#unfortunately you Will be getting more drawings of him because i like drawing lobotomies

[fexrox]

im not beating the jojo allegations

[sassygwaine]

parts of “unmasking autism” by devon price, phd that made me go oof

I do think when allistic people declare that everyone is a little Autistic, it means they are close to making an important breakthrough about how mental disorders are defined: why do we declare some people broken, and others perfectly normal, when they exhibit the same traits? Where do we draw the line, and why do we even bother doing so? (32)

All too often, the difference between who gets perceived as an innocent, shy Autistic and who gets viewed as creepy, awkward, and obviously disabled is more a function of things like race, gender, and body size than it is any innate difference in personality or behavior. (57)

I was basically a perpetual adolescent, performing intelligence for praise but mismanaging my personal life and not connecting with anyone in a deeper way. (85)

Once you’ve proven yourself capable of suffering in silence, neurotypical people tend to expect you’ll be able to do it forever, no matter the cost. (99)

When the entire world shames people for being into “childish” things, having odd mannerisms, or simply being irritating, you don’t need ABA to program you into compliance. Everyone around you is already doing it. (102)

Unfortunately, when an Autistic person complains about the sensory pain they’re in, people think they’re being overly dramatic, needy, or even downright “crazy.” … They acted as if I chose to be distracted and furious every day. (115)

We often seek out clear “rules” for good behavior, which we then adhere to rigidly, hoping they will keep us socially safe and finally render us worthy. (121)

When many of us were growing up, adults saw us as loud, stubborn, uncaring, overly reactive, and burdensome. We’ve grown up believing we truly are hard to be around, and to love. (144)

Today, his fiction readers tell him he’s fantastic at writing dialogue, and really understands how other people speak and feel. But it’s not because these things come naturally to him. He devoted thousands of hours to picking conversations apart to make sense of them. (161)

We’re more like the protagonist of the video game Katamari Damacy, a freaky, colorful demigod who rolls an ever-growing ball of objects around, each step forward attracting more random items into his ball’s expanding gravitational field until it engulfs the universe. We don’t complete discrete projects. We build worlds. (178)

It’s vital we learn to navigate interactions marked by conflict, and practice standing firm in the face of negative reactions from others. As long as we haven’t abused anyone or violated their rights, it’s okay for our actions to make others unhappy. (193)

At times, unmasking means teaching our neurotypical friends and family to treat us better; in other situations, it may mean disengaging from those who aren’t ever going to be worth the effort. (195)

[regarding friendships worth cultivating:] Who tells me honestly when I’ve hurt them, and gives me a real opportunity to do better? (205)

“I am not a math-minded type of Autistic…I am the kind who thinks about people obsessively.” (219)

In his writing, [Mike] Oliver described disability as a political status, one that is created by the systems that surround us, not our minds and bodies. (230)

Emotions that are too large, passions that are too childish and not profitable, habits that are too repetitive, and bodies and minds that require daily assistance all challenge this incredibly narrow definition of health. It is only by expanding our definition of what is acceptable human behavior and working to meet other people’s manifold needs that we can move forward. (233)

From the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, to Hans Asperger’s research on “high-functioning” Autistics, to the forced lobotomies performed on gay people and communists, immense violence has been done in the name of science and “protecting” the public. (247)

We all deserve to take a step back and ask whether our lives line up with our values, whether the work we do and the face we show to others reflects our genuine self, and if not, what we might want to change. (250)

[girlreviews]

Review #485: Continuum, John Mayer

The thing you need to know first about my listening to this album is that I truly have never heard it, or any songs on it, ever. John Mayer was really not a mainstream thing in the UK where I grew up and any releases of new music from him happened without anyone on that little island being particularly aware of it, with a few exceptions here and there. So please imagine how weird that is when the opening track is, apparently, one of those ones that is so overplayed and recognizable in American culture that is provokes a visceral and physical response in people. But not me. I thought it was fine.

