#me: doesn’t do the six pages but damn well doesn’t do the short version either

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

“Oh -- thank God!”

So I discovered after writing most of this already that Misha said they were actually still on set when looking at the astrology book, but my  story was too far gone to change, so I just ignored that minor detail. Hope you like my version of events better anyway.

It’s certainly more fun and in depth than what we actually heard.

______________________________________________________

“Hey, Mish—what’s your birthday?”

Misha looks away from the TV to squint at Jensen? “What? Why? You know my birthday.”

Jensen grins at the book in his lap but he doesn’t glance up to meet Misha’s eyes.

“Where did you get that thing anyway?” Jared asks around a mouthful of room service hot-wing. The football game they’re watching plays on in front of them, and Jared is already sucked back in before Jensen can answer.

“Got it from the make-up trailer. Not sure who left it in there.”

“And you brought it with you?” Misha asks.

“Just threw it in my bag … wasn’t really thinking ‘bout it. Now, c’mon. Tell me your birthday, Mish.”

Misha rolls his eyes. “You c’mon. You know what it is … August 20th.”

Smiling victoriously, Jensen sits up in his seat a little, hunching forward as he scans his finger down the page. “Oh—thank God!” he says finally, flopping back against the couch with a bit too much drama.

“Thank God, what? What did it say?”

Jensen just continues smiling as he closes the book and pulls himself off the couch. “Alright, I’m gonna head back to my room and unpack.”

“Jensen!” Misha chuckles, albeit, a bit annoyed now that he’s being so blatantly ignored.

“I don’t get why you bother unpacking, man. We’ll only be here for a couple days” Jared says—still with his mouth full, and still barely present in the conversation.

“I can’t plan an outfit if I can’t see all my clothes laid out” Jensen huffs, as if it’s something they all do. As if he isn’t the only one in the room who is truly concerned about these things.

Jared rolls his eyes and Misha snorts, and Jensen flips them both off before turning to head out the door of Jared’s suite.

After he’s gone, Misha turns back to Jared and wonders at him. “What do you think he meant?”

Jared is wide eyed, watching the Longhorns charge against the Sooners, but they were blocked right at the fifty yard line. “No! C’mon! Damnit!”

“Jared …” Misha tries again.

“Huh?” Jared sighs, finally tearing his eyes away to look at his friend. “What’d you say?”

Misha chuckles and then leans forward—elbows on his knees, as if this was a matter of great importance. “What do you think Jensen meant after he looked up my birthday in that horoscope book and said ‘Oh—thank God’?”

Jared’s eyebrows pile down on the bridge of his nose for a second, briefly having no clue what Misha is talking about; and then all at once, they shoot up again. “Oh, that? He was probably seeing if you two were okay to bang.”

Misha spits out a laugh, more at himself than anyone—because he honestly thought that Jared might give him a sincere answer for once. “Okay, yeah … well, I guess I’ll leave you to your game.”

Jared is already engrossed again, and he barely raises a hand to say bye as Misha gets up to head for the door.

Once in the hallway, Misha sighs—not sure why he puts up with those two. But then again, he knows exactly why. They are his two best friends, and they know him better than almost anyone, which is why they know all the perfect ways to torture him. It’s unfair really, and Misha tells himself that he probably wouldn’t stick around if it wasn’t all so fucking hilarious.

He peers down the brightly patterned hallway  to see his room just a couple doors down from Jared’s, but then he turns his head the other direction to look at suite 509 … Jensen’s suite. And as if he can see through the door—he pictures Jensen standing at the end up his bed, six outfits spread out before him, four-too many for their short trip to Toronto. Inevitably, one of those outfits will end up in Misha’s bag on the way back, either because Jensen already wore it too many times, or because whatever Misha haphazardly threw together for this trip will not satisfy Jensen’s top-tier taste.  Misha can’t count how many times he’s walked out of his hotel room at one of these conventions, just to be marched right back in by his ever-suave costar.

“You can’t be serious” Jensen would say. “You look like a busted piñata.”

Misha used to argue, used to act offended (even though he really could not care less) but then he saw how happy Jensen would be after he dressed him. The pride on his face as he stood behind Misha as they both looked in the mirror. The happy murmurs, the intense scans of Misha’s entire body, the genuine compliments that Misha never knew he needed until he heard them come from his friend’s freckled lips.

“You look so good, Mish.”

“See how this shirt makes your eyes look amazing?”

And the ever-invigorating “Damn!”

Misha found himself really looking forward to their occasional games of dress-up; so much so, that the cons where Jensen couldn’t fly in until Sunday morning always left Misha a little down. He still doesn’t care what outfit he ends up in, but he does like the boost that his friend’s praise gives him right before he heads out on the stage.

The knock on the door surprises him—because Misha finds that he’s the one doing the knocking.

Jensen opens it, already smiling as if he knew who it was. He could have known. He could’ve looked through the peephole anytime in the last few minutes and saw Misha standing there, daydreaming like an idiot.

Misha blushes as he waves awkwardly at the other man.

Jensen just leans against the door coolly. “Hey—long time no see.”

Misha blushes more and sighs. “Yeah, um, well … I was just wondering if you had anything I could wear? I don’t even know what all I packed .”

Surprisingly, Jensen frowns a little at that. “Nah, man. Sorry, I didn’t have time to pack as much as I usually do either, and I know everything I do have will be too small ya.”

“Really?” Misha says, instantly embarrassed at how disappointed he sounds.

But Jensen seems disappointed too. “Yeah—I only have a few things, and since you’ve been working out so much …” he grabs Misha’s shoulder for emphasis and gives it a squeeze, “I think my shirts would all be too tight on you.”

Misha slumps a little, but still smiles at the round-a-bout compliment he just received. “Alright, no problem. I’m sure I have something semi-decent in my bag.”

“Doubt it” Jensen laughs as he leans back against the door.

With another sigh, Misha looks over Jensen’s shoulder and spots the book on the end of the bed; and before Jensen can invite him in, Misha is moving around him to go pick it up.

But Jensen doesn’t seem to mind as he shuts the door and follows Misha into the bedroom.

“So …” Misha begins, not able to wait one more second, “why did you want to look up my birthday in this thing anyway?”

Jensen smiles and then pulls up beside Misha—their shoulders brushing as he puts out his hand so Misha can give him the book. “Well, they got these categories … compatibility between the signs and shit. Like friendship compatibility, frenemies … romantic compatibility. That sorta thing.”

Misha nods as he watches Jensen flip through the book.

“And here …” Jensen continues, scrolling his finger down to the chapter titled “Leo and Pisces” he comes to a stop at the bullet-point for friendship. “Here it says that you and I are entirely different in character, but love the new aspects we bring to each other’s lives.”

With a smile, Misha relaxes his shoulders—relieved with the answer he finally received, but then all at once, he shrugs them up again. “But … you already knew that. Why the big exaggerated response at looking it up? Were you just trying to mess with me?” It’s more than likely, and Misha knows it.

Jensen grins as he turns around to sit on the edge of the bed—still grinning as he looks back up at Misha, thumbing over to the next page in the process. “And here … in the next category” he goes on, as if Misha hadn’t said a thing just a moment ago, “it says that the outward dominance of the Leo is willingly accepted by the Pisces, sometimes more than they let on. The Pisces’ submissive nature welcomes the Leo’s control, as long as it’s put forth with affection and love. These two are a rare match, but a good and strong one once paired.”

Misha tilts his head some, wondering down at the other man— suddenly noting that the category Jensen is looking at is for ‘sexual compatibility’.

Jensen sits proudly atop the bed, smugly smiling up at him, like he’s played the world’s best prank. “Huh” Misha says finally.

Jensen’s smile droops a bit. “Huh?”

“Yeah … huh. I guess Jared was telling me the truth.”

Now it’s Jensen’s turn to look puzzled. “What? Truth about what?”

Misha chuckles before coming forward and turning around to sit down next to Jensen. “I asked him why he thought you were looking me up in that book, and he said it’s because you wanted to know if we were fit to bang.”

Jensen throws his head back in a laugh, and Misha admires the view.

“He wasn’t wrong.”

Once Jensen settles, he shakes his head and agrees. “Nope. He wasn’t. Plus, he and I were talking about it before you even came into the room. I had already looked up Danneel and I; so Jared said I should look you up next, just to make sure that the stars weren’t pissed at us for being together.”

“Definitely don’t want to piss off those stars” Misha says with a laugh.

Jensen grins even wider. “Nope … sure don’t.”

“But, according to that book, they should be more than happy about my dominance over you in the bedroom.”

Jensen’s stare narrow as he sits up a little straighter—eyes flicking around for a moment before settling back onto Misha’s in front of him. “Well … we’re in a bedroom right now. Whatd’ya say we please some stars?”

Misha grins, reaching up to thread his hand around the other man’s neck, nodding enthusiastically as he climbs on top of him. “Oh—thank God!”

[calleo-bricriu]

what's the de sade ripoff book like anyway?

It’s like listening to someone who thinks they’re a genius but who’s really sort of–slightly below average at everything ramble on and on and on for over 400 pages about how they’re a genius and everyone around them is making their life horrible because they don’t understand how much of a genius he is.

Also, alcohol isn’t a stimulant at all, let alone a strong one. I guess, to be entirely fair, if I found out my Mum had a sex dungeon in the house I’d probably need a drink as well.

A lot of drinks.

And an Obliviator.

Finding out your mum has a sex dungeon is a pretty reasonable excuse to drink a lot.

Anyway, this author is allegedly a doctor, he ought to know damn well alcohol isn’t a stimulant.

I really do just love how it’s the same exact story, only with worse writing and set in Dresden–then Hamburg–then…New York City.

Some guy named Newcomber completely flips out any time someone says a woman’s name around him in his own house. It’s never explained why. I feel like that should have been an important plot point? Maybe he’s assuming everyone’s already read the book he blatantly lifted from.

Men just need to not be allowed to describe women in their books if they’re going to do it like this: “Seated in a large leathern chair was a dainty piece of pink-cheeked, dark-haired, ebon-eyed femininity. Her sealskin jacket fitted snugly her lithe form, and a fascinating toque rounded off the saucy, childlike appearance of the young woman.”

That’s the sort of description that makes you feel like you need to run a Scourgify through your entire brain.

I’ve read, as I mentioned yesterday, de Sade; all of his uncensored garbage and the difference is, de Sade knew he was a shite writer.

He was just one of those obnoxious people that feels the need to be edgy for shock value; to get a reaction. He wasn’t ever trying to be good at it, he just wanted to get a reaction and have people pay attention to him, which he got–usually in the form of prison.But, the end result of that is that his writing aged in a way that makes it so completely off the wall ridiculous that it’s more funny and less shocking now.

Like–right, if you’ve never read 120 Days of Sodom you should, because all it is is this list of increasingly improbable to impossible scenarios, in actual list form, that are discussed by the characters like they’re going over a list of chores they need to do that afternoon.

One involved mice and cannons, actual cannons, that somehow didn’t result in death or injury to anyone (including the mice), another had to do with somehow arranging it so a woman would give birth to a goat, which would then become a sex slave–the goat, not the woman, I think he forgot there was a woman involved in that one by the time he got to the impossible goat baby–and when you read something like that, you know damn well the person writing it was writing what they were writing as bait to see how mad people would get about it.

This idiot, however, didn’t appear to get the joke and is taking his own…version of Justine very, very seriously which leaves you more with a really creeped out feeling than a, “HA! I can’t believe anyone fell for this, it’s so obviously written as over the top with intent to offend people too stupid to get the joke,” sort of thing.

So, moving on from the creepy description of childlike femininity–and who says woman like that anyway?

Ms. Femininity gets up and gives the, “Never Say A Woman’s Name In My House For Any Reason Ever” Newcomber a kiss and he just sort of shrugs it off, which makes her concerned but since he never bothered detailing whatever backstory these two have I guess I’m just supposed to make one up. Guessing that, because it was described as “armorous” they’re lovers but, it might have had more of an impact if he’d–mentioned that previously at some point?

This is only page sixteen, as an aside.

She was gossiping with his mom and mom let slip that he was leaving Dresden and she’s upset but again, no backstory given between these two so we don’t even know how or why she knows his mother. All we know about that relationship is that his mom grosses him out probably because of the sex dungeon thing, which is a fair reason to not want to visit your mother’s house.

So he’s pretty meh about the kiss hello, she loses her mind about it and says he’s being cruel then flings herself onto the sofa for a good cry about which he doesn’t even care.

His name is Leigh, apparently, which is a perfectly common German name, as is Newcomber..

And she’s–Tahitian (but upper class, he’s emphasised that, can’t have him screwing around with a commoner from Tahiti, obviously) and grew up in…Honolulu and got married to a US Navy officer two years before she met the guy in Dresden that she just kissed and is now crying over while the author scrambles for a backstory.

Great, got married at sixteen, is now referred to as a “child-wife” and somehow his deployment from Honolulu landed her in…Dresden.

He should have known not to leave her alone in Dresden because, since she’s Tahitian, that means she’s just going to start cheating on him the second his back is turned (which appears to be what’s happening here).

An entire page later, we find out her name is Obera, and the guy whose mom has a sex dungeon who straight up ignores her is apparently the love of her life despite the fact that all we’ve seen so far is that he’s straight up not the least bit interested in her.

That finally ended and we’re back to her crying on the sofa and he tells her to knock it off because it makes him feel mean–when he was just mean to her not even two full pages ago. Leigh’s got a terrible memory, I guess.

“Finely-molded limbs”. Stop it.

A few paragraphs of Obera going on about how Leigh’s sister, Mizpra, is a complete and utter bitch and Leigh agreeing with her that Mizpra is, in fact, a complete and utter bitch. I might be too if my name were Mizpra.

At this point, in the middle of Obera trying to explain some theological lecture she attended, the author butts in to tell us that the lectures are FACTS then references some article in Popular Science Monthly from May 1989 called, “Witchcraft in Bavaria” right after Leigh starts talking about how Dresden has lousy weather and they’re going to the Rhine because the climate is that much different–five hours barely South and mostly West of Dresden, though it might be closer depending on where along the Rhine they’re going; its a river, and it’s not exactly a short one.

It also apparently has a climate similar to Honolulu which tells me he’s never been to either place but, it’s fiction, so why the hell not?

I’m only on page 22 now, as an aside.

Suffer with me, this is awful.

So he’s already planned this whole thing, someone named Frau Leidmann will lie to everyone and tell them that Obera is traveling with some old woman, he’s sending a telegram from…New York asking her to meet some made up person in Hamburg which, incidentally, is five hours North of Dresden and if you’re trying to aim for a warmer, closer to Honolulu climate here, you don’t want to be going North but okay, fine, we’re going to Hamburg.

Author really ought to have consulted a map before writing this.

“Was it right that he should take her with him and wreck her life?” Um–if you have to ask…

Wonderful, well, at least by now she’s 18 because she got married two years previously at 16.

By page 23 he’s essentially admitted he doesn’t like her much at all but she’s hot and young so he’s going with that. Not creepy at all.

“He would throw her aside as he would any other obstacle. Was this love?” …no. We established that two paragraphs ago when his thought was straight up that he didn’t love her.

Can’t take her back to the US with him but–he’s–that part was never mentioned at any point, as far as we’ve known until page 24 is that the guy lives in Dresden, his sister is a bitch, and his mom has a sex dungeon.

Nothing dignified about his appearance, likes his laboratory, doesn’t have a real job, nobody understands him, I’m starting to think it’s less that his sister is a bitch and more that he’s just kind of a whiny creep.

So, that’s the end of chapter 1.

Chapter two starts with him explaining why he named one of his dogs Bridget and why he’s mad that Obera could not possibly care less. I couldn’t possibly care less either but he explains it anyway in the weirdest possible way, “They do not associate the name with the beautiful, refined, and historically interesting woman who gave it such prominence. How can you associate a noisy, china-breaking, red-headed, befuzzled, opinionated ruler of the kitchen with Bridget the Goddess of Poetry, the Gaelic Muse, the sentimental, impulsive Sappho of ancient Ireland?”

Man, don’t talk about your dog that way, just don’t. I don’t like where you’re going with it.

Dagda gets a much shorter, “he was the all-king, almost the Zeus of ancient Ireland.”

Ah, and Obera is, of course, a princess. A Tahitian princess.

From Honolulu.

Which is famously in Tahiti and not a six hour flight–a thing that didn’t exactly exist in 1901 so I’m assuming it would have taken a hell of a lot longer by boat–North on an entirely different set of islands.

Okay.

You know, at least de Sade knew where physical locations of places were.

Do you know how bad something as to be that, not even 35 full pages in, you can not only recognise it as a direct derivative work of the Marquis de Sade but also have it be abundantly clear that it’s, like, a version of it so poorly done that the only reason you’re still reading it is because you kind of now want to see just how much more idiotic the story can get?

That’s what this book is like.

“He arose and went to her, took her on his lap, and talked to her as though she were a child.” No. No, stop that right now.

Four pages of him explaining that the reason why he ordered, ordered, her to read a childrens book was to prove to her how all folk tales are all the same and nothing is original and something about random Greek philosophers, then Why Catholics Are Right.

I might have been as bored reading that as Obera probably was having to listen to it.

HA! SHE FELL ASLEEP WHILE HE WAS TALKING!

She has a nap, wakes up later, and has somehow…uh…received a letter from that guy she married in Honolulu basically saying, “We both made a mistake. Divorce time.” and is somehow upset by this despite it being established in the last chapter that she wasn’t super interested in him anyway as the first thing she did when he ended up deployed was start fucking this idiot of a pseudo-intellectual.

…and this is somehow Mizpra’s fault, so I’m assuming she tattled, then he straight up jumps from, “Yeah I don’t love her, she’s just hot I guess” to “I LOVE YOU LET’S GET MARRIED DEFINITELY NOT TO SPITE MY SISTER!”

That’s not sarcasm. That’s exactly what it was. Right after he does the, “I love you! I’ll marry you!” (twice in a row at that, nobody talks like that) he moves right onto “the bitch can’t laugh at you getting busted cheating if we get married” which is not entirely sound logic but that’s where we’re going.

Robert Mesney hopefully got out of this stupid plot by realising what was going on and filing for divorce.

Actually, he doesn’t even ask her  to marry him he tells her that he’s going to marry her and doesn’t give her the option to object which I guess is just fine because at some point during his rant about his sister being a tattling bitch Obera fainted and he just…didn’t notice until he let her go and she fell over because of the being unconscious thing. Even then he didn’t really care, he just sort of went, “Oh.” and dropped her back on the bed.

Now she’s talking about his “aged countenance” which might be a little more fair if it hadn’t been mentioned that he’s 25. It’s not exactly old enough to count as “aged countenance”.

Apparently he’s also an alcoholic, which they keep referring to as dipsomania. Good idea, marry the 25 year old alcoholic who the plot has established doesn’t even love you (nor has he shown it at any point in their interactions apart from shouting it at her after finding out his sister told her soon-to-be-ex-husband that Obera was cheating on him), that’ll go well for everyone involved. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong here.

The servant at this place in Hamburg has been going on for five and a half pages about how Leigh is a drunk and how it’s his mother’s fault or something then just rambling on about his own family tree for no actual reason and how he’s somehow related to Leigh but also is looking forward to the time when the last Newcomber dies.

That’s chapter 2.

