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#the whole !!! the whole history being based on something inaccurate and one-sided and the walls literally breaking down.

otp-holic · 3 years

Text

The one place (where something happened) (A03)

“In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.” Alice Munro. (or the one where they receive a letter from a familiar name and we go into 4Ks of fluff around a lost afternoon in France)

4K. Lamely explicit at one point. Fanfic + Pictures Inside. Trigger for FLUFF as the main plot. Part of the Never let us lose what we have gained series (AO3)

This was supposed to be a manip with 200 words of bantering and it's now 4Ks of fluff with a few pictures. I've decided to leave them inside the cut because I feel they work better with its context there. I'm sorry for the hassle, but I really hope you give this a chance... unless you have cavities, only like fics with amazing plots or are allergic to shameless fluff.

Please do not repost the pictures, I know this is futile, but… I try :)

DAGUERROTYPE, France 1944 Private Collection.

Steve is cooling down from his very early run, enjoying the feeling of the pink sunrise looming over the awakening Brooklyn streets as he walks the last couple of blocks on the way home, when his phone beeps.

“Check your actual mailbox, we dropped something for you there. I think you should appreciate us making it old-fashioned just for you, grandpas!”

Steve smiles at Sam’s text and as soon as he arrives at their building he snaps a picture of the very common and flat envelope with “Barnes&Rogers” scribbled on top of a Stark Logo, to send along his response.

“Nice try, but this is inaccurate. A letter would have never made its way to us without an address or stamp. We’ll send you a proper thank you card to show you how it’s done.”

He can’t help but chuckle at his own joke rereading the text while he opens the door, and when he looks up from his phone and into the kitchen, he is received by a sleepy Bucky looking at the coffee machine like he looks at Steve during their most soft and embarrassingly cheesy moments.

“You love that thing more than you love me, confess it.”

“In the mornings? Yes. I don’t even like you in the mornings most of the time,” he answers matter of factly. “Want some?”

Steve playfully wiggles an eyebrow.

“No way. Your sweaty self is tempting, but coffee smells better. I might join you in the shower later.” Bucky offers him one of the two cups he has poured and he notices the envelope Steve is holding. “What is that?”

“We’ve got mail!” He hands it to Bucky. “I have no idea what's on it, but Sam texted me to say they had something delivered to our mailbox and there it was. Open it.”

Bucky leaves the cup on the counter, face sparked with a curiosity that makes him look twenty-one (and Steve weak on the knees), and goes for it.

The content is a bit underwhelming at first glance: Another envelope, white, no Stark logo, but topped with a bright green post-it with a note on Pepper’s script.

“This got to me via PR. We analyzed it and checked with the source (no peeking, I swear) and it seems legit. With that return address, it’s likely to arouse your interest. Love, P.”

Bucky tears off the post-it and the letter is revealed to be addressed to Steve Rogers at the Stark Tower, but it is when they turn it around when everything goes still for a second.

The return address is some street in Marseille, but what has Steve’s mouth dry and Bucky’s hand trembling just a bit is the combination of the place and the name written on top: Emmanuelle Jaques Dernier.

“Boom?”, Bucky says, trying to cut through their heavy hearts and taking Steve’s hand. It’s a terrible terrible joke, but Dernier would have loved it and he grins.

“That’s a terrible terrible joke,” Steve verbalizes, “but I think at least we’ve reached the same conclusion.”

“Elementary, my dear Steve,” Bucky answers as he opens the second envelope, only to reveal a folded letter and yet another envelope. “It’s a fucking vault of paper!”

Steve takes the letter from him, unfolds it, and quickly scans it (normal office paper, printed, hand-signed) before he starts reading it out loud to Bucky’s undivided attention.

“Dear Mr. Rogers,

My name is Emmanuelle Dernier and I am the great-grandson of Jaques Dernier of the Howling Commandos.

First, let me tell you that we all in our family grew up with amazing stories and praise for you, Sergeant Barnes, and the rest of the team. I never got to meet my great-grandfather or any of them (you), but I’ve always felt like I did.

In fact, that’s the ultimate reason behind this letter: I ached to honor him and I’ve been putting in order all his remaining letters, pictures, and memories so they don’t get lost forever, and there are many things I’m discovering through this journey. So many pictures and tiny details… and amongst them, you and the rest of the Commandos appear at the most random and memorable moments. Nothing that’s going to make it into history books, more like the stories my grandpa used to share with us over and over again, those important tidbits that make him more human.

Anyway, I was going through the pictures he kept when I came across some war photos that didn’t seem to match the 40s timeframe. Typical daguerreotypes from the 20s in a very bad state, probably taken with a camera from the era in 1944 and developed on a later date by somebody who clearly didn’t master the technique.

They were in a very bad state and hidden inside an envelope that said “Terribly drunk soldiers in France making idiots of ourselves in unique and creative ways. Fun evening, horrible hangover. About 20 miles west of the Maginot Line. Autumn ‘44”. I’m attaching a photocopy of that, I hope you can understand my decision to keep the original.

After restoring the daguerreotypes with some experts, all I got were five very bad pictures with silhouettes of people apparently having fun…. but there was one that got a lot better in the cleaning process that feels important somehow. I’m sending the original, as well as the restored version I got.

I, of course, don’t have the whole context, but I hope it brings back a good memory. My great-grandpa might be in the picture, but I don’t think this one belongs to my family or to a museum.

Thank you for your service, I really hope this letter finds its way to you.

E.Dernier.”

“I can’t believe… Steve, most days I’m convinced that day and that place are a figment of my imagination,” Bucky smiles, remembering. “When I think of a moment of pure joy during the war, I think about that afternoon in France, and it always feels unreal. A bubble of air and laughter while we were so surrounded by death.”

Steve nods, reminiscing about that warm and humid September morning when they arrived at yet another abandoned and destroyed little village, this one about twenty miles west of the Maginot Line. They had orders to lie low and wait for twenty-four hours before they started the maneuver to wipe another Hydra base off the map, and that little town was perfect for that.

Among bomb debris and fallen walls, they found one small building miraculously standing next to the remains of the church, so they decided to set camp under a roof for a change since the weather was being a little flickery with the rain, and they had the rare luxury of time.

The inside of the tiny house was as unusual as the outside: nothing was destroyed beyond being dusty and worn by time, and everything they found (furniture, kitchenware, and even fabrics) belonged more to Steve and Bucky’s early childhoods than to 1944, a living museum frozen in time.

Only it was not a museum, but the parish house left untouched and non-raided: old-fashioned clothes, outdated church books, yellowing clergy collars, and, of course, the wine cellar. Oh, that wine cellar… the havoc it unleashed.

“I remember the absolute excitement when Falsworth found all those bottles of old unscathed mass wine from the parish,” Steve brings his memory to words, looking at Bucky, “I’m still a little convinced that we are going to hell for drinking them.”

“Not for that, probably, but it was a wonder nobody died on the spot of wine poisoning, it tasted like sweet vinegar, ugh.”

“But it did his part, right? Took our minds off things; got us drunk, bold and silly.” Steve answers.

“Apparently not all of us,” Bucky says very seriously, looking at Steve.

“Technicalities… I got drunk by proxy. Seeing you all so happy made me giddy and tipsy, too.”

“I came and went… I remember being a little surprised at the clarity of my thoughts at some moments there when some of the guys were basically drooling on the floor. Now I understand, of course.”

Steve squeezes his hand, not much to be said there.

They were already way too drunk by the early afternoon, drinking to the sound of a sudden rainstorm pouring outside. All of them scattered across the small dusty living room and its adjoining kitchen while they went through all the bottles of wine they had been able to find. Cheering for the foregone priest every time somebody raised a glass, and laughing as if there were no ruins or war on the other side; just silly men (boys, really) laughing their hearts out.

“Earth to Steve… I don’t know about you, but I’m dying to see what the hell that envelope is hiding. Especially now that we know about its time stamp.”

“I’m sorry, me too! Gabe drunkenly handling that old camera and those glass plaques the way he did? I’m honestly impressed that he was able to take any pictures at all,” he muses. “Shit, is it weird that I’m nervous?”

“I’m gonna save us the bantering because I’m nervous, too,” Bucky answers in all sincerity. “Truth is, Steve, I remember everything about that day.”

It’s a new admission, a newly opened door for them because for some reason, they have never talked about that peaceful surreal afternoon, and Steve nods in recognition as he silently goes for the envelope one-handed, not wanting to let go of Bucky’s hand because his surface is way cooler than his wrenching insides. Maybe the picture is an overexposed french wall but maybe…

The photo he extracts from the envelope is clearly the original and damaged one Emmanuelle specified in his letter. Anybody else looking at it would see nothing beyond Dernier’s blurry profile, but since Steve and Bucky were there when this was taken, they know exactly what moment Steve is holding in his hand.

“Buck,…” is all Steve can say, struck by the blurry keepsake.

Later in the afternoon when they had already consumed most of the wine and there was not a single coherent thought left in the room, one of the guys took the parish books and besottedly announced that there was a wedding set for today… thirty years ago. Alcohol fueled a goofy idea that escalated at the speed of light, with Morita saying they were going to a wedding because they deserved a celebration, Dernier confessing that he had once considered becoming a priest, and Dum-dum bringing out all the old fashioned clothes from the wardrobe and deciding they were getting nice and clean for the festivities.

“That’s clearly Dernier in the picture killing it in his priest role, right?” Bucky says, half smiling and interrupting Steve’s thoughts. “You know, I went all-in with that fake wedding party. I was laughing to tears when I saw you put on that ridiculously long and ill-fitting jacket from the 10s, feeling weightless and silly for the first time since sailing off, and God knows we all deserved that. And it was all safe and light-hearted until fucking Morita decided you had to be the groom, and...”

“Were you jealous because I won the dashing groom competition?”

Steve’s attempt at a joke is weak, but there’s truth behind it: Morita chose Steve as the groom (“Cap, you are the most dashing and the least drunk”) to a chorus of excited voices cheering for him. Somebody else, most likely Dum-Dum, chose the rest of the roles (Sarge, best man duty; Jones, camera; Morita, keep the wine flowing; the rest of you, misbehave!) and in the blink of an eye, they were all going outside laughing under a light rain, and about to celebrate Steve’s fictional wedding to nobody.

“How could I be jealous?” Bucky cuts in. “Do you remember all you said to me that afternoon? During World War II and in front of a battalion of men?”

“I was drunk.”

“Fuck you!” Bucky disentangles his hand from Steve’s to use both of them to hold Steve’s face and kiss him with violence. “Tell me. Do you remember what you said?”

As if he could ever forget. He can recall every step he took from the house to the makeshift wedding spot amidst the trees where his best man (looking dapper even in that ludicrous jacket) was laughing along Dernier. He can still smell the petrichor, can still sense the blush coloring his cheeks while hoping nobody noticed and can still hear the beating of his heart when Bucky handed him a battered umbrella (“You don’t deserve to get rained on your wedding day, punk”) and a fucking ring made out his shoelaces (“You’ll have to buy something a little more permanent.”). And then…

“Dernier started the ceremony and he wanted to know if I had somebody in mind and I said ‘of course’.” He replays, his voice barely a whisper. “I said I’d had my eyes on a brown-haired Brooklynite since before I could remember. I said that I was pretty sure those blue eyes were set on mine too and that hopefully those eyes would be set enough to want to marry me even if I had never dared to ask.”

He’s been holding Bucky’s gaze the whole time, and he’s far from over yet, but he needs to fucking breathe before he goes on. Neither of them has moved a muscle for the past minute.

“Then he asked me to repeat the wedding vows after him and…”

“And you said Buck, right?”, Bucky interrupts, voice winded. “You fucking whispered I take you, Buck, as my lawful wedded husband till the end of the line. I heard, Steve. Even if the rest of the world didn’t, I did. But you never said anything, so I always deemed it impossible, a product of the corniest nook of my mind trying to outweigh all those bad things, because not even you could be as bold, reckless, and mushy as to do that,…it’s my fucking fault, I should have known better!”

“Not completely reckless, pal. I was scared shitless as I said those words, but what else could I do? You were right by my side about to put a ring on my finger as my “best man”, everyone, including you, supposedly drunk past recollection, and everybody else too far away to hear my whispers. It was such an easy choice in the end because truth should always win over fear. And those vows were. The truth.”

“You have always been too honest for your own good, Rogers,” Bucky is breathless and exasperated and goes for his mouth again, bringing in all he (they) couldn’t in 1944. “You destroyed me, Steve. My knees were as weak as a teenager’s in front of his first crush. I wanted to kiss you so badly when I heard you say all that there in the open… and I couldn’t even acknowledge it.”

“I know. And for what it's worth, I really thought you didn’t remember.”

It is too much. Is it normal to feel this much? Steve would blame it on the serum enhancements, but he was already overwhelmed at 16, so that’s clearly not the answer.

