#henceforth I must traumatize him more

[pepperedwires]

He may of gotten a teensy bit injured… :c

[lionheartslowstart]

Baby Reindeer

Last night, I finished watching the docu-series Baby Reindeer. Wow, just wow. Let me tell you, that series is not for the faint of heart.

I am fascinated by true crime. If I wasn't an actor, I would have become a criminal psychologist. Psychology, especially that of criminals, has always been riveting to me. While that is what initially drew my attention to Baby Reindeer, I found myself getting drawn in further and further because, well, I had a stalker once, too.

I want to preface this entry by saying that Richard Gadd had it WAY worse than I ever did. For starters, my stalker was primarily an internet stalker. As far as I am aware, she never showed up physically to anywhere I was, or followed me around. Though it is entirely possible that she did and I didn't know, or that it would have gotten to that point if she had stalked me for a longer period of time. On that note, the person who cyber-stalked me only did so for about a month. I cannot even begin to understand what it must have felt like to have someone stalk you to that degree for a full year and a half. Although, based solely on my own experience of cyber-stalking, I can imagine how traumatizing it must have been. I also firmly believe my stalker would have continued, if she hadn't discovered I was trying to serve her with a court summons. Additionally, the woman who cyber-stalked me, whom I will henceforth refer to as "Anna," was a friend at one point in time. I had (mistakenly) trusted her and cared for her at one point in my life. Whereas Richard Gadd's stalker was a relative stranger, which I'm sure added to the fear he must have experienced, not really knowing of what she might be capable.

Still, despite these vast differences in our experiences, I cannot help but notice some interesting overlap.

For starters, I was always amazed, albeit irritated, by Anna's ability to only absorb one out of every five things I said. Whether it was a word, a phrase, or even a couple of sentences, it always seemed like Anna only heard (or read) a chunk of whatever I said to her, both during our friendship and after. I would send paragraphs upon paragraphs explaining what she had done wrong, or explaining why I didn't want her in my life, yet she would only respond to one or two things, and ignore anything she didn't want to hear, or couldn't twist to her own narrative. And of course, no matter how many times I told her to leave me alone, that I didn't want to hear from her, that I didn't want any contact with her, she acted like she never heard it.

Also, like "Martha," Anna would flip-flop between telling me how much she loved me and cursing me out. One moment she would beg and tell me she would do anything for me to forgive her, the next she would tell me she hoped my mom died. One moment she would tell me she would always love me now and forever, whether I believed her or not, the next she would post how she was going to off herself and it was all my fault. She spread rumors about me, tried to ruin my other relationships, and said just the most vile, horrific stuff to me, went out of her way to trigger my PTSD and give me flashbacks, all while crying about how I had ruined her life and insisting that she loved me. Etcetera, etcetera. Just perpetual whiplash. Honestly, it's hard for me to believe it was only a month, considering how much she did in that short amount of time. I have SEVEN manila envelopes bursting with screenshots and notes about everything that happened in just those four weeks.

Additionally, Anna somehow perfectly rode the line between unhinged and shockingly calculated. In Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd paints a picture of this deranged woman who became obsessed with him and seemed incapable of logical thought or reason. And yet, she clearly had more awareness than one might think, considering she seemed to know just how to avoid getting caught. She must have known what she was doing was wrong, at least on some level, especially considering she had been arrested in the past for the same behavior. So Anna too was more slippery than I would have liked. The PI my parents had hired wasn't able to find her without my help, and even then, Anna knew what she was walking into. I think she only agreed to meet with me because she couldn't resist the idea of getting to see me in person again. I knew her obsession with me was also her weakness. But even with her strange level of self-awareness, ability to fly under the radar, and unknown ways to creep on my private social media accounts, Anna was...unbalanced. Her messages were erratic, with an almost crazed, desperation to them. Whether it was desperation to hurt me, or to attempt to "force" me to forgive her. Every message and every post rang with a frenzy that I can't quite put into words. But I can say that I saw the same frenzy in "Martha" in Baby Reindeer.

And the anxiety. Hoo boy can I relate to the anxiety. Every time my phone vibrated I got a panic attack. It got to the point where I stopped answering the phone altogether. For that month, Anna was my whole life. (Which I'm sure is exactly what she wanted.) When I wasn't reading the horrible things she said to me or about me, I was thinking about her, worrying about what she'd do or say next, wondering how long it would be before she actually showed up somewhere, wondering why I hadn't heard from her yet that day. And even when I wasn't busy doing those things, I was busy compiling evidence for court.

Speaking of court, while "Martha" had actually faced legal consequences in the past for another case of stalking, Anna, to my knowledge, has not. That said, Anna, like "Martha," does have a history of stalking. She harassed an ex for several months, much longer than she did me, and she even dragged me along on a "date" to where her ex worked so she could spy on her. (I immensely regret enabling her that night. I was young and naive and she was my friend at the time. At that point I had no idea Anna had a history of stalking her.) Because of that history, and because she had previously followed her ex on more than one occasion, I do believe that it may very well have escalated to that point if Anna had continued stalking me.

Do I think Anna would have attacked me or one of my loved ones? No. That said, "Martha" seemed harmless enough, didn't she? I think most people wouldn't see her as a threat. With Anna, many of my loved ones were concerned with the same thing. And when I would say, "I've known this woman for almost four years, I don't think she would resort to physical violence," I was always met with some variation of: "But Sophie, clearly you never really knew her if you didn't know she was capable of THIS. So how do you know she isn't capable of violence?" Which, let's be honest, is a valid point.

One thing I loved about Baby Reindeer was Richard Gadd's brutal honesty about the part he played. While, of course, "Martha's" stalking was not Richard Gadd's fault, he does admit that he was not the perfect victim, and in some cases even encouraged her, or at the very least made unwise choices. Was I the perfect victim? No. I wouldn't say that I egged Anna on by any means, but there were better choices I could have made, both during my friendship with Anna and after. So I can also relate to the experience of wondering if things could have been different. If there was maybe something I could have done to prevent the harassment? It's difficult to not blame yourself when things like this happen, even when you know on a logical level that it's not your fault. (Though, I do maintain that no matter how I ended my friendship with her, the result would have been the same.)

In the beginning, I admit, I allowed her to get in my head and make me angry enough to respond to her. Luckily, my lawyer quickly advised me to stop engaging her and to just say "Stop contacting me." But honestly, I wish I hadn't done that either. I should have just ignored her completely. If I could go back, I wouldn't have engaged with her at all. I would have just sat back and let her cyber-stalk and harass me to her heart's content, instead of responding at all. It left me feeling emotionally drained, and I do think, in some sick, twisted way, me even just repeatedly messaging "stop contacting me" was all the validation she needed to keep going. Maybe if I hadn't responded at all, she would have gotten bored. I don't know. Bottom line, there were better choices I could have made. Whether those choices would have made any real difference, I can't be sure.

Most importantly though, I relate to Richard Gadd's admitted obsession with "Martha." I mean, let's be honest here. She stalked him back in 2014, and in the ten years since, he wrote a play, and a Netflix docu-series about it. I don't say that to judge him at all. I understand. Going through something like that changes you. To reiterate, my experience was VERY different to Richard Gadd's, and I'm not at all trying to compare the severity of his case to mine. I'm just noting the similarities, the things I can relate to, the moments I sat up in my seat and went, "huh." And when Richard Gadd said "did I miss her?" I had an involuntary moment of self-reflection.

Do I miss her?

And the horrible, horrible answer is, yes. Even though it was only a month of anxiety, panic, dread, and adrenaline, that month became my new normal. The self-righteous anger particularly became addictive to me. To the point where I agreed to meet up with her so she could "explain herself," and even allowed her to message me on Tumblr once in a while. I told myself it was to keep the peace, so that she wouldn't go on a cyber-stalking rampage again. And I maintain that that was 100% true, but I'd be lying if I said it was the only reason. The sad fact is, I relished in the opportunity to get angry with her. Almost like I was getting to make up for, not just the cyber-stalking, but the hell she put me through when we were friends. (She was not a good friend, y'all.) But especially the betrayal of everything she did during that month. It fueled a fire in me I don't know I'll be able to ever put out.

A couple of months ago, I finally put the kibosh on any contact with her at all. She had the audacity to ask me to get lunch with her, to "catch up" and I knew I had to burn it all down then and there. The fact that she would think that was an acceptable thing to do, after not only everything she put me through in only four weeks, but after I repeatedly reiterated to her that our contact was not ever going to leave this website, astonished me. Then again, she was CLEARLY never good with boundaries in the first place, so I shouldn't have been too surprised. In that moment, I knew that I had to completely sever all ties. That it was not healthy for me to have any form of contact with her, to give her any sort of leeway, lest it give her a shred of hope that we could be friends, or worse, that I might accidentally let slip something personal that she could later use against me, as she is clearly wont to do.

