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crystalelemental · 1 year

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Unit Viability Speculation - February 2023

Palentine’s month came in with some high expectations I never really expected to go anywhere, but I figured I’d hit at least one. Little did I know I hit two. The most obvious two, but still, two. The bad news is, literally every other aspect played out terribly. I will not front. I’m not satisfied with this month’s outcomes at all. Like, at all.

SS Lysandre and Volcanion I’ll say it: Volcanion’s lame. It looks dumb, it’s wholly irrelevant as a Pokemon with no interesting traits, and it’s set as either Fire or Water type, which we have too many of in the game already. I don’t love this alt, which is a damned shame because holy shit my man looks good.

Volcanion got Water, and what’s endlessly comical to me is that they didn’t even make Steam Eruption important. It’s just for utility, and has bad DPS for a 4-bar move. No, his DPS is his Buddy move, which is also hilarious, in Hydro Pump, which is an AoE move that has the base power of a sync move. The problem? It only works if a foe is burned. While he has Heat Wave for AoE burn, it’s a bad burn rate and his natural multipliers can’t make it work. So he’s purely on Steam Eruption, then spam Hydro Pump. Which works okay in CS where you can just keep the no status conditions effect off. But in Gauntlet? This man lives and dies entirely by whether the foe can be burned. And I’m not going to front. I don’t like Burn, so I have no idea who’s immune to it. Uxie and Cobalion can become immune. Lysandre has to use Steam Eruption alone on Bar 2 Uxie, and if he can’t take out Cobalion, the second half of that entire fight is a wash. He can’t address Tornadus well. If Moltres or Entei are immune to burn, they’re potential problems too, despite his advantage. He’s weak to Rock so Regirock is a no-go. I just...don’t know how I feel about the guy.

Grid gives him Furious Brain and a 50% chance to burn off Heat Wave to save some CS needs, but the rest is once again reliant on Burn. I think my misgivings come from not knowing how much is Burn immune. It could be fine. But I don’t love that entire fights are outside his ability because of that. Also, just putting it out there: the only interesting thing he does, debuffing Atk/Sp Def, is a 5/5 node. No thanks, bro.

Anabel and Snorlax First, I need to know: does Anabel use Snorlax? I don’t remember her using Snorlax, but also I don’t like Gen 7 so it’s been a while. Either way, I hate the partner choice, it’s bad and should feel bad. Second, why PokeFair? I mean, it’s what Anabel deserves, but also I don’t think this unit’s that great, and I’m kinda stunned given that Looker is just a regular pool unit.

Headbutt with Aggravation is good. Protect...exists. Reflect...exists. Trainer move buffs +2 attack, but also gives crit shield, status shield, and Light Screen. ...okay. She can GMax, so Max Replenish turns these 1MP moves into 2MP if nothing else. She’s able to buff special defense by 1 every time an MP move is used, heals 50% HP when using her Max Move, and gains +20% to all stats when any field condition is active. Note: absolutely nothing in her kit extends the duration of these effects. PokeFair. Melony. Just saying.

Her grid hurts me physically. Move Gauge Acceleration when a field effect is present and Synchro Healing 1 would be great tools, if they weren’t 5/5 locked. But they are, so... Healthy Healing is fine. Quick Cure is nice. Charging Infliction 2 is something I guess. Durable on Trainer Move is fantastic. Crit Squad 1 on Trainer Move is nice but insufficient to cap crit. Shielded and Shielding Strikes are okay. No built-in Vigilance, no gauge control, slow-ramping and potentially insignificant defense buffing, can’t cap any offensive stat, no extension of her myriad field effects. I legitimately struggle to see Anabel’s status as a PokeFair. This does not seem...particularly mind-blowing. And I’m betting good money that grid will have energy issues regardless just trying to fix what she needs. But hey, maybe the other one is good.

Emma and Crobat Hey kids, you like PokeFairs?! Oh, and it’s Crobat! Not Espurr. For no reason. Also Crobat is the first Pokemon to three major trainer appearances. Gengar and Charizard could do it, but only because of MU’s eggmons. Crobat has Koga, Janine, and now Emma for Triple Bat. So it’s gonna be good, right?

Poison Fang! No Hostile Environment! Lucy! Just. Saying. Potion! On a Striker! That’ll help! Buddy move operates similarly to Lysandre, only working if the foe is Poisoned. Now that one I know is bad. Tornadus and Cobalion are right out, Uxie poses problems as well, and because she can’t even guaranteed Toxic by herself as a FUCKING POKEFAIR, teambuilding considerations exist. Her Trainer Move is the only legitimately good thing about her, giving +4 speed to the entire team. That, legitimately, helps. Her passives also attempt to remove gauge considerations with Toxic Freebie...4. Head Start 2 is an attempt at Fast Ramping, which some will love. And her final gives guaranteed crit to her sync, which is nice, considering her buddy move also guaranteed crits. She’s pretty free from setup costs, being 1MP for +4 attack and guaranteed to crit on every attack that matters.

Emma’s 5/5 grid is...really nice. +1 evasion to the whole team per attack is great. Ruthless Toxin is really good. Toxic after sync is something, not too convinced it matters though. Super Toxic is fun given her buddy move, being a great source of DPS in CS, but utterly worthless in Gauntlet where nothing is Poison weak. Inertia and Ramming Speed are nice and synergistic. There’s not too much of overwhelming value, but there’s good stuff. She’s not too shabby, I just...really wish her DPS weren’t locked behind the foe being poisoned. That’s going to really hinder her. Like, severely.

Palentine’s Mallow Now that Mallow has an outfit I can respect, I can safely say I just don’t like Mallow. I took one look at this and felt nothing but disappointment. Shame she’s the support with Appletun. Should’ve been Cheryl.

Mallow seems weird. Dire Hit All+ is good, but her trainer move is +3 defense to the team and then move gauge recovery. You know, like Lance and Rosa did. I don’t know why that’s a thing. Her Grass-type move is great, hitting -1 special defense per attack, but she doesn’t double up like Brendan, and her main designation is Dragon despite Dragon Pulse being terrible for a support. Her passives are a buttload of healing, but all super conditional on her attacking, one pop heal of 50% when she’s under half HP, and Initial Synchro Healing 2, which is atrocious for a support, because your allies aren’t going to be significantly hurt by the time you bust that out for double damage. She gets Hype Up 9 and Staggering 4 for Dragon Pulse, but (1) that’s the wrong attack move, and (2) that’s way too slow to build up special attack boosts. She does get Vigilance and Revenge Boost 9, alongside Triage Tank 4 (not Team), but if it seems like I’m kinda glossing over Mallow it’s because I am. I don’t like the partnership, this feels like Palentine’s Marnie and Bea all over again, but more in the Bea camp where the unit’s kinda bad.

Palentine’s Elesa Welcome to five alts, girl. Togetic is an odd choice, but I guess it pairs with Winter Skyla’s Togekiss. Metronome, Fly, Dire Hit+, and a trainer move that gives +3 to both offenses. Not the best look. Super Powered 5 is neat for her sync, but otherwise you’re rolling the dice on Metronome. She does get +1 stack of both physical and special moves with each status move’s use, and guess what Metronome is. Her grid even offers the boosted rate to all secondary effects, so the inclusion of moves like Rock Slide and Blizzard in its arsenal is wildly interesting. It’s super luck reliant, don’t count on it, but random luck can sometimes pull through. I don’t have a ton to say. She’s a fairly standard Striker that lives for their sync nuke, but has a really interesting approach with Metronome shenanigans.

Lodge Morty Okay. F2P support. Boosts Special Attack and Crit. Separately, but still. This is unique. Trainer move also boosts evasion and team speed, which is really useful. Full Heal is situational, but can be clutch. My misgiving is that Morty...has some issues because of his F2P designation. Bad stats, mostly, but also he didn’t get Endurance. Given low stats, this is a potential death sentence, given that others with much stronger and faster buffing kits have desperately needed that skill. Morty takes 6 turns to fully cap all offenses, and I can pretty much promise he won’t survive that long. You pick one buff or the other, and you ideally stick to it. After that, you hope on some evasion, and aim for your 30% boosts to all stats per attack, with Healthy Healing and Ridicure as backup. I won’t lie, I really like the buffing potential, but I can’t help but feel a little wary about the stats and lack of Endurance. This won’t pan out so well in CS, but Gauntlet...maybe he’ll shine?

Common Grid War Act 14 I’m start Roark because I’m scared. Standfast 3, 5, and 7. Glad to know my fears were founded. Pinpoint Entry, First Aid 4, and Sharp Entry aren’t bad, though. Trainer Move getting gradual healing is great, and giving Follow-Through for potential sync is nice too. Haymaker as a sync multiplier is divine. He gets +1 physical moves up next on trainer move as well. And Double Down 5 for good measure. 150% bonus sync damage, and his trainer move gives a lot of really nice effects now. I can’t lie. That’s...actually kinda good. I’ll have to see how he plays, but he might just be the best Rock-type in the F2P pool now.

Maylene time. Rock Smash On a Roll 1. Natural Remedy. Precision Pals on trainer move. Pep Rally on trainer move, holy shit. Quick Cure. Superduper Effective 5 on Drain Punch for better healing? Sterner Stuff, Safety Tether, and Unbending? Those...are not bad at all. Maylene realistically just wanted her MPRs to cap attack and crit, but she got some decent tools beyond that too. Her trainer move giving speed is wildly helpful, as gauges were one of her biggest issues. This is...pretty great. I can’t lie. I just wish she had a bit more healing potential as a support. No Master Healer...hurts a bit.

Shauntal...please. Please do neat stuff. “Gritty 5 and Lessen Burn 9!” Baller. Endurance. Ramming Speed, radical. On a Roll 2, beautiful 60%. Critical Eye 1 on trainer move, nice. 30% chance to burn foes when they hit her, nice. Brain Sync 5, we take those. I like it. This seems like a metric ton of fun.

Grid Expansions Base Elesa gets Brawn Sync 5, Critical Eye 1 broadly, Standfast 9, and Fleet Feet 2 on her trainer move. These are pretty reasonable effects. I do think her overall power leaves a lot to be desired, since her sync was pretty awful and 50% isn’t fully salvaging that, but the remaining self-sufficiency and huge improvement to damage reduction in a single half-cost node is great.

Alder got Pinpoint Entry 1 and Brain Sync...2. Wow. Wow, okay, yeah, I’m gonna...I guess I’ll shut up about Anni Lillie now (lies). Dismay is faster Devastation setup. BOGO on Struggle Bug is...not worth it, but okay. Impervious to block his own trainer move downside is okay. Furious Brain for a move multiplier is hilarious. It’s fine. It’s all just fine.

Sycamore gets Quick Cure, Team Sharp Entry, Team Beef Up, and Freevenge 4. Just...get it, man. Team Sharp Entry was all I wanted to see, but even better gauge control and immunity to first trap to fuck over Entei? Beautiful.

Miscellaneous Leon is bad with Gigantamax, and now we have Fire Damage Field, which means that much like Stealth Rock, this will be utterly useless and he would’ve been better off with just Sun. Why the fuck doesn’t it inflict Trap on all foes? That would’ve been something.

Oh and apparently there’s a Champion Select Scout at the end of the month, and Steven’s there. Okay.

Oh, and we get regional Meowth in the eggs this month. Galarian has Iron Head Aggravation which is nice, while Alolan has Bite Aggravation so not as good, and is probably better off taking the support for max speed.

Final Thoughts I’m crabby about this. Volcanion is lame, no Looker alt, Emma and Anabel are PokeFair but legitimately don’t feel that great to me (though Emma’s DPS will likely change my tune), the Palentine’s alts aren’t all that exciting to me, and even the grid expansions feels decent but not all that exciting. I dunno. I know I set my expectations way too high, almost as a defense mechanism, but this...isn’t quite what I wanted. At all. Like I got the CS, but not Drasna, how did that happen?

But. Anabel is here. Which means she won’t be taking a spot in Alola. Lusamine and Nihilego is back on the table. Please, game. Do not fail me there too. Not like this.

#unit viability speculation #pokemon masters

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whatisonthemoon · 1 year

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The Real Issue in the Case of Rev. Moon (1984)

△ Pictured: From left to right: Senator Orrin Hatch, Rev. Everett Sileven, Moon By Colman McCarthy

February 5, 1984

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder and leader of the Unification Church, is not everyone's idea of the Second Coming. I confess to having had a passing feeling of elation when in May 1982 he was fined $25,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison for tax evasion and filing false returns. An appeals court upheld the conviction.

I wasn't alone in that feeling. Polls have reported wide hostility to Moon. Perhaps it's his mysterious smile that irks us, because in fact he's as completely normal as any commie-hating, money-loving preacherman at the head table of the town prayer breakfast beating a pious breast when the cameras roll.

Unfortunately for me, I understood more the reasons that Moon was unpopular--his methods of programming recruits, the mass weddings, his real-estate holdings--than I did the reasons the government won its case. Last week, when Moon asked the Supreme Court to review his conviction, some reconsiderations were in order.

First Amendment principles of religious freedom are involved, as well as procedural questions on whether Moon's original trial before a New York jury was fair. What the appeals court described as "troubling issues of religious persecution and abridgement of free speech" has created a unification of believers that only amazing grace or love of the First Amendment can explain.

It is the latter. Some 40 national groups joined the appeal last week as friends of the court. These include the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Baptist Churches, the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, the United Presbyterian Church and the National Council of Churches.

This is a Noah's ark of views and styles. Everyone is on board, not to express faith in Moon but to perform the good works of protecting his right to express his Unification beliefs. If his church is under unfair attack this time, someone else's may be next time. The First Amendment forbids the government from nosing into lawful internal church matters, regardless of how odd those matters appear to outsiders. The more bizarre, the more reason for protection.

Moon was prosecuted for not reporting as personal income--and paying taxes on--$162,000 earned as interest, mostly from a Chase Manhattan bank account. The critical question was who owned the money, the church or the church leader. Moon argued that he was the trustee of the money. It was given by church members to be used, through Moon, for their religious purposes. The members had decided, in a legal process, that this was the way they wanted their assets to be managed and used.

Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar and a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, is Moon's chief counsel. In the petition to the Supreme Court, Tribe argued that the religion clauses of the First Amendment are violated when the government decides it is wrong for a church leader to use funds that his followers want him to use.

In United States v. Moon, the government, Tribe writes, "simply proceeded with a theory that ignored Rev. Moon's relationship to his followers; a theory that Rev. Moon's ownership of the assets were in Rev. Moon's name and under his control, and that the assets had been used for what the government deemed Rev. Moon's personal investments and expenditures. This theory treated the intent and religious identity of the assets' donors as wholly irrelevant, and relegated Rev. Moon to the role of an 'ordinary high-ranking businessman'--the very image the government continuously conjured up before the jury."

The national concern generated by this case isn't wasted. Moon's unpopularity is unimportant. Even then, the personal attacks against him are similar in meanness and bias to those vented historically against Jewish, Christian and Moslem leaders when they were newcomers bringing a minority religion into the community. The Unification Church members I know are decent and honest citizens.

