DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Team Butterfly suffers from the horrific affliction known as American individualism.
🦋 Team Butterfly Forever 🦋
- Thread starter open_sketch
- Start date
- Original Mature Novel
on tragedy and comedy
New
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
given recent discussion, i figure i'll lay out my philosophy here guiding how i will be treating various subjects in this fic.
this is a story about trauma, loss, mourning, pain, and the quiet suffering of isolation. there's going to be heavy stuff,
this is a comedy about friendship, love, absurdities mundane and supernatural, and cartoons for children. there's going to be jokes.
because it is both these things and more besides, and there's going to be jokes about heavy stuff. there will be jokes about trauma, loss, mourning, pain, and isolation.
but the heavy things themselves are not the jokes. trauma, loss, mourning, pain, and isolation are not jokes.
but they can be the context jokes are told in.
part of the human condition is the tragedy is often absurd, petty, ironic, strange, surreal, over the top, abrupt, or incongruous, and all those things can be funny. sometimes we laugh because otherwise we'd cry, and sometimes we laugh because with distance, perspective, or a sense of safety, the oddities stand out. finding humour in our situations can be how we cope, how we heal, or how we connect with others so we can do those things.
i just want to tell people right now that his story is going to be many things, and there will be much about it that is very serious and wants to be taken seriously. but it is a comedy, and in many ways the comedy is vital. humour is how Eve and her friends are getting through the things they experience, and it's my goal that the comedy helps the reader too.
like… take the last chapter and Brigid.
it is not funny that Brigid has post-traumatic epilepsy. the fact she is suffering is not funny. what it has done to her life and self-image is not funny. i tried to treat her pain and struggles as real, valid, important things. i wanted the reader to recognize another human being in pain, to put themselves in Eve's shoes as she has to sit in the helpless horror of seeing somebody she loves in such a bad place.
a person having a seizure is not funny. at no point do i want to try and make the fact a person is having a seizure funny.
… but it is just a little funny that when she blanks out holding the sparkle pen she was wrapping a wire around, the little spring she made slips off and bounces in front of her face as she stares off into space, right?
like, yes, it's not funny to Eve, watching it happen. it probably wasn't funny to you when you read it through the first time. but in a few weeks, turning it over her in head, Eve is going to laugh. she might even tell Brigid about it, and Brigid might laugh too.
and i know some of you pictured it as i described it up there and smiled. the contrast is a little funny. a piece of metal going 'boing' is a little funny, and a person absolutely not reacting to that happening is a little funny.
there's nothing wrong with that. tragedy often isn't dignified, and loss of dignity is often funny because it deflates our self-image and self-importance. that same loss of dignity can be connective when used right.
there's limits, of course, and you have to avoid being cruel, lurid, and explorative. i won't be making jokes about how seizures are often accompanied by a loss of bladder control, for instance, because "haha isn't that shameful" isn't a joke worth telling.
there is not a single joke in Brigid's clinic-tonic seizure. it is not funny. i don't think it's funny and i hope you didn't either. it's awful and i wanted people to feel concern, sympathy, horror, and heartache reading it.
… but "epileptic magical girl can't get through own transformation sequence" could be an Onion headline. when the thought first occurred while constructing the outline, i laughed!
yes, it's horrifying, sad, heartbreaking, it's going to continue to be a serious topic in this story because the suffering it causes isn't a joke and at no point is the hurt going to be used for humour. in-universe nothing is funny about it.
but as observers who understand this is a genre, we can understand that it's juxtaposing a real issue with a fictional context in a way that is, among other things, funny, right?
the joke isn't that epilepsy is funny, it's not that an episode of pokémon sending a bunch of kids to the hospital is funny. neither of those things are funny.
but taking an artifact of the animation and acknowledging it inside the fiction is conceptually funny by its nature. it's funny for the same reason that, say, a character noticing the rock that was drawn on a cell instead of painted on a background and making a decision based on it is funny. or to use a specific example to this medium, the way that Eve's internal narration has to take several crossed-out runs at the name of a medication is funny.
i'm not making jokes about it in the story itself, but when you tell your friends about it when pitching the story to your friends, they might think the concept is funny, and that's on purpose.
for contrast, compare to the joke the Simpsons did on the same topic, where the joke is basically "isn't it funny that anime can give you a seizure? isn't the way we drew the symptoms of the seizure funny?" you see the difference?
humour derived from tragedy is often cruel and i think it sets some expectations. we are used to jokes about tragedy being, in essence, "it's funny that this happened to somebody i think deserved it", or perhaps "i wish to induce suffering in people i think deserve it and that's funny." it sucks, and i think it's why there's a reaction that you can't joke about bad things, or that you can only joke about specific bad things you specifically experienced as an allowance we are making for your recovery.
i used to think that way, but frankly it is bullshit. the problem is not jokes; it is always cruelty, dehumanization, and lack of care. while we must be mindful of our voice and perspective, interrogating our motives and context, if we say the absurdity of the world is anyone's exclusive property we rob humour of it's power to build empathy and community.
i have had some really tragic things happen to me in recent years. this story is, in part, me processing and coming to terms with it. but some of it is really funny too, and some of the worst parts get the loudest laughs when i talk about it with the right framing.
having to go to a courthouse because a loved one is talking about their imminent death in suicidal terms isn't funny. nothing about what was said to me was, at the time, funny.
but immediately after it happened, as i tried to put it all together, i laughed because it was so fucking weird. having delusions isn't funny, but the content of the delusions themselves can be a different story.
and then… well, being unable to get through the meeting with the judge without laughing, during the hardest 48 hours of my life, because of how absurd the delusions i need to describe for context are? yeah, sorry, that's a little bit funny.
and when i apologized, terrified that i'd ruined it and he wasn't going to take me seriously after that… the judge looking at me with utter sincerity and saying, completely deadpan, "no, that's objectively weird as hell" is fucking hilarious.
this is a story about trauma, loss, mourning, pain, and the quiet suffering of isolation. there's going to be heavy stuff,
this is a comedy about friendship, love, absurdities mundane and supernatural, and cartoons for children. there's going to be jokes.
