Chapter 5 Tristan!! How'd the end of Virginia go for him? And the following whirlwind of events? Hows he coping? Anything he particularly enjoyed or detested more then others? Where's his head at and how's he holding up?
Aaaaaaaa thank you!! :D <3 And apologies for taking..... how many months??? Too many! And also sorry for the length, this one got away from me, but holy shit there was so much going on (and being set up!) in this chapter.
Virginia Contest
He didn't win in Virginia, but he didn't get sent home either, and that is honestly the best he could hope for. After the response to their week 1 win, he's kind of internalized the dark forest theory lol. If they can stay in the middle of the pack until the semi-finals and THEN get sent home, maybe that will give them enough of an engagement bump to get a decent contract or at least book some better-paying gigs so they can afford shit like healthcare and paying their manager without having to sell their souls to Music Now. At the very least maybe by that point they won’t be completely defined by the scandal.
He doesn't know what to make of Seven's song. I think he's just compartmentalizing the hell out of it otherwise he’ll start spiraling. Underground Wastebasket performing the song he wrote and doing well was a bright spot though, he worked his ass off on that song and part of him really enjoyed the challenge of writing in a dramatically different style, so seeing it pay off was really cool. He's also just in a really weird place (kind of a pariah, can't do anything right and on the rare occasions he does it's invalidated and punished), so pouring himself into a collaboration and getting to see the other person kick ass with it? To feel like he actually did something good? He is clinging to those scraps of validation and connection.
But honestly the best part of the entire week was the bus ride. Tristan just immediately crawled into his bunk and tried to sleep/hide for almost the entire 10 hours. It’s become the only part of the tour that he actively looks forward to.
The Challenge
He’s not really worried about the new challenge. I mean, he IS, but his anxiety is centered entirely on the fact that they’ll only have a single rehearsal session to learn two entire songs. The gimmick part where the rest of the band has to write the song on their own doesn’t bother him. They’re not really being judged on the song, they’re being judged on the performance. Getting to hang out with the other writers is cool at least, even if he feels like an outsider due to the cheating allegations.
The duet
Ho boy. The duet with Seven was... a LOT. It was so much. It was everything he's wanted for three years. They slipped back into those roles like they'd never stopped. It felt like coming home. For three minutes, he had his friend back. And afterwards they even sort of talked. Briefly, sure, but actually talked, not just Tristan showing his throat and Seven lashing out. And it felt like that meant something; Tristan started to feel hopeful for the first time in a long time. Aaaaand then Seven admitted how much he *doesn’t* want this connection, that he views their shared history as this oppressive force he is desperate to escape. And.... woof. Tristan was crushed. Just absolutely devastated. Another classic Seven rug pull and he wasn’t even trying this time, he was just talking genuinely, but that's exactly what made it feel real in a way that his previous jabs and lashing out hadn't.
The cherry on top was trying to talk to his friends about it and them completely blowing him off. And then Orion defending them, reinforcing Tristan’s deprioritization of his own feelings. (Orion who really should have known better after the conversation on the bus, he knew Tristan still had feelings for Seven, he knew this was a big deal. Like, my guy, you’re the one having an existential crisis over a fuckin wedding invitation, a little empathy please and thank you). And like, surprise surprise, this is what happens when you spend 3 years lying to your friends and pretending to be fine. But also. Come on. Your friend just got forced to sing a duet with their ex and instead of checking on them, you pretend nothing happened and act like they're the weird one if they try to bring it up? the call is coming from inside the house, y'all.
The dinner with G's family
Hell. Absolute hell.
Before he even gets there he’s panicking because this is the cafe all over again and it's going to make everything worse. He dresses up, but still ends up feeling cheap and out of place (and he forgot to bring a jacket so his tats are out AND he’s freezing), everything about the place screams 'you don't belong here' and he keeps expecting someone to call the cops on him. The menu doesn’t even have prices!
The actual dinner was lowkey bloodsport. Beatrice in particular just kept going for the throat, leveraging disdain, humiliation and casual cruelty not just against Tristan, but Griffin and Victoria as well. Straight up telling Tristan that people who aren't close to their parents "aren't whole"? Bitch??? That hit dead center on the childhood trauma, like hey even this random stranger can see that there's something deeply wrong with you and that's why no one wants you. Christ. And then following that up by accusing him of taking advantage of Griffin for attention, with the father talking about the band and Tristan’s career as if it were just a childish hobby (much like his own parents do), and the sister bringing up them "kicking Seven out" of the band and how it was such a great business decision. He couldn't get a word in edgewise; even when directly addressed, if he tried to answer the rest of them interrupted or talked over him. His heart was racing, his adrenaline spiking, he felt like he was drowning.
