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the-inc-den · 3 years

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I Think This Could Be the Start of a New Life (The Inc Den)

A/N: Oh hi 👋🏻. Here’s the first piece I guess. Figured I’d get everyone introduced. I hope you enjoy them because I love everyone dearly. so yeah.

Warnings: None? swearing I guess, but this is SFW

Summary: River would really like to stop being sexiled from their apartment.

Word Count: 4.5K

River was lounging on the couch in the main space of their apartment waiting for their roommate Lacey to come out of the bathroom. Literally lounging as one foot was propped up on the couch while the other stayed on the floor, careful to keep their still shoe wearing foot off the couch lest Nox or Lacey throw a fit. They were scrolling through their phone and half answering texts from their work group chat, Al and Roger debating pop music influences with commentary chimed in from time to time. They tapped their foot to some mental tune they were playing to keep themselves occupied, probably something that was on Drake’s playlist that they’d heard at work. River had to wonder if Nox was in the room and waiting for them to leave before coming out, but they were probably still curled up under Lacey’s bed. River threw their head back and let out a groan as they looked at the clock on their phone, Lacey’d been getting ready for nearly an hour.

“Lace, c’mon, do you want to get to Labyrinth before last call or not?” They called. They hardly remembered why they had agreed to accompany Lacey on her night out, she was just going to meet up with Scott and then sexile River from the apartment. Then River would have to call up Drake or Roger or Al and crash on their couch and they weren’t super keen on doing that tonight, their hips still hurt from the last time they’d had to. Lacey exited the bathroom with her red hair curled and her makeup done to perfection which was really impressive, River just wished it didn’t take an hour to do.

“Please tell me you’re not going out like that?” Lacey pleaded. River looked over their outfit: ripped jeans, Converse that had seen better days if the faded canvas and scuffed bottoms were any indication, and their “River’s Fight School” t-shirt that Lacey had made them after the “worst breakup she’d ever experienced” that had ended with River threatening to kick the ex’s ass. The outfit had been what they’d worn on shift and it’d been fine, mostly because unlike Roger, they never dressed to impress at the shop.

“I am, because may I remind you I’m not keen on impressing anyone. Besides, I wanna sleep comfortably on whatever couch I have to end up crashing on.” River replied with only a dash of bitterness sneaking into their tone. Lacey rolled her eyes and slid her boots on.

“Fine, fine, c’mon,” Lacey said. River stood up and grabbed their jacket off the couch arm.

“Nox, don’t tear the apartment apart!” River shouted into the apartment as they closed the door. Their typical parting words to the shadow monster who lived under Lacey’s bed.

The duo walked to Labyrinth with little fuss, minus Lacey occasionally twirling her hair around her finger. After six years of friendship, River knew that she was nervous about something.

“Are you and Scott okay?” They asked.

“What? Oh! Yeah, totally, work’s just been a pain and I’m… wait what —“

“You’re twirling your hair,” River said, miming the gesture by twisting their bangs out of their face. Lacey looked over at her finger and immediately dropped her hand.

“Damn you Rio,”

“You love me,” they were quick to interject with a smile. Lacey chuckled as they approached the bar. Frankie was standing outside and Lacey smiled up at the rakassha as she entered and River gave a mock salute. “Evenin’ Frankie,” they said and received a nod in response. River walked in and was almost smacked by the noise. Boys Don’t Cry was playing over the speakers as the bar and surrounding tables were crowded. As to be expected on a Friday night.

“Lacey Loo!” A male voice yelled from one of the side tables. Lacey grinned as she turned to greet the voice. Decked in a red plaid shirt and good jeans was Scott, the himbo werewolf boyfriend. He was a good guy, he and River got along when they hung out together, they were just… loud when it came to nightly extracurriculars, and that was before getting into the whole “is a werewolf” thing. River nodded that they were taking their leave as Lacey went over to Scott and they found themselves going to the bar. They waited for the bartender to finish dealing with some newbies as they took their seat in their usual stool. It was a miracle that as busy as the bar was, they managed to snag it. If River didn’t know any better, they might’ve thought that Chrissa was saving it for them. They watched the orc bartender work, she eventually turned around and seemed relieved to see River.

“Finally, someone easy,” she said with a sigh. River chuckled and smiled.

“Hey Chrissa, my usual?” They asked.

“One mildly large glass of Coca Cola, coming up.” She said as she pulled a glass and the soda gun. Chrissa filled it and slid it to River with a smile, garnished with its usual orange umbrella, a mental note to whoever came on shift after Chrissa or simply any passing waiter that River wasn’t drinking. They snuck a glance around the bar, trying to spot if there was anyone they knew hanging around. Other than Scott and Lacey cozied up in the corner, the answer seemed to be a resounding no, not that it wasn’t expected. River sighed and went back to focusing on Chrissa doing her work. They’d always had a fascination with watching the bartender work, it was always interesting, trying to follow Chrissa’s hands move and grab the bottles without thinking too hard about what they were, measuring the liquor with ease that only came from repeated movements and months of training before her first shift. Laurence had hired her after he got tired of working the bar himself, roughly around the same time River and Lacey had started frequenting the place when they first moved to the city.

Chrissa dealt with some customers at the other end of the bar before coming back in front of River.

“How was work by the way?” She asked. River shrugged in response.

“Wasn’t too bad, mostly just stayed in the basement with Drake.” They said, the record shop they worked at had a light dampened basement for those who didn’t do well with sunlight, which included their vampire coworker. River just liked it because it was usually a lot quieter than working the upstairs front counter. Even if Al sometimes sent the most ridiculous requests down to them.

“No wonder you’re so fucking pale,” Chrissa joked as she cleaned glasses. River just rolled their eyes.

“Hey, I’m pale because of a lot of reasons. The basement and Nox are just two of the reasons.” They remarked.

“How is Nox by the way?”

“Good, he’s mostly keeping to himself, deep cleaned the apartment the other day and I didn’t even know he could do that.” River remarked with a chuckle. Nox didn’t pay rent, but he usually made up for it by keeping the apartment clean when Lacey and them couldn’t. “I think he wrote something about wanting to try manifesting fully again while we were there, but we haven’t been in the apartment at the same time long enough.”

“Scott?” Chrissa asked. River groaned and nodded.

“I swear, it’d be easier if they just moved in together so I could start looking for other roommates, but they’re “still taking it slow”.” River remarked.

“Heads up, someone headed your way,” Chrissa said, her tone of voice taking on a dash of an edge. River furrowed their brow until they turned and saw a purple skinned woman stride toward them with a glint in their eyes that River had a sneaking suspicion they should fear.

“Do you?” River asked with a slight head tilt of confusion

“Yeah, if it were anyone else, I’d say run.”

“But it’s me so…”

“Oh I’m so looking forward to what comes next.” Chirssa said with a laugh as they moved down the bar a bit. The woman who finished coming over made a show of coming next to River without getting into their personal space. River watched them out of the corner of their eye, waiting to see what the play was.

“What’re you drinking sweetie?” The woman asked. She had wavy purple and pink hair with white ox horns that curved just below her chin.

“Just soda, I’m a DD tonight,” River lied. Not about the soda, but about being the DD. Really, they were waiting for the text that said they were out of an apartment tonight, but DD seemed like the safer excuse.

“Ah, the responsible friend, those are always nice to have, I’ve never had the luck,” the woman said with a smile. Her voice sounded like honey and it was pleasant to listen to. But between Chrissa’s warnings and this woman seeming to lay on thick whatever it was they were trying, River let a chuckle escape them. “What?” she asked with a slight tilt of her head.

“You’ve struck out Misae,” Chrissa said, coming back over with a martini glass with pink liquid in it. “You managed to pick the one ace human in the whole establishment.”

“I doubt that,” River remarked, the venn diagram of “ace being” and “human” in this establishment was a thin middle ground, but not one person thin. At least, as far as River knew. Misae however chuckled and smiled.

“Then I’m terribly sorry about all of that,”

“Ah don’t worry about it, you’re still pretty and I like getting hit on by pretty women even if they are trying to mildly charm me.” River said with a grin. “I’m River,” they said, offering their hand.

“Misae as Chirssa mentioned, charmed to meet you River,” She said, shaking hands with a gentle grace. When they released each other's hands, Misae furrowed her brow. “Nothing?” She asked which got another laugh out of River. “Not a thing,” they said.

“Wow…” Misae said with a sigh as she took a sip of her drink. River thought she’d leave and go find another target before a grin came onto her lips. “Would you mind coming and pranking my friends? I’ve got one who needs to be taken down a peg and I think you’ll be my secret weapon.” She asked. River looked over at Chrissa who gave a short nod.

“If it’s who I think it is, they’ll knock him down several pegs.” She said, River turned back to Misae who was still grinning, more conspiratorial than sensual, they snuck a quick glance to where Lacey and Scott were still curled up together before facing Misae again.

“Yeah why not,” they said as they popped off their barstool. Misae giggled and offered her hand, a hand that River took, as she dragged them to a booth tucked into the back of the bar, it was an eight person booth currently filled with three similar looking individuals, in so much as they weren’t human and definitely had demonic lineage. River did their best to not make assumptions, but judging on what Misae had brought them over to achieve, the members of the table were all various forms of incubi. Concubi? Was that the technical term? One on the edge of the seating arrangement was a light blue man with his horns curving up from his forehead and a darker blue coloring on his cheek that River had a hard time telling if it was a blush or makeup.

“Mis, who’s this?” He asked, his voice slightly higher than expected and a curious look on his face.

“This is River, River this is Azzy,” the light blue one who smiled slightly and River was pretty convinced that this was the closest they were going to experience an embarrassed incubus. “Kori,” a maroon inc who seemed to be the eldest of the group as he simply smiled at their appearance. He had long hair tied up in a bun and River felt a little bit more at ease seeing him. “And Joliet,” another maroon skinned being who was grinning, he also had tied up black hair, though he wore jewelry on his horns. “Where’s Rose?” Misae asked as she gestured for River to sit next to Joliet. She sat down next to Azzy across the table and River tried not to feel like they’d been suddenly thrown off the deep end.

“Bathroom.” Azzy said.

“Biblically speaking,” Joliet quickly added. River chuckled a little at the need for clarification. Something told them that for him it was actually necessary. They also suspected he was probably their target.

“Ah, well, that’s chill.”

“Mis what are you planning?” Kori asked with a slight glare directed at his friend. Ah, he was the dad friend.

“Oh nothing, just a lil bit of karmic justice,” Misae said with a grin that was anything but innocent. Joliet leaned over to River and whispered in their ear.

“Blink twice and I’ll get you out of here,” he said with a smirk. River stared at him with a smirk of their own and Joliet broke into a laugh. “Oh they’re good,”

“Seriously Mis, what’s going on?” Kori asked.

“It’s payback for Rose stealing my mark last week.” Misae said.

“And how is this gonna be payback?” Kori asked. “You just put a perfectly beautiful human in front of him, if anything all this is going to do is insure none of us sleep tonight,” he said.

“Oh you’ll see,” Misae said, throwing a wink River’s way. River tried to not blush at being called beautiful and simply kept their game face on.

“What’ll Kor see?” A navy blue inc asked. He wore a grey t-shirt and dark black jeans and River saw the issue. Between golden eyes and a charisma that dripped off of him, even as unaffected as River was, he knew who and what he was and was well aware that manipulating people was second nature. He’d been looking over at Kori before scanning the table and landing on River. “Oh… oh hello,” he said. His voice was warmer than Misae’s was, more a whiskey than a true honey, but it didn’t hit River the way they imagined he intended. “If you’d scootch in sugar,” he said. To play along, River did so, pressing a little closer to Joliet in the process. River snuck a glance at the others who all looked a little nervous, even Misae, but River softly shook their head, hiding it by pushing their bangs off their forehead a bit. “Now, hello. I’m Rosair, you can call me Rose,” he said as he offered his hand to shake. River took it with a smirk of their own.

“Nice to meet you Rose, River,” they said. Rosair took their hand and kissed the back of it and River chuckled. “You do this to all the pretty people who cross your path?” They asked.

“Yes,”

“Then I can see why Misae and Chrissa put me up to this,” they said with a chuckle. Rosair furrowed his brow to which River only grinned. “I’m ace Rose, you’re just pretty.” Rosair looked over at Misae who was grinning.

“Payback’s a bitch Rosie,” she said.

“Ah no matter, you’re still here.” he said with a small smirk that seemed to indicate he wasn’t done yet.

“Sure,” River said as they tapped his shoulder. “So, other than trying to pick up people at bars, what do you lot do?” They asked with a tilt of their head. Even Misae looked a little surprised at the question. “What? You think I’m just gonna go back to the bar and go back to sitting alone? C’mon now, you guys are not that dumb.” Joliet broke out of the stunned silence first with a laugh.

“You’ll have to forgive them, they’re very used to transactional interactions and have not quite figured out just normal interactions, I work at a tattoo parlor.” He said with a smile.

“Interesting, Kori?” River asked, glancing a little around Joliet.

“Oh uh, I work at a bakery. Mostly donuts and cake.” He said.

“I’ll definitely have to try it some time, assuming you’re any good,”

“I’m mostly the counter, but Mandy, who actually owns the place, is quite good.” Kori clarified.

“Azzy?” River asked with a raised eyebrow, watching him fight off the dark blue crawling onto his cheeks.

“I work at a thrift shop.”

“I’m a grad student,” Misae said, “mostly focusing on art and culture, and Rosair’s a mooch.”

“I think the technical term is gold digger,” Joliet commented.

“I thought it was drifter,” Kori chimed in.

“None of you are correct, I’m a freelancer.” Rosair said with a roll of his eyes.

“That’s what we said: a freeloader.” Azzy said and River had to quickly get closer to Joliet as Rosair nearly vaulted over the table to get at his friend. River laughed a little and looked over at Rosair for the first time since he sat down.

“What’s your specialty?” They asked leaning on the table and cutting off the others physically a bit, which got a gasp from Joliet.

“Graphic design,” he said.

“You any good?”

“I’ve been told so, but you’re welcome to find out,” he said with a smirk returning. River laughed a little.

“Okay, yeah, I walked into that one,” they said as the giggles subsided.

The conversation continued on like that for a while, giggles and quips and jokes at everyone’s expense. River learned that Kori, Misae, and Azzy had known each other since high school, Joliet wasn’t technically an inc but his dad had been, so his cambion status gave him a weird in when they were in college with the other three, and Rosair had needed people to help pay the rent on his, in Azzy’s words, “fucking massive” apartment which had led to their loose confederation of people. Joliet called them “the Inc Den” which only got a groan out of Kori. They were pleasant and funny, and River tried not to think about how they were the first friends they’d made outside of work in three years.

When Misae had left the table to get drinks, River felt their phone vibrate and they tried not to groan as they fished it out of their pocket.

“Careful sugar,” Rosair said. He’d tucked himself in close next to River even after the rejection and they kept their phone in the pocket next to him.

“Shut up Rose,” they muttered as they clicked it on.

From Lacey Loo: hey…. I’m sorry. Tell drake i’ll pay for his breakfast.

River tried not to slam their head on the table in response. They tried not to think about how normal it was that Lacey didn’t even have to say much for River to get the whole picture. They changed their text channels and started texting Drake.

To Drake-ula: please tell me your couch is open

From Drake-ula: sorry dude, ditto situation

To Drake-ula: a) get some, roger’ll expect a review b) fuck you fine c) please tell me it isn’t roger

From Drake-ula: you think too lowly of me, it isn’t roger. And fuck you too, see you tomorrow.

River went to change chats again when Joliet piped up, “What’s with the angry eyes Riv?” He asked.

“My roommate just sexiled me and my go-to couch did the same.” They said as they pulled up Roger’s contact.

To Roger Snake: please tell me I can crash on a pile of pillows

The lack of instantaneous reply led to River looking at the time. The fact that it was a little after midnight meant Roger wouldn't even be up, the early sleeper he was. “Fuck!” They hissed.

“Aren’t you a little old to get sexiled?” Kori asked.

“Do you want to be in the same apartment as a werewolf having sex when he’s noisy even unshifted?” River asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Fair enough,” Kori said almost immediately. River sighed and tried to think of literally anyone else who might be okay with them crashing. Derek usually didn’t want anyone in his apartment except for holiday dinners, Chasen was out of town, and Al lived with six other people and they usually had people on the couch. They felt bad for Nox, who could technically leave the apartment, didn’t like doing it so they usually just suffered in silence and berated Lacey in the mirror the following morning.

