Kef's post here, specifically the art at the end, is haunting me. It is fucking with me bad. I wouldn't wish boredom and lack of mental stimulus on my worst enemies, and here Jazz is. Stuck and trapped.
Aimless.
So I decided to write a little something because OOF. Do you know what it's like to be bored? Constantly? Because I do and it SUCKS.
For @keferon's apocalyptic ponyo au.
There’s nothing to do.
This isn’t anything unusual. Jazz regularly finds himself bored out of his mind every day. He’s exhausted every avenue of entertainment he can and then some. He already knows this human dialect, English, so he can’t entertain himself trying to puzzle out words and letters. The people at this aquarium haven’t given him any toys to mess around with either. It’s always a toss up whether the aquariums he ends up at give him toys or not. He prefers it when they do. It’s demeaning sure, but what isn’t in his situation? At least with a beach ball, he could do SOMETHING. It’s night and usually, Jazz would escape his tank by now to explore the building, but the aquarium was setting up some new policy, something about frequent tank escapes and trying to prevent them. It’s not from Jazz’s end, he’s too good at this by now to get caught, but the octopi weren’t exactly being subtle when they went to throw rotten clams at their caretakers. What this means for Jazz though, is that the aquarium is busy tonight, and there’s too many humans around for Jazz to risk it.
What it means is that there is nothing to do, and Jazz is bored.
Bored bored bored, he is so BORED, there is nothing to DO!!
He bursts into an agitated swim, circling circling and circling, trying to burn off the restless energy, or maybe to get dizzy just to feel something, anything, but he’s done this too many times, it’ll take more than that to get him dizzy. The apathy and numbed anger quickly comes back, stealing his energy and hollowing him out. He hangs in the water, bored.
There is nothing to do.
More notes on being Bored!:
when you spend all day every day almost always always always BORED, you start creating your own entertainment
Jazz zoning out a LOT because there just simply isn't anything for him to do. Sure there's the training and there's the performances and the checkups and the people watching, but they can only take away the boredom for so long.
Oh! By the way, off tangent, but I finally thought up of a reason for why Jazz hasn't tried talking to the humans in an attempt to get them to realize that he's sentient and that he has a home and he wants to be free. Or to get them to make his tank more, you know, hospitable. Or at the very least not claw at the walls inducing.
Uh, simple reason: he physically can't.
Like, merfolk just Do Not have the vocal cords to pronounce human speech.
Humans don't have the vocal cords to copy a lot of noises! We can do a lot, sure, but we can't do everything! I say it's the same for merfolk! They may look like humans, but humans look a lot like mers too, and so I say: while both of them can learn the other's language, they're gonna have a difficult time actually speaking it.
so like, Jazz DOES try to talk to the humans, tries to get them to realize that he's a person and he just wants to go home, please please PLEASE-!
but he is clumsy with human speech and they just think he's like a clever parrot. He has intelligence, sure, but that's it. They think his cries are because he misses his home and his pod, sure, but they also think he's better off in captivity since he is so small and alone. They know better. Poor little orca, so scared and hurt.
But they know better.
It's for his own good.
It's okay because it's for his own good.
ANYWAYS I'm digressing, back to boredom notes.
Jazz loses time a lot. There's just.. so little for him to do. And so little reason to do it. He tries to keep himself busy but sometimes he's just.. tired.
He swims because he's bored of staying still, and then he stays still because he's bored of swimming.
haha, wait, oof, ya boi probably has depression honestly.
He probably gets moments of mania too. You know, ACTUALLY clawing at the walls, throwing himself against the tank because he hates hates HATES how small and cramped it is! How it's only big enough for him to swim in small circles! HE HATES IT
The buzzing in his skin, the restlessness, the need for something, ANYTHING, to make him think, to make him FEEL. He’s going to claw at the walls, this is torture.
The reason why Jazz knows so many human languages isn't just because he was passed around a lot and was exposed to them, it's because he was actively trying to learn them. At first, it was to try and tell someone that he just wants to go home, but when it became clear it wouldn't work, he still kept learning anyways because that way he could overhear conversations, read information from maps and leftover textbooks/papers, and try to escape on his own. Can't escape from the aquarium if he just gets immediately lost once he's outside. (don't think about how he wouldn't be able to escape even if he can read and listen. That path leads to numbness and Jazz has had enough numbness, he needs to focus.)
There's also just.. nothing else for him to do. And if he wants to stave off the boredom and Empty Hollow Fog, then he has to do something.
Honestly, when Jazz and Prowl escape, Jazz is going to have one HELL of an adjustment period outside of just learning mer culture and the ocean world. Going from being bored every day to NEW EXCITING DIFFERENT CHANGES is going to be exhausting. Like, yes, it's all very new and very exciting, and Jazz is going to be a little too preoccupied with staying alive and being terrified to really feel the crash, but man oh man, when there is a lull in all of this? This mer going to crash a LOT.