The conviction of their leader represents a brick knocked out of the wall of separation between church and state. Every church, and every leader of one, will be more at the mercy of the state if Moon's conviction is allowed to stand.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/02/05/the-real-issue-in-the-case-of-rev-moon/ad8c3905-ccda-4854-a3d5-1a403177dcc1/

Note on this article: This editorial by Colman McCarthy in the Washington Post portrays Rev. Moon as a victim of oppression. This may appear to be a defense of religious freedom but on closer examination, the biases and class interests become evident. The media is not a neutral and impartial observer, but rather an active participant in shaping public opinion and promoting the interests of those in power. The emphasis on religious freedom in the Rev. Moon case should be seen as part of this larger pattern of deception and propaganda, rather than as a sincere defense of religious liberty. The media, including the Washington Post, is not a neutral and impartial observer of events but rather an active participant in shaping public opinion. The media is dominated by large corporations and the wealthy, who have a vested interest in promoting their own views and interests. Media outlets often focus on stories and perspectives that align with the interests of their owners and advertisers. In the case of the Rev. Moon, the Washington Post editorial emphasizes the importance of religious freedom, and the diverse support from civil leaders that Moon received in his struggle for freedom, but fails to mention the financial interests of those who benefited from his release. The fight for Rev. Moon's freedom was not just about religious liberty, but also about the interests of those who financially supported him and the organizations that advocated for his release. This was not just the forming Religious Right and Evangelicals, but also included Democratic politicians, former Civil Rights leaders, the ACLU, the National Council of Churches, as well as other political and civil leaders. They were all paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some way or another.

None of what was said in this editorial addresses the constant abuses and mismanagement of funds by religious organizations, which often go unnoticed and unscathed, and how Moon’s victory would likely ensure that they remain unscathed. The emphasis on religious freedom can distract from these important issues and create a false impression of the reality of the situation.

The Washington Post is part of the bourgeois establishment and represents the interests of those in power. Its support of religious freedom can be seen as an attempt to protect the interests of religious organizations, which have significant influence and resources, rather than as an impartial promotion of religious liberty.

#sun myung moon #religious freedom #unification church #moonies #ffwpu #family federation for world peace and unification #washington post #legal #law #1984 #unification church history #politics #politicians #national council of churches #aclu #capitalism

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denimbex1986 · 3 years

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‘...The series seems to struggle itself with the question of what it says about Bucky that he “let” himself be controlled (nb: it doesn’t say anything) and decides some “will he won’t he” suspense over whether he’s deep down still a killer and how he can make up for what he supposedly did are valuable questions to ask, rather than a replication of the same agonising self blame that most abuse survivors subject themselves to.

...it’s believable for everyone to treat his torture and enslavement as an awful unspeakable thing no one wants to confront in earnest, because people are very bad at handling difficult emotional situations, but that treatment is also only ever depicted as wholly appropriate, and so the audience is asked to buy in. Beyond a couple of angry threats Bucky throws the way of Zemo (Daniel Bruhl), his former tormentor, Zemo’s two second apology in episode 3, and some blink and you’ll miss them visual inserts during the aforementioned scene with Ayo, the writing focusses entirely on what Bucky was forced to do while enslaved and skirts around the awful things that were done *to him*, rendering the exploration of his trauma confusing and unbalanced.

...the core message from Sam’s tough love, however kindly delivered, was “man up and take responsibility”. Far from being an example of men healthily discussing emotions, this is a fairly typically macho rejection of any suggestion of fragility or ambivalence. (He also talks about the ineffectiveness of Bucky telling people he’s sorry, seconds after mentioning he was doing the exact opposite, so the incoherence of this speech really has layers.) These might be the kind of well-meaning observations that a real male friend would make, but coming from the mouth of the next Captain America, we are also asked to take them as unimpeachably correct.

...this total emphasis on being “of service” is quite a directive to give a man who was compelled very painfully into service for years, and doesn’t challenge the unhealthy pressure men put on themselves to be in control of their own emotions at all times. The closest Bucky ever comes to falling to pieces comes not from the writing but Stan, who inserts the occasional waver into Bucky’s voice to show all this control is costing something, and does a great trade in “haunted behind the eyes” facial expressions. As a challenge though to the scale of what’s being demanded of the character, that’s fairly thin gruel.

...Sam entreats Bucky to stop working out how to stop all of Hydra’s beneficiaries, and focus on helping its victims — by going and telling them he murdered their loved ones. He doesn’t come out and say that explicitly, obviously, because that would involve the writers directly acknowledging this is some pretty extreme shit, so they just couch it as “people out there who need closure, which only you can give”. I think this is supposed to come off as subtle, rather than minimising.

I have to ask, because when I’ve suggested to people this advice was, well, bad, it hasn’t gone down well: does it really seem a good idea for Bucky, an emotionally unstable man in the midst of an identity crisis, to go off on his own and talk to the loved ones of Hydra’s victims, who he was forced to murder, given the last time someone found out about this (ie Tony Stark) they tried to kill him? Could this not be profoundly retraumatising, having to relive these memories out loud to devastated victims, again and again? Could taking on all their grief and pain and rage on behalf of Hydra, his own torturers, who he must have his own anger against but who will never seek forgiveness, not reinforce the self hatred he already feels?

Meanwhile, is it going to make anyone feel better to be told out of the blue how their loved ones died by the person who killed them? Did seeing Bucky make Isaiah feel better? Did he enjoy that reminder of his past? Did it bring closure? Did anyone on the writing team ask any of these questions?

...The writers...were so unable to authentically write a scene between Bucky and Yori (Ken Takemoto), the father of a man he murdered, that wouldn’t go disastrously wrong they cut it short after about three lines rather than suggest Sam might have oversimplified the problem. But, they needed their vehicle to get Bucky to his smiley happy ending, so the scene had to stay in. He declares at the end of it “I didn’t have a choice” and it‘s possible this was intended to sound like a breakthrough, but as a character beat it’s rather hollow, given that in six hours we’ve seen no depiction of him coming to this realisation.

In any case, no one asks Bucky if this drive to make amends for things he didn’t do is a form of self flagellation that’s preventing him from letting go, whether he’s really up to facing all of Hydra’s victims by himself, offers to go with him, or points out he doesn’t actually need to do any of it...

But aside from saying some pretty unhealthy stuff about recovery, which may not deliver the best messages to male survivors of abuse and assault watching at home, it does seem a shame that what’s unique and interesting about Bucky in the world of male superheroes has been stripped away: the challenging of normative male roles, all the real darkness of having to climb out of what he’s gone through, reduced down to a boring, irrelevant commandment to “do the work”, take charge. In this show, Bucky’s just another dude being a dude.

...Bucky’s story is...operatically, garishly tragic, full of high saturation contradictions and big questions about the self, and a story driven by real world struggle...’

#Sebastian Stan #bucky #falcon and the winter soldier

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awheckery · 3 years

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so. uh.

cut for frank discussion of chronic illness and the serious failures of the american healthcare system. tw for fatphobia and gaslighting.

Last July, I got sick. It wasn’t too bad at first: some fatigue, body aches and a slightly elevated temp, until suddenly it was bad and I wound up in the ER. It took three rounds of steroids, a round of antibiotics and a more powerful inhaler to get my feet back under me, but I never fully recovered.

I didn’t talk about it here, except for answering an ask in October and blaming my lack of creative output on depression. It really, really wasn’t depression; it was my health progressively collapsing, one system after another until the avalanche of symptoms that flattened me just after New Year’s.

For the last four months, I’ve spiked a fever over 100°F nearly every single day. My joints hurt. My knuckles are knobbly and swollen, and occasionally my fingers are so painful and weak I’ve had to literally tape my pen to my hand at work. I get rashes at random that itch so badly I claw myself bloody. I overheat and have hot flashes in temperate rooms. The skin on my face and neck and shoulders turns red and hot to the touch, like I’m burning for hours with no immediately discernible provocation.

Some days, I wake up and I don’t have the strength to get out of bed. Some days I can’t wake up at all. I’ve slept through deafening alarms for hours, long enough for my phone battery to run out and die. I can only stand up for ten minutes a day without being hobbled by the effort, and every extra minute beyond that I pay for in hours spent bedbound by exhaustion and pain.

I keep losing words. I’ll arrive at the middle of a sentence and stumble to a halt, because the word I need isn’t there. It’s not true aphasia, and it’s not all the time. I comprehend written and verbal communication perfectly well, but I can’t get my own thoughts out without tripping over them.

I am, to quote a friend attending school to be a nurse practitioner, “a textbook case for SLE,” and I agree, but somehow I can’t pay a doctor to treat me seriously.

In January, I was referred to a rheumatologist after the bloodwork my PCP ordered indicated I had autoimmune activity of some kind.

To date, that’s my only test for anything that’s come out definitively positive for any kind of disease state at all. Ever. I tested negative for celiac disease on a technicality nine years ago, despite how specifically and intensely sick gluten makes me, so I was dismayed but not too surprised when follow-up bloodwork for lupus came back just barely inside the range of “normal.” Despite that, I wasn’t prepared to be jerked around as much as I have been.

The first rheumatologist I saw, back at the end of January, had barely been in the exam room for thirty seconds when I could see he’d already made up his mind about me. He was dismissive and perfunctory and condescending when he told me that “plenty of perfectly healthy people have positive ANA results,” and he referred me back to my PCP for an exercise program and antidepressants to treat my “fibromyalgia.”

Putting aside that I’m not a “perfectly healthy person,” I’m a Fat Lady living in America, and I’ve experienced medical fatphobia for decades at this point. You learn the key words and phrases pretty quickly, and “exercise program” has never not been a euphemism for “weight loss.” (Which is heavily ironic in this particular situation, because before I was Fat, I walked 2-3 miles a day for funsies and spent 15-20 hours in the gym every week. I only stopped because I somehow shredded both my ACLs in one summer. I’d love to get back to that if a rheumatologist could help me figure out how to be active and uninjured at the same time.)

I was frustrated after that first appointment, enough to request a referral to one of the best teaching hospitals in the country. Why not go to the best, right? There was a five month wait for an appointment, but I am stubborn, and I made use of the time by documenting every bullshit symptom my body threw at me. I have a daily symptom journal, full of subjective entries like my pain and fatigue levels, as well as objective entries like daily temperature changes and photos of my rashes and my burning face and my goddamn mouth ulcers.

I thought I had enough logged to be impossible to ignore, and then I saw the second rheumatologist three weeks ago, and the first sentence out of her mouth was the beginning of an interrogation on my blood pressure, and whether I was taking medication or if I was on a fucking exercise program for it. I tried to get the appointment back on track by sharing my symptom diary, and she turned back to my just-under-the-wire test results, and told me, “many healthy people have positive ANA results, it doesn’t mean anything without other positive test results for specific conditions.”

I said, “Healthy people don’t run a fever for months.”

And then she told me that a "fever is not associated with any of the conditions a rheumatologist treats." I was so startled by the confidence and authority with which she stated the lie that I was unable to speak to rouse a defense or contribute anything else for the rest of the appointment. After an insultingly brief examination, in which I never took my face mask off and she declined to look at any of my photos, she said that she “didn’t see anything that could be rheumatologically wrong with me.”

I asked her what she thought could be wrong with me, and she grudgingly admitted it’s possible, though rare to have an autoimmune disease and test negative for everything, so she would order more tests and refer me to appropriate specialists for my various symptoms. She ordered a referral to an infectious disease specialist for my fevers, and a referral to a dermatologist for my “rosacea” (that she’s assuming I have, because I would like to again note she did not see it, at no point did she actually look at my face or a photo of it), and a referral to an ENT for a salivary gland biopsy for my dry mouth, and a referral to a neurologist for my “stroke-like” memory and speech problems.

It was, all told, an unbearably shitty appointment. I cried in my car for an hour in the hospital parking garage so I wouldn’t do anything impulsive like lying down in traffic, and then I went home, cried some more, and went to bed for three days.

On the fourth day, I woke up enraged. It’s one thing to be blown off by a doctor when you’re just reporting symptoms without proof, it’s a wholly different thing for a doctor to ignore your proof and lie about diagnostic criteria to your face.

It’s hard enough not to think you’re crazy when your test results come back negative over and over; it’s that much harder after being told that your major concrete measurable symptom is diagnostically irrelevant, when it really, really isn’t.

(for the record, just going off the symptoms I can concretely prove I’ve experienced in the last week alone, I land a 16 on this chart, which is the most up-to-date, widely agreed-upon diagnostic criteria)

I have decided, for the moment, to play ball. I don’t have the energy to jump through all the hoops this rheumatologist wants, but I'm angry enough to drag myself through them. Tomorrow I’m supposed to see the infectious diseases specialist. On Wednesday I see the dermatologist. In two weeks I see the ENT, and I’ve got a neurology appointment tentatively scheduled for December.

I’m going to be blisteringly forthright with all of these doctors about why I’m there, and that I’m looking to exclude diagnoses other than the lupus I pretty obviously have. (Except with the ENT. Apparently they treat allergies, and I’d like to be able to go outside long enough to walk a dog, someday.)

I’m supposed to see this rheumatologist again at the end of November. Depending on how this week’s appointments go, I’m aiming to either move up my appointment with her when one becomes available, or just send a firm yet diplomatic email asking why the diagnostic criteria apply to everyone but me.

If anybody else has gotten through this fucking nightmare successfully, I’m open to suggestions, it’s not like it can get worse at this point.

#long post #sufferpunk life #chronic illness #chronic pain #sle #lupus #aka why I've gotten nothing interesting or creative done since last year #fml

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mirkwoodest · 3 years

Text

@fishwantmewomenfearme

[TL;DR: Tbh there’s some iffy stuff in lotr and I won’t defend it, but that has nothing to do with his interest in languages, history, and folklore. Tolkien denounced white supremacy and antisemitism in 1938 when a German publishing house wanted to translate his book. I compared that to how Taylor Swift handled her own white-supremacist fans in 2009-2019.]

I'm not going to be the guy to stand up and say that Tolkien's works are totally free of racist and antisemitic undertones, because that would be incorrect (sad to say, but facts are facts). Still, I think that the fuck-off letter he wrote to a German publisher in 1983 when they asked him to provide documentation of his Aryan heritage puts him at LEAST one step above Taylor Swift, as low as that bar is.

Actually, that’s a pretty good comparison. Taylor Swift and Tolkien both have qualities that make white supremacists fawn over them. Taylor, because she’s an “Aryan queen” or whatever bullshit, and Tolkien because he, as you mentioned, is “into german history and language” and weaves a lot of northern European mythology into his works. So they both had/have white supremacist fans. How should one handle this? Tolkien wrote:

"I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride. Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung."

[emphasis mine]

This letter alone isn’t the kind of “hey FUCK off” I would have preferred, but it’s at least a comfort that Tolkien stated outright that he thought Aryan purity and anti-semitism was, at the very least, nonsense, and that the rise of white supremacy in Germany was making him actively lose pride in his German heritage. There is also documentation that he was less diplomatic in private, telling his publisher that he despised the Nazi “race-doctrine” and found it “wholly pernicious and unscientific.”

Comparatively, Swift posed with Swastika Guy in 2009. It almost immediately went public, but the only comment made was by her publicist, who only said that “She doesn't know who this guy is and she didn't realize what was on his shirt.” Swift then became an alt-right icon in 2016, and didn’t comment on that until 2019, when she finally said “white supremacy is repulsive” with her whole chest, but brushed off criticism that she should have said so 4-10 years earlier. (I'm bringing up Swift not to make Tolkien look better, but because she’s the first person I could think of who was in a similar situation of suddenly encountering white supremacist fans.)

Once again, that’s a LOW bar, but I think it’s important to discuss how a person’s interests and characteristics (an interest in germanic history/mythology/languages for Tolkien, aesthetically appealing to Nazi beauty ideals for Swift) are not in themselves inherently racist or an indication of racism, but they do attract racists, and how these figures should respond to that attention. (Quickly and with strong language, in my opinion, which neither Tolkien or Swift managed to do, although I personally believe Tolkien gets more credit for saying what he did in the pre-internet era and while there were out-and-proud nazi sympathizers in Engand before Britain went to war with Germany.)