because it is both these things and more besides, and there's going to be jokes about heavy stuff. there will be jokes about trauma, loss, mourning, pain, and isolation.
but the heavy things themselves are not the jokes. trauma, loss, mourning, pain, and isolation are not jokes.
but they can be the context jokes are told in.
part of the human condition is the tragedy is often absurd, petty, ironic, strange, surreal, over the top, abrupt, or incongruous, and all those things can be funny. sometimes we laugh because otherwise we'd cry, and sometimes we laugh because with distance, perspective, or a sense of safety, the oddities stand out. finding humour in our situations can be how we cope, how we heal, or how we connect with others so we can do those things.
i just want to tell people right now that his story is going to be many things, and there will be much about it that is very serious and wants to be taken seriously. but it is a comedy, and in many ways the comedy is vital. humour is how Eve and her friends are getting through the things they experience, and it's my goal that the comedy helps the reader too.
like… take the last chapter and Brigid.
it is not funny that Brigid has post-traumatic epilepsy. the fact she is suffering is not funny. what it has done to her life and self-image is not funny. i tried to treat her pain and struggles as real, valid, important things. i wanted the reader to recognize another human being in pain, to put themselves in Eve's shoes as she has to sit in the helpless horror of seeing somebody she loves in such a bad place.
a person having a seizure is not funny. at no point do i want to try and make the fact a person is having a seizure funny.
… but it is just a little funny that when she blanks out holding the sparkle pen she was wrapping a wire around, the little spring she made slips off and bounces in front of her face as she stares off into space, right?
like, yes, it's not funny to Eve, watching it happen. it probably wasn't funny to you when you read it through the first time. but in a few weeks, turning it over her in head, Eve is going to laugh. she might even tell Brigid about it, and Brigid might laugh too.
and i know some of you pictured it as i described it up there and smiled. the contrast is a little funny. a piece of metal going 'boing' is a little funny, and a person absolutely not reacting to that happening is a little funny.
there's nothing wrong with that. tragedy often isn't dignified, and loss of dignity is often funny because it deflates our self-image and self-importance. that same loss of dignity can be connective when used right.
there's limits, of course, and you have to avoid being cruel, lurid, and explorative. i won't be making jokes about how seizures are often accompanied by a loss of bladder control, for instance, because "haha isn't that shameful" isn't a joke worth telling.
there is not a single joke in Brigid's clinic-tonic seizure. it is not funny. i don't think it's funny and i hope you didn't either. it's awful and i wanted people to feel concern, sympathy, horror, and heartache reading it.
… but "epileptic magical girl can't get through own transformation sequence" could be an Onion headline. when the thought first occurred while constructing the outline, i laughed!
yes, it's horrifying, sad, heartbreaking, it's going to continue to be a serious topic in this story because the suffering it causes isn't a joke and at no point is the hurt going to be used for humour. in-universe nothing is funny about it.
but as observers who understand this is a genre, we can understand that it's juxtaposing a real issue with a fictional context in a way that is, among other things, funny, right?
the joke isn't that epilepsy is funny, it's not that an episode of pokémon sending a bunch of kids to the hospital is funny. neither of those things are funny.
but taking an artifact of the animation and acknowledging it inside the fiction is conceptually funny by its nature. it's funny for the same reason that, say, a character noticing the rock that was drawn on a cell instead of painted on a background and making a decision based on it is funny. or to use a specific example to this medium, the way that Eve's internal narration has to take several crossed-out runs at the name of a medication is funny.
i'm not making jokes about it in the story itself, but when you tell your friends about it when pitching the story to your friends, they might think the concept is funny, and that's on purpose.
for contrast, compare to the joke the Simpsons did on the same topic, where the joke is basically "isn't it funny that anime can give you a seizure? isn't the way we drew the symptoms of the seizure funny?" you see the difference?
humour derived from tragedy is often cruel and i think it sets some expectations. we are used to jokes about tragedy being, in essence, "it's funny that this happened to somebody i think deserved it", or perhaps "i wish to induce suffering in people i think deserve it and that's funny." it sucks, and i think it's why there's a reaction that you can't joke about bad things, or that you can only joke about specific bad things you specifically experienced as an allowance we are making for your recovery.
i used to think that way, but frankly it is bullshit. the problem is not jokes; it is always cruelty, dehumanization, and lack of care. while we must be mindful of our voice and perspective, interrogating our motives and context, if we say the absurdity of the world is anyone's exclusive property we rob humour of it's power to build empathy and community.
i have had some really tragic things happen to me in recent years. this story is, in part, me processing and coming to terms with it. but some of it is really funny too, and some of the worst parts get the loudest laughs when i talk about it with the right framing.
having to go to a courthouse because a loved one is talking about their imminent death in suicidal terms isn't funny. nothing about what was said to me was, at the time, funny.
but immediately after it happened, as i tried to put it all together, i laughed because it was so fucking weird. having delusions isn't funny, but the content of the delusions themselves can be a different story.
and then… well, being unable to get through the meeting with the judge without laughing, during the hardest 48 hours of my life, because of how absurd the delusions i need to describe for context are? yeah, sorry, that's a little bit funny.
and when i apologized, terrified that i'd ruined it and he wasn't going to take me seriously after that… the judge looking at me with utter sincerity and saying, completely deadpan, "no, that's objectively weird as hell" is fucking hilarious.
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- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...okay yes, I know I said it was horrifying, but it was also a little funny.
I just want to say that those two paragraphs perfectly get the tone across. I'm willing to bet that none of us here never had an experience that was terrible to experience in first-person and at the same time gut-bustingly funny from wider perspective, whether due to sheer absurdity or any other reason.