Despite this, I still think about her. I wonder which of my social media accounts she has looked at today, despite the fact that I have her blocked on everything. (And yes, I am 100% sure that she is still looking at my accounts, though most likely not every day.) I think about the comment she left on a YouTube video I was in, but hastily deleted when she realized I was responding to the comments. I think about all the things I want to say to her, knowing they would only fall on deaf ears, and all I would be doing is giving her the satisfaction of interacting with her. Even now, as I type this, I know with certainty that she is reading it, smirking over my admission, and equally upset at the comparison drawn between her and "Martha." But despite this knowledge, the knowledge that me even writing this is giving her some sort of weird satisfaction, I must be honest. Honesty is the first step to healing and closure. And that is what I want.

Above all else, I think the thing I obsess about the most is the same reason I started to watch Baby Reindeer in the first place...Why? Why did Anna do this? What sickness makes a person capable of doing something like that to another human being? Whether it's a complete stranger, or someone you've been friends with for years. What kind of psyche results in this kind of person, who does and says these kinds of things? There is an insatiable curiosity in me, one I know I will never be able to satisfy. There are so many questions that will never be answered, so many things I want to shout at her, to metaphorically shake her and scream "Why don't you understand this?!" But at the end of the day, there would never be a point. She would never understand, never be able to leave the bubble reality that she has created for herself, and never fully take accountability for all she did without somehow finding a way to blame me for it. After all, like my boyfriend says, "Logic does not work with illogical people."

Considering how much worse Richard Gadd had it than me, do I think it will take me 10+ years to move on? Probably not. But honestly? I don't know. The depths Anna sunk to, the things she said and did, I can't fathom a time when I will no longer dwell on the anger, to suddenly want to yell at her, to tell her all the things I think and feel and to MAKE her see how absolutely unhinged she is. And I know that's exactly what she wants. She wants to make an imprint on my mind, for me to never forget her, and to be as obsessed with her as she is with me. Unfortunately, so far it seems she's gotten exactly what she wanted. Well, except for one thing, and arguably the most important thing. Me. She will never have me in her life ever again, and despite whatever vitriol she may have spewed about me, I know that's what she really wants. But even typing this, and feeling this icky form of pride, I know that's unhealthy. To think of her this way. I long for a day when I can think of her with indifference. Or better yet, when I don't think of her at all.

I hope it comes one day. In the meantime, at least there's therapy.

[eijispumpkin]

On Allegory, Imperfection, and Inadvertent Subversion: A small essay about Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish and Salinger’s “A Perfect Day For Bananafish”.

In the story of Banana Fish, Yoshida references Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day For Bananafish” (which henceforth shall be addressed as “Perfect Day” simply for ease of reading) several different ways, both in-universe and out. It is exceedingly evident that the character of Ash Lynx is heavily based on Seymour Glass, and one might surmise that Banana Fish is an allegorical retelling of “Perfect Day”, especially given that in the original story, Ash Lynx dies of what is arguably a “passive suicide” – that is, when faced with an injury that isn’t immediately fatal, he chooses to bleed out rather than seek help, which when framed as a suicide, parallels the much more violent and sudden suicide of Seymour Glass.

However, this surface-level allegorical reading ignores a very important variable in the story of Banana Fish, namely the counterpart to Ash’s Seymour: Eiji’s Sybil. While Ash and Seymour share many similarities (both are traumatized, troubled geniuses with partly-Irish roots who grew up in New York City), the similarities between Eiji and Sybil are very few. Eiji does symbolize a world of innocence to contrast with Ash’s world of horrors, but unlike Sybil, Eiji is an adult with agency of his own, and though he retains some of Sybil’s childlike innocence and is able to connect deeply with Ash as a result of it, Eiji’s agency and decisions ultimately change the narrative and its meaning.

That is to say, by introducing Eiji as an imperfect Sybil, one who has agency and can actually provide Ash with understanding and support of the kind that Seymour never got from Muriel or others around him (and which Sybil, being three years old, was in no way equipped to provide), Banana Fish directly subverts “Perfect Day”’s original message of cynicism in the face of a material world unconcerned with the horror of lost innocence and its resulting isolation.

To understand what this means, it’s important to first understand the meaning and context of “Perfect Day” and the circumstances in which it was written. “Perfect Day” is a story written first and foremost as a critique of American materialism in the wake of WWII; Salinger echoes the concerns of the Lost Generation before him, in a way, by really driving home the alienation from modern adult life felt by those who were exposed to the horrors and traumas of the battlefields in wartorn Europe, only to return home and find a culture completely removed from it all. Seymour Glass is a stand-in for Salinger himself—Kenneth Slawenski, in his 2010 biography of Salinger, notes that on returning from the European theater, Salinger “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.”

If that sounds familiar, good, because it should! This is precisely the motif of “Perfect Day” (as well as some of Salinger’s other work featuring members of the Glass family, such as Seymour’s younger brother Buddy, which, as an aside, is a name that might stick out to Banana Fish fans. Whether this is an intentional reference or a coincidence, I can’t say for certain, but given the depth of other references within this allegory, I’m inclined to think it’s intentional).

As a quick summary for those who may need a refresher, “Perfect Day” is a story about a deeply traumatized man who feels isolated from the rest of society because of the weight of the horrors he has been exposed to. Muriel Glass, Seymour’s wife, is the epitome of this: she represents the materialistic culture that Seymour feels so alienated from, always talking about brand-name things and luxuries and upward mobility. Seymour rejects her company in favor of playing the piano for children and spending time on the beach, where he tells three-year-old Sybil Carpenter a story about bananafish, fish that gorge themselves on bananas in holes under the sea until they’re too fat to escape the entrances to these little banana dens, and then they die. Instead of dismissing this story as something bizarre, Sybil claims she sees a bananafish in the water, which endears her to Seymour, until she leaves, at which point he returns to his hotel room and shoots himself in the head.

In “Perfect Day”, this interaction (between Sybil and Seymour) is the center of a set of dualities. Sybil represents the state of childlike innocence that Seymour longs to return to, and because of her innocence, she can “understand” him in ways that the material adults like her mother or Muriel do not. Seymour’s isolation is a product of his society and the lack of support and understanding for traumatized veterans returning from war, and it shows in the way that adults his age cannot connect with him, and he cannot connect with them. This disconnect between worlds is what eventually results in Seymour’s suicide—he can fit neither in the world in which he wishes to be, nor in the one in which he must reside, and it ends in his death.

The question is, then, how does this relate to Banana Fish?

As mentioned previously, Ash Lynx is a very clear parallel to Seymour Glass. He’s a young man faced with immeasurable trauma from which he believes he can never recover, and there is a clear motif of duality in his entire character arc: his world (one of violence and trauma) versus the “normal” world (where innocent people who have “regular” lives may reside). Like Seymour, Ash feels trapped in a world he can’t escape, knowing “the truth” that he knows, about the horrors that people are capable of.

It follows, then, that Eiji Okumura is a parallel to Sybil Carpenter, who represents childlike innocence and a world that Ash longs to be part of but can’t reach. And to an extent, this is true: Eiji is sheltered and innocent, comparing real-life to TV shows and being completely unexposed to kidnappings, drugs, guns, and violence. However, there is a sharp contrast between Eiji and Sybil, one that fundamentally changes the relationship between Eiji and Ash and makes it radically different from that between Sybil and Seymour:

Eiji is an adult, and as such, he has agency of his own.

Unlike Sybil with Seymour, Eiji can make his own choices and face Ash as an equal. Where Sybil is a child who runs back to her mother after playing with Seymour at the beach, Eiji actively and consistently chooses to stay with Ash, over and over. He even explicitly tells Ash “you are not alone”, which is a huge and direct contrast to the message of inevitable, devastating isolation from “Perfect Day”. Whereas Sybil’s innocence serves as a reminder to Seymour of what he’s lost and cannot regain, Eiji’s innocence is a beacon of comfort and companionship to Ash. Eiji is someone with whom Ash can relax and be playful like a boy his own age, as noted by Max and Ibe watching them interact.

This communication and connection are present between Sybil and Seymour, but in a very different way. Seymour prefers to play make-believe and tell silly stories to kids, because he went from being a wide-eyed innocent to being traumatized and longing for a place to belong, and Sybil as a child represents what he wishes he had, while the adults around him (most notably Muriel, his wife) are a world he doesn’t understand that feels false.

This is not the dichotomy of worlds that Ash faces. Ash faces a world of trauma and suffering that he sees himself as trapped in, and a world of peace and security that he thinks is beyond his reach. Where Seymour yearns for a return to innocence, Ash yearns to escape his pain, and the combination of this subtle difference with the effect of Eiji’s agency and the narrative structure of Banana Fish results in a subversion of the themes in “Perfect Day”.

Banana Fish is a long-form narrative, while “Perfect Day” is a short story. Part of the inherent structure of a long-form narrative is character growth and development, which for obvious reasons is much less prominent in short stories. As a result, Eiji’s impact on Ash is clearly visible over the course of the narrative, and it becomes impossible to declare that Ash is firmly rooted in the world he sees himself as trapped in. By the end of the story, even Ash wavers on this assertion; although he ultimately succumbs to suicide, a narrative choice that been criticized ever since its publication, in the moments leading up to his stabbing, he does believe that Eiji is right, or at least right enough that he wants to see him one last time (this is ambiguous and open to interpretation, of course).

