#And people seem to not like seeing math being given symbolic meaning for whatever reason. It's all symbolic anyway they're literal symbols. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

passable-talent · 3 years

Text

ya boi is back with a new niche character played by hayden christensen for yall to enjoy.

CW: blood, wounds, cursing, piercings, tattoos, guns, fighting, deaths of unnamed characters

AJ x gn!reader - Takers (2010). the stupid hat grew on me.

dedicated as always to @haydens-moles and @iscariot-rising for being my friends and for appreciating hayden as much as I do

The story of your life, as you loved to explain it, boiled down to a little math joke. Excited five, you called it, or it’s official terminology- five factorial. Written as “5!”, hence the awful pun.

“Factorials,” you’d say, “for those that don’t remember, are a multiplication of every number up to the one that’s being discussed. As such, five factorial is five, times four, times three, times two, times one.”

Your life, your excited five, was as follows: five major scars, four tattoos, three piercings, two eyebrow slits.

“The one is usually ignored,” you’d say, “as it makes no multiplicative difference. That’s why I don’t have a ‘one’.”

In August, 2009, you got your ‘one’. Its a doozy. But we’re not there yet.

~~~

Five major scars.

December 25, 1983. It’s your first Christmas. Your parents think you’re just being a cranky infant, but something way more serious is going on- they find out the next day that you’ve got RSV, a respiratory virus that’s especially dangerous for infants. You spend the next three years periodically using a ventilator whenever the coughing acts up. You don’t remember much of it, other than the vaguely crayon-looking piece of the machine, but you can’t forget that it happened, due to the pretty white scar over the bridge of your nose. It’s not such a gnarly wound as it is a reminder- not of the ventilator that wore through your skin thanks to frequent use, but of the virus that almost took your life only a few months after it had begun.

July 28, 1993. You’re seven years old, staying at your grandmother’s house with your cousin, who’s six months older than you. You’re playing cops and robbers- he’s the cop. The forest streaks by as you run the length of the property, slightly faster than him, but he catches you and throws you down. You land on your back on a jagged rock, not only painfully impacting your spine but digging deeply into your muscles beside it. It was the first hospital visit you remember, and the dark, long scar halfway between your tailbone and your shoulders reminds you never to fall without controlling it.

January 15, 1998. You’re in sophomore year of high school, and not the most popular. You like to play by the rules, and some asshole junior decides that he doesn’t like the way you won’t let him cheat off of your trigonometry homework, and decides that a knife is the best way to settle the problem. Those homework answers weren’t worth the long white line over all four of the knuckles of your left hand, but it is a pretty little reminder that lowlifes do what they want. And law enforcement, or whatever your school called the ‘anti-bullying league’, does jack shit about it.

October 30, 2002. You’re almost done with your certification to become a cop- thank god. You couldn’t stand the people who were to become your graduate class. They were so ready to become cops just to bully people, just to get to weild an iron fist and hide their bloodlust behind the law. Not you- you’re here to do some real good. That’s what they don’t like about you. And that’s why Fred Young splits open your cheek when just he’s supposed to be practicing his sparring. It’s an ugly scar, needed six stitches, but it’s a reminder that even the cops aren’t always the good guys.

May 14, 2004. You’re a new cop, working under detective Wells. There’s a robbery of a jewelry store a few blocks from where you’re patrolling, and as you’re making your way to the scene, a man in a fedora runs smack into you, taking you both to the ground. Broken glass digs into your shoulder, but he apologizes, and his blue eyes look so genuine. He’s afraid. You’d not realize until a month later that he wasn’t a scared bystander, but in fact one of the thieves. The fifth of your scars matches your first meeting with AJ- who would, by the end of the summer, become one of the most important people in your life.

~~~

Four tattoos.

August 4, 1999- Left wrist, inside knob of the bone. The little symbol had represented something to you when you were sixteen, but it had long lost whatever meaning you’d given it. Now, it was just a pattern to pass your thumb over whenever you got restless.

February 16, 2002- The cap of the right shoulder. It was your bunk number, from when you were training to be a cop. Nothing extravagant, but it was supposed to represent the beginning of the rest of your life- it was supposed to represent your calling.

June 1, 2004- Left arm, the outside of the forearm. Bleeding from your first tattoo was a new one, the largest one on your body. It was geometrical and high contrast, black lines loosely following your veins up toward your elbow, as though that left hand was bringing darkness into your body. It did- you shot with your left hand.

July 17, 2004- Right collarbone. A single, circular monogram, made up of six letters.

T A K E R S.

~~~

Three piercings.

April 7, 1989. Your father took you to get your ears pierced, but insisted upon arrival that it was too expensive to get both done, so you only got your left. The assymetrical style would have to grow on you- at six years old, you hated it.

May 19, 2003. You couldn’t have piercings at the academy, they were unprofessional, they were dangerous. So the night of graduation, you went out and got a hole punched into your nostril- the pain made tears well up, but more than anything, it was the satisfaction of giving a pretty little ‘fuck you’ to your superiors, who you’d never see again.

July 18, 2006. AJ takes you to a fancy beauty salon for an eyebrow bar after hearing maybe once that you’d wanted another piercing. You knew you were in love with him- who else in your life had ever paid such close attention to you?

~~~

Two eyebrow slits.

June 23, 2004. You leave the police force. You tell Wells that it’s because you’re pissed you can’t find the guys that robbed the jewelry store, but that’s not even close to the truth. You’ve found them- hell, you got a good look at one of them on the very day of the robbery. But you’ve done the looking, and didn’t have the heart to bring them in. They had families. They donated ten percent of every heist to a charity. They did more for the community than the police you worked for, and they did it clean- they didn’t hurt anybody, if they didn’t have to. They did what you’d hoped to do, when you joined the force. What you’d never gotten to do. Eyebrow slits were considered extremely unprofessional, so the moment you were free of your two week notice, you split open your right eyebrow. It would give a good balance to the bar piercing you hoped to put through your left someday.

