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memzhay · 3 years

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The Tonight Show

“Welcome back to the Tonight Show, everybody!” Jimmy says with palpable good humor. “We’re back with more from our good friends Rhett and Link!”

The audience cheers. The camera cuts to Rhett and Link seated on the couch next to Jimmy’s desk. Dressed to the nines. Big smiles. Having so much fun.

“We’re going to play a game for you tonight we are calling ‘Blank Thinks Blank is a Blank!’ Here’s how it’s going to work. In front of me are these 3 opaque jars.” He gestures to 3 large white mason jars in front of him on the desk. “In this jar,” pointing to the one on the audience’s left, “are our names, Rhett, Link, and Jimmy.”

“I’m Rhett!” Rhett offers helpfully.

“In this jar in the middle, we also have our names, Rhett, Link, and Jimmy.”

“I’m Link!” Link says proudly.

“Very good,” Jimmy chuckles. “And in this final jar there is some sort of mystery thing that one of us thinks another one of us, or himself I suppose, is. I will draw a slip of paper from each of these jars, and we will enact a scene based on what comes out. Sound good?”

The audience claps. Rhett and Link look ready for action.

“Alright for our first scene,” he draws slips of paper from the jars, “Jimmy,” gestures to himself, “thinks Link,” the camera snaps to a close up of Link who gives an adorable ‘who me?’ look, “is a kitten!”

Link instantly gets down on his knees on the floor. Licking the back of his hand and grooming himself like a cute cute kitty.

“You’re missing the premise of the game here,” says Rhett. “You don’t have to be a kitten, he has to think you are a kitten.”

Link turns and looks up at Rhett. “Mew?” he says in a tiny kitten voice, and goes back to grooming himself.

Jimmy gets up and comes around the desk. “What an adorable little kitten!” he exclaims. “Can I pet you?” Jimmy reaches his hand down to Link who purrs and rubs his face on Jimmy’s hand. Rhett shakes his head from the couch looking embarrassed and a teensy bit jealous.

“Clearly evil,” says Rhett. The audience laughs, and a few cat people make sounds of mock outrage. Link hams it up, arching his body and rubbing his side against Jimmy’s leg.

“Do you want to play, little kitty? Do you want to play with this feather on a string?”

Jimmy holds up an invisible feather on an invisible string and Link wastes no time batting at it with his paws. “Mew!” he cries in delight. He barrel rolls on the ground and lays on his back pawing up at the invisible feather.

“Good kitty! Pretty kitty!” Jimmy praises. The Roots play some nice “TA DA!” music, and the scene is over. The audience cheers. Link gets up from the ground, dusts himself off and goes back to the couch.

“Alright, for our next scene,” Jimmy says, pulling slips of paper from the jars, “Rhett thinks Jimmy is a koala.”

Rhett springs up and does some warmup stretches. Jimmy stands in front of the desk looking slightly bewildered. “How am I supposed to-“

“Here,” Link gets up and stands next to Jimmy. “I’m a eucalyptus tree,” he offers helpfully. “Climb me.”

“What?!” Jimmy laughs.

“For goodness sakes,” Link says in mock exasperation. He grabs Jimmy’s arms and wraps them around his shoulders. He reaches down and hooks a hand under Jimmy’s thigh, picking it up and holding it in front of him. “It’s ok, man. I’m a tree,” he assures adopting a neutral ‘tree’ expression.

“G’day children!” Rhett says to the audience in a passable Australian accent. “This cheeky little fella here is a koala bear, and isn’t he a beauty?!” The audience laughs. Jimmy smiles sheepishly.

“Now we all know that koalas eat eucalyptus leaves.” Rhett picks up the discarded slips of paper from the previous rounds and approaches Jimmy. “This little guy just loves them!” he says holding a slip of paper up to Jimmy’s mouth.

Jimmy looks at Rhett like he must be insane, but Rhett doesn’t back down, and Jimmy opens his mouth and accepts the paper. Chewing miserably while the audience has a good laugh.

“See! Look at that hungry little fella! Now when the leaves fall off like that, you really should just put them back in the tree. Keeps everything nice and neat.” He holds the rest of the paper slips up to Link, who rolls his eyes but opens his mouth and allows Rhett to stuff the rest of the paper slips in it.

“Now remember children, these little buggers are cute, but if you see one, you mustn’t try to pet it. They can carry chlamydia.” The audience cackles. Jimmy laughs and looks insulted. “This one definitely has chlamydia,” Rhett declares.

“TA DA!” play the Roots. The audience hoots and the scene ends.

Jimmy sits back behind the desk as Rhett and Link return to the couch. Jimmy is snickering and muttering about chlamydia.

“Alright, and for our final scene,” he says reading the last of the paper slips, “Link thinks Rhett is a motorcycle.”

Rhett and Link stand up and confer for a second.

“Do you think?” asks Rhett gesturing to the floor.

“Yes,” Link nods sagely. “I do.”

Rhett sighs. “I thought so.” He proceeds to lay down on the floor on his back, lifting his arms. While he is getting situated, Link gives a long-suffering look to the camera. He then doesn’t hesitate to get down on the floor, straddling Rhett, and grabbing his raised fists like handlebars.

“Time to hit the open road!” Link proclaims. He lifts his knee and brings it down like he is kick starting his bike. “Huh,” he ponders. “This motorcycle doesn’t make any noise when you start it.”

He tries again and Rhett makes enthusiastic vroom vroom noises. Link lets out a whoop and leans the motorcycle this way and that. “Let’s see what this baby can do. This is an excellent motorcycle! Top of the line!”

“I’m a Harley!” Rhett exclaims and continues making vroom vroom noises.

“You sure are!” calls Link. “You’re a big ol’ hog of a Harley! Let’s see if we can get this thing to pop a wheelie!”

Link grinds is hips down into Rhett, grabbing his wrists and lifting his shoulders off the ground. GIF makers all over the internet abruptly die of cardiac arrest only to be instantly resurrected by the power of the pure awesomeness of it!

“Whee!” Link yells in delight. He lowers his arms and Rhett’s shoulders return to the floor. Rhett is laughing now, and his arms go limp.

“Oh no!” Link yells. “Something’s gone wrong with my bike! We’re gonna crash!!”

Link flings himself off Rhett and rolls down the stairs, off the stage, and splats dramatically on the floor in front of the audience, limbs splayed every which way, tongue lolling out. He dies with a groan.

“TA DA!” the Roots play. The audience laughs and hollers and applauds like crazy.

Link hops up and bounds back up the stairs, helping Rhett off the ground. They take a moment brushing each other off and adjusting each other’s ties. Rhett smooths Link’s hair back. Link raises a hand to do the same, then shrugs as Rhett shakes his lion mane of hair into place majestically. They give the audience a wave and return to the couch laughing.

Jimmy is smiling and looking a bit dumfounded. “There were like a thousand ways you could have done that,” he says, “and you just mounted him!”

Link considers. “It was the best way to do it,” he says simply. He turns his head to Rhett who nods enthusiastically. Obviously!

The camera cuts back to a close up of Jimmy, a bemused smile on his face. “Legendary,” he says. “Ladies and Gentlemen, the new season of Good Mythical Morning hits YouTube on April 19th! Give it up for the incomparable Rhett and Link!!”

Cheers, music, and cut to commercial.

#rhink #rhink fic #rhink fanfiction

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aqua-murphys-law · 4 years

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when it rains

Rating: K+ Warnings: panic attacks, breakdowns, self-depreciating thoughts Summary:

i’m only honest when it rains if i time it right, the thunder breaks when i open my mouth i wanna tell you but i don’t know how

~*~

With a life like Milo’s, it’s only a matter of time before he can’t just grin and bear it anymore. Some times are less convenient than others.

A/N: This started out as a purely self-indulgent “let Milo get angry and upset” whump fic, but hooooo boy there’s a lot to unpack now. My headcanons just will not give me a break. But hey, y’all get a +6k word fic out of the deal, so enjoy!

Check replies for a link to read on A03 for full tags, cause Tumblr hates links apparently! - Aqua

~*~

Of all the ways Milo Murphy has traveled to school, clinging to the top of a runaway ice cream stand that’s surfing a massive wave of pistachios is certainly one of the more palatable ones.

Hah, palatable- he almost makes the joke out loud, but between Zack’s screaming and Melissa’s shrieking laughter and the roar of wind and veering traffic in their ears, they probably won’t hear him. He files that pun away for later and turns his focus to their inevitable stopping; there’s a fountain up ahead that’s about the right height.

Adjusting his grip, Milo climbs over to the side of the stand, throwing its weight to the left. That changes its trajectory just enough to crash right into the fountain, tipping them and all the stand’s contents over into the small ocean of pistachios below. It’s like falling into a ball pit- if the balls in ball pits were tiny green nuts with miscellaneous ice cream sundae ingredients scattered about. Either way, it’s a soft enough landing, and the momentum carries them further down the road before the ground flattens out and they finally roll to a stop.

As fate would have it, the tidal wave of debris has carried them right to the school crosswalk, minutes before first bell. There’s a small group of their classmates waiting to cross, gaping at the wreckage. Milo picks himself out of the mess and dusts his knees off before helping Zack to his feet.

“Watch out for the banana peels,” Milo cautions. “They’re just as slippery in real life as they are in cartoons.”

Zack catches his breath. “Dude, that was kinda awesome.”

Milo’s heart swells happily, and he grins. “I’d say that’s one of our most palatable adventures yet.”

Zack’s eyes light up as he catches on, nudging Milo with his elbow. “It sherbet was!”

“No puns this early in the morning,” Melissa groans, picking pistachios out of her hair.

Milo digs a brush out of his backpack and hands it to her. “Sorry, Melissa,” he says good-naturedly.

“Yeah, sorry,” Zack says, “we know you don’t… cone-done that behavior.”

Milo hides a laugh behind his hand while Melissa lightly punches Zack’s arm before continuing to brush out the pistachios. Then he takes a second to look over the damage again, double-checking no one got caught in the crossfire. It’s a good thing the stand hadn’t been open yet when that freighter full of pistachios exploded-

“Stop! Milo.”

Milo looks over at the familiar voice, smiling. “Hi, Elliot.”

As always, the crossing guard is brandishing his stop sign at them. His attention seems to be split between staring at Milo and staring at the heap of food in the street.

Melissa rolls her eyes. “We’re already stopped,” she points out, passing the brush back to Milo. “You know, just a group of middle school kids, waiting for the crossing guard to help them cross the street?”

“Yeah,” Zack adds, “your job?”

Elliot makes a disbelieving sound. “What, the giant mountain of walnuts hasn’t stopped traffic enough as it is?”

“Actually, they’re pistachios,” Milo says helpfully, tucking the brush away. “And sure, but it’s really best to wait for authorized personnel to formally halt the flow of traffic using proper signage instead of taking your chances.”

“I know that!” Elliot protests, sounding irritable. He holds the stop sign out, gesturing with his other hand for them all to cross. “Alright, move it along, people…”

Milo is happy to do so, leaving Elliot’s grumbling behind. It’s always a good morning when he actually makes it to school, and on time. Walking beside him, Melissa’s already whipped her phone out to share the pictures she took during all the excitement, snickering at the way Zack’s eyes widen. Milo chuckles to himself; how she manages to get such incredible shots, he’ll never know.

They reach the sidewalk on the other side without incident. He can hear the echoes of sirens from responding emergency vehicles starting up across town and knows they’ll be at the scene in a couple minutes. That makes him feel better about heading inside before they arrive, though he laments the fact that he won’t get to thank them personally-

“You know, Murphy, these catastrophes would be a lot more bearable if you took them seriously.”

Milo pauses, tilting his head. Melissa and Zack are already frowning at Elliot, but he wants to make sure he’s accurately identified the disdain in Elliot’s voice and isn’t just missing sarcasm again.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Elliot folds his arms with a huff, his stop sign sticking out at an angle. “I mean, you walk around with that grin on your face, brushing everything off like it’s no big deal.” He scowls at Milo over his glasses. “Do you even care about all the chaos you leave in your wake?”

Milo blinks, his smile faltering. Is that the impression people get from him?

Zack steps forward. “Hey man, back off,” he snaps at Elliot.