- Location
- America
- Pronouns
- He/Him
With all of the things going on in the world lately, I can't help but sometimes think that if it wasn't all real, if real lives weren't being harmed and at risk of being harmed, some of this would be funny in the stupidity or absurdity of it all. it's important to remember that this is a normal human reaction to this kind of stuff. Thanks for the reminder, it matters.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Oh, indeed; there are some current and recent events that I think in fiction would pretty much have to be presented as comedy, because who could take them seriously?WhatIf said:
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I'm gonna be honest, I fell behind for a few chapters (a lot of stories piled up due to disturbed sleep), and now that I've caught up I'm still just hung up on this bit
how did andy get a phone
does andy have a legal identity to make amazon purchases with. what did the paperwork for that look like. how does he manage a mobile phone with his leetol pawsies. does he have a special kitty phone keypad?
like
how did andy get a phone
does andy have a legal identity to make amazon purchases with. what did the paperwork for that look like. how does he manage a mobile phone with his leetol pawsies. does he have a special kitty phone keypad?
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Apparently it's a pretty big phone? So, maybe he doesn't need the keypoint, just increase the zoom. Some phones have accesibility modes for that.
Anyway, maybe he didn't need to buy the phone on Amazon. Could have been a combination deal with the carrier.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
are you saying that cats shouldn't have phones?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
i'm saying society thinks cats shouldn't have phones, and i'm deeply curious how andy stuck it to them.
- Location
- in the trash
implying cats care about what society thinks
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- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
andy is the exception he's a very respectable little man
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
by the way, for those curious, Andy's giant smartphone is a real phone. It's the Samsung Galaxy Mega, chosen so its easier to dial numbers with paws.
to give you all some more fodder to make fun of me, i would like to state for the record that yes, i have gone and picked out what everyone's phones are. Eve has an iPhone 4S, Amara has a Nexus 5, I've mentioned Kimiyo's Xperia, whose flashing green message light that appears in chapter 4 is a real feature, and before that she had a Razr 2 because she doesn't trust smart phones. Brigid has an Optimus 7, though it hasn't come up yet. The other characters all have their phones picked out too. i also did this for cars, laptops, game systems if any other misc electronics that might come up.
yes i know im weird but genuinely this helps. researching Japanese cell phones and the policies of Docomo allowed me to debut Andy's stupidly huge phone, which is, and i am not joking, important for the plot.
sorry for lack of updates in the last little bit; life has been a bit busy again and the stress has seriously dragged down my writing. sooon.
to give you all some more fodder to make fun of me, i would like to state for the record that yes, i have gone and picked out what everyone's phones are. Eve has an iPhone 4S, Amara has a Nexus 5, I've mentioned Kimiyo's Xperia, whose flashing green message light that appears in chapter 4 is a real feature, and before that she had a Razr 2 because she doesn't trust smart phones. Brigid has an Optimus 7, though it hasn't come up yet. The other characters all have their phones picked out too. i also did this for cars, laptops, game systems if any other misc electronics that might come up.
yes i know im weird but genuinely this helps. researching Japanese cell phones and the policies of Docomo allowed me to debut Andy's stupidly huge phone, which is, and i am not joking, important for the plot.
sorry for lack of updates in the last little bit; life has been a bit busy again and the stress has seriously dragged down my writing. sooon.
- Location
- Soviet Canuckistan
I love the amount of research you plow into this, it winds up doing very interesting things to the narrative
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Take as much as time as you need. This has been absolutely excellent.
Now I can safely picture that scene in my head without needing to hand my phone to my cat.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Perhaps potentially, but my reaction continues to be along the lines of "Wow, that's impressive; thanks for the care you put into this! I hope it's not wearing on you too much, though." rather than some sort of "Hah, nerd, a term that definitely in no way also describes me!". And this does seem to be in line with the general pattern of the comments.open_sketch said:
- Location
- Vermont
You're doing good! This story updates more rapidly than several others that I follow attentively, I trust that it will arrive and I will enjoy it when it does.
- Location
- America
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You almost certainly no longer need this, but for the kind of person who reads quality history books from random University Presses, Thomas F. Mayer has a good three volume series of books on the Roman Inquisition for the University of Pennsylvania Press (The Roman Inquisition: A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo, The Roman Inquisition on the Stage of Italy, c. 1590-1640, and The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo).
Yeah, it was a while ago. I think I'll check nevertheless, thanks!
- Pronouns
- She/They
Caught up on this, Extremely good writing and character work. You capture the surrealism of adult life incredibly well.
🦋 Chapter 6 - Turbulence (Part 2)
New
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
You didn't have much to pack the next morning, seeing as you hadn't intended on staying long anyway. You took your meds, changed the sheets on Brigid's bed, and triple-checked your bag, each time discovering some new obvious thing you'd forgotten.
Molly had volunteered to drive you to Heathrow in the morning, but you were hoping to stay until Brigid came home to at least say goodbye properly. You lay with your head on Amara's lap on the couch, wishing you'd had the foresight to bring your laptop. Instead, you tried to watch videos on the apartment's crappy wifi with your phone as she got in some vital Computering before you were stuck on planes for like twelve hours.
"Watcha watching?" Rita asked from the other chair. You tapped the pause button.
"New Numberphile," you said. That didn't seem to mean anything to her. "Uh, youtuber who does math stuff. It's about how many panels are on a soccer ball," you explained. "That's a football in British."
"Right."
"Well, okay, technically it's about topology,, which I never really learned? Like, the Euler characteristic and stuff. But it's still neat," you admitted, "It's just using footsoccerballs as an example."
"I can see why you and Brigid are friends," Rita said. "Little genius society you got going."
"What? Oh God no, she's the genius, I'm dumb as hell. I don't understand half this stuff, like, economics is baby math. It's basically just statistics and algebra and the biggest most hilarious variable assumptions you've ever seen," you explained.
"You're not dumb," Amara reminded you, as if by automatic reflex. You groaned.
"Fiiiine," you said, not believing it for a second. Your friends were brilliant, they all knew so much, had cool hobbies, could make things. You just had pills that made studying bearable.
The video ran down and autoplay spat you an ad, so you tapped back to home idly. Sitting there at the top of your recommendations was a blast from the past; a bit of the Butterfly Knight's one and only press conference, under the title "Butterfly Knights vs The News". You felt a sharp feeling in your chest, the reminder painful, but you clicked it anyway.
It was a portion of the ABC-7 broadcast of the conference; the local channels had put it on live while the national ones all edited it down. Esmé had proposed it and sent anonymous letters to various news channels; the city and state were treating you like a threat, people were in danger, and it was well past time they knew what was going on.
