#fear play in fiction
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Hi Pia
I blubbing love your stories. The way you build such 4 dimensional characters and riveting plots alongside really sexy smut that manages to never feel forced or empty is just... *chefiest of chef's kiss*
I've recently been re-reading you RotG fics. I know you don't write for that fandom anymore but I loved to fear play between Jack and Pitch. Particularly in the SALverse. It was so tantalisingly visceral
Would you ever write that sort of extreme fear play again?
Hi anon,
I don't think I'll probably write it the way you're thinking about.
I've written a lot of scenes since where a character is scared, for example, there's a few in The Beast that Chose its Own Bridle (especially around sounding and chemical play), I'd say a couple in Eversion, quite a lot in Smoke in Autumn, and definitely in The Wind that Cuts the Night (including one that leads to reluctant safeword use).
To me, those are all intense fear play scenes. These are characters that fear for their sanity, the safety of their body, and more. The terror is real. In fact in some cases it's more intense than what Pitch ever makes Jack feel, because what Pitch does is so intensely controlled and mental, and has nothing to do with what he's actually doing to Jack at the time, which is often pretty mild.
But in terms of it being caused by eye contact alone, not so much. That was not something I was drawn to repeating, because I preferred the fear/terror being caused by something actually tangibly happening to the character, and not a mind trick, which felt a little like cheating, lol.
#asks and answers#shadows and light#SALverse#fear play in fiction#i love writing fear play into many of the long stories i do anon#but if they haven't clocked for you (if you've read any)#then i'd say no i'm definitely not going to be writing that very specific subset#of fearplay any time soon!#administrator gwyn wants this in the queue
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Steve Rogers in Avengers: Endgame (2019)
#steve rogers#steverogersedit#evansedit#marveledit#marveldaily#marvelgifs#mcuedit#dailyteamcap#capedit#userelysia#this scene still makes me feel so many things 4 years later#to me he's as brave as they get but it's not because he really has no fears at all#it's because he just does it scared#one of the reasons i am so happy chris evans played steve rogers is because i feel like he really understands him and respects him#he said in his actors on actors interview that he understands what it's like to have a fictional character who's your whole world#and means a lot to you and really inspires you#and that's steve rogers for so many people 🥺#i give the russos sooo much shit (AS I VERY WELL SHOULD) for not understanding steve's character but they ate this one little thing#when they had him grit his teeth and get back up and tighten the strap on his shield and face off an entire alien army alone#the moment he picks up mjolnir is an absolute fan favourite but i think it has some competition for the best steve scene in endgame#this is a crowning moment#*
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I hate the stretch lines in the front of Curly's uniform because that means the devs rushed to make a model in like a month or so and thought "They gotta at least know he has huge knockers, gotta know he's got back pain." Cause like what is the thematic importance of his tits having overhang?
What responsibility is that representing? Breast reduction? It shows an inherent greed in his character due to the excess and heshouldletmeholdone and that he clearly is blinded cause if he tries to look down his damn ladder all he's seeing is his own cleavage.
#this is my curly slander post ig#disclaimer i need you to understand i see all fictional men i like as like butches Curly is no exception#but like they didnt need to add that many polygons to his chest like its unnessary and honestly a little mean he already has so many things#to handle and you expect him to hold those boys up like that just aint right this is like something so stupid but i know you can tell im#having strong feelings about it cause like what was the point why did they survive the fucking crash it has to be a injoke at this point#with the devs it shouldnt make me this mad im turning into a misandrist but only towards large chested men#mouthwashing#curly mouthwashing#shitpost#suggestive#ig because this is just about his chest but like also they made him objectively pretty for no reason like yeah like ideal man and work ig#but they went over the extra mile like i have a right to be mad they did that much for a model we see canonically for like two seconds its#crazy actually how little we see of curly pre crash because we also lose his physical movements to help characterize him the way we see#body language with the other characters and how it gives way to their struggles and personalities and sentiments in certain moments#like all he does and how he emotes is stifled by the fact we always play as him until the last moments where he takes over to try and save#the ship and crew and even right before that the scene is so wrought with tension we cant tell what that look he gave Jimmy meant due to#the limitations of the models and how stiff Curly is like was it fear acceptance denial we dont know enought about how he acts himself#to tell and then everything else is charaterized by what Jimmy had done to where we dont really just get to see Curly as himself like Anya#and Swansea and Daisuke we have no idea how theyd act in a regular moment outside of a few glimpses and even then it is them doing#their jobs like grrrr we hate an unreliable narrator but also its the fact jimmy clearly does not interact with them or try to outside of#his position as copilot and then captain harkening back to the entire capitlist view of utility and how he views all of them as useless eve#Curly which fandom tangent the fandom also tends to do to Curly as they base every trait on what they think he failed to do as Captain#between Jimmy and Anya when the QnAs kinda make him out to be a rather open and willing person but still someone who isnt like a push over#just thinking of QnA three where it mentions hes very open to trying new things and you need to be an open minded person to open urself up#to failure like that and ig this is just the weird view that Curly needs to learn that or that theres redemption he needs personality wise#verses healing and learning from trauma like idk its the idea that people assume he did abosultely nothing when the games points out direct#and throught parallels he was taking actions its just wasnt enough and an over focus on absolute inaction vs ineffective methods used to#tackle the issues and themes the game grapples with plus wanting someone to take the blame and have to make it up to Anya even tho#i think it would mean nothing from Curly because she saw his efforts and would be disappointed it wasnt enough but the idea she would#disregard the attempts or not acknoweldge Jimmy as the epicenter compared ot Curly is weird and too focused on someone
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Primal play
What to do with this pretty little prey animal not that I've caught them ?
#You all asked for this so#Let me know what you think#Or if you have suggestions for the future#I want to know just how much you enjoyed it#audio#primal kink#primal play#primal fear#primal needs#audio fiction#audio kink#fox talks#kink posting
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gravity falls canonmates step back im about to become a gross amalgamation of flesh
btw its 3am you can't trust anything i say
stan pines kin vent under break
wrong wrong WRONG. i feel like im wearing ill fitted skin. it wrinkles and writhes in all the wrong places and then you. you. perfect six fingered bastard. always top of the class. always perfect. i did everything short of crawling into your skin. i took your name and tried to use it for honor and all it did was rot and flay. i dont feel like anything but a. fucking menace. i feel like a hobbling zombie infecting everything it bit, rotten teeth gnashing at your throat. im nothing and you were everything. i want to pretend to be you again. i want to pretend to be something, something uncorrupted by the sins of flesh. maybe. maybe if i pretend enough, i'll be just as good, just as smart, as you are. maybe i'll be worth something in every life ive lived. maybe i'll bloom instead of rot. if. if i just fake it enough. but that seems impossible with your greatness. a fucking pebble pretending to be a boulder. laudable. pa was right about me. he always was.
#.stan#.txt#WOAH. i fear i may have accidentally cooked whilst venting#yeesh#get a load of this guy#fictionfolk#fiction kin#fictionkin#otherkin community#otherkin#kin#kin vent#kin community#vent post#vent#tw rotting#cw rotting#gravity falls kin#gravity falls stanley#stanley pines#grunkle stan#the bill in me is doing a lil dance bc funkytown is playing#the stan in me is sobbing
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Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?