“Yeah,” Melissa chimes in, folding her arms, “you’re just bitter because people keep assuming you’re in your thirties.” She jerks her chin over at the doors. “Come on, Milo.”

Milo manages to smile again, but it feels strained. “Elliot, I can assure you that I understand the severity of Murphy’s Law,” he says carefully, moving to follow Melissa up the rest of the stairs.

“Well, you certainly don’t act like it,” Elliot gripes after them, a parting jab.

Milo should let it go, he knows he should. This is just how Elliot is; there’s no way somebody so pathologically obsessed with safety would ever see Milo as anything more than a hazard. But this is more than simply placing blame on him for Murphy’s Law. That, he’s used to. He can handle that.

What he can’t stand for is the implication that he doesn’t care when people get hurt. Not when he works so hard to avoid it- often at the expense of his own wellbeing. If he only worried about himself, Murphy’s Law would be exponentially easier to deal with. Most people don’t realize that.

He stops walking, turning to look Elliot dead in the eye. “What’s the alternative?” he asks, his face blank and voice held carefully neutral.

Elliot’s clearly surprised at the question. He hesitates, shooting a wary look at Melissa and Zack, before he manages a shrug. “I don’t know, just some indication that you’re actually sorry for everything going wrong all the time?”

Milo’s grip on his backpack goes white-knuckled. “You think I should feel sorry?” he asks quietly.

Elliot flounders for a second. “I, uh… well, yes?”

It’s one thing for Milo to impulsively feel responsible for any destruction caused by Murphy’s Law, before he can remind himself that it’s not his fault. But it’s another thing entirely for someone to tell him that he should feel that way, all the time.

“What would you like me to do?” he presses. “Walk around with my head hung low, overcome with guilt every time Murphy’s Law happens? Apologize constantly when the majority of the people in my life have been dealing with it for years? Or- or beat myself up over something I can’t change or control?”

Elliot’s eyes widen, his brows shooting up to his hairline. “Now listen, that’s not exactly what I said-”

“But it’s what you meant, right?” Milo asks in a voice he doesn’t recognize. It’s white-hot with anger, and he can feel the glare that’s drawing his eyebrows down into a point, the way it’s narrowing his eyes. It’s an unfamiliar expression.

Oh, this is dangerous territory. Anger isn’t safe; it clouds the mind and fosters rash decisions, preventing one from thinking clearly. He can’t afford to have his judgement skewed, his reaction time hampered by the distraction of wrestling emotions under control. Not here, when there’s so many people around who could get hurt by his inability to act if something were to happen.

Melissa tugs Milo by the arm, trying to pull him away. “Milo, come on, he’s not worth it,” she says, her voice low and urgent.

The concern in her voice pricks at him. He’s aware, to some degree, that they’ve attracted an audience; the other kids that crossed with them are lingering, whispering to each other. He’s aware that his heart is starting to race and his skin feels flushed, the unpleasant physical effects of anger. And he’s especially aware of Zack’s gaze on him, what he must be thinking of the whole situation.

But Milo abruptly finds that he doesn’t care. Maybe that should concern him, too.

Elliot holds up his hands, something akin to panic flashing across his face. “Hey, look, I didn’t-”

“If I let myself feel bad every time Murphy’s Law happened, I’d never stop,” Milo says sharply. “Do you realize that? You’re only exposed to Murphy’s Law in the brief moments I’m around you. But for me, it never ends. It doesn’t have a weekly schedule, it doesn’t take days off. It doesn’t even stop when I’m asleep. And I will be dealing with it for the rest of my life.”

A horrible silence follows, even Elliot seeming lost for words.

Chills erupt across Milo’s skin. The fiery anger inside him suddenly extinguishes, leaving him cold and hollow. He’s struck with the realization that in his lashing out, he’s only just upset himself more. Because he doesn’t like to think about the future, about how everything he’s experienced so far in his short life is just the tip of the iceberg, and there he goes, now he’s thinking about it-

Something wet runs down his cheek.

Instinctively, Milo looks up to find the source. But there aren’t any clouds in the sky threatening a sudden downpour, no leaky pipes or anything else to drip water on him. Brows knitting in confusion, he absently reaches a hand up to his face.

Then his eyes start to sting as his vision blurs, and it hits him.

He’s crying.

… he’s crying?

A sound gets choked in his throat, something that sounds suspiciously like a whimper. Horror sweeps through him but it’s rapidly being outdone by the overwhelming hysteria.

Oh no. No, no, no, he can’t be crying, not here. He stumbles away from Elliot, his backpack hitting the stair railing with a soft thud, and presses the heels of his palms against his burning eyes. Stop, stop, stop! Colors bloom behind his closed lids, intensifying as he increases the pressure until it’s almost painful, desperately willing the tears to go away.

He’s not supposed to be crying at school. If there’s anything more distracting than anger, it’s crying. There are too many people around him, something could go wrong at any second and he won’t be able to protect them like this- something could be going wrong right now and he won’t notice because he’s too busy falling to pieces.

Panic kicks in, and the harsh echo in his ears tells him he’s hyperventilating. That’s definitely not helping, but the part of him that realizes this is remarkably absent, like he’s become disconnected from his own body.

The rest of him is pretty sure he’s about to die. And not in the way he’s familiar with.

Two hands circle his wrists, pulling them down from his eyes in a grip that’s gentle yet firm. Melissa’s face swims into focus.

~*~

Melissa searches Milo’s face, her heart sinking.

“Milo?” she tries. “You okay?”

Milo doesn’t respond, but he squeezes his eyes shut, sending a few more tears streaking down his face. She can feel his pulse jumping under the scarred skin of his wrists. His heartbeat, normally so steady, is running fast and erratic.

Something is very wrong.

“Woah, uh, is he okay?” Elliot asks, alarmed.

“You don’t get to talk,” Melissa hisses at him before turning back to Milo. It’s incredibly hard to push her anger down, but she has to, for his sake. “Milo,” she says, softer, “it’s me. You’re alright. We’re gonna go somewhere else, okay?”

Milo still doesn’t respond, but he curls a little closer to her. Melissa takes a second to shoot a warning look at the other kids gathered around. “Give us some space,” she orders them. And then, “Zack, you’re with me.”

They must hear the barely restrained fury in her voice, because the doors are cleared in record time. Zack unfreezes and swiftly places himself on the other side of Milo, his hands fidgeting like he isn’t sure what to do with them.

Gently, Melissa starts leading Milo up the stairs, into the school. Thankfully, he follows. He seems to be in a daze, too focused on his internal panic to take notice of what’s going on around him. Melissa is suddenly very grateful that she and Zack are here, because if Milo were alone in such a state, he wouldn’t be able to protect himself from any Murphy’s Law incidents.

Speaking of Zack, the other boy has moved slightly in front of them, paving a way through the various students still lingering in the halls before class.

“Where to?” he asks over his shoulder, voice tight with worry.

“Somewhere quiet and out of the way.”

“Under the stairwell?”

Melissa follows Zack’s gaze to the stairwell before nodding swiftly. They make a beeline for it, swerving only to avoid a ceiling tile that drops out of its frame above them. She catches the edge of it with her shoe and sends it skidding along the floor, out of the way. Serves it right.

She ducks under the stairwell, careful to pull Milo down after her so he doesn’t hit his head. The little alcove is a bit dusty, but it’s quiet and away from prying eyes, so it’ll do. She shrugs her backpack off and sits against the wall, taking Milo’s weight.

He leans on her heavily, like he doesn’t have the energy to hold himself upright. She’s tempted to slip off his backpack as well, since that’s probably accounting for a third of his weight right now, but she knows that would only make him panic further.

He’s still breathing way too fast for her liking, blinking rapidly to try and fight back tears. The glassy look in his eyes is so unlike him, it makes her heart clench painfully.

Zack’s voice hovers anxiously somewhere above her. “Has this happened before?”

“Not in public,” Melissa answers shortly. Then she swallows hard and forces her voice to come out calm and gentle. “Hey Milo, you with me?”

It takes a second for Milo to find her eyes, trembling all the while.

Melissa holds his gaze, pouring as much reassurance into it as she can. “Good, that’s good. Zack’s here with us. Is that alright?”

Milo doesn’t look over at Zack, but he manages a nod.

“Okay,” Melissa murmurs. She takes a quick look to make sure no one’s wandering by the stairwell before turning back to Milo. “We’re alone now, just us three. We’re safe.” She takes a deep breath. “Go ahead.”

Milo’s face crumples. “Melissa-”

He finally breaks, burying his face in her shoulder. His sobs are partially muffled by her jacket- which is quickly becoming damp- but she can feel the force of each one, the way his chest heaves for breath. He holds her arms like his life depends on it, pressing close to her as if he’s trying to hide away from the world.

Even though she’s preparing herself for it, hearing him cry brings a fresh wave of tears to her own eyes. Stubbornly, she stares up at the ceiling until they recede. She can’t break down right now. Milo needs her.

Think about something else, something funny. Like how great it’s going to feel to get Elliot back for this. There’s a petting zoo service nearby that rents out ducks. If she places an order soon, she could probably get them before Monday. How many ducks is too many, she wonders?

“So hey, uh, what’s going on?” Zack’s low murmur brings her out of the daydream. He’s looking at Milo with a stricken expression. “Is he going to be okay?”

Melissa exhales, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face. “He will be,” she says softly. “He’s just overwhelmed.”

Zack runs a hand through his hair. “Is- is there anything I can do?” he asks helplessly.

There isn’t much, but she can tell just from looking at him that his anxiety is skyrocketing right now, on the verge of his own panic attack. Giving him something, anything else to focus on might help.

“Keep people off us, and watch for any trouble,” Melissa decides.

It’s strange to think that she’s only known this boy for a few months, yet she’d trust him with hers and Milo’s wellbeing. But Zack’s proven he can handle Murphy’s Law, and she knows he’ll protect them with everything he’s got.

She’s proven right when Zack’s expression hardens, and he nods. Turning around, he goes to stand at the mouth of the alcove, blocking her and Milo from view of the hallway. His hands twitch at his sides, ready to act. Just like that.

Not for the first time, Melissa is thankful that Zack became their friend. Milo chose well.

And speaking of Milo, the panic seems to have finally ebbed. Now it’s just regular crying, without the hyperventilating and shaking. The knot in her stomach loosens, but only slightly- they aren’t out of the woods yet.

Gently, she drums her fingers along his spine, beating a soothing rhythm against the body armor he wears under his clothes. The muffled thuds are too light for him to feel; it’s really just so he has a sound to focus on. She’s found that helps, in the past.

But she doesn’t try to shush him. Now that he’s actually crying, he needs to get it all out. She tries to imagine that her arms around Milo are a safety net, allowing him to be vulnerable without fear. She hopes he can pick up on it.

The next several minutes pass in relative calm- if holding your friend while he has a breakdown can be considered calm. A couple times, Melissa catches wind of something going on in the hallway, some likely improbable object coming their way. But thanks to Zack’s vigilance, nothing comes close, letting her focus all her attention on Milo.

It’s not long after second bell when Milo starts to come back to himself. His grip on her arms tightens and then immediately slackens, and the next breath he takes is a deep one, though it shudders on the exhale.

There are a couple moments where Milo is still and quiet, just the occasional sniffle as his breathing evens out. Then he pulls back enough to look at Melissa, his eyes red and teary but no longer vacant.

“Melissa?” he breathes, his voice small.

Melissa lets out a sigh of relief, managing a tired smile. “There you are.”

“Hey, buddy.” As relieved as Melissa feels, Zack sounds about a hundred times more so. He kneels down next to them, his hand once again awkwardly hovering over Milo’s shoulder before retreating. “How you feeling?”

Milo glances around, taking in their surroundings. Melissa can almost see the moment realization hits; his mouth presses into a tight line before he looks away, wiping at his eyes. “Guys, I- I am so sorry-”

“Don’t you dare,” Melissa cuts him off sternly.

Milo swallows hard, tucking his knees to his chest. “But it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have lost my cool back there,” he mumbles guiltily. “It was just Elliot being, y- you know, Elliot, and I got-”

“Rightfully upset,” Melissa finishes for him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, dude, you’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Zack agrees.

Milo’s smile is thin, but his eyes are thoughtful. Melissa hopes they’ve gotten through to him. She isn’t going to push it any more, though, not right now.

