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miscelunaaa · 2 years

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shell-ter | knj

pairing: hermit crab!namjoon x marine biologist!reader (who is also soft-bodied because reasons)

genre: crack, humor, smut, strangers to lovers, hybrid au, really just unabashed nonsense

summary: While walking on the beach and avoiding your responsibilities, you stumble upon a line of hermit crabs waiting to exchange shells. It should be an exciting moment for you, but instead there’s this random naked guy yelling at you to leave his friends alone. Why can’t a stroll on the beach ever just be a stroll on the beach?

rating: 18+ for maximum crabby goodness

word count: 6.9k

warnings: Scientific inaccuracies around the nature of crabs, hermit crabs, and other adjacent decapod crustaceans (I tried my best, I promise). Implied early pandemic setting. Writer plays fast and loose with hybrid tropes. Swearing. Crabby Namjoon lmfao. Meet ugly. Awkward public nudity, which is also very likely illegal wherever this is set. Joon’s crab friends leave him to die. Probably inaccurate descriptions of hermit crab mating conventions. Namjoon being casually naked the entire fucking time. Instinctually protective Namjoon. Lots of hybrid nonsense. Bittersweet ending?? Kind of??? Look, Namjoon plays by nature’s laws, y’all. This is perhaps the least feelingsy thing I have ever written. sexual content in the form of: Breeding kink. Oral, female receiving. Face sitting. Body worship??? Size kink. Big Dick!Namjoon. Dirty talk. Strength kink. Unprotected sex with other birth control in place. Rough-ish sex. Squirting. Possessive Namjoon. Hybrid nonsense.

notes: this is all @thatlongspringnight’s fault, so everyone pls be sure to thank Julie. I ironically and unironically love hybrid fics, and this series is going to be my homage to the more ironic side. There will be more chaos!! I’ve got ideas for each member, some more than one! Please note that this is a significantly delayed crosspost from my AO3 pseud. I’m still trying to decide how to approach this space in a lot of ways and posting this is partially me feeling out how I personally feel about getting work out in this space anymore.

Please also note!! I am no longer doing any tag lists. If you want updates for as soon as I post a fic, please subscribe to me on AO3. Updates go straight to your inbox and AO3 is way more stable than this fucking dinosaur of a platform. And this is to say nothing about it actually giving a shit about writers.

my masterlist | my disclaimers | read on ao3

The sun has only been above the horizon for a short while and already it feels like the sand’s been baking underneath its gaze for hours. The tiny grains each feel like hot coals as they wend their way between your toes. You scowl and try to step more carefully. Seokjin’s already fucked up the shower drain once or twice after neglecting to shake the sand off his body; you’d hate to be the next call to your cranky landlord.

It’s not a glamorous life, being a marine biologist, but someone has to do it. Or at least, that’s what you and Seokjin keep telling yourselves every time the university threatens to cut your funding and bring both of you back home. Someone has to study the beach flora and fauna, right?

Right?

“But why crabs?” you mutter to yourself. “Why the fuck did I pick crabs …”

Hermit crabs aren’t even real crabs, you muse to yourself as you step lightly over the early morning beach. They’re still crustaceans, just not “true” crabs like their sisters in the infraorder. Every time the university threatens to cut funding, you have to explain it to some bureaucrat who doesn’t think it’s important to know the difference. To the average person and their piss-poor science literacy, taxonomy seems like a lie anyway.

All things become crabs in the end. You’re more than ready to carcinize and join your tiny decapod brethren. Seems easier than waking up at the asscrack of dawn just to put on pants and a bra and see if you can catch them moving shells all at once. At least the crabs are nicer than anyone in the finance department so … take me now, crab daddy or whatever.

Today doesn’t seem promising. You’ve been trying to observe a vacancy chain for a week, with no luck. It’s not even for your thesis; you’re just fucking bored. Like fine yeah whatever you could be working on your thesis right now but why do that when you can avoid it and watch hermit crabs line up and wait patiently for shell to free up? They even naturally orient themselves!! They line up by size! That’s way more fascinating and way less depressing than talking about brachyura behaviors in wild environments versus commercial ones.

Maybe you should have picked the fake crabs instead. Maybe your advisor would let you change your thesis … for the third time …

Better not. It’s just easier to procrastinate the inevitable at this time.

Hours pass, and nothing’s happening on the beach. You’ve walked it up and down, you’ve reapplied sunscreen, you’ve finished both water bottles, and you’ve seen nothing, not even a lone crab sighing. You go home for lunch with a sigh, taking care to knock the sand out of your sandals before going into the dinky apartment. And then you repeat it all again, leaving this time with a sun hat and stronger sunscreen for the intense afternoon light.

You’d think by this time that the sound of the waves beating the shore would drive you nuts and remind you of your failures, but no. It’s the only thing soothing your annoyance at the lack of hermit crabs and your lack of will to work on your thesis.

Every once in a while, as the sun makes its way across the cloudless sky, you sit for a moment in the hot sand, dropping your notebook to the side. During these moments, you allow yourself to stare out into the sea and let the quiet flow through you. It’s nice, really. No one’s been coming to the beach because of the pandemic, so it’s personal nature hours just for you, the lone soul brave enough to venture out.

It’s during one of these moments, late in the day, the sun just beginning to touch the horizon after a long day of making things unbearably hot, that you see it. Or, rather, you see them.

Hermit crabs, perhaps a half dozen or so, beginning to queue up in the sand. It’s adorable, really; they’ve arranged themselves biggest to smallest, and they’re holding onto each other with their claws to make sure the order is maintained. At the end of the line lays a shell, just a bit too big for the biggest crab to move into.

The wonders of nature never cease to amaze you.

You watch from a few feet away, trying not to make any sudden movements, as a few more crabs join the line and the rest shuffle to make sure they’re in the right order. You turn to reach for your notebook.

As you’re flipping through to the first available page, you hear a little pop.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The angry voice makes you jump, your notes and pen flying somewhere as your hat falls off and you scramble to look dignified instead of very obsessed with crustaceans.

“N-NOTHING?? I-I waS—”

“Doesn’t look like nothing to me.” The voice is angry, accusatory. Your head spins around to find its source before you’ve even located your pen and you’re too startled to care about the undignified shriek you emit when your eyes find it. Or, actually—if you had to make an assumption—him.

A man, tall and lanky and naked as hell, is staring down at you. His hands are on his hips, his skin burnished gold in the mid-afternoon sunlight. Good lord, he’s so fucking naked! And angry!! But mOSTLY NAKED???

Why is an angry naked man yelling at you on the beach?

Why is it also kind of turning you on???

(Maybe Seokjin was right, maybe you do need to get laid.)

“Do you fucking mind?” He’s tall too, glowering down at you with handsomely hooded eyes, his full lips set into a hard line that makes no sense with how soft they look.

This is not the time to be thinking about this man’s mouth!! What are you doing? Has the sun addled you? Say something!

“D-do I mind? Mind what?”

“Do. You. Fucking. Mind?” the man spits at you. His eyebrows furrow.

Don’t look down. Fuck. Do not look down.

“Do I mind?” Something in your brain finally fires correctly. “Do you mind?? Naked asshole yelling at me?”

“This is my natural state and this is my turf—”

You scramble up to stand, almost falling over because your head swims from doing it too quickly.

“Your turf? This is a public beach, dickwad.”

Dick. Don’t look down don’t look—

Fuck. You looked down. Ohhhhhh boy did you look down. Oh wow. That’s a peen. That’s a big ole peen out in the sunlight in public on this here public beach. Holy shit. He’s gifted and he’s naked and he’s on the beach yelling at you and fuck why is this making you so horny???

“Lady, I don’t know who the fuck you are but you’re on my turf, you’re scaring my friends, and you need to fucking leave so we can do our business and get back to doing what we do.” The man’s chest is rising and falling rapidly as his jaw ticks with frustration. He’s got really nice pecs and his n—NO. FOCUS.

“I’m sorry, what friends? It’s just you and me here on the beach.” Thank god. This would be hard to explain to the local cops.

He steps to the side and points at the ground, to the little hermit crabs in their line. “My friends??? The crabs that you’re disturbing, including myself???”

The incredulity in his voice makes it click for you.

“Oh. Oh my god, are you a crab hybrid?”

He puts his face in his hands and shouts through his palms: “YES.”

“I … okay, are you all hybrids? I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I—”

“Save it, I don’t care. Could you just leave us alone now? You’re scaring the littler ones and we all just want new shells.”

You bend over to pick up your notebook. “I’m a scientist, I promise I wasn’t trying to scare you and your friends.”

“Fine, whatever, just leave us alone please? You’ve been walking up and down this beach for days and you’re disturbing the peace.”

You’re suddenly very aware of the sand stuck between your sandals and the soles of your feet. Your heart sinks. “Ah, yeah. I can … do that. I guess.”

It’s better this way, probably. You need to start working on your thesis anyway. Your notebook feels heavy in your hand as you secure your hat back on your head.

“Great,” the man says. His shoulders relax as he sighs. “Great. Thanks for understanding. I have to get back to it but if I see you around again, I’m coming for you. Got it?”

Did he have to say “come for you” while ass-fucking-naked on the beach and looking like a hunky dreamboat??? You feel something in the pit of your stomach pulse with need.

“Yeah,” you say as you abruptly turn away. Is the sun hotter now or is it just you? “I got it. Bye then, I guess.” God, this is just fucking weird. Hybrid crabs in the wild and they’re kind of hot too. Ugh. Seokjin’s going to laugh his ass off.

“Bye.”

You only make it a few steps away before a loud, frantic “FUCK” makes you whip back around.

The man is on his hands and knees, still very naked and human shaped, scrutinizing something in the sand.

“Um, is everything alright?” You keep your voice low and soft in hopes that your question won’t aggravate him further.

He sits back on his heels, throwing his head back with a groan. His throat bobs, and you try not to think about what biting at his resplendent skin might be like.

“No. No it’s not. I lost my fucking shell because these assholes—” he gestures wildly at nothing in particular “—finished the shell queue without me. The only one that’s left is way too small.”

And now the handsome naked man is pouting. He’s a hermit crab hybrid without a shell and pouting and distraught and now even more naked in a way. Good lord, is this a test? Is there a dude with a camera hiding somewhere recording all of this for reality TV?

“I’m sorry.” What else can you say?

“This is what I get for helping these ungrateful fuckers. This fucking sucks.”

If he doesn’t have a shell, does that mean he’s homeless?

“How long do you think it’ll be until the next vacancy chain forms?”

“The what? The shell switch?” He looks up at you. You’re still standing a little ways away, but the anguish is clear on his face. “I don’t know, it could be days it could be …”

Weeks.

Shit. You can’t just leave him out here like this.

Without thinking, you walk over to him and squat down to look at him at his level. “I’ve got a roommate, he’s a scientist too. I’m sure if we explain what’s going on, he’d be okay with you crashing with us for a bit. If you want, that is. I just … I feel bad. You lost your shell because you were yelling at me.”

The man bites his lip as his eyes trail away, lost in thought. And then, after a moment, he nods his head.

“Okay. It’s the least you can do, I guess.”

He’s hot. He’s kind of rude, but at least he’s hot, you think.

“Great,” you reply, hiding your slight irritation. You shrug off your sun protective button-up and hand it to him. “Tie this around your front to cover up. It’s just a five minute walk from here. I’m Y/N, by the way.”

He looks at the shirt and takes it reluctantly.

“I’m Namjoon.”

The first thing you learn about your new hybrid acquaintance is that he has little regard for personal boundaries. The moment he steps into your apartment, he refuses to leave your side. You’d expected him to be skittish, maybe, but not clingy like this. You’d had to keep him out of your bedroom as you changed out of your beach clothes, and you’d actually locked the door to the bathroom for once because it took too much convincing to let him know that you weren’t going to suddenly disappear on him, leaving him alone in a strange place. You weren’t unconvinced that he wasn’t going to to break the door down. You could hear him pacing on the other side as you tried to pee in peace with mixed success.

If you hadn’t been convinced of his hybrid status before, watching him sniff at the air and scrutinize everything in your little apartment would have been enough to change your mind. And then there’s his proclivity for nudity, which just further proves his nature. His behavior is just that removed from what you’re used to from normative humans.

You’d also expected more questions from him, if you were being honest. Then again, just because Namjoon had been encountered in a wild environment didn’t mean he’d been born out there. He’d not been perturbed by the microwave or the stove or even the hot water kettle you’d started as soon as you got out to the kitchen. But fuck, he was weirdly clingy.

You frown as you wait for the water to boil. You don’t know much about hybrids, but if you had to guess, his clingy behavior likely has something to do with you being an available female and it being the mating season. August is primetime for horny hermit crabs; maybe his instincts are drawing him to you in some way because of it. If you’re being honest, you don’t completely hate it, though it feels a bit cringe to admit that to yourself. Even so, you try to shake the shame. So what if you enjoy the fact that he may or may not at this point in time consider you desirable in some way? Who doesn’t want to feel desired every once in a while?

As you reach up to open a cabinet above the counter and grab a box of tea, you hear something rustle behind you. Namjoon probably, still looking around while hovering.

“Namjoon, do you want some—”

Your voice catches in your throat as you feel a warm body press to your back. Large hands appear on either side of you, grasping the counter. You feel warm breath on your neck.

“—tea?”

A nose nuzzles into your skin, lips exhale a shaky breath.

“You smell really good, baby,” Namjoon says. “Smell good enough to eat, to …”

T-to what? You feel like you’re about to implode. To whAT??

“To what?”

Ugh, you sound pitiful with your voice all airy like that. You’re lucky anything managed to come out at all.

His hands don’t move to touch you, but his chest is scorching against your back. He’s close enough that you hear him swallow as his lips brush just barely against the shell of your ear.

“To breed.”

Namjoon’s voice is so low it brings goosebumps to your skin. A tremble passes through you, and you’re certain he can feel you shiver between his form and the counter.

“That exciting for you?” he asks. “The idea of getting your cunt fucked by a hybrid cock?”

“Yes,” you breathe.

His hands finally move, his weight settling against your back as he begins touching you, brushing his fingertips against your forearms and over your hips.

“Do you want me to mate with you, baby?”

“Yes.” God yes.

The scramble for your bedroom is a blur. All the way there, your hands are trailing over his skin while his are pushing your clothes up and off. You can feel how hard he’s gotten against you, but before you can get your hands on his erection, he’s falling back against your bed and pulling you on top of him.

Maybe you should be worried about how quickly things escalated. And maybe your conscience should shut the fuck up and let you be vaguely irresponsible with your feelings and body for the first time in months.

Namjoon groans as you straddle him, letting your hot flesh drag against his. His fingers sink into the softness of your thighs.

He murmurs a protest against your kisses. “Not yet, I want to—”

You realize he’s pulling you up his torso before can think to stop him. With stunning ease—damn that hybrid strength—he carefully positions your center over his face.

“This. I want this. I want your scent. I want you.” He looks up at you from between your thighs with those intense, dark eyes of his. Fuck. Fuck you want to die. This is fucking obscene. This is fucking—

The first suck against your folds makes your body pulse, and every movement after that brings you higher and higher into a stratosphere you didn’t even know existed. Namjoon is extremely skilled with his human mouth. It feels like you’re being devoured. It feels fucking amazing.

“Taste so ripe for me, baby. Breeding you’s going to be so easy,” he says against you. The vibration of his low, husky voice reverberates up your spine. Goosebumps spring up from your bare skin. Did your nipples just pucker?

Maybe you’ll leave out the fact that you’ve got an IUD. Maybe you’ll just let him have his fantasy about you. You’d hate to break his little paguroidean heart.

Namjoon licks wide stripes through your folds, each stroke culminating in a suck at your clit before he starts the motion anew. He groans into your flesh as if it’s the finest thing he’s ever consumed, as if he can’t help how this makes him feel. Each stroke, each tug, each movement and sound he makes pushes you closer to an edge you didn’t realize was there.

Your hands find their way to his scalp. You run your fingers through the dense hair as you breathlessly moan praises to him. It’s all you can do not to grind down onto his face; you’d hate to feel like you’re suffocating him. When his teeth graze your clit, however, you find yourself gripping his hair close to his scalp and grinding down anyway.

“Fuck, I’m so close, I’m gonna come,” you keen, your hips dragging along his lips.

“Come on my face, baby. Give it all to me,” Namjoon growls. His grip on you tightens and he starts helping you hump his face.

Suddenly, the wave hits you. It carries you past the edge and out into a realm of pleasure you haven’t felt in ages. You cry out, your body tensing as your cunt pulses with release. High as you feel, the emptiness makes it feel incomplete.

It’s like Namjoon senses this, because abruptly, he’s flipping you down onto your back. He towers above you as you whimper and reach for him.