I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.
disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.
this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.
what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.
with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.
from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.
with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)
#ask#not art#tldr a lot of fantasy high's and d20's nature plays against having a Horror horror piece in it. there's no space for emptiness or dread#that's one of the most attractive things to me about horror. the monster signifying a new world you don't understand#you see something on the deserted streets and you realize: oh. the world doesn't work how I've been thinking it does#if u've noticed how much this has in common with queer experiences haha. yeag#man. actually I should also put the I Am Not White disclaimer in there too lmao a lot of the notion of The Monstrous is! traditionally#about maintaining and upkeeping a ''social order'' (read: the powers that be)#and a Lot of Wilderness Fiction is deeply and maliciously colonialist#so when I say ''the unknown land'' and ''the monster'' I am pretty much speaking From one of those unknown lands#and from the position of one of those monsters#the fear of the monstrous is so very often the fear of being consumed by - or becoming - the monstrous yourself#and well. when you're already there in the eye of the zeitgeist. You Can Do What You Want Forever#all that to say it Is important to me that baron is made of riz's lies. even more so in this funny class swap thing I make for fun#like as a horror protag he makes me insane. he loves lines! he loves lines he drew himself. he replicates these borders in himself#that mirror the world he lives in that's so hostile to him. that kid Loves rules. he bows to even the ones that hurt him#like. u get where I'm getting to right I did make a whole comic kinda near this subject he's Already The Other#baron is a monster's monster. baron is a mirror image. GODs I cant help but wish they were messier#it's kinda why I make class swap baron to be like. an ever nearing realization. like I warble abt all this but I genuinely do also find#canon baron to be just as visually coherent and thematically perfect as riz if not more. it's hard to beat how cool the mirror stuff is#it's hard to beat that doll face in iconic visuals! I have to strike according to my strength rather than trying to beat canon#so instead of reflection it's captured moments. instead of a blank face it's the lack of one. mmm. maybe I'm just kinda breaking things#for fun also but that's My prerogative in my house awooga <3#well. thats kinda my thoughts on the general subject. thank u for listening. I will bake something soon dyou want some
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obligatory scott and scar posting
#smajor#goodtimeswithscar#last life smp#“wait have you only seen the very beginning and very end of secret life”#yes#listen i get STRESSED#hc and the life series are slowly helping me make some progress about that though actually#see i've always had trouble with getting stressed over conflict in fiction#like it hits me way too hard#and that makes it hard to get into a lot of media let me tell you#then i started playing ttrpgs with some REALLY good folks#and that became my first practice area to work through some fears and have time to address some personal stuff#and it became easier to be okay irl over time#and now i'm watching these minecraft folks blow each other up and do death games and when theyre done theyre all still GOOD#not just fine irl but they still LIKE each other (or at least seem to be alright playing together again)#and that's just helping my brain a lot!#OOPS UNRELATED PERSONAL ESSAY IN THE TAGS I GUESS
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this isnt what i usually post on this blog but I'm already sick of all the memes and 'jokes'. I am almost certainly leaving the fandom for good now because of the book of bills release and NO it is not because billford's community has an influx of supporters.
So the worship and romanticization of asylums and other abusive practices for mental health have been steadily gaining traction in recent years, especially with the rise of tiktok's toxicity.
SO many people, especially younger people, regularly talk about how they want lobotomies or how women they don't like should be lobotomized. They get tattoos of lobotomy like it's some quirky fun thing and not one of the most horrific tortures someone can endure.
These same people, ESPECIALLY leftists, will look at anyone they disagree with or don't like and say "get institutionalized, loser" or "et therapy" and it's always in a mocking way. it's always in a policing way.
because these people know that mental wards strip everyone of their freedom and their bodily autonomy. they know these places arent for healing--theyre for silencing.
So the amount of people i see treating bill being institutionalized like a good thing---even the writers and alex himself?
Yeah. Im out ✌🏼
#you people try to act quirky and say you like weird stuff and you like crazy people and hate normies#but then when someone isnt a normie and actually does want to change things in radical ways you want to put them in an asylum#i do not want to interact with any of you people!#i still love gravity falls (obviously) but im just... so over the fandom at this point.#even people who LIKE bill are trying to act like this is all a good thing#guess what asylums dont help :) they almost always make things worse!#so in reality if bill ever got out he would just be 100x worse and more vengeful than before! congrats.#Play stupid games get stupid prizes!#gravity falls#antipsych#i seriously dont understand why anyone things mental wards are in any way different than how they used to be a hundred yeears ago.#because they arent. at all. like literally at all.#they forcefully medicate you with pills that you dont need and that actively harm you bc random ass nurses diagnose you with#someething different every other day and ust give you a new pill for every diagnosis#i know someone who was put on antipsychs when not only do they not have a psych disorder but they had a heart condition and#nearly died bc of it. I myself was put on three different pills the very night i went in. they never#even hesitated to wait and see if i would have a bad reaection or if i reeally needed it.#bc why would they when heavily meedicating you makes you unable to think or reaelize what theyre doing is extremely unethical?#i saw multiple people held down and strapped to their beds and given sedatives for doing nothing at all. For simply asking questions.#I saw staff harass and mock and disrespect very speciifc kids (specifically the poc kids.)#I saw staff lie and try to incite fear in other kids and myself.#one of them told me the night before i was cleared for release tat if i said 'im fine' at any point they would keep me for another month.#and that if i didnt continue to take the meds (ssris) that i was overdosing on that they would come grab me in a van and bring me back#against my will.#Keep in mind i was here based off of lies. There was no real reason for me to be in that asylum.#So yeah. literally dont come on this post trying to defend asylums bc i PROMISE you i have more experience in the reality than you#ever could.#Theyre horrible and romanticising it even against a fictional villain is repulsive behavior.
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A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Signalman (BBC, 1976)
"The tunnel collision is the worst to be feared. Your nightmares would go hard to equal it. The wreckage becomes hideously compressed in the confined space. If fire breaks out, the tunnel and its ventilating shafts become furnace flues. You cannot see in the dark to get the wreckage and the bodies out. The screams of the injured and dying echo in a most... persistent way. It's the shape of the tunnel, you see, sir."
#a ghost story for christmas#the signalman#charles dickens#single play#horror tv#1976#bbc#classic tv#andrew davies#lawrence gordon clark#denholm elliott#bernard lloyd#reginald jessup#carina wyeth#rosemary hill#holds a very special place in my heart as not only the first of the LGC Ghost Stories i ever saw (a late night bbc repeat many years ago#and before they were all so readily available) but also as perhaps the first ghost story i ever read: i was gifted a book of ghostly tales#as a small child (a bizarre choice as i was a trembling flower of a child who feared absolutely everything) and i have never forgotten the#cover‚ an illustration of the titular signalman waving his flag in thick mist or smoke. it has remained a favourite tho‚ perhaps bc#it hits on some of my very favourite ideas and tropes in horror fiction: the self fulfilling prophecy‚ the inevitability of an event and#the echoes it casts‚ backwards as well as forwards; horror as a cycle or ouroboros‚ where the victim and the monster (for want of a better#term: the supernatural perhaps) are one and the same but the realisation comes too late. Davies' script works hard to pack a lot of this in#to a modest running time (a notable early work from him and one of his first adaptations of a victorian work‚ something that has become#in many ways the focus of his career and at which he truly excels). largely a two hander between Lloyd's well meaning skeptic and the#peerless Elliott as the troubled railwayman‚ but Clark is working as hard as ever to make the setting and the decor into just as vital#characters (could a more foreboding and significant looking train tunnel even exist? a spectacular find by someone at the bbc)#not perhaps the archetypal LGC ghost story for christmas (it's not a James story for a start) but a genuinely superlative example of#the ghost story as told for the medium of television.
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happy pride month here’s my self ship art with herbert west
#PLEASEEEE ignore the lighting + the smudges + stuff….. thank uuuuu#┣▇▇▇═─<3#those r supposed to be the stickers they put on vhs tapes at rental places#check out my 80s persona variant btw. my Walkman is playing nothing to fear by oingo boingo on loop#f/o x s/i#self ship art#self ship community#self ship#oc x canon#f/o community#f/o stuff#should I tag reanimator or would the fanbase think I’m cringy#reanimator#fictional other#THERE ARE SO MANY TAGS
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I act like Harvey is the most evil creature ever
But in reality he'd freak out and act like hes drowning if I pushed him into knee deep water.
Honestly let's just imagine that when something good happens to Harvey something comedically terrible happens afterwards, nothing that horrible enough to make you feel too bad but, bad enough to be funny
Honestly that's kinda what happens all the time, he finds the cure to cancer and Maru accidentally destroys it
He leaves a girls yoga class and the farmer sees and tells everyone
Like if you don't take his character seriously, he's just a hilariously bad failure of a person. I should just stop taking him so seriously and I'll probably enjoy his existence as a joke, he's just here for the world to spit on his shoes, or for me to vomit on his shirt when I end up in the clinic. Lmao
I think I've found a way to actually enjoy a fictional character and not hate his guts.
#stardew valley#sdv#stardew valley memes#stardew valley harvey#sdv harvey#stardew harvey#stardew valley shitpost#who knew not taking a fictional character seriously was all it to get over my fear#im boutta vomit on his shoes#lmaooo#you hit a guy with glasses#well played Stardew valley#well played
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Fishing Habits
Summary:
“I know what you’re doing,” Dan said without preamble. “Huh?” Jay said. “Oh, right. I know you work for the school, but I didn’t think you’d be that much of a hardass.” “What?” Dan said. Jay paused, looking Dan over for a moment. “Actually, what are you talking about? I don’t think we’re on the same page.” “With the fish,” Dan clarified. Jay raised the odd ridges of flesh over his eyes that functioned as eyebrows. “I’m mer, you asshole. I can talk to them. They told me what fucked-up shit you’ve been pulling. What’s your problem?” “Sometimes I get hungry,” Jay said. “Can I see your notes now?”
