#either that or some mistake i made that i keep ruminating on but for now | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kadavernagh · 2 years ago

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TIMING: Current LOCATION: Some woods near the Common PARTIES: Chris and Regan SUMMARY: Chris and Regan run into each other while jogging early in the morning, and an extremely loud, booming noise prompts them to investigate. As they go winding into the woods looking for the source of the sound, they find... absolutely nothing! Don't worry about it. CONTENT WARNING: None

There was nothing like a 5:30am jog to wake your body up, especially after spending half the night in the morgue. Regan ran a hand along her forehead, brushing the sweat away, and she couldn’t help but probe the dark rings under her eyes while she was there. Since moving here, sleep had become unreliable. Whether it was because she was reluctant to depart from the morgue or because of the nightmares, she couldn’t say, but jogging provided an escape from all of the anxious rumination. Even she could appreciate the first signs of spring blooming across the Common – tulips, daffodils, and the robins bouncing across the nascent grass. Not to mention some dragonflies that made her skin crawl in a way she didn’t miss.

She exhaled a long breath, shook her head, and tried to meet her pace again. What did spring matter? Clear your thoughts. Just run. But once the thoughts started trickling in, it was hard to get back into the same groove.

BAAAAAAWK.

A call thundered across the Common. Organic, by the sound of it, not from any machine. An animal. Regan stopped in her tracks. A distraction. That was quite welcome. But… whatever made that sound had to have been huge. She looked up, noticing the branches swaying in wind that wasn’t previously there. I could do one better, she thought, but that was chased by a concern – is it dangerous? Did that make it her responsibility to investigate? Slowly, Regan turned around, intending to approach the direction the sound had come from. But she wasn’t the only one there – someone else, a man who also looked a little worse for the wear, and was clearly dressed for jogging. “You heard that, right”?

For Chris, sleep either held on too long or it never showed up to begin with — last night was one of those nights. He’d stayed up, of course, as the fall of night felt a lot more invigorating and safer than the harshness of the sun, but as the hours ticked away he realized that he had made a mistake. A nap or two wasn’t enough to quiet his restless mind, so with the inevitable rise of dawn, the only option was to try and get some fresh air — and potentially tire himself out enough to where he could pass out and sleep.

He hoped that it would be early enough in the day where the only people he might come across were other runners — or people who wanted to keep to themselves. That was the ideal situation, of course, but people were social; he couldn’t fault them for that, he just needed to keep things brief if he wanted to make it back to the motel room without incident. Even though sleep liked to be elusive, it was what he needed in order to stay calm. At least, it gave him a fighting chance.

Now, Chris knew he had been sleep deprived for some time now, but he didn’t think it was bad enough to mess with his head. He felt the sound before he heard it; it rumbled deeply at first, but only for a moment — and then the sound came, piercing and large. Chris halted, alert. The other joggers in the Common, or rather jogger, also stopped to listen. A familiar grumble started low within him, but a voice tore through the strict attention and pulled his gaze away from the direction of the sound. “I think so…” he trailed before he offered the hesitant shrug of a shoulder. “Thunder?” He offered, though the minute the word left his lips he knew it was wrong.

Regan approached the other jogger, as he appeared to be just as alarmed. Did he think it was something dangerous, or was it just unexpected enough to throw him for a loop? At least he heard it. That meant it wasn’t one of those things – something only her ears were privy to. Her and the others. This was better. Especially when punctuated with a shrug, as he had. “Thunder!” Regan said agreeably, latching onto the casually offered explanation that didn’t make a ton of sense. Thunder could happen even under clear skies, but was it likely? And though the sound shared some similarities, thunder didn’t sound so shrill. But what else could it have been?

So thunder was as good an explanation as any, right? “Yes, thunder. It’s a good explanation. You’re probably correct. It’s nothing to be alarmed about.” Regan looked up at the sky; it was still dark out, so maybe there were some storm clouds up there that evaded her sight. Yes. Thunder.

And there it was again, equally as loud, but sounding more like a squawk than a thunderclap. The tops of the trees shivered and bent again. Regan’s body tensed up, and she met eyes with the man, wondering if doubts about the thunder explanation were starting to seep in for him, too. “Maybe we should – I mean, it’s probably thunder. But do you think we should check it out? What if someone is hurt?”

Two sides — there were always two sides, but they were inside his head and neither could make up their mind. Depending on the day, one would have the upper hand. Right then, however, they were both stumped. The sound definitely didn’t come from the delayed crack of lightning, Chris knew that much but he also didn’t want to think of what the sound could be.

He’d rather just go home and forget the whole thing even happened, and with his company accepting the ‘thunder’ explanation, as ridiculous as it was, he was ready to turn tail.

‘What if someone is hurt?’ The second sound seemed a lot more animal in nature; it sent an immediate shiver down Chris’ spine. He wanted to run back to the motel even more now out of his own safety, but his starlit-haired jogging neighbor was right, they needed to check it out. He didn’t want to, in case he made it worse by being there, but if he left now it would just be another regret. Chris stole himself a deep breath before he could muster a nod. “You’re right.. Even if it’s… just thunder.”

He chewed on his bottom lip, but seemed to make up his mind when he started towards the supposed direction. “I mean, I’d want someone to do the same for me… Just in case.” It was probably just the weather. Or some kind of north east temperature thing.

Regan never quite knew what to expect from the average human – many, if not most of them, simply wanted to keep their head down and look out only for themselves. But a select few were almost altruistic, willing to put themselves at risk for the chance of helping others. She’d met many doctors who fell into both categories; it transcended profession. And this jogger, it seemed, had enough decency to care about a theoretical other. Regan nodded, pleased. “If things get hairy, you should know I’m a doctor.” And they could get hairy, perhaps literally. She’d seen enough strange or dangerous animals in these woods to know that. She decided to neglect to mention that her specialty was forensic pathology. That was not going to be reassuring.

“It’s probably nothing,” she said, trying to convince herself too, as she tread off the path. She wasn’t sure she completely believed that, considering all of the unusual deaths this town had already greeted her with, but enough genuine hope remained that she considered it to be a truthful statement. “We’ll just take a quick look, make sure no one was, uh, struck by lightning – and then we’ll be on our way. Jogging. Like regular joggers. Who didn’t hear anything out of the norm.” She paused in her steps, pushing a branch out of the way, “Not that this is that out of the norm, right?”

A weird sound like a ticking clock, almost a clucking noise, sounded in response. The hair along Regan’s neck prickled and she looked over at the man. “Was that your stomach? I don’t know about you, but I always eat after I jog. You’re probably hungry.”

Chris really wished he would have stayed at the motel at this point. He thought that morning would be uneventful, quiet even. People were either supposed to be asleep or just waking up for whatever the day would bring them. He just wanted to have a little jog and then pass out in his bed for a few hours, enough to make him feel like he wasn’t a zombie. But no, he wasn’t allowed even that. It began to look like the universe was just out to get him.

He turned to her, then, with a hesitantly relieved expression on his face. “Good to know. Let’s hope it doesn’t, though.” As willing and ready as he was to help, he’d rather not. And besides, he didn’t even know what kind of doctor she was — her confidence, and even decision to announce her profession, led him to believe that she could indeed be of great assistance if this turned sour. But he didn’t want to rely on that, instead he hoped that the seas ahead were safe.

With her as lead, Chris started off the path towards whatever had made that sound. It was a little humorous with how thickly she kept the denial, especially out loud — it was funny because he did the same thing. Granted, he kept it all hidden away, but her verbal string of thought was eerily similar to his own. “No, no way. Things make loud noises all the time… I mean, there are cows here, too, right? Maybe it’s.. I don’t know.” Any corner he tried to take only left him more confused. The fields weren’t terribly far from where they were, but not close enough to chalk it up to big machinery.

Chris stopped completely when the next sound came in. His instinct told him to turn tail and leave — now. His mind, on the other hand, grew too curious. “I’ve never been that hungry,” he shook his head no. “At this point, though, I kind of wish it was…”

“You’re certain?” Regan asked even though he sounded certain. And it apparently wasn’t wishful thinking on his part, but on hers. “It… it’s probably cows, then, like you said. Or more thunder. But it sounded almost like…” She wasn’t sure, actually. It was a familiar noise, not so off from the cow suggestion, but not at this decibel, and she couldn’t totally place it. “Someone could have lost their cows. Really lost their cows. I don’t know of a farm here.”

“You know, I don’t usually intentionally go off the beaten path when I jog.” Regan explained, carefully stepping over a twisting tree root. They were really getting into the woods, now. “I mean, I – well, I’m pulled away sometimes. Often.” By death. “But I don’t go looking for trouble. You… don’t think this is trouble, do you? Trouble for someone else, maybe, but not for us.”

The strange thunder sounded again as if in response, but Regan was looking at the ground instead of up at the sky. There was something there. It shone brightly in the morning sun, calling out from the dirt. Regan stopped, making a halting motion with her hands, and examined the object in question – a feather. A massive one. It was as long as she was tall. Which admittedly wasn’t very tall, but it was for a feather.

When the sun hit it at just the right angle, it glowed like the brightest rainbow Regan had ever seen, each vivid color blending seamlessly into the next. She’d handled a lot of feathers, a lot of dead birds, but none of them had been anything like this. Somehow, the way it glowed was even more remarkable than the sheer size of it. Regan stared, mesmerized, and she knew she needed to pick it up. She turned it around in her hand by the shaft. It seemed real. Not manufactured. But what did that mean about the bird it came from? How big would– no, no. Some birds just had huge feathers. Maybe it was from a peacock.

“A peacock must have escaped the zoo, huh? An extremely large one.” It seemed at least feasible. “It seems at least feasible,” she said, giving voice to the shaky thought. She lowered the feather, reluctantly offering it to the man in case he wanted to admire it, too. Besides, Regan wasn’t sure she cared all that much about it unless the peacock in question was dead. Then it held more of an intrigue.

He shouldn’t have gone out — or at least ignored whatever it was that made that noise. At this point, it was becoming a little ridiculous and nerve-inducing to head deeper towards the culprit, especially with someone who was a complete stranger to him. Chris felt like this might be a bad idea. He felt his legs continue on, though, willingly following his equally confused and curious charge.

“Pretty certain,” Chris returned, though he was filled with nothing but uncertainty. “I know there’s a bunch of farms out west but.. Yeah, not around here, I guess. Mining equipment?” He asked cautiously, as if he were making his way around eggshells. If it wasn’t anything organic, and frankly, he had no idea what could be big enough to make a sound as thunderous as it was, it could be mechanical, right? Those Bobcat machines were pretty darn big. “Are they still mining?”

Chris felt his stomach knot; though she seemed to have good intentions, her rambling and slightly cryptic musings unsettled him. “What, uh.. what pulls you away from a jog?” He could relate, truthfully, but he had a photographer’s eye and things that looked like they would stand out immortalized on film always caused him to pause — even if he didn’t have his camera with him. He prayed her answer didn’t feel as nefarious as their slow march towards the unknown felt. “... I hope it’s not trouble.. But with my track record..” With that, Chris offered her a sardonic scoff and a shrug. “I guess we can just hope—”

He’d almost run into her as he had missed her halting hand. He opened his mouth to question but then looked down, too. Oh. He’d seen some big feathers in his time, especially when he’d go out to take some pictures, especially of birds, but none of them had this length. None of them were ever this big.

Chris swallowed. He watched as she picked it up off the ground, its vibrant colors mesmerizing. “Do.. Does this place have a zoo?” He didn’t remember looking one up or seeing one around town, but it was possible. Peacocks certainly had feathers as large as the one she held in her hands, but it was entirely wrong. It didn’t look like a peacock feather, at least none that he’d ever seen. How many species of peacock were there? He accepted the feather — it was a lot lighter than he anticipated and the colors shifted so wildly it couldn’t be real. But it felt real.

“I don’t think this is a peacock..”

“There must be a zoo. Where else would there be peacocks?” Regan shrugged, deciding the matter was closed. It was a peacock feather. But the woods had answers of their own as a blur of movement shook the trees ahead. Probably a squirrel. But within milliseconds it became clear it was something much, much larger. The trees were doing more than moving; they were bending and breaking. Her self-preservation was often a thing of the past, especially when curiosity competed with it – so instead of moving, Regan froze, trying to get a better look at the movement as it drew near. It was tall. Something with long, naked legs and a big rounded body. She looked at the man but said nothing, not wanting to alert whatever it was that had joined them.

It was close. A couple of nearby trees came up against the creature; they groaned and spilled over from the pressure, providing a good view of what had knocked them over. It made a thunderous gobble that shook the woods once more. And from within the shadows of the trees emerged a…

Chick…en?

One that stood about twenty feet tall. Regan took several steps back and looked at the man, her eyes huge. She then looked back at the chicken. Its feathers were beautiful and gleaming, and it bobbed its giant head in curiosity, comb and waddle flapping from the motion. The chicken’s powerful legs kicked at the ground, uprooting some vegetation and dirt. Despite its size, it seemed completely unaware that it was anything out of the ordinary. Regan tried to swallow back her surprise – knowing it was not permitted – but found her mouth was entirely dry. She couldn’t even string together the word chicken.

It seemed to hold no interest in the two of them. After pecking at the ground for a moment, it tore off on its swift, scaly legs, gobbling and leaving behind another couple of feathers that matched the first one. They danced to the ground, luminous against the dark dirt. The chicken, meanwhile, darted out of sight – all twenty feet of it. Regan watched as it pushed its way through the woods again, leaving behind a trail of more small, fallen trees and torn up bushes.

She looked at the feathers. Looked in the direction the chicken went, seeing only the faintest hint of movement in the distance now. Then looked at the man.

When she managed to swallow, her words – and sense – returned to her. The explanation was simple: it didn’t happen.

Regan was practically smiling. “Ha. Never mind. You know what, I think you’re right about the mining. These woods are full of some strange gasses. Or, uh–” She looked down at the ground, where the dirt had mostly been upturned like something enormous had just tread over it. There were some mushrooms. She pointed down at them. “Do you know what mushroom species this is? I don’t. Doesn’t look familiar. So who knows what kind of spores it – some mushrooms can cause you to hallucinate. So, the spores. You know.” She made a vaguely spore-like gesture with her hands. “Anyway, I think I’m inebriated.”

Well, she did have a point. Chris wasn’t an animal expert by any means — he just took pictures of them. Just because he’d never seen a peacock with feathers like that didn’t mean it didn’t come from a peacock. It could very well be some strange, New England subspecies of peacock for all he knew. Maybe the zoo had a rare bird or something. There were just too many variables and ‘what ifs’ for either of them to come up with a solid conclusion — and honestly, he preferred that. He’d rather remain blissfully unaware than come face to face with, well, anything weird.

Unfortunately, ignorance could only last so long.

The movement of the dense trees told them something drew near. It moved faster than Chris anticipated, having been stopped just as his intention to leave began. His instinct to run became overshadowed the moment the behemoth broke through the trees, its secrecy now known to the two bewildered joggers. Its likeness was strikingly normal and it wouldn’t have been wildly out of place if it wasn’t for its sheer size.

He could feel his company’s eyes on him, see them just out of the corner of his own — he couldn’t look at her, not now, not when his mind practically exploded from what he saw. As quickly as it unraveled, it tried to backpedal. Chris could already feel himself try to rationalize a giant chicken; it could be a hallucination, swamp gas maybe, or some other rather large bird, an optical illusion, or maybe all of this was just a dream? He could be making it up, just his brain coming up with something unusual to cope with everyday stress and trauma.

Or it could be real.

Regardless, Chris found himself frozen. The - chicken - did what a normal chicken would do, peck around a bit and then scurry off onto its desired path, completely unbothered by both them and its rather immense height. It made quick work of the crowded treeline they all found themselves in and soon disappeared, leaving the pair to stand in thick silence —

— until she roused her voice which mentally brought Chris careening back into their surroundings and the odd situation at hand. It took him just then to realize he hadn’t been breathing and his throat felt like sandpaper. He watched her, silently, as she tried to verbally make sense of what just happened. He.. he didn’t know what to think. He didn’t want to. So he let her do that for him.

“Mushrooms. Yeah. It’s probably them.. They’re everywhere. I..” Chris blinked a few times. His throat still felt dry. “I do.. Feel a little dizzy. You're right.. I think it’s the spores. Think it’s deadly?” Whether he meant the spores of the giant-chicken-they-most-certainly-did-not-see was unclear.

So it was agreed. The chicken was the result of some mushroom spores, much like many things in this town probably were. Regan nodded slowly, accepting of this, but something did feel… off. Like she was trying to avoid thinking about it, instead of facing it head on like she was supposed to. It had taken her months just to look at her own wings, and the sight of them still made her squirm. She was willing to look past the possibility of a giant chicken actually existing. She was. She had to be. Her mind felt like it was about to pour over some edge with nothing to catch it.

“Right? They’re all over the place. I mean, I even saw some on the way here. We’ve probably been breathing in spores this whole time.” She looked down at the mushroom again, which seemed merely ordinary. “Probably not deadly. I feel otherwise fine. Do you? But, uh, if you do feel like you’re dying, give me a call. I’ll let you know if you – I mean, I’ll prepare the morgue for your arrival.” Wait, that wasn’t a better thing to say.

Regan waved a hand and pointed the way they’d come from. “Well, I think we did enough investigating, don’t you? Even though we didn’t find anything. Absolutely nothing. If anyone asks us what we found, I’ll have nothing to tell them. I think that’s fine.” Regan’s stomach ached as if she’d just eaten something foul, and it was a sensation she was more than familiar with: her body rejecting the lies that had just fallen out of her mouth. Did that mean she didn’t even believe what she was saying? That made no sense. Of course she believed it. She did. Fearg an chinniúint, why couldn’t it just be easy?

In the distance, the thunder rumbled again. This time it almost sounded a bit like a chicken. Damn it. Hallucinations, that was all. They both agreed. Regan pushed the thought away and turned to her companion, who seemed to want nothing to do with going toward the noise again. That settled it: what an uneventful jog this had been.

#c chris #writing

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shnargo · 3 years ago

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Hi! Can I request either prompt e or k from the soulmate at prompt list for tasm!peter Parker! I think either one would be super cute for him!!! I love your writing by the way!! ❤️

Mixed Up

pairings: TASM!Peter Parker x [female! & soulmate!] reader

dynamic: ex-best friends to enemies to lovers :)

summary: Peter hasn't seen you in years that grew his resentment, but suddenly you turn up at a high-end party he attended only for a mission. Maybe you're not the same person he thought you were.

warnings: allusions to being an escort & mild description of injuries / violence. lightly beta-read so there might be mistakes :O

word count: 2270

a/n: thank you! although i do think i took a completely different route with this than you were expecting, but i hope you enjoy it nonetheless. i also made the reader female to fit the story better, so i hope you don't mind :)

e...sp (soulmates can sense one another’s presence and feel each other’s exact emotions even when miles away).

The crowd was bustling with the rich and upper class folk alike, all in all stuffy people he’d rather not associate with were it not for the knowledge that Kingpin would be attending. After knocking out some entitled guy with similar tailor measurements— he’d be sparing the kid from ruining his father’s reputation which he considered good enough payment— he was easily able to blend into the crowd. The plan was mainly to scope the grounds, keep an ear out for any nefarious plots skulking about and handle it accordingly.

What he didn’t expect was for you to be hanging off the crime lord’s arm as eye-candy.

Peter didn’t meet you until after he got together with Gwen. You had come in 20 minutes late to science class and when the teacher confronted you with a tone that was extraordinarily condescending, you didn’t hesitate to bite back with a snarky answer yourself which landed you in detention. Once you took your seat beside him, he couldn’t keep an amused smile from the interaction to which you responded with a raised eyebrow and the query of ‘what the hell he was smiling like a dork for’. To say that you became fast friends would be an understatement— the truth of the matter was, he would’ve trusted you with his life despite knowing you for a little less than a year. After graduation, he swore to himself that he would tell you the truth about his alter-ego.

But then you disappeared. At least, until now.

