#here people are much more sensible about science

[snigepippi]

I did not grow up on multiple choice tests. They were first widely introduced around 2005 in my area and i was the ladt generation on the old version of the curriculum at Uni.

But I've had to deal with them as a teacher. Sigh. (It's one of the reasons why I don't teach anymore. I hate the superficial curriculum decide by people who don't understand students and I hate the superficial tests.)

Anyway my advice:

Many expect that the questions have increased difficulties. The the first ones ate easiest, last ones hardest. That is not how it's done, they are more randomised. If you find a question hard, skip it and go to the next one, instead of wasting time thinking about it. You can always go back to the hard ones later.

Every single time I say the phrase “I was classically trained in the art of multiple choice tests” everyone in the room who’s not a millennial laughs at my joke while all the other millennials in the room immediately look like they just walked in on a funeral by accident.

[max1461]

Here is an observation of common attitudes I see in tech-adjacent spaces (mostly online).

The thing about programming/tech is, at its base, it's historically and culturally contingent. There are of course many fundamental (physical and mathematical) limitations on what a computer can and cannot do, how fast it can do things, and so on. But at least as much of the modern tech landscape is the product of choices made by people about how these machines will work, choices that very much could have been made differently. And modern computing technology is a huge tower of these choices, each resting on and grappling with the ones below it. If you're, say, a web developer writing a web app, the sheer height of this tower of contingent human decisions that your work rests on is almost incomprehensible. And by and large, programmers know this.

I am not dispensing some secret wisdom that I think tech workers don't have. On the contrary, I think the vast contingency of it all is blindingly obvious to anyone who has tried to make a computer do anything. But tech is also, well, technical, and do you know what else is technical? Science. I think this has lead to a sort of cultural false affinity, where tech is perceived, both from within and without, as more similar to science than it is to the humanities. Certainly, there are certain kinds of intellectual labor that tech shares with the sciences. But there are also, as described above, certain kinds of intellectual labor that tech shares to a much greater degree with the humanities, namely (in the broadest terms): grappling with other people's choices.

From without, I think this misplaced affinity leads people to believe that technology is less contingent than it actually is. But I think this belief would be completely untenable from within; it just cannot contend with reality. I've never met a tech worker or enthusiast who seems to think this way. Rather, I feel there is a persistent perception among tech-inclined people that science is more contingent than it actually is. I don't think this misperception rises to the level of a belief, rather I think it is more of an intuition. I think tech people have very much trained themselves (rightly, in their native context) to look at complex systems and go "how could this be reworked, improved, done differently?" I think this impulse is very sensible in computing but very out of place in, say, biology. And I suppose my conjecture (this whole post is purely conjectural, based on a gut sense that might not be worth anything) is that this is one of the main reasons for the popularity of transhumanism in, you know, the Bay. And whatnot.

I'm not saying transhumanism is actually, physically impossible. Of course it's not! The technology will, I strongly suspect, exist some day. But if you're living in 2024, I think the engineering mindset is more-or-less unambiguously the wrong one to bring to biology, at least macrobiology. This post is not about the limits of what is physically possible, it's about the attitudes that I sometimes see tech people bring to other endeavors that I think sometimes lead them to fall on their face. If you come to biology thinking about it as this contingent thing that you must grapple with, as you grapple with a novel or a codebase or anything else made by humans, I think it will make you like biology less and understand it less well.

When I was younger and a lot more naive, as a young teenager who knew a little bit about programming and nothing about linguistics, I wanted to create a "logical language" that could replace natural languages (with all their irregularities and perceived inefficiencies) for the purpose of human communication. This is part of how I initially got into conlanging. Now, with an actual linguistics background, I view this as... again, perhaps not per se impossible, but extremely unlikely to work or even to be desirable to attempt in any foreseeable future, for a whole host of rather fundamental reasons. I don't feel that this desire can survive very well upon confrontation with what we actually know (and crucially also, what we don't know) about human language.

I mean, if you want to try, you can try. I won't stop you.

Anyway, I feel that holding onto this sort of mindset too intensely does not really permit engagement with nature and the sciences. It's the same way I think a lot of per se humanities people fudge engagement with the sciences, where they insist on mounting some kind of social critique even when it is not appropriate (to be clear, I think critique of scientific practices/institutions are sometimes appropriate, but I think people whose professional training gives them an instinct to critique often take it too far).

So like, I guess that's my thesis. Coding is a humanity in disguise, and I wish that people who are used to dealing with human-made things would adopt a more native scientific or naturalist mindset when dealing with science and nature.

[intersexbookclub]

Discussion summary: Left Hand of Darkness

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic in science fiction that explores issues of sex/gender in an alien-yet-human society where the aliens are just like us except in how they reproduce. These aliens, the Gethenians, can reproduce as either male or female. They spend most of their lives sexually undifferentiated. Once a month, they go into heat (“kemmer”) and their sexual organs activate as either male or female (it’s essentially random).

Here's a summary of the discussions we had on 2023-08-25 and 2023-09-01 about the book:

HIGH LEVEL REACTONS

Michelle (@scifimagpie): even though it was written by a cis straight perisex woman there is a queerness to the writing that feels true and that she nailed. There is a queerness to the soul of this book that still holds up, that's true and good, and I cannot but love and respect that.

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): this book is such a commentary on 1960s misogyny. Genly is a raging misogynist. It takes a whole prison break and crossing the arctic for Genly to realize a woman or androgyne can be competent 👀

Dimitri: [Having read just the first half of the book] I wonder if it keeps happening, if Genly keeps going "woaaaah" [to the Gethenians’ androgyny] or if he ever acclimates. It's been half the novel my guy

vic: yeah a book where a guy is destroyed by seeing a breast makes me want queer theory

vic: [it also] makes me feel good to see how much has changed [since the 1960s]

THE INTERSEX STUFF

A thing we appreciated about the book was how being intersex is contextual. The main character of the book, Genly Ai, is a human from a planet like Earth, who visits Gethen to open trade and diplomatic relations.

On his home planet, and to Earth sensibilities, Genly is perisex - he is able to reproduce at any time of the month and is consistently male.

But on Gethen, Genly becomes intersex. On Gethen, the norm is that you only manifest (and can reproduce as) a given sex during the monthly kemmer (heat/oestrus) period. 

The Gethenians understand Genly as living in “permanent kemmer”, which is described as a common (intersex) condition, and these people are hyper-sexualized and referred to as Perverts.

At this point it’s worth noting that depiction is not the same as endorsement. Michelle pointed out the book is very empathetic to those in permanent kemmer. LeGuin does not appear to be endorsing the social stigma faced by these people, merely depicting it, and putting a mirror to how our own society treats intersex people.

Throughout the book, Genly is treated as an oddity by the Gethenians. He is hyper sexualized. He undergoes a genital inspection to prove he is who he says he is. 

When Genly is sent to a prison camp and forcibly given HRT, he does not respond “normally” to the hormones, the effects are way worse for him, and the prison camp staff don’t care, and keep administering them even if it’ll kill him. 

Two of us have had the experience of having hyperandrogenism and being forced onto birth control as teenager, and relating to the sluggishness of the drugs that Genly experienced, as well as the sense that gender/sex conformity was more important to authority figures (parents, doctors) than actual health and well-being.

Another scene we discussed the one where Genly is in a prison van en route to the gulag, and a Gethenian enters kemmer and wants to mate with him and he declines. He is given multiple opportunities over the course of the book to try having sex with a Gethenian, and declines every time, and we wondered if he avoided it out of trauma of being hyper-sexualized & hyper-medicalized & having had his genitals inspected.

We discussed the way he described his genital inspection through a trauma lens, and how it interacts with toxic masculinity - in vic’s terms, Genly being "I am a manly man and I have don't trauma"

Those of us who read the short story, Coming of Age in Karhide, noted that once the world was narrated from a Gethenian POV, the people in permanent kemmer were treated far more neutrally, which gave us the impression that Genly as an unreliable narrator was injecting some intersexism along with his misogyny

WHY IT MATTERS TO READ THIS BOOK THROUGH AN INTERSEX LENS

Elizabeth: I’ve encountered critiques of this book from perisex trans folks because to them the book is committing biological essentialism, and dismissing the book as a result. I think they’re missing that this book is as much about (inter)sex as it is about gender. I think they’re too quick to dismiss the book as being outdated or having backwards ideas because they’re not appreciating the intersex themes. 

Elizabeth: The intersex themes aren’t exactly subtle, so it kind of stings that I haven’t seen any intersex analyses of this book, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of perisex trans analyses that all miss the huge intersex elephants in the room.

Also Elizabeth: I’ve seen this book show up in lists of intersex books/characters made by perisex people, and I’ve seen Estraven listed as intersex character, and it gets me upset because Estraven isn’t intersex! Estraven is perisex in the society in which he lives. Genly is the intersex character in this story and people who misunderstand intersex as being able to reproduce as male & female (or having quirky genitals smh) are completely missing that being intersex is socially constructed and based on what is considered typical for a given species.

WHAT THE BOOK DOESN’T HANDLE WELL

The body descriptions. As Dmitri put it: “ Like "his butt jiggled and it reminded  me of women" ew. It was intentional but I had to put the book down. It reminded me of transvestigators and how they take pictures of people in public.” 🤮

Not pushing Genly to reflect on how weird he is about other people’s bodies. We all had issues with how Genly is constantly scrutinizing the bodies of other humans to assess their gender(s) and it’s pretty gross.

vic asked: “how much of this is her reproducing violence without her knowing it? A thing I didn't like was how he always judging and analyzing people's bodies and realizing others treat him that way. And I wish there was more of his discomfort about this, that it made him feel icky.”

Dimitri added: “I really wanted him to have a moment of this too, for him to realize how much it sucks to be treated this way. As a trans person it's so uncomfortable. What are you doing going around doing this to people?”

Using male pronouns as default/ungendered pronouns. Élaina asked why Genly thinks a male pronoun is more appropriate for a transcendent God and pointed out there’s a lot to unpack there.

OTHER POSITIVES ABOUT THE BOOK

Genly’s journey towards respecting women, that he still had a ways to go by the end of the book. vic pointed out how “LeGuin was straight, and she loves men, and is kinda giving them the side-eye [in this book]. Her writing about how Genly is childish makes me really happy. It’s kind of hilarious to watch him bang his head against the wall because he’s so rigid.” 

To which Dmitri added: “I agree with the bit on forgiving men for stuff. I don't know how she [LeGuin] does it but she really lays it all out. She gives you a platter of how men are bad at things, how they make mistakes that are pretty specific to them. She has prepared a buffet of it.”

Autistic Estraven! As Michelle put it: “autistic queer feels about Estraven speaking literally and plainly and Genly not getting it”

The truck chapter. Hits like a pile of bricks. We talked about it as a metaphor for the current pandemic.

The Genly x Estraven slowburn queerplatonic relationship

The conlang! Less is more in how it gets used

MIXED REACTIONS

The Foretelling. For some it felt unnecessary and a bit fetishy. For others it was fun paranormal times.

Pacing. Some liked how the book really forces you to really contemplate as you go. Others struggled with a pace that feels very slow to 2023 readers.

WORKS WE COMPARED THE BOOK TO

Star Trek (the original series) - we wondered if LHOD and Genly Ai were progressive by 1960s standards, and TOS came up as a comparison point. We were all of the impression that TOS was progressive for its time but all of us find it pretty misogynist by our standards. The interest in extra-sensory perception (ESP) is something that was a staple of TOS that feels very strange to contemporary viewers and also cropped up in LHOD

Ancillary Justice - for being a book where characters’ genders are all ambiguous but the POV character is actually normal about how they describe other characters’ bodies.

The Deep - for being another book in a situation where being able to reproduce as male and female is the norm. The Deep was written by an actually intersex author, and doesn’t have the cisperisex gaze of scrutinizing every body for sex. But oddly LHOD actually winds up feeling more like a book about intersex people, because it features a character who is the odd one out in a gonosynic society. In contrast, nobody is intersex in the Deep - everybody matches the norms for their species, which makes the intersex themes in the work much more subtle.

Overall, as vic put it, “there's something to be said about an honest depiction that's not great, especially when there's no alternatives”. For a long time there weren’t many other games in town when it came to this sort of book, and even though some things now feel dated, it’s still a valuable read. We’d love to see more intersex reviews & analyses of the book!

[a-typical]

Probability figures in everyday decisions we make. Consider the public’s sentiment toward genetically modified organisms—GMOs. Reactions tend to be bimodal, depending on your politics, itself a warning flag. The truth and efficacy of science should never correlate with your political views.

The food chemical company Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, developed a genetically modified variant of corn that was completely resistant to glyphosate, a weed-killing herbicide marketed under the name Roundup, which they also developed. Monsanto scientists genetically removed their corn’s susceptibility to the chemical. This potent combo—Monsanto’s GMO corn coupled with Monsanto’s weed killer—enabled farmers to spray their entire crops and have the herbicide kill everything but the corn. The Vermont ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s uses corn syrup as a sweetener for some of their products. (Yes, I too was surprised to learn this.) News that some of their ice creams had trace amounts of glyphosate from the corn used in their syrup created a media dust-up. In response, Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop using GMO corn syrup altogether, even though the one-part-per-billion detection levels of glyphosate were far below US and European standards. Since many people who buy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream lean left—aligned with the company’s generally progressive views on all things—Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings Inc. judged this ban to be a wise business decision.

Let’s look closer at what happened there. Every substance you could possibly ingest, food and otherwise, has a calculated lethal dose associated with it, measured by what’s called LD50. That’s the dose per kilogram of body weight where 50 percent of the people who consume that amount will die quickly. These data often come from tests on laboratory mammals such as mice. There’s another metric, called no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL), which addresses the long-term influence of a substance on your health and is more sensible when thinking about food safety. LD50 helps to make a different point. The smaller its value for a substance, the more lethal it is. As such, tables of LD50s can be quite illuminating. Here’s a sampling:

Sucrose (table sugar) | 30 grams per kilogram

Ethanol (common alcohol) | 7 grams per kilogram

Glyphosate (Roundup) | 5 grams per kilogram

Table Salt | 3 grams per kilogram

Caffeine | 0.2 grams per kilogram

Nicotine | 0.0065 grams per kilogram

The most lethal substance on this hand-picked list is nicotine. Caffeine looks quite potent too. Just drink about eighty demitasse cups of espresso if you want to die from it. Next comes salt.

The least deadly on the list is sugar, as you might expect. Notice further that glyphosate is less lethal than table salt, but not by much. Actually none of this concerns us here. What matters is what happens to a 150 lb. (70 kg) person who eats Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—a fact I calculated but relegated to my Forbidden Twitter file, where it remains, simply for how disturbing it would be. In social media, I never intend to be disturbing:

You would need to consume four hundred million pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for its trace amounts of glyphosate to kill you. But after only 20 pints you will die from its sugar content.

Ben & Jerry’s made the right corporate decision if it protected their profits. Although they could have also used the occasion as a teaching moment—a mind-blowing lesson on comparative risk. But that works only if people are open to learning. In modern times, many of us don’t satisfy that criterion, perhaps because, according to the nineteenth-century British essayist Walter Bagehot,

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

It is, as common people say, so “upsetting;” it makes you think that, after all, your favourite notions may be wrong, your firmest beliefs ill-founded.… Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.

— Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization - Neil deGrasse Tyson (2022)

[maxwell-grant]

So, as a lover of superheroes, supervillains, super-science ETC, i've had Venture Bros on the mind recently, for reasons that should be obvious, and my mind has run into an intersting question I kinda want to pick your brain on: Why does Venture Bros work. Like, it's a show that is absurdly cynical and dark and bleak. It's comedically dark, but sitll dark. Downright mean-spirited a lot of the time. And normally, I find that kind of cynicism very dull, but...For some reason, here it feels like it works. Maybe it's just the sense of affection, of real love for classic 60s cartoons and superhero comics sprinkled throughout, but...I don't know, it feels like it should make me as angry as something like Velma does but it just doesn't. I don't know why. ANy thoughts

I said as much that a lot of that has to do with the fact that the show stuck around, and the characters were developed so vividly, that the creators had to answer the "...okay, so now what?" process, that usually stops those kinds of mean dark parodies right on their tracks when they run out of cheap shots to take. But honestly, going back and rewatching it? Venture Bros was always going to go there, the whole Jonny Quest parody thing just did not last past Season One, hell you could argue it didn't even really last past the pilot or midway through S1. By episode one of Season 2, the show had gestated into it's own thing. The show was allowed to grow, and change, and develop. It got to move past itself and say goodbye to old favorite ideas and say hello to new ones, it got to breathe new life into itself with the soft-reboot of Season 6 and keep being so much more with every new season.

