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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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What are your thoughts on Jekyll/Hyde and his archetype of the human periodically changing into a monster ?

Jekyll & Hyde was the 2nd horror story I read following Frankenstein, I got it off the same library and it always stuck very strongly with me even before I got into horror in general. I even dressed up as Jekyll/Hyde as a kid for a school fair by shredding a lab coat on one side and asking my sister to make-up claw gashes on my exposed arm and paint half of my face, although in hindsight I think I ended up looking more like Doctor Two-Face than Jekyll/Hyde, but I was 12 and didn't have any Victorian clothing to use so I had to make do. The first film project I tried doing at film school was intended to be a modern take on Jekyll & Hyde, and I didn't get much farther than a couple of discarded scripts

Much like Frankenstein, Mr Hyde as a character and a story is something that's kind of baked into everything I do artistically. And it's not just me, as even in pop culture itself, none of us can escape Mr Hyde. I would go so far as to argue Mr Hyde may be the single most significant character created by victorian fiction, if only by the sheer impact and legacy the character's had.

(Fan-art by guilhermefranco)

Part of what makes Mr Hyde such a powerful and lasting icon of pop culture is that the very premise of the book invites a personal reading that's gonna vary from person to person. Because everyone's familiar with the basic twist of the story, that it's a conflict of duality, of the good and evil sides, but everyone has a more personal idea of what those entail. Some people make the story more about class. A lot of readings laser-focus on sex and lust as the driving force, and there's also a lot of readings of Mr Hyde that tackle it to explore a more gendered perspective, and so forth.

I don't particularly take much notice of the Jekyll & Hyde adaptations partially because the novel's premise and themes have become baked so throughly into pop culture and explored in so many different and interesting ways, that I'm not particularly starving for good Jekyll & Hyde adaptations the way I am for Dracula and Frankenstein. The Fredric March film in particular is one that orbits my head less because of the film itself (although I do recommend it), but because of one specific scene, and that's when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde on screen.

Out of all the things they could have shown him doing right that second, they instead took the time to show him enjoying the rain.

Just Hyde taking off his hat and letting it all cascade on his face with this sheer enthusiasm like he's never been to the rain before, never enjoyed it before, and now that he's free from being Jekyll, he gets to enjoy life like he never has before. It's such an oddly humanizing moment to put amidst a horror movie, in the scene where you're ostensibly introducing the monster to the audience, and it makes such a stark contrast to the rest of the film where Hyde is completely irredeemable, but I think it's that contrast that makes the film's take on Hyde work so well even with it's diverging from the source material, even if I don't particularly like in general interpretations of Hyde that are focused on a sexual aspect.

Because one, it understands that Jekyll was fundamentally a self-serving coward and not a paragon of goodness, and two, it also understands one of the things that makes Hyde scary: He wants what all of us want, to live and be happy. He's happy when he leaves the lab and dances around in the rain like a giddy child, he's happy when he goes to places Jekyll couldn't dream of showing up, he's happy as a showgirl-abusing sexual predator. Hyde is all wants, all the time, and there's not that much difference between his wants, his domineering possessiveness, and the likes exhibited by Muriel's father and Jekyll's own within the very same film, which also works to emphasize one of the other ideas of the original story, that Edward Hyde doesn't come from nowhere. That no monster is closer to humanity than Mr Hyde, because he is us. He is the thing that Jekyll refused to take responsability for until it was too late.

(Art by LorenzoMastroianni)

While many of the ideas that defined Mr Hyde had already been explored in pop culture beforehand, Hyde popularized and redefined many of them in particular by modernizing the idea. He was the werewolf, the doppelganger, The Player On The Other Side, except he came from within. He was not transformed by circumstance, he made himself that way, and the elixir merely brought out something already inside his soul. To acknowledge that he's there is to acknowledge that he is you, and to not do that is to either lose to him, or perish. Hyde was there to address both the rot settling in Victorian society as well as grappling concerns over Darwinian heritage, of the realization that man has always had the beast inside of him (it's no accident that Hyde's main method of murder is by clubbing people to death with his cane like a caveman).

I've already argued on my post about Tarzan that the Wild Man archetype, beginning with Enkidu of The Epic of Gilgamesh, is the in-between man and beast, between superhero and monster, and that Mr Hyde is an essential component of the superhero's trajectory, as the creature split in between. That stories about dual personalities, doppelgangers, the duality of the soul, the hero with a day job and an after dark career, you can pinpoint Hyde as a turning point in how all of these solidified gradually in pop culture. And I've argued otherwise that The Punisher, for all that his image and narrative points otherwise, is ultimately just as much of a superhero as the rest of them, even if no one wants to admit it, drawing a parallel between The Punisher and Mr Hyde. And he's far from the only modern character that can invite this kind of parallel.

The idea of a regular person periodically or permanently transforming into, or revealing itself to be, something extraordinary and fantastic and scary, grappling with the divide it causes in their soul, and questions whether it's a new development or merely the truest parts of themselves coming to light at last, and the effects this transformation has for good and bad alike. The idea of a potent, dangerous, unpredictable enemy who ultimately is you, or at least a facet of you and what you can do. That these are bound to destroy each other if not reconciled with or overcome.

You know what are my thoughts on the archetype of "human periodically changing into a monster" are? Look around you and you're gonna see the myriad ways The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's themes have manifested in the century and a half since the story's release. Why it shouldn't be any surprise whatsoever that Mr Hyde has become such an integral part of pop culture, in it's heroes and monsters alike. Why we can never escape Mr Hyde, just as Jekyll never could.

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde.

He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close… - Hunter S. Thompson

There is a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction that explains almost every terrible thing happening in the news today. And it's not the scene where Ving Rhames shoots that guy's dick off. It's the part where the hit man played by John Travolta is talking about how somebody vandalized his car, and says this:

"Boy, I wish I could've caught him doing it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It'd been worth him doing it, just so I could've caught him doing it."

That last sentence is something everyone should understand about mankind. After all, the statement is completely illogical -- revenge is supposed to be about righting a wrong. But he wants to be wronged, specifically so he'll have an excuse to get revenge. We all do.

Why else would we love a good revenge movie? We sit in a theater and watch Liam Neeson's daughter get kidnapped. We're not sad about it, because we know he's a badass and he finally has permission to be awesome. Not a single person in that theater was rooting for it to all be an innocent misunderstanding. We wanted Liam to be wronged, because we wanted to see him kick ass. It's why so many people walk around with vigilante fantasies in their heads.

Long, long ago, the people in charge figured out that the easiest and most reliable way to bind a society together was by controlling and channeling our hate addiction. That's the reason why seeing hurricane wreckage on the news makes us mumble "That's sad" and maybe donate a few bucks to the Red Cross hurricane fund, while 9/11 sends us into a decade-long trillion-dollar rage that leaves the Middle East in flames.

The former was caused by wind; the latter was caused by monsters. The former makes us kind of bummed out; the latter gets us high.

It's easy to blame the news media for pumping us full of stories of mass shootings and kidnapped children, but that's stopping one step short of the answer: The media just gives us what we want. And what we want is to think we're beset on all sides by monsters.

The really popular stories will always feature monsters that are as different from us as possible. Think about Star Wars -- what real shithead has ever referred to himself as being on "the dark side"? In Harry Potter and countless fantasy universes, you have wizards working in "black magic" and the "dark arts." Can you imagine a scientist developing some technology for chemical weapons or invasive advertising openly thinking of what he does as "dark science"? Can you imagine a real world leader naming his headquarters "The Death Star" or "Mount Doom"?

Of course not. But we need to believe that evil people know they're evil, or else that would open the door to the fact that we might be evil without knowing it. I mean, sure, maybe we've bought chocolate that was made using child slaves or driven cars that poisoned the air, but we didn't do it to be evil -- we were simply doing whatever we felt like and ignoring the consequences. Not like Hitler and the bankers who ruined the economy and those people who burned the kittens -- they wake up every day intentionally dreaming up new evils to create. It's not like Hitler actually thought he was saving the world.

So no matter how many times you vote to cut food stamps and then use the money to buy a boat, you could still be way worse. You could, after all, be one of those murdering / lazy / ignorant / greedy / oppressive monsters that you know the world is full of, and that only your awesome moral code prevents you from turning into at any moment. And those monsters are out there.

They have to be. Because otherwise, we're the monsters - 5 Reasons Humanity Desperately Wants Monsters To Be Real, by Jason Pargin

(Two-Face sequence comes from the end of Batman Annual #14: Eye of the Beholder)

For good or bad, Hyde has become omnipresent. He's a part of our superheroes, he's a part of our supervillains, he's in our monsters. He lives and prattles in our ears, sometimes we need him to survive, and sometimes we become Hyde even when we don't need to, because our survival instincts or base cruelties or desperation brings out the worst in us. Sometimes we can beat him, and sometimes he's not that bad. Sometimes we do need to appease him and listen to what he says, about us and the world around us. And sometimes we need to do so specifically to prove him wrong and beat him again.

But he never, ever goes away, as he so accurately declares in the musical

Do you really think That I would ever let you go...

Do you think I'd ever set you free?

If you do, I'm sad to say It simply isn't so

You will never get away FROM MEEEEEE

(Art by Akreon on Artstation)

#tw: injury #tw: blood #tw: disfigurement #replies tag #dr jekyll and mr hyde #the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde #robert louis stevenson #two-face #batman #monster tag #universal monsters #horror tag

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demigoddreamer · 3 years

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Addressing Batman’s Abuse

Damian: I killed someone

Bruce(and the rest of the batfamily but mostly bruce): It’s ok it’s because of your childhood, you were raised to be an assassin as long as you didn’t murder anyone innocent and do better next time

Dick: I killed someone

Bruce: well i saved them didn’t count bye

Tim: I killed someone

Bruce: Seriously Tim? ok I’m kinda disappointed but i’ll be ok in a little bit(actually idk cause I can’t recall if tim ever killed someone)

Jason: I killed someone

Bruce: HOW DARE YOU BREAK THE NO KILL RULE YOU LITTLE PIECE OF **** WE HAVE MORALS YOU’RE JUST ANOTHER CRIMINAL, A MURDERER, A MONSTER YOU LET THEM WIN IF YOU KILL

Alright enough with the jokes let’s get serious, let’s talk about the abuse. I have a lot to unpack and if you’re like me who doesn’t have the patience to read long things if they don’t matter then i’m sorry . I can read school stuff but fanfiction more than like 30 chapters irritates me which is stupid because I love to read but the human brain is A FUCKING ANNOYING HYPOCRITE. I love the batbros with all my heart and we hate to see bad stuff happen to them. but Bruce...he can get away with hurting the people who he should see as sons and who in turn consider him a father figure. He is essentially taking advantage of their love for his cause. Because the most important thing is batman and the mission which he will hold above his own children, the people in his life who care about him and support him in his insane crusade. Batman is someone who is consumed by this darkness that causes him to sacrifice everything for the mission. It is stated multiple times that his Robins are supposed to be better than him, they’re not needed as assistants in the battlefield but rather emotional support as they bring a little light to Bruce's pain and vengeful darkness. The Robins become better people than Bruce.

There are obvious examples of Bruce’s abuse such as his second Robin now Red Hood Jason Todd. Now I may be biased as he is my favorite but I love all the robins dearly so FREAKING much. Jason is constantly remembered as Batman’s greatest failure. Why is that? we are led to believe it’s because Bruce didn’t save him but really it’s because Jason didn’t fall in line with Batman’s code which is where we see the flaws in Batman’s philosophy. Why doesn’t Batman just kill the Joker? Jason makes some very valid points saying that all Joker does is cause pain and he keeps breaking out of prison and causing more pain and it’s a vicious cycle, a revolving door that Batman refuses to end. Joker and Batman are almost obsessed with each other. But Batman refuses to kill Joker saying if he does he can’t come back and Joker will win. It’s a war between numbers and moral high ground. But in reality who cares if Joker wins? It’s vague what does it even mean? Joker keeps on killing and if he was gone the world would be safer? It doesn’t matter if he wins as long as people live. Jason Todd is someone who is constantly hurt by the people who are supposed to love him. An example of this is Batman choosing to save Joker rather than his own son in the Under the Red Hood storyline. Jason is clearly heartbroken over the fact that Bruce refuses to kill the person who MURDERED HIM saying “I thought I’d be the last person you ever let him hurt” Jason obviously has lots of trauma PTSD depression and he probably just wants to feel safe pleading with Bruce to just kill Joker that’s it saying “doing it because he took me away from you” which Batman refuses just saying I can’t.