Honestly, if he wasn’t so close to you before, he wouldn’t recognize you now. Gone was the outspoken, wildly expressive teenager he once knew, and there before him stood someone with practiced, careful movements paired with a demure expression that knew when to give a smile when needed. This is what you left him without a word for— a high life amongst two-faced people you had once swore you disdained. Maybe he didn’t know you after all, but that left something bitter in his chest once the initial shock had faded away. He forced the grimace off his face; he was here for work after all. So heading into the fray, Peter went to mingle with the others and get something substantial enough so he could leave shortly after.

You saw him across the room at the beginning of the evening. Peter Parker, your closest friend, confidant, something you were never able to have due to your background until it was viciously ripped away from you. But worst of all, he was your soulmate who was too close but too far as they say. You only wished you could’ve met him before Gwen did, but you had little time to ruminate on what ‘if’s.

The world never made living easy for you. Since you were a child, you were living in and out of homes due to parents with checkered histories of their own. It wasn’t until after high school that their debts caught up to you, and you were forced to get caught up in muddy deals and sketchy criminals at best. But damn it, if you weren’t anything but stubborn which is the main reason you stood where you were today. You learned, even if it meant sacrificing every piece of yourself to stay alive. Still, you never gave yourself up completely, since you only came to this party to work out intel to have Kingpin’s syndicate slowly but surely crumble from the inside out.

So you hung off the man’s arm, laughing to appease the masses, but your eyes kept careful track of your hazelnut haired friend. He shouldn’t be here, and you knew for a fact he noticed you when you felt that surge of resentment pass over you. You just hoped he felt the guilt in return.

When the music began to play, partners were switched off to encourage acquaintanceship and cordial terms before business ventures began. To your surprise, Peter walked up to you, extending his hand in an offer to dance. Never showing more than a quirk of your lips, you rested your hand onto his and followed his lead.

Not a word was said at first. The both of you merely matched the pace of others, but you could feel animosity swath over you with each step you took. His grip was too tight, his eyes were piercing, and he looked like he had too much to say. And to further his frustration, you didn’t seem to bat an eye.

“You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous.” You cut through the tension as the dance slowed, speaking softly by his ear. He shivered.

“So now she speaks.” You’re sure he felt the exasperation that ran through you as his lips pursed.

“And you should listen.” Leaning back, you looked into his eyes. “You should leave when you can, before it’s too late.”

“Before your great king decides that I’m not good company?” His narrowed eyes shot a glance at the man who was easily dwarfing his own partner. “I think I can handle myself fine.”

“You don’t know what he has planned-”

“Oh and of course you do? You sure had plans when you up and left without a single word. You didn’t even say goodbye.” Sadness pooled in your belly as it glimmered in his eyes for a split second but soon simmered to bitterness. “And you seem just fine without me so far, so why don’t we keep it that way?”

For the first time that night, he saw your expression falter. Your lip quivered with your downcast eyes, and as he heard your heartbeat pick up, he couldn’t ignore the very real heartache those words brought you.

But he felt it. And he’s never had that for anyone else other than Gwen.

“There you are, sweetheart. Was thinking you didn’t wanna dance with me.” A heavy hand touched the small of you back, and you held back the impulse repulsion that bubbled up. Instead you smiled, craning your neck up high to look at the man towering above you.

“Sorry dear, you know I don’t get out much.” Composed and controlled, you were yourself again. You didn’t fight as he led you away, easily falling into pace with him. But you were forced to a halt as the large man paused from the sound behind you.

A sudden “Wait!” was said from your ex-best friend, who with wide eyes, mirrored your shock at his own exclamation. He held your gaze nearly dumbfounded, but at Kingpin’s stare he found his words. “We, uh, didn’t finish our dance.”

The hand behind your back stilled, and you hoped the man beside you couldn’t feel the panicked beating of your heart for Peter’s sake. But a sardonic laugh resounded and you felt it shake the room. “Sorry boy, she’s mine tonight. But if you’re still so keen, you can book her another day.” Nausea was felt at the back of your throat, but you continued the path Kingpin determined as he walked on.

However, you still felt the stare of familiar eyes on the back of your head, as you disappeared into the crowd.

He should’ve listened to you.

Even if he was a hero, injuries didn’t hurt any less. Especially from endless goons with pipe bats, pistols, and small blades that consisted of his afterparty. Luckily, Kingpin hadn’t gotten ahold of his identity, but the man still caught wind that the spider-themed vigilante had infiltrated the event. Things were quickly shut down and you were quickly ushered away along with the rest of the guests. He just wished he could’ve had another chance to talk to you. Not even about his revelation, just to apologize for being such a jerk. That’s all he was after her death after all.

He felt blood bubbling up in his mouth as he sustained another hit due to fatigue. He was slowing down too much, but he didn’t have the stamina to run yet barely had the strength to keep fighting. Though to think ‘Spider-man: Career Ended By Mere Goonies’ being on the headlines irked him more than he liked so he kept as light as he could on his feet and threw more punches. There were only a dozen or so of them left, maybe he’d get lucky. But the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and as he turned, a smack to the side of his head rendered him on the floor and probably with a concussion.

He only blinked for a second he thinks, but the area around him has become littered with bodies and he sees a shadowed figure in the distance. Another blink and the scene has shifted to a small sidewalk indicated by the flickering street lights above that gives him a headache. And he swears he only rested his eyes for a minute, but now he’s in a bed with too many pillows that are propping him up. It takes him a moment to gather his senses to hear the sound of running water as his eyes adjust to the low-lighting of the bedroom, and he feels his mask is off.

His mask is off and he’s in a stranger’s house.

He jerks to a sitting position, but the spike of pain shooting through his body renders a string of curses as he falls back into the pillows. Again he barely registers a figure rushing over to him, with a small bucket and towel that are placed beside a box of medical aids he finds. It’s only when he looks back up that he realizes, that figure is you.

“I’d say, ‘I told you so.’ But I don’t think you can even hear me through that thick skull of yours.” With a dip, the towel is soaked easily, and after a quick squeegee, you lift it up and make contact with the gash on his cheek which he barely bothers to flinch at.

“How?” His voice is crackly and sounds like death and that causes him to flinch, but you don’t bat an eye, rather, giving an amused look.

“You aren’t the only one who learned how to fight.” The blood cleans off easier than he’d think, and you’re dabbing some antiseptic and bandaging it up with the kind of ease that tells him you’ve done this too many times before. “I get the whole hero thing includes being willing to die for your cause, but I don’t think rushing into a fight with the entire security of Kingpin’s building was justified.” With a sigh, you toss the cotton ball into the nearby bin. “May’s still alive, isn’t she? You have someone waiting for you at home, don’t go dying willy nilly like that.”

He knows he’s staring, but he blames the concussion for slowing him down. “I’m sorry.” He blurts, it’s also limiting his impulse behavior it seems. You’re wiping your hands off with the towel, and when he glances down, he sees that the whole suit is off and the rest of his wounds have been tended to. He’s not really allowed to dwell on that when you respond.

“For what exactly? If you need, I can list why you should be.” The towel is chucked into the bucket while you lean into the bedside. “But I’m sorry too, for leaving you like that. I was forced into working in this industry is why, and I didn’t want to risk letting you know through all these years. Knowing the identity of Spider-man is too valuable information to let these kinds of people find out.” He knows your explanation condones your leaving, but he feels your guilt that returns at the statement. It doesn’t make him feel any better about how he acted.

But you’re looking at him with sympathetic eyes that he knows you probably could have never afforded to risk showing until now. In that moment, you remind him of how you were all those years ago. His friend who was always extraordinarily understanding of how he felt and endlessly patient with his excuses— that you even knew were pathetic— but always dismissed with a sarcastic comment. And that there makes him realize that you knew all along, the truth of his connection to you.

“For saying all that shit.” The revelation sputters his mind to think, allowing him to finally piece his thoughts together to break the silence. The words feel heavy in his mouth, but he keeps trying to push them out anyways. “And for mixing up my spider sense with the soulmate tingle too.” All that pain he felt through the years he thought was his own. It was easy to have them all become so indistinguishable, especially given the grief he was faced with due to the many he failed to save. Oh, his eyes were getting all dewey too and staring at your shocked face, he comes to the realization that he just babbled all of that to you instead of just thinking it.

You scoot closer to him, eyes filled with a sorrow-tinged warmth that you freely express to him. Your hand lifts to gently run through his hair in a manner that feels too intimate and gives his tears the permission to start dripping down his face. As you lean in to lightly press your forehead against his, his arms lightly wrap around your waist to hold you close to him as if afraid you might leave again. At that moment he feels like he’s finally come home after a much too long trip. He feels relief. He feels comfort.

He feels only you.

masterlist

#shnargo writes #bweep #tasm!peter x reader #tasm!spiderman x reader #tasm!peter parker #andrew garfield spiderman #tasm!spiderman/reader #tasm!peter/reader #tasm!spiderman fanfic #spiderman x reader

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fruit-teeth · 2 years ago

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I had a bit of a breakthrough tonight while I was sobbing in my room and I feel compelled to share it for some reason so here I go

Lately I’ve been dealing a lot with trust issues. Specifically: I’m socially anxious and I have very few irl friends (and online friends for that matter, I’m socially anxious on here too), but a big part of that is that I tend to instantly assume that people either a) don’t like me, b) like me at first, but then realize I’m annoying and decide to stop talking to me or c) will end up hurting me in some way if I get too close to them. These fears of mine are, as I’ve come to realize, a reflection of things that actually did occur during my life.

I had a friend who I thought of as my best friend for many, many years, only to have her randomly stop talking to me and join a completely different friend group. The last time I saw her, she barely said hello to me and acted like I was just an acquaintance. That encounter upset me so badly that I remember hiding in the bathroom and trying not to cry because I was so heartbroken. Even though it’s been years since then (this happened my senior year of high school and I’m an adult now), it led to a spiral of shame, anger, and resentment that eventually led to me deciding I would never call someone my best friend again. Not only that, but that same year, I had my high school graduation party, and I’m not even exaggerating when I say that NONE, and I mean NONE of my friends or really even any of my classmates showed up. I felt extremely betrayed by this, even more so when one those friends expected me to show up to HER party (allegedly she’d had to cover a shift for a coworker at her job at the last minute, which is why she didn’t show, but I still doubt the validity of this). These weren’t the only instances, make no mistake - I’ve had other friends that mocked my interests, and even one that turned out to be a straight-up bully towards me. She made fun of me for liking My Little Pony, and there was even a horrifying moment where she mockingly imitated one of my stims as a way of ‘teasing’ me. High school was tough on its own, but a bad system of friends made it even harder than it ever needed to be.

It’s been years since then, sure, but this has really destroyed my confidence when it’s come to making and keeping friends. I worry constantly if maybe my old friends thought I was annoying and that’s why I was so easy to cast aside like nothing, so now when I get into new friendships, I hide my true personality because I’m terrified they’ll see the real me and think it’s annoying or weird. At the same time, though, when someone is being nice to me and genuinely wants to hang out with me, I always think to myself “this has to be a trap or something, this is too good to be true”. I have a very small circle of friends now, both online and in person, but even with those friends I worry that when they see me or think about me they think to themselves “oh god not Mara again”. This leads to me being very distant, which also causes these friendships to dissipate sometimes. Social interaction is already confusing sometimes thanks to being autistic, but it’s made even worse thanks to the history I have with making and keeping friends.

I started thinking over these things today and remembering all the pain, the anger, everything, and I started feeling really hopeless. I started to feel like I was going to be alone forever, because I couldn’t trust anyone to not secretly hate me or leave me when I wasn’t convenient for them anymore. But it was during this that I suddenly remembered a comment my dad had made a couple years ago: “you don’t remember every time you ate a decent apple, but you certainly remember the times you bit into rotten ones”.

And…yeah. I don’t think about all the times people were kind to me, or the times people were gentle and said nice things to me. When I think about friendships or people in general, I tend to ruminate on all the things that have gone wrong, the times I was ignored or criticized, the moments I realized someone didn’t actually care about me. This realization broke me, though I can’t really hate myself for it. My brain is trying to protect me from future heartbreak by convincing me that there’s no point in maintaining those relationships, that my heart will just get stepped on again. That’s why the negative experiences get amplified while the positive ones fall to the wayside, it’s a method of protection. But it’s a rock and a hard place - either I open myself up to trusting again and get hurt, or I keep closing myself off and hurt myself by isolating from everyone. There’s no way to truly avoid or anticipate pain, though - we can only cope with it when it happens. That’s at least one thing I’ve fully realized lately, and it was NOT an easy conclusion to come to.

The times my old friends abandoned me, mistreated me, or shattered my heart will forever live in my memory. But the times my current friends have said kind things to me, hugged me when they were happy to see me, shared their happy moments and interests with me, even told me they loved me…those are things I can’t let myself forget. Even if my brain is trying desperately to protect me from feeling pain, I know now just how important it is to counteract those anxious thoughts with the memories of what it’s like to be loved and appreciated, because that’s one thing I don’t think anyone should ever forget.

So…I guess I’m sharing this because I think I’m not the only one dealing with this. I know how difficult it is to make friends and to open yourself up to trusting others after you’ve experienced pain, but I think finding people you can trust and who will love you for you can feel very worth it once it happens. Sorry I’m not making sense because it’s very late and I need to go to sleep but I hope you understand me

#geez this turned out very long #I’m emotional rn sorry #just me things #text post #long post #social anxiety #friendships #trust issues #healing #actually autistic #bullying #vent #my writing

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theggning · 4 years ago

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Codsworth Is So Underrated, You Guys

ALTERNATE TITLE: Codsworth and the Totally Understated Mindbending Evolution of Artificial Consciousness

I find Codsworth is often the most underrated of the 16 companions in Fallout 4. Your faithful robot butler is among the very first you can recruit and an excellent early-game ally, but he has a few disadvantages in gameplay that mean he’s often sent back to Sanctuary before long. Codsworth is a mid-to-close range fighter only, cannot wear armor or be equipped with weapons. He cannot be healed by stimpak, which makes him a liability if you’re playing on Survival mode. He has no companion quest of his own, so unless you particularly enjoy him there’s not a compelling reason to keep him for a long time. He also becomes recruitable exactly 2 minutes after adorable puppy Best Boy Dogmeat, so he is often (understandably) replaced just as soon as he’s made available.

But there is this great, completely understated facet to Codsworth, so understated that the game does not draw attention to it in any way. And yet, it is a wonderful reflection of many of the themes of Fallout 4 and, I believe, a pretty strong indication of its thesis statement.

Now what in the hell am I talking about?

Like many sci-fi/fantasy universes, the Fallout series is home to many highly-advanced robots. Robots were commonplace before the Great War, and many have survived the bombs intact and in working order. Others have been built or modified by wastelanders to serve various tasks (Percy, Ada.) The most important thing to understand about robots, though, is though they may have vivid personalities programmed in, they are widely accepted to be objects. They are thought of the same way as an appliance, a machine built for a specific purpose and programmed to follow a strict set of protocols.

Many jokes revolve around the relatively rigid intelligence of robots. Pre-War, many were deployed in inappropriate jobs or designed haphazardly (Mister Handies acting as nurses in a hospital, “paramedic” Protectrons with massive deadly tasers for hands, military robots constantly going haywire and erupting in friendly fire.) Others continue to man businesses and play out daily tasks as they were programmed to do over 200 years ago. Most robots are incapable of understanding anything beyond their initial programming, and most pre-War robots are completely unaware that the Great War ever happened.

When the Sole Survivor reunites with Codsworth at the ruins of their home, it seems like he, too, doesn’t understand what’s going on. He talks about tending the (dead) garden, references the (ghoulified) neighbors, and generally acts like the chipper robot butler Sole left behind on their way to Vault 111.

But there is something slightly… off in Codsworth’s dialogue here. Though he acts like the war never happened, he also specifically mentions details that suggest it did:

Player Default: Codsworth! You're still... fully operational?

Codsworth: {Defiant} Well of course, mum. You can thank the fine engineers at General Atomics for that! At least, you could have. Had they not been... vaporized.

A bit over 210 actually, mum. Give or take a little for the Earth's rotation and some minor dings to the ole' chronometer. That means you're two centuries late for dinner! Ha ha ha. Perhaps I can whip you up a snack? You must be famished.

You've no idea the desperation for human contact one develops over 200 years. {Upset, recalling bad memories of encountering raiders and scavengers. / Disgust} And when you do encounter them? Oh the cruelty! You're either... target practice or... spare parts!

Even stranger, Codsworth mentions details that are plainly made-up (or some kind of delusion):

Codsworth: It's been ages since we've had a proper family activity. Checkers. Or perhaps charades. Shaun does so love that game. Is the lad... with you...?

Player Default: Codsworth... listen to me carefully... have you seen him? Have you seen Shaun?

Codsworth: Why, sir had him last, remember? Perhaps he's gone to the Parker residence to arrange a play-date?

(Shaun is an infant. He is too young to play charades or to go to the neighbors for a play-date.)

So at once, Codsworth does and does not acknowledge the war. He does and does not seem to understand what’s happened, and he does and does not seem to follow Sole’s urgency regarding their spouse’s death and Shaun’s kidnapping.

And then, after a speech check, Codsworth finally snaps and breaks down sobbing in despair. Not only does he understand that the war happened, he has developed the ability to get depressed about it. Longing for human contact and with nothing else to do, he’s even developed coping mechanisms to help him try to deal with his loneliness and despair—futilely trying to do his chores and deluding himself into pretending everything is completely normal.

Wait a minute. Sobbing? Despair? Depression? Coping mechanisms and delusions? This Is all pretty sophisticated stuff to be programmed into a robot, and if you spend more time with Codsworth, the reality of what’s happened to him becomes apparent:

Codsworth has evolved beyond his programming. In his 210 lonely years of existence, he has developed emotional reactions and self-awareness far beyond that of most other robots, and, indeed, has basically evolved an artificial consciousness.

“Emergent intelligence” is the theoretical ability of an AI to eventually develop something resembling human thought processes, and it seems that our dear Codsworth has undergone this. Traveling with him, he displays many sophisticated thoughts and behaviors far beyond what most robots are shown to be capable of. He has memories of pre-War time and places, and understands how various locations have changed. He is capable of learning new information and forming opinions on it, gaining his own understanding of the people and factions in the Commonwealth. He can feel happiness, sorrow, fear, disgust. He can anticipate things, predict danger and imagine how people might respond to your actions. The mere he fact he has opinions and a moral code that he applies to you shows he has free will, something even other robot companions don’t (Ada has a personality, but absolutely does not care about your actions.)

He’s also smart enough to make many wry observational jokes, and to lay one hell of a sick burn on you:

{Joking - Found an old bowling alley. / Amused} Fancy a game, mum? Something tells me the bumpers are no longer available.

Codsworth’s intelligence is even more sophisticated than that. He displays stunning self-awareness, frequently referencing the fact he is a robot and what that means. He is very proud of his background as General Atomics’ finest, and seems pleased with his robot nature and his lot in life. (Unlike Curie, I don’t think Codsworth would ever really want to gain a synth body. He seems quite happy as he is.)

Here he is making reference to still feeling the tug of his programming:

{Seeing an office with chairs arranged in a circle. / Neutral} I've the most incredible urge to rearrange those chairs in a more perfect circle.

Understanding when other robots are restricted by theirs:

A pity. It appears Deezer's programming is too severe to allow for normal conversation. Ah well.

And when they’re actually not:

Codsworth: Greetings, sir. Good to see another robot in town. That chef hat becomes you.

Takahashi: Nan-ni shimasho-ka?

Codsworth: Takahashi you say? I'm Codsworth, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Takahashi: Nan-ni shimasho-ka?

Codsworth: Is that so? Well, we both know RobCo is no General Atomics. It's not surprising it failed, shoddy work and all. {Friendly - trying to cheer up another robot. / Friendly} Chin up, though. Never know when parts may turn up.

And here’s Galaxy Brain Codsworth ruminating on his own state of being and contemplating his nature:

{Disappointed that he can't be 100% human sometimes. / Sad} It's unfortunate that I lack the proper design to consume liquids. Something about camaraderie over a few drinks is very inviting.

I suppose if I had the hardware, I'd have the software as well. I'd hate to see how that'd affect my honesty and manner settings.

{Reconsidering what he thought was a good idea. / Thinking} Indeed. Perhaps I should rethink my initial desire.

