#(at least how i do. with simple understandable explanation) and so its easier to suck the reader into the

[bigskydreaming]

I feel another fanon debunk session coming over me, and this one’s a BIG one. 

Let’s talk about the DickKory breakup, and why it happened.

Yup, we’re going there.

Before we get going though, I want to make one thing abundantly clear: this is NOT an invitation to bash on Kory. There will be no bashing of Kory on this post if I have anything to say about it, and its my post, so I do. So nyah nyah. But seriously like, don’t get my reasons for making this post wrong. I LOVE Kory. I SHIP Dick/Kory. And I don’t actually blame Kory for any of this, no matter how the page I’m about to show makes it appear, for reasons that I will get into later in this post, but like. I really truly don’t. I don’t think the Dick/Kory breakup ultimately was either of their fault. I think it was the painful end result of them both hitting rock bottom due to endless external fuckery with their lives and their minds during the tail end of their relationship, making it all but impossible for them to be there for each other the way they truly needed and WANTED to be....ultimately forcing them to break off and BOTH try and reorder their lives on their own. But IMO, this NEVER actually marked a dissolution of their feelings for each other, no matter what either (particularly Dick) eventually claimed in order to rationalize things to themselves.

I do however think some of the other Titans bear some culpability for not seeing things as they truly were here. I can understand given what they all went through during this time period like, how maybe it became easier to just blame Dick especially as he has a tendency to be so willing to accept blame? And so I think a lot of conclusions were jumped to that at other times they WOULD have spent more time thinking through. But here and now they didn’t simply because they were so relieved to HAVE an easy, simple explanation for things going wrong and someone to blame, someone who ACCEPTED blame. And thus more easily allowing them to speed through to the portion of events where they worked on ‘forgiving him’ for what he’d done so they could all move past it.

Okay, so let me stop talking in code for those of you who have only the faintest idea of what I’m talking about.

Traditional fanon states - and most wiki summaries I’ve seen actually CORROBORATE this, which drives me COMPLETELY up the wall because I would like to have WORDS with whomever wrote each of these wiki summaries - that ultimately, Dick and Kory broke up because they rushed into things with the wedding and both realized they weren’t actually ready to get married.

Let me be clear: this is totally and completely 100% true.

Fanon and wikis go ON however, to conclude that the ‘fault’ lies with Dick, because he was the one who jumped the gun in proposing, and that he only DID so, because he thought getting married would ‘help him finally grow up’ and ‘hit one of the milestones he thought he was missing while everyone else his age that he’d known in high school and stuff were graduating college and getting married and having kids right about now.’ And also that he eventually concluded that he didn’t actually love Kory the way he thought he did and needed to let her go for her sake.

Now let me also be clear: this is also MOSTLY true in the sense that he did eventually THINK these thoughts, some ten or fifteen issues after their crashed wedding, when he was off on his own and thinking through everything that was going on in his life and trying to make sense of the decisions he’d been making lately, most of which he was unhappy with.

The one part that ISN’T true is that last bit, which a lot of people extrapolate from and use as their basis for saying Dick ‘fell out of love with Kory’ and ‘realized that he no longer loved her the way he once had,’ with this leading into why they never got back together after Kory returned to Earth in the Titans revival series in the late 90s.

HOWEVER.

There’s a tiiiiiiiiiny little correction I must make to that last part, which might seem insignificant, but becomes ABUNDANTLY important when added to some other much needed - and much ignored overlooked - context:

Dick never ACTUALLY said or thought that he didn’t love Kory anymore, full stop. What he actually said, in its entirety, was that he realized “he never really loved Kory the way she deserved to be loved.”

Why is this distinction so important? Hang on just a sec, we’re almost there.

Now I would like to share with you, for those who have never seen this page or those who perhaps have forgotten it or its significance, the EXACT page where Dick proposes to Kory, from The New Titans #99, one issue before their wedding special in issue #100. (What’s that? You’re surprised that they got married the very issue after the proposal? You thought that they were engaged for a lengthier period of time? Ohhhh don’t worry, fair readers. We’ll get there. Ohhhh we’ll get there).

But first, those of you who have never actually read this page before, I would like you to take a look at it, and see if you can Where’s Waldo what it is about this page that makes my blood reach a boiling point in excess of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit every time someone utters the words “Dick rushed into marriage because he thought it would make him grow up or hit some important life milestone.”

Take a gander, what do you see:

See it? Get what I’m talking about?

Any talk of Dick and Kory breaking up because they weren’t ready to get married, and Dick having been the one to rush them into it before they were ready, COMPLETELY fails at accurately representing the events of that time if it fails to mention the fact that:

DICK ONLY PROPOSED WHEN HE DID BECAUSE HE WAS DESPERATE TO CONVINCE KORY, HIMSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE THAT HE LOVED HER AND ONLY HER AND SLEEPING WITH MIRAGE HAD MEANT NOTHING!

(Since, y’know, he didn’t actually sleep with her so much as he was raped by her).

I mean, your mileage may vary, but me, I happen to think that bit there is pretty CRITICAL FUCKING INTEL when it comes to this whole matter.

Claiming Dick is to blame because he rushed into marriage because he was looking to grow up or hit some milestone utterly FAILS as an analytical conclusion in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY....

When there is both ZERO indication from him BEFORE the proposal, that those are reasons or thoughts he has that has him leaning towards proposing.....

As well as ZERO reflection AFTER the failed wedding, that being desperate to convince everyone who thought he’d cheated on Kory that he really did love her, was at all a key motivating factor in him proposing when and how he did.

Like it or not, Mirage and the storyline surrounding that is utterly CRUCIAL to the DickKory breakup, because EVERY mention of that describes the cause of that breakup being rushing into marriage, and if you take away that storyline - and every character’s reaction to it - there is absolutely NO reason to even THINK Dick would still have proposed when he did.

And thus, leaving the Mirage story ENTIRELY out of all talk of the end of Dick and Kory’s relationship, is just....blatantly not indicative of what the story actually was.

Now, in addition, I know we tend to talk about this story as though DC sucks for never calling the rape what it was, and say that if DC’s not willing to treat these things as what they really are, they shouldn’t be using them as story points. First order of business: Yes DC sucks a lot and their handling of all this sucked.

BUT.

It is also not entirely accurate to say that they never TREATED this story as what it was.

Because while everyone else may have been fixated on it as Dick cheating on Kory....initially, at pretty much every point UNTIL the wedding....Dick at least was STEADFAST in not considering HIMSELF having cheated. I mean, look at his language in just the page above. He talks about being “repulsed” by what Mirage did. The writers might have never actually called what happened to Dick ‘rape,’ but initially they were VERY consistent in nevertheless writing him as someone who at least to some degree felt victimized by what happened, rather than culpable. He was trying to convince everyone ELSE to see it that way - until eventually he kinda gave up, and started to see it THEIR way. 

You can literally see him already starting to make the pivot towards rationalizing that POV to himself in the above page....he talks about ‘thinking with his hormones’ and that leading him to make a mistake, even though his hormones had nothing to do with whether what happened was wrong or not.....it was always entirely about: would he have consented to sex with Mirage IF he knew she wasn’t really Kory. Thinking with his hormones in no way addresses the fact that its completely unreasonable to expect anyone to be so on guard 24/7, even in the privacy of their own bedroom with their own girlfriend, that they have their eyes peeled for an impostor even there. 

In fact, imagine what the others would have all said if Dick hadn’t slept with Mirage that night, or else had confided in them later that it felt not right, that something was wrong, at some point BEFORE Mirage entered and told Dick in front of everyone that it had actually been her. How likely do you think it would have been that instead of taking Dick at face value, many of them would have instead viewed this as just another time Dick was exercising “Bat-paranoia” rather than allowing himself to be intimate with a loved one the way normal, non-Batfolk do, y’know? Do you think they would have automatically agreed with him that there was something up and he had reason to feel that ‘something wasn’t right about Kory’ when Dick probably still would have had no idea what for sure he felt was off, let alone that it wasn’t ACTUALLY her? Or would they have gotten on his case about how this is just him self-sabotaging again and letting his issues come between him and someone he cared about?

Tbh, one of the things that was greatest about Dick and Kory’s relationship IMO was that she was one of the best at getting him out of his own head. With Kory, when they weren’t both being jerked around by brainwashing plots and the like, Dick was better at just....letting go and just being himself around her. He didn’t feel like he had to constantly be on his guard or waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ironically, IMO, Dick DOES have a tendency to self-sabotage at times and let paranoia or other issues keep him from totally dropping his defenses and letting himself be vulnerable with other people.....meaning he probably would have been MORE likely to cue into something being off, if it had been anyone BUT Kory he’d been dating when Mirage replaced them.

So bottom line is, you can’t actually fully blame the writing for the others’ reactions to this story. Because whether they ever actually acknowledged it or not, for a good ten to fifteen issues up to the wedding, the writers pretty consistently depicted Dick as someone who was and felt victimized, even if he didn’t consciously realize it yet himself, let alone why. There were repeated moments between Kory initially breaking up with him after it happened through this proposal above, where it basically reads like Dick yelling “Ask me how violated I feel! Go on, ask me!” Except he never really got the chance because he was too busy replying to everyone around him that he hadn’t cheated on Kory, he thought he was WITH Kory, and that was the ONLY reason he had sex that night.

Slight tangent - this btw, is why I can never even get worked up enough about Nightwing Annual #2 to be like, defensive about it. That was the flashback issue written YEARS after all these events, where retroactively Andreyko inserted at some point between this proposal and the wedding - without changing anything else or the events he wrote ever being brought up or acknowledged again - a story where Dick went to visit Babs to personally deliver her wedding invitation....but only AFTER they slept together. And then when he gave her the invitation and she got furious about what had just happened, he just blithely said oh Kory won’t mind, and Babs was like yeah well I MIND!

Which was a totally valid reaction for Babs to have to those events as depicted, its just....I can’t remotely take them seriously, not when I’ve actually READ the events that by Andreyko’s own admission are meant to bookend that story. So you’re telling me, that right after Dick proposes to his longtime girlfriend SPECIFICALLY because he’s desperate to convince her he loves only her and would never willingly sleep with anyone else......he would go and sleep with someone else between then and the wedding? And then just without a hint of remorse say oh what’s the problem, Kory would be fine with it - when literally everything else about the wedding even HAPPENING was based on the fact that he knew for a fact that Kory would NOT in fact, be fine with that? Umm, make it make sense, except you can’t, because that story and the point where it makes sense are in two entirely different galactic quadrants. Green Lanterns couldn’t make it from Point A to Point B. So lol, sorry not sorry, I’m gonna stay not taking that story or claims that Dick is ACTUALLY a cheater, like, remotely seriously. I mean, your mileage may vary, but I especially don’t think anyone who can make excuses for Bruce’s many transgressions being OOC like, has any business trying to pass this particular story off as in character, but WHATEVS. Like, you CAN do it if you really want to, but I mean, I’m just gonna think that’s silly. I’ll be like OMG you’re so silly. Why are you so silly, can we just stop with all the silliness. And then like, I’ll go do something else or whatever. 

(Oh and for the record, the wedding was the issue after Dick proposed, but it wasn’t meant to be like, the day after or anything. BUT we do know it was still pretty damn soon after, like at most a week or two....because the concurrent storyline was Roy being upset because the government was trying to shut down the Titans and said they would unless Roy took leadership from Dick and ousted him, which Roy understandably was NOT keen to do, even and especially with everything going on as the Titans were a family first and foremost and he was stuck between trying to preserve them and keep them going and betraying everything they stood for by basically instigating a vote of no confidence in Dick’s leadership.....but point being, Roy kept stalling the government agent asking for his answer......when said agent was very impatient, and asked repeatedly both in issue #99 AND issue #100. So you’re never going to convince me Roy managed to stall said agent for months or whatever, or any longer than a couple weeks at most, to allow for Dick and everyone else to put together a shotgun wedding for him and Kory. Which just further adds to the make it make sense aspect of the above mentioned Annual, but I absofuckinglutely digress).

Anyway. 

NOW, let’s bring it back around to when I said like, don’t do the thing, don’t actually blame Kory for any of this, don’t you do it? /paraphrase

Yeah. So we’re there at that point now, and I reiterate once more for the court, like, hey, what if you just don’t? Y’know? Even if you’re looking at her dialogue in the above page I posted and are like, I’m feeling the urge, the urge to.....idk something that rhymes with urge but is bad I guess? Whatever. Just like. Don’t do it. Say nasty things about Kory because of this story three times in front of your computer and I will totally like, be conjured by that and crawl out of your screen all creepy girl from The Ring style. It will NOT be pretty. I am NOT meant to fit through there. I can NOT make it look good. You have been warned.

Okay so like, the reason I say none of this is on Kory even though I don’t make the same distinctions for the other Titans is threefold. No, lbr, its probably more on account of I can’t count and I’m always wrong about this shit. But let’s start with three.

1) The first thing we need to address is the fact that Dick WAS acting erratically and out of character through all of this time, even before what happened with Mirage. This was still in the near aftermath of Titans Hunt, and he was still reeling from that, and holding himself totally accountable. People who’ve followed me for awhile have probably seen me fixate on Titans Hunt before, but I honestly don’t think anyone who hasn’t read the full extent of comics from that storyline all the way through like....The New Titans #115 or so, like.....truly grasps the extent of just HOW much that single storyline affected Dick. He was at rock bottom because of it in a way that is probably only truly comparable with the Blockbuster storyline, but for even LONGER. Like the span of comics I referenced just now covers probably like....almost fifty issues. 

That’s fifty issues where Dick consistently brings up his failure to stop that and how much Joey and Charlie and Arella and everyone else’s deaths during that like, just weighs on him, and fucks with his confidence and just.....his overall sense of purpose and self. He WAS lost and aimless for a lot of that time. And he DID absolutely even recognize HIMSELF that it was affecting him. Like ten issues or so after the crashed wedding, when he’s on his own journey of self-discovery while looking for Kory in the Amazon (uh yeah, that’s a thing. I’ll get to that)....like, he acknowledges to himself that ever since the Titans Hunt he’s been getting crazier and more demanding (his words) and he doesn’t even recognize himself anymore...and he attributes all of that to not having come to terms with their deaths and his inability to prevent them. 

Now, notably, he DOESN’T ever at this time acknowledge that his behavior took an INCREASINGLY downward spiral ever since Mirage and specifically due to everyone blaming him for what he deep down felt wasn’t actually his fault but was losing conviction in. And quite frankly, even though he SAYS at this point he’s ready to move on from their losses, I don’t think that actually happened, but I’ll get back to both those things. First, the important point here, in terms of Kory, is that from her perspective, Dick had been increasingly unpredictable and not himself ever since the losses during Titans Hunt. Actually, given that she was the one who went with him to the Manor after Jason’s death and the only one who saw him come in and out and who thus knows the full extent of what transpired there - with this all happening not long before Titans Hunt - you could additionally say her awareness of that also has her almost prepared to expect the totally unexpected from Dick at this point.

Does that mean its right? No. But it does mean that its there.

2) Next. Kory was not actually offered the chance by the storyline to internalize what happened between Mirage and Dick from a stable, grounded headspace. Mirage KIDNAPPED Kory and replaced her before she slept with Dick. In the grand scheme of things, what happened to Kory specifically here is probably far from the worst thing that’s ever happened to her, but it couldn’t have been pleasant and I’m the first to yell NO TRAUMA OLYMPICS so in that spirit, fuck whether it was as bad as it COULD have been, and again, just acknowledge that it happened, and its reasonable and expected that it would have a negative effect on Kory. She was targeted and victimized by Mirage too. Not in the same way as Dick, but add that to the fact that unlike the other Titans, she was the one IN the relationship with Dick and thus the only one besides him that had a stake in what Mirage’s actions served as a catalyst for in that regard, like....she was not an impartial bystander to all this, and that needs to be considered. She was PART of it. It was her life that was hijacked by all this too.

3) Third.....it is extremely extremely EXTREMELY important here to acknowledge that Kory is herself a rape survivor. She has extensive trauma from her childhood in the Citadel, and that is bound to color her perceptions of what happened here, at least initially. I am 174% soooooo not here for vilifying another rape survivor in defense of a different rape survivor. Like, I’m just saying.....do not throw Kory under the bus for not acknowledging Dick’s trauma and trauma responses as a rape survivor in this story if you’re not also YOURSELF acknowledging Kory’s OWN trauma as a rape survivor.

This is key not because it says any opinions she had at this time don’t count, but rather that they simply don’t come from the same place as the VICTIM-BLAMING that is the central issue with others holding Dick accountable for his own rape. In Kory’s case, we have to consider the issue of projection. The ways in which her own experiences and how they’ve informed her DEFAULT perception of something that deeply affected her, might skew her initial reaction to experiences which share a LABEL, but not specific ELEMENTS.

What I mean here is both Kory and Dick, as of this point in time, are rape survivors. But they survived very very VERY different kinds of rape. Both were abundantly clear that they DID NOT WANT what happened to them, that they were not willing parties to what actually transpired....but what springs to Kory’s mind when someone says “I didn’t want the sex that happened” is understandably going to look VERY different from what Dick was describing when he said “I didn’t want the sex that happened.” So its not really all that unreasonable for Kory to hold those two things up in her head and say these are not the same, and from there jump to the unfortunate conclusion that Dick HAD wanted it on some level, else it would have looked more like her own experiences...especially because others around them were already voicing and affirming this opinion in various ways. 

Again, is this fair, or deserved? No. But I talk all the time with other characters and with Dick himself about how its just not reasonable to expect characters - especially ones with highly CHARGED emotions related to their own parallel experiences - to act from an unbiased state or POV and thus leap to the most ideal conclusion without at least first stumbling through some other ones. So with Kory, her own context with rape simply CAN NOT be divorced from the fact that recognizing the central issue of this later moment in time was that it was a rape. Her own experiences and the likely projection of them onto the moment at hand add a degree of context to conclusions she arrived at that other characters simply do not have....and thus, again, its not okay to paint her with the same brush as all those characters. And unless you’re already somehow making a distinction as to why her reaction is different from others despite superficially appearing the same......then like. You need to be. LOL. 

4) The other factor that’s important to consider here is that just like Kory was never offered the chance to RECEIVE information of what happened from a relatively grounded place and headspace....the stories never gave her any real time to think things through, process over time, and arrive at different conclusions from her earlier ones. Again, I talk all the time about how Dick’s experiences with the Titans pre-his time in Bludhaven were colored by multiple instances of brainwashing and his head being fucked with and being personally targeted and jerked around in a ton of ways? The same is true of Kory, and it needs to be given equal weight.

Their wedding was crashed by ‘the dark soul self’ of Raven - who they thought was dead - as she infected Kory with what she called a demon seed that was going to grow a new demon inside of her. Due to her possession, Kory spent weeks in a mental institutition, trying to overcome the entity inside her (with Dick sitting by her side and holding her hand through all of it, just FYI). When she finally did purge the entity from her, Kory took off and ended up in a village in the Amazon, with the ordeal having given her amnesia. Dick went after her, but he’d only just tracked her down when she took off again to foil an alien invasion using radio waves that she was uniquely suited to recognize due to being familiar with their tactics, but which pitted her against most of the rest of the world in like, the Ultimate Gaslighting Showdown as everyone kept telling her she was crazy (she was wearing a tinfoil hat to protect herself from the transmissions, the writers were deliberately not doing her any favors). 

Only after that was foiled did she regain her memories, and while off the page she agreed to meet with Dick to talk about their failed wedding and everything that happened afterward, as he’d returned from the Amazon by now, where he’d ultimately come to his own self-realizations about everything (or what we were told to accept were his realizations)....in the end she took off for Tamaran without meeting him, leaving him waiting where they’d agreed to rendezvous. Again, I say this not to vilify Kory, because I absolutely think she made the best choice for herself at the time, and should have, and I don’t think Dick has ever blamed her for that and tbh they both separately came to the same decisions about needing to be apart to recollect themselves and figure out who they were and where to go from here, like, without having to actually talk it out to arrive at the same point. I DO raise this point simply to put out there that in contrast to many other things I’ve seen said about the break up......they....never technically broke up?

Like I mean, don’t get me wrong. They DID. They both considered themselves broken up and eventually moved on with other people, Dick with Babs, and Kory with a general who she married back on New Tamaran before it was destroyed by the Sun Eater (again, Kory went through some SHIT after their break up. Dick wasn’t the only one.) But I just mean like.....it was LITERALLY the most mutual break-up that is possible for a break-up to be, because neither one of them ever actually communicated their intent to the other in order for them to both CLEARLY be on the same page. There was no “Dick called off the wedding” - that never actually happened, it was just....never revisited. There was no “Dick told her he no longer had feelings for her” - that was something that happened later, and yes, I’ll get to that too. OMG shut up me. But also shh I’m talking. 

But yeah like.....their break-up, despite being almost universally claimed as Dick’s choice and responsibility, with zero mention of Mirage’s role in it in any official accounting of it I’VE ever seen, and with Kory painted as being the victim of Dick’s wandering ways and not knowing what he wanted in the distant aftermath of their break-up, as it was said that due to being Tamaranean, she loved for life and thus would always be in love with Dick even though he after her return claimed he no longer loved her (like, I don’t blame Kory but I also don’t like takes that act like Dick DID all this to Kory somehow. Like that’s literally the entire point here, neither of them needs to be to blame or each other’s victim according to how the story ACTUALLY went).....

But yeah, despite all that.....it really was the most mutually arrived at decision ever, because neither one of them actually EVER EVEN SAID ‘WE NEED TO BREAK UP’ to the other. They both just....ended up there on their own. 

(And also because DC wanted them there in order to secure the rest of their push to put Nightwing solely back in the Batbooks for the next several years. With, don’t forget, this all coinciding with the government forcing him out of the Titans and putting Roy in charge and with this all culminating in Dick having his initial adventure in Bludhaven at Bruce’s ask, and then deciding to make that his new base of operations and kinda reinvent himself there, at the start of his solo title. Again, shout out to the myth of “Dick Grayson always runs from things because commitment issues” - not only did he NOT flee to Bludhaven because he just changed his mind about the wedding and said whoops sorry Kory, it wasn’t even his CHOICE to leave the Titans, even if eventually he agreed it was for the best right now. His ex went back to her home planet and he was asked to leave his team. Why the fuck WOULDN’T he go somewhere else?)

NEXT. (jfc he mumbled to himself under his breath. what the fuck did I start here).

Circling back around AGAIN, this time back to Dick’s STATED reasons for deciding things were over.

Two...umm, fuck it, ‘a number that is more than one’ things that need to be kept in mind HERE:

1) The most crucial bit of context when examining Dick’s journey of self-exploration in the Amazon while searching for Kory and what he comes to say and think about everything that’s happened and his own behavior....

Is that he is an EXTREMELY unreliable narrator at this point in time. Y’know how we talk about Dick having that tendency to take on more accountability than is actually earned and is way quicker to view himself as in need of apologizing than he is to view others needing to do that for him?

Yeah I mean, that’s a thing, I definitely have like a billion citations ready to go on a moment’s notice, but point is, being aware of that tendency means absolutely nothing if you don’t actively APPLY that awareness to Dick’s periods of self-reflection and like....compare and contrast what he THINKS about things he’s said or done with like....what he’s ACTUALLY said or done.

For instance, on the way to his so-called epiphanies about all this, he makes the claim that the entire time Kory was dealing with the demon entity inside of her, he was being so selfish because all he was doing was wishing she would wake up or be free of it so that she could help him with his problems instead. (And just for the record, I can provide actual panels for everything I reference in this post, I’m just limiting myself to a couple because I’m just trying to NOT beat War and Peace’s pagecount as it is. Will I succeed? No. Did I try? Yes.)

Now, Dick spending his time at his possessed fianceé’s side doing nothing but wishing she would snap out of it and focus on his problems instead.....is that selfish of him?

Well, yeah.

But is it TRUE?

I mean, you tell me:

This is right smack dab in the middle of that whole storyline, set only a few issues after the crashed wedding, and before Kory successfully evicts the demon entity and loses her memories. This is literally what Dick was ACTUALLY like the entire time. At the TIME, every single thing he said and did was focused on her.....the CLOSEST he came even in his internal monologue, to making it all about him, was him thinking about how this has shown him just how much he needs her.

Do people helping a loved one through something traumatic occasionally have selfish thoughts where their awareness of their own troubles momentarily supersedes their focus on their loved one? Yeah. Does this actually make them selfish if their ACTUAL focus and actions and words are aimed entirely at their loved ones the whole time, with no single actual detour to “hey, while you’re up, can we talk about me for a sec”?

Mmmmm....I feel like no, but I am open to you drawing other conclusions as long as you are aware that they are wrong and mine is right, kay. I mean okay, fine. You can disagree with me here but I’m still gonna disagree about your disagreement there and its just gonna be this whole big thing and its like, ugh, whatever, y’know?

But hey, you do you.

ANYWAY, point is, unless you draw the wrong conclusion here in which case PTTTHB!, like, I think its safe to say Dick thinking in the midst of his self-awareness deep dive that he was being nothing but selfish during that whole story and thus didn’t deserve Kory, like....whether or not the writers are actually AWARE of it or not, I mean......that’s still a pretty good context clue that his internal monologues at this point in time are maybe a little bit skewed towards being more about accepting blame than reflecting reality, right? Yes, no, maybe so?

Well then again, if you agree with me, then add to that awareness the added bit of trivia that every single other one of Dick’s ‘ultimate realizations’ (he just wanted to get married because he thought it would bring stability to his life, it would help him grow up, hit one of those aforementioned milestones, etc)....like every single one of them.....was an opinion that was FIRST offered by one of the other Titans. 

Every. Single. One.

(Wanted to get married for the stability was something Donna said she thought was his reasoning, to the other original Titans. The bit about thinking it would help him grow up was unfortunately ALSO Donna, but said to Kory before the wedding when Kory asked if she thought this was a mistake and if she thought Dick had proposed for the right reasons. The milestones thing was said by either Roy, Garth or Wally, I honestly forget which, but it was when the three of them went out to discuss the pending government takeover of the team and how to break this to Dick with everything else going on).

And with not a SINGLE one of these opinions present in ANY of Dick’s internal monologues BEFORE the proposal, hinting that they were anywhere near being on his radar at THAT point.

So....which makes more narrative sense? That Dick ultimately just realized that everything he THOUGHT was motivating him when he proposed was NOT true and that it was only his friends that clued into his actual reasons, which he must have overheard at some point and internalized in order to have replicated said opinions in his thoughts so exactly? Again with ZERO mention alongside any of this, that peoples’ views of what happened with Mirage was at ALL a factor in his thinking?

Or.....does it maybe better track, that over the course of Dick repeatedly expressing that he didn’t know it wasn’t Kory, that he never wanted to cheat on her, that he loved her and only her and would never knowingly do that....with NO ONE budging and everyone from Kory to all of his best friends acting like his adulterous guilt was an over and done with conclusion and they’d already long since moved on to the point of how willing or not they were to forgive him, based on everything else he’d been going through.....and with Dick thinking that how remorseful he appeared to be and how willing to ACCEPT accountability was likely to play a part in how much people were willing to look past all his recent fuck-ups here.......

Does it maaaaaaaybe actually make a little bit more sense that Dick’s total 180 into taking full responsibility and coming up with all these rationalizations for his actions that essentially just mimic theories everyone else had for his behavior has more to do with his deeply internalized acceptance that nobody was listening to his side of the story or what he was actually trying to say (without even real SELF awareness at the time that what he was feeling wasn’t just ‘I’m innocent of what you’re accusing me of’ but ‘I was violated and used’)?