“Please, I need your cock,” you say, fighting tears as your orgasm’s flood recedes.

“I’m going to fuck my spawn into you over and over, baby,” he purrs, his eyes trailing up and down your quivering body. “Gonna fill your soft, pretty body up with my seed. You’re not going to be able to walk for days when I’m done with you.”

You watch as his hand drifts down his torso to tug at his massive length. Will it even fit? You’re not sure. And will he actually wreck you the point of rendering you immobile? Who fucking cares?? You’re willing to see him try. For science. Yeah, for science or something.

You reach for him again, hands open and needy as you help him pump his length a few times before he finally lifts his eyes back to you. He looks hungry, perhaps as even as needy as you feel.

Namjoon finally leans over you, and you feel the tip of his cock start pressing into your cunt. You suck in a breath as slowly, so slowly, he pushes further inside. His size almost hurts; it toes the delicious line between pain and pleasure, and you can’t be bothered to differentiate between the two. Not now, not in this moment.

He groans once he’s finally fully sheathed within you, and the sound of his pleasure makes you clench. The squeeze makes his body tense.

“Cunt’s so tight, so fucking right around me.”

If you weren’t so breathless from being filled, you’d cry out praise in return. You don’t get the chance to catch your breath. Namjoon starts thrusting slowly, and the drag of his skin against your core makes you grip the sheets and press your hips into his.

For a moment, you wonder if this is it. This is hybrid sex. It’s normal sex but just a little bit better in all the right ways. Your hormones sigh in content, but your scientist brain is a little disappointed that it’s not something more.

After a few moments, during which you finally seemed to adjust to his girth, he stops and hooks your legs around his elbows. The stretch of your muscles is unexpected and before he starts to thrust again, you panic.

“Namjoon, I don’t think I can bend like tha—”

“Yes you can. I’ve got you,” he murmurs, his face dropping to kiss your knee as you adjust. He’s got your legs bent up at an intense angle, making his thrusts even deeper. Because of his strength, he’s able to help support your weight on his arms and thighs so that you don’t have to support it yourself. You’re completely at his mercy now, and fuck if it’s not the hottest thing that’s ever happened to you.

He picks up his pace as you relax into the position. Every thrust has his hips slapping against yours, the wet sound of his cock fucking your cunt echoing into your tiny bedroom. You realize through the haze that your bed is creaking and hitting the wall behind it as he fucks you hard and deep. You can’t be bothered to care if your neighbors will hear. They can probably hear you moaning and crying in his arms too. The hybrid above you seems to think the same thing.

“That’s right, baby, let them hear you. Let them hear me breed this wet fucking hole. Let them hear me fill you with my spawn.” Namjoon’s breaths are beginning to grow raged. When he’s not grunting obscene, filthy things at you, he’s biting his lip. Sweat’s dripping down his temples and neck and beading at his chest. “You’re mine. This is my cunt, no one else can fill you like this, can they?”

“No one can. I’m yours,” you whimper as your hands trail up to grip his arms. “Only yours.” What the hell has gotten into you? Pre-thesis trip you could never.

His thrusts grow rougher still and you realize that the string within you has wound itself tightly again. Fuck, it’s never snuck up on you like this. Namjoon’s cock is dragging against every sensitive spot it can and at such a quick pace that suddenly, just as soon as you noticed it, the string is snapping.

You scream. You’ve never screamed during sex before. This orgasm’s even stronger than the last; your ears ring, your heart pounds, your cunt tries to squeeze around his length so tightly that he almost can’t move. And you’re wet, so so suddenly wet. There’s a trickle down your ass and into the sheets and you realize that this fucking hybrid’s still fucking you through it as if it’s nothing.

He doesn’t make it much longer after you. As soon as your orgasm begins to ebb, his hips begin to stutter, hard and fast.

Namjoon swears one last time and with a last snap of his hips, he comes, emptying himself within you.

Your ears continue to ring with the sudden silence. The sound of heavy breathing is the only thing reminding you that right, yes, you’re still alive, this isn’t a weirdly real wet dream at all. This actually happened.

You wait for Namjoon to pull out, only to realize that he’s looking down at where you’re still joined. His brow is furrowed, even and his chest rises and falls with recovering breaths.

Finally, you break the silence.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?”

“Yeah, just ... I didn’t realize you could gush like that.” His fingers brush along the stretch marks at your inner thighs as he looks down at the sticky scene.

“Yeah, it’s a bit messy, I’m sorry. It means you did a good job though.”

Namjoon grabs a pillow and places it under your hips before carefully pulling out. You whimper at the sudden loss of his cock.

“Don’t apologize, I just—”

Is he ... is he pouting right now??

He sits back on his heels and surveys your wrecked, tired body, the pout still playing his lips.

“I just wish you could have done that on my face. It smells so good.”

Your feel your face heat instantly. Not even his obscene dirty talk had you feeling this embarrassed. Does he even know what he’s saying right now?? You’re so stunned you can’t even speak.

Namjoon shrugs to himself before finally settling next to you in the bed and pulling you towards him with care.

“It’s fine,” he says into your neck. “The night is still young, it just means I’ll have to try harder when we go again in an hour.”

Your stomach lurches at the thought. You’re not sure if it’s horror or anticipation. “Again? In an hour?”

Morning comes sooner than either you or Namjoon expect, and with it, your roommate, also arriving sooner than you expect.

He makes himself known in his customary way, which doesn’t have the customary result he expects. Barging into your room, already recounting the wonders he saw out at the reef, goes over poorly when you’ve got a hybrid still sleeping in your bed, clinging to you under the thin sheet covering your naked bodies.

Seokjin yelps. You scream. These are normal and expected reactions.

But poor Namjoon … he does neither of those things.

“I’ve never seen a grown man skitter.”

“Well, you scared him. I think he’s got a right to be spooked.”

You and Seokjin are standing outside of your bedroom door while Namjoon hides under your bed, refusing to come out until he thinks it’s safe. Your roommate’s not wrong; the man had absolutely skittered into his new hiding place. He’d actually tried to drag you with him, but you’d resisted long enough to shout at Seokjin to leave before you tore him a new asscrack.

“His dick is … well, it’s huge.”

“Nice subject change there, you jerk.”

“What? You expect me to see an endowment like that and not say something? How did you even fit it inside you?”

“Please don’t say the word endowment. We’re stressed enough about funding without you comparing his dick to the massive amount of money we’re missing out on.”

“Fine. Unlike the rich white assholes back home though, he seems … nice? I guess? The whole hiding under the bed thing notwithstanding. Did he at least know how to use that enormous—”

You hold up a hand. “Just stop. The sex was great. Amazing even. But um, the hiding thing—”

“You’re about to tell me something weird aren’t you. Hon, you’ve got to stop bringing home your weird hippie types, like, you can’t just bring hot homeless dudes home. Living in a van is not the same as having a house! I hope you used a condom.”

“Jin. Ugh. God, that was one fucking time. He’s not unhoused and even if he were, what business is that of ours?”

Suddenly a voice comes from inside your bedroom. It’s muffled, and perhaps a little salty in tone, but it’s now close enough to make you think that maybe Namjoon’s gone from hiding under the bed to hiding under the blankets. “Well, technically I am homeless and it’s all your fault!”

Seokjin raises an eyebrow and levels a hard stare at you. “Talk.”

Namjoon doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to get back to the beach after being coaxed out from your bedroom. In fact, he’s not in much of a hurry to do anything besides follow you around the little apartment, wrapping his arms around your waist whenever he’s got the chance. He’s also not in much of a hurry to put on any of the clothes that Seokjin picked out for him.

Namjoon just looks at the garments and instead walks over to you and pulls your body into his chest. His body is warm against your back. The gesture seems sweet, but it’s beginning to get annoying. Seokjin looks the two of you up and down, your stiff form enveloped by Namjoon’s lanky, muscular one.

He shrugs. “If I had thighs like that I’d eschew pants too, I guess.”

You purse your lips as you watch Jin leave the room, leaving you with the very naked and needy Namjoon.

“Hey, so um,” you start, your fingers finding his arms to loosen his hold on you. “You’re really cool, but I’m not much of a … cuddler? Like casual cuddling is cool but this is a bit much.”

Instead of letting you shake him off, the hybrid’s hold around you tightens.

“I’m not cuddling,” he scoffs. “I don’t cuddle. This is protection. I’m making sure you stay safe until you can release your eggs in the ocean.”

It’s very hard not to roll your eyes and scoff back. This is an instinctual behavior for a lot of brachyura species, and apparently it’s something he’s displaying too.

You pat his arm, perhaps with a little bit of condescension. “Yeah, but I don’t have any natural predators, big guy.”

“True. But you’re still all soft.” His hand trails up from your waist to fondle one of your breasts. Your breath hitches while he continues to speak. “You still need protection.”

“Namjoon, I’m not going to suddenly sprout an exoskeleton.”

“Don’t care. Still gonna do my job as your mate, at least until you can get back to the ocean.”

“Buddy, we had mammalian sex!”

As much as you protest, it’s no use. At any given moment as the day moves on, Namjoon’s got his naked body entwined with yours, to protect you from predators like email pings from your computer and Seokjin (but only when he suddenly stands up or steps too close to you). It’s all you can do to get him to release you from the confines of his embrace so that you can use the bathroom. For his part, Namjoon seems to be content to spoon you on the couch as you mindlessly sort through thesis research.

It could be worse, you guess. You’re getting your touch fix for the next few months of thesis hell.

Seokjin tolerates the interloper as well as can be expected, but softens when he sees the delighted look on Namjoon’s face as he has instant ramen for the first time. It’s a humble dinner, but it does the job. After that, Namjoon seems to soften on Jin too, and finally, you can move around the apartment without requiring Namjoon’s protection.

The next day, the hybrid seems more restless. He’s not ready to go back to the beach, but if you had to guess, he’s close. Now that he’s no longer preoccupied with your safety, he starts inspecting things in the apartment with care. He opens cabinets and sticks half his big body in them, probably just to see how it feels. He smells and sniffs things like spices and soap. He touches the carpet and the couch and the different utensils sitting in the kitchen’s tool crock. Nothing is not worth his inspection, it seems.

At one point, you walk into the living room to see him standing in the box that Seokjin’s extra computer monitor shipped in. He stands in it as if it’s exactly what he’s supposed to be doing at the moment, while still naked as ever, his hands at his sides with his back straight. His full lips are pursed into a thoughtful pout as he stares off into space.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?” you ask gently, hoping you don’t startle him.

He blinks and turns to look at you.

“Yeah. Uh …” He pauses, and looks down at his feet in the box, and then back to you. “Does this box make my butt look big?”

It’s now your turn to blink and not speak for a moment.

This must be an instinct thing too. And it’s one you’re frankly unequipped to handle. How do you tell a hermit crab hybrid that he doesn’t currently need a shell, not in this form at least?

“Um, no, it doesn’t,” you say carefully but casually. “Looks great.”

Namjoon tries to hold your gaze but you glance away and try to make yourself look less perturbed by pulling out your phone and pretending to check the time. When you look back at him, his pout is even more pronounced.

“I don’t believe you,” he grumbles.

The rest of the day passes much like this, with Namjoon trying to see how it feels to cram his big body in various spaces. At one point, you find him sitting in your empty suitcase. At another Seokjin enters the bathroom and comes out screaming moments later; Namjoon had laid down in the bathtub and decided not to make his presence known until Jin had already lowered his fly to pee.

Your favorite might be the hybrid’s discovery of the colander in the kitchen. After inspecting it closely, he sets it atop his head. He thinks for a moment, rolling his shoulders and shifting his weight between his feet, as if to feel out how the colander might protect him from danger. Whatever protection it offers must be enough because after a moment, he nods, and carries on doing whatever it is a hermit crab hybrid does after finding suitable protection. In this case, it’s sitting at the kitchen table, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with his bare fingers while you and Seokjin chip away at your research.

Later that evening, after you’d all eaten dinner and had gone to bed, Namjoon wakes you up and says, “I think it’s time for you to go release your eggs into the ocean.”

And who are you to argue with his instincts as a hybrid?

As luck would have it, the beach is vacant still, and the weather is having one of its rare mild days. There are no errant visitors escaping their homes for some sun. There are no beach patrols or lifeguards, no kids playing hooky. It’s just you and Seokjin and the increasingly agitated crustacean hybrid who just wants to make sure you deposit your eggs in the ocean like a good girl.

No matter how many times you tell him you’ve got an IUD and a mammalian reproductive system, he still thinks that he needs to see you leave his spawn out in the sea. He’d tried to pull you out of bed to do it last night, but you’d pinched his nipple to get him off you and made him compromise: if he put a pair of Seokjin’s shorts on and left the colander at home to come with you, he could escort you to the ocean to “deposit your eggs.”

So now it’s mid morning. You’re about to wade out into the ocean to please Namjoon’s instincts.

Seokjin had shaken his head and said, “The things we do for science” when you’d woken him. He’s not wrong, you sigh to yourself as you kick off your sandals and shrug off your bag. You set them in the sand next to Seokjin and approach the water lapping the shore. You turn, and see that Namjoon’s close behind you, but instead of looking out at the ocean, he’s looking at the sand underfoot, his brow furrowed.

“Everything okay, Namjoon?”

“Yeah, go release your eggs, baby.”

You hate that his casual language still makes you preen, days after he’d fucked you. It’s even more infuriating that he can make something like releasing imaginary spawn out into the ocean sound remotely sexy. And yet … the things we do for science … and for the people we’d probably come to love if circumstances were different.

The water is warm and comfortable as you wade out into the shallows. It soaks through the running shorts you’d worn and wicks up your shirt as you move deeper, so that eventually it’s up to your waist. You turn and look at the beach, Seokjin standing where the sand is still dry, Namjoon closer, the waves brushing over his toes.

You squat a little, trying to make your imaginary spawning look convincing. After a few moments, you stand and start wading back. As you emerge from the ocean, Namjoon smiles. Ah, he has dimples, how had you never noticed?

Seokjin trots forward and tosses you a towel as you walk further ashore. You wrap it around your middle as Namjoon moves to wrap his arms around you.

“Thanks for having my spawn,” he murmurs, his voice sweet and heady as he kisses your forehead and holds you for a moment. Your eyes meet Seokjin’s over his shoulder, and the man looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. He keeps his cool and swallows it down as Namjoon releases you and clears his throat.

“So uh, just a second, I think—” The hybrid squints and looks out across the sand. “—Yeah, one moment.”

He runs off in the direction he squinted, and suddenly stops and squats down. You and Seokjin watch as he picks something up and looks at it closely. And then he puts it down and picks something else up. The objects are too small for you to see clearly.

“Is he … is that …” Seokjin trails off and starts walking toward him, and you follow.

“It’s another vacancy chain,” you say as the two of you draw closer to the hybrid, just enough to see the gathering at his feet. You watch Namjoon’s eyes trail up and down the line of hermit crabs, who’ve already ordered themselves by size. “Maybe one of them is about to give up a shell that’s the right size?”

Your roommate throws you a glance. “That’s the hope, right?”

You nod. Is he expecting this to bother you in some way? For a moment, you zone out, wondering what you’re supposed to feel about all this. But it’s only for a moment, because suddenly your attention’s being stolen away.

“You fuckers, I’ll fucking fight you!” Namjoon suddenly shouts.

With a little pop, he disappears. In his place is a little hermit crab without a shell, its little spiral abdomen, soft and vulnerable, curled up to the side. Seokjin’s shorts flutter to the ground a second later, now empty. You and Seokjin watch as this little crab, presumably Namjoon, scuttles up to another crab similar in size, and starts to hit it with his pinchers. All hell breaks loose in the vacancy chain, and you loose track of Namjoon as the hermit crabs all swarm and start … fighting, you guess? It’s weird and kind of hard to look at, but you also can’t get yourself to look away.

After a few moments, a lone crab wearing a shell emerges from the scuffle and creeps toward you and Seokjin.

“Is that … Namjoon? Is he looking at you?” Seokjin groans. “This is fucking weird.”

You squat down to look at the little crab. It, or maybe he, waves a claw at you, almost as if saluting, and then walks off quickly. You let your eyes follow him down the beach as he moves away from the fray. When you turn to look back at the vacancy chain scuffle, you see that it’s broken up. The crabs are dispersing and going off to do whatever it is that they do during these late summer days.

Namjoon’s gone. And you can’t help but smile to yourself and wonder what the fuck just happened.

“Is that it?” Jin’s beside himself with laughter. “He’s just fucking leaving? No dinners or dates, just a fuck and run after you’ve fulfilled your purpose? Is there no romance left in the world??”

You stand and dust off your knees, watching your fellow scientist send the hermit crabs scurrying away as he walks up and reaches for his discarded shorts.

