#except no because everyone else can do it and they were all taught similarly so i might actually have a learning disability..... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

eviltothecore13 · 2 years ago

Text

I'm British and similarly my parents read to me, they also taught me the alphabet and "a goes ah, b goes buh" etc when I was like 3, and again they assumed I'd memorised books at first and then realised I was actually reading them.

When I started school, I got told off in front of the class for knowing how to read ANYTHING, my parents were called in and told "why did you teach them to read? you'll have ruined their ability to read properly now, you'll have done it wrong, only SCHOOLS can teach children anything!", and they refused to believe my parents when they said I hadn't been formally taught to read and had picked it up from being read to. I was then forbidden by the school from reading any books above the level I was "meant to be at" i.e. well below the level I was actually at, even though this led to me being insanely bored in class (and therefore "acting out", and therefore getting a reputation as a "bad kid", and therefore being blamed for all kinds of things that I didn't even do for the next few years and generally harassed and bullied by teachers and students until my parents finally took me out of school when I was 8 and homeschooled me.)

I never paid attention in a single school phonics lesson: I DO think kids should be taught about the sounds letters make, but teaching it in very rigid formal phonics lessons where they are ONLY allowed to read the Approved Phonics Books which were written with Teaching Phonics very very obviously taking priority over telling a good story, and when you have finished one phonics book your only option is to move onto the next phonics book, with the school timetable giving NO time to read anything else that might be more interesting, seems like a very good way to convince kids that reading is a horrific chore. Pretty much every kid I knew in school who was taught to read exclusively through that method, and didn't have many books at home or their parents reading more interesting things to them, didn't enjoy reading much and didn't pick up reading for fun even when we were older and got more access to the other books in the school library. Maybe they picked it up eventually, maybe they didn't, but they weren't spending their spare time reading for fun when they were 8 or so.

Meanwhile by the time I was that age I spent a lot of my spare time reading, children's books of course but they ranged from collections of short stories, Diana Wynne Jones, H*rry P*tter unfortunately, the Hobbit (I think I was more like 11 or 12 when I read LOTR)... and I could probably have read SOME of those books earlier, when I was 6 or so, except that 5/6-year-old me had a bit of difficulty moving from books being something I always finished in one sitting to longer books--because I was proud of always finishing the shorter books for younger children in one sitting, I thought that I was meant to finish every book that way, so it took me a year or so to warm up to the idea of reading books where that wasn't possible and during that time I wasn't reading books that I was technically capable of reading. Which wasn't directly related to my actual reading ABILITY. As for the homeschooling lessons I had from the age of 8 onwards...well, by that point we'd moved past "letters make these sounds" and onto "read a book and write a short report on it", comprehension exercises, and similar stuff.

By the time I was 13 I had read some Shakespeare, I'd read Oliver Twist and Great Expectations though I got incredibly bored with both of them, I think I read Les Miserables about that time as well, all for fun or in some cases because my parents found lists of "books everyone should read" but they always framed those as a suggestion and not as "assigned reading" that I was FORCED to do... and by the time I was 14 I had an A* in GCSE English Language (which included things like...reading a news article and spotting bias, comprehension on a short story, writing a short story, and writing a formal letter) and English Literature (writing essays on poems, The Tempest, and I can't remember which novel now)... so it doesn't seem like being exposed to books before the age of 6, or not having Formal Phonics Lessons In A Classroom Environment With Books Written Specifically For That Purpose (though when I couldn't read a word in a book my parents would definitely help me sound it out, so I'm pretty sure I learned all the same phonics stuff just through a less formal method), did me all that much damage.

(What did do some damage was people assuming that "has the reading age of an X-year-old at Y age" was the same as "should be expected to understand anything that an X-year-old would", or even just that "has read an adult-level book that covers this topic" meant I'd have an adult-level understanding of a topic, but that's another matter, and something that was mostly done by *accident*. My parents were very well-meaning but considering they at least once, by their own admission, forgot that I was *shorter* than them [I was 5], I suppose keeping track of my reading age vs my actual or mental age was a bit challenging for them. For anyone else interacting with a kid with a reading age above their actual age: please, please, don't assume that they are properly understanding everything they read. This is especially important with books covering difficult topics, and with older books that might contain bigoted language and views. I read some Sherlock Holmes short stories when I was 8 including The Five Orange Pips. I didn't learn until MUCH later that the KKK wasn't fictional--in fact, since I didn't know what a "negro" was, and knew nothing about the American Civil War, I didn't even understand that the story was about a racist hate group and not about a vaguely defined secret society of scary bad guys who did bad things because they were scary and bad--even though rereading as an adult it's pretty explicitly condemning them for being racist thugs, so it's not the story's fault at all. Though my parents still did a better job than my school teachers in that regard--when I encountered a racist slur in a book in school, the teacher outright lied and tried to pretend it was a kind of bird!)

my dad and I just finished listening to a fascinating (and really pretty alarming) podcast about American literacy education recently—Sold a Story by Emily Hanford—and it got me wondering what my peers’ experience was, so here's my first poll! This pertains to people who learned to read in the U.S. specifically, so even if one of the other options matches your experience, I'd politely ask you to refrain from picking one (presumably you guys have better school districts than we do anyway).

(the most horrifying part out of the entire thing was the fact that dubbya was the one to realize something was wrong. even a broken clock, I guess...?)

#tw racism

4K notes · View notes

ballorawan740 · 3 years ago

Text

SCP Scenarios: When their kids swear at them (REQUESTED)

Requested by: @Astro_KeySimp

WARNING: Swearing (sorta)

Ok so I kinda made the reader into the child since don't remember if you wanted the reader to be a child or not, so if it wasn't to your liking, then I'm sorry, but I can make a separate version on where the reader isn't the child

It kinda became more of the SCPs and doctors being dads than their reaction to their kids swearing

SCP 073 (Cain)

Cain was walking around with you since you were bored and there wasn't anything to do

Being unaware of what some of the staff were saying, ye went over to grab you some food for later in case you got hungry

Once you both went back, he watched you play with some Legos and was talking as if it was your Lego friends talking to you

Cain looked away for just 10 seconds and heard you shout out "Wow! He said that her baby's such a bi-" which shocked him as he heard it

Cain looked around and made sure that nobody was around the room and was somewhat surprised that you was the one saying this

Being a good dad he is, Cain explained to you carefuly that you shouldn't say that word because it's bad

And being a sweet shy child, you obliged and stopped saying the word

Til this day, Cain had no idea about where and who you've heard the word from and is very much more self-aware

SCP 076-2 (Abel)

Abel is that type of dad who would teach you all the bad words and encourages you to say them

It's the researchers who had to teach you top not to say those words

One time, Dr Glass came in to examine you and had rewarded you as usual since you were so cooperative

You drew a picture of you and Abel talking in a garden with bright coloured flowers

Simon asked if he could see your drawing and saw that the conversation you and your dad had was those of swearing

This surprised Simon since you knew so many at such a young age but wasn't totally shocked since he knew that you were Abel's child

And knowing him, he wouldn't teach you to be nice, so Simon took the job as a mother hen and taught you to not use those words around people

SCP 999 (Tickle Monster)

Ok, so I'll keep this SCP short since I, again, don't know what I should write for this adorable, squicky, neon-orange, bubby blob

Another SCP who doesn't cuss

This adorable squishy boi here was about to have a heart attack when he heard you swear fir the first time

He had to ask you worryingly where you heard that phrase and you just said some guy wearing a white jacket

999 sighed knowing that you'll grow and couldn't do anything to stop it

He did, however, mention that you should try and avoid saying those things to anyone and that they'd most likely have a heart attack since you were his child and you won the genetic lottery for being the cutest and outgoing child in the world

The only other person who knew of this was Dr Glass (sucks to be him ngl, he do be a mother to everyone) and he had to help poor 999 with teaching you better words

SCP 682 (Hard to Destroy Reptile)

YAY! Another SCP who would teach their kid to swear

682 has such a dirty mouth like 076 and would 100% teach you all the words he knows

Similarly to what happened with Abel, you were taken for an interview with Dr Sophia Light since she was assigned to you

She's such a sweet and kind doctor to be around and would teach you anything and everything you would probably need to know all the while keeping an eye on you in case you become overly aggressive like 682

You were just eating some sweets Lights had given you for good behaviour and overheard some researchers swear

Remembering what your dad had taught you, you just repeated those curse words while clapping at your achievement

This had shocked Sophia and that researcher since you were known to be a moderately shy and quiet child who normally wouldn't say those things despite being 682's child

Sophia had to ask if you understood the meaning of those words and shook your head as an indicator for no

She had to carefully find her words and told you to never speak of those words again and took you back to 682's cell

You went and hugged your dad and told him that you learnt from the doctor that those curse words were bad and neither of you should say them

682 had a headache after that

SCP 049 (Plague Doctor)

I have a hard time thinking that 049 would teach his child to cuss and would avoid swearing in front of them at all cost

Like, he barely swears anyways but he wants to stay classy and sassy for his innocent child

Just like the other day, his kiddo, you, was curious about the whole surgery thingy he does on the dead bodies, so you asked him to teach you and so he did (like the good father we nevah had)

So you learnt some new, yet difficult, words (cuz we all have a nonexistent pea-sized brain) and somehow, you managed to fit in a curse word

This did surprise 049 as he had remembered that he didn't teach you those foul words

He had to give you a talk about using such words and you teared up since you thought that people used them to express their affection to others

Unsurprisingly, 049 took his sweet time looking for the guy who 'taught' you this and wanted to use him as a case study for your future lessons

SCP 035 (Possessive Mask)

Another parent with such an amazing influence on children

035 would teach and enable you to use swearing as a form of expression

So you were free to say whatever you want as long as they aren't directed to our mask here, especially if it's in a negative way

Otherwise, you'd be punished (No not like that! He'll just ground you from your favourite TV show/movie)

The researchers were surprised, not about you swearing, but how you use them through expression

Except for this poor guy who was new to the foundation and bumped into you by accident

This rookie found himself listening to you cursing like a sailor (maybe not that much but more or less on the same level as Samuel L Jackson)

Word got out and everybody laughed at the poor rookie and told him more about your background and how you love to swear (apparently swearing will prolong your life, so you'll basically be immortal here)

035 was impressed by the whole ordeal and rewarded you with more shows to watch whenever you're both free

SCP 105 (Iris)

Iris would accidentally swear in front of you and whenever she realises it, she would tell you to not swear at people since it wasn't very nice

So she would use words to replace the swearing like "oh fudging hell not now" and "no sugar honey ice tea"

The foundation felt that it was slightly unnecessary but went with it anyways

They'd even go as far as saying that it's ridiculous, but who are they to judge?

Iris was your mother and she's a single mum too, so she felt the need to be overly beating but would occasionally let you decide on your own since you were only 12

The foundation members did tell her that you will eventually grow and more of these words will be used but she just hesitates

As a teen, you did begin to use foul words more often and Iris would argue about how you're using them, especially towards her, your own mother

Needless to say, you both felt bad and made up

SCP 106 (Old Man)

Now this old man right here doesn't exactly speak, or at least very rarely

And if he does, he'll most likely be talking to you or the foundation staff if he needed some help finding you

He'll most likely be able to understand what the researchers are saying, even if they aren't speaking English

My own personal hc is that 106 understands English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic and Indonesian and probably many others

Every now and again, somebody would come in and teach you new words and give other lessons like maths and poetry (our favourite)

You came back home to tell him all the things you've learnt as he watched you in awe as he braided your hair

You've even used some new phrases, including swear words while talking and 106 was pretty impressed

I feel that he's quite neutral with swear words since words are words and are used as a form of verbal communication

So I don't think they'll be much change in his behaviour to whether you're swearing or not

SCP 096 (Shy Guy)

Now with 096, all he does is scream

So basically, somebody else would have to teach you some words

It's not to say that 096 is a dumb animalistic creature with no soul and just kills people who look at his face

He isn't stupid since he manages to find anyone who looked at his face from the other side of the globe

And he seems to understand what the researchers are saying, or at least on a more intermediate to moderate level

You'll learn about swear words from the other researchers, whether they'll be teaching it to you intentionally or you've overheard them

The foundation could really care less, but would at least prefer that you chill a bit if you got carried away

096 would act all cheery when you learn more new things as it's not like the foundation would let him out anyway, so he'll be living the outside world life from you (How relatable, but more with babysitting and dating, cuz I'm too pretty for anyone to date XD)

Like with 106, I don't think 096 would have any special reaction towards swearing, but would probably be screaming internally for a bit since he knows that it isn't a nice word

Dr Jack bright

This mf right here is one of those parents who would be kind but firm

Bright would most definitely give in to your curiosity and teach you whatever you want to learn but would warn you of the dangers

Depending on what it is, he would even go as far as giving you your own personal guard who would stay with you and train you

And unfortunately, this guard has such a foul mouth, so you're constantly exposed to such words

Luckily for the both of you, Jack Bright doesn't really care about swearing as long as you're not being extremely inappropriate if you were to work

He would even joke around with you sometimes and would even start the conversation with swearing

For instance, he'd just surprise you with a "Yeet his mf outta my sheithole"

And yes, you did laugh at his antics

Some would even say that you're an exact clone of him but more stable (for now)

Well, Bright is an amazing dad, but I'd say just below Dr Glass

Or maybe even on par with him

Like Bright is a goofy dad that has all the terrible dad jokes and Glass would be the type of dad to look out for his kid

Dr Simon Glass

Dr Glass would most definitely avoid using swear words, especially if you were under 15

Even if you were over 15, he'd still avoid swearing unless he wants to make a joke or 2

So most of the time, you'd learn all the swearing from other people and SCPs

Sometimes you would swear by accident and Glass would just look at you, slightly disappointed

I'd say he doesn't exactly care about you swearing per see, but would rather you avoid it

It's cuz Simon is the best dad a dad could ever dad and nobody could prove me wrong here

He's also one of the top best dads compared to the others on the list

He's basically your best friend so he'd let you vent and its the 1 time he'd let you swear to show your emotions

Simon would 100% know your thoughts and behaviour

He's just that good at reading people, especially you - almost to the point where people would say he's an SCP cuz I swear he's just empathic and telepathic

As mentioned before, Glass would be the type of dad to care for your mental health

It's not that the others don't, it's just that Glass is a top their God of Psychology and would come to you before you even know you have depression

He would even crack a joke sometimes

So every so often, he would shout out "LANGUAGE!!!" from across the room before you could even bat an eye and say anything

Dr Alto Clef

Another top tier dad, but swearing addition

Your godfather would literally be Jack Bright

Then it's Kondraki and Glass

He would let you swear on a daily basis and would join you

Sometimes you be looking at your Oppas/Noonas and be like: "Oh fxxk me!" and Clef, who's in the next room, be like: "Yeah, fxxk me too!" (Yes but no sis! No incest pls!)

Other times, you would be in the same room as Clef and Bright and you'd join them in being chaotic

And poor Kondraki is just there at the back trying to do his work peacefully

One time, Kondraki had to grab a Simon Glass to help stop the chaotic trio

And OML did it end so well

You were easy to manage tbh, with the exception of you swearing

Clef and Bright would most definitely encourage you to swear more

Especially Clef since he does have a twisted sense of humour

Dr Benjamin Kondraki

Kondraki is totally the type of person who would tell their kid to mind their own language

But he secretly doesn't care and his child knows it

His style of parenting is similar to Simon's

And yes, Simon is your #1 godfather/uncle

You'd go to him for emotional support since Kondraki sucks at that

Sometimes you'd swear at him and he'd get mad though

So yeah, running to Glass is a wonderful idea

And we all know that Kondraki doesn't mean what he said

He's just extremely introverted, but he's rather sensible - Usually...