The artbook goes into this quite a lot, actually, with Jackson talking about how Venture Bros started as a one-off gag observation about how Jonny Quest ripped off Tom Swift, and then became a concept when he realized he could fit all of his unused ideas for The Tick and superhero parodies and weird comic ideas. He and Doc Hammer actually specifically address how the parody element faded and why:

I like the pilot. It isn't the show that we made. but I like the pilot. The pilot was made with a different concept. I can watch it and not tie it into Venture Bros. I can go, "Okay, here are these characters in their first bid for comedy,", and it had moments when we both said, "Yes, we will perpetuate these moments. This is who these characters are." And it had moments of single-beat pilot jumps. It was fine. It was not the show that we kept writing, because we couldn't.

There's something about a straight parody that I think has a cap. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe people can write a parody forever, but I think you can only make so many jokes on one thing for a certain amount of time before you go, "We have to develop the world that these people are in.". It needs a revolving door.

You would need to approach it like Harvey Birdman, which said, "We're going to take every character we can get a license for, bring them onto the show, and have them do their thing in our world so we can demystify all the characters you remember from your childhood". It's a great straight-up parody. But if you take Sealab 2021 - that had nothing to do with the original. They took these drawings, and they said, "These are totally different people. We're going to give them their own different world, their own language, characters", and that worked.

We were leaning towards that. Venture Bros was even weirder because we said, "Let's make this world rock solid and deep and long and have just an abundance of information. Let's have the jokes come from everywhere, and the speed is hard to keep up with. You have to watch it twice". And that was nothing that Jackson and I talked about. Let's make this smart, rich and meaningful, and hope that other people have our sensibility and eventually get it. - Doc Hammer, Go Team Venture!: The Art and Making of The Venture Bros.

There's even this quote from Jackson regarding one of the earliest attempts made in trying to figure out the show's look and design where it was supposed to be animated in CG at Will Vinton Studios, and it was intended to look gorgeous as well as outrageously expensive and within six months everyone aboard had left and Jackson's time in The Tick was up so he had to get production on the new thing moving along. And he describes what wound up being a pretty effective summation of the show post-animation bump;

"Screw the bad-on-purpose sixties Marvel thing. Screw irony. Isn't it way more subversive to do this smart-ass, darkish comedy but have every aspect of it look gorgeous?

That's what got me thinking that it's way cooler to make things well and beautiful than to try to make them crappy on purpose - Jackson Publick, Go Team Venture!: The Art and Making of The Venture Bros.

Most if not everything that makes the show work, that makes it's character work, you can trace pretty directly from that process, of where the show started versus where it ended. It's Rusty Venture becoming a more complicated character and less of a mean caricature. It's Brock Samson needing things to do besides being the action badass who kills armies of disposable henchmen, and the show needing to move past him and make him so much more as a person. It's in how the show was originally conceived in a villain-of-the-week format and The Monarch was a throwaway gag character for the pilot, but The Monarch's defined personality and shtick worked well enough that it made it much easier and more rewarding for them to just go back to him for most episodes, until he wormed his way into becoming the show's other protagonist. It's Hank and Dean growing past literally and textually interchangeable and disposable Hardy Boys pastiches into actual people, distinct people, people who can carry their own plotlines and take center stage and actually be The Venture Brothers as something more than just a throwaway gag concept.

I'm certainly not saying it works for everyone, or that it works 100% of the time, again rewatching the show is putting a lot into perspective for me and a lot of jokes kinda did just age abysmally, but the show knows what it's doing enough to skirt by and avoid a lot of catastrophic pitfalls that usually happen with similar projects.

And really I'd say the main reason it works is, and it's never really just one reason, is because it was, and is, a painstaking labor of love founded on a marriage by two geeks (I'm not even exaggerating, that's how the two described their partnership at least a few times) shooting the shit at a treefort for nights on end, getting to do all these dumb voices that you only get to do with friends, laboring extensively for years on making this thing they'd created the best that it possibly could be, something they put all of themselves into again and again. It's them making a dozen different comedy duos voiced by themselves and finding ways to make each distinct so they can fit in all these dumb and lovely little conversations and skits, it's that combination of their skills and preferences and even disagreements. It's got that Asterix thing where the work is so inseparably intertwined with the partnership that made it, that the work's growth over time is tied to.

So honestly the best way I can summarize why I think the Venture Bros works is because it was 19 years of Jackson Pollock and Doc Hammer at AstroBase doing exactly this, just replace the cartoon sound effects with deep cut pop culture riffs and in-depth earnest extrapolations of why the comic books and cartoons they love and obsess about are deeply stupid on a fundamental level and why this something great that you can spin endless stories and scenes out of, actually no keep the over-the-top battle sound effects, those are equally important.

"Jackson and I, we'd go every day and talk and laugh and get to know each other and not even talk about the show, but just find out what our sensibilites were. It was like the process of falling in love"

We played darts and made up these little skits, much of it became The Venture Bros. It was all kind of based around this idea that Aquaman and Black Manta were not who they were but people that were much chattier and more social. It's almost like what The Monarch and Dr Venture became, actual people that have these bizarre jobs: chaser and chasee. This strange bureaucratic relationship with the paradigm of villain and hero.

I'm a goofball and name shit. Of course I named my studio. We took over the place and AstroBase as this entity - a really filthy fucking painting studio - became a creative tree fort. Owning the AstroBase is one of the things that made The Venture Bros.

A place where we could go at two in the morning and scream at the top of our lungs that had nothing to do with commerce. It was a clubhouse. A pure idiot invention. And if we wanted to stay up all night making costumes or rubber swords, we just did. - Doc Hammer - Doc Hammer, Go Team Venture!: The Art and Making of The Venture Bros.

[transpersian]

That anon is unbelievable. 💀 Like yeah, people can do/say/wear whatever they want in their own homes, but it's also common fucking knowledge that you alter your habits a bit when having guests over so that they're comfortable. This might differ some between households, but there are common boundaries that most people expect to have respected when they're a guest in someone's home - such as not seeing their host in the nude (or partially nude) with no warning or consent.

That's just basic fucking decency that Poppy apparently lacks. It sounds like she didn't even provide a heads up that this was something her guest should expect during this visit. A 42y/o with a background in social sciences should not need to have normal human behavior explained to her. At best, she's a shitty host who bullies her 18y/o guests for being asexuality after daring to express a minutae of discomfort.

Even if we remove her victim's age and orientation from the equation, it isn't much better. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people, when accidentally seeing a platonic friend in a state of undress, are going to feel awkward and instinctually look away. It isn't just out of personal discomfort, but out of respect for the other person's privacy and dignity as well! Not that Poppy would understand caring about that.

I can believe that first encounter was an accident. But Poppy's immediate response to her guest having a completly normal fucking reaction to this scenario being to get offended and then mock its sexuality is so incredibly telling. It's clear that the second time was intentional as hell, for no other reason than to be petty and provoke more discomfort as punishment for Poppy having her ego shattered by an 18y/o that didn't want to see her topless. Pathetic.

Disclaimer: I'm all for destigmatizing breasts being uncovered in a nonsexual manner. But - just like cis male chests - there will always be contexts where they are presented sexually. "Free the nipple" doesn't suddenly mean it's you're no longer capable of inappropriately exposing your breasts to someone. Intent and context are key. A cis man walking around in nothing but his underwear while an unsuspecting guest is in his home has the same potential of being inappropriate/uncomfortable, regardless of breasts being involved or not.

Ah, a sensible anon! Thank you for writing, anon.

This is another one of those asks that I don't really feel a need to respond to most of; it's just a solid articulation of how obviously horrific and callous this behavior is to any decent human being with a proper grasp of boundaries, compassion, and consideration for others.

But it also highlights something that I think is glossed over a lot: while the problem is always relevant, what's truly telling is how people react to being told they've hurt someone.

Do they show concern and want to understand how their actions affected the other party? Or do they get defensive, going so far as to, perhaps, dismiss the person's concerns entirely?

Or even better, let's set aside the nudity, the location, the terminology used, etc for a second and ask this:

Why are so few people talking about Poppy's attitude towards Dormiyu's "weird asexual shit" and how flagrantly acephobic it is?

What mental gymnastics are we pulling to make that okay, along with how her and Zena laughed about it together? In front of Dormiyu?

But yes. Behold, my "massive hate campaign" is now being used to... checks notes Boost and defend a teenager who's accusing a 42yo of sexual impropriety and bigotry, while her fans are bulldozing in here with superstar arguments like "technically the dictionary says that isn't flashing" and "if you're in my house, I'm allowed to be nude around you, it's my house."

And these are the same people telling me that I look insane and ridiculous?

Yeah, they hold no power here. We'll see how it all washes out in the end.

[arkhammaid]

Pookie 2 please. (Ollie has my heart rn and I need fluff)

I need Spanish media Nepo babies influence against the stark influence in literally the rest of the world. I need the unresolved angst and I need the mortal enemies these two would be because Carlos WISHES he was as good as little stark.

But also OLLIE BABY he deserves the world and while yes he would get shit from Tony, Peter and Harley, he would win them over so fast.

Tony immediately is just like “k your chill and actually have the capability and SeNsIbIlItY to send a stark to bed when they’ve been sciencing and inventing long enough” so as long as he doesn’t have to bear witness to PDA he’s adopted another kid (part time of course, he’s an in law with no trauma (compared to his three))

Peter and Harley would be giving him shit for the longest, but eventually he’s like another brother and they just make fun of any PDA. They’re also teaching him ✨science (engineering) things™️✨ so he has a lot more input into the car and drives a lot better.

But yes Ollie is a simp and will fangirl the most about tony and Peter, while also being overly respectful with pepper because holy shit that’s the lady who has control over a company with not much previous experience, can pilot the iron man suits, and has media influence…. He was raised to be respectful of strong independent women.

Anyways enough of that have a great rest of your (insert appropriate timeframe here)!

i just woke up to this, a big smooch to you anon <33

referring to this post

yes to all of this!! so, the thing is, up until now, no one really went against the spanish papers because they were either not powerful or bothered enough by them 😭 but i just KNOW all starks are petty enough to go all out. i also feel like sainz sr would be sensible enough to actually stop the slander but carlos would just continue (and get in trouble lmao) because he can not cope with his feelings. especially when he sees his replacement getting all cozy with little stark...

ollie just wants the best for the love of his life (that's what little stark is) and tony has eyes. he sees how happy he makes her, so he gets accepted very fast into the family. much faster than he thought

ALSO YES! ollie fears any starks too much to actually do any kind of PDA, he doesn't want to get run over just because he kissed their daughter/sister in front of them 😭 it ends with little stark literally grabbing his face and kissing him in public, leaving him all dazed and blushing

and once peter and harley get over it, they actually become really close with ollie, start to drag him with them every where. it ends up with them stealing ollie from little stark for "bearman time" (stark siblings fighting over who gets to spend time with ollie while he's just standing there like this 🧍‍♀️)

ollie returns from his winter break and starts to talk with his engineers in engineer talk and everyone in the factory is just o.O (resulting in people trying to play detectives,, because wtf did ollie do over winter break (since he and little stark are definitely keeping their relationship secret for a while)) charles is definitely quaking in his boots when ollie delivers his sim racing times. why can't he just have one easy season...

ollie bearman was definitely raised to respect women and isn't afraid to show his inner fangirl (why do you think little stark fell for him...) he will forever remember the day when pepper gave her approval of his relationship to her daughter. it literally means the world to him

to add to all that!! the bearman's absolutely ADORE little stark. his younger siblings think ollie is the coolest brother in the whole world because 1. he met iron man 2. he talked to iron man 3. he's literally dating the only daughter iron man has. no one can top that

while his parents are first... well a bit reserved, (since she's the daughter of a public hero AND a driver) when ollie tells them that he and little stark started dating, they're very excited for him. they see how happy they make each other, so little stark is definitely a honorary bearman (and they don't mind PDA, which results in ollie being much more bold with little stark when he's around his family instead of hers LMAO (it results with little stark wanting to visit them very often, she likes this ollie much more))

[canmom]

Feel free to ignore considering it’s a very messy topic. Why do you think SFF communities (especially book communities) attracts so many bad faith actors?

my apologies anon, I took a minute to answer this one.

I think the most parsimonious answer is that they don't, especially, it's just that bad faith actors are basically everywhere. like, is it really true that there are more bad faith actors in SFF than in say, music? film? 'literary' fiction, or other genres like crime or erotica? i think if I was as immersed in any of those worlds as I am in SFF, I'd know about just as many stories of petty cruelty, exploitation, bizarre dramas...

still, some speculations about factors playing into it, that aren't necessarily specific to sci-fi.

the thing about SFF is that it's a subculture, and one that's pretty niche. not quite as niche as like, BASE jumping or something lol - most bookshops around here will have an SFF shelf, and obviously SFF films and games are almost as mainstream as entertainment gets - but for dedicated sci-fi fans it's seen as a sort of refuge of 'people like them' (generally some variety of autistic nerd archetype), and there is a lot of anxiety that comes with maintaining that.

this sort of attitude is commonly associated with the old guard of reactionary fandom - the infamous Puppies - but I think by now we've seen that the current overtly queer/progressive/whatever you wanna call it generation is just as capable of lashing out at perceived intruders. (for an obvious example, this kind of sentiment was a major factor in the Isabel Fall incident.)

besides that, what are people fighting for anyway? what are the 'stakes' of scifi/fantasy fandom? intuitively, they're tiny. but...

within any niche subculture, it is possible to achieve a certain degree of fame and influence. if you can play the rhetorical game, you can establish yourself as a microcelebrity/tastemaker, promote your friends and make a show of casting out the enemies, and set up the rules of the discourse... in your small bubble. until sooner or later the wind changes and you get knocked off the pedestal, anyway. so part of it is just people wanting to rule an insular little fiefdom.

but then there's also like... 'being an author'. SFF lit is not especially popular these days. you can't really make a living from short stories anymore (too few magazines that pay, too hard to get in, too little reward). however, if you get very, very lucky, make the right connections (probably at Clarion), you might just be able to get some novels published, and maaaybe they will find an audience and earn out their advances... and if everything goes perfectly, you might just manage to make a reasonable middle class sort of income.

and that's not nothing! especially if other forms of work are inaccessible. i have a friend whose circumstances were changed very dramatically when they got a big advance on their novel. but ultimately I don't think it's about that, nobody would sensibly try to become an author for the money, it's an obviously terrible gamble.

however, within the subculture, being a published author is a still big deal. it's a sense that you've 'made it', people will look up to you, or resent you if they don't feel you deserve it. there is a strong divide between 'authors' and 'fans' that structures interactions between the two. I don't get the impression that this is actually very fun for the authors, but it's easy to see that from outside and think "I wish I was worthy of that kind of respect too".

much the same applies in other fields - for example animation. maybe it pays shit and demand insane hours with zero job security... but for the fans, you come to have immense admiration for the 'real animators' and want to feel you could be their equal one day. and people are willing to sacrifice a lot for the sake of that idea of accomplishment, even if it's still very unlikely.

so with all that in mind... science fiction authors are usually science fiction fans. there's not really any other reason you'd write it lmao. so could speculate that for the ones who have 'made it', the situation is still precarious, or seems like it. there's little guarantee you'll get published again if a book doesn't sell. and you depend on a good reputation to stay in the game. so you have a bit of power (enough to go to your head) and fear of losing that power and sense of accomplishment... that's probably sufficient to motivate a whole lot of horrendous behaviour that would seem incomprehensible from outside.

none of this is really specific to science fiction/fantasy. but then I don't think SFF is really all that unique.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Bruce Schneier's "A Hacker's Mind"

A Hacker’s Mind is security expert Bruce Schneier’s latest book, released today. For long-time readers of Schneier, the subject matter will be familiar, but this iteration of Schneier’s core security literacy curriculum has an important new gloss: power.

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393866667

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/07/trickster-makes-the-world/#power-play

Schneier started out as a cryptographer, author of 1994’s Applied Cryptography, one of the standard texts on the subject. He created and co-created several important ciphers, and started two successful security startups that were sold onto larger firms. Many readers outside of cryptography circles became familiar with Schneier through his contribution to Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and he is well-known in science fiction circles (he even received a Hugo nomination for editing the restaurant guide for MiniCon 34 in 1999).

https://www.schneier.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/restaurants-san-jose.pdf

But Schneier’s biggest claim in fame is as a science communicator, specifically in the domain of security. In the wake of the 9/11 bombings and the creation of a suite of hasty, ill-considered “security” measures, Schneier coined the term “security theater” to describe a certain kind of wasteful, harmful, pointless exercise, like forcing travelers to take off their shoes to board an airplane.

Schneier led the charge for a kind of sensible, reasonable thinking about security, using a mix of tactics to shift the discourse on the subject: debating TSA boss Kip Hawley, traveling with reporters through airport checkpoints while narrating countermeasures to defeat every single post-9/11 measure, and holding annual “movie-plot threat” competitions:

https://www.schneier.com/tag/movie-plot-threat-contests/

Most importantly, though, Schneier wrote long-form books that set out the case for sound security reasoning, railing against security theater and calling for policies that would actually make our physical and digital world more secure — abolishing DRM, clearing legal barriers to vulnerability research and disclosure, and debunking security snake-oil, from “unbreakable proprietary ciphers” to “behavioral detection training” for TSA officers.

