#when has he ever expressed interest in Martin that’s not institute related

[chipotle-chicken-avocado-melt]

Am I the only one who’s not convinced by Jon/martin? When they got together it was less culmination of 4 seasons of building and developing and more of a “wait did I miss like a whole season” moment. I feel like I must have missed something because I am more often asking if they even like each other

[gammija]

The final Web!Martin evidence list

Now that canon is done, and we’ve got word of god confirmation that Web!Martin wasn’t complete nonsense, I decided to go back to my lil chronological evidence list and actually clean it up a bit, delete parts that in hindsight weren't all that indicative, and put everything in a slightly more readable format. (Obligatory disclaimer that i don’t and never did believe or advocate for some kind of evil web!martin, and that I'm not intending to connect a moral judgement to martin (or anyone else for that matter) having some of these traits)

So here: The (hopefully, please) final list with Web!Martin Evidence! Presented in order of importance, according to. me

The final (hopefully) Web!Martin evidence list

(In order from most to least obvious)

Spiders

I mean, it’s called the Web. TMA reiterates quite a few times that Martin liked spiders. Sometimes it IS that easy.

MAG022: Martin: "I like spiders. Big ones, at least. Y’know, y’know the ones you can see some fur on; I actually think they’re sort of cute -"

MAG038: | Sasha: "A spider?" Jon: "Yeah. I tried to kill it…" [...] Sasha: [Chuckles] "Well, I won’t tell Martin." Jon: "Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem."

MAG059: Jon: "I have done my best to prevent Martin reading this statement in too much detail. I have no interest in having another argument about spiders."

MAG079: Jon: "Apparently, biologically, his account of the spiders doesn’t make any sense according to Martin."

MAG197: Martin: “What? Because I like spiders? Well, used to.”

Lies and subterfuge

Martin is able to use lying and subterfuge to achieve his goals, and is called manipulative a few times.

Lies:

MAG022: Martin: "[He] became slightly more co-operative after I lied to him and told him that one of the upstairs residents had buzzed me in."

MAG056: Martin: "I lied on my CV."

MAG158: Peter: “But you said –” Martin: “Honestly, I mostly just said what I thought you wanted to hear.”

MAG164: Jon: "You – I actually believed you!"

MAG189: Martin: “Sorry. Sorry, John. Not sure how much everything up there actually understood what was going on. But, y’know, I didn’t want to take any chances so it made sense to… um…” Jon: “Put on a show?” Martin: “Yeah, basically, more or less.”

MAG191: Martin: "That's not true." Arun: "Liar!"

Subterfuge:

The plan in 118, which revolved around convincing Elias that Martin was only “acting out”, to create a distraction for Melanie. (Also compare the way he evades giving a straight answer here with the way Annabelle talks in 196.)

Working with Peter in s4 under false pretenses, to distract him from Jon and eventually try to learn what Peter wanted.

Manipulation accusations:

These, I know, are somewhat contentious, since it’s mostly villains saying this to him. I’m still including them, since

1): From a media analysis standpoint, being mentioned 3 times is a sign to pay attention, even when it may not be the full truth.

2): I only see it as describing Martin’s behaviour in the previous points, not as a moral judgement; Especially since he almost always ‘manipulates’ people in positions of power over him.

Still, if it bothers anyone, feel free to ignore these.

MAG138: Martin: "That’s it? No, no monologue, no mind games? You love manipulating people!" Elias: "That makes two of us."

MAG186: Martin: “I can be a real manipulative prick, you know that?” Also Martin: “Oh yeah.”

MAG196: Annabelle: “Because you always managed to get what you wanted through smiles and shrugs and stammerings that weren’t nearly as awkward as they seemed.” [SMALL SOUND OF MARTIN’S CONCESSION TO THE POINT] Martin: “Point taken.”

The Lonely/the Web

The Lonely and the Web sometimes affect Martin to similar degrees.

In season 3, when Martin is getting used to reading statements for the first time, most of them leave him emotionally affected: MAG084, MAG088, MAG090,

MAG095: Martin: “S-S-Statement… done.” [HEAVY BREATHING & TREMBLING AS MARTIN STEADIES HIMSELF] “I don’t like recording these. There. I-I said it.”,

MAG098: Martin: [Panting] “End of statement.” [Deep breath] “I, um, I think I might need to sit down. Oh. Yeah, I am. Right. I don’t, uh, I’m not really sure if these are actually getting easier or harder. I mean I don’t feel –”

Only the last two statements he reads are remarkably easier. This might be a hint that Martin is just getting used to reading them, but the quote from MAG098 seems to contradict that. Either way, it’s likely not a coincidence that those last two happen to be the Lonely and the Web:

MAG108: Martin: “Statement ends.” (exhale) “That wasn’t so bad…”

MAG110: Martin: “Statement ends.” [...] “I mean, I think it sounds like a Jurgen Leitner book. About spiders. Hm. Good John didn’t have to read this one, anyway. I know he’s not a fan. Although, this one wasn’t too bad, actually! I – yeah. Anyway.”

In season 5, there are two powers’ Domains that actually affected Martin mentally, as opposed to only physically: the Lonely’s, in 170 (and arguably 186), and, depending on your interpretation, in 172, when Martin went exploring without knowing why he did so.

Proximity

Martin investigates a lot of the Web statements during season 1 to 3 (in other words, when the archive team still researches statements). The only ones he isn’t mentioned in during this period are MAG019 and MAG020, when he’s being harrassed by worms, and MAG081, which Jon records by himself outside of the institute.

Most notably, he’s the one who discovered the statement in MAG114, ‘Cracked Foundations’, which is the one statement in the entire show that sets up the interdimensional properties of HTR.

The Web!Lighter passed through Martin's hands first, before he gave it to Jon.

Similarly, Annabelle mostly spoke to Martin in season 5, despite most other Avatars usually focusing on Jon.

Aesthetics

Apart from the above obviously Web related areas, there are some other aesthetics which are mentioned in connection to both the Web and Martin, throughout canon.

These are describing the Web;

These are describing Martin.

Tapes:

Martin is the only character to treat the tape recorders as friends - any other character is either indifferent, or treats them as enemies.

MAG039: Martin: "I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm."

MAG154 Martin: “Oh. Hi. Hello again.” … (small laugh) “Sorry pal, false alarm this time.”

MAG156 Martin: “Mm? Oh.” [HE LAUGHS, GENTLY.] “Yeah. (rustling paper) I was going to read one. Hate for you to miss it!” [SHORT, FORCED LAUGH, AS HE FLAPS THE STATEMENT AROUND.]

MAG170 Martin: “Oh. Oh, hello. What’s this? Wow, retro! What are you up to, little buddy; just – listening? That’s okay. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

MAG190 Jon: "[The tapes] seem to like [Martin]."

Retro:

MAG069: Statement: “I only saw Annabelle Cane once during this period. She wasn’t hard to pick out. She dressed like a vintage clothing store exploded on her, and her short bleach-blonde hair stood out sharply against dark skin.”

MAG160: Jon: “Anyways, don’t tell me the phonebox down there doesn’t appeal to your retro aesthetic.” Martin: “It – might. Maybe.”

MAG163: Annabelle/the Web callying Martin via an old payphone: [ A PHONE RINGS. IT’S NOT THE TINNY, ELECTRONIC SOUND OF A CELLPHONE – NO, THIS IS A TRUE, HEAVY, CLASSIC RING.] Martin: “Uh. John? Uh, J, John – the, uh, payphone that’s – here, for some reason – it’s ringing?”

Hatred of burns:

MAG067: Jack Barnabas’ statement: “I looked up and noticed within the corner of the room, where there had been a spider’s web this morning, there was just a faint wisp of smoke.” “Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundreds of tiny spiders.”

MAG139: Statement by member of Cult of the Lightless Flame: “The Mother of Puppets has always suffered at our hand; all the manipulation and subtle venom in the world means nothing against a pure and unrestrained force of destruction and ruin.” Agnes burned down Hilltop Road.

MAG145: The Web ties Gertrude to Agnes, stopping the Desolation’s ritual (the only Power whose ritual the Web is known to have prevented).

MAG167: Gertrude enlists Agnes’/the Desolation’s help in order to burn her assistant Emma, who was Web aligned.

MAG169: Martin: "Look, I just – don’t want to get burned, all right? It’s, it’s like my least favorite pain ever. [...] I, I legitimately hate burns, alright? They’re, they’re awful, and they scar horribly, and they just – it – it just makes me sick; I, I hate it. Hate it!"

Phrasing:

MAG039: Martin: "I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck. [...] It's just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think."

MAG079: Martin's poem: "The threads of people walking, living, lovi–"

MAG117: Martin: "This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good leaving my own little web. Oh, oh, Christ, I hope John doesn’t actually listen to these. “Good lord, is Martin becoming some sort of spider person?” No, John, it’s an expression, chill out! Besides, spiders are fine. I mean, yes, people are scared of them, obviously, but actual spiders, they just want to help you out with flies."

MAG167: Jon: “Methinks the Spider dost protest too much.” Martin: “Jon –” Jon: “Joking! Just joking.”

Personality:

How applicable these are depends heavily on how you interpret Martin's own personality, so your mileage may vary.

MAG008: Statement: “Nobody ever said a word against Raymond himself, though, who was by all accounts a kind and gentle soul [...]”

MAG123: Jon: "The Web does seem to have a preference for those who prefer not to assert themselves."

MAG147: Annabelles statement: "I discovered a deep and enduring talent inside myself for lying. [...] My manipulations were not intricate, but they were far beyond what was expected of a child my age, and I have always believed that the key to manipulating people is to ensure that they always under- or overestimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans."

Word of God and Annabelle

I kinda wanted to ‘prove’ that Web!Martin had quite a bit of evidence to back it up, hence this header being last. But of course, in this post-canon world, there are a few lines that most obviously confirm the theory:

MAG197: Martin is Web enough to be able to read the 'vibrations', like Annabelle, and see Jon and Basira (the latter being especially notable, as he hadn't known she was there beforehand): [CHITTERING, BUZZING AND HIGH-PITCHED SQUEALS CHANGE CADENCE] Martin: "Wait… Wait, hang on, is that him?" Annabelle: "Yes. I guess you’re better with the Web than we thought." Martin: "And – Wait, ha– No, uh… is that… Basira? He – He’s got Basira with him!" Annabelle: "Yes."

Season 5 Q&A part 2: Jonny: “Essentially, it was fascinating looking at the fandom and, like, the Web!Martin believers, because what they were doing was correctly picking up on hints dropped in the early seasons that were later, like, not exactly abandoned, but it was much more like, ‘Well, no, he does have like aspects of The Web to him, but he is moreover The Lonely.’ And that came about very… very organically, really. Because throughout Season 3 and going into Season 4, we had this conversation and we were like, ‘No, actually he's like-” Alex: “‘It can't be, it cannot be, it must be the other way round’ Yeah.”

(Note that they say “throughout season 3 and going into season 4,” which likely means that season 1, season 2, and at least part of season 3, aka half of the entire show, were written with Web!Martin as an intentional possibility.)

If you read all that, thanks so much! Obviously, Web!Martin never really came to fruition, so it's fine if you still don't like it. This is just a post explaining where it was coming from, at least for me and the other theorists I've spoken to.

[bluejayblueskies]

i don’t know if you’re still doing aus but gerard/agnes/jon friendship ?

send me an au and i'll give you 5+ headcanons about it!

listen jongerryagnes friendship is one of my favorite non-canon friendships and i may be writing some of it right now

i’m going to take this in a ‘five separate jongerryagnes friendship aus’ direction! this one’s a bit long so i’ve put 2-5 under a cut

1. childhood friends au! if still spooky, they all meet each other shortly after mr. spider and somehow it comes out to agnes and gerry that jon’s terrified of spiders and it’s because of a book. gerry, already In The Know about leitners, resolves to find it and burn it to avenge his friend, and agnes volunteers to do the actual burning. jon is surprised (and a bit emotional, though he refuses to admit it) that they care about him after such a short time. he says it’s okay that he gets bullied one (1) time before gerry and agnes shut him down completely.

jon, not realizing that what he’s saying is Bad Actually: yeah sometimes people bully me? but it’s because i’m smarter than them haha and um. that means it’s okay!

agnes and gerry, already planning exactly how they’re going to make sure nobody every bullies jon ever again: no, jon. no it’s not okay.

2. research-era au! jon and gerry meet at the institute and bond for leitner-related reasons. gerry met agnes some time prior (maybe on a leitner-related hunt) and became kind-of-friends with her and so he introduces her to jon and they get along really well. they all go hunt leitners together and agnes burns them (even the ones that are a bit resistant to burning seem to catch fire when she touches them) and it’s wonderful. sometimes they just get together to hang out and like. do normal stuff. and it’s hilarious

jon, exasperated: gerry why did you think ice cream was a good idea?

gerry, throwing his hands up in the air: i don’t know, because it’s fucking summer and it’s hot as hell outside?

agnes, with a puddle of melted ice cream in her hand because gerry handed it to her and she took it without thinking: it’s fine jon. this happens a lot.

the ice cream vendor, Nervously: i can, um. i can make you another?

agnes, pleasantly: that would be wonderful, thank you.

jon, More exasperated: you still won’t be able to hold it! agnes!

(jon ends up holding it for her, a sour expression on his face as he eats his own rum-and-raisin ice cream. gerry teases him endlessly for being an ‘old man’ with ‘old man ice cream tastes’ while eating his own lemon-flavored ice cream.)

3. no-supernatural au! maybe they all meet at university--jon and gerry are the same major and they meet agnes during the one (1) time they attend a meeting for their university’s glassblowing club (’because it’ll be fun and interesting, jon,’ gerry said while waving the flyer in his face. ‘come on, trust me.’). they spend so much time together that whenever somebody sees them without the other two, they always make some sort of joke about it. they like to study at a coffee shop near campus, where jon gets a pot of earl grey, gerry gets either a large black coffee or a hot chocolate with whipped cream (with no in-between), and agnes gets a small coffee that she never actually drinks. jon actually studies, gerry mostly doodles in the margins of his notebooks (but still manages to get good marks, to jon’s bafflement and mild irritation), and agnes also doodles but like... for class. (she’s an art major.) they like to watch horror movies together just to watch the way jon rants about the bad special effects and unrealistic plot lines.

4. everyone-lives au, takes place mid-season three. instead of jon facing everything by himself, gerry and agnes are there and they’re there to help! after the jude incident (which jon goes to without telling gerry and agnes, much to their frustration and worry), gerry and agnes are like ‘um. you’re not going to meet mike on your own’ and so they go with him. the extra mediation keeps mike from throwing jon into the vast, they leave before daisy comes, but daisy ends up tracking jon down anyway. but because jon’s not alone, she’s not able to corner him in the same way, and so he comes away relatively unharmed.

he still gets taken by the circus, except this time gerry and agnes track him down and rescue him (it takes them less than a week and involves a significant amount of threatening elias with bodily harm). after that they’re basically glued to jon’s side at all times.

jon, lying in bed, squished between two people, one of whom is very very hot: um. do you guys have to be here?

gerry: yes. agnes, stop hogging the duvet--aren’t you warm enough already?

agnes, in that voice she uses where they can’t tell whether or not she’s joking: i’m always cold

jon: ... fine. but it’s my duvet, technically, so i’ll be the one hogging it, thank you very much

5. my hyper-specific ‘jon kept gerry’s page and now gerry’s traversing the apocalypse with him and martin and also agnes is alive still and they find her in one of the domains and she joins them in their journey’ au. jon and agnes get to bond over being the chosen one (and how much it fucking sucks), gerry and agnes bond over being entrenched in entity-related bullshit basically since birth, and martin and agnes bond over having shitty, lonely childhoods.

agnes, wrinkling her nose and reaching into jon’s pocket to pull out the lighter: why do you have this? i thought you said you don’t like the Spider

jon: i... what?

gerry: oh he doesn’t remember he has that. it’s a whole Thing

agnes, after a moment’s consideration: all right. *lights it on fire*

martin: agnes!

agnes, shrugging: what? i don’t like the Spider either. and i don’t really trust spooky memory-wiping lighters

martin: ... fair point

annabelle, over in upton house, sitting with her feet up and eating little sandwiches: well. fuck.

[ieatmypizzawithaforkandknife]

MAG 022 - Colony

Summary: Martin Blackwood dictates his statement regarding “a close encounter with something I believe to have once been Jane Prentiss.”

So can we all agree that Martin is the most adorable person ever and needs to be protected at all costs? Because within the first minute of this episode he was firmly placed in the Smol Bean category of my brain, and there he shall forever be. I am quite certain I will end up crying about this man at some point.

I’m really glad I listened to this episode again after finishing the season, because even in the short time between this episode and the season finale, so much of my opinions on Jonathan himself and on the relationship between Jonathan and Martin have changed. I know, this episode was about Martin - but it was also the first time we actually got to see these two characters interact, as opposed to Jonathan just making offhand comments about Martin’s supposedly subpar work. (Poor Martin. Mean Jonathan.)

I love how Martin says, “I just want to make a statement about what happened to me. I mean...it’s what we do!” and Jonathan’s immediate reply is, “No, what we do is research statements - usually those made by liars and the mentally unwell.” His tone holds its usual amount of derision, but after listening to the last few episodes of S1, I can’t find it in myself to hold it against him anymore. (I never claimed to be good at reading people.) Towards the end of the episode, Jonathan tells Martin he can sleep in the Archive, basically doing what I think was the Jonathan version of reassuring him, by telling him how safe it is. His tone isn’t reassuring - it’s very factual, as he lists off all the different ways the Institute is a safe place and by telling Martin he’ll ask Elias about adding some extra security. But if Jonathan were just trying to get Martin to sleep there so he wouldn’t lose a research assistant, he probably could’ve just told Martin to stay there and Martin would’ve listened. He seems to care about Martin in a way that isn’t shown in his offhand remarks in previous episodes. And while there’s a slight admonishment when he says, “No, what we do is research statements”, it smacks more of a concerned admonishment than an angry one to me. Conclusion: Jonathan is, as always, terrible with people, but not because he doesn’t care.

I’m also wondering how much of the “No, what we do is research statements” line was Jonathan and how much was Elias. It reminded me of what Jonathan said when he was contemplating bringing up the Leitner situation to Elias in episode 17: “I know he’ll just give me the old “record and study, not interfere or contain” speech again”. In particular, the word “again” indicates it’s something they’ve butted heads on before. It’s interesting that in this episode Jonathan seems to take Elias’ position on the issue. It could be that he’s just trying to be responsible in a general sense and that he doesn’t want to be liable if anything happens to Martin. But, taken with what I said in the previous paragraph, it could also be read as “I’d like to discourage this man from further endangering himself in the future because I care about him and I cannot/do not know how to express this directly, so I will hide behind what my own boss has told me many times.”

On the subject of Martin himself - I don’t think I can properly express how much I already love this adorable, nervous man. There were just so many great lines from him in this episode, whether for characterization or for humor - and often it was both. The long beat of silence after “Well, I need to tell someone what happened, and you can vouch for the soundness of my mind, can’t you?” Also: “Look, I know you hate the word, but it was really…spooky.” And “I was heading home when I got to thinking, and…I was worried I hadn’t really done enough investigation for you”. And “I’ve catalogued and looked into enough of these cases to know that following the noise is always a really, really bad idea, but…I mean…it’s my job, isn’t it?” And finally, at the very end when Jonathan offers him a place to stay at the Archive, he’s so flustered, both at the offer and at the very idea that Jonathan believes him. He’s basically tripping over himself and cringing as he gives his own statement, so hung up on the idea that he won’t be believed or that this isn’t enough.

