#to give extremely detailed all-five-senses hallucinations that this is what's happening

[fictionadventurer]

I know it's not technically a fairy tale, but do you happen to have any recs for retellings of Tam Lin?

--Siena

Unfortunately, no, since I haven't read any. However, I've heard good things about The Perilous Gard, which I believe draws from that fairy tale.

[nevertheless-moving]

Suicidal Misunderstanding X

Star Wars Time Travel AU #27

Part I - - - - - Part II - - - - - Part III - - - - - Part IV - - - - - Part V - - -  - - Part VI - - - - - Part VII - - - - - Part VIII - - - - - Part IX

“I realize this is incredibly difficult,” the Nautolan Soul Healer said calmly. “But in order for us to help Obi-Wan, we need to determine the cause of his current disconnection with reality. Based on the drug panel, and convenient surveillance, we have, to the best of our ability, ruled out temporary psychosis brought on by a drug interaction.”

Cody stiffened further, not sure how to react to anything anymore. When a brother tried to end his own life, it was usually obvious why.

Sife Aerdo continued on. “There have, of course, been cases of Jedi Seers giveing into their fears of the future, or losing their sense of reality, but every case study involving such an extreme reaction was the result a gradual degradation over the course of many years. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Obi-Wan experienced a vision, and it may have impacted his breakdown to some extent. The more we know, the more successful any attempts to convince him of reality will be.”

Bant furrowed her brow in thought, trying to replay three decades of increasingly vague discussions of nightmares.

”Considering the high profile nature of his position, we cannot rule out some kind of psychological attack, perhaps even a darksider incursion.

Anakin leaned forward intently, the inside of his skull buzzing with white noise.

"All that being said, we must be prepared to treat Obi-Wan’s self harm as the  culmination of a long and quiet mental health struggle. He would not be the first in the Order to disguise such a thing with durasteel self-discipline.”

At that, Bant and Mace took a moment to release their feelings to the force, while Anakin raised his shields defensively.

Master Aerdo finally hesitated, before continuing in the same smooth tone. “I would ordinarily prefer to structure this kind of conversation quite differently- allow Obi-Wan time to share his feelings first and invite you each separately to support him in the healing process. But he’s gone from fighting sedatives and force compulsions as though the fate of the galaxy depended on it, to a self-induced coma. All while barely lucid, yet still somehow maintaining Master Class mental shielding. We need to get a better understanding of his mental landscape if we’re going to even begin the process of treatment."

It is necessary to note that everyone in that room had led, in one way or another, a somewhat miserable life. This was the main reason none of them could claim that the next five hours were the worst they had ever experienced. 

“But he’s always had terrible sleeping habits.” Anakin said hoarsely.

“Yes, but I think they got worse after Qui-Gon passed,” Bant argued, not sure what point she was making. 

“When I pointed out he couldn’t be getting more than three hours a night he told me that he could manage on meditation” Cody offered irritably.

“That’s technically true,” Mace confirmed. “If the Master in question is well-balanced otherwise”

“So its like his eating habits, crushing responsibilities, and repeated exposure to violence, then? Completely fine for a Jedi, in less it’s not, in which case it’s a major red flag?” 

“I think it would help to establish a timeline.“

Aerdo actually dredged up old mission reports, leading to the group reluctantly contacting Ashoka for her memories of Mortis.

At her Master’s insistence, she told them everything she remembered, hazy as it was, nervously elaborating on her own memories of falling. To her confusion, Master Windu all but brushed past that, assuring her that the important thing with stepping into darkness was the choice to the return to the light. Anakin bizarrely agreed with Windu. Out loud. Unnerved by the cooperation more than anything, she put her holographic foot down and demanded to know what was going on. 

Anakin took the comm-link into a separate room to speak privately.

Upon return, he informed the group (with a visibly red and puffy face) that Kit would be escorting her back from Mount Cala cleanup early, daring anyone to disagree. Windu nodded and the conversation continued on.

Together they rewatched holo-footage of Obi-Wan laughing amongst Ghost company the night before last, and debated reports from psychometric investigators who had scoured the cantina as well as Obi-Wan’s personal quarters for traces of illicit substances. Between that and another drug panel, they were finally forced to conclude that despite the timing, the alcohol at most confused Obi-Wan’s perception of a vision, or possibly simply loosened his tongue.

Bant prodded Cody to repeat every word from the holocar ride to the temple, taking furious notes. Cody was unable to stop the heat that crawled up his face.

Just when the looming horror of Obi-Wan actually preparing to intentionally die started to break over Anakin, Windu interjected.

“You don’t see what I do,” the Harun Kal said grimly. “Something galaxy-sized shattered around Obi-Wan and he didn’t break from it. The closest comparison I have is Master Yaddle’s presence when she meditated on her confinement. He’s chosen to keep going, even when, quite frankly, death would be a release. We’re missing something fundamental.”

“He said there were ‘other dark forces at work.’ Even if the fight was objectively hopeless... there’s no way he would choose to die because of it!” Anakin agreed vehemently, shaking off morbid fears.

“But he did choose to die.” Cody said quietly. And the wind went out of Anakin’s sails.

“Lets go back.”

Anakin gritted his teeth as they picked apart everything ‘unusual’ Obi-Wan had said and done leading up to his visit with Bant.

“What exactly did he...”

“So Plo Koon was able to get a read through his shields?”

“Did he have anything to eat?”

“How did that compare to...”

“When he's mentioned things in the future...did it seem good or bad to you?” Bant asked.

“Bad.” Cody and Anakin said in unison. Remembering the trip to the temple Cody spoke again, “Definitely bad.”

“Right. When we were talking he sometimes used the wrong tenses for things, people. I confronted him on not knowing ‘when’ he was after Knight Skywalker left. He told me that he knew what was real, but he was “enjoying not fully living in the moment” he also said that he intended to “wake up”

“Enjoying? That’s the exact word he used?” Cody asked incredulous. 

“He did seem...mostly happy yesterday. Giddy, at points.” Anakin said, slumping in on himself.

Bant looked at her notes once more before addressing the group.

“This isn’t vision psychosis in any manner I’ve heard of before...but I think I might have a theory. He used to have intense visions when we were kids; plenty of us did sometimes, but Obi-Wan would be unable to sleep after. What terrified him more than anything was the uncertainty that he might make the wrong choice- even when the vision was about something good, or neutral. His visions gradually stopped coming around puberty. We just had a conversation about this a few months ago- how relieved he was to only have to manage flashes of precognition. If he had a random, horrifying vision of a terrible future...suicide wouldn’t be his reaction. It’s too final.”

“Even if he blamed himself for what he saw coming?” Mace asked.

“Especially if he blamed himself.” Bant said. 

“What’s your theory?” Aerdo prodded.

“What if...what if he was telling the truth when he said he could separate out what was real and what was not? What if there was no distortion or blurring between now and then? What if he was just wrong about which was which?”

“That...would be a very extreme and abnormal manifestation of force-induced psychosis. He has training in distinguishing reality from visions. The continued presence of his mental shielding means that the fabric of his mind can’t be so horrifically collapsed in on itself.” 

“What if the vision was actually that realistic?” Bant said, pushing back against the soul healer. “So detailed and vivid that it effectively was a reality in itself, and everything else, all of us...”

“Were just memories” Anakin finished. “It would...actually explain pretty much everything. You said he wanted to wake up and when...when I found him.” He stopped, swallowing. “When I found him, he argued with me...what if he wasn’t trying to hurt himself? If you’re right...that would mean I found him trying to get back to reality.”

“It could explain his behavior in the halls...his desperation to wake...” Sife mused “But it runs counter to every other experience I’ve had with those managing prophetic visions. Master Windu, could that explain the shatterpoints you saw?”

“I’m not certain. It would have to have been extraordinarily real to create the echos of Shattering I witnessed. I don’t know if that depth of vision has occurred before, but then again, many things are possible in the force.”

“You really think he might have been...trying to wake up from dream? By killing himself?!” Cody asked incredulous.

“If that ends up being what happened I am going to give him such shit. That is the worst way to end a vision.” Anakin replied.

“Yes. It is.” Bant said pointedly. “That’s why it’s a last resort, after every other attempt to wake fails.” 

They all sat in silence, processing various implications. Cody was unnerved by another terrifying insight into force powers, as well as the idea that the General might vividly remember Cody being inexplicably mind-controlled into trying to kill him. Anakin was trying to understand what this would mean for them, and the conversations he had thought they had had. Did...any of it count, if he thought he was offering it to a hallucination?

“Alright, this is a valuable working idea, but let’s make sure to examine everything with an open mind before we draw any more conclusions. Anakin, what happened after you left the healers office?”

Obi-Wan’s critique of the practicalities of visiting a soul healer could be and was interpreted multiple ways. The incongruity of peacekeepers in war sparked a rehash of earlier discussion. More apologies. Self identifying as ‘crazy’ inspired new debate, especially in the context of the new theory. 

“When I saw him enter the fountain room I assumed he had had a brutal run-in with  dark force user.” Windu explained. “Based on everything we’ve gone over, I don’t understand when...but some of the more insidious sith compulsions work by taking whatever small anger or hurt you feel and magnifying them until they consume you. If Obi-Wan was already experiencing self loathing...”

Cody sucked in a breath. “Then a Sith mind suggestion would bring him to commit suicide. It...sounds like something he might do, if he was partially in control. Take the blow rather than let himself be used as a weapon against anyone else, even his worst enemy.”

“Hells, it could have been an even vaguer compulsion, driving him to attack the person he hates the most,” Bant added darkly.

Anakin buried his head in his hands, trying to hold it together. He couldn’t afford to lose control or get angry. Hells, getting angry at Obi-Wan for ‘failing him’ when in pain could be the reason Obi-Wan was currently in the healing halls. The man said he loved him unconditionally, then practically had a breakdown over how much Anakin pushed that unconditional love to the breaking point, then killed himself. How was he supposed to-

“Anakin? Are you alright to continue?” someone said.

“Yes. No. There’s more I have to tell you...I don’t know if it will help but - it was hurting Obi-Wan...I...”

“Let’s just take it one step at a time. What happened after you left Mace?”

Apparently even Cody somehow knew more about Bruck Chun than Anakin. Master Windu and Eerin told different sides of the same sad story, which spiraled back into a conversation about Obi-Wan’s inadequacy issues, which somehow devolved into a long rant about Qui-Gon Jinn that Master Windu had apparently been holding back for years. 

“My apologies.” He said afterwards, clearing his throat as the group stared, taken aback. “Old grievances. Go on Anakin, what did happened after you got to the ‘secret spot.’”

“He...was skirting around whatever was bothering him...I pushed him...told him I wanted to help...he said I couldn’t...because it was me...because of what I...”

Anakin stood up suddenly, feeling the walls of the room closing in.

“I’m sorry- I’m sorry I-” 

He ran out.

He turned around almost immediately, pacing in the small corridor, knowing he couldn’t leave, simply needing a minute to catch his breath.

Master Windu followed him out after a moment, not saying anything, just standing there. Watching him.

“What!” Anakin finally snapped. “What do you have to say that I don’t know already!”

“Knight Skywalker-”

“Don’t call me that! I DON’T DESERVE-” 

Anakin let out a frustrated snarl, punching a wall. The crumble of stone beneath this fist briefly made him feel better, but then he remembered Obi-Wan’s heartbroken expression in the light of an underworldly glow, and the tiny, choked sound he heard when the healers moved him and Anakin just...collapsed, falling to his knees.

Master Windu sank down gracefully beside him.

“Anakin. This isn’t about attachment issues, is it.”

“Not really, no. I mean, maybe you’ll blame attachment but it’s more about...”

“Anger.”

Anakin looked up at that, trying to regain the meditative calm he had felt for a glimmering moment yesterday, right in-between making peace in the cave and everything burning to ash. 

“You know that I have had my own struggles with anger. It is how and why I came to develop Vaapad.” 

“Yes, but you’ve Mastered your anger. And you’ve never...never given in to hate.”

A beat passed and Windu watched some of Skywalker’s familiar breaking points flicker into view. 

“You’ve done something. Something you know the Jedi won’t forgive.”

“Obi-Wan forgave me.” Anakin said, whispering. “He said that even though I couldn’t fix what I did he loved me anyway and I just needed to...to honestly regret what I did and not do it again. I told him I’d get rid of my lightsaber and I meant it and...I thought he forgave me. I was ready to go to the Council with him, come clean about everything. And then I left him alone to get dinner and when I came back...he was holding my lightsaber. My lightsaber.” 

Anakin buried his face in his hands, shuddering with creeping cold.

“I’m not going to critique your and Obi-Wan’s attachment to each other right now. I’m well aware that much of the order has turned to personal ties to maintain their stability given the ongoing horrors of war. I am, for many reasons, wary of the risks this brings us, yet it is also true that risks do not automatically mean failure. I myself have mastered my emotions in a different manner than conventional wisdom councils.” 

Windu spoke carefully. For all that he and Anakin had similar relationships with the force, they rarely saw eye to eye on any given subject. At a certain point, Mace had accepted that the volatile young man was determined to find the worst possible interpretation for anything he said. And Mace was not the order’s most patient diplomat.

“As for your crime, whatever it is, l will tell you this: Unless you choose to renounce the code and leave our number, you will be treated as a Jedi Knight, subject to our protections, as well as our judgement. You will receive appropriate mental counseling. If you are judged to be a danger to those around you, your actions will be curtailed and monitored, possibly through temporary confinement.  The Jedi do not believe in punitive measures for their own sake, but you may be required to provide restitution to those you harmed, perhaps indefinitely. 

Silence hung perilously between them. Windu watched a tremor run through the unfathomable kaleidoscopic of shatterpoints that had orbited Skywalker since he was a boy. A small one broke inward, and an attached tangle of larger, darker ones fell away, crumbling to dust. The rest faded from view, invisible for the moment. A choice had been made, some decision that closed off at least one path to the darkside.

“There’s no one to make restitutions to.”

“...You’re going to have to elaborate on that.”

“Let’s go back inside- I don’t want to do this twice.”

They returned to the increasingly hated meeting room.

Anakin spoke in an outpouring of words about love and hate, about misplaced revenge and now uncertain forgiveness. When he finally finished, the room was deathly silent.

The three Jedi sat quietly while Cody pinched the bridge of his nose. “I guess this is why Jedi have the no attachment rule, huh? I admit I never really got it, but I suppose even if I-”

Bant abruptly lunged up, fumbling to bring her lightsaber to Anakin’s neck. Everyone jumped to their feet, except for Anakin, who stared at Bant with a wretched expression.

“MASTER EERIN! This is not-”

“Did you do it?” she asked, ignoring the Master of the Order.

“Bant!”

“It was my first thought after I saw him. We all rushed in expecting a fight, or a bomb, only to find you, insane, and him with a hole next to his heart. I didn’t want to believe it of course, but you’ve always had a violent streak that Obi-Wan, force help him, couldn’t quite soothe away. A fight gone wrong. Master Windu said it was suicide, and I believed him, and I’ve been trying to make sense of that ever since. But Mace found you after, didn’t he? After you felt guilty? Did you think he was going to turn on you?”

“Bant Eerin, you are dangerously-”

“No.” Anakin whispered.

“Obviously I might be why. But I didn’t- I couldn’t. I know I’m not good but I can’t even imagine- holding a saber against him like that. Kriff, do you not get how much I can’t handle losing people I love? I was insane when you saw me because I saw someone trying to kill Obi-Wan and I couldn’t even fight them.”  

Bant held his gaze for several lingering seconds, deactivated her saber and dropping it with a clatter. They stared at each other, breathing heavily and not blinking. She returned to her seat, moving jerkily. “I apologize Knight Skywalker. That was uncalled for.” 

“I wish I could say I wouldn’t have done the same thing in your shoes” he responded lowly. Bant made a tiny, unintelligible noise in reply. 

Cody collapsed back into his chair, holstering his blaster.  “Alright then...so after you finished sitting in the fountain room...what happened next?”

Everyone stared at him.

“What?”

“You’re handling Anakin’s confession somewhat dispassionately. We’re simply surprised.” Mace said slowly, returning to his seat at the same time as Master Aerdo fell into theirs.

Cody shifted uncomfortably. “The vod were trained in a wide range of enemy suppression tactics. While we’re extremely glad the Jedi have never asked us to employ them, I’m not...unfamiliar with this scale of deliberate slaughter. At least in the hypothetical, sir.”

“I see.” Aerdo said. “That is a valuable insight to have, thank you. Knight Skywalker-”

“Just...call me Anakin. Or Skywalker.”

“Anakin. When did this happen?”

“About two years ago, immediately before the First Battle of Geonosis.”

“And have you had any similar experiences with giving into the darkside since?” they asked placidly.

“I don’t think so but...we went to war the next day and....I don’t know if I’ve stopped fighting since it- since I did what I did.”

“Hmm. Anakin, would you mind stepping outside the room and waiting in the corridor for a moment please?” 

He bit his tongue, tasting blood, and quietly walked out the door while the Masters decided his fate. He leaned back against a wall, desperately wanting to see Padme. 

To his surprise, the door opened barely a few minutes later, and he was politely invited back in.

“Anakin.” Master Windu spoke. “Thank you for telling us this. It’s an important insight into Obi-Wan’s feelings right now, and I recognize that you could have kept it a secret. As Head of the Order, and with the advice of a Senior Soul Healer, I have made a decision. You will be assigned a personal soul healer, who you will start seeing tomorrow. Commander Cody pointed out that over nearly two years of continuous warfare, you have maintained some of the the lowest trooper casualty units of any division, by a significant margin if we evaluate based on mission risk level. Your civilian and enemy casualties will be reviewed, but even considering constant war, since your massacre of the Tuskens, you have clearly managed to at least... direct your violence away from the innocent. We do not consider you a threat to the inhabitants of the world. For the time being, I see no real benefit to limiting or tracking your behavior within the temple or on planet, but you are barred from leaving orbit. I have decided to delay a full reckoning before the council until such time that your former Master is well enough to provide his own opinion. Give me just cause, and I will have you confined to a force-suppressing cell. Do you understand?”

Anakin nodded, bowing in acknowledgment. All things considered, it was...honestly better than he expected.

“Now, as Cody” Windu paused. “My apologies, as the Commander was saying-” 

“Cody’s fine, sir” Cody said, wrung out in a way different from anything Kamino had trained him for.

“...I think we can all consider ourselves on a first name basis at this point.” Bant said with a snort. She paused. “That includes you Anakin. I really don’t know how to handle what you did but kark it, I don’t want to hate you. For myself.”

Everyone nodded.

“As Cody was saying, what happened next?”

Peace. Comfort. Hunger. A warning in the force...

-

“I tried to pull the saber back but his finger was already on the igniter...” 

“You probably saved his life. Even a second later-”

“I know, that’s almost the worst part.”

-

“-his neck”

“Why would he change weapons?”

“What if-”

-

“He said what to you and Healer Che?”

“That has to support the detailed vision idea, think about-”

“I’m sorry, Emperor?”

-

“I think we’re done.”

Anakin stared blankly at Sife. “But we didn’t figure anything out.”

“Not conclusively, but we’re unlikely to make any more progress, you’ve given me enough information to preform a meaningful meditative scan, or guide a conversation, should Obi-Wan wake, or navigate through his mind, should we decide to make a more decisive attempt at his shields.”

“Master Aerdo... I leave the final judgement up to you, but I strongly urge you to make a more decisive attempt. I am more convinced now than I was...” Mace glanced at the chronometer “five hours ago that this was motivated by a specific, external stimuli, likely dark. Do you disagree?”

“No.” they said with a sigh. “But I don’t want to underestimate how much underlying factors might have contributed to his response to stimuli, including underlying factors that none of you were aware of.”

The Nautolan Soul Healer stood up, tucking their hands into their sleeves to address the room with classical Jedi serenity. It was a little irritating.

“In any case, we all need to sleep, eat, and meditate. Master Eerin, you have the rest of the day off, I've cleared it with Master Che already. Master Windu, I leave the final judgement up to you, and I am aware that your duties as Master of the Order are unceasing, but I urge you to take some time to center yourself before returning to the council. Commander Cody, I would be more than willing to arrange soul healing for you or any of the Vod, please let me know. Anakin, you will receive a comm later today with further details on your future healing sessions. 

They bowed low, then glided out the door.

Bant stood next, bowed individually to each soul, and sped walked out.

Commander Cody cleared his throat awkwardly, “Mace- what should I tell the troops? We’re supposed to have command briefings later tonight.”

“If anyone asks about General Kenobi, tell them its classified.” I’ll schedule a briefing on the subject. Now go find Captain Rex and take care of yourself, that’s an order.”

Cody saluted, first to the high General, then to Anakin.

Finally it was just Mace and Anakin.

“Is there anyone who you trust who I can call to stay with you.” Master Windu asked.

“I can manage on my own” Anakin replied, not willing to give the Master of the Order anything else he could use against him, even after everything.

Master Windu held back a sigh.

He continued once more, making a deliberate attempt to soften his tone. “Anakin- I know we’ve had our differences, but this is not a trick, nor a trap. You’ve suffered a series of great shocks in the last 24 hours and handled them with immense maturity. I myself am struggling to deal with the emotional fallout.”

Anakin looked up at that, surprised. He didn’t seem to be struggling, but maybe that was what made him a good Jedi Master...