You sigh wistfully. “With the way the guy ate me out, I was dinner.”

“That’s gross. That’s fucking disgusting. I don’t need to know that shit.”

“Look I’ve seen things now, don’t knock hybrid dick till you try it.”

“Quit bragging, it’s unbecoming.”

“Fine. Just know that jealousy is unbecoming as well.”

As you walk back down the beach to collect your things, Seokjin squints out to the horizon. He takes a deep breath and sighs. “Well it’s good he was a paguroidea and not brachyura I guess, right? You didn’t like compromise your data or anything?”

“Oh god no,” you shake your head. “I will do a lot of things for science, but that’s not one of them.”

“Then, uh, what was all this then with Namjoon? An experiment of sorts?” He’s got a smile on his face, and a light, teasing tone. He’s trying to make sure you’re okay, it seems, trying to gauge whether or not you caught feelings.

“No, not an experiment,” you say, letting yourself grow quiet with thought.

“Then what would you call it? Like are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” You really are, you mean it when you say it. “This was fun, I think. Just some fun and helping someone who needed it.”

“So is that code for schedule you a vacation for the next mating season around here or—”

Seokjin’s sentence is cut off by you throwing a sandal at him.

“You jerk! I can’t believe you’re supposed to be the uncle to my spawn and you’re treating me this way!”

Your roommate’s laughter peals through the air. “You’ll regret that when you need help coming up with names for your several hundred children.”

“Ugh, thank god for larval stages and precocious young.”

“They grow up so fast. Want noodles when we get home?”

“Please. Let’s head back.”

Thank you for reading! Drop me an ask and tell me what you think. Find me in various places at my carrd :)

©miscelunaaa 2022. My work is only found on this blog and under my ao3 pseud. Do not, under any circumstances, copy or repost my work. Thank you.

posted: originally to ao3 9.10.2022, to tumblr on 10.26.2022

#namjoon fic #kim namjoon fic #kim namjoon fanfic #bts fic #bts hybrid fic #hybrid namjoon #hybrid namjoon x reader #hybrid knj #knj x female reader #knj x reader #knj fic #lmao what is tagging anymore #it's been so fucking long since I last made a big post I think I've forgotten everything tbh

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ashintheairlikesnow · 2 years

Text

Creeping Ambition

CW: Dehumanization, captivity, restraints, emotional manipulation, mad science, drugging, delirium/hallucinations, noncon touch (nonsexual), torture

For @whumptober 2022, day 1: adverse effects / “this wasn’t supposed to happen” and day 23: tied to a table

Signs of the Sea Masterlist

The following was attached to an email sent to Austin Howard, CEO of Howard Reston Health, by Dr. Rachel Lachlan

RECORDING 90

DAY 076 SINCE SUBJECT WAS ACQUIRED

There is a soft, slight hiss as the recording begins. Barely perceptible, it seems to grow slightly louder as the recording continues.

A woman’s voice speaks.

“This is Dr. Rachel Lachlan, recording for the purposes of later transcription, with Bahram Anvari assisting. Subject is adolescent mer and is a rare example of a young adult male. Today’s examinations are more practical than usual, I must admit. We’re not looking for any big breakthroughs in knowledge today.”

A male voice with traces of a long-ago English accent still clinging to the edges of each syllable speaks next. “We’re not?”

“No, Bahram.” The rattling of metal, sound of wheels rolling along a floor. There is a splash of water, the sound of it slopping against the sides of a tall plastic tub. A soft chirp and click becomes audible, questioning. While the young man murmurs a soothing nonsense reply, the woman ignores it. There is light beeping, four in quick succession, then the sound of a mechanism unlocking. Creaking as a door swings open. The rattling of wheels begins again. “Today is really more about observation, looking for the smaller details that our more difficult work may lead to us missing.”

“So we’re just going to… watch him?”

Thump.

“In a manner of speaking, yes. Please move the mer onto the examination table.”

There is a brief pause, and then Bahram Anvari speaks in a softer, sweeter voice. “Okay, here we go. Yeah, you know how to do this by now, huh? One… two… three… up!”

Harder thumps, and the sound of Bahram Anvari’s heavy breathing from exertion. The mer chirps, a sound that manages at once to be both plaintive and attempting cheerful.

“There we go,” Bahram says. “Good, good job.”

“It doesn’t understand English or ASL.” Dr. Lachlan’s voice is dry and disdainful. “I don’t know why you bother with all that nonsense. It isn’t a person, Bahram.”

“With all due respect, Dr. Lachlan, anatomical studies of recovered specimens have shown that they have very similar neurological structures to our own.” Bahram’s voice might tighten slightly - it’s difficult to tell by recording alone. “There’s no reason to believe he can’t learn a language as easily as we do.”

“Bahram.” Dr. Lachlan’s sigh is audible in the recording. “What have I told you about over-humanizing the test subjects? He is not human.”

“Their scientific name is Homo haffru sirenia! They’re part of our family tree!”

“I have some disagreements about that classification, to be frank. With the gills and being fully aquatic in their natural lives, I would really call them Cetacea, class them alongside whales, not Simiiformes like us.”

“You’d be wrong if you did. Anyone who did would be wrong. He is clearly a branch of humanity-”

There is a pause. “Bahram. Are you questioning my understanding of taxonomy as it applies to a marine subject I have far more knowledge of and experience with than you do?”

“... I thought you said you’d never worked with them personally before this.”

There is another, much longer pause. “Bahram-”

“Did you? Did you work with mer before, in person? Not just observational?”

“That isn’t relevant to the current-”

“Zer nazan! Of course it’s relevant-”

“Bahram! I can dismiss you from this project if you would prefer, right now, and you may pack your things and go.”

A pause. “What?”

“I can continue onward on my own or hire someone new, if you would prefer. Or you can stop blithering and help me provide mankind with discoveries that could get both of us quite wealthy and well-known.”

“I don’t care about money, Dr. Lachlan. And I don’t care about getting my name in any publications, or-”

“But you value your parents’ regard, don’t you? I imagine that after you have already left your university education somewhat… ignominiously, that losing your first and only job immediately afterward would disappoint them further.”

Silence, broken only by the questioning clicks from the mer, which neither human seems to respond to. Bahram Anvari is the first one to speak again. “I… I’m sorry, Dr. Lachlan. I didn’t sleep well last night, and I’ve been having some trouble… with everything.”

“I can see that.” Dr. Lachlan’s reply is clipped, irritated but no longer angry. “Does this mean I should be concerned about a repeat of your prior illness? I offered you an option that allowed you to gain the experience you need without having to attend classes, and even agreed to speak to Dr. Evans about forgiving some of your incompletes in order to allow you to return to finish your degree-”

“I know, Dr. Lachlan, and I’m grateful… it’s just-”

“Should I rescind that offer, Bahram? You know as well as I it will be quite impossible for you to gain employment within your chosen field without that bit of paper proving your capabilities.”

“No! No, I’m… I’ll be fine. I’m fine, doctor. I’m just… I’ll try to get better sleep. That usually helps a lot.”

“I will hold you to that. Now… let’s get him strapped down.”

Bahram’s voice has a note of reluctance and uncertainty. “... yes, doctor.”

For approximately sixty-seven seconds, the only sounds are the breathing of the two humans and the mer, and the sound of metal buckles clinking as the mer is strapped by tail and wrists against the table. The mer whistles in distress, but beyond some low shushing noises from Bahram, neither speaks to him.

Dr. Rachel Lachlan’s heels click on the tile floor as she moves away from the recording device.

“Dr. Lachlan? What are you doing?” Bahram Anvari moves the microphone closer to the mer, and there is the sound of scraping and a brief burst of feedback and audio noise.

Dr. Lachlan’s reply is faded and distant. A cabinet door opens and closes sharply. Water runs, and then shuts off again shortly afterward. “I’m prepping our observational study, Bahram. We’ll be observing the effects of a specific kind of sedative being developed for use in merkind.”

“For use in… why would we need that? I thought you said you didn’t plan to take any more-”

“I don’t plan to do anything, Bahram. My employer, however, may wish to gain further subjects in the future. And we want this to be as humane a process as we can make it. Now, you mentioned his right arm is no longer useful for syringe injection?”

“... right. He’s… his veins are totally tapped out on that side. We’re giving him too much-”

“Nonsense. We’ll try the left today, then.”

The mer whistles again. This time Bahram speaks to him directly. “It’s all right, just turn your… right. Just like that. Give blood, okay?”

“It knows that command, hm?” Dr. Lachlan laughs, a little wryly. “Like a dog learning what ‘roll over’ means.”

“Or a child," Bahram says quietly, "learning how to ask to be held.”

Dr. Lachlan makes a sound of disgust, but doesn’t reprimand him this time. Instead, there is a brief silence before the mer whimpers and Bahram shushes him again.

“Bahram, what are you doing?”

“He likes-... it helps him feel better,” Bahram replies, a little defensively. “He’s scared of needles - can’t imagine why - but if one of us is there with a hand on his head, it helps him.”

“You’re a lost cause, Anvari. Imagine how little we would know about the world if all our researchers had your bleeding heart.”

“We might know just as much, and have found it out in ways that didn’t involve terror.”

“Nonsense. And... there we go. It should only take a few minutes to take effect. Let’s clean up while we wait.”

“Yes, doctor. All right, buddy, you took the needle really well. Now-... here, yes.” Brief silence. “Good? See?”

“... are you signing to it again, Bahram?”

“Yes. He really does know a few signs, and-”

“Hmph. Hopeless indeed. Come here and help me.”

For approximately five minutes and forty-two seconds, no sound is heard beyond breathing, Dr. Lachlan’s quiet commands, and Bahram’s soft, deferential answers. Then, the mer whimpers and whistles, and the two humans go quiet.

Rattling and thumps. Distressed clicks and whistles raise in volume and pitch. Audio briefly drops out as the mer’s keening is too loud and close and the microphone fails to fully record it and instead records a moment of static.

Keening again. Table rattling.

“What is he doing? Dr. Lachlan, why is he doing that?”

“It’s thrashing, Bahram.”

“No, I see that, but… why is he-... hey, it’s okay, it’s-... ow!”

“Don’t get so close to it!”

“He bit me!”

“Shocking. You put your hand next to its mouth and it bit you. A wild surprise.”

“Dr. Lachlan… What’s wrong with him?!”

INCLUDED: FIGURE 3.2, PHOTO OF MER TAKEN FROM LEFT SIDE

“Hm. Well. That wasn’t supposed to happen.” Dr. Lachlan’s voice is muffled, as the mer continues to wail, rattling and thumping against the table as he thrashes. The keens become shrieking, screeches that overwhelm the recording with feedback again and again.

SUBECT STRAPPED TO TABLE. SHOULDER BLADES AND TAIL AGAINST METAL. BACK ARCHED. DRIED AND WET SALTWATER ON FACE. MOUTH WIDE OPEN, FANGS GLEAM IN THE LIGHT PLACED CLOSE TO FACE.

EYES WIDE.

SEE SUPPORTIVE DOCUMENTATION RECORDING INCREASED HEART RATE.

Primary audio file unusable for reference purposes for period of sixty-six seconds due to this loss of fidelity.

SEE INCLUDED AUDIO FILE 62 FOR MORE ACCURATE RECORDING OF MER DISTRESS SOUNDS WHEN NEGATIVE PHYSICAL STIMULI IS APPLIED.

INCLUDED AUDIO FILE 62 FROM RECORDS: MER SCREAMING.

“What was supposed to happen? That wasn’t a sedative, was it, Dr. Lachlan? We’ve used sedatives on him before and this has never happened, so what did you give him and what did you think would happen when you did?”

“Bahram-... I would watch your tone-”

“What was it?!”

“... a deliriant.”

The pause that follows is not a silence at all. The mer continues to shriek in the background, audio crackling in and out, in and out.

“You gave him something to make him hallucinate?!”

“My employer-”

The sound of tearing fabric overtakes all over noise.

“... wait, what’s that sound?”

Crashing, sound of metal against tile, glass breaking, more fabric tearing, and above it all, the mer’s high-pitched, keening screams.

“Shit! Come here, buddy, it’s okay, come here-... oh shit-.. Stop, stop trying-... my ears, that hurts so bad, stop it-"

“The subject,” Dr. Lachlan speaks over the noise, voice strained with effort, nearly shouting herself, “has torn the restraints on the right side and from its tail and is now off the table and on the ground. It has destroyed laboratory equipment, including the restraints… also a variety of compounds intended for experimental use… several broken syringes, its travel tank…”

“Here, let me get that for you, just calm down, calm down, here we go… here we go-...”

“Bahram Anvari has undone the subject’s last remaining restraint from around its wrist-”

“He’s terrified! Whatever you gave him is hurting him!”

“It’s not hurting him… it… it just may be causing some sensory hallucinations-”

“No.” Bahram’s voice is firm. “He can see his pod-... his family. He can see them being harpooned like he was! He can see-... see their blood in the water-... he thinks he’s in the water. He’s trying to get to them to help! Here, here buddy, it’s okay, you’re just in the lab with me…”

INCLUDED: FIGURE 3.3. STILL IMAGE FROM SECURITY CAMERA LOCATED IN PLACEMENT SEVEN WITHIN LAB.

PHOTO OF BAHRAM ANVARI, SEATED. ANVARI HOLDS MER SUBJECT, WHO IS STILL APPEARING TO VOCALIZE. MER SUBJECT IS BLURRY DUE TO CONTINUED VOLATILE MOVEMENTS. WATER IS VISIBLE AROUND TILE FLOOR DUE TO OVERTURNED TRAVEL TANK.

ALSO VISIBLE: GLASS SHARDS, SYRINGES, TORN NYLON, OVERTURNED METAL TABLE, AND DR. RACHEL LACHLAN STANDING NEAR SINK.

“How can you know?” Dr. Rachel Lachlan’s voice remains calm despite noise and movement. “How can you know that’s what it sees?”

“I just-... I just know!”

There is whispering, from Bahram Anvari, which cannot be understood on the audio recording. After approximately seven seconds of further vocalizations, the mer goes quiet, and then whistles exactly once, high-pitched for one second, then three shorter, sharper, lower notes.

“I know,” Bahram says, voice soft and gentle. “I know. We’re just here in the lab. It’s just us.”

“Bhhh… Bhhhh-rmmm.” The mer appears to be attempting to say Bahram Anvari’s name. This transcriber did their best to accurately reflect the pronunciation of syllables. “Bhhh-rmmm, hhhh-puh…”

“I’m right here. I’m right here. It’s just us, it’s just the lab. Your pod is still out there, they’re all right, it’s just us here… just us.”

“Bhh-rmmmm… mah-... mah-”

“I know, I’m so sorry, she’s not here.”

“Mah-”

“I know.”

A pause.

FIGURES 3.4, 3.5, AND 3.6. STILL FROM SECURITY CAMERA LOCATED OVER ENTRANCE INTO LABORATORY. PHOTO SHOWS JUVENILE MER HELD BY BAHRAM ANVARI.

FIRST PHOTO SHOWS MER WITH PALMS FACING SELF, CLAWS SPREAD, ONE HAND LOCATED THREE INCHES ABOVE THE OTHER. ONE HAND IS OVER LUNG AREA SLIGHTLY TO THE LEFT SIDE, ONE OVER UPPER ABDOMEN ON RIGHT.

SECOND PHOTO SHOWS SAME IMAGE, BUT NOW MER’S HANDS HAVE SHIFTED INWARD, ONE DIRECTLY ABOVE THE OTHER, CLAWS SPREAD, CENTRAL POSITION IN FRONT OF TORSO.

THIRD PHOTO SHOWS MER’S HANDS HAVE RETURNED TO THEIR ORIGINAL POSITION, CLAWS SPREAD, ONE SLIGHTLY TO RIGHT AND THE OTHER SLIGHTLY TO LEFT.

“I know, I know you are, I know… It’ll stop after a while, I promise…”

“Bahram.” Dr. Lachlan sounds genuinely unsettled for the first time. “What did it just do?”

“He said I’m afraid. Miah and I have taught him some ASL, I told you, Dr. Lachlan, he isn’t what you keep saying he is, he’s thinking all the time. He’s learning. He’s-... he’s just a kid-”

“It is a juvenile mer-”

“He’s a child. A humanoid child who has been abducted, and he’s scared and in pain and it’s… I’m part of it. It’s my fault. He misses them so much… He thinks about his mother, you know. All the time. It’s okay… it’s okay. I think about my maman, too…”

“It thinks about its parent?”

“Dr. Lachlan…”

“Fine. Its mother.”

“Yes. He’s… he’s barely more than a baby.”

“This juvenile is adolescent. It’s within two years of entering its first mating cycle!”

