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forevercloudnine · 3 years

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new 52 scarebat ship meme

(I had @heroes-etc give me more questions, but for scarebat this time, since we talk about it 24/7 but I never post about it. These are from this ship meme.)

4. Their favorite physical feature on each other?

There’s only one feature of Bruce’s appearance that’s scarier when he’s not wearing the batsuit, and that’s his creepy blue eyes. Especially the way Greg Capullo draws them where they’re sickly pale and have ridiculously constricted pupils.

So his eyes would definitely be in the running for Jonathan’s favorite feature, even if seeing them would require Bruce’s mask to be off, which is something New 52 Scarecrow explicitly avoids. Yes, that character trait only exists to justify why Batman’s identity is still secret after Scarecrow mind controls and subsequently institutionalizes him in “Gothtopia,” but I think it’s interesting so I’m going to pretend it’s not shoe-horned in there for meta reasons.

Actually having to see Bruce without the cowl on would definitely permanently break the illusion of Batman as a nightmarish inhuman bat demon, which I’m sure is a large part of the appeal for anyone as obsessed with fear as Jonathan Crane. But Bruce’s creepy eyes would be a serious consolation prize.

Bruce’s favorite of Jonathan’s physical features is rough, because Jonathan is famously not great re: physical features. I’m going to say his mouth, because a) that’s where the snark comes from, and b) the New 52 establishes that in one of their earlier encounters, Jonathan had sewn his own mouth shut, so it’s one of those things where a bad first impression turned positive later on leads to more fondness than if you’d made a good impression in the first place.

I just looked up the panel where he does it and I DID forget how incredibly gross his lips look here, which makes the fact that I have chosen it as Bruce’s feature seem really funny in retrospect. But I do think that seeing Jonathan’s mouth healed and unmutilated would be a reassuring reminder of how he’s stabilized since their first encounter, at least to the point that he isn’t hurting himself anymore. Also, Bruce buys him a lot of chapstick.

Bonus alternate answer that did not make it into the Google Doc:

9. How open are they with their feelings?

Bruce and Jonathan are both pretty competent deceivers in the New 52; Bruce always, Jonathan depending on how the writer is feeling (though you could argue that Bruce just has a stronger grip on reality, while Jonathan’s skill at obfuscation varies with how lucid he is).

...I was going to use Detective Comics #23.3 as an example of Jonathan being a good liar, but actually upon re-reading I’m realizing that only 1/4 rogues buy his attempt at manipulation. So maybe he’s considerably worse at hiding his intentions than he thinks he is. Regardless, he doesn’t ever attempt to disguise his obsession with Batman.

Whether or not he’d express romantic feelings or try to hide them is debatable. There’s no Masters of Fear equivalent in the New 52 establishing that he was ever mocked or punished for expressing romantic feelings for someone, though there is a flashback panel in his origin emphasizing that he was always lonely in this regard (and coincidentally doesn’t specify that his interest is in women, which is fun).

In Green Lanterns #17 he has some internal monologue about how fear is his romance and he needs Batman to feel it, but it is an INTERNAL monologue, so it’s not clear if this is something he would express to Bruce or keep to himself. Or if he’s even fully processed it himself, given how incredibly out of it he is in this comic. Most of his spoken lines are just kind of screaming incoherently. Bruce gets pretty snippy with a Green Lantern at the end of the issue for suggesting that Jonathan should be punished for his crimes as if he were in control of his actions.

Bruce is a similarly complicated answer, since for all his deceptions and shadowy mystery he pretty much wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to romance. It’s just that his heart doesn’t express or process emotions the same way as anyone around him, which can create conflict. His (seriously underrated) love interest during Scarecrow’s origin arc, Natalya, spent most of her time dating him thinking that he didn’t care about her for this reason. He was trying to express that he loved her, but he mostly did so through complimenting her skills, which she never took as serious declarations of affection because he wasn’t being straightforward and she was insecure.

Jonathan does not himself seem like someone who would be especially secure in the idea of another person having romantic feelings towards him, so I assume that while Bruce might THINK he’s being open with any romantic feelings he develops, he would in reality just be really confusing.

13. How do they react to being away from each other?

I actually think that in general, Jonathan is one of the few people who would have no issue dealing with Bruce’s tendency to unexpectedly go AWOL for long periods of time, given that he himself has a tendency to fixate on his work to the exclusion of everything else.

But New 52 Jonathan specifically probably has pretty serious abandonment issues due to his father putting him in “the pit” and dying before he could take him out, meaning that Jonathan was waiting for his dad to come back for him for God knows how long, until Jonathan Sr.’s employers finally sent the police to investigate.

So while in general I think he wouldn’t be very clingy, any impression that Bruce had died or otherwise wasn’t coming back for him would probably be incredibly triggering. If Bruce could assuage this reaction by occasionally sending updates that at least indicated he was still alive, then I doubt Jonathan would have any problems with his absence.

(@heroes-etc: bruce sending like a checkmark emoji once a day. jonathan hears his phone ping, looks at the screen, and goes hm. good. and doesnt respond.)

Bruce meanwhile has no problem ditching literally any love interest at any time if something crime-related comes up, unless he’s considering quitting the cowl for them (as Joker probably accurately fears will happen with Catwoman in Prelude to the Wedding). But I don’t think he’d stop being Batman for Scarecrow, nor would Jonathan ever want him to — he’s interested in Batman, not necessarily Bruce Wayne.

But even though Bruce wouldn’t have an emotional problem with distance, I think he would get similarly paranoid if they went too long without contact, though for different reasons than Jonathan. Unlike some other villains (*cough* Joker and Riddler), Scarecrow has machinations that don’t require getting Batman’s attention, so if he decided to continue with his less legal experiments, he would not feel compelled to get Bruce involved. While the “World’s Greatest Detective” would probably not have an issue keeping an eye on Jonathan while he’s in Gotham, he’s considerably less capable of that in space. And Jonathan is definitely a rogue he would be obsessed with keeping an eye on, even if he reformed.

Batman & Robin Eternal established that Dick’s first supervillain conflict AND first mission leaving the country was chasing Scarecrow across the world for an entire summer, which is kind of insane considering how early it was in Batman’s career. Like, he did not have an army of children to watch Gotham for him while he was gone. He had one child, and he took that child WITH him. He left Gotham undefended for months, JUST to catch Scarecrow. Sooo that in of itself implies he wouldn’t be great at keeping his distance.

15. Does their view of themselves differ from their partner’s view?

Well, Jonathan occasionally sees Bruce as a giant bat demon, so yes.

Outside of that very obvious differing view, Jonathan in general sees himself and the rest of the rogue gallery as more vital to Batman’s identity than Bruce considers them; the extent to which he’s right varies depending on your interpretation of Bruce’s character, but it’s definitely not something Bruce would ever consciously think or say.

This is related to something that’s definitely a misconception of his, though, which is that the majority of Batman’s job revolves around supervillains like him. In Kings of Fear, when Jonathan blackmails Bruce into letting him come on patrol with him (which is a whole thing in of itself), he’s shocked at how boring most of Batman’s work is. Which probably goes along hand in hand with sometimes seeing Bruce as an almost mythologically inhuman figure.

In his defense, it’s not like he has a lot of context for what the minutiae of Batman’s job is like. He’s either fighting Batman, hiding from Batman, or imprisoned by Batman in Arkham, a place where everyone else also spends all their time fighting or hiding from Batman. Which would really skew your perspective.

Interestingly, Bruce and Jonathan are both people who pride themselves on being extremely self-aware. Both of them probably inaccurately. You can rant about how you have a perfect understanding of your troubled mental state all day long, but if you’re still dressing up like a monster at night to indulge the power fantasies you created as a traumatized child by scaring the hell out of people, there’s probably a level of self-realization you haven’t gotten to yet.

Bruce however is at least self-aware enough to regularly be able to analyze his way out of fear toxin induced hallucinations, which Jonathan is unable to do — when he’s not depicted as having become immune to his fear toxin due to overexposure (as he is in Green Lanterns #17), he can be defeated with the same formulas that Batman regularly manages to resist (like his honestly embarrassing breakdown in Nightwing #50).

Which ties into the difference between how he sees himself and how Bruce sees him: Jonathan obviously visualizes himself as a “master” of fear. He actually has the same internal monologue about fear and trauma that Bruce does in Batman: The Dark Knight #13: “Make it your own... run to what you fear... stare it in the eye... until it whimpers and backs down.” But Bruce doesn’t see Scarecrow as conquering his fear; he sees him as addicted to it, to the point of his own detriment.

Which is interesting, because Jonathan clearly sees his Scarecrow persona as a way to regain control after being victimized by his father’s fear experiments throughout his childhood. I guess Bruce’s perspective would be that Jonathan’s father instead got him addicted to fear as a child, so his attempts at agency as Scarecrow are just a) reliving his trauma over and over and b) compulsively inflicting his own trauma on others. There’s probably some truth to that, even if overall it’s probably an oversimplification (and coincidentally pretty much EXACTLY what Riddler argues Bruce is doing by “funding” Batman in Batman Annual #4, so there’s that).

20. Did either person change at all, to be with their partner?

The obvious answer here is yes, because Jonathan is a supervillain with no regard for human life while Bruce is a superhero who has dedicated his life to protecting people. So presumably one or both of them would have to make serious compromises to be together. HOWEVER. Scarecrow’s primary motivation is to research, understand and inflict fear, while Batman’s modus operandi is making his enemies afraid of him. So despite their contradiction in morals, they’re uniquely positioned to advance each other’s goals, were they to ever join forces.

Bruce never has a problem using fear toxin on Scarecrow, presumably partially out of an “eye for an eye” sense of poetic justice, but also because Batman is practical and it’s a nonlethal weapon that’s always available to him while fighting Scarecrow. If he could have fear toxin customized for his own use, it’s hard to imagine him being unwilling to use it. In Gothtopia he actually advocates for using what’s leftover from Crane’s new formula on all the inmates at Arkham, which seems about as insanely morally ambiguous as it gets. Arguably, putting fear toxin in his smoke bombs would be considerably less wrong than drugging mental patients out of their mind when they’re supposed to be receiving therapy (this is also the issue where he illegally releases Poison Ivy because she did him a favor, which is both morally questionable and relevant to the current topic).

Jonathan obviously already thinks Batman is the most interesting possible case study in fear; it’s why he keeps coming back to Bruce and Gotham despite being one of the more independent villains in Batman’s rogue gallery in the New 52. So though he would have to give up actively kidnapping people (which would be a huge sacrifice, I’m sure), teaming up with Bruce would give him unrestricted access to his favorite test subject. Unfortunately, it seems very possible that he would fall back to old tricks if he ever felt that he’d gotten everything he could out of a partnership with Bruce. Fortunately, that would probably take a VERY long time.

#scarebat #jonathan crane #scarecrow #bruce wayne #batman #ship meme #every day i think about the parallels between bruce and jonathan's childhoods that were set up by their new 52 origins #well. not every day #pretty goddamn regularly #i used to absolutely despise the new 52 scarecrow origin + characterization #but scarebat redeemed it for me

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flowerslightning · 4 years

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(Part 2) Cloud Strife and his Mental Illness

a.k.a Psychiatric Disorder

| 1. Memory | ⇦ Click if u havent read it yet

2. Hallucinations, Illusions and Delusions

Since these three things relate well with Cloud's troubled memories, I'll be talking about them first before jumping to his Confused Personality

This post will bore u a bit or maybe a lot 😂 it depends. If ure interested with psychiatric stuff, u'll find this enjoyable as much as i do

Disclaimer : I'm 21 and still a tiny meany student. During my intern at Psychiatric Department, I learned and witnessed psychiatric problems from real life patients. And since Cloud (my fav FF character) has psychiatric issues, I'll be sharing some of my knowledge and interpretation of Cloud's character. Im not diagnosing him, rather i'm giving my own opinion about his status

@nibelheiim created a post about dissociation, she explained about hallucination, PTSD and more. Come and check her out! Her words were more direct and easier to understand. She explained about Psychological matter and she's a real psychology student too!

While my explanation will be more focusing on Psychiatric Topic and words used will be more complicated (with grammar errors). My facts will be based on ICD 10 and DSM-IV

A lot of people were confused with these three terms - Hallucination Illusion Delusion - These terms associated with abnormalities of perception. It is important to understand that this abnormality holds two keys; ● 1. Perception is the process of becoming aware of what is presented through the sense organs. ● 2. Imagery is an experience originating within the mind that usually lacks the sense of reality that is part of perception.

Abnormalities of perceptions have 4 theme, but I'll be focusing on two major types that relate with Cloud: (i) Hallucinations ; (ii) Illusions. Some cases, perception can be normal in intensity and quality but has a changed meaning for the person who experiences it - it is called as Delusional Perception. It is not an abnormal of perceptions, rather it is a disorder of a person's thinking.

Try guessing, how many from these terms does Cloud has?

1. Hallucinations

- A perception experienced in the absence of external stimulus to the corresponding sense organ. Eg - patient hears a voice when no one is speaking within a hearing distance or patient sees something approaching him when visually no one is there. There are 2 qualities to determine a hallucination: ●it is experienced as a true perception●it seems to come from outside of the head●

The above gif, where Sephiroth suddenly appear again before Cloud's eyes even able to touch Aerith's shoulder, it illustrate perfectly the 'Visual Hallucination'. No one can see Sephiroth, other than Cloud himself.

Cloud [Remake] kinda had anxiety when he stared at the fire and later he saw Sephiroth surrounded with flames, then poof, that silver guy disappeared along with the images of fire. He said he was hallucinating stuff after the first bombing mission. Idk how Sephiroth could create fake images of fire around him, either Cloud was really hallucinating or it was really Sephiroth that came to see him. But, this is what we call as 'Visual and Auditory Hallucinations'. Cloud SAW Sephiroth and HEARD him talking when no one else did. I can also add in 'Tactile Hallucination' because he probably felt the burning sensation on his skin from the flame around him that caused him to feel hot and sweating, or probably it was his anxiety that caused him sweating upon meeting Sephiroth with the flashback of his burning hometown

Hallucinations can occur in all sensory modalities; visual, olfactory, auditory etc. In the Remake, the Whispers could only be seen by certain people. To those who couldnt see it, they would be puzzled what was happening to u, and would've thought that u were hallucinating something, like in the case of Aerith.

In Cloud's case, perhaps Cloud [In OG] had auditory hallucination due to his severe case of Mako Addiction. But then, that wasnt exactly a hallucination though, cuz the thing he said "'Coming.. They're coming" was actually true. A monster fell from the sky.

Other 'hallucinations' that Cloud had was the images of Sephiroth that appeared in certain headache. Cloud may claimed it was his hallucinations, but i've read it somewhere that says it was really Sephiroth appeared before his eyes. Sephiroth was messing with Cloud's mind, trying to break his mental in order to control him. However, IF IT WASNT SEPHIROTH that came, Cloud's 'hallucination' would be known as a mental disorder that may lead to severe case - eg Schizophrenia.