Hilariously, Codsworth does not seem fully aware of how remarkable his intelligence is. He occasionally says things like “if I had feelings” and “if I could feel things,” indicating that in some ways he still believes he is only a robot and defines himself by what a robot is and does.

But as we can see, our humble robot butler has essentially evolved to become the smartest, most emotionally intelligent and person-like robot in the Commonwealth*, and potentially in the series.

([SIDE NOTE: Other FO4 robots nearing Codsworth’s level of consciousness and developed personality include Captain Ironsides, KLE-O, Whitechapel Charlie, and perhaps Takahashi. Curie is close, but also receives the unfair advantage of being uploaded into a synth body with a human brain. Jezebel also functions off of a human brain. Nick is not a robot, he’s a synth (though he does jokingly refer to himself as one) and also has the advantage of a human brain encoded on his processor.])

Also hilariously, the game basically does not acknowledge Codsworth’s impressive evolution. At all. There is absolutely no direct mention of it in the script. It is all left to ambient dialogue and the player’s own observations. And because so many people overlook Codsworth as a companion, they may not even realize exactly how unique his expanded consciousness is.

Now, you might call this total lack of mention a mistake, an oversight on Bethesda’s part, or that old chestnut “bad writing.” I don’t think it is. I think it’s a deliciously subtle little detail to include in a story about humanity, machines, artificial intelligence, and what makes a person.

Many of the themes of FO4 revolve around synths—distinctly not robots, but androids, artificially created beings with fully organic human bodies. Most of the storyline factions have strong beliefs about synths and the relative humanity thereof. The Institute believes that synths are objects, tools, machines no different from a robot who are only simulating their personalities through programming. The Brotherhood believes synths are monstrous abominations, a danger to humanity itself, technology run amok which needs to be destroyed. The Railroad believes they are people. Not humans, but people, built instead of born, free-thinking beings that deserve to be treated with respect and given rights.

Through quests, dialogue, notes, worldbuilding and other venues, players explore these questions. What makes someone a person? If your personality and memories can be rewritten or programmed, then who are you, really? Where do we draw the line between humans and machines, and how do we decide who belongs where?

Meanwhile, as the player contemplates the nature of personhood and the definition of intelligence, their robot butler quietly evolves into a fully-conscious person on his own, right beside them.

Codsworth is unquestionably a machine, but also unquestionably beyond the appliance he was built to be. Which to some philosophies and players should really beg a few other questions. If a robot can be considered a person, then what makes synths so different? And how many excuses do we have to make to pretend otherwise?

Ya boy Codsworth may not be flashy, or powerful, or kissable. He may not be the most glamorous companion around. But he is a good friend, a beloved member of the family, and above all else, a loyal butler—content to serve, quietly and humbly doing his job where some may never even notice him-- or the fact that he’s casually become his own person and sent generations of roboticists and philosophers spinning in their graves.

#fallout 4 #fallout meta #codsworth #hey tumblr fuck you i win #i was forced to do an involuntary second draft #but i like it better now so hey

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littlemisswriter · 4 years ago

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Saving London - Part 1

Summary:

What if the Frye twins never grew up to be assassins, yet to be working men and women in the city of London along with the others? What if Lily had been the only assassin to respond to Henry Green's plead for help? And what if she recruits the twins to work alongside her to stop the oppression and fight against Templars?

[Here is my promised written imagine, there will be more parts soon so don’t worry! Let me know if you like it; I am trying new concepts around the Syndicate storyline, types of AU’s that I don’t see much in this fandom, let alone this game specifically! So hope you all enjoy :)]

Society had been they way it had always been for the last hundred years. A biased dictatorship working in favour of their own gain and allowing those under them to indulge in nothing but their scraps. The world was a large place, with London in the very centre.

The blue skies above were being met with black hazes from the factories below, and those situated in those said factories were not faring any better. Day in, day out were workers worn to the bone. Hands calloused and dirty from maintaining the machines that built the technologies around them. Men spent most time away from home, doing their best to support families in spite of their decreasing health. Though it had not only been men that were subjected to this environment, but women and children as well.

Morally it had been frowned upon to have such a vast amount of workers, but business wise… those who held power could get away with whatever they wanted. Well, had been able to get away with what they wanted. Times were changing, people were oppressed, and a certain underground gang had taken it upon themselves to answer London’s calls.

Outside the factory walls in Southwark, the sun had begun to descend behind the horizon; the chilly night air settling in for those still out and about on the streets. But for those in the factory, the temperature had been nothing less of humid and uncomfortable. Those workers that kept away with their tasks had been there for hours, body’s aching and spirits broken, yet still desperate to cling onto what little pay they could get.

Among those had been a particular young man, muscles built deeply by his youthful ability to complete his tasks and those around in need of help. He had built up a sweat, resulting in the first few buttons of his shirt being undone to provide some form of air to his skin. His hair had been hard to maintain on its own, strands consistent to fall upon his forehead and block his view irritatingly, so he simply kept it slick back with the help of his newsboy cap. “Oi Jacob!”

The call of his name had distracted him momentarily, hands gripping around the broom as he watched an older worker approach him cautiously. His eyebrow raised.

“What is it, Tommy?” Taking a proper stand with a lean on his elbow and hand to his waist, he stood waiting for the chap to spit out whatever sat on his tongue. Tommy pointed behind him and Jacob’s gaze followed.

“Little Charlie seems tired, he does. Poor lad can’t barely keep his eyes open.” The mention of the young boy had Jacob’s brows furrow in concern, their eyes landing to watch the child struggle to pick up a basket from the corner. Tommy had not spoken a tale, the boy’s legs weak as he struggled to carry his own weight, and face red from exhaustion of working more than half the day. “Do you think you could ‘elp? I know it’s a bother to ask-”

He was interrupted by a raise of Jacob’s hand and a quick reassuringly smile. “No bother.” The older man sighed in relief, hands rubbing together stressfully as the lines on his face etched a smile to replicate.

“Thank you. I don’t know what we’d do without you.” The thought given a moment to linger at the consequences of those if Jacob were not there to aid them. It was chilling, and most unwelcome.

The broom was leant on the wall he found it, forgotten as Jacob made way quickly over to help the young boy. His pace was quick, but not quick enough as Charlie’s knees gave out and he slipped down to the floor. Jacob’s eyes widened as he came by him, hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright, Charlie?” The young boy could only nod and wipe his elbow out from under his nose, as if to hold back tears.

“I’m just tired, sir.” As would be expected.

“Jacob,” he corrected, not fond of the title from a boy he knew relatively well, “and don’t worry. Go take a rest out of sight, and I’ll take care of this.” Charlie’s eyes glimmered in relief, offering only an eager nod. But before either could move, they had been called. And not kindly in the slightest.

“You two!” A pair of Blighters had caught the workers dawdling, meaning now a confrontation was imminent. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Impulsively, Jacob stood with furrowed brows, his arm outstretched to the boy behind him as he acted as a barrier.

“I made the mistake, not the boy. I was about to rectify-”

“Stop your babbling, boy!” Jacob was shoved back, his footing catching his fall easily as he narrowed his eyes up to the guards. “What I see is two slackers! And you know what happens to slackers?” The brute standing behind the accuser had grinned evilly, knuckles cracking as he came forward. Slight panic rose through Jacob as he once again placed himself between Charlie and danger.

“I’ll take punishment, whatever it is. Just let the boy go.” A mere cackle came his response as the two made ground towards them.

“Boss told us to give a thrashing to those sitting idle.” As he would, seeing as that man had been the least compassionate foreman Jacob had ever come across. His only concern was himself and everything that he reflected. Ministered beatings had not been uncommon here, yet nobody seemed to adjust to the mistreatment or became brave enough to stop them.

The scene had many eyes turn, some stopping to witness the horror of the Blighters. Though nobody moved. Most had uttered a few courageous words before, but nothing drastic to make a change. They all knew their place, as uncomfortable as the reality of it was. And the truth was, if you wanted to eat, you did as you were told and took what was given to you.

Jacob stepped back a few paces, keeping Charlie hidden well behind him as he did his best to appear brave. If anybody had a shot at countering hits and supplying their own, it was Jacob. But that had not meant it was going to be any less brutal.

They came closer, almost cornering the man as the boy did nothing but whimper behind him; all in all, they had felt helpless. But yet… it appeared fate had other plans.

“I’m gonna hit you so hard, I’ll-”

A commotion could suddenly be heard from higher up, stilling the Blighters as they bore witness to yells and thumps at the top of the factory. It had not sounded too promising, especially when no one knew whose yells they belonged to and why they were suddenly prominent. Then, a body came tumbling down to the bottom floor, everyone gasping in horror as it lay limp and lifeless for everyone to see.

Jacob blinked back profusely, glancing back to Charlie before allowing himself to recognize exactly who lay dead before him.

The foreman. His throat continuously bleeding out as well as two stab marks to his chest. A sight that most may and did feel faint from. And so, panic ensured as the workers let down their tasks easily and made way for escape. Charlie had been one to catch himself in the mass of the crowd, yet Jacob’s feet were planted firmly to the ground. It was a horrible sight, yes, but he was also oddly intrigued as to what was going on.

“Oh shit!” The brute muttering, looking over to his partner before hesitantly making way to the body. Though he did not get far when a figure had abruptly dropped done next to the man. They had been covered head to toe in robes, their identity concealed with a hood though a belt masked with weapons had been on display for all to see.

A lump caught in Jacob’s throat as he and the few others that still remained quickly pieced together that whoever was under those robes had been the culprit to the foreman’s death. And rightly so, ruminating on the behaviour that led the man to his own demise.

“Who the hell are you? What have you done?” The figure stood straight, turning to face what appeared to be the last remaining Blighters in the factory. It was quiet, too quiet, and that had sent up an unnerving chill through their spines.

“Now, that is not a polite way to speak, is it?” The voice was female, a surprising notion in on itself. But yet it had been cocky, the calm demeanour of someone having just murdered another was terrifying. And her dry laugh that followed after had both Blighters step back in hesitance. “This man is dead,” she pointed to the body, allowing Jacob to capture a look at a glistening blade attached to her forearm. He swallowed back harshly.

“You’re the dead man!” The shorter Blighter had been snapped back into anger as the stranger merely found humour in his boss’s death. He yanked a blade from his pocket and charged at the woman, all bodies tensing as they waited for the clash. Though she had easily ducked his swing, her speed impeccable as she twisted the same arm intended for harm back behind his back. A crack had been heard, the Blighter yelling in agony as she took his own blade and ended him with it.

No sweat was broken, neither had her spirit. As if she was simply strolling through a park with infinite time on her hands. The brute had been next, fighting back resistance as he too took charge. His hits were hard, the man built on nothing but sheer muscle and height. Which left his weak spot open, something she took great advantage of.

A slip between his legs and a kick to the back of his leg brought him to his knees. He swung against vigorously, though his attempts had been in vain as she used her height advantage to slide the very same blade on her wrist down into his neck.

Blood came and sept through as he lay limp in it, all threatening seeming to disappear as now stood the workers and the dangerous stranger. She looked around, taking a moment to ensure that the factory had been completely wiped out of all Blighters before echoing a large whistle. It was a call, and soon enough, as if waiting for the signal, a handful of Rooks had stepped into the building and immediately made claim.

“What in the…” Jacob could not fathom what was happening, or how it had actually been done. Who was the stranger? Why go to all the trouble for a factory in Southwark? Why had he been more intrigued than fearful of it all?

“My fellow companions!” The stranger began, finding refuge on a crate as she stood centre of attention to all those around. “I know you may be confused, and even frightened, but fear not! We are not here to hurt you or any others that do not belong to the Blighter gang!” Precuring the safety and wellbeing of those who had feared had them relax, but not entirely. Their bodies still tense and hesitant as they gathered around.

Jacob had been one to come closer, arms crossed over his chest as he stood in the small surrounding crowd. His brows furrowed as he kept all attention to the stranger.

She looked around her, nodding to her Rooks before gently pulling her hood back. It was if his heart had stopped as he first lay eyes on the woman. She had been beautiful, no doubt about it. Yet she was foreign, dressed to what society would deem inappropriate for women. She was cocky and dangerous, a small grin still etched to the corner of her mouth as she spoke to those openly around her. “My name is Lily Harvard, and these here are my Rooks!” Arms out wide as she gestured to the green coated gang surrounding. “I am here to make you all an offer. To help us take down the Blighters in all boroughs and liberate London back to its people!”

An honourable quest yet a large ask. She had taken employment from those under an authority that much less cared about the health and wellbeing of its workers. But did not come empty handed.

“Join me! Join the Rooks!” Some had already taken to the idea, a few more Rooks entering with spare jackets to pass to those that were eager to be invested in something, and others that did not want to be left stranded. “You do not have to do anything you do not wish, but bear in mind that you will be apart of something larger than yourselves! Help us destroys Crawford Starrick’s hold on this city, and we in turn will welcome you like family!”

The coaxing appeared to deter a few, those leaving subtly out of the eye of others though most stayed, agreeing to the terms and enlightened to be better looked after in this new emerging gang. Jacob had not peeped a word, his eyes still drawn to Lily as she looked happily to those around her. A nudge had suddenly caught his attention and a woman holding a green jacket extended it out to him. “You in, sunshine?”

Jacob took a moment, looking from the jacket to the Rook, to Lily, and back to the jacket. Well… it could not possibly be worse than working in this factory with little to no regard. Plus… redemption for him and those around him did sound quiet appealing.

“Why not?” The Rook offered him a toothy grin and chucked the jacket in his hands. The man grasping to the material before ridding his own jacket and replacing it.

It was the start of something better, and he couldn’t wait to tell Evie.

#assassins creed #jacob frye #fandom #assassins creed syndicate #assassin creed syndicate #evie frye #assassin's creed syndicate #frye twins #older jacob frye #ac syndicate #Jacob Frye gif #au #storyline #imagine

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ahkaahshi · 5 years ago

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on this segment of spur of the moment hq content:

things that keep them up at night

sakusa sometimes stays awake contemplating the possibilities of the next day and wondering if he’s well-enough prepared. he runs through his mental to-do list for tomorrow to make sure he’s not forgetting anything. he also checks his alarm several times to reassure himself that it’s set. he likes to think he’s the guy that can get up on the first alarm but definitely turns on another one just in case his body gives in to the temptations of “just a few more minutes” of extra sleep in the morning. he’ll also get out of bed just to double check that the front door is locked since he has a tendency to fixate on the idea of things not being done.

ushijima doesn’t have many problems with sleeping, at all. however, in the rare moments when he finds he can’t drift off as easily as usual, it’s often because something happened during the day that bothered him or made him feel uncertainty. maybe he got into an argument with you about something that might not have been as trivial as it seemed, or one of his teammates made an offhanded comment about something that he didn’t quite understand. he’ll often contemplate the meaning of these things or what he should do about them, but once he settles on a decision, he’ll be able to head back to bed with a clear mind.

bokuto has too many ideas running through his head for him to sleep sometimes. they can be about anything, really, from a new type of tandem play he wants to suggest to atsumu to a new recipe he wants to try recreating--with supervision, of course. his inability to quell all these new ideas often keeps him up for longer than ends up being good for him in the morning. when he arrives at practice with bags under his eyes, his teammates know he’s had an epiphany of some sort that he’s going to want to share. whether or not it’ll come out coherently is another matter, though.

kuroo gets easily disturbed by noises. the gentle hum of a car’s engine as it passes by, the sound of rain pattering against the windows, or the nearly inaudible creak of the house settling will all catch his attention and spark wonderment within him. where’s the car going? when is it going to stop raining? was that the house settling or a ghost? there’s no end to his natural curiosity, and, unfortunately for him, not knowing the answers to these things sometimes makes it harder for him to sleep than necessary. it’s okay not to know where the car’s going, kuroo! get some rest!

hirugami sometimes finds himself losing sleep over imagining the things he could’ve done differently. though he’s able to take his losses in stride and shake them off easily now, he’s still retained slivers of his tendencies to ruminate. during times like these, he lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling in the darkness of his room, watching how the scenario he’s picturing could’ve played out differently. when he really struggled with this, he stayed up for hours, just tormented by what his brain convinced him were wrongdoings or mistakes. now, however, he’s got a journal and pen by his bedside to write down his thoughts just so he can clear his head and go back to sleep once more.

oikawa is mostly kept awake by thoughts of failure and the what ifs. what if this wasn’t the right decision? what if I wasn’t ready for this? what if I never end up being as great as I want to be? usually when these ideas plague him, he thinks of you or of iwaizumi and what the two of you would say to make him feel better. of course, he has no qualms with texting either of you, no matter what the time may be. anything the two of you say will help, even iwaizumi’s text that reads, “go back to sleep, jackass,” because any response--no matter what time it’s given or how it’s delivered--means that he’s important to you.

iwaizumi the thought that he could always be doing better is what often keeps him up in the middle of the night. he wracks his brain to come up with ways that he could be better tomorrow than he was yesterday. have I really done/tried my best? is a question that always seems to haunt him in the late hours of the night, when there’s no distractions. the answer’s usually no, and while having the persistence and dedication he has to being his best self is an honorable one, it’s not great when it disturbs the rest he very much needs to be his best.

akaashi often finds his sleeping difficulties are associated with stress. when he’s got a lot going on in his life or feels like he’s holding onto too much, it manifests in the form of stress dreams--specifically those where he’s being chased but he can never seem to escape. even though he feels mentally exhausted, he can’t find a position that feels comfortable or stop fidgeting. he keeps a bottle of melatonin by the bed to help him fall back asleep during moments like these so he can delay dealing with his worries until the sun is up, at least. he can’t cope with much if he’s too tired.

atsumu has trouble sleeping when he’s lonely. while he loves having freedom from his brother, and has wished for it many times before, it never feels quite right for him to be alone. he’s used to having osamu in the same room as him, or you sleeping peacefully beside him, so if he’s the only one occupying his entire home, it’ll create this strange void within him. in situations like these, he’ll often end up calling or texting you and asking if he can come spend the night--if you’re nearby--or moving his head underneath the covers so he feels completely ensconced in warmth to make up for the emptiness he feels within.

osamu gets caught up in ideas about the future. unlike sakusa who reserves his further-reaching thoughts for when his brain is more alert and focused during the day, osamu tends to live more in the moment then and delve into the ideas of long-term, future goals at night. to be fair, it’s one of the few times when he doesn’t have someone needing his attention, but that doesn’t mean it’s the optimal time, especially when it’s past 2am and he has to get up in less than five hours. however, solidifying--or at least contemplating--his goals for the future is something he usually finds he can’t go to sleep without doing every now and then.

masterlist ⭐︎ treat me to a coffee!

honorary tags (since the taglist idea went out the window lol oops!)

local hirugami stans: @hqxreader @shou-kunn

my “sponsor”: @ohbyunhunn

#fran writes hq!!#haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #hq!!#sakusa kiyoomi #ushijima wakatoshi #bokuto koutarou #kuroo tetsurou #hirugami sachirou #oikawa tooru #iwaizumi hajime #akaashi keiji #miya atsumu #miya osamu #anime #manga #spur of the moment hq content

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thornsraised · 4 years ago

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@thornsguarded asked: There seems to be very little difference between rain and tears, Silver discovers. He's never been much of a crier, but sitting on the cold forest floor in the dark at the mercy of the rain, ruminating on the news that he is not really Lilia's blood son brings it out of him. Part of him wants to see his father, while the other disappointed part wants otherwise. The 8 year old brings his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them. If he's neither fae or Lilia's son, then who is he really?