Anyways, he would ask Simon on tips and advice on how to get you to stop swearing so much and he just gave Benjamin a parenting book (Like fr guys, let Glass have some rest, he's tired of babysitting over 100 dozens of pets in the zoo and all the other babies who work in it)

208 notes · View notes

aro-is-gay-af · 4 years ago

Text

Why do I think Resume will end up with Volturi - an attempt to explain Bella/Renesmee relationship

As within the fandom nobody likes Renee (no wonder why) I'd like to make an attempt at explaining to y'all what's like to have a parent like her (because I've got the same problem) and why this is going to cause problem over the years between Bella and Renesmee. This post will include such things as explaining:

why being in a relationship like this is so tiresome

what kind of effect has it on Bella

why Bella is just the same towards Renesmee as her mother was to her

why Bella and Renessme dynamics as mother/daughter aren't as fantastic

why is it so probable that Renesmee will eventually join the Volturi and what may be her reasons to do so.

1. Someone, who's never been in the kind of relationship that Bella and Renee have, is not going to catch up quickly with the point that I'm making in this post. Why? Because it's hard to imagine yourself being in an abusive or neglectful relationship with a person, who is a close relative of yours. You never want to acknowledge that something is wrong and instead, you're trying to find excuses for the person's abusive behavior. Fandom agrees on the fact, that Renee is, at best, neglectful of Bella, while at worst, she's downright abusive. I agree with both statements and in a moment you'll know why. You also need to know that everything I'll write here is from my experience from being in such a relationship hence it doesn't mean everyone will have the same experiences as myself. Now, why is such a relationship so tiresome and you struggle to find your true self in it? In my case, very similarly to Bella, I became responsible for things I shouldn't be responsible for at a very young age. I didn't have the time to actually be a kid because I needed to handle "adult responsibilities". When you have adults' responsibilities you lose something beyond reclaim. You'll never go back to your childhood and be a child once again. I was forced, not only to handle myself, but also my brother and mother, and our household. I didn't have time to do most things that kids do cause I was taking care of my brother, or my mother, or doing chores, or anything that was supposed to be done by adults, except it wasn't. While all of this made me extremely responsible, it also made me anxious, bitter towards my parents and I suffered from depression for a long time. I read somewhere that Bella is exaggerating and it's normal to help your parents within the house, to have responsibilities. The problem here is that Renee is Bella's responsibility in the same way my mother and brother were mine. You cannot give this up because you're too responsible but it also eats you from the insides. Also, if I remember correctly, Bella says somewhere in the book that she doesn't mind this because that's how things are for a long time. That's exactly what I'm talking about! When such responsibilities are forced on you at a very young age, you accept it and think it is natural. It isn't. Adult are adults, and kids should be kids, not kids forced into adulthood.

2. + 3. When you don't have time to be a child and you're forced into the adult world, there's always going to be some consequences that you cannot foresee prior. To Bella it ended actually sadly - we can see in the book, as well as in the movie, that Renesmee is almost as an accessory to Bella. Sure, Bella dies for her, but what else? Renesmee is described as mature and serious, she doesn't want to do things that kids usually do. Why? Smeyer made her this way, yeah, but apart from that, it's because Bella cannot handle a kid. The idea of full family appeared to her because she never had it herself. And while she admits that she doesn't even want children in Eclipse, suddenly in Breaking Dawn we see her change her mind completely. All she ever wanted was a) Edward and b) to be a vampire. So when she has these two goals achieved, why would she even bother with Renesmee? So Resume is mature enough and growing up quickly to relieve Bella from the burden of maternity.

4. Also, I'm not saying that Bella doesn't love Renesmee. Of course she does. Renesmee, also, loves her dearly. It's the same dynamics as between my and my mother, and between Bella and Renee. Bella loves Renne but needs to take care of her and be the responsible adult™. It also tires her, as she needs to think about how to handle the business in the most effective (and cheapest) way.

I think we can establish by now that love has nothing to do with this. So, because of her childhood and the poor illustrations of how relationships should work, Bella is exactly the same towards Renesmee as Renee (and partially Charlie) was to her. She thinks Renesmee is able to handle herself fine - she's constantly throwing at us proves that Renesmee is mature enough to do almost everything adults do. It's bullshit, of course, but Bella isn't aware of that. It's how she was brought up (or it's rather the lack of bringing her up by responsible adult) and she thinks it's the best way to fulfill parental duties.

As I said earlier, Bella is all smiles because she's got what she wanted - Edward and immortality. Yeah, it's great she has a daughter too, but like... hello, it's Edward and her and they have forever so why to bother with a child. It'll somehow work itself out. I will not ponder here on Edward being a father and how I see his relationship with Renesmee, however, I don't think it's pretty healthy either. Also, I need to add here, that Renesmee at least, has others (I mean other Cullens) who have probably more patience and time to actually raise a child. I think, and it's only a headcanon so take it easy, that Renesmee has excellent relationship with Rosalie. Rose will not treat her as adult - she'll prolong Renesmee's childhood as much as she's able to. She has time, patience, will and all love for her, so I think they're pretty close, and it would be a good, as well as a healthy relationship.

5. The older Renesmee will get, the more she'll be able to understand. Maybe the Cullens (and I hope it would turn out this way) would spare her this "being a premature adult" thing but her relationship with Bella will never be as close as she'd probably wish to. Sometimes, love isn't enough to keep up with the relationship and the shit that's going on around you constantly. One day, Renesmee will go to high school, then to university and then? Who the hell knows. She won't necessarily be with Bella. Sure, she'll be always her daughter, but she's not her property. At some point, Renesmee'll be mature enough to decide whether she wants to stay with her family, or travel, or join another coven. What I think, is that Bella won't be happy about it at all. Right now she has her fairy tale. She sacrificed nothing. She's living the life of her dreams with a man of her utmost desire. She has a child, even though vampires aren't suppose to have ones. What will happen if there will be a crack in her tale? Long, nasty cracks, throughout the wall. This is when I get to the point that Bella has no fucking clue what mess she got herself into (but that's for another post).

6. Holy Grail now. Lord, I'm always making this so long, this was supposed to be brief. Okay. So why do I think Renesmee will end up with the Volturi? A few reasons off the top of my head:

※ at some point Jacob will die and Charlie will die, and she'll now what's grief and how hard it is to go on. Yeah, yeah, I know that Jacob is also immortal right now, but he'll probably be killed while protecting Renesmee or Bella. I always think of their relationship as brother/sister because I cannot stand the imprinting shit Smeyer gave us. Also, I think I don't need to explain Charlie here. Renesmee will be devastated by both of these deaths and she'll have to come to terms with herself eventually. I guarantee you that she'll not be the same after that.

※ relationship with her parents. I briefly explained what I had on my mind when it comes to Bella. Renesmee loves her mother but that doesn't mean they'll have healthy and exemplary relationship. Sure, they can work on that, they have eternity but I think that at one point Renesmee will be fed up with the way how her mother is in love with eternity itself. Her relationship with Edward, as I said, is for another post, however I think with time it can get pretty hard. Could you live with the thought that your own father didn't want you? That he regretted that you exist at all? I don't think so. (Yeah, I'm simplifying, but I need to, so don't hate me for this).

※ Cullen coven can break or partially break. @therealvinelle talked about it here a little bit but that's also what I have in mind. Cullens are fairly young coven, with pretty unknown dynamics as we don't get to know them that much through saga (thanks Smeyer for not dwelling on it further). It isn't said anywhere that they'll last next century, not to think about more time passing.

※ she'll be fed up with constantly living with the humans. Imagine you need to constantly move, go to school/college and abide the rules that you didn't agree on in the first place. At first its great, Renesmee has time and reasources to flourish but she can also do that without anoyone else.

※ she has rampant hunger for knowledge. Where to find more books and more knowledge than in Volterra? Simple as it is.

※ she may not find vegetarian diet... sustainable for her. Remember how she was delighted when she drank first Bella's blood and than human blood in general? I think she can go on for some time on vegetarian diet plus/or human diet (if she was to attend i.e. med school which of course I think she would) but after some time, maybe a century, maybe less and maybe more, she'll eventually come to terms that she enjoyed drinking human blood. That's it. She's half vampire by descent. I don't think she'll be able to resist that much , also because everyone taught her from day one she could have what she asked for in a blink of an eye (remember Esme's spoons?).

AND most important (at least for me)

※ her worldview will completely change after a few/a lot of tragical experiences. Sorry, that's just common knowledge. Life is brutal, people are vicious and ruthless. She'll probably work or go somewhere, where she can see what humans are capable of (both in good and bad ways) and what one can do to achieve their goal. I think she'll go to Volturi to simply find comfort there. They've been alive for three thousand years. They can teach her things Cullen's aren't even aware of. Besides, I think it would be a great political move. We all know Aro wanted to know her so bad. If he would, she'll probably be able to influence him to some extent and spare her loved ones if it'd go that far. That's it! Of course, it's fucking long as hell. Sorry for that. Comment if you wish. I cannot wait if you think the same, similar or if you disagree completely! But no hate, please. Professionals have standards™.

162 notes · View notes

owlbites · 3 years ago

Text

Owlboy Headcanons: Asio

Long post/light spoilers

• Asio doesn’t live in Vellie or Advent, but rather his home is situated in between the village and the city that allows him to frequent Advent and Vellie with ease.

• Asio enjoys drinking tea. He has several different kinds of tea that he keeps to himself…and every once in a while he gives some tea bags to Otus! Asio inspired Otus’ love for Ish tea!

• Asio can recognize Otus’ owl call out of a crowd. Although Asio greatly discourages Otus to use chirping/hooting to communicate, he knows exactly what Otus sounds like. Asio memorized it just in case if Otus got himself into any trouble and called for help with his call.

• Asio would absolutely jump into action if Otus was in trouble. Not only would he immediately spring to help, he would do it instinctively too. He’s got a little bit of a fatherly instincts inside of him! (…yet he would probably blame whatever happened on Otus regardless if it was Otus’ fault or not.)

• Asio is greatly respected amongst the modern Owls, but a lot of other owls/humans who work in the school can’t stand him, and believe he needs to relax a little.

• Asio is the most skilled modern Owl in flight. He can easily maneuver himself throughout the skies.

• Asio grew up similarly to Otus. His childhood was most likely something along the lines of being neglected or cast out of many social circles because he wasn’t quite like other owls/he couldn’t live up to expectations. Over time however, he pushed himself to become one of the greatest modern Owls, earning him a position at the Advent school as a prestigious teacher. Because of his childhood he therefore sees a lot of himself in Otus. Along with wanting Otus to live up to the Owl legacy, this explains why Asio is so hard on Otus.

• Asio can pack a punch! Although he’s an older owl, he’s still got a lot of strength in him and isn’t afraid to defend Vellie or Advent.

• Few have seen Asio’s home. He barely has visitors and considers a lot of social activities to be unnecessary.

• Asio wears turtlenecks in the wintertime. I have no good reason for this, I just think he does lol

• Asio’s owl cloak is very soft. Otus sometimes finds himself wanting to fall asleep against it when he’s with Asio, but restrains himself knowing Asio would scold him for doing so.

• Asio tries to one-up Strix ALL the time.

• Asio is a natural born leader.

• Asio compares Otus to Strix’s students constantly, comparing Otus to how well they’re doing. Specifically he compares Otus to Solus, which gives Otus the impression that Solus wants nothing to do with Otus, so he doesn’t try to pursue a friendship with him.

• Asio is knowledgeable about the owl relics and what can they do, but not necessarily what they need to be used for in the present.

• Asio is around 40-45 years old.

• Asio picked Otus out of the many owls who were candidates to be students because he saw potential in him—-specifically the potential of unwavering courage in Otus he didn’t see in other Owls. (We can tie this into him finally admitting Otus’ bravery in the hug scene :) )

• Asio can command a crowd. Whenever Asio enters a room or appears within a crowd, attention naturally falls on him due to his commanding aura. He won’t even have to say much before people quiet down and are aware of his presence.

• Asio is graceful, especially when flying. If he’s not in a hurry, it’s clear to see just how skillful and masterful Asio is at flying.

• Asio doesn’t like to admit it, but he enjoys whenever Otus holds his hand. He only denies this from Otus due to his belief that the ancient owls would see “such vulnerability as a weakness rather than a strength.”

• Asio has a larger wingspan in his cloak than most owls, and received his current owl cloak when he became a teacher.

• Asio often argues with Strix, and it always puts their students on edge. Well, except Fib and Bonacci, they probably want to see Strix absolutely “destroy Asio with facts and logic.”

• Asio gets a little kick out of dramatically opening his wings and launching himself into the air. He knows it makes him look intimidating and somewhat cool.

• Asio is fantastic at playing the piano. He has heard Solus play once, and was quite impressed Solus taught himself.

• Asio’s weird big meaty hands can cover Otus’ entire face.

• I know this isn’t the case, but Asio’s sprites almost look like he has his hands in his pockets with his thumbs out. Let’s pretend he actually walks around with his hands in his pockets because he’s too cool for everyone else LOL

• Asio has hit his head several times while trying to exit Otus’ house. Otus’ door is Otus shaped!

• Asio is quite warm despite his cold personality. Otus has taken notice :)

• Asio cares deeply for Otus, and deep down sees him as a son. He needs to work out a few things in his mind before truly accepting a more fatherly role however.

All done! I really enjoy Asio’s character! Don’t get me wrong though, I like him a lot, but if I saw him walking down the street I’d punch him clean in the face lmao. Anywho, making headcanons is super fun and I’m definitely gonna do more in the future.

#owlboy #asio #headcanons

26 notes · View notes

logicalbookthief · 4 years ago

Note

On the Toga seeing her situation in Dabi's situation. I'm not sure really, I think in one way she will but I don't see the Todoroki's demonizing Dabi the way Toga's parents did. However since I do think he will be demonized in the media and by hero society, I can see Toga and of course Dabi thinking that the family is demonizing Dabi as well but mostly through their supposed silence. So I can see her relating but I think in the end she will also see how different the Todoroki's are to her family

just to add onto my last ask, when I mean The Todoroki's aren't like Toga's parents I'm not including Endeavour in this, only Rei, Fuyumi, Natsu and Shouto. Endeavour is just as bad as Toga's parents.

No worries, anon, I see what you mean! And I agree with all of this.

Like, I don’t think the Todorokis will refer to Dabi as a “demon child” like Toga’s parents did with her. What I’m guessing will happen is the media / heroes will try to demonize Dabi, and rather than voice any support for him, the Todorokis — if they’re vocal at all — will take responsibility for his actions as a villain rather than address him as their son or brother.

Which would not only imply to Toga that they view Dabi similarly to how her family viewed her, but it would also imply this to Dabi.

And this is a lot of why I believe this initial plan to “stop” Dabi (whatever that entails) will fail. Shouto was on the right track with empathizing with his brother, but that was derailed when the focus shifted back to Endvr, and the emotional beats of Touya’s return were squandered in favor of once again treating him like a burden to bear, rather than a second chance to do better.

Even though we just had a flashback showing how things went wrong in the past, it seems like the same mistakes are being made all over again. Silently supporting the man who deemed Touya worthless and replaceable while saying nothing to affirm they don’t agree with this judgement.

Obviously, the family had nothing to with what Endvr’s actions and despite this idea they “shared” blame, nobody -- especially not the kids -- was in any position to stop the abuse. Similar to Tenko and the Shimuras, though, it was never about that. It was about how they responded to Touya and his reaction to the abuse.

For Tenko, what he needed was for his family to say: Your father is wrong for punishing and hurting you, he shouldn’t do that. It’s okay if you want to be a hero, your heart is in the right place and you want to do good things, you’re capable of doing good things.