“You could stay with us sugar,” Rosair said. River looked over at him with a look of confused amusement.

“Bet you say that to all the pretty people,”

“Actually we have a “no marks in the apartment” policy,” Azzy said. “It ensures we all sleep and don’t end up in this very situation,” he added.

“Why should I?”

“Because going back to your place means a very vocal werewolf,” Rosair said.

“And we have a pull out couch.” Kori cut in quickly.

“And they think you're cute and the fact that you haven’t run for the hills after nearly two hours with us is a sign they might want to keep you around,” Joliet whispered in River’s ear. Joliet had quickly become a grounding element at the table. He seemed to translate the unspoken wants of everyone with ease of exetend exposure. River tried not to flush a little at the comment.

“Can I convince you all to swear on no funny business?” They asked cautiously.

“Absolutely, just a couch,” Kori said. River looked over at Rosair who chuckled but nodded.

“On my name, there’ll be no funny business, just a couch.” River glanced at Azzy and Misae who nodded in agreement.

“We’re with them.” Misae said. River did a quick pro-con list in their head and sighed.

“Alright, yeah, I’d love it if I could crash on your couch,” they said.

“Then we should probably get out of here,” Kori remarked. Misae stood up and allowed him and Azzy out of the booth. Rosair did the same for River and Joliet. River quickly realized that other than Azzy and Misae, River was the shortest amongst the group, and even Azzy had his horns for a little bit of extra height. As they started walking for the door, River caught Chrissa’s eye who only slightly furrowed her brow and came a dash closer

“Rio,” she said. The group stopped and River went over to the bar, leaning over on their elbows.

“What’s up?” They asked.

“You’re fully conscious and aware you’re leaving with these people right?” Chrissa asked. River chuckled slightly and nodded.

“Yeah, Drake’s got someone over and Lacey kicked me out, they’re letting me crash on their couch,” River said. They appreciated the check, really, it was out of character for River to leave Labyrinth with anyone other than Lacey, Drake, or even Roger if they managed to catch him early enough.

“Alright, text me in the morning, yeah?” She said, which River nodded without comment. They went back over to the others and they continued their way out of the bar, River saluting Frankie at the door as a symbol that they were leaving willingly. Frankie let out a low growl but nodded as they let Kori lead the group to the apartment.

It wasn’t a far walk from the Labyrinth, probably why they favored it like Lacey and River did, and it was actually surprisingly closer to work than River’s own apartment. Which meant it was in the opposite direction of their apartment making changing before work tomorrow a challenge. Maybe they could? No, no that’d be pushing it. They’d just ask Derek to have a spare set in the back room when they got in. When the group reached the complex, River realized why Rosair had needed help with the rent, it was not an inexpensive building, even if Rosair was as good as he said he was. They all piled into the elevator with Azzy practically leaning on Misae out of exhaustion. Kori was scrolling through his phone while Joliet was fishing out the keys. They reached the sixth floor and wandered down the hall a little before opening the door.

The main space was fairly open, a decent size kitchen off to the right, a television on a stand by far wall in between two doors. There was a small set of stairs that seemed to lead into a small hallway. If River had to guess, they were going to go with the idea that that’s probably where the den’s bedrooms were.

“Bathroom’s the left door, I’ll help with the couch when you come out,” Joliet said. Having been relieved from bed duty, Azzy and Misae wandered their way upstairs. River nodded once and wandered into the bathroom that was quite well furnished for a half bath. They quickly went and splashed some water on their face and came back to Kori and Joliet waiting for them. Joliet had tugged the bed out and it looked really comfy, even by pull out bed standards, as Kori had seemed to stack pillows and extra blankets on the end. Kori then handed over a pair of sweatpants.

“Figured you didn’t want to sleep in jeans,” he said and River couldn’t tell because the apartment was dark, but they could’ve sworn Kori was a little flustered.

“Thanks Kor,” River said with a small smile. Kori nodded and untied his hair as he wandered over to the stairs, shaking it out and running his hand through it. River tried not to be mesmerized by the gesture but based on Joliet’s chuckle they were unsuccessful.

“I’m pretty convinced that’s why he keeps it tied up,” Joliet remarked.

“Probably, he could cause traffic accidents like that.”

“Wait until he reminds you he can be a whore,” Joliet said.

“Huh?” River said with a small flush of pink.

“Kori doesn’t like to advertise he’s an incubus, rather just let people think he’s a slightly tall tiefling. Hell, if he could survive without having to feed, he’d do it. But every once and a while either Misae or Rosair will convince him to dress up and it tends to lead people to have a hard time keeping their hands to themselves.” Joliet said. “But, enough chatter, I’m the door to the right, if you need anything just knock. Most of us don’t get up before noon, but I’m your best bet if you need something in the morning.

“Like a different t-shirt?” River asked.

“Oh yeah, I’ll even loot a pair of underwear if you need it.”

“I don’t think--”

“Don’t worry, Rose won’t notice.” Joliet said with a smirk. River tried not to laugh too loudly at the prospect.

“Thanks Jols,” they said. Joliet grinned and held their arm out, allowing River to come into his side if they wanted to. They did, with ease tucking themselves into his side and receiving a quick squeeze.

“No worries darling, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, yeah?” He said with a smile. River nodded and quickly disappeared back into the bathroom to change into the sweatpants that anyone with eyeballs could tell weren't theirs, but they didn't really mind. They were comfy and that was all that mattered. They tiptoed back out and carefully curled up in the pile of blankets. This.... this was good.

#exophilia #terato #demon boyfriend #demon girlfriend #exophilia writing #nonbinary lead #incubus #sucubus #my writing

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free--therapy · 3 years

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How to Deal with Social Anxiety

Social anxiety tells us two lies, says Boston-based clinical psychologist Ellen Hendriksen. The first is that the worst-case scenario is bound to happen: We will be rejected; people will point and laugh; we’ll be humiliated. The second is that we can’t deal with that worst-case scenario or the ups and downs of a socialized life that come with being human.

“I have a history of social anxiety, and I was actually nervous to disclose that in the book,” says Hendriksen, referring to How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety. The book details her scientifically based, judgment-free approach to social anxiety. “I thought revealing a struggle would make people pull away as if it were contagious. But when you disclose something about yourself, more often than not, someone will disclose something very similar to you, and that creates a bond. If I had a nickel for everybody who came up to me and said, ‘I have social anxiety, too…’”

A Q&A with Ellen Hendriksen, PhD

Q: What is social anxiety? How do you know whether you have it?

A: Social anxiety is self-consciousness on steroids. It is the perception that there are things deficient about us that—unless we work hard to hide or conceal them—will be revealed, resulting in our being judged or rejected.

We can all relate to the experience of looking in the mirror in the morning and seeing some kind of physical flaw that we feel self-conscious about. Maybe we have a big pimple, or maybe we’re having a bad hair day, or maybe we think we look weird in these pants. So we try to conceal that thing. We might put on some extra foundation, or wear a hat that day, or change our pants. But if we can’t do those things, if we go out into the world with our pimple or our bad hair or our weird pants, the resulting feeling is similar to social anxiety.

Social anxiety usually falls into one of four categories:

The external self. There’s a whole category of perceived physical flaws—we’re ugly, we’re fat, our skin is blemished.

The symptoms of anxiety themselves. We may believe that it will become obvious that our hands are shaking, or that we’re blushing, or that our voice is trembling.

The fear that our social skills will be judged inadequate. We’re boring, or we’re annoying, or we have nothing to say, or we keep going blank.

Our entire personality. The anxiety here is that it will become obvious that our entire personality is somehow defective or inadequate, that we’re stupid, or that no one wants to hang out with us, or that we’re incompetent.

Social anxiety can blossom as many different flowers, but they all come from the same perceived root that there is something that needs to be hidden. But these perceived flaws are not true at all. At most, there’s a grain of truth in a perceived flaw—like maybe we do blush, for example, but not to the extent that we think—plus it doesn’t cause the amount of attention or rejection we anticipate.

Q: How is social anxiety distinct from generalized anxiety disorder?

A: If there were a Venn diagram of general anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder, many people would fall in that overlap. General anxiety disorder is characterized by worries: There’s worry that feels uncontrollable and skips from topic to topic. We might start with, “Oh, I’ve got a headache this morning,” to, “Oh my god, maybe I have a brain tumor.” Then: “If I die, how would my family support itself?” And so on. It might skip from your job to your social life to your health to global warming.

Whereas social anxiety is centered on this fear of the reveal: The fear that something theoretically deficient about you will become obvious to everyone.

Q: Does social anxiety ever work itself out? Or is it always something that needs to be worked at to be overcome?

A: It depends. Social anxiety is driven by avoidance. Avoidance might be overt: We might not show up at a party, tell our best friend we can’t participate at her wedding, or not tell anybody it’s our birthday at the office. Avoidance can also be covert: We could show up at a party but spend all our time scrolling through our phone. Or we could tell people it’s our birthday at work, but then make sure that we basically hide from everyone, all day, so they don’t make a big deal, etc.

Either way, through overt or covert avoidance, what results is a buildup of a dearth of experiences. We don’t realize that we were safe all along, or that our imagined worst-case scenarios don’t actually happen. If we keep avoiding as we move through life, then the anxiety will not resolve itself. It will be maintained by our own avoidance.

However, social anxiety does often get better as people age, because generally we can’t avoid everything. Life happens. We will often passively absorb experiences and realize they weren’t so bad. For example, maybe our boss makes us give a talk, and even though we dreaded it and secretly hoped it would be canceled, it goes fine, and we realize, “Oh, maybe I can do this.” All in all, it depends on how much we engage in avoidance and how much we are willing to try the things we’re afraid of despite our fears.

Now, actively working on social anxiety can turbocharge that growth and change. I advise people to select a few things, big and small, that they would like to work toward and actively try to not avoid those experiences but actively search them out. It feels awkward, but the key is to start small and work your way up. You can start as small as you like—you don’t have to cannonball into the deep end.

Q: How can you help a friend with their social anxiety?

A: Unfortunately, what usually happens when somebody discloses social anxiety is that their friends tend to ask less of them. The friends tend to try to accommodate to make them feel comfortable. Which I get; which is lovely and heartwarming and I appreciate that they’re trying to make their friend feel better. But what happens is then they decide, “Oh, now I can’t invite this person to the party.” Or “Now we can’t go to new places.” Or “Oh, my cousin is coming to town, so my socially anxious friend probably wouldn’t want to meet her.” In protecting their friend, they end up enabling them.

What I tell friends to do, in contrast, is to be a champion. That means hearing their friend’s fears and working with them to see what they want to strive for. How do they want to stretch and grow? See if you can help them with that.

It’s important not to dismiss their fears, such as, “Don’t worry—you’ll be fine,” or “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” We don’t want to minimize their very real fears. Instead we can tell the truth and say, “You’re strong and you can do this.” Or “The scariest moment’s right before you go in. Let’s give it a shot.” Or “Last time you stuck with it, you felt better after just a few minutes. Let’s see if that happens again.

"In sum, let them be in the driver’s seat, but also ask how you can help.

Q: What are things socially anxious people have in common (besides social anxiety)?

A: Social anxiety comes bundled with some really good traits. People with social anxiety often have really high standards, so they hold a good work ethic; they’re conscientious; they often can read others’ feelings. (Well, sometimes we overread them.)But in general, we’re pretty empathetic; we’re helpful and altruistic; we’re often good listeners. We work hard to get along, because if you roll back caring too much about what people think of you, what you get is simply caring about people. In terms of living a happy life, the greatest thing you can do is connect with others by being kind and warm. People with social anxiety are extremely well-suited to do that.

Plus, it’s important to emphasize that as we work on our social anxiety, as we try to conquer our fear, those good traits don’t go away.

Read More of the article and Q&As here

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tes-trash-blog · 4 years

Note

🌙 hmm... an age old question but opinion on the whole Imperials Vs Stormcloaks fiasco Skyrim tried to feed us?

*cracks neck*

Goodbye follower count, I’m going in!

I’m going to preface this with a confession: In my first ever playthrough of Skyrim (2014), I did side with the Imperials. On my second, I sided with the Stormcloaks. Since then, I have done three more playthroughs on the Stormcloak side, and three more on the Imperial side. In four more still my Dragonborn was neutral, slaying Alduin without ever taking a side. In my playthroughs, especially the ones after 2016, I’ve developed my own opinions about the Imperials and Stormcloaks alike.

In order to better articulate my opinion, we must first briefly examine four factors: the American landscape in which Skyrim was conceived, Skyrim itself and its portrayal of the Imperials and Stormcloaks (and the Thalmor), and Umberto Eco, the usage of terms like “fascism” and especially “Nazism” in American popular culture, and how this all relates to the Imperial/Stormcloak fiasco.

So let’s get started.

Part 1: Thanks, Obama.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. It was a landslide victory against Republican runner John McCain, a conserative who frequently brought up his service in the Vietnam War (and his time as a prisoner of war) during his campaign, as well as his years of service in political office. In a move to make his (very white, very male) campaign seem more inclusive in the face of the frontrunners of the Democratic campaign (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), he appointed Sarah Palin as his VP. She was the only conservative woman who agreed to be his running mate, as all three conservative women in the Senate already said no, and the Republicans couldn’t find a black conservative.

(I’m not making this up.)

Anyway, come 2008, the conservatives lose their goddamn minds because Bush’s reign of actual terror was over, a Black man is now President and Whiteness is in peril. This was before the term “triggered” became a popular sneer in the conservative dictionary, but “snowflake” was used a lot. Come 2009, the Tea Party emerges. And now we get to the crux of my, uh, observation.

For the young, uninitiated, or non-Americans who are thinking “What the fuck is wrong with America”, the Tea Party Movement was/is a rash of hardline rightwingers who, still licking their wounds from a sound beating by the Democrats in the 2008 election, sought to rebrand themselves. With some bootstrap lifting and millions of dollars in funding from media tycoons such as the Koch brothers, the Tea Party made its official debut in 2010 after the signing of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Their message was simple: It’s time to take America back from the lazy, the entitled, and the “uppity”. What was really just a rehash of a song and dance that’s been turning its ugly white head since at least 1964 gained something of a stranglehold on America, in spite of its relatively small size of active members. It hit all the notes: a populist movement rooted in the perceived threats to their faith, their culture, and their social and economic capital.

They also believed shit like this:

For instance, Tea Partiers are more likely than other conservatives to agree with statements such as “If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites,” and are more likely to disagree with statements like “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” (Williamson, 34)

Like I said. Since 1964.

What made the Tea Party different from the other conservative temper tantrums was one thing: Internet access. All of a sudden, these angry white men had an outlet for voicing their rages, and an open recruiting forum for other malcontents and disaffected youths. I’m not implying the Tea Party had anything to do with Gamergate, nor that Gamergate had anything to do with the rise of the alt-right or whatever these tennybopper neo-Nazis are calling themselves now, but I am saying those circles at least touch in a Venn diagram.

“But tes-trash-blog! What do the machinations of American politics have to do with Elves?” you may ask. Well dear reader, this leads me to..

Part 2: Hey, you! You’re finally awake!

Skyrim was an overnight hit. On release, The Elder Scrolls 5 generated 450 million dollars on its opening weekend alone. This game sold for around 20 million copies, not including Special Edition, VR, or Switch, and continues to see an average of around 10,000 players a week 9 years later (Steamcharts).

And 20 million people see one thing first: A strong, noble Nord in captivity, telling you that you’re on your way to be executed by the Imperials, who are in bed with a scary, sneering bunch of High Elves dressed in black. 20 million people already were told who was the clear bad guy in this game, and it wasn’t the strong, noble Nord in captivity. I’ll be going into this more into Part 3, but suffice to say, the Imperials were already coded as Bad Guy by association. The Imperials decided to execute you, the player. They shot a man in the back because he ran from his own execution. He stole a horse, which was a crime punishable by death in those days. The game doesn’t tell you that part, and is content to say that Lokir was killed because he was in the same cart as the Stormcloaks.

Speaking of Imperials, the Third Empire is written as obtuse, corrupt, uncaring, and cruel. The Septim Dynasty is wrought with scandal and intrigue, plagued by conflict, and powerless to do anything about the Oblivion Crisis that almost ended the world. They flat out abandoned Morrowind and Summerset to better protect their own, offered no help during the Void Nights that destabilized the Khajiit, and worst of all, signed a treaty outlawing Talos worship. That is the crux on which the Stormcloak/Imperial conflict lies. These damned outsiders telling these humble Nords what to do and what not to do. They’re corrupt, lazy, and know nothing of the hardships these people endure, and now the nanny state Empire is telling them they don’t have the freedom to worship what they want? How dare they!