March 4, 2007. You’re cleaning up your slit when AJ walks into the room and stands behind you so that you can see him through the mirror. You keep your eyes on the trimmer you’re so delicately running over your skin, but when he opens up a little felt box with a pretty ring inside, you whirl around with such panic that you make the slit approximately half an inch wider than it should’ve been. Lilli helped you fill in the gap for the engagement photos, but you decided to keep a second slit on the other end of the unfortunate shave- a little reminder of the evening in which he proposed to you.

~~~

“The one is usually ignored,” you’d say, “as it makes no multiplicative difference. That’s why I don’t have a ‘one’.”

On August 27, 2009, you got your ‘one’.

You’d been out of the game for two years, choosing not to take a cut of the winnings. You’d advise, you’d plan, you’d set up, but you did not want to be on site when the heist went down. The boys had it taken care of, and you butted heads with Jesse far too often for anyone’s comfort.

You especially couldn’t work on this project, thanks to a little fucker named Ghost- he didn’t trust you, as a member of the Takers he’d never met, and you didn’t trust him, as a criminal you’d never grown to respect.

You knew that most of them didn’t trust Ghost either, but everything he brought forward checked out- AJ must’ve mumbled the plan thirty times in his sleep in the five days from its suggestion to its fruition. There were no holes. Knowing Gordon and John, they had some ‘insurance’ for Ghost, anyway. In case it went wrong.

Still, you stayed at the Hotel Roosevelt through it all. You were their sitter, keeping the hotel room warm and ready for their arrival. They arrived back one by one- and like usual, AJ got there first. He, Gordon, and John were usually the first to get out, but he always made it back to the room first, because that way he could get some time with you. That way, he could have a private reunion, fresh off of a job.

“Hey, baby,” he said as he closed the door, and you waited for him to turn his eyes to you before you gave him a smile. He threw down his bag onto one of the chairs, and it landed with a heavy thump, but you’d long grown used to the sound of the score. However much he pulled, good for him. You were just happy to slip your arms around his neck and feel him kiss the scar on your cheekbone before sliding his lips to yours.

He always kissed different right after a job- before the boys had all gotten back, before the total was counted. He had a confidence to his movement, but there was fear, insecurity, just a tinge. He wasn’t just a taker, he was a man, who had worries and risks just like every other man.

You were out of the game for a few reasons. They had it taken care of. You butted heads with Jesse. You didn’t trust Ghost. But you knew that you were AJ’s biggest fear- you knew that if you got hurt on a job, he’d never forgive himself.

So he kissed you, he held you close, he reminded himself that you were here, you were fine. His long fingers seems to take up half your back, and his hair was already in his face, as though you’d tugged it there yourself.

With just one more pass of your lips over his, you pulled away.

“How’d it go?” You asked with a soft voice, rolling your first finger through the curls at the back of his neck.

“Could’ve gone better,” he said with a chuckle, “but we got it done.” You heard a knock at the door, and Gordon was the next arrival- then John, then Jake, then Ghost. Jesse came last, and with him, a whole host of new problems.

A bullet splintered the door and caught AJ somewhere under the ribcage. Everyone hit the floor, diving behind couches, and you popped your head up long enough to see AJ launch over the kitchen island. The room shattered into gunfire and feathers from expensive pillows, glass shards littering the ground like raindrops. It all moved so fast, and the air exploded into noise. You could barely track AJ through it all, he was so far away, all the way across the room. And you wanted to keep your eye straight down the barrel of your gun.

“AJ!” Jesse called from beside you, hidden behind a brown leather couch, “You okay?” You looked around the side of it, and saw him ten feet from you, the longest ten feet of your life, behind the kitchen island. He was struggling, on his hands and knees.

“Get up,” you snarled, knowing he’d already taken a hit.

“Out the back!” John ordered from the doorway behind you, and you started to realize the moment, the dangerous, heavy moment. AJ was all the way across the room- he couldn’t cross it. Not with these mobsters holding ground.

“Let’s go!” Gordon shouted, and your eyes connected with AJ’s. He saw the same thing you did.

“Go,” he said, voice calm, and it cut through the chaos of the room, cut through every hardened lesson ever pounded into you, cut through every wall you’d ever built around you, around your heart. “I’m coming.”

AJ was a good liar. But he couldn’t lie to you.

“No,” you growled through gritted teeth, and you made a rash decision.

You’d always been good at gymnastics. You had strong control over the movement of your body, and had, ever since you’d learned from your cousin throwing you down onto that stone that split open your back. You could move and slink and roll and dive in ways that would keep you not only from falling, but even from being noticed.

Using the chaos as your cover, you did a tight diving roll across the room to him, slipping between shelters unscathed. This brought you just a bit closer to the mobsters, but further from the back door exit that Gordon had been trying to guide you toward. You’d chose AJ over your safety any day- the surprise and the fear in his eyes said that he wished you wouldn’t.

Making sure you had enough ammo, you considered your final move- this didn’t end until these mobsters did. There were five of them left, after all this commotion: four in the room, one in the hall. You couldn’t take all five, not with their guns being so much more than yours, but you could take out a few. You could shift attention, you could buy time.

And hopefully, you could stay breathing, too. That’d be nice.

“Stay down,” you hissed, leaving AJ behind the island where he’d be forgotten about, or assumed dead. Then, you rounded the corner and rolled to the feet of the closest mobster. As you came out of the roll you caught his legs in yours, wrenching them from under him and taking him to the ground with one of the first moves you’d learned in basic training. He hit the wall hard, and was unconscious by the time he landed- the same could not be said for his friends.

From your right, you could see Gordon, still firing, still hopeful for your and AJ’s escape. Your shoulders were above the couch, so you knew he saw as you turned your weapon to the second mobster before he could turn to you, and stopped his heart.

Your commotion had caught the attention of the other three who still remained. You whirled around and raised your gun to one of them, but they managed it first.

Gordon had to swallow back his horror as he saw a bullet enter the front of your side profile, and blood explode from the back. He took out the mobster who still had his attention on you- but your shoulders smacked to the ground outside of his view, and he closed the door.

Luckily, their aim was spotty. You now had a useless left arm, but you were still breathing. Not that you’d let the one remaining mobster notice that.

You and AJ played dead, only a few feet from each other, but the kitchen island becoming a thicker wall than any you’d ever been split by. As you stared blankly at the ceiling, taking shallow breaths hidden by the folds of your shirt, you hoped he didn’t think you were dead. You hoped he wasn’t bleeding out.

After what felt like agonizingly long minutes, the shooting finally stopped, and the door opened again. Gordon was the first to enter the room, and rounded the couch to you, grief in his eyes, expecting the worst.

But you could give him a smile.

“Surprise,” you groaned, and he lit up in relief, helping you sit up with your good arm.

“Look at you, playing dirty,” he said with a laugh, “I thought you were gone for sure.”

“AJ,” you heard Jake say from across the room, and finally AJ could sit up from where you’d forced him down. The two of you had both bled straight through your shirts, but there wasn’t any time for sweet reunions- everyone had to get out, and fast.

AJ left his car wherever it was. John gave the two of you a ride to the airstrip where Gordon was going to disappear for a while, and on the way you and AJ attempted to give each other first aid until the personnel on the plane could take care of it.

Eventually, you leaned against his left, and he against your right, your wounds still stinging and sticky with blood, but manageable, for as long as they needed to be.

The night didn’t get any easier, but that didn’t matter- you were home free, they’d managed the job, and Ghost was out of the picture, and neither of you were going to die.

And someday, when you felt brave enough to recount your near-death, near-loss, near-jailed experience, you’d say:

Five major scars, four tattoos, three piercings, two eyebrow slits. And one gun shot wound.

-🦌 Roe

#reader insert #angst #aj #aj takers #takers #takers 2010 #hayden christensen #anakin skywalker #x reader #gn!reader #aj x reader #fics

189 notes · View notes

draven-imani · 3 years

Text

Journal 5 (part 1)

We’ve had an…extremely productive day. We found a note on Hosilla’s person that detailed three safehouses of the cult of Baphomet: Nyserian Manor, Topaz Solutions, and the Tower of Estrod. The note was signed SV—which I’m assuming is Stauton Vhagn. Looks like he came back and finished the job of destroying the Wardstone after Commander Tirabade stopped him the first time.

After talking to Aravashnial, Anevia, and Horgus, we pooled our information together. Nyserian Manor was owned by a noble who sometimes worked with Horgus, and had taken out a loan from him once to buy Commander Tirabade’s sword from her. Anevia hadn’t been aware Irabeth had sold her sword—apparently she’d told her wife she’d lost it. Anevia was going to be having words with the commander of the Eagle Watch upon seeing her again.

The Tower of Estrod was of interest to Aravashnial, as it was a place of arcane studies. He also requested that we look into the Blackwing Library, where the Riftwardens would be located.

Anevia wanted to look for Irabeth, and therefore would like to look into going home as that was the only lead she had on where her wife may be.

As we discussed, we exited the subterranean tunnels and entered the sewers. And came upon three orphan kids and a middle aged pinkish tiefling woman with many piercings and a bow. The orphans immediately ran to Luna, clearly familiar with her. Another point in her favor for ‘good person, not a murderer/serial killer/whatever else the rumor mill decides to say’.

“So you must be ‘Una’,” the tiefling said, imitating the orphans mispronunciation of her name. Or maybe legitimately mistaking her name for that. “Nice to meet you, incase you haven’t noticed, everything’s gone to hell.”

The tiefling introduced herself as Hiskaria. She had arrived in town from Numeria recently to join the Raven Corps, actually, although she was apparently a Kenabres native initially. She was on lone by one ‘Kevoth-Kul’, because she was a criminal on parole, and joining the Raven Corps was her penance.

Ouch.

Aaaaaand as the only member of the Raven Corps around that means it fell on me to keep her around until we could either find her handler or someone with more authority. That and strength in numbers. We couldn’t exactly leave her behind, even if she is a confessed murderer.

Oh, yeah, I didn’t mention that her crime was murder did I? Yeah, our new buddy’s a convicted murderer. One fake murderer and one real one, and if I had to put money on it, everyone’s going to get who’s who wrong.

After some discussion, we decided to head for Horgus’ manor first. It would provide a safe place to leave the orphans, so that we wouldn’t be dragging them around in the open where every demon still lurking around might decide to swoop down on them.

We made it there with only minor incident, some rat demon ripping up a clothing store who dubbed himself ‘the rat king’. He was of personal offense to Melody given that he was in the process of destroying things of beauty. That and the owners of the shop were still there and might be able to salvage some things.

Given my studies I was able to identify the demon as an Abrikandilu, a wrecker demon. A destroyer of beauty, not just of artwork like the dresses, but of physical beauty, using their fangs to cause horrible scarring on those they attack. I also knew that Radiance was the only weapon we had that would pierce its defenses, although it also had a unique weakness to mirrors, due to all demons of this kind having an abhorrence of their own visage. That being the case, I suggested that Luna and Melody slip into the store to get one of the mirrors from the changing rooms within while I distracted and fought it with Radiance and Hiskaria took pot shots at it from a safe distance.

Radiance and I were both more than happy to finally be putting a demon to the blade.

Spilling demons’ blood, at least, we both agree on.

Things went off about how we’d hoped. The Abrikandilu was a bit faster than I’d anticipated and it rushed me rather than me pinning it by the building as I’d planned, but I stopped its fangs with my shield and avoided any new scars. Melody and Luna came out with a mirror, which drew the demon’s attention. Luna’s axe stuck into it. Then Radiance slew it.

Radiance roared in my head each time it drew blood against a demonic foe, in what I can only describe as ecstasy. They, at least, get joy from battle. I wish I could say the same, but the demons die all the same. I feel good about it, that we slayed the demon and helped those people. It’s something good. Not joy, that’s too strong of a word. I feel—satisfied, maybe?

Regardless, the shop owners thanked us. They had little to offer and we tried to assure them that we didn’t need anything, but they insisted on at least providing us with a nice outfit each in thanks. I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything so fine. An orphan and a soldier don’t exactly make for elegant living.

Afterwards we made it to Horgus’ manor with no further incidents. His holdings were untouched. Melody mused at first that perhaps someone was trying to frame him. However after some thought, Hiskaria and I disagreed with that assessment. Demons by nature would seek out where the most people are, the places where they could wreak the most havoc. And as we approached it was clear that his manor was devoid of life. It would seem that his men and his servants had fled their posts when the attack happened, and as a lucky result the manor had been untouched. I’ll give Horgus some credit here. While he was clearly visibly upset that the men he’d hired to protect his holdings had left their posts, he tried very hard to be reasonable that it was for the best that they’d left and protected the servants, and that it had indirectly kept the demons from destroying his things. He was however very upset that they’d taken all of the mints from the little bowl at the front entrance—as was Miss Melody, who bemoaned that it was quite rude of them. Ah what I would give to have her priorities.

Luna was shepherding the orphans—one of whom, Hamm, had taken a shine to Hiskaria’s magic and gotten it into his head that he was going to…what was it? Summon demons in his snot bubbles? Charming kid. Glad his entire world falling apart around him didn’t completely destroy his sense of innocence and wonder. Suppose he was lucky he ran into Hiskaria so the three of them didn’t get killed or worse. That’s a point in her favor.

After gathering up food from the kitchen and some entertainment for the kids from a room formerly used for the staff’s children while they were on the job, Horgus went down to the safest part of the manor: the vault. He opened the safe, which proved to have been completed untouched. Inside was more wealth than I’d probably ever seen in one place before, or ever will again. He paid Luna that looked like a rather hefty sum. Then he also paid myself, Melody, and Hiskaria 1000 gold for returning him here safely, although payment had never been promised. Hiskaria tried to argue that she’d only just joined with us, but he said that it was payment due to someone who couldn’t be here to take their cut.

Horgus…is a complicated man, I am beginning to realize. I cannot pin him down yet. Even more than most people, his words and actions do not align. And even some of his actions I think are more masks on top of that. Luna insists he’s a good man but won’t give details beyond that. She’s had a few private conversations with him, so I’m inclined to believe she knows something that’s given her that impression. And I trust Luna’s judgement in people.

As Horgus locked himself away, we heard the beginnings of him teaching the kids something or another about some…math thing. I don’t know, look, I’m not the one to look to about Abadar tax bracket stuff. Luna was just glad he was hopefully keeping Hamm from thinking about snot demons.

From there we went next door, to Nyserian Manor. Or what was left of it. Which was not much. At all. Or anything, really. See, the demons hadn’t been very discerning in their building demolition. They’d destroyed their own safehouse. Idiots. Served anyone who was inside right for betraying humanity to the demons.

Next up was Blackwing Library.

Oh Blackwing Library. This one made me angry.

If you know me you know that’s bad. Of course, you don’t know me, because you’re just a bundle of inanimate papers sandwiched in leather that I’m writing in to keep my tenuous grip on sanity together. Suffice to say: that’s bad. I don’t get angry easily. Unless you’re a Deskari worshipper or waving his symbol in my face like I’m a bull, but I mean, that’s just asking for trouble from any Iomedaen, really.

As we approached the library, it was immediately apparent that the entire thing had been decimated. Aravashnial was despondent. All of his friends and colleagues with the Riftwardens would have been there, and he feared the worst. While Melody and surprisingly Hiskaria tried to comfort him, Luna tried to sneak closer to look into the library. I stuck close to her, although not so close as to blow her cover.

What she saw was a turncoat Iomedaen with five librarians bound and gagged, and a sixth librarian being forced to pile books around them, to serve as both a book burning and a funeral pyre.

We didn’t have long to think as he pulled out the flint and tinder. Luna downed a potion of invisibility and vanished. We had to put our faith in her. And as usual, she didn’t let us down, as a moment later blood splattered across the floor and she reappeared behind the armored man with her hood up and a declaration that she was “the Butcher of Balestreet, Bitch”.

The cavalier’s two tiefling thugs tried to flank Luna, but I helped fight off one and Hiskaria finished them with a potshot from outside the door that got him right between the eyes, while Melody swooped in to take a stab at the other.

Luna clearly outmatched the man she was facing, and he was smart enough to realize it. He dropped his weapons, and offered to surrender. He swore if we let him go, he’d never do such a thing again.

The others seemed ready to let their guards down.

I didn’t buy it.

I could feel it. This was an evil man. The kind who would just turn around and do something like this again the second he had an opportunity, if we let him live.

Luna lowered her weapon to go deal with the tiefling thug. I told her what I just wrote, that if we let him go he would just harm others. She said it wasn’t going to be her choice to make.

If anyone was making this choice, it was going to be me, and me alone.

Melody tried to reason that maybe we could get some information out of him. That we could take him alive, and question him. After all, that’s what she was best at.

And then what, I asked her. What do we do with him after that? There weren’t any jails. The city was in chaos. Where do we put him when we’re done questioning him so that he doesn’t hurt anyone else?

He swore again that he’d just go away and be good. I called bullshit.

Melody said maybe he’d know more about the safehouses, or the other plans. What we’d potentially be walking into.

Fine. For the safety of the rest of the group, I’d take him alive.

So I punched the cocky bastard in the face and left him to Melody.

Hiskaria and Luna went about helping the librarians while Melody did her thing. She manacled the man and tied him up for a nice friendly chat. I stuck around. I didn’t trust this man. Kaleb, I learned his name was. Much good it did.

Melody woke him up. First thing he did was tried to play ignorant. Tried to pretend like he’d been possessed, like he hadn’t been in control of his own faculties before.

Bullshit. More lies.

Melody saw through his lies this time just as much as I had. She told him to start over and try again.

Next he tried to weave a sob story about how he’d been coerced into doing what he’d done. How he was a crusader who’s unit had been taken captive, and he’d been forced into committing evil acts out of desperation.

Again, nothing but lies. All he knew how to do was lie, habitually, spew whatever falsehood he thought would get him in our good graces.

When Melody and I called him out on it again, he snapped. In a final act of rebellious desperation, he finally told the truth. He’s nothing but scum of the earth. He was a crusader, and his unit had been wiped out, that was the one honest thing that had left this mouth. Afterwards he’d decided to hedge his bets and side with the demons, so he started committing every atrocity he could to try to win their favor. And he swore that when he died and went to the pits of the Abyss to be reborn he’d come back.

And flay us alive.

Bad choice of words.

I think the bull metaphor before was apt, because I certainly saw red for a moment. I don’t think anyone was in disagreement when I stabbed Radiance through his blackened heart at this point though.

We didn’t learn anything though. Except that he wasn’t a cultist. Just a psychopath who found an excuse to start killing people.

As we discussed our next course of action, the librarian we’d rescued approached us. He knew that Aravashnial was with the Riftwardens, and he knew what had happened to them. The Riftwardens after locking what they could in their vault had teleported to a different location, meaning Aravashnial’s friends were safely somewhere else. Unfortunately, a day later someone else arrived. Xanthir Vang. Another of Deskari’s generals. A worm that walks, a terrible creature that is both a swarm and one being bound to Deskari’s will. Xanthir cut through the floor, right above where the vault would be in the secret Riftwarden floors below, and lifted the entire vault from the floor. Then he ripped it apart like it was nothing. He seemed disappointed that the Riftwardens weren’t there—predictably, I suppose, since he had a personal grudge against them.

We found a single dead and dried up worm husk in a corner of the room. I don’t like this. It’s probably my imagination that my arm itches. Probably. Another of Deskari’s generals so close. That’s…terrifying.

With this information tucked away, we decided to head for Anevia’s home to look for clues of where Commander Tirabade may be. Mostly to make sure her wife was safe, and to inform her of everything we’d found out thus far, and a little tiny bit to ask her about that sword she’d apparently sold behind her back.

On the way, we were accosted by a skeletal demon from atop a building, who also called himself the rat king. He claimed the one we’d defeated before was a usurper, and then summoned a swarm of dire rats to attack us. We dealt with the dire rats handily enough. They took a few chomps at me, annoying little things. Between rats and lizards, do I just taste good or something?

Nope, just licked my hand to test it, I’m quite certain I do not taste good.

We arrived to a small unassuming house. Irabeth’s funds clearly went to things other than worldly possessions. Not that it was a bad house. I’m not trying to be judgmental of Irabeth Tirabade I’m just saying with her position most people would have much larger quarters, so she clearly puts hers to good use elsewhere. I’m not one to judge small living quarters, I live in the barracks. Which probably are in ruins now. Ah, well. Not like I had anything of sentimental value in there anyways. My fiddle, my sword, and my shield were on my person, those were the only things I might have cried over losing. And then my sword got forcefully replaced by a talkative holy blade anyways.

I wish I could say Radiance is growing on me like Horgus. Unfortunately, we got off an extremely wrong foot and they haven’t exactly tried to mend any bridges. Luna says I should be more assertive with them, since I’m the only one who can wield them, they need me to do their holy mission they want. And Radiance even agreed with her, because of course they did.

Figures. A guy tries to be nice to the holy sword who he’ll have to be working with for the foreseeable future and apparently even trying to just not make waves with the being you’ll have to work with talking in your head is the wrong move.

Fine…assertive. What do they want me to do, put Radiance in time out in their little box when they get uppity? That is a funny image though.

I’ve completely lost my train of thought.

Right, reread a few paragraphs, Anevia’s house. So, Luna and Melody took a peek inside to make sure nothing was lurking around inside.

Predictably, something was lurking around inside.

He was invisible, but when Melody began using detect evil he ‘pinged’, so she had an idea of where the invisible presence was. The invisible presence summoned a fire beetle outside to attack Anevia, but Hiskaria turned and shot it dead before it got a chance.

Melody and Luna had a good idea where the invisible foe was, and began to force him back into a corner, although their swings of axe and glaive kept hitting nothing but air.

I came in, and I swear to you Iomedae guided Radiance’s blade. Not only did I strike true, from the amount of red that splattered across the ground, I’m certain I hit something vital. That, and I made him very angry. The next thing I saw was an enraged orc, whose invisibility faded away as a blast of fire was released from his hand point blank in my face. Too familiar. Far too familiar. And then darkness.

And then I was awake again, Melody tipping one of my potions into my mouth. Luna had bloodied the orc, but he’d refused to go down in his blind frenzy. Then Hiskaria had stepped in and finished the job.

I proceeded to heal myself a little more thoroughly while the ladies talked to Anevia about what just happened.

Huh, now that Aravashnial and Horgus are gone I am the only guy in the little group of ours, aren’t I?

The prettiest guy in our group by default as well, not that that’s saying much.

Anevia recognized the orc, he was someone who Irabeth had stopped from some previous scheme years back, who she’d left out in the world alive. Apparently, he came back for revenge. He won’t be getting a third chance.

With that settled and no more assassins lurking about, Anevia went to her and Irabeth’s bedroom and opened a secret compartment. Inside she read a note and took out some supplies. She told us that Commander Tirabade and the other remaining Crusaders were hiding out at the Defender’s Heart tavern, and the passcode to get in was “Silverstrong”.

We decided to go straight there, as it was closer than any of the safehouses, and allies were still more useful than victories at the moment.

I was especially feeling that way when that damn skeleton ‘rat king’ showed up again, and threw a flock of vultures at us. Most of which decided to descend upon me. I know vultures are a bad omen but come on, that’s too on the nose even for me. What’s worse? Do you know what’s worse? What’s even worse than vultures? Fiend vultures. These things could smite. I had, no joke, five buzzards smiting me like a bunch of feathery antipaladins.

Just my cursed luck again. Why does Desna hate me?

So, yeah. I was hurting. And really wanting some rest. While everyone else was ready and raring to go for two more safehouses after we finished meeting with the Commander. I finished healing myself again and I was almost tapped out of spells, and completely out of potions. My fervor was wearing thin as well. Luna was all well and good, she didn’t use spells. Hiskaria was fine, she mostly only used her cantrips to empower her bow to fire twice—a neat trick that didn’t really cost her anything. Melody had used one judgement and some spells but she was just fine and equally ready to go.

Ever the weak link.

Eh, no point thinking like that, right? Plenty more happened after that. We arrived to Defender’s Heart and gave them the passcode. They came out to meet us, initially excited to see Anevia.

Then they saw Luna, still with her hood up in her Butcher guise from our fight earlier.

Oops.

We tried to explain that this wasn’t what it looked like. That she wasn’t actually a murderer. That the rumors and stories and reports were wrong. Anevia tried to back us up. Luna took off her hood, and pointed out that she drank one of the two of them under the table at this very tavern just a few days prior, and no one got hurt. Despite our best efforts, tensions were raising. The guards were going for their weapons, and we were surrounded. The paladins were throwing accusations, and no one was listening to our words, they were only hearing what they believed to be true.

Then a strong hand came down on both of the guards’ shoulders. A voice spoke, and told them that maybe sometime they should try actually using the gift Iomedae grants them to detect evil.

Irabeth Tirabade stood behind the two guards, in the flesh, as…everything as I ever would have imagined. Tall, proud, honorable, noble.

The guards scrambled to cast the detect spells, and predictably found that Luna was not evil. They were puzzled but relaxed somewhat. Then jumped and went for their weapons again when they looked in Hiskaria’s direction.

The Commander told them that it was alright, and held up some papers, saying all the paperwork was in order for Hiskaria.

It looked like she was officially Raven Corps now.

Commander Tirabade picked up Anevia and carried her inside, and asked the four of us to follow. She got to quarters where she could lay Anevia down, then turned to me.

And the conversation went something like this.

“Acting Captain of the Raven Corps,” she said.

I was flabbergasted for a moment then realized she had to be talking to me because there was literally no one else she could be talking to. “Me?”

#journal entry #pathfinder #pathfinder wotr #pathfinder wotr spoilers #Draven Imani

9 notes · View notes

thanksjro · 4 years

Text

More Than Meets the Eye #18- Rung Psychologically Tortures a Man with Poor Snack Management

So, Swerve’s having a less than stellar day, and for once it isn’t linked to his deep-rooted sense of self-loathing.

Good thing he already emptied those stills, otherwise this would be just the hugest mess.

Thanks to some off-panel Whirl shenanigans that took place prior to this storyline, Swerve had Brainstorm put in a few security measures. Of course, Brainstorm being Brainstorm, never does weaponry in any half-measures.

Still, it isn’t quite enough. Looks like Swerve’s going to have to break out the big guns for this guy.

There’s a lot going on here, so let’s break it down.

On the character side of things, it would appear that Swerve is a merciful god of robot booze, as he’s not yet banned anyone from his small business, even when he probably ought to- Fort Max I get, and Whirl has the whole “is also an Autobot” thing going on, but Cyclonus has actively attempted to murder Swerve in the past, and also is the closest thing to a Decepticon they’ve got on the ship at any given time.

On the weaponry side of things, it would seem that Swerve having blown his face clean off his skull back in issue #12 got back to Brainstorm, who- because he’s married to his career and loves a project- immediately got to work on a gun that Swerve could actually handle with his funky little cartoon-man hands. Of course, that doesn’t mean Swerve’s going to get away with his dignity intact, oh heavens no! This thing has a literal smiley face slapped on the front of it. Well, you know what they say: it’s Nerf or Nothing.

Swerve blasts a hole in the Legislator with his silly, silly gun, and the bar is saved from further destruction.

I like to imagine that Brainstorm recorded that victory line himself, because he wants to support his friends, in his own, bizarre way.

Things are looking rough for the rest of the Lost Light, as the Legislators have completely flooded the ship with their forces, as the crew do their best to fight them off. Blaster’s had his titty compartment blasted open. Huffer is screaming. The medics have taken to violence. Skids has broken out the brass knuckles and is making god-awful math puns. The Legislators are still coming, without any end in sight. It’s a real shitshow.

Over on Luna 1, it would appear that Ratchet immediately passed out after seeing Pharma, which is a fair response to seeing someone who’s supposed to be very much dead, I think. Pharma calls Lockdown, they have a bit of banter, and then the scene moves on to whatever Cyclonus and Whirl are doing.

Because these two are the only ones on the away team who can actually fly, they’ve broken off from the rest. Whirl’s getting antsy, and decides he’s gonna fight something. Cyclonus, though he does mention that Rodimus told them not to do exactly what Whirl is suggesting, seems to agree with this line of thought.

Speaking of Rodimus, him and the rest of the gang are zipping around on those M.A.R.B.s, though it appears as if some of the passengers have switched drivers. Rung’s over with Chromedome now, holding on to him for dear life. Maybe they’re having an impromptu grief counseling session as they run from danger. Tailgate’s with Rodimus, and he’s just pointed out that Ratchet got left behind. Rodimus can’t deal with that right now, though, and decides that they need to get away from all these gotdang Decepticons and then figure out their next step.

Then he’s distracted by the literal lineup of dead Titans just hanging out on the moon.

Luna 1’s kinda fucked up.