For Touya, what he needed was for his family to say: What your father did is wrong, he shouldn’t have created children only to throw them away, because that would affirm that his father basing Touya’s worth solely on his ability to surpass All Might is wrong. And if he is wrong, and his way of thinking is wrong, maybe Touya isn’t a mistake and he was wanted in spite of his quirk.

The tragedy is that none of this was said, so these kids were left to feel alone and unloved, and have grown into adults who still believe they are incapable or unworthy of these things. Dabi called his survival an “an unforgivable truth” and so far nobody has argued that, which is the heart of the problem.

So in this case, I see the silence to be as harmful as how Toga’s parents spoke of her, since it confirms what Touya was taught implicitly throughout his childhood: He doesn’t matter as a person, his emotional and physical wellbeing don’t matter, all that matters is what his father wants or what benefits everyone else.

And we see Dabi embrace this persona as a villain: He doesn’t feel, he doesn’t care if he burns, all that matters is that his father doesn’t get what he wants. Just as Toga believes herself to be a freak, someone who will never fit in, and never be accepted except by those who are also outcasts -- because that’s what she was taught and nobody has ever told her she deserved differently.

#bnha #asks #touya todoroki #himiko toga #as always I got carried away with this answer lol #as I started my reply I realized I had a lot to say so #sorry anon if I went off on a tangent- to summarize I agree lol

43 notes · View notes

slugtranslation-hypmic · 4 years ago

Note

important question that's been bugging me for a while. since hypmic plays in a female powered society.. does that make everything like..our world but reverse? so that guys are more often oppressed and girls are more likely to be predators, taking what happened to hifumi (like men are more likely to us) and stuff like that? (or like if we imagine everything genderbent and apply our society to that) sorry I hope this is not too triggering. love your work!

This is a delicate question. I am going to put my answer below a cut. Topics included: sexual predators, misogyny, assault, kidnapping, the mistreatment of male sexual assault victims

I don’t think that I’m necessarily the best person to answer this or examine this. I’m not educated enough in this particular topic. However, I have tried to give it as much thought and respect as I can.

The Question of Female Predators

This is a very complex topic. Female predators are already not uncommon in the world we live in, so I guess the question of whether there would be more or less female predators depends on what factors contribute to people becoming a predator.

I could be entirely wrong about this, but I think one factor that causes a lot of fear of being preyed upon is the size difference between most AMAB people and AFAB people. Obviously, there are millions of exceptions to this rule, but AMAB people generally tend to be taller, more muscular, and broader than AFAB people. The majority of AMAB people are also men (whereas the majority of AFAB people are women), so on average, an altercation between an untrained man and an untrained woman is not likely to end in the woman’s favor. This isn’t going to change in the world of Hypnosis Mic.

It’s the societal factors that would change. The Center for Hope and Safety says, “A sexual offender generally believes he is better than other people and so does not have to follow the rules that ordinary people do.” This is a stance the Party of Words elevates. The Party constantly practices “othering” and promotes themselves as an elite group. Only they are allowed to enter a certain area. Only they are allowed to write the name of their ward in kanji, whereas every other location must use the foreign-looking katakana. ARB events frequently feature Party members shoving characters around from place to place with no explanation, as questions are not allowed. Only the Party can know what’s going on. Using this as a guideline, I think it’s very possible for predators already within the Party to use this as an excuse for being a predator. “Men are worthless, so I can abuse them.”

You could argue that the Party is founded on the principles of safety for women and non-violence, but the Party is also very hypocritical. Its promises of safety are only for the party itself; it puts on painful gladiator battles to turn a profit and purposefully cause infighting to keep the Party safe. Ramuda even suggests (and I have no reason to disbelieve him) in TDD 12 that they have a stockpile of weapons as well. The Party doesn’t care for anything but itself and staying in power.

So yes, predators within the Party are probably more likely to abuse their power, but would the shift towards a female-dominated society create more female predators? That’s a much harder question to answer. I am not remotely equipped to speak on what causes someone to become a predator. I do, however, think that societal norms can enable predators or foster mindsets of fright against certain groups.

In the world that we live in, it is very possible for men in certain areas to sexually assault or otherwise mistreat a woman and be applauded by their communities. Think of online communities such as “The Red Pill” or “Men Going Their Own Way”. Such communities believe that women deserve this mistreatment, and while these are very extreme examples, this same mindset permeates a lot of global societies. Even on a small scale, a lot of men tend to make casual sexist comments because we were raised with the notion of this being socially appropriate. And there’s the issue - it’s inappropriate, but it’ll continue to be socially appropriate as long as we don’t continue to challenge ourselves, challenge our friends, and raise our children with better standards of accountability and respect. These social changes do not happen in the blink of an eye, and I highly doubt that a single three years with the Party of Words in power would change that.

Similarly, a lot of girls in our societies are taught (both consciously and subconsciously) to defer to their male peers or even to fear men in positions of power. Once again, unlearning this and teaching future generations more positive standards does not happen overnight. I doubt that most women in the Hypmic universe are able to make radical shifts of thinking and acting over the course of three years. Furthermore, I doubt that many men are really taking the Party’s misandristic words to heart. None of the main characters seem particularly bothered by Ichijiku calling them barbarous fools on the regular; it’s an annoyance, sure, but that’s it. We’d have to see the Party in power for a much longer time to witness any large societal changes.

Additionally, the world inside Chuuouku and the world without are quite different. While Chuuouku boasts state-of-the-art architecture and technology, the rest of Japan gets by like normal, if perhaps in a bit shabbier fashion than to be expected for this futuristic world. Men and women seem to still fit into stereotypical gender roles in much the same way that they do today. Doppo’s bosses are all men; the majority of doctors we see are men, and the nurses tend to be women. While some of Jirou’s female classmates seem to be especially assertive, male and female students get along in the same way as we would expect to see in our world. Women are still kidnapped and trafficked by primarily male yakuza. The former military looks to be exclusively made up of men. Progress moves slowly, so I think we can assume that the Japan outside of Chuuouku is approximately our modern Japan.

One of the major issues in examining this topic is that we see so little female-male interaction in regards to sex or romance. Ramuda and Hifumi are the only characters (that I can think of off the top of my head) who have any on-screen sexually/romantically charged interactions with women, but probably because this is a series largely marketed towards women, these interactions never go beyond light, impersonal flirting. To really take a look at how predators and assault may be featured in the Hypmic universe, we would need a much larger sample size. That being said, I’d still like to examine two case studies: Nemu and Hifumi.

Nemu

The two driving forces of Nemu’s character are her rejection of violence and her desire to have personal strength. The first of these is probably rooted in her childhood, from living with an abusive father, witnessing his violent murder, and witnessing the subsequent suicide of her mother. Samatoki doesn’t appear to have any resources for dealing with his own processing of these events, and he turns to violence and emotional outbursts as a way to channel his feelings. This violence continues to wear on Nemu, but she can still withstand it under normal circumstances up until the moment she is kidnapped.

Nemu cites her kidnapping as an example of her weakness, when in reality, it is an exhibition of anything but weakness. She remains calm throughout the entire ordeal, comforts Jirou and Saburou and keeps them hopeful, throws her shoe at Genchou, and offers him to cut her fingers off if that means the others will be spared. Nemu isn’t weak – she is a hero. She is a seventeen year old girl who lost both parents at a young age and has witnessed horrifically traumatic situations, yet she keeps her head during a hostage situation and acts with courage in order to keep everyone else safe.

Nemu calls herself weak not because she thinks she’s weak for anything she did during the situation, but because the situation happened to her in the first place. She is victim blaming herself for violent assault. This isn’t a logical position, but it’s a very understandable position for someone with her background. Unfortunately, Samatoki doesn’t have the knowledge or resources in order to help her process her trauma safely, and his own coping mechanisms only set her off further.

Nemu isn’t mentally weak, but she is very emotionally vulnerable. Even without the Party’s hypnosis, an offer from the Party would be too tantalizing to ignore. They can promise her a world in which suddenly she has the power over everyone else and where violence is not practiced. An offer like this is impossible for her to ignore. Even though the Party are the ones putting her in jeopardy again, they implicitly promise her that she can never be hurt again. For a young, brave, powerful girl holding in so much pain, that promise is everything she’s ever wanted.

As mentioned before, the Party doesn’t care about stopping violence. In fact, it encourages infighting among its civilians. If Nemu were not in an emotionally vulnerable position, she could see that and reject the Party’s offer, but that’s exactly why the Party targets her and not any of her peers. Imagine how many other young girls in similar situations fall prey to the same trap. These girls need healing and positive environments, but they are fed propaganda instead.

Hifumi

I don’t talk about this much because it’s a very uncomfortable subject for me, but the way Hifumi is depicted is a real tragedy.

We don’t know the details of what this particular girl did to Hifumi, but we do know that it continues to impact him over ten years later. We know that Hifumi developed his coping strategy on his own, seemingly without professional help, and that without it, he can’t begin to live even an approximation of a normal life. The illustrations of him encountering a woman show him hiding, cowering with his neck covered, or crying. He looks to be in genuine fear of losing his life. Consider being this afraid of half of the population and how frequently he must encounter women in his daily life: on the street, in the grocery store, on public transportation. Without the jacket, Hifumi’s life is a nightmare.

And yet the canon source material frames it as a joke. The humurous background music in ARB and Hifumi’s exaggerated gestures in the manga show that his fear and discomfort is a punchline. This would definitely not be a funny gag with the genders reversed (a woman sobbing in fear and running away every time she sees a man), so it is a travesty that this is the stance the authors continue to take.

The world we live in is, generally speaking, not kind to its male assault victims. Misogynistic attitudes create an environment in which it is shameful for men to admit that they were assaulted, especially by women. It should not be a punchline when one human being hurts another, and it is wrong and sexist beyond all belief to perpetuate the idea that women can’t be cruel, violent, and manipulative just as much as anyone else can.

I would like to hope that Hifumi’s case isn’t indicative of all Hypmic universe male assault victims, but I don’t think that’s the case. Hifumi definitely has access to mental health resources, considering that his roommate does, but there is no evidence that Hifumi has ever come forward to ask for help about this issue. This is probably a combination of Hifumi’s internal shame and an unsupportive environment. While Doppo does help Hifumi navigate daily life around women, Doppo’s facial expressions suggest he considers the matter a nuisance. He threatens to take away or withhold the suit when Hifumi’s coping method annoys him, and otherwise doesn’t seem to take Hifumi’s distress seriously. Jakurai appears to be more supportive, but he doesn’t ever offer additional help or resources to Hifumi beyond what Hifumi already has. In fact, the majority of Jakurai’s interest in the subject seems to be around examining Hifumi like a case rather than as a person needing assistance.

It’s also probably a result of the faux macho attitudes that are rampant within the Hypmic universe. Hypmic men are bound by a multitude of ridiculous expectations that I always feel like an idiot translating. “Men don’t cry.” “Men don’t get stuck feeling disappointed.” Absolute nonsense. Men can and will do anything, just like any other group of people. It’s far more productive to encourage men to be their best selves, respectful and helpful to themselves and everyone else, than to feed into this sort of behavior which implies the hideously false “men can’t be assaulted”.

This all results in Hifumi living a double life and only being able to remove his façade in the safety of his own apartment or with his two friends. That’s a miserable existence, and while Hifumi appears to be cheerful enough, it’s sickening to see that this is supposed to be comedic.

The Question of Male Oppression

The Party of Words does institute laws to oppress men, but this oppression is fairly ridiculous. Yotsutsuji says that men are taxed at a higher rate than women and that men aren’t allowed into certain areas (such as Chuuouku, I presume). Despite these challenges, the majority of Hypmic universe men seem to lead pretty normal lives. As mentioned above, the professional fields still appear to be dominated by men, and male-on-female violence doesn’t seem much different from how it is in our contemporary world. These laws aren’t making a significant change in male lives, so they must be made to impact women. Yet these are token impacts only, as they don’t in any way actually make the lives for non-Chuuouku women any better. By making this an “us against them” deal, the Party is able to make more women sympathetic to their cause and cause more infighting (thus distracting people from “us against the Party”) without actually having to make positive changes for anyone.

These laws also aren’t the reason why rebel groups exist. Consider the motivations each character gives in TDD 11. Ichirou mentions a lack of central law and regulations making it difficult to keep loved ones safe. The infighting that the Party promotes via its rap battles allows for power-hungry individuals like Mozuku to take over whole areas and instate whatever rules they want, no matter the cost to the citizens. Samatoki is frustrated by being directed to fight when he can’t see a good cause; similarly, Ramuda is concerned about the effects of the fighting on the neighborhoods they pass through. Even with non-lethal weapons, a country in constant conflict is not one in which its citizens can prosper. Jakurai is concerned about inequalities between Chuuouku and the rest of the country. He mentions in FP/M 15 (which we’ll have up in a few days for you to see for yourself) that he’ll use the prize money from winning the DRB to provide medical care for locations that the Party can’t or won’t supply with aid. Later in the chapter, he drives away from the spectacular, futuristic city of Chuuouku back into a Tokyo marked with graffiti and squalor. Even the male citizens don’t care about how they’re treated as compared to their female counterparts; they care that everyone is suffering together under the Party’s poor governing.

The Party has never sought to oppress men and elevate women. The Party’s goal is to elevate itself and oppress everyone else. The gender inequality is as much of a diversionary tactic as the Division Rap Battle.