“Now, c’mon, let’s get off the floor,” she says, straightening up. “My legs are falling asleep.”

Milo accepts the hand she offers him, letting her pull him up and out from under the stairwell. He looks a little shaky on his feet, his face still paler than normal, but he jolts when he notices the clock.

“Oh no, we’re late for first period. We’d better-”

“Nuh uh.” Melissa holds fast to his arm. “After a bout like that, you need to go home and rest.”

Milo hesitates. “I miss so much school already…”

Melissa shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter. Mental health days are included under excused absences, you know. We’ll let the teachers know and grab your homework for you.”

“Seriously, it’s alright,” Zack says softly.

Milo studies them both before nodding. “Okay,” he relents. “Thanks.”

Melissa whips out her phone to text his mom. As she does so, she notices Milo is starting to lean against Zack for support. The other boy doesn’t seem to mind, his arm automatically shifting around Milo’s shoulders. It seems his earlier reservations are gone, now that Milo’s sought out the contact. It’s a cute sight.

“Alright,” Melissa tucks her phone away, “your mom’s on her way over. I asked her to meet us in the back lot, just in case the jerk-who-shall-not-be-named is still skulking around.”

Milo nods slightly, giving her a grateful smile before his gaze lowers again.

Now that he’s given up on toughing out the day, he’s starting to withdraw. He doesn’t always go nonverbal after a crying spell, but the panic attack has to have done a number on him.

They aren’t common for Milo, panic attacks. Melissa knows his stress response is… highly abnormal. Even before she met him, he’d been living in a constant state of stress for years. She’s not sure if he’s learned to tune it out, or if his body has just stopped responding to common stressors by this point. But she knows he rarely gets a physical reaction to danger, that ‘fight or flight’ response that spikes you up with adrenaline.

This is clearly a different ball game. The only time she can recall anything remotely similar to this happening was the first time she got seriously hurt by Murphy’s Law. And it didn’t even happen on the spot; he hadn’t broken down until visiting her in the hospital after the fact.

That was a long time ago, but it left quite the impression. The hyperventilating and shaking, she remembers. And that distant, glassy expression. It was something she hoped she’d never have to witness again, but of course, life has other plans.

Not that she blames Milo for it. After all, however difficult this is for her, it’s much, much worse for him. Losing control of his emotions hits him hard, because his life is already so out of control as it is. The one thing he should always have control over is himself, but he doesn’t.

And even though she’s long since made peace with the idea that life isn’t fair, this feels particularly, especially unfair. With all the danger Murphy’s Law brings, Milo shouldn’t have to deal with guilt, judgmental crossing guards, or a misplaced sense of responsibility so severe that he feels like he isn’t even allowed to cry.

Her expression must be troubled, because Milo lightly bumps against her arm. By the time she looks over, he’s already averted his gaze again- eye contact is probably a bit much for him right now- but she appreciates the gesture anyways.

‘Don’t worry,’ he seems to be saying.

Well… she can try not to, for his sake.

~*~

Zack can’t help stealing glances at Milo as they make their way down the hall.

He knows he shouldn’t be staring, because Milo doesn’t seem too keen on eye contact at the moment. It’s just hard to resist the urge to check up on him. Most of Zack’s focus was on keeping Murphy’s Law at bay, so he couldn’t really keep tabs on how the situation was going.

He can’t shake how jarring it was to see Milo like that. It’s a very good thing Melissa was there to snap him into action, because if she hadn’t, he probably would’ve just stood there frozen like a complete idiot, not helping the situation at all.

And how sad is that? Milo saves Zack over and over again, every time disaster strikes, but the one time Milo really needs him, Zack’s totally useless.

He should’ve seen that the conversation was going south and shut it down. He should’ve stood up for Milo more, or tried to get him out of the situation. He should’ve-

There’s a slight tug at the hem of his shirt. When he turns his head, he finds Milo’s hand gripping there. Not pulling, or trying to get his attention- Milo’s facing straight ahead, eyes downcast. Just, holding. Whether it’s an attempt to give comfort or receive it, Zack’s not sure.

But it does give him something else to focus on, aside from the spiraling thoughts in his head, and he smiles softly. Just in case Milo can see it out of the corner of his eye.

It’s a good reminder; there’s no point in dwelling on the past. He needs to keep moving forward, like Milo does.

They reach the back doors without issue, and are greeted by an empty parking lot. Fortunately, there aren’t any late stragglers- aside from them, of course. It’s a nice day, not too cold, so Zack doesn’t mind waiting a few minutes. Maybe the fresh air will help Milo. It’s certainly helping Zack.

He lets out a deep breath, feeling a little better for it. Milo settles further against his side while they wait, his cheek pressed against Zack’s shoulder. That steals the breath Zack just got back, but that’s the least of his concerns right now.

He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed when Mrs. Murphy’s car pulls into the lot. Milo perks up a bit, though still remains silent as his mother exits the car. She takes in Milo’s current state with no comment, just a sad, knowing look in her eyes, and Zack wonders if this is more common than he realized.

“You ready to go, honey?” she asks kindly.

Milo hesitates for a second, then turns and abruptly gives a hug to the both of them. It’s a quick thing, but Zack feels his face heat up immediately; Milo’s never hugged him before. And that thought is followed by his heart swelling almost painfully, because Milo’s never hugged him before. With that context, it’s a deeply touching gesture.

After stepping away, Milo darts over to his mom, hiding his face in her side. She smooths a hand over his hair, murmuring something too low for Zack to hear, before smiling at them gratefully. “Thanks, you two.”

“No problem, Mrs. Murphy,” Melissa replies. “Feel better soon, Milo.”

“Yeah, take it easy,” Zack calls after them.

The car pulls away, and Zack can see Diogee clambering into Milo’s lap before they’re out of view. That makes him feel a little better. Still, he sends a quick prayer to the universe that the car ride goes smoothly, without any Murphy’s Law incidents. Milo really deserves a break.

Next to him, Melissa stands motionless, watching the car leave. Zack clears his throat. “Well, we should probably head back…”

Melissa shakes her head, sitting down on the steps. “First period’s already half-over by now, no point in going.” She shrugs. “Plus, we need to talk this out, or it’ll turn into one of those weird unspoken things.”

“Oh.” Hesitantly, Zack sits down next to her. If Melissa is willing to play hooky, it must be important. “Alright, then.”

They sit in silence for a few moments, listening to the sounds of distant traffic. He’d been expecting Melissa to start the conversation, but she seems to be waiting for him, instead. Waiting to see what his reaction is.

It hadn’t taken long for Melissa to go from ‘Milo’s only other friend’ to ‘Milo and Zack’s friend.’ Once she warmed up to him, she’d moved right along to acting like they’d known each other for years. But they certainly haven’t had any deep, serious discussions before. He’s not quite sure how to proceed.

Zack rubs the back of his neck, feeling awkward. “So, uh… that happened.”

“Yep.” Melissa exhales heavily, but her expression is sympathetic. “I’m sorry you weren’t more prepared, it’s just that he tries to handle these things privately.”

Zack frowns. “These things? What do you mean?”

Melissa stares out over the parking lot, her brows knit together. “Milo breaks bones on a monthly basis. He comes away with some kind of injury on a near-daily basis. And the constant threat of danger plus the massive amount of effort required to deal with it would be enough to drive anyone to tears.”

“And…?” Zack prompts, confused.

Melissa glances at him out of the side of her eye. “Before now, have you ever seen him cry?”

Zack opens his mouth to reply, ‘Of course I have!’ because surely it would’ve happened at some point. He knows Milo gets hurt frequently, he’s watched it happen. But as he thinks about it, he can’t actually recall a time when tears were involved. Not even for broken bones.

“I… woah, you’re right,” Zack realizes, his stomach dropping.

Melissa nods grimly. “He doesn’t like crying. Says it messes with his ability to react to Murphy’s Law. So he just… doesn’t let himself cry, most of the time, no matter how hurt he gets. It’s been like that for as long as I’ve known him.”

It takes a second for the full implications to hit Zack. “Wait, didn’t you guys meet when you were six?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” Zack swallows. They might be old enough now that crying isn’t as common, but Milo’s been like this since he was six, possibly younger. Zack himself was a bit of a crybaby at that age, even a skinned knee sending him into hysterics.

And sure, maybe it’s embarrassing to look back on, but that’s normal for little kids.

Milo didn’t get to have that.

“That’s… kinda sad,” Zack murmurs.

“I know,” Melissa sighs. “Of course, he can’t bottle it up forever. And crying is an important chemical release, it’s healthy. So he just puts it off until he’s safe at home, usually on a weekend. That way, he’s got his family there to look out for him, and he doesn’t have to worry about anyone else getting caught up in Murphy’s Law. I’ve only been there for a handful of them, but he probably goes for months in between. It’s… a lot of buildup.”

The pieces are starting to fall into place. Zack inhales sharply. “So, when he does finally let himself cry…”

Melissa gives him a thin smile. “Well, you know what they say. When it rains, it pours.” She wraps her arms around herself. “But this time was worse than normal, because he was having a panic attack on top of it. He really didn’t want to break down at school.”

Zack nods slowly, brows furrowing. “Wow. I had no idea.”

Melissa makes a noncommittal noise. “It’s not your fault, he doesn’t like people to know.”

Alarm shoots through Zack. This is a deeply personal aspect of Milo’s life. What if he wasn’t ready for Zack to see it? What if Zack’s intruding?

Melissa must have noticed the panic on his face, because she waves him off. “Don’t worry, him letting you stay was giving permission for me to tell you this. Just, people, in general. He puts a lot of work into staying upbeat all the time, and he doesn’t want that ruined by something like this.”

Zack chews on his lip, only slightly relieved. Quite a few people saw the beginning of the whole thing. “Is he gonna be okay? I know it was just some kids from class, but…”

“I think he will be,” Melissa says thoughtfully. “He’s been branching out a lot more this year, in terms of making friends.” She smiles faintly at him. “We’ve got you to thank for that.”

The sudden diverge throws Zack for a loop. “What do you mean?”

Melissa leans back on her elbows, contemplative. “I mean, if Milo and I started a band last year, Mort wouldn’t have dreamed of joining. If we’d been crazy enough to have a birthday party, no one would’ve come. For as long as all of us here can remember, Milo’s just had me. But seeing you give him a chance… I don’t know, I think it’s helped them realize they don’t have to stay so far away.”

Zack’s stunned. “I… guess I hadn’t thought about it.”

That’s an understatement. Zack found his place so readily within this new school that he hadn’t stopped to consider what things had been like before. He knows Milo didn’t have any close friends aside from Melissa, but had the other kids in class always been nothing more than scant acquaintances? Was it new for them to engage Milo in conversation or willingly be around him?

Then Zack thinks back to the day they met, at the bus stop. The way the other kids there had immediately scrambled away from Milo, expressions full of fear. And he’s pretty sure he knows the answer.

Melissa hums. “Yep. You’re a trendsetter.”

Zack rubs his arm, embarrassed. He really doesn’t deserve accolades just for giving Milo a chance. “So… do you cry often?” he ventures, changing the subject.

Melissa rolls her eyes at him. “I’d say a normal amount, for someone in my circumstances. Whenever I’m seriously hurt, you can bet I’m crying about it. Not everyone can just block out that kind of pain.” Her expression sobers. “But even on the emotional side of things, if there’s ever a particularly rough day, then yeah, I’ll go home and cry it out. It’s a good release.”

“Huh.” Zack scratches his head. “Gotta say, I’m a little surprised. You seem to handle Murphy’s Law so well, you know?”

Melissa snorts. “Yeah, only because I let myself cry every now and them. No one can deal with all that disaster and destruction without it getting to them. Not even Milo.”

“Fair point,” Zack amends.

“So, what about you?” Melissa elbows him. “C’mon, don’t be a hypocrite.”

Zack flushes. “I mean, yeah, sometimes,” he admits. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be friends with Milo, but Murphy’s Law can be… stressful.” Particularly on top of his normal anxiety, but she doesn’t need to know that.

Melissa nods approvingly. “Good. Own it. Being part of a Murphy’s life has its ups and down. It also has its own set of rules.”

“Like what?” Zack asks, tilting his head.

“You need to make sure you relieve stress on a regular basis, whether that’s through crying or something else. And you need to relax on a regular basis, too. Not necessarily in that order,” she adds, as an afterthought.

