Further Research Notes, 2020

Back to Rewind.

Another green-covered moleskine, like the first Research Notes book. Unlike that one, this one has been decorated--there's a nonbinary heart sticker stuck to the front cover, and a pass to HalcyCon 2020 is being used as a bookmark. The inside front cover has a series of scrawled messages from other members of Big Team.

## S5E1 - Mirror Superstitions and the Consortium

August 21, 2020

Oh my god. Oh man. Okay. Okay.
You know, instead of me panicking into my research notes, let’s just talk about mirrors! We--we meaning humanity--have been making them since prehistoric times; we have records of obsidian mirrors dating back to Turkey in 6000 BC. Obsidian was a good material for it, being a naturally-occuring surface that was fairly reflective; people would also polish stones. Metal mirrors, including silver mirrors, emerged in the bronze age.
Philosophers have also been talking about reflections for...well, probably as long as we’ve been able to see them. They’re linked (obviously) to the idea of self-reflection and self-knowledge, as they allow someone to see themselves (in theory) accurately.

On the other hand, mirrors also have a lot of supernatural rumors about them, most of which take the whole “mirrors reflect the self” thing a little further. A bit of research shows there’s a pretty common superstition that when someone dies, you should cover all the mirrors in the house to prevent the soul of the deceased from being ‘trapped’ in the mirror. The idea of souls in the mirror also is why there’s the rumor about seven years of bad luck--apparently the Romans thought that your soul was what was reflected in the mirror, and when you broke the mirror you injured your soul. There are a lot of stories about mirrors as portals to another world, too (I mean, think of *Through the Looking Glass*).
And while I wouldn’t consider myself a really superstitious person, after today I really am going to be uncomfortable around broken mirrors for a while. We--Libra and I and two new team members, Starshine and A-Vis--were sent off to the Consortium’s...library-prison? They have one of those--to find an alien diplomat who went missing, and it turns out where they went missing was inside Aina?? Who has another dimension in his chest??
This city is so goddamn weird sometimes.
I’m not going to get into everything that happened in that mirror dimension, because I’m going to be having nightmares about it for the next few weeks and don’t want to kickstart that process, but some highlights would be A-Vis somehow talking a mirror construct into not attacking us, which...I was *there*, and I don’t entirely understand how he did it; Starshine managing to fly us around this weird dimension on a cloud, which isn’t an experience I ever thought I’d have; and Libra...well, Kurt did a lot today, from teleporting us all to Madagascar via a very hungry hippos figurine to saving all of our asses, so I’ll get back to Kurt.
Also, uh, Merlin was there, with the Consortium. Which was great, it was really nice to be able to talk to him again, and also. You know what we’re going back to the mirror nightmare dimension!
Anyway after A-Vis decided to name the mirror construct Mimsy and convinced them to stop attacking us, Kurt found the diplomat we’d been looking for...and also a criminal named Irich the Entomber who stole people’s souls, and by the time the rest of us got there Kurt was being soul-drained by the guy, so I managed to pull them out of that and nearly got soul-stolen myself...it wasn’t great, but Starshine stabbed the guy so hard that he started leaking ghosts, which was REALLY impressive.
A-Vis managed to get very hurt, so Kurt was trying to teleport them and the diplomat--who I never got the name of--out, but it didn’t work--Irich blew himself up with ghosts, which hurt everyone very badly and broke the ceiling badly enough that this...black hole giant started coming in, and I tried to fix the ceiling and it didn’t work--I actually...broke the gauntlet.
That was terrifying. It was just...gone. It’s not like it’s the chattiest thing, I guess, but it’s always just there, in the back of my mind, letting me tap in to the time around me. It’s like having background music on all the time and then suddenly having it shut off--that loss, that completely eerie silence. I...wasn’t much use for the rest of the time, as if I’d be any use without the Gauntlet in the first place.
But that was okay, because Kurt had things under control. I don’t know what they did, precisely--there was a green crystal that they smashed, and then a green crystal wall blocked the giant and also the smaller things trying to get us (Mimsy was protecting us--again, I don’t know HOW A-Vis did that) and then they just...the only way I can think of putting it is that they ripped out all of the rest of Irich’s ghosts, encased the guy in crystal, and teleported all of us back. So that was my day! I also talked to Merlin which was...good. It was good, and everything is going to be fine!
Oh god. What does the Halcyon Museum have that’s interesting to people who know magic?? I need help.
P.S. I wanna keep an eye on A-Vis--they're great, but a lot of stuff they said about how they grew up wasn't. Kurt gave them a card for a counselor which is good but it still really sounds like they grew up in a *cult.*
[the next page just has a bulleted list, along with a map of the museum drawn from memory with ‘x’ marks on everything mentioned:]
- Seb’s zodiac tree cutting- the nemean lion’s coat- Ostanes’ grimoire- ‘take something mundane and make it magical???” - Norse exhibit but if he wants to dunk on it- the exterior of the first alien spacecraft to crash in halcyon- tapestries

