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[This is a cheeky title for an untitled piece, written essentially as a prelude for a character in an Edwardian Vampire: The Masquerade setting. That setting hasnāt met as a fully realized table game yet, but I wrote this as a gift for the storyteller who is planning and writing it. As such, the piece assumes some basic knowledge of how VtM works. Hopefully, Iāve done enough with the contour of these broad strokes that youād be able to enjoy a brief story about some chance meetings in the dark of night in New York City.]
The cold streets lay still at this hour of the evening. Lanterns glowed softly to provide some small aid to any waywards who found themselves outside at this hour; for which virtuous souls in this era would not have completed their business before sundown?
Patrick stumbled up the western avenue of Central Park with dissatisfied grunts. Shuffling along in the dark, he kept his eyes forward while not truly seeing ahead; so empty was his mind, drowned in drudgery, drowsy thoughts of his bed, and a dollop of drink. Some small parcel of his spirit recognized that he was north of 70, and after some more trudging he turned west, allowing the parcel to sink back beneath the bubbles of his mind.
Patrick continued in this way for some time, awake and not, upright and not. It could be said the smallest part of him was driving his turbulent frame homeward, as a coachman drives a clattering carriage over cobbles. In his state, any who bore witness would not blame him for falling over when he heard a rosy voice call out from the shadows.
A figure in a long street coat and newsy cap emerged from an alley between tenements. Patrick fought off bleary weariness and stared, focusing on a hand extended towards him as he heard, āSorry to spook ya so, govā, but I were asking if you was in fair form and now it seems thatās a ways aside the truth, yea?ā
While Patrickās mind was grinding back to life, he could not yet make anything of this velvet voice he was hearing. It sounded young, but whether lass or lad he could not say, and although smooth, it spoke in the coarse tongue of the street. He clasped the outstretched hand with his, grunted as he hoisted himself up, nodded as he righted himself, and responded, āAye. Thank you. Iāve had much to drink and have much yet to walk.ā Patrick glanced aside, trying to identify the block, āMuch at this gait, at least.ā Turning around to look, he stumbled once more.
The indeterminate youth reached out to steady the man, offering, āCome this way. Lean to here in the alley fer a spell afore ya tumble the rest oā the way home.ā Despite the curiousness of the request, Patrick found the contact comforting, and followed suit to lean against the cool brick of the alley, which lightened his bones and tempered his flushed cheeks. The two stood in dark and silence for a few moments as Patrick tried to will himself back to alertness, or at least to whatever modicum would be necessary to make it home while on his feet. āWhatās got you so coiled up and taking liquid comfort to come to this sorry state?ā
Leaning further into the wall, as though the resistance of the wall would push him back to sobriety, and without opening his eyes or turning to face the question, Patrick replied, āItās hardly your place to ask a stranger his business.ā Without pause, he heard a small, sweet chuckle, which almost provoked a low rumbling laugh of his own, but he did not at all understand why.
āMay be right, there, govā, but this side of the street is hardly any place at all. There donāt need to be any rules here in the dark.ā
Patrick cracked his eyes open to regard the shrouded youth and their queer questions. They leaned on the wall opposite him, and naught of their form could be made out beneath the cap and coat. He knew nothing of them, and yet Patrick found them positively disarming. It was almost charming, and he couldnāt say what kept it from being so. āMy story aināt an uncommon thing you wouldnāt hear from any other working man. Just hit it hard today and then harder tonight.ā And then, with a smirk, Patrick dismissively glanced away and parried, āI doubt youāve the same excuse for being out here past bedtime, youngāun.ā
A louder, brighter laugh came from the opposite wall, and as Patrickās gaze was drawn back over, he saw faint lamplight bouncing off what must have been a cascade of dark hair, which the youth was now running one hand through, cap held in the other. āWherever we find ourselves, it can be important to take a moment to breathe, and allow our own creature comforts to set us aright again.ā Patrick was transfixed by the glint of light in her (he was certain it was āherā, now) eyes, which he had not yet seen but now could not ignore. āWouldnāt you say?ā
A moment. Another.
āWhat?ā Patrick grasped at brick as a parcel of his bubbled up to deliver the thought that her voice sounded different than it did a second ago, but he wasnāt receiving such messages at the moment. āWhat?ā
āIf youāre worried, it only has to be a moment, but what a moment it would be, wouldnāt it?ā
Patrick felt warm. Everything felt warm. His blood flooding through his veins felt warmer beneath his skin. The night air went from crisp to sharp and scalding for a moment. Her scent tickled his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his- when did he get close enough to feel her breath?
