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moonchildreads · 2 years ago

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small town

Chapter 14 - Missing You

IN THIS CHAPTER: The meaning of flowers, homemade cake, and Maureen and Margaret become friends [6.0k]

WARNINGS: angst, discussions about dead parents (car accident/unspecified terminal illness), survivor's guilt, unprocessed grief - please heed my warnings. i'm currently grieving someone and this is very raw, proceed only if it won't hurt you

A/N: shout out to @duquesademiel and @justahappycloud for teaching me that it is okay to write as a form of therapy, and i'm sorry i keep sending you the sad bits of this fic only. i love you and i can't believe i get to call you my friends. also, big thank you to @boomhauer for letting me use her chosen name for eddie's dad - i admire you greatly and everyone should go and read disjointed as a thank you. we're so very lucky we have you in this fandom <3

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You had so much hope for a brighter day Why were you my flower plucked away?

Sunday, May 11th - 1986

“What on Earth are you doing?”

Mother’s Day had always been a weird day for Dottie. When she was a toddler, it was just another calm and quiet Sunday, albeit one where her Dad wanted more cuddles than usual, which, quite frankly, already were a lot. Still, she enjoyed the extra attention and he loved holding his little girl in his arms while she took a nap on his chest so there were no complaints to be heard from either side. When she was in kindergarten, her class spent an entire Friday making gifts for their Moms. Dottie came back home with a hopeful smile and gave her paper mache and macaroni flower to her Dad, asking if he could send it all the way up to Heaven for her. James had neer been happier about the fact that they now had separate bedrooms so she wouldn’t hear him sob clutching her handcraft to his chest while she slept. When she was around 8, she asked her Dad why couldn’t they simply celebrate Mother’s Day like everyone else in her class.

Margaret’s physical absence in her daughter’s life wasn’t an unusual topic in their home; in fact, a lot of teachers commented on it as Dottie grew up, praising James for keeping her memory alive and normalizing a sad situation so his kid wouldn’t suffer. James wasn’t sure why telling his daughter that she had been so very much loved by her dead parent was worthy of being praised, but as a single dad in the ‘70s, he took whatever kind words he could get. He made sure that Dottie understood she had a Mom, that she didn’t suddenly appear from thin air one day to change James’ life forever, that she’d been wanted and dreamed of by both parents. Margaret’s face was in countless pictures around their home, they stayed in her old bedroom whenever they visited her side of the family in Pennsylvania, they talked about what she’d say or what she’d do at all times. Margaret Burke was a constant presence in their lives despite her untimely death, and the fact that they celebrated that every day except during Mother’s Day didn’t feel right to her daughter.

That’s how Dottie found herself establishing little traditions that were still in place that Sunday afternoon when she opened her front door to find one of her best friends holding a small bouquet tied together with a big silver ribbon. Dressed in an all-black ensemble as he usually did, the lilac and white flowers sprinkled with greenery were the only pop of color in the foggy drizzly afternoon. Eddie was smiling wide despite the ugly weather, his dimples perfectly on display for the world to appreciate.

“Hey! This is for you,” Eddie thrust the flowers forward. “Actually, they are for your Mom but… yeah.”

“You bought my Mom flowers?” Dottie said, disbelief present in her tone as her fingers brushed against his chunky rings when she accepted the bouquet, skin bristling at the contact.

“Yeah, you like ‘em? The purple ones are rosemary and the white ones are, uh, bellflowers? The lady at the shop said there are, like, a million white flowers that look like bells so I picked the prettiest ones,” he dropped his backpack on the armchair in the living room and followed her to the kitchen.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you pick these?”

“Well, I kinda… borrowed your flower book?” he admitted, leaning on the kitchen island to watch her fill a glass vase and start arranging the flowers. “The one you and Jeff were talking about at lunch? It’s in my bag.”

“Wait, what? When did you grab it? I didn’t even notice it was gone.”

“Yesterday, when you left me alone in your room to go get snacks. D’you have any more of those strawberries? They were so good.”

“Yes, but you can’t eat them. We need them for the cake,” Dottie cut a few long stems until she was happy with how her vase looked and tied the silver ribbon that the bouquet had been bound with around the glass. “So if you stole my book, what do these mean?”

“I didn’t steal it, I was gonna give it back!” he said, faking being offended at her accusation before he dropped the act and stared down at his hands. “The, um- the rosemary is remembrance. The bell flowers are gratitude.”

“Gratitude? For my Mom?” she searched for his eyes with her own but he kept looking at his rings.

“Just wanted to thank her, y’know,” he looked up at her after a pause. “For giving me you.”

“Shit, Ed, you can’t say things like that without a warning, you’re gonna make me cry!” she fanned her face with her hand, voice playful but eyes full of very real tears. “Thank you, you’re… thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he smiled shyly, reaching across the island to grab a flower out of the vase and bump her nose with it.

She giggled, taking the long stem from his fingers and setting it behind her right ear before turning around towards the counter where baking supplies were neatly laid out. She picked up two envelopes: one was the now familiar soft pink rectangle she had been carrying in her backpack all week but the other one was unassuming plain white. She slid the white one across the ceramic countertop; Eddie opened it to find a Garfield themed Mother’s Day card, the orange cat grinning on the front of the glossy paper. A pen entered his line of vision and he looked up to see Dottie nervously staring at him.

“I got you your own card,” she explained, clicking the pen and offering it to him. “Thought maybe you’d like to join my little ritual later.”

“Ritual?”

“I write down the things I want to say to my Mom and then I burn the card. It’s dumb, you know I don’t really believe in, like, the afterlife or whatever but… Dunno. Feels like the words reach her if I burn it.”

“No, I get it,” he reassured her. “So I can write whatever I want?”

“Yeah! I mostly just update mine on how everything’s going. About my Dad, and school, stuff like that. Like leaving a message on her answering machine.”

“Okay, I can do that,” he smiled. “I’ll join your ritual.”

“Yeah? Okay, cool! I’ll… I’ll get started on the cake while you do that then.”

Happy to have a task to focus on instead of staring at him for an hour, Dottie opened a bottom drawer and took out a dark green apron with a tiny lemon pattern, quickly tying it behind her back with a thin bow. Eddie watched her move around her kitchen with ease, measuring ingredients and lining up a cake pan with parchment paper like she’d done it a thousand times. He supposed she’d had; kids with hard childhoods always knew their way around ovens and knives. It was simply a matter of survival: sometimes you were hungry and there weren’t any adults around even if the grownups in your life weren’t neglectful, like Wayne or James. Eddie looked down at Garfield’s large face printed on the paper and began spilling everything that was rattling inside his brain through his pen. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote until the left side of the opened card was full and had no more space to write on, so he continued writing on the backside.

He told his Mom about Wayne while Dottie mixed flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt. He promised her he’d graduate this year while hearing the sounds of two eggs being cracked, the overwhelming sweetness of vanilla extract filling the air. He confided that he didn’t feel as lonely as before anymore, that he thought he finally had great friends, a club that looked up to him, a band that made him proud. He asked her not to worry about him anymore when Dottie poured the batter into a round pan and offered him the spoon to lick. And thus, Eddie wrote to her Mom about the girl he had a growing crush on, how he felt like he didn’t have to hide anything from her because she understood him in ways that other people had never understood, and how desperately he hoped she would look at him in the same way he saw her. If he had lifted his head up when he was putting the card back into the envelope, he would have seen Dottie sneaking glances at him while she cut strawberries and realized that he didn’t have to hope for anything anymore; Dottie already looked at him with stars in her eyes even if he didn’t think he was worthy of it yet.

With the cake baking in the oven for the next 30 minutes, all the strawberries cut in half, and the homemade jam finishing its 48 hour setting period in the fridge, both teens sat down on cushy stools at the kitchen island to finish the half-done homework they had abandoned on Saturday after it got dark. They could hear James pottering about upstairs, cleaning the bathroom while listening to the radio. He was singing along to West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys - “the latest #1 on the Billboard Hot 100” the announcer had said. James didn’t really like the Pet Shop Boys, but he had heard it so much on the radio during the last couple of months that he couldn’t be blamed for knowing the lyrics by heart at that point.

“You done?” Eddie asked, gathering his stuff and shoving everything into his backpack.

“Yeah- yeah, I’m done,” Dottie said, moving to clear her stuff too. “Cake should be done in five, I think.”

“What’s next?”

“Wanna whip the cream while I do the glaze?”

“Sure. You’re gonna have to guide me though,” his face lit up in a mischievous smile. “And I’m gonna need one of those cute little aprons you’ve been hiding from me too.”

“You get plain dark blue,” she said, going through the drawer. “Or… I can offer you a “Kiss the Cook” apron with a big red heart on it?”

“Princess, you already know which one I want,” he batted his eyelashes at her. “Besides, it matches my scrunchie!”

Dottie tried to contain her giggles with no success when he tied his hair up into a bun with the red scrunchie that had found permanent residence in the depths of her empty fruit bowl, twirling around to show off his new hairdo. He bowed his head so she could slip the apron around his neck, leaving the tying up to him and fetching the ingredients for their next tasks. She separated them into two small piles, his ingredients to the right, hers to the left.

“To make whipped cream you put heavy cream in this,” she slid a bowl in front of him. “And you use the mixer to whisk it until it gets a bit bubbly. Then, you add the sugar and the vanilla extract, and you mix until it’s not runny anymore.”

“How much of everything?” he asked, pushing his sleeves to his elbows.

“One tablespoon of sugar and one teaspoon of vanilla extract.”

“The tablespoon is the big one, right?”

“Yes, chef,” she said, juicing a lemon for her glaze.

They worked together in relative silence, the loud sounds of the mixer drowning any words they could say. Eddie found out that he could draw on the cream when it got a bit more stiff, and quickly proceeded to spend the next few minutes drawing penis shape after penis shape into the mixture. He thought it was hilarious until Dottie unplugged the electric appliance, shaking her head at his antics. He got the cake out of the oven while she finished up her glaze, concentrating on not burning her concoction heating up on the stovetop.

“Do you always bake a cake for Mother’s Day?”

“Pretty much, yeah. It was my Mom’s favorite cake, it’s her recipe, so... Dunno, it feels nice. And I get to eat cake in the end so everything works out.”

“Y’know, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone make lemon glaze since I lived with my Grandma for three months,” he said, fanning the cake with a takeaway menu to cool it down.

“That sounds fun. How old were you?”

“Eight. Stayed with her the whole summer. She made awful lemon bars, I mean that shit tasted like fuckin’ cardboard,” Dottie snorted at his horrified expression. “But she made the best apple pie I’ve ever had. I think I gained like 10 pounds that summer.”

“Just from apple pie?” she asked, adding the last bit of the lemon juice to the pot.

“And ice cream,” he smiled. “Best summer of my life.”

“Eddie?” she said softly. “Can I ask you something kind of personal?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“How old were you when you moved in with Wayne?”

“After that summer. Actually,” he snorted bitterly. “The only reason I got to stay with my Grandma all those months was because my Dad got himself locked up and didn’t think it was important to mention he had a kid.”

“What?”

“They found out I existed when the school year started. A teacher asked me about my summer and called Social Services. When they came to see me, they said my Grandma was too old to raise me, so Wayne asked for custody. Been living with him since then.”

“What happened to your Dad?” she turned off the heat and turned to look at him.

“He’s still in prison. Won’t get out until I’m in my thirties as far as I know. He’s an asshole so… I don’t really care about him, and Wayne doesn’t either. Never went to visit him. Shit, I don’t think he even knows where they’ve got him, and that’s his little brother.”

“I mean, you just said he was an asshole so…”

“Yeah, I did,” he let out a wry chuckle.

“What’s his name? It isn’t Edward, right?”

“No, my Mom chose Edward. His name’s Wyatt.”

“Ah, that sucks,” she shook her head, moving past him to cut the cake in half to start assembling. He looked at her questioningly. “Wayne and Wyatt? ‘Cause you like alliteration?”

“Doesn’t ruin it for me. Actually, you might like this - you know what other two names start with the same letter?” he leaned onto the counter next to her. She was still wearing a sprig of rosemary in her hair.

“Bilbo and Baggins?” she joked.

“Maureen and Margaret.”

Dottie stopped cutting, knife halfway into the soft vanilla sponge, and stared at him. Eddie was looking at the two envelopes laying side by side next to the flower vase, right hand twirling the rings on his left hand. She remembered a conversation she’d had with Ms. Kelly early on in February after the excitement of being the new kid had died down and everyone had forgotten about her, going back to their cliques and usual groups of friends without sparing a single glance at her. If you want others to open up to you, you have to be open with them too, Ms. Kelly had said, in that gentle voice she always talked to troubled students with.

As much as Eddie wore his heart on his sleeve, he wasn’t keen on talking about his past. He rarely offered up pieces of important information about his childhood, choosing to only share the inconsequential parts instead. Everything else was locked up tight in his chest, just like Dottie did with her deepest memories. She wondered if the reason he was being candid with her now was because she’d let him peek behind her curtains first on Friday night at Lover’s Lake. A key exchanged for a key.

“Your mom’s name was Maureen?” Dottie asked, resuming her cutting.

“Yeah. Wayne says everyone called her Mo.”

“That’s a pretty name,” she smiled. “Mo and Maggie. Maybe they would’ve been friends.”

“Yeah. That would’ve been nice. We could have introduced them.”

“I don’t know if I’d be in Hawkins if my Mom was still here, though,” she said, sliding a big spatula under the first layer of cake to move it to a different plate. “Don’t think we would have moved out of New York.”

“Dunno if I’d be here either,” Eddie admitted, watching her spread the whipped cream he had made on the cake. “My Mom wasn’t from Hawkins. I don’t really know where she was from, I asked but Wayne doesn’t know either so… Said she didn’t like talking about it ‘cause her parents kicked her out when they found out she was pregnant.”

“That’s actually so wretched.”

“I know, right? Like, I know my Dad was always a fucking asshole but it wasn’t her fault, she was barely 17.”

“How did she meet your Dad then? If she wasn’t from Hawkins.”

“As far as I know, she worked at a diner my Dad stopped at on his route. Wayne got him a job as a trucker when he turned 18. So he met my Mom there, dated her for like, three months at the most, and then I showed up to ruin everything,” Dottie scoffed at him but he continued. “She dropped out of high school, he brought her to Hawkins and I was born here. They got married when she turned 18 a few months later. Actually, my Grandma kinda forced them to get married. She really liked my Mom and didn’t want people to treat her like shit ‘cause she had a bastard child.”

“God, people sucked back then.”

“It was the ‘60s, The Beatles were the biggest band in the world, everything sucked back then.”

“Say that again and I’ll kill you in your sleep,” she deadpanned and he let out a huge snort, enjoying how easy it was to rile her up. “You were saying, though.”

“Nah, it’s just… If they were married, it didn’t look like I was an unhappy accident, y’know?” Eddie got a bit more serious. “Anyway, Wyatt didn’t really want to be a dad. He would get in his truck and leave for days, and then when he came back he treated my Mom like shit. I don’t remember much but my Grandma told me once that he used to hit her a lot. I mean, I was his own personal punching bag so that shouldn’t surprise me as much as it does but still.”

“Jesus Christ,” she breathed out.

“It’s been ages since I’ve seen him and my Mom died when I was three, that’s why I don’t really remember anything,” he said, but he did. He remembered everything about Wyatt Munson; every hit, every insult, every scream. He cleared his throat. “After that, my Dad quit his job and started working at Brimborn before it closed down.”

“Brimborn… That’s the abandoned warehouse on Cherry Lane, right?”

“Cherry Oak Drive.”

“There’s like three different roads with “cherry” in their names in Hawkins, it’s so dumb.”

“Nobody said we were very original around here,” he chuckled.

Dottie moved around the kitchen to go find the strawberry jam she’d made a few days prior and found him still staring at the cards when she turned. He wasn’t crying at the memories, he didn’t even look sad. Just… resigned. Like he’d gotten used to things being shit all the time so it was a waste of time to get upset about them anymore. She left the jar on the counter and wrapped her arms around Eddie’s waist, her chest colliding with his back, her face buried between his shoulder blades.

“I’m so happy Wayne was there for you. He’s a great man.”

“Yeah,” he said, voice uncharacteristically soft, hands curling around hers. “Sometimes… sometimes I used to wish he was my real Dad, y’know?”

“He is.”

They stayed like that in the middle of Dottie’s kitchen, a million different things running through their heads: the dead mothers that shared the first letter of their names, the men that had raised them, and the people who had cared for them along the way. There was love to be found here in this kitchen, they both knew it. Only time would tell what it could turn into - what it would turn into - but for now, this friendship that only seemed to grow stronger every day was more than they had dreamed of when they first met in that dark props room thanks to the one and only Dustin Henderson. Maybe a Thank You note was in order.

Eddie thought it was very fitting that there wasn’t a bit of sunshine to be found as they stepped out into the backyard to begin what Dottie kept calling her “little ritual”. He held their envelopes carefully, one on each hand, while he watched her shove bits of craft paper and small branches into an empty bucket of paint, a box of matches resting on the floor next to her sneakers. She grabbed one and lit it on fire, throwing it into the can that had been scrubbed clean of any traces of paint ages ago and was now used as a regular bucket of water to douse the embers whenever James felt like using the grill. Wordlessly, she took her envelope from him and knelt in front of the can with her eyes closed, pressing the paper to her chest for a few seconds before lifting it up to her lips for a quick kiss, letting it fall onto the flames. She watched how the fire consumed her written words for a moment and went back to stand next to her friend.

She didn’t give him any indications as to what to do, simply choosing to let her hands fall in front of her, right hand twirling the ring on her left middle finger, eyes never leaving the flames. Eddie took her solemn silence as permission to approach the metallic can, kneeling on one knee and dropping his card inside. It was a strange feeling, he reckoned, to be sharing such an intimate and private moment with Dottie, and yet knowing that his words would never be read by her or any other person. Whatever he’d said in his letter was between him and the wind that he hoped would reach his Mom’s ears. I guess that’s the point of the ritual, he thought, moving back to his spot next to the pensive girl.

“It’s my fault,” she mumbled, gaze still stuck to the orange dancing in front of them and yet so far away from what she was actually seeing. “It’s my fault she’s dead.”

He turned to look at her, eyebrows meeting in the middle. Eddie had never seen her look so defeated. He wondered how he’d never noticed it before: the weight of the guilt she was carrying on her shoulders, the deep seated shame in the pit of her stomach that felt all too familiar to him, the vacant space within her eyes. It was like looking into a mirror that he’d been trying to ignore for so long. He reached out to her, his right hand wrapping around her left, rings brushing against each other’s, and squeezed tightly.

“She knew she was sick while she was pregnant and delayed her treatment for me. I killed her.”

“Dot, you know that’s not right.”

“Isn’t it? She knew it was me or her, and she chose me,” she held on tighter to his hand. “Sometimes… god, sometimes I wish she’d chosen herself instead. And it’s not that I want to be dead, I swear it’s not about that, but… it wasn’t fair. Not to her, not to my Dad. And it wasn’t fair to me either.”

“It’s my fault my Mom’s dead,” Eddie said, moving his fingers to intertwine with hers. She turned to him, both sets of wet brown eyes finding each others’ in the backyard. “It was the last day of preschool before the Winter holidays and I wanted pizza, so she went out to go get it. A drunk guy ran her over. She never saw it coming. My Dad wasn’t even in town. She died alone on the side of the road and with a fucking 2x1 pizza coupon in her coat pocket.”

“Eddie, you couldn’t have known. That wasn’t your fault-”

“It wasn’t yours either but you’re still gonna blame yourself for the rest of your life, aren’t you?” his lower lip trembled and they both squeezed tighter. The skin stretching over their knuckles was as white as the bellflowers in the kitchen. “They were adults, they made their own choices but you’re always gonna think about what you could have done differently, even if you didn’t know how to wipe your own ass yet.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she insisted. “That drunk asshole should be to blame, not you.”

“It wasn’t your fault either,” he said, matching her intensity. “You didn’t make her sick, that just happens sometimes and it’s no one’s fault.”

“It is! It’s my fault she didn’t get the treatment she should have gotten!”

“And it’s my fault my Mom was out there that night because I wanted pizza,” he lifted the hand that wasn’t holding onto hers and cupped the side of her face, thumb brushing away an angry tear. “If you’re not gonna stop blaming yourself, then I won’t stop either. You can’t have it both ways, Dot. Either we both move on, or we stay here together because fuck if I know who else to talk about this shit with.”

“It’s not fair,” she pouted, head falling forward until it hit his chest, his hand sliding into her hair.

“No, it’s not,” he agreed, taking a deep breath.

There was nothing else to be said, nothing left to clarify or explain. There were no words to soothe the pain, because it was so embedded into who they were as people that no amount of comfort would ever patch up the wounds that had healed badly and left deep scars that would never completely disappear. Margaret and Maureen were no longer there, and Eddie and Dottie had to move on. They weren’t sure how, and by God if they hadn’t tried to do so all these years, but it felt a lot easier to forgive yourself when someone else was walking down that road with you.

Dottie sobbed quietly against Eddie’s chest, head bowed with his right hand tangling into her curls, cupping the back of her head. Eddie let his own tears fall, his cheek pressed onto her crown, thumb brushing the exposed skin behind her ear. In the silence filled with paper and wood crackling inside the paint bucket, they thought about how much they longed for something they couldn’t even remember having, and how their rusty padlocks were starting to fall limp at their feet. How even when their brains were miles away from their bodies, they still anchored each other down, hearts beating in sync and hands holding hands, Eddie’s thick mood ring on his right hand clashing against Dottie’s only dainty band; her Mom’s engagement ring glinting on her left middle finger.

Suddenly, she startled him by laughing softly through her tears, bringing their joined hands between their chests. He peered at her face curiously, waiting for her to speak.

“She would have fucking loved you,” she said, looking up at him with a big smile and shining eyes.

“Yeah?” he smiled back.

“I told my Auntie Rachel about you, and she said that she wants to meet you. That you remind her of my Mom.”

“I do?”

“It’s because she was the glue. She was the one that introduced everyone in the group, they are all friends because of her. And that’s what you do for us with Hellfire. You’re our glue.”

“You know,” he stopped his sentence to chuckle. “Wayne said something like that about you too.”

“Yeah?”

“He said that you boss me around like my Mom did with him,” he laughed. “And that you always tidy up his coffee table like she did.”

“That’s so embarrassing,” she laughed with him.

“I think Wayne likes you more than he likes me,” he whispered conspiratorially. “But I know my Mom would have loved you too.”

“Eddie? If I wanted to get a tattoo to honor my Mom-”

“I’m taking you to get it when you turn 21. It’ll be your birthday present, I promise. Just… wait until you’re 21 so I can take you to a nice shop, because mine look really awesome but it’s honestly a miracle I’m not dead,” she snorted loudly. “I’m serious! I don’t think the guy washed his hands since he came back from Vietnam.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll wait. But you gotta promise we’ll still be friends in three years.”

“Oh, princess, I’m a ride or die. No getting rid of me now, sorry.”

“Good. Didn’t want to get rid of you anyways.”

While Dottie was inside setting up the TV to watch The Wizard of Oz, Eddie excused himself to the backyard for a smoke. He ran through everything that had happened between them that week, starting with their argument about his moldy ceiling all the way until the last ten minutes when she was still buried in his arms. Being vulnerable wasn’t something that came easy to Eddie; he was way too used to covering everything up in leather and sarcasm, but now that he’d started shedding the layers, it was surprisingly liberating to keep going, especially when he kept being rewarded by Dottie letting down her barriers too. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t realize James had slipped out into the backyard too and was walking towards him, glancing at the pile of ashes at the bottom of the metallic can.

“She got you to join her ritual?” James asked, coming to a stop next to the younger man who was smoking under the patio roof.

“It was interesting. I enjoyed it,” he said, the right corner of his lips twitching upwards into a soft smile. He offered his pack of cigs to James, who shook his head, hands in his pockets.

“No, thank you. Haven’t smoked in years.”

“I should probably stop smoking but it’s hard when my Uncle does it too.”

“I know what you mean, my parents are smokers,” James said, nodding. “I only stopped because Maggie got pregnant and she hated the smell on my clothes. Said it made her want to throw up.”

“Dot hates it too,” Eddie chuckled. “She’s always wrinkling her nose when we smoke near her.”

“She does it to my mother too, don’t take it personal.”

Eddie didn’t really know what else to say so he stayed quiet, busying himself with his cigarette. He knew Dottie hated the fact that he and Donny smoked, but despite that, she’d never told them to not do it. Instead, she moved around them to stand next to Gareth or Jeff, away from the wind that blew the smoke into her space until they were done indulging in their vices. She had never complained about the smell either; the only time they’d heard her say anything negative about it was when she said that her Grandma liked smoking inside her kitchen while sitting next to an opened window and that the smoke made her cough, so Eddie tried not to smoke in the van when he was driving her around. He tapped the butt to the sole of his boot and saved it in the little cardboard box, fully intending on throwing it in the trash when he came back inside when James cleared his throat.

“Eddie, do you mind if we have a talk? Man to man,” he said, his tone friendly but firm.

“Y-yeah, of course. Is there a problem, sir?” Eddie’s palms were sweating. He had seen this coming but didn’t think it would happen so soon.

“No, actually I wanted to thank you,” James began. “Dottie told me what you did for her on Friday, that was… very thoughtful of you.”

“Oh,” he was surprised. “I… You don’t have to thank me. I don’t know if she told you but… I haven’t been a very good friend lately and I wanted to apologize to her. That’s all.”

“Well, either way, thank you. Proms and school dances are… a touchy subject for her, you know? Not a lot of good memories. Just- thank you for making her senior prom special.”

“Of course,” Eddie said, scratching the skin under his watch. “We’ll make sure she has a good prom. And if- if you want us to bring her back at, like, a certain hour, we- we can totally do that too. We’ll look out for her.”

“I know,” the older man smiled at him, noticing how nervous he looked. Eddie might be almost 20 but he was still a little boy trying to impress the father of the girl he liked; James supposed he’d looked the same when he’d started dating Maggie. “You’re good kids, all of you. And Dottie’s never really had good friends before so… if she’s happy, I’m happy.”

“I’m glad. That’s she’s happy, I mean,” he hurried to say. “Not that she had bad friends before. That part sucks, she’s… she’s great and I’m glad I- glad we got to meet her and… stuff.”

“You all mean a lot to her, but you… You’re very important to her. You know that, don’t you, Eddie?” James said, and Eddie felt very much like he was being tested.

“She’s important to me too, sir.”

James smiled, satisfied with the boy’s answer. He understood now the glee his father-in-law felt whenever he made him squirm, it was very enjoyable. It was in good faith though, Roger had never outright disrespected him, and James didn’t intend on doing it to Eddie either, but he supposed it was his God given right to mess with the kid a little bit as the father of a teenage daughter. Maybe one day Eddie would understand it too.