2. Illusions

An illusion is a misperception of an external stimulus. It often occur in several circumstances: (i)level of sensory stimulation reduced (ii)attention is not focused on the sensory modality (iii)level of consciousness reduced (iv)being in a state of intense emotion- fear.

Does Cloud has it? Urm, maybe? Well, it can be proven when he saw his 'noisy neighbour next door' as Sephiroth. As stated above, illusions occur in 4 conditions, and Cloud was in number (i) and (iv). When Tifa yelled him to stop, Cloud came back to reality and got really confused when the 'Sephiroth' that attacked him was actually a sick guy. We can also add in 'Hallucinations of Deep sensation' in this scenario bcause Cloud experienced the feelings of being pushed down by 'Sephiroth'.

However, we all know that 'Sephiroth' was real at that moment. For Cloud, he thought it was an illusion, but for us the audience, it was a real thing.

If u want a better explanation and example, try watching Joker the movie. The main theme of the movie was 'mental illness'. There are lots of scenes that shows different type of hallucinations, illusions and also personality disorder.

3. Delusions

a.k.a fixed false belief. A belief that is held firmly despite evidence contrary. A delusion is nearly always a false belief but not always so. There are around 11 types of delusions according to the book. Half of it may suggest Shcizophrenia. Schizophrenia is certainly not in Cloud's case. I've studied one by one the type of delusions and none of them match with Cloud FF7.

I will surely give anyone a good punch in the face if they dare to say Cloud suffers from Schizophrenia. I've met with bunch of patients having it, and the way they see this world is totally different from us.

In some other cases, eg a spiritualist convince a person to believe in his spiritualism and he present with contrary evidence to the non-believer. This non-delusional belief is called 'overvalued ideas'

Overvalued ideas is an isolated , preoccupying and strongly held belief that dominates a person's life and may affect his action. One of the easiest example i can come up with; a friend who had skin cancer may be convinced to her roomate that cancer is contagious, and her roomate suspects any abnormal skin conditions she has is an evidence to show she too, may have developed the same cancer, when the truth is, she's just completely fine.

It is very hard to distinguish between a delusion and overvalued ideas.

I had a patient, he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. He looked like an ordinary man, but when he talked, it sounded so unreal. He said he had jumped off from 10th floor several times and didnt get a scratch from it. He believed he wont die bcause he had gained super power. He even convinced me to try his 'so-called-secret technique- on how to survive a jump. By doing that often, I will have a superpower like him - a strong physical body. Up until now, I still dont know if he was being deluded with his thought or he was overvalued his idea, bcause from his psychiatric record, he did try to jump off from the second floor of his apartment's balcony a few times.

So, Im not really sure of myself did Cloud [FF7] really had delusion or not. Well, he believed he made it to SOLDIER bcause he had mako eyes. But was it something we called as delusion or was he just overvaluing his idea? He didnt know the truth and his memory messed up. No one could explain to him why he had Mako eyes, except Prof Hojo and Zack who knew the truth

Besides, after Tifa helped with his memory, Cloud accepted the fact he wasnt in SOLDIER. For patient who deluded with their own thoughts, they hardly could believe what people told him.

However, surely Cloud [in AC] had delusions of guilt and worthlessness due to the fact that he believed he had done something shameful and sinful - the main trigger of this theme was, he got infected with Geostigma while he was searching a cure for Denzel. Cloud got depressed with the loss of Aerith and the memory of Zack death had returned, but I think he was recovering very well in that two years time skip. The moment he got Geostigma, he became deluded he was worthless and his depression kicked in again.

Hallucinations and Illusions are normal to be experienced by healthy people, but it wont be if u encounter too many hallucinations & illusions in 2 weeks time. Believe it or not, a lot of people around us are actually mentally ill bcause some of them may have excessive certain delusions, such as delusions of jealousy, grandiose delusions, nihilistic, paranoid etc. Although 'it is consider as normal' in a few circumstance, a few cases need to refer to psychologist and in severer cases, must refer to psychiatrist. If u follow Dr Phil's show, u'll see a bunch of patients have different kind of crazy delusions.

Overall from my statement above, I would conclude that since Sephiroth always appear before Cloud's eyes, this resulting Cloud to think he has both Hallucination and Illusion, when in fact, he's just a normal guy with amnesia and personality confusion. Cloud doesnt have Delusion like how many fans said, neither he has an overvalued idea, even with the evidence of Mako eyes supporting his reasoning + he's a great fighter. I will have to say that perhaps it is his brain defence mechanism that tricks his mind to believe he is a Soldier.

If only Sephiroth stop disturbing Cloud's life, it will be a lot faster to fix Cloud. Tifa alone will be the main strength to get Cloud back to normal. Ah, but this is the beauty of the game. Life wont be exciting without the presence of a beautiful villain and a love triangle (Tifa-Cloud-Sephiroth). Lol Technically I see them trying to fight for Cloud's mental health. Tifa wants to help Cloud with his mental status while Sephiroth is trying to destroy it. Lolololol

My crack theory : Sephiroth says he's going to take Cloud's most precious thing, and he ends up choosing to kill Aerith, but ofc there's another reason why Aerith got killed. But if Sephiroth kills Tifa first, I think he can take over Cloud's mind faster, because then, no one will be holding Cloud back. Honestly no one can ever will, not even Aerith. So does that mean Sephiroth doesnt know about Cloud's deepest secret or is Cloud just good at hiding his weakness?

I WILL UPDATE THE NEXT POST LATER because I've reached tumblr limit images agaiiin. The next part will be focusing about his personality - Personality Disorder

If there is any part that I've mistaken, pls correct me. I'm sorry for my english. English is not my native language, so there are plenty of grammar errors.

#final fantasy 7 #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 remake #final fantasy gif #ff7r #mygif #ff7r spoilers #cloud ff7 #cloud strife gif #sephiroth gif #final fantasy sephiroth #character analysis #psychology #psychiatric disorders #cloud strife #aerith gainsborough

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marshmallowprotection · 3 years

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I rambled this out in the tags of my reblog of ur response to my... hm, "pink" ask, but i'll put it here anyways

I think ray and i are similar in the way of emotional sensitivity and people pleaser tendencies, albeit stemming from very different origins. For Ray, it's his traumas and the lifestyle and mindset he's been forced into. For me, it's the neurological disorder/learning difference I've had all my life, ADHD, and its accompanying RSD and anxiety.

One good thing about that bad friendship i got myself into was that i learned how to be a little more independent and how to overcome certain parts of my anxiety at times, as well as how to say no and to not give in so easily into the urge to just do whatever my friends ask.

So, I'm better than I was. But like I mentioned, its a little different when i dont know the person yet, and its especially different if theyre as sweet and kind as ray is. Honestly it gets me weak. I mean, even in the game, when i play AS (and his route) for the first time, i was very compliant to everything he said, especially since he seemed to have some confidence about him (i still cant tell if im just dumb or if he actually seems that way to others in the beginning). And thats not just cos i wanted to progress with the game; i chose the options i felt drawn to.

I'd have a hard time telling him no.

As for emotional sensitivity and RSD... itd be a loop i swear oh my days lol. He's always like "sorry sorry sorry pls dont hate me" and im sitting there like "same." If i was actually there id be like "no no never! Id never hate you i swear ur so freaking nice and sweet and fjbdjdbjd" and then like that very same day, say i shot him a text or two and he doesnt respond for like an hour. I get it. I know he's busy. I don't reach out further cos i dont wanna be annoying, i just wait. And wait. And tell myself he's busy. He doesn't hate me. He's just busy. ...did i say something wrong? Maybe i was confusing...? *proceeds to reread my texts like a million times, analyzing all the possible interpretations and probably scaring myself a couple times*

Finally a text comes in, or a chatroom with him opens up, and- here's where we differ. I keep those "what if he hates me" thoughts to myself. Instead its, "oh thank goodness lol i thought maybe i was being annoying or something or offended u or made u mad" (usually just one of those; which one i felt depends on the scenario) and even then it's only if an opportunity comes up. Sometimes i'll outright ask "was i being annoying? Sorry i know i can get out of hand sometimes" or say something like "just lemme know whenever im too overbearing or annoying or confusing or fast, etc". I tend to prefer to lean towards semi-subtle phrasing rather than outright asking.

But its like... "sorry sorry; are u mad?" "No!! No im not mad... but... i thought you'd be upset at me so I was afraid to face you... and then when you didnt text me i thought it even more..." "what??? No never! I didnt text u cos i thought u were mad!" Lmaooo

[417]

Yeah, I can totally relate to that internalized dialogue. So, it just seems that you can look at him and say same hat. I understand that feeling very well because I do it all the time too. Ray oftentimes gets overworked and overwhelmed by the thought that he's not doing enough, as a matter of fact, he's been told that he's not doing enough so he just thinks that constantly without anyone having to prompt him otherwise. A part of it might be a manipulation on his part but another part of it is genuine self-loathing. It is hard to say because he has moments where his genuine sincerity comes out and moments when his plans pop out. That's why I often tell people that he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yes, he is relatable in a sense but that doesn't mean that he is inherently good too.

His morality is a little skewed but you can't really blame him for it given how he was manipulated himself. It is a matter of getting to know him and helping him see that something is amiss that allows him to almost realize that it's not okay. It is just too easy to overanalyze and get overwhelmed by the smallest of details that may not mean anything. It's an unfortunate circumstance that many of us have to deal with.

He's definitely a lot to deal with, and you have to be on your toes and ready to deal with it. If you are not in the right headspace or you easily get overwhelmed by little comments that may not mean much, then it's probably going to be hard for you to deal with the situations that take place with him. Even I know that I would have some specific problems with it myself given he and I have so much in common. However, don't think that that counts you out or anything. You still have the capability to get through to him.

It just comes down to empathizing and reaching out to each other when things don't feel right. That is easier said than done though so yeah, it would be a little complicated. It'll turn into a game where you're reassuring him and he's reassuring you. Sometimes it's good if someone can understand you firsthand, because the thing you can help yourself in the process.

#mod kait #ask #417 anon

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princessmovieticket · 5 years

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Random, but.

My dad came over this weekend to drop something off, he said something (unintentionally) demeaning about one of my younger sisters and it lead to this discussion, as I was going through how he does this very often and he doesnt fully realize it's effects. He speaks in a guilting/shaming way, without even realizing it. My sisters/mom, we've all caught on, but it doesnt mitigates the effects it has on the way the family functions/we function as humans, and my youngest sisters are too young to realize this/not internalize it.

That's not even the post of this point, but anyway.

We got to a place where he was insisting prayer. The pray would really help me.

And I froze. I shut down as I began to search for a way to navigate this conversation.

Because I knew if I outright rejected him, and didn't tip toe around

I could just feel the reaction and consequences.

Ah, wait, this is related to what I first explained, lol.

I could see it. In the moment I knew if I said "Christianity, and your way of doing things, is not going to fix this."

Then he would then feel that he held the moral high ground. That the consequences my disability have on my life, could now be twisted back on to me because I can now be considered a person rejecting God with a pride that blocks any hope of things improving.

Something that would slowly grow, seeming to gain credibility, simply because I will continue to be disabled and run into the complications that arises from this.

Life happening to a person not devoted to God is some how proof of consequences,

Where as life happening to someone devoted to God, is...not....

I could see, things being used against me. Not just verbally, emotionally. Him leveraging "Christianity" against my limitations due to disability.

I'm on thin enough ice with using curse words in my comic and then including queer relationships. (Despite it's over all cartoony and..progressive/move forward, messages).

We speak nothing of it, cuz, well, WASP.

.....though he has come around considerably of topics of POC.

......this is what I grew up doing, I grew up learning to defend myself. To not have holes in my story, to communicate it completely.

And with my family I can usually do it to a level that builds respect, and a tonal shift.

Which, has actually been great.

When I was young, I was told the devil was wrapping his arms around me because I like anime and manga.

Now, all my younger sisters can watch as much, and read as much manga as they want.

They can say the word "depression".

They can say the words "birth control."

......they can go from being subtly fat-shamed and accused of giving into anxiety, not trying hard enough with online schooling, and everything else about them ignored

To being diagnosed with a knot in their intestine and hashimoto's.

From being "it doesnt matter that she's half black, skin tone doesn't make a difference."

To "it really matters."

I normalized challenging things that were doing harm.

Kinda at my own physical and emotional peril.

And it has paid off in many ways, but there's some things words can't fix.

Things I can't question.

To oppose my dad's go-to christian solutions, is to oppose/reject him as a person.

It's much of his identity.

But I don't want to pander to "solutions" that are not true solutions. That do harm and kinda ignore what's actually happening.

Prayer, in the sense he was talking about, is just a way for him to feel better about the situation.

It's frightening, the idea of someone next to me having feelings of warmth and hope that mitigate the harsher reality.

It's a jarring situation. It makes things feel...like there's even less control, less hope.

Some things I just have to let be. It's not a topic to be handled out right.

After all, perhaps less about prayer, and more so what he's able to understand, empathize, and be aware of.

Same as his "guilt" language.

Then again, I see the effect the church bubble has had of my entire family, and it's kind of awful.

But it's not the church bubble, it's the ignorance that live within it, the same sort of ignorance you think you're being freed of when your in the church bubble.

(To someone, that made sense).

.....my older sister was sexually abused within the church bubble. She grew up into mental illness, addictions, more abuse, a mess of either guilting language or high praise. And my dad's solution was always to send her to a christian camp. (The same camps known for being horrible gay conversion camps, something I did not learn until 3 years ago).

My dad thought Obama not far off from the antichrist.

I was disabled, while living at home, and would see him maybe once a month.

.....He's not the worst. This shit is not great, but dad wise, I could do much worse.

But the effect power imbalance with such a person, not only emotionally when growing up, but certainly as a physically disabled adult,

Is intensely uncomfortable.

I can deal with the contradictions of the family better than I use to.

It's just....so much too process.

Especially when I'm disabled to the point of needing his help, but also too disabled to be able to make things better for my sisters.

Sometimes I wish I was healthy just for their sake.

...At least loving comics has now been normalized... Hehe. I will forever remember the moment when I told them I was starting a webcomic and would being putting it up on webtoons and they lost their shit.

because that was the moment I realized "well, now I gots to do it."

And it's nice. To know whatever I put out, will very very likely be read by them. And they might not know when I'm writing about something serious, or drawing something silly, that it's just for their amusement. But it is.

And It's the opposite of what my dad calls prayer.

It's trying to see things to the best of your ability and growing.

It's not visiting a family member who lives in the same house, maybe once a month.

Its saying "even when your alone I want you to feel loved. I want you to have a meaningful moments even in my absence. Scattering things that make life more liveable, for you to find. To restore a sense of being able to endure. Of feeling whole. The hope of working things out. You were thought of, on purpose, because you are that important, no matter what. You don't have to earn this love, you simply are loved."