“As I told you before, I am not going to begrudge you the comfort of attachment. I’m rather convinced it would do you more harm than good at this point. I don’t want you flying right now, and you don’t have to be alone. I hope we have come to a better understanding today, but I doubt my presence is suddenly a comfort, though please correct me if I’m wrong. Now is there someone I can call?”

-

Padme ended her call with Master Windu extremely discomfited. She had barely heard from Anakin since he ran out on her the night before last to take care of an apparently extremely drunk Obi-Wan. He had messaged her a few times that night, promising to make it up to her, but had been comm-silent since. She had been starting to get worried, and now the Master of the Order was asking her to pick him up from the temple. Fortunately, she had already cleared most of her meetings for the week well in advance (Courascant leave usually meant THEM time, not that she was jealous of Obi-Wan, of course).

The speeder ride back from the temple was silent. All Anakin would say was that he would explain everything once they were in ‘a secure location.’ 

The door to the apartment had scarcely closed behind them when Anakin fell into her arms, shaking.

“Anakin, talk to me love, what’s wrong?” She gently guided him to the couch, arranging him so she could hold him protectively.

“Obi-Wan tried to kill himself.”

She let out a harsh gasp, “No! He can’t have, he would never-” 

“I got to him in time, but Padme... he was holding a lightsaber to his heart. It was...really close” He burrowed deeper into the folds of her dress, and she gripped him fiercely.

“Oh gods, is he-”

“He’s physically healing, but he’s still...not all there. I spent all of today locked in a room, trying to figure out if it was a Sith Attack, or an insane vision, or..or me”

“Anakin! What do you mean ‘me’ - Obi-Wan loves you, you-”

“I know.” Anakin interrupted her again, knowing he was being unfair; he was just too exhausted to be patient.

“He told me loved me. He...he...found out about what I did to the Tusken village, You should have seen his face, Padme, he was horrified, but he still told me he loved me, and he was willing to forgive me, even though he shouldn’t”

“Of course he forgave you,” Padme whispered. “You’re not a monster, Anakin, I know you would never do something like that again.”

"And then after we talked, I left him alone and he-” Anakin choked out into her dress.

Tears ran down her face, heart breaking. “That’s- that’s horrible. Anakin...it must have have been a attack, Obi-Wan wouldn’t do that.” she said urgently.

He pulled away, horrified. “I made you cry. I made Obi-Wan cry too. I’m sorry- Padme please, promise me you won’t-”

She grabbed the sides of his head. 

Her nails bit into the soft skin behind his ears as she pulled him down so they were face-to-face, vowing, “Never. I swear by the force itself, I will never choose death over life.”

He let out a relieved sigh, eyes fluttering closed.

“Now you,” she demanded

“As long as I have anyone to live for, I swear by the force, I will never choose death over life.”

She pulled him the rest of the way in for a bruising kiss. He lifted her, and they desperately clung at one another as he carried her to bed. They continued like that, clinging and grasping, until exhaustion carried him to sleep. She pulled the covers over top them both and curled around him defensively as the day slowly faded away.

Part XI

[rsgguk]

true love, almost always — jjk

↳ aka — 'cause baby you're perfect for me

summary: y/n didn't know much about her soulmate. She knows that he's artistic from the little doodles that appears on her arm. She knows he's athletic from the scrapes that appears on her knees. She also knows that he has pain in the ass friends from the random dick drawings that appears on her forehead

genre: romance, angst, comedy, fluff

word count: 5.8 k

pairings:

Jungkook + reader | soulmates

warnings: so let me tell you, this is probably gonna be a bit inconsistent, I had written most of this during the middle of the night when I had a severe case of the feels. Now this isn't my usual style of writing, most things are in passive form because I'm trying to focus more on how they feel. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to this writing style but I had fun generally not worrying on the dialogue.

Y/n didn't know much about her soulmate. In a system where everything marked on your soulmates skin crosses on yours, she knows from the seemingly many doodles that appears on the plan of her hand that he is an artistic person. She knows from the way her knees would appear scraped at times meant that he was either athletic or desperately clumsy. She knows that by the scar that daunted on her cheek that he got in a ’fight’ with his brother. She also knows from the random dick drawings that appear on her forehead that he has the most chaotic of friends.

Jungkook would like to say he knew a lot about his soulmate. He knows by the way tiny little hearts would appear near his doodles that she wasn't the most artsy person in the world, but she could draw a damn to near perfect heart. He knows by the way that small little freckles would gloss over his skin that she was an outgoing person. He knows by the way that shallow cuts would appear on his arms and fingers that she had an asshole cat. He also knows that by the way tiny reminders would appear on his palm that she had a knack for forgetting things (he also knows that her handwriting might be the cutest thing he'd ever seen, but he may be a little biased).

They're sober to the fact that the other exist by the time they're 11. Jungkook was bored in class and started drawing little clouds, trees, the sun with shades on, the whole package on his arm. And then on the expanse of his palm would appear in large curvy letters, 'can you draw a cat?'.

He thinks back to the day and guesses that he didn't really understand the extremity of the situation back then. Everyone had a soulmate, but it was the first time he'd actually 'talked' to his.

He didn't gasp or scream or shed a tear, only complying with her request and drawing a cute little cat next the tree trunk. He'd think he was hallucinating about the request until he watched as a ribbon was drawn and coloured in the middle of the cat's head.

The next week, he would have a fight with his brother that had ended in him getting a cut on his cheek. He doesn’t worry about it, only locking himself in his room and sulking in his sheets. It’s when a few words appeared on his palm that he finally sat up with a smile on his lips. She would write down if he was okay because a cut had appeared on her cheek.

‘I’m sorry’ he’d write.

‘it’s okay my daddy said I look cool’ she would reply, and his cheeks would flush because his mom had always said that a woman’s face was her pride. Jungkook had never understood it back then, because if he could be covered in dirt after a fun game of soccer, and still be called adorable, why should it matter what a girl’s face looked like?

She’d ask what happened and Jungkook would bite down an embarrassed whine. ’My brother said I played with the computer too much so I threw a pen at him’.

‘did you win?’ She’d ask a second later.

’No it hit the floor and bounced to my face’.

‘and then he laughed at me’

‘your brother sounds stupid’

‘he is stupid’

They didn't talk more than that, they were still young and the whole soulmates thing hadn't made sense yet. Jungkook still drew his doodles on his arm and she'd add little details (mostly hearts) around them, a tiny reminder that she was there.

It was barely considered a means of communication but it had morphed into a sense of comfort for Jungkook. He draws the little doodles, sometimes it was of a cat (He would never admit it but he'd learn how to draw a cat because he knew she liked cats). And each time without fail, she'd draw a tiny ribbon on its head.

And then Jungkook entered high-school and he met his friends. His stupid, chaotic, love them to death friends and his soul mate was still there, drawing little heart across his skin. The boys say its cheesy (as cheesy as it is to the fact that she's literally his soul mate) but he really hadn't given a shit.

He'd considered himself a romantic throughout the years, although he's gotten not a single bit of experience, he cries at the ending of titanic every single time and his ideal way of proposal is during the sunset walking across the shoreline of the beach, nightlights littered in the scenery and him on one knee, asking to marry his one and only soulmate.

He tries his best to keep up a mature kind of facade for his soul mate. Afterall, that was what they were into right? Older and more mature men. Sure, they'd like bad boys too, but honestly Jungkook bruises like a peach. His act of maturity consists of drawing thing with 'deeper meaning'. And yes, maybe a cat surfing on the beach tides has a deeper meaning, you never know.

His act is ruined when one day, he falls asleep during lunch after a long night of overwatch (in which he dominated by the way) and wakes up to Taehyung snickering beside him, looking at him with the largest shit eating grin he’d ever seen. Jungkook would shake his head and roll his eyes, dismissing whatever it was that he did.

Later during class, everyone kept giving him weird looks, and his teacher even laughed at the sight of him. It wasn’t until multiple frowney faces appeared on his arm that he really realized that something was wrong. His heart skipped a beat when he answered back with question marks written along her doodles.

‘there’s a dick drawing on my forehead :(’ she’d rely with the same curvy letters he’d gotten used to. And then there was a sound that had left his mouth. A mix between an angry scream and a surprised gasp with a little bit of an embarrassed groan. He’d then realize he was still in the middle of class and that every one of his classmates were staring at him.

His teacher would give him some sort of look between annoyed and amused, and finally asks ’so you finally realized huh?’. Jungkook would splutter on his words and immediately turn towards Jimin and Taehyung. It was barely a second before Jimin had shook his head and pointed at Taehyung. He would finally lift his hand off his mouth and bursts out laughing for a minute or two before outright choking, tears in his eyes.

That day, Jungkook along with Taehyung and (for some reason) Jimin would be sent to the discipline teacher. Jungkook wouldn’t give a shit about being sent to devil’s incarnate, only silently punching Taehyung’s shoulder and cussing it out at him for making him look like a fool to his soulmate.

When he’s home (after a lecture from his mom, a pat on the back from his dad and a high five from his brother), he locks himself in his bedroom and takes a pen from his bag, writing apologies all over his arm. She’d reply a minute later, saying it was okay.

His fingers would then drum along his arm, his leg jumping up and down, trying to figure out what else to say to her. He’d get up the courage and ask her what was her name. She’d respond with y/n and he’d have a smile riding up his lips, saying her name again and again, realizing that he loved how it felt to say her name.

Then the two of them would keep talking to each other, Jungkook constantly rolling up his sleeve to make some room for more words. They would spend the whole night getting to know each other and filling up a whole decade of silence. When they had run out of room to write, she would go on and ask for his number so they could text instead, and Jungkook would get up to his feet, jumping up and down on his heels. He wouldn’t waste a second to write down his number on the little space he had left.

The next day, he had woken up with an especially good mood. An extra jump on each of his step, a large grin on his face as if he hadn’t gotten into trouble for having a dick drawn on his forehead just the day before. Taehyung would expect a more than pissed of Jungkook, maybe a little bit of pettiness in the mix, but Jungkook shows nothing but adoration for him, even going as far as to buy him the apple juice he knows he loves from the convenience store nearby.

Texting her falls so easily in his routine. One second, he’s hesitant to text her, afraid to show her just how much of a dumbass he could be, another second, he’s called her the fifth time in a day because he swears a baby just gave him a nasty look. They connect quickly. She finds out the reason she suddenly gets eye bags after a full night’s sleep with because her idiot soulmate had spent the whole night screaming at wario for cheating at Mario kart.

Taehyung says it’s sickening to see just how lovey dovey Jungkook was (Jimin says it’s nice to see him so in love, but they both knew he secretly hated it too). The way his eyes light up at the sight of her name appearing on his screen.

He gets in trouble more nowadays though, teachers having caught him talking to his soulmate on his arm, and the most embarrassing time they read out his not-so-failed attempts of flirting off his arm to the whole class. Let’s just say he’d gotten teased for the life of him when it reached his brother’s ears (though he supposes his brother isn’t any better when he would literally be a make shift carpet if his soulmate asked for it). The Jeon boys treat their women like proper queens and won’t settle for anything less.

The first time they video call, Jungkook has fixed his hair for the hundredths time, a comfortable (and new that he bought just for this occasion) sweatshirt hung loosely on his shoulders. She’d asked if it was okay if they could do a video call the day before and Jungkook being as whipped as he was, of course agreed with her, only regretting not to be the one who asked first.

He’s so tense that when his phone starts ringing, he nearly chucks it off to the wall. He forces himself to calm down before setting it up on the table and pressing the green button after taking a deep breath. He looks at the screen and watches as her face appears. His heart almost bursts, because he’s thought of this moment a million times. He’d expect her to be something like a glowing figure, that she’d resemble a star and that her voice would sound like a serenading angel.

She’s nothing like he’d expect. She’s not glowing like an angel. Her camera has bad lighting and he could see a few strands of her hair sticking out. When she says hello, it isn’t like an angel, her voice isn’t smooth, a little raspy. But she still manages to surpass all his expectations, and he realizes she’s so much better than he’d ever imagined. His heart beats faster and faster because she’s only said one word, and Jungkook is already falling for her. She’s not perfect, but she’s perfect for him.

It’s going well, very well. There’s a way that she makes him feel, a way that just brightens up his day, and when they have their video calls and she laughs at one of those lame jokes that he’d gotten from one of his friends, her voice just soothes him, lets him relax into his seat and just watch as her eyes crinkle in joy.

 It starts to become a routine, the video calls are weekly but the texting is daily. Whenever he’s nervous about an upcoming exam, he calls her and just listens to her talk about her day, lets her voice fill his ear and calm his nerves. And then she would get off track and asks why is it that he had called her and he’d brush it off, he called to hear her voice, but he won’t say that because it’s too cheesy and he has a reputation to keep.

It’s during one of his classes that he feels it, a gut wrenching feeling deep in his stomach that has him groaning. It’s a different type of pain, nothing like nausea or a muscle cramp, because he’d always considered himself as a person with a great pain tolerance, but at that moment, he had just felt like curling in a ball and crying. Jimin and Taehyung would take him to the clinic immediately, and he’d just have tears rolling down his cheeks, and he’s sniffling and making these weird choking sounds when he tries to smother down his sobs.

He stays there for a while, the curtains draped closed with Jimin and Taehyung just rubbing his back soothingly. He tries to calm down, but every so and then, a sob bubbles up to his chest and a new wave of tear roll down his cheeks. It stays like that for an hour and the pain in his stomach travels up to his chest. His right arm starts to ache and dizziness starts to seep in his head. He falls asleep in the clinic bed, his whimpers slowing down and his eyes drooping heavily.

When he’s back at home, he doesn’t try to talk to his parents. They’d come visit now and then, giving a few hugs and pats on the back. His brother would come by when Jungkook had calmed down a bit, ruffling his hair and saying ‘it’s going to be okay’. But that’s the thing, there isn’t an ‘it’ to be okay. For all he knew, ‘it’ was all okay, everything was going okay in class, but then there was this rush of emotion that came over him and he’d just double over in pain. There was this burning sensation in his gut, something that hadn’t been building but more of an eruption. And then it would slowly cascade to his chest, and then he’d start crying and crying, choking on his sobs.

He’s in his sheets, listening to the sounds of pans clanging from the downstairs kitchen. His mom was cooking dinner, but he doubted that he’d go down to have some himself. The sound of the washing machine clashing against itself. That old thing was always just waiting to give out. The sound of the TV running from the living room. There was always some sort of game his dad would be watching, cheering on for teams he’d never even heard of. These are all sounds he’d never realized he’d taken comfort into. Such meaningless things that were just always there, a consistency that had always reassured him in some way.

He’d just lays there, listening to his own heartbeat. For the first time in hours, he feels relaxed and his breath relax into a steady pace. His eyes almost drift to sleep, because It's been a long day and Jungkook feels exhausted, but then there’s this loud blaring noise that breaks the silence. He knows what it is, someone had gone up and called him again. It would be the sixth call he’d get from his friends.

Only it turns out that it wasn’t his friends, it wasn’t Jimin, nor Taehyung or even Yoongi. It was her, and it terrified him because he’d always smile at the sight of her name, but there was this raw and intense feeling that had him wanting to decline the call. It terrified him because she’s his soulmate and supposedly the ’love of his life’ but he had wanted nothing more than to hang up the call. And it just stays like that, him wallowing in the fact as his phone had stopped ringing, and then a few seconds pass and her name appears again. His arm would suddenly feel heavy at the weight of the phone in his hand. Slowly, he would finally tap on the green button.

Her voice hits him like a wave. Jungkook doesn’t even have the chance to say anything when her voice starts filling his ears. Her voice is raspy and broken, there’s sniffling and whimpering as she rushes through her words. ’I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ she whispers in uneven breathes, and he would have stopped her, to comfort her and ask her why she was crying and that ’it’ was going to be okay. But then there is this sudden realization that hits him that ’it’ wasn’t going to be okay, and he probably wasn’t going to be okay. So, he just sits there as new tears roll down his cheeks.

When she finally speaks, everything just dawns on him. He felt like he was dying because his soulmate had kissed someone, he felt like dying because his soulmate had kissed someone that wasn’t him, he felt like dying because his soulmate’s first kiss wasn’t him, and will never be him. And then all of her other words just go straight through his other ear. He doesn’t hear it when she says that she didn’t want it, or when she says that she didn’t know it was going to happen until it happened, or when she says that she also felt the pain, the suffocating and unrelenting pain, that she also felt like she was dying.

He hears it when she says she loves him.

Jungkook has always one for cheesy romances and tear-jerking speeches. He imagines their first exchanges of ‘I love you’ to be at night, with a sea of stars sunken in the night sky because that was where they would have their first kiss. She would have his jacket that was a little too big for her on her shoulders because the night was breezy and his mom raised him to be a gentle man. Her hands would be in his because she always has cold hands and he always has warm hands.

He would talk about the ‘old times’ like when he had drawn those little cats for her or when he’d waken up to many frowney faces along his arm because his friends yet again drew dicks on his forehead (he should really get some proper sleep). And then he’d try to coax a few tears out of her and end it off with ’I love you’, and because this was Jungkook’s imagination of how things would go, she would also say I love you, and they’d kiss in the night sky.

Jungkook then realizes that nothing he’d imagined will ever go as planned, that they will never have a first kiss, because she’d already had hers with some random asshole, and that they’d never have their first ‘I love you’, because she had already said it through the phone while they were both out of breath and sobbing every drop of tear from their bodies.

He doesn’t realize it, but when he’d finally gotten out of his phase, the call had already ended and his cheeks had become tear stained and his sobs had calmed down to weak whimpers. He realizes that he’d just hung up on her after she’d said she loved him, and he just panics, because she’s going to think he doesn't love her and he should immediately call her and tell her that he loves her, because he does, he loves her like he’d never loved anyone before.

He’d started talking to her in his sophomore years and he was now a senior, and she'd been there in every step of the way. But he just doesn't, he doesn’t tell her he loves her, he doesn’t call her, because he doesn’t trust himself if he does. And she doesn’t call back either.

There are a few times when Jungkook forgets that y/n is his soulmate. He doesn’t know what he’d expect when he doesn’t talk to her in a week. It starts off small. He catches himself dozing off, looking into the distance and zoning out. His friends would ask him if he was okay and he’d reply with ’I’m fine’, even though he knew he wasn't, and that he knew they wouldn’t believe him anyway, because who the hell would be fine yet walk into the classroom with puffy and bloodshot eyes.

And then when class goes on like normal, he’s moving his leg up and down, fingers drumming along the desk, because he swears class had never been this long before. He realizes later that class had always gone on so fast because y/n was always there for him to talk to. He looks back at it as if it had happened years ago, as if he hadn’t talked to her in decades.

The truth is that they haven’t talked in no less than three days, yet he’s been missing her as if he’d gone days without a limb. A piece of him feels missing, torn apart from him and left out to dry. It’s a weird feeling, a suffocating feeling that has him yearning for her, that has him filling his mind with nothing but her. He supposes that was the thing with soulmates, when they were together, it had felt like he was he was over the moon, as if nothing could ever go wrong in his life, but when they were apart, it felt like he was missing a part of himself.

She would nag at him whenever he was bombarding her with doodles on his arm, waiting for her attention so she could drag him from his boredom of class. She’d say ‘you have class’ and he’d say ’I also have a soulmate, and I’d rather pay attention to her’. His friends would tease for it, for flirting and dancing around with her as if it was a game of push and pull, as if she wasn’t his soulmate.

That’s the thing that terrifies him, because as far as he had ever known, having a soulmate was the best feeling in the world. It’s all rainbows and roses, because it had meant that there will always be that one person that just gets you, that just loves you unconditionally for all your flaws and perfections, all your quirks and mishaps. That one person that will always be there for every step of the way. He yearns that, the comfort of knowing there was someone the universe had picked just for him, the missing piece to his puzzle.

And then he meets her, and he realizes just how perfect she is for him.

And then the whole fiasco happens and he realizes just how much it would hurt if he didn’t get his happy ending, because he knows it wasn’t uncommon for soulmates not to work out, usually from the intensity of their emotions for each other.

Having a soulmate had also meant other things. It meant that when you were together, you’d feel the happiest you’d ever be, but if you weren’t, you’d dread every second of your life. You’d feel pain, you’d feel nauseous, you’d feel your body start to crumble. Having a soulmate was almost like a drug, something so addicting that your body starts to dysfunction when you go a day without.

Jungkook still feels it sometimes, when he’s managed to get her out of his mind. There was this sudden jolt of pain that shoot up his chest, causing him to lose focus. And then all he can think about is her, her, her. He wonders if she feels it too, if she misses him too, if she thinks of him too. He realizes how stupid he is, because his phone is right there in front him, and he could end all of this with just one button.

Truth is he’d stopped mulling over the whole kiss thing a while ago, and that he should’ve called her a long time ago, but he was scared, scared of his own emotions, scared of how much he loved her, scared that this whole thing is going to destroy to him.

He wants to talk about this with someone, to anyone, but then it dawns on him that the only person he really wants to talk to about this was his soulmate, and that she was the only person he should be talking to about this. So, he picks up his phone and presses on the name he’d been missing for what felt like decades now.

She answers after no less than a few seconds. She speaks after a second’s hesitation, and her voice is filled with the sort of hope, as if she has done something wrong. Jungkook cuts her off when she starts on her little ramble (a habit he’d learn she had over the years) and apologizes, two words that hits her as hard as a brick. ‘I’m sorry’ he’d say again, and again and again. He says it until he can hear her start crying on the other end of the call. He knows she’s crying in a way that she’s trying to hide it from him, but he’d still hear her weak sniffles and whimpers.