Now there’s other instances that make my blood boil such as Batman and Robin #20. Damian died in Batman Inc. and obviously since Bruce can’t ever deal with pain in a healthy constructive way, he goes full dark and rage and sadness. He becomes desperate to bring Damian back, being abusive to Tim even when Batman tried to experiment on Frankenstein to bring Damian back and Tim blew the lab up. But Jason...oh god...Bruce wants Jason on a mission in Ethiopia to bring the people who tried to kill Damian justice . (Talia put a bounty on his head) and then Jason agreed, excited at the chance of working with someone he considers a father again. Jason has ceased his killing he has calmed down from when he tried to hurt them all, his mind was damaged by the lazarus pit and he went insane with pain and rage. From my pseudo psychologist perspective I think he thought hurting them would make his pain cease if he tried to hurt the things that caused his pain it would fix him. Anyway Jason is on kinder terms with them but it’s still rough. They’re not all that kind with him sure he’s made mistakes but they all have and he’s really sorry about it. Anyway after taking those bad guys down they talk about family and trust and faith. Then...Bruce does it and reveals the real reason why they came to Ethiopia. Bruce wanted to bring Jason to the place he DIED. WHERE THERE IS A BUTT TON OF TRAUMA. Jason is just so shocked at first he stands there looking numb. He isn't even angry yet. He stands there feeling the pain of that horrible day saying”You lied to me. this wasn't about taking down those mercenaries. You wanted to bring me here..to the worst place in the world...and here I was starting to believe all your crap about trust and faith” He sounds broken which he is he’s been broken by so many people and now Bruce who isn’t supposed to break him just did by taking advantage of him and bringing him to somewhere of horrible trauma. Bruce reveals that he brought Jason here so he could figure out how to bring Damian back to life explaining “Those killers were the mission but this was something else something I couldn’t ignore I thought bringing you here could jog your memory-maybe retrieve a buried buried deep in your subconscious that could help piece together how you came to life so I” and Jason finishes this saying “-could apply it to getting Damian back. Yeah I get it. Did it ever occur to you I might like keeping whatever the hell happened to me buried deep?”Obviously, Jason doesn’t want to relieve his trauma, he doesn’t want to deal with what happened to him a second time. He just wants to move on but Bruce won’t let him. Bruce doesn’t seem to acknowledge Jason’s trauma nor does he seem to care for his well being. “If you cared about me, you wouldn’t want me to dredge up the one thing I've been trying to forget. I don’t want to remember the most horrific day of my life, all right? You may like wallowing in your tragedies but I’m done looking back” which is true all Batman does is sit in the pain of his parents death and he can’t heal like and he spreads pain to others at this rate the dead parents excuse gets a little old. BUT THEN BRUCE HAS THE AUDACITY TO SAY “If you cared about me and what I’ve lost, you’d want to dredge this up! Don’t you see-there’s a chance you can help me erase one of the worst days of my life. You can give me the greatest gift of all and help me figure out how to bring my son back!” Here he uses a lot of pronouns referring to himself, CARED ABOUT ME, I’VE LOST, HELP ME, MY LIFE, GIVE ME, HELP ME, MY SON. Yes Bruce, make it all about you, cause we definitely want you too. You’re a grown ass man and Jason is the more mature person here, honestly all the Robins learn to process grief and heal and grow and they’re just generally better people. Bruce is basically saying I care more about Damian than I care about you and my needs are greater than yours so screw your feelings, your feelings don’t matter. He really only seems to care about himself and he wants to erase his own pain. He doesn’t even seem to consider what Damian would want and what being brought back to life would do to him. Jason knows what it’s like, the pain of it, he’s probably the only person who would understand why someone wouldn’t want to come back. After All of this Bruce doesn’t even apologize and makes some half assed promise for unconditional truth but Jason still accepts this and helps Bruce get Damian’s body back from Darkseid even though he didn’t have to.

Also there’s battle of the cowl which I desperately try to ignore but what I can tell Bruce *cough* died *cough* at this rate whenever Bruce dies or some crap I’m like ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT??? But sorry back to the topic. Bruce had a message for Jason for everyone else was just like I hope you’re doing well I love y’all live your life for JASON HOWEVER. He was all like you’re a failure not because I didn’t save you but because I don’t like how you turned out. Also you have problems, you’re mentally ill(I know but don’t have to be so awful about it)and there’s a secret I shouldn’t have kept and bye. And he suggests help but WHY DIDN’T HE GET JASON HELP WHEN HE WAS YOUNGER HMMMMM? It’s so obvious Jason’s childhood is full of abuse of course he has bad mental health and all that jazz. Also he puts Jason in Arkham where the Joker is 5 DOORS DOWN. I don’t think I have to say anything but they could literally put him in ANY OTHER PRISON. Why this one idk?

Bruce beat Jason and was probably about to kill Jason in RHATO #25. All beacuse Jason shot penguin and since Red Hood is a criminal blah blah blah Bruce has to do something. Actually he doesn’t as he just assumes Jason killed him which he didn’t also he didn’t seem to consider mind control or clones or whatever and he thought it was a good idea to beat the crap out of his sons. Jason even points this out”You are a character, I’ve never seen you beat Joker that hard and you hate him”...Bruce is beating him harder than the Joker. BRUCE IS BEATING HIS GODDAMN SON, SO HE HATES HIS SON MORE THAN JOKER??? Here we see how Bruce constantly chooses Joker over Jason.

Let's also talk about Dick his first son (I love my circus boi). After Jason died *sob*(i’m gonna cry) Dick is pretty darn sad and Bruce didn’t tell him shit so he’s obv like hey what’s the deal and BRUCE HAS THE AUDACITY TO BE MAD AT DICK. and he tries to kick Dick out of his life and be like leave your key get outta my face and he punched Dick LIKE BOI YOU DIDN’T TELL HIM ABOUT THE FUNERAL OR THE FACE THAT JASON DIED. We already knew it was bad because Bruce and Dick argued like my parents argue which is pretty bad. Lo and behold Bruce doesn’t apologize.

Also Nightwing #30 after Dick was outed as Nightwing and fake died on telelvision. Bruce used like WAAAAAAY excessive force. They were sparring but it got real violent real fast. And Nightwing wasn’t in the right mindset he was traumatized and Bruce totally took advantage of him by asking him to work for Spyral which Dick obv didn’t want to do but Bruce fucking FORCED that crap onto him after something as awful as that and he probably knew Dick would give in eventually that bastard. No, Bruce doesn’t apologize either.

Most recently Batman #71...now see this is Tim’s turn and I love my big brain boi Tim... and when you love a fictional character you know something bad is gonna happen. Bruce’s abuse, it’s kinda worse cause he’s a fucking KID. now Bruce be like let’s meet and shit so most of them are there and some evil villain is doing their thang and Tim is tryin be nice comforting Bruce, telling him that Tim will always be there and that Tim will help AND BRUCE FUCKING PUNCHED HIM. HE WAS JUST TRYIN BE NICE AND HELP YOU FEEL BETTER YOU POS. Now do we see Bruce apologize? NOOOOO. What did you expect? Honestly it’s not that hard it’s a simple sentences even a dumbass like you can manage it

Now I’m not totally familiar with any abuse on Damian but it’s there. Bruce is allergic to emotions, and it’s hard for him to be emotionally supportive and show any affection whatsoever. Showing any semblance of pride to Damian is like me trying to do pushups it’s FUCKING impossible for Bruce to show any compassion toward his son whatsoever (seriously though push ups are a pain in the ass I’m not athletic whatsoever why do you think I waste my time venting on tumblr the only thing I’m good for is being the smart kid in school and even then some people outshine me in that.)...sad but I’m not here to complain about that. Anyway Dick is a BAMF and openly shows Damian hey i’m proud of you and I love you. IT’S NOT THAT HARD BRUCE.

Bruce can’t ever be happy, he doesn’t let himself be happy because he can’t move on from that tragedy that happened to him. And he doesn’t allow anyone around him to be happy either. Shown as when Dick is like hey I can be in love with someone and we can be long term we can be happy together. BRUCE BE LIKE NUH HUH VIGILANTES CAN’T BE HAPPY WE HAVE TO SACRIFICE FOR THE MISSION. Let your son be FUCKING HAPPY. I know I sound like I hate him and maybe I do a bit but I don’t think he’s like completely Joker evil and irredeemable. I just can’t deal with how DC handles abusers like Bruce and having characters enable this behavior. We need to know that Bruce’s behavior is not ok and his children are completely numb to it, it’s normal to them and it’s disgusting. Bruce needs repercussions and he needs to know that he can’t do that to kids who love and trust him.

LINK TO PART 2:

https://demigoddreamer.tumblr.com/post/639314330465222656/addressing-batmans-abuse-part-2

If a loved one is hurting you reach out and seek help. You deserve the world

#batfam #jason todd #dick grayson #damian wayne #tim drake #red hood #nightwing #red robin #robin #bruce wayne #batman #dc comics #abuse #it's not ok #if you're in this situation reach out #bruce wayne is a bad parent

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monstercupcake61176 · 4 years

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Some things about Logan that I don’t see anyone talk about

Putting this under a cut because it gets long but hey, I’m proud of it. Honestly, I don’t know what the heck this turned into. I thought it was just gonna be an analysis but I can’t maintain a steady train of thought to save my life.

During SVS when Deceit calls Logan as a witness he asks him what his thoughts are on the whole matter and at first Logan gives an objective opinion, saying that Thomas has more to lose if he misses the wedding. His words are: “Up until very recently, this callback didn't even exist to Thomas. Therefore, missing this opportunity is akin to him never having gotten the callback in the first place. There’s no real impact.”

He furthers this point by saying that even if Thomas did go to the call back there’s no guarantee that he’d even get the part in the first place. So if he went, failed to get the part, then he would have missed the wedding for nothing. That said, when Deceit asks what they could lose if they skip the wedding, Logan says that it’s possible that he loses his friends and that Thomas’ friends are important to him. Up until now Logan hasn’t been giving his own personal thoughts on the matter, which Deceit then asks him to do, and here’s the first thing Logan says: “Well, Thomas has several friends and they all tend to distract him from his responsibilities so perhaps two less isn’t so bad.”

And when I say no one talks about this, I don’t mean just the fandom, I mean literally, no one in the room so much as reacts to this. Deceit just moves the conversation along and despite asking for Logan’s thoughts, he doesn’t acknowledge them at all.

Why I find this so odd is that most of the Sides, Virgil included, all care and love Thomas’ friends just as much as he does.

But Logan? He never shows an interest or any concern towards them, he tolerates their existence in Thomas’ life but he doesn’t go out of his way worrying about whether or not Thomas’ actions will hurt them like the others do.

This continues in DWIT when Logan gets offended by Remus insulting Thomas’ work (which is the only time Logan is openly bothered by Remus throughout the episode might I add) and says: “Insulting Thomas’ friends and family is one thing but his work? Is nothing sacred?” And this time there is a brief reaction from Thomas who at first agrees with him but then asks “What about my friends and family?” But again, it’s still not really acknowledged or brought up throughout the remainder of the episode or within the fandom. This time it’s treated as more of a joke and Logan doesn’t bother hiding the statement from the others, but in SVS he says it quickly and under his breath, like he doesn’t want the others to know, but still isn’t really making an effort to hide it.

And knowing Logan, he isn’t afraid to voice his opinions.

So what’s the point of this observation? Well, I have one of three points.

The first point is how this behavior towards Thomas’ friends and family can show insight as to how Logan views the other Sides. He’s not particularly close with any of them, honestly, he’s the odd one out. He doesn’t like to participate in their group activities unless it serves a purpose. Like in Making Changes, he agreed to shapeshift into Thomas’ friends as long as it would help him. Then in Fitting In he was willing to participate if it meant helping Virgil, but as soon as he learned he’d had the option to not participate he was angry that he’d gone through all of that and wasted time. And of course LNTAO he spent the entire episode butting heads with everyone while they tried to convince him to join in on something he really did not want to do.

The times where Logan did participate in the group, I noticed something interesting but also kinda sad. So in the Christmas video at first, Logan refuses to sing. Instead he speaks all of his lines because he doesn’t like to sing. But eventually, he starts rapping his line instead since he doesn’t mind rapping. The first couple of times he does it, he glances at the others to see if they’ve noticed, when they don’t comment he stops looking and starts getting more into it. He gets louder, he moves around more, he might actually be starting to have fun with this, but then Roman finally says something. “Are you trying to rap?” And then he stops. He tells Roman he doesn’t like to sing, and instead of being told “Oh okay, go ahead and rap if that’s more your style.” What he’s doing is ruining Roman’s song and so he stops, but he gets to have at least a little more fun (and possible revenge) by swapping lines with Patton and first, scaring everyone with a FALSEHOOD and when it’s his turn again, everyone braces themselves, only to be blown away when he actually sings his line. But here’s the thing, he doesn’t sing the lyrics Roman wrote, instead he changes it to something he actually enjoys. Only this time, it’s accepted instead of being rejected, and I believe it’s because this time he did it the way Roman would have wanted it. Had Logan rapped the line, I doubt any of them would have been as impressed. (No hate on Roman though I love my boy and he works so hard)

Skip ahead to Embarrassing Phases and you have all the Sides dressed in Halloween costumes, even Logan! But then we learn that originally, Logan was going to dress as Dr. Frankenstein, not the monster. He only changed this when Roman basically said, “That’s boring! Be the monster instead! That’s way better!” And again, Logan complies. He joins in with the group, but he had to give something up in order to do it. Both times Logan had to change himself in order to join in with the others, and when it was clear that what was going on wasn’t helping him, like with the song in LNTAO, instead of stopping and asking Logan how they can better help him understand, they continue on while Logan becomes more and more frustrated. Sure, he came around in the end, even turning into a puppet himself and enjoying it a little, and I’m pretty sure it’s because this time, everyone accepted it.

No one asked him to change what he did, they didn’t criticize him or anything, they all liked it, which is I’m sure what made Logan feel more at ease and even get into “character” as a puppet. Now imagine if he’d received the same acceptance during both Christmas episodes. Where he wasn’t shot down for rapping his lines and was able to go further with what he was doing as he got more comfortable, or was able to dress in the costume he wanted. What if he’d fully embraced the “mad scientist” look and blew the others away with his costume? To add to Logan being the outsider of the group, more so than Virgil at this point, is how his views and wants differ so much from the other three. He doesn’t view Thomas’ friends as important, everyone else does. He thinks Thomas should get a different job, everyone is appalled by the very thought. Logan wishes Thomas would go back to school, take a course or two, and while he was told that Thomas would consider it, this never happened.

And admittedly, while some of the other three’s views clash, their wants always line up with what Thomas also wants. Patton wants him to be a good person and friend because that’s what Thomas himself wants to be. Roman wants him to chase his dreams and do the things he’s passionate about because Thomas wants that too. Virgil wants him to be safe and not get hurt, so does Thomas.

Logan wants him to be taken seriously and pursue a more professional, stable career, but that’s not really what Thomas wants. He’s accepted that his content doesn’t have to be serious in order to have meaning, and he loves his current profession and wants to pursue a career in acting. Their wants clash, and Logan seems to have accepted this rather begrudgingly. Settling for the role of the Side who provides Thomas with the information he needs and does his best to do his job despite being dragged into the other’s shenanigans. Since the Crofter’s episode, Logan has been making more of an effort to be taken as seriously as possible. Refusing to be seen as a joke and possibly, doing what he can to be accepted just enough by the others so they’ll listen to him. And if this sometimes means compromising who he is, then so be it. Because to him, nothing is more important than his job.

All of this brings me to my second point: You know who else’s wants differ from what Thomas actually wants? Deceit and Remus.

Deceit wants Thomas put himself above others in order to obtain his goals while Remus wants him to be more daring with his content and not put limits on himself.

Thomas, of course, doesn’t want to put others down in order to get what he wants, and he has his own morals that keep him from going off the rails with what he puts in his videos.

He, along with the others, see these ideals as bad and want nothing to do with them. When in reality Thomas being 100% selfless is hurting him and there isn’t anything wrong with exploring darker themes in videos, but we’ll get to that another time.

So far Thomas rejects everything Deceit and Remus bring to the table, and in a way, he does the same thing with Logan. Granted, Logan has the advantage of not being a “Dark Side” so he is at least listened to and for the most part, his words are heeded when he’s doing his job.

