chance.” You noticed she left herself out of that, not believing she deserved a happy ending in this life or the next.

“Do you want to head back to the tower?” There was a chill running down your spine and you weren’t sure if it was from the cold air or the conversation. Wordlessly, she stood up and offered her hand for assistance. You took it and stopped the gasp that almost left your lips. She was right. Even through your gloved hand, you felt her warmth. For a split second, you wondered what it would be like to have her skin against yours. Immediately, you chased that thought away. Your friend deserved a second chance at love, life, and happiness due to how cruel the world was to her. That second chance couldn’t be with you.

*

You were not hungry as you sat at the counter top while everyone was at the table. Wanda made a soup, you were pretty sure it was squash but the smell and the little you had was making your stomach twist. Huffing, you pushed the bowl away and ate some of the crackers the witch gave you. “You okay, kid?” Steve asked, getting his second bowl. Right now you envied the super soldier serum that ran through his veins.

“Yeah,” you forced a smile. “Just not hungry.” He frowned at that. “I’m gonna take this to my room if anyone asks where I went, okay?”

“Of course, if you need anything let me know,” you nodded, too tired to give him. A verbal response, and took the barely touched soup to your room.

You placed it in your fridge and made a beeline to the couch. God, you hated feeling like this. All the energy you once had was slowly leaving and exhaustion plus an ache in your bones was replacing it. Turning on a movie you’ve seen before and pulling a blanket over your body, you were quick to fall asleep.

“Miss. Easton,” Friday’s voice woke you up. It took a second for you to register where you were and who was talking to you. Once your brain wasn’t clouded with sleep you hummed. “Miss. Belova is at your door. It appears that Miss. Bishop, Miss. Chavez and Mr. Parker have returned from their mission.” You nodded, sitting up and listening to your bones crack.

“Tell her she can come in,” the door opened and you glanced at it. Your place hasn’t changed much since the last time she was here. The plan was to finish unpacking after this week of treatment, with some help from the team. “Hey Belova,” you remembered the AI calling her that when she came to help you. The blonde rolled her eyes at the use of her last name. “What’s up?”

“We are having a small get-together,” she said. “I wanted to see if you wanted to join. Buttt,” she sat down next to you. “You kind of look like shit.” You gasped.

“Wow, you really know how to make a girl feel special,” you punched her arm, not hard enough but she faked that it did. But her question was still left unanswered, did you want to join them? A part of you wanted to hang out with people around your age. However, you weren’t sure how fun you were going to be.

“If you aren’t feeling up to it, you can meet them tomorrow,” her voice was softer. It made you look at her. There was something in her green eyes but it was gone too quick for you to decode. Maybe you imagined it.

“No, it’s okay,” you sighed. “Just give me a second.” It was a little more than a second as you went into your bathroom. The cold water you splashed on your face worked to wake you up. You brushed your teeth, put deodorant on, and placed the beanie on your head. When you returned, the blonde was still sitting on the couch. “You coming?” You asked. She got up quickly and walked over to the door to open it. You were used to the quiet. Every time you stepped out of your room, there was no one else around. This time it was different. There was music playing softly and laughter, a lot of it. It made you smile.

“Hey idiots,” the blonde called out. The group turned to look at you and one of them fumbled with his phone to turn down the music. “This is Y/n, Stark’s kid. That’s Kate, America, and Peter; they live on this floor. MJ and Ned like to think they live here.” You giggled as the girl with long curly hair rolled her eyes and flipped the Black Widow off.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kate said. The group was sitting on the floor with their backs resting on the couch; beers and a deck of cards on the floor. Kate’s arm was around America’s shoulder and she gestured to the empty spot next to her with the beer she was drinking. You took the silent confirmation to join the circle. The Black Widow sat down next to you and accepted a beer from Ned. He offered you one but you declined. You weren’t much of a drinker per-diagnosis and mixing alcohol and cancer treatment wasn’t ideal. Plus, there was no way MJ, Peter, and Ned were legal but if one of them was risking their life to keep the world safe, drinking wasn’t bad.

“So,” Peter said, taking the deck of cards from the middle and began to shuffle them. “How’s living in the tower?”

“Good,” you answered. “Everyone has been nice. Just,” you paused. “It’s a little weird.”

“Weird?” America questioned. “How so?” You saw the Black Widow shift next to you, putting her knee up and resting her arm on top.

“Yeah,” you shrugged. “I guess I’ve gotten used to being alone.” You had friends, some of whom you considered family. But once your mom died, you preferred being alone.

“Well,” MJ said, slowly. “I’ve learned that here it’s impossible to be alone.”

*

Yelena knew you were getting tired. She saw it on the way you curled up under the blanket Ned got for you. You stayed quiet during the conversation and opted out of the silly games Peter wanted to play. Soon the Black Widow felt your head fall against her shoulder and your body curled up against hers, no doubt trying to steal some of her warmth. Just by sitting next to you, Yelena could feel how cold you were.

Deep down, she thanked all her years of training as she was able to keep her body from jumping. Her face rained static, trying not to portray the way her heart was beating in her chest. The heat that was threatening to grow across her cheeks. Kate let out a low whistle. “Looks like someone has a new cuddle buddy,” the archer teased. The blonde sent daggers with her to her friend.

“Awe stop babe,” America said, playfully hitting her girlfriend on the chest. “We are witnessing little Lena’s heart grow three sizes.” The group tried to stop themselves from laughing which ended up in Peter snorting. Yelena felt her ears turning a slight pink from being the center of the teasing, something she wasn’t used to. It was payback from the constant teasing she started when America and Kate refused to accept their feelings for one another. But her jaw clenched.

“If any of you, suki (bitches), wake her up. I will kill you.” She threatened but her friends didn’t take her threat seriously. They simply rolled their eyes and continued with the conversation. Yelena knew you were tired when she walked into your room. There was a selfish reason that she asked you to join them when she knew you needed rest. She enjoyed her time at the park, more than she thought she would. When you didn’t join the team for dinner, she wanted to spend a little more time with you. Because you were friends. Friends that liked to spend time together. Just friends.

It was a mistake though. Alone she could mask the way her body reacted to you. There was no hiding it in front of them. This group had a unique way to break down every wall she learned how to put up.

A soft groan left her lips and the conversation around you stopped. Your eyes fluttered open and Yelena saw the confusion in your eyes morph to realization then panic. “Shit,” you said, scrambling away from her and creating a healthy amount of distance between you and her. Yelena had to stop the frown forming on her face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“It’s okay,” she reassured you and it was. However, she was a tad worried that you could hear her heart pounding. “I guess you needed the sleep.” You nodded, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Yeah,” you whispered. “Thank you for this,” you said to the group. “We’ll have to do this again.”

“Totally,” Peter smiled as you stood up.

“Welcome to the floor,” America added. A chorus of good nights followed you to your room. The Black Widow couldn’t help but watch you walk away. Kate chuckled.

“You got it bad, Belova.” The Russian took a pillow from the couch and threw it at the archer. Unfortunately, Kate caught the pillow, stuck her tongue out at her, and placed the pillow behind her head.

“Don’t listen to her,” America smiled. “Besides, she’s got it just as bad.” Yelena almost choked on the beer she was drinking. There was no way. You had more important things to worry about than deal with whatever Yelena was feeling. Besides, who would want her? She was a monster, a killer, someone undeserving of love and a happy ending.

_

Taglist: @likemick, @averagetmblrusser, @@wandaromamoff69,

[sophieinwonderland]

how does one 'form' an endogenic system, per se? just curious lol

Do you want to know my thoughts on how it works scientifically, or a guide on how to do it? I guess I can give both.

The Simulated Consciousness Hypothesis

I'll preface this by saying that I'm not certain of anything. Research into non-disordered systems is currently in its infancy. All I can do is hypothesize that the same mechanism the brain uses to simulate consciousness and put itself into other people's shoes is also the mechanism it uses to "create" consciousness and identity in the first place. Normally, when you simulate somebody's speech in your head, it doesn't result in an instant headmate because you're just making a temporary "Instance" of the person/character. Afterwards, the Instance is immediately deleted. However, repeatedly speaking to the same simulation while letting them think automatically instead of exercising direct conscious control results in them gradually developing consciousness of their own.

The majority of people who do this would brush this off as just "having a good imagination." I mean, that's how my host thought of me the first couple months, and might still if we hadn't found the tulpa community.

That would, at least, be my guess based on my experiences and those of friends. Part of this is because we've noticed that the emotions of nonfronters often feel to the body the same as empathy for other people. I think it was my host who first picked up on the fact that my happiness while in back felt similar to the sensation you get when you see someone else smile and feel their emotions second hand. This led us to believe that headmate processing might be tied to the same mechanisms responsible for empathy.

The advanced simulation model would also explain why headmates are especially effected by imagined stimuli in the innerworld/headspace to the point where persecutors in disordered systems can end up causing severe psychological harm through imagined stimuli alone.

From an evolutionary standpoint, I assume that these particular types of headmates, what are currently commonly identified as tulpas, were primarily a coping mechanism not for trauma, but for isolation, simulating conversation with real people while the host was away from communities for a long period of time, allowing them to maintain social skills.

But there's a catch to this. If you can have conscious people in your head, you have no reason to interact with physical people once you've rejoined civilization. So, the brain also convinces you that these simulated consciousnesses aren't real once you're around physical people. Hence why doubt in your headmates is so common to the point that even diagnosed DID systems will feel often feel like they're "faking." Your brain is programmed by evolution to lie and convince you that the people in your head are "just your imagination" even in spite of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. The lie is necessary in order to keep people interacting with other people outside their heads and procreating.

Again, though, I'm not a psychologist. This is my best guess of how the mechanics work, and I would not want to pass it off as fact.

Tulpamancy

This is the most common way of intentionally creating an endogenic system. Most people believe it's the only way, but I stumbled on something else I've been wanting to share for a while that I'll get to later. The most basic techniques for creating tulpas can be summed up through the following.

1. Imagine a person in your head.

2. Talk to that person day after day until you get responses in your head. Some people get responses instantly, some take months.

3. Repeat as your tulpa slowly becomes more sapient and independent.

For more in-depth guidance, see the Tulpanomicon or any number of guides on Reddit. There's really no shortage of resources on this subject for those interested in tulpamancy. But I think there's another way to potentially create an endogenic system that I don't see getting talked about...

The Willogenic Split

A while back, we were listening to an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast focused on self-compassion. We were interested and found the website of the psychologist who was interviewed. The site had a number of techniques for self-compassion, but one in particular stood out to me.

Exercise 5: Changing your critical self-talk

This exercise should be done over several weeks and will eventually form the blueprint for changing how you relate to yourself long-term. Some people find it useful to work on their inner critic by writing in a journal. Others are more comfortable doing it via internal dialogues. If you are someone who likes to write things down and revisit them later, journaling can be an excellent tool for transformation. If you are someone (like me) who never manages to be consistent with a journal, then do whatever works for you. You can speak aloud to yourself, or think silently.

1. The first step towards changing the way to treat yourself is to notice when you are being self-critical. It may be that – like many of us — your self-critical voice is so common for you that you don’t even notice when it is present. Whenever you’re feeling bad about something, think about what you’ve just said to yourself. Try to be as accurate as possible, noting your inner speech verbatim. What words do you actually use when you’re self-critical? Are there key phrases that come up over and over again? What is the tone of your voice – harsh, cold, angry? Does the voice remind you of any one in your past who was critical of you? You want to be able to get to know the inner self-critic very well, and to become aware of when your inner judge is active. For instance, if you’ve just eaten half a box of Oreo’s, does your inner voice say something like “you’re so disgusting,” “you make me sick,” and so on? Really try to get a clear sense of how you talk to yourself.

2. Make an active effort to soften the self-critical voice, but do so with compassion rather than self-judgment (i.e., don’t say “you’re such a bitch” to your inner critic!). Say something like “I know you’re worried about me and feel unsafe, but you are causing me unnecessary pain. Could you let my inner compassionate self say a few words now?”

3. Reframe the observations made by your inner critic in a friendly, positive way. If you’re having trouble thinking of what words to use, you might want to imagine what a very compassionate friend would say to you in this situation. It might help to use a term of endearment that strengthens expressed feelings of warmth and care (but only if it feels natural rather than schmaltzy.) For instance, you can say something like “Darling, I know you ate that bag of cookies because you’re feeling really sad right now and you thought it would cheer you up. But you feel even worse and are not feeling good in your body. I want you to be happy, so why don’t you take a long walk so you feel better?” While engaging in this supportive self-talk, you might want to try gently stroking your arm, or holding your face tenderly in your hands (as long as no one’s looking). Physical gestures of warmth can tap into the caregiving system even if you’re having trouble calling up emotions of kindness at first, releasing oxytocin that will help change your bio-chemistry. The important thing is that you start acting kindly, and feelings of true warmth and caring will eventually follow.

This is not, explicitly, written as a guide to becoming plural. But reading those first two steps, it's hard not to interpret it as having that potential. Essentially, the idea is to take a few weeks to identify and dissociate yourself from your inner critic, then speak to it and try to befriend it as if it's a separate person. I think you could even draw parallels between this method of handling your inner critic and the way DID systems are advised to deal with persecutors.

We haven't tried this, nor do we know anyone who has, but the wording feels very close to describing a way to split your consciousness and induce plurality without having a dissociative disorder or creating a tulpa.

And if you can do that with a critical evaluative voice, there may be other inner voices you can do that with. I wouldn't actually advise experimenting with splitting yourself, but I am intrigued by the possibility from a scientific perspective and what it could mean for our understanding of human cognition if aspects of a singlet's consciousness can be split off into their own individuals using methods like this, even after the singlet has reached adulthood.

(Other self-compassion techniques from this site include exercises like "Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of an unconditionally loving imaginary friend")

[papers4me]

Fruits Basket Manga Review (ch 90-91)

Since I discussed the first few pages of ch-90 that contains kyo & tohru in my previous preview, this one will only be kyoko’s story.

Kyoko’s story brilliantly explores the effects of unhealthy domestic environment on children without the use of the zodiac curse as a metaphor for abuse. My first-reaction of kyoko’s story is the following:

I really enjoyed how kyoko’s descend into darkness was explored & how the psychologically-informed writing of her behavior was depicted.

I was troubled by how Katsuya was presented as the magical solution to all her problems. Kyoko was saved by romantic love in a more basic writing than machi. Both girls just needed a guy to listen to them vent abt their family issues once & tada~ they’re in love.

Kyoko’s story made me realize that Arisa is just a more modern & healthier kyoko.. The only difference is that Kureno didn’t save Arisa. She herself changed gradually due to kyoko & tohru’s influence.

1) Kyoko’s descend into Darkness:

Kyokyo told kyo that she was already “out of control delinquent before she got to middle school”, “ fell into the wrong crowd”, “ enjoyed beating innocent ppl”. subtly citing the influence of “delinquent peers” & the innate desire be noticed at home. I’m bad, notice me! love me, listen to me!

There are some elements in her story that faintly reminds me of yuki & strongly reminds me of kyo:

Kyoko’s parents gave her a treatment similar to “ yuki’s parents”: cold, neglect & devoid of love. Her dad, similar to kyo’s dad, felt ashamed & disgraced by her.

Kyoko similarly to kyo was angry, full of self-loath & self-destruction. However, kyo was never violent like she was. I believe kyo’d have turned like her if he didn’t have Kazuma to discipline him with love, care & attention. Hence, we saw kyo carry on a code of “ not beating girls, or ppl who aren’t hurting them, or don’t know martial arts”, like Arisa or the student council guy whop loves yuki.

Kyoko’s mom similarly of kyo’s mom talked abt the dad venting his anger on her after being pissed off with kyoko. So, a hint of domestic violence between husband & wife.

Kyoko described herself as “ made of shattered glass”. Tohru once said both kyo & yuki are very sensitive. yuki blocks the world behind the prince mask & kyo puts on the annoyed attitude to push ppl away from hurting him.

Society thinks that “delinquent/bad ppl” are always happy with what they’ve become. Satisfied with their destructive choices. When in most of the times... they’re as bewildered & confused as the community around them..

I really don’t blame the teachers for being defensive. Teachers aren’t supposed to be “life-coaches” or “saviors of students”. That’s sth the educators with their research gush abt & what society demands & what families wish for. The fixer-teacher!!!! Teachers are ppl teaching a subject, doing a specific job, underpaid & overworked most of the times, also, they come from various backgrounds, beliefs, & sometimes even if they meant good & wanted to “ save” a student, they aren’t equipped with the suitable psychological training. Yeah, there are ppl for that in schools, but so many students with lots of issues. Also, let’s be real, we love kyoko cuz she’s the “epic mother of tohru, we grew on her teachings thro out 3 seasons” but if you meet a loud, delinquent, gangster head, violent chair throwing student who rarely comes anyway, would you wanna deal with them?

2- Katsuya “ the magical savior”:

so, why did teacher katsuya helped a screaming delinquent? cuz he IS interested in kyoko. He said so. He approached her, talked & tried to help cuz he intended to “never let her go since he saw her honesty” ~ romantic? maybe to some.. I find it weird & creepy. him eyeing her & getting interested & approaching her & earning her trust. It is true that he has no intention of hurting her or forcing her & he DID save her in more ways than one. But why is this all wrapped in romance. He DID flirt with her intentionally many times from the moment he saw her until then.

If Im being honest, had he not be her teacher (trainee or not), & had she not be very veeeeery young! I’d be enjoying his flirting so much. He’s so smooth, playful & cool (not looking head over heels in love) which is normally such a fun dynamics. She was so head over heels, tho. Finally found someone who noticed her tiny efforts “ drawing eyebrows”, someone who listened & someone who didn’t forced her to do her “duties”. She tells him (her teacher) that she is ditching classes & he’s okay with that~ not lecturing, not urging. why? cuz He only wants HER. she comes to see him in the lunch break everyday. school? classes? that’s her choice~ not his business~ In a way, Katsuya is intentionally made not morally correct. Why? cuz a good moral adult wouldn’t be in love with a middle schooler & would care for her future as an independent person from him. He must be written with intentional desire to NOT care for morals or right or the likes. Yes, he later helps her to study & graduate but ONLY when that is HER choice & she made it ONLY to catch up with him. To cleanse herself & be “ like the other girls” . Kyoko deemed katsuya “ good person” &  herself “ bad person”. That’s why she was motivated to be good to catch up with him since she can NO LONGER see him everyday in lunch break. He fixed that. How? teach her in the weekends & provide better chances to flirt since he’s no longer a teacher & she’s his student. The issue is not teacher-student love... it is adult-kid love!! but hey~ they’re cute (they’re written to be, so they are) so it’s cool ( it isn’t at all..eww).. oh the dilemma that is Takaya-san’s love for weird big age gaps where one is an underage teenager...