It breaks his heart because he knows he never should’ve hung up on her that day, that he should’ve said that it was never her fault that ‘it’ happened, that he never thought of ‘it’ as her fault, that he was sorry ‘it’ had to happened in the first place

There’s a lot of things he realizes that he should have told her, so he doesn’t give her the time to say anything before he gets everything off his chest. He tells her everything. He tells her that he had never been upset with her, that he was upset with what happened to her. He tells her that he’s scared, no— terrified of how strong his feeling are for her, that the pain he felt that day was never what he’d ever experienced before. He tells her how much he had missed her during his period of stupidity when he decided not to talk to her, that he’d thought of her every second of the day.

And she just swallows in everything he tells her, listening to every word he says without a single interruption. And then they talk, talk, and talk until they shed more tears, because they’d never realized it, but they had always needed this. It’s a bit like clearing the air, speaking up about every and any hesitations they’d have.

They talk until their voices go dry and their eyes droop heavily. It isn’t until then that Jungkook realizes he hadn’t had a good night’s rest in days. Sleeping had always come easy to him, but during the past few days, he would lay down in his bed and just had this queasy and tense feeling.

When they’re nearing the end of the conversation, he knows there’s this one thing he hadn’t said yet, and he knows she’d been waiting for it too, those three simple words that had meant everything to them. He wants to say it, but there’s this one nerve in his stomach that causes his throat to close up when he tries to.

She finally ends the call after hours and hours of talking about their feeling and what they’d miss. Jungkook would again take out his pen, and write the words he’d meant to say in the palm of his hand. I love you.

Jimin shares a look with Taehyung when Jungkook comes to class the next day (he’s always late and it’s definitely not because of his poor excuse of a sleeping schedule), and the next thing he knows, they’re just screaming and hollering before running towards him. Jungkook swears he’s never felt more scared than he was at that moment, with the sight of his two best friends sprinting as if they were about to run them over like the untimely death of Mufasa.

And then they just hug him, stuff him with pats on the back and intense noogies. Jungkook just stands there, accepting it with the most confused expression ever. They go on about how glad they are that he got over whatever it was that had set him in such a sour and glum mood the past week and it puzzles him because he doesn’t remember being that much of a debbie downer.

They prove him otherwise by listing all the reasons he was such a pain to hang out with, because he’d somehow turned into a dictionary of depressing jokes and emo quotes. They end up finishing each other’s sentences, locking eyes when they say the same words and giving each other a bunch of high fives (Jungkook sometimes feels sorry for whoever their soulmates are, because the two of them are so in sync that they were already each other’s soulmate).

They’re interrupted when the teacher finally enters the class and tells everyone (specifically the two of them) to take a seat. They turn to Jungkook one final time and give him a pat in the back because they’re genuinely happy that the kid had no longer seemed so miserable.

Jungkook hadn’t thought hearing ‘I love you’ would change much for him. He’d heard it a dozen times from his parents (never from his brother, but let’s be honest, that’s to be expected) an amount more than you’d expect from Jimin and Taehyung (although Taehyung would say it more to annoy him and it works every single time), three times from Namjoon (which makes him grin more than it should) and once from Yoongi (now that one he wears like a golden medal).

Hearing it from his soulmate hits him in a totally different way. The conversation they had led them to get more comfortable in their relationships, this time acknowledging each other in a more romantic way. The way she says ‘I love you’ during insignificant moments like during a goodnight text or his after his daily ramble on how his friends are a pain in the ass sends him in a sort of high. It makes him giggle and flush and swoon all in the same time. It makes him feel things in a way he never knew he could.

Jungkook would learn that he shouldn’t plan things out as much as he used to, lets himself enjoy the moment for a while. Takes one step at a time, and this time he’s not as terrified to his wits anymore. It turns out when he's not worrying about all of his 'plans', time happens to move so fast.

When he finally sees her, she's got her back turned towards him, she hasn't noticed yet.

Jungkook takes a moment to take it all in. Sparks don’t fly, his hands don’t sweat and his breathing doesn’t pace. There is no nausea or nervousness that bubbles up in his stomach. When he sees her, his heart starts beating faster, but it beats in a way that you see something familiar after a long time, there is this sort of comfortable feeling. There’s a moment of complete peacefulness and serenity when he sees her. He’d never felt more at home.

When she sees him, her knees almost buckle, because he’s there. The boy, the dumbass, her soulmate that she’d been talking to for years now is finally there, and he’s waiting for her, looking for her. Her eyes almost well up in tears and she hates it because she swore to herself, she’d done cried enough times in their relationship, she doesn’t need to add another one to it.

She cries anyways, and she guesses she doesn’t hate it that much after all. Jungkook had managed to overturn all her expectations of their relationship that she’s not surprised that he pulls this either. She’s always known that her forgetfulness would bite her in the ass one day and she guesses she can’t be mad when this happens.

‘4:30 java time café pick up’ and right below on her palm is his handwriting, the handwriting she’s grown to adore and look forward to all these years, is written ’I found you’.

[tristennedarkmorn]

Day 31 - Shadowlands @daily-writing-challenge​ Co-written with @taricdarkmorn​ for his Day 31 as well!

Red awoke with a startle, bolting up into a seated position on the couch as a chill ran up his spine and down his extremities.  Eyes wide with panic, he looked around and realized that he was still in Taric’s apartment, with Taric himself staring down at him and a worried expression on his face. He felt all sorts of discombobulated, as if half of him were here and present in the other man’s apartment, and the other half somewhere floating around the Shadowlands.

“I had to bring you back.”  Taric placed a hand to Red’s arm as a means to ground him.  “You okay, what did you see?” He grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and pulled it over his shivering uncle’s shoulders. The man was freezing cold to the touch, as if he had just been submerged in icy water.

Red blinked a few times just to ensure that this wasn’t some sort of hallucination, reaching over to pat and then grip at Taric’s arm; he at least felt real.  He breathed in the warm air and immediately broke into a coughing fit, prompting Taric to rush into the kitchen to grab him a glass of water. For a while his breathing was labored and he had to gasp for air a few times, but eventually his lungs adapted to the warmer temperature and he was able to breathe normally.

Taric gave him his space, lighting up what looked like a stick of incense near the other man; something to help calm him and help him breathe easier.  He wasn’t going to rush him into speaking, Taric knew all too well how it felt to come back from a ‘deeper’ exploration of the Shadowlands. Although this had seemed much more intense than the usual trips: If Taric hadn’t been there acting as a tether, Red may have never come back. 

“It was like…”  Red furrowed his brow as he attempted to make sense of what he had experienced.  “..being caught in a violent storm, but then I was suddenly drowning and choking in this murky swamp.” He rubbed at his throat, coughing a few more times into the crook of his elbow and taking a moment for himself to collect his thoughts again.  It felt as if all of this had lasted hours, but glancing at the clock he then realized he had only been ‘gone’ for a little over five minutes.

Taric stared in horror, this sounded nothing like the previous journeys he had taken before, but the Shadowlands were vast and seemingly unending.  No single trip had ever been the same, there were infinite ‘afterlives’ to experience.  He offered Red a hand-rolled cigarette, some special blend of his creation that would calm the other man.

“I couldn’t see much at first, all just blurred colors and a feeling. I remember it felt like my blood was boiling beneath my flesh and then suddenly it was freezing cold.  I could finally focus a little better, but all I could see at that point was ice; a frozen landscape.  It reminded me of Icecrown, but...worse?”  He shivered again and reached for the offered cigarette, giving it a quick light.  Eyes fluttered shut as he inhaled, feeling a little more like himself as the seconds ticked by.  “Colder, more blustery. It looked like there were bodies frozen in the ice, all contorted…” He shook his head and leaned back against the couch cushion, exhaling a cloud of smoke up towards the ceiling.  “That’s about when you pulled me back. I think I was in the M-”

Taric interrupted him with a brief, “I know.” He didn’t need to finish that sentence, he didn’t want him to finish that sentence. “You were...” Taric gestured, trying to put what was happening into words.  “...mmm, it was like all of that was happening to your body here.”

Well that wasn’t normal; not that either had much comparison given this was something done in very rare cases. Physically entering and remaining within the Vale could be dangerous enough, but astral projection into the Shadowlands proper had its own separate set of difficulties and danger.  While all of those in the Darkmorn family were capable, it wasn’t done very often and usually only for emergencies. This, however, constituted an emergency, so it was well worth the risk. Plus, with the two of them working together they figured there would be a greater chance of nothing going terribly wrong. They were lucky Taric reeled Red back when he did.

Red kept his eyes shut, attempting to picture all he had seen in his mind to try and describe it better.  That was the strange thing about the entire process, no matter how real it had all looked and felt, the details were forgotten quickly.  “I remember feeling more and more anxious as time went on, like all of this was building up to something big that I couldn’t quite see.  And I just felt,” He pressed a hand to his chest, tapping it there a few times, “like I was being drained.  Like everything around me was being drained of life, as weird as that sounds, all to feed this ‘big thing’ I was sinking into.  It wasn’t just the ‘newly dead’ that it was happening to, it was the established as well.  There’s just...this feeling on the tip of my brain I can’t quite reach.”

Taric leaned back in his chair, cupping his chin in thought as he mused aloud. “Like everything is connected.  Just one long chain of events that stretches far back.”

“And you could see everything that has happened, and everything that is going to happen.  A perfect pattern laid out that has us all trapped within, where all the lines suddenly converge.”

The two men stared at each other in silence. It was so strange having someone you barely know already understand you so well; not questioning your train of thought, but being able to relate despite the incongruities and the implausibilities.  Most others would probably think all of this to be preposterous and quite possibly assume the duo were insane, but they had both reached a sudden clarity in a very convoluted situation.

Taric pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “I have to pack a bag and tie up some loose ends here.  I’ll meet you in Orgrimmar?”

Red nodded as he stood, the after-effects still making his thoughts fuzzy and his body heavy. “Yeah…” He clapped a hand to Taric’s shoulder as he passed him. “I’ll see you soon, and thanks.”

[clvrissa]

[ ODEYA RUSH. CIS FEMALE. SHE/HER. ] [ ƈʟǟʀɨֆֆǟ "ʀɨֆֆǟ" ƈօաɛռ ] is a [ TWENTY-ONE ] year old [ FIRST AID ] at camp reviere. [ SHE ] makes me think of [ hand stitched skirts, tarot cards shuffled but never dealt, silence ringing in your ears ]. their favorite horror movie is [ THE EVIL DEAD ] and they remind me of [ ֆǟʀǟɦ ɮǟɨʟɛʏ ]. [ ally. 22. est. she/her. ]

what’s up, y’all ???? my name is ally, i have a love/hate relationship with horror, i simp for bailey sarian, i’m extremely inconsistent with the Aesthetic, and i’m here with my fucked-up daughter, rissa !!! her inspo is, ofc, sarah bailey, but instead of magic it’s psychometry. cool? cool. details are below, and yes, this is a novel, but there’s tl;drs.

ֆȶǟȶɨֆȶɨƈֆ.

full name. clarissa genevieve cowen  nickname(s). rissa. she hates clarissa.  occupation. first aid at camp reverie, nursing student  age. twenty-one.  date of birth. january 27, 1963 nationality. american. ethnicity. ashkenazi jewish.  orientation. lesbian. gender & pronouns. cis female, she/her.

height. 5′8″.  weight. 150 lbs. eye color. grey-blue.  hair color + style. dark brown, curly, usually messy. she tries to braid it and keep it back but it always tends to get free.  distinguishing features. those spooky eyes, her homemade baggy clothes, deep and deadpan voice, 

ɮɨօɢʀǟքɦʏ.

born to a mechanic and the town psychic in louisiana in 1963, rissa was kind of destined to be an outcast. or, so she thought; her brother, chaplin, never had too much trouble fitting in.

she was more visibly the psychic’s daughter, though. not only bc she has wild hair, piercing eyes, and is terribly shy. from a young age, her mom used her as a prop during readings, the creepy little girl in the corner of the room. apparently chaplin couldn’t stay still long enough to be spooky :////

that was, until rissa helped one of her mom’s clients clean up her spilled purse, and she touched an old compact mirror. suddenly, she saw what it had seen, and blurted out that this was her mother’s old mirror, that she’d bought it in london and that it had seen war. 

so, her mother asked her to take part in the readings, sometimes. if there was an important object, she’d give it to rissa to evaluate. even if there wasn’t, she’d still put the client’s purse, coat, whatever next to rissa, in case she picked anything up. 

sometimes rissa couldn’t get anything, so she made things up. sometimes she sensed something, and sometimes, too often, she sensed something too awful to even keep the object in her hands. at least once a month, rissa saw something bad enough that she���d run to the attic and hide until her brother came to get her out. you can fill in the blanks there. 

it was when she was ten that her teacher told her there was always a scientific explanation for things, and that magic wasn’t real. she clung to that, and asked to read about seeing things. her teacher told her to find the dsm ii in the public library. what she found... made sense but was almost worse than magic. since then, she’s been convinced she’s sick, and she’s making all the things she saw up in her head. 

she also researched treatments, and that made her want to keep her mouth shut even more. 

she started to avoid readings as much as she could. her mother told her she was wasting her gift. rissa insisted it wasn’t a gift, it was an illness. a disease. 

uhhhhhhhh went full goth in high school. collected bones and hung out with the weird kids and smoked weed while listening to joy division in the woods. she didn’t like to touch people, she felt fucked up, and they were all okay with that. her best friend used to read lovecraft to her when she got high and rissa realized she was in love. she swallowed it down like she swallowed everything else down. 

she spent the last few months of high school living with her father, since her mother didn’t want her to go to nursing school. her brother helped her leave home, and now she’s a nursing student at a community college. 

tl;dr the psychic’s daughter has psychometry, sees some fucked up shit, suppresses her powers and convinces herself she’s having hallucinations, becomes a goth lesbian nursing student, 

քɛʀֆօռǟʟɨȶʏ.

let’s get one thing straight: rissa doesn’t have a fucking clue who she is. she sees herself as something of a shattered mirror; trying to imitate what she thinks people want to see, but too dangerous to touch, to really know. she’s constantly recreating her identity as a result, as some kind of illusion. if she’s mysterious, nobody can tell when something is wrong. 

she makes almost all her own clothes out of like. patchworks of other clothes. this is partially because she’s poor and partially because she likes things that are her own. and also definitely because she can’t find light enough clothing to provide her with the preferred amount of coverage in the summer without being too hot. 

yeah, she wears full length skirts made out of tshirts and old lady cotton cardigans every day, so that she can’t accidentally brush up against anyone and activate her psychometry. also because she hates being known in any capacity. they’re patchwork. she looks like a bag lady. 

she is still a very shy person, but she pretends to be cold and kind of mean instead. if she likes you, though, she’s just sarcastic and trying really hard to be funny. 

Big Lesbian. Huge. 

doesn’t want to be Known. if you’ve known her for longer than a year she’s been like five different people. whenever she feels like she’s falling into a pattern, she does something she thinks no one will expect. her motivation is as flakey as the fucking wind. 

in truth she’s incredibly sensitive and takes everything personally because her self-esteem is like. below rock bottom. 

still has nightmares about what she’s seen with her abilities, though she’s blocked a lot of it out during her day-to-day. if you’ve seen her have a nightmare, she’ll pretend it never happened. 

for some reason, she loves old people. maybe it’s because she can tell if they like her or not from the moment she meets them, and as a result, she doesn’t really care what they think. but also... she loves stories. 

probably has a lovecraft book with her at all times. still very much a goth. 

big Daria vibes. 

collects animal bones. she found a deer skull when she was a kid and all she felt when she touched it was peace. she slept with it like a teddy bear. even though she’s since suppressed her psychometry, she still finds animal bones to be somewhat soothing. 

at parties, the type of person to steal a bottle of vodka and a bag of cheetos and hiding in the bathtub to get turnt. that’s living the good life. if you need to pee, sucks, she’s not moving. 

anyways have some tik toks 

(body image tw) big mood

her last two brain cells trying to destroy her psychometry 

instead of spongebob quotes its joy division lyrics 

աǟռȶɛɖ ƈօռռɛƈȶɨօռֆ.

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖎𝖊𝖗𝖔𝖕𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖙. an opposites attract kind of thing. her camp bestie that is very much on the straight and narrow while she tends to wanna go. all over the place. she definitely calls them a nerd daily. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖔𝖑. someone whose leg she likes to pull, who she’ll regale with scary stories, whether they want her to or not. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖊𝖒𝖕𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖘. a girl rissa has a major crush on. not like she’ll ever say it out loud. 

𝖏𝖚𝖉𝖌𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙. a good influence of sorts. someone who curtails some of rissa’s more chaotic tendencies and sees the potential she has. someone who rissa actually feels a responsibility to.

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖑. opposite of judgement. someone who brings out the worst, most chaotic and painful and hurtful parts of her. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖑𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘. someone who understands her trauma, to some extent. they connect on that deep level, even if they don’t connect on the surface. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖒𝖎𝖙. she someone she can get weird with yk. probably smokes weed with her and knows a little too much about her for comfort. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖊𝖒𝖕𝖊𝖗𝖔𝖗. authority for her to rebel against. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗. someone with a fucked up past that triggers her psychometry like nothing else. maybe she brushed against them on the first day of camp and almost passed out. she avoids them like the plague. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖘𝖚𝖓. their optimism fucking kills her. she wants so badly to be mean to them but can never bring herself to. makes her want to be kind. 

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖒𝖔𝖔𝖓. is fascinated by her past life as a psychic prop and thinks she’s So Cool. rissa is probably crueler to them than anyone else, because she doesn’t want to think about that time in her life. 

[cassatine]

TROS rambles under cut. Spoilers ahead.

There’s a lot I didn’t particularly like in TROS, but I expected that, so I’m mostly disappointed by the execution. It feels extremely messy, stuffed full of things supposed to please the audience but without that much thought given to the overall effect or the underlying message.

It’s small things like a cute new droid whose function in the narrative is to deliver one hint for the high-stakes treasure hunt, and also be cute and sell merch. At least the droid has a function; I’m still wondering why the giant slug on the Falcon at the beginning of the movie. Isn’t the cast big enough. Aren’t there enough new characters as is. Did we need the slug. I’m aware it sounds like nitpicking, it’s just that I feel it’s representative of the film making unnecessary detours for cool factor while moving at breakneck speed, which makes the whole story suffer.

But there’s other, bigger things. Leia’s training, her having a saber, even if she put it down – it was such a big deal that Luke was the Last Jedi, the only one who could train Rey, and although we’ve seen Leia use the Force, there was absolutely nothing in the previous two movies to let us think she’d trained under Luke. I feel the main reason Leia has a saber is simply the need to replace the one yeeted by Ben so that he’d have a weapon in the final fight, and having another family saber handed to Rey was yet another way to confirm Rey as the chosen heir of the Jedi and the Skywalkers, something TROS really tried to hammer in imo; Leia’s saber and training, the pep talk with Force Ghost Luke (who doesn’t have anything to say to his nephew), everything about how the Jedi live in her in the final fight, plus the voices of Anakin, Obi-Wan, etc (who, like Luke, don’t have anything to say to Kylo/Ben), and the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia appearing to her at the end. They didn’t do that when their nephew and son died. I don’t really mind that Rey takes the Skywalker name, because I’m not big on the blood lineage fixation to start with, and the film doesn’t make her reasons explicit so I can find a way to make it work for me, but it’s the culmination of the pattern framing her as the one heir.

Even her ending up in Luke’s childhood home fits within it, but I have other issues with her ending up alone on Tatooine; mainly what the fuck am I supposed to do with it? Like if there was something about how she was, idk, starting a Jedi school AT LEAST that’d make sense for the story I think Abrams is trying to tell because right now… how are the Jedi not going to end if she’s basically in exile?? Wasn’t it such a big deal to see the Jedi continue? How did we end up pretty much back to square one, with the last of the Jedi self-exiled on an out-of-the-way planet for not-so-clear reasons? For that matter, how is Rey choosing exile in the grand tradition of Jedi who failed – Obi-Wan, Yoda, and later Luke – supposed to be read? We’re given no insight in what goes on in her head after Exegol; her reaction to Ben’s death I’m 100% certain is meant to be heartbreaking, and it’s filmed that way. But after that she’s just… it’s not clear *what* she is, because there’s some happiness on her part, yes, but it’s part of the over-the-top ROTJ-like happiness expressed by all the Resistance peeps at the end, like they’re all so glad the Empire, First and Final Order are gone that they’re high on it. But as far as characterization goes it’s hard to say whether Rey’s going through the motions, if she’s sad but content that at least Ben turned or smthg, or if she’s totally fine and dandy. There’s nothing about why she choses to go to Tatooine, why she chooses to use the Skywalker name, why she buries the sabers, or how the fuck she feels about anything. I don’t think everything in an ending needs to be made explicit and explained in details, but it all kinda feels like a cop-out.

Speaking of cop-outs, I could mention The Pit, but also... I know a lot of people wanted Finn to have the Force; I’ve always been on the fence, because I feared his having the Force would end up being the reason he defected, and I didn’t want that decision to boil down to the magic force field told him so. Well, he had A Feeling, which implies he’s Force sensitive at least? Him and a whole other bunch of ex-troopers? I don’t know what to make of this. I mean, sure, the FO indoctrinates kids, but apparently once the Force gives them A Feeling they just break out of it? But also, how much does the Force meddles in events, because it kind of feels like those Feelings are moving people to where they need to be for Plot to happen (Leia’s saber premonition doesn’t really help the thus it was written vibe).  

