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oldshrewsburyian · 4 years

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if u ever wanna dump an essay about edward fairfax rochester to me...I’m here!

Ahh, you must know how dangerous such an invitation is to an enthusiast! It’s a rainy Sunday evening, I’ve poured myself a glass of wine, and I’m ready to do this. I think Charlotte Brontë is doing and exploring some really interesting things in the character of Rochester, which sometimes get flattened/left out in adaptations. To be fair to the adaptations: he’s still compelling as a Brooding Gothic Protagonist.™

Prolegomenon I: I haven’t read the scholarship on Jane Eyre since undergrad, and I haven’t read The Wide Sargasso Sea since graduate school. I make no claims to particular originality here. And of course, literature can and does hold multiple meanings, etc. etc.; this is my take on Edward Fairfax “Self-Delusion” Rochester. The subfields of Jane Eyre criticism I’m most familiar with/informed by are “Jane Eyre + feminist theory” and “Jane Eyre + ‘early 19th-century debates within Anglicanism, pretty wild, right?’” This should surprise exactly no one who follows this blog.

Prolegomenon II: when I get caught up in my Rochester Feelings in conversation, there is inevitably a point where one of my English-major or -professor friends will shout me down and say “He kept a WIFE in the ATTIC” and I know. I know. It’s inexcusable and I’m not trying to excuse it, and everyone should read Jean Rhys. What I am really interested in doing, though, is exploring Rochester as three-dimensional character, not “man whose bad behavior gets hand-waved aside because reasons.”

First off: Rochester is a man of contradictions. He is a man who is generous to his retainers and his tenants. He is a man who shoulders even social responsibilities that are not strictly his, as we see in the education of Adèle (who might otherwise have died in an uncharitable charitable institution, or become a laundress, or become a courtesan.) True, we meet him as an extremely awkward and fumbling and sometimes resentful figure in loco parentis. But he is trying. I think this is perhaps the key thing about Rochester: what we see him doing for most of the novel, almost always badly, is trying to achieve better (more just, more humane, more equitable) results within a system (patriarchal, economic, colonial) that is rotten at its core. It is not everyone who has the moral fiber of a Jane Eyre, to say “this system is rotten at its core and it is better to starve on the moors or live forever unhappy than to be complicit in it.” The second thing we see Rochester doing, almost always badly, and this is where the contradiction comes in, is trying to avoid his own pain. I’ve intentionally said pain rather than guilt. I think that gets closer to the heart of the matter.

I’m going to get back to my essay in a minute, but an interjection of sorts, before I put the rest of it under a cut: I think it is vital to the novel that Rochester genuinely changes. Justification of this argument and More Emotions below.

For contemporary readers, the concept of repentance as a process may feel unfamiliar, trite, irreversibly sullied by hypocrites. But even if we take it out of Brontë’s extremely Anglican framework, I read Rochester’s profound, unconditional acceptance of his own sin (wrong, if you prefer) against Bertha and the losses which he sees as divine punishment for it as absolutely key to his having a chance at a future with Jane. The concept of divine retribution is surely stranger to us even than that of repentance, but having Thornfield, Rochester’s inheritance, sign and symbol and engine of his patriarchal wealth, built on colonial exploitation, literally go up in flames like the wicked cities of the Old Testament, is Not Exactly Subtle. And, of course, he loses his sight: “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” His sight has been, in the most fundamental spiritual sense, diseased. He has been incapable of accurately seeing his own guilt (which is to say, seeing it in proportion to all other things, the other facts of Bertha’s madness, the duplicity of his family and that of the Masons, etc. etc.) So he loses his sight. And then he gains a much richer understanding of, well, everything. Gradually. Not all at once. I have Feelings about the psychological realism of those final chapters, but let me rewind, as it were. [N.B. I’m not arguing that Charlotte Brontë presents all this as a straightforward Divine Smiting. It matters that Bertha gets the freedom to bring all this crashing down (literally), and that she chooses her own end. But I do think that Rochester reads it as Smiting; I think we need to take that final assertion of his seriously. It’s entirely possible to read the Elm Tree Incident, and indeed that bizarre wedding morning, as Rochester waiting, waiting with pounding heart, for the bolt of lightning.]

I believe passionately in Rochester and Jane as a couple for a number of reasons (so many reasons, all the reasons), but perhaps chief among them is that they are both, bless them, raging romantics who have had very little outlet for their rich emotional life or for their unconventional, erudite, intelligent, exploratory spiritualities. OR (sorry, I forgot one) for their intellectual life, come to that! Rochester with his library full of science and his feelings about moths and Jane who becomes a teacher and genuinely loves nurturing young minds. *sobs* I love them so much. But Rochester is far too ready to manipulate others as he has been manipulated, and as others seek to manipulate him. His treatment of Blanche Ingram, for instance, I read as being several things, in shifting proportion 1) an effort to distract himself from Jane; he has few if any scruples about involving the unscrupulous and mercenary Miss Ingram in bigamy 2) an effort to distract the neighborhood and its gossip from Jane; why, after all, has he been at Thornfield so long without entertaining anyone?? very suspicious 3) an effort to find out what Jane’s feelings for him are. We see her ready to sting him into jealousy at the end too, a nice little bit of symmetry. Rochester is, yes, high-handed in the extreme. But I read the conversation under the elm tree not as a cynical test, but a genuine and painfully awkward attempt to figure out what Jane’s feelings for him really are. Yes, they’ve been having High Spiritual Communion and intellectual discussions and mutual teasing and borderline flirting for however many weeks it’s been. But also: he’s her employer. He’s at least 15 years older than she is (I forget the details on this. 15? 20? anyway, point stands.) He is not and never has been handsome, and he knows exactly how little his wealth counts for with Jane. He’s deeply weird and his house is weird and he comes with a French ward and a mysterious attic and a wife. But does she love him anyway? She does! *cries about it*

Of course, none of this excuses the inexcusable. The proposal-to-wedding sequence shows us Rochester at his moral nadir, in relation to both Bertha and Jane. It also shows him on the knife edge of losing control over his integrity in other ways, now that he has violated this one. (Remember when Jane comes back to Thornfield and says “Reader, I had feared worse; I had feared he was mad”? Yeah, there’s a reason for that.) Anyway, allow me to present excerpts from Chapter 27, which lives in paraphrase in my head at all times:

[W]hile he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair—soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his.

Whew! Anyway, she decides not to despite the fact that she and Rochester feel exactly the same way in this moment:

I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.

*sobs harder* I think it is vitally important to point out that Jane is not cold or even, in this moment, convinced by her own arguments. She and Rochester are, moments after this, in each other’s arms, the language of fire and flame used for them both, and Rochester releases her first because he wants her influenced by nothing but her own will; not their shared passion, and certainly not his own force.

...Where was I before I got caught up with the unbearable sexual and emotional tension? Oh yes, Rochester after Jane leaves. He embraces an extremely thorough program of self-punishment. The most obvious course of action for him -- the one that Jane, the person who knows him best in all the world, assumes he has taken -- is to run away from his pain again, to leave England. He does not do that. He does the opposite of that. He refuses to so much as leave Thornfield itself except to roam the grounds at night. I love this book so much. Then, after the fire, which happens only 2 months after Jane leaves, he goes to Ferndean. Now! The only thing we have learned about Ferndean previously is that Rochester refused to have Bertha live there because its bad climate would have (or at least might have) killed her. We learn from Jane-as-narrator that literally no one will rent it, again, because of its “ineligible and insalubrious site.” Rochester has, with heartbreaking obviousness, given up on life. He has, by his own account, been “doing nothing, expecting nothing,” in “ceaseless sorrow... [and] delirium of desire.”

...Edward Fairfax Rochester has never heard of chill. Also, as we learn, though he is worried about his disabilities because he is worried that Jane will mind, and because they make him a less eligible potential husband in his own estimation (*sniffle*), what he has been chiefly preoccupied with for the last year is worrying about where Jane is and if she’s all right. Again: the man has never heard of chill. But his impulses are generous. He is the heir to a rotten and a poisoned inheritance, and he begins by blaming this inheritance -- his external circumstances, both his privilege and the choices that he is pushed into by his father and brother -- for his own injuries and the ways in which he has injured others. But I (obviously) vigorously cling to the belief that he genuinely turns away from this, that he confronts his own sins and repents and accepts that he will not, cannot, be reunited with Jane in this life. But then he is. *cries about it* Moreover, in a key reorientation from his earlier avoidance-and-denial coping strategy, he accepts Jane’s services “without painful shame or damping humiliation.” He un-hermits himself! He and Jane travel to see friends and family! They receive visitors! These romantic-hearted science nerds proceed to be shockingly normal... for their own given value of that. I’m also convinced that they have the kinkiest sex in nineteenth-century English literature, and I support them. And part of their happiness is the happiness of others; it’s the opposite of Rochester’s globe-trotting, radically individualistic conduct in the first part of the novel. Of course it’s more than he deserves; he knows that, and he needs to know it. But it’s narratively elegant, and (I think) deeply satisfying. And I love it. And, obviously, him... again, more than he deserves.

#jane eyre #edward fairfax rochester #was recently reminded of how hard i ship jane/rochester #is a tag that i have #asks and answers #emilydickinsonapologist

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blaster-aichi · 3 years

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IF24 speculation screaming

Preview

With all of the preview caps available, there’s been a lot to take in; from Ibuki with Majesty Lord to Emi’s fairy wings to all the boys’ younger selves playing together in the park. So this might be a tad all over the place but hoping to condense thoughts coherently.

— Emi and Aichi are both shown to be wearing their powered forms; this might be as part of a flashback which covered Emi’s first interaction with Aichi after his disappearance, allowing Shuka to remain in the season past her sacrifice. For Aichi, there seems little reason (or even if it’s possible) for him to done the Alfred costume at this stage, and with his eyes normal, I’ve my doubts that the new screencap of him takes place in the present, more so after the glimpse in the preview after IF23. Something assuming full control isn’t likely to care what state he’s in or continue any pretense that he has any control over himself. It might be in part why Aichi hasn’t paid that much attention to Ibuki, picking to brutalize Ren instead, when their history might be crucial in the foundation of IF’s story. It may come from Emi and Kai’s taking flight, comparing the Aichi of then to the one of now radiating all kinds of ominous energy or Nome’s recounting earlier events. The point for Emi when Aichi was no longer missing but the enemy; she was well aware by her and Shuka’s infiltration in the first episode and we’ve been shown notable moments through their fight, but not the moment when they discovered the identity of the Jammers’ commander-in-chief.

— Twitter Fanguards are excited at the prospect that the young boys playing in the park is a sign that the timeline’s resolution will grant the ideal timeline where no-one is left alone. To be cautiously optimistic, the thought that had come to my mind initially was the scene being a depiction of a timeline that Kai and/or Ibuki are fighting for or one they imagine might have come about if they had done something differently, sparing Aichi the anguish of his IF childhood and connecting everyone far earlier. If it’s the former, there’s hope that IF25 might serve as an epilogue to emphasize on giving us an glimpse at this perfect timeline while the Outside World characters establish all is well on their end and returning to their normal lives.

Destiny Conductor 2.0 Nome

The glow of Nome’s screencap insinuates his usage of the Akashic Records, but the smile he has is rather ominous, suggesting that his taking off after recruiting Ibuki and Suiko always had a much more sinister undertone to it. The possibility that’s been sprouting personally since Kourin was debunked as being the one pulling Aichi’s strings is that Nome has been the one in that position all along.

During the PsyZombie arc, it’s possible that, whether through Takuto or by another means, Nome became infected by Brandt’s power, positioning him as his brother’s successor. With Brandt defeated once, by taking hold of the Akashic Records, he/it was able to take an entirely different approach: if it couldn’t twist the original timeline to its will, it would use another. The starting point: the boy who crushed Brandt’s ambition.

As established by Takuto as the strongest, Aichi became the primary target of this second effort. Whether the Aichi of IF is his Outside World self pulled within the world and overwritten to live a second childhood like Kai-kun, or the one native to IF World, it works either way. — Outside World Aichi, who might have still held a fragment of Brandt’s power within him from Destiny Conductor’s direct involvement in his sealing, through his Psyqualia which has remained tainted since, thus never freeing him entirely from the power, even though he was unaware ever since, had that exploited as a seed from which his imagination would fester from the below. — IF World Aichi, whose life was monitored by Nome, to prevent any future possible encounters with Vanguard. Using the Akashic Records, Nome mapped out both Kai-kun and Aichi’s so the former’s would be as happy and peaceful as possible while the latters’ plunged him into the depths of solitude, haunting him with images of Kai-kun to ready Aichi for breaking, by his own hand or seeing Kai-kun by happenstance. As a result, Aichi’s power had no outlet and festered, spilling over ultimately when Takuto appeared and turned the key. In the scenario of Outside World Aichi, his line “it’s been a while, Kourin” would reference their time together directly, but in the case he was native to IF’s timeline, it might be Brandt speaking through him. In a manner of speaking, IF serves the same purpose as the Sanctuary from Legion Mate; a means of containing Aichi so that he can’t wreck havoc, whether in good way or bad.

The colour scheme of Aichi’s power has resembled Brandt’s and his binding Kai-kun resembled Link Joker’s (a clan with which Brandt has a connection) power to Lock — Ibuki even saying “Unlock” while Superior Realizing Harmonics Messiah — so until it’s 1000% debunked, I’m still clinging to this theory that’s been building over the past few months.

Aichi isn’t Nome/Brandt’s sole target, however. Charged with their duty to oversee the multiverse, the Tatsunagis are in the enemy’s sights. Takuto and Kourin placed half of the family within IF straight away, Rekka and Ren following and we were witness to Nome roping in Ibuki and Suiko. Aichi was used as bait in order to draw the family in its entirety within a world that is distorted to the point of requiring intervention, where the strongest fighter has been twisted into the enemy. There’s simply no coincidence about collecting them in one place, Takuto was used as the objective for Rekka and Ren. — Takuto specifically has the additional motivation of being the failed first Destiny Conductor. If Brandt has been within Aichi, that might have been reflected in his demeanour leading up to and during the meeting with Takuto; there’s not enough to discern if IF Aichi truly has the hostile side we’ve been seeing or that be a result of the current crisis. — Like Aichi, if IF Kai-kun is the Outside World version sealed, that would likewise remove him from being an immediate threat, as one of the strongest Vanguard fighters. Meaning that Ren and Ibuki, as the other greatest threats to a Brandt resurgence, were perfect candidates for the remaining Tatsunagis’ teams, bringing all the vital players for Brandt’s previous failure onto the board.

And in a world without Vanguard, a world where Aichi is overflowing with power that even he couldn’t control, it’s the perfect time for Nome to step onto the stage and reveal himself.

Emi, Kai and Aichi

The screencap of a winged Emi and Kai gives the impression that they, alone, are heading to the final battle with Aichi, and it’s tremendously fitting. Emi began this journey with one partner by her side, and this way, she would end it with one. Though the nature of that partner will have changed drastically: from someone important to her, who belongs to another world, to someone invaluable to Aichi, presumably native to the timeline with them.

The dynamic between IF Emi, Kai and Aichi is quite unique; with the state of the multiverse in mind, Emi represents the life of isolation Aichi has lived until this point, the only person who was with him throughout years of torment and loneliness. Whereas Kai embodies the possibility wrought from other timelines; what Aichi could and should have grown into, the friends around him that Aichi was meant to have connected with. They represent Aichi’s family and friends respectively, the two people most important to him in IF’s timeline where one was his reality, his daytime, and the other his long-off dream, his nighttime. Both, equally, want him back, even if it might cost the existence of the three of them — like Aichi, they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves if it means grasping what they believe is right.

For those who know Fate/Grand Order, IF very much resembles a Lostbelt, so at the resolution of the fight, with its correction, the world is likely to vanish — with anyone who belongs there. If Aichi, Emi and Kai are all native to IF — and they’re the only characters at the heart of this story who we don’t know for certain come from the Outside World — Emi and Kai separating from the others spares their friends the anguish of losing someone else right before them. The Outside World characters know the cost, but they don’t have to witness it, and can remember Emi and Kai by their happier times. Ibuki and the others instead are charged with stopping Nome’s ambition with the family and their partners gathered as well as seeing the small Kai-kun and Aichi meet, so their assignment to correct history is complete.

Emi and Kai’s battle with Aichi is a much more personal one, so they go ahead to save him by their own hands. Emi to get back the brother she’s been chasing all along, Kai to see the happiness he was gifted shared with the person who gave up so much to protect it, whom he wants to see smile by his side, who he wants to return Blaster Blade to. When Aichi is rescued, the three of them remain together, accepting the end of their world and their anguish. Kai-kun doesn’t return to his parents, having already made the choice of Aichi and the original timeline over them long ago, it serves as a demonstration for Aichi’s eyes that he won’t be left behind in the shadows anymore. After losing so much, none of the trio are alone as they watch their world fading away, reconciling and huddling or even Kai-kun and Aichi having a cardfight so that Kai can share with Aichi the fun they were supposed to have, Emi watching as her brother shows the side she’s always known him to have before someone else. It’s bittersweet, but all three of them could be united and experience true happiness at the end.

#Cardfight!! Vanguard #Cardfight!! Vanguard IF #cfv spoilers #speculation #goes out there hard for maybe one last time for this season #IF is honestly a blessing for all the fun theorizing it's brought back to me #no matter how bumpy it got at times I love it for that alone

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ceescedasticity · 4 years

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another sneak preview

Or actually this may or may not be the entire interlude chapter, but I haven’t decided yet, and I’m fishing for feedback because today has been terrible.

Interlude: Hypatia

Wakaba was never going to get used to accessing cognitive space — the Metaverse — with a phone app. It did not make sense.