“Everything alright?” Dottie said, popping her head out of the kitchen backdoor and looking at the two men standing on the grass with curiosity.

“Yeah, just two guys having a manly talk. You know, about sports and stuff,” James said.

“You only watch sports when the Olympics are on.”

“I also watch the Super Bowl,” he argued.

“You never watch the rest of the season, what’s the point?”

“It’s fun,” he said, turning to Eddie. “Right, Ed?”

“Only reason I watch is because Wayne makes the best spicy wings in Hawkins,” he grinned. “Sorry, sir.”

“You two are missing out,” James shook his head, jesting. “Gonna watch The Wizard of Oz?”

“Yeah, wanna join?”

“Nah, I’m gonna go lay down for a bit. I’ll take a piece of cake though.”

Later that day, when they were hanging out on the couch stuffing their faces full with vanilla sponge and strawberry jam while watching Judy Garland and her merry gang of new friends walk down the yellow brick road, Dottie eyed Eddie suspiciously until he turned to her, whipped cream staining his upper lip.

“Okay, spill.”

“Wha’?” he asked, cheeks full of cake.

“What were you and my Dad talking about outside?”

“Manly stuff,” he swallowed quickly. “Can’t tell you. If you knew, I’d have to kill you, it’s the law.”

“You’re such an idiot,” she giggled, stealing a strawberry from his plate.

He gasped in horror but still let her do it, because she was important to him and he’d do anything to keep that smile on her face, including tearing down the walls he’d carefully built around himself all throughout his life. And hopefully, by shedding that weight, she’d be able to get rid of hers too, and Mo and Maggie could be proud of them for finally moving on.

taglist (comment below or shoot me a dm if you want to be added!): @munsonology @kurdtbean

#bunny writes #small town fic #eddie munson x female character #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x oc #eddie munson #eddie munson x ofc #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst #stranger things 4 #joseph quinn #baby's first fic

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bitegore · 2 years ago

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Here. have one of the various things that I have been entertaining myself with in the absence of any ability to fucking get drowsy.

I don't know how to do a read more on mobile, so just, like, from this point onward, content warning for stunticon style Bad(tm) and the various kinds of interpersonal violence and rape that I tend to throw at them via Motormaster.

Okay so assuming that things are going on for kind of a while, drag strip is rapidly developing the kind of like, emotional fractures that are kind of obvious if you're looking from the outside and you're close enough to know what they used to look like. He is very clearly reaching some kind of breaking point. And wildrider, my beloved, my favorite spiky boye, this dude is well aware of what he's looking at because he has literally been around drag strip since the beginning and he actually cares about him. And it's obvious where it's coming from semicolon drag strip's whole attitude means that he's motormaster's favorite punching bag and they consistently go back and forth and Motormaster walks away just fine but drag strip limps about like an emotionally wounded bird snapping at everyone for the next thirty two hours.

Seen winds up with wildrider and drag strip hanging out in the rec room when motormaster stomps his way in, fuming for some unspecified reason and just clearly in a terrible mood. This is not good news for either of them and they both kinda like look at each other and they're like ...yeah, we're going to clear out without speaking and they go to get up and leave. This would be fine, except the motormaster watches them both like, present signs of life and goes "drag strip, with me" and goes to stop off his room with drags in tow.

Experience tells wildrider that this is going to end with a very miserable drag strip sulking around for the rest of the next day and a half, what he's not really fond of for various reasons (at least one of which being that he cares about drag strip because he likes him), and in a moment of what is genuinely just impulsive headempty bullshit he steps in between the two of them and he goes "nope! I'm going to go with you motormaster, by the way did you know I'm the most annoying person you've ever met neener neener come hit me and forget the drag strip is over there". Motormaster, who is pissed as fuck but also not a complete and utter idiot, can see through what wildrider's doing but also he's really bad and he really wants to hit someone and wildrider's literally right there. It turns into an entire brawl. Wildrider spends the entire time being as annoying as possible.

Another important piece of context is that motormaster doesn't really like fucking wildrider that much, because he thinks it's boring. He's like sort of right, because wildrider has a pretty high pain tolerance and doesn't really mind having awkward and uncomfortable sex and he generally can just chill out and look on the bright side- as opposed to literally any of the other stunticons, who get authentically upset when people treat them badly. I feel like it's obvious at this point that I've given motormaster a kink for fucking somebody who is fighting back and resisting and doesn't really want him to do that at all, and it's because I genuinely don't think that he would keep doing it if he didn't want to. But my wildrider kind of doesn't care, so he is the least interesting member of motormasters team for motormaster to fuck. He would greatly prefer to just deal with drag strip being miserable after, even though he doesn't really get where that's coming from, then be frustrated and unfulfilled after fucking wildrider and then go fuck drag strip. Because then he has two unhappy teammates. But crucially he really isn't that interested in fucking wildrider as opposed to fucking drag strip. So wildrider is kind of fighting an uphill battle here.

It becomes even more uphill when drag strip finally puts two and two together and just, like, is kind of offended that wildrider thought he needed protecting? Like he does. Hands down, he absolutely doesn't want to do this, but he is just so fucking offended at the thought that he's some fucking damsel that needs somebody else to step in and come save him that he jumps in. On motormaster's side. Against wildrider. Like an idiot.

Because it devolves into a physical fight, too, the other two come out and watch. They're making a lot of noise. It's not subtle. Breakdown and Dead End are also probably the two smartest members of the team, so they are able to figure out what's going on without much trouble, because it's also not subtle. And... this is really not meant to be character bashing but my dead end is kind of a douchebag. I love that for him, I love that he's a dick, but he's a huge dick. So he figures out what the fuck is going on and jumps in also on motormaster's side, because it's funny to him. Breakdown is pissed off with dead end for unspecified reasons (probably because Dead end was being a dick to him earlier or smth) and so breakdown jumps in on wildrider's side in response to dead end joining the argument just to piss dead end off and with no real interest in helping drag strip, who he's also mad at.

Eventually this hits some point for motormaster, who's already pissed the fuck off and completely out of patience for anyone, and he just gives up and goes "Fuck it. Compromise. I'll just fuck both of you. I'm sick of this stupid bullshit and if you don't get in my quarters this fucking instant I'm just going to start shooting," which sort of sorts that but really just moves the argument to his room and cuts the other two stunticons out. Drag strip fights plenty hard but wild rider, who basically hasn't bothered fighting Motormaster in the bedroom and like 3 years, but now he's fighting tooth and nail because he's got an actual reason to bother this time and he has already committed to this and he's not giving up now just because they've changed venues. At the end of the day, turns out Motormaster has a great time, wildrider is pretty much fine aside from how he needs to go down to the medbay and have them reattach like three of his limbs, and drag strip has had the least miserable experience with motormaster he's had in like several years. Drag strip is still vaguely offended that wildrider felt the need to try and give him a hand but he can't deny that he actually genuinely appreciates having someone apparently show any care for his well-being for once. Also from the outside watching motormaster go at it with someone else it gets really obvious really fast that motormaster is like 70x more interested in any situation when the person he's involved with is trying to fight him, which drags probably never would have clicked if he wasn't watching given he doesn't know how to just go limp and will literally keep fighting the entire time but wildrider is totally willing to just kind of chill out when he is fully pinned or doesn't quite think he can get out but has successfully achieved the objective of 'maintain motormaster's full attention'. He's had practice. I doubt it'll change anything because even just faking losing to get what you want is one step too close to actually losing for drag strip, but it's a thought.

No idea where it goes from there. I just like when: them.

Fun fact: I'm writing all this up with voice to text because my eyes hurt like a motherfucker and I don't feel like looking at my screen; as a result there might be some weird typos. However one of said weird typos was really funny. I said stunticons and it translated that to stunted guns. Like. Damn, they sure are, aren't they? (It also keeps calling Motormaster Murdermaster lmao)

#red rambles #lemon #I'm not putting this in the main tags

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theowritesfiction · 2 years ago

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Watching ATS has for me really driven home the point of how badly many writers struggle to write evil.

Late in season 4, it has become very easy for me to identify the problems with ATS, and it’s not just about the weak and poorly written protagonists. It’s the absence of a captivating and threatening antagonist that really makes this show suffer.

The closest that ATS has to a central antagonist is the Wolfram & Hart law firm. The trouble with this concept should be obvious. It’s a LAW FIRM. In a show about powerful supernatural demonic creatures, your main antagonist is a LAW FIRM. And they themselves are just puppets in service of mysterious Senior Partners who are never revealed. As a result, the motivations and goals of Wolfram & Hart are… ehhh?! Completely nebulous and unclear. Their motto might as well be ‘Do Unspecified EVIL!’ There’s literally an episode where this massive law firm conspires to steal a few bob from CHILDREN’S CHARITY. Like… could you come up with a more cartoonish portrayal of evil?

The problem with all of this? Wolfram & Hart are completely nonthreatening villains. Even the protagonists never take them seriously. Angel just strolls into their supposedly impenetrable and well secured building and roughs up whoever he pleases whenever he pleases. In a well written show, seeing the villains plot their schemes should leave the viewer tense. In ATS, watching Wolfram & Hart scheme makes me laugh and reach for the popcorn.

Let’s move on to specific characters, starting with Lilah. Three and a half seasons later and after her death, I still fail to understand the point of her character. She was never allowed to be competent, to succeed at any of her schemes or to pose any sort of serious threat to the protagonists. I don’t know anything about her goals, ambitions and motivations other than basic ‘I’m evil, yay!’ But why is she like that? I mean, soulless corporate empty suits exist, but they’re not important characters in TV shows. For her role, Lilah should have had an actual personality, but there was just so little. And that’s disappointing, because if they had only allowed her to be competent and occasionally succeed at thwarting the heroes, she would have been more threatening and a credible villain. As it was, Angel just threatened her whenever he pleased, and she bent over backwards to please him every time. Even her ‘romance’ with Wesley was botched and disappointing. She supposedly seduced Wesley to use him and learn his secrets… except that she failed even at that, and Wesley learned more from her than she did from him. Also, Wesley’s regret at having failed to redeem her was seriously pathetic. I’m sorry, but where was the actual effort to do that? All we saw was them having sex and Wesley talking shit about her. Was he redeeming her with his magic dick? Good grief, this show violates the principle of 'show not tell' ALL THE TIME. How can professional writers be this bad?

Moving on to Cordelia, or should I use air quotes when speaking about Cordelia, because she’s apparently possessed by… the most stupid and ridiculous evil entity ever? Let’s do a resume. First of all, this entity is ostensibly incredibly powerful, and yet for the longest time they don’t actually do anything with this power. The only thing they do is directly speak in the mind of Angelus. And make the cringiest threats ever. Also, this supposedly powerful entity is incredibly incompetent in how they manage to waste an asset in the Beast. Why would you even have Beast confront Angelus? If you wanted Angelus on your side, just go after him yourself… like you literally did an episode later, but only after the Beast was already dead. So moronic. Also, what is even the goal of this evil entity? There is no plan other than just ‘have Beast do unspecific evil things and create chaos’. Like I’m sorry, but antagonists need goals and motivations too, that’s just Writing 101. These hack writers need to hand in their laptops and find a different profession.

And it really would help to make your antagonists feel like credible threats if they actually had a plan, you know? A plan that wasn’t STUPID, I should add. One of the funniest examples is Holtz in season 3. He spends all this time and effort training his vampire slayers to go after Angel. They are all defeated in 15 seconds of screen time. I don’t even… come on you guys! Can professional writers stop making things up as they go, please?

Anyway, that was a really long rant, ATS specific maybe, but I feel like a lot of this applies to writing antagonists in general. I think people who follow my blog for ATLA related reasons can probably apply this to the ATLA comics. I really, really don’t understand why writing evil is so hard for some people. Nothing turns me off a piece of media quicker than only shallow antagonists.

#ats critical #anti angel #bad writing #problems writing evil

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becomewings · 4 years ago

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The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>

BTS Universe Story Highlights, pt. 3 / 4

« pt. 2 | » pt. 4

Introduction

The following sections for JiMin’s and HoSeok’s arcs are 4.5k and 4k, respectively. As with pt.2 of the series, I have included “tl;dr commentary” at the bottom of the post after a section of additional thoughts. This commentary summarizes the parenthetical asides I made throughout the summaries and may be of interest as standalone reading to those who have already played the game yet would like to review its connections to the BU texts and MVs.

Content warning: contains references to death, suicide, suicidal ideation, child abuse, domestic violence, blood, homicide, depression, trauma, PTSD

This guide contains major spoilers and includes references to other BU media

Do not repost, copy, or quote without permission

Stopped Time

SeokJin’s primary goal in JiMin’s story is to free him from the hospital psychiatric ward to which his parents have him committed before he gives up on life. Much like his sudden, unexplained absence in The Notes 1, JiMin is not even present in the first two episodes except for an introductory cutscene. In a hospital hallway on an unspecified date, he plays on the colored tiles and stops when he reaches “the line” by the exit door. (This line marks the end of the psychiatric ward and is first described in his 11 May Year 22 entry in The Notes 1.) Everything goes black except for JiMin and the door. A nurse taps him on the shoulder, bringing him back to reality, and hands him pills.

The playable story begins on 22 April Year 22 with SeokJin attending a meeting organized by the patrons of the Songho Foundation. Seo HyunJung, the city’s Deputy Mayor, suggested it to SeokJin’s father, Kim ChangJun, at the inauguration ceremony. (SeokJin attends the inauguration ceremony on 11 April in many loops; it plays out in episode 2 of JungKook’s arc.) SeokJin scans over the crowd, reflecting that while the pretext of the meeting is to discuss community development, in reality it is a social gathering to advance individual careers. These sessions make him uncomfortable, but this time he is attending of his own accord with the intention of meeting someone.

This someone is a woman who actually approaches him first, introducing herself as Sim SeonMi. SeokJin knows that she is JiMin’s mother. He has met her in previous loops but needs to pretend that this is their first time meeting. His goal is to bring up JiMin naturally and persuade her to discharge him from the hospital. Before he can broach the subject, the high school principal, Jo JinMyung, joins them. SeokJin uses his arrival as an opportunity to bring up school and guide the conversation toward JiMin by first asking if they know each other. “We’ve met a few times at gatherings. I was told her child used to be a student at our school,” answers Jo JinMyung. “Ah, really? I attended Jeil High too,” says SeokJin. Sim SeonMi looks taken aback, and he asks for her child’s name. She tries to avoid the question by saying that they probably won’t know each other due to their age gap, but when pressed again she relents. “His name is Park JiMin.” “I know JiMin! We were close. Is JiMin doing okay?” SeokJin responds brightly, wondering if she will provide an empty lie. Instead, she excuses herself with the claim that she needs to greet someone else.

SeokJin quickly wraps up with the principal and begins to casually approach her again. He stops when he overhears two women mention her name. “There’s no gathering she doesn’t attend these days. Looks like her husband’s star is on the rise, thanks to her efforts…” The player has the choice to listen quietly or butt in. If SeokJin stands by, they speculate that she was invited because her husband’s company is one of the patrons. If he interrupts, they caution him to stay away from her. In both routes, SeokJin learns that Sim SeonMi doesn’t have the best reputation and that rumors of her hospitalized son are spreading. Their blame on her helps explain what underlay her hysteric responses in previous loops.

Though it’s uncomfortable, SeokJin reapproaches her when she is alone. She greets him a little coldly. “You don’t have to be so formal to me. I’m JiMin’s friend,” he assures. “Is that so? How friendly you are.” Sim SeonMi smiles awkwardly and keeps looking elsewhere as though for an escape. “It would’ve been nice if JiMin’s father was here… He’ll join me another time, so you can say hello to him then.” “Yes. I’ll make sure to bring my father along then,” SeokJin replies, hoping to snag her attention. Her eyes change at the mention of his father. “Shall we do that, then? It’ll be even better with the Assemblyman.” SeokJin brings up JiMin again by either asking if he still attends Jeil High or how he’s doing. Her uneasy answers are “These days? Yes… Of course” or “...He’s fine,” respectively. SeokJin requests JiMin’s phone number, rendering her silent for a long moment. “That’s a bit difficult. I’m not sure I can give out JiMin’s contact information without his approval.” SeokJin attempts to convince her by stating that they were close friends in school yet lost contact when he studied abroad. But all he gets from her is, “Then I’ll ask JiMin, and make sure to contact you if he says it’s okay.” Sim SeonMi taps him on the shoulder and quickly walks away.

By 25 April, SeokJin still hasn’t heard from JiMin’s mother, so he decides to visit her and reveal that he knows JiMin was admitted to an inpatient psychiatric ward. Uncle JunHo, his father’s secretary, intercepts him before he leaves the house and asks where he’s going. SeokJin either answers that he is heading to school or meeting a friend to work on assignments. He declines a ride from JunHo in the first path but can’t conjure an excuse to not accept in the second. In both, JunHo comments that it’s not easy being the family of a public official and that he noticed SeokJin engaged in a long conversation with Sim SeonMi at the meeting. SeokJin explains that she is his friend’s mother, and JunHo advises him not to get too friendly with her because she doesn’t have a great reputation. In the second path, he also adds information about JiMin’s father that catches SeokJin’s attention because he has not heard anything about the man. Apparently Park JinWook is one of the foundation’s board members. ‘He’s pretty remarkable. He entered as a researcher and became a board member… The one thing that people like him want most is connections,” JunHo muses. He cautions SeokJin to “be wary of any advances [he] can see the intent of.”

The scene cuts to the exterior of an apartment building after SeokJin has either driven himself or been dropped off nearby by JunHo. He considers the public assessment of JiMin’s mother: she works hard to elevate her husband’s status but ignores her own son in favor of the family’s reputation. Sim SeonMi happens to step outside before SeokJin enters the building. She looks wary when he says, “I haven’t heard from you, so I decided to come see you myself.” In an effort to persuade her, SeokJin begins with either “I want to see JiMin” or “I came to see you because I know everything.” In the first path, she lies about not getting in touch with JiMin yet because he is studying abroad in the U.S. SeokJin is stunned by this egregious falsehood. “From what I’ve heard… JiMin’s locked up in a hospital. He’s at the Gyeong Il Hospital, isn’t he?” A similar reaction occurs in the second path from the point of SeokJin mentioning the hospital. Sim SeonMi hardens and objects to the phrase “locked up,” stating that JiMin is an inpatient because he is sick. “SeokJin, I appreciate that you’re worried about JiMin… But I’m his mother, and that means I know what’s best for him.” The paths converge as she tries to leave, claiming they have nothing left to discuss. Persuading her to release JiMin from the hospital seems impossible. “I’ll look into it on my own. I’m going to see JiMin, no matter how hard you try to stop me,” SeokJin warns. Sim SeonMi glares at him, voice low and cold. “‘SeokJin. If I can give you a word of advice… Adults have reasons for everything they do. You should forget about this.”

The beginning of episode 3 visits JiMin’s perspective on 27 April. He has relocated temporarily to the surgical ward due to an injured wrist. After treatment, he returns to his hospital room to find his mother arranging some items she brought. JiMin approaches nervously, wondering if she thinks he has caused a problem again. “It doesn’t look too bad, thankfully,” she remarks, glancing at his wrist. Her concern is unfamiliar yet welcome. “Do you know a Kim SeokJin? He said he attended Jeil High.” The mention of SeokJin surprises JiMin, but he tries to answer passively because of her angry tone. “Yes, but why are you suddenly ask—” “Did you contact him?” Sim SeonMi interrupts, halting her organizing to stare at him. “Why are you so immature? Do you ever think of anyone outside of here?” Injury throbbing, JiMin doesn’t know how to respond. “If you want to leave, tell me why you’re doing this. Tell me instead of embarrassing me by contacting some random person! Is that why you hurt your wrist? To rebel?” she demands. JiMin tries to explain this isn’t true, but she doesn’t listen. “I’m really tired, too. How many years has it been? How long do I have to suffer because of you?” Sim SeonMi leaves, the rant having done little to expend her anger. JiMin knows that her worries are pointed at herself, not at him; he is someone who makes life harder for her. He decides not to talk about anything else because he doesn’t want to make things even more difficult for her.

The story cuts to SeokJin loitering outside Gyeong Il Hospital, mulling over what action to take since JiMin is moving out of the surgical ward that day. (The date is unspecified in the game, but in The Notes 1, he is scheduled to return to the psychiatric ward on 16 May.) SeokJin knows that he will be the first suspect if JiMin disappears now and that he must act carefully since he was unable to persuade JiMin’s mother. As the day grows dark, he spots Sim SeonMi rushing into the hospital on her second visit. SeokJin hurries after her, worried that something happened to JiMin. The panicked voices of a medical team emerge from JiMin’s room. Doctors crowd around someone laying on the bed. “No, JiMin!” SeokJin hears Sim SeonMi scream followed by the sound of shattering glass.

The loop resets, and the game rejoins SeokJin on 10 May standing at a road and reflecting on the last failure. “If JiMin isn’t saved while he’s in the surgical ward, he makes his choice days after he returns to the closed ward. But it happened too quickly this time. What pushed him?” he wonders. He recalls Sim SeonMi’s final words before the loop ended. “No, JiMin! I’m sorry. I was wrong! You can see your friends; you can do anything you want… So please, open your eyes!” SeokJin realizes that he may have caused Sim SeonMi to act out of the ordinary, which in turn affected JiMin’s choice. It’s his fault, and he made JiMin suffer more. He thinks, “Even though I’ve experienced losing my friends before… No matter how many times it repeats… It never gets any easier.” SeokJin decides to abandon persuading JiMin’s mother to avoid provoking her and reverts his plan to sneaking JiMin out like in earlier loops. But first, he must focus on a more pressing issue—rescuing HoSeok after he collapses on the bridge that day.

After a cut, HoSeok awakens in SeokJin’s car and is shocked to see him. “Wow, is it really you? How long has it been?” “Lean on me for a bit longer. You didn’t hurt yourself when you fell?” SeokJin checks. HoSeok assures him that he’s all right and asks how SeokJin saw him. When SeokJin says he was just passing by, HoSeok remarks, “Wow! That’s so weird. Thanks for saving me.” It’s the first time SeokJin has heard something like this. He remembers JiMin in a previous loop telling him, “This is where I should be.” Does JiMin really want to leave the hospital? SeokJin believed that he did, but now he’s less confident. “HoSeok. If you had someone in front of you who wanted to die because living was too difficult… What would you do?” he asks. HoSeok answers without hesitation, “Well, I would help them.” “Even if that person doesn’t want my help?” says SeokJin. “ Isn’t helping them the right thing to do? Even if you don’t know why they want to die… They need to keep living for something to change,” HoSeok muses.

SeokJin drops HoSeok off at Two Star Burger before returning to the hospital alone, his friend’s words sticking with him. Even though JiMin isn’t guaranteed to be happy when he leaves the hospital, he needs to stay alive to have even the opportunity for happiness. Still uncertain how to proceed, SeokJin heads to the hospital lounge to organize his thoughts before visiting JiMin. Through an open door, he spots JiMin trudging down a hallway. SeokJin either calls out to him or watches him, but the latter is the result regardless because JiMin doesn’t hear him in the first path. JiMin stares at the door as people come and go and eventually returns to his room.

On 7 May, JiMin roams the hallways of the 5th floor surgical ward. He was moved there about ten days earlier after he ran into someone and fell. The surgical ward is not too different from the psychiatric one: the hallway is a little longer, and it has a lounge in the middle. But the freedom to move around in this space brings him joy that he doesn’t have in the psychiatric ward. He even wanders around at night when no one is around and dances in the lounge. Despite this newfound freedom, his body stops at the same point in the hallway—where the psychiatric ward ends four floors above him. After reaching his line again, JiMin returns to his room. He assumes a student occupied the bed before him because he finds a forgotten workbook in the nearby drawers. Remembering that he used this workbook in school, he flips through and reads the notes scribbled in the margins. “I want to go to a PC cafe, too…” he murmurs, spotting the note “wanna go to the PC cafe later?” JiMin finds a haphazardly folded paper tucked into the pages and unfolds it curiously. “Career… plan?”

The story cuts to 10 May with SeokJin, from a hidden vantage point, watching JiMin sit in the hospital lounge and read a book. It reminds him of their days in the classroom hideout. “He seems okay right now.” SeokJin receives a call from Uncle JunHo about the scheduling of a Songho Foundation seminar. During their conversation, a loudspeaker announcement summons JiMin to the 2nd floor physical therapy room. He drops the book and runs out of the lounge. Once finished with the call, SeokJin tries to find the book JiMin was reading. He doesn’t see it among those scattered around the lounge and thinks that JiMin must’ve had a reason to hide it. Hoping it will provide him a clue to understanding his friend, SeokJin hunts around either the window or trash can with no luck before turning to the vending machine. After scooting a bookcase out of the way, he is finally able to rescue the item. SeokJin deduces that the workbook doesn’t belong to JiMin because it’s Year 2 material and JiMin was admitted to the hospital in his first year. He finds the detached sheet with two different types of handwriting and determines which belongs to JiMin. The game provides a quick flashback shot of JiMin filling out the paper. “Aspiring Career Path: Will I be able to go to university too? Scholastic Activities: What should I learn in Year 2… Extracurricular Activities: Join the dance club HoSeok started.” SeokJin wonders what JiMin felt as he wrote in the answers. He considers how JiMin people-watched from the hallway and looked happy reading the workbook. “You want to leave, don’t you?” SeokJin thinks. “Let’s get out of here. So you can be the one to decide what kind of life you want to live.” He resolves to break JiMin free.

On 11 May, JiMin stops at the invisible line in the hallway again. He stares at the door before turning around and bumping into someone. He is shocked speechless when he realizes that it’s SeokJin. The next episode continues from this moment but switches to SeokJin’s perspective. He calms JiMin down before bringing him to the lounge, giving the excuse that he was in the hospital to visit someone else. JiMin’s cheeks are hollowed, his hands skinnier than normal. SeokJin wonders if he can inspire JiMin to act if he tells him that he’ll be able to do all of the things he wrote on the career plan once he leaves the hospital. He either asks, “JiMin, are you injured?” or “How long have you been in the hospital?” In both paths, JiMin refers to his wrist injury and the time he’s been in the surgical ward rather than the psychiatric one. He looks grim when he can’t give a proper answer to either “When do you get discharged?” or “Are you sick?” “I think I have to go now. It’s almost time for treatment, too…” JiMin stands to leave, avoiding his gaze. SeokJin rushes after him and blocks his path, knowing this might be their last chance to speak if they say goodbye already. “JiMin, I’m here because I know everything. You want to leave this place, don’t you? You’ve been here for two years.” JiMin steps back but doesn’t run away. “I just happened to hear… how your mother locked you in the psychiatric ward,” SeokJin explains. JiMin shakes his head with a frightened expression. “No. I’m here because I’m sick.” His eyes falter when SeokJin presses, “JiMin, I can help you. Let’s get out of here together.”