Going further, in the seat of Imperial power in Skyrim is none other than Jarl Elisif, a young widow who relies heavily on the advice of her (overwhelmingly male) thanes, stewards, and generals. She’s weak, thinks mostly of her dead husband, and is written as someone who overreacts to scenarios; the “legion of troops” to Wolfskull Cave over a farmer reporting strange noises, banning the Burning of King Olaf in the wake of her husband’s murder via Shout come to mind. Compare and contrast that to the seat of Stormcloak power, Windhelm. Ulfric spends his time pouring over the map of troop movements and discussing strategy when he’s not delivering his big damn “Why I Fight” speech. Elisif is weak, Ulfric is strong. The Jarl of Solitude is even told to tone it down during the armistice negotiations in Season Unending. She’s chastised by her own general. The first thing you see in Solitude is a man being executed for opening a gate. The first thing you see in Windhelm is two Nords harassing a Dark Elf woman and accusing her of being an Imperial spy.

Both are portrayed as horrific, but only one has bystanders decrying the acts of the offender. Only one has a relative in the crowd proclaim, “That’s my brother [they’re executing]!” The best you get with Suvaris is her confronting you about whether or not you “hate her kind”. Even a mouth breathing racist would be disinclined to say “yes” when confronted with the question of whether or not they’re racist, but that’s how the writers of Skyrim think racism works.

I acknowledge that this was an attempt at bothsidesism, but the handling was.. clumsy.

Part 3: Ur-Fascism, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Bash The Stormcloaks

And now we move on to Umberto Eco, fiction writer, essayist, and writer of the famous essay Ur-Fascism. In short, Eco summarizes 14 separate properties of a fascist movement; it’s important to stress that this should not be treated as a checklist if a piece of media is fascist, or if a person is actually a Nazi, or to say “X is Bad Because Checklist”. It’s frankly impossible to even organize these points into a coherent system, as fascism is an ideology that is, by its nature, incoherent.

With that in mind, let’s run down the points:

1. “The Cult of Tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The Rejection of Modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement Is Treason” – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s ‘fear’ of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings, or any anti-Semitic conspiracy ever).

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to NOT build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the Weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. “Selective Populism” – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People.”

14. “Newspeak” – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I did copy and paste the list from Wikipedia, but you can read the full essay here. It’s 9 pages long. You can do it, I have faith in you.

You may notice that you can’t really shorthand these concepts, or at least not in an aesthetically pleasing way. However, you can point to the most infamous of fascist regimes and take their aesthetic instead. You see it in Star Wars with the Empire (hmm) and the First Order, in Star Trek with the Mirrorverse and the Cardassian Dominion (hmm), and in the.. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue..

Oh, yeah. The Thalmor. They dress in dark colors, are a foreign power trying to exert their influence on the downtrodden Nord, enact purges, and scream about Elven superiority. The Thalmor express every surface level perception of a Nazi in American popular culture. TVTropes has already pretty well covered this ground in their Video Games section of A Nazi By Any Other Name, so I won’t go too much into here seeing as I’m already at the 2000 word mark. Suffice to say, it’s hard to think Bethesda wasn’t trying to make the player associate the 4th Era Altmer with the 1930’s German.

And in doing so, they accidentally created a group that is.. Well, you’ve read the essay or at least the 14 points. Try and tell me how many of them don’t apply to Nordic culture. What grabs me the most are points 9, 11, and 13: life is a perpetual struggle in which you must emerge victorious, a culture of Heroes impatient to die in a glorious fashion, and the Common Will that is enacted and reinforced by one strongman leader. You see these elements in play in Nord culture, in Stormcloak ideology especially. I, for one, hear what Galmar really means when he says “We will make Skyrim beautiful again”. I hear the echoes in George W Bush’s speeches and McCain’s campaign when Ulfric talks of duty and service, of “fighting because Skyrim needs heroes, and there’s no one else but us.”

It’s less of a dog whistle and more of a foghorn if you ask me. And to go back to part 2, this is a message that 20 million played. Not all of them are Stormcloak stans, but that compelling message was still present. Americans love being a strongman hero in their media; we eat that shit up. The setup was enough: you’re a lone hero about to be executed by milquetoast Imperials and Nazi-coded Thalmor. The story was enough: a strong man rebels against a system gone awry, one that seeks to destroy his way of life.

It was enough to compel a “fashwave” artist to take on the monkier Stormcloak(Hann). It was enough that Skyrim was lauded as a “real” game instead of say, Depression Quest, and to justify ruining a game developer’s life over it.

It was enough that when Skyrim came out in 2011, the game did not do so well in Germany because of these elements, because the game was written for you to be sympathetic towards these very white, very blond and Ayran-coded Nords. I can’t speak for the popularity of the game now in Germany, but when I lived there, there were a few raised eyebrows among my age group about the message of the game.

I think about that a lot, especially when the tesblr discourse heats up about the Stormcloaks. I see how visibly upset people get when someone throws shade at Ulfric. The talk of “it’s just a video game” and “lul get triggered” starts to look less like passive dismissal and shoddy trolling and more a kind of funhouse mirror to how they really think.

I can’t lie, it reminds me so much of 2009, of these angry people screaming racial slurs on the Internet because there’s a Black president or posting sexist screeds because Michelle Obama wanted kids to have access to healthy meals. It reminds me of the kid in my sophomore class who said he was going to “take out” Obama on his inauguration day. He was 15 years old then. He’s a father now.

Hell, it reminds me of right now, of Republican Senators demanding civility and tone policing as they kowtow to an actual fascist. The Stormcloak in the Reach camp “had to do something” about the Empire telling him and his what to do, and the neighbor I used to dogsit for had to do something too. I don’t watch his dogs anymore. When I told him I wouldn’t, he tried to make himself the victim and say I was getting political about dog sitting. It’s just two dogs. It’s just a video game. All political messages are just imaginary, snowflake.

But it’s really not, is it now?

TL;DR and Sources

TL;DR: The imperials are portrayed as weak and effectual, as the bootlicker to the Thalmor, and the writers were so busy trying to make one side look bad and weak they inadvertently made actual fascists.

Even though this is pretty long, this really only scratches the surface of the.. Well, everything. In all honesty this is just a very condensed version of my opinion. Big shockeroo, there.

Do keep in mind that this isn’t a condemnation of Skyrim. Lord knows I love that game, or I wouldn’t have this blog. This also isn’t a damning of people who play the game and side with the Stormcloaks, or think Ulfric is hot, or don’t like the Thalmor or what have you. You do you, fam. You do you. This is my observation and opinion on one aspect of the game, just with some tasty sources to better paint a picture of where I personally formed my opinion.

This also isn’t to say that I’m trying to draw a 1:1 comparison between The Elder Scrolls and reality, or that Ulfric is obviously a McCain/Trump/Hitler expy, but Skyrim is, like all things, a product of the minds that created it. Skyrim didn’t happen in an apolitical vacuum, and apolitical stories about war simply do not exist. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply reinforcing the status quo, and it is our responsibility as people who consume this media to question it, and that status quo they so dearly wish to hang on to.

Also, Elisif hot.

Sources:

Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books. 1995. https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf>

Williamson, Venssa, Skocpol, Theda and Coggin, John. “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”. Perspectives on Politics, Volume 9. March 2011. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop_0.pdf>

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Steamcharts.com https://steamcharts.com/app/72850>

Schreier, Jason. “Bethesda Ships 7M Skyrim, Earns About $450M”. Wired. November 16, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/11/skyrim-sales/>

Hann, Michael. “‘Fashwave” - synth music co-opted by the far right”. The Guardian. December 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/14/fashwave-synth-music-co-opted-by-the-far-right>

#holy shit this got long #lore overanalysis #the trash talks

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dirtyfilthy · 3 years

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The Betrayal Of Chelsea Manning By The Coward Adrian Lamo

I have only participated in “cancel culture” once that I can remember. Once, over the broad course of my life, and that was when Adrian Lamo sold Chelsea Manning out to the authorities. Motherfucker has the sheer gall to call himself a hacker, and then rats someone out — not because of his principles, but from a constant desire for pure narcissistic supply -- and all this from a position of trust no less…

I was real angry, and I wanted to put the boot in, any way I could. There was a special circle of hell reserved for people like Adrian Lamo… and as it would turn out, he was already in it.

Amongst petty vendettas like stuffing his wikipedia page with all the well referenced dirt I could dig up, along the way, and kind of by-the-by, I ended up doing a lot of research on the guy, and then, well, the picture of Lamo that emerged…

Jesus.

He’s been a hardcore benzo addict since his twenties. If you know what to look for you can tell in some of his interviews, slurring his words and looking very spacey. He never really had a real job, never broke into the industry he was aways on the fringes of. It’s kinda crazy, if you search for “homeless hacker Adrian Lamo” you can still see what the mass media thought of him before he turned in Chelsea.

He’d kind of weaselled his way into popular consciousness by being a shameless self-promoter, and then managing to get caught in that spectacular “rebellious teenage hacker” vs. “huge faceless corporation” way that tends to capture people’s imagination.

There were whole articles about him in Wired. Multiple in fact. Here’s one of earliest from 2004 (unfortunately now behind a paywall), “New York Times vs The Homeless Hacker”. The first few lines can still give you the gist, however

A self-styled security expert and serial self-promoter, Adrian Lamo made headlines as a grayhat hacker. Then the Gray Lady came down on his head. Not long ago Adrian Lamo was exploring an abandoned gypsum processing plant in West Philadelphia with two friends, when a police cruiser drove slowly by. Lamo’s friends were high on methamphetamines…

https://www.wired.com/2004/04/hacker-5/

Even during this phase of his life, a lot of people in the scene didn’t like him. At least, there were people complaining on hacker boards about him stealing exploits and then burning them for the publicity. In the end he got off with probation and home detention, and that was the end of blatantly hacking into shit. Any more and he would certainly end up in prison. Attitudes were changing, the authorities had stopped seeing hacking as just high-spirited teenage hijinks. and the increasingly severe penalties could land you some serious time.

After this, he just sorted floated around. He never got job in the industry like the rest of us, and I suspect he may have been basically unemployable for one reason or another. The next time he popped up in my news feed was in 2010 with a strange article from ex-hacker turned journalist and friend of Lamo’s,, Kevin Poulsen — “Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo Institutionalized, Diagnosed with Asperger’s”

The first paragraph or so reads:

Last month Adrian Lamo, a man once hunted by the FBI, did something contrary to his nature. He says he picked up a payphone outside a Northern California supermarket and called the cops.

Someone, Lamo says, had grabbed his backpack containing the prescription anti-depressants he'd been on since 2004, the year he pleaded guilty to hacking The New York Times. He wanted his medication back. But when the police arrived at the Safeway parking lot it was Lamo, not the missing backpack, that interested them. Something about his halting, monotone speech, perhaps slowed by his medication, got the officers' attention

— (https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lamo/)

The article claimed Lamo had been arrested for acting strangely and then institutionalised, basically claiming the police had arrested him because he was autistic. At the time, I didn’t really give this a second thought, “oh well, ho-hum”. As itt turned out, this was a case of the most spectacular kind of “spin” I think I’ve ever seen; the only place the article actually intersected with general consensual reality was in stating Lamo had been arrested and placed on psychiatric hold.

The real story, which is entirely far more pathetic, was that Lamo’s family had become worried about his benzo use (“prescription anti-depressants”) and had cut him off. He totally lost the plot at this point and stormed out of house. Concerned about his mental state, and with fears for his physical safety, it was actually his own family that called the police to try and find him.

When confronted about this fairly massive discrepancy, Lamo claimed he hadn’t exactly “lied” as such, and had simply withheld some facts due to personal privacy concerns.

It was at this point I finally began to see the whole tattered trajectory of Lamo’s entire life — trace the greasy path of his rainbow with my fingertips, and watch as the once bright twine became increasing gray and frayed as each thread began to curve back towards it’s inevitable impact with the earth, when, at which point, everything important would begin to totally unravel around him.

At his core, Adrian Lamo was a narcissist, and so Adrian Lamo absolutely believed in the Adrian Lamo narrative, as only a narcissist can. Near of beginning of his tale, this was easy to do. He was a wandering Daoist sage, a renegade techno-monk character in a Neal Stephenson cyberpunk novella, and anytime he wanted to see his own reflection he could simply look in any of the major newspapers.

After his arrest and release, the rest of the world moved on. His peers all settled down to well-paid industry gigs, and you couldn’t just pop the New York Times through an open proxy any longer — well, at least: not most of time, anyway. His own sword, never the exactly the sharpest in the first place, was beginning to show some signs of a serious structural rust.

Without the constant assurance of people telling his own story back at him, what was he exactly? What did the mirror portray to him now? An unemployed, semi-homeless drug addict, a hacker who couldn’t hack his way out of wet paper back with pick axe, the tired punch line to any number of bad jokes...

Of course, the many similarities to my own life were not exactly lost on me. I was basically a case of being a few near misses and unlucky hits away from sitting in his exact position. I had made the transition to an industry career successfully, but I was still a drug addict with mental heath issues. I had gone through my own narcissistic stage when I was younger, but thankfully grew out of it, the old moons no longer pulled on my tides the way they used to.

The essential Lamo pattern had began to emerge. Still chasing the same bright stars that had long since sunk beneath the horizon line of the ocean; Lamo would begin to feel irrelevant — Lamo would get then his name in the media in some fashion. A momentary peace was then achieved, then came a brief period of post-orgasmic. cosmic serenity.

But of course, the wheel of karma will not stop spinning for anyone, and so, soon enough and all-to-quickly, the entire process of personal renewal, would have to, you know….. begin anew.

A few other case studies were observed. An unreleased, permanently unfinished documentary featuring Lamo was mysteriously leaked on the internet. Of course, Lamo himself had leaked it. And there was always appearing on various morning television shows, Good Morning America, Fox News & the like.

But then the mother of all opportunities just dropped into his lap.

Chelsea Manning needed someone to talk to.

Chelsea knew Lamo was Bi, so he was at least in the LGBT community. Adrian was a hacker too. He’d fought against the system in his day, he was certainly someone who would “get it”, she was very sure of this. And when she did reach out, he was indeed very sympathetic. Honestly, it seemed like he really cared. Just a genuine human being, reaching out across the vast emotional void to provide a sense of empathy to someone who really, really needed it right now..

He was very sympathetic when Chelsea told him all about her struggles with gender identity, and he was very sympathetic when she said she was leaking gigabytes of information to Wikileaks…. But behind his sunglasses, Lamo eyes had already morphed into a marquee LED matrix endlessly scrolling his own name. Think of the news coverage!

This was big. This was very big.

It would, in fact, turn out to be fucking huge. Of course, within in the hacker scene, and to a certain extent, even outside it, everyone just fucking loathed him now. Eventually even the news moved on, nobody wanted any more interviews, and in the end, when everything has already been all said and done: you are ultimately left with only yourself….

… a pathetic drug addict. Of course, I have to keep telling myself that one point of intersection does not an entire venn diagram or an actual equality make. But I can’t shake the feeling that, perhaps, maybe we weren’t really all that different. Maybe my own betrayals have had the simple luck of being a lot less public.

Perhaps my own sins were just as ugly, but far less ambitious.

Adrian Lamo died alone, from a drug overdose, in a private unit in an aged care facility in Wichita, Kansas. He was 37 years old. An autopsy showed his kidneys were already failing.

I guess Sartre got it wrong. Hell isn’t other people, it’s being left totally alone, with nothing else around but the tedious company of your own terrible self, and of course, the fucker won’t stop talking...

So obviously there was nothing more I could do to hurt Adrian Lamo, nothing that Adrian Lamo hadn’t done already. He had long since locked himself away in a prison cell of his own making. I do wonder if maybe one too many silent 3am’s hadn’t come crawling around the clock face when he was there & awake to witness it, lying in bed & staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about things.

Like I’m doing.

Shit, I hope don’t go out that way.