Zack raises his eyebrows. “Oh, okay. Anything else I should be aware of?”

Melissa counts them off on her fingers. “Stay hydrated, get regular sleep, have a good amount of protein in the diet…”

“That just sounds like normal self-care stuff,” Zack points out flatly.

Melissa squints at him. “Touché.” Then she snaps her fingers. “Gargling salt water can help your throat recover from over-screaming. Oh, and Murphys are legally protected from being discriminated against by an accord written in the early 1900’s, so don’t be afraid to cite it. Also, Milo craves physical affection from those he’s close to, but he doesn’t feel he has the right to ask for it.”

Zack blinks. “Figure all this out yourself?”

“Nah, Mrs. Murphy had some tips.” Melissa’s humor fades. “Seriously though, I noticed your hesitation back there. That’s a good instinct, since plenty of people don’t like to be touched during panic attacks. But you don’t need to worry about it with Milo, that’s one of the few times he actually seeks out comfort.”

Zack jolts with surprise. He hadn’t though Melissa would pick up on that- at the time, he was hardly aware of what he was doing, himself. “Oh, alright then.”

“And just for the record,” Melissa’s expression turns mischievous, “if you were a little more forthcoming with physical affection on a day-to-day basis, I don’t think Milo would mind.”

Zack jumps to his feet like he’s been electrocuted, choking on air. “O- oh, sure, of course. Being close to Milo, I don’t have a problem with that, why would I have a problem with that?” he babbles, feeling his face heat up. “I mean, I don’t not have a problem with it, I mean, not more than the normal amount for two friends-” Okay, Zack, time to shut up now.

Melissa just snickers at him, standing up and dusting off her skirt. “C’mon, it’s about time to head in. Ready for a completely average, boring, uneventful day?”

Zack sighs, shoving his hands in his pockets with a rueful grin. “If we must.”

Maybe it’s not so bad to have a little time to process things, considering how much he has to process.

~*~

Milo’s only been curled up on the couch for a couple hours when his phone buzzes.

It’s a selfie from Melissa, in science class. She’s angled the phone to get Zack in the background of the shot; he’s clearly dozing, eyelids drooping as he rests his chin in his hand. Melissa’s giving the camera a knowing look, and the caption reads, ‘Someone’s missing you!’

Milo’s heart skips a beat. He quickly attributes it to surprise that Melissa is actually texting in class- though he knows she’s just checking in with him. It’s a thoughtful gesture, and he sends a couple emojis back. Words, even in text form, are still hard right now. But he knows she’ll understand, because she and Zack are the best friends a Murphy could ask for.

He’s lucky like that, to not have to weather this storm alone.

~*~

#milo murphy's law #mml #my writing

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bromfieldhall · 5 years

Text

101 Days of Captain Swan - Day 50 - CS Fanfic

Read from the beginning on FF.Net or AO3 or

Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,

For @deathbycaptainswan and Guest

My thanks to @csmarchmadness for getting me to write something after nearly two years! Hope you all like it.

011:"May I have this dance?"

“Stop fidgeting, little brother, or do you wish everyone in the room to suspect that this is your first time attending a royal ball?”

“Do not call me little brother,” Killian countered irritably. “And I’m not a bloody child, Liam – I don’t fidget, especially at the prospect of some dancing, royal or not.”

In blatant contradiction of his claim, Killian tugged his pristine white vest down a little then adjusted his blue naval jacket. Twice.

“Maybe it’s the prospect of seeing your mystery woman again that has you preening yourself then?” his brother suggested in obvious amusement.

Killian’s head snapped around at that remark and Liam was quite certain that if looks could kill, he would be well and truly dead.

“I knew I would regret telling you,” the younger man muttered in annoyance. He looked away and scanned the near to full ballroom. “Not that it matters. The lady is clearly not coming.”

Liam frowned at his brother’s pessimism and placed a hand on his shoulder, causing the younger man to turn back to him.

“Come now, the Princess has yet to be announced and they’ll only do that when everyone has arrived. So until then, there is still hope. Right, brother?”

Killian gazed at him a moment then finally smiled a little and gave a curt nod.

“Aye. I suppose you’re right.”

“And if she doesn’t come, well then, there are many other women here who are very pleasing to the eye, are there not?” the older man continued helpfully.

Killian’s mouth tightened at that, but he kept his smile in place. How could he possibly explain to Liam that he had no interest in looking at anyone other than her when he couldn’t even explain it to himself?

When they’d docked that morning, he’d had no idea that his world would be turned upside down a mere few hours later.

Having finally scraped together enough money for commissions in the navy, he and Liam had worked tirelessly through the ranks. And now, here they were, on their first assignment as captain and lieutenant respectively. They had put into port to replenish supplies and had discovered that the princess of the realm was having a ball to celebrate her twenty first birthday. Naturally, Liam had taken the opportunity to attend the palace and offer a token of respect in the name of their King. Diplomacy was always one of his strong points and he knew it might pave the way for any alliances in the future should their own realm ever need it.

The princess had been with her parents when he’d been granted an audience that morning and presented the gift of fine perfume blended from sweetly fragrant flowers found only in their realm. She’d been so delighted with it, that she had invited him and his officers to her ball that evening.

Unfortunately, his news hadn’t been met with much enthusiasm from his brother. Killian had protested at what he saw as wasting time with ‘frivolities’ when they should be continuing with their mission.

With Liam being stubborn in his decision, however, he’d pulled rank and Killian had been forced to concede. Unhappy with his lot, he’d requested some time ashore through gritted teeth and had stalked off the moment his brother had nodded his assent.

The town had been a surprisingly bustling place, certainly larger than he’d expected. There was many a pedlar selling their wares, but there had been one in particular, set a little apart from the others, that had really caught his eye.

Flowers had adorned the seller’s stall, those clearly being the main source of income, and to the side there was a small table upon which sat a neatly laid out selection of books.

Eagerly, he’d walked over, only to feel a dart of disappointment when he’d seen that they’d made up a makeshift library of sorts. With a long voyage ahead of him, he’d hoped that he could have purchased a book to keep him entertained during the rare times he was off duty.

Still, as he’d perused the titles, he’d found himself drawn to one with a piratical theme in spite of himself.

“Do you want to borrow that?”

He’d looked up at the softly spoken question and felt his heart miss a beat at the vision before him. Simply dressed though she was, the young woman’s beauty was beyond compare. Long golden hair, softly curving lips, high cheekbones and green eyes that, he’d belatedly realised, gazed expectantly back at him as she’d waited for a reply.

“Uh...no...thank you,” he’d stuttered awkwardly and shut the book with a snap before placing it back on the table.

“Are you sure?” she’d pressed in faint amusement. “You’ve been reading it for the past ten minutes. Surely you must want to know how it ends?”

“Aye, Milady, I do,” he’d admitted with a rueful smile - and a fair blush if the heat he’d felt in his cheeks was anything to go by. “But I’m sailing on the early tide in the morning and our voyage is a long one. Much longer than the time you’d allow for me to borrow that book, I’d wager.”

“Oh, what a pity,” she’d stated, moving a couple of steps closer to him, a faint frown marring her features.

“That I won’t know how it ends – or that I’m sailing tomorrow?” he’d countered without thinking.

She’d raised a brow at his bluntness and he’d almost taken the words back in a stuttering apology. He’d never been so forward with a lady before - but it seemed that he hadn’t offended as he’d feared because she’d suddenly let out a delighted laugh.

“I think before I answer that, I should at least know your name.”

He’d given it gladly and now, as he stood in the ballroom, thinking back over the rest of the afternoon, the realisation that she’d never actually revealed her own was more frustrating than ever.

Frowning a little, he refused a glass of wine that a passing servant paused to offer and glanced around the crowded hall, searching out the woman he was dearly hoping to see again. It’d only been when he’d spoken of his encounter to Liam that it’d hit him how skillfully she’d managed to avoid answering anything remotely personal about herself.

“Sensible woman,” his brother had teased with a chuckle.

Now, as Killian scanned the faces of the ever growing throng of people, he couldn’t help wonder if maybe Liam was right. Increasingly it was becoming clear that, enchanted though he had been of her, her failure to appear meant that she obviously hadn’t been quite so enamoured of him.

Her lack of revealing anything about herself should have been a clue, he realised grimly.

And yet...it was she that had made a point of asking what he was doing that evening.

He knew he hadn’t imagined her look of disappointment, fleeting though it was, when he’d admitted that he had a prior engagement at the ball.

“Personally I think it a waste of time,” he’d told her, even more annoyed than before that duty dictated he attend when he’d rather have tried to arrange to meet with her again.

“The ball or the princess?” she’d queried wryly, a gleam of sudden amusement dancing in her eyes as she’d echoed his earlier retort.

He should have asked for her name then. Instead, he’d muttered an aggrieved, “Both. I do not like to dance and have no desire in pandering to a lady I have not even met, royalty and diplomacy be hanged!”

A silence had met his outburst but when he’d looked back up at her, much to his chagrin, she’d been openly grinning at him. Consternation had turned to delight though, when she’d revealed that the entire town had been invited too.

“So you’ll be there tonight?” he’d clarified, the evening taking on a more appealing light,

“Only if you promise to dance with me,” she’d replied, that mischievous glint back in her eyes.

Despite his assertion of not liking it only moments earlier, he’d agreed at once, fairly certain that he could have been persuaded to do just about anything as far as the lady in front of him was concerned.

And yet here he was and she...she was nowhere to be seen.

The noisy chatter of the crowd suddenly faded to silence around him and Killian’s stomach fell as he realised what that meant.

The princess had arrived.

His brother shifted at his side and he gave him a cursory glance. A small smile conveyed Liam’s commiseration and Killian looked away. The disappointment was acute. So much so that he barely even registered the lofty announcement of, “Princess Emma of Misthaven,” that rang out around the ballroom.

Head bowed, he inwardly cursed his own idiocy for having believed that they’d shared some kind of instant connection. A mutual flare of feeling that couldn’t be denied. What the hell had he been thinking? This wasn’t some fairytale, this was real life. His life. That simple fact alone should have been enough to remind him that it was never going to end in his favour.

He was so caught up in his own personal torment that it took him a few seconds to register the sharp, urgent nudge to his side where Liam had elbowed him none too lightly.

“Killian,” he growled out the corner of his mouth in low warning.

His head snapped up and he shot his brother a glare.

“What the…,” he began angrily.

“May I have this dance, Lieutenant?” cut in a warm female voice suddenly.

Abruptly, all his anger evaporated as he swallowed hard and turned his head to behold the vision in front of him. Heart pounding, his mouth fell open in surprise.

It was her.

And she was a princess?

He blinked.

Liam cleared his throat...loudly.

Emma’s hopeful smile began to waver…

Finally gathering his wits, he quickly stepped forward and gave a courteous bow then took her proffered hand. A hand that he’d kissed so fervently not four hours ago when he’d taken his leave of her to go back to the ship. His lips began to tingle just at the thought of it and he’d known by the flush on her face that she’d been just as affected by the normally perfunctory gesture as he.

“It would be my honour, Your Royal Highness,” he accepted formally.

As he escorted her out into the middle of the room, the other guests moved out of their way, allowing them space. Killian didn’t even notice. His entire focus was on the beauty that he held in his arms. In her stunning red ballgown and with her long, blonde hair swept up into a smooth chignon, she simply took his breath away.

The first strains of violins filled the air and they began to move.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was this afternoon,” she apologised softly after they’d danced in silence for far longer than she’d liked. After his initial surprise, he’d schooled his features into a polite deference as was the norm when it came to her rank and she had no clue as to whether he was angry, happy or simply uncaring about her deception. She needed to know. “It was nice just being me for a short while and you were so easy to talk to, Killian. Easier than it’s ever been with anyone else and I thought that you...that we…,” she broke off and shrugged helplessly before adding, “I didn’t want that to change just because of a title.” She stared at him, trying to find a flicker of some emotion that would tell her either way a little of what he was feeling. “Has it?” she asked barely above a whisper.

Seeing the uncertainty that lurked in her eyes as she looked up at him, he frowned slightly. It dawned on him then that she’d misconstrued his dazed silence as some kind of detriment to herself. In truth, he’d been finding hard to find the words to convey how he was feeling. She was here, with him, that was all that mattered. And crazy though it was, because they barely knew each other, from what he’d gleaned from her hesitant words, she must have felt that same connection from the very first as he had.