“Yeah, and so was I when I was sixteen, but I still asked for Maman when I was in a car accident! He wants his mom. What kid have you met who didn’t want someone when he’s scared and alone?”

“I… don’t interact often with children.”

“Yeah. I can tell.”

Dr. Lachlan’s reply is clipped. “... I can see that you won’t be reasonable about the current situation. I need to record my observations for my employer’s benefit. I think we’ll cut our experiment short for today. When you can, return him to his tank and clean up this mess.”

“Yes, of course, doctor, but… that’s it? That’s all you needed?”

“... yes. I’ve gotten what my employer needs to know.”

Dr. Lachlan’s heels crunch on broken glass and plastic as she walks briskly out the door and closes it behind her with a sharp click.

The audio recording continues on for some time, the only sounds those of Bahram Anvari speaking to the mer, and the mer’s chirping, whistling, and clicking responses. After approximately one hour and seven minutes, Bahram Anvari begins to clean up the side of the laboratory closest to the door.

The sound of a secondary travel tank being wheeled in, one squeaky wheel differentiating it from the original, now broken one.

“Oh, right. The audio. Let me turn this over, bud, and then we can get you back home-... back into the tank, anyway. I can get the glass out of your tail in a second. Oh, man, you are so heavy…”

One final whistle from the mer.

“Yeah… you’re welcome. I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass later.”

RECORDING ENDS.

Copy of email sent to Austin Howard:

BODY:

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Breakthrough!

Mr. Howard,

I thought you might find something of value in this transcribed recording of my latest session with the juvenile mer subject. I have attached images and audio files that support the transcription, which I believe will be of immense benefit.

Frankly, this justifies our entire mission.

As you can see, the juvenile is learning American Sign Language due to repeated contact with my assistant and our friend’s daughter. While that is fascinating, there is something far more important in this recording.

Note, if you will, that Bahram Anvari appears to have some understanding as to the mer’s thoughts and access to specifics as to its reasoning that he shouldn’t.

He won’t tell me how he gained this knowledge, but I think our hunch is correct.

The mer are telepathic, Austin!

And ours… is talking to Bahram.

Yours,

Dr. Rachel Lachlan, D.Sc

Head of Applied Experimental Research

Howard Reston Health

[email protected]

(555) 683-4310

“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”

John Dewey

BODY:

FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Re: Breakthrough!

Dr. Lachlan,

I was excited to review the transcript of your session. Now, having listened to it and looked over your notes, I’m downright goddamn thrilled.

My secretary will be giving you a call in about twenty minutes. I intend to make a visit to your laboratory and see the juvenile in person. Schedule a particularly strenuous, frightening, or painful experiment for that day, and ensure Bahram Anvari assists you.

Let’s see what this little fish can do.

Thank you as always for your invaluable contributions,

Austin Howard

CEO, Howard Reston Health

[email protected]

(555) 334 - 2309

“Ambition can creep as well as soar.”

Edmund Burke

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @thefancydoughnut @whumptywhumpdump @boxboysandotherwhump @yet-another-heathen @fanmanga1357-blog @justabitofwhump @crystalrainwing @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @orchidscript @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up plus @whumpworldld for whumptober tag list

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copperbadge · 1 year

Note

Sam, a weird question. To you mostly because the French Republican calendar was your fault. Is there any other finite, oddly arbitrary list of Things to randomize a template (like a magical or power system)? I'm not keen on using the tarot journey, and Sailor Moon did it much better with the planets. I could venture into other zodiacs, but there are so many cultural layers that I'd rather incorporate them elsewise. Like if there were the Seven Beers of Chicago I might even consider it

Lord, the French Republican calendar happened to me :D

I'm not sure I'm following your meaning in terms of "arbitrary list of things to randomize a template". I've never encountered “the tarot journey” (it looks like it's a book, but I sense possibly you’re speaking of an abstract concept?) and I haven't seen Sailor Moon in probably....25 years or so. I know the Sailor Scouts each had their own planet, and there are certain values assigned to various zodiacs....anyway I suppose what I mean is, and this sounds snippy but I promise the sentiment is genuine, without knowing what you’re trying to achieve, recommendation can be difficult.

I think the thing is that to my mind all of these things are systematic within their own understanding of existence, so they wouldn’t randomize, they’d systematize within themselves. Like, the zodiac is based on a progression of stars -- the meaning of those stars in patterns is perhaps arbitrary, but the progression is based on observation of the natural world. I'm pretty sure the Sailor Scouts are all assigned major planets, like nobody's got Io or Europa or anything, and while the naming conventions may be arbitrary, the planets were chosen because they were, well, planets, which is again a function of the natural world.

If you're just looking for like....sets of things to work with in a magical system, I suppose you could use pretty much anything, but I'd go with stuff close to you. Like, for me, there are 77 neighborhoods in Chicago, and four major flavors of Coca Cola (Regular, Zero, Diet, Caffeine-Free Diet, before you get into the esoterica of flavors and fountain machines). You could use the Chicago neighborhoods in place of tarot cards (with perhaps the lake for the unnumbered Fool or similar), or use the Four Cokes instead of cardinal directions when, say, casting a circle. If you’re just looking to build a magical system from the ground up, you can make your own sets, even -- taxonomy is iffy at best and there’s nothing saying you can’t, for example, base your magical working in the Three Ritual Memes of Woman Doing Complicated Math, Guy With Butterfly, and Galaxy Brain Progression.

Anyway I hope this is helpful rather than just nonsense! I have a feeling you're reaching for something interesting but I'm just getting bogged down in some of the terminology.

#magic #tarot

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ellynneversweet · 2 years

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1. Woke up from a dream in which I thought I was awake but dream!me also thought she, as it were, was asleep and experiencing a lucid dream, because I was trying to text and my texts were throwing up random nonsense and garbled copy pasta (except for ‘god fucking damn it’ which I can apparently spell even in a dream). I don’t think this counts as a lucid dream but it also wasn’t actually frightening (as I understand it, a night terror requires 1. you to believe dream!you woke up and 2. keep experiencing scary dream thing OR start experiencing a new scary dream thing while ‘awake’). I propose a third taxonomy of irritating dream that doesn’t rise to nightmare level: a night annoyance. Possibly a night embarrassment. Although those might imply something else, so I’m happy to brainstorm a word for ‘thing that is like a night terror in relation to your conscious perception, but also not actually frightening.’

2. The thing I was trying to text about was ‘gingerbread but not,’ because apparently my subconscious has reached the time of year where I once again try to figure out what kind of European gingerbread-ish thing my Dutch grandparents used to send in Christmas packages, so I can make it at home in contrast to the far inferior anglosphere selection of gingerbread recipes I’ve tried. I know it’s not exclusively a Dutch thing, because I’ve also got similar things from someone visiting France and it’s pretty close to a very fancy pressed biscuit thing I got in Prague once, but the name of the exact spiced biccie in question eludes me. Naturally, I’m googling now.

#taxonomy of dreams and also biscuits #it’s not speculoos because that’s crunchy #it’s a chewy biscuit #i don’t THINK it’s springerle because I’m not an anise fan and that seems to feature heavily?#it’s also not an exclusively Christmas thing but of course gingerbreads of all sorts tend to be a northern hemisphere winter food

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northsouth89 · 8 months

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Beta and Palaestra

B: Oh, Hello. Where are we? Or when are we? I'm not sure what coordinates I should be inquiring about to orient myself when talking to you.

P: You remember Alice and Bob?

B: Yes, I think we spoke with them a bit ago. Although their conversation became rather technical rather quickly and I couldn't follow them down their well-trodden paths of taxonomy.

P: Okay, good. They're us.

B: Pardon?

P: Or perhaps we're them. It's hard to say exactly. It's somewhat like offices, like stations. A king or a guard or a priest, they remain even though the individual who occupies the role changes. Yeah?

B: Yes, I'm familiar.

P: Well, you're the Bob to my Alice. We aren't just those relationships, of course, but they hold somewhat true.

B: I think I follow.

P: In many ways we came before them, we're making those types, those roles that will be passed on to A and B later. But in other ways they came before. It's complicated.

B: Very well. That makes, if not sense, it makes less nonsense than many other things you've told me.

P: You're dead now, are you aware?

B: I gathered as much. There was the fire in the library and all that.

P: So you've been tasked with running a world, being a world. Being the parchment on which a story is written.

B: Beta's World. I've seen the title. Yes?

P: Exactly. I have a read on what, and you have a sense of how.

B: Okay you've lost me.

P: Yes, fair. Are you familiar with Anaphora Springs? It's a place, a town.

B: Can't say that I'm familiar.

P: Ah, yes, well. You're going to be, in a manner of speaking, bound to it. To part of it. The town square, specifically. As a vagrant, as a bird, perhaps as a statue of you prefer.

B: Who, or what, is in charge of all this? You seem to be doing the bidding of others.

P: You're not wrong on that point, but you're not entirely accurate either. It's a collective sort of thing. We march, or dance if you prefer. I prefer. We dance to the beat of the drum played by rumor. Rumor isn't a someone, it isn't an organization, it's an activity in which we all partake.

B: Uh huh.

P: It's not a metaphor, it's just a description. Some may call it culture, some prefer deities, ghost of the times if you speak German. But you don't. I don't either. Dharma?

B: I'm just going to pretend I know what that means to see if the next bit of information helps clarify. Sure. Yes. If course.

P: That's the stuff. Thank you. Well, we're part of an effort to repackage a lot of technical information into something accessible, to something delightful if we can swing it.

B: Why? What are the stakes?

P: Everything? Nothing? Paradise if you go in for that sort of thing.

B: Ah. So, some sort of... no. I don't want to be dismissive.

P: Appreciated. Well, yes, you see, why did you become the head librarian at the library of Alexandria? I don't want you to answer, I just want you to reflect on that motivation. It would be hard to give just one answer, I assume.

B: You assume correctly. There are many reasons, in a way there are no reasons. It's, well, yes. Because rumor is large and contains much. Rumor could be improved.

P: And that's what you'll be doing in Anaphora Springs. The next world, the world we're calling Lipsum until it has a proper name. If it ever has a proper name. Maybe names will be verboten in that world. It's hard to say.

B: So, this town square?

P: Yes. We're calling it Square One. It's borrowed from a phrase. Back to square one. You won't know it yet.

B: And what do you need me to do?

P: We need you to stay in that square, we need you to be someone that everyone who passes through can talk to, can know. We need you to be a teacher, a touchstone.

B: I think I can do that. I always liked being a reference. Someone people come to when they don't know where to start. That seems fitting.

P: Good. I'm glad. Thank you.

B: How do we get started?

#worldbuilding #betasworld

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simonalkenmayer · 2 years

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Friendly reminder that when an oppressed group says “I don’t like people who oppress me, the culture that oppresses me, and I am very skeptical of every person who benefits from that oppression by default, and who might be one of the bad guys” it’s not racist.

White culture unified smaller European cultures into a monolith that previously didn’t exist. “White culture” IS oppression. All those disparate groups who were previously enemies, allied to oppress and own and murder other people. They drew the line between white and BiPOC. So when a black or indigenous person says “My family has been oppressed for generations, raped, murdered, bought and sold, deprived and incarcerated, and you look just like my oppressor” that is not racism. It’s taxonomy. You are the enemy. Your white ancestors wanted to be white. They built that generational trauma and fear and you benefit from it. The oppressed have the right to dislike the oppressor, and when they are oppressed by the color of their skin, then the skin color of the oppressor is absolutely relevant.

If you don’t want to be the oppressor, but look like the oppressor, then it’s your job to do the following

Participate in oppression as little as possible in all the ways it happens

Use your privilege to defend and amplify BIPOC voices and try to stop the oppression by standing up to other people within the oppressive system

Shut down your ego, because they’re not talking about their ally. They’re talking about the monolith of “white culture” that formed to oppress them. If you’re really on their side, you will be able to see their perspective and say “whiteness is oppression”

Learn. From the oppressed. NOT the oppressor. People participating in oppression of course have a reason to argue that it isn’t happening or isn’t as bad or “don’t pick on me because I am white”. They aren’t picking on you because you’re white. They’re identifying you as part of the problem until you step up and say “I refuse to be part of that.”

They know that there are good white people, but they don’t know which white people are the good ones, do they? So they have every right to be cautious and see who can be trusted. If you had been raped, beaten, and deprived of growth by men, you’d be cautious of all men, and while you may know that it’s “not all men” you wouldn’t know which men. So you’d be cautious of ALL MEN. And if a man says “it’s sexist to avoid men or dislike men because one man raped you”…HE IS NOT THE MAN YOU SHOULD BE TRUSTING.

So stop. Racism has a POWER STRUCTURE to it. It is not racist for a black person not to trust you. I am sick to death of this “identifying the white monolith as racist is racist” nonsense. I will not listen to it. If you do not like this, feel free to block me.

#racism

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unpretty · 3 years

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astielle ch 28 spoiler ask dump~~

anonymous asked:

Tauril-form is puberty, because that's when his voice changes. Abysscale-form is college-age because that's when he goes to his first orgy.

anonymous asked:

You called Abysscale-form college-age (which does not preclude teenage sexscapades given the ages that go to college) and that tracks with how I think of Tauril-form as going through puberty (because of the voice-change). But if Tauril is the horny teenager that's kind of sad. Because as Minnow has pointed out many times That Dick Will Kill.

not each other, it won't!! although i imagine taurils sleeping with each other would have the bro-iest vibe. very bill and ted. taurils also have Options with people who aren't giant bull centaurs, it's just awkward is all. fortunately for everyone taurils are actually adults and are not full of hormones, they just have zero impulse control and when they like someone they want to impress them and spend time with them and it doesn't necessarily occur to them to get their dicks involved in the situation (karzarul's mind was elsewhere the first time he was a tauril)

anonymous asked:

When Violet said monsters make the best mercenaries and throw the best parties I didn't think about it, but the fact that all the impyrs came into being with swordsmanship skills equal to Lynette probably had something to do with the former. Even if ten isn't that many, THEY COME BACK. (Eventually. In, like, a month.) And the others probably learned from Lynette, even if they died. Lynette's unintentional teaching, back again.

they learned from the best murdering them repeatedly

anonymous asked:

When Ari is repopulating, and he skips Black Drakonis, he says "Makes sense." But he's surprised when Violet points out that Black Drakonis is missing, so it sounds like he at least had a theory/assumption at the time for why she was skipped, but it doesn't match with the new information.

he initially just assumed that black drakonis had managed to avoid being killed the whole time, which made sense because she's a big dragon and she can just fly away if someone is trying to murder her. but generally if a bigass monster is alive someone is going to see it, especially her, because she likes finding population centers to try to guard.

anonymous asked:

"It also occurred to him that trying to get Minnow to act like she lived in a society since they were young may have negatively impacted his sense of what constituted an acceptable thing to say to a person while his dick was out." Is just HILARIOUS.

anonymous asked:

Honestly I can relate to Leonas cause just last week I was like 'I keep falling asleep in class maybe I should develop a caffeine addiction' and one of my friends was like 'pls eat more food' so I started to actually have breakfast and an after work snack and I magically stopped falling asleep in class

anonymous asked:

Minnow's hips don't lie, but castle ruins are strangely deceptive.

everyone who wasn't following along when astielleblogging intersected with kink taxonomy hell is going to be so confused if/when minnow finally gets stuck somewhere

@9ofspades asked:

Ari is my favorite again and I want him to have actual eternity to be happy with his poly soulmate throuple together. And also his big monster family. Also I think he's wrong about what the core of the Heir and Hero are - both of them have, deep in the core of their souls, the fact that they are Monsterfuckers.

for the record i have a post in my drafts with all of your readalong asks and i still haven't decided what to do with them but i enjoyed them IMMENSELY

anonymous asked:

>looking for food >ask the cook if their food is earthy or wet >she doesn't understand >pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is earthy and what is wet >she laughs and says "it's good food sir" >buy some food >its wet

@ivylaughed asked:

I love the tumblr meme references in Astielle. The guards bringing their own knives; there being an infinite variety of brassica oleracea; the fucking chocolate guy. I'm half-waiting for a children's hospital/color theory reference. Thank you for the easter eggs.

i'm glad someone read 'chocolate birdhouse' and immediately thought THAT FUCKING CHOCOLATE GUY AGAIN ashjasd

anonymous asked:

I just wanted to say that as a plant nerd and forager I deeply appreciated Minnow's surprisingly accurate botany lesson.

unfortunately all the books that leonas gave minnow are still at her house and so she cannot cite sources for the existence of hemlock, queen anne's lace, and giant hogweed

anonymous asked:

“I think you overestimate people’s willingness to admit when things don’t make sense to them," lmao Minnow has a point

will the two men she is with learn from this and start admitting when they don't know things they think they should and are confused? absolutely not.

anonymous asked:

