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starculler · 3 years ago

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Whumptober 2021: Day 1

Word Count: 2489

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“Jason.”

Dick turned his head, trying to get a proper look at his brother without adding momentum to his slow, circular spin. His arms had gone alarmingly numb a while ago, pinned above his head, bound at the wrists by the same thick cord he hung from, and bearing the bulk of his weight unless he stretched out onto the tips of his toes. He considered doing so for a moment if for nothing else than to plant Jason firmly in his line of sight, but figured his peace of mind wasn’t quite worth stretching the painful length of bruising up and down his torso.

He’d managed well enough for the … hours? Days? Time had started to blend together after a spectacularly precise his to the side of his head, the blood long-dried and flaking against his cheek and jaw where it had dripped down from his hairline. His lack of broken bones — not for lack of trying if the pain in his sides was anything to go by — were at least a point in his favor. A little luck on his side, though he wouldn’t hold his breath hoping it stayed that way. It was a matter of if not when, as Jason’s own swollen, mottled-purple bruised wrist had proved.

“Jason,” he rasped again, wincing at the dull ache in his throat. “Jason, please,” he said, hating the frustrated edge leaking into his voice, “this isn’t the time for—”

“For what, Dick-face?” Jason snapped, voice echoing and too-loud in the still silence of whatever damp basement they’d been stashed in. “For more of your fucking martyr-hero stick? Maybe another round of trying to bullshit those fuckers into letting us go ‘cause that went so well last time? Maybe —”

Dick frowned as he finally circled back around to facing Jason, still bound at his ankles and wrists and cuffed to the leg of what might have been an old, rusted water heater or an antique stove after he’d slipped his restraints once already. He’d been caught only because he’d tried to help Dick. Jason’s next attempt had been a sore point since.

“Just,” Jason snarled, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say. “Just keep your useless trap shut unless there’s an actual idea rolling around in that empty fuckin’ head of yours.”

Thick, acrid anger burned through Dick’s chest and bubbled, useless, in his throat. His head throbbed, the steady drumbeat in his skull he’d felt since the hit that might as well have dissolved his concept of time in this godforsaken place growing to a much less negligible roar. He breathed through the pain and anger and the sudden nausea roiling in his stomach, the same slow, measured breaths Bruce had taught him as a kid. It would only do so much, but better that, he figured, than either letting his mouth run away from him or throwing up. Again.

“Jason,” he tried again once he’d sorted through the worst of what he felt, and wondered if he’d wind up with the name tattooed to his tongue from how much he’d repeated it. Had he ever used Jason’s name so often before now?

“Got anything new to say?” Dick pressed his lips into a thin, grim line and remained silent. Jason sneered. “Then shut the fuck up already.”

Dick sighed. He tried to shift, numb, prickling fingers wrapping clumsily around the cord keeping him suspended, and pulled to ease some of the pull on his shoulders only to slip. He hissed through clenched teeth, scrambling to stretch onto his toes and ignoring the ache along his sides and the burn in his back. There were more than bruises there, he knew — he’d screamed himself hoarse as they’d worked him over — but had refused to give it much thought beyond a brief acknowledgment of the pain. He stayed on his toes just long enough to breathe through what he’d done before easing off, slow and careful as he let his arms take the brunt of his weight again.

Jason’s head ducked, glaring once more at the cold, cement floor the second Dick’s gaze focused back on him. Some distant, probably slightly hysterical part of him wanted to laugh at that glimpse of concern he’d caught in his brother’s eyes. The anger for him rather than directed at him. It was nice, in a way, to know Jason cared — to be shown, however unwillingly. They had never really been close: Dick too distant to a brother he hadn’t wanted before Jason’s death, and too distracted after he’d come back to life and mellowed out enough to really come back to the family. It was nice, but unhelpful.

More than anything, Dick needed the ruthlessness the Red Hood was known for. He needed the man able, if not willing, to do what was needed for the sake of a plan. Not that Dick’s plan was much of one. He understood Jason’s anger in that regard. If anyone had told Dick to willingly leave one of his family in danger, he would have sucker-punched them in the face or worse. But he was the more injured of the two, strung up and beat and barely coherent most of the time because he’d spent his time running his mouth to keep their captors’ focus on him rather than on his brother.

Close or not, Dick had decided years ago that he’d do what he could to keep his family safe. If that meant taking a beating to spare someone else, then so be it. Even if it really fucking sucked.

“Jason,” he tried again, and rushed to talk when Jason’s head snapped up, glaring and ready to shout over him if need be. “No, shut up,” Dick hissed, gratified when Jason grimaced, fuming but silent. “I’m not telling you to abandon me here.” He was, they both knew he was, but there was no need to say it out loud. Their captors were playing with them right now, hoping to make Jason talk by hurting Dick. The chances of Dick dying after Jason was gone, though, were high. Still… “You’re not abandoning me. You’re getting help. We need help. Even if you somehow managed to get me down with a broken wrist, I don’t think I could walk out of here on my own and, again, you have a broken wrist. There’s just no way you’re getting me out of here alone.

“No,” he snapped when Jason moved to argue. “We’re good, can’t do what we do if we weren’t, but we’re only human.” Dick sucked in a single shaky breath and forced a grin that further split his lower lip. “I know you’ll come back for me, you and B and anyone else you can get your hands on. But first, you need to get out of here, find out where we are, and make the call. Got it?”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Jason growled, but there was no real heat to it. His shoulder had slumped, face twisted into a frown, and resignation visible in every line of his body. Dick was right and he knew it. “You’re not dyin’ here Dick-face,” he said, sharp and unhappy.

“I’m not,” Dick agreed despite the knots his stomach tied itself into.

Jason nodded, slow, and got to work getting free. The light across the room was too dim for Dick to see clearly — little more than the outline of Jason’s body and a few details catching the light visible, but he was enough of an escape artist himself to guess what Jason was doing. It would have been easier, faster, if they’d been caught as Red Hood and Nightwing instead of Jason Todd and Dick Grayson, but not impossible. All of them tended to carry at least some basic supplies on their person: lock picks, multi-purpose tools, a knife or two.

Dick held his breath while Jason worked, praying they hadn’t wasted too much time arguing and hesitating, and let it out all in a rush when he heard the distinct click of a cuff unlocking. He watched Jason stand, gingerly checking his fractured wrist and hissing when his fingers brushed it. Dick flashed him a smile, smaller this time but no less full of the same false confidence he’d injected into his earlier grin. And just as see-through. Jason frowned, nodded once, and stalked to the room’s only exit. After a brief moment spent listening for people on the other side and another to pick the lock, Jason strode through, silent as a shadow despite his bulk, and left Dick alone in the silence and near darkness.

Without another person there to occupy him, despite how neither had spoken much beyond brief check-ins and arguing about escape plans, time grew fuzzy. It seemed to slip through metaphorical fingers, no way to tell how long it had been since Jason had slipped out. The only relief was the lack of sound — no shouting, running, storming the basement, or anything else that might have indicated that Jason had been caught.

It was a relief.

It was a relief, until it wasn’t.

-- -- -- -- -- -- --

Jason couldn’t breathe.

The stale air cycling through his helmet tasted sour, made worse by the mingling damp, mold and the thick, coppery stench of blood. A fine tremor started in his hand, his white-knuckled grip on his pistol tightening until it threatened to either crack the grip or snap his fingers. He breathed in the deep, meditative breaths they all tended to use, but it did little to lessen the tightness in his chest and even less to banish the red haze creeping in at the edges of his vision.

A hand settled on his back under his jacket and pressed into the sweat-damp sweater he’d been wearing since they’d been caught, small but steadying. Firm and warm. A comfort and a warning bundled together in that special way only Cass managed. Calm, it seemed to say, but he could feel the way it shook, just slight enough that if he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been trying to focus on anything else but what lay in front of him. He swallowed, wanting to gag on the taste in his mouth. Wanting to storm out of this stupid cellar and press the muzzle of his gun to the temple of the nearest idiot and pull the trigger.

He wanted to crawl out of his skin. Crawl back in his grave. Be anyone or anywhere else because then, at least, this wouldn’t be his fault. He wanted to go back in time and strangle his brother for his idiotic ideas and too-good-self-sacrificial bullshit and find a way to switch places. Let Jason be the one on the floor because at least he’d already died. He’d lived the torture, the hopelessness, the last trembling breath before the explosion and the brief, concussive burn, so hot he’d felt cold. That, too, had been his fault.

It was funny, just a little, in an odd, hysteric kind of way.

He didn’t laugh. Didn’t cry. Didn’t move until Cassandra took him by the wrist and pulled him back up the stairs and out of the basement. His broken wrist throbbed, braced and in a sling because he’d refused anything more time consuming in lieu of going back personally with the others. It had taken him over an hour to find his way out of the maze of a hotel their captors had holed up in — some old place half fallen over with more rotted wood than intact some few miles outside of town — and another one and a half to find another living person with a cellphone.

Cass and Stephanie had found him some time after he called, his jacket, helmet, and guns in hand despite how they told him they were supposed to take him back to the cave so Alfred could check him over. Bruce, Tim, the demon brat, and Duke had gone after Dick. The girls hadn’t needed much convincing at all to take him there too once they’d at least stabilized his wrist and gotten him half-dressed in his Red Hood gear.

Stephanie and Duke were on the main floor, tense but trying to look casual where they leaned against moth-eaten, damaged furniture. Cass pulled him in their direction and past, out the door and into the cool, night air. Jason breathed it in with numb relief. He nearly jumped when another smaller hand touched his back, a brief pat before pulling away, and he looked to find Stephanie on his right and Duke on her other side.

“B commed,” she said, subdued and strained. “They made it to the hospital and N’s been taken in for surgery.” Her breath hitched, voice cracking toward the end. “They’re not sure if he’ll …”

“He will,” Jason rasped. “If there’s one thing I know,” he said, voice noticeably thick even through his helmet’s modulation, “it’s that luck fucking loves him. ‘S not about to run out any time soon.”

That pulled a startled laugh out of all three of them, and Jason’s lips pulled into an unwilling grin despite himself. He forced himself to breathe in sweet, fresh air and let some of the tension in his body drain out on the exhale. Dick would be fine, he told himself. The day Dick Grayson died without a single gray hair on his head was the day hell froze over, even if Jason had to drag him back to life kicking and screaming to make that true.

“I think we should make him a cake, for when he gets back,” Stephanie said, voice pitched up in a mostly poor attempt to cheer herself and them up. Duke nodded, about to say something when Cass interrupted with a cheerful chirp of:

“Two cakes.”

“Four,” Duke doubled to the girls’ obvious delight.

Jason groaned, tipping his head back dramatically and drawled, “None of you hellions are touching A’s goddamn kitchen. I’m not sitting through gross, obscure recipes for a week just ‘cause you decided to try playing baker.”

“I can bake!” Stephanie groused, and Jason laughed.

“You can go to a bakery,” Jason shot back. Stephanie huffed and Duke clapped her on the back while Cass muffled a small laugh of her own behind her hand.

Jason breathed in and finally holstered his gun as they reached the three bikes the trio had ridden in on. Dick would be okay, he told himself again, and for now he could do this. Play nice. Be a big brother. He owed that much, at least.

“I’ll bake,” Jason said giving the three a look before they hopped on their bikes, “and you can help.” He rolled his eyes behind his helmet as one cheer and two laughs rang out, then pulled himself carefully onto the back of Cass’ bike as she revved the engine, waiting for him to grab onto her so they could get back home.

#whumptober2021 #no.1 #bound #batman #dick grayson #jason todd #fic #injury #blood #my fanfic

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fandomlurker · 4 years ago

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A Ponderous Rewatch: Opportunity Knox and Cameo

We’re treated to something a bit special this episode! No, not the art and animation quality, as that’s…kinda weak this time. Or maybe I should say Brain is drawn and animated kinda nightmarishly in a lot of parts? Well, you’ll see.

No, the special thing about this episode is that it’s written by Tom Minton, the writer at Warner Brothers who was the original inspiration for The Brain! The general idea for Pinky and the Brain as characters and as a show came from Tom Ruegger having an office close by to Tom Minton and Eddie Fitzgerald, two writers and storyboard artists who he would often hear laughing and joking around together but usually couldn’t make out what exactly they were saying. Minton usually spoke low and quietly and was more introverted, while Fitzgerald was much more outgoing and loud…basically already like a cartoon come to life (Eddie actually did exclaim things like ‘Narf’ occasionally in reality, which was an aspect that was added to and exaggerated in Pinky’s character). The fact that these two guys who were viewed as total opposites by their colleagues were good friends and spent so much time working together in secret lead to everyone joking that they were secretly trying to take over the world.

That isn’t to say that Pinky and Brain are 100% cartoon copies of Eddie and Tom—our mouse duo definitely veered off into their own distinct personalities very quickly—but the basic bones of their characters came from these two real life men. That makes me wonder about how surreal it must have been for Tom Minton to write for episodes starring Pinky and the Brain. He only did so four times in Animaniacs (and Eddie Fitzgerald never directly worked on Animaniacs or Pinky and the Brain, to my knowledge).

In any case, let’s move on to the actual episode.

We open to a multitude of bubbling beakers of mysterious liquids and one scientist working alone at night in the Acme Labs. She sneezes a few times, and then exclaims that she’s only a few steps away from curing the common cold.

…Man, Acme Labs is a total shitshow when it comes to their work, aren’t they? In addition to all the blatantly cruel experiments on animals that they do, just look at how lax this scientist is about lab safety. I’ll give her props for at least wearing her lab coat properly and tying her long hair up, which is something most media usually gets wrong. The fact that she’s doing this medical experiment while not wearing gloves or proper eye protection or a mask is very troubling. Not to mention that she’s doing all this while being very sick, if her violent sneezes are anything to go by.

Hmm, that cage is looking suspiciously empty.

Well, well! Looks like our mousey duo is up to something.

“Ahehehehe, oh this is gonna be great, Brain! Narf!”

“Quiet, Pinky!”

OH LORD, SHE JUST CHUGS IT HERSELF! Lady, PLEASE! The fact that this “cure” is piss-coloured only makes it worse.

Sweetie, I think this needs more peer-reviewed, double-blind tests before you can truthfully say that you’ve made a cure for the common cold. You have no proper safety gear on and you’re doing this experiment all alone at night with no one to check up on you.

Oh no. Boys, what are you doing?

So they catapult some powdery substance on her and she goes into a more violent sneezing fit than before. She leaves the room to go “back to the drawing board”, but honestly I’m hoping that she just goes home and isolates herself for a while.

“Success, Pinky!”

“Egad, Brain, what is this stuff?!”

“A new strain of pollen I created myself, Pinky. It causes a temporary but uncontrollable fit of allergic sneezing in man.”

Pinky looks very disturbed by this (although I suppose it doesn’t help that Brain has that very smug and devious look on his face) until Brain says that the effect is temporary. It’s a nice little detail that shows us approximately where Pinky’s lines of morality are. Brain makes his own strain of pollen to cause humans to have severe sneezing fits? That’s amazing but horrifying! Oh, it’s only temporary? Well okay, then. It’s fine if it doesn’t cause any lasting harm.

“No human is immune.”

AAAAAAHHHHHHH! Holy fuck, show, don’t give me a jumpscare like that!

“Do you realize what we will do with this pollen, Pinky?”

“Umm… Open a boutique?”

GAH! I told you to stop doing that! Seriously, what’s up with the way Brain’s draw in this episode?

“Yes, that’s it. We’ll open a boutique and sell ladies’ clothing and pollen.”

“Egad, Brain, what fun! I like this idea, I do! Hehehahahaha!~”

Of course he would. Of course he’d like working in a more domestic setting and selling ladies’ clothing.

…Say, now that I think of it, I think this might be the first time we get a hint as to Pinky’s love of what’s stereotypically thought of as women’s clothing. Hmm.

BONK!

“Focus, Pinky, FOCUS!”

Brain, sweetie, not everyone goes into tunnel-visioned hyperfocus like you do.

“We shall do no less than go to Fort Knox, Kentucky: keeper of the nation’s gold supply. There, we will expose the guards to our pollen…”

Despite the general awkwardness of the animation this episode, I like the way Brain is drawn here from over the shoulder. Very nice work.

Also…”our” pollen? Brain, you made that yourself. I guess this is just another example of Brain subconsciously including Pinky in everything.

“…and while they’re sneezing uncontrollably, we’ll move into the vault and take the gold!”

Brain’s plan blueprints are such a treat. Gold! Gold! Gold!

“For he who controls this nation’s capital, controls the nation!”

Okay, this close-up is a little better.

“Off to Fort Knox!”

“Oh! Wait! But isn’t the nation’s capital in Washington, DC?”

BONK!

“Capital as in money, Pinky!”

Oh come on now, Brain. It was an easy mistake to make. Also “capital” in this instance can mean more than money if you want to get semantic about it.

Brain grabs Pinky’s tail to drag him away again. It’s a wonder that Pinky’s tail isn’t as kinked up and injured as Brain’s is by now.

Ooo, improvised tools time!

“But how are we gonna get to Fort Knox, Brain?”

“We’ll simply borrow one of the lab’s technological resources:”

“The minivan!”

Pinky, are you mildly swooning over Brain acquiring a minivan? I…

This does bring up a point I wanted to make, though. Sometimes fans will question why Pinky and Brain stay at Acme Labs despite being put through so much inhumane and humiliating bullshit. While it’s true that Brain doesn’t much like the experiments he’s subjected to (Pinky is…another story entirely), I’m pretty sure he keeps the labs as his home because it’s incredibly convenient for his world domination plans. These are ACME labs, after all, and regardless of how terrible the experiments are, Acme has access to just about every bit of technology in the Warner Brothers cartoon universe. Brain can find or order whatever parts he needs for his latest world domination plan whenever he wants, and no human bats an eye at mysterious bits and bobs showing up because, well, it’s Acme. Acme is in the business of doing absolutely everything. No matter what daytime tortures Brain goes through, the lab is an incredible asset to him, and he’d be foolish to give that up.

Hello again, Warner siblings! I hope you’re having fun tonight.

That’s an awfully tiny sack of pollen to take for this trip…

“Won’t we get in trouble, Brain?”

“’Get in trouble’? Pinky, we’re going to take over the world!”

I just like the tiny silhouettes in this screencap.

“Besides, we’ll have the van back here by 8 am.”

“Oh! All right, then!”

[Quickly googles how long it would take to drive from Burbank California to Fort Knox]

…Are you sure about that, Brain? Are you really, positively sure?

Oh my goodness, a little winch and pulley system! That’s a little convoluted, but it’s adorable.

“Oi! Nice threads, Brain! But, err, why the disguise?”

“If we are to succeed in our mission, I must pass for an average, non-descript motorist, Pinky.”

I agree, Pinky. Brain always looks good in a suit.

Also he’s on a literal soap box, holy shit.

“So while we’re driving, call me Mr. Perkins.”

A trillby?!? Put it back! Putitbackputitbackputitback!

“Say no more! Brilliant, Brain!”

“Mr. Perkins.”

