« explosivist »

jillian loved urban legends. she hadn’t put much stock in them as a child, but she’d loved them nonetheless. now, with ghost hunting being a part of her daily life, she wasn’t so quick to shrug them off as nothing more than make-believe. case in point: The House. 

all the neighbours called it The House, with the kind of dark tone that let you instantly know they meant a specific one. land developers had been looking at The House and the large swath of land it sat on for ages, but there was the matter of it potentially being haunted. enter, jillian holtzmann. 

the team had more-or-less agreed that they didn’t all need to go on these little ‘scouting missions’ to tiny towns with strange occurrences. it was a waste of time and resources, especially since those occurrences were more often than not a prank, or a family of raccoons. they’d played rock paper scissors to see who would come inspect The House. jillian had won, and the rest was history. 

every step she took into The House felt like she was talking a step further into a horror movie, complete with creaking floors, way too many spiderwebs, and a genuine trapdoor to the basement. flashlight in hand, she descended. 

at first, nothing looked too far off. the basement was properly underground, and there was a deep, impenetrable darkness in there.  “ drums, drums, in the deep... ”  she quoted to herself dramatically, swinging her flashlight beam across the room again. on this swing of the light, she noticed a rust-colored blotch on the floor. 

kneeling to inspect the stain she tripped over a bit of uneven flooring, and her flashlight fell from her hand, rolling away underneath some kind of basin and promptly turning off. a curse-word was half formed on her lips when she heard something, some kind of rustling, and was instantly reminded of the words following the ones she’d quoted from ‘fellowship of the ring’:  ‘a shadow moves in the dark; we cannot get out.’

“ hello? ”  she asked, then bit down on her lip at the cliché of it all.

“–Sorry. I really can’t do that. It’s an office, so it’s private. Patient files, sensitive information and everything. It wouldn’t be within my jurisdiction.”

She doesn’t know if she wants to touch the thing because the thing seems to be volatile and a little scary and touching it seems like the thing– the PKE meter– will react unfavorably to her and she’s more than a little bit scared of that. Because she knows something is wrong with her.

What if the thing also knows something is wrong with her. What if it alerts someone. What if someone finds out what’s wrong with her because–

She touches it, and then she drops it, quick, and her eyes widen because she’s overthinking it, and it falls to the carpet, unharmed, but she takes a step back like she’s only a little bit terrified of that. She’s terrified in general. She doesn’t want to touch it anymore– not anything that might make it obvious she is a thing, whatever that thing may be.

“You think it’s haunted in here?”

What an absurd concept– haunted. She doesn’t know what she is but she does know she thinks it’s ridiculous– ghosts, a haunting? There are no ghosts here, just a severely dissociating trauma victim who probably self-harms without full understanding of her own self or awareness, to boot.

“–I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drop your… PKE meter. I think it just startled me.”

“ hey, don’t worry about it. ”  jillian says easily, dipping to pick the meter up and shove it back into her duffel. this whole ‘convince her of the realness of ghosts’ thing doesn’t seem to be going her way, so she decides to take a different tact. 

“ how about this: i’m in town for a couple days, checking out the disappearances —— one of them was from your clinic, and you’re a local, so maybe you have some information. ”  she holds her hands up before victoria even has a chance to protest. 

“ even something you might not think is important could help save lives, ” she brings her voice down solemnly on the last bit of that. the woman works in a clinic, after all, she’s got to have some sense of civic or moral duty. 

“ so maybe we could meet up for lunch? it’d help me out, and then you don’t have to break your... jurisdiction rules. ”  jillian fishes into a pocket in her jumpsuit and pulls out a scrap of paper and a stub of a blackwing, which she scrawls the address of the motel she’s staying in, and her cell number.  “ or, i could just come back tomorrow morning, during business hours...”

» @explosivist.

                       Everything about the way Gorin casually continues to read a clipboard (as if she hasn’t been doing it for the past 10 minutes) belies her true intention. Although, a finger reaches up, taps the clipboard and in the next minute she’s asking:  ❝ Why don’t I buy you dinner tonight? ❞ A beat, Gorin reaches up to hang the clipboard next to the experiment, her fingers folding around her chin. Still not looking at Holtzmann. Separated but in tune, such a wonderful contradiction.  ❝ Chinese free for one night. ❞

jillian’s up to her elbows in machine parts, and she’s been blowing the same strand of blonde hair from her face since she started, which is to say that she hasn’t been paying the closest attention to dr. gorin. she starts to, though, with the offer of dinner.  

“ really, i’ve got it, ”  she says, and she’s almost reassuring herself more than victoria. to be fair, she is attempted to drag a huge desk across a room without scraping up the floor too badly.  “ no big deal. ”  she’s sweating with the effort.

oh, well then. at least someone has the capacity to disengage from erin’s lyrical epic in personal and professional shortcomings. she taps her pen irately against the back of her hand, perceiving the all-too-familiar disinterest with which her words are often met. ❛ i would, but it’s a long story. in many stanzas. i’m sure you don’t have the time. ❜

meme · ask box

"it just smells like standard death."

"i didn't expect that this would happen, but i see myself as a vegetarian for at least the next couple of weeks."

"what kind of cockamamie theory is this?"

"fuck you, my fingers don't need toughening."

"i shoulda been a surgeon."

"this is going to be a strange day."

"it's like one in the afternoon, and i'm lit."

"lie still, i'm not gonna hurt you."

"i guess i should look up before i shoot those things."

"go on, shoot me in the ass. it's okay, i can take it."

"[your muse] wants big boom."

"you're a nice guy and all, but sometimes you're a bull in a china shop."

"am i missing an eyebrow?"

"i have a date tomorrow..."

"what's more important, science or sex?"