Chapter 3 starts with the fact that Leigh said he’d be back by lunch and it’s been three days and he’s still not back; I guess, to be fair, he didn’t say by lunch on which day.

He’s just out binge drinking in Hamburg.

Shows up four days later at four in the morning and immediately starts drinking again and none of this is a red flag for her.

Now they’re–he’s going to Paris, she’s going back to…the US from Havre, and he’s somehow decided it’s a better idea for him to not also go to the US via Havre but to instead go to Liverpool and leave from there. Okay.

This is only page 44 out of 408.

Mizpra wants to control their mother to snag most of her estate out from under Leigh, it appears as though she’s just his stepsister anyway, Mrs. Kassel is apparently a nice lady because the author hammers that point away for a good two solid pages and she’s going to New York with Obera because she apparently owns a house on Fifth Avenue.

All right.

She just randomly tells Obera that crooked noses and mental illness (sorry, “bad psychic quality”) runs in the family. Still no red flags for Obera.

Skips right to the wedding which has…no detail at all. Literally the only mention it gets after all of that build up is, “The wedding took place at Mrs. Kassel’s, who attended to every detail,” then moves right on to Leigh getting a flat in uptown and a job at a hospital and to mention that his mother’s letters were “curt, unresponsive, and insulting” for which he blames Mizpra.

Couldn’t be the fact that he ran off to the US with a still married 18 year old without telling anyone, why would that bother someone’s mother?

He either gets fired or quits at the hospital, it was never mentioned either way, and has irregular work so now they’re behind on bills and Obera’s “condition” requires quiet and rest and…Mrs. Kassel to take her on a vacation I guess. Time skip from spring to autumn and, to nobody’s surprise, Obera comes back with a baby and her idiot of a husband is still unemployed and also didn’t seem to notice or care that she was gone (because that’s never mentioned) for almost a year.

By this point, Leigh straight up hates his mom and Mizpra is a “moral criminal” but it’s not explained how, just that she is.

Mom, Mizpra, and a whole bunch of their maids suddenly turn up at an uptown hotel and he just–takes off to go and see them despite having spent the last few pages going on about how he can’t stand either of them.

Sister’s got masculine handwriting which is somehow important to know.

Oh, let’s see, what else are we learning about Mizpra: Large jaws, muscled neck, small hips, uncomely waist, large hands, bold frame, coarse features, a “masculine larynx” and she–author keeps refering to Mizpra as she so that’s what I’m going with here–tells him to fuck off and that she’ll call the police if he tries to see mother.

So, instead of trying to reason with her (also why did they come over from Desden if they didn’t want to see him?) he just tells her she looks like a man.

“Mother doesn’t want to see you.”

“YEAH, WELL YOU LOOK LIKE A MAN! CHECKMATE! I AM SUCH AN INTELLECTUAL!”

Great display of the long winded nonsense the author gave everyone about what an intelligent intellectual this idiot is; best he can come up with is to tell his sister she looks like a man.

He still doesn’t have a job.

It’s been almost an entire year, how have they not been evicted from that flat yet?

Oh, but he has money to go out and get trashed again, though.

And he’s rambling to the bartender about people staring at “crippled children” for some fucking reason while the bartender pretty much pretends to listen.

He drinks because he’s a genius. That’s it. That’s the reason. He’s a genius and nobody gets him so he drinks.

58 pages in and I can kind of see why this guy’s sister doesn’t particularly care for him. I don’t particularly care for him either and, so far, am kind of on Mizpra’s side on this one.

Random name dropping list of famous people who had epilepsy or who were alcoholics or drug addicts. For an entire five pages. Nothing else, just a list, until he gets to Edgar Allan Poe who apparently had a psychic incubus problem instead.

One long paragraph held together by semicolons that says nothing at all.

Five pages about how his drinking problem is literally just like lycanthropy only, instead of turning into a wolf, he just goes to a pub and does so more often than once every full moon.

Same thing though. Exactly like lycanthropy which we all know is caused by thinking you’re a genius then being mad that nobody else agrees with that self-assessment.

More internal dialogue about how everybody is an idiot except him, because he’s a genius that nobody understands.

Somehow.

A few more pages of comparing himself to Nero which is not strictly the best comparison someone could make unless he’s planning to burn New York City down.

Couple of pages of internal dialogue about how he shouldn’t have to get a job because he’s a genius and people should just pay him to grace them with his presence.

End of Chapter 4 and I can’t keep reading this anymore today. This might be the worst thing I’ve ever read and not at all for the reasons the author was intending; it’s not shocking unless you’re shocked by how badly it’s written.

It’s so bad it’s almost exhausting.

[panismightier]

Generation Three

"Generation Three" is the short story I wrote for my fiction workshop this past semester! It's about 13 pages long (double spaced), so be sure you have time for it! I'll reblog it a few times for a bit after this. CW: a brief mention of suicide.

------

I was born in a tin can to die in a tin can.

My name is Sylvia Chavez, and I’m in Generation Three of the Miranda mission. When my parents were kids, old enough to remember but too young to have a say, their parents signed up for the world-expanding, paradigm-shifting mission of interstellar travel. The Miranda mission will take hundreds of people, thousands by the time the ship arrives, to TRAPPIST-1e, and they’ll start a colony there. Build a brave new world.

I won’t be around to see it.

See, the TRAPPIST-1 system is nearly seventy light years away. The Miranda doesn’t travel at the speed of light, only about a third of it. It’s a two-century flight, give or take. One way. Of course.

My life on this ship is pretty straightforward. I won’t have any responsibilities until I hit breeding age around thirty, and then I spit out a few kids and help raise Gen Four.

------

I eat lunch every day with this girl Lauren. That’s it, just Lauren—she was born to very communal, “takes a village” people. Lauren didn’t get a last name, because she’s the whole station’s daughter.

It felt like it, too, when she was born. She’s only sixteen. She was born after everyone thought Gen Three was full, and then Marcus offed himself and Lauren’s parents jumped to fill his slot. I was only eight, but it’s easy to remember how everyone doted on her.

She’s tiny, and not just because she’s young, with pale skin and ratty blonde hair that makes two little ringlets in the front where she twirls it. She’s always in the same worn-out blue sweater, except for the days it’s getting washed, and she always eats applesauce.

Lauren works in fashion design. Not that it means much here. She’s on a team of five, and they make the clothes for everyone on the station. They get to define fashion. Lauren mostly makes pajamas and lounge clothes, though, so I don’t think she cares much how it looks.

She’s scribbling down patterns now. She’s finished her applesauce—she always scarfs the stuff—but she’s waiting for me today.

“Don’t you have a special desk for that?” I ask her, pointing my fork at her patterns. It’s hard, to my untrained eye, to work out what kind of garment it is, but her paper hardly leaves room on the table for my plate.

“Yes,” she says. Eli waves to us on his way out of the lunch hall, but Lauren either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“Why don’t you use it?”

She shrugs, not looking up from the table. “You’re here. I like you.”

I grin. “I like you, too.”

“I want to show you something after.” Lauren pulls something from her bag that looks like a big, curved ruler and lays it on the table to trace.

“Show me what?” I move my plate to the bench next to me as she shifts the paper to cover the last clear foot of table.

She smiles, but still doesn’t look at me. “It’s a secret.”

------

Lauren’s secret is a tour of where she works. I’ve been there before—I’ve been to every one of the Miranda’s 700-odd acres more times than I can count, and Lauren’s workspace is, frankly, one of the least interesting. Not nearly as fun as the 0-G rec center. Well, Lauren’s always had an odd idea of fun.

She works in a big room on the second floor of the community center, full of long, cloth-strewn desks, scattered dress forms, several mirrors, and a line of sewing machines. Lauren grabs my sleeve and tugs me to the second table from the back. It’s even more of a mess than the others, and she pulls out the pattern she was working on before and drops it over the top of everything. Silently, she pulls up her chair, picks up a pair of scissors, and starts cutting the pattern out.

I watch her for a while, uncertain of what I’m meant to be doing. “Not that this isn’t fascinating,” I lie, “but why did you take me here?”

“I thought you’d want to see. Here, hold this,” Lauren says, shoving a piece of the pattern at me. It looks like the front of a shirt, so I hold it up to my chest.

“See what?” I ask as Lauren starts tugging at the paper, pinning it to my t-shirt. “And what are you doing?”

“Measuring,” Lauren says.

It’s the closest thing to an answer I’ll get out of her. I’ve learned to trust her judgement despite how little she explains. I wait for her to make her marks and unpin the pattern before I ask again: “What did you want me to see?”

She doesn’t stop moving. “This.”

“This what?”

“This.” She lets go of her work long enough to make an expansive gesture around the room.

I follow her gesture, watching carefully for anything terribly interesting. “I don’t get it,” I admit.

Lauren shrugs. “Something. Just something new.”

“There’s nothing new here.”

Lauren doesn’t answer. She moves behind me to pin something to my back.

“Why’d you want to show me something new, then?” I ask, watching her work in the mirror across the room.

“You’re bored all the time,” she says. “You should do something.”

“Like wh—ow!” I flinch away from a pin prick. Lauren mumbles an apology and pats my shoulder where she pricked it. “It’s fine,” I assure her. “I should do something like what?”

“Something,” Lauren says.

I won’t get any specifics out of her, then. “Why should I do anything?” I ask instead. “I have everything I need. It’s nice not to have to do anything.” Like Grandpa’s always told me.

“But are you happy?” Lauren asks around a mouthful of pins.

“What?”

She unpins the pattern, sets it on her desk, and spits out the pins, then leans forward to look me in the eye. “Are you happy?”

------

Grandpa’s putting together a jigsaw puzzle on one of the greenhouse tables. He loves the things. I’ve tried to show him the app on our tablets that would give him thousands of puzzles, with the added benefit of never getting messed up by gravity fluctuations, but he insists on the physical version, something about how the pieces feel in his fingers. There are six jigsaw puzzles on the Miranda. Four are for toddlers, and the other two Grandpa has committed to memory. His favorite is missing three pieces. At least one of those, I ate as a baby.

“Don’t you get bored?” I ask him. The greenhouse is hotter than the rest of the station, so I’ve taken off my shoes and jacket.

He shakes his head, snapping in a new piece every few seconds. “I love that I can do what I want here. That never gets boring.”

“Doesn’t it?” I poke my fingers through holes in the table, even though I’ve gotten them stuck enough times that I should know better.

“Are you getting existential again?”

“Maybe.”

Grandpa sets down his puzzle piece and looks up at me. “Listen, Sylvia,” he says, “I don’t know if there’s some grand design. But I do know that you were lucky enough to be born knowing exactly what you’re for.”

I give a noncommittal grunt.

“Have I told you about the paradox of choice?” Grandpa asks, leaning forward over the table.

“Yes.”

“The more options you have, the less likely you are to be satisfied with what you choose,” Grandpa explains anyway. “You have one choice—”

“—so I have no choice but to be happy with it, I know. I try to gesture, but my finger is stuck in the table. “You know it doesn’t really work that way, right?”

Grandpa chuckles, like he doesn’t think I mean it.

“Lauren asked me earlier if I’m happy,” I say.

“Lauren’s a bit of an oddball.” Like I haven’t heard this from him before. “All the workers are.”

“I know,” I say quietly.

“Why work if they don’t get anything out of it? I’ll never understand them.” He’s gone back to his puzzle, placing piece after piece in neat rows. It’s a picture of the launch of the first Miranda capsule, the little pod that took the first couple families to the station. We use it as storage now. I wonder if Grandpa’s realized he’s just assembling and reassembling a broom closet getting thrown into space.

“What do you get out of puzzles?” I ask.

His mouth opens, silent. “It feels good to finish them,” he says eventually.

“Even though you take them apart again right after?”

“It’s not the same thing,” he says, catching on to where I’m going. “This is a hobby, not work.”

I scowl. “I don’t get it.” I catch sight of a gardener pruning back a hedge behind Grandpa, so I call to them, twisting my finger out of the table to wave them over.

Clive is short and stout, with brown skin slightly wrinkled with smile lines. They’re one of the younger Gen Two people: they were the youngest baby when the mission launched, and moderately famous until Zo became the first baby born on the ship and eclipsed them.

“Why do you do greenhouse stuff?” I ask them. Clive stows their shears in their overalls’ pocket and pulls an exaggerated thinking face.

“Sylvia won’t understand the difference between a job and a hobby,” Grandpa explains, “so maybe you can shed some light. I don’t understand you workers.”

Clive brightens. “Oh, I don’t think there is a difference, for me,” they say. “I work in the greenhouse because I love it, and if it makes other people happy, all the better.”

“So that’s the difference?” I ask. “Work helps somebody else?

“When you ask Lauren for dresses, it’s work,” Grandpa says, “but when she makes you one without you asking, it’s a hobby.”

“There’s no real difference for her.” I’ve asked, and she’s nothing but delighted when people commission her. “Besides, if an artist draws for themselves, but puts the picture up in public, is that work or a hobby?”

“Does it matter?” Clive slides on the bench next to me and folds their gloves on the table. “We only do anything because we want to. Nothing’s really work.”

“I watch you sweat out here every damn day,” Grandpa says.

Clive shrugs. “And I watch you put together those puzzles. Why don’t you glue one and have something to show for it, for once?”

“I’d run out of things to do.” Grandpa’s nearly finished with this puzzle. He can’t have been here longer than an hour. “Besides, someone made sure I wouldn’t have all the pieces.”

I give him a dirty look.

“The nice thing about gardening,” says Clive wisely, “is that you don’t run out of things to do. They stretch their arms over their head, showing the tight muscles in their arms. “That clear things up, Sylv?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “Thanks.”

“Any time!” Clive scoots back off the bench and tugs their gloves on. “Any chance of a new recruit for my greenhouse squadron?”

I force a smile, but don’t answer as Clive returns to trimming the hedges. Grandpa finishes the puzzle and I stick my fingers in the table.

------

Lauren meets me for lunch the next day with three bandaged fingers and a folded-up grey cloth. “Try this on,” she instructs me without preamble, pushing the cloth at me. “Over your shirt is fine.”

She drops her bag on her usual bench and goes to the kitchen. I shimmy out of my skirt and pull the new dress over my head. It fits impeccably, as always. It’s hard to make out the style from here, but it’s a heavy fabric, almost like canvas, with a loose skirt dropping almost to my ankles. Each side has a pocket big enough to stick my arms in nearly to the elbow. I twirl and smile as the skirt billows out

Lauren returns with applesauce. “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” I tell her, “Like always. What inspired this one?”

Lauren brightens. She loves talking about her process. “I like the gardeners’ overalls,” she says. “I wanted to make something to remind me of them, but the dress probably isn’t good to work in, so I thought, Sylvia looks like she should work, but doesn’t, so maybe she wants it.” She takes a scoop of applesauce.

For a moment, I’m reeling. The rough fabric scratches at the base of my neck. “What do you mean, I look like I should work?”

“You never answered me yesterday,” Lauren says. “Are you happy?”

I look at the table, one thumb tracing the inside hem of the pocket.

“I’m not unhappy.” “Are you happy?”

“No.” Suddenly, I’m irritated, a heat flaring under my skin. “Is that what you want me to say?”

Lauren swallows the last of her applesauce, and then swallows again, blinking hard. “I was just asking.” She lets the silence hang as she collects herself. “Do you want to get food?”

My stomach growls. “Yes,” I decide, and head towards the cafeteria, the heavy new skirt swishing around my legs.

------

It takes me another four days to visit the greenhouse again, even though Grandpa makes a visit without me. He says when he gets back that Clive asked after my “quest to understand the nature of labor,” so the next day I go myself.

Clive is still there. I’d say they sleep in the greenhouse, if I didn’t know better.

“Hi,” I say, almost nervous. Before Clive can turn around, I ask them,

“Did you mean it about recruiting me for the greenhouse...whatever?”

Their eyes light up. “Of course! Does that mean you’re interested?”

I hesitate, even though I’ve known my answer for four days. “I...think so, yes.”

Clive beams and bounces on to the balls of their feet. “I could hug you!”

“Go ahead.” I grin back and open my arms. Clive is warm and solid and hugs so tight they crush the breath out of me.

Gardening is harder than I thought. Clive is a patient, enthusiastic teacher, but they pile so much on me so fast I have no idea how to absorb it all. After a few hours and a frustrated threat of quitting, they tell me to scrap everything they’ve been telling me, dart into a shed half-hidden in the hedges, and come back with a dried-out pea. “We’ll start slow.”

I take the pea. “We’re planting this, then?” I ask, too exhausted by the past few hours to question them.

“Yep!” How Clive has maintained their enthusiasm is beyond me. “Put it on the ground.”

I do.

“Poke it in with your finger, about an inch deep.”

I do. The soil is cool, and fluffier than I would have expected before Clive’s boot camp.

“Done.”

“Done?” I look up at them. “It took you hours to tell me to stick a pea in the ground?”

“Done for now.” They grin and offer me a hand up. “Sylvia Chavez, that is your pea.”

I blink. “Yeah?”

“You’re its mother. You planted it in the ground, and now it’s your responsibility to water it and check on it and make sure it grows into a healthy pea plant, one that you can pick pods off of and eat right there.”

I gasp. “I’m going to eat my grandchildren?”

Clive snorts, then doubles over laughing. “A poorly-chosen metaphor,” they concede. “The point is, it really doesn’t matter if it’s a job or a hobby. That pea is your something, because it’s your something.” I pull a face.

“Listen, Sylv,” Clive says, their smile fading. “I don’t know you too well, but it seems to me like you’re aimless. Maybe gardening isn’t your calling, but just try it out, okay?”

I wasn’t really prepared to Clive to get serious on me. “Why?”

“In about a month, that pea is going to send little shoots up,” they say, pointing at my finger-shaped hole in the ground. “And I think you might understand then why I garden, and why your grandpa does puzzles.”

“And why Lauren makes dresses?” I ask.

Clive’s smile returns. “And why Maurice cooks, and why Zo cleans things, and why Pax likes singing better when people listen.”

Nervously, I smile back. “Seems like a big ask of a little pea sprout.” “Then you’re giving the pea sprout purpose, too.”

------

A month later, I have a surprise for Lauren. I swore Clive to secrecy, but the greenhouse is public and gossip travels fast on the Miranda, so I’m concerned she already knows. If she does, she hides it well.

I make her close her eyes as I take her to the greenhouse. It’s not a long walk—there are no long walks on the Miranda—and the heat and earthy smell of the greenhouse is strong enough that I see a knowing smile on her face as we approach. She still doesn’t say anything.

I take her to my plant and tell her to open her eyes. She doesn’t see it at first. It’s tiny, barely sprouted an inch out of the ground, and its tiny leaves don’t draw much attention. But when I kneel down to point at it, her face lights up.

“Sylvia!” she says. “You did something!”

“I did!”

She crouches down next to me, then drops to her hands and knees to give the plant a gentle kiss. “You made it grow all by yourself?”

“Clive helped me,” I confess.

“But it’s yours.”

“It’s mine.”

She leans back, sitting on the balls of her feet and looking somewhere over my left shoulder. “How does it feel?”

I look at the plant. How does it feel? This little sprout is alive thanks to me. Its soil is damp (too damp, Clive keeps telling me) thanks to me. How does it feel?

It feels like a lot. There’s been dirt under my fingernails for a month, because Clive’s thick gloves were too clunky for the gentle touch the pea plant needed. My back and legs ache from all the crouching I’m still not used to. A month was long, and more than once I wanted to quit, but Clive threatened to let the pea plant die if I did. To my own surprise, I found I cared too much about the seed to risk calling their bluff.