He craves, no, he needs touching, grounding, closer. Bucky. There’s too much space between them even if they are back to kissing like they would have that day in 44, and at any other time if their own lives wouldn’t have stolen those moments from them.

“It happened.” Bucky whimpers, biting on Steve’s lip who abandons his own stool to straddle him, both of them gasping in sync at the feeling of their cocks, hard against each other’s through their soft pants.

Bucky soon ups the stakes by carding his metal hand through Steve’s hair pulling his head backwards to help himself into that spot on his neck.

“Same two moles as when you were tiny, as when we were at that war... Your cute vampire bite. Favorite spot.” He licks on them with the tip of his tongue. Steve growls on cue and Bucky giggles. “Favorite chain reaction.”

“Buck, you cheater, you know what that does to me!” Steve cries out followed by Bucky’s evil chuckle.”Bed, couch, countertop,…I don’t care, but naked. Now. Stained pants due to heavy petting are too much of a trip down memory lane for me. Let me keep a bit of my dignity.”

Steve stands up liberating Bucky from his grip but aching at the loss of contact.

They are naked and making out in the middle of the kitchen in no time; Bucky steadily pushing him against the refrigerator while fiercely grinding against his crotch.

“Hey, ‘teve,” Bucky pants. “The way this is going, it’s my dignity now that's at risk. I don’t think I can make it further than the floor before I come.”

Steve groans into his mouth just at the thought and they start sliding to the floor the best they can until he’s a human blanket moving over Bucky. With no lube at hand, and no time, that’s their best option.

They kiss and kiss and kiss, his hands not leaving Bucky’s sweaty hair. Bucky’s hands on his ass, forcing their groins closer with one while he (almost absently) plays around his hole with the other, driving Steve crazy in the process. Dicks left to do their own thing through pressure and friction. Everything is working. And fast.

“Oh, fuck!” Bucky exclaims “Can you promise me all this stuff with the letter was real and not a long-con plan to assure your fragile masculinity that I love you more than I love that espresso machine?”

That. That silly unfunny excuse of a joke that screams Bucky all over is what pushes Steve all the way over the edge. He fucking laughs as he comes making absolutely embarrassing sounds, pressing their foreheads and noses together until it hurts, and shaking from head to toe without stoping his pressure on the stupid and smug man under him. His lover. His partner. His unofficial husband. His best friend.

His Buck.

“There’s still too much blood in your brain if you can play that dirty,” Steve states, placing one hand between them grabbing Bucky’s hard cock. “Let’s see if I can do anything about it.”

“Your hand, usually so helpful, but I was already following you after that sound you make when you come and laugh at the same time, shit, it always goes straight to my dick, I’m,…” he keeps talking with difficulty between breaths and moans until he leaves his speech unfinished coming all over Steve’s fist.

They kiss on the lips breathing into each other before Steve rolls over. They are sticky and panting in silence, spread on their kitchen’s floor, Steve’s shoulders crushed between Bucky’s and the dishwasher. Domestic bliss at its most literal.

One lavish fuck and two showers later they reemerge into the kitchen in search of something to eat: Bucky is in charge of the food today, while Steve cleans the mess they left a couple of hours ago.

He’s decluttering the counter when their damaged picture laying there puts a smile on his face but also reminds him of the restored version presumably still waiting inside the disregarded letter, so he grabs the envelope to retrieve its contents: one photocopy (from Dernier’s original writing), and the promised photo.

And it is restored. Everything is clear where it was blurry before: Dernier (so deep into his priest impersonation that he’s not even looking at them), the trees, the battered umbrella, the ridiculous jackets… and them.

“You had the nerve to call me reckless and mushy, Buck?” Steve laughs as he stares at the picture where a very young Bucky is about to put a ring on his finger with the least subtle lovestruck expression he’s ever seen (“and it’s for you”, his brain proudly reminds him) “Wow, you might as well be kissing me there, anything would be more subtle than this!”

“Don’t shame me, you punk, especially not when you were the one responsible for breaking my brain back then!” Bucky answers coming from behind and stealing the picture from his hands to scrutinize it. Goofy grin and raging blush quickly taking over his face. “But you’re one to talk, Cap. You are gazing at that shoelace’s ring as if I were handing you a diamond tiara!”

Steve laughs softly at that and moves his right hand to his pocket, feeling the weight of the little compass he had retrieved earlier from one of his drawers. He used to carry it with him everywhere for comfort, but he has a better option now.

“Didn't you know that shoelaces are forever?” He asks, taking the compass out of his pocket and holding it in both hands as he opens it, nudging Bucky with his elbow to get his attention.

Bucky is confused for an instant while he looks at his young face staring at them from inside the little box. Of course he knew that (he made fun of Steve for days and days) but Steve detects the change in his expression when he notices the other thing.

“Wow, you gigantic sap,” Bucky says, taking the compass out of his hands to double-check he is seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. “You saved my shoelace.”

He had. While they were all celebrating his wedding under the rain dancing to no music, he quietly slipped the little string off his finger and tied it to the most secure place he had back then.

“It’s not a shoelace, you jerk, it’s a symbol. A declaration.” He laughs, stealing the compass back to safely pocket it again.

“You are delusional,” Bucky snorts, kissing the top of his head. But he’s widely smiling and lost in thought as he goes back to their sandwiches.

Steve stays on the spot enjoying the peace in their silent companionship, his focus on the latest news showing up on his phone, the text he’s writing to Sam and the comforting sounds of Bucky moving around the kitchen.

“You might have married me, but I never actually married you.” Bucky blurts out of the blue a bit later, sitting by his side as he hands him a plate with a sandwich and some grilled greens on it. “Do you want mayo with that?”

“Uh?” Steve forgets all about the news and the text and looks at Bucky in confusion.

“Mayo, do you want some?” Bucky repeats nonchalantly.

“No mayo, thank you; but I was actually more interested in the other part, you know, that thing about marriage?”

Bucky looks him in the eye: earnest, blushing and with the same look of smug adoration he had on the picture.

“Oh, that part.” He jokes. “You apparently married me in 1944, but I never married you back. And I would like to.”

“Marry me?” Steve asks and Bucky visibly nods.

“I’m sorry for throwing the idea at you like this, books tell me I'm supposed to have candles, music, and a ring, but you showed me that restored picture and I couldn't stop thinking about it, about proof,” Bucky speaks uncharacteristically slow and very softly, voice trembling here and there while he claps his hand with Steve’s finger by finger for reassurance and as a distraction. “A single photo had the power to transform a moment that existed just as a made-up happy place inside my mind into something tangible and real. Something that would be tangible and real for anybody getting a hold on it and looking at our stupid faces.”

“So stealthy,” Steve says, and they both laugh together.

“Proof, Steve. I was slicing tomatoes and thinking how there’s so much evidence, thousands of files! out there proving that all the stuff that fuels my nightmares were real, but nothing solid about this. Us.” Bucky stops for a moment collecting his thoughts, still smiling even with the heavy subject he just dropped into the mix. “Sorry, I believe I put more time into these sandwiches than into thinking this all the way through so I’m…”

“Take your time, we’ve gone from mayo to marriage to nightmares in five minutes so don’t worry, you have me hooked here.”

Steve makes Bucky laugh again as he intended, and he feels their calloused laced fingers immediately squeezing closer.

“It’s stupid because it doesn’t change anything for us but,.. I don’t fucking know, Steve, I think that picture has messed up with my mind! I instantly found comfort in the idea of people finding facts beyond the nightmares now or in the future. An easy to understand, universal and oversimplified proof of how much I loved you and how much I was loved in return.” Bucky takes a breath and stares at him sporting a million-watt smile. “Marrying you,… I would really love that. And for real this time.”

“Ok, Buck.” Steve instantly replies, eagerness winning over thoughtful and heartfelt declarations. He tightens the grip on their joined hands to drive them to his lips and seals the easiest answer he’s ever had to give.

And it's done!Sorry for the cavities, for going on with the fic when it should have ended and for ending it where it might have had to keep going. It was painful and fun. I'm free!

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crystalstar8 · 3 years

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Knights of the Night (ch 7)

Chapter 7

Ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5, ch 6, ch 7

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139240/chapters/71536491

pairing: Jungkook x oc

genre: vampire au, college au, twilight, romance

word count: 1,367

warnings: blood (obviously), kidnapping, child kidnapping, needles, France

notes: vampires, vampire au, college, college au, so many twilight references, blood, needles, kidnapping, children, homelessness, dance, ballet, flashbacks, romance, slow burn, probably no smut, idk yet tho, France, French things, attempted genocide, inaccurate French history, bisexual main character, @strawberriewithchocolate-blog @mozy-j @daechwitad-2 @zobadak

summary: Catalina starts college in a small town all the way across the country. She doesn’t know anyone and isn’t exactly looking for friends. She just wants to focus on dance. But when she meets fellow dance major, Jimin, and adventurous, fellow freshman, Jungkook, Catalina ends up discovering a whole new side to the small college town; one that is dangerous but oh so enticing…

After they had shown the ghost hunting documentary at game night, which everyone had loved, Jungkook declared that he was thirsty and was going on a hunt for beverages. That’s how Catalina found herself searching the front of the house for the garage with him, since Taehyung said, “There’s soda pop in the garage refrigerator.”

They ended up in a back kitchen, which connected to a mudroom, which led them to the garage. The garage was filled with ancient looking equipment and a tractor so rusty, Catalina figured she could shatter it with a good tap.

“Here they are!” Jungkook said, facing two refrigerators against the wall.

“Which one is for the soda pop?” asked Catalina. Jungkook opened both at once. The one on the left was filled with pop, beer and a single head of moldy broccoli. The other was filled with…

“What do you want? Coke?” Jungkook asked, closing the other fridge and reaching into left one.

“Wait, what was in that other fridge?” asked Catalina. She opened the one on the right. Blood bags. It was filled with blood bags. They both gasped.

“The secret soda pop,” Jungkook whispered. Catalina slapped his arm.

“Jungkook! Why do they have these?” she asked. Jungkook shook his head.

“I don’t know. Maybe one of them is a doctor or something?” he said.

“Probably not,” Catalina thought for a moment. “Not a word about this to anyone. We’ll discuss it later. Let’s just go enjoy game night. We probably shouldn’t stay the night though. Just in case.”

“Right. Got it. So, coke?” he asked, pulling an entire case of coke out of the left fridge.

“Yeah, coke is good,” Catalina nodded.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that night, Catalina sat up in bed on her laptop, unable to fall asleep. She just couldn’t stop thinking about what she saw in that fridge. She opened Google on her laptop and typed in “vampires”. Most of the sites that came up were about vampire novels or movies. She typed in “vampire history” instead. This gave her a bit more. There were tales about bloodsucking monsters all over the world. In Europe, they were considered demons or witches. There were many names for them throughout the middle east and Asia, but all the stories had the same few things in common: red eyes, superhuman speed and strength, unnatural beauty, and the need to drink human blood.

Catalina closed her laptop and sat against the wall, since her mattress was still on the floor against the wall. She had seen enough. Catalina knew what she needed to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The front door looked less intimidating than it did the first time Catalina had laid eyes on the house, but her heart still pounded in her chest as she raised a hand to knock. She waited a few seconds before the door opened. It was Namjoon. Catalina’s heart stuttered. God damn, he is so beautiful…

“Oh, hi!” he said. “What are you doing out so late? Not that I mind seeing you- I mean…”

Catalina giggled and momentarily forgot why she was here. Namjoon scratched the back of his head.

“Um, anyway, come on in,” he said.

“I was actually wondering if we could go for a walk,” said Catalina. Namjoon nodded and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. He led Catalina into the woods on the cobblestone path.

“Is there something you wanted to talk about?” he asked as they strolled side by side. Catalina felt her heartrate pick up again.

“I know what you are,” she said. Namjoon stopped and faced her.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Don’t play dumb Namjoon. I know what you are,” said Catalina. The confusion melted from his face, replaced with an intense gaze.

“Say it,” said Namjoon.

“You have blood red eyes, and all of you are unnaturally beautiful. I haven’t seen it, but I bet you have superhuman strength and speed,” said Catalina. “I saw the fridge in the garage. It was filled with blood bags.”

“Say it,” Namjoon said again. “Out loud.”

“Vampire.”

“Are you afraid?”

“I know you won’t hurt me,” Catalina said, looking up at him.

“You know the risk, and yet, you still want to see us,” he said.

“You’re not a killer.”

“I’m a predator, Catalina. Everything about me is meant to draw you in. You couldn’t outrun me if you tried, and you certainly couldn’t fight me,” said Namjoon.

“Namjoon. I don’t care. You and your friends have been nothing but kind to us. I’ve seen you all and none of you seem like you want to drink our blood,” said Catalina.