#adrian lamo #chelsea manning #nonfiction #creative nonfiction

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roswelldetails · 4 years

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RNM 2x11 - Linger

Quick note: I am SO sorry at how painfully late this is. I wasn't able to watch on Monday night because the police helicopter decided to sit over my apartment yelling loud threats to peaceful protesters when the episode aired politics. And then I had late meetings for work Wed and Thurs. And weekend things. Excuses, excuses though. I will try to do better next week this week.

EPISODE SUMMARY:

SECRETS AND LIES -- Driven by the prospects of her scientific research, Liz (Jeanine Mason) opens up to Diego (guest star Cleo Anthony) about all the good her findings could do. Meanwhile, Max (Nathan Dean) enlists Kyle's (Michael Trevino) help getting to the bottom of the recent abductions, while Michael (Michael Vlamis) does his own investigating into Alex's disappearance. Elsewhere, after learning more about her mother Louise, Isobel (Lily Cowles) pays a visit to Rosa (Amber Midthunder), in hopes that Rosa could help her begin to heal. Franklin Vallette directed the episode written by Ariana Quiñónez & Deirdre Mangan.

DETAILS:

Liz and Diego flashback from Denver the night he proposed. The science:

"Administering a lethal dose of radiation to observe a particular neoblast… It's a regenerative master cell. The only one with this protein. I mean, this particular cell was able to multiply, diversify, and reanimate my worm."

"Wait, so observing the master gets you the underlying mechanisms of tissue regeneration."

"Then I apply the mechanism to human tissue, and irreversible injury and degradation become distant memory. I know this isn't going to happen in our lifetime, but this could be a step to help."

Diego proposed to Liz in the lab at nearly midnight. She didn't seem to see the proposal coming, but she also didn't hesitate to say yes.

A neoblast is a part of a worm. I was so disappointed. I thought it sounded like some badass science thing.

Um...everything Liz is talking about is REAL. Check this out!

Present time, both Max and Liz waking up by alarm after falling asleep working. Liz's lab work we know a fair amount about and there's nothing specifically revealing about her wake up, but Max's is more interesting. Max fell asleep, while writing alien symbols in his journal. There's two empty vials of antidote in the box we saw last week (though we know he took one at the end of last week's episode. There's also an empty bottle of acetone.

Max, Liz, and Isobel at the Crashdown. Isobel used her powers to get in and apparently immediately put on antennae and made coffee.

Max immediately reacted when Liz said she was with Maria. Which, note that it is a little odd that Maria is out of town with Crash Con starting, given her pitch last episode and the relevance to her business.

Now Liz is saying I love you to Isobel too. Once the floodgates open they really really open with her

"Non-binary intimate companion" 😆

Butyricol has apparently only been used in one highly classified military trial. What's interesting about that detail to me is that if it's highly classified, how do we know that? All Diego told us last week was that it was only approved for military use. In order to know that it was only used in one military trial, you'd have to know the details of the military use which, if it's highly classified, would be nearly impossible to get your hands on - even for a senator's son. IMO, this is probably a bit of a plot screw up/narrative leap.

Liz references Charlie's bioweaponry expertise. Which we, the audience, know about from 2x04, but we didn't actually see Charlie explain any of that to Max and Liz...all she said in 2x08 was "a lot of people want to know what I know."

We are reminded that Alex is out of town, hence why no one is worried about not hearing back from him.

Michael tells Sanders everything they learned about Louise last week & then finds Alex's napkin from Jesse stuck to his boot, with blood on it, and immediately reacts.

Isobel mentions Rosa's sketchbooks in front of Diego, which was risky. Diego didn't seem to react either, which is weird.

Diego and Liz in the Crashdown.

"Ah, doing some molecular gastronomy."

"Oh, got to stay on top of trends these days. Everything needs to be Instagrammable."

"Look, I was thinking...I bet butyricol uses inducible diphtheria toxins to stun the memory expression neurons into paralysis. See, of we can counteract that, we can get your friend her memories back."

"Would it boost GABA in DLPFC?"

"See, no, you're thinking working memory, not recovery. Think traumatic memory."

I am not smart enough to explain the science in this scene so:

Michael finds Jesse Manes in Alex's house. Jesse pulls his gun, but Michael uses his powers to disarm him and throw him to the ground.

"You told Alex Tripp gave you this in 1987. That's before the Crashdown ever used this logo."

Accurate, based off of the flashbacks we saw in 2x09. However, how would Michael know that? Unless he has studied the history of the Crashdown Cafe, he wasn't even born yet in 1987. Unless they changed the logo much later. It would be way more plausible to me for Alex to know that detail than Michael, as someone who spent his childhood hanging out with Liz. Michael didn't even live in Roswell until 2001.

"I just found out that Alex never made it to Andrews Air Force Base last week. He's disabled. He has PTSD. So I'm concerned about him."

Isobel tells Rosa that Arturo is lying low. Which explains why he's not working during Crash Con.

Isobel explains to Rosa why she came. Love that Rosa knew it had to be about Isobel wanting something.

"I am curious about what's in your journals...I didn't really read anything. I'm trying this new thing where I don't follow every selfish impulse."

"But you still looked. What are you looking for?"

"Myself. So to speak. I'm curious about what might be in there from the whole Noah thing."

"You can look. And if you see something that you want to know about just ask. I'm probably going to tell you to mind your own beeswax, but, you know, shoot your shot."

Kyle and Max in the Wild Pony:

"I was suspended from work today. Craziest thing. I was accused of stealing hospital resources for personal use. There might even be a criminal investigation."

"Look… you're a good person. You probably deserve for me to leave you the hell alone, which is why I wish I didn't have to ask you, but I'm concerned that Project Shepherd might be tied to these abductions."

"You can't ask Alex?"

"He's out of town… Look, I'm just trying to find out who's hurting people."

"I hate having a conscience."

Diego & Liz in the Crashdown kitchen:

"Oh come on, you know damn well no one uses eggshells on purpose in any kind of cooking. You met my meemaw. Don't insult me. You're making calcium carbonate. Is this about regenerating worms?"

"Kind of. I'm testing out a theory. I know I have to recreate it in a sterile environment later, but with my dad laying low in peak tourist season, I haven't been able to spend as much time in the lab."

"The lab that made you sign an NDA. Which is where again?"

"Nice try."

Diego and Liz Flashback #2, celebrating her research grant and study publication:

"The groundbreaking research led by Elizabeth Ortecho is the future of biomedical engineering."

"This grant changes everything. I mean, there is so much more that we can do now. We are really gonna save lives."

"I'm so proud of you. Oh...my God. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay. I'm fine. It's just...when I was a kid, I felt trapped in my life. I was just thinking about what this would have meant to me then. To know that the person I am existed. This isn't what the world teaches girls like me to dream."

"What would you do… if you could do anything?"

"I want a Nobel Prize."

"Strong start. Okay what next?"

"Citizenship for my dad. I want him to not always have to be so scared. And I want to be less angry. I'm angry so much of the time."

"Anger's not so bad. It reminds us that something's not right. And then we change it. And you are gonna change everything. I'm so glad I get to stand beside you while you do."

Back to present:

"Wait, I don't think that's fully…"

"Why are you helping me? I mean my dad, but me."

"You sound like my girlfriend. Naomi was also surprised that I would rush to Roswell to help someone who bulldozed my life."

"I really wish I would have handled things differently."

"But if you had, I wouldn't have Naomi. I mean, I have a good life, Elizabeth. I'm happy. I do miss you at work though. There's really...there's no replacing you there."

"Yeah I get the feeling."

"So wouldn't it feel really good if you would just tell me what your secret experiment is?"

"Hypothetically, let's say there's this rare blood disorder that affects one in four million people. No research, no treatments...Do you remember my planarian neoblasts with the regenerative proteins? So I…" fades off.

Max & Kyle in the bunker

"Searching for the term butyricol. What makes you think it's got a connection to Project Shepherd?"

"The drug was developed by the military. And the only other clue we have is a fractal burn pattern, which is an alien thing."

"And Project Shepherd is in the middle of your alien-military Venn diagram."

"I know. It's a long shot, but it's all I have right now."

"I'm surprised you haven't asked to see this sooner."

"Yeah, I'm still figuring out how much information I want to know. I mean, you ever wake up from a night of drinking and not want to know what happened the night before in case it's worse than you imagined?"

"Like if I don't remember Taylor Swift drag night at Planet 7, then it didn't happen?"

"...When this is done, why don't you let me give you a lift over to Liz's lab? We can load up the stolen equipment so you can return it. She's not using it."

"Nah, we don't have to do that."

"I mean, your handprint gives you access to their security system, right? So, you know, just get in there and return their stuff. Maybe they'll go easier on you if they have it."

Jesse and Flint (in front of Michael)

"Flint, what did you do with your brother?"

"Drop the gun...you can't pull intel from a dead soldier."

"I'd be careful kid. I taught you everything you know, but I didn't teach you everything I know. You wouldn't have showed up unless you wanted my attention. Well here I am. Where is Alex."

"He's safe and sound. I know how concerned you are about his safety. That why you had him locked in the basement? You kidnapped him first, Pops. What do you want from him anyway?"

"You hand him over to me right now."

"No. This time I outrank you, and I haven't granted clearance."

"You outrank me."

"You went soft. My entire life has been about destroying the aliens. That's all I've done. Develop weapons, develop strategy. Fighting for our species, 'cause you told me."

"I was wrong."

"You can't do that. I don't need you for this, old man."

My question: how much of that was real and how much of that was staged? It seems like it was staged at the beginning, but then it also sort of seemed to go off the rails. It's really unclear to me just how involved Jesse is with Flint and Helena's plan. I'd like to believe a lot. But who knows? One thing I'm fairly confident about though is that Jesse is NOT who initially took Alex from the junkyard. The figure is all wrong for Jesse at the end of 2x10.

Michael uses his powers to steal Jesse's cane and whacks him over the head with it.

"You had him in your basement? What, you took him last week after you got that piece of alien tech from me? He's a loose end. If we got him back from Flint, you were gonna kill him. You are barely human! When I was a kid, I thought maybe because of my high IQ, my species was superior to your. Then I fell in love with your son. And I didn't feel superior anymore. I am angry. And smashing things, it's easy. Alex has evolved past that. He's past you! And he's past me. Despite you slapping him around, shoving that Manes Man crap down his throat, he still loves. He even loves you. You don't deserve to call him your son."

Max and Kyle trying to get into the lab.

"I was deceased when they made the guest list."

Gah plot issues. How did Max manage to sneak up on Liz in the lab at the beginning of 2x08 if he doesn't actually have access?

"Maybe Liz was still pissed about the pollen in my mom's perfume, had Alex revoke my access?"

Yet another plot issue. Why would Alex do that, even if Liz asked? He and Kyle were teaming up before he even knew that Liz knew about aliens. It makes zero sense that Alex would do that. It would have to be a spite thing from Liz because of her argument with Kyle in 2x09 and there's no guarantee she even has control over the security access for the lab.

"If Diego was able to find out about this butyricol through his fancy connections, maybe it wasn't a Project Shepherd or Caulfield trial. Maybe it was legit military."

"Military would have some use for something that would erase state secrets from people's minds. They can't spill to the enemy."

"Or you could erase bad memories from soldiers coming home. Or it could be a weapon."

"Erase an army's memories...they don't know what they're fighting for anymore."

"Project Shepherd hasn't been legit in years, so what does Flint Manes do, officially, for the military?"

"He's a weapons specialist. He could have access to biomedical trials."

"Let's go. Find out what he's up to."

Liz and Diego

"My team at my research facility, we found a rare protein. A mutated gene. You know what? I've said too much. You probably think I'm delusional anyway."

"No, you're not delusional. Elizabeth Holmes was delusional."

"Yeah, well, at least Elizabeth Holmes had funding."

"You can get funding."

HBO recently did a whole documentary on Elizabeth Holmes. I haven't watched it yet, but she seemed craaaazy in the trailer.

Flashback 3, Liz finding out that she lost her funding.

"The second we move from worms to human cells, they pull our funding and that isn't fair."

"I think you should reconsider the Genoryx grant."

"What difference does it make? Every research facility in this country answers to the same uber-conservative Department of Health and Human Services."

"Well, whoever's funding Genoryx isn't super concerned about FDA guidelines. They're above the red tape. Look, you can start saving the world now."

"I can't do anything shady or secret. I have too much to lose."

"My God, Elizabeth. You don't always have to be this perfect daughter of a perfect immigrant!"

"Yes I do. Because the imperfect daughter is in a box at Frontier Valley Cemetery."

Back to present:

"Genoryx has more money than they know what to do with."

"Just because your office has ping-pong tables and hyperbaric napping chambers, does not mean that Genoryx isn't unethical."

Note: up until this last line it was implied that Diego and Liz were actually working together in the lab. This line implies that wasn't the case, that Diego actually works for this Genoryx. Which sounds sketchy. Related to Deep Sky maybe?

Graham Green's interruption, which is certainly going to be relevant to one of the final episodes:

"Greetings, Graham Crackers! Today, a private citizen pledged a donation to the museum that will change the course of human history. At closing night, 7:00 p.m., main stage, I will unveil the most astonishing alien artifact I've seen in all my years of collecting."

Michael chases down Flint Manes, uses his powers to puncture his tire, disarm him, and toss him to the ground.

Isobel and Rosa discussing Helena:

"This is the post-high school chapter, which is really just a big burn book on my mom. Finding out my dad wasn't my dad was bad. It was Liz's senior year when I dumped my drug dealer boyfriend, and I went to this NA meeting. I think that was the first time that I ever actually wanted to get better. But still, I wore a hoodie, I sat in the back, I made myself really invisible. I was...high at the meeting. You can see it if you want to. Jump in."

What Helena says in Rosa's flashback:

"The drinking started when the man I loved left me. That was almost 20 years ago. And I still see him every day. I see him in the street, in my business, but I can handle that. What I can't handle is when I see him in our daughter's eyes. Sometimes I think if we didn't have a child together, I might not hurt so much all these years later. I might not still love him, but I do today. So I drink, and I take pills. And I try not to look my daughter in the eye."

Back to present:

"Why did you want to show me that?"

"I cannot relate to marrying a body-stealing alien sociopath. You're kind of on your own for that one. But I know that you're feeling messed up over not knowing your real mom. And I guess I just feel like it's worth saying that I wish I knew mine a little bit less."

Note: Again, how does Rosa know any of Isobel's identity issues? I guess we're supposed to assume that either Liz told her about it all, or that she and Isobel are having long, deep, phone conversations on the side? Because everything that happened with Isobel trying to learn about Louise happened while Rosa was in rehab.

The Spanish:

"Javi, la migra. Cuídate. Te llamo mas tarde."

Javi, immigration. Beware. I'll call you later.

The ICE officer from 2x10 comes into the Crashdown, threatens, and insults Liz. Liz first tries to get them to leave by offering them free coffee to go, and then the floodgates open and she starts fighting them. Diego finally convinces them to leave by telling them that the Acting Director of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement is a personal friend. At least the jackass learned how to pronounce her name properly since last episode! I don't really want to transcribe their insults so I'm gonna leave it at that summary, though if you need me to, just send me an ask.

Kyle and Max search Flint's house. Key points:

Inconsistency! Max's hands are bare when he picks the lock to break into the house, but then he puts gloves on (off camera) when he's searching. But if the point was to avoid fingerprints he just left them all over the door!

Kyle finds a thumb drive that catches his attention for some reason. It's labeled Yucca Blooms LTD. Just as a side point, the Yucca flower is the state flower of New Mexico.

Max finds something in the trash that catches his attention, but we don't see what it is until the end of the episode.

They get interrupted by a car pulling up and hide in the closet (paralleling Liz and Kyle hiding in the closet in 2x04).

Max finds the sniper rifle in the closet, which was shooting at him and Charlie when they rescued Cam in 2x08. (But Max shot the sniper...just a point.)

Kyle says Max smells like rain.

Kyle spots the hunting van pulling away from Flint's house.

I lied, you can see Max pull the box from the trash can.

Rosa calls Helena's house to hear her mom's voice. Dirk answers & says:

"Helena? Helena is that you baby? Oh if it is please come home. We've been so worried. I love you so much. If this is the bastard that took her, I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch."

Note: why would Rosa have Helena's phone number? That is such a silly plot point. They wouldn't let her see Helena in 2x07 so why would they let her have her phone number? Why would she WANT it? This one kind of bugs me.

In the car driving back to Roswell, Rosa speculates that Helena was abducted leaving town. Either that or she bailed on her family.