He pulled her a little closer, not enough to be disrespectful to her position but enough that she knew that nothing had changed.

“How can I possibly in good conscience condemn you for not telling the whole truth when I am guilty of the exact same thing myself?” he told her in a wry tone.

“You?” she queried, her eyes widening a little in surprise.

“Aye, me,” he confirmed with a nod. “You may remember that I told you that I didn’t like to dance,” he continued, mirth threading his low tone as he suddenly grinned down at her, “Well, I find that dancing with you makes a complete liar out of me.”

Emma stared at him a moment then let out a delighted laugh.

“So this evening hasn’t been as much of a chore as you thought it was going to be then?”

“Not even remotely,” he assured her as the music, and their dance, came to an end.

“Will you save me a second dance, Lieutenant?” she asked as he straightened from the customary bow that finalised all dances.

“Aye, Your Highness,” he replied with a nod. “Gladly.”

As it turned out, Killian ‘saved’ her a further four dances in total and when the night came to an end, Emma asked him to accompany her to the library before he left.

“I have something for you,” she told him, running her finger along the spines of a row of books, searching out a particular volume. “Here!” Turning to him with a triumphant grin, she held out a small, familiar looking novel to him. “I thought you might want to finish it.”

Killian reached for the book, his heart skipping a beat as his fingers brushed lightly against hers. Glancing at the title, he saw that it was the one he’d been reading that afternoon. Touched at her thoughtfulness, he looked up at her with a soft smile and took an involuntary step closer to where she stood.

“Thank you, Your Highness, I shall treasure it always.”

“Emma,” she corrected him, also moving closer, “You can call me, Emma, and it wasn’t a gift, Killian, I expect you to return it to me after your voyage.” Another step brought her almost toe to toe with him and she reached out to clasp his free hand before adding a little breathlessly, “In person.”

This time his heart started to race. There was no mistaking what she was telling him and even if he were unsure, just one look into her eyes told him more than any words ever could exactly how she felt.

“Are you...sure that you’re willing to wait that long?” he asked huskily.

“I am. I will,” she promised then leaned toward him, face upturned, mouth slightly parted in mute invitation.

Without hesitation, he bent to place his lips on hers. Gently at first, their kiss soon deepened, the book falling from his hand as he drew her into his arms pulling her flush against him. They were both breathing heavily by the time they parted, the strength of their passion evident in the flush of their cheeks and the way they swayed together, foreheads touching.

Killian forced himself to let her go and take a step back. He had to leave, though it pained him to do so. How could it be that he’d fallen in love with this woman so quickly? Because he knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he had.

Irrevocably.

Completely.

“I have to go,” he told her regretfully before stooping to pick up the book.

She nodded, tears shimmering in her eyes.

“Stay safe, Killian.”

Unable to go without one last kiss, he grasped her hand and tugged her towards him gently. It was lingering and sweet and when he pulled back he assured her intently, “I will come back to you, Emma, and not just because of this book.”

He turned and left then. One more moment in her presence and he was afraid that he wouldn’t have it in him to leave at all.

Liam was waiting for him at the palace gates and together they took a carriage to the docks. They rode in silence, although Killian felt his brother’s curious gaze upon him more than once, but it wasn’t until they were back aboard ship that he finally asked him about Emma.

“Do you love her?” Liam queried once he’d finished speaking.

“Aye, I do,” Killian answered with a certainty that made his brother smile.

“Let us make sure that you return that book in a timely fashion then,” Liam stated with purpose.

Eight months later, Killian exited the private chambers of the King and Queen of Misthaven with the treasured book in one hand, his other resting lightly upon the hilt of his sword. Dressed entirely in black, he was no longer a part of the navy to which he’d once so longed to belong.

Their mission had been a spectacular failure, one that had nearly cost Liam his life. Thankfully, Killian had realised that the magical plant they were supposed to bring home to their King was, in fact, deadly. One of their crew members had accidentally cut themselves on it only moments before Liam had reached out to grab some himself.

As he saw the black toxin spreading rapidly through the man’s veins, he’d ran and knocked Liam down before the same thing could happen to him. It had been a near miss and when the brothers had spoken of it afterwards, they’d both agreed that they could not continue to be loyal to a man that would use such an evil poison against his enemies.

That very day they’d commandeered the ‘Jewel of the Realm’, spoken to their crew and had tossed aside their uniforms forever. Any man that didn’t wish to join them were put ashore at the next port and then they’d began the journey back to Misthaven.

Once there, they’d immediately sent word to the castle, requesting an urgent audience with the King and Queen. Free agents now that they were, they’d offered to serve as privateers to the realm and pledge allegiance to Misthaven.

The royals had agreed and asked them to return the next day to sign appropriate papers. The brothers had bowed reverently, then Queen Snow had addressed Killian directly.

“I suspect there is also another reason for your visit today, Mr Jones,” she remarked, gazing pointedly at the book he held and then back to his lightly reddening face.

“Aye, Your Majesty,” he confessed, plucking self consciously at his shirt and standing up a little straighter. “I would like permission to speak with your daughter. She kindly leant me her book and asked that I return it. Personally.”

“Emma has spoken of it to me frequently over the past few months,” she revealed in wry amusement. “I believe she is quite desperate to see her book again and know that it is safe, so you’d better make haste to the gardens. She was heading towards the blue arbor near the great oak when I saw her last.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he replied, bowing low again before shooting a triumphant grin at Liam then turning and almost running out of the room.

She hadn’t forgotten him...

The sun burned bright in the sky as he hurried out into the gardens. He saw a tall oak tree in the distance and headed purposefully in its direction. As he got closer, he could see Emma sitting with her back to him, a soft breeze gently lifting the tendrils of her golden locks as she stared out across the rolling hills that lay beyond the palace walls. Grass underfoot deadened the sound of his footsteps and he was able to approach unannounced. A few feet from the arbor he stopped and simply stared at her for a moment, drinking in the sight of the woman that was so dear to his heart.

“I’ve brought your book back, Your Highness,” he finally said, unable to conceal the slight unsteadiness of his voice.

He saw her stiffen then she turned and stood up abruptly, staring at him with such hope and such dawning joy. Such...love.

“Emma,” she reminded him softly, a solitary tear tracking slowly down her cheek, “You can call me, Emma.”

“Emma,” he murmured huskily and then she was in his arms.

He didn’t know who had moved first, he didn’t care. They hugged each other tightly, then shared kiss after kiss after kiss, whispering words of love and promises of a future together.

They were married two months later and the Best Man was pleased to note that during the ceremony, his little brother didn’t fidget once.

Send me a number from my blog!!

#cs march madness #101 days of cs #cs ff #cs fluff #cs romance

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rallamajoop · 6 years

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An update on that charity auction thing (or, how I spent several months constructing elaborate headcanons about undercover agent air hostesses instead of just writing the damn fic)

Point the first: I still have not written the auction-winner's fic which I owe from way back in January. Her request called for case fic starring one of UNCLE's recurring female cast, such as Sarah Johnson or Heather McNabb, which was all well and good.

The sensible thing for me to do at this point would probably have been to churn out something starring Sarah, who is My Favourite and the much better developed of the two (I've had half-an-idea for something along those lines for ages). Heather (who, for all her established qualifications, mostly seems to be stuck being the girl back at the office who answers the phone) gives you far less to work with character-wise -- so little that the question of how to make a case-fic starring her work at all struck me as a real conundrum.

Unfortunately, I never can resist a good conundrum, and that's the long and short of how I found myself mentally committed to filling out that auction fic the hard way.

I could ramble on about the process here,* but the bottom line is that I've had the thing basically plotted out since around, oh, May or June or so, minus a few key details that remain sticking points (like a rather infuriating innocent-shaped-hole in the story). It was there that it dawned on me that one of the little details I really ought to have pinned down about Heather herself -- at least in my head, whether or not it came up in the story -- was the dangling question of just who her roommate was.

Some context: among the few things we do learn about Heather in her very first appearance is this bit of dialogue from Napoleon:

Napoleon: Oh, no, Heather's been with us almost a year. She used to be a stewardess. She rooms with--

But Waverly cuts him off there, so we never hear who she rooms with -- let alone why Napoleon might thing it worth mentioning to his superior.

Knowing Napoleon, the obvious answer is that Heather rooms with some other attractive young woman he has dated, or would like to date -- perhaps another beautiful UNCLE girl (or stewardess). All the same, I spent some time casting for alternate possibilities before my brain inevitably went, "Well, duh, it's Wanda Townsend from S3 -- the other stewardess-cum-UNCLE-staffer, who very nearly became Heather herself? Who else would it be?"

This would call for a little context from what has become my specialty subject in the land of fandom trivia, the women of UNCLE. See, back before May Heatherly was cast as Heather McNabb, the role very nearly went to an actress called Sharyn Hillyer, who had a small role in the UNCLE pilot as the stewardess on the plane with Napoleon in the final scene (pic on the left below). I'm halfway-convinced that line I just quoted about how Heather used to be a stewardess could very well be an artifact leftover from when Hillyer was in the lead for the role, by way of explaining to the audience why a woman we'd last seen playing a stewardess was suddenly working for UNCLE as of episode 2 (it's certainly more interesting than to assume the writers were simply going "how can we make this sexy woman even MORE sexy to our straight-male-target-audience?" -- which it might still be, but I digress).

Hillyer's story on UNCLE doesn't end there, however, because she was eventually cast as a recurring UNCLE girl (the affore-mentioned Wanda Townsend) starting with The Indian Affairs Affair at the end of S2. But by Indian Affairs, Hillyer was actually making her third appearance in the show -- just 4 episodes previously, she'd appeared as another stewardess in The Project Deephole Affair (pic on the right above).

There's nothing remarkable about the same actress getting called back for multiple different roles in a show like UNCLE, of course, but the neat thing about Hillyer's parts is that you can so easily headcanon them them all into the same character. Her stewardess character from the pilot certainly seems to know Napoleon -- perhaps even who he works for -- and though it's subtler in Project Deephole, I always did like the idea she might just have been an UNCLE plant there too, helping keep an eye on the episode's hapless innocent. Heck, if UNCLE (read: probably Napoleon) canonically recruited one stewardess into their regular staff with Heather, why shouldn't there be more?

Now, I reiterate, to this point I have already dedicated north of 4K words to the subject of these characters and their place in UNCLE, from every obvious angle (and a number of less obvious). But so habituated had I become to thinking of the various Wandas as underdeveloped punchlines, and of the 60's stewardess as a one-dimensional male fantasy, that I am ashamed to admit it was only now that it hit me: recruiting stewardesses as UNCLE staff isn't just a convenient backstory for a couple of bit-parts, it's an act of genius!

Not seeing it? Let me explain!

To start with, the stewardess is the perfect courier. She might travel anywhere in the world as part of her daily routine, carrying items on and off the plane without half the fuss facing the average traveler. If there's a person of interest among the passengers, the stewardess is the one person on the plane who can walk by his seat a dozen times in an hour without looking the least bit suspicious, who can "helpfully" take an interest in whatever he's doing. Many in the job speak multiple languages, and what better job to give you familiarity with locations across the country, if not the world? Finally, after all that time in customer service, she'll have ample practice at sizing people up at a glance, quickly remembering names and faces, and maintaining a cheery smile no matter how much stress she's under (which may well include real life-or-death situations, given that air safety in the 60s was not what it is today). All invaluable skills for the budding spy!**

And if UNCLE aren't forward-thinking enough to have put all that together long ago, you can bet your liver Napoleon would be the one to rectify it. What better way to pass some microfilm to a courier than to conceal it in a bunch of roses, to be presented to his latest stewardess-girlfriend over dinner (during which he'll ask if she's ever been to Paris -- oh, you're scheduled to fly out this week? You must try this little shop -- let me write down the address -- ask for Jean-Louis, drop my name if you need to -- you won't regret it, I promise).