I actually hoped to like this album, because unfortunately for me, John Mayer’s “Sob Rock”, I genuinely believe has not yet had it’s day, and it’s one of the better works of art to be put out in the last decade. It was smart, conceptual, beautiful, serious and unserious and just really fucking good man. Whenever the question of what to listen to cannot be answered, the answer is Sob Rock. AND EVEN THAT has a banished song on it, because he can’t fucking help himself. John. It was 2021. It was following a year of reckoning for us all. And you thought it was funny or cool to put a track on there and unironically call it “Why You No Love Me”. Get the fuck out of here John. You’re honestly lucky the rest of it is good enough that I will tolerate this being on there at all. And it’s terrible. Get help. Get therapy. Get a lobotomy. Whoever she is, stay away from her.

I reasonably expected that this would be as good as that in a different way if it made its way to the Rolling Stone’s Top 500, but, I don’t get it. I really sat and asked myself what the appeal is for a good long while too.

There are some, SOME, like THREE tracks that I think are pretty decent songs. They’re interesting. They have depth. The rest of it is coffee house music or a guy who is trying really hard to convince you he’s a deep, romantic, misunderstood thinker. And I’m not picking up what he’s putting down. You’re a fraud my guy, I can feel it in these songs. They’re shallow. They’re a performance. But not in a good way.

This is the same John Mayer that proudly expressed in an interview (with Rolling Stone!) “My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a fuckin' David Duke cock. I'm going to start dating separately from my dick."

Yeah, so I don’t think we are going to be reading into any of these soft boy coffee house Nora Ephron “missing each other” montage soundtrack vibes (listen to “Gravity” and tell me you can’t just see Meg Ryan drawing her curtains closed lamenting why Tom Hanks or Billy Crystal hasn’t called or emailed yet).

So look, it’s barreling towards mediocrity on all fronts, it’s especially full of shit conceptually, and I just think he needs to leave this kind of thing to Norah Jones, who isn’t really my cup of tea either but she’s not out there using the n-word in interviews, name-dropping David Duke, referring to past girlfriends as “sexual napalm”, or dating girls more than ten years younger than him that are barely adults. Just shut the fuck up John. If you’re not going to make something self deprecating that at least acknowledges what a garbage guy you are, then I’m not gonna be able to hear anything in it that’s good. That’s why Sob Rock works, you know that, right John? Cus you’re kind of a garbage guy and you’re kind of self aware in it. You’re in your forties now and this shit was never cute but I can promise you it’s just ugly now.

Honestly, I have no idea why this is critically acclaimed and the only thing I’ve got is that he is generally revered to be a prodigy of sorts on the old axe, is appreciated by his (male) peers for this, toured with the Grateful Dead etc, and this guitar is incorporated into this dull droll coffee house music. Here’s my response: so what?

Last thing on this. I once listened to Sob Rock for the bazillionth time, but I was laying in bed with it playing through my projector. I was very high. Spotify did that annoying thing it does where it puts a short animation up with the music and it was just giant on my wall. All I can say is that the vibe was ruined by John Mayer’s massive and disturbing lips. This is the duality of separating the art from the artist. Sometimes we love an album and we hate that we love it because they are such a dick and have weird lips that freak you out. If John Mayer was walking towards me on the street I would recoil in horror and run the opposite direction because his lips strike a primal fear deep in my heart. Is it rational? No. Is it true? Yes.

I listened to Continuum a second time to be thorough but it’s not gonna get a third go. But I will start a letter writing campaign insisting that the next iteration of the top 500 replace Continuum with Sob Rock and I’m pretty serious about that. My brain can’t make sense of this being better than that. I would say I’d die on that hill but I ain’t dying on no hill for this fool.

[sparklyjojos]

[Disco in his introduction:]  Everyone I meet always tells me “Stop acting like a living joke” at first, but ultimately, what’s the difference between my lifestyle and you guys’ lifestyle? I, too, pay my taxes; I, too, arrange my CDs neatly in order; and when I talk to the person next to me in the stands and see a fly ball that’ll obviously be a foul, I, too, shut up. That’s normal. No one can escape from that reality.