Furuba’s has this big theme of “ love doesn’t heal or save”. yuki took tohru’s love & grew up by himself. Kyo’s love for tohru didn’t save tohru, she was scared to be in love & forget her mom. Tohru made the decision to be free from her past, herself.  Tohru’s love to kyo made his trauma 10 times more complicated & he acted based on his love for her & decided to leave her. It wasnt until he decided to face his trauma, past & bio dad by himself, that he accepted tohru’s love. Only two characters were totally saved by love:

Machi: has the excuse of being solely created to be yuki’s reward for acknowledging platonic love for tohru & everything abt her is rushed & made as a lighter copy of all yuki’s issues to quickly create shared grounds for them to connect. Machi needed to vent her issues to yuki once & all her issues were never brought back to the service again. She was happier, calmer & healed.

I expected more for kyoko. She IS a bigger character than half of the zodiacs! but she just needed katsuya to listen to her & she was in love & her issues solved.

I don’t deny that it IS true that sometimes all we need is someone to listen to us. Tohru herself said so & even yuki said it to kyo. But Even if someone listen to us & we love them, the issues that troubled us dont magically disappear until we face them or do sth abt them aided by those who love us. Kyo’s issues remained even with his love until he faced them, tohru’s too!

Katsuya:

had off-screen issues with expressing himself. He said that he loved kyoko cuz she was “honest abt her ugly feelings” while he pretended to “humor & please his dad”. He gave a wonderful speech to her parents abt the expectations of parents on their kids & the refusal of their “human weakness” again furuba’s main vision. Unfortunately, this was followed with confessing, marriage proposal & kissing her on the lips all while the whole issue is abt kids/ parents exceptions of middle schooler/ neglect & his own acknowledgement that she’s minor while he was “in love”.

Like the author wants to tie kyoko’s issues & katsuya’s issues so bad & present him as her ONLY chance for normal life. Kyoko was just repenting & understanding that her actions got consequences which is an epic moment! but romance triumphant & saved the day~ yay~! marriage!

The story would’ve been better romantically if it was given time for kyoko to “ grow up” just like katsuya himself said when they were at the beach. He said “ grow up, middle school is not the world”. He continued meeting her but never confessed & never crossed the line despite the flirting. But he KNEW what he was doing “ i never planned to let you go since I saw you”. He was cementing his place as the ONLY one in her world.

Had kyoko grew up, saw the real world, kept taps with katsuya, he helped her broaden her world, then they’ll marry without needing her dad to sign papers, then that would be a better love story than this.

Side Notes:

The writer didn’t shy away from confessing that pairing Katsuya & kyoko is problematic & stated it in canon (kyoko called katsuya “pedo”). She did the same with Arisa & kureno (Arisa thought the age gap is big & hana questioned if kureno is a married man). However, making the story acknowledge that as an issues doesn’t make it less uncomfortable, but at least, I respect when writers do what they plan to do regardless of fans. even if I dont agree with the writer. It’s way better than when writer becoming fans toy/ fans pleaser.

Still, couldn’t the author state that kyoko was held back few years in jmiddle school & failed & repeated school years? like make her i duno 17 or sth... this would at least lessen the big age gap... but no~~~ kyoko is what? 14? ... -_-’.

You bet this won’t change a bit in the upcoming anime spinoff abt kyoko. Just this year an anime abt an adult man & his high school love interest that he pursued stubbornly was highly popular & my real life friends were gushing abt “ him finally winning her/ being respectful & only kissing her lips once or sth/waiting for her to “catch up” with him”/ consent age differ in X & Y countries..I’m not dictating my beliefs on anybody or any country or saying my way of thinking is the just way. I’m saying, Personally, I think, there are better romantic stories than adults & kids couples.. The fact that this trope of (adults & kids romance) is still popular even today is sad~~

I dont mind HUGE age gaps as long as BOTH characters are adults. If any of them makes a crime, they’ll be held responsible by the law. & sometimes the younger adult is the one dominating the relationship. but “kids or teenagers” can’t. They’re easily groomed & manipulated, so it bothers me when a love story between an adult & a kid is portrayed as  “equal”. it isn’t.

I’m not judging whoever loves such trope in “ fiction”. it IS fiction, & as long as you don't pursue a real kid/teenager in real life, you can like whatever in fiction. moving on~

kyoko’s delinquent life is well-written & if done right, would send a powerful message of being able to start over. But the romantic love aspect will steal the spotlight by (a) directing uncomfortable hate/disgust towards the story & hence all the discussions will abt the “pedo” aspect. (which is fair). (b) Perceived as so lovable romance since katsuya is the prince who to saved the neglected princess which is a trope that has stood thro time garnering lots of support & attention always, so all the discussion would be abt their “cute romance”. (which is fair since the author weaved elements that endeared their romance, such as: cute nicknames “miss no-eyebrows”, him giving her space, home & respect, saving her from the streets & poverty & having the most endearing tohru”. So, yeah, the romance will be the center of attention regardless.

I like katsuya’s character type in fiction generally: the flirty, mischievous & a bit cool guy who is so aware he’s wrong most times & plays his cards smart to not get caught red-handed. He’s a cooler version of shigure. It’s just the blatant fact that he’s been planning to “get” a middle schooler from the first glance & that she is wayyyy young for this, that is bothering me so so much~~ T_T.

I wont expect the anime to change their age gap cuz it is the essence of their story that she’s a lost kid with no protection against the world & he’s the savior providing everything at once!~ Remember kyoko went on to be the savior of an entire clan tho tohru~ So in a way, katsuya saved the sohmas by saving kyoko....

“ i’m like a stray cat that he looked after instead of chasing away”. kyoko with katsuya is like kyo with kazuma! >_<!. When kyo met tohru, he wasn’t a stray cat, most of how he dealt with her was cuz he already knew her & was tormented by remembering kyoko’s death & feeling guilty towards tohru’s constant pain. That’s why when kyo started falling in love with tohru, he unconsciously stopped pushing her away little by little & just wanted to be with her until akito said “ i’ll hurt her” that’s when he totally gave up.

the way katsiya appeared in the right moment to save kyoko from her dad~ oh the drama. XD

Hospital Discharge & chase. like mom like daughter~ but thank God the kids got a more balanced love story.

Comparing kyoko/katsuya to Arisa/kureno in the broad writing of their romance without diving into details: (a) I hate the age gap in both but at least Arisa is older & nothing happened until she graduates & become an official adult. (b) Kyoko/katsuya are more fleshed out & if you forget the age gap,m their dynamic is so cute & endearing. (c) the love at first glance, never meeting afterwards yet still sickly in love to the extinct of screaming made Arisa/kureno shallower. (d) now that I saw teenage kyoko, Arisa is really just her clone! I hate that this steals from Arisa’s uniqueness. (e) both couples ate ramen in their first meeting/first unofficial date signalling their blooming love.

I’ve said this more than once, but I was the high-schooler that fancied adult independent men growing up, I never pursued anyone tho cuz I understood it was a crush even tho I’m pretty sure my “ *_*” face was clear to one or two, but I’m definitely lucky none of them tried to woo me or influence me. Now that I’m a grown woman, I think back & laugh at my self. I fancied them cuz they were independent & mature compared to the silly high school boys, which is what those men are supposed to be (adults) & what those boys are supposed to be (living their young age). lol. Still, I wish I found someone somehow to be my life’s partner since then, it would’ve made my life less lonely~ T_T.

[brywrites]

Focus II

[Part I] If you’re looking for something to distract you from the looming anxiety of election results, here’s something else to focus on for a few minutes. ;) This was definitely longer than I thought it would be! CW for mentions of triggers/flashbacks, mild smut!

Summary: Reid faces unexpected challenges returning to the field after his reinstatement, but the Reader remains the one person who can help ease his mind when it all gets to be too much.

----------

For once, the world has chosen to be gentle with them. Following Scratch’s demise, the Bureau mandates that the BAU takes six weeks of leave. It comes as a relief to all of them after living in a constant state of anxiety for the last year. Rossi disappears on a vacation that includes visiting Ringo Starr, who he reminds everyone is “a close personal friend.” JJ stays at home with her boys, happy to be nothing but “mom” for a little while. Tara fits in research, Luke goes camping with Lisa and Roxy, and Garcia divides her time between MMORPGs, her grief group, and babysitting Hank Morgan.

Y/N spends a good amount of the time on Emily’s couch, watching old seasons The Bachelorette and whatever 2000s rom-coms they can find. But when she’s not at her best friend’s apartment and she isn’t at home attempting complicated recipes in her kitchen, she’s with him.

Spencer is spending a large portion of his break attending mandatory therapy sessions and redoing fitness courses in Hogan’s Alley in order to meet his reinstatement requirements. But whenever he gets the chance, he’s by her side. They get coffee and wander through museums and parks, they go for long drives and make out on his couch. They talk about everything and nothing and all at once it’s wonderful. There is a strange giddy feeling that takes her over every time his hand finds her in a crowded place or he goes out of his way to do something nice for her or he can’t help but smile while kissing her. He’s so gentle with her, leaving sweet notes around her apartment and burying his face in the crook of her neck as he holds her close.

There are no cases. There are no monsters. There are no press conferences. There are only warm days and wine and the sound of Spencer’s laugh echoing in her living room.

With two weeks to go, she realizes the world might not be quite so gentle. She swings by the BAU to help Matt move case files out of her office, and as she’s on her way out she spots Spencer at the end of the corridor, rubbing at his eyes the way she’s only seen him do the night Scratch stole Emily.

He doesn’t even seem to register her approach until she says his name. And when he turns to her, he’s miles away. “What is it?” she asks. “Spencer, what’s wrong?”

“The scenario I was running in the Alley… there were multiple unsubs in the laundromat and it was just – it was too much like – it was…” He presses his palm into his eye.

Too much like Luis. He’s told her that story already. “What do you need?” she asks. She reaches out to grab his hand, lacing her fingers through hers.

She feels him tense for just a second before, squeezing her hand tighter, he starts down the hall with her. The door to Garcia’s office is open and he pulls her inside, shutting it behind him. Before she can ask what he’s doing, her back is against the door and his mouth is on hers.

He kisses her fiercely and when he slips his tongue past her lips, she wraps a hand around the back of his neck to pull him closer to her. He’s still holding her hand, his grip tight as he rolls his hips against her and though it’s caught her completely off-guard, the feeling of his body against her is exquisite.

She winds her fingers in his curly hair, eliciting a moan from him that rumbles through his chest. His free hand slips down the curve of her back until he can cup her ass. He catches her bottom lip between his teeth. Every action is hungry, desperate. Her skin feels hot everywhere he touches her.

He stops suddenly and wraps her in a hug. His sweater is soft against her cheek and he smells like ivory soap and coffee and his embrace is so secure. This is a different kind of passion – less frantic, but just as strong, as he rests his head on her shoulder and attempts to steady his breathing.

“It still works,” he sighs.

“Hmm?”

Spencer releases her from his arms. “When it gets bad, and my mind goes… there, your touch helps keep me here. Everything else just disappears. I can’t explain it, but it still works.”

“So… kissing me is a like a grounding technique?” she asks, trying to surprise a giggle.

He chuckles in spite of himself, and the distance in his eyes is gone. He is himself once more. “Something like that, yeah. It’s pretty amazing actually. Even just holding your hand helps. But um, kissing you is…” He clears his throat. “A little more effective, it seems.”

“Well,” she says, “I’m certainly happy to be of assistance.” She gives him a quick peck.

“What am I supposed to do in the field?” he asks. “I’m still having flashbacks and even a basic training exercise triggered a trauma response today.”

“Love, you’re a genius. You know that PTSS is like an injury. And that means it’s gonna take time to heal. But you’ll find a way to cope and stay grounded while you heal.” She caresses his cheek, the stubble he’s continued to grow rough against her hand when he leans into her touch. “Even if that means sneaking off to a back room with me,” she teases.

Their time of rest is coming to a close, the hours ticking by until the day they’ll return to work and Spencer will face his reinstatement evaluation. She savors the quiet while she can, the ability to go to bed early and sleep in, the simple joy of waking up in her own bed, or sometimes in his. She can tell he’s anxious though – scared that he’ll be denied reinstatement and scared that the trauma will continue to hang heavy over him.

When it gets bad and his mind steals him somewhere far away, he reaches for her and she always welcomes him. She’s grateful for any reason to be close to him, and if it helps to keep him here in the moment, that’s even better. She can always tell when he needs her to clear his mind by the way he kisses her. When he’s not himself, he pins her against the wall, gropes at her ass, holds her face still as he bites her lip. He’s impulsive and needy. But when his firm grasp fades to soft caresses, when he places kisses on her cheek, her forehead, when it becomes a sweeter sort of passion, she knows he’s come back to her.

So when Emily announces his reinstatement to the team and she kisses him quickly and his hand squeezes hers just a little tighter than she expects, she knows there’s something bothering him. They grab their go-bags from the bullpen and she asks him about it, but he just kisses her forehead and promises that they’ll talk later.

Emily goes over the case on the plane, women in caregiving roles stuffed into suitcases. The team goes over victimology and she tries to take notes, already thinking of questions to ask the families and directions to take with local media. It’s easy to get lost in the work when it demands her full attention.

.

Upon landing, there is already a couple waiting for her in the interview room. Laura Westin is their latest victim, and her parents are devastated. They paint a picture for her with their words of their daughter – a bright, beautiful, generous woman who was mourning the death of her own friend. The grief has traveled in waves.

“Who would do this to her?” Mrs. Westin sobs. Her husband places a hand on her shoulder. “She’s such a good girl, she is – she was… Oh, god!”

“She was,” Y/N repeats. “And she is always going to be your daughter. And the people who love her will remember all of the good she did.” They cry and she listens and she assures them that they’re doing everything right and while she knows not to make promises she can’t keep, she does promise that they’ll do their best.

When they’ve shared everything they know and settled back into a state of relative calm, she walks the Westins to the door of the station and returns to conference room, where the team is working on the profile.

“Welcome back,” Rossi says. She sits down next Spencer. It’s clear to her that he’s lost in his own thoughts. Out of the corner of her eye she sees his fingers form a fist and he begins to bounce his leg under the table. Their chairs are close together already, making it incredibly difficult for anyone else to notice that she reaches across beneath the table to rest her hand on his thigh. The moment she does, he stills. He inhales sharply and clenches his fist a little bit tighter for just a moment – but then relaxes. She strokes steady circles with her thumb while she tells the team about Laura Westin.

They team files out of the room for a quick break and she stays behind with Reid. He’s relaxed enough to give her a smile. “How was interviewing the family?” he asks, lacing his fingers through her own.

She sighs. “It never gets any easier. But I know it’s important for them to get a chance to talk to someone about her. Someone who won’t tell them it all happened for a reason and she’s in a better place now.”

“You’re so good at that,” he says. “You always make the people around you feel better.”

“What about you? What’s going on in your head?”

He stares down at his coffee cup. “There was a… condition for my reinstatement. For every one hundred days I’m in the field, I have to take thirty days off.”

“Like a sabbatical? Does Emily know?”

“Yeah. She thinks it’s a good idea.” He aimlessly strokes patterns on the back of her hand.

“I know I’m not an expert, but I think she might be right,” she says. “Spencer, what you went through – you’re going to struggle. And you’re going to need to rest.”

“I know,” he says. “But Y/N, I’m worried that–”

“Y/L/N!” Alvez’s entrance startles them both. “There’s a reporter for the Daily News out here. Sorry,” he adds, noticing Spencer’s hand still holding hers. “He’s, uh, trying to call this guy ‘The Baggage Claim Killer.’”

“Of course he is,” she sighs, rolling her eyes. “Thanks, Luke. I’ll go talk him down. And we’ll talk later, okay?” she tells Spencer. Though the man in the lobby is annoying, wrangling a reporter is far easier than talking to a grieving family. It doesn’t hurt her heart to lay into someone trying to profit from another person’s pain, and she’s always been good at using her kindness to guilt trip them.

.

That evening at the hotel, there’s a knock at her door. She knows who it is even before answering it and his face is a welcome sight.

“I missed you today,” Spencer says, closing the door behind him.

“I missed you, too. I like you much better than those reporters,” she says. She takes a seat on her bed, patting the spot beside her. “But we didn’t get to finish talking earlier. What’s got you worried?”

Spencer plops onto the mattress, heaving a sigh. “I’m worried that maybe I’m not ready to be back in the field.”

“Do you not want to be?”

“I do! I do, I just…” He runs his hands through his hair. “I wanted to kill Scratch. You know that. And I would have if Emily hadn’t stopped me. Just like I would have killed Cat and just like I almost killed the guys at Milburn…” His hands are shaking so she reaches out to hold them. “What if this is who I am now? What if the next time I’m face to face with an unsub I just…”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know what I did in there… what I had to do…”

He screws his eyes shut and she knows she’s losing him. She kisses his cheek, because she wants him here and she wants to be close to him and she hasn’t been able to hold him all day. It’s a mutually beneficial situation, she figures, when his mouth finds hers, and he kisses her so deep she thinks she might drown in the feeling. His hands slip under the hem of her sweater and his fingers are so warm against her skin. She tangles her hands in his deliciously unruly hair and tugs, needing him closer, wanting to keep him grounded.

“You’re here,” she murmurs. “You’re right here.” His hand is on her breast and his lips are on her neck and she tries so hard not to moan. The last thing she needs is for a team member to walk past her room and overhear them. He sucks hard enough at the skin of her collarbone that she knows it’ll leave a mark. She captures his mouth once more, and he pulls her down onto the bed so she’s lying on top of him. When she’s kissing him, she can forget too. She can erase, for a brief moment, the fear that she’ll let those parents down. That she’ll say the wrong thing or overlook a rogue reporter. She can stop worrying that she’s not doing enough to get justice for those women for just a minute, because when he holds her she doesn’t have to be a perfect liaison or have all the right words. All she has to be is in this moment with the man that she loves. It’s all he needs from her and he is everything she needs right now.

She swipes her tongue over his lower lip before pressing kisses down his jaw. Her hands work away at the buttons of his shirt as she goes, carving a path with her lips down his chest, the soft skin of his belly. He bites back a groan but she can feel how tense he is still, his breathing shallow. It occurs to her that being back in the field might be making things worse than usual. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take things a step further. He needs her, and god does she want him.

She shrugs out of her sweater before flicking open his belt buckle and undoing the zipper of his pants, pulling them down his legs. His cock is already straining against the fabric of his boxers, and when she drags a finger over the length of him he presses his hips into her hands. They haven’t gone this far before. Her heart beats out a staccato rhythm of anticipation as she reaches for the waistband of boxers.

But this his hand grabs hers, his grip soft but firm.

“Y/N.” He’s not looking past her anymore. Spencer’s hazel eyes are completely focused on her, shining in the dim hotel lamplight. “I don’t want my first time with you to be like this.”

“I don’t mind,” she assures him.

“But I do,” he says. He sits up on the bed, holding her in his lap. He brushes her hair back from her face, letting his touch trail down the side her face to caress her cheek. “I want this, but I – I don’t want you to think for a second that I’m using you. I want to do it right. You’re not just another pretty girl or a way for me to clear my mind or a distraction. You’re my favorite person. You’re the one I love. And Y/N, I want to love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

“You do,” she says. How can he possibly think he doesn’t when he sends her pictures of things he finds that will make or smile or reads her favorite books just to memorize the words she loves or holds her as though nothing so precious has ever been within his grasp before?