## S5E11- Ragna Rokkr

August 30, 2020
Some day, I’m going to find the statistics for the chance a public event in Halcyon to be crashed by a supervillain, because this is just RIDICULOUS.
But first--I did some research on the Rokkr, because that became relevant. From what I can find, which isn’t as comprehensive as I’d like--I’m pretty sure if I start in-depth studying Norse Myth I’ll find more, but I have so many things I’m researching in depth--they’re a subset of entity in Asgardian stories, who focus on the more primal, ‘dark’ areas of nature and are usually seen as antagonistic figures in myth. Loki is mentioned in conjunction with them, unsurprisingly, as are his children Fenrir, Jormungandr, and Hel and their mother Angrboda. Apparently some people also include Nidhogg, the wyrm chewing on the roots of the world tree, in the list. (To look up: would people consider Hatti and Skoll, the wolves who will devour the sun and moon, rokkr?)
The word “Rokkr” apparently is most commonly cited to mean “spinning wheel”, which it’s linguistic descendant *rokkur* means in Icelandic. That said, it also meant twilight at some point, to the point that “ragnarok”--the twilight of the gods--is from *ragna røkkr*. Basically, what I’m getting at here is that if a group refers to themselves as the rokkr, it’s not a good sign.
Anyway, this is all prelude to the fact that Hisham and I went to Ms. Lindholm’s opening Vikingr exhibit, which was wonderful and beautifully set-up until the point where it got attacked by a group calling themselves the rokkr. Turned out that Ernest, Hana, and Melody were also there (and A-Vis, but I only saw them for a little bit), to check out the exhibits! Which was very cool, although Ernest got a little swamped by fans. Anyway, Ms. Lindholm’s speech about the exhibit was extremely cool, and the Helveigr runestone--the centerpiece of the exhibit--was beautiful.
It turned out Emmy was also there, so we got to hang out some! Hana got a picture of the pair of us, and she got to meet Melody and Ernest, which was great, or would have been if Ernest’s first sentence was about me having a date, and then it was apparently Open Season on me. I didn’t know signing up for Big Team was agreeing to have so many more elder siblings ready to tease me...I can’t say I actually mind too much. It’s nice that they care, you know? But also GEEZ.
Which isn’t to say I preferred it when this asshole stood up on the stage and announced that he was here to “take what’s ours.”
Okay, let’s take a moment here. He didn’t elaborate on that much, because he started rambling about how he needed the Helveigr runestone to start Ragnarok, which, great, but like...if this was just an issue of repatriation, we have official channels for that. I know museums get a bad rap for just stealing cultural artifacts, and that’s not unjustified, *British Museum*, but HCMCH doesn’t do that! We have processes where you can say “hey this is my cultural heritage and it was taken from my family/culture” and we, almost always, go “oh shit, our bad, we didn’t know the origins of all of this, do you want help setting up somewhere to display it or do you have your own plan” because we’re not assholes. My point is that if that was the only issue, there were a lot of better ways to do it than to attack a display, freeze everything, and try to stab a curator.
Not that the ragnarok explanation made much more sense. Their entire thing was “oh, we need this to start ragnarok. Don’t stop us, because ragnarok is inevitable so there’s no point” like...if it’s so inevitable why do you need the runestone? Does stopping you from taking the runestone delay ragnarok? That seems pretty worth doing!
So we ended up fighting them. A-Vis showed up out of nowhere to distract one of the three main people fighting us, who called himself Hati (see above point about the wolves). I ended up...working with? Helping? The one named Skoll after she saw Fenris, their leader, on the receiving end of Melody and Ernest being pissed off. She offered a deal: let her take Fenris, and she’d just leave. That sounded pretty fair, because the guy was terrifying and there were a lot of these rokkr, but she was pretty pissed that I had to get the gang to knock him out to do it. What did she want from me! He wasn’t going to stop fighting on his own!! If she had better ideas, she was welcome to share them!!
Anyway, they all vanished, but they took the inscription of the runestone with them, and even the gauntlet couldn’t get it back. So that fucking sucks. But Emmy got Ms. Lindholm out of the way--she can breathe fire, which is really cool. I love my cool dragon sister!
Hisham didn’t fare as well, though. He tried to tackle Fenris, and it didn’t go very well--he was bleeding a lot, and we got him over to AEGIS, but...I’m worried about him, okay? He keeps running into these situations and getting hurt--last time Tempus almost sent him off wherever, and now this. I don’t want him to vanish or die because he keeps running at terrifying villains!

## S5E19: Friends and Family

September 7, 2020
Okay, I’m writing this really quickly because I want to get it down before I forget, but also I’m busy later today so I have to get this done fast! It also means that I actually didn’t do any research before this because I don’t really have the time, although it’s also Labor Day so I need to remember to tweet about that.
So yesterday I headed over to HalcyCon because it looked really fun, and honestly I had a much better time than I was expecting for most of it! Most of that is down to good company, though. For the first bit, Mishel towed me around the con in her great cosplay, so that was fun to just be in the periphery of, and then after that I ran into Merlin who was very bored, so he ditched handing out pamphlets and we looked around the con together, which was really fun, even if half the time I was so busy talking that I wasn’t paying attention to a lot of the con.

**Okay! But! Highlights! First of all, Boon was there, which was good--although they’re really taking the power loss from Iconoclast hard. I know I don’t wish I could do more with this gauntlet much, because the idea of being able to use it on people is terrifying and I think rewinding someone’s personal timeline would be very hard or impossible anyway, but I still wish I could have set Boon’s powers back to before that asshole happened. I wish I could set Emmy back to before she transformed, although that would be weird--she’d be two years younger--but it would also be a lot easier than taking experimental drugs to try to get back to normal.**

**God. That’s still such a mess. Mia, Emmy’s girlfriend, was at the con and she took Gethin Industries’ experimental cure, which they had displays of it working, but those were definitely people who were super vetted and had signed release forms and...ugh. I helped distract the guards so she could go take it to Emmy even thoug it’s all just...illegal? And a bad idea?**

**Boon was wonderful, though, they didn’t even need an explanation for why I needed to sneak something out, they were just on board immediately, which...I really appreciate? It was a tense enough situation without me having to figure out how to explain to someone who doesn’t know Emmy or our family or any of that why this was so important.**

**Like...I don’t think this is a smart idea. I don’t! It’s not a good plan, these are experimental drugs, and they’re stolen experimental drugs. But also, who the hell am I to tell someone they have to stay in a body they don’t want to be in! I’ve had years of working to make my body one that I want to be in! I’m not a hypocrite!! Also, I’m not going to ditch Emmy when she needs me, I’m not Bill. If she needs me I’m going to be here. Even if she needs me to do something really stupid, I guess, although I’m also gonna have to talk to her about if this is really a good idea.**
Ugh, anyway. A villain named Hotshot tried to steal Boon’s powers, which, bad timing on her part. That caused a whole problem--she missed, hit Savior, then we had a Savior-powered Hotshot running around, and then Seb and Jenny, who were nearby, ran into the thing being chased by Bishop agents, and all if it was a HUGE mess but also a useful distraction, and also apparently ‘the most interesting thing that happened all day’ according to Merlin.
Which, speaking of, I asked him if he wanted to ditch the con today to come check out the museum, and he said yes, and I said it was a date and he asked if it was a date and I said it was if he wanted it to be, and he said he did, so we’re going on a date! Today!! Which is what I have to go do!
...I’m really nervous but like, hey. Hey. At least I don’t have to worry about what to hair, because when someone’s seen you in a neon crop-top and also after getting backhanded into a wall in a mirror hell dimension, the bar is pretty low for “looking good.” If I don’t look like I’ve been in a fistfight with someone who easily beat me in a fistfight, I’m doing better than average. And he saw me trudging through a sewer, having gotten beat up in a mirror dimension, and getting into a fight at *HalcyCon* and *still* decided that he wanted to go on this date so I can't be fucking up too badly, right?

Oh shit is that the time? I gotta go.
(P.S. Also Boon came out to me as nonbinary, and asked for...support, I guess, for telling Atlanta? Which, Atlanta is going to love Boon no matter what, anyone with eyes can see that, but I was really...touched that Boon thought to come to me? Because they’re so cool and competent and good at this, and I’m just kind of a nerd, but I guess if this is something I can help them out with, I’m definitely going to do my best.)

## S5OVA: Investigative Journalism

September 11, 2020
So let’s talk about investigative reporting. The history of modern investigative reporting can actually be traced back to the muckrakers of the Progressive Era, who were journalists who, as the name indicates, combed through the sordid, unpleasant details of modern life to expose corruption, ill treatment of workers, and other, similar issues for the public eye. The beginning of what is considered true muckraking journalism is the 1903 edition of *McClure’s Magazine*, which published *The History of Standard Oil* by Ida Tarbell, *The Shame of the Cities* by Lincoln Steffens, and *The Right to Work* by Ray Stannard Baker--which were investigations of the Standard Oil monopoly under Rockefeller, corrupt political machines in city government, and coal mine conditions respectively.
While the term “muckraker” was initially coined as derogatory by Theodore Roosevelt and was disliked by the journalists doing that work, it has now come to be used for even modern investigative journalists. A more modern, famous example of muckraking/investigative journalism would be the investigation done by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward into the wiretapping of the Democratic Party Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel by the Nixon Administration, which can be argued to have led to the impeachment of the president.
I’ve been thinking about this because the other night I ran into an investigative reporter here in Halcyon--sorry, a *detectigative reporter*. Her name is Blink and she’s eight, so I don’t believe she’s quite reached the heights of the other reporters that I’ve mentioned, but she certainly has a nose for trouble. She messaged GAIA asking for members of Big Team to come help her find her best friend, who had gone missing--upon us actually meeting her, this friend turned out to be a large black dog named Miss It, who vanished at the dog park earlier.
And, well, I was done with my homework and didn’t have anything else to do, so I, A-Vis, Solae, and Cadenza--one of the newer members--decided we’d help her out, and good thing we did. Pretty soon we learned that not only were other dogs going missing, but a bunch of them had robbed a jewelry store. Which didn’t seem like typical dog behavior.
I was trying to figure out what was going on and where the dogs were headed, Cadenza was...singing at a witness?, A-Vis was talking to a cop, and Solae managed to actually catch one of the dogs and hold it for a bit, which let A-Vis put a tracker on it so we could figure out where it was going. On the way, someone mentioned that having a police scanner would be useful, which did lead to A-Vis walking off, saying something to someone, and then a few blocks later pulling a duffel bag out of a bush with a functional police scanner in it.

Which...okay, we’ll get back to that.

Anyway, we ended up in the Semi-Abandoned Warehouse District, which honestly should have been predictable. Honestly where else would people be putting a bunch of stolen property and also dogs? Anyway, A-Vis actually came up with a great plan to deal with it--Cadenza distracting the dogs (with Blink) while the rest of us went into the main area, which is where we found this guy who called himself Kennelmaster, and *god*, what a douche.

I’m so tired of people who think they’re clever or interesting for stealing things from children and using them for crime. I might have lost my temper a bit at the guy, but he thought being a villain would be cool and somehow didn’t see the consequences of his actions coming at him. So maybe he learned something from this experience.
In the end we had to call animal control to get the rest of the dogs rounded up, although Miss It found Blink and was very happy (Turns out, Miss It can change her own size, and between that and Blink’s ability to teleport, the pair of them are a powerful duo; I offered to introduce them to Engineer Princess Tune-Up and Scrap-Scrap, I think they’d get along) about that, and *very angry* at Kennelmaster.
But then after this, I ended up talking with A-Vis, because between what they’ve said about their upbringing and the fact that they’ve gone off twice and then ended up with something useful, I was a little curious. They ended up telling me that the people who raised them still help them out sometimes, and they were still really defensive about their upbringing.
And, well, I get it. It sounds alarming to me, and it could *be* alarming, but I don’t have the full context for what’s happening. I’d be doing A-Vis, myself, and the team a disservice if I assumed I knew what was going on based on an incomplete picture. I tried to get across to them what I think the most important point is--that we ask questions because we want to help them or are worried about them, but that we’re also going to respect them and what they want to do.

Which...as much as I’m uncertain about how A-Vis grew up, I have to think this is the right thing to do. If we try to push help they don’t want on them, they won’t feel like we trust them and they won’t respond. You can’t make someone take help they don’t want. You can just make them feel like if they need help, they can come to you. I hope I did that. I don’t know, but I hope so.

## S5E25 - Black-Tie Events and White-Collar Crime

September 18, 2020

At the beginning of today I didn’t think I would be talking about corporate embezzlement! But to be fair, at the beginning of today I also didn’t think I would have had to borrow the costume maker to make formalwear, so now I guess I have a set of nice clothes if I ever have to go to a fancy dress occasion again.
Anyway, embezzlement. I actually texted Summer to get some of the details about this, because while white-collar crime is not her area almost always, she did, like, study this stuff in law school. So when you break down the types of crime, embezzlement is premediated--it would be extremely difficult to suddenly and spontaneously embezzle money. For something to be embezzlement--and not just, uh, theft--it has to meet specific criteria: it has to be fraudulent, meaning the embezzler had to know what they were doing (if you have no idea you’re embezzling, legally, you’re not embezzling. You’re just stealing, and also an idiot); it has to be criminal, meaning it has to have “substantial interference” upon the legal ownership of whoever has entrusted you with the money, which seems like the kind of term that gets loudly argued about in court cases; it has to be of property, which is a broad term that includes liquid assets and very rarely means, like, physical property; it has to be of someone else’s stuff because you can’t embezzle your own stuff; and it has to be stuff that was legally entrusted to you for the duration, otherwise--again--it’s just larceny.
Which brings me around to Gethin Industries. So all of this started when I was at lunch with Mia and Emmy. First of all, the Gethin thing works! Which is wonderful. I mean, I’m not a huge fan of how she got it, but we’ve been over that, and mostly I’m just happy that she’s okay. The problem is that it’s not a permanent solution--she has to take it every day, and it only lasts 24 hours. So I guess it’s like a lot of medication to deal with ongoing problems. Anyway, one of the things that she brought up is that Gethin’s gonna be releasing this at a completely ludicrous price--one that a lot of the people who need it can’t afford.
And that’s just criminal. I don’t mean criminal in the sense of the written law, more just...okay, there’s like, a basic level of decency everyone deserves, right? And part of that is not being price-gouged on medication that will improve their lives? If you’re a company making medicine, you should be trying to help people. That’s literally your job.
Ugh, anyway. The local marketing guy for Gethin was going to be at a big gala in Halcyon, so the plan was for me to sneak in and try to talk to him about it. Which I did, it’s pretty easy to pop a window open with the gauntlet and head up. The thing I wasn’t expecting was for more members of the team to be there--apparently Ellen and Tay had picked up a kidnapping gig off of that app where you can hire people with superpowers? They weren’t intending to actually kidnap anyone, more to thwart it, but it was still nice to see them. Also there was Fearless--well, Elena, Maria, and Fearless, they’re a package deal in a way that’s like but also not quite like Solae/Dawn/Luna, from my understanding--who I’d never really interacted with before, but who seem very cool. The three of them were there with their aunt, who’s a lawyer, and was bringing a class action lawsuit against the head of that app--and they also offered to back me up in the conversation with the guy from Gethin.

Which was really, really nice of them! It didn’t end up super relevant, because when I started talking to the guy he started going on about the price of imports from Asgard and asked if I knew how hard it was to get there, which...was not the right way to put up a smokescreen. I mean, I know Boon. They have a door to Asgard in their basement. And most of the Asgardians I know wouldn’t put high import taxes on stuff making essential medicine, so that was already pretty suspicious--and then it turned out that the actual CEO of Gethin had showed up and came by and was pretty confused, because he had heard that they were selling it at production value.
So I was there, talking with *the actual fucking CEO of Gethin Industries,* which my sister’s girlfriend lowkey robbed a week or so ago, and wondering how my life got this surreal. Also, and more importantly, wondering where the problem was here. So I took a look at the marketing guy--I mean, a Look look, like I’ve been practicing after talking with Gwen--and, well, turns out the guy was skimming off the top of the deal for his own reasons.
Asshole.

Anyway, I told the CEO that there must have been some mistake and gave him Maggie Ostenburg’s email so he could sort out the “problem” with the import costs, but we all knew that the guy had been embezzling. It just seemed rude to point that out, and besides, it was a little fun to watch him squirm as he realized he used the exact wrong excuses in front of someone who actually knew ther local point of contact with Asgard. Pretty sure that guy is fired now.
Anyway, then typical Big Team life interfered--the supervillain who’s been messing with people on that app, Chelicerae, who is also unsurprisingly the CEO of the same app, tried to get a pair of cronies with darkness and...space-warping powers to help kidnap Syndra Fox of Falcon and Fox, we got stuck in an endless hallway, space broke a little bit, and she got away but Syndra was unkidnapped and the hotel is now a lot more interesting to look at.
Also, got to fight alongside Ellen and Tay for the first time since they got back, which was fun! They have the weirdest time vibes, now, but that’s nothing new for teammates.

## S5E39 - Diplomacy and a Return to Mirrors

October 3, 2020

I really need to get a copy of the Avalon/Asgard diplomatic treaty that has the specifics of Earth being a neutral zone, because apparently I can’t trust anyone on either side of that particular divide to not just attack each other on sight, and I really don’t want my plane to be ground zero for another war between them. Also, because I have friends on both sides and that would just get extremely awkward so very fast. ALSO because I really don’t want to fight a valkyrie for attacking my boyfriend. (Boyfriend? We need to talk about what to call each other. I need to find a way to talk about that that isn’t the most awkward thing in the world. Oh no. Okay, that’s a problem for later Ryan, the point is I really would like more certainty that Maggie Ostenburg won’t try to completely destroy him again).
Anyway, I bring this up because Gwen texted a bunch of us asking if we could help mediate between Elle and Maggie Ostenburg, because they both were called in to help investigate the mirror dimension we’d gone to back in August. I said yes, obviously, because the mirror dimension is a real problem and Asgard and Avalon fighting is an even bigger problem and, okay, maybe a bit because I was hoping that Merlin would be over at the Consortium. Which he was, so that was great!
Boon came along with their mom, Hana decided to try her new(?) armor out by flying to Madagascar with...uh...mixed results (It’s fine, we fixed the tower, the seagull is gone), and a newer member of the team, Carmen--or Red Wolf, I think she goes by on the job--came along as well. Apparently, the Big Team gossip machine has not shut up about my life, because the only thing Carmen had heard about me was that I was a nerd and was dating Merlin. I need to have a talk with a lot of people on the team, apparently.
Anyway, we headed into the mirror dimension along with Elle (who I think I’ve finally gotten to just call me Ryan) and Maggie, who...uh…at some point I need to try to explain to Maggie Ostenburg the thing with mom, because I tried, and it did NOT work. I can see where Boon gets it? Anyway, we all got split up pretty fast, because I tried to heal one of the cracks--which did NOT work and broke MANY things--and meanwhile Elle and Maggie heard the giant black hole entity and ran off to fight it, which I think? They had a good time doing? I’m glad they got to fight something that wasn’t each other.
Anyway, we ended up getting pulled into the cracks, and Hana and I ended up somewhere in the rocky mountains with AEGIS on a mission? When I woke up from falling through that crack Hana was shooting lasers everywhere and didn’t seem in control, so that was...not ideal. I managed to fix up her armor so it got the ability to help her regulate her energy back, and...well, I’m going to get pretty cagey here because while I hope nobody reads these notes, I really don’t want to leak someone else’s secrets.
 Long story short, Spegulo was there--they’re in AEGIS custody--and was the end-point of this particular mirror-crack. We coordinated with Boon and Carmen on the other side of the crack to shut it from both ends, and once I got Spegulo monologuing they explained that the mirror dimension is a living thing--so I can’t just fix it like I do with broken things, it needs something closer to healing. So more Boon’s wheelhouse. Anyway, all it took with Spegulo was pointing out that there was a void monster that could try to come out of them at any point for them to agree to do the fixing on their end, and then we got a ride home from AEGIS. Sucked that we didn’t spend more time in Madagascar, but...well, what can you do.
Just realized that I didn’t do any research for this week. It’s been a long week, and I fell through a dimension? I could look up the history of diplomatic treaties but honestly, I just want to nap.

## S5E41 - Coffee and Cutting Class

October 9, 2020

So I can’t be the only person who generally thinks that school PSAs are a waste of time.
I mean, first of all, if you give people anything to do during school that isn’t school, they will take it as full permission to not pay attention, because none of us really want to be there. I mean, I’m a nerd and I don’t want to be at school most of the time. Anyway, they pulled us all out of class today for the dumbest one yet--a time anomaly warning session.
And they brought in Ellen and Tay, two people who actively want to start doing time shenanigans again, and Ernest, whose very presence distracts half of the people our age from whatever they’re doing. So it was a bad plan from the start, honestly. And all of this is against the main point, which is---listen. Almost everyone I know who’s gotten involved in time shenanigans did it because they fell into it on accident, or some tragedy happened. So rarely is it “oh, I saw a weird time thing and thought it would be fun to jump into it.” The idea that you can stop people from getting lost in time just by telling them to “just say no” or whatever...it’s so stupid.
It wasn’t a good presentation. It just made me angry, honestly, and that’s not Ellen or Tay or Ernest’s fault--they were the best part of it, and it was nice hanging out with them later, which we did, I skipped the last half of school and we got pizza. Tay offered to make me lunches in the morning, which…
It was just really, really nice of her. I feel kinda bad for accepting, because that’s a lot of trouble to go to, but she pointed out that she has a lot of time and makes breakfast for Ellen anyway, so I guess it’s all alright?
It’s...weird, to have someone offer to do something like that for me, in like, a nice way, not in an assuming I can’t take care of myself way. Not weird in a bad way. Weird in a good way. I need to find something nice I can do for her in return. And when the coffee machine started spitting out a temporal rift (...Halcyon City, at it again), Ellen shoved me out of the way of the damage…
Like, I know Ellen and Tay have a sort of aloof too-cool-for-this air or image or whatever, but they’re really just extremely kind people.
 Anyway, one of the other students did just absorb a bunch of time energy and started going nuts with it, so I turned off the coffee machine, Tay knocked out the kid, and we tried to figure out how to deal with the time rift...and, uh, Ernest did something to it with lightning and I saw…
Well. I saw mom. Different, yeah--it seemed like whenever she was wasn’t particularly good, there was glitching effects in the air that might have just been from the rift, but...she was there. She was there. I was three seconds from just walking into the rift, but it turned out it wasn’t a...door, I guess, just a window. I couldn’t reach her through it.
She was right there, and I couldn’t do anything.
 But. The Gauntlet and I could figure out when she was. I need to tell Mel that I know all of the places we need to go, now. We can get this show on the road, so to speak--if he’s done making that time travel machine, we can go find Lugnut and Mom. We have to.

## S5 Time Passes - Trip Planning

October 21, 2020

I kind of thought that I’d be more excited about this, when it was finally time. And that I’d be more anxious about it. I’m both, of course, but mostly I’m just...I don’t know. I feel like I’m watching everything happen around me from a million miles away. Mel says that he’s almost done with the machine to find Lugnut and Mom. I have the times we have to go to.
It’s like being in shock, the way I was the first week or so, but with more purpose. I didn’t know what I was doing, then. Now, it’s like the ONLY thing I know is what I’m doing. I keep losing concentration at school, when I’m hanging out with people...I don’t think it’s good, really, but what else am I supposed to do? I’ve been wanting this to happen for eight months, now. Most of a year. Now that it’s almost here, it feels like it isn’t real.
This isn’t very concise, or very coherent. I guess I just needed somewhere to talk, where I didn’t need to make sense, and this journal has turned into that. I was sad when I filled up the last one, you know? It was the one Mom gave me. She signed the first page. I didn’t want to put it up on a shelf and forget about it.
But this one is good, too. Mom didn’t give it to me, but I bought it myself, and people from the team have doodled on it and written things. That’s important, too.
I need to talk to the team. I need to talk to a lot of people. I want to say that this trip will go well, but I know better than to make any assumptions when it comes to time travel. I don’t know when I’ll be back, and the last thing I want to do is leave people in the situation I was in--where someone has vanished into time, without any warning or explanation or goodbye. I’ll...I don’t know. I’ll write notes or something, just a “I’m going to go find mom, I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I will be back. Don’t worry about me more than you need to, and I’ll see you (hopefully) soon” message. I’ll have to tell Emmy, Merlin, the team...probably Hisham and the museum. Maybe put in a note at school. I want to think I’ll be back the day we leave, but I’m not going to assume things.
I guess I should go do that. Next time I write, I hope mom will be back.

## S5E54 - Eight Months, Eleven Days

October 25, 2020

I woke up this morning and Mom was here.
We must have fallen asleep while talking at Emmy’s, because when I woke up it was the three of us--Emmy, me, Mom--asleep on the couch, all in, kind of a pile. The last time we’d done that was my fourteenth birthday,  when I wanted to try to do a Lord of the Rings marathon but we all fell asleep during the Two Towers. I think Mia put a blanket over all of us this time because there was a blanket there, and Emmy had burrowed as far under it as possible--I guess cold isn’t super fun, when you’re still half-Transformed into a reptile?
But. Mom is here. She’s still here, now, and she’s going to be here tomorrow and the next day and the next. I didn’t want to write this down when it was all happening, because I felt like it would be bad luck, but...I thought it would take years. I mean, I hoped it wouldn’t, but some part of me had just resigned myself to spending years and years figuring out how to get her back.
It makes me think of Tempus. Of Emmy in the other universe. Devoting your entire life to getting your parents back...I can understand where she was coming from, which kind of scares me. I can understand that determination, but…where she loses me is where she said that she didn’t care about any other timeline, any other version of her family. I don’t know how she can do that. I mean, she wasn’t my Emmy, but I still...fighting her was still hard. Aman, over there, wasn’t our Aman, but he still helped us, and I still wanted to help him. Want to help him still, if I ever get the chance.
I guess...I’m just sad, I think, that Emmy ended up feeling like she had to cut off all of that, all of that empathy, to get what she wanted. Especially because it wouldn’t have worked. It’s so...counterproductive, not realizing that helping people can actually help you. If she’d just...If back when I got the gauntlet, she’d *told* me that her parents were frozen in time and she needed both Gauntlets to free them (which...she didn’t. I managed to do it with just the one. But then, the experience I needed to learn how to do that came from all my time on Big Team, all the time I had to learn how to adapt and use my abilities to work with other people), I would have gone to help her in a heartbeat. She didn’t have to try to steal it. She could have just asked.
But then, she probably wouldn’t have. I keep thinking of her as just another version of my Emmy, as a tragedy, but our family...seems like it was very different in that timeline. She said something about me getting jealous of her and her power, implied that our parents being frozen was other-Me’s fault--I don’t know how much of that was true, and how much was just her warped perception of things. She said it was my fault they were frozen for taking the gauntlet, which isn’t how anything works, and I was too angry to be thinking clearly, let alone listening clearly. I remember her implying that she’d killed me--other-me--though; that was pretty hard to forget. At some point, someone stops being a tragedy and starts being a danger to everyone else, and I think she crossed that line years ago.
I guess that’s what I mean, that I think our family was different in that time. I can’t imagine being so jealous of Emmy, no matter what her powers were, that I did something horrible because of it, and I can’t imagine her ever trying to actually kill me. Then again, I can’t imagine being me and not having retrocognition. I can’t imagine being someone who thinks it’s okay to tear apart multiple timelines to get to my goals.
Well. It didn’t happen here. Which doesn’t mean I should just forget about it, obviously, but it’s pretty clear that as similar as the people in that timeline are to the ones in this timeline, they’re not the same. I can’t picture Nat forming a cult, for one thing, or if she did I’m pretty sure her mom full-naming her would shut that right down. So that place--the timeline the left gauntlet got to--is very different. I still want to be able to help them, but…
But maybe I focus on solving one problem at a time, and I just--we just--solved the biggest problem in my life for the past year. I woke up this morning and mom was back. Mom is back, Emmy is back, we’re all together again. That’s enough. That’s more than enough--it’s more than I could have asked for.
Mom is back, so it’s a good day.

## S5E56 - Space and Time

November 11, 2020

So the first known telescope was patented by Dutch eyeglass-maker Hans Lippershy, back in 1608, but it’s most famous origin comes when Galileo Galilei, the following year, improved the design and applied it to astronomy, where he went on to use it to help prove his hypothesis of a heliocentric view of the solar system; later, in 1611, Kepler came up with an improved schematic, and Keplerian telescopes were common until around 1668, when Isaac Newton is credited for first using reflectors to help redirect light to an eyepiece.
Our modern telescopes are mostly the Ritchey-Chretien variant of Cassegrain-reflector telescopes, which improved upon that reflector technology as well as having hyperbolic primary and secondary mirrors to aid in the redirection of light. These are for reflector telescopes, obviously, not the ones which deal in radio waves or other types of radiation. I could go into the more high-tech ones, but the one I dealt with this past weekend was a pretty standard one for observational/amateur observing.
All of which is a long way to start out saying that I had to fix the astronomy club’s telescope again. It wasn’t our fault, this time--okay, so it’s a long story that starts with coming by school during club time because I didn’t have much else to do, getting...hit on by Faith? No idea what that was about but she seemed pretty embarrassed later, so I’m assuming that something was up and I’ll figure out more about it later--and then noticing that Ellens were being vanished by someone. They had a pretty good invisibility setup going on, so looking back in time didn’t help me much, and I ended up working with Tay, Faith, and Nat to figure out what was going on.
It was...honestly kind of unnerving. I kept finding piles of clothes and I would look back in time and see them just...vanish, poofing away into dust. Tay was convinced they were being disintegrated, and I kept not wanting to think about that, but honestly the spell that was being used wasn’t too far off. I figured out how to undo it--we managed to--but it wasn’t...it wasn’t a fun situation.
And then things got worse, because we got up to the Astronomy Club and someone who I gather from context clues is Vic Toxic showed up, and--you know, I always kind of assumed people were exaggerating, when they said he was an asshole. Like, there are a lot of assholes in this city. A lot. How much of a dick could this one guy be, really?
So it turns out they weren’t exaggerating at all. At all.
I’m not a violent person, but if that man comes near Miraya again I’m going to do my level best to injure him, because--he was doing something to her to make her stay near him/go along with him, and it was creepy and horrible and I hate him.

The good news is, though, that no matter how much a creep someone is, their spells are still effects that happen in time. And I’ve gotten extremely good at moving things in time, it turns out.
Still, he had help from one of the Ellens, who threw Nat out a window, and then I went out the window to try to save her, and I did save Nat but then I was out the window, and...listen. A lot of things happened, people fell through Miraya into the Big Team vault, and by the time we got there it was a shattered time-hellscape that I walked into, nearly fainted in, and then left very quickly.
So, bad side of new time powers: I’m a lot more susceptible to what Nat has taken to calling “bad time vibes” and I can’t think of a better name for it. But Tay seemed to have things fully under control: not only did she send Vic Toxic somewhere in time (I could probably figure out where, but uh, I don’t care about that guy? So I don’t even want to know) but she also managed to find the Tay of that Ellen who had been working with Vic--who had been working with him in order to get her Tay back, so. It all worked out!
Except for the telescope. The telescope did break again, so I was reading up about telescopes to try to fix it. But hey--there was a reunion someone thought was impossible, and a creep is gone for the moment, so! Things are going well.

## S5E61 - If I Ever See Another Draugr It Will Be Too Soon

So I guess it’s high time I talked about draugr. They’re mostly known from the Scandiavian sagas, although commenters have extended the term to encompass the haugbui and aptrganga from the middle ages. In all cases, though, they’re a form of revenant--they possess a physical body, rather than being an incorporeal or semicorporeal spirit. The word itself--draugr--does just mean an undead spirit, but in use it is almost exclusively the embodied spirits who inhabited cairns and burial mounds. Another term for them is the barrow-wight, which Tolkien borrowed for Lord of the Rings, although that’s really just a literal translation of *haugbui*.
In any case, the similarities in all of these forms of undead that cluster under the name draugr is a strong connection to the place of their burial. They were reported as having superhuman strength and just looking awful, either “death-blue” or “corpse-pale”, although there’s also a use of the term “black as Hel.” According to legend, they reeked of death (can confirm) and often act to protect their burial-mound from any perceived invasion or threat. In some tellings, they have access to magic like shapeshifting, divination, weather control, and cursing people. That seems to be reserved for the more sentient forms of the draugr, though, not just the malevolent corpses. Typically in legend, one has to be mean or greedy in life to become a draugr; greed in particular is a motivation, as draugr attack not only to protect their cairns but also out of an innate jealousy of the living.
According to most reports, the way to kill a draugr is by decapitating them. So that at least we got right.
If anyone reading this is wondering why I’m talking about draugr, guess what got into our sewers again! This time it seemed like people deliberately opened a portal--into Niflheim, and probably into a barrow--and let the draugr pour through. They attacked people, of course, but also seemed to go for the Zodiac Tree cuttings. That also makes sense, from the lore--I’d guess the Zodiac Tree is the most vital thing in Halcyon, so it makes sense that vitality-thirsting corpses would attack its roots.
Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one on hand--Boon was downtown for a photoshoot for their modelling company, the Fearless trio were nearby (and I gave Elena the Forbidden Hot Chocolate recipe--I figure if anyone can make good use if it, it’s her), and both Carmen and Astra were in the area. All this was good because the draugr were also heading for Big Base; apparently GAIA blew some stuff up in order to seal a breach, so I guess I have to go make sure nothing is too broken sometime later today. Still, we had a lot of it handled, and for the rest, we got some Asgardian help.
In related news, I have met the current Heimdall? So that’s how my life is going. She’s very nice and helped me get some cold-weather gear for reptilian transformed, to pass on to Emmy. I know the winter’s been real rough on her scales.
Anyway, I’m glad I’m on such a great team and all, and that I made a new friend, but if I ever see another FUCKING draugr, it will be too soon.

## S5E66 - Shipping Up To Boston

November 21, 2020
Good news: I got to see Jake! Bad news: it was while Boston was under lockdown by supervillains.
Okay so maybe I should back up. Jake was up in Boston and calling home, because he finally had cell service again, and then suddenly the service cut out halfway through the call. So mom was understandably worried, and I messaged people and checked the news, and it turned out that two assholes named Undertow and Nachtmusik had walled off the city and cut off the bay, blocking all contact in and out.
So that was bad.
I headed to the base because there was a group coming together to figure out what to do, and actually met up with the Jackal and Hero One (uh, Hikari Satou. They are retired. But they’re *Hero One* and they *talked to me* and I have to stop going on this tangent. I’m trying to take factual notes as a historical record!) who were also coming to talk about this problem. So we all packed into the Jackal-van so Melody could take us up to Boston (we all being me, Ernest, Melody, and Nat) and then it turned out this other guy--Nat called him Riptide, apparently he’s a supervillain around Halcyon?--was tailing the van, and so there was a bit of an argument about if he should come along. Nat was willing to vouch for him, and he was looking for his mom, so…

Well. What possible authority could I have to say no to that? So I guess I vouched for him too, and Ernest and Melody ended up going with it, and honestly that ended up for the best--Riptide was pretty useful to have along.
Once we got to Boston, though, things got really weird. The city was half-destroyed already; we had to try to help sort through rubble to find people. I tried to figure out what was going on, but once I opened up the whole time-senses bubble, I could just feel...It’s hard to describe. The darkness of outer space, but it was looking at me; a darkness with eyes and teeth, a darkness that ate time. I got to feel it more up-close later; I hope I never have to again. I was...pretty shaken, honestly, and Hikari got on the communicators we had to help snap me out of it. I need to remember to thank them for that, as soon as I get over the surreal state of my life where I now get pep talks from Hero One sometimes?
Well, then things got worse again. Shadows attacked, and while she really helped take them out, Melody passed out after that. Nachtmusik put out all the lights--I tried to pull a trick I’d pulled with Vic Toxic and just rewind them to being back on, but instead--
It’s hard to explain. I lost control of something, and got, well, pulled somewhere. Pulled through that same darkness I talked about earlier--the darkness of the end of time. I...didn’t know Nachtmusik’s powers included that. When I came out of it, I was in Boston, but a very different Boston. It was rebuilt, for one, and there was a huge crowd of people in, uh...let’s say alarmingly familiar outfits.
So apparently, and I didn’t know I could do this, but I panicked in the face of that end-of-time thing and sent myself...to the same timeline Tempus was from? It wasn’t the same point, I don’t think--had slightly different vibes, I’d guess it’s a little bit in the future--but there I was, in a crowd of Stanzas, which was better than the end of time, but not by much.
And then she showed up.
I’m not going to call her Nat because she’s not my Nat. That Cadenza showed up at the head of some parade, and I could tell--she was doing something with her powers, making them even more enthused with her, even more of a rabid fanbase. And all of that was bad enough but she also had...Well. I’d seen the reaper scythe that Ernest grabbed from somewhere before, but I’d never expected any version of Cadenza to be using it. She noticed me--recognized me, which is interesting, I didn’t think that that timeline’s version of me had ever met her so maybe I do go back to 2054--and said fighting me would be a good excuse to try out the scythe “her father” gave her.
So that’s also not good.

Anyway I got myself back to my Boston real fast, because I really don’t want to fight someone with a reaper scythe and a mob. I got back and was on the pier with the others, so that was good, and Nat had...somehow passed out and was being held by Undertow? So I grabbed her back and then Undertow, uh, hit me? With two ships?
Next thing I remember I’m waking up on the deck of Jake’s ship and watching Ernest and Nat give what is, in my unbiased opinion, the best dual performance I’ve ever seen in my life. Nat literally blew Undertow away. Ernest cleared the sky! Over Boston!! It was incredible.

I didn’t tell them--either of them--about what I saw in the other Boston. I know that’s a little weird, but...come on. Come on. Nothing those people do has anything to do with our Ernest and Nat. That Cadenza would never share a stage with anyone, even Ernest. And she certainly wouldn’t do something selfless, and our Nat does selfless things every goddamn day. All it would do is make them feel guilty about things they would never do.
And I don’t think they need that. Ernest and Nat did amazing things today, and it’s time to celebrate that.

## S5E72 - Meteorology, Volcanology, and Other Things The Syndicate Doesn't Understand

November 28, 2020

So let’s talk about Ferdinandea, or Graham Island, or Ile Julia, because it’s really an interesting historical and geological story. I’ve been thinking about it because of Mount Nomani, which just showed up in the bay; Mount Nomani of course appears to have a somewhat more supernatural origin (it’s larger than most vanishing islands), but it’s worth noting that this is far from the first time that a volcanic island has spontaneously appeared and caused a territory dispute. The most famous of the islands that did this is, as I mentioned, Graham Island.
So Graham Island/Isole Ferdinandea/Ille Julia is a volcanic island off the coast of Sicily, part of the Campi Flegrei del Mar di Sicilia, a series of underwater volcanoes in the area. Specifically, Graham Island is part of the submerged volcano Empedocles. It’s famous--or infamous--for suddenly appearing at least four times in recorded history, before quickly sinking back under the waves, giving it the appearance of a magical island that surfaces from the water and then vanishes without a trace.
Of course, there’s a completely normal explanation for this. Seamount eruptions of Empedocles push upward, causing Graham Island to emerge, and then erosion and the settling of the volcanic forces cause it to retreat again under the water. Still, especially in eras were understanding of volcanic activity was less well-developed, this was a pretty inexplicable phenomenon.
The most recent appearance of this island was in July 1831, when an eruption of Empedocles caused the island to reappear. A British Navy captain with the almost ludicrously English name of Humphrey Fleming Senhouse, claimed the island for the British Crown, because of course he did. Ferdinand II, the king of the Two Sicilies, sent naval ships to claim the island for the Bourbon Crown, and then the French decided to throw their hat in the ring with their navy,  with Spain declaring their intent to do the same. This is part of the reason it has so many names; everyone wanted a name declaring their own ownership over the island. And it would have been a useful island; it was well-positioned to help control Mediterranean trade. For five months, conflict raged over this chunk of basalt...before being proved entirely useless when, by the end of 1831, the island’s easily-eroded tephra had washed away, leaving no sign of the island above the waves.
So what I’m saying, i guess, is that history is wild and also, don’t count on Mount Nomani being here for the long haul. And honestly, if it pulls a Ferdinandea and vanishes underwater, I’m going to be extremely amused at all the work the Syndicate did to make it a super secret evil base.
I mean, in all honesty, that’s about in line with their plans in general at this point. They wanted to stop Fimbulvetr by warming up the ambient temperature of Halcyon? Which, there’s so much wrong with that that it almost would take too much time to unpack, but it’s going to bother me if I don’t, so here we go. First of all, part of the main problem is the ice and snowfall, and all that warming up the area will do for that is turn that into rain. So you’d be looking at a massive rainfall coming into the Halcyon area, at a time of year when the city really isn’t equipped to handle it. But the larger problem is that you’d also be creating a low-pressure center over Halcyon City at the same time as everywhere else is getting much colder, meaning suddenly, all of the nearby bad weather is going to try to take the path of least resistance and go straight to Halcyon. The resulting clashing front *right over a bay*, where there’s plenty of water to be sucked into the air and turned into rain? It’s a nightmare.

And none of this is getting into how many explosive things these idiots put inside and active volcano. I’m just saying, if the Syndicate expects me to believe they’re a safer, saner way of protecting the city than Big Team, they could start by making a single safe or sane decision.
Anyway I know all of this because Atlanta got kidnapped. Okay even before then, Jake invited me out for a tour of the bay, and then I invited people and a lot of people came along, but hey, the more the merrier. So Atlanta brought Jasper and Ernest and Boon brought most of the Ostenburg-Welles gang, honestly, and up until the kidnapping it was mostly a great time. Boon and Emmy got to talk, which is nice--they’re both going to the same school--and apparently Maggie Ostenburg tried to convince mom that a baby lamb was Boon as a baby, which. I’m not sure how she expected that to work, but it was very funny.
And then Atlanta got kidnapped and THEN we learned that ex-AEGIS agent Carson had stowed away on the ship, because god forbid anything normal happen in this city, so Jake gave me the keys to the submarine and Maggie, Carson, and the rest of the Big Team gang went to go check out this volcano, where--as you uh, might have guessed--we found a Syndicate base.
You might ask, “how good are Maggie Ostenburg, Ernest, Boon, Carson, and you, Ryan, at sneaking into a Syndicate base?” And the answer is, we almost made it out of one room without setting off an alarm.

So, bad.

When we found Atlanta someone was shooting lasers at her, in the VOLCANO OVER OPEN MAGMA, so again, the Syndicate is really selling their “better alternative to big team” line here, and so of course we had to fight. A...well, a lot of stuff happened. I’m not going to talk about Boon’s stuff, that’s his business, but we did get the Heart of the Dawn (remember that thing?) away from the Syndicate, and now I’m planning on researching it with Merlin to see if we can figure out what it does.
Also, Ernest refused to leave that fucking volcano come hell, high water, or Yamato herself showing up, so that was great. Love that. We definitely could have been out of there a lot faster. But, well, I’m not sure what I expected, you know? And it all ended alright. So no harm, no foul.

## S5 Finale- Ragna Rokkr, Again

December 13, 2020
I didn’t expect it to go this wrong.

God. Maybe I’m being too dramatic. I’m probably being too dramatic. It wasn’t that bad, except that the world almost ended, and Merlin got hurt, and the world almost ended, and Merlin got hurt and I couldn’t do *anything* about *either* of those things.
The snow was so thick as we were on the way there. I could research and talk about Fimbulvetr and what was happening but I can’t think. I try to read and I can’t get more than a few sentences in. I keep double-checking, making sure my door is closed, making sure my window is closed. And then I look out the window and make sure it’s stopped snowing. And then I try to read, and I do it all again, because I can’t sleep yet.

Some part of me is amused, you know? After everything--after 2054, after Mom, after Mount Nomani, after Boston, *this* is what gets me. This is what makes me scared, and I’m not even scared of Ragnarok. Well, no, I am, but that’s stopped. I’m scared because--

Well.

I tried to take the gauntlets off, after talking to Jera. I tried just...throwing them across the room, getting them *off.*

They reappeared, the second I tried to do anything. It didn’t even feel different with them off. If I wanted to get this whole Jera problem over with by just handing them the gauntlets, it wouldn’t work. It’s...more complicated than that.

And that terrifies me,  because that means I can’t stop. When I lost control--when I got upset in the old museum--I brought the place down around me just...by being *angry.* I wasn’t even trying to do it. I just got angry, and time bent and broke and shifted around me in all the wrong ways. And I don’t have an out. I picked up that gauntlet in February, I picked up the second, and now I’m...locked in. And I have to live with the consequences of this, and deal with them.

But if any of that rubble had fallen just to the side...some of the people in there were unconscious. I got lucky. I got so, so lucky. We all did.

Merlin made the point--there are a lot of ways things can go. This was one of the better ones. We’re all okay, we’re all alive. The world isn’t ending. He woke up. That’s good. I’m trying to remember that, but it’s hard, because I know all the ways that things could have gone badly, and next time, it could go badly.

I’ll just have to do better, next time.

## S5.5 - Impostor Syndrome in Copenhagen

January 15, 2021
Sometimes I feel like I’m living someone else’s life. That all this cool stuff happening to me is supposed to be happening to someone else, someone who’s interesting or powerful or talented and who is supposed to be having these grand adventures, while I’m supposed to be sitting in a museum back room, cataloguing things.
I guess that’s a pretty weird thing to start this journal with, huh? I could start by talking about Copenhagen, or about how even if a monarch is “good” the system of monarchy is inherently flawed, or that if you resort to violence to prove the superiority of your way of life all you’re really saying is that you lack the ability to convince anyone on your merits alone. About how no matter how good a person you are right now, being immortal means that as time goes on it becomes harder and harder to see other people as *people* and not as things. About how that was already clear, because that Queen’s entire deal was so much patronizing bullshit. And sure, those are all good points and everything, but…

I don’t know. I keep feeling about how strange it was to stand on that battlefield. There was a vampire swordfighting an intergalactic conqueror! Two world champions were B-blade battling and tearing up the area! We were all setting up a long-form distraction for Morgan le Fay to banish Queen Azure to another world!

And there I was, some kid from the museum who happened to pick up a magic artifact last year. It almost felt like a joke, but I was the punchline, and that’s never a very fun thing to be. It felt like any second, someone was going to ask me if I was *sure* I was supposed to be there, or if Big Team had meant to send one of the real heroes over, and I had somehow gotten slid in to replace them. It felt like someone was going to ask me if I was supposed to have these gauntlets, or if someone else should have gotten them first.

I guess part of why this keeps bothering me is that I keep wondering when he’s going to realize I’m boring.

It’s a stupid thought. I *know* it’s a stupid thought. It’s not like Merlin is particularly known for being too tactful about when he finds people boring. It’s part of what I like about him! I don’t usually have to guess what he’s thinking, he’s going to let me know, and that’s refreshing, that’s *nice.* And I’m pretty sure if he was losing interest, that would be something that, well...the rest of the day wouldn’t have gone the same way as it did.

I just don’t understand, I guess, how he could possibly *not* be bored with me. I’m not an interesting person. I’m not! I’m a kid who likes the most boring things in the world. Nobody wants to listen to me. Nobody wants to spend time around me--not anyone my age, at least. Nobody *likes* me, not really, unless there’s a group project. Except now, people do, and I…

Like I said. I feel like I’m living someone else’s life. Most days I can kinda...push through it. I can believe that I’m actually someone people like talking to, someone people look to for help and assistance. I can help people, I can do things. And then there are the bad days, when I can’t. And this is one of the bad days, I think.

I should...probably talk to someone about this, huh? But it’s hard. It’s hard to say hi, I’m on the Big Team and I work at the museum where people ask me for advice setting things up, I helped get my mom back from another timeline...and I have massive Impostor Syndrome to the point I’m just waiting for everyone to realize that I don’t deserve this. That sounds like a joke, again.

It might be worth it, though. For the rest of the bad days.