I should get back to work.

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bloody-delicious · 5 years

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May I have a matchup please? I’m 5’7 with long light brown hair and light blue-green eyes. I’m a little chubby. I can be goofy but it’s mainly bI cause I like making people laugh. Im very optimistic and love doing things for others. I love nature and hiking, my hobbies include playing guitar, singing, baking and cooking. I have a terrible tendency of being gullible but it is only because I always try to think the best of people.

I match you with: Billy loomis!

•the boy next door, the sweet bad boy, the high school heartthrob, the caring boyfriend, Billy Loomis. of all the masks Billy wears, these are the most convincing. the truth of his identity, of who he really is not just as a killer, but also as a person, is hidden behind a plastic face and the red knife that so violently tore into the flesh of his victims. the serial killer that murdered these teenagers was complicated, clever, and so captivatingly mysterious. the boy underneath the costume, however, is not. a horror addict growing up watching Michael standing over his sister's dead body and Pamela voorhees avenge her son, pushed by trauma and tragedy and wounds that just wouldnt fucking heal, fell into delusion. he created a character of himself, made reality a story, convinced himself of what he wanted life to be. the boy hearing his mother and father fight in the kitchen long into the night, futile attempts at sleep as he lay awake and stared at the ceiling above listening to the hatred in their words, with no pillow thick enough to drown their voices out and no sleeping pill powerful enough to quiet his mind, he retreated into the worlds that he knew and loved and suddenly realized he had an opportunity. the seed of disease grew in his brain day after day, fight after fight, and ultimately consumed him the day he looked down into the earth and saw the black coffin being lowered down, down, down, white Rose's in a wreath laying neatly on top fading into the darkness. he had an opportunity. he wanted so badly to become the feared, cold hearted killers on the screen that he eventually convinced himself that he was one. the vulnerability, the emotions, everything that had made him Billy, was crushed by this mask he mutilated his face into, but he did not know that it still lay there, behind all that he had fabricated, it lay in the darkness and rotted. a teenager buys a costume and becomes a God, he manipulates someone he might have once called a friend into helping him(after all, he doesnt want to pay for his crimes, and someone will have to take the blame), kisses a girl and says I love you and fantasizes of spilling her guts in his sleep because someone has to pay for what has happened to him, and the next of kin is her. things could have been different. had he had someone who would have fought and fought until they broke him back into that little boy sitting in the theater at the nightmare on elm street midnight showing, maybe he could have changed. but life doesnt give second chances.

• should you try to befriend Billy, he would most likely accept and return the kindness. of course, he would only see this as a way to build up his reputation as a nice guy, someone who got along with everyone, someone who wouldnt hurt a fly. trying to get closer to him would be a risky endeavor, as he may allow it for the sake of the matter stated previously, however, he may become irritated and leave your body at the front door for mom and dad to find when they get home. he thinks selfishly, and makes every decision with his plans to murder sidney in mind, considering how it could affect his role as a suspect, how it might look suspicious if he did this or that. unfortunately, he would definitely take advantage of you due to your tendency to trust others, having the view that most people are good and just. treat him with the kindness in your heart, show your altruistic nature, and he may reconsider. as embarrassing as it is to spare the goody two shoes who always ends up getting a torturous ending, Billy will perhaps convince himself that the kill simply isn't worth the risk. continue being yourself, continue showing the goodness inside of you, and you may make the plastic start to crack, if only but a little. show Billy no mercy, surround him with the reality that there are good people, there is good in the world, force him to face the fact that the characters on the screen will not accept him as a killer because they are not real and this is not a movie. you will have to work hard, discreetly intervening when he plans a murder, silently teaching him to find the little boy that he left behind all those years ago.

• if you actually manage to get through to Billy, to the real Billy, he will break. destroying all that he has spent his teen years working towards, destroying the character he so determinedly tried to mold himself into, will add another wound that will never heal. if he had continued, however, eventually there would be no flesh, nothing human left to scar. becoming who he truly is will be a slow, painful, angry process, and he will find himself leaning on you like a crutch, like you are the only thing holding him up. with your personality, though, and the things you show him, he will be able to stand again, and instead of relying on you, he will chose to have you in his life, standing beside him. Billy has not known love, he has known how to manipulate it into something dark and wicked and vile. love is caring for someone, and that means doing whatever it takes to help them, even if it means you have to put them in pain. Billy may understand one day.

• you will find that Billy loves your hobbies, he loves your personality. when we experience the darkness ourselves, we can truly appreciate those who fought their way into the light. he almost looks to you as a motherly figure, from the way you care for him and from your love of baking and cooking. he'll tease you about it if only to hide the fact that he loves it. after having lost a mother, he has found through your loving nature that he brought with him a certain emptiness from being denied the pure love that a mother gives a child. having not been given such love before, Billy will be very thankful that you offer it to him, though, again, he will never admit it in order to keep his pride.

#slasher x reader #ghostface #billy loomis #i am so sorry you have to read this its such garbage #forgive me anon

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halfshelled · 5 years

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I have been waiting for this moment my entire life... How do the boys function as a team? And does anything that Draxum says to them actually affect their team dynamic?

BOI

i have been thinking about this for ages get ready for the ramble of your life

the boys in the Draxum AU have extremely tense and complicated relationships, especially when they’re with Draxum but hopefully i can put them into words well enough here SO

im gunna start with the actual team dynamics for when they’re on missions/in training and then go into more personal interactions

for ease of reference since donnie isn’t a fighter raph, leo, & mikey will be referred to as The Soldiers and i’m gunna put this under a read more because its gunna be LOOOONG

OFF WE GO!

Donnie doesnt go on missions or train with his brothers. he did when they were younger (they all started extremely young, like roughly 5-7 years old) but once he showed not only an interest in but an extreme aptitude for mechanical and biomystical science he stopped training and instead draxum took him under his wing as a lab partner/apprentice. the praise and pressure from draxum towards donnie was the first big wedge driven between the brothers

The others were taught how to fight individually before Draxum began having them spar with each other and eventually allying himself with Big Mama for more intensive work fighting in the Battle Nexus

Raph is a defacto leader of the Soldiers since he’s the biggest (most physically imposing + raw strength) and the oldest (been training the longest). He doesn’t say much and doesn’t usually need to, quite literally following “actions speak louder than words”. He doesn’t see his brothers as competition quite the same way Leo does but rather takes great pressure on himself to be the strongest to protect them, whether they need it or not. His destructive power is the one thing he’s certain he’s good for but it’s driven a fear of hurting his brothers and a refusal to show weakness.

Leo falls in as a second in command but Draxum and Big Mama’s comments (direct in Draxum’s case and indirect in Mama’s) tend to undermine his ability compared to the others and foot him as the underdog nobody really believes can win. His specialty lies primarily in his agility and stamina, especially as his greatest chance in a fight against Raph. He’s extremely jealous of the other Soldiers and has a deep rooted inferiority complex towards them because of how often he’s put down as a drag on the other two, especially after the loss of his leg.

Mikey is happy to be the follower in the group despite clearly being Draxum’s favorite warrior. Mikey’s early cockiness and pure skill/intuition at besting the others in combat quickly led to him being separated from them during training as individuals. Draxum is extremely hard on Mikey during lessons and it’s burnt out a lot of his confidence. He’s got a perfectionism streak a mile long and it eats at him every time he feels he’s made a mistake, especially when he sees his older brothers all cover and take the fall for him.

Raph & Leo are constantly pitted against one another in sparring, far more so than either of them have been pitted against Mikey combined (though they are occasionally set up as a team against Mikey). They rarely talk to each other and they both see one another as reckless and selfish. Despite their pointed differences in combat styles, strengths/weaknesses, and personality they’re really rather similar at their cores but because of the rivalry Draxum’s set for them they can’t slow down long enough to see it. Both of them want to be better warriors to take care of the others and above all want to prove they’re worth something like they feel Mikey and Donnie have. They butt heads and have torn each other up pretty bad, but they’ve got to watch each others’ backs and have a silent pact to keep on eye on the other two. At the end of the day, they have an understanding of each other that begins rather shakily but grows incredibly strong after the boys escape to the surface.

Raph & Donnie do not get along. They weren’t particularly close as kids and the isolation of both of them from one another hasn’t helped, self imposed or otherwise. Some of the rare occasions they interact are when Donnie is testing some new invention/weapon or when they’re on caretaker duty for Lou Jitsu. Raph doesn’t trust Donnie half as far as he can throw him for numerous reasons (primarily his proximity/loyalty to Draxum and his opinion that D’s betrayed the Soldiers and thinks he’s better than the three of them). He only yields to Donnie’s demands to give him medical treatment when he’s too damaged to refuse or Draxum steps in to force Raph to sit still for 30 minutes and let Don work. Donnie on the other hand finds Raph’s stubbornness and tough guy attitude incredibly annoying since it’s an obstacle and he knows he’ll have to fix whatever Raph breaks, whether its an actual object or his arm again. One of the things they have in common though is that more often than not they’re going to be awake. They’re both the first and last ones asleep on any given day.

Donnie & Leo are fairly close despite not being able to interact often. Leo doesn’t see Don as competition and isn’t afraid to talk to Donnie about weakness or issues he’s having. Donnie finds trying to explain his process to Leo a good way to find issues in any places he gets stuck while working. It gives each of them a chance to be talkative even if just for a little bit out of the day. They confide in each other openly and since both of them strive for Draxum’s praise in differing fields they often provide one another with pointers to try and improve. They’re ideology and morality scales can make it hard for them to see eye to eye on some subjects and when they disagree they disagree hard and it puts both of them in a set of bad moods that rival tornado season thunder storms.

Donnie & Mikey don’t connect much but they’re never hostile. Sometimes Mikey’s high energy can rub Donnie the wrong way, especially if D’s extra sleep deprived. Donnie knows Mikey can get freaked out by all the medical stuff so he tries to explain it and lets Mike ramble because he knows it helps calm him down. A lot of their interactions are short and somewhat stiff since they don’t have as many opportunities to bond. Draxum expects highly of both of them and they have an unspoken bond over it, occasionally exchanging a few jokes about it to try and lighten one another’s mood and keep their collective mind off the stress. Like Leo & Raph, they end up becoming closer once they escape. They both shoulder a lot of confusion and anxiety about if it was the right thing to do and Mikey helps ease Donnie into the idea of starting from scratch while Donnie helps Mikey adjust to his newfound need for structure when they’re suddenly without any.

Mikey & Leo have one of those dynamics where they’re constantly exchanging quips and snarky responses. A pair of speedy acrobats, they tend to run circles around their oldest brother and together can drive Raph up a wall, especially when they decide to team up and take over a mission instead of listen to him. They do get along but it can be hard for them to be genuine with one another. Draxum’s instilled each of them with the belief that they aren’t on any sort of level playing ground together and they’re attempts at crossing the gap are awkward at best. It’s not uncommon for them to misinterpret one another’s kindness as patronizing and get into a spitting match over it. Leo’s intensely jealous of Mikey and Mikey often feels like Leo purposefully tries to exclude him. The duo can more or less be summed up in the phrase “it’s all fun and game until someone loses an eye” as they metaphorically street race one another at any given chance.

Mikey & Raph are extremely close in a similar way Leo and Donnie are. I’ve mentioned in passing before that Mikey tends to climb on Raph whenever he can get away with it and that it’s a security blanket act for the both of them. It’s a silent exchange of personal weakness between them. It’s a reminder to Raph that his brothers trust him to take care of them and not just fight for them while it lets Mikey be childish and solidifies his place as a member of the family in his own eyes. Mikey manages to get Raph to talk a little more/talk more freely about what’s on his mind and distracts him from all the weight on his shoulders as the protector. Raph meanwhile allows Mikey to be quiet or afraid when he needs to as well as indulging in his little brother’s need for physical affection. They help one another escape momentarily away from the need to fit in their roles and process their emotions, whatever they may be.

#frens #i need a good tag for you my dude #i say words #au info #draxum au #new lore hot off the presses #my writing #i went on a massive ramble i hope this actually answered the question akjshjdh #feel free to ask me more if you want to know or any something clarified i loved the chance to babble about my boys

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everydayanth · 5 years

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The Liam Neeson Thing...

Okay guys, this is gonna get complex and personal right quick. But it’s been bothering me and I’m working on posting more without thinking about it for two weeks until nobody cares anymore.

So here goes.

Context matters. Context is important and it can be complicated, but it freakin’ matters.

In my opinion, Liam Neeson’s flaw was that he thought a rapist would be the kind of person to also attack him.

Here’s the thing guys, if you’ve never heard someone you love confess to you that they have been irrevocably hurt by a person, you need to take a step back for a minute.

That moment, talking about it, it’s extremely vulnerable, so this is a bit hard for me, but in a moment of chaos and torment, a person you love and care deeply for is breaking apart in front of you and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it. There’s not a damn thing you can do but hold them and cry with them and hurt for them and try to help and figure out the right thing to say.

And when they’re tucked safe in bed and you’re researching what you can do for them or laying awake thinking about what you could possibly say, the amount of guilt and hurt and anger hits you in the chest, it fills you so wholly that you just need to find a way to let it out. It’s a dangerous rage, it’s immature and unhealthy and so so so painful.

We don’t talk about emotions in America. We just don’t. So of course we want to put this emotion into a context we discuss, and idea we understand.

But it’s not an -ism, it’s an emotion.

If you don’t think when my sister told me about our cousin assaulting her that I didn’t wander around my ghetto ass neighborhood waiting for some big white guy to try to hurt me, well, you’d be wrong. Our brain makes patterns, my cousin didn’t live in our city, but I knew he was a big white guy with a shitty pencil beard, my brain classified that as a pattern. Every time I talked to a big white guy, I had to check myself, yeah. But when my brain registered a human who looked like my cousin, my heart rate ran up and I would will them to attack me. I wanted to fight because I didn’t know what else to do with all that pain, all that helpless emotion. But I could wander around places where someone was bound to get hurt anyway and invite the fight to me.

Neeson was wandering around areas inviting a fight. INVITING, not instigating. It is a common reaction of revenge and feeling hurt, and we’re shoving this idea into something familiar - outrage, racism, etc., anything so we don’t have to actually talk about emotions.

He was looking for a “black bastard,” poor choice of words, I agree, but he was hoping that guy, the one who hurt his friend, would challenge him, and it would just happen to be the same guy and he could get his anger out. It’s not healthy, but if they man who hurt his friend had been white and he’d wandered around lower class white neighborhoods inviting a fight, would it have been racism?

This had an opportunity to be a conversation about what the fuck you do around a friend who confesses they were raped and hurt to you. After all the #MeToo (or in the midst of it), how do you be a friend to your loved ones who feel ready to confess to you? What do you do to manage that amount of disgust you feel at the world, that rage and hate and hurt and horror that there’s not a single damn thing you can do?

This could have been a conversation about grief and friendship and growth and complex emotions. But we made it about the race of a rapist instead.