IT’S NOT AS though lilia has made an attempt to hide silver being far from his son by blood — from their strikingly different appearances alone, lilia assumed it was quite obvious. but that was, as he’s discovered recently, a mistake on his part, to assume such logic from a child.

and so lilia is running through the forest at night, in the pouring rain, in search of a confused and lost child he loves so dearly. ( and he can’t get his bat familiars to do anything when the rain is like this, so running through the forest without a clear idea of which direction silver took off in it is. ) a gentle glow emanates from his magical gem as he holds it above his head, magic projecting a soft light to dull the shadows and stopping the rain from falling onto the old fae. “ silver!! ” he calls into the night, knowing his voice won’t carry that well but trying nonetheless.

perhaps he should have had more tact when answering the boy’s question, he considers as he searches. perhaps laughing — even if amused and far from cruel — only served to further confuse the poor child. there is so much lilia is still learning himself, raising a child of his own alone. ( well, he has malleus’ help on occasion, and he had raised malleus as well, but he had more help then from others loyal to the royal bloodline. this life, in a little cottage to call home away from stone walls and constant reminders of a less pleasant time long - past is different. this is a learning experience... and at times silver suffers for it, it seems. )

but lilia isn’t merely a simple father wandering aimlessly while looking for his runaway son, and his sharp ruby eyes catch sight of a freshly - snapped twig, small enough for a child’s weight to have broken. and he follows that trail — slipped - on mud here, a faint remainder of a footprint sheltered from most of the rain there — to where silver is huddled with his knees pulled to his chest. for a moment lilia just stares down at him as he lifts his head to meet his gaze — that confusion, that upset, those aurora eyes rimmed red from crying... lilia’s old heart aches, and he kneels down to be closer to level with silver, the two magically sheltered from the rain now.

“ i understand you’re no doubt upset with me for concealing something like that from you, ” lilia says, voice loud enough to carry over the sound of the heavy rain but still soft. he watches as silver chews his bottom lip, eyes widening a bit as more tears threaten to fall. lilia reaches a hand out to tenderly wipe some of the water from his cheek, offering the boy a warm little smile. “ it was far from my intention to keep a secret. i mistakenly thought it didn’t matter. you’re my son, silver — just as much if not more than you would be if we were related by blood. you mean more to me than anything in this world, and i never want you to be confused about your place here. ”

silver’s eyes go wide with awe and emotion, lips trembling — but he doesn’t get the chance to say anything as lightning illuminates the forest around them in sharp contrast to the shadows, pale eyes flashing in the light. thunder cracks almost instantly after, and the boy throws himself instinctively into his father’s arms. lilia is knocked backwards into the mud, but he doesn’t care as he catches the now well and truly crying and terrified child. “ ‘m sorry, ” silver cries, and lilia shakes his head as he kisses his temple as the boy clings to him.

“ no, no, dear child. you have naught to apologize for, and all would be forgiven if you did. ” he doesn’t once let his grip on his son falter as he stands, now damp from rain and mud and far from upset about either, so strong is his relief and love. “ now, let’s go home and get out of this storm that snuck up on us rather rudely, hm?? and we can get dry and comfortable. ”

another lesson is about to be learned in the coming days: one about humans and their fragility and how easily they fall ill at the slightest inconvenience to their mortal bodies. but it’s a lesson lilia will take in stride as he nurses and cares for his cold - stricken son, doing all he can to bring him back to health and to keep that precious smile on his face.

#ic. ✕#thornsguarded #i need a TAG but it's fine i need so many tags #instead take this fucking answer that i have FEELINGS about i'm gonna CRY i'm so mushy #lilia loves silver so MUCH shut up

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sleepless-in-starbucks · 5 years ago

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Natural Space and Drawn-On Suns

Summary: In a world filled with soulmates, Roman had long ago accepted that ve was never going to have one. The Universe had chosen to be a bitch to vim, and ve was stuck with that. So even though it was very in-character, Roman thought it was pretty rude of the Universe to make vim fall so hopelessly in love with two soulmates, too. Content: (Not actually) unrequited love, (mutual) pining, mention/reference to various (minor) injuries, technically one very minor reference to self-harm, panic attack, some poorly timed laughing, references to not sleeping well/bad sleeping habits, happy ending; nb!roman, nb!remy, genderfluid!logan, all characters are implied to be aromantic, soulmate au Ships: QPR rolosleep, pre-established losleep Note: For the majority of this, Logan uses the atlantis pronoun set- a/lan/atla/atlan/atlantiself. I mention this because the ‘a’ pronoun confused me many a time while writing, and I don’t want it to confuse you while reading

Confessions. Roman loved them…

...as tropes.

In real life? Not so much.

Maybe it would’ve been better if they weren’t soulmates. Maybe it would’ve been better if ve had a soulmate of vis own. Maybe it would’ve been better if Roman’s concept of romance existed past poorly written dime novels and cheesy romcoms.

Maybe it would’ve been just as hard if all the odds were in vis favor.

But as they stood, they weren’t great.

And yet… Roman still wanted to confess.

No, scratch that.

Needed to confess.

Ve couldn’t go on like this. They were just… so in love. Almost too in love, depending on who you asked, but Roman never saw it like that. Maybe that’s because ve’s biased. Ve found ve didn’t care that much.

They were real soulmates, unlike some of them. Some matches never clicked. Some took time.

Logan and Remy took time, but they hadn’t needed it. You could see it in their every action, their every word, their every small glance at the other. They didn’t even have a good meet-cute and they still fit better together than any couple Roman had ever seen. From two strangers forced to share the last seat on the bus to soulmates who’s every move around the other was laced with something, something more than love, something that was made from the stars themselves.

And it was etched across their skin too, the stars and constellations that decorated Logan’s skin at every spot Remy had bled and the planets on Remy that marked the spot of Logan’s every bruise. Space flowed in their veins and held them together.

Roman wasn’t as lucky. For all the beauty ve had seen in soul markings, it had only ever been on others. It had never been scales on vis burns or flowers on vis scars- better put, never markings on vis skin where vis soulmate’s had been marred. Because ve didn’t have a soulmate.

And that had hurt. Hurt worse than the tiny cuts and bruises that had near constantly lined vis arms until high school, in the hopes that vis soulmate would see them and know Roman was there. Hurt worse than going through high school watching people laugh as swirls and hearts appeared on their skin, ruminating on what their other halves could be getting up to. Hurt worse than seeing the college couples roaming campus, hand in hand, matching in injuries and patterns and bright smiles filled with adoration for the other. It hurt to know the universe, or fate, or whatever had abandoned vim, had left vim to yearn for the sort of connection it was supposed to give vim but didn’t. Left to yearn for desires that would never be fulfilled.

So, of course, in response to vis anger and betrayal and annoyance, the universe (or fate, or whatever) had sent vim Logan and Remy.

Aka, it had stabbed vim in the back and asked vim if ve had anymore complaints about vis situation.

Remy was an astronomy major who was sassy, aloof, and very vocal about the fact that they couldn’t wait to be away from earth and to the stars. Logan was a marine biology major who was withdrawn, sarcastic, and eager to sink into the depths of the ocean. Complete opposites heading in the same direction, Logan had called them once, her head on Remy’s shoulder while they did their homework and muttered about how space didn’t have homework.

Roman had watched them from where ve had been working on vis own bed, wishing that direction was towards vim.

It wasn’t going to be, of course. Multiple soulmates existed. If Roman was meant to be a part of their happiness, ve would’ve been their soulmate.

But ve wasn’t.

And that should’ve been the end of it. Ve should’ve moved on, should’ve settled with the fact ve was only ever going to maybe find love with others like vim, should’ve been happy to be Logan and Remy’s friend and nothing more.

Vis heart had other plans.

It refused to give up. It refused to move on. It refused to accept the kindness Logan and Remy showed vim as acts of friendship and instead went searching for proof of something closer.

Remy bringing Roman a coffee when they got one wasn’t Remy just being nice to and considerate of their roommate, it was a gift and sign of affection. Logan helping Roman with some of vis homework wasn’t them just trying to be helpful, it was an excuse to spend more time with Roman. Them inviting Roman so many places with them wasn’t just a gesture of friendship but instead a precursor to actual dates.

Vis heart was wrong, of course. It didn’t actually mean anything that Remy had vis coffee order memorized or that Logan always leaned so close to vim when showing vim vis mistake or that ve couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had been on a just-them date (even when Roman hadn’t been able to come to the outings they had invited vim on, they always ended up cancelling anyways, normally staying in with vim instead). Vis heart was still wrong, still seeing things that weren’t there.

So why was Roman entertaining it? Why was ve going to confess to Logan and Remy, admit that ve could see the galaxies on their skin in their eyes as well, lay vimself open before them even though ve knew ve would only be met with rejection?

Partially because ve knew it was the only way to crush that hope, once and for all. The only way to get over them was to know ve could truly never have them. Even if it stung like poison and burned like magma, Roman needed them to stare vim in the eyes and tell vim they liked vim, but only as a friend.

It was mostly because Roman was a lovesick fool.

So, here ve was. Sitting on vis bed, dressed up nice in a white dress layered in red, good looking but not uncomfortable, feeling like a complete wreck.

The three of them were supposed to be going to dinner. Some place nice, nicer than Roman was really used to, especially for something as simple as friends hanging out. But Remy had said they were also celebrating Logan’s most recent test score being absolutely stunning (and Logan just being stunning in general), so Roman had accepted it. And ve was going to tell them then, after ve had snuck around them and paid the bill vimself and when the meal was at end, so when things went horribly ve’d be able to just leave right after. It was a simple plan. It was a great plan. Ve even knew the outcome, so it was a guaranteed plan too.

Yet there was a pit in vis stomach the size of the moon and it felt like there were stars in vis throat, stealing vis breath as ve tried to breathe around them. Because for as good of a plan as it was, there was still one problem: Roman.

Ve didn’t want to know that Logan and Remy didn’t want vim. Ve didn’t want them to tell vim they only liked vim as a friend. Ve didn’t want that hope to be crushed.

But ve couldn’t keep going on like this either, couldn’t keep pretending to just be their friend, couldn’t just swallow down vis affections like a bad aftertaste. No, Roman had two choices left to vim, and the fact that they were a rock and a hard place didn’t matter- ve had to pick one.

Roman’s phone dinged, and ve didn’t need to check it to know it was Remy, letting vim know that they and Logan were there, ready to go. Roman just had to reply that ve was ready, or even that ve needed another minute, and then head out and meet them, and go to dinner, and… and…

Apparently, there was a third choice: end up destroyed, right smack dab in the middle of the other two options.

Ve wasn’t sure when ve had slipped off the bed, but ve must have, since the ground beneath vim was no longer soft and no longer allowed vim to press vis fingers into it. Ve was vaguely aware that vis phone was buzzing more, more than it should have, probably, but ve couldn’t truly bring vimself to care. Ve couldn’t bring vimself to care about anything, right then, anything that wasn’t Logan and Remy and messing everything up and dreams that would never come true and the blood roaring in vis ears and now that ve was thinking about it was ve even breathing anymore, did that even matter anymore-

Warmth, heavy and real, on vis shoulder. On instinct, Roman sucked in a breath, and though it was shaky and weak, it was something. There was something- someone- someones- in front of vim, but Roman couldn’t focus on them, the single breath ve had gotten not nearly enough to last long. Soon enough, ve was choking again, choking on stars ve had never had and never would.

More warmth, this one warm but tempered, prepared, steady, took one of Roman’s hands, pulling it away from vim until it was planted against a warm surface, one that was moving up and down in a controlled manner, slight squeezes of vis hand inviting vim to try and follow the pattern. And Roman tried to, ve really did, not knowing why ve trusted the warmth or why ve wanted to follow its suggestions, but ve did, so ve tried, and tried again and again and again even when ve couldn’t keep with the pattern just right, the warmth on vis shoulder supporting vim the whole way through.

As Roman’s breathing started to even out, so did vis focus start to come back. Vis gaze seemed to be pointed solely at the floor, but Roman could see the two figures in vis peripheral- pressed slacks and polo matched with a lovely tie, and a dazzling dress that lesser fools might’ve called garish. Ah. So it was them.

Some part of Roman was nagging that this was an issue, that there was a problem here, but ve was still occupied with the much too difficult task of breathing to worry about it much. Ve slumped over more and more with every breath, fairly certain ve was leaning against Remy, but not aware enough to care. They certainly didn’t seem to mind, their arm slipping over Roman’s shoulders and pulling vim closer to them.

“It’s alright, you’re alright, you’re okay.” They soothed quietly, their voice gentle and melodic to Roman’s ears. “Let’s get you back on the bed, yeah? Comfier up there, angel.”

A warning bell popped up in the back of Roman’s mind, something about the importance of nicknames and petnames, but ve ignored it in favor of nodding and breathing. The grip on vis shoulders tightened, and a moment later ve was vertical, only to almost instantly go back to being down. Logan was grabbing Remy’s pillows off their bed, placing them along with Roman’s, so that when Remy properly laid vim down ve was still supported mostly-upright by the pillow stack.

Remy helped settle vim, coming to sit down on the inside of vis bed, partly pressed against the wall and next to Roman’s head. Logan sat in a similar spot on the edge of the bed, frowning at Roman while Remy brushed vis hair out of vis face.

For a few minutes, they stayed like that, Roman quietly breathing while Remy and Logan sat next to vim, Remy having moved on to playing with vis hair while Logan’s hand rested on Roman’s shoulder, reassuring and constant. It almost would’ve been perfect, being so close and relaxed with them, were it not for the reason they had ended up like that in the first place.

“So,” Remy said, finally, breaking the silence gently, “are we going to talk about this?”

“About what?” Roman asked, vis eyes have fallen shut at some point, though ve was still very much awake. Ve was pretty sure ve knew what Remy wanted to talk about, but a bit of playing-dumb and buying time couldn’t hurt either way.

“Oh, just the fact that you were having a panic attack a moment ago.” Remy said, tone faux conversational but unable to completely hide the undercurrent of worry in their voice.

Roman half-shrugged. “It’s nothing.” Ve answered. Because it was nothing, really. All secrets came to light eventually, so it was for the best Roman keep vis under wraps for as long as possible, and deal with the fallout whenever it occurred naturally. A simple conclusion that ve certainly hadn’t needed to panic over. And now that it was figured out, ve was okay, so it was nothing.

Remy didn’t seem to agree. “Oh, yeah, because struggling to just breathe for five minutes is clearly the result of nothing.” They snapped. Roman flinched, and they immediately drew away from vim in response, looking away, expression abashed.

Logan reached across Roman, placing a hand on Remy’s arm in support, and Roman tried to ignore the lurch in vis stomach at the loving gesture. A looked at Remy for a moment, the two of them seeming to have a silent conversation before Remy nodded, looking reassured as Logan turned atla gaze on Roman.

“Remy’s just concerned, Roman, as am I. And with good reason.” Logan said calmly, though there was a look in atla eye that Roman knew well from late nights when Remy couldn’t sleep. “While panic attacks can be brought on by small things, we’ve never seen you have one. That suggests that whatever caused it is very important- at the very least, it’s not ‘nothing.’”

“And even if it was something ‘small,’ we’d still want to know.” Remy tacked on, voice deliberately much softer. “You’re upset, love, and we want to help you as best we can.”

With breathing no longer as serious of an issue as it had been, Roman was able to make the connection between nicknames and petnames and the alarm that had been going off in vis mind- Remy used a lot of nicknames interchangeably as petnames, but there were a few that they only used for people they cared dearly for (aka Logan).

Amongst those few? ‘Angel’ and ‘love.’

Roman forced vimself to keep breathing normally, well aware hyperventilating more would only be a cause for more concern for the other two. And they were already concerned enough, with Remy calling vim by nicknames that were meant for people closer to them then Roman was and with Logan looking at vim with a fond sort of worry reserved for Remy and Remy alone. So worried over vim they were treating vim like ve was someone close to them. Like ve was someone who truly mattered.

Like ve was someone who was their soulmate.

And all of a sudden, Roman was back to the problem of confessions. Ve couldn’t go on like this, no matter how badly ve wanted to pretend ve could. Ve needed to let them know ve was fine, that the panic had been over something silly that they couldn’t fix anyways, so they could realize how much their attempts at kindness came off as cruel. It would hurt, but it would ultimately be for the best, and Roman knew that was what mattered in the end.

Ve cleared vis throat. “It was… it’s about you guys.”

Logan and Remy both stiffened at that, casting each other a quick glance that Roman couldn’t decipher but ve didn’t miss either. Ve felt bad, well-aware that vis phrasing could’ve been better, but ve needed the build-up. Ve knew if ve tried to say it all at once, ve’d just chicken out, and that would get them all nowhere.

“Roman, if Remy or I have ever done anything to greatly distress you-”

“No, it’s not that.” Roman said, cutting Logan off.

Logan frowned, once more glancing over at Remy, who offered an equally confused-but-worried expression. Logan looked back at Roman. “Then… what’s wrong?”

Roman took a deep breath, steeling vimself. “I’m in love with you. Both of you.”

Dead silence. Roman wasn’t surprised. There wasn’t really a good way to react to that, after all.

“I’m sorry.” Roman said quietly, feeling ve had to fill the silence with something, anything. Ve needed to apologize, anyways. “I know you’re soulmates and I know you don’t- I know you just see me as a friend. And that’s- that’s fine, really, I love what we have, I just- I’m sorry.”

The silence once more stretched out as Roman finished, focusing vis attention on vis feet, trying to ignore the tears stinging at the corner of vis eyes in anticipation of all the words that were to come.

And then… laughter.

Hesitant at first, but louder soon enough, startling Roman into looking over and its source. Remy was leaning against the wall next to them, laughing, trying not to look at Roman as they did so. Ve looked over at Logan in confusion, not finding any answers in lan covering atla mouth with atla hand, hiding a smile or a frown Roman wasn’t sure. Ve supposed vis hopeless love could be seen as funny, or perhaps a joke, but… well… this wasn’t one of the outcomes ve had really expected.

“I’m- I’m so sorry, baby, this is a horrible reaction.” Remy said after a moment, once more looking at Roman and smiling for some reason or another. They looked happy, really happy, more happy than a bad joke about Roman’s love could possibly make them- right?

“And likely misleading.” Logan pointed out as well, though a sounded amused. Once more, Roman glanced between them, trying to figure out the joke ve wasn’t a part of.

“I know you guys probably think this is a joke, but I’m being serious.” Roman said, frustrated. Ve just wanted them to acknowledge what ve had said, acknowledge its ramifications, acknowledge what it meant for vim and for them all. “It’s not funny.”

Remy stifled their laughs at that, though they were still smiling, a sweet, fond thing that Roman wanted to see forever even if ve knew ve didn’t deserve it for a second. “We know, Ro. It’s just… bad timing, I think.”

Logan nodded, atla face set back into a neutral expression, save for the twitch up at the corner of atla lips and the soft look in atla eyes. “Roman, do you know why we were going to dinner tonight?”

“To celebrate your recent test score…?” Roman said, slowly, fairly certain that was the right answer but unsure why it mattered right now.

“I haven’t taken a test in at least two weeks, so no, not that.” Logan responded.

Roman frowned and looked towards Remy. “You said-”

“You kinda put me on the spot, hun.” Remy excused, chuckling a bit. “It was the first thing that came to mind as to why we’d all be going out to such a fancy place- I didn’t think you’d buy it, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain when you did.”

“Oh.” Roman said, accepting the answer before frowning harder, still confused. “But if that’s not why we were going out… what was the actual reason?”

“Good word choice there- Ro, we were going to ask if you wanted to be our partner.”

It was Roman’s turn to be silent, looking between vis two friends and squishes quicker than ve had been earlier, waiting for their expressions to break, for them to laugh, for them to mock vim for falling for it. But they didn’t, they remained looking the faintest bits amused but mostly fond, fond for vim, and Roman had the vague feeling ve was going to start crying soon.

“But… you’re soulmates.” Roman said, not wanting to crush vis hope but not wanting to only offer it false chances. “You’re not fated to be with anyone else.”

“Technically, no.” Logan agreed. “Which is why we didn’t want to tell you the true purpose of this evening. I confess, we were… worried. Roman, you’re attractive-”

“Very attractive, incredibly handsome.”

“-and talented-”

“So amazingly talented.”

“-and just generally, as they say, a ‘catch.’”

“A wonderful catch.”

Logan gently hit Remy’s arm, atla expression one meant to be of annoyance for being interrupted but coming off only as in love. Remy just smirked back, and Logan rolled atla eyes, and turned back to Roman and looked at vim the exact same way a had been looking at Remy, just minus the poor attempts at faux exasperation.

“And yet, you never seemed to show any interest in having a partner.” Logan continued, frowning just the tiniest bit. “We assumed you held to old traditions- the idea that you couldn’t be with those who were marked for soulmates, only others who weren’t.”

“Which is why we were going to go to such a nice restaurant.” Remy explained. “We figured, hey, if we ask and you say no and everything’s awkward, at least we’ll be awkward in style.”