Anyway, my intention here isn’t to shield Tolkien from all criticism, because it’s really important to be critical of racism and antisemitism even in the works we love. But I do have an issue with you throwing these tags up so casually in the notes of a post where I was simply talking about celebrating Tolkien’s use of Old English, Old Norse, and germanic words and names. If you start to draw a direct line between studying linguistics, history, and mythology to being a white supremacist, you should possibly pause and reflect.

Once again, there are elements in Tolkien’s works that can and should be criticized and analyzed for racism and antisemitism, but his playful use of language and his merit as an academic and linguist are not it. Thank you for engaging with my post, however. It’s given me a chance to offer people potentially new information and encouraged fans of Tolkien and the fantasy genre to look at these important but difficult topics with care.

If anyone takes issue with any of the above points, I am open to hearing them. My goal is not to fight, but to talk, listen, learn, and grow in understanding.

#I’m not sure if I did this response justice at all #I thought about saying nothing but I feel like we should create a culture in the tolkien fandom #that can recognize and be open to criticism #while still recognizing nuances.#To say that there is no racism in tolkien’s works is wrong.#But to say that an interest in European languages and cultures is racist is also wrong.#racism mention #antisemitism mention #world war ii mention #nazi mention #talk #jirt

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captainofthetidesbreath · 3 years

Note

It might be controversial, but I think there's a miscommunication between Lucien and basically everyone. I don't think the "you can just leave if you want" thing was meant to be gaslighting. Obviously with everything there are conditions. I think it was meant to be "if you go home and leave the threshold crest you can go". But because we know the M9 have no intent of doing that and if they left they'd just keep going to the same place. Lucien doesn't want them going there before him, but if they actually left he'd be fine. Obviously I could be wrong, or I could be misinterpreting it, but I think it's something to consider.

This ask was received before the airing of 2.122: Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained, so I’m sticking to talking about 2.121: Ice and Fire and previous. Not that 122 changed my stance at all.

I have to disagree, both because that doesn’t address the crux of why I think that moment is gaslighting and it also doesn’t address that when I say that I believe is Lucien gaslighting them, it’s much more broad than “I’m not keeping you from bolting.” It’s also very much in how Lucien keeps turning the situation around to frame it as if it’s the Nein who are responsible for the situation they find themselves in, especially in how it keeps being framed that it’s their fault there’s no freedom of trust here. For me, it’s more about what feels like constant attempts to turn around their perception about what the situation really is and try to make them shoulder the blame for what goes wrong for them instead.

Frankly, it’s irrelevant to me whether or not he means “you can leave whenever you want—so long as you turn over the crest and leave Eiselcross” because crux of the point is: he says he has not and is not preventing them from leaving. This is demonstrably false. He hampered their ability to walk away when he interrupted their long rest, he stopped them from leaving at first sign of danger, and putting stipulations and conditions on them leaving is indeed a form of preventing them from leaving. To me, him saying that seems to be to sow the seeds of doubt that he is being hostile to them, that he’s actually being quite gracious when he’s not.

As a note, if the Nein attempt to bolt in the future and Lucien lets them go, it won’t change my view of this particular line because they’re separate instances of behavior. The point is that historically, Lucien HAS prevented them from leaving at their leisure, more than once, then he directly states to them that he’s done no such thing. In this specific moment, he’s engaged in a blatant denial of his own behavior and pushed a line that did not match up with his actions.

And, most importantly, when I say that I believe is Lucien gaslighting them, that encompasses more than his remark about preventing them from bolting.

Outside of “I’m not keeping you from bolting,” the way that Lucien weaves a narrative that the Nein are the ones who are responding inappropriately to him is also, in my view, consistent with gaslighting. On top of that, Lucien engages in a lot of minimizing of his own behavior, trying to cast it as entirely and wholly reasonable—diminishing his veiled hostility and control of the situation down to a mild “I’m just careful” and “I have reason to mistrust” as if he’s simply responding and bears no primary responsibility for the situation.

There is a constant circling back to framing it as if it’s the Nein’s fault certain things are happening, that the Nein are the ones refusing there to be trust in this relationship, that the Nein are not making fair effort here, that the Nein are the ones instigating. Just as two examples from the Tower scene in 2.121: Ice and Fire:

CALEB: How can I help you? LUCIEN: I was just curious as to where this strange portal led. CALEB: This is my house. We are going to have a comfortable night before trudging through the bleak frozen north tomorrow. LUCIEN: Ah. Didn't mention you had a home before. CALEB: Have you told us everything? LUCIEN: No, but you've told me so little.

[ Caleb, audibly annoyed, makes an offer to allow the Takers to stay in the Tower tomorrow night to better facilitate working together. ] LUCIEN: See now, that there would have been a great way to start the night's conversation.

The fact that the dynamic keeps circling back around to the responsibility for the civility of the relationship falling on the Nein and that Lucien is simply responding to them acting as if he hasn’t done anything to invite hostility, mistrust, and guarded behavior. Which, simply is not true. Lucien absolves himself of responsibility for a situation he entirely created and is trying to convince the Nein that they’re the ones responsible for these things happening because they’re not trusting enough and they’re too hostile.

Again, there seems to be an intent to make the Nein doubt their own perception of the situation and convince them that he is correct, that he has been quite patient and gracious with them and that what’s happening is rooted in their lack of willingness to trust him.

And that’s gaslighting. Turning around the victims’ beliefs about what the situation really is and trying to force them to shoulder the blame instead: the constant reframing of the situation that the Nein are the ones who need to be responsible for cultivating trust here and that they’re the ones who somehow instigated it every time he consciously sets something awry for them.

And before anyone says that the Nein did start this off with hostility, Lucien is trying to unleash an all-consuming eldritch force onto the Material Plane. He’s killed people who were in his way and used their deaths to set up an intimidating tableau. He implicitly threatened to kill the Nein should they not do as he wanted. I’d say he gave them more than enough reason to be hostile.

#Critical Role #Critical Role things #CR meta #long post for ts

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thinkingaboutitalittle · 4 years

Text

ｔｉｇｈｔｒｏｐｅ

summary: “It’s capital, this tightrope that the two of you walk between harsh discipline and sweet indulgence.”

pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

warnings: mentions of violence, red room, implied age gap-ish, it’s a little angsty? kinda hurt comfort but there’s plot

a/n: hi again! I really like the concept of this one! I hope you like it too, feedback is definitely welcome

word count: 2.2k ish

When he’d first met you, you were the antithesis to what he’d expected. Prepped with the information that you were a recruit found in one of the last scattered branches of HYDRA’S Red Room and trained to have the strength and endurance of a skilled olympian, when you’d been introduced all wide-eyed and with a bright smile that had a smear of peanut butter at its corner, Bucky was floored. Fresh from Wakanda and losing his best friend, he didn’t think it’d work, the two of you running together.

And at first he was right, things were rough. Technically, you were and still are his apprentice, obligated to attend general training and conditioning sessions with him as your guide. You’d had an impeccable persistence and the skill set that HYDRA engraved into your physicality was more than enough to get you through, but Bucky had the experience. You were strong and good at taking direction, but HYDRA had trained the instinct and critical thinking out of you, and the process of finding your footing with your newfound freedom was difficult.

There were arguments over the ungodly hours that he’d chosen scheduled for sparring sessions (“Are you shitting me Barnes? You want me to wake up at five in the morning to get decked in the face?”), about whether or not certain techniques were viable in fighting situations (“Biting into someones arm while they’ve got you in a headlock isn’t reliable option doll, especially if the arm is made out of vibranium”), and when the two of you were extra frustrated, eating habits were also up for debate (“You cannot only eat pop tarts the week before a mission!” “I’ll stop eating pop tarts the day you give Sam a compliment,”).

But eventually, when the two of you’d finally realized that your distaste for each other may have stemmed for a repressed attraction towards one another, you made it work. You Learn to fight without actually aiming to hurt the other person and you manage to communicate with one another with the exclusion of screaming matches and elongated lectures. (You also learn how to sneak into each others rooms without waking up other shield officers on your shared floor in the middle of the night, but that’s something neither of you care to define)

The two of you are sparring together late this afternoon after you’d convinced him of the fact that you’re far better suited to give him your focus after you’d fully awakened and consumed a healthy portion of your daily allotment of junk food.

“I already told you your elbows are too loose, don’t give me that shit again,”

You tighten your stance against the previously acclaimed Winter Soldier, and throw another, albeit cleaner, punch. A grunt of approval from Bucky and your movements continue to present themselves with precise stability.

“Christ, Barnes you’re stricter than my babysitters at camp HYDRA,” He smirks, appreciates the value of making light of a shitty situation, and then retorts,

“I’m prettier to look at though, huh?”

It’s capital, this tightrope that the two of you walk between harsh discipline and sweet indulgence.

You square your shoulders and dip your head in an attempt to seem more menacing, “Only in the dark, baby. I’m gonna kick your ass,”

Again he responds with a practiced snort, “Good fighters don’t reveal their strategy before they’ve done it, keep that chin up or I’m going to knock it next time you come near me,”

Somehow, amongst all the near misses and successful jabs to the stomach, a small smirk manages its way onto your face. Before you’d started to train with Bucky, fighting was a commitment you had no choice in deciding. You’d go through endless hours of getting beaten down, only to be forced back onto your feet and beaten again; bulldozed into compliance. Training with Bucky is different; dares you to test the boundaries and willingly push yourself to your limit, not because you have to but because you want to.

You solidify your strategy in your head before moving to deliver a swift kick to Bucky’s ankles. He dodges it, as expected, and plants himself on top of you, restraining your legs between his own and digging his enormous forearms into your biceps.

“I already told you, this shit won’t fly on anyone bigger than you, princess, you’re going to have to tap,” and boy, if only you’d had a body camera to record the way that his face slackens when you retaliate with, “C’mon Buck, you’re telling me it doesn’t get you off to be on top of a dame like me?”

It’s a low blow to use your unspecified status outside of the gym to your advantage, but what was it that he’d told you in your first training session? Ah yes, use whatever advantage you have to your benefit.

You were only following directions.

Quickly, you move his practically limp limbs from your body and force yourself onto his front, resting your knees atop his flesh and alloyed forearms (because goodness knows you wouldn’t be able to hold them down with your hands) and the rest of your weight on his torso. And he looks so helplessly confused in this position you can’t help yourself from speaking through a smug smile, “Never took you for a bottom, princess.”

Buckys going to crack your head like a walnut. He jerks upward to catch your head between his fists, but a sudden rush of alarms stops him in his tracks. All of the sudden, the shield compound is doused in red lights and an automated voice is eerily repeating there has been a breach in the compound, agents follow evacuation protocol. However, the warning comes late because only a few seconds after you and Bucky have detangled yourselves from each other, the doors to the training hall are bursting open with what has to be a group of wanna-be HYDRA affiliates demanding information and files about some secret mission that neither of you were a part of.

Regardless, Bucky is on his feet immediately and ushering you to stand behind his immense form, his tone gritting out a stiff, “Y/N. Behind me. Now.”. Though your developing sense of instinct is telling you that this situation is one that Bucky shouldn’t be handling alone, your feet move before your brain can catch up, eager to comply with his demands instead of challenging them.

The infiltrators are small in number but waste no time zeroing in on Bucky as soon as they realize his presence as the Winter Soldier. He pushes you into a locker, spitting out something about staying there until he handles them and direct orders, agent but you can’t help but crack the door open, fearing Bucky’s well being.

Surprising no one, Bucky can mostly handle himself against a group of middle-aged men who are scarcely trained and even more scarcely armed. However, in his struggle with one of the larger men in the group, Bucky fails to notice that one of the other Hydra members has managed to snatch a particularly large knife from his belt loop and is getting ready to dig it into his back in an attempt to save his comrade.

Emerging from the locker, you move to kick the knife out of the enemy’s hand, knocking it somewhere across the gym, and landing yourself in the middle of the brawl. In your haste, the agent swings a punch to your jaw, but you recover quickly. You knock the agent twice and before you can move to disable him further, Bucky finds his way to you and heaves the man a generous amount of yards away.

Before either of the chance to say anything to each other, the room is rushed by Shield agents searching to apprehend the HYDRA men and to find out any information regarding the infiltration.

It’s a couple of hours before you get to see Bucky again.

Between all of the shield officers asking painfully specific questions and their obnoxious insistence that things like this never happen, by the time Barnes finds you sitting in the compound kitchen, legs dangling from the center island and fingers wrapped around a lukewarm cup of tea, you’ve both had enough time to sit with previous events.

You’re ambivalent, a tricky mixture of guilt and pride making a home in the form of a lump in your throat. Part of you knows what you did was the right thing; if you’d have let Bucky get hurt, the other offender would have used the advantage to gang up on him and you’d’ve had to take on the both of them instead of just one. But there’s still a lingering part of you that feels an immense sense of shame for not wholly complying.

Maybe it’s just leftover conditioning from your time with HYDRA, the remaining indents from the ideals they’d ingrained into your mentality, but disobeying direct orders, no matter how irrelevant they may have proven themselves to be, left you with a bitter taste in your mouth and frustrating tears in your eyes. Even after training with Bucky for so long and recognizing the difference between appropriate and inappropriate times to act on your own volition, you still maneuver on a fine line between overwhelming shame and practiced action.

He moves in front of you, between your legs, and when he notices your refusal to look him in the eyes, Buck slips his thumb and forefinger under your chin lifting your misty eyes to his worried gaze. There’s a rush of bile rising in your throat that you know can only be remedied by a salve of words, “Bucky I- I’m so sorry I didn’t l-listen to y-,”

“If you finish that apology, I’m going to give you another shiner, princess,”

He stills you, maneuvering the hand that’s not holding your face to shift the tea out of your hands and then to rest on your bicep. Save for a handful of your sniffles and the soft noises Bucky makes in the back of his throat when his eyes focus on a particularly darkened or swollen segment of skin, the two of you maintain a quietness as he looks you over.

And - no matter how long he’s been fighting with you by his side and no matter how many times he’s scolded himself for feeling self-pity when others, you are in pain - this part never get easier; swallowing his pride and accepting the fact that not everyone can make it out unscathed.

He moves away from you to fish an icepack from the door of the fridge, holding it in his hand for a few seconds before setting it back in its spot and pressing his now cool metal palm to the side of your face. You sigh in relief, starting to come down from your thoughts, leaning into Bucky.

Finally, he speaks, “You didn’t do anything wrong,” you suck in a breath and he knows you’re preparing to refute his claim, so he cuts you off swiftly, “I know you think you fucked it up because that’s what they want you to think, but you acted on your instinct doll, you did good.”

Your breathing slows back down to its normal pace, and his thumb moves to wipe the tears off of your cheeks. It’s almost laughable how easily he gets you calm; how he’s managed to keep you from falling off of the tightrope and now rests on it with you, an unspoken in equilibrium. He nudges his nose to yours and smoothes a kiss to your lips, a final attempt at calming whatever stray nerves remain.

When he pulls away, you can’t help but chuckle. “What is it, sweetheart?”

Recovering with a weak smile you respond, “I get knocked twice for your ass and all I get is a little kiss?”

His smirk is cheeky as he presses another to your lips, this time deeper and more intentional, “You’re telling me this isn’t enough to get you off, princess?”