And who can blame him? If you really think about what happened to him...I can’t blame him for thinking he wouldn’t be believed or that no one would be concerned for his safety. From his perspective, he just spent thirteen days alone in his apartment with no electricity, no company, no way to communicate with the outside world - and, to his knowledge, not a single person checked up on him! Obviously that was a good thing, because if someone had come to his door, they would have been met with Jane Prentiss - but Martin went for almost two weeks without a single good night’s sleep, eating ready meals and canned food, being constantly startled by her knocking, and he had to have wondered, at least once, why no one even wondered where he was.

One key to Martin’s survival was that he had plenty of water: “Luckily there was no problem with my water supply, so I had plenty to drink. I’m just glad none of them thought to come up through the pipes.” I genuinely can’t tell if Jonny’s hanging a lampshade on the issue or if we’re supposed to wonder why the worms never came up through the pipes, but in any case I am wondering it. Another key to his survival is that, despite not having a peephole, Martin somehow knew when she’d gone - and he wasn’t entirely sure how he knew. He surmises that the musty smell surrounding her must have been gone, and he didn’t hear any knocking for a little while, but in the end he has to confirm her absence by simply opening his door - which, if he were wrong, would have led to certain death - or, as he says at one point, “worse”.

Another mystery to me is when Martin goes into the basement of the building on Boothby Rd the first time and this happens: “I didn’t like the way my shadow moved. The light from the window behind me cast it pretty clearly on the floor, and looking at it I swear the edges seemed to move…it’s was like a, like an undulation…like, like they were being shifted by something.” He doesn’t follow this up with “and then I noticed my ‘shadow’ was actually worms on the floor”, so this doesn’t seem like a Jane Prentiss thing to me, or a Carlos Vittery’s spider thing either. And if it isn’t associated with either of the two known Boothby Rd-related entities, then it was something else entirely, which has me worried. But that’s the only mention of anything like a shadow being “shifted” in this episode, so for now I’m hoping I’m just reading too much into things.

There were so many excellent visual descriptions in this episode, so kudos to Jonny as always, and in this case kudos also to Alex for the performance. Martin describes the Jane Prentiss worms as “maybe an inch long, with a silver segmented body that goes black at one end, almost like it’s been burned.” This could just be a general creepy description, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the “burning” imagery here, given all the times fire and burning have come up before, even though I’m not sure what specifically it might be connected to from previous episodes. More concrete, though, is the difference between Jane Prentiss’ clothing when Martin encounters her and what she was wearing in her first appearance in episode 6. Harriett Lee, her victim in that episode, told Timothy Hodge, the man who gave the statement, that she found Prentiss wearing a long red dress. By contrast, Martin finds her in the basement wearing “a threadbare grey overcoat, though beneath it her legs were bare” (so, she’s no longer wearing the long red dress) and holding “a stained green handkerchief.” The events of episode 6 occurred in late November 2014 - almost a year and a half before Martin’s encounter with her. So why was she still in that area after all that time? We know she isn’t physically unable to leave - she follows Martin all the way to his home in Stockwell. And where did she get the overcoat and the handkerchief? I’m assuming it came from another victim, though she could have stolen them I guess. As far as we know they never did follow up with Timothy Hodge, despite Jonathan noting in that episode that they probably should. Jonathan also hasn’t mentioned looking into missing persons reports from the area either, even though that seems to me like an obvious thing to investigate.

Speaking of investigating...my ears perked up when the owner of the building told Martin that Carlos’ cat now lives with the Sanderson couple in apartment 2. I immediately flashed back to episode 15 and Laura Popham’s missing (presumably dead) sister, Elena Sanderson. (I remembered the name because of the Sanderson sisters, of course. #90schild) I don’t think it’s an actual connection, though, for two reasons: First, it doesn’t fit the timeline. Elena went missing in June 2014, and this Sanderson couple apparently still lives in this building in early 2016. It could be a relative, or maybe she magically reappeared, but I don’t see any specific reason to think either of those things. Second, there are something like 20,000 people with that surname living in England (yay genealogy websites). If it were a less common name, I’d be more suspicious, but as it stands now I’m keeping it in mind but leaning towards it being a coincidence.

Some final thoughts on Jane Prentiss. She apparently “called herself to be a practicing witch and believed [herself] to be infected by a dangerous, unknown parasite.” This is the first time the word “witch” is mentioned in the show (unless you’re counting Julia Montauk going to see The Witches in episode 9 lol), but not the first time we have seen something, or someone, witch-like. There are almost too many examples of things that could be considered “magic” to list, but the ones that stand out to me the most as potentially witch-like are: Mary Key being alive and the bones falling out of the books in episode 4; Agnes Montague/Fielding/whatever her name is and her apparent agelessness in episode 8; Robert Montauk’s heart ritual in the shed in episode 11; the unnamed man’s chanting in the hospital in episode 12; and Angela in episode 14. I’m not sure how any of these might be connected, but now that the word’s been mentioned I’m considering it a possibility.

And lastly...“Keep him. We have had our fun. He will want to see it when the archivist’s crimson fate arrives.” Jonathan’s voice when he read that last part, man. Martin asks what it means, and he sounds genuine, but Jonathan...I think Jonathan was thinking the same thing I am: that “the archivist’s crimson fate” sounds an awful lot like the description of Gertrude Robinson’s death as foretold in the dream from episode 11, particularly in the description of the Institute: “It was this building into which all the veins flowed: every door, every window was solid with them. When the bursts of red light passed into it, the whole building glowed crimson.”

This post is part of a series where I write my thoughts about each episode and obsessively connect dots in an effort to figure out The Big Mysteries of the series. All posts in this series are tagged “is this liveblogging?” Comments and messages are welcome but I have only listened to season 1, so I ask that you not spoil me for anything beyond episode 40. In the words of Jonny Sims…thanks for listening!

Minor spoilers for a later episode in S1 after the cut.

Just have to take a moment to freak out about the fact that I completely forgot about Martin’s description of Jane Prentiss’ skin as “full of holes - deep, black holes just honeycombing every bit of flesh like a…wasps’ nest.” HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THAT HE USED THE EXACT SAME WORDS SHE DID IN HER STATEMENT. Like, I don’t know if it’s significant, or if the description just fit so well that Jonny wanted to reuse it, but...damn.

[inscapeblog]

Design and Context: Subculture Valentino Vivian

Introduction

The design has been a significant part of human society and is now a part of our lives more than ever. This is made so because of the internet and the growing popularity of social media. Anyone with a smartphone and internet can connect with the world, be it carefully taken photos or well-edited videos. Design inspiration can be taken from anywhere, like a pattern on a leaf or the specific grains on tree bark. Culture is also a significant influence on design, although, in this essay, we will investigate the influence of subcultures in design. This essay will define what a subculture is and will examine various examples of how certain subcultures influence the design and prove that subcultures in context can help provide design solutions. This essay will discuss multiple subcultures that birthed new forms of design.

Defining Subcultures 

In this section, we will discuss the definition of subculture and its characteristics. The more commonly known definition of subcultures is “the concept of a subculture implies a minority culture that is of subordinated and secondary nature in relation to a dominant majority culture” (Zackariasson et al., 2014). Based on this definition, a subculture is based on a long-standing culture like music, fashion and architecture and adopting certain practises or beliefs of that culture that do not necessarily match with the original culture. Subculture in this regard is similar to a group of friends going to the cinema to watch a movie, but one group does not like the choice of the movie by the group, so then they would decide to watch a different movie. 

Making reference to the definition of culture is “the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.” (Oxford Language). From this definition, Nathan Bolton state that these subcultures are in opposition to accepting the customs and ideas social behaviour of the culture in question (Boltan, 2012). He uses a study that focused on gang crime in working-class American teens, the culture in which they derive from gang culture in America, although they were mostly anti-utilitarian. These troubled teenagers would be able to relate to one another by sharing their short time crime stories/experiences “ The gang inverted the values of the majority culture, deliberately pursuing the mirror image of the American dream.” (Boltan, 2012) 

A book that is focussed on the subject of consumer behaviour defines subculture as “people who share a set of secondary values” (Niosi, n.d.) The definition states that one can be part of one or many different subcultures, but the individual is part of a larger community within a smaller community. What places people in subcultures are based on Material culture, social institution, beliefs, aesthetics and language as this makeup much larger, broader cultures like music, Christianity and the French-speaking population. Subcultures are also formed based on a trait that is very different from society; for example, Vegans are a subcultural group that believes that its wrong to consume animal products and, in doing so, has an effect on climate change. Vegans are different or have a trait that others do not.

When defining subcultures, there are some definitions that are positive and others that have negatives connotations. When referring to the negative connotations, it is usually stated that the smaller group within a larger culture do not agree with their belief or ideals of that culture. As an act of rebellion, they form their own group, which then becomes its own culture within another culture. When referring to the positive connotations, this is more so in the commercial field. This is where success is attained by a brand where there are a large variety of people from around the world of different beliefs, languages and aesthetics, just to name a few (Zackariasson et al., 2014). An example of this positive connotation can be seen with the Sony Playstation community; Sony’s Playstation 4 is one of the highest selling consoles of the past four years. They were able to do this within the gaming community. There is a subculture in gamer who prefer the PlayStation 4 over other consoles, thus creating more subcultural in terms of games.

The significance of Subculture in identifying and solving a design problem

s in mainstream society.”(LumenLearning, n.d.) The first argument is that pop culture caters to the mainstream but forgets about those not in mainstream society; this would then create a void of diversity in the design field. If all designers were to design with a pop culture mentality, a large majority of the designs the world would be exposed to would all be the same or have taken a similar approach. If we look at the economic point of view, if companies used one method of solving design solutions, it will show in their designs, not only that, but it would be difficult to interest investors as one would see that there is no difference in the design approach.

Subcultures allow designers to view the design problem through a different lens as they would typically do. Subcultures are various ways that people consider a topic or culture; this then breeds room for diversity in design. By using or designing with subcultures in mind, then broadens the skillset for designers, allowing them to venture into new ways of designing. As an example, if a designer were to start using elements of the Hip hop subculture in their design, they see how bold fonts would work with specific colours. Another way in which subcultures are essential to design is that they inform the designer on the connotations of certain elements, colours objects. An example could be that in mainstream culture, Monster energy drink can be viewed as the second-best energy drink, whereas in the skater culture, Monster is the best, and nothing compares.

Music is one of the most diverse phenomena; the sharing, critiquing, and enjoyment of music is one of the primary activators for subculture groups. Discussions are had, and opinions are formed, dividing people into these subcultures. Due to these many subcultures being created, there is an untapped market for designers. “ designers translate this idea of a music and internet subcultural “scene” into a product design worthy of those individuals amerced within theses subcultural groups.” (Allen, 2009) The creation of these products allows more people to be made aware of these other subcultures that one could identify with, thus increase and growing that specific subculture.

It is essential for designers to know about subcultures and what subcultures bare good prospects. Having knowledge of subcultures is essential in terms of inclusivity. It is well documented that member of the LGBTQ community have been scrutinised over the years, and this community also serves as a subculture. In 1905 the arrow man was created by J.C Leyendecker, which revolutionise design and advertising. The illustration was placed on many magazine covers; the man is said to be the J.C Leyendecker partner, which means that the arrow man is the first homosexual male to make it onto magazine covers. As a result of this design, making it on the magazine cover made the public at the time know that there is a subculture or community where homosexual males are welcomed, and that pop culture is evolving to include them. Design helps inform and influence the public, steer change. (Martin, 2019)Examples of successful application of  in spatial design

Skatehalle, Berlin, Germany

Skatehalle is a wooden skate park located in Berlin, German. Skatehalle is a space purposefully designed for the enjoyment of the skater community. The park is made up of ramps, rails and bowls all used to perform tricks. In the skater culture, they value creativity, risk and freedom, which are very prominent in the park's designs. Their bright, colourful murals express the core values of skaters pushing risk. Skatehalle is effective in the sense that because of the ever-growing skate culture, some or most cities did not approve as it was seen as a delinquent activity. As a result, many skateparks were built and are still popular to this day  

Spodek Arena

The Spodek Arena is a multipurpose arena located in Katowice Poland. This arena annually hosts the IEM Katowice Esports tournament. The arena is designed to cater to the need of the Esport gaming community. In these tournaments teams play games like Dota and League of legends for Trophies, these are highly sponsored event. Elements that make this space for the subculture of Esports gamer is that they have multiple large screens and seating from the floors to the rafters for maximum amount of spectator. This type of design ia effective because many gamer set ups use neon light set ups and most the time the gamers are in their rooms doing extraordinary things with no audience, so the arena is designed in such a way that these factor are non existent.  

 Conclusion

The study and knowledge of subcultures are significant as this knowledge will help any, and all designers reach different audiences. Having knowledge about different subcultures can also help designers find new ways to approach design problems using elements from different subcultures to create new and impactful designs. When designing, it is also important to know what certain elements of a specific culture or subculture mean in order not to offend or give off the wrong messages. Subcultures are a significant part of the design. 

Reference List

Allen, B. (2009). CULTURALISTIC DESIGN: DESIGN APPROACH TO CREATE PRODUCTS FOR SPECIFIC CULTURAL AND SUBCULTURAL GROUPS [Ebook]. Retrieved 10 March 2021, from http://etd.auburn.edu.

Boltan, N. (2012). Essay on graphic design through the effects of subcultures. [Ebook] (p. 1). Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://issuu.com/nathanbolton/docs/how_subcultures_have_effected_graphic_design1.

D'Angelo, W. (2020). Switch vs PS4 vs Xbox One Global Lifetime Sales – January 2020. VGChartz. Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://www.vgchartz.com/article/442352/switch-vs-ps4-vs-xbox-one-global-lifetime-salesjanuary-2020/#:~:text=The%20PS4%20has%20sold%20106.99,Xbox%20One%2046.36%20million%20units.&text=The%20PlayStation%204%20outsold%20the,and%20Xbox%20One%20are%20down.

DiBlasi, A., & Willis, V. (Eds.). (2014). Geek rock : An exploration of music and subculture. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('https://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='https://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;’>https://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a>

LumenLearning. Pop Culture, Subculture, and Cultural Change | Introduction to Sociology. Courses.lumenlearning.com. Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sociology/chapter/pop-culture-subculture-and-cultural-change/.

Martin, M. (2019). The Leading LGBTQ+ Milestones in the World of Design. Architectural Digest. Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/lgbtq-design-milestones.

Niosi, A. Subcultures. Kpu.pressbooks.pub. Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/introconsumerbehaviour/chapter/subcultures/.

Zackariasson, P., Wilson, T., & Dymek, M. (2014). The video game industry. Routledge.

[schmokschmok]

omnia mutantur, nihil interit

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Relationship: Georgie x Melanie

Characters: Georgie Barker, Melanie King, Jonathan Sims, Martin K. Blackwood, Tim Stoker, Sasha James

Wordcount: 10.000

Freeform:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Alternate Universe - College/University

Romantic & Platonic Soulmates

Minor Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Brief Jon/Georgie & Melanie/Sasha

Amicable Breakups

Trans Melanie King & Martin Blackwood

He/Him & They/Them Pronouns For Asexual, Nonbinary Royalty Jon Sims

Summary

Melanie is lucky, that's what everyone says. She's blessed because she's got the name of her soulmate etched into her skin. For her, the name is many things: a blessing, a curse, her Damocles' sword.

A "the first words your soulmate says to you are written on your skin"-au but with a twist, i guess. 

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25056415

Complimentary Jon/Martin Fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28395876

CN: Mild Internalised Homo- and Transmisia in #6 and #7, Food (mentioned in #9 and #10); Alcohol (mentioned in #10)

#1

It’s rare for a person to have the name of their soulmate as their mark – or at least that’s what everyone says.

They congratulate her when they see the loopy script on her ankle, cooing at the roundness of the O and the little bow of the H and the wrongly weighed Ss. They see the tilt of the script and tell her, it must be an optimistic soul writing with the future in mind, looking forward to all the things the future could hold.

They tell . her she’s lucky, oh so lucky to know the name of the one she’s waiting for, that she doesn’t have to strain her ears every time she meets someone new for faint, trivial words like “hey, what’s your name” or “look out!”

They tell her she’s blessed for the simplicity of her soulmark – words written by her soulmate themselves instead of little marks she has to find on the body of her loved one, or a string tugging on her finger and connecting her to a heartbeat she may never see the face belonging to, or a countdown leaving her to grasp for straws in the middle of Trafalgar Square staring at thousands of faces and possibilities rushing away. She’s blessed for having two clues to find out the identity of the person who’ll love her the most. That she could be one of the forsaken that see everything their soulmate writes on their skin. That she could have been in pain when she’s away from her soulmate – bound to them by fate and chance.

No, she’s got a name, loopy and bubbly and inked into the skin underneath her left ankle.

“Jonathan Sims,” she whispers sometimes while brushing over the name with her thumb or the tips of her fingers, wondering what kind of person he will be. And she doesn’t know who he is, but she’s so young and the only thing she truly knows is that she will love him dearly.

She wears his name in pride, presents it like a trophy, wants everyone to know: She’s not afraid of bearing her soul right on her skin for everyone to see.

 #2

She shoves her feet into black, clunky boots and she begs her mother to buy them, because she needs them so much. Never, she thinks, blinking away the hotness and the burning behind her eyes, never again will she look at those cursed letters, at his name that she wanted to hear so desperately for the longest of times.

Until she found herself lying in bed next to Sasha like the thousands of times she did in the past. Until darkness ascended upon them, their faces illuminated only by the glow of the full moon. Until Sasha reached out, intertwining their fingers and whispering softly that she loves her; that she always has, that she always will. Until Sasha comes closer and closer and almost closes the gap between them – if it weren’t for Melanie closing it first.

 #3

“Jonathan Sims,” he says absentmindedly as if it weren’t the most important name for Melanie, a curse and blessing at the same time. He doesn’t even look her way, just scans the page for their assignment, underlining a few words in preparation.

She stares at him, takes in the sharp line of his mouth and the prominent cupid bow that should soften the hard look but really doesn’t. Her eyes roam his face, the long bridge of his nose that’s interrupted by a crook indicating he broke it in the past. She stares at his wide forehead and his thick eyebrows, at his long eyelashes and the brown half circle of his irises. His profile is composed of sharp angles and straight lines, his skin of a deep, dark brown, scattered with circular scars, his face framed with rich, brown wavy hair that came free at some point from the messy bun nestled on top of his head.

He’s not attractive, by any means, but she can easily see he’s got a presence and a certain kind of charm. He looks like a college professor on the wrong side of the classroom.

And it is his name on her ankle, hidden beneath layers of tights and soft socks and the thick material of her boots. And it is his name that sends a shiver down her spine and makes the hairs on her neck and arms stand up.

She stares and she stares and she stares and she stares – until he’s looking at her, too, brows furrowed and a look of annoyance on his face. And the only thing she can do is releasing a shaky breath and softly saying: “Oh no.”

His eyes widen a fraction and his hand shoots up to his clavicle on instinct. Then the expression on his face shifts into a scowl and a heavy coldness sinks into her stomach.

“The feeling is mutual,” he spits through gritted teeth, quickly scanning her face, finding something she can’t even name. Subsequently, he averts his eyes and shuffles through the papers in front of him. “I’d prefer to split the work evenly and propose a meeting a few weeks in to compare notes and draft a first outline for the presentation.” He clears his throat. “If you’re interested, we can exchange numbers for research related questions.” He eyes her. “And research related questions only.”

Her jaw’s locked and cracks worryingly when she opens her mouth violently to retort: “I’m not interested in anything other than our presentation, jerk.”

Maybe she’s imagining it, but her insult seems to loosen his shoulders just an inch and the scowl softens into a less sullen look.