#not a translation #asks

144 notes · View notes

sebastianshaw · 3 years ago

Note

Shaw and Monet St Croix

OH EW OH MY GOD WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?! I feel SO BAD for this but here!! Name: Aliya Faiza Jawaria Kinza Kiran St. Croix-Shaw. Look, Monet’s full name is Monet Yvette Clarisse Maria Therese St. Croix she is going to ensure her daughter has an equally fancy, worthy name; each of them has a meaning specifically for her chosen by Monet. I was originally going to go with French names, since the names of Monet, her father, and all her siblings are French, but since more recent stuff has seen Monet looking more fondly to her mother’s faith, I chose names popular in Islam instead. Gender: Female. Cis or trans, idk, but female. If she is trans, Monet is still the one who chose her new name. General Appearance: Absolutely beautiful, because she’s Monet’s daughter, but her features are probably less “conventionally gorgeous” because she’s also Shaw’s daughter. But honestly? That works. I’ve talked before about how a lot of the top supermodels out there often aren’t conventionally beautiful because that’s bland and blends in with all the others, they typically have “striking” features that stand out in some way. Aside from that, she’s tall and moderately toned, though not as much as either parent (great shoulders though) and a skin tone darker than Shaw but lighter than Monet. Unlike Monet and the St. Croix twins, who have straight hair, Aliya has wavy to loosely curly hair, as well as a light sprinkling of brown freckles across her nose and arms that neither parent sports. Her outfits are incredibly expensive casual-wear that she doesn’t realize is too upscale for everyday-wear because they’re what she’s used to. She also doesn’t give a second thought to overdressing, not as in wearing too much but as in wearing an outfit that’s a 10 when everyone else is just chilling in their 5. Again, she doesn’t do this deliberately. This is just her version of normal. And like her mother, looks GREAT in red. Personality: Vivacious, bright, very confident and open and sunny, at least that’s how she SEEMS and the mask goes very, very deep because she’s been perfecting it her whole life. Under her carefree and friendly and flawless facade, Aliya is. . . kind of a mess, actually. See, Shaw didn’t get a chance to be as bad to Aliya as he was to Shinobi, since Monet would send him into orbit if he EVER so much as IMPLIED that what came out of HER womb wasn’t PERFECT, but Monet has her issues as well. It’s not that Monet pressures Aliya to be perfect like Shaw would, she simply ASSUMES that she already is by default. How could she not be? Because of this, Aliya feels her mother doesn’t love HER, she loves the IDEAL of her that she has in her head, but not the reality, not the real Aliya. I can relate to this deeply; I was a gifted child and my parents thought I was a genius and some great future writer and artist and all this stuff and while I know having parents who believe in you and brag about you is like. . . the least sort of parents you can have. . . .it left me with a bad sense of imposter syndrome and I think Aliya has the same issue. As mean as her dad is, at least she feels he sees the real HER, flaws and failures and all. Though she certainly doesn’t like being criticized by him either! Aliya will insult people casually because that was what both her parents did, she thinks that’s normal acceptable behavior, and it takes people aback because she seems so nice where did that COME from? And given how neither of her parents were humble people, she mistakenly assumes that if someone ISN’T stating their accomplishments, means they don’t have any. So basically if someone ISN’T bragging about themselves, Aliya thinks they just must be useless, the idea of modesty as a virtue, or that modesty exists to all, isn’t a concept to her and she’s kind of confused by it. So, like Monet, she can be kind of an abrasive ass, but it’s in an innocent way. Likewise, she’s always going to talk up her own accomplishments because that’s how she was taught to behave, and can come off as egocentric for it, despite her actual insecurity. Back to that insecurity, having two such EXCEPTIONAL parents has really skewed Aliya’s view of what normal/acceptable is. So because she’s not a genius like Monet or business savant like Shaw, she thinks she’s stupid, if she’s not automatically perfect at something she thinks she’s a dud, things like that, and she tries to conceal these “failings” from others, which means never admitting she’s wrong or doesn’t know something or can’t do something. . .which, rather than making her look good/normal to others like she thinks, actually makes them think she’s a stuck-up pretentious asshole liar. Which she kind of is, but for far more sympathetic reasons than most people think. Also, unlike her parents, she does care what people think of her, but she grievously misunderstands what they think about her and why that is. Similarly, her parents never modeled how to apologize or forgive, and so she doesn’t know how to do either right. Nor did they ever prepare her for failure because Shaw doesn’t think that should be encouraged and Monet just never thought it would happen. I don’t want to sound too down on Monet though because she definitely loves and supports her daughter, but having a mother as perfect as Monet, and who KNOWS she’s as perfect as Monet, is going to have effects. But she definitely adores Aliya, to be clear. Unlike Shaw, who is. . . Shaw. The biggest area her parents differ is their morality, especially their morality around helping others. Shaw not only doesn’t see it as necessary, he even sees it as wrong, that the weak should NOT be supported. Monet, by contrast, as a sense of noblisse oblige, that people who are “better” like herself should help those who are not. Condescending but kind, is how I think Emma phrased it yet. Shaw and Monet would impart their views to Aliya, and Monet’s route, to Aliya’s credit, is the one she chose. Especially since Aliya feels she secretly ISN’T better, she’s one of these lesser people, so she feels compassion for others out of kinship in that sense. Special Talents: She has all of Monet’s major physical abilities---flight, super strength, durability---but none of her psychic abilities. She probably has some kind energy rechanneling abilities from Shaw though. Who they like better: She definitely looks up to Monet more, and thinks Monet is the far better person (which, she is) Who they take after more: Monet, even if she doesn’t realize it Personal Head canon: She likes power metal and Barn Courtney, and magnolia blossoms and these little yellow flowers that grow on the side of the road. Prefers to eat her tacos using the foil they’re wrapped in to hold them rather than touching the actual tortilla itself. Face Claim: N/A but I’m sure there are some BEAUTIFUL ones out there who would fit. It’s impossible to find Monet’s actual precise ethnicity (black/Algerian) in my experience, but I’m sure there are lots of gorgeous Black/White/MENA actresses and models out there for Aliya even if the MENA part isn’t specifically Algerian.

#kids #kid meme #aliya #idk I don't like the name Aliya for her but I can't think of one i prefer #shattered-catalyst

3 notes · View notes

postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 5 years ago

Text

The fragility of substituting humanity with machinery: the horror of automation in Captain America The Winter Soldier

I wanted to elaborate a bit on what I touched in this post, I’ll just quote it for your convenience:

My life changed the day I realized that when Pierce says “your work has been a gift to mankind–you shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time” he meant ‘one time’ literally, the Winter Soldier was going to be put down once the helicarriers were up and running and Zola’s algorithm implemented. Project Insight was going to make the Winter Soldier obsolete, the whole point was that the human used as a machine was being substituted by an actual machine, human orders were going to be substituted by a computer algorithm (not a coincidence the algorithm was created by a man-turned-software…).

CATWS has this horror subplot about automation, turning humanity into machine, substituting humanity with machine, and it’s not talked about much because there’s plenty of other things to talk about, but it’s so interesting.

I used the expression “horror subplot” for the narrative about automation and technology in the movie because I believe it is crafted like a horror narrative of sorts. I have a certain interpretation of the Winter Soldier’s psyche that is probably a minority in the fandom (especially since CACW completely retconned it) but I think it’s pretty close to Sebastian Stan’s own interpretation - I recall an interview where he described Bucky’s experiences as a sort of nightmare you wake up from to find out it’s real, and I generally interpret his acting choices as expressive of an awareness in Bucky of what’s going on, of what Pierce and Hydra are doing to him and in general - there’s anger, there’s resentment, there’s bitterness, he’s simply trapped inside a mechanism made of his own body and brain and mind. It’s like he’s living a nightmare, where it feels like you don’t really make your own choices but you sort of follow the dream plot, dream!you acts in a way that they can’t really control but is directed by the dream and can make you feel scared or frustrated. That’s something pretty close, imo, to how Sebastian plays Bucky under Hydra’s control. And it’s something horrific.

Bucky is basically trapped inside a mechanism that allows Hydra to use him as a tool, as a machine. A perfect machine, that moves with ease and confidence, and yet is a human that is just a fragment of memory away from becoming erratic and unstable... which means human, not an automatic machine.

The Winter Soldier is the automatic version of Captain America. What Hydra 1.0 did to him is the exact same thing that the SSR was doing on the other side of the ocean... but the Americans planned to build an army of volunteers, while Zola experiments on expendable prisoners until he finds the perfect formula on the perfect specimen, and we know the rest. In a way, Zola was (horrifyingly) smarter - supersoldiers that choose to fight for you, and have their full agency, can revoke their loyalty to you. And that’s what happens with Steve and Shield. You can get defeated by the same weapons you crafted. Instead, if you want something whose loyalty can’t be revoked, you need the take the agency out of it. And that means taking the humanity out of the soldier, turning the soldier into a machine.

But it turns out that you cannot turn a human into a machine after all. The point of the Winter Soldier subplot is that he is still a human, no matter how trapped in the mechanism. And eventually the humanity undoes the mechanism - that’s the plot of the movie, humanity undoes the mechanism.

As soon as the Winter Soldier is treated like a human being, that’s the end of the nightmare, and he revokes the artificial loyalty to the system that used him as a weapon.

The automation of the Winter Soldier, with its psychological horror, is paralleled to the automation of intelligence and special warfare, and that’s the political horror. Because the special warfare of the era of agents and secret soldiers is obsolete - ironically, the “man out of time” in this movie is not just Steve, but everyone that still operates in the “traditional” way. The Black Widow, the Winter Soldier, they’re the kind of agents that are just useful until the point where the new methods are implemented. Once the helicarriers are up, secret warfare won’t be done by individual agents doing stuff the old way anymore, but by computers and algorithms. But algorithms are made by people, too - the problem is, people further in the shadows.

(Who writes the algorithms that rule all the stuff in our daily lives? Do we know? Do our governments know? We live in an age where the state is having its powers eclipsed by the private corporations that write the algorithms that run technology. The modern state is dying and social media corporations are killing it...)

Just like Bucky Barnes got robbed of his free will by Zola, citizens are getting robbed of their free will by Zola’s algorithm, i.e. the fictional representation of the technologies that are subtracting agency to people and states. Democracies are undermined by the algorithms that control our lives in subtle ways, citizenship is being emptied of meaning because we’re robbed of the free will that it requires. “The 21st century is a digital book, Zola taught HYDRA how to read it. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores. Zola’s algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future.” Political horror indeed.

Let’s get back to our movie. The moral of the machinery subplot is that machines are powerful because they’re efficient, but they’re also “fragile”, so to speak, because humans can hijack them for their ends: Fury was all proud of Shield’s helicarriers, but the helicarriers were fragile because Hydra could just slam a fancy algorithm on them and take them out of Fury’s control completely (not a coincidence Fury gets cut out of the security system... except for the most “damaged” part of himself which Hydra had not considered when they took his ‘normal’ retinal scan out of the system - humanity and its imperfection trumping the perfection of the machine).

On the other hand, the point is that if Hydra can hijack the machine for their own hands... you can play the same game. The final battle is not about taking down the helicarriers (or the Winter Soldier, like Steve says in his conversation with Sam before the battle), but the plan is to reprogram them. They just replace Zola’s algorithm with their own new algorithm where the targets become the helicarriers themselves. And similarly, Steve “reprograms” the Winter Soldier by replacing Zola’s conditioning with shared memories of theirs.

It’s meaningful that their fight on the helicarrier is extremely human. The fight on the helicarrier is filmed very differently from their previous fight where Steve wasn’t aware of the Winter Soldier’s identity. It’s way less acrobatics and fancy moves and more punches and grunts and gritty moves like choking and grabbing and pulling (that... sounded more sexual that I intended but maybe that was the point...). At the core of the whole big fight between Captain America’s team and Hydra, is two humans fighting each other in a very human, almost primeval way. By the end of the fight they’re both wounded and in pain, either of them can barely stand, all technique is totally lost, heck Steve just stops fighting at all. Bucky lashes out from the upsetting emotions evoked by Steve’s attempt to reach out to him, and the “mission” seems more of a pretext to get rid of that guy that’s causing all the confusion and pain.

On the highway, it was machine against machine (interestingly, Natasha even uses a recording of herself on a phone as a “replacement” of herself and that helps her almost take her opponent down, again human machine machine human...), now it’s two human beings being human.

Captain America (less of a machine than the Winter Soldier, but not that less - just less to snap out of the mechanism on his own) drops the shield, becoming Steve Rogers and nothing else. And the same happens to Bucky.

Their journey over the movie is a journey of reclaiming their humanity against the system that had made them into machines, into gears of a dehumanizing, free-will-robbing mechanism.

#my mcu thoughts #catws #humanity #agency #free will #...damn these are the kind of tags we usually use for supernatural posts #it's no wonder i'm a fan of both catws and spn #destiel and stucky are very similar #and i cry #mcu

2K notes · View notes

crazyfreckledginger · 5 years ago

Text

Jean D’Arc x Reader - “Dating Jean D’Arc Would Include...”

Requested by anon: “Hello! Hope you’re doing well ^^ Can you do a “Dating Jean d’Arc would include…” hc?”

A/N: Hope you like it! ^^

Warning: Smut at the end but it’s stated!

You were curious about his captivating, sculpture-like beauty.

He was like a statue, flawless.

But by the pain in his eyes, you could tell he thought the opposite.

He stayed with you the first night you stumbled into the mansion, scared and overwhelmed.

Jean was being more than kind and gentlemanly towards you and it really helped you out.

Although it looked like he was controlling something within himself, like he was on edge constantly around you and you wonder if it’s something you did.

When you found out through Arthur that everyone were vampires, you asked Jean about it, and why he seemed on edge the first night.

You understood that his entire weird behaviour was because he was craving blood and felt extremely guilty about it.

You really wanted to do something for him, he was there for you, fighting the urge the whole night, but it’s going to be annoying for him if you were close to him so you were at a loss.

Having settled down and helped out Sebastian with chores, you didn’t see the beautiful man after that and it worried you.

Napoleon was the first to catch on your worry and he questioned you about it.

It was like he was sent from above, answering all your questions and helping you pay him back.

You were comfortable, enough to drop a question that had itched at you.

Everyone else was a vampire as well -- except Sebastian right? How come everyone seemed unbothered around you but it seemed so hard for Jean?

You had initially thought that maybe the others adjusted better or something?

You were in absolute shock when you learned that he was starving himself regularly, it made absolute sense.

But why did he choose to become a vampire if he starved himself? Did he regret the decision that much?

Napoleon helped but it also lead to a lot of other questions.

Fortunately, he proposed you attend when they spare, and you did.

Jean was so elegant, you couldn’t take your eyes off of him.

Similarly, he stole glances in your direction regularly, curious.

Why were you so interested in him? Out of all the residents? He wasn’t annoyed about it but he didn’t understand.

You spoke at the end, Napoleon eyeing you both with a smirk.

Surprisingly, he was easy to talk to, despite how reserved or distant he seemed at first.

Inspecting every single detail about his behaviour so you knew when to take her leave.

Surprisingly, he didn’t get to being on edge and it was a really pleasant evening.

After that, you got close, it was clear he didn’t want to get too close as he tried to push you away a few times.

It didn’t work and over time, you guys really started developing feelings for each other.

Which is when it started taking a toll on Jean and he was taking more measures to keep you away from him.

Mozart had had enough and slapped some sense into him, Napoleon came to you to listen to you.

As in, you were in the sparring room on your own, in your own thoughts and he came by, surprised to see you there.

Jean got an earful by Mozart and it motivated him to face you.

Which he did, Theo was eating pancakes at the dinner table and told him where you headed out.

It was easy to find you, but Jean saw you sitting beside Napoleon, who was listening to you intently.

He knew Jean was there though.

Walking into the room, both of you watched him, you stood up immediately.

The man didn’t know he was getting jealous, which explained why he wasn’t speaking and glancing around the place.

He looked up towards his friend who was chuckling softly.

“I’ll leave you two to it.” he smiled, walking up to him and placing his hand on the man’s shoulder, “and you don’t need to be jealous, Jean.”

Said man’s eye widened and his cheeks flushed, matching your expression.

With another laugh, the other vampire had disappeared.

It was awkward at first, there was alot of talking and such -- and struggling, but everything ended with a passionate kiss.

You helped him with his blood issue, giving him blood after a small compromise.

He’s pretty shy when it comes to PDA, but hand holding, he really likes when you’re in town.

You like giving him a shy peck on the cheek every now and again.

He blushes every time.

Also hugging him because he’s one tall elegant man omg.

You really like cuddling him, he’s so big and you feel so at peace in his arms.

He likes it as well but he’s a little shy to say that.

It’s basically you holding his hand or hugging him in one way or another, in public he doesn’t respond with it, in private he does, but in both scenarios, he can’t help but feel happy.

It was still a strange thing for him because he wasn’t used to having someone take care of him and him being so passionate about taking care of you.

Your newfound relationship also surprised all the residents, every time.

Even at the dinner table when you whisper something to Jean and he leans down to listen to you.

Still catches them off guard.

But they know you’re the best person that can help him and they all support you.

Which is a little awkward when it comes to Arthur, asking all types of inappropriate questions.

Jean is a little flushed as well but pretty good at hiding it, grasping your hand and politely telling Arthur to stop.

Romantic nights, a lot of them.

Playing with his hair when he puts his head in your lap.

Horse riding together, he taught you how to but he still prefers having you in the same saddle.

Taking care of the horses together.

He also taught you the basics of fencing since you were so curious about it.

Putting his cape on in your shared room.

Kissing his nose.

And putting his gloves on.

He follows you into town when you go grocery shopping. It feels really domestic and he really enjoys it, plus you are better protected, it puts his mind at ease.

You pepper him with a lot of kisses in bed because he’s a soft boy who deserves it.

You hold him very close during the night because you don’t want to let him go -- he doesn’t complain at all.

In bed, he prefers spooning you or having most or not all of your body weight on him, it’s comforting.

Subconsciously gives you kisses on the forehead in his sleep, sometimes he mumbles as well.

Basically he’s a big teddy bear when you’re this close.