Heather may well have been one of his first recruits. This is all ancient history by the time we meet her, of course, as she's long since transferred to UNCLE New York full time (where, if her first bio is to be believed, she's since been promoted to head of Communications). Maybe she even personally recommended Wanda to Napoleon as another recruit. Wanda herself started out in nursing before moving to aviation (which was actually the normal career path for stewardesses back in the 30's, and far from unheard of even in the 50's and 60's -- neatly explaining how Wanda is qualified to give Napoleon all those shots in My Friend the Gorilla). Wanda was obviously spent at least a good couple of years working as one of UNCLE's stewardess-air-couriers, given she's in the same job from the pilot right up until late S2, But by this point, Heather had long-since disappeared from the office (probably transferred to some other UNCLE office elsewhere in the world), and the New York office was short-staffed, so this would be when Napoleon talks Wanda into transferring to the office full time.

This is also where it all starts to go wrong. Napoleon, inveterate flirt that he is, leaves Wanda with the impression that he wasn't just offering her a transfer, he was also asking her to go steady -- and when it comes right down to it, both of them were a little at fault for that bit of miscommunication. Gentleman that he is, Napoleon did his best not to let her down when he realised the mistake (see: dates mentioned in Monks of St Thomas and Pop Art). But truthfully he just wasn’t that into Wanda, and got far too much use out of charm in the field (see: Do It Yourself Dreadful) to stay faithful very long. (Sharyn Hillyer herself once suggested that the particular joy Wanda takes out of sticking Napoleon with all those needles in Gorilla was a subtle little bit of revenge for all that cheating, and I don't think I can add much to that.) But by the end of the season, she's come to terms with the reality of the situation. (Maybe she has a rebound office-fling with Paul Westcott, guaranteeing maximum shadenfreude when Napoleon inevitably found out about her new beau).

No-one else at UNCLE has any great sympathy for Napoleon through all this. It may not have been entirely his own fault, but he absolutely brings it on himself.

(FWIW, feel free to adopt any part of all that needlessly-elaborate headcanon for your own fic use if you like it. I mean, I’d like to hear about it if you do, but c'mon -- now that I've put the idea in your head, there's just no way Napoleon isn't recruiting stewardesses to UNCLE's cause, is there?)

All well and good, but jumping back several topics, it is now still over 6 months since I promised that fic, and excited as I am by all this backstory, I am no closer to having anything to show for it. What the hell, thought I, even if there isn't a proper fic in all this, surely I can at least get a short prelude ficlet about how Heather was originally recruited to UNCLE out of it. I'll still have the case-fic to write, but I should be able to bang it out quickly as a quick apology to my requester for making her wait so long.

Naturally, this was my cue to... start furiously researching the world of the 60's stewardess, buy two different books, track down a library copy of a third, watch a few documentaries and generally get myself so excited over the research aspect that the fic still hasn't been written.

Over air hostesses. No, I know. I was not expecting this either.

But easy as it is to write them off as an outdated male fantasy, the world of the 60′s stewardess turned out to be a mess of fascinating contradictions -- not to mention a truly enlightening (and frequently horrifying) window into the world of Cold War gender politics. In an era when aviation was still something new, exciting and prohibitively expensive to the masses, it's hard to overstate how much it meant to some of these women just to have the opportunity to fly. So many applied for every opening that the airlines could pick and choose. Many if not most had college educations, spoke two or even more languages -- a small handful even had pilots licenses, but the airlines wouldn't hire female pilots, so they took the next best thing.

Yet for all their qualifications, no-one could hope to be hired if she didn't meet the airline's exacting beauty standards, and girls could be fired for no more than putting on a few pounds or turning up in the wrong underwear. They were 'acceptable' to mores of the day only because they played a suitably servile role, usually for no more than a year or two before leaving the job to get married (wedded stewardesses were, of course, forbidden) -- but a minority still made the work into a lifelong career, used their salaries to buy homes and independence, and their image in the fight for feminist causes. And for all that the airlines had originally hired women in the belief they'd be that much less likely to unionise and make trouble, there seems to have almost never been a time before these women had begun fighting for their rights. My reading list includes two different personal accounts from former stewardesses, both of whom worked 5 years for the same airline, barely a decade apart, and their experiences could hardly be more diametrically opposed. It's fascinating.

...and 2K more words of meta later, I still have not written my fic.

It's coming, I promise. It’s just not exactly written just yet. >.>

(Quite possibly there is yet another post’s worth of shameless history-geek-out over the world of the airline stewardess coming too, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point.)

* Did I mention I also spent some of those months finishing a PhD and starting a new full-time job again for the first time in years? I don’t mention this to boast, it’s just, well, that sort of thing does get a bit distracting. Ahem.

** Lest you imagine I’ve come up with anything remotely original here, I’d point out that while researching the topic, I also discovered that idea of stewardesses as spies was a major plot point in the short-lived 2011 series Pan Am. It wasn’t a particularly great show -- I barely made it two episodes in -- but it did spark enough online discussion that I have seen former flight attendants (and various other commentators) both dismiss it as ridiculous, and suggest there was no way it didn’t happen -- especially once regular commercial Russian flights began. So take that as you will.

#The Man from U.N.C.L.E.#The Man from UNCLE #Heather McNabb #Napoleon Solo #Wanda Townsend #Wanda #aviation #fic #headcanon #the women of UNCLE

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comrade-meow · 3 years

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"When someone tells you to 'educate yourself,' they are not telling you to actually learn the facts, figures, history, or logic of debate. They are telling you to agree with them. The idea that someone may be educated on an issue and yet still disagree with you on it is inconceivable to people who have been 'dis-educated.'"

Educate yourself. If you have ever stated an unpopular opinion online, especially about social issues, you’ve probably had this mantra thrown at you. If you’re new to being on the “wrong side” of a particular debate, being told you need to “educate yourself” can be really disorienting. The phrase implies that the speaker knows more than you, you’re undeniably in the wrong, and a little bit of reading will set you straight. But like many mantras on the left today, “educate yourself” has become a meaningless tagline devoid of any real connection to the actual text of the phrase.

A popular progressive Instagram account, @soyouwanttotalkabout (no affiliation with the book “So You Want To Talk About Race”), claims to help educate readers on issues such as race, gender, and politics. The account includes over 400 image slide posts of sound-bite style messages on all of the most popular issues in social justice today. “Choosing to educate ourselves is the first step in becoming allies,” says one post on being a trans ally. “With this education, you’ll be able to better support the trans and nonbinary folks in your lives, and help to create a safer, kinder and more accepting world.” The account also includes, without the slightest hint of self-awareness, a post describing “performative activism” (vs. “authentic activism”) as activism that is “Visible, Audience-driven, and Sustained by public consumption.”

There are pages of comments on these posts thanking the account for the content and helping them learn. The most popular comment, though, appears to be followers tagging in another user to the thread—presumably, to educate them.

“This was a good one for me to share with family & friends that just refuse to open their eyes & minds,” one user commented on a post titled “White Denial.”

“@[username] you should read this,” says another.

The @soyouwanttotalkabout account appears to exist almost entirely to give people a place to go when they need to “educate themselves,” or, when they want their friend to get educated.

But the posts themselves are superficial in depth, often repeat misinformation, and rarely cite sources except in the case of direct quotes. To be fair, Instagram does not lend itself to a more detailed, nuanced, or in-depth format for education—but this is exactly the problem. Well-meaning people who want to “be better” are turning to social media for an education on issues that are often complicated and have real consequences on the lives of others.

This account perfectly encapsulates the problems associated with demands to “educate yourself.” Education in this context doesn’t mean actually learning the breadth of information on the issue, but instead training yourself to parrot surface-level mantras. When questioned on the details of your stance, you don’t need to deepen your education—you just need to shut down debate and tell the other person to educate themselves. What’s happening is not education but rather, as Jones School of Law Professor Adam J. MacLeod put it, “dis-education.” In a 2017 speech to his first-year Law Students, MacLeod confronted his students over the growing trend of illiberalism among his students:

“Before I can teach you how to reason, I must first teach you how to rid yourself of unreason. For many of you have not yet been educated. You have been dis-educated. To put it bluntly, you have been indoctrinated. Before you learn how to think you must first learn how to stop unthinking.”

Today, the professor would probably face disciplinary action for this speech.

When we are told to “educate yourself,” what we are actually being told to do is to allow ourselves to be indoctrinated into a particular ideology. In reality, developing a deep understanding of all sides of the debate is unwelcome, and those providing the “education” are often very misinformed themselves. For example, in their post on being a Trans Ally, @soyouwanttotalkabout made several claims that are logically incomplete (such as creating a circular definition of “gender”), but actually didn’t even represent the critical gender theory ideological perspective accurately (the side they are claiming to educate us about).

Despite many people helpfully instructing me in the past few years to educate myself on trans issues, I was able to immediately spot problems with the thread from the gender theory perspective (such as their list of “common genders,” conflation of “gender” and “gender expression,” and the claim that gender identity “can change over time”). This is because, despite disagreeing with the ideology of gender theory, I am actually very well educated on the issue. I have spent the past three years now writing nearly exclusively about gender identity, I have personal experience with friends and family members transitioning, and I work for a nonprofit which largely focuses on the issue. I am, by nearly every measure imaginable, more educated on the issue than every person who has ever demanded I “educate yourself.”

When someone tells you to “educate yourself,” they are not telling you to actually learn the facts, figures, history, or logic of debate. They are telling you to agree with them. The idea that someone may be educated on an issue and yet still disagree with you on it is inconceivable to people who have been “dis-educated.”

Two people who are equally educated on an issue (imagine they have read all the same books and studies, spoken to the same experts, and listened to the same people with “lived experience”) may still come to a different conclusion.

How is this possible if all you need to be on the “right” side is to simply educate yourself?

The deciding factor in most of our political opinions is not the facts of the case, but rather the values we hold through which we interpret the meaning of these facts.

Most people, to at least some degree, hold many of the same values: individual liberty, societal equality, the sanctity of life, and the desire to reduce harm and suffering in the world. How we will position ourselves on certain issues often has less to do with the facts of the case, or even which values we hold, but in which order we prioritize these values.

To grossly oversimplify the culture war between the “woke” and the “unwoke,” critical theory tends to prioritize social equality over individual liberty (for example, by limiting which groups of people can use certain words or hairstyles to prevent the few instances of racism that could stem from individuals of these groups using them).

When someone disagrees with a value prioritization on issues where values compete (such as individual liberty vs. social equality), education based on your own values is not what is needed to change that person’s mind. The role of facts in changing someone’s stance is to inform them of whether or not a position they support is ultimately upholding their values. Sometimes people apply their values inconsistently, and pointing this out can be either met with defensiveness or provide an opportunity to change their opinion. However, what someone is unlikely to change through the knowledge of new facts is their underlying values and the priorities they assign them.

If we are to trust a definition provided by @soyouwanttotalkabout, intolerance is:

“Not being able to or willing to accept that someone’s ideas or lives are different from our own.”

The inherent intolerance in the “educate yourself” rhetoric is the assumption that someone can not hold or prioritize different values from you. Our values are borne in us from a combination of our genetics/personality and life experiences, and they are core to what makes us individuals. “Educate yourself” is a form of gaslighting—denying the facts we already know and rejecting our own perception of the moral implications of that reality. Unless the person repeating the command is a verified expert in the domain, they probably have no business demanding you to learn anything (see also: the Dunning-Kruger effect). If anything, the very use of this phrase is likely to signpost a person who is actually quite uneducated on the issue—or else they would have been able to engage with you in a more meaningful way.

The truth is, we probably could all stand to have more facts when evaluating our stances on important social issues. Facts help us decide when our values are being upheld or when they are being violated. But when someone tells you to “educate yourself,” they don’t mean engaging in the process of collecting facts and analysing their moral outcome as compared to your value priorities. They mean fall in line. Capitulate. Give up your own values, your own education, your own life experience and do what I tell you—or else.

#Anglo.txt

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nerobombs · 7 years

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The Support Report, Or: Why people only want to DPS

At the behest of @shitteadrinkersays, I recently bought Overwatch and have been having some modicum of enjoyment with it. I’m only level 38 now, yet I have a pretty solid understanding of the game and a good grasp on the current competitive meta, even though I only quickplay.

And like all games that utilise some form of the Trinity (tank, DPS, healers), Overwatch is rife with DPS one-tricks who only want to do damage and get kills and refusing to take on the utility roles of tanking or healing in any occasion. As I’m very late to the Overwatch train, I’m sure everyone is familiar with the the “No Healers” warning being accompanied by a lastpick Hanzo whose presence is about as useful as a DVD rewinder, or the “No Tanks” message being helpfully accompanied by a Genji or Symmetra.