(Accessing it using the rift generator in the lab had been bad enough. Yes, it had supposedly been thoroughly tested, and Wakaba herself had programmed in failsafes in the power supply to shut it down if it ever started using more energy than was necessary for a strictly local distortion — but it was based on tech that almost took out a city.)

(…Or, actually, tech that some experimenters almost took out a city with, and wasn't that just the problem.)

(Sometimes she wondered if she would have pursued cognitive psience if she'd realized how very un-theoretical it could get.)

(But the point remained, Metaverse access from a phone app did not make sense, and further investigation had only led to the unavoidable conclusion that it wasn't a phone app, not really, but neither she nor Futaba were ready to say what it was. Futaba had elected not to mention it to the others. Sadly, investigating the source and purpose of a suspicious not-actually-a-phone-app was rather far down their to-do list, since they could at least be confident it had nothing to do with Project Styx.)

She probably was going to get used to the way Mementos felt just that little bit more wrong than the museum, and yet simultaneously less… less… she'd find the words. Hopefully before she got used to it.

She'd come early with Futaba, Wakaba wanting to take some readings (the sensors were all piled in the wheelchair), but they still weren't the first to arrive — there was a black silhouette sitting cross-legged on the floor as Mementos solidified around them, though she quickly bounced to her feet. "Oracle, Archive, good morning."

"Shade?" Futaba said, surprised. "What are you doing here already?"

"I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea to hang around the station for a long time, in the real world," Shade said. "For… conspiracy reasons?"

"No, I think that's probably fine?" Futaba said, and looked at Wakaba for confirmation.

"It should be," Wakaba agreed. "We don't think they know there's anything special about the location. Why?"

Shade was Hifumi Togo — a year older than Futaba and not a time traveler, so not even in high school quite yet. Wakaba felt reasonably well-acquainted with her and her Persona from the museum Palace excursions, on top of their brief meeting in Wakaba's Palace, and Futaba's somewhat disjointed account of the events since regaining her memory and more disjointed account of their interactions with Hifumi in the future. Hifumi liked shogi, science fiction books, and pointing out aspects of the museum that made Madarame look particularly bad, because—

"Apparently I can't be in the house without fighting with my mother this morning," Hifumi said, clearly trying for light but not really succeeding. "I thought she'd accepted the argument that I was focusing on high school for now, but apparently not."

"Oh," Futaba said. "Ugh. Well… hanging around the station is fine, probably. But since you're here, want to help us with these sensors?"

Evidently they were not discussing the Togo household at this time. Wakaba refrained from pushing.

For the moment.

It took <em>extensive</em> modification to get any kind of audiovisual recording working in the Metaverse, and Wakaba was still trying to recreate what the lab had managed. But the barometer, Geiger counter, and accelerometer all operated, sort of, and observations could be recorded manually. Barometric readings were just slightly higher than you'd expect for Tokyo's elevation, but lower than either of the Palaces she'd gotten measurements from. The accelerometer thought they were in free fall — in the Palaces the gravitational offset had been lower than it should have been. The Geiger counter reported negligible radiation, but who knew what that meant. Wakaba wanted to set up a seismograph — she'd gotten some interesting readings in the Palaces and wanted to compare — but that would have to wait until they weren't on a mission.

They were just packing the equipment away when reality rippled, and they were joined by both Queen — Makoto Niijima, two years older than Futaba, might or might not have time-traveled but definitely didn't remember it — and Fox — Yusuke Kitagawa, one year older than Futaba but definitely time-traveled. She knew Yusuke the best, of Futaba's new friends. He'd been in the temple, been present for every museum Palace excursion, she'd met his senpai, and as far as she could tell he wasn't trying to withhold any significant information about his background or home life from her, so he was more forthcoming than some of the others.

He was withholding information about the now-defunct future, but Wakaba was fairly sure that was at Futaba's instigation.

"Great, Inari's on time," Futaba said. "Do you know if…?"

"According to the group chat they're both in Shibuya Station already," Makoto said. "They should be along any— There they are."

And here was the interesting part.

Once Wakaba was out of the hospital and safely in Sojiro's house where they could speak freely, Futaba had gone into more detail about the last timeline, and told them about the friends/comrades she was in contact with — about most of them, that was. Two of them, as per agreement, she was vague on.

Noir — two years older than Futaba, a classmate of Makoto's, and definite time traveler. And Crow — two years older than Futaba, a classmate of Makoto's though he hadn't been in the original timeline, and definitely not a time traveler. Both, Futaba had explained back in February, would probably happier to trust a Shadow than an adult, so it was only to be expected that they did not join any of the experimental trips to the museum Palace while Wakaba was there.

Noir reportedly had a rich and powerful father who'd been awful to her and awful to his employees — Noir would say the employees had it worse but in Futaba's opinion it was debatable — and in the original timeline he'd gotten involved in Shido's conspiracy and ultimately gotten murdered over it. Noir, Crow, and Makoto had prevented this, this time, with a "change of heart" before he could get involved.

(Wakaba had asked Makoto, as casually as possible, if Noir was satisfied with the effects of the cognitive interference. Makoto had said Noir was very happy not to have her father involved with Shido or dead, and everyone was happy Noir's father wasn't trying to make her marry anybody, from which Wakaba concluded there were undesirable side effects but the kids had decided the upsides were worth it.)

Noir, according to Futaba, didn't have any problem believing that Wakaba and Sojiro wouldn't hurt them, were on their side against Shido. She just, according to Futaba, had trouble accepting that adults could be useful in the Metaverse.

When the subject had come up again during a museum trip, Hifumi had remarked that she thought Noir was finally in a position where there weren't any adults casually rearranging her life, and she didn't want to jeopardize that, before Makoto gave her a pointed look and she shut up.

Wakaba had a guess which answer was closer to the truth.

Crow was a different situation entirely. Futaba had, as per agreement, not revealed his name or any information that would reveal his identity — but that didn't exclude revealing his actions in the future timeline: he'd pretended to join them, then betrayed them, then died, and he'd been the cognitive assassin "Black Mask".

(Which meant that original-timeline Wakaba had been murdered by a first-year high school student, which was… she didn't have the words for that. Shido was odious.)

"He's not working for Shido this time, because Noir found him first," Futaba had said finally. "He's a part of the team. Noir and Makoto know basically what's going on with him — he listens to them — and I trust their judgment. And really I don't have any more justification to be nervous than Noir, and she brought him along to fight her dad's Shadow when he definitely murdered her dad by killing his Shadow last time. It's just… hard."

She'd softened a fair amount since then. Wakaba hadn't understood why — it seemed faster than familiarity alone would account for — until the Kana situation came out, and then it made sense that Crow having a lot to say about social services and holding strong opinions on adults who exploited children would make Futaba better disposed towards him.

(Speaking of things she didn't have words for.) (Futaba had been reticent in large part out of respect for Kana's wishes — but might she have said something, last year, if Wakaba hadn't been so very preoccupied with work?)

"Hello, Archive," Noir said politely.

"Noir, Crow, pleased to meet you," Wakaba replied.

"The same," Noir said.

"Looking forward to seeing 'hyperbola' in action," said Crow, which was probably even true.

"Well," said Futaba in the awkward pause that followed. "Shall we?"

***

[Hmmmm, yeah, I think I want to add some more impressions of what Futaba isn’t saying about the future actually. Still needs work.]

#writing babble #start again fic

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dancingsparks · 4 years

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Strawberry Jam

Thank you at my wonderful beta reader who tumblr won’t let me tag but was kind enough to read this and make sure it’s correct. 💙

Also on Ao3

Damen glares at the jar.

This entire situation is ridiculous. He just wanted to make some nice breakfast for them, it was supposed to be simple but attentive and get him a smile and an enjoyable morning with his boyfriend.

He did not plan on fighting with the jar of jam. Strawberry jam, which, inexplicably, makes the situation worse.

And yet that is exactly what he is doing, panting and cursing and getting nowhere. The damned thing is closed and there is no opening it. It doesn’t matter that it’s just a tiny jar and Damen should be more than capable of opening it, shouldn’t even have to try really.

It’s rather insulting, now that he thinks about it. He never had any problems opening anything, has mastered the art of using his muscles to help out and impress. Only to be bested by strawberry jam.

Laurent is never going to live this down if he finds out, even Nik would laugh at him!

Damen takes the jar again, his new found determination spurring him on. He just hasn’t tried hard enough.

Holding the jar securely in one hand, Damen grabs the lid in his other hand and begins to twist.

It doesn’t move at all.

Damen grits his teeth and tenses his muscles, not letting up for a second.

He tries everything, pushes harder and changes the angle, but the jar remains stubbornly closed.

Damen is this close to deciding to just smash the jar on the table and break the jar, when someone chuckles behind him.

Despite the mortifying situation he has been caught in, Damen smiles. He knows that sound, loves that sound.

Trying to save what is left to save, he quickly moves the jar behind his back and greet Laurent, hoping to distract him from asking hard to answer questions.

“Morning love, I,” Damen looks around their kitchen, breakfast only half-done and in no way ready to be presented. He squeezes the jar once more, cursing it once again for not following the plan. “I hoped to surprise you.”

Laurent always looks lovely in the morning, soft and ruffled from sleep, not yet put together into the perfect mask he shows to the rest of the world.

Damen watches in reference as Laurent gracefully steps forward, walks his hand up his chest and slings his arms around his neck, leaning close. Yes, Laurent is absolutely enchanting, and Damen can never have enough of him.

Standing on his tiptoes, Laurent nuzzles against his neck, teases him, whispers into his ear. “And surprise me you did.”

Anticipating a kiss Damen turns his head, leaning down to meet Laurent half way. Laurent smiles sweetly up at him, batting his eyelashes and something in Damen warns him that this is a trap, that he is planning something.

Before Damen can act on this realisation, Laurent’s hands shoot down his arms, taking the jar from him and dancing out of range, not giving Damen a chance to catch him. Laurent laughs at him, mischievous glint in his eyes and throws the jar between his hands. “This one gave you quite the fight, didn’t it?”

Damen sighs, of course Laurent wouldn’t let that go. There is absolutely nothing Damen could do or say anymore to save his honour, except establish this is all to blame on the jar and would have happened to everyone, therefore this has nothing to do with him.

Which, granted, will be hard to sell. Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the try though.

“Stop laughing already, the jar is impossible to open and that is all there is to it.” Laurent obviously doesn’t believe him, raising an amused eyebrow at him and smirking. Damen has to come up with something better if he wants to convince him. Or get him to accept it as the official story at least. Laurent won’t ever believe such a ridiculous excuse, but if Damen gives him a better story than his sudden fail to do the simplest tasks, he might be spared the embarrassment of having his friends know.

“Open it then, if you don’t believe me.” Not the best, but it would have to do. If Damen couldn’t open it, there is no way Laurent can and he can be Damen’s witness to how impossible it is.

Laurent opens the jar with an easy flick of his wrist.

Damen stares at him.

It can’t have been that easy, that is exactly what he himself did too. It can’t be.

But Damen doesn’t know how Laurent could have tricked him in this, how he could have pulled this off. He didn’t change the jars, Damen would have noticed that, and he didn’t tamper with it either. Maybe Damen’s efforts were just enough to loosen it somewhat, so that it was almost open already when Laurent stole it. No, then Damen could have done it himself, would have noticed something.

Laurent smiles at him, innocently and sweet, enjoying the mystery he presents.

“I assure you there is no trick involved, I’m just smarter than you are.” While that is probably true, Damen is by no means stupid. There is something he is missing here, and he knows how to figure out what it is.

“If that is what you want to call it, though I would probably just call it dumb luck.” Damen shrugs, watching Laurent frown and hiding his growing grin. Laurent does love to brag. It’s a neat little weakness to exploit and Damen genuinely enjoys listening when he lays his mind out for him. Even after all this time it feels special, intimate and treasured.

“No, it wasn’t, I noticed you were trying very hard to screw that jar shut. There is no luck involved in detailed observation.” Laurent is pouting now, which is adorable but only a by-product this time. The wrong direction, Damen focused all his efforts and closing the jar tighter. Now he does feel incredibly foolish.

“Don’t mope, dear. I quite enjoyed the show, you know? Very impressive.” It’s stupid and shallow, but that does make Damen feel better. Though that might also be because Laurent is close again, the damn jar nowhere to be seen and his hands playing with his hair, no trick in his closeness this time.

Damen leans down to kiss him, indenting nothing more than a quick peck but lingering, kissing him again. Laurent doesn’t mind, pressing up against him and pulling him down, turning his head however it pleases him and eagerly meeting him. Damen could do nothing but kiss him all day.

Of course, this is exactly the moment Laurent chooses to break away, not getting far because of Damen’s hands on his back but farther than Damen wants him. “I believe I was promised breakfast?”

Damen glances over at the table, everything done and waiting just for them. Nothing that couldn’t wait a little. “What would you say to brunch today?”

Laurent laughs, a beautiful sound Damen suspects he will never hear enough of, before finally coming back and kissing him again.

#Lamen #Captive Prince #laurent x damen #damen x laurent #my writing #fanfic

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megaderping · 4 years

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Having another one of those anxiety-riddled days, and I hate it. :/ Anxious rambling below. Please don’t reblog.

I... have some weird traumas, tbh. A lot of gossiping and backtalking from when I was a kid has made me STUPID paranoid about people just. Not communicating and time and time again I’ve had to deal with some pretty awful crap like folks conspiring behind my back to get me removed from a server/community because I was “too soft” and “too sensitive”. Because apparently caring about the feelings of others and encouraging kindness is “sugarcoating” and that’s NO GOOD. Sure, it got resolved, but I still remember it and it still hurts. Because it’s happened so many times. People periodically taking their issues with me to other people instead of telling me so I can learn and improve on those behaviors- something I care a LOT about, tbh. Like, honestly. If I EVER say or do anything hurtful, or my work conveys an uncomfortable message, it’s okay to talk to me about it. Communication is so, SO crucial- and previous lack of communication honestly has me constantly second guessing everything I say and do. I’ve been gaslit in the past. I’ve been treated to passive aggressive jabs where people won’t just TELL me what it is wrong but you can tell something is. And the condescension. Good lord, the condescension. People talking to me like I’m a little kid... Awful. Absolutely awful. It’s happened to me at my JOB, even. That condescending tone when I say something that I guess was dense? Or something? I dunno. But it still stings. It reminds me of all the times it happened before. Just like the gossip. And the two-faced behaviors, being friendly to my face but wanting me to be “fucking destroyed”. I remember this one time a coworker humiliated me by, during break, telling me over the headset that I needed to move a cart and insisting I do it RIGHT AWAY... but by the time I got out there, he’d moved it all ready and was so smug about it. In general, I just tend to internalize a lot of these negative experiences, and then replay them in my head randomly. Usually when something tangentially reminds me of it. And the problem is... it’s hard not for me to take this stuff to heart. In January, I was harassed on a freaking virtual pet site of all things. It’s stupid, right? That I’d get so worked up over a silly game that’s long antiquated- it was petty and I should’ve just walked away. But the passive aggression and nasty messages I got, the accusations, the gossip...

It was seriously bad for my mental health because it reminded me of all the times from my childhood to the present I’ve had to deal with crap like that. So I can’t detach because my mind goes on this snowball of a tangent of all these bad memories. Which is also a problem, I think? That when something upsets me, instead of backing away, I just. Focus on the thing that’s upsetting me, which makes it worse. (This is the part where I acknowledge tumblr is so not a substitute for therapy. I don’t expect anyone here to have the answers, I just really need to vent.) I think another problem I have is just... this eagerness to please as many people as possible, which can lead to me being basically a doormat because I’m too scared to upset people thus too scared to take a definitive stance. Or I hide my feelings for fear of conflict. Which is stupid, I know. It’s important to be firm. And it’s not like I HAVEN’T been in the past- but sometimes getting to that point is scary. And my go-to response when people are mad is “it’s my fault,” which is probably not healthy either. I think it’s something that’s easily exploited. So often I get put into situations where I’m expected to mediate. And even though it’s stressful for me, I do it because I’m empathetic and care so much about how other people feel. It is SO hard for me to be like, “I’m sorry, but I’m not comfortable getting involved.” It’s also just... hard when someone says something that bothers ME to like. Confront ‘em about that. It’s been an issue in the past- particularly since my server opened- where someone might say something offensive and I’d get intimidated instead of putting my foot down because I’d already been told repeatedly that I’m “too sensitive.” That it’s ‘censorship’ to ban certain terms that MULTIPLE friends and users deemed uncomfortable. That people need to “grow thicker skin”. Good lord, when we banned certain slurs, some people were OUTRAGED and tried to argue “but it’s not ACTUALLY a slur!!!” People getting miffed about our restrictions on overly offensive/edgy humor and toxicity. Maybe some folks need to “grow thicker skin.” Maybe I do, too. But I’m not gonna be a hardcase who disregards the feelings of people who trusted me enough to tell me that, hey, this is a very uncomfortable and hurtful term. Again, I honestly do care a lot about how other people think/feel to like... an overwhelming and probably unhealthy degree? But I just... think it’s important to be kind to others. And to me, getting angry because one community decides, hey, maybe don’t say something that is hurtful to a lot of the userbase is just... callous. And I know you can’t please everyone. That constantly worrying about other people’s opinions will only bring more stress- but at the same time, I also don’t want to be entirely dismissive. I want to accept that yes, I can make mistakes, and yes, I’m not perfect- but also make efforts to improve. But sometimes it’s just so hard to tell when it’s just my paranoia and when it is legitimately time to make an effort. Just... I dunno. This became a ramble with a lot of tangents. Kinda like my last big rant. x_x It really was a stream of consciousness thing, I guess.