“That was your idea alone, Remy.”

“We’re soulmates, love, everything I do is your problem as well.”

“Unfortunately.” Logan muttered, rolling atla eyes even as a smiled. Remy matched atla smile before leaning over to kiss atla cheek, smile growing when Logan’s cheeks dusted pink at the action. “You are being a distraction.”

“The best.” Remy responded cheerfully. They leaned back to their side of the bed, moving forward a bit so they could hold the side of Roman’s face, their smile having taken on a slightly dopey look. “We could go through all the exacts of falling for you and worrying about falling for you- and we will, later, if you want- but I think you have enough of the gist for now, darling.”

Roman met Remy’s eyes, slightly addicted to looking into them, the dark brown so often hidden ve wouldn’t want to look away even if they weren’t filled with a happy, bright sort of affection. “So… what now, then?”

Logan laughed, softly, the sound immediately drawing Roman’s attention to lan, watching with adoring fascination as a smiled gently at vim. A looked away for only a moment to take one of Roman’s hands in atla own, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it, making Roman blush.

“Now, assuming you are amicable to the idea, the three of us get together queerplatonically.” Logan explained, simply and sweetly.

“As partners.” Remy added, shifting their position on the bed so that they were closer to Roman and pressing a kiss to vis forehead as they did so. Roman blushed harder, a development Remy looked delighted by.

“You guys are acting like we already are partners.” Roman pointed out.

“Well, you have admitted that you hold queerplatonic feelings for us, and we’ve confessed to having the same for you.” Logan pointed out, now holding Roman’s hand between both of atlan. “Apologies if we are making inaccurate assumptions, but there appears to be no reason for us not to be partners already.”

“Lo, love, you’re sounding a little impatient there.” Remy said, teasingly, smiling at Logan from where they were reclining beside Roman’s head.

Logan just rolled atla eyes. “It has been twenty-two near-insufferable weeks of you complaining about how pretty your roommate is and twenty-one messy weeks of falling for vim too because you wouldn’t stop talking about vim. We have confirmation that ve returns our affections. I wish to now show these affections. Any delays in me doing so are only further annoyances.”

Remy laughed. “Well, you heard my starshine.” They said, grinning at Roman. “Have anything to say in your defense?”

Roman bit vis lip. “We’re not soulmates.”

“Logan’s parents were soulmates and they divorced two years after they had lan.” Remy said. “Meanwhile, of my five parents, only one set of them were soulmates, and all of them have been cheesy and in love as long as I can remember.”

“So while your fears in that particular regard were valid… using it as a defense is not.” Logan told vim, squeezing vis hand, reminding both that a was there and that a was tired of waiting. “Anything else?”

Roman didn’t respond at first, taking a moment to think, but ve wasn’t sure why ve bothered. It was a little laughable, how quickly vis fears over being in love with them fell apart once the soulmates thing was out of the equation. Ve knew they were polyam, as Remy had mentioned it multiple times over the past few weeks- something Roman was now realizing may have been on purpose- and if they liked vim back then there was no need to worry over unrequited love.

Really, there wasn’t even a reason to think. They loved vim, and they didn’t care that ve wasn’t their soulmate. What more could Roman want?

“I guess not.” Ve said, finally, offering the two of them a smile that ve knew came off as awkward but ve hoped also came off as sweet, or fond, or nice, or any one of the dozens of things they were. And from the way Remy smiled back, brighter and happier than Roman thought ve had ever seen them before, ve had the feeling vis smile was just fine.

“Finally.” Logan said in direct contrast, moving from sitting on the edge of the bed to being stretched out across it, pressed into Roman’s side in mere seconds. A peppered kisses across the entirety of the side of Roman’s face, ignoring vis once-more rapidly rising flush. As quickly as a had started, Logan settled, pressing atla face into the crook of Roman’s neck, muttering to atlantiself about what sounded like the annoyances of pining over stupid pretty people.

“Wh-what just happened?” Roman asked, looking over at Remy, wishing ve could pretend the stutter was from exhaustion and not how flustered ve currently was. Not that it seemed Remy would’ve bought the ‘exhaustion’ excuse anyways, chuckling at Roman as they glanced over at Logan fondly.

“Logan’s officially claimed you as a partner.” Remy explained, tone soft and loving. “A’ll never admit it out loud, but a’s very cuddly with the people a loves. A’s been ranting about how warm you look for weeks now.”

“Oh.” Roman said, equally soft, looking at Logan’s messy dark hair, covering any part of atla face that Roman might’ve been able to see past where it was pushed against vis neck. “Is a asleep?”

Roman was answered by a huff from Logan atlantiself, tightening atla hold on Roman and shifting atla head. Remy chuckled again, reaching over to run a hand through Logan’s hair, Logan humming contentedly in response.

“A will be soon enough.” Logan’s hums turned annoyed. “Oh, hush. You sleep worse than me and you know it.” A more questioning hum. “Roman’s also tired and has nowhere to be, ve will not mind if you fall asleep wrapped around vim.”

“But dinner-”

“Has been cancelled since we saw you having a panic attack.” Remy cut vim off smoothly, still playing with Logan’s hair as they kissed Roman’s forehead. “Your only evening plans are to lay here and let Logan cuddle you and probably take a nap while you’re at it.”

“I think I can get behind those plans.” Roman replied, loath to move or disrupt Logan in any way. “And afterwards? When a wakes back up?”

Remy shrugged. “A’ll still want to hold you, so probably watch a movie. Or take turns talking about how much we love you. Or find all your scars- I know you have a lot, sweetheart, you were a trouble child- so me and Lo can map them out properly.”

“Map them out…?”

“I was thinking suns.” Remy answered, their hand moving from Logan’s head down atla arm, tracing over one of the constellation patterns there. “Bright and energetic and beautiful.”

Roman realized what Remy meant as ve looked at Logan’s soulmarks, and at the black sketch of saturn on the back of Remy’s hand from where Logan had accidentally trapped atla hand in a door. “That would be… nice.” Ve decided quietly, looking at the planets and stars and thinking suns would look nice amongst them. “Could you also…”

“I think you’ll wear the universe very well.” Remy said by way of response, their hand slipping all the way down Logan’s arm so that they could hold atlan. They moved back, pulling their joined hands over Roman’s chest, Remy using their free hand to rest their head on. “But for now, you should probably try to get some sleep, angel.”

Though ve wanted to argue, wanted to say ve wasn’t tired and would much rather talk to Remy about just how long the whole mutual-pining thing had been going on, vis earlier exhaustion from the panic attack was creeping back in, and with Logan pressed against vis side and Remy just as close resisting its call had become nigh impossible. So instead, Roman wrapped an arm around Logan, holding lan even closer. Ve curled up a bit, getting comfortable, before glancing back at Remy. They were still resting on their hand, eyes open but half-lidded, watching Roman and Logan with a tired smile.

“Don’t you need sleep too?” Roman asked as ve settled vis head over Logan’s, reveling in how close and warm and soft a was.

“I’ll go to bed soon enough, don’t worry.” Remy assured, softly kissing the top of Roman’s head. “Sleep well, love.”

And Roman did, feeling melty from the fondness in Remy’s voice, feeling warm from Logan against vim, and feeling only pure joy at the thought of being a part of Logan and Remy’s universe.

#rolosleep #qpr rolosleep #ts roman #ts logan #ts sleep #ts remy #fanfic #fanfiction #ts sides #sanders sides #the cryptid speaks #nb!roman #nb!remy #genderfluid!logan #no one in this got to be even kinda cis skdjnhfck #also ignore the bad pacing/emotional jumps this is a spur-of-the-moment fic after all #it's also only Mostly edited so if u see errors that's why

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silenthillmutual · 5 years ago

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[ID: Anonymous said: this isnt like, a demand or request, just an expression of interest - you mentioned in your daniil-is-autistic post that you also think artemy is neurodivergent, and i would really enjoy seeing a similar post on that topic. thank you, have a nice day.]

(anon is referring to this post!)

i do have some thoughts that i would like to share about that topic! however comma, it probably will not be as in-depth as my post about daniil, as i am myself autistic and have had a couple years since being diagnosed to ruminate on places where that has affected my life, and so it’s easier to write about coming from a place of personal experience. i can do the same with depression, for the same reason.

i have a couple of ideas about what artemy could have:

adhd

ptsd

ocd

i won’t really be going into ptsd or ocd on this post because i feel like it’s more difficult to point the ptsd out (artemy doesn’t talk much about or flashback at all to being on the front) and because i think ocd should have its own post. it is severely misunderstood, even by other neurodivergent people. plus i think all four of the healers have it (or aspects of it), and this post is about artemy.

i feel like… something about the dsmv diagnostic criteria for adhd feels condescending to me, like it feels the way it’s worded places a lot of the blame on the person who has it? and some of the criteria like “fails to follow through on instructions”, “does not seem to listen when spoken to directly”, “has trouble holding attention on tasks” can depend greatly on the player. not as much of that is baked into artemy’s character and dialogue in the same way that social ineptitude, which is a core feature of autism, is baked into daniil’s character and dialogue.

with that being said: while i will include a few things from the diagnostic dsmv diagnositic criteria as listed on the cdc website, i am going to primarily be thinking about accounts from people with adhd. i have several friends with adhd (and i suspect that i may have it, though i’ve only come to suspect this recently and have had less time to think on it) whose experiences i will be taking into account.

other links to sources i am referring to: [adhd/autism venn diagram by tfw-adhd] [what those symptoms look like in adults, by chadd] [ptsd criteria on brainline] [ocd criteria on beyondocd]

vague spoilers for pathologic classic & pathologic 2

very briefly & quickly: ptsd & ocd

the problem with going into it is this game is already a very difficult and anxiety-inducing world because of the plague and i’d argue that any of the healers could have one or both of these either before the outbreak or after it, so here are some things that stick out to me for

ptsd - overly negative thoughts or assumptions about oneself or the world (can overlap with adhd; artemy has the option to repeatedly blame himself for his father’s death), negative affect, feeling isolated, irritability or aggression, risky or destructive behavior, hypervigilance (any game that dabbles in horror aspects will expect this from you), difficulty sleeping (overlaps with adhd), depersonalization (this is a core aspect of the theatre theme of the game)

ocd - without going through the entire ybocs, i’ll just say that i think all three healers struggle with hoarding (understandably and by necessity) and hypermorality (all three protagonists believe they are the one and only person who is right, rubin is awfully judgmental of people who don’t abide by his personal standards). compulsions would be easier to point out in the game than the obsessions they are linked to, as we’re not exactly privvy to intrusive thoughts outside of the dreams. you could, however, say that artemy struggles with intrusive thoughts of causing harm even inadvertantly and argue that he takes measures to ensure that he doesn’t, won’t, and hasn’t. in classic, this is highly dependent on playstyle.

[this is my standard disclaimer that i have an official diagnosis of ptsd so i’m not just pulling this out of nowhere and am about 98% sure i have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and have researched it thoroughly.]

what’s built into the game: making careless mistakes, poor planning skills, time blindness / anxiety, executive dysfunction

pathologic is a game that sometimes feels like you’re being set up for failure. something that i missed talking about in my previous post is that it often feels like an autism/adhd simulator because it is, in classic, so very easy to screw yourself over and get locked out of an objective by picking the wrong dialogue option. while some of the correct dialogue options are obvious, others feel like a guessing game and you have to just hope you’re picking the right thing and have made a save file at the right place to go back and pick different options in the case that you’ve bungled something. hence, “making careless mistakes”. it’s a little bit easier in 2, as dialogue options that end a conversation are indicated with a diamond (thank you to whomever decided on that!), but it makes up for this by being unforgiving in other aspects. i believe the difficulty settings for imago state that the game is intended to be “almost unbearable” - and lots of people have difficulty completing it on the intended difficulty without cheats. (do not discourse about this on my post.) the game invites you to make careless mistakes and either live with or learn from them.

keeping this in mind, you’re kind of expected to have “poor planning skills” on at least your first time playing it. part of the game’s point is that you can’t do everything, and you can’t save everyone. not paying close enough attention or interpreting the instructions of the game just right in classic can cost you the lives of several of your bound.

that also feeds into time blindness & time anxiety. classic & 2 do these in different ways. in classic, you can’t run, so you have to hope you’re not busy doing something else or else hope that all of your letters come in at a time where you can hit up all the places you need to go, or you’re going to be cutting it short on time for the day. in 2, you can run, but there are far more sidequests to be completed than in classic.

i’d also argue that executive dysfunction is a core aspect of the game. you are very busy and very poor and items are very expensive, meaning that unless you know what you’re in for, either you or the town is low on resources or funds or time to do things like eat, sleep, and take care of your aches, immunity, and infection. all of which can be avoided if you don’t make careless mistakes, have good planning skills, and can manage your time wisely.

“interrupts or intrudes on others”

i don’t appear to have a screenshot of him doing this in 2, but he and daniil do have at least one conversation in which they keep interrupting each other. peak autism/adhd solidarity.

i do, however, have a screenshot example of him doing this to clara in pathologic classic

Haruspex: …Wait a second. If there was nothing but the great Bull, where did the stars and light come from? Changeling: Oh, don’t interrupt!

and as for intruding - khan feels that he does this frequently: intruding on him and capella at the station, intruding on him and notkin at the broken heart, and here he is intruding on kids at the nutshell:

We have so few places of our own - only a couple. And yet you feel the urge to impose yourself even here. Do you know what childhood is? It’s slavery. Herders treat their cattle better than parents treat their children. They lock us up like objects, mold us like statues, and still never take us remotely seriously.

he also intrudes on clara talking with block on day 11, either completely oblivious to the fact that he’s doing it or outright ignoring that he is.

“is often ‘on the go’“

i could say that this is one that is built into the way the game is organized, and it’s true! but his time spent with lara comes to mind. she’s not the only one to mention his restlessness, but i don’t keep screenshots of big vlad on hand so their day 1 dialogue is lost to the wind.

Aren’t you supposed to be terribly busy? I don’t understand why you keep coming. Or do you need my help again? I’ll wash your clothes. You’re filthy, like a chimney sweep. Revolting. While they dry, have some sleep.

“often fidgets […] or squirms in seat”

like with daniil’s body language, i don’t have any gifs to show to prove this. i’m really looking forward to seeing what idle animations he gets in the other two routes. for now i know that in the lucid dream, if you use flycam you can see him idling by swaying and rubbing his chin & that in other pantomimes he can be found constantly turning his head and looking around.

sleep problems

i don’t have the screen shot so just pretend that i do - he mentions this to the fellow traveler on, i think, day one when you go to the dead item shop. in either game, you can also only sleep for a maximum of six hours at a time, which is like..two hours less than the recommended amount, unless that’s changed.

little sense of danger & impulsivity

As usual, I act first and think later. I’ve made a panacea. But from what? What blood was that? Whose blood was that? To cure the Town, I’ll need to figure that out.

there’s actually no dialogue i can think of that addresses the danger of the situation he’s in - which is sort of the reason why i included it! though i am absolutely obsessed with classic artemy threatening grief, kingpin of the villains in town:

Bad Grief: That ain’t good! Got too soft a heart or something? Soft, eh… Well, can’t blame you. Haruspex: Got too hard of a bone structure? You watch it. I’ll break them in no time.

artemy has little to no problem offering to help daniil get ahold of organs and blood:

Bachelor: Exactly. I need tissues of a person who died of the Sand Plague. I need them today, right now! I’ve tried to get them at the cemetary, but failed miserably. The patrolmen are vigilantly watching over the dead. Haruspex: Would you like me to get you some? Bachelor: I’d reward you generously for that. Haruspex: Deal. I’ll do what I can, even though I still don’t have the right to.

‘even though i still don’t have the right to’ - he knows it’s illegal and could easily lose him reputation, but he jumps at the chance to do so. part of his route requires you being in constant danger, but later on there are options to tell daniil you won’t help him. this isn’t one of them.

in pathologic 2, you can also instigate fights with people by, to name a few: refusing to leave the house in the atrium where they have a person bound and gagged upstairs, not leaving barley the barber in grief’s lair, and picking the wrong dialogue option with the guys in the broken heart on day 11.

as referenced above, his impulsivity sometimes shows in the dialogue options you can choose. you can say things that clearly haven’t been thought through all the way. for example, this is what he says to clara bout her parents:

I wonder what you did to your old ones. There was someone gullible enough to adopt you?

and this is how she replies:

Clara: What? Why would you say that? I never even knew them. I’ve been an orphan for as long as I can remember. Artemy: I didn’t know. Right, that’s what I figured.

it’s not all that different from the sort of tactless comment a person with autism might make.

no motivation for tasks you are not interested in & hyperfixations

in pathologic 2, on day 3, daniil asks artemy to be his aide in developing a vaccine. artemy’s responses are all something dismissive and frequently quite rude. here’s the end of that conversation:

Bachelor: I will make the vaccine, but I can’t do it without you. All you need to do is be at hand and do as I say. I will take full responsibility for the situation. Haruspex: Perhaps I’ll drop by… if I have the time.

guess what never happens?

it’s understandable that the panacea is artemy’s main goal. what makes it stick out to me as a hyperfixation specifically is that, while a vaccine is daniil’s main goal, daniil manages to ask artemy about his progress with the panacea.

Bachelor: Anyway, how’s it going? Any progress?

the interest is never reciprocated.

emotional dysregulation & rejection sensitivity dysphoria

i personally think this is the most striking piece of evidence. every single perceived sleight can invoke a drastic reaction in artemy. just take day 3 for example - the perceived sleight here is the belief (based on no evidence) that daniil was snubbing him or trying to exclude him from the meeting:

Bachelor: Burakh. The situation is regretful. I just didn’t have time to warn you. Haruspex: This was ugly of you.

and then he proceeds to get into an argument with him. he can, in fact, get into snits with not just daniil, but with rubin and lara as well. i will not be taking sides in this, because who is right / who is wrong is not really the point, the point is how artemy responds to perceived sleights with increased emotional agitation.

when capella upsets him by telling him she’s taking the kids from under his care for their own protection, he can respond by comparing her to her horrible capitalist pig of a father:

You truly are your father’s daughter. Children always succeed their parents…

i can’t even remember what was said to him to get him to reply this, only that it was said to him by a teenager:

I’m a surgeon. Ever considered having your tongue removed?

he also holds onto murky’s repetitious “what is there about you to love? nothing. so i don’t.” and brings it up to her when she is infected with the sand plague on day 10. though it does bring the rather heartwarming line about murky having loved him from the start, my point remains that he has not been able to stop thinking about something murky has said that she has obviously already changed her mind about by this point in time in the game.

difficulties making & keeping friends

remember what i said about the interest in daniil’s vaccine not being reciprocated? yeah. friends, acquaintances, colleagues - they all kind of expect you to take an interest in their lives. this is where autism & adhd overlap, from my understanding - both can come with an inability to recognize social cues. in fact, i’m going to use the same example now that i used in my post about daniil (it is, after all, what inspired this ask):

Bachelor: From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

daniil thinks they’ve been having a normal conversation, but artemy hasn’t picked up on whatever social cues he’s been using. this could easily be on either one of them. though i will say, some of my easiest friendships as a person with autism have been with people who have adhd. which is why i’d suggest that daniil saying he’ll tell artemy about thanatica “the way i’d tell a close, intimate friend” is autism/adhd solidarity. despite initially not getting along, they are clearly able to communicate with each other.

i think the rest of this is really self-explanatory. despite being from the town in classic, artemy doesn’t actually appear to have any friends in it. could be a symptom of him having left much ealier (ten years ago as opposed to the five in pathologic 2), but in pathologic 2 his friendships are constantly under threat of spontaneous combustion. this day three conversation with lara sums it up nicely:

Lara: Ugh, whatever. Like it’s any of my business… Do whatever you want. Did you make peace with stakh? Artemy: Doesn’t look like it… Forget Stakh. I see now that I’m one step away from falling out with you. Why?

there’s a variety of reasons why his friendships are falling apart. but it occurs to me that there’s no mention of artemy communicating with his friends at all while he was gone, and maybe that’s contributing to it. this is not an attempt to pick sides (i think everybody’s wrong), i am just pointing this out.

adhd in adults: history of academic or career underachievement, relationship problems due to not completing tasks, chronic stress and worry over failure to accomplish goals, chronic and intense feelings of frustration / guilt / blame

artemy did not finish med school. classic has him described as a “vagrant scholar” traveling from town to town to learn instead of staying in the capital where he was sent (”always ‘on the go’” indeed). in pathologic 2 he simply states that he doesn’t have a degree and that he sucked at latin.

relationship problems mentioned under “making and keeping friendships”, but it should be noted that you can repair your friendships by completing a sidequest on day 3 to gather everyone together.