Dan is an ordinary merman-pretending-to-be-a-human. Jay is... something else entirely. He seems like a really pleasant guy, except for how freaked out all the fish are. And Dan's college has just opened a new aquarium...
On Ao3 here.
There was an understanding, which had been in place as long as Dan could remember, that meant that one must not reveal the existence of The Supernatural to human society, and if one did the people they made the reveal to needed to be dealt with in some way—sworn to secrecy, brought into the fold of the Oceanic, or even, at absolutely worst, killed. Dan didn’t want to deal with it. There was a lot of paperwork involved in fucking up the order of things, and it was a huge hassle, and also there was a lot of risk involved. It wasn’t like Dan had any real need to reveal he’d grown up under the Pacific rather than in it, anyway. And his parents were living off the coast of Oregon now anyway, so he didn’t even have to do that much lying about it. It was easy and he kept it well under wraps.
He did five years of field work before they told him they were going to require him to come back to the university and teach at a handful of classes before he’d be allowed back out into the field or he’d lose his position, which also meant losing most of his source of funding and the grant he was working with. They offered to let him teach it remotely, of course—the department chair apologizing profusely the entire time—but Dan was doing altogether too much of the work from six hundred feet below the surface of the Atlantic and that just wouldn’t work out. No way to maintain The Secret. Instead he resigned himself to another few years living on land and away from the fishes, rented an apartment, and returned to Spokane to teach two sessions of classes about saltwater ecology in the Pacific to incoming students and one class on field work to older biology majors. Oh well. At least he could visit home on the weekends.
Since his own research was put on pause and the college did promise to pay for his tuition, Dan opted to take a handful of classes, too. What else was he going to do? He was still in touch with the rest of the field crew, and when they finally started writing, sure, he’d refocus onto that, but at the moment he wasn’t going to be of any help. And in one of the classes was a gray man.
You weren’t allowed to do that, but he was doing it. Dan was perfectly certain that there were laws against being out in the open with visibly-discolored flesh across all the major out-of-sight jurisdictions, and he was also pretty sure the Sideways Court was still offering free glamours for anyone who desperately needed into human society and also could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they couldn’t just change their colors themselves, though Dan had also heard that the paperwork to prove either was a nightmare and the Sideways Court sounded just kind of awful to boot. The Oceanic North-Pacific Authority was a lot better in a lot of ways. God knew applying for his visa was a nightmare of bureaucracy. But the point was: the gray man was openly flouting the rules. And worse than just being gray alone, he also had horns. His fingernails were blue, his teeth were sharp and needle-shaped, and his eyes had no pupils, just scleras and black centers that looked like hollow glass marbles. He had ripples crisscrossing his skin like vines growing just beneath the surface, and though Dan couldn’t be sure, he thought his body was a weird consistency, too, that he bent further than Dan expected when he bumped into things or wore a heavy bag over his shoulders. There was no way his appearance was legal. Dan felt for him, because it had to be difficult doing all that, but it wasn’t allowed. He’d probably get in trouble for just being around it, if someone came and found out and reported the guy and Dan hadn’t said anything.
Still. Dan had to respect it. And it was interesting to see how fast the other students got used to Jay and his gray skin and his horns and his eerie pupil-less eyes. Honestly, Dan was kind of disappointed in himself. His initial anxiety was unfair, wasn’t it? It was the laws that were unfair. Human society clearly wasn’t the problem it was cracked up to be.
Eventually Dan worked up the courage to tell Jay that he was mer. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. Jay had just nodded, shrugged, and said, “Cool.” That was it. And, honestly, as far as Dan was concerned, that was plenty. He didn’t need to be friends with a twenty-something nonconformist—or however old Jay was; he hadn’t asked, really—and just because they were both in the same class didn’t mean anything, really. They knew each other’s names, and Jay occasionally asked Dan for notes. That was plenty.
-
Dan wasn’t much of a partier and he wasn’t much of a night owl, and he didn’t’ spend a lot of time out of the house. What he did was usually at a river somewhere. Spokane was gorgeous and full of lively fish, and by virtue of his heritage Dan could chat. Fish didn’t usually have a lot to talk about, but something had them in a tizzy when Dan finally made it out to his favorite spot, and they were particularly anxious to tip him off.
At first, he couldn’t make heads or tails of why it mattered to him that someone had developed new lures (aside from how his job was kind of to keep an eye on what people were doing with his rivers and all). But it came together eventually. Jay had something weird about him. He’d started coming to the water just like Dan had—here and elsewhere—and chatting, just like Dan had. And Dan had lured them into a sense of security. They should’ve been secure, talking! Even when Dan was hungry he didn’t eat the fish he talked to! But to talk to Jay was dangerous. Fish that talked to Jay too long vanished. And he had strange lures, luminescent sweet blue worms that made fish dizzy and sick if they bit them off and which moved even when torn apart until they were eaten. The fish insisted, almost en masse, that this strange gray man who chatted up their waters was bad news, and on the whole they badly wanted Dan to find him and make him cut it out.
Dan didn’t even know what to make of it at first. He asked question after question, trying to understand what they meant first and then after to try to ensure they weren’t actually talking about his classmate. The fish were convinced he was unfathomably ancient, even though he was taking first-year classes. But it became too clear that they were the same person after not long at all. A handful even had his name to relay, and even though they pronounced it a little differently, there was no question that he was the same person with the same name. Brazen.
The fish generally knew what predation was and it—well, it bothered them, sure, but it was an understood way of life, and they knew Dan himself ate fish and was part of human society where fishing was done. They’d never come to ask him to put an end to regular fishing before. The first and last time any of them had banded together like this, it was six fish, and they wanted him to handle a chemical mess that he’d been almost completely useless about. The fact that he had nearly forty fish across a whole host of species asking him to put a stop to Jay’s hunting meant that something about that guy was very, very off.
At least, when it came to the fish.
Still, Dan didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Maybe he was just a weirdo. But he had access to most of the college labs, and there were fishtanks in several buildings, and so—nervously and feeling like he certainly looked a bit out of his mind—he went around, talking to the fish there. He didn’t like what he found. All the fish knew Jay. There was no doubt he could and did talk to them, often at odd hours when the fish said that they were typically bored, which meant he was on campus late at night and early in the morning sneaking in to talk with them. Several tanks were apparently head-over-heels charmed. Others, these fewer and further between and, Dan noted after a short while poking around, more likely to have deaths in the fish population waved off than more carefully-managed tanks, told Dan nervously that Jay wasn’t what he seemed. That he had been charming and pleasant and had these magnificent worm lures that they’d never seen before, and then without warning he’d coaxed one of them into his hands and ate them, just like that.
These were domestic fishes, indoor fish. Pets, practically. It was alien to them that a person would do that, and it scared them. But it didn’t seem Jay would willingly strike too many times in the same place, rotating tanks out at random. And what for? Sometimes, they said, he’d come back, and chat like nothing had happened even though they all saw him kill one of their number without a thought. There was something wrong with him. Dan, if Dan knew him, should be cautious.
These fish didn’t seem to understand that there was a world of difference between eating a human (or a mer, really) and eating a goldfish, but Dan promised to take the warning under advisement anyway.
-
Upon the day that Dan decided to confront Jay about his weird, creepy fish-eating behavior, several interesting things happened.
The first was simple. A colleague from the Environmental Sciences branch had invited him to downtown Spokane for no clear reason just before when Dan typically took his lunch. Alicia had been a close friend when Dan was doing his dissertation and she was currently working on her own postdoc research a little ways outside Spokane, just far enough from where Dan lived that they only got together so often. She told him that it was a surprise, and ot to look anything up about the location, so he obligingly didn’t.
It turned out to be an aquarium. More than that, it was an aquarium owned and run jointly by the college and a handful of others, and while it was still in the final stages before opening, Dan—by virtue of his employment with the school and his own degree focus in fish care and fish wellness—was welcome back whenever, provided he told them what he was doing and didn’t meddle unexpectedly. They wanted him to give his thoughts on a couple of tanks. And the tanks were fascinating. For some reason, whoever had done the design of the building had had a vision and they’d executed it; the tanks looked like classrooms-turned-reefs, replicas of desks and tables cast in plaster and then given coral to grow over them, furnished with lighting that looked like fluorescent strip lights in classrooms and even sometimes sporting false windows out to the street. And all the while, inside, sharks and huge groupers and small brightly-colored reef fish and schooling fish and others besides serenely went about their business. It was inspired, it really was. His parents would’ve gotten such a kick out of it.