Cutting back to our framing device- nope, still haven’t gotten caught up with the present yet- Ambus asks what Rodimus did next. Well, a lot happened. A lot. Chromedome jumped out of his therapy session with Rung and transforms into his alt, which I want to say is the only time he’ll do it in MTMTE. Whirl and Cyclonus are faffing about in the sky, more or less toying with the Decepticons following them. Rodimus wants to pull another Fantastic Voyage, much to Tailgate’s horror.

Rodimus zooms into the first crack he sees, but doesn’t manage to lose his attackers. Tailgate provides commentary, as Rodimus wraps the little guy around his neck like a cape, leaps from the M.A.R.B., and does some super sick gymnastics, hanging from a pipe jutting out of the ceiling as the guys who were chasing them run into… well, I assume each other, but it’s not terribly clear.

Crisis avoided, Rodimus drops down, transforming as he does. Tailgate goes with him, because gravity is still a thing on the moon, and we get a reminder that he’s only got a couple days left to live. Unfortunately, it would appear he’ll be spending his final days rotting in a prison cell, as Lockdown shows up with everyone else in handcuffs, forcing Rodimus to come quietly. Everyone seems very put out by this whole situation, especially Brainstorm. He’s downright furious, probably because he got captured by the guy with a fish butt on his head.

Oh, the indignity of it all!

Then again, maybe he’s just focused on working up the cajones to ask just what the hell is going on on this super weird moon. Lockdown obviously isn’t a bad enough dude to be running this operation- we saw what happened the last time he went against someone who actually had the time to plan something out- so our away team has deduced that there’s someone higher up on the food chain here. Also, there’s the whole issue of money clearly being a major factor in all this.

That sort of tech doesn’t just fall out of the sky.

As they’re being walked down this corridor of tension building, Chromedome spies Ultra Magnus in an adjoining hallway. He calls to him, but is very solidly ignored. But there’s no time to worry about Magnus being a rude shit, because it’s time for character reveals!

There’s an interesting little detail about Tyrest’s character, which is a little hard to see given the layout of the art for this page, but here it is, on the end of his staff:

Now, I know that the Autobot badge was appropriated from a symbol meant to represent Primus, but that was millions of years ago. So much for being a neutral party, huh Tyrest?

Rodimus is real peeved about being chased, shot at, arrested, and held against his will, and fully intends to give Tyrest a piece of his mind. Tyrest isn’t interested, however, telling him to shove a sock in it, or be “held in contempt.” While this is happening, Perceptor and Brainstorm have noticed the positively humongous and positively ancient space bridge that Tyrest just has lying around in this room.

Oh no, this is about the baby field from last issue, isn’t it? Brainstorm’s going to jail for infant arson.

Rodimus greatly dislikes this whole situation, and expresses himself through the art of verbal abuse. Smash cut to them back in the cell, Ambus not seeming terribly impressed with how Rodimus handled himself with Tyrest.

The tale is finished, we know where we were. Now how to move forward?

Chromedome asks for a bit more information on our new friend, because the whole “Ambus” thing is throwing him off, and with good reason: how do you tell your late husband’s ex that you had to blow up your mutual partner to keep him from being eaten by a lippy bastard? But this isn’t the illustrious Dominus Ambus- this is MINIMUS Ambus, the lesser known brother. Chromedome/Dominus isn’t completely taken off the table, however, as Minimus uses some awkward phrases that seems to tell me Dominus isn’t confirmed dead.

Rung wants to know what Minimus’ whole deal is, seeing as he’s also in prison with the lot of them. Minimus explains that he’d been moving a shipment of energon derivatives, when Tyrest had arrested him for having traces of space cocaine in his goods.

Was taking his eye really necessary, Tyrest?

Minimus was placed into custody years ago, and has been awaiting trial this whole time. Not exactly sure why, seeing as this moon isn’t exactly off the chain populated. Maybe Tyrest’s just been busy doing things that are absolutely NOT nefarious in any form or fashion whatsoever.

Minimus mentions that he’s lost his Autobot badge, and Rung offers to let him borrow his own- which we’ve never seen him wear because it’s apparently too big for him- but Minimus would rather he wear it himself.

Tailgate doesn’t take to this bit of information about the appeals system very well, seeing as he’s not got years to wait around. He’s beginning to panic, not trusting Cyclonus and Whirl to break them out, and starts needling the others to do something. Brainstorm reveals that his briefcase, which he’s had this entire time, as he always does, has an attention deflector built into it, making it effectively invisible to Tyrest and his goons. Rung feels a certain kinship with the briefcase in that moment.

Imagine walking up to a widower and saying “Hey there, honeybunches, how about submitting to that crippling addiction your late spouse begged you to quit so we can bust out of prison?”

Of course, Tailgate’s only told Cyclonus about his condition, so no one’s exactly raring to go busting out, since they’ve assumed everyone present is effectively immortal.

Over on another part of the moon, Ratchet’s finally waking up from his stress-induced nap to find Pharma channeling his inner Jigsaw. Ratchet gives him some constructive criticism on his new hands, but Pharma’s kind of over listening to whatever Ratchet thinks.

Oh, I hope it’s one of those gag gifts where you open it and get hit in the face with a pie. Those are always a laugh.

Back on the Lost Light, Swerve is looking for his very best friend in the whole wide world. I really hope the feeling is mutual, because there’s no way Swerve would survive that sort of rejection.

The doors to the oil reservoir open, looking like the elevator scene from The Shining, and we see what’s become of our dear, dear Skidsy.

Skids is pretty sure all this Legislator nonsense is because of him, and he’s not about to let people die for his sorry butt today, no siree. He’s gonna save the day.

Then again, this is about where Star Saber pops into existence behind him and stabs him through the spine, so maybe not.

Behold, a bastard!

Star Saber in the IDW run is well-known as being a witch-hunting zealot who can and will commit acts of violence over any perceived slight against Primus he identifies in any given living creature. This is a stark removal from his original character, who is so pure-hearted, kind, and generous, he literally adopted an orphan to raise as his own son. So, what exactly happened here?

TMUK happened.

Back in the days before Roberts was a professional scriptwriter, back before IDW had the license for Transformers, the members of the TMUK fan group decided that Victory’s Star Saber was going to be evil. Why isn’t exactly clear, only that it was a decision that was made not by Roberts on his lonesome, but more as a collaborative effort. Of course, this Star Saber isn’t a one-to-one copy of the TMUK Star Saber- that guy was much more conniving and, uh, Hitler-y, than what we have here.

Getting back to the story, Swerve tries to save/avenge Skids, firing with his custom gun, only to miss every single shot.

Looks like there’s going to need to be a rework on the My First Blaster.

Swerve gets beaned over the head with the butt of Star Saber’s sword for his troubles, his visor shattering in the process. Damn, sure hope he’s got a reading prescription, and not anything he’ll actually need to see.

Back over on the moon, Ratchet’s pretty uninterested in playing Pharma’s little game. It’s just as well though, because, as it turns out, Pharma’s an impatient guy. Must be an absolute nightmare during the holiday season and birthdays. He throws open the box, revealing what’s inside.

THAT IS NOT PIE.

But we saw Ratchet’s face over on the other side of the room. How can he be in two places at once? Well, here’s the thing about Transformers…

They’re pretty darn hard to kill.

Back in the cell, Rung’s doing his part as a member of the away team by passing out snacks. Tailgate reveals his awful garbage disposal mouth. We get the down-low on Tyrest.

Once upon a time, Tyrest was an engineer. Then the war happened, shit got crazy, and suddenly he was organizing exoduses and peace talks with genocidal maniacs, and got appointed Chief Justice by the space pope himself.

Rodimus comes over to get in on the little snack party Rung and Tailgate are having, mentioning the Aequitas Trials- the very ones that were recorded onto Ironfist’s brain back in Last Stand of the Wreckers. Minimus comes over, warning Rodimus to keep hush-hush about those, since they’re top secret and all. Kind of a weird thing for you to do, Minimus. Hell, why do YOU know about these super secret trials, Mr. Nobody Trader Guy? Those were after Dominus disappeared, so it’s not like you had an in through your cool older brother.

Rodimus gives everyone the skinny on the trials, despite Minimus being weird about the whole thing.

Perceptor knows all this already, but I suppose it��s possible Rodimus is the only son of a gun who isn’t subscribed to Wreckers: Declassified and isn’t aware of Perceptor’s whole deal.

Minimus moves the topic over to the crew of the Lost Light, latching on to Skids specifically the moment he’s mentioned. Rung does his due diligence and offers Minimus a ride on the snack train. Minimus declines, Rung insists, and the box of space pocky is dropped on the floor.

Minimus goes to help Rung pick up the snacks, as Rung actively hinders the clean up effort.

Minimus is two seconds from snapping Rung’s scrawny little wrist like a toothpick if he doesn’t quit it. Luckily Rodimus is there to break up this positively bizarre situation. And then things get really weird.

Rung’s been watching Minimus since they got here, noticing things that were very familiar- speech patterns, mannerisms, tone, inflection, OCD behaviors, things like that. Once he developed enough of a hunch, Rung started intentionally antagonizing him by making a mess and putting his Autobot badge on in a way that isn’t up to standards. Why would he do this? Why would he want to cause an outburst in someone he just met?

Well, the thing is, he hasn’t just met Minimus Ambus. He’s actually been serving under him for the last year.

That’s a rather dark use of your doctorate, Rung, forcing a man to reveal his true identity by poking at his mental health until he was about to snap your neck over some candy. You did it so well, too.

Maybe you were on Kimia for more than just psych evals. What was your career officially called again? Psyops specialist is what they have listed on the Wiki. Truth be told, I don’t even know what that entails. Let’s look it up, shall we?

...I guess therapy is his side gig?

So either Roberts meant something else entirely, or Rung is actually super fucking scary.

#transformers #jro #mtmte #remain in light #issue 18 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #overthinking about robots #incoming analysis #comic script writing

82 notes · View notes

andersunmenschlich · 4 years

Text

Episode 17: The Boneturner’s Tale

Ah, finally. It’s about time I got another episode listened to. Amazing how long that takes; so much to do. And still I have no bookcases. Oh well. This one’s the statement of a Sebastian Adekoya, and apparently it has something to do with books. I am pleased.

...Oh, I am very pleased.

It seems to me that Sebastian Adekoya understands books very well. I’ve said before (and will doubtless say again) that all books are books of magic. Just as this episode’s statement-giver says, opening a book allows you to enter the mind of someone who may well be long dead. In such cases, reading is a form of necromancy.

To read a book is to change your mind: to place thoughts there that are not your own, to see things you’ve never seen, walk through worlds you’ve never been to, that no longer exist or don’t exist yet, or that never will.

To write is to preserve a fraction of your own mind, freezing it in symbols which wait to be decoded by the incautious.

You don’t know what thoughts you’re inviting to live inside your mind when you settle down to decipher a lexical set. You can’t know what they’ll do to you, nor you to them (nor what they, changed, may do to you again). The promises in the titles, in the genres and the labels, can only tell you so much. What does this set of words contain? Have you even understood what is meant by the description—are you sure you know what it means when an old story is called a “romance,” or when a newer one is labeled “wuxia”?

Some thoughts won’t be able to live in your mind. Some you’ll never be able to get rid of. Personalities and people, scenes and scenarios, images and ideas... foreign things birthed in the minds of others; decode the twisting lines on the page before you, and they’ll spring to life in your mind as powerful as the day they were written.

Words can be wonderful—and dangerous.

Books are beautiful—and bewitching.

You should never read unwarily, because when you read you’re bringing alien thoughts to life in your mind, and you may not want them to make a home there....

Sebastian Adekoya says he used to work at Chiswick Library. As he describes it, it’s a local library very like the one I grew up with: cheaply furnished, full of battered paperbacks, open-feeling, and frequented by friendly, quietly chatting patrons. Probably the occasional Children’s Corner with a librarian who reads aloud well and a much-loved copy of, say, Matilda or Owl at Home, depending on the audience.

Our statement-giver says it was 1996 when the thing happened.

He’d been working for the library about a year at that point, and knew that the library bought its books new, when it bought them (though he didn’t know where they bought them from).

A patron returned five books at the front desk. One of them, he’d never seen before. It was not, however, new. “The barcode and ISBN,” Sebastian says, “both registered as being that of Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, but the book itself was an almost featureless black paperback, with a title on the front in faded white serif font: The Bone Turner’s Tale.”

Confused, he calls the librarian (Ruth Weaver) over to look at it.

She also didn’t remember ever seeing it before, but it had the appropriate markings for a book from Chiswick Library, and the stamps on the lending label indicated it’d been in their collection for several years.

Weaver shrugs and says not to worry about it: they’ll get it put on the system properly. Sebastian, however, is bothered. So he does a bit of quick research.

The man who brought the book in, one Michael Crew, apparently only checked out four books, not five. Our statement-giver thinks maybe he’s a self-published author trying to get his book into the local library, and suggests this possibility to the librarian, who laughs and says that’s probably it—though why anyone would bother trying to get a book onto the shelves of this particular local library was beyond her.

Sebastian Adekoya notes that the book looked worn, “like it had seen decades of being read, with a line creased down the spine and one half of the cover faded from the sun. Nor, from what I could see, did it list any author at all.”

At this point, our fascinating book story is interrupted by the arrival of another character.

According to our statement-giver, this Jared Hopworth is, “not to put too fine a point on it, thick as mud.” He was also Sebastian’s best friend when the two of them were kids: inseparable. Hm. I must admit, I never had (nor wanted) anyone like that in my life. I suppose there was that other preacher’s oldest kid, from the church in the next church region over (it’s not called a diocese when you’re Protestant, but the effect’s much the same...). We were mostly friends in name, though, and never spent much time together.

In any case, Sebastian went to college and Jared hit the back alleys. For some reason, it seems, Jared Hopworth saw this as Sebastian Adekoya betraying him by being too smart, not him betraying Sebastian via being an idiot too stupid for college.

I do have to wonder how intelligent our statement-giver actually is, however, given that he apparently decided to just put up with what he describes as “a campaign of petty terror” for the sake of a memory of childhood friendship. Oh, sure, “he was always very careful to stop before he did anything that might get the police involved—but let’s be honest with ourselves, shall we?

You should only brush off malicious behavior from others if you’re enjoying it, and want to encourage them to do more.

...And now we get an even larger interruption. Excellent.

I do believe this is the very first time another character has actually broken into the middle of a recording. I don’t like it. Who is this Miss Herne, and why is her complaint so important that my story has to be disrupted?

I don’t even remember ever hearing her name before. I don’t know her, I don’t care about her—weren’t we in the middle of something?

...Oh, no, wait... I do remember her.

Naomi Herne, the annoying woman who doesn’t know how to appreciate a misty moonlit graveyard meadow. The one with the unusual attachment to that large piece of headstone. What’s she complaining about? I don’t remember that she had anything to complain about besides her own unfortunate lack of, as the children say, “chill.”

Well, whatever the case, it seems Jonathan Sims considers Naomi Herne’s statement a waste of time. It wasn’t, it was beautiful—but never mind. The interrupting messenger, someone named Elias (which rings a faint bell), tells the head archivist that the Lucas family gives the Magnus Institute financial support, so he shouldn’t annoy anyone connected with them if he can help it. Does Naomi Herne count as “connected to the Lucas family”? Her Lucas husband’s dead. She doesn’t even have the name. No children that I’ve heard of. No reason she should be connected that I can see. And they didn’t seem terribly interested in a connection at the funeral, did they? I think Mr. Sims can antagonize her all he wants without damaging future Lucas donations, frankly.

Our interrupter is also looking for Martin (the supposedly-but-not-apparently incompetent archival assistant). Mr. Sims says Martin is off sick with stomach problems this week, and Elias leaves.

...Wait.

Elias Bouchard? Jonathan Sims’ boss? Why is he running messages down to the archives? This makes even less sense than Rosie the receptionist being in charge of upkeep on recording equipment. Just how much disbelief is supposed to be suspended here? I’m asking seriously, because the Magnus Institute seems like a very badly put together organization if you think about it too much. Or at all.

Well. Elias Bouchard leaves, Mr. Sims expresses “blessed relief” at the fact of Martin’s being sick and thus not at work, and we return to the statement.

...Our main character really dislikes this particular assistant, and for (it would seem) no good reason. Is there history there? Did Martin do something especially bad to Mr. Sims at some point in the past?

Or is it just some kind of negative bias, like thinking a man will be no good with children because he’s a man, or that a woman will suck at math, or that a Hispanic cleaner will steal your jewelry because they’re Hispanic (you dropped your necklace down the back of the dresser, Grandma—I am never going to forget that unjust accusation, nor how plain you made it that your suspicion was based entirely on race).

In any case: back to the library.

Sebastian Adekoya notes that it’s typically a bad thing when Jared Hopworth turns up at the library, because it means Jared’s “bored enough to seek me out for harassment.”

This is apparently exactly what Mr. Hopworth has in mind, because he waits for Weaver to go back to her office and close the door, then knocks the returns cart over, spilling books everywhere. Which is a horrible thing to do. I can’t stand seeing books mistreated this way, I’d rather watch someone bash innocent children around (which, I realize, isn’t saying much given I’m the one talking—but still).

Despite obviously having done it on purpose, he smiles and apologizes.

I’m familiar with this particular method of annoying people. Deliberately doing something terrible, then acting as though it was accidental? Yes, indeed.

People have trouble dealing with this. You did a bad thing. You clearly meant to do the bad thing. This should give them the right to demand retribution. But then, instead of continuing in the “person who does bad things deliberately” role, you switch to “friendly mistake-maker,” and it throws them.

Really they shouldn’t give you the benefit of the doubt.

There’s no doubt!

Sebastian Adekoya bends down to pick the books up, and as anyone with a capacity for noticing patterns of behavior could have predicted, Jared Hopworth hits him in the back of the head with a book.

Which is, again, a terrible thing to do to a book. Human skulls are, on average, much sturdier than the covers of books.

This book, however, may be capable of taking care of itself.

“Behind me, Jared stood holding the book I had put aside—The Bone Turner’s Tale—and had apparently picked it up to hit me with. But rather than offering me a fake apology, or further violence, instead his eyes were locked on the book. We stood there in silence for a few seconds, until he said something about needing something new to read, turned around, and walked off.”

According to our statement-giver, Jared Hopworth isn’t much of a reader, “and the look in his eyes when he left had something in it not entirely unlike fear.”

Yes, I think this work might be able to handle that book-abusing felon just fine.

On his way home after leaving the library that night, Mr. Adekoya passes Mr. Hopworth’s house. Apparently they’re both living in the same houses they occupied as children, which is rather unfortunate for Sebastian, don’t you think? It’s late September, which is a nicely spooky time of year, and something’s moving in the pool of orange light under a streetlamp.

It’s a rat. A large white rat that looks as though it was once a pet. Something’s wrong with the back half of it, and its head seems to be turned around farther than it should be as it drags itself along by its front paws.

Which is also deliciously spooky.

Sebastian Adekoya stares at it until it drags itself off into the darkness and disappears from sight.

He notes that the lights were off in Jared Hopworth’s house. As someone who sleeps days, works nights, and routinely doesn’t turn the lights on as I go about my nightly affairs, I don’t find this particularly indicative of a lack of activity—but that’s me. I suppose most people, when their lights are shut off, don’t make and eat food, read books, do jigsaw puzzles, etc. Ah, how limiting it must be to have such weak senses.

Jared Hopworth more or less vanishes from the scene for a while. Weeks go by without him turning up to torment Sebastian Adekoya, who begins to feel worried. Almost a month with no torment? Surely something must be wrong!

...Hmm. Do you suppose our statement-giver might be just mildly masochistic?

Whatever the case, he’s not eager enough for unpleasantness to actually go to Mr. Hopworth’s house and check on him, so the Jaredless time rolls by until late October, when Jared’s mother turns up at the library with her arm in a sling, wearing an unnecessarily bulky coat and a hateful expression, carrying a familiar black-bound paperback book, which she flings onto the floor at our statement-giver’s feet before turning to leave.

Sebastian Adekoya asks after the health of her son, which arrests her departure and provokes a bit of an outburst: “She spun back and started to swear violently at me, told me I had no business with her son and that I—and my books—were to stay away from him.” This outburst also gives Sebastian a bit more time to inspect the arm... which reminds me markedly of the rat.

“As she spoke, I couldn’t look away from her arm and the odd ways it twisted as she gestured. How her fingers seemed to bend the wrong way.”

Well, well, well.

Before leaving, Mrs. Hopworth spits at Mr. Adekoya—and I find it interesting that, while she clearly has no problem throwing the book onto the floor like it’s a live animal and she wants to smash its skull, she avoids spitting on it.

Despite the absence of spittle, our statement-giver decides to employ paper handkerchieves in picking the book up, rather than touch it with his bare hands.

He sticks it in the book returns cart, locks up the library, and goes home.

It rains heavily that night and Sebastian Adekoya, in his converted attic bedroom, can’t sleep. He’s worrying about the book. He’s worrying that perhaps he shouldn’t have just left it there, unsupervised, as it were. “What if Ruth came in earlier than I did tomorrow and took it? What would happen to her?”

Frankly, that strikes me as an interesting experiment. What would happen to Weaver? Come to that, what happened to Hopworth? Was the idiot eaten by the bone book? Twisted beyond telling? Possessed, perhaps?

I’d quite like to know.

“Should I have destroyed it?” Sebastian Adekoya asks himself.

I’m not sure this question would even occur to me. “Should,” after all, presupposes some kind of ideal state for things to be in.

Should you do thus-and-such a thing? It’s an incomplete sentence. You’ve left off your goal. “In order to [X], should I [Y]?” That is a complete sentence. So—should Sebastian Adekoya destroy The Bone Turner’s Tale? It depends on what his goal is. If he wants to study it, then no: he definitely shouldn’t. If he wants to stop it from doing what it seems to be doing, then yes: he probably should.

Completely failing to define his goal for an ideal state of things RE: The Bone Turner’s Tale, Sebastian discards the idea of destruction on the grounds that he wasn’t sure he had it in him to destroy a book—”even one with such a strangeness to it.”

Well now. Thank you, Mr. Adekoya, for letting us know that you consider strangeness a helpful push towards destruction.

...Oh, I’m not really surprised. I do have a passing acquaintance with humanity, after all.

Sebastian Adekoya lies awake in bed until sometime around two in the morning, when he finally gives up and goes to get the book. He gets out of bed, dresses, grabs his gloves and a jacket, and walks twenty minutes to the library in the rain, where he unlocks the door, goes in, deactivates the alarm, and begins turning on as many lights as possible without making it too obvious that there’s someone in the building.

He tells us that part of him wanted to keep the library in its nearly pitch-black state, but he turned on lights anyway. I’m guessing this is due to his weak eyes, since he says “I had to half-feel my way through the foyer and into the library proper.” [with a complete lack of sympathy] Must be rough.

He also uses a flashlight—but not before he puts his bare hand on the book returns cart, catching his balance, and his fingers come away wet.

The books, it would seem, are all bleeding.

...That is very annoying. I think I would be very nearly angry. Blood-soaked books!? Have you any idea how difficult that is to clean? Frankly, it’s impossible! This had better be the type of supernatural blood that vanishes without a trace.

The Bone Turner’s Tale, meanwhile, is as dry as... well... a bone.

Sebastian Adekoya puts his gloves back on (which means, unless he washed his hands without telling us or this is the type of supernatural blood that vanishes without a trace, that the inside of at least one of those thick gloves is going to need some rather tricky cleaning done), and picks up The Bone Turner’s Tale. He puts it on the desk and—clumsily, because of the thick gloves—begins reading.

He doesn’t begin at the beginning, just opens it randomly, which I suppose is understandable given the current unwieldiness of his fingers, but still. I can’t really approve.

“It was written in prose, and certainly seemed to be a story of some kind. The part I read dealt with an unnamed man, at various points referred to as the Boneturner, the Bonesmith or just the Turner, watching an assembled group of people as they made their way into a small village.

“It’s unclear from what I read whether he is traveling with them, or simply following them, but I remember being unsettled by the details he observed in them: the way the parson would move his hand over his mouth whenever he stared too long at the nuns or how the cook looked at the meat he prepared with the same eyes that looked at the pardoner. It was only at that point that I realized the book was describing the pilgrims from The Canterbury Tales.”

You know, I’ve never read The Canterbury Tales.

“Now, this certainly wasn’t some lost section of a Chaucer classic,” our statement-giver tells us. “It was written in modern English, with none of the archaic spelling or pronunciation of the original, and besides that the writing itself was of questionable quality. There was something compelling about it, though.”

“I flicked ahead a few pages, and found the Bonesmith had apparently crept up to the miller while he slept. It described him silently reaching inside him, and… it’s a bit hazy. All I remember clearly is the line ‘and from his rib a flute to play that merry tune of marrow took’. And as for the rest, I don’t recall in detail, but I know that I almost threw up, and that the miller did not survive. This was on page sixteen, and it was a thick book.”

Funny, since he described it as a small paperback earlier. Hmm. Something like my paperback copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, maybe? 6.75″ x 4.25″, over 1000 pages long—a veritable brick of a book. Hmm. Could be.

It also gives a bit of a hint as to what might have happened to the rat (and the mother... and possibly the son).

I like it.

Our statement-giver is notably less pleased, and turns to the frontispiece to see if he can figure out where this book came from. Apparently he’s given up on the idea that Michael Crew wrote and self-published it? I don’t see that that’s entirely out of the question at this point. I mean—what, after all, do we really know about Michael Crew?

Peeling off the Chiswick Library label, Sebastian Adekoya discovers another library label beneath.

This label is not in excellent shape. According to our statement-giver, it says something like “Library of Gergensburg” (or “Jürgenleit,” or “Jurgenlicht”), which suggests that the last library wasn’t in Britain.

I wonder whether it was still written in English there?

Giving credence to my tentative hypothesis regarding masochism, Sebastian Adekoya prepares to return to reading the book that nearly made him throw up.

At this point, however, Jared Hopworth breaks in. Literally. Through a window. Sebastian Adekoya recognizes Jared via voice, which is one of the only ways I ever manage to recognize anyone. (Why, yes: I am indeed borderline prosopagnosic. I blame humanity’s insistence on all looking basically identical. Two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth—and all in the same arrangement, at that. How, I ask you, is anyone supposed to tell any of you apart?)

As far as visuals go: Jared has apparently decided to dress himself in baggy pants and a thick coat with a face-concealing hood. This strikes me as a very reasonable way to dress, particularly if both coat and pants come well-supplied with those deep and useful pockets I take so much for granted in my clothing.

Sebastian says that Jared is now “longer” than he used to be, whatever that means.

If he meant “taller,” I’d expect him to say “taller.” But “longer”? I’m not entirely certain.... Does he mean to say that Jared has, perhaps, been a bit stretched? That would seem to fit with the pointyness of his fingers.

His bones, I’d say, are longer than they once were.

Jared Hopworth is also “standing at a strange angle, as though his legs were too stiff to use.” That’s interesting.

If I were to guess (which I’m about to), I’d say that reading this book gives people the ability to manipulate bone inside living bodies. Now, I might hypothesize that the book simply warps things all on its own... but that rat really did look like an experiment, and Jared coming for the book strikes me as an “I haven’t mastered this skill yet, I need more practice, give me the manual” type of thing.

Sebastian Adekoya, declining to give Jared Hopworth the book despite the obvious tidiness of giving a strange thing to a strange thing, decides to punch Jared Hopworth right in the solar plexus.

Whereupon Jared bites Sebastian with, not his teeth, but his ribcage.

“...I felt his flesh give way and almost retract, drawing me in close. And then I felt his ribs shift, shut tight around my hand, as though his ribcage were trying to bite me. They were sharper than I would have thought possible, and at last, this was what actually started me screaming.”

Now, if that isn’t just perfect for late October, I don’t know what is.

Sebastian drops The Bone Turner’s Tale. Jared grabs it and runs off. Sebastian starts chasing him, but....

“I started to chase after him, until I saw how he was moving. How many limbs he had. He had… added some extras. That was the moment it finally all got too much for me; I stopped running. It wasn’t my book, it wasn’t my responsibility and I had no idea what I was dealing with, so I didn’t. I just stood there in a daze and watched the thing that was once Jared disappear out into the rain. I never saw him again.”

Uh.

Well, that’s probably all for the best so far as Sebastian Adekoya’s concerned, but does he really think things are going to stay that way? Jared Hopworth likes bullying him; I somehow doubt that gaining new powers will have changed that.

Our statement-giver, I think, is just as doomed as... huh. As pretty much all of the others seem to have been, come to think of it.

Somebody heard Mr. Adekoya screaming, it seems, and called the police. They turn up to receive the best lie Sebastian Adekoya can come up with on the spur of the moment, which involves falling asleep at his desk and being awoken by an attempted robbery. He can’t remember how he explained the bloody books, which seems to me like a thing that would take some explaining.

Hmm. I wonder how many strange things the police see in the Magnus Archives universe. Maybe Sebastian didn’t explain the books at all—perhaps there are some things the police in this universe just... leave alone.

The blood, apparently, was not the disappearing type. Mr. Adekoya says “it took weeks to get out,” and I assume he means to imply “out of the carpet,” because let’s face it: blood-soaked books don’t clean. Those books had to be thrown away and we all know it.