“chronic stress and worry over failure to accomplish goals” is sort of the entirety of pathologic 2. you could say it’s built into the game, but artemy does express a lot of stress over not knowing where to turn for answers, has bizarre prophetic dreams, and is plagued by… well, the plague taunting him for not being to save his bound. both when notkin gets sick on day 4 and when all of the children get sick on day 10, he can express an extreme amount of guilt for not having the ability to cure them.

i mentioned under ptsd that artemy has a tendency to be able to blame himself for his father’s death, and i think that fits under here as well. there’s also this:

I get anxious thinking about my kids… Are they faring all right in the Lair without me?

conclusion

i do not know if i have adhd myself and i am sure there are things i am missing, especially as i have not completed artemy’s route in classic yet or started clara’s. feel free to contribute to this, i would love to see others’ input!

#icarus.txt #icarus answers #artemy burakh #pathologic meta

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yellowocaballero · 4 years ago

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thoughts on writing gertrude? loved your latest evil con update :)

Oooh, thanks for asking. Truth be told that the story was the result of me stress-procrastinating on a large project at work due that day, so the writing process was basically me slapping the keyboard a few times for about two hours and then posting it without really even looking it over. See if you can catch ALL of the grammar mistakes, lmfao!!!

But it was a lot of fun to write a POV I’d never written before, especially one so different from everybody else’s. She’s also a very distinct personality and character, with a lot of ‘rules’ that I had to come up with on the spot, lol. What I really did enjoy was structuring the story similarly to some of the older TV shows I like, like Murder She Wrote or Columbo. I also adjusted the internal narration and the style to be a little more flowery or film noir, with a focus on evocative yet precise language and ruminations, because I needed to drive home that she and Agnes were absolutely pyromaniac girlfriends and that she felt very much A Certain Way over her that she was refusing to admit.

(Some characters ruminate and some characters don’t. As a writer, try to stay away from long rambling paragraphs about a character’s thoughts, because that’s dull as shit. However, whenever I write from the POV of Archivist!Sasha and Gertrude, these two people absolutely follow logical trains of thought compulsively as part of how they problem-solve or plan. They have constructive and directed trains of thought that they use to problem-solve/narrate the story. If you’re writing from Jon’s POV, he ALSO has these trains of thought, except they are nonconstructive, rambling, illogical, and soaked in stress and anxiety. I have Jon think about how he FEELS and I have Sasha and Gertrude think about what they’re DOING. But also avoid long paragraphs of internal narration cuz that shit’s boring lol.)

But writing from Gertrude’s POV was very interesting to me, because I couldn’t use her to give the audience emotional cues. Normally when you’re writing something gross you rely on both description/word choice and the POV to signal to the audience that it’s gross - the spider’s legs were luminescent, scratchy, carapaces, shifting and groaning under their unnatural weight, but more importantly Sasha felt bile rise in her throat and was hit by a stab of nausea. You can only get so scary actually describing something, you also have to lean on emotional cues through loaded language and other character reactions. But with Gertrude, the whole scene in Jon’s bedroom (that, to be clear, was a bedroom coated in giant spider webs containing a half-human half-spider teenager groaning in agony and lashing out violently) was described clinically and professionally. Because she’s a professional, and she just wasn’t fucking scared by it. Because we’re soaked in her POV, we aren’t scared either. The scariest thing to us is how much Jon is clearly suffering. But, on the flip side, when Jon’s acting and looking more human, the most normal and innocuous things he does becomes dangerous and threatening, because Gertrude’s running her little logic programs telling her that he’s dangerous.

Beyond the joys of POV, characterization wise: Gertrude brings narrative conflict wherever she goes because she is instantly half a step away from throwing down at any moment lol, which makes her perfect for instilling tension and conflict in a story. The main tension of that story was Gertrude and her distrust/horniness for Agnes, and Gertrude and her distrust of Jon - something she ultimately only dropped because she had decided to dismiss him as a threat (orrr diiddd sheeee....). Also, exploring her and Agnes’ relationship was FUN AS HELL, because I was constrained by how little these characters wanted to talk about what they were feeling. The ‘I’m only talking to you for business reasons’ thing was lifted from WTNV, which is the platonic ideal of romance. It was fun to also kind of explore from an outsider’s perspective how weird it is that a 60 year old fire messiah (she looks more like mid-twenties, it’s a testament to how Gertrude thinks of Agnes that she thinks of her as an older woman) is best friends with a teenager and they’re both very protective of another, younger, spider-teenager. Her relationship dynamics with the other characters are fun too: she denies it but Gerry is obviously like a nephew to her, she’s entrenched in a massive Will-they-won’t-they with Agnes, and she has people in her circle, but she obviously really doesn’t actually give a shit about or love anybody but herself. Gertrude cares about herself, and keeping the world safe, and that’s it.

AU notes: so basically what happened was that Agnes had her Crisis of Faith earlier than in canon, and she’s kept up very secret and limited communication with Gerry since the 1999 Evilcon (they were banned from any evilcons afterwards, so they never met up again as kids after that and they never saw Jon again). Instead of killing herself she decided to run away instead, so she asked for Gertrude’s help in torching any of her cult members who stopped her from leaving. They Fell In Love and had A Night of Passion and Spoke Longingly of Running Away Together before Gertrude’s sense of duty to her job made her break it off. Agnes is now enthusiastically trying to live out that ‘real life’ thing when she gets word that Jon’s spider-person transformation has started happening and that he had to run away, and is now homeless in London. Gerry’s been meaning to go ditch his mom and live with Agnes too, so basically Gerry and Agnes teamed up to go rescue Jon and falsify their identities so they can all try to live the normal life they never got. They’re best friends and continue living together until we see them all as adults in the main story. Agnes and Gerry are MUCH happier than in canon and Jon’s...well, he’s having a time of it, but he’ll end up alright! Right?

Also the only music I listened to while writing the whole thing was Billy Joel, Jim Croce, Hall and Oates, etc. :) Thanks for the q!!

#'golden brown' by the stranglers is my agnes/gertrude anthem and that's the tea #gertrude is such a bad person and she is so aware of that but you can tell she's the kind of bad person who thinks bad people are superior #to nice people #gertrude handshake meme jon: self centered af #also btw i kept it ambiguous what exactly was fucking happening in jon's weird little spider-brain #eg how much he was manipulating gertrude how much he was in control of himself etc #but rest assured the kid is going THRU IT and his spidermom is giving a lot of solutions which maybe arent so good #tma #my writing

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cake-writes · 5 years ago

Text

Six (4/6)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Chapter Warnings: Angst, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Bucky), Eating Disorder (Reader), Fluff, Slow Burn, 18+

Summary: Bucky knew that there were more important things for him to worry about. Of course he did. He still had to work through the horrors of his past, never mind his present, which was the exact reason why he honed right in on your petty bullshit. You distracted him from the things he didn’t want to think about. You also drove him up a fucking wall.

Part Three / Master List

By the time you grudgingly pulled yourself out of bed, it was well after ten o’clock and you felt like death. Your body ached, and your stomach was in knots because you spent most of the night ruminating about the things you’d confessed to Bucky – things you’d never told another person before.

Why?

What made this particular Friday even worse was that you ran into him in the hallway as you made your way downstairs. With a nervous smile, you asked him how his day was going, but it just went downhill from there. An awkward, tense conversation with a man more standoffish than usual made things incredibly unpleasant.

You’d opened up to him last night, possibly even bonded a little, but now he didn’t want anything to do with you. What an idiot you’d been, but it made sense. Of course he didn’t. Bucky had his own problems. He didn’t need yours added to the mix, especially considering how stupid and small they were in comparison.

So, predictably, you went for a run to clear your head, and you pushed your body harder than you should have, so much that you collapsed halfway through.

Weak.

Your body was still so weak, over a week later.

You hated it.

Chest heaving, you struggled to pull yourself up into a seated position and finally came to lean against the closest tree, rough bark biting into your back.

Such a sunny day, you noticed, despite the dark shadows clouding your mind. You couldn’t enjoy it at all.

With your heartbeat thrumming in your ears, your vision started to blur as you peered up at the bright blue sky, consciousness fading away with the autumn breeze.

The smell of cigarette smoke made your nose wrinkle.

“Come on, doll, wake up.”

Soft – almost like a dream.

Come on, pretty girl. Wake up for me.

One gentle pat to your cheek, then another. A grumble, but no dice.

Bucky muttered under his breath, “How long have you been out here, darlin’? You’re ice cold.”

Darlin’. Pretty girl. Wake up for me.

Too-hot fingers gently tugged you up off the ground, and then came a distinct feeling of weightlessness, one that had you finally jerking awake. Heart pounding, eyes wild, you blinked blearily up at Bucky, almost like he’d burned you – and in a way, he had. For a few seconds, you were disoriented, unsure of what was real and what wasn’t.

Then you spotted the lit cigarette hanging from his lips.

“You’re smoking,” you said dumbly.

The cigarette was what you focused on, because you couldn’t handle how good it felt to be held like this, held by him. Not only were you starved for food, but also for touch and right now, his body felt like a radiator.

Unimpressed, Bucky replied, “You’re freezing.”

This marked the second time he’d rescued you from yourself.

It was dusk, now, you realized, pink and purple sky giving way to black. You must have been asleep for hours – asleep or unconscious, you weren’t really sure anymore. Then again, you weren’t really sure you even cared anymore.

“Put me down,” you rasped, throat far too dry for comfort. “I’m fine.”

You weren’t.

Bucky clearly didn’t believe you judging by the skeptical look on his face, but he gently set you back down upon unsteady feet. The second he pulled away from you, a cool breeze rustled through the trees and you shivered.

He opened his mouth to say something, but you shook your head before he could even start – as if to reiterate that you were fine. The way you briskly rubbed your arms to warm yourself up said otherwise.

Pretty girl.

Not pretty at all. You must have looked terrible.

“Did you—” you started to ask, but when he met your eyes, the words died in your throat. He’d never call you that, not in a million years. It was a dream through and through, you were sure of it, and now you needed a distraction from how much it bothered you that it was just a dream. “Why are you smoking all the way out here?”

All alone.

At least, until he came across you.

Bucky paused to take a drag from his nearly-finished cigarette, and then he dropped it to the ground, putting out the ember with the toe of his boot. “Promise me you’ll talk to Dr. Cho, and I’ll tell you.”

You scoffed. “I said I’m fine, Bucky. It was a nice day. I took a nap.”

“It doesn’t take normal people five minutes to wake up from a nap, you know.”

That set you off.

“I’m not normal, Bucky,” you snapped. “Or did you already forget our conversation last night?”

A conversation that he acted like hadn’t even happened this morning.

The minute the nasty question escaped your mouth, however, you knew you’d made a mistake by the way Bucky’s eyes lit up like blue fire – icy hot and burning right through you.

“Of course I didn’t forget,” he spat, his patience clearly drawing thin. “You think I wanted to find you like that? Half-dead, barely breathing? Christ, doll, what the hell do you expect me to say?”

You winced at his tone, but you knew he was right. That didn’t mean you were going to back down. “I didn’t ask you to come looking for me.”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, princess,” he bit out, and your face flushed hot in humiliation from his condescending tone. “I wasn’t looking for you. I went for a walk to clear my head, and—” Then he cut himself off with an irritated sigh and told you, “Forget it. I’m taking you back to medical.”

When his flesh hand latched around your upper arm, you snarled, “No, you aren’t.”

But you couldn’t break free. This was him. Bucky Barnes. Your worst enemy.

Right?

So you planted your feet firmly, instead, but that didn’t work either. A simple tug from him was all it took to get you moving.

“Let me go,” you demanded. “Let me the fuck go, Barnes, or I’ll—”

The rest of your threat died in your throat when Bucky shot you another look.

“Or you’ll what? Hurt me? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

You swallowed hard. He’d finally called you out on your empty threats – threats you’d been throwing his way for months. You’d always known that there wouldn’t have been a single thing you could do against him in a fight, not really, but neither of you had actually addressed that elephant in the room until now.

“Now move,” Bucky ordered, “Or I’ll make you move.”

“I’m not going anywhere with—”

A strangled yelp marked the end of your sentence when he hoisted you over his shoulder so quickly, it gave you vertigo.

This wasn’t right. He couldn’t just manhandle you like this. You had rights.

But with his vibranium arm hooked behind your knees, you were trapped no matter how much you thrashed to break free. It wasn’t anger that propelled you now, but fear; he planned to take you to medical, where you’d be forced out of the field because of him. Forced out of the only thing that kept you going.

A string of insults escaped your lips, too many to count.

Put me down, you dick.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

How dare you put your hands on me!

You’re a real asshole, Barnes, you know that?

I trusted you. Why can’t you trust me?

I’ll get better, I promise. Just let me go.

Bucky, please. Don’t do this to me.

You felt him tense up just a little at your barrage of hate, of lies, of pleas, but he didn’t say a thing – just let you mouth off until you gave up. Predictably, within a minute or two, your struggles finally slowed to a stop. Body exhausted and soul just as much, you couldn’t put up a fight anymore even if you wanted to.

“Are you done?”

The only sound for miles was the crunching of leaves under his boots, ground to dust just like any shred of comradery the two of you might have started to establish. Tears prickled at the corners of your eyes as you stared down at the dirt path, blankly, feeling numb as can be.

Bucky must have felt your shoulders shake with silent sobs, because he spoke soon after. “I don’t want to do this, but you’re not taking care of yourself.”

“Fuck you.”

A long pause.

A heavy sigh.

“You’re so much lighter than before. I’m worried about you.”

That caught you off guard, but you lashed out anyway. “I’m dead weight, remember? Why the hell do you care?”

Bucky seemed to consider your question before he admitted, “I did some research. Saw what’ll happen to you if you keep this up.”

You knew what would happen, too. You just didn’t care. Not anymore.

You may not have cared about yourself, but deep down, some part of you cared about him. You must have, otherwise you wouldn’t have confessed to him the things you’d kept under wraps for so long; otherwise his standoffishness this morning wouldn’t have bothered you like it did, so much that you ran yourself to the point of exhaustion to escape your anxious thoughts.

You just didn’t know why you cared, and that bothered you the most.

For a fleeting moment, you wished that this was the dream – that you’d wake up from the calorie-obsessed horror that your life had become to those sweet, gentle whispers.

Pretty girl. Sweetheart. Wake up for me.

Part Five

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky x you #bucky barnes imagine

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concussed-to-pieces · 4 years ago

Text

The Mettle Of A Man; Part Thirteen

Fandom: Fallout (4)

Pairing: Eventual Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Enjoy!

Part One: ArcJet

Part Two: The Prydwen

Part Three: Orders

Part Four: Finding Brandis

Part Five: Weston Water And Oberland

Part Six: Meeting Preston And Matthew

Part Seven: Radstag And Radstorm

Part Eight: The Return To Sanctuary Hills

Part Nine: Domestic Ruminations

Part Ten: Institutionalized

Part Eleven: Two Weeks, Three Days

Part Twelve: Haylen’s Warning And The Glowing Sea

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains extreme mental duress and graphic depictions of gore. Stay safe!]

M7-97.

That couldn't be right.

M7-97 .

Quinlan must have gotten something incorrect. A line of code must be askew. Maybe he had used the wrong cipher.

M7-97 .

" Danse, they know you're a synth! Please , you have to run! " Haylen had begged him, tears streaming down her face. If this was a joke, it was a disturbing one, and certainly in poor taste.

M7-97 .

Danse's stomach wouldn't stop tying itself in knots. He was distracted, dangerously so.

M7-97 .

Was Vega leading him into a trap? Was he being set up?

Was he really a synth? His memories swirled uncertainly, sterile and damning. Featureless gray buildings, scavenging through the ruins of the Capital Wasteland, alone, alone .

The meager breakfast he had eaten in the mess hall threatened to make a reappearance. Was he really a synth? Danse felt like he couldn't breathe, lightheaded from warring with his panic. He leaned against the double doors as Vega set up the location pulser, the knight fumbling for a moment with the fiddly gear.

"Wait, Vega." The paladin said abruptly when she was about to push the activation button. She turned to look at him and Danse's heart clenched in his chest.

He went to remove his helmet, the gorget seal hissing loudly in the stillness of the Sentinel site. Here amongst the towering stacks of carefully packaged warheads, the paladin made a split-second choice. If she had been sent along with him to end him, he wouldn't resist. But he needed to say his piece.

Rushed on by fear, nausea and the devastating knowledge that he would never see her again, Danse began to speak. "I just wanted you to know how immensely proud I am of you, Knight Vega," he choked out, half-expecting her to blow his head off now that he had offered her the opportunity. "You've done so much for the Brotherhood, for me , I...I'm at a loss for words."

Instead of killing him where he stood, Elizabeth removed her own helmet, her brilliant smile making Danse's heart trip violently. "Thank you, Danse." She replied softly, a gauntlet over her chest. Not in salute, but in sincerity.

Danse's finger twitched on the trigger of his rifle, but he forced himself to unclench his hand from the stock. No, not like this . She had offered him her vulnerability in turn, though hers seemed to be unwitting. He wouldn't sully their last encounter by being the one to fire first.

"When you arrived at the police station, I didn't know whether we could trust you. But as I said before you departed for the Institute, you've proved yourself time and again in my eyes. I am honored to have fought alongside you, and I'm honored to call you my friend," Danse's voice trembled, "Elizabeth."

"Gosh." Vega blinked at him, seeming concerned. "You really need that R and R, Danse. Look, this isn't the end of the world! We'll only be apart for a little while."

"Apart?" Danse asked, confused. He could have sworn that she was here to either kill him or simply keep him occupied until the rest of the Brotherhood arrived to put an end to him.

"Yeah, you're supposed to stay here to count and secure the bombs. Elder Maxson wanted me to report back double-time once I activated the pulser, according to that scribe at Echo." Backhand shrugged. "I dunno', seems kinda' dumb for me to hoof it if they're sending vertibirds, but I guess they trust you to make sure nothing stupid happens in the meantime."

She was leaving him alone? Danse's brain reeled with a million plans half-formed, a million courses of action that he could take. They're separating us , he realized. If she was being removed from the situation ahead of him, that allowed him tactical breathing room to devise a strategy. He wouldn't have to fight her. Wouldn't have to get her tangled in his mess. Wouldn't have to kill her . "Of course," he murmured. "Sorry, I...it's been a long day."

Backhand waved him off, rummaging through her satchel. That familiar bandanna emerged from the cavern of her bag and Danse forced himself to remain still as she got within melee distance. Her fingers surprisingly nimble in their gauntlets, she wound the 'lucky' bandanna around his neck and tucked the loose ends beneath his left ear. The fabric was worn and faded, a nondescript color that may have once been olive drab. It was technically much too big to be a simple bandanna, but he had no other name for the large square of cloth. A scarf, perhaps?

"There." She hummed, appearing pleased with her handiwork. "Now you'll have a little luck with you until we meet again."

Danse reached out almost against his will, the servos in his gauntlet whirring softly when he drew a finger from the cryo burn on her forehead down to the one on her chin. "Take care of yourself in my absence, Knight Vega." His throat ached.

"I will. Don't worry about me!" Backhand promised him with an easy grin. "I just hope you won't get bored to death out here all alone." She brought her hand down on the pulser, slipped her helmet back on and then threw him a salute. "Ad Victoriam, Paladin Danse."

And Paladin Logan Danse, pride of the Brotherhood of Steel, gave her the most razor-sharp salute of his career. "Ad Victoriam, Knight Vega."

…

He was going to be sick. Elizabeth had departed not five minutes ago and Danse dry heaved from nerves as he shoved his helmet back on.

He didn't have time to be sick.

M7-97 .

There was no way she had known. She would be safe. She could claim ignorance.