[Tsukumojuku in Tsukumojukumatsu:] Just like every other great detective in this world, I don’t exist in the sense that other people do—people who pay taxes, use the convenience store bathroom, and drink too much until they lose memory. The perfect being that is the great detective can only ever exist inside stories.

Still obsessed with Maijo’s concept of Great Detectives(TM)

So, as much as that first part of Disco Wednesdayyy is... questionable, I feel like it does have a goal beside just Being Awful. Disco starts off as a relatively normal human, a very much Not great detective, just some dude with horrible urges surrounded by the grim reality of non-beautified crime and death. More of a hardboiled detective, if you will, and so the narration also follows some... unfortunate tendencies of the hardboiled genre, especially in regards to gratituous violence and portrayal of female characters.

And then Mercury C shows up and the book does a 180. Suddenly, we’re in a typical shinhonkaku Great Detective book, with a strange murder in a strange house with strange people, with secret messages and wordplays. And everything is trying to forcibly drag Disco, thrashing and screaming, into being a Great Detective. The universe WILL make him do a dramatic explanation of the case, search for hidden meaning in words, and draw silly little diagrams for the reader’s convenience.

This isn’t the only time this conflict shows up in Maijo, either. It’s a constant theme that’s explored in different ways.

2003 Tsukumojuku tries his hardest to keep the comfort of being Just Some Guy, just a Tsutomu with a boring job and a family and bills to pay, and will deny being a Great Detective as long as he can. But just as Disco has to solve the Pine House, Tsukumojuku has to eventually solve the Cross House and embrace the hidden truth.

And the Disco-verse Tsutomu, a random guy from the sticks, would much rather be the Great Detective Tsukumojuku, this unrealistic concept who’s cool and smart, who doesn’t have crippling depression and doesn’t get kicked down the hall by his best friend.

ID:INVADED has maybe the most straightforward way of showing this conflict: there’s that messed up Narihisago guy who deals with horribly real violence and trauma, and there’s the young, smiling Great Detective Sakaido who deals with symbols. And that’s not even touching Fukuda, who’s a Sakai Tsutomu expy down to the self-lobotomy, 3 being A Wonderful Number, and “Tamotsu” being almost an anagram of “Tsutomu”. (Remember, ID:INVADED was at first called “Alien Thursdayyy” and was likely deeply connected to Disco.)

Then again, some characters are mostly comfortable just being Great Detectives, like Jorge, his Tsukumojuku, and the -matsu Tsukumojuku. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re the closest to understanding Beyond. Jorge-verse Tsukumojuku is distraught when not being a Great Detective anymore, because that was what he’s always known and what gave him comfort. They all have this innate sense of Everything Having Meaning. From the very beginning they just know the world was made for them, and it’s so fascinating to compare their narration styles to someone like early Disco, who would never understand that.

God, I love Maijo sometimes.

[vateacancameos]

I Won't Let You Let Me Down So Easily

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Fandom: The Locked Tomb Trilogy Pairing: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus Tags: Canon Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Gideon the Ninth, Post-Harrow the Ninth, Pre-Slash, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, they're working on the lovers part, POV Gideon Nav, Gideon watches Harrow Word Count: 1804 Part 2 of the Watching series (read Part 1 here)

For all of her short years of life, Gideon Nav has never wanted anything more than to ignore the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. To pretend she doesn’t exist. Unfortunately for Gideon—and the entirety of the Ninth—Harrowhark Nonagesimus has made that impossible from day one. She’s always there, one step away from Gideon, not looking at her, but making her own presence known, making sure she’s seen. That shrill, commanding tone is there from the moment she says her first word. Bones follow her every command, and she’s a tiny tyrant in black and wearing a painted mask. Where she is, skeletons follow, and Gideon is left behind, bloodied and beaten on the floor.