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #marvel #eve wrote this #bucky barnes oneshot #winter soldier x reader #avengers #tfatws #bucky barnes x you #Bucky barnes x y/n #bucky one shot #bucky x you #bucky

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sh-rare-pair-exchange · 3 years

Text

Thief

For @crying-is-your-latest-fashion | starchild1

A/N: Happy rarepair exchange... day (?)! Hope you like my gift <3

Simon woke up to a loud, resounding clatter. He groaned and debated whether or not to investigate. It was the middle of the night, and there was a huge possibility that it was a burglar coming to steal something.

Joke’s on the burglar though — Simon thought as he begrudgingly got out from his warm bed — everything in his dorm was cheap. It was for this precise reason that his mother told him not to bring anything too valuable to college.

It was bright in the kitchen. What kind of burglar turns on the lights?

No one, obviously. Simon watched: half asleep, half endeared, and wholly annoyed at Jace who rummaged around their kitchen like a man on a mission. It would’ve been adorable to watch, but Simon had just pulled three consecutive all-nighters and watching Jace cook instant noodles like he did almost everytime Jace loses a game when he could be sleeping was... what he wanted to do. Simon heaved a sigh. No one told him that having a boyfriend would deprive one of sleep in more ways than one. Or maybe Jace was a unique case. He always was.

“Hey.” Jace greeted. Simon’s eyes snapped open. He was so tired.

“‘ello” Jace looked at Simon, all rumpled clothes and half-lidded eyes, and couldn’t help but smile. The hollow feeling of defeat filled up with fondness for Simon who was seated at the table and trying hard not to fall asleep.

“You should go back to bed.” Jace said, sitting on the table after putting the pack of noodles in the pot. He tried running a hand through Simon’s tangled curls, but found his fingers stuck and opted to scratch his scalp gently instead.

“No.” Simon said, his answer muffled by the table.

“Why not?” Jace wasn’t sure if it was the exhaustion, the yellow lights, or the late hour, but Simon looked blurred. Soft, even. Whatever it was the movies liked to do to flashback scenes — where a reel of romantic snapshots played in a montage, it was in his chest. Probably in his eyes too. Warming him up better than the instant noodles could ever hope to do.

“You lost.” Those words should’ve felt like salt on open wounds. They didn’t. It was honey down his throat, it was balm for his muscles. The pain relief patches on his legs felt irrelevant as he hobbled over to the stove where the pot threatened to boil over.

“Do you want some?” Jace asked as he drained the noodles.

Simon grunted. No. How far gone did you have to be, to easily decipher the most inconsequential sounds from your partner? Jace pursed his lips and tried not to note his stomach clenching. He was probably just hungry. Running around the muddy soccer field was exhausting. His eyes narrowed on the noodles, focusing on it like he should’ve focused on the game earlier.

Jace placed the plate on the table with a soft thump. Simon sat up, propping his chin up on a hand with his eyes closed.

Jace ate the noodles slowly, his eyes never leaving Simon whose head was lolling from side to side.

It was quiet, as their little corner of the world tended to be at most midnights, when something so obvious slapped him in the face. Jace stared in wonder as his little mouse slept — snoring with every breath like his life depended on it — and realized: he was in love.

The fork stopped halfway to his mouth. Steam rose from the bowl beneath him and warmed up his face, clouding his vision and replacing it with memories made with countless bowls of noodles just like this one.

Their first meeting: fighting over the last pack of instant noodles in the campus convenience store. The nearby professor taking her lunch had had enough and told them to share the noodles or fight to the death for it outside, offering them knives that came from who knows where.

Their first date gone wrong: when it rained during their picnic at a drive-in theater, ruining dinner and prompting them to take shelter in the car, where some possibly expired pack of instant noodles were shared between two awkward freshmen college students on the precipice of something unknown and beautiful.

Everytime Jace lost a game, everytime Jace won a game. Everytime Simon snagged a gig, everytime Simon changed the band name. They probably should eat someting other than processed plastic. Three years filled with instant noodles can’t be good for their health, and Jace planned to live a long time. Preferrably with Simon.

“It’s cold.” Simon mumbled, bringing Jace out of his reverie. Partly. Simon was still looking at him with bleary eyes, and Jace still felt like he was starring in a chick flick.

“What is?”

“Your food.” Jace looked down at his bowl and realized that it was no longer warm like it was earlier. He sighed and shovelled the remaining food into his mouth, quickly cleaning up to lay down sooner.

“My mother told me to be careful of thieves around the campus,” Simon said, his face shoved in Jace’s chest as they laid down on their bed together. Big enough to fit them both, but small enough that they were always pressed together at night. Jace didn’t mind one bit.

“Okay?” He was tired, but he couldn’t sleep for some reason. His mind awake while his eyes could barely make out the ceiling above him, painting shadows with the streetlights outside.

“Didn’t know I’d be living with one.” If he could, Jace would’ve raised an eyebrow.

“Are you calling me a thief, Lewis?”

“Yes.”

“What did I steal? Your heart?” There was a lazy smile on his face, and he knew that if Alec were here right now, he’d never hear the end of it. He always teased Alec for being too whipped, and now here he was smiling like and idiot because his boyfriend accused him of being a thief.

“No.” Jace’s brows furrowed. “My sleep.” He snorted, and decided not to argue. Simon’s loud snore punctuated his sentiment. Jace fell asleep to Simon’s steady breathing, half baked healthy meal plans frozen on his mind.

#shrarepairexchange #sh rare pair gift exchange #shadowhunters #crying-is-your-latest-fashion #shrarepair2021

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besidemethewholedamntime · 4 years

Text

now that i see you

I couldn’t help myself and ending up writing another fic. I hope you don’t mind, and i hope you enjoy!

Summary:

'“I know you,” Jemma says, her voice a soft whisper. “Isn’t that strange? As soon as I saw you I knew you. It feels like I’ve known you my whole life.”'

A moment between Jemma and her baby.

{Read on Ao3}

or read below!

The thing about space is that there is no time, so Jemma has no idea whether it is early or late as she lays in their bed, holding their newborn baby girl in her arms. She doesn’t know if it’s been hours or minutes since she was placed there, and honestly, she doesn’t care. Right now, she would be perfectly happy to take this moment and live in it forever.

“Hello, you,” Jemma says softly as her daughter snuffles a little and opens her eyes. “It’s so very good to meet you.”

She’s not accustomed to holding children, and during these seemingly never-ending months of pregnancy, it had become one of many irrational fears. What if I don’t know how to hold them, Fitz? she had cried into his shoulder once, voice full of terror. What if I drop them?

You have never failed at one thing in your life, he’d said quite firmly, though he’d been rubbing her back in slow, comforting circles. There is no way you will fail at holding a baby.

Looking back on that moment now feels so silly with her daughter now safely in her arms as though she’s always belonged there. Jemma knows all about intuition and instinct in parenting, but she just never imagined how it would feel. Their daughter hasn’t been in the world a full day yet, and already the time before her arrival is growing fuzzy, fading away into irrelevance. In this moment she cares very little of all that has come before.

She runs a gentle finger over their daughter’s forehead, her nose, her chin. Impossibly small and incredibly perfect. Their daughter’s blue eyes follow her movement, but she doesn’t cry or give any other indication of upset. She watches her mother, just as her mother watches her.

“I know you,” Jemma says, her voice a soft whisper. “Isn’t that strange? As soon as I saw you I knew you. It feels like I’ve known you my whole life.”

Ever since they have known they were going to become parents, Jemma has loved her daughter, and what has surprised her is how it is so different from the way she loves Fitz. He is her best-friend, her partner, her soulmate, he always will be, and she loves him endlessly. Or she thought she did. Looking down now into this tiny face, each detail already committed to memory, she knows that it’s not quite true. As much as she loves Fitz, she will forever love their daughter more, and there’s nothing within her that makes her sorry for that.

He feels the same way, she knows he does. In those precious few moments just after their daughter was born, Jemma had caught him looking at her with an indescribable look in his face. It’s a look that Jemma’s only caught in flashes over the years, a moment seen out of the corner of her eye before it disappeared. When they were standing in front of the sunrise. When he told her she was something magnificent. When she found him in space, and then again the second time. When she married him. That look that does such funny things to her heart but that she’s never caught more than a glimpse of in all the years she’s known him.

When he had held their daughter for the first time she had seen it clearly for what it was. A thousand other things, but the greatest of these was love. Pure and simple love that asked of nothing in return. That look that she’s felt on her skin all these years in flashes was now being given completely unreservedly to their child, and Fitz’s heart, which once had its home with Jemma, now fully belonged to their daughter.

“You are so perfect,” she says now. “So beautiful.” The baby looks up at her, slowly blinking. “Magnificent.”

How fitting it is that she was born in space, all of the majesty of the cosmos lying before them. All those years ago when she hoped of finding something magnificent, she never could have dreamed it would be their daughter. But it makes sense now, it all completely makes sense. There is nothing more magnificent than her.

Jemma looks to Fitz, who sits in the floor next to the bed, back against the wall. Giving them space, but also unable to be parted from them even just into the other room, he’d sat there and tried his hardest to stay awake. It had been in vain, however, and his eyes had shut not long after. His breathing is deep and even, but she knows even the slightest noise would wake him and he’d be by her side in an instant. He deserves a rest, and Jemma, who up until now has had the most intimate bond with her daughter, would just like a moment before she has to let that go.

“It might be a little strange around here at first. Well, not for you I suppose. This is all you’ll have known. But for us it might take some adjusting, so if you could just bear with us until we do, that would be great.”

It’s not how she wanted to do it. She wanted to be retired from SHIELD first and be free from the danger and uncertainty that had followed her and Fitz for so long. She wanted to have a house first, and a big garden that her child could run around and play in. It would have been nice to have her parents there. She hasn’t seen or even spoken to them in so long. It feels cruel to have kept this away from them, even though she knows there was no other way. Her mum and dad, who have always given her so much and encouraged her to chase every opportunity she had. What would they make of all this?

She understands them more now than she ever has before. To love your child is to want them to have the things you never did, and for them to find the world in a better place than before. This may not be how she would have chosen it, but it’s the way it’s happened and Fitz is right – they do deserve to take some time and just be. Of course they will save their friends and the world, but their daughter now comes before all that. She deserves some time to just grow, and they deserve that time with her. In case the worst does happen when they have to return to their mission, Jemma wants to ensure that their daughter knows them. She won’t let them become a ghost in a photograph or a voice in a half-faded memory. Unable to give their daughter everything she would like to at this moment, she will damn well give her that.

“I’m afraid I don’t have very much practice with babies,” she says. “Neither of us do. But we’ll figure it out, alright? You don’t ever have to worry about a thing because we’ll fix it together. Just like always.”

She glances over at Fitz. Dear, sweet Fitz who has always been by her side. They have been torn apart so many times, but just one more and then that’s it. They’re done.

“We’ll love you forever,” Jemma says, needing it to be said. “You never have to keep secrets from us, and we’ll never keep them from you. You can always tell us anything.” She laughs a little. “I promise you there’s not a lot that can shock us anymore.”

Shock, no, but surprise? She is surprised every time she wakes up and finds Fitz still next to her, one arm curled around her so he can feel if she moves in the night. She was constantly surprised all the way through her pregnancy, from the little kicks and lazy somersaults she felt. She is surprised now every time her heart beats, because it beats with so much love for this tiny being whose very existence in this world is nothing short of a miracle.

“There’s so much I want to share with you and tell you about how we got here.” Jemma sniffs, but a tear falls on their daughter’s forehead anyway. Gently she wipes it away with her thumb, and their baby just keeps on looking upwards, completely enchanted.

“It took us such a long time, but we made it. I’ll tell you all about it someday, about how once upon a time there were two young scientists who embarked on the biggest adventure, and how it changed their whole lives forever.”

Sixteen and achingly shy, to having a daughter in the sky. Is the ride worth it? she once asked. Oh yes it is, she wants to tell her younger self. It’s worth everything you’ve ever done or had done to you. You will get there one day. Just hold on, and keep holding on tight.

“The important bit, though, the only part you need to know right now, is that they loved each other. They loved each other more than there are words or stars, and their love was so big it could overcome anything that was in their way. And a love like that, stronger than any curse, brought them you.”

Their baby shifts and Jemma feels her heart flip over on itself. She holds her closer, knowing that she is living in a moment that is already a memory.

“You are extraordinary. No matter what you do or who you become, know you always will be.”

She’s crying now, but from the sheer happiness she feels inside her heart. The complete and utter joy that this small being who is half her and half Fitz and just wholly herself exists. Softly she kisses her on the forehead, looking down into those eyes that already seem wise beyond their years, as if they hold the secrets to the entire universe.

“You’re our everything,” she says thickly, trying so very hard not to sob and wake up Fitz. She doesn’t want to worry him. “The biggest star in star in all of the skies. We’ll make it all better for you. Just you wait and see.”

Once upon a time she said that the answer was in the stars, and only now does she realise just how right she was. Their daughter is the answer to every question she could ever have, the reason for every decision ever made. She is the beat in their hearts and the breath in their lungs. She is the promise of a brighter, better future to be made, where they can all go on despite their losses.

The brightest star in all of their skies, she is what they are fighting for.

#aosficnet2 #fitzsimmons #aos #aos spoilers #aos finale #fitzsimmons fic #fanfic by moi #i'm so emotional oh my gosh #i still can't get over the fact my babies have a baby!#it just made me have all the feels #and i really wanted to write something like 'the wonder of it all' but from Jemma's POV #since 'the wonder of it all' is so vague it works for right now #anyway i hope you like it!#sorry it's two days in a row but i'm very excited!#i can't work on anything else right now #also sorry for the banner quality #idk what's up with it #it's being deliberately fickle i think #anyways enjoy!!

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silversavant2021 · 3 years

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The Least Protected Group...Single Fathers!

There are several laws that protect various groups in our society, and in various areas...employment, wages, education, etc. According to the U.S Federal Law website, “these laws prohibit discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, and genetic information, as well as reprisal for protected activity”. However, although they protect according to gender, there is another group within gender which needs protecting in another specific area. That area is fatherhood, and when it comes to their rights to their children after separation, and/or divorce.

If we look through the articles online, and in booklets on custody we will see a great deal of information on what is called conservatorship and in all of these documents the deciding factor is a term called, “the best interest of the child”. In looking at that statement, we would think it would be both parents but it is not.

In Texas, the Family Code gives the father the same rights as the mother as far as custody of the children however that is rarely carried out. The mother is usually granted the position of custodial parent, even if the father is in a better position of stability in order to have the child(ren).

The imbalance has gotten so great until various states are beginning to take action on behalf of the fathers. In Massachusetts, a ballot initiative was created, and approved 85 to 15 percent on protecting the rights of the father. The ballot was an initiative to approve equal legal and physical custody of the children in the case of divorce. This ballot was requesting that “the courts uphold the fundamental rights of both parents to the shared physical and legal custody of their children”. And that state is not the only one requesting this by proposition on behalf of fathers. The Washington Post had an article by Michael Allison Chandler entitled “More than 20 states in 2017 considered laws to promote shared custody of children after divorce.”

One would have to ask; why is this necessary since most custody paperwork state that either parent has the right to conservatorship, or custody? It is because Family Courts use the concept called “best interest of the child” to decide who will hold this position, and that term is wholly subjective. Over the years, this term has been used to give custody, in most cases, to the mother.

Ms. Chandler also states that, “we are led to believe that the plight of fatherless children is caused by husbands walking out on their wives, fathers abandoning their children, and “deadbeat dads” when one of the best-kept secrets in American society today is that two-thirds of divorces are now sought by wives, not husbands”. She claims that the “feminist movement has taught wives that they can seek “liberation” by walking out of their marriage contract and marital duties and still reap the benefits of marriage, i.e. their children and his money.”