That it was more about him finding ways to justify to himself getting on the same page everyone else ALREADY seemed to be on in regards to him and his recent behavior, as that seemed to be the only way to move forward, that he was tired of fighting everybody and feeling like he was in the wrong for it so honestly, maybe they were right?

Because from there.....

Its only a veeeeeery short hop, skip and a jump from “well I guess I DID do what they say and I SHOULD have known it wasn’t Kory”.....to.....”since the only thing I kept clinging to for how I couldn’t know was my insistence that I truly loved Kory, and it turns out that I still SHOULD have known anyway......doesn’t that mean that I didn’t really love Kory the way I thought I did? Or as much as I thought I did?”

“Did I never really love Kory as much as she deserved?”

Cuz uh, remember earlier when I talked about it being significant that Dick never ACTUALLY claimed during this time that he didn’t love Kory anymore or fell out of love with her or anything like that, but rather that his precise claim was “I didn’t love her AS MUCH AS SHE DESERVED”?

Aka.....”enough that I would have known it wasn’t actually Kory that I was with?”

Yeah. Uh, that. That’s the significance there. Yeah. So....

2) Now as to something else to keep in mind in regards to Dick’s eventual ‘self-realizations’ - this calls back to when I said earlier that Dick WAS acting erratically during this time, stemming all the way back to the Titans Hunt aftermath. He was overly aggressive, he was ready to fight anyone at a moment’s notice, he was tunnel-visioned.....in short, he was actually quite a lot how the fanon interpretations of his temper I rage about usually depict him. But the key thing here, and the reason why I wouldn’t have a problem with people drawing references from THIS time when talking about him behaving this way.....

Is that much like when Dick was behaving erratically during the Brother Blood storyline, it was with NARRATIVE INTENT.

There, Dick’s behavior led to the reveal that he was lashing out because he was fighting the Church of Blood’s mental conditioning. Here, Dick’s behavior is directly tied to his downward spiral resulting from the trauma of Titans Hunt and his guilt from that.

In both cases, I’d have zero issue with people referencing specific instances of this behavior....

As long as they ALSO reference and acknowledge the specific narrative context that was directly CONNECTED to that behavior. Its not about whether or not it excuses any specific thing he does, its about the fact that while these behaviors did happen, they shouldn’t be depicted as indicative of his OVERALL characterization, because they were specifically and deliberately written into his actions WITH INTENT by the writers, who were trying to use his DELIBERATELY out of the ordinary behavior to arrive at some narrative point or conclusion.

And here, for Dick, that was the eventual realization that he’d never fully dealt with his feelings about the losses during the Titans Hunt.

I don’t like how he acts in a lot of the issues around this time. Its ugly. But its MEANT to be ugly. I don’t like Dick’s fight with Roy when he tells him about taking over leadership because of the government’s interference. I don’t like it AT ALL. 

But what I DO like is how the very next page after the fight, after Donna follows Dick out of the room, Dick turns around and acknowledges how out of control he’d just been and said he felt it proved that everyone was right, things HAD gotten to him more than he’d realized or admitted to himself, and it probably was a sign he needed to take a step back, and besides, Kory needed him more than the team did right now anyway.

THAT’S one of the core things I like about Dick Grayson, that almost without exception, his worst actions or behaviors are almost immediately followed by his realization of this and a tangible action or change in his actions to address it. That’s not something every character can claim - in fact, its unfortunately pretty damn rare.

But here’s the problem with that, in this specific scenario:

Dick WAS spiraling, he DID act out in ways he was right to be called out on and to feel guilt about, and there WAS basis for him acknowledging that there was stuff he needed to address in his life and his head, and to take responsibility for.

Thing is though, nobody else at any point ever stood up to point to where in his willingness to hold himself accountable for his mistakes and try and do better in regards to his friends and teammates and overall relationships....

He additionally took on guilt that WASN’T deserved. Because the other Titans were the ones who in their overall rush to judgment about his behavior and the reasons why.....still erroneously lumped in with the rest, their conclusion as to how the situation with Mirage should be viewed.

And frankly, though this doesn’t make them look good, there’s plenty of places you can go with that which don’t make them heartless monsters either. They were wrong, not to listen to him about Mirage, and I maintain that this tangibly WORSENED his already existing downward spiral from Titans Hunt, because that was already stuff he really could have benefited from support for the others from....and then this other thing happened that he additionally really needed support about, rather than blame.

Problem is, the overall impression given off by the other Titans was that they thought they already WERE doing their best to be supportive, by being so willing to look PAST ‘what Dick had done with Mirage’ and FORGIVE Dick for that, make allowances for why it and other decisions they didn’t agree with, like his rush to marriage, might make sense based on what they were attributing as the reason for his out of character behavior....the fallout from Titans Hunt...but ONLY that.

Like to be clear, I’m aware that there is a flip side of things in fanon, where some stans overcorrect on Dick’s behalf and act like the Titans all universally slut-shamed Dick and were terrible to him. No. That’s not what happened either. There was ONE slut-shaming Titan and ONLY one....and that was Pantha, who to be frank, like.....she was literally written to be the button pusher in regards to everyone. She likely would have said the same thing no matter who was in that situation, because she honestly didn’t care, she was just interested in making the cheap jokes at their expense.

The other Titans though did not adopt a slut-shaming stance against Dick...just a victim-blaming one. Which makes some things better, but some things worse IMO.

Its easier to understand how they could have all fallen into this trap despite all being seasoned heroes who should have known better than to view these specific events the way they did....if you consider that their fatal flaw here was ironically that they were SO quick to try and find a reason that Dick might have done this that they felt they could forgive....that they never actually thought things through long enough to recognize how quick on the draw they’d been in their reactions. And then they failed to listen to Dick’s side of things because they’d kinda convinced themselves that they were ALREADY doing him a favor and hearing him out by having decided to look past what he’d done and make allowances for it....and so they kinda filtered everything he was saying through a lens of like...waiting for him to catch up to what they’d already decided had happened and onto the part where he did the Dick Grayson thing and apologized and accepted responsibility for it....at which point they, as his friends, would be honestly able to say “already forgiven, dude.”

You could additionally factor in the idea that their very respect for his capabilities and high opinion of his overall ‘on the ball-ness’ made what had happened easy to view as something that’d just slipped past his radar, a rare oversight that again, he could be forgiven for, rather than what it was....again, something that he should never have been expected to ‘catch’ in the first place, any more than they would have been.

Either way, the real problem was always just that they failed to support him in the ways he actually needed, because they were already busy forgiving him for things he didn’t actually need forgiveness for because they were never his to accept blame for in the first place. But then BECAUSE Dick was already primed to accept the blame for what he WAS right to accept responsibility for, he overextended and took on everything that was held against him, rather than first differentiating between where a mea culpa both was and WAS NOT due.

No matter how you slice it, the Titans WERE wrong on this front, and Dick absolutely DOES have canon grounds to nurse some bitterness and resentment about, towards them. Again, with a lot of ways that can be approached. Personally, when I think about fics tackling this subject, my big want is always gonna be like.....confrontation fics? Like that’s what I’ve always really wanted to see here....like there’s a lot of obviously valid catharsis to be had in fics that have someone walk Dick through what a more objective view of what happened back then and let him finally unburden himself of all that unearned guilt there...BUT all the focus there is typically on that realization of the truth for DICK, that like....there’s almost never any follow-up where that realization is further pursued and extended to the relevant Titans? And tbh, I’ve always viewed that as the far greater ‘crime’ this story executed in regards to Dick’s character....not an overall obliviousness to his own victimization, period, but the fact that he was basically pushed into ACCEPTING a culpable view of events when actually, he’d always KNOWN on some level that it wasn’t really his fault and he had every reason to feel repulsed and angry and violated.

Like, I do obviously view Dick as someone with a large degree of self-awareness, in no small part due to how often he DOES do these introspective deep dives and reflect on events and actions and behaviors, and even though I understand the viewpoint that things look different when applied to yourself than to others, I do think its perfectly likely that Dick would at some point come to his own realization about what had actually happened with Mirage and why he’d initially felt the way he did about it. Maybe not before the events with Tarantula, but in the aftermath? I think he absolutely would connect certain things then, even if just because of how FAMILIAR everything felt to that earlier time post-Titans Hunt. The Blockbuster arc was like, the most rock bottom Dick had ever been SINCE that point, and various similarities could have definitely been pinging all over for him....the losses he suffered reminding him of his guilt for the fallen Titans, the end of Dick and Babs’ relationship, while based on more reasons than just Tarantula kissing Dick, like, still including that as a reason and so thus bearing an uncomfortable similarity to the last time he was held accountable for his rapist and now eventual rapist’s actions, etc.

And I do think that Dick having some realizations of his own post-Blockbuster could explain a LOT about his later interactions with the Titans, who I honestly don’t think he was ever quite as close to again?

Which makes a ton of sense if you view the 1999 series, and how difficult it was for them to get Dick to join up, and how he was plenty ready to leave at any point...like, that makes a TON of sense if you consider that Dick might have at this point been quietly nursing hurt of his own that everyone was so eager and willing to let bygones be bygones and ‘forgive’ his mistakes of the past, that nobody still had ever realized what he’d had to realize all on his own....that THEY all had a perception of events and like, their friendships, that included forgiving Dick for a betrayal that Dick NEVER ACTUALLY ENACTED. Where its like, thanks, but I didn’t actually need that, what I needed was someone to listen to me. But at the same time its totally understandable why he wouldn’t ever want to bring that up himself....because he’d already TRIED expressing himself on this matter years before, and been shot down, and its totally reasonable that he worried history would just repeat there rather than bring him the closure he WANTED on that front. But again....the distance he keeps a lot of the Titans at after his return to the team pairs pretty damn well with him being both quietly resentful of forgiveness he never needed and wondering when it was everyone else’s turn to accept the accountability for wrongs done that everyone was always so quick to demand from him....as well as why the last thing in the world he’d want to do is bring this all up again himself.

Similarly, this is why I think he always expressed to Kory, ever since her return to Earth, that he wasn’t in love with her anymore.....I don’t think its necessarily true that his feelings ever fully went away, and I also don’t think he’d bear the same resentments towards her that he did the others, even though Kory too ‘forgave’ him for something he never needed absolution for. Because I think at the same time, he’s more aware than most of Kory’s own history, and he has too much empathy for what all that likely stirred up for her at the time as well as his awareness that she really did love him and always had and that she’d mourned their relationship just as much as he had. 

So I truly don’t think Dick blames her, in ways that can’t be said of the others, and I don’t think it was truly that he didn’t love her anymore, or that there was no longer anything there....I think he always just said that in order to protect himself, because he was still hurting from everything that had happened back then and how everyone had always painted it as his fault ever since, and his own traumas had only compounded those very specific feelings with later events like Tarantula and her impact on his life, and its just like......I think if it ever came out via someone else re-raising the issue, Dick would be like okay, yes, absolutely let’s finally talk about this....but I totally understand why Dick would never want to re-raise it himself because....he definitely did TRY to express his violation way back when. Why should he be the one to have to essentially.....retry his own case with his friends in order to finally get the verdict he should have had all along, y’know? 

Its one thing to get that its probably never going to happen without initiating it himself, but its another thing for that to get you past the hump of just not wanting to relive some of your worst moments when your best friends not believing in you or being so willing to believe something about you in some ways did just as much damage to you as the actual initial violation.

But again, all that said, I would absolutely like, rob the Louvre (Okay I’d also rob the Louvre just for money but like. You get it) for stories where one of the Titans has an ‘oh shit’ realization about everything with Mirage years later. And they tentatively try and bring it up with Dick in the hopes of ‘fixing things’ by correcting the damage they’d done when making him feel it was his to accept blame on.....and for Dick to just be like. “Yeah, uh, I was there. I figured all that out a long time ago, I just didn’t see the point in trying to convince everybody twice.” And them like....being like oh crap we have to figure out a way to make things right, like all this time we’ve thought things were kinda broken between us because of what Dick did but actually it was the other way around and about Dick’s feelings about what WE did.

Okay now like....don’t laugh but I’m literally still not done, because I had this whole other thing about how now we needed to finally talk about the Zitka in the room, which is that IMO its always been kinda backwards to view Tarantula as the focal point of Dick’s traumas here and what happened with Mirage as some kind of footnote kinda....personally I think it should be the other way around. That its Mirage that weighs on Dick the most because what she did was premeditated where with Catalina it was a crime of opportunity. With Miriam though, it was always going to happen no matter what, because it only happened because she MADE it happen. She like....stalked Dick pretty much from the time of her arrival in this timeline (or at least how that initially was viewed - the timeline thing, not the stalking thing. Forget it. Weird story is weird. Doesn’t matter). But like....Mirage went after Dick with intent. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she was willing to do whatever to make it happen, up to and including kidnapping Dick’s actual girlfriend and taking her place.

With Tarantula, like, she was more than quick to seize on the first opportunity to make it happen, but like...that’s still a different thing IMO from like...KNOWING that someone literally plotted out and premeditated one of the most disruptive traumas of your life without any care for what it would DO to your life, and you later carrying all the blame for that in everyone else’s eyes without anyone ever acknowledging what it did to YOU....even though MULTIPLE people know and its even affected your overall reputation. With Tarantula....I think that trauma absolutely compounded everything else that happened with Blockbuster but it was hardly limited to just that, but again with Mirage....that one specific act pretty much derailed the entire course of Dick’s life at the time. Because again....while you could absolutely claim that there are other issues Dick and Kory might have broken up because of later, even without Mirage’s actions, like....you have to MAKE the case for those reasons. You can’t just attribute their breakup to rushing into marriage, when again....Mirage was the literal catalyst for Dick proposing when he did.

Which again, to bring it all back to the start.....that’s why it will forever make me channel Gar Logan and turn into a green-hued screeching howler monkey every time people are like I absolutely agree that its not okay to blame Dick for his own rape at Mirage’s hands....but then turn around and be like okay, but Dick and Kory did break up because Dick rushed them into marriage before they were ready.

Cuz.

Like.

THEY’RE THE EXACT SAME THING!

The one is just the other but described from a different vantage point.

faslkfhaklfhaklfhkalfha

I get if people didn’t know that before now, but please please please can we like....push back against the misinformation on this particular topic because omggggg is it unpleasant to repeatedly hear people contradict themselves in the same paragraphs half the time because they literally don’t know that they’re talking about the same events in both cases.

Believe it or not, I actually had a lot more about Mirage and about other ways things could have gone differently for Dick and Kory if he’d had even just a little more support from someone else at the time, whether from Bruce or even just one of the Titans, like all it would have taken was just ONE person to try and view things from Dick’s perspective and be like okay everyone hold up, some bad fucking conclusions have been arrived at here.

BUT I am tired and this is long and literally just...whatever. I’ll do that some other time. LOL. And I bounce.

#first person to try and tell me the wordcount of this is getting blocked I swear to fucking god

[saintapoptosis]

Dark Entries: A Goth Music Overview

The tags on that aux cord post are really grinding my gears on this Monday evening so I’m making it my responsibility to educate people on this site as to what goth music actually is. I know this is going to get on some people’s nerves and generate some discourse because the “what is goth?” debate never seems to end, but at the end of the day I’m just some stranger on the internet who’s not even old enough to be in most goth clubs in my country. This is just my interpretation and explanation of it all for the curious. 

The long and short of it is that goth is a music based subculture. there’s no requirement to being goth other than listening to the music- which seems to be what’s confusing a surprisingly high people on this site. i’m not going to judge you for calling mother mother or my chemical romance goth up until this point. the subculture is largely underground and obscure by nature. Popular legend has it that the goth scene was born in 1979 when British rock band Bauhaus released the nine-minute long single Bela Lugosi’s Dead, but if you ask me that oversimplifies how it all started and isn’t even their best classic goth song. Goth is better understood as a progression from the punk explosion of the late 70s to what came after: the aptly named post-punk genre and beyond. Goth wasn’t the only genre that came from post-punk- new wave, shoegaze, and most alternative rock as we know it did too! Post-punk (British post-punk specifically) was and continues to be a lot of things compared to punk: noisier, faster, slower, stripped-down, more “intellectual”, weirder, and more emotional than early punk rock (the early British goth scene was also heavily linked to one particular club in London called the Batcave which just makes sense). Bands like Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, the Cure and the Sisters of Mercy also brought a dark, gloomy feel to the experimental do-it-yourself attitude of post-punk and are widely considered to be the founding gothic rock bands. Groups like Xmal Deutschland, Clan of Xymox, Sex Gang Children, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, and Pink Turns Blue are also hugely important to understanding the sound of the early scene (as well as the look) but didn’t achieve the same mainstream success.

But to make matters more complicated, there’s more than one goth “genre” because none of this is simple and no one agrees on this stuff in the scene. The usual laundry list of “goth” genres is as follows: gothic/goth rock, post-punk (widely contested ), darkwave, ethereal wave, deathrock, coldwave, and sometimes industrial. Angela Benedict explains it well in this video. Deathrock in particular is interesting because it was basically the “American version” of goth music and subculture for a long time and is widely called “too punk for goth and too goth for punk”. Darkwave and industrial are products of the scene getting its start in the early 80s when synthesizers became commercially available. Whether or not industrial in particular counts as “goth” or not is one of the quickest ways to start a fight among goths and also because nobody seems to be able to agree on what’s “real” industrial music. Metal isn’t widely considered to be goth music proper but I have yet to meet a goth who doesn’t like at least a little bit of metal. Historically that crossover didn’t really happen until metal started getting more creative as well (after all, the 80s were the golden age of fratty hair metal and toxic masculinity and neither of those things mesh well with goth style and sensibilities). 

Now that I’m done rambling about the early history of the goth scene, here’s some short answers to the inevitable goth faqs:

Isn’t goth also about aesthetic and fashion?

Yes, but they can’t be fully separated from the music and community. The music generally inspires the fashion and we really like copying the outfits, hair, and makeup of musicians. Goths don’t own in dressing in all black and there’s plenty of goths out there who don’t “dress like it” (including myself and MANY goth and post-punk musicians).

Are you all satanists/pagans/witches? Are you all kinky?

More often than the average person but it’s more a consequence of being in a counterculture community than anything else. Goth and alternative women aren’t your fetish or your future “big titty goth gf”. We just like a certain style of music and just happen to dress weirdly sometimes.

Why don’t more people know that goth is about music?

Goth music generally doesn’t sell well because so much of it is too abrasive or weird and most artists are pretty far underground. Goth musicians also had a habit of denying involvement with “the goth scene” early on and goths, punks, metalheads, and emos are generally lumped together in mainstream media. Gothic fashion is much easier to rip off and sell than the subculture itself is. You (and more likely than not) your parents have probably heard and enjoyed semi-“goth” music before if you like Depeche Mode or The Cure.

How do I get into the goth subculture? 

Listen to the music. Spotify’s Dark and Gothic playlist is surprisingly good and I’m partial to this massive Spotify user-created playlist of old and new bands and this mix on Youtube with lesser-known bangers. Goth music varies widely but a fuckton of it is made to be danced to because we hang out in clubs a lot of the time. The map below isn’t quite accurate but may be able to help you find your local community be it a club or a nonprofit organization! It’s fine to be confused and it’s perfectly alright to ease into it slowly without worrying about how to dress. 

Where’s Your Goth At? A Worldwide Map of Goth Clubs and Events

Why do you guys like vampires so much?

They represent the pain and suffering of the human experience in a way that humans don’t plus Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire came out in the 80s and Bauhaus and David Bowie were in a movie about vampires. They also just straight up look cool.

More resources:

Before Bauhaus: How Goth Became Goth - a history of the dark music that paved the way for the scene. this channel has a couple more goth history videos.

Poseurs, Elitists, and Goth - a good explanation for why listening to goth music matters as well as why being a hardass about listening to the “right” goth music sucks. also very entertaining and made by @cadaverkelly who’s posted a TON of goth music on this site and has an entire channel dedicated to the subculture. 

The Music of the Goth Subculture: Postmodernism and Aesthetics - an academic paper for nerds like me to parse through that has a ton of context and analysis on the goth movement and its origins.

#goth music #80s goth #goth subculture #goth #gothic #zemmoa.txt #what prescription adderall does to a mfer #long post #bauhaus #the cure #joy division #post-punk #siouxsie and the banshees #new wave #music history #punk

[capseycartwright]

but at the cost I payed, I'm pretty sure I got screwed

buck wasn't exactly sure how to process the fact he'd been lied to, his entire life - that his parents had forced maddie to keep such a fundamental part of his past, his life, from him. but - at least he wasn't alone.

or - eight conversations between buck and his true family as he comes to terms with the existence of the brother he never knew he had. set post 4x04

ao3 link

i. albert

Buck had forgotten that Albert would be home, when he managed to stumble through his own front door – breath catching in his chest as he tried to process the bombshell Maddie had just dropped on his life. Maybe – maybe it was rude of him, cruel to forget that he shared his apartment with the younger man, that Albert lived on his couch, but Buck had forgotten, and how he wasn’t sure of a kind way to tell Albert that if he had to have a conversation with another human being, there and then, that he would scream.

And he might not be able to stop screaming.

Albert was looking at him with genuine concern written all over his face, sliding the pan he was using to cook off the hob, so it wouldn’t burn. “Are you okay, Buck?” he asked, and Buck knew he could talk to Albert, and he would try to understand; burdened by his own family issues in ways that would make it easier to admit the insanity of the Buckley family aloud.

But Buck couldn’t.

“That’s kind of a loaded question, Albert,” Buck managed to choke the words out, anxiety clawing at his chest.

Albert inclined his head slightly. “Okay,” he conceded. “Are you well enough to be here, alone – or as alone as you can be with me, here,” he grinned slightly at his own words. “Or do you need me to call someone?”

“I don’t think I know,” Buck admitted, forcing himself to sit at the kitchen table, his blood thundering in his ears as he tried to process everything.

He had a brother. He has a brother – even if that brother wasn’t alive, anymore. Buck had a brother – he wasn’t the only Buckley boy, like he’d believed for so much of his life. For twenty-nine years, he’d thought Maddie was his only sibling, but she wasn’t, and Buck’s entire world felt like it had been spun on its axis and nothing made sense, anymore; but somehow everything made more sense than it ever had before, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with that.

Albert pushed a glass of water toward him, a kind look on his face.

“I don’t think I can talk about it, yet,” Buck admitted, the cool condensation dripping down the side of the glass – a housewarming gift from Hen and Karen, glasses nicer than he’d ever buy himself, if he was being honest – grounding in the way it reminded Buck that he wasn’t dreaming, the glass wet to touch.

“That’s okay,” Albert shrugged. “I can talk, instead, if you want.”

Buck could have cried, with relief. “Yeah, that would be great, Albert.”

Albert grinned. “Okay,” he nodded, moving his pan back onto the hob. “So – I had an online class, today, and one of my classmates, they were clearly not paying attention, but as it turns out, they had taken a series of photos of themselves, and were playing it as a video……..”

Buck forced himself to focus on Albert’s words, his roommate talking about the perfectly mundane happenings of his day, how his online classes went, how their neighbour down the hall still firmly believed he and Buck were a couple, and how its quite sweet, really, because she’s trying her hardest to make sure that they know she accepts them, and she’ll be dropping by a loaf of banana bread, in the morning.

It wasn’t until Albert set a bowl down in front of Buck, a simple pasta dish that made Buck’s stomach growl in acknowledgement of how hungry he was, that Buck spoke, looking at his roommate – his friend – with watery eyes.

“Thank you,” Buck managed to sputter out.

Albert shrugged. “You need to eat,” he said, pushing a fork toward Buck. “My grandmother – she always said that the problems of the world looked a little less daunting, when you looked at them with a full stomach.”

“I don’t just mean for the food,” Buck croaked, though he was grateful for the food – because he wasn’t sure if he had the mental energy to try and make himself dinner, to remember how to cook any of the ingredients that sat in his well-stocked kitchen. “I mean – for taking me out of my head, for a minute.”

Albert smiled, in that endearingly sincere way he always did, Chimney’s brother always one to wear his heart on his sleeve. “What are roommates for?”

ii. bobby

It’s not as though Buck particularly wanted to tell Bobby, about what was going on – but after the incident at the fire, after the way Buck had been acting, he knew he had to, he knew that he had to admit to his boss what was happening. He’d been insufferable to work with, Buck knew, and his boss was owed an explanation.

What Buck hadn’t expected was Bobby’s reaction. It wasn’t – it wasn’t the reaction of a Captain, a professional acknowledgement of a personal trauma that Buck wasn’t able to compartmentalise and leave at home, like he was supposed to, it was the reaction of a friend, Bobby pulling Buck in for a determined, bone-crushing hug.

“I’m so sorry, Buck,” Bobby’s voice was calm, against the sea of static that was buzzing in Buck’s head, something Buck could cling to as he stood, still as a statue, in Bobby’s embrace.

“You didn’t do anything,” Buck found himself saying, confused.

Bobby pulled back, hands on Buck’s shoulders. “I can be sorry, even if I didn’t have a role to play in this,” he said. “Buck, I’m sorry for you as your friend – what your parents hid from you, it was cruel. You didn’t deserve to be lied to like that.”

Buck swallowed his tears, focusing his gaze on one of the photos hanging on the back wall of Bobby’s office. “Their kid died,” he said, voice robotic as he voiced the sentence he’d practiced over, and over. “I can’t blame them.”

“Yes, you can,” Bobby’s voice was fierce. “Buck – I had to bury my own children. That is a pain I will never forget, and one I will live with for the rest of my life. I can’t even begin to describe to you what that grief, the grief of losing a child, feels like, and I hope you never, ever understand it,” he said. “But I have never put the burden of that grief on May, or Harry. Your parents had no right to force you, and Maddie, to bear their grief in the way they did. It was wrong. It is wrong.”

Buck hated how easily he was crying – how easily he’d always been reduced to tears, too soft, too emotional, not enough of a tough guy to please his father. “It was?” his voice was tiny as he spoke, unsure if he could take Bobby’s words at face value. Was Bobby saying that just to placate him? To make it so he could suck it up, and work?

“Yes, Buck,” Bobby’s voice was firm. “It was wrong – and no one in this team is going to begrudge you the time you need to process this. We’re your family, and we’re here for you. Okay? I’m here for you Buck, whatever you need.”

Buck hadn’t been hugged a lot, as a kid – not by his parents, at least. That was a pitifully sad thing to admit, but it was the truth – for all the ways Maddie had been kind, and affectionate, pressing kisses to Buck’s curls and hugging him close, his parents had been cold, and physically distant, never giving Buck more than a pat on the shoulder.

He knew why, now. They looked at him and all they saw was Daniel – all they ever saw was the son who would forever be twelve, frozen in time. They had watched him grow up, and maybe he was tolerable, when he was younger, when he was going through all the same phases that Daniel had – but as soon as Buck had turned thirteen, and lived longer than the brother he didn’t know existed, his parents had kept their distance more, and more, and then Maddie had left, and Buck had been left to crave physical affection, taking that intimacy wherever he could get it, regardless of the impact it had on him, regardless of how it would all leave him feeling even lonelier, when it was over.

But –

Bobby was a dad.

Not his dad –

But someone’s dad.

“Could I…” Buck cut himself off, embarrassed. “Could I have another hug, Bobby?”

Bobby’s eyes were sad, and full of sympathy – but not pity, Buck noted. “Yeah, kid,” Bobby said, pulling him in for a hug, Buck forced to stoop a little, to match Bobby’s height, comfortable in the embrace, this time. “You can have a hug.”

iii. hen

“Hey there, Buckaroo.”