Rosa says she's not done with rehab and wants to go back once they know her mom is ok. Isobel actually seems concerned and asks if she wants to stay longer. Rosa wants to stay until she's better.

Isobel on money, answering one of fandom's oldest questions:

"Listen, Noah was a treacherous, serial-killing alien, but he did have a happy knack for day trading. And… I've been trying to figure out what to do with all that money he left behind...I want to be better too. The more that I learn about Louise, the more I want to be like her. She was a good person and she made a difference. Someone told me recently that they saw a lot of her in me. I really want that to be true."

They stop at the junkyard since Michael is not responding to Isobel. Which...doesn't seem all that out of character for him?

Michael and Flint chatting while Michael violently tortures him:

"So this is the perk of being a weapons specialist, huh?"

"If this is your attempt to convince me that you aren't a horde of violent invaders here to colonize a planet that isn't yours, I mean, you're doing a really bang-up job."

"You know, I was a good kid. I wanted to be an agricultural engineer. Maybe have a couple kids, start a dad band. But then I was provoked. And now I'm this. Maybe there's still hope for you. Your brother Gregory's living a peaceful life teaching kids, staying jacked on the res. And Alex…"

"Alex is a traitor. He'll be court-martialed when this is over."

"So he's still alive?"

"You were early."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, my father demanded a meeting. I had just left Sanders' Auto."

"If you hurt that old man!"

"I wouldn't touch him. Okay? He's a hard-working American. I was just leaving you a note. And I took Alex because I knew it was the best way to get you to cooperate. Alex will be fine as long as you do what I say. If you disobey, make my day any worse, Alex will die knowing you are the reason. So why don't you untie me and apologize. We'll go from there."

Note that this scene is where we learn the source of the fractal burns.

Diego's last pitch to Liz:

"Listen, Genoryx invests in their people. You are valuable. I'm sure they'll sponsor Arturo's path to citizenship if you just sign on. In the meantime, you can work in a sanctuary city."

Max and Liz's fight:

"Kyle and I connected butyricol to Flint Manes. So I called Alex's other brother Greg, and he said that Flint has this property outside of town. He drives a massive hunting van, Liz. He was the sniper the night we found Cameron."

"Have you called Alex?"

"No, Kyle's on it, but there's something else. I found this in Flint's trash."

"This is the box my dad kept my abuelita's ring in until my mom stole it."

"I got the ring back, but she kept the box."

"Rosa called earlier. She was worried about Mom. I said that she probably just bailed like she always does. Okay, if Flint used Jenna to get to Charlie because Charlie builds bioweapons, what does he want with my mom?"

"Maybe he's trying to get to another bioengineering genius."

"Well, that's not gonna work. I don't care about her… Max, what's going on? You're being cold."

"This is a serious conversation."

"No, don't do that. What's going on?"

"I know Maria left yesterday. I saw her and Mimi off from the Wild Pony. So I know you didn't spend last night helping her process. And you certainly didn't spend last night here. I didn't push it this morning because I trust you, and everyone's entitled to their secrets."

"If this is about Diego you're way off base."

"I wish this was about Diego. Why is Kyle locked out of your lab? Why did you tell me that no one's accepting your applications when you've turned down two research grant offers? I found the papers in my trash."

"Because I don't want to go back to that. Okay? I brought you back to life and now I don't want to go back to worms and mice and rats and hoping maybe my work will help some other scientist revolutionize medicine decades from now."

"What kind of work are you doing, exactly?"

"I'm developing a rapid treatment for a rare blood disease. Kyle's girlfriend is sick and I want to help repay him for what he's done for us."

"So this is just about Kyle's girlfriend and then it's over?"

"If I can cure her, the possibilities are endless. I can adjust it for other illnesses.

"Adjust what exactly? Alien DNA? Liz, my God. Like, let's say you're right and you find some miracle cure-all in alien spinal fluid and then that information falls into the wrong hands?"

"It won't because it's in my hands. Max, I love you, I love your family. I am asking you to trust me with this."

"No you're not asking me anything. You haven't asked me about any of this. You just got caught in a string of lies."

"I guess it sucks, huh? When your partner doesn't include you in major, life-altering decisions?"

"Are you angry at me for bringing your sister back?"

Not gonna lie, I laughed out loud when Rosa walks in at this moment. When, literally, another alien brings Rosa back." Rosa & Isobel's reveal:

"Well, there is new information."

"We found this on Michael's trailer."

"Flint didn't abduct my mother. This is Helena's handwriting. They're working together."

Just one more little detail about the note... It's the same Roswell postcard that Cam's fake note from Charlie came on in 2x04. Different handwriting though.

Kyle and Steph:

"Is it true? Have you been stealing from the hospital?"

"Steph…"

"Yeah. #nofilter. I can't get my hands to work lately, which makes getting the top off my makeup kind of hard. But we can talk about eye shadow after you answer me. Have you been siphoning hospital resources for God knows what?"

"It's not that simple. Yes, I've gone against hospital policy to treat people who can't get health care."

"Yeah well, this isn't a victimless crime, Kyle. My dad. He's been getting so much heat about supply shortages. His personal genome machine getting stolen out from under his nose. Do you know how much it's costing him to keep me alive right now? How much it would cost if he lost his fancy insurance?"

"I hadn't thought about that. I'm gonna return everything. That's why I'm here right now. To apologize. And to say goodbye. I am definitely going to lose my job, and after I confess to everything they're definitely gonna press criminal charges."

"Yeah well, your mom's the sheriff."

"And if you'd met her you'd know that means I'm really screwed. I wish you'd met her. She'd really love you. Goodbye Steph."

"Show up for your shift tomorrow...Yeah the thing about dying? Your dad's willing to do whatever it takes to make you happy. And I don't want you to lose your job, so."

"I don't know what to say."

"Don't. I'm still mad at you. Close the door on your way out."

Helena and Michael after she injects him:

"It's a special drug developed at Caulfield. It won't harm you at all, but you won't be able to use any telekinesis until it wears off. It'll keep you honest."

"I want to see Alex."

"Oh, you will. After you build me this bomb."

MUSIC:

Note, normally I get my music list straight from the source - the show's music supervisor shares it on Twitter @cmollere. But he didn't share this week because politics. So this week I pulled it from here:

Pasado Es Pasado - LMS

Makeup Counter Girl - Powerslide

Summer's Over - Pillbox

Just a Human, Being Human - Joey Sykes

The Last Man in Tujunga - I See Hawks in L.A.

Matter of Fact - BUVA

Take Me Someplace - Joey Sykes

Fade Out - Vicious Kiss

It's Easier to Run Away - Joey Sykes

#roswell new mexico #details #rnm season 2 #episode details #long post #rnm211 #Linger

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nancythedrew · 5 years

Text

I don’t think I’ve gone through and analyzed/mocked the features of MID that HeR is promoting on their website yet. Idk when these even went up but I’m feeling snarky and got some free time so here we go bbies:

“Analyze clues with a new inventory system and examinable 3D objects” -- Was there something wrong with the old inventory system?? Like once we got past that horrible scrolling one that only showed 4 items at a time I felt like we kind of mastered the inventory concept. And haven’t we always been able to examine 3D objects?

“Learn and uncover the truth about the historical Salem Witch Trials” -- Is HeR insinuating that they, a company that has been unable to release a new product in 3+ years, is going to reveal to us some new history about the Salem Witch Trials that we as a society have not learned in the hundreds of years since the Salem Witch Trials happened

“Explore true and expansive 3D environments” -- As if to imply that the other environments we’ve encountered were not true? They were lies? Ok I get maybe they’re saying “true 3D” but again...unless they having us pull out those red-blue 3D glasses from 2003 I’m pretty sure the past environments we’ve encountered have been as 3D as they can get

“Discover and solve the plight of the accused witches” -- Is a plight something that you “solve”? Isn’t it just kind of...a thing that is or isn’t. We could learn about it I guess. But it kind of feels like whoever wrote this is just throwing out arbitrary verbs, like when I try to fix my resume so I’m not putting “Assisted” under every single bulletpoint of what I did in my past jobs

“Take a tour of Salem and discern fact from fiction” -- Are these two things even related? Like I’m really hoping no one’s lying to us during a tour of present day Salem. Like if a tour guide says “this is city hall” I better not have to start discerning if that is fact or not

“Meet and interact with all 11 characters” -- Incredible. In the past I have been so disappointed with how we’ve met characters and yet to interact with them. But are you telling me, that in this true 3D environment I will be able to ~*INTERACT*~ with them too?

I cannot wait to interact with characters with such rich and meaningful backstories as these characters must have:

“Solve puzzles embedded into the story” -- I was gonna just be like “yay puzzles” but actually if they’re promising the puzzles to be “embedded” into the plot we better get some better backstory than ancient Maori tribes carving shit into rocks to figure out where aliens are(I think that was the “plot” of MED??)

“Enjoy thrilling in-game cutscenes” -- Well consider me ready to be thrilled then.

“Cook New England favorite dishes like Johnny Cakes” -- Johnny Cakes sounds like a euphemism for boobs.

“Explore an ancient cemetery and historic estate” -- Nice, can’t complain.

“Investigate with updated and modernized controls” -- Can’t I just use my mouse and/or trackpad when I forget to charge my wireless mouse? Why we gotta fix what’s not broken

“Mix potions and learn about ancient remedies” -- The kids and their moms on the HeR forums are gonna hate this. Unless the ancient remedies are like tea tree oil and apple cider vinegar. I feel like the people who complain about witchcraft on the HeR forums are pseudoscience anti-vaxxers too. Or at least there’s some venn diagram overlap between those groups

“Team up with the Hardy Boys” -- I cannot believe that with how poorly managed HeR is that they’ve remembered to renew their license to use the Hardy Boys?

“Solve multiple crimes including arson” -- Yeah this definitely sounds like they only have a plotline written out for arson and have no idea how they’re gonna work in other crimes but hopefully they’ll figure it out by the time the game releases(which is yet another reason the release keeps getting pushed back)

#nancy drew #midnight in salem #hiatus salt

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hellyeahomeland · 4 years

Photo

“The English Teacher” | Directed by Michael Cuesta, Cinematography by Giorgio Scali

Sara: Not really related to this image specifically, but this week’s episode was directed by Michael Cuesta, whom you may remember as the directing executive producer for the show’s first two seasons. He directed some of the best episodes of the show: the pilot, “The Weekend,” “Marine One,” “The Choice.” I was really, really happy to see that they brought him back for the penultimate episode. That feels fitting and so, so right.

Related to this image specifically, opening on an image of Carrie literally split in half in the frame feels symbolic. She’s being pulled in two competing directions, her loyalty to Saul fighting with her desire to prevent a nuclear war.

Gail: When the episode first started I wondered if she had escaped custody and was standing and waiting to have a passport photo taken like Brody in “The Choice” (again, a Michael Cuesta episode). (My tin foil hat has been all over the place lately!) But then it occurred to me that it’s actually the mirror of the opening shot of Carrie in the first episode this season. The close-ups of Carrie in both scenes have a lot in common, especially that we can only see half of her face. In episode one, the other half of the frame was black and here, the other half is white. I think Sara was right when she pointed out in last week’s Director’s Chair about the transition images at the end of “Designated Driver.” Carrie’s life has always been somewhere in between the black and white.

Ashley: The way this carefully pans down across her face, only to find that she is actually cuffed to the chair, is pretty well-done. We’ve seen her in cuffs too many times this season, and trapped in other ways more often than that.

Sara: This image of Carrie watching the suicide bomb footage on TV really calls to mind the visuals in the opening credits of a young Carrie watching war and terror play out on a television screen.

Ashley: How many times has Carrie seen something awful and life-altering on television? She was in this position in season five when she saw Quinn in the gas chamber. Shocking and devastating and just kinda the life of Carrie Mathison, tbh.

Gail: I agree with both of you, this is a great callback to Carrie in the credits and Carrie in “New Normal.” Carrie’s unconventional methods often come at a high price and this scene is another reminder of that. (And how amazing is Chris Bauer, who plays Carrie’s lawyer?! Sara, he’s even giving you some sweet ‘stache!)

Sara: Love the mustache.

Sara: Tag yourself I’m Wellington.

Ashley: We are all Wellington.

Gail: Pretty sure I’ve been Saul all week trying to get my kids to do their e-learning. I’m tagging my son as Zabel and my daughter as Hayes. My husband is full-on Wellington, knowing I’m right but refusing to get involved.

Ashley: The sharp difference between Zabel’s terrible beard and Saul’s luscious beard is one of the best things this show has offered us.

Gail: I love that Saul’s body language tells a story too. He can hardly bring himself to look at Zabel, let alone face him.

Sara: John Zabel is a real fuckin’ slime ball and Hugh Dancy has been so, so good in this role. You can tell he must relish getting to play this evil character, going up against these actors and actors that he’s known so intimately, though entirely offscreen, the last ten years.

Sara: I love this detail of Saul moving one of his books back just a millimeter or so. It really emphasizes how meticulous he is and also begs the question if he’s going to realize Carrie had them all splayed out on his living room floor. Does he keep them in a specific order?

Ashley: I WAS WONDERING THE SAME THING. And I’m surprised he has so many of them — he was looking at one volume specifically, so I initially was wondering if his commie shelf was just to hide that particular book.

Gail: No small detail seems to escape Saul’s attention. Such a small movement, but it says so much about who Saul is. And yes, Ashley, some of those books were just decoys! Carrie figured that out as she was sorting the books, which is also a great detail about who Saul is. Saul’s red book collection of asset communication is also his hobby. As Carrie says, the best lies have to have truth in them.

Sara: Ben Savage as young Mandy Patinkin is some of the most inspired casting ever. I know he’s already played a young Mandy Patinkin, but I am still in awe. The flat bill cap was an excellent detail. #hat

Gail: I love how he is wearing a trademark Saul plaid shirt, too!

Gail: Another shot of a character with only half of their face shown. This time it’s a young Saul who already has his fair share of secrets.

Ashley: Spoiler alert, she doesn’t shoot him.

Sara: IJLTP.

Gail: We don’t get this close-up shot in this scene until Saul drops his facade and asks her if she’s reading between the lines... He wants to pull a fast one on the useful idiots in the Oval Office and wants her help to do it (ugh, Tasneem agrees!). From a distance, we see Saul in his office somewhere in the West Wing, playing the part of National Security Advisor, but as the camera moves in for this close-up, we see Saul as who he really is: the smart and strategic spy.

Sara: There were quite a few extreme close-ups of Saul this week. What does it mean in an episode where we learn more about his heroic past than potentially at any other time this series? For me this really put into perspective how much we don’t know about Saul. Carrie alludes to snippets he’s revealed over the years, but even she--presumably his closest confidante--doesn’t know. Saul is the opposite of an open book, pun intended.

Ashley: Let’s crack his spine open and see if there’s a note.

Sara: This slow push on Carrie as the judge reads the list of charges against her is devastating, and not just for Carrie. It is for the audience too, because we know the truth. It goes without saying that Claire is magnificent here.

Ashley: Listening to all of the things Carrie Mathison is being charged with — specifically because we know the character, we have known her for a long time — is painful. For Claire, who has lived in Carrie’s skin for so long, it must have been torture.

Gail: Carrie’s lawyer is dressed in red, white and blue while Carrie is dressed for a funeral. I’m sure neither is a coincidence.

Sara: I do not like the context of this shot, but I love the shot itself. IDNLTCOTSBILTSI.

Sara: Linus being the only one in a room full of military brass and West Wing staff who understands that something’s fishy here is a very “of course” moment. I love how they’re framed in shadows here. In a way, he and Saul have both been running a “shadow” government all season, working in the background, out of sight.

Gail: Saul has his own circle of trust now and Wellington’s circle is only bumping up against it, no Venn diagrams here. Saul is playing his cards close to the vest, knowing he is on borrowed time. (See what I did there?)

Sara: I loved the payoff of the Carrie/Jenna relationship this week. Jenna coming to the realization that Quinn did before--nothing is worth the damage they cause--plays like a terrible déjà vu moment. Carrie just sits there, silent, as Jenna walks out. As staff writer Jonathan Redding said, “She was never going to become another Carrie. She can’t make Carrie’s trades.”

Gail: I think Carrie sits silently as Jenna walks out because she can’t argue with her. Carrie herself came to the same realization back in season four. Interestingly, as Jenna has her realization that nothing is worth the damage they do, Carrie is sitting at a dining room table, just like Quinn was when he had his realization in “Gerontion.” Except this time Carrie is the one who everyone thinks is guilty of a crime she didn’t commit. So. Many. Parallels.