A server dumping a glass of wine in his lap gave him an excuse to escape to the bathroom and have the panic attack that’s been building the entire dinner. It still doesn’t occur to him that he could just leave. Not seriously at least. He still has the urge to run, but he always has the urge to run, and he’s been ignoring his own comfort and desires for so long, that this doesn’t register as a real action that he could take. It’s just a feeling. And his feelings don’t matter. Orion said this was a test. So he has to go through with it. If he doesn’t go back to the table then he fails the test. And if he fails the test, then it means he’s not good enough and doesn’t have what it takes for a career in music and Orion will be disappointed and leave and his friends will hate him for fucking up their careers (and they’re gonna hate him no matter what because as soon as the media finds out about the dinner, it’ll be another scandal even though BotB forced him to go), and then THEY’LL leave, etc etc.
The irony of it being Blake who saves him, Blake who provides the reality check, Blake who asks him what he wants, Blake who reminds him that he does actually have a choice, that the Saw trap is optional, is one of my favorite things about the chapter. It’s such a small moment, but it’s so important for Tristan. Being asked what he wants and encouraged to be a little selfish, a little rebellious – it rewires his brain a little. It’s a little pathetic just how happy it makes him. Like all he’s doing is walking around the city, eating streetfood and being lightly antagonized by Blake and he feels like he just did a party drug. For this tiny window of time he feels more alive and happy than he’s felt in literal years – the closest he normally gets is performing, but that’s always tempered by the weight of the anxiety, pressure and attention, by contrast this stupid little outing was pure crack. It’s also a much needed dose of normalcy; it makes him feel more human and grounded, however briefly. He’s starting to genuinely like Blake. More than he should.
Festival and club
The music festival he actually kinda enjoyed. Even if he was working for most of it, getting to hang out with his friends as just that, friends, rather than The Band, getting to enjoy the music as part of the audience rather than having to perform, it was a good reset. Or it would have been if they’d been able to actually rest afterwards. Instead he gets dragged to the afterparty at the club which IMMEDIATELY dials everything back up to 11. He’s already running on almost no sleep (thanks, Griffin’s family), he’s exhausted, dehydrated, his social battery is dead as hell, and the wall-to-wall noise and lights and bodies, the nails-on-chalkboard overstimulation of the club is just way too much.
For the second night in a row he’s drowning and trying desperately to pass it off as swimming, fake smiling like his life depends on it, with a pounding headache and skin that feels too tight, watching everyone around him cut loose and have fun while he struggles just to appear normal. It really intensifies the feeling that he doesn’t belong in the industry. He’s been doing this for years, it shouldn’t still be this hard. He doesn’t understand what’s wrong with him.
Apparently neither do his friends since they keep pushing him to participate (despite being fully aware that he’s never been comfortable at parties) and then expecting him to clean up their messes when they get into fights/trouble. And even in the cases where they don’t consciously expect it, he’s got reason to believe Orion sure does – he still hasn’t forgotten how disappointed their manager was in him after he failed to break up the fight in the prologue.
And the thing is he’s used to it, he’s used to being the designated sober person, he’s used to looking after his friends at parties, and up until now he hasn’t minded because having a role gave him a sense of belonging in an environment where he struggled to fit. But everything is hitting different this time. Instead of feeling more connected to his friends, he feels alienated; instead of feeling needed, he feels used.
Griffin showing up and dragging Tristan into his inner circle to play nice with his shitty rockstar friends (the two older guys, not Frankie and Luca) definitely does not help. But Luca, at least, is a breath of fresh air. And a temporary escape from G’s orbit. Effortlessly charming and bewilderingly sincere, he’s just so easy to be around, easy to talk to, at a time when every other interaction feels like trying to run in quicksand. And he was legit helpful. Like he was more of a mentor to Tristan in a 5 minute conversation than G has been the entire show.
By the end of the night, however, Tristan had hit the level of exhaustion and overstimulation where he was unconsciously dissociating from his body, like full on crying at one point but completely unaware of it. Probably ugly-cried himself to sleep when he got back to the hotel room and couldn’t have even articulated why. Just: gestures vaguely at Everything.