She never asked for this. She’s never wanted to be the bane of everyone’s existence. In fact, she tries her hardest to get away, time and time and time and time again. But Harrow demands an audience, and with most of the House being blinded from old age, Gideon is the one forced to watch. So she watches. Mostly, she watches her back, but over time, she watches just to see. What she’s looking for, she’s not sure.

She’s never wanted this, so why does a part of her now ask for it?

*** 

 (read the rest under the cut)

***

Somehow Gideon isn’t surprised that even in the afterlife, she’s forced to watch Harrow. The Dark Mistress of Drearburh is a necromancer after all. If Gideon couldn’t get away from her during any of her eighty-seven escape attempts in life, it’s doubtful a little something like lacking a body would stop Harrow from forcing her to stay.

The really annoying part is that this time, Gideon actually does want to watch, but she’s got less a front-row seat and more like she’s using binoculars turned backwards so the thing she’s looking at is tiny and the lenses are smudged and she’s got cotton stuffed in her ears. She’s grateful for that when Ianthe tries her hand (haha, hand) at flirting with Harrow—she’s never felt such intense second-hand embarrassment in her life—but seeing what’s happening on The Mithraeum would be rather helpful right now.

Especially considering she isn’t allowed to do her job (protecting) thanks to one pointy-faced emo chick performing an at-home lobotomy with only a sociopathic princess to watch over her. Oh yeah, pre-surgery, Gideon could watch everything just fine. Why is it always that she’s forced to watch when she doesn’t want to, and she can’t watch when she does want to? She’s more than a little ticked by that.

No one ever asks her what she wants.

***

You know what’s really fucking annoying? Dying for your best frenemy so she can become the thing she’s wanted to become since she was four, then getting not only walled up in a tiny corner of Prissy McBitchFace’s brain, not only forced to see how awkward God is during tea time, not only stuck watching Harrow fumble her training and social interaction, but ALSO, unable to make her fucking necromancer work out or learn one single thing about a sword.

IT’S A FUCKING POMMEL, HARROWHARK. You can learn all the bones of the body by age two and a half, but you can’t learn the very few parts of a fucking sword? Sigh.

She’s being willfully ignorant on purpose. Gideon knows it.

***

You know what’s really fucking sad? Watching Harrowhark unable to function. Not just in her usual disconnected with reality and living in her special world where she’s the queen and everyone bows to her way. No, Harrow is … not Harrow. She’s barely human now (not that she was ever particularly human, more like a pointy, annoying bat), she’s paranoid (granted, someone is trying to kill her on the daily), she’s not sleeping, there are more wards in her tiny room than in all of the Ninth House, and she’s trying to … make soup?

It’s embarrassing to watch, and once again, Gideon is grateful her view is fuzzy and distant. Except that since she only gets a far-off snapshot of events a few times a day, she has lots of time to think and contemplate. And the more she thinks about it, the worse she feels. It’s sad, Harrow’s life is. And not in a oh she’s such a dork, how sad way, but more in a way that hurts Gideon’s heart, if Gideon had a heart still, which she guesses she doesn’t, not properly.

But still, she aches for Harrow. She wants to do her job, to be the big bad protector, but someone decided to be a selfish jerk and not let Gideon do the one thing she literally died to do.

Some people suck.

***

Swear to John (who’d’ve thought God’s name would be John), Gideon is really fucking tired of watching. At least when she was forced to watch Harrow in the past(life), she had a sword in her hands and a cocky smile on her face. Oh, what she’d give to go back to being able to watch and do, rather than watch and … watch, but not really watch, because time moves funny for her and it sounds like everyone is talking under water and faces are distorted (oh, no, wait, Ianthe’s face is always like that, nm).

She needs to be able to do again. She needs to force her dumb necromancer to get some sleep and then some exercise and then some brain surgery, in that order (what? squats are important). And then maybe learn the parts of the sword. SERIOUSLY, HARROW, HOW HARD IS POMMEL?