Ashley: Putting Carrie at the dining room table is interesting — she’s surrounded by empty chairs. You can’t help but think of all the people she’s lost, and yet another person is walking away. She’s completely alone.

Sara: ICONIC MOMENT IN TELEVISION HISTORY.

Gail: Did Carrie swipe a pair of Saul’s glasses from his house? They look similar to asset Anna’s glasses as well. Not sure if that means anything, but it’s interesting.

Sara: Gail, you can read my tin foil hat theory on that in this week’s TCWTW.

Sara: I love love love this transition that reveals the teacher in the photo is the Russian translator. It’s inspired.

Gail: Me too! I also love that she is in focus while everyone else is not, which adds importance to her character as well. The first shot of her mirrors the photo of The English Teacher. We don’t see her full face until she talks to Saul directly in this scene, a small detail that reveals who her character is important to.

Ashley: Her shoulders are squared, head cocked, listening — the contrast from the girl she was in the photo is evident even from behind.

Gail: Usually when a character is having an important moment, you see their face and reaction on camera, not the back of their head. Breaking that rule with Anna over and over again throughout the course of this scene is extremely effective. She’s a faceless, non-threatening fly on the wall and surely not the high-ranking Kremlin (and presumably male) official they are worried about.

Sara: The framing of these characters in this shot is amazing. Anna stands in the camera’s focus, head tilted ever so slightly. The other men don’t even notice. You can see how she’s been such an effective asset. Hidden in plain sight.

Sara: Kusnetsov’s book is Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. This is the last novel Dickens ever wrote, which is fitting here.

Gail: According to Wikipedia, the book explores the conflict between doing what society expects and the idea of being true to oneself. When you set that concept against Andrei’s role as a double agent, the theme takes on new meaning.

Ashley: Nerds.

Gail: Saul doesn’t yet know how important Anna is, but Michael Cuesta and Giorgio Scali are giving the audience a subtle clue here. By shooting Anna from a low angle it alludes that her character is powerful and has influence, something Saul will come to realize shortly.

Sara: We all agree that it was 100% intentional to cast an actress to play young Anna that looks just enough like Claire Danes to make you think, right? I don’t mean that Carrie is the lovechild of Saul and Anna (the timelines don’t match!). More that Saul has a type, no?

Sara: ...And in case we had any doubt that they’re drawing a parallel between Anna and Carrie, we have this transition. This episode is filled with loaded transitions.

Gail: Carrie in the center of the frame, caught in between the dark and light, is an ongoing theme this episode. We see it here again as she makes her way toward Saul’s library.

Sara: There are multiple pans over Saul’s giant collection of red books, most of the titles unreadable and blurred. But where do we land at the end? The camera holds on this book, A Woman’s Vengeance by James Payn. There is almost no info about this book on the internet, which leads me to believe it’s fake. Yet it’s in the public domain. Did they just like the title?

Gail: I read a little about it online. It was published originally in 1872, volume 2 of 3. I read an excerpt of it on Amazon, and the first chapter is titled “A Good Night’s Work.” Having this close-up shot of these books that follow our introduction to young Anna, Saul’s asset who is clearly a woman scorned, makes this book title (and the title to its first chapter) feel very fitting.

Sara: If the Wikipedia entry about The Secret Agent is any indication, this book is a doozy. Basically everyone suffers and dies at the end and an innocent person is accidentally killed.

Gail: That Wikipedia page is crazy! It also says that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, loved this book and closely identified himself with the character of the “Professor”... which ties into Saul’s alias, Professor Rabinow. I live for this stuff--always a mark of a good production when the depth of the details matches the intensity of the show.

Sara: The phantom horizontal line on the seven.

Ashley: That is like the ONE thing that I, Ashley, actually noticed and mentioned first. Give me a shout-out, man, I mean, DAMN.

Sara: Shout out to Ashley, who noticed and mentioned this first!

Gail: Homeland always gives us the best bokeh. I love its use here. We have a window into Saul’s biggest secret, the details surrounding it are hazy to us at first, and we can’t see the full picture yet--just like this shot.

Sara: IJLTP.

Ashley: I love how old-school Carrie is — she’s so visual, and in her own way, just like Saul. She lays it all out and uses her hands to put it together.

Gail: Her bulletin board, highlighters and thread have been replaced by notecards and old carpet that I’d like to think Mira picked out, but the result is the same as we watch Carrie put all of the pieces together. It’s HIGH RED y’all.

Sara: “High red,” omg. I’m obsessed with the sequence of Carrie assembling the book timeline and figuring out Saul’s method of communication. For me it’s one of the all-time best Homeland scenes.

Sara: The editing in this scene is exquisite. The use of jump cuts adds to the tension and uncertainty as Carrie herself attempts to splice together these disparate clues into something greater, some sort of truth.

The scene is almost completely free of dialogue. Claire has to convey Carrie’s journey to the truth here through only her actions. I love the shots at ground level of her literally on hands and knees flipping through the books. There is a sense of desperation and urgency to it that is thrilling.

Sara: The Smile.

Gail: I see what you did there and I approve. IJLTP.

Ashley: I’m a little surprised that Carrie isn’t a bit more conflicted here.

Sara: Cutting Carrie and Saul together at the moment where their minds finally sync is … quite literal, actually, but it works. In these twin shots of Carrie and Saul I’m struck especially by how Saul is against a light background while Carrie is cloaked in darkness.

Gail: These back-to-back shots give the impression that Carrie and Saul are on opposite ends of the same book which rings very true to me. The black and white imagery continues here as Sara points out. We see Carrie just barely ahead of the darkness, looking toward the light.

Ashley: Mandy just does things with his face sometimes and it’s amazing to watch.

Sara: Another extreme close-up of Saul as he realizes that Carrie lied to him.

Gail: Saul’s line from earlier in the season rings in my ears here. “You are vulnerable to him in ways neither of us can imagine.” But to build on my thoughts on his earlier close-up shot, I think it’s an effective tool for us to get a window into what Saul is genuinely thinking and feeling at that moment. The massive implications of Carrie’s involvement in a play being run by Yevgeny are devastating and Saul realizes it in one stunning and heartbreaking moment.

Gail: Anna saving Saul’s life gives so much more weight and importance to who she is to Saul. He owes her his life and, thirty years later, his career, too.

Sara: There is something fantastical about this part of the flashback. The backdrop and extreme lighting looks sort of … fake? It almost looks like they’re on a film set. I’m interpreting this as a reflection of Saul’s memory: we all want to see ourselves as the hero in our movie of our lives.

Sara: Shout out to Gail for realizing this Charlotte Benson character was featured last season with Ivan.

Gail: I love a good easter egg and a good callback. Details like this and recurring characters like Scott Ryan give their world realism. I stan.

Ashley: This is such a terribly effective moment in the show. We haven’t seen Yevgeny at all in this episode, and yet he’s ever-present; closing on “kill Saul” is so fucking… ugh. Stupid Homeland.

Gail: All of Yevgeny’s shots in this scene are done with a steady camera, which gives the impression (illusion?) of his control of the situation. Have we had a scene where Yevgeny isn’t leaning? My God, he’s even leaning when on Zoom for Spies.

Sara: As Yevgeny reveals the full extent of his play--“Kill Saul”--the camera zooms in on him. Eventually he takes up almost the entire frame. It gives the feeling of stakes being continually raised. And he’s still got that trademark smirk and nonchalance, despite what he’s telling Carrie to do.

Sara: Meanwhile, the camera stays mostly the same distance away from Carrie but pans in semi-circles around her, back and forth, back and forth. It’s an interesting choice as she comes to the realization of what Yevgeny is suggesting. The camera is almost like the wheels spinning in her head as she understands the full scope of the choice she must make.

Gail: As Carrie and Yevgeny go back and forth, each one trying to figure out what the other one knows, the shots start to go back and forth as well, mimicking their dance. In film and television production, there is a term called the 180 degree rule. What it means is that there is an imaginary line running through a scene, from side to side, with respect to the camera. The rule of thumb is that the camera should never cross the line because it causes the viewer to feel disoriented and confused. But when used effectively, we get the powerful effect that it had here in this scene. We (the audience) feel the same disorientation as Carrie, the same unsteadiness that is reflected in the handheld camera that shoots her. As I mentioned above, when we see Yevgeny on the computer screen, he is centered, steady and in control. Quite a contrast between the two.

Ashley: I repeat… stupid Homeland.

Ashley: We’ve seen so much darkness in this episode, mostly related to Saul — Carrie, for her part, has been pretty much in bright spaces. Despite everything that’s happened to her, I believe that this is the darkest point in her life.

Sara: Carrie hurriedly walks out of this vast, empty mansion as the lights dim behind her. The weight and horror of this decision is splayed across her face. The darkness follows her. The question now as we head into this final chapter: can she outrun it? Or will it finally catch up to her?

Gail: Staying just ahead of the darkness and trying to find the light. Here Carrie is again living somewhere in between.

#let's crack his spine open and see if there's a note #zoom for spies #we need alt titles for these now i guess?#homeland #homelandedit #in the director's chair #the english teacher #*#by: sara #by: gail #by: ashley #michael cuesta

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tophatsftw · 4 years

Text

I read this auto straddle post, and it spoke to me. let’s go lesbians.

what people are fighting about on Twitter

falconer

sensitive, white girl Ikea decor

being in the Midwest (cheese)

which craft stores are ethically sourcing their wool

why pie charts suck

Having multiple conflicting feelings at the same time

Mitski’s right hand in the Geyser music video

Nora Ephron

trying not to be a U-Haul Lesbian and also being a U-Haul Lesbian

Bottle-feeding kittens

my dog & her various doggy woes

being Very Online™

homophobic 80s-90s action/horror movies

Cate Blanchett

large appliances

screaming and crying in socially inappropriate spheres

Sandra Bullock’s entire filmography

Vermicomposting

unlikely instances of near death experiences

the neopets stock market

animals that look like people

Kristen Stewart’s facial expressions

Apocalypse prepping

Satanic philosophy and history

why queers love My Chemical Romance so dang much

casseroles

cultivating hobbies in your 20’s to feel alive again

a fascination with straight people’s behavior

I also am extremely into bees. Like, my dudes, you have — I swear to you, on my mom, that this is an absolute fact — never, ever met someone who knows or cares about bees as much as I do. Everybody says, “Oh, I love bees; hell yeah, save the bees!”… but they’re only ever talking about the European honeybee, apis mellifera, a species transplanted from its original endemic territory to support large-scale agriculture, a practice that has had a purely negative impact on the earth and upon ourselves ever since humanity’s shift to agrarian society from hunter-gatherer culture circa 3000 BCE. Have any of these people who “love bees” even HEARD of solitary species? Do they know about thyreus nitidulus, the neon cuckoo bee? It’s blue! It’s beautiful!

intersectional Satanic feminism

boobs??!

eating a 1lb bag of Sour Patch Kids in under an hour

MILFs

Cringey mid-2000s teen dramas that had too few lesbians

Paul Giamatti’s film and music career

baseball caps worn backwards

Amish romance novels

everything about donuts

wholesome thirst trapping

the Venn diagram of Janelle Monae and Carly Rae Jepsen fandom

insulting men who say gross stuff to me in my DMs

…cooking pasta?

saying embarrassing things that make me want to die in a hole

going on 100 first dates without ever getting a second

Committing to a bit that was never that funny to start with, but now that I’ve started you can pry it from my cold dead hands

knitting penis-shaped pillows

identifying what episode of The Nanny it is based on C.C. Babcock’s hair

running long distances very slowly

puppets, just all types of puppets

communications cables and antennas

girl groups of the ’60s

moss

The Devil Wears Prada Cerulean Monologue

telling people to quit things they should quit

power tools one can rent from Home Depot

Hayley Kiyoko (I’m a three-time award winner of the “Most Likely to Mention Hayley Kiyoko in a Piece Not About Hayley Kiyoko” award at [redacted publication])

Irish country singer Daniel O’Donnell

golden retrievers

geology, specifically volcanoes

Fyre Festival

The Boys Are Back In Town

Film bros and how to shut them down

ruining vegan cakes by accident

having two straight women as best friends

loud eyeshadow

horses, Jodie Foster

Which Lana Del Rey Song to Make Out To

Mid 2000’s MySpace/Emo Culture

lesbian weddings (not my own)

Charcuterie Boards

the perils of being Very Tall Indeed

media to watch while stoned

escape rooms

18th century satire

basket-weaving, I am not kidding do you want to see a picture of my basket

Hannibal Lecter

History of the ball-point pen

swords

old dyke stuff

I’m not a sex toy expert, but I’m sure I could learn

drawing ugly stick figures

70’s soft rock

A-Camp

Big Little Lies, the audiobook of Big Little Lies

middle aged actresses

Bath and Body Works candles

consuming popular media years after everyone else and letting people enjoy it again vicariously through you

how to take care of a backyard above-ground pool impulsively purchased at Target in Denver, a place with no water and weird weather (an ongoing investigation)

spending money I don’t have to support women on Kickstarter

a deep knowledge of 1800s British literature that I did not ask for

treating your plants as your children

HORSES

Should a Duggar ever come out, I am READY to write that article yesterday

aggressive inline skating

Barbra Streisand; circus history

identifying British birds

being an Appalachian in New York during the Year of Our Dumpster Lord 2019 when the New York Times seems determined to profile everyone I’ve ever been to Walmart with

being friends with theater people

how to make couples fall in love with you even when they totally thought they were just going to “try” a threesome “once” lol

Linoleum

#autostraddle #lgbtq

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killervibe · 5 years

Text

Chapter 2: The Clique

Caitlin couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe, she wasn’t even sure she could manage to blink, frozen numb. Her fingertips were white against her binder, gripping tightly to her notes as if it were her last strand of sanity.

She couldn’t do it. Not by herself, not when her hands were trembling and she was refusing to believe the truth, and she had to do it to protect him, and she had to stay where she was, walk the halls, wear her mascara, as if it won’t soon streak down her face—when all she wanted was to go back to yesterday and do it all over.

She fumbled with her cardigan, still shaking as she hung it on the hook, the school still too warm to wear anything but short sleeves. And when careful hands were on her back, spinning her around, her heart caught in her throat.

Cisco grabbed her hands, searching her face, his eyes were red-rimmed, and he had bags under them, a deep frown etched over, and she did that, she put it there.

“Caitlin, what’s happening, I don’t understand, why did you send me that text?”

Caitlin swallowed the lump in her throat, parting her mouth, but it was like her voice box had been ripped out, and she was helpless but to watch him stare at her, desperate for answers.

“Sweetheart,” he said softer, tone inflecting, and she flinched as he shook their joint hands. “Talk to me, please. It’s okay that you’re scared about something but please don’t push me away, I’m here.”

She tore away her gaze, feeling hollow inside, scooped out with nothing left for her to offer him. “These past two weeks—“

“—Were amazing—“

“—Were a mistake.”

He dropped her hands, horrified. “What?”

She couldn’t even recognize her own voice, when she continued, dull and stone faced. “They were a mistake. It never should have happened. We’re not a good fit, and should stay apart. I don’t like you the way I thought I did anymore.”

“Like?” he choked out, tears rimming under his big eyes. “You love me. I love you , since before I even knew what it was.”

She shook her head. “No. I’m done.”

Cisco’s hand went to his mouth, like he was trying to hide the sickness he felt. And Caitlin had to take her bag and walk away from him, leave him alone in the hallway to go to homeroom, so she did, forcing her feet to shuffle away, legs heavy like lead.

Mrs. DeVoe called attendance, and it was like every eye was on her, fear crawling up her skin. Caitlin stared down at her desk, waiting for her name to be called when Becky Sharpe sat down next to her.

“Hi, Caitlin,” she said cautiously. “Thanks for coming to see me but I was fine, just my usual, bad luck, you know.”

Becky had a bandaid over her nose, and Caitlin wanted to point out that it would do nothing for the break or to reduce bruising, but decided not to.

“The meeting wasn’t about you,” Caitlin said, flat. “It was about me. I broke up with Cisco.”

Becky’s eyes widened. She missed what followed, the aftermath, having had left early to be driven by her grandmother to the emergency room.

“Why?!”

“Because I had to.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, nauseous, and only opened them to raise her hand when Mrs. DeVoe finally called out her name.