He's going to have to take a lot of breaks, not just because his tail is weak and undeveloped, but also because he's never had So Much happening All The Time before. It's a lot to adjust to!
(Not that Jazz will let himself have those breaks because uh oh, he's kinda lowkey ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED that Prowl will leave him behind if he can't keep up and Jazz is tired, but he can not go back to being alone.)
Jazz has so many made up games and tricks and stories and music and and and in his head. Because, and I can't stress this enough, there is nothing else for him to do!
And when there is nothing for you to do, you start making shit up because the only other alternative is to zone out and lose time, or hit something. And Jazz gets bored of zoning out too, and the last time he hit something, they restrained him and sedated him, so uh. No. No more of that.
Jazz spent a lot of time tinkering with the locks on his tank and practicing moving himself on dry land. He's gotten good at escaping, and very good at doing neat tricks, like doing pull ups to haul himself up the stairs by using their railings, or waddling over the itchy carpet by lifting his tail in the air and keeping it there, or doing a semi cartwheel where he flips himself head over tails by using his tail to help himself roll over (okay that last one is just for fun but come on, he's allowed to have fun.)
Sometimes, when he gets too good at sneaking around, sneaks around while giving himself a handicap just to give himself a challenge. Is it a good idea? Probably not. But he's so bored.
He's gotten some close calls, but he is now very good at sneaking around.
Jazz watches people, just like they watch him, and makes up stories for them. The lady with the screaming toddler is actually secretly a spy, and the child is their cover story! But the spy lady is regretting everything in her life now. She can hack into any computer ever, but she can not hack a child and tell them to behave. The man lingering by the penguins is staring at them because he's thinking about a lover who was lost at sea! The kid popping bubblegum in the corner has parents who are going through a very messy and very dramatic divorce, and they came to the aquarium to escape the fighting. The lady in the giant hat is having a secret affair!
He is so bored.
Jazz also observes, and notices people. Notices their behavior, their motives, their patterns. The caretaker with the Tuesday shift get nervous with loud sudden movements, so Jazz is careful to be small and gentle when it's his turn to feed him. Because if he is small and gentle, then the Tuesday Caretaker will give him a small smile back and sometimes, he'll spend a little extra time talking to him while feeding him, telling him about his classes or about whatever game he's playing for the week. The teenager regular, who must be one of the staff's kids to be able to come so often, loves it when he puts on a little show, playing up his cuteness, and acting playful. She stays longer when he does so, and that means that she stays long enough to meet with one of the cleaning staff members that she's friends with. THIS leads to them greeting each other, and the janitor leaving his cleaning cart unattended, and if Jazz is verrrrry careful, he can snatch one of the chemicals from the cart before the janitor notices. The night guard on Fridays is lazy and always leaves his shift a little early than he should, which means Jazz has less time to get back to his tank on those days.
Jazz notices it all.
There's little else he can do BUT observe.
Jazz probably fidgets and stims a lot too. Idle tapping of his fingers, splashing his tail into the water absentmindedly, humming notes to made up music, or snatches of songs he's memorized, making nonsense noises to himself, tearing up bits of his environment, like peeling paint or crumbling plastic rock.
He tries to stave off the Empty and the Fog, he DOES, but it doesn't always work. Some days, the Fog wins and he just.. floats. Listlessly. Bored. He's so sick of it all, and he's so tired.
He's heard about depression from the college interns and he's pretty sure that's what he has. Lack of stimulation, isolated, and bored bored BORED. Plus, there's that small deal with him being FUCKING TRAPPED AND HELPLESS TO THE WHIMS OF A PEOPLE WHO DON'T SEE HIM AS A PERSON.
So you know. He's probably depressed. The Empty is probably the depression. Yippee.
So this has been sitting in my files since MAY!!!!
It was supposed to be for MerMay, but I hit a mAjOr block on it. Finished in the middle of the night last night, saw it still looked like shit and went, "FUCK IT!!! Posting it anyway." So here we are.
Anywho I guess this could be a companion piece to an old Merformer fic of mine, It basically is the designs I used. But you know, whatever... I just wanted some Mer Jazz and Prowl.
Basically Jazz was being to mUcH. And Prowler had to nope out. He can move pretty well out of the water to he used it to his advantage. The Sanctuary faculty are used to him slithering about the place and have even given Prowler his own pile of pillows. He likes to surf the web too, so they gave him a tablet to. Cuz why not, he's smart. Jazz is not happy his Prowler bailed on him, bit what's a shark to do?