That’s how much we don’t want to talk about feelings.

We would focus on a man talking for the first time about the anger of helplessness in the face of a friend’s pain and come out in outrage.

Here’s the reality guys, racism is forming a series of patterns based on skin color that aren’t true. They can be based off stereotypes or influenced by false representation in sensational news. Racism is NOT fighting your brain’s reality in order to form a more balanced understanding of the world. I was assaulted by a bunch of black kids at a playground when I was 14, it was terrifying and it’s a long and complex story but the short of it is very simple: I lived in a black neighborhood and this was not my only experience with black kids. I went to school with middle class black kids and I hung out with other black kids, this was NOT my only experience, and therefore, my brain was capable of nixing the pattern before it was created. Black kids weren’t dangerous, those kids were just assholes.

Racism is if Neeson went to those places and started fights. I can’t know whether he did or not, but it’s if he went around and accused every black man of being a rapist, in his head or otherwise. I didn’t have a lot of experience with big white guys, so it took me much longer not to feel nervous around them than it did to write off my brain’s pattern about the black kids. Emotions and how our brains work are important details for us to know, and it’s the real reason diversity matters, it keeps our patterns in context. Neeson coming out of the situation horrified at himself shows growth of emotion, the dismissal of the pattern, recognizing that it is false without acting on it, understanding the power of agency is an illusion because he would never find that particular man.

Comparing this to the policing issues isn’t the same, because of their place in society, their home culture society, and the results of their opinions. A police officer has a responsibility to the public to understand their emotions and their racial biases, an actor is responsible for displaying emotion. We can’t hold these people to the same accountability, that would be ridiculous, for a police officer, emotions need to be stable and understood and should involve a LOT more psychology training. For an actor... they entertain us with their emotions. They need to be self aware and reflective in order to project our experiences in stories. We still expect race car drivers to follow the speed limits and we understand that doctors have to call in sick sometimes, the world isn’t fair and occupation doesn’t dismiss personal biases or professional demeanor, but context matters. A doctor calling in sick after handling small pox in a lab requires observation and questions, an actor talking about rage and looking for a fight when he was younger and confessing horror at that version of himself while promoting a film about revenge kind of seems like part of the job, of doing the job well.

And it’s not racist because it was not instigated by the color of skin as perceived by an individual to be less or more - he was inviting a fight with a black man on the word of his friend. That was wrong, and so was me doing it with large white men (also because I am not that large of a white woman, so that wasn’t going to end well for me), but he even said in a follow up interview that they could have killed him. The interviewer says she thinks of the innocent black man that could have been killed and Neeson responds “Or he could have killed me.” BUT HE WASN’T INSTIGATING FIGHTS, he was INVITING them! He wasn’t looking for an innocent man, he was waiting for someone to try to hurt him so he could release the extreme emotions. These are different. These are SO different.

This conversation can go back to what it could have been. Race of the rapist aside, what do you do when a person you love confides in you that they have been hurt and scared and they are breaking apart in front of you? How do you process your emotions and heartbreak? What can you do or say? How can you feel like you’re helping? Is that selfish? Why do we need to feel like we’re helping? How do you manage your own trauma so you don’t loop theirs in with yours? How do you self reflect so that you stop your brain forming false patterns when you’re filled with so much hurt and pain? How do you not become a villain of the world, hating everyone for always telling you you are helpless? How do you find control in yourself when you’re imploding and be responsible and mature with emotions? How do you talk about it in a society that wants to be angry? How do you not hate them for focusing on your reaction to a rapist rather than being angry with an individual for being an asshole and RAPING your friend?

How do we return to a conversation about emotions and how, unchecked, they can lead to pain and anger and rage, and eventually, if we don’t have a moment of clarity and rationality, if we are not balanced in the world, they can become biases that develop into ignorance and racism? How do we focus on context so that we don’t become arrogant and disconnected, classists by nature because we interact with such a small and similar world? How do we connect and talk about the human experience when society turns away from us in favor of what is familiar? How do we have a logical discussion about emotion when we can’t even talk about meaning and intent? How do we accuse someone of racism when, had the rapist been white, the conversation might have focused on the context of emotion and pain and hurt and the process of healing - it was the outraged audience that pointed at the race as important, as the meaningful factor, how do we look at that hypocrisy and not feel utterly defeated?

How do we scream at the world that we need help, we all need help, without crucifying ourselves? I have no idea, this post is terrifying and I have no idea what to expect. Maybe nothing would be good? To return to not a single note or like or comment, to be unheard and dismissed and navigated around might be good because I want to talk about this reality but it. Is. Terrifying.

And maybe it’s all a projection. Maybe I’m the racist and I want to defend someone I relate to. But it feels more right that we as a society don’t talk about emotions, we lock them up like these secret things we’re terrified other people will discover. I’m working on vulnerability lately, and what better place to talk about all the shit that’s ever happened to me than the freakin’ internet! I’m just a person and from my experiences, I think I understand what Neeson meant. But that could equally be a self-aggrandizing reality that doesn’t exist. Perhaps he’s just a racist, a professional actor with a successful career who took this exact moment to reveal his true colors, what a sneaky man!

But more probably, the logic says, he’s a professional actor with a successful career who took this moment to discuss the emotions he’s had to reflect on and relive for the past year or so in order to play a role in a film that he hopes will entertain and reflect something of the human experience. He more probably took the moment to discuss a human experience and we did not listen because it’s more popular not to listen or because we could not relate or because we just want to be angry and sometimes pulling weeds is so exhausting we raze the whole garden instead. We did not talk about the moment he was horrified with himself because we don’t want to talk about growth or greys, we want the world to stabilize so we can see the bad guys clearly.

We really ought to know by now that there are no clear bad guys.

And we know Neeson likes to play in those lines. What is good? What is bad? They aren’t a duality, they are a false dichotomy, created by whatever world you grew up in, whatever experiences you had, whatever your society or culture told you, whatever education you discovered, and whatever philosophy you’ve come to believe. But in a moment of vulnerable confession, in all that grey reality, your friend tells you about a bad guy and they become singularly bad. They don’t exist beyond that. And that’s what is horrifying. That you stop seeing humanity as grey and suddenly it becomes good or bad, that’s the scary part about revenge and inviting fights, it encourages a black-and-white view of the world that says the rapist is ONLY bad and your friend is ONLY good.

A bit ironic that, in trying to talk about that tunnel-vision-rage, Neeson found himself the target of it.

It’s raw, that anger. It’s part of all the hurt that has happened to you and then you couldn’t even protect your friend or family. Why did you go through all that pain if you couldn’t grow enough to save them? That guilt is a liar, you didn’t hurt them, the asshole did, and you need that to be true or else you were also the cause of all your own pain as well. So you look for the assholes because then at least you could be useful, you could protect them from one asshole by taking the hit. We need to talk about that kind of hurt, about sacrificing the self for revenge because you can’t find worth anymore. We need to talk about existential nihilism that hides inside outrage because you can’t find meaning anymore. We need to talk about emotions and how to talk about them so we can be better friends, better people, so when we look for guidance on talking to friends about their hurt, we find advice on how to not be overwhelmed by rage and guilt and disgust and anger and violence.

That’s the conversation we could have had. That’s the world we could have started to create. But outrage culture is racist and racism gets attention and we all just want to be heard because we don’t know how to talk about our emotions. Interesting how it keeps going around like that.

#anthropology #psychology #racism #emotion #outrage #friendship #discussion #rage #rape #culture #society #loneliness #growth #discovery #Liam neeson

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 5 years

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Impeachment 101

If you follow the news even vaguely, you’re hearing a lot about impeachment, for good reasons. Since you’re hearing a lot about it, it’s worth understanding how it works. The civics class Cliff’s notes are well and good, but that’s not necessarily enough to separate signal from noise. Lotta scorching hot takes out there, people.

Pictured: a widdle baby take, awwww!

The basic analogy is that impeachment of a public official is like an indictment in the criminal justice system. Once the official has been impeached, the process moves to a trial in the Senate. If the official is acquitted they go back to their jobs, just like defendants who are acquitted in a trial can go back to their lives. If they are convicted, the sentence is removal from office. This post focuses on presidential impeachment because, obviously, but constitutional impeachment proceedings apply to other federal officials as well. Vice presidents, cabinet members, and judges1 would be subject to the same process. In practice, though, presidential impeachments are unique because the public is also paying conscious attention. Whether or not the secretary of the interior gets to keep his job is not something most of us think about in our day-to-day lives, but if someone else suddenly becomes the president, we’re going to notice.

In American history, there have been consequential impeachment proceedings against three presidents: Andrew Johnson (1868), Richard Nixon (1974), and Bill Clinton (1998). Two of those presidents were impeached by the House of Representatives. No United States president has been removed by conviction in the Senate. That’s a really small sample size because it’s a drastic thing which shouldn’t happen very often. That means most of what we understand impeachment to be isn’t about laws or even formal congressional procedures. A lot of it is expectations, customs, and winging it.

Of the three historical examples up there, the most useful comparison is to the case of Richard Nixon. Johnson was too far in the past to be particularly helpful now. The Clinton impeachment is recent enough that most people at least vaguely remember it, but it’s not really helpful in understanding how events are unfolding now because it was pure bad faith bullshit. It was still an important event historically, but the process of trying to work through major existential questions is just different than the process of pulling stuff out of your ass. But the Nixon administration was modern enough to make sense to us. His criminality was, more or less, comparable to Individual-1’s. His fall even started with a break-in at the DNC.

In practice, the official beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry tends to come pretty late in the game, after months or even years of public hearings which convince people that impeachment is necessary. Congress started investigating Watergate before a special prosecutor was even hired. There’s a temptation to write stuff like this off unless a C-Span clip goes viral, but this step is really important in convincing voters that whatever’s being investigated is worth grinding the country to the halt and turfing out the head of state. And if Congress is acting in good faith, they’re trying to get really important information and explain it to the public, and that also takes a while – not least because if you actually need a court to enforce a subpoena for important information, you have to be able to prove that you tried everything else first.

That’s where we are now. If Democratic leadership had sworn a blood oath that they were 100% dead set on impeaching Individual-1, they would be doing exactly what they’re doing. There are legitimate and complicated tactical questions about how long we should spend here, what the scope of the investigations should be, if and when Democratic leadership should even publicly say what they’re doing. But what people are saying, which as of now is “we’re not there yet,” should not be confused with what they are doing, which has been a large and coordinated move in that direction.2

Impeachment proceedings formally start with the House Judiciary Committee approving a resolution to start an inquiry. This doesn’t necessarily amp up their investigative powers overall. (It may make some information easier to get – but the courts would have to decide that, which also takes time.) The most powerful tool remains lots and lots of public hearings, organized into a basic story that the national media can understand and convey. It’s important to do this only after laying the groundwork because a premature impeachment inquiry arguably gets in the way of a more comprehensive set of investigations, sucks up all the attention from other worthy investigations or political issues, and sets an unnecessarily narrow time frame to wrap up the investigation.

An impeachment resolution isn’t about “do we hate this dude’s face y/n?” but about whether they’ve committed treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. “High crimes and misdemeanors” are purposefully vague so that they can evolve with the times. While the impeachment process is in many ways analogous to criminal justice procedure, impeachable offenses are not necessarily crimes, and not all crimes are necessarily impeachable offenses. The Framers initially intended it to include things like cheating your way into office, or selling out the United States to a foreign power. The main offense on which different Congresses have historically agreed is obstruction of justice, and it makes sense: the most important part of the president’s job is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and obstructing justice is, you know, the opposite of that. In practice, an impeachable offense is whatever the House of Representatives says it is. The point is, a majority of the Judiciary Committee has to agree on a list of specific things that the president did which are bad enough to merit removal from office – kind of like the specific charges that a prosecutor brings against a criminal defendant. Things on that list are called articles of impeachment.

The one time in history that impeachment proceedings have resulted in a president actually leaving office, they only ever got this far. By the time the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon were approved, the Watergate hearings had made it clear that the House was going to impeach him and Republican senators had seen enough to tell him that he would be convicted. That’s not a shortcut – those hearings took over a year – but it is a possibility.

If they approve the articles of impeachment, a majority of the House Judiciary Committee passes the resolution to the full House, which becomes like a grand jury. With a regular old majority vote, the House can impeach the president. Their presidency isn’t over, but it is damaged. Again, the criminal procedure analogy is useful: when someone gets indicted, that doesn’t mean they’ll be locked up immediately, but it does mean their life gets a lot more complicated for a while. If a majority of the House votes no, the process stops.

Once the president is impeached the process moves to the Senate, where there is a trial of the president. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is the judge, a few representatives from the House majority are the managers (ie, prosecutors), and the Senate is the jury. Evidence is heard, arguments are made, and eventually there is a vote to acquit or convict. If two-thirds of the Senate votes to convict, then the president is removed from office and the vice president is sworn in as president. Any less than that, the president is acquitted and everyone goes back to their jobs.

Under current circumstances, that two-thirds bar means that conviction and removal are effectively impossible. The Republicans are the majority in the Senate, and Senate Republicans are completely indifferent to national security, democratic legitimacy, the rule of law, and basic morality. They have been showing us who they are for years; it is way past time to believe them.

There are a lot of legitimate arguments that impeachment in the House is worth doing anyway, and there are a lot of legitimate reasons to be reluctant. Unfortunately, you need to be especially wary of cynicism, fatalism, and bothsidesism right now: a lot of commentators out there are misguided, irresponsible, or outright dishonest enough to insinuate that Democrats could stop this Trump nightmare immediately but they just aren’t because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . If that were possible, it would clearly be the right thing to do. Because it’s not possible, the way forward is far less clear.

There’s no cheat code to get us through this quickly. We can’t afford to get used to this, and we can’t afford to get overwhelmed by it. A couple of things you can do if it helps you stay grounded:

If you’re ready for impeachment, call your member of Congress and let them know.

Use whatever platform you have to spread digestible stories about Trump regime corruption and obstruction, or of course any constructive arguments on the subject of impeachment. Think carefully before sharing impatient attacks on elected Democrats, though, because what we need them to do is hard enough and weakening them with infighting makes it even harder.

1 For example, if someone on the Supreme Court was found to have told dozens of bald-faced lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing in order to cover up serious wrongdoing and openly threatened to abuse his position to retaliate against anyone who opposed him because of said misconduct, he could also be impeached. Just clarifying IN CASE A MOTHERFUCKER THINKS WE FORGOT.

2 I’m stressing this point because …. look, I don’t blame anyone for being emotional right now, I’m just saying, if a #Take boils down to “BoTH sIDeS aRe DoInG nOthInG, dEmS dOn’t CarE, NANcy pelOsi DoeSnT gET It,” you may want to approach it with some skepticism.