“But you told me he loves you,” Becky whispered when call was over. “Why would you give that up?”

Hearing those words brought bile to Caitlin’s throat, and, suddenly, like a tidal wave, Caitlin was hit with terror over what she’d done. She scrambled from her seat, half grabbing her bag as she bolted, leaving her binder behind.

Her teacher yelled after her to demand where she was going, and the chattering classroom hushed over, craning their heads in unison to stare.

But she didn’t care, couldn’t care, wouldn’t care.

She nearly tripped in her shoes, and crashed violently when she cut a corner, her shoulder jabbing harshly against an edge as she sprinted to the ladies washroom. She threw her expensive bag onto the dirty floor when she got there, things smashing inside, and put her hands in her silver streaked hair, trying to breathe. She stared at her reflection in the badly washed mirror, and couldn’t recognize herself. The black on her eyelids, over her nails clashing terribly with her yellow summer dress.

How could she be so stupid? How could she think she could do both, one foot in each circle, like she could be the middle of a venn diagram. And why was she there in the first place? Why did she ever choose to ever think for one minute anything less than she knew was true?

Her mind was all over the place, not even able to hold onto a single train of thought. And then she couldn’t even do that, couldn’t even stand up anymore, shaking in this pathetic bathroom badly in need of renovations. Her chest was heaving and she tried to calm down, clutching her locket but broke down into sobs instead. Her back went sliding down one of the doors of the stalls.

This was it. There was nothing left. Nobody left. And everything is her fault. She was alone now. Utterly alone. No Daddy, no mom, not really, no Barry or Cisco. That’s gone forever. Broken, worse than last April, far worse, because she looked into his eyes and told him nasty lies, tore his heart in two, stomped on it and just walked away instead. And how could he ever love her again?

Who does she turn to now? And who would even care?

Only Lexi and her minions, and maybe Becky Sharpe, who was nice enough to hand her a kleenex when she needed one yesterday, but for all intents and purposes, didn’t really know her.

And, Lexi’s confession yesterday shook her. Caitlin threw up when she heard it, the fear in Lexi’s voice, and she knew that girl was defensive but she never knew why, didn’t understand why. And—She didn’t want to believe it, she really couldn’t dare, but what was Caitlin supposed to say, in the light of a second accusation? To let someone pour their heart out over their trauma and just brush it off like Lexi wasn’t sobbing when she’d told her what happened last Spring.

And so maybe she were the true loser here after all. And maybe she was blind to what everyone else saw, what the whole school warned her of last year that she turned her head from until she listened, and maybe letting Cisco back into her heart was weaknesses, or a desperate attempt to hold onto her innocence, before everything once dear to her was poisoned forever.

And she—She knew deep down this wasn’t right. That there was something wrong, but she didn’t know who to believe anymore, who to trust, but Cisco, liar or not, cheater or not, her boyfriend or not, was still Cisco and so she’d do anything she could to keep him safe.

And she wasn’t safe for him, she was the opposite. Caitlin wasn’t about to risk that, to put his everything on the line. So she had to give her phone to Lexi, and let her type in the words in the cafeteria before school started as the girls ate breakfast, after Lexi carefully asked why she hadn’t done it yet.

And when Caitlin said because she couldn’t, desperate to cling to the one good thing she had left, Lexi asked for her phone to protect you Caitlin, come on, we have to look out for each other. It’ll hurt today, but make you stronger. We can get through this together. Caitlin’s lip trembled, but she forced herself not to feel, not to look, unlocking her passcode, which wasn’t Cisco’s birthday anymore, because she changed that last May, and she buried her head in her arms on the table and stared at the graffiti scribbled there until Lexi said done.

Caitlin had taken her phone back, after that. Slid it into her pocket, put it on airplane mode and refused to see what came after.

Footsteps drew nearer down the hall then stopped. Caitlin looked up miserably when the door creaked open, bracing herself for whoever was about to see her in such a state.

It was Iris, and she stopped abruptly, her hand paused over the front zipper of her messenger bag, taking in the scene.

“Caitlin?” Iris hurried to her side, crouching down in her cute flats. “What’s wrong?”

Caitlin sobbed again, couldn’t help it, because she missed her but she missed Cisco too and how could she miss someone after screwing up her entire future with them?

“We broke up,” she gasped, burying her head in her hands. “We’re even now.”

“Oh my god, what?” Iris exclaimed, pulling her up. “Why?”

Caitlin’s mouth thinned in a straight line, and she pawed at the paper towel dispenser, trying to clean her face.

Iris went digging back into her bag, retrieving a makeup wipe.

Caitlin took it gingerly.

“Why won’t you talk to me anymore? Or to Barry?”

Caitlin ran the cold tap, and stuck the towel over her eyes, water dripping down her arms, as she took a shuddery breath.

She couldn’t tell Iris anything, Iris who was now the girlfriend of Barry, the best friend of Cisco.

The warning bell rang. Iris picked up Caitlin’s abandoned purse.

Caitlin reached for it, but Iris held it back.

“Look,” Iris said. “If this is about Lexi—“

“It’s not!”

“If this is about Lexi,” Iris continued, unafraid of being snapped at. “You should know she’s not the kind of person you are. She’s superficial, Caitlin, she’s all about playing games. It doesn’t matter how much she says she likes you, she’s the only person who wins.”

“This isn’t a game!” Caitlin wailed, the paper towel still damp over her forehead. She wished it were simple as that. That she could quit and put away a board into a cardboard box, and get back to real life, the one where she weren’t losing. “You don’t understand anything!”

Iris grabbed Caitlin’s wrist, jerking her hold on the paper down so she’d no longer hide her face. Caitlin startled, looking up at Iris staring sharply at her, eyes falling to her grip. “I don’t understand because you won’t tell us.”

Caitlin recoiled, yanking her hand back. “Stop pretending to care.”

She stalked out of the bathroom, breathing in shakily, telling herself to suck it up, and rushed to her first period class.

She walked into the science lab, trying to tell herself to calm down. It was chemistry. She was good at chemistry. And it was the first class of the semester, so most likely they’d review something really basic, like ionic compounds. She’d handle it. She’d totally be able to make it fine.

She’d be okay.

Caitlin kept repeating this in her head over and over until she half believed it, no longer on the edge of another panic attack.

She lined up against the wall with the rest of the class along the radiator, her classmates chattering as the teacher finally called them to attention.

“So,” Ms. McGee began. “As you can see this is the chemistry lab and we only have twenty five stations. This means every student will be assigned a partner for the remainder of the year. You will share equipment, perform experiments, write lab reports as well as complete two semester projects with your partner.”

Someone rose their hand. “Can we choose our partners?”

“No, it’s alphabetical order. Now let me do attendance. As your names are called I will direct you to the assigned work station.”

Caitlin was suddenly more alert, something going off at the back of her mind. She peered around at her classmates, looking for Becky, Lily or Ronnie, already calculating that she’d be paired with one of them.

The second half of the alphabet was prattled off. “Ronald Raymond?” The teacher looked at the remaining students, and Caitlin stepped back, shocked. Ronnie had never missed a day of school, rivalling Cisco for perfect attendance.

“Hmm,” their teacher said. “Well, he’s absent so Mr. Ramon, why don’t you take station sixteen instead?”

“Becky Sharpe, table two with the student teacher. We’d like to prevent further incidents, yes?”

Caitlin’s eyes grew with horror, at what that meant. “Miss Snow, you can go join Mr. Ramon.”

“What?” Caitlin blurted out, and the entire class went quiet, staring at her.

Cisco stopped tying his lab apron, looking up at Caitlin, weary, like he went through the longest day and they’ve barely started first period.

“Will that be a problem?” Ms. McGee prodded.

“Can’t I work with Becky?” she pleaded, shooting a glance at Becky, who had already somehow managed to spill three separate beakers, giggling nervously as the student teacher watched her like a hawk. Caitlin cringed. Her nickname was definitely not uncalled for.

“Miss Snow, I assigned you to table sixteen. I expect you to go there.”

Cisco remained quiet, and Caitlin felt stuck in her spot, glued to the floor.

“Miss Snow? Today please.” She looked back at her clipboard. “Lily Stein, table seventeen…”

Caitlin forced herself to shuffle her feet forward and sat at the stool. She dropped her bag to the floor and stared at the table blankly.

“Caitlin?” Cisco whispered. He put a hand to her shoulder, and Caitlin watched his hand there, just casually resting on her skin, like it belonged there.

It did.

It didn’t.

“This is just a class,” she forced out. “We’ll do our labs and that’s it, okay?”

“Caitlin.”

She looked up sharply, tears welling again in her eyes. “That’s it, okay?”

He held out her lab apron and she took it because she had to, then tied her hair up in a ponytail.

“So what,” Cisco said after awkward silence. “We’re just not even going to talk anymore? What the hell?”

They were going to do a simple experiment, testing out the equipment by boiling water with bunsen burners. Caitlin tried not to yawn, she’d been using bunsen burners since elementary school. She thought this was AP Chem.

“Oh the silent treatment,” Cisco noted when she didn’t reply, chuckling to himself as he turned on the bio-sink tap. “My baby sister knows that game very well.”

Caitlin took out her pencil case and dumped its contents out on the table, her lucky eraser falling out onto the floor, having shaken the bag a little too forcefully.

Cisco got it for her, placing it in front of her on the table. “You look very pretty today,” he said, and his hair rustled a bit underneath the band of his goggles. He blew at it, pulling his curtain of hair out of his face. “You always do.”

Caitlin furrowed her brows, digging her lead pencil into the paper, answering question one about required materials to perform the experiment in full sentences instead of the suggested point form.

“You should really tie your hair up. It’s a lab hazard.”

Cisco frowned. Caitlin returned to the worksheet.

Cisco plugged in the burner, and placed the beaker of water onto the platform, drumming his fingers against the desk as the gas flame ignited.

The water was just starting to boil when he took her hand. “Caitlin, what did I do? Did I hurt you? Because yesterday at lunch, it was like you could barely keep your hands off me, we were so happy, and I don’t understand what’s happened since.”

Did he hurt her? Does she even know who he is anymore? Does she really believe what Lexi said? What Cisco did?

It didn’t matter, she decided. In order for this to work, she had to act like he did.

She stared at his hand over hers. Soft, and gentle and she pulled it away, unable to believe she couldn’t have him anymore.

“I can’t—” she choked, her stool screeching back as she grabbed the handle of her bag and made a run for it yet again, throwing her apron onto the floor of the lab and bursting out the door, sprinting down the hallway.

She didn’t go to the bathroom this time, just kept going, turning corners until she made her way out the back door, ending up in the field.

She didn’t want to be here. She couldn’t be here. Not in chemistry class, not in the hallways, not even in that school. Her hands went to her face, but bumped against the hard plastic of the safety goggles, and she yanked them off. She took out her phone, wanting to dial her driver to pick her up, but hesitated.

Her driver would tell her mom she skipped school.

So she went to the App Store and downloaded Uber.

She dug through her bag for her debit card, realizing she forgot her binder in her homeroom class, and her compact mirror had smashed, shards littered at the bottom. She dug out the card from her wallet, walking distractedly to the bleachers as she organized her contact information, setting up her account and plugging in her payment method.

There weren’t any rides nearby, the closest car a good sixteen minutes away. She sighed, and raked her hand through her hair. The field was all but empty, a small gym class doing laps around the perimeter. She didn’t think she’d get caught, that people would find her here, but she wouldn’t know. Didn’t know what happened to runaways. She had always followed the rules. She had always done everything right, academically, anyways.

She’d get a detention. Or, her eyes widened, a suspension. A call home. Oh god, she was going to get yelled at. But it was too late to go back. Forget chemistry class, she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to show her face there again, her cheeks going red with downright mortification. She had talked back to Mrs. McGee, the teacher who she was eyeing on writing her letters of recommendation for Harvard.

She could only hope Cisco didn’t get excused to come find her, because she really ran out of words left to say.

Caitlin fidgeted, rubbing her exposed legs and missing her sweater left in her locker, wishing the minutes to go faster, staring at the icon of the blue mazda coming to pick her up from this hellsite so she could go home.

She didn’t notice the person walking up the silver steps of the bleachers from the other end, though she should’ve, the aluminum creaky, going taunt underneath her feet at the weight of another body making their way down her row.

“Hey, Caitlin.”

She squinted up at Eddie Thawne, the sunlight filtering through his blond hair, smiling down at her with his boyish charm. He threw his Adidas sports bag beside her and made himself comfortable, their knees grazed for a moment, Eddie casually leaning his elbows back on the bleacher behind them, stretching out his legs.

“You have free period now, too?”

Caitlin lied and nodded, wrapping her arms around herself. “Hi.”

They sat in silence for a minute, watching Wally West outrun his entire Sophomore class out on the field.

“Listen, Eddie…”

“You did the right thing.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, you did.”

Caitlin looked at him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “But it wasn’t my place. I did it to hurt Barry, but who I really hurt was you.”

Eddie shook his head and rolled his eyes like it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing because he wouldn’t look her in the eye, his foot tapping against the bleacher in a measured beat she knew was a nervous tick.

“I never stood a chance. My head was in the clouds, dreaming up futures with her, thinking we’d go to schools together and stuff. It was naive as hell. You saved me from a lot of trouble this year.”

“But you still love Iris.”

“Yeah.”

Caitlin sighed and Eddie saw her shiver in her sleeveless dress. He rummaged through his bag and passed her his varsity jacket. She took it because she was freezing, slipping her arms through the giant sleeves with a murmured thanks.

“No sweat,” he said, giving her an appraising look. “New haircut?”

“You can say it.”

“Wasn’t gonna!”

“My dad hated it. Said it looked like I was--” she stopped and gave out a weak half laugh, rubbing at her own eyes, frustrating that all she could seem to do today was cry. “I was auditioning for the role of a space martian in an Ariana Grande music video. I didn’t even know he knew who Ariana Grande was.”

Eddie laughed out loud, his voice rich and friendly. “I didn’t even know that you knew who she was. Everytime I see you, you’ve got your head stuck in some book.”

“I’m not that bad.” She scrunched up her nose. “Cisco loves that stuff.”

Her phone vibrated, saying her ride was 5 minutes away.

“How are things with Cisco?”

And she had forgot, for a moment, why she was out here skipping class for the first time, skipping school without an early dismissal.

She looked away, staring at the green grass. “We’re not together anymore.”

“That’s too bad. You two were pretty solid.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, I always knew Ronnie Raymond had a thing for you.”

Caitlin’s eyes widened. “...Uh. Yes, but—”

He saw her alarm and waved his hand at her, as if to say like, chill, I’m not telling you to get married.

“You should think about it. We deserve a second chance, you know? Iris isn’t my future. Maybe Cisco isn’t yours.”

Caitlin didn’t want to believe that.

Caitlin’s phone beeped again, she jumped up in the sun in another boy’s jacket, eyeliner smudged under her eyes, unsure what to do.

“I have to go—Uh, study.”

She tried to school her face neutral, like she wasn’t about to walk off the school property and get into a weird car with a weird driver she won’t know, hoping she wasn’t screaming I’m gonna ditch school for the first time right now because as you can clearly see, even if you are too nice to comment on it, I am an emotional wreck.

“...On the second day of school?”

“...Yeah,” she replied lamely.

She begun to shrug off Eddie’s jacket, but he waved her off again.

“Nah, keep it. We’re getting the new ones after practice today. You can give it back during another free period.”

“...Oh. Alright. Bye Eddie.”

Eddie slid on his sunglasses, “See you later.”

~.~

Uber wasn’t so bad. Her driver was steely quiet just like her own chauffeur. It was awkward, but she supposed that was the way it ought to be.

Caitlin climbed the steps to her house two at a time but paused at the entryway. There was mail in Caitlin’s mailbox. Flyers and enveloppes shoved haphazardly into the black rectangle with her address number embossed in golden script. It was jarring, she wasn't used to it, as silly as that sounded. Usually, she’d come home to find everything pristine, the mail already picked up by one of the house staff, and anything delivered for her already sitting neatly on her bed.

She reached in and took them out of the box, sorting through them. Most of it was junk, but there were lots of bills. Some for her mother, but most of them were addressed to her father, which panged her heart. One or two international cards with stamps in the corner were in the mix, and Caitlin realized they must’ve been late condolences from business partners of Tannhauser Industries.