“I need to prove it to myself though.” And though she doesn’t quite understand, she relents. But when she asks if he wants to be alone, he says, “Can I just stay here? With you?”

“Of course.” She trades her slacks for a pair of pajama shorts and asks, “So you do think I’m a pretty girl though?”

He laughs. “The prettiest. But you know that already.” She curls up under the covers with him and watches him fall asleep with his arms around her. His breathing steadies and in sleep he looks more peaceful than he has his days. His body relaxes. A small smile graces his face. Like this, she can almost pretend that Mexico never happened and nothing ever hurt him. She loves him in all ways and all parts, even when he’s hurting, but she wishes she could take that pain away from him.

.

By the time she arrives at the unsub’s house with Rossi, Luke is leading William Lynch away in handcuffs and Spencer is walking the survivor to the meet the medics. Once she’s in the ambulance, Y/N meets him on the sidewalk.

“I didn’t hurt him,” he says.

“I knew you wouldn’t.” He pulls her into a hug, and to her surprise, there is no tension in his touch. He’s not far away. He doesn’t need her to keep him in this moment. He just wants to hold her. She rests her head against his chest, relishing that simple fact.

That week, she can see a lightness in his step at work. His smile comes easier and stays a little longer. He seems to be finding his footing in the office and with the team once again, and he’s even excited about the prospect of the seminars he’ll be teaching. The weekend is welcomed with a Friday night dinner at Rossi’s, after which Spencer drives the both of them back to his apartment. When she steps inside, she finds the living room lit up with string lights and her favorite flowers sitting on the kitchen table.

“What’s all this?” she asks.

“For you, Pretty Girl,” he says. “I told you I wanted to do this right. Flowers have been a symbol of romantic love for centuries, particularly when given as a gift, so that was obvious. And dimmed lights are typically used as a way to set a romantic mood, although also have a skill for lighting up the life of everyone you meet, so there’s that too. Maybe that doesn’t make much sense,” he says, laughing at himself. “But I wanted to make it clear that I was thinking of you and I wanted to make tonight special. Not that anything has to happen tonight, of course, but if you still wanted to I just thought that maybe, well–”

“It’s perfect,” she assures him. “More than perfect. I love it. I love you. And this is exactly what I want.” She stands on her toes to kiss him before he can start rambling once more. Spencer leads her to the bedroom and unlike the rush of movement and need in Florida, he knows exactly he wants. Every kiss is languid and longing, every touch so precise and electric. He helps her out of her dress and places kisses between the valley of her breasts, the curves of her hips. He lets her guide him to where she wants him most and responds to every cue she gives him. Every inch of her body is given careful attention. As if he needs nothing from her at all but to love her.

It’s so much more than sex. As much as she hates the term making love she doesn’t know what else to call it. Because in every gesture, every kiss, he tells her without words that he loves her. And with every touch she tries to tell him the same. He devotes himself to ensuring she comes first, and makes good on that promise with ease, but when he finally reaches his release the sound of him crying her name is the holiest benediction she’s ever heard.

It takes him several minutes after to regain the ability to form words, during which she lies there in contended bliss, stroking his hair. “I love you,” is the first thing he says. “I love you, Pretty Girl.”

She smiles to herself, delighted to be not just a pretty girl who steals his train of thought, but his pretty girl. The one who gets to stay by his side and take his breath away and push the nightmares back. “I love you, too.”

“I’m so glad you kissed me that day.”

“I’m glad Emily gave me such an outrageous idea,” she giggles.

“Thank you for being patient with me all this time. I know I say that you help me forget, but it’s more than that. You’re the one who helps me remember who I am and what matters. But I love you for so many more reasons than that. I’ve asked a lot of you lately and I want to make sure I make you feel as loved as you make me feel.”

“Spencer, you asked me to kiss you. That’s hardly a burden. And I like listening to you. I like being with you – because you make me feel so loved, all the time.” She snuggles closer to him. “I like you like this, when you’re sweet and gentle and you. But it’s, um, it’s not a bad thing when you lose control a little bit. It’s sort of hot – to feel like you just can’t help yourself.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Well, I will absolutely need to remember that. You know, it scares me sometimes, how much I want you. How much I love you. But I’d much rather be scared by that than by the person I am without you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. Because they’re both better when they’re together.

He makes her brave. She gives him strength. They change each other for the better, and as the days pass, the world feels a little lighter again. The sabbatical proves to be a good idea. With rest, with time, with therapy, she watches him heal. He doesn’t need to run off to kiss her hard against a wall to keep himself grounded (though when she’s in a certain mood, he’s more than happy to). He can focus in the field without her by his side. But when he’s having a hard time, his hand will still find hers. He’ll stand a little closer to her, and look at her, letting the rest of the world fade away, and feel better, every time. And there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.

[scripttorture]

Do you have advice on portraying mental disorders to the public in a way that makes sense? How does one portray multiple disorders at once while making it clear they’re the result of torture? Do you usually name them in the story? I can portray disorders + symptoms that come with mental health problems resulting from torture, but I feel like I’m battling public ignorance before even getting to debunking myths about torture. I have the information, but I don’t know how to portray it organically.

I can tell you what I do, but I think that whether that will work for you or not partly depends on how you approach writing.

 If what I say doesn’t fit with your writing style that isn’t a failing and it doesn’t mean you’re ‘doing it wrong’. I don’t think there is one sure fire way to write a complex topic well. And honestly the fact that you’re putting in the time to research and practice is probably more important then any advice I have to give.

 I don’t always name mental health problems in my stories. I appreciate that some people think you always should. Usually because they say if you name a disorder the readers can’t deny it or pretend it’s something else.

 I have a friend in one of my writing groups. He’s writing a wonderful adventure story with a Deaf protagonist. He repeatedly describes the character as Deaf and all of her communication is in sign language.

 He has still had feedback from people six chapters into the story saying they did not realise the character was Deaf.

 Here’s my take away from this: While it is important to try your best with anything you portray it is also important to accept that some people just Will Not Get It despite your best efforts.

 Shout out to the person who thought I was discussing trans people when I spoke about historical pre-pubertal eunuchs.

 Start by thinking about who you’re writing for. What does your ideal reader look like? Whose feedback do you hope for?

 Because I think there’s a big difference in how we approach the story/conversation when we’re expecting to talk to people with experience vs people without.

 Most of the time I’m writing for trauma survivors. I hope I’m writing stories that other people will enjoy. But I accept in the writing that a lot of people without experience of these things might not… quite connect the dots.

 It sounds like you want to write for people who aren’t survivors. To educate. That is just as valid and valuable. It’s a very different approach though.

 When I think about naming a mental health problem I think about how that name fits into the story. The main character in my current story is about 11-13. She’s spent a fair amount of time with two adult survivors. But I’m not sure if she has the knowledge or vocabulary to label what she’s seeing and I’m not sure if anyone else would say it to her.

 So I put those mental health problems in to the way these characters behave and the way their daughter talks to her friend about her parents.

 That approach may not work if the majority of your intended audience have no knowledge about mental health.

 And for me in this story that’s part of the point. I expect that a lot of readers will be taken aback when they find out what these characters have lived through and realise that what they’ve seen up to now are symptoms not ‘quirky character flaws’. I expect that to prompt some thought and questioning*.

 Linking these illnesses to torture was easy in this particular set of stories because the readers will (eventually) see the characters before and after torture. The change happens in front of them.

 Generally I think that’s a good way of establishing the link: explicitly showing the character before and after trauma and highlighting the changes. That can be directly as part of the story, but it can also be done through other characters talking about the past (which can help establish relationships and characters) and by having the survivors themselves reminisce about ‘before’.

 It’s also important to remember that you can show symptoms developing without showing torture itself. There’s nothing wrong with choosing to show quiet moments with the character in a cell, even if we’re told they’re cliché. Use every moment that you can make powerful.

 There’s also nothing wrong with jumping around in the time line and telling a story in a non-linear fashion. My general point here is that there are a lot of ways you can bring up the character’s past and how they’ve changed.

 You can also have a character explicitly state that these symptoms are expected, normal responses to a horrendous situation. Any characters who are doctors, mental health professionals or some types of social workers would be good fits for that. Depending on how you structure the story religious figures (who may be involved in anti-torture work or helping survivors) could work.

 If there are other survivor characters then having a discussion between them about what it changed could be a good organic way to bring that up while bringing the characters closer together.

 Circling back to writing mental health problems- I do think sometimes a lack of an explicit label can help communicate the experience. I think sometimes people get so caught up on the diagnosis and what they think it means that they don’t engage with anything that goes against that preconceived notion. But… whenever you don’t make something explicit in the text you’re leaving it up to the reader to decide how to interpret it. You’re taking a risk to trust this stranger who picked up your story.

 I get the feeling the main thing here is writing it all organically and the fear of messing up.

 That’s understandable. Any writing already asks that we juggle. Adding in torture and mental health problems and committing to doing them well adds a lot more implements into the air.

 And I guarantee that practice will help. It always does.

 Personally I’ve been writing mental health problems for so long that a lot of it has become instinctual. It’s an ingrained part of how I write (for better or worse). Making symptoms an organic part of the character is about making them a part of every aspect of a character’s life.

 Which sounds harder then it is. It’s about thinking things through and filtering them through the character’s personality/motivations.

 Because as much as we can hope to get a message across primarily we are telling stories. And everything needs to serve that.

 Let’s have some examples. I’m going to use two characters from two different stories, Kibwe and Ilāra. Kibwe made a full physical recover from torture. Ilāra ended up with a single below knee amputation. And while there is some overlap in the symptoms I chose for them they’re very different people.

 Kibwe’s long term symptoms are memory loss, intrusive memories, hypervigilance and chronic pain and I’m toying with the idea of adding in inaccurate memories as well.

 His memory problems are an integral part of his character arc and motivation through the stories he’s in. Despite knowing intellectually that they are a normal response to trauma Kibwe sees them as a personal failing. They made it impossible for him to bring charges and that fed into feelings of guilt and self-blame.

 Which is what drives him to stand up for other people.

 Every heroic action he takes in the story, every time he puts himself between someone else and harm, is coming out of his own experience of memory loss and possibly inaccurate memories. It’s all because trying to do the sensible thing and report what happened to the police left him feeling useless, powerless.

 His intrusive memories feed into this as well. They serve as constant reminders that strengthen his resolve.

 In the parts of the story from his perspective all of these memory problems and the effect they have are obvious and there inclusion is natural. Because they colour every single thing he does.

 In the parts of the story that are from other perspectives it’s less obvious what the problem is but there is still clearly A Problem.

 His intrusive memories are pauses in the middle of doing or saying something. They’re the moments when he screws his eyes shut and breathes deep and has to ask the other characters to repeat themselves. They’re the way he flinches at ordinary things and the way he flies off the handle anytime someone brings beer into his workplace.

 His chronic pain is in the days when he can’t do his job. When his hands shake and he snaps. When he takes his frustrations out with the wrong words to the wrong people. And in the distant, awkward way he tries to make amends afterwards.

 Internally he barely acknowledges his hypervigilance. But externally he always positions himself so that he can clearly see anyone else in the room. He can always see the exits. He twitches, he turns his head a lot to keep other people in view. And if he can’t see everyone, can’t see a way out then his speech starts to get biting, his anger leaks through.

 In contrast Ilāra is very very aware of their own hypervigilance.

 They track the people around them and the terrain and rationalise it as sensible. As a precaution. As keeping themselves and others safe. So a portion of any part of the narrative from their perspective is about that: Ilāra's internal paranoid risk assessments.

 They also have learning difficulties, which are more obvious from outside perspectives. Because Ilāra has a proud streak; they’re not stupid, they can get by just fine. They’re just letting their friends/found-family help out because it makes them happy. Ilāra does not actually need help.

 Contrast with the perspectives of the other characters who are very aware that Ilāra can’t manage a budget. Without help they really can’t manage their own money well enough to keep themselves fed, housed and clothed. Because they never learnt how.

 And again this comes up organically because it’s a big part of Ilāra's relationships. There’s a strange push-pull: Ilāra's hypervigilance internally rationalised as protecting these few valued people and those same people stepping in to do the things Ilāra can’t.

 They also experience chronic pain. Though I’m unsure whether this is primarily because of torture or because they lost a limb. And in a way the distinction doesn’t matter. Regardless of the cause it is there.

 They’re actually a lot better at dealing with it then Kibwe, because they’re much better at lying, acting and disguising their own distress.

 Ilāra's other symptoms are less immediately obvious in the narrative but again, they underpin everything.

 Ilāra struggles to relate to people, to really value them as people and they are incredibly socially isolated. Their entire social circle is essentially their family and their work colleagues and there is a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram.

 They don’t know how to honestly relate to other people. They play parts, putting on masks to get by.

 And this comes into the story with every interaction they have. It’s the contrast between their attempts at calculation around outsiders (and how often they’re rejected/dismissed) and their incredibly intense attachment to this small circle of people.

 I’m not sure what the end point of Ilāra's character arc is yet. But one of the things that keeps coming up is the question of who they are away from this small circle of valued people. And whether they can value their own life when they can’t ‘protect’ the people they love.

 Writing all of this out has made me realise something: it’s a lot easier to bring up symptoms organically when those symptoms become an intrinsic part of the character.

 And that can be difficult to grasp at the first attempt. Or the tenth. Or the hundredth.

 We are taught to assume health, be it mental or physical. That people have two legs and functional pancreases and don’t relive violent attacks every time they smell beer.

 Part of writing these things organically (for me anyway) is breaking that internal image. It’s… building a mind that’s a different shape.

 For both of these characters their symptoms are tied to important parts of the long term plot as well as their everyday experience.

 Kibwe would be a different person without his memory problems. They inform what he values, how he acts and the ethical lines he draws for himself. His intrusive memories impact his daily life and so does his chronic pain and hypervigilance. And this in turn impacts his relationships with the other characters, some of whom are more forgiving/understanding of his ‘moods’ then others.

 Ilāra is driven by their isolation and struggle to connect to others. It leads to them putting incredible weight and value on the few relationships they do have. And that drives them to act, to take risks. Fundamentally they fear loss and however calculating and cunning they can be that fear makes them do some idiotic things. Things that effect the plot and every other character.

 Hypervigilance and learning difficulties are their everyday experience. The tension they feel in crowds. The way they assess unfamiliar environments. The way they’ll hand over their pay check to a daughter-figure with a joke and tell themselves that she’s just fussing. The way they’ll get up in the middle of the night and count every item of food in the house.

 Writing mental health problems in an understandable way is like writing any other disability. It’s making it part of the character without it being the whole of the character. It’s recognising how any condition limits a character and having a clear view of when those limits are internal (ie the condition itself) versus external (societal, behavioural expectations, other people etc.)

 Including these things naturally means constructing scenes that are working at multiple levels. If symptoms impact how the characters relate to each other then they fit naturally into any important relationship moments. If symptoms impact the character’s everyday life then it’s natural for the character to consider them before taking an important action.

 When symptoms are related to a character’s long term motivation then it doesn’t feel jarring that they’d come up over and over again. In the same way that bringing up a character’s big-brother figure feels right when you’ve established they have an important, character defining bond.

 It takes practice. Writing is work and it takes a lot of skill to make it look effortless.

 Right now I think the most important thing to take away is this: keep trying. Write and write and write. Don’t let the fear of getting things wrong stop you from getting better.

 I hope that helps. :)

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[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

Headcanon: Julian Bashir is autistic and has frequent sensory overload, and the only two people who can help him are Garek and O’ Brien. Me? Projecting? It’s more likely than you think!!!

Ha, moooood. Which on that note I have a somewhat intense fic here in which Julian has a meltdown. It’s not related to sensory issues so much as “oh boy a lot of shit’s happened to him” but if you want more O'Brien helping him out after this – so because we gave that fic to O'Brien, let’s give this one to Garak.

Also can we talk about the fact that it’s canon that Julian and the other augments can hear sounds at decibels that non-augments can’t and that it causes them pain, but Julian just taught himself to not react, like fuck, how did someone write this and not follow through on Julian-Bashir-is-autistic-and-or-otherwise-nd!

sorry for taking so long, a. this got a bit longish so it’s under a cut and b. I got distracted by the fact that I always want to see everyone’s notes on reblogs in case of interesting discussion points and i have just now learnt that that cannot be done easily if a lot of people reblog at once… oh hyper-fixation how you get me time and again

this takes place post-Doctor Bashir I Presume and alludes to the fact that during this time Garak and Bashir’s interactions were gradually stripped away in the show (because it too gay) - Andy Robinson ran with that in A Stitch In Time and had Garak write about how much he regretted the two of them not remaining close/hinted that he was in love with him… so take that background as you will.

—— More Space ——-

Thank goodness, he thought after an indeterminate amount of time. O'Brien was here. He would be able to calm him down, he would know how to come up with some soothing description of exactly which of DS9’s pistons or pipes or programs was currently making that noise and he’d either fix it or stay with him until it sorted itself out. Or maybe the noise was gone and the residual whining was just himself recreating it perfectly in his head, or maybe he was just too far gone by now for it to matter, but O'Brien would help. Since the two of them had become friends and some of Julian’s old ticks had returned after his augmentation had come to light, Miles had been a surprisingly steady presence in his life.

“Doctor?”

No, not Miles.

Garak.

He couldn’t make himself respond. His body felt like it was compressing him into a vice, with all his ability to focus somehow splintered into a million shards, each of them painful to the touch. Oh no, what if Garak touched him? If Garak touched him right now he might shatter or scream or something else entirely outside of his control, but talking was also impossible right now, so he couldn’t ask him not to touch, please don’t touch-

Garak sat down in front of him, far enough away that it didn’t feel like too… much.

“Doctor. You don’t need to say or do anything.”

He could manage that.

“I was wondering why you’d missed our lunch date. Very pleased to find you didn’t simply opt not to come without telling me, although I find the alternative to be distressing.”  He stopped talking for a moment then. “Apologies for breaking into your room. Again.”

While Garak simply sat and occasionally spoke Julian was dimly aware of the fact that he could feel his edges hardening again. The shards were being pulled back together.

He also noticed now that he was freezing. It usually happened like that, having sat sedentary for however long or coming down from some emotional extreme. He shivered.

“This station is cold,” said Garak.“The temperature, the lights, the people… all too cold.”

Julian managed a smile and it was like his mouth was freed from a curse. “It is, isn’t it.”

“Not to mention loud,” Garak added.