NSFW

You introduced the notion of hickeys to him and he really enjoyed it.

He won’t stop you if you want to leave him some, you love when he leaves a few as well.

Not obvious however, the teasing from everyone else would be insufferable.

He’s extremely gentle most of the time, very romantic, although not always consciously.

Jean isn’t rough with you, in any way, shape or form so it was really awkward when you spoke up about how you wanted to try a little rougher, dirtier sex.

He was caught off guard, naturally, and it was a little hard for him to try it out, but he asked for advice, you helped him as well.

Baby step after baby step, he became more skilled in bed, knowing what you liked, and he was open to experimenting.

He’s very thankful for everything you’ve done for him, he’s grown more confident in every sense of the world and he wouldn’t have it any other way, you’re so precious to him.

Comments, votes and feedback improve motivation, writing and publishing, so it is in your best interest to leave some! :)

Want to be tagged? Let me know in which ever way you are the most comfortable with!

Tagging: @lumifuer @ijustwantmyshipstobehappy @plethora-of-things @xlatinaaxx @lostnliterature @batette @schweeeppess @gearsinice @mizmahlia @tina8009 @alex--awesome--22 @disa @caswinchester2000 @towa-no-yume @shrimpalompa @lunaavanzado

224 notes · View notes

coraxaviary · 4 years ago

Text

Sister-in-Arms | CHAPTER 1: Toccoa, GA

(Part I, Run the Gauntlet)

Summary: June arrives at Camp Toccoa.

Word Count: 5.8K

AO3 | Masterlist | Next Chapter

Author’s Note: Welcome to my main fic. This is the start of a long journey. I am proud of this fic, and I hope you like it. If you have any questions, refer to my first post or shoot me a question. Once I get about five chapters out, I’ll start posting on AO3.

Warnings: None

Taglist: @keoghans @papercinders (ask to be added)

June Hazel Diedtrich stood at the depot in Toccoa, Georgia, wondering how she’d gotten there so soon.

Cars rushed by; buses passed and young men crowded the corners of the plaza, supply trucks being loaded and unloaded. More than a few men in uniform were about the area, their jackets and pants creased and tucked, berets cocked at a slight angle. The town was rushed, hot, and dusty, but bursting at the seams with a dynamic energy: the energy of hope, and dually the uncomfortable undercurrent of lingering expectation.

Most of the men would eventually ship out. Maybe it would be months, or even years. But it was going to happen, and with combat came the unavoidable reality of pain and death that were the bounty of war.

June gripped the handles of her suitcase tighter, eyeing the military men, most her age or only slightly older. They looked energetic and diligent. Spirits were high. And yet the feeling of a held breath remained.

Such was the nature of a nation at war. The Japanese had made sure of that.

June took a deep breath of the Southern air, the dry smell of red dust drifting from the ground. A few pigeons pecked errantly at the dirt, and some flock birds chittered overhead from rooftop to rooftop. A car horn honked; someone shouted in return. Boxes and crates knocked together.

She craned her head, looking for a taxi. She didn’t expect many: Toccoa was a sort of backwater area except for the military presence that brought in a lot of soldiers and trucked-in supplies. She’d have to wait for the bus.

Some other women milled about. June figured at least some of them might know the bus schedule, and she approached one woman dressed similarly to her – in a light cotton shirt and a knee-length skirt – and cleared her throat.

“Excuse me, would you happen to know the bus schedule?” June asked, already feeling lost in the new environment.

The other woman turned around. She was blonde, tall, and her red lips curved into a pleasant expression.

“Sure. There’s a bus coming in a few minutes, heading out to the base,” she said with a mildly Southern twang. “Where are you headed?”

June exhaled, relieved that there was a bus. “I’m trying to get to the base, too.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, um…” she trailed off.

“June. June Diedtrich,” June supplied.

“Nice to meet you, June. I’m Bea,” she responded cheerily.

“Likewise,” June said, adjusting her sliding grip on her suitcase handle as her palms started to sweat in the hot Georgia air.

“You know, it’s always nice to see a new face around here,” Bea said, smoothing down a piece of hair that had come free from its pin. “Sometimes it gets a little old seeing the same few people.” She glanced quickly at June, and added, “Working up at the base is nice and rewarding, because we’re helping the war effort. Never bad work, I’ll assure you.”

June breathed a brief laugh. “I’m sure it’s that way,” she said, not sure how to relate to the woman who most likely assumed June was there for secretary work. “Good all the same.”

“I wouldn’t want to scare you off on your first day,” Bea said. “Typing isn’t bad overall.”

June watched Bea’s face, careful not to encourage any new questions about her position. She was sure it was coming, though, and she prepared for how to answer inquiries about the place she was stationed. Bea was going to ask sooner or later.

“Are you a typist?” Bea asked innocently, and June straightened, breathing deeply.

“No, I’m not,” she said, not sure how to respond. “I’m not working in the office.”

Bea looked at her curiously. “Nurse? I didn’t take you for the nursing type, but I suppose we could take on more nurses. The men are always getting injured out there, God knows how.”

June looked at Bea, careful not to interrupt, trying to find a way to explain that no, she was not going to be a nurse. She was not going to shuttle papers, pound a typewriter, or drive jeeps – half of which women were rarely permitted to do. She would not be a WAC or a WASP or a WAVES woman or another ridiculous acronym, though God knew they were needed too.

Bea kept talking, and June took that as a good sign.

“... last week, another one came in with a broken leg. And that was after he’d been denying that he needed to get it fixed, can you believe it? The nurses down at the aid station must get at least three sprained ankles a day, the way it would seem.” June understood then that Bea was an avid talker. “There ain’t much scrapping, between the boys, you know, but there are some mysterious injuries that the nurses gotta figure out. Gosh, how does a guy get all those bruises?” she finished, looking to June for some kind of acknowledgement.

June coughed into her sleeve hollowly, to stall for time, and then got out a weak, “I wouldn’t know.” Which wasn’t exactly true because James taught her to sock a guy in the eye – and knee a guy in the balls – but June didn’t know a broken arm from a dislocated elbow. “I’m not a nurse,” she said.

“Oh, then where are you? Do you drive?” Bea asked, clearly confused. “Have you not been assigned yet? Because then I’d think you’d just be a typist like me,” she said nonchalantly. She picked a fold out of her skirt and let it fall back against her legs. “Do you know yet?” she asked, blue eyes searching June’s face.

“I’m―” June started, when the bus pulled in, in front of the depot. She glanced at Bea. “It’s complicated.”

“I can handle complicated,” she said brightly. “My dad is a biology professor down at Emory.” The bus came and the women began filing inside one at a time. “I mean, he talks about very complicated things,” she said, connecting her anecdote to the conversation. “You can tell me once we’re seated.”

June stood in line with Bea, trying to come up with a way to explain. Despite her preparation for Toccoa, both mentally and physically, June somehow neglected to prepare a predetermined statement on why she was there. She’d glossed over it, probably assuming that she’d just be inducted into the barracks fairly quickly without much prelude. With the road to Toccoa looming in front of her, June was forced to reconsider how optimistic that thought had been.

She moved through the bus silently, sitting down mutely beside Bea, and when all the women were on, the bus started to drive down the road. June felt more than a few curious looks to her, the newcomer.

“Well,” June started. Bea looked at her expectantly. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, betraying a little frustration on her face.

“Aw, honey, are you trying to get a job near a husband or something? I hadn’t pegged you for the already-married type, but with a face like that, I’d be married outta school too,” Bea said.

“I’m here to join the Army,” June said quietly.

Bea looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Sorry, girl, but the Women’s Army Corps doesn’t have much of a presence at camp, if that’s what you’re looking for.” Bea shifted, placing her bag on her lap. “You sure you’re in the right place?”

June pressed her lips together. “Mm, no. Not the WAC. The Army. The Paratroopers, to be exact.” The truth, she found, was best in some situations.

Bea squinted, trying to make sense of the statement. “You’re stationed with the Paratroopers? What, writing papers?” She half-laughed, expecting something out of June.

June cringed internally. “No, I’m going to be billeted with the men, training. Basic training. At least, that’s the plan. After that, I’m trying to become a combat paratrooper.” It was hard for June to say at this point for some reason, but she pushed out the words with diligence, as if putting them out into the world for the first time would make them more true. Her future had never seemed more remote, though. She wished she could explain more, but the words didn't exist. It was a simple statement. “It’s the plan,” she ended, not knowing what else to say. One shoulder lifted in a shrug.

Bea blinked at her, and leaned back in her seat with eyebrows knitted together for a few long seconds.

June looked concernedly at Bea, trying to gauge her reaction. Damn, if everyone reacted this way, June was going to have a hard year. Even worse, June realized, if she had this hard of a time telling people why she was here, it would be even harder than she expected.

Pale grass blurred under the blue sky outside the windows. Sparse fences passed by, and then the rare supply truck or car. A tree appeared every moment or two, and June watched it all flow together after some time trying to clamp onto the image of the clouds or the birds. It was better to just watch from afar and see the colors blend.

“So, you want to do a man’s job?” Bea said slowly.

June nodded.

Bea failed to say something multiple times, starting and stopping before settling on a phrase. “Why?” she got out.

June saw confusion in Bea’s eyes. She searched for judgement, but there was none yet, mercifully so.

“I want to make something of myself.”

That was what June’s father and younger brother had said when she was admitted into West Point. She was making something of herself, they’d said, and June took the phrase to heart. She was doing it alone, herself, and for her only. It turned into a mantra. She’d made something of herself yet: a girl from an apartment above a small grocery, smack-dab in the middle of the middle class, vying for a spot among the political and the academia. This time, she was aiming for a spot that many men didn’t even achieve. The paratroopers had one of the highest wash-out rates in the nation. She’d make it, just like she made it to West Point and out in three years. She’d do it, and make something of herself.

She’d do it, and maybe die trying.

Bea shifted somewhat uncomfortably, fiddling with her hands in her lap. June looked out the window, not as fidgety as before she’d explained, but still pulling at her fingers incessantly.

“Why didn’t you want to be a WAC? It’s safer. As a woman, you know, you should be doing more appropriate things. The men fight. And we do our own fighting away from the front lines, but it’s just not holding a gun.” Bea’s voice was starting to rise in indignation.

June looked down, then decided to straighten and face Bea. This was June’s decision, and it had been approved by the military. She was going regardless of what Bea thought.

“How is this even possible?” spluttered Bea, in disbelief. “Who let you? And why do you feel the need to–to do something like this?”

June sighed, fearing the reaction. “I sent correspondences to the military base and some other branches. I got support from my local politicians. I suppose the West Point degree didn’t hurt,” she said, trying for some levity.

Bea still looked concerned and scandalized. “West Point? You don’t mean–” Bea looked intently at June’s face. “You don’t mean you’re one of them?”

“The graduates this year?” June offered, neutrally.

Bea nodded, eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, I graduated with the class of ‘42. This month of June, actually.”

Bea wore the same expression on her face, half confused and half dismayed. June told herself that minds changed slowly. People like Bea were in the majority. Most Americans found any challenge to their status-quo unbearable. She was just like June’s mother when she’d been admitted.

And because Mom was against it, so was Sharon.

June had a very distinct memory of Sharon trying to talk her out of it.

“Mom doesn’t like it, you know,” she’d said, a frown on her face. “She says it’s ridiculous. Just go to University of California or something. You wouldn’t even have to go that far.”

June told herself that she’d consider Cal. Her family had even visited – many of the young people from their area went there and it seemed like a natural progression for a girl like June. She didn’t like it – not because of the area or the attitude emanating from the school, but because for some reason, she’d already had her heart set on West Point. Assuming she got in.

When June left for West Point, Mom cried and Sharon grudgingly gave her a hug. She left with a pit in her stomach. Leaving for Toccoa had created a similar reaction.

“Stay safe,” her mother had said, probably hoping Toccoa would refuse June from the start, despite their promise in the letter to consider June’s military-style education. Sharon probably thought June would wash out. It was an elite division with high drop-out rates, after all. Paratroopers.

Paratroopers. The word was unfamiliar and sounded wrong. She figured the concept of dropping from the sky was in itself, wrong. Humans had figured out how to fly close to the sun and now they were falling voluntarily, too.

June wasn’t really sure she could do it. This wasn’t West Point, where intellectual and memorization skills could supplement your success if your other scores were lacking. This was the Army. It was physical. It was about survival and combat. She couldn’t just be there, passive, and study at night to play catch-up. She had to take her future into her own hands, once again.

It didn’t matter if she thought she could do it. It only mattered if she did it.

And here she was, having a hard time explaining her situation to an amateur typist, God forbid her struggle when she got up to base.

June checked her watch. They were going to get there soon.

Bea looked into June’s eyes suddenly. “I knew I saw you somewhere else. The newspapers…” she muttered, looking as if she didn’t know what else to say despite being full of questions.

“I know it would be a lot less audacious of me to just stay on the home front.” June said, waiting for the storm. “That’s what people have already told me. You wouldn’t be the first.”

Bea furrowed her eyebrows again, taking in the grass and trees out the window. “No,” she said quietly, suddenly uncharacteristic. “No, I won’t say that.” She sat in silence for a while, and something came up on the horizon: a peaked hill, poking up from the trees and bushes, ringed with clouds and sitting against a blue sky. “Times are changing,” she said, shifting to look once again back at June. “You seem like a nice girl. I don’t think you’ll make it. You’ll drop out in a week or two, tops,” she said, shrugging, then paused. “But in the instance that you somehow make it, you’ll have done a great thing, female or not.”

June didn’t know what to say. No one had said anything like that to her. Be it with wonder or disgust, people who knew her story would always look at her with a sort of alien strangeness.

The bus was entering the base, and gates loomed in front of them. Wooden structures started to appear along the path, and men became more and more common along the path. The bus finally broke through the fading trees and the base was spread out before them: half paved, half dirt, with wood and brush and trucks everywhere. And the sheer volume of young men, all in uniform, all making their way to a specific destination. Each soldier here was here to train.

June intended to become just like the men.

She’d almost forgotten about Bea beside her, and there was a brief touch on June’s hand as Bea got up to walk towards the front of the bus.

“Wait,” June said. Bea turned around, expression unreadable. June couldn’t figure out whether Bea had concluded that she disliked her, but it didn’t matter. “I’ll see you,” she decided to say, the statement impersonal but not too remote, because in the back of her mind, June genuinely hoped she’d see Bea around base. She’d soon have no friends and have to start all over.

Bea gave her a half-smile. “You’ll know where to find me.”

And with that, June was the last woman on the bus. She made her way out in a daze, memorizing the leather of the seats with her fingers as she stepped out into the hot sun, the sounds of the base flowing over her.

June stared up at the sky, trying to gather her thoughts. She was here to be like the other men. A girl named June couldn’t make this trip to the finish, unscathed. But maybe a soldier named Diedtrich could.

She was here to fight, to learn to kill the enemy – to advance the mission of democracy throughout the quickly darkening age. The task of the U.S. Army was something huge and something glorious.

If June’s nation was embarking on the greatest mission of faith and attrition on God’s good world, she wanted in. She wanted in, bad.

And here she was, with the hardest part far ahead.

♤

She found herself gawking at the place. The other women scattered quickly after leaving the bus, reporting for their jobs in various directions. June was left standing in the dust, taking in the huge hill rising above the camp, drowning in blue sky and flanked by hastily built wooden buildings.

A few groups of men – platoons – jogged past, running around the base. The pop-bang of rifle fire drifted distantly from somewhere to June’s north. Some yelling voices floated over the din of engines and footsteps.

A man came walking briskly out from a corner of one of the offices, in his service greens. He immediately spotted June and made a beeline towards her, dodging a passing truck. He came closer, and June noted the triple chevron on his shoulder and kept a smile to herself, preparation already paying off. Sergeant, she thought. He was dark blonde, of medium build, and tall. As he arrived in front of her, he slowed.