Neither Finn nor Poe had any personal arc to speak of; they don’t grow or learn or do shit beyond being Rey’s sidekicks on her speedrun to the big boss (literally it’s a treasure hunt to open the final dungeon and beat the big boss; that’s it that the plot). They do Cool Action Stuff, and once Leia dies become Generals in her stead, which has about zero impact on anything. Poe’s revealed to be a spice smuggler because I guess a real Star Wars trio™ needs an ex-spice smuggler, just like a real Star WarsTM needs training scenes and a family reveal and a planet-destroying weapon (not spherical this time woohoo) and some Palpatine sprinkled on top. The trio’s interactions were… Idk what’s going on there. Sure there’s lots of banter and one-liners, but it left me with the impression that the film tried to have something for every ship (minus, very glaringly, Finnrose) – Finn seems to be trying to declare something to Rey, which seems to piss off Poe, but it’s hard to say if it’s because Poe’s into Rey as well, or into Finn, who also seems to be into Poe, but less than into Rey. And then there’s almost no interaction between Finn and Rose, who’s side-lined for the whole fucking movie, but there’s Jannah, who has either shippy or sibling vibes with Finn, I have no idea honestly, and Zorii, because I guess every ex-spice smuggler needs a Leia analogue.

Speaking of Leia, I have more to be displeased about – her death was fucking underwhelming, and not given much impact. Having Kylo/Ben haunted by Han (Ghost? Memory? Hallucination?), while not something I dislike in itself – Han had his big moment in TFA, and here he completely overshadows Leia’s. She doesn’t even get to have actual dialogue with Kylo/Ben, and the yeeting his saber should have happened after Leia reached him imo; switching that would have given a lot more impact to her death. The dialogue with Han doesn’t even need to change, but if Leia had contacted Kylo/Ben after the “I know what I have to do” repeat, it’d have been a more effective scene (and again, Han already had his big moment in TFA). The aftermath wasn’t particularly well-done either; characters are sad she died, of course, but it’s like perfunctory five minutes sadness and then she’s barely mentioned again, and her body just lies there in the background of some scenes while people talk.

I’m running out of steam, so in conclusion –

TROS I think mostly fails because it takes no risks; it’s trying to have something in it for everyone, and goes about it messily, without that much care for the big picture, which is how it ends pretending to have a happy end when we’ve just seen the final act of three generations of Skywalker tragedy. It doesn’t commit to anything, excepted leaving room for fun trio adventures sequels, because if there’s one thing we know, it’s that self-exiled Jedi are always found by some bright-eyed tentative student, if not a call for help from old friends.

[leo-interactive-fiction]

I'm absolutely fascinated by The Residence of Reeker Hill, I'm very excited to see what you do with such an interesting premise! Would you be okay with sharing some info on the ROs, and what you mean by an unreliable perspective on your ROs?

Unfortunately, Residence of Reeker Hill is being put on the backburner as I work on my other two books, but due to that I don’t mind being a bit generous and going over some of the inner workings and ideas I have regarding it, but fair warning they are not so fleshed out and some of the ideas are in my mind at this point and not on paper. So spoilers from this point on haha.

So I had planned 7 ROs for this book: The Gardener, The Maid/Butler, The Cook, The Elusive Servant, The Failed Actor/Actress, The Salacious Twins, and The Nightmare. I’ll go over each one in detail later, but first I’ll detail a bit about the setting.

Setting: So I have this set in a mansion, colloquially known simply as the Residence. It’s detailed as more of an ethereal place, unable to be seen or entered by common folk. I kinda wanted to give it something of a Hotel California feel, but with a mansion. There’s a big lawn garden in front, the two story mansion in the center, and some open space in the back, while the entire area is surrounded by a thick forest. I have the mansion set up to have most of the residential and recreational stuff in the first floor east wing, while the utilities like kitchen, laundry, servants quarters are located in the first floor west wing. The second floor is divided into three sections, with the west being for an extremely large library, the middle serving as something of an observatory/drawing room, and the east being a forbidden area that no one is ever ever allowed to go into. This place would basically serve to move the plot along later once the MC gets (somewhat) more comfortable with their surroundings.

ROs: Each RO I have planned has a specified reason for actually being in the residence. The residence specifically targets those who are essentially down on their luck with no where else to turn, so each RO in turn has a problem such as that. Unfortunately, the residence is a cruel and toyful place, and while it allows each individual a new beginning and allows everyone to be the best version of themselves they can be, it also essentially works to personify the darker nature that caused the RO’s problem in the first place. This dark nature is showcased as a unique monster that symbolized each RO’s past that they run from.

Berry/Bonny: The first RO you meet is the gardener of the residence. They’re typically seen in dirty overalls and a straw hat, and tend to always carry around their watering can. They enjoy tending to the plants and have a considerable fear of flame and anything involving it, so they don’t eat anything cooked.

Burns/Burna: This is Berry/Bonny’s respective monster, a figure with charred and blackened skin, wearing a ragged jumpsuit, gasmask, and carrying a gasoline can. Wherever they show, a blazing fire is sure to follow. They represent the RO’s involvement with the fire that burned down the entirety of their family estate and killed those inside in the process.

Victor/Victoria: A raven haired butler/maid of the residence. They’re reserved to a fault, and talk only in short, submissive statements. The most efficient individual you’ll ever meet, they have a routine and timer for every action they take within the residence.

Viscer/Visceris: Victor/Victoria’s inner demon, a white haired, sadistic and hedonistic figure. While the only appearance change that happens is their hair, red eyes, and appearance of fangs, their personality takes a dramatic change to one of a self-seeking and human-loathing nature. They represent the repressed stress the RO faces from being a servant all their life and the pent up aggression that ultimately gets released. They are the reason for a past incident where they ultimately ended up murdering a family of five.

Cecil/Cecilia: The red-headed chef of the residence. Slightly snappy to those they feel have no common sense, they are on average a fairly kind individual, if a bit asocial. With a high sense of duty, they find great reward in having others enjoy the food they dedicate themselves to make.

Canibel/Canibella: The regret that haunts the RO, a stickly, long limbed monstrosity with rows of teeth in a mouth that stretches across the majority of their face. With sunken, hollow space in place of where their eyes are, they represent the blinding hunger they faced during an expedition they took with fellow friends in the arctic. With no more resources, Cecil/Cecilia turn to murdering and cooking the rest of the group, eating and acquiring an infatuation with human flesh.

Istellen/Istella: The shy young adult that accidentally mistakes their room for yours near the end of the book. Their name had yet to be revealed, but it is in the coding. They appear to personify a natural innocence. They are a failed actor/actress, due to the rise of an inexplicable case of stagefright that stained their reputation and ruined their chances in the industry. They have yet to recover and now very rarely talk to strangers and have a hard time being looked at by even a single person.

Inseen/Inseena: The creature responsible for the RO’s massive stage-fright, this short, sickly looking boy/girl stares unblinkingly with black, empty space where their eyes would be, an unknown black liquid seeping out of the sockets as an ever-present thin smile completes the face. The creature represents the RO’s past unreasonable desire to be the center of the spotlight, showcased by the creatures still figure until someone were to look away, then inexplicably they are one step closer. Unlike the rest of the monsters, this one is detached from the RO, and haunts them as well as you. The sleepless nights they caused the RO caused them mental fatigue that led to a psychotic episode on the stage.

Quinn/Quill: The elusive fourth servant of the house, seen so little that even the other servants forget their presence. A young adult who begins appearing to you like an apparition a little bit after the dining room scene, on the way back to your room alone. They wear a more Victorian-gothic era attire compared to the other residents. In all actuality, this servant is an apparition; a ghost of a long-dead servant that haunts the halls of the residence and has made themselves known to you due to your specific ability to see Vice (I'll explain the MC's actual vision meaning later). They wish to pass on, but require your help to find the person responsible for the accident that killed them all those years ago.

Sin/Sina: Quinn/Quill's alter-ego, a poltergeist spirit with a deep-seated hatred for humanity due to the accidental death that took their life along with Quinn/Quill's. They believe their was no accident, and it was a conspiration of several of the servants to see them killed. Unable to forgive, they seek to haunt and corrupt Quinn/Quill in order to enact their revenge through Quinn/Quill's more physical form, since they are unable to.

Penn & Lann/ Penta & Lana: The salacious twins. Pe can be identified by their more brightly colored hair and energetic attitude compared to the more muted color and personality of La. While two individuals, they are never seen apart. Consistently quoting each other as one body and mind, the two partake in every action together, from monotonous tasks like brushing teeth and sleeping to the more intricate duties of talking and sleeping with others. Being of similar spirit, they both enjoy the hunt and chase of finding partners to bed, leading to a considerably tainted reputation that eventually led to their excommunication from their community.

Pelatin/Pelatina: A grotesque and malformed clump of limbs sticking out of a singular misshapen body. Two heads can be seen vying for control of every limb, and the body juts in awkward ways due to this. This malformation represents the unnaturally strong dependency each of the twins has developed for the other, despite each wanting to be their own individual. This desire for independence and the inner competition between the two is what lead to them seeking sexual respite for validation, but eventually it lead to their invalidity.

The Nightmare: Not just a nightmare, this is Your Nightmare, and the reason for your spiral into insanity and eventual denouncement from your family. Showcased a shadowy and bloody figure, either masculine or feminine, they represent different things depending on your decisions through the game. If you embrace the nightmare, it represents your bloodthirsty desire. All of the events from before you entered the mansion weren't visions: You sought to murder every individual you met until your eventual escape from the family who attempted to shelter you. If you attempt to rehabilitate from your waking nightmares, they represent a malevolent dark spirit seeking to corrupt and possess you to undertake their gruesome actions. If you remain neutral or simply coexist with the nightmare, it represents your repressed stress from attempting to lead a normal life. It is an altered coping mechanism from the inability to successfully lead a fulfilling life.

Now about the visions, and what they really are. Most of it has to do with what Your Nightmare is to you, but one thing is certain: The visions are very lifelike. Basically, depending on your decisions and standing with the nightmare, there's different ways the visions can be determined: Sick and twisted hallucination of a demented individual attempting to justify their slaughter, The supernatural ability to see a completely different world known as Vice, or moments in which your Nightmare is attempting to possess you. This, and the decision of RO, will correlate to the ending of the game, of which there are several different interpretations for what actually happened, and what is or isn't real. So basically, the player chooses how the game interprets the symptoms you have haha.

Obvious disclaimer, this would be the fundamental basis that I have to work with, but is always subject to change as I flesh out more of the story at a later date haha.

[retrauxpunk]

sv 6.06

recap post of the penultimate episode of silicon valley under the cut (with spoilers as usual)

this miiiight be a downer post so if you want to avoid that ... this is your warning

...

...

... i think this is the first episode recap post i’m writing that doesn’t start with ‘what the fuck’ because honestly i think i found this episode a bit weird and not ................that good? and MAYBE it’s just because i’ve had a shitty couple days? i’m not totally sure.

but.

I dunno.

I’ll try do this chronologically.

it was a good point of yikes with richard not actually having secured the AT&T deal and just telling his employees that he had because like, that’s a good potential source of conflict. i’m down for that.

i liked when he was talking to AT&T guy and then there’s a cut to dinesh and gilfoyle standing their like shocked parents. dinesh’s expression of ‘WHAT’ ... yeah i like that. also gilfoyle looked especially fine as hell, particularly the hands.

okay.

i 

... gilfoyle using THE AI TO DEBUG CODE? i think this broke my suspension of disbelief. this seems wildly stupid and implausible given, like, gilfoyle’s WHOLE CHARACTER? i don’t really buy that someone who’s as security-conscious and conscientious as he is would, um, DO THIS? please feel free to present counterarguments if you disagree with this (or any other points in this post tbh) because i’m honestly open to hearing them, in fact i would welcome anything that made this episode feel more sense-making and less ‘what the fuck did the show just decide to fire all their tech consultants and throw character out the window?’

LIKE. it’s partly the fact that this seems a bit farfetched on the technological realism front but it’s MORE SO the fact that it just seems so NOT GILFOYLE.

GIVEN THAT FIVE EPISODES AGO HE GOT MAD AT DINESH FOR LETTING THE TWO AIs TALK. HE’S CLEARLY AWARE OF THE RISKS.

and he acts like this cavalier dont give a fuck asshole but i DO NOT BELIEVE that he would risk ALL OF PIED PIPER’S CODE with his AI?????? FUCK what is this!!...?

..............????

okay.

i’m  ............ upset that they seem to have COMPLETELY DITCHED this whole jarrich thing they were building up. i’m NOT saying i’m mad that they’re not canonically a romantic couple. i’m saying that -- shipper goggles completely not in the picture -- the first four episodes built up so much stuff for them, there was SO MUCH about their relationship, and with 6.05 and 6.06 there was just fucking NOTHING. and it just. feels like kinda shitty writing? UNLESS?? in the final episode there’s a lot of richard and jared content to make up for it?

like the first four episodes had so MUCH content about their relationship (jared’s whole generally lovelorn thing, accidentally driving to the hacker hostel, quitting, richard throwing a fit when he quit and watching with this cocktail of sadness and bitterness and anger as jared leaves, their fight at the hacker hostel, JARED BRIEFLY FORGETTING TO BE MAD AT RICHARD AND SMILING DURING THE WHOLE BUYING HOOLI THING, richard apologising and telling jared he missed him, JARED FUCKING CRYING) and then there’s just NOTHING? what the FUCK? IS THIS? it HONESTLY feels like the writers were building up to a big richard and jared moment (whether romantic or platonic, either works) but then that storyline got axed by an executive and they got forced into dropping or something, or they just fucking collectively FORGOT about this whole arc seriously WHAT. IS THIS?????

this is the first time in my life i’ve gotten this level of upset about any tv and i guess, well, whatever they do with the finale, it can’t be as bad as what they did with game of thrones!! (i don’t watch game of thrones or read asoiaf, but it was pretty impossible not to catch wind of that whole clusterfuck) that’s gonna be my source of ......... solace.

so yeah.

for FUCK’s sake. all of jared’s talking about gwart, i just. if that’s meant to be sincere i don’t fucking buy it because no fucking way did jared imprint so hard on a person who was fundamentally a rebound

I’M STILL MAD ABOUT THE LACK OF JARRICH STORYLINE WHAT THE FUCK this is not even a queerbaiting issue THEY HAD A FUCKING STORYLINE TOGETHER AND NOW IT’S VANISHED INTO FUCKING SMOKE WHAT THE FUCK

ALSO DID THEY SERIOUSLY JUST WIPE OUT HOLDEN OFF-SCREEN ARE WE REALLY MEANT TO JUST IMAGINE THAT IN THE GAP BETWEEN EPISODES JARED JUST CONTINUOUSLY EMOTIONALLY ABUSED/HARRASSED HOLDEN INTO QUITTING WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK

honestly when i set out to write this recap i was just like ‘this prob won’t be a long post because all i really have feelings about and want to talk about is the ending of the episode’ but clearly ... that has turned out not to be the case

okay anyway, yeah, i mean, it’s definitely plausible that if richard and jared were to real life people that jared would rejoin pied piper and they’d just simply never address their falling out, right, i mean people are plausibly that emotionally constipated sometimes and don’t communicate in situations where you’d expect them to.

BUT THIS ISN’T REAL LIFE IT’S FUCKING TV and it appears to me rather much like shitty screenwriting when you set up a relationship conflict that’s fucking PACKED with juicy emotional moments and then it DISAPPEARS INTO THIN AIR what the FUCK

jesus christ

okay

anyway.

russfest.

honestly when jared was seeing gwart around i was a bit like, okay if this meant to be a legit hallucination it’s a bit Much because, really, jared being that genuinely devoted to gwart that the breakup with her cut him that much? i’m not buying it 

so i’m glad it turned out to be Not a hallucination

i liked the twist that actually yaonet wasn’t throttling pied piper, pied piper itself just wasn’t good enough. i liked richard breaking down over it. tbh on a subjectively level i found it a bit painful to watch because he really did behave like a toddler and that was a bit, like, second-hand-embarrassment. but i don’t like object to it or anything.

WHY IS THIS SEASON ONLY SEVEN EPISODES.

the fucking speed with which richard breaks down and then magically finds a solution honestly feels way too rushed and unearned.

U N E A R N E D

that is how i feel about the resolution of this episode. like.

okay so if i remember/understand this correctly, richard’s [extremely hand-wavey solution] was to apply his compression algorithm to son of anton which allowed it to become more intelligent and learn faster/better? and that basically FIXED PIED PIPER? he used gilfoyle’s [a tad unrealistically] bitching AI to like ... have pied piper fix itself? 

i barely understand it.

and it’s not like i demand a fully fleshed-out solution, right, like with the middle-out jerkoff epiphany, that wasn’t fleshed out but there was enough detail for it to feel believable. whereas with this ... it did not feel like that. 

yeah the whole thing felt way too rushed.

what even was it? like, gilfoyle was using son of anton on pipernet to debug things ... whereas richard first used his compression algorithm on son of anton, then set son of anton loose on pied piper? okay that makes, like, enough sense that if they poured more time and detail into this, then i’d probably be totally happy accepting this in the storyline and my suspension of disbelief wouldn’t have been fucking skullfucked

but this, just. this pacing. i did not like it. it felt massively unearned because there were, what, a very small number of minutes between when richard finds out his tech is inadequate to when he finds a solution?

GOD THEY COULD’VE MADE THIS SO MUCH BETTER IF THEY’D PUT AN EPISODE BETWEEN PROBLEM AND SOLUTION INSTEAD OF JUST LIKE TWO FUCKING MINUTES

this makes me SO MAD IT GIVES ME THE CONFIDENCE TO THINK I COULD WRITE A BETTER STORY THEN THEY DID? FUCK???????

???

okay like yeah totally possible the writers had constraints outside of their control and they did the best they could. but. i’m still not ... happy with the result lol

anyway yeah i’m fucking cheesed off about how richard gets skullfucked with the inadequacy of his own tech, has a breakdown, and then MERE MINUTES OF SCREENTIME LATER, he has a wild solution that works!

and sure, they had it appear to fail first, which was good. but then it magically was back up and running! and yeah i liked how russ said ‘lights!’ and it turned out that this magical new pied piper had gotten so awesome that it build this new feature for itself or whatever, but, honestly, it happened way too quickly to feel believable or satisfying and i’m mad.

because this show has set a pretty high standard in the past and now it’s been a fucking let-down with this episode. god.

what the fuck is this pacing? it was so good at the beginning of this season!! WHAT IS THIS???

AND IF THE PROBLEM IS TIME

THEN WHY THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE SO MANY PLOTLINES WITH FILLER? THE WHOLE ETHAN CONFLICT. GILFOYLE AND MONICA VS TRACY. GAVIN FUCKING BELSON’S STUPID BOOK DEAL. can you imagine how much better this russfest plotline would’ve been if they’d had MORE TIME from not doing those ultimately unimportant subplots? fuck

i have legitimately worked myself into a rage writing this post. i did not expect to have this many feelings, to this level of intensity.

and it’s fucking frustrating because the bones of an awesome arc are here! the moment when the AT&T guy sees the giant hologram from the plane, that could’ve been actually epic rather than a feeling of ‘i know this is meant to be epic but it just feels totally hollow because they completely fucking compressed the biggest part of this whole episode into five fucking minutes’

and richard’s breakdown where he’s jumping on the laptop, screaming about ‘six years’? god that point would’ve been amazing if there’d been more time to explore it!

on a lighter note, i was amused when richard said he had gilfoyle’s laptop because i was like ‘oh okay it’s nice to know that richard is a l33t enough hax0r that he can get through gilfoyle’s undoubtedly Strong laptop security with [presumably] relative ease’ ... and then it turns out it’s dinesh’s laptop and i’m like, ah, okay, less impressive then XD

...there’s no way that the girls in jian-yang’s ‘coding class’ were stupid enough to believe that writing fake amazon reviews constitutes ‘coding’. not in fucking 2019.

i’m mad.

god this has lowered my expectations of the series finale SO MUCH which i guess may be a good thing because, y’know, there’s less capacity for disappointment now.

IT’S OKAY.

IT’S OKAY.

EVEN IF THE SERIES ENDS ON A SHIT NOTE, WE HAD FIVE AND A HALF SEASONS OF SHOW THAT RANGED FROM FUCKING AMAZING TO NOT AS GOOD BUT STILL ALRIGHT.

and i have a whole imagination’s worth of potential fan content to be created once the show’s over. i don’t know how long this sv love affair will last but i sure fucking intend to keep it alive as long as i can.

on the topic of fan content, if you’re interested in making sv fan stuff and receiving it as a christmas/holiday gift, please consider signing up for the silicon valley secret santa/gift exchange that i’m running :))) the official blog for it is @svexchange2k19 and the sign-up form is here

[douxreviews]

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - ‘Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson’ Review

"The mission is ladies' night."

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. leaves its usual heavy storytelling aside and delivers one of its most unique episodes. Very Whedonesque and definitely the funniest one they have ever done. What's not to love?

"Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson" is a well crafted episode: written with confidence, produced with style and very well acted. There is one detail I'd like to address first, because it's the only flaw in an otherwise terrific episode: Simmons' behavior and how it doesn't fracture her friendship with Daisy.