M7-97 .

Danse knew he didn't have long before the vertibirds arrived. Half of him was so sure this was all a mistake, a misunderstanding that he could easily clear up with a simple explanation. The other half of him was Haylen's anguished voice pleading Danse you have to run, they'll kill you!

And every second he wasted arguing with himself was a second that possible death drew closer. The paladin could feel his legs shaking in his armor frame, his whole body starting to tremble as the urge to flee threatened to swallow him whole. But no, he was a Brotherhood soldier.

Danse paced the floor in front of the double doors, making a point to leave the safety on his laser rifle. Whatever his fate, he would meet it peacefully. He would not open fire on his brothers and sisters, even if they were indeed arriving to slaughter him. If he truly was a synth, he reasoned desperately, then he needed to be destroyed. There could be no allowances or exceptions.

Had there ever been a real Danse?

He jerked to a halt at that, his heart dropping. Was he a replacement , or had there never been a 'real' Danse to begin with? The notion that the real Danse might have been disposed of ages ago to allow him to infiltrate the Brotherhood was...oh God, it was awful , Danse wished he had never thought of it.

M7-97 .

He slammed a fist down on the button for the lift. Vega had left via the same path, so he knew that it must eventually lead outside. That…

He shouldn't try to escape if he was a synth. He needed to be destroyed . If he wasn't one and he fled, it would just make him look even more guilty.

But...but he didn't want to die. After everything that he had survived, everything that he had overcome, all the suffering he had endured--

Oh God, he didn't want to die. Was this some malevolent failsafe programming, or was this just his human self-preservation instincts kicking in? Danse wanted to tear his hair out. He was second guessing every damn thing his body was doing, hyper-aware of the thunder of his pulse, the way his pace of respiration felt stilted and unnatural.

With a grind of gears the lift finally arrived at the bottom of its track.

Danse heard the armored footsteps approaching through the tunnels and he braced himself, hoping against hope that he was wrong, that everything was wrong. He couldn't be a synth. That couldn't be true. His entire existence couldn't be a lie. The emotions that ran rampant in him even now, the times he had longed to be less expressive, as sturdy and unwavering as his armor, the fear that tried to choke him...just a walking, talking falsehood?

Danse's stomach dropped out when a knight and numerous scribes emerged from the end of the tunnel, the armored individual brandishing a heavy gatling laser. The paladin heard the weapon spin up in warning and he realized he wasn't even getting a shot across the bow or a chance to surrender. All doubt was removed from his mind.

Danse, his body moving without conscious input, flung himself to the side. He dropped his rifle in his rush and it was obliterated by the deadly laser fire that dogged his footsteps while he lunged for the elevator. Hammering the button to raise the lift once he was onboard, Danse stumbled into the far corner of the platform.

" Abomination! " The knight screamed after him, making Danse cringe against the wall of the shaft. " Fuck you, what did you do with Danse?! " Lasers tore through the platform beneath Danse and the paladin staggered, almost losing his footing. " How dare you, freak! "

Whatever Danse would have said in reply caught in his throat, his eyes blurring with pained tears as the lift platform teetered and shrieked to a halt. The knight continued to aim upwards from beneath the platform, heedless of the damage that could be done to him should the whole thing give way. Danse jumped and grabbed the lip of the shaft, the gears under his pauldrons clicking loudly as he hauled himself up and over onto the small landing. Double doors greeted him and he shouldered them open hurriedly, hearing a resounding clang! as the elevator grating pulled itself apart and collapsed behind him.

The doors led to the outside of one of the exhaust pylons and Danse quickly swept his head back and forth, squinting in the irradiated light as he took in the landscape from his elevated perch. A lone vertibird sat empty beside the entrance to the site. They must have sent a vanguard squadron to... dispose of him before the rest of the fleet moved in.

The scaffolding creaked threateningly beneath the weight of his armor and then gave out, sending Danse plummeting to the ground. The paladin gritted his teeth on impact, feeling the shock rattle his legs and spine. He didn't have time. He needed to get away.

M7-97 .

His radio buzzed with static, solidifying into what resembled a repeating distress signal as Danse fled Site Prescott. He quickened his pace as soon as he dared to, too concerned about distancing himself from the rest of the Brotherhood to worry about turning off his radio. But then, a specific portion of the staticky distress message caught his attention.

"... remember that church steeple sticking out that we spotted a week ago? Go there, turn southwest and walk until you find a cave… "

Danse checked his compass, sighed, and then turned the radio up just enough so that he could determine if he was getting closer or further away from the origin point of the signal.

Calling it a cave smacked of charity instead of reality. It was more of a hollowed-out landslide of debris, and it looked on the verge of collapsing beneath the heft of its own weight. Danse crouched down, listening intently. He could still hear the faint sound of more vertibirds high above, but he didn't hear any motion inside the cave.

"... must have had a better suit or something… " The message continued repeating without a hitch.

Emboldened, the paladin crept forward into the cramped space. His sabatons scored the dead earth beneath him, dislodging chunks of cracked asphalt with every ponderous step. All he could hope is that he wasn't sauntering into some deathclaw's den, or a nest of radscorpions. Danse loathed entering tight spaces in his power armor.

His headlamp bounced off the walls, the light watered down and sickly from the heavy radiation storm that seethed overhead. Brain fungus cluttered the debris around him, bioluminescence glittering feebly in the gloom.

The man who had set up the distress signal (a raider, if Danse had to guess based solely on his voice and the bedraggled body on the ground in front of him) appeared to have expired from the radiation. His suit of power armor stood empty, and after a perfunctory examination Danse quickly spotted the problem. The fusion core was untouched, inserted improperly and thus wasn't powering the suit. A rookie mistake, one that had cost this raider his life.

On the spur of the moment, Danse made another choice that he knew would have serious repercussions.

Stepping out of his own armor, he hastily put the fresh core into his utility pouch and then extracted his half-spent one to slot into the raider's suit. He suddenly remembered Backhand's bandanna draped carefully around his neck and he fumbled with the cloth, tearing it free and shoving it into the pouch alongside the fresh core.

Radiation seared at his skin through his jumpsuit. Danse rushed to don the ramshackle armor, his body immediately noticing the difference in protection. The right leg on the armor was rusted through, but Danse didn't have the luxury of time on his side to change it out. At least the frame was still sound.

Paladin Danse emerged from the other end of the cave, the raider armor shrieking in protest as he knocked the grit out of the joints. The rubber gaskets around the neck and gauntlets were worn to almost nothing, and Danse could feel the irradiated rain seeping into the suit.

He raised his head, squinting through the hissing droplets that marred the face shielding, and finally caught sight of the overpass in the distance when it was brought into stark contrast against the sky by a jagged flash of yellowed lightning.

Danse didn't actively think for quite a while. He simply put one foot in front of the other and intermittently checked his compass, doing his best to avoid the meandering packs of ferals that dotted the perpetually gloam-shrouded landscape. This armor was barely capable of shielding him from the radiation; he wasn't overeager to test its combat capabilities.

Unfortunately, a territorial deathclaw didn't give him much of a choice. Danse knew he was severely outmatched, and he certainly knew he wouldn't be able to outrun the swift creature. So it was down to him finding stable high ground, his service pistol cracking in the green twilight as he squared off with the massive beast.

It roared and charged at him, bounding up the hillside faster than Danse could backpedal. He quickly found himself beneath the creature, the claws that were its namesake raking through the welded-together pauldrons while Danse pressed the muzzle of his pistol to the beast's unprotected stomach and pumped it full of bullets. The deathclaw roared again, fitting the top of Danse's helmet into its mouth and biting down.

The shriek of metal rang in Danse's ears and his jaw locked up as a portion of the helm gave way, his nose immediately broken under the assault.

He prayed he hadn't run his magazine dry just yet, because reloading in this position might prove difficult. His left gauntlet grappled beneath the deathclaw's chin, crushing the mutated beast's throat until it finally released the grip it had on his helmet. Danse braced the point of his elbow against the ground at his side and just held down the trigger until the weapon clicked emptily.

The deathclaw was still fighting (albeit a bit less staunchly) and Danse took the opportunity to release his gun, slam his gauntlets down on the creature's prominent horns and twist its head violently until the neck snapped.

It went limp on top of him and Danse laid there for a moment, simply trying to catch his breath. He had been wholly silent through the encounter, and his heart sank as he determined that no human would have faced down a deathclaw so quietly.

M7-97 .

A vertibird flew by overhead, a very familiar munitions crate dangling from the main body by way of a cargo cable.

Danse wriggled out from beneath the deathclaw's body once the flying vehicle had passed, managing to shed the helmet after he rose. He knew he must look grisly; he had felt his nose break and he could only imagine what else had shattered.

But the overpass that marked the edge of the Glowing Sea loomed nearby, a Lovecraftian sentry tall and motionless in the constant yellow-green lightning of the radstorms. The same urgency that had fueled Danse before returned once again as he heard the distant roar of more vertibirds. They would be searching for him.

Danse lumbered forward, not really picking a direction so much as trying to move away as fast as he possibly could. He was limping in the armor but he didn't dare to stop and assess the damage. If he stopped, he was dead.

So he didn't stop.

Danse ran through the night, the driving rain pooling at the gorget gasket before his next step would tilt his hips and dump the water down into the frame. He burned through the rest of his core and paused only momentarily to switch to the fresh one, agony spiking hot behind his eyes when he peeled his body free of the shredded pauldrons and slammed the new fusion core home in the backplate. Exhaustion knotted his muscles as he forced himself back into the suit. The metal latched down like the deathclaw's talons, perforating his shoulders anew and all but bonding him to the inside of the frame.

And he didn't stop. One foot in front of the other, body wracked with shivers from being soaked to the skin, his mind terrifyingly empty, devoid of any thoughts, Danse simply fled.

The second core burned out just as the clouds were beginning to pink up at the horizon and Danse abandoned the armor in a grove of sticks that might have once been a picturesque copse of birch. Without armor the going was admittedly slower. Danse knew he had lost too much blood to keep this up for much longer without causing severe damage, possibly long-term effects--

Did things like that even matter anymore? He was a synth .

M7-97 .

Just thinking about that reality again had Danse hiccupping and retching, the man staggering to grab hold of a tree as his legs tried to give out. The brittle trunk split under his ungainly weight and Danse found himself tumbling forward over a steep bluff, the paladin's body finally crashing to a halt in a nest of shrubs at the base of the cliff.

With all the wind knocked out of his lungs, Danse welcomed the darkness of unconsciousness that rose to greet him.

After that, it was a blur. Two tiny hands grabbed underneath his arms, Danse's large frame obviously too heavy to be budged by the owner of said hands. The taste of blood dripped down his throat from his broken nose, making his stomach churn. Danse couldn't even muster up the strength to open his eyes.

" Easy there, Matt! He's hurt. Wait for your brothers and I ."

Part Fourteen

#fallout 4 #fallout four #paladin danse #paladin danse x sole survivor #fallout fandom #fallout fanfic #paladin danse/sole survivor #paladin danse x f!sole #paladin danse imagine #fo4 companions imagine #fo4 companions #fo4 paladin danse #canon-typical violence #spoilers #Eventual romance #slow burn #brotherhood of steel

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path-of-my-childhood · 6 years ago

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Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’

By: Laura Snapes for The Guardian Date: August 24th 2019

Taylor Swift’s Nashville apartment is an Etsy fever dream, a 365-days-a-year Christmas shop, pure teenage girl id. You enter through a vestibule clad in blue velvet and covered in gilt frames bursting with fake flowers. The ceiling is painted like the night sky. Above a koi pond in the living area, a narrow staircase spirals six feet up towards a giant, pillow-lagged birdcage that probably has the best view in the city. Later, Swift will tell me she needs metaphors “to understand anything that happens to me”, and the birdcage defies you not to interpret it as a pointed comment on the contradictions of stardom.

Swift, wearing pale jeans and dip-dyed shirt, her sandy hair tied in a blue scrunchie, leads the way up the staircase to show me the view. The decor hasn’t changed since she bought this place in 2009, when she was 19. “All of these high rises are new since then,” she says, gesturing at the squat glass structures and cranes. Meanwhile her oven is still covered in stickers, more teenage diary than adult appliance.

Now 29, she has spent much of the past three years living quietly in London with her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, making the penthouse a kind of time capsule, a monument to youthful naivety given an unlimited budget – the years when she sang about Romeo and Juliet and wore ballgowns to awards shows; before she moved to New York and honed her slick, self-mythologising pop.

It is mid-August. This is Swift’s first UK interview in more than three years, and she seems nervous: neither presidential nor goofy (her usual defaults), but quick with a tongue-out “ugh” of regret or frustration as she picks at her glittery purple nails. We climb down from the birdcage to sit by the pond, and when the conversation turns to 2016, the year the wheels came off for her, Swift stiffens as if driving over a mile of speed bumps. After a series of bruising public spats (with Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj) in 2015, there was a high-profile standoff with Kanye West. The news that she was in a relationship with actor Tom Hiddleston, which leaked soon after, was widely dismissed as a diversionary tactic. Meanwhile, Swift went to court to prosecute a sexual assault claim, and faced a furious backlash when she failed to endorse a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, allowing the alt-right to adopt her as their “Aryan princess”.

Her critics assumed she cared only about the bottom line. The reality, Swift says, is that she was totally broken. “Every domino fell,” she says bitterly. “It became really terrifying for anyone to even know where I was. And I felt completely incapable of doing or saying anything publicly, at all. Even about my music. I always said I wouldn’t talk about what was happening personally, because that was a personal time.” She won’t get into specifics. “I just need some things that are mine,” she despairs. “Just some things.”

A year later, in 2017, Swift released her album Reputation, half high-camp heel turn, drawing on hip-hop and vaudeville (the brilliantly hammy Look What You Made Me Do), half stunned appreciation that her nascent relationship with Alwyn had weathered the storm (the soft, sensual pop of songs Delicate and Dress).

Her new album, Lover, her seventh, was released yesterday. It’s much lighter than Reputation: Swift likens writing it to feeling like “I could take a full deep breath again”. Much of it is about Alwyn: the Galway Girl-ish track London Boy lists their favourite city haunts and her newfound appreciation of watching rugby in the pub with his uni mates; on the ruminative Afterglow, she asks him to forgive her anxious tendency to assume the worst.

While she has always written about relationships, they were either teenage fantasy or a postmortem on a high-profile breakup, with exes such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles. But she and Alwyn have seldom been pictured together, and their relationship is the only other thing she won’t talk about. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she says, laughing after I attempt a stealthy angle. “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it – but it’s just that it goes out into the world. That’s where the boundary is, and that’s where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”

Instead, she has swapped personal disclosure for activism. Last August, Swift broke her political silence to endorse Democratic Tennessee candidate Phil Bredesen in the November 2018 senate race. Vote.org reported an unprecedented spike in voting registration after Swift’s Instagram post, while Donald Trump responded that he liked her music “about 25% less now”.

Meanwhile, her recent single You Need To Calm Down admonished homophobes and namechecked US LGBTQ rights organisation Glaad (which then saw increased donations). Swift filled her video with cameos from queer stars such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen singer Adam Lambert, and capped it with a call to sign her petition in support of the Equality Act, which if passed would prohibit gender- and sexuality-based discrimination in the US. A video of Polish LGBTQ fans miming the track in defiance of their government’s homophobic agenda went viral. But Swift was accused of “queerbaiting” and bandwagon-jumping. You can see how she might find it hard to work out what, exactly, people want from her.

***

It was girlhood that made Swift a multimillionaire. When country music’s gatekeepers swore that housewives were the only women interested in the genre, she proved them wrong. Her self-titled debut marked the longest stay on the Billboard 200 by any album released in the decade. A potentially cloying image – corkscrew curls, lyrics thick on “daddy” and down-home values – were undercut by the fact she was evidently, endearingly, a bit of a freak, an unusual combination of intensity and artlessness. Also, she was really, really good at what she did, and not just for a teenager: her entirely self-written third album, 2010’s Speak Now, is unmatched in its devastatingly withering dismissals of awful men.

As a teenager, Swift was obsessed with VH1’s Behind The Music, the series devoted to the rise and fall of great musicians. She would forensically rewatch episodes, trying to pinpoint the moment a career went wrong. I ask her to imagine she’s watching the episode about herself and do the same thing: where was her misstep? “Oh my God,” she says, drawing a deep breath and letting her lips vibrate as she exhales. “I mean, that’s so depressing!” She thinks back and tries to deflect. “What I remember is that [the show] was always like, ‘Then we started fighting in the tour bus and then the drummer quit and the guitarist was like, “You’re not paying me enough.”’’’

But that’s not what she used to say. In interviews into her early 20s, Swift often observed that an artist fails when they lose their self-awareness, as if repeating the fact would work like an insurance against succumbing to the same fate. But did she make that mistake herself? She squeezes her nose and blows to clear a ringing in her ears before answering. “I definitely think that sometimes you don’t realise how you’re being perceived,” she says. “Pop music can feel like it’s The Hunger Games, and like we’re gladiators. And you can really lose focus of the fact that that’s how it feels because that’s how a lot of stan [fan] Twitter and tabloids and blogs make it seem – the overanalysing of everything makes it feel really intense.”

She describes the way she burned bridges in 2016 as a kind of obliviousness. “I didn’t realise it was like a classic overthrow of someone in power – where you didn’t realise the whispers behind your back, you didn’t realise the chain reaction of events that was going to make everything fall apart at the exact, perfect time for it to fall apart.”

Here’s that chain reaction in full. With her 2014 album 1989 (the year she was born), Swift transcended country stardom, becoming as ubiquitous as Beyoncé. For the first time she vocally embraced feminism, something she had rejected in her teens; but, after a while, it seemed to amount to not much more than a lot of pictures of her hanging out with her “squad”, a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham. The squad very much did not include her former friend Katy Perry, whom Swift targeted in her song Bad Blood, as part of what seemed like a painfully overblown dispute about some backing dancers. Then, when Nicki Minaj tweeted that MTV’s 2015 Video Music awards had rewarded white women at the expense of women of colour, multiple-nominee Swift took it personally, responding: “Maybe one of the men took your slot.” For someone prone to talking about the haters, she quickly became her own worst enemy.

Her old adversary Kanye West resurfaced in February 2016. In 2009, West had invaded Swift’s stage at the MTV VMAs to protest against her victory over Beyoncé in the female video of the year category. It remains the peak of interest in Swift on Google Trends, and the conflict between them has become such a cornerstone of celebrity journalism that it’s hard to remember it lay dormant for nearly seven years – until West released his song Famous. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex,” he rapped. “Why? I made that bitch famous.” The video depicted a Swift mannequin naked in bed with men including Trump.

Swift loudly condemned both; although she had discussed the track with West, she said she had never agreed to the “bitch” lyric or the video. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, released a heavily edited clip that showed Swift at least agreeing to the “sex” line on the phone with West, if not the “bitch” part. Swift pleaded the technicality, but it made no difference: when Kardashian went on Twitter to describe her as a snake, the comparison stuck and the singer found herself very publicly “cancelled” – the incident taken as “proof” of Swift’s insincerity. So she went away.

Swift says she stopped trying to explain herself, even though she “definitely” could have. As she worked on Reputation, she was also writing “a think-piece a day that I knew I would never publish: the stuff I would say, and the different facets of the situation that nobody knew”. If she could exonerate herself, why didn’t she? She leans forward. “Here’s why,” she says conspiratorially. “Because when people are in a hate frenzy and they find something to mutually hate together, it bonds them. And anything you say is in an echo chamber of mockery.”

She compares that year to being hit by a tidal wave. “You can either stand there and let the wave crash into you, and you can try as hard as you can to fight something that’s more powerful and bigger than you,” she says. “Or you can dive under the water, hold your breath, wait for it to pass and while you’re down there, try to learn something. Why was I in that part of the ocean? There were clearly signs that said: Rip tide! Undertow! Don’t swim! There are no lifeguards!” She’s on a roll. “Why was I there? Why was I trusting people I trusted? Why was I letting people into my life the way I was letting them in? What was I doing that caused this?”