Namjoon scoffed and said, “You have no idea how much I’d like to taste your blood. You smell…irresistible.”

Catalina blushed. “Can you stop? Once you’ve had a taste?”

“What?”

“I mean, if you were to drink from me, would you be able to control yourself before you took too much?” Catalina asked. She couldn’t believe what she was saying. She was playing with fire, but the thought of it made her a bit dizzy with anticipation. Her blush was hot all the way down her neck.

Namjoon stared at her and said, “You can’t be serious.”

Catalina shrugged and brushed her hair off her shoulder, baring her neck. Namjoon smirked and shook his head. Catalina’s flush turned to one of embarrassment.

“I’m not drinking from you,” Namjoon said. “I’m old enough to control myself, but what if I wasn’t? A younger vampire wouldn’t have turned you down either.”

Catalina sighed and said, “Sorry, I don’t know why I asked that.”

“It’s okay,” Namjoon said. They continued walking.

“So, vampires are real?” Catalina asked. Namjoon nodded. “Are other things real? Like werewolves and demons?”

“Werewolves are real, but you probably won’t ever meet one,” Namjoon explained. “They tend to live off the grid and the ones who don’t are hunted pretty relentlessly by the Pack Hunters. Also, demons[PG1] aren’t real. Religion is a human based concept that holds no truth.”

“So, crucifixes don’t repel you or anything?” Catalina asked. Namjoon laughed and said no. “Cool, wait who are the Pack Hunters?”

“The Pack Hunters are an organization that hunts werewolves,” he said. “They say that they’re protecting society but most of the time, the people they hunt are harmless, just trying to live peacefully. It is a problem in the werewolf community. Werewolves can no longer live in packs like they used to. They’ve been on the run for so long, it’s basically every man for himself.”

“That’s terrible,” said Catalina. She had so many questions buzzing through her head and she didn’t know where to start. She supposed what she was most curious about was what lore was true and what wasn’t. “Do you have fangs?”

Namjoon flashed a toothy smile, showing off sharp fangs. Catalina gasped.

“I didn’t notice those on any of you guys before!” she said.

“That’s because we didn’t want you to notice,” said Namjoon.

“Can you be killed with a wooden stake?” asked Catalina.

“No.”

“Does silver hurt you?”

“Yes, it just burns a bit.”

“Can you enter a place before being invited in?”

“It’s not the polite thing to do, but technically yes.

“Do you burn up in sunlight?”

“Not exactly, we’re just more susceptible to really bad sunburns.”

“Are you actually immortal?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?” Catalina asked.

“Twenty-three.”

“How long have you been twenty-three?”

A pause. “A while. Catalina, I’d love to stay out and answer your questions, but don’t you have class tomorrow morning?” asked Namjoon.

“Do you need sleep?” she asked. Namjoon sighed.

“No, I can sleep but I don’t need to. I’m pretty sure it’s nearing two in the morning,” he said.

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry for bombarding you with questions,” said Catalina. They stepped off the trail and Catalina didn’t even realize they had made their way back to the house.

“No, it’s okay,” said Namjoon. “I never mind spending time with you.”

Catalina blushed again.

“I like spending time with you too,” Catalina mumbled, playing with the ends of her hair.

“I’ll drive you home. Someone recently went missing in this town, you shouldn’t be out at night alone,” he said.

(Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!!!)

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 4 years

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I have a silly Napoleon ask for you: if he suddenly woke up in the present day what do you think he would a)like most about it b) like least about it c)get unreasonably addicted to d)decide to do for a living

hahah I’ve answered a similar one before here and here.

Most Like About It: A lot, I think. Central heating. Guys, he’d fucking love central heating.

In general, he’d love most technological advances. Cars, planes, trains etc. like he’d be very into that. “Bertrand we’re going to ride the TGV all day every day. Look at how fast we are going! This is genius.”

“Bertrand WE ARE IN THE SKY. This is AMAZING. We are going from Paris to Rome in a matter of HOURS. HOURS BERTRAND. WE DON’T HAVE TO CROSS MOUNTAINS.” (sorry just assuming this is exile Napoleon who woke up in modern day.)

Public transit in general - the metro, buses - anything that makes life more efficient for people. Dishwasher, washers/dryers, modern electricity, laptops, printers, ball point pens etc.

I suspect he’d be a big supporter of public health care and all the advances made on vaccines and medicine in general. 100% would hate anti-vaxxers. Pro-modern glasses (he’d get himself a pair asap. Then they’d explain contacts to him and I think he’d be like “WAIT NO, I WANT THOSE.” He would not be into lasik, I suspect).

Modern hygiene! Razors, tooth brushes, floss, moisturizer - general daily body care he’d probably be keen on. (All that stuff we take for granted.) Though maybe not all of it, he was quite traditional in certain things (his penchant for older fashion, par exemple). Maybe he’d keep the old straight razor shaving approach. But modern dentistry would be a huge improvement and I can’t see him being against it. Especially as someone who had a tooth extracted in the early 19th century.

‘Oh they give you pain killers now? Fantastic.’

‘Sir, we just numb the area where we are doing the work.’

‘So it doesn’t impede my awareness? Amazing. Please, fix all my teeth right now.’

He’d also support the greater access to education that exists, especially compared to his day. Also, streaming services. He would binge so many things. ‘Bertrand we are watching every thing this very soothing sounding British naturalist made about planet earth. Holy shit look at that they’re under water! They’re at the bottom of the ocean! Bertrand look at this. if only Josephine were here. She’d be so excited.’

Pro-zoom/Microsoft teams/facetime etc. 100%. ‘If I had this instead of people relying on my bad handwriting ...’

Oh, he’d like the EU as a concept. Except he would be very disappointed that France wasn’t at the helm. I think France’s position globally would disappoint him, overall. But yeah, the broad principles espoused by the concept of the European Union would appeal to him.

Brexit though. Lol. I think he’d enjoy watching England shoot itself in the foot. But if you asked him for his opinion, as in “do you think the UK should do this” he would answer no. They should remain.

He would like globalization, trade agreements, things like NAFTA, CETA etc. Supporter of big government. Reduction of religion in public sphere. Though would he be pro-banning visual manifestations of faith? (i.e. Hijab etc.) I don’t know. I doubt it. Simply because he was very focused on religion in government, so if churches aren’t involved in decision making, what citizens get up to on their own is their business (so long as you don’t cause problems). But I don’t know, he might be pro-it, because he was also into assimilation and creating a broad sense of a French culture. I could see him really going either way on it. It’d probably come down to whatever he thought would garner the most public support as a political move (since a lot of his more liberal moves as a leader were tied to understanding that marginalized communities would gun hard for him if he helped them).

He would be pro-mask wearing for COVID because he wasn’t a fucking idiot and lived in a time when pandemics were still a real going concern.

He would also probably like how comfortable modern clothing is. I don’t think he’d like how cheap and made-to-wear-out that most brands are, but he’d like the over all philosophy. Like Napoleon would dig t-shirts. Lounge wear. The fact that jeans have some stretch in them. That sort of thing.

Least Like: I think he’d be very wary of the internet. For many reasons. For the lack of government control (Napoleon “What is a free press? never heard of her” Bonaparte). But also, because of the misinformation problems. The side effects many of us are now bearing witness to, and experiencing the ramifications of.

He would dislike the whole fake news nonsense. Oh this man was a master spin-doctor, very good at twisting a narrative around to suit him, but he still did have respect for and a firm belief in basic facts. Especially fake news that usurped the sound advise of scientists and doctors (i.e. COVID nonsense).

Free press, I think he would be wary of it. Mostly from a government control perspective. Like as a day-to-day citizen, since he wouldn’t be anyone in power in this hypothetical, I think he’d value it. He would do that disassocative thing he did when he talked about things in the abstract. That cold, calculating way he would position himself in a situation and be like “Ah yes, these are the things that need to be tamped down if you want control of a populace as a monarch”. Then he had his more liberal, call-back-to-that-misspent-jacobin-youth moments where his views shifted.

I suppose it would also depend what age this hypothetical Napoleon is. He softened a lot in retirement exile. Napoleon at the height of his power, thirty-odd years old, different man to fifty year old Napoleon.

Would not be into women in politics. He’d be like ‘Why is there a woman in charge of Germany? Also what happened to the Habsburgs? Where’s Prussia? Silesia? What the FuCk is happening in the Balkans? I’m very confused about Europe’s current geographic layout. ...Corsica...still doing you, I see.’

He’d dislike Trump and his cronies. As I wrote before: “ I think Napoleon would find Trump disgusting on a personal level. Uneducated, incapable of holding a real conversation, gauche, anti-intellectual, anti-fact-based discussion, anti-science, anti-art etc. He’d also feel that Trump is disgracing the position of President and that he is unworthy of leadership. Napoleon would also find Trump physically repulsive as he could be a wee bit shallow in some of his assessments (though, very early modern to 19th century to assume your physical appearance is a manifestation of your interiority).”

Steve Bannon’s fiddling with finances? Napoleon would find that repulsive. Mitch Mcconnell disgracing his office by fucking around with constitutional loop holes? Napoleon would think it a disgrace.

He had a lot of respect for America’s experiment with democracy. Like, quite a lot of respect. So I think he’d be vastly disappointed in not only the person occupying the white house, but also a lot of the apathy in voting that is going around. (Yes, this coming from a [mostly] absolutest monarch, too.) But Napoleon valued and respected the notion of civic duty. If you live in a democracy, you have a duty to participate. To opt out is to shirk that duty which he would find insulting and distasteful. Because, I would argue, he was very much a believer in people doing right by their fellow citizens.

Get unreasonably addicted to: MODERN BATHS. HE WOULD NEVER LEAVE THE BATHTUB. THEY CAN HAVE JETS AND EVERYTHING BERTRAND THIS IS GREAT.

Also central heating. Saunas. Jacuzzis. He was like a wee lizard seeking warmth at all times.

I think he’d be into driving. I don’t know if he would be good at it. Don’t let Napoleon take the wheel, guys. But if someone else was driving he’d be that person “go faster. you’re driving like my grandmother.” And gods, he’d do dumb shit like drive like a maniac around the arc de triumph six times in a row because he’s an adrenaline junkie and a risk-taker (it’s that bored ADD brain of his). The autobahn would be his dream.

I think he’d be super into epic fantasy series. Like the big sweeping ones like Lord of the Rings. I think less so GRRM because GRRM is unrealistic and Napoleon is pedantic. Especially about politics and war. Exhibit A: consider Napoleon’s very detailed nitpicking of Virgil on his inaccurate rendition of Troy from a military perspective. Therefore, I suspect GRRM’s lack of accuracy in how society works, how war works, how politics works, all the plot holes and illogical character decisions, would drive him up the wall. Napoleon liked Homer because he could tell Homer had been to war. And you can tell Tolkien has been to war. Also LOTR hits all those notes of high-hearted emotion and big sweeping scenes that Napoleon so liked in Ossian and the Illiad etc.

All this to say, overall, as a genre, I think those big, sweeping fantasies with lots of plot, politics, intrigue, soaring battles, great heights of emotion - he’d love that. It would hit all of his buttons for what he liked in fiction. Lots of emotion, lots of action, lots of big scenes, lots of crazy shenanigans. This can also be applied to Sci-fi. I think he’d be a big nerd on that too. But the science would have to make sense.

I think he’d be into Star Trek, particularly Picard, if only for the philosophical aspects of it. He liked those sorts of questions and hypotheticals. So I think he’d binge all of The Next Generation (among other seasons).

Do for a living: Teach? God knows. This is Napoleon from 18-something who just woke up? He could be paid for consultant work for historians and film crews and the like, I guess. Just to tell them how accurate stuff is. Of course, be wary, this is Napoleon I Am A Spin Doctor Bonaparte.

I think he could lean into writing histories - particularly the classics, early French and European history - that sort of thing, where he already has a strong background in it and it wouldn’t require him basically learning an entirely new trade. Like, will Napoleon ever fully be a natural with computers and cell phones? Probably not. Could he be like your old school Professor emeritus who still churns out papers and does 90% of it the old fashioned by-hand way? Yes. And Napoleon had a bunch of histories planned on St. Helena that he wanted to write, so I think he could do that.

As this is literally Napoleon Bonaparte he’d get a book deal in seconds. There’d be a bidding war over it.

Thank you for the ask! This was very amusing :D

#napoleon #napoleon was his own shitpost #napoleon bonaparte #napoleonic #napoleon in the modern day #ask #reply #anon

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thejackmeister-mongolhistory · 4 years

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Have you read/what are your thoughts on Jack Weatherford's books?

I have indeed read some of Weatherford’s work: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and his Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan rescued his Empire. He has another book which is something to do on on the Mongol Empire laid the foundation for modern religious tolerance, I believe, but I have never read it.