Alicia had shown him around, and then they’d gotten food. It was a very nice afternoon, all things told.
The second was less pleasant. Just as he and Alicia were going their separate ways, Dan got an email from the school about a missing student, a request for more information if anyone had any. They had last been seen about a week before, and their car had just turned up abandoned at Lake Wenatchee, a state park a little ways outside Spokane. Dan hadn’t seen that happen before. Unfortunate, but not anyone he knew. He filed it away mentally and had pretty much stopped thinking about it by the time he got back to his apartment.
The third, and most objectively inconsequential, was that his first afternoon class had been canceled. His professor had come down with the flu.
And, finally, though they didn’t have class together today, Jay had called Dan and asked to meet with him. Evidently Jay had missed a lecture, or maybe several, and wanted to see Dan’s notes. The timing was just right.
“I know what you’re doing,” Dan said without preamble.
“Huh?” Jay said. “Oh, right. I know you work for the school, but I didn’t think you’d be that much of a hardass.”
“What?” Dan said.
Jay paused, looking Dan over for a moment. “Actually, what are you talking about? I don’t think we’re on the same page.”
“With the fish,” Dan clarified. Jay raised the odd ridges of flesh over his eyes that functioned as eyebrows. “I’m mer, you asshole. I can talk to them. They told me what fucked-up shit you’ve been pulling. What’s your problem?”
“Sometimes I get hungry,” Jay said. “Can I see your notes now?”
“Sometimes you get hungry?” Dan echoed. It took him a moment to remember how to form sentences properly. “Go to the—fucking—there are vending machines all over campus, there’s a cafeteria, you’re an underclassmen, don’t you have a meal plan—you get hungry? Hungry?”
Jay looked at Dan as though he were completely unimpressed and completely unmoved. “Okay. Can I see your notes now?”
Dan took a deep breath. “Jay, I’m here on behalf of the fish to ask you to cut the shit.”
“Huh,” Jay said. “Are you, like, going to let me see your notes, or was this just, you know, pretext to yell at me?”
Dan sighed, pulling his knapsack around to see if he could find his notebook. “No. As much as I think the way that you’ve started going after these fish is creepy as all fuck, I don’t really want your grades to suffer. Stop eating the fish.”
Jay shrugged. “I guess I can go out of campus and—”
“No,” Dan said, cutting him off. “Not the campus fish, all the local fish. I first heard about this from the fish in the Spokane. Everyone at Riverside Park is sick of your shit. It’s creepy, Jay. What’s the point of getting all buddy-buddy with fish you’re planning on eating?”
Jay’s eyes narrowed. “What, should I kill without a thought, then? What if I catch a fish with obligations?”
“That’s not why you’re doing it.”
“You’re right,” Jay said. “It’s not. But it is a consideration, among many. I don’t think it’s as bad as you think. And, no, I won’t be stopping any time soon.”
Dan shook his head and threw the notebook at the table. “Give it back to me when we have class again. And after that, I don’t want to hear from you.”
“What’s the big problem?” Jay said, suddenly sounding much more concerned. “Acanthis, they’re just fish.”
“They’re not just fish to me,” Dan snapped. “I’m mer, you asshole. It’s not the same. And—the way you do it is creepy. I don’t like it. Just because I know fish aren’t people to you doesn’t mean they don’t matter to me.”
“Oh,” Jay said. “The issue is that I eat fish?”
“I eat fish!” Dan said. “Are you being—are you being willfully stupid now? The problem is that you’re making friends with the fish you eat!”
“Ah,” Jay said. “Yeah, no, sorry, there’s nothing you can do about that. It’s been good knowing you, Acanthis. Thanks for the notes.”
“Fuck yourself,” Dan said, rather charitably, as far as he was concerned, and stormed back out of the library.
-
Jay did not stop preying on the fish. He did stop asking Dan for notes. He did also return Dan’s notebook, in about the same condition as he’d taken it, but there was an odd blue stain on one page.
And life continued as it normally did. The class continued. Dan got familiar with the professor, a lovely older woman called Dr. Bernadotte Maragou, who was very sweet and worked in the Health Sciences department but was still nonetheless teaching an ecology course because the school was lacking a professor to teach it and she had the necessary bioinformatics background. Unfortunately, Jay did, too. He was—to everyone else, at least—charming, or at least something like it. To hear Bernie speak, he was sweet and helpful and wouldn’t hurt a fly. But if she could hear the fish, she’d think he was the devil. All everyone else’s adoration served to do was make Dan like him even less.
Still, the end of the semester approached apace, and Dan kept his focus on himself and his friends as much as he was able. Most of the fish that Dan was familiar with knew better than to trust Jay by now, and he heard that Jay was venturing further and causing trouble in different places instead, but he left it alone. Realistically, what was he going to do? It was the only reasonable thing. He stopped by the aquarium on occasion, which was a delight in and of itself, and he got his work done, and he kept in touch with his colleagues in the Atlantic and they kept him posted on what they were seeing with the shark populations they were monitoring. There were some instances of bad news—the missing student never showed up, and another one or two, Dan wasn’t sure, joined them in vanishing off the face of the earth, but it was a city and these things happened and it didn’t happen to anyone Dan knew. At the end of the day, all was as well as it could really be.
Until it wasn’t.
One week before the end of classes, Bernadotte announced to the class as a whole that the university was going to launch the aquarium publicly, explaining briefly what it was and much more rapidly turning to something worse: that, as a pre-opening event, the Environmental Sciences college was hosting an event and anyone enrolled in an CoES class was welcome, for free and everything. Dan watched Jay perk up, visibly interested. Absolutely not.
It was one thing to be eating goldfish from the tank and wild fish out of the river. It was something else entirely to start eating out of an aquarium. Dan couldn’t help but feel protective over a project he’d helped with, too, even if it hadn’t been that much help. He knew a lot of those fish. He was absolutely not letting this rule-flaunting, skeevy asshole fuck it all up.
He accosted Jay outside class. “You are not going to that aquarium.”
“The one with the art installations?” Jay said. “Yes I am. Do you want something, Acanthis?”
“Would you quit calling me by my last name? Stay out of those fucking fish tanks.”
“No,” Jay said. “I have another class to be at, Acanthis, would you get out of my face?”
“The second anything goes wrong at that aquarium, I’m pointing the finger at you,” Dan said. “Don’t even fucking think about it. I’ll know if even a single fish is fucking hurt. If you even speak to them.”
“Acanthis. I have places to be,” Jay said. “Move, or I’m pushing you.”
“This is the only warning I’m fucking giving you,” Dan growled. “Take it. Stay out of the fucking aquarium.”
Jay scoffed and shouldered past Dan. Dan made no effort not to be pushed out of the way, but called after Jay, “I mean it!”
Jay shook his head, like he was rolling his eyes where Dan couldn’t see them, and kept walking. So the aquarium was screwed, basically.
-
Dan knew he was being a little unreasonable. He wasn’t going to let that stop him, though.
Asking around turned up that Jay likely didn’t have a car, so Dan figured that he was going to try to catch a ride with someone else to the aquarium. It was hardly walking distance, from campus to the center of downtown Spokane. Trying to stop Jay from getting a carpool was going to be hard, but not impossible, of course. He’d figure something out. If he could even figure out who was bringing Jay…
…which turned out to be easier than Dan had expected. Two days after the announcement in class, Bernie had announced that she’d gotten some students who were struggling to make it to the aquarium location, and she would be organizing carpools. That just meant that Dan needed to see who got Jay’s name and somehow convince them not to bring Jay. These were students. He could probably bribe them, or ply them with cookies and alcohol, or something. Wouldn’t be too hard.
It wasn’t to be. Bernie ended up with three kids on overflow, and Jay was one of them. Bernie was a really lovely lady, and sweet as they came. And there was absolutely no way Dan was going to be able to tell her what the issue was without having to answer difficult questions about himself, and besides, she’d probably insist that he was being too hard on Jay and there was a good reason to eat goldfish after telling them you thought they were the best individual fish on the planet or something. So just telling Jay’s transportation to leave him behind unexpectedly was out of the plan.