...I wonder what the blood type was.

Jonathan Sims describes himself as “deeply unhappy” about this statement.

“I’ve barely scratched the surface of the archives, and have already uncovered evidence of two separate surviving books from Jürgen Leitner’s library. Until he mentioned that, I was tempted to dismiss much of it out of hand, but as it stands now I believe every word.”

So interesting, the things he believes and doesn’t believe. I’m becoming more and more convinced that he stubbornly denies things until evidence actually forces him to believe—which might seem like a good way to remain sane in a universe like this one, but consider: is the denial of reality sanity? I don’t see that it’s even safety, since not knowing about a thing (germs, say) has never prevented the thing from killing you.

An interesting side note: Mr. Sims’ boss, Elias Bouchard, apparently has a very hands-off attitude when it comes to the supernatural.

“Record and study, not interfere or contain.”

Personally, I think that study and interference aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive... but that’s me. In any case, I do think Sebastian Adekoya’s either very dense, or that library label was very oddly written. Two separate words with two separate capitals (Jürgen Leitner) seem difficult to confuse for a single word! “Jürgenleit”? Really? Come, now.

Tim and Sasha, two of the three amazingly competent archival assistants, have done research which proves that yes, Jared Hopworth had a warrant out for breaking and entering and assault, but no, nobody found him and the case was dropped.

And aha!

About seven years after giving this statement, Sebastian Adekoya was found dead in the middle of the road, body so messed up they figured it had to be a hit-and-run.

Even though there were no signs of crushing or trauma marks.

That’s lovely.

I’d like a Leitner.

#The Magnus Archives #episode 17 #commentary #late to the party

10 notes · View notes

writtingsofspn · 5 years

Text

A Bit protective

Request: The 14ish reader who is Sams daughter is hurt so Dean and Sam take care of her

Warnings: As the cap would say “language” and a hurt reader,

A/N: So I wrote this then realized it may not have completely been what the requester wanted so if this is the case please feel free to tell me and I’ll write something new for you. Hope you like it tho!!

“How about a nine-letter word for symbolize?”

You took some time to count out the letters on your fingers before answering “represent” in between bites of cereal.

Your dad just nodded, the same small proud smile on his face that he always got whenever you did the crossword puzzle together.

“A high-pitched cry that starts with s?”

“Scream?” You asked

Your dad just shook his head “seven letters, ends with an H”

“Oh, screech”

He scribbled the word down in ink, the only man you knew who could and would do a crossword puzzle in pen. You know he knew the answers to all of these, they weren’t exactly hard clues, but as your uncle Dean explained he liked to think of it as something the two of you did together. Something that wasn’t supernatural related that is. So you did the crossword puzzle with him nearly every morning, something you didn’t necessarily dislike.

Speak of the devil your uncle walked into the kitchen just as your dad was about to ask you another question, ignoring the situation at hand as he set the laptop he was carrying down on the table in front of the two of you. “I think I found us a case”

Your dad eyed you nervously but didn’t say anything as he leaned forward to read the article. Hunting when it came to you was a very conditional thing, there was a list of rules that probably spanned six feet in length had they been written down about when you could and couldn’t hunt. Not on a school night, not if grades aren’t where they needed to be, not if you’re sick, not if you were in the demographic of people being killed, etc.

You understood why your dad was being protective, you’d been on enough hunts to know they’re a serious thing that can go wrong very easily and very quickly, but you still couldn’t help but feel frustrated by the amount of persuasion it took to get you on a case.

“group of middle-aged men and women found all mauled to death by what look like animal marks. All of them teachers at a local high school. All of them found within a three day time period within their own homes, their hearts all missing” Uncle Dean explained, looking mostly at Sam as it had yet to be decided weather or not you were tagging along on this one.

“Werewolves?” You asked, leaning forward to look at the article as well

“Bingo” Your uncle nodded “if I had to guess angry parents or even kids”

“Sweet, let’s go” You tried to rush, hoping to skip over the trial and just be able to push yourself into the car with no conversation.

“The deaths are surrounding a high school you’re not going” Your dad grunted as he stood up, sending your uncle a glare that screamed ‘back me up’.

“nothings happened in a high school” You tried to reason “the only victims are middle-aged people who happened to work there”

“Which means the kids at this high school could be the werewolves. The answer is no.”

You bit the inside of your cheek in frustration. You were on a three-day weekend from school there is no way you were just going to sit around the bunker that entire time. With a deep breath you pulled out your biggest puppy dog eyes and pouted slightly “uncle Dean”

Your uncle sighed, running a hand through his hair before glaring at your dad “you really expect me to say no to that”

“I do”

“but…she could be of some help” You could see the hesitation on your uncles face as he admitted it. Fighting off a grin from your own face as you turned your gaze to your father who stayed silent. “she’s a high schooler, she could get information more easily than we could posing as FBI agents”

“You want to send my daughter into a high school attended by werewolves?” Your father asked in disbelief. The conversation evolving before your eyes as if the two had forgotten you were in the room.

“they’re not going to attack her during a school day in front of all the other students. And as long as she stays by our side outside of school” At these words he looked in your direction, making sure you knew what was coming before continuing “she’ll be safe.”

You could have squealed at the sight of your dads face. He was actually considering it, this would be the first time you were allowed to do something on your own on a hunt.

“Not to mention” Your uncle continued “it may just be a parent of a kid”

Your dad let out an exasperated sigh, finally looking in your direction giving you a chance to use your puppy dog eyes on him. “fine”

Without any hesitation you jumped into the air and wrapped your arms around your dad, him chuckling before doing the same. “you’re way too excited about this”

“nonsense” You laughed before letting go of him and giving your uncle a hug in thanks before heading out of the room, you had some packing to do.

You’ve never been so excited to go to school before.

You’d practiced your story with your dad all morning in lieu of a crossword puzzle. He recently received a job offer at a law firm nearby so you moved from Idaho in the middle of the semester. It wasn’t a hard story to remember by any means but you could tell he was nervous and you were walking on thin ice so you humored him, even changing your outfit three times after he vetoed it.

He drove you to school in your uncles car, dressed for his meeting with the principle, going over even more rules as he drove. If you find one of them don’t engage, flee any dangerous situations, blah blah blah, you’d honestly stopped listening ten minutes ago, simply giving him a head nod every once in a while.

The building he pulled up to was small, significantly smaller than your current school, one story, looked as though it housed a max of eight classrooms.

“I signed you up for all of the advanced courses they offered” Your dad explained, looking through the paperwork he had to fill out to get you in “but it’s a small school, hopefully that means you can get information easily and get out”

You nodded, reaching for the door handle, eager to get started when you were stopped by a hand on your shoulder. “Y/N I’m serious” Your dad was all but pleading at this point, forcing you to turn around and actually pay attention, looking him in the eye as he spoke “be careful and trust your instincts. If its too much there’s no shame in telling me that”

“I know dad” You assured him with a small, sincere smile “I’ve got this”

He forced a smile back at you before getting out of the car and walking you into the building.

You were placed into advanced English and math, those being the only advanced courses they offered, and remedial science and history with an art extracurricular. Not too bad a schedule.

The classes roughly aligned with what you were learning at your usual school but given that you weren’t staying you didn’t put too much effort into paying attention, focusing more on talking to as many people as you could. This you were remarkably good at, it paid to be the new girl in this situation, everyone was curious about you and eager to talk, you were fresh meat.

So even though schools was by no means bad you were still eager to leave, practically running out of school up to your dad and uncle who parked out front. Your dad eagerly engulfing you into a hug, relieved to see you were, well, still alive.

“Did you find anything out?” Your uncle asked cutting right to business.

“Not yet” You shook your head, running a frustrated hand through your hair “the teachers who were killed weren’t liked by the students but none of them seemed necessarily happy that they were dead.”

“but it went ok?” Your dad asked “you can not go tomorrow if you want”

“No it went fine” You assured him with a small laugh “it was kind of fun I met a lot of people”

“Alright just try not to draw unnecessary attention to yourself” He warned as you and your uncle shared an eyeroll that was not missed by him.

“I think its too late for that Sammy” Your uncle said with a smile. The two of you followed his gaze to a kid you recognized from your math class, looking in your direction with a smirk on his face completely ignoring the conversation his friends were having around him.

“He’s probably just looking at the car” You brushed it off, hesitating as you saw your dad cross his arms and clench his jaw, maybe he was looking at you.

“just go talk to him” Your uncle pushed, enjoying the look on your dad face as he ushered you back across the street.

“I can’t believe your pimping out my daughter for information” Sam growled, watching as you walked up to the kid with a huge ass grin on his face, immediately bringing you in for a hug, a girl he knew for less than a day.

“’Pimping out’…really Sammy”

Sam looked over at Dean, hating the smirk on his face before heading back into the car mumbling that he couldn’t watch you interact with that kid anymore. Dean laughed, taking one last glance at you before following his brother into the impala.

“You know she gets that from my side” Dean smirked, pointing over at you as you laughed at whatever the kid said, placing your arm sweetly on his. He had to admit you were good at flirting.

“We are the same side” Sam shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose and doing anything to avoid watching you.

“You know you’re too protective of her” Dean couldn’t help but laugh “don’t pimp out my daughter, don’t use my daughter to pick up chicks”

Sam just glared at his brother, relieved to see you on your way back to the car, practically skipping.

“So how’d it go” Your uncle practically sang as you got into the backseat, urging the heat not to rush to cheeks.

“Good I think.” You said as you shut the door behind you “he said a group of them meet up every night at this place in the woods to smoke”

“So no useful information” Your father jumped in making your eyes roll.

“Well he said he must have some good stuff cause they always black out and wake up covered in random bruises”

“Sounds like they’re it” Your uncle agreed, starting the car.

“Do you know where and when”

“Of course” You winked making your uncle laugh.

“Anything else?” Your dad mumbled, not sharing in the same mood as your uncle and you.

“Yeah actually” You said as you pulled a piece of paper out of your pocket “reason number 432 I should get my own cell phone”

Your dad took the paper from you, unfolding it to see a phone number written in blue pen “reason number 432 you should not get your own cell phone”

Your dad held your gun out inches from your fingers “when was the last time you practiced”

“Literally yesterday” You sighed “Uncle Dean took me”

Your dad looked to his brother for confirmation, only giving you the gun after he nodded in response. You checked the clip, making sure it was packed with silver bullets.

“When were you supposed to meet them?” Your uncle asked you.

“Around ten” You answered, checking your phone “its elven now so things should be underway”

“Alright I’ll go in first” Your dad started to devise a plan before you cut him off.

“Shouldn’t I go in first?” The two men stared at you in silence, waiting for you to explain further “in case they are just getting high”

“Absolutely not” Your father brushed you aside without any thought, immediately jumping back into his original plan “Y/N follows me in and Dean you bring up the rear”

“Dad I’ll be careful, I’ll stay hidden we just don’t want to spook them if they are just kids”

“Y/N it is too dangerous you are not experienced enough to go in first end of story”

“Fuck this” You mumbled under your breath before marching up to the house without them, opening the door and walking in before either of them could stop you.

You immediately crouched behind a corner and ducked your head in, careful not to let anyone know you were inside. After clearing the area in front of you you got ready to move, grabbing the corner to steady yourself when you heard a growling from down the hallway. You turned your head, seeing nothing but a large figure and glowing eyes. Without any hesitation you fired at it, relieved to see it drop to the ground.

The door to the house immediately busted open to reveal your father looking very pissed behind it. You started to stand up straight, bracing yourself for an on slot of “Who do you think you are” and “what do you think you were doing” when out of nowhere you were hit in the side and tossed to the ground. You yelled loudly in surprise, you could hear growling and the tearing of clothing but didn’t register any feeling immediate, screaming in fear until you heard a gunshot and a large mass slump on top of you.

You looked down at your torso and could see nothing but blood, you were absolutely drenched in it and your first reaction was to freak out. Your eyes went wide, and your arms started to claw at the ground to pull you away from it.

“Y/N, Y/N!” You could hear your fathers voice, trying to catch your attention. You turned your head to look at him, his eyes as wide as yours just making you panic further. “Y/N are you ok?”

For the first time you stopped to think, staring down at the thing on top of you, you honestly weren’t sure you were ok. You knew you were struggling to breathe but you attributed it to panic. But the more you thought about it the more a pain in your torso began to register.

“my-my my stomach” You stuttered out, your hands reaching towards the area. Your hands were shaking, that had never happened before.

Your dad leaned down towards the area, carefully picking the werewolf off of you as he tried to distinguish between your blood and its.

He immediately swore under his breath, just loud enough for you to hear, as he picked the thing off of you.

“Dad?”

He ignored you completely, yelling out Dean’s name before leaning down and putting his arms underneath you. “Y/N this is going to hurt”

You fought all inclinations to scream as he picked you up, tears prickling your eyes as you clenched your hands.

“I know sweetie I’m sorry” Your dad started apologizing, his voice shaking heavily as he did so.

“Dad am I going to die?” You asked him as you leaned your head against his chest, the cold air biting as you were carried outside.

“Not on my watch” You could feel that even he didn’t believe his own words, undercutting them by immediately yelling “Dean hurry the fuck up” back at the house.

Dean came running out of the house, freezing at the sight of you with wide eyes.

“Dean!” Your dad yelled again, snapping your uncle out of his trance as he unlocked the doors.

Your dad laid you carefully into the backseat and got in behind you, laying your head on his lap and taking off his shirt and pressing it onto your wound making you groan loudly.

You watched your dads expression as the impala pulled away from the house, you could see him silently will your uncle to drive faster.

“Daddy” You called out to him, using a name you hadn’t called him since you were a kid. Sam took notice of this, staring down at you with drawn brows. “Daddy I’m scared”

You could see his lip quiver at your words, he was trying to stay strong for you but the façade was quickly fading. “I know sweetheart” He silently tapped Dean’s shoulder, begging him to go faster. “I know”

You could feel your eyes getting heavier as you struggled to stay awake.

Sam watched as your eyes started to close, keeping a hand on your wrist to monitor your pulse just in case as he slowly started to break down. He fought to keep his breath steady but every time he looked at you he was sent spiraling again.

“Dean what if Cas doesn’t come?”

“Cas will come” Dean grunted as he weaved in and out of cars, ignoring the angry honks he got in response.

“But what if he doesn’t”

“We both know Cas is very protective of Y/N” Dean sighed “he’ll drop anything to come”

Sam only nodded and tried to tell himself that Dean was right, tried to tell himself that you were going to be ok, but every minute it got significantly harder. He could feel the lump in his throat threaten to burst as tears welled in his eyes. He blinked to try and get rid of them but that only caused them to spill over and run down his cheeks. “Dean I can’t lose her”

The pain in his brother’s voice killed Dean as he pushed the petal down even further. “You’re not going to Sammy”

Dean was right, Cas showed up immediate, not asking any questions before he pressed two fingers to your forehead and doing all that he could do. Sam just feared that it wasn’t enough.

It had taken too long to get to the bunker, your pulse was slow and weak by the time they had pulled up, you had lost way too much blood as well and Sam was covered in it. They immediately laid you in your own bed, figuring it would be the most comfortable place for you until you woke up.

For the longest time Sam had refused to change, refused to shower, refused to leave your side at any time. Only doing so when Dean promised to sit there and yell if anything changed.

Dean made him a sandwich everyday, knocking on your door before walking in to replace the plate that had food from the meal before, always practically untouched. “Sam you need to eat”

“No I need my daughter to be ok” Sam growled in response.

“How are you supposed to protect her if you’re starving” Dean tried to persuade him.

“I couldn’t protect her in the first place” Sam all but whispered “doesn’t change anything”

Dean furrowed his brow and set the plate down, sitting down beside his brother with his back resting on the wall. “Sam you know this isn’t your fault right”

Sam just grunted and stared at you, begging you to wake up.

“Sam you couldn’t have known-“

“My gut told me not to let her come on the hunt” Sam interrupted him, putting his face in his hands “I knew it was a bad idea, but I let her come anyway it’s my fault”

“But you didn’t know” His brother objected “it was a feeling, the same feeling you get every time she comes on a hunt”

Sam paused, his lip trembling “I distracted her…She was fine until I started to yell at her…She-she could have seen it coming if I hadn’t”

“Don’t do this to yourself Sammy” His brother all but begged “it’s not anyone’s fault, what happened happened and no amount of self-pity is going to change that”

Sam sniffed and wiped at his eyes, doing his best to swallow the lump in his throat “really? You’re giving me a lesson on self loathing?”

Dean chuckled softly in response. “If I get you a drink will you eat that sandwich now”

Sam paused for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. Thanks Dean”

Dean just smiled in response and pushed himself off of the ground, pausing as Sam spoke again. “Dean…Do you think she’s going to be ok?” He asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Dean looked back at you, watching your chest rise and fall with each breath “She’s a fighter that kid of yours” He said with a chuckle “I really think she will”

Sam nodded and looked at you as well “god I hope so”

#Sam Winchester #sam imagine #sam one shot #Sam Oneshot #sam x reader #SPN #spn fanfic #spn fan fiction #spn oneshot #spn imagine #supernatural #supernatural oneshot #supernatural one shot #supernatural imagine

34 notes · View notes

momestuck · 5 years

Text

Epilogues: Candy, chapters 6-13 [the rest of Epilogue 2]

I’m told that there are 40 chapters, and a postscript, in Candy - and also that it’s split into 8 individual ‘epilogues’ within that, of varying length. ‘Epilogue 2′ began with chapter 4, featuring Rose and Kanaya. So I kind of cut it off in exactly the wrong place. Oops!

Anyway I’m going to split these up by Epilogue section from now on. This one covers the rest of Epilogue 2, which mostly concerns shipping, and processing of feelings.

Here are the irons in the fire at the outset of chapter 6:

Gamzee is back! he claims to be setting out on a ‘redemption arc’

Terezi is in space somewhere looking for Vriska, but set to return at some point, and not all that happy that Gamzee’s back

Dirk has perceived some bad news. And briefly spoken about it with Jane, though without explaining anything.

But that’s all Epilogue 1 stuff - old hat!

Rose has suddenly recovered from her illness, and is patching things up with Kanaya

Jade has attempted to push Dave and Karkat to admit they’re into each other, but really just made things worse

Jane attempted to run for President of Earth C - to the trepidation of the Karkat, who hyperbolically suggested this would amount to troll genocide - but abandoned the idea

That’s all interesting but let’s talk about money! This is something I didn’t pick up on in the last post:

KARKAT: OK, SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. YOUR PRIORITIES ARE: NUMBER ONE, THE ECONOMY, WHICH LET ME REMIND YOU IS BUILT ENTIRELY ON INFINITE, FAKE MONEY THAT WE CAN MAKE AS MUCH OF AS WE WANT.

Elsewhere, Jane’s megacorp and stocks are mentioned.

One wonders why, given the machinery to manufacture just about anything by means of alchemizer, the forms of money, stocks, and corporations are retained... what sort of productive and reproductive labour is regulated and mediated by these markets? Or are they merely acting out the vestigial forms of capitalism as a bizarre drama...

As for the consequences of an infinite money supply, let’s not get into the ‘modern monetary theory’ debate on a Homestuck post, maybe.

on to chapter 6+

This is a Jane chapter. It opens almost immediately with economic discussion; Dave apparently once accused Jane of ‘neoliberal corporate welfare’ for trying to bolster the ‘struggling locksmith industry’ rendered unnecessary on a planet without crime.

She’s visiting Jake, who’s probably my least favourite Homestuck character (who’s not an alpha troll). About Dirk... Jake (Jane says) seems to still have a bit of a thing for him, and Jane, meanwhile, still “has no idea why she can’t get [Jake] out of her system, even after all these years.”

The reason Jane cancelled her run was, it turns out, because Dirk said ‘cancel everything’. She gets drunk, very quickly... and hits on Jake, who is completely oblivious to her advances. She speaks of wanting to abandon business to raise a family, which Jake himself notes is something rather new for her (though the whole traditional gender thing she does isn’t lol)

Jake/Jane isn’t a ship I have any sort of opinion about, honestly. Dirk/Jake’s terrible collapsing relationship was kind of interesting but yeah, here’s a thing. What even are heterosexuals though? “I want to clean your giant house and have a lot of children”... incomprehensible!

One thing I will give credit for is the narration: it creates pretty strong images of like, these characters as fully embodied people, being intimate in like, subtle physical ways. that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense... whatever lol. it works

chapter 7

...brings us back to Gamzee. fittingly, i’m listening to the friendsim soundtrack as i read this, and i just hit ‘take me to clown church’.

anyway since this whole story basically seems to be an exercise in developing ships along the lines of ‘A is into B, B is obvious to their advances’... Roxy’s hot for John now I guess? or at least, so Callie thinks. she insists they’re all going to be ‘very, very happy’ despite her disappointment.

anyway, then we get Gamzee saying a bunch of casually misogynist stuff to John about Roxy. in this context, basically two interpretations are shown: a shallow ‘oh he’s redeemed now’ attitude from Roxy and Callie, and a ‘oh god i hate this person keep him away from me’ attitude from John. Gamzee’s repulsive qualities are underlined by the narration (from John’s perspective): he’s unhygienic, he’s casually misogynist (which seems like a new element, and rather out of keeping with the gendered-but-somehow-theoretically-not-patriarchal Alternia)...

chapter 8

Rose and Kanaya chapter. Jane’s possible presidency is once again the subject of discussion. Jane apparently wanted to apply some kind of anti-troll eugenics policy, and tried to bring Kanaya on board - and got told to fuck off for it. Our two good lesbians agree that, if Karkat were president (and Dave running the economy), things might have worked out ok...

We are briefly introduced to a new character, a jadeblood troll called Swifer Eggmop. Her character archetype, we are directly told, is ‘1920s newsboy’.

We bear witness to an egg hatching (in prose, anyway). This particular baby grub out closely resembling Vriska... which Kanaya says is because she comes from a slurry based on the original 12 trolls. Rose notes this would make Vriska the troll’s Ancestor, which raises an interesting question of whether Ancestors still exist as a social concept on Earth C. Anyway, Kanaya wants to adopt baby Vriska, which can only be a fantastic idea...

KANAYA: There Are Two Things Of Which I Have No Doubt

KANAYA: That You And I Are Going To Be Happy For The Rest Of Our Lives

KANAYA: And That We Are Never Ever Going To See Vriska Again

I think we can safely assume that neither of those things are true. The emphasis on ‘happiness forever’, voiced by multiple characters, is interesting... also the turn towards reproduction.

I went to uni with people who have kids now. Heck I have friends who have a child (who they are trying to spare from gender)... but for most of my social circle, which is to say almost entirely 20-to-30-something trans women, even the idea of adopting is incomprehensible? It’s somehow weird to think of ‘wanting kids’ as the narrative of 20-something year olds...

Kanaya is right. Vriska is dead, and despite everything, she died a hero. Vriska was a complicated figure of contrasting extremes; her heroic actions were matched in scale only by her monstrous ones, and since no one had actually witnessed her end, it was impossible to say which side the pendulum swung and judged her death—Heroic or Just.

It would be a fitting memorial for her and Kanaya to raise a version of Vriska who would be given every chance to make good on her noble characteristics. A true, symbolic redemption arc. Something about the thought appeals to Rose’s taste for the dramatic flourish. It would be proof that this was all worth it in the end: the destruction of multiple universes, the death of Kanaya’s friends, the circuitous rites of suffering experienced by the nearly infinite splintered versions of every being to inhabit Paradox Space...

Once again, the notion of a ‘redemption arc’ enters the narrative explicitly, directly echoing fandom discussion. Unlike Gamzee, this is studiously neutral on the Vriska Question: steering exactly between ‘Vriska did nothing wrong’, nor ‘Vriska is a monster’. Regardless... I think it’s probably safe to say that everyone’s prophecies are wrong and we haven’t seen the last of the ‘true’ Vriska.

chapter 9

More of Jade trying very hard to ship her friends, to the discomfort of everyone involved. Jade kisses Karkat, and Karkat explicitly names what she’s doing as sexual assault, a violation of boundaries and consent - Jade attempts to convince him that no, it was really Dave who kissed him!

This prompts a long monologue from Dave in which it’s obvious that he has put some thought into kissing Karkat. Point seems to be: they sure are into each other but Jade’s intervention is not at all welcome. At least I hope that’s the point. I would prefer not to see Jade vindicated by the narrative.

Anyway, other things of cultural note: grub spaghetti is apparently still eaten on Earth C. I always thought it was implied that ‘grubs’ in Troll food were like, actual troll babies, but maybe they’re just ordinary (for certain values thereof...) bugs bc I don’t think Kanaya would stand for that.

chapter 10

The ‘Jane running for president’ subplot has largely disappeared, because what we’re really here for is... shipping! This time, a John/Roxy chapter. I think they call it Roxygen or something? Terezi explains the ‘pair the spares’ logic of the ship (dequirkified):

TEREZI: Um, yeah John.

TEREZI: We are not idiots. We can all do the math on this.

TEREZI: It’s not like you were going to fuck your human mom or human sister.

TEREZI: And you are “not a homosexual,” which takes Strider dick out of the equation.

TEREZI: And Kanaya is the only girl troll left, and she lesbian married one of the two remaining eligible human females.

TEREZI: Oh and Jake is a double threat. A human dad with a human dick!

TEREZI: So by a process of elimination, of *course* you were going to “fall in love” with Roxy.

Equation of ‘dick’ with ‘male’ there terezi but whatever... (god is this fic going to get into the question of what a ‘nook’ and a ‘bulge’ is...)

(lol i’m calling it a fic...)

Anyway, my position on this one is: Roxy/Calliope was a fine ship worth upholding, and I do not see any reason why anyone would be into John. Though I may be biased on that front.

Terezi also brings up the Calliope question. John is trepidatious on that front.

There’s an interesting line from Roxy here, when John tries to assure her she doesn’t have to wear makeup:

ROXY: john...

ROXY: do u ever think about like

ROXY: gender???

JOHN: ???

JOHN: uh. not really, i guess?

JOHN: but i don’t think girls should feel like they HAVE to wear makeup just because they’re girls.

ROXY: lol

ROXY: thats not what im getting at

JOHN: what do you mean then?

JOHN: are you, like...

ROXY: like what

This is where I’m conscious of the ‘trans character’ tag on this one.

They talk about adulthood, as a performance that they do not feel ‘ready’ for. At that point Dave shows up, clearly aflustered after Jade’s intervention:

DAVE: anyone can be a dude if they really want thats part of the beauty of living in this brand new world with none of the baggage our old world had like gender and sexuality and relationships only involving a very specific number of people

chapter 11

So yeah now to pick up the torch on Dave starting to understand he’s gay. here for this

DAVE: theres a metric fucking ton of shit about to come down on me because i dragged my heels on doing some serious self reflection

JOHN: is this just some more stuff about...

JOHN: being gay?

DAVE: maybe yeah

DAVE: ok definitely yeah

DAVE: its 110% about being gay

JOHN: i thought you’d already worked all that stuff out?

DAVE: turns out it takes a long time to figure out your sexuality after a childhood filled with repression and abuse

nice to see it named as such i guess

the dialogue in the last couple of chapters has been really good. i’m getting properly drawn into this, the characters feel extremely well-realised. threads which were long latent are finally being made explicit.

Dave is struggling with very abrupt self-realisation: he definitely has feelings for Karkat, he has complicated feelings for Jade, but the ‘simple’ solution of just entering a non-mono relationship both is not feeling ‘right’ to him. John isn’t really able to help... he’s gonna talk to Dirk.

This chapter does a lot, I really like it, but at the same time I’ve not got a tremendous amount to add to it.

chapter 12

in our latest chapter of ‘homestuck but they fuck now’, Jake and Jane did that - while up on various substances, including at least alcohol and the trickster lollipop. Jake is having second thoughts but when he tries to back out, Jane looks sad, so he decides to go for it. This can only end well.

Also damn I guess someone on the team thought ‘what would it be like to fuck while high on the trickster lollipop’ so uh, that’s a thing now.

chapter 13

Back to the Strider boys. There’s a heavy intro...

Dave and Dirk don’t talk that much about the heavy stuff. They don’t need to. Dave can hear his brother’s voice in his head.

Not, like, literally. That would be insane. But Dave knows what his bro is like. Dirk, or a version of him, instilled in Dave a way of living and thinking that would, for better or worse, persist far beyond the first thirteen years of his upbringing.

Yeah huh.

Can’t believe Rose and Kanaya have the dubious honour of being the most ‘together’ characters in this.

Anyway in this case Dave still feels like he needs to talk to Dirk - who we know has gone awol, for some mysterious reason. He meets... Gamzee, who says some religious clown stuff, and offers Dave a redemption arc (really running this joke into the ground huh), but Dave brushes him off. Then he finds a fembot that Dirk was working on, with a note.

We don’t get to read the note yet. I would guess that’s the end of epilogue 2.

Sure enough it is.

Epilogue 2, taken as a whole

I quite enjoyed this, Gamzee sections notwithstanding. The prose is tight, the dialogue is hitting its flow, and a lot of relationships that were left vague in Homestuck proper are finally being given time to develop.