Before I go much further, I should state a few things. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World was the first ‘serious’ book I ever read on the Mongol Empire. I had finished reading Conn Iggulden’s Conqueror series, which sparked my interest in the Chinggisid Empire: that I was able to, some time after, pick up a copy of Weatherford’s book is what fanned the flames of my passion for the topic. At the time, I can remember being so impressed by the depth of Weatherford’s description and his own passion in Mongol culture, and I do believe without it, there would be no The Jackmeister: Mongol History. Especially in my own earlier videos, before my skills as a researcher had developed alongside my access to sources, Weatherford’s influence can be seen. I think in a video I did on Chinggis Khan’s sons, I basically called them all failures, as per Weatherford’s depiction of them.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World was also a huge boon for Weatherford, as it sold magnificently. There is a good chance today if you go into your local bookstore for something on the Mongol Empire, you’ll find a copy of it there, 15 years since its first release. And online, a search for ‘books on the Mongols’ will likely turn it up in the top results. It’s been translated into multiple languages, has brought him honours and awards even in Mongolia. I think it can be created to some extent to assisting in the increase in westerners (i.e., average people, not researchers and historians) to view Chinggis Khan as something other than a blood crazed maniac. That Bodrov’s Mongol came out just a few years afterward contributed as well: before that, probably most North Americans exposure to Chinggis was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. No disrespect to Al Leong, but it’s not the most accurate depiction.

Weatherford is a skilled writer, and a key to Modern World’s success is that it is a very readable work. The image he presents of Temujin’s flight to Burkhan Khaldun after Borte’s capture, and the choices he faced, I found a poignant image which has stuck with me. Weatherford’s background is as an Anthropologist, and that is apparent in the attention he gives to discussing Mongolian culture. Not an extensive description of steppe tribes and politics, he places Temujin into a cultural context recognizable to modern Mongolians, a focus on his human side, rather than that of the conqueror. Considering that his entire book is on the positive transformative aspects of the Mongol Empire, that shouldn’t be surprising.

Now, that’s a lot of words talking about the books and Weatherford and things about them. My own thoughts on them? Well…

As I have dug deeper into the works of specialists and primary sources, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World has not aged well. Weatherford is a skilled writer and an anthropologist with a deep appreciation for Mongolian culture. But he is not a historian. And when you read it from an historian’s viewpoint, it is a deeply frustrating work. Because there are so many details and facts it gets wrong that it it very distracting. Opening to a random page while I write this, while discussing the opening of conflict between the Mongols and the Jin Dynasty, he writes:

“The unexpected death of the Golden Khan of the Jurched and the ascension of his young son to the throne in 1210 offered the Jurchen court an opportunity to assess Genghis Khan …” (page 82).

A few points just in this line: the Mongols called the Jin Emperor the Altan Khan, so literally the Golden Khan. Unusual to do so in a secondary source though, and rather annoying for a reader who may want something more specific, and to find out who the name of this particular monarch. Likewise, to call them the Jurched is unusual: the -ed is a plural ending in Mongolian which you will see on the end of tribal names. But the Jurchen weren’t Mongolian, and Weatherford’s section on them as a whole emphasis their tribal origins, which is a slight misdirection considering how sincizied they had become over the 12th and early 13th century. Not 100% sinicized, but more than one might expect reading just Weatherford’s work, and enough that the increasing adoption of Chinese culture and customs by the Jurchen Jin court brought friction with the military aspects and particularly those Jurchen who still remained in the homeland, in what we generally call Manchuria. However, the succession changes he described are completely false: from 1208 until 1213 the Jin Emperor was Wei Shao Wang, a man whose reign was so poor he was posthumously demoted from emperor to prince, but was probably similar age to Chinggis himself! He was succeeded by a cousin, the Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, who was again of similar age to Chinggis himself.

The Jin had plenty of difficulties with their emperors, but they never put a child upon the Dragon Throne (I think the third emperor, Xijing of Jin, may have been around 15 when he became Emperor? That was the youngest). This is just one example, but I could flip around the book and find many more (but I don’t want this response to be 20 pages long).

Weatherford is also frustrating in his relative lack of citing his information, especially particularly interesting claims. The importance of footnotes and endnotes in History, is so that others can see where you got your information from. Essentially, so we can see you’re not making it up, or misrepresenting them entirely. For example, on page 235 he says the Mongol conquests led to an increase in tools carpenters in Europe had access too, and that they built new cranes and other devices based off knowledge gained from routes opened by the Mongols. A very interesting point to raise, one I’d love to follow up on, but there is no hint to where this information comes from, or what evidence supports this statement, or if he is even accurately representing what someone said on this matter. Or when he makes those inaccurate statements, we can’t even follow up to see what it was that misled him in the first place.

Finally, while I agree with the general point of his thesis (the Mongol Empire transformed Eurasia) much of his support for this argument I find either unsupported, or just wrong. Page 233, he says literacy increased under the Mongol Empire, presenting Kublai Khan’s construction of a printing office in 1269 so government mandates can be disseminated, as support for this. That isn’t even evidence for increased literacy in China because of the Mongols, let alone the entire Asian continent. And does establishing a printing office offset the destruction of libraries, archives and deaths of learned people in the initial conquests? He presents the Mongol invasions to Europe as ending the Middle Ages, saying at one point.

“European Knighthood never recovered from the blow of losing nearly one hundred thousand soldiers in Hungary and Poland, what the Europeans mounted as the ‘the flower’ of their knighthood and aristocracy. Walled cities and heavily armoured knights were finished, and in the smoke and gunpowder of the Easter Season of 1241, the Mongol triumph portended the coming total destruction of European Feudalism and the Middle Ages.” (page 155)

This is ludicrous. Heavily armoured knights didn’t even end in Hungary, who suffered the worst of the 1241-1242 invasion, let alone in all of Europe. Saying that it portended the end of Feudalism is like saying the death of Augustus portended the end of the Roman Empire. Sure, one occurs before the other, but they’re only tangentially related. As shown in studies by Erik Fügedi, Hungarian castle building actually increased after the Mongol invasion, now largely in stone instead of wood and earthen walls. And of course, European armour making increased in complexity, as the Mongol invasion predated the famous full suits of plate European knights are famous for.

That is in general the problem with much of Weatherford’s evidence for the impact of the Mongol Empire. There is a huge amount of actual effects the Mongols had, both positive and negative. But Weatherford misses much of these in favour of flashier statements like the above. And by trying to prove this point so much, he ends up minimizing the lives lost in the first place: for some regions, that was the entire experience of the Mongols, and the only place they held in those local popular memories after the disintegration of the Khanates. From what I recall of The Secret History of the Mongol Queens, it had many similar problems. That is why I find Weatherford’s work so frustrating: because it ultimately cannot reach the lofty goals it sets for itself, miring the reader down in distracting, inaccurate representations and doing a disservice to a fascinating and important topic for world history.

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nikkiwriteswords · 5 years

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Hey there! I have a TUA theory that's been going through my head for weeks, and I'd love to hear what you think of it/if you can expand it in any way. Basically, I wonder if the powers the Hargreeves siblings have are somehow linked to the country they were born in. Luther, who has a Norther-European-sounding name, has a Viking's strenght, Klaus is from Austria/Germany, countries with a long history of wars (and therefore, death), Vanya is from Russia, homeland to great composers... (1/2)

(2/2)… a friend of mine suggested that Five could be from England, a country which used to control most of the world, because he can go wherever he pleases. I have a couple of ideas about the others, but I’m less sure about them. I’d love to get your feedback on this, and maybe hear your ideas! I think you do a magnificent job on your account (I literally opened my account today cause I couldn’t get enough of the content in your blog!) All the love, and thanks in advance!

Hey! Oh wow, thank you so much!! It makes me so happy to know people are enjoying my blog - so much so that you started your own, that’s amazing! I’m looking forward to seeing what you write: this is a great theory to start with, and I have had some ideas about the characters’ origins before, so let’s see what we can tease out of it: Now, let’s start by saying that we don’t have actual canon confirmation of the siblings’ origin and ethnicities (at least not that I can recall). For one, it’d be inaccurate to try and assume anything from the comics because the style is not true-to-life. However, what we can say is that Netflix’s casting choices for the show brought a much clearer diversity to our (anti)hero family. This is a good backlash against the prevalent whitewashing in tv and film (specifically Hollywood) of the last few years, but (1, is it diverse enough? and 2) it raises the question of how far we should read into the ethnicities of the cast as reflective of the characters. We must be careful not to 1) confuse comic canon with tv canon, and 2) conflate or assume things about a character identity based on assumptions about the actor/actress, unless they are qualities the cast themselves want to give their character. For instance, I’ve no idea if Cody Ray Thompson is Jewish, but he has confirmed (along with sharing a ton of other personal headcanons) that Dave was Jewish, based on Dave’s surname in on the dogtags. Meanwhile, Robert Sheehan disguises his Irish accent, therefore we can’t assume Klaus is Irish just because Robert is. Accent is a pretty big signifier, tbf, so this one is probably pretty obvious.

So what can we use as identifiers? Language cues, for one. Although it’s not conclusive evidence, we can theorise that Klaus knows a little German, and speculate that he wanted to feel connected to his German/Austrian heritage and distance himself from his upbringing. Therefore, from a linguistic perspective, names are also quite telling.

(They could have always been picked out of a hat, of course, but that’s no fun, and name meanings are so beautifully subjective.) This actually ties in with my own ideas on name analysis and what they can tell us about each character. (It’s in my drafts somewhere, but it’s only rudimentary so far). I was inspired when I saw this post [x]. What I had not considered, though, is how their heritage might be alluded to through their powers. The point about Russian composers is really interesting. Of course, other countries have great composers too, so how do we prove that link? If I had any classical music knowledge, I’d look through both the comics and the show for songs Vanya plays, or music associated with her in the show, or see if there’s any background details that could point to Russian composers in association with her character. Klaus, Germanic, means ‘victory of the people’. It originated from the Greek Nikolaos (coincidentally… so does Nikki. Just throwing that out there). It sounds heroic, but Klaus is decidedly anti-heroic for most of the first season. So perhaps we can interpret him as, quite literally, not living up to his name. Then there’s the elephant in the room: his untapped potential. Within that meaning, ‘victory of the people’, there’s connotations of conflict (and therefore death); revolution; the underdog rising up out of oppression. As Klaus does. Of course, if we’re talking about German heritage and conflict, we’ve got to mention WW2. There could be tenuous parallels to be made between Reginald and toxic ideologies like Nazism, and the outfit he wears as he stands in the door of the mausoleum did remind me of the uniforms of SS soldiers in Schindler’s List. But honestly, that would need fact-checking against reality, not another movie, and I don’t really want to touch Nazism any further than that without proper research. Nonetheless, I do wonder what the reaction would be to a man with a German name meeting a man with a Jewish name just 20 years after the end of WW2. However, I’d be more inclined to think about that name meaning again - victory of the people - and how it might allude to the Berlin Wall. But again, I’d need to research, because I know next to nothing about it. Could any of this explain his power to see the dead, though? If Klaus was intended to be Germany personified, specifically history of Germany wars and ideological conflicts, I’d say - it’s a stretch. There could be something there about carrying your past with you, learning from it instead of rejecting it, but it’s too vague. I also had brief thoughts on Luther. It is also a Germanic name, likewise derived from Greek, and means ‘soldier of the people’. In Greek, it derives from a word meaning ‘free’. Now, Luther is the conventional hero to Klaus’s antihero. (Does that place them on two sides of the metaphorical wall?) Where Klaus does not live up to his name, Luther does. He is the people’s soldier, with the strong moral conviction to protect and dish out justice. To that end, strength plays into that image. That said, I don’t know if there’s any signifiers from Luther’s character about his ethnic origins other than his name. However, the German theologist Martin Luther, founder of Lutheranism, is thought to be a key namesake for ‘Luther’. Martin Luther was seminal to the Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church, from which Lutheranism was born. Of course, the topic of religion might not relate directly to Luther, but the ideological crisis surrounding the Protestant Reformation - devote worship of a higher power, and a crisis of free will following challenges to predestination (all events in one’s life are predetermined by God) - could be equated with Luther’s crisis of faith in Reginald. All that being said, I also have a very vague recollection from my research that it also literally means ‘strong’. So. Mystery solved?As for Five, I really don’t think we can conclude anything that wouldn’t be pure headcanon. He’s an enigma, and is likely to stay that way. The only thing I can say is that his name - just a number - makes him elusive, hard to pin down, just like his powers. And, just a final thought: what purpose would it serve, to have heritage linked to powers? Sure, there’s the implication of the effect it has on identity as a whole, which is the underlying assumption of this entire post. But what else does it imply, to use these powers for good (or bad)? Global unification? We know that Hargreeves’s entire purpose for the Academy is to ‘save the world’, but even though they are facing down the apocalypse, the show makes it feel very personal, not universal. A family united.