She wishes she had Harrow’s dumb army of constructs to fight. Even without a body, she has excess energy to get rid of and– HOLY SHIT. A CONSTRUCT JUST BURST OUT OF THE SKINNY/BUFF LYCTOR’S abdomen.

Okay, Harrow. You win this round.

***

Sleep does not help Harrowhark’s mood. She’s less of a zombie, sure, but she’s still a bit bananas. Watching her cut off Ianthe’s arm is pretty great, though (less great is watching her climb on top of Princess Bitch to do it). And the sex thing with God and two of the saints is … well, the jury is still out on that one. She actually got quite an eyeful of that scene. Perhaps all the wine allowed Gideon more freedom to move about in her necro’s brain.

None of that shocks her like watching Harrow save the lyctor whose been out to kill her for months. Gideon would definitely save him if she were in Harrow’s shoes (except she’d never be in those shoes because, one, they’re too small for her, and two, SHE KNOWS HOW TO USE A FUCKING SWORD). But even after everything that happened at Canaan House, and all that she’s seen of the disaster that is Harrow’s current life, watching Harrow save the man she’s absolutely bloody terrified of is … staggering.

Gideon’s not sure what to do with this information. Harrow with a normal human conscious is not something she thought she’d ever see. It’s not the Harrow she knew for seventeen years. It’s not the girl she fought tooth and nail with almost all of her life. It’s not the tiny mad genius who broke into the Tomb just to say she could. It’s not the tyrant who puppeteered her dead parents’ bodies for seven years for a power trip. It’s not the necromancer who longed for nothing more than to become a lyctor, even at every other person around hers expense.

It’s not the bone magician who performed possibly deadly surgery on her own brain rather than share soul space with the woman who died for her.

And if Harrow’s actions now say she’s not those things, then what else doesn’t Gideon know about her?

***

For once, Gideon is the watchee instead of the watcher.

Leave it to Sextus to be the one to see her.

***

Gideon takes it all back. She’d rather spend a myriad watching helplessly and foggily as her necromancer bumbles through life because she refuses to accept help in becoming a real lyctor. She’d love to go back to watching her make soup and avoid kisses with Tridentarius The Lesser and grimace at tea and cut her hair every three days and fuck up Gideon’s beloved two-hander by covering it in bone glue.

Because the alternative, of Harrow just up and leaving her body, which has just come to pass, is untenable. It’s wrong. Not just Gideon’s eyes and her WTF expression on Harrow’s face, but also the pure lack of Harrow in the room. For such a tiny little witch, she takes up a lot of space. She always has. It’s why Gideon had watched her their whole lives. Harrow would enter a room, and her presence would draw Gideon like a paperclip to a magnet. It was hateful, but it was comfortable, a known entity.

But Harrow being gone is so wrong.

Luckily, there are plenty of bug-human-acid-monster things that hold her attention for a time. That, and trying to figure out how to work Harrow’s limp noodle arms so that she can use a sword that weighs about the same as she currently does. As Gideon hacks and kicks and watches Harrow’s extremities regrow (trippy), she avoids thinking about why Harrow has left her. She fights Princess Peach and avoids thinking. She bickers (and maybe falls just a tiny bit in love) with Ianthe Tridentarius and avoids thinking. She listens to confessions twenty years in coming and avoids thinking. She finds her (very fucked up) family and avoids thinking. She (maybe?) befriends the lyctor who tried for nine months to kill her necromancer (except its actually not the lyctor anymore and she’s definitely going to have to learn more about that at some point when she’s no longer fighting for her [lyctor’s] life) and avoids thinking.

She’s going to have to think again at some point, but she’ll avoid it as long as she’s able.