Why did this narrative choice spark so much controversy and outcry from fans? Not every story that ends in tragedy is criticized as poorly written for it; examples range from Shakespearean tragedies to “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, a film in which the entire cast dies in the climax. Yet just about all fans agree that it fit the narrative. Clearly, then, it is possible to craft a story that ends in death and tragedy but still feels well-written. What makes Banana Fish different?

I would argue that the answer lies in this imperfect allegory. By creating a Sybil-esque character that can interact with the Seymour-esque character as equals, can stay with him, and can listen to him and support him through his grief and pain, Akimi Yoshida inadvertently turned “Perfect Day”’s message on its head. The tragedy of “Perfect Day” is Seymour’s isolation. By giving Ash a warm, compassionate relationship in which he is assured over and over that he is not alone, Yoshida upturns this entirely.

Ash is led to believe in this dichotomy mostly by his isolation. He believes that since Eiji is in mortal danger as a result of being special to him, he needs to send Eiji to safety, i.e. somewhere far from him and far from the reach of those who would hurt them both. This isn’t a miscommunication issue or anything of the sort; this is Ash being afraid for Eiji’s life; Eiji isn’t averse to returning to Japan itself. Eiji is averse to returning to Japan without Ash, as he mentions when he talks about how Ash could be a model, and tells him about kami. In establishing this as a consistent tenet of Eiji’s character, Yoshida ensures that Ash is not isolated in the same way that Seymour was.

In addition, Eiji can move freely between both worlds set up in Ash’s perceived dichotomy, a motif made explicitly clear when Eiji leaps the wall to freedom and light at the beginning, leaving Ash (and Skipper) behind in captivity in the dark. Despite this escape from the world of violence and crime, Eiji returns of his own volition and stays with Ash, experiences his own fair share of horrific traumas, and still leaves in the end to return to his world. This makes it clear that the dichotomy is less stark than Ash is led to believe, unlike the repeated validation of his isolation that Seymour receives, and is another reason that the ending of “Perfect Day” is inconsistent with the ending of Banana Fish

A quick sidebar: Banana Fish has no real Muriel, but if pressed, I would posit that the closest parallel to Muriel that exists is Blanca, whose main purpose in the narrative seems to be to reinforce to Ash that he can’t escape the world he feels trapped in and longs to leave. But where in “Perfect Day” Muriel symbolized the materialism of American society after WWII, Blanca has no real established reason to be so invested in keeping Ash down, and in conjunction with the fact that despite his own traumas, he can retire peacefully to the Caribbean, his role in the story falls to pieces entirely. Where Muriel represented a lifestyle that Seymour fundamentally could not reach, thereby reinforcing his isolation, Blanca is supposed to parallel Ash to a degree, but his words to Ash do not match his actions whatsoever.

Therefore, if anything, Blanca’s assertions serve only to strike a contrast with Eiji’s (and Max’s, to an extent, since Max and Eiji both agree that Ash can escape this and they want him to heal). Moreover, Blanca’s relationship with Ash is that of a mentor and a student, a relationship that is shown to be fundamentally unhealthy, given that Blanca willingly worked for Ash’s abuser, a mafia don who he knew trafficked children. Some argue that Blanca was blackmailed into this service, but given that Blanca chose to betray Golzine at the end and work with Ash with seemingly no real provocation or change in his relationship with Golzine, this supposition seems flawed. Blanca’s assertions about Ash and his ability to forge bonds and leave his world the way Eiji does, and indeed the way Blanca himself does, are simply incorrect, and the narrative itself provides us all the tools we need to realize that Blanca is wrong, even without the extended context of a parallel to Muriel Glass.

Returning to the main issue at hand, i.e. that of the imperfect allegorical connections between Sybil and Eiji, and the dichotomy between worlds that Ash perceives, it’s clear that in creating a positive, nurturing relationship between Ash and Eiji rather than a one-off encounter, Yoshida inadvertently created a story about connections rather than isolation. Ash’s attempts to keep Eiji safe from harm by sending him home are countered by Eiji’s assertion that he only wants to go to Japan if Ash comes with him, which is a kind of selfless devotion that reaches through Ash’s isolation until he decides that he won’t try and separate himself from Eiji anymore, which is a massive blow to the dichotomy of his supposed two worlds. This is the narrative acknowledging that both worlds can coexist.

Not only this, but also Eiji, who has his own trauma—he’s kidnapped several times, shot at, drugged, sexually assaulted, attacked with a knife by a drugged friend, exposed to several deaths, shot at people in fights himself, and ultimately nearly killed by a gunshot wound—despite all of this, Eiji is still allowed to exist in the world of peace and regularity. Eiji’s innocence is sharply tempered by traumatic experiences, and he can still walk between worlds. If Eiji, Max, Ibe, Jessica, Sing, Cain, and Blanca can all experience traumas, why is Ash the only one who cannot escape? Is there some kind of magical bar of “too much” trauma, like an event horizon on a black hole?

Obviously, no.

So it comes to this: Essentially, the reason that the ending is so controversial, and why I personally believe that the open ending of the anime is an improvement to the original story, is that the allegory between Banana Fish and “Perfect Day” falls apart because of Eiji’s agency. Ash wants to protect Eiji, and to protect Eiji’s innocence and light, because he feels that it’s beyond his own reach, but Eiji forges a bond with him that is rooted in mutual respect and care, and in doing so, undoes the devastating, painful isolation that led to Seymour’s suicide. This is why Ash’s death can feel so hollow—it doesn’t follow the pattern of “Perfect Day”; after the entire story is about Ash’s bonds and those who love him unconditionally, it feels almost like a shock-value plot twist tacked on, rather than a tragic inevitability.

I don’t believe that Yoshida intended Banana Fish to be a subversion of “Perfect Day”. I believe she meant it as a one-to-one allegory, and this is why she kept the ending as Ash choosing death. However, due to the changes in themes because of the characters and their relationships, Ash is not isolated in the profound way Seymour was, and his death is therefore not nearly as impactful.

[elvensemi]

pls tell me about the brees and rens especially the brees bc i just met aeris bree for the first time and what the fuck??? “he [avi] was so sweet”??? it’s like they’ve switched personalities with their valesport(?) selves, where ren’s the one who Gets It and thinks jean is fairly straightforward while bree’s working through emotional trauma via kinky sex

Ironically they kind of have switched places. I was kind of wondering if anyone would notice that! It wasn’t necessarily on purpose, but their personalities and roles changed just enough that it happened all by itself. I shall now as requested go on at great length!! (mobile users if it just stops here it’s because I put it behind a cut and this site is ridiculous)

So let’s start with the Brees! There’s an immediate and obvious key difference between them: Valesport!Bree (henceforth Bree) is a cursed human; Aeris!Bree (Bridget) is a werewolf. The other most important difference is their families. Bree’s mother was disowned by her (very catholic) parents after she got pregnant as a teenager (they tried to keep it secret, but that’s kind of hard to do long term). Bree was raised by her great grandparents, who kept her extremely isolated. She didn’t interact with a person other than the two of them until she was a teenager and ran away from home. Bree also doesn’t get along with her mother, who was traumatized by the conditions of Bree’s birth. By contrast, Bridget has a huge and pretty supportive family. The Coreys haven’t come up much yet, but we’ll learn more about them during the course of Bridges (the plotline following Bridget and Tiff’s romance). 

So right off the bat, there’s a lot of personality difference. Neither one is very socially intelligent and make a lot of faux pas, but Bree is more insecure and anxious. 

Now, to address their relationships with Jean/Avi respectively! So, the story where Bridget is the “runner up” in the first (and last) relay race under Avi’s rule takes place ten years before the events in Beg Off. Bree is almost-23, Bridget is almost 29. Bridget has had ten years to settle into life in the castle, and while she might not be adjusted to life in the city as a whole, she’s adjusted a lot to life with in the castle and with Avi. 

Bree’s relationship with Jean is fraught. It’s been pretty antagonistic the whole way through–whether you want to blame Jean or Bree for that is your call–and has a lot to do with Bree’s own insecurities (”I’m weak, I’m vulnerable, I’m unattractive, I’m cursed”), fears (”one day he’ll get bored of me, no one is allowed to know about my curse”), and hang-ups (”I can’t turn out a slut like my mother”). Jean, meanwhile, in turns enjoys making a project of her (”she’s so much better at being a person now! she can manage her emotions better and isn’t as hung-up on sex; I’ve even improved her relationship with her mother! truly I am magnanimous and magnificent”) and just enjoying how easy it is to push her buttons. Not to mention Jean himself has a personality that changes based on what gets the most reaction out of the person he’s feeding off of. That’s a really key point of difference between Jean and Avi, frankly. Bree has a lot of fetishes that Jean can exploit to get a very fun rise out of her. She does not necessarily enjoy, realize, or want to admit she has those fetishes. 