Final thoughts (not really, but i had to cut myself off lol)
The previous chapter hinted at where the cracks were beginning to form and I feel like we see those starting to widen/get more defined in chapter 5. Particularly between Tristan and the band*.
*(the OG crew. August has never done anything wrong ever in their life and i love them)
When Seven left, Tristan was forced into being solo lead and expected to tank most of the pressure, attention and responsibility that came with that and he really struggled with it, particularly in the beginning, but he had learned to manage ("manage") – at their previous level of fame. What they’re dealing with now is orders of magnitude bigger, and instead of trying of diffuse some of that pressure/responsibility across the band, his friends and his manager codified the existing dynamic by making Tristan the “leader”.
And now the band is getting increasingly possessive, attempting to dictate who Tristan is allowed to interact with (no reconciling with Seven, no talking to Blake, etc), and getting weird as hell when he behaves in a way that differs from their expectations. It’s suffocating.
It’s also validating his shitty coping mechanisms right as they’re all starting to backfire, so instead of learning from it he just doubles down harder on pretending to be fine and ignoring his own feelings.
He’s starting to feel less and less like part of the band and more like a piece of equipment, a speaker that plays lead vocals. It’s getting a bit Omelas adjacent – one person’s gotta suffer continuously so that everyone else can have what they want.
It's making the nudges towards a solo career all the more interesting though. Or it will once he actually lets himself think about that. Currently his response is kneejerk denial because it feels like an attack on the band. And he doesn’t even want to be solo lead, so why would he want to go full solo? But as things get more rocky with the band and that trust continues to erode, he might be tempted by the freedom that comes with that route.
Things with Seven continue to be one step forward, two steps back. The duet is still this painful, snarled mess in Tristan’s head. The admission that Seven misses singing together, that there’s still something there but that Seven wants it gone, that things could work out, but won’t. He doesn’t know what to do with that, how to move on from that, knowing that there’s still a chance, but that the other person wants more than anything in the world to excise it like a cancer. Turns out there’s something that hurts even worse that outright rejection. And while a more rational person might take the fact Seven is admitting ANYTHING as progress (and they’d be correct), Tristan is too much of a mess and too much in his own head to see beyond the hurt at this point.
Meanwhile the weird, self-destructive thing him and Blake have going on (which still somehow manages to be less toxic than 98% of his other relationships) continues to develop. It’s not so defined that I’d call it a friendship yet, but there’s an odd intensity to the connection there, and Tristan is already getting attached. Which is going to bite him in the ass SO HARD. But that may also end up being what he needs to start asserting himself.
Western passport holders will never understand. To go anywhere with a third worlder passport like a Filipino one, you need your tax returns, certificate of employment, bank statements, marriage certificates, sometimes a recommendation from a citizen of the country you want to travel to, everything possible to prove that you have a job and a family at home and you're not planning to be an illegal immigrant, JUST to get hit with a rejection because the embassy didn't believe you had enough proof.
Did you have travel plans? Already booked the plane tickets and hotels? Fuck you, better hope they issue refunds (they don't).
Americans and Western Europeans will never understand how insanely hard and bothersome it's to travel anywhere with a weak passport, let alone immigrate.
You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.
You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.
But if you marry one of our first-world citizens, then fine, you can come. Because we can't upset them, after all, they are a real person, unlike you.
EU Advice to people who have friends in places with weak passports- go to your department of foreigners and ask for something that called Formal Letter of Invitation or something similar. It usually is called something similar and costs a few euro/whatever currency you have. It will not be more than a fancy coffee at Starbucks or such place.
You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.
But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.
It's some effort, but if it's for a friend it's worth it. And it's way less costly than the ridiculous loops the friend is being forced to go through and pay for multiple 3rd party services just to get a freaking visa for a month.