But really, that’s all Logan’s reduced to. There’s a problem, he gives all the facts they need in order to solve it, and then he’s done. He sees it as work, as his job. He does what he needs to and nothing more, not expecting anything in return.

Then DWIT happens, and once the problem is solved, something changes. Thomas thanks Logan for helping them, and at first he brushes it off, but then he’s told he’s cool.

And you can clearly see how this affects Logan, his face lights up. He looks surprised, almost like he doesn’t believe it, but then he almost smiles before sinking out. We don’t see his full reaction, but we see enough to know that this meant a lot to him. This continues in the first Sanders Asides episode where he refers to him as their “Cool teacher” and after he once again solves their dilemma and everything is going smoothly, he has a quiet moment where he smiles and looks very proud of himself.

Something has changed with Logan now, for the first time (and I meant that it literally could be the first time I’m not sure) he’s been given validation for his work. He wasn’t looking for praise, he was just doing his job, but Thomas was so grateful and finally, finally after doing this for so long he’s finally given assurance that what he’s doing matters, it means something to Thomas and he won’t forget that.

So for the third and final point (which will be the shortest since it’s mostly speculating), I believe all of this will come into play once the next Side is revealed. We’ve seen that Logan is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to Remus, Deceit even leaves him out of the conversation since we all know Logan would have solved the problem almost instantly, and it’s been speculated before that Logan may meet his match with this next Dark Side, and honestly, I think that may be the case.

Right now, Logan is probably at the highest he’s ever been. He’s finally being recognized by Thomas, he’s confident in his ability to deal with the Dark Sides and handle them (even better than Virgil who was making it his personal goal to protect Thomas from them) and probably isn’t even concerned with the remaining Side.

And here’s the thing, Deceit probably knows all this.

It’s implied that he’s the one who set Remus loose, and he was either observing what happened or had Remus fill him in once he got back. Either way, he’ll know about how Logan handled the situation. If he wants whatever plan he has in mind to work, he needs Logan out of the way. Whether that means physically preventing him from being with the others, or by using the next Dark Side against him.

Think about it, Remus distressed Patton, Virgil, and Thomas throughout the episode, Roman clearly doesn’t like him. Virgil goes feral when Deceit shows up, but Logan hardly reacts to their presence.

If Deceit wants to succeed, Logan has to be taken down, and will probably use his pride, and current state of confidence, against him with the next Side. Because if Logan can’t be counted on to help Thomas, if Logic can’t be counted on, then who will Thomas turn to?

Him and Virgil aren’t in a good place right now, and from the looks of it, he may not be in the best place with Patton or Roman either, which would leave Logan as the last of the “Light Sides” for Thomas to turn to.

But if he were to see him fail, or disappear, then it would be the perfect opportunity for Deceit to step in and replace him as the Side Thomas listens to. Or even have this next Side take on the role instead depending on what he represents.

But hey, that’s just a theory, a Side theory.

Also I really love Logan can you tell?

#sanders sides #logan sanders #sanders sides theory #remus sanders #deceit sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #thomas sanders

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sell-our-skins · 4 years

Text

Day 4 of Paradise Motel Week Post Canon AO3 Link ~ Hum Hallelujah “Trying to honor the dead is really difficult when the person who killed them is *right there*”

The Girl was struggling to close her backpack. It was a fairly cheap thing, recently bought by her mom. The shade reminded her of apricots, and all of the times she used to steal fruit flavored candies with Ghoul. Actual fruits were impossible to come by in the zones, or at least they used to be, but with BL/ind being gone, she supposed that she could try a real one now.

It was hot in the car. She was sitting in the passenger seat and the sun was beating down on her through the windshield. Her door was open, occasionally giving a short gust of wind. ‘Mom’s getting the keys,’ she told herself. Soon she could crank up the air conditioning and try to relax. That was, if the bag would actually close.

The zipper refused to budge. She gave it another exasperated tug, “Motherfucker,” she hissed out. Stupid zipper. Stupid backpack.

“Motorbaby?” Maya poked her head into the front seat of the van. Her dark hair, which was streaked with the occasional grey, was pulled up into a loose bun and a leather jacket thrown over a plain green tank top, “You need help?”

The Girl sighed, silently handing her mom the backpack in defeat. Maya smiled warmly, opening up the glovebox in front of the Girl with a gentle click. It was filled to the brim with trinkets from their adventures so far. The older Killjoy pulled out a half melted blue candle and began to carefully rub it over the zipper lining.

The Girl arched one of her eyebrows.

“Don’t question me, child of mine,” she warned with a chuckle, setting the candle down on the dashboard. Maya firmly grabbed the stubborn zipper, and closed the bag with ease.

“I take back my eyebrow raise. You’re clearly a deity in disguise,” Maya rolled her eyes, handing the Girl her bag and buckling herself up. The Girl carefully set the fruit-colored-bag in the backseat.

Maya started the van, and she started to head towards Route Guano. It was only now sinking in, what they were doing and where they were going. The Girl could feel her stomach flip with anxiety and her head filling with doubts.

It was apparently visible in her face, since her mom commented on it, “You know, we don’t have to do this. We could… make an altar for ourselves. Just a family thing.”

She actually considered it for a second, but no. She wasn’t going to let some asshole ruin her day

“I’ll be fine.”

--=+=--

The two Killjoys pulled up to the Ultra V hideout, which was formally some type of restaurant. A fast food place, most likely, but it was nearly unrecognizable. It was covered in spray painted tags and other interesting looking ornaments. However, today, it was also decorated with different types of desert wildflowers.

Pretty much as soon as the car had stopped, a teal haired Killjoy burst through the front of the restaurant, followed by their pink haired twin.

“KIIIIIIID! KID KIID!” the twins called out, running towards the car as fast as they could. The Girl felt a little smile appear on her face as she opened the door and hopped out of the van. Instantly, Vaya had pulled her into a tight hug and loudly exclaimed, “I can’t believe you actually came!”

“Yeah, glad you could make it, tumbleweed,” Vamos tried to play faer previous excitement off casually. Fae leaned against the van, a caricatured version of looking cool. Though they somehow made it work.

“Don’t scratch the paint, pup,” Maya piped up, hopping out of their car with a bag slung over her shoulder, “Can ya’ lend me a hand?”

“‘Course, Ms. Psychic,” Vaya called out, letting go of the girl and rushing to the other side of the van, their sibling following closely behind.

Merely a few seconds later, Vinyl came walking towards the group. The Girl gave him a wave, grabbing her apricot backpack from the backseat. Vinyl pointed at her backpack, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, uh, I got it. You can see if mom needs help, though,” he nodded at her words and travelled around the vehicle. The Girl glanced over at the doorway. The last member of the Ultra Vs was just standing there. Staring back at her and leaning against the doorway. His hair had faded slightly, turning a sort of pinkish red.

She sighed and looked up into the sky. Probably around 4.

‘You’ve been through hell and back you can deal with this,’ she ran a hand through her hair and made her way into the Ultra V hideout. Val’s eyes were practically staring right through her. Like a snake watching its prey. The Girl just tried to not acknowledge it.

She looked around at the now decorated restaurant. There were a handful of wildflowers in a variety of colors in cans and petals on the ground. A desk had been pushed out into the front room, making a makeshift altar. It was extremely plain, the only things on it being a faded polaroid of Volume in a soft yellow frame, a couple bad luck bead bracelets placed on the corners of the picture frame, a bag of chips, most likely stolen from Tommy, and a hair dye kit in Electric Frankenstein.

She opened up her bag and began to pull things out of it. Beads, photos, and other precious items. The Girl started to add things to their shared altar, making sure everyone had a section. Her family, her friends, no one was left out.

“Surprised you’re even here, halo head,” Val finally piped up, after what quite possibly could have been the most awkward silence.

‘Halo head,’ she mused to herself, ‘haven’t heard that one in a minute.’

“I’m here to help, don’t get sour,” she said with a sigh, carefully setting out both the battery powered and real candles.

“Help with what? None of this even… matters,” he moved away from his spot in the doorway and towards the altar she was working on.

She didn’t even dignify his sentence by turning to look at him, continuing to set out the picture frames. Val was just trying to get a rise out of her, she knew it.

“I mean, what deity is this for, again?”

“The Phoenix Witch,” the Girl strung a string of bad luck beads around the top of the desk.

“Yeah, the humanoid in a feather coat.”

She gave Val a somewhat annoyed look from over her shoulder, “Just a few months ago you saw me explode into a ball of green electricity,” she went back to what she was doing.

That seemed to set him off, really make him flare up, “I’m not gonna let some bomb with a silver tongue make my crew-”

“Heyyyyy!” Vaya announced their presence as they burst in through the front door. When they noticed how tense Val was, they cleared their throat, “Hope I didn’t interrupt your little get together.”

“Nope, we’re fine,” the Girl put on a fake smile. Apparently it was believable enough, because they let it go with a shrug.

Vaya was followed in by the rest of the Killjoys, all holding different bags filled with goodies.

Val’s anger seemed to fizzle out, since he practically slunk back into the background. It was like a sparkler, going from loud, bright, and fiery to silent in a matter of minutes. A sparkler in Poison Red hair dye. It still made her frown when she thought of it.

--=+=--

The altar was almost completely done, and Vamos was helping with the finishing touches. It was packed full of gifts and photographs, all meant to honor the ghosted. Maya, Vinyl, and Vaya were all in the restaurant’s kitchen, cooking both for the altar and for all of the other Killjoys. There was laughter coming from the kitchen. Well, Vaya and Maya were laughing, Vinyl was trying to fight the smile that wanted to appear on his face. The others were able to hear due to the openness of the restaurant. Val was hunched over on the couch, scribbling in his notebook.

“Lookin’ pretty shiny,” Vamos adjusted one of the frames near the back, since the glare of the lights had made it difficult to see. In it was a photo of Dr. Death Defying and Cherri Cola that the Girl had stolen out of Dr. Death’s station. Faer smile faded almost instantly.

“Christ, I kinda miss the old man,” fae mumbled, tone somewhat sorrowful, maybe even regretful. Fae brushed some of their neon hair out of faer eyes and continued to stare at the frame for a moment. Val shifted on the couch, no longer hunched over. No, now he was listening.

“Yeah, but, I guess… it happens… in a way?” the Girl struggled to find the words, she could feel herself getting somewhat choked up.

“It wasn’t his time,” Maya added, her tone laced with bitterness, “It’s a damn shame, but he’s with the witch now”

“God can you hear yourselves? He was a broken record. A dust angel. What’s the point of all of this?” Val’s voice snapped through the conversation. Everyone was tensely staring at Val, now. A stiff silence having come over the room.

“You wouldn’t know a broken record if you were hit over the head with one,” the Girl snapped back, after what felt an eternity, “The hell is wrong with you? Why can’t you just enjoy something for once?”

Val wrinkled his nose at her, storming out of the building without another word. Fuck.

“Guess you really blew up on him,” Maya tried, her joke falling flat.

--=+=--

It had only been around 15 minutes. The Girl hesitantly poked her head out of the door, looking at Val, who was sitting on the stairs.

“What?” he didn’t look up at her, like he thought the pavement was the most interesting thing in the zones. The stars were just starting to pop up in the sky, the sun sinking behind its spot in the hills.

The Girl just plopped down next to him and stared up at the sky, “You don’t have to like me, Val.”

Val looked up from his pavement, staring at the Girl with a look of mostly confusion.

“We just can’t keep pretending like we aren’t bothered by each other,” she ran a hand through her hair, focusing on a particularly bright star.

There was a beat of silence, “And I know you’re too stubborn to agree. It’s fine,” she hoped that her words came off as lighthearted. The last thing she needed was Val snapping at her again.

“You like the stars?” he finally spoke up.

She broke her staring contest with the bright star to glance at her fellow Killjoy, “Yeah, uh…” The Girl ran a hand through her hair again, debating whether to share what just popped into her head.

“Party, they used to tell me that when you got ghosted you would get turned into a star,” Val looked over at her, his face unreadable, “It always made me feel better, when I would hear people talking about claps going South on the radio. Made me feel like they were just… turning into stardust.”

He looked like he was processing her words, struggling to find the right response.

“Shiny,” is what he finally landed on.

“Yeah, shiny.”

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silenthillmutual · 4 years

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Danganronpa 1 & 2 characters as High School “recommended reading” books I actually read

Makoto Naegi

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee when i read it: 5th grade for fun, 10th grade for English class did i like it? well enough yeah content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism, ableism, and sexism about: Recounts a summer in which Scout and her brother, Jem, watch their lawyer father defend a black man accused of raping a white woman in the south while balancing raising them alone. Other stuff happens, but that’s the most important plot thread.

Sayaka Maizono

Medea by Euripides when i read it: i don’t remember, maybe 9th for drama, 12th for English? did i like it? yep! content warnings: child murder, infidelity, some pretty brutal other character deaths, sexism about: Medea, who has sacrificed everything to be with her husband - even committed treason - has been left by the man so he can move on to woo and wed a princess. And she loses her shit.

Leon Kuwata

The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn by Mark Twain when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: thematic & period-typical racism (use of the n-word), domestic abuse, classism iirc? about: After his abusive dad comes back and demands money under the threat of death, Huck Finn runs away with a fugitive slave down the Mississippi River. Being Mark Twain, it’s a comedy, although Huck’s father is genuinely kind of frightening and his friendship with Jim is kind of heartwarming.

Chihiro Fujisaki

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade & freshman year of college for class did i like it? I’ve got mixed feelings; i love the book, hate most peoples’ interpretations of it. content warnings: character death, incest (depending on the version of the novel you read), unethical doctors, neglectful parents about: Thinking he knows better than literally anyone else he’s ever met, Victor Frankenstein decides it’s his birthright to play god. He robs graves to build the perfect body, and then, once he’s successful, flips his shit and refuses to acknowledge any part he played in the creation, wrecking the lives of like everyone he knows.