Oh no, he’s threatening to punch the audience now!

“Ooo, right, right. Narf! Heh, Mr. Per-kins.~”

“Pinky, start your engine!”

So Pinky tugs on a rope tied to the car keys to start the minivan, and I bet we can all already tell that he’s going to be doing most of the hard work for this roadtrip.

“Now depress the brake!”

I half expected a joke here where Pinky would say depressing things to the brake, but that didn’t happen. It’s just as well, I suppose. Pinky’s not usually the type to be mean to anyone or anything.

Instead, he pushes himself into the brake.

This made me curious about how strong real mice are. According to this scientific article, the average mouse can lift approximately 70 g in weight.That’s not a lot compared to us humans, of course, but seeing as the average weight of the common house mouse is 19 g (and common wood mice are on average 23 g), that’s really impressive! Still, for Pinky to be able to depress the brake is quite a feat that’s worlds beyond what the average real-life mouse can do.

Yes, yes, I know. It’s all cartoon logic and physics. That’s not going to stop me from having the headcanon that Pinky and the Brain have both been modified so much by Acme Labs that in addition to becoming sapient and intelligent, they’re basically little mouse superheroes in strength, too.

“Yes! Now I’ll shift the transmission into gear and…you give it the gas!”

Man, Pinky just slams his entire body onto the gas pedal with all his mousey might! You can hear him physically strain against it. Well done, Mr. Paulsen!

“Now Pinky, let us, in the vernacular, ‘take this hog out on the road and see who’s boss’!”

Oh lord, Brain’s on a slight power trip just from being able to drive a vehicle. If he ever does rule over the world one day, I fear he may explode from the sheer ego-high of it.

Anyway, on the way to Fort Knox they get stuck behind a rather slow transport truck. Well, Brain can’t have that! He’s got to get back to the lab by 8 am after all!

“Pinky! Prepare to pass a slow-moving vehicle!”

“Righty-o, Brain!”

Again, Pinky, I’m pretty sure you really aren’t supposed to stick your ass and chest out while saluting. You’re supposed to keep your posture straight.

…What am I saying? Pinky can’t do anything straight.

“Call me Mr. Perkins! Activate left turn indicator now.”

Aww, a little hop!~

Unfortunately it’s the wrong lever.

“…Let’s try that again, Pinky.”

“Narf! Wrong switch.”

He sits down to think and of course he gets it right that way.

Anyone else enjoying a lesson on how to drive from Pinky and the Brain? No? Just me? I mean, I already know how, but this is super cute.

“Exemplary work, Pinky!”

Brain, he just…he just pulled a switch. By accident. The fact that he’s so sincere about complimenting him for this is very cute but also very odd. I guess Brain’s in a good mood tonight.

“But we’re slowing down. Quickly, step on the gas!”

“Gas, check!”

Pinky, no!

Oh lord, he just lets himself fall directly on the gas pedal. You okay there, dude?

“Maintain pedal pressure, Pinky!”

I don’t think he has much of a choice, Brain.

So they get beside the freight truck and the driver of it picks up his CB radio mic.

“Hey, breaker breaker one nine, this here’s Big Red. Eh…what’s your handle, good buddy? Over.”

“The name’s Perkins. MISTER Perkins. Just an average, non-descript motorist.”

Wh—Why is there a CB radio installed in the Acme Lab minivan?

Pinky chooses this moment to lift himself off the gas pedal and then jump back on it in a weirdly showy, semi-acrobatic way. The first screencap has the tip of his tail almost in the shape of a heart, so I had to include it.

Our duo pass by the freight truck. Needless to say, the truck driver is still pretty rattled by his run-in with “Mr. Perkins”.

“I gotta quit eatin’ them double onion chili dogs!…”

Usually people just run with it on this show, but this is one of those rare moments where a human being doesn’t inexplicably fall for one of Brain’s horrible human disguises.

The minivan’s grill looks like teeth here and it’s almost menacing.

Uh oh, Brain’s getting dozy.

“Pinky…I’m in need of some music to keep myself raptly alert. And use the cruise control this time so we don’t lose speed!”

I don’t know why I’m so charmed by Pinky pressing the cruise control button like this, but it’s very cute.

“Cruise control on, Br—aaaerr—umm, Mr. Perkins!”

He is trying his best. :3c

“[yawn] Stellar, Pinky. Now see if you can locate a local radio station frequency.”

“Narf! Wrong knob…”

Smacking the hell out of the right knob make the radio explode into a loud yet incredibly mild generic rock tune. I’m surprised Pinky’s so alarmed. I wonder if Brain—

JEEZUS FUCK! You gotta stop giving me a heart attack with these sudden messed up close-ups of Brain, episode!

“Turn off the radio, Pinky!”

“Heeey! This knob’s loose!”

Aaaand there he goes.

“Oohoo ahaha! What’d’ya know? The lighter works!”

I wonder if Pinky knows what that’s actually for at this point, considering his utter disdain for smoking later in the spin-off?

“The radio, Pinky!”

“Ooo, right. Almost forgot!”

Uh oh.

“Whew. Suddenly I feel downright feverish, I do…”

Pinky has become a Charmander, and he’s not happy about it.

So he’s screaming and shouting his verbal tics all over the place and what’s Brain’s reaction?

“There’s no need for you to entertain me personally, Pinky. I’m quite awake now.”

BRAIN! You wipe that smug smile off your face right now, you little jerk! I know Pinky will be okay because he always is, but still.

One screen wipe later…

“Kentucky, Pinky! We made it!”

“All right, Brain!”

“Mister PERKINS!”

Brain, I think Pinky’s just not into this roleplay tonight. Or it might be your trillby. Lose the damn trillby.

“Fort Knox is mere miles away. Nothing can stop us now!”

Well, looks like you jinxed yourself.

I’ve got no love for cops, but his “what the fuck” expression here is choice.

“Good evening, officer. Was I exceeding the speed limit?”

“By about a hundred miles an hour.”

Oh, is that all? They’d need to be over by, like, a thousand or so miles an hour to make as good of a time as they did getting here.

Maybe this guy is going to arrest them for breaking the laws of time and space.

“I’m sorry, y’see—“

Shining a flashlight directly into your eyes? Yup, this is definitely a cop.

“I’m Mr. Perkins, an average, non-descript—“

“Can I see your license and registration, please?”

And then Pinky immediately interrupts the shakedown with a happy, matter-of-fact “We don’t have any! Zort! :D” and now my mind wanders off into let’s-overanalyze-the-shit-out-of-this-joke-scene territory because… Look at this. A cop pulls over a vehicle from Acme Labs doing about a hundred miles over the speed limit and finds Brain, a mouse in a suit trying to pass as a human driver. Then Pinky, who is dressed in no such disguise because why would Brain ever think of an obviously important detail ever in one of his plans, pops up to say that they don’t have a driver’s license.

…So what does this scene look like at this point from the cop’s perspective? Besides the very rare outlier like the truck driver from before, humans usually take Brain’s word for it that he’s also human, no matter how shoddy his disguise is. There are a few possibilities here, and I honestly can’t decide which is funniest:

1. The cop can see through Brain’s poor disguise just like the truck driver from earlier can, and knows that these are actually two mice that have stolen a truck and have been speeding down the highway with it.

2. The cop thinks Brain is a very odd-looking human without a driver’s license who’s been driving down the highway at insane speeds with his loose pet talking mouse by his side.

3. The cop believes that Brain really is an odd-looking human who has no license and has been wildly speeding down the highway and also there’s an equally odd-looking human man with him who is stark naked for some mysterious reason.

I’ll let you decide which one is the most likely canon scenario as we continue as Brain tries to clear up this scenario.

“If you must know, we are two lab mice out to control the world by seizing its gold assets. But when we assume power, rest assured our budget will result in substantial new funding for law enforcement.”

…

Leave it to Brain to truthfully spell out his global domination intentions for no good reason and then lie his little mousey ass off to try and bribe his way out of going to jail.

Also, again, it’s “when we assume power” and not “when I assume power”. Hmm.

“…Oh.”

“Bwuhyuube… Be--best be on your way, then.”

“Thank you, officer.”

I’d say I was surprised that white privilege extends even to white lab mice here but…that would be a lie.

“Oh man, I do miss them witless teenage speed demons…”

So they finally make it to Fort Knox.

…And I guess the Warner siblings do, too!

The two mice have parked on a hill overlooking their target and gosh Brain, you’re looking extra pudgy here.

“It’s time to make our move, Pinky.”

Judging by the look on his face here, I think Pinky just noticed how thicc Brain’s behind has suddenly gotten.

Nevertheless, they begin their pollen assault on the guards.

Finally, the moment has arrived!

Brain’s head is shaped like a football and is almost as wide as Pinky is tall here, but besides that this is a cool shot.

This bit was also used in the spin-off’s theme for some reason, but now it will forever remind me of the absolute chaotic laughter that erupted when I got some friends to sit down and watch an episode of PatB. The stream decided to stop on this specific shot for buffering and they all just lost it. Most of the reaction was through voice on Discord, but luckily there were some friends using text chat too:

I live for moments like these when we’re streaming shows and movies.

“Egad! This is even better than a Ducktales episode, Brain!”

That’s pretty high praise, Pinky. I love the shadowing done on him here as well.

“Pinky… Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

“Wha—I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a career? Oof, it’s all too much for me!”

Pinky did…did you see all this gold and immediately begin envisioning yourself using the money to settle down and start a family?!? And so far in this series you aren’t dating anyone and you probably don’t even know anyone besides Brain and…

Okay, listen, I know it’s established later on that Pinky has wishes and daydreams about having a very domestic life, culminating in that one “Somewhere That’s Green” parody fantasy where he and Brain live together like a 50s couple in the Elmyra spin-off but… But…!

Well, you’ll kind of get a family along with your world domination “career” in a few years, Pinky. It’s probably not going to be quite how you envisioned it, though.

“The gold, Pinky! It’s all ours. Let’s move it out!”

Umm…

“One…two…three…and lift!”

I just realized that out of context the poses and faces in this screencap could look, uhh, questionable. But will that stop me from sharing it? No.

“I believe my plan has a…fatal flaw…”

About 27.4 pounds worth of a fatal flaw. You two might have super strength in comparison to other mice, but it looks like you both have a hard limit.

“I am in intense pain, Pinky.”

“Ditto, Brain. Zort!”

Well, okay, I guess it’s good that you are both cartoons, then. You boys should be able to shrug this off pretty quickly, especially Pinky.

OH GOD!

Is this what all those nightmarish close-ups of Brain were preparing me for?!?

“Fear not, Pinky, for the unwieldy atomic weight of gold will not thwart us tomorrow night.”

“Why? What are we doing tomorrow night, Brain?”

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky… Try to take over the world!”

You know, most cartoons would settle for them just being covered in bandages. Not Animaniacs, though. In Animaniacs were have to know that their removal from under the gold bar was so difficult and painful that fur was pulled out and they were left with bare, raw patches of skin. T-thanks, Warner Brothers?

Let’s end with a somewhat longer cameo appearance, as I suspect at this point Tumblr will have another fit if I try to combine two full episodes again.

The very next episode of Animaniacs has a skit called Hercule Yakko, which is a vague parody of Hercule Poirot mysteries. We get a good handful of cameos from the stars of other Animaniacs skits as passengers on a luxury cruise boat on the Nile.

The basic premise is that the Marita, one of the Hip Hippos, awakens in the middle of the night to find her comically large diamond necklace missing. The Warner siblings are a detective team who happen to also be onboard the ship and offer to help the hippo couple find it.

Before you ask, yes, this is the same episode as the infamous “fingerprints” joke.

Eventually the Warner siblings begin to go around knocking on the doors of the other passengers’ rooms to ask questions. They come across Slappy Squirrel first, who knows nothing about the missing diamond and just wants to be left alone to sleep. Then they meet Minerva Mink and, well, you can guess how that went. Then Yakko knocks on the last door.

“YES?”

Smol.

Look at them in their matching lederhosen! That’s absolutely adorable. Bravo to whichever of the mice had the idea for these “disguises”.

“Did you steal a big diamond?”

“No. We are Swiss hikers on holiday.”

Okay so maybe I’ll deduct a few points for wearing lederhosen, which is more associated with Bavaria and Germany, but claiming to be Swiss. Not that people in Switzerland didn’t also wear it, but you’d probably want to make your cover story as unsuspicious as possible, right? And that’s not even going into the idea of wearing a garment made from leather in hot, hot Egypt. These mice must be drenched in sweat…

“Look at me, Brain! I’m Heidi! Yodelehe-NARF!~”

Well at least someone in this duo is trying his best to reference things from Switzerland.

…Brain is the one that fucked up the lederhosen cultural background thing, isn’t he? Goddammit, Brain.

He just bonks the hell outta Pinky and silently slams the door in Yakko’s face.

After briefly talking with Marita, Yakko exclaims that he knows where the diamond is and asks that everyone assemble together in the state room. And so they do!

Aww, they’re sharing a chair because they are so, so tiny. :3c

“You’re probably all wondering why I called you here!”

“To reveal the thief?!?” says everyone in unison.

Minerva, you’re looking kind of weird in that second pic.

“No. It’s because you can’t play charades with three people.”

“That’s it! I’m goin’ back to bed.”

“So am I. I didn’t take the diamond!”

Man, Minerva really got a raw deal in the 90s. She only has two episode skits of her own and makes a few tiny cameos elsewhere, like in this one. I get that she was put on the back-burner as a character because her skits were considered “too suggestive”—and to be honest they were a bit over the top—but there are certainly ways that you can write a character who uses their sex appeal for comedic effect without it being disrespectful. It’s a shame they never tried to tweak the tone of her episodes just a tad.

But anyway, mice!

Brain is looking at Minerva with…worry? Concern? Confusion? Which is a very atypical reaction to Minerva. Gee, I wonder why.

Pinky is Looking Respectfully.

I’m never going to get over how cute they look in these outfits.

“I also am innocent.”

“Umm… I may have done it! I walk in my sleep, you know.”

Pinky, sweetie, I know you’re trying in your own odd little way to help but there’s no way you’d be able to carry a diamond of that size.

BONK!

This is the very last clear shot that the mice are in and it’s not very significant but I liked the angle of it.

Oh, you’re asking who took the diamond? No one did. The diamond was lodged in Marita’s butt fat the entire time. It’s the typical style of “humour” from skits with the Hip Hippos. Now you all know why no one is clamouring for their return in the reboot.

That’s it for this post, though. I should have the next episode that I promised would go with this one up in a day or two.

See you next time, folks, when we go off to the races!

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #Opportunity Knox

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grayhouse3 · 4 years ago

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SJTR is my villain origin story

So I finished Stalking Jack the Ripper.

Originally I told myself that I was going to just stick it out and read the next one (“Oh, it’s about vampires and Dracula. It’s probably more fun. You can forget all about the pain this one inflicted on you"). No. I got 12% of the way through and had to DNF. So here are my messily compiled thoughts on the book, basically expanded from the last post. Honestly, kind of feel free knowing I won’t be writing more about this series. (Also I am adding some TWs down below but don't know if I am doing them right!)

More on the exoticism, weirdness with Audrey Rose's Indian mother, and the British Empire:

In chapter 14, we read, "Dark strands of hair were piled atop my head, my eyes more mysterious somehow with the dark liner, and my lips were the bright crimson of freshly spilled blood … I thought of my mother and the saris she’d brought me to wear from Grandmama’s homeland. I felt just as stunning now as I did then, and the memory warmed me.” I am still trying to figure out why Maniscalco made Audrey Rose mixed race. Why is Audrey Rose’s grandmother from India? Literally, what did it add to the story? Was it nothing more than just a cute lil quirky fun character trait to her? I don’t think I missed any key moments where there were important conversations about race, imperialism, British occupation, etc., mostly because Audrey Rose’s father (a big fancy rich lord) is a white man and because Audrey Rose is white-passing. I can’t recall any moments in the book where she faces the realities/consequences of being a socially mobile POC WOMAN in LONDON IN THE 1880s. Honestly, if someone else can point out a passage I glossed over or explain some nuance I missed I would actually really appreciate it, because this drove me CRAZY.

(Audrey Rose and her brother also go visit a circus in town in chapter 15; of course these events existed purely for England/colonizing countries to exercise and display their power and to exoticize/exploit the communities/cultures that they came into contact with. Audrey Rose sees silks, beads, etc. that remind her of her grandmother’s saris, smells the foods of her family’s “homeland,” etc. Also in the same chapter there’s this great scene where her brother is describing their mother and father’s marriage: “Grandmama told me she’d refused him twenty times just for fun,” Nathaniel replied. “Said he squirmed like a cobra in a basket. That’s how she knew he was in love.” Uhhh … Is that supposed to be romantic?)

On the feminism stuff:

I am too *gestures vaguely* to write much more on this. Yeah, it’s heavy-handed. Yeah, it’s cringey. But at the end of the day, it’s not really that harmful, I guess. Here’s just a fun sampling of some of my favorite lines from the book:A few of my favorite bites from the book:

***“close-minded society” (chapter 21) Okay

***"Why turn a murderer of women into front-page news?” (chapter 15) Bro do you know how the media works

***"But what of her [mother’s] insistence that I could be both strong and beautiful? Surely Father had to be wrong.” (chapter 21) Yes girl you are strong and beautiful!

***"There would be no skirts or bustles to wrangle with anymore. I was through with things confining me” (chapter 22) Ugh down with corsets just another tool of the patriarchy amirite

On the violence against women, weird classism, and stuff about prostitution:

I was bound to be uncomfortable about a lot of this because I have weird feelings about true crime stuff, and this is historical fiction set around the Jack the Ripper murders. It was going to go sour somewhere.

Consistently Audrey Rose wants to be sympathetic, but is unable to connect all the parts of this situation together: she struggles to imagine the women (very real-life victims) beyond their lives of prostitution, poverty, squalor. When she does, we see something like this: "The women he murdered did matter ... They were daughters and wives and mothers and sisters” (chapter 28). Oftentimes she wishes she could continue to cut cadavers open in peace (women in science!) without having to think about how those cadavers came to be on her examination table: “I needed to get away from those women and their tragic lives before my emotions got the better of me” (chapter 25). Perhaps Maniscalco deserves more credit here, and perhaps I’m just being a bitch, because Audrey Rose is a very privileged girl and her actions and thoughts make that clear. It’s just that the conclusions she comes to in the name of feminism, justice, etc. weren’t at all satisfying to me.