Also true of America—I don’t know whether you can get one written for you at an agency, but you can just write and send a letter yourself! A formal letter of invitation can speed up the B-2 (tourism visa) process immensely, it’s helped get my Georgian friend to visit after having been rejected twice. You include a number of specific details and send it either to your friend/family directly, to the relevant consulate, or both. Here are good templates to follow:
Sample Invitation Letter
Invitation Letter for B1/B2 Visitor Visa Application Priya Mehta 2789 Willowbrook Rd, Apt – 12C San Francisco, CA – 94115 Dear Consular Offi
Parts that made me tweak in a dim-lit movie theater:
1. Every time we meet a woman or enslaved individual that, y’know, had some semblance of agency in the text, Nolan has just… removed that? Circe’s commanding presence & how she genuinely overpowers Odysseus? Gone. Helen actually stealing the show in Book 4 where she walks down into the room and controls the conversation re: Odysseus & Troy? Gone. Utterly Gone. Lupita Nyong’o gets 0 chance to speak on her own terms and its actually so depressing. Also I’m genuinely unsure here but it seemed like Circe & Calypso’s divine status was… nonexistent?? They’re both goddesses but apparently not to Christopher Nolan 🫤
And this treatment extends to Odysseus’ slaves, specifically Eumaeus & Eurycleia (eurynome & philoetius not appearing in this goddamn film ifg). Almost every action taken by Eurycleia in the Odyssey is attributed to someone else in Nolan’s adaptation, she gets 0.2 seconds of screentime, its actually absurd. I think she has two lines in the whole movie. Eurycleia. Odysseus and Telemachus’ nurse. The woman who canonically organizes the doors to be locked during the suitor’s slaughter? Who canonically helps secure Telemachus’ provisions for Pylos? fuckin. Not There. And Eumaeus (who literally perfectly models xenia to a disguised Odysseys while living in extreme poverty) notably Does Not Get To Do That in Nolan’s odyssey, instead he’s like. injured I guess? I’m so fuckin confused as to why that happened, it just made the plot more convoluted. Medon is also just not there at all. Medon who is actually the fuckin best?? My underestimated king??? Where Is He.
2. oh my god everything abt the scene with Polyphemus makes me want to claw my eyes out (except maybe his eye? that looked kinda cool idfk). yknow how polyphemus appears, speaks to the crew, and they let their guard down? how the polyphemus episode represents the world outside of greek customs like xenia? how he fucking talks to them? he talks to them and his neighbors? yeah. in Nolan’s odyssey, there are no neighbors. there is no existential mirror/cyclopean foil to ithacan society. there are no other cyclopes. He doesnt even fucking talk 😭😭 <- i mean he gets one line but the audios so distorted that without captions i had no idea what he said
3. Anticleia reunion scene? Nonexistent. Laertes? Nonexistent. Allegedly still around. Sir Not-Appearing In-This-Film. Book 15 reunion between Telemachus and Odysseus? Nonexistent. Reunion between Odysseus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius? Not there. The fucking marriage bed scene? The goddamn marriage bed? NOT THERE. screams into a bag
4. ODYSSEUS “DIDNT WANT TO RETURN HOME” 😭 they keep fucking saying this over and over again too and. No he very much did. No home means no guaranteed kleos guys. his sons life is in jeopardy but Ok christopher shitlan do whatever the fuck you want, i guess
5. every time i heard them say “our civilization is collapsing” or “they say the peoples from the sea are attacking” or “our age of bronze is ending” not only did i feel my soul die a little more inside but i also kept thinking “man, this sounds a lot like the white supremacist belief in ‘western civilization’ just superimposed onto a falsified image of the late bronze age” and thats because It Is.
strange decisions:
1. boar scar apparently occurred when odysseus was an adult???
2. elliot page’s sinon gets one helluva backstory which i guess was kinda cool if you ignore elliot page getting brutally slaughtered in the first 30 seconds of the movie? not sure how to feel about that
3. travis scott kept showing up randomly which was like. fine i guess? genuinely im not sure what the difference between him & phemius was supposed to be. i didnt even see phemius. tbf i was taking notes this whole time so maybe i missed him? but travis scott shouldve just been phemius idfk why he wasnt