In considering the background elements of this controversial topic I interviewed Baba Richard and Sri Namaste Moore, who are “The Infinite Couple” and have a combination of 30+ years of experience, (and success), in dealing with men, women, and couples regarding relationships.

Sri Namaste stated that this basically started with “Women’s Rights” movement, and explained how this played into this situation of mothers being given more rights than fathers in the case of custody.

She elaborated on what two legal rights, which were attached to this movement, brought about:

• Women’s Reproductive Rights:

• Reproductive Rights — claims having the ability to decide whether, and when to have children—are important to women’s socioeconomic well-being and overall health. Research suggests that being able to make decisions about one’s own reproductive life and the timing of one’s entry into parenthood is associated with greater relationship stability and satisfaction.

• AbortionRights:

• AccesstoAbortion-IntheUnitedStates,the1973SupremeCourtcaseRoev.Wade established the legal right to abortion. State legislative and executive bodies nonetheless continue to battle over legislation related to access to abortion, including parental consent and notification and mandatory waiting periods. In addition, public funding for abortion remains a contested issue in many states: federal law has banned the use of federal funds for most abortions since 1977, and currently does not allow the use of federal funds for abortion unless the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest or the woman’s life is in danger. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 reinforces these restrictions, but state Medicaid programs have the option to cover abortion in other circumstances using only state, and no federal funds.

Sri Namaste stated, “Initially, women were supposed to be given Reproductive Rights/Freedoms however a woman had that already, and had already exercised her right when she chose to have unprotected sex. That was/is her exercising her “right to reproduce” by allowing herself to get pregnant. She had a choice to prevent that from happening by several different means.

“Then giving her the sole right to decide to keep the baby, or not, is giving her sovereignty as well. Now she has the right to decide “life or death” with impunity in the case of this child. Even though the child was created by the woman and the man; the father has no rights and even if he wants the baby, (which belongs to him as well), he has no right to it.”

Also, that baby is not “her body”, it is a whole separate entity.

Sri Namaste also stated, “The “double standard” is amazing! If the pregnancy is wanted then, even at the earliest stages, the woman celebrates the pregnancy. She will call the baby “hers”, buys clothes, has a celebration, names the baby, etc. And if she should “miscarry”, (lose the baby), she mourns, has a funeral, etc. HOWEVER, if the pregnancy is unwanted...suddenly it is NOT a baby, it is a fetus – a non-thing.”

I asked her how did all that plays into child custody?

She stated, “Because the woman has already been given “sovereignty” over the baby/fetus before birth so it just carries over when the child is born...she still has those rights. However, everyone should be sovereign over their own life, and when one has a child, that is a “separate” life which belongs to the mother AND the father who made it.”

“Also, because that child is a combination of the mother and the father, she shouldn't be able to make that decision alone, and definitely not on the behalf of the father. The state should be the entity who is stepping in to ensure decisions would be neutral, but they are not.”

I was surprised at how all of this fit together.

In order to get a perspective from a man, from a father’s point of view, and from one who had gone through a divorce and custody within in the court system, I then spoke to Baba Richard, who stated:

“I think fundamentally there is something that is happening here. Once you are a parent then being a good parent is based on time passing and you being engaged in that. In talking about the role of the father, what is happening and is implicit in the whole system is that fatherhood is irrelevant. The “state” is functioning as the “father surrogate” and making decisions as to what the state and the woman are going to do about the child(ren).”

“The father is looked at as an economic contributor at maximum, or somebody that if you refuse, or are not meeting whatever standard they say, economically, then you are punished. The system is already in place that you, father, are here to provide economics so the state and the mother can decide what they are going to do with your resources in order to decide what the future of your child is going to be.”

“Once one starts from a “faulty premise” all decisions after that...none of them can be, “well this is great”, because it is a “domino effect”. Look at fatherhood and motherhood as two parallel lines...train tracks, if you will...equal parallel lines and they must be because they both have equal responsibility for the welfare of what they created. Once we say the only “line” that matters is the motherhood line when going forward, then the fatherhood line veers off...we don’t need that, don’t want that line. So, once you engage with the state those two lines are no longer parallel, and never brought back into parallel. Fatherhood gets a “dotted line” which says “you can pay money but we will decide how often you see the child.”

“Visitation is something you do for someone who is “incarcerated”. You don’t visit your “prodigy”, you don’t “visit” your children, children don’t “visit” you. What are they talking about? Either we ALL visit, or nobody visits. Shared custody by default, NOT an arrangement the father has to negotiate his way into. The presumption should be that BOTH parents will share equal responsibility for raising the child(ren) that they have created between the two of them.”

“When you go into that equation with the idea that “woman create children”, and men- we don’t know what they do...but they are engaged in some level of “malfeasance” or irresponsibility because a child has come forward so now the state needs to come in to make things fair...better...more equitable, for the women. One has to wonder, “how is the state the arbiter between these two people?”

“There is a default belief/assumption that there has been some wrong-doing on the part of the man...the scales are inherently imbalanced and “justice”, the state, is stepping in to balance this inequity. The woman has been victimized by this man through the act of pregnancy and now the state is here to make things right again.”

“You, the woman, being right, and righteous, should be supported in whatever you decide to do. It is impossible for you to not to visit your children because the presumption is that the child is at home, and home is always with YOU.”

However, in the case of the man, let’s bullet point the situation and think like this... “Imagine a world where”:

-You are guilty before the proceedings even start.

-All you will get is a decision as to what level of punishment you will endure.

-You will never be found “not guilty” because this is the nature of things.

-You will incur penalties that are overwhelming in most cases.

There is no court of appeals, the only thing, the most you can get is a lessening of the penalty/sentence but you will have it until the courts decide that you don’t.

“Now where is this? In a foreign country? Or some weird dystopian future where everything has “gone to hell in a handcart”? No, this is what a person live with every day if that person is a MAN, and happen to get divorced from a woman, and there are children involved. Or weren’t married and there are children involved.”

I said, “I don’t understand, why doesn’t the courts give joint custody”? He said...

“It is inherently unfair, and I think that there is a presumption of “guilt” with respect to men who are in court...for whatever reason. When I went for my divorce, the judge, his attitude toward me was hostile for no reason. I am not a criminal, and was not there for an assumption of any criminal activity.”

“While waiting for other people to handle their business I saw many different types of cases. There were people who came through who had committed crimes. I had committed no crime, was only there due to processing a divorce. Me, and this woman, had decided we did not want to go forward in life anymore. I couldn’t understand how I warranted all of this “ire” from the judge? I didn’t know him, personally. We both, (my spouse and I), were there at the same time, and when he talked to her, he was nice, and soft spoken...and then when he talked to me it was, “well, what's this!!!” spoken in anger.

I asked him, “But there are documented “rules” that apply to everybody, even mothers; why aren’t they enforced? He said...

“Because there is another issue as to why things go the way they go. Men are not prepared. Actually, it is almost the opposite of being prepared. They are intentionally unprepared because number one, one of the things that I saw in the four or five guys that I know, including myself when I got divorced, is that they are emotionally exhausted...there is a great deal of stress, strain, etc....and a man has to still keep up everything while all of this going on.”

“One of the things about the linear nature of men is that we, we don't do well with this kind of “stress”. We don’t maintain hatred in “perpetuity”. Even if you look at a man whose been trained as a military soldier...yes, they may be upset about the enemy...but the actual pulling of the trigger, or launching the missile is very dispassionate. This is just a job that he is doing...combatants over there...we got them all right, cool. Let's go home, you know, but they don't usually keep that “emotional charge” every day.

“But it's one of the things about the feminine, and I've seen it, they can hold a grudge. Oh my God...even if the two people haven't been together for decades, kids are grown, and gone on and whatever. And it's like, you want to set her off, mention his name in her presence, and it's just like the day that they got divorced.”

“The point being is that when they go into this court situation, number one, most people don’t have any experience with this...it’s not like buying a car, one gets to do this many times so they know what to expect. When they go into this situation, it's the first time, and they don't know what to think or how it's going to go. Also, all they want is for the pain to stop, and they think that after this, we can be “okay”, it’s official.”

“Most men are at the point where they think, “You know what, I'll start over, whatever car, house, whatever things. I don't care. I don't care about any of that because being able to sleep at night”, even if they have to sleep on a pallet. However, here’s the hinge that door swings on...the men go into this thinking that what she wants is stuff, right? What they find out is what she wants is for him to suffer, and no amount of money, no amount of stuff, all the things that he gave, the “quid to the pro quo” that he thinks is going to happen... doesn’t!”

And so that's a double whammy because then they're shocked because they're like, wait a minute, I gave you what you said you wanted...all the stuff. I let you have whatever it is that you want up to, and including what I considered the most precious...the care of the children. But now he finds that the woman, the court, and the state are thinking, “how much worse can we make this? What else can we do?” Whatever he thought he was going to give, that's not enough, and he is thinking, “Wait a minute, I gave everything so how can that not be enough? There isn’t anything more to give.” And the courts state, “you better come up with something because now we have rules in place that where we're going from present into the future. And now as a state, we can enforce those rules and say, not only have you given all of your material possessions presently, now we are going to look into the future and you will give all your possessions in perpetuity, or until the child(ren) are 18-21 years old.”

“Suddenly, he comes into this realization that the rules that are imposed upon men in that situation are only for men. There are no equivalent rules for women. So, if he doesn't do whatever the court says, then there are penalties and it is NOT that she can’t do what the court says and “be penalized”, it is because she has no rules!”

Personally, I was shocked, and had nothing else to say.

As I began to research further for the solution(s) to this challenge for “fathers”, I decided to do some research on this topic with “Father’s Rights” organizations. I found three agencies, and interviewed the three men who had started, and/or participated in them. What I found was confirming.

The first person interviewed in this arena was Joshua Banks, who is the Founder/Facilitator of IDADS, (Involved Dads of Action Developing and Succeeding), and he is the Program Coordinator. His agency has been in operation since 2015, and his motivation was dealing with families for 7 years as a Pastor. He assisted 300+ people through online summits, and approximately 80 fathers on a weekly basis.

He states, “It is always better for the child when there is joint custody however the system seems to be in opposition to this. It seems that “best interest of the child” always translate to the Mom. A majority of the fathers I deals with want to be involved in their children’s lives, and the few who are reluctant is due to the “toxicity” of the relationship with the mothers.”

His advice to fathers seeking joint custody to:

Engage the Mom, try to get her “onboard”.

As soon as the child is born, go to child support court, (whether you live together or not), so there will be no risk of “arrears”, (even if you only put payment as $100). This is because even if you take care of your child, pay bills in the household, etc. the “child support system” does NOT acknowledge/recognize support paid OUTSIDE of their courts. This will make it easier when you go to Family Court regarding custody.

Build Credibility - Employment, shelter, and a proper environment for his child.

Effort - It won’t be easy, and he will have to “fight”.

Involvement - No matter how difficult it is made, stay involved!

Attorney - If at all possible, get an attorney.

His agency is currently involved with the Attorney General’s Father’s Rights Division; Child Protection Services - Father’s Rights Coalition; and the University of Texas - Child and Family Research Partnership under Dr, Osborn. His agency also receives referrals from Child Protective Services.

The second person I interviewed in this area was Isaac Rowe, who is the Founder of “The Man In Me”, and he is the CEO. His agency has been in operation since 2012, and his motivation was seeing the “fatherless sons” in his arena. He was also troubled by what he saw a friend go through not being able to be with his father...saw it from a “child’s” standpoint. He decided to tell fathers to fight for their rights, and more time with their children. He assists 300+ men through conferences, and speaking engagements, and approximately 80-120 men weekly/bi-weekly.

He states, “Joint custody is always best for the child because everyone is doing their part for the sake of that child. A father’s participation beyond “court appointed visitation” is very important, and valuable to the child. The biggest hinderance I have seen is that the judges will rule against fathers, and there is definitely a double standard.”

He doesn’t have much dealings with the agencies in the area however they have helped fathers to come to his meetings. His advice to fathers seeking joint custody is to:

• Try to co-bond with child,(easier when mom is onboard). • Take care of himself,(spiritually, mentally, physically, financially). • Get in programs to better themselves • Don’t give up,or sign over rights, [you will still have to pay child support]. • Show responsibility; employment, housing, etc. • Don’t get behind in child support payment; no child support arrears.

The last person I interviewed in this area was Marcus Griggs, who is the Director of Fatherhood Services at “The Man In Me”. His motivation was having a well-adjusted dad, and see what not having one had done to youth, and men. He transitioned from working with youth to working with men. Also, he saw the “system” was not set-up for “families”, (which included fathers). He assists 30-40 men on an average.

He said, “All the men I deals with want to “father” their children. I feel that it is better for the children to have both parents, and even research has proven that there is damage to children due to a lack of fathers.”

He states the biggest hinderance to fathers is: • They are not a consideration • They have to“jump thru hoops” to qualify which is not done with mothers.

• Laws are not enforced with mothers.

His advice to fathers seeking custody is to: • Be prepared for an“intake”,which is required of fathers, only. • Get information - know what the requirements are before you go to one.

• Be employed, have a residence, etc. • Have a willingness to fight for their child(ren).

He also said there is a program called “NCP-Choices” which assist fathers with “back child support” however there may be a qualification that the fathers have a “good” relationship with the mother. He also receives referrals from Child Support Services.

I must say that I did note that each person stated some sort of “appeasing of the mother” as a prerequisite to any possibility of getting joint custody, and even a service. This speaks directly to the bias-ness of that system.

In my research I noted several situations, these included the:

Bias-ness of Judicial Systems in Texas, [and in most states]:

-Fathers have to “appease” the mother in order to get visitation.

-Fathers have to “appease” the mother in order to get joint custody, even when he is qualified.

There are NO rules, requirements, regulations, or qualifications for mothers

Unfairness of the “System”:

• If a woman births a baby, and is unable to take care of it, she gets free

“Government assistance/subsidies” in the form of:

• Medical Care • Food Stamps • Finances Aid

• Housing – Section 8 vouchers/certificate • Free, or Subsidized Daycare • Earned Income Credit on tax returns

However, if a father creates a baby, and he is unable to support it he gets:

• Excessive child support payments, and if he is unable to pay then:

-He loses his driver’s license -He is put in jail. -His income tax is garnisheed.

-He is stigmatized, and alienated from his child.

My question is, “Shouldn’t the one chosen to be the CUSTODIAL PARENT be the ONE who is most capable of, and the most responsible in caring for the child with the LEAST amount of assistance from the government”?

Then there is the case(s) of:

There are REQUIREMENTS which the fathers have to achieve, and which have to be PROVEN in order to have visitation, and/or to be “custodial” parent, when the mothers do not.

If mothers do not allow the fathers to see their child on the appointed days, the courts do not enforce his rights, or penalize her behavior. The father’s are sent to a different court for that.

Fathers are required to take “fathering classes/counseling” and to pay for them, while this is never required of the mother.

In my reviewing the “Standard Possession Order and Parenting Time” on the TXACCESS. ORG website I found the “visitation schedule” that is given to fathers, (yearly time given to spend with their child(ren)):

The schedule of time assigned to fathers in order to see their children are “every first and third weekend, every fifth weekend, 2 hours on Weds. or Thurs. each week”, every other holiday week, and 30 days in the summer. This amount to, (yearly-2020):

Regular Weekends = 48 days

Fifth Weekends = 8 days

Thursdays - 2 hours = 4.3 days

Alternate Hours

• Sub-Total is: 60.3 days a year

Holidays Weeks - alternate between odd/even years (additional 7 days when it is his year).