I feel beaten. I feel proud. I feel tired. I feel full.

I pat the little pea plant’s leaves and glance back up at Lauren. “I’m happy.”

[perlumi-delirium]

Parvulus

There are many chapters in Les Misérables that I love. Still, Parvulus holds a very special place in my heart, and in this post I will try to explain why it means so much to me. (or : I'm still not sure how to join Brick!Club and this is a very awkward attempt at jumping on the bandwagon, pls @pilferingapples confirm for my peace of mind)

What is striking about this chapter is how short it is : barely a page. It's an interesting way to start Paris étudié dans son atome, like swift paintbrush strokes across a canvas. The rhythm is quick, and each chapter helps to paint the portrait of the gamin. The listing of the many qualities and particularities of the gamin makes for the better part of the chapter, but that's not what I want to bring light upon. There are two words that I think are really essential to the understanding of this chapter : Parvulus, and homuncio. Both are latin words -not surprising given Hugo's love for latin- but here he subtly diverts from their usual meaning and use, and it makes the subtext 100% charming and painful at the same time.

Starting with Parvulus. I am fairly sure that most editions give the meaning for this word, but I do think that there's more to say about than just what it means in its most basic sense. I cannot be sure what English translators translate it into, but in French, it's 'le tout petit', aka 'the small one'. To understand how meaningful it is that Hugo made this the title of his chapter, I need to talk a bit about the word itself.

Parvulus is the diminutive form of the latin word parvus, meaning 'small' and/or 'not much'. Parvulus upgrades this meaning to 'very small'. As you can see, the most basic meaning of parvulus isn't what Hugo means when he uses it. That's because parvulus is not generally a noun. In latin dictionaries, it's listed as parvulus,a,um : it's an adjective. However here Hugo doesn't use it with any other word that could be identified as a subject. The word is alone, and it's clear that it's intended to be taken as such (tough latin loves to only imply words instead of stating them, it's clearly not the case here). So what Hugo does is that he takes the diminutive form of an adjective (which can already be taken as a small joke on his part : a diminutive word for a small being) and he makes it a substantive.

Hugo takes an adjective and makes a noun out of it, and it highlights the tenderness of this chapter, especially when we reach the end. The gamin truly is Paris’ child, and it’s said right in the title.

You cannot understand how much this means to me. Using the adjective would just be describing the gamin, as he spends multiple chapters doing. But to start his serie of chapters, he not only gives us a name for the gamin type as a whole ; he tells us how frail yet charming they are. Diminutives in latin can have two meanings, that strongly depend on context : either they have a negative connotation or they are affectionate. Here, it's definitely affectionate, and it warms my heart so much. Hugo has so much tenderness for the gamin, and he says so right from the start. Just, in a subtle, blink-and-you'll-miss-it way. Or rather, 'if you don't have extensive latin knowledge you'll definitely miss it' way.

Also, I like that Hugo brags to be the first one to use 'gamin' in a book six chapters later, then gives us another nice name for them, but in latin because it's even more pretentious and fancy. (and latin does convey connotation in nice, discreet ways).

Small digression while I'm at it : in III.3.7 Hugo says that the first use of gamin can be traced back to 1834 with Claude Gueux, and while it's already super funny that he advertises for his own book, I still can't believe that he so blatantly LIES. Hugo uses the word gamin in ch. II.5 in Notre-Dame de Paris. Which was published in 1831.WHY HUGO. I honestly don't buy that he forgot about Notre-Dame de Paris, so I'm left with two hypothesis : either he considers Notre-Dame to be too much of an early work, or he wanted to bring attention to a more political work, rather than just a Romantic Book with Nice Architecture Digressions. Either way I'm sure he had a true reason for doing this and not knowing for sure Bugs Me. (I need to reread Claude Gueux damn) (if you want to discuss this with me PLEASE DO)

ANYWAY moving on to the next point : homuncio. This word bugged me so much once I decided to make some research for this chapter, and it was a frustrating search, let me tell you.

The complete sentence I'm refeering to is 'Homuncio, dirait Plaute.' As Plautus would say huh, Hugo ? If you're not overly familiar with Plautus, in a few words : Plautus is probably the most famous latin comedy playwriter of Antiquity.

Why the reference to Plautus, then, you may ask ? Well I'm glad you ask, because there's a 50% chance that Hugo used it because References Are Nice. I checked all of Plautus' famous comedies, and I found only two uses of the word (and a slightly altered version of it, though it has the same meaning). Not much to work on then. It is possible, I guess, that Hugo was Truly Refeering to one of these two occurrences. I doubt it, and does it even matter ? In the grand scheme of things... no. It doesn't.

Hugo is always citing latin authors and great writers before him like a student name drops fifty authors in his essay in hopes that the teachers think he's clever and well-read. Though, admittedly, Hugo HAS read them. But still. The reference to Plautus is mostly for show.

What matters is the nature of the word. And guess what ? Homuncio... is another diminutive. To be precise, it's a diminutive of the word 'homo', aka man/human. Even if we all know Homo is also a nice wolf name. (listen, I needed to make this ref to L'homme qui rit, it's for my health thank you)

So Hugo took this short chapter, put two latin diminutives into it, all to talk about the Small Gamin character type. Way to lay it off heavy even in the STRUCTURE of the novel, thanks Hugo.

This chapter is mostly upbeat. The long, flowing sentences, the enumeration. All of it can seem strangely cheerful when truly the subject is child poverty. It's strange, because Hugo definitely feels for these kids who live in the streets and survive as they can in a hostile world, but he still paints them as cheerful fairy types, who laugh more often than they cry and make the most of any situation.

That's also what the word Homuncio implies, if one doesn't look more into it : Plautus is a comedy author, so it's easy to disregard the word (which I personally have never find explained by notes in any editions, please do tell me if some English ones do explain it) as a nice funny thing to call gamins and call it a day.

The truth is far from that. I haven't found much information in my latin dictionary, because this word is seldom used. I did manage to confirm that it's a diminutive, but it's its meaning that interests me the most : homuncio means 'poor little man', as listed in its definition in the Gaffiot. That's an interesting way to put it, right ? Where parvulus was really caring, homuncio carries the second use of diminutives : it's connoted negatively, and it's even sometimes pejorative.

Why, then, use this word ?

It may seem a bit far-stretched, but the fact that these two latin words are used mere sentences apart drives me to believe they can be taken as parallels. One is tender and kind ; the other is seemingly funny but ultimately denounces a sad truth : there are children in Paris who have neither food nor a home. Plautus is a comedy playwriter ; he's also known for his sharp pen, and his plays make fun of society's many flaws. That's why Hugo prefers him over Terence in this particular chapter.

I checked as many uses of the word homuncio as I could. It was... difficult, because the word is really rarely used, but it was enough to confirm that it's definitely a negative word. Plautus can use it to mock ; Cicero uses it to pity. Both of them use it to denounce.

From here, I can only wonder if homuncio could, potentially, be a subtle way for Hugo to make the readers remember that the gamins too, belong to the Misérables of the human kind.

[ghostmartyr]

"and give her fucking themes a chance to actually fucking matter to the fucking plot you fucking fucked up story" thank you for being a constant voice of reason in this fucking fandom i'm never Not going to be mad about historia's story playing out beautifully and then having it all be undone. sometimes it feels like the CD skipped and reset all the progress in the story so we have to learn, AGAIN, that freedom is good and raising kids to serve you and your ideals is BAD, etc etc

Technically I left the fandom my home is the void.

(To no one’s surprise, this got angry. I should maybe consider shutting up about this, but as you can see by the number of times I use the word “fuck” in the quoted material, I have lost the self-control battle here many times.)

The part of it I always come back to when I’ve made the mistake of thinking about it and getting angry all over again is that if we learn that lesson again this arc, what we’ve really learned is that nothing that happens to these characters matters.

If their arcs can be undone by a time skip, there is zero reason to believe that any of what happens to them will stick. The entire Reiss cavern debacle is this exact thing, of Historia telling tradition to go fuck itself because it’s not a tradition worth keeping. That’s the watered down version, but for crying out loud, Historia’s whole damn arc leads to her changing the world.

Not because of any noble reason. Because she doesn’t want to die. She wants to stay herself, and for that she obliterates centuries of children eating each other. She’s her family’s bastard child who refuses to take part in what’s kept them broken for so long.

Yes, let’s have that character be shoved back into the cycle off-screen. Let’s have the girl who grows up unloved and unwanted, who breaks her family’s curse because she finally feels in her bones how wrong it is, go along with a plan to curse another child.

Historia being. fucking Historia enough to snap out a yes to cutting her life short if it saves the world does not bother me. The girl is a dumbass Gryffindor; it takes up until she’s taking her first step off the bridge to realize oh hey, maybe this is actually bad. She’s not an Idiot Hero, but try telling that to some of her decisions.

But her whole arc, as it is introduced and as Ymir’s soaks in, is about how if fate’s fucking you over this badly, maybe consider telling it to go fuck itself and use your own good qualities to carve out something better.

Nine seconds later we’re scrubbing that lesson off because the stakes have clearly changed.

Same story, only bigger. Now that it’s bigger the rules are different. Let’s have one page of Historia not looking miserable to remind everyone how the story’s shooting her directly back to being miserable.

There is no point to this. The one person who knows what it’s like to be seen as a curse and a tool, turning another child into a curse and a tool? After her entire character denouement is about picking up unwanted orphans and treating them as people?

Forget every single other part of this:

If things are as written, Historia has consented to selling away a child’s future. Several more generations, actually. She’s consented to passing on that feeling Frieda has when the weight of the world crushes her and she’s collapsed in tears in between a fence and her baby sister.

The torture that Frieda goes through is not the driving force of Historia’s resolution to give a damn about her life, but it’s something she knows just as keenly as her own pain, and it helps guide her speech to Eren. Her raison d'être comes from her entire family’s exploitation at their own hands.

There are ways to have characters become everything they hate. Those stories can even be interesting and very well done.

Interesting and well written ways do not include the literary equivalent of a character checking the Yes box on becoming everything their arc says they never want to be. Historia has like. Twenty pages where she’s drawn in between her arc’s conclusion and 107. Six of them have her saying anything, and four of those six are her reacting to Ymir’s letter and telling EMA she sure is golly chuffed to see how they aren’t permanently scarred.

Then 107 happens.

You can’t hit the undo button on a character’s arc that efficiently and still pretend like anything they go through has a lasting impact. Ymir’s choice to turn herself in is cut from the same contrived cloth, with every single new thing we find out about the world only making her decision somehow looking worse in addition to the character mutilation thing.

There’s a lot to what’s going on that skeeves the ever-loving fuck out of me. In the realm of squick, this is where my brain will never willingly live.

But it’s the complete bastardization of Historia’s arc that pisses me off.

Would the stupid kid agree to die in thirteen years five seconds after hearing that’s an option?

Yes, she’s a fucking idiot. All the growth in the world won’t ever undo that.

Would the stupid kid agree to have a child so its child, and its child after that, could eat their parent to become a tool of war?

…

“Everything That My Personal Arc Stands Against, I choose you!”

Thank you, I’m so glad we sat through all your parental and existential angst to have land you in a place that would come much closer to making sense if those pages had never been written. Brava.

-takes a very deep breath-

And that’s why I’m still clinging to hope that things aren’t as they seem. Because this story has always cared about character. When something doesn’t make sense, it’s because something is missing, not because the story didn’t care.

In theory.

Historia’s thing is the strongest test to that theory since Ymir’s thing, and as loud as I am about the latter, that hasn’t actually been resolved yet either.

Paradis agreeing to use children to fuel their survival is the kind of permanent marker stain that is hard to go back on, but it’s also nearly impossible to move forward with, because it would mean that Our Heroes’ one truly heroic trait is bunk.

They are the ones meant to break the damaging cycles, no matter the personal cost.

This is where they’ve chosen perpetuating them to escape personal cost.

Hence my growing opinion that they can all go ahead and die if this is where they’re at. If they’re growing more of these cycles, they’re just another villain, and I’d rather watch them all be wiped out while they’re still trying to be heroic and failing than what comes if they keep up with this.

So.

I’d like to think the story isn’t really doing this.

That it is threatening this, and driving itself deep into the muck, but will ultimately call out the illusion of this much darkness as an illusion.

I really don’t want to read a story where it goes, “our themes matter! …unless we don’t think the plot progresses the way we want when we let them matter.”

Character should determine story, or story should determine character. Pick one, but they shouldn’t ever be at war. If a character’s arc is about telling fate to go fuck itself, but fate fucks them, you can’t expect the audience to buy it when any other character fights fate–but for real this time!!1!

Hell this makes me so frustrated.

I really, really would like to believe it will turn out fine, because you legitimately could not write something that flew more in the face of everything Historia’s grown into, and despite this story’s eccentricities, its character work is some of the best I’ve ever seen.

Eren’s out murdering children and making Mikasa cry, and it’s a given that something more is behind it.

Historia’s pregnancy breaks essential themes of the entire story, but yeah, it is totally what it looks like.

(inb4 it’s not what it looks like but somehow manages to be even worse because that’s the kind of bloody trail it’s been)

I don’t mean to keep beating this horse, because I’m guessing most everyone is sick of me losing my temper about it by now, but it drives me up the wall. I obviously have a personal interest in Historia’s arc, but I like the manga, and part of the appeal of Historia’s arc is how it is singing directly to the beauty that’s to be found in the cruel world instead of bowing to that cruelty.

Now one of the voices of that appears to be on bended knee and just. pleeeeease be a ploy. Please don’t turn into one of those series where I have to get out MS Paint and draw a bad graph about where a really great story gave up on itself.

Honestly, one of my dearest hopes is that I’m going to feel like a massive idiot for getting this worked up over this because it’s all going to be fine.

Time will tell, I guess.

For the time being…

-twitch-

[neotrinitythinker]

Brush off The Grime Of Yesterday (And Begin Again) Chapter 4.

Hank's never really done Spring Cleaning. Even before everything that happened. Cleaning was time consuming.

Something shifts in April. Someone intensely hopeful and new.

In five months, it will have been four months since the car flipped over in practically slow motion and he lost Cole forever. And Isobel, though he lost her entirely on his own.

Hank's been up since 8 cleaning waking with the rest of the world as he hears the birds sing a unceasing, if not slightly annoying, melody. Each moment getting closer to opening Cole's room before walking away again. time. He needs fucking time. Even if the whole point of this was to get around to his room. He isn't avoiding, he tells himself. He isn't.

Connor hasn't noticed his hesitance towards going into Cole's room yet. Or if he has he hasn't said anything. Hank isn't sure how he'd talk to Connor about this anyways. What he even wants to say to him.

Connor's been busy cleaning himself, seemingly taking solace in the task. He's bumped into him a few times, exchanged a few greetings as he's scrubbed and discarded throughout the house.

But mostly he's been in his bedroom, he's had a lot of stuff just lying around the past couple years. He still isn't avoiding.

Maybe he's avoiding, just the tiniest bit.

He hasn't been in Cole's room since the week after the accident, he's drunkenly ripped off the wooden name sign with his name off the door that he bought him for his 5th birthday and broke it into several tiny little pieces, but he's hasn't stepped foot inside the room in four years.

Isobel couldn't either, he thinks. But he doubts she had time to even try with all the unceasing yelling and blaming they did in the following four months before she moved out.

He doesn't want to go in it. Going in feels like an invitation to finally move on. To embrace the fucking healing process. He doesn't want to have to move on. He doesn't want to be the parent that fondly remembers a bittersweet memory of their long dead daughter or son before resuming whatever they were doing before the memory hit them. Like a functional grieving parent. He wants to remember every moment with him.

Maybe there is no functional grieving parent. Maybe it's a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

There's a part of him that does long to move on. Wants his heart to hurt less, not think about playing a game of Russian Roulette with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol every time something reminds him of Cole. It feels...so possible. The thought of being alright again. It fades in and out of the realm of possibility like breath on a mirror more times than he'd like to admit.

He was tired of being angry with the world.

Then Connor came. Every moment with him felt like the moment the android doctor came back to tell him his son was dead all over again. That *he* had to done all he could do because the real doctor had been in some hospital closet getting high of Red Ice.

And Connor had come in and stuck. He had torn down those accusatory, grief fueled walls that overflowed with beer and spite that told him every android was the reason his son was dead.

He doesn't know what he did to deserve Connor appearing in his life.

Androids have had the right to move into their own homes for a month now.

Connor chose to stay.

They haven't talked about it. He just sort of stuck around. Stayed.

Hank finds that he doesn't actually mind. And he's been drinking less.

And in a way, it's another chance. However reluctant he is to talk about it with Connor, it feels like a second start. A reason to try.

Maybe they don't *need* to talk about it. He thinks. Maybe it's unspoken.

Family.

Eventually he manages to clean up or throw away all the things he didn't even know he had, trinkets, clothes he never wore anymore. Junk.

Except for the album.

He's kept the photo album shoved far into the deep recesses of the closet, like it's some sort of skeleton for him. And he supposes it is one. Even if he moves on. He's not going to throw it away. Not ever.

It's a baby blue colored, daisy decorated thick mass of a book. However short his time was with him, there was so many memories of him. So many moments he felt so unbelievably goddamn lucky to be privileged enough to even have. To even have the honor of witnessing. being a part of.

He runs a shaky hand over the outside of it, sighing. The daisy decor is still as scratchy as the day Isobel and Cole made it. They wanted it to be so special

Slowly, he heads to Cole's room, a shaking hand opens the handle.

His room is still the same way he left it the morning he left forever. Aside from the old whiskey bottle he left on the floor when he came into the room drunk the week after the funeral. Isobel had been so angry.

He doesn't know why he chose today to try and move on. Shit, why he chose today to be the day he finally went in the room. But he's here.

It's a room decorated by blue and green walls, walls joined by posters of this show Cole never stayed quiet about. In a way this room is deceitful, he's half expecting Cole to come crashing into it, asking him why he's in it and if he come with him to watch his shows.

He won't. But Hank can dream.

He has two bags with him. One for the things he can bear to get rid of, and the things he isn't sure he's ready to get rid of just yet. Maybe with time he will be, but this isn't the day.

Sluggishly, he moves forward to grab various things, it feels automatic. Like he's the android.

He takes the bag of things he kept with him, setting it down on the table next to the album as he sits on the couch with it.

He sees Connor out of the corner of his eye, a look of confusion, and then slight concern as he glances at the open door of what he can only assume is Coles room. And then back to him.

"Hank? What are you doing?" He asks softly.

Hank breathes in. "Spring Cleaning, kid."

"Are you okay?" Connor questions.

Hank scoffs. "I don't know. You know Cole helped make this?" He asks, holding up the album. "He was so proud of it."

"It looks very well made." Connor says simply. He's trying Hank thinks. He knows Connor sometimes has trouble with emotional support. He sure as shit was himself.

"Yeah. Yeah it sure is." He laughs bitterly. He holds up a toy he didn't end up throwing out. "I got this for his 3rd birthday. He was so....happy." Hank never wanted a drink this badly. But a month sober can't be all for nothing.

Connor moves, sitting down next to him. "Is that a photo album?" There weren't that many people that used them. At least physical paper versions nowadays.

Hank smiles. "Yeah. five years worth of memories in 'em."