***

When Gideon finally escapes and gets somewhere safe, she has time to watch again, and she hates it. She watches Harrow’s face in the mirror. She wills her necromancer to come back. She begs Harrow to come back. She paints the best skull she’s ever painted on Harrow’s face. She puts on the rust-black robes. She stares at the mirror and tries to find Harrow in the frown lines and pointy chin. But she’s not there, and it looks wrong. Gideon screams and punches the mirror. The broken flesh repairs instantly. She hates that. She needs the pain the last.

She has always associated pain with Harrow. The physical pain of their fights. The emotional pain of being unloved. If the pain is no longer there, does that mean Harrow is gone for good?

Gideon Nav’s eyes sting, and she watches the paint melt off Harrow’s face.

[mystxmomo]

Gimme a uhhh Matsukamu headcanon surrounding Kamukura's surgery recovery and medication and shit, if you'd like.

Mm I would very much like thank you for this good prompt. Even if it sort of turned into both a Hinata and Kamukura w/ Matsuda headcanon list instead of a specifically shipping list. I want to thank you, also, for consistently fueling my Matsukamu bullshit

So real talk. I think Hinata and Matsuda have both a healthy respect for one another and an unhealthy disrespect for one another. They’d create interesting foils, in that Matsuda is someone that is treated with a lot of respect despite how he behaves specifically because of the talent he has, and I don’t really think Hinata was treated the best which, lmao, probably goes without saying.

Matsuda gave Hinata two very clear chances to get out of dodge before realizing how serious he was about this. 

Hinata and Matsuda’s relationship is this post. Maybe one day I’ll draw something for it, but this is it this is their relationship.

When it comes to Kamukura’s like.. actual recovery though, I think that The Steering Committee attempted to sort of, rush through his creation process? They wanted more done faster, because time is money, and they were already sinking a lot of money into this. So for a while Matsuda was playing a game of “Working against the Steering Committee and playing nice to please them”

I ALSO think they attempted to take him off whatever pain medication they used on him during his surgery WAYY too fast. Thats something Matsuda probably had to fight to keep him on. 

The beginning part of Kamukura’s life was spent more asleep then awake. He hurt, so when he wasn’t testing he was asleep. The further apart surgeries got, the less of an issue this became. But I think that Kamukura could fall asleep anywhere.

I think Matsuda purposefully botched Kamukura’s lobotomy. Matsuda is very much a “Matsuda knows best,” Kinda person. If he thinks taking away a guys ability to feel emotions is a bad idea, he’s not going to go through with it entirely. Just enough that theres an obvious change in his demeanor, but not enough to like destroy it entirely? I think I’ve talked about this here before but the fact that Kamukura can feel bored like, at all? Is proof that he has the capability to feel still.

I think Kamukura start’s off with a very black and white mentality. Like “This person is mean to me so they’re a bad person, but this person is nice to me so they’re a nice person” kinda mindset

Which means for a lil’bit, he does NOT see past Matsuda’s bullshit extra tsundre shit. 

Kamukura use to bite people before he got whatever talents allowed him to go all superhuman and shit. If he didn’t want to be touched, and more often then not he didn’t want to be touched, he would bite you. Matsuda never got bit hard enough to break skin though! Just enough to bruise. So that was considerate of Kamukura.

I think Kamukura had a tendency of sneaking out a lot, and Matsuda, the poor unfortunate bastard he is, is often tasked with finding him before he gets caught. Sometimes this results in Kamukura being dragged back immediately. Other times, this results in getting starbucks at 10am on a school day, because Matsuda is tired and well. They’re already out and about. Might as well. 

I probably have more but ehhnnnn kay.

[lobotomycorplegacy-archive]

Fragment of the universe

“Ah yes, O-03-60-T. First of all, I want to say that the most frequent question Lobotomy Corp gets is ‘do we have aliens from outer space?’ Company policy is to answer ‘no.’ The last thing we need is the general public attracting more Abnormalities here, we already have our hands full finding them on Earth.”

“Anyway, O-03-60-T confirmed to us personally that it is from outer space, but because of obvious language barriers cannot seem to pinpoint where it’s from. And while it has been displaying behavior that insists it comes in peace, something’s... well, something just doesn’t feel right to me.”