Mondo Oowada

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton when i read it: like 6th or 7th grade, for fun did i like it? i loved it! content warnings: abuse, thematic classism, character death about: Honestly the most obvious choice to make for Mondo. Ponyboy Curits, a greaser, recounts the last few months of his life in which, after being repeatedly harassed and then nearly killed by gang of rich kids, his friend Johnny stabs one to death. In order to keep Johnny out of prison and Ponyboy out of a boys’ home, the two run away. Considering Ponyboy is also being raised by an older brother, this totally fits Mondo.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru

King Lear by William Shakespeare when i read it: twice in college (discliamer: as an english major i had to taken an entire course on shakespeare, so he shows up a lot here between that and having done theatre) did i like it? no content warnings: a surprising amount of gore for a stage play, including a guy getting his eyes gouged out and someone getting beheaded iirc about: The king’s getting up in years, so he’s hoping he can drop the workload off onto his three daughters while remaining the figurehead. His youngest, Cordelia, who he loves best, refuses to kiss his ass by saying that he’ll still have power over her once she’s married, and this pisses him off so he disinherits her. Then her sisters, annoyed with their father and his favoritism, decide that with Cordelia out of the way they can now do basically whatever they want and determine to make his life hell. Since he named them Goneril and Regan, I don’t blame them.

Hifumi Yamada

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer when i read it: college, but i wanna say i read some of the stories in it for English classes in high school? did i like it? some of the stories i did yeah content warnings: varies from story to story, but i remember unsanitary, drunkenness, and infidelity about: The overarching “plot” as such is that a group of people are making a pilgrimage to Canterbury, and decide that to pass the time they will tell two stories each. Each story is told in-character, and whoever tells the best story has to...buy everybody dinner, or something? I don’t really recall. It’s a comedy, but it’s also unfinished because Chaucer bit off way more than he could chew.

Celes Ludenberg

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? probably, i’m a fan of Poe content warnings: drunkenness, murder about: This one got memetic on tumblr for a while, but essentially this guy decides to get revenge on an old friend of his for some kind of sleight by getting him drunk during Carnival, leading him into the basement, and burying him alive. Poe isn’t one to go soft.

Sakura Oogami

“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? no content warnings: objectification, something akin to torture about: A family finds an old man with wings lying face-down on the ground and decide to keep him like a pet. People see him and assume he is an animal, and the family decides to start charging admission like their own private sideshow, while onlookers abuse him. One of those extra depressing stories that makes you wonder why the hell you had to read it for class.

Mukuro Ikusaba

The Crucible by Arthur Miller when i read it: the first time, probably in 6th or 7th grade, and then several more times after that for a variety of other classes. it’s a theatre and English class staple.�� did i like it? when taken in context, yes. but i’m also fucking sick of reading it. content warnings: infidelity, paranoia bait, period-typical racism & sexism (takes place during the Salem Witch Trials) about: The plot is a witch hunt, in which a girl who had an affair with a married man claims to have been taken over by the spirit of the devil and that all her friends and a variety of other townsfolk have too. It follows the trials as they try to determine who is and is not guilty, who will repent for their sins, and thematically is about puritanical hysteria. It’s about the Red Scare of the 50s, surveillance, the Hollywood Blacklist, propaganda, and tyrannical government. Naturally, teachers fail to provide any context for the play that actually makes it relevant or interesting. Compare to modern day callout/cancel culture.

Kyouko Kirigiri

12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose when i read it: 10th grade (although i’d already seen the movie) did i like it? yes content warnings: thematic classism & xenophobia about: The jury of a case in which a teenager is accused of murder convene to determine their verdict. All but one man believe him to be guilty. The rest of the play covers his attempts to sway his other jurors into at least casting aside their prejudices to view the case impartially.

Byakuya Togami

The Federalist Papers when i read it: summer before 12th grade for AP Gov. yikes. did i like it? oh god no. i had to have my lawyer dad explain it to me. content warnings: legalese and it’s boring as fuck about: i mean it’s just a bunch of essays to promote ratifying the the constitution. I don’t even remember if we read all of them. that’s how bad my retention of the subject is.

Toko Fukawa

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? kind of? content warnings: bugs, emotional abuse, depression about: A man awakens one day to find he has transformed into a giant cockroach. It’s a metaphor for his depression and what a burden he feels like to his family. If you read anything about Kafka’s life, you’ll understand why he was depressed.

Aoi Asahina

Hamlet by William Shakespeare when i read it: i’ve forgotten when my first time was because i’ve had to read it so constantly. if i had to wager a guess, i’d say middle school, though i’ve read it for fun, for drama class, and for English class. did i like it? yes content warnings: character death, suicidal ideation, incest vibes (depending on your interpretation) about: Hamlet, not over the early death of his father, is enraged that his mother has married his uncle. He’s really bringing everyone else down about it, and then he starts to see his father’s ghost on top of it all. No one’s sure if he’s just mad with grief or if the ghost is for real, but he starts making life for everyone else difficult when he decides to try and expose his uncle as his father’s murderer.

Yasuhiro Hagakure

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller when i read it: 10th grade i think? did i like it? if i believed in book-burning, this would’ve been the first turned to ash in my trashcan content warnings: infidelity, mediocre white men with narcissism, suicide, not sure what else about: An aging father who thinks he was robbed of success by circumstances refuses to face facts that he is a loser by projecting his failures onto a son that now hates him and thinking real big of himself for a wash-out.

Junko Enoshima

Othello by William Shakespeare when i read it: college did i like it? it’s my favorite Shakepseare play, actually! content warnings: thematic racism/xenophobia/Islamophobia, domestic abuse, character death about: A tragedy centering around the planned downfall of Othello, Moor of Venice. He’s relatively well-respected for his heroics and generally being a pretty cool guy, but for whatever reason, Iago wants to see him suffer. And when I say “for whatever reason” - it’s because Iago never gives a consistent one, but at the end he admits the entire thing has been his orchestration and he’s had no issue exploiting peoples’ bigotry as a means to an end. One popular and pretty text-evident theory is that Iago is in love with Othello. But - causing a ruckus, bringing society to its knees, and torturing a man just for shits n giggles? Getting it all done by sheer power of charisma? That’s all Junko ever does.

Monokuma

1984 by George Orwell when i read it: 10th grade for fun, 12th grade for class did i like it? yes but i don’t recommend it. i like tedious shit. content warnings: paranoia bait, sexual themes, torture, probably other stuff i’m forgetting about: Classic dystopia lit in which the government controls the flow of information to the degree of creating its own language (”newspeak”) to explain the technology used to survey its citizens and distill history-changing propaganda. Especially relevant in an era of “fake news.” Where Big Brother Is Watching comes from. Extremely difficult to get into.

Hajime Hinata

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah content warnings: ableism, implied domestic abuse, character death, animal death, era-typical sexism (1930s) about: Very desolate and depressing novella about the futility of the American Dream to “make something of yourself”. Two farmhands, Lennie and George, arrive at a California farm seeking employment. They just want to earn enough money to open up a farm of their own - a rabbit farm - and things are all downhill from there. Well-written and one of Steinbeck’s shorter works.

Twogami

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald when i read it: 11th grade did i like it? yes! i loved it. but in the way that you love sleazy tabloid rag stories. content warnings: infidelity, car accidents, character death about: Stupidly rich people in New York in the 1920s being fake as hell. It’s about excess and decadence and the idea of having a rags-to-riches story, and it’s very homoerotic.

Teruteru Hanamura

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? one of my top faves tbh content warnings: alcoholism & drug usage, thematic classism & racism (ie that’s the point), sexual themes, violence, non-graphic suicide (like literally the last sentence), character deaths about: You know how 1984 is a very pessimistic dystopia about government surveillance? Brave New World is like “what if everything was a utopia because of government interference?” It’s easier to get into than 1984. It’s about a man from the upper echelon of society discovering the dirty secret of how society is able to able to function the way it does, an outsider into his world to shake things up.

Mahiru Koizumi

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen when i read it: i dunno, summer between 9th and 10th grade maybe? did i like it? yes! i loved it. content warnings: there are a couple of guys who are sort of gross but there’s nothing that bad in it about: An upper-middle class family - more the mother than the father - trying to marry off the eldest of their five daughters. It’s largely character-driven and most of the plot focuses on Jane’s relationship with Bingley, Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy, and the problems witch judging people based on first impressions.

Peko Pekoyama

Call of the Wild by Jack London when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? fuck no content warnings: graphic animal violence. if there’s other stuff i forgot because i fucking hated this book. about: I think it’s something like a dog getting lost in Alaska and has to learn to be a wolf in order to survive? It’s incredibly brutal and is one of those media where just reading it makes you feel cold.

Hiyoko Saionji

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not really content warnings: man i don’t know, but it’s by Tennessee Williams so there’s probably alcoholism, daddy issues, and homophobia about: An overbearing mother embarrasses her son and disabled daughter when an old school friend comes to visit...I’m not sure if there’s more of a plot to it than that. Like most Williams works, it’s largely character-driven.

Ibuki Mioda

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino when i read it: college did i like it? this is one of those rare exceptions in books where i read it, because i remember having a visceral reaction to it, but i can not for the life of me remember a single damn thing about it other than how stupidly difficult it was to read. content warnings: it’s metaficiton. about: You are the protagonist. I genuinely can’t explain anymore than that.

Mikan Tsumiki

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? not really, but i’d be willing to reread it content warnings: domestic abuse, rape about: Unstable Blanche DuBois goes to visit her sister, Stella, and meets her appalling husband Stanley. All Tennessee Williams plays seem to have a theme of family tragedy in them, with this being probably the most bleak example.

Nekomaru Nidai

The Odyssey by Homer when i read it: 9th grade, then again in college for a classics class did i like it? yeah content warnings: your usual classical Greek-variety nonsense, including character death, infidelity, and partying. about: Odysseus attempts to make his way back home after the Trojan War, and has a time of it. Having pissed off Poseidon he’s gotten off-course and gotten lost another ten years, and had a whole slew of other adventures trying to make it back home and save his wife from the harassment she’s been getting since his disappearance.

Gundham Tanaka

The Tempest by William Shakespeare when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? not especially content warnings: thematic colonialism & racism...not sure what else but it’s hard as fuck to read. try reading it out loud & acting along to it. about: I didn’t totally get it but there’s something about a wizard having been banished and now people are coming back to find him for some reason? the people who exiled him & his brother & daughter have crash-landed on his island and now he might get his revenge. Thanks, TVTropes! All I remember is discussing in one class about how The Tempest managed to predict the “finding” of America and how the English would treat the native peoples. It’s a “romance”, which in that day and age meant it was about magic. Influenced some science fiction works like Brave New World (the title of which comes from a line spoken by Miranda). I should probably reread it.

Nagito Komaeda

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger when i read it: 8th grade for fun did i like it? yeah content warnings: implied pedophilia. i’m sure there’s other stuff but i don’t remember it well enough. about: Perennial troublemaker Holden Caulfield is kicked out of boarding school, and takes a hell of a long time getting home from the place as he complains about his declining mental state, hypocrisy, and loss of innocence. It’s one of those books you either really love or really hate, and has been repeatedly challenged because Holden swears too much and might be bisexual.

Chiaki Nanami

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw when i read it: 12th grade, i think did i like it? yes content warnings: classism about: A linguistics professor makes a bet with a friend that he can take any lower-class citizen and teach them to speak formal English, well enough to pass them off as aristocracy to other rich people. It’s the plot upon which the musical My Fair Lady is based, although it was intended as a deconstruction of the kind of plot whose trope it now codifies.

Sonia Nevermind

“Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl when i read it: 10th grade did i like it? yeah! content warnings: infidelity, character death about: A guy comes home and tells his heavily pregnant wife that he’s been having an affair, and he’s leaving her. She doesn’t take it well. I won’t spoil the rest of it, as it’s a short story, but it’s fun to keep in mind that it’s be the same guy who wrote classics such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Kazuichi Souda

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare when i read it: 8th grade for a book report and then again in....i don’t know. i’ve had to read it a lot. did i like it? sure, it’s got some pretty great insults content warnings: men being douchebags including stalker-y behavior, and a woman falls in love with a man who has a donkey’s head (it doesn’t last) about: Hermia & Lysander are planning to run away to get married because Hermia’s father doesn’t approve of Lysander, and she’s trying to dodge the affections of Demetrius - the man to whom she has been betrothed, because he’s an ass who, among other things, slept with her friend Helena and then ditched her. Which Helena is still hung up on, even though he’s a gross creep. At the same time, a group of actors are trying to get together a play for an upcoming royal wedding, and the King of the Faeries is trying to win back his wife. This all connects because a faerie decides to fuck around.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier when i read it: college, for an independent study did i like it? yeah content warnings: graphic violence, i think some homophobia? about: Kids and staff at a private school take a candy sale way too damn seriously. There’s basically a mafia at the school and some sort of weird popularity contest and hazing going on.

Akane Owari

“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell when i read it: 9th grade did i like it? i guess so content warnings: human hunting about: A man finds himself shipwrecked on an island, and is then hunted for sport. No, really.

Monomi

East of Eden by John Steinbeck when i read it: technically i’m in the middle of it right now, but that counts, right? did i like it? so far, i guess i do, but it’s mainly i care character who comes up later. couldn’t give less of a shit about adam trask, full offense content warnings: period-typical sexism & racism (set around the turn of the 20th century and published in 1952), implied pedophilia (that gets incredibly glossed over), ableism about: A combination of heavy-handed religious allegory (Steinbeck really just can’t cool it with the Cain and Abel theme naming) and family tree history. Follows the Trask family through Adam’s childhood, tumultuous relationship with his brother, even worse relationship with his wife, and horrible parenting of his children. The end (which is what the film adaptation covers) is more centered on his son Cal Trask grappling with the idea that he might be evil because of his genetics, or something. I think that’s an argument you could make of Monomi, being related to Monokuma (or at least, how i’m sure she’d feel).

#danganronpa #ok to rb

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afanoftheglassscientists · 5 years

Text

The Glass Scientists...Midnight Predictions?

Pupy and his creatures hath returned and I immediately wanted to start this week’s predictions after last week’s page. If the tgs tag wasn’t so cozy I might have made like seven different posts by the time this Sunday. As it stands I feel like if I do more than three posts a week I’ll end up swallowing everyone else’s hard work because of the frequency. These posts are long because I still have some restraint left in me to wait...but then I spend way too long on this post and Monday rolls around...whoops. So now this is...a Glass Scientists MIDNIGHT Predictions post!!!

Anyway tailors are scary and they scare me, but I wonder why Jasper’s a little frazzled at the thought of them? Also Jekyll what are you doing with Jasper’s collar? Are you straightening it or loosening it? I hope its the latter because my child must be set f r e e. F R E E H I M ! ! !