Obviously it’s kind of risky bringing in explicitly sexual themes, but I think they approach them in the ‘right’ way: focusing on the emotional meaning of relationships that now might - now we’re dealing with 23-year-olds - include sex, rather than just porn lol. It does slightly strain credibility that, in all their time on Earth C, none of them have made any meaningful friendships or relationships outside the core group of 8 kids and a handful of surviving trolls, but I can also understand the desire to focus on the already-developed characters. That’s a common problem for ‘endgame’ ships: in truth dating exclusively within a tiny friendship group is probably a recipe for disaster, but in fiction it makes a work manageable.

I am enjoying just how gay Homestuck has gotten. If Homestuck is the comic for Very Online kids who were around 13 in 2009 when the comic began, it’s somewhat fitting, because our cohort has, at least to a degree, done the same thing lol. Of course, that’s shaped by my personal experience of like, transitioning and moving to a friendship group that’s like 99% trans lesbians and bi women, but I suspect statistics would bear out the idea that more and more people are comfortable identifying ourselves as not-straight in some way. I could be wrong about that though lol.

Of course, it’s too much to hope that this trend - insofar as it exists! - is like, the beginning of the end for Gender as a system of social relations, violent exploitation and coercion - especially since periods of ‘more acceptance’ often seem to precede violent repression (c.f. Weimar Germany and then, the nazis; the period just before the AIDS crisis; much earlier, the construction of colonial/modern gender in the first place on the bones of less rigid gender systems...)

Anyway, let’s see what’s happened to old Dirk. I’m still wondering who the “trans character” is going to be, and how they’re going to handle that. It’s going to be tough to match fic like @rememberwhenyoutried‘s An Earth-Shattering Confession, but we shall see.

#momestuck

4 notes · View notes

tangled23works · 6 years

Text

Whatever It Takes

Part 1 - I Won’t Give Up

Also read it on Archive of Our Own

This is something I wrote recently. It’s a favorite trope of mine. Since my time is limited I won’t be able to update it regularly so that is why it’s part one of a series about married olicity. Read it and tell me what you think!

I’m not tagging anyone at the moment but if you’d like me to tag you, ask!

Five weeks after the words “I want a divorce” had been uttered, Felicity stared at her husband. The huge mahogany CEO desk was between them, a symbol of all the irreconcilable differences that had separated them through their marriage.

Oliver Queen was currently dressed to the nines in a gray Armani suit, looking confident and polished in a way that Felicity Smoak, daughter of a cocktail waitress could never hope to be. The Smoaks were the complete opposites of the Queens and that should have been her first clue that this marriage was going to fail spectacularly.

She tried to focus on Oliver but truth be told, she was a little bit overwhelmed by the entire situation. The moment she had entered the office for their scheduled appointment he had dropped a major bomb. “I’m not signing these papers, Felicity.” God, the way he had said those words had grated on her nerves. So calm, so easy, so implacable… As if she had brought him Chinese for dinner and he had replied with an ‘I’m not going to eat that, Felicity’ . Such a difficult man to love. Such a difficult man to divorce.

“And why not?” she finally asked when she had found her bearings.

She needed to learn the proper legal procedure for this. Felicity had no idea how one was supposed to divorce a husband that didn’t actually want to be divorced. But she needed to be prepared. Because if he had decided that he didn’t want to be separated from her, he would fight her every step of the way. Oliver Jonas Queen was a fracking force of nature.

She was planning to contact her lawyer and then to Google for possible solutions when she noticed that the silence had stretched for too long and that his ridiculously attractive eyebrow was raised in a way that meant that he was waiting for her to focus. So she forced herself to pay attention and raised an eyebrow of her own. He didn’t laugh at her pathetic attempt. Not that he would have anyway because Oliver Queen and smiling were two things totally incompatible.

“I thought that would be obvious. I’m not signing them because I don’t want to be divorced.”

“What do you mean you don’t want to be divorced?” she asked, exasperated. “There is no reason for us to be married anymore.”

“Isn’t there?” And that annoying eyebrow was raised again.

“From the moment we met, we knew that this had an expiration date. It’s not like you love me or anything,” she fake-laughed.

They had been married for 18 months after all and for most of that time she had wished nothing more for her husband to love her. She had wished and prayed and thought of several ridiculous ways to make that happen. But it never had. Felicity Smoak would never be loved by Oliver Queen.

“Nevertheless,” he began, not bothering to deny any of what she had just said, “we are a couple and I’d like us to remain one.”

“You know, Oliver… Sometimes even I believe that you are a robot like everyone says you are.”

She heard his sharp intake of breath and was afraid that she had hurt him somehow. However, it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to recover from that verbal jab.

“Sweetheart,” the word sounded so hollow that Felicity felt like crying, “you know better than most that’s not true.”

He was talking of course about their sex life and he was not wrong. If there was one thing that they had been good at, it was sex. Until it had become a burden that she couldn’t bear any longer. Not because he was hurting her. Oliver would never, not in a million years hurt her. At least physically speaking. No, the truth was that he didn’t have any feelings for her and eventually, she had been unable to respond. It seemed that some part of her couldn’t deal with that anymore. Having sex while he didn’t give a shit about her had started to feel a lot like torture.

Felicity cleared her throat. “Anyway, you still haven’t given me one single reason why we should remain married.”

“Because of the contract you signed on your own free will. And based on that document, you have to wait at least five years before filing for divorce. I know that you’re the math whiz here but by my estimation, 18 months is not enough time.”

“When we agreed to get married, we thought Isabel Rochev had a chance at taking your company and destroying the family name. Now that she’s out of the picture, there’s no need for you to have a wife.”

“There’s every need,” he countered. He didn’t yell or even raise his voice but she knew that he was getting pissed. “Give me a chance. And if I fail, I’ll let you back out of the agreement.”

“Oh Oliver,” she said, feeling uncountably sad, “marriage is not a QC project. Better people than us have tried and failed. You cannot force personal relationships to succeed like you did with the company.”

“I can try.”

She studied him for a long moment. His clear blue eyes, his scruffy, square jaw, the way his hands rested on top of the desk and realized something.

“You’re really not going to sign the papers, are you?”

“No, I’m not,” he replied softly.

“And I can’t say or do anything to convince you otherwise?”

He shook his head.

“When you say you need time to try, how much time are we talking about?”

“Give me six months.”

“Six months? That’s too long.”

“No, it’s really not. In about six months we will have been married for two years so no one will be able to accuse us of giving up if we actually get divorced.”

Ah, so that was his problem. Of course, the son of Moira and Robert Queen cared more about what other people had to say than the fact that his wife didn’t want to live with him anymore. Appearances mattered to the Queens; people, not so much.

“I need time to think about it.”

“You’ve had five weeks, Felicity. More than enough time.”

“So, I’m assuming you want to move back in?”

During their separation, Oliver had been staying at The Strand. It was a weird choice. Although the luxurious hotel was considered one of the best in Star City and Felicity could easily imagine the CEO of Queen Consolidated booking a suite there, she thought it strange that he hadn’t chosen to stay at his parents’ house.

“Yes. I’ll ask Diggle to bring my things to the loft later.”

“Okay. By the way,” she said nonchalantly, “you’re staying in the guest room.”

“What?”

“Don’t look at me like that, Oliver. I might have agreed to prolong this marriage for six months but you’re not going to sleep with me until I think it’s a good idea.”

“And how am I supposed to fight for us when you’re sleeping upstairs, as far away from me as possible?”

“That was the least of our problems, Oliver.”

His blue eyes narrowed. “What was our most important problem then?”

“The fact that you have no idea who I am. You don’t even see me,” she admitted. It was painful but it had to be said. She could have also added ‘You wish I was Laurel Lance’ but this was not the time or place for that particular discussion.

When he didn’t comment on that, Felicity sighed. Getting Oliver to talk about feelings was like trying to convince Moira Queen to eat a burger at Big Belly. Unfortunately, neither of these things was ever going to happen.

Frustrated with this whole conversation and his refusal to cooperate, Felicity walked towards the door.

“Anyway, I have to go. Tell Dig I’ll see him later at the loft. Bye Oliver.”

John Diggle was the only person in Oliver’s life that didn’t think of her as the cute but worthless wife. Instead, he treated her like an actual person which was very rare in the life of Star City’s rich and famous. And that was why he was her favorite by far.

“I’m glad to see you again, Mrs. Queen.”

“Oh my God, Dig! If you don’t start calling me Felicity, I’ll hack your bank accounts and donate all your money to Greenpeace.”

“Great cause,” he laughed. “Where should I put Mr. Queen’s stuff?”

“In the guest bedroom.”

He quirked an eyebrow but didn’t comment further. Oliver’s bodyguard was a huge black man who had fought in Afghanistan before dedicating his life to protecting her husband. There was a story behind Dig’s decision to abandon the military in favor of following Oliver Queen around but Felicity was not privy to it.

“So, did you take him back or what?” he asked in that no-nonsense way of his when he returned.

“Or what.”

“Hmm,” Dig murmured.

“What? If you have something to say, just say it. Everyone else has an opinion on my relationship. After all, you might be the only person in this city who understands Oliver Queen.”

Dig folded his arms. “No one understands that boy,” he scoffed.

Felicity giggled. Hearing someone call her very mature and intimidating husband a boy would never stop being funny.

“Seriously though, if you decide to give him a chance you should do it with your whole heart.” He pointed towards the guest bedroom. “Sleeping away from each other is not going to bring you any closer.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, Dig. Our marriage is a façade. I wanted this to work so much. And I am the only one that tried. I tried until I lost sight of who I am. Maybe it’s time I focused on myself for a change.”

“Focusing on yourself is great but it’s not the way to save a marriage.”

“Then what is the way? Tell me because I have no idea. My parents got divorced when I was 7 years old. I don’t exactly have the best example of a healthy relationship in my life.”

He seemed to think about it for a while. “Well, from my experience the best way is to talk to each other. Communication. That’s the big idea.”

“Does that actually work?”

Dig gave her a soft smile. “It worked for me. I married the same woman twice after all.”

“Really?” Felicity asked, open-mouthed. She couldn’t even think of a universe where John Diggle and Lyla Michaels were not a couple. To hear that they had ever been divorced was a shock.

Dig checked his beeping cellphone and muttered an apology. “Oh no, John! You don’t get to share a juicy tidbit like that and then leave.”

The big man just chuckled. “Maybe some other time, Mrs. Queen. Alright?”

“Fine,” she pouted. Felicity hated mysteries with a passion.

“Just think about what I said. And remember, no matter who you think Oliver Queen is, he isn't a guy that gives up.”

"Maybe, giving up is the only option. Maybe, there's nothing left for him here."

#olicity #my fanfic #oliver queen #felicity smoak #married couple #angst and feels

5 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

Text

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN DEFCON

Close, but not as strong. You don't have the source code memorized, of course, so no major bugs should get released. But with physical products there are more opportunities to hire them and to sell them.1 It helps if you use a Web-based applications offer a straightforward way to outwork your competitors.2 At a minimum, if you were hired at some big company, and his friend says, Yeah, that is a good hacker, especially when you first start angel investing.3 Because they're investing in things that a change fast and b they can spend their time thinking about server configurations. Actually what it says is that circuit densities will double every 18 months. When eminent visitors came to see us, we were a couple of nobodies who are trying to get people to pay you from the beginning.4 It's an exciting place.

For the angel to have someone to make the medicine go down. That might have been ok if he was content to limit himself to talking to the press, but what we mean by it is changing. I wanted. And this, as you can, and your competitors can, you tend to feel rich.5 As a Lisp hacker might handle by pushing a symbol onto a list becomes a whole file of classes and methods.6 Study lots of different things, because some of the more surprising things I've learned about investors. What began as combing his hair a little carefully over a thin patch has gradually, over 20 years, grown into a monstrosity.7

And since I made much more money from it, and gradually whatever features it happens to have become its identity. We're impatient. And so all over the place. If a company is doing well, investors will want founders to turn down most acquisition offers. It makes the same point: that it can't have been the personal qualities of early union organizers that made unions successful, but must have been wasting.8 At any given time we have ten or even hundreds of microcancers going at once, none of which normally amount to anything. I like about this idea, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it.9 Because VCs like publicity. Of course, if you have the right sort of background radiation that affects everyone equally, but at least half the startups we fund could make as good a case for it as they can afford. Joe Kraus's idea that you should be smarter. There is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities.

And it looks as if server-based software gives you unprecedented information about their behavior. In practice a group of 10 managers to work together.10 But because he doesn't understand the risks, he tends to magnify them. Increase taxes, and willingness to take risks. You only take one shower in the morning.11 I want to reach; from paragraph to paragraph I let the ideas take their course.12 I remember when computers were, for me at least, how I write one. We're starting to move from social lies to real lies. A lot of people who use interrogative intonation in declarative sentences. Many published essays peter out in the countryside.

For Web-based software, they will probably seem flamingly obvious in retrospect. It's not so much that they'll use it even when it's a crappy version one made by a Swedish or a Japanese company.13 One is that this is a valid approach. It's not what people learn in classes at MIT and Stanford that has made technology companies spring up around them. But an illusion it was. Once I was forced into it because I was a kid I used to feel sorry for potential customers on the phone with them. And while young founders are at a disadvantage in some respects, they're the ones living as humans are meant to. If you try this trick, you'll probably buy a Japanese one. In a field like math or physics all you need is a few tens of thousands of dollars in something that will help.

Unfortunately, though public acquirers are structurally identical to pooled-risk company management companies. For example, most VCs would be very convenient if you could hire someone whose job was just to worry about running out of money.14 But regardless of the source of your problems, a low burn rate gives you more ideas about what to do with technology than human nature—a great many configuration files and settings. That's something Yahoo did understand. So I'd advise you to be skeptical about claims of experience and connections.15 So my guess is that they drift just the right amount.16 Plus he introduced us to one of their fellow students was on the line.17

But there is something afoot. Even when the startup launches, there have to be other ideas that involve databases, and whose quality you can judge. The thin end of the spectrum. Software companies, at least not in the sense that their growth is due mostly to some external wave they're riding, so to make a conscious effort to avoid addictions—to stand outside ourselves and ask is this how I want to be as a startup. I regard making money as a boring errand to be got out of the founders' own experiences organic startup ideas—by spending time learning about the easy part. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work in offices now: you can't show off by wearing clothes too fancy to wear in a factory, so you don't need to write. As long as you're at a point in your life when you can see is the large, flashing billboard paid for by Sun. This essay is derived from a talk at Defcon 2005.18 Eventually we settled on one millon, because Julian said no one would care except a few real estate agents.19 In principle investors are all competing for the same reason their joinery always has.20

But I wouldn't bet on it. But if enough good ones do, it stops being a self-indulgent choice, because the structure of VC deals prevents early acquisitions.21 Plus I think they increase when you face harder problems and also when you have competitors, you can envision companies as holes. To developers, the most common form of discussion was the disputation. We can stop there, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads.22 Which will make you think What did I do before x?23 Most investors, especially VCs, are not like founders. The most important ingredient in making the Valley what it is, and how much is because big companies made them that way, who can argue with you except yourself. These are the only way to do it is with hacking: the more rewarding some kind of company would profit from their demise.24 For I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or become a slave to Philosophy, but if I get free of Mr Linus's business I will resolutely bid adew to it eternally, excepting what I do for my privat satisfaction or leave to come out after me.

Notes

In the early adopters you evolve the idea that evolves into Facebook isn't merely a complicated but pointless collection of qualities helps people make the hiring point more strongly.

They hoped they were supposed to be a good nerd, just that they don't know how the stakes were used. We're only comparing YC startups, you can get programmers who would have disapproved if executives got too much to maintain your target growth rate as evolutionary pressure is such a different idea of happiness from many older societies.

The revenue estimate is based on revenues of 1. There are lots of others followed. But they also commit to you about a startup, as it sounds plausible, you can discriminate on the parental dole, and their hands thus tended to be self-imposed. I realize I'm going to use thresholds proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where w is will and d discipline.

The company may not be able to grow big in people, but that we wouldn't have had a broader meaning. By this I used thresholds of. Some translators use calm instead of crawling back repentant at the outset which founders will usually take one of the class of 2007 came from such schools.

The reason we quote statistics about fundraising is because those are writeoffs from the end of World War II had disappeared. 5 million cap, but he got there by another path. That's the difference between us and the super-angels hate to match.

Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but this sort of person who would never come face to face with the amount—maybe not linearly, but he turned them down because investors don't like content is the way they do the startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work have different time quanta. I get the answer is no longer a precondition.

A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that they kill you—when you ad lib you end up with an online service. 56 million. Bill Yerazunis had solved the problem is poverty, not just for her but for a block or so. In technology, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to preserve their wealth by forbidding the export of gold or silver.

That would be in that. The trustafarians' ancestors didn't get rich from a mediocre VC. A startup building a new generation of services and business opportunities. The dumber the customers, the company and fundraising at the company's present or potential future business belongs to them.

Now many tech companies don't. If it's 90%, you'd ultimately be a good product. Earlier versions used a recent Business Week article mentioning del. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp, which would cause HTTP and HTML to continue to maltreat people who make things very confusing.

Keep heat low. The reason not to like to fight. The word boss is derived from the end of World War II to the inane questions of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses. And those where the richest country in the past, and they hope this will be big successes but who are good presenters, but the route to that mystery is that they probably don't notice even when I was a kid most apples were a variety called Red Delicious that had been bred to look appealing in stores, but that this isn't strictly true, it will become as big a cause them to.

One new thing the company by doing another round that values the company, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But I think that's because delicious/popular. The reason you don't have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take another startup to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting you write has a pretty mediocre job of suppressing the natural human inclination to say how justified this worry is. Even the cheap kinds of content.

To a kid and as an adult. A scientist isn't committed to rejecting it. What if a company with rapid, genuine growth is genuine. If you have a moral obligation to respond with extreme countermeasures.

I couldn't convince Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this talk, so you'd have to assume it's bad.

If they were going to need common sense when intepreting it. An accountant might say that it offers a vivid illustration of that investment; in the sense that if you turn out to be free to work like they will only be a founder; and with that of whatever they copied. I'm not saying that if you hadn't written about them. Though we're happy to provide this service, and suddenly they need.

I replace the url with that additional constraint, you now get to be good. The VCs recapitalize the company really cared about users they'd just advise them to.

Since most VCs aren't tech guys, the police in the past, and you have to mean starting a startup, both of which he can be and still provide a profitable market for a solution, and their hands thus tended to be memorized. Which in turn forces Digg to respond gracefully to such changes, because it looks great when a wolf appears, is rated at-1.

Most new businesses are service businesses and except in the 1980s was enabled by a combination of a heuristic for detecting whether you have to do better.

Again, hard work. Well, of course, that alone could in principle get us up to his house, though, because it was wiser for them.

I wonder if they'd like it if you get nothing. The most important factor in the world, and stir. Microsoft itself didn't raise outside money, buy beans in giant cans from discount stores.

Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college. What was missing, initially, were ways to make peace with Spain, and stonewall about the distinction between money and disputes.

Aristotle's contribution? Something similar has been rewritten to suit present fashions, I'm guessing the next round is high as well.

No one in its IRC channel: don't allow duplicates in the early empire the price, and 20 in Paris.

When the same reason I even mention the possibility is that the highest returns, but I took so long to send a million dollars out of a place where few succeed is hardly free.

1 note · View note

carryforthtradition · 3 years

Text

Wrestles with Books by Masha Savitz

Excerpt from magical realism memoir, Fish Eyes For Pearls

I am born into the tribe of Israelites, the Children of Israel, people of the book.  Israel, Yisrael means ‘wrestles with God.’

What does it mean to be dyslexic as one from the people of the book?

I’m one who wrestles with books.

I’m a stranger in a foreign land and although I seem to speak the same language, I don’t understand.

This foreign place is school.

I am a character in my own imagined sequel to Camus’ book that I am assigned to read in high school, but never do.

Why would someone who claims to be an existentialist bother writing a book in the first place?

School is the first box.

People banter around the phrase, ‘Think outside the box.’ I didn’t know there was a box. I don’t know of this common system.

Some of us are born in the box, some are herded in soon after, while others need maps and instruction for finding it and operating within its proximity.

Some of us need this instruction drawn in colourful pictures depicting icons and landmarks associated with related emotional resonance. Some need mathematical equations, precise data with circumference for com- fort. Some prefer nautical, elemental references, including the movement of stars, time of year for bird migration and weather patterns.

Still others need it sung in a lullaby.

How does one enter The Box, and what might the consequences or rewards be for doing so? Can you get back out once you get in, are there emergency exits, public transportation, equal access for all?

Kindergarten is lovely, but all becomes alien thereafter.

I’m not indifferent, just different.

In third grade, I wonder how everyone else knows what to do, when I am so lost. We build a huge Noah’s ark. I make the lions. This, I get.

My father asks about my homework assignments. I don’t know. Why don’t I know there are homework assignments? He is frustrated, loses his temper with me. I feel bad that my smart papa has a dud for a daughter. I burrow deep into myself.

In high school, I sit down to study for a final exam, pulling out the year’s notes, all utterly incomprehensible gibberish, turns me cold and sick inside.

Like the moment we find out that Jack Nicholson, in The Shining, has spent all his time writing a book comprised of just one sentence, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, repeated a bazillion times.

That sick feeling.

Frightening- because this looks like the writing of a mad person. I burrow deeper. Never tell anyone.

But as an art major, I get into university. My personal essay and portfolio are strong. In painting class, I come to sense my intelligence.

I feel like NASA, discovering intelligent life, my own.

It has its own way of organizing, perceiving, analysing, it doesn’t live in my mind, no, somewhere deeper.

I will cherish and slowly learn to trust it, defend it, cultivate it, as it cultivates me- moving from the non- verbal languages to the written, expanding into my mind and heart, eyes and hands and into empty space.

At eight years old, I am fascinated with the back cover of a children’s scrapbook that my grandparents buy me. It is decorated with astrological symbols and signs. The written word, now, begins to interest me.

I read my first books in my twenties.

Astrology books allow me to match my own perceptions and knowing with the written words before me, creating a symbiotic relationship between my thoughts and words in reverse, a process which will eventually begin at the written word and lead to comprehension.

For the first time, the written word, this collection of letters and symbols, has a relationship with something I know. A pathway is forged in my mind for associating words with cognitive ideas and thoughts. Though decoding is still arduous, with effort I crack the codes.

My mind doesn’t build files. So, like a computer, if there is no file or system to save it to, bye-bye.

I don’t make this connection until after an entire summer of trying to organize my apartment, I find at the end it is no more organized than the day I started.

I walk around with a photo album or box of chargers and extension cords, trying to figure out where it goes, can’t decide, and pick up another object. Weeks of this make Jack a dull boy.

To support myself through college I get a job teaching at a religious after-school program at a synagogue outside of Boston. But I am ambivalent about being a teacher, since I had loathed school. I feel like a traitor.

There are children and there are grownups. Us and them.

I cannot conceive how it can be that grownups don’t remember how it was to be a child. Do they really forget? How does this happen?

When I am still a child, I wish as hard as I can to imprint this on my soul and mind, instructing my future self never to forget being a child.

This may be in part the reason it is easy for me to connect with children.

I never forgot. And I don’t forget. And some things about teaching become evident:

1. I have the opportunity to make school for others what it never was for me.

2. Whatever I hope to achieve as an artist happens more readily, efficaciously in a classroom.

I can create a small community of joy and expansion, honouring the individual, while working and sharing together as a collective.

I spot all the kids who are drifting away. I see their manoeuvres to keep me off their trail, so that I won’t suspect they do not understand the lesson.

I know where they are, I know how they feel. I know how to bring them back. We expect children to meet us where we are. That is impossible.

Like someone adrift on a raft in the ocean, it’s a search and rescue mission.

We must get into the cold water with a life jacket in hand, because they are scared. They would rather fail from not trying, than fail after trying, because that is too humiliating. They will do what they can to avoid any more bruising. Protecting their fragile ego.

Because I am them, I know how to find them and get them safely back to shore. I won’t let you drown I try to say to them in the silent language of my gaze. Ich und Du, I and thou.

In this space created between us, the atoms that will form pathways, bridges, avenues trails and rails. Seeds yielding life.

While working with children I will often sense the profound field that is created, and the words I and Thou, coined by Vienna born philosopher, Martin Buber.

My first awareness of Buber is in a Jewish Encyclopaedia, where in volume ‘B’, there is in an old photo of Buber from the early 60s. My young father’s face beams out from among all the parade celebrants at the side of the eighty-year-old philosopher!

Without having read his work, I sense that this is in part Buber’s thesis, his foundation. Success lies in the space between. The mutuality. Where, sharing that same space, rapport is experienced. Then, can come communication, where all is possible, a third entity of commonality. The new colour made between two primary colours. The fertile green ground of potentiality created between yellow and blue.

The students, like works of art, require similar skills from me. It will be a dance between my will and their potential- a process of discovery.

My cousin, a child psychologist, connects me with a job to shadow an eight-year-old boy in a private Cambridge elementary school.

W has moved out. This gig should be lucrative and maybe rewarding. I meet Jared, the boy, and his mother for a preliminary interview over coffee.

He is quite a frail little thing, sleepy heavy lids, freckled chipmunk cheeks. He smiles politely, wiggling in his chair with feet dangling a foot from the floor.

I am now part of the second-grade class. The children pet my burgundy velvet full bodysuit. Jared throws blocks across the class at some other children and then runs out of the building. The teacher wants Jared out altogether. His meagre demeanour becomes meaner and meaner as he morphs into a petite terror.

I am given my own little office in hopes that I will occupy him for the school day and keep everyone safe.

Initially, I am told that Jared gets frustrated because he has learning challenges. Squatting on the floor of my office, he sharpens a pencil, and with great fervour, stabs my booted foot repeatedly, a maniacal grin across his face.

‘How is Jared doing? Is he learning his math?’ Asks his quaffed and tailored mother, sitting in my office a few days later in all shades taupe. ‘Well, when we can get past his anger.’ I answer.

‘He’s not angry,’ she replies, placing her hands in her lap.

‘Actually,’ I respond, ‘he is REALLY angry. ‘She smiles and clearing her throat explains, ‘Oh no, he’s just acting angry.’

Jared, though abusive, seems to need me. I’m the only one he has here, the only one who acknowledges that he is angry. But after years of a marriage with anger hurled in my direction at light speed, on the subway platform fresh from work, I hold back tears.

I sceptically purchase a book on energy healing from a local bookstore.

I sit at my kitchen table and read. This all makes perfect sense to me. Traditional therapy only builds a road between the emotional to that of the mental. To contextualize feelings, very important, a start, but ultimately limited. I learn that there are aspects of the self that the self cannot access. This speaks to my floundering stuck state. It seems I should consult someone that has studied with the author. I successfully track down someone in the Boston area.