Short flashbacks play from JiMin’s perspective alongside his thoughts: “At first, I wanted to leave. I called my mom and cried until my voice went hoarse, asking her to take me home. That I didn’t want to stay here. But she didn’t listen. Because this is where I should be…” Aloud, JiMin speaks in a voice that sounds like he has given up on everything. “Even if I leave, I’ll eventually come back.” SeokJin shakes his head. “What’s important is how you feel. JiMin, you really want to stay here? That’s okay with you?” Depending on the players’ choice, he either continues, “Do you really not have anything you want to do?” or “‘You really want to stay here in the hospital?” In the first path, SeokJin tries to remind him of something he must want to do like studying or dancing. “I don’t… have anything like that,” JiMin lies. In the second path, JiMin says it’s better for him in the hospital because outside people treat him like a freak. SeokJin remembers the women whispering about Sim SeonMi and her hospitalized son at the Songho Foundation meeting. In both paths, JiMin is pale and shaky. SeokJin decides to ask one more time. “You don’t want to go outside and see your friends?” JiMin seems to perk up at the mention of “friends,” but he does not respond or lift his gaze. SeokJin’s parting words are, “Think about it, JiMin… I’ll come back to visit again.”

The next day (12 May), SeokJin reflects on his failure to persuade both JiMin and his mother. “What can I do to help JiMin get over his fear and gain courage?” he wonders. The career plan comes to mind again with JiMin’s notes of college, studying, and dancing—the things he wants to do outside of the hospital. This prompts SeokJin to remember a day in the classroom hideout when he filmed HoSeok dancing. On the sidelines, TaeHyung complimented HoSeok’s moves and asked if JiMin could dance like that. Gaze full of envy and longing, JiMin answered, “No. How could I do that?” “HoSeok! JiMin says he wants to try!” TaeHyung called. Flustered, JiMin tried to stop him, but HoSeok looked over. “Do you want to try?” JiMin insisted that he couldn’t, but TaeHyung pushed him forward and HoSeok gladly demonstrated the routine. JiMin hesitated at first to attempt it alone but began to move at their encouragement. In the present, SeokJin believes that he has found an answer in this memory. “TaeHyung, who pushed him forward… and HoSeok, who believed that he could do it. Maybe one of those two will help JiMin muster up the courage.”

SeokJin picks TaeHyung to help him persuade JiMin, considering that he was the first person to notice how JiMin was feeling when they watched HoSeok dance and helped JiMin take action when he hesitated. (We know from The Notes 1 that SeokJin’s later, successful choice ends up being HoSeok instead.) On 13 May, SeokJin visits TaeHyung’s convenience store to explain JiMin’s situation, and TaeHyung immediately agrees to help. Late that night and with little planned, they sneak into JiMin’s hospital room. Sensing their presence, JiMin turns on the light and is especially surprised to see TaeHyung. “We’re here to get you out of here, JiMin,” he says. “Did you think about it?” SeokJin asks. When JiMin hesitates, TaeHyung presses him to answer honestly. “Park JiMin, do you like being here? Staying here is awful! Let’s leave. You can think when we’re outside.” TaeHyung forces JiMin to his feet even as he hesitates and protests about the impending night rounds, although he does not push TaeHyung’s hand away. SeokJin knows this is hasty but decides to trust TaeHyung. Out in the hallway, he reflects that if even he spoke the same words, JiMin would not agree. SeokJin has encountered moments like this before where his friends solve problems that he cannot fix alone. “TaeHyung seems to be JiMin’s answer, just like YoonGi needed JungKook,” SeokJin thinks. (JungKook saving YoonGi is not a solution that played out in YoonGi’s story, but this is a familiar theme from Notes 1 and forward.)

The elevator arrives as they turn the corner, its doors opening to reveal Sim SeonMi. SeokJin warns, “Hide. It’s JiMin’s mom.” She walks past without noticing them. SeokJin quickly presses the elevator button, but it has already left. “JiMin, quick!” TaeHyung calls. “TaeHyung, I just…” “You can’t look back,” TaeHyung says firmly. He and SeokJin pull JiMin towards the stairwell, but JiMin stops walking. “What’s wrong?” asks TaeHyung. JiMin’s expression is on the verge of crying yet also angry. “I can’t,” he whispers. “Park JiMin, we don’t have time for this—” TaeHyung is interrupted by Sim SeonMi’s distant voice. “Where’d he go? The bathroom?” SeokJin tugs JiMin’s arm, but he looks afraid again. “SeokJin, I… I can’t do this. I don’t think I can.” SeokJin either soothes JiMin himself or has TaeHyung talk to him. In the first path, he takes JiMin’s trembling hand. “It’s safe for me here.” JiMin shakes his head. “No, JiMin. Something bad will happen if you stay here,” SeokJin cautions. “No, I have to stay here. That’s what’s right. I want to stay here,” JiMin insists. In the second path, SeokJin shoots TaeHyung a look, and TaeHyung in turn scans over JiMin. The tapping sound of shoes rings through the silent hallway. TaeHyung begins, “JiMin, if you stop here��” The paths rejoin when Sim SeonMi spots them and calls to JiMin, face livid as she approaches. “Oh… Mom.” The color drains from JiMin’s face. “Please… Please! Can’t you just stay put?” she demands sharply.

TaeHyung attempts to intervene, introducing himself as JiMin’s friend. Sim SeonMi does not look at him even when he explains that JiMin didn’t expect their visit and they were just taking him outside so as not to disturb the sleeping patients. SeokJin chimes in too, hoping their flimsy excuse will work, but Sim SeonMi orders JiMin back to his room. Looking defeated, JiMin trudges out of sight. Sim SeonMi finally turns her gaze on SeokJin, regarding him with the same expression as she utters the same words from the last loop. “I didn't know you were JiMin’s friend.” She warns them not to visit him again like this because he is very sick and it will interfere with his treatment. Before coldly turning to leave, she touches TaeHyung’s shoulder for a moment. (This same gesture was given to HoSeok in the hospital after JiMin’s seizure at the bus stop on 15 September Year 20 in Notes 1.) Her presence is like a wall separating them from JiMin. (SeokJin’s observation echoes HoSeok’s feeling that she was drawing an uncrossable line between them that September.) TaeHyung yells after her, “What’s wrong with him?! You can’t even spare the time to talk to us?!” SeokJin cautions him to stop. “Let me go! JiMin! Park JiMin!” TaeHyung’s voice rings loudly in the hallway, but no one answers. As they leave the hospital, he asks, “Do you think JiMin will be okay?” SeokJin cannot respond because he knows the truth: when JiMin returns to the psychiatric ward, he always makes the same awful choice.

The story cuts to JiMin sitting on his hospital bed and staring at his feet, unable to face his mother. He regrets following SeokJin and TaeHyung. “It was a lie, wasn’t it?” Sim SeonMi asks. “What those kids said earlier. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” JiMin apologizes, throat catching. “What were you going to do? What could you possibly do outside of this place?” she demands. JiMin remembers all the things he thought about alone in the lounge: going to school, making friends, and learning dance from HoSeok again. “I want to live a regular life. It’s nothing that special. Why is it that I’m not allowed to dream?” he thinks. “JiMin, let’s focus on getting better first. When you’re all better… I’ll let you do whatever you want once you’re discharged. But you know that now isn’t the time. Let’s do it when you’re back to normal,” Sim SeonMi advises with a power in her voice that he can’t fight. Questions pile up in his head: what is getting better, and what is normal? But he holds it in and nods, not wanting to make things any more difficult for her. “Okay, Mom. I will…” As he speaks, it dawns on him that he’ll never get to leave the hospital.

JiMin moves back to the psychiatric ward after SeokJin and TaeHyung’s visit. The place is still the same: a man mutters that he’s not crazy; a child stays glued to the window, waiting for their mom. “And then there’s me, unable to progress because I’m locked in the past. If nothing changes even as time flows, how is it any different than time standing still?” On 19 May, JiMin stands in the bathroom with the water running. He sees and hears the falling drops as rain and smells a sharp stickiness. Reflected in the water in the sink, he sees a vision of himself on “that day.” (This is referring to 6 April Year 11 and the events of the arboretum, first introduced in that dated entry in The Notes 1 and revealed in full on 12 August Year 22 of The Notes 2.) “...I hate it.” JiMin covers his eyes. “I want to forget everything. I want to rest.” The glass shatters, concluding his arc.

Someone Left Behind

HoSeok’s story opens on 11 May Year 22 with SeokJin providing some chronological context. So far, he has not made it to June once in the loops because HoSeok collapses from his narcolepsy and JiMin is still trapped in the hospital. SeokJin can encounter JiMin naturally if he admits HoSeok to the hospital after his collapse on 10 May, but HoSeok has an accident in the hospital stairwell and falls into despair over his leg injury. (10 May is the date HoSeok collapses and wakes up in the hospital in The Notes 1, and this is likely the moment referenced by his bridge scene in the I Need U MV.) Even if SeokJin prevents that accident or helps HoSeok avoid admittance to the hospital entirely, his narcolepsy grows worse over time after 10 May. SeokJin determines that he needs to control HoSeok’s narcolepsy in order to save him, and he heads to Two Star Burger where HoSeok works to begin earnestly investigating.

A cutscene plays out at the restaurant: HoSeok, wearing a manager’s tag, watches two friends eating at a table while someone places their order with him. His expression is distant and briefly sad until he catches himself and smiles brightly at the customer. When the door chimes, he greets the new visitor and realizes it’s SeokJin. This is apparently their first time meeting in this loop because HoSeok heard from the other guys that Seokjin returned. SeokJin asks how he’s doing, and HoSeok replies, “Me? Same as usual.” SeokJin knows that “same as usual” means HoSeok’s life has a set, monotonous routine: working his part-time job, going to dance practice, and occasionally visiting the children’s home. Sometimes, he also comes to the bridge over the river and watches the scenery. The scene transitions to this location later at night as SeokJin narrates this. He stands at a distance so HoSeok doesn’t see him. HoSeok’s out-of-character, melancholy expression worries SeokJin. He hasn’t observed any changes to his friend’s daily routine, and HoSeok hasn’t collapsed recently—so why does he keep collapsing on 10 May?

The narrative cuts to 3 May. (I double-checked the dates and can only assume that this is a new loop, although a reset is not specifically mentioned—or else the opening date was a typo.) SeokJin mulls the situation over alone for a while but ends up going to NamJoon out of frustration. NamJoon and HoSeok share similarities, and they’re both responsible for other people. Believing that NamJoon knows HoSeok best, SeokJin visits his container. NamJoon greets him warmly. JungKook is already there, killing time after school. SeokJin mentions that he saw HoSeok a few days earlier at Two Star Burger but couldn’t really talk to him because he was busy. NamJoon suggests inviting him to join them after work and bring some hamburgers too since JungKook is hungry. SeokJin either calls HoSeok himself or lets JungKook call. In the first path, HoSeok says he’ll come as soon as SeokJin mentions that a few of them are together. In the second path, while JungKook is on the phone, SeokJin asks NamJoon how HoSeok is and learns that he practices dance at the cultural center every day. SeokJin wonders if HoSeok is pushing himself too hard. The paths rejoin: before HoSeok arrives, SeokJin inquires about his narcolepsy too. NamJoon doesn’t know much except that he’s still taking medication for it and seems to be doing okay. It seems that no one dares to bring it up since HoSeok doesn’t speak about it openly. The conversation trails off while they wait, although it’s not awkward—it reminds SeokJin of old times together.

HoSeok arrives with a cheerful greeting, wafting in the smell of fresh hamburgers. “These hamburgers were hand-made by the employee of the month!” He rustles through the bags and produces a kid’s meal boxed toy, giving it to JungKook. “Here’s your Children’s Day gift!” JungKook pouts that he’s not a kid but seems pleased to receive a gift even though it’s a couple days early. HoSeok explains that he has to be at the children’s home on 5 May. NamJoon asks if they’re hosting an event that day. “It’s not really an event… I’m going to see the families,” says HoSeok. He plans to bring hamburgers and play with the kids rather than bring gifts. SeokJin is surprised to hear that almost twenty children, ranging from young kids to high schoolers, live at the home. “‘That’s more than I expected. It must be fun when everyone plays together.” HoSeok invites him to come along to take photos of everyone, and SeokJin agrees with a high-five. NamJoon declines because he’s too busy, and JungKook hesitates. HoSeok assures him not to feel pressured, causing SeokJin to reflect on how he has always been the “mood-maker” whose cheerful personality eases awkward situations and defuses disagreements. While lost in thought, he notices HoSeok taking out his medication. “How are you these days? Do you feel better?” NamJoon checks. “Hmm. I don’t have any symptoms, but I shouldn’t be skipping these.” A grim expression flashes across HoSeok’s face. SeokJin thinks, “It doesn’t mean he’s alright just because he smiles in front of people.” He guesses that HoSeok must feel scared of his condition, not knowing when he’ll collapse next. It’s not enough for SeokJin to prevent the accidents he can see or to stop HoSeok from getting injured—he must save him from the fear that isn’t visible. SeokJin resolves to find out what makes him collapse. Even if the condition isn’t curable, discovering the cause might help HoSeok get better.

On 5 May, SeokJin meets up with HoSeok at the children’s home, which is located near Yangji Stream. HoSeo looks happy and explains that visiting there is like coming home. They bring their respective gifts of hamburgers and snacks inside, and all the kids rush to HoSeok in excitement. One of the home’s staff greets them. HoSeok introduces her as Kim JungHee. He calls her “auntie” and regards her as someone who has been like a mother to him. As SeokJin helps her set the table with food, he thinks that the children’s home feels like an ordinary family home and HoSeok looks like the dependable older brother among all the kids. After taking all the requested pictures later, SeokJin joins HoSeok to watch the children play outside. “You’re on good terms with the kids,” he observes. “I’ve only been out of the children’s home about three months now, so I know them all,” HoSeok explains. (He moved into his rooftop room on 25 Feb Year 22 according to that date’s Note accompanying the Persona album.) SeokJin either comments, “Auntie seems like a great person. She treated me well and we’ve only just met,” or asks, “How old were you when you first came here?” In both paths, HoSeok speaks with visible adoration for Kim JungHee. In the first path, he mentions that although she’s scary when mad, she never gets angry without a reason. “Auntie JungHee is just… like a mom. She’s mom.” In the second path, HoSeok answers that he was seven when he moved into the children’s home. He describes how Auntie would sing him songs that his mother listened to instead of a lullaby when he had trouble falling asleep, and that was the first time he cried after coming to the home. SeokJin begins, “Then, HoSeok, when you were little…” But a boy’s cries interrupt him before he can ask if HoSeok experienced narcolepsy when he was younger. “What’s wrong, JiHun?” HoSeok asks in concern. The sobbing boy shows him a broken toy rocket. “My mom… gave this to me.” HoSeok is at a loss because it looks impossible to fix. “I’ll bring you a new one next time. Don’t cry, JiHun. Okay?” The boy keeps crying despite HoSeok’s attempts at consolation. Before SeokJin can think of another tactic, HoSeok speaks up, drying JiHun’s tears. “JiHun, do you want to go with me to see a real rocket?”

At HoSeok’s request, SeokJin drives them both to Yeongsan Bridge, one of the bridges that crosses Yangji Stream and that HoSeok frequents. SeokJin is perplexed about what could count as a “real rocket” as they head to HoSeok’s usual spot on the bridge, and JiHun appears suspicious but excited. “Look over there!” HoSeok points to the train departing Songju Station in the distance, picking up speed on the tracks. “Wow!” JiHun exclaims. “What do you think? That rocket looks cool, huh?” asks HoSeok. “Rocket? That’s a train,” says the boy. “Look closely! It’s a rocket.” HoSeok beams. JiHun asks HoSeok why he calls it a rocket. HoSeok explains that the front end of the train is pointy like a rocket and that it takes people somewhere far away. (He also refers to the trains as rockets in his 4 July Year 22 entry from The Notes 2.) SeokJin realizes that from his vantage point on the bridge, HoSeko has been watching the train that leaves Songju. “JiHun, you can wish on the rocket, too!” HoSeok describes how the rocket can carry dreams because the people who ride on it have dreams. JiHun wishes to become famous so his mom can find him. HoSeok falls silent for a moment before resuming his chatty demeanor. Together they wish on the rocket for JiHun to see his mom again. JiHun asks HoSeok what he wishes for so they can wish it on the next rocket. HoSeok whispers in his ear. “Wow, you too?!” JiHun exclaims. HoSeok shushes him, so SeokJin does not learn HoSeok’s answer.

After dropping JiHun off at the children’s home, SeokJin and HoSeok relax at a bar. HoSeok thanks him for his help that day. SeokJin asks if HoSeok visits Yeongsan Bridge frequently to look at the trains. HoSeok smiles bashfully over his drink and explains that he liked visiting it when he lived in the children’s home. “Is that when you came up with the rocket story?” SeokJin asks. HoSeok replies, ‘Yeah. The people getting on the train look so cheerful and happy. It almost makes me want to get on there with them, too.” He stops abruptly and calls out to a customer on his way out. The young man is introduced as DongJin, a friend who also grew up in the children’s home. SeokJin invites him to sit with them, hoping that he knows more about HoSeok, but DongJin declines since he’s with other company. Before departing, he mentions that he will stop by Two Star Burger to see HoSeok soon. After his friend leaves, HoSeok tells SeokJin more about his childhood. SeokJin understands why he considers the people at the children’s home his family.

A little tipsy now, HoSeok brings up another memory. The whole family at the children’s home goes to Yangji Stream on August 30th for the yearly fireworks, but when he was about nine, he had to be admitted to the hospital for a check-up. SeokJin either asks, “Did you miss the fireworks that year?” or “Were you sick?” In the first path, HoSeok describes how he snuck out of his hospital room and up to the rooftop to watch the fireworks. Along the way, he found a little kid crying in the stairwell who was looking for his mom and wanted to leave, and he brought the boy to the roof so they could view the fireworks together. He doesn’t know who the kid was or remember his face. (See the Additional Thoughts section at the end for who I hope this kid really was!) In the second path, HoSeok answers that he was falling asleep without explanation but the doctor said there was nothing particularly abnormal. SeokJin tries to ask a leading question to get him to reveal more, but HoSeok’s expression is grim. The paths rejoin with HoSeok asking SeokJin if he has attended the fireworks festival too. He looks wistful when SeokJin replies that he went with his family when he was younger. HoSeok brings up DongJin again. “He’s a really lucky guy. Even though it was pretty late, he got in touch with his parents and moved out to go live with them.” His eyes reflect bitterness. “DongJin and I… both dreamed of going to the fireworks festival with our parents. I guess he’ll achieve his dream for the first time this year.” SeokJin recalls HoSeok’s rocket story and asks if that’s the dream he told JiHun about earlier. HoSeok dismisses this: his dream now is to become famous for dancing. SeokJin remembers him mentioning this in high school. “Right, you said you wanted to become famous as a dancer so it would help you find your mom… Are you still dancing because of that?” HoSeok says that was why he first started but he grew to really love dance. “You don’t have any plans to go find your mom, then?” SeokJin asks. “Why would I go anywhere? My home, work, and friends are all here.” HoSeok laughs, but it seems like he is just holding on rather than truly feeling happy. “I just… like where I am.”

Episode four begins on 8 May, Parents’ Day, in HoSeok’s perspective. As promised, DongJin visits him at Two Star Burger and asks if he can get a job there because he needs money. HoSeok is taken aback since DongJin supposedly has moved out of Songju to live with his father after reconnecting with his family. “What happened to your self-reliance support fund?” DongJin confesses that he gave it all to his father, who said that he needed it to buy them a house but hasn’t contacted him since receiving the money. “I think my expectations were too high. They abandoned me once. Why wouldn’t they abandon me a second time? I wish I hadn’t met them…” DongJin’s voice wavers. HoSeok assures him that his father must be busy looking for houses. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll contact you soon. I’ll look into a job for you.” DongJin thanks him multiple times before leaving. After work, HoSeok returns to the bridge and leans on the railing. He often does this even when there are no passing trains—watching the flow of the river empties his mind and puts him at ease. But the calm water cannot still his thoughts today. He thinks about the many children at the home who want to be reunited with their parents, including JiHun, DongJin, and himself. HoSeok is honest about his feelings, acknowledging that he envies DongJin for being able to contact a parent, even one who let him down. He closes his eyes and remembers the day his mom abandoned him at the carousel. In the memory, she hands him a chocolate bar and instructs him to count to ten before opening his eyes. The screen goes black after “three,” and at “nine,” the player hears the sound of someone falling. (The carousel memory is also depicted in the Highlight Reel.)

The story cuts to the next day, 9 May, outside Two Star Burger. SeokJin is uneasy knowing that HoSeok collapsed yesterday, two days earlier than he normally does in the loops, and hovers nearby to keep an eye on him. HoSeok announces that he’s heading out for a delivery and heads outside to the delivery scooter. A passing woman reminds her daughter to count before crossing the street. “One, two, three…” HoSeok watches them cross the street and collapses again. “HoSeok!” SeokJin cries. He gets permission from the restaurant manager to take a still-unconscious HoSeok home to his room that overlooks all of Songju City. SeokJin helps HoSeok onto his bed before looking around his room. The player has a choice to look at the items on the desk or a familiar planter on the dresser. In the first path, SeokJin clicks past the screensaver on HoSeok’s laptop and sees that the web browser is open to an audition information video for a famous international dance team. (This may be the same dance team that one of his friends from the children’s home successfully auditions for, referenced in HoSeok’s 4 July Year 22 entry accompanying the Tear album and 7 July Year 22 entry in The Notes 1.) He remembers HoSeok mentioning that he’s happiest when dancing and knows that he still runs Just Dance, the dance club he started in high school. “I’m sure he’d do well if he applies,” SeokJin muses. In the second path, SeokJin recognizes the plant as the one HoSeok tended every day in their classroom hideout. He wonders what HoSeok was thinking when he brought the plant home and how he feels caring for it. The paths rejoin with HoSeok stirring on the bed, mumbling “Mmm… Mom… Don’t go…” SeokJin recalls that HoSeok called for his mother when he fell asleep in high school. “Is the memory of losing his mom related to his narcolepsy?” he thinks. “Are you okay, HoSeok?” SeokJin asks when HoSeok opens his eyes. HoSeok is confused to find himself at home. SeokJin explains that he happened to see him collapse as he was passing by and assures him that he spoke to his manager. “HoSeok, you know how you keep collapsing… The hospital doesn’t know why yet? You don’t have any idea what makes you collapse, either?” he presses. But HoSeok shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

On 10 May, HoSeok receives a call from one of the younger kids from the children’s home while getting ready for work in his apartment. The kid informs him that Auntie JungHee isn’t working at the home anymore because she has been diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer. She is scheduled to have surgery, but the chances of success are low. HoSeok’s mind goes blank, and he hangs up. When he rushes outside, he runs into SeokJin. “I stopped by because I was worried. Are you headed out?” asks SeokJin. Consumed with the thought of getting to Auntie, HoSeok says he needs to visit JungHee and doesn’t have time to ask why SeokJin is there. SeokJin follows, offering him a ride. The player chooses to have HoSeok either get in the car or refuse the ride. In the first path, HoSeok pretends to be calm when explaining the situation to SeokJin, but his voice noticeably trembles. In the second path, he declines because he’s afraid that speaking about it will make it come true, and then he runs to the bus stop.

The story cuts to HoSeok standing on the bridge, unable to remember how he made it to Auntie’s house after saying goodbye to SeokJin. He can only recall the face he saw through one of the open windows of Auntie’s house: JungHee laughing as she chatted with someone. The news of her illness and the low success rate of the surgery seems like a lie. She was the first person he could rely on after HoSeok lost his mom. He can’t shake off the vision of himself standing in front of the carousel “like an idiot.” Head spinning, he thinks, “I just wanted them to stay by my side. Is that too much to ask? What kind of terrible thing have I ever done?” The perspective switches to SeokJin as he watches HoSeok walk precariously across the bridge, looking both shocked and deeply sad. He reflects on his failed attempts to prevent HoSeok from collapsing here. Even if he stays with HoSeok like he did with JungKook or intervenes like he did with YoonGi, HoSeok always runs to JungHee’s home and then collapses on this bridge on his way back. SeokJin is aware that JungHee has cancer (so the first path of the branching choices has happened at least once, or he found out in earlier loops). The extra collapses of this loop weigh on SeokJin’s mind too. Something changed after HoSeok met DongJin, and SeokJin regrets taking him to the bar on 5 May. He looks on as HoSeok inevitably staggers and falls in the same spot.

SeokJin calls 119 and has HoSeok admitted to the hospital. As before, HoSeok is placed in the same hospital room of the surgery ward as JiMin. SeokJin decides not to visit him because he is afraid of running into JiMin and unsure of what will play out if he does. Now that HoSeok is in the hospital, there is no way to avoid the future accident in the stairwell. A few days later, SeokJin scopes out the scene. He mulls over the repeating scenario of HoSeok chasing down the stairs after a woman he mistakes for his mother. SeokJin connects the dots between HoSeok calling for his mother in his sleep and the way he cried in front of his Auntie’s house. “Everything has to do with ‘mom.’ If HoSeok’s narcolepsy is because of ‘mom,’ does that mean this accident is connected to the idea of mom, too?” In other loops in which SeokJin successfully prevented the stairwell accident, HoSeok continued to collapse more frequently until he eventually did so in the street. SeokJin contemplates how his condition apparently worsens after he sees a woman that reminds him of his mother.

The day after HoSeok is admitted to the hospital, 11 May, SeokJin invites NamJoon to meet him at a cart bar after his work shift. NamJoon brings up HoSeok first. Unable to say that he was the one to call for help, SeokJin pretends to be surprised that HoSeok is in the hospital. NamJoon reports that HoSeok had a minor concussion and is staying there for a couple days so the doctors can run additional tests. SeokJin wonders if HoSeok dreamt of his mother again and feels a pang at the image of him haunted by nightmares. He proceeds to tell NamJoon about their visit to the children’s home, meeting DongJin, and learning about the auntie’s illness. Cautiously, SeokJin proposes that HoSeok’s collapsing may be related to his mother. NamJoon mulls it over before agreeing. “I guess it could. Thinking about his auntie might have led him to think about his mom.” “I’m sure he feels like he’s losing his mother a second time,” SeokJin adds. NamJoon asks if he knows HoSeok’s wish to become a famous dancer in order to find his mom, although his dancing grew into a genuine source of joy. “So I thought… Dance had become Jung HoSeok’s cure. Something that helps him hold on. The thing that helps him bear something he can’t otherwise. That’s what dance is to HoSeok. Don’t you have something like that, SeokJin?” NamJoon regards him silently after this, leaving SeokJin much to contemplate. They promise to visit HoSeok together at the hospital. SeokJin hopes that if NamJoon knows just how much dancing means to HoSeok, he may figure out something from HoSeok’s reaction in the stairwell that SeokJin has missed. He just needs to figure out a natural way to get NamJoon into the stairwell at the right time.