After exploring these questions regarding tomorrow’s page I’ll be talking about Jasper’s immunity to the nightmates. Last week I actually came close in predicting that Jekyll can still concentrate on doing productive things like helping Jasper, but last page reminded me of what makes Jasper unique in the story as well as my predictions made for this chapter as whole. It also reminded me that Jekyll’s desire to be depended upon is going to be even more prominent now than I thought, and its going to get worse before it gets better. Hopefully it gets better. Please let it get better Miss Sabrina.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you this one was going to be long folks.

Tomorrow’s Page Predictions (Ch. 8, Pg. 8)

Tailoring Troubles

I feel I need to acknowledge the elephant in the room here: Jasper is queer. This isn’t up for debate. Sabrina made it very clear that almost everyone in The Glass Scientists is Bi, and she specifically referred to Jasper and Jekyll as queer. I don’t think its much of a stretch to assume Jasper doesn’t feel great about being measured because of this aspect of him, which he might not be proud of yet and is also scared of what might happen if that part of him is revealed. Not to jump the gun here, but maybe Jasper calling himself a monster in Chapter 2 wasn’t in reference to him being a werewolf.

“I’m not a real scientist! I’m not even a real human anymore! I’m...just a monster.”

“Just” meaning “what’s left for them to be,” and not “what they’ve become.”

However I’m not going to get into specifics as to why Jasper’s identity plays into his fear of tailoring here, because I think that requires us knowing more about how Jasper actually identifies, which at this point in time is still pretty vague. So instead I’m making a list of all the other reasons why Jasper might not want to meet a tailor.

Tailor might judge him for his usual attire.

Tailor have long snake-like ropes that wrap around you that don’t have cute doggy faces so whatd the point I ask of you.

Tailor might make comments about Jasper’s body like, “oh nice collarbone,” or “you could lose some weight a bit here,” and it might be a nice gesture to ease tensions but don’t

While being measured Jasper is scared breathing will mess with the measurements and consequently almost passes out.

Jasper has a bunch of bites and scratches all over his body due to his creatures (plus the werewolf that bit him) and he thinks its fine and normal but the tailor might faint in horror.

If tailor accidentally pokes him he might jump out of his skin and attach himself to the ceiling.

Jekyll wht r you doin?

While Jekyll is making Jasper uncomfortable at the mention of tailoring he is doing something that would make me uncomfortable in Jasper’s situation. Don’t just go messing with other peoples clothes, Jekyll! Especially when its around their neck! Anyway what he’s doing with that bow?

Option 1 - He’s rearranging the bow to make it even - alright fair, but he should have warned Jasper first! I feel like a PTA mom ready to call the principal.

Option 2 - He’s removing the bow altogether - F R E E H I M. In Sabrina’s blog waaaaaaaaay back when one of the sketches introducing Jasper showed him sitting down looking like he just went through a sauna and is giving the dopiest look. I feel like releasing him from the bow prison and being able to take a full breadth would give him the same feeling. Listen we got the Hungry Jasper we will get the Dopey Jasper!

Option 3 - He’s replacing the bow with a bow that might suit him better - No keep it off let Jasper be f r e e.

Option 4 - He just wants to play dress up - I’M CALLING YOUR MOM!!!

Option 5 - Jekyll doesn’t have the chance because Jasper backs away at the thought of tailors - You win this round uneven bow.

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General Predictions

Before Chapter 8 started I predicted that Jasper would join the Concerned for Jekyll Club. I was also going to add that if Jasper does try to show concern for Jekyll, Jekyll would hit back that concern and center it toward Jasper. He wants to help and fuss over Jasper, and NEVER wants that help and fussing over to be geared toward him. Being fussed over implies he has a problem. Jekyll doesn’t have a problem, Jasper has the problem! That’s why he needs to help Jasper, see? Its important they keep that dynamic, otherwise Jekyll would have to confront his own issues and that’s just not as fun.

And what do you know: Lanyon, who is a professional Jekyll fusser-over, is deeply affected by the nightmates, but Jasper, who’s still preoccupied with his own worries, isn’t. Hyde said so himself-

“Jasper’s the only person left who isn’t yelling at, gossiping about, or relentlessly fussing over Jekyll. And that’s a problem.”

Now Hyde’s not mad at Jasper here, because this has nothing to do with Jasper and has to do entirely with Jekyll’s perception of him, which is as a reprieve, or to put in the Broadway show Wicked’s terms, a “new project.” He’s a opportunity for Jekyll to practice his hobby, like a office worker getting the chance to write a few extra pages in his novel about snails. And a novel about snails wouldn’t ask its author to take a break now would it?

Jasper’s not targeted by the nightmates because he hasn't done anything yet to change Jekyll’s view of him. He’s a nice young man who has agreed to be a respectable mad scientist under Jekyll’s wing. Both parties get something out of this arrangement, and there is no possible way for this to go wrong. Easy peasy...

So How Does This Go Wrong

For me, there’s three ways for Jasper’s nightmate-free bubble to burst: Jasper confronts Jekyll, Jasper is negatively affected by Jekyll’s attention, or Jekyll is forced to recognize how dependent he is on Jasper’s need for his help. Here’s how we could get to any of these points-

Jasper Starts to Put the Pieces Together - I still have my money on Jasper being more observant than he lets on, but is easily distracted by outside situations or inner fears. If Jasper starts to remedy these self fears he might have a moment to register how Jekyll is much more enthusiastic about helping him than he is with, say, helping a sick elderly mad scientist up in the attic. Or how Jekyll looks at his fellow lodgers and Lanyon versus how he looks at Jasper. Or how Jekyll doesn’t seem to do have anything else to do on his free time. Oh he still treats Frankenstein and go to important meetings, but if Jasper asks what Jekyll does on his off-time would Jekyll give him that same blank-eyed stare he gave him in front of his door? I don’t think he’d be creeped out right away, but he might start to think that Jekyll needs to like, sleep or something...

Lodgers Gossip and/or are also Worried - The Lodgers gossip about Jekyll, that’s pretty clear from Hyde’s comment, which is why they’re affected by the nightmates. And what’s this? Jekyll seems to concentrate an awful lot on Jasper. Why is that? I think there might be a mix of Lodgers who will gossip about Jasper alongside Jekyll, Lodgers on Team Frankenstein who want to bring Jasper on their side of the playing field or at least out from under Jekyll’s “respectable” thumb, and maybe Lodgers who realize that Jekyll treating Jasper like his personal therapy tool is, like, bad and want to either tell off Jekyll or tell Jasper this isn’t a great situation. Jasper might not see it as a serious issue, but he might be inclined to start doubting it.

Lanyon Confronts Jekyll on it OR Tell Jasper About Jekyll’s Situation - Hyde’s annoyed at Jekyll being around Jasper basically because Jasper’s NOT doing things that Lanyon would do, which is hilarious given how much Hyde tooootally hates Lanyon. So wouldn’t it be funny if Lanyon was the one to burst the bubble? Anyway there’s a likely chance that Lanyon will notice how Jasper seems to be the only Lodger who doesn’t see Jekyll stressed, because he doesn’t realize that he’s the de-stresser. And if he does than Lanyon will have to first go, “Really Henry, ANOTHER werewolf!?” and then go, “How do I handle this situation in regards to Jekyll’s problems, not to mention finding Hyde?” He might find issues with their dynamic (n-not that he’d be jealous or anything! b-b-baka!) and tell Jekyll he should probably take a break, or tell Jasper he needs to refuse Jekyll’s help every single time he offers it, because it could hurt Jekyll in the long run. He could also try to set aside his concerns and use it to his advantage. Jekyll doesn’t seem to want Lanyon’s company or answer his questions, but maybe if Jasper asked questions Jekyll would be more willing to give answers, even if its not truthful answers. I do a lot of predictions centered around problems Jekyll, Jasper and Hyde have, along with a little bit of Rachel’s flaws, but I think I might talk more on Lanyon’s faults as well at a later date.

Frankenstein - Just Frankenstein. That’s it. That’s all it takes. I’ll leave you to imagine how she’d affect the situation.

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Okay I need to stop here. I might come back to the topic later because it involves Jasper but for now I think it filled my quota. I hope you enjoy this while we wait for tomor...this morning’s page.

And since this is a midnight post...

That’s it for this midnight prediction. Now go to bed!

#tgs #tgs Sunday predictions #the glass scientists

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apparitionism · 5 years

Text

Helicobacter 15

I have very little idea who even sees what I post anymore, given Tumblr and its unparseable algorithms. Once again, in the interest of possibly appearing in search results, I’m going to eschew links to the other fourteen (!) parts of this story here in this post... but they exist and can be found! This piece mostly boils down to callbacks, so the previous parts are indeed important, in an inside-joke sense. Anyhow, with housekeeping out of the way, where were we? Previously on Helicobacter, Myka was happy, Helena was too, and I myself couldn’t be bothered to stitch some dialogue exchanges into a full scene. Did a little better this time, but it’s still sort of Frankenstein’s-monster-ish.

Helicobacter 15

Helena knew that what she beheld wasn’t real. She knew it, because this was a plan, because everything thus far seemed to be going to plan. But when she entered the hospital room and saw Myka in that bed—that hospital bed, which was so very much not the bed they had so recently shared—all of what she knew left her mind: the “you’re up!” text she’d just received in the parking garage where she and Steve and Liam had been waiting for their cue, the fact that Steve and Liam were indeed right behind her, the crush of people in the room itself. The full complement... Abigail, extravagantly “blood”-soaked; Rick and Varsha, exuding white-coated competence; Jeannie, wearing a stricken expression that proved she either was an extremely good actor or did not enjoy having to see her daughter this way any more than Helena did; and, finally, Jane Lattimer, with whom Helena had interacted in only the most functional of ways but who had maintained a commanding, severe aspect at all times. She now looked a bit like Helena herself most likely had, in that original, first hospital immediacy, her face a mix of “something is happening to which I do not have full access” and “how can I persuade my actual day to resume.”

These things left Helena’s mind, and what remained was Myka, in a hospital bed.

“It was you all along,” Myka said, and her voice was sweet, not weak. “It really was you.”

Helena had been working on a dramatic statement in the “yes, it was I!” genre in response to whatever she encountered, here in this little hospital-room playhouse. But “I’m sorry” she said instead. An inadequate apology for everything from the original sin of the textbook through to Myka’s having to lie here in a hospital bed again.

Myka said, “I’m not.” She smiled. “But we really need to stop meeting like this.”

Enough of Helena’s wits returned for her to observe, “Abigail seems to have got the worst of it this time.”

“Impressive, right?” Abigail said. “When she gets sick, she gets sick. Overachiever.”

Now Helena did try to “act”: “You told her,” she said to Rick, who nodded. “So you know everything?” Helena asked Myka.

“I hope so,” said Myka. “I want to.”

“I want you not to be sick again,” Helena said, and that was no act.

“I can see that. Come here. If I am going to be sick again, it’s where you belong.” Myka looked up at Rick. “Now I’m the one who’s sorry. I did think it was you. Before. That it was supposed to be.” Rick said a soft “me too,” and Helena saw that Myka’s words, and his, were indeed about before: before Helena. Months ago, she would have found such an acknowledgement exclusionary and enraging. Now it raised further gratitude in her. She found she could not quite remember how it felt to hate Rick.

She did remember, however, how it felt to go to Myka’s bedside and take her hand. “I didn’t think I’d be allowed to do this,” she said.

“Technically,” Myka said, now with a glance at Jane Lattimer, “you’re not. But isn’t there an initiative about to be rolled out? That might make it okay?”

Everyone else was now conspicuously silent. Helena was not at all sorry to have missed whatever histrionics had preceded her entrance, but poor Liam was likely to regret finding so little to work with, improvisationally.

“Initiative?” Jane asked, with an edge, and Helena began to worry.

“Sunshine?” Myka asked back.

Jane frowned, and Helena, her worry intensifying, said, “I don’t want to cause trouble. But at the same time, I’d be happier if I didn’t have to skulk in someone else’s emails. Even if he was kind about it. Thank you, Rick.” She meant it.

“You’re welcome,” Rick said, and he seemed to mean it as well. “Happier’s a good goal. For you and for Myka. I think we all agree on that.”

“We certainly do,” Jeannie said.

Her words made Helena remember that, given the situation, she wouldn’t know who this was. “Have we met?” she asked.

In lieu of a real answer, Jeannie ruminated, “Myka told me about you, the first time this happened. Of course she told me after the fact. About all of it. ‘Hi, Mom, hope bridge club was fun, and by the way, cancer.’ And even then she seemed more concerned about having decorated you with so much of her AB-positive... that was a little confusing, in terms of priorities, but the most confusing part is why nobody insisted on calling her next of kin!”

“Mom,” Myka said. “First, I wasn’t dying. And second, storyline, okay?”

“Fine,” Jeannie said. “Am I allowed to sigh and say words about destiny?”

“Like I could stop you,” Myka said.

Helena tried to walk a middle way with, “I wish the circumstances were better, but I’m pleased to meet you.”

“We’ll see if it’s likewise,” said Jeannie, with a bit of her familiar twinkle.

“I’ll try to make it so. If Myka will let me, now that she knows that my feelings belong to me, not Rick. And now that she knows that her feelings are for me, not Rick. That is, if she still has those feelings, given the revelation that they may be for me, not Rick.” Well, that had been a terrible improvisation. Helena wished some language-use fail-safe mechanism could have cut her off after the first “me, not Rick.”

“I have them,” Myka said, with admirable simplicity. To Jane, she said, “So could we?”

“Could you what?” Jane asked. She still wore a frown, but was that was from “when will my day resume” annoyance, or because Myka was on an extremely wrong track?

“Hold hands, now that we know who feels what for whom. Could we just do this, and not worry about our jobs? Given the sunshine, I really think we—”

“But Myka,” Jane said, her expression changing from severe to gently serious, “that isn’t how it’s intended to work. It’s intended, once we announce, to flush people out: ultimately, to be an even greater deterrent. To show that we can find problems and dispatch them. One of you would still have to go—the only thing the initiative does is provide for some negotiating and grace period. A softer landing, with associated publicity. For example, Helena’s firm could finish the library, but she’d be barred from city work after that. Or you could wrap up your projects, and then you’d exit with some sort of severance package.”

Myka’s small smile had vanished, and her hold on Helena’s hand had become progressively tighter through Jane’s explanation. “What? No... no, no, no! Blameless adorable girls!”