Also: OH MY GOD. Oh my god. There is this one moment that is BRANDED AGAINST THE GRAY MATTER OF MY BRAIN FOREVER and I will never forget it. At one point, Audrey Rose and love interest Thomas decide the best thing they can do is go out and—yes—stalk Jack the Ripper. To do this, they know they need to “blend in” with the crowds in East End. So … like … cosplaying as poor people? Audrey Rose manages to find and wear the dress of ONE OF THE MURDER VICTIMS (long story short her medical doctor uncle was in a relationship with this woman and when she died he acquired her worldly possessions). It’s like, so fucked up, I can’t even describe my reaction when I read it. In chapter 25 we read, "The dress was a little too old, a little too ragged, a bit too big. If I were to wear this ghastly dress out, I’d look as if I belonged in the East End, begging for work to feed my addictions … It was absolutely perfect.” Oh my god. And THAT’S NOT EVEN THE WORST PART. While they’re “stalking Jack the Ripper” on this incredibly stupid mission, the two main characters just … make out in an alley. Like, okay. People are being murdered and you’re wearing a dead woman’s dress and you suspect your father of being guilty, but yeah, that kind of stuff makes us all a little horny. Super relatable. Absolutely no concept of reality or consequences or anything at all.

Another random note on class: I noticed the only time Maniscalco writes in dialects/accents, she’s writing seedy/working-class characters. Not saying this is a problem unique to Maniscalco’s writing by a longshot, but ... something to think on. (I think it’s ingrained in a lot of author’s writing habits/minds at this point.)

Weird stuff about the dad, the brother, and what justice means to Audrey Rose:

I had to add a whole new highlighting color for this stuff!

Any growth Audrey Rose might’ve shown over the course of the novel—anything about how these women mattered, and how they deserved justice as any “highborn” individual might, simply by dint of being humans—goes away when she and Thomas come to the conclusion that the Ripper murders must have been committed by Audrey Rose’s father. She realizes her moral dilemma when she contends with the harsh reality: if her father is the Ripper, can she turn him into the authorities? Audrey Rose worries how that might impact her own moral virtue: "They’d hang Father. Given who he was, they’d make it as public and brutal as possible. Just because blood might stain his hands did not mean I wanted his on mine. No matter if it was right or wrong” (chapter 24). First of all, BITCH. You have to. You have to report this kind of thing. No ifs, ands, or buts. I HAVE to imagine Maniscalco’s intended audience would feel the same? It’s? Serial murder? Second: Audrey Rose, baby, sweetie, honey. This is just a reminder that ACAB. I actually don’t know a whole lot about how the late Victorian criminal justice system functioned, but something tells me her family's public outlook would’ve been less bleak than she imagines here.

Lucky for Audrey Rose, her dad isn’t guilty in the end—but her brother sure is. He’s a mad scientist, using the brutalized bodies and souvenirs of his victims for Frankenstein-style experiments. Ultimately, he wants to reanimate the corpse of his and Audrey Rose’s long-dead mother, and he believes he can achieve this by transplanting fresh organs into ? Her dead and decomposed body? The thing is that, this moral dilemma persists for Audrey Rose—and her dad, too. He pressures her not to bring the little matter of Nathaniel’s issue—you know, his casual murder of a number of local women—to Scotland Yard: “They’ll have your brother hanged,” he said quietly. “Could you honestly watch that happen? As a family, have we not suffered enough?” (chapter 29). Nathaniel electrocutes himself to evade capture by the authorities, and Audrey Rose and her father feel relief. The book ends by confirming that "Lord Edmund covered up Nathaniel’s involvement, I didn’t ask how. One day I’d let everyone know the truth, but the pain was too raw now” (chapter 30).

((Side note: Listen. I knew Nathaniel had something sinister going on from the GET-GO (I’m not trying to be obnoxious) because he basically started some nighttime vigilante group called the Whitechapel Knights of Justice or whatever bullshit, I don’t know. All I know is that my red flags IMMEDIATELY started going off because that sounds exactly like the terrible and awful Crusader cosplay clubs from my (bad) Catholic childhood, where everyone thinks they’re a knight for Good but really they’re the bad guy.))

Overall, kind of ...

I think one of my biggest issues with this ending was … You have already stepped into a realm of fantastical revisionist history here in writing such a fictionalized version of these real-life events. (I know Maniscalco is far from the first to do it.) That means that the rules you are playing by are essentially your own—evidenced by the liberties she points out in her Author’s/Historical note (dates changed for convenience or storytelling purposes, real-life individuals changed for narrative purposes, etc.). So WHY would you not conclude this fantasy retelling of the Jack the Ripper murders by meting out some form of justice? I hear the counterargument: "Well, because we still don’t know the culprit today. This book would ring hollow if it named someone since historians, forensic scientists, etc. still don’t know who committed these crimes." My question: is that really a problem though? This is a work of fiction. Nothing in history happened the way it is written here. Is it crueler to the women who were murdered and who remain spectacles for true crime junkies and authors like this, less satisfying to readers who want some more concrete kind of closure, to not offer that up? I am asking this in earnest here, because I don’t know. Maybe it is insensitive to make up a murderer, to fill in the gaps in order to make sense of the violence that happened. But in my brain it feels almost like a responsibility at this point, since these murders served as the backdrop for the romance between Audrey Rose and Thomas, for the background to Audrey Rose’s empty feminist diatribes, and as inspiration for a book that went on far longer than it needed to. To me it kind of feels like the least an author could do, but I have no clue.

Anyways, I'm just glad I get to put this series to bed. No more.I truly lost sleep over it this weekend. Onto something better, please, for the love of god.

#mnc reads #mnc writes #stalking jack the ripper #sjtr #I dont know what to tag this as but I dont want to leave anything out!#tw death #tw suicice #body horror #violence #classism #I guess #racism #maybe #I dont know #Im sorry

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sharekowa · 4 years ago

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Kankandara

When I was in Elementary School I was a naive hick, and fucked around with my buddies A and B a lot. We had a turbulent life.

A and I’s families had given up on us, but B’s mother was always taking care of him.

She was super strict about it, but she still did a lot of stuff for B.

B and his mother had a bad fight sometime in Middle School grade 3. He didn’t tell us what it was about, but apparently he hurt his mother psychologically.

After leaving his mother in ruins, his pops came back.

B’s pops immediately understood what had happened and went up to his wife, ignoring B.

Her clothes and hair were in tatters, and she was spacing out, staring at the floor with eyes like a dead fish. B’s pops looked at her and spoke to B.

B’s Dad: “You little shit, you became the kind of guy who could trample all over someone this much, huh? Why can’t you understand how much your mother cares about you?”

He was holding his wife, and was not looking at B at all.

B: “Shut the fuck up. Should I kill you, motherfucker? Huh!?”

B had no intent of listening to his pops.

But his pops didn’t react to this threat, and apparently kept talking calmly.

B’s Dad: “...You...you think there isn’t anything that can scare you, don’t you?”

B: “Nope. If there is, I’d fuckin’ like to see it!”

His pops was quiet for a bit, and then spoke.

B’s Dad: “You are my son. I know very well how much your mother worries about you. But if you can only hurt her in response, I have an idea.

I speak not as a father, but as a human, a third party.

I’ll be upfront, I only tell you this because you have proven you don’t care if you die. If that’s fine, listen to what I have to say.”

B apparently felt an intense energy from these words, but provoked him anyway saying “Whatever, fucking tell me!”

B’s Dad: “You know that place in the forest that is restricted? Go in there, all the way to the back. You’ll understand the rest when you’re there. Try going crazy like you did just now, if you can.”

The forest B’s pops was talking about is at the base of a small mountain where we live. It’s kind of like a sea of trees (jukai).

You can enter the mountain normally, and the forest as a whole is normal, but if you go in, there’s an area that is restricted partway through.

Specifically, it’s like if you drew a small circle inside a square, and were told not to go in the circle. It’s basically a super small part of the forest.

The restricted area is surrounded by a fence around 2 meters high, with thick chain links and barbed wire. The whole fence is tangled with layered white paper (like a unique shide), with a ton of bells of varying sizes attached.

Shide (paper used to designate sacred areas in Shinto)

It’s so weird that it’s just a small part of the forest. The fence itself is strange. Basically, I can sum it up as being extremely weird.

Also, on specific days, I’ve seen priestesses gathered around the entrance, but I didn’t know what they were doing because those days the whole area would be restricted.

There were lots of rumors flying around, but the most common one was that there was a brainwashing facility for a cult. It’s a pain in the ass to even get there, so I barely heard of people even going that deep into the forest.

B’s pops didn’t wait for B to reply, and took his wife upstairs to the second floor. B immediately left his house and met up with me and A who were waiting for him. That’s when we heard about what his dad told him.

A: “A father saying that much to his son? Must have been bad.”

Me: “It’s rumored to be a cult facility right? I guess he’s telling you to get caught and brainwashed. You could say that’s scary but...what are you gonna do? Are you gonna go?“

B: “Of course I’m gonna go. It’s probably bullshit.“

Me and A tagged along out of curiosity, so all three of us were going to head there.

We used different tools. I think the time was past 1:00 midnight. We arrived with high spirits, entering the forest and shining the ground before us with the flashlights we had brought.

The path is one you can hike with light equipment. We always wore jikatabi so it was easy for us to walk, but there was almost a 40 minute walk to get to the area in question. However, before even 5 minutes had passed since we entered the forest, something weird happened.

Jikatabi shoes

Around the same time as we got in and started walking, we could hear a sound coming from far away.

The still of the night emphasizes the sound. B was the first to notice it.

B: “Hey, you guys hear something?”

We strained our ears upon these words, and yep, we could hear it.

We definitely could hear it faintly from far away: the sound of dry leaves being dragged, and the sound of branches being snapped.

Since it was from a distance and so faint, we weren’t really scared.

We didn’t think it was a person -- there’s gotta be animals around here. Reassured, we kept going.

I stopped paying attention to it after thinking it was an animal, but after around 20 minutes of walking, B noticed something again and stopped me and A.

B: “A, can you walk ahead a little bit?”

A: “What? Why?”

B: “Just do it, dude.”

A, looking confused, walked ahead and then came back to us.

Seeing this, B developed a thoughtful expression.

A: “Hey, what is it?!”

Me: “Yeah, explain!”

After we said this, B said “Stay quiet and listen veeeery carefully,” and walked ahead like he had made A do, and came back.

After he did this 2 or 3 times, we finally realized what was happening.

The faint, distant sounds were moving when we did.

When we start walking, the sound starts walking, and when we stop the sound stops too.

It was almost as if it knew what we were doing. I couldn’t help but feel a bit colder. There is no light aside from what we have. The moon is out, but it was almost entirely blocked by the trees.

We have our flashlights on, so it’s not strange that whatever it is knows where we are. But we have to squint to even see each other even though we are walking together.

What are they doing with no light on in this darkness? Why are they moving the same way we were?

B: “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Is someone following us?”

A: “It doesn’t feel like someone’s getting closer. It sounds like they’ve been at the same distance from us as earlier.”

As A said, for the 20 minutes we had been in the forest, the distance between us and the sound hadn’t changed at all.

It wasn’t coming closer or going further. It had maintained the same distance the whole time.

Me: “Are we being watched?”

A: “Seems like it...If it’s a cult or something, then they probably have weird devices and stuff.“

Judging from the sound, it wasn’t multiple people, but just one person following us the whole time.

We stopped to think a while, and decided it was dangerous to try to figure out the source of the sound. Being careful of our surroundings, we decided to keep going.

As we kept going, the sound stuck to us, but I couldn’t care less about a damn sound when we finally were able to see the fence.

...Because the appearance of the fence was even weirder than the sound.

It was the first time seeing it for all three of us, but it exceeded our imaginations.

At the same time, a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind before suddenly occurred to me.

I am a skeptic about ghosts, but even I couldn’t help but think that there is something unreal beyond that fence.

Not just anything either, but something extremely fucked.

Wait, so it’s a place with that kind of legend...?

For the first time since we came into the forest, I started to think we were in a dangerous place.

A: “Are you telling me we have to rip this and go in? No matter how you look at it, this ain’t normal!“

B: “Shut the fuck up man, don’t be pissing yourself over some shit like this!“

B yelled at me and A, who were scared upon seeing the weird fence. B used the tools he had brought and started to destroy it.

The sound of the insane amount of bells ringing was louder than the sound of him tearing it down.

But since we hadn’t imagined it would be like this, the tools we brought were too weak. Or rather, the fence was unnaturally strong. It didn’t even move an inch, so I wondered if it was made with special materials.

In the end, we had to climb it, but because of the chain link that was pretty easy.

But as soon as we got off the fence, I felt strongly that something was wrong.

I guess it was maybe claustrophobia? I felt short of breath, like I was trapped in a coffin.

A and B seemed to be feeling the same, and we all hesitated before moving more. We had already gone past the fence, though, we couldn’t stop now.

As soon as we stepped forward to keep going, all three of us realized something.

The sound that had followed us all this time had stopped as soon as we crossed the fence.

To be honest, it was so freaky that I couldn’t care less, but I was even more freaked out by what A said next.

A: “Hey guys...what if...they were in here the whole time? This fence, at least from here, has no gate...maybe that’s why they couldn’t come closer...?”

B: “Nah, no fuckin’ way man. The place where we first noticed the sound moving can’t even be seen from here. There’s no way they would know what we were doing from the moment we got into the forest.“

In normal circumstances, B would be right. The restricted zone and the entrance to the forest are pretty far part.

I wrote that it’s around a 40 minutes’ walk earlier, but we weren’t walking slowly and the distance itself is pretty long.

But as soon as the thought crossed my mind that it might not be something from reality, I couldn’t deny A’s words.

Unlike me and A who had felt a definite danger since we first saw the fence, B was suddenly very determined.

B: “I don’t know if it’s a spirit or what, but if it’s like you said, doesn’t that mean it can’t leave this fenced area? it’s not much of a big deal then.“

Saying this, we went deeper.

The fence of the opposite side of the restricted area was starting to come into view. We found something strange after we walked 20-30 minutes after crossing the fence.

6 trees were surrounded by a shimenawa, and those 6 trees were enclosed by 6 ropes, making a hexagonal space.

Shimenawa, which are used to designate sacred places in Shinto.

There was official-looking shide, unlike the ones on the fence.

And in the center was something like a money-offering box from a shrine.

As soon as we saw it, all three of us were speechless. Me and A were starting to panic - things were really getting dangerous.

As dumb as we are, we vaguely know where and for what shimenawa are used.

The reason why this area is restricted must be what we are seeing.

We had finally arrived at our destination.

Me: “This has gotta be what your pops was telling you about.“

A: “You can’t go wild here, man. It’s obviously a bad idea.“

But B didn’t lose his determination.

B: “It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something bad. Let’s try checking out that box! Maybe there’s treasure inside.“

B ducked under the ropes, entering the hexagon and approaching the box.

Me and A were more worried about what B might do than the box, but followed him anyway.

The box was covered in rust, perhaps because it was left outside and got rained on.

The upper part is a lid, with mesh so you can see inside, but there’s a plank under the lid so you actually can’t see anything.

The box also had something wild written on it in chalk. Probably family crests or something, but each side of the box has multiple symbols and they are all different. No two were the same.

Me and A tried our best not to touch it, but B didn’t care and touched it. We cautioned him to be gentle as he investigated the box.

It seemed to be anchored directly into the ground, so even though it wasn’t that heavy, it couldn’t be lifted.

After examining the box closely to try to see how to open it, B realized that the just the back side comes off.

B: “Yo, just this part comes off! We can see inside!”

B removed one side of the box, and me and A peered inside from behind B.

Inside the box, there were four plastic water-bottle shaped jars, with some kind of liquid inside. In the center of the box, toothpick-like sticks around 5 centimeters long with their tips painted red were arranged in a weird shape. ／＼／＼＞

This kinda shape, made of 6 sticks. Just the four places touching are painted red.

Me: “What the hell is that? Toothpicks?”

A: “Yo, the water-bottle things have stuff inside. Gross.“

B: “We came all this way for some water bottles and toothpicks? I don’t get it.“

Me and A had just lightly touched the water-bottle shaped jars, but B took one of them in his hands and started to smell its contents and stuff. Once he put it back, he reached out to touch the ／＼／＼＞.

The toothpick stuck to his fingertip for a second, maybe because he was sweating, and the shape was messed up when he let go.

That moment...

Ring rring! Ring ring!!

The bells were ringing with incredible force from the opposite direction from where we had come -- beyond the hexagon, around where I could barely make out the fence.

At this we all screamed “Aaah!”, scared shitless. We all looked at each other at once.

B: “Who is it, goddamit!? Don’t fuck with me!”

B started running in the direction of the sound.

Me: “Dumbass, don’t go there!”

A: “Yo B! It’s dangerous!“

As we readied ourselves to scramble after him, B stopped in his tracks. He was motionless, with his flashlight still facing in front of him.

“What, are you fucking with us?” As me and A sighed in relief and rushed towards him, B’s body started to tremble.

“H...hey...What’s wrong...?”

As I said this, we both instinctively looked towards where B’s flashlight shone.

B’s flashlight shone around the roots of one of the many trees huddled together.

From its rear, a woman’s face was peering our way.

Showing just half of her face, she seemed to be unbothered by the bright light and was gazing at us.

She was grimacing, showing all of her teeth, and her eyes were hostile.

“AAAAAARGH!!!!!”

I’m not sure who screamed, but at that moment we turned back and ran.

My mind went blank. It felt like my body was making the best decisions it could.

With no time to even look at each other, each of us scrambled desperately towards the fence. As soon as I saw the fence, I jumped it with all my might and climbed it with force. When I got to the top, I jumped off and tried to immediately run for the exit.

A, perhaps confused, is having trouble climbing the fence and isn’t coming.

Me: “A! Hurry up!!”

B: “Yo! Hurry the fuck up!!“

Me and B didn’t know what to do while we waited for A.

Me: “What is that thing!? What the hell is it!?”

B: “I don’t fucking know man, shut up!“

We were completely in panic mode.

Just then...

Rring! Ring ring!

The bells shook deafeningly loud, and the fence started to shake.

What the... Where is it coming from!?

Even as me and B panicked, we checked our surroundings.

It was coming from the opposite of the entrance: from the direction of the mountain. The sound and the shaking of the fence got more and more intense as if it was coming closer.

Me: “Oh shit, oh shit!”

B: “You still haven’t climbed yet!? Hurry up!!”

I knew our words were only confusing A more, but there was no way we couldn’t warn him. A scrambled up the fence with immense concentration.

The moment A was about to reach the top of the fence, me and B were not watching.

I was shaking violently, sweat pouring out all over my body, unable to make a sound.

A noticed and looked at where we were looking.

The thing was on this side of the fence continuing towards the mountain.

I had thought it was just a face, but it was actually a naked torso with six arms.

Using those arms it grabbed the chain link and barbed wire skillfully, its mouth still in a wide grimace. It was coming towards us like a spider crossing its web. Immense fear filled me.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!”

A suddenly jumped from above, crashing onto me and B.

This woke us out of our stupor, and we got A up immediately and booked it for the entrance to the forest.

We can’t look back. I just looked forward and ran and ran with all my strength.

It shouldn’t have taken 30 minutes running at full speed, but it felt like I had run for hours.

As the entrance came into view, I could see people in the distance.

No way...all three of us screeched to a halt, quietly checking out the silhouettes.

We couldn’t tell who it was, but it was multiple people. It wasn’t the thing.

As soon as we confirmed this we started running again, and ran right into the group.