On 12 May, SeokJin and NamJoon meet at the hospital. SeokJin suggests that they take the stairs since the elevators are crowded and lies about HoSeok being on the 3rd floor to strengthen his excuse. When they arrive on the 2nd floor landing, they hear footsteps and voices from above. The woman descending the stairs with a child is the one whom HoSeok keeps mistaking for his mother. SeokJin needs to stall until HoSeok comes down too, so he either suggests that they buy some snacks to bring or mentions that he may have got the wrong floor number and checks his phone. Moments later, they hear pounding footsteps and HoSeok shouting, “Mom!” NamJoon locks eyes with HoSeok and, unaware of what is about to happen, turns to follow the woman. “Ma’am! Excuse me!” Caught off guard, SeokJin is too late to grab HoSeok, who falls and screams. As he rolls on the floor clutching his leg, sealing the injury that will prevent him from dancing, the glass shatters.

SeokJin involves NamJoon in several more loops after that, but his attempts to save HoSeok end in failure. He wonders again if he should admit HoSeok to the hospital at all, but decides that if the incident is connected to HoSeok’s trauma, it needs to be solved rather than avoided. On a new 12 May, SeokJin stands near the hospital stairwell, prepared to intervene himself and ask HoSeok about his mother afterward. He spots JiMin emerging from the 2nd floor physical therapy room and pressing the elevator button. Hiding out of sight in the stairwell, SeokJin mulls over his options. If he prevents HoSeok’s accident, he still needs to get JiMin out of the hospital too—an effort that has been unsuccessful so far due to JiMin stopping at the exit or later having a seizure when they pass the arboretum. “Maybe the answer to HoSeok is… JiMin? What if… this incident is the variable between HoSeok and JiMin?” Heart pounding, SeokJin begins to hope that they can save each other. He doesn’t have enough time before HoSeok comes down the stairs to figure out what to say to JiMin and decides that he will just have to make the reason for his presence in the hospital believable. “JiMin!” he calls. “SeokJin? How are you here—” Looking shocked, JiMin steps back like he’s about to run away. SeokJin realizes that they haven’t met in this loop yet, and JiMin strongly dislikes people knowing that he’s in the hospital. With no time to explain, SeokJin leaves him behind and rushes into the stairwell. But he’s too late to catch HoSeok’s fall, and the story concludes with the glass shattering once again. (Based on The Notes 1, we know that the “successful” decision SeokJin makes in later loops is to stay out of sight when he calls JiMin. JiMin is puzzled by the silhouette he sees in the doorway and enters the stairwell just in time to catch HoSeok.)

Additional Thoughts

JiMin’s mother, Sim SeonMi, becomes one of the most fleshed-out adult characters in the BU narrative so far thanks to his story. We already knew the most about SeokJin’s father, Kim ChangJun, due to his role in The Notes 2. I’ve had an inkling of a suspicion that JiMin’s parents were connected in some way to SeokJin’s father, so I was satisfied to see this confirmed in the game. I’m curious about JiMin’s father and the lack of details surrounding him. He has only been depicted once in The Notes 1, when JiMin returned home days after sneaking out of the hospital with his friends.

Though it’s never explicitly stated in the texts, the Wings Short Film #6 MAMA depicts that HoSeok is diagnosed with Munchausen’s syndrome, a psychological disorder in which the individual pretends to be ill or deliberately produces symptoms of the illness. His prescription pills are actually placebos. On 16 May Year 22 in The Notes 1, HoSeok confesses to JiMin that his narcolepsy is fake, although he doesn’t feign symptoms on purpose.

I was personally a little disappointed with the lack of new information in HoSeok’s story. While his relationships with the auntie and other children from the home are explored in greater detail, the most significant plot points if his arc have already been covered as of The Notes 2.

I have no proof for this, but I want the unidentified crying boy who young HoSeok met in the hospital stairwell and brought to the rooftop to see the fireworks to be JiMin. If HoSeok was 9 at the time, then JiMin was 7. He has been in and out of the hospital since the arboretum incident (earlier that same year), so it is plausible that he had an overlapping stay with HoSeok in the summer of Year 11.

As mentioned above, the following “tl;dr” commentary summarizes the parenthetical notes I provided in the summaries in case you want to review them on their own.

Stopped Time — tl;dr commentary

In the opening cutscene, JiMin plays on the colored tiles in a hospital hallway and stops when he reaches “the line” by the exit door. This line marks the end of the psychiatric ward and is first described in his 11 May Year 22 entry in The Notes 1.

The Songho Foundation patron meeting that SeokJin attends on 22 April Year 22 was suggested by the city’s Deputy Mayor at the inauguration ceremony on 11 April. That earlier ceremony played out in JungKook’s arc.

Before the loop reset, SeokJin waits outside the Gyeong Il Hospital as he plans his next move since JiMin is moving out of the surgical ward that day. The date is unspecified in the game, but in The Notes 1, he is scheduled to return to the psychiatric ward on 16 May.

In this story, SeokJin picks TaeHyung to help him free JiMin from the hospital. He hopes that TaeHyung will be JiMin’s “answer,” just like YoonGi needed JungKook. JungKook saving YoonGi is not a solution that played out in YoonGi’s story, but this is a familiar theme from Notes 1 and forward. However, SeokJin and TaeHyung are caught by JiMin’s mother while trying to leave the hospital with him. We know from The Notes 1 that SeokJin’s later, successful choice ends up being HoSeok instead.

Before coldly leaving SeokJin and TaeHyung to rejoin her son, Sim SeonMi touches TaeHyung’s shoulder for a moment. This same gesture was given to HoSeok in the hospital after JiMin’s seizure at the bus stop on 15 September Year 20 in Notes 1. To SeokJin, her presence is like a wall separating them from JiMin. This echoes HoSeok’s feeling that she was drawing an uncrossable line between them that September.

At the end of the story, the vision JiMin sees reflected in the sink water of “that day” is referring to 6 April Year 11 and the events of the arboretum, first introduced in that dated entry in The Notes 1 and revealed in full on 12 August Year 22 of The Notes 2.

Someone Left Behind — tl;dr commentary

In the story’s opening, SeokJin refers to HoSeok’s collapse on 10 May. This is the date that HoSeok collapses and wakes up in the hospital in The Notes 1, and it is likely the moment referenced by his bridge scene in the I Need U MV.

When SeokJin observes that HoSeok is on good terms with the kids from the children’s home, HoSeok explains that he’s only been out of the home for about three months. He moved into his rooftop room on 25 Feb Year 22 according to that date’s Note accompanying the Persona album.

As he does in the game, HoSeok refers to the trains as “rockets” in his 4 July Year 22 entry from The Notes 2.

HoSeok’s memory of being abandoned at the carousel is also depicted in the Highlight Reel.

When searching HoSeok’s apartment, SeokJin notices the laptop’s web browser is open to an audition information video for a famous international dance team. This may be the same dance team that one of his friends from the children’s home successfully auditions for, referenced in HoSeok’s 4 July Year 22 entry accompanying the Tear album and 7 July Year 22 entry in The Notes 1.

At the end of the story, SeokJin hopes to gain JiMin’s help to save HoSeok but ends up spooking him because they haven’t met in that loop yet. Based on The Notes 1, we know that the “successful” decision SeokJin makes in later loops is to stay out of sight when he calls JiMin. JiMin is puzzled by the silhouette he sees in the doorway and enters the stairwell just in time to catch HoSeok.

Did you learn anything new from these stories that I did not specifically mention? Let me know in the replies or tags! Please stay tuned for part 4, featuring TaeHyung and the Epilogue.

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lisbetadair · 3 years ago

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The Ghost Comics: A Timeline 2

This is the same timeline, but this time I Have Opinions About Things. It's under cut because it's as long as the last one, the whole torture theme that was so imperative to the comics being something that not everyone wants to read and because some of you really like the comics and I get very sarcastic about the plot holes.

Unspecified time: Riley (age 8) is taken to a punk gig by his father. His eyes are brown despite being the most cerulean orbs to ever have existed in the One True Divine Canon of the Actual Game. He witnesses his father having sex with a woman. He either murders her, or causes her death through negligence. Also, despite Riley being voiced by famous Cockney actor and Eastenders royalty Craig Fairbrass, Riley is inexplicably living in Manchester.

January 2003: Riley visits his mother after an eighteenth month absence. For inexplicable reasons, he is wearing dress uniform.

March 2004: Riley confronts his father at a punk club night in Manchester, tells him not to come home and they fight. For inexplicable reasons, he is wearing dress uniform and a red beret, despite the SAS having worn beige ones since the 1940s. I mean, it's not even like they are the original maroon that they were at the inception of the regiment, which I could kind of forgive, they are actually red. He extracts his brother from wherever he is staying and takes him to rehab.

June 2006: Tommy Riley gets married.

Early October 2009: Riley gets orders to join a US led anti-drugs task force. Two previous unsuccessful missions of this task force to assassinate a heroin smuggling cartel leader in Mexico are mentioned.

13th October 2009: Major Vernon picks Riley up at Fort Bragg, and explains his concerns about a possible leak (possibly higher up the chain of command) that resulted in the last mission being unsuccessful. He explains he is the only survivor of that mission. In case anyone wants some cultural context " Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas was Number One on the Billboard chart for almost the whole month preceding, so you could really use that for inoffensive pop foreshadowing! It was followed by the Kings of Leon's Use Somebody for the first week of the month which I guess is also Relevant Foreshadowing Content!

October 30th 2009: Sykes dies during the parachute infiltration, due to a parachute malfunction. After the super stealthy parachute infiltration by night, they all check into a local hotel to "blend in" as sex tourists. It is unclear as to why they merely did not drive in like everyone else. They all go out drinking. Riley refuses the advances of a local sex worker, and follows Cumberland to a brothel.

October 31st 2009: He reports to Vernon that Cumberland was using a brothel where members of the cartel were also seen. That night is...

November 1st 2009: Doomed mission into Coahila, Mexico gets going. It is unclear as to what happened to the night of October 31st. Riley enters to target's villa and finds Cumberland gravely injured. Vernon appears, and helpfully explains in villain monologue that Cumberland witnessed him sabotage Syke's parachute, and this has been reported up the chain of command. Presumably Cumberland thought Sykes was a bit of an arsehole, hence why he didn't pipe up sooner. Vernon kills Cumberland but Riley escapes as far as the villa wall, where he is shot by Roba and captured

December 2009: Gratuitous torture.

February 2010: Gratuitous torture, and sexual assault.

March 2010: Gratuitous torture 3

July 2010: Sparks and Washington escape. Riley is buried alive with the corpse of Major Vernon, but escapes.

August 2010: Riley wanders in the desert, across the US border and is repatriated to the UK.

December 18th 2010: Riley appeals to his commanding officer to be returned to active service.

Later in December 2010: Riley visits his family in Salford. Sparks appears. No one considers Spark's appearance at Riley's next of kin's address to be a massive breach of security, or in fact, any sort of concerning event at all, and Riley and Sparks go drinking. They attempt to sexually assault a woman, but are scared off by the sound of police sirens approaching. Riley returns Sparks to his hotel and tries to stab Sparks, presumably this is because he has come to his sense and doesn't want to be some sort of rapist. They fight, and Washington returns, chasing Riley off. Shots are fired. He returns to his brother's house and finds the family murdered.

He phones his commander and is told he is dead as a result of an accident.

Sparks phones and says he's murdered Riley's psychiatrist. Washington sets the psychiatrists house on fire with a grenade, launched from a grenade launcher.

Later in December 2010 (it might be January, who knows?): Riley visits his father in hospital. He leaves before Sparks and Washington appear, and waltz, unchallenged, into a hospital, and murder Riley's father by shooting him at point blank range.

Even later in December 2010 (again, might be January): Riley murders Washington and Sparks who are inexplicably not wanted in connection with the murder of Riley senior. I fear this may be a cultural misunderstanding and possibly the comic writers live in a country so saturated in gun violence that people getting shot in hospitals is a completely normal occurrence, but there's no way that this would not merit major media attention and would have leant absolute credence to any defence Riley was putting about that he was being framed by rogue US agents. He takes Sparks back to his family's house, dumps the body there and sets the house on fire, putting his dog tags on Sparks to confuse the evidence despite mitochondrial DNA testing being a well-used forensic technique.

Unspecified time between December and February: A Colonel Barber, a character we have never met before, requests that the case into Washington's murder is closed, implying high levels of corruption or negligence in the British Military Police.

February 2011: Riley returns to Mexico and kills Robas.

A representative of Task Force 141 appears to pick up Riley immediate after. Presumably tipped off to the event by Barber. Implying that what? They knew Riley would go after Robas, and had the place on watch to see when this occurred, tracked him through the brush until they felt it was suitably out of the way enough to not be noticed? Does it imply that the whole Robas operation (the MK Ultra 2.0 stuff) was organised by the US and they are just waiting to see whether it has worked or not? And it has??

#simon ghost riley

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holymoonlighted · 4 years ago

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Lost in the Sands, Irithyll, Anor Londo and beyond.

Spoilers for Dark Souls III for the entire post:

Irithyll is an interesting location in Dark Souls III, a snowy town with an eternal Moon upon its sky; Anor Londo being the same. However, if not obvious it was not always the case for Dark Souls III. The intentions for Anor Londo and Irithyll were much different, it can even be seen in the game still.

If one needs some information before we begin: Dark Souls III was heavily edited and reconstructed very late in the day. You can still see so many unused structures and different placements of things especially from Vordt’s room where you fly to Undead Settlement. Many maps even now have drastically rearranged, new or removed architecture, placements of buildings and locations, the works. It is a miracle that this game even came out, honestly. Nevertheless, this is needed to explain that the story was shifted around insurmountably. It is why many things in the story seem to just fall off, or seem like they don’t belong. Many things even during the DLC were absolutely switched and patchworked in to make sense or to make things even more confusing. Boss Musical Chairs is the name of the game in this game as well. Nevertheless, enjoy.

(Sorry, this is the best shot I could get for this building.)

This itself is Anor Londo. This is not the end of the world as the Ringed City would like you to believe. It was never planned to be that until they had to cut the entire concept. Yes, this means Irithyll was a desert at some point. It’s still quite obvious in the final game, but luckily snow acts the same as sand in the way it’s used but, nonetheless, here we go. In this version, it was just sand everywhere. Furthermore, this proves something by the appearance of it. It’s old, decrepit and quite frankly demolished. Ruins are all over the place and it is obviously quite large. It also appears even from Vordt’s view, not as high up as if it’s sunken into the sands. Many buildings are left to ruin and most likely, no holy sights or Gwyn or even Gwynevere statues exist anymore. So, it’s not how it appears in the final game, and that can be explained. What would have happened is, at some point, travelling back to a past Anor Londo was necessary. How or why this was isn’t know, but, what is known is that travelling back was a thing but then possibly defeating Gwyndolin or someone that looks like Gwyndolin was necessary. If you notice, the Gwyndolin we fight as Aldrich, well that isn’t Gwyndolin. It’s just Lothric with a mask similar to Gwyndolin. It is also interesting to note, at one point, Aldrich had the ability to summon Man Grubs as one point and it links him to being Rosaria’s firstborn even more, so fun fact.

Current story aside this, well, is not Gwyndolin. The mask is so different that it looks like a Bootleg. Not to mention the clothes are entirely new, especially that the color is transparent and black. And this was most likely the case. Someone who was pretending to be Gwyndolin and faking it so that they can influence the people of Irithyll their god is still alive, somebody named Sulyvahn. See, Aldrich’s internal name is Sulyvahn. With this it can be concluded that some roles were changed, Aldrich at one point was at Archdragon Peak, way, way past Anor Londo. Then he was at the Cathedral, still far away from Anor Londo. In conclusion, Sulyvahn was this character that was acting like Gwyndolin, who is leading the Darkmoon Knights and corrupting their image. There is just a boss in the files called “Anor Londo Boss” and well, it was most likely Sulyvahn and was probably a callback to the Gwyndolin fight. At the time where you travel back to, Anor Londo was still whole, in fact the past map is actually the current map but the past map would have a “past” world state aka just a filter on the screen. Also, the entire Sulyvahn and Aldrich plot was absolutely just not here. As will be seen later. The boss that was “Moonlight Witch” and this enemy still appears in game, as the “Fire Witch”. It’s also in the art book with some impressive art, it being the boss is the reason. These enemies still bare their magic and weapons in the final game, but not the spell shown in its art.

This location by the way is called “Anor Londo Ruins” and the entire place would just be ruins and it was also the end game area, assumedly. And, once in the past, and defeating this boss some event revolving around resurrection is involved. An unused game flag called “After Resurrection” is present but sadly, nothing is known about it other than that. Except, we probably do know. Sulyvahn as we know him now is actually a boss called “Old King of the Eclipse” and was actually the final boss before Soul of Cinder. He was probably the final boss for a long while until he had to be changed due to unspecified reasons.

The Old King of the Eclipse:

This part of cut content is extremely, very, very hard to pin down lore-wise but other parts like mechanics is pretty easy to decipher. So, to state a few things I said before and some I didn’t:

Aldrich in Archdragon Peak

Resurrection in Anor Londo

Lorian and Lothric being an early boss

Old King of the Eclipse being resurrected

Archdragon Peak lines up with Lothric Castle with some teleportation manipulation, meaning Archdragon Peak was closer at one point, incredibly close.

So, with this information we can construct a narrative: Aldrich is still a Lord of Cinder, traveling to him would be like Anor Londo now. But instead it would be in Archdragon peak. Since the Lothric princes are early bosses, no need to fight them as Lords of Cinder(them being Lords is very late, apparent by their absence in the intro cutscene.). So, three lords defeated and once at Anor Londo, a resurrection happens. Then you go to Untended Graves and unlock the Kiln of the First Flame. It is unknown if something at Anor Londo resurrected the Old King, or what it’s just up in the clouds. Also, I am not sure when this was a thing but the Pilgrim Butterflies at one point were seemingly Dragons. A lot of early stuff seemed to involve Draconic Children and really the return of Dragons in general. Which could help with the whole scenic thing of “Things are turning back to how their primal form” which would also include the world itself, which includes Dragons who were there before Gwyn and Humans. But. nevertheless, assume that this resurrection is related.

Then, this possibly kickstarts the Eclipse or furthers it along. The Eclipse in a logistical standpoint is not explained as far as I know. It has not true explanation that gives credence to any sort of theory involving it rather than content clues. It seems that a King was born and became a holy symbol of this world ending eclipse, it is most likely that this eclipse is something like the 2012 Mayan Calendar event and when this or this happens like the resurrection, it kicks off and the world ends. The picture below is assumedly the eclipse as well as the Kiln at this point:

Also, keep in mind that this King is literally the Sulyvahn Model, from what I know, nothing drastic changed and it’s the same. The King seems to form this duality, like souls tends to do; Life and Death, Alive and Undead, Good and Evil and Light and Dark which are incredibly key opponents in the Dark Souls world. Gwyn has always been seen as the light of the world, he is literally the Sun. The Eclipse is the Moon, Darkness. An Eclipse is the Moon obscuring the Sun, and this King of the Eclipse can be well equated with a Dark Lord character archetype found in fiction. This figure that overshadows the Dark. It’s even more apparent looking at early Anor Londo, it’s absolutely destroyed. Gwyns legacy is destroyed, at least one of its major parts.

Gwyn as a name is essentially forgotten. And yes, it is unknown how worshipped this King was, but, he’s doing way better than Gwyn, he’s still alive. So, it seems this King and the Eclipse is this symbolic thing that says “Gwyn is dead, his age of light is dead, overtaken by the dark.” and it’s way more maddening when you realize this is the apocalypse, the end of everything. Also, notice how it looks exactly like the Darksign, this bloody Moon of Darkness which covers the Sun; It’s definitely a symbol of Gwyn’s fear and his failed efforts have finally overtaken his world that he’s built.

It’s not only Gwyn, though. The society he built is still lingering through Lothric, in some capacity. Undead are still hated, the linking of the fire is still “needed” and supported to the point an entire Kingdom’s ethics are based around making a worthy linker. It symbolizes, in my mind, the idea of the curse and the world that the sins are bleeding onto the world as if it were saying “this has been brought onto you, by you, your blood.” Of course, Gwyn did bring the curse to humanity, but they continued to link the fire, the fear of death is a thing that lingers still: But due to humanity’s fears as well, they continued to link it. But since humanity continued this tradition. The world must sit and watch itself burn.

Of course, this is just my theory, if you have anything else to add or you don’t agree, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for reading! (This post has been drastically edited!)

#Soulsborne #Dark Souls III #Dark Souls Theory #Dark Souls #Soulsborne Cut Content

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trickstercaptain · 4 years ago

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DMTNT ALTERATIONS circa 2020 edition

okay okay okay so i’ve managed to consolidate this into four separate parts that deal primarily with Jack in DMTNT ( and, frankly, that’s enough to deal with without me going into my issues with every other character and plot decision lmao ). I’m still not overly fond of the direction they took his character in this movie ( because there were 293243 other more interesting routes to take ) but this is me making it workable because if you fix Jack in this movie you immediately solve a number of the problems with it imo. a lot of this hasn’t really changed from the original posts i made on the old blog back when the film first came out, i’ve just consolidated it in order to move it over and hopefully make it easier to read.

also, particularly when it comes to the continuity section, this is just my personal take on it. I don’t expect any of my partners to adhere to the timeline etc, this is just how I’m choosing to make sense of it:

CONTINUITY WITH OST & THE TRILOGY

Jack and Henry KNOW each other. Jack was a sporadic presence in the young boy’s early life and became a surrogate father to him in Will’s absence ( but never did he seek to replace Will. Jack was always the one telling Henry stories about his father ). Therefore, when Henry receives the message from Salazar to find Jack, and he encounters Jack in that jail cell, the two of them already have a strong relationship and rapport. This also means that Jack is in favour of using the trident not only to defeat Salazar, but to free Will from the Dutchman’s curse.

Post-AWE: Jack briefly meets Margaret Smyth during this post-AWE period, because Carina is the same age as Henry in the novelisation ( they’re both nineteen ). this is also around about the time that she’s conceived and later left in an orphanage by Hector. this is also why I lean towards the headcanon that Jack and Barbossa spent more time together leading this joint crew than is implied right at the end of AWE, and therefore Jack does not immediately lose the Pearl following the third movie.

Pre-OST: during the time between AWE and OST, Jack would have been pirating, regularly ( ish ) visiting Elizabeth and Henry on Shipwreck Cove but, most importantly, looking for the Fountain of Youth. he does eventually find it – or at least locates the caves past Whitecap Bay, hence why he is in a position to lead an expedition there during the fourth movie – but he does not know of the ritual at this point, nor does he actually see the fountain himself.

The events of OST take place seven years after AWE.

The events of DMTNT take place twelve years after OST, meaning that is the length of time in which the Black Pearl has been locked away in bottle-form.

To explain away Jack being in his late fifties at this point yet looking and acting like a man no older than his late forties, even though he doesn’t drink from the Fountain himself in OST, some of the youthful properties of the water rub off on him and slow his ageing process after this point. Jack wonders at whether he has somehow unlocked the secret of effective immortality.

CHARACTERISATION

First things first, Jack is not the useless drunk jester that he is for the vast majority of this movie. He does not make lewd comments about Elizabeth or act as if he does not care about the Turners, nor does he lack the intelligence and wit he possesses in the other four movies.

He is depressed at the very beginning of the film, which results from a curse placed on him by Shansa at Barbossa's request to 'curse his enemies.' This curse is placed on him around a year or two before the events of DMTNT, and immediately hampers his cultivated legend by causing repeated bad luck and disaster at every turn.

Every attempt he makes at getting the Black Pearl out of the bottle or tracking Barbossa down with the intention of using his sword to do so ( in the years since OST I refuse to believe that thought does not cross Jack's mind ) ends in failure. He attempts to barter and scheme for another ship and instead ends up with the Dying Gull, which is so unseaworthy that it strands Jack and his crew on the island of Saint Martin.

Jack has spent roughly six months on Saint Martin prior to the events of DMTNT, and his grand plan to secure passage off of it is to steal from the bank ( with the aid of the mayor's wife, Francis, with whom he is having an affair and intends to accompany him ) and use the funds to refit the Dying Gull and make her seaworthy again.

I am also stating right here that Jack does not demand tribute of his crew following this failed bank robbery and, when it comes to his execution scene, Gibbs does not have to be paid to come and rescue him. That's nonsense I want nothing to do with, thank you.

When that ends in failure, Jack, in a moment of desperation and amplified by the effects of Shansa's curse, gives away his compass for another drink. For a fleeting moment, he gives it away with no intention of getting it back, and that is all the compass needs to lash out and free Salazar.

The compass' reaction is the first moment of realisation for Jack of how far he has sunk in the last couple of years. When Henry reaches him with Salazar's warning, he actually sits up and takes notice and, for the rest of the film, is the same Jack we know and love and actually cares about seeing Henry reunited with his father.

With the trident of Poseidon destroyed, Shansa's curse is lifted and Jack is once again free to do as he pleases.

Jack goes with Henry and Carina on land where they are united with Will at the end of the movie.

THE COMPASS

To explain away that Jack has given away his compass MULTIPLE times throughout the trilogy without any serious repercussions such as... whatever the Devil's Triangle is, I'll firstly note that each time he has bartered it away to somebody, the intention on his part has never been permanent. He has always intended to get it back somehow or use the bartering away to further his own ends, and through whatever laws of magic or physics has always obtained it again.

The difference in DMTNT is that Jack gives it away with no such intention, and that is what constitutes as betraying it. Jack and the compass are inextricably linked and have been ever since he was given it by Tia Dalma as a child: the compass is a powerful enough magical artefact in my opinion to have a consciousness or soul of some kind, in the same way that the Black Pearl is implied to have. In betraying it, the compass is spurred to react.

I don't like the idea that the compass caused Salazar to be trapped inside of the Devil's Triangle ( since Salazar and his crew went down as they entered -- that had nothing to do with the compass ), but instead I interpret that freeing Salazar is the compass' reaction to being betrayed. It lashes out and causes the earthquake in order to punish Jack and, on some level, spur him on to restore his reputation and break his own curse that's plaguing him.