Summer Vacation - 30 days • Total of 90.3 to 97.3 days a year! That is not even 1/3 of the year!!!

As I began to look at the negative impact on fathers when the mothers are the “custodial parent” I realized something. As a mother of 4 adult children, and 18 grandchildren I realize that women learn how to be “good mothers” by being with their child(ren) on consistent, daily, hands-on basis. When fathers only have “visitation rights” that is minimal access. They do not get the opportunity to properly develop “fathering abilities”, to learn and grow with their child(ren), and/or to actually experience being a “father”. Also, if they aren’t as good at it as mom, then they are penalized for not being “good” at something they were not allowed to do by the court systems, and the mothers, who didn’t allow it.

Finally, there is another challenge to this...according to the US Department of Human Services/Child Protection Resources Online, mothers were more likely to abuse their children than fathers at a percentage of 70.6% vs 29.4%.

According to Allie Morris, of the San Antonio Express-News, it is reported that in 2018, 211 children had died from child abuse in Texas. It is also noted that in half of those deaths, CPS- Child Protection Services had been investigating the cases. If the statistics are true, (from CPS), then in most of those cases the mothers had custody. I have to wonder how many of those cases were because the children were allowed to remain with the mothers, instead of being given to the fathers.

Also, why are courts, and CPS, ignoring this information instead of making it a consideration when determining who would be in the “best interest of the child”?

As you can see, there is a need for legislation to be put in place not only to “protect” fathers from the bias-ness of what is already in place, but children as well. There needs to be a revision of the Judicial System on the behalf of fathers and their children for the future.

#child support #father's rights #children #family

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arcticdementor · 3 years

Link

When I was in grad school at Purdue these anti-abortion protesters would show up about once a semester. They had these giant signs (and I must admit the graphic design skills were on point) that showed mutilated fetuses, analogized abortion to the Holocaust, and said “Black Lives Matter?” with dubious statistics about the number of Black women who had abortions in a given year. As a pro-choice guy myself I found them offensive. I also recognized them as a part of life, like telemarketers or dandruff.

Some of my peers did not. Grad students from various departments circulated emails calling for a response. Not much ever came of it. (Shocking, I know.) But I remember talking to someone I didn’t know about it, someone from another department. At one point he said “we’re going to no-platform them,” as casually as he might have informed me that he was stopping at Jimmy John’s on the way home. I thought, but did not say, what seemed like the obvious response: that we attended a university run by a pro-life president in a pro-life state with a pro-life governor and a pro-life legislature and a pro-life citizenry and that we were a bunch of powerless disorganized outsider academics who the local population didn’t much like and that if anyone was going to be “no-platformed” it was going to be us. But the thought had apparently not occurred to him, marinated in academia and I’m guessing very online. He was a progressive living in 21st century America and he assumed that those he chose to censor were those he could. This confidence is shared by many left-leaning people today, and it is typical of contemporary liberalism in its combination of arrogance and folly.

One of the themes I’ve come back to many times in my writing is the idea that people mistake empirical claims (this is true about the world) with normative claims (this should be true about the world). Nowhere is this more clear than with “hate speech”1 and censorship. I think hate speech laws are politically and morally wrong, a normative claim, but more importantly they don’t work, an empirical claim - one which if true renders normative claims that hate speech laws are good irrelevant.

The debate about whether we should censor unpopular views such as hate speech is an important one, but also a strange one. In my experience, it operates wholly independent from any consideration of the restraints of reality. People debate only on the level of the highest principle; everything is a referendum on the mores of democracy. They are all should questions - should we erode the right to free expression in the name of protecting minority groups from psychic harms? Should we prohibit the use of certain offensive terms? Should we declare some political positions out of bounds in public society? But all of these normative questions depend on the answers to empirical questions that preempt them, “cans” that come before “shoulds.” Can we actually protect minority groups from psychic harms through laws intended to limit speech? Can we actually prevent people from using offensive terms in any practical and meaningful sense? Can we actually limit political positions, given that they have a tendency to be reworded or rebranded and that trying to restrict them tends to feed them as they bubble under the surface?

…

France has gone back to the online hate speech well, only this time rebranded - as a combo with some Islamophobic provisions. It appears that the hate speech game can be played by the bad guys too. Some people think we should restrict racial slurs, some other people think that’s a good idea plus let’s use that law to restrict all those radical Muslim teachings. You see it turns out that when you insist on promulgating a nebulous, easily-manipulated term like “hate speech,” you are giving free rein to bad people to exploit it for their own ends. France has also recently attempted to pass a law severely restricting the ability of citizens to share photos and videos of police violence. You see, when you government gets in the censorship game, they don’t stop just where you want them to. This may come as a shock but consistent principles like “don’t censor people” are easier to defend than sentiments like “censor people because they’re bad but make sure you ask me who’s bad first because I’m the one who decides who’s bad, OK?”

Of all the pretense and hubris that regularly spools forth from the social justice crowd, probably the most deluded is their dogged belief that if some new laws restricting speech were to be passed, they would inevitably be the ones to choose who gets silenced and what they don’t get to say. This is from a group that constantly self-identifies as marginalized and othered, and yet they are certain that they will be the ones left on the throne to decide who gets to say what. Why? I have no idea. The cops like you as little as you like them, lefties. You really think they’re gonna enforce the hate speech law the way you want them to? You want to defund the police, you think they’re irredeemably racist, you think they’re all fascists at heart, but you also want to give them sweeping new powers to limit what people say? That’s… strange.

#freddie deboer #substack

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thepursuitofunderstanding · 3 years

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January 31/2021

Well, hello new journal! I look forward to our explorations together. Now, what shall we begin discussing this morning? Nothing feels important enough to mark your first pages [this is from before I switched from paper to digital journaling]. I guess that I could say that I’m starting to catch a glimpse of what I might like my life to be like once I graduate Uni. That’s long been a giant question mark for/with me. Due in large part, I’m sure, to the fact that the conventional path seems to be a sort of settling down. That is, graduates go out and find a job; make a home in some place or other; date/get married; essentially people seem to settle onto one path--at the expense of all other paths. Which is fine--for them. I think that there shall be no settling for me. I must keep moving. This seems to be a condition of my existence. Whether this movement is within or without seems to be irrelevant. Or, rather, I do seem to to particularly prize/regard the internal movement, but I have found external movement to be a great stimulator of internal movement. And, alas, as long as I have books and you [that is, my journal] I seem to never stop moving within. So that helps that.

Most of all though, I don’t want to chain myself to some job that stymies my movement. Especially my internal movement. If I’ve learned anything about myself in these 24 years, it’s that such is a death sentence for/to me. I must keep moving. Inertia is death. Because a self-imposed death is still very much a death. Perhaps an ever deader death (if that’s possible). Now, of course, this whole ‘not letting a job chain me down’ does get rather complicated by the fact that I do need money to maintain my survival. It’s not like everyone in the world enters into the contract (or bondage, depending on how you look at it) of a job because they’re just total masochists. No, I recognize that for the most part people consent to have a job for the simple fact that it is required for their continual survival. As it is for my continual survival. Plus I’ll have some student loans to pay off (I try not to stress too much about that one. Uni is absolutely imperative for/to my development. I’ll figure out how to pay for it later.), so it seems that I will definitely need to figure out some way of generating moneys. But, alas, I aim to keep my expenses such that I won’t have to chain myself to a full-time job. I aim to do this by living in my van when weather permits and then...figuring something out for winter. I’ll live frugally--my only indulgence being books. For it turns out that one really doesn’t need as much money to get by as one might think. You cut out all that useless shit that people buy, get back to just the basics and suddenly things become much more manageable.

This, I hope, will be what the outward appearance of my life will look like after graduation. And inwardly, well, I can’t even imagine that--I’ll be moving, that’s all I know. Working towards Greatness, looking at perhaps getting myself published; learning, always learning. This is how I’ll fill my life. It makes me so full and content to consider that I could cry. Oh what a feeling it is to actually want; to crave to live one’s life. It’s not exactly a feeling that I’m familiar with. Usually I tend to attempt--by any means necessary--to avoid gazing too long into the/my future. For the wretched weight of it felt only like a jail cell beckoning me towards it confines. Time, at my back, preventing my retreat, the chains of life always an inevitability; I could see no way around it. Or, rather, I could imagine ways around it (my power of imagination being what it is paired with my insatiable need to read anything that I can get my hands on (that makes it sound like I’m not a discriminating reader, which is false: I might just be the most snobbish reader that I’ve ever encountered. I’m so intimately aware that I’ll never be able to read all the books that I want to, therefore I must be very careful to give my time and energy to only those books that I deem to be imperative to my development. God I sound like such a cocky asshole. But hopefully a cocky asshole that is tempered with the realization that I’m not shit yet and I never will be unless I really... strain myself. I’m not sure how this spiraled into a poop(ing) metaphor, but here we are nevertheless.)) but I never felt myself to be capable of the strength and individuality required to evade that jail cell that I’ve witnessed so many people around me imprisoned by.

Alas though, I realize now that the only thing more terrifying than attempting such an evasion is to not. For, to not attempt such an evasion is to surrender myself; to fail to become myself: of which I agree with Kierkegaard is a fate worse than death. I have discovered that I can withstand a lot of pain and discomfort in life--but not that. To lose myself, especially like that, to (how did he put it?) “pawn” myself to the world is not something that I will ever be able to withstand. I know this. Any leanings in the past towards such have led--always--to a crushing compulsion to end it all. I seem to be so constituted that such a pawning is simply not an option to/for me. Which is something that I’ve only just now grasped in its entirety. I seem to have had some hunch of it for a few years here now (thus the talk of the conditions of my existence) but only now have I managed to grasp (or begun to grasp) the full weight of all this. I can truly do no other. I have never, nor will I ever, have any choice in the matter. Or, rather, since I don’t believe in determinism, I should say that my choice is to either live “myself” or to not live at all. This is the ultimate condition of my existence. All other conditions stem from this ultimate one.

Wow, okay, so this is why I love writing--why I absolutely need to write. Just as my physical body needs food and water to sustain itself, my soul needs to write. For through/by writing I come to be/tough ‘myself.’ Perhaps f I did not write I would become a pawn to the world. And I would never realize that although I might be physically alive; conventionally regarded as a living being; I never became anything more than a living death. For that’s what it feels like to pawn oneself to the world. I feels like one’s ‘self’ and one’s life is not one’s own; that one is merely a spectator to the unfolding of a dreary and rather impersonal drama.--Gross. That is, if I had it in me to even put up with any of that. I imagine that, being who/as I am, I wouldn’t live to see too many seasons of a life like this: the cape of despair eventually suffocating me.

I wonder, what is it about me, my ‘self’ that makes it wholly impossible for me to ignore my ‘self.’I look around me and see the majority of people managing it just fine (or, rather, as fine as one can manage the pawning of oneself to the world.). Why is such a path/manner of Being one that is closed to me? I couldn’t attempt it even if I wanted to. Why/how is this??? What is it about me that makes this so? Because I realize now that my inability to do such a thing/live such a way, has defined my entire life thus far. It doesn’t seem to be something that I learned or picked up from anyone else. That is, I can think of no one who modelled anything like this in my early life. It was only later on, when the definition was making itself felt more and more that I managed to find others who also felt such a condition defining their existence. But those others didn’t birth it in me, they only (not only, for their friendship has been everything to me.) helped me recognize what was already there.

My need to be/become my’self’ seems to be an inborn requirement of my Being. The condition of my existence. But how can this be?? For this condition doesn’t seem to be present, or at least, not nearly as stressed, in the people that I observe around me. It is this condition that has made me feel different--pathological--my whole life. Even when I couldn’t grasp it, it was always there, whispering to me from the darkness. It was never not there. Thus, I though that there was something wrong with me.

It would seem that the entire trajectory of my life has been defined by the attempt to understand this whispering from the darkness. For I discovered early on that I couldn’t silence it without simultaneously doing away with myself. Because it is more me than I am... Whatever that means. And it is this whispering, this me, my ‘self’ that I am now engaged in consolidating; I am collecting from the darkness and attempting to explore and understand. This is what my life is about. Or, at least, it is the meaning of my life. My defining commitment as Hubert Dreyfus would say? And God is that which makes it all possible is what Kierkegaard what would say? God is the ground where all of this takes place; God is the sun which allows for the illumination of these dark places. It is only with/through God that the whispering can be understood? Is God that which whispers to me? That would indicate/imply that my ‘self’ is God; a fragment of God? My ‘self’ is atman? So many things to consider here...

Atman, my ‘self’, might this bear any relation to the concept of Nothingness that Sartre is acquainting me with? He does talk about how this Nothingness “haunts” Being. And I would certainly say that this whispering from the darkness of my Being has haunted me. Haunting is actually a perfect word for it. I seem to be more (profoundly?) haunted than others. Is this possible? I wonder, will Sartre ever discuss the possibility of some being more “haunted” or possessing more Nothingness than others?

It has become apparent to me recently that this is my work. It is my play too actually, all woven into one. That is, when I sit here with you, when I lose myself in books, when I wander around and think/imagine, I am working. It may seem like such a minor distinction to focus on--such a trivial thing to notice and distinguish. But to/for me it is everything. I have always craved to be one of those people who is consumed by their work. I has always thought that there was something to important and noble about it. I bestows one’s life with an importance that isn’t there otherwise. That is, a life without this emphasis on one’s work is a life without a defining commitment. This seems to be an awareness that I apprehended before I was ever able to understand or articulate it. All I knew was that I was missing an importance/meaning to my life. I could see that others (though few) had it. But I never really believed that I would come to experience it myself. I had resigned myself to merely watching those others from the sidelines. Always to be aware of the game that I so desperately yearned to be a part of, yet never being chosen to participate. For, alas, it does seem to be a game that one must be chosen for. You can want to participate with your whole Being, but that means nothing unless one is animated from within. Otherwise one will simply be going through the movements; it will be purely mechanical. A true experience of/participation in the game requires that one lose oneself in/to it. And to lose oneself to something is never a choice made by oneself. That is, one can offer oneself up to this losing, but one can never control whether/if one will get swallowed up. I so wanted to be swallowed up by the game--by my work--and now it seems to be happening. I wonder, if one consistently offers oneself up to such a swallowing, is it inevitable that one will eventually get swallowed up? So many questions. And I’ve gotten so abstract and... mystical(?) in my thoughts now that I can hardly ask anyone else these questions. For, even the formulation of these questions requires such a lengthy and convoluted explanation that I’m unsure if I could even construct them, let alone hope that anyone might be able to follow my train of thought well enough for anything close to a satisfactory answer. It seems that I must wander the path of my questioning alone. And my writing is my mapping of the territory that I come across. This is my contribution to the literary community: to add my mappings to the mass of mappings that have been done before me. Because, after all, aren’t we all just trying to make sense of this crazy thing we call life? And isn’t life continuously evading our attempts to do so?

The closer I get to Greatness the deeper I’ll be able to penetrate into (the mystery of) life. And, thus, the more precise/profound/meaningful my mapping will become.