See, last season Simmons tried to stop Fitz from ripping the inhibitor from Daisy's brain, but afterwards she sided with Fitz, didn't show one ounce of sympathy towards her friend and acted against her direct orders. We never saw their friendship recover from that. This season Simmons again acted against what everybody had decided, and in this very episode she challenged (!) Daisy of all people. Yes, she is not emotionally well and her unstoppable drive to find Fitz is clouding her judgement, but her inability to understand Davis' and Piper's perspectives, for instance, is jarring, especially when it leads her to call them cowards. How dare she? She is not confronted nearly enough, though, and the episode proceeds to give her validation, for Fitz is right around the corner. It's not that her jump of faith could not have brought her what she was looking for, but more that her selfishness was not addressed as it should have been. So when Daisy and Simmons are high and professing their love for one another, I can only conclude that Daisy is the best, most patient friend ever, and one that Simmons, at this point, does not deserve.

But enough with that issue, because this was such a great episode that it deserves more happy words than I'm giving it so far, and stoned Simmons was a big part of that greatness.

It's boys' night for Fitz and Enoch when they arrive on the planet of Kitson and must gamble for their tickets back to the orbit of Jupiter. Fitz and Enoch are a great duo, and it makes so much sense that a sentient android (or whatever Enoch is) would end up being Fitz's mate. But is he really? When Enoch professes that Fitz has become his best friend, Fitz doesn't return the sentiment immediately. Only later, when Enoch is depressed and in need of a pep talk, does Fitz say Enoch is his best friend also. Was he being honest or just trying to cheer Enoch up? I'm going with the second option, for Fitz wasn't paying attention to their growing bond at all. He is so focused on the mission (it's all about Simmons) that Enoch's attachment to him flew over his head. Or maybe Fitz didn't expect that someone with such a robotic demeanor would have real feelings.

In any case, it's nice that Enoch is being fleshed out as a character. He is genuine and faithful (let's not forget that his previous version sacrificed himself for the team), which makes him someone easy to root for. I mean, how unbelievably cute was he in this episode? Even his brief existential crisis was cute, and it opens new possibilities for the character. Now that his mission as a chronicon is cancelled, he can just become part of the gang. :)

While Enoch and Fitz were the emotional center of the episode, Daisy and Simmons were the comedic one. And OH MY GOD I LOVED IT SO MUCH. Why, oh why, didn't this show try stuff like this before? I know the one-off stories of season one were more miss than hit, and the show became extremely serialized from season two onward, but episodes like this are gold. Gold, I tell you. Okay, I have a weak spot for episodes where characters are high or under a spell and act all goofy. Still, it's nice to see these characters you've grown fond of just having some fun together. And after the doom and gloom of last season, this was a welcomed change of tone.

It's ladies' night for Daisy and Simmons when they arrive on the planet of Kitson and completely lose focus of their mission after they inadvertently get stoned. Chloe Bennet and Elizabeth Henstridge play off each other really well and dive head first into the silliness of the script. You can tell they had lots of fun shooting this episode. I loved several moments, but my absolute favorite one was Simmons directing Daisy's blast and yelling "Fire." That was totally Whedon-y, wasn't it? Daisy narrating the night to herself was another hoot. Daisy, in general, was awesome, and her fight against the hunters was one of the coolest the show has ever done. I mean, she was high and still got the moves. And what about that music score? All hit, no miss.

Skimmons or Death!

Even though this was not the typical arc heavy episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it was no filler either, as we got some significant arc progression. See, it's completely possible to design an episode as a standalone that anyone can randomly watch whenever they want too just for the fun of it and still make it relevant to the arc story (not that I have anything against purely one-off stories, they have their value too!). We learned that there are several types of chronicons, one of these types are hunters, who are after Fitz for... reasons. The hunter we met said that Daisy and the others are "out of time," as in out of their original timeline. But Fitz isn't, right? The Fitz who was out of time died, and this Fitz actually belongs to this timeline. So why did the hunter take him?

I know many fans were frustrated that Simmons and Fitz were separated yet again, but I loved that they only saw each other for like five seconds and Fitz was taken. At first, the search for Fitz looked like an unnecessary side plot this season, but now it matters and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. And it's not only Jemma who wants to find Fitz. His best friend Enoch will want to get him back too.

Intel and Assets

- After saying "Expecto Patronum," Simmons hallucinated a tiny monkey Fitz. Of course the image of Fitz would appear as her patron.

- I loved that Simmons, even stoned, was able to tell that the sound they were listening to wasn't part of the hallucination. Girl is smart.

- So, is Daisy cool with the use of torture now? I wonder if this will be explored in depth later or if we are just supposed to accept that a year in space has led her to this point.

- The planet of Kitson has only one city, apparently, also called Kitson, and it's ruled by a man named... Kitson. Boy, is he self-centered or what?

- The title of this episode is a reference to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

- Did the hunters really need to kill the hostess? She seemed so nice.

Quotes

Enoch: "I'm well-versed in over 10,000 intergalactic games of chance, several of which are being played in this casino." Fitz: "And you're only just telling me that now? Which games are you good at?" Enoch: "Approximately none."

Inspector: "The planet Kitson is a nasty place, absent any basic scrap of decency." Piper: "Somebody just described Florida."

Inspector: "'What happens on the planet of Kitson...'" Daisy: "Stays on Kitson?" Inspector: "No. 'Is contagious and burns.'"

Enoch: "There are other ways to earn money." Fitz: "How?" Enoch: "The brothels of Kitson. We are both healthy and not unattractive specimens, and I am well-versed in over one hundred and thirt-" Fitz: "Stop."

Daisy: "Are you feeling okay?" Simmons: "Are you?" Daisy: "I asked you first." Simmons: "I asked you second." Daisy: "On three. One, two, three..." Simmons: "I'm not okay at all." Daisy: "I'm tripping balls."

Daisy: "I don't think it's the atmosphere." Simmons: "No, that was silly. It's clearly psychopharmacological expiali-" Skimmons: "-docious."

Simmons: "You had big hair." Daisy: "You had big... nerd face. What house are you in? Gryffindor?" Simmons: "Ravenclaw, girl, please."

Simmons: "I think my parents are mice." Daisy: "That makes sense."

Enoch: "What are you doing?" Fitz: "I'm rebooting you." Enoch: "I'm not comfortable with this level of intimacy."

Daisy: "If I can't quake it, I'll break it."

Simmons: "I have reason to believe that my future husband is behind that door." Guard: "And what reason is that?" Simmons: "The dolphin told me in a secret signal only I can hear that was meant just for me."

I loved it and I'm grading it according to the amount of fun I had. Four out of four bad little puffies.

--

Lamounier

Note: I'm so, so very sorry for the lateness of this review.

[brazenautomaton]

Now that Silent Partner, Unfinished Business is complete, it’s time for answers and trivia and commentary and other such spoilers under a readmore! Send me an ask if you have any other questions about stuff, or post it as an AO3 comment.

First, the chapter titles. Following the naming convention of 100 Bullets, each of them references or alludes to the chapter number that it is.

One Is The Lowliest Number - references “One Is The Loneliest Number” by Three Dog Night. 

Folie a Deux - “Folie a Deux” or “Madness of Two” is when people transmit psychiatric illness, delusions, or hallucinations through social connection.

Bad Company - references the phrase “Three’s company, four’s a crowd” - and “Bad Company”, by Bad Company, on the album Bad Company.

Forewarned is Foreboding - references the phrase “Forewarned is Forearmed”

Slaughterhouse - references “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut

Six Degrees of Severance - references the concept of “Six Degrees Of Separation”, and the process of severing a connection.

Magnificent - references the classic Western “The Magnificent Seven”.

Termination Procedure - AKA “Termin8ion Procedure”, it’s the process you go through to end someone’s employment.

Never A Cloudy Day - September is the ninth month of the year, "September” by Earth Wind And Fire contains the lyric “Say do you remember / Dancing in September / Never was a cloudy day”.

Epilogue: Decision - Deci-, as in decimal, is the Latin prefix meaning ten or tenth. 

I wrote the first version of this story over 10 years ago. I wrote myself into a corner in Chapter 5, because the Yotsuba Kira was still Higuchi, and it lay untouched for a decade. Naomi could write fluently and at length, her relationship with Misa was way easier, everything else was way easier, and it honestly wasn’t that good. I think like 1/3rd of chapters 1 through 4 are made up of text from the old version?

The idea of this being a fix fic to bring back a character that the narrative shortchanged was not the first idea. The first idea was “100 Bullets and Death Note ask exactly the same question, what would you do if you could kill someone and get away with it. But they answer it in totally different ways. How could those two concepts meet? Well, who in Death Note was betrayed and would seek revenge? Naomi Misora is a good candidate. How do I bring her back to life in a way that doesn’t seem she got off scot free?”

The original version of the story had no hints about the Minutemen (or the Trust, L’s employers) because none of that stuff was in the 100 Bullets comic yet, or at least not the trade paperbacks I had access to. The Minutemen and the Trust are kind of lame, to be honest, and they kinda dilute the elements and stories that made 100 Bullets compelling, but they are a perfect match for all the unanswered questions about L that Ryuzaki vocalizes in chapter 6.

You probably noticed how everyone had to stammer and search for the word “aphasia”. Did you notice that Misa was the only one who ever correctly used the word, had it immediately called to mind, and wasn’t reading it off a piece of paper? She was thinking about that word a lot more than everyone else.

I don’t remember when I first started using the double-slash notation for written text, but I figured that calling out written text was extremely, extremely important in a story where written text is extremely, extremely important for multiple reasons. I don’t know if I’ll use it for anything else I write.

Light’s symbolic fruit is the apple, obviously. Naomi is seen drinking orange juice and eating orange-flavored things, because they are as dissimilar as apples and oranges. Misa -- stuck between them and unsure of whose identity she will adopt -- drinks a lot of spring water.

“Midland Carbide Labs” and “Amalgamated Flourodynamics” are the two opposing player teams in the Half-Life mod “Science and Industry”, where players abduct scientists from each other to research their weapons.

Beta reader @ellieintheskywithroxy is a qt3.14.

Misa did a photoshoot, as a Malkavian vampire schoolgirl, for White Wolf Publishing back in the day. She thinks that White Wolf owns vampires the same way the Tolkien estate owns hobbits, so any changes they make to their setting are Official Vampire Changes, and she was miffed they got rid of Masquerade. Depending on her mood she thinks Naomi is either a Brujah or a Toreador.

Light’s “decoy Kira” plan was going to explode if it ever got to the point where he commanded or tricked Kira-Y into giving up his memories -- Nabiki Egawa would remember everything and they’d figure out Kira’s deception real fast.

The fact that Light’s WoW character is a Holy Paladin who he did not earn but instead purchased illicitly is extremely intentional. He plays WoW instead of a made-up game because A: I can cite details and people will appreciate the deep pulls and B: if I made up my own online game with a character as completely braindead easy to play as a Holy Pally in Burning Crusade, to allow Light to type messages while playing, it would look like I was making up absurd nonsense to make things easy on the character.

Naomi’s reaction to the BB case mirrors my own. I honestly could not finish the light novel because I found the authorial voice so grating, and the combination of smugness with the complete lack of knowledge about how things work in the setting of the story (literally one of the first things in the narration is something along the lines of “Of course her superiors were demeaning her, she was a woman and Japanese and this was America and we don’t need to go into any more detail than that”) was infuriating. And in the story that is supposed to be Naomi’s time to shine, she accomplishes nothing, saves no one, may as well not have gotten out of bed, and the things we’re supposed to see as her being a genius are her ability to follow along the clues that she is being spoon-fed by the actual serial killer. Jesus, dude. I said this whole incident gave her an incredible sense of impostor syndrome and hatred for her job, because the rest of the world -- like the LN itself -- acts like she accomplished something when she clearly did not. 

Similarly, I changed the details of Misa’s confinement to make sense. On someone else’s post, someone asked if Misa was tortured -- the depiction of her treatment is so inconsistent and incoherent that this is impossible to answer in the canon. They say she was denied water for three days, but has none of the symptoms of it. They have her bound a to gurney apparatus that takes twenty minutes to set up, and let her out every single time she asks to pee, and somehow she never tries to escape. And of course she gets out after a month of not moving with no muscle atrophy. This version is supposed to be a coherent model of treatment that sits on the borderline, in a grey area -- it’s torture if it’s done to inflict pain, and not torture if it’s done out of a reasonable concern for safety. The Second Kira was the most dangerous human being on the planet Earth and they had no idea how she worked. Some of her confinement was obviously necessary for the sake of safety. But how much of it was, and for how long was it warranted?

Most of the new Death Note rules are introduced to set up things that happen later, answer niggling questions I had, or just flesh out the concepts introduced. But the rule about “Once your lifespan goes negative, if you try to update it again, it just flips the fuck out” is just so Naomi and Misa can’t know how much lifespan Rem gave them.

There was no good or natural time to show it, but the moment Misa heard about rule 38a, which says that you can only regain your memory of the Death Note six times, she figured out if it was possible to surrender a Death Note that wasn’t being actively haunted (it was), she just reclaimed and gave up an evidence sheet of //ARVC-5// five more times.

Ryuzaki has no idea where the pina coladas are coming from and at this point he is too afraid to ask.

[shewantedtobeasecretgirl]

9. My Sharon…ah a.k.a. porn star alter egos, the other Stone and a dangerous ginger (Part One)

We’ve already been waiting for our food for almost an hour; unlike we do during our usually chaotic meals accompanied by parallel discussions, we’re all sitting silently staring in front of ourselves, trying to use as little energy as possible.

“I’ve told you we should have chosen that vegetarian restaurant…” Jeff mutters in a monotonous voice.

“Of course… and the predator part of the team can go to hell, right? Vegetarian restaurant, ‘course… over my dead body, Jeff.” Smitty hisses indignantly.

“Hey, I see food! Finally!” I sigh relieved as I spot the waitress approaching our table carrying two huge trays with burgers, burritos and fries. On arriving, she recoils desperately since everybody starts shouting their orders to be the first to be served. After a few seconds of hesitation, she puts the trays on the table and then flees terrified. I’m not surprised about her reaction; I’ve never been in the middle of a locust swarm but it can be something similar.

“And people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp…” Judy and Stone recite in unison but realizing the situation they both fall silent embarrassed.

“What???” I inquire confused. Their sudden telepathic connection is pretty strange, not to mention the fact that it didn’t make any sense.

“Armaments, Chapter Two.” Stone lectures me briefly with an eyeroll.

“Verses Nine to Twenty-One.” Judy adds helpfully probably seeing my still clueless expression.

“It’s from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. When Arthur and his knights encounter the Killer Rabbit, they think that the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch might…”

“Thanks for the explanation Mike, I think I’ve heard enough...”

“Finally, my precious.” Judy rubs her hands together and grabs the Tabasco bottle to pour an enormous amount of hot sauce on her large cheeseburger.

“Tabasco? Don’t your lips hurt?” Jeff’s head perks up.

Why would her lips hurt? Did Jeff bite her mouth on the date? I glance at Karrie who answers with a barely visible shrug. So she hasn’t succeeded to learn some details of yesterday’s events either… I haven’t been able to get rid of the guys and make Judy tell everything. I could swear she has been hiding intentionally the whole day, she pretended sleeping when I got on their bus and fake-shopped between the shelves of the store at the gas station for long minutes so that we wouldn’t meet at women’s restroom. She’s quite naive if she thinks I would give up and forget about it so easily…

“Why would her lips hurt?” Scully echoes my thoughts.

“Oh, eheh, I thought I got herpes but luckily it was only a false alarm…” she snickers awkwardly. Herpes? Jesus, she’s impossible… Okay, Jeff definitely didn’t bite her anywhere… I’m not the only one who’s shocked by her words, though, Jeff exchanges a meaningful look with the terrified Mike who forgets to chew for a few seconds, Dave narrows his eyes and glances at Stone who answers with a content smirk. Am I hallucinating or do they know something I don’t?

“Uhm, but really, Tabasco? I didn’t know you liked hot sauce.” I try to direct the chat back to culinary topics.

“Oh, I adore it! But… ugh… cucumber…” she picks out a few slices of vegetable of her burger.

“Are you crazy? I mean, that’s not an actual question, of course you are; cucumber is one of the best things in the world... But if you’re such a picky eater, then take the consequences… ” Stone leans over the table and steals the green treasures from her plate.

“Hey, you haven’t even touched your fries, are you a potato snob? And it is him who calls me a picky eater… Waster… Eye for an eye.” Judy fires back and grabs the small paper bag of fries greedily from Stone’s plate.

“Guys, could you suspend the food fight until we finish our meal? You can stay here and disembowel each other with plastic cutlery but please, wait until we leave, I can’t stand blood…” Eric intervenes. “Judy, are you serious, you eat cheeseburger with knife and fork?” he breaks the character of the form teacher.

“I have to… my mouth cavity is extreme small.” Judy explains making Stone snort.

“Hmph… this is new to me, I’ve never heard this excuse. OUCH!!!” he allows himself a sexist joke, which I immediately punish by stomping at full strength on his left foot.

“Maybe because you’ve never even got close to any type of situations when you could hear it.” Jeff joins the attack with verbal means and a satisfied grin.

“Thank you very much, Jeff… Eeed… your partner is hurting meeee....” Stone whines in the voice of annoying squealer kids.

“Because she’s my feminist girl who immediately avenges jerk behavior.” Ed presses a long and slow kiss on my cheek, which makes me immediately pull closer to him.

“And she bites too…” I whisper into his ear making sure that no one else can hear it. Okay, I know, whispering in bigger company is not the most polite behavior but… it’s been a while since we…

“And how was the exhibition?” Scully’s annoying capon voice pulls me back in the present.

“The s...exhibition…” Smitty giggles and earns a head-slap from Karrie for his immature joke.

“I liked it a lot… Zach has really good eyes to find art in everyday life. It’s cool how these paintings reflect on current public issues or even on each other… You know, painters usually don’t use each other’s work as canvas but with graffiti… anything can happen. The angry owner paints the wall or it gets completed or altered by other artists… And this is why Zach’s work is so worthy; he takes snapshots of society…” Judy rambles unaware of the fact that Jeff is listening to her with dreamy heart-eyes.

“Jeff, I’ve started being jealous, you’ve never taken me to any intellectual programs, always those smoky pubs…” Stone pretends jealousy. Scully turns to him and takes a deep breath while stroking his shoulder gently.

“Stoney… it’s high time you faced the fact that is obvious to everyone else here: he’s ashamed of you.”

“But why? I do everything to meet his expectations… I read every day and…” he sniffs.

“Stone, what you do to those… “artistic” magazines… it can’t be regarded as reading.” Jeff snorts moving his hand obscenely over his lap.

“Jesus…” Ed almost spits out his apple juice of laughter and the general amusement spreads along the table like bushfire.

“Stone, if you want to win Jeff’s heart, you have to count with serious competition, reading won’t be enough.”

“Anyway, Scully, speaking of reading, I actually didn’t read yesterday evening since something very weird happened to me when I was heading to my room.” he darts his eyes at Judy who immediately freezes and stops snickering. “I heard music from the bar and went in to take a closer look at the piano player but I happened to meet…”

“AWWWW!!!” Judy groans with a surprisingly high volume, which makes everyone stare at her. “Dif... dif iv fooo delifiouf!!!” she mumbles pointing at her burger. Judging from her pronunciation, she must be nibbling on a half cow in her mouth.

“After this interesting gastronomic intermezzo, I would go on, may I? So, entering the bar I encountered…”

“Amd de dabafco… heabedly…” Judy keeps moaning. Okay, if she goes on like this, I’ll begin to be concerned about her mental condition, maybe someone spiked her drink…

“Okay, everyone who’s interested in this incomprehensible muttering, raise your hands. Nobody? Great. So, entering the bar I encountered a very weird chick.” Stone begins and for some unknown reason, Judy looks as terrified as if she had realized that her food was poisoned.

“You mean alien kind of weird or sort of a psycho girl?”

“Thanks for the great question, Mike. I don’t know, she seemed to be pretty harmless, she just ordered drinks she didn’t like but at one certain point she grabbed my arm, I thought she could have been able to break it. We also played pool but she insisted on choosing the most hopeless options, as if she had tried to lose intentionally.”

Judy listens to him with a tense attention while literally stabbing her burger with the plastic fork again and again.

“And then?” Ed asks with some impatience in his voice. I can relate to him, Stone’s story doesn’t sound very interesting even despite the theatrical presentation.

“I tried to help her with a few advice but she kept digging in my privacy and left insulted.” Stone shrugs.

“… and this was the story of the evening when Stone almost picked up a lunatic. Thanks Stone, that was interesting, really.” Ed sums up probably everybody’s opinion.

Hearing a snapping voice I squint at Judy; as if she’d just woken up from hypnosis, she examines the two plastic sticks helplessly that remained from the fork. Okay, I have to remind Eric to keep any kind of pointed or edged objects away from her if Stone’s in the room as well.

“Ugh… I’m not sure if I’m able to walk back to the club on my own feet…” Mike rubs his stomach standing up from the table.

“Because you’re a chowhound…”

“Would you be willing to pull me back while I’m sitting on carrier trolley? You would be allowed to insult me in the meantime… Consider it Stone, this isn’t an everyday offer, take it or leave it…”

“Come on Mike, he couldn’t even pull a five-year-old child…” Scully follows them and they begin a heated discussion about the estimated load capacity of Stone’s different body parts.