Bridget with Avi, by contrast, well, we haven’t seen a lot of it yet (someone get Kitty enthusiastic about playing out Bridget’s ‘job interview’ please XD I can write it myself but I don’t WANT to), but we get peeks in both Building Bridges and Beg Off. But for the sake of rambling, I’ll spoil a few key details (since you and you alone will read this far). As mentioned before, Bridget is a werewolf. She’s a big predator, and Avi is a Bigger Predator. However you want to phrase it, he’s her boss, he’s her alpha, whatever, he’s established dominance pretty clearly and his instincts align well with hers in terms of their respective roles. He’s the boss and she has no issues or qualms with that. For Bridget, Avi is straightforward. She does what he tells her, and in return she gets a sweet job, all the meat she can eat, plenty of money to send home to mom and pop, and an unreasonable amount of good sex and good company. Bridget is quite happy in her place in life in the castle. 

Now for the Rens. 8| This got so long. 

So! Ren actually has three versions (hi, cupcake!ren) but we’ll focus on A!Ren and V!Ren for the purposes of keeping this slightly shorter. So all Rens (she’s my oldest OC and has existed in about a million things by now) have 2 formative events in their childhood: being adopted the first time (by Noah/the Duke) and running into Clarke, who I will avoid going into a lot of detail on. The second thing never happened to A!Ren, and her personality is different because of it. Also, A!Ren’s “Noah” was eaten before she had the chance to grow up and see him for what he was. More key personality differences from the get go, like with Bree! 

A!Ren is more angry at the world. She’s around the same age as V!Ren but she had more goals and more hopes. V!Ren is, sadly enough, a little more thoroughly broken, and also, unlike A!Ren, totally unaware of any special powers vis-a-vis rats. This means A!Ren wants things, and all V!Ren really wants at the beginning of her story is for people to stop trying to assault her, and also, like, food. She’s just as abrasive, generally, but she recognizes Jean early on as something to be respected (much like Ren does with Avi, note how different she acts around Avi versus Gareth lmfao), so she’s polite. 

The Ren/Jean relationship is easy. They each have something the other wants, and Jean finds Ren refreshingly straightforward. He can relax around her, and be more “himself.” And himself is more like Avi, so of course Ren finds him straightforward. With her, he is, because she’ll give him or get him what he wants without him really having to try much at all. 

The Ren/Avi relationship, by contrast, is incredibly fraught and antagonistic. He ate her father, to start with, and is directly responsible for her being on the streets to begin with. Furthermore, he owns her; she’s in his prison because she broke his laws. She’s also much more politically minded than V!Ren, which of course causes plenty of issues when you’re an anarcho-communist getting fucked by the king. She doesn’t even think there should BE a king, for pity’s sake, and if there is, he should at least be more concerned with the equal distribution of wealth and less concerned with getting his dick wet. She has Opinions, and she’s pissed about being in jail in the first place. 

So, yes! I hope this answers some of your questions (surely it must) and also questions you didn’t ask about my wordiness when compared to Unpretty, who is perfectly capable of answering an ask in two paragraphs instead of 20. 

[lucymontero]

Memories of the Alhambra: WTF

So not everyone is a fan of open-ended finales and that’s fine. But I do think there is a logical explanation there, if you already bought into the show in the first place.

Here’s what I think the show was implying from the ending, based on what they had asked us to accept already about Memories of the Alhambra (henceforth to be referred to as “The Game”).

What we know about The Game in ‘normal mode’:

You have to wear the lenses to play. 

You must be logged in to play. 

The server has to be running for you to play. 

You can interact with other users and NPCs and your body registers these interactions as physical sensation without haptic suit- so somehow Se Ju managed to map the human cortex via the eye.

That is a huge leap that you have to accept to get past Episode 1 and Jin Woo interacting with the guard on the plinth. That the game, as it is intended to work, literally tricks your brain into thinking your are feeling blows and holding objects that aren’t there. This is basically magic already, but the sensations are mild and, most important, don’t actually have any lasting effects, besides perhaps fatigue from your actual physical exertion of swinging your arms or running around. You get logged out when you ‘die’, your physical body doesn’t actually shut off.

What we know about The Game in ‘bugged” mode:

You can be logged in against your will, and without the lenses in your eyes. When the server is up- that means you are vulnerable to NPCs, when the server isn’t up you can still be stalked by the dead bug.

So already the game is somehow mapped into your brain in a way that forces you to interact with it directly, without the lens. 

The sensations that you feel are more intense than those in the normal game, the pain is more intense, and injuries have the potential to cause physical damage that, while not visible to anyone not playing the game, is potentially fatal. The symptoms on the corpses can look like shock, or, even weirder, blood loss? Without any open wounds. 

That’s what you have to accept to buy into Hung- Seok’s death in episode 3. That injuries your body perceives from game NPCs or other users can be so powerful they can short circuit your brain and drive into shock and death. 

In the same way, and in an inconsistent and less clear manner, is the ability of the game to trick your brain into NOT feeling pain. Jin Woo has a limp from a real injury. We see him leveling up in the abandoned school, still fighting with his cane in his hand. But as he increases in levels, it is revealed that he doesn’t limp when he’s logged in? So whatever is mapping the game into his vision and other senses somehow fools his body into changing his gait. It is unclear when this happens in some cases, because the show uses an unreliable narrator, so sometimes we are seeing events where Jin Woo is fighting and what we are seeing on screen is how Jin Woo perceives the situation, and he isn’t limping. But then we see that same series of events through another character watching a security feed of Jin Woo fighting that reveals he was limping all along, presumably made unaware of it. 

The game has the potential to remap actual reality, the physical status or ability of non-users to perceive users.

Later in the show, and after he has leveled up to master status, and is on the run from NPCs and the police, Jin Woo’s limp also disappears from his actual physical gait, as people remark “Didn’t Jin Woo limp? Because he’s running really fast!”. This isn’t a permanent re-write, it only lasts as long as the servers are up. When Jin Woo isn’t logged in, the limp reappears. So it is possible that the rules of the game adjust as player experience is gained, not just in regards to weapons and regular game features, but as regards to the power of the game’s bugged out murderous/healing glitches. Which is why, perhaps, the most powerful reality re-writing ability of all is reserved for masters, but more on that later.

Importantly, these phenomena that happen in bugged mode are not apparent to all users, which is why Jin Woo can’t get anyone to believe him. Under the bugged version a very specific series of events has to happen to you.

So, a heck of a lot of magical thinking is required to get past the events of the first couple episodes, but the show is pretty consistent about the rules. Which leads us to the results of buggy game play, “Bugs”.

The “bugs” themselves seemed to originate in a malfunction of the game during an act of physical violence in front of Emma, who seems to be more than an ordinary NPC, more than an homage to a beloved sisters, but some kind of HAL-like representation of the game, so when Marco stabs Se Ju physically in the cafe, the game at that moment “learns” to actually harm people. (It reminds me a bit of the “nanogenes” in Doctor Who) When people are killed as a result of game-induced injuries, they leave a physical corpse, but their image remains in the game and they return as ghost users, in the likeness of how they died, and with all the abilities they had, perceptible only to the person involved in the death.  

DEAD BUGS

Marco is a bug, killed by the game via Se Ju . 

Hyung-Seok is a bug, killed by the game via Jin Woo. 

Seo Jung-Hoon is a bug, killed by the game.

Dr. Cha is a bug, killed by the game.

LIVING BUGS

Jin Woo is also perceived by the game as a bug. We see “Emma is deleting the bug” as Emma stabs him with the Key of Heaven the first time. But Jin Woo isn’t a zombie ghost killed by the game, he’s a “living bug.” How did that happen?

I thought his error status was related to  either a) his involvement in Hyung-Seok’s game-related death that flagged him as “wrong” because a user should not be able to kill another user, or b) because in the same way the game erroneously killed people and makes them bugs, it has erroneously “healed” him, which is not something it is supposed to do. 

The first explanation raises the logical question, does that mean Se Ju is/was a living bug too? Se Ju killed Marco in the same way Jin Woo killed Hyung-Seok. And Marco stalks Se Ju the same way that Jin Woo, and only Jin Woo, is stalked by Hyung-Seok. So if Se Ju is a bug, why isn’t Se Ju affected by the reset events in the finale, when all the bugs are deleted? 

Either a) he was never a bug because bug status only happens when the game tries to physically rewrite you- either to kill or heal you, and the game never physically messed with him in a way it wasn’t designed to, 

or b) Se Ju was a bug, because anyone who was involved in a “wrong” game event like a game-death becomes a bug but he is fine at the end because Jin Woo completed the quest and became “the new master” and gave Emma the Key to Heaven- which tore down the walls and allowed Se Ju to be released from the instance dungeon- and when Se Ju re-emerges into the world he isn’t recognized by the game at all or at least not as a bug.  Which is why he is able to walk around Granada looking for his family and encountering the nicest waiter I have ever met without being attacked by Marco or Hasid warriors. He’s essentially re-written. 