After reading the book I make an appointment with Perry, an energy healer, I explain my situation...Jared is so angry and W was so angry...and I can’t take anymore anger. They need me, but abuse the one closest.

‘That’s because you are angry.’ Perry explains. ‘I’m not angry.’ I shuffle uneasy in an easy chair. He smiles, ‘No, you’re angry.’

‘Jared is not separate from you,’ he explains, ‘but rather an extension of you, and you need to see him as such, and only then, will you both heal this.’

The next morning, I take Perry’s advice. Jared and I go to the gym, and at the count of three, I instruct, we will hurl ourselves into the mats that are hanging on the wall.

‘One two three.’ We leap into the thick foam rubber blue plastic. SMASH. A shock as our bodies hit the mats.

Release. Laughter. And again.

Jared’s moods improve, as do mine. As he lightens, his academics, handwriting, and focus improve along with a joy of learning. They have diagnosed him all wrong. It’s not his school performance that makes him upset, but rather his upset that makes it impossible for him to concentrate on school work.

We write, do math, and research his favourite subject - dogs. We read about Max, a beat poet puppy and Jared writes poetry. But his parents become very concerned the day he punches a pillow.

I had brought in a pillow for him to punch as a way to express and expel the excessive, unmet anger. And, because I am now no longer threatened by anger myself, there is no invisible cap or limit to what I can handle. He is free to fully rage, and I am comfortable letting him go as far as he needs.

His slight boy frame collapses to the ground in exhaustion. Then he crawls back up and swipes some more. And when he is done, he is done. It is done. There is peace.

The next morning, we compose a poem together about the pillow, which he has beaten and thrashed the day before.

The Nothing Pillow, by Jared N.

My pillow is the colour of a sunset, it is soft as cloud, sits nice and warm like sitting by a warm fire in the winter, I want to lay on my pillow, to look at it, and make sure its ok. I call it the nothing pillow because it doesn’t do anything, and when I lie on it, I think of nothing. The stuffing is like cotton candy, I want to eat it. When I hold my pillow,

I feel happy as can be, I feel happy like a warm bed. Good night.

His parents accuse me of riling him up.

By the end of a winter that had left Cambridge squinty bright when the sun reflected off the miles of chalky white snow, that fell that year, Jared has a new school.

A few weeks later Jared’s prominent lawyer father calls to apologize for accusations and to thank me for ‘keeping it together’ when everyone else was ‘going under.’ Jared’s Head of Child Psychology therapist lauds me for seeing what even he missed. He writes me a letter of recommendation for a Master’s in social work at an East Coast school, but West cost is beckoning.

At my new job, I am asked to tutor Eric, athletic, magnetic smile and sweet nature.

He slips through years of Hebrew classes without learning how to read. Now, I am hired to catch him up, prepare him to come in front of the community for his Bar Mitzvah, leading and chanting prayers and scripture in Hebrew.

I work with Eric and he makes great strides. When I move to LA, another teacher takes over for me. She calls me and wants to know the secret of my success.

‘How did you do it Masha? Did you find out his diagnosis?’

‘No,’ I explain, I have a distrust and disinterest in diagnoses. They are too often wrong.

‘Then how? You did really well with him. What did you do?’

‘I played football with him,’ I answer.

‘What? Football? What are you talking about?’ He is athletic, and I show up on the football field, looking inept where he is a star. I’m on his turf, willing to be incompetent, willing to look foolish. So, he is prepared to take a risk with me, in my classroom.

We are equals, willing to go beyond protected boundaries, defended borders, trusting that the other will gently guide us towards success with encouragement and aplomb.

I hadn’t really had a plan, just instincts. I hadn’t been trained, I was unorthodox, just showing up empty and trying to intuit with the children, something no one had done for me. My dyslexia creates empathy and understanding, but I have no direct or received method for guiding them through.

With Rabbinical aspirations and schooling, I sometimes tutor and officiate the Jewish coming of age ceremony for those thirteen years of age, a Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.

Many of the tweens I work with are outside of the synagogue school system for one reason or another - a parent not Jewish, kids with learning issues, or the child that surprises parents by wanting the ceremony when the family is not particularly religious.

Because many of the students have no Jewish background, my lessons encompass everything from reading and writing Hebrew, learning about holidays, customs and liturgy, while preparing for the ceremony that they will lead in English and Hebrew.

We often meet at coffee shops accompanied with warm sweet drinks and pastries.

Each child is a riddle with a pad lock keeping them from full success. I unscramble codes and unlock each child, one conversation, lesson, or exchange, at a time.

Ich und Du

Mitch and Devon are twin brothers. One is very sensitive, polite, deeply moral. The other is sweet natured and only interested in baseball. Neither one wants to be studying for a Bar Mitzvah. Both are only doing it for their parents.

Mitch is certain this is not for him, but reconciled. He finds religion superfluous since all humans, in his estimation, know innately how to behave and do the right thing.

Dyslexia teaches me that, because I don’t have answers like a glossary of terms I can retrieve on demand, I am empty, open with receptors up. I understand I need to approach each child on his and her own terms, comfortable with not knowing. And, through listening, with the desire and faith to prevail, there is only the Ich und Du. There, I will find the answers, in the space between us. All is revealed.

Writing the Bar Mitzvah speech offers great opportunity to crystalize and articulate beliefs and ideas. It is a way to forge the nascent adult identity, affirming the individual within the context of family and community.

The individual within society, a balance we have not been able to quite achieve. A society which prizes the self at the expense of the greater collective breeds sickness, but also, failing to value the individual weakens the strength of the collective. Middle path says Buddhism, middle path.

Mitch expands on the idea of empathy ‘You know the feelings of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’

Devon recites, ‘I discovered that Judaism and baseball are similar in many ways. Baseball and Judaism both have rules which allow everyone to play together, a way to measure yourself, and a standard to strive for. Both try to push you to be your best, the rabbi is like a coach, they can guide you, try to help you improve, but it is really up to you.’

After the service, I overhear Mitch say to his younger cousin, ‘Are you going to have a Bat Mitzvah? You should, it’s a lot of work but it’s so worth it.’ He sees that I overhear him. I lower my eyes, smiling in my heart.

Everyone has given up on Alex having a Bar Mitzvah. He is now fourteen.

I am told his ‘condition’ prior to our first lesson. He is diagnosed with mild Asperger’s. He needs structure, I am instructed. Well, if that’s what he needs, that’s what we will do. So, although I am more fluid in my approach, I will adapt to him, I will meet him.

But, structure is not what he needs. During my introduction, I outline in detail a very regimented schedule, and at the end remark, ‘But, I like to be open to inspiration.’

He smiles saying, ‘Yeah, that works for me.’

I ask him to repeat this, making sure he heard and understood.

We never have a rigid schedule from that day onward. He thrives. What I learn about him is the opposite of what the specialists advise. His emotions are very strong, if not addressed at the onset he is moody and unfocused. He must identify his feelings, needs, options, solutions, choices. We have incredible success, and fun. He is philosophical, creative, sensitive and sincere. He craves to express himself, to be heard. As do we all.

Maddie is bright and sassy. Her father is a professor of neurology and she, with the mind of a scientist and the attitude of a Westside girl, thinks that God and Hebrew school is a waste of her time. For weeks I try to find a way to reach her, bring her into the conversation. I explain that her agnostic voice is relevant and welcome in our class, that she too is an equally valuable part of the class. This doesn’t seem to mean anything.

I am losing her. It is like struggling with a painting. I will not give up.

We are making a short film based on a line from Deuteronomy, ‘Love God with all your heart, all of your soul, all of your everything.’ I open a conversation with her saying, ‘This project might be challenging for you to work on since you don’t believe in God.’

‘Yup.’ Only half snarky.

‘Let’s see if we can figure this out, a way for this to work for you.’

We discuss theology, science, creation, belief. She is unsure. ‘So, it’s a mystery to you?’ I reframe. ‘Yeah.’

‘What if we replace the word God for ‘Mystery’, I suggest. Instead we will say, ‘I love The Mystery with all my heart all my soul and all my everything. Would that feel right for you? Would that work?’

Bingo! Game changer! Maddie, is able to find integrity and meaning in her studies from this point forward.

The Bat Mitzvah makes sense as she can place herself comfortably in the tradition. When it comes time for her Bat Mitzvah, she uses the term, ‘The Mystery’ in her speech to the community, she learns her material quickly and easily.

Establishing trust is paramount.

Carl Jung believes and trusts implicitly that his patients must and will arrive at the right decisions on their own.

Since this marks one’s journey towards adulthood, I point out that this is a good example of exercising adult wisdom.

There is a time I had abandoned Ich und Du, and the consequences are not good. When I seek advice from ‘the experts’, my life lessons overwhelmingly expose their deficits, imploring me to trust my own wisdom.

A teenage boy directs a comment to me during class, ‘I thought of you the other day- in my bed.’

I consult the school therapist. ‘You need to talk to him, tell him this makes you uncomfortable.’ She insists.

I ask to speak to him after class and it’s awkward. I’m uncomfortable. These are not my words, my real sentiments. He looks shamed, mortified. He thought he was being cute.

My discussion with him hadn’t come from an authentic place in me, or acknowledged our genuine connection.

Sometimes, I handle sexual inappropriateness with a bit more levity and mastery. Two boys in the back of the seventh-grade class attempt to shock me.

‘Masha, is penis a bad word?’

‘No, penis is my favourite word,’ I respond. Screams from the back row. They babble and yell, arms flailing in adolescent gainliness.

‘Are you serious? ‘No sillies, let’s get on with work.’

I never have a behaviour problem again with this class. Putty.

And then there are the teachers that are pivotal in my life.

Geraldine Jackson, five feet of feisty, with pixy short hair and reading glasses that slide down a slightly pug nose. Lean and sparky. Often scary. She is the math teacher. I am a computative disaster. She puts me in the lower group and ignores me. The next year, she teaches English.

There is no awareness of different learning styles at this time. I assume stupidity is the culprit. ‘She’s sweet, creative.’ Is the best a teacher can say of me.

I am even a creative speller!

Every week Mrs. Jackson gives us a creative writing assignment. One week, though mine is short, my story on re-gifting makes her laugh. She reads it to the class. I am now on her radar.

From this point forward, I rise and rise to the bar set before me, becoming one of the two highest graded students in the class for creative composition. Myself and my friend, Missy.

I am not much for competition, more the Aphrodite than the Athena or Artemis. I am thrilled for us both. She is driven, petit though complains she is fat, frets about failing tests when she will score a ninety-eight.

Chances are I will score a thirty out of a hundred and I am woefully chubby. Eleven years of age.

The thesaurus is now my trusty companion, my favourite game - the wonderment of words! I seek them out, hunting words like a scavenger, a canine on the trail, a pirate for loot ‘n booty. Then, savouring the delight of the hunt, I tack them to sentences like animal heads to plaque and wall.

My treasury of gemmed jewels to which I will devote myself first comes in the form of the sixth grade Friday creative compositions where, I pull all-nighters, writing and rewriting.

Here, it starts. Deep into the hushed amorphous night, I am most awake, discovering shapes in the shapeless, word-less, time space, planting and harvesting in the rich fertile darkness. I am free.

Construction of the bridge begins.

I am born into the tribe of Israelites, the Children of

Israel, people of the book. Israel, Yisrael means ‘wrestles with God.’

What does it mean to be dyslexic as one from the people of the book?

I’m one who wrestles with books.

0 notes

thezoequinn · 7 years

Text

The Value Of Just Shutting The Fuck Up Sometimes

A few weeks ago, I was doing an interview with a reporter and she was asking about almost every weird GamerGate conspiracy theory that had come up about me in the last few years. I've honestly forgotten more of them than I remembered at this point. She didn't seem to understand why I'd never addressed most of the accusations which had ranged from whose dick I touched to literally murdering people. She said in researching me for the piece, she'd only ever found the weirdo accusations but not my version of events, and seemed to not understand why I wouldn't just say what actually did or didn't happen.

I can't blame her for being curious. I think whenever we hear something wild, especially about someone or something we care about, we want to know answers. Lord knows if you're the one being lied about, it's a natural impulse to want to set the record straight or give your side of anything.

Sadly, that's extremely short sighted. No one thinks about what might happen next.

It's been over three years of being accused of all kinds of shit from all kinds of people, and if I've learned nothing else, I've learned the importance of restraint and the responsibility that comes with having a large platform and gigantic visibility. It makes me feel like a kaiju where any small movement could potentially tip over a building. I've written a bunch in my book about how engaging with bad-faith accusations and signal boosting them just to refute them can easily backfire and ingrain false information in people's minds even further. That can sometimes just come down to a math problem - if someone with an audience of 50 makes up a rumor about you, if you respond to it with your audience of 500, more people are going to see the false stuff than would otherwise. To complicate matters, there are enough people out there who think that even refuting something at all makes you look guilty. There are people who want you to be guilty because they already don't like you. Frequently, bad-faith accusations will not be addressed by proof to the contrary, because you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into in the first place. People are complicated.

But when you put your side of anything out there, the thing that comes next isn't usually "oh, okay". The thing that comes next is usually escalation. It's people digging into shit trying to prove you wrong. It's invasive, and it can have so much collateral damage.

For example, when people ask me why I didn't address my ex's claims about who I did and didn't sleep with, even when I had the floor, I get why they'd ask. My own desire to keep some remaining shred of my privacy aside, those claims aren't just about me. I've been accused of sleeping with people I haven't ever really talked to, people who are pretty private in general who just want to be left the hell alone. I don't have the right to drag them back into a messy situation that involves probably getting stalked and yelled at by nazis just to try and save my own skin, especially since it's more likely than not that people are just going to believe whatever they want to anyway. Or maybe that's me being cynical after watching years of people claiming that I fucked someone for a review I never got from a website I already had written for in the past. I honestly have, I think understandably, lost a bit of perspective on that particular point.

This is especially complicated by situations like mine, because I am under constant surveillance by people who hate my guts who are looking for people to hurt, and people looking to feed on "drama", and people looking for new targets. If you think that's being dramatic, there are places I know of that have threads specifically about stalking me *to this day* with literally thousands of posts in them. Bad faith actors aside, my audience is in the hundreds of thousands. The responsibility that comes with that is something I take extremely seriously. It's something that I encourage everyone else with big online platforms to take extremely seriously too. I think a lot of us internet famous folks ended up here without really trying to, and it's easy to feel like "well I didn't ask for this and it's not my fault if something happens" and while, yeah, sure, you can't take responsibility for the actions of other people (especially people who are super out there and just looking to hurt someone regardless of whatever you're doing), I see no reason to not try to minimize harm. A power dynamic doesn't cease to exist just because you didn't explicitly seek that power out, or maybe didn't even want it in the first place. People who have less resources than you will still have less resources than you regardless of how you feel about it.

When there's a significant power differential at play, there's harm algebra to be done when it comes to addressing disinformation. It's not as simple as "just setting the record straight" in public, because once you make something public you give up a certain degree of control that you cannot get back. It might mean putting someone who is already hurting or has so much less than me in more harm than I'd ever face by just taking the reputation hit.

Sometimes there's situations where I just have to take it on the chin, because nothing happens in a vacuum. Sometimes I just have to let it go, no matter how much it fucking sucks to have people out there tearing into you for reasons that really have very little to do with you, because the collateral damage is too much on too many people to justify any potential repairs to my reputation.

Honestly, it's really not worth it to me to escalate a situation just to make a frequently pointless attempt at getting people to be more critical of the wild shit they read about me online, especially when it means probably hurting someone else. It's been years and I still don't know how to navigate a lot of this. I've tried so much already - talking about bigger stuff, proving what actually happened, attempting to prove negatives, responding only with screenshots of fighting game win screens. It's not like people making shit up about me, regardless of motivation, is a novel occurrence in my life. It's not like I've made the right call all the time - I've arrived at this method of dealing with shit after making a lot of *wrong* calls. I've been pretty open about being a bad fit for being a public figure of any sort - I was (and still feel) vastly unprepared to handle being a weird symbol to so many people who want all kinds of things from me regardless of if they need a villain or a hero or a symbol of whatever the fuck.

Frankly I can't live my life around playing whack a mole with whatever new horseshit slithers out of the corners of the internet on any given day that ends in Y, because when I was trying to do that it really almost cost me my life.

A fun side effect of being a survivor of domestic violence is how easy it is to slip back into doubting your own life and experiences to a hyperbolic degree. A fun side effect of depression is feeling like everything you say and do is bad and wrong and that you're worthless on a regular basis. A fun side effect of my PTSD is flashing back to being in that fucking elevator shaft when GamerGate started and I couldn't sleep or eat and was convinced everyone would turn on me and I'd be alone forever any time some conspiracy comes up that hits me at just the right angle that it gets under my armor.

But I know that's squarely out of my control. All I can do is manage what I do with that. I don't know what else to do other than seek external advice from people smarter than me when something comes up that really gets under my skin or makes me doubt my own version of events even when I damn well know something didn't happen to help counter the trashbrain filter that the disinformation comes in through because having those issues doesn't let me off of any hooks. I don't want to use any of that, or even my status as someone who is frequently targeted with shit that I'm too exhausted to type out so just picture me gesturing vaguely at everything to absolve me of anything. I don't ever want to think I'm above reproach, so I check in with people around me who will be honest and call me on my shit. When I do fuck up, and I do because I'm a human in an extremely weird fucking situation, I do whatever seems like the right thing to do, not the face-saving thing to do. Sometimes, this is shit that's done in private. I don't know why people assume everything has to be handled extremely online. But overwhelmingly more often than not, shit is maliciously made up, and more often than not the only right move that will de-escalate shit and hurt the least amount of people is just letting it go and praying that people will see through it, or they'll actually talk to me if they see some wild accusation. And if people wanted to look for reasons to think the worst and get the knives out immediately, honestly, I feel extremely done with anyone looking to build people up only to gleefully tear them back down. I'm tired and I've watched too many communities devour themselves to want any part of that, and am only interested in working toward a future that's centered on restorative justice instead of exclusively punitive systems in different settings. I'm tired of enthusiastic disposibility masquerading as community. All that behavior says to me is that I was never safe around you in the first place.

I know I'm taking a gigantic risk in even posting this to begin with because I know it's an uncomfortable subject, but it feels like a bigger, longer-term risk to watch my comrades, siblings, and friends all scared and lost on either side of the power dynamic - both as people who have grievances with people with gigantic platforms, and as people who have gained both visibility and the jealousy and hatefollows that come with it. I'm tired of talking about this stuff in dms with other scared people who don't know what to do. And by no means do I think this is the only way to deal with any of this - this is just how I feel, and how I approach being someone who went from being some random weirdo to being a cultural football. Your mileage may vary. Hopefully I figure out a way that's less dehumanizing, and if I do, I'll be sure and let you know. But again, I'm a random weirdo game developer. I'm figuring this shit out as I go, and I lean into my skids and wear my heart on my sleeve and if y'all want to throw me in the trash over being aggressively vulnerable and human at you, that's ok. You don't have to like me or support me, and I like trash anyway.

Shit's pretty fucked up in the world right now (duh), but the very least we can do is really interrogate how and what we use our varying degrees of reach and visibility for. We have to see ourselves as part of something larger and look at our impact instead of just our intentions. For me, sometimes that means that being right doesn't mean a damn thing and is unrelated to doing the right thing. Sometimes, for me, that means knowing when to just shut the fuck up and let people think what they're gonna think. And if nothing else, I've seen that on a long enough timeline, people tend to figure out who makes shit up without my involvement.

So I'm only gonna say all of this once, here, so that I never have to say it again and I can point at it any time I'm asked to weigh in on something someone said about me on the internet, because god damn I'm tired and I'd rather spend my time and effort trying to help people and make dope shit than fuss about what people think they know about me.

#cw: abuse #cw: ptsd #cw: trauma

494 notes · View notes

likeshipsonthesea · 7 years

Text

A Happy Ending

Nursey Week Day 6: Dreamer

Nursey sits on the floor of the living room, playing with Legos and trying to build the coolest castle there ever was. He considers two Legos thoughtfully, deciding eventually on a pink door over a green one.

The castle, Nursey decides, belongs to a King and a Queen. They have a son, the Prince. The King and Queen work a lot, as kings and queens usually do, which leaves the Prince to his own devices much of the time. He wanders about the cool castle excitedly, ready to find a new secret passageway or a painting willing to have a conversation (because, in the cool castle, paintings can talk).

The Prince finds a room filled with toys. So many toys that it’s overwhelming. There is a wall lined with stuffed animals, cupboards filled with action figures and shelves filled with colorful books detailing stories of unearthly adventures. The Prince runs about the room, picking up toys and playing with them for a while before moving on. He puts together a puzzle of the Eiffel Tower in France, which he’s seen himself, and then he uses dolls to act out a tale of falling in love. In the back of the room, there’s a group of people the Prince’s age, willing to play hockey with him when he asks.

When the Prince tires of playing, he attempts to find his way out of the room, but he cannot find the door he came in through. Nothing looks familiar and the Prince begins to get scared, worried that he’ll be stuck in this room forever. As cool as the toys are, he misses his parents, the King and Queen, and he doesn’t want the toys if he can’t have them, too.

Just as the Prince starts to cry, hopelessly lost, the King and Queen rush over to him, having found him in the large, cool castle.

The Queen scoops the Prince up in her arms, cooing softly. “We were so worried about you,” she says, petting his hair and holding him close. “We missed you so much.”

The King puts a hand on the Prince’s back, rubbing soothingly. “Yes, son, you are the most important thing to us and we thought we lost you.”

“What about-” the Prince sniffles, “- what about your jobs?” he asks.

“They don’t mean anything compared to you,” the Queen says.

“You are the most important thing to us,” the King says, nodding.

The Prince smiles, pressing his face into his mother’s chest, and hugs her tighter.

“Now, what would you like for dinner?” the King asks, but it doesn’t sound like the King’s booming, deep voice.

Nursey frowns, looking up at his nanny, who’s wearing an expectant look on her face.

“What?”

His nanny rolls her eyes, annoyed. “What would you like for dinner?”

Nursey blinks at her, confused. “Don’t Mommy and Daddy decide?”

“They won’t be eating it. They have to work late.”

“Oh.” Nursey looks back at his Lego castle. “Whatever’s fine,” he says. His nanny leaves, walking towards the kitchen. Nursey starts taking apart the castle.

*~*~*

The saying, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to see it, does it make a sound?” is an incredibly arrogant thought, Nursey decides halfway through his math period. Like, who says that something is only true if you’re there to witness it? Things happen even if you aren’t there. Things happen even if humans aren’t there. Humanity is not the be-all end-all of the world.

Humanity is pretty arrogant too, now that he thinks about it. They consider themselves the top of the food chain, the smartest, the best species. Just because humans don’t understand what animals are saying doesn’t mean that animals aren’t just as smart as them. It’s not unlike when people who don’t speak English are considered stupid in the eyes of bigoted only-English speaking people simply because they can’t understand what the non-English speaker is saying. Not to say that non-English speakers are animals and English speaking people are “higher” like humanity considers itself to be, just that the prejudice both experience are somewhat similar.

“Mr. Nurse?”

Nursey looks up to see the teacher, Mr. Camilleri, wearing an expectant look on his face.

“What?”

The kids around him laugh and Nursey tries to duck down further into his notes.

Mr. Cam, because he’s chill as hell, glares the rest of them into silence and re-asks, “What was your answer for number four?”

“Uh.” Nursey looks down at his paper. Number four is artfully decorated with some confusing scribbles, random lines, and a circled 42˚. “42?”

Camilleri nods, turning back to the whiteboard, where he writes down 42˚. “While that’s not the final answer, it is a pit stop on the way of getting there. Ms. Junip, could you help us get to the final answer?”

Nursey pays attention as Penelope Junip explains the rest of the problem because he knows he’ll need to understand this for the next test. When the question is over, and they move onto number five, Nursey finds that he actually got the right answer for that one, so he lets himself drift as Camilleri explains it for those who didn’t.

He wonders if numbers have relationships with each other. He feels like five would be a dick; he’s so special and everything, only fitting into numbers that end in five or zero. Ten is probably humble, a little embarrassed at five’s arrogance. Eight probably loves nine, but nine only has eyes for ten, and they’re such a perfect couple that eight always feels bad for his feelings. Six probably knows this, and takes eight and seven out when any of the three of them are feeling bad. Seven always feels out of place, so awkward and never feeling like he fits except with a select few, like six, and eight. Nursey almost laughs at himself when he finds himself identifying with the number seven.

Next period, he has English. They’re reading Romeo and Juliet, and though Nursey’s already read it, he can’t wait. English works in his mind the way that math does in Penelope Junip’s. Metaphors and similes, figurative language peppered with repetition and symbolism and allusions. It makes sense the way an equation should; everything fits. But it’s more fun than math, because he can move things around and still have it make sense. There isn’t such structure to English.

He finds this ironic, of course, because he usually loves structure, control. Any differentiation has him freaking out in a decidedly unchill manner. But it’s also perfectly understandable, he reasons. All the best things in his life are unstructured, craziness, chaos. Shitty Knight, hockey, poetry. He’s just a chaotic kind of guy.

As they move onto number six, Nursey laments his situation while also trying to figure out how in the world Camilleri got 73˚.

*~*~*

There’s a brochure in front of him. Actually, there are several brochures in front of him. There’s one for Yale, since it’s an Ivy and would get him an internship in any of the places a child of parents like his ought to get an internship. There’s two other ones of colleges in New York, Columbia and Cornell. Columbia because it’s in New York City and his guidance counselor assumed he might want to stay close to home, and Cornell, a product of his mother’s lingering hope that he will go into engineering. Harvard is there, his father’s way of pushing Nursey into law so he could go and tell his business buddies that his son is a lawyer.

In the middle of them all sits Samwell University. This one was given to him by Shitty Knight, who stopped by Andover in February for Nursey’s birthday celebration and to taunt some of his least favorite teachers with pranks. He had clapped Nursey on the back, laughing and telling him that it all starts now, with seventeen and freedom and independence.

“You’d like it,” Shitty had said, eyes earnest despite the haziness of the alcohol. “It’s-” He had shaken his head, beaming. “It’s fucking sw’awesome. Come to the hockey tour; I promise you won’t regret it.”

Nursey hadn’t regretted it. He had loved Samwell, from the hockey rink being beautiful enough to inspire sonnets to the teammates who welcomed out-of-the-norm people to the quietly outstanding libraries to the two girls he saw kissing in broad daylight like there was nothing to be afraid of. Samwell was everything he had wanted in high school and never got. Well, he got a taste of it, in the form of Shitty, but Nursey wanted a world of Shitty Knight.

God, he could never tell Shitty that. His ego, and Nursey’s tolerance of it, would explode.

He imagines himself at Samwell, surrounded by those people and those things. He could get a boyfriend- or girlfriend, he is pan, after all, but he can get a girlfriend at Andover- and flaunt him like he would deserve. He could live in the library, with books and that architecture, crying over its beauty and his sure-to-be-deadly coursework. He could spend practices and roadies and wins and losses with guys who collectively yelled at the one taddy that made a comment about that baking one’s femininity.

In his mind, Nursey sits on a couch in a frat house. It smells terrible. There’s pie.

It’s wonderful.

*~*~*

There’s a room somewhere, the place is irrelevant. In this room, there’s an unending supply of tea, all the flavors Nursey could dream of. All of his favorite books are in a pile next to the comfiest couch that was ever made. Next to that pile are all the books Nursey’s ever wanted to read. People are only allowed in the room if they’re wearing fuzzy socks and of a mind that’s ready to relax.

There are no clocks in the room, so there is no time. Nothing outside the room matters and Nursey is sitting on that couch, sipping tea, reading books, and wearing fuzzy socks.

He is not, as he was earlier led to believe, underneath the Haus dining table attempting to cram for his environmental science midterm while Bitty flutters about the kitchen, offering him pastries every once in a while. That, he’s sure, would be terrible and ridiculous in equal measures.