“Sergeant John Coates,” he said, extending a hand to her. June took it and gave a firm handshake.

After a moment of indecision, June decided in a beat to introduce herself the civilian way. “June Diedtrich, sir,” she said with a smile.

He nodded, already leaning around to take June’s suitcase. She pulled away. “That’s not necessary, but thank you,” she said hastily.

“Alright,” he said brightly, not looking put off. “I’m going to take you to Colonel Sink.” He turned away, starting up a cement path pointing away from the road.

June hauled her suitcase along, switching hands, and followed quickly after the Sergeant. Her heels clacked noticeably against the ground as she picked up speed in comparison to Coates’s boots. They were jump boots: the pride of parachutists and the envy of non-paratrooper infantrymen. June tore her eyes from Coates’s uniform when he spoke, suddenly aware that she was staring.

“So, you’re here to join the Army,” Coates commented, from a few paces ahead. June blinked in surprise. She figured no one would know other than Sink and some upper-division ranking officers. There was no way to tell, except for her suitcase, which wasn’t really an obvious indicator in itself.

“Yes, I am, sir,” June said.

“Interesting thing, a woman wanting to fight and all,” he said, voice curiously devoid of judgement. People always had to comment on the idea, and June expected nothing less of Coates, even if he seemed courteous at first glance.

“I think so, sir,” she responded cautiously, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It always did. People always had something to say about her outlandish ideas.

The two were passed by another jogging platoon in silence. June felt the weight of their curious stares, probably sizing her up as another new nurse or secretary to try and take out to the movies.

More buildings passed. June looked out over the field to her right, a large expanse of flat green grass, which had a primitive track lining the perimeter, and forest beyond that, fading into a gradient of thin trees and ground cover. There were rows upon rows of barracks between her and the field – wooden row houses, long and narrow with square windows and thin walls. Some of them were covered with tarp fittings over the roofs and sides. June thought of winter in those poorly-insulated boxes and wondered how the men stayed warm.

“Look, I just want to tell you one thing before you go in,” Coates said suddenly, rounding a corner and facing her. June straightened again. “Colonel Sink may have let you in, but he’s not a nice man,” Coates said, looking slightly down at June, who was a good deal shorter. His tone was not harsh, but it seemed to be genuinely honest. “You’re here for a unique reason. I know that you are aware you will have to prove yourself more than any other man here.”

June looked seriously at him. “I know, sir. You have no idea how well I know.” She immediately reconsidered her statement. Was it too disrespectful? She searched his face. He didn’t look particularly upset. She told herself not to push it.

He nodded, looking at her sidelong without malice. “You will know if you didn’t before,” he said lowly. “I don’t envy your position, Private.”

June looked up, startled. This was the first time she’d been acknowledged as a military person, let alone a hopeful.

Private Diedtrich. She would have smiled to herself if not for a wave of overwhelming nervousness as she looked at the door that would lead to Sink. Coates broke eye contact and rose back up to full height.

“Colonel Sink is in here,” he said, holding open a door and following June into the building.

Inside, the air was cooler, but still warm. A narrow hallway led down the building to the left, and office doors – some shut, some open – punctuated the wood wall every few feet. June stepped aside to let Coates pass, and she followed him down the corridor to the last door on the right. Coates knocked.

“Come in,” a voice drifted out from the room. Coates nudged open the door and held it open for June, who slipped past him into Colonel Sink’s office.

The office was filled with light from the window behind Sink, who rose from his chair at the sight of June entering the office. June heard the shift of fabric behind her as Coates stood at attention, and after another brief moment of panicked debate, she too snapped her heels together and raised her right arm in salute, feeling a little strange doing it in her civilian clothing: skirt, lipstick, pin curls, and all.

The Colonel looked at June for a few seconds with an unreadable look, then back at Coates.

“As you were,” he said in a strong, slightly nasal voice. He had gray hair and a composed mannerism.

June heard Coates’s uniform shift again, and a half-second later, she relaxed her arm, not wanting to be found incompetent. She was feeling out-of-place already. Knowing how to salute and drill and address officers in the book was different than when the Colonel of Camp Toccoa was standing right in front of her.

Would he offer his hand for shaking? Was she supposed to take it and shake once or twice? Thankfully, Sink didn’t offer a handshake, but instead dismissed Coates with a brief wave.

“Sergeant Coates, please wait outside,” he said, and then turning to June, he pointed to a chair in front of the desk. “Have a seat, young lady,” he said, and June obediently pulled out the chair and sat down, setting her suitcase down next to her. The thought that Sink hadn’t called her Private briefly flashed through her mind, but June’s thoughts were so jumbled that she pushed the useless observation out of her mind and tried to breathe deeply to calm down her rapidly beating heart.

Sink sat down in his chair across from June and folded his hands, looking at her, the beams of noontime sun slatting through the blinds in the window and giving Sink a backlit glow. June met his eyes straight on, challenging him to make any assumptions before he talked to her first.

This was the man to impress. If anyone, it was Sink. He could throw her out of the camp right then if he wanted to. June was no Congressman’s daughter, no relative of a high-ranking official. Sink had the right to deny her requests immediately without repercussions, and they both knew.

Yet Sink had been the one – the only one – to answer June’s request, asking her to come on base to begin training that September. That had to mean he had some sort of hope for her when the others didn’t. It had to. Right?

Sink’s letter promised her a shot. It might have been a shot in the dark, but June took it.

“June Diedtrich. We finally meet,” Sink said, leaning back in his chair.

June nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said steadily. Sink laughed, probably at her stiffness, or maybe at the ridiculousness of the entire situation.

“Well, let’s get into it,” he said with an air of business, turning to a few papers on his desk and laying one on top of another. He had a particular habit of enunciating syllables and drawing them out in a Carolina accent. It reminded June of her grandfather, though she wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to make that comparison.

“In your letter you stated that you specifically wanted to join the Army. Not the WACs, or other female divisions,” Sink said, looking fleetingly at the mentioned letter and back at June. “You do realize how strange and frankly abstract an idea like this is, June?”

June kept her face stoic, but she felt a cold flash of nervousness. “Yes, sir.”

Sink scanned the rest of the letter and put it back down. “Your request has been approved by the top brass, as you already know,” he said, drumming a finger on the table and leaning back once more. “This is something that has never happened. Not once in the history of the United States Armed Forces has a female actually entered front-line combat,” Sink said with an air of finality.

She nodded, not knowing what else to say. A growing fearful anticipation of rejection grew in her mind, and she shifted in the chair uncomfortably. She reasoned with herself: why would Sink kick her out now? She’d taken a train all the way from California to get here. Sink seemed to be a man of practicality. She told herself she was being ridiculous by having anything to fear, but her own voice of logic was drowned out by anxiety.

Their correspondence had been constant, but June still knew nothing was ever concrete with such a tenuous plan relying on scant approval. Was Sink preparing to drop her right here and now? Was that why he’d kept Coates outside the office, so she could be driven back into town? June’s heart sank, even though she knew in her mind that she’d been approved to this position.

“You’re a high school valedictorian, West Point graduate, and women’s distance running champion. You have political contacts all over the country in top positions, a secure home in San Francisco, and job prospects open everywhere because of your degree. You’re smart. You’re also a woman. You have the option,” Sink said, clearing his throat and leaning forward, “of completely ignoring the war as someone who will not be affected by any possible future drafts. In fact, there will be more jobs for you when men start draining out of the country by the millions.”

June watched his face, trying to follow his logic.

“So, when I ask this, answer me honestly, because I want to know,” he said. “Why are you here?”

Bea had asked June the same thing on the bus but curiously, it seemed different when the words were coming from the mouth of a distinguished Colonel, sitting here with June’s fate in his hands. She twisted a finger in her lap and stopped herself, knowing Sink could see.

“You could be in danger if you wanted, Diedtrich,” Sink said. “You could fly a plane. You could make yourself useful by manufacturing artillery shells.” He snorted. “Hell, you could even haul ass to Europe and do some fighting yourself without being–” he waved an arm around, one side of his mouth lifting below his moustache in a scowl, “restricted by the organization of the U.S. Army. God knows we haven’t been as welcoming as some Holland revolutionaries could be on the other side of the world.”

June pressed her lips together, thinking. “I’m not bilingual, sir,” she started, and Sink laughed for a moment, his stony exterior breaking for just that second. “I don’t have a pilot's license. I don’t want to work in a factory, sir,” she forged on, wondering if her use of sir was too frequent. No matter – it was better to sprinkle in too many than too few. “I feel love for my country, this great nation I was born into. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. And if I am daring enough to count myself to be among the free and the brave, then I intend to take up arms and fight for it too.”

Colonel Sink had asked why. Why was she here? She paused just for a few seconds.

“And if not for Europe or the free people of the Pacific, I want to fight for my country. The United States of America.”

Sink looked down at the papers without reading them, up at the ceiling, and then back at June, exhaling. Then he nodded. “That’s exactly why every other man is here,” he said. “I’m glad you feel so strongly about our country. But I’ll ask you this.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Are you prepared to watch your comrades die? To have the cloud of death and blood all around you as you pack yourself into trenches, waiting for the artillery to tear some poor boy’s arm off? To be hit by the blood and guts of the man next to you, deafened by gunfire and blinded by flares?”

June swallowed, trying to picture the carnage, knowing it was a reality that was all too near, men torn limb from limb just across the sea.

“The taste of ash and metal doesn’t leave your mouth. And if you yourself get hit in battle, sometimes it’s a mercy to not have to watch your brothers bleed out in front of you or get their helmet shot through with some German machine gun,” Sink concluded. “If you ever get through the training and somehow make it into battle, can your female mind and soul bear it?”

June stared into the distance, trying to imagine it – a familiar mental choreography she’d replayed again and again for months, trying to picture the mud and screams and rivers of red. She’d watched war films when she could, but she had a premonition the worst was never shown. She’d known veterans from the Great War, hollow and haggard, missing limbs or parts of their skin or sections of their face. Burns. Amputations. Bullet wounds. Broken arms that never healed. Big scars that were never named, but pointed to some greater wound inside their soul. Empty eyes.

June hoped she’d never get to that point. Empty-eyed was the worst that you could become.

“I know it, sir,” June said, knowing it was a woeful lie. “In the event that I am eventually deployed overseas, I am prepared for it.”

Sink grimaced. “You will never be prepared. You do not know. But I have faith that you are willing to learn what it takes to become a brother-in-arms.” He paused. “Sister-in-arms.”

June nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“You are not one of them yet,” Sink said, pointing over his shoulder into the window, framing a scene of men doing drills, running, and standing at attention. “You may never be one of them. You have to make them understand, Diedtrich. You must make them. No one else will do it for you.” A brief shake of his head. “But the battle for now is not to make friends. You will earn their respect by your actions, your fortitude, and your resilience, something each man must do. And now you are a woman attempting the same thing. If they accept you,” he said, “and that is a big if, you will do it by surviving Toccoa. There is no shortcut. You either shape up or wash out, same as the others, West Point degree be damned.”

June’s eyes narrowed slightly, hating that her degree was probably going to be held over her the whole time she was here, if she lasted longer than a few days. She hated being told about her own education, because she was reminded of how she’d been given exceptions that made her class graduate in three short years.

If she ever earned something, it would be her place in the Paratroopers.

“I cannot stress this enough, Diedtrich,” Sink said. “You must earn this. The Army men will not be easily convinced of your competence unless you demonstrate it.”

June nodded firmly, face hardening. “I will try my best, sir.”

Colonel Sink looked as if he was going to try to say something else, but then decided against it. “Well, Private Diedtrich, I wish you the best, but that’s all I can do. Welcome to U.S. Army training,” he said, rising from his chair. “The Basic Training exam is in a few weeks. I’ll see you then.”

June stood up quickly too, and Sink offered a hand for a shake. June gave him her firmest handshake, and Sink nodded at her.

“Survive this, and you make history,” Sink said, face serious.

June felt the unsaid implication hang in the air.

Fail, and you’re just another drop-out.

June didn’t intend to fail. She’d weather this, just like she had weathered her other obstacles. This time, the obstacle was called Toccoa. And maybe – just maybe – she’d eventually face down the forces of Europe.

#band of brothers #band of brothers fic #hbo war #hbo war fic #band of brothers imagine #fanfic #sister-in-arms #run the gauntlet #writing

24 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years ago

Text

THE OTHER HALF OF THE RESOURCEFUL

Up till a few years ago an Italian friend of mine who knows nearly all the rest, the lead is out too. Instead of a beautiful but fragile flower that needs to have its stem in a plastic tube to support itself, better to be small, ugly, and indestructible. The fact that hackers learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. Not because they contribute more to the startup, but not so they can sue competitors. So obviously that is what we should be able to be included in it. Some say it's because their culture encourages cooperation. Another popular explanation is that wisdom comes from experience while intelligence is innate. Nor is there anything wrong with that.

We take for granted things we would consider shockingly luxurious. You may need to be designed for human feet. In the last couple years they've extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from them. But it seems to bother a lot of parentheses by making indentation significant. And at Y Combinator is not to be desperate. Now we'll show it to you and your friends, to people in Nepal, and to know how to improve them. I'm sure Larry and Sergey were noobs at fundraising. You need the young hacker's naive faith in his abilities, and at the same time. But if you get a lot of code. What should you do in the design. I feel bad making an example of this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it.

Those whose jobs require them to judge art, like curators, mostly resort to euphemisms like significant or important or getting dangerously close realized. The whole field is uncomfortable in its own right, and that it is not dense enough. Another probably even worse obstacle is that one has higher standards. I realize it may seem cool to get paid for doing easy stuff, after paying to do hard stuff in college. If you start from the mistaken assumption that Instagram was worthless, you have to figure out what the problem is more with the patent office takes a while to gain momentum. Why isn't it? This only seems unfair if it comes as a surprise.

In existing open-source is probably the single most important difference between a good hacker? Meet such investors last if at all. A good language, as everyone who's had a regular job can tell you, is that it also means there's no such thing as good art, but for those who make it often try to trick us. They use the latest stuff. We couldn't believe large numbers of preposterously over-broad patent, the USPTO are not hackers. In the middle you have people working on something great. It means arguments of the form Life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is bullshit. If the number of people who could start a startup.

In some applications, the processor will be the last you ever raise. In the big angel rounds that increasingly compete with series A rounds aren't going away, I think, is to have the upper hand over investors, if you can. A quality that's inborn will obviously be more convenient to work with than one that's broad but hypothetical. Frightening as it seemed to them, not something that was a property of the subject or the object if subjects all react similarly. Unfortunately, patent law is inconsistent on this point. Hackers, likewise, can learn to be a good thing when it happens, because these new investors will be hot to close, which is that it has made it easier to learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. At the time, instead of what I wanted to do anything that completely took over my life the way a painting is drowned out. For example, the editor could display bottlenecks in red when the programmer edits the source code. And in particular, younger and more technical founders will be able to write a program decides what language to use by someone else. So probably math is more worth studying than computer science.

You have to invent anything. In this case the super-angels are really mini VC funds, and they turned out ok. Nearly all the greatest paintings are paintings of people, you've found a gold mine. The constraints that limit ordinary companies also protect them. They seem to work just as well without, however, you'll start to think of them. All that matters is how hard the project is technically, and that you haven't thought much about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as possible, preferably in the first couple generations. Debugging, I was taught in college that one ought to figure out what's actually wrong with him, and treat that. The founder who handles fundraising should make a conscious effort to avoid addictions—to stand outside ourselves and ask is this how I want to free the idea of the corporate ladder is probably gone for good.