The android doesn't say anything, and Hank continues.

"You know...the day Cole was born.. I thought I was the luckiest person on the goddamn planet." He starts. "He was one of the few great things to have happened to me. He was so...small and...happy. I didn't know what I did to deserve him. This...chance, I was given."

Hank opens a page of the album to a series of photos. His eyes set on one of them. A exhausted but grinning golden haired woman with grey eyes and a crooked nose held a blanket wrapped newborn. Next to them, a younger, less grizzled Hank stood nearby, a smile formed on his features.

"Those were the happiest six years of my life." Hank explains. "Until I took him for an afternoon drive and only one of us came out it."

Connor looks how Hank feels. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant." He doesn't bother to correct him with 'Hank.'

"Yeah...Me too."

Hesitantly, he closes the album with a heavy sigh. He needed to say it now or the room would just continue to collect dust. Cole loved the room. It didn't feel right to just let it suffer that fate.

"Look, Connor." He starts, shifting his body so that he was facing the other man. "I cleaned out the room...well, because it felt...like the right thing. Cole didn't deserve for it just be a ghost town.  But...also, maybe you deserve to use it now. Cole fucking loved androids. Only feels right that you use it now."

Connor's eyes widen slightly. "Hank, I... I'm perfectly alright with going into stasis on the couch, I don't even require a bed, I don't even need to go into stasis at night. I couldn't possibly take Cole-"

"Just say yes. Alright, you've been living here for five months, kid. And you don't even have a bed." Hank interrupts.

"But..it's Cole's room Hank. Are you sure your ready for that?" Connor asks.

Hank runs a hand over his face. "No, if i'm honest. But I need to fucking...do this someday or other." Moving on.

Both of them sit there for a good five seconds.

"You aren't Cole, Connor. But you're still...family." A son.

Hank continues. "You're family, now. Take the room."

Connor stays silent, expression thoughtful, before nodding.

Hank stands, walking towards his room.

"Where you going?" Connor asks.

"To bed, I need a damn nap." Hank says in an empty voice.

"I think of you as my family too." Connor says suddenly.

Hank turns. Connor's eyes shine in the living room lamps light next to the couch, his expression is warm, content. It's the happiest he's ever seen him.

"Good. That's good." He says, gently shutting the door.

Good.

[wlwinry]

Fae and Feline

for @itsyaboimilk

----------

"He's a cat."

King rolls his eyes from where he lies sprawled across bar, tail flicking in mild annoyance as Ban prods at him with a look of delighted incredulity. Diane swats the immortal's hand away (and thank the gods for that, because the imbecile was about to rub his fur the wrong way on top of it all) and scratches him behind the ears gently. "Yes, he's a cat, and don't poke at him, Ban!" He lets out a meow of surprise as Diane scoops him up, but swiftly goes boneless in her arms, purring to let her know of his appreciation. She giggles, before shooting a sharp look back up at Ban. "He hates that when he's normal; imagine what it would feel like now?"

A cackle escapes the mouth of the Sin of Greed, and King hisses at him, flattening his ears. No need for him to ruin everything, he thinks sulkily, teeth bared. Really, everything had been fine. So what if he'd poked around Merlin's lab while looking for Oslo and ended up activating a protective charm that left him as a cat? It would wear off--at least, Merlin had implied as much.

Gods, he hopes it wears off. But maybe not quite yet, because Diane's petting feels absolutely amazing and this is probably the most relaxed he's been since the war ended. He purrs as her fingers massage his scruff, letting his eyes drift closed--

"Meliodas, no!" He opens one eye as the Captain makes a dive for the window, Elizabeth grabbing him by the back of his shirt to keep him from removing himself (in the most dramatic way possible, as per demon prince prerogative, apparently) from what he'll admit is a rather bizarre situation. Meliodas grumbles, and King's purr turns into a genuine snort of amusement--he might actually be a cat, but sometimes Captain actually acts like one. I would know, he thinks, sitting up in Diane's arms as Meliodas gives Elizabeth a look of pure pleading, one that he knows quite well as the "dear gods get me away from this madness" look. He feels a bit of vindictive pleasure--normally he's the one who employs it, and it never ends in his favor after he does. Sure enough, Elizabeth only gives him a kiss on the cheek and a look of complete and utter amusement at his plight before glancing at Merlin. "When will it wear off?"

The warlock tilts her head, looking smug. "Oh, about a month or so."

A month. King resists the urge to caterwaul in fury at that; a few days would've been fine, a few weeks tolerable, but an entire month?  He hisses again, lashing his tail, before springing out of Diane's arms and trotting over to Merlin, who merely looks even more self-satisfied. Damned witch, he thinks crossly, glaring at her. She shrugs in response. "I did warn you not to look through my things."

Ban cackles again, and before King even knows what he's doing, he whips around and bites the immortal hard on the ankle. The snarl that earns him seems to be more a reaction of surprise as opposed to genuine pain, but it doesn't stop Elaine from scooping him up and scolding him again. He sees Diane rolling her eyes over his sister's shoulder, though, so he doesn't feel contrite whatsoever.

"This month is going to be hell," he hears Meliodas mutter, and he can't stop a feeling of wicked glee from running through him.

This month is going to be fun.

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

"Why is King on the chandelier?"

King peers down at the others as Ban raises an eyebrow at him. Why not? he suggests, knowing full well the others can't understand him. It's just as well, though. If they could, then they'd know that Oslo had spooked him and he'd somehow sprung up here to escape his Black Hound's scrutiny. As it is, he can pass it off as a deliberate action and they'll be none the wiser.

It's certainly a nice change of pace from the usual "let's all laugh at King", at any rate. And, if he's being honest...it's rather warm and comfy up here, with the lamps so close by and the ability to see everything happening in the Boar Hat. He quite likes it, and he purrs and stretches out even more ostentatiously over the bars of the light fixture. Meliodas just shakes his head with a huff that seems to be more fond exasperation than anything else, turning to leave. Diane shoots him a grin and a thumbs-up (his tail curls in response and he purrs even harder) before darting outside. Gowther scribbles something down in that notebook he's taken to carrying, before giving him one of those guileless smiles and hurrying back to the stairs, presumably up to the attic-turned library (King has already started crafting a nest of sorts up there, with one of those soft throw pillows and a few torn pages that Gowther will probably gut him for once he's back to normal). And Ban...

Ban reaches up to poke him again, and King does what comes naturally--he jumps, landing lightly on the Sin of Greed's head and digging his claws in. A stream of curses erupts from Ban's mouth and King barely resists the urge to cackle in petty, vindictive glee. And so the tables are turned, he croons cheerfully, sheathing and unsheathing his claws as the swearing stops and a full-on death glare is unleashed instead. It seems almost half-hearted, though, and he realizes why with a faint thrill of excitement--Ban doesn't want to hurt him while he's a cat. And it makes sense, hilarious though it is, because Ban has always been easily attached to cute things. As much as King hates to admit it, he's good with kids and fond of animals (when he's not killing them--the animals, not the children. Even Ban would never stoop that low), and out of all of the Sins, their most abrasive and seemingly-superficial member is the one most likely to click with a stray. It's a bit...sad, almost, considering what little he knows of Ban's past, but it's also funny in the most ridiculous way. A six-foot-eleven monster of a man who can kill without blinking and suffer the most agonizing torture imaginable, who literally walked through hell, won't hurt stray animals and is secretly excellent with children.

Either way, it's a victory, and King settles down onto Ban's head for a nap with a contented sigh, grinning inwardly at the defeated grumble the act earns him.

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

As it turns out, small, dark spaces are excellent for taking naps if you happen to be a creature small enough to fit inside one. Empty jars in the pantry swiftly become some of King's favorite spots to settle down for a nap; after all, no one bothers to check in the empty containers--at least, not the one person who's actually supposed to be in the kitchen. It's really Meliodas's fault, what happens before he gets banned from the kitchen entirely. It happens while he's dozing in one of the containers, snapping abruptly awake as the pantry door opens. King settles back down, though--he's taken plenty of naps like this before and Ban's never figured it out once. He'll just go back to sleep after the bastard's gotten whatever he needs. 

Except the soft click of the tongue and the scent of smoke and spice and a well-masked note of sweet definitely don't belong to Ban, and he stiffens in the jar as it's picked up, the lid coming off--

King screeches as the jar is tossed suddenly, thrown with shocking force and shattering on impact; it has to be an effect of Merlin's spell or his true faerie nature that he doesn't break his ribs when he ricochets off of the wall and manages to land (with surprising grace) on his feet. He shakes out his pelt indignantly before hissing at the culprit--at Meliodas. The Captain's eyes are blown wide with shock, his shoulders shaking, and King almost feels bad before he bursts out, "What the ever-loving actual FUCK!"

That, of course, sends the whole damn household scurrying in. King swiftly sits down, washing his paws innocently. Might as well take the opportunity to pile on the indignation factor while he still can; after all, it's not often that Captain is so visible shaken, especially if it's by something so small.

"He's a cat," Elizabeth feels compelled to point out after a trembling, furious Sin of Wrath explains the situation (King feels smug to the point of impossibility), clearly barely resisting the urge to giggle at the more-than-traumatized look on Meliodas's face. "He's going to hide in places and jump out at you, it's what cats do." 

"He's a DEVIL and I'm going to KICK HIM OUT OF MY FUCKING HOUSE," Meliodas seethes, eyeing King with a mixture of respect and fury, mostly the latter. The Faerie-turned-feline merely rolls his amber eyes and leaps onto Diane's shoulders, purring softly.

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

Normally being stroked feels quite good; it sends a rush of warmth through him and he tends to just collapse into a boneless puddle right there, especially when Diane's the one petting him. Not when Gowther does it, though. No, when Gowther does it, it takes a physical effort for King not to claw his eyes out in frustration, because poor, sweet, oh-so guileless Gowther, knowledgeable Gowther, the same Gowther who researches almost everything he's interested in the point of exhaustion, has not yet figured out that you can't stroke a cat's fur backwards.

King bites down on a hiss as Gowther hums in delight, running slim fingers through his short fur. He doesn't want to upset the doll; ever since getting his emotions back, he's been sensitive and cheerful and King likes this version of him much better than the apathetic memory-stealing (highly misguided, he'll admit) one from before their training with Gloxinia and Dolor (he pushes down the memory of his and Diane's teachers, knowing that he'll be up all night with nightmares if he thinks of them). They've become close friends, and he doesn't want to mess that up.

But goddamn if it doesn't get annoying when (like right now) Gowther's petting him so absently, so naturally, and it's the wrong fucking way.

King settles into the doll's lap and lets out a miserable sigh, enduring it.

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

The change from cat to faerie is as swift as the original shift was, except this time his instincts don't quite have the time to catch up. King finds himself hissing at Ban, purring when his hair is ruffled, and jumping on things when he ends up startled. It's unbecoming for a Faerie King, for any higher being, really, but Merlin says there's nothing he can do, so he decides to wait it out.

Except it's not really bad, he decides, a soft rumbling noise escaping his throat as Diane runs her fingers through his hair, propping himself up on his elbows in order to kiss her cheek. She giggles and kisses him back, and he feels his face heat up as he blushes, his purring increasing in volume. Not that bad at all.

[tomfooleryprime]

The illogic of a logical philosophy

The pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery was titled “The Vulcan Hello,” and Michael Burnham was all about giving one to the Klingons.

Unfortunately, the Vulcan hello she was referring to looked a little less like this:

And a lot more like this:

Apparently, this shocked some fans, but I’m not really sure why. There are a lot of perpetuated ideas that Vulcans are strict pacifists because, after all, war is illogical. But if we really peel back some of the canon, the reality is that Vulcans probably prefer peace, but they’re certainly not above violence, and that’s the problem with living by logic.

Is violence illogical? Who’s to say? Even a philosophy based on pure logic is doomed to be convoluted because spoken language is imprecise and no philosophy is absolute. Yet Vulcan philosophy is often treated as though it must be, as if for any single issue, there is only one perfectly logical solution amid a sea of half-logical alternatives and utter irrationality.

So, what is Vulcan philosophy? Over the years, it’s expanded into a belief system that has two giant scoops of Greek stoicism, a pinch of Jewish mysticism, a dollop of utilitarianism, and a rationalism cherry on top. I would actually argue that this Frankenstein philosophy is whatever it needs to be, so long as it can be defended with a reasonably sound argument delivered in monotone, dispassionate speech. And therein lies the problem. How do we decide what is “reasonably sound?” Worse yet, what is logic?

Believe it or not, there is no universal agreement on the exact scope of this particular discipline. The ancient Greeks studied logic in philosophy, but logic also has more discrete applications in mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. I could type thousands of words dissecting the different branches of logic, but Wikipedia did it so much better than I ever could. Bottom line is, if you’re not using logic to defend mathematical proofs or write code, there’s a whole lot of gray area for what can be considered “logical.”

Me too, Amanda, me too.

So how do stoicism, rationalism, and utilitarianism fit into the Vulcan narrative? Stoicism goes back to the ancient Greeks and championed the idea virtue was based on knowledge, and that wise and virtuous people lived in harmony with reason and were able to accept reality and not allow themselves to be controlled by pain, fear, or desire. If that doesn’t sound like the first page of the Vulcan playbook, I don’t know what does.

Rationalism is a philosophy that sort of bridges ancient stoicism with the modern world and asserts that reason should be the chief source and test of logic rather than religious belief or emotional response. And lastly, utilitarianism is a doctrine that asserts that actions are right if they are useful or benefit a majority. Sound familiar?

If it doesn’t, you’ve never seen The Wrath of Khan. Or shopped at Hallmark.

But the thing is, not one of those philosophical systems says, “No violence.” If The Teachings of Surak has strict rules prohibiting violence, all the Vulcans we’ve ever met across six different series are really shitty Vulcans. 

We see many instances of Vulcans preferring to avoid violence and killing—Vulcans often employ a nerve pinch to subdue aggressors rather than smack them around—but they are capable of worse. In the TOS episode, “Journey to Babel,” a Tellarite ambassador is murdered by someone who “knew exactly where to apply pressure to snap the neck instantly,” according to Dr. McCoy. As Kirk ponders who could have possibly committed such an act, Spock is all too quick to throw his dad under the bus and say, “Vulcans.”

While he quickly adds that “Vulcans do not approve of violence” he also mentions that “it would be illogical to kill without reason.” And so:

Backpedaling at warp eight.

Sarek knows how to kill because he’s skilled in a deadly martial arts technique called tal-shaya. The fact that Vulcans train in martial arts, possess weapons like the lirpa and the ahn-woon, and cruise around the quadrant in ships outfitted with weapons suggests they are at least prepared to defend themselves if necessary, which would disqualify them from being absolute pacifists. But that doesn’t necessarily make them warmongers either.

So, what about actually instigating a war? In Enterprise, we got a view of Vulcans that a lot of people weren’t comfortable with. We saw Vulcans spying on their Andorian neighbors, we saw religious factions fighting one another, and we saw a Vulcan High Command that seemed remarkably belligerent. Some fans might argue that after the discovery of the Kir’Shara in the Enterprise story arc that included the episodes “The Forge,” “The Awakening,” and “Kir’Shara” led to a new reformation, Vulcans returned to their true logical roots, ditching their semi-violent ways. 

But it’s evident that Vulcans believe that sometimes logic requires violence. Recall those utilitarian principles woven throughout Vulcan philosophy. One of the most well-known philosophical thought experiments is referred to as The Trolley Problem, and it’s a test of utilitarian judgments. There are many variations, but the short one goes like this:

There’s a trolley hurtling down a track with five people on it. The brakes are shot and it’s going to crash, killing all on board. You happen to be standing next to a switch that would divert the trolley onto a separate track where it would gently crash into a sandbank, saving the lives of those five people. The only problem is, there is a person tied to the tracks you want to divert the trolley onto. If you pull the switch, you will actively kill one person to save five. If you do nothing, you will passively allow the person tied to the tracks to live at the expense of the five on the trolley. And so, if we are capable of acting, do we have a duty to act? (Here’s a fascinating quiz if you’d like to explore your own beliefs on the subject.) But what would Vulcans do?

Rather than spend time debating it, I can tell you exactly what most Vulcans would probably do. In the TOS episode, “Operation, Annihilate!,” Deneva colony is infested with neural parasites and Dr. McCoy can’t find a way to kill them. Kirk is struggling to find a way to prevent the spread of these parasites, and Spock points out the only logical solution, though it is “understandably upsetting,” is to destroy the colony and its one million inhabitants because there are billions of people living beyond Deneva colony to think about. McCoy didn’t handle it well.

A real dick move, Mr. Spock. A real dick move.

Now, to his credit, Spock was also infected, so he was willing to die for his principles, but he didn’t bat an eye at the idea of killing a million people. The good news is, it’s old-school Trek so of course they found a solution that didn’t end with the tragic slaughter of a million colonists, but Spock’s initial recommendation was that it was logical to commit an act of violence against one million people to save the lives of billions. 

Maybe you agree with him, maybe you don’t, but that being said, is it really such a wild notion to believe that the Vulcans would prefer occasional small acts of aggression against the Klingons if there were sufficient reason to believe it would prevent a war? 

When explaining to Captain Georgiou what a Vulcan hello was, Michael Burnham didn’t say the Vulcans slaughtered every Klingon they encountered, simply that they “fired first” in order to “say hello in a language the Klingons understood.” If anything, it sounds like the Vulcan policy was more in line with a warning shot than a Klingon genocide, and from my own simple-minded human perspective, that sounds pretty damn logical if it prevents real and prolific bloodshed.

But that comes back to the initial question of “what is Vulcan philosophy?” Perhaps we should ask ourselves who is the ultimate judge of what is logical? In theory, it should be Surak and his teachings, right?

Surak’s a smart guy who obviously knows a bargain when he sees one, as illustrated by this ensemble that looks a 6th grade home economics project met the clearance rack at the local craft store. 

Unfortunately, just because something is written down doesn’t mean everyone is going to agree on the same interpretation, otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court would be about 99% less busy and history wouldn’t be littered with the bodies of billions of people desperate to prove their version of the God of Abraham is the right one.  

I don’t know why Vulcans are so often portrayed as being a culture of homogenous personalities, beliefs, and values, as though logic is logic and there’s no room for variation. Imagine what the series would have been like if we played switcheroo with Spock, Tuvok, and T’Pol. Picture the moody and somewhat emotional T’Pol trying to give advice to Captain Kirk, or the wise and experienced Tuvok trying to talk Archer out of half the shit he did in the Delphic Expanse.

Tuvok’s eyes are clearly asking if it’s too late to go back to the Delta quadrant and get assimilated by the Borg.

The point is, individual Vulcans aren’t interchangeable, and I don’t think their beliefs are either. Just look at what happened in the Enterprise episode, “Carbon Creek.” Three Vulcans are marooned on Earth in the 1950s and are facing starvation when they encounter a pair of deer. Despite the fact that Vulcans eat plant-based diets because their tenets about non-violence extend to animals, Mestral suggests eating one of them because:

A Vulcan Mrs. Donner.

Stron is Vulcan-horrified at the idea of resorting to “savagery,” but thankfully T’Pol/T’Mir agrees to violate the Vulcan version of the Prime Directive instead so they don’t have to murder Bambi’s mom. But that scene raises an interesting point. Who was right, Mestral or Stron? Or both? Or neither?