”Hey! They came out!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me...They actually went past the fence!?”

“Heeey! Run and let the wife know!”

The gathered people ran to us, abuzz.

All three of our minds were blank and we were so spaced out that we couldn’t immediately understand what they were saying to us.

Then we were put in a car, and even though it was around 3:00, we were taken to a gathering hall that is used for events.

When we got inside, my mother and big sister, A’s pops, and B’s mother were there.

B’s mother aside, my mother who I hadn’t even had a decent conversation with was crying. A told me later that his pops’ facial expression was one he had never seen before.

B’s mom: “Everyone was okay...! I’m so relieved...!“

Unlike B’s mother, I was hit by my mother and A was hit by his pops. But, we both received kind words unlike any we had heard before. After each of us had spoken to our families, B’s mother came to talk to us.

B’s Mom: “I am very sorry. This is my husband’s fault, and by extension also my fault. I am truly so sorry...! Really...”

She bowed many times.

Even though she’s from another family, a parent acting like that in front of her child was an unpleasant feeling.

A’s Dad: “That’s enough. Everyone was okay, see?“

My Mom: “Yes, exactly. It’s not your fault.”

After this, most of the conversation was between the parents, and we were just spacing out.

Probably because it was late at night, and it felt like a wrap after everyone checked in on each other. At this point, we didn’t get any explanation and went our separate ways home.

Around noon the proceeding day, my big sis violently woke me up.

When I opened my eyes, her face was so tensed that it seemed like a continuation of last night.

Me: “What the fuck is your problem?”

Big sis: “B’s mother called. Shit’s going down.“

When I took the phone and answered, B’s mom was yelling in a way I had never heard her do before.

B’s mom: “B...B is acting strange! What did you do last night, up there !? I thought all you did was go past the fence!?”

It seemed like I wouldn’t be able to have a conversation with her, so I hung up and headed to B’s house.

A had apparently got a similar phone call, and both of us went to talk to B’s mother. Apparently, after B came home last night, he suddenly started screaming that all of his hands and feet hurt. He collapsed with his arms and legs outstretched, maybe because he couldn’t move due to the pain. She told us that he stayed in that pose and thrashed around complaining of pain. Whenever his mother tried to do something to help, all he did was yell “It fuckin’ hurts” and they couldn’t understand each other. She tried her best and was able to carry him to his room, but since he was still in that condition, she wondered how we were doing and had called us.

After hearing this story we immediately went to B’s room, and could hear him screaming all the way from the stairs.

”It hurts, it fuckin’ hurts!” on repeat.

When we got in the room, as expected his arms and legs were outstretched and he was flailing around.

Me: “Hey! What happened!?”

A: “Pull it together, man! What is wrong with you?”

Even when we talked to him, B just yells “It fuckin’ hurts” and didn’t even make eye contact with us.

What’s going on...? Me and A couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

We went back to B’s mother for the moment, and she asked us with a tone strikingly more quiet than earlier.

B’s mom: “Tell me what you did there. That will tell me everything I need to know. Last night, what did you do there?“

I of course knew what she wanted to ask, but I couldn’t answer well because I loathed having to remember what had happened in order to tell her.

Or rather, the fact that I saw that thing was so dominant in my memory that I had completely forgotten to think about what was the cause of it all. B’s mother clarified, asking us “Not what you saw, but what did you do?” She seemed to be indicating it.

After B’s mother told us this, we tried our damnedest to remember last night and search for a possible cause.

If the question is “What did we see?” then we should have been in the same condition as B currently is.

But even if the question is “What did you do?” We took basically the same actions towards that thing.

We touched the box too. We also technically touched the water bottle-shaped things. The only thing left is...the toothpicks....

Both of us realized. It’s the toothpicks. Only B had touched those, and he even moved their shape. He also didn’t put them back. We communicated this to B’s mother.

Then, her expression began to change and she started to shake.

She suddenly took out some paper from a drawer and dialed a phone number while looking at it. Me and A could only look on.

After she spoke to someone on the phone for a while, B’s mother came back to us and spoke with a shaking voice.

B’s mom: “If you boys take the approach of going over to their house, they can see you immediately, so go on home and get ready right now. I will speak to your parents for you, they will prepare you even if you don’t tell them anything. Come here again the day after tomorrow.“

I couldn’t understand what she was saying. We were gonna meet who, where? She ignored us when we asked for an explanation and sent us home immediately.

We both went straight home, confused and doubtful, and were told “You have to go there” without asking us any questions.

Two days later me and A went with B’s mother to a certain location, still completely in the dark on what was going on.

Apparently B was taken there the previous day.

I had thought it might be someplace far, but it was not only a different city, but a different prefecture. We rode the Shinkansen trains for a few hours, and then drove from the station for a few more. We were taken into a picturesque village in the depths of the mountains. We were shown to a mansion on the outskirts of the village. It was old and huge, and even had a separate building and storage house. It was impressive.

When B’s mother rang the doorbell, a middle aged dude and a girl came to greet us.

The middle aged dude looked Yakuza-esque, kind of scary-looking and wore a suit. The girl was a little older than us, wearing white traditional Japanese clothes and a red hakama. Basically, she wsa dressed as a shrine maiden.

As they greeted us, we found out that the middle aged dude was the girl’s uncle. He had a pretty common surname, but the shrine maiden girl had a confusing name that sounded like “aoikanjo” (this is how I heard it, at least).

Though I said they greeted us, it was apparently different from common understandings of a greeting.

I don’t really get it, but basically her family’s true identity is something we are not allowed to know.

In truth, neither of us knew anything about her or her family, but for here to make things easier I’ll call her Aoi.

We were taken to a huge ass traditional Japanese style parlor with tatami floors, and they started talking to us in a super serious tone before I could even understand what was happening.

Uncle: “Your son is currently resting. These kids are the kids who were with him?”

B’s mom: “Yes. It seems like these three went to that place.”

Uncle: “I see. You, can you tell us what happened? Where did you go, what did you do, what did you see, as detailed as possible. Can you do it?” I was surprised at him suddenly asking us a question, but me and A were able to soomehow tell the middle aged dude the events of that night.

However, around the part of the toothpicks, he suddenly said “Hey, what the fuck did you just say?” in a very deep and serious tone. We couldn’t understand what was happening and got even more confused.

A: “Y...yes?“

Uncle: “You motherfuckers, you’re not telling me you moved those things!?“

He yelled at us with such energy that I thought he might grab me. Aoi stopped and started to talk in a voice so quiet and weak it was like a mosquito’s cry.

Aoi: “In the center of the box...small stick-like objects should have been placed in a certain shape. Did you touch them? By touching them, did you change the shape even a little bit?“

Me: “Ah, um...we moved them. I think the shape changed too.”

Aoi: “Do you happen to recall who changed the shape that the toothpicks were in? Not who touched it, but who changed the shape.“

Me and A looked at each other, and told her it was B.

Seeing this, the middle aged dude sat back and sighed, and said to B’s mother: Uncle: “Mother, I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t think your son can be helped. I hadn’t heard in this much detail, but if it’s his symptoms another cause might be possible. I didn’t think he’d had moved the sticks.”

B’s mom: “No..this can’t be...”

She probably had more to say, but B’s mother looked away as if she was swallowing her words.

We couldn’t say it, but we felt the same way too. What does it mean that B can’t be helped? What is he talking about?

Even though I wanted to inquire this, my voice wouldn’t come. Seeing the three of us like this, the middle aged dude started talking, sighing along the way. Finally, we were told something about what we had seen.

Its common name is Narijara or Naridara, but in older times it was called Kankanjara or Kankandara. Apparently there’s a lot of names for it depending on the person’s age or familial background.

Currently, the most common name for it is just “Dara”. Special families like the dude’s call it the Kankandara. It’s a story close to myths or legends.

The villagers of a certain village were plagued by a giant man-eating snake. They requested its removal from a shrine maiden’s family who had hereditary various powers as the children of kami. The family accepted the task and sent a particularly powerful shrine maiden to defeat the giant snake.

The shrine maiden earnestly fought the giant snake, as villagers watched from their hiding places. However, the snake got her in a passing moment and ate the bottom half of her body.

Even then, the shrine maiden used various powers to protect the villagers and fought the giant snake with all her might.

However, the villagers saw that she’d lost half her body and decided she would never win. They proposed to the giant snake that they would like the safety of their village in exchange for the shrine maiden’s life, as a human sacrifice. The giant snake was annoyed by how powerful the shrine maiden was, so it accepted. It made the villagers cut off her arms so she was easier to eat, and consumed the shrine maiden who had become like a Daruma. With this, the villagers got a short period of peace.

Later, it becomes clear that someone from the shrine maiden’s house had came up with this plan. At this time, there were 6 people in her family. The changes occurred suddenly.

The giant snake suddenly disappeared, and people started dying one by one in a village that was supposed to not have any more enemies.

They died in the village, in the mountains, in the forest. Everyone who died was missing either their right or left arm.

18 people died, including the 6 members of the shrine maiden’s family.

There were 4 people who survived.

The middle aged dude and Aoi explained it to us in turns.

Uncle: “I don’t know where or when this story’s from, but that box has been moved locations periodically and appeased ritually.

The person managing it changes each time. There’s a bunch of house crest-like symbols on the box, right? Those are the houses that have contributed places for the appeasing until now.

There’s a gathering of people from families like ours who oversee it, and that’s where it’s decided. There are occasionally idiots who volunteer, though.

Anything about the Kankandara is not shared with people who aren’t in charge of it. Locals are just told it has some negative history attached to it, and the managing people give locals someone to contact in case something happens.”

When we tell people, the contacts, people from families like us, are there, so people understand just from that the nature of the negative history. The current contact isn’t us, but since it’s an emergency we were contacted yesterday.“

Apparently, B’s mother had called somewhere else the day before yesterday, and whoever she talked to took B here and entrusted him to these guys after talking.

B’s mother had already called there while we were in the forest, and had heard some of the details.

Aoi: “Usually, the Kankandara is moved among mountain or forest locations. I think you saw it, but the 6 trees and 6 ropes represent the villagers, the 6 sticks the shrine maiden’s family, and the 4 jars in the corners represent the 4 survivors.

The shape that the 6 sticks create is that of the shrine maiden.

Why this is how it is dealt with, or even just how the box is set up, from when...including my family, I do not think anyone currently knows any more than what legends say.”

However, the most commonly told theory is that the 4 who survived researched all about how to calm an angered spirit at the shrine maiden’s house, and created a unique format as a result.

The bells on the fence were the only part following the formula, and the chain link and such were put by the current manager.

Uncle: “There are a few people from my family who have exorcised the Kankandara in the past, but all of them died within 2, 3 years. Just suddenly, out of the blue.

The person who caused it almost always doesn’t make it out either. That’s how hard it is.“

Even after hearing all of this, us three were still completely behind. All I could do was just sit there blankly.

However, the situation changed again.

Uncle: “Mother, I think you have an idea of what a dangerous thing the Kankandara is. I said it before, but if he had just not moved the sticks he would have been fine. But I think this time, there’s nothing we can do.“

B’s mom: “Please, is there anything you can do? It’s my fault, I beg of you, please.”

B’s mother didn’t back down.

It wasn’t her fault no matter how you looked at, but she made it her responsibility and lowered her head, asking over and over. She wasn’t crying though, she looked like she had made up her mind somehow.

Uncle: “We also want to do something. But if he moved the sticks and saw that thing...

You guys saw it too, right? You saw the shrine maiden who was eaten by the giant snake. You saw her bottom half, right? And you understood the meaning of that shape?“

”...What?”

Me and A couldn’t understand his words. Bottom half? I thought we only saw her upper half.

A: “Um...lower half? I did see her upper half, but...”

Haring this, the dude and Aoi were visibly surprised.

Uncle: “Hey hey hey, what are you saying? You moved that stick, right? Then you should have seen her bottom half.”

Aoi: “The woman who appeared in front of you didn’t have the bottom half of her body? Then, how many arms did she have?“

A and I checked with each other and answered: “She had 6 arms. 3 on each side, but no bottom half of her body.”

Hearing this, the man leaned forward again, putting the pressure on us and getting real close.

Uncle: “You’re sure? You definitely didn’t see the lower half of her body?“

Me: “Y...yes...“

The man turned to B’s mother again and smiled, saying:

“Mother, we might be able to do something for your son.“

At this, B’s mother and us all held our breaths and paid attention. The man and Aoi explained what he had meant.

Aoi: “There are 2 actions that can cause the priestess to become enraged with you.

What you cannot do is change that shape that represents the priestess. What you cannot see is the priestess who is depicted by that shape.”

Uncle: “In truth, moving the sticks means you’re done for, because that means you have to see her. But somehow, for some reason, you guys didn’t see it. It should be visible to everyone, not just the person who moved the shape, so if you guys haven’t seen it, then B must not have either.“

Me: “What do you mean, we didn’t see it? What we saw...” Aoi: “Of course, it still was the priestess herself. However, it wasn’t the kankandara. She must not have had an intent to take your lives. She appeared not as a kankandara but as a priestess, so that night must have been her having fun.” The priestess and kankandara are the same, but also different, apparently.

Uncle: “If the kankandara didn’t show up, then the thing attacking that kid must be doing it for fun, like Aoi said. If you leave it to us, we will probably be able to do something about it in the long term.“

I felt like the tenseness in the air had suddenly dissipated for the first time.

It was enough to just know that B could be saved, and B’s mother’s face at this time was incredible. It was a smile that showed how much she had worried for B over the past few days and how that anxiety had suddenly got off her shoulders. The man and Aoi saw her reaction and the atmosphere became more relaxed, and suddenly they started acting like normal people.

Uncle: “We’ll take that kid in officially. Mom, we’ll explain things later. You two should be purified/exorcised by Aoi and then go home. Try not to be too reckless from now on.“

After this we talked a little bit about stuff related to B. His mom stayed and we got purified and went home.

I don’t know what they did since their family had a tradition where we couldn’t meet B. I don’t know if he was treated as having switched schools or was still in the school system, but I haven’t seen him since then. Apparently he hasn’t died or anything; he completely recovered and is living normally somewhere.

By the way, B’s father never showed his face once throughout the whole ordeal. I don’t know what he is thinking.

Me and A calmed down pretty fast.

There were a lot of reasons, but the biggest was B’s mother’s appearance. There’s a bit of an epilogue. Things were probably the hardest for her.

I felt like I was forced to think about what being a mother is like. And after this, both my and A’s parents started to interact with us bit by bit.

All of this combined, and we stopped doing dumb shit naturally.

In terms of other stuff we were able to figure out, the priestesses who convened on specific days were from the families who gave us advice.

Even though the Kankandara was already seen as dangerous, it is considered something close to kami. A giant snake was the kami of the mountains or the forest, so once a year they dance sacred kagura and offer norito prayers.

Also, we heard sounds after we went into the forest because the Kankandara is basically like, kept in a cage. The hexagon and box thing are like seals for it, so if we hadn’t moved the sticks or changed the hexagon, it would’n’t have shown itself. The place where it is appeased is decided by specific numbers defining the area within a limited part of the mountain and forest. Generally, it can’t leave that area, but if it’s surrounded by a fence, then it can crawl around on the outside of the fence like we saw.

This is all we found out. Apparently it’s been moved from where we live. I don’t ever want to go back there again so I haven’t checked, but after almost a year passed from what happened, people came to remove the fence, so it’s probably somewhere else now.

#creepypasta #horror #spooky #scary #japanese

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crystalelemental · 4 years ago

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With Book 4 in FEH out of the way, I guess it’s time to talk about the stories so far. Book 2 is still the best, in my opinion.

I don’t think I’ve really talked about this, so let me explain. Book 1 sucks. It’s nothing, it doesn’t even try. The only hint of events occurring is that Veronica’s possessed by some evil dragon god of Embla, but that never got resolved in any way, and has really never been brought up again. We’re so far outside of that plotline that Veronica’s basically a dedicated ally now. Nothing about that book had a plan.

Book 2 had a plan, and a structure, and it worked. It wasn’t flashy or interesting, and I can respect anyone whose stance is that Book 3 or 4 had a more interesting concept. I personally liked the cast overall for Book 2, even though some got limited screen time and Surtr’s about as boring a villain as you can have. But Book 2 wins because Books 3 and 4 flopped.

Book 3 flopped because they backed out. The idea of the realm of the dead is cool, and facing off against the god of death is cool. But the god of death is about as stock standard evil as you can get, with no actual plan beyond “swell the ranks of the dead.” Why massacre these worlds? Why does she need to kill Eir a million times to create more of the dead, shouldn’t you have plenty? Like it doesn’t add up. And Eir starting out as the concept of Merciful Death was amazing, that was the best setup possible. And then it turns out no, she’s not even associated with death, she’s with the life dragon in opposition, none of that was real. Oh okay. Way to undermine your entire theme for nothing I guess. Also I hate to be like this, but I actually dislike the Veronica and Alfonse as Thrasir and Lif thing. I thought it was substantially more interesting when they were presented as the ancient rulers of their kingdoms. But then no, it’s just Veronica and Alfonse, and while Thrasir continues to get nothing except being omnicidal for funsies, Lif gets all the heavy drama and dialogue and focus, because god forbid this story stop riding Alfonse’s dick for five seconds. Book 3 had interesting concepts that just didn’t pan out, and the characters all wound up being less interesting than they initially started out. Also, let’s be real. For a fucking DEATH GOD, they sure had no problem working around her ability to inflict absolute death in the most standard way possible. Which kind of immediately nerfed Hel’s threat level for me, not gonna lie.

Book 4 started out interesting, immediately tanked harder than I’ve seen anything in this game tank, had a redemption arc, and then decided it had enough of success and ended in a pathetic squelching fart noise. Fairies and dreams? Awesome. Aesthetic approved. But it takes them like two chapters to introduce Plumeria as the fucking wet dreams fairy, and immediately all sense of this being serious is dead. They even had the audacity to outright explain that no no, she may be the lewd fairy, but she doesn’t actually like that job!

Listen guys. I get it. You know the sexy outfits and character designs sell, but you also know that people are insane, and they somehow expect the slutty fairy to present this concept of being exclusively available to them so you can sell that fap bait. I really get it. But oh my god you could not have handled this any worse, because now that just feels like rape fetish. “No no, her job is to be a prostitute, but she’s not a slut because she hates it!” is not the save you think it is, friend. You’d have been better off either giving her a sadistic streak with this and enjoying toying with people who can never truly have her, or just making her slutty. That would’ve been so much less uncomfortable.

So until the halfway point, we’re kinda just dealing with the fact this incredibly uncomfortable character just exists around here. And then Freyja drops. And initially it’s like oh, I just appreciate there’s an evil fairy whose costume design isn’t a fucking disaster, she actually looks good. And then they have her motivation being assuming complete control over dreams by taking her brother’s power, and ensuring that the dream world can’t die like it almost had. And they introduce this really cool concept of her taking in abandoned children and giving them a new life as the fairies, and...well...