“Beth… uhm, could we talk for a second?” Jeff steps to me. I wait until everyone else leaves but I’m afraid this conversation will be embarrassing even without the smartass remarks of the others. I’m rooting for Jeff with all my heart but the role of the matchmaker isn’t really for me… I encouraged Judy but that doesn’t mean I want to mediate between them…

“What can I do for you?” I ask although I exactly know the answer. Pushing Judy into his bed and locking the door from outside.

“I don’t know if Judy have told you anything about yesterday evening… and I don’t even want to ask it… “he adds defensively seeing I’m about to refuse to take part in any intervention.

“Then what?” I fold my arms amused. I’m mean, I know. But I can’t help enjoying how this more than six feet tall guy is scratching the ground with the tip of his sneaker.

“Our date ended in a pretty sudden way. I mean, you know, we didn’t… kiss…” he lowers his voice at the last word, unnecessarily, though, since everyone else from the team has already left the restaurant.

“But she didn’t slap you either… I mean, I guess.”

“Exactly, that’s the point… we didn’t talk about what’s next. At first I felt pretty confident but… I don’t know, I realized we haven’t agreed on a second date yet and…”

“Look, I think you expect too much from her… Imagine this situation in a normal environment. And when I say “normal”, I mean the usual dating habits. Girl and guy know each other, guy likes girl so he asks her out, they have a date… and that’s where you are right now. What would you do normally after a date?”

“Uhm, I don’t know, I guess I’d call her a few days later and…”

“See, that’s the key. A few days later. You wouldn’t call her immediately pressuring her to give a feedback. The fact she’s around you basically all the time doesn’t mean she doesn’t need time to process and consider the pace. Plus, you’re colleagues. Plus, there are a bunch of curious people around who are observing you like you were the main characters of a soap opera. So being pushed is probably the last thing she needs.”

“I know, but this insecurity is killing me. I’m not a macho type but I don’t like to be fooled either…”

“I’m convinced that she’s not the type who would intentionally fool you. Just give her a little space.”

“Okay… but I would appreciate if you talked to her… I mean you don’t have to tell me how she feels but…”

Jesus, the guy is persistent and his only luck is that I really like him.

“I can’t promise anything, but if she comes up with the topic, I’ll try to drop some cautious hints. Deal?” I throw my arms in the air unwillingly.

“I knew I could count on you!” he flashes his trademark thousand watt smile at me.

And now, all I have to do is cornering Judy. Because I’m not going to let her screw up everything with this sweet idiot.

***

“Hey, Scully, what happened to my amp during the show? I started being worried about Ethel.”

Mike and I glance amused at each other hearing the sign of Stone beginning to embrace the name of his stuffed pet.

“The ventilator I stood behind it broke down. But your calf wasn’t in danger, she felt like a rock star in the cloud of smoke.”

“Please don’t overplay the role, Scul.”

“I’m not overplaying anything, I can hear her mooing the backup vocals every time you play Black, just ask Dave!” Scully puts his tongue out insulted at Stone.

“Jesus, I never thought I would be the one who warned you but… you smoke too much weed.”

“No because I share it with Ethel, she likes chewing the cud of it…”

“Okay, some hash and acid must have kicked in too…” he rolls his eyes following Scully in the hallway.

“Okay, finally we’re alone, we need to talk.” Mike jabbers pulling closer to me.

“But we’re already talking.” I grin at him enjoying his mongoose moves; I’ve noticed he acts like a nervous little rodent when he’s excited.

“Please Jude, we don’t have time for this, they’re back in minutes.”

“Hey, it wasn’t me who…”

“Jude, it’s about Jeff.”

The smile freezes on my face. I can’t believe this, even Mike? I thought if no one else, he’d leave me alone.

“Mike, I’m not going to discuss this with you, it’s my business. And Jeff’s.” I correct myself for show. Obviously, if I had to choose between discussing our thing (in case we have one at all) with Jeff and impalement, I’d pick the latter.

“Wait, so did it happen? Did he conceal it from us only because he’s a gentleman?” his face lights up suddenly. “Oh, I knew you play in the master class, Jeffrey, you shouldn’t be so modest.” he goes on talking to himself.

“Excuse me???” I cut him off suspecting he’s rambling about something I’m not even willing to call by its name.

“Oh, so you didn’t…?” he asks disappointed. “Then he didn’t lie to us…”

“Mike, would you try to speak coherently?”

“Sure, sorry. So Jeff joined us at the bar after your date and the main character was a girl who was raised by foster parents and she didn’t know anything about her biological family.”

“What?” I stare at him. Oh no, I should have known, he’s drunk.

“And she fell in love with her rich boss who owned an ostrich farm and collected bowling shoes.” Mike goes on and his eyes pop staring at something behind me, which makes me turn around. I notice Dave fidgeting with his drum kit and realize Mike shifted topic so that he can’t overhear us.

“Aaand… was her boss handsome?” I make an insecure attempt to play along with him.

“I don’t know; too much hair gel for my taste but…” he shrugs. “So the guy invited her to his ranch and we discussed your date and Jeff misunderstood everything, your hair, the lenses, everything…”

I guess from his next switch that we’re alone again.

“How do you mean he misunderstood my hair? How can one misunderstood hair at all?”

“He thought you had dolled up for the occasion but Stone tried to convince him that it was only the razor.” Razor??? What if I was right and he’s drunk? Or even high? Or is someone behind my back again? Or did Stone notice with his impossibly green X-ray eyes that I haven’t shaved my legs since I arrived to Cleveland?

“Yeah and after having had sex with him, the girl received an anonymous letter which claimed she and her boss were biological siblings.”

“Oh no! And then? What happened after she had read the letter?” I pretend astonishment and follow Smitty and Karrie with my eyes who carefully lift the soundboard and place it onto the amp to push them out to the van.

“She ran away from the ranch and got hit by a truck. She woke up in the hospital but due to her amnesia no one could identify her. Things got more complicated when the hospital was attacked by zombie apes and they dragged her to their space ship and…”

“Mike, you shouldn’t harass Miss Judy with your pervert movies. Judy, he made me watch that one too, you don’t want to know what comes next, trust me.” Smitty shakes his head and disappears with the gear in the hallway.

“So that was that weird chainsaw sound I heard through the wall last night… Mike, you should see a sex therapist, I’m serious.” Karrie steps back for a second before leaving with Smitty.

“Now I’m really interested in the ending, please go on, Mike.” I grin at the blushing guitarist.

“And Stone also found out about your trick. And now Jeff knows about it as well.” he retorts challenging.

“What are you talking about? I can’t pull out rabbits from a hat or coins from behind anyone’s ears.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” he points at me with an accusing look.

“No, I don’t, could you be more specific?”

“The trick you used to prevent Jeff got pregnant and couldn’t find out if the father was ostrich farm guy or one of the zombie apes. The guy was convinced it was him but the wedding ceremony got interrupted and…”

“Excuse me, Mike but have you just said that Jeff got pregnant from an ostrich farm owner? Or zombie apes? Ugh, I thought Montanans fucked cows but this… this is…”

The steps that made Mike tell on the plotline of the chainsaw porn belonged to Stone who unfortunately must have heard a few words from our actual topic.

“Actually, we wanted to keep it in secret, since you had that little quarrel at the restaurant. You know, pregnant... men have to be protected from any sources of stress. And in the meantime you turned out to be the father but don’t worry, Stone, you’ll be a great dad, anyway. And if you won’t find the front of the child just check it in the manual.” I flash my sweetest smile at him.

“Ugh… I imagined the baby of them, it would be no wonder if no one knew which is their back and their front… Jesus, I need to go to the restroom.” Mike frowns leaving us alone, although I guess the reason of his escape is the six pack beer box that was left unsupervised in the backstage.

“Uhm… Stone… do you have a second?”

To his nodding I start talking.

“Look, I…”

“Time out.” he mumbles rummaging in his guitar case.

“Idiot.” I click with my tong and stomp angrily; even despite my eyeroll I spot a weird twitch in the corner of his mouth which I can’t decode. Who cares, I decided to be a lady this time and I’m not going to let him rile me up. “I… I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that you didn’t mention our conversation to Jeff… or anyone… I guess…” I keep my eyes on the mic cables that I’m trying to untangle in the meantime, with not much success, though.

“Why?” he asks back briefly.

“How do you mean “why”?” I perk my head up.

“Why do you appreciate it? Were you afraid of me doing it?”

I mutter something indistinct since I don’t feel like answering yes but I don’t want to deny it either as who knows what his reaction would be…

“So basically you’re thanking me for not telling to Jeff that you find him amusing, kind and funny? You’re weird, I don’t think he would feel insulted hearing that.”

“No… I don’t… I’m not…” I gibber. And here we are. I hate that he’s able to confuse me with one single word and I hate that he doesn’t let me tell what I mapped out and…

“Are you not thanking me or don’t you find him amusing, kind and funny?” he stares me with that irritating poker face, I wish could punch him… but no. I’m going to stay cool. I don’t let him influence my behavior. I’m the more mature so I can’t lose my temper.

“It doesn’t matter what I said or did. I just wanted to thank you for your discretion.” I try to get out of the situation without giving a straightforward answer.

“Do you think that I shut my mouth to save your ass?” he folds his arms smirking. “Cute theory, truly. But it’s not about you. It’s about Jeff. I didn’t want to embarrass him since…”

“Embarrass him??? I’ve heard you calling him a caveman, a yeti, a Montanan cow-fucker… and you don’t want to embarrass him???” I burst out in an exaggerated laughter.

“At least, I don’t play with his feelings.”

“That’s for sure. You humiliate him in pretty obvious and clear ways. But I don’t like veiled references, let’s be honest. Do you think I fool him?”

“I haven’t even mentioned your name, you’re smarter than I thought.”

The fuckin’ smirk won’t appear from his face. Okay, please, let someone took this cable away from me before I strangle him with it.

“I don’t know what you have to do with my private life but...”

“Nothing, luckily. But our bassist has, however much unprofessional it is to run after a colleague…”

“Speaking of professionalism, you have to play in one of the most important TV shows of this country in less than twenty-four hours and instead of preparing for the big event you’re spending your time with prying into other people’s life.”

“I’ve played Alive and Porch so many times that could do it only using my toes so…”

“EW!!!”

“…so it doesn’t require much preparation. Look, I’m not saying that you’re fooling him intentionally. Or even consciously. I’m only trying to point out that it’s pretty obvious that you don’t have the faintest idea how to handle his affection.” he shrugs.

“But I have a pretty clear idea of not discussing this with you.”

That damn cable has tangled into a huge knot in the meantime and my nervous tugging doesn’t help much with untying it. He takes it out of my hands and starts loosening it with slow, steady moves.

“You don’t have to. But you’d better find out what’s next before things get more complicated.” he reaches his palm with the knot-free cable on it out in front of me.

“Otherwise?” I ask with hands on my hips refusing to take it.

“Otherwise things do get complicated.” he remarks nonchalantly and ties it again into the most complex knot I’ve ever seen. I should answer something witty but I’m just mouthing like a damn fish as he slowly reaches for my arm and pulls it from my hip to put the cable into my hand. I have no idea for how long we’ve been staring at each other when he finally clears his throat and runs his fingers through his hair flipping it back. I only start blinking when he grabs his guitar case and leaves the stage. When I hear the nasal voice echoing, I’m still standing motionless on the stage.

“And by the way, nothing’s wrong with my toes.”

***

I’m not going to throw up. I’m not going to throw up. I’m not going to throw up. I should have already got used to public performances but I feel awful. The whole country is going to watch us and if it wouldn’t be enough, my mom called the whole family, uncles, aunts, cousins, their wives and husbands (including the former ones) and reminded them to turn on the TV at 11 p.m. My symptoms are worse than ever, I really need something to calm down… I should check our dressing room, maybe I find some booze there…

“Hey Mike… are you okay?” Jude approaches me with her tiny, quick steps.

“Yes, I’m okay… I’m almost okay…” I keep marching in circles in the backstage room of Studio 8H.

“You shouldn’t be that nervous, it’s not your first TV performance.”

“You don’t understand… I’ll screw up everything, I can feel it in my guts.” And I mean it literally.

“Haha, why would you? You’ll be great, I’m sure as hell.”

“Because. Before the unplugged show we realized our rented instruments weren’t suitable to anything we wanted to do and Ed fell off the chair during the set… my solos were barely audible…”

And it’s being aired in a few weeks so the whole country will know about the fiasco…

“You shouldn’t be that strict with yourself. But you know what? I know someone who is objective and can smell bad gigs from miles. A real expert.” she smiles cryptically. “We’re going to call Effie tomorrow. She’s going to watch the show, she even wants to record it.”

“Watch? Record??? No!” I squeak in despair. Suddenly, making myself ridiculous in front of my family and the whole American nation sounds pretty marginal in comparison to the fact that the person whom I’ve never met but to whom want to listen until the universe collapses is about to watch me making silly faces and stumble on my own foot.

“Jesus, why?” she sighs with growing annoyance.

“Because… because… she’s a young girl and… young girls should go to bed by 11 p. m.?”

My argumentation doesn’t sound very convincing and Jude looks at me as if I was completely losing my mind, which is pretty close to how I feel right now, actually…

“Okay Mike, now we’re going to look for your dressing room and I help you with a few relaxation exercises I learnt at Juilliard. They helped me overcome the terrible stage fright I used to feel before concerts so trust me…” she wraps one arm around my shoulder and gently but firmly directs me towards the hallway.

“I think Stone has already found our room.” I nod towards our rhythm guitarist who’s standing in front of a door staring it persistently.

“I know you’re convinced you can use the force but what if you tried the door handle?” she remarks in a mocking voice.

“There’s no try.” I help her out with the matching accent.

“Unlike you, the staff seems to be serious with this Star Wars thing.” Stone points with his thumb at a sheet taped on the door. After decoding the sloppy handwriting, I read the following names on it:

EDDIE VADER

JEFF AMEN

MIKE MCREADY

STEVE GOSSARD

DAVE ABRUZESE

       ABBRUZESE

     ABBRUZZESE

“Excellent.” Stone mumbles.

“I think they expected your porn star alter egos.” Judy shrugs casually.

“Our what?” I glance at her furrowing my eyebrows.

“You know, porn actors and actresses all use stage names, borrowing those of celebrities. Of course they always change the spelling to avoid legal problems.” she picks the sheet at the typos in our names.

“And what kind of porn actor would call himself Eddie Vader?” I ask in disbelief.

“Maybe he’s the protagonist of a kinky, incestuous story flavored with father issues. And Jeff Amen…”

“…is the naughty parish priest of a sleepy, small town somewhere in Montana.” Judy finishes Stone’s sentence. “Whereas Mike McReady…”

“…bangs everything that moves and comes in like five seconds?” Stone chuckles and although Jude tries to keep a straight face, to my biggest surprise, I spot a mischievous sparkle in her eyes that sends a completely different message towards him. They team up and joke at someone else’s expense? That’s new to me.

“You…” I point alternatively at Judy and Stone, who are still staring at each other with the same half smile on their face “…you’re supposed to be enemies, okay?” They finally notice I’m talking to them and interestingly, they both rearrange their facial muscles into a nonchalant expression in a fragment of a second. “Anyway, what about Steve Gossard?”

“It’s pretty obvious. The crew of SNL wanted him to feel like a normal person, at least for one day.” Judy explains. “Of course they didn’t know that a proper name was barely enough but they gave it a try.” she adds fixing her glasses and avoiding Stone’s glance.

“You can joke with my name but it’s undeniable that my name is the coolest porn star name in the world. Get it, Stone, hard like a stone, the connection is undeniable.” he slaps back putting on his disarming smirk and does indistinct moves with his hands to underline his theory.

“No sane porn actor would use your name but you know what, if you feel better of that thought…” Judy shoots one more arrow saturated with sarcasm after Stone who started pacing towards the studio room in the meantime.

“I don’t have time for this right now. If anybody looked for me, I’m gone to find Sharon Stone. Who borrowed her name from you know whom…” he answers with a high-minded wave, not even looking back at her.

“Who exactly needs to relax?” I squint at her. Am I hallucinating or are her nostrils really fuming? She looks like a dragon that’s ready to burn down a whole metropolis.

“I’m relaxed, Mike.” she utters slowly. “I’ve never been more relaxed.”

We spend like half an hour in the dressing room before the rehearsal. Although Judy’s exercises are efficient, I still find this whole process more stressful than a simple sound check. There are cameras and fussy crew members everywhere, we’re even asked to do everything the same way as we will do it in the live show. Like it was possible to ask Ed bouncing both times in the same way or Stone bouncing during the sound check at all, which he never does anyway... It’s just ridiculous. The glass-wearing, stage manager called Joe has even to act like the host of the show announcing us and then clapping exactly for five seconds playing the audience… like we were in some fuckin’ theater.

After having played “Alive” and “Porch” umpteen times, the director shows up to discuss the details of the gag in which they want us to participate.

“So according to our conception, the scene begins with Sharon Stone sitting cross-legged in a chair, wearing her famous dress from Basic Instinct. He announces you and after a cut, the camera shows you staring at her with dropped jaws for a few second. Can you do it?” he shares the plot. He seems to be impatient, probably because of the tight schedule.

“What a great idea. Of course we can, we do that all the time, right, guys?” Ed mumbles in a colorless voice. He’s right, it sounds like a pretty schematic, cheap, sexist joke, which doesn’t really fit our style but luckily, we’re open about our principles enough not to compromise ourselves by doing it.

“But where’s Sharon Stone? We need her to the scene.” Stone insists; he’s the most enthusiastic from the band for obvious reasons.

“As I’ve said, there will be a cut in the scene, which means we don’t need her to be able to shoot your part. Ms. Stone hasn’t arrived yet, anyway.” the director tries to keep his temper but Stone isn’t really cooperative in this process.

“But I’m not an actor, I can’t pretend I’m watching Sharon Stone if I’m not. I’m afraid I can’t do it without her.” he shrugs flashing his most irritating lopsided grin.

“I’ll see what I can do. But you need to wear the same clothes as in the live show, so please, go and change…” the director decides to quit the conversation. I can understand him.

We gather again in the same room about ten minutes later.

“Where is Sharon Stone?” Stone repeats the million-dollar question like a broken record player.

“I am Sharon Stone.” I turn in the direction of the familiar male voice and I notice Joe, the grinning stage manager waving towards us. “At least for the next ten minutes. I can even sit in that chair like her if that helps you. But I’m not willing to put on that dress, I like this sweater better.” he remarks addressing his words to Stone.

“No… uhm…I don’t think it’d be necessary… I learnt how to use my imagination in the last ten minutes…” he mutters.

The makes a few takes of our dumbest stares but we’re not told which one is the winner. Not that I’m interested in any of them.

“Hey, stunned guy, you were awesome.” Jude nudges me while I’m heading back to the dressing room, which makes me start.

“Huh, what?”

“Your stunned face. I saw your acting performance in the control room, I think it was sweet.”

“Oh. Thanks.” I flush. Maybe I should practice how to look stunned… maybe she’s not the only Camden girl who thinks I’m sweet… Cool down, Cready, what if she’s a hideous, toothless frog?

“Hey, and what about me?” Jeff catches up to us, provoking Judy to compliment him too.

“Your face can’t even be seen of that fur hat… I could cut a few holes into it for your eyes, nose and mouth, if you want to.” she teases him, which he answers by sticking out his tongue at her.

“That’d be problematic. His brain has already grown to the hat, if you tried to cut into it, you would basically execute a lobotomy on him.” Stone maneuvers between them, to Jeff’s utmost delight.

“It’s like you and your scrunchie, right? It blocks your skull so that your cerebrum doesn’t fall out of your head and roll away during your head bobbing.” she imitates Stone’s typical, pigeon-like neck moves. After a quick half turn, Stone rambles on walking backwards.

“Why don’t we discuss your potato bag dress too… sorry!” he adds mechanically not even glancing at the tall, blonde woman into whom he’s just bumped. She looks familiar but I can’t recall if I have met her and if I have, where...

“Ha, Stone Gossard is trying to give me fashion advice, I like that…”

“Yes, maybe you should set your own house in order at first…” Jeff retorts too.

“…says the guy who sleeps wearing a hat.” Stone keeps torturing our bassist.

“How could he take it off? His brain…” Judy points at Jeff’s forehead.

“Don’t make me turn this car around...” Jeff grunts.

“But where’s Sharon Stone?”

***

I loathe restrooms of public places so much. Small, tight compartments, like this one. Even the lock is broken so I have to hold on to the door handle while I’m balancing over the toilet bowl of questionable tidiness. At least, I don’t have any company; I hate sharing my most intimate body functions and enjoying those of the others at the same time. Awkward sounds and unpleasant smells… I know it’s a natural thing but still… I’m almost ready when I hear the door squeaking and heels tapping on the tiled ground. Unfortunately the owner of the legs picks the compartment next to me… great, one can’t even finish her internal monologue without being bothered. Maybe if I don’t move and breathe, I can stay unnoticed.

“Damn.” I hear my neighbor cursing. “Hey… there’s someone over there, isn’t it?” I hear the voice again from the level of my ankles. Of course, she peaked around under the wall, next time I should crouch down on the top of the toilet. “There’s no toilet paper in this one, could you give me a few sheets? Just put them into my hand, I think I can manage to reach for them at the bottom…

“Sure…” I groan. And now? Should I ask her whether she wants to pee or…? I make a quick calculation and tear off and hand her the estimated needs of an adult woman with healthy digestive system. I can get a glance at hear shoes in the meantime, one could commit a suicide by jumping off them. I decide to sneak out while she’s doing her job (whatever it is) to avoid the usual embarrassing encounter. I’m already washing my hands when the entrance door opens and it is Beth who slams it behind herself with a victorious smile.