Put 100 Vulcans in a room and ask them when war is justifiable, I’m sure they’d all spout off some Vulcan version of Just War Theory like the smug, walking information databases that they are. But put 100 Vulcans in charge of making a real-world decision about going to war, and we’d get 100 different answers, some which directly contradicted others, but each defended by iron clad logic.  

To wrap this drivel up, Vulcan philosophy is a really bizarre hodgepodge of conflicting ideologies. They believe in infinite diversity in infinite combinations, which means they celebrate the beauty of the countless variables of the universe, unless it’s a Klingon bird-of-prey, in which case, they shoot that shit up. Pacifism is great when it’s convenient, killing is bad, except for when it isn’t, it’s not genocide if you have a really good reason, and eating animals is wrong, except for when it’s necessary. Yeah, logical.

I’m of the opinion that Vulcans are no better than humans—they do their best to grapple with complex issues according to a chaotic and occasionally contradictory set of beliefs. Even if they swear they aren’t driven by emotion, they are still at the mercy of their life experiences and world views when it comes to decision making. Logic is a tool that can help them arrive at answers, but it isn’t the answer. Most importantly, like any tool, logic can be abused or corrupted.

Given the weight of the evidence, I would re-assert that Vulcans are happy to declare anything as being logical, so long as it suits their agenda or personal beliefs. Or perhaps it’s better to say that the writers of Star Trek will call anything logical if it adds to the dialogue or advances the plot.

What say you, T’Pol?

[markoftheasphodel]

When Xmas Cavs Grow Up

Just to get all my thoughts in one place, especially as a) I haven’t talked about Seth & Orson in a long time and b) FE15 happened.

One of the (cough) archetypical hallmarks of Fire Emblem casts is the “Cain and Abel,” meaning not murderous siblings but a pair of matched knights who are friends or friendly rivals. One wears red and one wears green, one is loud and the other is quiet, one is serious and the other is fun-loving, often one whacks things with a sword while the other spears things with a lance. It’s a consistent enough trope to get its own page (70) in the 20th anniversary artbook.

But what happens when these bright young things grow up? Well, a couple of FE games have given us a glimpse of it.

Spoilers for Archanea, Jugdral, Magvel, and Valentia follow.

Archanea: Cain and Abel

“I work with a knight called Abel. I tend to get carried away, but he balances me out with his calmness.”

“When there are two precious things in your life… you must choose between them.

So, during the War of Heroes (FE3 Book II/FE12), Cain and Abel aren’t "the Cain & Abel” anymore. A new pair of trainee knights, “rowdy” Luke and “steady” Roderick, fill those roles with Roderick’s love interest Cecil rounding them out as a trio of cavaliers. So what’s become of the OG Christmas Cavs?

Yeah, OK, I think everyone here knows this story. If you don’t, FE Heroes gives you the Cliff’s Notes versions. Cain stayed at Marth’s side, trained a new crop of knights, and per FE3 Book II was trusted enough to help govern Altea when Marth went on missions elsewhere, and became Marth’s advisor after Jagen’s iron bones finally rusted out. Cain’s loud, he likes training, he’s nicknamed The Bull, he’s basically got no life outside of serving Marth.

Meanwhile Abel, the suave Panther to Cain’s Bull, retired, got married, opened a shop, and got dragged back into the war when his wife Est got held hostage by the bad guys, betrayed Marth, got forgiven for it, and then disappears forever after the war, chasing after an equally forever-disappeared Est. We know he and Cain are BFFs because Fire Emblem lore consistently tells us they’re friends, not because they actually have any scenes together or anything. They’ve been imitated, echoed, expied, et cetera.

Cain joins the party in FE12 as an unpromoted Level 9 cavalier, Abel joins many chapters later as a Level 1 paladin. (Don’t ask me how he got that promotion.)

Highlight: You get a better sense of Cain&Abel’s eternal legend from their expies Sully and Stahl in FE13 than you do from the originals.

Jugdral: Glade and Finn

“Glade, this is just the beginning. We still have a long way ahead of us.”

“Yes, we must return to Lenster and restore the flag of the Gae Bolg… That’s when we can finally have a drink together again.”

Archetypes weren’t really a thing during the SNES era but there were definitely call-backs even in the first five installments and FE5 had more than a few callbacks to FE3 specifically (hi, Asvel! Hi, Shannam!). Enter our next pair of veteran BFFs. If you only know Glade as the punchline to the Choose Your Heroes poll them I recommend reading this on Reddit as a primer.

Glade fits into what’s generally seen as the “Cain” archetype– maybe not as naturally talented as his BFF but known for his hard work and enthusiasm. He’s outspoken enough to criticize allies– even (allegedly) royal allies– who are letting down the cause and he’s openly affectionate with his wife Selphina. Life in the resistance has been hard and he’s accumulated a lot of regrets but he’s still in there trying. Finn is the more introverted of the pair, less willing to go on the record about his opinions, less able to demonstrate affection– which impacted his relationship with his own MIA apparent-love-interest Lachesis and is contributing to a strained relationship with his daughter Nanna. His sole passion, if it counts as one, appears to be geopolitical. “Another Abel with the same shitty taste in women,” one member of the FE Subreddit called him in a thread where passions were running high, and while that phrasing isn’t really fair to anyone involved, the underlying connection is legit IMO, though maybe not in the way that poster thought.

Glade and Finn aren’t polar opposites so much as they are variations on a theme (they even use the same weapon), in large part because Glade appears to be Finn’s deliberate foil, spun off to do the exact things FE4!Finn was doing that didn’t gel with where his FE5!characterization was taking him. They’re both loyal, patriotic, and so forth, and they’ve both suffered hardship for the cause of Prince Leif and Leonster, but whatever stroke of fate let Finn catch Prince Quan’s favor when they were kids while Glade stayed behind in Leonster has put a gap between them that friendship can’t bridge 100%. Glade’s doing his job and accumulating worldly success, Finn’s on a crusade that entails high personal sacrifice. Glade’s got his regrets, Finn’s outright broken inside. Glade’s a leader; Finn’s a hero. Glade makes history; Finn becomes a legend.

Unlike Cain & Abel they have actual in-game dialogue, plus the Leonster’s Fall short story in the Thracia artbook to give a sense of who they were as young knights before everything went to utter shit. There’s a lot of emotional build-up to their mid-battle reunion, which itself isn’t that emotional a scene but does include the “we’ll have a drink later” line that seemingly evokes the dialogue between Sigurd and Eldigan early in FE4. Given how that friendship played out, this would seem ominous… but, as it happens, fate has pretty much done its worst to these two already. There’s no betrayal, no falling out. After the war Glade enjoys his hot wife and promotion and makes New Thracia into an efficient and modern war machine. Finn disappears into the desert for three years because Reasons but he does come back. Remake plz?

Finn’s in Leif’s starting party as a Level 7 unpromoted unit, Glade joins in Ch13 as a Level 2 promoted unit.

Highlight: In spite of all the ways in which Jugdral is hell this is the only world in which our Veteran Cav BFFs might have the chance to continue their friendship later in life.

Magvel: Seth and Orson

“If Orson can turn his back on Renais… We remaining knights will have to work all the harder to prove ourselves!”

“You’re an impressive knight, Seth. You would sacrifice your life for king and country. Not even a moment’s pause. It’s a pitiful, unrewarding life, through and through.”

One of my contentions about FE8 has always been that, despite the mechanical similarities to FE2 (dual lords, monsters, etc) that the plot was a reworking of the War of Heroes, with more emphasis on character development and far less on the overall heroic myth. Given the shit that dedicated knights go through for their Lords, it was only a matter of time before we got to see what happened when somebody actually snapped. Abel betrayed Marth and all but he didn’t mean to, and Marth forgave him, and he’s just kind of an incoherent mess (see: FE Heroes) thereafter of his loyalty and his love for Est and his regrets for his treason. Finn breaks inside but keeps going on his impossible path despite a wasteland of collateral damage (including Glade at one point) around him and stakes that rise from “stay alive” to “reclaim Leonster” to “unify all Thracia” to “liberate entire continent from Dark Lord” because well, that’s what he does. Either way, they lose the girl (to say the least). Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 

Enter Orson, who looks at this particular bad deal being offered and says “to hell with that.”

So Orson and Seth are knights of Renais. Orson seems to be the older of the two. He’s got a quiet and serene personality (so, he’s the Abel) and he’s got a wife named Monica. Seth is the commander of the Knights of Renais, is renowned as The Silver Knight, has the other young knights looking up to him. He’s not boisterous like some of the Cain-types but he’s got the red hair, the training-freak personality (see: FE Heroes), and so on. Seth in typical Cain fashion doesn’t have a ladyfriend… yet. Hold that thought.

Long story short, Orson doesn’t betray Renais because Monica’s being held as a hostage. He betrays Renais because Monica’s already dead and in the grave six months and Grado’s dark powers offer her back in some horrible fashion. He sells out his country to enjoy alone time with the ghastly puppet of his wife, and when Seth finally confronts him mid-game Orson’s just sane enough to offer a concise and brutal takedown of the whole knighthood thing. And this hits Seth hard, because Seth’s been keeping his own secrets– specifically, his improper feelings for his liege lady princess Eirika– and FE8′s story is an entire gallery of bad examples of what twisted love can do to a person. Orson, Carlyle, Lyon himself– this roll call of the mad and the damned is what’s held up to Seth as his fate should he give into his heart: “there but for the grace of god(s) go I.”

But Magvel is surprisingly kind to Seth, offering him a happy ending with Eirika in spite of his own protests or a union with the lovely priestess Natasha. Orson gets a dirt nap in the company of what’s left of Monica.

Seth joins at the start as a Level 1 Paladin, Orson joins in Ephraim’s first chapter as a Level 3 Paladin before turning his colors.

Highlight: This is the only case in which the Veteran Cavs are not in some sense a retcon onto the source material.

Valentia: Clive and Fernand

“Enough, Fernand. You’ve suffered enough. You needn’t flog yourself any further.”

“Good… I am…rather tired. Tired of despair… Tired of rage… But Clive…I’m glad I got to see you one last time.”

FE2 didn’t have anything mapping to the "Cain & Abel” Xmas Cav archetype because it wasn’t an archetype yet and definitely didn’t have any take on the adult version thereof. FE15, besides retconning Forsyth into the ambitious Green Knight to the stolid Red Knight played by Lukas, plum invented an entire “veteran cav BFFs” tragic subplot for us to enjoy. Nice.

So on the one hand we have Clive. Clive’s the leader of the rebel group known as the Deliverance, has impeccable breeding and a glowing reputation, a sizable chunk of the playable cast has the hots for him, etc. He’s got a canon love interest, the glamorous paladin Mathilda, so you might expect based on the above that the plot-gods are about to take a wrecking ball to Clive’s life.

Except Clive also has a BFF and his BFF has problems. Orson at least has the pretense of being on the lords’ side before Seth unmasks him as a traitor. Fernand’s a prick from the moment he shows up on screen and promptly flounces from the Deliverance all in a froth over being led by a “farmboy” like Alm and lends his services (such as they are) to Rigel’s Lord Berkut. There’s also a hint that Fernand is actually into Mathilda himself (oh noes), but the entire Deliverance scene is rife with homoerotic subtext[*] and Fernand’s got a pretty bad case of it. Since Clive still cares a lot about his BFF we then have to make the attempt to redeem Fernand, which of course fails, so this particular version of the veteran cav subplot ends with a big dramatic death scene with a CG and lots of ellipses and everything. 

Their whole subplot is wrapped up in an interesting if maybe not entirely successful take on what knights exactly are for– what kind of ruler is a legitimate ruler? How is that ruler best served? Unlike all of the previous examples, Clive and Fernand started their careers as knights sworn to a shitty, useless, negligent king, one whose bloodline was apparently extinct by the start of the game. There’s never any question that Cain serves Marth, that Glade and Finn serve Leif, that Seth serves the twins of Renais. If Abel and Orson waver it’s not because Marth or the twins are not the right lords to serve, but because Abel and Orson have personal weaknesses. But Clive and Fernand both have to make an actual conscious choice as to whom they are going to serve, and Clive makes the right choice (with a lot of second-guessing along the way) and Fernand doesn’t, the end.

Clive joins as a Level 6 cavalier; Fernand is not playable in the main game.

Highlight: These guys get their own prequel in the Rise of the Deliverance DLC, wherein Fernand is playable .

* Xmas Cavs and their grown-up equivalents generally do have some measure of that goin’ on (Seth and Orson being an exception), but the Deliverance is pretty hard to overlook.

[illuminating-dragons]

Nesting (4/?): Profoundly

Summary:  The lead up to a wedding isn't always peaceful, but people come together in the end.

Read it on AO3

           Sam grimaced as he heard another dish hit the kitchen wall. “You’d think with two grooms we’d avoid the wedding crazies.”

           “It’s your idjit brother,” Bobby grumbled, turning the page of an old ledger. “He can’t shut up to save his damn life.”

           Dean and Cas’ wedding was in a week, and it was turning into an enormous headache for anyone within three hundred miles of the Bunker. It wasn’t the guest list, it wasn’t the food, it wasn’t even the damn venue.

           It was the grooms themselves.

           Since returning from Hell, Sam had witnessed Dean and Cas arguing only a handful of times. They were quick and intense, years of a profound bond soothing the worst of the anger. But ever since Jody and Donna’s wedding six months ago, ever since Hannah asked innocently when they would get married…

           “What are we up to?” Sarah asked.

           “Seventy four arguments,” Sam reported. “Since the start of July.”

           Sarah groaned and hit her head off the desk.

           He heard Cas’ raised voice now. Great. That meant a longer argument. Sam dearly wished that either Ben or Gabriel were here—they could knock sense into the couple better than anyone—but both were away from the Bunker.

           Bobby glared at Sam. “It’s your turn.”

           “It is not, it’s Charlie’s!”

           “She and Anna are in Moondor,” Sarah reminded him. “Come on, Sam. I’ve got to finish the playlist anyways.”

           Sam knew there was no point protesting. He got up and went down the hall towards the kitchen. His brothers’ voices were lower now, but no less intense. Hoping he wasn’t going to have to pull them apart (again), Sam froze in his tracks when their voices rose again.

           “I swear, Cas, it feels like you don’t want to get married at all!”

           “Don’t be ridiculous, Dean, of course I do!”

           “Then why do you keep picking at me?! Everything I suggest you shoot down!”

           “You aren’t asking for enough!”

           “What the fuck does that MEAN?!” Another crash. “I’m asking for what I want, Cas. It’s one fucking day of our lives, it doesn’t have to be perfect!”

           “Nothing in your life has ever been perfect!”

           The silence was louder than the crashes.

           “What do you mean?” Dean’s voice was terribly quiet.

           “You’ve been dragged around your entire life,” Cas replied. “You’ve rarely had an opportunity to make choices, and they haven’t been good ones. I want to make sure you can choose whatever you want, Dean.”

           “I am choosing what I want, Cas,” Dean said. His voice was much gentler now. “I love all of the ideas we’ve come up with, and the ones I picked out are the ones I think are the best. It’s not the French Riviera, but it’s what I know. It’s what I want. I don’t want our wedding to be something completely out of my experience. It’s about us, about our life, our family…” There was another pause. “But that’s not really what you’re worried about, is it baby? You think I might not have chosen right when I picked you.”

           “The thought had crossed my mind.” Cas’ voice was thready.

           Sam risked stepping closer, close enough that he could see the kitchen. Dean and Cas were standing amid a bunch of shattered glass and china, and Cas had his head bowed.

           “You are the Righteous Man,” Cas said. “You were made by Heaven itself to fight Hell, and you defied them both. You are better than anyone dreamed you would be. You could have anyone.”

           “I want you.” Dean stepped forward and took Cas’ face in his hands. “Castiel, I want you. You are the Saviour of the Righteous Man. You were built to love God, and you chose to love me…to love me too. I love you, Cas. You’re perfect as far as I’m concerned. And if anyone thinks different—that might actually be a good thing. I get you all to myself.”

           Cas laughed, but it was more of a sob, and Sam realized it was time to leave. He retreated to give them some privacy, but not before he saw Dean enfold Cas in his arms.

           There were no more arguments that day, or the next five days. Which was good, because Charlie’s dress went missing, Kevin came down with the flu and they found out about a shifter in Topeka, running around in the guise of the dead (they’d been grave digging).

           But by the day before the wedding, the shifter had been taken out by Samandriel, Kevin was healed after he actually admitted he was sick, and Charlie’s dress had been rescued from the trunk of the Impala. A vigorous washing got the smell of gunpowder out.

           Most of the wedding guests were already there. Every ‘claimed’ bedroom was full, people chattering with excitement and finding “my damn pantyhose!” “You don’t need that shit!” “It’s the pair Gabriel made that doesn’t rip!” “…I’ll help you look.”

           Dean and Cas sat in the middle of the chaos, told sternly not to help at all. Ben stood guard proudly, arms folded. He was taking his best man job seriously.

           (Not all the arguments in the last six months had been between the grooms-to-be).

           At last the kerfuffle died down, and the bachelor party began.

           Cas had vehemently protested against this idea, and even Dean didn’t see the need. “I don’t want to be hungover on our wedding day, and besides, I am not taking my kid to a strip club.”

           “Indeed not,” Cas agreed. “I don’t want you dead on our wedding day.”

           With Ben as best man, however, Dean agreed to try a party, so long as Ben planned it. Ben had enlisted the groomsmen and groomsgals to help plan bits and pieces, but the twelve-year-old had kept most of the details close to his chest. Only Gabriel seemed to know the whole story, but he’d barely been in the Bunker in the last month.

           Which Sam thought, given the chaos, was really a smart thing.

           The first part of the party was a buffet. Everyone got their favourite foods, and they ate picnic style in the main room, curled up on cushions and bean bag chairs Gabriel had snapped up. Sam stole a few of Sarah’s grapes—to make up for it, he fed her the last of his strawberries. Dean and Cas were arguing playfully over which burgers were best, and the conversation rose and fell as everyone digested.

           Then there was pie. Lots of different kinds, and Benny beamed with pride as everyone ate up. “Told you it was better than that magic food, Tricky,” he drawled.

           Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Listen, Ex-Fangs, you just got your sweet tooth back. Give it some time to adjust.”

           Benny rolled his eyes and bared his completely normal teeth. “Sure thing, sugar.”      

           Once the last bites had been scraped off the plates, Gabriel clapped his hands. “Alright, listen up everyone.” He turned to Ben. “Want to explain your idea for entertainment tonight, kiddo?”

           Ben shuffled nervously. “Okay.” At Gabriel’s encouraging nod, he dashed out of the room.

           “What’s he doing?” Dean asked.

           “Patience, Dean-o. All will be revealed.”

           Ben returned with a wrapped package and a strange looking video camera. It looked like a camera from the eighties had a baby with a telescope.

           “What’s that, son?” Dean raised his eyebrows as Ben sat down in front of him and Cas.

           “Well, I thought it would be nice to talk about memories from when you were younger—not just with each other, but with other people in our family. And that’s easier when you’ve got some visual aids, so…”

           Dean opened the package carefully. It was a photo album.

           “What—we didn’t—we don’t have all that many pictures, buddy.” Dean said gently. “You don’t need this big a—” He opened the album and fell silent.

           “Dean?” Sam asked. He scooted so he could see the pages, and his jaw dropped.