#dorkvents #tw: bullying #tw: trauma #tw: anxiety #tw: abuse mention #tl;dr: communication is SO important and people aren't mindreaders #don't reblog #i'll be okay but i just needed to get some things off my chest #it's been a rough day

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tarithenurse · 5 years

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Agent of Hope - 22

Your world falls into ruin together with the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcements Logistics Division when you find out that your boyfriend isn’t one of the good guys. Pairing: Brock Rumlow x fem!reader, Natasha Romanoff x fem!reader Contents: Action! Injuries. Reference to and dealing with trauma. Reference to smut. Not a lot of words. A/N: Tadaaaa!! Lots of love for liking and reblogging!! Enjoy!

22 - Change on the Rise

… Rumlow …

The first call comes in at 4PM on a Saturday. It’s short, clear, and sends Brock’s blood pumping at a rate it normally only reaches during the obsessive dreams featuring [Y/N] that forces him to jerk off. “Target S in sight”. Abandoning the half-made plans for an infiltration of a CDC-lab (in his opinion a brute insurgence would be better anyways), Brock hurries off to the TacSit room with the hopes of establishing a live connection to the agent at the scene. Goddamnfinally!

The primary objective was pure damage control at first which, after a few days, extended into an alteration in the official plan: eliminate any advantage Rogers and his bunch of bastards might have as if that hadn’t been standard for ages. After some discussions, the leadership allowed to recover (alive) what’s been lost - the cost being the unsupervised leadership of Project S, as dealing with [Y/N] and her visions was dubbed. Brock decided he could live with that, knowing that upervision is a hell of a lot better than no involvement at all.

“What’s the status?” he barks the moment the door swings open for him.

Frantic fingers push buttons lit by the bluish glow of screens before a headset is thrust his way. There’s a moment of silence in the headphones, then a small plop before the faint noises of the city can be heard along with a quiet, monotone narration of the events. No visual.

“Reinforcements ‘bout ten minutes out,” the voice of the agent explains.

It’d been pure chance. After ages without unscheduled trips, [Y/N] and the Widow have broken cover by leaving the tower for something as stupid as a stroll and window shopping. It’s tempting to think it’d be a simple takeover, but nothing involving Romanoff is simple and any relaxation she shows is a cover for plans A, B, and all the way through Z.

The agent is tailing them through a street market when the dreaded words are heard: “Shit! Lost sight of Widow…”

There are a few tomb-quiet seconds where no one dares to breath.

“Hold this, please.” Spoken by a perfectly calm woman the request heard over the line makes the hairs on Brock stand on end.

There’s nothing they can do at HQ beside listening to the sudden still of breath before a wheezing gurgle, nor the evident handling of the earpiece before the connection is cut (probably crushed under a boot).

“ETA on team?” It’s a judgement call Brock has to make whether to call off the reinforcements or not.

“Engaging right now, sir.” Burn the fucking bridges, then. A screen flashes to show a crude map with a bunch of small dots clustered very close together indicating the approximate positions of the team members. “Switch to channel three for audio.”

His fingers know the way to the little button on the side of the headset, clicking it twice to get to listen in. With no eyes on the situation, Brock is forced to stay quiet as anything he says only will serve as a potential distraction, but it’s frustrating to hear the grunts and surprised shouts before the first clear word comes through the line: shooter. That’s the last Brock hear from the team.

… Reader …

“OW!”

“I know. Hold still…” the self-appointed Nurse Natasha orders patiently but pauses for a moment in the task of wrapping your hand, “at least you didn’t break it.”

You cast another glance at the x-ray displayed on the screen. “Feels like it…maybe we should call a doctor before you c’ntinue?”

“Ha!”

With steady hands, your love winds the elastic dressing around the thumb, careful to smooth is out, and of course it hurts…but honestly not a lot more than it would anyways, and you know you’ve gotten off lightly - your last experience with a Hydra ambush had ended differently. The memory makes you shiver. You still have nightmares randomly during the week, and the attack today is almost a guarantee that tonight will be a bad one even if the only physical result is a sprained thumb, and a bruised cheek and upper arm. Damn, Hydra goons must be made of steel.

A sound by the door to the infirmary startles you, the resulting movement causing the pain to flare up. How can everyone move so quietly? Even munching on a sandwich (coffee in the other hand), Clint sidles over with nothing but the softest of tread.

“Guess no one’s taught you ‘ow to throw a punch, huh?” he comments dryly.

Pain or not, the guy has a tendency to state the obvious. “Not yet, no, thank you very much.”

“Yet?” It sounds more like an off-hand comment next to the thorough inspection of Tasha’s work (pointing out tiny creases before she has a chance to fix them). “Plan on making it a habit to hit on guys?”

Groan! “Only to teach them a lesson or two…I’m gonna need lessons first though.” It gets silent enough that you can hear the faint sound of traffic almost 20 floors below. “I just…I need to know. Can’t stand being so…so useless! Y’know?”

It’s smart of Clint when he chooses a tactical retreat, granting Natasha and you some privacy, and maybe you imagine it…but isn’t that a wink before the door closes? Does he agree with me? A hint of confidence straightens your back as you wait for Natasha to secure the wrapping.

The red-head is thinking, considering all possible options and outcomes before voicing an opinion. Maybe it’s harder for her this time too because she has a more personal stake in it than she has been used to for years…and gods know she’s a tiger mom: ready to fight to protect the few near and dear to her. What will be valued highest here? The ability to protect oneself or avoid digging into a metaphorical wound that’s just starting to heal?

“Nat…”

“I – yeah, I get it and it’d be smart even if everything’s fine, I just –“ steeling herself with a breath, she meets your gaze, “on two conditions, okay?” She sees your placating shrug and takes your hands (carefully). “I won’t a…friend of mine to train you, not me.” You wait. “And I want you to see a psychologist too…in fact, I think you should do that anyways.”

Oh.

… Romanoff …

Natasha can see some of the light dwindle in [Y/N]’s eyes. Just hear me out. Physical injuries are easy enough for the former assassin to deal with but the trauma on mind and soul...well, the lessons taught in the Red Room weren’t exactly focused on that except to exploit it. I should’ve insisted on this long ago. Every argument is met with silence and downcast gaze. Sometimes a nod. Thankfully, it helps to promise women for both projects, and by the time [Y/N] accepts the conditions, Nat has already decided to call in any favour needed to get none other than Maria Hill to assist with the self defense.

“Please,” the coming trainee says meekly, “don’t tell anyone I’ll be seeing a shrink.”

Ingrained taboo? “I think Steve and I are the only ones that haven’t made use of it…and I’m not even sure about Cap.” She tilts the somber face up again. “It’s not weakness to need help like that, babe. It’s strength. It’s tough, but I know you’ll come to like it, so to say.”

“Logic’ly…urgh…I guess it makes sense but I just…wanna forget!” There are tears in the [Y/E/C] eyes from both the prospect as much as the knowledge that: “I can’t forget, though.”

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greyvvardenfell · 4 years

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Reyja and Julian (Apprentice April Week 2)

1. What does your character feel when they see their LI for the first time each day?

Overwhelmed with love and affection. Reyja never thought she’d be so happy, or have someone like him in her life. She just loves him so much...

2. What things does your character love about their LI?

Is everything an acceptable answer? Umm... she loves his sense of humor, his general approach to life, how protective he is of her, his kinkiness, his height and build, his passion for his work, his curiosity, his emotional availability, his openness...

3. What things about their LI annoy them?

Julian snores. Sometimes it’s cute, sometimes it’s awful. He also overworks himself and puts everyone else’s needs above his own, which hurts Reyja to see, especially when he’s sacrificing his comfort for hers.

4. Who does what chores?

It’s a relatively even split. Reyja is home more so she does a fair amount of the cleaning, but despises doing dishes. Neither of them like to cook, but Reyja will if pushed or if she gets a craving for something specific. Julian does the dishes so Reyja doesn’t have to, and also manages their money. He’s also usually the shopper, if they don’t go together. 5. Do they prefer to stay at home, or do they like to go out?

Both. Julian’s much more extroverted than Reyja most of the time, and adores being able to show off how much he loves her in public. They’re also uhhhh huge exhibitionists so. That’s a plus in the “going out” category. But there’s nothing sweeter than getting to curl up together in their own home with no one but each other. 6. What are some little things they do for each other throughout the day?

Julian’s a gift-giver and likes to leave or send little presents to Reyja when he’s gone. Whether that’s making breakfast for her, leaving a note on the bathroom mirror, popping home at lunch to bring her flowers, he loves them all. Reyja will sometimes bring him food at the clinic and stick around for a bit, helping organize his space or just keeping him company.

7. What are some private jokes they share?

Nothing specific comes to mind, but they do like dropping oblique references to their many kinky exploits into regular conversation. Reyja is especially good at this, because it makes Julian blush. 8. What are some embarrassing couple stories?

Reyja and Julian have essentially no boundaries with each other. They’ve seen everything the other has to share and hide. No bathroom, shower, tub, or bed is off limits if one of them is in it and the other wants to be. This usually isn’t a problem, but if they ever stay at someone else’s house, their host has a period of adjustment... 9. Is their relationship open or exclusive?

Exclusive with an asterisk. They’ll invite friends to have sex with them sometimes, but with hard limits and only if the other is involved. 10. How often do they need to be intimate?

Constantly. 11. Have they ever fought?

Both Julian and Reyja are good at communicating things that might lead to an argument before it ever gets there, but once in a while Reyja might get too stubborn or Julian might get too paranoid and something will blow up. It’s over very quickly, though, and both regret it every time. 12. Describe their perfect date

Lots of PDA followed by lots of sex. Anything more specific is flexible. 13. Do they have an evening routine?

They try to go to bed at the same time, for prime cuddling. Reyja washes her face and brushes her teeth while Julian changes for bed, then vice versa, then they’ll snuggle up and either talk or read together until one of them is ready to sleep. 14. Describe a “paid scene” with your character and their LI

I’ve already done that a couple of times. (links are NSFW) And I’m planning on writing more. 15. Would they go on a double date?

They’re not opposed to it. 16. Who pops the question?

Julian. I’ve written about this too!

17. Describe the wedding

Small and intimate, taking place in Patova (where they move a couple of years after the end of the game). Guests include Portia and Nahara, Mazelinka, Nazali and Otheron, Lucio and Skylar, Asra and Muriel, possibly Nadia and Yazakh, and a handful of other friends from their adventures.

18. Any babies?

Absolutely not. Reyja is tokophobic and horrible with kids.

19. Do they stay in Vesuvia, or eventually move somewhere else?

Answered this without even meaning to! Yes, they move from the shop to the South End roughly a year after the game ends, and then from the South End to a smaller city called Patova, which is about a day’s journey inland from Vesuvia, about two years after that. 20. Talk about that family life. What’s it like?

Domestic, intimate, and kinky.

Bonus: Petnames. What petnames does your character and their LI call each other?

Reyja calls Julian Juley, Jujubee, ‘Bee, and lovely. Julian calls Reyja darling, dearest, my love, Rey, sweetheart, and moonbeam.

#hey did you know if you hit enter and control at the same time it posts whatever you're working on whether you're ready or not?#haha #apprenticeapril #otp: over and over again into oblivion #the arcana #ask me about my ocs

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diveronarpg · 4 years

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Congratulations, ART! You’ve been accepted for the role of EDMUND with an approved FC change to Max Irons. Admin Minnie: I knew this was a winner while reading your plots Art, but it was your para sample that really left me speechless. The way you showed us how he had suffered and how he had ached, all that bitterness and resentment and ambition and pride... it was so clear how deep your love for Edmund goes. I am thrilled to see someone with such an intimate, intense grasp on Easton’s soul. Please stay forever, and please ruin us for the rest of your life! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Art

Age | 19

Preferred Pronouns | He/him

Activity Level | Well here’s the thing about quarantine. I will be spending the next two-three months in a house, all day, every day, with consistent access to a laptop. I also lost my job and because the US economy is a flaming pile of garbagé, I don’t imagine getting another any time soon, especially since all my skills are in food. All this to say, I believe I will be incredibly active, outside of my Skype’d classes and grocery runs and whatnot.

Timezone | MST

How did you find the rp? | A discord friend DM’d it to me after I went on a rant about Edmund and the layers to his “Thou, Nature, art my Goddess” soliloquy. They know me so well, and acceptances were literally in like six hours from when I got the link, so I sat my butt down, put down my real-world obligations for a moment, and typed this whole thing out like I was writing an unstarted essay due at midnight.

Current/Past RP Accounts | All my old RP writing is from years ago and is, frankly, really really bad. Thank you for making this optional.

IN CHARACTER

Character | Edmund or Easton Craven. I love Daniel Sharman’s wonderful, gorgeous face with my whole heart (hello gay awakening), but I’d like to use Max Irons instead, if at all possible.

What drew you to this character? | So, my love of Easton/Edmund actually began about a year ago, when I cut my hair and started playing around with names and different clothes. I was in a Shakespeare class at my college, and it was a requirement that we perform a monologue. It didn’t need to be Broadway-worthy, we just needed to deliver it, and we could do this as often as we liked. I performed two. One from a play we had read and analyzed, as my professor asked, and I did another. That second one was Edmund’s “Thou, Nature” soliloquy. It was the first time I performed as a guy to an audience that thought I was a guy, not a girl playing dress up. So I have a really strong emotional connection to Edmund, regardless of the form he’s in.

I was really excited by this particular version of him, however, because I thought it played right along the line of a monstrous asshole and charming young man doing what he can to deal with the hand dealt to him. He’s both of those things, to me, and I really enjoyed that you brought that forward. Edmund, from the source, reminds me of Chris Evans’ character from Knives Out, in a way? Completely self-motivated, selfish and cruel, and yet really fun and charming, as long as it isn’t you he’s screwing over at the time. I know he isn’t that character and I’m honestly really glad for it. I just found a similarity there.

I just really like those kinds of characters in fiction, and that, combined with my emotional ties and vague debt to the source character, meant I arrived and started writing as fast as I could.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

These are all ideas, nothing here is set in stone, and are entirely dependent on the beauty of the other writers free will.

Some Twelve or Fourteen Moonshines Lag of a Brother: From the get-go of this awful experience known as the human existence, Easton has existed just slightly behind Everett, just enough to keep the guy freezing in the shadows. It’s the last name, the mannerisms, and the goddamn eyes that sit in his skull. It is a truth, acknowledged by both me and him, that there is an association to Easton he really wishes wasn’t there. This is why I want someone to look at Easton and see Easton, not a Craven.

Now, I want to pause here, and say that Easton is a lying snake of a man that would and probably will sell out his own family for one corn chip. He is completely self-centered, convinced of his superiority, and willing to bleed the world dry to get the pound of flesh he is owed. I want someone to see this, to realize there is a snake curled around the Capulet’s necks, willing to bite and kill every single one of them if it means he gets to sit comfortably on a throne of gold and bones. Because that is what he wants, he wants the world to pay for every second of misery he endured in his life. But he is charming, slippery in the way only the truly awful can be. He’s accepted the labels thrown at him and become them, which is its own kind of armor. Who doesn’t love a bad boy?

But beyond all that, he is rotten through and through. I’d like his armor to crack and reveal the duplicity underneath, maybe around someone like Maeve or Catherine, someone that might not be believed right away. I love the idea of Easton being the wolf among some very dangerous sheep, but the really, truly awful ones not realizing. This could produce a really fun dance, where the two parties involved both try really really hard to overthrow or remove the other from their position while still trying really hard to maintain a veil of normality.

But that dance is what makes this all so terribly fun. They’re on a rock, doomed to eventually die, and Easton wants his power, but why can’t he play a few games while trying to get it?

I Grow, I Prosper: Easton, poor guy, was brought into the world and then spent the next twenty-six years being told his existence and all the things that came with it were his fault. They weren’t, or at least they weren’t in the way he had been told his entire life. He has learned to move past the label of “bastard” or “illegitimate”, meeting all such claims with the certainty that he must act the part. But does his position fulfill him? Does his current lot in life spark joy? I think not! He is a captain, yes, but so is his brother. He is, at best, on equal footing with his brother and at worst, he is the younger brother desperately following behind Everett as a living shadow yet again. Easton needs to be more than Everett. He’s wanted this his entire life. The whole city needs to look at Easton and see him, not his brother, and then Easton wants to rub it in Everett’s face, lord it over him for the next century at the shortest. That is the general idea behind this plot: Everett surpassing and overcoming his brother. The fact that he’d end up lording over so many others is really just a plus!

This plot would require effort. Loads and LOADS of plotting and communication on my part, and a whole lot of cutthroat, stepping-on-literally-everyone-else-in-Verona from Easton. He is going to have to exploit the hell out of Celeste and the information she can get him, potentially leading to her downfall just so Easton can succeed. He will need Rafaella and Tiberius to trust him almost unconditionally, which, just from what I’ve seen poking around the main, seems pretty much impossible. And of course, he has to successfully and continually one-up Everett, which might be the hardest job of all, given the whole awful tangle of EmotionsTM that Easton has towards him. It’s hard for him to be clear-headed when he wants to tear Everett into little tiny pieces with his bare hands.

But hey, that is, again, the whole point of this plot: the destruction of the legitimate son. Eliminating the sun so the moon can rule 24/7.

My Services are Bound: No matter how ambitious, how desperate Easton is to rule the world, he doesn’t yet. He works for the Capulets and he is a tool used to further the wishes of those above him in this terribly illegal food chain where dog eats dog. No matter how much Easton wishes it was different, it isn’t, at least not at the moment, and he must bide his time until something better happens.

Yes, Easton is a tool, and I want him to be reminded of that. He has the ambition to rule the world, can picture himself with a crown he may never hold, but he is a knight on the chessboard. I want his ego to be checked, I want him to be taken down at the knees and reminded of the situation he is in, who he works for. Now, ideally, this would come from the Capulet family themselves and not a rogue Montague or something.