Perhaps B is actually the simpler rule. After all, one of the most horror-movie like aspects of The Game in ‘bugged’ mode is the inability to escape the ghosts, even when taking out the lenses. But that horror is reserved for only certain people, and is not experienced by every user that was created before the reset. Only Se Ju and Jin Woo are haunted  against their will. And since that starts happening to Jin Woo before he even acquires the limp that the game later erases, that suggests you  become a “living” bug by being involved in a game death. Then, if a living bug takes an ally, the ally user also becomes a living bug, and is plagued by the same inability to leave the game and the more powerful game injuries and potential death.  We know the ally feature has problems, because Jin Woo tries frantically to break the alliance as soon as he realizes that becoming allies with Sung Joon resulted Sung Joon both seeing Hyung-Seok and experiencing the pain of an actual bullet wound when he gets shot (as opposed to the lesser sensation that the game would normally allow a user hit by a bullet to feel). But the game won’t let them break it. The dire consequences of alliances is also why Jin Woo is so reluctant to use this method of “proof”.  Dr. Cha  becomes locked into the game as soon as he allies with Jin Woo, making him vulnerable to both Jin Woo’s enemy users and the NPCs in any area that the server reaches.

Also, and perhaps most magical, shutting down the servers doesn’t stop bug enemies from appearing. Appearing from where? The user’s own mind? Except allies can see them? Hive mind? They come from some magical ghost server in the sky. Apparently when Emma remapped the game in reality she somehow accidentally gave the bugs the ability of manifest in front of their enemies wherever they were. Jin Woo sees Hyung Seok even when the servers are off. Even when he’s out of range of a server. But “normal” game functions, like NPCs, items, and leveling up, require the server to be on, even for living bugs. Which is why Jin Woo’s approach to not going batshit insane is to get the server running at the abandoned school, so he can have access to NPCs to kill, to gain experience, to level up, to access weapons, so he isn’t running from Hyung-Seok’s sword anymore.

So what the fuck is an “instance dungeon”?

Speaking of places that are both dependent on the server, and immune to server shut down. Se Ju’s “explanation” - a year later and once he’s slightly less traumatized- for where he was the whole year was that he had designed a place just for himself in the game, where he was “invisible” to NPCs, and refers to it as an instance dungeon, something the other game people seem to understand. I am not a gamer but so we know what he is referencing in regular game play:

The problem can be stated as follows: every player wants to be "The Hero", slay "The Monster", rescue "The Princess", and obtain "The Magic Sword". When there are thousands of players all playing the same game, clearly not everyone can be the hero. The problem of everyone wanting to kill the same monster and gain the best treasure became obvious in the game EverQuest, where several groups of players would compete and sometimes harass each other in the same dungeon, in order to get to the monsters dropping valuable items. The creation of instances largely solves this set of problems, leaving only travelling to and from the dungeon as a potential risk in player versus player environments.

Events that go on in an instance dungeon are only known to those people inside it. One you step inside, only those with you experience the same set of circumstances, your actions aren’t perceptible to those outside the dungeon until you emerge. They can run multiple instances at the same time, all fighting the same monsters, invisible to each other, in little bubble universes of the same quest.

So, to hide from Marco, Se Ju hid in what would have been a pocket universe in the game- where Marco and NPCs would not be aware of his presence. Now, when you combine that regular function, where this would ONLY apply to game features and users, with the game’s ability to map reality, what the show implies is that when Se Ju hid from the game, his design for an instance dungeon worked a little too well, and he was also masked from the real world. This finally explains what they showed us in an earlier scene, with a shot of Jin Woo walking right past a fetal Se Ju on the train platform, with Jin Woo’s musing in voice over about how maybe Se Ju was, in fact, on the platform that day, and nobody saw. Because Se Ju was in the instance dungeon, neither the game nor the real world could see him. He was physically there, but no one, not game users, not real people, could physically see him.

Of course this is magical magical but by this point you’ve been nodding along as server-less ghosts kill people so it’s a stretch, a big one, but not actually inconsistent with the magical game powers we’ve seen so far. Just a much more powerful manifestation of them.

Se Ju didn’t pop back into existence when the servers were shut off, so the instance dungeon is a place outside the main game, similar magic to how the dead bugs appear when the server is off. However getting OUT of the dungeon and back to the main game and main world seem to require the servers to be on to open the door. Important.

It also raises the question of what is it like to BE in an instance dungeon. Was Se Ju sitting somewhere eating churros ,sliding into convenience stores and invisibly grabbing food? What parts of the real world were perceptible to him? I dunno, if he’d been living such a normal but invisible existence, wouldn’t he be a little less wrecked? Wouldn’t he be aware of what was going on in the world? He seemed shocked his family moved, what was going on with the development of the game, things publicly known. If the writers wanted us to believe he was chilling invisibly in an abandoned apartment until someone got rid of Marco, why was he (as his sister notes) wearing the same clothes and his hair was the same length as the day he went in. He seemed bewildered at how distraught his family was.  He was still terrified of storms and Marco, as if he’d been terrorizing him just the day before and not a year ago. So, maybe he was in some sort stasis- the game kind of froze him or paused him- if it can kill people or heal their limps is it really that much more of a stretch? He seemed like he’d woken up from a really long disoriented state. Maybe the game maintained him just as he was when he went into the dungeon, but he doesn’t have a memory of the dungeon, and we don’t see where he came back out. Could have been the train station. He got released just as he went in.

So, what happened to Jin Woo? 

When a living bug is deleted, what happens? We never see it, since every other bug Jin Woo deleted was of someone who already left a corpse elsewhere. But every other time the game has killed a person, there has been a body left behind. Marco, Hyung-Seok, Jung Hoon, Dr. Cha, their bodies don’t disappear when they died. If Emma had killed Jin Woo, there should be a very pretty corpse nearby. 

So OK, he didn’t die, but his buggy part was deleted. Which also means that’s not a ghost Jin Woo ally we are seeing haunting Seoul and saving newbies in the final scene, because that is a bug function and all the bugs are gone. (I also assume that Emma deleted Marco. Jin Woo obviously couldn’t because bugs only appear to their associated living bugs and their allies. I mean,  Emma presumably would have used the Key of Heaven to delete all the bugs without needing Jin Woo’s dramatic stabbing help if Jin Woo weren’t so stubborn about not wanting to die himself. Drama queen. jk i heart jin woo). Deleting a living bug seems very painful for it, but if the game were to kill Jin Woo, that would also be in itself a bug- that’s not a real game function. Emma has to remove the corruption, but it is not clear that that requires physical death and since we never saw a corpse, I’m gonna go with, painful, but not lethal. Although we can understand why Jin Woo would think he was going to die and in the end he gives Emma the key clearly expecting to die to set everything right and we get it please stop panning to the crucifix already. 

So, the only place for Jin Woo to be, since he isn’t dead, is in the instance dungeon. Since they never show this we have to imagine how that might have happened, but given that Jin Woo is the highest level of user ever in the game (higher than Se Ju), has completed the Master Quest and obtained the Key to Heaven that allows opening of gates and rewriting of game functions, it is possible that he somehow managed to pop himself into the little pocket instance dungeon that only masters can access. This would mask him both from the physical world and the game world, but also protect him from dying from any Emma-related shock or injuries. It is unclear if you need to Key to Heaven to get out of the dungeon, it may have dropped back into his inventory when Emma was done (his guns seem to have remained) or he may have the ability to open the dungeon without the key as level 100. So Jin Woo presumably has the means to extract himself from the instance dungeon without having to send some stranger on a quest in Spain, but all evidence points to the servers needing to be ON to reconnect from the isolated instance dungeon to the main game and main world. So he can’t get out, once the servers are shut off.

Fast forward a year and the server starts up again with the game launch and maybe that is the impetus for a Jin Woo to somehow find his way out of the instance dungeon. He hasn’t been hiding invisibly watching all this go on, he’s been somewhere else, probably unaware of the passage of time. The game launch resurrects him,  hence all the Hee Ju praying montages that weren’t that necessary or subtle. It is unclear what is required to get out-how much time, are there obstacles- but the servers get switched off and on during the day to keep Seoul sane, and only operate in certain areas, so this may complicate things and explain why he didn’t pop up instantly when they started testing or once launched. Also if Jin Woo’s mental state is anything like Se Ju’s was when he got out, he’d be disoriented, and revert to the survival mode he was in for so long, maybe coming out only to kill a few NPCs and then revert to the dungeon. Until Hee Joo finds him and he knows he’s safe, which is about to happen as the show ends.

So I think he’s alive, he was sort of saved/trapped in the instance dungeon, and when the game restarted he made his way out and Hee Ju is about to find him. The end.

[deepfriedtwinkie]

Kingsman: A Trainee’s Mission (Pt. I)

PREQUEL FIC, this section ~2kw—THIS WILL BE MULTIPART; please like and most importantly REBLOG if you enjoy, babes <3

note: ignores TGC’s two-second mention of Harry having been in the army. I already had my own ideas about his backstory way before that, so whoops, I accidentally disregarded canon, imagine that

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“Fall in.”