But why does this happen? There’s plenty of answers that can be gleaned superficially--people want to make flashy plays, DPS is “more fun”, and the DPS heroes and classes are cooler. These are all correct to some extent, but I’d like to go a little in-depth with it, and more importantly, suggest some things on how to improve it the apparent unattractiveness of utility roles.

Bear in mind that I use the term “support” to include both tanks and healers.

1). Support roles don’t directly interact with the enemy.

I would argue that this is the biggest gremlin crawling around on the backs of support roles in most games and the largest reason as to why support roles are universally the least-played role in almost every multiplayer game.

Simply put, when you play support, you are mostly dependent on the other members of your team to directly interact with the enemy. The support role has very little personal agency when it comes to interacting directly with opponents.

The biggest draw of video games as a medium is interaction. It’s what separates video games from books or movies: the consumer is a participant, not merely an observer. In the context of video game combat, there are at least two different levels of interaction that can loosely defined as direct interactions and indirect interactions.

In combat, direct interactions can be interpreted as anything, well, direct. Dealing damage, applying debuffs, taking damage, avoiding damage, and thinking of how to better do these things. In any case, all of these actions deal require that the player interact with the enemy whether they be another human player or merely AI, and these actions have immediate feedback and gratification: when you engage in direct interactions, the game usually lets you know that you’ve hurt the enemy, and when you win, the enemy dies.

Indirect interactions consist largely of the perceived “support” roles. Healing allies, buffing allies, and giving allies the opportunity for direct interaction. In certain games, this can include more esoteric ventures such as building structures or scouting for enemy locations.

Most “support” roles in video games engage in very little direct interaction with the enemy. The vast majority of support roles comprise of “indirect interactions”: you heal your allies so they don’t die, and if they don’t die then they can defeat the enemy. You shield your allies so they don’t die, and if they don’t die then they can defeat the enemy. You buff your allies so they are better at defeating the enemy. You scout for your allies so they know where the enemy is, so they can defeat the enemy.

It can be frustrating, and is a part of why playing support is unsatisfying: the goal of the game is to defeat the enemy, you know that the enemy is there, but you are expected to refrain from or are completely incapable of directly contributing to that goal by interacting with the enemy.

You are almost entirely dependent on your team to interact with the enemy. You don’t get to directly interact with the enemy, for the most part. You can’t really shoot them because you do no damage. You can’t run forward and hit them because otherwise your team takes damage. The only thing you can do is sit there, and hope that your team is good enough to win the game as you hold them up with your tanking or your healing. You lack the agency to directly interact with the enemy.

I’m sure anyone who’s ever healed or tanked in a game has rolled their eyes at bad DPS. After all, DPS are the ones who directly progress the “defeating enemy” goal, and yet they’re dying to mechanics or getting shot in the face. You can try to prevent this, but preventing your allies from dying is not the same as “damaging the enemy”. There is no guarantee that saving your allies contributes to winning the game, because your allies are doing all of the interactions with the enemy, not you.

2). Supporting lacks gratifying feedback.

In any game with combat, direct interactions are considered the “fun” part of the combat by the majority of the audience, because it is ultimately a simple system that provides instant and effective feedback. You hit the enemy, you see their health go down, they die, you get points or whatever. The appeal of the interaction is on-screen.

In competitive multiplayer games, direct interactions are further rewarded with voice prompts like “Double kill!” and “Multi-kill!”. In Overwatch, direct interactions are rewarded with things like “Play of the Game”. And it makes sense: if your goal in this game is to defeat the enemy, then actions that contribute directly to that goal (by defeating the enemy) are rewarded.

However, as a support, you pretty much don’t get to receive any of that positive, rewarding feedback. Even worse, sometimes you only receive negative feedback from dumbass DPS players who refuse to support and/or completely fail to understand how to support at all.

After all, if you play a DPS and kill five enemies, you receive immediate feedback from the game that “Hey, you killed five enemies! You win for defeating all the enemies!”, or “Killing spree!” or “multi-kill!” and there is a very simple direct correlation established that “defeating enemies = winning”.

Supporting lacks that very simple correlation.

Now, it’s not as if supporting is entirely devoid of feedback. In MMORPGs especially, it can be hugely satisfying to see HP bars spike upwards with massive heals, or to see a giant megalaser attack only do three damage to your team.

But still, in the context of “goal = defeating enemy”, supporting lacks feedback that indicates that you as a player are contributing to that goal in a meaningful fashion. You can infer it (i.e. “I’m healing and my team isn’t dying so they’re killing the enemies and we’re winning”), but there is rarely any meaningful, direct, gratifying indication from the game that what you are doing is important.

When people say that “supporting is boring”, this is mostly what they’re referring to, in combination with the above.

3). Supports are rarely assigned distinct goals.

This is somewhat tied with #2 and #1.

Remember, in games with combat, the game gives you the goal. It says “defeat the enemies and you will win”. There is a correlation between “doing damage = defeating enemies = winning”.

However, as mentioned, supports tend to lack this correlation, because you’re not directly contributing to the goal; you’re indirectly contributing to the goal by allowing your allies to directly contribute to the goal, which is not the same thing.

For the most part, the players who play support have to make up their own goals. “I have to heal and keep my team alive”. “I have to shield my allies.” “I have to rez.” For some people, making up their own goals is very gratifying. For most others, however, it’s simply irritating.

In World of Warcraft, there was a boss fight called Valithria Dreamwalker. The fight ended when a green dragon named Valithria was healed to full HP. This is an example of a distinct goal being given to supports by a video game: “You must heal this ally to full HP, and if you do, you win.” That establishes a slightly modified version of the above correlation: “pumping out heals = healing allies = winning”.

Goals establish the above correlation, which makes the games “more fun”. However, as said repeatedly, supporting lacks such direct correlations. Remember, you’re not reaching any goals: you’re allowing your allies to reach their goals. And this can be fun! Just...not all the time, and certainly not for everyone.

I will admit that this point has the highest potential to be largely subjective, but I would argue that for most video game players, this is an important note: it is satisfying to be given a goal to reach, reaching it, and being told that you did well by the game. Supports don’t get these.

So how do we fix this?

There’s a couple ways, and if you’ve read my rant up to this point, you probably know what I’m about to say.

Bear in mind that these aren’t mean to be catch-all solutions, but more suggestions as to how to make the supporting role more appealing to the majority playerbase.

Allow supports to support their allies by directly interacting with the enemy.

While indirect interactions have their own sense of appeal in combat, that appeal is far from mainstream as far as the gaming crowd goes. The easiest way to allow for supporting mechanics while maintaining direct interaction with the enemy is to make one dependent on the other.

For example, taking damage from enemies lets you turn that damage into a shield. You heal allies by draining life from enemies. If you heal your allies, you deal more damage to enemies. Things like that.

This increases the skillcap by a considerable amount, yes, but direct interactions are “more fun” for most people.

Implement greater feedback for supporting.

Overwatch has an MVP system, and it’s rare that healers and tanks aren’t voted as MVP by the others on the team, especially on a winning team. This is a step forward in the right direction! It feels gratifying.

However, Overwatch’s MVP screen only happens at the end of the game. There needs to be feedback during the game to let support players know that what they are doing is important.

Sometimes this can be fixed simply with bigger numbers. More exotic methods could be tested: for example, if you manage to save someone right before they die, a “Savior heal!” voice shoutout is played, or something.

Either way, supporting roles in video games need greater feedback to be more appealing.

Related to “greater feedback” is the following:

Support players should have relatively clear goals given to them by the game.

Now, like I said, supporting is largely indirect. It lacks the simple and direct correlation of “dealing damage = defeating enemy = winning”.

However, that doesn’t mean goals can’t be implemented. For example, a simple tick that says “Heal 5000 health for your allies”, or “Block 20,000 damage”, and giving rewards for achieving those goals, can lead to supporting being rather rewarding.

Overall, supporting can feel like a chore in a game, but it doesn’t have to be a chore. There are ways to improve how supporting is implemented in a game to make it more fun and therefore, hopefully reduce the number of games I get fucking instalock Hanzos or Offensive DPS Ana’s who never heal in my Overwatch games.

#gaming #rant #writing #mmorpg #moba #supports #tanking #healing #overwatch #man i have no idea what to put for tags #BLAH BLAH BLAH #please read what i write #oh god i'm so lonely

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trentteti · 7 years

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The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All Special

Rachel Lindsay is a practicing attorney who once took the LSAT. And you, dear reader, are an aspiring attorney who will soon take the LSAT, Rachel Lindsay is also an aspiring married person, serving as the bachelorette on this season of The Bachelorette, the love story these depraved times deserve. And you, dear reader, may also be an aspiring married person? Either way, you definitely have at least a few things in common with Rachel. So every Tuesday, we’re going to be tracking Rachel’s romantic journey on The Bachelorette, and see what we can learn about love, loss, and the LSAT. Welcome back to the Logical Rose-ning Section.

Last time: The remaining guys took turns seeing the wonders of Rachel’s Dallas hometown and withstanding the protectiveness of Rachel. Eric was normal and sociable, Peter tried to play it cool, and Bryan displayed a thirst for their approval that not even the Rio Grande could quench. Rachel then took the guys on a trip to La Rioja wine region of Spain, where Eric picked up some late season momentum and Peter appeared to lose his pole position. The changing fortunes of the guys stoked some much-needed drama for the final episode, which leads us to …

… Oh yeah, the Men Tell All episode. The writing sample of The Bachelorette season. The unnecessary addendum to the proceedings that merely prolongs the inevitable. For The Bachelorette, the inevitable being a contractually-mandated engagement and publicity tour; for the LSAT, your constitutionally-mandated duty to drink as many alcoholic beverages as you can responsibly consume. Just like the writing sample, the real stuff is already done–the important selections have been made, the long journey across five countries/sections has been traveled–you’ve done everything you’ve needed to do to get a good score. And yet here we are, biding time.

So the writing sample was on my mind as I watched a two-hour special in which the also-rans of this season got one last moment in the spotlight to hash out differences, confront Rachel, and make one final push to secure the Instagram endorsements that will allow them to finally quit their personal training gigs. During the special though, I was shocked to see these guys actually give some worthwhile advice for completing the LSAT’s writing sample. Apparently, the Men really did Tell All, at least with respect to the most overlooked part of the LSAT.

If you don’t already know, the writing sample is always given as the final section of the LSAT. After 175 minutes of intense logical reasoning and critical reading, you’re given 35 minutes to write a short persuasive essay. The format is always the same: you must make an argument for one of two mutually exclusive options described in the prompt. You will also be given two criteria to consider when making the argument. You will be provided a series of facts that you can reference to support your argument. Just choose one of the two options and make your best case for it.

The essay you compose will not affect your final score, but it will be included as part of your law school application. Admissions officers will likely give the essay a quick read-through to make sure you didn’t completely blow it off and that you possess at least a decent command over the written word even when exhausted. Although you shouldn’t feel too much pressure when writing the sample, there are a few mistakes you should avoid, which the Men Tell All special helpfully illustrated to us all last night.

So let’s get into these lessons.

Lesson 1: Don’t spend too much time recapping the prompt

The essay you compose for the writing sample should be short, sweet, and to the point. Like a cake pop. If you spend the introduction of your essay repeating all the background information the prompt just told you, you’re wasting valuable time and space. And more importantly, you’re just going to bore the poor admissions officer tasked with reading your essay. That admissions officer will have read hundreds of those writing samples already, and will be, trust me, well acquainted with the facts.

At least as well acquainted as the poor blogger who has spilled gallons upon gallons of digital ink recapping this season of The Bachelorette. Even the casual fan of this program must remember the main plot points of this season–DeMario showed up with a so-called “side chick,” there was a feud between some guy named like Blaine or something and a failed comedian whose catchphrase was “Whablam” or whatever, there was self-proclaimed “country boy” (read: white person) who promised to have problems with “certain people” (read: not white people) in the house and proceeded to have completely self-made problems with those people, but especially with lovable wrestler/doting father Kenny.

