I think LotR could have ended much differently if Frodo had just turned to Sam and said, “Hey, look, I realize you hate Gollum and don’t trust him at all, but could you please give him a chance? Genuinely be supportive of him? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am Projecting Heavily on him and my hope and sanity kind of hinges upon believing that he can be redeemed. I thought I was being really obvious about that but maybe not.”
“That’s all very well to say, Mr Frodo, but you and Peter Jackson were both asleep the one time I tried to bond with him over cookery and it didn’t end too well regardless, and also my own stability is pretty heavily dependent on my fixed intention to protect you, so I don’t have a lot of cope left over for him, if you understand me.”
“Christ, precious! Are WE the most psychologically stable ones on this trip?!”
• Bence Kardos has been told that he’s lucky. He’s an Alpha, an old legacy with strong ties to Maillardet’s first class. At the same time, he has a lot of soft spots he has to cover. His severe learning disability has left him on the bubble, a maybe for Capstone when his preordained path had him scribbled in as a hard yes. His parents are Anubis, and they won’t accept anything but excellence. They’ve molded him, and there is literally no fighting when both his mother and father are purple-bands who don’t see anything wrong with using their powers to “correct” the parts of him they don’t like.
• Unbeknownst to Bence, his relationship with his Beta, Louis Song, has stoked the coals of a century-long grudge match. In one corner, we have Bence’s namesake: the strapping huntsman who planted the seeds and built the wall. In the other corner seethes the ghost of Louis’s namesake: his great-grandmother, a schoolteacher with fifty pounds of beef for all things Foundation.
• The only thing standing between these warring ghosts and the students is Father Joe Blake, the youngest Set member. He’s really new to all of this (and isn’t 100% sure how to keep spirits from suplexing each other), but he will definitely try his best.
• Issue 2 of 5, Rated T
• WARNING: This work contains themes of parental gaslighting and internalized homophobia.
Amira: You need them to think you’re stronger than you actually are.
Joe: That’s what you do?
Amira: Me? Oh, no. My power is no illusion. I can fucking demolish you.
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