They’re the words he’s been waiting for. Hands behind his back, Harry steps into line with the fifteen other proposals. A subtle glance over his shoulder takes stock of them. Some look to have come to life from the brochures of Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds. Others look prepared for a rock-&-roll concert on a quad somewhere. He wonders which will be his future colleague.

The old man who gave the order, ruddy and silver-white haired, sporting elbow-patched tweed, comes two paces forward. He adjusts his black-rimmed glasses, folding his arms over his burdened clipboard.

“Gentlemen. My name is Arthur,” he begins. “I welcome you to the interview process; very likely the most extreme interview process in the world. Have no doubt of that.” Pausing, he lightly clears his throat. “Now, ordinarily, as per the Kingsman tradition, these trials are overseen by our resident Merlin.”

Merlin the Wizard, Harry thinks. Tech wizard. The agents’ handler. His smile is hard to repress.

“However. Circumstances being as they are, may our dear friend rest in peace, I will be testing the lot of you myself.”

In the back row, there’s the faintest snort, and fainter muttering; Harry picks up something to the effect of how this ought to be cake, then. Arthur’s caught it as well. He levels a halfheartedly-scathing gaze, but moves along.

“If you’ve taken notice of your company, which I hope to God will never again need be asked of you, you will have counted sixteen applicants in this room. On this rare occasion, we are seeking to fill two positions. The very same incident that claimed the life of our Merlin has also laid to rest our dearly missed Agent Galahad.” The old man studies them, his eyes demanding postures of stone. “If any of you are perturbed by the possibility of someday greeting the same fate, this moment will be your final chance to leave.”

Harry waits, still as a pond. Nobody moves.

One brusque nod from Arthur. “Good. In that case, I look forward to finding out which two of you, and only two of you, will become the newest members of Kingsman. I wish a great deal of luck to you all.”

Hardly necessary, Harry thinks.

“Now then.” Arthur’s pen points out the perimeter of the room in a slow circle, and the candidates’ eyes follow. Against the walls are bunks beds, four to the left, four to the right, a metre or so between each. “In a moment, you will go and find your name on an index card attached to one of these bunks. These designate your assigned sleeping arrangements. On your cot, you will find one of these.” He points his pen at the nearest lower bunk, sporting a lump of thick canvas. “Can anyone identify this item?”

Ten or so hands go up. Arthur lights on the nebbish thing to Harry’s immediate right, already sweating through his ill-fitting sport coat.

“It’s a sleeping bag, sir?”

Snickers blossom around the error. You twit, it’s a body bag.

“It’s a body bag,” says Arthur. “Lyle, isn’t it?”

Lyle gives a quivering nod, Adam’s apple plunging. Arthur makes a note. Well he’ll be gone by the week-end.

“At your station, you will write your name on the bag provided. You will also write the names of any and all next-of-kin. This represents your acknowledgement of the extraordinary risk you are about to face, as well as your very binding agreement to our incredibly strict confidentiality policy. It is your contract. Should you break this contract at any time, I regret to say, and hope you understand, that the names on your bag will henceforth, and without fail, become its inhabitants.” Like the army, then. I’ve read about this. “Have I made myself clear?”

Fifteen heads bob. The outlier is at the far end of Harry’s row. He’s a slight thing with a close haircut, wearing a coat of blue and green tartan plaid. From the look of him, he can’t possibly be out of secondary school. His arm is raised.

So is Arthur’s eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Isn’t that an army technique, sir?” The question comes in a Scot’s brogue.

“Beg pardon?”

“The army. God save the Queen.” Even with his eyes forward again, Harry can hear repressed amusement in the words, albeit not repressed very hard. “Is it not typical for army recruits to be given the same exercise as a scare tactic?”

A look passes Arthur’s face that suggests how very much done he is with all of them. The young man goes without an answer, not that he seemed to be too seriously curious in the first place. Arthur pokes the bridge of his glasses, turning away.

“Fall out.”

Harry waits until he’s gone, then sets himself upon the nearest bunks with the famished eyes of a wild man.

His name isn’t on the first frame, so he moves left. It isn’t on the second, third, fourth, or fifth, either. It’s on the sixth. Only his card is there; his bunkmate’s has already been removed, leaving behind a bent thumbtack.

“Hope you don’t mind I had my heart set on the top bunk,” comes the brogue.

Harry looks up, only to retrace his visual steps as the young man above him hops back to solid ground. A grin comes over him—Yes, this will do fine, I’m sure this will be interesting—and he proffers his hand. His fellow recruit accepts, and he shakes enthusiastically.

“Harry Hart.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

The silence that follows outlasts the handshake. Harry blinks. He chalks the missed cue up to possible excitement or nerves, at least until his companion turns away with an amicable nod, retrieving his body bag like nothing else is happening.

“Aren’t you going to tell me your name?” Harry asks.

The thought must be genuinely foreign to the lad, going by the way his brow serpentines. “Why would I do that?”

Why on earth would you ask a thing like that? “I…well, I told you mine.”

“Yes, and I appreciated that. It’s very pretty. I like alliteration.”

Harry follows him around the other side of the bunks as he goes about searching for a pen, utterly bewildered to be having this conversation. “So you aren’t going to tell me yours? That doesn’t seem very fair. How should I know what I’m meant to call you?”

“When you think about it, do you really have to call me anything at all?” He pulls the cap off a felt marker. “I’ll know it’s me you’re talking to if you’re looking at me. It’s a basic measure of respect, eye contact. Very valuable in many situations.”

“Oh, come now, don’t be ridiculous.” Harry’s tone is still brightly convivial, which he’s rather proud of, considering he’s rapidly approaching a state of active frustration. “Just tell me your name.”

“All right, fine,” the other one exhales. “You can call me Merlin, if you like.”

Merlin. “Merlin.”

“Yes.”

It’s too preposterous to abide. “But you don’t know that you’ll get the position! You’re no more Merlin at this point than anyone else in this room.”

The young man flips a shoulder, looking blasé. “It’s only a matter of time. And it’s not like the last one’s still using it. He’s dead, what does he care? Seems up for grabs to me.”

The marker squeaks across the cardstock on the body bag. Harry attempts to read over his bunkmate’s shoulder, but the stubborn little shit’s concealing it from him. “You’re certainly quite confident, aren’t you?”

“Well, I don’t like to brag.”

“Please, now, come on, I insist you give me something to call you other than Merlin. What if one of us gets a position and the other doesn’t? I’d like to think we may be friends by the end of this; how will I keep in touch with you?”

Would-Be Merlin chuckles to himself, not unkindly replying, “If one of us gets a position and the other doesn’t, something tells me there won’t be any keeping in touch. Matter of fact, the loser may be unlikely to remember any of this. Have you seen those amnesia darts yet?”

“Oh yes, they’re brilliant.” Briefly he feels the thrill of this afternoon again. Hundreds of gadgets, dozens of all manner of vehicles, all hidden below the earth while regular people go about their lives, walking dogs, pushing prams, shopping at Tesco… He shakes his head. “That’s not the point.”

“All right, all right. You can call me…M.”

M.

“M. M, as in, M from the James Bond films?”

“Yes. M as in M from the James Bond films.” He caps the marker, holding it out. “If you wanna use this, I’m all through with it.”

Harry takes it, but makes no move toward his bag. He stares at M-Not-Merlin for a few moments, standing there as unmoved as he is, squared off with him. Unblinking. Assured. Something calmly challenging in it, almost. And his body bag over his arm with the card on front obscured conveniently to the underside.

The conclusion’s a slap in the skull he should’ve picked up minutes ago. “You really can’t stand your name whatsoever, can you?”

“No. No I can’t.”

His grin returns for having won the prize. He walks around him. “If it’s all that traumatic of an embarrassment for you, why not go by something else?” His palm braces the index card for writing on. “Or have it changed entirely, for that matter. I’m sure it couldn’t be very complicated.”

“Oh, couldn’t it, then?”

“Ah. So you’ve thought of that.”

“More than once, believe you me. It’d kill my auntie.” The lad’s climbing back up the ladder now, the frame creaking after him. “Raised me from a boy, that woman did. Christ knows why she loves the hideous thing, but it’s a family name.” He parks himself at the foot of his cot, legs swaying just slightly. “So I’m a bit stuck with it, y’see.”

“Yes, I do.”

Tilting his head, Harry admires the careful scrawl of his mothers’ names. Contrary to frightening him, he almost wishes he could cut out this patch and frame it, along with perhaps mailing them a copy. Imagine how a thing like this would look next to my nursery school handprints.

“Well then.” He, too, smoothly folds his bag, cheerful as he looks up. “I suppose M is as good as anything. Lovely to meet you, M.”

“Much appreciated. And likewise.”

Harry extends the marker. “You can have this back now. Thank you very kindly.”