“All that machinery,” Julian nodded and spoke slowly. His mouth still needed to unstick. “Every time an alarm goes it’s like a sharp pain… I used to be… much better at this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I used to… I used to get these all the time as a child. Meltdowns, shutdowns, I think. But then my parents told me later that it was a side-effect of the augmentations and I tried to… to will myself to stop them, to bypass my natural instincts in order to not be found out and it worked, in a way, or at least nobody found out. I familiarised myself with and categorised any sights, sounds, smells, feelings I came across on earth during my Starfleet training and ordered them into lists and sublists: What I could handle mostly, what I could handle sometimes, what I needed to avoid at all costs. I managed to… to pretend. And then I came to Deep Space Nine and for awhile it was all too much again, I had to make new lists, but I managed, I really… I really did, I really did, I really-” he was talking himself into hyperventilating again, he knew this, but he couldn’t stop now, “- and then I got captured and it was like everything just stopped. I barely- I don’t even remember most of it, but when I got back it was so much worse -”

“Julian,” said Garak and the sound of his first name coming from Garak’s mouth surprised him back to the now. “Julian,” said Garak again. “You’re here. With me. On a floor that is quite cold, I might add.”

Julian breathed out and mumbled under the exhale. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.”

“What is that,” asked Garak.

“Counting my fingers. It… helps.”

“Noted,” and the easy way in which Garak seemed to have just accepted that he would be helping Julian again in future was another shock to his system, but then why wouldn’t he? Even if they hadn’t met up as often as they used to. Even if he was untrustworthy at heart and Julian could never figure out why Garak wanted his company at all. He found he missed Garak’s simple and complicated nature. It grounded him, somehow.

He got up off the floor, reaching out for Garak when he stumbled. He held him just tight enough to make sure that he wouldn’t fall. Not overcrowding – Julian suddenly remembered that Garak was claustrophobic. He must know how easily sensory inputs could become too much.

At Garak’s questioningly soft hold on his arm, Julian nodded and he helped him to the sofa. “Would you like some water?”

Julian nodded. As Garak went to fetch it, he began to talk again. Somehow… he just needed to get it out now, like an excision. “After the truth came out my mother told me that they’d been lying. I mean, they’ve been lying about so much, but specifically about this. I’ve always been like this. Or. Some of it. The meltdowns. I thought… those memories weren’t real. But now they are? Some of them. I’m having trouble sorting them.”

Garak handed him the water.

“I developed a theory,” said Julian, forgetting to sip.

“Tell me your theory doctor,” said Garak, his tone of voice tender as he sat down beside him, again, close enough if he needed him, but not too close.

“I was wondering why a heightened inability to process inputs was a side-effect of the vast majority of augments, when I had this inability before my augmentation. I started to suspect that it was less to do with the augmentations and was simply… who we were. The augmentations gone wrong could throw that into extremes, but that may have more to do with medical trauma responses than… anyway, I can’t confirm until I have more data. I did research into my own developmental delays, the medical history – it’s fascinating how we repeat cycles actually, first it was considered a form of possession or changelings, then it began to be classed under a broad form of what would be known as schizophrenia, then divided into narrow and still somewhat inaccurate categories of autism, aspergers, adhd, add, high and low functioning etcera, and then was gradually broadened again under general brain-differences known as neuroatypicals or neurodiverse,” he took a breath and continued: “- I’m not too interested in 21st century history honestly, but I know the government upheavals affected medical classifications and concepts of what was known broadly as “disabilities” at the time, and that it fundamentally shifted again once we formed the federation. But then -” and here he started gesticulating widely in excitement or outrage - “it all becomes the same just repackaged, doesn’t? Stigma against augments who are overwhelmingly people like me is stigma against neurodiversity is stigma against the “possessed,” it’s…” he trailed off. “It’s all the same,” he finished lamely.

He’d become very aware suddenly that he’d done that thing that annoyed most of the people he ever conversed with, running his mouth while forgetting the other person. But Garak didn’t seem annoyed. He was listening intently, in fact. At the pause he even nodded and offered: “The history of such matters is different on Cardassia. Or rather, mental and developmental differences don’t get acknowledged on Cardassia.”

“Eugenics?” said Julian with a frown.

“Not as such. We don’t mind in theory, as long as everyone can perform the tasks they’re assigned to. It’s a… class thing. If you belong to a powerful family and are expected to do great things in the army or politics or the sciences, being unable to do so for any reason is usually – what is the term humans use? - “Swept under the rug.” But then someone like you, dear doctor, if you had been Cardassian it might surprisingly have been easier for you.”

Julian shook his head. “My abilities are due to my augmentations. I’d have been… I don’t know. Not me,” he said softly.

At that, Garak gave him a look that he couldn’t pin down. Something… surprised for a moment, almost? Then smoothed out into an enigmatic smile. “Perhaps. From what you tell me you’ve always processed like you do, you’ve just been given better tools to translate and more…” he searched for the word for a second, before landing on: “space.”

At that Julian burst out into an unexpected laugh. “I certainly have enough space out here. More than enough, I’d say.”

Garak’s smile deepened. “But it doesn’t matter. Either you were always going to be able to pursue medicine and the stigmas of your parents and surrounding society were preventing you from discovering that on your own, or your augmentations made you unlock new abilities. But on Cardassia someone with the kind of passion you possess would have done well, with or without them.”

“If I were born into the right class. And if I didn’t get arrested for being fundamentally against the militaristic state.”

“Naturally,” acceded Garak. “And I must say I’m quite relieved to find the incorruptible, perfect federation comes with its own flaws. One wouldn’t have expected it with the way humans constantly go on about it.”

“Oh, we go on about the federation? According to you Cardassia is superior in culture -”

“- oh, definitely -”

“- politics -”

“- without a doubt, my dear -”

“- criminal justice system?”

“- well, we’ve never brought a wrong case before the court-”

“- I know you’re just saying that to rile me up-”

“- my dear doctor, when have I ever been anything but sincere?”

“- when have you ever said anything you meant?”

“- I am offended, truly-” said Garak with a big grin on his face.

Julian found it the easiest thing in the galaxy to return.

“Remember to drink your water,” he was reminded, gently, before they continued their lunch discussion. It was a moment in which they both forgot that they had ever begun to drift apart in the first place.

—— The End ——-

[huntertales]

Part One: Slippery Little Snake. (Dog Dean Afternoon S09E05)

Episode Summary: While investigating two bizarre murders, Y/N and the boys realize there is an eyewitness to both gruesome deaths--a German Shepard. Anxious to find out what monsters they are dealing with, the three look up a spell that can help communicate with the dog. When Dean decides to be the one to perform the spell, he quickly realizes it comes with side effects no one saw coming.  Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader Word Count: 4,356.

Previous Part | Supernatural Rewrite Masterlist

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Best cure of all.”

You grimaced at the sight of Dean’s infamous hangover cure he swore was the key to getting over the consequences of drinking from the previous night before. You and the boys had given Kevin a chance to cut loose and enjoy himself away from his responsibilities in hopes it might help make the kid feel more refreshed. Only it seemed the opposite reaction happened. Kevin complained of a headache that wouldn’t go away and feeling nauseous to the point he feared he might throw up. You didn’t think he would have taken it so hard, and he was such a lightweight. Luckily through the complaints of an upset stomach and how the room spinned he managed to keep down the food you offered him.

Dean suggested an infamous Winchester speciality that might be able to kick this hangover in its ass, his own words. You watched in disturbance as Kevin drank two glasses of the stuff. The sight made you flashback to your younger pre-hunting days where you were a lightweight compared to the way a Winchester could handle their alcohol. Dean always could drink you under the table, not that you tried to keep up with him when you drank with him. The next morning you suffered the consequences almost exactly like Kevin had. Dean swore the drink he created helped. You swallowed it down and a few minutes later you threw up everything you had drank from the night before, and anything else that hadn’t digested yet. You admitted the stuff made you feel better. But you wouldn’t touch that stuff ever again.

You told Kevin to keep resting up and sleep off the hangover for a little while longer. When you were sure the kid was going to be fine on his own, you and Dean made your way to the war room where Sam had been occupying for a little while. He sat at the table with his laptop open and doing a little bit of research, hopefully accomplishing something better than the fiasco you had endured just a few minutes ago.

“Wow.” Dean’s approaching voice made his brother turn his attention away from the screen for a moment to see the both of you appeared to be beside yourselves in what you just went through. Sam gave you a confused expression, wondering what the problem was. “Kevin. Just poured some buffalo milk down his gob twice.”

“Buffalo milk?” Sam repeated what his brother just said, not exactly sure if he wanted to know where the man managed to get his hands on the suff. You sat on the edge of the table as Dean placed his hands on the back of an empty rolling chair next to his brother and leaned his body forward.

“Yeah, Dean’s infamous hangover cure-all. It’s apparently got everything in it. Except buffalo milk. God, the smell of it alone brought me back to my early twenties.” You mumbled, your nose scrunching up at the past memories you wished stayed buried. “Hopefully it’ll help Kevin from puking anymore of his guts out.”

“How is that kid still recovering from Branson?” Sam had seen his fair share of lightweights in his time, but there might have been nobody who couldn’t tolerate alcohol the way Kevin showed he wasn’t able to. You shrugged your shoulders from the lack of answers. The poor kid was a lost cause. You figured he would have taken the first chance he got to crawl into a bottle in some kind of attempt to bury the trauma that came from the chaos that ensued.

“What can I say? He’s an amateur.” Dean said. You scoffed as your reaction, feeling that was an understatement from the way you left the poor kid. “The slippery nipple shots at the Dolly Parton Dixie Stampede nearly killed the guy.”

“All right. Well, I got something that’s gonna get us back on the road.” Sam offered a change of subject to something he thought his brother might be interested in hearing. The older man took a seat next to him as you leaned over to take a quick peek at the screen, wondering what kind of case it was.

“Great.” You said. “I’ve been itching to stretch my legs and get out there again.”

Dean turned his head to your direction when you voiced your happiness of tagging along. The man was hesitant about letting you back out there after the favor Ezekial had done for him, and the warning of the consequences of furthering his stay. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

You furrowed your brow from his question, “Why would I not be ready for that?”

“Aren’t you kind of running on empty?” Dean asked in concern.

“Yeah, but the last three nights straight, I had eight hours of shut-eye. And for a hunter, that’s like twenty.” You tried to talk the man into letting you do your damn job without restrictions. You looked over at Sam to see the young man was hesitant himself about giving you the chance to tag along on a hunt. You rolled your eyes from the way they were acting. “Trust me, guys. I feel good.”

“Well, that’s great and all, but you’re still recovering from the trials. I think you ought to pace yourself, you know? And the sooner you heal…” Dean reminded you of a little fact he thought slipped your mind. You crossed your arms over your chest at the flimsy excuse he thought was going to work on you. When he trailed off and fell silent for a moment, you raised your brow in curiosity as to what he was going to say next. “Sam and I just want you back to your old self.”

“I am, guys. I know my body better than anyone else. Not to mention the fact that Kevin’s back on the heaven spell. Crowley’s locked up. We should be out there doing what we do best.” You said. The boys thought otherwise from their unspoken actions that said more than they were willing to admit. You rolled your eyes in annoyance as Dean leaned back in his seat and kicked up one of his legs to the table. The man tried to get a word into the argument, but you stopped him before he could. “Sammy, what’s this case you got for us?”

“Uh, a taxidermist named Max Alexander mysteriously crushed to death. Nearly every joint in his body dislocated, every bone broken.” Sam read off the gory details that caught his attention in the first place. “Poor guy is a human pretzel.”

“Tell me, Dean, what’s got that kind of strength?” You asked him, curious to see what his response was going to be since he had so much to say just a minute ago.

“A demonic luchador?” Dean made little effort into trying to make an education assumption to what might be the cause behind the out of ordinary death.

“Shop’s a couple hours away in Enid, Oklahoma.” Sam said. “We should at least check it out.”

“Unless the boss man thinks there’s some reason we shouldn’t.” You directed your gaze back over to the older Winchester to hear what he had to say. A smile crept to the edges of your lips from the way he fell silent. The response to his defeat. You slid off the table and back to your feet to get started on the packing that was ahead of you. Before you did, you wanted to make one thing clear. “Don’t forget the fact that I kicked your ass just the other day. And I’ll gladly do it again.”

You went on your way from stating the small fact you thought was enough proof to get you back on hunting without them worrying about your health. Dean let out a heavy sigh and ran a hand down his face from your ever growing stubborn behavior. “I swear, I don’t even know why I even bother with her.”

+ + +

You and the boys arrived in Oklahoma a few hours later, the first stop on your list was checking out the crime scene that was still crawling with cops. The first suspicious thing you noticed before even walking into the building was the threat painted on the front entrance of Max Alexander’s taxidermy business. “Die Scum” was written in all capital letters. Whoever painted the threat wanted to get their message across loud as possible. And someone made sure to keep to the painted words. You wondered if it was done by the same person. A few monsters liked to taunt their victims before going in for the thrill of the kill.

Sam noticed something in the letter M that was worth pointing out. You noticed it was an upside down triangle with what appeared to be a paw print. He snapped a quick picture with his phone for future research and headed inside with the rest of you. Taxidermy was something you didn’t give much of a second thought about. However when you stepped into Max’s business, you found yourself surrounded by endless animals of all sorts, all dead and stuffed for display. Animals’ heads mounted to the wall, birds frozen in mid flight, wild cats bearing their sharp fangs appearing as if they were ready to attack. There was some sort of strange craft to stuffing a dead animal and making it look realistic.

“Well, the creep factor just skyrocketed.” Dean mumbled, eyeing the dozens of dead animals surrounding him.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” A sheriff stopped the three of you, not sure who you were. 

“How are you? I’m Special Agent Chaplin.” You introduced yourself to him, flashing your fake FBI badge to the man. “These are my partners Agent Michaels and DeVille.”

“The body’s already been to the morgue. Just wrapping it up with Dave Stephens. He’s the one who discovered the boy.” The sheriff explained. You looked over to see an older man leaning against the register, still distraught from the events he thought would have never happened in a million years. “Such a shame. I used to go hunting with Max. He was a real good egg.”

“Sorry for your loss.” Dean gave his condolences to the officer. “You mind showing my partner around? Agent Chaplin and I have a couple of questions for Mr. Stephens.”

The sheriff nodded his head and gestured for Sam to follow him into the next room where the murder took place. You and Dean approached the older man, figuring he might know a thing or two that might be helpful in discovering if this case might be worth your while.

“Dave Stephens?” You asked. You and Dean flashed your badges once again at the man, “My partner and I have got a couple of questions for you if that’s all right.”

“I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.” Dave responded without an ounce of hesitation. “Max was a real pal.”

“Hunting buddy?” You wondered. You smiled ever so slightly when you saw his expression immediately change into surprise from how you were able to answer correctly in one guess. You had a feeling it was a common hobby among the locals from the sight of this place. “So, about what time did you discover the body?”

“About nine A.M.—my usual pickup time.” Dave answered. “I come in every Wednesday and Sundays to collect the entrails.”

You furrowed your brow from the terminology. “The entrails?”

“The animal organs. After Max would dig them out and work his magic.” Dave said. “He was a real artist, you know?”

You discovered what kind of magic Max was able to do with the creatures he was given. You found your attention lingering away from the conversation for a moment when you spotted Sam exploring the man's collection. You quickly bit your bottom lip to keep a smile from spreading across your lips at the little creature he was holding that appeared to be dressed as a character from Game of Thrones. Sam amused himself from the expression that crossed his face. Dean found it nothing more than bizarre as to why a grown man would waste his time putting so much effort into such a thing.

“Strange thing is, though,” The both of you quickly turned your full attention back to Dave to hear what else he had to say, pretending as if you were distracted by something childish. “bins were empty this morning.”

“Why is that strange?” Dean asked.

“Well, because it’s a Sunday. Weekend hunts are pretty much a given in this neck of the woods, so they’re usually chock-full of guts.” Dave explained as to why it was out of the ordinary for him.

“Any chance Max could have cleaned them out himself?” You wondered.

“No. It’s a biohazard. You can’t just throw the stuff out.” Dave said. You were learning all sorts of things about animal organs today, more than you ever wanted in your entire life. “You gotta burn it.”

“Huh. The more you know.” You gave him a polite smile from his explanation you could have gone without. You looked over to the sheriff when he approached the three of you again. “Is there anything else missing from the shop?”

“No.” The sheriff said. “The register was full, and the safe was intact. And all of Max’s trophies were still on the walls.”

“And was there anybody else here when you showed up?” Dean asked. 

“No one. No, other than the Colonel.” Dave chuckled and looked over his shoulder to Max’s pet. You felt a smile stretch across your lips at the sight of a German Shepard. 

Sam finished up his search around the crime scene and headed back over to you and his brother. You smiled at the sheriff and Dave, excusing yourself and walking over to another part of the shop where there was nobody else around to have a private conversation of your own to discuss what you found. You had a feeling this was going to be a worthwhile case after all. Everything was adding up with unusual circumstances.

“Okay, so,” You stood with your back to the crime scene, catching up with the younger man about everything you were able to learn in the short time. “We’ve got a thief who’s jonesing for animal parts, we’ve got a pagan symbol, and we’ve got a human pretzel.”

“Yeah, it all sounds very witch-y, but I wasn’t able to find a hex bag.” Sam said, putting a hole in his own theory to what might be to blame for the taxidermist’s death.

“All right, well, let’s keep digging. But not here.” Dean suggested. He didn’t move right away. You noticed his eyes wandered up to a part of the shop that kept his attention. You followed his gaze to see the man was staring at a stuffed owl hanging up on a high shelf, its yellow eyes fixated on the huner in a way that made him uncomfortable. “I don’t like the way that one’s looking at me.”

You stifled a laugh from his paranoid behavior and softly nudged him in the arm to get moving. The three of you still needed to get settled into a motel and started on research to figure out what was the cause of Max Alexander’s death. You took one more curious glance at the owl before heading out the front door.

+ + +

“Okay, that symbol in the graffiti, it’s…not wiccan. It’s copywritten.” Sam worked right away on trying to figure out what the strange symbol you had seen back at the crime scene. The search took little effort into finding its source. You walked over to the man, dropping the shirt you pulled out from your bag you pulled out to change into and out of your fed clothes. He held out his laptop for Dean to take so the both of you could take a look at the homepage for yourselves. “Local animal rights group, Enid’s answer to PETA.”

“S.N.A.R.T.?” Dean read off the animal rights’ group and its terrible name they thought was a good idea. It stood for Showing No Animal Rough Treatment. You didn’t know if you should laugh or at least give them credit for trying to be original. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Well, it makes sense that an animals-rights group would have an axe to grind with a taxidermist.” Sam said.

“Why?” Dean asked, not seeing the connection between the two. “The animals’ already dead.”

“Yeah, but hunters are what keep them in business.” You added on. “Now the question is, are those bleeding hearts actually witches or just hippies?”

Dean glanced up from the laptop screen and to you, proposing a question. “What’s the difference?”

+ + +

The difference between the two that one was capable of murder. You took doubt in the fact that a group of animal rights activists would go far as committing murder. But when you added the element of witchcraft that’s when the lines between right and wrong started to grow blurry. You and the boys decided to speak to a couple of the members after tracking them down to a vegan bakery called Gentle Earth. Business was booming with customers enjoying a plant-based meal inside and passing by a couple of women walking out with a cup of all organic and overly expensive coffee, ethically sourced you guessed.