This man, this crabby looking man, is her Damocles’ sword.

 #4

They’re sitting in the institute’s library, knees knocking into each other every once in a while, their table littered with notes and papers and books. The pen behind Melanie’s ear slips further down when she shakes her head vigorously.

“Did you spend even a minute thinking about that take?” She barks out an incredulous laugh. “Ovid was not ‘too self-absorbed’ and ‘incapable of eradicating his failures.’ Who are you? Seneca’s sycophant?”

“It’s a well-known fact that Ovid never surpassed his early stages. His texts had potential and even though they received the criticism needed to fix them, he was never capable of revising them and tapping the full potential,” Jon shoots right back, pulling multiple notes out of the mess on the table. “It isn’t only Seneca, you know that full well, Quintilian provides anecdotal evidence as well. His writing is shallow and superficial, and I should say it.” Melanie huffs agitated.

“What you should do is shut your cakehole and read some fucking books.” Melanie wrings her hands in frustration, before reaching over the myriads of notes and papers for a book that’s half-buried underneath two other books. “Is the only book you ever read about Ovid by Fränkel? Because that is some seriously prejudiced fuckwart and he should never have been allowed to write about Ovid in the first place. Otis’ work was published in the same fucking year, you could have read that instead.”

He bristles, reminding her of a peacock fanning out its tail feathers. Swallowing a triumphant laugh, she readies herself for the next round to come.

“I’ll have you informed that I read every single thing you forwarded to me, but I know they’re wrong.” He stares into her eyes, unwavering.

“That you’re wrong,” he clarifies. “You will never convince me that Ovid knew what he was doing.”

“We can’t do this presentation if you can’t admit that you’re wrong!” Her voice is probably too loud for the library, but Oliver doesn’t mind them as long as they’re alone and Professor Lukas is out of the building.

“Is there anything you’re ever right about? We don’t have to agree about the history of research to present it,” he argues because of course he does. They’re project partners for five weeks now and despite the fact that this is their first meeting vis a vis, he disagreed with practically every single thing she sent him over the past weeks. If she says Ovid’s Metamorphoses are a composite epos, he tells her it’s a collection of loosely connected stories. If she says Ovid’s been exiled for political reasons, he tells her Ovid’s probably never been exiled and it’s all a nice story he drafted to write his Tristia and that’s it.

“I know we don’t have to agree on anything,” she says and she’s about to raise her voice again to continue arguing, when a voice startles her, and she freezes up: “Jonathan Sims!”

Jon rolls with his eyes and says, without turning around: “I’m in the middle of something, Georgie, can you get back to me later?”

“Can you get back to me at all?” She plops down next to them on a chair and Melanie’s breath gets caught in her throat. She’s beautiful, but in a preppy hipster kind of way. Her hair falls in tight, natural curls over her shoulders almost onto her back and frames her round face. Underneath her wide nose glistens a golden, sun-shaped septum, accentuated by the deep red of her full lips. Both complimenting the warm undertone of her black skin. Despite the cold outside she’s only wearing a thick knitted cardigan over a white top with a floral pattern and a mustard yellow skirt. “I messaged you three times today and yet you refuse to answer me.” The colour of her nails and outfit are geared to each other and she lays her hand on his elbow to finally catch his full attention.

Jon looks up to her at last, ignoring her hand on the sleeve of his light brown button-down. In spite of his deadpan voice, the corners of his mouth curl upward into the smallest of smiles.

“If I would have wanted to answer you, Georgie, I would have done it. As you can see, I’m working on a project with Melanie right now.” Two pairs of brown eyes land on Melanie and she feels scrutinised all of a sudden. Georgie smiles at her, dimply and revealing the golden shine of a labial frenulum piercing resting against the top of her bunny like front teeth.

“Oh, you’re Melanie!” The way she says it is equally anxiety inducing and thrilling, like she wanted to meet Melanie, like they could be friends. “I’ve heard so much about you!”

And the only proper response that comes to her mind is: “Oh god, I am so sorry.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” Georgie rushes to say, then she’s backpaddling again, correcting herself: “Well, maybe Jon wanted it to sound all bad, but I think you sound like a lovely person.” Jon scoffs but he doesn’t interject. They share a look Melanie can’t decipher.

And suddenly, Melanie grows aware of the way she looks today. She is a wall of black clothes and silver accessories and white skin contrasting the warmness of Georgie and Jon. Like an old-timey photograph next to a polished fall edition of the vogue.

Georgie and Jon make a beautiful couple. She’s chubby and soft where Jon is lean and sharp, she’s lively and welcoming where Jon is still and reserved. They balance each other and share these little smiles and glances of contentment. And Melanie is a washed-out copy of a copy of a newspaper picture of welcome to the black parade with the name of this man engraved into her very bones.

“I think, I need to go,” she forces the words to tumble over her lips. As she’s trying to gather her notes without stealing Jon’s or knocking something off the table, Georgie as much as sprawls herself over Jon’s lap and snatches her wrist mid-air and forces her to a halt.

“No, no, please,” Georgie pleads. Lowering her voice as if she didn’t want Jon to hear, she adds: “Don’t leave me alone with this guy, I have to listen to him go on about fungi for way too long. And I cannot take it anymore.”

“I feel kind of attacked,” Jon interjects and Georgie waves him off, right in front of his face, almost hitting his nose, and says: “Good.”

“You should go and get a coffee or tea with us,” Georgie turns to Melanie again and smiles, dimples violently digging into her cheeks. “You both seem tense, maybe we should go right now.”

“We don’t have the t–“ Jon doesn’t get much farther in his rejection, before Georgie interrupts him: “You don’t have a say in this, you owe me for ignoring me, Jon.” His mumbling could be interpreted as a fine and Georgie obviously decides to do so.

Melanie only stares at them, at Georgie mostly, clutching her paperwork to her chest and thinking that life’s unfair. That she’s condemned to have his name on her forever, while he has the most gorgeous woman as his girlfriend and no interest in her at all.

She shouldn’t agree and she knows that, it’s a simple fact of life that Georgie is a beautiful goddess and Melanie is a tiny lesbian who has no control over her lizard brain. She will crush on Georgie and it’s only a matter of time. If the past few minutes are any indication, she will crush so hard, the only pieces left of her will be scattered by the storm that’s already starting to brew.

“Yes,” she says in spite of everything she knows to be true, “That sounds lovely.”

The look Jon sends her expresses almost comically her previous thoughts. Ignoring his pained face, she shoots Georgie a loop-sided grin, the dreadful realisation of her fuck-up finally sinking in. Unbothered by both Jon and Melanie, Georgie sits back in her chair and clasps her hands in front of her chest, while saying: “Perfect, gather your stuff and off we go.”

Full of vim and vigour, she pushes herself out of her chair and stands up.

For a moment, Melanie can’t look away from her. She starts comparing herself to Georgie and if it weren’t for Sasha and that faithful night, she’d still think she only ever wants to be the beautiful women she sees when in reality she wants to be with them, with the picture she painted in her mind, so badly everything inside her aches.

 #5

melesbian: things i should have told you long ago – a complete list by melanie king

melesbian: i met my soulmate and he has the most beautiful girlfriend of all time

melesbian: that’s it. that’s the list.

 sashaway: ghgfhlsd

sashaway: you made me keysmash, I hope you’re proud of yourself

sashaway: is that list really complete?

 melesbian: no

 sashaway: thought so

sashaway: what are you going to do about it?

 melesbian: continue not talking to that pompous twat and silently pine after his girlfriend

 sashaway: as much as I love your dramatics, I need more information to really get a grasp on that situation

 melesbian: it’s not a good story. it’s not even a story

melesbian: i’m taking this class on greek and roman epic (for the credits tbh) and one jonathan sims is my project partner

melesbian: we worked in the library on our first draft today

melesbian: and suddenly

melesbian: a goddess ascended from mount olympus (to keep the theme) and plopped up right next to the guy that said in no uncertain terms that he’s not interested in talking to me at all

 sashaway: oof harsh

sashaway: are you interested in talking to him?

 melesbian: lol no

melesbian: i know it’s late but i’m in front of your door and … you could open up?

 #6

“We broke up,” she says matter-of-factly, she doesn’t sound too stressed about it, however. Georgie’s head lies in Melanie’s lap and she’s painting her long, almond shaped nails in a soft baby blue. Almost constantly, her hair moves due to the light breeze and tickles Melanie’s bare arm. But she doesn’t want to move because she’s quite comfortable and Georgie would probably move too, if she thought she’d inconvenience Melanie in any way.

Normally, she wouldn’t pry for more information because the only person she feels close enough to know how to deal with the aftermath is Sasha. But she’s curious and she thinks that there’s no reason in the world to dump Georgie Barker, so she probably left him and – even though Melanie doesn’t want to acknowledge it – Jon and her, they are somewhat friends and she doesn’t want him to feel too bad. (Only ever a little, as a treat.)

So, she shoots for nonchalant and distant interest, but misses the mark by far: “Why did you break up?” Georgie doesn’t seem to notice.

“We mutually agreed he’s an insufferable twat and I’m the burden of his very existence,” she replies, stretching her arm as far away and then pulling it as close as possible to inspect her painted nails. “We not so mutually agreed that he’s got a big, fat, massive crush on someone else.”

“Who could he have a crush on if you literally exist??”

Melanie didn’t mean to say that out loud, oh fucking hell, this is bad. This is real bad. She can’t have Georgie knowing about Melanie’s big, fat, massive crush on Georgie.

Georgie laughs.

“Oh, Melanie, you’re lovely. I always feel special talking to you,” she says as if it wouldn’t set Melanie on edge; as if it wouldn’t make her heart race in her chest, loudly pounding and pumping blood through her veins. She suddenly feels light-headed and dizzy. Georgie continues, nevertheless. “You know, he says it’s not a crush, it’s ‘active disdain’ but he didn’t listen to me at all when I tried to explain to him what ‘active’ in this context means.” She sighs. “It’s a bit pathetic, but that’s Jon for you. And I don’t think I’m one to talk because,” she makes a show of looking inconspicuously to the left and right, “maybe I’m projecting my own crush onto him.” She looks up at Melanie, tentatively. “But you can’t tell him that.”

“I would never,” Melanie rushes to say, not quite processing the fact that Georgie’s already infatuated with someone new. Someone who’s probably not Melanie, because Melanie is never that lucky. She inhales shakily. “So, you’re still amicable?”

For a moment, Georgie seems contemplating, a bit unsure almost. Then she says slowly: “I think so, yes. Jon’s my best friend, I would never forgive myself if I lost him over something as trivial as a breakup.” She shrugs dismissively. “How about you? Anyone caught your attention?” A heartbeat passes, Melanie freezing up like a deer in headlights. “Or are you aro? We’ve never talked about this, when I think about it now.”

“Not aro,” Melanie forces the words out through her teeth, trying to sound like she’s got still air in her lungs to speak. “I’m a lesbian, actually.”

She readies herself for Georgie to get weird and regret lying on Melanie like Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus on a divan. But instead, Georgie’s face lights up and she coos: “We could have talked about girls for months, Melanie, we could have truly lived that LGBT+ solidarity!” As if it’s an afterthought, she adds: “I’m bi. It’s pretty obvious because every time I leave a room, I announce that very fact to the whole room but somehow people think I’m just really enthusiastic about getting away.” She laughs, and that, paired with her trashy joke, lets Melanie lose a bit of the tension that coiled in her stomach.

She doesn’t say We’ve got three letters present then, because even though she’s got the most impressive crush of all times on Georgie and Georgie labelled herself bi just a few seconds ago, she’s not quite ready to open up that much. (Pride’s approaching fast and maybe in a few weeks she’ll be ready to brandish the trans flag, but for now she wants to feel proud of herself for saying I’m a lesbian out loud for the first time since she came out to her parents. She doesn’t get much opportunity to tell people she’s gay and the only ones outside of her family that know are Sasha and Tim – because they were the only ones important enough to tell.)

“Biii~ the way,” Georgie continues, showing off a smirk that would look like a smile on any other person, “you didn’t answer my question. Anyone caught your attention?”

Well, there’s this girl I really like but she’s been in a relationship with my soulmate until very recently. And I also thought she was straight as an arrow, so I didn’t really entertain the thought she could be interested in me in any kind of way, is what Melanie wants to say. (Well, not really wants to but perhaps should and definitely feels the need to.)

“There’s this girl I fancy,” is what she says instead. “Stunningly beautiful, breathtakingly kind.”

“Do I know her?” Georgie’s voice doesn’t change, not really, but it feels like there’s an edge to it that wasn’t previously present. Maybe it’s because of the softness of Melanie’s voice or the distant, unfocused look on her face that she always gets when she’s trying to not give in to the urge of fucking everything up – both unknown to Georgie until now, because, even if Melanie likes to think otherwise, they’re not that close.

“I don’t think, I know her, really,” she settles on. Because it’s true. And it stings. It stings to think that the gorgeous woman in her lap is just the ex-girlfriend of the guy she did a project with for one of her classes and whose name is part of her life for longer than she can remember – and that they hang out from time to time but that it’s more on a superficial level. Hell, she can’t even name the most basic things of Georgie’s life: Is she an only child? What’s her favourite colour? Is the skin of her hands as soft as it looks?

“That’s unfortunate,” Georgie replies softly, “maybe you should get to know her.” The tip of her finger suddenly boops Melanie’s nose, and she smiles encouragingly. The smell of nail polish lingers in the air. “And when you know her and still think she’s that nice, you should introduce her to me so I can make sure you’re not wasting your time.”

And Melanie thinks that maybe she should introduce Georgie to Sasha so Sasha can tell her that she should stop wasting her time.

However, for now she’s going to be a little selfish, so she holds up her hand in front of Georgie’s face and says: “Do you think blue would suit me?” Enthusiastically, Georgie sits up, sunshine reflecting on her septum, and her labial frenulum piercing exposed in a wide grin.

“This blue would suit you very well!” She reaches for Melanie’s hands and her nail polish bottle. “We’d match!! And it would distract me from the fact that my nail polish doesn’t match my outfit.”

“Why’d you paint them, then? The pink was nice,” Melanie asks and watches Georgie uncapping the bottle and getting to work on Melanie’s nails.

“Jon asked me to accompany him to an outing tonight and I wanted to wear a blue dress, so the pink had to go,” Georgie explains while finishing Melanie’s third finger. It looks so easy when Georgie paints nails – when Melanie does it, she always paints over the borders of her nails and on her cuticles, the polish ends up a bit uneven and streaky in places. But it suits her overall aesthetic, so she’s not too stressed about it. But this is different, isn’t it? It’s Georgie holding her hand like a precious object, like a restaurateur may hold a vase or plate while trying to glue the smallest of bits back together. It’s Georgie applying her own nail polish that’s the softest of blues instead of Melanie’s usual blackest of blacks. It’s Georgie being a considerate friend for Jon despite their recent breakup. It’s the domesticity of sitting on the grass in the middle of the Magnus’ University’s campus, ready to be seen by anyone that passes by. It’s Melanie not being disgusted by and anxious because of affection and touching and overall close proximity. – All in all, everything is too much. So, she stills.

“If you wanted, you could join us.” Georgie’s voice is timid, as if she’s testing the waters. And Melanie wants to say yes, because Georgie asked her and she wants to spend time with her, get to know her, but she also promised Sasha to meet up with her because they have to start planning Tim’s birthday. So, she says as much and adds: “I’m sorry. But next time I will come, I promise.”

“You can bring Sasha and Tim. I would love to get to know them,” Georgie says with a hint of disappointment and a spoonful excitement.

“Yeah,” Melanie says, “I think that would be nice.”

They fall silent after that and Melanie thinks she could get used to this. To learning all the little things about Georgie. And she begins now with the dry softness of her hands against her own rough palm.

 #7

Melanie inhales shakily, counts to ten, and exhales slowly. A hesitating hand reaches for her own, startling her and making her eyes snap up to land on Sasha’s smiling face.

“You okay?” Sasha’s voice is soft and only meant to be heard by Melanie. “It’s not too late to go, if you want to.” Just as Melanie opens her mouth to retort that she doesn’t actually want to go, because she wants to be here and enjoy this, a familiar voice calls her name. Before turning around to face Georgie, she gives Sasha a quick nod and forces something akin to a smile on her face.

“Finally! I was afraid we wouldn’t find you,” Georgie says, a little out of breath and through half a laugh. “It took a bit longer, but the boys are to blame, I reject all accusations that my make-up is at fault.” She looks gorgeous as ever; it’s the first time, Melanie has ever seen her with braids instead of her natural curls. She’s wearing a pink top and the mustard yellow high-waist skirt she wore the first time Melanie had met her. Her legs are clad in light blue overknee socks. Despite the pressing heat, she’s wearing a thin white cardigan.

Looped through her arm is Jon’s bare one. He looks highly stressed in his black button-up and his light grey skinny jeans which she – Melanie is sure of it – has seen on Georgie on the seldom occasion she wears trousers. White socks stick out of his lilac chucks.

“I thought you were bi.” The words escape her mouth like an accusation a second before her eyes fall on Martin who should be the first one to spot due to his height but tends to merge with the background because of the way he slumps into himself, shrinking a few inches to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. He’s in his usual floral-patterned button-up and khakis but someone has painted the rainbow flag on his freckled cheeks.

“I am,” Georgie answers light-heartedly, “but the colours of the pan flag are much nicer, don’t you think?” She lets go of Jon’s arm, at least doubling the anxiety apparent on his face in the process. She twirls and fans out her skirt, curtsying ironically, before looping her arm through Jon’s again.

A moment of silence falls over them, broken only by the chattering and cheering voices around them.

“This is Sasha,” Melanie almost yells, attempting to brush over the fact how uncomfortable she feels and with the thought in mind that introductions are long overdue. She holds up their intertwined hands and Sasha smiles into the round. Tim, whose existence Melanie has straight up forgotten until now, clears his throat behind her. Hastily, she points over her shoulder at the tall guy. “And this is Tim.”

He drops his elbows on her shoulders, leaning half-way over her and stage-whispering: “I want to be offended because you didn’t introduce us earlier, but I can see why you tried to keep your model friends all to yourself.”

A scowl on her face that could rival Jon’s best ones, she retorts: “If you don’t retreat in a peaceful manner, I will not shy away from shanking you.” Tim doesn’t take her seriously, which was to be suspected, and rests his chin on her head, laughing quietly.

“I love your subtle use of the flags,” Sasha says, gesturing widely at all three of them. She’s wearing shorts and an oversized shirt – that could also be one of Tim’s, Melanie’s not sure –, around her waist she’s tied a bi flag like a loop-sided dip hem skirt. “You definitely put more thought into it than Tim.” Her free hand points over her shoulder to Tim, who dramatically rips his arms away from Melanie’s shoulders and stands tall to his full height. Almost knocking his hand into a stranger, he spreads his arms out like wings and showcases the pan flag he made Sasha paint across his whole torso.

“I was never one for subtlety,” Tim admits like it’s a character trait he’s allowed to be proud of. As if he’s waiting for applause, his arms stay extended and he grins at Jon, Martin and Georgie.

“I tried to coax Jon into going shirtless with a giant ace of hearts painted on his chest, but due to unknown reasons he refused,” Georgie intersects, once again causing Jon’s scowl to deepen. He hisses at her: “There are no ‘unknown reasons’, Georgie!”

She ignores him and bulldozes on: “I think it has everything to do with his stunning good looks. If he’d show too much skin too many people would start swooning on the streets. We can’t have that.” She winks conspiringly at Melanie.

Petulantly, Jon interjects: “If I didn’t wear a shirt, where would I have put my pin?”