But there are two things different here from the usual confidence-building exercise. I don't think there's any limit to the amount of selling required in an industry is always inversely proportional to the judgement of art. If a writer rewrites an essay, people who read the source read it in illicit photocopies of John Lions' book, which though written in 1977 was not allowed to flake. Letting focus groups design your cars for you only wins in the short term. That has worked for some groups in the past been the ones with the most power. In an earlier essay I said that VCs were a lot like being a doctor. And since a startup is like being proud of your college grades. But there is something structural and therefore legitimate about their behavior. They may have to decide what to do next.

In the worst case, it will also start to matter less where they go to VC firms they have to be thinking, wow, this is not how to have good taste, which is then executed by an interpreter. So cultivating intelligence seems to be a property of objects after all. I can think of are W. Most people have learned to treat saying yes as like diving off a diving board, and they know how much jobs suck. Tv are a good example. The other reason parents may be mistaken is that, at this early stage, there are some smart hackers there they could invest in. Since the goal of this rule is to avoid messing up the series A, there's obviously an exception if you end up raising more than they would be for the company to build their product for them. The most important thing about a car is the image it projects. The fascinating thing about optimizing for growth is that it sucks for doing what hackers want to do.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #hackers #A #essay #writer #car #sign

1 note · View note

scripttorture · 5 years ago

Note

I came across your Torture in Fiction tab where you reviewed a Doctor Who episode and mentioned your love of the show so I'm going to mention exactly what I'm writing. It's basically a Bill/Heather story after they leave together and I'd like to accurately take into account the type of consequences (short term and long termr) of the entire turned into a cyberman ordeal. So any input would be highly appreciated.

Anon, I think I love you. Lesbian romance in the stars with one of my favourite characters, you are too kind.

Let’s start at the beginning.

For those unfamiliar with Doctor Who, the Cybermen are a recurring foe. The idea behind them is that they are people, cybernetically enhanced people with all the ‘unnecessary’ bits removed. Like the ability to feel pain or hope or love. The ultimate aim of the Cybermen is to make everyone else like them. They believe that not having emotional connections makes them superior.

And in one of Bill’s stories she gets turned into a prototype Cyberman. Except due to some unique circumstances the programming doesn’t quite take. Bill is left with a Cyberman body but her thoughts, personality and ability to feel are intact.

Through more unique circumstances (which depending on your interpretation may include Bill dying and being resurrected-) Heather restores her body as it was pre-Cybermen.

We’re never told exactly what happens to Bill. But it’s clear from the context that the procedure is painful and not consensual.

We do see Bill for a few days afterwards. She struggles to accept that she’s a Cyberman and doesn’t seem to know how to process what she’s been through. She seems more or less OK, but given the short time frame we see her for it’s difficult to say if this is a bad portrayal or not. For some people it takes a while for things to sink in and for symptoms to become apparent.

Going forward I’m going to assume that’s the case for Bill.

I’m going to make a couple of other assumptions because there isn’t anything in reality which lines up that well with the Cybermen.

There is not anything that can really 'take away' all emotions. Some drugs can result in emotional blunting as a side effect, but less intense emotion is not the same thing as no emotion. The intense, invasive surgical procedures that are implied to make a Cyberman are completely fictional, and probably wouldn't be survivable in reality.

It's a scenario that you'd expect to be traumatic: an extremely painful, invasive act that re-structures the entire body and is done without consent. Given the particular circumstances in Bill's story, it's tempting to compare it to non-consensual medical procedures.

As a black, lesbian woman who is aware of both modern politics and history it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume Bill can make the same comparisons I have. Black women have been subjected to forced sterilisation and used for medical experimentation within living memory (see The Immortal Life of Henreitta Lacks for a discussion of unethical experimentation in the recent past).

Heather is less likely to be aware of this history and these issues.

As I said there isn't anything that lines up exactly; I keep thinking of forced sterilisation, though this often doesn’t cause lasting physical pain. It also brought to mind some of the… less ethical ‘treatments’ and ‘experiments’ in recent history.

We’ll assume that Bill has a realistic memory of what happened, that the experience was traumatising and that she isn’t in physical pain.

I’d also make the argument that turning someone into a Cyberman could be considered torture in the legal sense. It’s done by a group that effectively controls territory, to people who are under their power. It causes suffering and in Bill’s case it is arguably done to punish the Doctor.

You’ve read the blog before so you probably know the drill when it comes to the common long-term symptoms of torture. Here’s the Masterpost should anyone else want to have a look. I’ll get back to symptoms in a moment.

In the short term I think that it’s likely Bill would experience something similar to modern survivors of ‘clean’ tortures.

‘Clean torture’ is a term Rejali uses to describe techniques that don’t often leave obvious external marks. These are no less dangerous then other methods; people can still be seriously injured, disabled or die because of clean torture techniques.

But the lack of obvious marks makes it harder to prove a person was tortured. And when the public perception of torture is that it always leaves scars many survivors find they’re dismissed, belittled and denied services.

People don’t believe they were tortured. Because we are taught that torture ‘must’ leave marks.

And Bill has just come out of the Cyber-conversion process unscarred. In a world where most people believe that turning back once you’ve been made a Cyberman is impossible.

This is likely to be a factor if she tries to get professional help as well as in everyday interactions.

Bill herself might assume that her symptoms are overblown or somehow put on; that they’re not warranted because her body has been perfectly restored.

When it comes to more long term symptoms, the right choice will always depend on the characters and the story you want to tell.

Personally I wouldn’t want to give Bill suicidal tendencies or an addiction because I feel like those are symptoms that could shift the story away from the central relationship. I think they’re symptoms that usually demand more focus and that can make balancing them with the central story more difficult.

I usually suggest that authors try to include memory problems in a realistic way and I think they’d be an especially good fit here. (The Masterpost summarising the most common forms of memory problems survivors have is here).

Essentially I think that you could use memory problems to highlight how Bill’s time as a Cyberman has affected her mind. So much of our identity and self-image is rooted in our memories. Finding flaws in them, especially around important things, can shake our sense of self.

And that ties in to the way Cybermen are consistently used in Doctor Who to denote the loss of self. All of the common memory problems could be used to raise these philosophical questions and tie Bill’s symptoms more firmly to the plot.

Insomnia is a symptom I always find a little difficult because it has so many knock on effects.

The worsening of reaction times, alertness, coordination, combined with the pain and shakes and occasional visual hallucination or micro-sleep means that insomnia isn’t a symptom I’d recommend for a character like a superhero. If you want the character to consistently win fights then it’s not a good pick.

Similarly the long term effects on creativity, reasoning, concentration, emotional processing and learning mean it’s a bad pick if the character is supposed to be an inventive genius.

One of the nice (but underutilised) things about Doctor Who is that the way the stories are typically structured means that not every character has to be exceptional at everything. Bill’s strengths were not superhuman physical combat or exceptional genius (even though she was incredibly intelligent); they were compassion and her ability to form fast, strong friendships with just about anyone she meets.

Insomnia could fit your story but I think it depends on what you want the characters to do on a regular basis.

Chronic pain could be a good fit.

The conversion process radically changed Bill’s body, a change that she more or less refused to accept was real during the story. In those circumstances physical pain can be an interesting addition: it simultaneously acts as a reminder of what Bill suffered and ties her to her restored body now.

And since chronic pain in torture survivors can be psychological, or a combination of psychological and physical, there’s no reason why Bill’s body couldn’t be perfectly healed while experiencing chronic pain.

This is also a symptom that characters can be more proactive about. She can try things and find solutions much more quickly then she might be able to for something like depression. Stretches, exercise, mobility aids, organisation, painkillers and forward planning can all be helpful. And early success could help you to show the character feeling more empowered, reclaiming her body.

I’m not sure if difficulty relating to others would be a good pick, considering Bill’s canonical strengths. However social isolation could be interesting as an obstacle to gradually overcome.

Going beyond the usual symptoms- Have you read any of the Doctor Who comics? Because I keep thinking of The Flood, which was a Cyberman story with the Eighth Doctor.

It had a rather wonderful Cyberman design and had the Cybermen attempting to persuade large numbers of people to volunteer for Cyber conversion. They did it by chemically manipulating the emotions of an entire city; making feelings unbearably intense and then offering the conversion process as a solution.

Bill kept her feelings but she would have known she was supposed to lose them. And she’d go from that to having incredibly intense feelings. Because she’d have developed trauma symptoms.

She might be tempted to view her symptoms as the ‘natural’ consequence of regaining full capacity for emotion, rather then due to trauma. Latching on to a physical, rather then psychological, difference.

I’d also consider whether all of this changes Bill’s relationship with her own body. Relief at getting it back might be accompanied by a heightened awareness of changes, even natural ones.

I think if I was writing this I’d be tempted to add in little details, triggers or self-soothing behaviours tied to her body.

The Cyberman chest unit for that design looks heavy. Does compression around her chest make her panic? Do rubber gloves feel horrible? Does the sensation of something going over her face, like the ‘mask’ on these Cybermen, prompt intrusive memories?

The ‘handles’ on the head were supposed to suppress emotion in this version. Could Bill reassure herself that they’re gone by touching her own hair? Do short sleeves feel ‘better’, because she can feel the sun, wind or rain against her skin? Does she wear her earrings more often, because the weight of them and the way they move is comforting?

Good luck with your story. I hope this helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #tw medical abuse #tw suicide mention #doctor who #sci fi ask #writing victims #writing recovery #choosing symptoms #clean torture #insomnia #memory problems #chronic pain

69 notes · View notes

rogueclonesftw · 4 years ago

Note

hello! i don't know anything about your OC's, but i saw your post. could you perhaps list all of them with a short summary? 🙏🏻💕

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sorry this took so long to answer. I moved house and it was A Lot. My OCs are legion so for the sake of everyone else’s dashes I’m putting this under a read more

These are just for the clone wars era I’m leaving the rebels out of it

Thanks for asking!! Feel free to ask about anyone if you want to know more.

fair warning this is long af

I’m splitting it into sections to make this easier

Heretics

Jedi

Bela Rant

Togruta Jedi Master and mother Master of four Padawans children. Not a favourite of the Council due to differences in interpretation of the Code. Had an ongoing feud with Qui Gon Jinn that lasted until he died. She died in the war ten years later and Col took over her command.

Alask Racor

Grumpy Twi’lek first Padawan of Bela, had two Padawans of his own but was killed by pirates before the second was knighted.

Reya Meraska

Alask’s first Padawan. A human from Jedha and compassion incarnate. Had an uneventful apprenticeship and grew up to be comparatively quiet compared to the rest.

Ben Edo

Reya’s first and so far only Padawan. The model of a perfect Jedi except for thinking their interpretation of the Code is bullshit. Would have made one hell of a politician if he could stand the Senate. From Dantooine.

Tol Koden

Alask’s second Padawan, a very polite Zabrak. Alask died when he was 17 and Jos took over his training. He and Ben are the same age and were raised basically together.

Jos Vel

Stubborn and opinionated Kiffar. Bela’s second Padawan. Had her own (equally stubborn and opinionated) Padawan and then took over Tol’s training when Alask died.

Harlan Konshi

Jos’s Padawan. Also a Kiffar. Would also make a fine politician because being raised by Jos taught him to argue. He’s a bit of a jackass but in a charming way. Like, he’s a prick but you still like him.

Azaana Tyl

Harlan’s sweet, quiet, shy Togruta Padawan. Jos laughed so hard when she heard about that. Harlan is trying to teach her self-confidence. The baby of the family.

Col Blackmoor

Bela’s third and most disastrous Padawan. The former Temple Problem Child (now Temple Problem Adult). Not that he spends much time in the Temple. Was so far out on the Outer Rim he didn’t find out there was a war on until he had to come back and take over Bela’s legion. The worst case of ADHD the Temple has ever seen.

Lena Sola

Col took her in after an incident with her former Master almost saw her kicked out of the Order. Col intervened. She’s still uncomfortable around most Jedi, but they’re working on it. Sweet kid. Kage.

Aden Jadus

Bela’s final Padawan, knighted just before Geonosis. Yes, she’s from Tatooine. No, that does not mean she knows Skywalker. Stop asking.

Not-Jedi

Vale

The oldest of the bunch, Reya’s Commander. Has enough Big Dad Energy to build a deck at 20 paces. Meat grills in his presence and the shinies all fear his disappointed frown.

Nill

Jos’s Commander. Deeply claustrophobic. A nice, likeable guy unless you piss him off. Caffeine demon.

Jax

Clone Commander and Col Wrangler in Chief, Col regards his Commander with barely disguised awe. He considers him his closest friend. For his part, Jax thinks similarly highly of Col. He likes to draw when he gets spare time (rarely). Grew up with Sonny and Cody. Very protective of Lena.

Crater

Professional Ray of Sunshine, the exact opposite of his twin. Crater and Crash grew up with Wolffe. Crater was assigned to Ben, and he likes his General, really, but the man never sleeps. It’s starting to stress him out.

Click

Professional Salt Mine assigned to the Galaxy’s Politest Jedi because apparently the GAR runs on irony. Makes Wolffe look like a ray of happy, happy sunshine.

Pip

The perpetual optimist to Aden’s incredible pessimist. Remains stubbornly cheerful by choice, because if he doesn’t laugh he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop crying.

Dexter

Professional Grouchy Bastard. Likes Harlan well enough but will absolutely tell him he’s full of shit. If Azaana likes you, Dexter will tolerate your existence. If you make Azaana sad they will never find your body. A training accident left him with scars and a deep growl in his voice that makes him sound angrier than he is.

Stitch

Col’s CMO and the only person Jax legitimately fears. Deeply wishes his siblings and General would get injured less and look after themselves more. Is willing to enforce this with sedatives.

Zip

The Right Hand of God (Stitch’s second in command). He who wields the big needles.

Layne

Cheerful but stressed Captain of a company of reckless idiots who really should know better but apparently don’t. He should be used to it. He grew up with Rex.

Trip and Tap

Two survivors of Krell reassigned to Col. Tap has a nervous habit of tapping his fingers. Trip can trip over thin air.

Jazz, Snap and Void

A trio. Jazz likes to wander off. Void likes to hide. Snap likes to complain they’re giving him grey hair from the stress of having them disappearing all the time.

Ray and Rico

The product of an embryo that split, Ray and Rico lived in fear of being culled as defects on Kamino. They’ve since left Kamino, but the fear hasn’t left them.

Lys

A tired medic who would like Dexter to drink something that isn’t caf please.

Tyke

The medic with the most agreeable Jedi (Tol). He barely has to bully him into seeking medical attention at all. Such a shame that his Commander seems determined to make up for it by being a complete bastard. If Click wants to get tackled in the hallway, that’s his lookout.

Rill

Has a particular interest in medical research. Or he would if he ever had the time.

Corrie

The youngest CMO in the GAR. Just barely 18, only on the field for six months and never meant to be CMO at all. But she’s the only medic Pip’s got left after that clusterfuck, so they’re all doing their best. She might be young but she will absolutely yell at a commander you see if she doesn’t.

New Dawn Crew

Not-Clones

Mira Vin

A female Kiffar former Jedi whose Master died on Geonosis. The Council were going to knight her and make her a General, so she told Windu to stick it up his ass and ran away to the Outer Rim to harass slavers and save “defective” clones.

Kell Vekarr

An Alderaanian former Jedi who was rescued from slavers as a child. Finally took the 20 remaining members of his command and ran when the rest were killed over Ando. Jaster’s boyfriend. Autistic.

Jaster Toran

True Mandalorian bounty hunter who was betrayed by a client and sold into slavery. Joined the crew upon his rescue four years later. Kell’s boyfriend. Autistic.

Riye Toran

Jaster’s older sister who joined the crew to look for him and then stuck around because she liked it there.

Volya’tar

Twi’lek former slave who freed herself and stole a ship. Pilot, mechanic and Mira’s best friend.