Buck looked up to see Hen approaching him, doughnut in hand.

“You were missing out on the sugar delivery,” Hen explained, hanging him the plate. “So I snagged you your favourite flavour.”

Buck wanted to cry. “You didn’t have to do that, Hen.”

Hen shrugged, sliding down the wall so she was sitting on the concrete next to him, the bright sun of the Los Angeles afternoon beating down on them, the corner they were sitting in slightly secluded, distant from the noise of the firehouse that Buck normally thrived in – just, not today.

“I wanted to,” she said, taking a bite of her own doughnut – cinnamon sugar, Buck noted, her favourite. She’d always been the one to support Buck’s belief that simple was best, when it came to doughnuts, never making fun of Buck’s preference for plain old raspberry jelly flavour; unlike Chimney and the rest of the team, who favoured the hipster doughnut place around the corner from the station, and all the weird flavours they sold.

“Because you feel sorry for me?” Buck found himself asking.

“Because you’re my friend,” Hen corrected, nudging Buck’s knee with her own. “And I can see you’re hurting, Buck, so I wanted to do something nice for you.”

Buck knew he didn’t look the best, rocking up to their shift that morning – his eyes were red raw from crying, because he was in that stage of processing it all, now (Dr. Copeland had assured him that crying was a perfectly healthy trauma response, but Buck was tired of Albert’s quietly concerned looks, because apparently even crying alone in his shower didn’t guarantee privacy in the tiny space they co-existed in.)

He just hadn’t realised he looked that bad.

“I guess you know, then,” Buck murmured, poking at his doughnut. He’d given Bobby permission to tell the team, if he felt it was appropriate – he just hadn’t been able to face the prospect of telling them himself.

“No,” Hen’s voice was firm. “Whatever is going on with you, is your story to tell, Buck. Unless you want to tell me, I have no intention of finding out what is happening.”

Buck shot her a confused look.

“Chimney, he gave me the impression that whatever you’ve found out, is something that was kept from you by the people you love most in the world, and you didn’t have a choice in who found out, because Maddie told him first, and when – and when you got trapped, in that fire, Chimney panicked and told some of the team,” Hen said, explaining what Buck already knew – what Chimney had already desperately apologised for, terrified that Buck’s newfound knowledge of his dead brother had pushed him from resident daredevil to on the verge of suicidal.

Buck didn’t blame him, really.

“I didn’t hear the secret, at the fire,” Hen said. “And I asked Bobby not to tell me. I want you to be able to tell at least one person, on your own terms, if you want to tell me. And if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay too – I just want you to have the option. I’m happy to be the friend who doesn’t know, if that’s what you need.”

Hen’s sincerity was making Buck want to cry again, his friend looking at him earnestly as she spoke. He knew that if he asked her, Hen would do her best to never find out what Buck’s secret was – Hen was good with secrets – and Buck wasn’t sure how to voice his appreciation out loud in a way that felt appropriate for the magnitude of what Hen was offering him.

Peace.

The power to take control of his own situation.

Buck hadn’t felt in control from the moment he had picked up that photograph of Daniel, and Maddie had admitted who it was, but now, for a second, at least, he felt in control.

“I had a brother,” Buck admitted, hot, angry tears rolling down his cheeks. “I had a brother, and they never told me – they kept him from me. For my whole life, they kept him from me, Hen.”

“Oh, Buck,” Hen’s voice was thick with emotion as she spoke. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

“I know – I know it wouldn’t have change the fact he died, when I was a baby,” Buck continued, managing to talk about it, even just a little, for the first time since he’d found out. “But I deserved to know, Hen.”

“Yes, you did,” Hen was fierce in her agreement. “They had no right to keep his existence from you, Buck.”

“It explains it, you know,” Buck glanced at Hen, the protectiveness that was written all over her face making his heart twist in his chest. “Why they never loved me, not really – I was never Daniel.”

“I’m not even going to pretend to understand your parents,” Hen said, wrapping her arms around Buck’s shoulders, pulling him close, running a hand through his curls, the same way Maddie used to, when he was younger. “But I’ll tell you something for nothing, Buck; I love you. I love you like a brother, and I know its not the same, but I love you. And loving you has been damn easy, from the moment you stepped into this fire station – because you have a heart of goddamn gold, Buck. And your parents inability to see that is not your fault.”

Buck let out a shuddering sigh, leaning into the comforting embrace Hen was offering him. “I’m not sure if I believe you, Hen.”

“That’s okay,” Hen reassured. “I’ll keep reminding you until you do.”

“You will?”

“I will,” Hen confirmed. “Because that’s what family does, Buck. Now – eat your doughnut before we get called out.”

iv. chimney

Buck hated the tentative way that his friend – and teammate, and future brother-in-law, probably – approached him, looking nervous. He hated it – and he hated how he didn’t have it in him to put a stop to it, just yet.

“Hey, Buck,” Chimney greeted.

Buck paused what he was doing, the chrome of the ladder truck already gleaming from the thorough polish he had given it. “Are you here as my sisters boyfriend, Chimney, or my friend?”

“As your friend,” Chimney answered without a second’s hesitation, which Buck had to admit he appreciated.

“Okay,” Buck put the polish down entirely, nodding. “Because I’m not ready to talk to Maddie about this yet.”

“She knows,” Chimney nodded, quiet for a second. “I wanted to talk to you as my friend, Buck, because – and I would walk through fire for your sister – you were my friend before I ever met Maddie, and I don’t want you to forget that. I care about you as more than just my girlfriends brother, Buck, and I’m – I’m sorry this is happening to you.”

Buck didn’t have a reason not to believe Chimney – really, he didn’t. “I’m still angry,” he admitted. “That you knew before I did. You had no right to know before I did, Chim.”

“I know,” Chimney agreed, rocking forward on his heels as he spoke. “I wish I didn’t know, Buck,” he said. “I wish I hadn’t found out before you. I – I said, from the moment I knew, that you deserved to know, but as much as it wasn’t my place to know before you, it wasn’t my place to tell you. It needed to come from Maddie, and your parents.”

Buck nodded. It was true – that it would have been worse to hear it from Chimney, and not Maddie, or his mom and dad. Of all the people to hear it from, Chimney would have been the worst one. It should have come from his parents, really – from the people who’d forced a child, their daughter, to keep their older brother’s existence a secret their entire lives. Maddie had been nine, when she’d been forced to pretend Daniel had never existed. She couldn’t have possibly understood the consequences of their parents refusal to acknowledge that Daniel had been a part of their lives, once.

“I know,” Buck said finally. “I know, Chim. I just – I can’t pretend like I’m feeling all that logical, about all of this. I’m trying – I’m just not there yet.”

Chimney’s expression was genuinely understanding. “You don’t need to be logical about this, Buck,” he shook his head. “You’re entitled to deal with this and grieve – and be angry as hell – in whatever way works best for you. I just – I wanted to know that I’m here for you, that I’m your friend. And if you need to talk to me, I can be your friend – and just your friend, not Maddie’s boyfriend. What we talk about, it stays between me and you, Buck.”

Buck gave Chimney a grateful smile. “Thank you, Chim,” he said, awkwardly wringing his polish rag between his hands, twisting, and pulling, the material taut in his hands. “I just don’t think I’m ready to talk about it with anyone, yet.”

And that was the truth of it –

Buck wasn’t ready to talk about it with anyone, not his friends, not Maddie, not even with his therapist – not yet.

“Then let’s talk about something else,” Chimney said, grabbing another polish rag, smirking at Buck. “Like your terrible polish job.”

Buck glared good-naturedly at Chimney. “I’m not a probie anymore, Chim, don’t start this.”

Chimney whistled cheerfully as he started to polish, grinning. “You’ll always be a probie to me, Buckaroo.”

v. athena

Buck hadn’t seen Athena in a while – their calls didn’t actually crossover, all that much, so it wasn’t all that unusual to have not seen her in a few weeks. A part of Buck was glad – and not because he didn’t love Athena, but he wasn’t sure if he could cope with seeing the anger she carried on his behalf in person. Buck didn’t like when other people felt burdened by his issues.

“Buck.”

Buck paused, halfway back to the truck. He couldn’t exactly ignore his Captain’s wife – or anyone, for that matter. Maddie (Maddie, always Maddie, not their parents) had raised him better than that, had raised him to be polite. “Hi, Athena.”

“I know you’re not ready to talk about it,” Athena said, hands on hips, stance fierce and protective and everything Buck never had in a mother. He was glad, May and Harry had her, at least. “But I wanted you to know – parents shouldn’t lie to their children the ways yours have lied to you. It’s cruel, and I’m sorry it happened to you, Buck.”

Buck didn’t quite know what to say. “Uh – thank you?”

“I’m not trying to overstep,” Athena raised her hands in surrender. “I’m not your mother. I’m your friend, though, Buck – and I’m someone’s mom, and I can’t stand the thought of you thinking that your parents did all this out of some twisted sense of protection for you, and Maddie. Parents – however hard – should teach you how to grieve. Not teach you to be invisible as a punishment for something you never knew happened.”

Buck nodded, shaking hands gripping tightly to his halogen. “You’re a great mom, Athena,” he said quietly.

“And you’re a great man, Evan Buckley,” Athena gave his elbow a squeeze. “I just thought you should hear that from someone today.”

vi. christopher

Buck had an armful of Christopher the second he walked through the front door of the Diaz household, the little boy flying at him, crutches and all. “Oh, hey, buddy,” Buck laughed, easily scooping a wriggling Christopher up, easing his crutches off of his arms so he could hug him properly.

“I’m glad you’re here, Buck!” Christopher said, grinning widely at Buck, his new braces glinting in the soft light of the evening, reminding Buck of how grown up the kid in his arms was getting – on the cusp of his teenage years, all too soon.

“I’m glad I’m here too, buddy,” Buck replied, holding Christopher close. He wasn’t even the kids dad – and he couldn’t imagine ever lying to him, like his parents had to him, couldn’t imagine doing anything except loving the little boy with everything he had.

“Dad said you’ve had a bad week,” Christopher said matter-of-factly. “So we have a surprise for you.”

“Oh, you do?” Buck gave Christopher a watery smile, flashing Eddie a confused look.

Eddie raised his hands in surrender. “It was all this guy,” he said proudly. “I just did the driving.”

Buck laughed, looking back at Christopher. “Where are we going, then?”

“Kitchen!”

Tossing a giggling Christopher over his shoulder, Buck made his way to the kitchen, Christopher chatting excitedly as he moved. Buck felt like he was going to cry – really, properly cry – when he spotted the feast of all of his favourite things on the Diaz kitchen table.

“We got all your favourites!” Christopher explained. “Popcorn, and chocolate – and pizza! And we’re going to watch Inside Out, because its your favourite film, and me and dad, we’re going to make sure you feel better, Buck.”

Buck wiped roughly at his eyes. This kid. “I already feel better, buddy.”

Christopher’s brow was furrowed. “But you’re crying.”

“People can cry when they’re happy, Chris,” Eddie explained, running a soothing hand down Buck’s back. “It doesn’t always mean someone is sad.”

“Your dad is right,” Buck confirmed. “I’m crying because I’m happy – and I’m very grateful to have such a thoughtful kid taking care of me.”

Christopher grinned again, patting a sticky hand against Buck’s cheek. “You’re gonna be o-kay, kid,” he beamed, and for the first time, Buck almost believed it.

vii. eddie

“He’s out like a light,” Buck said softly, half closing the porch door behind them – enough that they wouldn’t wake Christopher, with their conversation, but still open enough that they’d be able to hear if Christopher woke up in the night.

Christopher had insisted on Buck being the one to put him to bed, that night, despite how hard Eddie tried to get Christopher to give Buck a break – but Buck had enjoyed the routine of it all, if he was being honest, Christopher’s happy snorts as Buck (badly) danced around the bathroom while Christopher brushed his teeth making him forget the car-wreck his life was for a few minutes, at least.

Eddie nodded, nudging a beer toward Buck. “You spoil him, you know,” he said, not a hint of annoyance in his voice. “I know you read him two chapters of his book, not one.”

Buck hummed gratefully. “I know,” he said, voice dropping. “Kids deserve to be spoiled, a bit at least.”

“How are you doing Buck? Really?” Eddie asked, and Buck felt a dam inside him break – he’d kept everything he was feeling so bottled up, for so long, and all of a sudden, on his best friends back porch, it all came pouring out, tears cascading down his cheeks.

“I had a brother,” Buck hiccupped out, bordering on hysterical as he cried, Eddie moving quickly so he was crouching in front of Buck, soothing hands on Buck’s knees. “I had a brother, Eddie.”

Eddie’s face was twisted, a mixture of heartbreak and sympathy. “I know, Buck,” he soothed softly, gentle hands wiping at Buck’s tears, taking Buck’s hands in his own, grounding Buck in the new reality he had found himself in, the past few weeks – a world where he was suddenly the youngest of three siblings, the third Buckley, not the second.

“I always wanted a brother,” Buck admitted out-loud for the first time, unable to stop his tears, gripping tightly to Eddie’s hands. “I love – I love Maddie, but I always wanted a brother, too, and I had one, and I didn’t know, and I can’t stop thinking about how different life might have been if he was still around. He was ten years older than me.”

Eddie was quiet.

“His name was Daniel,” Buck said, shakily voicing his brothers name out-loud for the first time to someone other than maybe. “His name was Daniel, and he was ten years older than me, and I’d have been a really good brother to him, and that’s all I know, and I just – I wish I knew more.”

“You know,” Eddie’s voice was soft, and reassuring, comforting and grounding in ways that Buck wasn’t sure how he ever lived without before, his best friend the kind of anchor Buck needed, in his life. “I bet Maddie knows more.”

“Eddie….”

“I know it hurts,” Eddie squeezed Buck’s hands, his expression encouraging as Buck forced himself to look at the older man. “And it’s going to hurt for a long time, Buck, and I’m sorry for that – but you’re not alone in that hurt. Me, Chris, Hen – the others – we’re here, and we love you, and we’ll do our best to understand, but there’s one person in the world that shares this hurt with you.”

“But she knew, Eddie, she knew all along, and she didn’t tell me – and I know she was a kid and it wasn’t her fault, but it still hurts, because she got to know him and grieve him, and I didn’t.”

“Did she?” Eddie countered, wise as ever now he went to regular therapy. “She had to pretend he didn’t exist. To grieve properly – you need to talk about the person, about who they were, and Maddie didn’t get to do that. As much as she can help you get to know who Daniel was, you can help her grieve the brother she wasn’t allowed to remember. I can’t help you do that.”

Buck tightened his grip on Eddie’s hands. “I can’t, not yet,” he admitted hoarsely. “Not tonight.”

“No,” Eddie hummed his agreement. “Tonight its just you and me, and the rest of these beers, and as much crying as you want. Okay?”

Buck laughed. Back when he first met Eddie, he could never have imagined their friendship getting to this point – to where they could sit, and talk, and drink and cry together. Somehow, somewhere along the way, they’d created this safe space, together, and Buck had never been more grateful for his best friend than he was, there and then.

He had a brother.

And tonight – tonight was the first time he’d said that out loud and hadn’t felt bitter, and angry, about it. Tonight had been the first time he’d said those words out loud and wondered who the person was, who Daniel had been – instead of focusing on the lies, the hurt of it all.

That was progress.

Swallowing thickly, Buck wiped at his sore eyes. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he directed his question at Eddie.

“Anything?” Eddie’s lips quirked up in the beginnings of a smile.

“Anything,” Buck confirmed.

Eddie grinned. “Did you know - nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine?”

Buck snorted, the sound outrageously loud in the quiet of the evening. “I don’t want to know how you know that.”

(He knew – of course he knew. Eddie was the only person who knew exactly how to bring Buck out of his own head, with odd facts and quirky news articles, anything to distract Buck from the overwhelming noise of his own thoughts).

Eddie took a swig of his beer, smiling contently. “You’re not the only one who can know weird things.”

viii. maddie

When she opened the door, Maddie greeted Buck with a relief he didn’t feel deserving to be on the receiving end of.

“I’m sorry, Maddie.”

“No,” Maddie interrupted, pulling him close, clinging tightly to his shoulders, refusing to let her pregnant belly be an obstacle to squeezing the life out of Buck – and he couldn’t say he was opposed to a bone-crushing hug from his sister. “You don’t need to apologise, Buck, not to me – not about this. I should be apologising to you.”

Buck pressed his face into the material of Maddie’s cardigan, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume. She’d worn the same one since she was a teenager, and in the years when they weren’t in contact, Buck – well, he’d sometimes go to the perfume section of the department store, and sneak a sample, desperate to feel close to his sister, even if Doug had long since cut her off from him.

“I can’t hear you,” Maddie admitted, her voice soft as she ran a gentle hand through Buck’s hair.

“I said,” Buck pulled back slightly, Maddie’s tears reflecting his own. “I know we’ve got a lot to talk about – but uh, Maddie, will you tell me about him?”

Maddie brushed away a few stray tears of Buck’s before they had the chance to drip from his chin, nodding. “I’d really like that,” she confirmed, tugging Buck toward the couch. Her baby box was still on the coffee table, a photograph of Daniel – the same one Buck had found – propped up against the wood, another one next to it.

Of the three of them.

Buck looked as though he couldn’t be more than a few weeks old, in the photograph, Maddie proudly holding him in her arms, a little boy who was familiar, in so many ways, hair blond and bright like Buck’s had been, as a child – and unfamiliar in so many others, a kid who would forever be twelve years old.

“Is that us?” Buck asked, doing his best to fold his long limbs, curling himself up against Maddie, thinking back to when they were kids, and all the evenings they’d do the same – Buck curled up in her lap as they watched TV, or as Maddie soothed his tears after a fight with their parents. Her belly got in the way, a bit, and a part of Buck’s heart ached with the knowledge that someone else, his niece, would curl up in Maddie’s lap the same way he used to, in just a matter of months, but he pushed the thought aside.

“I told everyone you were my baby,” Maddie said, sounding like she was smiling. “Oh, I loved you so much from the moment you were born, Buck, and I wouldn’t let Daniel go near you – because you were mine.”

Buck didn’t try and stop his tears, now.

“He loved you just as much,” Maddie continued. “He would tell dad, how excited he was to be able to teach you to play soccer, one day, and ride a bike.”

All the things Maddie had taught him, in the end, Buck thought to himself.

“He picked your middle name,” Maddie continued. “Because he had a best friend called EJ, and he told mom and dad that you should have the same initials – Evan James - because you were going to be his new best friend.”

Closing his eyes, Buck let Maddie’s words wash over him, painting a picture of someone he would never have the chance to know – but loved, Buck thought, all the same, because Daniel couldn’t have known, how life would turn out without him, because he had only been a kid, when he died – and he wouldn’t have understood.

“He’d be proud of you, I think,” Maddie said quietly, pressing a kiss to Buck’s curls. “Because I am, Buck, I am so proud of you. You are not a disappointment. You are the greatest man I have ever known and I am so proud of you, and I love you, and I’ll tell everyone the same thing I told them when I was eight and I held you for the first time. You’re mine, Buck, not theirs.”

Buck nodded, not trusting himself to open his eyes. “I love you, Maddie.”

“I love you, little brother,” Maddie sounded like she was crying too, now. “We’re going to be okay.”

Buck –

Well, he didn’t have a reason not to believe his sister.

He wanted to believe her.

And maybe –

Just maybe.

He already did.

Yeah.

They would be okay.

#911 fox #evan buckley #maddie buckley #911 fic #in which i ramble #in which lorna writes fic #this is what i did instead of working this morning yes #don't @ me i;m overflowing with feelings after that episode

[j-reau]

There’s something I want to talk about that’s been sitting in my head for a few days now. I kept telling myself not to talk about because tumblr struggles with the line between feelings and drama, between change or growth and confrontation and vauging.

That’s not what this post is for me. It’s not drama or a vague post. It’s trying to work through how I feel, trying to talk to the community at large about stuff I think we can do better, or at least stuff I want for me and for my friends and writing partners. 

I think somewhere along the way, in its inability to wrestle with grey areas, tumblr as a whole lost the middle ground between self care and hurting others, and in doing so turned communication into confrontation. I’ll be clear about something to start this off; you don’t owe strangers on the internet anything. You don’t owe someone an explanation as to why you don’t follow them. You don’t owe a mutual an explanation as to why you write with someone else more or where your muse goes that day. You don’t owe anyone your time. You don’t owe anyone your mental health. Curating a safe space is important. Creating boundaries is healthy whether they’re for you or for someone else. I believe all of that to be true and I think that it’s important that on tumblr we absolve some people of the pressure put on them by themselves. I was once stalked by someone who I had never once talked to on this website who demanded to know why I wouldn’t write with them. I did not owe them explanation. Not for why I didn’t follow them and certainly not for why I eventually blocked them. And once they messaged me over and over from different accounts, my boundaries had been crossed and I felt very uncomfortable. So I understand the importance of making sure people know that that kind of pressure is fucked up. Because of my decision not to follow them, that person posted at length about how I was an elitist, unfriendly, etc. They even threatened self harm and guilt baited. And it is instances like that where I think it’s important that we make clear over and over and over that you don’t owe people an explanation. 

With all of that said, I think somewhere along the way we started applying all of those posts about how to deal with toxic people and strangers and started applying them to our friends. And that’s where things get uncomfortable for me and worth talking about for me. So I guess that’s what I want to do. Because to me, you absolutely owe your friends some communication. You owe your friends a reason. Even if it’s as simple as “hey I think I need some space, please don’t contact me for a while.” Relationships come and go and on a website like tumblr we get very close to some people fast, or we talk a lot and share a lot, not everyone is going to click. Not everyone is going to jive and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. But in relationships, communication is a crucial and important part of adult hood. Ignoring problems isn’t adult. Failing to communicate isn’t mature or conflict free. My best and closest friends are the people with which I can communicate. And in some relationships you’ll learn that your communication styles don’t match. And that’s okay too. But communication is important to any friendship, partnership, etc. Something as simple as “hey can we not talk about that? It makes me uncomfortable.” Something as simple as “will you do me a favor and blacklist your posts about _____ because seeing them makes me anxious.” Or even communicating needs for validation like “I’m feeling really sad and anxious today. It’s nothing you’re doing but could you give me a little reassurance?” Or “hey I’ve been busy this week. It’s not you but I need some space away from discord.” Communications don’t have to be arguments. They don’t have to be confrontations. They’re just expressing a feeling and allowing someone else to then accept the boundary or need you express and meet it, ask questions if they need to or whatever it may be. Like for example, “sure I can give you space. Do you want to just hit me up when you feel better or should I reach out in a few days?” 

I think maybe part of it is about how we place value on “friendships” and on partnerships writing on tumblr. And maybe that’s where some of us differ and I also think is an important thing that should be communicated. For me, I write with hundreds of people. I love writing with people. I love having tons of partners and writing with any of my mutuals who want to. When it comes to writing and people who I have writing partnerships with, my communication style is pretty straight forward. And it starts from jump, communicating if we want to ship or not, communicating what kinds of plots we like. And then later when someone has to say “hey can we drop this thread and start a new one?” Or “Sorry I vanished for a month do you still want to write this?” All of those things are communications and to me, come with trust that you will be honest and receive the other person in good faith. of course, in hundreds of people that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it doesn’t go well, and that’s fine. These are writing partners and while my communication style will always be the same and be as honest and straightforward as I can give it, it may not mesh with someone else’s. But then there are friends -- good friends. And by good friends I mean the people you talk to frequently. The people you talk to about how you feel, about what’s going on in your life, about your insecurities or whatever it may be. The people you write with frequently or have built a relationship with, the people you tell with your words that you love or that mean a lot to you. Maybe some people on tumblr use words like that lightly. I don’t know. But for me those are meaningful things and the people I consider good friends are not the same as strangers and are not the same as casual writing partners. 

Something is exchanged when we RP. I talked about this in my last post. I talked about how it’s not “just tumblr RP” how there are feelings and intimacy that is personal and terrifying in writing with people and sharing your creative work with them and opening yourself up to rejection and insecurity. When you RP, when you talk a lot, when you become friends with someone even if it’s on the internet, just as in real life, you’re exchanging trust. You are opening yourself up to vulnerability in expressing your feelings, in sharing your world with someone and they are doing the same by accepting that, caring for that, sharing their own, etc. To me, once you hit the point of having exchanged trust with someone, that’s when you owe communication of some kind. It can be as small as “hey I can’t talk today” and as big as “this thing you did yesterday hurt my feelings.” But it’s so important to do it. That’s important for a number of reasons. It’s important because maybe there is a misunderstanding that can be cleared up. It’s important because maybe that other person may not even know they hurt you and could apologize. It’s important because vocalizing your own feelings is an adult point of growth for you. And a number of other things. 

And I GET IT. Trust me, I do. Communicating is uncomfortable. What about how anxious it makes you? What about how you feel panicked and sweaty and your heart races and you worry that it won’t be well received. Trust me, we all have been there. It happens to everyone and it fucking sucks. But the only way that gets better is with practice. I can already hear the tumblr mentality that says “you shouldn’t have to feel that way if you don’t want to,” and there’s some truth to that. But any therapist will tell you that communication is the key to coming to the other side of that and that the more you do it, the better it’ll be, the easier it’ll feel. Having been in several relationships with people that projected their feelings onto me or held me accountable for their happiness, learning to communicate boundaries, learning to communicate feelings versus intention and all of that were huge for me. This isn’t something I popped out of the womb understanding. It’s something I’ll surely fail at a thousand times. But it’s definitely something important to me to learn. And I think it’s something tumblr can benefit from. Because while “let people block you” is an important mentality for strangers, for abusers, for toxicity, etc it’s not a good mentality for friendships and relationships. Ghosting your friends is really hurtful. Cutting people who mean something to you out with no communication or explanation causes a snowball of bad feeling and anxiety in allowing you to have closure on your terms and the other party to have none. Expecting people to handle hurt and confusion and sadness in private without ever talking about it to anyone is really fucking isolating. Tumblr mentality likes to push that we should be able to axe people without consequence, that they should not ever wonder why, that they can not talk about it to anyone else, or express their sadness. But isolating people in their feelings isn’t healthy and it isn’t adult. There’s a lot of hurt that could be avoided on this website by people learning to communicate and by accepting that sometimes conversations have to be had, even if we don’t like it. Or at the very least, taking ownership for the fact that if we don’t want to have a conversation, that that is on us and not on the other person for feeling confused and not knowing what happened.

So I guess where I’m at here is that I just wanted to talk about that area, and open the floor a little to remind people about communicating. And what I mean when I say friends vs. strangers vs. partners is that I think we also need to be honest with each other and ourselves about who our friends are. Because once you open that trust with someone, there’s responsibility there with what you do with that trust. So be aware of where you open that trust. Be aware of what you say and how you treat people. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone you run across on the internet. I certainly am not. Even people I love writing with may not be my close friends, but I make sure that those are people that I’m not being vulnerable with and sharing feelings about things with and expressing how important they are to me. They are of course still important, but it’s different. Don’t fake friendship with people. Don’t love people into the safety and security of trust and communication that you’re not willing to have. It’s okay if communication isn’t your thing, but understanding that and understanding how you treat people because of it is important. Because communication is important. To friendship, to partnerships, hell even to relationships with coworkers and family members. As a community, I think it’s really important that we encourage being more communicative, and that communication isn’t conflict, and that sometimes having a quick conversation about something where both parties get closure or can say their piece or clear things up is the absolute best way to handle things. 