“What?” Jane said.

Myka turned to Helena and said, in a voice as tense as her grip, “I didn’t know.”

Helena said a quiet, “That’s your just deserts for reading things you shouldn’t. Draft memos... marked-up city planning textbooks...”

“I thought it was going to be perfect,” Myka said. Her eyes dampened, and she blinked fast.

“It is perfect, as far as the initiative goes,” Jane told her, “but it doesn’t get you the outcome you seem to want.”

Myka hates how red... they really could not move to Maine and refuse to fish for lobsters, so Helena was going to have to come up with something else, and she was going to have to do it quickly. “But not the outcome you want, either,” she said to Jane, buying time.

“How do you mean?” Jane asked.

“Do you want me to be barred from city work?”

“Of course not. I wish I could say there were plenty of firms in the sea that can bring work in on time and on budget, but.”

Helena continued, slowly, “And you can’t possibly want to send Myka off into the sunset with a severance package, because she’s exceptional at her job.” An even more salient through struck her: “And because you most likely won’t be allowed to replace her, will you? Given budgetary concerns.”

“That’s most likely correct,” Jane said.

And now Helena had to throw that last reasonable save-us-all possibility out the window as well. Not on impulse, but as an imperative: because it was no longer a reasonable possibility. She said, “I would swear to fall out of love with her, but I don’t believe I can do that. And you would have your suspicions, wouldn’t you? Regardless of what either of us swore.”

“‘Suspicions’ is far too mild a word for what I would have, if you tried to sell me that story,” Jane said. “That story.”

It was a clear request: sell me the right story. What was the right story? The current circumstance was once a different circumstance, Helena reminded herself, and then she began to remind Jane of it: “Let’s consider a hypothetical situation. What would have happened if she and I had been together before I bid on the neighborhood?”

Jane said, promptly, “You would never have been allowed within ten miles of that bid.”

“But remember, the process began before the current mayor took office. And Myka wasn’t involved, not initially. Under the previous administration, that was the functional equivalent of being ten miles apart, wouldn’t you say? Under the previous administration, our integrity would have been the stuff of legend. Perhaps even epic poetry, composed in Greek.” She glanced at Myka, who was not at all ready to smile. I will never, ever let this face be red again. Maine, lobsters, red. Everything connected. Fix it.

Jane said, “I have my doubts about the poetry, but in a general sense, yes.”

“And neither Myka nor I could have known that after my unfortunate incident with her now-former coworker, you would assign her to the project. Could we? She certainly didn’t volunteer for it.”

“No...” Now Jane Lattimer had a tilt to her head and a glint to her eye that suggested she was beginning to see Helena’s point: blameless adorable girls...

Myka was still blinking, and she was breathing hard through her nose: she wasn’t there yet.

“The timeline,” Helena said. “The timeline. You assign Myka to the project, having no idea that she and I are together in some way; we don’t say anything about it, because why would we have done, under the previous regime? A short time later, the new mayor takes office; new rules go into effect. Myka and I are now stuck: what can we do? If we reveal ourselves, either she loses her job, or my firm is dropped from consideration. We don’t want either of those outcomes, so for a brief while, we bide our time. Perhaps we’re trying to figure out a plan.” She looked at Myka again, and now Myka blinked again, but slow, an I trust you blink, an I still don’t quite see but I trust you movement of lids and lashes.

Helena, encouraged, continued, “We fail to figure out a plan before Myka falls ill, and we have our day in hospital. She conveys to you the basic facts of what happened—that she did fall ill, that I was there with her—because she could hardly conceal those facts. And you, following the guidelines, remove her from the project and install Abigail instead. We breathe something of a sigh of relief, but we also find ourselves consigned to secrecy. We’re trapped. We remain trapped, all this time... but, notably, I don’t attempt to influence any of Myka’s work, and she exerts no influence to benefit me. That is objectively the case.”

“The mayor wouldn’t bother to follow that story,” Jane said. “She’s busy; it’s lengthy. And I’m not persuaded it’s true.”

“It could have been true. Just as this story of emails and a relapse could have been true,” Helena told her—but having done so, she realized that she had fully confessed to the fictional nature of the current situation. Monumental error?

Apparently not; Jane’s posture relaxed, and she said, “So Myka’s all right?”

Myka squeezed Helena’s hand. “I’m all right,” she said, and Helena was so relieved to hear her sound like herself again that she sat down next to her on the bed, heedless, now, of all appearances, even of making it clear that she had indeed been with Myka, lately, in a better bed than this one. She noted that she was on the correct side of this bed. They had been in better beds, but at least she was in this one correctly.

“All right then,” Jane said. “Several things could have been true. What actually is true?”

The words “First there was a fountain” made their way out of Myka’s mouth before Helena managed to interrupt, “I don’t believe anyone’s life will be improved if we try to explain. Speaking of stories no one would bother to follow.” Myka’s theory regarding public shaming was all very well, but now they needed to offer something that made sense.

“All right then, “ Jane said. “We’ll save the truth for a less instrumental time. But what would you like me to sell to the mayor?”

Helena said, “Sell her this: a city employee and a contractor have a personal relationship that predates the current administration, but that relationship has never been allowed to influence their work. I think that says a great deal about how this mayor has managed to bring integrity back to governance, don’t you?” Jane began to nod, if still with bit of skepticism, so Helena went on, “If the mayor is indeed concerned about having nothing to disclose, then here is something that may be disclosed. If everything looks too perfect, here is a story in which everyone’s behavior, while not perfect, is undamaging to the work at hand. In fact the work at hand is being done rather well, and our conduct has been, all things considered, very nearly exemplary.”

No one else in the room had said anything for quite some time—poor Liam, Helena thought again. Everyone’s eyes were on Jane, who said, “It’s a shame you weren’t secretly married. I’d have a better case for having this new initiative somehow grandfather you in, given your ‘exemplary’ conduct.” Helena heard the quote marks.

“Hm,” Rick said. “How about if they were engaged?”

Jane tilted her head one way, then the other. “It couldn’t hurt.”

Rick turned to Myka and Helena and shrugged as if to say “well then.”

“There are several people who work at this hospital who would attest to that as fact,” Helena said.

Myka smiled up at Helena. “Plus it would help explain why you dropped everything to be here today—I mean, here, today, when I’m having this relapse—regardless of appearances.”

Jane said, “And I suppose it would explain why, here today, you were both unable to hide the ‘real’ situation from me. Given what a terrible actor Helena is.” She said this last with a “go ahead, challenge me” air.

“Terrible,” Helena agreed, not rising to the bait, if indeed it was bait. “Jane, I believe you’re the hero in this scenario, are you not? You offer the mayor an easy way to show a tinge of relatively harmless imperfection, and you keep all your personnel in place. No other department head could possibly have the opportunity—and ability!—to thread such a needle.”

“Don’t push,” Jane warned.

“I can’t help but push,” Helena said, because it was true. “Look at her.” She herself looked at Myka... and was struck by the fact of her. No more impulses; only imperatives.

“It’s fortunate you’ve given up asking me to believe that this romance is purely epistolary,” Jane said. “We do still have one problem, however, speaking of looking: going forward, there’s that pesky appearance of a conflict of interest. I’m not sure how I can talk the mayor down from that.”

Varsha said, “I have an idea. You see, I’m using this wallpaper”—she gestured at Rick—“to help my career.”

“Who are you again?” Jane asked.

“I am Doctor Varsha Parekh, but that is unfortunately neither here nor there in the present circumstance. The point is that the wallpaper is fine with it. He would most likely not be fine with it, however, if I hadn’t told him. If for example I told someone else and that news made its way back to him.”

“Full disclosure!” Liam said, with a florid melodrama that the current circumstance certainly didn’t warrant... then again, Helena did see that it was likely to be one of his only lines, so of course he would want to make the most of it.

His making the most of it startled Jane. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I thought,” Liam began, just as extravagantly—then Steve elbowed him and he calmed down—“well, I thought I might get to play a doctor too, but instead I’m ‘Assistant’s Boyfriend.’ Which is fine.” He elbowed Steve.

Jeannie sighed. “I’m still just ‘Mom.’”

Myka burst out with, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

“I know you did,” Jeannie told her, “and it’s fine, just as Liam said, but—”

“No, Mom,” Myka said, “I’m talking about disclosure. If I warn them, no one can say I didn’t warn them.”

Abigail mused, “It is a conflict of interest. Say it loud and proud, over and over, and eventually nobody’ll think twice about it; they’ll bake it into every single good word you might say about her. And every single bad word you might say about anybody else.”

“You will have to say it over and over,” Jane told Myka, “or everyone will think you��re joking.”

“I will be so happy to say it over and over,” Myka said. Her hand, still gripping Helena’s, was warm.

Jane said, “You’ve always been above reproach... are you ready to take that reputational hit?”

At that, Myka did lose a bit of her shine. Helena looked at Abigail, who shrugged and said, “She’s the one who keeps saying she’s tougher than she looks.”

“Think of it as a metaphorical pie in the face,” Helena suggested to Myka.

“I guess you did pre-apologize,” Myka said. “First thing when you walked in here.”

“And I felt I really did have to throw it. Well, to set you up for it to be thrown, I suppose. Unfortunately I don’t think anyone will bother hiding it in a bouquet.”

“Helena, I had no idea you were this strange,” Jane remarked.

“I’m not the one who—never mind. Yes, I am this strange. Now. I occasion the throwing of metaphorical pies. I personify the lessons of a koan that inexplicably involves a lobster. And everywhere I go, I find myself there under false false pretenses.”

“Not everywhere,” Myka said. “But speaking of false false pretenses, and why she goes places, I should make clear that regardless of when anything did or didn’t happen, I did all the pursuing, I swear. If she’s been trying to get me to wield influence on her behalf, she’s doing a terrible job. Gave me no incentive at all.” Myka accompanied this with an irresistible nestle against Helena’s side... a reminder that Myka herself had provided near-constant incentive for Helena to give up and give in. As she was now once again doing.

“Maybe she’s spectacular at reverse psychology,” Abigail said.

“Whose side are you on?” Myka demanded.

With a glance at Jane, Abigail said, “Good governance. I’m on the side of good governance.” She glanced down at the “gore” that decorated her. “I’m also on the side of clean clothes.”

Steve said, “She is not spectacular at reverse psychology. She’s not even very good at straightforward psychology.”

Helena sat there and took it, because really, what were her options? Her martyrdom was mitigated by the fact that she was still sitting next to Myka, holding her hand. With a modicum of hope.

Jane said, “Honestly, psychology aside, I wish you’d just come to me in the first place. My heart isn’t made of stone.” She shook her head in an exasperated chide.

In response to which, Helena had no choice but to muse, “How ironic it would be if someone had, prior to all this, suggested doing precisely that.”

Myka un-nestled herself and poked Helena in the side. “How even more ironic it would be if, after all this, someone else were to decide she’d changed her mind about wanting to be with someone.”

“I am having a sign made that says ‘point taken.’”

“Good investment.” Myka then re-nestled herself, as if it were a relief to have that settled.

And with that, Helena capitulated. Entirely: no part of her soul was divided. She would sell the firm to Steve if she had to; she would move to Maine; she would confront lobsters or any other monster from her childhood, from her subconscious, or from reality. She would maintain.

Jane said, “I need to make one more very important point, one that each and every one of you needs to take to heart: You’re all terrible actors—“

“Now, wait,” Jeannie said, and Liam added, “You should have seen me as Biff Loman three seasons ago at the Civic Theater.”

Jane rolled her eyes. “But since you’re willing to put on this ridiculous show to ‘help’ them, can I count on you to maintain the equally ridiculous position that they’ve been involved for as long as they have to have been, for this story to be plausible? A year? More?”

Helena, suddenly giddy at the idea of victory within their grasp, said, “We have known each other for more than a year and have been madly in love for twice that long. Wait, was that backwards?”

“Liar,” Myka accused. “Three times that long.”

Rick offered, “I am pretty sure Myka cheated on me with her.”

Myka raised a threatening hand to him. “Hey. Actually too soon on that.”

“Sorry,” he said.

Helena remembered how it felt to resent him. She glared.

“Very sorry,” he amended.

“Some secret engagement that you were trying to tell me some fake story about,” Steve said, contemplatively.

Helena recognized the phrasing. “You did say that. At the time.”

“I was all set to believe it then... so now I do.” His breathing was steady. Helena reflected that if she did have to sell the firm to him, everyone there would most likely breathe far more steadily, far more of the time.

“Wonderful,” said Jane. “And when I say ‘wonderful,’ I mean that if I hear one whisper of trouble about this, everyone in this room over whom I have any authority whatsoever is fired, removed, or otherwise penalized. Do I make myself clear?” She received decisive nods from everyone, even those over whom she technically had no power at all. “All right. Here is the ‘real’ story: you’ve been engaged since before the current administration came into office. I had no knowledge of this engagement. As far as I knew, you met on the day of Myka’s hospital stay—during which, I’m gathering, Helena represented herself as Myka’s fiancée.”

“I did,” Helena said.

“That representation of the situation was, if anyone asks from this point forward, true,” Jane told her.

Helena said, “It felt true.”

“It did,” Myka agreed.

“True enough,” Rick harrumphed.

Helena remembered yet more resentment.

Jane went on, “And I removed Myka from the project with absolutely no knowledge of this previously existing relationship. And the two of you spent a great deal of time fearing for your lives and livelihoods.”

“Also true,” Helena affirmed.

“Very,” Myka intensified.

“Because you didn’t know how magnanimous I would be in attempting to work out this grandfathering situation,” Jane concluded.

“I bet I suspected,” Myka said, with a bit of a wily smile, and she knew Jane better than Helena did, so she would know if that was all right, but Helena still had to resist a strong urge to shush her and tell her not to tempt fate.

Fortunately, Jane seemed not to take it amiss. “I haven’t survived as many administrations as I have by being unwilling or unable to do what’s necessary to get to my preferred outcome. You’re not wrong about the politics of the situation, Helena. I think this will let the mayor send a particular signal... I think it could, strangely, work. And work well.”

“So many of Myka’s ideas seem to,” Helena said. “Work strangely, I mean. And well. Although rarely as she intends.”

Jeannie said, “You probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that that’s been true since she was five and decided that she wanted a pet. Her father wouldn’t get her a dog, so she used Pop-Tarts to train a raccoon to sit at the backyard picnic table with her.”