#impeachment #united states constitution #law #congressional procedure #criminal procedure #house of representatives #senate

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actualbird · 6 years

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yo you totally made me think about low empathy michael and it like totally makes sense and i think about it a lot when i listen to two player game bc ye like he OBVIOUSLY cares a lot about jeremy and he loves him and like jeremy's stating his problem and michael keeps saying the same solution cause like "that's the answer bro, don't be down" bc he cant wrap his head around the emotions and connect w them that well so in his mind he's just saying this completely fool proof solution i love this hc

yo i got this ask while balls deep in three books of discourse analysis i could only understand by like 10% but because of that was in the mood to just. keep thinking my brain in circles.

so heres a stupidly long answer cataloging canon instances of michael being low empathy af/exhibiting other traits related to this. along with like, characterization to extrapolate from that (at least by my own personal interpretation. obligatory disclaimer that how i see characters is not law, this is just My Take).

but before that, im gonna define some terms outright so we’re all on the same page. empathy is a person’s capability to understand and feel what others are feeling. basically how well you can put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. this shouldnt be confused with sympathy, which is feeling compassion, pity, sorrow etc. for another. empathy is recognition/replication while sympathy is more on the caring about it. here i focus on empathy and the lack of it.

im not an expert on Anything but speaking from experience as somebody who has very low empathy, this causes some complications. when you dont feel what others are feeling, sometimes you dont notice other people’s feelings at all. this results in stuff like bluntness, trouble reading social cues, insensitivity, etc. all things that 1) may happen unintentionally, 2) can be worked through via healthy communication, 3) are not inherently bad, just a result of how one reacts to external emotions and 4) things i totally think michael exhibits because hes a low empathy goblin i love with my whole heart.

let’s get right into it. in more than survive, right after jeremy and michael discover their boyf riend backpacks, this exchange occurs

this seems pretty normal at first glance but it is the first instance of what seems to be michael’s go-to pattern for when he notices his best friend is feeling down, which, at least, kudos to michael, he very obviously noticed jeremy’s feelings. hurrah! so his process for how to fix this goes a little like “step 1: notice jeremy is upset. step 2: cheer jeremy up! step 3: unknowingly kinda mess up step 2“

jeremy is upset about the backpacks but then jeremy provides an out with something supposedly positive. michael latches on to it. it turns out to be negative. michael tries to salvage the situation by cheering jeremy up! by giving him a cool science fact! hell yeah! except it’s a shaky save at best because he does call the both of them losers but in an “it’s okay :D” way.

all in all this is nothing really, just some friendly fast paced banter between best friends. whats important here is the 3 step pattern aforementioned because it 1) shows that michael Cares about his best friend and tries to make things better and 2) is BASICALLY the entirety of two player game

TWO PLAYER GAME is such a BOP and, at its core, is a song about how michael has got jeremy’s back and vice versa. but tpg is also textbook the 3 step pattern with added sprinkle of unintended invalidation. ive briefly spoken about tpg before so this might look a lil familiar but at its gist:

like you said anon, in tpg jeremy tells michael a problem he has, and throughout the course of the song, he continually makes it known that hes upset and has a lot of issues. step 1 has been achieved: michael knows jeremy is not doing too hot. time to do step 2: cheer him up!! and what better way to do that than to think positive with his trademark line “guys like us are cool in college” like, over and over again. because….it makes sense for michael. things might suck now, but just keep swimming yeah? it’ll be better later.

but it’s not better now and thats what jeremy actually needed validation on. michael thinks the solution is to look to the future but jeremy has his problems bothering him in the present. for all that michael says this is a two player game, he’s unintentionally dismissive because he doesnt understand that this isnt something that can be fixed with a simple “look forward to two years from now” mentality. neither of them are in the wrong, really. theyre just not on the same page.

onwards we go to something else entirely. the chili fries

this is a RIDICULOUSLY SMALL MOMENT but it stuck out to me because imo it is pretty obvious that jeremy says “leave me alone” because hes bummed and is being dramatic, but michael takes it literally and uses the opportunity to skedaddle and get his sweet sweet discontinued soda. im aware michael had to be gone for plot reasons and also the discontinued soda is foreshadowing for the mtn dew red, but taken at face value, this is something that happens a lot w/ low empathy: things are taken literally.

jeremy is upset. jeremy said to give him some space. thats cool, i’ll go for a bit and come back with something neat that might cheer him up—hey, where’d he go?

and now let’s jump to something everybody and their dog knows about. michael in the bathroom. except not really. because mitb isnt what interests me so much as what happens before.

pre mitb is very, very interesting. before i say anything i’ll be clear in saying that literally nobody had even remotely a nice halloween night, it’s a disaster for everybody involved, but keep in mind that jeremy goes into the pre mitb scene immediately after the clusterfuck that is do you wanna hang and also getting chased down by a sloshed but aggressive jake. many people have said this before me but i’ll say it again: jeremy was not doing well. at all.

and this is where michael fails step 1 of his pattern. he doesnt pick up on this at all. michael is kinda stuck in his own head right now. hes pissed. hes confused. hes betrayed. he cant understand other people’s feelings and now he has to deal with his own too. his head is a melting pot of AGH and he takes it out on jeremy. yeah, he tries to help jeremy, but he doesnt do it very well. it’s all very accusatory, and jeremy just had a terrible night, so jeremy lashes out.

teenagers are bad at emotions but theyre not bad people for it. //cue mitb notes, we know the drill

to the play!!!

recap for maximum contextualization: jeremy realizes the squip is bad fucking news and wants it gone. michael makes an entrance with the one thing that can kill it. and then this happens

AIGHT okay so the whole “i need an apology” scene is obviously played for comedy, and it does a good job at suddenly diffusing the end of the world stakes with some more down to earth teen friend drama but that aside, this scene is a good candidate to be listed under the definition of the phrase “bad timing” because michael, holy shit. BAD TIMING. like great timing for humor but bad timing as a human being.

here we have jeremy clearly in possessed distress and michael has the antidote but he only wants to give it on a condition. it is absolutely a dick move. yeah, michael is is valid for wanting an apology, but not at this moment with the current stakes. this is michael thinking pretty selfishly. hes stuck in his own head and his own thoughts. he cares about jeremy and wants to help but…this apology important to him. it’s easy to get stuck on things like this when you cant empathize with others. the low empathy means that the only feelings you really get to really interact with are your own, so theres a tendency to focus on them. sometimes even at inopportune moments.

unintentional asshole-ery behold. in fact, this can be pushed even harder by this snippet in the score of be more chill that had some lines from an earlier draft.

the fetus version of michael makes an entrance is hilariously low empathy, oh my god. this happens while jeremy is rolling around on the floor fighting an invisible-to-everybody-else squip and this is the first thing michael says. it’s positively dickish.

SO with that done, a little bit can be extrapolated in terms of characterization. i think michael is low empathy so the dominos fall. michael is terrible at feelings. hes got a tendency to get stuck in his own head and not see what others are going through. his emotional periphery is abysmal, hes like a horse with those things that stop horses from looking to the side. in spite of all this, he still has a lot of love and good in his heart and he tries his best to show that in the ways that make sense to him. post-canon, the rift between his brain and jeremy’s brain can only be bridged by a big healthy heap of communication where michael learns that what makes sense to him isnt always what makes sense to other people. hes a good kid. he can do it.

of course this is, again, all my take. the fun thing about transformative work and fandom is that all interpretations are valid and there will always be somebody out there who agrees. or disagrees. but on this blog, this is my michael. or at least one aspect of my michael. //shrug

ANYWAY im glad you like the hc anon!! ive obviously got a lot of feelings about it since i used your ask as an excuse to aimlessly ramble for, holy shit, 1.6 k words lmao. i hope you have a good day!!!

#be more chill #bmc #i spent too much time typing this so it's getting tagged #if i had to type all this you have to scroll past all of it. ive never used a readmore in my life #i havent written most of this into fic yet but i want to. desperately #hc

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constablegoo · 6 years

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alright so i have. a lot of questions and thoughts on changeling physiology

tldr it’s quite unorganized so; asexual reproduction, shifting is a natural instinct but can be expanded through study and discipline, Form is easier to reproduce than Function, changelings passively absorb energy via background radiation, conservation of mass... ha, energy efficiency, regeneration is an aware but subdued/vulnerable state, you can sneak up on odo but not most changelings, exaggerated and inhuman movement, language and body language learning, Viscosity tm, vital organs exist, injury and physical tolerance, focusing the senses...

asexual reproduction. loads of possibilities here. they might split in two (which could mean they’re really all clones of one another or else slight variations on an original) or lob a bit of themselves off which then begins to form a new individual. they might fragment off and start growing more individuals from themselves until they’re mature enough to carry on, or they might produce spores!!! OR they might reproduce the way coral do. the main complication is that this is meant for simple or single-celled organisms and also maybe leaves them all more vulnerable to that Clone Problem of being wiped out by a single virus. but perhaps their ability to mimic other types of dna is involved in providing new individuals with a robust enough mix of original genes to be baseline Adaptable

also a problem with simple organisms is that they propagate Extremely quickly and tend to be short-lived and. unintelligent (think fruit flies) so - changelings could have a fair few ‘simple organism’ traits but are ofc complex in reality

the mimicry -- do they actually become the material?? if you scan a changeling as a rock, they have the make up of a rock. but what about more complex materials? or systems? like fire? that requires energy input. im gonna go with: 1. depends on skill level 2. some things like fire they can mimic visually, maybe even with proper light and heat, but does take energy to do so.

speaking of which HOW do they get energy. i think i rambled about this a little in another post, but basically im going with the idea that they’re sort of filter feeders on the dust of the universe... they’re just VERY energy-efficient and collecting these little bits of radiation being thrown around space is a passive activity. i.e. odo probs wouldnt even know he does it, even though he does it constantly.

um. conservation of mass. the biggest thing ive seen odo turn into is that blob-monster, which was maybe 10′x10′ ? 15 at most? large, but probably somewhat unstable, and not huge. the smallest thing in canon is probably the mouse. ive seen the idea that humanoid-formed odo might be. hollow? there’s no need for him to actually form internal organs or any of that, its all surface-level, and besides. if we’re going with the idea that they can reproduce Form more than Function, they wouldnt actually work. he doesnt even eat anyway, so why waste that kinda energy?

that said!! there are probably some basic object functions they can reproduce. im gonna say that maybe your average changeling isnt going to be able to make a microwave that actually microwaves (not without a great deal of practice and scientific understanding), but could more easily become a lamp, for instance, that does actually turn on. that means they have some ability for bioluminescence, but again that requires energy and would shorten the time they can hold that shape.

regeneration obvs. is a chance to re-acquire energy, but we’re told odo doesnt sleep - it’s still a resting state, but maybe he’s still at least somewhat aware of his surroundings, if a bit unable to focus. he certainly seems to still undergo thought processes, etc. but if attacked in this state, he’ll be quite vulnerable, esp if he’s just reached hour 16, but he wont be completely defenseless. WAY more likely to hide than retaliate though, esp depending on where in the cycle he happens to be at the time -- even if that werent also kinda his personality. maybe its like bein rly rly rly tired but ur brain wont keep quiet.

kinda enjoy the idea of changelings becoming a little translucent or misshapen when they zone out. it takes some effort, practice, skill to remain present. a habit!

im sure he doesnt really bother to maintain constant humanoid-shape unless someone’s likely to look at him. could see him MAYBE being caught unawares, on occasion, whoops. very rarely, but how embarrassing

on that note, if you’re able to sneak up on odo and surprise him, he might momentarily jump a little out of shape (like a cartoon, exaggerated). other emotions like disgust or haughtiness might come off a little exaggerated too

at large, humanoid body language is a learned language for changelings, even if they can pick it up very quickly

odo’s got his humanoid walk cycle down pretty good but probably not perfectly, actually. i sort of imagine it could be a little more flowing -- not always -- but if he’s doing something he normally doesnt do, he moves a little less like a human bc he hasnt practiced it enough

ok whats the viscosity of changelings? like..... really runny and liquidy? j.... jelly? i kinda refer back to single-celled organisms again. cytoplasm w control.

in fact odo probably has some very simple (or maybe very complex, considering, but able to disguise themselves accordingly. so simple-appearing?) organs going on in there as well as cytoplasm of some sort

they dont sweat, they dont bleed, they dont smell, they dont taste, they dont sleep

they DO see, hear, are tactile, and feel most emotions that humans do. some of that emotions stuff is cultural

losing a little tiny bit of themselves (injury, i.e., a bit chopped off by a weapon) probs doesnt really hurt much more than getting a scrape, but if u like chop em in half thats gonna be Bad. but most surface level damage is just like getting a haircut or something, no pain. re: that scene with odo stopping the turbolift like.... that could’ve been painful

FOCUS!! sight, sound, etc - im writing senses as things that dont necessarily need to be located in the. face. bc they dont. but im thinking odo tends to concentrate it of course to better interact with others. that means technically - he could. .. . ‘accumulate light sensors’ and see out the back of his head, for instance, even without forming eyes, but because odo’s odo and he’s really trying to fit in he usually wont do that sort of thing and you can still sneak up on him. sometimes he even forgets he can do that kind of thing, when he’s humanoid-formed (unless he’s startled -- then he might revert to more ‘natural’ reactions) - bc he really hasnt spent any time with his people at all

this doesnt even get into the Great Link and changelings being a little bit touch-psychic

another thought !! i like the idea of one limitation being that he has to have seen / experienced in-person / studied / encountered / been exposed to an object, person, or animal to really become it. that’s where skill comes in -- some things are going to come very naturally, like shapes that are common in the universe such as rocks or. plants, in star trek . they can learn by description or by looking at images and making their best guess, but its not gonna be totally accurate. so - some shapes come from study, like humanoids, and others come more by instinct like rocks and dirt and water, like learning to talk.

so when did odo meet a klingon targ omg

also means they are instinctually EXCELLENT observers, both of material and behavior

but imagine a bird or smth speaking in odos voice yikes

speaking of speaking, odo speaks bajoran and doesnt really know any other languages on his own, except workable cardassian. i.e. he’d have to learn to speak seagull

what if bc odo’s learning and sort of stunted in skill bc of his upbringing and inhibitions his face is..... actually made of latex, sometimes, like when he needs to save energy he goes Low Poly Rendering cos its close enough, and easier, and he’s interacted with plenty of latex and other Made materials bc he’s hardly lived at all anywhere that wasnt built-up by life forms. (probs partly why he seems so interested in practicing other animals and plants -- natural shapes are not shapes he’s been as exposed to, so they’re more interesting - and dynamic - than say, furniture / appliances)

he gives off no body heat, but neither is he cold. room temp, with a wide tolerance

can survive in space and vacuums

they seem somewhat naturally stronger than humans, esp as a sturdy material

some of them can become a magnet, thats just aligning poles / can then reproduce some basic electronics functions

at least they seem to have pretty comparable intelligence to humans so that’s relatable

#LONG POST /#body horror tw #look out beloooow !!!#almost a stream of consciousness ramble sfdkgh #featuring some awfully shorthand Science #pretty much a headcanon dump . notes on specific choices im making etc #things that'll def change over time im sure #⌀ EVERY SIXTEEN HOURS I TURN INTO A LIQUID! [ about. ]#oh god this is so long but i had so much time to think at work #scary notes to myself #⌀ UNKNOWN SAMPLE. [ ooc. ]#im SO SORRY mobile users

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clonerightsagenda · 7 years

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Posting Gill’s bday fic over here with permission. It’s Rosemary-related and TLC compliant (with a couple of minor spoilers) but should be understandable even with no knowledge of the AU.