The Capulet family, in order to win this war they’ve found themselves in, need their tools to be obedient and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. This is not the case with Easton. He’s a rebellious man, more loyal to himself than any of the lofty ideas the Capulet heads have surrounded themselves with. So the family he serves would need to get Easton back in line, somehow. They’d need to remind him who he is and whom he serves no matter what it took and use whatever tools at their disposal. This could potentially happen after Easton completely blows off a mission he was handed to advance his own agendas, which I think would probably be the best choice as it would probably send these awful shrieking sirens off in the Capulets.

I want this particular plot because Easton is so assured that he will be able to make the world pay and yet he’s just one man against so very many others.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Oh most definitely. As a writer, I am a firm believer in conditional happy endings, probably because I play so many video games. In order to get a happy ending, in order to survive, the character has to do all the right things. The likelihood of Easton doing all the right things is just tiny, absolutely microscopic.

IN DEPTH

I was going to do both, but I’m running out of time so…

In-Character Para Sample:

There is something beautiful in standing alone, where there are no silent reminders of how Easton arrived in this world, how he stepped into it screaming and no one cared to change that. There were no side-eyes, reminding him of how unwanted he was, how utterly unworthy he was to bear the name “Craven”. No hands hiding giggles at the boy his mother ran from and his father hid away. Here, under the bowed ceiling in the transept of the Capulet’s cathedral, there was only him and God.

“I hope,” Easton began, fingers lightly running across the back of a pew likely not used for praying, “that you know what is coming.” The eyes that proclaim a taint to his family’s name were raised to dance across the ceiling. “If word is to be believed, you, an old man in the sky, a Father,” he spat out, “brought me here. Placed me here upon this Earth to do whatever it is I so wish.” A smile, small and dangerous with heavy promises was birthed on his face, an expression that could not have been more familiar to his muscles. “I suppose that’s all a father has ever done for me. Perhaps,” he mused, lightly tapping his chin as he continued to wander aimlessly among the seats of a flock absent. “Perhaps I should be grateful that both You and him are both so delightfully hands-off.”

“I suppose this rock is where You chose to put all Your bastards, isn’t it? Shoved them away from Your kingdom, making them fight for their place in Your home despite them all being Your children?” The noise that escaped Easton’s mouth was not fit for the place he stood in, but it hardly seemed to matter to him as he collapsed into a pew, feet raised to rest on a Bible, feet that had stood in a man’s blood not hours before. “I suppose that must be how it is, because we’re all made in Your image, aren’t we? And that man had to learn it from somewhere.”

His head fell back, eyes closed to the beauty above him in a silent condemnation for Who it was built for. “You’ve released yet another snake into your garden by making that woman my mother and handing me the Craven name, you know.” The observation was quiet, laced with the bitterness of cyanide, perfected over years of similar declarations. The words were familiar, not on his tongue but rather to his mind, the idea similar to ones he had kept close for years.“I have crawled in the dirt on my stomach for too long because of You, and I shall take a throne and dare You to steal it from me.”

He inhaled, once, a desperate attempt to calm the words he could feel rising like acid in his throat. It didn’t work, though Easton didn’t try very hard. He rarely did when alone. “I am owed this, you miserable old bastard,” he hissed out from behind his teeth, sounding like the snake he had just claimed to be. “I will take everything because this is Your fault, and I will make your precious sheep pay for every inch of Your mistake. It’s mine, I deserve it.” A hand was clenched into a fist in his lap and Easton shifted forward, only to slam it into the wood of the pew ahead of him. “It’s mine.”

He stood suddenly, coat rising around him like smoke rising around a fire, warning the world of the danger just over there. Turning on his heel, he left the cathedral without a look back, without a fear of God. And though there had been no one around, the air hung heavy with a question. Just which father had he been addressing?

Extras: If you have anything else you’d like to include (further headcanons, an inspo tag, a mock blog, etc), feel free to share it here! This is OPTIONAL.

I submitted this through an Easton mock blog! There was going to be stuff there but my laptop crashed and I need to eat dinner!

#accepted #accepted: edmund

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dumdeeedum · 5 years

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“The Magicians” Alice/Quentin/Eliot Love Triangle? Que? No, let’s stop the fuck right there...

I’m so frustrated with how bad Wednesday night’s episode of “The Magicians” was and with how bad this entire season has been, especially with how poorly they’ve handled anything to do with Alice, Quentin, and Eliot. I mean, generally I’m frustrated with how bad this show can be way too often but I’m going to try to keep my thoughts as organized as I can.

I want to preface all of this by saying that no, I don’t believe they’re still pursuing Eliot and Quentin because they’ve still given me no reason to. I just wanted to express my thoughts on these rumors of a love triangle and who knows, they might go that way, I don’t work there. I just know that for now they’ve set things up in a really poor way and I don’t see a true Eliot and Quentin outcome happening for a while if at all.

First I gotta reiterate this in case it isn’t clear: this is not a well-written show for me, it’s a fun show, to be sure, but not a well-written one. They have too few episodes to get away with the amount of dicking around they do and it’s clear they have no direction even when they have source material to draw from, and that’s a bad combination and a big problem. And those are just some of its issues.

A show like “Black Sails,” for example, had about 8 episodes per season and made good use of every minute of them because that’s how you tell the story you want to tell when you have limited time and can’t fuck around with filler. Very similar situation with the show “Spartacus” with a similar number of episodes per season to “The Magicians” and they wrapped it up in 4 seasons. But I tend to think 4-5 seasons is the limit before a show loses focus and goes downhill anyway.

It has also become clear to me that Sera Gamble has no interest in doing anything progressive. She wants to be one of the boys, play the game and get ahead which is her prerogative but at this point people have to come to terms with the fact that she’s always been a White Feminist(tm) and quit fucking around like she gives a shit about equity for marginalized communities or even visibility. All of the bullshit to do with Sera Gamble has been known for years now, too, so I’m not even sure why anyone would be surprised that she sucks at this point. I’m sure she’s sitting somewhere right now unable to understand where she fucked up and why because she doesn’t have it in her to accept criticism and it shows. Last I heard she’s still going after people on twitter for not liking the outcomes of her dumbass decisions as a show-runner; bitch, grow up!

You know what would be truly radical in this series? Stop having these women live for these men. Julia is off losing her autonomy to a man, again, Kady is about ready to allow herself to die because she misses her boyfriend, Margo is ditching the plan to save her best friend over some super mediocre, joke of a man she can do better than without even trying, and Alice is once again in Quentin’s orbit and having nothing to do for herself. Yay, feminism? You’re fucking kidding me, right?

And now I’m hearing people saying that they’re trying to set up a love triangle in season 5 between Eliot, Quentin, and Alice and I think the idea of this disgusts me more than if they’d just drop Eliot and Quentin as a pairing altogether after the massive fuckup that was the latter part of this season. How obtuse do you have to be to think a bisexual love triangle would be appropriate queer representation given our social climate? But here’s the thing, they’re playing on your intelligence if they do this, again, and I’m about to explain why.

Yes, it’s going to get lengthy because I’m going to be discussing the show from a social but also from a narrative standpoint, but you know me by now.

Don’t get it twisted, what they would ultimately be doing if they went this route is giving us even more straight representation while under the guise of bisexual representation given that Alice and Quentin are now back together, as a straight couple whether you think Quentin is bisexual or not. And that’s what matters when it comes to queer visibility. We’ve gotten straight Quentin pairings now from seasons 1-4 and they’ve yet to have Quentin explore any same-sex romantic partnerships or even fantasies other than the nonsense with Eliot because those were blink and you miss them moments.

And here’s the insidiousness of all of this and I really want people to think about this: They would use this as an excuse to still appear as though they were doing right by their queer audience while once again only really exploring one facet of Quentin’s supposed bisexuality, the more palatable one, while ignoring the other, more taboo one and calling it bisexual representation. That is not good bisexual representation, at all, how can it be?

And god forbid you raise a stink over these poor attempts at representation because then you get accused of hating and bi-phobia and of erasing Quentin’s bisexuality and blah blah blah. And, really, bisexual, where? Where are we going to get this exploration of Quentin’s sexuality while he’s dating Alice again and Eliot is somewhere in the sidelines dealing with the aftermath of being possessed by a being who murdered people using his body?

Can we stop with the intellectual dishonesty? Can we stop accepting these insults to the intelligence of the lgbtqa community?

And no, don’t even pretend the idea of a poly-amorous relationship wouldn’t be a fucking absurdity given their history. Quentin and Alice broke up because Quentin fucked Eliot and Margo. One of the people involved in that betrayal would be one of the last people Alice would want to share her boyfriend with. And that’s if she would even be OK with a poly-amorous relationship to begin with because the idea seemed to disturb her when her parents were doing it and frankly, not everyone is poly-amorous, in fact, most people aren’t.

Unfortunately, that’s just part of living in a heteronormative society where people, as a whole, just aren’t evolved enough yet to have explored other types of relationship dynamics because of the restrictions society has placed on them and it is what it is. The polyamory argument doesn’t even belong in the same space as the bisexuality argument because it makes bisexuality seem like a life choice as opposed to something people are born as. I’d say it’s less realistic, right now, to have everyone OK with sharing their significant others with everyone than to have a person identify as bisexual! Most people don’t have the self-confidence or the conditions to improve their self-esteem enough to even explore poly yet, and some people just aren’t into it and that’s their right, but I digress.

It just seems like everything that should have been happening in this season would instead be happening next season if they went this route and the only difference would be that they’d have made it palatable for their straight, homophobic audience by having Alice on Quentin’s dick the majority of the time they should be using to explore Quentin’s sexuality. When would they have time to give Quentin the important moments of introspection he needs to figure out whom and what he wants? Even his getting back together with Alice was very abrupt and didn’t seem like a well thought out decision on either Quentin’s or Alice’s part. Why couldn’t they just be single for a while if they were going to waste season 4 and work on this in season 5??

But this is just what they do by now because they can’t write a good romance. Straight shit gets put on the fast track in an absurdly unrealistic way, everyone’s in love in 5 minutes, smart, beautiful, boss bitch women date mediocre men when we’d never see it the other way around, and anything queer gets a couple of seconds of screen-time at best before someone is killed off, or they add a woman to the mix for no good reason, or we have to do a 50 year montage with no actual romantic intimacy to establish tha they’re even romantically interested in one another, blah blah, woof, woof.

Here’s a good question for those of you bi-Quentin-stans: None of you think it odd that while these creators kept alluding to exploring a canon male/male pairing with a bisexual character Alice and Julia, two women whom have exclusively dated men, have still had, to date, a longer, more sexually charged make out scene than gay Eliot and a supposedly bisexual Quentin ever have? Not to mention that the only time we explore Quentin’s sexuality in fantasy it’s some super fucking trite women making out for his pleasure fantasy.

No one thinks about why that is? No one thinks that perhaps it’s because depicting lesbian situations for the male gaze is a super common thing to do in media and is another one of those things that allows creators to pretend they have queer representation when really they’re trying to draw male views by exploiting the women of their series? It seemed pretty obvious to me as soon as I saw it but I haven’t fucked around with critiques of this shit in a long time and I don’t let this shit slide.

So now if they went the love triangle route in season 5 how would that work?

We’ve gotten a story line where not only was Eliot right that Quentin wouldn’t choose him when Quentin has the choice, but Eliot is going to have to come back and see this shit and deal with it on top of whatever massive trauma being possessed like this would inevitably cause. Do we really see Eliot saying anything to Quentin after that knowing what we know about Eliot’s way of handling shit? 4.5 leaves us thinking that maybe Eliot now sees that perhaps he shouldn’t have been so quick to reject Quentin and that perhaps Quentin would have chosen him and that Eliot wasn’t right to suggest he wouldn’t and yet here we are. And knowing what we know about Eliot would he try to get between that?

I actually think they’d done a good job closing the chapter on Alice and Quentin when Quentin told Alice he didn’t love her anymore and closed the book and I think they could have explored a really good friendship between them after that! That should have been when Alice and Kady did their own library thing and became more fully-fleshed out characters in their own right and when Quentin started exploring his own options and realizing he would choose Eliot even if at the time he thought Eliot wouldn’t choose him. Because this is something he should have been thinking about anyway!

There seems to be a pretty big issue that no one is considering about 4.5 and it’s a result of this ret-con having been handled so poorly so they couldn’t do what really needed to be done with the aftermath of it. The rejection conversation was really fucking poorly done because it was such a short, almost throwaway scene! We have Quentin get his memories back and immediately jump to wanting to be with Eliot and Eliot rejects him, for very good reason, in my opinion. Quentin seems a little bummed about it and then the scene ends. But from what we know about episodes 3.5 and on, Quentin hasn’t given it another thought. It didn’t even come up when he talked up Fillory to the plant so I really reject the premise that it was so traumatic for him to be rejected by Eliot that he didn’t even want to talk about anything to do with Fillory. Unless he’s even more immature than I thought it seems really unlikely that being rejected would eliminate all the other good shit in Quentin’s mind that relates to that lifetime, like, I don’t know, his fucking wife, his son, his grandchildren!? Miss me with that and stop excusing the shit decisions they make for Quentin in this show.

Was the idea here that they continue to go this route where everyone is expected to consider Quentin's feelings but he isn’t expected to consider theirs? Quentin has a habit of being inconsiderate dating back to season 1 (For Julia, his best friend, not getting into Brakebills was her punishment because she wouldn’t fuck him, Alice shouldn’t be upset that he cheated on her and Quentin doesn’t have to respect it when she tells him to back off, etc.) and the reasoning is always that Quentin’s got a low self-esteem and depressive issues but that’s not good enough now with 50 years of life experience under his belt. It’s especially not good enough when it comes to a man whom he’s known an entire lifetime through good and bad. So why didn’t they have him even consider what Eliot said to him and the validity of it?

Eliot explicitly says to Quentin that he knows Quentin so he knows how this would turn out, and Eliot was right! But somehow when Eliot rejects Quentin it isn’t incumbent upon Quentin to consider why Eliot would do that even though Quentin knows his own dating history and that he’d had a wife in Fillory? We’re just supposed to accept that Quentin just took the rejection at face value without even really listening to the wording or thinking about where Eliot might be coming from? Neither his nor Eliot’s problems or desires in the real world have suddenly disappeared just because they got their memories of Fillory back and Quentin knows that. Eliot made that point when he rejected Quentin, in a way, so isn’t there more to consider here? It’s especially egregious for this to be Quentin’s take away when we remember that Eliot didn’t have a husband in Fillory so Eliot was always there for Quentin and Quentin’s son and even Quentin’s wife in ways Quentin couldn’t be there for Eliot. How could it be as simple as “in the real world, you don’t do it for me” by Quentin? That’s just dumb.

A better scene would have had Eliot qualify his rejection to a man he spent 50 fucking years in love with so that Quentin could consider Eliot’s feelings on the subject before jumping to conclusions or even making a decision about them. And Quentin could have taken a moment to discuss Eliot’s insecurities if he really wanted to be with him or even just understand them. But instead the takeaway is more “poor victim Quentin isn’t special.” That’s just bad writing!

And what about Eliot? What does he get in all of this if they went the triangle route? Would they then allow him to explore a non-toxic relationship of his own or would he be sitting by like a dog and watching this shitshow of a romance between Quentin and Alice for however long it takes before they give us a sprinkling of Queliot? And who will be there to support him when his best friend is off fucking around with that loser Josh and Quentin is back with the girl that Eliot was afraid Quentin would choose over him? This effectively leaves Eliot alone to handle shit the way he’s always handled it and that’s just bad for his character after all the development he’s had.

What kind of queer representation is this going to be moving forward? We barely got Eliot this season, will he just sort of be there next season and have just as little to do as he had this season? He has nothing more to do in Fillory so where will they stick him now?

Narratively, everything that’s happened post 4.5 has really fucked the ability for an Eliot and Quentin pairing to work unless they double time it in season 5 and I don’t see how they can when Quentin is with Alice again. The show-runners have really gone out of their way to erase anything having to do with Eliot and Quentin as a couple to the point where it makes 3.5 and 4.5 seem like alternate universe versions of the show that don’t fit into the rest of the series. It’s clear to me at this point that they’re trying to move past the idea of Eliot and Quentin as a couple so even a triangle would seem really bizarre in light of that.

I’m not seeing it, I’m really not and as much as I know people want to hold out hope that Eliot and Quentin will happen I just feel like at this point the show would be trying to run out the clock without giving them anything substantial the same way they did this season. Everyone’s obviously free to do what they want with that but realistically I would hold out and not give them ratings until we see if they give us something that isn’t insulting bullshit.

#the magicians #queliot #eliot waugh #quentin coldwater #alice quinn #representation #lgbtqa representation #representation matters #media #television

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officially-tonynat-shrine · 5 years

Text

How To Keep A Secret

(A/N): I'm back!! And I'm not proud of myself because I've procrastinated this for a long long time. This fic was supposed to be up by October 2018. It's been bloody five months. I'm sorry for being a dick @spideypeach. I hope you like this. 😭💖💛 I'm sorry once again :(

Also, Happy Birthday, Barnes!

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader // Word Count: around 2.1k

Prompt (highlighted in the fic): "How do you know that?! Only like, seven people know that!" (I have kind of changed the prompt to suit the fic)

Summary: Some things are best kept secret. Some are not. // Warnings: exploitation of the fact that Bruce knows Hindi? It's explained at the end, of course☺️. (Shitty writing?)

••••

"You know, for a group of extremely observant, stealthy operatives they are extremely dumb."