#me still posting diary entiries on tumblr because idk what to do with my feelings #you betcha #but i really don't know what to do with my feelings lately and i keep getting off the dash but then i feel sad and i miss it #and idk i feel like there are so many more solutions here than we're willing to have #i'll come back eventually but when i do i think this kind of conversation is what i'm really going to implement on my blog #if that makes sense #idk i would love to talk to more people about this or just hear how you feel #even if it's the opposite

[imagining-supernatural]

The Backstory

Part 15 of Seventy Percent

Series Summary: When you left on your trip to Vegas, you’d planned on letting loose for one last weekend before heading back to reality and getting your affairs in order so your best friend wouldn’t be left cleaning up your mess when your cancer finally ended your life. What you hadn’t counted on was waking up married to a celebrity who has a knight-in-shining-armor complex, connections with an oncologist, and amazing insurance…

Chapter Summary: You and Sebastian sit down and you finally tell him about your past

Word Count: 1,757

HGTV was playing in the background, but neither you nor Seb were paying attention. You were curled together in the recliner with a heavy blanket over your legs. He still had a few hours before he had to head out to his interview with Jimmy Fallon, so this was the best time to tell him about your past. Enough time that he could process everything and not be too burdened during his interview, but not enough time that the two of you would drag out every damn detail. There were parts that you wouldn’t tell him, but most of it, you wanted him to know.

You just had to figure out how to start.

“You grew up in Wyoming, right?” He prompted, as if sensing that you were stuck before you had even begun.

“Yeah.” You sighed heavily, shoring up your courage. “It was just me, my sister, and my parents. If I have any cousins or aunts, I don’t know about them. My, uh, my dad was… you know what? I’m just gonna say everything really quick to get it all out there. I think that’ll be easier.”

He nodded, rubbing his hand along your spine. You tucked your head into his neck, hoping that the lack of eye contact would make it even easier.

“Alright. Ever since I can remember, my dad has been an alcoholic. Abusive too, but I didn’t realize until later. He took out most of it on my mom and sister, since she was older. But then, uh, my sister, Eliza, moved out when she turned sixteen and it was just me and my mom.”

“How old were you?” he asked in a pained whisper.

“Eight. She’s eight years older than me. He died when our house caught fire when I was sixteen. Cigarette left burning. His fault.” Your voice broke on the last two words, but you powered through. “Luckily mom was in lockup for the night for drunk and disorderly or something and I was staying with Jaz. That was… it’s fucked up to say, but that was the best day of my life.”

His hand moved up your back and settled on the back of your head, holding you closer. That simple action drew a wave of tears to your eyes that had you blinking quickly, trying to hold them back. God, you didn’t deserve him.

Remembering the truth of that day… you really didn’t deserve him.

“Um, so that left me and my mom. She… She was an alcoholic too, but more of a neglectful alcoholic. Thank god for Jasmin and her family. I don’t know what I would have done without them. They kept me alive and sane until I was old enough to get a job and basically support myself a few months after my dad died. I thought it was over, then. Up until then, my family was just that trash family that other people in town gossiped about to feel better about themselves. I got some pitying looks, and that was it.

“Then my sister went and got arrested. Everyone expected me to take in her two sons when she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.”

“What did she do?”

A bitter laugh escaped your throat. “Fucking murdered her boyfriend. Abused her kids. Assaulted a police officer. She… she didn’t have a friend like Jaz. Or a support system like Jaz’s family. But that’s still no excuse. None at all. They’re her kids. She knew what it was like to grow up being a punching bag. She…” In an effort to control your budding anger, you took a deep breath and turned your face into Seb’s neck for a second, letting his familiar scent calm you.

“So when she was sentenced to twenty-five to life, the entire town assumed I would adopt the kids. I mean, they were my nephews and all, but everyone was acting like it was my responsibility to raise them. But… But I was barely eighteen. I couldn’t even take care of myself and I didn’t want to put them in a position where I—where I might snap like she did. It wasn’t fair to them. And they were young enough that they were adopted fairly quickly and now they’re with some family down in Georgia growing up with cute little Southern accents. Their parents send me letters sometimes. Pictures too. The boys are happy. And I know I made the right decision, but if you listen to what everyone else said, then you’d start thinking I was a selfish bitch who didn’t respect family values as if they’d all forgotten the kind of values my family taught me. I-I-I know I made the right choice. They’re happy. So fuck what everyone else thought.”

“People make far too many judgments based on far too few facts,” Sebastian whispered against your hair.

“And far too many assumptions,” you mumbled.

He held you in silence for a few minutes, just stroking your hair.

“You know what the worst thing someone said to me was?” You asked a bit later, after your heartbeat had calmed down from its angry beating. “When word got out that I had cancer, someone from my hometown told me that God gave me cancer as punishment for not adopting my nephews. For thinking someone else could raise them better than their own blood. Years later and they still couldn’t let it go.”

Not that they were entirely wrong. Your cancer might have been punishment from God, but not because you didn’t adopt your nephews. There were far worse things you’d done.

“That’s—” He couldn’t even find a word to describe how that made him felt. And you completely understood.

“Rude? Horribly offensive? Fucking ignorant? Welcome to small town Wyoming where the bible rules and if you say you’ve never shot a gun you’ll be shunned until you do.”

“Fuckin’ hell, sweetie, that’s… God that’s horrible.”

“People suck,” you said simply. “I just… I wanted you to know. You know, in case this shit hits the news or whatever. And also… Also, I just wanted you to know. I wanted to tell you. Regardless.”

He slid his hand to your chin and tilted your head up until you were falling into his blue eyes. “Thank you, Y/N. Thank for telling me; trusting me.”

“Thank you for being someone who doesn’t suck,” you responded in a weak effort to lighten the mood.

You only had a second to register his soft smile before he leaned forward and brushed his lips against your cheek. “I always knew you were strong. I mean, to go through cancer treatment like this… but now?” His thumb rubbed against your cheek, nearly touching your lips. Your eyes closed at his touch, face leaning into his palm. “Sweetheart, I think you’re the strongest person I think I’ve ever met.”

Just as you were about to argue his statement, he leaned forward again. This time his lips brushed just at the corner of your mouth and lingered, wiping away every single word you’d ever known. He finally pulled away a hairsbreadth and the air between you two was super-charged. All it would take was a tilt of your head and you’d be kissing him properly.

But you couldn’t do it. You just couldn’t.

After a moment more, he drew back, pausing only to press his lips to your forehead briefly. “So, your sister and mom are still alive?”

“No.” Your voice was surprisingly strong. Barely wavering. “My sister’s still in prison, but my mom died a few months after I turned sixteen. Another reason the town seems to hate me. They think if I’d stuck around more, she wouldn’t have killed herself but that wasn’t my job. I was a kid. It wasn’t my job to keep my parent alive.”

“Killed herself?”

“Drunk herself to death, I guess.” It was an explanation you’d said many times before. One that wasn’t entirely accurate, but the closest to the truth you could get. “Suicide wasn’t the official cause of death, but I knew. She drunk too much. I think she was shooting up with something, too. They called it an accidental overdose. Said if I’d been there, I might have been able to call 911 and save her. But they didn’t know us. They didn’t know what happened in that house. I… I don’t blame her. She didn’t want to be saved. She let him break her. My sister became him.”

“And you? What do you think you did?”

“I think… I think… I don’t know. I made a lot of bad decisions in college, but that’s just college. I think I would have turned out differently if I hadn’t spent so much time with Jaz’s family. But even then… I don’t know, Seb. I just know that I never wanted to make anyone feel like I did. It took me my entire college career with campus therapists to work through shit. And there’s some things I haven’t told anyone. And I’m going to be working through everything for the rest of my life. I know that. I think I just became more aware. Aware what kind of affect my words might have on someone else. I’m cautious about everything. Maybe that’s why I went into data security. I didn’t have anyone, really, to protect me.” By this point you’d practically forgotten you weren’t alone. You were just musing aloud. Putting together parts of your therapy sessions with your own emotions.

It was something you’d never done.

Even in therapy, you hadn’t opened up all the way.

But here? With someone you’d met a month ago?

Here, you felt safe. Loved, even.

“What about Jasmin?”

“She tried. But her family was amazing. She just couldn’t understand my family. She was always sympathetic, but never really knew how to help. And, honestly, I wouldn’t ever want her to know how to help. I never want her to be in the position to understand.”

“I guess I get that.”

“’Sides, this way I had her to pull me out. She pushed me to move on. Helped me figure out how to… not become them.”

Silence, once again, fell. Even telling the barest bones of your past had exhausted you and you couldn’t move from Seb’s lap even if you wanted to.

It was nearly a half hour later when he spoke in a soft voice, his words drawing a soft laugh from you. “At least I don’t have to go through the meet the parents shtick.”

Think that’s all of it? The worst of it? 

CHAPTER 16: THE FIRST PAPARAZZI AMBUSH

#sebastianxreader #sebastian x reader #sebastian x reader angst #sebastian stan x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #mcu #marvel fanfic

[ificanwriteiscannon]

Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr.

This is dedicated to @nothingeverdies  aka Nikki Sixx’s true soulmate. Te amo amiga <3

 N\A: Picture is not mine, found in Pinterest. Take it easy because it was my first soulmate AU ok ?! Also sorry for any mistake and if it sucks (creativity has not been my friend these days). ANYWAY, hope you all enjoy! 

In a world of soulmates, people perfectly chosen by the universe to spend the rest of their lives together, Y\N couldn’t understand why some settled for someone else. And that’s why she hopefully waited for him. Her Frank.

It’d been only 3 months since she joined Mötley Crüe as their photographer on tour, in hopes that traveling around the world would make it easy to find her destined one. But the task was easier said than done. It wasn’t enough all the chaos that seemed to surround the boys, but apparently, Nikki Sixx didn’t know how to get a no. Since the moment his eyes landed on her, he’d been following her around like a lost puppy. Even the groupies were long forgotten after the second month.

“Dude, you gotta talk to her” Tommy mocked leading the bottle of Jack to his lips

“Fuck you. I won’t talk to her. It’s impossible that she didn’t feel it, man. I felt it when I met her, she has to know”  

Y\N didn’t know. Of course she felt the butterflies and all the crazy shit when she first landed eyes on Nikki, but that had to be because he was Nikki Fucking Sixx right? She was destined for Frank, and for him she would wait.

She traced the black bold name in her wrist with the point of her finger. She knew she would find him someday.

But why did it hurt so bad when Nikki kept his distance as she asked? And why spend time with him was so fucking good and made her feel complete? Why everything seemed so simple with him? She shook her head as trying to make the feelings fade away.

Focus Y\N.

Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr.

God, that sounds like a douchbag’s name. Well, he must be one to HAVE A SOULMATE THAT THINKS SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

SHIT.

The photographer felt guilty of wanting to know more about Nikki, to feel worried about him when he passed out, or just vanished from their hotel, only to be found almost dead in a close bar. She also shouldn’t feel jealous when girls flashed him or sat on his lap. But all that didn’t change the fact that Nikki was the only one who could truly calm her when she felt anxious, or how a simple wink from him would change her day. But that was enough, pushing her shirt down, Y\N decided that Nikki Sixx wouldn’t fuck up with her destined one.

Nonetheless, the bassist would have none of that. As soon as Y\N left the room she was pushed inside another by a tall large frame. Nikki.

“Look, I shouldn’t be doing this ok? But fuck it woman, you’re killing me!” He paced around the room with his hands moving anxiously. Y\N sat at the small sofa looking at him clearly confused.

“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about Sixx”

“I understand I am a fucking mess, and my life is crazy and all that shit, BUT FUCK, I LOVE YOU GODDAMIT” Y\N was in shock. He abruptly admitted he loved her. Something inside filled her with happiness and all she wanted was to get up and kiss him, mark him as hers and steal him away from the world.

“Nikki, I am sorry, but I’m looking for my soulmate. I like you a lot, I care for you deeply but I gotta find him. Maybe we would be fun and all, but I’m sure your soulmate will be awesome and as soon as you meet her –“ Y\N spoke, ignoring the slight pain that held her chest as she thought of Nikki as someone else’s soulmate.

“BUT I MET HER! I MET MY SOULMATE AND ITS YOU, DAMNIT” The man was furious but Y\N could hear the pain in his voice, the sound almost breaking her heart.  As watching her suspiciously looking at him, he lifted his shirt and showed her name delicately tattooed in his forearm, almost lost in the middle of the others tattoos that covered the bassist.

For a moment the photographer as she thought about the possibilities. It was rare but unrequited soulmates weren’t a myth. She cared so much about Nikki it broke her heart as she watched him lower his gaze to the ground and sadly chuckled.

“I don’t know why I’m even chocked to be rejected.” He whispered to himself “I should be used to this shit by now”

“Nikki I am so sorry, I care for you so much. I-I never thought it was possible to feel this way about someone other than your soulmate, but I do. I love you too.. But at the same time I gotta give Frank a chance.. I-I need to at least find him” Y\N had tears coming down her face, and the man had to hold himself back not to run to her and embrace her. But suddenly Nikki frowned his brows and turned to her

“Wait, what did you said his name was again?” Nikki hopefully walked towards her as she pulled her sleeve

“Frank. Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr. Sounds like a douchbag’s name I know but-“ At this point, Sixx started laughing until he had tears in the corners of his eyes. Y\N was furious to say at least, here she was opening her heart to him and he fucking laughed? She growled and stormed past him, but was held by her wrist by Nikki, who was still laughing but calmed himself down.

“Babe, I think there may be an explanation to this whole thing.. I guess I should have seen this coming too” He pulled her close to his chest, caressing her wrist with the point of his fingers. Y\N would be lying if she said that being in his arms didn’t calm her, but her mind still screamed that she should be angry at him, even if her body didn’t give a fuck to it.

“What is it? Just say it for god’s sake” She pouted and huffed in his arms, Nikki just chuckled and put some of her hair behind her ear, looking at her lovingly.

“You see, when I was born my messed parents named me after my father. But when I was finally free from that whole thing, I changed it. I was born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr, but changed to Nikki Sixx” It was crazy, either way, something inside her screamed that it was the truth and she decided to follow her intuition

“You mean, that we’re soulmates?” Y\N asked with a glint of hope in her voice, making the man bite a small smile and nod “Well, I was right then.”

“What you mean?” Nikki asked playing with her hair

“It is a douchbag’s name” The bassist rolled his eyes as his soulmate giggled, right before he kissed her.

#nikki sixx imagine #nikki sixx imagines #nikki sixx one shot #nikki sixx fanfic

[thegeneralsnotebook]

Special: On LL, Print & Play, and My Future With The Game

By now, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to the news coming out about Set 11, you’ll likely have heard the big announcement that is accompanying it. That is, that Friends Forever (Set 10) was the last set that will be officially printed and distributed by Enterplay. From this point on, sets will be designed, tested, released and managed exclusively by Commentary is Magic, in addition to their existing responsibilities with regard to managing organized play and all official rule documents. It goes without saying that this is major news for the game, and in accordance, I felt that it would be a good idea to offer my own commentary on what this means, both for the game now, as well as for the foreseeable future.

It bears pointing out first that while in the past I have worked with Commentary is Magic as a commentator for their broadcasts of tournament events, and will continue to do so, neither I nor any of the groups that I work with are affiliated with them in any way. The opinions that shall be expressed within this article are entirely my own, and come from a few days of honest contemplation, coupled with CiM’s extensive explanation for their actions this past Sunday, in their most recent stream.

To begin with, I should point out that regardless of anything else, this sucks. The end of the printed era and the beginning of the Print & Play era means that this game will never again be what it was before. None of us can say how well it will turn out, and while we hope it goes well, it goes without saying that things would have been better with Enterplay still involved. While there has always been a measure of disagreement over Enterplay’s handling of the game in the past, the fact remains that over the course of the game’s existence they have continued to produce an exciting, novel, and fun experience. I have no doubts that the designers responsible for the MLPCCG would have carried on doing so had the prospect made financial sense for their company. Unfortunately, it would seem that it did not. Whatever I have said in the past, I want to thank them right now, for the skill and devotion they provided in taking the game to its current state, and wish them all the best of luck wherever life takes them next.

That being said, the fact that Enterplay will not be continuing on with the license presents the community with a sobering choice. Ordinarily, the lack of a commercial rights-holder to make the game officially would mean the end of things. It would be, unless the community were to decide to continue on without them. This is not without precedent, and is perhaps most notably exemplified by the more than a decade long run of the Star Wars TCG under a fan development body, after Wizards of the Coast suspended development of that game in 2005. Though the Star Wars story does bring with it another important thing to understand: while CiM has made the initial choice to attempt to carry on with the game, they will not be able to do it alone. Unless there is a community willing and ready to continue supporting the game just as they are, this experiment in fan-run MLPCCG will be a short-lived one indeed.

Make no mistake, while playing the game from Set 11 on will no longer require as much of a monetary investment, it will absolutely require an investment of a different sort. Namely, the effort necessary to obtain the master copies of the cards, and to print them, however you decide to do it. This could be as simple as printing on regular paper and affixing the art to other cards to serve as a backing, right up to crafting acceptable playing cards yourself using an artisan print service. The options present a range of difficulty and investment required, but all of them are going to involve more time and effort than throwing some money at Enterplay and having the new cards show up at your doorstep several days later.

This will be a different game than it was before. People can make all kinds of arguments about whether it’s easier or harder to get into now, about the impact this change will have on the secondary market or the value of past collections. These debates are valid, but beneath them I think is a more important point. The game has fundamentally changed, and it will now no longer appeal to some people that it appealed to before. No one should be held in contempt if they decide that the game is no longer for them, and they don’t wish to participate anymore. Inevitably, the community will suffer some attrition from this change. Likewise, none should be held in disdain for choosing to continue on, as I shall be doing.

The gentlemen that make up CiM are good friends of mine, and I know that they have been the subject of a variety of suspicions and ill-will over the course of the existence of their organization. Arguably, it may have started even before then. Yet the evidence that I can see points to them being dedicated servants to the ideal that this community deserves a fun game to play, and that this game deserves as wide a community as it can get.

CiM is betting that enough people will stick around to make their gamble worth it. They are risking a significant amount of time and resources, never mind potential legal liability, to see this thing through. And make no mistake, this gamble that they are making only pays off if the game stays fun and enjoyable for all of the diverse and disparate elements of the community that plays it, rather than only for an elitist cabal. I have the great personal honour of knowing the members of CiM as friends, and I can say that none of these guys are stupid. They understand, and have always understood, the great authority and responsibility that they have as community leaders. This was true even before they claimed any official responsibility for the workings of the game. It perhaps bears repeating that CiM itself was borne out of a desire to grow the game beyond its extant community and present its best face to the wider world. I have never got the impression that their goals as an organization have changed.

Throughout all of their tenure as community leaders, they have gone to great lengths to dispel any suspicions that may have been cast their way. When they assumed control over the official rules and banlist, they began publishing their decklists in advance of official tournaments, denying themselves the opportunity to sweep the field with whatever tricks or combos they had privately discovered. Through events like CoCo and their sponsorship of increased and well-supported organized play, they have given everyone else the chance and support to grow their own local metas, which gives the entire community more opportunities to build better decks and compete at the major events. While it is true that designing the game while competing in it is a strange arrangement, the members of CiM have voluntarily imposed major disadvantages upon themselves in the hope of assuaging these concerns. And after all, every responsibility they have taken on has been done because they enjoy the game and want to be able to keep playing it competitively. To then not be able to keep playing it would obviously be an unworkable arrangement.

Having said all of that, it should perhaps be obvious that my personal take on this matter is a vote of confidence in the new designers. I could ask you, if this game were to continue being made, how else could it be done? Enterplay has made it known that commercially, the proposition does not make sense. Thus further design and production needs to be performed by the community if it is to happen at all. Again then, who else could do it? CiM has been around since nearly the beginning of the game, they have a network of similarly experienced testers, and even more important than that they have the passion and integrity to ensure that this process is carried out correctly. If what we desire is a future where further development on this game still happens, what reasonable alternative do we have to this one?

This is to make no mention of the fact that all of the members of CiM are functional adult human beings with lives outside of pony cards. As someone who has spent some time doing amateur card and set design, I can tell you that it is no easy process. It takes long hours of volunteer time to see a work of the magnitude of an entire set through to completion. Add to that as well all of their work producing content and organizing tournaments across the continent. I can say with no exaggeration that I’ve found their dedication inspiring beyond measure.

Which brings us to the final point. If you are anything like me, your first thought upon hearing of the move to Print & Play was to go to CiM’s Patreon page and either increase your current donation or start a new one. After all, I was willing to pay Enterplay to keep the game going, why wouldn’t I pay its new wardens to equally show my appreciation for their efforts?

Alas, this cannot happen. CiM thought through the matter extensively prior to taking up this responsibility, and as they’ve mentioned elsewhere, turning their efforts into any kind of commercial enterprise presents an enormous risk given that they have no license from Hasbro for the use of MLP show assets. Even doing this as a non-commercial enterprise presents risk on its own. So they have wisely decided to eschew all compensation for their organized play efforts. The next time that you get the chance to meet them in person, I’d recommend a thank-you. It’s honestly the least that they deserve.

So what does that mean for me? Well, from everything I’ve seen so far, Leaders & Legends looks great. Obviously it’s far too soon to say anything about the meta that will shape up after its release, but the cards at least look fun to experiment with. And, given that we have a fresh set of designers for Set 11, I see a new opportunity for some statistical analysis. Once Set 11 has been fully revealed, I’ll be performing an analysis of how the design of the set works out when compared to the Enterplay-designed ones. Hopefully, this will determine if CiM is bringing any fresh philosophy to the table, and maybe offer some hints of what directions they will be pursuing as they move into Set 12 and beyond.

Set 11 marks a brave new beginning for the MLPCCG. I see no reason to stop playing it, thinking about it, or writing about it, so I’ll keep on. I sincerely hope that everyone else who reads this will join me.

Note that this article will not replace my usual October Feature. That one, containing card ratings for the Friends Forever Core meta up to the Old Money/Portal bans, will be around at the usual time near to Hallowe’en.

#mlpccg #printandplay #leadersandlegends

[caddeter]

Hey, Knight, I have a serious question for you:  Are you fucking illiterate or something?

Okay, looking through the notes, I can’t let this go.

Soku, You JUST described what you do.

Soku made a grand total of two posts in this chain.  You can find both of them here.  One of them is an actual explanation on why Savage’s post is stupid, the other is him simply saying ‘eh’ in reply to Xenodweeb.

“Instead of making the White Fang this way, do it this way that justifies my political beliefs because I deserve validation. 

1.  That had never come up in that chain at all, Soku pointed to utilizing the school setting as an example.

2.  It has nothing to do with his political believes, it has everything to do with putting fucking effort into a point of your show!  How is pointing out that a show displaying an extremely black and white stance on a real world issue that is excessively grey a political stance?

3.  If your talking about what Xenodweeb said, allow me to simplify it for you:  They hyped up a character, only to kill her off not five minutes later.  Even if we ignore her skin color, that’s still incredibly stupid.  And it’s made worse with her skin color.  Even then, there’s a grand total of twelve named dark skin characters in a cast of over 70 characters.  Five of them are villains, the rest are unimportant.  Seriously, what does any black character, who isn’t Emerald, Ilia, or the fox brothers contribute to the plot?  And aside from the guy based off an Achievement Hunter joke and the guy from the team they only remembered half the members of, I bet you and the rest of the fandom don’t even remember they exist.

Also: Listen to me and only people like me because I deserve to be solely pandered to while you don’t deserve a say in your own show.”

First of all, is Savage a member of CRWBY?  Is Savage one of the lead writers?  Is Savage even a Rooster Teeth employee?  You and your little posse constantly remind us that RWBY isn’t our show, yet whenever it’s convenient, it’s your show.

Secondly, that’s your argument, not ours.  You constantly pride your opinions above everyone else’s, from people with experience with the subject they’re talking about, to people who have researched the subject their talking about, to scene analysis, to fucking shit posts.  And you’ve done this over on Deviantart, where there is no RWDE tag, and was just people criticizing your precious little show.  The RWDE tag was made so that the main RWBY tag wouldn’t need to read through all of our posts.  We’re trying to keep our opinions away from you jack asses, and this is the thanks we get?  You know what, screw it, this is going in the main tag.

I just boiled down your entire collection of RWDE posts down into this because THIS is how you act each time:

And I’m a dragon who breaths Popsicle, living on top of the Eiffel Tower making reviews of late night talk shows.  How many times have you said that, and how many times have we proven you wrong?

Only your worldview (even if it’s blatantly wrong and fucking stupid) deserves to be seen and only YOUR iteration) deserves to eb seen and only people like you get to have media in their tastes.

Mirrors are a rare thing in your house, aren’t they?

Okay, that was a little too fast, let me slow it down for you:  Mirrors are pieces of shiny glass you look at to see yourself.

Even then, what are you judging this on?  The fact that people complained about plot holes, unfortunate implications, terrible execution, wasted potential, a side character steeling the spotlight?  That’s not a matter of taste, that’s a matter of desiring quality.  People would be complaining about RWBY’s flaws even if RWDE never existed, just look at how the anime reviewing community treated Sword Art Online.

Everything about RWBY must conform to what you think you deserve, regardless of fucking quality or what the Writer’s want to do or why other people like RWBY.

Yes, because a consistent plot, stable world building, and an understanding of what it’s doing is completely subjective.

RWBY’s quality is objectively terrible; it’s full of plot holes, we get more development for the side characters than we do the main characters, and the world building is excessively muddled.  It also has a bad habit of flat out lying to its audience and constantly ignores the easier solutions.  And with how many details are missed between the writers and animators, I’m left with the impression that the production of this show is a big game of telephone.

Calling RT sexist, racist and homophobic is not criticism.

Jaune gets away with, and is rewarded for something that Yang is demonized for.  That is sexism and criticism.

RT constantly portrays the White Fang, who were left with little other option than to become a violent group like many real world minorities, are treated as completely evil with no redeeming qualities.  And then there’s the count of black characters in the show an their importance to it.  That’s racist and criticism.

It took RT five years to reveal an LGBT character, after years of excuses that for some reason never applied to straight pairings.  That’s homophobic and criticism.

Do you read selectively or something?  We’ve explained several times over how one could get these impressions.  Just because you plug your ears and shout, ‘LALALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING!’ doesn’t mean the evidence stops existing.

Lying about the show is not criticism.

Knight, the only people who have ever lied about RWBY is you.  We have backed up our claims with explanations, comparisons, examples.  You have changed evidence to work with your conclusion instead of changing your conclusion to work with evidence.  You’ve flat out admitted to doing that, yet you still act like we’re in the wrong.  Why can you get away with something like that, but we constantly get demonized for you’re lies?!

Spreading controversy like a manwhore with STD is not criticism.

You really don’t understand how criticism works, especially for a show this popular, do you?

Okay, even ignoring the fact that that’s a load of bull, that’s all you do.  Every time there’s a new RWDE post, you jump to the front lines to start a flame war.

You do not criticize, you complain.

My god, it’s almost as if that was the basis for the RWDE tag in the first place!..  How do you breath?  You can’t wrap your head around this simple concept, yet you still haven’t suffocated yet?  How does that work?

People HAVE refuted you:

Yeah, badly.  And then they got refuted right back.

I’ve had to have done it at least fifty times.

First of all, you’ve had way more chats with people in the RWDE tag than just fifty.  If your track record is so bad, why is your ego so huge?