THE FLASHBACK

tl;dr; i actually don’t mind this scene in most of its execution, but this is me fitting it into the wider canon of TPOF and my own headcanons that predate this movie. this is also me fitting it into POTC’s own canon.

The ship Jack is on is NOT the Wicked Wench. Nor is he made captain of it through his actions against Captain Salazar. Instead, he is a sometimes crewman on an unspecified ship sailing from Shipwreck Cove and comes up against the Silent Mary in battle. Jack's actions and quick thinking save the lives of those on his ship and others trying to escape the carnage.

Jack does not gain his 'sparrow' moniker from Captain Salazar. Firstly, there is no plausible way for Jack to overhear or know that Salazar refers to him as a sparrow given that they do not say a single word to each other ( other than Jack shouting in the crow's nest ) and Salazar spends the next several decades trapped inside of the Devil's Triangle, and secondly my own interpretation is that Jack obtains his last name from his mother.

Jack did not receive his compass from the captain of the ship he's on in the flashback, but from Tia Dalma as per trilogy canon. He also does not receive pieces of his iconic costume from the crew as tribute.

Jack did not realise that Salazar would end up trapped inside the Triangle. He saw the ship get destroyed by the rocks and go down once it entered the cavern and so Jack assumed, for the next forty years, that he’d killed both Salazar and the rest of his crew.

Over the next forty years, the Devil’s Triangle became a place of legend ( enough for Henry to be able to recognise it ). It was rumoured that any ship who strayed too close would disappear without trace ( much like the Bermuda Triangle myth ). Jack eventually hears about the rumours but thinks nothing of them, and certainly doesn’t put two and two together that his compass could potentially lead to Salazar’s escape.

#&. he plays things closer to the vest now ( headcanon. )#&. depths few had ever begun to glimpse ( meta tag. )#&. verse. bad luck dogs you day and night ( dmtnt. )#it's been three years and still my prevailing thought when it comes to this movie is #/how does jack's compass cause an earthquake/#/how does salazar know jack has a magical compass and that it can get him out of the triangle/#so here i am nixing it for the most part lmao #this movie is so poorly written it's not even funny #but anYWAY here this is for those rare occasions when i write in this verse lmao #it'll also be going up on the verse page :'))

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lettersfromn0where · 4 years ago

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Zutara Week 2020, Day 1: “Reunions”

IT’S ZUTARA WEEK BABEY *smoke nostrils emojis*! Here’s my contribution for Day 1 :) @zutaraweek

Title: the most beautiful thing (that I have never seen)

Summary: This should be no sweat. After all, Katara's had the entire duration of Zuko's trip to the Earth Kingdom to work herself up to task of giving him news that'll rock his world. That doesn't make said news any easier to get out, though.

A/N: I couldn't be more excited about my first Zutara week! I kinda went back to my roots for this with all of my favorite tropes: clueless Zuko! Affectionate Zuko! Protective/Worried Zuko! Kidfic! Fire Lady Katara! Domestic fluff! Screw Canon They've Been Happily Married For Decades! ...okay, Sarah, that's enough exclamation points *takes the box of exclamation points out of my hands*. Anyway. To kick off Zutara week, this one is just pure fun and fluff, and I hope it brings you joy - because that's the entire reason this exists.

Zuko has a feeling something is up when he steps onto the dock and he’s nearly knocked into the harbor by a blur of…something…flinging itself full-force at him. For a moment he remembers to be worried that this is some sort of improbable and incredibly strange assassination attempt but when the blur settles and he realizes that he’s feeling arms around his waist, holding on for dear life, he lets down his guard.

“I missed you,” the blur that Zuko now recognizes as his wife mumbles into his shoulder. He’s a little shell-shocked – he wasn’t expecting her to meet him – but he smiles softly, moving his arms from their startled paralysis at his sides to encircle her waist. Katara nuzzles against his neck. “I missed you, I missed you, I missed you-“

“I was only gone for a week,” he chuckles, privately wondering what’s going on here but too happy to see her to question it. “But I missed you, too. I’m glad to see you feeling better.”

(Even though it had been a short trip, one she’d been meant to accompany him on but had chosen not to when she’d come down with something the week before, he truly had. He could’ve used her assistance, and her conversation, and the pillow he had to cuddle with as he fell asleep in her absence – because, though he’d never admit it, he’d grown so used to falling asleep with her in his arms that he could no longer drift off easily without something there – was a rather poor substitute.)

“I’m still not feeling fantastic, but I’m doing better.” She leans back a little to look him in the eyes, and her smile is radiant and he almost falls into the harbor for the second time in five minutes. “How was Omashu?”

He groans, and that’s all the detail she needs. Linking her arm through his, the Fire Lady laughs and drags her husband (followed by a retinue of guards whose prying eyes she doesn’t seem to notice) to her waiting palanquin.

To Zuko’s surprise, Katara isn’t very chatty on the ride back to the palace. She’s clearly happy – to see him, probably, but he can’t shake the feeling that the smile on her face isn’t just for him – but a little nervous, too, wringing her hands in her lap. He takes one of them in his, both to still her and to feel her skin against his (something he never gets sick of after several years of touch starvation), and massages circles on the back of her hand. “Are you all right?” he asks, flipping her hand to trace the lines of her palm.

Her breath hitches and for a moment, when he glances up in surprise at the sound, she looks suspiciously close to teary-eyed. “Of course I am,” she says shakily, holding out her arms to him in a gesture for please hug me, NOW, or I believe I might cry. And as a wide-eyed and incredibly confused Zuko takes folds her into his arms, he finds himself at a total loss.

“Are you…” he’s almost afraid to ask. Something’s definitely going on here. What am I not understanding? “Is this about whatever you came down with last week?”

“I’m okay,” she says with a watery smile, sniffling. “It’s nothing bad. Don’t worry, I didn’t get sicker.”

He’s too relieved to notice that she doesn’t outright deny it. “Good.” He lets her snuggle up against him and his heart would be melting right now if Katara wasn’t crying for some unspecified reason of which he remains completely unaware.

(It still is, a little bit, but…this can’t be good.)

-----

Zuko is starting to be very worried about this.

Usually, he’s the earlier riser. He’s up at sunrise nearly every day, so he’s a little taken-aback when he opens his eyes to find Katara’s side of the bed empty, gone with no evidence that she was ever there but a person-shaped impression in the satin of their sheets. “Katara?” he calls groggily, rubbing at his eyes. “Where’d you go?”

She pads back down the corridor from their washroom when she hears Zuko’s voice. “Here,” she calls back softly; though there’s no one but him to wake up in this wing of the palace, it feels wrong to raise her voice in the quiet hours of the early dawn. She tries to smile reassuringly as she slides back under the covers and snuggles up to her husband, sleepily clinging to his neck, but he can’t help but notice that her expression is a little pinched. The relief on her face when she finally lays down is obvious, even though she’s nearly asleep.

“Are you still not feeling well?” Zuko asks, pushing a tendril of hair that escaped her braid overnight behind her ear. “Do we need to call-“

“No,” she mumbles sleepily. “’m fine.”

She drifts off after that, and even a few hours later when they have to wake up, she won’t get out of bed. It’s not like her to sleep in – she’s normally so industrious – but her eyes are heavy, and she looks miserable at the idea of starting her day. Zuko can’t bring himself to protest that she has meetings to attend (she does) or that there are documents to review (there are), but it worries him all day. She’s clearly not over her illness and the fact that it isn’t gone makes his stomach twist.

When he returns to their rooms that evening after an exhausting workday to find her passed out in the same clothes she wore to bed last night, he wonders if she’s moved an inch all day.

Zuko shakes his head. There’s definitely something she’s not telling me, he thinks as she sheds his robes and gets ready to join her in sleep (if he even can). It’s a thought that only feels like a dagger to the heart when she unconsciously presses herself closer to him, so trusting she’s drawn to him even as she sleeps.

He can’t let anything happen to her.

--------

It has been four days of this now, and Zuko is definitely worried - infinitely moreso because Katara won’t let him call in a doctor. One minute she’s burrowed in his arms like her life depends on it and the next she’s yelling at him, and he’s really on the verge of a nervous breakdown now-

“For the last time, I’m fine!” Katara snaps, turning her back to him. She’s been acting out-of-character lately, but this sheer, unadulterated rage is new. “You do not need to call the doctor, I’m not dying, and you’re not helping by worrying about me all the time!”

“How could you possibly expect me not to worry?” he yelps. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been” – he starts to tick off her symptoms on his fingers – “crying, sleeping badly, getting mad at nothing, sometimes not waking up at all, running off without telling me why, looking sick, eating almost nothing and then going and eating weird things at weird times – Katara, you’re not fine. And I can’t just sit here and watch you get sicker anymore.”

She hangs her head. “There’s a reason I’ve been running off,” she says quietly, seated at the end of their bed and looking…defeated. It’s not a look she wears often and Zuko’s already-frazzled brain has yet another item to add to its list of Things to Worry About now. “I’m…getting nauseous a lot.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Zuko’s face blanches. “You’re sick and you didn’t tell me?”

“This is exactly why!” she protests, throwing up her hands. “It was only ever going to freak you out, and I was waiting for the right time, and honestly, I kind of hoped you’d put two and two together but clearly you’re too dense to-“

“You’re really sick, aren’t you?” Zuko feels like the room is spinning. “Something’s-”

Katara crosses her arms, her defeated expression turning to one of…amusement? Zuko is rather confused – in an instant. “No, Zuko, I’m not sick,” she says, and he’s pretty sure she’s laughing at his expense. “I mean, yes, I am. I mean, feeling sick. But I’m not gonna die.”

“Then why won’t you tell me what’s actually wrong with you?” Between the information he’s just received and her latest sudden mood swing, Zuko is at wit’s end.

“You really haven’t figured it out yet?” she smirks, and, crawling to the other side of the bed where he stands, she sits up on her knees to stand at his eye level and loops her arms around his neck. “I’m not dying, Zuko. I’m pregnant.”

“You’re-“

Oh.

Zuko blinks a few times to make sure he’s not dreaming (or…hallucinating – it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’s ever experienced), and when he opens his eyes again, Katara’s still there, her blue eyes huge and level with his, waiting expectantly for a response.

(Expectantly. Zuko almost laughs at the fact that he’s so addled he’s making accidental puns now.)

“That makes so much more sense,” he says, breathing a long sigh of relief. Now he really is laughing, partly out of the delight that’s managed to seep through the cracks of ‘I need to process this’ and partly out of sheer relief, because she’s okay, and this is good. “So you’re okay?”

Katara rolls her eyes and pushes her nose against his. “Yes, idiot husband, I’m fine.” She leans in to steal a fleeting kiss. “But check back with me in seven months and I probably won’t have the same answer.”

Then it hits him like a ton of bricks, and his eyes are moist and he’s laughing and crying all at once and all he can think to do is reach down to lift her legs, scooping her off the bed and into his arms and pulling her closer than close. He doesn’t spin her (because he will not be a walking cliché…or, realistically, because his arms are trembling and he’s terrified he’ll drop her even though he does this often), but she gives a delighted little yelp of surprise as he cradles her to his chest, pressing kisses to every exposed surface of her face.

“Someone’s happy,” she teases, and he just kisses her.

“I am,” he says after they finally break apart. “Katara, I…” the lump in his throat won’t let words pass by. “I can’t…I’m sorry, this…I love you.”

He sets her back on the bed and she flops against the comforter, pulling him down with her. They’re laying parallel on the comforter on their backs but Zuko flips on his side to get a better look at her. (An awed smile overtakes his face, and he concludes that whoever it was that decided pregnant women glow was really onto something.) Katara notices, and reaches out to ruffle his hair.

“Aww,” she mutters, moving closer. “You’re cute when you’re speechless.”

They’re silent for a moment, lying there to let themselves take it all in, and then Katara takes his hands and sets them against her still-flat stomach. Zuko feels like he should say something, at first, but the thousand emotions running through his mind won’t let him. And that might be for the better, he realizes.

Words aren’t enough for this moment.

#zutara week #zutara week 2020 #day 1: reunions #myfic #fanfic #writing #mywriting #zutara #zuko #katara #atla #otp: i should be the one thanking you

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odanurr87 · 5 years ago

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2019: My year in K-Dramas - Part 2

And we’re back! So, um, yeah, this took a lot longer than I imagined at first, but the truth is I was also dealing with coursework and other projects. As a result, I decided to break this last post into two, so instead of 6 shows in 1 post, you get 6 shows across 2 posts, building anticipation like a kdrama! And, I mean, two of those shows are My Love from the Star and Descendants of the Sun... Those two powerhouses deserve a bit more attention, maybe a couple of rewatches. Anyway, let’s get this show on the road!

WARNING! I’ve purposefully kept any big spoilers out of this post but some light spoilers may remain. Proceed with caution.

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When the Camellia Blooms (2019)

Gong Hyo-Jin as Oh Dong-Baek and Kang Ha-Neul as Hwang Yong-Sik.

Release Date: September 18 - November 21, 2019

Episodes: 20

Available on: Netflix

Summary: Dong-Baek is a single mother who moves to the town of Ongsan to open up a bar, the Camellia, while trying to raise her son, Pil-Gu. Six years later, Yong-Sik, a police officer and the youngest son of Dong-Baek’s only friend in Ongsan, returns and is instantly smitten by her. Yong-Sik is determined to woo her but Dong-Baek is also equally determined to resist his advances at first, a situation that is further complicated by the sudden reappearance of Dong-Baek’s ex and Pil-Gu’s biological father, Kang Jong-Ryul, who tries to win her back. When a serial killer known as Joker resurfaces after years of inactivity threatening to go after Dong-Baek, Yong-Sik launches an investigation to catch the elusive Joker once and for all.

What I liked:

The down-to-earth feel of the show. Save for the murder mystery element of the show, When the Camellia Blooms is pretty down-to-earth, depicting characters that could very much exist in our neighbourhood and exploring problems related to everyday life. How many kdramas show the struggles of a single mom trying to handle a love life while raising her son? I bet there are not a lot of them, and the only similar one I’ve watched, and would recommend, is One Spring Night, that depicts the life of a single dad balancing a romantic relationship while raising his son (it’s probably a more realistic representation all around down even to side characters). Even Yong-Sik is not the idealized male protagonist that most kdramas favour, at one point referred to as a “country bumpkin” by Dong-Baek’s ex, and while he may come across as rather simple-minded, he’s also refreshingly honest, determined (both in his pursuit of Dong-Baek and Joker), hard-working, and always there when the chips fall. While Dong-Baek’s ex is an ass for the majority of the show, I appreciated his inclusion because it clearly showed the contrast between the two characters vying for Dong-Baek’s affections: the man who pities her, and the man who encourages her; the man who’s ashamed of how she’s living her life, and the man who’s proud of what she has accomplished; the man who loves his memory of her, and the man who loves her as she is now; her past, and her present. Which one of the two will become her future?

The supporting cast. I am going to put them all together in the same bag as I don’t think anyone was particularly outstanding, but they all contributed to making this show a most entertaining watch from beginning to end: from Yong-Sik’s superior and chief of police, Byun Bae-Soo (played by Jeon Bae-Soo), through the simple-minded landlord with political aspirations, Noh Gyu-Tae (played by Oh Jung-Se), his cunning wife and ace attorney, Hong Ja-Young (played by Yeom Hye-Rae), to Dong-Baek’s kleptomaniac friend, Choi Hyang-Mi (played by Son Dam-Bi). At one point I even became more interested in the relationship between the characters of Gyu-Tae and Ja-Young, so strong were their performances. And I couldn’t help but feel sad for Hyang-Mi despite her many opportunistic deeds, a character who’s had a life as unforgiving as Dong-Baek, especially when we learn the reason behind some of her actions, and happy for her when she realises family isn’t always blood and ultimately chooses to walk a path of redemption. Sure wish we had seen more of that. You could make the case that Gyu-Tae and Hyang-Mi are the best out of the supporting cast, perhaps because of how much their characters grow over the course of the show.

What I didn’t like:

How the murder-mystery was handled/resolved. The first episode starts with the murder of an unknown person at some unspecified point in the future, a typical enough hook. We’re shown that person is someone who Yong-Sik apparently knew and cared for, but even when later episodes extend that scene frame by frame, tempting the audience to participate in this game of whodunit, the identity is only allowed to be revealed when the series catches up to that moment. The murder mystery element is sprinkled throughout the series as Yong-Sik is intent on protecting Dong-Baek and catching the serial killer Joker. But this isn’t Broadchurch, where the entire show revolves around solving the murder mystery and seeing its effects on the people of the small town of Dorset. No, in a way, the murder mystery in When the Camellia Blooms feels like a strategy, designed so that when the real goal of the show is revealed, the exploration of motherhood, you’ll be too invested to back out. One could argue the same for the romance between Dong-Baek and Yong-Sik. As a result, the murder-mystery feels drawn out and starts losing some of its steam as we approach the final episodes. Involving Dong-Baek’s mother in the whole affair was oddly convenient but felt out of place and worked against the show. Here we have a woman who knows, or thinks she knows, who the killer is several episodes before the end, and not only does she not tell the police about it but she actually confronts the killer. In any other show, the outcome would have been inevitable: the woman is murdered, leaving the police another clue as to who might have done it. However, since the show has already planned a happy ending for this character, she can’t be killed (incidentally, this happens with another character as well), even if the show later tries to toy with our feelings by suggesting she’s dead (not because of Joker though). The reveal of the culprit’s identity was a letdown, not only because the writers showed their hand early on but because we were never really given good suspects to begin with, and in a murder mystery that’s essential. Yes, we’re given a good pool of suspects for Joker’s latest victim, but since we also know Joker killed other people and is targeting Dong-Baek, not to mention the tone and themes of the show, we can readily eliminate almost all of them. They could’ve toyed around with the idea of a copycat, killing a person and pinning it on Joker, but they didn’t. And don’t get me started on how they finally catch Joker, this dreaded serial killer who had managed to avoid capture for years but turned out be to a bit of a joke, pun intended.

How insufferable Pil-Gu became towards the end. To be fair, I blame the adults (and writers) in this show more than I do Pil-Gu. I had no qualms about how his character had been handled for most of the show, but then along came Episode 17, where the writers decided to amp the drama to 11 just for the sake of it, a trope I really don’t like. Basically, through a series of misunderstandings that no adult feels compelled to clear up, Pil-Gu throws a tantrum, accusing her mother of not loving him anymore, and why does she need to get married, and why can’t she live alone with him for the rest of her life, etc., etc., forgetting it was Pil-Gu who, earlier that episode, had asked Yong-Sik to stay at their home and protect his mom. Like I said, nobody even bothers to explain the situation to him (even though he’s shown to be pretty smart and should’ve probably figured it out himself) and, worse, Dong-Baek plays along and decides to break up with Yong-Sik, determined never to love anyone other than Pil-Gu for the rest of her life. Jesus. As if wanting to twist the knife further, Episode 18 ends with a grown-up Pil-Gu, a jarring and decidedly out-of-place transition, suggesting he grew up to be a fine man as a result of her mom’s decision, but anyone who’s ever watched a kdrama knows better than that: you’re just padding out events for the sake of drama and this show didn’t need that. At this point, I lost whatever appreciation I might have had for the character of Pil-Gu and was half rooting for Yong-Sik to be promoted and get his ass back to Seoul ASAP, never to return to Ongsan again.

The existence of Episode 18. Yes, this is the episode where Dong-Baek and Yong-Sik break up, but that’s not what I’m getting at as I discussed that point previously. Episode 18 also sees Pil-Gu suddenly want to live with his biological father out of a misunderstanding (so many misunderstandings in these last few episodes!) and Kang Jong-Ryul try to act as that father to him. It’s clear he’s out of his depth with Pil-Gu, but he seems to be trying so it feels jarring when Dong-Baek returns for Pil-Gu and punches him in the face. Look, Jong-Ryul has been a bit of an ass throughout so he has more than earned that punch but not in this context. The show immediately kicks in the music that depicts this as a moment of triumph and personal growth for Dong-Baek but I kept thinking, “The one time this dude is actually trying to step up to the plate, assuming his responsibilities as a father, and he gets punched for it? Sure, he’s not that great but he’s only had Pil-Gu for, what, a week? Less? And it’s not like he kidnapped him or anything. This doesn’t even make sense.” And what growth are we talking about when she immediately caters to the whims of a kid and breaks up with Yong-Sik? Who is the adult in this relationship? Are there any adults in this show? There’s a decidedly marked absence of fathers, and those there are aren’t shown in a very good light but that’s another matter. Episode 18 is, quite simply, an episode that shouldn’t exist as it really brings nothing to the table and only pads out the inevitable.

OTP: While not my #1 pick amongst the shows I watched in 2019, it was refreshingly different, with the show slowly building their relationship in spite of Yong-Sik’s relentless attempts to woo Dong-Baek. In any other show, such determination could’ve come across as annoying, perhaps bordering on harassment, but this is mitigated by Yong-Sik’s sincere personality, his active listening of Dong-Baek’s problems, his support and encouragement of her, and ultimately his respect of the boundaries set by Dong-Baek, a woman who is not accustomed to such repeated shows of affection and is ill-equipped to handle them. It was very rewarding to see her evolution as a character, finding the confidence to grow out of her shell, even if there were some flaws in the journey.

Verdict: While the show trips a little at the end it was a solid watch, and I could see myself returning to it every once in a while because of its mundane (and I’m using this word as a compliment here) aspects. It doesn’t hurt it has some good humour in between all the crying. Oh, yes, there’s a reason why I chose that particular gif to represent the relationship between Yong-Sik and Dong-Baek.

Rewatch meter: I’m going to cheat and say it’s Medium-to-High.

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Bring it on, ghost (2016)

Kim So-Hyun as Kim Hyun-Ji, and Ok Taec-Yeon as Park Bong-Pal.

Release Date: July 11 - August 30, 2016

Episodes: 16

Available on: Netflix, Viki

Summary: Park Bong-Pal is a 2nd year Economics student with a side job as an exorcist due to his strange ability to see ghosts, a fact that has prevented him from having a normal life and that he deeply resents. One night, while performing an exorcism at a high school, he comes across Kim Hyun-Ji, a former high school student turned wandering spirit, who has no recollection of her past but possesses an innate talent to fight ghosts and spot their weak points. During this encounter, the two accidentally kiss, and Hyun-Ji briefly recalls some of her memories. Convinced Bong-Pal holds the key to her memories and determined to find out more, she manages to persuade a reluctant Bong-Pal to let her move in in exchange for helping him fight ghosts. But Bong-Pal soon learns that not all ghosts are evil, and some may be even cute enough to fall for.

What I liked:

Kim So-Hyun as Kim Hyun-Ji. Do I need to add anything further? That picture should be enough evidence in and of itself. Kim So-Hyun looks like she’s having a blast acting as a kickass high-school student/ghost who has a penchant for upsetting Bong-Pal and looking criminally cute while doing so. With a personality like that, it’s no wonder Bong-Pal couldn’t help but fall for her. Who wouldn’t? Perhaps what makes her character so lovable is precisely the fact that she works off of Bong-Pal’s more curt personality. As they say, opposites attract.

Lee David as Kim In-Rang and Kang Ki-Young as Choi Cheon-Sang.

The humor. I’ll admit that I miscalculated with these two in the beginning, resigning myself to having to endure their interventions in what I felt was shaping up to be an otherwise great show. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find they made for some good comic relief, especially after they convince Bong-Pal to let them handle the business side of exorcising ghosts and join him and Hyun-Ji in their nightly escapades. That sounded better in my head. The humor is never crass and, most importantly, it never outlasts its welcome. Hey, they even try to do him a solid and hitch him with his crush, but Hyun-Ji has already managed to work her magic on him unbeknownst to her. In fact, much of the show’s humor is also a credit to the comedic rapport between the characters of Bong-Pal and Hyun-Ji, especially in the earlier episodes when their different personalities are most notable, but also later on when feelings of jealousy start to surface. Their playful bickering is often reproduced in some of the background music used and is also present in some of the ghost fights as if saying, “Yeah, we’re fighting a pervert ghost in a sauna and having a blast, what of it?”

The formula. What do I mean by that? For the most part, this show works like a procedural, with Hyun-Ji and Bong-Pal fighting the ghost of the week in each successive episode, while at the same time having a multi-episodic story-arc. This is the formula used in US TV shows: introduce an interesting story-arc in the first few episodes, then forget all about it until the final episodes of the season, with filler episodes in between. The difference being Bring it on, Ghost is actually a good procedural: there are no filler episodes, every ghost fight serves a purpose, whether it be to develop our protagonists (at times providing interesting backstory) or to strengthen their bond, and the main story-arc is always subtly running in the background until the paths of our protagonists and villain cross and events come to a head. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, US TV shows should seriously consider having shorter and tighter seasons, as their quality suffers otherwise. Bong Pal and Hyun-Ji’s ghost fights will also sometimes include moral or life lessons that flow naturally and never feel forced; nobody’s beating you over the head with them and shouting, “DO YOU GET IT NOW?!” As you can imagine, they’re certainly more subtle than US TV shows, but then again kdramas seem to have mastered the art of telling a lot without actually saying it, something others could learn from.

What I didn’t like:

The amnesia trope. Look, before you say anything, I understand why it’s there, sorta, it’s a reversal of Kim Hyun-Ji’s clinginess (that is an actual word) to Bong-Pal, if for different reasons. I don’t mind that it happened, but what I do mind is that it’s never reversed, making it somewhat difficult to believe that she’d fall for a stranger in what appears to be a very short amount of time. You could argue she’s unconsciouscly attracted to him given their past connection, and the show does at one point suggest that she may be regaining her memories, or that it’s possible at least, but nothing comes of it. This sudden bout of amnesia also offers her temporary protection from the villain, but at the end of the day I am left thinking that the show could’ve done without it or reverse it at the very end.

OTP: It’s a team effort, but Kim So-Hyun kills it!

Verdict: An infinitely rewatchable show with an all-around solid cast and great sense of humor. Like Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon, this show is sure to put a smile on your face if you’re feeling down or if you simply want to have a good time.

Rewatch meter: High

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One More Time (2016)

Kim Myung Soo as Yoo Tan, and Yoon So-Hee as Moon Da-In.

Release Date: October 26 - December 14, 2016

Episodes: 8

Available on: Netflix

Summary: Yoo Tan is the lead singer of an indie band called One More Time, together with his girlfriend, Moon Da-In, and his childhood friends. However, with bills mounting and his hopes for success dwindling, his relationships take a turn for the worse. When he’s offered to sign a contract with a music label, Yoo Tan sees his long-awaited chance and decides to burn all bridges to his past life, but an unexpected event that forces him to constantly relive the past twenty-four hours makes him reconsider his outlook on life.