Bucky chuckled at your statement. He rolled over to face you, metal arm hovering over yours- which was around his torso- before cautiously bringing it around you waist. He brought you closer to him. You craned your neck and kissed him on the chin, the thin silk sheets barely covering your modesty. He snuggled you in his arms, his metal arm softly stroking your back as he kissed your head.

"Doll", he started after letting out a content sigh, "if they find out then I won't be the world's deadliest assassin. Imagine holding that title and not even being able to sneak around the people you know so damn well!"

You whined as he tried to get up, not wanting to let go of him so soon.

"Baby, it's already 6 am. Steve will be wondering where I am."

"Don't go." You whined again.

"Now, I wouldn't have to go if it weren't for someone insisting on keeping up the charade, right?" He sang.

"Ugh, damn, I'm not liking the bet now."

"Well, you can always accept defeat."

"Aw, hell nah!"

"Is that bet really worth all this trouble, doll?" Bucky pouted.

"Ooh, no. Hell, no. I know what you're doing, Barnes. Your puppy eyes won't work on me." You turned your face from him, hoping that he would stop attacking you with the famous 'Buck Eyes'.

Till date, no one but Tony had been able to avoid them. From the day Tony had flipped the finger at 'Buck Eyes', everyone worshipped the ground Tony walked on and Bucky was constantly trying to get Tony to yield.

"But baby," Bucky whined.

You giggled, lightly pushing him away.

"Go on and join that cockblock of your best friend, love."

He guffawed at your nickname for his best friend.

"Honestly, Bucky. I'm telling you. He already knows. How else can he cockblock us five times in three days?! That'd take some serious coincidences."

"Well, I have a way of finding out whether or not he knows." Bucky smirked.

"And what might that involve?"

"Well," he mused, "it's very simple. Only involves you and me fuc-"

"Bucky!"

"What?!" He laughed. That cheeky brat.

≈≈≈

"You're late."

Bucky took his eyes off the flowers growing on the sidewalk and faced his best friend. Steve was standing with his arms crossed across his chest, the extremely tight white t-shirt threatening to break its seams.

"And you still haven't bought clothes that fit you."

"You had a good night's sleep?" Steve asked, ignoring the man's statement.

"Yeah." He smiled as he thought of you. More specifically, him in your arms.

Steve nodded. He had been afraid that after the Germany debacle, it would be very difficult to change things back to normal. He remembered the countless nights he had been up thinking about how in hell he could apologize to Tony. He knew he had made a mistake. He admitted it. But he had feared that Tony would never accept it- and rightfully so. He had, after all, hurt his friend. But fortunately it seemed like everything worked out well.

It had taken some time, but the billionaire had warmed up to Bucky and now it seemed that they even considered each other friends.

"What are ya thinking of, pal?" Steve wouldn't have noticed but everyone else, Bucky included, agreed on the fact that Steve's Brooklyn mannerisms had made a comeback now that Bucky was around more. They could see him fall back into 40's self. Sam appreciated it a lot. Mostly because a lot of the 40s slang gave him content to tease Steve and Bucky with.

Steve would never admit it out loud but he personally was grateful for Sam and Bucky's playful bickering. It brought out Bucky's 40s snarky habits. Although he had observed that Bucky had been exceptionally happier for the past six months or so. Especially in the company of the newest addition to their weird family. You.

Steve was not blind. His best friend may be a world renowned and feared assassin but he was as smooth as Steve when it came to wooing dames of the 21st century. And Steve was sure he wasn't hallucinating when he had seen Bucky stare at you on countless occassions. And his suspicions were only confirmed furthermore when Nat and Sam had approached him the day before.

≈≈≈

He was staring at (Y/N) again. This had become a common occurrence in the past two weeks. Everytime (Y/N) would enter or exit a room, Bucky's eyes would follow the retreating figure. Steve wanted to confront Bucky but knowing him, he would never get straight answers.

"You've seen it too, haven't you?" Natasha's accusing tone caught his attention.

Steve turned to the fiery redhead questioningly but when he faced her he knew what she was talking about. He sighed, "I know. I have my doubts too. But you know him. He won't talk!"

"Doesn't mean we shouldn't help them." Sam said, from the chair nearby.

Steve opened his mouth to explain for the hundredth time how Bucky would just cut their balls off before asking for help when he realised what Sam said.

"Wait. What do you mean 'help them?"

Sam smirked wildly before leaning forward as if he were about to disclose the biggest secret. He whispered, "You see, while you two were busy observing Barnes gawking at (Y/N), I was keeping tabs on (Y/N). Wanna know what I concluded?"

"She likes him too!" Natasha whispered scandalously.

"Exactly. And that's why we must focus on (Y/N) rather than trying to get Barnes to confess. Because all of us know that Barnes is one stuck up idiot."

≈≈≈

It was quite late in the night when Bucky woke up thirsty and hungry. He groggily sat up on the bed and felt around for your warm body. Of course, you had sneaked out. The bet was really getting on Bucky's nerves now. He was this close to kissing you in front of everyone and carrying you with, to his room.

Bucky staggered out of his room, muttering angry curses.

"Fucking bet. Fucking pride and ego. How in fresh hell can Nat not figure this one out?! Isn't she supposed to be a fucking spy-"

"-I'm telling you, they were giving each other heart eyes!"

"Nat, are you sure? If Bucky wanted to hide it, he wouldn't have so obnoxiously stared at her."

"Steve, we have talked about this how many times now? All of us have established that Barnes is putty when it comes to (Y/N), we-"

Before anyone could hear or see him, Bucky retraced his steps away from the approaching silhouettes and back to his room, thirst and hunger forgotten. His smile could have rivalled the Sun. He giddily tip-toed back to his room and noiselessly shut the door. He couldn't wait for tomorrow.

The next day, Bucky got up to FRIDAY. Not exactly what he had anticipated but he couldn't have been bothered by anything that day. He had a plan ready and it was simple. All he needed was an observant audience.

"Mr. Barnes, Mr. Stark requests everyone's presence in the common room by two o'clock. The Wakandan quinjets will reach the hangar by 02:15 pm."

Bucky glanced at the vintage clock- courtesy of Sam and Tony- beside his bed. 10 o'clock. He still had time.

You had just worn your gym outfit when you heard a knock at the door.

"Come in!"

"Well, don't you look beautiful?"

Before you could turn around to greet your boyfriend, Bucky snuck his arms around your waist. You giggled, trying to escape his grip, "Bucky someone might see!"

"No one's home, doll. Sam, Nat and Steve decided to go grocery shopping, Rhodey and Bruce dragged Tony out of his lab to grab breakfast, Clint and Scott will come over only by one, Thor will arrive at two and-"

"Okay! Okay, I get the picture, lover boy!" You tittered. "How about we go for a walk then? We haven't done that in a while."

Bucky decided that it would be a good idea to hint about Steve and Nat knowing when the two of you would be returning to the Tower. That way you won't have enough time to register that he might be up to something. Although he would only realise later that the scene the both of you would walk into definitely would not need any fuelling from his side.

≈≈≈

Peter decided that reaching the Tower by 01:30 pm was a great decision on his behalf. He did not think anyone would be in the Tower and he could easily slip into the gym to practice some new moves.

"Kid, you are not stepping into the gym for two more weeks." Tony's voice boomed from behind him as Peter crossed the common room. Cursing his luck he turned around hoping that he could convince- any thought of convincing anyone vanished into things air when he saw five of the adults staring down at him. Silently sliding back into the common room he settled down and stuck his earphones in his ears.

"... Wouldn't be a problem, I mean we can always team them up against each other-"

He must have dozed off. He deduced that there were about five to six people in the room. He knew that Tony was speaking before being interrupted.

"Yes, but if they want to hide it they might protest-"

"Heavens, Rogers why do you have to be so pessimistic-"

"I'm not being pessimistic, I'm just stating the possibilities!"

"Fine! IF they start protesting then we'll just force them together."

"But then Bucky will know that we know that-"

"Jesus, kitna Buck Buck karta hai."

"I know that's Hindi, Bruce."

"Rogers, stop deviating from the topic."

"Can I ask what in fresh fuck is happening here?"

The dead silence prompted Peter to get up and look around. He could feel the awkwardness radiating off of Steve. Somehow everyone else was either jubliantly smirking or utterly confused. (Y/N) being the latter.

"Well, hello there, fossil. (N/N)." Natasha grinned.

"Nat, what are you up to?" You cautiously asked. God knows what these little shits had been up to while Bucky and you had been out.

"We might know something." Tony breached the topic. "Something specifically related to you."

"Me?"

"And Bucky, of course."

You stilled. You could see Peter perking up at Tony's declaration. Of course he wanted 'the tea'. Sometimes you wondered how Tony and Peter were not related.

"So y'all gonna kiss or not?" Sam bluntly asked.

"What?!"

Peter could see the tension on your features.

"How do you know that?! How long have you known?! And who told you? I don't remember-"

As your gaze fixated on Peter's he yelled, "I swear I didn't do it! I did not tell them! Only like seven people know, I swear!"

Peter meekly scanned the room and seeing almost every other person's face painted in confusion, he awkwardly shrunk into the sofa.

"Kid, what are you talking about?"

"The same thing that you guys are inisuating."

"And that is?" Steve prompted.

"How you guys came to know that Bucky and (Y/N) are dating?" Peter squeaked.

"I'm sorry, what the fuck?"

Natasha swirled facing the two of you, shock and excitement written all over her face.

"YOU TWO ARE DATING?!"

It was utter chaos in the room. Steve was trying to calm Sam down and Nat was ranting on and on about how she could not have noticed it.

"I'm a fucking spy, goddammit!"

"Oh my God, are you guys done screaming my ears out?" Bucky asked calmly.

"Did you know that they know?!"

"Doll, how would I know-"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

"The fuck kinda-"

"Guys! Guys! Guys! Why is this even important? Everybody knows everything, nothing to hide, can't we move on and let this slide?"

"That was good."

"Thanks, man."

"Wait a minute. Pete, I don't care how you got to know about us. What did you mean by only seven people know it?!"

"Uh, well, I- I- I- you know, seven? Yeah, I mean, I know, you know, Bucky knows, and- and- um-"

"And the White Wolf and Spiderman?" You deadpan.

"Yes! Yes! They know too."

"Peter, I am the White Wolf and you are Spiderman."

Peter let out a sigh of defeat and stuttered, "Itoldnedandauntmaythedayigottoknowandthenifacetimedshurisoeveryoneinwakandaknows."

"I only got Ned and face timed."

"Well, I may or may not have told Ned and Aunt May and then proceeded to have FaceTime Shuri. May be." Peter answered evasively.

"So everyone except us." Natasha barked, still annoyed that she wasn't able to find out.

"Yeah, basically." Peter casually answered before thinking for a few seconds and added, "does this mean I'll be able to join the super secret meetings?"

"Oh hell no!"

••••

(A/N): did y'all like it?

"Kitna Buck Buck karta hai" is a pun of sorts. The sentence basically means, "[name] blabbers a lot." 'buck buck' (or bak bak, as it is written) means blabbering. Guess, you'll understand the rest ;)

Tagging some lovelies for validation: @shamelessbookaddict @emilyshurley @thebookwormslytherin @trashpanda-barnes @messy-random-bitch

#bucky barnes x reader #one shot #marvel #steve rogers #peter parker #natasha romanoff #bucky barnes #tony stark #sam wilson #x reader inserts #fluff?#fluff #i hope so

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xathia-89 · 6 years

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Overcoming the Past

Azuchi was as lively as ever. Kenshin had brought me along since it was turning into a long-term allegiance with Nobunaga to chase down Kennyo and all of his network. He feared that leaving me behind would make me an obvious target for the former Abbott, especially since both him and Shingen really needed to be here to ensure that everything was going to be lead from this point. It would give Kenshin a better piece of mind at least, though Hideyoshi had taken the same sort of shine to me as well for some bizarre reason.

I had been visiting Sasuke when we’d both been sucked into a wormhole. We were friends from high school, and despite all outward appearances, we were always close. Yukimura had initially decided that I was trying to con Sasuke into a romantic relationship, then as he saw us constantly he realised that I had never even considered anything on that scale. I even humoured the vassal as I simply kept myself aloof of Shingen’s flirting techniques. Takeda was persistent, and I was constantly on my guard around the man. I took to spending my time mostly with Kenshin anyway since the God of War was too busy focusing on his next battle to understand what the castle needed for its smooth operation in his absence.

It was rare that I went anywhere near a battlefield. It wasn’t in my interest nor my nature. I was much happier being left back at Kasugayama and making sure that there was always a home for them all to return to. Takeda had been threatened after a couple of days of listening to me complain about the visiting warlord by Kenshin, and Shingen decided to listen to it from what I had experienced afterwards at least. So it meant that I could do all the homey things without sending the wrong intentions to the Kai warlord.

Yukimura and Sasuke were practically joined at the hip, even if most of what Sasuke said flew over the vassal’s head. And it was a comfort to me to have Sasuke so close. I had no idea how he survived for four years without me, I was floundering for the half an hour that he wasn’t present when I arrived in the Sengoku.

I had been formally introduced to the staff and anyone vaguely near Azuchi castle as an Uesugi Princess, so a lot of the maids were both scared of my connection to Kenshin and very curious. It didn’t bother me what they thought or said about it since it wasn’t like I would be living at Azuchi forever. Kenshin had gotten a gut instinct that leaving me behind without protection would leave Kennyo with an option of forcing battle before they were all ready and had stubbornly made me pack things whilst my horse had been saddled up. Sasuke and Yukimura found it very amusing to listen to me telling Kenshin off for treating me as though I was a thing to order about. Shingen found it endearing and tried to flirt with me which left him with a red palm print across his cheek.

“Kenshin,” I whined at him as he entered after another long day in council with his least favourite people.

“Don’t start,” he barked, though nodding in thanks after I poured his sake out.

“It’s boring! And you forced me to come with you, but I’m not allowed anywhere without an escort, and all the escorts are in the same meeting as you are,” I sulked. “Don’t they have any seamstresses here?”

“I’ll ask tomorrow for you,” Kenshin sighed, and then patted me on the head. It was a sibling-kind of affection between us, just as it was between me and Sasuke. “I had to get the most annoying Chatelaine-Princess in all of Japan,” he smiled.

“Well if you didn’t have me, then you’d be bored,” I beamed. “Has anyone seen him?” I switched to a serious note.

“We’ve had rumours. Sasuke is working with Mitsuhide to collaborate on where we need to go. You’ll be staying here with Hideyoshi as your guard,” the mismatched eyes were momentarily glaring at me.

“Hey, I never said I needed a guard,” I argued and pushed the pickled plums towards the warlord. “That was your decision and wording.”

“Only because I made the stupid decision to bring you with me onto the battlefield once, and Kennyo saw you as the weak spot he could exploit,” Kenshin shook his head. It wasn’t regret anymore, it was a simple fact. Kennyo was the current problem, and that needed addressing. Unfortunately for everyone involved it meant joining up with his sworn enemy Nobunaga Oda. I was useless with a sword, and more likely to hurt myself than anyone else, every attempt at teaching me self-defence had gone more than a little awry and we found out that I wasn’t much better at being a healer. “Go and get some sleep, I’ll see if Nobunaga or Hideyoshi can help solve your boredom before Sasuke gets wind of it and gets you out of safety.”

I wasn’t that surprised to find Toyotomi knocking on my door around midday. He was surprisingly accepting of me into Azuchi, probably because he’d seen first hand what I was like around a sword, and then had to bandage my arm up as well. I’d heard all the jokes that Hideyoshi was the mother hen of the castle, but then he was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that I was competent in my role as Chatelaine at Kasugayama. I was taken down to the seamstress area, where I learnt that Kenshin had been praising my skills to keep all of the staff inline after Ieyasu had slipped a comment about me being his little slip of a side thing.

“You two never act like you’re together,” the vassal admitted as we approached the lower parts of the castle.

“Lord Kenshin is just my big brother really,” I smiled. “There’s nothing romantic going on.”

“Now that’s the perfect introduction for me,” a man with an eyepatch smoothly appeared and went to put his arm over my shoulder. I instantly slapped him before he could finish the move and hid the other side of Hideyoshi, who was torn between telling me off and telling off the stranger. “That’s a good arm lass,” he chuckled, rubbing his very red cheek.

“Masamune!” Toyotomi had finally decided that his ally required the first scolding. “And don’t think you’re off the hook either Natsuki,” he frowned over his shoulder at me.

“Maybe not, but he might learn to not do that to me,” I shrugged as the door to the sewing area was opened for me, and Hideyoshi’s look told the one-eyed dragon to not follow, though it was evidently ignored as I was introduced to all of the seamstresses.

Masamune went to casually lean over and try to corner me, as I then picked up the fabric scissors to ‘examine’ them. I heard the audible gulp, and Hideyoshi was then trying to hide his amusement by coughing over a laugh. The girls were absolutely lovely and so eager to gain another set of hands for my stay as the two warlords returned to the council that was taking up everyone’s time.

Kenshin was frowning at his smirking ally. Shingen had overheard the previous evening about Masamune’s introduction to Natsuki, and how much of a failure it had been. There was still a faint outline on Date’s cheek from where he had been slapped, which did amuse the other warlords just as much.

“Natsuki didn’t like your attempts then?” Shingen was taunting Masamune, the two womanisers of the room trying to size each other up already.

“She did the same to you every time you’ve tried,” Kenshin was trying to stop the obvious before it started. “You had to get your saddle repaired from the last one because you fell off your horse.”

“She’s always around you or Sasuke though, and she’s not got her guard around Yukimura,” Takeda was practically pouting at the discussion.

“Because we don’t flirt with her,” Uesugi replied through gritted teeth.

“I bet she likes a different approach,” Mitsuhide and Sasuke had returned in the middle of the night, and Akechi was enjoying being the stirrer in this far too much.