Schneier inspired much of my own interest in cryptography, and he went on to design my wedding rings, which are cipher wheels:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/09/contest_cory_do.html

And then he judged a public cipher-design contest, which Chris Smith won with “The Fidget Protocol”:

http://craphound.com/FidgetProtocol.zip

Schneier’s books — starting with 2000’s Secrets and Lies — follow a familiar, winning formula. Each one advances a long-form argument for better security reasoning, leavened with a series of utterly delightful examples of successful and hacks and counterhacks, in which clever people engage in duels of wits over the best way to protect some precious resource — or bypass that protection. There is an endless supply of these, and they are addictive, impossible to read without laughing and sharing them on. There’s something innately satisfying about reading about hacks and counterhacks — as authors have understood since Poe wrote “The Purloined Letter” in 1844.

A Hacker’s Mind picks up on this familiar formula, with a fresh set of winning security anaecdotes, both new and historical, and restates Schneier’s hypothesis about how we should think about security — but, as noted, Hacker’s Mind brings a new twist to the subject: power.

In this book, Schneier broadens his frame to consider all of society’s rules — its norms, laws and regulations — as a security system, and then considers all the efforts to change those rules through a security lens, framing everything from street protests to tax-cheating as “hacks.”

This is a great analytical tool, one that evolved out of Schneier’s work on security policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. By thinking of (say) tax law as a security system, we can analyze its vulnerabilities just as we would analyze the risks to, say, your Gmail account. The tax system can be hacked by lobbying for tax-code loopholes, or by discovering and exploiting accidental loopholes. It can be hacked by suborning IRS inspectors, or by suborning Congress to cut the budget for IRS inspectors. It can be hacked by winning court cases defending exotic interpretations of the tax code, or by lobbying Congress to retroactively legalize those interpretations before a judge can toss them out.

This analysis has a problem, though: the hacker in popular imagination is a trickster figure, an analog for Coyote or Anansi, outsmarting the powerful with wits and stealth and bravado. The delight we take in these stories comes from the way that hacking can upend power differentials, hoisting elites on their own petard. An Anansi story in which a billionaire hires a trickster god to evade consequences for maiming workers in his factory is a hell of a lot less satisfying than the traditional canon.

Schneier resolves this conundrum by parsing hacking through another dimension: power. A hack by the powerful against society — tax evasion, regulatory arbitrage, fraud, political corruption — is a hack, sure, but it’s a different kind of hack from the hacks we’ve delighted in since “The Purloined Letter.”

This leaves us with two categories: hacks by the powerful to increase their power; and hacks by everyone else to take power away from the powerful. These two categories have become modern motifs in other domains — think of comedians’ talk of “punching up vs punching down” or the critique of the idea of “anti-white racism.”

But while this tool is familiar, it takes on a new utility when used to understand the security dimensions of policy, law and norms. Schneier uses it to propose several concrete proposals for making our policy “more secure” — that is, less vulnerable to corruption that further entrenches the powerful.

That said, the book does more to explain the source of problems than to lay out a program for addressing them — a common problem with analytical books. That’s okay, of course — we can’t begin to improve our society until we agree on what’s wrong with it — but there is definitely more work to be done in converting these systemic analyses into systemic policies.

Next week (Feb 8-17), I'll be in Australia, touring my book Chokepoint Capitalism with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We'll be in Brisbane on Feb 8, and then we're doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 9. Next are Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I hope to see you!

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

[Image ID: The WW Norton cover for Bruce Schneier's 'A Hacker's Mind.']

[auxiliarydetective]

AP-01: Project Apocalypse

ch. 15: Physical Therapy

AP-01 Masterlist

This fic is part of the Academy Projects series, a full rewrite of The Umbrella Academy with the addition of an original character, Kassandra Hargreeves. Throughout the story, you'll stumble across a few songs. This is supposed to make the fic feel as much like the show as possible, so I recommend you don't skip them.

Warnings: Canon-typical issues, substance abuse

Both practically brooding, Diego and Kassandra entered the dimly lit bar. The counter was close to the entrance with no barkeeper in sight and Klaus’s coat thrown haphazardly over the surface, right next to an empty shot glass. Careful not to have the bottle inside fall out, Kassandra picked the coat up and clutched it to her chest. Then, she scanned the room for more details. Old tables, old men sitting at them to match, all staring at a significantly younger man in front of a memorabilia board. Klaus, gently caressing a tiny man in a picture. That was Dave. For as tender as the moment could have been, the tension in the room was crushing. Swiftly, Kassandra made her way towards Klaus and Diego – her main hope of protection in this situation – who was being oddly soft and kind towards his brother for once. She had barely reached them when a particularly scruffy-looking bar patron raised his voice.

“Hey, guys,” he said sharply. “This bar? It’s for vets only.”

Can’t we get a break for once? Kassandra muttered in her mind, gently putting a hand on Klaus’s arm.

“I am a vet,” Klaus mumbled in soft sadness.

“Really?” the man chuckled. “Where’d you serve?”

Kassandra bit her tongue and bound her hands from pointing at the picture in front of her and telling this man to open his eyes. It was faded, yes, but that was clearly Klaus in that picture from the 60s – but seeing that, to most sensible people, time travel was a thing of science fiction…

“None of your business,” Klaus sneered.

“You got balls coming in here pretending to be one of us.”

“Oh, I have every right to be here, just like you,” Klaus growled as he finally turned around. “Asshole!”

Once again, the situation was getting out of hand.

“Let him be, Klaus,” Kassandra whispered, taking his hand. “Let him be ignorant and high-and-mighty, just don’t make this worse for yourself.”

But he didn’t listen. Of course, he didn’t. He just scoffed, but he left her hand where it was. If this was a blessing or a curse was to be determined because Kassandra could feel his emotions boiling up. She tried to calm them but the alcohol in his veins made getting through hard. Luckily, Diego was there to de-escalate the situation – an uncommon occurrence. Usually, he was doing the opposite. He stepped between Klaus and the man and held the veteran back.

“Slow down, Marine,” he said. “Alright? My brother’s just had a few too many. Let’s just call it a day, all go our own way.”

“Sure thing,” the veteran grumbled.

“Thank you. Klaus—”

“As long as you apologize.”

Klaus just giggled. Kassandra could feel the tension and hostility in the room grow even further, all eyes now on them. It was maybe eight versus three, and two of those three couldn’t fight. This would not end well.

“Fine,” Diego said. “I’m sorry. He’s sorry. We’re all sorry. Right, Kassandra?”

“Yes,” Kassandra quickly agreed, failing to keep her voice at a soft level. “We won’t bother you again.”

“I wanna hear him say it,” the veteran declared in a tone that made Kassandra’s toes curl.

She could hear it in his thoughts: He was well aware that Klaus couldn’t say it. All of this was done on purpose. This man was out for trouble. Probably hadn’t gotten to punch someone around in some time. Kassandra pressed her lips together and tried to swallow her anger. She hated people like that.

“… Klaus?”

“No, no, no, he’s right,” Klaus muttered, but it was much too insincere. Not in his tone, but in his mind. If Kassandra hadn’t been worried about his safety before, she must have started now. “He’s right. He’s right. I’d like to apologize… that you… are depriving some village of their idiot!”

As Klaus spat out the last word, the veteran swung his fist for Klaus’s head. But, miraculously, in his drunkenness, Klaus dodged and went right for a counter attack. From that moment on, everything went far too fast. As soon as the first punch had been thrown, Diego had jumped into action, beating people up left and right as if his life depended on it. Within seconds, the entire situation devolved into a bar brawl and Kassandra could physically feel her last nerve snap. She threw Klaus’s coat onto a nearby table and stomped into action, grabbed one of the men backing Klaus into a corner and yanked him by the collar, pulling him away from the scene. Quick, steely movements took over as she kicked him in the shin to make him topple over, then spun around and whacked him in the skull with her ankle brace. After the first knockout, the second was easier, Diego assisting her on the third and fourth until all the veterans were on the floor.

“So much for not kicking anyone’s ass in over a decade,” Diego commented as the siblings slid out of the bar. “I don’t buy it.”

“Then you’ll get it for free because I wasn’t lying,” Kassandra muttered, her ankle aching, her fingers fumbling with a blister of ibuprofen.

“It’s that good ol’ muscle memory of yours,” Klaus sighed, putting his coat back on, slipping into a giggle.The three of them clambered into the car, Klaus and Diego in the front, Kassandra in the back, and drove off, leaving the shouting veterans behind. For a while, they just cruised through the city seemingly at random, before Diego came to a halt with the back of the car pointed to a very familiar building. Griddy’s Donuts.

“C’mon, Ben, ice cream donuts are half off!”

“Shhhh, not so loud, Dad could still hear you.”

With quick steps, Ben caught up to the rest of the group, diving under Klaus’s arm only to be held in place there. A little further ahead, Kassandra and Allison were chatting about necklaces they had seen in a shop window and about braiding each other’s hair. Luther and Diego were at the front of the group, trying to compete over who would get to Griddy’s first and constantly having to be called back because they were splitting from the rest. Right on cue as Allison mocked them for being slower than Five, he appeared on the sidewalk next to them, Vanya clinging on to his arm.

“There you are, where have you been?” Allison asked sharply. “You didn’t jump ahead, did you?”

“No!” Five protested. “Who do you think I am, some kind of cheater?”

“Yes.”

“I took a bit longer to put away my violin,” Vanya cut in, “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, you’re still on time,” Kassandra hummed. “Wouldn’t wanna miss out on the special offers, right?”

It was a sunny day in September, maybe the last sunny day of the year, and the Umbrellas had left their jackets behind, basking in the afternoon sun. Kassandra had a bag slung over her shoulder, her notebook and polaroid camera safely stored inside, and Vanya had the kids’ (stolen) pocket money hidden inside her pinafore.

“People are staring at us,” she muttered, dipping her head as Five strutted forward to compete with Diego and Luther.

“That’s fine, let them stare,” Kassandra shrugged but she still switched places with Vanya so that Vanya would be hidden away in the middle.

“Well, we do look like we escaped from a 60s boarding school,” Allison commented. “But, y’know, 1860s.”

“1860s?!” Klaus scoffed from behind, “No way, your skirts are too short! What a scandal!”

“We’re twelve!”

A not-so-short but breezy walk later, the Umbrellas piled into Griddy’s Donuts, bickering over who got in first and nearly getting stuck in the door as they did. Finally, they were all inside and scrambled to the seats at the counter, shouting orders over one another as the waitress tried to keep up with them, giggling every time she lost track. The other customers were a little annoyed, but with a few rumors from Allison, everything was fine, and the kids could dive into donut paradise.

So, they each got their sugary sweet orders and settled down as they started eating, though not without stealing from each other as they did. It was so much different from meals at the Academy, where everyone was deathly quiet and even the slightest disorder wasn’t tolerated. Kassandra basked in everyone’s happiness, laughing wildly as she defended her raspberry jelly against Klaus. Soon, Allison had settled for braiding Vanya’s hair in exchange for bites of her donut, and Ben was being a good student, learning to do the same as he did Kassandra’s hair.

“Hey, what about me?” Klaus complained.

“Your hair’s too short,” Allison stated.

“No, no, I could do a little braid,” Kassandra suggested, motioning him over.

“Hey, Diego, you’ve got training at five,” Ben called, “don’t stuff it.”

Diego just groaned in disapproval, his mouth wedged shut by a donut – a sight that Kassandra immediately had to snap a picture of, triggering another sound of complaint.

“You too, Luther.”

“We’ll just skip training,” Luther shrugged, chewing on his third pastry of the day.

“Wow, goody two shoes finally got a mind of his own!” Five smirked, trying not to have the marshmallows fall off his peanut butter special.

“Five, do you want a braid too?” Vanya asked.

“I’d rather swallow arsenic, thanks, sis.”

“Okay, I’m glad I asked.”

“It’ll put waves in my hair, you know how dumb I look with waves in my hair.”

“I think you look adorable,” Kassandra hummed, snapping a picture of Five with his sugar-loaded donut.

“I never look adorable, dickhead.”

“Hey, language!”

“Dickhead,” almost all of the siblings echoed, and Kassandra was left pouting.

“You think Dad is gonna look for us?” Vanya muttered.

“No way,” Diego mumbled through a full mouth, “but he’s gonna cut our sweets for a month.”

“Yeah, we’re all gonna get detention,” Allison agreed. “Worth it though.”

Kassandra hummed in approval, closing her eyes for a second as she took in the feelings and sounds. The clinking of cutlery, the bickering of her siblings around her, the gentle tugs at her hair as Ben braided it, the faint rumbling of cars outside. It was like a lullaby for her mind, putting her worries at ease despite the chaos around her. With a bit of readjusting of the positions of the group and relocating to the floor, Klaus settled down in front of Kassandra and she ran her fingers through his hair, weaving the longer portion of his curls into a loose braid.

“Hey, Kass!” Diego called. “When’s that new movie coming to theaters again?”

“Kass! Kass!”

“Yeah. Yeah?” Kassandra blurted out, blinking rapidly as she drifted back into reality, just now realizing that Klaus was poking her cheek and that Diego was calling her name in the present.

“Did you get hit over the head again or—?”

“No, I’m fine, I was just… spaced out.”

“Well, space back in,” Diego said, “‘cause I spotted the guy who attacked the Academy and tortured Klaus.”

“We spotted the guy,” Klaus corrected.

“Whatever. What I’m saying is: This is gonna get violent, so if you wanna tap out—”

“No, I’m not tapping out,” Kassandra protested. “What do you think I am, some kind of coward?”

“You said you’d hold down the base.”

“Well, I also said I couldn’t fight anymore but I clearly can, right? So, come on, start the car, or else we’re gonna lose him. Equal numbers squad, just like the old days. We can get this guy and his partner on top of that, we just gotta be smart about it.”

“We’ve never been good at that,” Klaus muttered as he took a swig from his vodka bottle.

“Fine, then we’ll just beat them to a pulp.”

Diego let out a little laugh and started the car. “Y’know, I like this new you.”

General Taglist: @starcrossedjedis @oneirataxia-girl @daughter-of-melpomene @bravelittleflower @box-of-bats

Academy Projects Taglist: @therantsofawriterrr @come-along-pond @the-wyvern-institute @cherrybombgigi

Let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!

[alj4890]

If you get this, answer with three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs! Anon or not, doesn’t matter!

Oof, I got five of these requests now 😂 Does that mean fifteen facts? I'll try to do three for each ask. I'm nowhere near interesting enough for this 🤣 Thanks @jerzwriter @angelasscribbles @twinkleallnight @peonierose @aussiegurl1234 for the asks 🥰

1. I have never left the United States. There were multiple times where I'd planned a trip or planned on spending a semester of school out of the country, but something major would happen to keep me stuck here 🤣 I don't think I'll ever get out of here😂

2. I'm an only child who grew up outside of Memphis, TN on fifty acres of land. My only neighbors were family members. My cousins are fourteen, eleven, and nine years older than me, so it was up to my imagination to entertain myself 😂

3. I married an only child. My husband and I decided to have at least two children after his father became seriously ill with his heart and we saw how hard it was on my husband in having to make all the decisions concerning life support. That's how I ended up being the mother of two.

4. I've never had to study. If I read something once, I'm able to remember just about all of it. Not really a photographic memory but close to it. I'm the same with hearing something. I can usually walk out of a movie theater, quoting lines from certain scenes.

5. I never wanted a big wedding (even though I have a huge extended family) because I hate being the center of attention. I dreamed of eloping somewhere beautiful, on a spur of the moment decision. I kinda got my dream. My husband gave in to eloping in the Smoky Mountains during a very snowy January, but he wanted it planned with a tux and wedding dress and just our parents. I gave in and was happy I did after finding the perfect dress and in seeing how much it meant to our parents

6. When I was twenty-nine, I had to have a complete hysterectomy. Benign tumors had taken over my ovaries and were embedded in my uterus. The ones in my uterus had grown and stretched it to the point where it was the size it would have been if I was three months pregnant. Since I wasn't pregnant, it was some of the worst physical pain I've ever experienced with it pressing into various nerves in my back and pelvic region. I've never been more excited to have surgery than that day.