“And against its better judgment, it agreed to continue to pose as her fiancée,” Helena said, and she felt Myka’s body move. Laughter, accompanied by a mumble of “should’ve tried Pop-Tarts with you.”

Abigail asked, with enthusiasm, “Did it bite her and give her rabies? Ooh, Rick, is that why you decided to become a doctor? Seeing your little best friend foaming at the mouth?”

“Seeing Myka foaming at the mouth would’ve made me want to become an exorcist, not a doctor. Also, I thought Myka did have a dog.”

“Can you not tell dogs and raccoons apart?” Varsha asked, giving him a look. “That is so sad.”

“You are a fine one,” Helena told her.

“I know which one you are. If my grandma were standing here with a bowl of her famous lapsi, she would without doubt refuse to serve it to you. She’d train a raccoon with it instead.” She really was very matter-of-fact about it. Helena believed her.

Jeannie continued her story: “That well-fed raccoon spread the news about the Pop-Tarts far and wide. Myka’s father took the trash out one day and met up with eleven of them, sitting in a line, waiting for Myka and snacks. Reasonably politely, but still. He screamed—he’s never liked raccoons—but they were unfazed.”

“And?” Helena asked. Myka was still laughing against her, harder now, saying “Eleven, eleven...”

“And the next day, he brought home a dog to deal with our raccoon problem.”

Now Myka picked up the tale. “She was a Corgi mix named George Eliot—although I was five, so I thought that was all one word, ‘Georgeliot’—and I adored her. So did the raccoons, and vice versa. My dad felt so betrayed.”

“I begin to see why he spends so much of his time sitting in a boat,” Helena said.

“Also he thinks raccoons can’t swim,” Myka told her.

“Can they?”

Myka, solemnly: “Like little furry crocodiles.”

Helena did think she had gone all in, mere moments ago. Now, however, a small, final bit of her heart or her soul or whatever might have intended to hold out some possibility of defiant resistance dusted its hands, picked up its lunch bucket, and walked off the job. She sighed. “I suppose they’ll feel right at home in the fountain, then.”

“They’ll keep it lobster-free for you,” Myka assured her.

“Considerate,” Helena said. She closed her eyes and, for one breath, paid no heed to those surrounding them; she let herself revel in the physicality of leaning against inadequate pillows, atop an industrial-grade bedsheet. With Myka. Not the day’s inevitable outcome by any means.

Then Jane said, “I am now exiting this inside-joke snowglobe and going back to City Hall, where I expect Myka and Abigail to join me shortly. And I’d appreciate it if Myka and Helena would both be so kind as to continue behaving in your exemplary nonpersonal fashion until I’ve had a chance to talk to the mayor.”

“Should I be there?” Myka asked. “I really think I could explain—”

Jane interrupted, beating Helena to it by a nanosecond, “You should not be there. You should be at least half a world away.”

At this, Myka gasped, dropped Helena’s hand, and sat up extremely straight. She said to the room, “Half a world away! If everybody here isn’t thinking exactly what I’m thinking, I’m going to be so disappointed.”

Helena said, “I, on the other hand, will be relieved. Because I fear for our collective sanity if we’ve all started thinking like you.”

“I’m with you, Helena,” Rick said, and Helena felt her umbrage subside again.

Varsha said, “I’m inclined to agree, but for reasons of family and history, I’ll vote ‘present’ instead.” She directed an appraising gaze at Myka and asked, “Unless you’re thinking about rabies? It’s caused by a lyssavirus, not very interestingly shaped, but extremely—”

“Not rabies,” said Myka. Varsha deflated, and Myka said, “I promise to think about rabies some other time.” Varsha didn’t smile, not exactly, but Helena for one was amused to find that there was a facial expression easily legible as “pleased to have at this moment begun mentally assembling a PowerPoint presentation on the topic of lyssaviruses.”

“Clean clothes?” Abigail tried, to which Myka shook her head. Abigail glanced at Jane again. “But I still care about good governance.”

Liam declared, “I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!”

Both Steve and Myka said, “What?”

“It’s from Salesman. I was thinking about that season at the Civic.”

Steve said, “I was thinking about what kinds of design projects we could bid on that might involve greenhouses.”

Jane said, “Hm.” Then she said, “Well.” Then she pointed at him and said, “You didn’t hear it from me, but there’s a public/private partnership being set up to fund a senior-housing complex. I heard the word ‘greenhouse’ mentioned as something to consider, in terms of providing resident activities. Then again I also heard ‘horseshoe pit’ and ‘pickleball court,’ so they may go sporty instead.”

“When we bid,” Helena began, but at Jane’s ahem hurriedly corrected to, “rather, if we bid, Steve will wax lyrical on the virtues of gardening and persuade them otherwise. Won’t you?”

“The virtues of gardening, but the virtues of gardeners in particular,” he responded.

Liam put an arm around his shoulders. “Aw. You’re not a dime a dozen.”

“Neither are you,” Steve said, with an answering embrace. Helena found them charming.

Myka, charmed or not, was undeterred. “What is wrong with you people? Half a world away!”

“Well,” Jeannie said, “my first thought was probably too stereotypical a ‘Mom’ line, given that it was ‘honeymoon,’ so—”

“Ding ding ding!” Myka shouted. “We have a winner!”

“Your thought was ‘honeymoon’?” Helena asked, and Myka nodded in dramatic fashion. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I don’t believe we can go on a honeymoon.”

“Why not?”

She had to be joking. The guileless eyes had to be an act. Helena didn’t know what the purpose of this act in particular was, but she played along and said, “Those generally follow weddings.”

Still guileless: “And?”

“And—Jane, don’t listen to this part—as far as I know, we are not in fact even engaged to be married.” Something had turned slightly strange in the room; Helena looked to Steve, but he gave her very little in response, not a smile or a shrug, just a gaze. Abigail did the same. Helena began to worry again. “These things do tend to proceed in a customary sequence,” she said, as a last aren’t-we-on-the-same-page stab.

“Okay, then, let’s get our raccoons in a row.” Myka turned her still-upright torso toward Helena and took her hand again. “First step: will you marry me?”

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Helicobacter #part 15 #AU week #I am curious to see if this part shows up in searches or tags #because there seems to be no rhyme or reason to what does or doesn't anymore #this vestige of bering-and-wells land should be allowed to persist #even if tumblr is trying to pretend we don't/shouldn't exist #I thought that particular tactic vis-à-vis bering and wells was the bailiwick of a TV show #that sent the father of science fiction to Heteroville Wisconsin #for no reason whatsoever

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thaegeiro · 6 years

Text

ok, this is probably gonna be a complicated, rambling mess of a post, but i wanted to talk a bit about why i don’t necessarily ascribe to the whole idea of ‘frankenstein was the true monster of the story’ / ‘knowledge is knowing frankenstein wasn’t the monster, wisdom is knowing he was the monster’ / any variation of that.

now, let me preface this shit by saying i absolutely don’t think frankenstein is perfect. not by any means. he’s arrogant, he’s cowardly, he’s selfish, he’s cruel, he’s objectifying, he’s impulsive, he’s overly emotional, he has a dozen different flaws i could name. i am not at all excusing his actions or claiming he’s a perfect person.

but i don’t... really think he’s a monster, let alone the ‘true monster’ of the story. this may purely be a personal opinion, but for me, the power of the novel is that both frankenstein and the being are very, very human, and you can see why they took all the horrible actions they did. and for frankenstein, a lot of his shitty actions come down to just basic fucking fear. does that make them excusable? absolutely not. but it does mean we can see where he’s coming from, i think. most of the time, the shitty things he does aren’t malicious, and even when they are, he sure as hell has some good reasons for being angry.

let’s start with the first big misstep: abandoning the being. yes, that was unbelievably shitty, especially from the being’s perspective — all he knows is that frankenstein created him and then tossed him aside like trash, and his anger is very justifiable. but from frankenstein’s perspective, he panicked after a horrible, badly-thought-out decision and ran away. should he have done that? no. but he was panicking. he woke up to see a fucking eight foot tall horrific monstrosity made out of rotting corpses grinning at him and reaching for him in his bed, and yeah, he got himself into that situation, but it’s not exactly hard to see why he might panic and run the fuck out of his apartment. i’d probably do that shit, too. and then, when he came back the next day, he fell so ill that he was bedridden for over a year. trekking out to find the monster he created wasn’t exactly high on the list of priorities.

the interpretation of that part, i think, comes totally down to perspective. from the being’s side, yeah, it’s unbelievably shitty and inexcusable: his creator made him, ditched him, did nothing to search for him, and seemingly just cast him aside entirely. but from frankenstein’s perspective, none of that is as malicious or monstrous as the being wants to have us believe. he didn’t have the conscious thought of abandoning the being — he fled in an absolute panic, and when he returned, yes, his delirious first thoughts were being glad that the being was gone, but immediately afterwards, he fell so ill that searching the being out was an impossibility. the actions were shitty and impulsive, but again, not malicious.

then we get to his first meeting with the being, after guillaume’s death. mind you, he has no idea at this point what the being has been up to — he only knows (or suspects) that this creature has killed his younger brother, and that’s a pretty good reason to be a little pissed. he treats the being like shit when they meet, certainly, but again, all he has in his head is ‘this thing killed my baby brother.’ and yeah, he’s horrified when the being first demands a second creature and he at first attempts to refuse, but when he finally consents, why does he do it?

“I compassionated him and sometimes felt a wish to console him... I thought that as I could not sympathise with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow. [...] I concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request.”

he gets that he’s been cruel. he gets that he’s been unfair. as selfish and arrogant as he is, he gets that he does owe the being at least some compassion, even if he despises him now and finds him disgusting.

so why does he go back on it. why does he refuse to make the second creature after promising to do it? again, out of fear, not largely out of malice. perhaps there’s some malice there, in wanting to get back at the creature who killed his brother, but most of his thoughts are rooted in basic terror — and not unfounded terror, either. now, some of his fears are a bit ridiculous, like his fear that the being and the female will procreate (you’re making her, victor, you can literally just not put in a uterus, it’s not that difficult), but a lot of them are well-founded. and you know what? to be totally honest, the way he thinks about the female is a damn sight better than the way the being thinks about her. i’m not trying to objectively demonise the being, either, since i understand his reasons for acting the way he does, but the way he thinks / talks about the female is atrocious. he takes it for granted that another creature like him will automatically want to spend her life with him — frankenstein is the one that pauses to think, ‘hey, wait a minute, this woman i’m making hasn’t consented to that. she hasn’t promised anything. she’s gonna have her own thoughts and feelings and she might actually not want to be with him, so what happens if she rejects him and he gets angry over that?’ it’s a prospect that never crosses the being’s mind, but it crosses frankenstein’s, and that fear makes a hell of a lot of sense. the being has already shown that he doesn’t handle rejection (not just romantic, but familial and platonic) very well, so frankenstein has every reason to be concerned that he might lash out if this second creature — surprise, surprise — might not actually like the being. the being is thinking of her as some abstract object to which he’s entitled; frankenstein’s fears, for the most part, are based on his acknowledgment that she isn’t what the being wants her to be. she’ll be a rational, thinking creature, just like the being is, and he might actually make things a thousand times worse by bringing her into the world.

so he destroys her before he brings her to life. and again, it’s a matter of perspective. from the being’s perspective, this is horrific. he’s spent his whole life getting rejected, abused, and mistreated, and when he asks for one thing from his creator, the one person who’s supposed to owe him something in this world, that creator goes back on his word. he has every right to be furious. it certainly doesn’t justify the actions he takes as revenge, but his anger itself is justified. but from frankenstein’s perspective, what he did makes absolute sense. he was scared, and he had every right to be.

that ended way longer than i meant it to be, but i’ve been thinking about this for a while. it just doesn’t sit quite right with me when people claim frankenstein was ‘the true monster.’ was he a horrible father / creator? yeah, man, 100%. i’m with you there. were his actions justifiable? no, they weren’t. does he have a thousand flaws that are inexcusable and that inevitably led to his downfall? you bet. but nearly everything he did is something that we, as readers, can understand and (to some degree) sympathise with. most of the bad things he did were out of fear, misunderstanding, naivete, or panic.

might make him an idiot, might make him a coward, but i don’t think it makes him the real monster.

#( * meta. )#did i just write 1.3k words of meta at 10pm after three ciders #maybe????????#no one has to read all of this it's mostly just incoherent ramblings but i wanted to write my thoughts out

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mk-wizard · 3 years

Text

The problem with Grimm and all franchises like it

Hello. I want to talk about something that is dear to me because it helped shape me into the kind of writer I am today. Before I do, I want to give some brief context as to how it became important to me.

When I was a little girl and especially in high school, while I didn’t know it then, I was the weird girl. I didn’t fit in anywhere. Not even with the geeks. I was the sore thumb wherever I want and this was a huge factor in how school was like walking through hell for me as I was the easiest target in the world to be bullied. I tried to be like other girls, but even then, when I tried to be anything but myself, even though I was aware that being myself was the reason other teens made my life miserable, I knew that this was not the solution. My eyes finally got opened as to why I felt this way and was aware of it when I read the book Frankenstein for the first time ever because I finally found a character I could identify with: The Monster.

I was out casted, mocked, judged and punished for just being different and not being able to conform to what society perceived as a “person” even though I clearly am one. Even visually, I was in some ways I was like the Monster in that I didn’t follow fashion trends or wore my clothes the way magazines told me to yet I was still feminine (and still am). I just dressed however I wanted to and even at times, my own family would question why I would wear the clothes I did and so frequently instead of wearing what all the girls my own age did.

The Monster changed my life and my outlook on my own identity as well as identity in general. The Monster represented people who just can’t be “normal” even if they tried because who they are, regardless of how much that clashes with social norms, is cemented in the way they are. Also, despite the Monster being so heavily pitied for being abused and rejected by society by readers, we treat real life Monsters the exact same way for the exact same crime in their minds alone which is not being normal. I should know because I was punished for not being normal. Yet at the same time, Monsters are a very important part of society. Without our Monsters, we wouldn’t have inventors, influencers, revolutions and so on. Sadly, they still go through a rough path in order to gain the respect of other people. If you read the biography of any of these figures, the number one thing they will have in common is that they were out casted or deemed as weirdos.

This is all relevant to the topic I want to address because despite all of our social progress and all our talk about accepting others, we really still don’t. And TV shows or media like Grimm are not helping.