“First one to get a kiss off our lovely Chatelaine has the rest of the warlords' sake reserves,” Shingen stated in overconfidence.

“Natsuki isn’t a toy,” Hideyoshi frowned. “Just because she won’t flirt with you or Masamune doesn’t mean she’s to be played with.”

“Maybe she likes someone, and doesn’t want to admit it?” Mitsunari was innocent in his actions and words, but he got all of the men fired up unintentionally.

“That’s a stupid bet,” I snorted as Sasuke caught me up on the commotions that had happened during the day. We were sharing some sake next to the brazier that warmed up all around. “And as lovely as Mitsunari is, that sentence just guaranteed that I’m going to be avoiding most of the castle.”

“Mm, I haven’t even told Lord Kenshin about your past,” the ninja murmured. “It’s not my story to tell.”

“He knows bits and pieces, the outline of it,” I shrugged uncomfortably. “I hate telling people. They either get overly sympathetic and start treating me like I’m a broken porcelain doll, or they get all up in my face wanting me to ‘try it with them’ as though it’ll fix all of the panic attacks,” I frowned.

“You’ve been pretty good with handling Shingen I had to admit,” Sasuke smiled proudly.

“I have been a little deceitful about the whole healing side though,” I sheepishly added.

“It keeps you away from the battlefield, your intentions are solid, and it does give myself and Lord Kenshin less to worry about if you’re safely holed up in a castle rather than back in the camps,” the man nodded his head. “Have you met all of the Azuchi warlords yet then?”

“Nearly all of them, I haven’t met Ieyasu,” I shrugged. “Apparently he’s just prickly and all that so it’s not like I’m missing out on a lot.”

I could hear the argument already forming in my friend’s mind as I smirked against my cup of sake. Sasuke had always been a fanatical history buff, and he could probably tell anyone more about the lives of these warlords than they could tell you themselves. I refilled our cups as Kenshin let himself into the room, looking as irritated as Sasuke had on his arrival.

“If you brought the pickled plums, we have the sake,” I smiled, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

“Good,” the warlord grumped, and immediately held his cup out for me to fill.

It was a comfortable silence between us, and then I was surprised when Hideyoshi came to find me and tell me about the bet.

“I’ll just be going,” Toyotomi was nervous, and it made me chuckle.

“Or you could join in with the sake drinking?” I offered, knowing that Sasuke would be fangirling on the inside at least.

Uesugi was glaring at me, but I merely smiled at the warlord in response. This was my room, and it was, therefore, my invitation that he couldn’t overrule. Hideyoshi uneasily sat between me and Sasuke, the ninja struggling to come to terms with being in such close proximity with one of his favourite warlords. I was trying to suppress all my instincts to grin wickedly at my long-term friend as I focused on the sake.

“I need a favour with this bet,” I eventually broke what was most likely half an hour of silence. “How I’ve been with Shingen and Masamune isn’t unusual, it’s my standard reaction to anyone trying to become anything more than friends,” I slowly started, circling the sake cup in my hand and staring at the clear liquid. “Sasuke knows all this, but when I was a lot younger, I did have a long-term partner. He died, and it was my fault,” I smiled tightly.

“It wasn’t your fault Natsuki,” I was surprised that the ninja had found his tongue in the presence of Hideyoshi. “He was in an accident on the way to see you, that doesn’t mean it’s your fault.”

“I begged him to come and see me,” I smiled wryly.

“He would be berating you terribly if he could see how you avoided all romance now. He’d want you to be happy,” Sasuke stoically replied.

“I am happy. I like to not get involved romantically,” I argued. “I begged him to come and see me, and he died on the way, if I hadn’t begged for him to come and see me, then he wouldn’t have died.”

Both the warlords were studying me quietly, as though things were making sense to them.

“What happened the last time someone managed to get close to you?” Kenshin asked, his eyes narrowed slightly.

Sasuke choked on his sake with laughter. “She beat them black and blue,” he grinned, a proud look on his face. “And then broke down in tears and it took me a while to get anything to make sense,” his face fell. I was busy staring at my cup, the panic attacks were never fun. “So, if we could all try and help Natsuki to avoid anyone getting too close then I think it’s best for all involved.”

Hideyoshi nodded first, which surprised me, as Kenshin gave the ninja a look which told him that he was an idiot for thinking otherwise.

Sasuke shoved me into the library suddenly a few days later. Hideyoshi and Kenshin had been brilliant in helping me avoid all of the other warlords, and I swore that I’d heard Toyotomi scolding Nobunaga for trying to trick me. I blinked as I overheard an elaborate lie coming out of the ninja’s mouth to Shingen, whilst I held in a chuckle and decided to have a look around the room I was in.

I had been studying classical Japanese scripture with Sasuke during my stay, but I wasn’t fully confident in it without someone to help. It hadn’t stopped my curiosity though as I went to get a book off the shelf, only to find it was just out of my reach and caused me to topple backwards.

I closed my eyes and braced myself for the impact, only to find that my cushion was in the grasp of an unknown man. The book fell at our feet and flopped open to show the various healing properties of a plant.

“I didn’t think that Kenshin’s Chatelaine knew any healing,” the man bristled, immediately uprighting me and turning away.

“Sasuke claimed that I just never corrected what was said,” I replied, bending over to get the book before looking at the man in question. My breath caught in my throat. He was a great likeness for Ryoma, down to the stand-offish way he abruptly addressed me. My heart was going to burst through my chest if I wasn’t careful.

“Why would you do that?” He snorted, already judging me heavily as I glanced down to the book in my hands.

“So I didn’t get under their feet on the battlefield. If I don’t know how to fight properly or heal, then there’s no point in bringing me along,” I calmly stated. “Plus if I’m not on the battlefield then Lord Kenshin can’t worry about a weakling like me,” I shrugged, and looked around to find that the only reading spot in the room was next to the strange man.

I dropped myself down onto the furthest cushion away from him and balanced the book across my lap. I was sat in the modern western manner instead of the traditional Japanese style, it was easier to not need a table if you were only reading.

“If you wanted some table space then you should have just asked,” I heard after a few minutes. It was a huffy tone, and I was struggling to keep my thoughts going straight. It reminded of the times when Ryoma and I were studying, and I’d end up in his lap whilst we went through things together that I didn’t understand.

“Thank you,” was all that I could utter, though I made sure that I wasn’t encroaching on anything the strange man had out on the table.

The book was snatched out of my hands after a short while, and I was surprised to see the man glancing over it. “This is too advance scripture for you,” it wasn’t a question, just a statement as I frowned at him. “So why are you trying to read it?”

“Sasuke, Hideyoshi or Kenshin would have come to fetch me if it was safe for me to leave, so I might as well find something to test myself with since I can’t just twiddle my thumbs for however long,” I replied, curious as to his intentions.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that Hideyoshi joined in on playing mother hen,” the blonde snorted. “Do you want help reading this or not?” He clicked before I moved next to him, and decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Natsuki,” Shingen’s voice called out and made me freeze up as the door to the library opened.

“She’s not here,” the male next to me stood up and glowered at the imposing warlord, whilst stopping him from being able to see around the bookcases.

“You’re no fun now Ieyasu,” Takeda darkly chuckled. “Our darling princess hasn’t been seen all day and she’s not in her room or with the seamstresses, and this is the last place in the castle to be checked.”

“Maybe she’s avoiding you all because of that stupid bet,” the blonde bristled. “She’s good friends with Kenshin’s ninja, so he’s probably helping her and they’re crawling through the roof or something,” he was trying to get Shingen to leave as I relaxed a little.

“Fine,” Shingen was clearly sulking from the tone in his voice.

I didn’t dare to breathe until his footsteps faded away, and I was still reluctant to talk, though Ieyasu simply picked the book up and resumed the lesson. It was a combination of medicine and scripture, and I was finding it soothing that everything in him was reminiscent of Ryoma. I understood what he said against what he meant, and his teaching technique was a mirror of his as well.

A soft thud and a pressure against his shoulder made the blonde stop, and he tried to not smile at the sight. The princess had fallen asleep against him. It was adorable that she apparently let her guard down around him, and her ability to understand exactly what he meant was endearing as well. There was a quiet knock at the door, which put him on edge.

Sasuke gave an apologetic bow to the warlord. “Many apologies Lord Ieyasu,” he murmured. “Lord Kenshin and Hideyoshi will appreciate that she managed to avoid Shingen, Masamune and Mitsuhide today,” he smiled and went to pick her up, only to find that Tokugawa already had the small female in his arms.

“Might as well take her back to her room right?” He abrupted said and then stared at the smiling ninja. “What?”

“I think I understand now why she let her guard down around you,” Sasuke smiled and bowed again.

“Well, she’s not annoying like most I suppose,” the blonde grumbled, already walking towards the guest quarters with the sleeping princess.

I tried to go about my days as normal, only to find out that slapping warlords was now apparently part of it. Nobunaga, Masamune, Shingen, Mitsuhide and on occasions I had found that Mitsunari was easily led astray. The staff were more amazed that I hadn’t been put in the dungeons as all of them were preparing to leave for war. I avoided Ieyasu as much as possible, it was easier than trying to constantly remind myself it wasn’t Ryoma. My emotions were definitely on a knife’s edge and it was much simpler to throw myself in to all of the sewing work that had accumulated.

Then I was called to the war council, by Nobunaga Oda of all people.

“Ieyasu let slip a piece of interesting information that Kenshin didn’t even know,” the man looked cocky and intrigued in one good. “That your knowledge and understanding of medicine matches his. Yet you keep away from all aspects of it from what I’ve heard.”

“If I get taken to the battlefield, then I just become a liability,” I replied sharply, feeling strangely wounded by the fact that Tokugawa had shared the tidbit. “So I feign no knowledge and get left behind to keep home safe for them all to return to instead. Otherwise, someone might get an idea in his head about kidnapping me,” I cooly finished, looking straight at Oda as he realised I was talking about him.

I stormed off when I was dismissed aloofly by the dark haired male. Kenshin would be questioning me later, but right now I was justifiably angry. I wanted to punch Ieyasu’s handsome face as I decided to risk everything, and ran out into the deep parts of the garden, not taking a note of my path.

“Has she been found yet?” Kenshin was frowning as his ninja dropped down soundlessly from the ceiling with a shake of his head. “We’ve emptied the castle out, and we were the last ones who saw her,” he pondered, his mismatched eyes gazing around them. “What would she normally do in anger?” He asked Sasuke, their mutual concern clear.

“She’d get out of the place and away from the people who were causing the stress,” Sasuke replied, lowering his mask to respond. “But I’m not certain that she’d find what she was looking for around here,” he frowned.

“And what would she be looking for?” The warlord pressed.

“A lake, or a river, or some form of water,” the ninja explained. “She finds it soothing.”

“Then we get the others to search for them and the surrounding areas,” Kenshin turned around promptly, his silent instruction clear as he left his ninja to do his speciality.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, as I rubbed my eyes and slowly sat up. Then a haori fell off me, and I frowned at it. It wasn’t one I recognised, as a scoff I did broke the soothing sounds of the running water.

“You’ve got everyone searching for you,” Ieyasu was abrupt. “You’re mad because I told them you’re good at medicine, and I don’t understand why it’s bothering me that you’re upset about it.”

“I’m upset because I don’t want to be dragged onto the battlefield and become a liability. I’m a weakling, leave me behind and let me do what I’m good at,” I snipped at him, already gathering his haori up to hand back to him. “And now everyone knows I’m good at medicine, they’re going to want me on the field and I’m just going to get in the way.”

“No, you won’t,” I wasn’t expecting Tokugawa to argue back with me, his face level with mine. Tears were threatening as everything was just a hark back to my relationship. I could feel the distance closing, and I was torn in two.

His lips were soft against mine. It was reminding me of everything that I’d missed since Ryoma had gone, with Ieyasu’s slender fingers gently holding my jaw up. His tongue explored every part of my mouth, as though desperate to remember my exact taste as a wanton moan escaped before I had a chance to stop it.

“What brought that on?” I breathed, our foreheads resting against each other.

“You looked like you wanted it,” Tokugawa grumbled, as I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well then, I will just need to make sure my expressions are for you only,” I smiled.

“How did Ieyasu win?!” Was shouted across the river, and both of us instantly froze up at the sound of Masamune’s voice.

“Oh, that stupid bet,” Tokugawa rubbed his forehead.

“I know you didn’t just kiss me because of that, otherwise you’d have done so in the library,” I replied, getting him to look me in the eyes, and trying to ignore my impending panic attack.

I was swaddled in warmth, as I blinked in surprise before realising that I was wrapped up in Ieyasu’s arms under his haori. My head was resting against his chest as I listened to his breathing to set mine to.

“I could see you beginning to panic,” the blonde mumbled, keen to keep his voice out of reach of the now approaching warlords.

“Thank you,” I quietly responded, not letting my grip go from around his waist.

Kenshin was watching his Chatelaine with avid interest. She was quietly cooped up in the corner of the main hall with Ieyasu, both of them eating the stupidly spicy food that Tokugawa liked as on occasions the heat would get too much for Natsuki, and she’d neck down a large amount of sake.

“I think we lost our princess,” Shingen was being a sore loser and pouting. Though he wasn’t alone as Masamune was half-heartedly glaring at the sight.

“No, she’s just found out where she needs to be,” Uesugi corrected his ally and toasted his cup to the woman who had glanced over in his direction with an apologetic smile.

#ikesen #Ikémen Sengoku #ikemen sengoku #Ieyasu Tokugawa

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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June 29th-July 5th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 29th, 2019 to July 5th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

Whether intentional or not, what would you say is the central theme of your comic?

snuffysam

The central theme of Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/ is, to put it in a word, acceptance. Accepting that you can't change the past, accepting that you can't control everything that happens in your life, accepting that other people come from different walks of life and experience different hardships from you, accepting that you can't change other people's hearts, and learning to accept yourself even when others don't accept you.

Attila Polyák

The story of Tales of Midgard https://talesofmidgard.com/comic/book-1-cover-page/ does have a central theme, but most of the story mostly follows events that allow the exploration of the world. That said... If you look at it closely you'll notice that the story does involve themes about free will and the results and consequences of an actions taken.

Respheal

Kinda hit me just now that the central theme of Galebound (http://www.galebound.com/) might be "real change comes from a place of love, not hate". Basically, even if you have "good" goals, trying to achieve those goals from a position of hatred will just destroy everything around you, while doing something because of love elevates everything. Also row row fight the power(edited)

Jonny Aleksey

The Undefeatable J-Man ( http://jonnyalekseydrawscomics.com/thelatestpage ) So when I starting writing up the series years ago the idea was always going to be about the relationship between J-Man and his father. J-Man having idolized his officer dad when he was little but growing more distance after he becomes a hero and does his own "cases" (like a kid trying to be grown up). The inclusion of sidekick Sleepy Bear evolved from a fun silly idea into being a sort of little brother to J-Man, forcing him into a guardian role before he's really ready. I guess in short the theme has become maturity and hero worship.(edited)

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

If Leif & Thorn (http://leifandthorn.com/) has a main theme, it's "communication." Partly because the characters don't share a first language -- and even as Thorn gets better at speaking Leif's, there are huge cultural differences that they need to figure out and talk through.

On top of that, if you dig down far enough, a ton of the problem-of-the-week type conflicts can be traced back to miscommunication! Someone hasn't explained themselves, or tried but didn't get it across very well, or explained it clearly but the other person didn't want to listen...

(The other problems are pretty much all about financial exploitation. Something goes wrong, it's either miscommunication or capitalism. Or both!)

But I'm A Cat Person (http://bicatperson.com/) is about broke recent college grads living on their own for the first time, but still making new connections and getting by with help from their friends. Also, immortal shapeshifters who need to be bonded to a human Master and will literally run down like a rusting machine if they don't get regular orders. There was a point when I figured the theme was "independence," but it's really more "interdependence."

...It's very political, but it takes place in 2010-2011, so the in-universe references have to be specific to that era. If they didn't, I'd be saying "stronger together" a lot more.

keii4ii

Heart of Keol (https://heartofkeol.com/) is about being let down by the one person you trusted, when you needed them the most. The feeling of "I'd thought they would care, but I guess that was too much to expect........" It's also about how you change (which hopefully includes healing -- though that isn't the case every time...) after such an experience. How that relationship changes afterward, and how it affects your other relationships.

Mharz

The Angel with Black Wings http://blackwings.mharz.com/ main central theme is "forgiveness" whether it's towards others or towards yourself. We've all been hurt before and sometimes depending on how tough it is, it can sometimes be so hard to forgive anyone even yourself. Some had so many tragedies happened to them that they had formed hatred towards the world that they just want to see it burn. Many of us formed self-loathing because we haven't achieve this kind of status we wanted for ourselves, or maybe we have blamed ourselves for something bad that has happened in the past. Forgiveness or lack thereof can greatly affect someone's mental health... and it doesn't just affect ourselves, but the people around us. CHAMPS http://champs.mharz.com/ aside from the slow-burn lesbian romance that's going on is about which victories are more important? The main characters, being athletes they'd want to win any match they can... but winning doesn't necessarily mean a satisfying victory. Sometimes you need to make a choice.

NeilKapit

What is this theme? Is it, according to that one guy from the Game of Thrones show, something for eighth grade book reports? Everyone knows storytelling is all about random shit happening to keep people in their seats, regardless of why.