           Every page was crowded with pictures of him and Dean, and Bobby, and Ellen and Jo and Cas and Ash…Sam spotted pictures in college, and pictures with Pastor Jim, pictures with random hunters and survivors…

           “Ben suggested this and I thought it was a great idea,” Gabriel explained. “I went back and took all the pictures that were ever taken of the two of you and anyone you call family and stuck ‘em in. I’m working on the rest of you, but I thought the newlyweds would go first.”

           Dean leaned over and hugged Gabriel and Ben tightly. He was shaking. “You have no idea how much this means,” he said, voice thick.

           “It was no trouble,” Gabriel assured him. “Just promise me you’ll keep taking pictures. That album’s not going to fill itself!”

           Dean laughed. “Promise.” He picked up the strange camera. “Is that what this is for? I’ve never seen one like this.”

           “Nope.” Gabriel snapped, and suddenly everyone had popcorn and candy on their laps and they were all facing a screen hovering just in front of the staircase. “That is a memory projector, patent pending. Kali helped me make it.”

           “A memory projector?”

           Gabriel snapped again, and the camera flew out of Dean’s hands to hover just behind them. “Ben asked me about home movies. I know you guys didn’t make too many, so I made some.”

           Sam blinked. “How?”

           “Short version is I followed you around in the past whenever you did something mildly interesting and ‘filmed’ it. I’ve got some memories of Cas from when he was a fledgling too.”

           Both Cas and Dean’s eyes were wide.

           “And don’t you worry, Cassie,” Gabriel added. “Bal and Anna gave me some more…recent ones.”

           Cas groaned. Dean took his hand. “Come on babe, it’ll be fun. It’s a great idea, Ben. And thanks for your help, Gabriel.”

           “Like I said, it was nothing. Now let’s get this film festival going.” Gabriel paused for effect. “I call it ‘The Profound Bond’.”

           “Balthazar!” Cas tried to launch himself at his brother. “You weren’t supposed to repeat that!”

           But it wasn’t nothing, Sam realized as a clip of him and Dean as small children started to play. Time travelling was difficult for angels, even archangels; and now a tiny version of Cas popped up too. Gabriel had somehow managed to convert his own memories of his fledgling’s true forms to tiny children who looked like their current vessels. And he’d done it all in time for a wedding, refusing to take credit for the immense amount of effort.

           And Sam watched Cas lean his head on Gabriel’s shoulder for a minute, and Dean smile over Cas’ head, and knew that the to-be-weds knew it too.

           It was late when they stopped watching videos (the one where Sam was chased by a goose at a petting zoo, forcing Dean to rescue him by dragging him on top of the Impala’s hood got an annoying amount of laughs), and Sam carried a sleeping Sarah to their room. He crawled in next to her and cradled her in his arms, and for a moment dared to dream of maybe someday…maybe someday they would have a wedding eve. They weren’t ready for that yet—he wasn’t ready for that yet—but for the first time the idea seemed possible. A future with her.

           And with that thought, Sam fell asleep.

           He woke to a gentle touch to his shoulder. Confused, he looked up and gasped, yanking Sarah closer.

           His mother stood over him. “Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

           Sam shifted as Sarah stirred. “No problem,” he whispered. “Are you all here?”

           Mary nodded. “We came as soon as we could. We thought you could all use a hand first thing in the morning.”

           Sarah was awake now. “Hi Mary,” she said sleepily. “We’ll be up in a minute.”

           “What about Dean?” Sam asked.

           “JO GET OUT WHAT THE FUCK?!”

           The outraged shout rang through the Bunker.

           “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SPEND THE NIGHT WITH YOUR GROOM, EITHER!”

           “FUCK THAT!”

           “Who thought Jo was a good idea?” Sam muttered. Sarah giggled.

           Mary’s eyes danced. “No one.”

           And with that, Destiel’s wedding day began properly.

[jewishaxelwalker]

Axel Walker, as a character, is a real mess. As he was pretty much only written by one person prior to 2011, and that one person was Geoff Johns, it’s no real wonder why. My complaints regarding every book Geoff Johns has ever worked on could fill a book roughly the size of the bible, but that’s neither here nor there right now.

Of all the new villains Johns created during his underwhelming run on the Flash, Axel is the one that’s lasted longest. Hunter Zoloman’s Zoom is a close second, but all bets were off with that guy once Johns was given the go-ahead to bring back Eobard Thawne, who hasn’t gone the hell away since 2009. But despite showing up regularly throughout his Flash run, making an appearance in his Teen Titans run, and just generally existing in Rogues’ Revenge, Blackest Night: The Flash, and the Brightest Day Flash series, Geoff Johns never actually bothered to give this kid a personality. No, really.

Axel has personality traits, most prevalent among them being annoying and young, but seeing as Johns was pushing 30 when he created Axel...the “youth” aspect of the character seemed overly exaggerated. For instance, here’s the panel that gives us the best guess as to how old he is:

“Dropped out of high school a few years ago” is a real shitty timeline. How many years is a few? Did he drop out as a freshman, a junior? Between how damn small he is (DC Encyclopedia cites him as being 5′7″, but I’ll eat my hat if he’s over 5′2″), the rest of the Rogues referring to him as “kid” all the time, and the way he kept being set up as one of Bart’s villains in the short time he was Kid Flash, I feel like we’re supposed to think of Axel as 16 or 17. However, Axel is shown being sent to Iron Heights on multiple occasions. That’s big boy prison, not a juvenile detention facility. So it’s entirely possible he’s 18 or 19. But we will never know.

So okay, back to those character traits. Early on, it was established that in addition to being young and annoying, Axel was also highly inventive, having created a bunch of tricks and gags that James Jesse, his predecessor, hadn’t used. He also utilized modern technology in a way that only someone written by a 30+ year old in 2005 could:

Is this even possible? I know about as much about computers as the next Amish person, that is to say, next to nothing, so I can’t tell you. But it’s possible according to Comic Book Hacking!

Anyway, when he first hit the scene, Axel was working with Blacksmith’s new Rogues. That didn’t last long, and he eventually jumped ship with Mark and Evan, who vouched for him with Len for whatever reason, and then Axel was a true and proper Rogue.

And here’s where it all goes a bit hinky.

During Crossfire (183-188 if you want exact issues), Axel had a glossy sheen of “golly, gee whiz!” about him. He was new to this whole villainy thing, eager to prove himself, and ready and willing to cause some chaos. Chaotic Neutral, if you will. The Identity Crisis tie-in issues (214-217) and Rogue War (220-225) introduced a weird little quirk that hadn’t been present before: sadism, and a need for said sadism to be corrected. 

In 214, Axel obliviously offers to whip up some poison gas to lace the flowers Len wants to send in sympathy to Ralph Dibny. Not knockout gas, or some other harmless gag, poison. We’d already seen that the other Rogues had a habit of insulting Axel in previous issues, but in 216, Len one-punches him to the floor for making fun of Digger when news of his death was reported.

The next panel shows that he is deadass unconscious. 220 gives us another fun panel of weird sadism that comes out of left field:

Now, where did this come from? I like to trace it back to a couple of panels from 188:

-words of advice from Weather Wizard, which are later parroted back in 221:

Again, it has previously been shown that of all the older Rogues, the one Axel is closest to, sees as a sort of mentor even, is Weather Wizard. Which brings me to Rogues’ Revenge.

Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge is possibly my least favorite comic of all time. It’s the one that paved the way for the return of Eobard Thawne (my least favorite villain) and killed off Thad Thawne (my absolute favorite villain)...but it was also the place where my favorite version of Axel was born.

Axel’s part in Rogue War ended when James beat the hell out of him, stole his mask and shoes, and tossed him in a dumpster. Between Rogue War and Rogues’ Revenge, Axel showed up in all of one comic, where he murdered a quartet of college students in the Detective Chimp: Helmet of Fate issue:

It’s one of those comics that really doesn’t make a ton of sense out of Axel’s characterization, what little there was to begin with. When we next see Axel in Rogues’ Revenge #1, he’s put together his own little gang. While his Trickster gang dresses like him, Axel is the only one who actually uses tricks, the other guys use guns. They’re disposed of, and Axel is folded back in with the Rogues. After Len beats him up a bit, of course:

But what else is new, right? After a whole rigamarole about the Rogues going to Gambi’s workshop to give their costumes back, but they find him beat all to hell by a group calling themselves the New Rogues, who’d also kidnapped Len’s father. The Rogues find them. There’s a fight. And then, this:

Followed very closely by this:

And quite literally immediately after, this:

And this is it. This is my favorite version of Axel, born from what might be the shittiest comic of all time. My favorite version of Axel is the underutilized “scared rabbit covering it all up with false bravado” version, which we would now see in everything following this issue, up until the New 52. After Rogues’ Revenge, Axel’s speaking panels were cut to practically nothing. He lurked in the background of scenes, helped out, had a one-liner or two, but did Johns ever again attempt to give him any kind of depth? Nope. All his character development from this point on would come from Scott Kolins:

This page baffled me for the longest time, when it came out. Len has just had Mick kill his father for him. Third panel, Axel’s expression is very neutral, not giving away anything. Fifth panel, peeking out from behind Len, his expression borders on worry, but by panel six right next to it, he’s schooled himself back to neutrality. Then we get this page:

“Us”, Axel says. As if he actually did any murdering of his own. That’s why the past sadistic streak and the Detective Chimp issue never sat well with me. Where did these traits spring from? I know I said earlier that the whole “no conscience” thing might be to blame, but it was never consistent. 

Scroll back up. Look at those facial expressions. Kolins might draw Len craggier than a mountain peak, but his Axel is definitely the most expressive. Look at the page with Mark causing faux-Abra Kadabra to explode. Look at that bottom-right panel. You can literally see him being terrified of the people he’s with, finally understanding exactly what they’re capable of, and realizing that he’s in too deep to get out unharmed. But at the same time…he doesn’t want out, because these guys are all Dad now. He idolizes them and he fears them. So he digs deep for the set of balls that got him into Blacksmith’s circuit, and uses the fact that none of the others have really tried to get to know him to his advantage. Bad jokes, ignorance, bratting it up…hiding his fear. After the page above, Axel spends the rest of Rogues’ Revenge making some of the silliest expressions he ever has in a comic when he’s in focus, but out of focus, he’s all frowns and neutral faces. He does end up aiding in Inertia’s murder...somehow

Seriously, what the hell is he shooting at him, a spring? It’s coiled too loosely to choke him, and though the shot of Thad’s corpse shows it still wrapped around his throat, there’s no bruising there like on his face and body.

The next place Axel, or the Rogues for that matter, show up is in Blackest Night: Flash, another Johns disaster. There, he’s the comedic relief from start to finish. He’s not particularly interested in fighting zombies, so his expressions tend to range from a very fake-looking full-face grin to straight up terror:

And of course, the pit. I’ve got a whole other laundry list of ways comics failed Owen Mercer, but that’s not for here. When the horribly out of character Captain Cold confronts the even more horribly out of character Owen about his actions in trying to bring back his father, it’s bad. But is it “copying every line and forehead wrinkle from Mark’s face onto Axel’s face” bad?

Bam. After Blackest Night, the Rogues would show up only once more before Flashpoint, in a couple of issues of the Brightest Day Flash series. Here, he actually has a few panels of dialogue and is actually shown to be doing things for a change. 

One of his only panels worth mentioning, though, is this one from issue 6:

So...if Axel is a millennial, then that means he was born between 1981 and 1997, making him at most 29 and at least 13 back in 2010. Release this kid’s age, DC. The world wants to know.

So. You’d think a character study on a Trickster would end with a bang, but I don’t really think it can. Axel is honestly a pretty weak character, whose goals and motivations are either bland or entirely nonexistent. We never got a real backstory for him other than a few thoughtboxes in the Flash 1/2 issue, we never got to see how he’d blossom under a competent writer pre-New 52, his entire existence seemed to be one of those famous Johns dropped plots. He feels like he should have a bigger role than he does, and is in fact the legacy Rogue with the least number of pre-New 52 appearances. Which is ironic, because he’s the only legacy Rogue that escaped erasure with the rest of the old universe. His few appearances in the New 52 Flash title, the Rebirth Flash title, and non-canon books like Injustice have given him more of a character than all of his time under Johns, and he’s better off for it. Except for the Injustice universe, where he’s dead.

I guess all I can say is, the kid was interesting enough to deserve better, but it took his old universe being wiped out and replaced for him to get it. Bummer.

[journeysintowebcomics]

Homestuck Liveblog #170

UPDATE 170: Dave Gets His Epiphany

Last time Hussie had decided it was time to pour even more dialogue onto the readers, since last time it hadn’t been enough, hah! Ten different dialogue options – presented linearly, in a subversion of how this usually goes. So let’s continue with what may or may not be the last chance these characters have of talking to each other before the fights.

So I heard that hovering over the options one already cleared would show images, and that was right! There are images. It seems Dave and Dirk continue just...lying around awkwardly, and Vriska and her ghost are arguing while Meenah fantasizes about varied stuff. There’s more than can be done, although the very next option is Roxy being alone. She’s still trying to create the matriorb. Calliope is sitting right in front of her, in silent support role. Roxy channels the universe and Alternia’s complicated state of matters, and...

Well! Mission accomplished! That was easier than I thought it’d be, even with Calliope’s silent help. I suppose there wasn’t more time for delaying this any longer. Kanaya is going to be immensely happy the troll race will be resurrected now. This was a short detour, completely devoid of words but with a significant development – at least to complete quite some part of Roxy and Kanaya’s arcs and goals in this story.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Roxy and Calliope leave right when the bizarre combination that is Jasprosesprite arrives to hassle Jane for a while longer. I’m crossing my fingers this’ll be quick and painless.

JASPROSESPRITE^2: Miss me Rose?  JASPROSESPRITE^2: Did you know I love you?? Weird thing for me to say and you to hear, probably!  JASPROSESPRITE^2: I inherited the adoration our cat had for you, which now strangely is directed with the exact same intensity at myself, because I'm you!  JASPROSESPRITE^2: Funnily enough this manifests itself in a particularly acute form of narcissism, which is something we were already sort of afflicted by, and so was our cat by the very nature of the sort of animal he was!  JASPROSESPRITE^2: The bottom line is I'm pretty twisted up inside in all the most beautiful ways and it's wonderful.  ROSE: It really isn't.

Haha, okay, that one was actually pretty funny. She’s not wrong, Rose, you do tend to have slight traces of narcissism in your personality. Guess that all the increased narcissism in this sprite is what makes it have absolutely no brain-mouth filter, what with having an inflated sense of the self and what one says. Being a cat can’t help that either.

Now that Jasperosesprite made the customary hassling towards Rose, she gets straight to business about the battle plan. She has to arrange with Jane how it’ll be done, after all. This is achieved by taking Jane away without even giving her a moment to prepare. There’s someone she needs to meet, somebody in Jane’s planet.

Ah, true, the denizen. The New Wonderkids’ session was rather lacking in information about the denizens, especially since this session was meant to do pretty much nothing. Given Hussie’s track record so far, I’m almost completely sure that Jane’s talk with the denizen will happen off-screen and the characters will talk about it once it’s done, so...no more option than waiting until this is done!

Damn it , I have been bamboozled! Well played, Hussie, you had me fooled, I admit it. This could be good, though, not everyday you meet a senior version of yourself that’s dressed as a clown and...is the mother of your father. This is time-travel-gone-wrong levels of weird.

Aw, come on, Hussie, I wanted to see this! But nope, just when Nannasprite got in front of Jane the section ended and went to the next. Oh well. I’m really hoping I’ll have the chance to see how this goes, but I’m not going to hold my breath over it. The scribbled images of what the rest of the options are doing show John and Terezi discussing how Rose could have a black romance status with, uh, a version of herself. Yeeeeeeah no, let’s not do that. Doesn’t seem healthy – just ask Karkat, it’d be a headache.

About Roxy and Calliope, they just arrived to what I think is Jade’s planet, and Calliope is told to stay with Jade. I had completely forgotten Jade is still asleep. It’s once again said that it’s nice to have Calliope around. And...that was it! I just summarized around six or so pages in this very short paragraph.

I think that goes way beyond the realm of kismesis behavior Rose...and out of the realm of sanity as well. Stay away from any copies of the Sassacre book, resist the temptation. Anyways, Dave and Dirk are still here. Going to try to talk again? They’re focusing more on the battle to come than on anything else. Hah! No progress on the heartfelt conversation front, apparently.

DAVE: hes got lord english powers tho

It could be a way to know how well a fight against Lord English would go, then. Sure, Union Jack is completely different, less bulky, has no time powers, and presumably has one single personality in that noggin of his instead of being a weird amalgamation, but it’d be a way to see if they are ready to fight against Lord English. Think of it as having training wheels on your bike.

Swords can’t help you solve problems with people, who’d have thought. Dirk and Jake are the closest example to how someone who has spent their formative years alone and without the presence of people around would behave: with no social skills at all. Jade got very lucky in that regard, she is very well-balanced for someone who grew on an island and only had a dog for company. Then again, her Dreamself must have been of help, the Prospitians must have helped her have some people skills.

DIRK: ...  DAVE: ...

Nothing has changed here.

It takes a few pages more before Dirk takes the plunge headfirst down the emotional cliff, with all the grace of a novice. It does get the conversation going, mostly about how this isn’t how he pictured the meeting going.

DIRK: Maybe you'll think it's weird that I idolized some version of you that I never knew. 

These two are much more similar than they each realize. Their upbringings aren’t that different, heck, I’d say that Lil’ Hal fulfilled the role Bro had, just with less sword attacks. Other than that it was pretty much the same, an isolated life with an aloof person/glasses in the vicinity. Come on, Dave, admit you idolized Bro. That’d be a great step towards turning the page in your life and bonding with Dirk, you can do it!

DAVE: ive got to say  DAVE: meeting you  DAVE: its not rockin my world here  DAVE: or upending any paradigms or whatever  DAVE: listening to you and looking at you  DAVE: it really really just  DAVE: reminds me of him

Close enough! I’m a bit downtrodden there was no exchange of words between Bro and Dave so I could have a reference on how similar this actual situation is to how they got along. I imagine Bro wasn’t that different from Dirk.

DIRK: Things, between you and me, from your perspective, um,  DIRK: Are we like, not cool?  DAVE: ..................

I’m not sure if it’s telling or not that there was no ‘yeah’ or similar quick response.

DAVE: i didnt fuckin like you that much ok? 

...

...

...okay, that isn’t how I thought it’d go. I suppose there’s a difference between idolizing and actually liking a person. Good for you for saying it aloud, Dave. It must have been very difficult to say to anybody, even more to a version of your brother.

After a sequence of images meant to show how little time passed between Dave going “I don’t want to talk about it” to “okay heres what im saying” he finally starts...and boy is it tough.

DAVE: i dunno why my friends got to have adults around who cared about them  DAVE: they complained bitterly about stuff so i guess i convinced myself they were all in the same boat as me  DAVE: but thats not how it was 

That’s pretty much how kids and teenagers are, they complain and don’t realize sometimes such complaints aren’t about things as bad as they could be. Leaving behind such behavior is part of growing up. Dave didn’t realize how badly he was being treated, though, he just saw no difference between his life and the lives of the rest of his friends – at first.