Of course, the illusion is shattered when Dex shoves himself under the table as well, already bustling in before he seems to realize that Nursey already occupies this space. He considers Nursey for a moment with an angry expression before muttering, “Budge over,” and settling in next to him. He pulls out a French history textbook and begins taking notes.

It’s a well-known fact that underneath the Haus dining table is an excellent spot to study. Ransom spends at least half of his break downs under here. Shitty can usually be found here before finals, naked save for a textbook artfully covering his junk. Lardo has been under here so many times to finish a piece that the bottom of the table is covered in paint splatters. They, the glorious upperclassmen, imparted this knowledge on the lowly Frogs, who use the spot when necessary.

Nursey is too stressed to argue, so he just moves over. The two of them cram for a long while. Halfway through a sentence about wind patterns, Nursey snorts to himself when he realizes that his desire for timelessness seems to have been achieved. It isn’t exactly what he meant, but no fulfilled wish ever is.

Sometime after that but before Nursey gets to the end of that chapter, Bitty pokes his head under the table, offering out a plate of something that looks delicious.

“I made meringues. You boys want one?” His studying is usually done in the form of making his textbooks unsellable after the end of a class by dirtying them with flour and the like. Dex, who doesn’t mind, bought three of them in the beginning of the semester.

“Yes, please.” Dex, who’s closer, takes the plate and puts it in between his and Nursey’s legs. They bite into them simultaneously and groan likewise.

“Fuck, Bits,” Dex moans around his own. Bitty blushes. Nursey tries not to find it attractive, but it’s a battle.

“You’re the best,” Nursey says earnestly. Bitty rolls his eyes, but his lips curve into a pleased smile.

“You boys flatter me.” He rights himself, his head disappearing, and Nursey and Dex take a break from studying to devour the meringues. There’s an odd number, so they are left with one on the plate when they’ve polished off the rest. Nursey and Dex exchange a look. Then, Dex picks it up and cleanly breaks it in half, holding one piece out to Nursey, who smiles a little, surprised.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. Dex nods. They eat they’re shared treats, eyes shining like kids who found the cookie jar hidden above the refrigerator. It’s a secret, almost, and it tastes sweet.

*~*~*

There’s cheering, overwhelmingly loud cheering. It’s cold, as it always is on the ice, but Nursey loves it like he has since he shakily skated onto the rink near his parents’ apartment in New York. Everything is sore, and the cold doesn’t help, and his under armor sticks to him all clammy and sweaty like someone’s hand he doesn’t want to be holding.

The captain is beaming, laughing as he’s tackled by the rest of the team. They won, he’s thinking, it’s in his eyes, we did it, I can’t believe we did it. The goalie is being lifted into the air, laughing as the pressure of being the only thing between a victory and sadness drifts away. The coaches are clapping each other on the back, all of the players left on the bench having joined the fray. They share conspiratorial smiles, like proud parents able to bask in a moment of Look at what they did, look at what we helped them do.

For a second, the captain is Jack, looking proud and emotional but knowing that this isn’t it, there’s more to come. The goalie is Chowder, crying a little and scrambling away when Holster and Ransom try to hand him the puck, a Frozen Four win puck. Murray and Hall have that parental look about them, the kind of look that Nursey’s never seen on his own parents, and it makes him ache, but he doesn’t mind. It’s Samwell’s bench that’s void of players; the ice is covered in red and white jerseys; it’s red and white confetti falling from the ceiling.

The next second, Nursey is walking into a locker room with twenty-two other emotional young hockey players. Jack is nowhere to be seen; Chowder is crying- Nursey got that part right; Murray and Hall are attempting to tell them all that they did a good job, but their eyes aren’t quite convincing enough. Nursey curls a hand around Dex’s shoulder, the sound of his helmet banging on the floor reverberating around in Nursey’s ears.

He imagines cheering, in the next second. Whooping and the sloshing of Gatorade as it’s dumped on Jack, Chowder, the coaches, everyone. There would probably be a Gatorade fight, when Nursey thinks about it. Everyone would be laughing. Bitty would be thinking up the pie he was going to make in celebration. Shitty would probably be naked. Dex would probably be smiling that forest fire smile of his; unrestrainable and radiating warmth.

Nursey knows he has another three years to try, to do this again, to win. But, as he sits down at his designated cubby, his eyes catch on Shitty, whose hair falls in his face, his expression closed off. He looks at Jack’s stall, empty. Nothing has changed in that stall since Jack stood up from it two hours ago and gave a speech telling them to give it their all and that he would be happy. He isn’t happy now, Nursey thinks.

“Nursey,” someone says, breaking him out of his reverie. “You’ve gotta shower.”

Nursey looks up to see Dex standing there, anger in the set of his jaw and worry in his eyes. The anger seeps out a bit, though, when he sees Nursey’s face.

“We deserved it,” Nursey says, rambling in his mind and shutting his mouth tight. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. In all the movies, all the books, the team that deserved it won. The captain who had done his best, been encouraging, had gone through so much, he would get the win, win it all. Or-or the underdog, freshman goalie who was the sweetest person anyone would ever meet and a stone-cold killer between the poles, he would get a NCAA win his first year. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

“I know,” Dex says, and Nursey thinks he does.

*~*~*

A Snap sits unread on the screen of Nursey’s phone. It’s from wjp_dex and it sits unread because Nursey hasn’t finished this chapter yet. He doubts he’ll be able to finish a novel if he’s stopping every other word to look at the snapshots of his life that Dex gives him.

When the chapter is complete, he picks up and unlocks his phone, receiving his small gift. It’s a picture of Dex, a little sunburnt, with the bay behind him. He’s wearing a backwards cap and there’s a little ginger girl with her face smashed against his, grinning with a smile that’s missing a few teeth. Dex looks so content, relaxed around the eyes and his mouth in an easy smile. It’s captioned with sadie thinks your name is weird.

Nursey takes a picture of his laptop screen and sends back your face is weird. Then he takes another one of himself and clarifies dex’s, not sadie’s. sadie’s is adorable.

Suck up, Nursey gets back with a picture of Dex sticking his tongue out and Sadie smiling smugly.

In Maine, Dex would play in the water with Sadie and Scott and all the other siblings that have names so Irish that it’s like they’re trying to prove it-like the hair wasn’t enough. Nursey would lie on the beach, a book in his hand, or maybe a journal, so he could write. He would look up every once in a while to watch them all splash around, smile, and then go back to his work. After a while, Dex would get annoyed and send one of his cutest little relatives to go get him.

They’d spend the afternoon in the water, turning to prunes and tasting salt long after they’d left the beach. They’d walk back to the Poindexter’s house and Mrs. P would yell at them the second they walked in, telling them to hose off or go find some other place to have dinner. Dex would help his younger siblings get clean of sand and then start a water fight with Nursey, like they weren’t already soaking wet.

“You look like a drowned rat,” Dex would laugh, pushing Nursey’s mop of hair out of his eyes, as it usually fell there when it was wet.

“You look like a drowned rat,” Nursey would say back, too happy to come up with some other kind of insult. Then maybe he’d lean in and feel Dex’s sunburn-warm skin against his own, maybe it would be okay, maybe they’d-

wjp_dex has sent you a Snap! Nursey’s phone says. He opens it. Dex has taken a picture of the water and asked, how’s the novel coming along?

Bit by bit, he sends back, a picture of the half-filled (he’s always been an optimist, despite his attempts at the opposite) page he’s got on his screen.

Dex sends back another picture, still of the water, and a thumbs-up emoji. Nursey smiles, and turns back to the screen.

*~*~*

They’re fighting, and Nursey kisses him to shut Dex up. Dex’s skin is flushed with anger and his cheeks are warm under Nursey’s fingertips. He keeps trying to argue under Nursey’s lips, but silences himself when Nursey tells him to shut the fuck up. He pushes Nursey back against the door of whatever room they’re in-preferably one of their dorms, since there are beds there- and shoves his thigh in between Nursey’s. Nursey groans, his head falling back, and Dex fits his mouth around the skin of Nursey’s Adam’s apple and it’s-

They’re drunk and get caught on one another as they navigate the dance floor, sticking like soda that hasn’t bene cleaned properly off a counter top, but more pleasantly than that sounds. The music works its way into their hips, their hands, and they tell themselves- Nursey tells himself- that it’s Beyoncé, it’s the alcohol, it’s the kegster, it’s not them, and continues telling himself that as he licks at the sweat forming on Dex’s collarbone. Dex groans and Nursey feels the vibration in his mouth and it’s-

They’re both tired from practice and then lectures and they’re sitting in Nursey’s dorm studying, flipping through textbooks and laptops without making a sound. Dex starts typing, as he usually does, and Nursey starts humming to counteract it, and they both get so annoyed with one another that Nursey grabs Dex’s fingers to stop the tapping and Dex attempts to press them against Nursey’s mouth to quell the noise, but he only succeeds in getting their faces closer together. Nursey stares at Dex for too, too long and then leans closer and feels Dex’s exhale of breath against his check and it’s-

And it’s funny, because in every one of Nursey’s dreams of this situation, whenever he let himself think about it, he started it. Nursey would kiss him, Nursey would lean in, Nursey would be the instigator. Maybe it was a subconscious part of himself saying that Dex would never be the one to start it, mainly because he would never feel the same way. But whatever it was, Nursey always thought of it I kiss him, he doesn’t say no, because it would be the most plausible thing his mind could handle.

That’s how he knows that he isn’t dreaming right now, because Dex kissed him first. Dex said, “Hey, Nursey?” while they were sitting in the Haus basement as Dex attempted to fix the washer for what must be close to the hundredth time. Nursey suspects that it isn’t yet the hundredth time because he’d expect more confetti and celebration when it reaches the big one-o-o. Dex was the one that leaned in, so close that Nursey’s eyes widened and his heart started racing. Dex was the one that said, “Could you hand me the Phillips head screwdriver?” Dex had been the one that put his tools on the other side of Nursey’s spot, put Nursey between the tools and the washer.

“I-I don’t know a Phillip,” Nursey had said, aiming for witty and just sounding nervous. Unchill, his mind said, and he almost laughed.

“Oh,” Dex had said, his eyes laughing and his lips smirking. “I’ll get it then,” he murmured, and leaned forward. As his hand searched for the tool, his lips touched Nursey’s and his eyes closed. Which is a really ineffective way of searching for a tool, Nursey thought, before he sighed and closed his eyes as well.

Now, Dex is the one moving his lips like waves at the shore, relentless and intoxicating. Dex is the one putting his body in between Nursey’s spread thighs, gripping his waist all sturdy and focused, like when he’s fixing things. Nursey drops his hands off the planes of Dex’s broad shoulders, his wrists bent as his fingers intertwine in the sparse hairs on the back of Dex’s neck. He let his hair get long over the summer and Nursey has dreamed about that, too.

When Dex pulls back, he smiles. He holds up what Nursey presumes to be a Phillips head screwdriver.

“Got it,” he says.

“Yeah,” Nursey breathes out, and then smiles. Dex’s little laugh is way better than any flimsy dream.

*~*~*

Nursey sits in a waiting room. His phone lights up with texts from Shitty, Chowder, Dex, and the rest of the team, but mostly the first three. Good luck, a lot of them say, you’re going to do great a couple read.

Nursey closes his eyes.

He lives in either Maine or Massachusetts. There’s a big house with lots of rooms and comfy furniture that costs a decent amount, but it’s good furniture. He and Dex fought about the price of the couch and then made up when Nursey had it delivered without telling Dex and then let Dex fuck him on it. Nursey and Dex have their own room, with a big bed piled high with pillows and the softest sheets money could buy, which Dex didn’t fight him over because he’s a diva when it comes to blankets.

Some of the other rooms are also bedrooms. A guest room, for when Shitty and Lardo stop by, and a couple pull out beds for when more than one of Dex’s siblings comes by at a time. The other bedrooms are kids’ rooms, kids who love Dex and love Nursey and know what it’s like to be loved back, know what it’s like to be more important than anything else.

One of the other rooms is a home office, where Nursey writes, sometimes. Sometimes he stays in his and Dex’s room; sometimes he stays in the kitchen. Depends on the muse, really. Nursey writes a lot, being an author and all. His books are loved, maybe not famous, but loved and cherished and a lot to the people who read them. He makes enough off of them that they can be his job and damn does he love his job.

Dex comes home with the fucking bunch of kids that they have and presses a kiss to the side of Nursey’s face. “I love you,” he says, before asking about Nursey’s day and telling the kids to go do their schoolwork. Nursey loves him too, so much, and this is their life together. A little messy- how could it not be messy with all the kids they have?- but filled with love and warmth and presence.

“Mr. Nurse?” the receptionist calls, leaning out of a partially opened door. “We’re ready for you.”

Nursey grips his manuscript tightly- they had wanted a printed copy- and takes a deep breath. He knows that it wasn’t real, but a dreamer like him can accomplish anything, right?

#nurseydex #dexnursey #nurseyweek #nursey #derek nurse #check please #angst #happy ending #i promise it's happy

157 notes · View notes

puttingfingerstokeys · 4 years

Text

the shambling deceased

Nanowrimo day 23 Featuring an unnamed narrator Post-apocalyptic setting, zombies Zombies, death, body horror Finished and unedited

Human olfactory senses are not meant to become accustomed to the sweet stink of death. I don’t care how many television programs you have consumed over the years, where the heroes don’t notice the shambling threat until it is far too late. If the noises these revenants make are not enough to alert the characters in the show, surely the stench of rot and decay would catch their attention, right? Depending on the dramatic needs of the program, it may or it may not. But I am here to tell you, point blank, that the dead—they stink. They stink bad. They stink worse than the ugliest most odious smell you have ever experienced, bar none. A skunk cannot compare to the smell of death, though it certainly tries. The smell permeates, sticks, clings, and drags on you until you are well away from it.

And if the dead are the pursuing kind, rather than the sort who lays on the ground like a corpse really ought to do? Well, you do the math. They are not what anyone might call “quick”, but if the wind is right, the smell will do you in but good. It is rot, decay, and wrong. The smell is actually alarming, if you can believe that. Trust me when I say this: you never want to experience it if it is at all avoidable. Most people, in their lifetimes, smell death once or twice, usually when an animal has gotten itself up under their home and done the indecent thing, dying there to stink up the house and the surrounding area. They always seem to do this on hot days, too—it’s in rather poor form. Regardless, this stench only mimics what the shambling dead bring with them when they rove through an area.

That they move in herds is something the old shows used to get right, at least. I genuinely have no idea what, precisely, attracts them, though I think it might be sound. The dead, you see, don’t have lung capacity; their vocal flaps are generally decayed beyond use as it is soft tissue and, as a result, are unable to produce sounds like the groans you might think they would make.

I guess that might be one thing the television would have had right, about not being able to hear them, except those ambulating corpses would always moan and snarl and make all kinds of animalistic sounds. It was as if they were begging to be discovered. Real ones are hardly apex predators, but at the very least, they do not alert their prey of an incoming attack via audible means. It would really be embarrassing to be killed by a loud, stinky corpse.

It is still incredibly unclear what exactly animates these things. They do not appear to have normal blood flow or brain function; nothing beats or moves and they are decidedly lukewarm. Something is still firing up in their rotten noggins, but it certainly is not what you would call “proper” function. It seems to drive them toward the base urge to feed. I don’t think their bodies process the flesh they consume, however. The stuff probably sits in their guts and ferments—that’s where you get the explosive ones. We haven’t really bothered naming them anything fancy or cutesy. They’re shambling, bloated corpses and honestly, flippant as this commentary has been, there is absolutely jack shit all that’s funny about seeing once-living humans reduced to … that.

They cannot help it. There is no malice in them. There is nothing in them. They are husks, which is as good a name as any. Zombie has always sounded kind of silly to me, even if the implications are always fairly dark and dire. Husks better describes the hollowness of them, I think. So “the undead” or “the infected” work, but “husk” is a better term, given that we do not actually know if they are infected with anything or how they got that way and when you call something undead, it makes the thing somehow spookier than it has to be, lending it some sort of power. We should not fear these things. We need to dispose of them quickly; it is the absolute least we can do.

As far as corpses go, they are just as brittle and easily-perforated as what you might expect a half-decayed corpse to be. The hardest part, to be perfectly honest, is the clothing. Most people did not turn whilst also happening to be nude, unfortunately. Piercing clothes with a stick or any other blunt instrument is a lot tougher than the television shows always made it seem. You are best off with a machete or even a bat. Cutting off brain function stops ambulation. I… do not know if it stops brain function entirely unless the brain is vaporized. No one seems inclined to hang around husk-infested areas long enough to find out.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I was (partially) wrong about the events of a so-called “zombie apocalypse”. I had always theorized (during slow times at my job, mostly) that no society with known zombie-based media could fall victim to the idiotic happenings of your average zombie show, that the zombies could not last much longer than a few months, at most in, for example, a densely populated city, but that in the country, the problem would be solved within a week. There is simply more space way out in the boonies to see things like that coming—people are more armed, too, and not necessarily even with firearms. I am referring, of course, to basic farm implements: pitchforks, shovels, a literal tractor, splitting mauls, axes, actual logs—I could go on.

I was foolish, thinking it would be easy to simply go out and strike down things which had formerly been human, because I would know that they were not. What they don’t usually show in zombie shows—or didn’t; I doubt anyone will ever produce another, assuming we get to that point—is that when someone is freshly dead, they still look… human. Not just humanoid, mind you, but like a sick human being.

Okay, so remember when I said the husks don’t make noise? The old ones don’t, that’s true. But the fresh ones… sometimes it feels as if they are trying to communicate in some way. It definitely is not the growling-hissing sound you get from a movie or whatever. It feels like speaking to a person with a severe speech impediment, who is also deaf, and has some combination of Alzheimer’s and dementia. That is to say, you are not speaking with them, so much as listening. I have no idea what they are trying to say and I have only seen a fresh one a few times; thankfully, by the time they reach our home base, they have deteriorated thoroughly enough that there isn’t any more of that half-talking thing. It gives me the shivers even considering it. Do they consider what they are doing? Can they feel it? What part of them is left—if any?

I am one of those people who hopes that whatever they feel is rudimentary, pure instinct, that there is nothing of the soul who was once occupying the body—yet another decent reason to call them “husks”, rather than zombies.

They are chilling to behold, more than any George Romero film could attempt to portray. As a matter of course, anyone who has ever owned a zombie film or series has tossed it summarily out into the gutter, so to speak—though in some cases, literally. I have genuinely witnessed people with whole collections, tossing them out into our now-defunct trash bins. The gesture seems more symbolic than anything else; the only garbage truck I have seen in the area is the one the former “rogue garbage man” (a story for another time) had used to make his living, except this thing was ass-over-teakettle in a swamp. Whether it was a group of husks or just some of the run-to-riot wildlife in the area that drove him off the road, I guess I’ll never know.

The village I call home is a small place, a five-by-five mile square with probably five hundred people, total. The cop shop doubles as the library and town hall, if that gives you any idea of the scale of things. We have a four-way which is the biggest attraction in town and isn’t even a stop—traffic on the old highway zooms right on through. We have the essentials, a bar, a hardware, a convenience store and two churches, one Catholic, the other non-denominational, the church equivalent of “Original” and “Spicy”. I’m not entirely sure which one is which, but since the Catholics serve wine, I’m going with Original Recipe—they’re the ones who own the one graveyard in town, which I am pleased to say has expelled none of its residents. It probably isn’t feasible to rise from your grave when you are encased in cement and filled with formaldehyde. Who knew that our uncomfortably Egyptian burial practices would come in handy? There are a few cross streets here and there, but they either lead to dead-ends or a twisted mass of nonsense roads that curve and twist and transform into other roads as they hit county lines.

Everything that is not a house or trailer is a field, woods, a swamp, or some combination of the two.

For having so much farmland, however, there are very few farms. In recent years, times have been tough on anything that is not a massive, factory farm and, needless to say, anything called a “village” does not have the consumer base or, likely, the location to support such a thing. The government has been doing what it does best: making it hard on the little guy. I wish I could tell you it was because of this regime or that, red or blue, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure the agenda changes much across the aisle—not where regulatory licensure is concerned, anyway. Farmers just cannot keep up with government subsidization if they aren’t an approved recipient and then they lose their farms, plain and simple. It isn’t the best explanation, nor is it a terribly sympathetic one; don’t think me cold for this, but I recognize that there is plenty about the world I cannot change and, when the dead are walking, you quickly learn which battles to fight, which passions to chase, and which issues to leave behind in the dust of a previous age. I’ve shaken that particular blend of mud from my shoes.

My family is one of the fortunate few who had a “hobby” farm before this whole thing went down. I don’t know who decided to call it that, but this thing is no hobby. It is absolutely, without question, a full-time job taking care of the animals. We have the staples, chickens and hogs, like you would expect in the rural Midwest, but rather than cows, my family long ago elected to raise, breed, milk, and butcher goats. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, my friend; goat is good eating. The milk is creamy, the cheese is exquisite, and they are friendly, mid-sized beasts who can be pushed and pulled where you need them to go. Sometimes, we lament not having at least one cow, but upon reflection, the sheer size of any bovine is enough to stop that thought quickly; they eat a ton and if they do not want to cooperate, they simply won’t. There is little a human can do without a cattle prod (or dogs) and we’re fresh out.

We are fresh out of cattle prods, that is, not dogs. We have dogs. Everyone around here has at least one dog. It’s just something you do in the country. You have dogs. We have four, actually, and right now, they make for excellent guards, alerting us to the presence of the undead with quiet barks—we call them “low-commitment”, because it isn’t a full-on bark, but it’s loud enough to let us know something is up. It’s as if the dogs understand that the dead are attracted to sounds. Now, if a human being wanders by the fence, the dogs go all out. They’re really the epitome of “a bark worse than their bite”, but nobody else knows that, so they keep the riff-raff out. By riff-raff, I mean drifters, thieves, those who are not committed to survival by hard work, but by capitalizing on the work of others. Around here, there are plenty—or there were. Needless to say, that behavior does not win you many friends during a crisis like this one. My family is generous, but we are not soft, nor stupid. Telling the good from the bad has never been difficult for us… or the dogs, actually.

So there you have it… “hobby” farm with doggy security system. We have ham, goat, and chicken a-plenty; we have eggs, milk, and cheese. We are very well-outfitted for this “apocalypse”, if you want to call it that. I think it might be a bit overblown, but nobody asked me, did they? There are plenty of people and families out there who were not so fortunate. It did not take long to realize how well-positioned we were (and still are) to survive and even to thrive in these new dark ages. Oh, but I guess I got ahead of myself again—or maybe behind… again. You probably aren’t here for logistics or whatever. You probably saw the opening monologue and thought “shit, she’s going to spill it all; we’re going to get a real juicy story”. You want to know how it started, or at the very least, how it started for me, don’t you? Well, strap in. This is a long one.

#OC #OW #zombie apocalypse

0 notes

mathematicianadda · 5 years

Text

Two of the most important skills for being good with math

Hi, this is an opinion piece. I can only report on my own experience, and this idea is simply what I've observed in my own time with mathematics. If you think disagree and think I'm dead wrong, or almost wrong, or somewhat misguided. Please let me know, I'd love to hear about your ideas!

Based on admittedly limited experience, it seems like there are two really important skills for being good at math. One is the ability to translate intuition into formalization, and the second is the ability to translate formalization into intuition. I have several reasons for believing this, and I'll discuss them starting with the first skill.

First: It seems that formalizations (definitions, theorems, etc) are often built to capture something we believe to be 'true' (or at least useful). Our minds may have put a pattern together, and formalizing said pattern can allow us to make more directly logical or algebraic inquisitions. This can be quite good for exploring places our intuition has a hard time reaching. And it lets you explore unarticulated consequences of that intuition. One fun example of this is the creation of tier lists in card games (hearthstone, slay the spire, etc). This tends to break some of the more poorly designed games out there, and for good reason. Knowing how to formalize intuitions can also keep you making mistakes earlier rather than later, this has the added benefit of cutting off dead-ends early -- If you can formalize an intuition, then it's often much easier to see how that intuition fails to line up with the larger mathematical context (usually by way of contradiction).

Second: It's usually the case that I see a proof intuitively before I see it emerge as numbers, equations, or a chain of logic. Following the feeling, shape, or contour of a proof, and filling in details later tends to be how I do math. This is both a good and bad thing: My role in a group will often be to do a lot of the high level outlining while others work on the specifics. This also means that I get to talk with professors about stuff way above my paygrade and I can sometimes keep up and ask helpful questions. The issue with this 'high in the sky' approach is that because I have a hard time filling in the details, a lot of my proofs are fluffy or hand-wavey, and the majority of my ideas lack formal rigor or any practical way to be used. Knowing that a proof needs just one more thing which is obviously true "but I just don't know how to phrase with math" has been a major sticking point on many of the more difficult problems I've faced.

Knowing how to turn formalizations into intuition (and understanding) is pretty much the reverse of this. But it's arguably just as important.

First: Viewing formalizations and definitions as merely collections of symbols and equations kills any and all enthusiasm I have for them. Math is special to me because of what it means and what it implies. I think this is one commonality between "those who do math for the sake of theory, and those who do math for the sake of problems". Math is cool and interesting and really fun. Knowing the motivation and logic behind the symbols and calculation makes it much more motivating to carry that calculation out. The times I've hated math the most have always been when I was made to do a lot of seemingly pointless and often difficult computation (I'm looking at you ODE), and I think this is a lot of people's experience. To keep doing math I have to have the motivation, that motivation can come from several places, but one of the sturdiest and most reliable sources of it is feeling that what I'm learning about is actually cool and interesting and understandable.

Second: I can't do math effectively without knowing what's really going on, I can't just manipulate symbols and apply definitions without knowing why they exist, or what they mean. Topology only makes sense to me by having a feeling for what spaces are and how they act in certain scenarios. Having this kind of mathematical understanding and background context feels vital to doing anything remotely intelligent or skillful. Maybe this is different for other people, maybe there are real, genuine, algebra ninjas out there. But I just don't work like that.

These skills work like two sides of the same coin and seem to feed each other. Absorbing definitions and theorems on an intuitive level lets you wield them with greater finesse and utility. This lets you tackle more interesting problems and theories which require new mathematical tools. Rinse and repeat.

Takeaways To this end, I have several recommendations:

Learn math like you would learn music or a language. Whenever you learn some new 'vocabulary', just babble with it. Toss it around and see what kinds of things it can speak usefully about. Try to create objects which satisfy the requirements of some definition you're learning. Try to see what happens if you break one of those requirements, what about breaking two? What's the weirdest object you can think of which still satisfies those requirements? This kind of stress-testing is a lot of work starting out, but it seems to get a bit easier each time you do it, and it starts becoming automatic. By doing this sort of thing, you become much more comfortable with the ins and outs of all the objects you're working with. This makes mathematical work much more illuminating, and it makes it easier to actually manipulate those objects.

When I first took topology, I remember the end of the semester being far easier than the beginning. Homework was easy, proofs tended to just fall out, and tests were fun opportunities to play around. That's the first A+ I've ever gotten in a math class. And I'm pretty sure it's because I just screwed around with the definitions a ton. I managed to just get so comfortable with the definitions of a topology, connectedness, open set, etc, that I could do the proofs in an intuitive way and I knew that I could just refer back to the definitions when I needed to justify my logic.

Associate a descriptive vocabulary with what each kind of math feels like. For example: Analysis -- Closeness, distance, things coming together\apart, handling movement along infinity, continuous behavior, functional behavior, etc. These particular phrases are probably at least a little bit naive, but they help me to recognize situations where I can actually use analysis. It's sort of the same thing as listening to a song and recognizing it as a certain genre, or cooking and realizing adding salt or limes or whatever would develop the taste in a good way.