Second of all, where exactly?  Was it here, where Delvin asks you for evidence of what you’re accusing him of, and then you ran off?  Was it here, where Delvin throws every one of your notions back at you in the end?  Was it here, where Dudeblade explains why you think it’s wrong to compare RWBY to other shows based on IMDB scores, before doing just that with shows with lower scores than RWBY?  Was it here, where Lycanheiress took everything you said and utterly destroyed it?  Was it this one here, where a transgender lesbian explains homophobia to you, and why people accuse you of being homophobic?  Or was it here, where Xenodweeb boiled all of your stupid notions down to the basic level to show why they’re wrong?

Thirdly, you’ve had to do it?  Did we make you?  Is Rooster Teeth paying you to paint their fanbase in a negative light?  Are they holding a gun to your head as you type this out?  Are they threatening your family?  Is the RWDE tag doing that?  Did anyone even ask?  I’ve already explained this to you, KKKoB, no one but you is making you write these.  You chose to do this.

Fourthly, for every one time you’ve attempted to debunk us, we’ve debunked you ten time over.

You just ignore them, block them or throw variations of the word “bigot” at them so you can disregard it

You mean like you did with Delvin?

You’re like that child who keeps changing the rules to make himself invincible because they suck at the game.

You mean like you did with Lycanheiress when you guys were arguing the shows focus on Jaune.  Also, when did we change the rules?  I’m pretty sure we’ve kept things pretty damn consistent in all of our debates with you.

And as for YOU, Xenodweeb,

I don’t wanna hear YOU try to talk about nuances when, looking at your entire conversation on this post (https://savageoppressme.tumblr.com/post/169718979263/xenodweeb-savageoppressme-xenodweeb), you look at everything in Black and White.

“>Racism is a non-issue>Civil rights movements=extremists”

Knight, cursory glances tell us why you’re full of bull.  Also, who do you think I’m going to believe, the guy who admitted to stalking and harassing people who blocked him, constantly acts as the exception to all of the rules he lays out, and almost drove someone on Deviantart to suicide, for Xenodweeb, who has, at worst, criticized RWBY.

Also, you’re one to talk about seeing things in black and white:  You view the RWDE tag as an irredeemable evil that must be purged no matter what each individual blog has done and yourself as the one true fan of RWBY.  What you’re asking for isn’t that we try to look past RWBY’s flaws, your asking for blind devotion to the all mighty Rooster Teeth.

Skipping a bit, because I’ve already established why the next few lines are bunk a few paragraphs back.

To you, “Nuance” does not mean “subtle differences in meaning or expression.” No, it means “my fucking view” without even taking the time to consider that maybe, just maybe, you are wrong and your blind.

How can someone be so in love with the sound of their own voice yet never hear what they’re saying?  Knight, you almost drove someone to suicide because you couldn’t handle the idea that they had a different view then you did.  You aren’t one to talk.

Fuck, there is a reason why I blacklisted the RWDE tag:

Wait...

!?!?!?!?!?!WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!

So you actually did that thing the RWDE tag was meant for?  Why are you still here then?!  Why are you still bitching about the tag you no longer need to look at!?  Why are you so dedicated to proven Darwinism wrong?!  There-there are no words to describe the level of stupid you are!  It doesn’t matter what insult I throw at you, it will always only ever be an insult to the people I’m grouping you with and a complement to you.  I feel sorry that people call you a Nazi now, at least those guys have some brains.  Retards, homophobes, racist, sexists, pedophiles, none of them deserve to be compared to you.  The FNDM would be disgusted if they saw you, hell, Rooster Teeth would be disgusted.  It’s a good thing Monty’s dead, because if he saw you, he’d jump right back into his grave!  You deplorable, inconsiderate, obnoxious, cruel, immature, cruel, judgemental piece of shit!  If the human race died tomorrow, we’d all die happy, because you would have finally have been removed from the gene pool!  I’ve seen super-villains more likable than you.

You know what, screw it, I don’t care what the rest of the post says.  I’ve made my point, I’m done here.

#rwde #rwby #anti-kob #kkkob #kob you little shit #burnt corn on the kkkob #i'm not sorry

[notalwaysontime]

Video Bootleg Guide

This is everything you need to know about The Release of new Video Boots, both before and after you get them, and information about how it all goes down for those who are confused about it, thus making them get very upset when a new one comes out and they can’t get it. A little understanding goes a long way.

I Apologize in advance for the length of this, but I wanted to include explanations not just dos and don’ts, because I know when I understand WHY, I’m more likely to remember and comply.

There’s been a lot of issues about the releases of new video bootlegs lately. And almost all the issues stem from people who jump into it without actually knowing or taking the time to find out how the whole process works. Beyond NFT Date confusion and the reason you buy it in the first place, which gets talked about endlessly, There are more things that come up that people don’t seem to realize it’s not ok to do, or could be damaging, also how to go about actually buying the bootlegs so here’s everything you need to know.

One thing to remember about this is that IT. IS. NOT. LEGAL. This is not an activity that should be splashed around all over the place. You really should not be openly advertising and shouting it from the rooftops. There should not be a hundred posts in a show’s tag saying things like “THERE”S A NEW _______ BOOTLEG OMG SOMEONE GET IT! WHO”S THE MASTER? WHERE DO I GET IT??????” Like a little subtly guys, seriously, keep this shit on the down low. You all really suck at treating this for what it is. If you’re gonna buy drugs, you’re not gonna yell out on the street “YO! THIS GUY HAS WEED COME BUY IT FROM HIM OVER HERE.” Or “EVERYONE LOOK I HAVE WEED, WHO WANTS SOME!?” A little discretion goes a long way, and understand that if you have none, you’re less likely to actually get answers from people when you have questions because the people who know what’s up won’t feel like they can trust you. I understand excitment. BE EXCITED! Just don’t throw all that excitement up in public posts.

Bootleg Releases/Buying the Videos

* Most masters have a mailing list you can get on, but they also announce their releases elsewhere. Do not expect people to just tell you who they are out in the open though. We protect the masters AT ALL COSTS, and honestly, most of what follows here is for that very protection. They risk A LOT so we can have these videos, and in return, the least we can do is protect them as best we can. That means private messages/emails/etc, not public (and as mentioned above, if it seems clear that you have no desire to respect, don’t expect to actually be given the information.)

* One big no no that’s been happening more and more lately is releasing masters’ screen caps. In the initial releases, masters will provide you with screen caps so that you can judge the quality of the video for yourself, and decide if you want to buy it or not if the quality matters to you. (It doesn’t to me so I almost never look at them, but some people it does). These caps are NOT for you to post. Like stop doing that. Remember what I said about protecting the master at all costs? Posting these is the opposite of that. It draws attention to them and the fact that this video exists and since it’s a new release it’s a hell of a lot easier to find than say one that’s been out for years. Do NOT underestimate Tumblr’s reach. People in the business have been catching wise to its existence for a long time now. You know that little show doing it’s Pre-Broadway run in Denver? A TON of stuff on Tumblr has been flagged by the people in charge of that show and taken down by Tumblr for violation. INCLUDING THE SCREEN CAPS FROM THE BOOT THAT SOMEONE POSTED. You know what that means? It means they knew it existed within days of it being filmed. That is not good. So please, I know you want to share them, I know you’re excited, but do NOT post these screen caps, share them privately, but do not post them.

* Before you contact the master, read all the information in their release posts, if any of their minimal guidelines are ones you cannot comply with, don’t contact them, it’s that simple. Wait for the NFT Date at that point. If it’s a solvable problem, ask someone else for help, but do not bother them with this extra burden, they have enough to deal with. (Ex. One master makes it clear they only take bitcoin, so if you cannot pay that way, do not waste their time. Either that, or find someone who can help you learn how to, or figure out how to pay them that way BEFORE you send an email)

* Masters are not quick to respond. They just aren’t. They have a lot of people contacting them, a lot of information to keep straight (not to mention they have jobs and lives). Email them once. THEY WILL GET BACK TO YOU. It can take 1-2 weeks to get an initial response about payment information. And once payment is made it can take another 1-2 weeks to actually receive the video. I usually don’t expect to have the DVD or link in hand until a month after I send my initial email.

* Every master is quite clear about their payment information and how they want things done, the directions are simple, so follow them to make their lives easier, because again, they have a lot to keep track of.

* It’s been said to death, but the reason we pay is to help them cover the expensive costs of getting us bootlegs in the first place. Its the least we can do since they risk so much for us. (Costs include, but are not limited to, Airfare, hotels, tickets to the shows, and filming equipment too. I know that once in a while, they like to buy new cameras so that the quality we get is better. That shit is expensive. Notice how amazing some of the more recent boots are? That’s because they have great equipment, and people who actually bought their videos from these masters helped them get that equipment.) Everything you pay these people gets put right back out FOR YOU. They don’t just profit and put it in their pocket, they use it to get more and more videos. Helping them helps you.

********* One MAJOR don’t that I’ve seen on the rise lately, and rest assured, continuation of this practice WILL make masters just decide to stop releasing videos, is this growing trend of “well the video is $20, so if we get 10-20 of us together we’ll only have to pay $1-2!!” STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT. Literally this is the worst, it is just as bad as releasing the video before the NFT date (more info on that below), its disrespectful and just rude. You bought ONE copy. If you have 10-20 pitch in, only ONE of you gets the video until the NFT date which hey, if that’s how you want to do it, that’s no skin off my nose, but that’s not what happens. You buy ONE copy between 20 of you, and then 20 copies exist where only one should. If you don’t have the $20 yourself, THEN WAIT. One of the perks of helping the master out is that you get the video 3-4 months before anyone else. Pay your fair share and give them a hand. It’s an insult to the risks they take when you’re a cheap ass like that. Do you go to Starbucks a few times a week?  Skip a visit each week and put that money in a jar, or ask anyone if there’s odd jobs they need help with for $5. Save it up, then when a video is released that you are DYING to have, you’ll have the money to pay for it. If it means as much to you as some of you say, you can find a way to do it, $20 really isn’t that much, YOU CAN DO IT! And if you truly can’t, I promise the wait time between then and the NFT date isn’t so bad, especially when you factor in the fact that you’ll be waiting one of those months anyway, even if you buy, like I mentioned above.

Getting the Video

So, You’ve Received Your Video, now what? Well first off, ENJOY IT! Watch it, laugh, cry, flail, watch it again, die, etc! I mean that’s what they’re here for! But after that, there are still some rules that need to be followed.

* Screen Caps and gifs, see the above point about the masters’ screen caps. It’s just not a good idea, and you really should stop. I know you want to gif and show off and have your favorite moments on a loop, but remember, these are still super new, it’s dangerous to bring this kind of attention to them. (Say it with me kids: PROTECT THE MASTER AT ALL COSTS!) The newer a bootleg is, the more dangerous it is. Old bootlegs, even ones that are just a couple years old don’t draw as much attention, and are a lot harder to track down the origins of them, so gifs don’t hurt anything, but one where maybe only a handful of people own it? Well that’s not hard at all. A good rule of thumb is if the NFT Date has not passed, keep the video, in it’s entirety to yourself. Make gifs to your heart’s content, but save them for the day that date passes.

* One thing master’s make very clear is never to upload their videos, but it keeps happening, and it’s another issue causing trouble. (Once again for the people in the back: PROTECT THE MASTERS AT ALL COSTS) Youtube is the least stealthy site there is, EVERYONE is on youtube. My mom who can’t ever remember the web address for it is on youtube, and I don’t care what “clever” name you think you gave it, it’s not hidden. I accidentally found a TROVE of NFT videos uploaded to youtube within about 5 minutes of being on the site. I wasn’t even trying and they popped up in the sidebar of a video I was watching. They get found. There is a reason the master’s request this so STOP uploading them! If you want to share the video when the date passes, upload it to a site like mega or mediafire, make them download it, but stop making them publicly streamable. (Do not even get me started on the existence of stage dork, like seriously guys? That site is just irresponsible. Remember, ILLEGAL activity here.)

* Also, come on, use your heads, never post your upload link publicly. I cannot stress enough that this shit needs to be kept on the down low. (Audios are illegal too, yes, but they honestly aren’t as big a deal as the videos.)

* NFT (Not for Trade) Until Dates - These are the BIGGEST thing you need to adhere to. Making the video NFT Until a certain date give the master not only the ability to make a little money from the people who have to have it RIGHT NOW and can’t wait, to cover their enormous costs, but it also protects them (Ok, you know the motto by now.) It keeps the video private until usually around 6-9 months after it was initially filmed and also gives it some distance from them as the filmer. When it starts circulating widely at that point it’s old enough that it doesn’t feel like such an immediate threat. Now, while trade may be in the name, it goes beyond and implies (and masters also state) no gifting til that day either. If a master sells 20 copies of a video, only 20 should exist until that date.

* Twitter and instagram - Guys, NEVER. EVER. EVER. Tweet or tag or whatever a bootleg or a screen cap of a bootleg or a gif or video clip to an actor. Just don’t. MOST get pissed, most hate them. It’s just safer for EVERYONE that you don’t. (Never forget the time someone even just accidentally tweeted a clip to someone (I can’t remember who), but they didn’t know it was a bootleg and the person was cleary mad. So like don’t do it on purpose. Some won’t mind, but it’s not worth the risk, It’s a slippery slope, so just assume that if you do this, the wrath of Patti LuPone will come down on you like the fire of a thousand suns. It’s not safe for you.

Other Stuff

* If you decided to wait for the NFT Date to pass, have some patience. The amount of posts I saw downright DEMANDING, the Bandstand video the SECOND the NFT date passed was disgusting, especially since all the people making said posts were outright expecting people to just give them the video. If Someone has intentions to gift a newly available bootleg, they will. But being rude about it won’t get you anywhere, and it’ll just piss people off. Also understand that newly available videos, for most people, are not things they gift, because remember, they paid actual money for it, so they’d like to get a little return on their investment in the form of other shows. (This is how, for the record, I grew my collection to the size it is. A friend started me off with a generous amount of gifts and I thank god for her every day because I was new and desperate and I saw the promised land on her trading site. After that I started buying the new videos and when the dates passed, I had things people wanted, so I was able to trade them for the videos I wanted. Also for the new videos I decided I didn’t want to spend money on.) So what I’m saying is, be on the look out for someone hinting that they have it for gift but you can’t always expect that.

* I get just waiting for a gift of a video if you only want a couple show bootlegs, but for some of you, who say bootlegs are your life and all you have, but who are still expecting everything to be gifted to them, you should really look into, and consider trading. Your life will be a whole lot easier, and honestly its not that hard. Look for people who give gifts, email people with large sites politely with a few wants and ask if they mind helping a new guy out (hint: The older the requests, the more likely they will be to gift it, things that are 5 years or so old, I’m pretty much guaranteed to pass it along.) Things you get might be common, but not everyone has them. THere’s a lot of common videos I don’t have, and when someone is new, I will try my best to pick something I don’t have out from their list. I was new at a time too, people showed me kindness, so I pass it along. It took me  no time, and just a little effort to grow my list to the behemoth I have now and I’m a happy girl. Also, trade people for things you might not want, necessarily, because someone else who has something you want might just want that video you weren’t interested in. It works, trust me!

* Video bootlegs are not super common, most shows will only get one, MAYBE two. Anything beyond that is lucky. (Wicked is the anomaly, and to a slightly lesson degree, Legally Blonde) If a new video comes out you’ll know, but your wasting your time if you go around saying things like “Someone film _____ tonight Becasue ________” Filmers don’t take requests, deciding to go and film takes planning. They’ll film what shows they want when they want, and there’s only about 5 of them so don’t expect that it’ll happen on a whim, and really the odds that some random person will A) just decide to film the show and b) that they’ll do it well and not get caught if they do, are slim to none.

And ok, it’s nearly 830 am and I’ve yet to sleep, so I think that’s everything and remember kids be kind to one another.

Also if anyone has anything that they feel needs to be added, or that I did not touch on, message me or comment on the post and I’ll edit!

#broadway bootlegs #bootleg videos #bootlegs #musical bootlegs #broadway trading #I said I'd write it and I did so here you go

[dentelle-grise]

Your Latest Trick - Chapter 21

(Loki x Reader NSFW) Long after everyone has stopped talking about Loki and his misdemeanors, his failed attempt to take over Midgard and his punishment, you meet him at a party.

All chapters to date at AO3 (50K, NC-17)

Tagging my rebloggers, commenters and other folk who asked. Please let me know if you want in (or out) of the list: @joanbushur, @frenchfrostpudding, @lovely-geek, @wolfsmom1, @sigridlaufeyson, @lokislonelylady, @monitoroutside, @daniissuchadani, @devilbat, @deadlydreamersecrets @helenisabel, @stardustandangelsfanfiction, @ely-seum, @wendyrobson1978, @the-ships-i-ship, @shemart101, @dreamourbrainout, @sadghostomg, @lokilover2000, @blobfishington, @lynneth1968-blog, @deaddecade, @nardo94 

Chapter 21

You inadvertently do something that shakes Loki’s trust in you and reveals a shocking secret from his past.  Meanwhile, Odin’s overconfidence with the Aether is more than raising eyebrows.

Hornace is sitting bundled in a reclining chair on the balcony.  He’s glum and clearly uncomfortable, but far better already than you ever could have hoped. His rapid recovery seems driven by his anger, but he’s still too weak to travel. You’re charged with bringing him in and changing his dressings.

“They should get rid of it before it swallows Asgard whole.” he mutters. He’s not really talking to you, more to the view of the city. “They don’t know what they’re doing. Not even the King.“ His voice falls to a whisper. ”Impetuous, excitable, foolhardy…”

He allows himself to be lifted and wheeled inside. 

None of his words seem to describe the stoic and proud Odin. Stubborn perhaps, but ‘foolhardy’? Hornace’s mood is soured by his injury, of course, and Odin is not his King. Might that make him more objective ?” You missed most of the explanations of their experiments that day after Odin’s speech, but you know what they’re trying to do - protect the realm.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” He huffs. He must see your consternation and turns his head to look at the wall, away from you and the task you have to do, away from the wound. “He’s the only one who can call a halt.”

Hornace tenses himself but doesn’t flinch as you let the warm water flow over his skin. You feel proud you’ve got the temperature perfect. Here in the healing rooms you pour yourself into your tasks like nothing else existed.

Rather than recoiling from the damaged flesh, you find yourself admiring the precision of healer’s work there. Dwarves are so much smaller, how difficult it must have been knitting the skin together there.

“Beautiful.” You say. An inappropriate word, but he doesn’t seem offended, just raises a shaggy eyebrow and hazards a glance. “I mean… it’s healing beautifully.”

“So much the better, the sooner I’ll be out of here.”

    Your confusion resurfaces as soon as you leave the healing rooms. So you walk home alone along the battlements with only the rising wind for company. Soon it will be too cold for this route to be comfortable, but for now it’s fine. You welcome the wind in your hair and clothes. You try to let it blow away your cares.

You wonder who Loki will be tonight.

Your wonder about Loki and Sif, and Fandral and Sif and Thor…and Sif and you and what she can possibly be thinking of you now.

As if on cue, you spot them, Fandral and Sif, coming the other way along the narrow walkway. They must see you about the same time. You keep your pace steady.

When you draw close enough, you see that Fandral is carrying both their swords, so they can walk closer together. How cute. You try not to show you’ve noticed, try not to stare. Whatever the issue was this morning they’ve resolved it. You’re getting ready to greet them politely when Sif drops her hand from her lover’s waist and bounds ahead to meet you.

She’s not confrontational, just awkward, which is far worse.

“I would like to apologize, for my intrusion.” She bows her head. She’s as uncomfortable as you are. A thousand unvoiced questions hang in the air.

“A simple mistake. No need to worry.” you reply. It’s easier to say while she’s not looking at you.

Fandral catches up and Sif raises her head, catching your eye a second. There’s the tiniest something there, as though she thinks she understands you and seeks that spark of understanding in return.

You don’t know how to react. You don’t try to process it. It’s at such cross purposes to your true situation. You stand there at a loss and the moment passes.

“Look.” says Fandral, oblivious, breaking the silence.

He’s pointing toward the tournament field where there’s a group of figures, your mother and Odin among them. You see that Odin is holding Gungnir and, mounted on the end of the famous staff, is something glowing a familiar red. Odin points it into the field where there is still some fallen masonry waiting to be cleared.

There’s a shot of light and the block of stonework simply explodes into nothing leaving a puffy cloud of dust. The people applaud and their cheers are carried to you on the wind. You look at the place the stonework had been as the dust clears.  Hornace’s worries were unfounded it seems, if the dark elves return now they run the risk of annihilation by their own magic.

But then you notice something dark in the dust.  Something falling away, sucking the dust somewhere, like a mouth in the ground.  A growing mouth.

The figures in the party draw back and move closer together.

Then Odin steps forward and you have your heart in your mouth ‘foolhardy and impetuous’? What has become of him since Frigga passed?  But he has Gungnir, now free of the red appendage, and he swings it above his head until its moving so fast you can hardly see it and the movement lets off a hum.  The rest of the group retreat still further. 

Odin lets out a great cry and the swirling air above his head falls toward the advancing abyss, just yards from his feet.

The hum stops and the enchantment lands like a net over the hole, straining as it’s pulled from below. Nothing moves, the hole neither growing nor retreating. The magic holds. 

There’s a collective sigh of relief but no clapping this time. Sif and Fandral are still staring incredulous at the scene. You quietly slip away.

    Loki’s coat is slung over the back of one of your chairs, claiming territory. That soft leather coat, long and so familiar, is very much his, not hers.

The man himself is standing facing the window, hands linked behind his back. Hearing you, he turns revealing an expression as hard and cold as a stone wall. Something has happened. He’s strained, tired, and angry. Could it be about his father’s actions

Thiere’s no trace of the honest ardor of yesterday nor the mischievous grin of this morning. He looks full on at you with a cold fire in his eyes and it hits you. It’s you he’s angry with.

“Darling” he says, without an ounce of affection. “When I said ‘tell no one’ I meant no one.”

“What?” you take a step closer and he rounds on you defensively, ready to spring, and not in a good way.

“I say to ‘tell no one’” he repeats slower and harsher, “and you spill every Intimate detail to the most vicious gossip in Asgard.”

“What? Who?” What can you have said or done to bring about this change? In a rush you think through every word of every conversation, you’ve had… Sif, Fandral, Hornace, the healers, the girls…

It’s true that people around you have noticed something different about you. How could they not. Your mother prised a few details from you, Fandral understood there was something, and as for Asta and Dagny, they are also very close to knowing. but you never let slip the truth to any of them. And not one of them could be called the ‘most vicious gossip in Asgard’.

Asta might be excitable, but she’s sweet, never nasty. You guess she was the closest, if she thought Loki was once your ‘sweetheart’.

“But my friend she…”

“Told everything to anyone who would listen. Details about my ‘stamina’, about how many times…” he spits. “But worst of all that I’m alive and in Asgard.”

“What, I never.”

“Fortunately, it went no further than the stables,”

What? Now you’re lost, you don’t know anyone who works in the stables, at least not personally.

“The damage control we’ve had to do.” He sighs. “All because you had to confide in your ‘faithful steed.’”

But…What? Not Asta but…

“Nara?!”

Of course. The first day out on the moors you had indeed told Nara., you had to tell someone about Loki’s return, you’d been bursting with it and, no, you hadn’t spared any details.

“But I thought it was safe. What harm could possible come…I didn’t think she could. She’s only…” You stop yourself but its too late.

“Only a horse. just a dumb animal, a stupid nag,?” his voice mounts. If he was angry before, that was nothing compared with this. You tell yourself not to be scared. It’s not fair. You didn’t know you could do harm this way, you just hope he can understand that.

“I’m supposed to be dead. Asgard is full of those who betrayed me, if ever the truth was known…”

“What?” You don’t quite reach his volume and that one brave word is weak and wavering but at least it’s there.

You didn’t know he could be this way. He’s livid, but more than that he’s hurt and you don’t know why. You reach for him. You want to coax out the other Loki – the one who teased you about telling on him when you were little – but he dodges and steps away.

“I’d have to leave again.” He says after a moment, “and there’s still so much I’ve got to do.” He starts pacing.

“I’m sorry”. You try. That stops him in his tracks and he looks back at you confused.

“We’re lucky her reputation is so bad. Most didn’t believe her.” He sounds calmer, like he’s trying to reign in his anger, but he won’t meet your eyes. “Perhaps she is ‘just a horse’ to you but she’s a skilled rumormonger who’ll speak ill of anyone to get a laugh or get you on her side. I would truly admire the disorder she makes if it weren’t solely out of hate. She was just waiting for a way to get to me again.”

“Again?” You think you know.

“You couldn’t know.” He sinks down on the bed, resting his head on one hand, hiding his face.

“Sleipnir?”

“ You do know then.” He drops his hand and you see his eyes shining.

��Fandral said-”

“Fandral.” He roars, jumping to his feet.

“He said that Thor. “

“Thor! And what other gems did Thor share about my life.”

“I don’t know.” You’ve got to calm things, boy is he volatile. “It was when you were dead. One evening they were telling stories. I got too upset to stay and listen.”

He softens slightly at that, and starts pacing again.

“She would say that I’d never be a true horse. They were all saying it.” He mutters in a lower, hateful tone. “But I would have. I would have stayed. If he’d loved me back.” You keep quiet, in part from shock, in part because you know it’s the best way to get him to go on.

“She never let me forget.” He sighs. “Jealousy. Pure and simple.”

“And she’d call Sleipnir ‘the clumsy spider’. Behind my back of course, but so I’d know. She and the others. Always little remarks about the ‘L.E.G.S.’ She got them all saying it. Hilarious.” he adds without humor.

“Of course that changed when he was grown.” And at last you see the hint of a smile.

“But I would have stayed. If he’d only come back.” You are trying to picture it all and keep down your panic about it being true, while he’s having a pity party about slights from a bunch of horses and unrequited love for some unnamed stallion. The ridiculousness of it hits you, but you can’t laugh. You step over to him and put your arms around him, trying to break him out of it. He doesn’t resist.

“Well you’re not a horse Loki, you’re a man, this is you.” you stroke your hand down the length of his arm. He doesn’t push you away so you take his face in your hands and make him look at you. “I love you as you are, the real you.” He doesn’t respond. Not even the rawness of your confession shakes him out of it.

Then it hits you. Loki already has a child! A secret child and you wonder, if Loki can turn into a horse can Sleipnir transform himself into a person? You can’t get your head around it. Loki has done crazy and, some say, terrible things, things you have pushed these to the back of your mind, incompatible as they are with what you have always known of him. But the hints you had of his doings were of violence and deluded world conquest, not of passing time as a pregnant mare, quietly bearing and rearing a foal in the prairies of Asgard while bickering with other horses.

It’s near impossible to picture him as he is here, elegant, poised, sad, but beautiful and to imagine him as a horse. If he hadn’t just told you, if you didn’t know his prowess at transformation, if the story hadn’t come from Thor, if it wasn’t for the desolate look on this face…You would think it was a prank.

“It was a prank that went awry, terribly awry.” He looks away from you and out into the gathering night. “But I’d do it again.”

“Loki, do you want more children?”

He stiffens and you curse yourself. You hadn’t meant it like that, through transformation and magic. What had you meant? it shrieks of a demand for commitment – You’ve only made things worse again. What if the only being that Loki ever had commitment to was this uncaring stallion.

I should have known.” he says slinging himself on the bed.

What should he have known? Known about you? You said you loved him and he ignored it. You don’t know if you’re forgiven. How much of his reaction is your betrayal and how much is his memories?