DAVE: so all thats left to do is look back and try to put the pieces together of my first 13 years  DAVE: and all i can think is what the fuck WAS that?!  DAVE: i dont come away with the impression i used to try convincing myself of, that he was like "mysterious" or "stern" or "aloof"  DAVE: the only feeling left is this insane impression that i was raised by somebody who fuckin HATED me 

...hated you? Hm...honestly? I don’t know. Bro’s way of raising Dave had a lot of things wrong, and I really don’t know how to interpret it. I’m interested on knowing how other people interpreted it. Would you mind telling me your thoughts, everyone? I really don’t know what to think about this.

Dirk actually sounds horrified about what he’s hearing. Perhaps he doesn’t like the thought of his equivalent doing this all?

DAVE: it took years to deconstruct it all and put it back together to understand how fuckin mad i should be  DAVE: and in particular how stone cold deeply uncared for i was my whole life  DAVE: like... being merely "monitored" by a violent robot 

Haha...you know what this brought to mind? What went through my head right when I read this part?

TT: Don't worry, that's normal.  TT: Upon activation he goes into Stalking Mode.  GT: Stalking mode??  TT: Yes. He will stalk you in the jungle and strike when your guard is down. 

It’s exactly that. Dave pretty much described the robot Dirk made and sent to Jake. It’s pretty much the same in terms of how Dave was raised! Wow, Hussie, did you do this on purpose? I think you did this on purpose! Dave may as well have been raised by the brobot thing, and just like Jake – who dreaded encountering it and once he had to fight it didn’t precisely have loads of fun – Dave now doesn’t want to fight. He wants to avoid this fighting thing, and hates that he has to be the one to grab the sword and slay the villain.

You seriously screwed up here, Bro.

Dave even brings up that maybe things would have been better if Lil’ Cal hadn’t been around. Maybe! The influence of Lord English can’t be an ingredient in a healthy household – even more since part of Lord English is once another version of Dirk. Hah! Life sucks for the Striders. It’s...it’s rather depressing, actually. I wonder if at the time they had to cram Caliborn into the puppet Dave realized what Lil’ Cal was. Even if he did, I doubt he’d have any kind of reaction when anyone was nearby, but at that moment I imagine many things clicked in Dave’s head.

Would Bro have been any different if that puppet of the damned hadn’t been around? Uh...I dunno. Maybe it really was a poisonous influence of some sort, influence Dirk was lucky not to have. It’s all up to interpretation, I’d say.

I think now that the epiphany is complete I can stop the update and continue next time. This, though, this is exactly what I was hoping the Striders would do, that at least one of them would unload this heavy emotional baggage, and it’s for the better! I’m glad it’s actually happening.

Next update: three updates

[traumabrained]

(cw: possible emotional abuse?) so hello, sorry to bother you, but this has been bothering me for some time now. when I was younger, my mom used to shout/aggressively say things about me not socializing enough and not having friends. she's often threatened to send me away to catholic school/juvie for things that i don't remember, and i think she's threatened to chop off my hand but that might not be true? (1/7)

she's also threatened to send me to mental institutions because i was "crazy and not normal." after i broke down and cried when i was 11, she sent me to therapy then got mad that i didn't recover fast enough (i kinda understand though it's expensive). i also remember being hit a few times but i don't think it was abuse just cultural differences (im asian). i don't think she wants to hurt me. (2/7)

i think i might have provoked her and kinda deserved it and after a majority of these incidences she was usually very sorry and either offered to let me hit her back to even the score or something or bought me things as an apology. (3/7)

all of this mostly stopped, i think, after a particularly large incident that involved me snapping and i think that scared her. but i feel that im acting like a spoiled sheltered brat because she does so much for me and im worried that im exaggerating or being too sensitive. i don't know if i love her it feels so awful to say that but i don't even think i want to. is this abuse? i don't know if i can call it that as it doesn't seem severe enough. (4/7)

this next part is going to sound completely crazy and i feel like a freak. i don't think i have ptsd or anything like that, but i feel like a toddler trapped in an adult body. i feel like in the present i think about incidents happening not necessarily to me, but an alternate version of me or a completely different person. (5/7)

whenever the actually incident or a situation that i created in my head would happen i retreat to sort of a fantasy world, where im either myself or another person, usually a child or an adult body with a child-like mind. (6/7)

i create one or two adult figures, always male, and they can be the same people over a certain period of time, who are kind of like a alternate family where they're both super loving and sweet. usually in these imaginary incidences they're cradling and trying to comfort me. is there a name for this? (7/7)

to answer your first question, this is absolutely abuse. regardless of your culture, and regardless of whether she “offers to let you hit her to even the score”, she is abusing you. there’s no excuse for hitting a child--they are defenseless. they can do absolutely nothing to prevent it or to fight back. most of the time they didnt even know better than to do whatever they are being punished for. and even if you did take your mom up on the offer and hit her back--that doesn’t nullify the abuse. she still hit you. she still has power over you. if anything, it’s a guilt trip tactic so you feel bad about what she did. 

and it doesn’t matter how much she looks like she regrets it. it still happened. she isnt doing jack shit to stop herself from doing it again.

and additionally--you didn’t deserve any of what she did. if a child is acting out, they’re doing it because something is wrong, and the only solution to that is to help them fix the problem. nothing else. even something as little as putting your kid in “time out” because they’re hyperactive or something is not the solution. that doesn’t help anyone but you. so your mom hitting you, threatening to maim you, or threatening to send you to mental hospitals or catholic school--none of it was deserved, and none of it was justified.

and honestly: i dont love my mother either. she is a horrible, manipulative woman. she doesn’t care about me, and she doesn’t care about my wellbeing. i have a hard time hating people, especially my own mother, but i sure as shit don’t love her. and you don’t have to love your family either. love and respect have to be earned and freely given, or else they mean nothing.

now on to mental part. as you are (presumably) aware, im not a professional, im just an 18 year old with a lot of personal experience and stuff i looked up and i give advice, not diagnoses. that being said, (and this is a suggestion based on what you’ve said, and nothing more) it sounds like a fun combination of:

1) maladaptive daydreaming--this is like normal daydreaming but x1000. it’s often involuntary (though not always) and tends to replace human interaction. people who maladaptively daydream sometimes have “inner worlds” (essentially, a reality inside your head that you visit often. it’s usually populated with people who you might form relationships with, etc.) or else a variety of places they go. im gonna direct you to the wikipedia page on it (honestly it looks pretty damn accurate to me, but i recommend you read a lot of pages about it, if you think it might fit what’s going on with you): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maladaptive_daydreaming

and then potentially either of these things:

a) DID--disassociative identity disorder. not sure i spelled that right, sorry. im getting a pretty bad headache right now so im gonna keep this short but here’s an explanation: http://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/dissociative-identity-disorder/dissociative-identity-disorder-did-signs-and-symptoms/ and to add onto this, people with DID (such as myself, actually) might have alters (basically additional personalities) that replace the original (i.e. the original personality that was in the body). for example: the original personality in our body has either gone to sleep for like 3 years, or else just straight up left. and so events that occurred when the body was younger don’t feel like they happened to me, or any of the other alters. there are six people in our body (right now youre talking to kasparov with ciardha butting in a lot). we’re all different ages, from 19 to 8.  it’s possible to have far more alters, and its also possible to have just one. basically what im suggesting here is that maybe a system (a body with more than one personality) was formed during a traumatic event, and you are the alter who is a child, and that the original is either dormant, or left. now im definitely not saying you have this. but i recommend that you look into this as well.

b) some kind of constant or else nearly-constant age regression. i really dont know much about this and googling it led to absolutely nothing, so i couldnt tell you what it’s caused by, or what to call it. my headache is getting a little migraine-y, so im sorry if this gets less helpful the more i write aaa

okay so essentially those are all the things that i can think of, but im certain its not an exhaustive list of possible things. if anyone has any information or ideas about this, please reply/reblog this post with your comments.

im sorry i couldn’t be of more help, and also that this took so long. feel free to message me with more info (or symptoms, which might help narrow it down) or send more asks

[musetotheworld]

Hi, there, Ashton. I love your fics. Are you still taking prompts? If you are, I'm really craving a domestic Supercat + anyone else, poly. Literally anyone else. From Adam to Lena, even a character from another show or an O.C.. Your pick. Just... I really need some poly that isn't just porn or smutty.

I’m not entirely happy with it (after putting so much into my poly PP fic this one seems lacking in comparison) but here it is! I hope it isn’t completely off base with what you want, and I’m willing to add short bits on if you or anyone else has specific prompts in the verse (they’ll be added to the end of the line with any others so don’t expect them right away), but it’s what I’ve got right now.

Just a note because I 100% don’t want to offend anyone, Kara’s version of polyamory in this is very specific due entirely to her cultural background, and while I try to stress that she’s aware and accepting of the fact humans have multiple forms, this is the one she’s comfortable with for herself based on what she grew up around.

“You know, when I left to find new adventures, it was withthe understanding that things between us weren’t going to change.”

The voice is pointed, nearly deadly in how sharp it is, butKara can clearly hear the hurt beneath the words, and looks up with a frown.

“And nothing has,” she says earnestly, standing from behindher desk when she sees Cat in the doorway of her office. She hadn’t expected tosee her girlfriend before their scheduled date in New York tomorrow evening. “Ididn’t know you were coming back, is everything okay? Is Carter okay?”

“Carter is fine; the trip with his father is going well thistime.” Cat doesn’t answer the rest of Kara’s question as she enters the room,closing the door behind her. That’s enough to tip Kara off that whatever ishappening here is serious, from the very beginning of their relationship Cathas preferred to avoid any personal conversations at work, reluctant to givethe other employees any reason to question Kara’s skill and dedication to herjob. Even now when Cat stops in on her frequent visits home, the time shespends at CatCo is limited.

“What’s wrong then,” Kara asks as she takes Cat’s hand andtugs her gently towards the couch she’d placed in the small side alcove of theroom. “Talk to me, please?”

“Did you check the front page of the Tribune this morning?”Cat asks, taking a seat almost reluctantly, a careful distance between themthat Kara longs to eliminate. She doesn’t yet though, easily sensing Cat’semotional turmoil and need for that very separation right now.

“No, I was almost late for work after an early morningsave,” Kara admits, wondering what that has to do with anything.

“So you didn’t see the massive picture on the front page,the one of you staring deeply into a certain Luthor’s eyes?” Cat says, hurt andanger dripping from every word as Kara just gapes at her. “Really Kara, I knowthe distance hasn’t been easy, but to move on without even telling me? Iexpected more from you.”

“I would never cheat on you, Cat,” Kara protests as soon asshe can find words, reaching for her phone to look at whatever picture iscausing this. “You know that. I love you. And yes you being gone so often hasbeen tough, but that doesn’t mean anything has changed.”

The picture that pulls up on Kara’s phone is more damningthan she would have thought, and without context Kara understands exactly whyCat would have flown across the country upon seeing it. She is staring deeplyinto Lena’s eyes, hands on her shoulders. It appears far more intimate than itwas, but there’s no way any reporter could have known Kara was using her x-rayvision to scan for injury from the various impacts sustained before the alienhad been defeated.

“You told me once that Kryptonians believed in and acceptedrelationships involving more than two people,” Cat says quietly, reaching out ahand to take Kara’s in a soft grasp. “And I’m afraid that with my being goneall the time, you’ll turn to her instead of me.”

“I’m not going to say I don’t find Lena attractive,” Karasays as she puts her phone down and turns to face Cat completely, knowing thatshe has to choose her words and explanations carefully. “But you are the womanI am with right now. And that means I will never do anything to hurt you.Whether I even could fall in love with Lena or not, what you want means more tome right now, because I want to be with you.”

“Well now you make me feel as if I’m holding you back fromsomething,” Cat says with a weak attempt at a laugh, and Kara knows she hasn’tsucceeded, not the way she wanted to.

“You’re not,” Kara says firmly, leaning in to close thedistance between them with a soft kiss, grateful when Cat doesn’t hesitate atall. “I’m happy with you being the only person in my life.”

“Would you be happier with both of us?” Cat asks quietly asshe leans into Kara’s side, allowing herself the closeness she’d deniedearlier. “Because if you are, I won’t stop you. It may take some getting usedto, but it’s a part of your life that I won’t try to fight.”

“Happier wouldn’t be the right word,” Kara tries to explain,wishing she had the right words for the situation. Kryptonian marriages andrelationships are difficult to explain to humans at the best of times, and withCat leaning against her, still clearly hurt, Kara doesn’t know how this issupposed to work. “Cat, I could never be with Lena if you weren’t involved. Iknow that’s how things work for some relationships here, but that isn’t howKryptonians are built. I love you, and in order for me to love Lena you wouldhave to as well. It would have to bethe three of us together. So you aren’t holding me back, or stopping me fromhaving anything. I already have you.”

Kara can tell Cat has understood when the tension leaves hersmall frame, letting her relax into Kara’s hold. It makes Kara tighten her gripjust slightly, careful to avoid too much pressure, but wanting Cat to know thatthis is what she wants. That this right here is enough.

“I think we’ll need to reschedule our dinner in New York,”Cat says when she pulls back, confident bearing once again in place. “I’ll takecare of it, but I think I’m going to stick around National City at least alittle while longer.”

“Can I come over tonight then?” Kara asks, not wanting toassume, even though she’s had a standing welcome for months now.

“Six sharp. Don’t be late.”

X

Cat does indeed take care of scheduling their dinner for thenext night, reserving a table at one of Kara’s favorite restaurants, where thefood is good and the portions are large enough that she doesn’t leave stillstarving. The staff is also very discreet, meaning even with the fact that themedia has been interested in their relationship since they’d gone public theirevening won’t be interrupted by camera flashes or end up in a gossip column thenext day.

Tonight Kara is surprised when the host leads them towardsone of the back rooms, knowing that Cat usually prefers one of the cornerbooths with a view over the bay. The private rooms are well appointed, but thelack of windows makes both Cat and Kara uncomfortable at times. Both, thoughthey usually deny it fiercely, are the slightest bit claustrophobic and tend toavoid rooms without windows if possible. It’s one reason Kara’s office door isso rarely closed.

When the door opens to reveal Lena sitting at the tablewaiting for them, Kara begins to understand. And while she wishes Cat hadwarned her before they’d arrived, Kara has to admit that if she’d known whatwas coming she probably wouldn’t have been able to enter the restaurant at all.

“Cat, Kara, how lovely of you to invite me,” Lena says asthey take their seats, a small but pleasant smile on her face. “I’ll admit, Iwouldn’t have expected you to spend your limited time together having dinnerwith me.”

“Yes, well, I know that you and Kara have become close overthe course of my travels,” Cat says as she picks up with wine menu, voicegiving nothing away.

“And you invited me to dinner to warn me off? I must say, Iwould have expected something more memorable,” Lena says, smile not fading inthe slightest as she looks at them.

Kara debates jumping in, but a quick glance between theother two women quickly has her deciding against that option. She isn’t sureexactly what Cat’s end game is here, and risking upsetting either her friend orher girlfriend sounds like a bad idea.

“If that was my goal, then I probably would have,” Cat sayswith a smile of her own, seeming completely relaxed despite the slowly growingtension in the room. “But I trust Kara, and what I know of you makes meinclined to trust you as well. You’re an interesting woman, Lena.”

“I do try to be, though I doubt I could measure up to yourlife,” Lena says, and Kara breathes a sigh of relief as things seem to relax.“So if not to warn me off, may I ask the point of dinner tonight? It’s notoften that someone seeks out my company, especially not someone so firmlyaligned with one of the Supers.”

A quick glance at Kara and a nod in return when sheunderstands what Cat is asking is all it takes for a message to be passedbetween the two, and Cat sits back in her chair as Kara carefully checks theroom around them for any sign that someone could be listening in. When she seesnothing, even when extending her senses to the rest of the restaurant and alittle beyond, she nods at Cat once more. She’d debated telling Lena the truthbefore this anyway, but had always held back out of habit if nothing else. ButCat apparently trusts her, and if the conversation is going where Kara thinksit is, then this is one secret that will need told sooner rather than later.

“Well, it’s that particular relationship I wanted to discusstonight,” Cat says, pausing for a moment when Kara reaches out a hand to stopher when their waiter enters to pour the wine and take their orders. “You knowthat CatCo has been linked to Supergirl from the very beginning, but the relationshipgoes back further than that.”

“Do tell,” Lena says as she sips her wine, looking betweenthe two of them with clear interest written on her face. “I wouldn’t haveguessed that from the way CatCo covered her first attempts at heroism.”

“The criticisms were fair and well deserved,” Kara jumps in,blushing a little as she remembers how badly she’d screwed up at the beginning.And really, this ought to be her reveal anyway. “If not for Cat’s critiques,who knows how things would have turned out. I know that having someone push meto be greater was something I sorely needed.”

“Wait, what are you saying?” Lena asks as Kara’s words sinkin, and with a deep breath Kara takes off her glasses, feeling Cat lay acomforting hand on her thigh beneath the table. “Oh my god.”

“Surprise,” Kara says with a weak laugh, almost afraid tolook up and meet Lena’s eyes.

“I may not have come here tonight to warn you off, Lena, butI trust that I don’t need to warn you that if you expose Kara’s secret I willtear you to shreds?” Cat asks, shaking both Kara and Lena out of the tensestandoff.

“Kara is a friend, of course I wouldn’t betray her trustthat way,” Lena says, clearly offended by the very thought.

“Then we won’t have a problem,” Cat says with a sweetlydangerous smile, and Kara is grateful when their appetizers appear before thetension starts to climb again. Between fumbling to put her glasses back on andthe welcome addition of food to the night, the danger seems to have passed fornow.

“I admit I’m still curious why I’m here,” Lena says as theyfinish their food, and Cat shakes her head warningly while Kara does anotherquick scan to ensure no one is near enough to overhear.

“I would have preferred to have this conversation somewheremore private, but I thought neutral ground was better,” Cat explains when Kara onceagain gives the all clear. “Given the limitations of the room, waiting for Kara’sokay is the only way to be sure we have what privacy is available.”

“My apologies,” Lena says smoothly, and Kara decides to takethe lead before the two powerful women start to clash. She’s more certain thanever now that she understands what Cat is doing tonight, and the last thing sheneeds is for a misunderstanding to make the whole thing backfire.

“It’s understandable, you didn’t know,” Kara cuts in beforeCat can say another word, shooting her girlfriend a look and receiving a nod inreturn. “But you’re right, there is a reason Cat invited you. She saw the pictureof us yesterday morning and flew back to confront me about it.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t about warning me off.” Theconfusion is back, and Kara wishes for a long moment that this was as easy asit had been on Krypton. Things were far more ritualized and there was far lessin the way of emotional reasoning behind the bonds, but at least there wasn’tthis awkward stumbling for words and explanations.

“It’s about asking if you’re actually interested,” Cat saysbluntly when Kara stumbles over her words, causing Lena and Kara to both lookat her in shock. “Oh, don’t give me those looks, there isn’t any good way toask and this way we have the main course to sit awkwardly before actuallydiscussing it over dessert.”

“Unless Lena is about to storm out in shock,” Kara pointsout, taking a large gulp of her water.

“Shock yes, storming out no,” Lena says, sitting back in herchair as she looks between the couple. “I’ll admit it wasn’t what I expectedfrom tonight.”

“And that still isn’t an answer to the question,” Cat pointsout.