XD Ari hears "Kavid" and immediately attempts a strategic retreat.

anonymous asked:

“‘you should get dressed’ is a complete sentence.” Is making me laugh.

it's probably for the best because if he actually had known all three of them were out there it would have taken him like an hour to get ready and he would have had at least one breakdown about how none of his outfits were good enough and it was all nari's fault

anonymous asked:

Kavid: I will be happy to HAVE YOU ALL *lascivious eyebrow wiggle* at my earliest convenience.

anonymous asked:

"he gets smaller" "in this weather who doesn't?" KITTY PLZZZ

anonymous asked:

I can't decide whether I love or hate Kavid - I have a very Specific idea in mind for his voice, though I admittedly can't figure out where I'm pulling it from. He is an Excellent character though. Lovely chapter as always :D

anonymous asked:

Before, I was entertained by Kavid. Now I love him.

anonymous asked:

Kitty, Kraven and Kavid have similar speech patterns on purpose, right??? Right?????

i was honestly imagining some kind of nonsense faux-european what-country-is-this-even-from hollywood accent but imagining that he has sounded extremely russian this whole time is extremely funny

@rose-and-bones asked:

SHE HAS A TYPE aghfgstjs

minnow having a thing for obnoxiously pretty men who think they're great aka self-recognition through the other (horny)

@speakingintothevoid asked:

“You are,” Leonas said, “an egotistical, self-important fop.” “Ye-e-es,” Kavid said without shame. “She has a type, does Starlight.” I! LOVE!! IT!!! Makes me almost think of Violet and Karzarul - our point of view character being faced with a version of themselves who are more comfortable in their own skin and our boys not knowing why that annoys them

@keleviel asked:

I rescind my earlier mild disdain, Kavid is great. Is he actually The Greatest Of Bards, or is that just more showmanship?

he rocks about as hard as you can rock on a lyre, which is probably harder than you'd think (especially if you brought a lot of drummers) (which he does)

anonymous asked:

Jakshahshsh every time a new astielle chapter comes out i read it at least twice. Kavid i love you. Leonas i love you also you fucked up lil man. And karzarul the seat. And minnow the mischievous. and just. poor nari. existing in the same world as minnow and her all-powerful boyfriends and also kavid. nari needs a raise

she really does

anonymous asked:

Bruce in Office Meeting and Leonas grabbing the wine when Kavid starts talking about Imperials solidarity.

anonymous asked:

"You would like to compare notes?""Always." Brilliant. Leonas to a t. Loving this interlude with kavid. Snuggly tipsy leonas is a treat. kavids talk of how the weather makes all of us smaller had me cackling. Also this batshit imperial conspiracy is gr8

anonymous asked:

I am suddenly much less comfortable about Leonas performing medical experiments on Minnow, though no fault of his own. :(

@mooseman13579 asked:

Leonas finding out about the weird sun empire truther stuff: haha I'm in danger

the real unanswered question is how much of this is news and how much of it is stuff he already knew and assumed was normal

@thegayknee asked:

Holy shit this is it, isnt it. This is how they fix karzarul's reputation and expose Leland. With the power of Kavid

anonymous asked:

Karzarul's Questlog: "Work on our Image" updated, The Tale of Hollow Monsters delivered to bard.

anonymous asked:

just how many of her lovers is minnow going to recruit into her questing party

she should probably be swapping people out to keep their levels consistent but instead she just keeps karzarul and leonas as her companions for every single quest

@flying-butter asked:

"Details! I need details!" "The king sucks." This is every conversation with any of the trio. Minnow likely knows how to complete half of Ari's quests and Leonas the other half, but no one talks about anything without prompting.

minnow just assumes that everyone knows what she knows because she can't possibly be the brains of the operation and meanwhile karzarul and leonas are both busy having shame

anonymous asked:

i was so excited for the lore drop but the moment Leonas sat in Karzarul's lap my brain just shut off

@themaidenisdeath asked:

oh yes, as we all know, "all business" and "taciturn" are the first words that come to mind when we think of Minnow. It reminded me of when she met Karzarul and he told her she was particularly chatty for hero. Sorry Kavid, you're just neither a Sweet, Considerate Monster with a Dick of Steel And Tentacles To Match™ nor a Twink Prince With Silky Hair, Dom Tendencies And Weird Dietary Beliefs™

@halfdeadfriedrice asked:

"what Hero business?" / "I'm the Hero. All my business is Hero business." You tell em Minnow! And then it turns out to be Quest relevant after all; all business is Hero business Also kavid's last night's makeup and messy convertible couch covered in laundry with half-empty wine bottles on the floor is THEE most visually resonant, I feel like I am visiting a college friend

leonas got very lucky that there weren't any cigarette butts floating in that wine because in his mood he might have just drank it anyway

#original #astielleblogging #writeblogging #astielle spoilers

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steve0discusses · 3 years

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Yugioh S5 Ep 19: Yugi and the Only Neck Accessory He Didn’t Really Want to Wear

Been busy! Hopefully stuff will open up soon as I’m taking a hiatus on a different quarantine project and will be finishing painting the entire roof of my car this week? One can hope. Sanding the rust off the whole top of a car takes a long time it turns out?

Also, fun Yugioh fact, I recently painted a book cover for an author who is older so she’s never seen the show, and she looked at my tumblr, saw my Duke Devlin fanart and was like “That’s him. That’s my main character. OMG. You captured him perfectly!” and I was like “Ma’am that is Duke Devlin, hence the single dice earring on his lobes there, but we can work with this.” and now a spiritual Duke Devlin is on the cover of a Wuxia-style fantasy trilogy on the Vella. Had to give him a top knot and delete the eyeliner for Wuxia reasons but uh, that’s just Duke.

So long story short, fanart can get you work, don’t even worry about posting that stuff online because most people don’t even know it’s fanart anyway and older ladies freakin love it.

Back in Yugioh, the team was doing their best to navigate a map through the woods and they do about as well as they normally do.

And inside Tristan lifted up the floorboards and was like “I found the only way out, this is it, this is the only way.”

And they ended up in something that has a color scheme I would actually associate with a jungle. Finally. We have finally left California (in order to go to another Hell.)

Youknow, when we went to California, we visited Hell, and when we went to India, we also took a stop at the nearest death destination. There’s just so much death on this show and sometimes I forget because there’s been a ghost in our party for so freakin long it’s been normalized.

(read more death imagery under the cut)

Joey freaks out at a flock of crows and reveals in this episode something I never realized about him before.

Like I’m not always the perfect observer as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but I love that this is canon for probably only this episode, but I will never forget it for the entirety of this series.

You go on hating birds, Joey.

Bro was like “Maybe it’s a deep cut about Mai Valentine because she’s a harpy lady” but eh...pretty sure we spent like an entire season of Joey telling us that Mai was a good experience? Would be incredibly funny if immediately after all of S4, Joey was like “You know what? Screw Mai, guys.”

So my thoughts...it’s probably just a literal bird experience. Like I had a friend who hated deer because once she went to a petting zoo, got some pellets to feed the deer, but her finger was sticking up, so when the deer came over to nibble on some pellets her finger went up it’s nose by accident. She was so disgusted by this event that was entirely her fault, that she brought up how much she hated deer basically whenever we saw one.

So like...maybe Joey fed a bird wrong at a petting zoo. I can see him getting bit by a parrot because he was too Joey Wheeler.

But now that we’re in a graveyard neighborhood, Pharaoh decides to hop out because there’s a lot of ghosts here and he needs to practice socializing with his peers.

So that’s just a Yugioh monster doing the ostrich dance, right? Like this is a meme from like 2010 but on Yugioh in 2003(4?)

Good to see the Ostrich dance here in the land before Vine.

So they pull out their Pokemon to do some antics, Tea looked like she was about to do something useful, and Yami does a yump across time and space to get her as far away from playing (not)cards as quickly as possible and y’all...sure was a position these animators animated.

Holy crap.

And I was going off about that scene last season where they woke up in the same bed like...

...have these two been together this entire time? Like together together?

They’re like...way more comfortable than you’d figure they’d be considering Yugi nearly passes out every time he gets a hug. But Yami just like....How long has this been going on? As long as Joey’s fear of birds?

Like obviously this show would never cover what the hell Yugi may be thinking about this overreaching move here, because we’re gonna gloss right over that, and just run away up a flight of stairs. No one mentions this ever again. Which is mind blowing for an anime to do. I think in most anime I watch, the kids would be like “ahh ahhhh I bumped into a booooob!” like it does for I want to say every other episode of My Hero Academia. But in Yugioh, they saw that low hanging fruit and they were like “we expect a higher level of maturity out of our audience. Now here’s a fleet of ostrich dancing tree monsters with faces for crotches.”

They decided to sprint up this flight of stairs, and it enough of a slope to deter the monsters who are only unbalanced weird legs.

I want us to take a moment and admire this background painting. I can’t unsee the rocks that are all the same size, just piled on top of eachother. Did Alexander the Great just plop rocks here--or was the mountain made up of tons of similarly shaped boulders?

Like there’s a lot of nice bg’s in this arc, don’t get me wrong, but this one...I’m just trying to wrap my head around the logic of it.

At the top, they meet a pantheon, that is immediately blocked by this wall, because if this arc had a tagline, it’s “Yugi gets inconvenienced every 4 seconds.”

Bro was like “Clearly they would have pushed it over if Tea wasn’t slacking off” and like...she is actually. Look at her. Only used one hand? Slacker.

Joey was disappointed he couldn’t push over a massive wall, and the team decided not to analyze how much Joey Wheeler thinks of his own strength and instead fixate on these statues.

Usually in anthro characters they kinda look birdlike but act human. But what about an anthro that’s just a bird? Like human torso, but can turn his head 180 degrees? Yugioh made me ask this question.

And then Joey was like “wait, there may be a solution that isn’t just to use brute strength!”

Youknow it is a bummer that Kaiba couldn’t witness Joey own a dragon while he himself only has a robot jet dragon. Although, the jet is probably faster, stronger and overall...better than this baby dragon. It would have been great for Kaiba to witness Joey under-utilize this dragon and forget he has it for like huge swatches of the episode.

And then Grandpa pulled some body horror out of nowhere.

Wow.

I mean that is really gross.

I guess Grandpa can’t use Blue eyes, because Kaiba ripped it up, Grandpa can’t use Exodia because Weevil tossed it off a boat, and grandpa can’t use the card that’s just a building because...it’s a building.

So instead Grandpa has a bunch of meat and bones that look like something out of Doom. It’s probably from a more obscure Konami property, but I forget which.

I’ve seen Tristan hold back Joey in this hold, first time it’s been Tea.

So much shipping in this episode, it’s wild.

It’s also wild how low my standards are for what could possibly be shipping when it comes to Yugioh because of how freakin tepid all of these characters are, which as I’ve brought up before, I really don’t mind.

So Yugi decides that because Grandpa was folding his arms like one monster and it made a gem light up or something, to just do the video game thing and use the giant ass statues as clues.

Why was this arc not a video game? Like parts of it really feel like it was meant to be.

So Yugi falls down a hole, where the walls cave in like it’s that dumpster in Star Wars but like...it barely phases him.

Also...Yugi might be able to see in the dark. It’s never been brought up but like...the more I think about it...has Yugi ever struggled to see without the lights on?

After Joey disappoints everyone, he confronts death.

And Pharaoh and Yugi decide to solve the puzzle of “how do I get out of this trap dungeon room” which, honestly, is probably what they’re doing every time they hang out in the brain pyramid.

So they summon their mascot monster, and surprisingly the show decided its ability to fly cannot help them out here.

Kuriboh manages to become enough of a doormat to push Yami up to the stone and they end up in a set of weird cuts that ended in this?

Like seriously it was like flashes of light and then they were just...up here like this.

Hey like...

Alexander the Great, my man...

Were you planning to put that stone in the middle of a exhaust vent hoping someone would touch it? Because there’s no way anyone would rationally have done that. You would need to fly to do it. This is the world’s worst DM.

Like Yugioh pulls a lot of fantasy nonsense but this arc is a lot more like a “it’s a kid’s show, just go with it.” arc than most of them. It’s not a bad vibe, necessarily, it’s just not the vibe I’m used to.

So once I witnessed maybe the most boring conversation I’ve ever witnessed about corn (this was on a twitch stream, by the way, a guy was playing an interesting game, and then a guest came on and started talking about corn and plants for 2 hours) and they would not shut up about how all taxonomy is wrong because there are no such thing as trees and how all animals are labelled incorrectly, and then they started comparing it to like all sorts of mushrooms and phytoplankton as you would if you clearly got a little bit high before dumping your corn knowledge on a twitch stream.

Anyway, after that bizarre experience I suffered so I could learn how to play an obscure video game, I think I can safely say, that while I know everyone here thinks a bird can’t be a dog. If you’re a high biologist: a bird is absolutely a dog. Apparently you can just do that if you’re the most boring biologist alive and no one will argue with you because to do that would involve talking to you. We’ll just say a bird is a dog and no one can fight me or I will talk about the corn book that this guest on this twitch chat was thinking about renting from the library about the different types of corn mutations inherent in freakin Indiana. Therefore, Joey’s fear of birds and dogs is same.

So they use Dark Magician to save them from the statues, and Yugi busts into the pantheon again because they got to open this casket before a time limit that I kind of forgot about, tbh.

And inside the casket, is...this thing!

(enjoy this line on the bottom of the image I don’t feel like fixing it)

And you may say to yourself...it looks like it’s just floating in mid-air, that’s silly, and so I want to introduce you to the next panel where you can see that it is...quite literally...just floating in the air like a video game.

and it just slurps itself onto Yugi before he can be like “nonono.”

Wasn’t there some horror movie where you were stuck in some sort of body brace that slowly tortures you (was that Saw?) This has that vibes. Like man that looks uncomfortable to wear over a jacket and two belts and a collar that is another belt.

That and I...I gotta appreciate that Yugi popped his collar while wearing body armor and chunky necklace. What 00′s fashion appreciation right there.

Bit like...this isn’t breathable, right? Like Yugi’s gonna finally take this thing off and his jacket will just be completely soaked in sweat?

Anyway, that’s it for this post, next week we’ll see if Yugi can walk through a doorway in that thing.

Also, I can’t bring up the ostrich dance without sharing the vines of my generation

youtube

#Yugioh #YGO #yu gi oh #photo recap #episode recap #S5 #Ep19 #Yugi Muto #Joey Wheeler #Joey's fear of birds I've never heard about until this episode #Tea Gardner #Grandpa Muto #Tristan Taylor #Baby Dragon #This weird ass tranformer that Yugi is wearing.

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nearit · 4 years

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Credit in the Straight World

The post-Buffy dialogue didn’t seem like an asset when Jennifer’s Body first came out back in 2009. Diablo Cody’s writing style was the sort of thing you talked about on your blog in those days and while no one was crying out for a purely naturalistic approach it’s fair to say that her script for Juno was generally regarded as being overly mannered, at least among the wannabe seekers I spent my time chatting with. If I was disinterested even at the time in the villainisation of Megan Fox, the Diablo Cody discourse was running through my mind throughout my first viewing; in fact, I may have heard it louder than the actual dialogue that was playing out on screen.

In 2020 I’m even more tired of that voice, that arch, chatty cadence, the one that started out as a piss take of a certain sort of American teen and ended up in the mouths of adults across the world. These days every superhero sounds like Spider-Man, every movie has at least three superheroes in it, and every home has at least four subscriptions to streaming channels packed to the gunnels with superhero media.

These are all exaggerations but I challenge you to show me the lie.

Why, then, did I find Jennifer’s Body less aggravating when I rewatched it recently? Perhaps because it’s actually about at least one thing, maybe several things, and because it seems to understand that theme is an aesthetic element rather than a slogan to be crudely painted on top of the engine of the story itself.

The exploration of Needy and Jennifer’s friendship is the main engine of this movie, powering everything from the pastel goth aesthetics to the endless push-pull of physical resentment and physical attraction that plays out between Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox on screen. These two elements may in fact be different facets of the same system: so be it, but Karyn Kusama’s movie deserves to be engaged with the same flair that has been applied to its design.

If the more unnatural affectations of the dialogue functions largely an expression of kinship so deeply worked up in itself that it has developed its own language, what to make of its presence in other parts of the movie? Some of this may be put down to a sort of excess of style, but elsewhere we find one of the movie’s other engines at work. The distanced, “I know, I know, but we’ve got to be like this to get ahead” misogyny of Adam Brody and his bandmates is the film’s most overt expression of contemporary sexism, but the bit that drew my attention this time was a seemingly stray bit of dialogue:

“Our library has an occult section?"