7. I'm not really a crier. I can watch sad movies, lose loved ones, be depressed, but the tears rarely fall. People have been shocked and thought I either didn't really love them or that I have no heart. Trust me, I do, I just don't really cry. The few times I have broken down and actually had tears, my loved ones and friends have panicked not knowing what to do since I'm supposed to be the stoic one of the bunch. It ends up being like that scene in Sense and Sensibility when Emma Thompson breaks down 🤣 Everyone freezes or tries to leave the room 😂

8. I love to laugh and joke around. I have both a silly and extremely sarcastic sense of humor. I use humor in everything and as often as I can. I'm the one you sit by during serious situations if you want to diffuse the tension with a giggle. I've even made people laugh at funerals during my eulogies (all respectful and usually just a funny, sweet anecdote about my loved one). Life is too precious to not find all the little bits of joy we can.

9. I did everything that my late aunt predicted I would in life. She said I would get a teaching degree, which I did. She said I would meet my husband before I graduated college, which I did. She then said I would teach a few years before having my first child, which I did. She then said I would probably get my masters degree between my first and second child, which I swore I was done with college when I graduated but I did do that very thing and got my M.A.Ed. focusing on library sciences between having my two. And to make it all the sweeter, I ended up being like her with having two sons who were exactly the same years and months apart in age as hers were. She was beyond thrilled that I was just like her in that aspect 😂

10. I always thought I would have girls (most of my family has nothing but girls or at least one) Me and my late aunt were the only two to have nothing but boys. It worked out great for me. I've never been into fashion, not really into anything really girly, can't fix hair at all 🤣, and always loved all the superheroes, video games, and Star Wars stuff that makes me the perfect mom for my two boys.

11. I love classic movies. The silent era, the thirties (especially Pre-Code) and the forties are my favorites. I'm amazed with the special effects, the stunning sets, stories, and amazing acting the stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood created. I will devour not only their films, but biographies on anyone working during that time, documentaries, and any tidbit I can find. I was born during the wrong era.

12. I truly believe I could survive happily on nothing but cheese dip, chips, and salsa. And peppers! Jalapeno and Pepperoncini are my favorites. Ghost pepper is becoming a favorite too. Last night, I made a bowl of peppers and ate them like popcorn while watching TV. I love to burn 🤣

13. Winter is my favorite season. Snow is beautiful and I wish I lived somewhere where it was guaranteed to fall for months on end. That's the dream. One day, I hope to move either to Wyoming or to Maine (I've visited both and fell in love with both of them) 😂

14. The hardest thing I've ever experienced in my life was when I suffered a miscarriage. It was my first pregnancy and it was one that wasn't planned. My husband and I had only been married for about six or seven months when I discovered I was pregnant. I was over the moon excited. I bought maternity clothes, started buying baby things like little outfits, bows, toys, etc. Then I started cramping near the end of the third month. Tests were done and it showed the baby stopped developing at eight weeks. No heartbeat. Nothing. I was devastated. I actually prayed I would die during the D and C. I hoped I would have an allergic reaction and die right there on the operating table. I thought it would be easier for my family to lose me that way. I felt like my body had betrayed me in the worst possible way. I hated it and I couldn't stand the depression that set in. This was one of the few times I cried, especially when I woke up after the procedure and saw I'd survived. I continued to pray for death for a few months after it. I knew I couldn't hurt my family by commiting suicide, nor could I talk to them about my feelings, so I begged God to make my heart stop, make my car run off the road and hit a tree, anything to stop the pain I felt. I then begged my husband for a divorce. I didn't want to be around anyone. I didn't want comfort, couldn't stand for anyone to touch me or hug me. I hated our home and the memories it now held for me. I wanted to simply disappear and feel nothing. I didn't want to talk to anyone, respond to what was going on around me, pretend that life was still going on. It was the darkest time in my life. I've written about the one night I broke down the hardest with my husband in a Thomas Hunt fic which was almost cathartic. Everything he and my OC say is the conversation my husband and I had that long and painful night. It still hurts after all these years later, though nowhere near that it once did, and every May I can't help but think I should be celebrating my first child's birthday.

15. That above fact shouldn't be one to end on, so let's end with something funny. With my oldest son, I had an ultrasound to find out if he was a boy or girl on April 1st. Our technician was known to joke around, so I was highly doubtful I was having a boy. I was convinced she was pulling an April Fool's prank on me 🤣 Until he popped out and the proof was in front of me, I thought he might end up really being a girl so I made sure to have a gender neutral outfit packed just in case it really was a joke 😂

[nocompromise-noregrets]

five good things

okay, gonna start with the main one because it's a big one:

LAST CAT STANDING IS GETTING HIS THYROID SORTED! He's had an overactive thyroid for pushing on for three years and we've been managing it with medication but it's been getting worse and although there is a treatment that will fix it outright (radioactive iodine injection) there have been such shortages that only one place has been doing it and their waiting list is over a year long, so he wouldn't be getting it this year, and he's nearly 18 so the longer he has to wait the worse he's going to get. However! Our vet called us last week and said she'd been doing a bit of research and found a couple of places much closer to us who are offering the treatment again and have much shorter waiting lists - one of them only about a month - so we said please refer him to one or other of those, and settled down to wait. Then I got a call yesterday from a very lovely vet at one of the places who talked me through it all and booked him in FOR TWO AND A HALF WEEKS' TIME. He'll have had it done by the time he turns 18 in mid-April! The really amazing thing is that this treatment has a 99.9% success rate - the vet described it both as 'the gold standard' and 'magical' and if a Sensible Veterinary Science Person is describing a treatment as 'magical'...well. I can't even begin to describe how thrilled we are. Our other three all had things that couldn't be cured (we don't even know what it was that Beanie had) so to have something that really can be cured straight off with one injection is just...it's such a relief you guys, I don't know how to tell you.

I've just had a really good two days at job number two with my gardener-lady biographer (who has turned into a really good friend and in fact bought our lovely little car off us a couple of months ago - so I got to see the little fella again which was lovely) - we did some reboxing of the stuff she's been sorting out, shuffled everything up and sorted it into a better order, and it all feels a lot more manageable now.

X-Men 97 is out!!! I haven't had chance to watch it yet but I'm SO EXCITED YOU GUYS OMG. I've seen a few stills, and it looks like my beloved Gambit is just as he was, and oh I am so pleased. <333333

The sun's been out today and we went for a wander at lunchtime, the spring flowers are all out and it was just so gloriously lovely to stand in the sun and feel warm.

Barduil Month is nearly here! (if anyone wants to prompt me please feel free - I have a couple but am always on the lookout for more!)

I am sitting in the pub with a very nice pint of Camden Hells and the laptop, one of my fellow regulars who I get on really well with is in the back room watching the rugby on his ipad and is going to come and join me when he's done, and some of my favourite bar staff are working. I am utterly knackered (I am such a lightweight, I'm not used to doing five-day weeks any more, and when I do two days in a row for job number two, to make it worth it for my friend to come up from London to work on gardener-lady's papers, I am always utterly wiped out at the end of it) but I'm chilling out and decompressing, there's a Wall of Sound playlist on the speakers (Da Doo Ron Ron currently) and everything is very lovely.

Both Isaac Howlett from Empathy Test and The Holy Ones have new singles out! Isaac's is here and is just perfect wounded-yearning-boy electropop (much like Empathy Test really) and THO's is here and is huge fun stoner-rock and Japa-the-guitar-player (who is one of my favourite people from the Finndom) hasn't changed a bit in fifteen years and I adore both him and the song. I'm hoping they'll announce some shows - they were playing in Helsinki in May 2020 and announced the show with enough notice that I was able to make arrangements to go, and I was on the point of doing so when Covid happened, the show was postponed to the September (when I still wouldn't have been able to enter Finland) and then cancelled, so I'm really really hoping they come through this time because I'm dying to see them. I also have itchy feet like you wouldn't believe and am dying for an excuse to go somewhere, and Helsinki being one of my favourite places in the whole world, well... :D :D :D

I had a fab birthday last week, and we went up to the new 'food dock' in town (one end of the docks has been converted into lots of bars, cafes and restaurants and it has been a very protracted process but it's finally finally all open) and had awesome burgers, locally-produced ice cream and locally-produced beer and looked at the pretty lights on the water and generally had a lovely evening of it.

Aaaaaand I have a fancy record player that works with our fancy wifi sound system, and Placebo's last two albums on vinyl, courtesy of the missus, and it's fancy enough that it doesn't auto-return at the end of a side so for the first time in about forty years I heard the track in the runout groove of side two of Sgt. Pepper which I hadn't heard since my dad got a tower stereo system in the 80s that had an auto-return and didn't play the runout groove and...yeah. Awesome. I sorted all my vinyl back into order (the missus does not do alphabetical order, and she'd had it all out of the cupboard at some point to do something or other behind the cupboard and then had not put it back in the right order), rediscovered a good few things, listened to a bunch of stuff and generally nerded out quite happily for a good few days XD

I had 96% on my most recent OU assignment XD all that's left to do is an essay plan for the final assignment, and then the final assignment itself, and given that I find planning really difficult, I'm probably going to write the final assignment and then summarise it for the plan, hand that in, then hand the final assignment in once I've had the feedback from the plan XDDDD And then I will be done, and I will be the king's favourite band (the Three Degrees) XDDDDDD

I think that's more than enough, don't you? :D Things are pretty all right at the moment, which is rather nice.

[communistkenobi]

i reckon i Will regret asking but what was the niche star wars discourse factionalism circa 2021

this is not like a big thing it’s very localised beef between a couple dozen blogs or so. like this is just harmless internet beef to the best of my knowledge.

there was a group of people on here who all had urls that were “milf[star wars character]”, and I believe a bunch of them were/are mutuals. star wars, by virtue of having no singular authoritative text but a series of texts with varying degrees of canonicity and authority, fosters an environment where disagreement over interpretation of canon (or what even constitutes canon) is particularly rampant. seemingly unrelated star wars opinions tend to get bundled together in weird ways, and sometimes it’s difficult to label those opinion bundles in a coherent way. pro/anti jedi is a big split, for example, and you can somewhat accurately guess at people’s general opinions on other areas of canon based on which side of that jedi split they fall on, but again, imprecise science, overly simplistic binary, etc. bottom line is it’s hard to navigate which star wars blogs to interact with, so some degree of opinion interpolation is required. this is not unique to sw either obviously I’m just giving this context

so, “milf urls” was an attempt to label a bundle of star wars opinions that some people did not like at all very much. I can’t remember all the details but “milf url” opinions tended to be on the more critical side, more openly hateful of writers that were otherwise generally well liked, stuff like that. I believe there was also shipping discourse involved but I don’t know anything about that. I was not involved in any way I just saw it flare up

anyway this is all just goofs as I said, it wasn’t like a big thing at all, some people just liked calling random star wars characters milfs, and that style of humour tended to conform with specific sensibilities about canon that rubbed some other people the wrong way. I was not a milf url person but I believe in their beliefs and also it was really funny

[kuiperoid]

Blood and Soul: A Comparative Analysis of Pagan and Christian Fascist Traditions

[originally posted here]

Introduction

Religion-inspired fascism has existed nearly as long as fascistic tendencies themselves. This makes immediate sense with fascism often desiring a return to tradition and religious thought and tradition fitting together well. What is a bit more surprising to modern audiences living in the era of prominent Christo-fascism is that Pagan-inspired fascism has historically been quite influential as well. This may initially sound contradictory, considering modern stereotypes about Neo-Pagans being socially progressive hippies. Alas, history is more complex than that and, in the modern day, people who fulfill part of that stereotype may diverge from it in other ways. The differences between Christian and Pagan fascism often come down to different interpretations of Christianity and its relevance to European culture, as this will focus on European and white American-based fascism specifically. Intriguingly, there have also been some overlap in Christianity and Pagan thought in some traditions. 

The People of the Land

First off, the practice of pre-Christian traditions in Europe among those who view the past of Europe as something grand to return to is far more sensible when put in that context. If fascism is an ideology of nostalgia, spiritual practices of the past would be included in that. Pagan traditions originating from Germany, Scandinavia, or any other European country were additionally seen as having ties to the land, what with each mythos pertaining to the climate and terrain of the respective countries. Early spiritual fascists were deeply into applying these interpretations to astrology, expanding the idea of predestination according to location not only to the location of one’s birth in terms of country, but in space as well. Phrenology and palmistry carried on the idea that one’s physical features could determine elements of who one is as a person. Much of fascist Paganism involved not just a spiritual connection to the land, common in general Paganism, but adding an element of superiority. The people of Germany or whichever country were not only connected to it spiritually, but that was where the best people were.

Against Christian Meritocracy

Actively anti-Christian fascism went about this from multiple directions. Part of it was Christianity being viewed as a “Jewish invention,” what with Jesus being a Jewish man. European fascism of yore, as with today, had long held an antisemitic slant. Consider how this would be continued under Nazi Germany when much of mainstream science was rejected due to how much of it was established by Jewish scientists. However, there is more to it than that. Going back to the perception of local Paganism being inherent to the land and the people of that land, Christianity, a religion of conversion, was seen as a foreign invasion. The pacificist tendencies of early Christianity were also unappealing to those who viewed themselves as conquerors. In addition, the image of Christianity as loving and accepting all converts was seen as an equalizing force for people of different lands. A meritocratic faith would go against the idea of any group of people being inherently superior because of the land from which they originated. This is also part of why so much early fascism was anti-capitalist as well, not because of critiques relating to mistreatment of workers, but because of its perception of meritocracy, that one could become something of nothing rather than being born into inherent greatness. 

Give Me a Savior

It would not be long before the embrace of a perceived meritocracy would fit right into fascism; if one is truly a member of the naturally best people, then a meritocratic society would be beneficial. The best people were capable of making the best choices and producing the best results with what they had. The concept of sinners was a great way to write off an entire segment of the population as inferior. It helped that many occultic-fascist Christians followed Gnostic Christian sects which believed that the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament were separate beings; the old in fact being the demonic “Demiurge,” providing a solution for the paradox of embracing a religion with Jewish influences. The more important factor in inducting Christianity into fascism, however, was less in the superiority of one’s own, but one person in particular: the messiah. The ancient myths provided plenty of heroes already. There has been some suggestion that not even the actual history provided the inspiration for the fascistic nostalgia but an illusion created by myths as well as more modern fantasy stories, but that is another topic. Christianity had its own collection of holy figures to look up to, the most important being Jesus. In addition to him being a hero of yore to provide important nostalgic inspiration, he was also said to return some day. This gives believers a hope for a return to a better time and escape from the ills they see in the world. Many Christo-fascists specifically follow millenarian beliefs that the end is near, so Jesus will be returning soon. In some cases, it has been believed that the messiah has existed in the form of fascist leaders.

The Need for Ritual

Something that greatly differentiates much of modern conservative Christianity to earlier Christo-fascism was the perception of Pagan influences. Many sects of Protestantism and newer Christian movements such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses are famous for denying certain images or going as far as to not celebrate holidays due to the pre-Christian influences on imagery and rituals. However, some earlier Christo-fascists embraced this. For example, Nazis used the carrying on of their own pre-Christian rituals in Christian traditions as an example of how inherent these practices were to German people. Perhaps this is one element of fascism that truly makes it distinct from general right-wing ideology: the element of ritual. Whether Pagan, Christian, or anything else, religion makes for an easy element to combine with fascism because of how rituals play into tradition as well as an event that the group can participate in together. This is not to say that all religion is inherently fascistic in nature, but it has elements that can be utilized thusly. 

Unscientific Leanings

Science denial has been an important part of combining spirituality and fascism. As previously mentioned, Nazis rejected much of modern science due to the proportion of Jewish scientists at the time. In place of real science were beliefs about spiritual connections to the lost land of Lemuria and Hanns Hörbiger’s Weltishlehre (“Ice World Theory”). The concept that the ancient Aryans were a mystical people who lost their powers due to race mixing provided quite the argument in favor of genocide. These were not ideas developed from in-depth research, but visions and dreams. If one believes in a special, spiritual connection to the land, something simply occurring to one sounds just as valid, if not more, than performing experiments and doing research. This continues into the modern day as science proves that there is no genetic basis to the concept of race and ideas like “IQ differences” being caused by hunger and lead poisoning rather than inherent intelligence. It is perhaps no coincidence that several prominent occultic fascists have been some form of artist, from Hitler the painter to playwright Rudolph John Gorsleben, people for whom the creations of their own minds bear more importance than observed reality. Unfortunately, they could not tell the difference. 

Enter Trad-Caths

It is difficult to place the exact moment in which western religious fascism went from being more Pagan to more Christian. Certainly, there are still Pagan fascists today, though they are outnumbered by Christo-fascists. The embrace of capitalistic-fascism likely played a role, considering how Christianity and capitalism were often combined in the past with ideas of supposed choice and meritocracy. Another observation of note is how Christo-fascism in the United States in particular has changed sects. Traditionally, Christo-fascism in the US has been seen as the haven of Evangelical Protestants. While this is still the case for some, there has been a steady rise since the late 2010s of Catholic-leaning Christo-fascists. Many have specifically identified with pre-Vatican II traditionalist Catholicism which involves keeping mass in Latin, women wearing veils in church, and refraining from eating red meat on Fridays, among other differences from the more lax modern Catholicism. Catholicism of all stripes is known for its strong aesthetics, but the “trad Caths” are returning to a time when this was even truer. The requirement of some knowledge of another language and differentiating oneself dietarily make participants stand out from their peers. It definitely has a psychological effect and brings one back to another time. One wonders how this will continue to impact the social and political landscape of the country over the next few years.