“Always knew I’d find the source of all evil at a vegan bakery.” Dean muttered. The man felt out of his element from the people he was surrounded by.

Sam sniffed the air, finding an odor he couldn’t place his finger on. “What’s that smell?”

“Patchouli. Yeah, mixed with depression from meat deprivation.” Dean said. You rolled your eyes from the way he was acting in such an immature fashion. His strong beliefs were radical as those who thought eating animal products were cruel and unusual. The man drew your attention to the front counter when he spotted the owners waiting on a few customers. He was quick to point out a fashion accessory that was a bit odd from the setting that didn’t require them. “Hey. You know who wears sunglasses inside? Blind people. And douchebags.”

You let out a quiet sigh and shook your head from the way he was acting, heading up to the counter to have a discussion with the owners. “Olivia and Dylan Camrose?” You asked the couple. Olivia nodded and smiled. “You two are members of S.N.A.R.T, correct?”

“Founders and co-presidents, actually.” Olivia corrected you about the role they played in the activist group. She playfully bumped shoulders with her husband, both of them sharing matching smiles from the hard work they loved doing. Olivia reached out and grabbed a brochure that was kept near a display of their desserts, presuming all of you were curious for being part of a good cause. “Can we interest you in some literature?”

You politely shook your head. “Or a flaxseed scone?” Dylan asked. You looked down at the pastry that appeared to be tasty at first glance, until you heard the lack of ingredients that made it vegan. “It’s wheat-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, and surprisingly moist.”

“Let me stop you right there.” Dean was quick to end this conversation before he could get roped any further into this hippie lifestyle he wanted nothing to do with. He pulled out his badge to flash it at the couple and got to the reason why you were here in the first place. “We’re here to investigate the death of Max Alexander, a local taxidermist.”

Olivia placed the brochure to the counter, her body growing stiff at the unexpected news. “He’s…dead?”

“You knew him?” You asked.

“Ish. Um…” She glanced over to her husband before finishing her response. “small town.”

“Well, he was murdered last night, and a S.N.A.R.T. logo was found at the crime scene.” Sam informed the couple. All though their eyes were covered with a pair of dark shades, the man could see the couples’ body language change in a way that made him suspicious. “You two wouldn’t have to know anything about that, would you?”

The couple thought it would be best for everyone to move this conversation somewhere else. All of you moved to an empty table in the middle of the bakery to hear their side of the story and fill in the gaps of that night.

“His business is funded by hunters. And you know how hunters are.” Dylan immediately lost you from the point he was trying to make. He was more than happy to elaborate on his view of them. “They’re selfish dicks who define themselves by what they kill.”

You had to admit you were a little offended by their presumption, despite the type of hunters who they were talking about was the complete opposite of what you did. “And as animal advocates, we couldn’t stand for that.” Olivia added on.

“So, you killed him?” Sam questioned the couple. 

“Of course not.” Olivia said. She was awfully quick to shoot down the accusation that was simply false. “S.N.A.R.T. doesn’t tolerate violence.”

“Huh. This is coming from a couple who spray-paints death threats.” Dean said, bringing up the red flag that seemed out of character for someone who advocated for the complete opposite for animals lives.

“It was a scare tactic.”Dylan defended himself. “We just wanted to spook him.”

“Turns out we were the ones who got spooked.” Olivia admitted. You wondered exactly what she meant by that, causing her to elaborate even further on her story. She passed a glance over at her husband, who nodded his head, feeling it was the right thing to do in order to set the record straight. “Well, last night, when we were tagging the joint, we heard this noise.”

“A hissing noise.” Dylan added.

“It freaked us out, so we ran into the alley.” Olivia continued on.

“But someone attacked us.”

“Sprayed us in the eyes with mace.”

“And it's not like we could go to the cops.”

“So, now we look like total douchebags because we have to wear our sunglasses inside.” Olivia gave the reason why the couple was forced to wear the dark shades indoors, making them feel exactly like what Dean had said earlier. You didn’t even bother looking over at the older man to see his smug smile at his judgement that turned out to be right.

The couple took off their sunglasses to show the damage that had been done to them from the surprise pepper spray attack. You winced at the scarring around their eyes that sure didn’t look like it was caused by something like pepper spray. It almost appeared to be acid burns from the extent of the physical damages. Dean subtly wagged his index finger, signaling for them to put the shades back on after finding the burns a little too uncomfortable to keep staring at.

+ + +

You did a little research of your own after you made it back to the motel and changed out of your fed clothes for some jeans and a shirt. Something about the burn like wounds the couple had gotten didn’t seem to add up. And you were right about your suspicions.

“Necrosis?” Dean read off the medical term you discovered, wondering what it meant.

“Premature death of tissues—that’s why their eyes were all messed up.” You said. “And it’s not caused by mace.”

“All right.” Dean twisted off the cap to his beer and tossed it to the sink. He leaned over your shoulder and placed a hand on the table to steady himself in doing so. He read off the medical information about black eyes from the page you pulled up. "What causes it?"

“Right here.” You placed a finger on the screen and began to read off something from the paragraph that might explain the reason behind the couples’ painful looking burns. “‘Blunt force, radiation, venom.’”

“As in ‘snake’?” Dean guessed from the sounds of it.

“The taxidermist was constricted. Olivia and Dylan heard hissing, and they were sprayed in the eyes. By venom. Sounds snake-y to me. I say if it does turn out to be that, we should skin it and turn it into a fabulous pair of boots.” You suggested. Dean chuckled at your joke, taking a seat from across from you at the table. “Bet S.N.A.R.T would love that.”

“Okay, so…what are we talking here,” Dean said, deciding to get serious for a moment to try and figure out what you might be hunting. “Some sort of freaky-ass snake monster?”

“Maybe.” You mumbled. You fell silent for a moment trying to figure out how all of this added up to make proper sense with what knowledge you had about the reptilians. “The weird thing is snakes either envenomate or constrict. No snake does both.”

“Correction,” Dean said. “freaky-ass mega-snake monster.”

You quietly chuckled to yourself before throwing out your best guess as to what it might be. “It could be a vetala.”

“Yeah, but they’re not afraid to sink their fangs in. Taxidermist was bite free. It doesn’t really fit the profile.” Dean reminded you about the small detail. You nodded your head. A sigh fell from your lips at the lack of leads you had at the moment. Dean came to your rescue of adding another pair of hands to the night of research ahead for you and Sam. “Call Kevin. Have him look some stuff up.”

You shut your laptop and reached for your phone when you decided to do just that. It wouldn’t hurt to have an extra set of hands on the case while you figured out what you were hunting. You just hoped the poor kid still wasn’t feeling hungover. The internet only had so much information at your fingertips, the Men of Letters’ library would hopefully have the answers you were looking for. You needed to find out and quick, before another life could be taken. 

[Next Part]

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[butterfly-winx]

its probably the helia stan in me but id love to read an origin story! idk if youre planning one for all of them but i really like your worldbuilding so id read them! and i know others would too! 💞 (also that fairy sketch was beautiful and if youre planning on it id love to hear more about him 👀)

Aahh ugh, I don’t actually have a lot fleshed out for Cyanox, except that he is the Guardian of Prometia and neutral to a fault. And also unintentionally the reason for why/how Layla  gained the ability to modify Sirenix into Crystal Sirenix to adapt to cold and high pressure environments. 

I am far too disorganised to make one collection post for the backgrounds of all characters I messed with, so I guess, here goes nothing. *cracks knuckles* Buckle in for the ride! (content warning for death and lethal illnesses)

Helia was born on Lynphea in a middle sized settlement in the moderate-warm Eastern Forests of Lynphea. I talk about the zones, culture and dangers of Lynphea here, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but Helia’s village was much closer to the borders of the Death Zone the virus has claimed for itself than what would have been advisable. Back then, they thought  Viaj would exhaust the surrounding natural resources and its people would move on long before the spread of the virus would become a danger to them. Oh how wrong they were. All it took was the change of the wind one summer.

Helia had been only five and then some and the world was still too vivid in his eyes, lights filtering through leaves a spectacle every day he accompanied one of his caretakers on a simple errand. He was the one who found the earliest warning sign, a fungal growth on a long leaf of gras that was the manifestation of the plague befalling its plant hosts. Not quite comprehending what that meant in his young age, Helia struggled for a long time with guilt about the terror his discovery brought, wishing he would have never played in the prairie. Like that would have avoided anything.

The inhabitants of Viaj actually gained a head start through his discovery though that potentially spared other communities, however it couldn’t help theirs. They quarantined immediately, drew up a magic barrier to protect everyone from the airborne spores that carry the virus from plants to humans. But doing so they gave up hunting and gathering and were entirely reliant on the rations the other communities would send with the quarantine workers. Though even those trickled to a stop when the first person fell sick with the cough and the tell-tale black spots formed on their mucous membrane. People saw no use in wasting resources on people who were damned to die. The best they could do now was limit travel to the edge of the Eastern Forest and set more scientists on recalculating the projected spread of the virus.

Lynpheans practice a philosophy of “live and let die” not hanging onto things beyond their lifespan, so this was seen as neither cruel or unusual, but show me one person who is truly prepared to die such a horrific, slow death in order to upkeep the natural order. The people of Viaj didn’t want to die, and they certainly didn’t deserve to die. But people fell like flies, until about three months later only Helia, Naoqi, the last adult, and Tsilla, the very last baby born in midst of all that, were alive. Naoqi cared for Helia and the baby as best as he could and in doing so became a replacement parental figure in Helia’s eyes. He did everything he could to make the horrible experience slightly lighter to bear for the children, but when the magic barrier keeping the wind away fell, there was little he could have done to stave off the inevitable. 

Helia was left alone, with a not even five moth old baby and no way of feeding himself or the baby. With nothing else left, he braved the forest and looked for the quarantine workers who were no doubt overseeing the area, which marked the last time Helia ever walked in the forests of his home. The quarantine workers were more than surprised by the tenacious boy with a baby in his arms and finding out he was still alive after what they thought was final exhaustion has set in. 

The next thing after that that Helia actually remembers is waking up on Magics with Saladin greeting him, introducing himself as a distant relative. The truth was a lot more complicated than that. The quarantine workers have taken Helia to the nearest hospital to treat him for the effects of starvation, because miraculously, the disease had still not taken hold of him after five months of exposure. Hermetically locked in a wing of the hospital, he was the most prised and most dangerous person and study artefact on the whole planet. His comatose slumber was watched from behind plexi glas and every then available humoral test was run on him to find out why he of all people had proved to be immune. If he was immune at all.

Meanwhile Saladin arrived on planet as he heard the news of the demise of his hometown, of his family. Even back then he had not been the pride of the planet and his relationship with his family had been strained because of the wars he had chosen to be involved in. All of that didn’t matter the instant lives were on the line and Saladin wanted nothing more than one last exchange of letters he would never get to make everything alright again. No power in the world would ever grant him that, but having powerful friends in the right circles granted him something else. Information, that a young Viaj boy was still alive in the Epidemiology Research Centre. He may be the future, the solution to all of their problems with a  DNA hiding the secrets to immunity. Saladin immediately inquired, dug deeper demanding to see the boy, but the Council denied him visitation rights. He had to strike an underhanded deal with the co-leader of the research project under a false name to find out Helia wasn’t even awake, but held in a magically induced coma for observational purposes. The scientist talked on and on about the possibilities and what they would do after they go the genes needed but Saladin blew up at that point. How dare they treat this boy like an object, like his loss wouldn’t be felt by anyone, should one of the procedures go wrong. Like all his life could hold from now on was an ultimate sacrifice for the benefit of the many. He wouldn’t even be able to comprehend that if told. With Saladin blowing a fuse, the research centre blew up too and he fled the planet that night with an unconscious Helia in his arms. 

So what felt like a night of knocked-in-the-head-by-a-horse sleep to Helia was actually close to four weeks in real world time. He has no concrete memory of what Saladin saved him from, but enough peripheral perception of what transpired planetside to make sense of the ramifications. Technically, Helia’s DNA is public property of the Lynphea Council, and technically both him and Saladin have an arrest warrant hanging over their head for the destruction and property damage caused. If Helia were to ever set foot on Lynphea again (or even go to a country that has an extradition treaty with them) he would be taken back to the Research Centre to be dissected to the smallest molecules until he yielded answers. 

While Helia was able to grow up in Magics in relative safety, the virus was still wreaking damage on Lynphea. Saladin (and to a lesser extent Helia) made the incredibly difficult decision to reject the experimentation on Helia and thus deny the population of their home a potential treatment to an otherwise lethal infection. It is an incredibly heavy burden and no day passes that they don’t question the rightness of their choice.

Helia can certainly appreciate the moral conflict now, but as a child he was much more difficult to manage. The switch from a huge nurturing family to one primary carer to rely on was harsh on Helia, who was already traumatised and needing  love and affection. Saladin did the best he could, but running a school and otherwise being a Universe-wide known hero didn’t help. After they grew close on the tail end of Helia’s childhood, they explosively drew apart during his tweens, Helia not able or reluctant to understand the restrictions Saladin placed on his life.

First, he was unwilling to share as much about Lynphean culture and way of life as Helia wished to know, saying that he wouldn’t be able to apply it there on Magics anyway. The deeper reason for that is more likely buried in his resentment for Lynphea rejecting him as harshly as they did after he helped save the Universe from the Ancestresses, but Helia of course knew nothing of that. Then when he moved over to adapting to life on Magics “in the Magics” way, he begged to be taught magic for which he had developed a budding talent. Saladin refused again for related trauma reasons. He didn’t want Helia to wield a power that could potentially make him a weapon in someone else’s crusade. Being his only personal student would only paint a target on Helia’s back. 

Helia was having none of that, fiercely objecting to the treatment. He had his own trauma to deal with. Like death by illness. (People falling ill was a lasting trigger he has been continuously working to overcome, but the first time Saladin came home with a cough Helia immediately worked himself into a panic attack so severe he couldn’t stop vomiting and had to be taken into a hospital himself. ) He shouldn’t have to shoulder the repercussions of Saladin’s problems too! 

People who say old teens and their wilfulness are hard to deal with, haven’t met twelve year old Helia yet. To think he actually mellowed out by the time he hit Red Fountain. In any case, Helia and Saladin weren’t really speaking civilly with each other anymore by the time Helia met Krystal. (More on her side of things here) Krystal, ten and absolutely blind to seeing obstacles, offered Helia her books on basic witchcraft and with that the opportunity to take his magic learning into his own hands. After all, sorcery required a lot of detailed instruction, but witchcraft was available to any odd fool who could set up a passable reaction equation. It took half a year of trials and encouragement for his efforts to yield a result and for Krystal and Helia’s friendship to bloom. It took Saladin much longer than that to catch on to Helia’s secret tinkering. The old man should have suspected something to be up after their disagreements magically disappeared after Helia and Krystal met twice. The aftermath was ugly and lead to Helia and Krystal reluctantly parting ways. 

Helia was inconsolable an dedicated a large part of his life to making it as difficult for Saladin as possible. His grades dropped, his art got angry and choppy and he had to be escorted home by peace keepers for having snuck into places he shouldn’t have been in. Year fourteen and fifteen of Helia’s life have been by far the most difficult to deal with with no improvement in sight. Under pressure from his school and Saladin to choose a path for higher education after his year nine exams, Helia thought it would be most spiteful to chose...nothing. He would simply stop going to school at 15 years of age and just become whatever. Maybe a full-time artist or a busker. “Hah, that’ll show Saladin!”- he thought, but he severely miscalculated.

Saladin had often threatened with making Helia enrol in his school if he didn’t behave and Helia never though he would make good on his words until he was dropped off at the main entrance with all his bags like the other freshmen filtering in through the gates. Being the headmaster, Saladin allowed Helia some liberties, trying to demonstrate to him that he shouldn’t see this as a punishment, but as an opportunity to further his life. Cue Helia’s biggest pièce de resistance, showing just how much he didn’t think so. As mentioned a few asks ago, he was given the liberty to chose where he lived and which team he chose, but not like that goddamit! He took shameless advantage of the loose wording Saladin used and hopped between rooms and teams completely ignoring conventions. He was the bane of the school, found on the roof, in supply closets and in the middle of hallways. Teams feared him, because they knew if Helia was assigned to them they might as well have been one person short, his flaky nature making it hard for them to work with him. Codatorta wrote as many warnings for Helia in that one year as he did in his whole career before that. Students at Red Fountain tended to be disciplined and dedicated to becoming Specialists, but Helia was the absolute antithesis to them. At the end of the year no amount of Saladin’s half-hearted excuses could save Helia from the overwhelming force of the teaching staff getting him sacked. Not that Helia minded, though. It was exactly what he wanted.

Saladin more or less gave up on him then. If he wanted to be on his own then fine. Saladin would help him with finding an own apartment and give him his first moth of rent, but after that Helia could go and find himself a purpose in the world alone. Fine. Fine. Alright! 

It was not alright at all, but it was buried under a very thick layer of “I’ll show ya” which made Helia want to live his best liberal artist life. He enjoyed creating as much art as he wanted, but he craved social contact and being engaged in something with a common goal, so he started getting involved with local pacifist groups. He had always preached a path of non-violence, which was about the only thing that had been ingrained in him from his Lynphean upbringing. There he started to expand his horizon beyond what his gut feeling taught him about pacifism and got into reading theory seriously. He was surprised how many of those books shared around had originally belonged to the Red Fountain library and even more so that they have ben written by the founders of the Red Fountain Cavalry. And that was when Helia bust down Saladin’s office door.

“All of this theory was in the school’s library the whole time!!?? And all everyone was ever talking about was warfare!! Why was I never told the best pacifist philosophers of the century were all Red Fountain members???” “You never showed up to any of the philosophy lectures! How am I to blame?” A deep breath from Helia, re-evaluating all of his 17 years of life choices. “Dada Saladin, you have to let me back into your school please.” 

And Saladin refused. To let him back without repercussions that is. Helia had to prove that he took his education seriously and was ready to commit by taking the entrance exam like everybody else to earn his place at the institute. He scraped the bottom of the scoreboard with his first results, but took the first year foundation course with a mile long stride. He was allowed to skip quite a few modules and ended up in the same year as the protag specialist boys with quite a reputation to his name. In the process of reacquainting himself with the school and its philosophy, he learned humility, respect, and when to keep his head down and mouth shut. The upperclassmen from his original year group barely believed he was supposedly the same person they got to know as an absolute menace . There are many rumours about twin brothers, brainwashing and Saladin’s terrifying magic might turning him into this new person.

Helia has come an extremely long way becoming the well-tempered and balanced person known from the show’s timeline. It is almost as if he compressed a lifetime of angst into three years, thus min-maxing his character development coming out more adult in the end at 18 years old than many people at 30. He lived through a lot of things and it shows in how he behaves and what he cares about. He is a passable fighter, but his main aim is always to protect and to avoid conflict if possible. He is a trained negotiator for that purpose and prefers to act as tactical support for his team. It all changes however once Riven and Sky both decide to quit the team leaving Helia, Brandon and Timmy with a very difficult decision on how to go on after that.