It was a good idea, in theory.
You'd done it in Dolores Park, atop the hill. Butterfly Shine had whipped up a little stage and podium, surprisingly restrained by her standards as you all tried to be very Serious and Adult about it. The video skipped the parts that had actually gone okay at the start, when you'd explained as best you could that you were superheroes, you lived regular lives and were normal people outside of superheroing, and those metal monsters you'd been fighting were the vanguard of an extradimensional invasion. You had figured that people would ask questions about that stuff.
This was incredibly naive of you.
Most of the questions were about specific incidents that, to be honest, the team hadn't given another thought after they'd happened, about specific people whose names you couldn't remember who had been hurt or killed, about property damage, about who was funding you. When Spark tried to step up and answer specific questions, she was quickly drowned out. Nobody seemed to care about the imminent invasion part.
After the obligatory Windows Movie Maker title card, the video picked up at just about the time that Butterfly Sage, already skeptical of the whole thing and standing silently in the back row throughout, stormed out after a reporter opened a question with a weaselly, indirect "Some people are saying…" type question speculating the team was working for the Chinese government.
You'd been flabbergasted, but fortunately Butterfly Shine had come to the rescue. Hearing her voice again always left an ache in your soul, seeing her cheery smile, her patience with them, her charisma as she managed the crowd.
But it just kept coming. Somebody asked why the Butterfly Knights hadn't done anything about Hurricane Katrina. Somebody followed that up with the same question about 9/11. Throughout it, a series of annotations overlaid over the screen as the uploader helpfully reminded people of the various incidents in question by linking to vaguely related wikipedia pages.
And then, the cops had shown up, and there was the slight flicker that could have been dismissed as a video artifact, but you knew it was Shine swapping herself out with a double to go manage the situation. The cheery illusionary automaton stepped back, and it was on you.
As your younger self tried to explain that, see, you lived on the west coast and those things happened a whole continent away, this devolved into questions about why other parts of the country didn't deserve the same protection, and then why the Butterfly Knights weren't working with the government, and say, isn't there a comic book about you, is this all some kind of publicity stunt?
"People have died," your younger self cried, utterly aghast. This was a response that did not make the questions any kinder.
A reporter from KRON4 was midway through asking why there weren't any men on the team when Butterfly Heart decided she'd had enough. She pushed her way to the front and slapped her hands on the illusionary podium hard enough the entire thing flickered and jumped like a film reel skipping frames.
"SHUT THE HELL UP! What is wrong with you people?" she yelled. There was a weak murmur of responses, but she wasn't having it. "No, nevermind, shut up. All of you suck!"
(The Youtuber added a little annotation speech bubble beside her head here reading "U MAD?" Yes. Yes she was. You turned off annotations.)
"We just wanted to-" some very brave and/or stupid reporter tried to say.
"Nuh-uh, shhh. Zip it. Actually, I got a couple questions for all of you. Why do you all feel the need to say incredibly creepy shit about us every time somebody gets a photo! It's so fucked up!"
The person who said that she should take it as a compliment was not audible on the broadcast.
"WE'RE FIFTEEN, YOU CREEPS!" Heart bellowed, loud enough that the entire crowd ducked in their chairs. She grabbed a random microphone off the podium. "This interview is OVER."
She then spiked it into the ground hard enough that the camera fell over, and the broadcast cut back to the shocked faces of Dan Ashley and Carolyn Johnson. After holding on that moment for several seconds, you were thoroughly jumpscared by the youtuber's ending slide and its accompanying screech of random metal music.
You closed the app and let your phone drop to your chest, sighing heavily. It was so odd, that had been a disaster, a low moment, but it felt so triumphant and impossible now. You'd despaired and now you'd do anything to get it back, but Brigid was too sick, Esmé was gone, and the Riley who had done that didn't exist anymore.
The sound of typing slowed for a moment, and Amara's hand brushed gently through your hair.
There was the scrape of a key in a lock from the apartment door, and Molly entered with a bag over her shoulder, holding the door open. Then there was Brigid, looking… better. Not good, by any means, but she was less shaky, less drawn in, more focused.
"Welcome home, Brigid," Rita said warmly. Brigid nodded, her face screwing up.
"I… I'm sorry I've been…" she began, pausing, a hand tapping against her thigh like she was trying to knock the words loose. "... not the best friend, or roommate, and-"
Rita rolled her eyes.
"Nobody's at their best when they're sick, love," she said. You nodded in agreement. "I'm just glad we know what the hell's going on."
"Yeah, what she said," you confirmed. "How are you feeling?"
She blinked, eyes scanning the floor as she processed a clearly unforeseen outcome.
"Tired. Sluggish. Nervous," she said. "Worried. Guilty. Bit hungry?"
"Not surprised by that," Molly said. One of the things on the Big List Of Brigid Sicknesses had been nutritional deficiencies. Her roommates had worked out she ate one or maybe two meals a day, usually in the middle of the night. "Do we got to do anything with the TV or anything? Curtains, or-"
"O-oh no, photosensitive seizures require pretty specific conditions," Brigid said nervously. "Um, Eve, when are you leaving?"
"In a few minutes?" you guessed, glancing to Molly for confirmation. Amara shut her laptop as if to confirm. "We just wanted to make sure you were okay before we left."
"Oh. Okay, wait a moment please?" she asked, then walked over to her room and disappeared. Molly nodded solidly.
"There we go, that's about the kinda weird she's supposed to be,' she said with a smile. "Good change. Eve, Amara, you two are heroes coming all the way out here for her, you know that?"
"We were worried," you said simply, picking yourself up. "And speaking of heroes, thanks again for driving us."
"Not a problem. It's not too far, and I've been meaning to head into the city anyway," she dismissed, as you shifted your legs and sat up to clear some couch for her. You weren't sure if she was just saying that to reassure you, but you weren't about to look a gift car ride in the… hood? Grille? Possibly bonnet or boot?
You glanced toward Brigid's door, curious what she was doing, and decided to check just in case she'd fallen over or something. You headed to her door and were just about to knock when it opened.