Sources

This work was heavily inspired by books Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology and Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. YouTuber Lady of the Library proved to be a valuable source of information on some of the myths. Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right by Matthew Dallek and Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America by Will Sommer also provided important modern context. Everything else was based on the author’s own observations, both in person and online, and general conclusions. 

[kingsofeverything]

Hi! Larry on a boat sounds really fun! I could use a good lunchtime read, thanks so much for offering these! We always appreciate all of you authors for sharing your AMAZING stories, but especially now, let’s sprinkle some additional appreciation on top! 🥰

omgggg this is my 3rd try posting this. i checked and it's within the character limit for tumblr, but the app kept shutting down. so now i'm on my laptop. ANYWAY. so this was a wip that i really wanted to make happen, but it hasn't worked out for me. i started it when the pandemic first started. louis is self-isolating on a boat (inspired by someone who did that here!) and i think he's older/silver foxy in this version. there's another (lost) version where they're exes.

thank you! i hope you like it!

“It’s such bullshit, man,” Niall says, pushing the sopping wet mop around on the floor behind the bar. It’s more effort than he usually makes and the smell of bleach is strong. “Can’t believe we still have to work.”

“I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got rent due.” Harry downs his shot of tequila and pats his pocket. “Smoke?”

“Weed?” Niall asks, and when Harry nods, Niall does too. “Let me finish my register and shit. Have a beer while you wait.”

Harry winds up having two and a half beers before Niall is finished. They wash their hands in the kitchen, laughing because they’ve both had their hands in and out of bleach water all evening, sanitizing everything in the restaurant. They walk out with another waiter, splitting up in the parking lot. Down the road from the bar where they work are the docks where local fishermen sell their catch, and where many of them keep their boats. Very rarely are there people out there this late at night, even in the peak of summertime. With it being February, and with the plague or whatever, there definitely won’t be anyone around. 

“Think I’m gonna call out tomorrow,” Niall says.

“Really?” 

“Yeah, man. They can’t fire us. Or like, at the very least, they’ll hire us back.” It sounds almost sensible, but then Harry remembers that his electric bill is past due and his roommate paid him in weed again. 

“You make money tonight or something?” Harry asks, narrowing his eyes.  

“I did alright. Three hundred.”

“Shit. I need to quit being a waiter and tend bar,” Harry says. He didn’t make a third of that tonight.

Niall parks as close as he can, and they walk to the end of the dock. “Oh, wow. Nice boat.”

“What is that, like… Is that considered a yacht?” Harry asks, squinting into the dark. It does look like one. A small one. It has a sail, so at least it’s a sailboat. Probably. 

Carefully, Harry unfolds the piece of aluminum foil he hid in the dry storage room when he first got to the restaurant that afternoon. The joint is lumpy and loose because he was in a hurry, and already high when he rolled it, but it tears easily, right down the middle. Harry makes sure to pinch the paper tight, and twists the ends of both half-sized joints before handing one to Niall. 

“That boat’s anchoring? Anchored? Whatever. It’s so close, like, why didn’t they dock it?” Harry asks, exhaling through his nose. There’s no science to back it up, but his hypothesis is that he gets a better high that way. “Bet it’d be easy to steal, right? Just, like… Swim out to it, lower the sails, and let the wind take you.”

Niall snorts. And coughs. And coughs again. 

“You better be choking on smoke, man.” Harry digs in his pocket and pulls out a bottle of hand sanitizer, holding it up until Niall opens his palm. 

Niall coughs again and laughs his wheezing high-laugh. “Nah, man, I was picturing you stealing a boat.”

“I could do it,” Harry insists. It does seem plausible. Wind. Waves. Sails. The desire to be free. However, there’s also the desire to not get arrested. Or like, die in a boating accident or something. It’s not like he knows how to sail. Still, the drama. It’s appealing. 

“Right,” Niall says. “I don’t even think you could swim out to it. It’s far. And then you’d have to climb on board, lower the sail—”

“Okay, so I probably couldn’t steal it. But I could swim out there. And get on board. There’s like, a ladder. I think. Steps, maybe? It’s not that far.” Maybe it’s the beer and weed, but he’s sure he could do it, and he doesn’t think he’ll drown. “Bet I can swim there and back in like, no time.”

Niall snorts and coughs, standing up from the dock and pointing out at the small yacht. “It’s pretty far out in the inlet. Like, that’s a fucking swim, man.”

“Still think I could do it,” Harry says, pinching the joint and holding it to his lips. 

“Give you half my tips if you do it,” Niall says, and Harry whips his head around. 

“Seriously?” He could really use the money. 

“You’re not gonna fucking drown, are you?”

Harry shrugs. “Probably not.”

“I don’t know, man.” Niall hums quietly, circling his hand in the air, leaving a trail of smoke. “That’s like, one of my biggest fears: dying doing something stupid while high.”

“Legitimate fear. Good one,” Harry says, patting his pockets. Maybe Niall will bet him to do something… easier. “You backing out? ’Cause I’m not.”

“No, no. Hundred fifty,” Niall says, and Harry has to rethink their friendship. “But like, can you take a life jacket?”

Harry scowls. “Where am I supposed to get one of those?”

Niall points at the line of boats along the dock.

“I’m not stealing a life jacket. Just, like… Can you keep up with my shit. Like my wallet and keys?” Harry asks, and Niall nods. 

“Yeah, man,” Niall says. 

“My phone too,” Harry says, handing it over. He kicks off his smelly work shoes and peels off his socks. It’ll be a nice, brisk swim. Probably isn’t even that cold. He walks to the edge of the dock and bends down, dipping his toe into the water. It’s certainly not warm. 

He can do this. He’s a strong swimmer. Was on the swim team when he was… Well, that was a long time ago. And he supposes it wasn’t so much a team as a group of moms trying to get their kids to burn off energy in a pool. Still. He kept the ribbons and participation medals. 

“Okay, give me an hour. If I’m not back, call like, the coast guard or something.” Harry nods once and strips out of his dirty uniform, kicking it into a pile with his socks and shoes. 

“An hour? I can’t sit here for an hour and like, worry about you drowning.”

“It won’t take me that long. Look,” Harry says, pointing a shaking finger at the boat. “It’s not that far. And if I don’t think I can swim back, I’ll… I’ll steal a lifejacket.”

Niall lifts his phone and says, “Okay. I’m going to record this.”

“Use my phone, man.” Harry grabs it from the pile of his things and tosses it to Niall. 

“Yeah, okay. And here…” Niall pulls a wad of cash out of his pocket and hands Harry the bet money. 

Harry reaches for his wallet, but stops, standing and tucking the cash into his briefs. They’re tight enough that he doesn’t think he’ll lose the money in the water. He walks back to the end of the dock, and turns to face Niall. 

“Go ahead, Harry.” Niall holds up his phone, wheezing another laugh, and says, “Tell us what you’re about to do.”

“Swim to that boat and back. Niall gave me a hundred and fifty bucks,” Harry pats his dick through his underwear, and Niall snorts.

“He put the money under his dick,” Niall says, turning the phone around to film himself. “Like, he used his dick as a paper weight.”

“This is why we wash our hands, people,” Harry says, cupping himself. “Okay, okay, okay. Here goes!”

Toes curled around the edge of the wooden dock, Harry takes a few deep breaths, trying to gauge the distance to the boat, and then he dives. It’s remarkable what you remember. Swimming, though he hasn’t done it in years, feels similar to riding a bike in that way. Of course, his muscles aren’t used to the workout, and the movements don’t come as fluidly as they once did, but he’s also taller and stronger and, once he gets into a groove with his freestyle stroke, he is one hundred percent certain for the first time that he is not going to die while high and doing something stupid. Not tonight. His mom would be so pissed. 

Still, by the time he’s close enough to the boat to see that there is, in fact, a ladder similar to the ones in the pool he used to swim in, he’s exhausted. He can make it back to the dock, but only after a rest. 

Waves rock the boat, making it harder to hold on to the ladder, but Harry gets his footing and climbs up, water running off of his body onto the boat deck. The air is colder than he remembers, and his nipples pebble instantly. 

One hand on the ladder to steady himself, Harry turns around and waves at Niall. When Niall waves back, Harry gives him two thumbs up, which he hopes are visible on camera, and looks around. 

Turns out that yachts are pretty boring. At least the visible parts. The cold water sobered Harry the second he surfaced and took his first breath, and after swimming for so long, he’s now sober, exhausted, hungry, and shivering. And whatever’s interesting about the boat is probably locked up behind the two small doors that Harry hopes lead to some sort of room below. Though, he supposes there could be an engine or something in there. While he’s on board, he might as well find out. 

Harry reaches for the doors to see if he can feel any handles or latches, though it’s difficult to tell what’s what in the moonlight. The doors swing open towards Harry, and he screams, stumbling backwards into the table that he just carefully avoided banging his hip on, and he falls sideways, crashing into the edge of the cushioned bench, and landing in a twisted tangle of limbs.

Niall coughs, and Harry thinks he might’ve hit his head. 

A scratchy voice asks, “What the fuck?” 

“Niall?” Harry speaks to the stars in the sky, too stunned to move.

“Okay, what the fuck, Niall?” 

Funny. That doesn’t sound like Niall. Harry lets his head loll to the side and squints. 

“No, you’re not Niall,” Harry says decisively.

“No, I’m not Niall. I’m Louis.” The most beautiful man Harry’s ever seen rises up with a glowing golden light, and floats over him. He frowns, which makes Harry sad, and points at Harry, which makes him happy, and says, “You’re Niall.”

“No, I’m Harry.” He’s almost positive. 

“Okay, Harry, then. What the fuck?” Louis coughs, covering his mouth with his arm. “Damn it.”

“Oh… Do you have the plague?” Harry asks. 

“Did you swim out here to ask me that?” 

“Uh… um…” Harry thinks about the truth, while Louis looks him up and down, and wonders what Louis would prefer to hear. Leaning in and holding Harry’s face in his hand, Louis moves Harry’s head side to side, peering intently into his eyes. Harry lets him because it seems like the thing to do, it’s not like he’s busy otherwise. Louis combs his fingers through Harry’s hair, close to his scalp, and Harry stares in wonder at the look of concern on Louis’ face. “Yeah.” 

“Yeah?” Louis tips his head to the side. “Yeah, what?”

“Don’t know,” Harry says. “You touched my face. We’re not supposed to touch our faces and I think that includes, like, other people’s faces.”

“Shit,” Louis says, pulling back and standing up. 

“I’m in my underwear,” Harry says, because he is. He just realized that he’s laying on the deck, he supposes that’s what it’s called, in his tiny pink briefs and nothing else. His tiny pink briefs, a hundred a fifty dollars, and nothing else. 

Louis looks down at Harry’s crotch, nodding to confirm the fact, then looks up, holding his hand over his eyes as if to shade them from the moonlight. He turns back to Harry and asks, “Did you swim out here? There’s a guy on the dock, waving at me.”

“That’s Niall,” Harry says.

“Oh, that’s Niall,” Louis says, waving at Niall. Maybe it’s the moonlight or maybe he hit his head, but it’s the most graceful wave he’s ever seen. Louis scowls down at him. “You swam out here?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, pleased to know the answer.

“Why?” 

Harry remembers that he has a body, that it’s mostly naked, and that Louis is looking at him. He reaches down and cups his cock. “Niall gave me a hundred and fifty dollars.”

“And you’re touching your dick because…”

“Because of the hundred and fifty dollars,” Harry says. Duh. “Duh.”

“Okay,” Louis says, dragging out the sound and scowling at him again. Harry wants to pout, but Louis holds out his hand, as if to help Harry up, so Harry grins at him instead. Lifting his hands in the air, Harry stretches his arms up until Louis grabs him by both wrists, and pulls. Because there isn’t much space, Harry doesn’t get all the way to his feet before Louis runs out of room and can’t back up any farther. But Harry manages to get his ass onto the bench seat, and figures he’s not likely to fall again. 

“Sorry I, um…” Harry rubs the back of his head where he hit it, and there’s a bump, but no blood when he checks his hand. “Sorry. We were just fucking around. Niall bet I couldn’t swim out here. I didn’t know anyone was on the boat.”

“Were you planning to swim back? Or did you think that far ahead?” Louis asks, dropping back down through the door that he came out of before. A moment later, he returns with a stack of folded towels. He drapes a towel over Harry’s head and wraps one around his shoulders. “Dry off. Warm up.”

“Thanks,” Harry says. It’s nice of Louis to be so hospitable. He very carefully bends over where he’s seated and wraps a towel around his hair, then tightens the one on his shoulders. “I can probably swim back in a little while.”

“You really think you can swim back?” 

“No, but I was hoping you’d offer to like, sail me up to the dock.”

“Not tonight,” Louis says. “In the morning. When I can see.”

“Oh, okay.” Harry checks beside him on the bench and, seeing nothing, lays down.

Louis snorts. “Come below deck. You might as well sleep in a bed. You’ve already been exposed.”

“Exposed?” Harry gasps, towel toppling off his head as he clutches his hand to his chest. “You have the plague!” 

“I don’t, but my boss does,” Louis says with a shrug. “So, you could, I guess? This is his boat, so…” 

“Great. Thanks,” Harry says, unwrapping the towel from his hair. 

“You swam out here, man,” Louis says, turning and climbing through the doors. Now that he’s not lying on the floor, Harry can see the steps that lead down into the space under the boat. Below deck or whatever. Louis calls from down there, “You can use my phone.”

“Oh, yeah.” Harry tries to focus on the end of the dock and can see Niall still standing there, waiting. Carefully, Harry gets to his feet and makes his way over to the ladder, waving at him. Niall waves back and Harry points towards Louis, who he can see is waiting for him at the bottom of the steps. Probably worried that Harry will fall again. Harry drapes his towels over his shoulders, carefully climbing down, and Louis appears at the ready, should Harry be unable to handle three measly steps. It’s cute. Louis is cute. “Do you have any Tylenol?”

“I think, yeah. You hit your head, then?” 

Harry nods, and Louis reaches into a cabinet, which turns out to be a refrigerator, opening a bottle of water and handing it to Harry, who takes it, along with two Tylenol. 

“Here,” Louis says, unlocking his phone and placing it in Harry’s open palm. 

The only phone number Harry knows besides his mom’s is his own, which is convenient, since he left his phone with Niall. He climbs back up the step ladder and waves both arms to get Niall’s attention, hoping he’ll put it together and pick up. After his phone rings once, Harry waves again, phone in his hand so that maybe Niall will see it. When Niall jumps and claps, Harry laughs and holds the phone to his ear.

“Harry?” 

“Hey, man. Shit, I’m glad you answered.”

“Yeah, what the fuck is going on? Who’s that dude?”

“Louis,” Harry says, smiling at the sound. “It’s his boat. I fell and hit my head, but I’m okay. But also, I probably shouldn’t swim back. So Louis said he’ll take me in the morning, if you’ll come pick me up, but guess what?”

“What?” Niall obliges.

“I guess he’d quarantined himself out here or something. So I’m going to have to lock myself up in my room. Probably see if I can get tested. Will you bring me food? And maybe like a mask or something for me to wear while we’re in the car together? Oh, man, we share a bathroom…”

“Shit, man. Might as well stay on the boat,” Niall says.

“Well, fuck you too, Niall,” Harry says.

“Just sayin’ you might as well, but whatever. Yeah, I’ll come pick you up, but if you cough on me, I swear, Harry, I—”

“Thanks, man. Love you,” Harry says. “I guess I’ll call you when I’m about to head towards the dock.”

“Okay, Harry. Be careful,” Niall says, and hangs up. Harry waves at him one more time, then climbs back below deck to face a worried Louis.

As Harry takes the last step, he hands Louis his phone, catching his toe and falling into Louis’ chest. He blushes, remembering again that he’s practically naked. “Oops.”

“Hi,” Louis says, steadying him with his hands on Harry’s shoulders. “Okay?”

“Wait a minute…” Harry narrows his eyes. “Come below deck. Is that some… some euphemism?”

“Euphemism?” Louis laughs, rolling his eyes. “No one’s having sex, Harry. There’s a guest cabin, so you’ll have your own berth.”

“Oh,” Harry says, unable to hide his disappointment. “Okay, thanks.”