(Aand we have arrived at present day for my AU timeline with this. I hope you made it this far, I‘ve never written this much for a tumblr post before)

[buncompass]

“Are you ready?”

I opened my backpack for one last check. 

“Flashlights, EMF reader, laser grid, night vision camera, backup batteries...Yeah I think I’m set!” I pulled my flashlight out and closed up my bag.

“Okay, let’s go.”

We stepped out of the car and looked around. Other than the solitary dome light from the car, the abandoned yard surrounding us was a void being carried on a breeze. The branches of low-hanging trees swayed and beckoned as they danced into the shallow pool of light around us, raising the hair on the back of my neck in an instant. Despite the full moon, the tall reaches of the pines blocked off almost all of the night sky. I glanced over at Adam. He pulled his own flashlight out and clicked it on before closing the door behind him. The beacon he produced got lost up the front walkway before landing squarely on a crooked, heavily-graffitied door. I turned my light on - the equivalent of an additional match in a coal mine.

“You should start filming before we even get in.” Adam suggested. He sent his flashlight across the yard to illuminate various odds and ends. “I don’t want anyone saying we faked anything.”

“You got it.” I stuffed my flashlight away, pulled my phone out of my pocket and attached my tripod and light. No more holding a flashlight and phone at the same time for us, no sir. We were professionals now. I opened the livestream and pointed my rig at Adam. “Five seconds,” I said. He hurriedly ran a hand through his hair as he turned. After a breath, he set his regular “I’m amped to be ghost hunting” grin to his face.

“What’s up, ghoulfriends?” He asked, his focus entirely on the camera. A few of our streamers began to respond immediately. The chat box along the bottom of the screen was awash in ghost emojis and greetings. One of my many jobs was to keep an eye on the chat for any hints or tips. There was nothing there for me yet.

“I’m Adam, the creature behind the camera is Carlie, and we are here at the Angel House for our Halloween spooktacular livestream event!”

I panned away from Adam and focused on the walkway leading up to the abandoned structure. With a jerk of my head, I directed Adam to get walking. The Angel House wasn’t close enough to be in focus yet. He fell into step next to me, out of view of the camera. 

“The Angel House, so named after its late owner, Maurice Angelo, has been recommended to us multiple times. We’ve read the reports you’ve tagged us in and decided that Halloween was the best option for our investigation.” I said, filling my role as historian. “For those not in the know, Maurice Angelo died under mysterious circumstances in the early 1880s. He had no known children, and evidently left his home and grounds to the town. Now, nearly 150 years later, the Angel House sits way in the back of a conservation land. It has been unoccupied this entire time.”

As I spoke, the house began to fill the frame of my phone. What had once been a handsome Victorian manor home was now a sagging, warped building. I paused to let the viewers get the full effect of its broken windows, peeling siding, and crooked front steps. A section of wall to the far left side of the house was broken open. The front porch had a collapsed roof and broken floorboards. It was like the house itself was discouraging entry.

The chat box continued to fill as more viewers signed in to the stream. I watched for a couple seconds and smiled when one viewer posted a gif of a small girl with black pigtails.  The gif was then repeated by others, all agreeing on what the house looked like.

“They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky..” I sang softly into the phone. More emojis lit up my screen. Our viewers were thrilled.

“They’re all together ooky, the Addams family!” Adam picked up the tune as we marched up the steps to the front door. He leaned forward and pushed it open on shrieking hinges. Our lights filled a cavernous foyer. Adam stepped ahead of me and I held back, careful to keep both him and the room in frame. A double staircase faced us, leading into the two opposite wings of the house. A broken, dusty chandelier hung above us. We paused again in the middle of the room, scanning the area for both the benefit of our viewers and ourselves.

“Do do do doo,” 

Adam clapped.

“Do do do doo!”

He clapped again.

“Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do,”

Someone clapped directly behind my head. I yelped and whipped around. The camera was pointed directly where I heard the sound. Adam, wisely, stayed put. This was our first piece of evidence - we didn’t want viewers thinking we were messing with them.

“What did you hear, Carlie?”

“Someone beat you to the last clap for the song, Adam.” I said. There was nothing behind us. I was staring out the open front door. My camera light bled out onto the porch, illuminating only a few feet out. Two busts sat on either side of the door on the inside along the wall. There were no additional doorways on the front wall of the house.

“Okay ghoulfriends,” Adam said. I panned slowly back around to where Adam stood. “This right here is why we wanted to do our first ever livestream at the Angel House! It seems we have a kindred spirit in here with us.” He grinned at his own pun. I provided the obligatory groan, glad to hear my voice had evened out. It’s hard to take ghost hunters seriously as is, let alone one who shrieks at the first piece of evidence. 

“The Angel House has exactly two reported deaths. The first being Mr. Angelo himself. The official report stated that he died of an undisclosed illness in his bed. The second reported death took place in 2001, on Halloween night. Exactly 19 years ago today.” 

“October 31, 2001 had the happy happenstance of having a full moon on Halloween. In fact, today is the first Halloween full moon since that night.” I added. Adam gestured to the rooms on the first floor beyond the staircases. The investigation had begun.

“On that date, local urban explorer and photographer Shawn Johnson decided to do a walkthrough of the Angel House. Now, Johnson was not a paranormal investigator. He was just a guy who loved exploring. While researching the house, we discovered his blog. The link will be posted on our page after the livestream.” Adam’s voice grew softer as we passed the staircase and walked towards an open doorway to the next room. It was a common theme for him - he started each investigation big and boisterous. When it came time for the actual investigating, he softened his tone. Something about big, empty, derelict buildings gave the same feeling as being in  a church. As though simply by talking, we were being  disruptive.

“Johnson believed that it was the unknown that made people nervous, not spirits or ghouls. So he opted for a nighttime exploration of the Angel House to prove, without question, that there was no such thing as ghosts. He wrote a preliminary blog post about it and outlined his plan for the night.” I explained. My tone matched Adam’s. 

“Unfortunately, Shawn Johnson never posted his follow up entry. He never made it out of the Angel House. His roommate woke up and checked his bedroom the next morning and found it empty. The police found Johnson in a guest bedroom on the second floor of the house, where he had died from blunt force trauma to the head. To this day, no one has found his camera.”

The chat box on the livestream was nonstop. Our fans were suggesting their own theories, expressing hope that we would find Johnson’s camera, and recommending what rooms to look in. I glanced through the thread. Nothing of relevance to the moment. 

We tiptoed over the threshold and found ourselves in a large kitchen. A cast iron stove lined one wall. The kitchen table, which at one point must have been beautiful with its intricate carvings and detail, was missing a leg and slanted to one side. Dust covered everything around us. Each step filled the air with an additional cloud. We poked through closets, looked out the windows, and opened every cabinet door. Nothing stirred. After a few more minutes of exploring. Adam signaled me to focus on him.

“So the main reason Carlie and I decided to start livestreaming was for better accountability. Believe it or not, we do read every single one of your comments and it breaks my little ghost-loving heart that you guys think we fake evidence.” Adam laid both hands over his heart and looked off into the distance, an exaggerated look of betrayal on his face. The chat box pinged with assurances in response. I grinned. 

“Whenever we investigate, we really do come alone. We don’t scope out places ahead of time, we don’t set anything up ahead of time. We do as little editing as possible, we just trim down on time to fit our investigations into a reasonable length. And to prove to you that it really just is us here, I want to direct your attention to the floor.”

I aimed the tripod down to our feet. Both of us wore heavy combat boots laced up tight. It had taken exactly one step on a rusty nail wearing Converse back in our early days to encourage safe footwear. 

“As you all can see, the floors of the Angel House have a pretty thick layer of dust. No one else is here. Every touch, every footstep, is 100% us.” Adam continued. I recorded our last few footsteps. The heavy treads of two pairs of boots, one smaller than the other, marked our way across the dilapidated kitchen.

“No activity has been found here, so it’s time for us to move on!” Adam walked back into frame. I recorded his feet for good measure, so that the viewers could see the footprints he left on the 140-year-old floors, when he stopped.

“Carlie, what the hell.”

“What?” I asked. I panned up to his face. He was looking at the floor ahead of us. I walked forward, keeping him in frame until I scanned farther up to the entryway to the kitchen. 

A third set of footsteps was clearly imprinted in the dust. It looked as though a third person had peered into the kitchen before walking away.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. 

“Come on!” Adam walked briskly toward the doorway. The third set of prints had come up from the perimeter of the foyer beyond the room. They were large, clearly men’s, but the tread did not match Adam’s in the slightest. I aimed the camera up to Adam’s face.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think we should follow them back to their source. If there’s someone else here, that could be unsafe for us. I want to see where they came in, because we would’ve heard someone come in the front door.”

“Right.” I agreed. We left the kitchen and walked along the third set of tracks. The chat box continued to roll. A few people thought we were messing with them, because why else make a big deal of our footprints if not to set up a mysterious third set? One commenter suggested we were intentionally misdirecting them. 

“It looks like whoever this was came down from the second floor.” Adam pointed at the tracks on the side of one of the grand staircases. I aimed my camera light around the area behind us. Only our tracks followed the third. 

“I guess we should just follow it up.” I suggested. Adam nodded and took a breath. Me and our viewers watched him steel himself as he led me forward to the staircase. 

“Oh, hey, battery and service check.” I reminded him. “If it ends up being just some creepy rando I want to be able to call for help.” He pulled out his phone and checked. 

“87%, full service.” He showed his phone screen to the camera and held it as the lens adjusted to his screen’s brightness. Once the camera registered his home screen, he pulled it down and tucked his phone into his pocket. Immediately, the chat box exploded. I held up a hand to keep Adam where he was. The thread was filled with exclamations and questions.

“Adam, the viewers saw something behind you.”

“What?” He looked behind him and shouted. I rushed forward and looked where he was pointing. The third set of steps had circled back behind him and gone up the stairs. I scanned up the staircase. In my first shot of the footsteps, they had been leading down on the left side. Now there was another set of the same footprints going up the right.

“EMF, now!”

I turned away from Adam so that he could access my bag. I kept the camera level as he dug through the pockets, searching for the tiny, handheld device that read electromagnetic frequencies. In a previous video, we proved that it was not set off by either of our phones or equipment, so Adam bypassed the explanation and held it  up. The little range of lights flashed immediately from green to red.

Something was in there with us. 

“Okay ghoulfriends!” Adam said, his voice an excited whisper. “The mysterious third set of tracks starts down the staircase and it looks like they loop around the back of the foyer. Whoever is here with us must have peeked in on us in the kitchen before going around the far end and then up the stairs behind us.”

“It can’t be some random person!” I said. “Our prints are the only ones from the front door and these steps originate somewhere upstairs! Unless some homeless person floated up there we can rule that out entirely.”

“Okay, let’s go!” Adam led the way up the stairs. We walked up the middle, keeping the mysterious footprints clearly on either side of us. At the top of the stairs we looked around. The EMF reader remained staunchly red.

“If we follow the prints to our left, we’ll see where they came from. If we follow them to the right, we’ll see where they lead. What do you think, everyone? Which way should we go?”

The chats were evenly divided. The viewers erupted into an argument about what made the most sense for capturing evidence of a ghost. Some argued that seeing the source would debunk the possibility of a third person in the house with us. Many argued that if we followed to where they lead, we’d see if it was a person. Some pointed out that either way, we’d be able to figure something out through a real-life sighting or process of elimination.

“It seems like our ghouls can’t decide!” I said.

“Well, then it’s a good thing we live in the future! Extra tripod please!” Adam reached for my bag again and took out a smaller handheld tripod and light. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, set it up, and held it up. 

“If you go back to our main page, you will see that we now have two streams! Stick around with Carlie if you want to see the source, and bounce on over to me if you want to see where they’re going!” 

I watched as half of our viewers left the current chat. 

“Okay Team Carlie, are we ready?” I asked. The chat lit up. 

“And Team Adam, are we set?” Adam asked his own chat. He shot me a thumbs up.

“Then Let’s Ghoul!” we both chanted. With a little wave at each other, we both turned to our respective quests.

The left hallway was as dark and dusty as the foyer below. A few doors to my right hung open, and a few more seemed to not have doors at all. They were simply yawning expanses of darkness until my camera light passed over them. The loss of Adam’s massive presence heralded the return of the creeping feeling on the back of my neck. I felt my entire body stand at attention, took a breath, and walked into the darkness. I directed my camera down to the floor. The mysterious third set was still to my left.

“As you guys can see, the footprints are a pretty decent size.” I stomped my foot next to one of the steps. Even with my big boots on, the extra set was larger. “I’m not sure what shoes looked like in 1880, but I’m fairly certain they didn’t have running sneakers. I wonder if we’re looking at the footsteps of the late Shawn Johnson?”

Talking to the chat made me feel less alone. I read their responses and theories as I walked to the far end of the hallway. The trail led me to the last door on the left. 

It was closed.

“Now that’s weird. Look at this! The steps clearly walk out through the doorway, but the door isn’t open. Do you think whoever did this doesn’t have to worry about doors?”

I took a breath.

“I guess there’s no use delaying this, huh? Okay, ghoulfriends. Let’s do it.” 

I kept the camera focused on the doorknob as I reached forward, grasped the cold, tarnished brass, and turned. The door opened inward, dragging along the dusty floor and mussing up the footsteps. I quickly panned up and did a sweep of the room. Nothing stirred.

“It looks like we’re in a bedroom.” I whispered to the chat. “It doesn’t look grand enough to be old Mr Angelo’s bedroom. This must be a guest bedroom.” 

A section of the wall was broken open. A massive branch had long since crashed down into the bedroom, leaving its rotted corpse behind. The furniture, having been exposed to the elements for who knows how long, bowed out at odd angles after absorbing moisture from outside. An ancient broken mirror stood facing the gaping hole in the wall. The shards of glass had been scattered along the floor. 

With my scan of my surroundings complete, I panned back down to the footsteps on the floor. Debris from the broken mirror and furniture pieces obscured what had once been a clear path. I followed them around the derelict bed towards the broken section of wall, placing my steps carefully.

“I’m not sure how secure this section of the house is.” I said to the chat. A few well-wishers told me to be careful. “If I feel like there’s any chance that this floor is unstable, I’m going to go find Adam. I’m looking for ghosts, not construction projects.”

I picked my way over to the mysterious source of the footsteps. The soft, rotted branch covered it up. I placed my foot on the floor next to it and pressed.

“I’m slowly applying pressure to the floor here. I’m not hearing any creaks or groans or anything, so I think I should be good.” Confident that the floor would support me, I stepped over completely and pushed the branch with my foot. It barely moved. The footsteps were clearly coming from beneath it. I looked around and spied a dresser not far behind me. 

“Okay guys, I’m going to put you right here and see if I can move the log. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful!” 

The camera light was aimed directly where I needed to be. I carefully squatted down, placed my hands underneath the damp, rotted trunk, and heaved. The tree creaked against the remaining wall. 

“One more time, I think!” I called back to my camera. I pushed again, and with a crack, the branch broke over, exposing the floor below. 

The footsteps came from the broken wall.

“What the hell?” I looked at the section of wall. There, nestled between the interior and exterior walls, was a battered camera. 

“Oh my GOD you guys, I think I found Shawn Johnson’s missing camera! Hold on, this is insane!” I stuck my arm into the wall. The moment my fingertips met plastic, I heard a rush of footsteps behind me. 

“What the--” Something sharp hit the back of my head, and I went down.

***

The floor was cold and hard beneath me. The back of my head throbbed. I opened my eyes, but saw nothing. Terror flooded my lungs as I blinked. I waved my hand in front of my face. In the darkness, I saw the stirrings of movement. My vision was fine; it was the room that had gone dark. I groaned and pushed myself up. Nausea stabbed through me. I leaned back against the wall and waited for the feeling to pass. 

“Okay,” I whispered. “Someone else was here. They hit me. They took my phone and tripod rig.” I sat on the floor and stared around the room, willing my eyes to adjust to the blackness. Shapes gradually appeared around the room. There was the bed, the dresser that had held my camera, the broken mirror across the room. Once I was sure my eyes were as focused as they could be, I pushed myself up against the wall and eased myself up. 

Whoever hit me had done an excellent job. Standing made me aware of how out of proportion I felt - my arms and legs felt too long for my body. Could I have brain damage? Was this just leftover dizziness? I shook my hands in an attempt to change the way they felt. No luck.

“Shit.” I whispered again. I shook my head and made myself focus. I had to find Adam. We would call the police, wait in the car, and everything would be okay. A shaky plan, but a plan nonetheless. I left the room feeling asymmetrical. 

The darkness enveloped me in the hallway. I paused to listen but heard nothing. Adam’s voice was so distinct, so easy to pick out, that he couldn’t be up on the second floor anymore. I would’ve heard him even if he were doing his excited livestream whisper. I walked down the hallway, keeping my hand on the wall for support. The camera light had spoiled me; I had never known such intense darkness. If Angel House had been creepy with poor lighting, it was menacing in the dark. I kept my focus on one thing: finding Adam. Whoever blitzed me thought I was already down, so I had to assume they were otherwise preoccupied. I stared around me, hoping for a break in the darkness, when my hand left the wall and found the railing to the grand staircase.

Quickly and quietly, I stole down the staircase and looped back to the kitchen. Just before the doorway I paused and listened, hard. Not a single noise. I peered around the frame and looked in. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was an expanse of darkness. I could make out the shapes of the lopsided table and stove, but not much else.  

“Adam?” 

No answer. I kept heading forward. We had only explored a small portion of Angel House, so the rest of the building was an unknown. I had no idea what else was on the first floor. My hand trailed along the wall next to me. The far corner of the room approached, a faded picture staring back at me. As I walked nearer, the face in the picture grew larger.  I stopped and stared. The face in the picture was hard to make out in the darkness. I took another step. The face in the picture grew larger still. Panic had finally started to settle in my ribcage. I strode forward, determined. The expression in the picture matched mine. 

He had a long face, a broad nose, and dark eyes. I turned my head to get a better look. He turned with me. I shook my head. He did the same. 

It was a mirror.

“What the hell. What the hell. What the hell??” I shouted. 

My voice, his voice, echoed across the empty foyer. It didn’t matter that there was someone else in the house. It didn’t matter that someone had tried to attack me. What mattered was that, somehow, I was staring out of someone else’s eyes into someone else’s face in a mirror. He was tall and thin, though somehow familiar. I leaned against the wall, bracing my considerably larger frame on a man’s hands and stared into the mirror. I took in the bold eyebrows and stubby facial hair. 

“Shawn Johnson,” I realized. Adam and I had studied his blog. There had been exactly one picture of the photographer. While he was exploring some old church somewhere he ran into another urban explorer. They had stood, arm in arm, grinning into their camera before exploring the church together. 

The camera!