Brigid was there, with a fresh change of clothes and a backpack on. The only adult you'd ever met who had to look up to meet your gaze, pale and gaunt and not even an hour out of the hospital, too much drive to fit in her fragile frame. She looked shocked to see you, wide green eyes blinking, but she settled into her determined stare.
"By the way, I'm coming with you," she said flatly. Your already-derailed train of thought caught fire beside the tracks and several nearby regions of the brain were hastily evacuated. They had to close memory lane until emergency crews were finished.
"I… dunno if the airline will allow that," you said uncertainly. You doubted she would quality as carry-on luggage, but then again…
"I already bought tickets," she explained. "When you booked them. Same flights. I knew you would worry if I told you."
Oh. That's why she asked you to do it, and why she was so insistent on getting the flight number.
"I don't think that's a good idea," you said, indicating insistently into her room with a finger. She stepped away and you shut the door behind you, dropping to a whisper. "What the hell are you doing, you just got out of the hospital?"
"I know. But I still have to help," she said matter-of-factly. She seemed confused that this was even an issue.
"You- But- I… Brigid! You can't, but, you're sick," you stammered. She nodded.
"Yes. I know. But I am not dead, which will not be the case if the Dark Queen returns," she said, shrugging. "And I have medicine now, I will be better able to contribute."
You leaned against her door heavily, trying to put together a response. You couldn't think of one fast enough before she kept talking.
"Yes, Spark is out of commission for now. But I can still be useful, and…" She took a deep breath. "I'm still a Butterfly Knight. I have a duty, a responsibility."
"You have a responsibility to…. Brigid, come on," you said weakly, your heart sinking in your chest. For somebody so smart, she didn't seem to learn. "You need to recover." I need you to recover. "You need time."
She looked downcast for a moment, her eyes tracking in the little tic that told you she was thinking hard.
"Yes. I do. But… everyone's hurting," she said slowly. "Everyone's sick, in a way. But for me, there's medicine, there's…" She glanced to her silent, broken, horrid machine, her face screwed up. "There's things I can do. I want to be there. For my friends."
You nodded. This was still stupid of her, and you were stupid too because you couldn't disagree anymore.
"For Riley?" you guessed. She shrugged.
"I dunno. I…" She looked away, lips pursed. "That's another reason why I need to come. I think she's too far gone. And I know you're trying to contact Tracy and Lyra, but they're gone too. They never cared. Esmé is dead. If you count Amara, which, TBH, you shouldn't, that's still three knights total."
"Yeah…" you agreed.
"And like, that's tank, crowd control, and… I guess support? But only like, moral support. That's not exactly a full raid," she continued, her eyes going wide as if she'd only just put it together fully. "Oh wow, we're fucked."
You stared at the floor too. You'd thought all those things, but hearing it from the smartest person in the world made it far more real.
"It's not looking good," you admitted. She reached up and put a hand awkwardly on your shoulder, the artifice of the gesture making it somehow more real, knowing she had to do it so consciously and deliberately.
"No. It's not. We're probably all going to die horribly again."
"Gee, thanks," you said.
"You're welcome. But if we're going to lose, I… I want to know I tried, That we had the best chance of winning we could have had," she said, her voice growing firmer toward the end. "I know I'm not at my best, but I don't think I'll make us worse. And it's better than trying to sleep through the apocalypse."
The worst part was, even though this was clearly still her being unreasonable and pushing herself again and probably even a little arrogant… there was a part of you that wanted her to come. You wanted your friend back, the person you could trust to figure out problems, know vital information, to pull a miracle out of a textbook. You wanted her back.
For years, Brigid had been a sickly face on a screen, a frustrating wall of obstinacy and denial. But before that, there was this wonderful little weirdo, funny and clever and brave and cute as a button, whose blunt affect and skeptical instincts hid a person who cared so much, who never even thought about the costs to herself despite being the person most able in the entire world to calculate them. You missed when she felt safe enough with her friends to push and prod and question and just talk about the world of knowledge inside her bursting to get out.
You thought she was in no state to be that person, but maybe you were wrong and she was right. Even given the last few years, the odds were in her favour.
"Okay," you agreed, hoping it would be.
The idea that it was just an hour between Oxford and London didn't really make sense to your West Coast brain. Cities weren't supposed to be just an hour apart, they were either right next to each other and kinda intermingling or they were a six to nine hour drive apart, nothing in between.
Yet somehow, Molly's aging yellow car carried you down the A40 (which sounded like a highway, but was actually a cute little two-lane road through the countryside, a description Molly objected to strenuously) to the airport with three minutes to spare on the hour. As Molly and Amara talked about software stuff in the front seat, you went over emergency plans with Brigid in case anything went wrong during the trip., as well as setting alarms for her meds.
She had her first focal seizure since she went into the hospital just as you came onto the highway proper. You didn't notice at first, it sort of just looked like she was resting her head against the window, but it became clear as she came out of it and, slurring heavily, asked to be reminded what you were talking about.
"Um. What to do if that happens in the airport," you said. Her bro furrowed in confusion, then she seemed to realize.
"Oh. Can you mark my, uh… the chart?" she asked, fumbling for her bag. You reached over and got her planner and highlighter out, and stuck a dot down on the noon column. "Thanks. It'll help with… knowing if the meds are helpling."
"Of course," you assured her.
You talked with her until she seemed to even out. The meds certainly seem to have reduced the number of seizures she dealt with, but it didn't make them any less unpleasant. The fatigue, which she seemed to be keeping at bay, returned with a vengeance, and once you actually rolled into the airport just a few minutes later she was already half-asleep in her seat. You thanked Molly for all her help, shouldered your bag, and headed in.
Brigid got through check-in without an issue and sat on the bench while you and Amara went up to the desk to do the same. The guy behind the counter, a balding but bright faced man in a blue and red tie, paused as he scanned over his passports, staring at his computer. His nametag identified him as David.
"Hold on, um, you've not got entry visas to the UK. Did you come in through Paris or Dublin?" he asked. You opened your mouth to respond, found yourself certain anything you'd say might incriminate you. "No, that doesn't make sense, nothing's stamped. Sorry, I think something's off with the system, can you hold on?"