It seems to me that the only way for me to draw closer to this Greatness (my Greatness?) is by following the whispers of my ‘self.’ That is, I may learn from those around me, but I can never rely on them too fully lest I imitate them and lose the thread/path of my ’self.’ For Greatness seems to be... wholly individual, in a certain regard. By that I mean that... what do I mean? Every artist has their own particular flavor of Greatness. And it is only through/by this particular flavoring that Greatness appears. Because Greatness is... well, it’s not black and white; it’s vibrant and lively, it dances and lives. It is transcendent. It cannot be created/pursued mechanically. Sure it requires discipline and control, but it also requires personality and deviation. It requires that one break rules and forge new paths. These things can only be done by the individual. For it requires that one step outside the boundaries/limitations that had previously been set. This is a task that can only be done by the individual. It is not a collective activity, not something that any machine (mechanized something) might be able to do/engage in. The mechanized something is unable to do such because, as I understand it, these things necessarily require boundaries in order to operate in the first place. Or else these get swallowed up by possibility and are unable to function at all. Thus limitations must be set and can only be sidestepped by direction from some external tinkering/director. And, in the case of the collective... there seems to be a sort of inertia in the collective. As is a certain level of inertia is one of its defining features. For it is only by standing still that things (people) can collect after all. Yes, that seems right. Thus, only the individual, through their individuality, may pursue/tough Greatness. Although, of course, in saying that I also recognize that the individual is an amalgamation of everyone and everything that said individual has ever encountered (or will ever encounter?). So, in a sense, the individual is, in the individual self, a collection of Being. But, alas, a different sort of collective than what one conventionally thinks of when they consider a collective.

Damn, I gotta say, I really covered some ground today. So odd too, I really had no idea that all of this was welling up within me. When I first sat down with you this morning I had absolutely no idea what we would be exploring together. Alas though, is it time to move onto some Being and Nothingness now? I’ve got to tell you, if I keep going at this pace, finishing it and The Second Sex by the end of the semester will be a piece of cake. I maybe should have set my aim even higher and also included Being and Time. But then, is it too late to make a change? Let’s just think about this for a minute... I’m at such a point in Being and Nothingness that I could reasonably leave it aside for a moment and return to it without too much confusion (I think). Being and Time only has 415 pages. And Dreyfus’ commentary on it is only 281 pages. Do I dare raise my aim? Doing so would mean adding another 700 pages to my goal, making it 2300 pages of dense philosophical treatise to complete in 3 months while simultaneously juggling 5 classes. Do I dare attempt it? I ask but I already know the answer. Now, the only question is, do I start Being and Time first or ought I take a bit of a wander through Dreyfus’ commentary first?

#january #journal entry

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ackervida · 4 years

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Flames of Nirvana, ch 1

Hello there, everyone! I’ve wanted to join the fandom and the Levi love bandwagon for the longest time, and since quarantine started I was like why not. So I wrote this bad boy (all day every day for the past month and a half might I add) and I hope you guys like it! The story is all written out, and updates will be every Sunday.

TW: This story will contain strong language, canon-typical violence, implied/mentions of rape, mentions of suicide, abuse, suicide attempts and explicit sexual content. It is manga compliant up until chapter 128, so there will be spoilers!

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990044/chapters/57707902

Summary: In the heat of a never ending war, Levi finds himself recruiting a compromised spy. But the war outside is nothing compared to their own inner battles, and hand in hand, they find the strength to conquer them one by one. And the world follows.

Pairing: Levi x Reader

Chapter 1

Levi swirled the tea in his cup pensively. It was still so strange to him, how the Marleyans drank their tea – sweetened and diluted with milk, leaving little room for the subtle, herbal flavors. He’d spat it back into the cup the first time he tried it, and in the following months, the Eldian Captain adopted the habit to request his tea plain, as much as it attracted odd glances from shopkeepers.

This particular teashop, however, was quite to his liking. Quaint, small enough to be peaceful, yet spacious enough to allow him to blend in with the other customers without being recognized, despite the telltale scars on his face. The tea itself wasn’t exactly what he remembered from home, but it came with free cookies and the Eldian old lady who usually brought his order was sweet, bubbly and never disclosed the fact that she knew exactly who he was.

Levi’s identity wasn’t as much of a problem as it used to be when the remaining Scouts permanently relocated to Marley’s capital, but there was still a level of dissent among the Marleyan citizens. After all, Eren’s near genocide had yet to be forgotten, and the new war put a wholly new strain on Marleyans’ views on Eldians.

Taking a tentative sip of the hot brew, Levi sighed. In his own way, the Captain had wearily come to terms with the fact that Eren had turned into a lost cause, yet he still couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe the idiot wouldn’t have done what he did if he’d been aware that peace still wouldn’t be an option. Yes, the Colossal titans would have crushed Marley.

What would have happened once they reached Starke?

It didn’t matter now, Levi mused. Whether the Starkans would have been able to fend off was irrelevant. What mattered was that this technologically superior nation suddenly entered the war and helped the Jaegerists seize control of Paradise Island; now, they’d joined forces against Marley and Hizuru, seeking the so-called spread of ‘civilization’ and ‘evolution’ through conquest.

Any hope that Levi might have had about seeing the carnage come to an end had been squandered.

“Is the tea not to your liking, my dear? I was excited to get this new mix, but I know you’re a fussy one,” Matilda, the shopkeeper, stopped by Levi’s table. Her mouth and eye crinkles spoke of a lifelong determination to smile, even though Levi knew better than to assume she’d led anything but an easy life in the Eldian ghettos. She’d never spoken to him of family, and the Captain had never asked.

“It’s not bad,” the brunet replied, taking another sip. His prosthetic fingers felt strange around the steaming mug – they couldn’t feel heat. “What was it called again? Robos?”

“Rooibos,” Matilda smiled, wordlessly setting another plate of sugar cookies on the table. Levi lifted a hand in protest, but the older woman shushed him quiet. “It’s on the house. If you’re worried about your silhouette, why don’t you share them with the pretty young lady back there? She’s been looking at you since you came in, and I don’t want to be insensitive but you do look like you could use some company.”

She winked to indicate precisely what kind of ‘company’ she was implying, and subtly tilted her head towards a table on the opposite side of the establishment, where a lone young woman was eating a bowl of soup. Levi met her E/C eyes as soon as he glanced her way and was inwardly surprised that the girl didn’t immediately avert her gaze. Instead, she held his stare for a few intense seconds, after which her eyes suggestively flitted to the seat in front of her.

Levi served the oblivious, but well-intended shopkeeper a half-hearted scowl, yet the Captain rose from his chair, having understood that the woman’s interest was not in any way hormonal or sparked by recognition. Matilda still leapt for joy – after all, Levi normally arrived and left alone, except for the rare occasion where he agreed to bring Hange or his former squad with him for an unnecessarily obnoxious lunch break. The bubbly shopkeeper took great care not to forget the cookies, setting them between Levi and the mysterious lady with a much too enthusiastic smile.

“So what’s your deal?” the brunet got straight to the point, leaning back and crossing his legs. Contrary to what he was expecting, the young woman broke into a quiet fit of giggles.

“You’re as charming as I’ve heard. You really must be the famous Captain Levi Ackerman.”

Though relieved that she hadn’t said it loud enough for the entire shop to hear, Levi snorted in annoyance. He really didn’t want to blow his only precious break with one of those air wasting assholes who liked to coat their point in useless pleasantries.

“Oi. Just spit it. What the hell do you want?”

The girl gave him a cool smile that lasted just a second too long for it to be natural, before resuming her eating. “Well, I… you don’t know this, but you saved my family when you coordinated the evacuation from the outskirts during the Rumbling. I wanted to thank you and… maybe treat you to some lunch?” she asked shyly, curling a strand of hair behind her ear in what appeared to be a coy gesture. However, Levi got a glimpse of the device attached to her ear and understood her message. She couldn’t be straight with him – she was being listened to.

The Captain downed the rest of his tea and politely asked Matilda to come over. “I guess I wouldn’t mind it. I’ll have what she’s having.”

He endured the conversation the girl seemed to produce out of thin air and ate his cauliflower soup diligently – even though, whoever she actually was, she was weird as fuck for liking something so bland. He figured that some of the questions she was asking were being dictated to her through the earpiece, so Levi offered vague or fake answers, silently hoping that whatever her plan was, she would get on with it faster.

“Oranges, you say? I don’t think I’ve ever had them,” the Captain commented almost absentmindedly, yet the woman’s eyes lit up with genuine joy and what seemed to be relief.

“Really? Never? You can come by my parents’ orchard anytime and you won’t leave without a full basket,” she laughed. “Actually, here, I’ll write you the address. If you have the time and, of course, if you want to… you can visit me. All the exotic fruit in the world won’t be enough to repay you, but this is the least I can do,” she opened her little bag and ripped a piece of paper from a notebook, scribbling furiously. “Not to mention… I’ve really loved your company. You seem to be a very gentle man, Levi. Can I call you Levi?”

“Be my guest,” the brunet replied, stuffing the paper in his pocket without looking at it and leaving their consumption’s worth of cash on the table. “You can make it up to me with that fruit basket,” he said when the girl began to protest, making her flash another one of those fake smiles. If she hadn’t made it obvious, Levi doubted he would have been able to tell, yet now that he knew that all her reactions were fake, he couldn’t help but dislike that forced smile on her otherwise beautiful features. Questions about who was employing her and what she was trying to gain from her interaction with him were swirling in his mind at miles per hour, way more interesting than any mundane topic of discussion.

The Captain made a point of ignoring Matilda’s cheeky grin as he led the young girl towards the exit and reciprocated her goodbye wishes. As she walked away, sundress flowing with the wind, Levi remained there for a while, a foot in the shop and a foot outside. After making sure no one was observing him, he fished out the note.

Once he read it, his hand flew straight to his own earpiece.

“Hange, get all the brats ready. We’re moving out as soon as I get back to base.”

“It’s still warm,” Hange said, her hand gripping a coffee mug. “They must have just fled.”

“Shit,” Levi cursed in frustration, dropping his rifle. The information the woman had given him was true – upon breaking into it much too easily, this produce farm was indeed a concealed military establishment belonging to the Starkan army. The note had also informed him that the Starkan commander, Victor Baal, would be present, so Levi had prepared an entire assassination operation at the speed of light – which made the complete bareness of the place even more of a disappointment.

It was also annoyingly pristine and unassuming at a first glance. The small room they were in looked like nothing more than a quaint, family-style common area, with hand-crafted rugs, a large wooden table and an attached kitchenette, where the coffee kettle still rested on a gas stove. Levi’s former squad, now led by Jean, as well as Reiner, Pieck and Annie had needed to very nearly demolish all the hidden chambers in order to discover the vast array of training areas, supplies and, most importantly, technological equipment.

“They appear to have left all equipment behind, including fuel and computers,” Armin confirmed as he walked back in, Jean, Connie and Mikasa following suit. “There is a massive storage room below us, fully equipped. At least that’s a good thing, right?”

“If they’re not laced with explosives that’ll paint the walls with our brains, then yes. Terrific,” replied Annie, who had given up any and all exploration upon realizing they’d been outrun, and was lounging casually on one of the chairs. Mikasa glared at her for the sarcastic way she’d talked to Armin, but the blonde merely rolled her eyes as if to say there was no other possible response.

“I already asked Magath to send tech support our way. Until then, if there’s nothing else, I suppose we can’t do much other than try not to get too depressed,” Hange sighed, rubbing her temples. Despite her words, the cat-and-mouse chase this war consisted of was really jarring – they’d finally gotten a good lead, they were so close, and they blew it.

All heads in the room whipped up, however, when one of the doors slammed against the wall. Reiner barged in, along with Pieck, both of them wearing distressed expressions.

“All of you need to come down to the storage room, now!”

“There’s weapons, Reiner, we know already-“

“I found a trap door,” Pieck interrupted. “We haven’t opened it fully yet, but… it smells like death.”

Upon walking into the spacious area, where the walls were laced with rifles and carefully attached explosive devices, as well as labeled boxes piled neatly behind pillars, the soldiers collectively covered their faces with their elbows. They were all used to the smell of corpses, but this level of decay and putrefaction could make anyone dizzy. Connie gagged almost instantly, not even reaching the top of the staircase before spilling the inside of his stomach.

“Do you need him for this?” Mikasa tilted her head towards her retching teammate while addressing Pieck. The brunette shook her head no, so Mikasa turned towards him fully.

“Connie, go and bring some wet rags. Take your time.”

“And clean that up,” Levi mumbled under his breath, upper lip curled in disgust. “Only other stench we need now is someone’s shit.”

Hange only graced her friend with a patient look, coughing into her fist. Her bespectacled eyes were inspecting the floor intensely, focusing on the small dent in the tiles. She hadn’t been in this room before, but it looked as though Reiner and Pieck had moved the asymmetrical tiles around in order to create the opening.

“How did you start opening it?”

“Better yet, how did you even see it?” Jean asked Pieck, holding the collar of his shirt over his nose. “Is that what happens when your face stays real close to floors for a long time?”

Severely unimpressed, the brunette merely pointed at the tiles lining the floor. They varied in shape and shades of grey, almost forming a pattern and yet not quite.

“If you press on them with your… hands, these tiles move. Also, the Starkans’ army symbol is a grey wolf. I figured I’d try arranging them to get that shape and… I got that small opening.”

Levi clicked his tongue. “So we’re going to have to play puzzle here?”

“No,” Armin replied, walking around the room with his eyebrows deeply creased in thought. “Based on the stench, and since we know that Starkans burn their bodies like we do, I think whatever is down there is a mass grave for prisoners and traitors. It would then have to be impossible to open from the inside, but-“

“Easy to access from the outside,” Hange finished his line of thought, very quickly deducing where Armin’s hypothesis was headed. “Also – have any of you found a possible way for an entire platoon to escape without being seen?”

Reiner huffed negatively. “You’re saying that’s what they used to flee?”

“That’s right,” Armin nodded, sharing a meaningful glance with his former Commander. “That makes it even more important for this trap door to open easily and quickly.”

The blond man crouched to the floor, his sky blue eyes gazing back and forth between the tiles with dashing speed and the wheels in his brain vigorously turning. No one spoke for a few pregnant moments, and they all held their breaths when Armin gently touched one tile, then pushed it with all his strength, huffing with the effort.

A loud machinery noise echoed in the room, and they all had to regain a sense of their footing as the floor moved with them. A gaping hole appeared in the floor, in the place of a grey wolf’s howling mouth.

“Holy shit,” Connie, who’d just begun his descent down the stairs, gaped. Instantly, though, he had to cover his nose and mouth with one of the wet towels he’d procured, promptly throwing the rest of them to his teammates as the stench became very nearly unbearable.

Levi turned his flashlight on and took the lead, overcome with a sense of impatience – after all, if the Starkans had escaped through this passage, there was still a chance they might be able to catch up if they moved quickly. “Let’s go.”

The first thing the Captain stepped on was a pool of moisture, and then something squelched beneath his foot. So much for shit being the last thing they needed. There seemed to be lightbulbs on the ceiling, yet inconveniently they weren’t functional. Levi pointed the light towards the wet floor and, unsurprisingly, he was met with floating bones, as well as feces and decomposed flesh that had not yet fully disintegrated.

It was a good thing Marley never had sewage overflows, though it might be a good idea for them to check for corpses – or the enemy - from time to time.

“They seem to have gone either forward or backward. Reiner, do you have any clues?”

“I’m not exactly familiar with the sewers, but my guess is they went towards the ocean. The other way leads to the water filtering facilities.”

“And they never mentioned having to filter human bones?” Jean replied bitingly. Out of all of them, he had the hardest time warming up to the idea that now they were working and living with their former enemies, still holding a grudge on Reiner in particular.

Reiner sighed. “No. But since a Starkan spy is what got us here in the first place, it’s safe to assume they have spies in plenty of other places, and they’re not as helpful as the one Captain Levi met.”

“I wonder what’s going to happen to her,” Armin voiced sadly, trying his hardest not to stare at the decay around him or reply to his own question.

Levi kept silent, but the matter was twisting his gut as well.