āWouldnāt it?ā
An eternity in a moment. He was already leaning over her, hands splayed on the brick beside her head. She placed her cap on his head and pulled the brim closer to her, bringing his face with it.
āYou seem to be tasting the idea, sir.ā She opened her coat, revealing reasonable menās garments, a buttoned shirt, a waistcoat, trousers, but also releasing the air that had been trapped within, and that air subsumed Patrickās senses. She traced his collar for a moment before gripping it in one hand. āIf you care to dine, I trust youāll find the meal fare quite reasonable.ā
Patrickās tantalized mind found a bubble of clarity as it became achingly clear what this woman was propositioning.
And when it popped, it exploded.
-----
Heartbeat pounding in the temples. Bleary moonlight and crooked shadows. A dirty patch of ground, cool to the touch.
Elaine finally pushed herself upright. What had taken only moments felt like hours, as the gravity of the situation dripped along the ground.
Her cap was ruined. All of her clothes too, frankly. Stripped buttons lay scattered all over this alleyway, beside the man. She never learned his name.
Even if she took the entire contents of his wallet, it would not have been worth this. She wouldnāt be able to get home, get anywhere in this state. She stood contemplating the sight, and what it would take to clean any of this up.
āYouāll also catch your own death in the night like this, hardly covered and wet with red.ā
Elaine jerked to a low stance, looking around for this voice that suddenly pooled around her. It certainly wasnāt the manās, though a manās voice it was.
āWhat exactly was your plan after all this? Bleeding up and down Western Central Park couldnāt have been how you expected to spend a Friday evening.ā
The voice didnāt echo. It sounded as though it were coming from directly behind her, and yet as she turned and turned Elaine found nothing. Nothing until the moon drew directly overhead, and she finally made out the form of a proper tailcoat at the other end of the alley, coiffed in neat blonde hair. She remained in her low stance, still gripping a pocketknife in her right hand, coated in gleaming crimson. āSome men jump, some men limp, some men whine, but most men pay. Iāve never had a man so⦠instantly⦠entitled to what wasnāt his. Anger and entitlement must have driven him to drink. I suppose Iād have to watch out for that next time, were I ever to have another after tonight. I doubt Iāll ever have another free night after this.ā
The man peered down at the body, then regarded her crouching form, tapping his walking stick on the ground. Elaine did not feel as though he glanced overlong at her exposed vulnerability. In fact, she had almost no read on how he read her, a rare thing for her. āWhat cause have you to say such a thing? Youāre a plenty clever girl. You were doing quite well before the man decided upon what was his.ā
Elaine did not know why she was compelled to say anything to this man who appeared out of moonlight. Perhaps some nihilistic resignation to the fact that she had no exit strategy for this. Perhaps something about the man who remained entirely composed when confronted with a highly indecorous cadaver and the woman who made it in an alleyway at night. She looked down at the body, and then at her knife, āI carry this knife in case of tempers like his, but itās never⦠never supposed to come to this.ā
āAnd yet you wielded it so well!ā Elaine looked up to hear the blondeās voice come from right in front of her. She struck with her left hand as she drew back her dagger in her right to follow up, but found that the man had already stopped both her left punch and right stab with outstretched index fingers. āIf only you could have seen the arcs, the curves, the splashes! I dare say you were quite ready to do so, as you were ready even just now.ā
She didnāt hear the man approach. In fact, as she registered his last words, she heard his walking stick topple and clatter over at the other end of the alley. This wasnāt a trick of the light, or her nerves failing her in her final hours before sheād be subject to the law. This man was unflappable, faster than shadows, and still staring directly at her, his face inches from her face. āAnd yet Iām no match for you, so letās cease the theatrics. Are you here to commandeer a doomed woman for some rich pervertās purpose? Youāve been watching this whole time and you didnāt stop any of it, so I can only assume your ends are nefarious at best.ā
āYouāre not entirely wrong, but you wound me so to tell me to dispense with theatre. Theatre is the whole point, you see. And Iād merely hate to lose such a skilled player as you, whose words remain so incisive before a man whom she cannot strike.ā
āIād rather leave my body with his for the police to find in the morning than to be subject to whatever demented will youāre intending.ā
āSuch spirited words for someone threatening their own demise! You continue to surprise. Delight, even.ā They had remained frozen in this awkwardly combative pose, index finger to fist, index finger to wrist, as though they were striking the pose for a dance, all this time, but the man finally stood upright, righting Elaine along with himself. He took her hands and folded them in front of her, dagger still clutched, but being careful enough not to have her cut herself. āWhat would it take for you to believe that I intend something⦠nefarious, sure, but something different, a different role for you?ā
Elaine could not move her hands. His frigid grip ensured that, and so he saw fit to continue. āA different role than toiling day in and day out, thrifting, grifting, stealing, and selling even yourself to feed all those adorable little mouths back at the orphanage?ā She chilled to think of how he could possibly know any of these things. Could this madman read her mind, or has he been watching her for longer than just tonight?