Only now Melanie notices a tiny pin shaped like two banners above each other on his breast pocket. A teal coloured pin reading he/him.

Georgie waves her hand dismissively at Jon, but it’s obvious that she’s doing it in a fond, loving way.

“It’s cute and you should really buy Martin a drink later as a thank you. However, you didn’t know Martin would gift nice pins to you, so it wasn’t an excuse when I proposed the idea to you back home,” she says with a shit-eating grin on her lips. “And you still have the bracelet, don’t you?” She points to the wrist of the arm she holds onto that pokes out of his pocket. A simple bracelet braided from teal coloured yarn. Then she cups her free hand around half of her mouth and she stage-whispers to Melanie, Sasha and Tim: “Martin made that as well. It’s really nice.”

They all coo appropriately, Martin’s blushing under the sudden attention.

“I wear one, too,” he pipes up unexpectantly and holds up his left arm, presenting a braided bracelet on his wrist. “It matches your socks.” And it’s true. Both his bracelet and Melanie’s overknee socks show the unmistakable colours of the trans flag. She smiles at him, genuinely and thankful. He didn’t have to do that and yet he did. Since their first-time meeting, they haven’t talked much to each other, but this little act of reassuring kindness makes her want to be better friends with him. He always looked like a nice bloke, but this … he didn’t have to do that. “If you want one, too, I– I could do that.”

“That would be really lovely,” she replies, while Sasha squeezes her hand reassuringly. And because Melanie can’t take all those eyes resting on them both, she turns to Jon: “Does that mean you got more than one?”

“Bracelets or pronouns?” He asks, irritation clear on his face. “Either way, the answer is yes.” He’s pulling his hand free from his pocket, showcasing a second pin shaped like the first one – only that this one reads they/them – and a differently braided bracelet. Both in salmon pink.

She makes a mental note to keep an eye on his wrist from now on

 #8

Being alone with Jon always feels weird, she thinks, fiddling with the strap of her bag. They’re proper friends now, she thinks, but they both now what’s written on their bodies, and it looms over them every time they talk.

This is the first time she’s in their room. Their roommate Gerry is out, and she sits on the open floor, propped up against Gerry’s bedframe. She’s met Gerry a total of two times and she digs his style, matching her all black aesthetic. But he’s a musician, never too far away from a guitar, and she never had the opportunity to hold a conversation with him. So, they greet each other, awkwardly aware of the other one’s presence and nothing more.

“I don’t want to sound rude, but why are you here?”

Jon’s voice is gruff and clearly irritated, but they’re not hostile which is more than Melanie could have hoped for. Even though they know each other for almost ten months now, she still can’t take the measure of them. If they think they’re friends. (The realisation that they could somehow not be on the same page makes her anxious, nausea washing over her.)

“Did Georgie tell you to add that to sound more approachable?” She’s deflecting and she knows it.

“Maybe, yeah.”

She didn’t think they would admit it. And that calms her a bit, because if they’d still hate her guts, they wouldn’t show the least bit of vulnerability.

“I came here,” she starts saying, pausing nervously. Then she shakes her head, lets go of her anxiety as much as she actively can. “I wanted to talk about Georgie.”

Sometimes it’s easy and people just know what’s going on because they just sense the vibe of the room or whatever, but Jon’s not one of those people. They try to pay mind to the people around them, or at least their friends, but social cues slip past them all of the time. She should have seen their questioning look coming, the way the little crease between their brows appears and their lips curl into half a pout. Slowly, they ask: “What about Georgie?”

“I want to ask her out,” she replies with as much bravado as she can muster. To be honest, she’s quite proud of herself. No quiver in her voice. No hesitation whatsoever.

“I’m not asking for your permission,” she clarifies hastily. “I only want to know if – you know, there are any– lingering feelings. For her.” She clears her throat. “We’re friends and– well, at least I think we’re friends, and I wouldn’t want to hurt you with my feelings.”

The thing is, she thought she’d get a straight and honest no, or a defensive no which really means yes. She didn’t think they’d look that … caught off guard. Like it’s complete fucking news to them that she could be interested in Georgie, or like it’s absolutely ridiculous that anyone could think Jonathan Sims could be hung up on a goddess. Or maybe, just maybe, they really are crushing on someone that’s not Georgie. Like they didn’t expect the conversation to go that way and they didn’t prepare an answer that would satisfy them in the long run.

“I–,” they stop talking, obviously restraining their hands from wringing the hem of their button-up. She catches once again the salmon-pink bracelet on their wrist. “I don’t harbour any romantic feelings for Georgie.”

It would feel more natural, if Jon averted their eyes, but they’re staring at Melanie. Trying to assess Melanie and her reaction, categorising every movement and word into the messy drawers of their mind.

“Okay,” Melanie says. “That’s good.” Her eyes flicker away from Jon’s face. Only for a moment. “For you. Because you’re not together anymore.” The sound that comes out of her throat is akin to a laugh or maybe a scoff. “And, well, for me? You know, with the whole date thing I’m trying to do.”

They look at each other for a moment. Outside of the room a door closes noisily and startles them out of their silence. Jon clears their throat and asks: “Am I obliged to share a personal information about my romantic life as well?”

“I mean, if you want to?”

“Georgie says it’s customary to,” their face scrunches up in something resembling disdain, “’trade’ that kind of information. So, if you’d like to know about my romantic endeavours, I would provide you the appropriate amount of ‘gen’.”

And this is the last straw. Hearing Jonathan Sims saying ‘gen’ like they’re chewing on the stickiest of caramel candies, is so unbelievably funny. So, she laughs. Between bursts of laughter, she tries to explain herself, but every time she stifles it enough to get half a word out, she gets a blurry look of their face and starts over again.

“I don’t get what’s so funny to you,” they state, piqued.

“What comes next?” Despite trying to slow her breath, she’s more gasping than asking. “You’re gonna dish on Georgie and Martin, all fax, no printer? You’re gonna spill the tea and throw some shade?”

Melanie wipes a stray tear from her cheek and the wetness from the corners of her eyes. She inhales and exhales deeply, multiple times. Then she draws another breath for good measure and says: “You don’t have to share anything with me, if you’re not comfortable. I didn’t come here to dig up some dirt on you. If you want to share, I’ll listen, or whatever, but I won’t, like, actively ask you about this sort of stuff.”

“I think, it would be,” they pause briefly, “good.” And yet, they don’t continue. She makes a prompting gesture with her hand. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that I take a fancy in someone. However, I find myself in the predicament of slowly acquiring a liking for … someone.”

“You want to share the name of that someone?” She’s not sure if they need to. When she thinks of it, she isn’t even sure if they know anybody else than herself, Georgie and – Martin.  (To an extent they know Sasha, Tim, Basira and Daisy. And that’s it. She doesn’t take them for one who develops feelings for someone they barely know.)

“I don’t think I have to do that,” they reply, sourly. Apparently, they did the same equation as her.

“No, maybe not.” She shrugs. “But if you ever feel the need to say it out loud – you know, not just in front of your mirror but rather a real-life person – I’m here.”

They smile. They definitely smile, even if it’s just the slightest of upward movements of the corner of their lips. And it makes her smile, too.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” they say, softly.

 #9

In the end, Melanie doesn’t get around to ask Georgie for a date. She wants to, really, she plans on doing it on this very day. But then she chickens out. Embarrassingly, so.

They went out for ice cream, Georgie in her cute summer sandals, Melanie in the clunky, black boots she’s wearing since she’s sixteen. They must make a weird couple, Georgie all cosmopolitan extravaganza and Melanie every MCR album cover incarnated.

Now, they’re sitting on the couch in Melanie’s shared flat. Georgie’s legs dangle off the armrest and her head lays in Melanie’s lap, once again.

“It must be nice to live in a whole flat,” Georgie says, her eyes closed and sighing contently. “You can throw a party, if your flat mates are up to it.”

“I’m not up for parties,” Melanie replies. “Annabelle and Jude aren’t either, thank god.”

Georgie cracks open one of her eyes and scans Melanie’s face. She catches Melanie’s gaze and brings every thought in Melanie’s mind to a halt. The only thing she can now concentrate on is Georgie’s soft looking cupid’s bow, and the desire to kiss her right there, and on the corners of her mouth, and the place on her cheek where Melanie knows appears a dimple whenever she smiles, and the line of her jaw. Melanie wants to kiss her forehead, along the edges of her brows, down her temples, and right next to her ears.

Sometimes it’s hard to sit next to Georgie and keep her distance. Everything about Georgie draws her near, pulls her in, makes her want to scream from the top of her lungs and remain silent at the same time. There’s a bowl filled with a burning hot liquid inside her, and every moment with Georgie is about balancing it out, preventing it from spilling.

“Would you go to a party with me?” While asking, Georgie opens her other eye and her gaze on Melanie grows even more intense.

“Is there a party?” Buying time seems reasonable, Melanie thinks.

“It’s a hypothetical party. And I hereby hypothetically invite you.” Georgie grins, lifting her chin a little. “Will you go with me to this hypothetical get together?”

“Well, if you ask me so nicely, I will hypothetically agree,” Melanie replies, smiling herself now. She can do this. She can totally ask Georgie for a date. (Her heart disagrees. But if her mind tells it Yes You Can Do It often enough, maybe it will become true.) “Maybe we should do that.” Close. “Go out.” Closer. “Together.” Yes, perfect. Nicely done, Melanie! “To a party.” Overshot.

“I would like that.” Her voice is oh so gentle and it’s as if Melanie had said go on a date with me, as if she hadn’t blown it completely. Georgie’s hand comes up, nude coloured nails brushing Melanie’s cheek. The tips of her fingers sink into Melanie’s hairline. “Your hair feels really nice.”

“Than– Thank you.” She can’t keep the stutter from the two words and it’s a bit embarrassing. She’s stuttering quite often, if she’s completely honest with herself. When she gets excited about her studies or about a paper on intersectional feminism or when she stumbles upon a really, really cute cat video. But never with her friends. It’s been ages since the last time she got so flustered she had to stammer and stumble over the words on her lips. “But it never looks as nice as yours.”

She can do this whole flirting thing, okay, she’s the fucking master of smooth comebacks. Once Georgie had said that Melanie’s coffee looked really nice and Melanie had answered ‘No, you’ like the absolute fucking court jester that she is. (She spends too much time with Martin, is the morale of the story.)

“If you ever decide to grow it out, I can braid it for you,” Georgie suggests, gently playing with the tips of Melanie’s hair. “I think you’d look nice with a small braid right here.” She traces a path above Melanie’s ear. “But I like your short hair, too. It suits you very well.”

Melanie doesn’t answer for a long, long moment. Then her hand finds its way towards Georgie’s face, hovering a good centimetre next to it, silently asking for permission. And Georgie’s grants it, comes even closer, letting her face be cupped by Melanie’s hand.

And with a sudden intensity, she feels the need to tell Georgie just how much she likes her. It’s gnawing at her, making her dizzy and uneasy. Her hand’s cradling the face of the woman she’s growing so fond of that sometimes the first thing she thinks of in the morning is shooting Georgie a little text wishing her a good morning.

Not being able to hold it back, the words spill from her mouth: “I really want to kiss you right now.”

Georgie’s mouth opens into a little surprised o, revealing just the tip of her labial frenulum piercing, shimmering in the warm shine of the coffee table light.

“I won’t do it if you don’t want me to,” Melanie rushes to say. “But if you’d like to, I would really, really like to kiss you right now.”

A heartbeat or two, then Georgie’s other hand shoots up, landing on the other side of Melanie’s face. She’s nodding vigorously now and grinning, eyes crinkling and full of zeal. She says: “Yes, okay, yeah, please do that. I would like that. Very much so. Right now would be good. Perfect actually.”

Before Georgie can spiral any further down the rambling vortex of her words, Melanie leans down and pulls her face up in the same movement. And she shuts Georgie up with the hard press of her lips. Her eyes flutter closed, and she can’t believe she’s really doing this. Kissing Georgie Barker on a humid night in July, sprawled on her couch, butterflies trying to escape from her torso.

This is good, this is nice, this is actually rather perfect.

Their mouths don’t fit right together with Georgie still lying on Melanie’s lap. She must be straining her neck somewhat awful to reach up to Melanie’s lips, and Melanie has to bend down awkwardly, and to be quite honest also a little bit dolorously, to actually keep the kiss going.

Melanie can taste the lipstick on Georgie’s mouth, feels it colouring her cupid’s bow. But she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t mind their uncomfortable position, the state of dishevelment they’ll both be in just a few minutes from now, and the fact that she wasn’t even smooth, asking Georgie for a kiss.

When they part, Georgie’s opening her eyes a tick after Melanie, and she uses it to really look at Georgie’s face. The perfectly shaped eyeliner, the warm colour of her subtle eyeshadow, the faintest traces of rouge on her cheeks, and the smudged lipstick.

“This is,” Georgie starts, finally sitting up without leaving Melanie’s lap. “I didn’t expect this when I came here.” She laughs softly, cupping Melanie’s face now with both of her hands; both resting just underneath Melanie’s jawline. “I’m not complaining, really, I thought about this for long enough. I’m just surprised, I guess.”

“What do you have to be surprised about?” Melanie tilts her head in confusion. “I am still in shock that you agreed to kiss me. I mean, I didn’t pressure you into doing that, did I?”

Georgie laughs.

“No,” she says. “No, you didn’t. I very much wanted to kiss you, thank you.”

“Are you thanking me for kissing you?”

Georgie tilts her head as well, contemplating Melanie’s words as if she hadn’t even realised, she had said them at all. Then she says: “I must have, yes. It was a rather nice kiss, so I think you deserve my gratitude.” She grins. “So, thank you, Melanie King, for the extreme pleasure of kissing you. And hopefully, I can extend this thank you indefinitely, because I very much intend on kissing you more.”

Melanie places a gentle kiss on Georgie’s nose and retorts: “You’re very welcome. And you can kiss me any time you want.” Their foreheads touch and Melanie lets out a shaky breath.

 #10

It's rare for Melanie to get roped into things she doesn’t enjoy at all. That includes family functions, student mixers and getting dragged to the nearby lake for a swim.

Swimming, much like jogging, was invented by the devil and exists solely for the purpose of torturing Melanie.

Usually, she tells Sasha and Tim or Georgie to go without her. On seldom occasions, she packs a book and a beach towel and sprawls herself out in a safe, reasonable distance to the water.

Today, she thought she could make Georgie happy and actually wear a swimsuit. – She still wouldn’t go near the water, but she could at least pretend that there’s a chance she won’t stay dry. She didn’t, however, think about the fact that it’s scorching hot today even though they’re in the shadows, and that Georgie isn’t as gullible as necessary to believe her lie about going for a swim.

“Why don’t you put those away?” Georgie asks; this time, Melanie’s head lies in Georgie’s lap, so Georgie has to look down at her girlfriend while gesturing towards Melanie’s clunky boots. “It’s a thousand degrees and you’re wearing two pairs of socks in black boots.”

“I’m also wearing only a swimsuit and shorts and there’s a light breeze,” Melanie counters, tugging at the strap of her black swimsuit. “Regular people sweat. Goths, we simmer.”

Chuckling, Georgie interjects: “You’re not a goth, love.”

It’s been two whole weeks since their first kiss, but Melanie’s still not used to the little jolts of excitement and endearment she feels, every time Georgie calls her a term of affection. She’s just like that, calling Jon honey and Martin our kid and Melanie love or dear or bird. At times Melanie thinks about all the possible names Georgie could call her, and about all the petnames she could think about calling Georgie.

“Well, sweating is gross, so I don’t do it,” Melanie says, shaking off the warm feeling in her chest. It’s warm enough as it is. “If you’re so hot, maybe you should take off your cardigan.”

The hesitation in Georgie’s answer translates to the uncertainty Melanie feels herself: “We could do it together.” Melanie doesn’t say anything at first, contemplating. “Putting it all out there, you know.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Georgie adds hastily, brushing a stray wisp of hair out of her face. It’s the first time Melanie sees her in a bun and therefore the first time she can see Georgie’s ears, the lobes stretched and decorated with little plugs engraved and gilded with a sun very much like the one she’s wearing as a septum. “I just want you to know that you’re safe with us and that I don’t care.” Her gaze is unwavering. “About, like, your mark.”

For all intents and purpose Melanie doesn’t want to look away but she still does it. Takes a look at Sasha and Tim, kicking water at each other and laughing. They are, as far as Melanie’s concerned, a one in a million pair. Sasha’s shoulder adorns the same spiral pattern as Tim’s biceps, and they knew each other since Sasha’s father worked one of the shifts when Tim was born in the hospital. – It’s not romantic, they’re platonic soulmates and they always knew that about each other.

Then she’s looking over at Jon and Martin, sitting on the small landing stage, feet dangling into the water. She doesn’t have to see their marks to know what they are. Beneath Jon’s clavicle OH NO is written in neat small caps. It’s not a nice mark but Jon’s not a nice man, so it’s not far-fetched to imagine that she’s not the only one proclaiming these words upon talking to him for the first time. Martin, on the other hand, has a full sentence on his upper thigh: Just got drunk and walked in. Written in a sharp script, the L reaching as far down as the G and the capital J. Something’s rather familiar about the handwriting, but she seems to be the only one paying attention to the marks at all and she doesn’t want to attract notice to something with so much potential of going wrong.

Georgie and her, they are the only one still hiding their soulmarks. And in this moment, Melanie thinks that there is no reason anymore to keep it secret. If anyone would be okay with Jon’s name on Melanie’s body, it would be Georgie. He’s her best friend and maybe they’re as platonic as Sasha and Tim. Maybe he’ll be her best friend, too. In, like, a distant future.

“Okay,” she hears herself say. Maybe even more surprised than Georgie. “I think I can do that.”

She sits up, blinking against the dizziness and the black dots dancing in front of her eyes. After that she reaches forward, tugging at the laces of her boots. One by one gets pulled free of their confinement and it takes not nearly as much time as Melanie would like it to.

A shaky breath (she should stop doing that, it fucks with her whole bad girl attitude) and she’s pulling off one boot at a time. Out of the corner of her eyes she can see Georgie taking off her cardigan, so she undresses her feet completely, setting aside both pairs of socks.

“My feet are the whitest of white,” Melanie jokes to cover up her nerves. “I don’t remember the last time they have seen the sun. I’m going to get a sunburn.”

“I’ve got sunscreen,” Georgie answers gently, cupping Melanie’s upper arm with her hand. Her nails are painted in the blackest of blacks, Melanie’s one and only nail polish. (Well, that’s not quite true. She’s got two bottles of the same colour, one for her hands, one for her feet.)

Georgie’s gaze falls onto Melanie’s feet. Amazed, she coos: “You painted your nails!”

“I always paint my toenails,” Melanie admits. “I’m usually the only one who sees it, but I like knowing that they’re painted.”

She turns around and for a moment she thinks about sitting tailor-fashion, hiding her left ankle. She doesn’t do it, however. Pulling her legs close, she sits sideways on her hip, showcasing Jon’s name in all its loopy glory.

“May I–,“ Georgie cuts herself off, fiddling with the cardigan in her lap. “May I take a look?”

Melanie shrugs, thinks better of it and says: “Yeah, sure.”

Carefully, Melanie extends her left leg, stretching it out in front of Georgie, so that her ankle is next to Georgie’s knee. Georgie’s hand reaches out tentatively, the tip of her index finger stopping just shy of Melanie’s skin. And suddenly, she’s touching Melanie’s skin, brushing over the swirls and bows and the name that is not hers.

“This is unbelievably funny,” she says, but she doesn’t sound like she thinks it’s funny. Melanie doesn’t think it’s funny. Her brows furrow and she’s this close to pulling her ankle away from Georgie’s touch. But it’s nice, is the thing. This is the first time in forever someone has touched her soulmark. Not even Melanie has consciously laid a finger on it in years.