“Ha! There you are.”

“So now you’re even following me to the restroom too?” I ask sarcastically.

“It was you who forced me to do it. And neither of us will leave until you finally tell me what happened last night.” she leans her back to the door folding her arms.

“Nothing particular, I don’t know why…”

I forget to finish the sentence since the door of the occupied compartment gets suddenly kicked out and a blonde, tall, beautiful woman basically falls out in front of the sinks.

“Shit, it got stuck, I was already thinking I would die here… Gosh, I hate this dress so much, I’m going to set it on fire in the second my contract’s running out, I swear.” she fixes the tight mini dress she’s wearing. Let’s wait for a second… Is she? Oh my… She is.

“Judy, nothing and nobody can distract me this time, not even Sharon Stone.” Beth stares me with her coldest look.

“Oh, I don’t want to bother you, just finish the girl talk.” she remarks cleaning and drying her hands.

“So, are you willing to tell me what happened or should I pull everything word by word out of you?”

“Can I choose the word by word version?” my lips pull into an embarrassed smile but Beth’s reaction is crazier than expected. She turns the key in the lock and walks slowly to the toilet bowl in the closest compartment.

“Are you sure you don’t want to be more cooperative?” she flashes a somewhat terrifying grin and swings the key over the toilet.

“You can’t do it, you can’t take us hostage… you can’t take Sharon Stone hostage here. She needs to go back to the set.” I try to make her come around.

“Actually, I don’t feel like going back so I’d stay… if you don’t mind, of course.” the captured sex symbol ruins my argumentation.

“Great. A real girl party.” Beth confirms with a plastic smile. “So, what happened yesterday evening?”

“Yeah, what happened yesterday?” Sharon repeats the question curiously. “Do you mind if I…?” she pulls a cigarette and a lighter out of her tights and since we both shake our head, she lights up.

“She had a date with Jeff.” Beth explains with a meaningful look. “With Jeff Ament.” she adds realizing the name didn’t ring a bell with her. “With Jeff Ament from Pearl Jam.” she narrows it down seeing the still clueless face of our chat partner. “And now it’s time to share the details.” she turns back demanding to me.

“Okay…” I sigh and give them a quick review about the date, trying to stay as objective as possible, avoiding any forms of judgment and not leaving any occasion for speculations.

“And at the end, you chickened out and used the trick.”

“Seriously, Beth, what trick? Mike told me the same and…”

“So you’ve already discussed it with Mike!” she shouts outraged. “Anyway, I’m talking about the herpes trick, of course.”

“What???”

“Pretending to have herpes to avoid being kissed.” Sharon enlightens me making me feel week-minded.

“Who… who would do something like that?” I try to sound innocent.

“Oh, come on, sweetie. The herpes trick is older than herpes itself. It’s a part of the female toolkit.” she goes on taking a deep drag.

“Judy, there’s nothing wrong in acknowledging you got confused and made a desperate decision.” Beth mellows out. “You can talk to me about your insecurities, it’s not a shame. I was too pushy and I’m sorry for that but I really think he’s a great guy and deserves a chance.”

“I know, I just… I’ve known him for... how long? Two weeks? I barely know him! And the thought of him having known me for the same time and wanting to know me better… maybe not only as a friend… it freaks me out. I’m not saying I’m not interested in him at all, it’s just… too fast!” I blurt out finally.

“Okay. You know what? If you’re not sure about your feelings… or expectations… let’s make a checklist! I mean… you start listing the characteristics you like and want to find in a guy and I tell you if Jeff has them. I’ve known him for more than two weeks…”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ve started being interested in that Jeff guy too.” Sharon hops on the sink with a bright smile.

“Jesus… guys are not like shopping lists… but okay, whatever!” I throw my arms in the air. “First of all… he must be reliable. I don’t like good-for-nothings.”

“Checked.” Beth nods satisfied.

“And… he must have a good sense of humor. If he can’t make you laugh or if he makes you explain your jokes, run!”

“Needless to say, but checked!” she confirms enthusiastically.

“The guy I’m looking for is… intelligent…”

“…checked…”

“…smart…”

“…checked…”

“…creative…”

“…checked…”

“…some talent doesn’t hurt either…”

“…some talent checked…” I can’t not notice that her voice gets more and more bored at every answer.

“He must be amusing and kind and funny as well. And interesting and gentle too.” I jabber in one breath.

“Checked, checked, checked, checked, checked… Come on, Judy, how long do you want to go on with this to believe he’s ideal for you?” she huffs impatiently.

“There’s one more thing.” I cut her off. “He… he must be attractive. Physically.” I feel my face reddening as I add the last word.”

“Checked.” she replies without hesitation. “Checked?” she repeats it with a questioning face and due to her reaction, I realize I’m scowling.

“I… I don’t know… I mean… he’s definitely not unattractive… but I’ve never felt that “let’s jump into bed immediately” vibe when being with him…” I try to express my feelings although the only thing I want to do is to mumble something indistinct and escape from this fuckin’ piss-smelling room.

“Now here’s the point!” Sharon exclaims and points at me holding her cigarette between her index and middle finger. “You don’t feel the buzz! Forget him.” she adds in a serious voice.

“The fact you don’t want to take him to bed immediately only means you’re not a slut. If a guy’s personality is likable, you can suddenly realize you’re attracted to him physically too. You should just spend some time with him without any pressure and let things happen.” Beth talks her over ignoring the advice.

“Bullshit! It’s not about having sex on the first date but there must be a spark… even if you don’t notice it immediately. Passion won’t grow out of nothing, trust me. Yes, passion, that’s the key. It isn’t worth a pile of shit if there isn’t any passion between you.” she flails intensely with the cigarette.

“Don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know any of you two.” Beth keeps persuading me and honestly, I don’t know whom I should believe.

“By the way, which one of the guys is Jeff? Is he the lanky one?” Sharon inquires while she’s stubbing the cigarette on the sink and then drops it into the trash bin.

“The tall, athletic one.” Beth helps her out. “The one with the hat.” she rolls her eyes seeing the uncomprehending expression of her.

“Oh. I thought he was the lanky one, with the ponytail.” she mutters disappointed.

“Ugh, Stone?” I groan in disgust.

“Yes, the one that almost hit me in the hallway. I heard you teasing each other, I thought something was going on between you. It looked definitely passion-like.”

“Wait, was that you?” I giggle.

“Yup. Wearing a leather jacket, denim pants and no makeup.”

“I have to tell this to Stone, he’ll freak out. He really appreciates your… ahem… talent… very much. Obviously not much enough to recognize you in “civil” clothes. Anyway, nothing is going on between us, let alone passion. Apart from the fact that we hate each other passionately.”

“Interesting, I could have sworn… But hate is a good start. Better than nothing. Have you ever tried hate sex?” she asks out of the blue.

“Excuse me, what?” I cackle.

“Of course, you haven’t. But you should. It’s hot.” she leans closer confidentially. “It makes things extremely complicated most of the times, but it’s hot. Anyway, what time is it? However much I’ve got fed up with drooling crew members, I should go back, they want to pre-record a few scenes…”

“Shit, it’s late you’re right. Beth, would you…?”

She fishes the key out of her pocket and unlocks the door unwillingly shaking her head.

“I hope you don’t let yourself be influenced by this… this… actress…” she whispers to me while we’re walking back to the studio room following the person in question.

“You mean by having sex with Stone?” I joke but Beth doesn’t seem to appreciate my humor so I go on sincerely. “Why would I? I’ve known her for like ten minutes. And I consider your advice but… you know it’s not as easy as you think, Jeff doesn’t stay away from me for a minute, the “without any pressure” factor depends on him too…”

“I see what I can do, don’t worry.” she smiles mysteriously in front of herself.

“Don’t you dare talk to him, do you want to ruin my life?” I scream-whisper since we’ve arrived to the waiting room in the meantime. The guys are talking standing in a circle apart from Stone who’s fixing his half ponytail with undivided attention in front of the mirror. What a narcissistic asshole.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be the prettiest poodle at the dog exhibition.” I remark casually as I pass him by.

“Do you prefer stray dogs?” he shouts after me in his irritating teenage guy voice. “Anyway, where is Sharon Stone?”

“I’m here and I’m ready for the action.” she answers in the steamiest tone I’ve ever heard and walks along the room with hypnotic hip moves.

“Stone, are you ready too?” I ask grinning ear to ear at my blushing enemy but I can’t enjoy his embarrassment for long since someone leans over my shoulder and sings two words into my ear.

“Hate sex…”

[toynbeees]

idk i felt like doing a breakdown of how I imagine post-game wendigo!josh in a saved AU since im back into until dawn again lmao. bear with me bc im super tired and only like half coherent but im trying

Appearance Okay so we all know wendi!Josh has that gross torn open mouth & sexy sharp teeth. Blind eye? Weird second white eyelid like reptiles have? But yeah these are my hc on wendi!Josh’s appearance.

-His ripped up jaw looks like a really extreme Chelsea/Glasgow Smile that’s torn up mid way to his ear with a couple of extra gashes spreading towards his eye. It looks super gnarly and painful but actually, it’s just a by-product of his jaw stretching to accommodate the extra teeth. The extra gashes heal up and yeah, he’s left with a stretched mouth that exposes half the inside of his mouth and makes Heath Ledger’s Joker look like a harmless cartoon character. It’s basically how his jaw is supposed to be in order to adapt to the fangs, though. The fangs themselves have entirely replaced all of his regular human teeth, not just the gross side, but they’re smaller and flatter on his “human” side - his wendigo side is filled with razor sharp teeth that stick out at odd angles since his mouth hasn’t really stretched enough to fit them. He can’t close his mouth great because of it and the teeth dig into his lower lip if he tries. Later on, he probably gets them filed down as best he can - which still leaves them too big for his mouth and peeking through, but at least they’re blunter and not quite so huge. Surgeons can’t do much for his mouth, though, as the skin around there is too tough to stitch/graft and anyway, the stretched gash is kind of needed in order for his teeth to fit, filed or not.

-his nails are also super sharp and talon-like, thick curled claws. They’re darker than regular nails too, almost black, making them look pretty fucking creepy. They’re tough, designed for ripping apart prey and skinning them, which means he has to be suuuuper careful when touching anything fragile. He files them down, which takes a fucking age because they’re so tough, but it helps make them not quite so dangerous.

-he isn’t actually blind, though the milky eye on the wendigo side suggests he should be. Wendigo eyes are just pale, like the rest of them, and although Josh’s sight isn’t as good as it used to be he isn’t completely blind. His sight is fuzzier than it used to be, designed for detecting movement than noticing details - but since he isn’t fully transformed he doesn’t have total “wendigo sight”, which is good. They do kind of glow in the dark though, like reflective lights. The eye on his human side is a little messed up too; his eyelid is damaged and kind of receded back which makes it look wider than his other eye. Maybe he clawed at it, trying to stop hallucinations or maybe it happened when Hannah dragged him away. His white eye is corrected with coloured contacts, nice and easy. His receded eyelid is fixed with surgery, leaving him with a small scar but it heals to almost nothing.

-although Josh isn’t totally wendigo, his body has started to elongate - mostly his limbs, though torso too. He went from five-foot-something (5′7 if we’re talking Rami’s height) to well over six foot. He’s... mostly in proportion still at least, except for the fact he’s a lot thinner and more spindly than he was before. This fingers are elongated too, more emphasized by the claws.

-I like the idea that Josh grows antlers just for the hilarity of it. Something slender like a chital deer maybe, but much smaller. He grows them in early spring (April-ish) and sheds them once summer starts to cool down in August-September.

Voice His wendigo transformation isn’t just physical! His voice is drastically different though still vaguely Josh-like, but there’s a lot of new and very weird quirks in his voice he didn’t have before.

-Josh’s voice is a lot raspier than it was, deep and gritty like a long time smoker with a slight, growly undertone that’s present even when he tries to be soft. It basically sounds like someone who’s started to lose their voice, but permanent. Actually speaking seems more difficult for him now, and his words are either too slow in concentration or come out all at once in a rush if he’s panicking. There’s no middle ground.

-when Josh is excited or happy, he makes these high pitched trills and chittering sounds that sound almost like a bird if not for the eerie humanness to them. A lot of the time these noises happen completely of their own accord, a kind of subconscious thing he doesn’t pay much attention to. He makes deeper, slower versions of these noises when he’s quietly content;  for example if he’s about to fall asleep or curled up comfortably on the sofa.

-when he’s angry or startled, though, Josh makes loud, inhuman screeches that really sound like something out of a horror movie. They’re shrill, loud and if people aren’t expecting it, it can give quite a scare. It’s something he always apologises profusely for after but like when people get a fright and scream, he can’t help it.

-growling is also a common thing, usually when he’s pissed off - or, occasionally, using it as a warning. Josh will duck low when he does this, adopting a defensive stance, hands resting on the floor and letting a deep growl low in his throat. This is one of those things that is completely intentional, an intimidation tactic, and usually one that works.

-his laugh isn’t much of a laugh any more - it’s more of a raspy coughing sound that’s sometimes interrupted by shrieks, like when a person snorts. Since laughing isn’t something people can really control there’s not much he can do to try and change it, but sometimes he tries to make his laugh more human. It usually ends up a creepy mess of wendigo and human.

Habits The wendigo in him makes Josh a little less... human in his actions. Everything has a vaguely creepy, uncanney valley feel about it now, mostly caused by his appearance but partially because some of the stuff he does is just damn weird

-Josh was pretty tactile before; no sense of personal space. It's even more obvious now and he seems to seek out physical contact a lot for comfort. Wendigos aren't social creatures so while his ways of showing affection aren't too human, the reasons for it certainly are. His favourite thing is to nuzzle into the crook of someone's neck and, if they're sitting, curl his limbs around them as if they're a human sized pillow. This is usually accompanied by the weird chittering sounds he makes.

-like all wendigos Josh can imitate people perfectly, which is pretty fucking cool. He can mimic anyone as long as he hears themsay the words, but if he knows a voice well enough he can mimic it without needing to hear something first. He often mimics by accident - if someone asks him a question and he's thinking it over, if he doesn't understand something or even if he just isn't paying attention to his words. It’s fun to use it to mess with people too, though.

-while his ceiling hanging skills aren't much on a full wendigo, Josh can scale pretty much any surface and cling to it for a while. His claws dig into the surface, fingers padded with a rough texture for extra grip. To make it easier to climb, Josh's elongated limbs a d torso are super flexible. He can hang from a ceiling if he really wants, but that will probably end in him falling face first to the floor.

-he doesn't blink as much now, which gives the impression he's staring at people or off in a daydream. It's extra creepy without the contacts, white eye on show. It's a tactic wendigos use to keep track of prey, so they don't lose sight of their food, but since Josh doesn't need to hunt it's just that he forgets blinking is a thing he should do.

Eating Human food is still essential since he's mostly human. That hasn't changed - except now he needs extra nutrition too.

-Josh eats a lot more meat than he used to. Doesn't matter what cut or what animal - as long as it's raw he's good. He can eat it cooked - and if he's eating a regular meal it will be - but raw meat and animal blood are a big part of his diet now. Wendigos are pure carnivores so it makes sense he has similar eating habits. 

-of course, since munching on a human corpse, regular animal meat isn't what he really craves. He only ate one bite down in the mines but it was enough to start some serious cravings for chowing down on a hunk of human being. The raw meat helps these cravings, but that doesn't mean they're totally gone. It's something Josh angsts about a lot.

Sleeping Of course turning half wendigo fucked up his sleeping pattern. Sleeping pills help, the rest he has to deal with alone. Sharing a bed with someone else helps.

-wendigos are nocturnal, sensitive to sunlight and vision suited to the dark. Josh is stuck half way between, sleepy during the day but unable to sleep at night. It's like his body is nocturnal but his mind isn't. On the bright  it's like he has an internal clock that always lets him know the time of day. Unfortunately it also means he's exhausted half the time. This is later helped with sleep meds, iron pills to supplement what he doesn't get from blood and short naps in the afternoon.

-rather than sleeping on a bed with covers/duvets, Josh loves sleeping in a kind of nest. Bed, sofa or floor - it doesn't matter as long as he has a pile of cushions and blankets. Living on a snow covered mountain he was used to freezing conditions with lots of layers to stay warm. It's unclear whether this is a trait he shares with wendigos or simply the result of having to make do in the mines and the subsequent recovery.

[did-you-reboot]

Unlocked

Saw this on /r/WritingPrompts and wanted to have a go: As the world's leading expert in Genetic Microbiology you discover that the ancient viral code in human DNA are there as limiters to human capabilities. You begin to activate these viruses to improve the human race but soon realize why they were there in the first place.

Twenty years.

Twenty years ago, my team and I found ourselves on the cusp of a breakthrough, of a new understanding of the human genome. By that point, we’d already spent several years refining techniques to sequence, catalog, and compare the genetic material of humans using the university’s then-new quantum computers. We agonized over having to share them with other research teams, and each failure meant waiting weeks for another turn.

It was nearly 2 AM on the last day of our allotted computer time that I got a call from one of the grad students in the team, screaming into the phone that one of my teammates had found something and that I should get to the lab immediately. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up; whatever it was they found, it was important, and I think deep in my gut I knew that we were going to find something groundbreaking.

I arrived at the lab unkempt and disheveled in my haste, and I hadn't the chance to put my bag down before Olson, the grad student, found me and herded me to Valdez’s station, where he was waiting, legs crossed, arms crossed, and foot wiggling anxiously.

He turned his monitor to me and got out of the chair without so much as a greeting. “Look at this,” was all he said. Olson hovered anxiously behind us, wringing her hands.

The tension was palpable as they waited for me to make sense of the data. My palms began sweating as I scrolled through marked-up images and highlighted numbers.

“Kang was right — we were right,” was all I could say.

Kang had theorized that the segmental duplications in the human genome were evidence of an ancient retrovirus. She'd founded my team several years ago and had laid the foundations of the work that had finally come to fruition at this moment. Two years ago she lost a battle with illness, and in this moment my heart ached because she deserved to see the numbers and the images and everything that had proved her right.

We spent another year painstakingly gathering more data to make sure the results weren't a fluke. We spent the time asking ourselves how this virus could be — in the time between the quantum computer runs, we wondered how this virus could have evolved, and why it did. None of the theories seemed to fit, and eventually I wondered: what if it had been purposefully created?

The more I thought about this, the more it felt right. But feelings, especially one as tenuous as this, did not make for good science. Still, I found myself fixated on the idea, which eventually drove a frustrated Valdez — and several other colleagues — from the team. Eventually it was only me and Olson left, and we left the university to continue our research with a team at Cassan Genetics, a genetic engineering firm that had shown interest in our findings.

Ten years ago, we began trials to remove the viral DNA from human cells. We selected a series of sites that we were convinced would allow brain cells to regenerate. In vitro trials went well, and three years later we moved on to human clinical trials with patients who had suffered severe brain trauma. My fixation all but disappeared — we were doing exciting work, and I threw myself into it with a passion.

The recovery with our treatment was remarkable and unprecedented. For obvious reasons, our firm wanted us to focus on refining the treatment. So we did. The trials were going incredibly well — too well, in fact, and it was five years ago that the first sign of significant side effects emerged. Patients who had received the widest spectrum of treatment were reporting hallucinations, vertigo, and showed symptoms of sensory overload. Soon after, some began reporting intense feelings of dread.

What was curious, however, were their hallucinations. All described glimpses of a void with ominous and out-of-focus glowing shapes. Most experienced some level of vertigo, with some saying that they felt like they were balancing on the edge of a cliff.

Nothing made sense; though physically the patients were fine, they were in incredible distress. Soon I wondered what would happen if we spliced the viral DNA back in, starting at the most recent sites of removal. And slowly, their symptoms diminished. We did more trials, gathered more data, to make sense of what was happening. Eventually we found that it didn’t matter what order we removed or reinserted the viral DNA: it was the number, not the order, of removals that were most likely to cause these symptoms.

Cassan was content to leave it at that — it was clear that the treatment worked wonders and they were chomping at the bit to announce a real medical miracle (their words). My team, however, was not. While we appeased Cassan by narrowing down the safe zones of treatment and refining the payload delivery systems, we squeezed in time to continue investigating the oddities surrounding the side effects and, more importantly, the oddly specific symptoms that the patients all shared. My suspicions regarding the origin of the retrovirus returned, clawing its way out of the back of my mind where I’d buried it years ago.

“I want to see what those patients saw,” I said one evening last year. Olson was just getting up to leave for the night, and she looked to me in a mixture of knowing and resignation.

“I know you do.” She wringed her hands — a habit she’s had since her grad school days. “They won’t like it.”

“I know they won’t.”

“You’re going to do it anyway,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.”

There was a real risk of, to put it bluntly, royally fucking myself up by giving myself so much of the viral removal treatment. It was beyond foolish to do this to myself, and I half expected to be the subject of a news article detailing a delusional researcher’s descent into insanity. But I needed to; something in those patients’ words had lit a sort of fire in me. Olson and Hsu, the only other person on the team who I knew understood my irrational objective and who too wanted to know just what those patients were seeing, agreed to begin the reversal should I begin to lose myself.