āYou seek to protect and provide for yours. I would do the same, and I would empower you to do so as well.ā He relented, releasing her hands to quizzically shrug at her. āI donāt have to call you āmineā if thatās more to your taste, but it would be true to at least some degree, thereās no getting around that.ā
He shrugged and she stared, uncomprehending. He continued, āIf thatās so abhorrent to you, go ahead and do what youāre going to do. Kill yourself, I imagine, after making a few arrangements for one of your little scoundrels to find this poor manās paltry salary. Youāre determined to die here, for fear of what comes with the d-ā
āWhy is it so important to you that I agree to whatever this is? Whoever you are, you could have had your way with me already. Several times, even. Assuming you have a way out of this mess, which you must, or you wouldnāt have wasted your time.ā
āWits sharper than your blade, even in the face of the truly unknown. Remarkable. What a remarkable performance. What magnificent theater, to be arguing for your fate, as your meal cools down below. Pretty soon, heās going to be useless to you, and then what will you do?ā
āWh-ā
āItās important to me that you agree simply because...ā He took her head in both his hands, adoringly, and in the instant before the moonlight overhead vanished behind the rooftops, he flashed the sharpest smile Elaine had ever seen. ā...even with such noble motives, having you agree to give up the dawn just makes for better theatre!ā
Fear already filled her being, but now understanding was swelling to match. He saw both swirling in her eyes as she raised her chin while keeping his gaze. She nodded once, and tilted her head. He fed quickly, and soon after, so did she.
Aires: The night has a thousand eyes, be very careful not to poke any of them. What did the night ever do to you?
Taurus: Be on the lookout for something that looks like its made of driftwood and light. He trades bad memories for fast food cupons.
Gemini: If you come across a library of forbidden knowledge tended by the dead dont try to check anything out. You can only get a card if youāre a legal citizen of an afterlife plane and it would be very embarrassing if you werenāt.
Cancer: Not every day will be one of triumph. You will fail, you will be lost, you will be scared. Fertilizer is made from plants whose time has passed.
Leo: You must be brave enough to produce terrible things. The key is discipline, fuck standards.
Virgo: The internet has made it possible to be scared to talk to girls that are thousands of miles away.Ā
Libra: Make sure to empty your dream catcher into a wastebasket every couple days. Otherwise you might attract things that try to eat the dreams suck there.
Scorpio: If youāre gonna break rules, for the love of god do it with some style.
Ophiuchus: Hiding under the covers actually works with some things. It is technically a threshold and so some things do actually have to be invited.
Sagittarius:Ā ātwo birds one stoneā Is a misleading proverb. Meteorites hit pretty hard.
Capricorn: Most armor is not resistant to funk based weaponry.Ā
Aquarius: Harvest from the rich and give to the poor. They wont need the blood for much longer anyway.
Pisces: Make up your own constellations, pray to your own gods, command unknown forces of your own divination. Steal from everything. This is real magic.
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Donāt talk to me about buffing or debuffing stats either. The only stat that matters is the enemyās HP, and I am going to debuff it all the way to zero.
Adrien is actually really smart and figures out that Marinette is more than JuSt a FRiEnD all the time, and the realization that sheās his Lady is never far behind.
That could help explain why Adrien is so āobliviousā in the timeline weāve been watching - Bunnyx has been conspiring to keep him in the dark this whole time!