Melanie’s silence following her statement must have tipped Georgie off that her choice of words maybe wasn’t the best because she startles and tries it again: “Sorry, that was rude. I mean.” This time she has the nerve to chuckle. “That’s not Jon’s handwriting.”

Surprise is not necessarily the best word to describe the thing that hits Melanie square in the stomach, sucker-punching the air from her lungs. Through gritted teeth and a tense jaw, she asks: “It’s not?” She needs the confirmation, needs Georgie to say it again.

But she doesn’t.

Instead she turns around, reaches for her purse and rifles through it until she finds what she’s looking for. A felt tip marker. She stops, however, hovering over Melanie’s ankle in a silent question. Melanie waves her hand dismissively, and Georgie apparently interprets it as affirmative. Then she proceeds, writing for a few seconds, maybe even half a minute. When she’s done, she lifts her head and caps the marker again, accidentally nudging Melanie’s foot with the back of her hand.

“You should take a look,” Georgie says, her voice with a nervous edge to it.

Melanie pulls her legs towards herself and scans her ankle that’s now covered in names in the same loopy script of her soulmark. The Ss of Sasha are as wrongly weighed as the ones in Sims, the bottom half much smaller than the top half. The Os in Stoker and Georgie have the same perfect roundness of the one in Jonathan. The Ks in Blackwood and Barker are written with the same bows as the H in Jonathan.

This is bizarre.

“Can– could you–,” Melanie huffs out a frustrated noise. “May I see yours, too?”

Slowly as if she’s trying not to scare Melanie away, she extends her right arm and Melanie can see the tiny handwriting in the crook of her arm. The tiny, tiny handwriting hat is unmistakably Melanie’s.

“You told me, you heard so much about me,” Melanie breathes. “You came into the library and went all soccer mom on Jon and then you said you heard so much about me.” She stares at the Oh god, I am so sorry engraved on Georgie’s skin. “And I thought: Oh shit, that guy is my soulmate and his girlfriend is the most beautiful being on this planet and he probably told her how much he hates me.”

“I didn’t think anything about it,” Georgie confesses with the softest of smiles. “I met so many people whose first words to me were an apology. Eventually, you start to, well, stop thinking about it.” She casts the marker away and leans forward, cupping Melanie’s hands with both of hers. “And Jon told me about your first encounter, so I didn’t think about it, like, twice.”

Melanie returns the slight pressure of Georgie’s hands and a smile blossoms on her face. She would have been okay with a platonic soul bond with Jon, really, she would have been. (Not at first because he’s a pompous twat and a squabbler, a know-it-all that rubs Melanie in all the wrong ways. But he grew on her like yeast on wet flour, and now she can easily picture herself sitting with him on the floor of her flat, eating ice cream drowned in scotch straight from the tub while decidedly not talking about their feelings or anything important at all.) But she doesn’t know if she would have been alright with Georgie falling out of love with her because of her soulmate. (It’s selfish, that’s what it is. Hoping against all hope that Georgie doesn’t meet her soulmate as long as they’re romantically involved.)

Now there is another bond between them, not necessarily romantic, but they were supposed to meet. Melanie’s allowed to fall as hard as she possibly can, because Georgie is the human the universe hand-picked just for her. The human that loves her the most. The human that she’s allowed to love back, unconditionally if she chooses so.

“I think, I’d like to get this tattooed,” Melanie croaks, averting her eyes.

“Don’t want to have Jon’s name on your ankle anymore?” There’s a chuckle in Georgie’s voice and a loving gentleness.

“I don’t think I mind it as much anymore,” Melanie answers. “But this is nice. Having the names of the people I love on me. Not just the clueless prat that led me to you.” She laughs. “And if they ask, I can still tell them it’s a list of my future enemies.”

They’re both chuckling now, and Melanie lifts their hands up, pressing soft kisses on the knuckles of Georgie’s hand. Warmth floods Melanie’s insides and she thinks that even if they ever were to break up, they can still remain friends. Jon and Sasha are a few feet away and they are living, breathing evidence that Georgie and Melanie can do this.

Something tender sits on the top of Melanie’s tongue and at first, she’s trying to swallow it back down, to not be that vulnerable so soon into their relationship, but then she shakes off the thought. Georgie seems to be honest with her feelings at all times, unafraid of showing her deepest inside, and Melanie doesn’t want to be a chicken about the only thing that truly matters. (Even though the weightiness of it is probably the reason why it’s so hard for her.)

“I really like you,” she ends up saying. The words like camomile on her tongue. What’s even better is Georgie smiling lovingly at her and replying; “I really like you, too.”

[bubonickitten]

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: tumblr // AO3

Chapter 5 full text & content warnings below the cut:

CWs for Chapter 5: flashbacks re: canon-typical trauma (each of Jon's encounters with the Fears is mentioned, some more detailed than others - worms and Circus-related horror in particular); brief mentions of eye horror/gouging. SPOILERS through S5.

   Chapter 5: Second Chance

   “Hi, Georgie,” Jon says meekly. There’s a raw quality to his tone that he didn’t anticipate. Don’t cry, he warns himself. Don’t you dare cry.   

  Georgie surveys him – not with fear, of course, but with a combination of caution and interest.

  “My eyes are up here,” Jon says with a small, hesitant smile.

  “Jonathan Sims, was that a joke?”

  “People might assume otherwise, but I do have a sense of humor.”

  “Not like that you don’t.”

  “It’s Martin’s,” Jon admits. When he feels himself start to flush, he averts his human eyes. Useless, really, considering how most of the others are still concentrated on Georgie, but it’s just force of habit at this point.

  Georgie grins for a brief moment. Jon is suddenly struck with the magnitude of how long it’s been since he’s seen her smile, and then it fades.

  “You’ve picked up quite a few more…” Georgie raises an eyebrow and motions vaguely at Jon and his general vicinity.

  “Yes.” Jon shifts his weight from one foot to the other, embarrassed. “They aren’t, ah… manifesting in my hospital room, are they?”

  Georgie looks at him like he’s grown an extra head. Though, that may have less to do with his question and more with yet another eye that just emerged unsolicited on his left cheekbone. Great timing.    

  “Uh… no?”

  “Oh, good.” He doesn’t bother to understate his relief. Everyone already saw him as a monster last time; retaining his post-apocalyptic nightmare ‘he’s-all-eyes’ look would make an already difficult challenge nearly impossible.

  “So you… you know where you are, then?”

  “Yes.” 

  When he doesn’t elaborate, Georgie’s eyes sweep up and down his figure again, and Jon feels exposed. Seen. She folds her arms and jerks her chin in his direction.  

  “You’ve got mud all over you.”

  “I… had to help someone climb out of a grave earlier.” In an attempt to distract himself from his own self-consciousness, he begins playing with a lock of hair at the nape of his neck.

  “And the blood?”

  “Dream pica,” Jon says guardedly. “And a dissection lab.” He looks around the pristine room they’re standing in. “A – a different one. With more… blood.”

  “Right.”

  The awkward silence drags on a bit too long.

  “It’s… it’s good to see you, Georgie,” he ventures.

  “Jon, is it really you?”

  “Yes.” Georgie doesn’t respond, and her expression is unreadable. “I – I don’t have any way to make you believe me, but… listen, Georgie, I – there are some important things I have to tell you before you wake up.”

  Before Georgie can stop him, he plunges into the first bullet point on his agenda.

  “First, Melanie. I don’t know how much she told you about her trip to India, but she still has a bullet in her leg, and it’s poisoning her. It didn’t show up on any scans then, and it probably still won’t, but it needs to come out. I know she’s been hurting, growing angrier –”

  “How do you –”

  “Please trust me, Georgie. I don’t know whether Melanie will listen to you, especially when you tell her the information came from me, but – but I think she already knows about the bullet, knows what it’s doing to her. She might not want to give it up, and – and it’s not my place to make that decision for her, but – the Slaughter wants to claim her, and I don’t think any good can come from becoming an Avatar.” He laughs bitterly. “Maybe – maybe that would be enough to convince her. Just tell her she could end up a monster like me.”   

  “Jon –”

  “I just wanted to let you know,” he interrupts again. “You know her better than I do, and she can trust you more than she can trust anyone at the Institute. I don’t know what your relationship is like right now, if she would listen to you, and – and you don’t have to tell me. But you both deserve to know about it. And she… she deserves a chance to heal. She deserves to know that she has a choice.”

  “Okay. That’s... a lot to unpack.” Then, businesslike: “What else?”

  “Martin. He needs to know that I’m coming back. It – it might take another month or two, but I’m going to wake up.”

  “Jon, I’ve never even spoken to him.”

  “I know, and – and right now, he’s distancing himself from the others, too. But he’s in danger.” Georgie raises her eyebrows. “A new kind of danger. If you could ask Melanie to get a message to him, to just – tell him that I’m asking him to wait a few more months before giving up on me.”

  “I’ll pass the message on to Melanie,” Georgie says evenly, “but I’m not going to pressure her about it.”

  “I understand.”

  “You… you think you can wake up, then?”

  “Yes. And I will.” He pauses. “Soon, I hope.”

  “You going to explain, or keep being mysterious?”

  “I… listen, Georgie, I want to tell you, I do –”

  “But you can’t, because as usual, you think you know what you’re doing and you’re going to rush ahead and throw yourself at –”

  “No,” he says firmly. “I know it seems like I’m falling into a – a familiar pattern, but that’s not what this is. I want to tell you, and I will tell you, it just – it can’t be here.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because Elias is probably watching us right now.”

  “Your boss Elias?" Georgie gives him a blank look. "Your boss Elias who is in prison right now for the murders he framed you for? That Elias?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think he can, what, snoop on your coma dreams?”

  “And most places in the physical world aren’t safe from him, either.”

  “Right,” Georgie sighs. She’s known Jon long enough to tell when he isn’t going to budge. “Where, then?”

  “The tunnels under the Institute. It’s a universal blind spot, he can’t See there.”

  “And you aren’t worried about him overhearing that?”

  “No. He’s likely aware that we know about the properties of the tunnels. Besides, this isn’t some secret battle we’re all fighting. Everything is out in the open. I don’t have to hide my suspicions, and he’s stopped pretending not to be evil. He can safely assume that I’m keeping secrets and plotting behind his back just the same as he is.” Jon glares up at the ceiling and the Watcher beyond it. “I just don’t want him to know the details.” 

  “Can’t he read minds?” Georgie looks away. “It’s just – Melanie mentioned –”

  “It’s… complicated.” Jon folds his arms and starts pacing slowly, retracing the same six-foot space back and forth as he pieces together an explanation. “Elias can See things that happen almost anywhere, but he has to concentrate in order to do it. He can Know a person’s secrets and details about their past, but I don’t think it’s mind-reading, per se, it’s just… Knowing, and – and there are limits on it. And he can implant images and knowledge into a person’s mind, but I think he has to actually be within eyesight in order to do it.”

  Jon abruptly stops pacing and stares transfixed at his feet.

  “It sounds like there’s a ‘but.’”

  “But… I don’t think he can actually read a person’s thoughts in real time. Sometimes it seems like it – he has a gift for reading people, and he always seems to know how best to manipulate or… or break a person. But I think… I think it’s an entirely non-supernatural gift.” Jon hugs his sides and draws his shoulders in, suddenly feeling both too small and too noticeable. “It’s monstrosity, but of a very human sort,” he murmurs softly. 

  “You’re sure?”

  “Fairly sure, yes, though it doesn’t hurt to take as many precautions as possible. I do plan on explaining things after I wake up, but only in the tunnels.” He gives Georgie a pleading look. “I wouldn’t ask you to come to the Institute if there was another option, but it… it has to be there. And I – I get it if you don’t want to see me in person, I can tell Melanie and then she can tell you, but it just – it still has to be in the tunnels.”

  “Jon, it isn’t that I don’t want to see you. I’ve been visiting you in hospital –”

  “I know.”

  “You could hear me?”

  “Not – not quite. I only just started being able to hear what goes on out there. But I… I know you’ve been visiting. Thank you.” Jon pauses, biting his lower lip. “Though I know that you… weren’t expecting me to recover.”

  “It’s been four months, Jon. You have no heartbeat, you’re not breathing –”

  “I know. And you’re thinking I’ve passed a point of no return and that you should cut ties with me before I drag you down with me.”

  “Well, have you?”

  “Passed a point of no return?” He looks up at the ceiling and closes his human eyes. “Yeah. A few of them, actually. I’m not fully human anymore, and I don’t think there’s a way to reverse it. But I – I’m still me, and I want to stay that way. You told me once – not long ago, I suppose – you said that if I was becoming something inhuman, I needed people in my life. To remind me of my humanity. You were right. There are more points of no return I could stumble into, I could get worse, and I don’t…” He swallows hard, fighting back the threat of tears. “I want to get better.”

  “Do you, though?” Georgie’s voice is gentle, but firm. “Actually?”

  “Yes,” Jon says without hesitation. “I really, really do. I can’t escape from the Institute, or from the Beholding. Not any time soon, anyway. Even when I was staying with you, I was physically dependent on reading statements – I just didn’t realize it yet. Running away and staying out of danger isn’t really an option for me anymore. It… hasn’t been for a long time. Maybe ever since I took the job.”

  Georgie presses her lips into a thin line, and Jon can tell he’s losing her.

  “But I’m not – I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not seeking out danger or heroics. I’m not… I’m not playing the martyr, or – or trying to court tragedy. I would love to go a month – hell, a week without the threat of death or worse hanging over me,” he says with a short, humorless laugh, “but that won’t happen as long as I’m the Archivist. So I – I don’t know what ‘better’ looks like for me now that I’m like this, but I want to try. I think this is a second chance, and I… I want to take it.”

  “I want to believe you, Jon. It’s just…”

  “You’ll believe it when you see it.” One corner of his mouth twitches up in a rueful smile.

  “Yeah.” Georgie’s answering smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

  He can’t really blame her for being skeptical. They’d had a conversation remarkably similar to this one before, shortly before their breakup – minus the supernatural elements, of course. He’d had a breakdown, finally admitted that he needed help, agreed to go to counseling – and then quit after two sessions. She’s seen his obsessiveness, his refusal to take care of himself, the self-destructive patterns he falls into, his apparent allergy to emotional vulnerability. He’s never shown her any other side of him. Come to think of it, he didn’t know he had another side until… all of this.

  “Look,” Georgie says after a moment and a sigh, “I – I’m not going to cut you out, not completely. But I may need some distance, you understand?”

  “Of course.”

  “And I can’t be your only support.”

  “I wouldn’t want that.”

  “And I have to decide how much I’m willing to get involved in… all of this.” Georgie frowns. “It’s just complicated, what with…”

  “Melanie.”

  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t want you trapped there, either – I think all of you should quit, actually. If you ever figure out how. Maybe even burn the place down just to be safe.” If she’s joking about the latter, Jon can’t tell. He doesn’t disagree with her, per se, but he does take a moment to wonder, not for the first time, how he’s managed to surround himself with so many people who see arson as a first resort. “It’s just –”

  “Listen, that’s actually the last thing I wanted to mention – I might have a way for Melanie to quit.”

  “What?”

  “I – I think the only reason she hasn’t been completely taken over by the Slaughter is because of her connection to the Eye, so it would be safest to remove the bullet first, if she decides that's what she wants, but – yes, there’s a way for her to quit.” He runs one hand through his hair and grimaces. “It’s drastic, but everyone needs to know they have the option. I can’t talk about the details here, though, and I – I’d rather everyone hear everything I have to say before making any decisions.”

  “You get more and more cryptic every time I see you, you know that?” 

  “Trust me, this is an improvement on…” Being the voice of the Archive, he does not say. “It could be worse.”

  “See? Cryptic.”

  “That can’t be the most off-putting thing about me.” As if on cue, another eye opens on his throat, centered on the scar that Daisy left him, and he cringes. More impeccable timing. 

  “Nah,” Georgie says after a contemplative hum. “I think the weirdest thing is how you just had an entire conversation about your feelings and didn’t once try to change the subject. Who are you, and what did you do with Jonathan Sims?”

  Jon laughs. “I guess I’ve… grown, a bit.”

  “Yeah, but when? Since you’ve been in a coma? This place doesn’t exactly seem ripe with opportunities for personal growth.”

  “I…”

  “Let me guess: you can’t talk about it.”

  “Not here.” Jon gives her an apologetic smile.   

  “Right.”

  Jon looks down again, scuffing one foot against the floor to fill the quiet.

  “So when can we expect you back in the world of the living?”

  “No more than a few months, I think. Hopefully sooner. It depends on how long it takes me to figure it out.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to?”

  “If I can’t do it on my own, someone else will do it for me. This in-between state doesn’t suit the Beholding, and there are at least a few interested parties who will force me to make a choice if I take too long. The Archivist has a role to perform, and right now, I’ve removed myself from the game board. Either I submit to the hand that moves me, or I die and make room for the next unsuspecting pawn in line.” Jon looks up. “Sorry, that came out more dramatic than I intended.”

  “A bit,” Georgie says, not unkindly.  

  “What I mean is, the coma has a time limit no matter what I do or don’t do. I’m not human enough to die, but I’m too human to live, so I have two choices: I accept what I’ve become and I wake up. I’ll still be me, but I’ll be even less human than I was before, and I’ll have to… make the best of that. Or, I sever my connection with the power that’s keeping me alive, and I die – not quite human, but not a monster, either. A slow death, though,” he adds bitterly. “To make sure I have plenty of time to change my mind.”    

  “Sounds to me like you haven’t made up your mind.”

  “I have, actually. It’s just… I don’t know how to finalize my choice, I suppose?”

  “You can’t just ask to speak to a manager?” One look at Georgie’s playful grin, and Jon feels himself smiling in return.

  “I wish. No, I – it’s… hm. Like I need to find my way to a crossroads, but I don’t have directions or a map.”

  “Maybe you just need a chaperon.” When Jon gives her a serious look, her teasing smirk fades. “What, seriously?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t given up on finding my own way, but if I take too long, a guide will pass this way and… encourage me to choose a path and follow it to the end.”

  “I’d ask you how you know all this, but I doubt you'll tell me.”

  “I Know it because of the Eye, broadly speaking, but there’s a more specific answer I want to give you. Just… not here.”

  “Fine," Georgie says, but she doesn't sound upset, much to Jon's relief. "Anything else?”

  Jon almost says no, but…

  “Maybe… maybe one more thing,” he says, lowering his gaze, suddenly very interested in the floor. “I’ve never had any control in these dreams, and I’m terrified that I’ll lose it again. If I do, just… behind all the eyes, it’s still me. I can see you, and hear you, and I was wondering if… I know it’s stupid, but if it’s alright with you – and I completely understand if it’s not, I don’t want you to feel obligated –”

  “What, Jon?”

  “I… could you still talk to me, maybe?” Jon says it so quickly that it comes out all as one word. “I won’t be able to answer, but it would still be nice to hear your voice. Tell me about the Admiral, or your current knitting project – or the newest What the Ghost, and the weirdest listener feedback it got, or… or the latest dick move your landlord pulled. Anything.”

  When Georgie doesn’t reply right away, Jon keeps his head down and braces himself for disappointment. He didn’t mean to sound so desperate, and now he’s made things weird. He probably shouldn’t have –

  “Huh,” Georgie says finally. “Are you sure you haven’t been able to hear me talking to you out there?”

  “Not… not that I know of?” Jon cautiously looks up at her. “Not consciously, at least.”

  “Hmm. Well, next time I see you, if you’re as unresponsive in here as you are out there, I’ll just do what I usually do when I visit you in hospital, which is natter on about my personal life and tell you all about the Admiral’s latest adventures in protecting the flat from spiders.”