This is what you have learned from dating Rose Lalonde. Expect any room to fill up with clutter in her presence. Your attempts to keep things tidy are as effective as holding back the tide. Expect everything to take on the feel of an epic, like you might be summoned onto a world-altering quest at a moment’s notice. It’s like a human fairy tale, but the old kind, not remakes that are all glitter and talking animals. The stories with teeth.

Don’t expect her to say that she loves you.

Don’t take it personally either. That’s what you remind yourself. Rose resists sincerity. When you presented her with the first flowers you’d grown in the new greenhouse (roses; you’d been delighted to learn she’d been named for a flower), she’d laughed uncertainly like you’d unlocked an event she didn’t have a script for. Over the next week, as the blooms withered, they moved around. First you spotted them on the windowsill, then on her bedside table, in this vase or that one, like she couldn’t figure out what place they had in her life.

On the Land of Rays and Frogs, you encountered a puzzle path made of colored lily pads. If you stepped on the wrong one, it would buckle and deposit you in a mini-boss chamber before you returned to the start, weary and wiser. Navigating this relationship feels much the same. Some of your missteps now are the inevitable outcome of two species still learning about each other, but not all of them. After reading Rose’s walkthrough, you’d daydreamed of meeting its author. Now you think you need a walkthrough for her too.

The day after your tumultuous first date, Rose dumped her concoctions down the drain, saying she could embarrass herself perfectly well without the aid of depressants. Not even a week later, she set the equipment up again.

“It might come in handy for medicinal purposes,” she said when you asked her why she’d changed her mind. “Besides, it wasn’t all bad.” She winked. “We got some mileage out of it.”

You blushed, and your rainbow drinker glow briefly flared before you wrestled it under control again. In the first few weeks you hadn’t known how the rules changed when you moved from unofficial to official. Where did you put your eyes, or your hands? What were you allowed to say? “It did make you more forward.”

She laughed, and from the sharpness on her breath you realized she’d already been sampling her experiments. “I can be so fucking uptight sometimes. Maybe we all need to lighten up. Lighten up. Get it?”

“I get it,” you said. But you didn’t.

So you sought clarification from Dave. After you quested through the meteor, lipstick at the ready in case of clown sightings, you found him topside staring back the way you’d come. At the beginning of your journey, you’d taken turns stationing yourselves there, afraid Jack would catch up and resume his rampage when you least expected it. When he didn’t make an appearance, you’d all let your guards down, reducing sentry duty to a quick backward glance now and then. Was he keeping watch for Lord English now?

“Are you watching for Jack?” you asked.

He jumped and tried to cover it with a miniscule adjustment to his cape. “Nah. Watching Skeletor blast everyone to bits.”

“You and Rose have been up here a lot recently.”

“We both came up after the first killing, you know? It was so loud.” He rubbed at his eyes underneath his shades. His skin is a few shades lighter than his sibling’s, and you could see shadows there. “It’s been hard to sleep since then. At least she’s found a way to conk out.”

“About her newfound use of soporifics.” You hesitated, staring up at the flashing lights that were already becoming familiar. It’s amazing how fast you accustom yourselves to the unthinkable. “Is that normal for humans?”

He frowned. (Later, he’d tell you he hadn’t been sure how to respond. “I didn’t want to fuck it up for you two,” he said. “I didn’t think it’d get that bad.”) “Hard to say what’s normal in our situation. Guess a lot of people would pull out a bottle after everything we’ve gone through. Better than sticking a forty-five in your mouth. She’s always been extreme about reacting to things. It’s hard to believe we’re the same damn species sometimes, let alone siblings.”

“I didn’t think an outing with me is so terrible you have to be out of your wits to enjoy it.” You didn’t mean to sound petulant, but his eyebrows rose.

“She doesn’t mean it like that.”

“I thought you didn’t understand her.”

“It would take an institutional thinktank to really figure her out, but I do a little.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. He does that when he’s being serious sometimes. “I think the whole thing freaked her out. Freaks her out, present tense, if you’re officially an item now. Congrats, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

Another spiderweb of cracks blossomed above your heads. You could see them reflected in Dave’s shades as he said, “I don’t think she trusts anyone being nice to her 100%, that’s all. Not even me.”

Rose has been clean for months now in human terms. You both have. The first few weeks of your victory were spent dealing with the effects of abandoning your substances of choice. You stumbled around feeling as if you’d been dipped in concrete, your movements and thoughts slow and ponderous. Rose went days without sleep and flinched away from things the rest of you couldn’t see. Roxy warned you of what to expect, since she’d gone through the process before. She’s also the one who told you to remind Rose to eat. “She’s not gonna want to,” she said. “You feel gross all over and the last thing you want to do is stick more shit in your body, but if you don’t eat you’ll just feel crummier.”

You’d noticed her drinking her meals before, but you’d never brought it up beyond meaningful glances or the pointed placement of foodstuffs in her respiteblock. Rose has always been good at dodging questions. “Do you have any suggestions for a strategic approach? She’ll try to deflect me with witticisms. Her barbs are floppy at the edges right now, but my defenses are equally compromised.”

“That’s a cute way of saying you’re both fucked up.” Roxy shrugged. “I can’t beat her in a war of words, and I wouldn’t try. My advice? Sit on her and force feed her Saltines while telling her it’s for her own good.”

You had been skipping meals yourself. Even after eating normal food, you still felt hungry. Your system wanted something else to satisfy it, so what was the point? Rose latched on to that hypocrisy when you tried to nag her, so you’d end up sitting across the table from each other with plates of leftovers cold from the fridge, matching each other mouthful for mouthful. Whatever worked.

The worst of that is past now. But sometimes she still behaves in ways that make you wonder if after all these sweeps she really trusts you.

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] -- GA: Jade GA: Shes Doing It Again GG: whos doing what? :o GA: You Know Who GA: Who Else Do I Come To You In Search Of Explanations For Their Inexplicable Habits GA: Show Some Space Player Solidarity Here GA: There Are So Few Of Us Who View Common Sense As Part Of A Complete Breakfast GG: for everyone else its an optional granola to sprinkle on top GA: The Recipe Said Season To Taste And Im Afraid Theres A Serious Lack Of That In The Premises GA: Ok Can We Cut The Extended Cooking Metaphor Out GG: yeah, it was getting a little meanspirited GA: That Too I Guess Mostly I Didnt Want To Get Stuck Exchanging Culinary Puns GG: ok, what terrible thing is rose doing now GA: She Has Locked Herself In Her Room And Has Been Listening To Her Playlist Designated For Angst For Three Hours GG: lol GG: that behavior cannot stand! GG: except it sort of can, since we all have a right to privacy GG: even if we exercise that right by listening to sad music all day GG: these things cannot be revoked for bad taste GA: Actually Most Of It Has Been Pretty Good GA: Filtering Through The Door Gives It Nice Acoustics GG: maybe you need to give her some... space :D :D :D GA: I Just Want To Know What Upset Her GA: She Says It Wasnt Me But I Dont Know If That Means It Wasnt Me Or It Was Me And I Am Expected To Work That Out On My Own GA: A Reassessment Of The Past Few Days Activities Hasnt Turned Up Anything Suspicious GG: i cant think of anything that might have upset her... GG: ohhhhhhhhhh GG: i think its her moms birthday GG: that might be it GA: How Did You Know GA: Is That Supposed To Be Common Knowledge GG: she complained one time about having to go to a fancy dinner GG: something thrown by her moms colleagues i think??? GG: her mom made her dress up in something frilly, she said she felt like an american girl doll GG: to be honest she sent a picture and i thought it was a cute dress!! GG: definitely not her style though GA: Im Impressed You Remember GG: i try to keep track of these things GG: it was nice hearing about everyones lives, i always wished I could do things like that GG: tell me your lususes birthday, i will put it in my calendar GA: I Never Knew It GA: I Wish Shed Told Me GA: Rose I Mean I Dont Think Wriggling Days Are Important For Virgin Mothergrubs GG: dont take it personally GG: she does it to all of us, and youre her girlfriend so she has to be EXTRA secretive about terrible and compromising things like emotions GA: That Logic Sounds Backward GG: the human mind is a complicated maze of mystery kanaya GA: Sounds Mysterious GG: it is GG: she probably doesnt realize its stressing you out, i know shes trying to be better about that kind of thing GG: you know, COMMUNICATION!! D: GA: No Please Anything But That GG: the achilles heel of our entire household GG: i can bug her if you want GA: No Thats Ok GA: Mostly I Wanted To Make Sure I Hadnt Caused This And Needed To Resolve It GA: If She Wants To Grieve By Herself I Understand GG: if shes still in there by dinner well root her out! GG: there is a limit to how many sad songs are good for your soul GA: Ok GA: In The Meantime Do You Have Any Work That Needs Doing In The Greenhouse GA: Id Like To Keep My Hands Busy GG: theres some stuff that needs deadheading on table three GG: do you want company? GA: No Thats Fine GA: Ill Talk To You Later GG: sure thing! -- ¬¬grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] -- GA: Im Sorry About Your Mother TT: Who told you about that? GA: Jade TT: Figures. TT: Lousy goddamn supportive friends. GA: She Has Said She Will Flush You Out If You Dont Come Down To Dinner GA: Do You Feel Up To It GA: Otherwise I Can Convince Her To Leave You Be GA: She Is Easily Distracted From Her Resolutions If You Know How To Play Your Gaming Rectangles Right TT: No, I'll be there. TT: What time is it? GA: Half Past Five So No Rush GA: Im Still Gardening And Havent Washed Up TT: It might take me that long to get presentable. GA: Was Her Wriggling Day Important To You GA: I Admit The Concept Is New To Me GA: What With Our Ancestors Being So Far Removed From Our Lives And Our Guardians Being Literal Fauna Who Did Not Celebrate Notable Dates TT: It’s probably not even her real birthday. TT: We were all created on the same day, and I doubt anyone was on hand to record when her meteor touched down. TT: She must have picked a day she liked. TT: We used to give each other over-the-top gifts every year. TT: I thought she was being passive aggressive, so I reciprocated in turn. TT: The last year, I thought about getting her a bedazzled martini glass, but I didn’t get around to it. TT: Thank god. TT: I can only hope she interpreted my gestures as sincere as readily as I interpreted hers as sarcastic. TT: Otherwise she must have thought I was the worst daughter imaginable. GA: Im Sure She Didnt Think That TT: I wish I’d given her something better. TT: Something genuine. GA: I Was Working On A New Hat For Nepeta During The Game GA: I Got Some Monster Slime On Her Old One With A Sloppy Chainsaw Maneuver And Even Though She Said It Wasnt The First Time I Wanted To Make It Up To Her GA: And Help At Least One Of My Teammates Diversify Their Wardrobe TT: There’s always an ulterior motive, isn’t there? GA: You Tell Me GA: You Are The Expert In Decoding The Nefarious Meaning Hidden Within Every Exchange Of Pleasantries TT: It’s a secret code, Kanaya. TT: The sixth grader who tossed the newspaper into our yard this morning is working with the KGB. That’s what "Good morning" meant. This is well established in spy manuals. GA: My Knowledge Of Human Subterfuge Is Always Expanding GA: The Hat Was Supposed To Be A Surprise GA: Then I Found It In A Treasure Chest Not Long Into Our Journey GA: Theyre Gone And You Know That But Then You Find Something That Reminds You GA: Oh GA: Ill Never Give Her That Will I TT: I don’t know what I would’ve done if we’d lost anyone from our session. TT: Well, I do know. I have memories from a timeline where we lost half. TT: It wasn’t pretty. TT: I know in a lot of ways we got lucky. GA: Its Not A Contest GA: You Dont Have To Have Had It Worst To Feel Bad TT: I know. TT: But it’s hard. GA: See Look At Us Talking About Our Emotions Isnt That Nice GA: A Horrible Kind Of Nice TT: Or a nice kind of horrible. TT: Either or. GA: The Juxtaposition Is Key TT: I didn't mean to shut you out. GA: I Know You Need Privacy Sometimes GA: I Would Just Prefer To Know Whats Going On So I Dont Have To Worry About Whats Wrong GA: And You Know You Can Talk To Me TT: I know. Intellectually. TT: Is it weird I can trust you all with my life but not always with my feelings? GA: Kind Of GA: But I Get It GA: Were All Weird About Some Things TT: I'm trying to do better. And I'll let you know next time I need to indulge in a three-hour sad jams session so you won't worry. TT: Maybe after I've run through my playlist, we can even talk about it. GA: We Can Sit Awkwardly At A Table Waiting For The Other One To Break The Silence First TT: A tradition. GA: Also I Should Let You Know Its Stir Fry Night TT: Really? TT: You should have led with that. TT: Save me a seat.

As time passes, you all improve with hesitant steps that sometimes send you sliding back, sometimes not. Rose throws herself into her walkthrough, which she plans to distribute to anyone else caught up in SGRUB’s gears. Everyone is on consultant duty to flesh out areas of personal expertise. You, however, are her co-editor, a position of special privilege.

Rose views the work as one more way to help whatever players come after you. Your motivation is less selfless. Once, several sweeps and universes ago, an alien’s words found you and gave you something to hang on to. Somewhere, in a distant galaxy, someone else is being forced to play this game. Maybe your words can reach them, like Rose’s reached you. Working on the walkthrough now lets you build something together in a way that she won’t dismiss as sappy and overdone, a love letter for the universe.

That doesn’t mean you don’t run into difficulties, of course.