His face is turned resolutely away from you and into the pillow. He’s fully dressed, a thick layer of leather between you and him, protecting him from any comfort you would bring. You don’t feel great about bringing comfort. It’s you that hurt him, what matter that it was an accident. At least he stayed, when he could have simply disappeared the same way he first brought you here, He’s deep inside himself but at least he’s here with you.

You hug him from behind while he lies there stiffly, never softening into sleep.

Finally, you doze yourself, your cheek against the leather. You only wake when you hear the door close and realize he’s gone. He chose to take the door though. He wanted you to know. He’s walked out angry and with no resolution… You can’t let that happen.

In a second you’re out the door.

He’s moving fast, but not running and you’re chasing, barefoot and silent. It’s déjà vu, like in the gardens before the attack, or in the palace that first night. He could magic himself away, you’re sure of it. If he doesn’t its that he wants you to follow him, or else he’s too distraught. You don’t understand. It seems like the problem was solved, no one believed Nara, so where is the problem. Why is he running away?

You chase him though the corridors of the palace, wondering when you will meet someone or when he will disappear. You try not to lose sight of that flash of green, but you round a corner and find yourself alone. When he’s run from you before he always wanted you to follow. This time you’re not so sure.

There’s no sign of him. You’re miles from your rooms. The night has never seemed so silent.

Then out of the gloom a figure breaks away from the darkness, your heart leaps as the it moves silently toward you, slowly, so slowly almost stumbling.

“Loki?”

There’s no answer. The figure advances.

Chapter 22

#loki #loki fanfiction #loki x reader #MCU #your latest trick

[wordsablaze]

Together

(alaw pt.2) It doesn't matter what the situation is, even if it's life-threatening, because Alec knows that Magnus will make sure they're together. A malec scene written for Alec Lightwood appreciation weeks 2017. Enjoy!

"Magnus!"

The cry is almost thrown from Alec's mouth as he shoots upright, his eyes wide and his sleep forgotten.

"Magnus?"

This time, it's no more than a questioning whisper, a soft sound echoing in the silence. Alec can't help the panic that rises in his chest when he finds that the other side of the bed is cold, stiff, crisp, in the first rivers of golden sunlight falling through the curtains.

It's as if someone's taken his heart from his chest, pulled it apart, and roughly shoved it back in without making sure it'd stayed intact. It might be that the morning confusion is sending his logic haywire but he doesn't know for sure, so the worry bubbling inside of him is relentless.

He jumps out of bed faster than the blink of a child's irritated eye and navigates his way to the other rooms in their apartment, something in the back of his mind telling him to find the warlock that should have been asleep next to him despite the utter bewilderment running through his veins like a lion chasing after its prey.

"Mags?" Alec whispers, hesitantly stepping on the lush carpets.

He remembers the first time he'd woken up like this, shocked to find a desolate half of their bed. He'd thought that Magnus had left him behind to go and pursue a better, more stable relationship. Of course, the reality had been very different and Alec had eaten the best omelette ever made for him that morning.

Which is why he has faith in the High Warlock, almost fully certain that he's not left and that there's a perfectly logical explanation to why Alec hadn't noticed his return. After all, optimism is a way of life taught to him by Magnus – one of the only lessons he hadn't realised he was learning until dire circumstances presented themselves as the equivalent of an examination.

Alec refrains from talking as he walks through the open doors to their living room, his shoulders hunched, his jaw clenched, and his hands half curled into fists.

It's such a relief to see the sleeping form of a tired warlock draped over the couch that Alec doesn't even try to stop the soft smile that attacks his face. He simply glances over the warlock to look for any injuries and, when he finds none, gently sits beside him.

"Magnus?" he asks quietly, not really expecting an answer.

He gets one.

"Alec?" Magnus' voice is tired, slurred, but still full of love. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

"Not anymore," Alec replies, leaning his head on the warlock's shoulder and relaxing into the familiar touch of magic and affection.

Magnus smiles and wraps his arm around the shadowhunter, letting sleep wash over the two of them as if they'd been born to rest. Somehow, sleeping is easier when they're together.

And so Alec is initially confused when he wakes up the next morning, wondering why their silky bed has turned into soft fabric. It only takes a few bleary blinks and the sight of Magnus smiling widely to make him remember what had happened.

"Are you okay, love?" Magnus asks, brushing Alec's hair into a quiff.

"I dreamed that you'd died," Alec whispers plainly, knowing that any attempts to sugar coat his dream will end up in a disaster of miscommunication.

"It'll take a lot more than a nightmare to get rid of me," Magnus promises, lighting kissing Alec's nose before waving his hand to brighten the lights around them.

Alec grins at Magnus, throwing his arms around the warlock as he fully wakes up. Magnus laughs with surprise and Alec lets his eyes close again, simply listening to the heartbeat beneath him, using the soft thudding as a tether to consciousness.

"Aren't you hungry?" Magnus asks, stroking Alec's hair.

"Mm- mm." Alec's response is a clear no, even if the majority of the population wouldn't be able to tell.

"So, what, are we going to stay here all day?" Magnus inquires, bemused.

"Maybe?" Alec's voice is surprisingly quiet.

Magnus only takes a second to realise what the shadowhunter means. Of course the lone word doesn't signify a simple answer; it's much more than that because Alec values simplicity and abbreviations, even if that makes their conversations much more complicated to outsiders and eavesdroppers.

"You have a mission, don't you?" Magnus asks softly, the question acting as its own answer.

Alec sighs, finally unwrapping himself from Magnus and sitting back with his legs crossed. "I have to go."

"I don't understand, darling. Why is this any different to your other missions?"

Alec swallows nervously, biting his lip so hard that his eyes water. He winces immediately, and Magnus grabs his hands, gently brushing circles over his runes. They stay silent for at least a full circulation of the clock's hands, until Alec builds up the strength to say the words stuck on his tongue.

"I might not be able to come back," he blurts eventually, swallowing visibly.

Magnus blinks.

"You might not…?"

Alec nods. "The clave has a way of getting there but they don't know if a return journey is possible."

Magnus takes a deep breath as Alec glances over the room, as if suddenly interested in architecture. This time, the silence between them is anything but comfortable. It's loud and piercing and brimming with worry.

"When do you leave?" Magnus asks. He knows that asking Alec what they're going for won't provide any answers but he has to know how much time he has left, he has to.

"Today," Alec whispers, already regretting not having told his boyfriend sooner, "We leave later today."

"Alexander…" Magnus sucks in a breath. "Are you telling me this might be our last few hours together?"

Alec shrugs.

"I won't let that happen." Magnus shakes his head. "I can't let that happen."

"Magnus…" Alec's tone is pained, remorseful.

"Alexander, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't-" he waves a hand helplessly- "I wanted you."

"If these were our last few hours together, I wanted you to be you. I didn't want you to be worried or sad, I just wanted to see your smile so I could leave you without a goodbye," Alec continues, "I didn't want to say goodbye, Magnus, I didn't want to make it final."

"And you thought I would be okay with that? Alexander, I have lost too many people to see you walk away and expect you back, only to find that you purposely left me with a loose end." Magnus' voice is deadly quiet, full of truth and love and regret.

"Magnus, I-"

"No. No. You don't get to make that choice for us, Alexander. You don't have the right."

And, with that, Magnus is gone, and only the faint smell of glitter and warmth remains in front of Alec.

His emotions twist in his stomach, writhing and knotting themselves into a trigger for his tears. He lets his tears fall, squeezing his eyes shut tight and rocking back and forth. He's not sure what he regrets, he just knows that he should have chosen a different path, a better path, a path that included Magnus. He should have chosen a path where the two of them ended up together.

By the time he figures out how to stand, there's an alarm ringing from his phone to tell him he should be heading back. He stares at it in a numb shock, unsure of whether he'd woken up late or if he'd spent half the day exhausting his tear ducts.

Either way, there's no time to think about where and when the time went.

Alec quickly gets himself ready, washing his face to banish the redness in his eyes. As he leaves, he slings his jacket over one shoulder, trying to ignore the echo of his boots on the pavement, the dull hum of mundane life buzzing like a painful reminder of the hurt look in Magnus' eyes and the alarming crack in his voice.

It's still early when he reaches the institute so he heads to find his team, knowing that they'll all be ready and waiting, equally as nervous but determined. He doesn't pay attention to what happens next, blurring everything out until they're standing at the portal that leads to their mission.

Then, suddenly, the world is clear again; He can see the magic waiting for them to step through. It's a reminder of Magnus' warm embraces and magical touches, the way they cuddle under the stars and kiss in the rain.

The others all go before him, steeling themselves and almost racing to get it over with and find out if they'll survive, while Alec takes a deep breath as he clenches his fists.

Just as he lifts a foot to step through, a hand slips into his.

His eyes widen.

"No." A breathless, disbelieving whisper.

"Quite the contrary," Magnus replies gently.

"Magnus…"

"Did you really think I would let you go?" Magnus asks, raising one prefect eyebrow.

Alec smiles. Despite the rage and confusion and alarm spiralling around his head, he smiles. He smiles because he's once again assured that Magnus does truly love him, and that he need not fear the warlock leaving or being disappointed in him.

"We go together."

Magnus squeezes his hand and Alec feels one of his rings digging into his skin, but it's a comfortable reminder of their interlocked fingers and matching smiles.

"We go together," Alec echoes.

The portal blinks at them as they step through, eyes closed, hands clasped firmly together, grinning sadly, hopefully. Alec can feel Magnus being tugged away by the portal but he holds on, leaning towards him and wishing nothing but for the two of them to remain with each other.

When they step through, he can't help thinking that his heart must be exhausted from the pain he's put it through. He doesn't care though, only worried about Magnus' hand in his and the way their gazes meet like an eclipse.

"Together," they chorus, turning away from the portal.

like/reblog but don’t repost, thanks!

#alecappreciation2017 #alec lightwood #magnus bane #malec #the mortal instruments #shadowhunters #alexander lightwood #magnus x alec #fluff #romance #oneshot #series #angst #hurt comfort #the clave #fanfiction #fanfic #cassandra clare #my writing #tmi

[nearlyhuman]

Long Post: An explanation about what anarchism is, why i’m an anarchist, and why it’s such a big part of my life all of a sudden

[[Since I don’t have much time before I need to get back to my homework, I am not going to edit this post super carefully to make sure I don’t sound like a dork or a narcissist. This post isn’t really meant for random followers, but people who know me irl. And I hope the people who know me irl don’t think i’m a narcissist and forgive me for being a dork. ]]

Beginning two years ago but not really taking root until a year-ish ago, anarchism became an idea in my mind with increasing pull and importance. As it has become a bigger inspiration and influence in my life/brain, I’ve brought it up in countless conversations and for the most part get blank stares, confusion, misconception, or the impression that the person i’m talking to wants to leave immediately because i’m scaring them or weirding them out or coming on too strong or w/e. I accepted, several months ago, that I can’t keep bringing it up if people aren’t interested. But recent weeks have made me realize that I should at least explain myself somewhere, once, in an impersonal setting, just to avoid constantly feeling like i’m weirding people out or confusing them. 

A foundational value in my life, spanning all kinds of religious metamorphoses, is the concept/verse “to those who have been given much. much will be expected.” In left-speak, I’m a Person of Privilege. I have been given access to a lot of things and have not faced hurdles many others have faced. I do not believe it is fine for me to simply enjoy my life however is easiest or happiest for myself -- I believe I had a god-given responsibility, a sacred duty to the world -- to give back, not just tithe-percentages but wholeheartedly.

That core value has driven me, again, from a young age, to self-educate about how the world works, and to be keenly invested in caring about the welfare of others, especially those who are extra vulnerable, disadvantaged, exploited, and oppressed. As I’ve slowly learned bit by bit, my attention has changed -- instead of focusing, for example, on the problem of suicide itself, I now invest more energy in the systems which create and allow for suicides to occur in epidemic proportions. While searching for the roots of the problems and the places where impact can be greatest and change is needed most urgently, I’ve been compelled to learn more and more about government, legislation, and those in power. Politics. That word everyone hates and removes from their own lives, but is really encompassing everything we do/think/are, every day, all the time. 

For a long time, the world of politics seemed like this enormous, hopeless, endless tangle of corruption and arbitrary interpretations of morality and justice and who has a right to what. It felt like there were good guys and bad guys on every side, that things were always convoluted, that no movement ever made sense for that long. None of it ever felt right, reliable, honest, trustworthy, or transparent.

And then, I learned about anarchism. 

When most people that I know discuss politics, there are roughly two sides. Sometimes people are vaguely aware of a third of fourth, but still, it’s largely a dichotomy. But what makes a Republican a Republican? What is the Republican platform, philosophically and policy-wise? What is a democrat? if you were to sit down and try to write a paper on what democrat ideology is, or what republican ideology is, could you do it? Do you know where the economics come from? Where the sense of authority comes from? Where the morality comes from? I think most of us just have these really vague notions about them, like “Republicans like small government and democrats like big government,” or “Republicans are christians and democrats are atheist.” But even these vague notions are usually pretty wrong -- for example, Republicans LOVE a large government regarding social justice issues, and there are MANY Christian denominations that are more populated by Democrats than Republicans. So what are these parties and how did they get so much power in our nation that they’re the only two platforms that Really Matter? Why do we accept the power they hold? Why do so many of us register as one or the other, and then vote down the ticket pretty much all one or all the other? When we don’t even know what they are and can only pick or choose a couple issues here and there that we feel like we maybe have kind of gotten a grasp of, like gay rights or abortion or gun control. 

So to explain anarchism and avoid that enormous mess about parties and what we think we accept even when we don’t understand it, let’s start at the beginning, and leave all preconceived notions behind. 

Who do you trust to be an authority over the world? who do you trust to be an authority over your life? Why? The people in power are not a special breed of person -- they don’t obtain power because they are more intelligent, more discerning, stronger of character, or more stable. For the most part, they obtain power because a) they want it and b) they’ve decided to spend their lives figuring out how to get it. And so now we’ve found ourselves in a society with myriad arbitrary laws dictating whether or not we can buy raw milk, who is permitted to marry who, that we can’t smoke weed but we can drink all the alcohol we want, that it’s okay to prescribe opiates regardless of alternatives/risks, that mass incarceration happens, police brutality happens, occupying other people’s countries and homes happens, patriarchy happens, white supremacy happens, that healthcare and justice can be bought only by those with wealth, and that wealth dictates everything. Seriously, from the nutrients we eat to the ratio of time we spend caring for ourselves to the lawyers we can afford to the healthcare we can afford to the education we can obtain to the amount of safety we can purchase etc etc. The more you know, the more evidence you see that having people calling the shots about how your personal world/life should go either don’t have your best interest in mind at all or don’t have the information and position they need to be in in order to make good decisions for you. Any direction that you look in -- economically, socially, geographically, culturally, you name it -- the people in power have really screwed us all over, majorly. And those of us w/ a decent amount of privilege can get by okay, most of the time. But it’s a sharp ledge to fall off when your luck runs out, when you quit winning the life-lottery that put you in a position of relative safety. Everyone hits that patch at some point. They get sexually assaulted. they can’t pay a debt. they find themselves with a chronic illness or a disease. will the system have your back when it happens to you? Look around and see that it absolutely will not. 

Okay, so, I’ve made a broad, quick case for why having a small subset of people in power over the rest of the world sucks. In anarchist lingo, we refer to that problem as being a problem of hierarchy. The idea of anarchism is to create a world without hierarchy. Again, PLEASE, keep leaving your preconceived notions at the door. Don’t bring up but what about X republican idea or X democrat idea and don’t bring up black masks and molotov cocktails, just hang back so we can keep working this out from scratch. 

So what does anarchism suggest? It suggests that we should be able to directly make our own choices in our lives. It suggests that we, the people, know what’s best for ourselves and can solve our own problems and make our own decisions and call our own shots. In effect, that means, instead of having a CEO or board make decisions about what millions of employees do, employees make decisions for themselves. Instead of having a department of education deciding what curriculum is being taught to our kids/us, we get to choose what we want to learn. Instead of having a department of state deciding when to draft us and send us into combat, we decide how to protect ourselves and make ourselves safe. We get to decide where to live, who we want to live with, who we want to work with, what we want to belong to, and how we make our communities work. Anarchism hinges upon the idea that, despite the fact that hierarchies have hit our culture hard (intelligence/information/mental health/opportunity-wise,) people WANT GOOD THINGS and can make decisions for themselves. People are a social species. By nature, we love to work together. We have families, we have friends, we seek community and partnership. We succeed when we cooperate and not when someone else makes our decisions for us and we are forced to comply. By giving power back to people, to be self-determining, we will be able to make progress together. And that governments and economic hierarchies that pose as being for our benefit/motivation/safety are actually ultimately getting in the way, and need to be dismantled and replaced with more cooperative, collaborative, empowered systems in order for civilization to avoid its descent into a melted planet where a tiny group has everything and the rest of us/our ancestors either die or get effectively enslaved. 

Honestly, the anarchist platform is kind of easier to understand than the Republican one or the Democrat one or the Libertarian one. It’s pretty simple. And we teach it to ourselves in all kinds of other situations. You know, all of that language about believing in ourselves and being empowered and being independent and knowing our worth and knowing what’s best for us and making or own decisions and respecting each other’s decisions and goals and dreams? We all talk about that all of the time! It’s just expected that if you’re a decent friend, you talk to your friends like that and you treat them like that. So anarchism really just takes what people sort of already understand on an internal/personal level and then expands that to encompass everything else, too. It’s not a big leap. Once you make it, it seems incredibly obvious. 

And that’s why it’s become so important in my life. I mean, for one, it’s beautiful and optimistic. Two, it’s really not a change at ALL from how I already lived and thought, it’s just putting how I lived and thought into a larger context. Three, it has helped the world make so much more sense to me -- it’s like Occam’s razor. If you apply an anarchist perspective to almost any problem, it’s solved pretty easily and neatly. Respect autonomy. Mind your business. Help your neighbor. Work together. Don’t oppress anyone. Don’t push anyone around. Be independent. Build what you want and what you love. 

So anyway. I’ll probably keep editing this post and improving it as time goes by because this is a rough draft on an important topic that will probably influence all kinds of things forever, unless I one day change my mind. 

#my life #anarchism #long post

[missmalyza]

It’s Called “Hemiplegia” aka Brain Damage.

I don’t do this. I don’t blog, and use the Internet as a platform for a diary to house my thoughts. Despite what I like to portray to other people, I actually keep the true inner workings of my mind private. But I can’t sleep, I’ve been crying so much, and I can’t keep the thoughts quiet enough for just a few minutes, so I can fall asleep.

Just like everyone else to this day, I have been defined by a colorful onset of labels, and everyone’s personal definitions of them. I let my parents dictate the way I saw myself for a pretty big chunk of my life, and a part of me has always blamed them for the kind of fuck-up I grew up to be. Well, at least maybe emotionally.

I am turning twenty-three this year, and twenty-two hasn’t been the easiest year in the short amount of time I’ve been around. On the start of 2017, I began to see many many doctors. And by many, I mean, seven (if you count the eye doctor). I saw many different specialists thinking I was going to die soon, or have some rare disease that’s eating away my body, because God knows what else can really go wrong at this point? I was always scared that I was going to die soon. When I was five I used to cry every night because I thought I was going to die at eighteen. Clearly I can’t call myself a psychic.

There’s a reason for all those doctors, but that isn’t the point of this.

I grew up with a disability loosely defined by terms to describe the symptoms I’ve experienced in my daily life. I never knew the proper term or the proper diagnosis, or what really happened to me, because my mom always said it didn’t really matter, because I was okay. I was always left wondering what it was really called and what really happened as I got older, because at some point it would just be easier to state the diagnosis rather than the symptoms.

I never knew what it was called until last week.

I grew up with a weaker left side, a smaller left side, and a stiffer left side. I can’t wiggle my toes no matter how hard I try; my calves are noticeably different sizes, my legs are of slightly different lengths, and my foot is positioned at an upward angle from the side. Visually, I walk slightly angled. I have a gigantic callous near my left pinky toe, and slightly curved toes that I am always a little bit embarrassed of. Oh, and that whole entire leg? It sometimes has uncontrollable muscle spasms, and just jerks out of nowhere. I have no control when this happens.

I can’t move my fingers individually. My left hand is used to press the shift and A button on the keyboard, because it can never align with the ASDF keys. My fingers lock, my forearm is stiff, and I can’t rotate my arm on my own to show you an open palm. My arm shakes uncontrollably when it’s grasping something on its own, and sometimes I just drop things without meaning to. I can’t ball my hand up to a fist, I can’t interlace my fingers with someone else’s, and things fall out of my grasp out of nowhere.

I always grew up with everyone telling me how lucky I am. “It could have been worse,” they would say. I could’ve died.

“You could’ve ended up deaf…” ,

“You could have this, that, something worse.”

“There are children around you with no homes.”

“There are children getting raped and molested every night. You’re fine.”

But I wasn’t fine. I always stopped myself from feeling bad at times that I wanted to feel bad, and cry, and feel frustrated, because I am lucky girl. I am grateful for the opportunities given to me by my loved ones that feeling bad for myself was never really an option. And because I had to force myself to be okay, it forced everyone to be okay with me, too. They treated me like it wasn’t okay to have my bad days. They told me to always have my chin up, because other people have it worse. They told me I didn’t have it that bad.  

But I did.

And I was robbed of the comfort I needed on those days when things just got too hard.

I always felt slightly less than than the normal kids. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn’t do things that normal people can. I can’t ride a bike without training wheels, I can’t play an instrument. I can’t do simple tasks, because I lack the fine motor skills children were supposed to develop as a toddler.

But the worst part was always having to answer the question: “What’s wrong with you?”

Because in truth, I don’t really know what’s wrong with me. I have always had this when I was a child, and my mom said I was normal, so I am, right?

But when the kids at school would always laugh and ask you why you walk funny, or why you wear a leg brace, and why you lack the coordination of a normal seven year old, how do you properly defend yourself?

When they ask you what’s up with your claw-like fingers, what do you really say?

How do I tell the world that I am as capable as the rest of them, and my shortcomings are the part of me that makes me human? Why was it always getting pointed out by the people outside my home that I will always be just a little bit less than them?

But…

Why is it in my home life, I was expected to not feel ashamed for having to deal with this throughout my whole life?

Why is it in my home life, I was expected to never let the things people say get to me?

People are cruel, and they will never understand.

I always wondered why I couldn’t come home in a bad mood without getting in trouble with my parents. Why is it that my parents could not understand that I had some unexplainable frustrations and stresses that I had to fight through every single day? And it was so hard to explain, because how do you express yourself eloquently at ten years old? Hell, I can’t even do that all the time at 22 and a half.

How come the elephant in the room was never acknowledged when it was hurting me day after day to stare at myself and know that I will be like this for the rest of my life?

And why did I get blamed, because I hated physical therapy so much? That shit sucked.

Why couldn’t I just cry in my mother’s arms instead of hearing her say “at least you aren’t getting sold into sex slavery” ? or “at least you’re smarter than them.”

Because they don’t know, and they will never understand. They will never understand how it feels to stare at the other side of your body, willing it to move the way you want it to, but seeing that it just can’t?

No one will understand that it feels so uncomfortable when people touch that side of my body, because I am so afraid they will notice the difference and say something a little degrading.

No one will ever understand my fears in the future that one day I will face the rejection of a man, because he can never see past my inabilities.

I fear having to explain one that there are certain things I can’t do, and see the pity and lack of understanding color his gaze as he stares at me with sympathy.

…that part applies to everyone.

I am ashamed at the thought of standing by his right side, and attempting to walk with our fingers interlaced because my left hand will flop so awkwardly it would take more effort to hold hands than to not hold hands at all.

I have learned to accept the fact that I can’t take those romantic walks on the beach because walking on sand is physically grueling on my foot. 

In every step I take, it takes twice as much effort on my part compared to someone “normal.”

I fear that one day I will drop my newborn child, because my arm will stiffen and lose control.  (Oh, but wait, I was never allowed to fear this, because this will be years in the future.)

I fear that I will lose my balance on my wedding day and trip as I walk down the aisle. 

How the fuck do I explain all of this to someone normal? How do you say all of this and still have someone really accept you for you and your brain damaged self?

But most of all, I fear of needing to have this conversation one day.

I fear the questions, and the facial expressions. I fear the explanation.

Because in the back of my mind, I can’t help but wonder:

Who can really truly...without a doubt, love a hemiplegic girl?

#hemiplegia #disability #lifewithdisabilities #longpost #longreads #grabafuckingtissue #angst

[multiverseofmiracleshq]

After the Whisperer posted their data leak on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s classified Project KOBIK, a group of heroes were summoned by Black Widow and the Winter Soldier. On the Helicarrier, formerly disgraced agent Sharon Carter gave them a rundown on the Pleasant Hill experiment. Upon arriving, they received a less than warm welcome and the group found themselves divided.

THIS IS THE OFFICIAL CHAT LOG COVERAGE OF THE IC

NATASHA ROMANOFF: She had been the last one on the Helicarrier. Funny, considering the fact that she was the one who had called them all there. Funny, considering the fact that she was the one (alongside Bucky) who was leaving a trail of property damage in her wake with little explanation. Natasha was, to put it very lightly, pissed. Wake up in the morning seeing red and going to bed with it still there kind of pissed. She and Bucky had decided early on it was best to not tell anyone what they were working on until after they had a better idea, but after the Whisperer and the whistleblower it was hard to deny that it was the right time. And so, the mass message. Everyone there had been selected for a reason. They could be trusted. Not the S.H.I.E.L.D. affiliates, but Sharon had called and Nat decided to at least hear her out. Krakoa had offered up five mutants for back-up with powers based in telepathy, tracking and teleportation. Her tardiness was a strategic tactic to stop the others from asking questions before she was ready. Braced against a wall with one and hanging onto one of the hooks, Natasha glanced around the group. “Everyone read their files? We have the Whisperer to thank for that. And Bobbi. Way to blow that whistle.” The anger was still present.

SHARON CARTER: As the helicarrier began its ascent, Sharon took a look at the anxious eyes around her in the room and glanced over to Bobbi and Daisy. It didn’t seem like those two were exactly eager to answer the questions regarding Project KOBIK, but then again neither was Sharon. The agent figured they’d have at least a little more time to break the news the proper way, but the Whisperer forced S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hand. Clearly Romanoff and Barnes knew that something was going on, and it was only a matter of time before even more information potentially got leaked. It was better to get ahead of it while they could. Natasha deserved answers, even if Sharon knew that the redhead was not going to react well to all of this. And helping S.H.I.E.L.D. with Project KOBIK was one of the main reasons Sharon was even allowed back in the United States, so she had no reason to go against Hill’s orders. It was simple: take the Avengers and Co. there, show them the town, and answer any questions they might have. Easier said than done, but still. “I’ll answer any questions any of you have on the way there, but I think showing everything to you will speak for itself.”

JESSICA JONES: Of course she had gotten caught up in something this big. A big pile of bullshit that smelled like Avengers and government agencies -- aka, her least favorite scents. Although she would have preferred to present as someone who didn’t come when called, Jess had already stuck her nose in deep enough that she had to follow through. That and she felt like she owed it to Matt. A blind man people didn’t know was blind who fought ninjas. Instead of getting annoyed about that fact Jessica just stared as the Black Widow spoke (definitely had never expected to be in the same space as her) and crossed her arms over her chest. “--So, I wasted a month of my life tracking down these people when Goldilocks (sharon) and Deep Throat (a reference to the nixon whistleblower and NOT linda lovelace) knew all along? Jesus, you people suck.”