Eventually, in a fit of desperation, Dan asked Bernie if he could catch a ride with her along with the other three students. She said that he could, and that it’d be a little cramped but there would still be room for everyone.
The night before the event, Dan started asking around again, trying to find Jay to warn him off a second time. This time he didn’t succeed. Everyone knew who he was, of course, but no one could quite find him. One girl even asked Dan if he thought Jay was ”next”—baffling Dan, and when he asked what she meant, she started carrying on about mysterious disappearances and serial killers like she thought they were living in a movie of some sort. No one else Dan spoke to was any more helpful. Jay had to be off-campus somewhere, or maybe he’d vanished into thin air. Dan wasn’t optimistic enough to trust in the latter, but he crossed his fingers anyway. That would be one disappearance Dan wouldn’t mind, that was for sure.
The inexorable march of time went on, as it always did. Tomorrow rolled around. Dan woke up on the morning of the aquarium event and knew that this was it. He was out of time. He just had to find some way to make it happen.
This time, he succeeded in waylaying Jay. It was by chance, even—he caught sight of Jay’s stupid gray horns just barely peeking out over the sea of faces at the front doors to the library and zeroed in on Jay as fast as he could. He grabbed Jay by the arm and couldn’t suppress a second of distaste at the texture of Jay’s flesh—strangely squishy and stiff all at once, like a very full water balloon instead of flesh with bones in it—and then Jay whirled around. “Acanthis?”
Dan opted not to call him on the name thing this time. “This is the last time I’m going to say it. Stay away from the aquarium.”
“Didn’t you say last time was going to be the only warning?” Jay said.
“I am so serious,” Dan said. “You do not want to test me on this. Stay away from the aquarium! Do I make myself clear?”
“Uh-huh. Enjoy the rest of your day, Acanthis.” Jay started to pull away from Dan, and Dan grabbed his arm tighter. His odd glassy eyes narrowed. “You’re going to want to let go of me right now.”
“Tell me you’ll stay away from the aquarium.”
Jay wrenched his arm away from Dan’s grip, much harder than Dan expected. His knuckles ached at the sudden force; he could swear he heard one of his joints crack. “I told you to let go of me, didn’t I? I don’t know how to say this politely, Acanthis—stop telling me to stay away from the aquarium. I’m allowed to be curious about it just like everyone else is. Just because you have a problem with me doesn’t make it my concern. I’m tolerating this, because you work here and I’m probably leaving after another semester. But if you push me, I’m going to start pushing back. Do I make myself clear?”
“I don’t have a problem with you, I have a problem with you eating—” Dan realized abruptly that they were in public and lowered his voice. “Eating the fucking fish! I think that should be fucking understandable.”
“No, you also have a problem with me,” Jay said flatly. “You are not the only one, and I do not care very much. But you will never be able to dictate what I do and don’t do. You had better get that through your head right the fuck now.”
Dan, disbelieving, shook his head. “I can’t fucking believe you.”
“Great,” Jay said, shoving past Dan. He hit Dan in the chest with his shoulder, clearly intentionally. “See you at the aquarium, Acanthis.”
“No you fucking won’t!” Dan called after him, but he vanished seamlessly into the crowd before he was even done speaking.
Fucker.
-
Finally, out of ideas, Dan called up a local friend who did some contract work with the Sideways Court and asked them to temporarily hex Bernie’s car. He felt bad about it, but it wouldn’t be any real harm done, and it’d just keep the car from starting for a while. It would stop the other two students from getting to the aquarium either, but Dan was willing to call that an acceptable loss. He turned up at the parking lot next to the cafeteria at the appointed meeting-time even though he knew it wasn’t going to get him anywhere; it seemed only fair to miss it, and besides, that let him keep an eye on Jay.
Jay gave Dan a very dubious look when he arrived. “You’d better not be waiting here for me, Acanthis.”
“Nope,” Dan said. “Carpooling.”
Jay gave him a long, hard look, and then shrugged and pulled out his phone. “I assume you’ll be dogging my steps all night?”
“You’d best believe it.”
“I don’t mean to insult you, Acanthis,” Jay said, “but this strikes me as a phenomenally stupid plan.”
“I keep telling you, my name is Dan,” Dam said. “And my plan is fine.”
“I’m sure it is,” Jay said, not looking up from his phone. “Look, for all anyone knows, you’re the concern here. Everyone at the library saw you getting handsy and aggressive with me. You have fuck-all in the way of evidence. And I’m—”
A car pulled up along the cement, and Jay cut off, picking his head up. “Ah, there’s Doctor Maragou,” he said, in exactly the same casual tone.
That was weird, and eerie. “Hey, Bernie,” Dan called, trying to keep any sort of distrust out of his tone of voice. “How’s your day been?”
“Oh, hi, Dan,” Bernie said. “Hi Jay! It’s great to see you both. Have you seen Sophia and Luke?”
“Not yet, but there’s still plenty of time,” Jay said, smiling warmly. “Dan, I know you’re closest with Doctor Maragou. Do you want to sit up front?”
“Generous of you,” Dan said, “yeah. Bernie, should we get in now?”
“Yeah, why not?” Bernie asked. “I think I see Sophia coming over now, anyway. It shouldn’t be too long.”
True enough, Sophia was cresting the small hill between the walking path and the parking lot. As Dan watched, Luke, the fourth student, walked over as well. So that was the whole crowd.
Dan didn’t need to jostle around, not in the front seat, but in the back Sophia, Luke, and Jay had to work out seating arrangements; Jay had volunteered to sit in the middle, but there was a little bit of difficulty with the seatbelts, and it took a few minutes of shuffling about before Luke finally announced to Bernie that they could start driving. Bernie nodded, smiling, and made to pull out of the parking lot. And then her car made a terrible backfiring noise.
“What the hell was that?” Luke blurted. “I mean, um, sorry Professor.”
“What the hell was that?” Bernie muttered, stepping on the gas again. Nothing happened.
“That’s… weird,” Sophia said. “Professor M., has that ever happened before?”
“Nope,” Bernie said. “I’ve never had any car do that before.”
“I can take a look at it,” Sophia said, already opening the door. “I’m good with cars.”
“Hang on a minute,” Bernie said, turning her key in the ignition. Nothing happened. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Yup,” Sophia said.
“How sure?” said Bernie, pressing on the gas again.
“Very sure,” Sophia said. “I like cars. Pressing on the gas isn’t going to do anything good if it‘s not igniting, so maybe stop doing that.”
Bernie stopped pressing on the gas very quickly. “Okay. You can look under the hood, if you want. Let me come out and look at it with you.”
The two of them stood outside the car looking at the hood for a good ten or eleven minutes. Jay made dubious eye contact with Dan through the rearview mirror. Dan pretended not to notice.
“Um,” Luke, the other classmate, said awkwardly after about two minutes of sustained silence. “So, uh, you’re Professor Acanthis, right?”
“You can call me Dan,” Dan said.
“Yeah, but you teach the fieldwork for nonmajors class, right?”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “Why?”
“Is it particularly hard?” Luke asked. “I mean, work-intensive. I’m setting up my schedule for next semester.”
Dan paused, trying to think about that. “I just started teaching it this semester. I think it’s pretty light, but you’re better off asking one of my students.”
“He means it’s very easy,” Jay said tonelessly. “Acanthis, tell him your late work policy.”
“It’s Dan,” Dan said. “As long as it’s in before the end of the semester, I don’t take points off late work.”
“They meet once a week, there’s a lab report due but you can work on it in the class, and it’s for nonmajors,” Jay added. “Very easy class. If you want an easy A you should take it.”
“Huh,” Luke said. “Thanks… Jaaaaaames?”
“Jay,” Jay said, but now that Dan was listening he pronounced it a little oddly, sort of more like ‘Joy’ than ‘Jay’. “Luke, right?”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Are you planning on taking it next semester? I thought you and Professor Acanthis had… um.”
“Drama?” Jay asked, and laughed under his breath. “No, it’s nothing serious, but I’m on the pre-med track. Have to take macrobio field instead. I’m only in class with Doc Maragou because it qualified as an elective.”
“What’s the deal, actually?” Luke said. “Like, if you don’t mind me asking, because I heard you guys were really, uh… but you seem chill now.”
“Like I said,” Jay said, “it’s nothing serious. Me and Acanthis have a couple disagreements over… I don’t know, I don’t want to get into it. And a friend of a friend was talking shit about me that he believed, but I think we’re over that. Mostly it’s personality clash.”