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houseinva · 7 years

Text

At the start of round 2 I was indifferent towards the idea of sex with Ben. In fact, I leaned more towards not wanting sex at all with him. But Ben sure was a charmer, at least when he wanted to be; he knew how to make all the right moves, say all the right words, and put me in all the right positions (no pun intended) to make that indifference turn into an infatuation and ultimately an addiction.

And so I became Ben’s side-piece, only I thought I was at least part of the main course. I didn’t know that I was balancing out Ben’s real main course, his relationship that was void of sex and affection, by giving him all my heart, my body, and all the attention and energy imaginable. I grew to adore Ben like no other.

I gave Ben authentic love, which is precisely what he sought; he ended up getting the best narcissistic from me in the universe. True, authentic, unconditional love isn’t easy to come by these days…

…whereas finding a side piece is. Being fooled into believing you’re the main squeeze when you’re really just a mistress is enough came to destroy my entire sense of self.

At the time I was clueless as to what was really taking place. I had no idea what narcissistic supply even was. I legitimately thought that Ben really dug me, I thought that we were an “item.” Only we weren’t’ really an item, I was an item, an object, an extension of Ben to use as he saw fit. In the beginning he saw fit to use me for good things and I loved it, I didn’t question his motives, I thought he was honest, loving and inherently good.

But good things never last for long; at least that’s what I’ve come to discover… and there’s really nothing good that ever comes out of narcissism. You’ll never read a story about a narcissist that has a happy ending, that’s for sure.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me stop and go back to the amazing times I spent with Ben at the starts of round 2, unknowingly (and eventually even knowingly) as none other than his side piece, as nothing but a piece of supply. I fought for my spot though, not knowing what I was signing up for....

The sex went from an okay learning experience for me to… out of this world, incredible for us both. Sex with Ben was something I never imagined possible between two people, at least not with one of those people being me. Our one day each weekend quickly turned into marathon, hours-long sex sessions, one event after the next. He was gifted in bed and he knew it; plus he knew how to add on all the bells and whistles, there was nothing he wouldn’t do sexually, nothing he couldn’t do well sexually, and nothing that was too taboo for him. Plus he was hot, he was extremely handsome, he was fit, he had a gorgeous body, he was flexible, he was versatile, and he knew how to put on quite a show; it seemed like Ben’s purpose on Earth was to spread sexual enjoyment. While Ben always claimed to be a versatile top, suddenly he wanted to bottom all the time for me. I had not seen us going in that direction but Ben was accurate in his assessment, and I truly fell in love with his bum, I did. That ass was solid, it was large, it was beautiful, and it was amazing. While I learned the basics of sex from my ex, it was Ben who took things to a whole new level. He always gave me pointers on how to improve (and I’d do them, and watch as he became more and more impressed), and so I credit Ben for being the one that actually broke me into the world of sex. He was a connoisseur when it came to sex, and he was adamant about instructing me on the right way to do things in bed. I also credit Ben for being the one that corrupted me in truly exposing me to the “dark side.”.

Ben prided himself on my sexual progress, he loved mentioning how bad I was when we first met compared to how much I’d excelled in bringing him pleasure on the regular. Watching me grow sexually and singing my praises also made his already large ego grow to ginormous proportions. Thanks to his one-on-one instruction in the sack, I turned into his preferred sexual partner in the DMV. Ben was definitely heavy on the flattery and flirtatiousness, which made my insecurities disappear, his words were hyperbole at its best:.

“You’re my favorite top, hand’s down. Any time you want sex don’t hold back – just text me. If I’m having sex with someone else I’ll even get up and leave so you can fuck me!”

I wasn’t always sure what to make of Ben’s grandiose words, as they sometimes seemed a bit back-handed, often sending me in two different directions, scratching my head. Like with the above he was clearly singing my sexual praises… yet did he intentionally throw in the part which, to me at least, reiterated that I was not worthy of monogamy or being his boyfriend one day? Or like these… they just seem a bit back-handed or perhaps phony, I don’t know…

…maybe I was just overthinking like Ben would often suggest.

But regardless of mixed messages, his actions always showed me how much he enjoyed being with me instead of anyone else, and he had no shortage of options.

I felt almost honored, like I’d hit the jack-pot, for Ben to have picked me to “make over” and fill my time with this bind-blowing pyrotechnic sex.

I was definitely the more old-fashioned one in the couple when it came to all things sexual, that’s for sure.

Ben could bring out the sexual side of us both, while I remained hidden, tail between my legs, and I’d still come out feeling more and more confident each time. Before I knew it, Ben spending his one weekend day with me was a given I grew accustomed to. There was one day when he came and left 13 times for sex in leas than 24 hours! It was odd but I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity, us being together was definitely not boring, and with time it just kept getting better and better.

Soon I found myself craving Ben: his smell, his taste, his everything just turned me on to the point where if I saw him walking into my building from afar, I got butterflies in my stomach. I had just become comfortable having sex with my ex when everything went to hell, and since then, I’d been a sexual recluse. I hadn’t been sexual up until Ben reentered my life and things went from nothing to balls-to-the walls. It got to the point where the only person I could imagine in a sexual light was him, and when I tried with others it was always a let-down, I couldn’t help but compare everyone to Ben, who was a master when it came to anything sexual. Ben was sex-bombing the hell out of me, I didn’t have to leave my house for anything, he always came to me, he always initiated sex, he always took away the awkwardness I felt with other, and left me with no insecurities about myself. Ben was one that seemed very confident in his looks and performance, it’s like he viewed himself almost as a sexual god. He dubbed himself my sexual “coach” and transformed me into what he claimed he saw in me when we first met.

“When I saw your dick, I knew what you could become,” he told me, which I found strange, given that he’d never once complimented anything about me during round 1, if anything it was the opposite. “I knew when I first met you that one day we’d be just like this. I’ve got you exactly how I wanted you.”

Despite the fact that the statement seemed inaccurate based on my recollection of history, hearing that made my self-esteem rise above sea level, it rose to the heavens, I felt on top of the world at last. He wanted sex in every way, shape and form, sex in every possible location, he brought all these sex toys and oils and just about everything under the sexual sun to house in a cabinet in my bedroom. The things that came out of Ben’s mouth or through his fingers via text never ceased to amaze me…

While I continued sensing some occasional back-handed compliments, or “jabs” as I’d call them, I could never prove he was actually doing this or intending to leave me second-guessing things. So I chose to just accept them all as compliments, and I truly believed every word he said. Why wouldn’t I?

Minus the gratuitous sexual content, the majority of what Ben said was so beautiful and so full of kindness and positivity that I stopped trying to analyze the situation and accepted what I saw via his actions: Ben wanted me as an integral part of his life. Before I knew it, he was over both days each weekend, then during the week after work. It turned out his boyfriend actually liked working - which was all he did - leaving Ben with nothing else to do but me.

Ben showed me more attention than I’d ever received in my life, he paid me more compliments than I’d ever thought possible, and he gave me more sexual pleasure in 18 months than I’ll probably have in the rest of my lifetime. During round 1, Ben ended our stint on a sour note – but in round 2, he managed to exceed anything I’d thought could exist in real life romance. He was beyond a gentleman, he was… my angel, he was my savior, he’d given me a reason to live and believed I was still worth something. HIV left me feeling so alone and without hope for a future, but having Ben there with me changed everything and made having HIV a moot point. I couldn’t have found a more loving, kind and perfect man to be at the center of my universe. Except that I wasn’t the center of his universe sadly. But overall, looking back, those were some beautiful, memorable days; every spare second Ben had, he was either by my side, or hitting me up to make plans to be by my side. He’d text me on Monday, asking me to pencil him in the next weekend. And before I knew it, it wasn’t just one day each weekend, it was the whole weekend, and then it after work drugin the week, too. Making plans? Why bother; it’s not as if he had to talk me into anything at that point, I was hooked, I’ll admit it, I was addicted to Ben. Addicted, no joke, that’s the only way I can describe it. If I went 2 days without seeing him it felt like I was going through a withdrawal.

But it was rare that I went 2 days without seeing Ben, so it wasn’t all that bad, at least not at the time. Ben wouldn’t let me go 2 days without seeing him as making plans with me was his top priority.

I’ll never forget waking up one morning to someone holding me in bed. I just about had a heart attack when I realized it was… Ben.

He was such the opposite of how he was during round 1. Not one, single time – in 18 months – did we see each other without having sex, sex, and more sex. But it was more than just sex: Ben became my best, closest and tightest friend.

Ben was not only my best friend, he was also my one and only PPIC – Poz Partner in Crime. For the first time ever, I consistently forgot all about having HIV. Ben made for an incredible escape, but unlike round 1, he wasn’t here for the short-term he made very clear.

I’ve never had someone sweat me like Ben did, it was such a compliment, it was so much fun.

And not once did I ever consider wanting to spend that time with someone else, I was perfectly content passing every free moment with my Benjamin. He was soooo good to me, he beyond catered to my every wish, need and fantasy that it was like being in heaven. Ben changed my life completely..

While I was the one that insisted on footing the bill for whatever we were ordering in to eat, or for occasional gas money since Ben always drove to me, he didn’t spend money on me ever, nor did he need to. He often came by having gone to the 7-11, bringing me 2 things I loved: Gummy Bears and Simply Lemonade, the best. It was a kind gesture, just thinking back on him carrying a bag into my place still makes me smile. I don’t think there was anything Ben could have meant more than those gummies and lemonade, and of course, our amazing time together.

Ben could come off as a bit haughty and reserved at times, perhaps standoff-ish with others, like he didn’t want to interact with other people and was introverted. So the fact that he had so much interest in seeing me all the time made me feel so special; the fact that he was giving me God’s gift to the world of sex on the regular, when my life had been sexless for practically its entirety, gave my existence a whole new meaning. I had found a diamond in the rough, and I believed that diamond was here to stay with me forever.

If someone had told me that in several months, our relationship would be the complete and polar opposite, I’d have said that wasn’t possible, I’d have thought they were smoking crack honestly; this sort of friendship was so monumental it was divine. And if someone had suggested Ben’s fame and notoriety would reach far outside of DC, landing him with fans throughout the nation, the backing of the federal government, and access to everything from the most advanced technology to a “get out of jail free card” for enjoying all the sex, drugs and risky business imaginable, I’d have been 100% certain they were smoking crack.

Looks like somebody’s smoking crack – oh wait – that”s just Ben!

Things in the world of narcissism are like the Twilight Zone, I hate to admit that I now know narcissistic personality disorder so well I could probably lecture on it... but at that time, I was blind to reality, I could only see Ben’s beautiful ass and was blind to everything else. We couldn’t be in the same room together for more than 2 minutes without our clothes coming off… nobody’s ever had that effect on me…

I appreciated everything Ben did for me, I looked forward to every moment I had with him, and somehow my time with Ben laying around my condo turned into the highlight of my life.

I was certain that nothing could ever break the bond we shared. Given the amount of time Ben spent focusing on me, on getting together, I thought these beautiful times were here to stay.

Ben swore that nothing could come between us, nothing at all, and I believed him. For whatever reason, Ben became perfect in every way, shape and form to me.

Well, in almost every way, shape and form; there was one thing I didn’t find perfect: Ben’s nick-name for me wasn’t very complimentary.

At first I thought it was cute, but then it seemed a bit ageist at the same time. I was maybe 5 years older than him, but when it came to life experiences, Ben was eons ahead of me so I didn’t view him as younger, I always saw him as my equal. I chose not to make a big deal about it and instead embrace it, and from that point forward I was “pops” and he was “son.” I often sent him little memes by text, with images of fathers and sons, in hopes of making him laugh whenever I could. But I won’t deny that constantly being called the name of a father, or often a grandfather, didn’t eventually takes it’s tole and make me feel like I was a geezer.

But at the time being, nicknames were cherished, they were interpreted, good or bad, to at least mean one thing: I was special to him, and I even had a special name.

Even if that nickname reflected an old geezer, he seemed to look after me quite well. At least I thought that’s what he was doing at that time… looking after me… although later on I’d wonder if Ben wasn’t looking at me under a microscope. That would eventually be the million dollar question…

Talk about charming, talk about selfless, talk about a freak-in-bed nymphomaniac, but in a good way, Ben was at my place every spare second either one of us had, and I took it as a huge compliment because Ben was super picky, Ben could have anyone he wanted but yet he wanted me. But on top of that our friendship seemed to get stronger by the day; Ben made a point of telling repeatedly how much our friendship meant meant to him above all else. Although he always came over taking off his clothes, acting as if sex wasn’t an option, it was a must, and I happily followed his lead.

