Reflection

The morning light stabbed at his reddened eyes, jarring him painfully from a fitful sleep. Another day to live through. Rubbing at his face, Nyi flung his arm down to tug futilely at the blanket that was no longer there. It had been kicked off sometime during the night of tossing and turning. The sheets were tangled around his thin frame, succeeding in covering his waist but uncovering one golden leg nearly to the hip. Some sheet managed higher on his body, and what the sheets didn't cover, his long black hair gave a shot. Groaning, he rolled over, pressing his face into the pillow and wishing he never had to get up. Some days he just wanted to stay asleep forever. Only one thing ever got him out of the bed. The possibility of finding Kephri today. It was the only reason he pushed to see the next day come.

After a minute of pretending to suffocate himself, he turned and began the slow process of dragging out of bed. He never could sleep well, mornings were more trouble than they were worth. There was never had any energy, not at least until coffee. Sheet wrapped around his waist, Nyi stumbled towards the kitchen at the other end of the studio. It was a well practiced maneuver to start coffee with only half your consciousness. Once the maker was quietly rumbling, he stumbled off to his next stop, the bathroom. Leaning heavily on the small sink, he stared at himself in the mirror.

"Nyi, why do you do this to yourself?" He asked the mirror, gazing semi-dazedly at the dark circles under emerald green eyes. They were once glowing with life, but now muted and resigned to his self-imposed fate. The youthful face was still pretty, but obviously worn and tired from night after sleepless night.

"I don't have anything left. And he's the only one who can make things right again." Nyi answered himself. "He'll protect me, scare off the ghosts. He always did." With a yawn, he reached up to massage some type of life into his face, even if it was just an act. A little cosmetic magic hid the circles, just in time for the coffee maker to beep its completion. Sluggishly he went back into the kitchen to pour himself a cup and down it. The caffeine hit his system in a wave. It took two more cups to even feel ready to face the day.

"I must be insane to think I could ever find him. It's a needle in a haystack." He finished the third cup, washed it carefully and placed it back on the rack. Then the trek back to his bed, to find clothing to wear for work. If he was lucky, he would get a mission today. The money was needed.

Nyi dressed and retrieved his shoes from the front door, slipping them on. He made the bed and washed up, to be ready to leave. Looking around, he made sure everything was in its place. It was. "But what choice do I have? I made this mess, so it's my personal hell to live in. I just have to survive...until I find him."

Tomorrow

Tomorrow he’d begin again.

Nyi put down the vidphone still in his hand, the words of the Employment Office echoing in his ears. He got the job, thanks to no one else willing to work with Kephri. Taran Graves, Kephri’s agent was to go over the details at 10am tomorrow morning in his office. The office was on the seventeenth floor of Hunter Central. Finally, tomorrow morning he would see Kephri again, after all these years.

And this time, no matter what it took, he was not letting him go.

He didn’t know what to feel. Relief? Triumph? Or just the same mix of desperation and determination that still kept him going, day after day. Kept him from doing more permanent harm to himself. Couldn’t find Kephri, couldn’t fix everything he had done wrong, if he was dead. Even if sometimes he was so tired he just wanted it all over. No more nightmares, no more insomnia, no more having to mainline coffee just to stay upright some mornings.

Nyi padded into the bathroom to stare at himself in the mirror, the feelings of disgust and revulsion at his image old friends come to greet him. He took notice of the dark circles under his eyes, the greasiness of his golden skin, all things that would have to change starting tomorrow. But he was good at hiding now, good at lying, at pretending to be what he was not. He would need to be cheerful, to be snarky and smartass right back at anything Kephri would throw at him. And most of all, patient. Nothing would be fixed in a day, in a week even. Kephri will try to get rid of him, will belittle him, try to leave him behind.

Because he doesn’t know the truth. A truth that Nyi might not ever be able to tell. But he doesn’t need the truth to fix his mistakes. He just needs this one chance. To be in Kephri’s presence again, to be able to talk to him again, maybe even befriend him. Even if it’s only as a stranger. For that was his only salvation.

Tomorrow he’d leave this self-induced purgatory. Tomorrow was the first day in the true life of Nyi Keene.

“Tomorrow.”

Kouki thought piece after the shopping trip with Shin

(From Ryukuto Academy)

He gave me a choice, and until then I never really knew how much freely having that choice mattered.

It's not like I haven't chosen things for myself before, Father isn't really that...demanding. And there are some things I've found a way to convince him of, when I knew they were the right course for me. I've always had this ability to know when a decision mattered I guess, and what I needed to choose. It's hard to explain and I've always just called it my sixth sense. But this wasn't my sense initially, and it should have been something inconsequential. Something normal and meant as a tease.

Shin meant it as a tease, though he was also poking at me with that razor insight of his. He knew that all I’ve ever worn are school uniforms and professional clothing. Never once have I bought anything else, ever considered it. Which is why his compliment followed by the tease hit so hard. I had his approval or at least some of it and I didn’t need to make myself into what he wanted to do so. While my plain clothing seemed to offend his sense of fashion, he never pushed his opinion. It was always what did I want to do. And I know he wouldn’t punish me no matter what I picked.