Plumeria. Again. Okay, so it wasn’t quite enough that we had a fairy who’s apparently forced into being the wet dreams fairy despite hating it, now she’s also a child who was abandoned by her mother and is desperately seeking to be loved. This is...this is next level of discomfort. Plumeria’s character bothers me. Like sure, fine, I get that this isn’t a badly developed character or anything, but it’s never really addressed how absolutely fucked up this is, and it’s especially disquieting considering this is IS’ sexy character for the book. This is their sex appeal pandering character, and this is the direction they wanted to go. Just...ew. Come on, guys. Have at least a bit of class, will you?

But the rest of the book at least continues to amp things up. Are Peony and Sharena actually swapped around? Freyr is dead, and Freyja is now literally unstoppable within the dream. Oh shit, Alfonse is fucking dead. There’s all this cool stuff happening, and then the final chapter happens.

Are Peony and Sharena actually swapped around? Who cares! Game’s not gonna tell you, because “it doesn’t matter.” Well good, glad that was a huge mystery that didn’t need solving so nobody bothered. Why even bring it up? The message of “It doesn’t matter” only works if there’s a crisis of identity and you’re getting the support of your long-time friends. Instead it’s just a mystery thrown in for nothing with no value, and the “it doesn’t matter, you’re my friend” comes from someone Sharena has no actual memories of and has only been around for like...a couple of hours or however long these events take place. It’s a completely meanningless subplot that goes nowhere and does nothing.

Freyja went from the villain tormenting the protagonists to suddenly having empathy toward everyone at the drop of a hat. They set up the frustration of not understanding why we’d fight so hard to return to reality when dreams are more comforting, but that doesn’t really establish much about Freyja herself. We get exactly one moment, where she calls for Triandra and Plumeria only to realize they’ve died, and feels sad about it. So when she gives up and everyone returns to reality, everyone’s back. Triandra and Plumeria are fine. Peony and presumably Mirabilis are fine. Alfonse isn’t actually dead so what was the point of bringing it up? Oh, but Freyja’s dead. How? Don’t...don’t worry about it. She just is, okay? Also if both masters of dream are dead, and the dream world was already dying before...how are the fairies still there? Wasn’t the point that all the old ones were dying because people from the real world (don’t even get me started on that bullshit) gave up on dreaming, and thus they needed to make humans into fairies to keep the dream world going? How are you all here as fairies? Explain?? Game?!?

And then they just...loop back to the start. Like nothing happened. Because nothing did happen. For all the interesting setup, all the interesting concept behind the new characters, and especially behind Freyja as an antagonist...it goes nowhere. The ultimate defining feature of this book was “Pointlessness.” Nothing mattered. No one did or accomplished anything. Except I guess killing the god of another realm, good job guys. I just...I don’t get it. What was the point of any of this? Maybe Book 5 is going to focus on Triandra and Plumeria wanting to join up and have you help get Freyja back, so there’s continuity, I don’t fucking know.

I honestly don’t know where I’d rank Book 4. I want to put it above Book 3 based on concepts and the fact that Freyja was actually interesting, just rushed to her development in the last book so it felt forced. But on the flip side, Book 4 was incredibly pointless. At least stuff happened in Book 3. Sure it undermined its entire theme and purpose, but stuff happened! You can’t say stuff didn’t happen! But I can definitely say that Book 2 is the only one I think turned out well. Because it was self-contained and made sense. Yes it was simple, but using simple tools to tell an effective story will always be better than trying to reach for complexity and falling flat on your ass. And yes, IS, I’m telling you maybe you should stop trying. Between two consecutive failed books and some of the Forging Bonds events of the last year just...completely doing nothing or even hurting the characters presented...maybe just...don’t try to be complicated. Because you’re not doing a good job.

#fire emblem heroes

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timetravelingpigeon · 6 years ago

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Excerpt: The Life and Life and Life of a Time Traveling Pigeon

In Which Columba Gears Up For the Challenge Ahead

[[PREVIOUS | INDEX | NEXT]] [ 20 / 33 ]

Back to the grind, I guess.

But this time? Oh, forget what I said about fighting Manhattan before. Now it was really on. Like, really, truthfully, cut-to-a-training-montage on. I mean it. No more bullshit, no more tourism. We’re getting serious about this.

First order of business: if I’m going to be doing some hard-core detective work, I’m going to need some way to do some hard-core snooping, and that means having some way of getting into places I’m not supposed to be. The easy option, of course, would be to just lug around a crowbar and some bolt-cutters, but that was the sort of shit you used when you actually wanted to steal stuff. Besides, they weren’t exactly stealthy. Lockpicking, on the other hand, was a much better choice for my purposes; it was quieter, the tools were easier to conceal, and, most importantly, it was cooler.

Turns out, there are YouTube videos out there on how to do damn near anything. That said, practicing got me plenty of strange looks, and actually procuring the tools was a minor adventure in and of itself. Trade school was involved. I’ll say this much, I’m honestly really proud of how good I was at the end of those eight-ish months.

(And these days, in the present-tense? I’m a goddamn master, if I do say so myself. Granted, I kind of cheat, but, whatever. I can unlock locks without using the original key, that’s all that matters.)

I briefly considered learning how to hotwire a car, then thought better of it, seeing as I’d most likely be using those skills in fucking New York City, also known as “the traffic jam capitol of the world.” It’d be like learning to drive a speedboat in Venice: theoretically helpful at first brush, but practically a lot less efficient than just walking or catching a ride.

I… also tried my hand at learning how to use a gun. I got as far as passing the basic safety tests before I took an honest look at myself and decided that it just wasn’t a good idea. It was too much power, and I didn’t trust myself to not point it in the wrong direction… again.

The final piece to this puzzle was one I already had well in hand, literally. Namely, my badass birding binoculars. True, they weren’t exactly top of the line, but they could hardly be considered beginners’ optics, either. In experienced hands, these babies could pick out a hummingbird at a thousand yards. And whose hands would be more experienced than those of someone who’d been using them for close to a decade, even before the time loop bullshit? Oh, yeah, that’s right. And if I could successfully track a six-inch swallow as it darted after bugs, I could sure as hell track a human-sized target, Spiderman wannabe or no. Plop me down in a good spot, and I’d become a surveying machine.

Now all I had to do was find said good spots. First on the list was finding somewhere to watch what Dr. Tanner was doing at the CytoCen complex, which was easier said than done. For starters, due to the buildings surrounding the central courtyard, I needed to be decently above ground level if I wanted to see what, if anything, was going on in there. Further, that main tower blocked all view from the east. Unless I wanted to become an expert in scaling buildings, my spot also needed to be somewhere that was accessible with only mild physical exertion, while also being somewhere I wasn’t likely to be bothered.

I found myself, on October 2nd at 5:40 in the afternoon, on the roof of an apartment building that was way too tall for its own good, binoculars in one hand and a caffeine-laced energy bar in the other, wondering just what the hell my life had become.

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#fiction #writing #my writing #original writing #amwriting #excerpt #@ Col

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pixieungerstories · 6 years ago

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Housemates 7

Final 24 hours of the sticker promotion on Patreon. Even if you have missed it, I still have a lot of good content over there. Like the pictures for this chapter.

Dren didn’t really care who they got as long as they kept him fed and kept the house clean enough that dirt wouldn’t stick to his feet as he walked through. His job title might be occupational therapist but he spent a significant part of the day with people using him as a stim toy and he came home all touched out and needing quiet time to decompress.

Vinny could cook and somehow managed to get the guys to clean up after themselves. That was good enough for him.

Today, he was a little late. Someone had ground crackers into his surface and there was no way he was going home without showering first. He was surprised when he got home and found an extra seat at the table. He was not up to guests. He decided to ignore it as he hung up his clothes at the front hall closet.

Vinny bounced over looking a little stressed and slightly manic. “Hi! I’m so glad you are home! Your nephew got here early and the poor little guy is really shy. But I set him a place at the table and we are all ready to go!”

Dren stared at her. Kogan stared at her. Derick looked appalled.

“What?”

“I don’t have a nephew,” Dren said slowly.

Vinny frowned, “But Kevin said…” she trailed off as her ears caught up to what she said. Then she pointed at the big glass bowl on the table. “That isn’t your nephew?”

Dren shook his head. Derick cleared his throat. “That’s a bowl of orange jello.”

Vinny narrowed her eyes, then moving faster than Dren would have guessed, she bent down, scooped up a pair of shoes and threw them one after the other hard enough to scuff Kevin. “You ASSHOLE!” she screamed. They were all trying not to laugh but it wasn’t really working.

Vinny looked over at them and just looked so embarrassed. She had blushed bright red, her eyes were shiny with tears and she just mumbled something about dinner being on the table and they could start without her.

Then she turned and ran up the stairs.

Dren closed his eyes. He turned to the dining room. “Kevin? How are you going to make this up to her?”

Kevin was currently a trunk and he just shrugged his handles, “It was just a joke.”

Dren scrubbed his face with his hands. He was not in the mood to deal with this. “Yeah. That you made at her expense.”

Kevin just muttered, “It was funny. Can’t she take a joke?”

Dren turned and walked up the stairs while Derick explained that it would also just be a joke if she put pink dye in his wood oil, but that he would likely be as impressed with that as she was with this.

He got up to the third floor and looked for something to knock on her door with. His hands were too squishy just now to manage to make much noise. In the end he just said, “Knock, knock. Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She was sitting in the corner with her fists clenched.

“Kevin is an asshole and I’m sorry he did that to you.”

Vinny shook her head and wiped her eyes. “I feel like an idiot.”

Dren shrugged, “You just haven’t met many-”

“NO! Not even that! I didn’t believe him at first, but he was so sincere and I thought that since I had been helping him with his shell, that maybe we were friends now. But after that, I feel like he was just using me and I wonder if he has just been exploiting me this whole time.”

Dren felt sick. “Wow. Um, shell care is something that mimics need or they end up with chronic pain. I didn’t know you were helping him with that. That makes tonight …really messed up. He’s trying to run you off so that you won’t help him.”

Vinny gritted her teeth.

Dren continued, “It’s up to you what you want to do about this, but it would help the rest of us if you told him how you feel betrayed and that he abused your trust. Otherwise he is just going to complain that you overreacted.”

Vinny nodded and stormed down the stairs. Even from the third floor, he could hear her shouting.

“Have you ever not lied to me? If you dicked me around about this - how can I believe anything you say? That has to be ten boxes of jello! You can go out and get fucking jello but not shell goop? I am such an idiot! I believed that whole bullshit story!” And her she said the thing that made Dren pay attention. “I thought you were actually trusting me, so I trusted you back. But that wasn’t it, was it? Was it all some sick scheme to make me touch you?”

That was interesting. She had made it what it was, a trust issue. If she had said she thought she was helping or that she was taking care of him, then she would be speaking from a position of power in the relationship. But as the person who was conned, the fault was clearly Kevin’s.

Which it was. But Kevin wouldn’t have seen it that way. He would see it as her holding power over him and him taking that back.

“Do you have any idea how used and betrayed I feel right now? Does that even matter to you?”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Well? Say something!”

Still nothing. “Fine!” Then the door slammed.

Dren carefully closed the door to Vinny’s room and headed down to eat dinner. There was no sign of the girl. The slow cooker full of beef stew and the fresh buttermilk biscuits were delicious. The crew ate in silence.

——

Dren was sitting in his room while the others were busy out of the house when Vinny came home. He stopped her on her way up the stairs. “Supper was lovely, did you get something to eat?”

She shook her head, “I seem to have lost my appetite.”

Dren considered this. “You look like you need to hit something.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “The angry walk around the neighbourhood didn’t help.”

Dren held out his arms. “It’s ok, you won’t hurt me.”

Vinny looked confused then upset. “I’m not going to hit you!”

“It’s really ok. It is basically my job.”

She just looked confused.

“I help people find tools to make their environments safer for them. But they are often angry and hitting me doesn’t actually hurt me, so-”

Vinny frowned, “That doesn’t sound right. Gelatinous can feel pain.”

Dren looked away, “Yeah, but it doesn’t do any lasting damage.”

“Wow. That is horrible.”

He shook his head. “It really isn’t. I get the most frustrated violent kids and I am able to find them tools to cope. It is very rewarding.” She gave him a look. “And only sometimes painful,” he added. He waved her in and offered her the other chair. “Do you know what you are going to do about Kevin?”

“Besides not trusting him again? No. I’m pissed but I’m not going to quit over it. But… look, for the first three or four weeks I was here, he didn’t say a single word to me. I am fine going back to that.”

Dren nodded slowly. Kevin’s door was open, so Dren knew he was listening. “What if he apologized?”

Vinny shrugged, “Do you really think he will?”

Dren considered this. “I don’t actually know. I’m not sure what he said about shell care, but he really was trusting you to let touch him like that.”

Vinny chewed her lip, “That’s what is currently worrying me. I thought it was just like… I don’t know, rubbing someone’s shoulders. Now I’m afraid it is some sex thing.”

Dren considered this. “I don’t think so. I come home from work all touched out. But no one touches Kevin. I think he’s starved for attention.”

Vinny looked thoughtful, but when she spoke it wasn’t what he was expecting. “So what do you do when you are all touched out?”

Dren laughed. “I come up here and melt. That’s the point of the bathtub. I can just relax.” Then he snorted, “Or I play with the stim gels myself and the guy tease me it’s porn. It isn’t,” he hastened to add. “It is different having people poke and prod me than having me touch someone else. But unless I want to moonlight as a massage therapist, there isn’t really away to get physical contact without the person touching you back.”

Vinny snorted, “Yeah, well anytime you want to practice those massage skills, just let me know. This place is definitely making me tense.” She reached over and rubbed the crook of her neck.

Dren snorted. “Come here. Sit on the floor and I’ll do that.” She wasn’t kidding, her neck, shoulders and back were a mess of knots.

Vinny gave a little moan, “I feel like I am taking advantage of you.”

Dren snorted, “Stim toys don’t hold up their end of the conversation.”

“I’m not sure I do a much better job. Hey, if you want to touch someone without being touched, why don’t you take care of Kevin’s shell?”

Dren snorted, “Once I get lotion on myself, I can’t get it off. It doesn’t soak in like it does on wood or skin. Anything I absorb, I digest.”

Vinny nodded, “Another food safety issue.”

“Pretty much. That’s one of the things I have in common with Kevin. Along with, we can both change shape and we are both less humanoid than the others.”

“I don’t know, you look pretty human to me.”

Dren shook his head again, “Only when I concentrate.”

“Dren? Thanks for listening to me.”

“Any time, Vinny. But you should really go get something to eat, then let Derick take over this job.”

He waited for her to go, then he closed the door, climbed into the tub and just let go. He sloshed into a puddle and lay there for a moment before falling asleep.

#drider #slime #gelatinous #orc #werewolf #minotaur #mimic #gargoyle #exophilia #terato #monster #monster boyfriend

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ladyginoza · 6 years ago

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I'm so angry at the so called experts in my province that are supposed to know how to deal with autistic children and to help parents by giving them tools that will help to make their children into functional independent adults since they don't.

The tools and information they provide to parents are complete joke and they don't work. They just make everything worst and it's no mystery as to why there are so many non functional autistic people in this province. It's unbelievable and it's all to blame by our dear so called autistic experts that pretty much know shit.

What do they recommend parents when their child throws a tantrum? Let him/her have her tantrum and leave the child be. (Which makes no sense and simply teaches the child that they can get away with anything as long as they through a tantrum)

What do they recommend parents when their child throws a fit and doesn't want to bathe/shower? Do nothing. Once they find themselves to be too dirty they will shower/bathe of their own free will (Which is bullshit cause if you let them decide on bathing/showering they will never do it)

What do they recommend parents when their child refuses to brush their teeth? They will lecture the parent for not providing cute little brushes and providing the child with baby toothpaste instead. (There is a reason why adults don't use baby toothpaste and that is because they don't help to protect your teeth from cavities. It's simply to start babies to get used to the toothpaste in their mind and to get them used to spitting it out. It serves no other purposes so what experts are telling parents are pretty much rotting autistic children's teeth but I guess it's okay since baby teeth falls out and new ones grow in right? Well it actually forms a habit and at age 12 the child still won't want to brush their teeth. My sister is a good example of that.)

What do experts recommend parents when their child obsess about things? The recommend parents to indulge in what their kids are obsessed about. (That is in no way healthy when it comes to the point the child refuses to do anything else or refuses to be interested in anything else other than what they are obsessing about at the time.)

What do experts recommend parents when their child follows them around and are pretty much possessive of the parent to the point that the child constantly harasses the parent to do what they want them to do such as the parent playing a little game on their tablet to unwind and the child always wants to interfere? They recommend to tolerate the child and allow the child to follow the parent like a dog even though the child does nothing that a child should do and the parent should allow the child to interfere in whatever they are doing. (That is such a terrible recommendation. Parents have the right to play little games to unwind and they have the right to personal space.

What do experts recommend parents when their child grows an interest in drawing for example? They recommend parents to constantly praise their child for what they created and to compliment how great their art is and to sit with them when they are creating. (I agree to praise a child when they do something since it is good for their mental development. However, there is a limit. For example, I wouldn't compliment a drawing if it is terrible but of course you wouldn't tell anyone what they created is bad but that it is good and they should keep practicing. Why? Well we live in the real world and what will happen if you constantly compliment something that is not that great well the other children surely will and what do you think will happen? Yeah, it won't end well. What experts are basically telling parents is to sugar coat everything which is a terrible idea. I don't believe in sugar coating, it never ends well.

What do experts recommend parents to do when they ask their child to do a simple chore and the child refuses and throws a tantrum? Nothing. That's right nothing and to do it yourself. (Like seriously? How is allowing a child to throw a tantrum so they don't have to do their chore supposed to help them become functioning independent adults? It doesn't. What do you think will happen when they get a job and their boss asks them to do something they don't want to do? They'll throw a tantrum and they'll get fired that's what will happen.

I understand that yes autistic children can't be treated exactly the same as other children but there should be a limit. I've often assisted in meetings with my mother since I'm also my sister's godmother and there was one meeting where experts would tell us that we should never give consequences to my sister. Like that is just bonkers.

My mother did what she thought was best and followed the so called experts' advises almost like a religion. 12 years later and you have one of the laziest manipulative child. They made everything worst. My sister does nothing and when I say nothing I do mean nothing. She's 12 and refuses to load the dishwasher, doesn't clean up after herself so we know exactly where she ate or know what she did. She doesn't pass the vacuum. My mom put her foot down and in order to get her to do simple chores like do her bed and empty the dishwasher she has to threaten my sister by taking something away. It's the only way she'll do it if she fears she'll lose something which is usually her DS.