  “Brave boy,” Jon says fondly, and Georgie snorts.

  They spend some time talking about the Admiral and his newfound obsession with bread ties until, mid-sentence, Georgie wakes. Jon is left alone in a sterile dissection lab, the harsh fluorescent light underscoring the emptiness of the place.

  The conversation went… better than he had dared to hope, really. He’s both stunned and relieved that Georgie hasn’t written him off yet, but also terrified of messing things up again, of squandering his second chance. He can’t count on getting a third. This is his one opportunity to fix things, to do better, to be better, and he needs to make it count.

  No pressure, he thinks to himself grimly, and he heads for the door.

   Time is difficult here.

  Well, it was difficult at the end of the world, too. Towards the end, Jon didn’t even bother to keep track of it, but he could have Known, if he had wanted. Here, though, he can’t seem to Know anything about what’s happening outside of the dream.

  Jon relies on his conversations with his fellow dreamers to gauge the time and date in the outside world, and it doesn’t take long for him to realize that his perception of time is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes what feels like hours to him translates to a week on the outside; sometimes a single night in the real world is stretched into days for Jon. There are indeterminate stretches of time in which he drifts in that directionless void again – times when, he assumes, all of the other dreamers are awake, leaving no nightmare settings for him to occupy.

  At least the passage of time seems to be progressive. Time travel is difficult enough without hopping around to different points on the timeline. He’s glad to see that, his initial leap backwards notwithstanding, time still seems to be moving in one direction.

  It took a long time for Jon to stop waiting for the moment when he would lose his agency and become the Watcher again. A small part of him is still waiting for the rug to be ripped out from under him again, but for the most part, he’s allowed himself to relax into it and silence his customary pessimism. He still isn’t sure exactly why he has so much control now. It’s a… well, not best-case scenario – that would be freedom from the dreams altogether, for himself and for the others – but it’s still an unexpected boon that he never would have even imagined. Every time he searches for an answer, though, he gets nothing but noise and a blinding headache.

  The best theory he can come up with is that he’s simply stronger now, after completing his metamorphosis into the Archive. If so, it’s somewhat worrisome. It would mean that coming back in time rewound most of the timeline, but he remains a product of its original trajectory. He is an artifact of a cascade of disasters that never happened – that will never happen, if he manages to foil Jonah’s plans. There’s no way of telling how the world might react to his presence in it. Is he an allergen of sorts, a paradox that cannot be reconciled? Is he something akin to the rift itself? God, he hopes not – it will be difficult to convince anyone of his humanity if he radiates the same sort of wrongness as the crack in the foundation at Hill Top Road.

  Most of all, though, he wonders what it means for the Archivist’s progress.

  At this point in his original timeline, he had been marked by the Web, the Eye, the Corruption, the Spiral, the Desolation, the Vast, the Hunt, and the Stranger. If he isn’t already marked by the End, he will be by the time he wakes up. That leaves the Slaughter, the Buried, the Dark, the Flesh, and the Lonely. He still has to rescue Daisy, so receiving a mark from the Buried is a given. Avoiding the Slaughter and the Lonely may be difficult, considering they’ve both already taken up residence in the Archives. He can try to avoid Jared Hopworth and Ny-Ålesund, but that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t stumble across the Flesh and the Dark some other way, and Jonah Magnus is nothing if not resourceful. He won’t give up just because Jon happens to evade two of his traps.

  Not to mention, Jon has an unfortunate tendency to serve himself up to the Fears on a silver platter. He’s gotten better at tempering his recklessness, at trusting others, at not going it alone, but still – in the past, he’s had an almost supernatural ability to make Jonah’s job easy. It’s possible – probable – that the Web was – is – pulling strings, but trying to account for the Web is like searching a beach for a single grain of sand.

  Then there’s Jonah Magnus’ suggestion that Jon’s life amounts to a truly unfortunate streak of bad luck, but luck is a nebulous concept, and a lot of Jon’s so-called chronic “bad luck” could be a direct result of the manipulations of – speak of the devil – the Web and Jonah Magnus. At this point, Jon suspects his misfortune probably has more to do with his being easily manipulated than it does with any sort of intrinsic unluckiness or tragic destiny.

  Jon’s initial encounter with the Web may or may not have been chance, but becoming the Archivist had nothing to do with luck. Jonah chose him because he knew that Jon would be easy to isolate, terrorize, and control. It was a deliberate action, not some passive twist of fate. Everything that unfolded from that point onward was carefully orchestrated and monitored by Jonah, and he always had contingency plans to keep Jon on the intended path. Yes, Jon made it easy for him in many ways, and he’s still responsible for his choices – but he’s also had to acknowledge that regardless of what choices he made, Jonah likely would have been ready with an equally effective backup plan to counter any move Jon did or did not make.

  Which is exactly why even now, with the advantage of foreknowledge, Jon is still absolutely terrified of Jonah Magnus.     

  But the more Jon thinks about it – and the more his attempts to Know yield nothing – the more he worries that all of that is moot. He recalls Jonah Magnus' statement with a full-body shudder.

  …if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this nightmare kingdom. Do you see where I’m going with this, Jon?  

  It wasn’t enough to have the Entities cause him bodily harm. The scars are just physical reminders of the encounter. Some of the Fears didn’t even leave him with visible scars. No, the real mark always depended on Jon’s lived experience of the confrontation: the terror, the pain, the confusion, the desperation, the alienation from himself, and the lingering, compounding trauma.  

  Knocking on Mr. Spider’s door, looking on as the monster took its substitute victim and saddled him with lifelong survivor's guilt. The worms gnawing and tunneling through his skin, wriggling against bone, lavishing praise on the give of his flesh, crooning that he will be cherished, he will be perfect, he will be a home. The pandemonium of the Distortion’s corridors; the razor edge of the bones in its hands. The white-hot agony of melting flesh; the terror of terminal velocity without an end; the inexorable press of a knife against his throat.

  An entire month of nothing but raw sensory input, disjointed and unfathomable: chittering, faceless things; ropes chafing and eroding furrows into skin; the ache of a jaw forced open by a length of cloth; cramping muscles and screaming joints; chill air and tailor’s tape on bare skin; layer after slimy layer of lotion; the scent of lavender cut through with the metallic tang of blood; so many hands, hands, hands, ever-present and unyielding. Nikola would mark dotted lines onto his skin with a felt-tip marker, providing a cheerful running commentary as she worked – the sorry state of his skin and her promise to get it into proper shape; vivid descriptions of how it would feel to be flensed alive, exquisitely painful yet so very liberating; how grateful he should be that he will get to be part of something so much greater than himself – all of it overlaid with Jon's unquestioning conviction that no one was coming to help him. 

  And encore after encore: an explosion, an endless nightmare, an impossible choice; the aching strain of bones bending, the agonizing snap of bones breaking, the unsettling vacancy left behind; the damp, earthy press of the coffin; the terrible beauty of unknowable darkness burning holes in his Sight.      

  Martin paling, fading, vanishing –

  “Are you scared, Jon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perfect.”  

  – almost disappeared, almost lost, almost alone. 

  Jon remembers it all in perfect, visceral detail, every sensation and panic-stricken thought seared into him and easily accessible at the merest twitch of an overactive imagination. He witnessed and experienced worse during the apocalypse, but still those tired old flashbacks would overtake him and bring him to his knees without warning as he passed between domains.

  The question of mind-body dualism is well-settled at this point, at least as far as Avatars are concerned. Jonah Magnus has been body-hopping for centuries, discarding vessels and possessing new ones on a whim; Jon himself is currently a living mind tethered to a body that is in most other respects clinically dead. What if the body is irrelevant, and what really matters is the conscious mind?

  It might not matter whether Jon’s body encounters those final five marks. As long as he remembers receiving them, his consciousness is still scarred by all Fourteen of the Dread Powers. What’s more, traversing the ruined earth retraced those marks several times over, branding him more deeply with every passage through an Entity’s domain. That might be more than enough to initiate the Watcher’s Crown Ritual.

  If so, Jon is still a living chronicle of terror, fully prepared and ready and marked, and he’s delivered himself to Jonah Magnus months ahead of schedule.

  And if that’s the case, Jon has once again played right into Jonah’s hands.

  He can only hope that Jonah doesn’t Know it – and even if he doesn’t, it seems foolish to hope that he won’t find out eventually.

   “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”

  “Absolutely not,” Naomi wheezes, doubled over with laughter.

  Jon groans and covers his face with his forearms, still lying on his back in the mud. He had been helping Naomi out of her grave, as had become the routine, but she had lost her footing just as she reached the top. In his scramble to catch her, he had lost balance and toppled in after her, and now they’re both stuck down here. Jon sits up and half-heartedly wipes the dirt off his hands, to little effect.

  “Break any bones, old man?”

  “It’s a dream, Naomi. Also, I’m only thirty.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  He glares at her, but it’s tempered by an amused twist of the lips that he can’t quite suppress – which just makes Naomi snicker again.  

  “So,” she says after a moment, “still haven’t woken up?”

  “Still trapped,” Jon says, all the levity bleeding out of him in an instant.  

  “No luck with the anchor?”

  “No luck.” Jon leans back against the wall and crosses his arms. “Not for lack of trying – or practice. Just the thought of him has saved me more than once. But I guess it’s… different, when it involves trying to manipulate the hour of your own death.”    

  He should have suspected as much, really. Escaping a pocket dimension is different from trying to meddle with the End’s sphere of influence. In all the statements he’s consumed regarding Terminus, no one has ever been able to truly hold sway over it in any direction. It does not want anything, because everyone and everything succumbs to it eventually, given enough time. It doesn’t answer to summons or worship or pleas. Sometimes it elects to play games, but it engages only on its own terms, and no one ever wins – they simply accrue enough debt to delay the inevitable for as long as it takes to repay their dues.   

  “You’re being spooky again,” Naomi says brightly.

  “At this point, I think it’s my default setting,” Jon deadpans back. “More importantly – did you end up going to meet the distinguished Duchess Jellybean Toes?”

  “Yes!” Naomi leans forward with her hands on her knees, practically buzzing with excitement. “She’s gorgeous. A bit rude, though – she climbed up under my shirt, stuck her head out though my collar, and refused to budge for the entire visit.”

  “Are you going to adopt her?”

  “Mhm. I still need to buy some things and get the flat ready for her, but I already paid the adoption fee. Her name is a bit of a mouthful, though. Might have to change it.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Jon says, giving her a severe look. He meant it as a joke, but when his voice dips lower than intended and too many eyes join in on the staring, he winces.

  Naomi doesn’t react, though; she’s well past the point of finding him intimidating. “Hm. Well, I’ll have to shorten it, at least.”

  “Could just call her the Duchess,” Jon says, regulating his tone more carefully this time.

  “It doesn’t sound too… I don’t know, pretentious?”

  “Not at all. It sounds regal,” Jon insists. “I’ve told you about the Admiral, and he carries his title admirably.”

  “If that was a joke, it was terrible.”

  “That one was unintentional, actually.”

  “Good. I almost had to reevaluate my opinion of you.”

  “Can’t have that,” Jon says drily, and then his expression softens. “Seriously though, I’m glad the adoption worked out for you.”

  “Yeah. I think it’ll be good for me. Less lonely, you know,” she says, voice growing so faint that Jon can only barely hear her. Then, in a louder, more conversational tone: “Besides, I’ve always wanted a cat.”

  “Me too,” Jon admits. “By the time I finally got a flat that allowed pets, I was… well, always at work. It didn’t feel right, adopting a cat and then leaving it alone all the time.”

  “Well, you’re not dead yet. Not too late to develop a better work-life balance, even if you are…” Naomi wiggles her fingers. “You know, spooky.”

  “Maybe,” Jon says, pointedly ignoring the jape.  

  “Oh.” Naomi sits up straighter and looks at him. “I just realized – are you going to be able to get out of here once I wake up?”

  “That… is a very good question.” Jon smirks at her alarm. “I’m kidding. It’ll fade out when you do. Then it’s either back to the void, or on to the next nightmare.”

  “Spooky.”

  “That’s your third strike. Quota met for the day.”

  “You really are a buzzkill.”

  “So I’m told,” Jon says. “Now, if you’re finished harassing me, tell me more about the Duchess.”

  “Well, she’s a calico – unbelievably fluffy – and she’s only a year old…”

   Jon has never been the most social person. He doesn’t go out of his way to make friends, conversations typically feel like minefields, and he has a propensity for going off on informational digressions that most people find annoying. He asks too many questions, frequently misses social cues, and has always had difficulty modulating his tone of voice. Becoming the Archivist only made things more complicated, since now a conversational misstep can easily mean unintentional compulsion or Knowing (and sharing) something that he shouldn’t.

  But in recent years, he’s nonetheless become more dependent on human interaction and less tolerant of being alone. He knew he had been starved for companionship since he lost Martin, but he didn’t realize the extent of it until he started talking again, and in his own voice. So, when the voyeuristic nightmare sessions turn into social calls, he finds himself thriving on it in a way that he never expected.   

  There’s his budding friendship with Naomi – unexpected, but far from unwelcome.

  He still finds Dr. Elliott a bit insufferable, but Jon finds himself insufferable as well, so he can’t judge too harshly. He always peeks into the anatomy lab to check that Elliott isn’t in the throes of the nightmare. Sometimes they find some shared academic interest to discuss; other times, Elliott dismisses him, citing a disinterest in conversation at that moment. Jon never asks him to elaborate.

  Tessa usually declines his company, but occasionally she’ll wave him over and immediately launch into a discussion about neural networks or machine learning or some other tech-related subject that’s been on her waking mind. Well, it’s usually more of a one-sided lecture than anything else, but Jon always finds himself riveted, listening hungrily as Tessa shines light on an unfamiliar subject. The first few times he asked follow-up questions, she took it as feigned interest or ridicule, but once she realized that he was actually interested and not just humoring her out of guilt, she began to brighten every time he offered a new tangent for her to explore. He wouldn’t call them friends by any stretch of the imagination, but she seems to enjoy talking to someone who doesn’t tune her out when she begins to ramble. If nothing else, it’s better than devouring a computer.

  Jon doesn’t have much in common with Jordan, to be honest. It doesn’t take long for them to exhaust all avenues of conversation and lapse into an awkward silence. Jordan is skittish, though; he finds Jon’s less-than-human appearance perpetually unsettling, but apparently prefers it to being left alone in this place. Eventually they settle on an unspoken arrangement of just staying within eyeshot of one another for the duration of the dream, even when the conversation runs dry.

  In the silence, it’s more difficult to stave off the Knowing, though, which means Jon gets treated to ceaseless updates on Jordan’s mental state – and Jordan is more repulsed by all those eyes than he is by even the worst infestations he’s encountered on the job. By the time Jordan wakes up, Jon usually feels like an insect half-dead and twitching in the aftermath of an insecticide assault. He can’t blame Jordan, but it does still take its toll on Jon’s already abysmal self-esteem.

  Karolina remains largely unresponsive. Jon sits with her, talks to her – at her, really – and hopes that he isn’t just annoying her. Her eyes follow his movements, and sometimes she smiles, but otherwise, she’s uncommunicative – whether by force or by choice, Jon doesn’t know, and the Beholding doesn’t seem inclined to tell him. Although he has yet to completely interrupt the dream sequence, there have been a few instances where the train car didn’t collapse. He can’t say conclusively whether that indicates progress, but at least it’s evidence that the script can change. 

  On the one hand, it’s probably a good sign that Jon doesn’t have as much control over the Knowing as he did in the future. On the other hand, it’s like having his wings clipped after learning to fly, and he hates it. The Beholding did withhold some things from him during the apocalypse, but for the most part, he had unfettered access to an ocean of knowledge – and it’s maddening to have it restricted once again.

  Even before becoming the Archivist, he always hated unanswered questions; it may as well have been a core facet of his personality. But after so much time with the Archive at the forefront, to not Know is wholly incompatible with his nature in a deeper, existential sense. For the human part of him, it’s like having an itch that can’t be scratched; for the Archivist, it’s excruciating; for the Archive, it’s utterly incomprehensible.

  The balance he’d found in the future is shifting, and he isn’t sure what that means for him just yet, or how he feels about it.

   “How is Melanie?”

  “Struggling,” Georgie says, “but hopeful, I think. It’s really not my place to say much more than that.”

  “Yes, of – of course. I’m… glad to hear that she’s recovering.”

  “She’s still angry that you won’t tell me how she can quit.”

  “I will, I promise, I just… I need to explain everything first.”

  “She said to tell you that it’s patronizing to assume she can’t make her own decision without you holding her hand.”

  “I’m not – I just want it to be an informed decision.” Jon frowns. “That sounded condescending, didn’t it?”

  “A bit, yeah.”

  Jon looks down and rubs his temples. There’s a likelihood that if he tells Georgie right now, Melanie will blind herself before he even wakes up. It’s her choice, of course, but a choice never really feels like a choice when it’s presented as the only option, when vital information is being withheld that might affect your decision.

  There’s also the fact that his death would free all of them without a need for eye-gouging. He’s going to tell them – it doesn’t feel right to keep it to himself – but that’s something that he would rather Jonah not overhear. Jonah might be willing to lose Melanie if she takes an awl to her eyes, but if he thinks there’s a chance that she or any of the others would kill his Archivist just when he’s starting to show some promise, well… there’s no telling whether or how Jonah would choose to intervene. 

  “It’s not just that.” Jon glances up at the ceiling and the Eye just beyond it.

  “Tunnels-only information?”

  “Yeah,” Jon says, contrite. “She might not want to hear it, but please tell Melanie that I’m sorry. I’m hoping – what’s the date right now?”

  “First of February.”

  “She shouldn’t have to wait too much longer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just… do.” Jon winces at his weak delivery. He hates being so cagey, but he really has no other option.

  “Right.”  

  “How is… how is Martin?” Jon asks tentatively, perking up ever so slightly. Georgie’s expression turns sympathetic.

  “Melanie says they haven’t seen him,” she says gently.  

  “Oh.” Jon deflates, his cautious hope abruptly snuffed out.

  “I’m sorry, Jon. Melanie did send a few emails, and when that didn’t get a response, she slipped a note under his door. But it’s been radio silence.”

  “Oh,” he says again, almost a whisper this time. He covers his face with both hands and takes a minute to collect himself. “Um, c-can you tell Melanie I said thank you for trying? I –”

  Georgie is gone before Jon can finish his sentence. The Admiral must have woken her for breakfast. He always has been a natural alarm clock.

  Left alone with his own thoughts again, Jon immerses himself in worrying about Martin and a rotating litany of what-ifs. 

   End Notes:

Sorry this chapter isn't very plot-heavy!! It was getting really long and I had to split it into two chapters. Things will move along at the beginning of Chapter 6. It should be ready before the weekend. (Probably by tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm almost done with it.)

There are two excerpts from the show in this one. The clip of Jonah's statement is from MAG 160; the brief "Are you scared?" interaction is from MAG 158. 

[sarcasticcynic]

Godwin’s Justice

Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Clarence Thomas is currently the longest-serving justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a subject of frequent criticism on this Tumblr due to his lack of qualifications for his post: he is opposed to much of the U.S. Constitution--supporting the most restrictive literal interpretation possible to give it as little effect as possible--but also a hypocrite when it serves his purpose.

This week Clarence sunk to a new low, even for him.

In Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., the Court considered an appeal involving two new Indiana laws. One addressed the disposal of fetal remains after an abortion: it preserved the woman’s right “to determine the final disposition of the aborted fetus,” but otherwise prohibited its disposal along with other infectious waste, such as the byproducts of surgery. The other barred abortions on the basis of sex, race, or disability. The lower court invalidated both provisions; the Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and Indiana asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

The Court issued an opinion without any formal briefing or argument. The opinion is per curiam (Latin for “through the court”), meaning no individual Justice is identified as its author. With regard to the first provision, the Court noted that no one had ever argued that the law “imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion,” and therefore it specifically did not use the “undue burden test” often applied to abortion regulations. Instead, the state needed only to show that the law was “rationally related” to some “legitimate government interest”--a test easily satisfied, especially since the woman’s own choice, if any, would still take precedence. The Court summarily reversed the lower court’s ruling.

The Court declined to consider the second provision at all. One of the Supreme Court’s tasks is to resolve splits of opinion between the federal circuit courts. In this case, no other court had ever considered this sort of question, so there was no split and thus no reason for the Supreme Court to involve itself. “We follow our ordinary practice of denying petitions insofar as they raise legal issues that have not been considered by additional Courts of Appeals.”

Thomas agreed with both of these conclusions. But he elected to write a separate twenty-page opinion--five times longer than the Court’s actual ruling!--to make clear that he absolutely supported government-mandated restrictions on a woman’s right to choose whether to undergo an abortion. And he selected a particularly disturbing way to make his case.

Margaret Sanger and Eugenics

Thomas dragged out old, debunked claims against Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (over a century ago), to argue that birth control and abortion are and always were racism under the guise of “eugenics,” designed to reduce the populations of black people and other minorities:

“The use of abortion to achieve eugenic goals is not merely hypothetical. The foundations for legalizing abortion in America were laid during the early 20th-century birth-control movement. That movement developed alongside the American eugenics movement. And significantly, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger recognized the eugenic potential of her cause. She emphasized and embraced the notion that birth control ‘opens the way to the eugenist.’ ... As a means of reducing the ‘ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all,’ Sanger argued that ‘Birth Control ... is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method’ of ‘human generation.’ ... In her view, birth control had been ‘accepted by the most clear thinking and far seeing of the Eugenists themselves as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.’”

Now, Sanger did support eugenics, which was fairly popular at the time. Other supporters included Winston Churchill, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and W.E.B. Du Bois, founder of the NAACP. Importantly, the primary purpose of eugenics at the time was not to create some kind of racial purity:

“The purpose of eugenics was to improve the human race by having people be more healthy through exercise, recreation in parks, marriage to someone free from sexually transmitted diseases, well-baby clinics, immunizations, clean food and water, proper nutrition, non-smoking and drinking.”

Claims about Sanger’s supposed racist views have been proven false again and again. For example:

Sanger did not found Planned Parenthood for “black genocide” or to “help kill black babies before they came into the world.”

Sanger’s goal was not “preventing black babies from being born.”

Sanger’s goal was not to “control” the black population.

Sanger did not believe African-Americans “should be eliminated.”

Sanger did not “want to kill black babies.”

Sanger was not “an active participant in the Ku Klux Klan.”

Sanger never said “Blacks, soldiers and Jews are a menace to race.”

Sanger never said “Slavs, Latin and Hebrew immigrants are human weeds ... a deadweight of human waste.”

In reality, Sanger opposed racial segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself praised Sanger when he accepted the Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood. Sanger simply wanted women to have the right to be able to avoid unwanted pregnancies, which is why she was such a strong advocate for contraception. In fact, Sanger invented the term “birth control”!

Thomas ignored all of these inconvenient facts, focusing instead on the sensationalist (and false) view that birth control and abortion are just ways to oppress minorities. He admitted that Sanger never expressed any support for abortion--in fact, she opposed it except to save the life of the mother--but, having falsely smeared Sanger as a racist, he wanted to ensure he could taint the entire concept of abortion with the same eugenics brush. Thomas therefore asserted that Sanger’s evil, racist support for birth control was the logical equivalent of support for abortion for the same evil, racist reasons:

“To be sure, Sanger distinguished between birth control and abortion. ... the eugenic arguments that she made in support of birth control apply with even greater force to abortion. ... Indeed, the individualized nature of abortion gives it even more eugenic potential than birth control.”

Planned Parenthood and Eugenics

Regardless of Sanger’s views on eugenics a century ago, there is absolutely nothing suggesting that Planned Parenthood today espouses any of its founder’s previous support for it. To the contrary, Planned Parenthood has specifically disavowed Sanger’s more troubling opinions, including her support for Buck v. Bell, the 1927 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the U.S. Constitution allows the compulsory sterilization of the “unfit.”

“Planned Parenthood acknowledges these major flaws in Sanger’s views — and we believe that they are wrong. Furthermore, we hope that this acknowledgment fosters an open conversation  on racism and ableism – both inside and out of our organization.”

Again, Thomas ignored this inconvenient fact, because it doesn’t square with his argument that Planned Parenthood is, today, a supporter of abortion as racist eugenics. By this reasoning, though, the Supreme Court’s ruling back in 1927--which, by the way, it has never overturned--demonstrates that the Court must actively support eugenics today and must therefore be a bunch of racists.

Nazis and Eugenics

To support his skewed opinions, Thomas specifically conjured up images of Nazi Germany and “the eugenics of the Nazis,” whose supposed justification for the Holocaust was a desire to cleanse what they considered “lesser” races. Sanger’s views of eugenics, right or wrong, were completely unrelated to the extreme views of the Nazis. In fact, Sanger strenuously opposed the Nazis: she “joined the Anti-Nazi Committee and gave money, my name and any influence I had with writers and others, to combat Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.”

But facts don’t deter Clarence Thomas. As far as he is concerned, support for abortion is support for eugenics, support for racism, and support for Nazis.

“From the beginning, birth control and abortion were promoted as means of effectuating eugenics. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was particularly open about the fact that birth control could be used for eugenic purposes. These arguments about the eugenic potential for birth control apply with even greater force to abortion. ... Enshrining a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement.”

It is not merely disappointing but frankly disgusting that a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court would go out of his way to lend credence and the weight of his institution to views that amount to little more than conspiracy theories and muckraking. To equate pro-choice supporters of birth control and reproductive rights with the Nazis is the ultimate abuse of Godwin’s Law. And now it’s in a formal published opinion of the United States Supreme Court.

[marginalgloss]

unclean without and within

From time to time while reading Patrick O’Brian’s novels in the Aubrey-Maturin series I stop and search them for signs of late style. By this I mean the sense of an ending, or at least the feeling that there is surely more of them behind me than there is in front. I recently finished The Wine-Dark Sea, which is the sixteenth instalment in a series that began in 1969 and ended with the publication of a final (unfinished) volume in 2004. This one came out in 1993, with the author well into his 70s; almost twenty-five years after the first in the series. 

Yet such a progression of time is scarcely evident from the text: this is unmistakably the same writer who started out with Master and Commander and Post Captain all those years ago. If you were to read them back to back, they’d seem less contiguous than seamlessly continuous. It is not for nothing that some readers describe this series as really being instalments in one vast novel completed over the course of perhaps a third of a man’s lifetime.

This is not to say that there’s no change in style, no progression, no growth. To take an obvious example, by now the author has become much more dextrous when it comes to the handling of the naval jargon for the benefit of the casual reader. The books become more comfortable dwelling in the interiority of their characters, sometimes to unusual and oblique effect. And of course our heroes have aged a bit, but not much; for several books now Jack and Stephen are referred to in ways that suggest the onset of late middle age, but what exactly this means is never quite clear. Age, here, is like a layer of dust that settles quickly but can be blown away at a moment’s notice when required. Much like how the HMS Surprise itself vanished for several books before appearing with most of its old crew again, O’Brian is not above grinding the authorial gears, bending the rules of historical fiction to get what he wants at times. Such is the writer’s prerogative. 

I thought the previous book, Clarissa Oakes, was a rare misfire; by comparison The Wine-Dark Sea is very much a return to form. It finally details the completion of a journey which I think was first mentioned way back in The Letter of Marque. As if to compensate for the relative quietude of its predecessor, this is a story crowded with incident. There’s a couple of great sea-chases, an erupting volcano, a thrilling sequence in an ice floe, and a bigger than usual helping of Napoleonic banter and intrigue by land. We even get a trip way up into the Andes, and a terribly bloody battle with pirates (rarer than you’d think in this series). All of which is to say that at this stage in the books, there is still no sign of the author slowing down.

To detail the story would be somewhat besides the point here. The form of this novel is mostly given over to the picturesque; much like those earliest books in the series, it is a series of events loosely connected by plot but mostly engendered by chance. Perhaps the most interesting character in this instalment is Dutourd, a French captain mentioned briefly in the last book but only met properly here. He is a would-be revolutionary and accidental privateer, an apparently sincere idealist dedicated to setting up a new kind of society in whatever colony will have him and his gunboat. Naturally, Jack is fairly frank in his contempt:

‘From the first Jack Aubrey had disliked all that he had heard of Dutourd: Stephen described him as a good benevolent man who had been misled first by ‘that mumping villain Rousseau’ and later by his passionate belief in his own system, based it was true on a hatred of poverty, war and injustice, but also on the assumption that men were naturally and equally good, needing only a firm, friendly hand to set them on the right path, the path to the realisation of their full potentialities. This of course entailed the abolition of the present order, which had so perverted them, and of the established churches. It was old, old stuff, familiar in all its variations, but Stephen had never heard it expressed with such freshness, fire and conviction. Neither fire nor conviction survived to reach Jack in Stephen’s summary, however, but the doctrine that levelled Nelson with one of his own bargemen was clear enough, and he watched the approaching boat with a cold look in his eye.’

Stephen is a little more nuanced — and sarcastic — in his critique. After being asked what he thinks of democracy, he appears to avoid the question, pleading etiquette:

‘…we nevertheless adhere strictly to the naval tradition which forbids the discussion of religion, women, or politics in our mess. It has been objected that this rule makes for insipidity, which may be so; yet on the other hand it has its uses, since in this case for example it prevents any member from wounding any other gentleman present by saying that he did not think the policy that put Socrates to death and that left Athens prostrate was the highest expression of human wisdom, or by quoting Aristotle’s definition of democracy as mob-rule, the depraved version of a commonwealth.’

Between Aubrey’s stolid conservatism and Maturin’s cynicism, it is difficult to extract much which is admirable about Dutourd from O’Brian’s writing. Perhaps the best we can say for him is that he seems to have a genuine concern for the wellbeing of the men around him. But he is not a leader. Being genuine in this world seems to count for very little unless you have the capability to back it up.

Given the constant level of contempt aimed at Dutourd throughout, I wonder if it’s possible to salvage a consistent political perspective from these books. There’s a gentle but consistent conservatism, of course, that comes from the overwhelming faith throughout in the institution of the navy — a faith only partly related to the actual men who serve in it, and which has little or nothing to do with a sense of Britishness or national identity. The thing above all for O’Brian is the nature of the service, as exemplified by what it takes to operate one of the most complex engines of war ever designed. This, for him, is society; it is not an ideal society, but it is an immensely capable example of one. In Dutourd we see one whose only goal is to undo that society, and replace it with something decentred, nebulous, suspicious.

The pleasing contrast in the series always comes from comparing this conservatism to Maturin’s revolutionary liberalism, itself tempered with doubt towards all institutions. But as the series goes on it seems like Stephen’s most defining characteristic is that he has no faith in anything except himself. His concern for the welfare of his fellow man seems sincere, at least when a scalpel is in his hand, but it isn’t heartfelt; were he living on land, we can’t really imagine him working as a surgeon, either for profit or out of the goodness of his heart. He lives for the moments when he is alone in nature. And in that regard he seems like a figure who exemplifies a certain kind of libertarianism, one which is sometimes associated with the later years of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Less Rousseau, more Thoreau. 

But Maturin’s gift, and his curse, is that he alone amongst the crew seems to possess a particular sense of aloneness. I love, for example, this little passage, from his trip into the Andes:

‘So it was: yet the western sky was still dark violet at the lower rim and as he looked at it Stephen remembered the words he had intended to write to Diana before he put his letter to the candle: ‘in this still cold air the stars do not twinkle, but hang there like a covey of planets’, for there they were, clear beads of unwinking gold. He could not relish them however; his dream still oppressed him, and he had to force a smile when Eduardo told him he had reserved a piece of bread for their breakfast instead of dried potatoes, a piece of wheaten bread.’

That pretty image followed, by the pang of self-awareness — the memory of a dismal dream, his faraway wife hung for some strange crime — and then that old O’Brian trick of breaking through with indirect discourse that gently mimics speech. ‘A piece of wheaten bread.’ 

One more thing I want to add. There’s something very peculiar about the fate of Martin here. I always found something feminine about his portrayal, perhaps in part because his traditional role in these books is to be Stephen’s conversational partner while Jack is indisposed. Theirs is a friendship in which intimacy seems to have been traded in for constant peaceful companionship. 

Eventually Martin becomes such a constant presence that he seems almost like a chaste spouse to Stephen. I don’t think O’Brian ever explicitly describes him as effeminate; but as a man, he doesn’t quite match up to the capabilities of his shipmates. Jack is perpetually uneasy with him, and I’m not sure it will suffice to say that he’s only suspicious of Martin’s authority on doctrinal matters. But the suspicion is strange, because it seems rootless. Martin isn’t outwardly threatening. He’s sensitive, observant, yet utterly hopeless as a physical presence compared to either of the leads. He’s perfectly pleasant, but not exceptional.

In this book, something odd happens. In Clarissa Oakes, Martin’s role as occasional companion appeared usurped by the titular woman smuggled aboard the ship. Now, it seems like O’Brian was looking for a way to get him out of the way, perhaps in order to set up a situation further down the line in England. Martin’s relationship with Clarissa becomes the instrument for bringing this about. Here is Stephen on the subject:

‘…Whether he has the disease I cannot tell for sure without a proper examination, though I doubt he has it physically: metaphysically however he is in a very bad way. Whether he lay with her or not in fact he certainly wished to do so and he is clerk enough to know that the wish is the sin; and being also persuaded that he is diseased he looks upon himself with horror, unclean without and within…’

Martin becomes desperately ill, and for a while Stephen cannot diagnose his problem. Eventually it turns out that, being tormented with guilt over an affair with Clarissa, he has poisoned himself with a desperately strong treatment for syphilis, derived from mercury. Here, perhaps, is what Jack had to be suspicious about all these years. We see this again and again in certain outlying characters in O’Brian’s world. They are tormented by a certain inner conviction, entirely irrational but thoroughly humane, that becomes not only a personal agony to the individual, but a true risk to the security of that precious narrow society.  

There is something uniquely sinister and sad about Martin’s condition here. It is as though he becomes here the ship’s equivalent of the portrait of Dorian Grey: he has somehow soaked up all the bad feeling, all the wickedness that was spread around during the Oakes incident. Ailments outside the physical have always proved entirely alien to Stephen, and so the only treatment he can conceive of is to send him on the first ship back to England. Instead of sending him to the bottom of the ocean, they send him home. 

[dweemeister]

Down Argentine Way (1940)

In 1940, the United States had not yet entered the Second World War. Despite having zero troops fighting in the European, North African, and Asia-Pacific theaters, the American government was nevertheless preparing for the contingency of war. Since the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State Department pushed forth its “Good Neighbor Policy” to Hollywood executives, intended to foster U.S.-Latin American relations through various means. With the Axis on the march and making overtures to still-neutral nations, the State Department asked for Hollywood’s assistance, to make films showing Latin American in a positive light while not exactly leaning too heavily on propaganda. Hollywood obliged. One of the first movies crafted in this State Department-mandated spirit was Irving Cummings’ Down Argentine Way, released by 20th Century Fox. In addition to fulfilling these governmental requests, the film also served as the breakout movie for Fox contractee Betty Grable, as well as introducing Americans to Carmen Miranda.

Despite Argentina being reference in the title, it seems Down Argentine Way is confused about what Latin American nation(s) it is representing. At a New York show jumping event, Glenda Crawford (Grable) meets Argentinian horse breeder, Ricardo Quintana (Don Ameche). Despite Glenda ostensibly approaching Ricardo to purchase his prize show jumping horse, Carmelita, the two strike up an immediate romantic interest and decide to have dinner after conversing for about two minutes. At dinner, Ricardo learns that Glenda is the niece of his father’s (Henry Stephenson) longtime rival – the story behind their elder Crawford-Quintana animosity is pure contrivance – and, by his father, Don Diego Quintana’s, instructions, Ricardo refuses to sell the horse and departs immediately for home. Justifiably perplexed by Ricardo’s sudden temperamental change, Glenda decides to do what anyone would: convincing her aunt Binnie (Charlotte Greenwood) to accompany her down to Argentina to demand a straight answer from Ricardo. When Ricardo meets Glenda again over another dinner (complete with Carmen Miranda song-and-dance numbers), he explains the situation and the two reclaim and rekindle their quickfire love – to Don Diego’s horror.

Among the actors playing bit roles are J. Carrol Naish (who so often played characters of varying races and ethnicities he was nicknamed, “Hollywood’s one-man U.N.”) as ranch hand Casiano, Kay Aldridge, Leonid Kinskey, and Chris-Pin Martin (a Mexican-American actor and the only credited actor of Latin American descent in this movie other than Miranda) as Esteban. The Nicholas Brothers have a cameo that contains one of the great on-screen performances, but more on that later.

20th Century Fox musicals crafted within the Golden Age of Hollywood’s Studio System are anything but cerebral. If one is watching these films for intricate plots, dramatic statements, and philosophical themes, you may want to retool your approach to these works. Fox’s musicals are splashy, dripping with Technicolor, and never pretend to be something more than what they actually are. This remarkable energy begins with one of the top-billed actors/ Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck intended Down Argentine Way as a vehicle for Fox’s two primary musical stars at that time – Don Ameche and Alice Faye. Betty Grable was Faye’s substitution when the latter fell ill. Despite both women being roughly the same age and having camera-friendly blonde locks, Grable’s higher, less husky voice lends the film a more youthful dynamism that Faye – a contralto who was a striking presence in her own distinctive way – cannot. Her chemistry with Ameche feels more akin to screwball comedy, the likes of which would inspire (and eventually eclipsed by) Marilyn Monroe. The Goldwyn Girl alumnus might not have been making her film debut, but this was certainly her coming-out extravaganza (she became a pin-up favorite for American soldiers in WWII), despite a chaotic screenplay and questionable acting from her own performance and of those surrounding her.

Fox’s executives must have realized that Carmen Miranda is a strange fit for a film set in Argentina and partly about a horse ranching family. Miranda’s jewelry-bedecked outfit and exposed midriff (the outfit, a baiana, is an embellishment on the clothes of African-Brazilians living in Bahia) makes her a flashy, exotified novelty in a movie attempting a half-baked narrative between Grable and Ameche. Down Argentine Way presents Miranda and her musical numbers (influenced by Brazilian and Cuban music) as a representation of South America, at large – someone did not complete any detailed research on the vast cultural differences between Argentina and Brazil. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of Miranda’s typecasting at Fox. Though she would garner supporting roles that gave her dialogue and subplots, Fox would make her costumes even more ostentatious than before, serving to further frame her as foreign, lusty, tropically exotic.

Other insensitivities of Latin Americans are sprinkled across the film’s runtime: laziness (how many siestas can Chris-Pin Martin take?), tomfoolery, freeloading, deceitful, longstanding Mexican stereotypes (see: the fiesta scene) carrying over to this film’s setting, and speaking the typical broken or heavy-accented English that Hollywood still associates with those having Latin American roots. American audiences might have enjoyed these Good Neighbor Policy-inspired movies, but Latin American governments took exception. The difference between American and Argentinian reactions could not be more stark. American moviegoers made Down Argentine Way Fox’s highest-grossing musical of 1940. Meanwhile, Argentina’s government, following an official screening of the film, refused to allow Down Argentine Way’s distribution to move forward in the titular nation. Viewers across Latin America would find the depiction of Argentina in Down Argentine Way as an incomprehensible mélange of Latin American influences,  without any care or understanding of the cultural nuances within and between Latin American nations (and primarily Argentina).