Ben was just sooooo into me that I was beside myself:

“He must have finally saw the true me, and that I’m not like all the other guys out there, that I really do care about him, that my words aren’t fake, that I treat people kindly,” I often thought to myself, knowing that Ben had experienced a lot of the opposite in his formative years. It never dawned on me that maybe Ben’s interest in me was something completely different altogether…

To say Ben went out of his way to form a bromance with me wouldn’t do it justice; he sweated me like nobody’s business, he gave me everything I ever wanted (and even things I never wanted as I didn’t know they existed) in a partner. As time marched on, even at the 18 month mark, we hadn’t lost interest in sex, nor saw it become the slightest bit boring. Strangely things only got better, even hotter, for the both of us when it came being intimate.

At the 10 month mark of round 2, I found myself suddenly enthralled with Ben sexually, I was craving him when he wasn’t there, and I always made sure to be my Sunday (and Saturday) best every weekend.

Us spending all this time together, us having sex nonstop, us planning on doing things we never did but spent an awful lot of time talking about… Ben initiated all of it, he had the balls that I was missing. Ben groomed me into what he wanted me to be in bed. For 10 straight months I’d say we averaged 20 hours a week having sex; and it never got lame, not for me, not for him – he couldn’t get enough – he was even sneaking out after midnight during the week to come over and fuck all night long. So much for my fears of Ben disappearing on me…

It was like the heaven’s had finally smiled down upon me and given me exactly what I was always looking for in a lover.

While I grew to really love Ben a great deal in those initial 10 months I didn’t feel threatened by or jealous of his ex, of have a problem with being the “side piece.” Ben had truly hooked me up in giving me his body to use as a blank canvas so I could figure out the ins and outs of sex; then again, he enjoyed every carnal moment of it, too. In those 10 months we never had an argument, we never bickered one single time, we were inseparable the moment we were in each other’s presence and forever making love. It was weird, it was inexplicable, but it seemed to work perfectly just how it was.

Ben was so dominant, and I was so submissive, yet…. I was the top and he was the bottom, although he always pretended he wasn’t. But he was so overtly sexual in all he said, in all he texted, in all he did, he was the ‘ying to my sex-less yang. He enabled me to break out of my shell and finally feel like I was desirable, even with HIV.

Unlike my ex, this time the sex, the bond, for both parties not just for one, this was finally authentic – it wasn’t fake, it wasn’t psychopathic, this was the real deal – and Ben had a heart behind his, well, penis. Ben was truly the full package, but I still didn’t allow myself to develop feelings for him outside of loving him like my bestest friend.

Damn, he was quite the little man-slut; and I loved every bit of it, it was everything I couldn’t be myself, it was fun. Ben definitely grew to be my favorite guy in my history of guys, hands-down, every night with him was an adventure, every moment spent with him was full of laughter and hot sexual tension.

I was love-bombed beyond my wildest dreams (and nightmares). Ben made me his number 1 guy (next to his sexless bf, that is) and he was determined, assertive and didn’t take no for an answer; in fact, he didn’t really have to ask, I never said no, I wanted whatever he did, and plus I trusted him.

This was every gay man’s dream come true. I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing, it was amazing, he was everything I ever wanted in a guy… with all this sluttiness I didn’t know existed added in there. It was blast. This wasn’t just a fleeting interest, this was something special, whatever it was.

Ben pulled out every trick in the book to show me he was an honest, loving, caring friend who truly loved me. I’d never been treated like this in my entire life. This was a unique friendship that I thought would last a lifetime, Ben was someone I could always rely on, he always followed through with what he said. He was amazing, he was perfect, he was… using a lot of techniques specific to narcissistic abuse, particularly the first phase of the relationship, idealization or “love-bombing,” only I didn’t know it yet, nor did I know the true power something like this could have over me, or over many people for that matter. This form of manipulation and brain-washing is a power like nothing I’ve ever encountered, it made me trust Ben no matter what, it made me obey him no matter what, it made me crave him no matter how horribly he treated me, it made me do things I’d have never considered doing otherwise. It left me addicted to and longing for Ben despite all the abuse that was to follow. There’s a reason why psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, and even cults use this very same technique to brainwash their victims: because it’s effective, very effective, in converting you into their slave. There’s a reason why it’s so difficult for people to go “no-contact” with a narcissist when it’s a no-brainier decision they know they should do yet they can’t. It makes one trust a predator no matter what, it makes one crave this person like a drug, and it makes one believe the unbelievable and do the unthinkable at their command. It bypasses logic altogether, it creates a biochemical bond enshrined into one’s brain by a slew of neurotransmitters. If someone tells you that another person cannot control you without your consent, they’re dead wrong. They haven’t experienced it is all, but I’m jumping the gun again.

Ben was monumental in my life honestly, especially given my loneliness living now with HIV. When someone touches your life (and you) in such a way, that’s a person that becomes extremely influential and special, it’s someone who, no matter how much time passes, just thinking about them leaves you feeling giddy.

I didn’t realize that Ben was a predator, and he’d marked his territory, he’d gotten me hooked, and I became dependent on him like a drug. Yet I still felt content despite knowing that I was losing control. I thought our plan was clear-cut and established: we had a bond that was special, and it was going to last forever this way. The problem was Ben never bothered to share his real plan with me ever, instead, he just reiterated this other plan that wasn’t really a plan for him at all, it was a “my truth”: a term later coined to describe Ben’s lies. They weren’t really lies but rather they were what he wanted to be true when the words left his mouth.

Eventually I began to notice, like in round 1, Ben would finish his sexual praises of me by adding on things like, “But, I don’t need the sex, I could take it or leave it, and we can always just be friends.”

This would throw me for a loop: he was the one that wanted the sex all the time, he was the one that said this was always how he saw things from the get-go, he was the sexual aggressor, too; and he was the only “real” sexual partner I’d had in my life, in my opinion at least. Yes, I’d had sex with others, but outside my ex, I’d never felt comfortable having sex, I never actually enjoyed and loved having sex. Our sex was instrumental in making me a sexual person, our sex wasn’t just sex, it was something that was life-altering. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced. And hearing him say that made it all seem like it was meaningless to him. Hearing him say that also seemed to be a power play, a control maneuver, like it didn’t really matter to him if he never had sex with me again. He knew at that point he’d hooked me, and our sex meant everything to me.

Then one day he threw out a line that was all too familiar:

“I think me being here all the time, giving you sex all the time like I’m doing, might be getting in the way of you meeting other guys, and getting yourself out there. Plus I don’t want you to get too attached. I think I’m need to stop the sex between us like it’s been.”

While this initially may sound like Ben was looking out for my best interests, to me this took me right back to round 1, where he controlled the sex between us, and I had no voice in things. He’d given something he knew I’d cherished, he knew how lame and sexless my life had always been before, and now that I had it, now that I was loving it, now that he’d conquered what he’d come for, he could flex his muscles and feel all the more powerful by threatening to take it away. Now at least that’s how I interpreted it, although I was biased ever since round 1. Suddenly I felt like Ben again was using this as a means of instilling fear and controlling the sex we shared like he was the dictator, and I was to obey whatever he said. Only this time I spoke up:

“If that’s what you want, then so be it, but I’m not having sex with you anymore, Ben. You did this in round 1: you made it sound like you were doing me a favor, but it comes off like – honestly – you’re trying to put me down and control me. If you want to have this relationship with me like you said you always planned on having, you need to stop worrying about me and my feelings, I’ll look out for myself; instead look out for you own feelings. That’s the only way this can work.”

Ben thought for a moment, and agreed to this. However, he’d rewrite that statement down the road; he’d claim that because I told him to not worry about my feelings that this also translated to telling him to let go over his feelings and fall in love with me concurrent with his other man. Like my words actually had that impact on him, please. But one day he’d blame my request that day for the reason why he found himself caught between two men. I never anticipated him translating my statement to mean something like that, although I’m sure he didn’t actually believe it either, but rather found a way to turn what I’d said back around against me as that became one of his favorite past-times, flipping the script as i referred to it.

But Ben made true to his words and stopped making the occasional, disparaging remark that did a great job at putting me in my place and feeling like I had no leverage, and finally… I felt at peace again with what we had. Ben surprised me one day when he referred to us having dated - yes he said dated - the year before, in round 1. What, what, what?!?!?

“You said we dated, Ben, did you know you said that?”

“Well, we did, for 3 or 4 months we dated, yes we did.” I was so shocked, and pleased, I felt validated finally for the first time ever with Ben. All that time when we were together during round 1, he made a point of saying that we weren’t dating. I was so ecstatic, not to have officially dated Ben, but because he finally validated the fact that we had something special, whether he wanted to admit it or not at the time:

“You’ve dated hundred of guys compared to me, Ben. And I have to admit something… the fact that you were so instrumental, so influential, and such a key part of my sexual awakening – but the fact that you minimized it, you denied it, you wouldn’t even acknowledge or validate that reality, it really made me feel small. Because something that meant a lot to me meant… nothing to you, or at least based on what you said. But hearing what you said today made me feel alive. Finally you admitted that I actually was an important part of your life for the first time, too. Thank you, Ben. You have no idea how much that meant to me.”

Things continued as they had been, only the sex seemed to be happening even more frequently, our relationship only got stronger and better. This was a friendship so unique I’d never heard of anything like it. And, no joke, I respected his relationship with his beau completely, and despite knowing it was failing, I never wanted anything more than what I had with Ben: awesome sex, no drama, no-strings-attached, and no power plays. I actually gave Ben advise all the time on how to save his relationship, I often played Devil’s advocate and took his boyfriend’s side when he mentioned their issues. And his boyfriend’s side I often took legitimately, hoping to open Ben’s eyes and view things a bit differently. I didn’t want them to end. Perhaps a bit selfish, I believed if they ended, Ben and I might end, too. I knew that Ben was getting everything from me that he wasn’t getting from home – and things at home weren’t going to change, that I was sure of, as when a relationship becomes sexless, and both partners are getting it elsewhere, you can drag that along for as long as you want but it can’t be fixed at that point. I feared that if they broke up Ben would have no reason to stick with me, he wouldn’t have his boyfriend’s off schedule to fill his time finding a place close to his work where he could do as he pleased and not worry about me trying to make a scene in his relationship. Call it selfish, me saying what I did to help and keep them together, but I also said what I did because I truly thought I was speaking the truth, whether it benefited me or not. I wasn’t really looking at the big picture then anyway, I couldn’t take my eyes off the here and now. Ben always swore, even up until the very end, that no matter what happened with him and his boyfriend there was one thing that would not ever change: us. He swore by those words, then again he swore by many words, and in the end there were a lot of swear words, that’s for sure. But words sworn and promises kept and all of them ultimately broken... that’s another chapter but we’re not there yet.

Ben still was devoted to his boyfriend despite never saying anything positive about the guy – for example, he never missed picking him up after work, although he said that was because he had to stay true to his word. Just like he did with me, me went above and beyond to make sure he was a man of his word and he was accountable to the things he promised others. I found it impressive, it was like he was forcing himself to break out of his nature and stick to doing things for others, he was adamant about being a man of his word. He admitted to me one day that he did have narcissistic “traits,” but claimed that this way of thinking, behaving and living was against his life philosophy and so he chose to live a different path. I believed him; I picked up where my blog had left off and began this, because I was now convinced my blog could have a happy ending. I believed that people with personality issues, narcissism and the like, got a bad rap; that all those negative articles you’d read were one-sided, written by people with bad experiences. You never came across an article actually written by someone with the disorder, you only saw the opposite. So this portion of my story was intended to show the other side, only I didn’t know at all what I was dealing with at that point, that the other side was pure evil and hell fire. Instead I was distracted by the beautiful promises, and all that sex, sex, and more sex.

For 10 months our fling was absolutely perfect, we didn’t have a single argument. He couldn’t have seemed happier himself, and I was ecstatic, too. Ben and his beau had ended up not breaking up, but they weren’t having sex or getting along either, at leasat according to Ben. So instead he was always with me, my friends all thought we were together. Ben was growing increasingly angry and hostile towards his boyfriend and his never-ending cheating, too, and it looked like their break-up was once again imminent in the very near future. When Ben spoke of his boyfriend’s lying and cheating, I found it a bit hypocritical. According to Ben, he was cheating on him with random guys here and there all the time; whereas Ben was having an all-out affair with me and spending more time over than he spent at home. Ben only had negative things to say about his boyfriend, though, he vented to me all the time and as a result I never heard anything good mentioned. I never imagined that he actually had feelings of love for him.

Instead I wondered why he even bothered remaining in the relationship, although when I asked he told me something that I wasn’t expecting: “He was the first guy that made the noise in my head go completely silent.” Hmmm… that was rather interesting. I asked him about me, and he responded: “You on the other hand are quite the opposite. But I’ve learned to tune out all your noise, Alex, I’ve learned to deal with you quite well, unlike during round 1.”