My sister has a thing where she likes to hit animals. She used to hit the cats or try to hurt them. Even my dog was often a punching bag until Maya started to lose patience and now growls at her and she also growls at my sister if she is rough towards the cats. We told her if Maya bites her due to her behavior, we won't punish Maya. It will be her that gets punished and surprise she hasn't mishandled any of the cats of Maya since we told her it would her that gets punished and not the other way around like the experts kept on saying XD

And hear this. When the so called experts would hold meetings with us, my sister was always around. We had to have her in the room with us as they would tell us how we should act and such. They claimed that since my sister is autistic that she wouldn't focus on what we talked about. Well surprise! Last year in school after she smacked her teacher aid in the face with a hockey stick and she was being scolded for it. Want to know what she replied to her teacher aid? She replied, ''It's okay what I did, I'm not normal.''. She literally uses her disability as an excuse to badly behave. Again to make sure she doesn't do it again, with my mother's approval, the school threatened my sister if she dared to hit anyone every again than whoever she hit will hit her back the exact same way. She never hit anyone again afterwards because she doesn't like it when others treat her the exact same way she treats them.

And don't get me started with table matters. Experts again told my parents to ignore it but now she's 12 and eats like a pig and other kids make fun of her for it. If you give her a full plate, she will eat it in less than 10 minutes and her mouth will be so full to the point she can't even close it. It's maddening and my parents have been trying to stop her from eating like that ever since she was 5 and it only continues to get worst. Last week she put a whole hotdog in her mouth without biting it.

My sister is 12 and you can bet your ass we can't take our eyes off her. At this point she doesn't read or write because she doesn't want to. She finds it hard so she doesn't want to do it. Her hygiene is terrible and we have to force her to shower but does a poor job unless she wants something. She refuses to learn anything new. At this point, if she doesn't break, once she hits 18, she'll be placed into a manor. It's to that point how non functional she is. So yeah she can't, no wait doesn't want to read a 3 word sentence.

Fucking experts who don't know shit.

Okay I'm done venting

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laurenelizabethmclaughlin-blog · 6 years ago

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Post-Truth Rhetoric’s Relationship to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

The world of politics as we know it today is different than the past, much different. New terms and sayings have been introduced to our dialogue, and speaking of dialogue, there’s very little to be found anymore. The terms “fake news” was thrown around repeatedly during the 2016 election, and continues to be currently, especially by our President, who will freely call any source, no matter how reputable it is “fake” if it goes against him and what he preaches. With fake news comes post-truth, and if you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone. Post-truth is a term that’s been around for a while, but gained notoriety during the rise of Trump, and the spread of questionable news and news sources. It’s so “trendy” that it was Oxford Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” in 2016. A post-truth world is one that centers around appeals to emotion and leaves credible sources and the real truth in the dust. Enter ethos, pathos, and logos, (three classic persuasion tools), and appeal to emotions is precisely what pathos deals with and takes advantage of. Post-truth exists regardless of facts and is basically a reiteration of bullshit. People have emotions, that’s what makes us able to be empathetic humans. But what happens when these emotions completely take over your thoughts, and lead to a complete ignorance of your logic and logos?

Bruce McComiskey is a professor of rhetoric at The University of Alabama at Birmingham who wrote a book focused specifically on post-truth called Post-Truth Rhetoric and Composition in which he discusses our current political climate and how it relates to rhetoric. He says, “In a post-truth communication landscape, people (especially politicians) say whatever might work in a given situation, whatever might generate the desired result, without any regard to the truth, value, or facticity of statements” (McComiskey, p. 6). This sums up post-truth pretty well, and gives readers an overview of what exactly it is. In a class on democracy and rhetoric I’m currently taking at Syracuse University, we’ve discussed post truth's relationship to ethos, pathos, and logos and how they’re all connected. Politics today are less logic based, and more emotion based. Decisions are no longer made by the head, but instead, the heart, and these emotions invoke pathos. Politicians are at a point where they will say anything to persuade and appeal to voters, regardless of whether or not it’s the truth. But post-truth also deals with and many times post-truth disregards all logic. Ethos is also hurt by post-truth as we have discussed in class because people can find a "news" source to back up almost anything they want to believe. Credibility is out, and click-bait is in when post-truth takes over. Pathos is already set up to help post-truth rhetoric, as appeals to emotion are what keep post-truth relevant, as many people replace logic with emotion when practicing bullshit or spreading something that isn't fact.

Every morning I listen to a podcast from The New York Times called “The Daily”, and this morning’s topic, October 31st, could not have been more timely as the host, Kevin Roose, was discussing Facebook and politics. He interviewed a couple who developed their own right-wing opinion and news website, “Mad World News”, to see where they’re coming from and how they got started. The owner and founder Cory Pebble claims, “If you can make a good story sound like a bad story, you’ll have a viral story”. The point behind the podcast is that both right and left wing news sites are developed in order to trigger anger, and you guessed it, play on your emotions, to make you believe something that you might normally question. Anger gets people fired up, and makes them more passionate about things they believe to be true. This is post-truth, and is a strong example to its relationship to ethos, pathos, and logos. This touches a little about social media, and politics, but I will be discussing this further in my next post. However, our reaction to post-truth news isn’t necessarily our fault , a 2017 CNN study that scanned participants brains as they discussed politics showed that our brain has a natural reaction to certain aspects of political conversations. The study found that, “when the participants were presented with evidence that challenged the political statements they agreed with, increased activity occurred in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex is associated with emotion regulation and the orbitofrontal cortex with cognitive flexibility”. (Howard, 2017). This explains the science behind appeals to emotion and how it affects your political beliefs and stances.

However, pathos is not the only of the three effected by post-truth. Logos and ethos are also thrown into that mix, but in a different way. Ethos, the appeal to credibility is damaged, because many times people are using, I hate to say it but, “fake” news outlets to spread stories that make them angry and get them fired up, even if the facts aren’t necessarily all there. Logos, the appeal to logic also goes out the window when it comes to emotions. I will touch on this more in a later post, but people tend to forget what they believe in, and what they know is right when other factors, such as strong emotions, come into play.

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baddyxangel · 4 years ago

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Scott is the flattest series regular in Teen Wolf. Teen Wolf dropped the ball with Scott. He’s surrounded by characters with amazing depth and character growth. He is the main character of the show and yet he’s the one everybody dislikes. I don’t dislike Scott. I don’t mind Scott, actually. He’s a good character, just like most characters in the show. But, I don’t love him. Same goes for a lot of people, as well. For a character we’re supposed to like, he’s not really that likable. In the beginning of the show, Scott started off as a bit of a naive, not the sharpest tool in the shed kid. But, I liked him anyways. His stupidity was funny to me and that gave him a bit of charm, weirdly enough. Then, seasons later, he becomes super mature. He develops a hero complex and has this thing against killing no matter what. He definitely took a turn for the worse throughout what you’d call character development. Scott became a flat character.

There was this old trend in literature about making the protagonist what you call an, ‘Epic Hero’. Basically, it’s a perfect hero. And Scott is by no means a perfect hero, but the show-writers gave a half-assed attempt to make him this God-like figure who could do no evil, who’s never selfish and always selfless, and who saves everyone because he loves everyone and tries to protect his friends no matter who’s bad or good. The thing is, we don’t like perfect heroes. Do you think an average person will look at Scott McCallHimPerfect and say, “he wants to save everyone. My god he’s just like me. He believes in good and evil. Damn I love him, just like me.” Nobody says that because Scott is not relatable in the slightest. He doesn’t have a personality other than, girls. Save people. Allison pretty wanna marry. Must not kill kill equal bad.

Do we even know anything about Scott? It might be just me, because I haven’t seen the show in a while. But what interests does Scott have? Because I don’t think we know the slightest about his hobbies and interests other than he plays lacrosse and likes to save people I guess. Do we ever see why he went to UC Davis? What does he want to be when he’s older? So yeah. Not only do we know next to nothing about what his personality and life is like outside of the supernatural, but he also acts all high and mighty. Bad combo.

One of the most annoying Scott moments—for many people—was when he yelled at Stiles for ‘killing’ Donovan without even listening to him. He took the word of Theo, some dude he barely knew, over his best friend. So, he was flipping his shit about Stiles killing someone because as he says it, “we don’t kill.” Despite the fact that almost all of the pack members and their allies have killed before. Scott develops this viewpoint on life throughout the series. He takes on this black and white view on life, thinking that if there’s someone against the pack, they’re a villain. They’re bad. But, if they’re an ally, they’re good. He doesn’t take into consideration that people are morally grey. He doesn’t recognize that the world isn’t black and white. There’s no such thing as good and evil. We’re all just...people. Scott never gets this fixed. He doesn’t make room for the thought that people who kill aren’t always evil. I feel bad for Stiles, because yeah, maybe Stiles could’ve explained what happened better, but the fact that his best friend wouldn’t give him a pass for self-defense is sad. Malia killed when she was eight and he never seemed to care. Kira killed that one guy when she revealed herself as a Kitsune and he she got a pass. Derek has killed many people and he doesn’t care. But the second Stiles kills someone, it’s suddenly an issue to Scott. Hypocritical, much?

In addition to all this, Scott’s also not the selfless hero everyone makes him out to be. He’s actually rather selfish and he’s proven this time and time again. Scott ditched Stiles time and time again to save Allison or someone else who never needed his help. He was also more than willing to throw Derek under the bus and blame him for some murders. I can’t remember any more times he’s done this, but let me know if you remember other examples.

I wish that he was more like his season one self. He went from 0-100 real fast in terms of ‘maturity’ and I found that annoying. His stupider self was more charming and was more interesting. Scott was struggling with dealing with his transformation and I wish this lasted for more than one season. It would’ve made him a much better character. And I do like Scott. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I like Scott and most of the other characters. He has his moments. Some good moments, some times I really do like Scott. But I wish he wasn’t so flat. I wish we knew a little more about him. The hero complex is an old, overused cliché and I was Scott was....y’know....more relatable.

Here seems as good a place as any to say it, so...the true alpha thing is BULLSHIT and it completely ruined Scott's character. One of my all-time favorite Scott moments was in 3a when he threatened Gerard, saying that if Gerard lied about Deucalion and people got hurt because of it, he'd come back and kill him. And almost immediately after that Scott becomes a true alpha and is like "Oh, wait... nevermind, then." Stiles should have at least said something like "Dude, Donovan was trying to kill ME," but all he ever says is "He was gonna kill my dad," which is not at all the reason why he killed Donovan. Not to mention that he didn’t even deliberately kill Donovan, it was a complete accident. The writers did that whole, ‘he was gonna kill my dad’ thing on purpose. If I was Stiles, I’d say, “seriously, Scott? That psycho was literally trying to kill me! And I didn’t even kill him! He fell and impaled himself!” The thing about his dad was to create more of a divide. But leaving out that Donovan was legitimately trying to kill Stiles is even more annoying to me because it leaves them room for Scott to be like "I know the difference between murder and self-defense," later on when they reconcile. If Stiles says it outright then Scott looks like too much of a dick for not taking that into account. But all of that only still makes sense if you've forgotten that Theo specifically said that Donovan went after Stiles when he lies to Scott about how it happened. So, it's already been (at the very least) implied to Scott that it was a self-defense situation (that got out of hand, according to Theo), but because Stiles doesn't specify that it leaves some (less than plausible, but okay) room for Scott to backtrack and be all "Well, I didn't know THAT. THAT changes everything." That's why that "lie of omission" bugs me so much. Stiles was not obligated to share his trauma with Scott if he didn’t want to. And Scott’s neither Stiles’ alpha, father, nor authority figure, so he doesn’t get to judge/condemn Stiles or demand an explanation from him. Not to mention that Scott is the very same hypocritical scumbag who threw a temper tantrum when Derek didn’t let him assassinate Peter like Scott WANTED and DEMANDED in Season 1, tried but failed to assassinate Gerard because ”He threatened to hurt my mom! I had no choice!” in Season 2, and conspired with the likes of Deucalion to assassinate Josh and Tracy in Season 5. Scott committing premeditated attempted murder for his own benefit and using Derek as his own personal murder weapon is good, but Stiles accidentally killing Donovan in self-defense to protect himself and his father is wrong and Stiles is a monster?! Lmfao sure, Scott! Scott McCall is a true something alright. A true hypocrite Stiles didn't because he was in a self destructive spiral. He didn't think he deserved to be forgiven and he thought he should lose Scott. The Dread doctors were constantly reinforcing his negative thoughts about himself through Theo and his own hallucinations because that was his greatest fault and source of his trauma

in the beginning scott was more than willing to kill to get what he wanted (for example when he was gonna kill peter since he thought that would cure him), which was always funny to me idk. i do love scott though especially the first 2 seasons scott since he changes after that, but he’s not the strongest character in the series and they should’ve done the whole ‘true alpha’ stuff differently imo

Scott McCall is literally the blandest, flattest, weakest, most useless fictional character ever. He’s just a badly written and portrayed Gary Stu and a judgmental bigot with abusive tendencies and no character development. Scott became a “True Alpha” due to his canonically nonexistent strength of character, virtue, moral superiority, and force of will, he’s never held accountable for his abusive actions and behavior, and the only time people dump his toxic ass it’s either not his fault or they are being wrong, psychotic, and unreasonable. Scott is such a Gary Stu it’s like a 12 year old on an ego trip wrote him. Scott yelled at Stiles, played judge, jury and executioner with Stiles, and accused Stiles of being a violent, unstable, dangerous, inhuman monster and a serial killer for choosing not to share his own trauma with Scott and for daring to accidentally kill Donovan in self-defense in Season 5; and yet Scott’s the one who threw a temper tantrum when Derek Hale didn’t let him assassinate Peter Hale in Season 1, conspired with Gerard Argent behind everyone’s back and used Derek as his murder weapon because “He threatened to hurt my mom! I had no choice!” in Season 2, lied to Kira about her fox to control her in Season 5A, plotted/conspired with Deucalion to assassinate innocent chimera victims Josh and Tracy in Season 5B, played up an injury that had long healed just to convince his friends to help him and not abandon him again in Season 5B, and wanted to sacrifice Tierney and Jiang to a mob boss to save his own ass in Season 6. There are 100 episodes suggesting that Scott is more than comfortable with killing someone, with lying, and with engaging in violent actions (premeditated murder) to protect himself and his mom despite all his big “killing is bad and wrong” speeches. Scott McCall is a true something alright. A True Hypocritical Asshole and Toxic Friend I remember this one time where Isaac told Scott he liked Allison and wanted to kiss her and Scott just threw him against the wall for having the internal thought to kiss her. He didn’t even do anything!! Plus, when your friend, who’s a survivor of abuse, advises you to hit him, you don’t actually do it!

And I love how Scott gave absolutely no sign of being gay, he’s even said numerous times he likes girls. Take those numerous denies over Stiles’ silence when asked about liking boys. Sceo is the worst ship I’ve ever come across of. The only ships regarding Theo that make sense to me are Thiam (Liam x Theo) and Steo (Stiles x Theo). The others, however, are total crackships. The fact that Theo didn’t show any care or remorse after he killed Scott proves it. And, they barely have any interactions after season five and the times they do, Scott is advocating Theo being sent back to prison. How is that shippable material?

”I’ve heard a lot of the defense of Scott McCall SWAT team, and I’ve heard a lot of them are hypocritical and mean. You can’t pull the race card because we don’t like a character. Scott is just bland, it’s got nothing to do with racism” You took the words right out of my mouth. Scott Stans pull out the “Scott McCall is a poor oppressed Mexican brown boy leader protagonist” every time Teen Wolf fans criticize Scott’s canonical abusive actions and behavior. They also claim that pointing out that Scott was unhealthily obsessed with Allison is racist, even though anyone who watched the actual show knows that Scott is canonically unhealthily obsessed with Allison – so much that he abuses Isaac out of sheer jealousy and hallucinates Allison making out with Jackson TWICE Exactly! Especially because he shoved Isaac into a wall just for thinking about Allison, AND SCOTT AND HER WERE BROKEN UP. He is super possessive of her to the point where he is interfering in Allison’s love life when they weren’t even together. I know there’s a bro-code, but Isaac didn’t even do anything. All he did was think about kissing her and he got thrown into a wall. And yeah, the Tumblr post said Stiles was obsessed with Lydia and nobody calls it out. Stiles was obsessed, but at least he didn’t react poorly when Lydia moved onto another boy. Scott McCall being a toxic friend and an even shittier character is not a Latino thing. It’s a Scott McCall thing

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fundamentalpowers · 7 years ago

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Sometimes I feel insecure about my intelligence. I mean I hope we all have doubts about our abilities, a little bit, just to avoid arrogance, but I’m going to be starting graduate studies for a PhD in philosophy this fall and it’s really hard not to feel that good ol’ imposter syndrome for a whole bunch of reasons that I’ll probably outline some other time. But whenever I’m feeling like I’m a REAL idiot, I remember that I’m not enough of a buffoon to come up with any variation of the ontological proof for the existence of God. They’re all pure bullshit. Fuck you, Anselm, you’re wrong. And fuck you, Descartes, you should have known better. This isn’t to say that it was dumb of them to believe in God, but trying to frame God’s existence as a logical inevitability, especially in the form of an ontological proof, is dumb as shit, for reasons I’ll describe below the line, because anyone familiar with the proofs and/or logic shouldn’t have to look at them again, but if you’re not familiar with this dumbass philosophy bullshit, here it is.

So an ontological proof for the existence of God is, as you might imagine, is an argument that purportedly proves God’s existence through the use of axioms based in ontology, which we can consider to be the study of being, reality, or categorization of the various objects that seem to litter the reality in which we seem to exist. Of course, this word most probably came about in the 1600s, and so much of what was once only scrutinized under the umbrella of metaphysics and ontology is today much better explained through empirical scientific investigation, but bear with the old philosophers here for a minute. Since the philosophical study of ontology is so focused on the definitions of commonly-used words, it has avoided being eclipsed by scientific inquiry at every age merely by the nature of science’s inability to fully encapsulate reality thus far: ”What does it mean to exist?”, “What are things”, and “What is being?” are all pretty serious, if elementary, questions to be asking in ontology, and it seems as though no matter how much we study the world, there will always be a place for these questions, because there is always some portion of existence that we cannot understand scientifically. I’m not saying that science is doomed to fail as a tool for understanding the universe, just that science has never fully encapsulated reality, and so there’s always some wiggle room for speculation. But, I digress. With this very brief introduction to ontology behind us, it may seem pretty obvious that this is the only way to argue for the existence of God, because God’s existence is clearly outside of the realm of modern science. While it is true that whether or not any god exists is outside of the realm of scientific inquiry, there are other ways that people have tried to logically prove God’s existence, including using the beauty of our scientific understanding of physical systems and laws in such arguments as the “fittedness argument” (which is even worse than any ontological argument), or a “cosmological argument,” which I rather enjoy except that I believe that you preclude yourself from actually defining what God is in any meaningful sense if you take it up as your argument for God’s existence. But you can research those things on your own or I can write about them at another time. Here, I’m only concerned with the ontological argument. An ontological argument, at the very least, has to give a reason why we should believe that if we believe that certain things exist, then we must also believe that God exists, because the existence of those things is only possible through the existence of (and/or actions of) God. Now, of the two famous ontological arguments for the existence of God, Descartes’ makes me angrier cuz he wasn’t even being funded by a Church when he decided to write his Meditations. He had just gone on a fucking bender and then realized that being so fucked up for so long actually wasn’t a great way for one to live one’s life. So he locked himself in his room for a week or two and just kinda wrote everything down to make himself feel like he wasn’t such a fuck-up. He could have done anything more interesting to kick off the mind-body problem in Western Philosophy, but he was just hungover and thinking that God must have been pretty good, I guess. Anyway, Descartes give us no explicit proof for his argument, relying instead on some pithy prose which formulates the proof in at least two ways that I can recall. I’ll write down both versions of his proof and talk shit about them as soon as I find my old notes, starting with a passage from his Fifth Meditation: Pithy Prose 1: “But if, from the mere fact that I can bring forth from my thought the idea of something, it follows that all that I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, then cannot this too be a basis for an argument proving the existence of God? Clearly the idea of God, that is, the idea of a supremely perfect being, is one I discover to be no less within me than the idea of any figure or number. And that it belongs to God’s nature that he always exists is something I understood no less clearly and distinctly than is the case when I demonstrate in regard to some figure or number that something also belongs to the nature of that figure or number. Thus, even if not everything that I have meditated upon during these last few days were true, still the existence of God out to have for me at least the same degree of certainty that truths of mathematics had until now.” Breaking this down into a proof format yields...