What I liked:

The concept. The idea of being stuck in a time loop is not a particularly new one, with Groundhog Day being the most obvious, and highly entertaining, exponent, although I do remember an episode of Stargate SG-1 called “Window of Opportunity” that exploited the same concept, if to a different effect. As in Groundhog Day, One More Time uses this idea as a vehicle of self-reflection for the main character, transforming him from a bitter, selfish, and somewhat egocentric person, to someone far more likable, who recognises the value in the friendships he has forged and rediscovers the love he holds for the woman who has always been there for him. But this is only the prelude to our story as One More Time extends this concept by providing a reason for the time loop: tying it to Moon Da-In’s life, or death. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character, Phil, is eventually confronted by the fact that, for all the things he can do as a result of the day resetting, he cannot prevent death no matter how hard he tries. This is a sobering moment for our main character. However, Yoo Tan goes through an even more harrowing crucible, as the person whose death he seemingly cannot prevent is his girlfriend, Da-In. Thus, the series shows us Yoo Tan’s many attempts to save her while delving into Da-In’s past. Will he succeed and get a second chance at a life with Da-In? I guess you’ll have to watch the show for that.

youtube

The songs. With a running time of 240 minutes, give or take, don’t expect a large soundtrack (compared to most kdramas), but I believe that is something that actually works in the show’s favour, as the songs are always used to highlight a given context, thus engraving them in your mind and rendering them memorable. I don’t really know how to explain it, and I blame my musical illiteracy. Sadly, the powers that be didn’t think that such a short web series was worthy of having a physical or even digital soundtrack release, what made finding any trace of these songs rather difficult for the past few years. Fortunately, one of the composers and singer, known as ODD, has recently released some tracks on her YouTube channel. These are: ‘Moonlight,’ ‘Birds,’ ‘Without you,’ and ‘In this night.’ While ‘Moonlight’ is my personal favourite, all four tracks are entirely deserving of being released, at least on Spotify so I can listen to them over and over again. With Spotify apparently coming to South Korea this year, that may yet be the case. There is also the main song, ‘One More Time,’ sang by none other than Kim Myung Soo himself in perhaps the most emotional scene in the drama, but it still remains elusive.

The leads and their chemistry. I had absolutely no trouble believing these two were in love with their longing stares and beautiful smiles. Kim Myung Soo and Yoon So-Hee did an incredible job (and the writers too, obviously) selling me on their relationship in such a short amount of time. At every point in the show I could understand where the characters were coming from, how much they cared for one another, and why they’d go to great lengths to protect their better half. Yes, they go through a rough patch at the beginning of the show, but that only makes it feel more real and it’s a necessary stepping stone in Yoo Tan’s character arc. I also really liked how the show took the time to explore Da-In’s past and see events from her perspective, highlighting just how central her character is to the plot of the story. Can’t say anymore for fear of spoilers. Really wish these two actors were to collaborate again in main roles.

Kim Ji-Young as the Grim Reaper. The way the show integrated a Grim Reaper was well thought out, and making her a child was a stroke of genius played to great comedic effect. I mean, who’d think this cute child was the embodiment of Death? Her childlike appearance is contrasted by her adult personality, and you can see she’s more than a bit fed up with troublesome humans who make her job more difficult than it already is, and she grows increasingly annoyed at a particular pair of them. I’ll let you guess who. Come to think of it, she reminds me a little of the older version of Samshin, the goddess of birth and fate, from Goblin. A great character all around without whom the show would be considerably lessened.

What I didn’t like:

Honestly, there’s really nothing that comes to mind. Sure, I could nitpick and say that some characters and storylines are dropped midway through the show, but I think it’s fair to say they had served their purpose, and trying to account for them in later episodes would’ve wasted the show’s valuable runtime. Could it have benefited from having a few more episodes? I suppose it’s possible, and I would’ve welcomed the chance to spend more time with these characters, but I believe the show was effective in telling its story across eight episodes, and any more could have placed the narrative under considerable stress. For instance, while I absolutely love Angel’s Last Mission: Love (incidentally, also starring Kim Myung Soo), one has to admit the plot was stretched longer than it needed to, and certain events do not hold up under further scrutiny.

OTP:

There is no sadness that last for eternity. There is no love that lasts for eternity either.

I’m going to vote that there is.

Which one are you voting for? Love or sadness?

Sad love.

Verdict: They say that good things come in small doses. If so, that fits this show perfectly. It was my introduction to Kim Myung Soo, who would then go on to deliver a stronger performance in Angel’s Last Mission: Love, as well as my introduction to Yoon So-Hee, whom I’d love to see in more main roles. While delivered in a short format I’m not used to, the show’s creators made the most of it and not a single minute feels wasted. An interesting concept that benefits from some tight writing, beautiful music, solid leads, and a lovable OTP, packaged as a mini-series. What more could I want?

Rewatch meter: High

#kdrama #kdramas #one more time #when the camellia blooms #let's fight ghost #bring it on ghost #kim myung soo #kim so hyun #gong hyo jin #kang ha neul #ok taecyeon #yoon so hee #review #netflix #viki

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verus-veritas · 5 years ago

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Senior Picture

By Cris Kane

Shawn had looks. He had a killer body. He had mad skills on the football field.

What he didn’t have was a lot of money.

So while other members of his class were hiring top-notch photographers to take their senior pictures, Shawn had to search for whoever could do it cheap. Around here, the cheapest shutterbug was “Navajo Joe”.

That’s what all the kids had been calling the short, skinny Native American kid from tenth grade since he and his family moved to town a few years back. Navajo Joe’s real first name was indeed Joseph, although no one knew if he was a Navajo or even bothered to ask what his background was. In general, he was just ignored, although behind his back, many of the jocks referred to him as “Nava-homo”. Not only was he small, thin and frail, sometimes staying out of school for weeks at a time for unspecified illnesses, but raised suspicions by excelling at anything artistic. While he never did anything overtly gay (besides being artistic), he did show up with his still camera at nearly every sporting event held at the high school and he seemed to focus his camera most intensely on the handsomest, hunkiest boys. At every football and basketball game, every swim or track meet, every wrestling match, Joseph could be found, hovering on the periphery, zooming in for the best angles. He used a vintage camera that still took photos on actual film and, after he developed the pictures, he would bring them in to the school newspaper for publication.

Shawn didn’t know much about art – or about much of anything besides football, to be honest – but he did know that, whenever his photo showed up in the school paper credited to Joseph, Shawn looked really cool in it. Not that any photographer could mess up terribly when taking a picture of the well-built senior with his shaggy brown hair, intense eyes, boyish upturned nose, firm lips and strong chin. But Joseph seemed to have a knack for snapping his shutter when Shawn was at peak awesomeness. Shawn’s girlfriend Madison had started keeping a scrapbook of all the photos of Shawn that appeared in the paper, so she could feast her eyes on Shawn during those rare waking moments when she let him out of her sight. Her favorite was probably one of Shawn at quarterback during the homecoming game, his facial features in perfect profile against the stadium lights, his right arm cocked back to throw, revealing just how pumped Shawn’s biceps were. Further down, Shawn’s spandex football pants embraced the bulging curves of his glutes and did nothing to hide the generous endowment lurking behind the laces on the front.

Madison was the one who urged Shawn last week to ask Joseph’s services for his senior portrait. When Joseph returned from one of his frequent absences on Monday, Shawn tracked him down in the hallway between classes. At first, Joseph acted afraid he was going to get beaten up when he saw Shawn walking quickly toward him in the hallway. Shawn grabbed Joseph by the arm so tightly that the skin indented and turned white, not returning to its natural cinnamon brown shade for a full minute after Shawn let him go.

“What do you want?”, Joseph mumbled, casting his worried gray eyes up at Shawn.

“Chill, Nava…Joe.” Shawn grinned disarmingly, but Joseph looked suspicious. “I just wanted to say I liked the pictures of me you’ve been taking for the school paper.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks.” Joseph indicated relief that a jock was actually being civil to him, but he still stood with his limbs tense, ready to bolt if necessary.

“My girlfriend loves the pictures too, and she was wondering…well, I was wondering too…if you’d be willing to take my senior picture for the yearbook.”

Joseph’s body relaxed and he smiled with relief. “Why, sure, I’d be happy to.”

“I can’t afford to pay you much. Both of my folks are out of work right now, and I don’t have much saved up, but…”

Joseph waved off his apologies. “I’ll do it for free. It’d be a great opportunity.”

Shawn’s grin widened, revealing a movie-star smile. “For serious? Awesome! When?”

Joseph started to get excited. “How about after school today?”

Shawn shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I got football practice.”

“We can do it after practice is over. We can go out by my house. There’s some great scenery we could use as a backdrop.”

Joseph’s extreme eagerness was starting to give Shawn second-thoughts. He looked down at what he was wearing: a long-sleeved plaid shirt with jeans and work boots. “I’m not sure I’m dressed right for photos today.”

“Are you kidding? You look fabulous!” Inside his head, Joseph was kicking the shit out of himself. Fabulous? He never said that word, but suddenly it fell out of his mouth as soon as he found himself talking to the school’s number-one stud. He knew the jocks’ secret nickname for him, and knew how accurate it was, but he didn’t want to blow this chance by acting like a cliche. He backpedaled. “What I mean is, you don’t want to be in the yearbook looking like some douchebag in a suit and a tie with your hair all fussed over. You want to look normal. You want to look the way you really look. Like you do right now.”

Shawn couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t want to look like some pretty-boy model posed in a studio. “You promise I’ll look bad-ass?”

“How could you not?” How could you not??? Way to go, Joseph, you’re sounding less and less like a regular guy the more you blather on. Just shut up before it gets any worse. “So, after practice tonight?”

“After practice tonight.”

---

Not wanting to be taunted by the jocks, Joseph didn’t hang around the football field or the locker room, but waited in the parking lot until Shawn was done with practice. When Shawn finally emerged, his hair was tousled, his shirt untucked, its top two buttons undone. As Shawn unlocked his rusty 4x4, he asked Joseph, “I don’t know the way, so I guess I’ll need to follow you.”

Joseph looked sheepish. “I don’t have a car. I take the bus.”

Shawn had forgotten how young Joseph was. He unlocked the passenger door and said, “Okay, hop in.”

Shawn swung by his house to grab a few cans of Bud from his dad’s mini-fridge in the unfinished basement. He offered one to Joseph, who politely declined. Shawn chugged two beers as the truck bounced along the dusty backroad that led to Joseph’s place. Shawn had hoped the beer would loosen him up, since he was self-conscious about the idea of posing for pictures, particularly for someone who was probably a fag. Not that he had a problem with gay people. At least not as much as some of the other jocks. Hey, maybe fags take the best pictures because they like what they’re seeing, Shawn thought. Although if that was the case, then Madison should be able to take the best pictures in the world, because she couldn’t keep her eyes or her hands off Shawn whenever they were together.

Shawn liked Madison a whole lot. With her wavy blond hair, big green eyes and porn-actress lips, she was definitely the hottest of the cheerleaders, and she worked just as hard to keep in good shape as Shawn did. She wore her cheerleading sweater to school as many days as possible because she knew just how spectacular it made her boobs look, and it never failed to get him hard when she would leap in the air and her skirt would fly up to reveal her panties and her great ass. It was true she could get clingy sometimes. For the past couple of weeks, it was like she wanted to be with him 24 hours a day. Fortunately she had mellowed out in the last day or two. Musta been her period or something. But mostly, he was happy to be her boyfriend and he knew how jealous the rest of his teammates were that he was the guy who Madison pursued.

They finally reached the top of the hill, where Joseph said meekly, “This is my place. It doesn’t look like much on the outside, but the outside keeps you from seeing how bad it looks inside.” Poor as his family was, Shawn suddenly felt like a millionaire compared to anyone who had to live in a dump like this. It had a sagging roof, a ramshackle porch, windows repaired with duct tape and a front yard consisting of dirt and rusty car parts.

A haunted scarecrow of a man with long white hair and the skin of a brown elephant opened the squeaky screen door and stepped onto the dilapidated porch. He eyed the strange truck with suspicion until Joseph leapt out of the passenger door and shouted, “It’s okay, this is a friend of mine from school.” Joseph smiled over at Shawn. “That’s my father. He’s scary at first, but when you get to know him…he’s terrifying.” Shawn had no doubt. “I’m gonna run in and get my camera. Be back in a minute.”

Joseph dashed swiftly across the pitiful “lawn” and into the house. Shawn was impressed by Joseph’s speed, especially for someone who’d just been so sick he couldn’t go to school. Maybe he should encourage the kid to join the track team next spring. Clearly he needed something positive in his life, and if Shawn vouched for Joseph, he was sure he could get the other jocks to lay off on the razzing and the mean jokes.

Shawn waved to Joseph’s father and called out, “How you doing today?” The old man merely stared, coolly appraising the young man and his truck. As a wind swept through, creating a cloud of dirt between them, Joseph stepped back outside carrying his camera and a tripod.

He sprinted over to the truck and told Shawn to follow him. “Bring your football.” Shawn jogged back to the truck and grabbed a ball from the cab, then cast a look back at Joseph’s father, who remained stern and unhappy.

Joseph scrambled easily up steep paths, increasing Shawn’s admiration for the wiry kid’s athleticism. He had assumed Joseph was just a wimpy art geek, but get this kid in a weight room and give him a year or two to grow, he might even be football material.

When they reached the top of the hill, Shawn was amazed by the natural beauty of the valley around them. “Shit, it’s awesome up here.”

“Yeah, I like to come up here and stare at the horizon and think about my future. The sunsets up here are spectac…they’re awesome.”

“I bet. So what should I do?”

Joseph pointed Shawn toward a rock outcropping near the edge of a cliff. “Stand over there. I can get all the hills and the trees behind you.”

Shawn set down the football, walked over and stood stiffly, facing directly at Joseph, arms hanging awkwardly at his sides. Joseph placed the camera on a tripod and looked through the eyepiece, then frowned. “No, I need you to relax. Be natural.”

Shawn tried but he was still too self-conscious. He fidgeted with his arms, having no idea where to put his hands. Joseph realized the problem and grabbed the football. “Here!” He gave the ball a wobbly toss more or less in Shawn’s direction. Shawn easily snagged it with one hand, although it sent him slightly off balance. A lesser athlete might have toppled over the edge. “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!”, Joseph yelled.

“No problem,” Shawn grinned back. Okay, maybe Joseph wasn’t football material.

“I want you to grip your ball and stare at the horizon like you’re looking downfield.” Shawn did as he was told. Giving him a prop to hold had made a world of difference. “Turn a little to your right.” Better still. Joseph risked making another suggestion. “Could you maybe unbutton a couple more buttons of your shirt?”

Shawn hesitated. Was this all part of Joseph’s plan? To get him out here and have him take off his clothes so he could have pictures to jack off to? Wait, he was the one who asked Joseph to take the pictures. Stop bein’ such a dick, Shawn thought. He loosened two more buttons, offering a peek at the pecs he’d spent so much time perfecting in the gym over the summer.

Joseph grinned approvingly. “That looks awesome. You ever thought of being a model, Shawn?” Shawn laughed off the suggestion. “I’m serious. I don’t think you appreciate all you’ve got going for you.”

Shawn was starting to feel uncomfortable again, and the buzz from those beers was really kicking in. He just wanted this over with. “Quit stalling and take the pictures, okay?”

Joseph nodded and looked through the viewfinder. “Did you ever hear that old story about how when the first Native Americans saw cameras, they refused to let anyone take their picture because it would steal their soul?”

“Yeah, I think I heard something about that. I always thought it was just bullshit.”

“Yeah, me too. Funny thing, though. I asked my father about it. And you know what? He told me it was true.”

Joseph snapped the shutter on the camera and the clicking sound reverberated in Shawn’s ears, repeating and repeating like it was caught in a loop. Shawn’s skin tingled all over while his muscles stiffened. Inside, he felt panicked as he realized he couldn’t move any part of his body. It was as if he had become frozen in time at the moment Joseph took the photo. His eyes remained fixed on the horizon and he couldn’t move them in any direction. He suddenly felt an incredible desire to itch his nose, to lick his lips, to scratch his balls, to do ANYTHING physical, but he was powerless. As if that sensation weren’t disturbing enough, he suddenly felt as if he were drifting out of his body – almost as if he were seeping out of his pores and becoming a vapor. Eventually, when he felt his entire being had escaped the confines of his body, he seemed to coalesce, his spirit – his soul – shrinking, becoming denser until it seemed to converge into a single particle that zoomed at light speed toward the lens of Joseph’s camera. He was disoriented as his very being was warped through the heavy glass of the camera’s lens until he was finally trapped inside the camera itself as a shapeless entity.

“Can you hear me, Shawn?” The voice was booming and echoey, like Joseph’s voice but heard from a long distance away in a deep canyon.

Shawn’s trapped being, or whatever you wanted to call it, could somehow hear the voice, and he discovered that he could psychically “speak” back to the voice, despite no longer having a tongue or a mouth. “What did you do to me?”

Joseph’s camera remained on the tripod, while Joseph sat beside it on the ground, eyes closed in a meditative state so he could communicate with Shawn’s trapped soul.

“My father taught me how to capture the souls of others in my camera, then teleport my own soul into their bodies.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“You’re stuck in a camera, Shawn. Does that seem like I’m shitting you?”

Although his soul had no eyes, Shawn could somehow look out through the lens and perceive his body, still standing frozen in position on the cliffside. “Why are you doing this?”

“First of all, because I can. I mean, if you had a choice to be either me or you, wouldn’t you choose you? Second of all, so that I can support my family.”

“Doesn’t look like you’re doing a great job of that so far,” said Shawn’s snide disembodied voice.

“I’m still only learning. But I’ve been on the lookout for a body that I could really do something with.”

“So all those pictures you took at the games, you were stealing people’s souls?”

“No, I have to concentrate to make it happen, so I only steal the souls that I really want. Like Madison’s.”

“What? You did this to Madison?”

“Yeah. A couple of weeks ago. I got her alone after cheerleading practice and asked if I could take her picture. And, zap, she was trapped in the camera just like you are now, while I took over her body.”

If Shawn’s soul had a head, it would be swimming. "So, wait, for the last two weeks, Madison…”

“Has been me, that’s right.” Shawn could hear a wicked smile in Joseph’s voice. “Every time you kissed her, every time she jerked you off, every time she blew you, that was me.”

Holy shit, Shawn thought. He had wondered why Madison had been so eager to give him blow jobs lately. “That’s sick.”

“I got the impression you enjoyed it at the time.”

“You did that just so you could have sex with me?”

“Not exactly. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed being so close to you, but being stuck in a straight girl just felt…icky. No, I had to use her to convince you to let Joseph take your picture. You would never have asked ‘Nava-homo’ to take pictures of you if your girlfriend hadn’t said how hot you looked in his photos. Once I – well, Madison – had planted that idea in your mind, Madison’s soul went back into her body, with no memory that anything unusual had happened to her, and I returned to school in as my dumb old self.”

Joseph’s body began to shake violently, as if something were escaping it at a rapid speed. Instantaneously, Shawn’s body began to vibrate. Joseph felt his spirit overtaking Shawn’s frame, his lifeforce oozing its way through Shawn’s bones, his muscles, his brain. The transition from his own scrawny body into Shawn’s was overwhelming to Joseph. While his training period had allowed him to enter other bodies that were larger than his, including his own father’s, none had previously possessed the strength, the poise and the confidence of Shawn. As Joseph acclimated to his new shape, the body began to move, balancing itself quickly before it could topple over the cliff. He clutched the football in his hands and had a comforting sense that Shawn’s body mechanics and agility were still intact even without Shawn’s soul. He glanced down at the gap in his open shirt and admired the well-honed musculature underneath. He lifted a mighty fist and appreciated how the folds of fabric stretched and strained over the pumped biceps. Taking over Madison was a means to an end. Taking over Shawn was Joseph’s wet dream. Shawn’s cock expanded to a rock-hard eight inches just from Joseph’s thoughts about what he would be able to do in this body.

Joseph looked over and saw his body collapsed on the ground beside the camera on its tripod. He walked over, enjoying the swagger that came automatically with this body, and spoke softly into the camera. “Shawn, I can’t hear you any more, but you should still be able to hear me. I’m not sure how long I’ll be in here, but don’t worry, my father will make sure nothing happens to you until I return. And I promise, I would never let anything bad happen to this body.” Joseph placed one of Shawn’s hands under his shirt and rubbed his smooth tanned skin.

Joseph, as Shawn, easily flung Joseph’s inert body over one shoulder and grabbed the camera and tripod with the other. He walked back to the house and left the camera and his old body with his father, then strode manfully back to the 4x4. He got into the driver’s seat and roared the engine to life. He had driven in enough other bodies by now that he could practically take a driver’s exam if he wanted to. He waved goodbye to his father, who could psychically make out the muffled screams of Shawn’s soul inside the camera.

Shawn did not show up for school the next day, and his parents told the school that he had never come home the night before, although his father did note that some cans of Budweiser had gone missing. No one had seen Shawn when he drove off, and his 4x4 was missing. Shawn’s girlfriend was questioned but she couldn’t think of anything that might have caused him to vanish, although the police found it suspicious that her memories of the past two weeks appeared to be astonishingly vague.

Joseph also did not show up for school the next day, but nobody noticed much. People were so used to him being out sick that this attracted no undue attention. He wasn’t a very memorable kid.

About a week later, Joseph’s father received a letter from California, in which Joseph described his adventures so far. He had ditched the 4x4 fairly quickly, to avoid being spotted, and with the help of family members scattered across the country, had made his way to the coast via various forms of transportation. He had already had meetings for possible representation as a model and hoped to be able to start sending checks back home soon. (There were other things Joseph planned to do with this body to make some extra money – things that Shawn would never have done and which Joseph’s father never needed to hear about.)

Just in case the police ever connected them to Shawn’s disappearance, Joseph’s father burnt the letter as well as a photo that Joseph had enclosed. It showed “Shawn” lying on a California beach in white shorts, hair clipped into a buzz cut and newly bleached to platinum blond, his softball-sized deltoids and biceps practically bursting through his golden skin.

In the photo, he was staring at the horizon, pondering the bright future ahead of him.

Source: “Senior Picture” by Cris Kane on Gay Spiral Stories

#possession #jock #soul #magic #gss

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minecraftoworymode · 5 years ago

Text

local admin discovers this CRAZY life hack, other admins HATE him! click to find out more -->

no but seriously what the hell kind of drama is bad enough that you kill one of your best friends and torture the other for an unspecified but presumably quite lengthy amount of time? did fred start kinning one of romeo’s ‘no doubles’ IDs? did they accuse romeo of being a homestuck and, having no way to deny the truth, he killed them in a blind panic? they didn’t play romeo’s nine-hour oblivion mod and he took this as a supreme betrayal? romeo wouldn’t get off the xbox when it was xara’s turn? what led to them fighting “for control of the world”?

i mean, given how much romeo wants friends you’d think that for him to consciously yeet the only ones he had there’d have to be a really good reason for it, right? right??