Regardless of my noise, Ben continued to treat me like royalty. I believed in my heart of hearts he felt really bad for what he’d done to me in round 1: I’d just been intentionally infected with HIV by my ex, he came along and could have been my rock, but instead he treated me like shit and discarded me; that discard was one of the most painful experiences of my life. And all over as stupid word: narcissist.

Only I never once considered that word had maybe enraged him to the point where all this song and dance was merely a way of silencing me for calling him out on his secret.

I never once considered this a possibility; with Ben’s never-ending attention, constant sex, incredible compliments, and his offers to help out with everything, what I saw was someone that genuinely wanted to see me succeed and find happiness. He was perfect to me. Only that he did have a boyfriend, and didn’t seem at all phased about dragging me along, subjugating me in a role that was somewhat demeaning.

Ironically, Ben’s concern about me isolating myself from the world kinda turned out to be how things ended up for me. But I was clueless as it was happening, little by little, instead I was captivated by his words, overflowing with kindness, and oozing with charm and admiration.

Our feelings became so intense that one night Ben professed his love to me: he said he loved me just as much as his boyfriend, he called me his boyfriend without the title, he swore that if forced him to make an ultimatum, he’d never pick one over the other; must be nice for Ben to have the luxury of so many offers at his disposal. He swore nothing would come in between us, and I believed it. I remember the look in his eyes and the smile on his face when he speaking these words: it felt like the room was growing fuzzy, I felt like he was hypnotizing me to be completely honest; it felt slightly fake even, but it still felt beautiful. And I chose to go along with it, it felt like it was coming from a good place, from his heart, although in hind-site I doubted Ben could truly love to be honest. That was just my gut instinct, whether I wanted to acknowledge it at the time or not…

I was in utter disbelief; I was certain from round 1 that Ben falling for me was not possible, yet somehow the impossible managed to occur. I was shell-shocked, I was perplexed, I was ecstatic.

I’ll admit that I eventually began to take Ben’s “love,” attention, and sexually grooming me for granted; he came over so frequently, the thought of things ending didn’t cross my mind. Our relationship wasn’t just physical sex and talking about love. Ben could find no fault with me, he seemed to be enamored with everything about me, and he made me happy.

Ben never stopped stressing that our friendship was so solid, so important to him, that nothing could ever impact it; time and again he reinforced that nothing – not his current boyfriend, not any future boyfriends – would ever impact what we shared. He was a gentleman, he was glowing light, and he was a master con artist and manipulator, he took pathological lying to a level so advanced that when I became aware of his lies, I didn’t bother questioning him. I can’t put into words the power a narcissist can have over his prey… it’s something that’s not even believable until you actually experience it. I even read up on the disorder while he was courting me, and continued throughout the relationship, only I didn’t believe a word I read as being applicable to Ben. I believed it was a “spectrum” disorder like autism, Ben being only a slight big effected. Or maybe I’d gotten it all wrong I thought, there were soooo many times when I was certain he’d done something horrible to me, only to have him come over with a smile on his face, saying he forgave me for going overboard regarding whatever it was that I accused him of doing. Perhaps I was wrong about Ben having narcissistic ways? Or perhaps the textbooks got it all wrong? Or perhaps the textbook got it right: I would be the one always apologizing, he would be the one always acting like the victim, and every time I’d catch him in the act he’d gaslight me into doubting myself.

When I expressed concern that I could be scapegoated as the cause of Ben and his boyfriend’s problems, suggesting that it might be easier than facing their actual inner demons, he was quick to reinforce that I was incorrect:

Out of any guy I’d met in my life, Ben turned out to be the best one, I felt so lucky to have him in my life, I was so proud to claim him as my bestie. He was so kind, so thoughtful and so good to me; Ben was definitely wild and crazy but yet well-behaved, he was “just right.” He was social when he needed to be, yet still reserved and perfect to be with one-on-one, which I loved. Ben was always so damn mellow and peaceful. I never saw him get upset, at least not yet in round 2. He was always so polite, never rude, never boastful, he was so humble yet he was secure, he was attractive, he was vivacious sexually, he was everything I needed, everything I’d ever wanted, I felt so comfortable with him and I’d never, ever felt this way in my life, not even with my ex during his fake honeymoon phase – this was truly a gift, I’d finally met my match. It was like Ben had been made just for me almost, nobody had ever complimented me this well. As pathetic as this may sound, my experience with round 2 and Ben was the absolute highlight of my life; I’d do anything for that boy, and he knew it, too. I adored him, and I could tell he loved the attention. It was amazing, and I felt like finally – at last – I’d met a true, loving friend that was meant to be.

I always felt safe when I was with Ben. He always left me feeling like nothing bad could happen to me as long as I was with him. I’m not sure why.

One day out of nowhere, Ben stopped texting every day like he’d always done; when I continued texting like normal, he became a bit short with me. When I tried talking to him by phone he seemed distant and cold all the sudden, not saying much at all before hanging up abruptly. Despite these changes, I was blown to smithereens when everything suddenly did a complete 180 in the blink of an eye.

Ben said he needed space, only he was rather abrupt and vague with his words, he didn’t explain anything at all honestly: he just kinda blurted out that he needed a break out of nowhere, and it went straight over my head initially. Ben needing “time off” seemed odd since he did all the making plans, initiating our time together, all the sex, everything was on his time already – I just took whatever he gave – so he already controlled our time together and our space apart. I wasn’t texting more frequently than before, and he was the one that started doing it daily to begin with. It seemed like a double standard and I couldn’t understand why Ben was blaming me for his sudden change in character. He was suddenly not the person I’d just spent 10 perfect, blissful months with.

Just like in round 1, everything came crashing down in a whirlwind of drama, everything I thought was real and truthful, showed itself to be the polar opposite. Here Ben had set the pace for everything, and the moment I started going along at the same exact pace – I didn’t do anything he hadn’t been doing the entire time – he then slammed on the breaks and didn’t give 2 shits about doing this to me. Why all the sudden was he saying he needed space, and a break, and time to focus on… his boyfriend? Wait a second, who’s that, I thought it was… kinda me? HUH? His boyfriend… that guy who was only described in positive words by me, and not Ben? What, what, what?

I hadn’t gone after Ben at all; I didn’t have any feelings towards him until he brought up being in love with me 10 months in. I’m not trying to lay the blame all on him, but in all sincerity, this relationship had been his creation.

He was suddenly a different person, he was exactly the opposite of who I thought he was. Here he’d said he had me exactly how he’d wanted me, how he’d envisioned having me all along since round 1. So what the hell was this going on?

Not once did I ask him to give up time with his boyfriend to be with me, that was all his doing. Never once did I ask him to stay when he’d leave my house to go and pick his boyfriend up. I actually gave Ben good advice on his relationship, it was advice that wasn’t aimed at derailing it either, but rather advice on how to keep things on the positive. I was shocked reading his texts, initially I thought he was joking. But then I realized: Ben was flipping the script, he was painting me out to be the aggressor, the one going after a guy that already had a boyfriend, whereas this had been the opposite of what he said. Was he delusional? How could he not be seeing reality? Our entire relationship was Ben’s creation. But I didn’t read Ben’s mind apparently, and failed to realize that despite his harsh words about his boyfriend, that he was still in love, and they were having issues and he needed space apart to deal with them. Yes, he’d asked me to back off but without any other explanation, it was kinda text-shouted among other things, I didn’t get it at first as it was thrown in among other things. He was so hard to read, often what I read him as being I’d later discover was incorrect. Suddenly he wasn’t happy and kind like he was before, suddenly everything changed. And suddenly my perfect Ben wasn’t so perfect after all, he went off on me like a wild animal, he had no mercy, no concern at all for my feelings at all. This was bizarre, this was strange, and I couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

Thinking about Ben’s words that summer, and how much they contradicted all he was saying now… it really hurt, I felt betrayed, I felt beyond confused, I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Only I wasn’t; I was at my house, holding my phone in my hand, shaking. And this was actually happening.

I truly believed Ben viewed me as his second boyfriend, I believed in his promises of our friendship lasting forever, but all of this was suddenly meaningless to him, and I was crushed. The boyfriend without the title, me being on the same playing field as his boyfriend, his selflessness, his kindness, his helping me get better, those were all things he said without me ever enticing him to do so.

Could he have done those all to maliciously ensnare me into letting my guard down and letting him take over my mind with lies? He said these remarks all out of his own free will, how could he suddenly flip-flop like this? I assumed he was under stress and displacing his anger on me at the time. Then several days later I got word that he’d broken up with his boyfriend. I tried to be as polite and understanding as possible, and I told Ben that he’d be missed as we’d initially made plans that Friday night, me tellng him to be good despite the breakup. Only his reaction took me by surprise, it wasn’t something I had expected given my words weren’t rude or mean-spirited..

I didn’t know how to respond; I didn’t know why he was so pissed off… how was I guilt-tripping him with anything? But the next text I sent came back saying that it couldn’t be sent, Ben did exactly what he did in round 1: he blocked me. I was beyond pissed off. This was the ONE thing that I hated more than anything, as it triggered me right back into feeling like I was in the past, in the midst of abuse, and I was livid, I was sad, and I felt desperate, I felt like a part of me died that day.

Ben had broken the one promise I made him agree to in order for me to participate in his vision of us being together. I became angry, and one thing was certain: I was not going to let him get away with it again. No way in hell. Ben was going to be held accountable for that one damn promise, after all, I’d stayed true to my word in everything I’d said I’d do for him.

Ben came into my life, he’d brought me the warmest, brightest, most intoxicating love I’d ever experienced; he’d made me all these promises I didn’t ask for – and they all were nothing but words in the end. I was somewhere between having a seizure and a panic attack as I tried reaching him by phone using various numbers, only to have him hang up as soon as he heard my voice. If I thought the feeling his first discard left in my stomach was queezie, this was 10 times worse. I was set on a mission to make him keep his word… after all… he knew about the psychopath in my recent past. For him to do something like this, which resembled that incident quite a bit, went against his entire mission statement: to help me get better. This didn’t help me get anything but worse. Why the hell did I even want him in my life if he’d done this to me… twice? Why couldn’t I clearly see the writing on the walls and leave? All it took was noting his smell on my pillow, or anything that reminded me of Ben, and my mind was right back stuck on him. And it wouldn’t stop being stuck either… at least not for quite a while.

First and fourth songs written / performed by me, and as always, for Ben.

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Scroll down read about covert narcissism in the Huffington Post.

Imagine that a dear and beloved friend gave you the gift you always dreamed of — your very own Rolex watch! Not only did you treasure the gift, but you have been ecstatic ever since your incredibly generous and kind friend bestowed you with this wonderful and thoughtful gift. Although surprised with the gift, it didn’t shock you, as you were privy to stories about his generosity and kindness to others, who similarly longed for something he was able to give them.

A few months after receiving your gorgeous Rolex, you notice that the crystal has taken on some scratches, which seems unlikely since Rolex watches are known for their scratch resistant sapphire crystals. Three months after that, the unbelievable happens: the watch begins to lose time! You don’t dare mention it to your friend for fear of appearing ungrateful and disrespectful. You choose to keep it a secret, as the watch is more than just a timepiece to you; it is symbolic of the closeness that you and your friend share. After all, you think, it’s not a big deal that your beautiful watch loses only a few minutes a day. No harm, no foul.

To your great surprise, six months after first receiving your cherished gift, your scratched and poorly functioning but beautiful Rolex stops working altogether! Confused but curious, you bring it to a watch repair shop, where you learn that the treasured gift from your treasured friend is a fake; nothing more than a $75, made in China, counterfeit!

With the best intentions, you kindly and sensitively email your friend to let him know he was duped into buying a counterfeit watch. You recommend that he pursue some form of compensation from the criminal jeweler who sold it to him. Although “duped” and “criminal” may not have been the best choices of words, you trust your friend to take it in the spirit in which it’s intended. His response confuses you, as the shared experience of disappointment and frustration you expected was countered by anger and defensiveness. He blames you for prematurely jumping to conclusions, judging him, and being irresponsible and reckless with the valuable gift he unselfishly gave you. The situation gets even more bizarre when you realize that the group of seven men who belong to your shared social circle are carbon-copied on this particular email conversation.

Shocked and dismayed, you reflexively respond to him alone with a firm “chill out” and “back down” message, while asking why he would include the guys from your group in this conversation. This response lights him up like a match thrown into a puddle of gasoline. In a fit of indignant anger, he demands that you return the watch to him so he can disprove your “baseless and vindictive” allegations.

Following your well-meaning attempts to calm him down, diffuse his defensiveness and get him to stop blaming you, you notice that his personality shifts to one that is aloof, cold, and disinterested in hearing anything more about your experience of disappointment. Being confused and stunned by the sum total of his anger and apparent retaliation for your simple heads-up about the watch, you naturally comply by returning the watch to him. You don’t dare challenge his bizarre request because its abundantly clear that doing so would trigger him to an even higher level of histrionic and displaced anger. Plus, you are already embarrassed because all the guys in your group are now privy to this private matter. Little did you know that, by returning the watch, you also forfeited any possibility of clearing your name and restoring your reputation that has been tarnished by this unfortunate and unfair smear campaign.