TT: Have you had a chance to look over the Prospit chapter? GA: Oh Uh GA: Ive Seen It TT: Did you have any feedback? TT: I'm going to ask Jade too, but I thought I'd give you the first shot. GA: Um GA: I Dont Know TT: Was it that off-base? TT: I know I'm a Derse dreamer, but I tried to be thorough. GA: Its More The Tone GA: You Wrote That Prospit May Look Friendlier But Should Still Be Viewed As An Antagonist Because It Has Ulterior Motives GA: And Maybe Thats True Especially About The Clouds GA: But My Time On The Moon Was The Brighter Portion Of My Childhood GA: And The People Of Prospit Were Always Kind To Me GA: So I Guess The Framing Made Those Memories Feel Kind Of GA: Threatened TT: Oh. GA: It Isnt A Logical Reaction TT: What do you think I should change? GA: I Dont Know GA: Maybe Nothing GA: Youre The Expert Here I Know Im Biased Toward My Moon Whatever Systems It Might Be Part Of GA: We All Take That View About Some Parts Of Our Youth Dont We GA: Even If It Was Part Of Something Bad We Remember The Good Moments GA: We Hold On To The Small Kindnesses TT: …Yeah. GA: You Can Disregard That Feedback GA: Youre The One With Writing Expertise And A Clear Goal In Mind GA: I Dont Really Know What Im Doing GA: Youre Better At This TT: I’m really not. TT: I just put on a more convincing show. TT: Don’t dismiss yourself. You have expertise in areas I don’t. GA: I Guess Im Not As Used To Putting Myself Out There TT: You can come up with a clever pen name. TT: There’s a tradition of vampires spelling their names backward. GA: Im Reformed TT: An anagram then, maybe. TT: Jokes aside, this is a collaborative project. We’ve got a Google doc and everything. TT: I don't want to intergalactically publish anything you're not comfortable with. TT: How about a revision session this evening? I'll bring Lofthouse cookies. GA: The Ones That Are Just Discs Of Sugar And Flour TT: With nary a redeeming nutritional quality in sight. TT: Keep that quiet, though. Jane would kill me if she knew I was smuggling them into the house. GA: Sounds Great Ill Be There

Rose’s typical drafting position is on her stomach with her laptop propped up on the pillow. You prefer to stretch your legs out with your back up against the wall. Thermoses of tea balance precariously between the two of you on the mattress.

“There’s been a lot of activity on the kernelsprite document,” Rose says, flicking through the pages. “Apparently Hal listed “100 advantages of being prototyped” and Dirk replaced it with “Most of this list is either illegal or immoral.” I’m turning track changes on to see what they were.”

You tap your fingers idly on the keys while your own husktop buffers. “Anything good?”

“Get away with murder,” she reads. “That’s cliché, you don’t even have to be a sprite for that. I think he just put it in there to be edgy. He’s trying so hard; you have to respect that. It’s like when I started buying black makeup to try to spite my mother.” She scrolls down further. “Oh, here’s a good one. Clip through the floor.”

“I’ve seen John do it. He’s not as original as he thinks he is.” You peer at her screen. “Eat your enemy’s phone. I’ll give him points for one. It’s not feasible for most mortals.”

Rose reaches across your legs for another cookie. “Sure, if you’re a coward.”

“I’ll accept that designation if it means avoiding a mouthful of circuitry.”

She chews thoughtfully and then flicks a sprinkle off onto the carpet. At least you’re in her room. Still, you feel a compulsion to pick it up. “About what you were saying earlier. I don’t want to contribute to any lingering insecurities.”

The change of topics catches you off guard. “They’re milling around in the lobby, but I’m not letting them upstairs.” You shrug, your shoulders sliding up the wall. “As we’ve been reminding each other, we can’t fix everything about ourselves immediately. I’m more confident than I used to be. I didn’t let Jake talk me into that routine with the glitter.”

“Shame.” She frowns at you, an expression diluted somewhat by a rim of frosting on her upper lip. “I’m not commandeering this project too much, am I? It’s nice to have something to be enthusiastic about again, but maybe I’m getting carried away.”

“No, you’re being very accommodating.” You squirm, smoothing out inconsequential creases in your skirt. Sometimes feelings don’t make sense. But once Rose decides she wants to talk about them, she tries to pin them to the page and dissect them. She does it because she wants to understand and help, the same way she wants to reverse engineer SBURB with words to assist players who come after. That doesn’t make the process any more pleasant when you’re the one on the operating table. “The problem is on my end, in the concern lobby. The lurking insecurities have been taking numbers for a while, and the counter is only up to twelve.”

“Like Inside Out crossed with a DMV? Hellish.” Rose picks up a pen and rolls it between her fingers. She likes to draft things longhand first sometimes. “I remember back on the last day of the game, you said you thought everyone burned brighter than you. You must’ve realized by now that my “burning brighter” is mostly because I have a habit of setting myself on fire.”

You’ll admit you’d been starstruck by the walkthrough’s mysterious author. It had been nice to harbor a new secret crush once Vriska was a lost cause. And you’d first met Rose face to face as a newly risen goddess bathed in the luminescence of the Green Sun. She’d seemed ethereal and beyond you.

Then, after the first few hours of sorting out living arrangements and watching Karkat roam around yelling for Gamzee to give the bodies back, she’d announced she was going to “sleep for a fucking week” and faceplanted into the nearest rug. Dave didn’t help beyond alchemizing some safety cones and setting them up around her. That had helped a little. So had seeing what her hair looks like in the mornings. “If you’re worried I have some unattainable vision of you set on a mental altar, rest easy. But you did restructure the multiverse with nothing but nerve, so I might still want your autograph a little.”

Rose brandishes the pen. “Only on the condition I get to sign your bra.” When you wave her away, she drops it on the pillow. “Spearheading the multiverse operation is one of my prouder accomplishments, I’ll admit, but my violet-tinged authorial prowess is entirely due to thinking I was hot shit as a pre-teen on the Internet. Besides, if we’re talking bragging rights, you fixed reality. Not to mention put up with us idiots for three years.”

“That was a struggle.” At times you’d wondered if you were the only one on the meteor keeping ahold of your wits. “Remember when the ceiling panels gave way and Gamzee fell onto the table?”

“Not our best group dinner. But you see, I’m a mess. You’re the one who has her act together.”

You frown. Being praised for your stability is a sore spot of yours. Yes, you’d been the one to bear everyone else’s struggles. That doesn’t mean you liked it. “I had to. Someone did. It got tiring after a while, though.”

Rose winces. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. You shouldn’t have had to. But it is impressive that you did.”

“You were sick,” you say, in response to her apology.

You see her shoulder blades rise and fall in a muted shrug. “I know. But that doesn’t mean you should have had to deal with it.”

“I guess…” Maybe you’re the one who’s prompted her to speak up, but you struggle with your words too. Troll culture teaches you that open exchanges of feelings are for moirails. Palemates are the only people you can trust the depths of your soul to, if you can truly trust anyone at all. Humans don’t compartmentalize in the same way. You can see the benefits of that system, but you still fear saying the wrong thing will push her away. “You undercut yourself to tell me I’m better than I think I am. But if I’m already worried about measuring up to some standard, that just pushes us both lower. Do you see what I mean?”

“The self-deprecation’s not cute. Got it.” She twists around in what is probably some kind of advanced yoga pose to look you in the eye. “But you shouldn’t undersell yourself either, ok?”

When she doesn’t break eye contact, you nod reluctantly. “This is a very affirming argument we’re having.”

She reaches over and prods you with the pen. “I’m channeling Jake. Believe in yourself.”

You smile. “It’s hard to resist, these days.”

When you’re done for the evening, Rose captchalogues her laptop and you troop out. Everyone has their own room, but all of you tend to spend more of your nights in the common area curled up in armchairs or slumped over each other on sofas, within easy sight of each other when you wake from bad dreams. After a few weeks of intentionally lingering there until you fell asleep, you made it official and filled the whole room with soft materials like a huge communal pile. Terezi even taped up democratically-determined regulations. Rose spends some nights curled up next to you with her face shoved so close against your neck you wonder how she can breathe. Sometimes, though, she retreats to a corner with a pillow at her back like a wall. You know not to approach her then.

Tonight, she finds an empty patch of floor and drops down on it. You lower yourself next to her.

“Are you happy with the chapter now?” she asks.

“I’d like to give it another pass tomorrow, but it’s much better.”

“And everything else?”

“That’s better too.”

“Good.” She gives you a peck on the lips and, when Terezi wolfwhistles, flips her the bird and kisses you for real. You kiss her back, until… You pull away.

“Are you wearing my lip balm?”

“Maybe.” She purses the lips in question. “It’s got a good flavor.”

“I was wondering where that went. You know, you could have just asked to borrow it.” Grudgingly, anyway. She has a terrible habit of licking the stuff off and then reapplying it to start the cycle anew.

Rose raises an eyebrow. “You offered to do my laundry so you could steal my favorite shirt.”

You think, with only a modicum of guilt, of the shirt you have stashed behind the laundry basket in your closet. “It’s very soft.”

“I’m never getting that back, am I?”

“Probably not.”

She sticks her tongue out at you and pulls a blanket over her shoulders. “Night.”

“Good night,” you say. That’s the only endearment you exchange.

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] -- GA: Karkat GA: Karkat Answer Your Phone I Know You Can See This GA: Youre Looking At It Right Now CG: YEAH I SURE AM. CG: I'M STARING AT THIS MARVELOUS HUNK OF PLASTIC AND ELECTRICITY IN MY HANDS AND REFLECTING ON HOW IT GRANTS US THE ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER FROM ANY DISTANCE. CG: SUCH AS, FOR EXAMPLE, EIGHT FUCKING FEET AWAY. GA: This Is Private CG: I DIDN'T KNOW WE HAD A CONCEPT OF PRIVACY ANYMORE. CG: COLOR ME SURPRISED, SO SOME THINGS ABOUT OUR LIVES *AREN’T* SUPPOSED TO BE COMMON KNOWLEDGE? GA: It Might Help If You Spoke With Any Kind Of Discretion Or Volume Control CG: NOT AN OPTION. CG: CARRY ON. GA: Youve Watched A Lot Of Human Romances GA: What Is The Appropriate Interval Before Affirmations Of Matespritship Are Exchanged GA: You Know Like GA: Uh CG: "I LOVE YOU"? GA: Yes That CG: THE FIRST STEP IS BEING ABLE TO TYPE IT INTO A PRIVATE CHAT SESSION WITHOUT BLUSHING. CG: I CAN SEE YOU OVER THERE. GA: Dammit GA: What Is The Waiting Period Here Like Three Sweeps CG: SO I GUESS SHE HASN'T DONE IT YET? GA: Well GA: Not Sober GA: She Was Quite Eager To Confess Admiration While On Soporifics GA: To Everyone And Everything Including Inanimate Objects GA: Im Not Sure Such Exchanges No Matter How Heartfelt Can Be Considered Fully Genuine CG: YOU'RE IN LUCK, A LOT OF HUMAN FILMS COVER THIS IN DEPTH. CG: IF YOU WANT I CAN ARRANGE A VIEWING SESSION WITH SOME MORE INFORMATIVE SELECTIONS. GA: That Might Be Fun GA: But Mostly I Would Appreciate Some Friendly Advice GA: As Educational As Im Sure The Latest Work Starring Anne Hathaway Would Be CG: AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY IS: CG: IT USUALLY DOESN’T TAKE THIS LONG. CG: BUT THE CHARACTERS INVOLVED ARE OLDER, THE SAME SPECIES, AND HAVEN’T BEEN THROUGH A WAR, SO IT’S NOT A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLE. CG: ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT IT? GA: Not Exactly GA: I Know The Sentiment Is There GA: If Anything I Just Hope She Feels Comfortable Enough She Knows She Can Be Open With Me GA: Shes Trying But I Can Tell Its Still Difficult For Her CG: DAVE SAYS "its obvious shes crazy about you" SO NO WORRIES THERE. GA: Why Is Dave Part Of This Conversation CG: HE WALKED OVER AND LOOKED AT MY PHONE OVER THE BACK OF THE SOFA. CG: LIKE I SAID. PRIVACY = ZERO GA: Hi Dave CG: HE SAYS HI. GA: I Saw Him Wave GA: Now Tell Him To Go Away CG: AND HE’S GONE. CG: THE CHAT IS CLEAR OF FUTURE BROTHERS-IN-LAW. GA: Future What CG: THAT’S WHAT YOU’LL BE IF YOU AND ROSE GET "HUMAN MARRIED". CG: THE RITUAL MAKES YOU FAMILY WITH THEIR ENTIRE FAMILY. CG: I’M PRETTY SURE IT WAS HISTORICALLY DESIGNED TO ACQUIRE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ADVANTAGES. CG: YOU KNOW, KIND OF LIKE HOW INTERCASTE MOIRALLEGIANCES CAN AFFORD LOWER CASTES PROTECTION. CG: BUT IN MODERN TIMES MOSTLY IT MEANS YOU’RE STUCK WITH THOSE CHUCKLEFUCKS FOR LIFE AS A PACKAGE DEAL. GA: Oh No CG: OH YES. GA: Karkat I May Be Rethinking This Whole Venture CG: TOO LATE, I’M GOING TO BE YOUR BEST MAN. IT’S ALREADY DECIDED. GA: What Is A Best Man GA: Is It Whoever I Have Designated If I Were For Some Reason Obligated To Wed Someone Of That Gender CG: NO. CG: THE MOVIES AREN’T ENTIRELY CLEAR ABOUT THEIR ROLE, BUT IN GENERAL THEY GIVE HEARTFELT SPEECHES AND PROVIDE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT. GA: Maybe I Want Jake To Be My Best Man GA: He Can Recite Touching Monologues Ripped From The Silver Screen CG: YOU HAVE NO SAY IN THIS WHATSOEVER. CG: (YOU KNOW I’M JOKING, RIGHT?) GA: I Figured GA: Although I Wouldn’t Put It Past You To Try To Plan That Kind Of Thing Out For Me CG: HEY IF YOU EVER WANT IDEAS, I CAN THROW SOME OUT THERE. CG: YOU’RE WAY TOO YOUNG FOR THAT KIND OF THING THOUGH. CG: AND WE STILL HAVE TO GET YOU FROM POINT A TO POINT B, WHICH INVOLVES TRAVERSING THE ROCKY TERRAIN OF EMOTIONAL HONESTY, WITH WHICH I HAVE HAD NO PAST PROBLEMS AT ALL. CG: YOU COULD ALWAYS SAY IT FIRST YOURSELF I GUESS. CG: UNLESS YOU THINK THAT’LL MAKE HER EVEN MORE NERVOUS? GA: It Might GA: Outright Displays Of Emotion Embarrass Her She Relates It Too Much To Her Drunken Excesses And Those Of Her Mother GA: If I Can Be Permitted To Psychoanalyze Here GA: Shes Admitted As Much CG: THEN… LET HER KNOW SHE CAN FEEL COMFORTABLE? CG: THAT DOESN’T SOUND VERY EXCITING, BUT MAYBE IT DOESN’T HAVE TO. CG: THEY MAKE A BIG DEAL OUT OF IT IN THE MOVIES BUT I THINK AS LONG AS YOU’RE BOTH ON THE SAME PAGE WHETHER THOSE THREE EXACT WORDS HAVE ESCAPED YOUR QUIVERING CHUTE FLAPS DOESN’T MATTER ALL THAT MUCH. CG: THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO SHOW YOU CARE. I’M PRETTY SURE YOU’VE GOT THAT COVERED. CG: MOVIES AREN’T ALWAYS THAT REALISTIC ABOUT WHICH PARTS OF A RELATIONSHIP ARE A FEDERAL FUCKING ISSUE VERSUS WHICH PARTS ARE NEGOTIABLE. GA: !! CG: YEAH YEAH RUB IT IN. CG: SO I RELIED ON THEM A LOT, IT’S NOT LIKE I HAD MUCH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. GA: I Shouldnt Criticize This Was Helpful GA: Thanks For Listening GA: And I Would Like To Watch Movies With You Sometime If That Offer Is Still On The Table CG: DEFINITELY. CG: I’LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN I’VE GOT A GOOD LINEUP PULLED TOGETHER.