I’ve tried so hard to be polite, be nice, do what I’m told. Be the perfect son, and I’ve never received nearly as much regard as he’s shown me now. Shin...are you what it’s like to be free? I had to choose to follow you, and now I’m wearing beautiful but strange clothing and feeling altogether like someone else. Like a transformation is happening, but so slow I barely notice the effects. And yet I believe these events are supposed to be normal for other people. If that’s true, what has my life been all this time? Was it ever really mine?

Is it too much to hope this is the fairytale I’ve been waiting so long for?

A Rant #1

(I blame Lindsey Ellis' video on CATS 2019 on this, and it also being late at night, and probably Shelter In Place.)


Fuck Reality.

 This is not an angsty post, despite the common associations one would get from just those two words. Also, this is my thoughts, my opinion, and it's 12:52am so deal. A thesis maybe? Or just something to work from. Once long ago, I wrote something to the effect of people need fantasies during times of strife for nostagia's sake, for escapism, for the hope that'll get better someday. Something like that, I'm not looking up my senior thesis in history for this. (I got my history degree by essentially writing about history and LOTR. No really. ^^) There are periods of time we could see the rise in this, I only picked a couple obvious ones and the effects they had on later periods.

In the current time period of utter trash fire, and some before it there keeps being this sense to make things more "realistic". As if reality is the pinnacle of all media. Reality is stranger than fiction, yes, but it is not in any way better. Fiction needs to be unrealistic. We need to see that things can be different. We need to not see "reality", but the reality that could be. To create that better world, we need to see that it's possible first.

Terry Pratchett had it right in The Hogfather, when Death tells Susan that people need to believe in the little lies (Tooth Fairy, Hogfather who really is Santa) so they can believe in the big ones. Justice, Mercy, Hope. Because they will only exist if we believe in them. It is this diet of believing in things that aren't real that help us believe in things that should be real.

But then we have these disturbing trends that get out of hand, that seek to destroy what is a human need. We have the darker and grittier trend, which is frankly depressing and smacks of wanting to make characters as miserable as you are. No one is allowed to be happy, not the story, not the people. In some ways that can be cathartic, but it seems more often just a way to be sadistic. Just enjoying causing pain to other (hopefully fictional) people. Let's make Superman (who is supposed to be a Big Damn Hero, not to mention an illegal immigrant) not give a shit about civilian life and be an angry killing machine. What does that do but debase the idea of the heroism that you could be too, all for some cheap jollies? He's a damn boy scout so that more people try to be like him in real life. And when I say people, I mean EVERYONE. The darker and grittier version only truly speaks to one small subset.

I finished watching Lindsay Ellis talk about "Why is Cats?" as in the musical, and the trainwreck of a movie. Could have been called Hubris, the movie. The only ones not being a dick in some way or another being the VFX people. Come out understanding more of why people liked the original musical, and a sense of this whole "It must be realistic!" thing has to stop. It does not have to be realistic if the whole point was to be fantastical in the first place. Reminded of complaints about The Greatest Showman not being historically correct. No shit, that wasn't the point. It's not a history movie, it's not a biography of PT Barnum. It's a musical about a bunch of weirdos no one likes finding a family. About accepting yourself for who you are, a freak, and fuck it all. "This is Me" is the focal point song. Who is it sung by? None of the top billing actors, the ones whose name got onto the poster and got most of the screen time. No, it's the bearded lady, played by Keala Settle, who I never heard of before this and I bet few had. The song is about how she had been abused, that no one would love her because of what she looked like. But fuck that, I'm not letting them win. Take it or leave it, This Is Me.

This musical movie exploded everywhere. That song did, there are many covers of it. Why? Not for the historical aspect, or being a story of PT Barnum. For the fantastical spectacle of it all, and because so many people know what it's like to be mocked for who you are. That movie is not realistic, no one is watching it for realism. They want to be entertained yes, but also escapism and looking for hope. "If those people could find their family, could stand to live with themselves, maybe I could."

And this is where the "make it realistic" aspect fails. Realism would not give you that. It would make PT Barnum more like he really was, a con man and a dick. Like the relationship between Phillip Carlyle and Anne Wheeler would have worked out so well in reality. Realism would tell you, yes you are a freak, so either hide it or change to look like the "normal" people. People are already doing that every day, they don't need a movie telling them that as well.

So let's have dragons and fairytales and happily ever afters. Where superheroes save the day and no one dies, or dies for very long. Let's believe in magic, psychic powers, peaceful galactic federations, and that "good" will always triumph over "evil". That anyone could open a wardrobe and enter a snowy forest by a streetlamp. That if you were given the One Ring, you could make it all the way to Mt Doom and throw it in.

If we can believe in that, it'll be easy to believe in a world where everyone has food on the table. That we can all have a roof over our heads or healthcare that won't drown us in debt. That we can survive a pandemic we were woefully unprepared for. That someday we can meet in person to laugh and cry and give hugs where desired.

I don't know what else to add. I'm not sure I made much of a point. But yeah, I don't need to be realistic. I will write my sappy happily ever afters. And what the hell, let's end on a quote. From the one who did not get taken in by the One Ring, and was clearly the best person in that whole book, Samwise Gamgee.

"I know, it's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo.

The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.

A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."

Why no context?

Why no context? Because that seems to be what I'm best at. Throwing writing into the wind without context just to see what happens. Dean of vague pronouncements. More than happy to provide it if someone is interested, but as I seem more often than not to be talking to myself, what do I need the context for?