“Yeah, it’s right here,” Louis says, and Harry turns in place, away from the tiny kitchen, which he thinks probably has a specific nautical name, towards the other side of the stepladder. It reminds him of his grandparents’ camper. “Listen, um… Do you want something to sleep in? I have some—”

“Nah, I’m good,” Harry says, crawling onto the thin mattress and looking back over his shoulder. “Usually sleep naked, so I’d just take whatever it is off again.”

“Oh… Okay.” Louis nods, swallowing audibly. 

The bed in the guest cabin is made so neatly that Harry wonders if it’s ever been slept in, blankets tucked in so tight that it’s a bit of a struggle to pull them free, but he gets them loose and crawls underneath completely before wiggling out of his briefs. Sitting up, Harry shakes out his damp underwear and hangs them on a little hook that juts out of the wall, probably for someone’s glasses or hat. 

“Thanks, Louis, for like, not having me arrested.”

Louis laughs quietly, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re welcome.”

“Also, thank you for letting me sleep here, but not for possibly giving me the plague. I’m not thrilled about that,” Harry says.

Again, Louis shrugs. “Sorry. Goodnight, Harry.”

“’Night, Louis,” Harry says, but he doesn’t lie back down until Louis steps forward and pulls the thin door to the cabin closed. As soon as he does, Harry reaches under the blanket and pulls out a hundred and fifty dollars, tucking the rolled up bills inside the flap of his briefs. Imagine, swimming all that way for a bet, and then losing the money. Especially now that he’s going to have to pay to go to the doctor. 

It’s an odd night’s sleep on the water. Once, when Harry was a teenager, he spent the night on a waterbed, but this is nothing like that. Occasionally, he feels like he’s falling, and wakes up panicking for a few seconds until he remembers where he is. When the sun rises, Harry is finally getting to sleep, so he buries his face in the pillow and ignores it. Louis will wake him up when he’s ready to take him to the dock. 

————

“Harry,” Louis’ urgent voice cuts through his dream. “Did you fuck with the anchor or something last night?”

Rolling onto his back, Harry rubs his eyes. “What? No.”

“You didn’t pull it up or mess with it?”

“No,” Harry says, sitting up. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess it must’ve come loose and we drifted or something, ’cause we’re not anchored off the inlet. There’s no dock, but we’re like, close to land, so…”

“Seriously? You don’t know where we are?” Harry asks, throwing back the blankets, and scooting to the end of the bed. 

“Can you?” Louis gestures to Harry’s crotch, and Harry smiles proudly. His dick is one of his favorite body parts; It’s nice when it’s appreciated by others. Still, he pulls on his pink briefs. 

“How can you not know where we are?” Harry stands, adjusting his semi, and Louis scoffs. “I just woke up.”

Louis ignores him and climbs out onto the deck, so Harry follows him up, looking around. The boat is just as close to the shore as it was from the dock, if not closer, and there’s marshland, which is somewhat familiar, but there are no docks or other boats. They must’ve floated into a preserved wildlife area or something. 

“I think we drifted north?” Louis slides aviator sunglasses over his eyes, and says. “My phone died, so I plugged it in. But we can probably check in a minute.”

“Oh,” Harry says, and watches Louis fiddle with something on the pedestal beside the steering wheel or helm or whatever it’s called.

“Shit. Seriously?” Louis smacks his hand against the wheel and slowly lowers his head down until he knocks his forehead on it. “The engine isn’t working.”

“Thought this was a sailboat,” Harry says, looking up at the empty mast. 

“Haha. It is, but boats like this have engines too, and that’s what I used. I don’t know a lot about sailing.”

“Me neither,” Harry says. “I don't know anything about it.”

“Okay, so, it’s fine. My phone’s probably charged enough now,” Louis says, going back below deck. This time Harry doesn’t follow, feeling sure that Louis will bring his phone out for a better signal. 

A few minutes later, Harry climbs down to find Louis sitting on the little sofa. 

“Nothing’s working. None of the outlets. The fridge. Lights. Nothing.”

“What… What do we do?” Harry asks, uselessly flipping a light switch. 

“Would Niall call someone? Like, if you don’t show up or call by a certain time?”

Harry nods. “He’s probably sleeping. Expecting me to call and wake him up.”

“Okay,” Louis says. “Okay, um… We have everything we need, like food and water and necessities. Hopefully Niall will call someone—”

“The Coast Guard,” Harry helpfully supplies. 

“Or anyone. But they’ll come find us.”

“How is nothing working?” Harry asks, following Louis below deck. 

“No clue,” Louis says, lying down on the little sofa. “Maybe we got struck by lightning.”

Staring at him, Harry drops onto the bench across from him. “It didn’t storm. It hasn’t rained at all. How’s that supposed to happen?”

“I don’t know, Harry. I’m not a weatherman.”

“Meteorologist.”

“Dude,” Louis says, turning his head to look right at him. “Shut up.”

Harry shuts up. 

Sweatpants would be nice. It’s not super cold. The weather is nice, actually, with clear skies and sun, and typically Harry’s pro-nudity, but Louis is wearing sweatpants. Dark grey ones. And they look comfy and warm and soft and they drape over Louis’ dick, drawing attention to it in a way that Harry can’t tell the intent. Which is why he wants sweatpants. Then he could lose the pink briefs, which dried stiffly overnight, and without underwear on, he knows he could draw Louis’ attention. 

“Remember when you offered me something to wear?” Harry sucks his lower lip between his teeth, ducking his chin and looking through his lashes. 

“Stop staring,” Louis says, and Harry’s mouth drops open. Not that he was being discreet, but he wasn’t expecting that response. “I have something. Hold on.”

Harry watches while Louis opens the door to his room, frowning at the oddly shaped bed. After a moment, during which only the curve of Louis’ ass is visible to Harry while the rest of him is hidden by the wall, Louis emerges with a wrinkled pair of cut off sweatpants. 

“They’re clean,” Louis says, shaking them out. “I didn’t think I’d be around people. So I just stuffed my clean laundry into a trash bag.”

“Okay, um, thank you,” Harry says, taking the shorts. “I keep my laundry in a basket.”

“I’m sure you do,” Louis says, stepping up into the sunlight. 

As soon as Louis is out of sight, Harry strips out of his briefs, tucking his money into the front, and hiding them under the edge of the mattress. The cut-off shorts are a much lighter grey than the pair of loosely fitting sweatpants Louis is wearing, and when Harry pulls them on, he finds they’re quite snug. He makes sure his dick is displayed in an aesthetically appealing, yet still properly lewd way, and ascends the stairs. 

“In a way, those are worse than your see-through pink bikini,” Louis says when he turns around. Even with his sunglasses on, he squints, and Harry wished he had a pair to protect his eyes. It’s bright out. 

“Those are briefs,” Harry says, looking down at the shadow his soft cock makes. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Piss over the side,” Louis says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “No way the head is working when nothing else is.”

“Gross.”

“Yes. It is,” Louis says. 

Harry holds onto the railing with one hand, standing at the top of the ladder he climbed the night before, and pushed his shorts down with his free hand. It takes him a minute to get past being gun shy, but the wind blows and he pees, laughing at the arc it makes before it hits the water. 

Dick tucked in, Harry carefully sits on the bench and lets himself look. The trees on the bank come right up to the water in places, curving over so that it’d be nearly impenetrable. No telling what’s on the other side either. 

“What if I, um… need to, um…” 

“If you can’t hold it,” Louis starts, pausing and looking at Harry over his sunglasses. “We’d have to… I guess we’d have to… We could inflate the dinghy, paddle it over there.” He points at the nearest bit of sand — a beach, Harry supposes, though it’s not much bigger than the sailboat — and says, “And if you’ve ever been camping…”

“Oh,” Harry says, cheeks turning pink. “Never mind.”

“Yeah, hopefully, Niall will wake up and call someone. Or maybe somebody will see us.”

“Who’s gonna see us? There’s no one around.”

“True. I don’t know… Maybe we should go to the end of the, um… the trees there.” Louis points in the opposite direction, and Harry turns to look, shading his eyes with his hands. It’s not far, but there’s no way Harry would swim it, and he doesn’t know how far he could paddle on an empty stomach. Without coffee. Or a bathroom. 

“Are you serious?” Harry asks instead. “What’s that gonna do?”

Louis lifts the bench across from Harry and says, “Flares. Maybe we’re closer to the inlet than we realize and someone will see.”

“Okay, yeah. That makes sense,” Harry says, imagining hours on the water, paddling and going mere inches. “Do you have a hat or something?”

“Yeah, we’ll be gone a while. Sunscreen’s probably a good idea. Shirts, too.” Louis leads the way below deck. “And coffee.”

They wind up eating cereal, and Harry borrows a white t-shirt, a pair of oversized yellow sunglasses that he doesn’t think belong to Louis, a Louisville snapback that he thinks does, and the rest of a bottle of sunscreen that’s two months past it’s expiration date. It’s enough for his nose. 

Louis climbs down first, into the dinghy, and Harry tosses the paddles to him. It’s reassuring watching him moving gracefully in the little boat, tucking a cooler in the back corner alongside the package of signal flares. Even if he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he looks like it, and he thought to bring lunch. He helps Harry from the ladder to the dinghy, pointing to the other side. 

“Sit up there,” Louis says, tapping his paddle on the end of the seat up front. “I’ll steer from the back.”

Using his paddle, Louis pushes the dinghy away from the boat, and they start towards the edge of the trees. At first, they’re out of sync with each other, but they get it after a few minutes, paddling and coasting, paddling and coasting, while Louis keeps them heading in the right direction. It’s exhausting and they’ve barely started. 

“See that beach?” Louis points to a short stretch of sand with a fallen tree in the center. “Stopping there.”

“Okay,” Harry says, paddling as Louis steers them that way. 

They don’t talk much, except for Louis giving instructions occasionally to move them closer to the beach. They get there faster than Harry expected, and it’s much too early for lunch. As they approach the sand, the water clears some, and Harry watches crabs and fish darting away at the sight of the boat. There’s a splash, and Harry looks up to see Louis wading his way around to the front of the boat, holding onto the rope on the side and guiding it in. Harry puts his paddle beside Louis’, tucking the end under the seat so it won’t fall out.

“Sit,” Louis says as he passes Harry, reaching his hand down and circling his fingers around Harry’s ankle. Harry sits. And Louis pulls the boat through the shallow water to the beach. “Okay, you can jump off now. Help me get the boat onto the sand.”

Even in a few inches of water, the boat is wobbly and hard to move around in, but Harry quickly scoots to the side and throws his legs over, sliding down into the cold water and helping haul the boat ashore. They pull it all the way up into the sand, and Louis grabs the oars, tossing one to Harry. He reaches into the cooler and pulls out a roll of toilet paper, wrapping it around his hand and giving the wad of tissue to Harry.

“Take your paddle. You go that way,” Louis says, pointing at Harry, who takes a moment to figure out what’s going on. Louis jerks his thumb in the opposite direction. “I’ll go this way.”

“Okay…” Harry stands there, paddle in one hand, tissue in the other. “How will I know how far to go?”

Louis sighs, looking at the woods around the beach. It’s fairly dense, and neither of them have shoes on. “I’m just going to sing. I’ll sing, you sing, so we can judge how far away from each other we are. We go as far as we can, I guess, and then just… dig a hole. And, you know, bury it.”

“Okey dokey,” Harry says.

“Yeah…” Louis takes his sunglasses off and hangs them from the loose collar of his t-shirt, and says, “Coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing just fine.”

“Oh!”

“Gotta gotta be down because I want it all,” Louis sings, raising his eyebrows and spinning on his heel. He walks towards the tree line, raising his voice as he goes. “It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?”

“It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss,” Harry sings back, walking the other way. 

Harry stumbles over vines and branches, singing his heart out, turning now and then to look back at the boat. When he can’t see the boat, which doesn’t take long considering how thick the growth is, he stops to listen. He can’t hear Louis, which means Louis hopefully can’t hear him. It is not the most embarrassing bathroom situation Harry’s ever been in, so he takes it all in stride, and he sings his way back to the beach and the boat, where Louis is waiting with hand sanitizer. A king among men.

They push the boat back into the water, climbing in once they’re deep enough, and paddling towards the edge of the trees. When they get there, the sun is high in the sky, and Harry’s arms are no longer his own. They’ve become extensions of his paddle. 

“Let’s get around the end here, then hopefully we’ll know which way to point the flare,” Louis says, paddling harder. Harry follows suit and they pass the last few trees on their left. 

The inlet where he first climbed onto the yacht leads to the ocean. Harry’s been out there before, and just past the trees at the end is a buoy and a marker and past that, you can see up and down the beach. Hotels and large houses that meet the dunes, and dunes that meet the sand. There’s a natural area nearby where trees grow right up to the beach, but on the other side of the much wider dunes there, is a parking lot. 

When they pass the last few trees on their left, they lift their paddles, and Harry looks left, then he looks right, then left again. The way the land curves along the water makes it difficult to see much, but there is no land visible across the water, and it looks like the ocean. He looks again, south he reckons, and turns to Louis. “Where the fuck are we?”

“Jesus,” Louis says, shading his eyes, even with sunglasses and a hat on. “I don’t see anything.”

“How far did we drift in… What? Six hours?” Harry shakes out his arms, then takes off his hat, combing his fingers through his sweaty, dirty hair. It’s so far back to the boat. The inflatable dinghy floats, no longer moving forward into the ocean, water lapping at the sides. Harry checks that his paddle is secure, and jumps overboard. Cold water touches every inch of his skin at once, making him forget which way is up, but he figures it out, kicking to the surface, gasping for air. 

“Harry!” Louis shouts, holding his paddle out for Harry to grab hold. “What the fuck?”

Harry lets go of the paddle and sinks into the water, swimming the rest of the distance to the dinghy. “Sorry. Was just hot and I was pissed off.”

“And wanted to drown yourself?” Louis asks, leaning down to grab hold of Harry’s t-shirt. “I’m gonna count to three, and you kick like you’re swimming hard.”

Harry nods, and Louis hooks his hands underneath both of Harry’s arms and, on the count of three, when Harry kicks his feet, Louis hauls him out of the water. He pulls Harry over the side and into the inflatable boat, rolling out of the way just in time, so that Harry lands beside him and not on top of him. 

“Holy shit,” Harry says, panting. “Sorry.”

“What the fuck?” Louis repeats, leaning over the side, cupping water in his hands, and splashing it on his face. 

“I wanted to go swimming,” Harry explains. 

“So you jumped overboard?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t think—”

“Clearly,” Louis says, sticking his paddle back in the water. “Let’s get back to the boat.”

Rather than try to explain further, Harry saves his energy for paddling. It probably wouldn’t make sense if he said it outloud anyway. The tide is rising as they paddle back, so the current carries them, making the trip easier than the first half. Still, when they reach the boat, and Louis grabs hold of the rope, Harry thinks he might not be able to climb the ladder, his arms are worn out. But Louis climbs up first, and his ass makes it easy for Harry to follow. 

“Now what?” Harry asks, flopping onto the bench as soon as he steps off the ladder. “Wait and hope someone finds us?”

Louis sits across from him, frowning. He takes off his hat and sunglasses, rubbing his eyes and combing his fingers through his messy, sweat damp hair. “I don’t know. I thought we’d see more than… I thought we’d see like, hotels or another boat or something.”

“Me too,” Harry says. Though they couldn’t really see much when they looked south. “Do you think we drifted north or south or like… out to sea?”

“North, man. The current flows north, and once we drifted out of the inlet, we would’ve just gone with it.” 

“I’m hungry,” Harry says, patting his empty stomach. “Time is it?”

“No clue, man. Sometime in the afternoon,” Louis says, pointing to the sun. He stands and waves for Harry to follow. “Come on. We should eat.”

Louis pulls everything out of the little refrigerator and freezer, and while he decides what needs to go, Harry makes them sandwiches. There’s more food than they’ll need, and once Harry’s stomach is full, he’s able to think a little more clearly. 

“So, we wait,” Harry says.

“I’m not paddling anywhere anytime soon,” Louis responds, squeezing his shoulder and shaking out his arms. 

“I don’t want to paddle anywhere ever again. Are you sure you can’t sail the boat?”

“I can sail the boat. I choose not to,” Louis says, climbing out onto the deck.

“What?” 

“I know a little bit,” Louis says when Harry follows. 

Not knowing anything at all about sailing, Harry figures it can’t be that hard. He climbs up on the bench and steps up on top of the boat, carefully walking to the mast and looking at the rolled up sail. “A little bit,” Harry says.

“My boss taught me some, but it makes me nervous, so I don’t do it.”

“It makes you nervous, so you don’t do it?” Harry asks, not quite believing him. “But you could, technically, sail us out of here, and like, just follow the coast until we get back home.”

“That or we could capsize and drown,” Louis says. 

“We have life jackets. We won’t drown.”

“Who’s coming to rescue us then?” 

Harry shrugs. “All I’m saying is I don’t want to be stuck here any longer than I have to.”

“In a hurry to self-isolate in your apartment?” Louis asks. 