The man reached for his phone, and you felt an awful sinking feeling in your chest. They couldn't hold you, you wouldn't have any problem getting home, but your real names were in their systems so even if they couldn't make a connection to Butterfly Ward and Princess Rose's daring escape from the Tower of London, you'd still be in major trouble. Plus, nobody would be watching Brigid for the trip back.
You were about two seconds from turning and running when Amara leaned against the desk, ran her her through her hair, and smiled the exact kind of smile that turned your brain to mush. Evidently, that was not just you.
"Oh hell, I was afraid of this. Honey, I told you we should have gotten restamped. I'm sorry about this, Dave. We took Ryanair in, they rerouted us at the last minute. It was supposed to be direct to Heathrow but they bumped us to a flight to Dublin to connect from there, I think something got, you know… mixed up," she said in her smoothest tones, her eyes playing across David subtly. The man's face grew red. "Could you give us a hand? We're just trying to get home."
"O-oh, w-well, yeah. Ryanair, hell, not surprised, shambles of an operation," he said, forcing out a chuckle. His hand moved away from his phone and his eyes dipped away. "T-these things, you know, they happen. Don't you worry, m-miss, I'll get this sorted."
"You're a real sweetheart," Amara assured him. There was a clatter of plastic as his hands trembled nervously against the keyboard, and you breathed a sigh of relief. Now you could just focus on getting on the plane and flying home in comfort. Amara and Brigid had both seemed trepidation on the drive up, but with this hurdle cleared it seemed like everything would be okay. Just sit back in comfort and enjoy the trip.
David printed out your tickets and tucked them into your passports, barely able to make eye contact as he handled them back to Amara. She might have put a little too much charm in the Princess Charming routine, the poor man looked like he might combust.
"A-all set, uh, yeah. Enjoy your flight," he stammered, tugging at his collar.
"We will," you assured him brightly as you checked your boarding passes. Group 4. Window seat! 3:30 takeoff and, if your previous flights were any indication, 9 hours of airborne luxury. "Thank you so much."
"Well, you know, it was nothing. Thank you," David said. "For flying United."
Molly had volunteered to drive you to Heathrow in the morning, but you were hoping to stay until Brigid came home to at least say goodbye properly. You lay with your head on Amara's lap on the couch, wishing you'd had the foresight to bring your laptop. Instead, you tried to watch videos on the apartment's crappy wifi with your phone as she got in some vital Computering before you were stuck on planes for like twelve hours.
"Watcha watching?" Rita asked from the other chair. You tapped the pause button.
"New Numberphile," you said. That didn't seem to mean anything to her. "Uh, youtuber who does math stuff. It's about how many panels are on a soccer ball," you explained. "That's a football in British."
"Right."
"Well, okay, technically it's about topology,, which I never really learned? Like, the Euler characteristic and stuff. But it's still neat," you admitted, "It's just using footsoccerballs as an example."
"I can see why you and Brigid are friends," Rita said. "Little genius society you got going."
"What? Oh God no, she's the genius, I'm dumb as hell. I don't understand half this stuff, like, economics is baby math. It's basically just statistics and algebra and the biggest most hilarious variable assumptions you've ever seen," you explained.
"You're not dumb," Amara reminded you, as if by automatic reflex. You groaned.
"Fiiiine," you said, not believing it for a second. Your friends were brilliant, they all knew so much, had cool hobbies, could make things. You just had pills that made studying bearable.
The video ran down and autoplay spat you an ad, so you tapped back to home idly. Sitting there at the top of your recommendations was a blast from the past; a bit of the Butterfly Knight's one and only press conference, under the title "Butterfly Knights vs The News". You felt a sharp feeling in your chest, the reminder painful, but you clicked it anyway.
It was a portion of the ABC-7 broadcast of the conference; the local channels had put it on live while the national ones all edited it down. Esmé had proposed it and sent anonymous letters to various news channels; the city and state were treating you like a threat, people were in danger, and it was well past time they knew what was going on.
It was a good idea, in theory.
You'd done it in Dolores Park, atop the hill. Butterfly Shine had whipped up a little stage and podium, surprisingly restrained by her standards as you all tried to be very Serious and Adult about it. The video skipped the parts that had actually gone okay at the start, when you'd explained as best you could that you were superheroes, you lived regular lives and were normal people outside of superheroing, and those metal monsters you'd been fighting were the vanguard of an extradimensional invasion. You had figured that people would ask questions about that stuff.
This was incredibly naive of you.
Most of the questions were about specific incidents that, to be honest, the team hadn't given another thought after they'd happened, about specific people whose names you couldn't remember who had been hurt or killed, about property damage, about who was funding you. When Spark tried to step up and answer specific questions, she was quickly drowned out. Nobody seemed to care about the imminent invasion part.
After the obligatory Windows Movie Maker title card, the video picked up at just about the time that Butterfly Sage, already skeptical of the whole thing and standing silently in the back row throughout, stormed out after a reporter opened a question with a weaselly, indirect "Some people are saying…" type question speculating the team was working for the Chinese government.
You'd been flabbergasted, but fortunately Butterfly Shine had come to the rescue. Hearing her voice again always left an ache in your soul, seeing her cheery smile, her patience with them, her charisma as she managed the crowd.
But it just kept coming. Somebody asked why the Butterfly Knights hadn't done anything about Hurricane Katrina. Somebody followed that up with the same question about 9/11. Throughout it, a series of annotations overlaid over the screen as the uploader helpfully reminded people of the various incidents in question by linking to vaguely related wikipedia pages.
And then, the cops had shown up, and there was the slight flicker that could have been dismissed as a video artifact, but you knew it was Shine swapping herself out with a double to go manage the situation. The cheery illusionary automaton stepped back, and it was on you.
As your younger self tried to explain that, see, you lived on the west coast and those things happened a whole continent away, this devolved into questions about why other parts of the country didn't deserve the same protection, and then why the Butterfly Knights weren't working with the government, and say, isn't there a comic book about you, is this all some kind of publicity stunt?