“It’s not personality clash,” Dan said. “He’s fucked over a few friends of mine and won’t stop doing it.”
Jay raised his eyebrows at Luke, who smiled rather tightly back. “It is really not that serious. He doesn’t like that I don’t do what he tells me. I get it. I don’t like to be told what to do. It’s a personality clash. We’re working it out. This time next year, I imagine you won’t even hear that me and Acanthis were arguing.”
“Huh,” Luke said. “Right.”
Dan willed himself not to argue, even though that was blatantly untrue. He didn’t need to hash the whole thing out in front of a human audience. Fortunately, about that point Bernie came back around. “We can’t figure the problem out,” she said through the driver’s-side door, “so you three might as well come out. I’m not sure what we’re going to do here.”
“Damn,” Luke said.
“It’s a bit of a walk,” Jay said, “and it’ll get us there a little late, but we could take the Six over to Riverside.”
Dan turned to look at him, uncomprehending. He could see the other three do the same.
“The bus,” Jay said. “Don’t any of you go anywhere?”
“I only take the campus shuttle,” Luke said. “Sorry.”
“Huh,” Jay said. “Anyway, if that’s the plan, we should probably get moving. If we miss the bus we’re going to be waiting for a good hour for the next one.”
“I think the event ends at eight,” Bernie said.
“And it’s, what, six now?” Jay said. “So we’ll basically miss it. I don’t particularly want to do that,” he said, making eye contact with Dan with a weird little sedate smile on his face, “so unless anyone has objections, let’s get moving.”
“How far of a walk is it?” Bernie asked.
Jay shrugged. “Maybe a few miles? It’s at the transit center. Do you know where I mean?”
“Oh!” Bernie said. “Okay, I think I can do that.”
“Fan-ta-stic,” Jay said. “Luke, Sophia, you two on board?”
“Yeah, sure,” Sophia said.
“You didn’t ask Dan,” Luke said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Jay said. “He’s going to follow me no matter what I ask him.”
“Oo-kay,” Luke said. “Yeah, I’ll come.”
Jay smiled, waving a hand and starting to walk rather briskly. “Alright. We have half an hour. Let’s move.”
Dan had never walked between the campus and the transit center like this before. This part of Spokane—of Washington, really—was gorgeous. Jay kept them hurrying along the side of the road, but Dan and Sophia kept slowing down to look at the trees or the rock faces or the rivers and falling behind. Dan wished he could say it was intentional, but it really was just that beautiful. And because they kept stopping at the same things, he and Sophia had started talking, aimlessly commenting on the trees and the water.
Then the road they were walking along turned into a bridge, high over a wide waterfall. All of them stopped, even Jay.
“This reminds me of where I grew up,” Sophia said to Dan. “I was walking distance from Wairere as a kid.”
Jay turned as though that had caught his attention. “Wairere Falls?”
“You’ve been there?” Sophia asked, looking a bit surprised. “Yeah.”
“They were more impressive than this, I think,” Jay said. “I don’t know, the last time I was in New Zealand was nearly thirty years ago.”
“Aotearoa,” Sophia said.
“Couldn’t have been,” Luke said, at about the same time. “How old are you?”
Jay laughed. “You think someone with a face as plastic as mine looks my age? I appreciate the vote of confidence. I’m pushing forty.”
Was that his cover? That he’d just undergone a bunch of surgeries?
“Oh, wow,” Bernie said. “What did you do before you decided to go into medicine?”
Jay glanced sidelong at Dan. “Professional fishing. Do you still need a moment to ogle?”
“Not hassling us to get moving again already?” Dan asked.
“We’ve got a little time,” Jay said.
“You were on us the whole way here,” Sophia said, still staring at the falls.
“Yeah, because I knew you were all going to stare here. It’s a nice waterfall. Take your time. I’ll tell you when we really have to get a move on.”
Dan turned that one over in his head for a moment. Was Jay expecting him to have delayed more intensely? Was that what that actually was? Or was this actually a moment of… what, generosity in disguise? Jay was such a strange person.
It was a nice waterfall, though, and the water below it looked deep and clear. Dan walked to the part of the railing Jay was leaning on, trying to look subtle, and leaned over. “Between the two of us, we’re the only ones who can breathe under water.”
“I can’t, actually,” Jay said. “I don’t breathe at all.”
Dan stopped, looking at him properly. Jay shrugged. “No lungs. Don’t breathe.”
“But you can live under water, right?” Dan did his best to clarify.
“Yeah, that I can,” Jay said. “What about it?”
“Have you ever gone over a waterfall like that? If you’re here, and you were in New Zealand around waterfalls.”
Now it was Jay’s turn to look at Dan oddly. “I have, actually. Not often, but I have. Are you about to ask me for advice?”
“I just… wonder, I guess,” Dan said. “Does this one look like it’d be good to jump off of?”
Jay was quiet for a moment, studying the water. “Well, depends what you mean by good. You’ll probably get spun really hard. Impacting the water will probably hurt, but you don’t want to dive or anything here, or you’ll risk hitting the bottom, I think, it doesn’t look that deep to me.”
“You could’ve just said no,” Dan said.
“Those are the only problems. If you don’t like being disoriented, that’s on you,” Jay said. “The water is clean and clear and there’s no rocky outcroppings to hit yourself into. It’s pretty damn good, as far as these things go.”
“Sounds kind of unpleasant.”
“It’s one of those things,” Jay said, turning toward the other three. “If you liked it, you’d probably already know that by now, and if you don’t, you’ve never thought about it. I’m not sure what kind of thrill-seeking mer adolescents get up to, though.”
“Me either, really. I lived most of my life on land after I turned twelve.”
“Huh,” Jay said. “That’s why you’re like this.”
“Like what?” Dan started, but Jay was already walking toward the other three. “Jay!”
“We’re going to get moving again, guys,” Jay said, waving. Bernie, Luke and Sophia reluctantly fell into step behind Jay again. Dan, for his part, hurried up to stand next to him so he could ask what the fuck Jay was talking about.
“What do you mean, that’s why I’m ‘like that?’”
“Do you want them hearing? I thought your being here meant you had to be super hush-hush.”
“Honestly, I’ve been wondering this whole time. Why don’t you?”
Jay gave him a disbelieving look. “Obviously I’m supposed to.”
“Well—you’re not, and no one’s tried to arrest you yet.”
“You’d be surprised at how low-profile I can be. Plastic surgery,” he said, tapping the ridges of flesh around his eyes, “tattoos, nail polish, and sometimes I can pass the horns off as a headband. Sometimes, if I’m really worried,” he glanced back at the other three, “they’re not looking. Watch this.”
Dan turned toward him, not sure what he was about to do, and was completely unprepared for his horns to just—sink back into the top of his forehead seemingly of their own volition. “What—?”
“It’s uncomfortable, though,” Jay said, replacing them with a gesture that looked more like spitting something out than horns protruding through his face. They were now streaked with some sort of bluish, viscous fluid, like dish soap. Jay ran his hands over them, and then rubbed his hands together, and when he went back to talking neither the horns nor his hands were wet.
“Neat trick,” Dan said, totally astonished.
“Handy, yeah,” Jay said. “Look, not that I’m not appreciating the conversation not suddenly being you yelling in my face and all, but can I ask what prompted the change of heart?”
“No hearts have been changed. I don’t want you to eat my fish,” Dan said. “But I can’t see a way to stop you getting to the aquarium, so I guess I’ll just have to tag around all night like you said I was going to. Might as well make it a little fun, right?”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Jay said slowly, not looking as though he understood at all.
-
The bus was miserable, but the aquarium was fantastic, so it balanced out. Dan did tail Jay the whole time, though Jay obligingly let Dan pick over the remnants of the sushi bar before they went around to the exhibits instead of trying to lose Dan so he could go start snatching schooling fish or something. Dan asked him if he wanted anything, concerned as he was for the live fish in the exhibits; Jay demurred. Something about a food allergy, or something; Dan wasn’t sure exactly what he meant but he sure made it sound like there wasn’t anything at the table that wouldn’t somehow make him sick.
Jay was fascinated by the first-floor exhibits that looked like classrooms. Eventually they made it to the second floor, after Jay had done a long loop around the expansive ground level and spent a lot of time in the touch-tank mumbling to a nervous epaulette shark until he could coax it up toward him. Dan didn’t like it then, but it hadn’t been sinister after all, and he was trying to relax. But just after they made it to the second floor, Jay slipped off into the shadows, and Dan just barely caught up to him before Jay—with Dan’s keys—slipped behind the Employees Only door and beckoned for Dan to follow.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing,” Dan hissed, as soon as he was inside. “They’ll kick you out if you’re back here.”