“Ugh. I forgot about the plague.”

“Stop calling it that. The plague is a real thing.”

“Whatever. Just because you want to be all alone on a boat doesn’t mean I do.”

“Well, hopefully Niall will pull through, then.” Louis looks up at him and when Harry slaps his hand against the rolled up sail, Louis shakes his head and disappears back below deck. The door to his cabin is closed when Harry follows him to try to continue the conversation, and despite the fact that he can obviously hear Harry, Louis doesn’t respond to anything he says. Eventually, he gives up and goes back up top. They were out in the sun for so long, but his skin isn’t pink at all, so Harry takes off his shirt and rolls up his shorts, laying on the cushioned bench and falling asleep in the late afternoon. 

He wakes up stiff and sore and still tired, blinking up at Louis, who’s standing over him, surrounded by pink and purple light. 

“Ooh, pretty,” Harry says, rubbing his eyes and sitting up. The sun is setting behind the trees and he’s awake just in time to watch it. 

Louis sits beside him, resting his arms on the back of the bench. “Forty-eight hours.”

“Huh?”

“I want to wait until it’s been forty-eight hours. Give them a chance to find us,” Louis says, scratching at his beard. He turns slightly, dropping his hands into his lap. “Not tomorrow, but the next morning. If we haven’t been rescued, I’ll try to sail south.”

“Okay, but no capsizing,” Harry says. 

Louis stills, shaking his head. “Have to wait and see.”

———

They are not rescued the following day. And they don’t talk about it. After breakfast, they paddle to the nearest beach and sing “Mr Brightside” at the top of their lungs while tromping through the trees in opposite directions. While Harry is using his paddle to push aside vines and brush on the way back to the beach, he sees something slithering past him in his peripheral vision. He screams, crashing through the trees and doesn’t stop until he’s waist deep in the water. 

From the shore beside the boat, Louis watches him curiously. “What’d you see?”

“Snake, I think!” Harry shivers and wraps his arms around himself. 

“Thought it might’ve been a bear,” Louis says, pushing the boat into the water and hopping on board. “This close to the water, it was probably an alligator or a water moccasin.”

Harry throws himself forward in the water, swimming as fast as he can towards the sound of Louis’ loud cackle. He’s able to push off of the sand and pull himself into the dinghy, though he lands even less gracefully than he did the day before when Louis hauled him out of the ocean. 

“Jesus, fuck. That scared the shit out of me,” Harry says, clambering to sit up. 

“Really?” Louis smirks, passing Harry’s paddle to him. 

Harry rolls his eyes. “Poop jokes.”

“Timely poop jokes,” Louis says. “Paddle harder or the snake’ll catch us!”

Harry paddles harder, ignoring Louis’ laughter behind him. “I don’t care if you’re kidding. That was scary.”

“That’s why you have the paddle and your beautiful singing voice,” Louis says. 

“Bear and snake protection?” Harry scowls at Louis over his shoulder. 

“Better than nothing.”

The next morning, when they still have not been rescued, Harry sings so loudly that Louis laughs instead of singing along with him. He bangs his paddle against the trees, and doesn’t see any animals, but Louis manages to scare him anyway once he’s back in the boat and thinks he’s safe. They’re just getting out of the shallows, when Louis smacks his paddle on the surface of the water and yells, “Snake!”

Harry tries his hardest to give him the silent treatment, but Louis seems to enjoy it, humming to himself, and singing quietly while he moves around the boat. And he doesn’t know what he expected the process of getting ready to sail the boat to be like, but it happens much faster than he would’ve thought. There are a lot of ropes, and more than one sail, and many other things that Harry doesn’t know the name or the purpose of, but eventually Louis tells him to raise the anchor. And then he has to show him how to do it. 

The wind catches the sail, and whether or not he knows what he’s doing, Louis smoothly maneuvers them out onto the ocean heading south. It seems easiest to stay out of his way, so Harry does, and water flies past beneath them. They aren’t sailing long before Harry sees his first dolphin. It breaches the surface, swimming alongside the boat and playing in the wake. 

“Where the hell are we?” Harry asks the dolphin. 

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Louis says. 

“I was talking to the dolphin.”

“Ooh!” Louis looks over that side of the boat, and says, “Oh, wow…” 

Grinning, Harry looks again to find at least six or seven of them playing behind the boat. “So cool. I wonder how long they’ll stay with us.”

Louis shrugs, tightening some rope that Harry would ask the name of, but he doesn’t really care. The wind picks up as they move south, and Harry makes himself wait until he’s absolutely sure they’ve been going the same direction for at least an hour before saying something. 

“When do you think we’ll get there?” Harry asks, kicking his bare feet up onto the metal railing behind the bench and laying down. 

“Where?” Louis asks, frowning at him and sweeping his arm around in a half-circle. “We’re traveling at about five knots. I figure we’ve gone maybe ten or twelve miles.”

“Oh my god, why’s it so slow?” Harry whines, throwing his arm over his eyes. 

“It’s a small sailboat, Harry. Top speed is like, seven knots.”

“What does that mean?”

Rolling his eyes, Louis says, “Not fast enough for you, guaranteed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Craning his neck, Harry scowls at him until he answers. 

“Means you’re a spoiled brat,” Louis snaps. 

“Fuck you too.”

“I really, really don’t think so.”

“Lame,” Harry retorts. “And boring.”

Louis hums, ignoring him. When Harry opens his mouth to ask again because there’s still no sign of another boat or anything, Louis excitedly says, “Oh! You know what we didn’t try?”

“What?” Harry sits up, ready to do whatever it is. 

“You should ask your mom to come get you.”

“Clever,” Harry says, crossing his arms and leaning back to look up at the sky. 

They don’t speak to each other until Louis says, “Come hold us steady for a second.”

“No, no, no.” Harry shakes his head and his finger, just to be sure Louis understands he wants nothing to do with the actual operation of the boat. 

“Fine. Guess I can piss right here,” Louis says, looking pointedly at Harry, who’s sitting fairly close to him. “You’re into watersports, right?”

Harry stares at him, cheeks heating. Belatedly, he rushes out, “No!” 

While Louis snickers, Harry takes the WTFWHEEL and does his best to keep it from spinning out of his hand. As soon as Louis finishes, Harry pees off the back of the boat too. 

“Is the wind picking up?” Harry asks. 

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Do me a favor?”

Narrowing his eyes, Harry says, “Depends.”

“Go below and, in the little cabinet under the bench, is a pair of binoculars.”

“Oh, okay,” Harry agreed, carefully climbing down the few steps. Right where Louis said they would be, Harry finds them, along with a box of books full of maps that he leaves alone. He climbs back on deck and, instead of handing the binoculars to Louis, he holds them to his eyes and adjusts the focus. “How far do these things see?”

“As far as your eyes do,” Louis answers shortly.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“You should be able to see something about fifteen miles away like it’s right in front of you,” Louis says, reaching a hand out for the binoculars, but Harry doesn’t give them to him. 

“I can’t see shit.”

“Take the lens caps off.”

“I did. I mean, all I see is water and trees and some clouds.”

“Give them to me,” Louis insists, and Harry does, rolling his eyes as he sits back down on the bench. With his sunglasses perched on top of his head, Louis holds the binoculars to his eyes. “What the fuck?”

“Right? So weird,” Harry says, taking the binoculars back and looking again. The clouds ahead are much darker than the few wisps of white they’ve seen so far. “What do we do?”

Louis shrugs. “All we can do is keep going south. Eventually we’ll get home.”

“Yeah, but what if we don’t?” 

“What?”

“Like, what if this is some parallel universe,” Harry offers, letting his mind wander. “Like an unpopulated world.”

Snorting loudly, Louis shakes his head. “Whatever you say, Harry.”

“Do you think we should be sailing towards those clouds?” 

“I… Should we find a place to anchor? Not like we can check the weather, but the last time I looked, the forecast said the past few days were supposed to be cold and cloudy, not warm and sunny, and there weren’t any storms expected.”

“Dunno. Those look like storm clouds to me,” Harry says, pointing at them. “We could stop here. Maybe it’s going inland, and we can wait for it to pass.”

“Storms usually travel up the coast. We could go west. See if we can go around it. Or go north. Try to find a place to dock that way.”

“Go back the way we came?” Harry pouts. 

“I don't know, Harry! Would you rather go towards the dark, and what are, frankly, ominous clouds? You’re supposed to tie the fucking boat up during a storm, but I don’t see any docks. Do you?”

“Shit. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Harry gets to his feet, looking south through the binoculars and slowly turning east. The clouds—Louis is right, they are ominous looking—seem to go on forever. There’s no going around them. “What’s north of us?”

“No fucking clue, man.” Louis loosens the sail, and goes below deck, returning before Harry can follow with the box of books and maps. He hands the box to Harry, and folds a map out on the table, pointing to the familiar curve of the coast.  “Yeah. See? You swam to the boat here. And the only natural areas around are the few state parks, but even there they have buildings and shit. Like, you can tell people have been there. We’ve traveled for hours, probably close to twenty miles.”

“Wow,” Harry says, maybe he’s dreaming. 

While Louis turns the boat around, Harry sits, flipping through an old book of maps, full of expired coupons for restaurants and attractions. On one page, there’s a large picture of a cartoon owl that says ‘Give A Hoot! Don’t Pollute!’ And Harry frowns. 

“Have you seen any litter?” Harry asks, putting the book back in the box.

Louis looks over the side of the boat, as if fully expecting to see a plastic bottle floating by. Slowly, he says, “No.”

“You know what?” Harry snaps his fingers, and says, “I bet I knocked myself out when I hit my head and this is just a dream or a hallucination or something.”

“Yeah? What about me?” Louis rolls his eyes, looking over his shoulder at the clouds behind them. 

Harry shrugs. “What about you?” 

“Why am I in your hallucination? I’d rather not be, so you could just hallucinate me out?”

“I can try,” Harry says, closing his eyes in concentration. While he’s at it, he pictures himself waking up, but neither thing has happened by the time he opens his eyes again. “Maybe if I go to sleep.”

“You do that. Because I might need your help in a little while, and I’d rather you get some rest.” Louis shoos him towards the doors and Harry goes below, curling up on his bed and falling asleep fast. 

————

“Up! Wake up, Harry!”

Harry sits up, rubbing his eyes and slowly realizing he’s still on the boat. “Still hallucinating.”

“Nope! Get up here and help me figure out what to do,” Louis orders, stepping up on deck before he finishes talking. 

And while it does still feel like it must be a dream or a hallucination, it feels real too. Harry joins Louis up top, looking south, frowning at the clouds in the distance. “Are they closer?”

“Yeah, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Go faster,” Harry says. 

“I can’t go any faster.” Louis hands him the binoculars and says, “We can either keep following the coast and hope the storm turns west. We can find a place to anchor, tie the boat up as well as we can, and ride it out below deck. Or we could head east, out to sea.”

“This is like one of those choose your own adventure books,” Harry says, looking back at the storm. 

“I think our best bet is to keep going for now, and be on the lookout for a safe place to spend the storm.” 

“Then why didn’t you just do that?” 

“Because I didn’t want to just make the decision without talking to you. And I’ll need your help, no matter what we do.”

Harry scoffs, crossing his arms and cocking his hip to the side. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Depends. If we keep going? Use the binoculars to scout ahead for an inlet or somewhere we can tie up the boat,” Louis says, pointing to the binoculars in Harry’s hand. “What do you want to do?”

“Keep going. Obviously,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. “We’re more likely to find a dock or something, right?”

“Sure,” Louis replies, but it’s clear he doesn’t believe they’ll find anything. 

Harry ignores him, looking through the binoculars at the coast, searching for someplace to park. Or whatever. They sail for a few hours, finding a few places that look promising until they get close and they don’t seem deep enough for the boat. 

“This sucks,” Harry says, dropping onto the bench. “We’re about to get rained on.”

“We’re about to get caught in a fucking hurricane,” Louis snaps, tightening one of the ropes.

“Are you serious?” Harry turns to look back at the storm. It just looks like a mass of dark grey clouds, but there are sheets of rain visible now. 

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s fucking huge. We have to find a place to hunker down.”

Sputtering a laugh, Harry says, “Hunker down.”

Louis stares at him for a moment, then snatches the binoculars from him, looking ahead between doing whatever else he does to the sails and the steering wheel. It probably has an official nautical name, but Harry doesn’t care enough to ask. Instead, he goes below, crawling into bed again. 

[yomogi-mogi-mochi]

Pygmalion (V)

Pairings: Rook/ (Pygmalion) MC // Idia/MC (Platonic)

Summary: You were frequently told that your career as a renowned sculptor did not match your dull and less than colorful personality. With your cybernetic hands, you carve the lives and deaths of those long gone‒ producing pieces which have been held in both technical and emotional high regard, dubbing you with the title “Pygm.AI.lion” despite your human heart and brain. When you accidentally still the usually flamboyant archer into silence after he comes across you working in your atelier‒ you find that you’ve become a victim to one of his ceaseless stalkings. Though, you’ve been prey long enough to know how hunt the huntsman himself.

Notes: The devil has been “putting me through the fucking ringer” as white people say. Been going through it recently lol February has already been such a shit month so I tried not to let my absolute mental spiral into ceaseless despair affect my writing as much hahaaaaa

Short but dense chapter

Anyways enjoy the fluff and angst (*´∀`)♪

CW: Mentions of grooming

AO3 Link Here.

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5 (Here) // Part 6

Masterlist.

——————————————————

Your friendship with him flooded into your life after that day. The two of you began to spend your weekends in the atelier from mild afternoons, until the moon rose high in the sky. Truth is‒ neither of you meant to stay for too long in the company of one another, but the bright laughter that carried throughout that small shed had made you both blind to the crimson brilliance of the setting sun and the bellow of the moonlight‒ only just noticing the darkness of the world when you aught the flickers of the candlelight lick his carefully carved features, glowing against his golden hair. You thought of grand baroque sculptures‒ the way he swayed and glided his arms in sweeping movements, tipping his head back into jubilant laughter‒ catching yourself posing him in your mind, committing every crease rippling from his fair smile, every which way his fingers fluttered against one another, sometimes against your own, carefully chiseling his flowering delight in your mind. 

The two of you began to whisper clever lines to each other during critiques, tossing amused looks during rehearsals at Film studies club, shared each other’s warmth in your atelier. He urged you to talk with Idia after what you had said, and you nodded, following the march of his heart as part of your own. Idia was surprised when you showed at his door, lifting your heels off the ground to reach your arms around his neck. Even with his slouch, you felt joy in how much he had grown. Rook also followed you in this manner, listening intently when you showed him techniques and effects on his camera‒ racing your brilliant sensibilities as quickly as you revealed them to him, with a dancing heart. 

“You seem different. Happier.” Idia says with a smirk. Ortho agrees, quietly catching the lingering glances each of you gave during rehearsals, your snickers and banter when you thought no one saw. Time had slowly receded back into the beat of a human heart once more‒ something you realized when you could remember each day, each sweet moment of which you and Rook slowly unraveled yourselves to one another. The two of you discussed all matters of things‒ ancient carving techniques dead to the world, the taste of his food, your friendship with foregone artists, his extravagant experiments in the science lab. You taught him attitudes of love, art, creation‒ trading thoughts which bloomed from your heart. 

“How does your food taste?”

“Like buttered clouds‒ honeyed with the sun.” 

“What are you carving?

“Guess.” 

The stories of your six hundred years of existence felt no richer than his own years. When he reminisced about his childhood, you could catch fragments of your youth with it‒ revelations of long forgotten memories surfacing by the enchantment of his voice. You remembered Lutetia, the name before the City of Flowers, your time you spent in the sun, skipping rocks by yourself by the pond. Rook recounts similar stories‒ perhaps you would have been friends as children. The centuries that had weighed upon you felt impossibly lighter when you faced his excited laugher.

The scarcity of time and distance mattered less to Rook when you divulge him in your secret smiles‒ too much to enjoy here, now, at the base of the ripening fruit tree that he had not thought much of the decay of his harvest, but the sweetening morsel in front of him. The game‒ the hunt never ended, however he no longer hopped from one carcass to another, instead following this animal with narrow, childish joy and curiosity. That picture of clarity in his mind felt brighter than ever when he allowed the fresh fragments of himself that he gave to you to be a part of it, which you returned with your own growing roots in that painting‒ creating, hand in hand, a magnum opus of beauty. There was truly no way to spend the days between the two of you without coloring it with each other’s warmth. 

You knew, soon, you were going to begin to find shapes of him everywhere you went‒ and in his absence, you would glance over at the imprint he left, and ache. The way his face stained pink with electrified blood when his touch lingered on yours made this longing worse, the rebellion inside of you nearly crumbling at his fingertips. The only thing which fortified that revolt was your knowledge of how it ended, the sculptures that surrounded the two of you which descended their decaying image upon you were evidence to that relentless tale, that curse. 