After the incident with Minaj, her critics started pointing out a narrative of “white victimhood” in Swift’s career. Speaking slowly and carefully, she says she came to understand “a lot about how my privilege allowed me to not have to learn about white privilege. I didn’t know about it as a kid, and that is privilege itself, you know? And that’s something that I’m still trying to educate myself on every day. How can I see where people are coming from, and understand the pain that comes with the history of our world?”

She also accepts some responsibility for her overexposure, and for some of the tabloid drama. If she didn’t wish a friend happy birthday on Instagram, there would be reports about severed friendships, even if they had celebrated together. “Because we didn’t post about it, it didn’t happen – and I realised I had done that,” she says. “I created an expectation that everything in my life that happened, people would see.”

But she also says she couldn’t win. “I’m kinda used to being gaslit by now,” she drawls wearily. “And I think it happens to women so often that, as we get older and see how the world works, we’re able to see through what is gaslighting. So I’m able to look at 1989 and go – KITTIES!” She breaks off as an assistant walks in with Swift’s three beloved cats, stars of her Instagram feed, back from the vet before they fly to England this week. Benjamin, Olivia and Meredith haughtily circle our feet (they are scared of the koi) as Swift resumes her train of thought, back to the release of 1989 and the subsequent fallout. “Oh my God, they were mad at me for smiling a lot and quote-unquote acting fake. And then they were mad at me that I was upset and bitter and kicking back.” The rules kept changing.

***

Swift’s new album comes with printed excerpts from her diaries. On 29 August 2016, she wrote in her girlish, bubble writing: “This summer is the apocalypse.” As the incident with West and Kardashian unfolded, she was preparing for her court case against radio DJ David Mueller, who was fired in 2013 after Swift reported him for putting his hand up her dress at a meet-and–greet event. He sued her for defamation; she countersued for sexual assault.

“Having dealt with a few of them, narcissists basically subscribe to a belief system that they should be able to do and say whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want to,” Swift says now, talking at full pelt. “And if we – as anyone else in the world, but specifically women – react to that, well, we’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to have a reaction to their actions.”

In summer 2016 she was in legal depositions, practising her testimony. “You’re supposed to be really polite to everyone,” she says. But by the time she got to court in August 2017, “something snapped, I think”. She laughs. Her testimony was sharp and uncompromising. She refused to allow Mueller’s lawyers to blame her or her security guards; when asked if she could see the incident, Swift said no, because “my ass is in the back of my body”. It was a brilliant, rude defence.

“You’re supposed to behave yourself in court and say ‘rear end’,” she says with mock politesse. “The other lawyer was saying, ‘When did he touch your backside?’ And I was like, ‘ASS! Call it what it is!’” She claps between each word. But despite the acclaim for her testimony and eventual victory (she asked for one symbolic dollar), she still felt belittled. It was two months prior to the beginning of the #MeToo movement. “Even this case was literally twisted so hard that people were calling it the ‘butt-grab case’. They were saying I sued him because there’s this narrative that I want to sue everyone. That was one of the reasons why the summer was the apocalypse.”

She never wanted the assault to be made public. Have there been other instances she has dealt with privately? “Actually, no,” she says soberly. “I’m really lucky that it hadn’t happened to me before. But that was one of the reasons it was so traumatising. I just didn’t know that could happen. It was really brazen, in front of seven people.” She has since had security cameras installed at every meet-and-greet she does, deliberately pointed at her lower half. “If something happens again, we can prove it with video footage from every angle,” she says.

The allegations about Harvey Weinstein came out soon after she won her case. The film producer had asked her to write a song for the romantic comedy One Chance, which earned her second Golden Globe nomination. Weinstein also got her a supporting role in the 2014 sci-fi movie The Giver, and attended the launch party for 1989. But she says they were never alone together.

“He’d call my management and be like, ‘Does she have a song for this film?’ And I’d be like, ‘Here it is,’” she says dispassionately. “And then I’d be at the Golden Globes. I absolutely never hung out. And I would get a vibe – I would never vouch for him. I believe women who come forward, I believe victims who come forward, I believe men who come forward.” Swift inhales, flustered. She says Weinstein never propositioned her. “If you listen to the stories, he picked people who were vulnerable, in his opinion. It seemed like it was a power thing. So, to me, that doesn’t say anything – that I wasn’t in that situation.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was more than nine months into his presidency, and still Swift had not taken a position. But the idea that a pop star could ever have impeded his path to the White House seemed increasingly naive. In hindsight, the demand that Swift speak up looks less about politics and more about her identity (white, rich, powerful) and a moralistic need for her to redeem herself – as if nobody else had ever acted on a vindictive instinct, or blundered publicly.

But she resisted what might have been an easy return to public favour. Although Reputation contained softer love songs, it was better known for its brittle, vengeful side (see This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things). She describes that side of the album now as a “bit of a persona”, and its hip-hop-influenced production as “a complete defence mechanism”. Personally, I thought she had never been more relatable, trashing the contract of pious relatability that traps young women in the public eye.

***

It was the assault trial, and watching the rights of LGBTQ friends be eroded, that finally politicised her, Swift says. “The things that happen to you in your life are what develop your political opinions. I was living in this Obama eight-year paradise of, you go, you cast your vote, the person you vote for wins, everyone’s happy!” she says. “This whole thing, the last three, four years, it completely blindsided a lot of us, me included.”

She recently said she was “dismayed” when a friend pointed out that her position on gay rights wasn’t obvious (what if she had a gay son, he asked), hence this summer’s course correction with the single You Need To Calm Down (“You’re comin’ at my friends like a missile/Why are you mad?/When you could be GLAAD?”). Didn’t she feel equally dismayed that her politics weren’t clear? “I did,” she insists, “and I hate to admit this, but I felt that I wasn’t educated enough on it. Because I hadn’t actively tried to learn about politics in a way that I felt was necessary for me, making statements that go out to hundreds of millions of people.”

She explains her inner conflict. “I come from country music. The number one thing they absolutely drill into you as a country artist, and you can ask any other country artist this, is ‘Don’t be like the Dixie Chicks!’” In 2003, the Texan country trio denounced the Iraq war, saying they were “ashamed” to share a home state with George W Bush. There was a boycott, and an event where a bulldozer crushed their CDs. “I watched country music snuff that candle out. The most amazing group we had, just because they talked about politics. And they were getting death threats. They were made such an example that basically every country artist that came after that, every label tells you, ‘Just do not get involved, no matter what.’

“And then, you know, if there was a time for me to get involved…” Swift pauses. “The worst part of the timing of what happened in 2016 was I felt completely voiceless. I just felt like, oh God, who would want me? Honestly.” She would otherwise have endorsed Hillary Clinton? “Of course,” she says sincerely. “I just felt completely, ugh, just useless. And maybe even like a hindrance.”

I suggest that, thinking selfishly, her coming out for Clinton might have made people like her. “I wasn’t thinking like that,” she stresses. “I was just trying to protect my mental health – not read the news very much, go cast my vote, tell people to vote. I just knew what I could handle and I knew what I couldn’t. I was literally about to break. For a while.” Did she seek therapy? “That stuff I just really wanna keep personal, if that’s OK,” she says.

She resists blaming anyone else for her political silence. Her emergence as a Democrat came after she left Big Machine, the label she signed to at 15. (They are now at loggerheads after label head Scott Borchetta sold the company, and the rights to Swift’s first six albums, to Kanye West’s manager, Scooter Braun.) Had Borchetta ever advised her against speaking out? She exhales. “It was just me and my life, and also doing a lot of self-reflection about how I did feel really remorseful for not saying anything. I wanted to try and help in any way that I could, the next time I got a chance. I didn’t help, I didn’t feel capable of it – and as soon as I can, I’m going to.”

Swift was once known for throwing extravagant 4 July parties at her Rhode Island mansion. The Instagram posts from these star-studded events – at which guests wore matching stars-and-stripes bikinis and onesies – probably supported a significant chunk of the celebrity news industry GDP. But in 2017, they stopped. “The horror!” wrote Cosmopolitan, citing “reasons that remain a mystery” for their disappearance. It wasn’t “squad” strife or the unavailability of matching cozzies that brought the parties to an end, but Swift’s disillusionment with her country, she says.

There is a smart song about this on the new album – the track that should have been the first single, instead of the cartoonish ME!. Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince is a forlorn, gothic ballad in the vein of Lana Del Rey that uses high-school imagery to dismantle American nationalism: “The whole school is rolling fake dice/You play stupid games/You win stupid prizes,” she sings with disdain. “Boys will be boys then/Where are the wise men?”

As an ambitious 11-year-old, she worked out that singing the national anthem at sports games was the quickest way to get in front of a large audience. When did she start feeling conflicted about what America stands for? She gives another emphatic ugh. “It was the fact that all the dirtiest tricks in the book were used and it worked,” she says. “The thing I can’t get over right now is gaslighting the American public into being like” – she adopts a sanctimonious tone – “‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’ We’re a democracy – at least, we’re supposed to be – where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate.” She doesn’t use Trump’s name. “I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy.”

As we speak, Tennessee lawmakers are trying to impose a near-total ban on abortion. Swift has staunchly defended her “Tennessee values” in recent months. What’s her position? “I mean, obviously, I’m pro-choice, and I just can’t believe this is happening,” she says. She looks close to tears. “I can’t believe we’re here. It’s really shocking and awful. And I just wanna do everything I can for 2020. I wanna figure out exactly how I can help, what are the most effective ways to help. ’Cause this is just…” She sighs again. “This is not it.”

***

It is easy to forget that the point of all this is that a teenage Taylor Swiftwanted to write love songs. Nemeses and negativity are now so entrenched in her public persona that it’s hard to know how she can get back to that, though she seems to want to. At the end of Daylight, the new album’s dreamy final song, there’s a spoken-word section: “I want to be defined by the things that I love,” she says as the music fades. “Not the things that I hate, not the things I’m afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night.” As well as the songs written for Alwyn, there is one for her mother, who recently experienced a cancer relapse: “You make the best of a bad deal/I just pretend it isn’t real,” Swift sings, backed by the Dixie Chicks.

How does writing about her personal life work if she’s setting clearer boundaries? “It actually made me feel more free,” she says. “I’ve always had this habit of never really going into detail about exactly what situation inspired what thing, but even more so now.” This is only half true: in the past, Swift wasn’t shy of a level of detail that invited fans to figure out specific truths about her relationships. And when I tell her that Lover feels a more emotionally guarded album, she bristles. “I know the difference between making art and living your life like a reality star,” she says. “And then even if it’s hard for other people to grasp, my definition is really clear.”

Even so, Swift begins Lover by addressing an adversary, opening with a song called I Forgot That You Existed (“it isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference”), presumably aimed at Kanye West, a track that slightly defeats its premise by existing. But it sweeps aside old dramas to confront Swift’s real nemesis, herself. “I never grew up/It’s getting so old,” she laments on The Archer.

She has had to learn not to pre-empt disaster, nor to run from it. Her life has been defined by relationships, friendships and business relationships that started and ended very publicly (though she and Perry are friends again). At the same time, the rules around celebrity engagement have evolved beyond recognition in her 15 years of fame. Rather than trying to adapt to them, she’s now asking herself: “How do you learn to maintain? How do you learn not to have these phantom disasters in your head that you play out, and how do you stop yourself from sabotage – because the panic mechanism in your brain is telling you that something must go wrong.” For her, this is what growing up is. “You can’t just make cut-and-dry decisions in life. A lot of things are a negotiation and a grey area and a dance of how to figure it out.”

And so this time, Swift is sticking around. In December she will turn 30, marking the point after which more than half her life will have been lived in public. She’ll start her new decade with a stronger self-preservationist streak, and a looser grip (as well as a cameo in Cats). “You can’t micromanage life, it turns out,” she says, drily.

When Swift finally answered my question about the moment she would choose in the VH1 Behind The Music episode about herself, the one where her career turned, she said she hoped it wouldn’t focus on her “apocalypse” summer of 2016. “Maybe this is wishful thinking,” she said, “but I’d like to think it would be in a couple of years.” It’s funny to hear her hope that the worst is still to come while sitting in her fairytale living room, the cats pacing: a pragmatist at odds with her romantic monument to teenage dreams. But it sounds something like perspective.

#taylor swift #interview #by taylor #the guardian #lover era #lover album #not sure how I feel about the interviewer's approach...there's a lot of irony in it #but a fun read for us nonetheless

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carlyraejepstein · 4 years ago

Text

potentially upsetting topics: sui, gender dysphoria, abuse and parents, sex

Elliot Page’s coming out rescued an awful day. Its wording is unbelievably powerful, a comment I have made once before and will continue to do so. In it, he so strongly encompasses the fears, the sorrow, the rage, but most importantly the determination and the defiance of not only him but every trans person. I hesitate to use the word “community” because it implies a certain connection that might just not be there; I play a bit of Counter-Strike but I don’t consider myself part of the Counter-Strike community; yet when I read Elliot’s words I feel solidarity, I feel a pull to the trans community that I often don’t feel I pay my dues to, and it feels good, really good. Like I said on Twitter once, other trans people being, existing, living, is just rad. Inspiring, even, despite how that word has been worn out by cis people.

However, there’s a certain something that Elliot didn’t write, for Elliot never wrote “I am a man”; only his name, and pronouns, how he wishes to be referred to. Of course, we cannot possibly know what this omission means or does not mean to Elliot, but it’s something that concurred with a shift in how I perceive my own gender.

I remember first properly ruminating on gender in 2012 or 2013. My understanding was primitive, coming from Wikipedia. Once I knew what transgender or, given the time period, transsexual, the curiosity never really went away. I knew at this point about transition, and I knew about deed polls because of my resentment of my parents, I knew about HRT and I even knew about the GICs. I felt compelled to be an ally in that turbulent period in both my life and in the online culture I immersed myself in from around 2015 to 2017. At this time a friend was going through their own transition and seeing them gave me pause for thought; partly pride, partly worry but a small kernel of imagination, wondering if that could ever be me. It was when I went to sixth form, with its environment permitting greater yet still constrained self expression, that I felt gender dysphoria hit me with its full weight. Thinking, wondering, worrying about being transgender has been the central dialogue of my internal and external monologue ever since. Not a day passes where I don’t think about the dysphoria I feel over my continued closet-dwelling and the malignantly gendered properties of my body. On a January morning in 2019, at my very lowest point, motionless under the covers, I gave myself a choice between transition and death, and I chose transition.

It’s been a complex journey. When I was 13 I shortened my gender neutral name to make it more masc (which I have now happily embraced as my middle name). I leant into the deepening of my voice because I thought it gave me authority, conditioned through the harsh words of people from public Team Fortress 2 servers. I’ve done almost everything under the sun that gets people to say “I’d never have known!” when you come out to them; I worry that I still do and that nothing has changed. I’ve gone and cross-dressed when my parents were out, and I’ve been traumatised by Susan’s Place. I am autistic, no one who has met me can escape that fact; not that I would want to, and as a consequence I am so much more confident in my presence on the internet than I ever have been in the flesh, despite me still not knowing how to make friends; hence I’ve ended up trying to piece my transition together through 4chan (I know, bad) and Reddit and Twitter.

Perhaps the biggest reason I am not out is the time when I decided I would come out to my mother as trans. When we were in Munich we had walked past a pride parade, and when we got back to the apartment I revealed off hand that I was bi. My mother chided me for not telling them before hand since it was “polite” to do so, as if it were not my choice to make because, as I still believe to this day, it’s not a big deal and it’s none of their business. But I decided this time it was important, and that I could trust her. It turns out that just like every other time, trusting my mother is a bad idea that is guaranteed to cause me pain every time I make that mistake. She told me that because she “knows more about [me] than [I] do”, that she thought that I was just straight up wrong, couched it in rhetoric about how she thought that I was too weak to be trans, and quoted the shockingly offensive “autism is extreme male brain” theory to me. It was really devastating at the time and I think it still affects me to this day, especially as she constantly tries to worm her tendrils back into my life after I moved out.

But enough about my mother; she is a fucking flat out abuser. She has emotionally abused me, and undoubtedly my brother, all our lives. I was relieved that my dad chose not to react aggressively as she did, but with a modicum of respect and agreement not to make such a big deal out of it, something I would never expect my mother to match. In the middle of writing this piece I had to decide that I could not do it any longer, and I would never let her back into my life again.

Where that conversation in late 2018 relates to Elliot Page’s statement is my mother’s purported belief that “you don’t have to define yourself as a man or a woman”. Going past the fact that she is lying, since her tolerance for all trans people is thinner than the grey hairs on her head going on the basis that she couldn’t bring herself to say one positive thing to her own daughter that afternoon, it struck me recently that I can more eloquently describe my gender through elimination rather than a label. I am happy to call myself a woman, a trans woman, and I don’t feel as if I really am wavering in or around the binary. But what I can say for definite is that while I have been a boy for almost all my life, and am holding onto that, I am not, and never will be, a man.

Where that leaves me is that I am not a man, but must I be a woman? If I am perhaps not a woman, am I non-binary? No; it doesn’t feel right. However, if I attach just a convenience to the label woman, I can give myself that flexibility in how I feel and how I present myself, and perhaps the biggest example of that is how in recent months I have made peace with my voice. It is not really a femme voice; I hit vocal fry just speaking normally. But I know how to be expressive with it; it is my voice that I have honed over 19 years after all. One day I want to find someone who will help me upgrade my voice (and yes, upgrade) but keeping it means I fulfil one cool thing about being trans, and that is saying fuck you to the very existence of the gender binary. I keep this voice out of necessity, but I’m still trans femme, I am still a woman and I still want my facial hair zapped off.

As well, I reserve the right to say I used to be a boy. Not a man, but a boy. That’s why they call it boymoding, right? How else can I describe the first 17 years of my life? I can be a boy all the same now, although I may be pushing it aged 20, and at the point at which I am really stretching that concept which at this point I am adhering to solely for my safety and comfort, I shouldn’t need to use it anymore. Wishful thinking, of course.

I think we should consider why we use “man” and “woman” in the first place. From my perspective they are simply words to describe people with two different sets of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, convenient because, well, being cis is unavoidably common. But they are not discrete, as we so often have to reiterate using intersex people as an unwilling crutch, where one does not occur in the other they are so often analogous and often they overlap! Supposedly 60% of teenage boys develop further breast tissue, and 40% of women have some form of facial hair. Thinking that the two are discrete gives rise to the idea of “biological sex”, a concept developed by cis people either to misgender trans people in a way they think is philosophically rigorous, or to reconcile their tenuous support for trans people with a continuing belief in the gender binary. Personally I would like to smash the concept of biological sex to bits because it is not useful to us. At the very least it may describe one’s primary sexual characteristics but bottom surgery exists, and I don’t happen to think that it is “mutilation”. I don’t need to argue that “biological sex can be changed”; they are not discrete categories, and I don’t need to move between them, or seek validation for having moved between them. It is not a helpful generalisation for bodies, diverse as they are.

I must add that as a trans woman the fact that I may have a penis doesn’t mean that I use it in the same way as a man. I use mine to pee, primarily, and it’s definitely not going inside anyone except myself any time soon; a whole zine was written about how trans women fuck and use their bits to fuck, so I definitely don’t need to anyway.

Another bullshit concept is “biological destiny” or “biological reality”, although I will give less breath to this one because at it’s core it is fundamentally misogynistic, and it so often is divorced from any sensible definition of reality. It’s like if I had to have my arm amputated and then someone came up to me and said “you’ll always have two arms, you were born with them and you’ll die with them”.

I’ve heard and thought a lot about gender abolition but it seems to me that its proponents expect that like the state, gendered differences will just disappear over time. But I don’t want that to happen. If the binary is done away with I don’t want gender to disappear I want it to flourish! Because gender is beautiful, men are beautiful, women are beautiful, and everyone in between or outwith are beautiful. On the other hand, me and you don’t need to be men, or women, or call ourselves non-binary to be beautiful. Being trans is about cultivating your own beauty and your own identity. When cissiety demands that the only identity and presentation we’re allowed is one that corresponds to what they decided was between our legs when we were born, why give ourselves only one other choice?

I don’t really know how to end this piece because I wrote one half of it one day and the other half a couple of weeks later. At the very least I’m glad I can attribute my peace with not necessarily being a woman but a femme to Elliot Page, and not my rotten bastard mother.

#trans #transgender #elliot page #gender abolition

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