On first blush this is everything that’s objectionable about postmodern horror, an acknowledgement of nonsensical tropes designed to allow the audience to feel superior to their own enjoyment. This is the sort of line that can undermine the film or TV show you’re watching while gesturing towards a sophistication that it fails to provide, but in Jennifer’s Body I read the line differently, as a further expression of the themes of the movie. Knowledge of the sort of personal/social demons this movie deals in is never far from the public consciousness. We have extensive taxonomies of sexism and have many tumblrs dedicated to the complexities of not being sure whether you want to be someone, be with them or be somewhere else entirely. The thing is, you wouldn't necessarily think any of this was true from the way we act as a society or the way we feel as individuals. The information is there, if too often out of site of those who need it and out of mind of the ones who should be there to share this knowledge.

#Jennifer's Body #Megan Fox #amanda seyfried #Adam Brody #Diablo Cody #karyn kusama

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the-faunal-frontier · 6 years

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CARNIVORA: END

And the Turkish Angora marks the end of my first order! I have drawn every species* of Carnivora, some of them multiple times! I’ve learned a lot in the last few months, including:

Where to look for images and descriptions of obscure species

A LOT about how geographical history affects evolution

Bizarrely difficult it is for me to draw cat faces in profile

Things with many spots are hard to draw

Always rasterize the sketch before using the pen tool!

Taxonomy is often still in the process of reevaluation

Convergent evolution is super cool!

What’s next! Oh my gosh, a break. I had to burn the candle at both ends and also cut the candle in half and start burning from the middle to finish by today, and I am exhausted! Did you know I also work a full time job, started working a couple hours on the side, and volunteer about 6 hours a week on average in addition to this? And I lose 10 hours a week just commuting! AHHHH!

Anyway, I’ll be taking another break of indeterminate time, not to exceed one month! I’m hoping to get my buffer (of three species) built back up, and get an online store set up so that THIS can be my full time job one day! I’ll keep posting some fun, filler nonsense in the meantime. When I return, I’ll be moving on to Pholidota (pangolins) and Perissodactyla (horses, tapirs, rhinos), which are fortunately both very small orders.

ORDER: CARNIVORA NUMBER OF SPECIES: 292-293 (+4-5 subspecies) TIME: 8.5 Months FINAL SCORE: 297 Illustrations!

*I did not draw the Egyptian Weasel. According to the IUCN and most sources, the Egyptian Weasel is a separate species (Mustela subpalmata) from the Least Weasel (Mustela nivalis). This is based on morphological differences. this 2016 study finds, based on comparisons of mitochondrial DNA, that there is “no evidence to support the view that the Egyptian weasel is genetically distinct from the least weasel”. I based my decision to skip the Egyptian Weasel on this study.

#news #progress report #x

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mild-lunacy · 5 years

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Toward a Taxonomy of the Antis

You know, maybe it should be obvious, but one of the main reasons fandom always ultimately disenchanted me is at least partly because of the *reasons* some people are fans. Or, perhaps I should say, we use 'fan' as a catchall term when there are actually many models and reasons for engagement. It's not as simple as 'fan' and 'anti', but I do think that many times, the type of fan who becomes an anti was always a separate type. One thing that made me think of this is an anti actually outright saying they were only into the Throne of Glass books because of the hype around them. A lot of people say they used to be 'naive' or young, but not usually admitting they weren't really into the story on any genuine level in the first place.

Of course, saying 'genuine' risks fan policing terminology and wank about what's a 'true fan' or not, which isn't where I'm going. I just want to differentiate someone enjoying a TV or book series (like Throne of Glass) due to spontaneously loving the characters or setting, and loving it essentially because other people love it. One is much more likely to last and prove resilient than the other. If you like the 'fan' part of fandom, then as soon as the fire cools-- or other people start getting disillusioned at some kind of tipping point-- inevitably you'll become drawn into the anti mindset. Just like being drawn into the fan mindset in the first place. The only thing that's different is the direction. It's still all about external judgment that ultimately has nothing to do with the story or characters.

I'm not saying that method of engagement isn't valid. In my mind, anything that naturally arises, sociologically speaking, simply *is*. There's no 'valid' or 'invalid' ways of social organization (or writing, for that matter). In fact, it's that mindset that is my biggest difference from the antis. Your average fan may just get bored and unable to finish watching or reading new installments if their interest was social, or limited in the first place. But a few develop a critical interest, usually if other people hate the writer(s) too. Note that modern antis very rarely (if ever) march to the beat of their own drummer. People rarely quietly post anti rants online for their own benefit, disconnected from the relevant fandom, at least not for long. However, longtime lone fans certainly do exist (as I can personally verify).

Aside from this anecdotal impression, I don't think it's a coincidence that most antis these days make primarily social and/or social justice critiques. At the very least, the kind of fan who'd gotten into the Throne of Glass books due to the hype is likely also sensitive to the newest social pressures and mores of behavior. It's not that I fundamentally disagree about the benefits of representation, for example. However, the sort of person who strongly condemns a writer for writing a male character who simply behaves realistically (and amusingly) when suddenly transported into a female body is not primarily concerned with the larger issues of transgender rights and representation, per se. When a critique is not at all reasonable, or connected to the reality of the characters and their situation, the apparent conclusion is that the justification given is just an excuse for the negative bias. The reason there needs to be an excuse is because antis are a community, and their whole point is to share salty thoughts. Everyone can agree that transphobia is bad (who's a Millennial or younger and in fandom, at least), and so that's one of the easiest things to condemn. And as an anti, you have to condemn.

I don't think people purposely come up with things they don't actually feel or believe, by any means. I'm sure any negative (or positive) reaction is almost always genuine. But I also think that for someone vulnerable to hype, their genuine emotional response is itself likely to be fundamentally socially based. That is, you would feel what other people feel. You would genuinely care about those things, but you would care about them without any real introspection to make sure things make sense or are 'fair' to the characters or the writer in the rational sense. Fairness is a much more internal measure than the groupthink (or really, groupfeel) that drives both online hype and witch hunts. I'd go out on a limb and say without the interest in enforcement of the social norms, these people would just be bored rather than outraged.

This explains why antis almost never read the text closely, or outright make up stuff that isn't there. There are people who are primarily critical *and* pay attention, but I hesitate to call those people 'antis'. As I said, it's not a simple dichotomy. I've had good friends and good online discussions with people who're both critical and analytical. In fact, many highly analytical people tend to critical of pretty much everything they love. The motivation here is different, but the effect is also. One of the main hallmarks of antis is really social justice ranting rather than rational critique that may include elements of social justice. One group is focused on studying the text, and the other just likes to sound off. And of course, there's the average online fan, whose mode of engagement is characterized primarily through shipping, crack and/or memes. Antis may have some interest in shipping, but it usually rings false, as they find any excuse to find an unlikely fanon ship and then slam the story for sinking it. Like, usually antis complain about the lack of central queer ships, but in The Raven Cycle, the one that existed wasn't enough. After all, it wasn't the random obscure ship they came up with.

Anyway, I feel somewhat better about this now, because I do take some of their points to heart and let it bother me even if I shouldn't. I'm vulnerable because I'm a mix of the analytical and squee-minded fan, and antis like to masquerade their rants as analysis, even though they actually care as little about analysis as they do about canon. The squeeing shippers can (and do) just dismiss or resent the antis without a care. I end up trying to see if their arguments make sense, and inevitably get irritated when they don't. It especially messes with my mind when they start on about shipping, as I said. Not like ships are supposed to make sense, per se, but they feel free to blast canon het ships for not being believable or developed properly, which is a fair mode of critique. However, the preferred slash ship is generally more nonsensical by far, but it's absolutely immune from critique because it's gay. And we all know being gay is all that matters, riiiiiight up until the point that it becomes canon. Then it's not good enough, by definition. Alas.

#pointless rambles #me myself and i #oh fandom #throne of glass #ya lit #raven cycle #reader response #shipping #fandom meta

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fang123456 · 3 years

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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John Minser & Tyler Gibb, “I Know a Guy Who Once Heard...”: Contemporary Legends and Narratives in Healthcare, J Med Humanit 1 (2019)

Abstract

Contemporary legends – also called urban legends – are common throughout our society. Distinct from mere rumors passed around social media, anecdotes of pseudoscientific discoveries, or medical misinformation, contemporary legends are important because, rather than merely transmitting false ideas or information about medicine, they model distinct and primarily antagonistic patterns of interaction between patients and providers via their narrative components. And, while legends that patients tell about their distrust for doctors are fairly well-studied, less attention has been paid to the kinds of legends that providers tell about patients. Many of these legends portray the likely patient as foolish, incompetent, and the ultimate source of his or her own medical condition. A partial solution to the challenges created by clashing, mutually belittling narratives can be found in the principles of narrative medicine, which strives to replace a received, stereotyped narrative with an individualized narrative constructed together by provider and patient. This paper will provide a definition of contemporary medical legends, analyze the unique narrative structure, develop a brief taxonomy of common themes, and describe how the structure and theme elucidate interesting and previously unexamined tensions within the provider-patient relationship.

Introduction

All healthcare providers can relate stories of the odd beliefs that they have encountered from patients, family members, and other healthcare professionals. From miracle cures to syndromes of dubious veracity, medical misinformation seems ubiquitous. Multiple studies have demonstrated a consistently high belief in so-called ‘medical myths’ across various populations (Corbie-Smith et al. 2002, 2460; Gansler et al. 2005, 656; Swami et al. 2012, 404-408). Commonly, healthcare providers respond to misinformation by assuming that there is a need for more education. The assumption is that if people have access to good information, then bad information will eventually wither on the vine. However, despite concerted educational efforts and improved communication skills, misinformation about medicine persists. Stories, whether accurate, fictitious, fanciful, or nonsensical, abound in the healthcare setting. Despite encountering stories throughout the day, healthcare providers rarely consider that they are the subject of their patient’s stories. But, of course, patients do tell stories about medicine to each other in conversation or through digital media (e.g., social media, Facebook, etc.), just as providers tell stories about patients to each other.

This paper draws on functionalist folklore and sociology studies, narrative psychology, and the principles of narrative medicine to propose a taxonomy of medical stories, what we refer to as contemporary legends, that influence beliefs about the provider-patient encounter (Victor 1993, 63-84; Charon 2006). Narrative is always about more than the story itself and is frequently a metaphor for other elements of life (Schiff 2012). Similarly, legends about the medical interaction are about more than the pure content of the narrative, and even those that upon first glance appear not to be about the medical interaction may nonetheless reveal deeper meanings about medicine’s role in the life of an individual, community, or society. Many commentators have noted that the telling of medical legends reflects and legitimizes distrust in medical authority, both in the healthcare system and in a particular provider (Russell et al. 2012, 40-47; Golden 2017). Some medical legends suggest that a medical encounter will lead to worse health outcomes or even death. Many legends impugn a physician’s competence, casting doubt on the entire medical profession or a physician’s ability to improve health. There are a number of reasons why these stories, both about patients and about providers, continue to circulate in communities. Some stories are satirical, while others are cautionary. This paper first takes the ubiquity of stories in the medical encounter as a foundation, then defines and proposes a framework for categorizing and understanding legends about the medical encounter, offers some analysis of the underlying meanings and purposes for which these stories are told, and finally discusses some approaches that may help to avoid recapitulating antagonistic narratives in actual patient-provider interaction.

Methods and approaches

Before detailing the taxonomy of medical legends, we must first clarify some terminology. Terminologically, “medical” and “legend: are both challenging, as is the classification of a legend as “contemporary” as opposed to an “urban” legend. Is a story about surgery performed by someone who is not a trained physician a “medical" legend? What about the deployment of a biological agent? Are stories about drug use, addiction, or mentally ill escaped convicts “medical contemporary legends”? Do half-remembered rumors of intentional AIDS transmissions qualify as “medical legends”? What about folk remedies and old-wives’ tales?

In searching for medical legends to include in our taxonomy, we needed to create some inclusion criteria. What constitutes a ‘legend’ or even ‘folklore’ has been the subject of intense scholarly debate (Ben-Amos 1971; Mullen 1972; Toelken 1979; Dègh 1991). Similarly, what constitutes ‘medicine’ has also been the subject of inquiry from science, technology, and society scholars (Illich 1975; Crawford 1980). In order to be inclusive, we have opted for broad definitions of both “medical" and “legend.” However, a few caveats are necessary to ensure that the label of “medicine” does not come to encompass all things even remotely related to health, medicines, well-being, or physical maladies. For our purposes, in order to be considered “medical,” the story must have at its heart an encounter with the healthcare system. Merely a medical diagnosis or injury is not sufficient to warrant inclusion in our search. For example, the classic tale, “The Hook,” includes a killer often described as “delusional” or “schizophrenic,” who has also suffered loss of a hand. While both a mental illness and a disability are salient medical details, the legend itself has little to do with the killer’s mental state or disabled status, nor does it involve a medical encounter. Although the story may reveal interesting cultural attitudes toward the mentally ill and disfigurement, it does not meet inclusion criteria.

In addition to a medical encounter, legends that include a physician actor whose role as a healthcare provider is important to the legend were included in our set. We have also included legends that mimic a medical interaction or which bring medicine out of its societally accepted clinical boundaries, following Bennett’s commentary on “AIDS aggressors” legends (2005). Legends about street drugs occupy a middle ground due to cultural ambivalence whether drug use should be classified as a medical issue or a criminal activity. Stories about “drug-crazed criminals,” in which the drug serves only as a convenient trope for the actor’s otherwise inexplicable behavior, have not been included here.

Once we clarify what we consider to be ‘medical,’ we must also make a distinction between a legend and other forms of folklore. Mullen’s commentary on rumor and legend and Toelken’s observations on conservation and dynamism are both important influences on this taxonomy (Mullen 1972; Toelken 1979). The boundary between rumor and legend is often porous, but typically the distinction is drawn between stories that have an identifiable narrative structure (legends) and stories that do not (rumors) (see Bascom 1965; Dègh 1991; Wyckoff 2000; DiFonzo and Bordia 2007; Oring 2008). Folk medicine, a field of study in its own right, shares more characteristics with rumor than with legend (Briggs 2012). The line between rumors and legends is imprecise—a rumor can easily become a legend as narrative details accrue or vice versa as the narrative elements are stripped away from legends over time (Mullen 1972).

In this study, we focus on ‘legends’ due to their narrative power to transmit values, to make sense of previous experiences, and to predict future encounters, while simultaneously typifying in-group identity and boundaries (Hevern 2008). Also, the medical legend must be plausible—that is to say that it is not unreasonable to believe that it did in fact occur at some point. Indeed, stories that did in some recognizable form occur but which have grown beyond their specific, defined origins still qualify as legend, as do stories which began as fiction but which subsequently happened in actual fact due to conscious or unconscious scripting. This is an important distinction between legends and myths, folk remedies, and rumors. Rumors are less able to transmit in-group identity or values; their lack of narrative structure means they instead reinforce existing beliefs, or their value transmission relies on a shared context that allows for implicit shared-value acknowledgment (Mullen 1972). This is not to imply rumors are unimportant. They appear regularly in the medical encounter in the form of overblown medical warnings and promises of miracle cures.

Some debate exists surrounding the term “contemporary” as a classification of legends, usually against the perhaps more familiar term “urban legend” but also as opposed to traditional legends (Williams 1982; Doyle and Knight 2005). We follow the general consensus among folklorists in naming as contemporary legends those legends that are modern, plausible, and non-supernatural. There need be nothing “urban” about a contemporary legend though most contemporary legends have their origins in the increasing urbanization and alienation of modern society. Furthermore, the roots of a contemporary legend may rest in ancient times or traditional sources but should be included if the story is still being circulated as plausible and actively occurring. Legends that include an element of the supernatural are excluded.

The terms “provider” and “patient” as used herein also deserve some scrutiny. The term “provider” has been criticized as reductive, confusingly non-specific, corporatizing, and insulting to physicians whose qualifications and skills are downplayed by its use (Conti 2008; Ofri 2011). The term Bpatient^ has also been contested as reductive, etymologically misleading, and indicative of an outdated social role (Neuberger 1999; Deber et al. 2005). Both terms have been selected for this paper specifically for their ability to include many individuals of disparate roles and responsibilities in a single term: legends are adaptable but frequently non-specific, and whether, for example, a care provider who greedily defrauds a patient is a physician or a nurse practitioner is largely immaterial within the functions of the legend. This is not to say that patient legends do not distinguish among physicians, nurses, medical assistants, and other care providers, only that it does not matter which title the legendary subject actually has if they are playing the role of the healthcare system representative in the legend itself. Based on our sample, legends told by patients are most often about physicians, but they are nearly as often about other healthcare professionals who represent and act within the healthcare system. Nurses are frequently associated with the patient perspective rather than the provider perspective in medical legends, but physicians are almost universally regarded as system representatives. With regard to the use of the term “patient,” legends about those seeking care do not depend on whether the relationship should more accurately be termed a client relationship – the subjects of these legends are acting as care recipients, or patients, for the purposes of the tale.