Proof 1: 1. Anything I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained within the idea of a thing is true of (the idea of) that thing.

2. I clearly and distinctly perceive that “necessary existence” is in the idea of God. 3. Therefore, God exists. Now, René goes on to explain that this is merely how a human should reasonably develop the idea that God must exist, and does not actually constitute an argument that God actually exists. However, this caveat doesn’t really save this proof from criticism, because we can still identify flaws in the reasoning of this proof. There are two basic ways in which we can analyse a proof: by looking at its logical structure, and by looking at the content and internal logic of its premises. The overall structure of this proof is solid, following a classic logical law of inference called modus ponens: If p implies q and p, then infer q. If premise 1 and premise 2 are true here, then premise 3 is inevitable. The actual content of the premises is where the problems lie, in my opinion. Now, I’m by no means the first person to criticize Descartes, but even as an undergrad student his premises struck me as absurd, because it looks like he’s just engaging in circular reasoning, or at the very least being disingenuous about human cognitive capabilities.

First, Descartes doesn’t seem to give any rigorous reasoning as to why necessary existence is in the idea of God itself, other than his own intuition. Intuition is all fine and good, but unexamined intuitions cannot lead us into knowledge. At best, they can be coincidentally correct or useful, and at worst, unexamined intuitions cement ignorance. Second, anyone can claim that the idea of any thing contains necessary existence (or some similar quality that would be purported to entail their existence in a simple proof like the above), and then claim that they perceive that quality of an idea clearly. Think of any other creator God; it’s likely that you could make an identical proof for their existence, and then find that now you have reasoned that there must exist two different Gods which both contain necessary existence in their very idea but which then each negate part of the very definition of the other, because I imagine that each of these Gods are also thought of as the sole creator of the universe. If either one of them were the sole creator, then the other could not be, and we’ve wound up in a paradox that results from applying just a little pressure to this proof. Anyway, since Descartes does have other formulations of his argument, I’ll wrap this part up by saying: This proof fails even with Descartes’ caveat that it is merely a descriptive psychological proof because he doesn’t provide definitions of what it is to clearly and distinctly perceive something (other than to have unshakeable belief in it), and so this proof is just an example of classic religious faith stretched out into a semblance of logic. You can know God through faith, but don’t pretend it’s a logical proof, René. There is another formulation that we can find by looking back to the Third Meditation. This is also the formulation that gets more attention, so I’ll spend some more time with it. Here, Descartes writes... Pithy Prose 2:

“...[T]here can be in me no idea of heat, or of a stone, unless it is placed in me by some cause that has at least as much reality as I conceive to be in the heat or in the stone. For although this cause conveys none of its actual or formal reality to my idea, it should not be thought for that reason that it must be less real.”

“[R]egardless of what it is that eventually is assigned as my cause, because I am a thinking thing and have within me a certain idea of God, it must be granted that what caused me is also a thinking thing and it too has an idea of all the perfections which I attribute to God. And I can again inquire of this cause whether it got its existence from itself or from another cause. For if it got its existence from itself, it is evident from what has been said that it is itself God, because, having the power of existing in and of itself, it unquestionably also has the power of actually possessing all the perfections of which it has in itself and idea, that is, all the perfections that I conceive to be in God. However, if it got its existence from another cause, I will once again inquire in similar fashion about this other cause: whether it is the ultimate cause, which will be God.”

We can take these passages, in conjunction with some other ideas that Descartes sprinkled throughout this meditation, and generate the following proof: Proof 2:

1. I have in me the idea of a supremely perfect being, infinite and containing all perfections.

2. Existence is more perfect than non-existence.

3. Thus, a supremely perfect being exists, i.e. God.

This proof seems to work quite a bit better than the first one which we mentioned, but it is far from perfect. Before I really dig into it, though, I should clarify that if you think that there is an issue with the first premise (Why should it matter what is in Descartes’ mind?), that his meditation does do some work to ground this proof. As you can see in the first excerpt of Pithy Prose that I provided for this version of the proof, Descartes was operating off of something of a framework in which he thought that any knowledge or ideas that he had seemed to come from the world outside him. He only ever had the idea of a rock because he encountered rocks, he only knew what heat and cold were by experiencing them, and so he thought that the idea of a God was the effect of some kind of contact with a being greater than himself. It doesn’t really pass muster today as epistemological grounding, but he really kicked off Western Philosophy, which hadn’t been doing very much in the way of innovation since the Greeks, and so I think I can forgive him for that. Aside from that grounding, though, it has a solid logical structure, quite similar to the first proof. However, the problems inherent in its premises run deeper than the first. The first issue that jumped out at me when I saw this formulation of the proof was the second premise, that existing is more perfect than not existing. This seemed counterintuitive to me, because I thought that if you accept that you can compare existing and non-existing things to each other with value statements like this, then you have to accept a lot of very weird concepts into your ontology. For example, if you accept that there can be two identical things, except that one thing exists and is more perfect where the other is only imaginary, you have to explain how it is that those two things can be compared in that way, and what exactly that imaginary thing lacks.

To make it more concrete, let’s say that we have an piece of art. You can use any piece of art, but I’ll just choose Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Now, if you accept statements such as premise 2, it would be perfectly okay to say that there is the Starry Night that you hang on your wall (or the wall of an art museum), but there is also a Starry Night which Van Gogh did not make, exactly the same in every way. Except for the fact that it doesn’t exist. He only created the one, and the fact that he painted that one that is hung on a wall somewhere makes that one more perfect than the nonexistent one. But that’s not how we use language, is it? Nor is it how we think of nonexistent things. How can there be a thing that doesn’t exist? If something exists, it seems, we can think of it and interact with it in other ways (including imagining it), but with things that do not exist, we can only imagine them, and cannot interact with them in any other way. We have one original Starry Night. We don’t have any number of non-existent Starry Nights to compare it to, and trying to explain why we don’t have non-existent things seems like some absurd philosophical word-twisting to describe something that we know intuitively: Objects either exist, or they don’t. You can’t compare an existing thing to a non-existent thing, much less upon the basis of its (non)existence. It just infuriated me that Descartes thought that there are existing things and nonexisting things, rather than just admitting that things either exist or they don’t.

Immanuel Kant, whose metaphysics I really admire (and whose ethics I generally don’t), posited one of the best-known rebuttals to this argument. He said that the second premise does not make sense because it conceives of “existence” as a quality of a thing, like its texture, mass, or chemical makeup, when in fact existence is a quantifier. All that it means for anything to exist is that there is at least one of that thing. Think of a sliding scale starting at 0. If there are 0 of that thing, that thing doesn’t exist, and if there’s 1 or more, it does. Way easier, right? Clarifying existence in this way clears up any possible confusions about existing and non-existing things, and also breaks this proof. When we imagine a thing, we always imagine that thing as though it existed. Even when we imagine things that we know to be fictional (non-existent), such as dragons, unicorns, and honest politicians, we pretend in our imaginations that such a thing exists in some world or another, and so it is misleading of the proof to say that we can imagine what a non-existent thing is like in contrast to an existing, but otherwise identical thing. Thus, Kant reasons that premise 2 really presupposes the existence of God. It doesn’t prove God’s existence at all. We are free to wonder about whether God exists, or to have faith in the existence or non-existence of such a higher power, but we don’t have to worry about being able to prove it in this way. So yeah, FUCK YOU DESCARTES. And to anyone who made it through that tall text post, your dedication is inspiring. Anyway, if you’re interested in reading more of this stuff, the version of Descartes’ Meditations that I’m using is from the fourth edition of Donald A. Cress translation of “Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy,” which is kind of fun to read if you can get through his dense, meandering style. If you’re not familiar with philosophy and want a more contemporary discussion of existence and nonexistence and how we should conceptualize them, I’m a big fan of David K. Lewis’ On the Plurality of Worlds, which I’ll definitely want to rave about at some point.

#also Intelligence is mostly fake anyway #I could rant about that at some other point #maybe i should start a real blog #for rants #rants and raves #descartes #dumb philosophy bullshit

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sonfaro · 7 years ago

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@you-me-and-the-force-between-us Thank you for your rebuttal. My response will be similarly long, and tumblr is being annoying so I’m switching to a new thread.

“Normal behavior isn’t always guaranteed by everyone. That’s life. Of course there are always going to be outliers of people who don’t think as they should. But they’re small compared to the number of people who CAN make these differences, so making comparisons like these are not only hurtful, but useless. It doesn’t matter WHAT language you use, somewhere out there–is going to fan over a serial killer or want to become one, because it’s not about language, it’s about personal experiences.” It DOES matter to those who are left behind. To those who’s people are routinely NOT treated in this way. Infantilizing dangerous white men at any level of media sets a tone. To see that kind of behavior follow into fiction and NOBODY have a problem with it is beyond bizarre to me. I’ve had friends locked up for far less who never got treated like the children they were, so forgive me if I’m a little sensitive to the subject. “People who sympathisize with these types of people are either going through some sort of fucked up, I’m edgy 100%, phase that they’ll grow out of or have some serious mental instabilities. It isn’t the media’s job to walk on egg shells with language,“ It’s the media’s job to present the truth with no spin. When they do things like this, it absolutely poisons the well. There’s no one to blame for his crimes but the monster, but there are people to blame for how that monster is viewed by the masses. “This other rhetoric about what’s being said and how it compares to fiction–it’s bullshit. And let’s be honest here for a second–just honestly speaking–looking through OP’s page you can very damn well tell this post isn’t done with good intentions in mind; it’s a clear attack on a group of people under the facet of being a good citizen who truly cares. Which also pisses me off.“ In what way? I’ve literally seen someone claim that Kylo is ‘young’ and ‘doesn’t know any better’. That sort of language does exist amongst the fandom. “(I’ve seen people call others abelist for using the word crazy on this hellsite, but idc either way) “ You’re sympathizing with the villain is all. Which is fine, “ Clearly it isn’t??? Because that’s OP’s point. That’s what OP has a problem with, saying that we’re like criminal sympathizers because we sympathize with a villain–so YES I agree, I’m JUST sympathizing with a villain IS ALL, nothing more. That’s the point.“ OP’s point is about the language being used: the infantilizing and woobifying. I can sympathize with Erik Killmonger, but know he’s a grown man and his end in Black Panther is justified. I’m not going to say “He’s basically a teenager lashing out” or nonsense like that - which IS a thing that Kylo stans have said. “ALSO JUST SO EVERYONE’S AWARE. This ISN’T the media saying this.“ Matt O’Donnell, listed below the lawyer in OP’s post, is a reporter. He lists the killer’s status as an orphan (with no reason), his young age (with no reason), and suggests he had a ‘troubled’ background. These are softening social cues. And the media doesn’t have to make these quotes the headline. It is they who present these quotes as a worthy title for an article. “Darth Vader is one of THEE most popular villains of all time, and most people ADORE baby-fying him.” Not canon Darth Vader they don’t. If you want an Alt universe Kylo (like Emo Kylo Ren) it’s whatever. That's a separate idea. “He was Kylo BEFORE KYLO EXISTED–he’s WORSE than Kylo–so where’s all the hate there?“ I disagree. Vader was a tool for the Emperor. Kylo IS the Emperor now. And the hate is largely gone because in canon Vader died sacrificing himself for the hero. “Why isn’t the majority of the world turned into serial killer supporters by now? A. The majority of the world isn’t into star wars. We’re a big fandom, but the world is bigger B. and the majority of Vader’s fans don’t try to justify his actions. He’s liked because he makes a great foil for our heroes. Why isn’t OP making a comparison to Darth Vader and attacking his fans? Again, Vader’s fans generally don’t make excuses for his actions. Because OP has an agenda to attack Reylos and make them seem like horrible people, because that’s just the way the shit rolls on Tumblr nowadays. Agreed, he definitely does. “[...]Committing a crime due to violent media, is far less easy to prove, and there has been no direct connection thus far.“ Right, but your post flat said “It isn’t true”, and that has not yet been determined. Hence my post. “All of these still prove my point–media alone does NOT transform you into a violent person UNLESS you already have a predisposition to being violent (like a history of abuse or a mental illness etc). It ISN’T true until you have enough statistics that back up your claim, and this doesn’t. What’s unhelpful, is not being well researched in a matter and making blatant claims. “ But I didn’t make a blatant claim about video games. I literally said the jury was still out. In response to you flat saying it wasn’t true. -_- “The media compares Hux and FO to Nazism because there’s a legitimate comparison to make (I know some SW fans disagree with me, but there is blatant Nazism parallels imo), because that was done PURPOSEFULLY. They took one evil regime irl and were inspired by it to create a fictional one of it. Every writer and design EVER takes inspiration form real life things to create something, eve villains. But let’s give an example here of a rational comparison and a shitty one:- Hux is like a Nazi (this can be confirmed by the imagery in SW, and background information, etc) - Hux is like a Nazi and therefore if you like Hux you like the Nazi party and therefore you’re a Nazi apologist. Hux is a Nazi and you’re a Nazi apologist.“ This is a bit of a straw man. You’d only be a Nazi apologist if you thought Hux’s POV were correct. Once more, liking a villain is fine - liking them to the point where your sympathy leads you to defend their views and actions is another thing entirely. “Saying that someone who likes Hux or the FO is like someone who might have agreed/sympathized with the deaths of millions of people is a HORRIBLE, inaccurate comparison to make (also Hux is LIKE a Nazi and Hux IS a Nazi are two different things, “ Again, that’s not what’s happening here. OP is talking about a specific action (how shippers talk about Kylo). Not liking the character in general. “And if you’re going to make the point that forcing yourself into someone’s mind is akin to rape, and therefore Kylo’s a rapist (and therefore Reylos are rape apologists–no lie i hear this shit WAY TOO much) then guess what?Obi-Wan is a rapist.Vader is a rapist.LUKE is a rapist.” I mean Vader definitely attempted to force himself into his daughters mind in ANH. Dude was the villain. The jedi mindtrick is more deception than anything else - morally suspect but not a painful violation unless there are more than one person doing it at the same time. Which is the actual term Pablo Hidalgo prefers for what Kylo does to Rey in that scene - a violation. “She (or he idk and idc tbh) is basically insinuating that Kylo Ren sympathizers cause school shooters sympathizers.“ Or vice versa, that the media and how damaged white monsters are portrayed is the reason Reylo’s see Kylo as sympathetic. Which was what OP’s excuse was IIRC. Personally I think the fault for both lies more with societies internal preference for white dudes, but that’s my take. “//Also–just for future notice–I don’t suggest ever using a Buzzfeed article to support your claim because your credibility will go right out the window. Buzzfeed is a pandering shitfest that is really written more by biased bloggers than actual reporters. I suggest using articles without bias and an actual good writing team and reputation.//“ I mean at this point that’s every news organization ever - least in America as far as I can tell. You can barely open a paper or watch the news without someone's opinion’s being clear. And it’s hardly the only article: https://www.salon.com/2016/01/12/we_need_to_talk_about_ben_kylo_ren_star_wars_and_the_media_narrative_of_the_mentally_ill_school_shooter/ https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/1/10698090/emo-kylo-ren-star-wars-parody-twitter http://www.forcematerial.com/home/2017/11/5/we-need-to-talk-about-kylo https://geekmom.com/2016/01/trying-not-to-raise-kylo-ren/ Kylo being compared to real world evil isn’t new. Shoot, there’s a bunch that link Kylo to the alt-right as well. Double shoot, Adam Driver himself straight compared him to terrorists. Kylo gets compared to lots of real world evil people. It’s going to happen. “Yup that’s definitely what happened. It wasn’t like he literally saw Luke about to kill him in his sleep“ No, he LITERALLY saw Luke post realization that he was in the wrong but still holding his lightsaber (like an idiot) and jumped to the conclusion his uncle was going to attack him. Luke’s behavior (which is a character assassination if I’ve ever seen one, but that’s an argument for another time) also happens only after peering into Ben’s mind and seeing nothing but evil. Ben then definitely attacks his uncle after that - from his point of view in self defence, sure - but from the overhead view an unnecessarily. “Oh no–wait, I was wrong:“ ...the article LITERALLY lists him murdering the kids. -_- “Oh so I guess it’s like I said before–people PICK AND CHOOSE their biases!! There is a UNMISTAKABLE comparison between Vader and Kylo FOR A REASON–the two ARE very much alike. But Kylo is a shooter and Vader’s tragic and grand?? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE WITH THIS BULLSHIT.“ Uh, yeah. Vaders complete arc requires six movies at two hours at least each to tell. It’s pretty grand (lofty, big, etc). His heel turn alone is a culmination of three whole films. Also, the article presents Kylo as tragic as well, with Drivers portrayal being described as: “a mixture of pain and hurt so raw it threatens to rend the fabric of the series every time he's on screen“. Did you actually read it? “really made me want to pluck my eyes out. Holy hell my dude, why did you use this as a reference when it’s so clearly just—bad?? I think I lost five years of my life.“ Because it’s another example of Kylo being compared to the evil that is a school shooter. Again, it’s not the only time, and it’s not the only horrible evil he’s compared to. OP was insensitive about it though, given recent events. “And I want to make this clear–I don’t give a single FUCK if you don’t like Kylo Ren. That your opinion.“ I like his character a lot actually. I think he makes an excellent, compelling villain based on Adam Driver’s work. My issue is people attempting to pretend he isn’t one, or that his past trauma absolves him of ANYTHING he’s chosen to do, or that anyone owes him anything at this point, or pretending that this 30 year old man’s childishness can be justified at all. My bigger concern is that sort of thing happens in the real world for folks just like Kylo and that the two often sound exactly the same. “ I CARE when you bring real people into stupid fictional shit and say “You’re the reason why this is happening. It’s YOUR fault things are this way” I don’t think that was OP’s point at all. Least as far as he’s said. “ESPECIALLY when fiction is used right after a real tragedy like this. “ THAT I can agree with. Dude was insensitive. “ It’s disgusting to be compared on ANY level with someone who might do something like this–and again–it isn’t true. “ No one compared you guys to the shooter. How you TALK about the villain was compared. “ Read up on mental illness, debate gun control, read up on what actually causes school shooters to occur, look up psychological studies of BOTH sides, not just what Buzzfeed says–they aren’t accredited to make those calls in any way.“ The article I listed didn’t list the causes of school shooting at all. Did you just skim it? “STOP accepting this shit behavior my dude. It ISN’T OK or educated AT ALL. It’s downright stupid.“ The behavior I don’t accept. The point - that dangerous young white men are coddled both in and out of fiction - is all too true though.