A few days later, Rose wanders into your room unannounced and flops onto the bed. This isn’t uncommon behavior, so you keep sorting through your clean laundry. Her cat behaves similarly, insinuating himself into a room as if he belongs there. It’s a lazy confidence you envy. “We should go out,” she says, directing her words at the ceiling.

“We should?” you ask, holding two socks up to see if they match. They don’t, exactly, but they are a pair. Rose knitted them for you herself. They’re lumpy and awkwardly shaped, and you treasure them.

“We were going to do something fun after the game, remember? That was the plan. But we've both been sick, and outside is...” Rose waves toward the window and the world it serves as a barrier against. “Outside, so we haven't gotten around to it. But we should. You’ve been in your room a lot. It’ll do us both good.”

Drat. Your downturns aren’t as explosive as the others’. Sometimes you simply withdraw, spending more time on your own while a mental screen descends between you and the world, distorting it like a blur filter. There’s nothing wrong with you, exactly; it’s just that you don’t have the energy. That’s not bad, right? There are worse things than numbness. “What were you thinking we could do?”

She sits up halfway and then flops back down again. The pillows bounce. “I was hoping you'd have some ideas.”

You twist the socks together and toss them into the appropriate drawer. “The only thing I remember suggesting was outfits without sleeves.”

“Compelling, but not really something to make a date out of.” Rose frowns. “Have we ever... had a normal date? By regular people's standards?”

“Troll or human?” You shake your head. “I don't think any species would give us a passing grade.”

“Earthworms might be impressed.”

You pout. “You've never taken me to any good plots of soil.”

“We'll do that next time. For now, Jane said someone needs to do the shopping.”

“You know how to sweep me off my feet.”

Rose, still prone, waves a list in your direction. “It'll be fun. We get to pick which flavor of potato chips we want, and everyone else has to live with it.”

If Alternia had anything like supermarkets, they hadn’t spread near your oasis. For all that your caste can stand the sun, the electric lights hurt your eyes. They’re too bright – a harsh white that makes all the bright colors look flat and artificial. You reach for Rose’s hand, and she squeezes it. “I appreciate the support,” you say, “but I wanted to see the list.”

“Oh. Right.” She brings it up for both of you to consult. “Does Jade know how expensive beef is? She’s really running us through it.”

“She’s been talking about growing vegetables for the household. It’s too bad she can’t raise her own cows.”

“Don’t give her ideas. She wouldn’t be able to bring herself to butcher them, not after we’d named them all.” Rose leads you to the back of the store and scoops up slabs of meat packed into tidy foam and plastic containers. The setup is so clinical your residual rainbow drinker instincts don’t even twitch. It’s a far cry from the Alternian pastime of slicing your dinner up while it’s still wriggling. “We need milk,” she begins, and trails off after she pivots to the left. “It was that way in my old store. But they must not follow a common plan.”

Rose looks unmoored now that her navigational confidence has been broken. A lot of the humans are like this, wavering when their world doesn’t behave the way they think it should. It’s almost easier for those of you who expect foreign ways and customs. It’s harder to be a stranger in your own home. “We’ll wander,” you say, and steer her firmly by the shoulder.

By a combination of trial and error and studying signage like relics of a lost civilization, you manage to gather everything on the list. The only problem comes when you pass a series of shelves stacked with bottles, and Rose stiffens. It takes a moment for the pieces to fall into place – you’ve never seen wine packaged in its original containers before.

”Come on,” you say, linking your arm with hers. “Help me test which limes are ripest.”

You have to tug for a moment before she comes with you. You don’t think she’s planning to make a running leap for the vintage. If anything, she looks like she does when there’s an enemy sighted, wary and ready to spring. If she destroys several wine racks with a blast of divine light, that’ll probably go on your bill.

”Sorry,” she says, once you’ve made it to the produce section. “At my old store, it was in a separate room. Not out in the open.”

You lean toward her a little, so your shoulders press together. “It took you by surprise.”

She leans back. “Like pulling down your sheets and seeing a spider in your bed.” You see a dot of blood on her lower lip. She must have bitten it. “It must be harder for you. There’s no getting away from all that blood walking around on two legs.”

”It’s easier not to slip up, though.” You reach over with your free hand and dab at her cut, wiping the smear on the side of your shirt. “They’d make a fuss if I tried to sample it.”

”That’s what recovering alcoholics need.” She swipes at her mouth herself, but the wound is already closing. “Wine bottles that scream when you open them.”

”You’ve uncovered a new industry.”

”I need to patent it immediately.”

You squeeze her arm before letting go. If she’s making jokes, that’s a good sign.

Rose perks up when you’re heading toward the checkout. “Hang on. We have to stop by the natural foods section.”

”We do?” You check the list again. There’s nothing left on it.

”You never know,” she says. Now it’s her turn to drag you along. “The cure to all our life’s problems might be hiding next to the apricot kernels.”

Her tone is mocking. “Is there something wrong with natural products?”

”Not on their own. Jade says a lot of processed food upsets her stomach after growing up without it. But some people will pitch organic to you as the cure for cancer, and if you’re telling me you feed your four-year-old Goji berries instead of getting him vaccinated, I think you’ve opened yourself up to public disdain.” Rose plucks a box of tea off the shelf. “Look at this one. It says it’ll revitalize your body and restore harmony to your thoughts. All for twelve dollars, too.”

”Sounds like a deal.”

”It would have its work cut out for it with us. Hey, if I drink Sleepy Time and Stay Alert blends at the same time, what do you think will happen?”

”You’ll shed your corporeal form and ascend to a being of pure consciousness, and that would be a shame, because I like your face.” You retrieve the boxes and put them back before she decides to do product testing. “Apparently these exotic grains cure depression with their wholesome vitamins and minerals.”

”Buy the whole shelf.”

She’s right; some of these products are ridiculous. The two of you are giggling over asparagus water when a middle-aged woman pushes past you with her shopping cart. A highblood couldn’t look down their nose better. “Are you girls done with that?” she asks.

”Definitely,” Rose says, straight-faced. “I’d recommend it. It made us gay.”

Rose did the talking there, and you were too busy laughing to think of how to react. But when you get to the cashier, your tongue twists in your mouth. You stammer through pleasantries until Rose rescues you and completes the transaction. You drift away while she's collecting the bags, pretending to peruse the week's advertisement flier.

“She was pretty,” Rose says when she joins you, groceries in tow. “Is that why you were stuttering?”

You take half the bags from her. It would have been polite to help her carry them from the conveyor belt, but you needed to escape. “Was she? I didn't notice.”

She nudges you with a conspiratorial grin. “You don't have to play coy. I won't get jealous.”

“I'm not playing coy.” You shift one of the bags over your wrist, and something inside crinkles. Hopefully you didn’t break anything. “Her face was a blur. I panicked.”

Rose’s smile fades. “I’d forgotten you could be shy.”

The automatic doors whoosh open as the two of you approach. You sidestep a mother and her offspring going the other direction. “When you grow up on an oasis where your nearest neighbors are the shambling undead, you're a little cautious of strangers.”

“But willing to send them messages on Pesterchum questioning their intelligence and morals.”

She printed your first conversation logs off and stuck them to her wall, which you find equally endearing and annoying. Every time you see them, you itch to pull out a pen and make edits. “That's different. We weren't face to face. And... this is all new, here. I worry they'll be able to tell.”

“That they'll scream “Space invader!” and cart you off to a top secret facility?

”I’m sure it’s funny to you,” you say with a sniff, starting across the parking lot. “They won’t dissect you.”

She smiles again – you meant her to; the dissection at least was a joke. “I get nervous too. Not as much now after everything we’ve been through, but I’ve always been hyperaware of social situations. But I tend to take the ‘don't get scared; get angry’ approach.”

You recall how she marched up to the conveyor belt and slammed down her purchases. “I did wonder if you were going to challenge the salesperson to a strife.”

“Chalk it up to the childhood narcissism. I always felt like everyone was passing judgment.”

You accidentally make eye contact with a man stepping out of his vehicle and redirect your gaze at Rose’s collarbone. “Like everyone's watching.”

She nods. “And that's not true. They have their own problems and couldn't care less what we do. We're not important to them. In this case, that's reassuring.”

You’re surprised she finds it comforting. You’re happy to fade into the background; Rose likes to be noticed. You’d never realized it frightened her too. “What a pair we make,” you say.

“Between us, we add up to one functional person.”

You pull open the car door for her with a flourish. “I'd be generous and say at least 1.5.”

A few of the humans have been working to get their licenses so Jane’s father doesn’t have to drive them everywhere. Rose only has a permit, but that doesn’t stop her from using the car. Seer powers let her know if there’s likely to be trouble, but otherwise she drives like she’s got a grudge against the pavement. She peels out of the parking spot and then slams on the brakes. You hug a carton of eggs to your chest so they don’t splatter against the windshield. “What is it?”

”We have cold bags for everything, right?”

”Yes.” It was overkill for a short trip, but you prefer to be prepared.

She pulls into the store’s partner gas station while you wave apologetically at the elderly woman she just cut off. “This is a date. We’re going to get coffee.”

The coffee machine is broken, so you both get 99 cent slushies and sit on the curb next to the free air pump. The parking spot is empty save for a mulch of cigarette butts and ripped up Lotto tickets. Rose slurps some of her concoction out of a straw. It’s a murky mess, and you spotted her squirting a few shots of energy drink in for good measure. You spent several minutes painstakingly creating a rainbow pattern and are now trying to drink evenly to keep the layers intact. A bag of chips slumps half-empty between you. They’ll complain about that back home, but it’s their fault for not coming along to supervise.

Rose sucks on her straw with a noise like a drain unclogging. “How’s this for romance and adventure?”

“I could do it again,” you say. And you could. The encounter with the cashier still leaves you shaken, but the haze has peeled off the world. It’s funny how after everything you’ve been through, something as simple like this can be energizing. There are groceries in the car that need to get back and a household worth of responsibilities to keep up with, but right now it could just be the two of you setting off on some new adventure. Rose has always made you feel that way. Light players make the world narrow around them, drawing in attention, compressing possibility. They’re a lantern you bump against, entranced. With Rose, you’ve found one that doesn’t burn.

”Well shit, these were ninety-nine cents.” She smirks in the way that means you’ve missed a joke. “I think our budget can afford it.”

”Thank you for dragging me out here.” Lurking in your room seems silly now. “It helps, borrowing your confidence.”

”It’s a show,” she says. “I don’t know how you manage to seem so centered all the time.”

”Amateur theatrics,” you say. “One functional person, here we are.” She raises her drink in a toast, and you knock them together. ”I mean it, though,” you continue. “It’s nice, the way you turn things into adventures. Even if it’s a shopping trip, I don’t know where we’re going to end up. It’s unpredictable, but I like it. I like spending time with you.”

She smiles and looks away. Whenever you’ve successfully induced emotions, she never wants to look you in the eye. “That slushy must have made an impression.”

”It was good.” You flick the straw, sending drops of condensation scattering across the asphalt. “We didn’t have anything like this at home, at least not where I grew up. That might explain part of the rapturous response. But mostly I think it’s because I love you.”

Rose stills. That might be a bad sign, but you’ve gotten yourself into this situation, so you might as well keep going. “I’m not trying to corner you,” you say, looking down at your knees. “I know you have difficulty expressing some things. But I wanted to express that. Right now.”

When you sneak a look over, her shoulders are shaking. The ice from your drink solidifies in your stomach until you realize she’s laughing.

”Do you know how long I’ve been agonizing over this?” she asks.

”I knew why,” you begin. “Your mother…” That’s not a complete sentence, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes you want to ask John to transport you into Rose’s past so you can grab the woman by her shoulders and shake her. “How could you be so careless?” you want to demand. “Didn’t you realize what you were doing?” You are all the results of what has been done to you, combined with your attempts to overcome it. Even with your universes gone, their impressions remain as indelible parts of you. You wouldn’t want Rose to be anything other than who she is, but that doesn’t stop you from wishing she could have gotten something better growing up.

“That was what started it.” Rose takes a gulp of her drink. The humor drains from her voice. Now she’ll look you in the eye. “She’d vanish into her laboratory or a drunken stupor and leave me to fend for myself. The first time I tried cooking spaghetti I set off the fire alarm. I couldn’t get it to stop until I climbed up on a chair and took the batteries out. She slept through the whole thing. So when she turned up with a new present, how could I believe it was sincere? And even if it was, it didn’t make up for anything. If all you can give is the trappings of love, like you’ve bought out a Valentines’ clearance sale but can’t be damned to raise your own child, it doesn’t count.” She sloshes the remains of her drink around with one hand and watches it like she’s reading tea leaves. “So I guess I distrusted all of it. The glitz, the performance, anything. Even the words. Because if you do it right, they should know. But… in the past I’ve been guilty of overcorrecting.”

“Really?” You try to keep your tone teasing. Anything else might alarm her.

She elbows you in the ribs, but not hard. “Sometimes I’ve turned the wheel a bit and drifted over the dividing line between reasonable responses and terrible decisions by a few millimeters.”

“I think a driving instructor might say you sailed over the median, engaged with oncoming traffic, and left the highway entirely for parts unknown. What?” you add. “I’ve read the manual you’re all practicing from.”

“Five dollars says you pass the test before I do. After the timeline John made unhappen, I realized I’d never told you. For all the wrong, stupid reasons. I shouldn’t have let any of that stop me. I would’ve died with that as one of my greatest regrets. So I wanted it to be perfect, since I made you wait so long.” She covers her mouth with one hand and smiles through her fingers. “God, you should see my search history. I watched promposal videos, although I wiped all that data and I’ll deny it if you tell anyone. And here we are –” she pauses and shakes her head - “in a gas station parking lot. But you know what? I think it fits.” She slings an arm around your shoulders and plants a sticky kiss on your cheek. “I love you. Let’s make it count.”

This is what you have learned from dating Rose Lalonde. Expect your lives to accumulate the clutter of experiences together – receipts and stolen shirts and empty packages still streaked with frosting. Expect to make missteps, because the two of you are walking an uncharted path one step after another. Sometimes you fall, fight your demons, and climb back up again. You are all doing this for the first time.

Expect her to say she loves you in unexpected ways. A new package of lip gloss left on your pillow. A flower pressed between the pages of a heavy book to make it delicate and perfect. Occasionally, the words.

Make it count.

#trying this one last time #kat writes fic #dare i put it in the tags....#nah #homestuck/

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