Even as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz headlined an incredible 1939 for Hollywood, color films remained expensive endeavors for the major studios. From the cinematography by Ray Rennahan (1941’s Blood and Sand, 1953’s Arrowhead) and Leon Shamroy (1953’s The Robe, 1963’s Cleopatra); the art direction by Richard Day (1931’s Arrowsmith, 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire) and Joseph C. Wright (1928’s The Man Who Laughs, 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes); and the costumes by Travis Banton (1932’s Shanghai Express, 1945’s Scarlet Street) make full use of Down Argentine Way’s Technicolor – which seems to leap from the viewer’s screen. A legitimate copy or print of Down Argentine Way is the best way to experience this and, even then, the current available official prints of this film could use a restoration to further accentuate the glitzy colors that these craftsmen intended.

The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, reprise the song in the film’s second half. In the late 1920s and early ‘30s (the height of swing jazz in America), the Nicholas were a headliner act at the Cotton Club in Harlem. There, they innovated their dancing style – a hybrid of ballet and tap that some call “acrobatic dancing” – and brought that to the masses through cinema. Despite their limited number of appearances in the movies due to the institutional racism of Hollywood casting, the Nicholas Brothers, years after the pinnacle of their talents, continue to grow their reputation as among the greatest dancers ever to grace American cinema. Their athletic routine for “Down Argentine Way” encapsulates the dancing expertise they brought to the screen – quick reactions, nifty footwork, and those splits. How can one not be in awe of their mastery?  

Carmen Miranda’s three songs – one at the film’s opening, the other two when Grable and Ameche’s character reunite in Argentina over dinner – are mostly in Portuguese. Only the opening song, “South American Way” has any English, but this is brief. Treat “South American Way” as a brief, one-minute appetizer that follows the opening credits. The two dinner-and-a-show samba songs once Grable touches down in Argentina are “Bambú, Bambú” (traditional music with lyrics by Almirante and Valdo de Abreu) “Mamãe Yo Quero” (music by Jararaca and Vicente Paiva, lyrics by Al Stillman). These numbers are nothing more than exotified showcases for Miranda’s theatrical instincts and singing ability – but what instincts, what ability she demonstrates.

Inconsequential though it seems to modern eyes, Down Argentine Way heralded the changing currents flowing through Hollywood’s relationship with Latin America as well as within 20th Century Fox itself. Down Argentine Way, however entertaining, is a clumsy attempt at placating the United States’ hemispheric neighbors in service of diplomatic goals. Though received poorly in South America, the adulation for this film in the United States prompted a half-decade wave of Good Neighbor Policy movies – most notably Disney’s Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). American filmmakers would mostly retreat to well-worn stereotypes over the next several years, solidifying cultural misconceptions of Latin America that have endured into this century. In Hollywood, the studios perfected their movie musical formulas over more than a decade following the silent era. With Down Argentine Way’s release, Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda became icons in America. But only Grable avoided being typecast; Miranda would be subject to the racial prejudice baked into Studio System at the time, never to fully escape it.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

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What We Learned at the 2018 Long Island Metastatic Breast Cancer Conference

In partnership with Northwell Health, Komen NYC continued the MBC conversation at the first annual Long Island Metastatic Breast Cancer Conference. Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell hosted the day of learning, fellowship and the most current information on treatments, research trials, patient support and national issues related to stage IV breast cancer. 

In order to fully grasp where we are today in understanding, preventing and treating metastatic breast cancer, it’s important to first think about how far we’ve come. According to Dr. George Raptis, member of the Breast Cancer Disease Management Team of Northwell Health Cancer Institute, the advancements in this field are a result of three major areas: patient advocacy, an increase in funding (including government funding for the National Cancer Institute), and innovations in biotechnology. Still, metastatic breast cancer is responsible for most of the nation’s 41,000 breast cancer deaths per year. “We’ve come so far but not far enough,” he says.

Susan G. Komen’s Focus on Metastatic Breast Cancer

“We all rise together,” says Linda Tantawi, reiterating her position from NYMBCC that Komen’s partnerships across Long Island and the Greater New York City area are critical in increasing the overall life for the stage IV community. Across the country, Komen is dedicated to helping the Stage IV community access relevant information and funding important research. Learn more about the enterprise-wide actions Komen is taking to address the needs of MBC patients.

Morning Keynote Speaker, Antoinette Martin

Community, Courage, and Cancer

As a way to cope with the fear, nausea and pain induced by her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, Antoinette began journaling her feelings and struggles and then emailing the people who loved her - the people she called My Everyone. “Writing allowed me to practice the words I couldn’t speak,” she says. A self-proclaimed ‘wimp’ soon became a beacon  of courage for herself and others.

These journals and emails supported and illuminated Antoinette’s daily life, but it’s what she learned by looking back on her writings that taught her the most. Her memoir, Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer, outlines these lessons:

Hug Your Everyone - don’t shy away from your loved ones

“Miraculously, the sky doesn’t fall when you ask for help!”

Express Your Soul - write, sing, meditate, exercise

“Do something that speaks to your soul.”

Laugh Every Day - it’s medicinal

“Laughter brings terror to its knees.”

Trust Your Gut

“I realized that my gut always knows the answer before I do!”

Don’t Own Your Cancer - it doesn’t define you

“It’s not MY cancer.”

Morning Panel - Clinical Trials: Nuts, Bolts and Myths

From side effects to dosage to efficacy, clinical trials are so important because of the knowledge gained at all 3 phases. In fact, Nancy Nahmias, BA, CCRA, says “most of you [in the room] take drugs approved as a result of clinical trials.” Dr. George Raptis and Dr. Robert Maki, Chief Scientific Officer at Northwell Health Cancer Institute and Director of the Center for New Cancer Therapies at Monter Cancer Center, Northwell Health, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory agreed that clinical trials help patients get access to useful drugs earlier.

“You’re not a guinea pig. You’re a person, a patient, and you’re part of the solution.” -Dr. Raptis on the role of clinical trial participants

If you or a loved one needs information or resources about clinical trials, call our clinical trial information helpline at 1-877-465-6636 or email clinicaltrialinfo@komen.org.

WATCH: Morning Panel on Clinical Trials: Nuts, Bolts and Myths

Triple Negative Breakout Session

As precision therapy becomes increasingly more available, researchers are working to find specific targets in all types of cancers. This is particularly hard to do with triple negative The key takeaway from Dr. Kit Cheng, Director of Fellowship at Northwell Health Hematology-Oncology program, is  that there is no “right” treatment for all patients, making it that much more important to “trust your gut to see what’s what.”

ER+ Breakout Session

Imagine every cancer cell has a baseball glove inside of it that catches estrogen. Once it’s caught, the estrogen increases and goes into the nucleus, or center, of the cancer cell, sits on the DNA and starts the production of certain proteins that start a certain behavior in the cancer cell. That’s the estrogen receptor. Dr. Raptis explains that if we can stop this production of certain proteins, we can treat cancer. So what’s holding us back? Well, one thing we know for sure about cancer is that it’s heterogeneous and constantly changing, so definitely consider rebiopsying a tumor to determine the best treatment plan, just like the advice Dr. Borgen gave at NYMBCC.  

WATCH: Breakout Session on ER+ with Dr. George Raptis Part 1 and Part 2

HER2 Positive Breakout Session

People are living longer with metastatic diagnoses, making it hopefully one day seem more like a chronic illness. "Yes you may have mets, but that is likely not what you are going to die from," says Dr. Jane Carleton, Associate Chief of Clinical Affairs at Northwell Health Cancer Institute at the Monter Cancer Center. But it’s critical to know what drives a cancer and what its characteristics are so you can treat, manage and monitor it effectively. Dr. Carleton calls Herceptin the “gold standard” for HER2 Positive because of its efficacy and because you can add other therapies to it based on clinical trial combinations. For example, the CLEOPATRA  trial found that dual targeting with the monoclonal antibodies pertuzumab and trastuzumab (aka Herceptin) plus chemotherapy increased median survival.

Bone Mets Breakout Session

While radiation is more precise than ever, we still limit its usage based on where tumors are located. Theoretically, we could use radiation every time to kill the cancer, but it would cause so many other issues that it might not be worth it. So how do you choose between quantity vs. quality of life? Dr. May Lim, full time attending and faculty member in the Department of Radiation Medicine at the Center for Advanced Medicine, says it’s all about individualized care. Before suggesting radiation, she asks herself, “What is the best sequence of treatment for this particular patient?” Dr. Carleton agrees that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. She suggests looking at your options not only for treatments, but also the frequency of treatments. For example, maybe your cancer is under control or stable, so your doctor suggests you go from getting radiation once a month to once every 3 months to once every 6 months.  

WATCH: Breakout Session on Bone Mets with Drs. Lim and Carleton

MBC in Older Women Breakout Session

Age may be just a number, but in many cases, it can determine the kind of treatment a patient receives. It’s not just about how old you are. According to Dr. Vincent Vinciguerra, Director of Medical Oncology and Hematology at North Shore University Hospital and a Professor at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and Dr. Cheng, someone may walk into their office who is 70 years old, but physiologically, they are closer to 90 years old, and vice versa. Because chronological age is different from physiological age, treatments may differ.

Breast Cancer & Neurological Metastasis Breakout Session

One of the main reasons it’s harder to treat cancer that has spread to the brain is because the size of therapies are often too large to get through the blood/brain barrier, so the next step in improving treatment will be finding smaller molecular therapies that are able to cross this barrier. Dr. Deborah Gruber, co-Director of the Brain Tumor Center at Northwell Health, and Dr. Beatrice Bloom, one of the Center of Excellence leaders for gynecological malignancies at CFAM and Vice Chair for Radiation Medicine, explain that just because a tumor is inoperable in the brain does not mean that the same type of tumor will be inoperable in other locations.

Afternoon Panel - Managing Life with Cancer

Metastatic breast cancer patients are more than just patients, they’re people. While the day started with interesting discussions and scientific jargon, the afternoon panel focused on how to live life with your diagnosis, not as your diagnosis. Here's what our panelists had to say: 

Nutrition

Don’t forget to wash your fruits & veggies! Antonella Apicella, MS, RD, CDN says that food safety is really important for patients because it decreases the risk of infection and foodborne illnesses.

Rehabilitation and Wellness 

Exercise is important before, during and after cancer treatments. “I believe in 10 years’ time, an oncologist will prescribe exercise as part of a patient’s treatment plan,” says Dr. Susan Maltser, Director of Cancer Rehabilitation at Northwell Health. For cancer patients, she recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week.

Managing Work and Career 

In addition to financial security and medical benefits, many patients want to keep working because of the social aspect it provides. Just make sure you’re aware of the resources available to you. Heather Rottmund, MHA, CPRW explains that “You can request a reasonable accommodation during any aspect of employment.”

Supportive Care 

Supportive and palliative care should be key components of a cancer patient’s treatment plan. “We need to work with nurses in an interdisciplinary way to make sure we help patients feel good during and after treatment,” says Dr. James D’Olimpio, Director of Supportive/Palliative Oncology and leader of the Cancer Pain and Symptom Control Service at North Shore University Hospital.

WATCH: Afternoon Panel on Managing Life with Cancer

And just like that, the first annual Long Island Metastatic Breast Cancer Conference came to an end!

Thank you to everyone who attended the conference or followed along online! And to our partners at Northwell Health and sponsors at Pfizer Oncology, we couldn’t have done it without you.

Special thanks to our panelists:

Antonella Apicella, MS RD, CDN

Dr. Beatrice Bloom

Dr. Jane Carleton

Dr. Kit Cheng

Dr. James D’Olimpio

Dr. Deborah Gruber

Dr. May Lim

Dr. Robert Maki

Dr. Susan Maltser

Antoinette Martin

Nancy Nahmias, BA, CCRA

Dr. George Raptis

Heather M. Rottmund, MHA, CPRW

Dr. Vincent Vinciguerra

It seems only appropriate to close this blog post with the same inspiring words that Linda Tantawi closed the day with: “The most important thing for this community is hope – I hope you learned something new and I hope to see you next year!”

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Speech by Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth at the opening of the Gotha exhibition of French masterpieces from Russia

Speech by Minister of State for Europe Michael Roth at the opening of the Gotha exhibition of French masterpieces from Russia

-- Translation of advance text --

Mr Mayor, Ms Taubert, Mr Shvydkoy, Ms Loshak, Professor Eberle, Excellencies, Ambassador Grinin, Ambassador Etienne, Honoured guests,

When preparing for this event, my mind was drawn to two questions in particular: Are art exhibitions like this one here in Gotha really a continuation of politics by other means? And can we learn anything for today from the art of bygone times?

Our relationship with Russia is currently experiencing some turbulence. Trust in Russia has been eroded by the illegal annexation of Crimea, the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, the measures taken to suppress criticism and the barbaric attacks on homosexuals in Chechnya. But it’s also clear that we are ready to reach out to each other again as soon as there is a basis on which to do so. We need each other. Especially now. The world yearns for greater peace, stability and security. But that we can only deliver if we work together.

In the midst of these political difficulties, this wonderful art exhibition gives us the chance to focus on a long‑standing trust‑based German-Russian partnership – the collaboration between the Friedenstein Castle Foundation in Gotha and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. This collaboration has not only made it possible for some of the French masterpieces on display here to be shown for the first time outside of Russia, but last year it also resulted in a Cranach exhibition in Moscow, which brought together works from Gotha’s Cranach collection with pieces that had been removed at the end of the Second World War. It was the first such exhibition ever to be held in Moscow or elsewhere and it met with overwhelming interest.

For Germany and Russia alike, the loss of cultural property has been a painful wound in our cultural identity. At the opening of the Moscow exhibition you, Professor Shvydkoy, expressed your hope that such joint projects would prepare the ground for talking about more difficult issues. I can only endorse this hope!

Yesterday, Cranach in Moscow – and today French masterpieces in Gotha. Both exhibitions are part of our endeavour to keep the dialogue between us alive in these politically strained times. Let us counteract this growing alienation first and foremost by strengthening and revitalising civil society exchange. Art and culture create human relationships. They help us understand each other better. They aren’t the cherry on the cake but the yeast in the dough.

For this reason, too, “inspiring people” is the slogan of our cultural relations and education policy. We want to inspire people across borders – for example through our numerous fellowship and residency programmes and our youth exchange programmes. Our cultural relations and education policy does not avert its eyes from critical social issues. Far from it. It takes sides. It takes the side of humanity, respect, diversity and artistic freedom. We want to be diverse without fear. Everywhere.

Only by meeting and exchanging ideas with other people can we create an environment that provides the scope for intellectual flexibility and development, fosters understanding and empathy, and breaks down prejudices. It is the job of cultural relations to create space for intellectual exchange and for the forming of emotional bonds. That’s what this project in Gotha is about as well.

It is the lifeblood of our societies. Culture has always been and will remain a “motor” of social processes. It is with this in mind that we also support projects to expand civil society exchange with Russia and eastern European countries.

We should also take the contemplation of art as an opportunity to see things from another perspective. That can certainly be of particular advantage in politics. As Paul Klee said in 1920, art does not reproduce what we see; rather it makes us see. Art is thus also a mirror of its time. Portraits have assumed a central place both in the Cranach exhibition in Moscow and in this show of French masterpieces in Gotha. In the 15th century, the genre of portraiture was becoming fashionable in the Italian city states, but it was still revolutionary. It put the individual in the focus of art and politics.

But portraits also remained a depiction of power, dominion, and political or economic importance, as was brought home to us by Cranach in particular with his many portraits of Luther.

Martin Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora were the first commoners in Germany to be painted in this style. To hang pictures of them on your own four walls was a courageous sign of support for the Reformation. Portraits from the Cranach workshop thus played a similarly central role in the success of the Reformation as Gutenberg’s printing press had done 50 years earlier. This development has been shown to great effect in the two major exhibitions in the United States which the Federal Foreign Office has helped fund. Interest was huge.

The German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe is currently responsible for a total of seven touring exhibitions which show just what far‑reaching political, religious and social effects the Reformation had in eastern Europe and even in Russia.

The French masters on show here – like Cranach many years before them – produced works commissioned by aristocrats at their courts, and so continued the tradition of portrait painting. However, their paintings also reveal how, following the Reformation and the rise of Absolutism in European capitals from Paris to Moscow in the 16th to 18th centuries, even more emphasis was laid on symbols of power.

What we see here today is thus in a sense the passion for art and collecting of a powerful pan‑European aristocratic elite. They defined themselves primarily through their noble lineage and their claims of dominion, and far less through their language or culture or that of their subjects.

For example, the exhibition includes portraits by François‑Lois Drouais and Jean‑Marc Nattier of Princess Ekaterina Golitsyna and Prince Dimitri Golitsyn. Their close relative, Princess Natalya Golitsyna, had a great fondness for card games and was the inspiration for Pushkin’s eponymous figure “The Queen of Spades” in the short story published in 1834, when she was still alive.

In the story, Hermann’s avarice leads to his betrayal of his beloved and the death of the Queen of Spades, but he is intoxicated by his belief in the magic power he has thereby gained which will guarantee that he triumphs in any card game. But then he makes a mistake at the crucial moment – and loses everything.

What a warning this is to the rulers and chancers of the modern world with their inflated egos! Especially since the Prince Golitsyn pictured in the portrait played a key role in the negotiations on the first partition of Poland. He embodies the aristocratic imperial ambitions of his time.

The artworks however also presage the fundamental shift which saw the decline of the noble houses of Europe in the second half of the 19th century and ushered in the age of nation states based on liberal or conservative values.

The aforementioned Prince Golitsyn is also remembered for founding Golitsyn Hospital in Moscow with his own money, and for leaving a large part of his inheritance to the institution.

Later on, members of the Golitsyn family and, from 1828 to 1853, the German doctor Friedrich Haas, known as the “holy doctor of Moscow”, worked in this very hospital. They worked together to humanise Russia’s penal system. The Golitsyn portrait thus also depicts one of the first protagonists of fledgling civil society engagement and an enabler of German-Russian cooperation. It is thus of unexpected relevance to us today! What a role model! And what a contrast to Golitsyn’s role in the partition of Poland.

In the early 20th century, irresponsible aristocratic elites and aggressive nationalism drew Europe into the cataclysm of the First World War. The deaths and deprivations this entailed swept the German and Russian royal families from the political stage, paving the way for the Russian Revolution of February-March and October-November 1917, and the November Revolution of 1918 and the creation of the Weimar Republic.

Konstantin Stanislavski, who co‑founded the Moscow Art Theatre company in 1898, once said: “Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art!” In an era when digitally filtered selfies are “advancing” portrait art in a highly ambivalent manner, questions about the place humans assume in society, in a world shaped by advancing globalisation and digitalisation, are still very topical. Portraiture remains a mirror of its time. Today, as it was in Cranach’s time.

A big thank you to the organisers of today’s exhibition! I wish all those active in the Russian-German dialogue on art and culture all the best – may you have lots of good ideas and pursue meaningful projects. Dialogue not speechlessness, exchange not isolation, inspiration not desolation, freedom not oppression, courage not resignation – that’s what I wish for us all. And so – to get back to my two initial questions – this art exhibition is political in nature. And we can indeed learn something from it if we open our minds to it.

from UK & Germany http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/EN/Infoservice/Presse/Reden/2017/170514-StM_R_Gotha.html?nn=479796