She paused when she found a blue envelope with her name on it and maneuvered her hold on all the other items under her arm. Ripping it open, she found a sunny little card which read “I promise not to ask you how you are. Instead I’ll entertain you with gossipy conversation and weird memes.”

She nudged the edge open with her thumb, and read the rest. Her eyes began to burn with tears when she recognized the handwriting she’d been lying to herself that wouldn’t be inside.

Caitlin,

Saw this at a Hallmark where I was passing time after dropping Rosita off at her Ballet class. I knew you’d like the tea bags after that debate we had over whether black or herbal tasted better. Also, I think you deserve a card. I’d mail you one everyday but I’ve been informed back in 8th grade by a certain someone that was obsessive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I Love you & hang in there. We’ll do this senior year thing together and it’ll be better than last time, I promise.

Cisco

Caitlin swallowed harshly, and sat down hard on the steps.

This isn’t fair.

Her breath caught as her fingers ran along the ink of his message but she couldn’t even look at it anymore, so she closed it, and covered her eyes with her palms. A sob slipped out, and then she couldn’t stop.

The front door opened, and a voice startled. “Caitlin! What are you doing home?”

Caitlin looked behind her shoulder, but no words came out. Molida’s surprised, stern face softened. Caitlin’s housekeeper hurried down the steps, sitting down next to her.

“Miss Snow, what happened?”

Caitlin exhaled shakily. “I couldn’t do it anymore. So I left.”

Caitlin leaned into Molida’s side easily, her hair splayed against her shirt. Molida was warm and sturdy, with her arms wrapped around Caitlin. She may be the only person she had left in her corner. “Caitlin, I don’t understand. You’ve never skipped school.”

Caitlin looked up, meeting kind eyes and noticing the curly hair braided down her back. Molida had pen ink on her right hand, and three rings on the fingers of her left. She forgot how young she was. Only about fifteen years older than herself, and, Caitlin thought, not for the first time, that maybe her life would be better if Molida was her mother instead. She sort of was, in a way. Having started working here ten years ago. Caitlin was only seven then.

“I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t stay.”

“And why not?”

A car rolled leisurely down the street, and they both turned their heads to watch it pass by the gate. The sun was beating down stronger, and Caitlin no longer felt cold.

“I wasn’t ready to go back. It was so bad, please don’t make me go back.”

“Caitlin, it’s school. You love school, and you need to--”

“You’re not listening to me! I said, I can’t.”

“Excuse me?” Molida gave her a long, evaluating look. “...Okay. You’ll stay home. But I have to call your mother. And then I’ll call the school to excuse your absence.”

Caitlin bunched the sleeves of Eddie’s jacket into her hands, biting her lip, staring down at the pavement. She didn’t deserve that kindness, not after the way she snapped at her.

“Caitlin, I just want to help you.”

There was no way. Absolutely no way she could. Not with all of it. Not everything. Not...Not what really mattered. What really happened.

But her heart was twisting apart like a fraying rope, and she was tired and scared, and exhausted. Her hand went to her locket around her neck, trying hard not to think about the two people in it, the two she had now lost permanently, in very different ways.

Caitlin stood up silently and so did Molida, gathering the mail. Caitlin shielded her eyes with her hand from the glare of the sun, meeting her gaze. “I don’t think you can.”

~.~

Caitlin didn’t know how she got here.

“Do you want another one?” Shawna asked, handing out a fresh red Solo cup. She wore a purple crop top, and skintight black jeans. Caitlin’s eyes lingered on silver rod of her belly button piercing, unsure whether to be awed or horrified. That couldn’t have possibly been painless.

“Well, Snow? I’m trying to be generous, here.” Shawna’s eyes were a little glossy, her hair frizzier, half falling out of the bun she’d had it piled high on top of her head.

“Of course she wants,” Lexi swooped in, taking the cup and placing it in her lap. Caitlin’s fingers curled around the cylindrical shape, staring down into its contents.

Caitlin sat stiffly on the couch of Tony Woodward’s parents’ home. She’d had three drinks already, two cranberry vodkas, the only alcoholic drink she’d learned she enjoyed at Lisa’s older brother’s birthday party last month. It wasn’t awful, but even she knew it was badly mixed, leaning heavily to the side of pure liquor. Her third drink was the half warm cup of beer thrusted at everyone who entered the door that made her grimace the entire time she tipped it down her throat. “What is it?”

“The hell do I know,” Shawna laughed, “I didn’t mix it.”

Caitlin glared at her.

“Oh come on, liven up. Isn’t that the point? Remember how fun it was, at Len’s party?”

Caitlin didn’t know, honestly. She was so drunk she barely remembered. Cisco kept giving her odd looks when she never took her sunglasses off the next day.

Becky Sharpe intervened, holding her hand out from the other end of the couch. “Hold up, if Caitlin doesn’t want to drink anymore then we let her do that, right? Like, I don’t drink anymore because I get alcohol poisoning from, like, one beer. So she’s fine. We can be sober buddies.”

“What the hell is the point of coming to a Tony Woodward party if it’s not to get trashed?” Shawna yelled. “You need to stop being such a prissy ass, Caitlin!”

The girls all stared at her expectantly as Flo Rida pulsated through the bluetooth speaker.

And it was like. Okay. So Caitlin was new at this, but it’s not like she was an alcohol virgin, right? She’d take dainty sips of wines from her dad’s cup at home occasionally, and she did drink two weeks ago and Leonard Snart’s party.

It’s just, it was a school night.

And when Lexi came over, pulling her out of bed and fixing her hair, telling her she knew what would cheer her up, she didn’t say no. She wasn’t even sure if she could say no. But what was the use analyzing that? She didn’t say it anyway, so what was the point? It’s not like Caitlin was in the mood to start playing around with pushing her limits with these girls.

She peered down into the cup.

Alcohol made people forget heartache, isn’t that what they said?

Caitlin took the glass and drank it all, then asked for another.

And then another.

~.~

“So when are you going to tell us whose jacket you’re wearing?” Lisa demanded, shrieking into Caitlin’s ear. She had finally returned from making her rounds with her lipstick smudged, making out with everyone who’d let her.

Caitlin blinked, looking down at her attire. “Oh my god.” She grabbed Lexi’s arm, shaking it. “Oh crap. It’s Eddie’s!?” she couldn’t believe she forgot. Why hasn’t she taken it off!? Everyone is going to start assuming stuff oh crap. Crap crap crap.

“Oh. My god??” Lexi jumped up and down on her seat cushion. “Spill the deets!”

Caitlin took another gulp from her cup and frowned, thinking hard. “Well, I think--Like. He was just being nice, you know. And he….gave it to me.”

Caitlin squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a little woozy. Was that what happened? It was, right?

“When?” Lisa implored.

Caitlin opened one eye. “This….morning?”

“Oh, my god. Ohmigod he likes you!”

Caitlin used Lexi’s arm for support to pull herself up. “No Because Iris! Doesn’t matter because Cisco.”

She reached for her cup again, but maybe it was Lisa’s. Oops.

“I thought you two broke up?” said Becky.

“No!” Caitlin exclaimed, getting up on her feet. “Like, listen, okay. I can wear this jacket if I want. Because me and Cisco aren’t like, infinite anymore. Not for now. Maybe never.”

“That’s right,” Lexi enthused, raising her solo cup to toast. “You’re an independent woman!”

Lisa whooped, toasting with Lexi.

“It’s stupid. It’s all so stupid. Why would we be infinite?” Caitlin ranted, starting to pace. “Every smart person talks about infinity like it’s a thing you know, like it’s real but they never got there. Infinite is like...Not….Achievable, so why are they lying?”

“That’s so deep,” Lisa fawned. “But I don’t get it.”

Caitlin nearly tripped, sloshing her drink over the rim. This place was so crowded. And it was crazy because she didn’t care about any of these people. It’s like what Shawna said. She was such a nerd. She didn’t branch out and talk to people. No wonder she had no friends! Look at all the people here, they were so cool and interesting, and they weren’t Barry and they weren’t Cisco so maybe she could start scratch.

Yeah. Caitlin was going to start scratch. Central City High School was pretty big, and half of her graduating class was crammed in this very house.

She decided to share this revelation. “Okay! But, I think it’s like--Just because, like. Some things don’t work! Okay! Sometimes they don’t! And you have to accept that! You just start over! Like that song!”

“Oh!” Lisa tilted her head, snapping her fingers and humming an indecipherable tune under her breath, trying to jog the words to memory. “I know! Thank U, Next?!?”

“Yes!” Caitlin clapped her hands. “Thank U, Next. You know? You just,” Caitlin stopped abruptly bumping into Jake Puckett.

His eyes went wide. “Snow? What are you doing here?”

Okay why is everyone asking her that. Is she like, on the non invite list or something. As if, Tony Woodward could make a list.

Jake’s eyebrows climbed higher, laughing with disbelief.

Ooooh no. She said that out loud didn’t she. She gasped, covering her mouth. “Ohmygosh. That was so rude.”

“I like you drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” Caitlin asserted, “I’m--” She realized who she was talking to. “Hey! You. You….Gross….Ugh! Stop bothering Cisco! You’re not allowed to talk to me.” She shoved him hard out of her way, and he let her, surprisingly, turning on his heel. letting her go.

She made a beeline into the kitchen to get something for her throat, still grumbling about that jerk. Her throat was burning and she wanted water. But this wasn’t her fridge and this wasn’t her kitchen and she didn’t know where the nice glasses were. Also. She wanted ice.

But finding water was actually really hard, people were stuffed against each other around the table with liquor and she ended up with two more cups of stuff she spent that last hour and a half drinking.

Caitlin gave up after aimlessly searching for about five minutes, slouching her head over the counter by the stove.

Becky found her there moments later. “Hey, it’s getting late. I’m gonna head home. You wanna come?”

“Ughhhh.”

“....Is that a yes?”

She wanted Cisco to take her home. A violent shudder went through her, and she bit her lip, fighting the urge to cry. She doesn’t understand why her head feels so funny and why she’s here and why the music is so god awful and loud. And why isn’t Cisco picking up her calls? She sent him twelve snaps and he hasn’t opened any of them so she deleted the app and then unfollowed him from Twitter. She looked up to tell Becky but she was gone.

Lexi walked in then, worming her way though the crowd. She glanced at Caitlin, then turned to Shawna who was closely behind her. “Oh my god. She’s a mess.”

“This is all your fault!” Caitlin yelled, banging her first against the table.

“Caitlin, you drank too much. God, when I said to have some fun tonight I didn’t mean for you to embarrass us.”

“I’m not!” she insisted, hiccuping loud sobs all over again. This wasn’t fun anymore. What was she even doing here? Was she out of her mind? She just wanted Cisco and she wanted to go home .

Tony peered in. “Is that Caitlin Snow screaming? Can she shut up? This house is loud enough, I’m afraid a neighbour is going to call the cops or something.”

It was as if Tony wished it upon itself and it immediately came true.

“Oh hell,” he cussed.

Loud voices starting making a ruckus over the music and the bluetooth was immediately disconnected. Kids started to scramble, ditching their friends in an attempt to run out undetected, and four policemen stormed in like it was a raid.

Shawna grabbed Lexi by the hand, pulling her through the back door in the kitchen.

Caitlin stood frozen, eyes wide with terror.

A police officer looked down at his notebook, “Alright, where’s Woodward? I know this is his house--” he looked up and nearly dropped his pen.“Caitlin?”

She looked up at officer West. That was a mistake. The look of disappointment on his face made her want to disintegrate.

“Change of plans,” officer West said to his partner, jabbing his thumb out at Caitlin. “I know this one. She’s a friend of my kid.”

Iris’s dad exchanged some words with his coworkers, then walked with Caitlin out of the house.

The cold air hit her too hard, like she had just stepped off a rollercoaster at a Six Flags. She swayed, woozy, and she had to rely on the large hands guiding her into the cruiser car. “Do you have your phone?”

“Its dead,” she slurred.

“Alright.” He strapped her into the backseat. Caitlin shrunk into herself, fisting the seatbelt, and hiding her face into the leather material. She felt like a criminal.

The ride was very quiet. Caitlin stared out the window watching all the lights whizz by.

Eventually, about five minutes from her neighbourhood, Officer West spoke up.

“Caitlin you are a minor. And you’ve consumed a hell lot of alcohol at an illegal house party unsupervised with a whole bunch of rough kids. You’re smarter than that.”

“I called Cisco. He didn’t pick up.”

Officer West adjusted his rearview mirror so he could look at her.

“Why didn’t he?”

“He hates me.”

“Why on Earth would Cisco hate you? Lovers’ spat?” He chuckled, but quieted when she didn’t answer. “Caitlin?”

“He hates me.”

“Kid, I don’t think you’re hearing what you’re saying. That boy is so ridiculously in love it hurts my eyeballs to watch. There’s no way that’s true.”

That angered her. Because she was hearing what she was saying, perfectly fine. And maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But one day very soon, Cisco’s blinding optimism she had fallen in love with will wither away, and for what she’d done to him, for the way she’s breaking the years they shared, there was no doubt in Caitlin’s mind that he was going to grow hate.

“Don’t you think I wouldn’t do something crazy unless my life was falling apart?”

Officer West paused, and pulled over on a side street. He twisted backwards and removed his black beanie.

“Caitlin. I know you’re struggling because of your father. You have real, raw pain in your heart and I understand that. My father died too when I was young and I was only left with my mother. But you need to handle grief in another way. A way that won’t put you in danger or isolate you. One with support and people who actually care.”

Caitlin blinked rapidly, her eyes welling with tears.

“But Grandma Esther loves you and Iris. You were still loved.”

Officer West’s face twisted. “You don’t think your mother loves you?”

Caitlin’s shoulders started to tremble and she pulled her legs up, dropping her head to her knees, unable to voice her thoughts aloud.

Nobody does anymore.

Joe made a grunting sound, and turned back around, turning on the windshields to wipe away the sudden rain.

“I'm gonna bring you home.”

~.~

Officer West got buzzed in through the gate and Caitlin’s mother came running down the front steps, meeting them down the driveway.

She gasped when she saw Caitlin and the state she was in. Her hair matted to the left, eyes incredibly red and puffy. And to make matters worse, she was still in Eddie Thawne’s jacket.

“Carla, did you know your daughter was not at home?”

Her mom crossed her arms over her satin robe, her reading glasses perched on the top of her head. “Our housekeeper informed me she had skipped school. It was my impression she was still here until half an hour ago.”

Iris’s dad frowned. “You never realized she wasn’t home?”

Mom shot him a look of disdain. “Officer West, I’m certain you’ve been in my home.”

“Yes I have,” he replied, without a beat.

“Then you know how large it is, and how easy one can slip away. Clearly, my child has lost the privilege to be entrusted with such responsibility of entering and leaving without permission. That ends tonight. Where were you?”

Caitlin shivered in the cold, eyelashes still clumped together from tears, as she looked up at her. “...A party.”

Her mother narrowed her eyes. “ Did Francisco put you up to this? And is that why you skipped? Some kind of senior’s prank? I don’t find that funny, Caitlin.”

“Cisco had nothing to do with this,” she said, tired. Caitlin pushed past her mother, “I told you I’m not speaking to him anymore. And I don’t want to talk to you either.”

She ignored whatever angered retort her mother threw at her back, going up the long driveway to go inside.

Caitlin was certain she was going to throw up, but she never did. She went to her bedroom and walked past her mirror. She paused, staring at her own reflection, feeling sick in a different way from the twisting in her stomach. She still had the black over her eyelids, and the black on her nails and the gaudy yellow sundress she now hates over the stupid varsity jacket.

She yanked it off, throwing it to the ground and pushing it out of her sight. It didn’t belong on her. She shouldn’t have taken it. It felt like cheating. It was wrong. And it was wrong to get drunk and it was wrong to go to the party and it was wrong to skip school and it was wrong to yell at Molida and it was wrong to snap at Iris and it was wrong to embarrass Cisco in front of the entire chemistry class. It was wrong to think she was worth one penny to him anymore, and it was wrong to miss his touch and his goodnights in her ear before drifting off to sleep like every night since he’d first learned how to use Armando’s ancient iPhone in the seventh grade.

But it wasn’t wrong to break up with Cisco. Her bottom lip trembled, and she turned her head away, unable to even look at herself.

She crawled into bed, curling into a ball on her side, with everything else still on. Even the lights.

#the flash #killervibe #tkv fic #cisco ramon #caitlin snow #lux et veritas

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