Like what?

“The amount of employees who are permanently institutionalized because of this thing. The number is hitting four digits very soon. Many are willing to dismiss this as attempting to take in too much information about the Abnormality at once, or attempting to break down it’s language in a way we humans can understand it and failing. But none of this accounts for when the Abnormality attacks, which is more often than thought. It can create additional appendages other than it’s own and when they pierce a human, the human suffers from permanent brain damage. Almost instantly.”

Crap. Sounds like no one is safe from it.

“Well, those who are described as Optimists seem to work with it with no negative side effects. We’re still trying to figure out why, and until then the rest of us need an effective strategy.”

“O-03-60-T wants to interact with us. According to what little communication we’ve managed with it, it came here to give us knowledge, and once we have come to understand what this knowledge is, all will be made clear. It’s certainly gone out of it’s way to show that it wants to be friendly: assuming the form of a child’s drawing, and making the shape of hearts once it understood what hearts meant in symbolism. And it’s trying very hard to communicate with us, being as cooperative as possible...”

And yet you said it attacked people?

“Yes. It’s a very moody creature, unfortunately, and it’s not happy being in containment all the time. Also, it’s common for any given agent to just lose their nerve around the thing, and that in turn makes it panic. It will change form, breach containment, and wander the halls. It will attack employees left and right, and will sometimes... sing.”

Sing?

“They call it ‘Echos from the beyond.’ The creature will suddenly emit loud sounds that some claim to have a melody to it. So, it’s been called a song. Sudden exposure leads to a variety of problems: headaches, dizziness, hallucinations, panic, cerebral aneurysms... nothing pleasant. In the short term, most agents recover.”

Except for the brain aneurysms, though...

Eugene ignores the mod.

“With long term exposure, which is sitting through the entirety of the ‘song,’ is where the permanent effects come into play. Permanent madness, brain damage, comas, and in a couple of extreme cases, death. And once the creature starts it’s ‘song,’ rarely does it stop. The good news is that it only takes a few coordinated whacks before we can get it back into containment. So the strategy so far is to get a large enough group together to suppress it and hope for the best in terms of surviving.”

Yeesh. Alright, personal story time. I hear you’ve got some good ones.

“Well, I’ve taken some time to attempt to communicate with it further. I’m being assisted by Dr. Wells from the Education Team who, ironically, was once a special ed teacher before taking some work in the company. His specialty was helping children communicate, so the two of us decided to see if we can work something out with O-03-60-T. While it’s taking to our lectures and is able to give us answers we can translate into English, it doesn’t like Dr. Wells very much. Or at least, doesn’t respond to him as frequently as the others. Dr. Wells said that he was more than used to it, but had a theory. We were using simplistic language and models for our lectures, treating it like a preschool lesson. When we decided to just speak normally, as though talking to another person, O-03-60-T responded much more positively. I asked it why it preferred this method more, it’s answer was ‘Not. Stupid. Smart. Talk. Adult.’”

Didn’t appreciate being talked down to?

“Right. We explained that we didn’t think it was stupid, we were just trying to help it learn more words. And it... laughed.”

“God, I hate when it laughs.”

What does it’s laughing sound like?

“No.”

Okay then... have you heard it’s song before?

“...yes.”

What does it sound like? And you can’t just say no.

“It.... you don’t understand. There’s no way to reproduce the sounds it makes. Any of them. In any way. And the hardest to describe is it’s song. We can’t even record it, the sounds statics and booms and can’t even play it back properly. No human words or Earthly sound can do it justice. However, I do have a theory.”

Yeah?

“I don’t think it’s singing. I think it’s crying.”

Crying?

“It only ‘sings’ when it breaches or is extremely upset. So I think it’s crying or, at worst, calling for help.”

What does it think is going to help it?

Eugene’s eyes wander up to the ceiling.

“...whatever it is, I just hope it can’t hear us from down here.”