Finally, we must briefly discuss the sources of the legends examined in this project. Over 450 distinct published records of legends, rumors, and other kinds of medical misinformation were gathered from online and physical media sources, including secondary literature published on the topic of contemporary legends. Data is recorded in a supplementary appendix. All included medical legends come from published sources, which, as Wyckoff notes, comes with the inherent risk of unintentionally dissociating the legend from the community, thus erasing contingent meanings and local functions (1993, 19-25). This study notes some narrative variations, but typically uses published and thus documented forms of the examined legends (Toelken 1979). The telling of legends is dynamic, and intended meanings can vary from teller to teller and between audiences. Nevertheless, stable versions of contemporary legends are still valuable to examine, due to the fact that the preserved narrative continues to transmit values, warnings, and the consequences of transgression, and would not survive if tellers and audiences did not find it plausible. While some meanings will be lost by not examining micronarratives and individual, verbal texts, the study of archetypal legends still has much to offer.

Narratives in medical folklore

Narrative folklore like contemporary legend is particularly powerful because of the unique characteristics of narrative. Hevern argues that narratives have four recognized social and psychological goals: “1) construing the meaning of ongoing experience, 2) predicting how intentional actors will act in the future, 3) negotiating social worlds, and 4) establishing personal identity for themselves and others” (2008). For those who transmit medical narratives, they are “a mode of knowledge emerging from action” or “knowledge activated through the word in time” (Nicolaisen 1982). Schiff describes narrative as “an expressive action, unfolding in space” and a “making-present” (2012). Oring, too, notes “there is experimental evidence that shows that information conveyed in a narrative is better remembered, more persuasive, and engenders greater belief than statistical information communicated on the same topic” (2008). Thus, a key feature of narrative is the telling of a subjective experience with some degree of authority, transforming a unique experience by one person into an informational unit that can be further transmitted, investigated, or used to make sense of both the past and the future. Narratives, and medical narratives in particular, are important to critically examine because they both provide a “re-configuring” with which to understand past interactions and because they provide a cognitive map or model with which to navigate future interactions (Schiff 2012). They transmit what kind of interaction one should expect and provide insight into the motivations of the other actors in the encounter. This is particularly useful for patients who are uncomfortable or inexperienced with the intimidating healthcare system or providers who enjoy a lofty societal status.

Folkloric narratives also provide members of an in-group with models of acceptable behavior and outline likely consequences of transgressing community norms (Wyckoff 1993, 18-19; Hevern 2008). Patients and providers are both recognizable folk groups that transmit folklore within the in-group (Dingwall 1977, 372-376; Dundes 2007). Healthcare providers share many common characteristics (e.g., similar training and education, views about scientific knowledge) and enjoy a general acceptance of professional ethical standards. The common goals of healthcare providers are the healing of the patient, the advancement of the knowledge of medicine, the palliation of pain, and the preservation of life. Providers are distinct from the lay population by virtue of their training, their mission, and the privilege that society grants them to intervene in others’ bodily reality, as well as by their ethos of systematic inquiry. Patients, on the other hand, do not typically share a single ideology or world view. Patients may be considered an identifiable in-group or folkloric community because of their disempowered status and their need to seek care from a provider. Patients are distinct from the general population by virtue of their health status and are distinct from healthcare providers in that they are obliged to ask for and receive medical intervention (Sontag 1990). Further, patients constitute an in-group because they share the legitimate expectation of appropriate, respectful care from the provider.

That the goals of providers and those of patients overlap but do not exactly align creates space for uncertainty and anxiety. Research shows that folklore, including legends, is likely to promulgate in situations of anxiety and uncertainty and in socially-inflected situations (Anthony 1973, 91-98; Wyckoff 1993, 25-27; Guerin and Miyazaki 2006; Stubbersfield et al. 2015). To most patients, the medical interaction is an inherently uncertain one. However, there is significant anxiety and uncertainty on the side of the provider as well. In a medical interaction, the patient is inherently vulnerable – the entire premise of the medical encounter relies on a vulnerable and disempowered patient’s willingness to seek the skills and competence of a provider. Even in the best scenarios, despite patients playing their role of disempowered supplicants, patients are not guaranteed a happy outcome from the encounter. The vulnerable patient runs the risk of harm due to provider malfeasance, negligence, or incompetence, and also runs the risk of an intervention that unsettles the patient’s sense of morality or propriety. To the provider, the patient interaction represents a professional risk: a patient who cannot or will not follow directions could represent an embarrassment to the provider. A criminal patient – a drug seeker or sophisticated thief – could do harm to the provider’s professional reputation, as could a particularly litigious patient.

The kinds of folkloric medical narrative shared primarily among patients about providers differs considerably from those shared among providers about patients. Both set of legends reflect the anxieties and risks of the in-group. This also explains the concern that emotional selection can significantly outweigh informational selection in legendary transmission (Guerin and Miyazaki 2006). As described by Swann and colleagues, identity fusion with a group and identification of personal values with group values means that affective response is likely to be heightened when confronting stories that model a challenge to or transgression of group values (2012). Information plays a large role in activating emotion. In fact, the kinds of folkloric narratives shared by institutional actors like attending physicians, medical educators, and fellow physicians contribute to patterns of thought that make them singularly ill-equipped to confront medical misinformation in an effective way because rather than addressing the anxieties that mistaken patients hold, the tellers of institutional legends unintentionally reinforce them.

Towards a taxonomy

Alan Dundes, drawing on the work of folklorist Vladimir Propp, proposed a functionalist approach to narrative folklore in which story elements that serve a similar purpose be grouped together for study. He called the larger functionalist groupings ‘motifemes,’ and the individual narrative manifestations ‘allomotifs’ (Dundes 1962). He gives the example of two folktales, one in which a sorcerer gives the hero a magical boat that ferries him where he wishes to go, and another in which a king gives the hero a magical ring that transports him wherever he wishes. Both allomotifs have the same narrative operation– an authority figure gifts the power of easy travel to a hero. While Dundes was referring to a function within a story, his idea of functional grouping can be extended to social and psychological functions of a narrative within a group, though this should be done with some caution (Wyckoff 1993, 24). Though it may overreach to attempt to use a text to describe an individual’s relationship to a narrative, what is clearer is how certain classes of legend serve group goals and act as moral instruction from the perspective of a particular ideology – Wyckoff states that “the legend seems, instead, to return tellers and listeners to the limits already privileged within the legend’s text rather than calling for an embracing of the other and his/her standards...while a legend text may reveal both sides of the interstitial conflict – both the established order and the challenge to it – any given performance (the core narrative and the commentary surrounding it) seeks to affirm only one stance (even if that stance is equivocation) rather than combine the elements of the old and the (potentially) new orders into a single, more broadly-defined order.”

It is therefore unsurprising that collected legends about the medical interaction largely fall into one of two categories – those that serve to advance patient values and reflect the fears of the patient population and those that serve to advance the values of the healthcare provider and reflect their priorities and anxieties.

Patient-oriented legends

There are two different but mutually reinforcing risks for the patient during the patient-provider interaction; one is a physical threat, the other is existential. In a negative encounter, a provider may cause physical harm to the patient either through malice, incompetence, negligence, or apathy. On the other hand, a provider may deliver information that challenges the patient’s worldview, sense of wellbeing, or personal illness narrative (Kleinman 1989; Frank 2013).

From a narratological perspective, the risk to physical health and the risk to the patient’s illness narrative are virtually inseparable. A biological decline in health, especially a traumatic or debilitating one, is the archetypal event that prompts patients to revise their illness narratives (Crossley 2002). The risk is especially acute if the cause of the worsening of the patients’ health and the attendant revision of their illness narrative, may be attributed to a provider’s actions. Similarly, a major negative change in one’s illness narrative will be experienced as if it were a biological decline, even if the biological pathology precedes the illness narrative revision, or, in some cases, doesn’t exist at all. In terms of narrative reasoning, the risks co-exist, even in stories that would otherwise seem to exhibit just one of these risks. One common medical legend, that of the organ thieves, may seem on its face to model merely a malicious intervention, but metaphorically, the victim of the organ thieves must also adjust his own personal narrative: he has passed through the gateway from self-identified health to the twilight kingdom of chronic illness—dialysis, anti-rejection drugs, and reduced function (Brunvand 2002; Bennett 2005). The horror of this legend is not merely in what was physically removed from the patient’s body but also in what was symbolically stolen. Similarly, legends that would seem to focus on informational trauma or misuse – like the recurring legend that the APA condones pedophilia – may not affect an individual’s health but are instead representative of social ill health: the physicians in the legend who define away moral categories or delegitimize experiences contribute to ill health overall, a disease of society (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017).

Besides, narratives usually have more than one simultaneous function. If the majority of patient-oriented legends can be expected to communicate the fundamental fears of lost health and negative illness narrative, then we should also expect individual stories to do something more specific. From folklore studies, we expect the patient’s experience to be validated, probably at the expense of the out-group provider, and we also expect to see unlikely situations that, in a poignant or memorable way, reflect an underlying plausible fear (Wyckoff 1993). Furthermore, Gary Allen Fine suggests that psychological distance and “alienation” caused by national homogenization and the breakdown of small, local communities of care in favor of larger amalgamated systems “promotes ‘horror’ stories which focus on the irresponsibility of these extra-community agencies” (Fine 1980). The specific legends that a patient finds plausible can give listeners a powerful window into the patient’s individual fears, hopes, and self-stories.

In his investigation of legal legend, Marc Galanter called the mismatch between widespread beliefs and verifiable data Ba contest among competing “knowledges” (1998). The divide between the kinds of knowledge produced by differing epistemological approaches can be seen in medical legend as well. Patient narratives typically reflect what Geertz calls the “commonsense perspective,” a pragmatic approach to problems defined by givenness and a desire to change only what can obviously be changed (1973). This point of view is also defined by its reliance on narrative reasoning, which focuses on an emplotted logic of cause-and-effect. Conversely, the narratives directed at physicians, nearly without exception, rein- force Geertz’s “scientific perspective.” It is science’s tendency to think categorically, without regard for pragmatism, that forms the principle source of threat and conflict, both in Geertz’s depiction and in contemporary legend narratives.

The specific fears communicated by patient-oriented legends all connect in some way to this clash between the commonsensical and the scientific. As well as dealing with overarching threats to health and narrative, patient-oriented legends fall into three types: 1) those that describe the anxiety that the provider will use the patient’s body as a source of profit, 2) those that reflect the fear that the provider’s claim to knowledge is unfounded, and 3) those that identify the provider as inappropriately assuming authority to which they are not entitled.

Patient-oriented legends: greed

One of the most well-known and frequently studied contemporary legends, that of the organ thief, is a medical legend that models a dark version of the provider-patient relationship (Campion-Vincent 2002; Bennett 2005). There are many variants of this tale, but central to the plot is the victim’s sudden victimization by a medically-trained thief who steals the victim’s organs (usually kidneys) to sell, leaving only an apologetic note. Narratively very different, but transmitting the same model of interaction, are tales of unnecessary surgeries and procedures. Most of these stories are invasive or embarrassing. Other narratives enacting the same social function include the detail that doctors are capable of curing conditions that only receive management or palliative care but fail to use the cure so that a potential source of revenue will not be cut off. Often, these legends are attributed to specific companies or universities or adhere to outsider physicians who rebel against the medical authority. Reversing the dynamic but preserving the function is a story that claims that scientists developed margarine to fatten cattle but released it for human consumption in order to make money (Hoax-Slayer Archive 2017). Similar are legends that the CDC owns patents for Ebola and legends that state that you can trade in cigarette packaging for free time in an iron lung (Campion-Vincent 2002; Brunvand 2014; Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017).

In 2002, one study found that over 60 % of survey respondents believed that it was very likely, likely, or unsure of the chance that doctors would use “you or someone like you” as a nonconsenting test subject (Corbie-Smith et al. 2002). More specifically in relation to legendry, in 2005, 27% of survey respondents reported believing that a cure for cancer exists and is deliberately being withheld (Gansler et al. 2005). These legends all suggest, and make plausible via differently structured but functionally similar narratives, that doctors use patients’ bodies as a source of profit – and that patients should be prepared to deal with such a motivated physician lest they suffer the gruesome consequences. There is a misalignment of the patient goal of compassionate care and the perceived provider goal of profit that drives legends of this type.

These narratives are supported by a large number of rumors and legends that suggest that physicians either manufacture disease or hide medical risks in order to drum up business. Anti-vaccine groups are fertile ground for legends of this type as are religious communities: a common version of this legend suggests that measles kills far fewer patients than the measles vaccine (but, it’s implied, is continued to be sold for profiteering) (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). A similar rumor, which also supports the narrative that physicians appropriate undeserved moral authority (see below), claims that Gardasil is specifically dangerous and regularly poisons young girls but continues to be prescribed (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). While both of these are frequently encountered as relatively narrative-free rumor, the supporting narrative of greed and persecution required to make sense of them is heavily implied or else already known by the in-group among whom the rumor circulates.

Patient-oriented legends: ignorance and missing the obvious

Another major type of interaction narrative legend is driven by the fear that care providers, despite years of training and access to vast healthcare resources, are on some level just making up all their expertise, revealing concerns both with Geertz’s ‘scientific perspective’ and with Foucault’s ‘medical gaze’ (Geertz 1973; Foucault 2003). In this view, the costs of medicine, including dehumanization and experimentation, do not purchase the knowledge that they purport to. Expressive of the themes of this type is the following legend originating in South Africa and circulating via internet as a first-hand source:

“For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a dead patient in the same bed every Friday morning,” a spokeswoman for the Pelonomi Hospital (Free State, South Africa) told reporters. There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths, and extensive checks on the air conditioning system, and a search for possible bacterial infection, failed to reveal any clues.

However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of those deaths. It seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the plug that powered the patient’s life-support system, plug her floor polisher into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave, unaware that the patient was now dead. She could not, after all, hear the screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher. (Brunvand 2014)

That the institutional actors – the care providers – thought to investigate the air conditioners and nosocomial infections but failed to investigate staff interference and interruption of life support reveals the tension between the ‘common-sense perspective,” here and elsewhere associated with the pragmatic goals of the patient, and the “scientific perspective” of the providers and the healthcare system. That investigation was not undertaken until multiple patients had died over multiple weeks reveals patients’ fear that their narrative way of knowing is unvalued – that they, as individuals, are unimportant under the dehumanizing glare of the scientific, categorical way of knowing. Furthermore, this legend shows providers doing violence to the dominant narrative of intensive care: that highly trained, expert caregivers are supposed to watch carefully over those most vulnerable patients. In this legend type, the scientific perspective misses obvious and important elements of care, revealing itself to be ideologically bankrupt and underequipped to pursue its central goals and obligations.

Legends of the failure of scientific ideology target both the system and the practitioner: the entire medical interaction, it seems, is dehumanizing, which opens the door for human-level failing. Examples of this type include helpless patients left in elevators due to the providers’ belief that they are under the care of someone else and legends of incredible escalation of invasiveness due to medical mistakes (Brunvand 2002, 136; Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). Another in the same tradition concerns a hospital that holds a press release touting the benefits of a new machine it has purchased, only to later find that the machine has never worked (Dale 1984). One striking legend, based on a famous experiment, tells of sane people (sometimes mistakenly, sometimes to prove a point) who are institutionalized and who, despite acting perfectly sane, nevertheless cannot convince their caregivers of their sanity – an example involves bus drivers dropping off busloads of healthy people at mental hospitals who are then institutionalized as intake, unable to protest their sanity due to their discounted testimonial status as merely the “insane” (Rosenhan 1973, 250-258; Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). Occasionally, as in legends of children (it is nearly always children) being pronounced dead prematurely, the common-sense perspective ultimately wins out when the parents intervene and rescue their child from being sorted into the category of the dead (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). Less sanguine are stories of husbands who believe their wives to have been mistakenly buried alive, which an exhumation subsequently proves true (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). In all cases, the providers cannot see the obvious because of their scientifically trained viewpoint, while patients, with their common-sensical concern for their own bodies and autonomy, are validated.

In many cases, these legends pull double duty, as well – some tellings, as with variants of the South African ‘haunted bed’ legend, reveal mistrust of minorities and the working class and thus align the goals of the patient population with the goals of the white majority and the middle class. Others target the VA hospital system specifically, a way to vent distrust of the depersonalizing elements of the categorical approach on which large-scale systems are built (Brunvand 2014).