"i kinda like it in here, it's private."

"i'm now standing in a melange of cooling fluid, gasoline, and cola."

"i'm standing right in it, and... i'm not dead yet."

"i think we should call it quits and go for the flaming arrows."

"well when you have a giant box of lard, it's just so darn tempting."

"i never get tired of doing that."

"it didn't hurt that much before, but now it really hurts!"

"i got a little...over-elegant."

"i get so much pleasure out of his discomfort!"

"ants are all over my head, man!"

"AH- okay, i'm an idiot."

"oh my god, it blew his teeth out..."

"guess what i did today!"

"how do you feel about electric shocks?"

"well, it better work, my shirt's all dirty."

"paramedics are... nowhere to be found."

"this is gonna KILL you."

"do you know something i don't?"

Okay, kids, it’s that time again where Kat’s gotta talk about some shit that I can’t believe I have to talk about.

You’re not entitled to anyone’s writing. Say it with me. You’re not entitled to anyone’s writing. Personals or general outside-the-lines people read roleplays all the time– it can be fun and cathartic for people who seldom get fanfiction of their preferred pairings, or like watching a fanfiction unfold, if it’s done right. I get that, it’s a fun experience.

Number one: Not every roleplayer enjoys this. Sometimes it feels pressuring to them, and it stops being fun when it garners outside attention and they feel they’re being watched and monitored. This is when you’re not entitled to anyone’s writing: send asks to characters! That’s decent, and a fun thing for the writer! We love that! Here’s the thing, though: when you’re very clearly invested in something solely for the ship, try not to make that transparent because it makes us feel shitty. We’re not here to fulfill your empty canon desires. We’re all unique portrayals with our own takes and our own writing, and we’re more than the dynamics we write with. It can make you feel downright shit to just be acknowledged for a specific ship or a specific dynamic. It makes us feel like our characters are good for a singular purpose, and that’s just not cool. We’re here because we love our characters for themselves.

Number two: don’t push your fucking agenda. For real, just don’t do it. Don’t harass about a specific plot-point you want. Don’t climb up anyone’s ass about a pairing you like. Just don’t do it. There’s such a thing as respectful distance, and it’s just better to keep it that way. Compliments are good– when they’re not covertly tucked away beneath micro-aggressions about writing. There’s a difference between a genuine compliment and one meant to coax an answer or encourage someone to do something you want them to do.

Number three: We’re writers with lives. Roleplaying for a lot of people is an opportunity to write collaboratively and creatively during the business of our school years or workdays in order to keep creative and continue to enjoy our creative talents. We are people before we are roleplayers, and as such, we reply to things at leisure. We’re all selective, if you’re not, you’re a bullshit artist. If you don’t have a preference, you’re not a person, you’re a manufactured roleplaying version of Siri. My point is no one owes you shit. Don’t harass. Be patient.

Number four: Learn how to talk to people without being creepy. This is one that always gets me. You can admire someone or love someone’s material, don’t put them on a pedestal or a higher standard. It’s weird and we don’t like it. Nine times out of ten, we’re not big on the attention. Character development asks? Yes! Send the thing! Asks about a single subject and ship that the mun has adamantly said is either a) not a thing or b) doesn’t want to talk about? No, fuckin’ stop that, it’s weird!

YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO SHIT.

she can cook, but she’s no good at baking; there’s too much precision needed, and not enough room for experimentation. 

she had trouble with her ‘L’s until she was three, so she used to refer to herself as 'jibbian’. to this day, her older siblings & parents often call her jibs or jibby. 

if she hadn’t’ve gone into engineering she’d have gone into sculpting. 

she can knit. everything she knits is slightly oversized, very colorful, and a bit lopsided.

she was born and raised in jersey city with her siblings.

“Closed is good for you, but it also means that the place isn’t open and since I’m the last person here for the night, it also means that I dictate how not open it is and, really, I encourage that it’s very not open.” As in please get out, if she’s being honest.

She’s uncomfortable, truthfully, and she doesn’t enjoy this– invasion of space. Victoria likes her space and doesn’t much enjoy it invaded. It’s important she keeps it, besides, because she’s very isolated. Space, space, space.

“As much as I do enjoy a good research opportunity– and make no mistake, I do–” she reads surprisingly frequently, a visit to the library has drawn her to the philosophy, to the science, curious and coerced, “–…what does your device do, the PKE meter? What kind of irregularities does it deal with?”

And now she’s curious. It’s sometimes irreversible, the desire to learn something, to understand something. To further knowledge somewhere that she barely has to begin with.

“ why don’t you show me around and we’ll call it even, hmm? ”  she replies, raising her eyebrows at victoria as if to punctuate the sentence. she hasn’t had to really do this before — usually the team is invited to places to bust the ghosts, to hunt the paranormal. the few times they’d had to shove in passed people, there had been an obvious and immediate threat. 

there’s nothing now, or at least, nothing jillian can see or sense. but people are missing, so something is happening. some part of her hopes that she hasn’t accidentally come down here to chase a serial killer. 

“ PKE meter, as in psychokinetic energy meter. the same way an infrared camera can pick up the heat we give off, this, ”  she jostles the device   “ can detect ghosts. well, what it’s really seeing is something like gravitation radiation. ghosts do some crazy shit to spacetime —— we think it’s because they’re meant to be on one side of the barrier and they’re on the other. ” 

she shrugs. she’s unlikely to be able to fix the ripples in the curvature of spacetime, so she does what she can. right now, that involves getting victoria to give her a tour of the facility, but so far that option seems to be getting further and further off the table. 

“ you can try it out, if you want. ”  she switches it around in her hand so she’s holding onto the part closest to the slowly moving parts, the handle held out to victoria.