Sometimes, you indulge yourself in such sweetened moments, your backs against each other resonating each other’s heart beat while you sat carving splendidly insignificant sculptures into ivory, he, fiddling with the camera in his hands, raising the screen when he remembered one of your exhibitions he had gone to, showing a picture of his adoration. But at times like this, it all felt too close‒ the ache much too acute for your swelling chest‒ suddenly aware of the closeness between you two strung together by your neighboring hands. Dread tightened your brows, you shrunk away from the warmth. This cruelty was a curse of your own making, but it was spun into your long, long life in such a way that it was almost unavoidable if you wanted to prevent your heart from breaking. 

“Ah‒ sorry‒“

“Désolé, I did not mean to after‒”

“No. It’s alright.” Your smile reached the corners of your eyes, lifting them like the climbing in your chest. “I just try not to, because of my magic. My body is unpredictable‒ I don’t want to hurt anyone.” 

“Does your magic affect living things as well?”

“No, but‒“

“Then I trust you not to hurt me.” 

You would let him do whatever he wanted with you when he said things like that, cradling your hand with such tenderness. Anything‒ just don’t let go, don't leave. Don't leave me.

 He asks you many questions, your thoughts. You don’t mind his curiosity. 

"What did you intend with this piece?"

"What did I intend with it?"

"Yes. What did you intend when you created her?" He pointed towards the wax covered figure they glowed delicately in the dusty sunlight. 

"My…" you lingered a bit at his words. "Like I said before. My hands move on their own. I am a sculptor who carves not with the mind or heart." Ignoring the tug in your chest at your own words, you continued. "I possess stone with life that has departed, and fossilize its demise into marble. That is all I know…I…" You were suddenly aware of the slight jitter in your movements, caused by your cybernetics. Opening and closing your fists, you could see the inhuman tick through the glass lens, connected to the enhanced retinal scanners of your eye. You knew of the cold, black blood which ran through your plastic veins. "Why…" Those words felt heavy on your lips. 

Rook pressed a finger against your chest, feeling the rhythmic drumming of your still very human heart melting into his skin, into his hand, traveling to the thundering of his ears. He hoped to fish it out so you could hear it for yourself too. "Here. What did this one here have in mind when you created?" He noticed his height made it perfect to gaze right into where the flesh over which your heart beat. "When gods create, they make their creations in their own image." The green tucked behind the slits of his eyes flickered towards you. "What sort of god are you?" 

You clenched the nausea in your abdomen. “…I am no god. These hands that create do not belong to me. I am merely a vessel to humanity’s life and death‒ its sorrows, pains, happiness. I merely observe it.” Your words came out in short bursts as you struggled to string together words that reflected your splintering heart. “ I cannot feel it. “

“What about your pain? Your sorrow? What about your happiness?”

You were silent. “My,” Rook took your old hands into the softness of his own. “My sorrow. My pain. My happiness.” The swirling in your chest felt muddled, a fine slurry of colors‒ you couldn’t identify what was what and where if you wanted to. You heaved out shallow breaths. 

“Your sorrow. Your pain. Your happiness.” His cheeks raised to a slivered smile. “Treasure it, like you treasure others’.” Rook hadn’t meant to say the last part, but as always spoke with as much conviction as he could. He meant to keep it deep within himself, melting into the chasmic depths of his heart so you could not trace the entrails to his soul, where he hid in the forested depth of his viridian eyes‒ but when he found himself lingering, deepening his gaze towards you, he couldn’t help but to cleave those words from himself, so openly offering a part of his heart. No wound had felt fresher, more incandescent, more real. You press your hand on top of his, resonating the fluttering of his pulse at your sensors with your own elating heartbeat, as if to answer‒ yes, yes, yes . It tickled. 

“Then show me yours, so I may know what to treasure.” 

 It had been centuries since you let go of your inhibitions to let the world eat you raw. You devoured each other in that tenderness, carving open your chests and watching them beat in each other's hands. Even in the face of blazing firelight against the darkness of night, your grotesque flesh burns the brightest, kindled with unparalleled vigor‒ the most soft, the most lucid, the most real thing in your hands. 

So it was inevitable that he would bear witness to the sudden stutter of your movements. 

It was during one of those temperate weekends, the two of you delightfully blind to the scorching sun setting on the horizon. You had been able to acquire a particularly fine specimen of ivory, carving it hollow into a small casket, sizing it to the dimensions of his hunter’s arrows. You chiseled diligently, with a murmuring chest, a low relief depicting scenes of affection, adoration, devotion. You remembered crowns of daisies, buttercups, and pansies merrily laced in wind tossed hair; scenes of lovers tending to a beast of love, the unicorn; secret meetings between sweethearts in the rose gardens‒ sculpting them prettily onto the creamy material, engraving the features as soft and tender as the feeling in your chest. There was a slight jitter in your arms, sure, but the swelling feeling in your chest carried you to an ignorant bliss. You place the casket on the drafting table, and go to lift a large slab of marble to access materials to polish the box. A tick sounds in your arms, you try to ignore it, but you're unable to when the full weight of the marble is slammed onto the ground, carrying your arms with it. Oily strands of black bead from your chest to the ruptured arms at your feet. You bend down‒ expecting it to pull together like threads, but it doesn't. It simply lies like cold flesh on the wood floor. 

"Maître d’Ivoire?"

When you don't respond, looking blankly at your fallen limbs, he tries again‒ closer, soft touch tickling your neck. 

"(Name)?" 

"It's not…" Fright seized your throat. "It's not mending. My Orpheus system. It's not working." There’s a slight tremble in your voice, Rook catches it with ease, steading your shoulders as you rise. 

"Let us search for Roi de Ta Chambre." 

You nodded dumbly. A worn cloth is wrapped around the arms, Rook searches for another cleaner one, before he shrugs off his own coat, wrapping it tightly around you. His smell‒ deep earthen oak and warmed amber on skin‒ is the only thing you take note of until you find yourselves in the hallways of the Ignihyde dorm, which feels stretched with your soaring anxiety, your knees wobbling as that lift each heavy foot to catch up with Rook’s hasty pace. You find yourself stumbling, staggering to the cold wall with your head leaned against it, the floor spinning from under your feet. Rook scent rushes closer as he catches your body, letting you slowly fall to the ground to rest. 

“Let’s rest a minute‒ before you’re falling into my arms again.” He makes you chuckle, you're glad he does as it distracts you from the gravitational feeling of something heaving from your chest, energy‒ or something more primordial from it‒ pouring from that thread of tension drawing from your lungs. You close your eyes for a moment, only lifting its weight and the slight one at the corner of your lips when you feel him pulling the jacket closer to your chest. Normally you would have detested such a fussy action, but you had little energy to thwart his movements or the smile mirroring your own, nor minded the warmth that came with his florid hands, enveloping you in his golden sanctuary. 

A darkened shade sharply colors your vision. You shift your eyes from Rook to the towering figures, your entire body clenching into itself at the sight. 

"Hello my little ram." He says with a crescent smile, arms open like a covetous falcon. Pointed teeth slashed across his face, glimmering sharp sliver in the inky overcast of his face. 

The words dry in your strangled throat. The shimmery, twisting horns archaic and unforgiving as the river Styx, the hair dark as burning coal sticking sharply in the air; the staff coiling around his veiny hands, commanding every movement of his body. Krios. 

“We were looking for you everywhere, young Jupiter.” He retracts his smoothed arms‒ just then, you notice he does not have the same weariness he did when you last saw him. It frightens you. “I can’t say I’m pleased with where you ran off to.” The creases at his nose bridge, and twitch of his eye were almost negligible, but the exact shapes were blackened in your memories as a sign of great vexation despite the hissing lightness of his voice. 

Somehow, you force words out, staccato breaths. “They brought me here. They chose me. I belong here.” 

“More than your family? More than I?” 

“I don’t believe strangers are welcome here on Night Raven’s campus. I would be glad to retrieve an escort to see you out, monsieur.” You see Rook's jaw tighten as he clenches his teeth through a thin smile, raising his cheeks just enough to reach that strain from his lips to his eyes. You shudder as you haul your body off of the floor, aided by Rook’s rushed hands, steadying your legs, your chest, your heart momentarily with his touch. Krios follows your movements carefully, crimson eyes slender and slow through the narrowed slits of his face. You turn to Rook. 

“Do you mind getting Idia for me? I’ll be alright here.” 

“Are you certain? I‒” 

“I am certain.” You curve your lips into a reassuring smile, quelling for a moment, the shaking in your body with all of the energy you could muster. Relief floods you when he nods, his hands stick Ike honey before he speeds off for Idia's room. 

"Why have you come to get me? S.T.Y.X has not come to collect me since Night Raven College called for me, not ever, since your…” you chose your words carefully, remembering the coldness of fallen flesh of the man standing, sprightly, in front of you. “... sabbatical. Why now?” 

"Who was that boy just now?" He trails his gaze to the endless hallways of the dorm, as if to pierce his precise location.

"Won't you answer my question?" 

"Oh sweet child." He curled his taloned hand under your chin, then curving it to your cheek. You thought to pull away, but didn't, instead wrinkling that disgust in your brows. "Look what they've done to you here. So defiant, so soft ." 

"My softness does not negate my abilities." You would treasure it dearly, harbor far from all of this . 

"With what arms, my child? The whole reason I'm here is to fix you. Don't you have some gratitude for the family who took you in and gave you everything ? You have it all‒ fame, immortality, youth‒ you could have power too, you know." 

No , you knew. You knew now. You were ablaze, enlightened by the brilliance of your own life, spun in the heavenly refuge of others. "I was so young. Conflicted. You took advantage of me. All of you. Every single one." The words were spat from your tightening throat. You knew what his presence heralded‒ your body would be brought back to that lab, subject to Krios’ dissections. Though you felt yourself being ensnared by Krios’ gaze, you felt that if you did not cry out this poison in your body, you would turn back‒ resist against the inevitable. You would spare that bitterness from yourself, from Rook. You glowered, a searing violence in your eyes. 

“I don’t want any of it‒ and you rob me of everything in return. My humanity, my memories, my youth- gone. What more must you take from me ? ” You bare your teeth, clenching an animal violence in the blood of your mouth. There’s your humanity. In the brutality, the lament of your eyes. It’s all still here, now. You want to tear him apart. 

His smile never falters, plucking your dismembered arms from the ground. With a lithe hand, he waves his staff, levitating your limbs in the air, before the blot swirls to your shoulders, threading together your body in curdles of jerky ink. You quickly shrug off Rook’s jacket so as not to soil it, allowing Krios to place a hand on your newly mended shoulder, bare to his sharp touch, cold as a cadaver. You lurch yourself from it, reaching down to grab the jacket, warming your shoulders inside of it. 

"Are you done with this tantrum of yours, my dear little ram?" He chided, slinking his hand onto your neck to turn your body towards his. The grief, the fury is slowly dying inside your chilling body, you clutch onto it in your thundering chest to conserve any of its fleeting warmth. You think of the fluttering pulse of Rook's hand, bright and balmy as the sun. "Feels good, does it not? Blaming others for your own shortcomings. Come back to your family now, you won’t survive without us. I'm giving you the change to go quietly before‒ "

"(Name)!"

You inhale sharply, and do not meet Idia's eyes. It would break you. 

"Master Idia, Master Ortho. How good it is to see you two again." A tightened smile.

“Rook is getting the headmage as we speak. You have no jurisdiction here Krios. I don’t know how- ” 

The doctor titters a piping whistle that cuts through Idia’s words. “Doctor’s orders, Master Idia. Right, (Name)?”

You wish you had the organs to vomit, the way he pulled your body close to his side while your name sat on his tongue like a blight‒ the smell of bleach and decay overpowering the warming amber of Rook’s scent. He turns to you, expectantly, a sly tip of his head which says, “ you know what to do .” You want the world to collapse‒ cindering fires, cataclysmic tornados, roaring thunderstorms‒ anything that holds all your rage and grief. But the youth, the heart Rook has resurrected with his careful hands knows the ruthless wrath pooling in Krios’ eyes that adds, try me, do it. Not a threat, a declaration of your power against his. 

“Idia. Ortho. Hear me.” You know the expression on his face without having to turn. Crumpled at the center of his nose bridge, head down. It was like this, always, back at the lab when you would tease him and his brother. 

“ Anything .” Idia answers for the two of them. 

"Watch over him. Over yourselves too."

"(Name)-" His voice breaks. 

“Idia.” You’re able to turn to him now, holding the last drop of humanity in the warmth of your smile. “Take care. It’ll pass.” Then, like blood, you drain it all from your body.

Still, it returns‒ breaking into your veins like a flood. You wanted to clobber yourself from weeks ago, begging Rook not to let go. It was always you, always . You swallow that lump of humanity down your esophagus, deep deep into the belly of the darkness. 

Krios rubs a thumb of your neck, guiding your movements towards the carriage you suddenly find yourself staggering towards. You twist out of his grasp like a feral animal‒ letting the coat fall from your shoulders and snatching the collar of his neck. Your breaths come out in white, steamy gasps, as you think, your gaze gritting against his never ending smile. No words, not even in all of the arcane, ancient languages you knew, were big enough for the hollowness in your heart, and the anger at the one who twisted it open. Hunger, starvation, famine‒ these words were not enough for the cosmic emptiness. You heave, silent, crumbling to the ground, pathetically grasping at the ground near Krios’ feet. The jacket is seized in your hands, rushing to a fragrance of humanity‒ of warmth, of life, of love. it will never be like this again. The frost you feel rising now is especially fracturing, knowing what the warmth from the rapture of the sun felt like on your flesh. It splitters you. This is not a wound your body can mend.

——————————————————

Notes:

Gina Lorenzo Bernini was a famous Italian baroque sculptor, you’ve probably seen some of his works in the past without realizing it‒ his work has been featured in a lot of mythological and Roman Catholic contexts. If you look up his pieces like David, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and Blessed Ludovia Albertoni‒ you’ll see what I mean when I was comparing it with Rook’s over dramatic movements lol. Baroque sculptures are typically very dynamic and have a melodramatic flare‒ but still retain a sense of sturdiness and realism‒ perfect for Rook I think. Very sensual, beautiful‒ and kind of scandalous for its time period. But some art historians argue that he’s even better than Michelangelo so sometimes you gotta be horny in the wrong time to get that sweet sweet fame after your demise ya know. You’d be surprised how many artists fit that statement

Also fun fact about Baroque painting‒ the guy who is most well known for it, Caravaggio (you might have heard the term “Caravaggesque” and chiaroscuro which are attributed to him and the overall baroque movement), killed a guy. Like literally just stabbed a guy to death. And NO ONE talks about it

Magnum opus: Basically the most important piece of artwork an artist produces (most renowned, most popular, etc)

Lutetia (called Lutèce in French) is actually the old name of Paris, meaning mud or swamp in Latin.

I feel like I spoke in riddles with all the analogies I’m using with Rook lol. But I feel like fits the flare of his character while it also grounds itself in reality a bit with its very visceral experiences. Like the whole fruit tree analogy is like Tantalus' thing‒ except the catch is that you’re the thing that holds yourself hostage from claiming the fruit, which I think is a very relatable experience for people who’re are in that young adult stage. 

Ivory chests, or coffret in French (meaning “coffin”- however no connection to death or burial rituals) were used as dowry pieces, or tokens of affection during courtship, as they often depicted scenes of love‒ especially through hunting imagery that was growing in popularity during the medieval period when these were made. Since they were much smaller because of the limited shape and size of ivory, they often held small things like trinkets, jewelry, locks of hair, etc. There’s a pretty famous version of these caskets (“Casket with Scenes of Romances”) that were reproduced multiple times in Paris, the center to ivory carving in the fourteenth century (unfortunately because of the plundering of Africa during the period). There’s a strong intersection between secular and nonsecular imagery during the period because Christianity was growing as a huge patron of the art world‒ so I changed some of the imagery up a little bit. Also, because of the unfortunate sexist and colonialism bit (keep in mind Crusades had just ended like a couple centuries ago too, and contributed significantly to national French identity)- like images of love being equated to the take over of a castle, images of combat, and the hunt and slay of a unicorn. Yes, heteronormative courting rituals have been convoluted with a slight air of violence for centuries folks. Anyways wanted to add more gentle imagery since A) don’t love the sexism and colonialism bit and B) it better fits the overall theme of acceptance and gentleness.

Yeah can you tell I like consumption imagery in my writing? Not at all right 

In “Flowers of Manhood” by Christopher Looby he describes daisies, buttercups, and in particular pansies as terms for "flamboyant gay men", which in the mid 20th century had become a symbol of queerness and queer love. As a queer myself, it's difficult to completely separate my own life from my writings‒ and with a GN MC, I thought I would add that in as a little homage to any of the queer people reading this, since we are so rarely represented in media.