“Not if I’m with you,” Jay said, which wasn’t true.
“Yes, they will. And they’ll revoke my clearance.”
“Come on. I want to talk to the nursery sharks.”
“Absofuckinglutely not,” Dan said. “I’ll tell on both of us.”
“What the fuck is the big idea?” Jay said. “Look, you can hear both sides of the conversation. And they’re nursery sharks, and I’m not even hungry. I’m curious about living in those drowned fake rooms. Do you know which tank we should be looking for?”
“We’re not doing this,” Dan said.
“Alright, I’ll find out without you,” Jay shrugged, and started walking. Dan reached out to grab Jay’s arm, and—
Well. Dan didn’t actually know what happened, only that his hand closed on solid-ish flesh, and then it was suddenly not solid under his hand at all, and Jay had sort of just pulled away around his fingers. Weird.
“You can come with me or you can stay there, but you’re not grabbing me in private,” Jay said. “I’m not interested in being yanked around, I don’t give a damn how worried you are about the fish. I’m not even going to put my face near the water.”
With deep misgivings, Dan hurried up and followed behind Jay. “It’s, um, door seven. The exhibit you want.”
“Thank you,” Jay said, sounding legitimately a little bit surprised. “Appreciate it.”
“Don’t expect a repeat,” Dan said. “And I will be warning them about you later.”
Jay hummed, pushing through the door slowly. Beyond, they could hear the pump and the water splashing.
Jay bent down by the side of the tank, reaching out with one hand. “This is going to look strange.”
“Everything you do looks strange,” Dan started, but he was right—it did look real fucking strange. The palm of his hand… uncoiled? Rippled and widened? And from the inside came slightly luminescent blue tendrils, about a half-inch wide each and visibly very soft, and slick with some sort of fluid with the consistency of honey, or maybe laundry detergent. He stuck these into the water without a worry, and then said, not too loudly, “Hey. Up here.”
Abruptly Dan remembered the lures. “You have those inside you? You feed them to the fish!”
“Sometimes they’re hungry,” Jay said.
“What are they, worms?” Dan asked. “Some sort of… fungus?”
Jay looked up from the water to squint at him. “Are you trying to fuck with me? Like, is that a joke?”
“What?”
Jay reached over with his normal hand and grabbed one tendril firmly, and then pulled. Hard, actually, hard enough that Dan thought it looked like it had to hurt, and then with a quiet squelching sound a small octagonal segment of his gray skin pulled free from the side of his hand and so did the tendril, still moving freely. “It’s me. I feel like that should be obvious, if the fish were reporting on me to you. That one bass got a good mouthful of my leg a few months ago.”
“What are those?” someone else said, and Jay and Dan both jumped and turned to see that there was a small nursery shark staring up at the both of them. Dan wasn’t terribly familiar with her, but he thought her name started with an s sound, or maybe an m. “Can I eat them?”
“Sure,” Jay said.
“They make fish sick,” Dan said quickly. “Better not.”
“They make fish sick?” Jay repeated. “They shouldn’t. Just drowsy, maybe.”
“Dizzy and sick, is what they told me.”
Jay looked down at his own hand curiously. “So, I’m Jay.” He said it oddly again. Maybe Dan was mispronouncing it. “My friend here is Dan.”
“Danistei,” Dan said, because he gave his real name to the fishes, thank you, and then registered that Jay had said his actual name.
“What’s your name?” Jay continued, as though nothing had happened.
“Svisa,” said the nursery shark.
“Nice to meet you, Svisa,” Dan started.
“We’re delighted you’ll speak to us,” Jay continued, coming very close to cutting Dan off. “I have a couple questions about the environment.”
“Oh, like he’s always asking,” Svisa said.
“Probably,” Jay said. “Do you know what your environment is a replica of?”
“It’s a replica?” Svisa said.
“It’s a replica of a human classroom,” Jay said, rapid-fire. “Thank you, Svisa. What do you think of the lighting on the side of the wall?”
“Oh, he really is always asking that one. It’s fine.”
“You come here from anywhere interesting?”
“Not really,” Svisa said.
“Captive-bred,” Dan cut in. “Svisa, are you bored?”
“A little bit,” Svisa said. “Nothing left in here to catch, and I know all the hiding places. When it’s light out, I can watch the other tank, but they’re dimming everything now.”
“They’re dimming everything,” Jay repeated. “Okay, Dan, up, let’s get out of here before we get caught.”
“Caught,” Svisa repeated.
“We’re not technically supposed to be back here right now,” Dan explained hastily, getting up. “Thank you so much for chatting, Svsia. Jay, was that what you wanted to know?”
“One last question,” Jay said. “How dark are the hiding places?”
“Dark enough,” Svisa said, delicately closing her jaws on a big chunk of Jay’s exposed tendrils. They sheared off cleanly, and started to leak thinner, less viscous blue fluid into the water; Jay rapidly curled them back up without even a hiss. “You’re leaving, I’ll see you some other time.”
“Me, maybe,” Dan muttered. “Jay, if she gets sick, I’m holding you to account for it.”
“She should be fine. It’s like weed,” Jay said. “Bye, Svisa, thanks for talking. Might see you again, might not. I’m curious about the way it feels down there. Dan, hitting the road?”
Dan sighed and followed behind Jay, and the two of them stepped out of the tank room and then into the Employees Only hall and then back into the rest of the museum. It was dim. “What time is it?”
“You have a phone, don’t you?” Jay said, but he was pulling his own out as he said it. “Eight ten.”
“They closed up fast,” Dan noted, a little surprised. “I wasn’t expecting them to kick everyone out and turn the lights off ten minutes after the event ended.”
Jay shrugged. “Maybe they’re just efficient. Let’s make sure they didn’t lock us in.”
They hadn’t, so the two of them walked out the doors and tried not to look suspicious. Or at least Dan tried; Jay looked casual as anything, sauntering out confidently.
“Stop looking over your shoulder,” Jay murmured out of the corner of his mouth, and Dan straightened up. “No, that’s worse, you look even more like you’re sneaking into the pantry to steal cookies or something. Do you just not do this sort of thing?”
“No, I don’t,” Dan said.
Jay paused. “Why were you messing with me so much, then? Starting out strong for your first few bits of mischief?”
“I,” Dan said, trying to wrap his head around that. “It was about the fish. It has always been about the fish.”
“But you had to know I wasn’t going to go after the fish in a new aquarium,” Jay said, sounding almost stupefied. “Right?”
What? “What? No.”
“If I’m going to an aquarium, there’s going to be close monitoring, people around,” Jay said. “And it’s not like they’re filling, anyway. Obviously I’d just go pick someone off in an alley beforehand, if it was that big a deal.”
“I told you, I don’t like you eating the wild fish either,” Dan said. “But I guess—”
“Fish?” Jay repeated. “No, I mean—” And then he stopped, and turned to gesture Dan toward an alley. “Come take a detour with me.”
“What do you mean, not fish?” Dan said, following easily.
Jay looked Dan up and down, still walking. The alley was longer than Dan expected. “I know you said something, at some point, about the ‘patterns,’” and here he made air-quotes with his fingers, “of the way that I ate the fish being ‘creepy.’”
“Yeah, because they are,” Dan said. “I mean, I might’ve been judging you wrong, but it still seems real fucking creepy to me. I don’t really get—”
Jay raised a hand and cut Dan off. “And I read into that, I think. I thought you meant the patterns I ate everything with were creepy.”
“I mean,” Dan started. “I don’t know.”
Jay smiled oddly, waving for Dan to walk a little faster. “And I thought to myself that that was fair, because you were right. And I didn’t know how much you’d told anyone, or how much trouble I’d be in if you had.”
“Jay. What are you getting at.”
“Fish are very unsatisfying, you know.” Jay sighed. “They don’t have much to talk about. Their secrets are inconsequential and not very interesting. And, now, I have a problem, the kind you’re not likely to have heard of. “
“Where are you leading me?”
“You’ll see,” Jay said. The alleyway had gotten so dark that it was difficult to make out anything except for the points of light reflecting off his eyes from the distant billboards on the street. “I need a secret—given freely—before I can eat my fill. Makes it had to order off the dinner menu. Told myself, hey, hospice care, that’s got to be the gig for me. But it doesn’t leave me a lot of time to hunt. So I’ve been scavenging the fishtanks. But do you know what one of the first things you told me was?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dan stopped walking.