You will be left trying to reconcile how and why your friend’s empathy, altruism, and sincerity disappeared in an instant and unexpectedly transformed into a laser-focused crusade to hurt you. After careful consideration, you decide to let the whole situation go, as the cards are already heavily stacked against you. Unfortunately, it’s too late and the domino effect can’t be stopped as you learn through the grapevine that your former friend has masterminded a smear campaign that will culminate in an expressed directive to exclude you from all future group activities. The “out of left field” abandonment by your friends will add another layer of trauma and betrayal.

You will be left with a “WTF” set of feelings, while trying to piece together what happened and why. Similar to other victims of covert narcissists, you will sadly realize that your “friend” and the friendship were never real. You may also come to the deeply disappointing conclusion that your counterfeit friend deceived you and others by creating multiple layers of fabricated personality traits, which were designed to benefit him. In other words, you will be shocked at the realization that your friend’s generous, unconditionally loving and altruistic persona was nothing more than an Oscar-worthy performance that was developed, practiced and honed through a long list of other discredited and discarded “friends.”

What you will soon learn is that this beloved friend was always a covert narcissist and the friendship you so dearly appreciated and valued was nothing more than a counterfeit, much like the Rolex watch.

Covert narcissists are masters of disguise — successful actors, humanitarians, politicians, clergy members, and even psychotherapists who are beloved and appreciated, but are secretly selfish, calculating, controlling, and vindictive. They create an illusion of selflessness while gaining from their elevated status. Although they share similar basic traits with the garden variety narcissist, i.e., the need for attention, affirmation, approval and recognition, they are stealthier about hiding their selfish and egocentric motives. Unlike the in your face narcissist, who parades his narcissism for all to see, the covert narcissist furtively hides his real motives and identity.

These narcissists are able to trick others into believing they are honest, altruistic and empathetic individuals. They are successful at pretending to be a more likable version of themselves, knowing that if their true identity was uncovered, they would not be able to maintain the respect, status and prestige that they have so manipulatively obtained.

Compared to overt narcissists, covert narcissists are more reserved and composed. By not advertising their deeper narcissistic values and motives, they are able to achieve their goals, while protecting their innermost insecurities and vulnerabilities. Unlike overt narcissists, they expend a great deal of psychological energy containing or hiding their callous, indifferent, and manipulative inner selves. Even though covert narcissists have repressed the full scope and magnitude of their personality disorder, on a semi-conscious level, they are aware that their fantasies are embarrassing and unacceptable.

Because covert narcissists are able to create and maintain a facade of altruism and unconditional positive regard, they are able to function in positions that are traditionally not attractive to narcissists, e.g., clergy, teachers, politicians, psychotherapists and others. Even though they are able to replicate the known characteristics of these positions, they are often deeply insecure and secretive about their lack of knowledge or inability to perform the most essential tasks. For example, a covert narcissist who is a psychotherapist will have mastered the stereotypical career-specific, idiosyncratic behavior patterns such as reflective listening, supporting and accepting feedback, and gestures that mimic unconditional acceptance.

However, this covert narcissist psychotherapist will be deficient in the most critical area of the job. Although they attempt to demonstrate honesty, sympathy and empathy with their clients, they ultimately fall short. They are simply unable to master the key elements of the position, as they are inherently judgmental, controlling and emotionally aloof. These therapists often become agitated at their clients when challenged or questioned. Clients who do not let them control the process will often trigger a narcissistic injury.

These secretive and slippery narcissists react to their unmasking with the full force of their arsenal of weapons that you would never guess existed. When they perceive a threat to their carefully and meticulously crafted public persona, all bets are off! Since their personal and professional reputation is built on a foundation of lies and misrepresentations, they will protect it by any means necessary. Their reflex to attack the perceived threat is fueled by an adrenaline-infused survival instinct that is no different than if they were cornered by a pack of hungry wolves. They will try to crush the threat, while positioning themselves as the victim of a premeditated vindictive and grievous harm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ross-a-rosenberg/unmasking-your-counterfei_b_10367886.html

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Prologue

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itsworn · 7 years

Text

We Give The Roadkill Traffic Report From The KTLA Sky5 Helicopter

It’s so early that the sun is still sleeping and the only light over Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, California is the weak glow from a few street lamps on the perimeter of the airfield. I can just make out the figure of pilot Mark Kono waving me through a series of security gates before he hops in an idling pickup truck and motions me to follow. Night still cloaks the small airport, dissolving the structures. Hangars and tarmac-harnessed planes rise up in the headlight beams then fall away. I’m creeping through at idle, concerned I’ll sideswipe a Cessna with the Roadkill Viper. The rear-view mirrors are empty black holes, everything behind me has ceased to exist. It’s kind of funny that the morning starts out with this blind crawl since the reason for my visit is to get the best view possible—1500 feet above the city in the KTLA news and traffic helicopter.

Mark is used to this eerie commute. He and his reporting partner, Eliana Moreno– whose job title of Aerial Photo Journalist make me think of a trapeze artist above a war zone with a camera, not entirely inaccurate–come to this tiny airport before dawn five days a week to fly the charcoal gray KTLA helicopter along the crash and stall-prone highways of Los Angeles county. Take-off time is usually around 6:30am, but Eliana and Mark get to the hanger at 4:00am so they can be ready in case of a breaking news story. I join them, along with fellow reporter, Jeff Baugh, in a blessedly heated office in a hanger housing two Astar training helicopters, and also blessedly, a coffee maker. The office walls are papered with aviation posters, flight maps, and photographs of helicopters hanging terrifyingly low over stadiums and forest fires. A flatscreen in the corner is playing the morning news on mute, setting the scene for our scheduled traffic input. The décor is half hobby store models of aircraft and half obvious hand-me-downs from someone’s house. A faux Tiffany lamp and a tin of popcorn with a golden retriever on it share desk space with a scaled down ‘copter perched on a bank of police and fire scanners. Eliana is listening intently to several of the scanners at once. It’s babble to me but she says that experience makes certain phrases stand out. “I can hear it in the tone of voice,” she said, “I can tell from a word or two if it’s a big chase, a big fire, or just something boring.”

“What are your favorite kinds of stories?” I ask and Mark and Eliana answer in unison. “Pursuits!”

“What are the worst?”

“Anything that’s just hovering over no action, like, brush fires, standoffs, trench rescues…” Mark starts before Eliana interrupts,“Bear in a tree,” she says, laughing, and Mark and Jeff snicker. “The desk reporter always asks you why the bear is in the tree,” she continues, “like, I don’t know. Isn’t that what bears do?” They all start laughing, and their conversation shifts to gossip about various news anchors and fellow pilots and then to helicopter crash stories. They aren’t being callous, it’s that same tough shell you notice when EMTs and brain surgeons are talking about their jobs. There is real danger in what they do. Think about it too long and you wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. I sip my weak pod-coffee and try to look like I am totally ok with hearing helicopter crash stories right before going up in a helicopter.

The history of news choppers started in Los Angeles, with KTLA Channel 5 in July of 1958, and it almost ended then too, as pilot Larry Scheer and engineer/cameraman, John Silva fought heat, vibration, and a near miss with a giant antennae to send the first live aerial shots of the Hollywood freeway to living rooms across the city of angels. The whole first broadcast is on YouTube, and a small grainy photo of that first Bell flight is taped to Eliana’s stack of scanners. Now it seems unthinkable to have a morning news show without a live view from above the city.

youtube

I’m just starting to fall asleep in the cozy darkness of the KTLA ‘copter cave when Mark says it’s time to go. We pile into the truck and head out thorough the warren of hangers to where the Channel 5 bird is waiting for us. A ground crew takes care of fuel and daily inspection, but both Mark and Eliana walk around the machine checking its carbon-fiber-hulled camera pod and various hinges and wires. “Once a door fell off a news ‘copter, but it wasn’t us,” Mark says as he waves me onboard. I make a note to not lean on the door, a vow I promptly break as soon as we lift off and I can see all the San Fernando Valley in the new light of the rising sun. It’s beautiful, and I press my face against the window trying to see my house.

The KTLA 5 Helicopter is an Airbus Eurocopter AStar AS350. I quiz Mark about its tech details, and he quizzes me about the Viper in return. We’re two happy gearhead nerds in the air. The AStar is powered by a single Arriel 1D1 Turbomeca turbine making about 732hp at the shaft. It runs on Jet A fuel, carries 143 gallons, and burns about 48 gallons per hour, giving Mark and Eliana around 2.5 hours in the air at a time. Stock, the AStar seats six, but with all the news equipment, including camera, gimbal, laptops, radios, and scanners, the KTLA ‘copter has just enough room for me and Jeff to squeeze in with the reporters. Mark says the AStar has a top speed of 135mph, but we start our cruise over I405 at a slow drift to match the traffic below.

Eliana starts calling out collisions as we follow the brake lights over the Sepulveda pass. She mentions an incident at the 101, but tells Mark not to bother, “It’s five minutes old, it’s probably over. Let’s go to the car fire near Santa Monica.”

As Mark circles the rising column of smoke on the shoulder of the freeway, I ask Eliana how they decide what to cover. “Some of it is requests from the traffic department and assignment desk in the studio, and some of it is our instincts based on the scanners. They trust us to find the news,” she answers, maneuvering the remote camera on the nose to give Mark a better view of the emergency vehicles surrounding a smoldering gray compact. “We’re one of the only stations that still sends a crew up just to cruise all throughout the day,” says Mark. “Most only go up for specific calls.” He turns back to the screen and calls into the station to give them the update. Then we make one last pass over the stopped lanes, and head towards downtown Los Angeles.

DTLA rises out of a low-lying fog bank. The glass-sided skyscrapers flame up with reflections of the morning sun, then go nearly invisible mirroring the sky as we change angles around them. We follow the radio to a jackknifed big rig blocking lanes on the 710 Southbound. Another news channel helicopter swings low underneath us and Mark makes a huffing noise. “Are you guys enemies?” I ask. “We’re competitive,” says Mark. “We’re aggressive. We want to be able to say, ‘First overhead on scene.’”

“Not enemies,” adds Eliana. “More like, we’re not friends.”

The semi truck is off to the side, so Mark heads east towards City of Industry where there is a report of a hit-and-run. It’s just happened, and there’s no information available other than what the chopper team can discern through the zoom lens. “There’s a school right there, think it’s a kid?” Mark asks Eliana. “Could be,” she answers, then points to an object in the intersection. “That’s a skateboard. It’s definitely a young person.” A few seconds later the on-air folks check in with Mark and he’s able to tell them that a young man, possibly a student was hit in the intersection, but has walked to the emergency vehicle, and will probably be ok. All the reporters, both ground and air, seem relieved. “We see a lot of bad things,” says Eliana, “but there’s something about a kid.”

As rush hour winds down, Mark apologizes. “I’m sorry we didn’t a get a chase for you,” he says, and I laugh and offer to call someone on the ground with a request to start one. The ‘copter makes a wide lazy circle up over Pasadena and the reporters tell me some of their greatest hits and misses. “Michael Jackson’s funeral was probably the most insane thing we ever shot, from a flying standpoint,” says Mark. “There were 20 something helicopters, every small plane in the city had been rented. It was madness in the air.”

“We almost got arrested for showing too much of the Christopher Dorner standoff,” says Eliana. “We try to respect the police and fire teams,” says Mark, “but in that case they felt we were showing too much of their tactical plan.”

Eliana starts laughing. “Remember the motorcycle pursuit where the guy ran in the house, changed clothes and came out disguised as an old man like he wasn’t the guy? He totally fooled us. He fooled everybody.”

Mark turns back towards Sun Valley, making sure to point out the fake plane crash at Universal Studios and oddly shaped swimming pools in the fancy backyards high in the Hollywood Hills. We geek out trying to identify various muscle cars from above, and Eliana humors us by moving the camera so we can get a better look at a large hoard of vintage Pontiacs in a storage lot. We touch down softly at Whiteman airport and say our farewells. I leave them settling back in by the scanners in case of a mid-day motorcycle chase. “Drive safe,” says Mark as I head out. “We’ll be up there, keeping an eye out for you.” He wasn’t kidding either; a few weeks later the morning news covered a sports car crash in the rain. Nobody hurt, just a stuffed Viper in a tree. Mark’s voice came on over the sound of rotor noise. “Sky5, first overhead, I bet Elana from HOT ROD knows that guy.”

The post We Give The Roadkill Traffic Report From The KTLA Sky5 Helicopter appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/give-roadkill-traffic-report-ktla-sky5-helicopter/ via IFTTT

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