"People have died," your younger self cried, utterly aghast. This was a response that did not make the questions any kinder.
A reporter from KRON4 was midway through asking why there weren't any men on the team when Butterfly Heart decided she'd had enough. She pushed her way to the front and slapped her hands on the illusionary podium hard enough the entire thing flickered and jumped like a film reel skipping frames.
"SHUT THE HELL UP! What is wrong with you people?" she yelled. There was a weak murmur of responses, but she wasn't having it. "No, nevermind, shut up. All of you suck!"
(The Youtuber added a little annotation speech bubble beside her head here reading "U MAD?" Yes. Yes she was. You turned off annotations.)
"We just wanted to-" some very brave and/or stupid reporter tried to say.
"Nuh-uh, shhh. Zip it. Actually, I got a couple questions for all of you. Why do you all feel the need to say incredibly creepy shit about us every time somebody gets a photo! It's so fucked up!"
The person who said that she should take it as a compliment was not audible on the broadcast.
"WE'RE FIFTEEN, YOU CREEPS!" Heart bellowed, loud enough that the entire crowd ducked in their chairs. She grabbed a random microphone off the podium. "This interview is OVER."
She then spiked it into the ground hard enough that the camera fell over, and the broadcast cut back to the shocked faces of Dan Ashley and Carolyn Johnson. After holding on that moment for several seconds, you were thoroughly jumpscared by the youtuber's ending slide and its accompanying screech of random metal music.
You closed the app and let your phone drop to your chest, sighing heavily. It was so odd, that had been a disaster, a low moment, but it felt so triumphant and impossible now. You'd despaired and now you'd do anything to get it back, but Brigid was too sick, Esmé was gone, and the Riley who had done that didn't exist anymore.
The sound of typing slowed for a moment, and Amara's hand brushed gently through your hair.
There was the scrape of a key in a lock from the apartment door, and Molly entered with a bag over her shoulder, holding the door open. Then there was Brigid, looking… better. Not good, by any means, but she was less shaky, less drawn in, more focused.
"Welcome home, Brigid," Rita said warmly. Brigid nodded, her face screwing up.
"I… I'm sorry I've been…" she began, pausing, a hand tapping against her thigh like she was trying to knock the words loose. "... not the best friend, or roommate, and-"
Rita rolled her eyes.
"Nobody's at their best when they're sick, love," she said. You nodded in agreement. "I'm just glad we know what the hell's going on."
"Yeah, what she said," you confirmed. "How are you feeling?"
She blinked, eyes scanning the floor as she processed a clearly unforeseen outcome.
"Tired. Sluggish. Nervous," she said. "Worried. Guilty. Bit hungry?"
"Not surprised by that," Molly said. One of the things on the Big List Of Brigid Sicknesses had been nutritional deficiencies. Her roommates had worked out she ate one or maybe two meals a day, usually in the middle of the night. "Do we got to do anything with the TV or anything? Curtains, or-"
"O-oh no, photosensitive seizures require pretty specific conditions," Brigid said nervously. "Um, Eve, when are you leaving?"
"In a few minutes?" you guessed, glancing to Molly for confirmation. Amara shut her laptop as if to confirm. "We just wanted to make sure you were okay before we left."
"Oh. Okay, wait a moment please?" she asked, then walked over to her room and disappeared. Molly nodded solidly.
"There we go, that's about the kinda weird she's supposed to be,' she said with a smile. "Good change. Eve, Amara, you two are heroes coming all the way out here for her, you know that?"
"We were worried," you said simply, picking yourself up. "And speaking of heroes, thanks again for driving us."
"Not a problem. It's not too far, and I've been meaning to head into the city anyway," she dismissed, as you shifted your legs and sat up to clear some couch for her. You weren't sure if she was just saying that to reassure you, but you weren't about to look a gift car ride in the… hood? Grille? Possibly bonnet or boot?
You glanced toward Brigid's door, curious what she was doing, and decided to check just in case she'd fallen over or something. You headed to her door and were just about to knock when it opened.
Brigid was there, with a fresh change of clothes and a backpack on. The only adult you'd ever met who had to look up to meet your gaze, pale and gaunt and not even an hour out of the hospital, too much drive to fit in her fragile frame. She looked shocked to see you, wide green eyes blinking, but she settled into her determined stare.
"By the way, I'm coming with you," she said flatly. Your already-derailed train of thought caught fire beside the tracks and several nearby regions of the brain were hastily evacuated. They had to close memory lane until emergency crews were finished.
"I… dunno if the airline will allow that," you said uncertainly. You doubted she would quality as carry-on luggage, but then again…
"I already bought tickets," she explained. "When you booked them. Same flights. I knew you would worry if I told you."
Oh. That's why she asked you to do it, and why she was so insistent on getting the flight number.
"I don't think that's a good idea," you said, indicating insistently into her room with a finger. She stepped away and you shut the door behind you, dropping to a whisper. "What the hell are you doing, you just got out of the hospital?"
"I know. But I still have to help," she said matter-of-factly. She seemed confused that this was even an issue.
"You- But- I… Brigid! You can't, but, you're sick," you stammered. She nodded.
"Yes. I know. But I am not dead, which will not be the case if the Dark Queen returns," she said, shrugging. "And I have medicine now, I will be better able to contribute."
You leaned against her door heavily, trying to put together a response. You couldn't think of one fast enough before she kept talking.
"Yes, Spark is out of commission for now. But I can still be useful, and…" She took a deep breath. "I'm still a Butterfly Knight. I have a duty, a responsibility."
"You have a responsibility to…. Brigid, come on," you said weakly, your heart sinking in your chest. For somebody so smart, she didn't seem to learn. "You need to recover." I need you to recover. "You need time."
She looked downcast for a moment, her eyes tracking in the little tic that told you she was thinking hard.
"Yes. I do. But… everyone's hurting," she said slowly. "Everyone's sick, in a way. But for me, there's medicine, there's…" She glanced to her silent, broken, horrid machine, her face screwed up. "There's things I can do. I want to be there. For my friends."
You nodded. This was still stupid of her, and you were stupid too because you couldn't disagree anymore.