Patient-oriented legends: authority misappropriation

At first glance, this final category of patient-oriented legend would seem populated with stories that have the least in common with one another. Stories of laws passed to prevent surgeries for the elderly coexist here with stories of HIV-infected needles left in restaurant ball pits where children will be stuck with them (see Brunvand 2002; Bennett 2005; Brunvand 2014; Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). The narrative core of each, though, is the way that the medical provider or the actor identified with medicine inappropriately intervenes in a part of an innocent patient’s life. Bennett argues that the horror of the AIDS Aggressor legend–a class of legends involving HIV-laden needles hidden in gas pumps, theater seats, ball pits, toilet seats, and other public places – lies in its ability to move medicine from compartmentalized settings to the patient’s everyday life, shattering a comforting illusion of safety and control; potential patients, in her words, “no longer know where the danger lies” (Bennett 2005). This legend also includes a distinct removal of choice from the patient-figure: the AIDS aggressor intervenes in the patient’s body without permission and harms instead of heals.

All authority misappropriation legends include an element of this removal of choice or inappropriate intervention though details vary. Examples exist of legends that reflect a fear of physicians’ intervention in patients’ moral, spiritual, legal, and political lives, while others have the physician claim authority over the patient’s illness experience. While this last might seem an odd choice for legends, in Kleinman’s terminology, “illness” is the patient’s experience – the pains, the aches, the obstacles to daily living – while “disease” is the biomedical entity that the physician seeks to combat. The gap between these definitions is the site of much anxiety, negotiation, and possible conflict and a rich ground for the growth of legend. An important version of this legend type is the story of a healthcare provider who seeks to categorize a disease as psychosomatic, a conclusion that the patient in the story vigorously contests, usually with a vindication as an ending (Lian and Grue 2017).

Like in the previous class of legends, dehumanization and science’s claim over what commonsensically seems to be true play a prominent role. In these legends, though, medical science’s systematic approach is less an approach to knowledge production and more a method for unshackling its practitioners from conventional morality or leading them to conclusions and interventions that the patient cannot accept. Many of these legends deal with sexuality and childbirth, both areas deeply invested with meaning-making, and many have religious overtones that throw the portrayal of scientific physicians into sharp relief. Indeed, the problem seems to lie in science’s unpleasant tendency to disrupt the narrative-based meaning-making of the individual patient. One of these legends, submitted to an online legend repository by email, follows:

In 2007, a nurse goes into the basement of a hospital and discovers a baby in a sink. She saves the baby and gets fired. Supposedly the hospital policy was any unwanted babies that were born were placed in the basement sink until they died. The nurse is brought up on charges and she, in turn, tries to go before congress and pass a new law that “no people are allowed to die in sinks" That being the name and title of the law she tried to have passed. She felt this was happening all over the United States and no one was doing anything about it. (Urban Legends Online 2017, reported by anonymous email)

There are several important elements to this legend, chief of which is the identification of scientific authority with political authoritarianism and moral presumption. Just as patients demand to be acknowledged as experts in illness experience, so too do they resist giving up moral authority to a system that appears to them to be usurping it. Immoral providers often get away scot-free in these legends, usually because they are portrayed as being in collusion with other powers-that-be though sometimes they are held accountable in ironic or narratively satisfying ways. Other legends which model an amoral and powerful provider include those of OB/GYN physicians strangling live-birth babies because they arrive too late to perform a standard pregnancy termination, legends that assert that the APA has condoned or defended pedophilia, and claims that controversial medications (usually birth control or Gardasil) are known to be deadly but nevertheless aggressively pushed by physicians (Brunvand 2002; Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). Politically-oriented legends include the claim that it’s illegal to be fat in Japan or fears that Obamacare included provisions that would prevent interventions for the elderly (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). Despite the lack of a physician at fault, the Bullet Baby legend, in which a young woman standing near a battle or crime scene is impregnated by a bullet that has passed through the testicle of the intended victim and into her body, also belongs here due to its themes of sudden body colonization and unwilling introduction into the medical sphere: the physician is responsible for shattering the patients’ personal narrative multiple times throughout the legend though he is not at fault for the unexpected pregnancy (Brunvand 2014). All of these legends include a strong theme of intervention into the internal lives of patients, ultimately doing violence to dominant patient narratives, and many also include inappropriate use of the physician’s gatekeeper function, either pushing patients who believe themselves to be healthy into the category of the ill or pushing behavior seen by commonsensical patients as disordered into the category of health.

Patient-oriented legends: summary

All three of these types of legends represent the agency of what Charon calls “the post-modern patient,” a patient who insists upon autonomy and shared decision-making in contrast to the “modernist” patient who willingly subjects themselves to the medical project (Charon 2006). The post-modern patient identifies specific vulnerabilities and combats them through legend repetition and the deployment of “counter-power” (Lian and Grue 2017). In Wyckoff’s work on legend-telling-as-ritual, she identifies contexts in which legend-telling works as a stand-in for action and a signal of good faith to other members of the community (Wyckoff 1993, 8). In short, she argues, legend telling functions as a safe action, indicating community solidarity while absolving the teller of taking further action at possible risk to themselves. All of these legend types function as community rituals that represent patients insisting upon autonomy while avoiding the risk of publicly confronting an expert care provider (as a malpractice suit would) or completely rejecting the authority of medicine (by, for example, refusing to consent to care). It is quite telling that despite the large number of patient-oriented legends that defend patients’ rights to be experts on their own illnesses, almost never do legends claim disease expertise for patients – though such discourses are starting to emerge in dedicated medical skeptic spaces, like anti-vaccine groups. Nevertheless, broadly encountered and conserved legends that model physician error do not posit an alternative model of, for example, disease transmission or antibiotic prescription. The physician’s core role remains legitimate even when legends draw attention to the human failings of providers (see Table 1).

Provider-oriented legends

The risks posed to a provider by a patient are in a different class – rather than being threatened bodily by the interaction, it is the provider’s reputation and self-image as a competent, well-trained professional with an appropriate approach to medical care that is at risk in most provider-patient interactions. Negative outcomes, or those outcomes perceived as negative, pose the greatest risk to providers, and indeed, one can see in these anxieties a clouded mirror of patient anxieties: the provider, it seems, may also harbor some doubts about the efficacy of her own training and ability, perhaps driven by broad cultural lionizing of the ideal heroic healer. More often, though, in legend the risks posed to the provider are effected through the person of the patient: medical care fails not through its inherent limitations or due to provider failure but because the patient is unable to understand simple directions or follow medical orders. Injuries proliferate not because of mistakes but because patients are endlessly authoring their own destruction. Provider reputations are at risk because patients are criminal and grasping, not because some provider reputations deserve to suffer. Just as the vast majority of patient-oriented legends come back to health (narrative) risks, so too do the vast majority of provider-oriented legends come back to the risks posed by the person of the patient.

Table 1. Themes in patient-oriented legends

Because provider-oriented legends must, in the face of the kind of anxieties they model, accomplish the dual goals of reinforcing the provider’s trained or ideological approach and discredit oppositional activity from the patient, they must be categorized differently from patient-oriented legends. Because nearly all patients have similar, mostly non-ideological goals, the values that are transmitted are more general and less methodological than those in provider-oriented legends. That providers come out of interactions, in much of their in-group folklore, looking clever, wise, and full of discernment is not surprising, since it is these traits that define the culturally ideal provider.

Two kinds of dangerous patient emerge across many provider-oriented tales: the incompetent and the malicious. A third type of provider-oriented legend also emerges – that which includes an absent or inactive patient who allows healing to happen without interference and which can therefore foreground validation of the provider’s training and shared values of the profession.

Provider-oriented legends: the incompetent patient

Many, many variations exist of the amusing or ridiculous injury. In almost all of these, the patient is the cause of his or her own plight. The famous “gerbil” legend, in which a patient’s rectum must be reconstructed following the introduction of a live rodent to that cavity, belongs to this class, as do stories of patients mistaking their dangerous items for other household objects and inflicting mortal wounds on themselves in their confusion – variants all exist in which a handgun is confused for an inhaler or a phone and in which a hot iron is confused for a phone (Brunvand 2014).

These stories cast patients’ foolishness as the ultimate source of their own pain, functionally reducing the provider’s responsibility for negative outcomes and providing an explanatory script for injuries and illnesses seen in daily clinical care. In a classic example of Bateson’s ‘double bind,’ these exemplar patients are seen as both responsible for their own suffering and unable to care for themselves, and they are asked both to accept blame and to divest responsibility (Bateson et al. 1972, 210- 211). Patients, these tales communicate, are working against their own best interests. These legends are economical in that they also preserve a kind of benevolent paternalist approach to medicine, both mitigating a patient-borne risk to provider reputation and self-image and maintaining shared, if contested, provider values of paternalistic care. They also work as jokes, which implicitly transmits provider values – in order to see another’s suffering as a joke, you must be able to separate the person suffering and the comedy of his condition, a cognitive task very much associated with traditional medical care and the medical gaze. Who laughs and who does not helps a social group to sort potential members into the in-group and the out- group (Smith 2009). Other versions of the ‘incompetent-patient’ variety include the country woman who uses a potato as a pessary until it sprouts inside her, the patient super-glued or painted onto a toilet seat, and the man who attempted, with disastrous results, to masturbate with a belt sander (Brunvand 2014; Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017).

Provider-oriented legends: the deceptive patient

Patients who present to the provider with ulterior motives represent a major threat to provider security, reputation, and self-image. Curiously, there are few legendary stories of physically hostile patients though these stories do exist in non-conserved form as inter-provider gossip. Whether outright criminal or merely looking to use the physician’s status and authority to benefit them- selves, patients who enter the medical dyad with hidden motives are prolific sources of legend.

The criminal patient represents a threat to the legitimate authority of the physician. By transgressing legally as well as medically, they stand in as a representative for rebellious patients who might dishonor a doctor by association. The deceptive or criminal patient who poses a threat to the provider’s reputation frequently takes one of two forms. In one case, the medical interaction is ongoing when the patient takes an antagonistic action, as in the case of the following legend, in which the interaction reveals the patient to be primarily criminal, but also incompetent:

In another memorable case... a doctor received a phone call from a pharmacist trying to confirm a suspicious prescription for morphine.

The doctor said, “Well, I’m a pediatrician. I don’t prescribe morphine. How did you know it was a fake?”

And the pharmacist said, “It’s for M-O-F-E-E-N, and it says: One kilo. Use as needed.” (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017)

In other deceptive-patient legends, the medical interaction is the source of the hostility: these include what are typically understood to be legal, not medical, legends, in which the patient sues the provider on a specious malpractice claim. Galanter notes: “The jaundiced view [that is, the belief that the legal system is in the throes of a major wave of individuals winning high-dollar cases against institutions on frivolous grounds] is very much the view of ‘top people,’ including politicians, media people, businesses people, and medical people” (Galanter 1998, 720). He cites as a key example the story of a psychic who was awarded nearly a million dollars by a jury after claiming that a CAT scan robbed her of her psychic powers. Though the decision was immediately set aside, the story continues to circulate as emblematic of the kind of suit providers should fear from their patients, especially since the interaction itself seemed to have been routine – it was only after the fact that the provider or health system was targeted.

Other examples include the legend that IBM offered to solve healthcare fraud for free, a legend that circulates with enormous dollar sums speculated to be lost to fraud (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). While this legend operates mainly at the political level, it also transmits the value that patients are constantly seeking to defraud providers.

Provider-oriented legends: “ideal” patients

The final category of provider-oriented legends concerns idealized or elided interactions. In these narratives, there is an element of wish fulfillment: the provider can be clever and wise without running the risk of l’esprit d’escalier inherent in face-to-face interaction. More importantly, in a mirror image of the patient-oriented fear of vulnerability, in these legends, healing happens precisely because the patient is unconscious and unable to interfere with the physician’s care decisions. One particularly telling legend speaks of a punk-rock female patient with green-dyed pubic hair and a tattoo that reads, “Keep off the grass.” The surgeon, required to shave all patient body hair, leaves a note: “Sorry, I had to mow the lawn” (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). In another, the patient is absent altogether: it is an explicitly provider- to-provider story of the removal of a “beautiful” bronchial blood clot (Urban Legends Reference Pages 2017). This story makes explicit the implied duty of an allopathic provider to separate the patient and the disorder and reminds providers to find beauty in the progression of disease, something that a patient would only in the most unusual of cases be able to do – and almost never in fatal cases.

The key to these legends are that providers are left alone to do their best work, and the unconsciousness of patients allows providers to work their craft. These legends are not overburdened with discussions of living wills or preferred patient outcomes: the provider, in the absence of the active patient, can work toward the pure goal of restoring health (see Table 2).

Narratives of trust and distrust

This taxonomy addresses the legends in their conserved form; muddying the waters are the contingent meanings that can emerge as audiences and storytellers adapt conserved forms for dynamic ends. Caldeira points us toward the concepts of “Esoteric B” and “Exoteric B,” defined as “what [a group] supposes others think of it” and “how it believes the other group feels it is perceived”: these reflexive categories are easily impacted by the receipt of legends not meant for the audience for which they are performed (Caldeira 2015). It is not unreasonable to imagine that a patient storyteller might repurpose a provider-oriented legend as a way of revealing to her audience “what doctors really think of us”– functionally, the audience may receive horror at the idea that wounds could be funny or disease beautiful. Similarly, the ignorance of a patient legend might be laughed at by providers who understand the workings of the hospital system and who see in the patient’s stories of mistreatment only an example of patient incompetence demonstrated by fools who think themselves wise. Research on the topic of rumors that challenge group values indicates that just such a recontextualization will typically take place; the usual move for tellers who are challenged to provide more evidence for their claims is to pivot from the position that the legend reflects “the truth” to the position that the legend reflects “a truth” with values that are still essentially sound (Boyes 1982).

Table 2. Themes in provider-oriented legends

Furthermore, trust research indicates that, in many cases, trust and distrust are not poles of a single continuum but rather, two independent sensibilities that wax and wane semi-independently from one another (Hall et al. 2001; Rose et al. 2004). A patient may distrust the health system but enjoy a comfortable relationship with her physician or trust nurses but distrust doctors.

To establish trust in a system that, via received narratives and potentially personal experience, a patient has come to distrust is therefore no simple task. Instead, a partial solution lies, as Charon suggests, in disruption. Received narratives are not easy to dislodge, but some research does suggest that a mutually respectful interaction can, at least, provide a competing model for how the patient-provider interaction can be experienced, and may increase trust in an individual provider even if distrust in a system is preserved (Hall et al. 2001; Charon 2006). And attention to a patient’s stories serves not only as a way for providers to situate their strategy for presenting information – true active listening itself shakes the foundations of the patient’s emotional walls when they expect a physician to be data-oriented.

Indeed, a provider who attempts to use scientific authority to correct misinformation runs the risk of further reinforcing one or more of the patient-oriented anxiety narratives. Wyckoff notes that, when narrative functions as legend, hewing to expected roles functions as participation in the ritual (Wyckoff 1993, 28-29). A physician who attempts to use systematic investigation to counter a patient narrative is operating according to the cognitive template or script supplied by legendry, and is more likely to reinforce an attitude of distrust.

A helpful question here might be: what does a patient who believes her most emotionally affective legends to be plausible also expect? A patient who expects to be profited from will expect quick turnaround in the clinic, little time to express needs and impressions, and confusing, expensive billing. A patient who expects the physician to be making up his expertise will probably expect not to understand the physician’s clinical reasoning or will oppose the reasoning more often in the situations they do at least partly understand. Furthermore, following Arthur Frank’s illness narrative models, restitution-oriented patients who believe incompetent-provider legends will likely expect their physician’s interventions to fail or come with unacceptable side effects, while more chaos-narrative-oriented patients won’t expect their physicians to be able to do much to restore order at all (Frank 2013). And patients who expect their physicians to claim unearned authority over illness experiences or moral decision-making will be more likely to challenge physician authority at every step. One can easily imagine the problems likely to emerge when a patient raised on falsely-authoritative- provider legends enters an interaction with a provider who has recently been swapping legends about patients who recover because they submit totally to their physician’s healing decisions!

Rita Charon speaks in Narrative Medicine of “an authentic intersubjective experience” in which the physician makes an effort to temporarily suspend narratives about the patient received from sources such as the medical chart, the physical, and patient stereotypes and legendry (Charon 2006). By doing so, the provider invites the patient not to see a body thief, a faceless representative of elitism, or a charlatan, but a subject – a person not dissimilar from the patient themselves. The provider’s vulnerability invites a vulnerability from the patient that will serve to build up trust, potentially displacing or at least existing alongside existing distrustful belief.

Charon reports an interaction with a patient who, following a mutually vulnerable discussion with her, openly weeps. He says: “No one ever let me do this before” (Charon 2006). Behaving in ways not typified through received narrative templates encourage moments of intersubjective breakthrough that hold the best hope for countering distrust – for both members of the care dyad.

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