Tuyetnhi

ha?

keii4ii

I think NeilKapit was making a joke about themes in general

Tuyetnhi

keii4ii

Not sure but my guess is he was sarcastically mimicking those who uh, don't "believe in themes"

Mharz

oh I thought it was pertaining to mine... becos my message was before theirs

I'm like did I say something wrong?

keii4ii

Nah, you're fine

Mharz

Ty keiiii

NeilKapit

It’s a joke based on a quote by David Benoit (sp?), one of the game of thrones showrunners, about how he approaches storytelling

It explains a lot about why the show went south so hard and so fast once they ran out of book material to adapt

Sorry if it sounded like I was dissing you or anyone here, I wasn’t

keii4ii

Thank you for clarifying

Mharz

it's good, bud. : D

NeilKapit

In all seriousness, the theme behind my comic We Are the Wyrecats (wyrecats.com) is coming of age in the worst possible way, with the protagonist having spent ages 18-22 in a coma, and awakening to a world where all the common sense heroism she and her friends tried to do ended up receiving a vicious backlash from the powers that be, where her friends have had to morally compromise in the name of survival, and where she realizes that people only allow you to do good on their terms

And what to make of things upon learning all of that

Nutty (Court of Roses)

In Court of Roses http://courtofroses.thecomicseries.com/ I'm trying to show the love, beauty, and power in self-expression, especially of the artistic kind and how versatile it can truly be. My bards will have a lot of challenges thrown at them to be solved uniquely with their talents!(edited)

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I wanna expand on that once they all start traveling together, as well as showing the importance of being able to seek help and comfort from others when you need it most.

Capitania do Azar

Haha central theme of my comic (www.sarilho.net/en/) is cooperation and this was super intentional because themes are super important and that's is why I spend so much time dealing with characters engaging in battle (edited)

MJ Massey

Not sure if this counts, but Black Ball (http://welcometoblackball.com/) is a deconstruction of the Great Gatsby and other 1920s literature which involves a lot of ironic tragedy. Emily is the common sense friend you wish all those characters had, because she has no time for that nonsense, and inadvertently comes in and makes people face their problems and, through that, become stronger, better people. While this is going on, she doesn't even realize that she's having an impact on people. Emily starts as sort of a passive doormat, being dragged around where her parents or the plot take her, but by the end she will find her own confidence and will become a more assertive person

Tuyetnhi

The main themes for OIYD! (http://oiydcomic.com/) is a combination of Fantasy vs. Reality, Truth and Lies, the scope of love, and the sacrifices or consquences made from those choices. Escapism, fantasies, and delusions often infer how we precieve our reality. And sometimes reality structures how these mindscapes are dictated. I want to explore such things under a romance between a dreamer and her dream, implications of trying to please your family and yourself, and what to do when your dreams can turn into concrete existence.(edited)

kayotics

Okay, so after some thinking, I think one of the main themes in Ingress Adventuring Company (https://ingress-comic.com/) is that healing isn't linear, and it can take a long time. That goes tied with the theme that sometimes there's more to people than what they show you. These aren't, like... SUPER obvious as themes yet, especially because most of the comic right now is a pretty light-hearted adventure story, but I think i'll get around to it.

deo101

Millennium's (http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/) main theme is really all about love, and overcoming great struggle through it. It's about healing and growth and finding your own family!(edited)

Jurinova

In it's core Home is a Distant Wish (https://tapas.io/series/hiadw) is about healing and finding one's own place in the world. It is about home but not just as a physical place but home as a feeling of belonging and safety, and most importantly about the right people. It is in many ways about people disconnected trying to connect again. There are more underlying themes that are a bit darker but I do like to think that the more hopeful themes are the dominant ones.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #comic tea party #ctp #creator babble

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eagle-eyez · 3 years

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Shortly after the COVID-19 lockdown began, I found myself all alone in my Mumbai apartment. My roommates had all left, for some reason or the other, and it was just me. The first couple of weeks were easy, I was living my best life and channeling my inner Kevin McAllister with gleeful abandon, eating ice-cream in the middle of the day with not a care in the world. The next couple of weeks, however, were... difficult. There was a point at which my little 2BHK abode, which, on usual days, felt stifling and small, started to seem infinite. The walls began to loom over me, and the walk from the front door to my kitchen felt like a marathon.

I was slowly beginning to succumb to a strange brand of melancholy, the kind that only something like a global pandemic can bring about. In my desperation to exit this sinking quicksand feeling, I tried all sorts of distractions. I watched films that everyone had raved about, television shows that frequently featured on "Top 10 shows to watch if you're not an uncultured swine" lists, even going so far as to — and I shudder to say this out loud — listen to a podcast or two. None of that really worked, and my salvation would finally come whilst trawling through the bargain bin offers on the PlayStation store, in the shape of F1 2019.

Prior to this point, I'd never played an F1 game before, despite being an on-again, off-again fan of the actual sport. Also, my utter incompetence when it comes to racing games might have something to do with why I'd never dipped my toes into Codemasters' decades-long series. In fact, just minutes after booting up F1 2019, I was ready to quit. I was expecting a light, carefree racing experience, but instead, what I got was an ultra-serious, simulator-esque ordeal, with all manners of strange buttons and technical jargon being thrown my way. Despite this initial reluctance, I persevered, and over the next month or so, I obsessively played my way through pretty much everything the game had to offer, and in the process, somehow managed to stave off the lockdown blues (Just to make it clear, I'm not advocating for F1 2019 to replace any of the tools you would use to improve your mental health, please try therapy, it works wonders).

So of course, a year later, when the opportunity came to review the successor to the game that got me through the first few months of the pandemic, I lunged at it with both hands. After having played it for a week or so, I've come to the realisation that despite having sunk many, many hours of my life into this game, I have somehow not gotten any better. I might actually be worse at it than I was a year ago. The game, on the other hand, has improved significantly.

Gameplay and Graphics

While the gameplay of F1 2021 is not massively different from its predecessors, there are a few noteworthy additions that make it a more appealing and polished game than those that came before it. Chief among those is the addition of Braking Point, a "Drive to Survive"-inspired game mode that attempts to throw back the curtain and expose the seedy underbelly of a sport that features 20 millionaires driving around in circles really fast. We'll talk about Braking Point in detail a little later, but F1 2021 is not all about huge updates and big overhauls.

There have also been a number of smaller, more subtle improvements. For an inept hand like myself, the assists, in particular, were one improvement that stood out to me almost immediately. Having little green and red arrows to tell you when to brake and when to accelerate away is really useful, and while these features have been a part of the F1 series for a while now, you do have a slightly larger degree of control over them now.

The game also integrates the DualSense controller's ability to adjust the tension in the trigger buttons, but if you didn't know that before you started playing, you might not realise it at all. In fact, I only remembered that the game was supposed to use adaptive triggers when I was re-watching a teaser trailer that had come out in the build-up to the game's release. Turns out, there are different levels of sensitivity that you can apply to the triggers, and the effects of the default level are not very noticeable. Once I had amped it up a little, I really felt a lot of feedback from the controls, and it made racing a lot more enjoyable by adding a heightened level of tactile interaction.

When it comes to the graphics, there's been a marked improvement in quality, though I suspect that might have more to do with the capabilities of the PlayStation 5 than it has to do with the game itself. Opting to race in rainy conditions will dramatically transform the visuals, with the almost photorealistic soaked asphalt, crunchy gravel and overcast skies really adding to the immersive quality of the experience. In contrast, when racing on circuits like Bahrain, the swirling sand and bright, oppressive sunlight really replicate what it's like to be at that particular track, so much so that while playing the game, I was overcome with nostalgia, thinking back to when a 10-year-old me got a chance to watch the F1 at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Braking Point - The Star Attraction

In Braking Point, F1's new story-focused mode, you're given the opportunity to relive the experience of being a pimply lad in your 20s, trying to make it in a big bad world, through the lens of one Aiden Jackson. Jackson is a strong favourite to win the F2 title, and your first race as Aiden Jackson is the championship-winning season finale that propels you to a seat in Formula 1. Soon after, you're forced to come to grips with the fact that it's not all stars and sunshine in the big leagues, and that underneath the bells and whistles, there's a viciously competitive system that's out to get you.

Among the chief antagonists of this story are your vaguely older teammate Casper Akkerman (really, he could be either 28 or 50) who despises you for being a young hotshot talent, and a very charismatic rival Devon Butler, who just seems to appear out of thin air at the very worst moments possible to sow seeds of doubt in your mind.

Now, there's nothing particularly new or interesting about this storyline in and of itself. It does seem like a slightly plagiarised reincarnation of the Alex Hunter story from FIFA games of the past, even featuring almost identical motivations for the primary character and the antagonists. How it does improve on that, though, is in the execution.

Each character is fleshed out to just the right point, where we neither skim over their reasons for doing what they do, nor dive into their past in exhaustive detail. The interactions between characters, especially those told through the cutscenes, are all paced well, and at no point does the story feel like it's dragging. The only character whose backstory I wasn't fully satisfied with was Akkerman, whose past exploits on the circuit are mentioned only in passing, but it's not something that hampered my enjoyment of the story.

Speaking of Akkerman, another gameplay feature that I really enjoyed was that Braking Point allowed you to race as Akkerman in some races that had were more meaningful to his storyline than they perhaps were to the protagonist. This truly gives players an ability to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, and adds a further level of nuance to this story. It gives a sense of authenticity to the world that the game is trying to bring to your television screens.

This world is also expanded upon by little touches like the mails you get in your inbox, as well as a social media feed of sorts that you can view on your virtual phone. Some of these are quite intriguing, and often form little side stories of their own, over the course of several emails. A significant portion of the story is also told through the medium of telephones, with Aiden being constantly plagued by his mum and team liaison/mediator Brian Doyle.

I do have a couple of gripes about Braking Point. To begin with, since the cutscenes are so visually appealing and well-written, there are occasions outside the cutscenes in which the characters look a little like they've been possessed by a demon, with deadpan expressions and eyes that are cold and calculating. Now, if there's a murder mystery side plot in the pipeline, this is more than acceptable, but otherwise, it just takes away from the overall polish of the game. Secondly, Braking Point is short, even for a novice like me who needs four or five attempts to complete every race.

Career

The career mode allows you to play either as a racer (Driver mode), or as a racer/owner/manager (My Team mode) who juggles the responsibilities of being the man in charge in addition to having to race every weekend. You can play the career mode all by yourself, or, if you have a very, very patient friend, which I do not, you can play it in CO-OP mode, which allows you and your friend to play as teammates or rivals.

When you play the "My Team" version of career mode, you're given a much larger degree of control over the team, and you can dictate proceedings according to your wishes. I found it quite entertaining, both in terms of story and gameplay, and I got a real kick out of acting like the big boss man. It was a little daunting, however, and required a fair bit of googling on my part to understand the progression systems involved in levelling up your engines and gearboxes. Of course, I admittedly have a very superficial knowledge of such things, and someone who is more aware of the inner workings of the sport will likely love the technical side of it.

That's not me though. I'm no geek. I'm fast, I'm furious, and I live to race baby. Hmm, I feel like the 'baby' was a bit too much, but my point stands. I wasn't interested in the makeup of the car or in having to decide what gearbox I was going to use, I just want to smoke fools on the track, and playing the "Driver" mode is perfect for that. You can pick from any team on the F1 and F2 grids, and then compete over the course of a season, or even half a season, if you want. I started out with an F2 side, and found that the journey towards qualifying for the Formula 1 was pretty engaging.

Multiplayer

There are a number of ways in which you can experience the joy of multiplayer racing, from online sessions to local split-screen races. The online races work well enough, but it took me very long to find players to race against, with wait times of over five minutes on some occasions. Perhaps some of that can be attributed to this still being a very new game, and it will likely improve in due time. I also prefer racing with collisions turned off so that other racers are not tangible entities that can make physical contact with me. I personally feel like it's much less chaotic, and ensures you don't fly off the tracks/have your front wing fall off every time you hit someone, but it does also make the race a teeny tiny bit less entertaining.

The multiplayer mode in which I had the most fun, however, was the local split-screen multiplayer, in which you can face off against someone sitting right next to you. Over the course of the past week, my brother and I have waged war on several occasions, and I have emerged victorious on almost every occasion (I let him win one time out of the goodness of my heart).

Grand Prix/Time Trial

These two modes are essentially the most barebones modes available, and they allow players to quickly jump into action whenever they so desire, cutting out any and all semblance of story or plot. They're great for learning how the game works, and challenging yourself to better your previous performances time and time again, should you be so inclined. With the time trial mode, you can also experience every track that the game has to offer without having to complete all of them first.

TL;DR: F1 2021 is a must-have for fans of the genre, as it builds upon an already robust series with numerous upgrades. If you're looking for a more fun, light-hearted racing experience, however, this is probably not for you.

Game reviewed on PlayStation 5. Review code provided by the publisher.

source https://www.firstpost.com/tech/gaming/f1-2021-review-a-near-perfect-blend-of-significant-innovation-and-subtle-improvement-9828141.html

#Technology

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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WHY I'M SMARTER THAN INVESTMENT

This is too big a problem to solve here, but I'd say the test is whether you're good at making things. So what if they fail? Though they're less well known, the angel investors are probably the more critical ingredient in creating a silicon valley in another country, it's clear the US is disorganized about routing people into careers. Easy, compared to college, but boring. 99%.1 The groups then proceeded to give fabulously slick presentations. What made him seem older? If I were a better speaker. More like the first step into a swamp. This form of lie is not without its uses. You know how you can design programs to be debuggable? But when they looked for startup ideas they didn't see this one, because unconsciously they shrank from having to deal with you later.

Foreseeing disaster, my friend and his wife rapidly improvised: yes, the turkey had wanted to die, and in particular, Internet startups are still only a fraction of the world's economy, this component will set the tone for the rest.2 They're started by the poor and the timid; they begin in marginal space and spare time; they're started by people who dropped out of school to do it yourself.3 Rejection is a question of seeing the obvious. Just a teacher? There have always been occasional cases, particularly in the US, and good high schools and good universities, like most other industrialized countries, I'd take the US system. 9782 free! But by the time we funded their second startup, a year later, they had become extremely formidable. And you know what you're talking about, you can do whatever you want and don't cite any previous work, and indignant readers will send you references to all the papers you should have been making.

But I can imagine a future in which the default choice of ambitious young people is to start a company at first. There's no evidence that famously successful organizations like the Roman army or the British East India Company were any less afflicted by protocol and politics than organizations of the same size today. But I don't wish I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of propaganda gets slipped into the curriculum in the name of simplification.4 What weaknesses could you exploit?5 Sometimes they're more candid and say explicitly that they need to see some traction.6 Because I wanted to keep the pressure on an investor or acquirer all the way to the close. They wouldn't well, seven of the eight startups we funded will make it. That's what makes sex and drugs so dangerous.7 With speaking it's the opposite: the two dovetailed beautifully. Works to your advantage.

Finally, what should one do about html? Hacking is something you learn best by doing it. So if you make it clear you're going to have to do to get the attention of an audience is to give people everything you've got, right away. I think, 24 hours to say yes or no answer to that question.8 My vote is they're a bad idea, for example, are working on an Ajax calendar. This pattern suggests that attitudes at Stanford and Berkeley are not an anomaly. Most were emerging from twenty or so years of being told what to do. He had all of us roaring with laughter. Imagine picking out apples at a grocery store.9 I must have been to till the same fields your whole life with the aim of being their Thanksgiving dinner. But it worked so well that we plan to do all our investing this way, or the large sums of money involved, but investment negotiations can easily turn personal.10 The most important quality is in a startup depends mainly on how smart and energetic you are, and much less on how old you are or how much business experience you have.

Not all ideas of that type.11 But that wears off after a few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the place I'd just left. Instead of just tweaking a spam till it gets through a copy of something they made, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. To start with, investors are letting founders cash out partially. But of course there were the usual nightmares associated with servers. Increasingly it will mean the people who think they don't need investors to start most companies; they can do a deal in 24 hours if they need it a lot. For example, most painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used brownish colors. Prefix Syntax? The idea is basically that you sort search results not in order of bids, you can envision companies as holes. If I encourage too many people to apply to Y Combinator, which is low to them. I don't think any would have traded it for a job in a cubicle. There isn't so much a phone as a replacement for x.

If this succeeds you get a silicon valley in Germany, because you tend to be calmer and more upstanding; they don't need to do iffy things to get an edge, and don't want to because they have no redundancy.12 You just know someone knows something, and see if there's a limit on the number of people want a large amount.13 Arguably they've done a bad job of hiring otherwise. In the meantime I tried my best to imitate them. Could a trend based on them be that powerful? I've said before, is a way for writers to make money.14 But if you parse it all, your filter might degenerate into a mere html recognizer.15 They try to hide even the existence of these words for as long as a startup founder about whether it might be good to solve? In a language with prefix syntax, any function you define is effectively an operator. And why is it hard to get emails out of your inbox? If the iPad had come first, we wouldn't think of the iPhone as a phone; we'd think of it as a tablet small enough to hold up to your ear.

If you want to understand startups is to look at what you enjoy as guilty pleasures. But there are limits to how well this can be done, no matter how obscure you are now. Just as happens in college, you may also be ready to. Now most VCs know they should be funding grad students or even undergrads. That will tend to get fixed. Or could have been implemented as a couple hundred lines of Perl; in fact they do all look the same. But we should be able to clear our heads of lies we were told. So now I'd advise people to go ahead and start startups right out of college. The disadvantage of having a larger universe of tokens is that there are going to be fairly laborious no matter what, and the reason why, unlike other languages, Lisp has dialects. Well, if you're starting a company that will do something cool, the aim had better be to make money and maybe be cool, not to be cut out of the way as soon as you can, so you start learning from users what you should do is to sacrifice unpromising startups. The result is bronze, which is predicated on the idea.16 Don't realize what you're avoiding One reason people who've been out in the world won't save you.