[well, at least it’s free real estate. everything in this post is headcanon territory, so to save both of us the trouble of having to read “i think” or “probably” or “evidence suggests” every two sentences i’ll be speaking as if this actually happened. but if anyone else has an idea of what the heck happened, i’d love to hear others’ takes!!!]

big Fs in the chat tonight, pals. for all that he wants people to like him, romeo is really, really, REALLY bad at going about it like a normal person. (ESPECIALLY in canon. like. frankly it’s almost to the point of seeming intentional because NO ONE can be that dense about being such an absolute and utter scoundrel. who does things that actively malicious without being aware of how hurtful it is? even capitalists generally know they’re being bastards. canon, man. i dont know.)

but- he wasn’t always quite that bad at it. it’s just that once you’ve tripped and spilled paint all over your canvas, and also you have god powers that give you infinite copies of other peoples’ paintings, it’s a lot easier to plug your ears chuck the canvas in the trash and go LA LA LA, MUST’VE BEEN THE PAINT’S FAULT instead of admitting you made a mistake, cleaning up the mess you made, and trying again.

the admins’ friendship was the canvas. here is the paint.

romeo really wants people to be his friends, and he couldn’t have had better ones than fred and xara. and honestly? he was perfectly fine with leaving behind everything and everyone else he’d ever known- all he needed were the other admins, no one and nothing else. dependency whoms’t? but for fred and xara, whose stances on relationships were , just a bit healthier than that- as much as they loved romeo- they missed the people they’d left behind.

romeo had invited them here- first xara, then fred- and while he’d of course agreed to let them go back whenever they asked they’ve- like, the idea hasn’t really seriously come up in... it’s been a very long while. i’m still working on the exact timeline here but it’s been- he’d almost completely forgotten about it, actually. they, on the other hand... hadn’t.

it’s like a freaking 2x combo double whopper whammy of being abandoned and also not being “enough” that hits romeo right in the heart nuts. but hey! necessity (or what he thought necessity) is the mother of invention, and for all that he thinks himself stupid he figured out a solution- more than a solution, even! he could do them one better than bringing them the people they missed. he would bring them the people they wanted.

the custom npcs mod allows you to create, well, npcs. it allows you to set their schedules, dialogue, stats, appearance, etc. and you do most of it by right-clicking with a hoe which i find hilarious but ANYWAY romeo came up with something similar. at first, his constructs were... not very convincing, but a little help from a bright-eyed friend made them almost indistinguishable from real people. (herobrine is another post, but for the record this isn’t even the biggest crap he’s pulled.)

he was so excited, presenting his gift to fred and xara. look, i was thinking- you said you missed that one roommate, right, even though they always left the door open and didn’t put food away? ta-dah! look at that, closing the door like a gentleman! and you were missing your counsellor, right? well, miss no more! they’re programmed to always be there for you- you never have to worry about scheduling or other patients, here’s someone who will always care! and that’s not all- if you’ve been having trouble with any of your moderators- or even the normal humans, those are fun too sometimes- this lets you change their mind! literally! no more arguing about what colour to make the new concrete blocks, no more fighting over who gets the first seat in the rollercoaster, you’ll never have to deal with any of that ever again-! ... hey, why aren’t you- why do you- why are you looking at me like that? xara? ... fred?

yeah, it... doesnt go over too well. the tool ends up broken, and romeo promises to not use it again- though only because it upset fred and xara, not because he really saw anything wrong with it. and he keeps that promise for a time. of course the paint can is already leaking, but romeo doesn’t see that yet. none of them really see what’s coming, not fully. how could they? no one wants to think the worst of the ones they love.

but they’re all understandably... tense, and romeo always tended to look to people to vent his emotions, and- the person who would come to be the warden has a huge fight with romeo, right in front of fred and xara’s salad. like. it’s really bad. they’re both on the verge of tears and the warden SLAMS the door as he leaves, which does make romeo cry. and the other two are like... hey... do you want anything... some cake...? prog rock...? we can cuddle...? n romeo’s usually already invited himself to one or more of those things by now but instead of throwing himself into their arms and wailing he’s just, standing there silently, tears streaming down his face, looking of all things pensive. and next in the series of many shocking things to come, he does something he’s never done before: he brightens and says, “i’m going to fix this,” before resolutely walking out the door.

fred and xara are like. oh my god. is- is he actually going to talk out his feelings and problems? is this- is healthy open communication here? did we do it? have we reached the mental wellness? is it finally happening? n romeo comes back a few hours later with his arm around the warden’s shoulders and they're both smiling and laughing and it sounds like everything's worked out just fine. in fact, after that, a bunch of people who’d had beef with romeo in the past seem to work things out with him, all parties seeming genuinely happier for it. romeo’s made a real change! fred and xara have never been more proud, more relieved, or more wrong.

he can’t lie to his friends. he can lie to everyone else, up to and including himself, but not to the ones he loves. it’s just... they’d been so happy, and he’d never seen anyone that proud of him, and, and...

that doesn’t go over too well either. and he should really make the tool out of something other than like, wood, so it stops getting broken so easily? he certainly has time to do so- the silence that follows is the longest the admins have ever gone without talking to one another. in retrospect they probably should’ve known that things were only going to get worse from there, but could you blame fred and xara for hoping beyond hope that- since they were always the ones to drag romeo out of his sulking and brooding- him coming to them first was a sign that he’d changed, for real this time? and the way he starts the conversation- by saying how the admins’ absence has impacted the people in their care- it’s certainly promising.

but- ah, what’s that line? something like,

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."

there are very, very few things that make fred visibly angry. not that things don’t ever make them mad, it’s just that their dedication to living their best life means that they’re generally able to keep a firm grip on how they express their emotions. but for romeo to brainwash- no, worse than brainwash- they don’t even have a word for it- fred’s own people? they’re called their friends for a reason! it doesn’t MATTER that he thought it’d make fred happy- did he think, for even a moment, about listening to what they’d said? does he not realize how absolutely vile it was to do that? the others are real people, too! all of them, not just the ones he considers his friends- do you even understand what that word means, romeo? "friend"?

what really burns is that fred isn’t just angry- they’re disappointed. they’re scared. they’re just as hurt as he is, which is just- how DARE they?! ROMEO’S the one who’s being yelled at! why are THEY crying?! (they’re all in tears now, actually, but romeo doesn’t notice his own.)

a deep breath. fred asks him to undo what he’s done. romeo doesn’t move.

a tense heartbeat. fred asks again, and takes a step forward. this time romeo flinches back.

there’s not a single quark between the three of them right now not on edge. it feels like the air before a lightning strike. something’s going to break. none of them are backing down. maybe none of them can because, if romeo’s not going to do it himself- fred takes a final step forward and asks, remarkably calmly, for romeo to give them the tool.

and then he does! and they apologize to each other for not having been more open about their feelings and defining and maintaining their boundaries and then they make up and have a really good hug and it’s great, everything’s great, and this is probably the mental image romeo tried to fall asleep to before realizing that that wouldn’t stop the nightmares and just giving up on the whole “resting” thing.

if you’re beginning to notice a pattern here with things really not going well, you might just be onto something about romeo’s behaviour. but to be fair none of them had gone into this situation expecting a fight- it was just, fred tried to take the tool and romeo instinctively pulled his weapon and- none of them realized quite how long fred had been losing blood? romeo had been lashing out, fred had been trying to take something he was holding while also trying to defend themself, xara had been trying to protect fred (and was also lashing out too, just a little)- i mean, they realized. eventually. and by that point honestly accidentally stabbing them wasn’t going to do anything the life force loss hadn’t, so like...

okay, brief side note: as operator, romeo’s existence maintains the mcsm universe. he can’t die, even if he wants to. xara and fred had the next best deal (arguably anyway), in that they could only be truly hurt by one thing: the person who’d given them administrative powers in the first place. which happened to be the same person who’d, like, just stabbed his best friend and was now staring in open horror as said friend’s skin flickered back to its original appearance before-

just like that they were gone. just like that. the lack of body and inventory really should’ve tipped them off that something wasn’t right, but for all that they both replay that moment in their minds for years to come they somehow never consider that fred wasn’t quite dead. and romeo had always had such an imagination! but maybe it was for the best that they didn’t consider it, anyway. ... maybe it was for the best.

it doesn’t have to almost kill xara for romeo to take her powers, but it does anyway because if romeo made a lot of stupid decisions before that’s just gotten amped up to eleven now that 90% of his impulse control is gone.

oh.

oh no.!!

romeo watch out almost a millennium of unprocessed trauma and grief is sneaking up on you- romeo- oh my god he can’t hear us he has minecraft airpods in- romeo oh nO

anyway thanks for coming to my tedtalk! tune in next time to hear about the fallout of romeo’s actions across multiple worlds and the group of dissidents whose entire existence is to, well, diss romeo, aka soren’s cult. in conclusion:

#mcsm #minecraft story mode #me a bit over a month ago: huh i wonder what this mcsm business is about #me now:#ng+#msg

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jewish-privilege · 6 years ago

Link

...Ask any Ashkenazi American Jew about his family’s arrival in the United States, and you’re likely to hear a certain story. With minor variations, it goes something like this: “My great-grandfather was called Rogarshevsky, but when he arrived at Ellis Island, the immigration officer couldn’t understand his accent. So he just wrote down ‘Rogers,’ and that became my family’s name.”

Most American Jews accept such stories as fact. The truth, however, is that they’re fiction. Ellis Island, New York City’s historic immigrant-absorption center, processed up to 11,000 immigrants daily between 1892 and 1924. Yet despite this incessant flow of newcomers, the highest standards of professionalism were demanded of those who worked there. All inspectors—many of whom were themselves immigrants, or children of immigrants—were required to know at least two languages; many knew far more, and all at the native-speaker level. Add to that the hundreds of auxiliary interpreters, and together you’ve covered nearly every possible language one might hear at Ellis Island. Yiddish, Russian, and Polish, in this context, were a piece of cake.

Nor were inspections the brief interactions we associate with passport control in today’s airports. Generally they lasted twenty minutes or more, as inspectors sought to identify those at high risk of becoming wards of the state. But perhaps most significantly, Ellis Island officers never wrote down immigrants’ names. Instead, they worked from ships’ manifests, which were themselves compiled by local officials at the point of embarkation. Even overseas, passenger lists were likewise not generated simply by asking immigrants for their names. Rather, they were drawn from passports, exit visas, and other identification papers. The reason for this was simple: Errors cost the shipping company money. A mistake on a manifest, such as a name that was not corroborated by other documentation (whether legal or fraudulent), would result in the forced deportation of the person in question back to his point of departure—at the shipping company’s expense. Of course, many Jewish immigrants’ names were changed upon coming to America. Without exception, however, they changed their names themselves.

...[The] enduring popularity of the name-change story among otherwise rational American Jews is nothing short of astounding. They cling to it, stubbornly defending it, long after any of their ancestors who actually came through Ellis Island as adults has passed away. It has taken on a near-sacred status, passed from parent to child to grandchild along with more general stories of national identity, such as the Exodus narrative related at Passover.

Of course, this stance is understandable. For the Ellis Island name-change story is not so much a historical error as it is a legend. It expresses both the highest hopes and the deepest fears of American Jewry.

To be sure, the hopes and fears embedded in the Ellis Island myth are specific to the challenges of American life. But they are also tied inexorably to long Jewish traditions of diaspora life around the world. For thousands of years, Jews outside the Land of Israel have developed strategies for preserving their culture absent collective political autonomy—an absence that, almost invariably, resulted in persecution, assimilation, or both. Some of these strategies, such as the establishment of separate educational systems, are common to all diaspora Jewish communities. The creation of founding legends is another example. These legends attempted to ground each community’s legitimacy in Jewish terms, invariably by rooting it firmly in the grand Jewish-historical narrative. At the same time, they offered a tailored response to the specific challenges each Jewish community faced.

Seen in this context, the Ellis Island name-change story is simply one of many diaspora founding legends. We often consider the American Jewish community, with its tenacious belief in both the purity of its American identity and its ability to live a fully Jewish life, to be a bizarre exception to the rules of Jewish history...

...The ethnographer Haya Bar-Itzhak sees the two main elements of this legend—the carving of Jewish texts onto Polish trees and the Hebrew origins of the word “Poland”—as part of a larger pattern of Jewish settlement in a new land. For instance, she points out, there is a well-known Jewish tradition of midrashim in which the names of places are given etymological explanations that relate to the original Israelite arrival there. The Polish legend, then, is but one of many similar attempts to “explain” the obviously Slavic names of specific places as in truth being of Semitic origin. According to these stories, Bar-Itzhak writes, the name “is understood not as a random and arbitrary set of phonemes, but as a concatenation that conveys a meaning in a Jewish language—Hebrew and/or Yiddish. The name-midrash unveils this meaning, which allows the newcomers to identify with the place by Judaizing it.”

...It is here that one finds the community’s greatest aspirations and deepest fears folded into a single, nonsupernatural tale. One the one hand, the Jews yearned to turn a strange landscape into a home that physically expressed the most deeply held Jewish value, that of Torah scholarship; so, too, did they dream of Gentile neighbors who would not merely tolerate, but actually honor, their presence in the country. On the other hand, they lived in constant terror of persecution, and doubted their ability to uphold the chain of tradition embodied in other, more established Jewish societies. By casting itself into an unspecified past, one in which no facts can be verified, the founding legend of Poland’s Jewish community becomes as improbable as the Ellis Island story—and as compelling.

...If all founding myths share the hopes and fears that characterized the Jewish historical experience in exile, then each legend also served its own community’s particular needs.

Yet these founding myths are not only about adapting to the demands of a new country. They are also about creating continuity with a specific “old” country: the Nation of Israel. One important component of all these legends is their connection to classic Jewish writings and images. The Polish story is particularly vivid in this respect. The idea of texts being transmitted supernaturally—flying through the sky, for example—has numerous resonances in early sources. One recalls God commanding the prophet Ezekiel to ingest a scroll, or R. Hanina ben Tradyon’s assertion, when wrapped in the burning Torah scroll that results in his martyrdom, that “the parchment is burning, but the letters are flying free!” Texts hanging from trees remind us of Psalm 137, which describes the Jewish exiles in Babylonia hanging their harps on branches, unwilling to sing songs of Jerusalem while their captors taunt them. Furthermore, the image of Polish Jews studying in a cave calls to mind the story of R. Shimon Bar Yohai and his son studying Torah in a cave while hiding from Roman persecutors, and the legends of diaspora Jews who return to Jerusalem in the messianic age through underground caverns. Some legends of Jewish Poland even describe this same cave at Kawenczynek as containing an underground passage to Israel.

...Sociologically, there is no question that the Ellis Island myth serves the same purpose of previous diaspora founding legends: allowing the community to express its highest aspirations and to face its greatest fears. True, the story seems to emphasize the severance of American Jews from their past. But the repeated telling of the story, and the emphatic belief with which American Jews have been taught to accept it, is itself the enactment of that continuity that older legends established through means more suited to their time and place. And as with these earlier myths, one cannot fully appreciate their power or purpose without likewise understanding their non-Jewish, co-territorial contexts. For in America—a nation famous for its lack of loyalty to burdensome, Old World conventions, in which everyone may invent himself anew—the very act of repeating a family story over the course of generations is itself a kind of resistance to Americanization.

American culture’s uniqueness lies in the fact that it does not force, but rather invites, immigrants to “remake” themselves—that is, to shed their past identities and pursue the future of their dreams. The goal of independence from Europe and all that it signified—its history as well as its social, economic, and cultural norms—was, after all, the basis of the American Revolution. Indeed, the “American dream,” with its assumption of potential upward social mobility, is based not on mere capitalism, but rather on the more profound idea that “it doesn’t matter where you come from.” Jews, like all other immigrant groups, were drawn to America precisely by this promise of freedom and opportunity that no other country in their history had ever offered them. But for Jews whose identity depends on the ritualized, intergenerational process of remembrance, the American emphasis on dissociation posed an existential threat to the Jewish communal future.

Consider, then, the motivations of those Jewish immigrants to America who created the myth that their names were changed against their will. Deeply aware of the significance of Jewish names, yet determined to help both themselves and their descendants blend in with their non-Jewish neighbors, they ultimately shed their conspicuous links to an Eastern European past. But—and this is the clincher—this was not a choice they were proud of. And so, by inventing a story that depicts their name change as beyond their control, and transmitting this story to their descendants as historical fact, these immigrants and their offspring sent a powerful message to future generations: I did not shed my Jewish identity intentionally. And despite the values of the country in which we are living, I hope that you won’t, either. This, then, expresses both the greatest hope and the greatest fear of American Jews: that their descendants will preserve their Jewish identity in a culture whose open objective has long been to invite them to forget it.

An expression of this tension inherent in the American Jewish experience can be seen in one of the many jokes that spun off from the Ellis Island myth: A flustered Jewish immigrant is asked for his name and responds in Yiddish, “Sheyn fargesn” (“[I] forgot already”)—only to find himself permanently saddled with the Irish-sounding moniker “Sean Ferguson.” This joke, along with its many straight-faced equivalents, is precisely the type of “name midrash” that Haya Bar-Itzhak describes in her ethnography of Jewish Poland. It is, as she writes, a multi-lingual pun that interprets a proper noun in the co-territorial language “not as a random and arbitrary set of phonemes, but as a concatenation that conveys a meaning in a Jewish language,” and that “Judaizes” the name in the process. The “Sean Ferguson” joke is even more rooted in the challenge presented to Jews by American culture, since at its core is the idea of forgetting—and, more pointedly, the idea that forgetting is itself an act for which a Jew and his descendants are punished (the assumption being, of course, that a Jew saddled with an Irish name has been unambiguously cursed).

In truth, then, the Ellis Island name-change story, while ostensibly about the unmaking of Jewish identity, are just the opposite: they are a process of Judaizing Gentile names by attributing to them a Jewish linguistic history. Making a name like Rogers into one that, secretly, has its roots in Rogarshevsky recalls how the word Poland was “revealed” as a Hebrew phrase in disguise. And it is precisely here, in the experience of exchanging one world for another, that we find the Ellis Island name-change story’s profound links to ancient Jewish texts and the greater pattern of Jewish history.

...What matters, rather, is the sentiment that the midrash captures, and the way this sentiment was expressed in the lives of Jews for centuries thereafter. This includes hundreds of thousands of American Jews whose ancestors may have changed their names but whose lies taught their descendants what was really worth keeping.

“History,” Gerson Cohen points out in his discussion of the Four Captives story, “is always shown to conform to a pattern”—not because such a pattern exists, but because historians and storytellers impose such a pattern on the facts (or invent the facts, when necessary). Cohen makes it clear that “it is this very orderliness of history that Ibn Daud finds a source of consolation, a source of hope that history will yet vindicate the Jewish hope for redemption.” By placing the Ellis Island name-change story into the continuum of diaspora myth making, we are no doubt doing just what Ibn Daud did, and for the same reason. We are claiming, rightly or wrongly, that history conforms to a pattern, in an attempt to console those who fear that the American Jewish community is in fact an anomaly in the Jewish people’s millennia-long continuity...

[Please read Dara Horn’s full, ridiculously well-researched and sourced, piece at Azure Online. It adds necessary color and history of other founding myths of our diaspora communities and how it all ties together to form Jewish history.]

#jewish history #white supremacy #assimilation #long post #dara horn #jewish identity

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svtskneecaps · 6 years ago

Text

See You When I Fall Asleep

Jeon Wonwoo x reader; Soulmate AU

So this is a little different to the other soulmate au stories I’ve written, and it also explains the reason why I’m postponing updates on Stop Loving to an unspecified date, and why i’m on the verge of a mental breakdown. Sorry for the inconvenience, hope this makes up for it! I haven’t got anything up for Wonwoo yet, and honestly writing this really helped my stress. Ya know, I felt productive and all that. Anyway, hope you enjoy~!

((this is not part of my main soulmate au series))

Soulmark: when your soulmate sleeps, they appear near you looking like the person who’s on your mind. you can interact with them, but nobody but you can see them, and they’re not allowed to give you anything that would hasten your meeting (I like to call this a Guardian Angel Mark)

Main Masterlist

“You’re up late.”

“And you’re asleep early.” You glanced up at your soulmate. “Or late, depending on who you ask. What brings you here?”

“Driving. Decided I’d take a quick nap.” He sat on your bed (you’d asked his pronouns long ago). “Who do I look like today?”

“Tony Stark. But young, so not Robert Downey Jr Tony Stark. Like, imagine him, but as a young, acne faced, awkward, too skinny for his height teenager. Minus the beard.”

“Specific.” He laughed. “Any reason why?”

You shrugged with a soft smile tugging at your lips. “ ‘S for my essay.”

“Oh right.” He leaned against the wall. “How’s that going, anyway?”

“Not well, let me tell you.” You sighed, fighting the urge to slam your laptop shut. “Actually don’t, I won’t shut up.”

“Made any progress since I was here last?”

“Unfortunately, not much.” You rubbed a distracted hand across your forehead, smearing the foundation you’d forgotten to take off that evening. “Maybe another hundred words, before I started looking for better examples.”

“Five hundred isn’t bad,” he encouraged.

“On a four thousand word essay?” You shot him a wry smile, turning back to your computer screen. “I don’t think so.”

He watched you work in silence for a second, before scooting closer. “You know working in the dark like this and staring at that screen isn’t good for your eyesight.”

“I’ll wake the people in the next room if I turn on the light, and they’ll be upset.” Your eyes didn’t leave the screen as you scrolled down the page. “You know how they get.”

“You know how I get,” he insisted, leaning into your side. The hair on your arms stood up. You still couldn’t get used to seeing that, where his ghostly figure leaned on you but you didn’t feel a thing. “You’ve at least been eating well, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” you said, unconvincingly.

“Y/N, you know your health is important.” He sounded disapproving, and worried.

“I’m not going to die because I didn’t eat breakfast.” You successfully avoided rolling your eyes like a petulant teenager. “I did that for the past two years and look, I’m still alive aren’t I?”

He just stared at you. Damnit. You hated that he knew that worked on you. “Alright fine, I’ll try to eat better.”

“And sleep at a more decent hour,” he scolded, checking the clock across the room, reading a time well past midnight. You just sighed, long and low, resting your head on his phantom shoulder.

He stared at your computer, seeming curious. “What are you looking at now?”

“Fan fiction. I’m trying to figure out a way to back up my argument.” You straightened back up, and now you rolled your eyes. “Or, you know, make one.” You sighed again and pulled a makeup wipe out of the box on the table next to your bed, rubbing the foundation from your hand and face. “I hit the same damn block, for the millionth fucking time.”

“Language,” he chided.

You snorted, reappearing from behind the wipe. “Sorry, it’s just hilarious for me to hear teenaged Tony Stark saying that.”

He pouted, but moved past your comment quickly. “Maybe if you went to sleep, it’d make more sense in the morning. You’d get a fresh perspective.”

“Oh, probably.” You tossed the makeup wipe in the trash and grabbed another one. “But I’d lose time, and that’s what I really, really need.”

“No, you need ideas.” He closed your computer, an action you knew took immense amounts of energy, so you were shocked that he’d even bothered. “And you’re not going to get them from staring at a computer screen.”

You trashed the last makeup wipe. “Okay, but it’s only because I love you.”

“Good.” You couldn’t see his face anymore, since your computer screen had been the only source of light in the room, but you knew he was smiling. “Now get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Okay.”

~~~

It was always disorienting to fall asleep with your soulmate by your side and wake up to have him gone. You knew he’d show up soon, though, and besides, you had an essay to work on.

“You didn’t forget what I said, did you?”

You didn’t look up. “Which part?”

“The part about eating.” Your soulmate found a seat on the arm of the chair next to you.

“I did get breakfast, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Good.” He seemed satisfied. “Any luck?”

You closed your laptop. “Not much. I’m probably going to give up for the morning. Clean my room or something.”

He followed along beside you. “So who am I today?”

You turned to look at him. “Jeon Wonwoo, from Seventeen. You know who he is or do you want me to describe him?”

“Describe him.”

You weren’t sure what that look on his face meant, but you shrugged it off. Your soulmate could be mischievous. Who knew, maybe he knew the guy. He mentioned at one point that he was an idol.

You studied him for a second. “Light brown-ish hair- I’m not sure which promotion this is from. He’s wearing glasses, actually, those cute thin wire framed ones that kinda remind one of Harry Potter. Kinda got the bookish nerd vibe going on if we’re being real. Umm... kind of a square jaw. Actually he has a really strong jaw. It’s nice. Never noticed that.” You shrugged. “He tends to be rated among the top visuals by fans, so take that however you will. I’m sure you know Korean beauty standards better than I do.”

“Yeah.” You could see him side eyeing you. “But do you find him attractive?”

You tried to keep your voice casual as your responded. “I mean I guess, I understand the physical appeal. And he’s got a lovely personality to go with it, which I can appreciate.”

He hummed in response.

You glanced back over at him. “What’s that big smile for?”

“Nothing.” He turned his head away slightly. You could tell the smile never dropped.

“Let me guess, you’re a Wonwoo stan? Don’t worry, once we meet in person I’ll describe you with all the care I do everyone else.”

“I’d love that,” he said, “more than anything else.”

~~~

He hadn’t shown up.

You’d known this was coming, of course; he’d said that his group would be touring in your country, but you didn’t think you’d feel his absence so keenly. Desperate to escape the lonely feeling, you spent a lot of your time in coffee shops. There was one downtown that you really loved, since it was in a non-sketchy neighborhood and the barista was kind of cute. She also didn’t mind when you accidentally fell asleep in the shop, which tended to happen quite often. Like today.

Your soulmate was wandering around in a downtown area not unlike yours when you showed up. He was obviously filming, so he didn’t acknowledge your presence, but you knew he was aware that you were there. He managed to slip away from the cameras for a brief second in a park as his members split off into various directions.

“Seems kind of early for you to be sleeping,” he teased.

“You know me.” You laughed. “Always falling asleep in random places.”

“I just hope this ‘random place’ is safe.”

“It is.”

You didn’t get much more than that quick exchange, since the cameras returned. The members went back to wandering around town (unfortunately, you couldn’t see what they looked like either, and although you weren’t sure why you figured it was because they were idols, and it would make your soulmate too easy to find). You narrated some of the things you saw, although you tried to keep it at a minimum. Despite your unending well of witty commentary, if your soulmate was caught smiling at nothing too many times the fans would catch on. His career meant a lot to the both of you and you didn’t want to mess that up.

Despite your unspoken commitment to staying quiet, you were getting confused, and with that came the desire to voice that confusion, because you knew a music shop with that name and you could’ve sworn that woman walking across the street from them was Mrs. Perkins from the nice clothing shop a few blocks down the street from the café you were dead asleep in, and you thought for a second that the friendly looking man switching the sign on the laundromat door to ‘open’ looked a lot like the grandfather of your best friend from childhood. And then you couldn’t keep quiet. “I think I’m around here.”

He looked over at you, then immediately jerked his attention back, but you knew he was listening. “I think I’m around here,” you repeated. “I know that shop, and I know him- and I recognize her- I might be right down the street.”

He said something in a low voice to his PD, who listened for a second, then said something to one of the staff members. Your soulmate looked back at you, and said one thing.

“Show me.”

After all those years an ocean apart, it was laughably simple to navigate through the streets to find the café, and seeing the look on his face when you pointed at your sleeping form, passed out on your computer keyboard, was simultaneously priceless and the sweetest thing you’d ever seen. As he pushed through the coffee shop door and moved over to wake you, you were suddenly struck by the realization that, this was it. You’d finally get to see what he looked like, to put a face and a name and a voice behind that personality you’d fallen for a million times over.

He placed his hand on your shoulder, and you were gone.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “Wake up~”

You pulled your face off your keyboard, rubbing the impression the ‘f’ key had made on your cheek. The face of the stranger who’d woken you blurred in your sleepy vision. But it wasn’t a stranger, you remembered, it was your soulmate. You couldn’t rub the sleep from your eyes fast enough, eager to see who it was you were destined to be with.

Your jaw dropped.

And of course, your first reaction upon regaining your senses was to smack him on the arm. “You told me you didn’t know who Jeon Wonwoo was!”

“I never said that!” he defended, grinning at you. “I just said I wanted you to describe what he looked like.”

“Well he looks like you, you dumb nugget!” You huffed. “Did you even try to tell me that you looked like yourself?”

“Well no,” he admitted, “but I wanted us to be in the same position, you know? Makes this moment sweeter.”

“But it would’ve been sooner.” You pouted, although you both knew there wasn’t any real emotion behind it. You were elated, and so was he.

“It’s better like this.”

You looked back up at him, smiling. “You’re right.”

“I always am,” he said calmly. You leaned your head against his arm, your smile growing as you felt him there, as more than just a ghostly presence. It was comforting.

He smirked. “So, about that essay...”

“No! I just met my soulmate, I’m not gonna think about some stupid essay!”

#in case you couldn’t tell i have a huge essay due soon that i’m not done with so writing will have to take a backseat for the time being #seventeen #seventeen soulmate au #seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #seventeen au #jeon wonwoo #jeon wonwoo scenarios #jeon wonwoo imagines #jeon wonwoo au #jeon wonwoo soulmate au #in a flash of erratic genius or sometin i pulled the title from a song #it’s crap i just couldn’t title it ‘soulmate wonwoo’ bc it would look too much like the series and it’s not that

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apparitionism · 6 years ago

Text

Helicobacter 13

Previously on Helicobacter, Myka called Helena on the phone. In the middle of the night. Because nobody was asleep. And this part is what ensues during that call. It’s not salacious, so I guess you can take “don’t worry” or “sorry” from me on that as you prefer. (I’m in fact not sorry at all.) As for who Myka’s boss is, I didn’t even try for anything new or interesting there; that’s definitely a “sorry.” Another “sorry” is that in this part, I got lazy with regard to tags and actions—you’re seeing only Helena’s side of the phone conversation, and I could have worked harder to move her around in the space, make her pick objects up and put them down, all the things we do when we’re alone and talking to someone who isn’t present. There’s no excuse for laziness, so I’m calling it what it is. There also may have been some slothfulness in part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, and part 12. Just to remind you, THIS IS A VERY SILLY STORY.

Helicobacter 13

The idea of Myka working on an idea—well, that provoked in Helena yet more heart-hammering, accompanied by nervous speculation: who would be pretending to have what relationship with whom? For whom would the pretending take place? And who would be presumed, possibly erroneously, to have foreknowledge, or no foreknowledge, of the relationship that was being pretended but was also most likely real? Helena leaned her upper body forward, onto the counter, beside her telephone, hoping that the cool of the manufactured stone against her torso might calm her... it was no help. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she lied.