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terrible-tentacle-theatre · 8 years ago

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The Bestiary Revamped: Bobbit Worm

Disclaimer: While this article is founded in scientific fact, it contains hyberbole and conscious exaggerations for the sake of comedy. Do not take my ramblings at face value. You can find the sources at the end of the article and tools for scientific fact-checking under the “Learn more” link on my blog.

The old article can be read here.

(Note: While writing this article, I was listening to the Final Fantasy IV boss battle theme.)

(Okay, so. Anyway.)

Of all the phyla of animal life, you’d be hard-pressed to find any that is more prominent in the public conscious as the epitome of harmless, pathetic, and ultimately boring animals than annelids.

I mean, what else, would you call a taxon that’s most famous member looks like this?

Wow. Fascinating.

Let’s be honest: earthworms aren’t the most exciting animals, to put it mildly. It’s truly difficult to imagine any more generic a creature than a tube of pasty and easily smearable flesh writhing on wet pavement after a light rain.

However, you might want to be careful when talking trash about earthworms and their fellow annelids. These pathetic all-organic homegrown noodles are essential to the circle of matter, and if they get fed up with your disrespectful shit they can just up and ditch the whole detritivorous routine, leaving you, and you personally, to literally eat dirt in their place. Be respectful to earthworms because they deal with all of the shit you don’t want to deal with, both metaphorically and in a literal sense.

But if that isn’t enough to convince you that you shouldn’t diss earthworms (in which case you’re probably an asshole to begin with), consider the following: if they can’t take more of your racist bull, they can tell on you to their big strong cousin. And pray to whatever transcendent being(s) you believe in that doesn’t happen. You do not want that to go down.

Why?

Simple.

Turns out, the ranks of the annelids apparently include the fucking Sarlacc.

*unholy screaming*

Meet the bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois), the newest resident of your recurring nightmares. Who knew that the cousin of the lowly earthworm is a vicious mashup of one of those bendy rainbow pencils and Shai-Hulud that also happens to eat happy thoughts for breakfast? Standing at a maximum length of roughly three goddamn meters, this lethal length of rope will shear anything with the balls and/or the stupidity to approach it in half and look fabulous with its iridescent cuticle the whole time. That is no exaggeration, as you will soon come to see.

This terrible killer rainbow was discovered in 1788 by a German naturalist called Peter Simon Pallas. Imagine hopping on a boat in the late 18th century, in a time when most people still believed in the existence of a good and loving God, and finding this. Imagine his reaction.

Actually, you don’t have to, because we have his portrait and you can see his empty-eyed stare shining through. “Scarred for life” doesn’t even begin covering this bullshit.

Seriously, look into his eyes. Dude’s dead inside.

Sweet lord have mercy. This guy is the real reason why you don’t talk shit about annelids. You can boast about being “the most intelligent creature on Earth” and “the crown of creation” and blah blah blah. Fat load of good it’s gonna do ya against a 10-feet-long rainbow death worm with spring-loaded jagged mandibles quite literally the size of your middle fingers.

Crown this.

And guess what - that worm is fucking pissed at you. You talked trash about its phylum and now you’ll get what’s coming to you. Next time you’ll think twice before you try talking down on annelids.

To better put in perspective why you should soil your pants in fear at this prospect, let’s review the bobbit worm’s life and times, as well as its lovely feeding habits.

Oh boy!

This will be fun.

So, the bobbit worm basically comes to be from the worm jizz and eggs floating around in the ocean. (Keep that in mind next time you go for a nice refreshing swim on the ocean beach.) The fertilized eggs hatch into microscopic little specks called trochophore larvae, which then drift around in the oceanic currents as plankton like a bunch of lazy shits. Fairly humble beginnings for what will soon become the beast that is the bobbit worm. It’s a bit like how Darth Vader used to be a slave on a backwater desert planet as a kid.

Note: this isn’t a bobbit worm trochophore, but that of another polychaete worm (Pomatoceros lamarckii), used here for demonstration. Anyway, they’re difficult to tell apart but one hatches into a harmless tube-building worm and the other a ravenous ten-feet-long predator with a pair of garden shears for a face. Polychaete larvae are like Kinder eggs, Russian roulette edition.

After growing out of its larval stage, a whole lot of completely uninteresting shit happens (mostly the gaining of additional segments), ending with a small mature worm that embeds itself into the seabed in a sufficiently warm and sunny part of the ocean.

What follows next is something right out of Return of the Jedi. What, you thought I was kidding about the Sarlacc?

The bobbit worm spends all day laying low in the seabed, waiting silently, with only the tip of its head sticking out of the sediment. Said head comes equipped with five chemoreceptory tendrils, allowing the worm to “taste” the water around itself. This comes in handy, seeing as it is completely fucking blind and the thought of growing eyes never even crossed it’s mind (which is actually fairly complex for an annelid). It’s like one of those blind sword masters from wuxia movies, except it’s a terrifying giant worm instead.

Aaaaaanyway! If the worm senses anything that “smells” edible, it correctly deduces that it is, in fact, edible. Which logically means that something was stupid enough to approach it without hightailing it out there. Therefore, it becomes a one-worm Darwin Award Committee and does this.

Steppin’ on the beach, do do do doOOOAAAAAARGH

You know, the longer this article gets, the less it feels like this is biology and the more it feels like I’m writing some sort of weird Dune fanfiction.

I feel like I should note that the bobbit worm’s definition of “edible” is amazingly flexible. This fucker will eat anything that comes close to it’s terrifying maw. Crabs, shrimp, fish, worms - anything with or without a pulse is at risk of suddenly being snatched by a horrifying giant worm and swallowed alive to be digested into slurry. If you’re lucky, though, it will miss and only ends up cutting you in half with the sheer force of its strike, completely by accident. Sweet dreams.

Speaking of its digestion, there is absolutely nothing that it cannot break down. It has zero problems wolfing down entire animals twice its width, and one incident involving a bobbit worm sneaking into an aquarium had it shred wire traps furnished with fishing hooks to pieces, then swallowing the hooks and digesting them, followed by eating its way through 20 pounds of fishing wire. I’m pretty sure the next thing to be broken down in its gut will be human civilization.

And if there’s nothing around to eat, the bobbit worm still firmly refuses to die. It will sustain itself just fine on detritus, algae and tiny little silica-shelled plankton called diatoms who are easily some of the prettiest things in the ocean.

It eats pure aesthetic and turns it into rainbow cuticle and mandibles that can shred any fish to ribbons. The bobbit worm is truly the pastel goth of the ocean.

They also have a nasty habit of occasionally burrowing into rocks when young, and ending up in aquariums in secret. There, being the insidious little assholes that they are, they bury themselves into the sediment and secretly start to munch upon the dumbass utopian fish society inside the aquarium, growing from angry shoelace to technicolor abomination in the process. Often it takes years to notice the bobbit worm hanging out in your aquarium, which is a pretty big feat. Imagine if you had to stay concealed in an glass-walled aquarium for years... while being three to ten feet long and covered in garish rainbow color. This guy could effortlessly drive Naruto out of the colorful ninja business. Enjoy your paranoia next time you buy live rocks for your aquarium.

In D&D, the bobbit worm multiclasses as assassin and barbarian.

Now I hope you understand that being a fish is akin to cosmic horror. Any moment you might be cruelly snatched out of existence by a being that is outside your generally accepted reality (the water) and also happens to be shit-your-pants terrifying and even have tentacles to round out the Lovecraft aesthetic. And they are covered in bristles that cause permanent numbness, just by the way. Just in case they weren’t horrifying enough, Mama Nature’s got you covered.

Oh, and one last thing: they are found in all three oceans.

So anyway, how’s planning that seaside vacation going? Have fun!

Sources:

Encyclopedia of Life (EoL)

Echinoblog

Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI)

Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)

SCHULZE, Anja. The Bobbit worm dilemma: a case for DNA (Reply to Salazar-Vallejo et al. 2011. Giant Eunicid Polychaetes (Annelida) in shallow tropical and temperate seas. Rev. Biol. Trop. 59-4: 1463-1474)

The Daily Mail

#bestiary #bestiary revamped #polychaete #worm #annelid #predator #ridiculous jaws #sessile #colorful #nightmare fuel #too fucking large #nope #nope nope nope #so much nope #taking the nope train to fuckthatville

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acoolguyscoollife · 5 years ago

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Chapter 26: This is Complete Bullshit

“Bullshit.” I felt I had to recall what I had said to Tabitha the first time she had told me about what she had created, and as I looked around at the rest of the group, it was all but confirmed that the rest of them agreed with me.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I’m only telling you what the prophets told me.” The elder said nonchalantly, and Amy stepped forward angrily, Aki grabbing onto her shoulder to hold them back.

“This is our lives we’re talking about here! The least you could do is pretend that you give a shit!” Amy yelled at him, but he didn’t flinch. In fact, he didn’t seem surprised or even phased by our reactions. It was almost as if he expected it, which honestly, considering the subject, wasn’t surprising.

“I’ve had thirty years since the prophecies were created to mourn what I knew was coming. And, as I stated, nothing is set in stone. You could very easily choose not to be the heroes.” He said, basically ignoring us as he turned back around.

“It’s just… ridiculous though.” I replied, and he raised an eyebrow at me. Or at least, I think he did. It was kind of hard to tell. “You’re telling me that you have people who have mastery over Chaos Theory?” Aki glanced over to Amy, who was still angrily glaring at the elder.

“What’s that?” Aki asked, and Amy responded before I could.

“Basically, it’s a theory that somewhere, there exists an equation, and if you can work that out, you can predict the future. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist as far as I remember.” She explained, giving a strangely scientific response that I would have expected from Tabitha, but not her. She must have been able to tell that I was looking at her funny through the shades, because she spoke to me next. “What? I played the same game you did that you learned that from.” Crap. Now I looked way less smart.

“Chaos Theory is an interesting hypothesis, but you’re still talking about terms that fall exclusively in your universe. No matter how much your best scientists could predict their own futures, they would be unable to predict alternate realities and the effects they would have.” The elder smirked, clearly pleased with himself, before continuing. “While what we have falls to prediction and nothing more, the possible futures are slim. All roads lead to Rome, and whatnot.”

“Am I the only one not getting… any of this?” Seth asked from the side of the group. He was still shirtless, with the jacket he had been wearing unzipped and leaving him exposed to the cool air.

“I don’t think I am, either.” Aki almost whispered, but attention was back on Seth, with Tabitha clearly remembering what she had been doing before the elder had arrived. Either that, or it was an excuse not to think about the grim things we had been told about. Glancing between everyone, I was pretty sure that was what we were all doing, despite how much more sense it would have made to address it.

“Ow, jeez Tabitha, gentle!” Seth complained as Tabitha set on him with even more fervour, poking and prodding at him with tools I could see her heating with her fingers. Her magic reminded me of the dagger I’d been given, and I took the chance to look at it again. “Why are you even trying to get rid of this thing, anyway? I feel great!” The blade seemed to have engravings, which, while they looked pretty cool, would offer no tactical advantage whatsoever. Well, unless they were parts of the conduits for energy. I wasn’t exactly sure how to test out the more… energised feeling I had with this blade strapped to my thigh, and I made a mental note to ask Tabitha if she could figure out a way I could do that.

“You heard him, these things aren’t going to last very long, and if it’s me that causes that to happen, I may as well figure that out now.” Tabitha replied, through gritted teeth. There was something different about the way she was acting, and I wanted to try and comfort her, but I couldn’t figure out what to comfort her about. Luckily, while I wasn’t that great with this sort of thing, I could see that Seth was, at the very least, able to distract her.

“I know, but you could have at least bought me dinner before – ow – poking at me with various things. I’m more than just my chest, you know.” Tabitha’s movements slowed down, with her eventually stopping, expression unable to be seen by anyone apart from Seth. The elder seemed to be largely ignoring us now, most likely because he knew we were going to be ignoring him. Amy was looking over at Tabitha with a slight hint of worry, and at this point, I was sorta feeling that too.

“Should we… go?” Rose asked me, most likely asking about giving everyone else some space, but she made me realise what actually had to be done. I looked back at her to give her a nod, before moving to Tabitha and taking a look at her watch. She didn’t even object as I tried to figure out how it worked, eventually deciding to go for the emergency exit button. Before I pressed, I motioned for everyone else to move in close, since I still wasn’t quite sure how it worked and the last thing I needed was someone to lose their legs or arms. As we all moved in close, Aki turned around and cleared her throat, causing the elder to look at her.

“Guess what, furball? You might think you’ve got all the future stuff figured out, but we’re the heroes of this story. So if you’re expecting to give us cryptic metaphors and then expect us to help you��” She said, surprising me, and probably everyone else. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her this serious. “…Then tough luck, because this gravy train is leaving the station.” And now everything made sense again. I didn’t wait for a response, pressing the button quickly. Within seconds, we were back in the lab, quickly noticing the difference in temperature and atmosphere. The low hum of the jungle was now replaced by another low hum, this time of technology that I would most likely never understand.

“Tab’, you okay?” Seth asked her, and she finally looked up. Now I could see her face, her feelings were slowly becoming clearer. She was despondent. We had just been told about our seemingly-grisly future, and, from what I had gathered, we had no leads to finding Uchen. But when she spoke, none of that came out.

“I just… don’t understand.” Tabitha began, voice slightly shaky in one of the only shows of emotion I’d ever really seen her give that wasn’t anger. “I could justify the magic, because it makes sense, right? It’s different energy reacting with our bodies in a way that allows us to utilise it like magic in fantasy.” She found her way to her desk, sitting in her chair roughly. “But soothsaying? How can I even pretend that that makes sense scientifically?” I opened my mouth to speak. “And I swear to god, if any of you say Chaos Theory, I’m going to blow up this whole building.” I closed my mouth again.

“Well, maybe it just… doesn’t, you know?” Seth offered, moving over to her desk and leaning against it. “Let’s face it, we don’t know everything in the world, right? Maybe shit’s just that confusing.” Tabitha looked up at him, giving him a slight smile, but behind it was clearly a lot of conflicting feelings.

“Or, maybe it’s even simpler than that.” Amy added, also moving over to her. I wasn’t sure why everyone was moving, we weren’t that far from her either way, but I felt like bringing that up might kill the flow of everyone’s brainstorming session. “So, we know that in these other worlds, things like magic and the like are just intrinsic parts of their universes, right?” She began, and I had a feeling that I’d have to listen carefully to make sure I didn’t end up not understanding something again. “Well, what if seeing the future is just a part of that universe, so while it may not make sense to us, it’s just a normal thing to them?”

“That’s simpler to you?” Seth asked, but his complaining was ignored by everyone in the room as Tabitha turned her smiling to Amy.

“I mean, I suppose it does. I just get in my head sometimes. Everything needs to make sense, you know?” Tabitha said, explaining what had really been going on in her head. For once, I finally felt like I could step in and add to the conversation.

“Well, think of it this way.” I began, using a convenient pause in talking to move closer to the rest of them. “Whether we can figure it out or not, these things do exist in the universe. It’s impossible for something that doesn’t make sense in some way to exist, it’s just that we don’t understand it yet. Like people’s emotions, or Inception.” I offered to Tabitha, who nodded along with everything I said.

“Hey, is that the one with Leonardo DiCaprio?” Aki asked from behind me, and everyone craned their necks to look at her. Aki and Rose were the only people left standing back at where we had come in, and Rose was frowning slightly at us. However, there were more pressing concerns.

“Okay, how in the hell do you know that?” Tabitha asked. “I thought you guys didn’t have any media down where you lived?”

“We didn’t have movies or TV. But I read a lot of magazines, and the novelization.” Aki explained, glancing between us. “The book makes it clearer that it stops spinning, by the way.”

“Aw, I hadn’t seen it yet.” Seth said under his breath.

“You’re really not missing much. Shutter Island was much better.” I said back to him, recalling when I’d been forced to watch it in a media class.

“Honestly, I thought The Great Gatsby was pretty good myself. Great music, too.” Amy said, continuing the same tone of voice that Seth had started in even though there wasn’t much point anymore.

“All of you are completely wrong. Titanic will always be his greatest film he ever did.” Tabitha interjected in a normal voice. “Wait holy shit, CG, is your real name Jack?” She added excitedly, motioning towards Rose, who was still stood there thin-lipped.

“I don’t even want to dignify that with a response.” I said, standing up straight. “I assume you’re feeling better now, then?” Tabitha nodded quickly, before talking again.

“You didn’t say no though, and I really want that to be true because that would just be perfect!” It was clear she wasn’t gonna let it go. However, I thankfully didn’t need to say anything, since Rose finally decided to add to the discussion.

“Nah, that’s not his name.” She said, leaning against a random other desk that I’d not seen anyone use since we came in.

“Wait, you know his name?” Aki said, her turn to be excited now. “Tell us!” Rose chuckled slightly, hopping onto the desk instead of leaning.

“Well, his real name actually is Cool Guy. Had it changed and everything, you know. He does also have a… well, normal name, for want of a better term. But that’s not really my place to say anything about it.” Rose was clearly having fun with this, now grinning from ear-to-ear. “But, for the right price, maybe I’ll tell you.” Immediately, I could feel everyone become interested.

“What do you want? I’ll give you my first-born!” Seth said quickly. A little too quickly, when it comes to promising children. Maybe he had a history.

“I was thinking about finding out something worthy of telling this secret. A soul for a soul, as it were.” Rose grinned evilly, and I knew I was powerless to do anything. “So what secrets do you guys have?” For a moment, no one said anything, and I thought that I was safe.

“I once licked someone’s nose for £200!” Seth said, and I knew it was only going to get weirder from there as Rose shook her head.

“I act smart but get most of my actual stuff from books!” Tabitha chimed in.

“That’s how everyone gets smart.” Rose replied, and Tabitha swore under her breath.

“I once dated a guy named Vince and a guy named Vaughn at the same time!” Amy said excitedly, and I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to be anything other than a slightly interesting piece of trivia. As Rose shook her head again, the room fell silent once more, with everyone weighing up whether their other secrets were worth more. Then, one of the voices that I’d not heard previously spoke up.

“Amy and I are dating, and I’m really excited because she’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met!” Aki said from where she had stayed standing ever since the return. Rose raised an eyebrow at this, but she wasn’t given the chance to say anything, as I said something first.

“What the fu-”

#cool guy #A Cool Guy's Cool Life #creative writing #story #writing

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