I am all for not taking fiction too seriously, but it still represents the times, world views and such. And when I first started watching Grimm, I was initially excited because I thought this was going to be a modern day take on monsters living among humans in a way that justice would be dealt for all. I could not have been more wrong. It was yet another Buffy the Vampire Slayer setting meaning that humans are always good and monsters are always evil. The only difference was that this series was made for an older audience and had the fairy tale theme. I was left feeling disappointed, but I could not explain why at the time. Years later, I can finally explain why. I felt like this series was an attack on the “Monsters” of society by telling them that they were not worthy of society acceptance, respect or being considered as decent. They did not deserve love, they did not deserve to be put on the same level as human beings and that all of them exist only to bring harm to the poor innocent humans. This message is not only backwater and false, it outright offensive.

In the real world, deeming a group as not being worthy of respect and automatically being deemed evil as a whole is a very real problem in our society. It is also a very real problem in our society that people have not been considered as worthy of love for something as trivial as the way they look. Think of people who have ended marriages to be with someone more physically attractive regardless of how many years, children and memories were shared with the spouse. People have even been denied jobs for just visually looking different or not fitting a specific standard that has nothing to do with the actual work the position involves. Also, not everyone who seems normal is a good person. Most abusive parents, sick people and criminals have no trouble passing off as normal people and even when we discover their dark side, our first reaction is to deny it, rationalize it or claim that it is one big misunderstanding. We refuse to acknowledge that a person who conforms so well to societal norms in their demeanor and presentation is in fact bad. On the flipside, we refuse to acknowledge that an oddball, eccentric or those who outright challenge societal norms are good. This all sounds ridiculous, but it is the reality of our world which is “humans good, monsters bad and a monster is only good when it tries to be human”.

And media like the TV series like Grimm are not helping put a stop to this nonsensical and outright dangerous mindset. It is as though everything we were taught as children like tolerance, open mindedness and judging others by their character is actively being torn out of our minds in favour of being forced to be left with the idea that we have no hope of being loved, respect or accepted in society unless we fit the accepted standard from how we think to how we look. Yes, it is getting better, but we are not quite there yet. As an artist who also happens to be a “Monster” by society’s standards, I think it is time to stop passing off shallow behaviour as normal or justified in all our media not just the kind for kids. We are too intelligent and too dignified to keep on telling this outdated fairy tale that even the children of today question.

It is time to change the story or better yet, tell a new one. It is time to finally openly love our Monsters and thank them for what they have done for us. The Monsters are not out to eat us, harm us or take over the world. They are just trying to live their best life and do in fact have love to give us if we give them a chance to.

Let us FINALLY make a show where monsters and humans live together, but in harmony where monsters are just as capable of being victims or heroes and humans are just as capable of being criminals and antagonists.

#monsters #frankenstein #essay #writing #society #kindness #social norms #challenge #thought #outcasts #outcast

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hitachi-grill420 · 4 years

Text

a month of poems

disorder/chaos/mess

organization is overrated,

in my opinion.

a necessary evil at best.

perhaps my need

for clutter to burrow in

is an indirect method of self-harm,

by means of

managing the Sisyphean task

of prying loose the memories

and forming the treasure map

leading me

to where the hell

I left my glasses cloth.

$19.99/month

do not doubt

for a single, solitary second

that if they commodify the sky

they would do so.

black it out,

darken it,

allow us starlight

as a subscription service.

Forgetful

sometimes my brain

functions like a cell phone

with only two bars.

constantly dropping thoughts,

buffering memories,

and whatever does make it through

is choppy, blurry, and

distorted.

chewed up tin foil

run me through the gears

like a penny

in one of those

souvenir shop

flattening machines.

render me a

useless novelty

destined to be forgotten

in a sock drawer,

or at best

slowly succumbing to the

entropy of a souvenir box,

alive and dead

like Schrödinger’s cat.

extremely gay

i am

a (barely) animate

heart-eyes emoji,

staring forever

at the tough,

beautiful,

creative,

powerful,

inspirational,

incredible

women and non-binary people

and trans people

in my life.

this is

less a poem

and more a declarative statement.

my heart is not a fireplace,

but a signal fire.

holler

you ever just wanna scream?

not particularly out of anger,

or fear.

just out of a desire

to be heard

and acknowledged

for once.

it’s why I admire birds:

they let us know

they exist

and are entirely

unashamed.

Finger

in a very literal sense,

I saw inside myself today.

as it turns out,

introspection becomes easier

(and less productive)

when you put a fine point to it.

it’s funny—

getting bloodwork done,

seeing that plastic tubing filling up

crimson

made my stomach turn.

but there, in the kitchen?

seeing the blood paint the paper towel?

I felt fine.

probability

assuming an infinite number of universes

there has to be

at least one

where

I didn’t just

roll over and let

you pull everything good from me.

in that universe,

I wonder what I’m like,

not having had to rebuild

my heart with scrawled recipes

and gummy multivitamins.

would they recognize me?

recognize this

patchwork Frankenstein?

is the act of rebuilding

transformative enough

to exceed them?

do you think they’d help me

gouge out

these final traces you left behind

on me?

artistry

while cleaning my room,

I found a number of

coffee mug stains.

a series of interconnected,

concentric rings.

i do not think

there is any sort of lesson here

(besides that I need to learn

how to drink coffee)

but i thought it was

neat.

a brief pause

to appreciate

happy little accidents

can’t ever be a bad thing.

an anthem of sorts

sometimes,

I psych myself up

in the bathroom

at work.

only when I know

there’s nobody to hear me

(because, I suppose,

some part of me still thinks

any praise or encouragement

directed towards me

is shameful).

the noises of the building,

only really audible when things

are quiet and calm,

become the melody to

my self-made self-help mix tape.

I have grown to love

the soundboard of modernity,

of planes landing,

the hum of pipes

and of distant radios.

Decade/decaid

ten years

is a lot of time.

I thought I would be

in my career by now

maybe married

(probably not, though).

time

makes fools of us all,

though.

I hope that

if I make it

to 2029,

it hurts a whole lot less

to look back.

I would like rose-colored glasses

with the thorns trimmed off.

a shorter poem

I’m bad at

letting things end

when they need to.

I grip on with

white knuckles,

dig my fingernails into

every single thing

because loss

and being forgotten

scare me more than

anything else in the world.

Dichotomy

a friend once told me,

“Jay,

you’re awful smart

to be such a clueless bitch.”

I have a hard time

focusing,

not tripping over my own feet,

saying things properly,

holding on

and/or

letting go as needed.

The real world

is hard to concentrate on

sometimes.

The mental tinnitus

of my neuroses

and my thoughts

occupy my

mind’s bandwidth

like trying to torrent

on dial-up.

I suppose it’s for the best, though.

Imagine what I could do

with fiber optics.

ghosts are real

I believe in ghosts.

Not for any particular reason.

I just think the idea of

leaving some sort of trace

(even a solely metaphysical one)

is nice.

but today,

I do feel like a ghost.

Translucent and hollow

leaving nothing but echoes

and messes

as I glide around.

I do believe in ghosts

just not all of them.

creatures of habit

every morning,

I make coffee,

feed my dog,

take my Buspirone.

it’s simple

but it’s a good way to start my day.

i like these small

islands of order

in oceans of chaos.

yet,

even within these islands,

lurk that great huntress

probability.

sometimes, my dog has already been fed

or we see a new bird outside

or I’m out of coffee

or I take time

to prepare a pot of pour-over.

one time,

a small family

of deer pranced through our yard.

sometimes,

these little compromises in our routines

can make the routines

a little less dusty.

Oceanic

beaches are nice.

(except for that one time

a bunch of mostly eaten fish and

manatee corpses washed up

on a beach

when I was little)

they are

a liminal space—

the boundary between

the quantifiable, land

and the infinitely, unknowably massive

seas.

crossing that boundary,

we are swallowed

more and more

by the mystery,

by the unknown,

and if we are not careful

it will eventually fill us,

consume us,

recycle us.

at the bottom,

no light reaches

(save for the bioluminescence

of the quasi-xenobiological

fish(?))

and the weight of every drop of water

above you pushes downwards.

i always wonder—

assuming one could survive—

what would that feel like?

would it crush you?

would you sink further down?

one day, I’ll meet you

there among the coral,

the vents,

and we will face the pressure

and we will either

drag Atlantis from the muck

or we will die.

poem for the lines in our palms

some people say they can

read your personality

or your future

by looking at the lines on your palm.

when I trace my own,

I see the curves of

a bull’s head,

of the biohazard symbol,

of the calloused pinky

from holding my phone so often.

and the lines in yours?

long and never ending,

curving at the edge like the horizon,

patient and soft like

cotton candy plucked out of time.

there are worlds between us,

separated by dermal layers.

yet, our lines compliment the other’s.

I can’t say I’ve ever

put much stock in palm reading,

but, hell

I’ll give it a try.

well, alright

my grandpa

was a greyhound bus driver

and a very good one at that.

his customers loved him

his bosses varied.

they bugged him to wear his hat,

and he, in turn, refused

until the day

he got a speeding ticket.

his dispatcher was furious.

Dispatch tore into him,

screaming for minutes into the phone.

my grandpa just says,

“I don’t know what happened.

I was wearing my hat and everything.”

I tell every boss I have this story,

to illustrate two important points:

One, I have an excellent work ethic.

And two,

I have the stubborn orneriness

of hillfolk

chicken-fried into my DNA.

streamed live from Kentucky, 11/12/2019

a human body strides forward,

each step heavy with

purpose, leaving blackened,

foot-shaped scars in the cement.

the heat radiates outward,

melting snow,

soft hissing joining the ambient sounds

of traffic on 238,

the wind,

the sounds of night.

the body is covered in thorns,

wreathed in crackling fire.

yet still it walks.

in front of it stand armed men,

a judge’s bench,

walls and laws and

every other obstacle.

behind it frolics other bodies,

some bright and rosy

others grey, dirt stuck to their faces

and under their nails.

yet still it walks.

poem for cold pizza

there are things to be said

for small comforts.

people assuming

I am incompetent

ignorant

or otherwise irrelevant

is a little less

painful

with the weak anesthetic

of cold pizza

and my antidepressants

and a brief forgetting

of shame.

poem for a morning run

“there is no such thing

as a free lunch.”

I repeat that in my mind as

i stumble into a stop sign,

hanging onto it

as the cul-de-sac warped beneath me.

my legs wobble,

reverberating upwards into

my stomach, empty

save for coffee

and acid

and a piece of leftover Halloween candy.

a neighbor,

in a wifebeater and boxers,

puffs on his cigarette while his dog

stares at me as it shits in the grass.

the earliest steps of any journey

are embarrassing

painful

and subject

to strange and critical audiences.

but today, I ran.

not far,

not for long,

and not without watching eyes, but

I ran.

poem for a day I didn’t feel like writing a poem

sometimes, poetry is easy.

it’s like riding a bike after you’ve learned:

muscle memory,

your innate familiarity,

your own balance,

all coming together.

today,

it was like I

Eternal Sunshine’d

bike riding out of my head

drug a scalpel through that part of my brain

and hopped on to do the

Tour de France.

maybe the bike

is also on fire?

reciprocity

it’s a lot easier

to give other people

good advice,

to give them

kind words, pieces of yourself

wrapped in love,

with care.

unfortunately,

i am a one-way road.

I spew forth care

but receiving it?

unthinkable.

far too busy.

after all,

I have gifts to deliver;

things to spew

anticipating

breathless, I sat at the bottom

of the waterfall, staring up

to its source, waiting patiently.

my chest felt like a rope pulled taut.

i feared you’d fallen on your climb to the top

(i had sat out, since I’d hurt my back

falling drunk off the porch

a few nights prior).

damn,

if I don’t wish that tension

hadn’t been in vain now.

quarantine

I am, essentially, the sum total

of a billion viruses.

poxes of sadness,

the belligerent fever of mania,

this infectious anger that bubbles

in my guts like stomach acid.

A splash of cool girl bacteria,

a shattered Petri dish of septic anxiety.

Inoculate yourselves against me.

I am a pestilence,

a plague,

an outbreak of rebellion

and sadness

and anger

and the radical desire

for the freedom of solitude.

victory

celebrating small wins

(even if, ultimately, their impact is limited)

keeps your spirit ignited.

we may have only taken

one mile out of a hundred,

but damn

if this mile ain’t a pretty one.

poem for colloidal silver

colloidal silver,

in excess,

turns you blue.

this is a more direct

cause-and-effect

than a lot of us can ask for.

hucksters passed it off

as a cure-all, the

hypothetical snake oil,

a panacea.

exploiting suffering for profit,

under false pretenses,

earns you a special place in hell

and I hope that place is a vivid cyan.

poem for a scab

I’ve never been sure how scabs work.

i know what they do

and that platelets are involved, I think

but beyond that, I’m stumped.

I assume it’s something like patching a hole

or sewing a button on.

with or without our knowledge,

our understanding,

our bodies repair themselves as needed.

our skin knits itself together,

diseases are fought off.

we fight off a lot without knowing.

perhaps it is better that way.

an impulse

don’t ever assume I know anything.

first mistake: I am a reaction.

vinegar and baking soda,

pouring up and over the rim,

spilling on the porch

on a hot April day.

First mistake: i was prepared.

the ant stored up food all spring.

the grasshopper laid around.

in winter, the ground froze

and both of them died.

first mistake: we cling too hard.

do you remember?

when you drank my savings,

slept with your space heater,

couldn’t spare a blanket?

i had six arms then, could lift

anything set in front of me,

but you left me outside and

now the frostbite’s set in.

first mistake: we hold on.

I feel the phantom pains of

those six strong arms, of

the space left when I dug you out of

me, of

the cold morning air

and the lingering taste of

Kentucky Gentleman

and the smell of vinegar.

first mistake:

not expecting you to jump

the day the cold blew in.

poem for the embers

anger is a good way to fuel yourself

especially when you don’t have

anything else

to run on.

but now I’m tired.

now all my insides feel burnt up,

the undergrowth in my guts

black and withered and smoking,

devoured by gluttonous rage

and my acid reflux.

there are two wolves inside of us

and mine are both picked clean,

their bones bleaching in the dazzling light

of the thorium reactor that’s taking up

the scar tissue where I used to mine for joy.

if I keep this bonfire going,

until I reach where I need to be,

will there be anything left inside me?

is the fuel to move worth it

if only wreckage arrives?

#by jay adams

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