“Do you guys hear that?” Connie asked quietly, bringing the team to a full stop. Indeed, from a few meters away, they could hear… moaning?

“Oi! Is anyone alive in here?” he broke off into a sprint, despite his comrades reaching out to stop him. Mikasa darted to run after him, yet she yelped after tripping on a very sturdy obstacle. Her reflexes prevented her from falling, but she gasped loudly when the flashlight revealed what had tripped her.

A battered man wheezing for air.

“Hange, I need the first aid kit!”

“Me too!” yelled Connie, who was trying to bring the body of a woman into an upright position, wincing as she broke into a violent coughing fit.

“Same here,” Annie called out, her arms fully submerged as she lifted another breathing person from the filthy waters.

The soldiers scrambled to offer first aid, at the same time trying to figure out if there were any more survivors that needed it. Something caught Levi’s peripheral vision, causing him to leave Mikasa and Pieck to tend to one of the victims by themselves.

“Levi, is there anyone else?” Hange questioned, but the Captain didn’t reply, cautiously approaching a patch of rippling water. He turned the flashlight to its brightest setting, and the breath promptly left his lungs.

The woman from the teashop made eye contact with him immediately, just like last time, but now her bruised, swollen eyes showed despair instead of quiet confidence.

“…Run,” she choked, her voice barely coming out. Levi could see the extent to which she’d been beaten – no, tortured – even through the water and dim light. Her plea almost failed to register.

“Dammit. All of you, grab the survivors and head back!”

“-evi… no… run, now,” she begged again, and this time Levi fully understood the urgency in her tone. The entire corridor was slowly becoming brighter. Squinting, the Captain realized with utter horror what the source was – the bulbs on the ceiling weren’t light bulbs. They were concealed grenades. And they were all exploding.

“Move OUT!” he barked, just as the sound of the explosions caught up with the light. Levi threw the girl over his shoulder, momentarily unable to care about the state of her injuries, and ran back along with his comrades. A string of curses left their mouths when the corridor boomed, almost throwing them up into the air from the force of the sound alone – there was no way they’d make it in time.

The last grenade exploded, and everything turned white.

“Good call, Reiner,” Hange breathed, slumping against the carcass of the Armored Titan. Reiner simply nodded, not having the energy for anything else – protecting everyone from the explosion without bursting through the ceiling with his titan form had momentarily winded him.

“Oi! Are you alright in there? There was an earthquake in the entire capital!”

That was Magath’s voice, and it was safe to say most of them had never been so happy to hear him.

Thankfully, he’d had the insight to bring a medical unit as well, which promptly began stabilizing the four survivors they’d managed to collect. No one wondered if there may have been any more – there was little point in doing so, after all. Even the foul smell had been replaced with grenade fumes.

“They knew we’d figure the trap door out,” Jean sighed, holding a pack of ice over the minor head bruise the explosion had gifted him with. “Dammit. Every enemy we face, it seems like they’re always a step ahead.”

“And yet they obviously didn’t expect Reiner to have such good control over his titan form,” Pieck countered. “I really doubt they were planning to leave all this equipment intact.”

“That may very well be so, but so far it looks like we’re going to have to learn how to use it all,” Hange mused, feeling a rifle up. The tech support unit had, so far, confirmed her fears – this weaponry was more advanced than anything produced in Marley. Their allies from Hizuru would be of great help, but although they could measure up to the Starkans regarding their technological prowess, the two countries had very different methods and approaches. “Add to that the modifications we’ll have to make so we don’t end up being predictable… it’s going to take a lot of time and resources before we can actually use any of it.”

“Maybe not,” said Levi, surprising Hange to a degree. He’d been so quiet ever since they’d escaped the sewers – she knew something must have happened in there for the brunet to become so uncharacteristically lost in thought, and the scientist knew him well enough. She glanced his way inquisitively.

Despite his indifferent façade, the Captain’s eyes were fixating on the four survivors still receiving medical attention. The woman from the teashop in particular, though he had yet to reveal to his comrades that the small, nearly broken form currently getting bandaged from head to toe was the one who’d revealed this place to them.

“Maybe they can help with that.”

A shared look of surprise was shared amongst the group, with Magath silently snorting through his nose. “You think they’d be willing to help us?”

“Is that so far-fetched? We saved their lives, and their previous employers obviously haven’t treated them very well,” Levi said casually, arms crossed and back leaning against the wall. He then eyed his former foes pointedly. “The Starkans have been one step ahead of us all this time, and these four might be our one good chance to finally penetrate their defenses. Plus, it wouldn’t be the first time someone had a change of heart.”

Magath, Reiner, Annie and Pieck averted their eyes, the Captain’s point obviously striking a chord. Hange, however, was not entirely convinced, yet she didn’t question her dear friend’s suggestion in front of everyone else.

“One of them is conscious, sir,” a doctor came up to Levi, and the Captain turned around so fast Hange thought he would strain a muscle. He noticed that the other woman they’d rescued was sitting up against the wall, and the brunet’s shoulders minimally slumped, but he still approached her with a confident stride.

This time, Hange did dart after him.

“Don’t you think we should at least get them to a proper infirmary before asking them to join us?” she whispered aggressively, grabbing Levi’s arm. “Or maybe figure out who the hell they are in the first place?”

Levi raised a brow. “No and no. They’ll have the mental clarity to think of more reasons to refuse once they recover, and it doesn’t really matter much who they are. They’re Starkans. That’s already an advantage for us.”

“Kiyomi won’t like this at all.”

“Kiyomi should have admitted the Starkan forces were overwhelming her troops in Shiganshina before they seized control of the city. She may just have to deal with this as a small compensation, not to mention she isn’t due to visit for two months.”

Hange sighed. “Why are you so convinced about this?”

He didn’t verbally reply, but his eyes involuntarily flitted to the young girl from the teashop. Both of her arms had needed to be popped back into place, all of her fingernails and toenails were missing and there surely must have been a lot of internal damage that he couldn’t see, based on the severe bruises littering her entire body. Hange followed his gaze and drew in a sharp breath.

“…Is that her?”

Levi let her draw her own conclusions and knelt in front of the conscious woman. She seemed to be about his and Hange’s age, maybe a tad older, with a dark complexion, a sturdy build and the curliest black hair the Captain had ever seen. Her plump lips were dried out, with a deep cut that reached her chin and had needed stitches. It would likely leave a long scar. Levi felt a pang of sympathy – after all, he was lucky to have regained his eyesight, but the marks on his face would stay with him forever.

He opened his mouth, no doubt to very directly get to the point, yet Hange beat him to it.

“Hey there. How are you feeling?”

As always, she backed him up even when she didn’t necessarily agree with him. Levi gave the scientist a brief, but grateful look.

Dark brown eyes moved from one to the other, and the woman put in an enormous amount of effort to lift a brow. “…Like I almost died surrounded by shit.”

Levi let out a snort, and Hange shook her head, rubbed the bridge of her nose and rose to her feet. “I’ll… leave you with him. I think you’ll get along.”

She walked away, likely to inform their other comrades about what the plan of action was, which left Levi to grace the woman with a nod meant to inform her that he meant no harm.

“A long ass scar… short as all hell… oh, fuck me,” she chortled, bursting into strained laughter. Her Marleyan was a bit choppy and not at all as perfect as the teashop woman’s, but then again she didn’t seem like a proper type of person. “Don’t tell me you are who I think you are.”

“I am. And you are?”

“Anya. Anya Murphy. How the hell did y’all manage to find this place?”

Levi sighed. “With some… help.”

Anya squinted in thought for a couple of seconds, after which her face formed a grimace. “Shit. That’s what they were questioning that poor little thing for, huh.”

“They?” Levi prompted her further, to which Anya sighed, wincing at the sting of her injuries. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like she’d been whipped.

“I don’t know how much the doll told you, but this is where the counter-espionage unit operated. So any and all unlucky bastards who did something behind big daddy Victor’s back would be dragged here, have all information tortured out of them and then be thrown in the sewers to die. Today was supposed to be me and a few others, but they’d barely gotten started when Victor dragged her in. Beat the hell out of her, she still didn’t talk. Then he got a call and ordered everyone to leave everything and flee. That includes me,” she said, gazing left and right. “And whoever else you managed to drag out of that hellhole alive.”

“So Victor Baal works directly with his counter-espionage unit?” Levi asked, ignoring the dread settling in his stomach. Increasingly, he felt like somehow this near failure of an operation was his fault.

Anya groaned in his face. “Listen man, I ain’t born yesterday. I am gonna work with you, I didn’t kill my entire fucking squad because I love Baal or his cocksucking Jaegerists. But for fuck’s sake, let me breathe, will you?”

In Levi’s book, that was a by-the-book success. Only when he agreed and rose to his feet did he notice the entirety of his former squad staring, with equally stupefied expressions.

Well, except Mikasa. She was more amused than Levi had ever seen her – at least since Eren died.

“Fuck are y’all looking at?”

“N-Nothing,” they stuttered collectively, reverting to their brat persona (as Levi liked to call it in the safety of his own mind) and scampered away. If the Captain was amused, he didn’t let it show – he’d never once reacted to anyone talking shit in his face, yet the brats still had the impression he would wreak havoc on the realm if such thing happened. It was funnier than it should be.

“Adam has agreed as well,” Hange appeared by his side.

“Who the fuck is Adam?”

The scientist gestured towards the older of the two men they’d rescued. He’d apparently gone right back to taking a nap after speaking with Hange, which was understandable considering the massive concussion he must have had, as well as his age. He looked well into his fifties, if not early sixties.

“Adam Tesla. He worked as a military engineer for the Starkans. He wanted to retire, but then realized that his wife had died without him being notified, and his two daughters were sold on the black market – he’d thought that producing weapons for the military would offer his family protection from Baal’s regime, but the army had conveniently ‘forgotten’. So he hacked all of their systems trying to find his daughters’ location, and ended up here.”

“You got all that from him in such a short time?” Levi asked in mild surprise, masking the sheer disgust the man’s life story evoked in him. For a nation that justified its ambition for dominance through a supposed spread of ‘modernity and civilization’, that sounded awfully primitive.

“You have your talents, I have mine,” Hange nudged him, her face turning serious after only a second of playfulness. “We should really head back now and let the tech team relocate all this equipment. I’ll take care of the other boy when he wakes up and you can talk to your spy.”

Levi sighed. “Right.”

Levi instantly knew the girl was awake, since she announced it by breaking into a very violent, rattling coughing fit. He tried not to wince – based on the medical report, she had several broken ribs. Breathing must have been painful as shit, let alone coughing.

Predictably, she keened in pain, gasping for air. The Captain rose from his chair and approached her bed, grabbing the glass of water from the nightstand. He pulled her up into a sitting position and went to make her drink immediately, but he was left blinking in stupefaction when she spat the liquid in his face.

Levi sighed.

“I’m not poisoning you. You need to drink water so you’ll stop coughing.”

At the sound of his voice, the girl opened her E/C eyes. They were bloodshot and squinting, yet he could tell that recognition hit instantly. She accepted the water this time, her features contorting in discomfort as she swallowed, and took a heaving breath while Levi carefully rested her head against the cushioned headboard.

“…Sorry,” she said hoarsely, watching him wipe the liquid off his face with a napkin. The Captain was a bit taken aback by the fact that she decided to speak Eldian, but somehow that made him involuntarily release some of the tension in his shoulders. It had been so long, after all, and even the former Scouts had taken to speaking Marleyan nearly 24/7 since it had become the norm.

“Don’t sweat it. I should have expected it.”

She hummed noncommittally, flinching as she tried to adjust her position in order to face him better. He couldn’t quite pinpoint the expression on her face, perhaps because almost half of it was bandaged, but it was something akin to deep regret – a stark contrast to the fake, but bubbly smile she’d greeted him with in the teashop.

“Did you all… make it?”

“Yes. And three other survivors we managed to rescue.”

“I see…Thank you,” the girl muttered, averting her gaze. “You didn’t have to… but I’m glad you’re all safe.”

Her Eldian was as perfect as her Marleyan, he couldn’t help but notice, but then again Levi figured he shouldn’t be so surprised – she was a spy.

“What’s your real name?” he changed the subject. He got the feeling that she required a much more delicate approach than Anya, so the Captain tried not to comment on matters which could very easily upset her further. It was plain to see – whatever had been done to her had left her in pieces.

“F/N L/N.”

Silence reigned for a while. Levi’s initial plan had been to make sure all four agreed to join their cause first and then deal with whatever happened afterwards – and yet, ever since he’d locked eyes with her in the sewers, there was a gnawing feeling in his chest that bothered him no end. No doubt, it would continue to eat at him until he received an answer, so the Captain decided to just throw it out into the open.

However, F/N spoke sooner than him.

“There is something you want, isn’t there?” she asked softly, and Levi realized she’d been studying his features. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll give you all the information I have.”

He sighed. “Before I get into any of that, I want to know one thing. How did the Starkans find out about what you did?”

His gut instinct had been right – F/N’s wistful expression turned into complete heartbreak. She closed her eyes and heaved a deep, yet uneven breath. Levi couldn’t take it back, however, so he simply waited for her to reply.

“I wasn’t sure at first… I planned every little thing and I was so, so careful. But I think I messed it up at the end,” she spoke, gazing into his eyes with a fragile inquisitiveness. “I should have kept you nearby until you were completely out of range. You said something through radio station after I left, didn’t you?”

Levi’s eyes widened minimally. He offered no reply, but he was beginning to understand the crucial error that had been made. That reaction was all the confirmation F/N required anyway.

“There were signal interceptors installed throughout the shop. I assume that your team employs codification, but it would only take the Starkan tech units a few hours to decipher it at most. I’m so sorry,” she shook her head, visibly ridden with guilt. “Your comrades almost died because of me – and for nothing. I guess Victor managed to blow up the base too.”

“…Shit,” was all Levi managed to say, his form hunching in the chair, forehead leaning into both of his hands. A wave of remorse and frustration washed over him – he hadn’t taken her seriously enough. He’d been approached by so many frauds in the past months, but that wasn’t an excuse. He’d allowed his mind to wander during their exchange, thinking of possibilities and motives, yet not safety. Only the contents of the note itself had revealed the actual significance of the risks this girl had taken, and then Levi had been too focused on acting upon the chance he’d been given to consider the danger of compromising her.

His gaze roamed her up and down, this time taking everything in. Joey, the other boy, had been lucky enough to get out of there with no injuries, and the other two had patterned, methodically attained wounds – whipping, stabbing injuries. F/N had been treated with no such methods – Levi had seen plenty of wounds before. He could reconstruct the entire incident if he put his mind to it: they’d started by ripping her nails off. Then they’d broken her arms. Then, in sheer anger and impatience, followed ruthless, aimless beating.

She’d trusted him with important information and that’s what she’d received in return.

“…The base and all of the equipment stayed intact,” Levi voiced. That seemed to snap her out of her haze, for F/N blinked in mild surprise.

“Oh.”

“The tech and engineering units have already begun their work on the equipment. We’re converting the establishment into a base of our own. All Marleyan employees in charge of water filtering are going through security checks. We managed to save three people who would have otherwise been dead and forgotten in filth. All of that is thanks to you. You have no reason to blame yourself for what happened.”

F/N stared, tears welling up in her eyes at his words. She wanted to say something, but her throat was too tight. Instead, she blinked the moisture away from her eyes and offered a small nod. Levi rose from his seat, fully intending to leave at this point – after all, it was the middle of the night and he needed to process this information so he could be functional once sunrise rolled along.

“Levi?”

He turned around.

“You really are a gentle man.”

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