4. The Phaecians are just not there guys and i have no idea why. odysseus’ wanderings are being narrated to calypso?
5. the crew mutinies at scylla instead? odysseus tries to sail towards charybdis??? this was a bizarre sequence
6. no nestor or peisistratus. somehow telemachus sails to the 100% inland palace of menelaus. who needs a chariot when you’ve got a Boat i guess
7. half of my notes just say “what happened to show, don’t tell” because the amount of exposition made me want to slam my head into the wall
highlights:
1. anne hathaway and tom holland had a very good dynamic, i feel like they really captured some of the tension between penelope & telemachus, ie penelope running the house for 20 years and still assuming some of that authority vs. telemachus trying to grow up/assume control of the household/establish his own kleos. loved that dynamic tbh. one of the better parts of the telemachy sections
2. lupita nyong’o was great in the uh. 30 seconds she had on screen. im so serious helen was fucking robbed in this movie
3. himesh patel fucking carried every scene he was in on his Back
4. rare cicones appearance
maybe the real sea peoples was the troy we sacked along the way
This isn't necessarily literal. It can apply to characters who aren't children too. But there's something about characters who are either certain of the fact, or terrified of the possibility, that they are just fundamentally wrong and bad at their core
if youre in the US (especially the northeast + michigan) i would avoid bagged salads/greens and generally wash your produce very thoroughly unless you want the diarrhea parasite
Michigan is experiencing its largest outbreak of a parasitic infection that causes severe diarrhea. Nearly 1,000 people have been diagnosed
this is not life-threatening, but also who wants weeks of diarrhea and a fucking parasite in them lol. if you suspect you've already had this and it's passed, i would see a doctor. you might need an antiparasitic anyway. if you're actively sick, see a doctor and they might be able to prescribe medication to help you get over it faster.
try to avoid eating raw vegetables, scrub fruit with a produce brush and rinse thoroughly with water. again, don't bother with premade greens or bagged salads. if you buy lettuce, remove the outer 2-3 layers of leaves.
there are UNVERIFIED rumors that the greens have been linked to a company that sources to taco bell. some locations have been actively pulling fresh ingredients like lettuce, avocado, and pico de gallo to mitigate the threat, so i would avoid any products from them just in case. considering how vast supply chains are, i'd be wary of any fast food greens in general for now.
also note this is a PARASITIC infection. most diarrhea-causing pathogens you expect to contaminate your greens are bacteria (e.g. e. coli and salmonella), which are a different domain of organism altogether. cyclospora is a protozoan, which is bigger and more complicated than a bacteria (for reference, malaria is also caused by a protozoan). bacterial diarrhea can be dangerous, but you might also expect to weather it and survive unscathed. do NOT fuck with PARASITIC contamination. you should be scared of this one!
Only high temperatures will kill cyclospora. It resides in what is like a shell, which is highly resistant to water and most cleaning chemicals. The substance it uses to cling to food is so strong we don't even fully know what its limits are. It may be best to avoid fruits and veggies you can't cook. Scrubbing only works if done hard enough and on foods with no hiding places (Like cucumbers and grapes). Peeling the skin off is your best bet at avoiding it however, scrubbing is not guaranteed.
Thank you OP for posting! Usually washing does work on most sicknesses, just not this one.
in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.
*Nüwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.
thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.
[drawn for the prompt: an AU of ART and MB's first meeting and conversation - e.g. another look at their first meeting from a fantasy, historical, or (non-canon) sci-fi lens! Any perspective is fine. The only constraint is that it cannot be set in the canon universe. Any visibly non-canon AU- fantasy, human, historical, etc. - anything goes!]
Final week of FLY on Kickstarter. Help us stretch our wings and consider backing on kickstarter! Every pledge brings us closer to sharing stories of empowerment with the world.
A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.
[id. A twitter post by @/Bennieeexyz
Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat.
Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records.
My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now.
Called the county clerk.
Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty.
Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons?
Me: Yes, but he's a cat.
Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county?
Me: He's a legal cat.
Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption.
Me: He can't file anything. He has paws.
Clerk: You can file on his behalf.
Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat."
Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons."
Me: What's the medical reason?
Clerk: He's a cat.
Me: That's not a medical condition.
Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving.
Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later.
"Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement."
Took the letter to my vet.
Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty.
Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty?
Me: Excellent question. No good answer.
Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten.
Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve?
Vet: On what grounds?
Me: He's a cat.
Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings."
Me: Perfect.
Sent it in. Got another rejection.
"Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court."
My roommate thought this was hilarious.
Roommate: Felix is going to jail.
Me: This is serious.
Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens.
Decided that was actually the only option left.
Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters.
Checked in at the courthouse.
Clerk: Name?
Me: Felix Martinez.
Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix?
Me: Yes.
Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat.
Me: I've been saying that for six weeks.
Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption?
Me: I filed three. All rejected.
Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.
Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation?
Me: Twice.
Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this.
Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me.
Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote?
Me: You tell me.
Supervisor: This is a data error.
Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out.
They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience.
Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry.
Me: Appreciate it.
Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted?
Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats.
Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card.
For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was.
Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud.
Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent.
Roommate: That's what they all say.
Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now.
Fitting end to his legal career.
end id]
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
andulkaphoto
romaincrisis
titsay