“The point has always been moot in the past, I haven’t givenit much thought,” Lena says, her voice not giving much away as she scrutinizesthem carefully. “I wouldn’t go after someone in a relationship. But yes, Cat,as I’m sure you can agree, Kara is a very intriguing woman who has a tendencyto capture interest. So what exactly are you getting at here?”

Cat smirks as if happy to have found someone who understandsher, and suddenly Kara thinks that this could actually work. She hadn’t quitebeen able to picture the two having feelings for each other, they’re both sostrong willed that Kara would have pictured them clashing more than anythingelse, but now she can see at least the possibility of a connection betweenthem.

“Kara’s particular background means relationships involvingmore than two people are as normal to her as those involving only two,” Catbegins, and Lena’s eyes narrow as she begins to understand. “When I saw thepicture of you two, I admit to overreacting and assuming the worst, which wasunfair of me. But the point remains that the interest was there, and I’m notopposed to the possibility of exploring it.”

“What Cat is trying to ask, is whether you’d be interestingin dating us, both of us,” Kara cuts in to explain, wanting it out there inplain words. Now that she knows what Cat had planned for the night, rather thanjust guessing, she’s more than willing to step up and take a more active partin asking, knowing she isn’t overstepping what Cat is comfortable with.

“Both of you, huh?” Lena asks, smirking when they nod, Kara’shand keeping Cat quiet while Lena thinks. “Sounds like an offer only a foolwould turn down.”

X

“Can you believe it’s already been a year?” Kara asks as shecrawls into bed, unsurprised when Cat and Lena both curl into her side withouthesitation. “I mean, our anniversary is in three days, but it seems like onlyyesterday Cat was ambushing us at dinner.”

“I can’t believe she didn’t warn you beforehand,” Lenalaughs, still as amused by that fact as she’d been when she found out.

“If I had she’d have run for the hills. I knew that after I’dbrought it up the day before she’d understand once she saw you, and when we satdown I asked to make sure it was okay.”

“Except you didn’t actually say anything,” Kara points out,even knowing she’ll already lose this battle. It’s not the first time, afterall.

“And yet you still understood me just fine.” And there itis, the same argument Cat brings up every time, the one Kara can’t argue with.

“I’m just glad you asked at all,” Lena murmurs as she leansup over Kara to give Cat a soft kiss, placing one on Kara’s waiting lips as sheshifts back into her side. “You surprised me, but I’m glad you did.”

“And we’re glad you accepted,” Kara says with a smile,pulling both of her lovers a little closer into her side, thinking back overthe last year they’ve all been together, and forward to the many more to come.

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Trolling Goalies, All-Star Voting, and Gretzky's Circus Pants

Three Stars of Comedy

The third star: Referee Ian Walsh – I appreciate his commitment to still finishing the job when things go bad. If my wifi goes out for six seconds I go back to bed for the rest of the day.

The second star: David Pastrnak is helping – Specifically, he's helping warm up Anton Khudobin, who could not possibly be less interested.

Oh hey, speaking of annoying a goaltender...

The first star: Carter Hart vs. Matteo Ritz – Hart is Canada's starting goalie at this year's World Juniors. "Matteo Ritz," which is clearly a made-up name, is the Swiss backup. Like many players these days, Hart has a superstition about being the last off the ice, but his comes with a twist: Instead of applying only to warmup, he wants to be last off for intermission too. Yes, during games. So the Swiss decided to send Ritz out to mess with him.

Careful readers will note that Hart used the same trick that P.K. Subban pulled off in last week's column, which I think we would all agree can only mean on thing: Carter Hart reads the Grab Bag. What's up Carter!

Needless to say, this is all very dumb. But Canadians are having some fun with it.

Trivial Annoyance of the Week

The NHL announced the results of fan voting for the All-Star Game captains this week. The fans elected Connor McDavid, Steven Stamkos, Alexander Ovechkin and P.K. Subban. Those are solid choices—good players, with a non-zero element of personality mixed in. Nice work, fans.

But there was something missing in the announcement. See if you can spot it.

Yes, they gave us the results of the fan vote…without actually telling us what the vote was. Once again, the league didn't bother sharing the numbers each guy got. That's no surprise, since they didn't release totals throughout the voting process either.

That's not a huge deal—it's just an all-star game, it's not like we're not voting in a head of state here. But it's weird. The All-Star vote is supposed to be a fun thing, and part of the fun is knowing what the races look like.

Which of the four players got the most votes, making him the leading vote-getter across the entire league? Great question, but we don't know. Lightning stars Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos were 1-2 in the Atlantic balloting, but was it a close race, with Kucherov nipping at his teammate's heels the whole way only to fall just short? No idea. Did Sidney Crosby give Ovechkin a run for his money in the Metro? Look, stop asking questions and just buy some neon yellow all-star jerseys.

The NFL doesn't do this. When Le'Veon Bell beats out Tom Brady for the top spot, they want you to know about it. MLB makes a point of marketing how close their races are. The NBA makes everything available in exhausting detail.

But not the NHL. When it comes to marketing all-stars, apparently they know better.

This fits in nicely with the league's habit of withholding information from fans whenever it can. We've been over this plenty of times before. Whether it's a conditional trade or a contract signing or the result of a replay review, the NHL wants you to know as little as possible. It's basically league policy at this point.

But when it comes to that other stuff, you can at least come up with a reason why the league might want to keep fans in the dark. Not a good reason, mind you, but something. Not here. I'm honestly stumped. Why wouldn't you want fans to get into the races?

We can only imagine what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe the races weren't close at all. Maybe fans somewhere were stuffing ballot boxes and the races were ridiculous. Maybe this is the league trying to hand out some sort of punitive payback for the whole John Scott fiasco. Maybe the vote totals are embarrassingly low across the board when compared to other sports.

Or maybe this is just yet another example of a league that doesn't really like its own fans very much, and can't help but take any opportunity it can find to passive-aggressively annoy them. If so, it's far from the most glaring or consequential example we've seen, and no doubt we'll all forget about it quickly enough. It's just odd. Even when the call is an easy one and everyone else is showing them the right answer, the NHL really can't help itself. They'll find a way to mess it up somehow.

Obscure Former Player of the Week

Earlier this week I wrote a piece that made a passing reference to Wayne Van Dorp, which made me think man, I need to write an obscure player piece on Wayne Van Dorp. So this week's obscure player is Wayne Van Dorp.

In addition to having a fantastic name, Wayne Van Dorp was a tough guy who took an unusual route to the NHL. Despite managing a decent 22 goals on top of 242 penalty minutes as a junior in 1980-81, he wasn't drafted. So he headed to Holland of all places, spending parts of four years playing pro in the Netherlands while also making appearances in North American minor leagues. That led to a free agent deal with the Buffalo Sabres in 1986, and a trade to Edmonton at the 1987 deadline paved his way to an NHL debut as a 25-year-old. He played a few games for the Oilers, earning a Cup ring in the process, before being dealt to the Penguins in the Paul Coffey trade.

After a few games in Pittsburgh it was back to Buffalo in another trade, but for the second time, he never suited up for the Sabres. Instead it was off to Chicago, where as a 1980s enforcer he put in his mandated service time in the Norris Division. He had his best season as a Blackhawk, playing 61 games and scoring seven goals in 1989-90 while racking up 303 PIM and squaring off with division stalwarts like Bob Probert, Joey Kocur, and Shane Churla. He went to Quebec in the 1990 waiver draft, where he suffered an injury that ultimately ended his NHL career. He'd head to Italy for a season before retiring in 1993.

Van Dorp's Wikipedia page is two paragraphs long, and for some reason one of them is solely about how he "has appeared in hockey blooper tapes fighting Serge Roberge" while in the AHL. I just like how they specify that it was hockey blooper tapes, plural.

I'm assuming the fight in question is this one, which is…fine. It's a good scrap. I'm not sure it's half a-guy's-entire-Wikipedia-page good, but maybe that's why I'm not an editor.

The NHL Actually Got Something Right

OK, we complained about the NHL finding a way to screw up the all-star voting. So let's flip the script and look at the other vote results that were released this week.

As part of the never-ending celebration of the league's 100th anniversary, we had yet another fan vote, this one for history's best uniforms. When the vote was first announced, it was hard not to roll your eyes and assume this was going to turn into another Original Six lovefest, with the rest of the list dominated by current designs because modern fans have no attention span. Instead, we got this:

That's… that's a damn good list. The whole top 25 is here.

We get an Original Six team at No. 1, but that's fine because the Blackhawks uniform is a worthy winner. But then the list veers off into some long-gone classics, like the Whalers, Nordiques, and North Stars. We get appearances by the old school Jets and Flames, and the Gretzky-era Kings. The Golden Knights even show up. All the Original Six teams are in there too, but they don't dominate.

It's not perfect. The Mighty Ducks are a little too high—sorry, 90s kids—and the lack of the old green and red Devils uniforms is inexcusable. But overall, this is a good ranking. For something that seems to have been destined to give people something to get upset and argue over, I can't really find anything to howl about here.

There's also a message here for modern-day uniform designers: Calm down, stop obsessively messing with the piping on the sleeves, and just give us a solid color combination with a logo a kid can draw on his or her pencil case. This isn't complicated, guys. When the Seattle Soundgardens show up in a few years and immediately win the Presidents' Trophy because teams line up to give them 30-goal scorers, they don't need to do it while wearing fourteen shades of puce and a logo designed by M.C. Escher. Simple works.

But yeah, good job NHL fans. And good job NHL for setting this up in a way that clearly got people thinking in the right direction. I'm assuming this is the last of the centennial votes, and if so, the league went out with a job well done.

(Now if only they told us how many votes each uniform got…)

Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown

Last weekend was New Year's Eve, which means it was quite possibly the anniversary of both the sport's greatest game and the NHL's great moment. The former, of course, is the classic 1975 exhibition showdown between the Canadiens and the Soviet Red Army that's often called the best game ever played.

The latter, as recently voted by NHL fans, is this week's clip.

It's December 31, 1988 and the Penguins are hosting the Devils for a New Year's Eve tilt at the old Igloo. Lemieux is about to do something that nobody has ever done before: Score five goals in five different ways.

Those five ways are, of course, by: Deflecting the puck off a defenseman, King Kong Bundy splashing a goalie, body-checking a referee, executing an NHL 94 one-timer, and by breaking a linesman's brain.

Wait, I'm being told the five ways are actually even strength, powerplay, short-handed, penalty shot and empty net. It's never been done before this game. Also never done before this game: Anyone thinking that "five goals five ways" was a thing.

I'm going to be completely honest with you: There are several better clips of this game available on YouTube, including the league's high-quality version and a fan-made version that's longer and more detailed. This one isn't as good, and doesn't even include all the goals. Why am I using it? Three words: Wayne Gretzky's pants. Stick with me, I've never steered you wrong before.

So we're actually watching something called Great Hockey Moments With Wayne Gretzky, as brought to you by Upper Deck. "You don't just watch the game, you play it!" Um, what? I'm trying to relax on my couch here, Upper Deck, how about you calm down on yelling at me for being lazy?

And there are Wayne Gretzky's pants. Was I wrong? I was not wrong.

Literally everyone dressed like this in the mid-90s, by the way. I'm not throwing stones here.

Gretzky intros the clip, and then we're on to the highlights. They're weirdly out of order here, starting with the hat-trick goal and then moving to the second. That one's my favorite, because it features Mario going one-on-one against a defender. That always resulted in somebody getting humiliated, but this time there's an added bonus: the defender is actually a forward, Aaron Broten. Lemieux used to regularly humiliate Ray Bourque, so you can imagine how this goes for Broten. But at least he tries and doesn't just immediately fall down and start crying, which I think should have resulted in him being awarded the Masterton.

Also, Lemieux ends the play by "accidentally" crushing the goalie. That happened a lot with Mario. At least nobody got kicked in the crotch, Jon Casey mutters bitterly.

They never do show the first goal, which makes sense given it was actually an own goal by the Devils. Instead we skip right to the penalty shot, followed by the empty netter. That one's funny because it came right as time expired, and you can see the linesman get flustered and try to half-heartedly wave off the goal before the referee skates over and tells him to stay in his damn lane.

As mentioned, this was recently voted the greatest moment in NHL history. We, um, all agree that this is not actually a "moment," right? OK, cool, just checking that words still had meaning.

Fun fact: In addition to the five goals, Lemieux added three assists to make this one of only sixteen eight-point games in NHL history. Even more impressive, it was the most ever by a player who had points on every goal scored by his team. That's a record that has to this day have never been matched because I'm pretty sure we all agree that the whole Sam Gagner thing was a glitch in the simulation and never actually happened.

And that wraps it up for five goals five ways. Join us next week when Gretzky one-ups Lemieux by becoming the first player to ever stuff five hockey helmets down the front of his pants.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @DownGoesBrown.

DGB Grab Bag: Trolling Goalies, All-Star Voting, and Gretzky's Circus Pants published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[wordsablaze]

#7: Two Years Before - Phil

Match of Magic What if destiny chose soulmates through literal aesthetic matches? What if education fused with impossibility and reality faded away? Dan and Phil must unite, work together and help each other live the best of all the worlds they can…

(Phil POV)

Phil looks up as the teacher calls his name, frowning. Miss Gravix shakes her head, “Sorry, I meant Bill. Your names are quite similar.” She corrects herself and Phil smiles, not minding. Next to him, Harry laughs, scribbling a message on her notebook for him to read.

He grins and shakes his head, “She’s just old.”

“No, she’s forgetful.” Harry corrects, “You gotta learn to be mean.”

“Then you’d be out of a job.” Phil smirks and Harry stifles her laugh, shaking her head, “That was clever, I’ll give you that.”

Phil mock-bows and shuts Harry’s notebook for her as Miss Gravix walks past.

Harry whistles, “Do you think she’d notice if you’d left it open?”

“Oh, come on, you remember Derek, right?” Phil raises an eyebrow and Harry instantly nods, remembering the poor guy who’d obviously written something incriminating and had then been suspended for a month.

They quickly jot down the notes, Harry copying off Phil as he copies off the board because she can’t see it over the girl in front of her, who’s unusually tall. Afterwards, they pack up and meet the others by the lockers, Harry hugging Laia. George and Sandra arrive at the same time, swinging their hands between them, shortly followed by Michael and Rosie, who arrive separately.

As they get on the bus, Phil ends up by himself, the other six all sitting with their respective matched. Not being divisible by two is the only downfall to having a friendship group of seven. That and the fact that the others are all matched already, which is extraordinarily rare. Most of the time it doesn’t affect him but he does sometimes wonder if and when he’s going to find his match.

He doesn’t necessarily mind sitting by himself on the bus though, listening to music as they reach his house. They assemble at a different house every month. Well, at least one day is planned and then any others they need are impromptu. Today happened to be Phil’s house, which meant the longest bus journey. Once they do get home, they decide to share their English results, all trying to improve on it as the school had recently decided to change the entire exam they’d spent so much time preparing for.

Phil puts the popcorn in the microwave as they dump their bags on his bed and sit on the floor, in a makeshift circle with their books in the middle.

“Hey, how’d you know that Henry knew he was in danger?” George asks.

Phil settles beside him and opens their book to a relevant page, “His manner. He’s glancing in all the mirrors and biting his nails.”

“We were meant to read their body language?” Laia asks, groaning.

“Yes, you dingbat.” Harry laughs, elbowing her while the rest of them laugh. They all know Harry’s insults and pet names for Laia were appreciated by said person every single time.

Laia sighs, “Okay, but that doesn’t explain why we were meant to figure out Jessica was the killer.”

“Yeah, that is weird.” Phil agrees.

“No, it’s because she used her cats as an alibi when they were all with Frank.” Michael explains, “Plus her daughter died three years ago so there’s no way she could have given her poison.”

“Oh, damn, I forgot about that.” Sandra whacks her forehead, “I put that the daughter could have influenced her.”

“Well, she was delusional. Technically, the daughter could have influenced her.” Phil argues.

“What I don’t get is why Henry didn’t just marry Jessica’s daughter in the first place.” Rosie frowns, “Surely that would have solved everything.”

“It wouldn’t have been a seven hundred page novel then, would it?” Laia smirks.

It takes them half an hour to fully exchange notes before settling down in Phil’s attic. Briefly arguing over a film, they settle on a horror film, squashing onto the beanbags with their remaining popcorn. Phil decides that he can make his video later, opting to watch the entire film despite the abrupt ending that manages to create more plot flaws than the entire film.

The film is a short one, ending before the neighbourhood goes dark. Harry, Laia and Michael leave together, George heading to his house soon after and Sandra waiting with Rosie while Sandra’s Dad gets there to pick them up.

After they’ve all left, he opens up his laptop and starts to edit the video so he doesn’t miss his mental deadline. Not that his subscribers would be mad at him if he didn’t but that’s just who he is and he can’t feel at ease unless he’s made his video. It’s only once he’s uploaded it that he blinks himself out of his editing trance and back into his bedroom, where he notices the alerts of comments and messages.

Today happens to be one of those days where, apparently, people weren’t feeling generous or supportive. Almost every other comment is negative, some being draconian and simply cruel.

Phil shuts his laptop as fast as he can without damaging it and sits on the floor of his room, his head resting in his hands. He keeps his eyes closed, trying to erase the image of any negative comments. He knows it shouldn’t bother him. He’s old enough to know – fifteen for heaven’s sake – that he should ignore them or tell someone close to him but who?

He doesn’t want to disturb his brothers with something that should be insignificant, distracting them from their advanced, probably vital, work. He can’t tell his parents as one isn’t here and the other may as well not be for all the good they do. He mentally chides himself; at least he has parents. Ideally, he would have gone to his match but he hasn’t met them yet, the lack of which is usually one of the main insults thrown at him. He groans softly, subconsciously curling into himself even more.

He doesn’t hear Jack calling him, he doesn’t hear Mark cracking jokes in attempt to lure him down and he doesn’t hear the two of them climbing the stairs. He doesn’t hear Jack’s shocked gasp, he doesn’t hear Mark’s rage-filled inhale and he doesn’t hear them opening his laptop. He doesn’t hear them quietly read the messages, he doesn’t hear them confer with each other and he doesn’t hear them slide down on either side of him. But he does notice their arms around his shoulders and their soft humming and whistling.

He smiles and lifts his head, noting the two of them in matching shirts while uncurling a little so he can hug them.

Jack smiles and ruffles his hair, “Dude, you totally ignore the buffoons of idiots that say those things, hear me?”

Phil nods, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand to exile the stray eyelash that had fallen in. Mark grins, “Remember the good, Philly. Remember the good.”

“I will.” Phil murmurs, “Are you sure they’re wrong though?”

“What? Saying you’re terrible if you haven’t met your match? People meet their matches at eighty, don’t worry about it man.”

“What if my match is repulsed?”

“Then they’d be lying.” Mark replies, knowing how he feels. Phil nods and Mark holds up a new version of Sims, “Look what I found.”

“There’s another one?” Phil asks incredulously.

Jack nods, “With new features. Wanna try it out?”

“Don’t tell Henry. Man, he’d go ballistic.”

“Bring it on.” Phil laughs, his mood brightening as they three of them head downstairs to challenge the latest update of Sims. The negativity forgotten as they start playing, he vows to keep making videos for the people that do appreciate it and he vows to someday find his match.

For now though, he’s perfectly content with playing about on and vicariously living the life of his Sim, simultaneously trying to imagine what his match will be like and how long they have to wait before meeting.

like/reblog but don’t repost, thanks!