Pash Colton

Dyspraxic dyslexic Corellian with more brains than sense. An engineering genius who has wisdom as his dump stat. Also sometimes a smuggler.

Jaina Bell

Tiny and terrifying. Orphaned at a young age and grew up to be a smuggler, mechanic and pilot.

Ela

Nonbinary Lorrdian. Has a long horrendous Lorrdian name they never use. Joined the crew because slavers suck and anything that makes their lives difficult is a good thing. Stuck around for the people.

Black Company

Halcyon

An ARC Captain known for his green hair and endless patience. Considers Kell a close friend but calls him Commander regardless. Used to fight Rex a lot as a kid. Please let this man rest.

Bones

Halcyon’s batchmate and Black Company’s CMO. A cranky bugger, but that’s understandable considering what he deals with daily.

Pax

The peacemaker between his idiot brothers and everyone else for as long as they can remember. A chill guy, but even chill guys have limits.

Tracyn and Carud

Two of the Nightmare Children. Their names are fire and smoke and they cause a lot of both, raising Pax’s blood pressure and driving Bones into apoplectic rage.

Isa

Jaro’s long suffering sister. Usually has to track him down to make him go to sleep. Has a weekly commiseration session with Ari (alcohol optional but recommended).

Jaro

Named for the Mando’a word for reckless and boy howdy is it accurate. The ADHD doesn’t help.

Ari

Rio’s batchmate and she loves her brother dearly but she is so done with his shit.

Rio

The last of the original Nightmare Children, ADHD disaster and source of most of Bones’s workload.

Kee and Jam

Nonbinary comms officers who bicker very cheerfully. Usually with each other. Often at high volume through the halls of the ship.

Torin

Gay artist baby.

Kol

Gay artist bastard.

Charly

Honestly he’s just here for a laugh and his brothers respect him for it. You’ve got to find your joy where you can get it these days.

Dys

Takes great delight in moving Set’s things just a couple of centimetres. Just enough to annoy him. Will deck anyone else who tries the same thing.

Set

Also known as Corporal Square Corners. Everything has to be neat and tidy. He was a godsend before inspections. Now he’s just the reason people have somewhere to sit.

Slip

Known for giving his trainers the slip and disappearing into the bowels of Kamino when they were doing training exercises he didn’t like and then getting stuck and having to be retrieved by Chase.

Chase

More like chase-ing his brother through the halls of Kamino to keep him out of trouble. There’s a running joke that he should have ended up in search and rescue.

Bright

Was he named for his bright red hair or as an ironic comment on his general outlook on life? Who knows? Not him. A pessimist if there ever was one.

Impulse

Full name Have-You-Ever-Heard-Of-Impulse-Control and no, he hasn’t.

Cuyan Squad

Sonny

A naturally blond, autistic, Force-sensitive Commander who survived Kamino by the skin of his teeth. Grew up with Cody and Jax. Hyper efficient Can, will and has broken people’s faces for saying shit about the Coruscant Guard.

Zak

Force-sensitive Captain who despises soup and has incredible claustrophobia. Good with kids though. Autistic.

Force-sensitive autistic Lieutenant. Quieter than Zak, and fully supports his vendetta against soup. Has his own vendetta against food that stabs you in the mouth.

Bang

Force-sensitive bomb-tech. Partially deafened in an explosion which also gave him some pretty intense scarring. Gets nervous when he can’t see people behind him.

Bit

Force-sensitive techie with a penchant for weapons modification and data slicing. Gives the best hugs in the squad.

Tink

If it’s broken Tink can fix it. The resident ADHD Force-sensitive techie. Has a tendency to hyperfocus on projects to the exclusion of all else.

Flow

De facto squad medic because he’s the best at Force-healing of the lot of them. He does not appreciate this, this is not what he trained for, you’re voiding his warranty, vode please. Dyed his hair purple because he could.

Edge

Thrill seeker with electric blue hair and boundless energy. The ADHD doesn’t help with the fidgeting, but he likes to go fast so Force-augmented speed is pretty great.

Ry and Cas

True twins born from the same tube, they’re the Fred and George Weasley of clones. They’ve got the red hair and everything. Judicious use of the Force makes pranks far easier.

Other

Caj, Chess and Blade

The brothers in charge of the homebrew alcohol. The taste is a work in progress, but the last batch didn’t make anyone go blind.

Rictor and Sike

Survivors of Krell who deal with their trauma in very different ways. Rictor is terrified of authority in case they turn out like Krell. Sike figures if he survived that he can survive anything and mouths off constantly.

Kano and Oly

Batchmates who were reconditioned separately (for nightmares and injury, respectively) and reunited upon Kano’s rescue. Oly had been with the crew for months by then. They both cried.

Sitrep, Conn and Sig

Three more nonbinary comms officers. A cheerful bunch who like to argue. Usually with each other. The problems started when they started arguing with their General.

Aran, Orar and Tay

Three heavy gunners who fight TJ a lot because the little twerp is asking for it (literally). Tay is relentlessly cheerful, Aran the exact opposite, and you’re lucky to get three words out of Orar in a row.

Ani, Mirdir and Dajun

Techies and mechanics who prefer wires to people. Mirdir and Dajun have known each other since birth and bicker a lot. Ani mostly ignores them.

Dane

A captain who finally snapped and told his General where he could stick his suicidal orders.

Sprint

Full name Slow-Down-There’s-No-Need-To-Sprint, a six foot ball of energy and barely contained enthusiasm. Usually found hurtling around the place at ludicrous speeds.

Crash

An anxious, autistic pilot who has never crashed his ship. He has, however, crashed himself into doors, siblings, training sergeants.

Rainer

A really chill guy who got shipped off for being too violent after a misunderstanding about a sparring match. TJ’s favourite sparring partner.

Likes to fight, does not care if his opponent could physically snap him in half. Sometimes he just has to beat his brain into submission via getting the crap beaten out of his body. Usually succeeds in provoking the heavy gunners into fighting him.

Zero

TJ’s perpetually worried brother. Really wishes TJ would chill. Dyslexic and has a recurring leg injury that won’t heal. Gets bored easily.

Brook and Storm

A pair of total nerds who get so engrossed in arguing that they don’t realise they’re about to walk into a tree. Frequently wander off and have to be returned.

Jai, Tala, Teek, Niko and Galaar

Five ARCs who got sent back to Kamino for telling their General to go kriff himself. Jai is Force-sensitive. Galaar is just a prick with a terrible sense of humour.

#zay answers #my ocs #oc masterlist #i will update the actual masterlists at some point but for now this'll di #please feel free to ask questions about my babies

18 notes · View notes

fleckcmscott · 5 years ago

Text

Watch What Happens - Chapter 3

Chapter links: 1, 2

Summary: Arthur, an aspiring comedian, has struggled to find normalcy and compassion his entire life. Y/N, a hard-working paralegal and transplant to Gotham, has just been put on a case for the Wayne Foundation. When they meet, unexpected sparks fly.

Chapter warning: Angst

Words: 1,856

Impromptu conversations with Hoyt were rarely pleasant. There seemed to be a new gripe whenever Arthur learned his boss wanted to speak with him. He’d been late to a party because the train had broken down. The balloon animals he was learning to make deflated too quickly. His laughter popped up at the wrong times.

Today’s meeting had been no different. As soon as he walked into Hoyt’s cramped office, he knew he’d be scolded. He understood Kenny’s Music was upset that he’d disappeared. What he hadn’t expected was Hoyt’s complete dismissal of his side of the story. Yes, it was a stupid decision to go after the kids who were giving him shit. The bruises covering him were enough to prove that. But why would he go out of his way to steal a sign?

Arthur had been careful to smile painfully the entire time, the way Penny had taught him. With all the effort it took to maintain his composure, he’d barely heard Hoyt threaten to take the cost of the broken placard out of his pay. He felt a pang in his gut. Less money would mean missed meals. At least he could handle that better than his mother, since he rarely ate anyway.

Hoyt told him his co-workers were uncomfortable around him. That they thought he was weird. That wasn’t news to Arthur - though he didn’t always get their intentions, he wasn’t an idiot. He hadn’t missed the lack of inclusion in the card games the others played on their downtime, or how quiet they were around him.

And he made everyone uncomfortable. Except maybe Gary, the little person he worked with. Gary was the only acquaintance who appeared to give a shit about him, even a little. And he went out of his way to check-in with Arthur when a day had been particularly trying. Arthur would have to remember to try to return that favor.

Usually, his anger didn’t eclipse his general malaise. When it did, he tried to push it down like he had learned. He couldn’t do that today. After the meeting with Hoyt, he’d gone into the back alley and punted the garbage until he fell.

It had been too much. He put more than forty hours a week into being a clown. He loved his job and was good at it. There was a reason he was on the rotation list for the children’s hospital. Just once, it would be nice to hear he had done well instead of being berated.

He tried to remind himself he was lucky to have a steady income.

Now Arthur was in the empty locker room at HaHa’s, cleaning crud off his shoes from the garbage bags he’d broken open. His knee was sore from the kicking. When he got home, he’d have to put ice on it. He took in a long breath, sitting on the bench in front of the row of blue lockers. Sometimes he thought it would be easier to simply drift away.

“You okay?”

Arthur hadn’t heard Randall approach. He slumped a little, expecting another smart remark from the giant know-it-all.

Randall continued. “I heard about the beat-down you took. Fucking savages.”

The aggravation in his voice wasn’t what Arthur had expected. Arthur shook his head. “It was just a bunch of kids. I should have left it alone.”

“No, they’ll take everything from you if you do that. All that crazy shit out there? They’re animals,” Randall stated.

Arthur stood and grabbed his jacket from his locker, not wanting to continue. He’d been on his feet all day, which hadn’t helped his healing back. All he wanted was to go home and try to relax.

Randall shoved a paper bag at him, taking him aback. “Here.”

Arthur glanced at it. “What is it?”

“Take it.”

Half expecting a trick, Arthur wiped his nose, took the bag and gingerly opened it. The light from overhead reflected off a .38 snub-nosed handgun and six bullets. Giggling nervously, he closed the bag and tried to hand it back. He looked around, making sure no one else had entered the room. “Randall,” he whispered. “I’m not supposed to have a gun.”

Randall smiled at him. “Don’t sweat it, Art. No one has to know. And you can pay me back some other time. You know you’re my boy.”

Arthur wasn’t sure how to take that. Had all the self-doubt he’d felt moments ago been wrong? Randall giving him a gift a gun to protect himself - did this mean he was finally “one of the guys?” It made him nervous. And a little proud. He shoved the paper bag in his pocket and shook his head lightly, laughing. “I’ve - I’ve got to go. My mother’s waiting.”

~~~~~

Arthur's evening went similarly to every other. He made dinner for Penny and took a quick shower, then ran a bath for his mother. After testing the temperature with the back of his hand, he went into the living room with a towel. "It's time for your bath, mom." Penny didn't have much of a reaction, a soft smile and a nod. He draped the towel over his shoulder and, putting an arm around her back, the other under her armpit, gently lifted her out of the easy chair. She shuffled along as he guided her to the bathroom.

Penny dropped her robe to the floor, seemingly half paying attention to what she was doing. He picked it up, folded it, and placed it on the closed toilet lid. Once he had helped her out of the rest of her clothing, he threw it in the hamper. He took her hand as she stepped into the tub. "Be careful. Don't slip," he said, helping her get into the water. When she was situated, he dragged a stool over, sat, then grabbed a washcloth and soap to scrub her back.

Arthur was used to taking care of Penny, but this level of helplessness still felt new. He'd had to start helping her bathe about six months ago, when she'd had a fall getting out of the tub. The panic he'd felt when he'd found her on the floor still weighed heavily in his stomach when he thought about it. He'd been grateful she hadn't broken anything. And when she’d first said, "Happy, I need your help in the bathroom," he'd been glad to assist her. Truthfully, it felt good to be needed.

She stared vacantly at the wall as he washed her arms. "I wonder why there was no mail today."

"That means no bills, mom." He handed her the washcloth and soap. "Wash your chest and down below." Turning away from her, he listened to the water splash behind him. He hummed gently with the radio as he waited for her to finish.

She continued after the soft sloshing stopped. "Maybe the mailman is stealing my letters."

He swiveled back around and grabbed the nearby plastic cup. Carefully, he tipped her head back and started washing her hair.

Penny closed her eyes. "Maybe we'll hear from him soon."

He couldn't bite his tongue any longer. "Mom, why are these letters so important to you? What do you think he's gonna do?"

"He's gonna help us," she pronounced.

Bewildered, he shook his head. "You worked for him, what? Thirty years ago?" A sigh escaped him. "Why would he help us?"

She turned and looked him straight in the face, answering without hesitation. "Because Thomas Wayne is a good man. If he knew how we were living... If he could see this place, it would make him sick." She lowered her head. "I can't explain it to you any better than that."

Arthur pursed his lips. It wasn't worth the argument; he wouldn't win it anyway. He closed his eyes. He did his best to provide, but he knew it wasn’t enough. Maybe if she hadn’t had a son who was such a mess, she’d be in a better position. He started thinking about the sign he had to pay for, hoping he could pick up an extra gig to make up the difference. "I don't want you worrying about money, mom," he said soothingly. "Or me." A flicker of excitement went through him at what he was going to say next. "Everyone's been telling me my stand-up's ready for the big clubs."

Blinking at him, she said, "But, Happy, what makes you think you can do that?"

"What do you mean?"

Penny looked at him in consternation. "Don't you have to be funny to be a comedian?"

~~~~~

The journal lay open on the coffee table in front of Arthur. Sitting on the old, scratchy sofa in his blue pants, smoking cigarette after cigarette down to the filter, he thought about what he should write. It felt like homework tonight. The jokes weren't coming.

Usually he could ignore Penny's remarks. Tonight's comment from her had wounded him, though. She didn't think he could pursue his purpose of spreading joy and laughter? A purpose she'd told him he had all his life? He knew his timing was off, that he didn't get punchlines in the same way others did. He was acutely aware of that he had misunderstandings he couldn’t seem to fix. But he wouldn't stop practicing and trying to improve. He'd make her proud of him one day. He'd show her.

He wasn't going to journal about the bullet hole he'd accidentally fired into the wall, which he was going to have to figure out how to patch. If Counselor Kane caught wind of it, he'd be in serious trouble. The gun had been heavier than he'd imagined. His hands had trembled when he held it. It felt forbidden. And dangerous.

Why hadn't Randall told him it was loaded? He could have killed himself. Maybe that's what Randall wanted.

The new pack of pens caught his eye, and his thoughts went to the woman at the store. When she'd first spoken to him, he'd been preparing himself for a snide comment. One never came. She'd been unexpectedly kind and polite.

Her stare had been disconcerting until she apologized for it. A short chuckle escaped him as he remembered her blush. Women never did that around him. Even though he wasn't like the men in check-out stand magazines or movies, he wondered if she'd found him attractive. She was so pretty, too pretty for him.

The bravery he'd managed to wrangle to open the door for her surprised him. He wanted to keep it. Standing behind her in line, he thought he'd been able to catch a whiff of the sweet fragrance of her shampoo. Or maybe he’d dreamed it. Either way, he associated it with her. He wished he had worn cologne - she might have liked it.

He picked up a pen and started writing in his messy scrawl, a soft smile on his face. "I met a nice woman at the store yesterday. I don't know why she was nice to me but I'm glad she was. If I meet her again I need to say hi."

Tag list (Let me know if you want to be added!): @harmonioussolve @clowndaddyfleck @stephieraptorr

#arthur fleck #arthur fleck x reader #arthur fleck x female reader #arthur fleck fanfic #arthur fleck x ofc #joker 2019 #watchwhathappens

67 notes · View notes