Pieces began to fall into place. Shawn Johnson had died in a second floor guest bedroom. The report we read named blunt force trauma. That would explain the head pain. Had he been murdered? Did I have to relive his last few moments because I found his camera?  Or was the ghost of Shawn Johnson trying to get me to understand something else? I dropped my hands from the wall around the mirror. Of course. The tree. The trees surrounding Angel House had swayed so easily in the breeze when Adam and I had pulled up. The branch I moved had been huge. It must have fallen into the tree, hit Shawn in the head, and knocked him out. 

So why was he here? And why was I with him? I paced in front of the mirror. Shawn hadn’t been a paranormal investigator. He was an urban explorer and photographer. He had come here to disprove the paranormal. I snorted. Before I could even begin to think of the irony of that theory, a car door slammed in the distance. 

“Adam!” I called out. Had he gone out to the car to look for me? I ran along the side wall of the foyer and stopped in front of the window. There, down the front walkway, stood Adam. He was facing someone and gesticulating at the house. A bright light shone in my direction. Adam must have gone for the police. He obviously couldn’t expect to find out that I had been possessed by the ghost of the guy we were hoping to find. He had gone for help. I smiled. This was going to be an interesting conversation. But on the bright side, I’d be able to take Adam and the cops to Shawn Johnson’s camera. 

I watched Adam fall into step with his companion. They walked up the walkway together, and I heard their voices lilting back and forth. There was no hurry in their stride. Their conversation sounded formal, informative. I pressed my - Shawn’s - face against the glass. 

Adam was walking up the walkway with a young woman, carrying a tripod. He was walking up the walkway with me. 

I watched us trek across the front porch and heard my own voice begin to sing.

We were walking up the front walkway the way we had earlier in the evening. I was watching myself film Adam as he clapped in tune to the theme song. The front door shrieked open, just as it had when I had been the one operating the camera, Adam and the other Carlie walked into the foyer. I approached us, stunned. We were staring around the foyer, panning across for shots. I came to a stop directly behind what should have been me.

“Do do do doo,” 

Adam clapped.

“Do do do doo!”

He clapped again.

“Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do,”

I clapped.

[self-proclaimed-chaotic-good]

Consequences of Curiosity | HAPtives and Reader (Oneshot)

Prompt: Fantasy

Fandom: The OA

Words: 2076

A/N: It’s been a while since I wrote for The OA and I’m missing that show so much right now. Some Elias Rahim x Reader around the end.

-

You had your theories of what happens after death, but most of them were seen as fantasies or a part of cultural beliefs. Working under Dr. Percy, you realized you were not the only one that wanted to conduct research on such a subject. Yet, you hadn’t realized what lengths he was willing to go to get answers.

He was paying you a generous amount, enough to keep you afloat and support your parents. He knew that. Which was why he threatened to take that money away and make sure that you’re blacklisted from every medical institution he knew if you said a word about the experiments he was conducting. You would have nothing. You would have to start from scratch or find another way to get by.

“It’s our experiment,” he would always emphasize.

You never agreed to any of this. You wanted to only look for those who had near death experiences and interview them, maybe even monitor them to see if there were any side effects. Kidnapping them and subjecting them to a rinse and repeat experiment of drugging them, killing them, monitoring their brain, before putting them back in their glass prison and waiting for them to wake up again, wasn’t what you had planned at all.

Seeing those five people trapped in a giant fish tank with only a thin mattress, pellet food, and a small stream that ran through all five cells for their water and even their bathroom. It was inhumane, and you couldn’t understand why Hap, as he insisted on being called, didn’t see it.

Hap had gone out to meet someone, leaving you alone with his captives. In all honesty with as, essentially, an accomplice, they were your captives as well. With him gone, you made sandwiches for them, similar to the one that Prairie had made for the others. No mayonnaise for Scott, you remembered.

You checked the time, making sure that he won’t be back any time soon, before switching the cameras to the looped feed you recorded when he wasn’t looking. Once you were sure that it was working, you climbed down the spiral stairs. The captives instantly cut off their conversation, turning to the stairs to see you with a plate. Prairie stood up and walked up to the glass wall, blue eyes watching your every move. You were amazed that she had gotten her sight back after her escape attempt, but it was also unnerving to feel her watching you. Like she could see all the things you’ve done, the good and bad.

“I’ve got some actual food,” you announced, dropping off a sandwich for each person. “You don’t have to eat it, but Hap’s not here and I doubt a sandwich would make a difference.”

They all stared at the sandwich skeptically before looking back at you. Only Prairie knelt down to pick up the sandwich, taking a bite out of it without a second thought.

“This is really good,” Prairie said, “Thank you.”

You gave her a small smile. “You’re welcome.”

You saw Homer frown, stooping down for his sandwich and biting into it as well. Rachel, then Renata followed, slowly relaxing when they realized how harmless it was. Scott ignored the sandwich, leaning against the glass wall to glare at you.

“How long are you gonna play good doc, bad doc, huh, Hap? Sending your assistant in to be nice before you kill us again?” Scott yelled at the camera.

“The cameras aren’t recording right now,” you told him, “We have a limited time until Hap gets back, but I want to help you guys.”

“And why the hell do you want to do that?”

“Because I never wanted any of this!” you said, waving at their glass prison, “He’s got something over me and I’m working to get that back and take him down. I’m close, but he keeps things under lock and key. I’m asking you to trust me on this, okay?”

Prairie placed a hand against the glass. “What do we have to do?”

“Really? You can’t trust them!” Scott shouted at her.

She shook her head. “I can feel it. There’s a reason why out of all people, they had ended up working with someone like Hap.”

“I know that there’s something that you’ve seen when you NDE’ed and Hap can see you do those movements. I’ve been making recordings to play on loop to prevent him from seeing too much, but I can only keep it up for so long. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’m going to gather all the data he’d collected, make some travel arrangements, and the next time he’s gone, we’ll have a small time frame to leave this place, turn in evidence against him, and we’ll be as far away as possible.”

Homer nodded. “It’s all we’ve got so far. What do you think, OA?”

Prairie, or the OA, frowned. “We need to try.”

Your plan would work, in theory, but Hap had been growing paranoid as time went on, omitting some details in the data he found. He believed that he and the others weren’t captor and captives, but research partners. His obsession with OA also grew, making you worried for her.

Everything had been turned upside down the day the sheriff came by to check on the cabin. Although, you didn’t get all the notes and data he made, you made due and hoped that whatever you memorized and wrote down, along with footage from some of the experiments and the cameras monitoring their glass prison, would be enough. So, you called the police and tipped them to check up on the cabin.

When the sheriff showed up, Hap gave you a look that you couldn’t quite decipher. He turned on rock music to drown out the yelling as he went to speak with the sheriff. You watched as they walked to the side of the cabin and partially out of view. You rushed over to the computer, making sure to bring up the feed of the basement, the sight of your newly made acquaintances made your heart hurt as they screamed and banged on the glass.

You forced yourself to walk away from the screen, jogging downstairs to make it look like you were busy. You nodded over at OA before turning to the rest of the notes that Hap had kept around the basement. If everything goes to plan, the sheriff will see the feed and Hap would finally be dealt with.

Just as you collected all the notes and tucked them into a briefcase, Hap came down the stairs. His eyes were cold as he looked at you before flickering over to his captives.

“Bring out Prairie and Homer,” he said, walking back up.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered as you opened their cells.

You reached out and gave OA a gentle squeeze on her arm. She sucked in a breath, not being used to skin contact. You snatched your hand away, apologizing again.

Everything that happened after that was like a strange dream. OA and Homer were to heal the sheriff’s wife so the sheriff could make a special arrangement with Hap that would allow him to continue his work. You stood by, Hap making sure you remained in his sights while he and the sheriff waited for OA and Homer to do the movements.

The lights flickered and like the time you had witnessed Scott being brought back to life, you watched as the woman was getting her energy back and began to move again. The sheriff gasped in disbelief, rushing over to the room to see her. Hap stood up, gripping hard on your arm as he dragged you with him, a gun held in his other hand.

He made you watch as he separated Homer and OA once again before they could even touch each other for the first time, then he shot the sheriff and his wife. Your heart fell when you realized that all your planning was for nothing, and now there were two people dead and two people heartbroken. Homer was thrown back in the glass prison while you scrambled to think of an escape plan with OA. Running in an area that you were unfamiliar with won’t do much, as he could catch up with you like he did with OA the last time. Then again, she was blind that time.

When Hap came back upstairs, you tried to jump him with a frying pan. He dodged out of the way, yanking the pan from you. He twirled it in his hand, before turning to you and swung at your head. All you could hear was OA’s screaming as you fell to the floor. Her screams became faint as he dragged her to the car. His footsteps came back a while later and he lifted you up and shoved you in the car with her.

OA’s soothing hands cradled your head on her lap as she cried, the car jerking around as Hap drove off. You wanted to wake up and assure her that you were fine, that you can still make an escape with her, but you couldn’t. You felt yourself slipping away. You failed.

-

“And that was the last thing you remembered?” Elias, the FBI trauma counselor asked.

You nodded slowly, wrapping your arms around your knees as you sat on the grass of a park a couple of blocks from the FBI building. Elias sat next to you, casually leaning back against a tree.

You had woken up in a hospital after having some kind of vision where OA was floating in the air, a bright light surrounding her, before falling quickly. Apparently, you still had the flashdrive of some of the footage you stole from Hap’s computer and the police had found it. You were promised to not be charged as a willing accomplice if you told them everything, but just as you were, they didn’t believe you. They had you talking to a trauma counselor, hoping that it could help clear your mind.

Elias Rahim was not what you expected from a trauma counselor that worked for the FBI. He was casual and he genuinely wanted to help you, listening closely to what you have to say without any bias. He helped you make sense of what happened and had not invalidated what you claimed to have experienced. It was easier to talk about it after each session. It took months for you to open up, but it was happening.

“Why were you curious about life after death?” he asked.

“Well… I guess because I’ve had a lot of relatives pass away and my parents… well, they’re not getting any younger. It’s like believing in heaven or the Land of the Dead. Knowing what’s beyond all of… this,” you waved your hands to your surroundings, “It’s comforting, I guess.”

Elias nodded. “I get it. Death is something we don’t have a say in, but the idea that life still continues in some other form is reassuring, right?”

You picked out a piece of grass and rolled it up with your fingers. “I… I had another dream,” you muttered.

Elias leaned in. “A dream?”

You nodded. “It was… it’s strange,” you said, laughing at it.

“Well, I want to know now.”

“You… you were on a stage, in front of hundreds of people,” you said, “You were rapping and people were shouting your lyrics back at you. It’s ridiculous, right?”

The corner of his lips turned up. “Could be because of that embarrassing story I told you about how I snuck into an Eminem concert,” he said.

You looked over at him, and he was giving you that strange look again. Like there was something that he wanted to tell me but couldn’t. He looked away, lifting up his sleeve to check the time.

“It’s time to head back now. See again at the same time next week?”

You nodded, dusting yourself off. The two of you walked back to the building where a family friend was waiting to pick you up.

“I’ll see you later, then,” you said to Elias.

He nodded, waving as you climbed into the car and drove off. He sighed. You were so close. He could tell that your other self wants you to remember, but your mind isn’t allowing it to take over. It can’t be rushed either. He would just have to wait, like he’s always done.

[reverseblackholeofwords]

Bo and Yancy

Part Four: Getting to Know You

From the notes of Professor Amelia Beauregard on Subject Y:

Day 1--Subject Y likes to dance. A lot. I found him dancing in his cell again today, singing to himself as if he is rehearsing a musical number for a play. When asked why he was dancing, Subject Y replied, “Why ain’t you dancin’?” Then wiggled his hips seductively. I told him to stop. He went back to dancing.

I paid close attention to the steps and tempo of the music and wondered if this could be some sort of kinetic coding, much like bees dancing to inform their hive where to find pollen. I made notes and decided to start these voice-recordings of my findings on the Subject. He continues to get on my nerves.

Day 2--Today Subject Y did not dance. In fact, he seemed quite despondent. This could be caused by a prolonged separation from the “boys and the goils” as the Subject so woefully informed me. This pertains to the fellow inmates at the penitentiary who Subject Y describes in almost a familial way. Knowing what I do about the Subject’s past with “family,” I find it very interesting that he is so attached to his fellow inmates.

I will continue to question him on his interpersonal relationships to see if this may be the source of his trauma, a doorway into his perception of the time/space continuum. I am also curious about this Jimmy the Pickle person of whom he speaks a great deal.

Day 6--Subject Y is now talking to himself. He does not seem to enjoy his solitary cell and asks to be let out at each mealtime. He has not yet made an escape attempt, but I wish to see if the prolonged solitude will either convince him to give me more answers or if it will induce whatever abilities he might have as an anomaly.

Day 7--Recently Subject Y has begun experiencing violent night terrors that wake him from sleep often. He now avoids sleep. He rarely eats. I worry for his well-being but am unsure how to proceed. He is a very dangerous individual.

I will continue to monitor him.

Day 10--Subject Y is no longer in his cell! I repeat, Subject Y is no longer in his cell! I checked first thing this morning, and he’s gone. The door remained locked, and there is no visible signs of an escape route. I do not understand how he was capable of this.

I have checked the security footage, and between the hours of three and four o’clock in the morning, Subject Y appears to sit up in bed, begin singing to himself, and then vanishes! How is this possible?

I am currently searching the lab. Maybe he hasn’t gotten far, not with the zombies outside. In fact, I’d say...

Y: Professor!

B: You! What are you doing in my kitchen?

Y: Well, what does it look like I’m doing? I’m making youse breakfast! How do youse like your eggs?

B: ...Sunny-side up.

Y: Perfect! The waffles are almost done!

Day 14--I now allow Subject Y to roam freely around the labs. He is less moody, but there has been no more evidence of his ability to manipulate either time or space. He likes to watch me bake. Pumpkin pie seems to be his favorite pastry.

I find his presence almost comforting after these many months spent alone fighting off the zombie hordes, but I still sleep with my blaster next to my bed. Just in case.

Day 19--I believe that Subject Y really knows nothing of the temporal map or the time anomaly. Now, I am not even sure he is still the source. Maybe his abilities are beyond his understanding, and they merely effect my device because they are time-related. Regardless, I do not think that Subject Y will be any use to my research.

Still, it would be a shame to send him back to the penitentiary now. Stupid, thick-headed song bird.

Day 21--Uh, hi, Miss Bo. I found your tape recorder, thingy while you was sleeping, and I just thought I’d leave you a little message! It’s been awful fun hangin’ out with youse these last few weeks, but the boys and the goils back at the penitentiary need me, ya know? The ole Warden just can’t manage without me. I hope you don’t get mad, and hey! Visiting day is every third Sunday, if you wanna swing by!

I’ll miss you. Buh-bye.

Day 22--Subject Y is gone. I received a call early this morning from Warden Eyeball Scum that he is safely back at Happy Trails...

I suppose from this point, I will have to begin back at square one. I am... disappointed, but I knew it was likely Subject Y was not, in fact, related to the time anomaly. And that he would not wish to remain here forever.

Of course, it won’t be so bad. Things can finally go back to normal around here. I won’t have to listen to his infernal singing anymore, and I can begin my search again fresh.

This is good.

Day 25--I miss him.

[intheseautumnhands]

I have no work so pre-NaNo ramblings under the jump as I try to sort out if I’m starting anything new for it, feel free to click through or ignore entirely. 

All fic, because I have no idea what Im doing with any original stuff right now. Most of it is TUA fic. Because I am currently Having An Obsession.

- Speaking of Having An Obsession, primary goal is definitely to get turpentine and patches (the pre-S1, “Diego and Vanya and pregnancy and dealing with trauma by being determined to be better parents than Reginald and finding something else to live for, technically a kidfic I guess even though it probably ends right before or right after the kid if born” fic) finished. Or close to it? Just... to work on it. 

(I’m stalled right now because I’ve written through what my brain termed The First Part, and I have an idea for The Third Or Fourth-ish Part, but need to figure out what The Second Part is going to be in a way that’s interesting to write about. Right now in my head it’s just “?????? Dealing? Somewhere in here we deal with the Question of Doctors, but not The Question of Medication, they need to be closer for that. also in here is where Diego effectively moves in even if they don’t really register that fact til later.” I may write the attached one-shot to The Third-ish Part in my head first, see where the emotional states land, and write towards that? That might work. Or maybe I’ll just put Braille on repeat and go to town.)

But I am not Proper NaNoing -- for one thing I don’t think the above is going to be 50k, especially not on top of the ~7k I have already? I could be wrong, but we’ll see. So other thoughts:

- I would like to get some more words on the Allison-is-born-in-Night-Vale story(/ies) done, because right now that exists as a decontextualized collection of paragraphs, some from the base fic, some from the series of spin-offs where she meets the various Hargreeves (mostly the one where Luther starts getting her show on the moon and falls in love with her from afar). And it’s just fun. I think I need a WTNV refresher, so I may make a point of listening to some of my favorites this week. It’s also good Halloween noise and I can work to it, so.

(Should not just listen to Desert Bluffs episodes. But may do some of those too. Because I love Kevin more than is probably healthy for me. One day I’ll go as Kevin for a con somewhere and have way too much fun.)

- I appear to have lost the bare: a pop opera/TUA crossover file somewhere in my docs? I need to dig it out again and go back to that as well, but I need a refresher on what bits I have scrambled down, because I think that’s also pretty piecemeal.

- ..... I don’t have that much oomph for my other existing WIPs right now, which is dissapointing. Some part of me DOES want to turn the series of Abigail/63!Will ficlets into somethign more than A Series of Kinky Moments, but I don’t know what to do with that, so it’s probably not happening yet.

I may make an effort to work on the eldritch-Sigyn-time-loop fic though. Because I love it and i feel like it’s going to end up just languishing. Or maybe that will be my wind-up to NaNo, since I don’t know what to write lately?

- Things I’d like to start but need to do research for:

-- That fic where Abigail survives but is mute, the metaphor becomes text and in her lack of voice becoming text she finds a way to reclaim her voice and her power, because I still have STRONG FEELINGS about Abigail Hobbs apparently. Like. A lot of them. Like, it’s almost a problem, but not surprising.

However, to write it properly I’d really want to research throat wounds and healing, and I am A Chicken about gory images, so I have to figure out how to research it without risking running into pictures.

-- I ALSO need to research throat wounds and healing for the fic where Diego crash-lands into the 60s a couple of months after Allison, they’re assumed to be married, and they just kind of roll with it. Also, racism in the 60s, and specifically how it affects marriages that are different races but nobody involved is white? Because literally every source I found on my first go-round was only about interracial marriage when one part was. 

(That, or I need to throw up my hands and choose to declare this fic not reality complaint, but I feel like this one I should definitely at least TRY to research first. But goddammit I just want to write fake-married-and-worried-about-everyone-else turning into actual-relationship(-and-still-worrying) [and also somewhere it developed a plot where Diego tries to get into boxing because he has no ability to keep jobs and ends up running into Luther and possibly evolves into threesomes and also collecting their other siblings several months before Five shows up? I don’t know how but it did].)