MATT MURDOCK: Matt was hanging out along the perimeter of the group as Natasha began talking, but Jessica’s words quickly became much more intriguing. His masked gaze was seemingly fixed on the floor a few feet in front of him, one ear trained in the direction of those explaining the situation, the other poised to catch any additional snide remarks from his coworker - for lack of a better term, “Can’t say I say this very often, but I agree. Seems like information we should’ve been privy to much sooner.”

BUCKY BARNES: He stayed towards the back, seated uncomfortable with the buckles loose around his lap. James wasn't proud to be aboard the helicarrier. He wasn't excited or eager. He felt just about the same as he did when a hit went wrong and he ended up with the poor sap's insides on his outsides. James glanced over at Jess's sentiment, feeling the edge of his lips twitch but not giving anything more. "It's not exactly unexpected, is it?" he said aloud to no one in particular. "If SHIELD can keep something hidden, they will. Even from their friends."

JESSICA DREW: After reading and re-reading the file, Jessica found that her brain still couldn’t make sense of the dossier. Sure, she understood it. But she didn’t understand it. “Excuse me? Quick q.” The Avenger held up her folder and tapped at one of the black and white images. “There’s a porcupine on here. And my baby is with a man who is not qualified to babysit because my porcupine went to pick him up from daycare and went MIA. No correlation, right?” Her voice had pitched upwards towards slightly hysterical at the end. “I just need someone to tell me that you assholes didn’t turn a grown man into a porcupine. Especially not one who was reformed.”

CAROL DANVERS: "Don't be ridiculous." Carol said as she came over to look at the photo, even if she had her own file to refer to. She frowned down at it. "There's no way they'd turn a person into an animal. Especially not a porcupine. They could've done better. Like a wolf. Lion maybe. Porcupine? Way below Gocking's paygrade."

JESSICA DREW: “He never would have left Gerry at daycare. Or go without calling Kalie. They may as well have just put down Roger instead of Porcupine.” Jess craned her neck to look up at Carol. Her eyes definitely weren’t watering. “So, yeah. I have a few questions. How did you pull this off? Maybe my boyfriend was easy to catch, but some of these people wouldn’t be.”

CAROL DANVERS: Carol grimaced. "Also answering the how would be great. It's not exactly natural to turn a human being into a rodent."

DAISY JOHNSON: After receiving the call from Bobbi that everything had gone to shit for a lack of a better word, Daisy seriously reconsidered her entire involvement with SHIELD. It took weeks of searching for her dad before Sharon finally approached her and asked her to join the program. Daisy had been livid, to say the least. Cal didn’t even remember being Hyde. What gave SHIELD the right to change their minds and imprison him inside of a fake town? And then she realized that Mack was no longer acting Director, and everything made sense. There was absolutely no way he’d do something like that and not tell her. It took a lot of convincing from Bobbi for Daisy to not just try to storm in there and quake the whole damn town down herself. Staying close to the project was the best thing Daisy could do for her dad, and for everyone else who didn’t deserve to be mind wiped and placed in there. But it wasn’t like Natasha knew any of that. Or Bucky. Or any of the Avengers. To them, she was just another SHIELD goon following Hill’s orders. She could practically feel Nat’s eyes glaring a hole through her as she cleared her throat uncomfortably. Honestly she wouldn’t even be on that damn plane if not for Bobbi dragging her ass on there. She didn’t get much warning to the fact that Bobbi had told everyone what was going on. “It’s more complicated than that.” She mumbled, referring to James’ comment with a sigh.

SHARON CARTER: Sharon could tell that Jessica was on the verge of tears, and she’d almost feel bad if she’d actually known the woman. But she was just doing what she was told, which included placing Roger inside of Pleasant Hill. She didn’t personally nab him, but still. “He was coming too close to compromising the project.. I’m sorry. I know this is probably not what you want to hear.”

MATT MURDOCK: Elektra had been missing for longer than Matt was comfortable admitting, and hearing about what had supposedly happened to the man in question had him frankly very worried. Unable to request the files in brail for his own benefit, Matt would just have to wait until Jessica would get the chance to relay him the information, to reassure him his girlfriend wasn’t loose in this town running around as a lizard or something. Jesus.

JESSICA DREW: “He got too close?” Jessica barely managed to stop herself from raising her voice. “So you turned a decent human being into a rodent because he got too close?? Jesus Christ, we went from H.Y.D.R.A. to this?”

NATASHA ROMANOFF: “Not everyone got turned into animals.” Natasha remained collected. “We have an entire registry full of strange faces. You want to cue us in on who’s who?” When Daisy spoke, the redhead turned to look at it. “Then explain how complicated it is, Agent.”

DAISY JOHNSON: Daisy turned in response to Natasha speaking to her, eyebrows furrowing at being referred to like she was some sort of subordinate. "Look, I didn't know about Yelena when we talked. I wasn't lying to you. You think I'm not furious that my dad's inside of there? Don't take your anger out on me."

BUCKY BARNES: "But you knew." James chimed in. "You knew what the operative was. Former and current criminals. And apparently Roger Gocking."

CAROL DANVERS: "I'd love to know why we were kept in the dark, to start."

DAISY JOHNSON: "I didn't know the list until The Whisperer leaked it. They withheld it from me." It didn't take a rocket scientist to connect the disappearances, though. Yelena, Cal... Daisy just didn't have a scope of exactly who was who inside, or even what specific criminals were in there.

BUCKY BARNES: "You're a shitty spy." James remarked petulantly.

NATASHA ROMANOFF: She wasn’t here to get snapped at by someone who was part of the problem. As Bucky spoke, the Widow’s gaze remained even. “The word is complicit.” Her tone was cool. “Furious, maybe, but not mad enough to come out yourself. As soon as I heard what was going on, James and I were out there researching and blowing up outposts. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t have the list. You knew enough.”

CAROL DANVERS: "She did. She had enough to come to us and let us help, but she didn't. We can be angry and lash out all we want, but what we need right now are details. What exactly are we walking in to, Johnson?"

BOBBI MORSE: "Hey.” Bobbi had been silent so far, watching the situation unfold. She had talked to Clint and Nat. Bobbi had given Daisy the heads up about what she was going to do because it was the right choice, even if it was a late one. “I went to Pleasant Hill in the beginning. I’ve watched them from the beginning. I thought I was doing the right thing by staying informed, but after being there for a while and the Roger thing... we messed up. Bad. Daredevil, Nat, Jess. I’m sorry. To you too, Barnes. And Daisy has some of the blame, but I have more of the answers.”

MATT MURDOCK: Matt folded his arms across his chest, only minutely satisfied that someone had the gall to finally apologize. “Alright - then why are we here if not for more answers.”

STEVE ROGERS: Steve learned a long time ago to stop expecting anything and anticipate that whatever answer he was looking for was usually way more complicated than he liked. As it would turn out this entire operation was not at all an exception to the rule. Nat was pissed—rightfully so, and while he could understand both sides —to a degree, he seemed to remember a different outlook being taken when Wanda Maximoff was running something similar—except even that wasn’t premeditated. “Answers will get us a whole lot farther.” Steve said after Bobbi spoke. They could sit here and bicker all day, pointing fingers, but that didn’t really get them anywhere. “How did it even get this far?”

JESSICA DREW: “Sorry won’t make Roger human again, but thank you, Barbara.” Jess couldn’t believe she had slept with the husband of the woman who had turned her boyfriend into a rodent. Clint really knew how to pick women.

DAISY JOHNSON: Daisy narrowed her eyes at Natasha, shaking her head in frustration. She knew that they'd be upset when they realized she was involved, but it seemed like it was impossible to get them to understand. Of course she knew that what SHIELD was doing was wrong. But arguing about it wasn't going to help anyone. "Bobbi's right. We thought we were doing good by staying close to the project but obviously we weren't. I'm sorry for not telling you sooner." She settled on, not wanting to argue about it anymore. Daisy turned her focus to Carol and took a deep breath. "We're talking into a town. A creepily normal town. No one in there remembers who they really are. All they know is their new mundane lives."

CAROL DANVERS: "So you castrated an entire group of people and turned them into docile brainless next door neighbors?" Carol clicked her tongue in disbelief. "Just keeps getting better, doesn't it. Westview gave you ideas. Not exactly what I expected to happen."

CLINT BARTON: Clint let out a mirthless laugh from his place aboard. "Right. You had the best of intentions didn't you, Bobbi? Would never do anything wrong or disorderly."

ROGUE: Rogue crossed her arms, listening to everyone go back and forth. At first she thought the porcupine thing was a joke, but as it turned out, it horrifically wasn’t. “Ah’m sayin’. Ya’ll practically burned Wanda at the stake, but at least she didn’t turn nobody into a rodent.” She muttered after Carol spoke.

NATHAN SUMMERS "I don't think that helps." Nathan added from his place near Rogue.

SHARON CARTER: "Lying is in the job description of being a SHIELD agent," Sharon chimed in, raising an eyebrow at the whole squabble going on between Daisy, Nat, Carol, and James. Clearly everyone wanted to point fingers and find someone to blame for this, but that didn't change what had been done. "Right next to some overtime required. And I think castrated is a little dramatic. They're living the American Dream. Tidy homes, friendly neighbors, and no crime. If you ask me that beats rotting away in the Raft."

BUCKY BARNES: "I lived the American dream too and my girlfriend ended up joining the Thunderbolts as a result. Wouldn't exactly recommend."

ROGUE: “Wasn’t tryin’ to.” She shrugged. “All Ah here is a bunch of people makin’ excuses and pointin’ fingers. If Ah have t’be here an’ we ain’t gonna come up with a solution, Ah may as well join the bitchin’.”

MATT MURDOCK: “But the way you’re laying this out, they didn’t exactly get a choice, as to what their ‘American Dream’ was, did they? You just slapped an identity on them and sent them off,” Matt pitched in, addressing Sharon directly.

AMERICA CHAVEZ: "Isn't that natural for you?" America asked, eyes skating over towards Rogue briefly. "Look, I don't care why or how, just what we're going to do next. I don't exactly see the issue of leaving them there."

SHARON CARTER: "What does it matter if they're in prison anyways?" Sharon quipped as she turned towards Matt.

NATASHA ROMANOFF: “And now your girlfriend has been lobotomized because apparently once wasn’t enough.” Natasha was a little surprised to hear James refer to Yelena as such considering how rocky their relationship continued to be. “Pleasant Hill is completely erasing any chance of redemption. They’re all going to be stuck there until what? They die?” Yelena. James. Steve. Natasha remained on the outside as reality warped those she cared about and it was tiring.

SAM WILSON: “Somewhere along the way, I’m gettin the feeling that we forgot about free will. Even if these people won’t be ‘free’ again because they’re in prison, they deserve to know their own names. How is stripping that away okay?” Sam piped up. “Especially if you’ve got falsely accused.” He wasn’t Captain America anymore but it didn’t matter. Sam held onto  his ideals.

AMERICA CHAVEZ: "Better than them breaking out and wreaking havoc. I don't see what the big deal is."

MATT MURDOCK: “It’s absolutely a question of free will,” Matt shook his head, thankful for Sam’s comment. The legal repercussions of this entire scenario were frankly frightening to consider, but as Daredevil, he had no jurisdiction here, so thinly veiled warnings would have to do, “I’d tread lightly, if I were you.”

SHARON CARTER: "There's room for reevaluation for some. Obviously that's not exactly on the table yet but it will be. We're not monsters." Maybe it seemed a bit harsh, but years in Madripoor unfortunately did that to Sharon. She would have been on the same exact side as Steve and Nat several years ago. But her morality was warped, and unfortunately the offer from SHIELD was too good to turn down. Probably why they picked her to be the mayor of the town.

KATE BISHOP: “Really, man?” Kate pivoted in her seat to look at America. “Sam and the Devil Dude are right. Everyone should at least have a name.”

STEVE ROGERS: “The prison system takes away people’s free will every day. This is beyond that, this is a matter of identity. Humanity.” A man was a porcupine for God’s sake. “They’re still people.”

CASSIE LANG: "Um, technically think they do have names?" Cassie chimed in, frowning as she looked down at her folder and shrugged. "Just... not their own. Nevermind, I'm gonna shut up now. This is still super messed up."

AMERICA CHAVEZ: "People who might've murdered other people. Definitely some people who have murdered other people. Speaking of, how did you two manage to slip through the cracks?" she asked, question directed at Natasha and Bucky."People who might've murdered other people. Definitely some people who have murdered other people. Speaking of, how did you two manage to slip through the cracks?" she asked, question directed at Natasha and Bucky.

BOBBI MORSE: “Hey now.” Bobbi frowned at Clint. “I make bad decisions. You know it, I know it, our marriage counselor knows it. I’m trying to do right here. We can fix this. The town database is the answer. Sharon, am I authorized to proceed?”

STEVE ROGERS: Steve looked at America and crossed his arms as he stood between both James and Nat. “If you have a point to make, make it.”

AMERICA CHAVEZ: "I think I made my point, loud and clear. I just need one person to explain to me exactly what it is we're doing here."

NATASHA ROMANOFF: “I started by jumping off a cliff and sacrificing myself to stop Thanos.” A muscle in Natasha’s jaw twitched. “But good question. A decade and a half ago, I was Yelena. If I was stuck in Pleasant Hill I would never have been able to redeem myself on Vormir. And some of the people in this room wouldn’t be here.”

AMERICA CHAVEZ: "So we let them loose on the off chance they'll throw themselves off a mountain? I don't like relying on those odds."

SHARON CARTER: Sharon turned her head towards Bobbi and frowned before shaking her head. "Look, I get it. You all have raised some fair points. There are some risks, but that's not why I'm bringing you all there. I'm not going to help you unilaterally disarm. The point of this is to show you KOBIK."

MONICA RAMBEAU: “If we’re not going to Pleasant Hill,” Monica looked up. “Where are we going?” She hadn’t made eye contact with Daisy yet deliberately.  

MATT MURDOCK: “And we’re all supposed to just nod and accept that this is how things are going now? Are you that confident everyone here will be okay with it?”

STEVE ROGERS: “If the point was to make snap assumptions based on things you don’t know anything about, then, sure, consider it made. However if it was to try and convince me that people deserved to have their bodily autonomy ripped away based on criminal actions, you kind of missed the mark when you tried took shots at a woman that literally saved the universe you exist in and a man who had 70 years stolen from him.”

AMERIA CHAVEZ: America crossed her arms over her chest and straightened her shoulders. The last person to make her nervous was Old Man Steve who should've retired centuries ago. "And all those people they killed? Who advocates for them? You stand up for them because you're emotionally involved. Bet you wouldn't if they were just another nameless HYDRA agent. Now again, why are we here?"

NATASHA ROMANOFF: Well, they had invited a telepath for a reason. As America dissented from what seemed to be the group opinion, Natasha made eye contact with the woman in the rear of the Helicarrier. If Sharon was going to hinder and not help they’d have to go with plan b.

KWANNON: Purposefully situated in the back, the mutant known as Psylocke had been sitting silently. After picking up an errant thought, she caught the gaze of Romanoff and nodded once. She wasn’t Emma. She wasn’t Jean. Thankfully, she wasn’t Betsy. She was the most subtle choice to lead the mutant task force but her stint with the Hellions had prepared her. While Rogue and Cable participated in the discussion, the telepath closed violet eyes and concentrated for a moment. Passcode: 1-1-3-4-7-8-7-8-6-6. Username: Burnes. Storing it in her mind, Kwannon calmly unhooked her seatbelt and moved across the Helicarrier as smoothly as if it wasn’t moving. She was lithe in her actions as pink flared up in the shape of a dagger in one fist and she shoved it through the temple of Sharon Carter, a quick telepathic knockout. As Laura lunged to the side to catch the agent as instructed, Psylocke turned to Natasha. “Passcode: 1-1-3-4-7-8-7-8-6-6. Username: Burnes. I think Agent Morse has something to say.”

STEVE ROGERS: A light, airy scoff puffed from his lips and he shook his head a little. “I used to think the world was black and white too, then I woke up.” Literally. “You can make as many judgements as you’d like, but as far as I’m concerned, anyone who’s willing to let people have their basic human rights taken from them, is no better than those they condemn. Especially if it’s because they think of themselves as superior. But what do I know, I’m just an old man. i’m sure you’ve got it all figured out already.”

NATASHA ROMANOFF: “What you lack in subtly, you made up for in presentation.” Natasha snorted at Kwannon. The mutant was unresponsive as she once again took her seat. “I’m loving the debate, but we’re on a limited timeframe now.”

AMERICA CHAVEZ: "We're just trying to save the world." America said just as she heard the commotion and watched an unconscious Carter slump against Laura Kinney. "I'm getting off this plane if someone doesn't inform me what the hell is going on, right now."

LAURA KINNEY: Readjusting as she balanced the weight of Sharon in her arms, Laura eased her to the ground before nudging her with the toe of her boot. So much for being just the back-up.

BOBBI MORSE: “Was that a thinly veiled threat?” Bobbi’s eyes darted between Nat and Psylocke. It didn’t matter. She had been going to talk before Sharon shot her down anyway. “It’s Ripley.” Bobbi rose so she could be seen better. “Star. That’s what the town database is. It’s a complicated system literally hooked into the Reality Stone in her chest. Anything inputted is then instantly translated to reality. I haven’t talked to Ripley, because they’re keeping her unconscious and intubated. The Wyngarde sisters are patrolling the perimeter. What you’re seeing isn’t an illusion. It’s all real.”

DAISY JOHNSON: Daisy's eyes widened as she watched Sharon suddenly into one of the mutant's arms. She wondered for a moment if she might be next, not that she'd blame them. She glanced at Monica for a moment, frowning when she realized that the other agent was definitely avoiding eye contact. Not that she could blame her for that either. But she knew what she could do to make this right, and she wouldn't hesitate this time. "There's also SHIELD agents embedded into the town, but the Wyngarde sisters are the hard part."

KATE BISHOP: Letting out a low whistle, Kate shook her head. “If it’s a Reality Stone, couldn’t Wanda, like, counteract it or something? She’s got some experience here.”

WANDA MAXIMOFF: Although present, Wanda intended to fly home as soon as they reached Pleasant Hill. It wasn’t wise for her to be in the proximity. She shook her head at Kate’s suggestion. “Ripley wields a Reality Stone from Earth-616. I could look into it, but I won’t act until I study more. If what Bobbi says is true then moving prematurely could cement whatever KOBIK has done.”

GABBY KINNEY: Gabby followed suit and poked Sharon's cheek with her finger before chuckling softly and glancing up at Laura. "She was being kind of a bitch anyways." She whispered.

JESSICA DREW: “So what I’m hearing is that if we misstep we run the risk of making everyone stuck as their new happy go luck personas. Or fursona in one case.” God, she was livid. “Now that Natasha and her friend have knocked out Sharon, do we have any idea how to go about this?”

LAURA KINNEY: Wyngarde Sisters. Laura glanced to Cable and Rogue briefly. “I thought they were playing dead.” She muttered under her breath. At Gabby’s comment, she couldn’t help but snort slightly and shake her head.

BOBBI MORSE: As the Helicarrier redirected slightly to chart a course towards Pleasant Hill, Bobbi racked her brain. “Dr. Randall Jessup is the Head of Onsite Scientific Research. You’re not going to get Dr. Selvig, the head of the Science Division, so Jessup is your best choice. He goes by Dr. Daniel Torres and he can work the Directory.” With that, the aircraft slowly began its descent towards a field outside suburbia.

NATHAN SUMMERS: "As they should've." Nathan muttered in response.

CLINT BARTON: "Thanks Bobbi, I've always been a fan of your belated news."

BOBBI MORSE: “I’m sorry, Clint, do you want to take it outside? I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t realize men would become rodents.”

DAISY JOHNSON: Daisy glanced towards Bobbi and Clint, grimacing at the argument before walking over to the pilot and taking a look outside of the window. "Looks like we're here."

SAM WILSON: “Wings up, guys.” Sam stood and cracked his neck. The Helicarrier finally touched down in a heavy gust of wind that flattened the grass. As the ramp slowly began to unfurl, Sam shot Carol a look. “Anyone else see the vanilla and chocolate dominatrixes down there?”

CLINT BARTON: "Maybe we could've realized it earlier if you'd just told someone."

CAROL DANVERS: "Pick up that vernacular from Perry?" Carol remarked teasingly next to Sam as the Wyngard’s came into view.

MARTINIQUE WYNGARDE: Martinique could hear the wind snapping around her and her sister as a helicarrier made its way to a landing, and could make out several guests inside. "I suppose we're supposed to do something about that?" She quipped towards Regan, her eyes rolling.

REGAN WYNGARDE: One hand rested on her black clad hip, the blonde Wyngarde used her free hand to shield her eyes. “--I was really hoping today was going to be a boring one. My shift is almost over.” Her tone was petulant. “Whatever. I’d say no showing off, but I’m the only one who could.”

BOBBI MORSE: “You do realize it’s only been a month, right? I still had to assess and gather evidence. I’m sorry I didn’t blow the whistle fast enough.” That was less apologetic and more annoyed. It felt like marriage counseling again.

SAM WILSON: “I think good ol’ Perry would have started with ‘Hey, girl, let me get in on that’ and then offer them a tour of his basement. Me? I’m happy with what I’ve got. You want to lead the way, Cap?”

CLINT BARTON: "There are people in there that we care about, Bobbi. It just...you could've handled this differently. You know I get it, I just wish I didn't have to."

BOBBI MORSE: Face softening, Bobbi nodded. “I know. I wish it was different. The second Sharon filled me in I either went along with it or had my mind erased, and that wouldn’t have helped anything” Rising to her feet, she unsheathed her battle staves before offering Clint a hand. “Punching things is the only better way to blow off steam than sex.”

CAROL DANVERS: "His basement? Was Perry also the hash slinging slasher?" The ramp hit solid ground and the helicarrier filled with the fading light of day, turning over into purples and blues. She was stepping to the front of the pack to face the Wyngarde's and all of Pleasant Hill when a rush of inertia turned her world a little topsey turvey. With a shove of power through her fists and the bottom of her feet, Carol found stability at the edge of the helicarrier, braced against the wall, just in time to see one of the sisters approach Bucky. "Dammit, I should've read the file." she muttered.

MARTINIQUE WYNGARDE: "Please," Martinique scoffed as she focused her attention on the man with the stupid goggles and metal wings attached to his back. She projected to replace Carol with Regan instead, and made it appear as if she was about to attack James with a knife.

CLINT BARTON: "At least on that we agree." Clint said as he followed suit. He understood better than he wanted to, but that didn't mean he didn't hate that people he cared about were hurting. On autopilot, he nocked an arrow and steadied his bow, rising it just in time for Martinique Wyngarde to shuffle the playing field. Reflexively, he positioned himself just enough to fire the bow at her fist to knock the knife from her grasp.

REGAN WYNGARDE: Finger tapping against her chin, the younger sister observed the heroes unloading. Martinique jumped in instantly, an impetuousness that had never let her be the favorite of their father. “Eenie meenie miney mo,” she hummed under her breath. Noticing the bow being notched, her eyes flashed white before it and the batons of the woman next to the archer vanished. A quick telepathic dive fished out the connection and Regan crossed the field towards them. “You had a lovely honeymoon. Seems like a great day to take a swim, huh?” For Regan, nothing changed. For Barbara Morse and Clint Barton they were suddenly trapped in a room filling with water. Wiping her hands, Regan smiled at her sister. “One point for me and none for you.”

CLINT BARTON: Clint stomped his feet hard, his boots splashing up water that was seeping under his pants and rising above his ankles fast. There was no source for it, which only told him that it wasn't real, but it sure as hell felt real. "I ever tell you I hate swimming? It's an awful activity." He set another arrow and fired at the wall, but the steel just dissolved against the fake walls and splattered into the fake water, only sealing their very real, not fake fates. "Maybe this is why I never signed the divorce papers. You were gonna follow me into death anyway."

BOBBI MORSE: Her staves were gone but Bobbi slammed her shoulder against the wall a few times. “I really hate telepaths.” She grumbled. Bobbi worked with Pleasant Hill. She knew what the Wyngarde’s could do. “Hey, baby?” Bobbi found herself back to back with Clint, using him as leverage to kick at the siding. “Regan Wyngarde’s illusions are strong enough to trick the body. Once we think we’re suffocating, our bodies actually will.” Maybe it was karma. She turned to face him, water now lapping at her chin. “You watched me drown once. That worked out better than this probably will. You know I still love you, right?”

BUCKY BARNES: Commotion broke out on the helicarrier as the Wyngarde’s infiltrated. He'd read the file, he knew that they specialized in illusion based abilities, but he hadn't expected one of them to take the form of Yelena, down to the way she clenched her fists at her sides when things got particularity hairy, always ready to grab a weapon holstered at her hip. To anyone else, this would've been such an easy snare, but James was cynical by nature and not easily disillusioned. He unhitched the rifle from his back holster and cocked it, aiming the barrel level with Yelena's head. "Dumb move, you don't actually think it's that easy to trick me, do you?"

MARTINIQUE WYNGARDE: Martinique glared at her sister, feeling anger flare through her chest as she shook her head and shrugged. As much as she tried not to give into the childish competitiveness that they often got into, she couldn't help it. She always had to prove herself to be better, always had to remind Regan of which of the two of them were older. She diverted her attention to Jessica Drew and pouted. "Your kid's adorable, you know." And with that, suddenly it appeared to Jessica as if her son turned into a porcupine, and then for good measure Martinique had him scurry away quickly towards the bushes.

DAISY JOHNSON: Daisy glared at the two women as everyone in the helicarrier seemed to suddenly lose their minds. She knew they specialized in telepathy and illusions, but other than that it didn't seem like they had a way to defend themselves against a quake. She stepped forward and held her arm around, sending a large shockwave towards the two mutants.

CLINT BARTON: The water was cold as it rushed around them, filling the tank at an alarming speed. They were almost submerged; his hair brushed against the ceiling. There was nowhere left to go. "Really? You're gonna do this now?" Clint said, head tilting down until their foreheads met. "You were always the love of my stupid, stupid life. Maybe I'll get luckier in the next one." He was joking, he always joked when he got nervous. He didn't mean it, but he couldn't break past the need to say it this way. "A stupid illusion." the water was getting higher. "A stupid fucking illusion."

REGAN WYNGARDE: As the dark haired agent Regan had seen inside began to shake the ground, the telepath narrowed her eyes and projected it so it looked as if the ground had dropped away as a result. Now having fun with it, Regan let an illusion roll over her as her body changed. Shorter and far more curved, she wore black jeans with a holster, boots and a dark t-shirt. As Barnes noticed her, she raised an eyebrow almost challengingly. “Nyet.” She spoke into the barrel of the gun with a slight Russian accent. “You’re too smart. Too damaged. But I don’t care.” Taking a step forward, dark painted nails nudged the barrel downwards. “It’d be easier with me. We both know it. I look like her, sound like her. We can all pretend and she can stay where she belongs.”

JESSICA DREW: As Clint and Bobbi suddenly began gasping, Jessica’s head snapped to the side as she saw one of the Mastermind’s appear to have Gerry. “Get the hell away from my son!” But it was too late and he was a porcupine. “You have to be fucking kidding me.” She turned to crawl through the bushes.

MARTINIQUE WYNGARDE: Martinique smirked as Jessica crawled and turned back towards her, continuing the illusion as she made the blood in her veins feel like lead. "Seems like your body's finally catching up with you, Drew." She continued the illusion, making the effects of the poisoning that was constantly plaguing Jessica's body seem to be accelerating.