“Oh, no skin off mine.” M points to bunk seven. “It’s his.”

Perspiring Lyle is flitting around the bunk adjacent, upending his toiletry kit, quite plainly frantic. It’s difficult to contain a laugh as Harry taps the poor sod on the shoulder with a “Pardon me,” then slips the marker into his clammy hand. “Take this one. All finished.”

The relief from the poor thing just about rattles the woodwork. “Oh—oh good, thank you. Thanks very much.”

“Not at all. Happy to help,” M contributes.

Good God, it’s a toss-up who’s the cheekier shit between the two of us. “Come on.” It’s time to get out of here before their neighbor wonders what’s funny. “Let’s go and find out where to hand these in, shall we?”

M hops down again with a grunt. “Every time I sit down.”

The body bags go in a heap on a table in the corner. Once there, Harry watches with some mild degree of amazement as M begins to separate them, unasked, glancing only fleetingly at each card, sorting out a new pile by alphabet.

He makes a mental note to get to know M better in the coming days. Already, it seems the wisest investment in the room.

.

pt. II | pt. III | pt. IV | pt. V | pt. VI  | pt. VII  | pt. VIII  | pt. IX

[imagineelrios]

Uninvited Guest

(Warning : Inappropriate for being an incident, but couldn’t stop from… you see… :“DDD and pardon for grammar mistaking.) 

(Jobs : Arme, Mastermind, RS, IP, DL and BM. Bcs why not. Bcsitstragecomedy.)

“Oi, already done?” Arme notices Masi standing up from the chair, relaxing his back. 

Masi nodded sluggishly, still recovers himself from exhaustion, “Yes… Maaaan, I managed to level up my pvp arena rank. I’m going home, Mom Grace will be angry if she knows that I was here.“  “Ah, I see. I’ll be walking you home.”

“Are you going to see Es?” Masi backed away, expressing his distaste. 

“Beats me." 

Unluckily, the tragedy has already been set up next to him while opening a door through doorknob. A crack in that door lets something slithery raid the internet cafe–a place where they usually come over to play their game online. Three first seconds, Masi isn’t aware of that being. 

And it was a greasy sense that alarmed Masi’s conscious. Long, and… scaly. 

Masi, feeling the great danger lingering on his hand, checked right there. 

Tadah.

A rat snake is making a grand entrance into their hideout.  "AAAAAAAAAA—–.” Masi shrieked. The snake moves cunningly onto one of his legs. He jumped away from the door, still screaming as fuck as that unwanted thing still wrapping around. 

Next scene was a great shock to Masi. 

The snake bit his bum. Pretty hard that he could die from sudden shock.

“#$%^!!” Masi cursed as he jumped away once more. The snake reacted more aggressive upon his cuss; snake’s tail was already spinning around his lateral malleolus while still biting his ass. 

“GYAAAAAAAA—-." 

Masi twisted his body, while one of his leg still shaking to get the snake out of this tragedy… And that leg strikes Arme’s sweet ol’ bum, too. A bit forward, his toes would’ve poked Arme’s genital from behind.

Arme soon shrieked in shock, "WHAAA—.”

He fell frontward, trying to stay still. 

“W-What–S-SNAKEEEE–!!” Arme shouted in fear, backed off from failed murder attempted by the little satan.

“ASAKSJAKSBAJHAS—.” Poor Masi. We could still hear his never-ending screams as he fell sided, trying to leave that shit serpent out of his leg.

Raven was surprisingly the first to back off from his chair despite on the farthest position with Masi and Arme’s spot. He must be traumatized seeing snake’s victorious terror on internet cafe he took care of.

Last minutes, he survived the disaster himself. Soon he tries to run while still unconsciously laid on the floor, and started to rush for the emergency door right behind Raven’s chair.

Ciel pushed his chair forward, and froze out of all watching this live-action tragecomedy. Probably he’ll never forget this. Ever. 

“Huh? Whats—AAAAAAAAAAAAAA—.” Both Elsword and Chung, the one sit up on the desk facing north, screamed altogether. 

They both stepped their own chair, already running away from snake’s recent spot. 

Raven? He’s already out of the stage by shutting the other room near the exit door.

Arme hissed as reached nearby chair, “#$%^… Masi… I’m not going to forgive you…" 

"S-Shut the hell up!” Masi exclaimed from outside, “I-I’m… I’m not going ba-back!” His voice has slightly broken, due to this trauma.

“Seriously… I cannot imagine this place will be raided… and to the worst, by a snake… A single snake, damn it.” Elsword inhales and stayed alert. 

“If only I brought my guns… Damn…” Chung breathes hastily. His hands were shaken, too.

Ciel objected Chung’s idea, “Bad idea… You could be arrested with illegal usage of weapon, you see…”

Raven broke the awkwardness between men, “… I called 911… whatever, I’m calling animal rescue, whatever…”

“And doctor.” Arme added, “Looked like Masi’s butt has already been marked…"  ”HOY.“ Masi once more exclaimed, "Don’t you dare to make me sound like a damn human marked by snake in so wrong waaaay!” He groaned painfully as he tried to cool down his bitten area.

Chung interrupted, “Snake… Was that snake brown one?" 

Arme nodded, "Yes… I can see it…" 

Elsword prayed mournfully, "Ah, I hope Lady Ishmael forgives him for the sins he have done… Amen…" 

"Amen.” Arme and others recited the same, to which annoys Masi. 

Alongside his late groans, Masi yelled furiously, “$%^& you all…! I’m going to have those #$%^ snakes spying your bed and bite you to the deaaatthh…. Aaaww, this huuurrttss… Damn…”

They will never, ever, forget what they have seen. A tragedy mixed with comedy, upon Masi’s agony.

Fortunately, Masi was later saved. No one dies from such tragecomedy.

“I’m so done with this.” Masi hissed at men in that place.

From henceforth, Masi swore himself that he’ll hate snake even more. Shit, snake have done tons of distasteful memories to him. Exclusively his bum.

[jknerd]

Snow White Chapter 32: Mother of Nation

[Much to her and Ju’s loss, the traumatic event caused her to miscarry their child. Later, they were told that Wang Seon was the one who set the lynch on the two elder princes. For the first time, everyone is seeing the least thing they had expect from Seol]

“WHAT?!” Ju shrieked in distress.

“The queen has miscarried the child, your majesty,” the royal physician muttered in anxiety, “the traumatic event might have been the cause.”

Ju clenched his fist to prevent himself from anger. He was shocked when he heard his queen fainted by witnessing the lynch of Prince Hyo-Seong and Won-Nyeong. And now his chance of becoming a father become futile, because of those impulsive, foolish nobles. Most of all, he was angry at whoever the one that caused the lynching. Jung and Baek-Ah was in the queen’s room to stay with Seol.

“Ji-Mong…” Ju spoke again, “did you found out who set the lynch?”

Ji-Mong sighed then answered.

Back at the queen’s chamber, Seol was sitting on her large bed, wearing a red chŏgori and black skirt. Her eyes were blank from the shock and forlorn since the miscarriage. Jung and Baek-Ah did everything to lighten up the mood but there was no sign of light. Then, they heard the presence of the king and bowed to Ju. The king greeted him back and seeing his queen’s expression, he told them to leave the chamber. Nodded their head, Jung and Baek-Ah left. Ju approached and sat beside her.

“Seol, I’m—”

“It’s alright,” she cut off with curt smile, “I’m the one who should feel sorry…you have been anticipating to become a father…and I was being childish to wander off recklessly…”

“No, it’s not your fault,” then remembering the name of the culprit he slowly glared, “if it weren’t for him we could have had our child.”

Seol, then looked at him.

“Who was it? Who set up such crime?” She asked, more like, demanding the answer.

Looking at her eyes, Ju decided to reply.

“Wang Seon,” he began, “he was the one who sent the wrongly accused nobles to lash out their anger on the two, because prince Hyo-Seong and Won-Nyeong were the ones who supported our father’s reformation and the purges.”

Seol’s face darkened and Ju noticed the familiar aura he had seen when he was a child. It was the same aura he had seen from his father Gwangjong. Especially when his father was up to another bloody purge. If Seol took after her father’s traits than her mother’s, she would also bring another bloody purge on the palace.

“Where is he now?” She asked, her voice become cold for brief seconds.

“He’s in prison,” he replied then looked up, “do you want him executed?”

“No, it is too lenient for him.”

Ju remembered the time he had seen officials killed and hung at the stake. Their corpse was either slashed or stabbed and the previous king was looking at them with cruel, icy smirk. Ju hoped Seol still retained her mother’s personality.

“What do you want me to do with him then?”

Seol made a small smile as she glanced at her king. When Ju looked at her, he felt like she has now had an upper hand. Now, she looked like she wasn’t belong to the world, envisioned her sitting on the throne, staring at the evil with cold, cruel eyes filled with disdain. Not that Ju was frightened, but he was intrigued to see innocent creature like her could become a graceful, yet powerful being.

“Your majesty…will you let me take care of this?”

With slightly widened eyes, he merely nodded his head.