“This explains why threatening you didn’t seem to do anything,” Jay said. “Did you even know I was threatening you?”
“When the hell were you threatening me?”
“That’s what I mean,” Jay said. “I’m full, now, I’m not eating anything. Or anyone. But you know what I’m getting at, don’t you?”
Dan shook his head. “You eat fish, and you’re implying you’ll eat me.”
“About the gist of it, yeah,” Jay said. “Keep walking, we’re going to get to the bus stop a few blocks early. I didn’t want to take you through here if you already knew I was likely to maybe eat you. Didn’t need that kind of thing getting me in trouble, you understand. You cannot do anything about me, but if you decided to start running and screaming it would’ve made my life inconvenient.”
“Are you,” Dan said, trying to find the polite term for it. “Are you a… person with a vamparasitic affliction?”
“Am I a what?” Jay said. “Vamparasitic affliction? Can you not say vampire now?”
“I think it’s offensive,” Dan said.
“If I were a vampire I wouldn’t be offended,” Jay said. “But no. I’m an obligate carnivore under a curse, but it’s a different one. You’ve seen me walk in the sunlight.”
“Can you eat garlic?”
“I can’t eat any plants.”
Dan could start to see the lights at the end of the walkway now. “Why do you eat people, if you can just eat fish?”
Jay looked at Dan for a moment, and despite the low light Dan thought he could see Jay’s needle-sharp teeth glinting in a very sharp smile. “Why does anyone prefer to eat anything? Just tastes better.”
#my writing#jai#pov oc is just some guy. doesn't matter very much#oc#original fiction#low fantasy horror#or something like that#what if a mysterious stranger that sort of seemed like a vampire was actually something different and worse: blue#if you get to the end and you're going 'man i thought that character was going to [spoiler but it should be obvious]' and are wondering#why the other guy decided to apparently not do anything about it But reveal the secret anyway: 1. he's wildly amused by this 2. he just#found out that he'd overestimated the threat level of said character by about 500x and furthermore decided after talking to him#that he's an idiot and can be easily charmed by 'giving secrets' (and he's right). but never fear.#said character is also unable to [removed; spoiler] anyone right now but next time he does he knows where he can look#and he's verrrrrry confident the other character won't be able to come up with any way to make it too much of a problem for him#as long as he keeps playing friendly and gets properly buddy-buddy#which is very funny because he was literally warned that that would be dangerous.
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If there is at least one thing I can credit FE for doing better than Tales in localization, it's not trying to actively go out of their way for an entire game to avoid subtext or direct text between two men that is romantic or implied romantic. Funny when it's so present that the attempt doesn't even work; infuriating that it was attempted to begin with.
So as much as I often have issues with some of FE's localizations, at least they have a leg up on loc Tales for that.
#DCB Comments#imagine changing entire sentences and vocal tones just to try to avoid it#if anything I'd say at least in FE the locs just... keep what's there like#they could've toned Soren and Houses Yuri down and they didn't. they just kept their lines or in some cases#especially with Houses Yuri I'd say leaned into them#have to specify bc Houses Yuri got to keep his bi agenda. Vesperia Yuri had the unfortunate issue of#the loc not wanting to keep his gay and trying reeeeally hard to avoid it#including altering entire sentences to avoid any woe is them misunderstandings about men having feelings for each other#meanwhile Houses Yuri is free to call men cute and lo and behold everyone loved that for him#they removed and altered a LOT of Vesperia Yuri's personality traits#(including any ability to express real sadness or fear bc woe is them if he's not a cool edgy man)#but they also really changed his tone toward Flynn PLUS some of what they say to each other#and twisted it to make it sound like Yuri was either angry or wasn't actually emotional abt him#forget the way they brought Grant George in for the DE release and made him sound just completely DEAD with zero personality#like. I can tolerate playing Houses dubbed despite my gripes with it (story based stuff)#it didn't feel like they were trying to alter LBGT+ aspects and they even for some rly leaned into it#basically if you haven't played Vesperia Yuri is... really gay coded. the loc pretended not to notice#in fact he's queer + gay coded bc and doesn't fit male gender norms and the gacha games LOVE that with his hair/outfits#Rays mind you is JP only bc it was shut down very quickly in the west and Vesp Yuri's story in Rays is uh#basically it centers around Flynn he loses his shit to protect Flynn and they do the usual like#don't-admit-it's-gay-outright in fictional media by using the ''Yuri's important person'' shtick#but he activates a special power in the middle of utterly raging to get Flynn back from their enemies#funny thing? that game never made it to that arc. I was told in about five months the western ver would've gotten that#but in some way I'm glad it didn't bc who knows how they would've tried to spin that#It's BAFFLING to me how you can get characters in Tales like JAY but the locs shake in their boots at the idea of queer gays#but given how allergic fictional media is to admitting a male character is gay -gestures to Ike and Vesp Yuri-#I'm not surprised I'm just actually angry that the locs try to censor homosexual relationships as much as possible even when they barely ca#if anyone does know Vesp Yuri and is confused on why I'm calling him gay coded despite what the dub did with Judith feel free to ask#bc I do ship them a little bit myself! but I just recognize that canon wise I really can't see him as anything but gay-demiromantic#but again at least FE locs don't shake in their boots anymore abt same sex pairs including men (side eyes Lucius/Raven)
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ok i might need to force myself to not romance astarion bc i don't want to know what it says about me to turn down karlach, the woman of my dreams, the character made to cater me personally, like, if she was real i'd bring the moon and stars down for the chance to see her smile, she's everything i've hoped for in a rpg companion, what does it say about me if i turn that down for someone like astarion
#ngl karlach would be too good for me and i wouldnt deserve it#shed probably ask me stuff like 'what do you want?' upon which i would be paralyzed with fear my mind completely blank unable#to process why i can't answer a simple question#and she's so up front with her emotions which i absolutely adore but i could not reciprocate that#wait am i actually for real avoiding the karlach romance bc i feel like this fictional character from a video game is too good for me#a real human being. like. i think i would feel guilty about romancing her#which makes no sense bc i romance characters too good for anyone all of the time. but idk#in those cases ive always had like a strong character i play as who is very divorced from who i am#but playing as durge there is no past so idk who my tav is yet so all i can do is project so he feels very. personal#im v sleepy and also ive had brain fog all day so yea idk#i mean i do genuinely like astarion and his character but in his case i dont feel guilty bc i feel like i#i have no idea how to finish that sentence without it sounding like 'i can fix him'#bc i dont want to fix him i want to show him compassion and respect him and his boundaries so he'll be able to reclaim tje feeling of#being in control of his life#so he'll stop putting people down to feel like hes on a pedestal#like i get him and why he is like that but i just feel like being kind and caring towards him would feel so good#it wouldnt fix him and thats a good thing bc i dont want him to change who he is but i do think he needs support#also hes hot im so mad at myself for being so atteacted to him#we wouldnt b here if i didnt have a thing for voices#besides thag back to the main point of astarion its like. ugh! im so frustrated rn bc i dont have the words#to express my emotions toward him bc everything ive said lacks the nuance that im feelikg but idk how to put it in words#i guess i want to protect him? that such a terrible sentence and still not what om going for
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larp outcome: Problems Guy did not appear. I became deranged from sleep dep and started randomly crying during conversations for a bit but everyone was nice as usual. died twice IG, came back both times, didn't react much because I was so goddamn tired OOG but am now experiencing delayed onset panic
#(each time you die your odds of coming back are worse.)#i cant be experiencing Mortality Fears about a fictional character i play. this is not tenable. really i just need more sleep#ceruleanrambling
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you know i actually have no conception of how my username objectively sounds because i pulled it from a random quote from a little life that means something completely different with context
#fearandhatred#just tried to remove myself from my body and think about it from an outsider pov#guys i am not full of hatred btw !!!!!!!#well actually let me rethink that. i AM a hater#for context the original quote is: fear and hatred - fear of everyone else; hatred of himself#i do not relate to the original quote either#HCWXWKAKAHA#i just didn't want a fandom specific username so 🤷♀️#my sideblog is also from a little life but it's one of the fictional plays willem was in (house on thistle lane)#which sounds objectively prettier as a username but not really main blog material imo#anyway. a lil bit of trivia
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