BOBBI MORSE: Almost half a foot shorter than Clint, Bobbi was paddling to try and stay afloat. “I mean, I’m not sure there’s going to be another time to do it.” Bobbi tried to laugh before almost choking on water. As his forehead hit hers, her eyes briefly closed and she strained to hear him over the sloshing. Aware that she was shaking from the cold, Bobbi tried to button the top of her uniform to try and peel off a layer to make it easier to float. The shaking just increased. “Luckier than me? Never, Barton. I think we tapped out. Let’s be boring next life. Live somewhere warm. No bullshit.” She tried to kiss him, barely managing to reach his lips. “And no stupid fucking illusions.” And with that, Bobbi went under.

CLINT BARTON: There wasn't anymore space. The claustrophobia was intense, careening through any romantic or lovesick thought he could've given in response. He just watched Bobbi go under, the water enveloping around her, helpless to do anything but watch her drown. Again. As the water rose higher up his nose, he tilted his head to get one final breath in before the water went over his head, too.

BUCKY BARNES: He let her, the barrel pointing slightly downward yet his grip tightened around the trigger. The illusion was almost palpable, filling into his senses and spreading into every crack and crevice. He remembered reading how vivid it could feel, how the body would succumb before the mind. "You make a terrible blonde." he said with only a slight tremble in his throat. Forcing himself to move, he released the trigger and instead shifted his grip on the rifle, bringing the side of the gun across Wyngarde's head with a speed only granted by proximity. Even as he made contact, even as he heard the crack of the metal hitting bone, Yelena's form didn't give way into Regan's. It didn't change a bit.

DAISY JOHNSON: Usually it took a second for her shock blasts to hit, but suddenly the floor dropped out from below Daisy and she was falling what seemed to be a pretty lengthy distance. Even if she knew these two could make illusions, that didn't change the fact that this felt very real. Her eyes widened as she desperately tried to grasp onto the sides of the walls, but she just kept falling. And finally, after what felt like forever, she hit the ground with a hard thud that knocked every last breath of wind out of her. She wheezed as she laid on the ground before rolling over and spitting blood out of her mouth. "That... all you got?.."

CAROL DANVERS: It was utter chaos. Carol couldn't get to James or Clint or Bobbi because she was too busy chasing after Jess, who was now on her hands and knees, crawling through nothing. "Jessica fucking Drew-" she grabbed for Jess's shoulder, trying to yank her back. "If you don't get your ass up right now I swear to god I will lob you into space."

LAURA KINNEY: Following Kwannon’s telepathic instructions, Laura had laid low and circled  the perimeter. She could smell a Wyngarde standing next to James despite the difference in appearance, but Laura left him to it as he took her out with a blow from his gun. “Gabby.” She spoke her sisters name quietly, knowing she’d pick up on the sound. Counting to three silently, Laura lunged forwards towards Martinique. Using her momentum, she managed to tackle her with her thighs wrapped around the other mutants torso so she could throw both of them to the ground. Instantly in a crouch, two claws where extended towards Martinique as she left a spot for Gabby.

JESSICA DREW: “You don’t understand.” Jessica ignored Carol. When she touched her the brunette instantly sent a flare of stinging green energy towards her friend. “That a-hole did to Gerry what they did to Roger. I have to find him.” Her body was suffering though, and her crawl stalled as she sat on her knees. “IthinkI’mgoingtopassout.”

WANDA MAXIMOFF: “Enough.” Wanda could see through the illusions. She had been trapped in one of her own, a Westview that momentarily caught her off guard. But the people weren’t real. It only took the sight of her fake husband and children to snap out of it and scarlet exploded off of the Witch as she broke free. Regan Wyngarde was lying prone on the ground even though she looked like Yelena Belova. When Wanda lifted a hand red ate its way over the unconscious form and revealed its true shape. The illusions around the field slowly began to disintegrate and fade in clouds of red as Wanda hung suspended above it all. “I think we should be done with that.”

GABBY KINNEY: Gabby followed nearby, trying to lay low and not draw attention from either of the Wyngarde sisters as she listened to Laura and nodded, sneaking up on the other side of Martinique before she clawed across Martinique's stomach. She intentionally didn't go deep enough to kill, but definitely enough to maim as Martinique let out a scream and threw her head back. "Should we knock her out? We should knock her out, right?" She tried to raise her voice a bit over the screaming.

CAROL DANVERS: "Then pass out, you crazy baby obsessed freak." Carol said, words lined with concern as she shook out her hand. Crouching next to Jess, she braced her arms out, ready to catch, just as the illusion started to die away. They were left in the field, just adjacent to the helicarrier, no porcupines or bushes in sight. "Jess?" Carol asked, hesitantly.

DAISY JOHNSON: As the illusion lifted, Daisy could finally take a deep breath of air again as she came back to reality. She was laying on the helicarrier floor, a little disoriented as she brushed herself off and slowly used one of the side benches to stand herself up. "Bobbi? Clint? You guys good?"

JESSICA DREW: “You should try having a kid. They consume your every thought.” Jess slurred. Now having Carol’s approval, her eyes rolled back in her head and she swooned to the side. A moment later the illusion ceased, and Jessica blinked and sat up once more. Running her had over her face, she glanced around the field in confusion. “Gerry’s not a porcupine, is he? But Roger still is.”

CLINT BARTON: Clint swallowed air with a heave, inhaling so intensely that he began coughing, body lurching forward. He grabbed at his chest, hands slapping against dry clothing; against his holster and accessory weapons. Everything was in place, he was dry, he could breathe. Bobbi--- he shifted so quickly he almost smacked into her. They were both on the ground, against the wall of the helicarrier. Dry, unharmed, alive. "What a fucking dream." he said to himself once he'd regained his breath. "All one big fucking nightmare." he looked up at the sound of Johnson's voice. "Yeah. One of them must've knocked me out." He slowly got to his feet, dusting himself off like he could still feel water beneath his suit. "Always gotta bring the bow and arrow guy along to take the bulk of the beating, huh."

CAROL DANVERS: "Which is why I already have one. You." Carol took the bulk of her weight until Jess popped back up, taking her and her weight with her. "Gerry's not here, Jess. Gocking is, well. Would you rather I say he's safe at home?"

JESSICA DREW: Rising on wobbly feet, Jessica leaned against Carol for a moment of support. Although she had yet to tell her friend, Martinique was right. Her body was killing her. “No. I don’t think I want to say anything on it. Who saved the day?”

LAURA KINNEY: As Martinique began to trash, Laura moved to straddle her with her knee pressured against her solar plexus. “If you have someone who can create illusions and kill people, you’re always going to knock them out. Basic rule, Gabby.” In one quick motion Laura rose and drove her foot into Martinique’s temple. “Easy.”

GABBY KINNEY: "I mean I got the no killing her part down, didn't I? Does that not count for something?" Gabby snorted, laughing a little as Laura kicked Martinique in the head. "I totally could have done that."

BOBBI MORSE: For what wasn’t the first time in her life, Bobbi was pretty sure she died. Which, like every other time, was a bummer. Her lungs had stopped straining for air when out of nowhere it came flooding in to fill her lungs with such and intensity that she gagged. Body slumped against her ex-husbands, it took a second for Bobbi’s brain to catch up. “I’m taking time off after this.” She mumbled. “And I’m going away. Far away.” The top layer of her suit had been discarded to the side of her, and Bobbi buttoned it back on before grabbing her staves and hooking them back into her holster. “I knew I didn’t like those two.”

KWANNON: Picking her way through the field of recovering people, the raven haired telepath made her way first towards the Black Widow. She had psychically blocked herself off from the Wyngarde’s, and as a superior telepath that had allowed her time to pick through the mind of the still unconscious Sharon Carter. Relaying the information to Natasha, she followed the spies suggestion and moved to where James Barnes stood by Regan. “Her father is just as bad.” She commented quietly before dropping her voice and telling him, “Astrid Massey. Twenty-One. She’s a nursing student. Natasha said you would want to know.”

DAISY JOHNSON: "So what's our next move?" Daisy asked, pausing before turning to address Natasha. She knew she wasn't going to be able to make all of this up to them right away, but she was going to do what was right. The time to gather intel was over, it was time to figure out a game plan. "I'll do whatever you guys need me to do. I'm.. really sorry, that I didn't come out and say something sooner. It didn't feel like I had the option to. If Sharon found out.. well, like Bobbi said, we'd probably be locked away in here somewhere too. But as far as I'm concerned, Maria Hill can kiss my ass."

BUCKY BARNES: The illusion had dissolved, letting James confirm Regan's identity before turning his attention towards Psylocke. He still kept a guard against Regan while he listened, his gun pointed down at aimed at her unconscious form. "Thank you." He said thinly. He was so fucking tired of people messing with his and Yelena's mind.

JANE DOE/RIPLEY RYAN: There was a ripple. It was a slight stirring of reality tampering that slowly moved across Westview from its border. The Reality Stone that lived inside of Pleasant Hill’s Jane Doe responded to its multiversal sister when the Scarlet Witch used her magic outside the town. In an unprecedented move, the Town Database crashed for a singular moment. It only took that second for a blonde to materialize in the field by the border, clothed only in a hospital gown with unkempt blonde hair. A plastic hospital bracelet hung off one boney wrist as she stared at the group. “This isn’t right.”

CAROL DANVERS: "Ripley?" Carol said as she stood, hauling Jess to her feet with her. "For a brief, minute moment I wondered where you'd scampered off to. I guess I'm not entirely surprised it's here."

JANE DOE/RIPLEY RYAN: “Ripley.” The woman repeated blankly. “No. No, I don’t think so. Why are you here? You’re not supposed to be.”

CAROL DANVERS: Carol took a tentative step forward, closer to Ripley. "Then who are you? Why aren't we supposed to be here?"

JANE DOE/RIPLEY RYAN: At the question, genuine confusion and dismay washed over her face. She should know that, shouldn’t she? The sedatives that they had been pumping through her system dulled any red flags. Although she was still at first as the other woman approached, Jane took a step towards her and reached out to touch her arm. As soon as she made contact with the fabric of the uniform, the red in her chest lit up the thin gown. Red washing over her features, she looked back up at Carol as the Database once again manipulated the Stone inside of her. “I’m supposed to bring you home.” In a burst of red Carol Danvers vanished.

SAM WILSON: Watching the interaction warily, Sam took a step forward when what appeared to be Ripley touched Carol’s arm. Then, his girlfriend was gone completely and he was in front of the blonde within a second. Grasping both of her shoulders, Sam stared her down only to meet an unfocused gaze. “No, no. We’ve played this game before. Bring her back. Pleasant Hill isn’t our home, or yours. Bring her back or I swear to God, I’ll --- not again. Not this.”

JANE DOE/RIPLEY RYAN: The Database technician was already at work. Through his monitors he observed the group at the border and quickly typed in commands to have the Stone absorb people into the town. America Chavez. Cindy Moon. Clint Barton. Gwen Stacy. Jessica Drew. Kate Bishop. Kwannon. Laura Kinney. Matthew Murdock. Miles Morales. Natasha Romanoff. Scott Lang. He would have continued on but the connection cut out. Under the instructions of Dr. Jessup they had no choice but to recall Ryan back inside the hospital before she came to. Just like that, the Pleasant Hill border was silent once more.

SAM WILSON: Standing there in the aftermath, Sam couldn’t help but let out an angry, “Fuck.” Red disappearing, he looked to Wanda but she just shook her head. If her own abilities had been a catalyst for Ripley appearing they couldn’t risk an encore. “We’ve gotta...” he glanced around. “Sound off.” The heroes remaining made themselves known. Bobbi Morse. Cassie Lang. Daisy Johnson. Gabby Kinney. James Barnes. Jessica Jones. Nathan Summers. Peter Parker. Monica Rambeau. Riri Williams. Rogue. Sam Alexander. Sam Wilson. Sharon Carter. Stephen Strange. Steve Rogers. Vivian Vision. Wanda Maximoff. Sam listened to them all speak and nodded. “So we got a few let then.”

BOBBI MORSE: “We need to divide.” Bobbi announced. “I've got about twelve reality blocker chips on me that could help us get in that I was supposed to distribute. Anyone up a trip into hell?”

JESSICA JONES: “Jesus Christ, no.” Jessica shook her head. She was still reeling from a vision of Kilgrave. “I didn’t want to do this and now I *really* don’t want to do this. Plus, I’m out of whiskey.”

WANDA MAXIMOFF: Locking eyes with Strange, Wanda spoke after a moment. “I’ll go home and study. See what I can learn. I shouldn’t be here. My abilities drew Ripley out. They don’t want me here. I need to go to Krakoa though, I can bring someone with me.”

SAM WILSON: It was decided. Jessica Jones would be brought back to New York by Strange, and Wanda would accompany Rogue to Krakoa while Cable returned the Wyngarde sisters to the Island. Sharon would be brought into Pleasant Hill along with the rescue task force, but without Kwannon they were lacking a back up plan. The task force would consist of Bobbi Morse, Cassie Lang, Daisy Johnson, Gabby Kinney, James Barnes, Peter Parker, Monica Rambeau, Riri Williams, Sam Alexander, Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers and Vivian Vision. As each team broke off and vanished into the dying light, Sam took a deep breath before following Bobbi to the gate. In and out. That was the plan, but it wasn’t likely to be reality.

#momevents #event: pleasant hill #pleasant hill: at the border #chatlog: pleasant hill border

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ARGUMENT

You please or annoy customers wholesale. The argument for designing languages for bad programmers is that there are economies of scale in how much of your life you devote to your work. It's a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must be badly designed. That was contrarian advice 10 years ago, they'd just get into an ideological argument. Google has, you have to overcome this: Doing something simple at first glance usually never were when you really looked at it. Medieval alchemists were working on it on the side while working on Wall Street. The manual should be thin as well.

Not just because it was more valuable, but because he spent all his time on it and neglected his studies, he was kicked out of school for a year. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is. But getting bought is getting them to act. They're quite explicit about it: they like to acquire startups at just the point where you can't go to your boss and say, I want to work ten times as hard, so please pay me ten times as hard, so will you please pay me ten times a much. Customers don't care how hard you work. But after a while I learned the trick of speaking fast. I'm not sure how reasonable a hope this is, but one thing I would really love to program. A big component of wealth is location. A lot of people, I was afraid of it too. How do you know when you meet one?

The investors are what make a startup hub. I heard this, I thought, these guys are great hackers. The reason funding deals take so long to develop that nontechnical people like managers and venture capitalists also learned it. In those days there was no one but him. Potential buyers will always delay if they can. In your own projects you don't have to do that. But there is another less sexy way to achieve that: just take less money. Whatever help investors give a startup tends to be underestimated. Maybe that's possible, but I think it could give you an edge to understand the underlying principles. These quotes about luck are not from founders whose startups failed. As you go into a startup, all the way to the close.

But getting bought is also an art in its own right, and one of which won't surprise them, and sitting on their boards if you did? Maybe the answer is yes, and you can do better work: Because we're relaxed, it's so much easier than building something great. You may not even be aware you're doing something people want. And they try to prevent you from doing things that they consider home-made presents to be a hacker yourself. They'll be fine. When I asked her what specific things she remembered speakers always saying, she mentioned: that the way to the top: The surprise for me was how accessible important and interesting people are. Another thing that might turn out to be very hard. In the long term the right answer for dealing with Internet distractions will be software that watches and controls them. They get new technology by buying the startups that created it—where presumably the hackers did have somewhere quiet to work. If you drink too much, you can contribute to open-source projects. One possible explanation is that they become part of people's identity, and people trying to break into your servers.

I sat down and wrote a web browser that didn't suck a fine idea, by the way they talk about them is that they make two mistakes that cancel each other out. It's so important to launch fast that it may be better to think of them as rather passive. How do you overcome schlep blindness? It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. I think anything that really smart people really love is worth paying attention to. If you wanted to get lots of attention. Fundraising is brutal. Surely Microsoft isn't benevolent?

If you're small, they don't realize just how fragile startups are, though they may not have been exposed to that. College is where faking stops working. So don't try to predict whether a startup will win, but to notice quickly that it already is winning. The structure of their business means a partner does at most 2 new investments a year, then on average you must be contributing at least x dollars a year, the law introduces frightening legal exposure for corporate officers. Why? Notice anything missing? So it's winner take all. This is so foreign to most people's experience that they don't get it till it happens. The investors or acquirers chose you because you seemed hot.

Just be warned you'll have to do something people want. It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration from women. Don't be evil. Imagine how much time you could save the world's engineers if they could get paid for it. Or at least you won't know what it is. You don't have to become a CEO or a movie star to be in a situation with measurement and leverage would be lead actor in a movie. This will sound shocking, but it didn't help Thinking Machines or Xerox.

When you think you've got a great idea. We can concentrate on doing what's best for our company, product, employees and customers. There's a fundamental problem in computer science, and it was about $300/month for big stores, so it was a little alarming to have users who got lots of traffic. This was what made everyone want computers. If someone were creating an Internet-based TV company from scratch now, they might have some plan for shows aimed at specific regions, but it was designed for its authors to use, and that's a really useful property in domains where things happen fast. And of course another big change for the average startup is that programming languages have improved—or rather, the median is probably zero. As anyone who has tried to optimize software knows, the key is measurement. If you force yourself to shorten the manual, in the best case you do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people's broken code. Writing application programs used to mean writing desktop software. They would rather overpay for a safe choice.

Thanks to Robert Morris, David Sloo, Max Roser, Jessica Livingston, and Sarah Harlin for inviting me to speak.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #trick #things #technology #software #times #man #term #idea #question #thing #want #deals #guys #year #servers #school #brain #fast #people #problem #course #stops #lot #Customers

[sunshineweb]

Why I Don’t Talk About My Stocks Publicly, And Why You Shouldn’t Either

It was sometime in the middle of 2008 when the realization of a global financial crisis had finally settled on the Indian stock market. I was working on my job as an analyst.

One stock – an Indian engineering major – I had recommended to our clients at the start of the year had fallen around 30% since my recommendation. Not just the stock price, the business had started to wobble. But I closed my eyes to that because my recommendation was now public and many clients would have bought it in their portfolios. To change my view after a 30% cut in stock’s price, however honest I would have been to accept my mistake, would have been a disaster.

Now, this wasn’t just one example that I can think of from that time. There were a few similar such recommendations I and my team had made then.

Some stocks had fallen just because the markets were down. But a few had fallen because their underlying businesses were also bouncing around on a rough wicket.

“What would our clients think of us,” I asked my colleague, “If we change our view now after the stock has already declined? It would hit the trust our clients have on us!” He agreed.

Anyways, cut to June 2012, a year after I had started Safal Niveshak. As part of the StockTalk initiative where I wrote about companies without explicitly recommending their stocks, I covered a leading Indian medical device company Opto Circuits. Here, despite having concerns on its working capital and goodwill on the balance sheet due to aggressive acquisitions, and just because I found the valuations reasonable, I avoided warning readers about the dangers of investing in the stock.

The stock fell sharply after my report on the business, and I got in the defensive mode. Over the next eight months, and after the stock had declined 52% from my report date, I wrote two posts re-explaining my stance on the business.

Despite knowing and communicating to readers that mine was not a stock recommendation but plain business analysis, I was in the “explanation” mode. Why? Because I had made a public appearance with my analysis on the stock, which had started playing dirty games with my mind.

I never owned that stock before, while, or after writing that report. But here is one lesson I learned from this episode, which I could also relate to what I was doing “not changing my mind” in 2008. And that lesson is…

Public Commitments are (Often) Dangerous Robert Cialdini wrote in his brilliant book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion –

Consider the organizations dedicated to helping people rid themselves of bad habits. Many weight-reduction clinics, for instance, understand that often a person’s private decision to lose weight will be too weak to withstand the blandishments of bakery windows, wafting cooking scents, and late-night Sara Lee commercials. So they see to it that the decision is buttressed by the pillars of public commitment. They require their clients to write down an immediate weight-loss goal and show that goal to as many friends, relatives, and neighbors as possible. Clinic operators report that frequently this simple technique works where all else has failed.

This was about losing weight, where the person making a public commitment to lose weight would not have to change his or her stance after some time. When you want to lose weight, nothing in the world would lead you to change your stance so that you want to start gaining weight. In such cases, making your intentions public or committing to your goals or resolutions in public is often helpful.

But what about commitments where you may need to change your stance in the future? Like stock market investing? Like weight loss, you fall for the commitment and consistency bias even here. But that is dreadful when the external situation warrants a change in your stance, including sometimes a complete reversal of what you had originally wanted to do.

I have seen this happen with myself like I explained above, and a lot of fellow investors including a few highly successful ones. At certain points in their investing careers, they went publicly vociferous about their stocks and paid a heavy price when commitment and consistency bias sucked them away from changing their minds when the facts changed.

Just because they had spoken publicly about their stocks, and when their stocks started falling because of a negative change in the underlying businesses, they could not adhere to what Keynes once said – “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

See what happens inside your brain when you tell your child that you’re going to give her a treat, and she replies, “You promise?” Your brain will now not allow you to reverse course because you have taken a position publicly, and that public is the most difficult to manage i.e., your child.

Speaking Publicly about Stocks is (Often) a Bad Idea Guy Spier writes in his book The Education of a Value Investor –

Over the years, I began to realize that it was a bad idea to speak publicly about stocks that I own. The issue isn’t that other investors might steal my best ideas. The real problem is that it messes with my head. Once we’ve made a public statement, it’s psychologically difficult to back away from what we’ve said — even if we’ve come to regret that opinion. So the last thing I want to do is walk into the trap of making a public statement about a stock, given that the situation might later change or that I might subsequently discover that I was wrong.

Public commitments, you see, tend to be lasting commitments. And as Spier writes, even when you come to regret your original decision, it’s difficult to change your mind because you have committed to it publicly.

Whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arises a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person. We all love consistent people, and always want to look like one. After all, someone who is inconsistent is looked at as fickle, uncertain, or unstable. On the other hand, consistency is a hallmark of being rational, assured, trustworthy, and sound.

Given this context, it is hardly surprising that people try to avoid the look of inconsistency. For appearances’ sake, then, the more public a stand, the more reluctant we will be to change it.

Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, chronicles the subprime crisis that nearly led to the downfall of the global financial system in 2008. In this book, Lewis profiles, among others, Michael Burry who was one of the very few investors who could see the subprime mortgage crisis coming and thus bought credit default swaps that ended up being highly profitable.

Here is an excerpt from the book where Burry comments on why he dislikes debating his investment positions, particularly related to the credit default swaps (emphasis is mine) –

Inadvertently, he’d opened up a debate with his own investors, which he counted among his least favorite activities. “I hated discussing ideas with investors,” he said, “because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process.” Once you became an idea’s defender, you had a harder time changing your mind about it.

Coming back to Cialdini, here is what he writes in his book –

Once an active commitment is made, then, self-image is squeezed from both sides by consistency pressures. From the inside, there is a pressure to bring self-image into line with action. From the outside, there is a sneakier pressure—a tendency to adjust this image according to the way others perceive us. And because others see us as believing what we have written (even when we’ve had little choice in the matter), we will once again experience a pull to bring self-image into line with the written statement.

Guy Spier writes (emphasis is mine) –

Instead of discussing current holdings in my letters to shareholders, I now provide a detailed postmortem on stocks that I’ve already sold. This gives shareholders a clear insight into how their money is being invested, but it doesn’t interfere with my ability to act as rationally as possible going forward. For me, this has certainly removed a psychological burden. I’d argue that most individual investors would also benefit from keeping quiet about their current investments since this talk only makes it harder to operate in a rational way. It’s so much easier when you don’t have to worry about how other people might judge you.

You now know the reason why I don’t talk about my stocks publicly. I won’t even if I am paid to.

I have seen the grave pitfalls of doing the same. I have experienced the quirks in my brain that emerge after such public announcements, and which play around with my sanity.

A lot of people think I do not showcase my investments or don’t talk about my stocks “because I am frightened of being mocked at of my average results.” But then, I know that I have nothing to prove to anyone except to myself.

Live with an Inner Scorecard Warren Buffett has talked about the concept of Inner Scorecard. In Chapter Three of his biography Snowball, he was quoted as saying this –

The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.

I always pose it this way. I say: ‘Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover?’ Now, that’s an interesting question.

Here’s another one. If the world couldn’t see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world’s greatest investor but in reality have the world’s worst record? Or be thought of as the world’s worst investor when you were actually the best?

In teaching your kids, I think the lesson they’re learning at a very, very early age is what their parents put the emphasis on. If all the emphasis is on what the world’s going to think about you, forgetting about how you really behave, you’ll wind up with an Outer Scorecard.

Let’s face it. Not a day goes by that we are not tempted to glance to the left and to the right to see how we measure up to the people around us and what others think of us, our work, our stocks. But it doesn’t stop there, does it?

We’re tempted to compare our children to other children, our spouse to other spouses, our salary to others’ salaries, our car to others’ cars. It’s frustrating. It’s exhausting. And as Buffett would tell you, it’s a trap.

This act of comparison with others – or seeking validation from others, that is one of the key intentions behind speaking publicly about stocks – is what is driven by living with an Outer Scorecard. And all it leads to is constant frustration because we will never stand up perfectly to what everyone else wants us to look like or be like. Over that, there are many of those who are waiting to criticize and pull us down, whatever we say or do.

Take Bruce Lee’s Advice “A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.” ~ Anonymous

The thing that separates us humans from other animals is that we constantly change into new forms, new avatars. We are sad, we are happy, we are emotional, and we are angry. We communicate through different languages, we do different kinds of work, and we deal with different kind of people differently. Effectively, we keep on changing ourselves as per the demands of time and situation.

In fact, success in life depends largely on whether we are able to change ourselves with changing times. If we are flexible and formless – like water – taking the form of whatever is around us, we gain power and succeed against those who rigidly hold on to their ground.

Despite this, when it comes to our ideas – especially when we have only one – we rigidly hold on to them…

…very much like Henry Ford who supposedly said, “People can have the Model T in any colour – so long as it’s black.” This nearly ruined Ford Motors Company in the 1920s, because while Mr. Ford was in love with his idea of “only black Model T” cars, Americans were shifting to bigger, faster, fancier, and brightly painted automobiles.

…or very much like the old “me” who would often not change views on stocks even when the circumstances changed, and paid heavy prices. A lot of this happened because my job required me to go public with my views on stocks.

I have seen several other investors fall in love with their stocks in the garb of “buy and hold”. So they will hold on to businesses, and especially those that are going downhill, and especially those where they have made their commitments public.

They will remain stuck in a status quo mode because they now hate to admit publicly they’ve lost money. They will even put a higher value on the stocks they already own than they would be willing to pay for the same things if they didn’t own them. All this because they’re too rigid to change their ideas, even when circumstances are shouting at them to do so, and because they are facing the public’s glare.

If you have been through such a moment in your own life (or investing life), you would like to read what Bruce Lee has to say –

Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. Put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. Put water into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or creep or drip or crash. Be water, my friend.

Charlie Munger says –

The game of life is the game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you want to win.

In fact, a few of life’s great pleasures are to keep learning, letting go of previously cherished ideas, and emptying your mind for new ideas to come in. Then you’re free to look for new ones. And you can only do that when you, like water, are formless. When you don’t live life on others’ terms (Outer Scorecard), but only yours (Inner Scorecard). And, with respect to investing, when you don’t publicly commit to ideas because you may need to change your view in the future.

So, speaking publicly about your stocks can often (not always, but often) lead you to pain…

…but it’s always a pleasure to be quiet and formless like water, my friend.

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