"For Riley?" you guessed. She shrugged.
"I dunno. I…" She looked away, lips pursed. "That's another reason why I need to come. I think she's too far gone. And I know you're trying to contact Tracy and Lyra, but they're gone too. They never cared. Esmé is dead. If you count Amara, which, TBH, you shouldn't, that's still three knights total."
"Yeah…" you agreed.
"And like, that's tank, crowd control, and… I guess support? But only like, moral support. That's not exactly a full raid," she continued, her eyes going wide as if she'd only just put it together fully. "Oh wow, we're fucked."
You stared at the floor too. You'd thought all those things, but hearing it from the smartest person in the world made it far more real.
"It's not looking good," you admitted. She reached up and put a hand awkwardly on your shoulder, the artifice of the gesture making it somehow more real, knowing she had to do it so consciously and deliberately.
"No. It's not. We're probably all going to die horribly again."
"Gee, thanks," you said.
"You're welcome. But if we're going to lose, I… I want to know I tried, That we had the best chance of winning we could have had," she said, her voice growing firmer toward the end. "I know I'm not at my best, but I don't think I'll make us worse. And it's better than trying to sleep through the apocalypse."
The worst part was, even though this was clearly still her being unreasonable and pushing herself again and probably even a little arrogant… there was a part of you that wanted her to come. You wanted your friend back, the person you could trust to figure out problems, know vital information, to pull a miracle out of a textbook. You wanted her back.
For years, Brigid had been a sickly face on a screen, a frustrating wall of obstinacy and denial. But before that, there was this wonderful little weirdo, funny and clever and brave and cute as a button, whose blunt affect and skeptical instincts hid a person who cared so much, who never even thought about the costs to herself despite being the person most able in the entire world to calculate them. You missed when she felt safe enough with her friends to push and prod and question and just talk about the world of knowledge inside her bursting to get out.
You thought she was in no state to be that person, but maybe you were wrong and she was right. Even given the last few years, the odds were in her favour.
"Okay," you agreed, hoping it would be.
🦋
The idea that it was just an hour between Oxford and London didn't really make sense to your West Coast brain. Cities weren't supposed to be just an hour apart, they were either right next to each other and kinda intermingling or they were a six to nine hour drive apart, nothing in between.
Yet somehow, Molly's aging yellow car carried you down the A40 (which sounded like a highway, but was actually a cute little two-lane road through the countryside, a description Molly objected to strenuously) to the airport with three minutes to spare on the hour. As Molly and Amara talked about software stuff in the front seat, you went over emergency plans with Brigid in case anything went wrong during the trip., as well as setting alarms for her meds.
She had her first focal seizure since she went into the hospital just as you came onto the highway proper. You didn't notice at first, it sort of just looked like she was resting her head against the window, but it became clear as she came out of it and, slurring heavily, asked to be reminded what you were talking about.
"Um. What to do if that happens in the airport," you said. Her bro furrowed in confusion, then she seemed to realize.
"Oh. Can you mark my, uh… the chart?" she asked, fumbling for her bag. You reached over and got her planner and highlighter out, and stuck a dot down on the noon column. "Thanks. It'll help with… knowing if the meds are helpling."
"Of course," you assured her.
You talked with her until she seemed to even out. The meds certainly seem to have reduced the number of seizures she dealt with, but it didn't make them any less unpleasant. The fatigue, which she seemed to be keeping at bay, returned with a vengeance, and once you actually rolled into the airport just a few minutes later she was already half-asleep in her seat. You thanked Molly for all her help, shouldered your bag, and headed in.
Brigid got through check-in without an issue and sat on the bench while you and Amara went up to the desk to do the same. The guy behind the counter, a balding but bright faced man in a blue and red tie, paused as he scanned over his passports, staring at his computer. His nametag identified him as David.
"Hold on, um, you've not got entry visas to the UK. Did you come in through Paris or Dublin?" he asked. You opened your mouth to respond, found yourself certain anything you'd say might incriminate you. "No, that doesn't make sense, nothing's stamped. Sorry, I think something's off with the system, can you hold on?"
The man reached for his phone, and you felt an awful sinking feeling in your chest. They couldn't hold you, you wouldn't have any problem getting home, but your real names were in their systems so even if they couldn't make a connection to Butterfly Ward and Princess Rose's daring escape from the Tower of London, you'd still be in major trouble. Plus, nobody would be watching Brigid for the trip back.
You were about two seconds from turning and running when Amara leaned against the desk, ran her her through her hair, and smiled the exact kind of smile that turned your brain to mush. Evidently, that was not just you.
"Oh hell, I was afraid of this. Honey, I told you we should have gotten restamped. I'm sorry about this, Dave. We took Ryanair in, they rerouted us at the last minute. It was supposed to be direct to Heathrow but they bumped us to a flight to Dublin to connect from there, I think something got, you know… mixed up," she said in her smoothest tones, her eyes playing across David subtly. The man's face grew red. "Could you give us a hand? We're just trying to get home."
"O-oh, w-well, yeah. Ryanair, hell, not surprised, shambles of an operation," he said, forcing out a chuckle. His hand moved away from his phone and his eyes dipped away. "T-these things, you know, they happen. Don't you worry, m-miss, I'll get this sorted."
"You're a real sweetheart," Amara assured him. There was a clatter of plastic as his hands trembled nervously against the keyboard, and you breathed a sigh of relief. Now you could just focus on getting on the plane and flying home in comfort. Amara and Brigid had both seemed trepidation on the drive up, but with this hurdle cleared it seemed like everything would be okay. Just sit back in comfort and enjoy the trip.
David printed out your tickets and tucked them into your passports, barely able to make eye contact as he handled them back to Amara. She might have put a little too much charm in the Princess Charming routine, the poor man looked like he might combust.
"A-all set, uh, yeah. Enjoy your flight," he stammered, tugging at his collar.
"We will," you assured him brightly as you checked your boarding passes. Group 4. Window seat! 3:30 takeoff and, if your previous flights were any indication, 9 hours of airborne luxury. "Thank you so much."
"Well, you know, it was nothing. Thank you," David said. "For flying United."
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