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People. Weāre bad at realizing how different we are. Think of really basic elements of a personality like attention span, memory, energy levels, the strength of any given emotional reactionā these things might be completely different for me and for you. Then pile decades of sight, smell, sounds, and brain chemistry on top of all that. Record it in an unreliable medium and make most of it invisible. Can you tell if someone says whatever comes to mind because they donāt have the attention span to self-edit, because they donāt have the energy to control their impulses, or because theyāre overwhelmed by some unknown context? Guess what, itās probably some fractally complicated combination of all of the above, and most of the result is people assuming they just donāt know better. How would you know if everyone else just had that. much. more. energy than you? Not clinically ill levels of difference, but just enough difference. Imagine the low energy starts so far back that itās changed the personās entire lifeā say low energy made them avoid exercise when they were smaller and so they missed out on things that could have increased their energy levels. Now theyāve got compounding factors. We donāt have numbers for this. We have labels, but labels are blurry spots of color on bad maps. A minor breathing difficulty can make someone anxious for a lifetime and theyāll just think they have a personality flaw. How would they know everyone else gets more air? Where are they in the blur between healthy and sick if the sickness is invisible, even to their own life experiences? Or consider, we have labels to differentiate between asexusal and aromantic, but what do you call a person who is neither of those things and yet also has no endorphin motive to get over the getting-to-know-you hump? If their desire resembles aromantic desire more than anything else, are they going to call themselves aromantic and give up? The label itself becomes a compounding factor. People are too complicated to name or number.
And what I hate about this, is that it makes us really fucking bad at communicating.
Can you think of someone who hurts themselves by being a complete misanthrope, and someone way too selfless who hurts themselves by ignoring their own boundaries? These people both need help, and the help they need is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Thereās spectrums like that for basically every personality trait, and every time, there are people out there throwing out advice for one scenario and that advice is seen by people who need the opposite. You can get completely honest and sincere advice that will make your life terrible if you pick up on it, and since one of the axes on which we differ is accurate self-awareness, there will always be people who do. Or look at that axis from the outside perspective: if youāve seen a tiny fraction of someoneās life and everything they tell you about their inner state is biased in some absolutely bonkers direction, you are gonna get turned upside-down and sideways trying to interact with them. Most people you meet will tell you accurate information about themselves. The kickers usually donāt even know theyāre ālyingā, same way the person with the breathing problem thinks their anxiety is just inherent to them and not a panic reaction to low level suffocation. Welcome to constantly guessing about how other people work, where there isnāt a clean dataset in the world and most of the important points of comparison are so low level that we donāt even talk about them, might not even have good words for them. And I hate it.
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Iāve read a lot of fanfiction in the past year, chiefly in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom, after only briefly flirting with fiction during high school. But Iāve been remiss in not giving a lot of feedback to authors and creators. Recently, thereās been some pushes from creators and the community to have active fans provide more feedback, as a way to encourage engagement and support, and as a way to promote the creation of more work from authors that may need the encouragement. I feel this movement is very good, and I want to help.
But my reluctance to provide feedback is for none of the frequently given reasons.
If youāre reading this at all, Iām surprised youāre here, but by now you have an idea of my conversational tone. Itās dry. Itās just not obviously congruent with the very warm and welcoming space the fandom has carved out for itself. That disconnect is just spackled over the core of my discomfort:
In short, if Iām not speaking the lingo, I come across as just a critic.
For me, the most sincere compliment I can pay a piece of work is to face it honestly, engage with it, and then talk about my experience with it. But I communicate that experience through the language of literary criticism (or what pieces of it still remain after college), and coupled with my tone, people donāt think I like their work. This is tragic to me, because if Iām putting words on a page, itās because youāve evoked a strong positive reaction somehow. If I instead have overwhelmingly negative reactions to your work, Iām not your audience so I just leave. (Also, please believe that I know the difference between constructive criticism, nitpicking, and spite.)
I can do better. I can sound kinder. I can provide more encouragement and reinforcement. I can reflect on what is and isnāt appropriate to comment on, relative to how an author presents themselves in their work and their notes. I can learn to do better, in this particular capacity, and elsewhere in life. But now Iāve written this here, to plead my case.Ā
Thatās it. Thanks for listening.
I didnāt know how to gracefully connect this dot, but itās not unrelated so it goes down here: A nontrivial part of my anxiety here is feeling like I donāt belong in the space. Fanfiction has been a historically female medium. The spaces I have gravitated to on Tumblr have seemed primarily female if not primarily genderqueer, bath, and beyond. Iām just a double Pisces hetero male trying not to rock the boat and trying instead to keep the peace.