The plan was to spend a year bringing myself up to the levels that caused the most severe symptoms in our trials patients. For the first few months, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary and I worried that the experiment was a bust. But soon I had what I could only explain as the tingles, waves of small sensations as though someone was lightly brushing their fingers across my skin.

Then the hallucinations came. There were flashes of darkness — the void with glowing shapes that seemed to be rushing past. The tingles became worse, and shortly after the hallucinations began, the vertigo came with it. But it was unlike any vertigo I had experienced. It wasn’t so much a feeling of being off-balance as it was my brain being concerned that I was about to fall from a great height.

Three months ago, there was real concern for my health, and Hsu tried to call it off and start the reversal treatment. By now we had already far surpassed the levels of treatment that we had tested on humans, so it was understandable that Hsu and Olson were becoming extremely uneasy from the descriptions of my symptoms. But the hallucinations were becoming more frequent, the glowing shapes becoming clearer and clearer, so I asked — begged — for Hsu and Olson to give me a little while longer.

I sat in the lab room today, waiting for my colleagues to arrive with the latest treatment. I glanced around the empty room, searching for the flashes of void that seemed to appear if I looked in just the right spots. The feeling of imminent falling was nearly constant these days, and a vague feeling of dread was always churning in the pit of my stomach. But these were as nothing; I felt that we were close to making sense of all this, and that was more than enough for me to push through.

Olson arrived with the treatment, Hsu on her heels with a tablet in hand. “Are you ready?” she asked as she set the tray down and took a seat in the stool next to me.

“Yeah.”

She administered the injection wordlessly. None of us moved to get up — it was now routine for them to monitor me for the next hour while the effects of the treatment slowly took root. I listened as Olson and Hsu discussed a food festival in the city, the dread in my stomach growing with each passing minute.

I soon felt as though my vision was closing in and going dark and I felt a small panic that I was about to go blind. The distress must have been obvious on my face, because I heard the faraway voices of Olson and Hsu asking me how I was feeling.

Minutes passed. Or was it seconds? The feeling of falling was growing worse and I shut my eyes in an attempt to stop it. I felt Hsu’s hand on my shoulder, and this was reassuring enough that I opened my eyes again.

I saw the void rushing past in all directions.

My mind felt odd, and I haven’t the vocabulary to describe how the tracts of thought were crisscrossing in my brain at strange angles. I looked up — or was it up anymore? — and my mouth fell open.

Glowing words hung suspended in the void above — above?

TIMELINE GL-57-A: LOST

These words, and more like it, were arranged in neat rows — rows? Cubes? — delimited by faint, glowing lines of light. They were far in the distance but also somehow simultaneously so close that I felt oppressed by their presence and their words. As I looked around me, I felt chills go down my spine.

TIMELINE GL89-57-B: LOST

TIMELINE EQ91-32-N: LOST

TIMELINE KL91-45-T: LOST

Under each of these glowing, floating signs were enormous squares — cubes? — of a nothingness that tweaked at my mind. I felt an instinctive fear at this nothingness: a bad gut feeling, a reflexive terror. Countless more glowing labels of lost timelines and their accompanying nothingness slowly — quickly? — moved past me. Were the terrifying squares of nothingness the only indicator now of a timeline that were, as the signs now showed, somehow lost?

I looked in the direction that I was traveling and found myself sitting before a panel of computers. But these were none that I’d ever seen: they were slim and indescribably sci-fi, and displayed incomprehensible graphs and numbers whose significance wasn’t immediately obvious. I looked up at the glowing sign that I and this panel of computers were moving toward and let out a small noise of surprise.

TIMELINE SV-99-A: STABLE

Stable?

I looked back down at the panel of computers in search of answers. I still hadn’t a clue what the numbers or graphs meant, but after a few moments of examining the screens, there was a soft hum and a sheet of plastic shot out of a slot on the side of one of screens. It floated in place where it had come out, and I knew that it was meant for me so I reached out to take it.

“Jesus Christ, where the fuck is her arm?!” came Hsu’s voice. I glanced back (??) and saw them panicking in the lab room, undecided if they should grab me or not.

I snatched the sheet of plastic before they could wrench my arm back (“Where the hell did that come from?” Hsu exclaimed). The plastic was about the size of a large tablet and about as thick as a credit card. On it was some sort of message in fine print, in several languages I recognized and a few that I’d never seen before.

Whenever you have come from: turn back and undo what you have done to yourself. Humanity and the local galactic cluster have been locked to the (-0.9667, 2.0103, -7.7016, - 1.0100) vector in SV-99-A to ensure survival of the human race. It is extremely dangerous to venture outside the confines of SV-99-A.

DO NOT ATTEMPT.

SV-99-A is the only stable timeline we were able to recover following the collapse of spacetime in the conflict with the Ulteaus. In the SV-99-A timescale, it took on the order of 9 billion years to lock the cluster safely. This timeline is all we could salvage.

We crippled you — us — to keep you safe in SV-99-A. We are long gone, but if you are reading this, then we have succeeded. Stay safe in SV-99-A. There is nothing else outside. We cannot survive in unstable spacetime.

There is nothing else out there.

DO NOT ATTEMPT.

[ichijikanme]

Enneagram Type 5: The Investigator

The Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, Isolated Person 

Healthy. Healthy Fives are able to observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight. Most mentally alert, curious, with an acutely searching intelligence — asking the right questions while using extraordinarily fine perceptions. Able to concentrate, to become engrossed in what has caught their attention, and to “tinker” with their interests until they discover or create something entirely new. Love learning, excited by acquiring knowledge, and often become experts in some field. Independent thinkers, innovative, inventive, and highly imaginative, producing extremely valuable, original ideas and boldly creative works. Mental or creative brilliance are balanced with compassion and feeling. At their best: Become intrepid discoverers and explorers, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. Deeply grounded in themselves and reality, and feel emotionally connected to the world rather than cut off from it. Visionaries, open-minded, taking in things whole, in their true context, seeing things as they actually are. May make pioneering discoveries of something entirely new or create new forms of artistic expression. Experience gnosis, direct knowing unmediated by mental constructs. 

Average. Average Fives begin conceptualizing everything before acting — working things out in their minds: model building, preparing, practicing, and gathering more resources. They retreat from the world into their own inner world of concepts and imagination. Studious, acquiring technique. Become specialized, and often “intellectual,” focusing on research, scholarship, and developing ideas. Much time spent on a few key interests while other areas of life are neglected. Increasingly detached as Fives become more involved with complicated ideas or imaginary worlds. Highly speculative (“What if this were to happen?”). Become preoccupied with their visions and interpretations rather than with reality. Immerse themselves in details, beginning to “lose the forest for the trees,” not seeing the true broader context. Are fascinated by offbeat, esoteric subjects, even those involving dark and disturbing elements. Detached from the practical world, a “disembodied mind,” although very high-strung and intense. Begin to take an antagonistic stance toward anything that would interfere with their inner world and personal vision. Can be aggressive as a defense against being emotionally involved or overwhelmed. Become provocative and abrasive, with intentionally extreme and radical views. Cynical and argumentative: others are too stupid to understand. Their extreme, iconoclastic interpretations may contain valuable insights, but also far-fetched half-truths. 

Unhealthy. Rejecting and repulsing all social attachments, unhealthy Fives become reclusive and isolated from people and reality; increasingly secretive, strange, eccentric, and mentally unstable. Severe depressions and nihilism are common. Highly antagonistic and vituperative, yet fearful of aggressions from others, they become increasingly suspicious and emotionally overwrought. Get obsessed with, yet frightened by, (their own) terrifying ideas, becoming horrified by themselves and by reality, and prey to gross distortions, phobias, and hallucinations. Feel like existence is torture. Seeking oblivion, Fives may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones. 

Triad Issues. Identified with the Thinking Center, the Five’s mind is overactive, overwhelming other functions, with the result that there is little connection with the physical body. Awareness of the emotional and interpersonal dimensions is generally undervalued and undeveloped. Thinking gets stuck in “preparation mode” — readying the self for postponed action. In this Triad, we also see themes concerning anxiety and security. Fives are anxious about their inability to cope with the potentially overwhelming outside world and so retreat into their minds, which they see as safer and more secure. 

Direction of Disintegration. Average Fives can become isolated and socially withdrawn to focus on pursuing whatever they believe will give them a sense of competence and mastery. To this end, they also cut off from basic needs for comfort, contact, and connection. This inevitably leads to stress, causing Fives to act out some of the average behaviors of type Seven. At such times, Fives become more scattered in their thinking, and impulsive in their actions. They may entertain themselves compulsively or suddenly try to connect with others socially, although their impulsivity often causes such efforts to backfire, leading to more withdrawal and social isolation. They may also seek to escape from painful feelings through manic activity or substance abuse. 

Unhealthy Fives can become extremely isolated and incapable of acting effectively in their environment; when they go to Seven, they become even more impulsive, acting erratically and hysterically. Thinking too much has gotten them into many problems, so they no longer think but act compulsively. Deteriorated Fives become unstable and reckless, lunging out at an apparent solution to their problems, although often doing only more harm to themselves than good. 

Direction of Integration. When healthy Fives go to Eight, they become grounded in their own body, feeling the power of their instinctual energy. Thus they are able to act from a realization of their own mastery; their grounding gives them a solid support for their knowledge such that they can act and lead others with confidence. (They also realize that while they do not know everything, they still probably know more than most.) Fives no longer feel cut off from the world; rather, they experience the depth of their connection with everything and their ability to engage fully in life and with other people. As a result, they feel more capable and secure than they did from observing reality while trying to detach themselves from it. This empowers them to use their wisdom compassionately for the good of the world. 

Security Point. Average Fives can also “act-out” the average behaviors of type Eight, but usually with trusted friends and intimates. They can become extremely assertive and defiant, pushing people’s boundaries while aggressively defending their own. Disagreements or fears of control by others can cause Fives to lose their tempers. At such times, the extent of a Five’s underlying anger and feelings of rejection and powerlessness is revealed.

Childhood Pattern. Fives are ambivalently identified with both parents or parent figures. At a deep, sometimes unconscious level, Fives felt rejected by both parents. The other two ambivalent types, Two and Eight, coped with feelings of rejection and fit into the family by attempting to play a complementary role to the “rejecting parent.” Thus, Twos learn to play the role of the nurturer, and Eights play the role of protector. In Fives, however, the two roles cancel each other out, leading young Fives to feel overwhelmed by the needs of their caretakers and uncertain as to what they might be able to contribute to the family. As a result, Fives begin to look for a role that has not been taken, a niche they can fulfill that will give them a sense of place and belonging. But because they feel they do not have a niche, they focus on searching for one. Fives do not believe they can engage deeply in sustainable relationships until they have adequately mastered their niche.

Basic Fear. Of being helpless, useless, and incapable. 

Basic Desire. To be capable and competent. (To be able to do.) 

Secondary Motivations. Fives want to understand reality, to observe everything, to master something to gain confidence (find a niche), to create an inner reality that feels more controllable than the real world, to shut out our intrusions, to challenge or scare off anyone who threatens their inner world or niche, to isolate themselves from the outside world. 

In Search of: Mastery. Fives want to master something so that they can feel more confident and ready to meet life’s challenges. To the degree that they have been damaged in childhood and their confidence (especially in their physical powers) has been compromised, they begin to create a private mental world (or an “alternative reality” of some kind) and master that. Average to unhealthy Fives might attempt to master anything from math to piano playing to chess or computer games in order to gain a feeling of confidence — and not to be intruded on in their private space. 

Healthy Sense of Self. “I am an intelligent, perceptive person.” 

Hidden Complaint. “I am so smart that no one else can understand the things I understand or appreciate the things I know.” 

Key Defense Mechanisms. Displacement, projection, isolation. 

Characteristic Temptation. To replace direct experience with concepts. Average to unhealthy Fives literally “think too much,” in inappropriate categories and circumstances. They are convinced that by pondering everything they will attain insight and thus be able to build competence and confidence. If Fives understand their environment, they can master it — and therefore will be able to defend themselves against it, if necessary. However, as they abstract from reality, average to unhealthy Fives become increasingly lost in their own thought processes until they lose all perspective. Their intense focus on their inner worlds leads them further and further from grounded contact with themselves and with reality. Excessive conceptualizing is therefore the potential prelude to distortions of perception and increasing failure of confidence. 

Saving Grace. Despite their intense preoccupations and increasingly dark interpretations of reality, average Fives may realize that they have begun to introduce distortions into their thinking rather than coming closer to any real understanding. Awareness of their own thought processes may prevent them from deteriorating further and getting out of touch with reality. Their healthy capacity for observation may help them reassess their ideas; their perceptiveness may help them return to a more balanced, healthier state.

Structural Patterns. The keynote is concentration. The objective world of reality is the focus of their attention; however, the more subjective world of thought is the arena that Fives inhabit. Therefore, the inner pattern is of thinking oriented to comprehending reality but impelled by subjective impulses (including aggressions). (Conflicts arise if and when their subjective impulses overpower and distort their perceptions.) Their minds are highly active, intensely driven, and yet defensive — and as their minds become increasingly overheated, Fives unconsciously project subjective ideas into their perceptions. Fives tend to go into so much depth and detail with what has caught their attention that they “disappear” socially and physically. This can make Fives characteristically awkward or even completely unaware of social conventions and graces. Outwardly, the pattern is of increasing distance from reality as Fives reject attachments with the world, particularly with other people. The overall pattern is of paradoxical curiosity and withdrawal, involvement and detachment, immersion and defense, aggression and fear of aggression, attraction and repulsion, and so forth. 

Cognitive Error. To think that they can understand the world by seeing themselves as a disconnected, “outside observer.” Whether or not they like it, Fives participate in the world and affect the subject of their observations.

Inevitable Consequences. The inevitable consequence of detachment and withdrawal (into mental constructs, ideas, theories, and imagined alternative realities) is that Fives undermine their Basic Desire (to be competent and capable) while increasingly bringing on themselves their Basic Fear, that they are helpless, useless, or incapable. If Fives cease engaging with reality and do not check their ideas against objective facts, they are in danger of becoming completely lost in their own inner world, and of getting out of touch with reality. Further, their disengagement from their own physicality and needs undermines their ability to feel confident to function in the world. Their increased loss of contact with their physicality, their groundedness, make it inevitable that they will feel threatened and overwhelmed either by someone else or by reality. Rather than be more safely defended by their powerful mental focus, they are literally driven mad by it. 

[classicfilmfreak]

New Post has been published on http://www.classicfilmfreak.com/2017/10/19/wolf-man-1941-starring-lon-chaney-claude-rains/

The Wolf Man (1941) starring Lon Chaney and Claude Rains

 “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

Much of the folklore—“wolflore,” wives tales?—known about werewolves and the process of their transformation, lycanthropy, originated in The Wolf Man.  If any one watching this 1941 film is unfamiliar with the werewolf legend, a number of the characters quote the above line, ad nauseam, as a reminder.

The first of these signposts mentioned in the film is the pentagram as a sign of the werewolf, engraved on the handle of a most important cane.  Another myth perpetuates the idea that this wild canine metamorphosis occurs during a full moon.  The old gypsy woman of the movie initiates the idea that a werewolf can be killed with a silver bullet, a silver knife or, as demonstrated at least twice in the film, that cane with its silver handle.  Introduced last, and to quote the old gypsy herself, “Whoever is bitten by a werewolf and lives becomes a werewolf himself.”

Unusual for this early in his career, Claude Rains has a non-villainous role here, remaining aloof from this werewolf business and denying that his son, played by Lon Chaney, Jr., has had the “wolf experience.”  He began his career, however, playing disagreeable fellows.  His first film, The Invisible Man in 1933, is one of the best in the horror genre.  While it wisely mixes some diverting humor with the horror, The Wolf Man takes it all seriously.

The following year, Rains goes insane in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, and, in 1935, he becomes an opium addict in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a choirmaster who murders all suitors of his inamorata and buries them in the cathedral crypt.  Next, as aristocrat Don Luis, a gout-crippled husband in Anthony Adverse (1936), he kills his wife’s lover in a duel.  From eighteenth-century Italy to medieval England Rains lusts for power, first as the Earl of Hertford in The Prince and the Pauper (1937) and then as Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), both opposite Errol Flynn.

When The Wolf Man opens, Larry Talbot (Chaney) is returning to his father’s ancestral home (a detailed matte painting) after eighteen years away.  The death of his brother in a hunting accident has reunited him with his father, Sir John (Rains), after years of estrangement.

After Larry has met his father’s friend, Colonel Montford (Ralph Bellamy), chief constable of the district, he visits an antique store.  He flatters a young woman, Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), but she appears impassive.  She, however, sells him a silver-handled walking stick, with an engraved pentagram and wolf’s head.  She acquaints him with the werewolf legend and the “Even a man . . . ” quote.  Despite her indifference, he says he will meet her at the shop that night and take her to the gypsy carnival that has just arrived in town.

After a brief scene at home where his father quotes the “Even a man . . . ” line, Larry returns that evening to the antique store.  Strangely enough, Gwen is waiting and introduces her friend Jenny (Fay Helm), who also quotes the line.

A fortuneteller, Bela (Bela Lugosi), reads Jenny’s palm and sees a pentagram, a portent of evil.  “Go quickly!  Go!” he says.  As she runs through the foggy woods, she is attacked by a wolf, which Larry kills with his cane but not before he is bitten on the chest.  Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya), another gypsy fortuneteller, happens by in her cart, greatly distressed over Larry’s wolf encounter.  Unfortunately he leaves his cane.

Psychiatrist Dr. Lloyd (Warren William) and the police find beside the dead Jenny the body of Bela, but where is the wolf that Larry killed?  (As Maleva will later explain, Bela was a werewolf and, upon death, returned to human form.)

During another visit to the carnival, Gwen is accompanied by her fiancé, Frank (Patric Knowles).  In reading Larry’s fortune, Maleva sees the worst and gives him a protective pentagram pendant, which he later will give to Gwen “just in case.”  For a reason unexplained, the pentagram, a sign of the werewolf, now becomes protection against one.

Larry goes home, notices the pentagram sign on his chest and sees his feet growing hair (no facial shots are used).  Now transformed into a wolf, he tiptoes through the fog-drenched woods—what has tiptoeing to do with a wolf?

Next morning, Larry has no memory of killing a gravedigger (Tom Stevenson), but awakens to see muddy paw tracks on the carpet and windowsill.  He at least has enough sense of guilt to rub them out.

Though still denying any wolf connection with his son, Sir John interprets the werewolf legend as a parable of “the good and evil in every man’s soul,” that “anything can happen to any man in his own mind.”  Despite Larry’s cane being found beside Bela’s body, Dr. Lloyd lays on the psychiatric jargon, attributing any of Larry’s werewolf links to his own “psychic maladjustment.”

On another nightly prowl as a wolf, Larry gets his foot caught in one of the traps which Frank and the colonel have set.  By the time Larry has returned to human form, he has freed himself from the trap and returned home.

Sir John of course still refuses to believe what Larry tells him, that he has killed Bela and the gravedigger, that he has seen the pentagram in Gwen’s palm.  He must leave town, he says.  When Colonel Montford comes for Sir John to join the wolf hunt, he straps his son to a chair and takes the silver-handled cane upon Larry’s insistence.

In the woods, Frank and Colonel Montford, armed with shotguns for any wolf contingency, end up chasing a wolf that is after Gwen.  Gwen falls unconscious and the wolf turns on Sir John, who uses the cane to kill the animal.

The hunters return just after the wolf has turned back into Larry, who obviously had escaped his bonds.  (The two previous human-to-wolf dissolves had been only of feet; now, for the third and last time, seventeen continuous dissolves show the face, the work of special effects expert John P. Fulton and make-up artist Jack Pierce.)

“The wolf must have attacked Gwen,” Montford surmises, “and Larry came to the rescue.”  The father, the one most in denial of his son being a werewolf, is now the only one who knows the truth.

By the true nature of the film—The Wolf Man is, after all, a horror film—it’s difficult for elements such as the subtleties of acting or serious character development to be exploited.  Claude Rains, however, comes through best of all, as expected, solid and determined, but, for a man with his character’s intelligence, he is a little slow to comprehend the goings-on.

Lon Chaney, in the first of five appearances as the wolf man, is sincere in his portrayal of an innocent man experiencing a series of changes through no fault of his own.  At first he is merely suspicions of what he might have done, then haunted by terrible visions and hallucinations beyond his comprehension and finally tormented—practically driven mad—by the realization that he has committed murder and, in his state, could endanger the life of the woman he loves.  Bela Lugosi had actively campaigned for the role, but ended up with his brief, killed-off-early part.

Evelyn Ankers and Maria Ouspenskaya, two quite different actresses in age and persona, serve well two extremes—the attractive love interest for Chaney and, talk about sincerity, the more than credible gypsy who delivers her hocus-pocus nonsense so convincingly she could have been recruited from an authentic band of gypsies, much as Jan Rubes as the Amish patriarch Eli Lapp in Witness (1985) seems borrowed from that religious sect.

As for the remaining three stars—Ralph Bellamy, Warren William and Patric Knowles, they are pretty much wasted, making a lot of entrances and exits, encumbered by some often trite dialogue.  Knowles, for one, is studio-supplied with the props of an English country gentleman, with pipe and tweed coat.  The film also features a number of well known supporting players of the ’30s and ’40s: J. M. Kerrigan, Forrester Harvey, Harry Cording, Olaf Hytten and Leyland Hodgson, among others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsrFMBWRC1M