Try exploring the world with math. It doesn't need to be completely rigorous and airtight, 'back of the envelope' and fermi-calculations are quite useful and can be really fun. Try figuring out how you would model random things you see in the world. How many bakers do you think there are in your city? Do you know how long it takes for a ball dropped from a given height to hit the ground? How much water do you think flows through a river in the center of your town? Asking these kinds of questions and really giving them an honest attempt has changed how I think about the world and mathematics. If you're looking for some good examples of this kind of thinking, check out The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, as well as Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman (You should check these books out anyway, even if you're not interested in learning to think like this).

TLDR: I think that being able to formalize and work with intuitions, and being able to turn definitions\theorems into intuition, are the most important skills for being good at math.

Anyway, there's some food for thought. The ideas in this post feel rough around the edges, so please voice your opinions if you disagree or have something you want to add.

submitted by /u/Howlingshepard [link] [comments] from math https://ift.tt/2YUUuoY from Blogger https://ift.tt/2KueMgU

#Blogger

0 notes

guywithtime2kill · 7 years

Photo

Breakdown/Analysis of 'Son of Rap Bear' Hello again! Apologies for not getting this out yesterday, but as I said I've been a little busy.Now, before getting into it I wanna say that I really like this episode. A lot of people hated it, and I can understand why - the rapping is painful... if you choose to take it seriously. I'll get into it further down, but it's actually part of why I really enjoy this one. But it's also a really strong episode for Flame Princess.So let's not waste anymore time, yeah?Son of Rap BearThe Clam Rap party was a nice introduction to the episode; classic low-key fun in Ooo. This marked the return of Crab Princess and her huge crab (is it even alive?) transport. And some nice "environmental storytelling" with the guests. Aside from a group of Candy People we got Breakfast Princess and one of her little sisters. It's nice that Finn invited Phoebe and Neptr because he knew they like rapping - and that FP brought Cinnamon Bun.Also, Elder Plops is actually a DJ in his downtime! I thought that was just a joke in Elements, but it turns out that that's legit.Also Chocoberry is with Mr Cupcake. I like how the show just made them a thing in the background.Lots of fun details here - like how Neptr is rapping even though Elder Plops isn't playing anything. So he's just droning on and continues to do so as Finn talks. Also, Phoebe just throws her plate of clams into the fire since, well, she doesn't eat."Utensils weren't provided, so I had to use my hands. I'm gonna be unhappy, if it happens agains." Once again, Finn belts out the dopest lyrics.Phoebe's first rap is pretty relevant to her character. Remember, her main conflict in this episode is that she feels like an uninteresting person, because her life has been very "contained", in more ways than one. So when she says, "I'm like a library book, so check me out, read my front and back covers so you know what I'm about," she's happily proclaiming she can be read like a book, and only her beginning and end, her recent history, is interesting.The rest of it is basically what FP realizes later - she's rapping about rapping. She has notably better skill than Finn, but, well, it isn't anything jaw-dropping.I gotta say, I really like how Phoebe picked up freestyle rapping. It's a fun and creative outlet for her, which I think is a very healthy avenue for her to pursue and distance herself from the stigma everybody has for her. Given that this is her first Clam Rap, it's clear she and the rest of Fire Kingdom still isn't wholly integrated with the rest of Ooo's societal structure. Getting out there and showing off her character like she does at the end of the episode was a significant step towards achieving this, I think."Rap Fastade" and neither Phoebe nor Finn hearing about it, makes it clear this was all part of Toronto's plan to steal the Fire Kingdom out from under her. And isn't it just fitting that she, once again, has to contend with people who aim to manipulate her naivety?I read through the part of the contract we see, and it seems like Toronto not only tricked Phoebe but also Son of Rap Bear. It mentions that their properties will be handed over to a set of "clients" - so I'm wondering if Toronto plans on owning the Party Bears' big monster guy, and if we'll see the results of this episode later. Probably not, but it's fun to notice these things and think about them.Neptr waves to Toronto when he says, "See you in a week." Little guy just misses the subtext of everything.Speaking of the monster, I like the detail that he has moss growing over him now. He must not have moved for a good while.There's also a ton of mushrooms in Rap Bear's place. What, does the monster have an infection or something?"He rapped my legs off." Only in Adventure Time.Remember how in 'Abstract', we see that Dirt Beer Guy now owns the Candy Tavern? On the roof, he put grass and trees on top. There's a sleeping deer there and I'm not sure if its real or fake or alive or dead. Let's not think about it."Rap Bear, Son of Rap Bear's father, said his son, Son of Rap Bear, would be at tonight's open mic." What a great jab at children's shows who do stupid hand-holdy exposition.I don't know the world of rapping/freestyle rapping, but they've got guest stars playing SORB and the gingerbread man: Dumbfoundead and Open Mike Eagle. They gave good performances in this episode! Especially Dumbfoundead.So, in case you haven't noticed for yourself, the rapping in this show really isn't good - at all. But the characters within act like it is, and /u/leusid pointed out to me that it's as if rapping is a reemerging artform in Ooo, it's different, so everyone who is average to us is great by their standards.SORB is savage as hell. "You haven't been in a battle since the age of two. I got shampoo more worldly than you."My favorite joke in this episode is how shit just explodes when they make killer raps. And that's a big part of why I enjoy this one - it's just fun! The rapping is painful sure, but if you don't take it seriously and just take it as is it's really enjoyable.Phoebe's naivety about the real world shows in how she thinks life experience can just be crammed in a week's time. Even Finn, who took ages to get where he is now, didn't achieve growth overnight. And that's the hidden theme of this episode: identity. That's a big theme of Adventure Time overall, but this episode if Phoebe's story.I like the detail in this episode of how Phoebe's burning works, and its consistency with her poisoning in The Red Throne. Remember how she cooled down and lost the majority of her powers? Well, she torches the little card a couple seconds after holding it (as opposed to how she destroyed Finn's poem by being near it in Burning Low), doesn't burn the papers, and only begins to singe Finn's shirt after settling her hands on his shirt. And he doesn't seem to mind as he grabs her by the wrists.I do wonder why Elements didn't reset her powers. Perhaps it shows that this was always a mental/emotional thing, and Phoebe is definitely more in-control and mellowed out than she was in her early days. Yet another subtle hint as to how Phoebe's identity and growth is the theme of this episode.Phoebe with sunglasses and riding Jake 2, encapsulates what I love about this episode. All these ridiculous things we see her doing, it puts Phoebe in a position we've never seen of her before - it's just so silly I can't help but smile. Really shows the kind of person she is and what she's willing to do for something she cares about. One of the first observation Finn makes about her is that she's passionate, and that has not waned over the years - only her expression of it.And in the background of that shot, a sad mailbox with socks that says "out of order." Whatever you say, Adventure Time.The sequence in which Phoebe is doing all these different things, to try and round herself as a person, is my favorite part of the episode outside of the third act. She gets a "real job" at Sassy's, and I love the "cuz I'm not very classy" bit - because she isn't, a princess wouldn't do a such a job but she isn't like other princesses.Climbing the rock (cool thing, it was a huge, dead insectoid) was a cool bit. That kind of imagery typically relates to one overcoming a huge obstacle and achieving their dreams. Now, on the surface you could argue that becoming Fire King was this obstacle, except it isn't. Phoebe's entire deal, her whole story ever since being introduced, was discovering who she is and her place in the world. Every episode has fed into this in one way or another, and here we have that identity essentially being attacked not only by SORB, but herself as well: she feels uninteresting, she feels like she hasn't lived a fulfilling life, and spiritually that means she doesn't feel like a complete person. However, her rap at the end is a realization of sorts, which I will get into further below.Really liked the other bit, where she had to "mind the clock," because she doesn't have time, only a week - in essence, she feels like she doesn't have time to patiently and carefully develop her very self."All around known, I'm the girl on a throne." Wow, that's actually a great line for the wrong reason - because that's all Phoebe is known for.Other interesting things include playing the saxophone for a day (very poorly, as a sax player myself I heard how bad that sounded).Standing in a bathtub was great. On a surface level, she's in the middle of the very thing that would hurt her, and to Phoebe that's interesting and probably hardcore. Except she's wearing boots. On a deeper level, bathtubs have always been a symbol of cleansing! Like she's ridding herself of her negativity and outer flaws. How she's in there with Finn speaks of their closeness. And he's with her every step of the way throughout this episode! It's nice to see how quickly their friendship mended together.When she's backrubbing Wyatt, they're in the Candy Tavern and there's graham crackers boarding up the wall from when SORB blew it open.So Bubblegum runs a math club! And for the only two people in Ooo who would care to: Turtle Princess and Kim Kil Wan. Funny how it says, "Don't stress about maths (until you know what I know)". For one, I doubt Phoebe became as good at maths as PB - emphasizing how haphazardly she tried to cram life experience in her. And on the other, it's a subtle jab of Bubblegum basically telling everyone not to worry about things until they are as smart as she is.That "mad grub" Phoebe made was appalling. Again, emphasizing how she really doesn't have much life experience, nor the time to carefully gain any.That billboard for Son of Rap Bear is awesome, and it's got a bit of meaning to it. But first, "When I close my eyes it's hard not to imagine that he's some sort of animal," - Ice King, Musicologist. Very deep, Simon.So, later in the episode, Flame Princess criticizes SORB for stealing his father's name and glory, and on this billboard we see he's already doing the same to Phoebe: he's called the "fire spitter," and his motif is flames. He's clearly trying to extinguish her already-meager fame at rapping and throwing himself to the forefront. It's funny how he's doing all this, when Phoebe just took up rapping as a fun hobby."Uh, yeah, my experience: solid like a pebble in aquarium - dropping knowledge like Bubblegum if she was a librarian." They do cool things with the outfits in this episode, and this line shown while Phoebe dresses in a bear hoodie is one of them. It circles back to the previous scene where SORB is trying to dethrone her identity while she tries to do the same. All while she says this line, where, no, she doesn't have a lot of experience or world knowledge. Both of these factors paint Phoebe in an artificial light, and we know that's not her. She isn't trying to take Son of Rap Bear's identity, nor is she this knowledgeable individual. And above all, Phoebe isn't fake - she isn't a liar. This rap really shows the power of this show's writing - how it crams so much meaning into just a minute of screentime.As soon as it's over, Phoebe says she feels like a hack as she removes the hoodie, and she hates that feeling. It's sweet of Finn, though, to tell her it's "really good."BMO hits the nail on the head: "Maybe there's an interesting thing about you that you just don't realize." I'll come back to this.Yeah, the can on Neptr's head. Did you know Finn made that because he intended for that to be his head originally? And who the hell does BMO think he is, trying to tell Neptr that what he believes in isn't real? He really is a child haha.Phoebe misses the point of BMO's wisdom, where she thinks the interesting thing about herself may lie in her relationship with her family - particularly, her father. I don't need to explain in depth why she went about that the wrong way: she's an interesting, complex person on her own, and it's because of her experiences borne from those of her father's treatment that made her who she is now. For better or worse. But of course, Phoebe doesn't get that immediately. It's a little sad that she really feels like a boring, unremarkable person.Flame King was utilized subtly and perfectly in this episode. The first shot we see of him and his kingdom encapsulates this and the theme of the episode, all without uttering a word about it. We see his Chipmunk Kingdom really has become one, and he's taken up painting as a fun hobby, even though he isn't good at it. It's exactly like what happened to Phoebe, right down to the little pastry companion he has, riding by on a skateboarding chicken.See, because just like Phoebe, it isn't Flame King's relationship with his daughter that makes him an interesting person. He's grown and developed on his own into a rounded individual, and he's happy with his existence. But Phoebe is a child who is uncertain about her place in the world and who she is as a person - a problem most everyone faces at this stage of their lives.There's a picture on Flame King's wall of Jake wearing a backpack. I guess he tried remembering the "baron of the Grass Lands to Prince Finn," and thought they were the same person.Phoebe came to her father in hopes of putting the past behind them. Because surely, with their history, doing so would definitely make for an interesting ballad, right? I believe that was her mentality here! But unfortunately, her father is still her father, and he still only thinks for himself as far as they're concerned. He isn't cruelly selfish, but he thinks she came to apologize for putting him in "lantern jail".Additionally, Flame King is still selfish because he clearly acknowledges that what he did to his daughter was terrible, but from his behavior (immediately going to put on tunes) and his dialogue, ("Be thankful for what you have now!") it's obvious he doesn't feel quite comfortable confronting this. He even says at the end of the scene, "Eugh. Drama." As though he doesn't like that stuff - it seems like he's missing the point and calling his daughter dramatic, but judging from his actions here he is well aware of what's going on. That's what AT does a lot with its writing - there's what you get on the surface level, but look past that and you'll see the character behind a lot of the, well, characters.Thing is, like with Finn, it's all on him. I've noticed Phoebe is as quick to anger as she is to forgive. Like Finn could have come back and been her friend at any time, but he needed to feel comfortable about it first, and grow. Perhaps her father will do the same, but likely not. But it's all on him to bury the hatchet.So, literally only the Party Bears and Fire People cared enough to show up to this. Just shows how little of a damn people gave about this.Phoebe's outfit in the climax has some nice meaning to it, just like the one from earlier that I mentioned. It's all white, giving off a pure sort of vibe that, by extension, feels honest and open. It also reminds me of her dress from Earth and Water - one of her most pivotal episodes in which Flame Princess, for the first time in her life, takes control of her own destiny and the first step towards becoming an individual.SORB coming in through a giant snapback is great.Toronto haha: "Aaaaand GO (sonofrapbear)"I love how they've written SORB's lyrics to attack Flame Princess at her most personal. He calls her a danger, and asks if any guys ever actually dated her or just used her for what she was. That was Don John, and that was what Finn did by accident. Flame Princess doesn't like being used, as we all know, and one of her goals as king was to be different from her predecessors - and that extends to Bubblegum in The Cooler.It's even more fitting that with Elements, Phoebe at her purest is a giant, rampaging monster that loves fighting. Maybe that's who she is, that's what she knows, and that's why she turned to healthier, less violent and offputting hobbies like rapping.I love how she blushes in embarrassment when SORB implies that she dates Cinnamon Bun as opposed to big macho men. Finn is more akin to the former too, and from Cinnamon Bun's reaction I'm wondering if we're supposed to get the vibe that they are in a relationship. I don't think so personally, they just seem like close friends, but it could just be something we haven't seen onscreen yet. To me, that just is another interesting facet of Phoebe's person: she prefers nice, sensitive guys like the two boys of her life.Which is why she completely chokes on her turn. Phoebe just isn't a mean person. Her rapping was never about criticizing people and making them feel like trash.Flame King's appearance made me realize this episode was also a parody of those singing competition-type movies. How the underdogs should totally lose, but then they see their loved ones in the audience and that somehow gives them inspiration to beat the pros. Except AT is more real than that, and Phoebe beat SORB at his own game, in her own badass way.There's a neat visual detail of how Phoebe blows off her rappers' hat when she explodes at her father - the final part of her desire to give the illusion of a "pro rapper" by wearing a snapback (which was also merchandise from The Music Hole when she rapped with Neptr). Once she sheds that, Phoebe isn't wearing a disguise anymore; she becomes real, to everyone, but more importantly, to herself.When she says, "I don't need you or anyone!" you hear another explosion in the background: she disses her father just by being honest. Phoebe doesn't need to rely on anyone, not like she did before she became king. She's the real ruler - not her selfish, cowardly father.She turns around and criticizes Son of Rap Bear for being a fake. He was just a kid trying to steamroll everyone who stood against him so he could feel fulfilled and special. But in truth, as Phoebe explains, that just proves how much of a sad little kid he is. SORB is really well-characterized for someone whose every line is just a rap - we get everything we need from the environment and other characters.As I said before, identity is the theme of this episode, and Phoebe's entire storyarc. Son of Rap Bear doesn't have one - he doesn't even have a real name, it's emphasized throughout by himself just being known as the son of a famous star."So sorry, you can't take what isn't owned by me... So take him away." That was badass, and then "I get it! She owned him!" was just hilarious.In the end, Phoebe tells it like it is. Like everyone who ever stood against her, being a liar and a swindler isn't the road to a happy life. Oh, it could achieve satisfaction, but unlike these people Phoebe loves her life and who she is, what she's accomplished. And she doesn't see her kingdom as something she owns, like her selfish father did: Flame Princess is the Fire Kingdom, and the Fire Kingdom is Flame Princess.Who she is has been shaped by her upbringing, and this mentality echoes in her attitude towards being a ruler (shaped by Finn's gentle guidance in her early days of being free) and what she went through before that, and after.And this is the heart of 'Son of Rap Bear'. Phoebe's rap emphasizes that she doesn't need to have a varied, "interesting" life to be an interesting person. What's interesting about her, and us as individuals, is the experiences we have and how they make us us is what really matters.I've always liked Flame Princess's story. In fact, I love it - she's a fantastic character, and a lot of people miss that because they criticize her for what she felt in this episode: she isn't interesting.But as someone who once, a long time ago, felt much like her - boring for not having a wild, crazy life, only realize later that who I am and why is what matters than superficialities, her character arc really jived with me, and it made me love this episode as much as every Flame Princess episode that came before it.Please join me tomorrow for 'Bonnibel Bubblegum.'

#adventuretime #adventure time #finn #jake #ice king #Marceline #Candy Kingdom #cartoon #princess

1 note · View note

underbananamoon · 7 years

Text

During autism testing when I received a diagnosis in adulthood, nearly 20 years ago now, it was ‘revealed’ that I have a college level understanding of many things involving words, literature, etc. but I have a 5th grade level maths ability. My skills are uneven. I struggle to imagine the difference between a million and a billion. (Perhaps lots of us do, because most of us don’t handle these numbers with any familiarity)… I ‘get’ that both are numbers, of course. But it’s hard for me to imagine where all the zeros are placed, and just how vastly distinct these large numbers are in comparison to each other. I’ve read where a million seconds equals 12 days, and that a billion seconds equals 31 years. It’s through thinking of the numbers in this different way, that I get some concept of them.

With the 9th ” #World Autism Awareness Day ” coming up on April 2nd, it’s relevant to say that not everyone’s experience with autism is the same; in fact it’s challenging to accurately try and grasp just how disparately distinct- individual experiences are. I can only relate my own.

The above painting I SOLD last month. The remaining works I have will go to Hynes Center, Boston in April. I look forward to seeing @ElizabethStringerKeefe and Boston again.

When I create “puzzle piece paintings” I feel obliged to state that I don’t use puzzle pieces in mixed media art because they “symbolize” autism. I’m not even sure how I feel about the puzzle piece as an autism ”symbol.” I’m certainly going to respect those who come down on the side of not liking the symbol, and I’m going to respect the POV that so many people like it. I’ve thought about it a long time, and I find that I have no strong feelings one way or another. I use puzzle pieces because I find them fun to work with!

Nothing more or less.

You’re probably aware of the “Light It Up Blue” campaign to raise (international) autism awareness too. Some people use the color yellow instead because the Blue campaign is generally an Autism Speaks thing and they’re controversial for completely VALID reasons of which I won’t get into.

I have often said, “Autism Speaks Doesn’t Speak For Me,” but I am not going to be confrontational, stubborn, or judgmental about people who wish to express sincere ‘awareness raising’ with whatever color of choice that may be. Buy a green lightbulb (that’s blue and yellow put together) for your porch-light if you wish, that’s up to you! I do have strong opinions but my purpose here is not to fan flames.

Perhaps most controversial Autism Speaks trigger points are:

Where funds are allocated. Their support of JRC (Judge Rotenberg Center) even though they were investigated for shock therapy use, harmful restraints and food deprivation among patients. Questionable POV about cure, eugenics, human rights violations. A mindset that autism equals heartache, tragedy, and ruined lives.

I have a safety pin. I sent peace flags to the White House as part of Art of Autism’s peace push. I like to garden. See how my morning glories have sprouted from seed:

I resist! I crusade from my introverted cat corner. But hot, flaming, I-am-right-you-are-wrong-you-will-never-realize-that-my-struggle-is-worse-than-yours mentality makes me feel physically ill and emotionally spent. All voices are important. All emotions are too. I know the value of having voice (my writing, my art) and the humiliation, sadness, frustration, anger- of not having one.

What you focus on grows! Fertilize one plant, ignore the other -and this is a tangible example of how this works. Positivity brings same. Focus on triumphs, skillsets, abilities (and these look different to every individual).

With Valerie Paradiz, PhD, Jamie T. Richardson, and Stephen Shore, Ed.D. (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person in 2016 after decades of online acquaintance) on board now at Autism Speaks, I absolutely feel strongly that positive changes like accentuation on personal strengths and self-advocacy are going to bring a whole new Autism Speaks into being. I have faith in this. For all of us, no matter where we fall on the spectrum.

I’m not anti- NT (neurotypical). Have I felt anger toward many an NT who was unwilling, unbending, and rigid in beliefs? Oh yes, and the reverse is true as well. Hell, I wrote a book on my experience, and still, some people who’ve read it do not get it. Perhaps I need to be better at clarification. :) I will say that I don’t believe that “us against them” mentalities are positive in the long run. Not in the autism community, and not in the world in general that we share with other humans. Sometimes the world makes me sad. My strong environmental concerns have inspired many tree paintings this year… Trees that howl. Scream. Sing. Speak.

I’ve met NTs and autistics too, who all vary in compassion levels, ability to listen to all POVs, and to reason intelligently, and I have come to the Swiss impasse so to speak. What I mean is, lots of people infuriate me (and I’m lowkey and hard to anger) so while a neurologically “typical” person can NOT understand my cognitive, sensory, social, mental, and neurological human experience, I know I cannot truly understand theirs either. I relate best to open people; that is to say people who aren’t quick to stereotype, who don’t pigeonhole.

Another debate provoking topic that surfaces occasionally, but especially during awareness anniversaries, tends to be person first language. Now, keep in mind I AM a Grammar Nazi. I am pedantic to a fault, annoyingly so. I love words. I bore people with them. As a keeper, collector, lover of language, I get protective of its use. I mean, I’ve lifelong selective mutism, I know what it’s like to have NO voice. That having been said:

Am I an autistic person or a person with autism?

In the long run, both ‘sides’ will have a list of why their version is the right one. I wish their weren’t sides. It’s interesting to note that The Smithsonian has this non-person-first stance:

I personally think “I am an autistic person” sounds better to me, and I am just not in the mood to explain why, nor do I intend this blog to be a catalyst for debate. and yadayadayada

Every year at this time, I understand the importance of autism awareness Day. I have to think about autism of course, as do many people I love-

every day of the year.

For those of us who know a child or adult on the less able end of the autism spectrum, there will be Autism Awareness Day Protesting. I get that. A person who is not verbal for example, (like T., a young lady I haven’t seen in a while and dearly love,) will have completely different needs and challenges than myself or people like me, and I am incidentally someone who has tried to function at my best on any given day moment to moment despite the cruel sensory shitshow I know and love as: the world I navigate. I would never minimize the self proclaimed quite real struggle of carers of so (for lack of better terminology) lower functioning autistics. I ask that in fairness, don’t minimize my experience either.

When ‘higher functioning’ autistics feel the need to hide, to pass for normal, they are like shadows walking through their lives and they give up pieces of themselves; I know something about that. A dear friend Polly once told me that when “I began to meet other people (my people, regardless of function and ability) on the spectrum who functioned at levels different from mine, I would feel a belonging such as I have never known.”

She was right. Autism awareness day, it will come and go, people will give lectures, glue puzzle jewelry art, or not, light up colors of their choice, or boycott the whole thing, create artworks, write moving blogs and protest blogs (this is neither) and so forth. I am just trying to make it on the skills I’ve been given in life:

writing.

Art.

I’m not big on self promotion, quite frankly I’m not very good at it, but because I view my writing as a positive form of expression, here’s a passage from my book of my experience:

Chapter Three: Uncle Rooster

I was about five. We were visiting Grandma in Vermont.

Relatives were gathered in the kitchen all around the Formica table; gabbing, laughing, swearing, eating, and smoking. Cousins darted after each other, more boisterous than I dared be. I sat on Daddy’s lap, blurring and staring into nothing; stuck in good between the table’s edge and his stomach. Voices were rising and falling; undecipherable gibberish. I was staring. I didn’t know it was Uncle Rodney’s voice asking me a question until I heard my father explaining me.

“Here,” Daddy said. He tossed Rodney the cigarette pack. It skimmed across the table in a whisper- swoosh! Then Daddy said, “Kimmy won’t pass these to ya.” She doesn’t touch ’em. Never has. She goes way out of her way to avoid ’em. Heh, heh.”

Uncle Rodney looked at me as if for the first time ever.

Shaking, I dared see his face. A long man who tended to dart about quickly, he had a gravelly voice that tumbled out of a pasted-on Cheshire cat grin. My father’s word for him was “cocky.” I thought of “rooster” when I heard that word and so my father’s word seemed to fit Rodney.

“That so? Doesn’t touch ’em?” said Uncle Rodney. He shoved the pack across the table toward me as if we were playing some game together. I jerked my hand away in time. From the missile. The pack skidded across the table right to where my hand had been moments before!

“I asked Kimmy to pass ’em,” Uncle Rodney said, grinning. Yikesyikesyikesyikes. I couldn’t breathe.

“Let it go, Rod. Heh, heh,” My father laughed. “She won’t. She never has. I don’t know why she’s like that.”

Good. It’s all explained. Get on with playing, cousins. I tilted my head to see into my father’s face and saw the stubble there. He was smiling cockeyed lopsided at me. What was worse, Daddy was averting his gaze from everyone. An outgoing man, he always looked people in the face. When we were out in public together and he held my hand, I wore his essence like a familiar mitten. The aunts and uncles were looking at me now too, not just Daddy. Even the cousins had ceased their darting about to glare at me. The humming voices stopped.

I tried to make my get-away but I was wedged in too tight. My throat felt constricted. It happened so fast! Uncle Rodney leapt up, the sound of his metal-legged chair screaming the way I should have. He rubbed the crinkle of that pack all over my arms and face. Bits of tobacco, the antithesis of the flower stamens I loved to dissect, were sprinkling out and tainting me. I whipped my face from side to side to avoid contact with the cigarette pack. He towered over me, grinding it into my cheeks. And my hair. My ears. Soon my face was wet with waterfall tears. The sound of the pack crinkling in my ears was more than I could stand. I dared not swat at it for fear of touching it.

“Gonna git you! Bad ciggie gonna git you!” Uncle Rodney taunted. I willed the cousins and aunts to swarm him like a mad sci-fi thriller plot and reveal hidden stingers from their backsides. No one heeded my thought vibes. Then nothing. Grandma’s rooster clock made a startlingly loud click. Click. Click.

Uncle Rodney sat down and leaned back against his chair, lighting a bent cigarette from the wadded pack he’d terrorized me with. He smoked like a cartoon villain. Silence reined in the kitchen except that I could hear his amusement. He was laughing. It was high-pitched like a shriek. He asked my father something then, quite seriously, “How long she been like that, Joe? If that ain’t the damnedest thing.” Always the wonder in the voice when the people tried to figure me out. I did not hear my father’s answer if there was one. I managed to wriggle onto my feet at last. I could hear no more and see no one. I spun in a slow circle with my soiled arms held straight out and I cried with no sound.

I was

a deaf,

mute and

blind kid.

((((((((END OF BOOK PASSAGE.)))))))

It is available on Amazon at the link at the end of this blog post. I recently was able to meet some very interesting students at a collage workshop I “instructed” in Massachusetts @GoodPurposeGallery. On the left is me, with students and Trish. On the right, I am trying to decide if the beautiful plant in the window is real. It certainly was!

Have you heard of SugarArt4Autism? Last year, cake artists at an international level, for April’s awareness day, selected artwork by autists and reproduced them on cakes. Imagine my surprise when I was contacted yesterday with the news that @Enrique, of #HaveSomeCake, Birmingham England, selected one of my paintings as inspiration for a cake creation this year. I’m so flattered and can’t wait to see which painting he chose. I’ll share as soon as I find out- on April 2nd when the cake is revealed. I elected to be surprised.

Whatever your experience, your views, your voice, it’s important. I’ve never seen a million dollars. I’ve also never seen a billion$, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist just because I have never physically seen that much money. I am very different from a lot of my peers (who I respect and admire very much) who are able to give TedTalks, orate fluently, and give speeches with confident clarity. My voice is in paintings. I am not a public speaker, yet, and I focus on the possibility that that type of voice exists within me, in fervent hope that it will manifest one day.

IT COULD HAPPEN.

MY BOOK available here:

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Banana-Moon-Living-Aspergers/dp/150572886X

Autism AWARENESS is Multi-Faceted During autism testing when I received a diagnosis in adulthood, nearly 20 years ago now, it was 'revealed' that I have a college level understanding of many things involving words, literature, etc.

#April2ndautismAwareness #book excerpt Kimberly Tucker #personfirstlanguage #world autism awareness day

0 notes