Wang Seon, who was imprisoned, had endured interrogation—more like tortures—and locked back inside the prison. He couldn’t forget Wang Chi’s expression when he told the oldest of Hwangju about Seol’s miscarriage. Wang Chi, who was sitting on his chair, formed an evil curl of his lips. His jealousy had reached into a point of obsession for the queen in which Seon was disturbed of and began to concerned of her and the king.

He heard the door opened and revealed a majestic looking woman stood outside, staring down at him with dignity and contempt. It was queen Hunui, Yoo Seol, followed by Jung, Baek-Ah, and others. He had seen her sweet smile but seeing her wearing the same expression Gwangjong made when he was angered, Seon was frightened. Feared for what will happen. Watching him trembling, Seol sighed.

“Don’t worry,” Seol spoke in soothing manner, “I’m not here to interrogate you.”

She gestured the guards to leave and glanced back at the prisoner. When Seon was young, he had heard the rumor of women from Chungju clan. Especially, the dowager queen Yoo. The mother of Gwangjong. She was well-known for her greed for the throne she used her sons to get whatever she wanted. To begin with, Queen Yoo was never the true queen. But one time when Wang Seon presented himself in the court, he didn’t meet the king, but Queen Hunui herself, sitting on the throne with Jung and Baek-Ah on both of her side standing. Seon initially was confused but seeing Seol for the first time, he was intimidated and was in awe.

“Why did you set the lynch?” She asked.

“P…pardon?”

“Why did you set the lynch?” She inquired with stern voice.

“I…” Seon averted his gaze.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you.” Seol commanded with glare, causing him the flinch for everyone felt like they were watching the mother scolding her child. Even Jung and Baek-Ah didn’t expect her harsh behaviors.

Seeing that she had scared the prisoner, she decided not to pressure him as someday she could find out the truth. But she needed to tell him what she must say.

“I’m not angry, but I’m very disappointed. As a head minister, you need to do what’s best for the country, but you deliberately disobeyed the father of Goryeo. It seemed you are too immature to know about the palace,” Seol frowned as she spoke, “you should be glad you will not be executed.”

Seon looked up at the queen. Jung and Baek-Ah glanced at Seol with wide eyes.

“You will be henceforth exiled to your residence,” Seol continued with indifferent voice but grew softened, “Beating and criticizing you means it is one of mothers’ way to express how much they care of their children…but I think what you need is reflecting yourself. Remember, your mother may have you as her only child…but I have the whole nation who are my sons and daughters.”

With that, she walked away and went out, leaving Wang Seon kneeled in guilt, reflecting himself for what he had done. Biting his lips to precent himself from wailing, he muttered his apologies for he couldn’t forget the queen’s words. Her deeds were reached throughout the palace. Servants expected the queen to execute him, but instead she didn’t do anything cruel as her father done. The queen treated everyone as her own children, giving them all with her affection and care.

Choi Ji-Mong could only smile by Seol’s demeanor for he knew she was born with the star of the queen, the mother of nation.

Previous: http://jknerd.tumblr.com/post/156434545636/snow-white-chapter-31-first-tragedy

Next: http://jknerd.tumblr.com/post/156613326221/snow-white-chapter-33-his-secrets

[embeddinggemstonessinnecklace]

Why Gemstone Energy Medicine is Essential For Complete Healing

Healing is the process of overcoming an illness, disorder, or injury. When you are completely healed, you have regained your health permanently. The illness will not return; the disorder is gone, and the injury has not left the area weakened and predisposed to further affliction.

To achieve complete healing you must address the energies associated with the condition. Every disease, disorder, or injury is not limited to the body, but involves essentially four types of energies. The first two are the negative emotions and thoughts related to the condition; third, disharmonious effluent that the diseased, pained, or injured tissue naturally throws off; and fourth, the energetic counterpart of the physical tissue must also be healed. In order to enjoy a complete healing, these four aspects must be addressed or physical healing will be delayed or incomplete. This can be done at the same time that you are working on the physical ailment.

Gemstone energy medicine is essential for complete healing because Embedding Gemstones in Necklace energies can harmonize and heal emotions and thoughts, dissipate disharmonious effluent, and deal directly with energetic counterparts. No other healing modality can do this as efficiently and effectively as gemstone therapy. Plus, gemstone energy medicine can be applied safely along with other healing modalities, medicines, and herbs that focus on healing the physical tissue.

First, let's talk about dissolving the emotional and mental ties to an illness. This is no small task, as physical illness is usually associated with a great deal of negative emotions and thoughts. These emotions and thoughts are a type of energy that can add to the burden of a disease. A prolonged illness or sudden injury can cause sadness and depression, frustration when dealing with insurance companies, and fear and anxiety about finances and inevitable lifestyle changes. After the diagnosis of a serious disease, patients are usually faced with a range of emotions and thoughts. The more anger, distress, guilt, depression, sadness, and denial they feel about their condition, the more unwanted emotional energy they have to resolve in order to heal. Thoughts are tied to emotions and tend to solidify the reality perceived. The more an individual worries, frets, and imagines the worst, the harder it will be to for him to find greater health.

Negative emotions and thoughts about an illness or injury first hover around the individual, and then begin to seep into the physical tissue. Once they anchor there, they can cause changes in that tissue. Which tissue is affected usually depends on a person's inherent weaknesses, including genetic factors. Embedded stress most commonly manifests as a hardening of tissue, such as muscles and arteries. It isn't just the fact that a person sits all day at a desk that causes knotted muscles. Although a sedentary lifestyle contributes to this condition, constant emotional and mental stress compounds the problem and makes it harder for the individual to relax despite regular exercise or even massage therapy.

Healing the emotions and thoughts associated with a condition can take much longer than the repair of physical tissue or the amelioration of a disease, especially if these aspects are not acknowledged. Gemstone energy medicine acknowledges them. As the energies of therapeutic gemstones worn around the neck radiate into the aura, they naturally balance, clarify, and uplift emotional and mental energies. It becomes easier for a person to recognize their own negativity. Furthermore, gemstone energy can give them the strength to let go their negative emotions and thoughts and replace them with positive ones.

Besides emotional and mental energies, a complete healing requires the clearing of disharmonious energies that may have accumulated in and around the affected cells and organs. I call this disharmonious effluent. Any painful, traumatized, or diseased tissue will naturally emit energy that reflects its state of health. The body is designed to do this. Disharmonious effluent is like a signal flare that alerts the body to the condition. If the signal is met with support from, say, the immune system, the need for the effluent is reduced and so it lessens as the immune system helps heal the condition.

If the body's resources are thin, because they are weakened or too many other issues are drawing upon them, then the signal flare may be partially or completely ignored. The disharmonious effluent grows louder, accumulates, and causes problems of its own. It can inhibit the flow of the body's natural healing energies and by crowding and pressing on an already distressed area, it can exacerbate pain. Lift and dissipate this unwanted accumulation and healing energy comes rushing in.

Several kinds of therapeutic gemstone necklaces can be used as poultices to sponge away the unwanted energy, others can be worn as necklaces to boost the immune system, or vitalize the body overall so that it can deal with signal flares as they arise. Especially helpful for clearing disharmonious effluent is the Energy Clearing GEMFormula. This natural remedy consists of edible pills that have been imprinted with the energies of certain gemstones. These energies were combined in one remedy designed to help the body release all types of unwanted energies, including emotional and thought energies that have embedded inside the body. For this reason, the Energy Clearing GEMFormula may be the most significant advancement in gemstone energy medicine to date.

Finally, successful healing of physical tissue requires the healing of its energetic counterpart. Each cell and organ has a counterpart, or energetic essence, which supports its every function. No matter what modality you use to treat a physical organ, you also treat its counterpart. With gemstone therapy you can treat the counterpart directly, and so the physical organ finds healing relief through energetic means. But what if the physical organ or a group of cells is removed?

Several years ago, after a series of excruciating gall bladder attacks, I had my gall bladder removed. End of story? It should have been. But I continued to have sharp pains in my side. My doctors assured me my gall bladder was successfully excised, and because there was no rational reason for the pain, they dismissed it. I mentioned the phantom pain to a friend who is also an energy worker. She reminded me that physical organs have energetic counterparts. Until the counterpart of my gall bladder was healed, I could still feel its distress in the form of pain. Since I was in the hospital for other reasons, I didn't have access to therapeutic gemstones. But I could use my imagination to conjure their healing essence.

Gemstones spheres are concentrated containers of healing energy, which is essentially light and sound of a very pure kind. To ease the pain caused by the energetic counterpart of my gall bladder, I imagined a bright light inside it. The light vibrated with beautiful, heavenly music. I also inwardly communicated with my body and the gall bladder counterpart, to explain why the organ needed to be removed, and that it was in the best interest of my entire being to live henceforth without it. I thanked my gall bladder for serving me for as long as it did.

As I practiced this exercise, the gall bladder counterpart healed, and the pain gradually eased and disappeared in about two days. Nearly five years later, it has never returned.