And yet, this special dedicated what seemed like hours to montage after montage going over these very same plot points. Producers, our minds may or may not be permanently damaged by watching your trash reality shows, but at least trust that we can remember episodes we watched like, three weeks ago.

Lesson 2: Don’t show up with prepackaged lines

Seriously, don’t try to plan ahead for the writing sample by thinking of clever lines you could use. The prompt could be about literally any topic, so you have no idea if the lines you plan will be useful. Plus, you have more than enough to worry about studying for the parts of the LSAT that will actually affect your final score.

Just look at the guys who used pre-planned statements on the Men Tell All special to see how far those lines will get you. Take Adam, who clearly wanted to say something about Lucas, the failed comedian who said “Whaboom” a lot. Adam dropped the line, “There was so much ‘Whaboom,’ it should been ‘Wha-bye.'” Which is like a C- joke at best, and didn’t even elicit a polite chuckle from the audience. Or take Lee’s pre-planned defense to systematically starting fights with every African-American contestant: “I should have been a better friend.” Which didn’t make sense, given that no one suggested that he was a friend. Or even Fred, the poor guy who harbored a crush on Rachel since summer camp, whose heartfelt monologue to her was undercut by his statement clearly being written and rehearsed.

You’ll be able to write this thing on test day, no need to plan ahead.

Lesson 3: If you’re going to try to flex with big words, make sure you know what they mean and have heard them used before

Having a big vocabulary won’t get you into law school or prolong your fifteen minutes of fame, but that doesn’t stop LSAT takers and former Bachelorette contestants from dropping recherché word bombs on the writing sample and Men Tell All special, respectively. DeMario, for instance, defended himself against accusations of two-timing with the aforementioned “side chick” by referencing the lack of “ocular” facts that he and the “side chick” were ever actually a couple. “Ocular,” of course, meaning “related to the eye.” So, you know, eye facts. Those things we talk about every day and frequently use as proof that two people are in a committed relationship. DeMario was probably looking for “observable” facts, or even “empirical” facts, but tried to get too grandiloquent and took an L so obvious that any oculus could see it.

Don’t be DeMario. Use words you know.

Lesson 4: Don’t get too attached to either of the options–take some time to brainstorm

Your job on the writing sample is to pick a side and argue why it’s the better of the two options. There’s no “right” answer, of course; generally, the prompt to the writing sample will give roughly equal pros and cons for each choice. You should therefore simply pick the option that you think you can make the better argument for–the option that you feel most passionately about.

But passion can be a fickle mistress. Matters of the heart are tough. Sometimes one option seems so right, but halfway through writing the second paragraph of your essay–or, say, half-way through shooting the spin-off program Bachelor in Paradise–you’ll realize that you should have chosen another option. At that point, it will be too late.

So take some time brainstorming pros and cons for each choice before making your decision. This step will help you pick the right option for you and construct a better argument for that option.

The Bachelor producers surely wish they took more time in deciding which of these cast members would serve as the next eponymous bachelor. Dean, the most recently eliminated contestant, was given ample screen time during the Men Tell Special. And given the rapturous reception he received from the crowd, it was clear that he should have been selected as the next bachelor. In a camouflage-print tuxedo jacket and a polka-dotted pocket square that matched his socks, Dean looked like a star, a perfect protagonist for the next season of The Bachelor. And yet, when nominal host Chris Harrison (who, after a total of about 5 minutes of screen time this season, finally got a chance to cook this episode–shouts to you Chris, keep getting dem checks) announced Dean as a contestant in Bachelor in Paradise, you could feel the crowd collectively sigh.

A little bit of brainstorming and research would have gone a long ways for the producers of The Bachelor. Don’t make the same mistakes they did.

Lesson 5: Leave the bloopers out

The writing sample isn’t a high school math test, so don’t show your work. You shouldn’t include any outlines or notes or rough drafts that you may make. You’ll have scratch paper to mock up these notes. In the space LSAC provides to write your essay, you should only include your final essay. Obviously.

But if only someone told that to the producers of the Men Tell All special, who closed the night with a blooper reel of Rachel sometimes almost tripping and Josiah eating and some of the men putting on lotion. Some things are best left on the cutting room floor.

And with that you have everything you need to succeed on the writing sample. Or at least to be reassured that you maybe didn’t completely waste two hours of your life watching trash reality television.

The Logical Rose-ning Section: Your Recap of The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All Special was originally published on LSAT Blog

#LSAT #The Bachelorette #The Logical Rose-ning Section #writing sample #trent teti #lsat

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repwinpril9y0a1 · 7 years

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Like A Rug

No, that's not a Donald Trump hair joke. It is nothing more than the end of a simile on lying. Rugs are the epitome of lying, since nothing lies more obviously than a rug. Of course, I could have gone with a different motif, but Al Franken had already used the title: "Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them," so I had to go with what was available, as it were.

The administration of Donald Trump has, so far, been breathtaking at its dishonesty. Some of this comes from the president himself, but a fair portion comes from his advisors, who are often put in the unenviable position of trying to prove something which is not actually true (so as not to contradict a Trump lie). They pretzel themselves into explaining what Trump really meant, and how in a certain light it bears a passing resemblance to something which is actually quasi-factual. Must be tough, but they all knew what they were signing up for, so it's hard to feel too sorry for them, really.

The Trump administration began this dishonesty on their first day in power. Sean Spicer was sent out to the press podium to state as a fact something which was simply not true. Trump's inauguration had: "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration -- period -- both in person and around the globe." This was laughably untrue, and anyone with eyes to see the photos knew it. That was Day One.

Since then the lies have been so constant and unrelenting it's actually hard to keep up with them all. Some of these wouldn't be classified as lies by some, such as Trump tweeting about a "so-called judge" who ruled against him. There's nothing "so-called" about him -- the man is indeed a federal judge, confirmed by the Senate, with a lifetime tenure on the bench. This is precisely why America's judiciary is completely independent, in fact, so they can ignore political pressure from other branches of the government. But some might call this merely an insult, rather than a lie.

Then there are questions of interpretation. When Trump spoke of Frederick Douglass seemingly in the present tense, it was interpreted as Trump not knowing Douglass was not still alive. Perhaps. He's not the most eloquent president we've ever had (by a long shot) so perhaps it was just his clunky speaking style. We're bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he could have just misspoken on this one. Then again, he could have just never heard of Frederick Douglass before in his life -- also a plausible explanation.

Other strange statements could likewise be chalked up as opinions, misguided though they may be, such as Kellyanne Conway insisting that there had been "no chaos" at the airports when Trump's Muslim ban was instituted, and everything was going swimmingly. To be as charitable as possible, it depends on her own personal definition of what she considers to be chaos. Looked like chaos to me, but who am I to contradict her opinion?

This all has to be seen through the lens of spin, because top advisors to any president are indeed spin doctors -- it's part of the job, really. But this is normally an exercise in framing the presentation more than disputing obvious facts. A presidential spokesperson might say something like: "We don't see this as a black-and-white incident. We see countless shades of grey, in fact, and while this incident may be seen by some as a darker shade of grey, we instead see the overall picture as lighter grey, like a pre-dawn brightening that promises much more light and sunshine to come." That's standard-issue spin, in other words. But the Trump people can't even manage that, when Trump himself insists in a tweet: "Black is white. Many people agree with me on this, believe me. Any use of the word BLACK is fake news, and sad." There's not a lot a spin doctor can do to fix something like that, in other words.

This is where we get into the astonishing lies erupting from the Trump administration which are just flat-out bald-faced lies, period. Not opinion, not spin, not misinterpretation -- just lies. Most of these are self-inflicted wounds of the most embarrassing type because they are so easy to refute.

Kellyanne Conway provided the most amusing example of this, last week. She castigated Chris Matthews for the media completely ignoring the "Bowling Green massacre" -- a phrase she has used in multiple interviews. The media didn't report on it because it didn't happen, of course. It was nothing short of a whopper of a lie.

This got more amusing when CNN refused to invite Kellyanne Conway on its Sunday morning show this weekend (although she did appear on the channel later in the day), because they considered her an untrustworthy source who had lost all credibility (because of lies like the Bowling Green massacre). Conway tried to lie her way out of this one, insisting that she was the one who turned CNN down. Sean Spicer was asked about this at a press briefing:

Q: CNN reportedly declined to interview Kellyanne Conway on Sunday because of questions about her credibility. Is the White House willing to offer alternative representatives to networks that refuse to work with specific spokespeople?

SPICER: I, I, well, frankly, I think that, that my understanding is they retracted that, they've walked that back or denied it or however you want to put it. I don't care.

This was also a lie. CNN never retracted, walked back, or denied that this was in fact the truth of the matter -- something they reiterated in a tweet. So Kellyanne lies about a massacre that never happened (while incredulously berating the media for not covering it), CNN doesn't invite her because she's a liar, and then Sean Spicer lies about it to the press, using an easily-checkable "fact" that wasn't true.

But I shouldn't pick on the advisors so much, because Donald Trump himself is the emperor of lies. While speaking to a meeting of law enforcement officials, Trump stated: "And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years. I used to use that, I'd say that in a speech and everybody was surprised. Because the press doesn't tell it like it is. It wasn't to their advantage to say that. But the murder rate is the highest it's been in, I guess, 45 to 47 years." This is not true. In fact, the opposite is true -- the murder rate is at a low point for the past 50 years or so. It was twice as high in the 1980s, in fact. An easily-checkable fact that Trump felt the compulsion to lie about.

This wasn't even Trump's biggest falsehood in the past few days (as I said, it's hard to keep up, due to the sheer volume of lies). Trump went off script in a recent speech to complain that the media was refusing to report on terrorist attacks, for unspecified nefarious reasons: "You've seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe, it's happening. It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that." This is, in fact, not true. Not even remotely. Unless he was referring to the Bowling Green massacre, of course, which wasn't reported by the media because it didn't happen.

Since then, his advisors have been trying to morph Trump's lie into a statement that he just didn't make -- that terrorism stories were merely underreported. Read Trump's own words -- that's not what he said, but whatever. When the press challenged the White House to name terrorist incidents which weren't covered, they hastily put together a list with laughable misspellings ("attaker," for instance). Almost 80 terrorist incidents were on this list, but it bizarrely contained attacks such as the Pulse shooting in Florida and San Bernardino (misspelled "San Bernadino") which were covered pretty much nonstop by all the news networks for over a week. Hard to call those "underreported" stories.

So Kellyanne Conway was dispatched to explain how the explanation didn't actually mean what they had previously said it meant. She helpfully explained that the list had both attacks which were sufficiently covered by the media, as well as others that weren't. Even though the list was supposed to only consist of underreported attacks (indeed, that was the whole point of the White House writing the list in the first place). Again, an easily-refuted lie. Her biggest whopper during this interview, however, was to insist: "I don't intend to spin." After which, her pants burst into flames on camera, and had to be quickly doused with a nearby fire extinguisher.

Well, no -- that last part didn't actually happen. It is nothing short of a lie, born of overly-wishful thinking. Still, it was astonishing the path these lies took over the past few days. Conway lies about a fictional terror attack, while castigating the media for not reporting it. Trump castigates the media for underreporting terror attacks, because the media somehow has "reasons" for not wanting to report it. Challenged on this statement, the White House comes up with a list of 78 terror attacks, all of which were reported on in the media, and some of which dominated coverage for weeks. The official story then shifted to "underreporting" as opposed to "not reporting" (Trump's original lie), and somehow the list morphed into a list of both adequately-reported and underreported incidents (even though that, too, was a lie -- they were all reported on). To top it all off, Conway returns to the airwaves to Trumpsplain it all to us, insisting that she doesn't intend to spin.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Hans Christian Andersen pointed it out almost two centuries ago, which is how I'm going to end this story:

The noblemen who were to carry his train stooped low and reached for the floor as if they were picking up his mantle. Then they pretended to lift and hold it high. They didn't dare admit they had nothing to hold.

So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.

"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.

"Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on."

"But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all.

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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repwincoml4a0a5 · 7 years

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Like A Rug

SPICER: I, I, well, frankly, I think that, that my understanding is they retracted that, they've walked that back or denied it or however you want to put it. I don't care.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Hans Christian Andersen pointed it out almost two centuries ago, which is how I'm going to end this story:

"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.

"Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on."

"But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2koqD0y

#DIYS

0 notes