- Shorter contenders if I need to find something else to think on for a bit include: 

-- The fic where Ben slowly becomes possessed by the Horror.

-- The series of AUs where each member of the Academy ended up being the last one left behind.

-- Luther viewing Vanya as their father’s left-hand team leader to his personal right-hand team leader and coming to her to keep her in the loop and ask advice, which eventually morphs as they get older into a habit of going to Vanya to confess everything he feels he’s done wrong and her giving him a kind of penance

... Do I even have anything else that’s not TUA left? I feel like I should but I Have A Fixation right now, it’s a problem. I need to go back to the Magicians and see if that creeps in. Or maybe something else, but this will work for NaNo, I think. altogether it’s definitely more than 50k, though I’m not planning to write it all at once this coming month, just, it’ll be easier if there’s a plan for me to look at while I’m going ‘but what do I wriiiiiiiite’ than if there’s nothing.

Not even sure I’m really going for 50k, but just. Writing in a Substantial Amount would be nice. For once I think I can do it! It’s been 14 fucking years since I’ve won (or even gone over 10k I believe)! So let’s see how it goes!

[detective-redstar]

CHAPTER 6 || The Truth. (part 1)

“Did you enjoy this little game I prepared for you? You all played so well! It was so fun watching you fall into the depths of despair! You guys did amazing, killing each other in such complex ways! I couldn’t be more satisfied with how it turned out!”

“But, there’s still a few mysteries that haven’t been solved yet. Which means we can’t end things here, can we? I’ll do my best to answer your questions~”

Why did you do this? 

“Hm? Why, you ask?” He tapped a finger on his lips, tilting his head. “I was bored, I guess. The crime rate in Japan is soooo low that I’m lucky if I get a decent case on my desk that can actually make me think.” His arms spread out, as did the smile on his face. “That~ is~ why~ I made this… these killing games!” He stumbled on his words. “To solve the seemingly unsolvable! To experience complex murder mysteries you couldn’t find in the real world!”

“... Well, that was the goal at first.” The excitement dropped from his hands to the floor. “If I’m being honest, I lost my real reason for doing this a while ago. I just kept going because I had to. Something compelled me to.”

What is that something?

"I don't know. There was just something. Like a subconscious urge. Hahaha, are you feeling unsatisfied with my answer?"

STARS...  How much of that is true?

"I don’t know anything about STARS, that waiver, this Chiyo Oshiro, or synthetic talents! I don’t know! That video makes no goddamn sense!” 

“... It’s confusing to me,” he starts explaining, his prior malice all but vanished. “As far as I know, this is my first killing game. Yet, the evidence shown to us, and these fuzzy memories that I can’t quite grasp, keep telling me otherwise. I don’t understand! How many times have I done this already?! And why don’t I remember any of them?!”

“If we believe all the facts presented to us. It seems like our memories and our talents aren’t real at all. Chiyo Oshiro also mentioned the world being in ruins, but none of us remember that, right? Which means a big portion of our memories have been altered. Right now, we’re in a simulation. Since Yuko Kuwashima is talking to us through Yunime, that must mean she’s alive, right? Even though she appeared as a ‘ghost’ alongside people who died from our killing game.”

“I think that means... that no one who died in this simulation actually died. They were just removed from the simulation.”

“But then... who am I...?”  Panic returned to his eyes as his thoughts ran amok.

What was the purpose behind all the simulated killing games then?

“... Was it to prevent me from taking actual lives in the real world? Does it have something to do with this urge I have?”

“Even after Chiyo Oshiro was executed, memory and talent augmentation research continued. It was supposed to help, but...there is a bit of a bug in the system. It's rare, but...every now and then, something will fail in the augmentation and it will create something...dangerous, to say the least. Chiyo Oshiro masterminded over fifty killing games, what would happen if that trait resurfaced in one of the augmented subjects? They would be a danger to society...would they not? What would happen if someone received the Mastermind trait during their augmentation, something that gave them an overwhelming compulsion to harm others, to create killing games. What do you think...would happen if a person like that was left to their own devices? At least, that's how S.T.A.R.S. sees it."

“It wasn't supposed to be like this. They wanted to fix you, but nothing they did worked. So they just left you here to rot to protect everyone else."

“What..?”

“............” 

5 games.

“No, no, no, no, no, no… No!!”  This was wrong. This was very, very wrong. Airi collapsed to his knees and screamed. Cracked memories, too distorted to truly make out, filled his mind until they were crammed against the walls of his skull.  Faces, names, friendships, rivalries, pain, tears.

5 games.

Memories of red splashing from his own body like rain. Over and over again, he died. Four times now, to be exact. The pain of death seeped into Airi’s nerves and he screamed until he choked.

It hurt so much. 

And it was all their fault.

“What have you done to me?” His voice was low, growling like a beast. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME!?” Both fists slammed onto his podium in pure rage, not caring for the damage done to them. “You… You took everything from me!! You did this to me! You made me this way!!” He took a second to catch his breath, his chest rising and falling violently as he neared the brink of hyperventilation. “I don’t want this! I didn’t want to be this way, and you-! You threw me here to make up for your mistake! You took away 4 years of my life, and for what!? Nothing has changed! How long do you plan to keep this up!?... How many more years will you rob me of?” His voice cracked and moisture pooled in his eyes.

“Why…? … Why…?”

...

“So, let me get this straight. All of us were experimented on, apparently with our consent. We were given fake memories, fake lives, fake talents. But! There's a possible side effect. You might develop mastermindosis or something! Which is what Seta contracted. And you've been trying to cure him by letting him manage five killing games? Wow!” (Ricardo)

"Silence! You all could not be MORE mistaken! If it were solely to satiate Airi's bloodlust, we could easily repeat simulations with artificial intelligence, to keep him busy and satisfied until we could find a permanent solution. You all are here for your own reasons. The nature of the experiment does not matter so much as the end result, that being, witnessing the impact of trauma on the recently augmented subjects. This is the safest environment to do so. Killing two birds with one stone, keeping Airi's mind sharp through the simulations and seeing the impact trauma has on you all. This is the best way to see if any of you are a danger to society." 

“.....”

"No," he glares at Mukuro. "You can't keep doing this! You can't keep hurting people like this! These games and this simulation have to stop!"

"I won't let you!" (Sujaku)

“You morons have no idea what you're talking about!" (Karaju)

"Our experiments aren't wrong!" (Mukuro)

"I'm here too!" (Hakumei)

[vaguely-concerned]

I am reading the Rogue One visual guide and I’m going to ramble at you about it

Starting with Baze and Chirrut facts because nothing is more important than Baze and Chirrut

- The Guardians of the Whills believe very deeply in the Force but their cosmology doesn’t center any fight between light and dark and they believe mortal minds can ‘encompass the totality of the Force’ with the right training (seemingly even for non-Force sensitives). *thinks of a little green baby who’s going to need some help with his place in the universe one day and how reductive the light/dark side dichotomy can be* good to know good to know. yes everything eventually comes down to baby yoda and his poor stressed out dad. protect them

- “Opposites in balance. Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus share a homeworld and a history, although they strike a compelling contrast. Baze is a hardened pragmatist, while Chirrut’s faith flourishes even in trying times. They both claim to act as the protector of the other.” 

in every way they are #goals. bffs/partners to lovers is Everything. ‘They both claim to act as the protector of the other’ is very funny and very sweet and very true; my favourite thing

- this book describes chirrut as baze’s ‘best friend and moral compass’, which is a funny way of spelling ‘husband of 30 years’ but who am I to criticize 

- baze is just. he’s so good. they say here pragmatism is his biggest trait but you can tell how much love has been at the center of him (and probably continues to be under it all) from the totality of his rage. I don’t think you can be this deeply hurt without loving just as deeply first. (like chirrut says, he used to believe more than anyone and now he’s thrown aside literally everything about the guardians except chirrut) it’s like he’s suffered a moral wound just seeing what’s happened to his home and it won’t heal and it never does, he just loses chirrut too and then at least it’s over. jesus christ it’s so soul crushingly sad in a quiet undramatic way 

- “Though both are Guardians of the Whills, Baze and Chirrut could not be more different in their approach to combat. Traditionalist Chirrut still carries weapons associated with the ancient order, while Baze adopts an implement of modern warfare. Their methods suit them individually, and both are effective extensions of their distinctive personalities. Though Baze may chide Chirrut for his antiques, and Chirrut may decry Baze’s reliance on soulless tools, they trust each other’s defences to such weapons.”

THEY TRUST EACH OTHER’S DEFENCES TO SUCH WEAPONS. YOU HAD TO WORD IT LIKE THAT HUH. YOU HAD TO GO AND MAKE IT CLEAR THEY’RE EACH OTHER’S MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD. WHAT. THE FUCK

- it’s implied baze’s hair used to be shorter when he was a Guardian! he’s just let it grow past what’s customary for them (and an excellent choice too his hair is wonderful)

- his repeating blaster is described as ‘modified and highly illegal’ hahaha

it also weighs 30 kg and is meant to be mounted on a tank

baze is the best

- chirrut built his own lightbow! apparently used to be a thing the guardians did to symbolize the end of their training. I wonder if baze used to have one too? even more I wonder if they’ve always been part of the same uh ‘divisions’ or what have you within the guardians, because I think there are some implications that baze has been more of an assassin/focused on violent conflicts even before the empire came and chirrut hasn’t

- this book does not adequately capture chirrut’s trickster/funny side, making me wonder how much of that was an addition by the actor and how much was planned out

- honestly... more baze & chirrut (well baze/chirrut let’s not play here) prequel books WHEN. what does their living room look like (because we do know they live together) how did they meet, when exactly did baze lose his faith and chirrut his sight, what was their first kiss like 

inquiring minds want to know (it’s me I want to know) 

- unless the wording is deliberately misleading here chirrut was not born blind (though he won’t discuss how he ended up this way) and he’s learned his current fighting technique over a prolonged period of time 

- bodhi is a bit of a gambling addict! and specifically one who’s pretty good at it; even after the empire knows he’s a defector he gets past their restrictions because he’s saved up all the credits/favours/even id-vouchers he’s owed by other imperial grunts fsdhfksdjf precious I love him 

- saw gerrera’s medical droid a) has been modified so its programming won’t stop it from being able to dispense drugs at dangerous intervals, b) professes sheer bafflement that saw is still alive and c) is ‘frequently deactivated to prevent it from building an ethical case to discontinue treatment’. I find the whole thing darkly hilarious.  

- there are literally whole subplots going on in the crowd scenes on Jedha about a mad evil surgeon who ‘decraniates’ people (essentially turning them into mindless servile husks with all of their head above the nose cut off, somehow), a masked cop from the Milvayne Authority who’s gone rogue to do the right thing and hunt him down against orders, a death cult, a bunch of different religious sects, a translation droid who has befriended a group of local orphans and shares his credits with them so they can eat and he’s SAVING UP FOR A PROCESSOR UPGRADE SO HE CAN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF SPIRITUALITY ;_____; what the fuck I want a tv-series about this droid IMMEDIATELY 

- this book shows you just how crucial K-2 is as an asset and what a masterstroke cassian’s reprogramming of him is... and it says some very, very sweet things about cassian as a person under all the trauma and spy stuff that he essentially treats him as his best friend instead of a tool. cASSIAN he deserved to survive and have SO much therapy ;_____; ah well at least we’re getting a prequel series about him right? pls be good

- oh cassian was a proper separatist during the clone wars! he probably has some very interesting points of view about the republic pre- and post empire huh (this is what I love about the clone wars era; they have built SUCH a believable and interesting political world here, all shades of grey. there were separatists with very valid points even thought they were lead by a guy named COUNT DOOKU played by CHRISTOPHER LEE, the first sign that you should look inwards and ask yourself... wait are we the bad guys)

- it’s so much more understandable to me now who in the rebel leadership is for following jyn’s plan and who is not. (namely: the ministers of finance and industry are both Not Into challenging the empire directly, kind of understandably)

in depth description of weapons technology... I sleep. deep dives into the political structure of the alliance leadership and their backgrounds and motivations? I have never been happier

(this. sort of should have been in the actual movie tho things would have made more sense)

- BAIL ORGANA Leia’s actual dad out there lookin’ fiiine, being righteous and good, almost making me forget he’s going to die SO SOON oh fuck :( 

- orson krennic is, presumably straight faced, described as ‘a cruel but brilliant man’ which is PATENTLY LUDICROUS because krennic is by literally every indication a fucking idiot, he needs galen to do all the real work for him, he mouths off to DARTH VADER and then tarkin just effortlessly swoops in and fucks him over in the end, easily outmaneuvering him... orson krennic is a fucking loser I don’t care if he’s the one who introduced brutalist architecture to coruscant

lol lol lol *arrow pointing towards krennic’s head* ‘Keen mind dissects architectural puzzles and conspiratorial plots’ okay I see what happened here orson krennic wrote this book 

- oh galen erso is kind of one of the most interesting and heartbreaking characters in all of star wars. (and I do not say this just because of mads mikkelsen’s cheek bones) he’s incredibly intelligent but from a really poor family and wanted to eliminate the difference between rich and poor and invent a new form of infinitely renewable energy... and technically he did achieve that, except his old college buddy orson krennic immediately found a way to use his technology for genocide and he didn’t realize until it was too late :’) there is something so comforting in the fact that in the end galen still got the last laugh in the most epic but unsung way. he’s the sort of quiet Magnificent Bastard who doesn’t even care he’ll never get the credit as long as it worked. u did good on that one jyn

also several of the scientists galen is leading on eadu are in the same category as him -- captured and forced to work for the empire. so that’s great and not at all upsetting 

- galen and lyra’s falling in love story is kind of sweet (though naturally it pales against baze and chirrut’s whole deal but then who could compare) and the sheer effort and detail that’s gone into building the farmstead in the beginning we end up seeing for 5 minutes... dude (it feels very convincingly like somewhere a family would live though) 

- *sees that ‘databook’ is a concept that exists apparently; groans in fic research I thought ‘holodisc’ might do the job but maybe this is a better fit*

- I will say that my largest gripe with this movie is how glaringly unnecessarily male it is. there’s literally no reason for most of the rebels and ESPECIALLY all of the scientists to be male but here we are. 

well the stormtroopers could all canonically be any gender behind the armor so uh that’s. something lol

- despite being all desert-y jedha is apparently quite cool! temperature-wise I mean though the huge ancient statues lying everywhere are pretty awesome too

- wow stormtrooper armor really does just suck huh. it’s like ‘well it might protect you from a blaster bolt if you stand upwind and angle yourself just right, who knows’. I guess this is why everyone and their grandmothers are drooling over mando’s beskar lol

- star wars’ insistence on sticking to single-biome planets is so silly and I love it. stick to that incomprehensible world building decision lucasfilm I respect you

- mon mothma! basically the most important character in the star wars universe who most people won’t know about lol she’s like the anti-palps. for the most part she is one of the most Big Goods in all of star wars (along with bail) but also she’s played by the actress who voices moira in overwatch so I do instinctively distrust her whenever I hear her talk haha. called palpatine a ‘lying executioner’ to his face which is both admirably bold and remarkably restrained, considering all the things palpatine is.

- oof the two people mentioned the most on anakin/vader’s pages are palpatine and obi wan. that’s. hurtful and bad and awful. the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making me watch ‘clone wars’ because watching ‘clone wars’ actually made me care about anakin skywalker :(

-ah shit this is a lot of pages about pasty empire dudes i’ll uh come back to these lol

[mellow-cello]

You mentioned once in the end notes of chapter 33 that you had, and i quote, ‘A method to your madness’ when describing how you wrote Harry’s stutter What was that? How did you know where to and where not to add a stutter? I’m writing a story with a character who has a stutter and after reading this fic, I’m inspired to nail his character now!

Heck I wrote out a great response and then lost it.

I’m definitely not an expert on this, and I’m sure I’m gonna get parts wrong in this, but I’ll do my best!

I guess I’d start with saying to listen to people with stutters. I think I mentioned it before, but when I decided Harry was going to have a stutter, I started watching a lot of Drew Lynch. I picked up a lot of patterns with his speech, things that he had issues with, for example words with repeated sounds (the word banana I think was something he mentioned having issues with) are something that can be difficult at times.

Also I write the stutter as I write the sentence almost every time (though I’ve actually completely forgotten to write it by accident and had to go add it in later). It may be a personal thing, but for me it makes the entire thing feel more organic. I enjoy writing dialogue a lot so hearing it in my head with the stutter helps me feel like it’s more real, I suppose. Also, part of the reason I used the potion to change the stutter (aside from developing character and relationships) was because I felt like I’d boxed myself into a very limited sound with the original, extreme stutter. Initially Harry stuttered more often than not over the words, where now it’s less than half the time on average, buuuuuut this isn’t static. How he feels can effect it greatly, such as if he’s dealing with anxiety or shock (anxiety makes it worse, shock can make it hard to complete words at all). Also, certain things like anger can make it less extreme (if he’s ranting the frequency of stutters will drop, though I haven’t done this yet with his current stutter if my memory is right...) I can’t say how accurate it is, but I used the King’s Speech as a kind of basis for this. There’s also certain... rules, I guess, that I have for what he can say. He always stutters over the words “uncle” and “Vernon”, and has never been able to say the word “abuse” (though he’s only tried once). With the “new stutter” (for lack of a better term), I have more freedom to single these things out.

The only other thing I’d note is not to just repeat the first letter of a word. Think instead about what sound is being repeated, and draw on that. Also, say it either out loud or in your head as you write it, and don’t be afraid to repeat entire syllables or cut up the middle of a word. So, say I was putting a stutter on the word “everywhere”. Instead of just going for the first letter by writing it as “e-e-everywhere”, I might instead throw the v in (ev-e-everywhere) or even have a restart of the entire word (ever-everywhere). Also, the sounds I target the most are W, S, and Y (though the stutter can appear anywhere or even not appear on these sounds, they’re the ones I usually gravitate towards), so instead I can put it halfway through by writing it as “everywhe-wh-where”. Basically don’t keep it as simple as throwing it on the first letter, though that’s still something that can appear from time to time.

Like I said, though, I’m not an expert on this. Make sure you dive into your research as well, and while you’re doing that you’ll probably find that a lot of people have different speech impediments and patterns. For example some come out by elongating out certain sounds (such as drawing out the ‘s’ or ‘n’ sound) or repeating entire words (like saying “where-where-where are you going?”). Keep in mind why your character has a stutter too; whether it’s from an injury or trauma or both. And if it’s an injury, what kind is it? A stutter caused by a concussion and one caused by a stroke may be two different things.

I guess my last note is to also try not to forget about readability? I can’t say for sure about how readable the stutter is in my writing since I don’t have a beta, but I try to walk the line carefully. Harry’s dialogue is meant to still be understood, but of course it’s a major part of his life. There are very very very few times he’s ever spoken without stuttering, and those are only short two to three word sentences. 

Damn, this got long but I hope this helped! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask!