Krixwell Liveblogs

He looked at his mother, and the look she gave him was answer enough.  He helped her hobble over to the group of people I’d indicated, leaving her in their care, and joined Charlotte in running for the warehouse where the woman and kids were.

And the hole has opened. Now it should get a lot easier to convince people to help out.

Now I just had to keep my momentum.

“You and your friend,” I spoke to a middle-aged guy and his buddy.  “There’s a guy slowly bleeding out in the factory there.  Go help him.”

Especially since she’s able to do this now.

The second that passed before they moved to obey left my heart pounding.

That little moment of “will they listen to me now”…

But then they do, much more quickly than the last guy, and things are good. Well, as good as they can be under these circumstances.

Also, I guess the fact that Taylor only mentioned the woman and children indicates that no, the man is not breathing.

I already figured the blood on the mother’s face was at least partially from her husband, and the breathing a reaction to what had just happened to him and the children, but there was a chance he was still alive but very badly hurt.

I spotted a twenty-something guy with an impressive bushy beard and no shirt.  Aside from one cut on his stomach and some smaller patches of shredded skin where the sand had caught him in the back, he seemed to be in okay shape.  “You.  Help her.”

And this allows her a second chance at the assertive, specific directions she failed to give earlier.

He looked at the older woman beside him.  His mother?  She was clearly hurt, and had the remains of two or three white t-shirts bundled around her arm.

Ah, yeah, some of them aren’t going to want to leave behind their closest to go help.

It was clear the limb had been caught by the sand; it looked like a mummy’s arm, only bloody.

Oh jeez.

Anticipating an excuse on his part, I pointing to the nearest group of injured and told him, “They’ll look after her.  There are people who need you more.  Second floor.  Go.”

This is how you do it. Good job, Taylor.

I owe her one hell of a favor.

Yes. Yes you do.

Unless you or someone else pulls something really good, Charlotte is going to be the MVP of this chapter for that move alone.

I’d had my bugs sweeping through nearby buildings since I’d arrived.  I hadn’t really stopped, even after I got home.  I had found several of the wounded.  A man lying prone, two kids huddled near their mother.  The mother’s face was sticky with blood, her breathing quick.

Ouch. Is the man breathing?

The children were bleeding too.  I could sense a man stumbling blindly through what had been his home, hands to his face.

You really should switch to a more eye-friendly shampoo, pal.

I almost sent her after the blind man, but reconsidered.

I pointed at a warehouse, and spoke loud enough for others to hear, “There’s a woman and two little kids in there, you won’t be able to help them alone.”

Ooh, good idea, inciting more people to help by making it absolutely clear that they are needed. That everyone needs to work together.

Which was a large part of why I had chosen them.

Yeah, I see what you’re doing, and I like it a lot.

“The cube got crushed when I was helping someone.  I was glad you didn’t use your power,” she said.

Oh, okay. That just leaves the mask, which is easy enough to explain.

Then, loud enough that some people nearby could hear her, she asked me, “What can I do?” 

Oh hell yes!

Remember what I said about the flock needing one person to be the first to break formation before they all did? That’s what Charlotte is doing. She knows how that works and is actively stepping into the situation to be that person for the rest of the crowd.

Go Charlotte!

“Alright,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt.  My fist clenched at my side.

I hesitated.  Someone was approaching.  I felt them passing through the bugs I’d dispersed through the crowd.  Charlotte.

Oh, hi! Are you going to save Taylor from having to do this? Perhaps with a rousing speech about how Skitter went against bystander syndrome to help you, and how they could at least do the same?

“You’re not wearing your mask,” I said, the second she was close enough to hear me, my voice quiet.  “Or the paper cube.”

Hm. Maybe she was not wearing her mask in order to seem less threatening when she went out to warn people? But why not the cube?

Is it an act of rebellion because of what just happened to the territory and the fact that she wasn’t told about the Nine being around before it was this late? I don’t think that fits with how she was acting on the phone, though, and there’s no reason for Charlotte to assume Skitter knew before she found out about the Shattering.

No, I think she’s coming to help, but wants to appear like a regular person for whatever reason.

Which left me three unpleasant options.  The first option was that I could abandon that plan, look weak, and lose standing in the eyes of everyone present.

Not really worth even thinking of unless the other options are significantly worse.

Alternately, I could speak up again, appeal to their humanity, beg, plead, demand, praying all the while for someone to come forward.  That was the second choice, and it would make me look even worse to everyone watching, with only a miniscule chance of success.

Is the third option basically the same but forcefully? Because that’s probably the best option. If they won’t listen and help out of the goodness of their hearts, it’s time for intimidation.

The silence stretched on.  I knew it had only been five or six seconds, but it felt like a minute.

It’s amazing how long six seconds can be. *glances over at Dungeons and Dragons*

The third of my ugly options?  I could make them listen.  Goad them into action with threats and violence.

Intimidation, yes. Actual violence, preferably not.

It meant I risked provoking the same sort of chaos and violence I was hoping to combat, but I suspected that chance was relatively minor.  I could get people to do what I needed them to do.  I’d maybe earn their respect, but I’d probably earn their enmity at the same time.

Yeah. You’re already on thin ice as an easy scapegoat. You don’t want to stomp on that ice.

Could I do this?  Could I become the bully, even if it was for the greater good?

…oof. Right. Bullies.

I was going to hate myself for doing it, but I’d left my dad behind to be here.  I wasn’t about to fail.

Add one more card to the guilt pile!

With my curiosity sated for now, let’s take a break to read some Worm.

Now, now, don’t worry, I know you all came here to read me prattle on about idiomatic etymology. We’ll be back to that before you know it, but for now, let’s do something else for a little while, okay?

So, because I’m guessing at least a couple of you are as curious about it as I am, here’s what I found about going south and west with a little quick research:

Wiktionary has this about going south, citing Christine Ammer’s The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms:

The origin is unclear. Common belief attributes it to the standard orientation of maps, where south is the downwards direction. Alternatively, it could stem from a euphemism used by some Native American for dying.

Norwegian Wiktionary didn’t have anything about going straight west. However, the Norwegian language council has this (translation mine):

“To go west” has in English long been used about dying (or breaking). The origin is probably the frightening thought of ending up where the sun sets (possibly far out at sea).

Some sources instead mention that it is criminal slang for ending up at an execution site in West Midlands in England. That is impossible for us to judge. The Wild West in America can at least be ruled out, as such an origin would be known in the Anglophone world.

The idiom supposedly spread wildly during the First World War. It probably came into Norwegian through sailor jargon. Tor Myklebost writes: “Seamen never say about their deceased mates that they’re ‘dead’. ‘He went west,’ they say.”

Straight west is a natural extension of west in Norwegian, and has long existed in its geographical sense.

Previously, the expression was often that something went north and down in Norwegian. Down in Denmark, projects rather go down and home, and in the east ((TN: Sweden)), to the woods or to hell, which of course also exists here. They can otherwise go in the sink, or worse. Things can further go ad undas ((TN: Latin, to the waves)), to the devil, in the dogs and to pieces – if it doesn’t simply bust. There might not be quite as many expressions for things going well.

One recurring thread in the Norwegian one is references to the sea. I have in the past suspected that it had to do with that, as the sea is to the west for most of Norway. But by the sound of it, the idiom originated outside Norway and spread here via sailors.

Also worth noting is that both the English and Norwegian etymologies appear to possibly have to do with death. It’s worth noting that in several mythologies, west is the direction to the underworld, so maybe some influence there might have been involved too.

And now that I’d fucked that up, I’d entrenched them.  The status quo was now quickly becoming ‘not listening to the supervillain’, and it would be twice as hard to get them to go against the rest of the herd. 

Damn. This is going south, and that’s where Taylor and the shockwave just came from, so we don’t want to go back that way right now.

…I wonder what made south the bad direction for something to go in English. In Norwegian, it’s west (something that is going badly “går rett vest”, “is going straight west”), and I similarly wonder what’s behind that.

Maybe it’s that south is down on maps these days? But why would the idea of bad things going downwards (notably, “going down” is a value-neutral phrase for something happening) be transplanted onto a map? And it’d need to be a fairly new development, since on older maps, down would… be… west. Huh. Maybe that is the origin and the difference is in when the speakers of each language adopted the idea?

I should probably just look this up. :p