“I don’t believe you. Like I said, we have to make this work.”

“We don’t have to,” Helena said. Not a lie, but close.

“How can you say that? It’s practically a religious obligation at this point.”

Helena heard herself make Charles’s question-noise.

“You’re awfully cute,” Myka said, and did that have to do with the noise itself or with what she saw as Helena’s dimwittedness? “Call it karma if you want, but honestly, why would any god who’d sell me your undergraduate city planning textbook and give me cancer and make me throw up on you and put Rick in the hospital they took me to even bother to get up in the morning after all that if the point weren’t for us to at least try to be together?”

“Why indeed.” Helena had to grant that it all did incline one to, in the manner of Myka’s mother, sigh and say words about destiny.

“I mean even if we’re going with karma, we have to help bring about that inevitable result. So I’ve been thinking a lot about ethics.”

Helena turned her back to the telephone, so she could pretend that Myka was there with her, standing behind her. “I have too.”

“But I bet,” pretend-Myka said, “you’ve been thinking about them as barriers. Like fences. Glass to keep somebody under. Right?”

“Hmph” was all Helena could muster, because of course Myka was right. The sound of Myka’s voice, which in the manner of mobile phones faded and strengthened, cutting out then back in, made her envision Myka’s image, there behind her, as a ghostly flicker... here, immateriality was the barrier. Entirely paradoxical. Would Myka come up with something similarly paradoxical with regard to ethics? Ethics as the absence of morality?

Myka answered this unspoken question with the non sequitur of another question: “Do you know what a circumstance actually is?”

Model trees, was Helena’s immediate thought, but the real memory-echo in her head was “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She asked, with some trepidation, “What do you mean?”

“Circumstance. The word. Its etymology.”

“Circum. ‘Around,’ obviously. And stance... I don’t know.” Shameful to admit. “Something to do with one’s position?”

“Don’t sound so embarrassed; I didn’t know either. It’s from the Latin stare, means ‘to stand.’ So the circumstance is everything standing, everything existing, all around us. That’s the barrier.”

“The circumstance.”

“Exactly. Not some mayoral rule governing it that says I can’t kiss you. So the circumstance is what has to change. And here’s the good news: it already has.”

She made it sound so appealing, and even better, so true. Helena, trying to be the voice of realism, said, “No it hasn’t.”

“Don’t be so sure. You can’t step in the same river twice, right? I’m pretty sure that a circumstance plus time becomes a different circumstance. We need the right people to recognize that. That’s why I’ve been working on this idea.”

Helena tried to gird herself with cynicism as she said, “All right. What is the idea?”

“What if I got sick again?”

That seemed yet another non sequitur of a question. “I don’t see how that is anything but the present circumstance minus time. I also don’t see how it is an idea.”

“I don’t believe anybody’s heart is made of stone,” Myka then said.

You have importuned her to say things you don’t expect, Helena reminded herself. “I’m not completely certain I agree, but I am completely certain I don’t understand what that has to do with any circumstance at all.”

“See, let’s say I have a relapse.”

At that, Helena whirled around to face the telephone—but Myka could not see her indignation, so Helena barked, as firmly as she could, “No. You will not ingest H. pylori intentionally. You have nothing to prove, about ulcers or anything else, and there can be no benefit to putting yourself in that bullet’s path again. Absolutely not.”

“I’d say I’m pretty sure you’re worth the risk—and I am pretty sure—but that wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“I am genuinely afraid to ask.”

“I don’t really have a relapse. I have a fake one. And you find out about it, and you come racing to be by my side.”

“You’re proposing a deathbed—or, I hope, sickbed—confession of some sort?”

“Right, because here’s the kicker: in front of my boss.”

“I don’t see how this solves the problem.”

“We are going to melt her not-made-of-stone heart.”

“First, you are making an unwarranted assumption,” Helena said, and Myka made an exaggerated version of the interrogative noise. As if she wanted to make fun of both Helena and Charles—though of course she could not have wanted to make fun of Charles. But Helena gave a response of the sort she would have given to her brother: “That her heart is made of some substance with a melting point lower than that of some unspecified stone.”

“I see that my actual unwarranted assumption was the notion that you could just leave the poor metaphors alone.”

“You’re the one who mixed them,” Helena noted. “But second, if Jane Lattimer is one to be moved by sentiment, why can’t we melt her heart, whatever its composition, by pleading our case? Saying that we want to be together?”

“Because then she’d know we’ve been sneaking around behind her back since that first hospital incident.”

“But then why would we declare our love in this second hospital incident? If I haven’t seen you since the first?”

Myka said, greatly smug, “Because I know something you don’t know. Well, two things. No, three—or wait, four—”

“This comes as no surprise. And I’m sure you should continue counting.”

“The first thing is, you’ve been emailing me. Privately.”

“No I haven’t.”

“Yes you have.”

“No I haven’t.”

“You need to listen to me really carefully: yes you have.”

Helena squinted at the telephone. Could that prompt it to make Myka’s words make more sense? “I have? Aren’t I far more ethical than that?”

“You haven’t done it as you.”

“I’ve done it as... whom, exactly?” She dreaded the answer.

“Rick.”

“I’ve been emailing you, but as Rick.”

“Right.”

“And so,” Helena said, turning her back once again on the telephone and the voice of absurdity emanating from it, “the logical conclusion to be drawn, regarding myself, is that I have lost my mind.”

Myka, cheerful: “If you look at it right, that’s basically the plan.”

Helena looked over her shoulder. “The plan is that I have lost my mind.”

“Over me! See, what happened was, you found me irresistible. In the hospital, that first time.”

Which prompted Helena to picture Myka in her hospital bed. Pale, vulnerable—the tempt-fate notion of pretending their way through it all again made Helena consider refusing to participate, no matter what Myka wanted. She could in such a way give Myka her protection one last time... but of course what Myka had said about being irresistible was true. Feeling very much at war with herself, Helena acquiesced, saying, “That, I can affirm.”

“Good. Certain parts of this conversation had me thinking maybe you’d changed your position. But so, mind lost, and after that... I haven’t quite worked this part out yet, but I think you ran into Rick. And of course the topic of me came up.”

“Of course. My poor lost mind wandering where it would.”

Helena could hear, and picture, the smile Myka wore as she continued her description of the “plan”: “You’d been trying to find a way to stay in touch with me, despite being so very very ethical and never wanting to do anything that would put livelihoods at risk. You said something romantic about that, and he was feeling guilty about how he did me wrong, so he agreed to facilitate you emailing me as him. Just so you could keep hearing my voice, even electronically.”

“Have you noticed that you and your charms are the stars of this story? Why haven’t you been emailing me as someone else because I’m so irresistible?”

“I’m sorry, whose plan is this?”

“Point taken. Carry on.”

“Okay, so you’ve been emailing me as him. And here’s the part where you get to be the awesome one: I think I’m falling for him again.”

“I don’t see how I’m notably awesome in that scenario. I don’t see how I’m notably part of that scenario.”

Myka exhaled with noise, and she dropped her voice. “On the basis of your words.”

“Oh.”

Myka said, returning to her jaunty “plan” voice, “History repeating. It’s elegant.”

“It’s... something. So how does this resolve?”

“I have a relapse. I go back to the hospital. Rick ends up being my doctor again, and I say, ‘No, he can’t treat me; we’re in love.’”

“In front of Jane Lattimer.”

“Correct. And Rick, who in this show is a quick thinker, says, ‘But it’s not me you’re in love with. I’ve called Cyrano; she’s on her way over.’ And then you bust in.”

Charles would love this, Helena reflected. In his honor, she asked, “Have you composed an appropriate soundtrack? I can’t imagine a melodrama like this without the swell of strings cueing the audience’s emotions.”

“If you can’t sell this without strings, you don’t deserve me,” Myka pronounced.

“I’m not sure I do deserve you. In any of the ways that might be taken.”

“And so then what you do is, you declare your love.” The smile was still there as Myka said, “If you still feel like it, you undeserving meanie.”

Helena couldn’t help but smile in response as she said, “So according to your plan, we are in the hospital in front of your superior, having declared our love for each other.”

“Right.”

But now Helena stopped smiling. “Whereupon we swear to fall out of love instantly, so as to remain gainfully employed? I don’t see how this indicates any change in circumstance.”

“That’s where the second thing I know comes in.”

“I am on tenterhooks.”

“I’m more productive at work when I’m happy. And my boss knows it.”

“Aren’t most people? And don’t most people know it?”

“That isn’t the thing I know.”

Helena sighed. “Again: tenterhooks.”

“I know that she remarked on it,” Myka said, smug again. “How happy I’ve been lately. How productive.”

“I’ve been miserable! How have you been happy?”

“Pay attention! I’ve been setting this up.”

Helena sighed again. She suspected she would be sighing a great deal more. “How is your duplicity not the stuff of legend?”

“Just waiting for my own personal Homer. And then Emily Wilson can translate tales of my duplicity from the Greek.”

“Why would anyone write about you in Greek?”

The telephone emitted its own exaggerated sigh. “Which problem do you want me concentrating on? How to convince someone to write about me in Greek, or how to get my boss to say it’s a good idea for us to be together? I can’t do everything at once!”

“But again, why don’t we just go to her and explain?” Helena asked.

“I would love to go to Emily Wilson and explain that someone needs to write about me in Greek, or even better that someone actually did, but sadly I think you mean my boss, which leads me to ask you, are you being dense on purpose? It’s so that I can be innocent!”

“What does that make me?” Helena asked. She had not been attending to her pot of coffee, but it was now ready. She was grateful for the distraction, grateful to be active as Myka conceded, “Well, it makes you guilty,” and followed that up with, “but not in the worst way!”

“Imagine my relief,” Helena said.

“Because you were trying to be good too. You didn’t reveal yourself to me.”

“What ethical paragons we both are.”

“The idea,” Myka said, speaking slowly again, “is that I wouldn’t have influenced your getting that library contract, because I thought I was in love with Rick, not with you.”

“Did you influence it?”

“Of course not. I mean, I have to confess: what I wanted to do was commandeer the committee and force them to advise the city council not to give it to you.”

“That is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” Helena told her. She turned away from the telephone again, coffee in hand. She imagined Myka standing behind her, holding coffee of her own, as if this were a nonparticular morning. “I didn’t want to bid on it, by the way,” Helena added. “It’s my employees’ fault.”

“Ditto on the most romantic,” Myka said. If her voice seemed to move closer, that was of course Helena’s hopeful imagination. But what a ridiculously dramatic heart-swell it caused. Myka went on, “And on the basis of that, I’d say we both need to get out more, but I’d really rather neither of us did.”

“That is also romantic, and if we were in the same space, I would show you how very much I would rather stay in.” Even in the early morning. Or: especially in the early morning. Helena considered the two of them in this kitchen, sharing space well or poorly, perhaps running into each other unintentionally... although this was quite a large space, so here any collisions would most likely be intentional. On every available surface, Myka had said—Helena remembered it distinctly—and kitchens had many, many surfaces. Helena closed her eyes, to prevent herself from looking at, from considering, those surfaces, and she cleared her throat. “However, we were speaking about your ‘idea.’ To recap: you feign a relapse.”

“Bloody, like before,” Myka enthused.

“Really? The blood too?” It wasn’t that Helena minded blood as such, but Myka’s production of it had been so surprising. And so prodigious.

“Don’t be squeamish. It’ll be fake blood, and it’ll be all over Abigail instead of you. I’ll be water-gunning it at her—I’d originally been planning to water-gun it at you, to make it even more like last time, but she talked me out of it. Helped me come up with a scenario that makes it pretty easy to get Jane to the hospital with us. So you should thank her.”

This at least did not seem to be Abigail in her “goading” persona. But it was also not, or did not seem to be, Abigail in her “protect Myka” persona either. Some hybrid of the two? “Bloody bloody Abigail Cho—she knows already? About this... idea, if that’s what we’re calling it?”

“I needed somebody to get me intel about whether the ‘act happy and productive’ part of my plan was working.”

“Intel,” Helena echoed, and she said it again, with even greater disbelief: “Intel.” And at that point, she did ask herself, If this works, can you accept all of it? Can you in good faith maintain that this woman will not make you want to throw that book of koans, or perhaps that preposterously proposed pie, at her? She answered herself No, and then she said aloud, “I have never before in my life entertained the notion that I might not be able to refrain from throwing a pie at someone.”

“Then it’s about time. And I’m glad you chose me for that, too.”

“I didn’t say it was you at whom I might not be able to refrain from throwing a pie.” If Myka wanted to engage in don’t-be-dense pedantry, Helena could certainly return fire.

“I think you need to listen really carefully again: karma, destiny, and I did not come up with all this just so you could go and throw pies at someone who isn’t me.”

“You and karma and destiny sound like a singing group.” That was too flippant. “I wouldn’t pre-apologize to anyone else for it.”

“That’s a little better.”

“I feel that I should pre-apologize to Jane Lattimer, however.”

“What for?”

That could not possibly have been a genuine question. “Perhaps for her having to witness a ridiculous play, whatever the outcome? Also, I should apologize in traditional after-the-fact fashion, for having set this entire thing in motion with my textbook.”

“Right, another thing I know. First, your textbook got her me, and she loves me. Particularly, as Abigail confirms, happy and productive me, as opposed to fatigued and overworked me. So that’s point one for you.”

“Is there a point two?”

“Point two is that your textbook got her me, but it also got her you. And she loves you too.”

“She does?”

“I got the intel on that.”

Helena registered the pride in Myka’s voice. At this accomplishment. Someone who sounded very like Charles whispered, deep in Helena’s cerebral cortex, Helena, can you in good faith maintain? “Intel,” Helena repeated.

“Listen to me,” Myka said with some urgency, as if she really thought there were some danger Helena would not listen, “point three is that she’s outcome-driven above all else, and I told you, an initial circumstance plus time—plus time and, particularly for you, accomplishment—becomes a different circumstance. I know you haven’t interacted with her directly all that much, but she raves about your work, how smoothly the neighborhood project went, so the situation is, she wants to keep me, because I’m blameless and also productive, and she wants to keep you, because you’re effective and also professional, and she’ll want to find a way to do both those things at the same time.” Myka took a loud breath, which she no doubt needed. “Plus she’s all in on the library.”

“Well. It is a library.”

“It is. So what do you think I think about it?”

Upon hearing that utterance, Helena became very aware that she and Myka would need to negotiate some ceiling on the number of times per conversation that Myka was allowed to drop her voice for effect. Given that the effect was so ridiculously assured, it seemed an unfair advantage. As if her discursive deck of cards had an extra ace.

And then Myka threw yet another ace onto the table: “I’d love to be showing you, right this minute.”

Helena choked out, “That the construction of a library can put that note in your voice...”

An entire deck of aces, these played with another of those audible smiles: “There’s a reason for our being in love. With each other, no less.”

The proceedings did still seem to be shining. Despite their having spent only short, limited-in-number spans of time together. Because of their having spent only those spans? “Wait,” Helena said. “In love. Why haven’t you and Rick met up?”

“When?”

“At any point while you were... re-falling in love with him.” It pained Helena to say it, nearly as much as it had pained her to hear Myka speak of it. Even as a façade.

“That’s a surprisingly good question,” Myka said, and Helena didn’t know whether to be pleased or offended by that “surprisingly.” “It hadn’t crossed my mind... because of course I’m not really, so why would I have?” (Pleased.) “Maybe I was worried because of how it ended before? Maybe the epistles were just so great, I didn’t want to spoil anything? Look, parts of this, we’re just going to have to sell it, okay?”

“Why do you think I can do any such thing? I really am a terrible actor, faux-engagement performances notwithstanding. Not that they convinced anyone in any case. Rick quickly discerned the reality. So did your mother.”

“You’re being so negative about this, plus you’re reconstructing history. Rick needed a paramedic’s help, according to you, to get anywhere near the reality, and I’m the one who told my mom the whole truth. But anyway, it doesn’t matter, because you’ll have some semi-pro backup: speaking of my mom, she’s going to come help, and she used to do community theater.”

“That’s... surprisingly unsurprising,” Helena said. “And speaking of not being surprised, or possibly amazed, so did Steve. Do community theater, that is. In fact that’s how he and his boyfriend met.”

“More help! Steve and his boyfriend, I mean! This is great!” Then her voice drooped a bit. “If they have time.”

Helena snorted. “‘If they have time.’ As if you didn’t know that anyone and everyone who knows you or me would find time—would buy tickets!—to see this ridiculous enactment of... whatever it is. And none of this is ‘great,’ by the way. This is hell, it has been for months, and yet you are proposing to set it on fire.”

“Isn’t hell always on fire?”

That was not a non sequitur, and Helena nodded a concession, despite Myka’s inability to see it. “I admit I didn’t think that through. But it certainly has the potential to make everything worse.”

Myka didn’t accuse her of being negative again, but she did begin to speak more slowly, using her you are being dense voice. “Big conspiracies are way more believable than small ones, so the more people we have... plus it means you’ll have fewer lines. Can you at least convincingly say you love me? And don’t use that terrible American accent to try to throw me off, either.”

“I love you? Is there much difference between English and American versions of that?”

“Either way, I didn’t find that persuasive, but instead of getting offended, I’m going to chalk it up to you needing practice. You’ll get some, and fortunately pretty soon, because I’m having everybody over to my place to make sure we’re all on the same page for the big show.”

“What? When?”

“Saturday. Rick said that he should be able to get the hospital staff to play along with my ‘relapse’ on Monday, so my mom’s flying in on Friday.”

“How long have you been planning this?”

“Would you believe me if I said ‘my whole life’?”

“No.”

“How about ‘since the elevator this afternoon’?”

“Yesterday afternoon. We’re well into tomorrow. And also no.” But Helena did entertain a brief question-mark of possibility.

“Okay,” Myka said. “Since a few months ago. My heart jumped every time I saw your name on an email or a piece of paper, and I figured that meant we’d better get to work.”

“I love you,” Helena said, because it was the truth of the matter. She could most likely have chosen a more ideal moment to say the truth than while drinking coffee alone in her kitchen, not facing a telephone, but if she was not going to contrive to stand in a fountain quoting a koan while brandishing a lobster, then there was most likely no need to waste time on overinvestment in the particulars.

She was rewarded with, “That was better.” This time, Myka’s voice made Helena think not of extra aces, but rather of exactly why she was willing to go through whatever hell-intensifications Myka cared to set in motion. Then Myka, changing gears as she would, said, “I think you’re a method actor. Also, your brother.”

And back to the non sequiturs. “You think my brother is a method actor? Why would you think anything at all about—”

“No, I think your brother called me. Said you kept refusing to wreck my car, so I had to do something.”

“My brother.”

“Some guy who called himself Charles Wells, anyway, who claimed to have a sister named Helena who was for some reason acting weirdly out of character so she’d deserve me.”

“Oh god.” She added “avenge myself upon Charles in a way most painful to him” to the list of things that she would, in that ideal world of fountains et cetera, contrive to do.

“So you see why I think you can probably manage without the string section. In which he was so invested. You two are really, really related.”

“He stopped haranguing me about you. It was terrible: I thought that he genuinely believed I should be able to reconcile myself to the... circumstance. That I would.”

“No, it was because I told him to quit making you feel bad about trying to be noble. That I was in fact cooking this up.”

“I’m sure he was over the moon.”

“Other than being totally disappointed that he hadn’t come up with it himself? Yeah. He does a kind of cute giggle-snicker thing when he’s pleased. You do it too—even though I haven’t heard it in a while—so maybe it’s genetic? I did have to talk him out of flying over to help.”

“I am astonished you were able to convince him otherwise.”

“Neither of us could figure out a good reason why your brother would show up with you when you came rushing to the hospital. Charles was convinced he could pull it off, but ‘he just happened to be visiting’ seemed too contrived to me.”

Helena was sure her imagination was incapable of projecting the full hamming horror of what Charles would have got up to. “That seemed too contrived,” she said.

“You may not be aware of it, but you just giggle-snickered.”

“I did not.”

“To repeat: ‘You may not be aware of it, but.’”

“I am aware of wanting to be kissing you now.”

Myka made a giggle-snicker noise of her own. “To shut me up?”

“I suppose that would be an acceptable side benefit,” Helena said.

“For future reference, I wouldn’t mind you shutting me up like that.”

“I know you well enough to know that depending on your mood, you might find some way to mind it.”

“Just for that, now I want to try to find that way. To prove you right.”

“You are perverse.”

“You know you want to try to prove me wrong.”

Helena set her coffee cup down, simply so that she could raise her palms heavenward... a pointless gesture, in that it was perceived by neither Myka nor, most likely, any other celestial being. “Congratulations. I have now forgotten the difference between right and wrong. Speaking of ethics. Why do I feel as if this has been part of your plan all along?”

“The thing is, you actually do remember the difference. And so do I. And maybe, just maybe, the ridiculous place I work is starting to remember it too. Because I know one more thing that you don’t. And this is the real intel.”

“Is it.” Helena braced herself, literally, against the counter.

“Seriously. Saving the best for last here: I saw a draft memo that I wasn’t supposed to see.”

Now Helena glanced upward, a Really? eyeroll of which she was in this case glad Myka was not aware. “Skullduggery regarding memos. Excellent. Honestly, given your love of intel and other espionagery, I don’t see why you didn’t write me some clandestine ‘eyes only’ memo about all of this. One that would have self-destructed.”

“You didn’t want to hear my voice?”

After another look up, Helena told the truth. “I want to bathe in your voice. But it reminds me of what I can’t have.”

“Yet. What you can’t have yet. By the way, Charles said to make you sweat about whether he’d told me about the achieving of a grail.”

“I certainly won’t sweat one drop over that. He would never have been able to refrain from telling you.”

“You two know each other really well, in addition to being really related. I don’t actually mind having been achieved, but we need to get you past this counterproductive renouncing idea.”

“Lancelot renounces the queen, not the Grail,” Helena grumbled.

“He said you’d say that. But I’d like to point out that you’re not in fact Lancelot—also, I’m pretty sure I’m not a bejeweled cup. Or a queen, so if you could maybe come up with a different story.”

“Charles came up with it in the first place, and haven’t you already found a different one? Aren’t I Cyrano?”

“I was just shorthanding. There’s got to be something better then both of those. Come on, you’re the one building a library.”

“Will that still be true, after Monday’s events?”

“It will. And here’s why.” Myka paused, clearly for effect.

“The suspense,” Helena said. “What, oh what, will you reveal.” She suspected Myka was having more fun than she should, with her striptease of a plan, her “saving the best for last.”

“Funny you should put it that way. There’s going to be—wait for it!—a sunshine initiative. For which we are going to be the poster children if we play all of my setup cards right.”

This woman, and cards, and the playing of them... “What?” Helena said.

“Because now the idea is that disclosing conflicts of interest is maybe even better than not having them.”

“I hate to be repetitive, but: what?”

“The best I can figure is that the administration’s political opponents seem to be getting suspicious about the fact that there aren’t any. Conflicts, I mean. It all seems too perfect, particularly as a change from the old regime.”

“It is not too perfect.”

“Right. Exactly. But this is why this is perfect: we’ve suddenly realized there’s a conflict. Jane can go to the mayor and say ‘Look! Blameless adorable girls! Let’s shine the sun on them!’”

“Blameless adorable girls. Upon whom the sun will be shining.” Helena shook her head, then vocalized it: “I am shaking my head at you. Do you really think the circumstance is that different now?”

“I really think there’s only so long I can pretend to be happy.”

Helena refilled her cup. Perhaps it was the drinking of coffee that heightened feelings of guilt... Myka should not have had to pretend at all. “Then find another girl with whom to be adorable. And the sun can shine as it wishes on the truly blameless two of you, initiatives aside.”

“I’ll rephrase: I really think there’s only so long I can pace back and forth in my hallway before I get in my car and come try to explain this to you yet again, but in person this time. What do you really think?”

“I think that your threat to explain in person is so tempting that I’m inclined to play extremely dumb,” Helena said, and Myka laughed. “But what I really think is that it all depends on every single thing falling correctly into place, including Jane Lattimer being magically persuaded to herself perform some persuasive magic. How likely is that?”

“I can’t believe you just asked me a question about the likelihood of events, Ms. Textbook.”

And indeed, Helena thought, she should have been brandishing a lobster while standing in a fountain. Or atop a model of one that would not be built. The likelihood of events. “Point taken, Ms. Helicobacter. I should have realized the paradoxical absurdity as the words were leaving my lips.”

“Oh, thanks a lot. That’s what I’ll be thinking about all day now.”

“Paradoxical absurdity?”

“Your lips. I really, really wish you’d been willing to be fast, there in that elevator.” And her tone teased, As fast as you know I know you can be.

“I don’t think that would have helped every single thing fall correctly into place.”

“Would’ve brought about an inevitable result, though. Anyway I’ll see you Saturday. I was going to call you tomorrow, or I guess I mean today, and tell you about all of this, but then the elevator, and I couldn’t sleep, and I hoped that you... I was trying to be all self-assured about it, but you weren’t really asleep, were you?”

If Helena had thought herself charmed by Myka before—and of course she had been relentlessly charmed by Myka before—the idea that Myka would hope, with just that plaintive edge... Helena was lost. “Of course not,” she said. When she herself spoke low, what was the effect?

Initially, it seemed to make Myka businesslike: “Invite Steve, tell him and his sweetheart to show up about six fifteen. But you get here at six.”

“Pardon?”

“Fifteen minutes, beautiful cheapskate.” Businesslike, but to a nonbusiness purpose. “Way more time than we’d have had in the elevator.”

“You said your mother would be there! And while I believe you now know at least some of what I’ll do when she isn’t watching, I assure you that I will absolutely not—”

“Fine,” Myka said, and now she was the one who was obviously rolling her eyes, “I’ll be on good behavior. I’ll just kiss you and kiss you and kiss you.”

“That’s good behavior?”

“Okay, maybe it’s not good behavior... maybe it’s just good.”

And Helena could not keep from envisioning being kissed and kissed and kissed, even for the proposed fifteen minutes, and she knew that it would be more than “just” good. She laughed at herself for knowing it, her laugh a small analog vibration of pleasure, one transformed into a digital electrical signal that traveled over its relaying frequency to Myka’s telephone, which translated it back into what Helena was sure Myka would hear, correctly, as pleasure.

All of that, in a fraction of a second, so why had Helena been surprised by what could happen in a day in a hospital? In a few noncontiguous hours of intimacy, pretended and real? “Very good,” she agreed, because that too was true.

“For that,” Myka said, “but not only that,” and she continued, quite persuasively, “I love you too.”

TBC

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