After all, the companies selling smells on the moon base could continue to sell them on the Earth, if they lobbied successfully for laws requiring us all to continue to breathe through tubes if they could avoid it. Most investors, especially VCs, are not like founders. But that's something you can do, but assume the worst about machines and other people. But those aren't the only reasons parents don't want their teenage kids having sex are complex.17 Some we helped with technical advice—for example, finding the recipient's email address base-64 encoded anywhere in a message is a very good spam indicator.18 We'll start with the one everyone's born with. Not just founders, but investors too.

Notes

Because we want to avoid this problem and yet managed to find users to recruit manually—is probably part of grasping evolution was to backtrack and try another approach.

You end up.

You won't hire all those 20 people at once, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with VCs suggest it's roughly correct to say exactly what constitutes research in the sense that if you were going to need to be the only one founder take fundraising meetings is that as you get nothing. Come to think of the money.

Ed. Good news: users don't care about may not understand you at a Demo Day. What happens in practice is that the big winners aren't all that value, don't worry about the paperwork there, and don't want to sell earlier than you otherwise would have met 30 people he meets at parties he's a real idea that evolves into Facebook is a trailing indicator in any case, because you have for one user. These anti-immigration people to claim that companies will one day be able to fool investors with such tricks, you'd get ten times as much effort it costs.

It might also be argued that we wrote in order to win. But one of these people.

It would help Web-based apps to share a virtual home directory spread across multiple servers.

I used a technicality to get into a big chunk of stock options than any other company has to be most attractive when it's their own itinerary through no-land, while simultaneously implying that lies believed for a certain threshold. And while this sort of things you sell.

Heirs will be. For founders who had to push founders to have kids soon. These false positive rate is 10%, moving to Monaco would only give you money for. The point where things start with consumer electronics.

Could you endure studying literary theory, or to be doctors?

We're sometimes disappointed when a wolf appears, is not writing the agreement, but I'm not against editing. It will require more than that total abstinence is the odds are slightly worse. Some VCs will try to start some vaguely benevolent business. I was surprised to find it hard to do would be very hard and doesn't get paid to work for us now to appreciate how important a duty it must have seemed to someone still implicitly operating on the order of 10,000 sestertii apiece for slaves learned in the evolution of the word programmers care about, just try to accept a particular valuation, or editions with the high-fiber diet is to discount knowledge that at some of these titles vary too much to hope for, but when that happens, it tends to be staying at a pre-money valuation of zero.

There is no different from technology companies between them so founders can get very emotional. Something similar happens with suburbs. I remember the eyes of phone companies are up-front capital intensive to founders.

The person who would have for a smooth one. But that solution has broader consequences than just salary.

There are circumstances where this is not merely blurry versions of great things were created mainly to make more money was the fall of 2008 the terms they were, they'd have taken one of the main effect of this essay I'm talking here about academic talks, which is to the year x in a time, because the danger of chasing large investments is not one of those you should. How much more attractive to investors. When governments decide how to achieve wisdom is that there could be done at a friend's house for the board to give him 95% of spam, for example, MySpace is basically a replacement mall for mallrats.

In-Q-Tel that is actually a great reputation and they're clearly working fast to get into a pattern, as Prohibition and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen.

A company will either be a trivial enhancement of HTTP, to a degree in design is any better than his peers will get funding, pretty much regardless of how to value potential dividends. So in effect what the rule of thumb, the increasing complacency of managements. Since capital is no longer play that role, it increases your confidence in a rice cooker, if the current options suck enough. Yes, actually: dealing with the bad idea, at least for those founders.

College English Departments Come From?

Microsoft must know in the country it's in. I used a TV as a source of food. Or rather indignant; that's the main emotion I've observed; but it is not just something the automobile, the second type to go to a college that limits their options?

Now many tech companies don't advertise this. I think the main effect of this model was that they aren't. This wipes out the existing shareholders, including the numbers we have to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go ahead. Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Thanks to Richard Jowsey, Bob Frankston, Geoff Ralston, James Bracy, rew Mason, Abby Kirigin, Chip Coldwell, Sam Altman, and Marc Andreessen for the lulz.

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yasbxxgie · 6 years

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A Valuable Reputation: After Tyrone Hayes said that a chemical was harmful, its maker pursued him

In 2001, seven years after joining the biology faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, Tyrone Hayes stopped talking about his research with people he didn’t trust. He instructed the students in his lab, where he was raising three thousand frogs, to hang up the phone if they heard a click, a signal that a third party might be on the line. Other scientists seemed to remember events differently, he noticed, so he started carrying an audio recorder to meetings. “The secret to a happy, successful life of paranoia,” he liked to say, “is to keep careful track of your persecutors.”

Three years earlier, Syngenta, one of the largest agribusinesses in the world, had asked Hayes to conduct experiments on the herbicide atrazine, which is applied to more than half the corn in the United States. Hayes was thirty-one, and he had already published twenty papers on the endocrinology of amphibians. David Wake, a professor in Hayes’s department, said that Hayes “may have had the greatest potential of anyone in the field.” But, when Hayes discovered that atrazine might impede the sexual development of frogs, his dealings with Syngenta became strained, and, in November, 2000, he ended his relationship with the company.

Hayes continued studying atrazine on his own, and soon he became convinced that Syngenta representatives were following him to conferences around the world. He worried that the company was orchestrating a campaign to destroy his reputation. He complained that whenever he gave public talks there was a stranger in the back of the room, taking notes. On a trip to Washington, D.C., in 2003, he stayed at a different hotel each night. He was still in touch with a few Syngenta scientists and, after noticing that they knew many details about his work and his schedule, he suspected that they were reading his e-mails. To confuse them, he asked a student to write misleading e-mails from his office computer while he was travelling. He sent backup copies of his data and notes to his parents in sealed boxes. In an e-mail to one Syngenta scientist, he wrote that he had “risked my reputation, my name … some say even my life, for what I thought (and now know) is right.” A few scientists had previously done experiments that anticipated Hayes’s work, but no one had observed such extreme effects. In another e-mail to Syngenta, he acknowledged that it might appear that he was suffering from a “Napoleon complex” or “delusions of grandeur.”

For years, despite his achievements, Hayes had felt like an interloper. In academic settings, it seemed to him that his colleagues were operating according to a frivolous code of manners: they spoke so formally, fashioning themselves as detached authorities, and rarely admitted what they didn’t know. He had grown up in Columbia, South Carolina, in a neighborhood where fewer than forty per cent of residents finish high school. Until sixth grade, when he was accepted into a program for the gifted, in a different neighborhood, he had never had a conversation with a white person his age. He and his friends used to tell one another how “white people do this, and white people do that,” pretending that they knew. After he switched schools and took advanced courses, the black kids made fun of him, saying, “Oh, he thinks he’s white.”

He was fascinated by the idea of metamorphosis, and spent much of his adolescence collecting tadpoles and frogs and crossbreeding different species of grasshoppers. He raised frog larvae on his parents’ front porch, and examined how lizards respond to changes in temperature (by using a blow-dryer) and light (by placing them in a doghouse). His father, a carpet layer, used to look at his experiments, shake his head, and say, “There’s a fine line between a genius and a fool.”

Hayes received a scholarship to Harvard, and, in 1985, began what he calls the worst four years of his life. Many of the other black students had gone to private schools and came from affluent families. He felt disconnected and ill-equipped—he was placed on academic probation—until he became close to a biology professor, who encouraged him to work in his lab. Five feet three and thin, Hayes distinguished himself by dressing flamboyantly, like Prince. The Harvard Crimson, in an article about a campus party, wrote that he looked as if he belonged in the “rock-’n’-ready atmosphere of New York’s Danceteria.” He thought about dropping out, but then he started dating a classmate, Katherine Kim, a Korean-American biology major from Kansas. He married her two days after he graduated.

They moved to Berkeley, where Hayes enrolled in the university’s program in integrative biology. He completed his Ph.D. in three and a half years, and was immediately hired by his department. “He was a force of nature—incredibly gifted and hardworking,” Paul Barber, a colleague who is now a professor at U.C.L.A., says. Hayes became one of only a few black tenured biology professors in the country. He won Berkeley’s highest award for teaching, and ran the most racially diverse lab in his department, attracting students who were the first in their families to go to college. Nigel Noriega, a former graduate student, said that the lab was a “comfort zone” for students who were “just suffocating at Berkeley,” because they felt alienated from academic culture.

Hayes had become accustomed to steady praise from his colleagues, but, when Syngenta cast doubt on his work, he became preoccupied by old anxieties. He believed that the company was trying to isolate him from other scientists and “play on my insecurities—the fear that I’m not good enough, that everyone thinks I’m a fraud,” he said. He told colleagues that he suspected that Syngenta held “focus groups” on how to mine his vulnerabilities. Roger Liu, who worked in Hayes’s lab for a decade, both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, said, “In the beginning, I was really worried for his safety. But then I couldn’t tell where the reality ended and the exaggeration crept in.”

Liu and several other former students said that they had remained skeptical of Hayes’s accusations until last summer, when an article appeared in Environmental Health News (in partnership with 100Reporters)* that drew on Syngenta’s internal records. Hundreds of Syngenta’s memos, notes, and e-mails have been unsealed following the settlement, in 2012, of two class-action suits brought by twenty-three Midwestern cities and towns that accused Syngenta of “concealing atrazine’s true dangerous nature” and contaminating their drinking water. Stephen Tillery, the lawyer who argued the cases, said, “Tyrone’s work gave us the scientific basis for the lawsuit.”

Hayes has devoted the past fifteen years to studying atrazine, and during that time scientists around the world have expanded on his findings, suggesting that the herbicide is associated with birth defects in humans as well as in animals. The company documents show that, while Hayes was studying atrazine, Syngenta was studying him, as he had long suspected. Syngenta’s public-relations team had drafted a list of four goals. The first was “discredit Hayes.” In a spiral-bound notebook, Syngenta’s communications manager, Sherry Ford, who referred to Hayes by his initials, wrote that the company could “prevent citing of TH data by revealing him as noncredible.” He was a frequent topic of conversation at company meetings. Syngenta looked for ways to “exploit Hayes’ faults/problems.” “If TH involved in scandal, enviros will drop him,” Ford wrote. She observed that Hayes “grew up in world (S.C.) that wouldn’t accept him,” “needs adulation,” “doesn’t sleep,” was “scarred for life.” She wrote, “What’s motivating Hayes?—basic question.”

Syngenta, which is based in Basel, sells more than fourteen billion dollars’ worth of seeds and pesticides a year and funds research at some four hundred academic institutions around the world. When Hayes agreed to do experiments for the company (which at that time was part of a larger corporation, Novartis), the students in his lab expressed concern that biotech companies were “buying up universities” and that industry funding would compromise the objectivity of their research. Hayes assured them that his fee, a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, would make their lab more rigorous. He could employ more students, buy new equipment, and raise more frogs. Though his lab was well funded, federal support for research was growing increasingly unstable, and, like many academics and administrators, he felt that he should find new sources of revenue. “I went into it as if I were a painter, performing a service,” Hayes told me. “You commissioned it, and I come up with the results, and you do what you want with them. It’s your responsibility, not mine.”

Atrazine is the second most widely used herbicide in the U.S., where sales are estimated at about three hundred million dollars a year. Introduced in 1958, it is cheap to produce and controls a broad range of weeds. (Glyphosate, which is produced by Monsanto, is the most popular herbicide.) A study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that without atrazine the national corn yield would fall by six per cent, creating an annual loss of nearly two billion dollars. But the herbicide degrades slowly in soil and often washes into streams and lakes, where it doesn’t readily dissolve. Atrazine is one of the most common contaminants of drinking water; an estimated thirty million Americans are exposed to trace amounts of the chemical.

In 1994, the E.P.A., expressing concerns about atrazine’s health effects, announced that it would start a scientific review. Syngenta assembled a panel of scientists and professors, through a consulting firm called EcoRisk, to study the herbicide. Hayes eventually joined the group. His first experiment showed that male tadpoles exposed to atrazine developed less muscle surrounding their vocal cords, and he hypothesized that the chemical had the potential to reduce testosterone levels. “I have been losing lots of sleep over this,” he wrote one EcoRisk panel member, in the summer of 2000. “I realize the implications and of course want to make sure that everything possible has been done and controlled for.” After a conference call, he was surprised by the way the company kept critiquing what seemed to be trivial aspects of the work. Hayes wanted to repeat and validate his experiments, and complained that the company was slowing him down and that independent scientists would publish similar results before he could. He decided to resign from the panel, writing in a letter that he didn’t want to be “scooped.” “I fear that my reputation will be damaged if I continue my relationship and associated low productivity with Novartis,” he wrote. “It will appear to my colleagues that I have been part of a plan to bury important data.”

Hayes repeated the experiments using funds from Berkeley and the National Science Foundation. Afterward, he wrote to the panel, “Although I do not want to make a big deal out of it until I have all of the data analyzed and decoded—I feel I should warn you that I think something very strange is coming up in these animals.” After dissecting the frogs, he noticed that some could not be clearly identified as male or female: they had both testes and ovaries. Others had multiple testes that were deformed.

In January, 2001, Syngenta employees and members of the EcoRisk panel travelled to Berkeley to discuss Hayes’s new findings. Syngenta asked to meet with him privately, but Hayes insisted on the presence of his students, a few colleagues, and his wife. He had previously had an amiable relationship with the panel—he had enjoyed taking long runs with the scientist who supervised it—and he began the meeting, in a large room at Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, as if he were hosting an academic conference. He wore a new suit and brought in catered meals.

After lunch, Syngenta introduced a guest speaker, a statistical consultant, who listed numerous errors in Hayes’s report and concluded that the results were not statistically significant. Hayes’s wife, Katherine Kim, said that the consultant seemed to be trying to “make Tyrone look as foolish as possible.” Wake, the biology professor, said that the men on the EcoRisk panel looked increasingly uncomfortable. “They were experienced enough to know that the issues the statistical consultant was raising were routine and ridiculous,” he said. “A couple of glitches were presented as if they were the end of the world. I’ve been a scientist in academic settings for forty years, and I’ve never experienced anything like that. They were after Tyrone.”

Hayes later e-mailed three of the scientists, telling them, “I was insulted, felt railroaded and, in fact, felt that some dishonest and unethical activity was going on.” When he explained what had happened to Theo Colborn, the scientist who had popularized the theory that industrial chemicals could alter hormones, she advised him, “Don’t go home the same way twice.” Colborn was convinced that her office had been bugged, and that industry representatives followed her. She told Hayes to “keep looking over your shoulder” and to be careful whom he let in his lab. She warned him, “You have got to protect yourself.”

Hayes published his atrazine work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a year and a half after quitting the panel. He wrote that what he called “hermaphroditism” was induced in frogs by exposure to atrazine at levels thirty times below what the E.P.A. permits in water. He hypothesized that the chemical could be a factor in the decline in amphibian populations, a phenomenon observed all over the world. In an e-mail sent the day before the publication, he congratulated the students in his lab for taking the “ethical stance” by continuing the work on their own. “We (and our principles) have been tested, and I believe we have not only passed but exceeded expectations,” he wrote. “Science is a principle and a process of seeking truth. Truth cannot be purchased and, thus, truth cannot be altered by money. Professorship is not a career, but rather a life’s pursuit. The people with whom I work daily exemplify and remind me of this promise.”

He and his students continued the work, travelling to farming regions throughout the Midwest, collecting frogs in ponds and lakes, and sending three hundred pails of frozen water back to Berkeley. In papers in Nature and in Environmental Health Perspectives, Hayes reported that he had found frogs with sexual abnormalities in atrazine-contaminated sites in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming. “Now that I have realized what we are into, I cannot stop it,” he wrote to a colleague. “It is an entity of its own.” Hayes began arriving at his lab at 3:30 a.m. and staying fourteen hours. He had two young children, who sometimes assisted by color-coding containers.

According to company e-mails, Syngenta was distressed by Hayes’s work. Its public-relations team compiled a database of more than a hundred “supportive third party stakeholders,” including twenty-five professors, who could defend atrazine or act as “spokespeople on Hayes.” The P.R. team suggested that the company “purchase ‘Tyrone Hayes’ as a search word on the internet, so that any time someone searches for Tyrone’s material, the first thing they see is our material.” The proposal was later expanded to include the phrases “amphibian hayes,” “atrazine frogs,” and “frog feminization.” (Searching online for “Tyrone Hayes” now brings up an advertisement that says, “Tyrone Hayes Not Credible.”)

In June, 2002, two months after Hayes’s first atrazine publication, Syngenta announced in a press release that three studies had failed to replicate Hayes’s work. In a letter to the editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, eight scientists on the EcoRisk panel wrote that Hayes’s study had “little regard for assessment of causality,” lacked statistical details, misused the term “dose,” made vague and naïve references, and misspelled a word. They said that Hayes’s claim that his paper had “significant implications for environmental and public health” had not been “scientifically demonstrated.” Steven Milloy, a freelance science columnist who runs a nonprofit organization to which Syngenta has given tens of thousands of dollars, wrote an article for Fox News titled “Freaky-Frog Fraud,” which picked apart Hayes’s paper in Nature, saying that there wasn’t a clear relationship between the concentration of atrazine and the effect on the frog. Milloy characterized Hayes as a “junk scientist” and dismissed his “lame” conclusions as “just another of Hayes’ tricks.”

Fussy critiques of scientific experiments have become integral to what is known as the “sound science” campaign, an effort by interest groups and industries to slow the pace of regulation. David Michaels, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, wrote, in his book “Doubt Is Their Product” (2008), that corporations have developed sophisticated strategies for “manufacturing and magnifying uncertainty.” In the eighties and nineties, the tobacco industry fended off regulations by drawing attention to questions about the science of secondhand smoke. Many companies have adopted this tactic. “Industry has learned that debating the science is much easier and more effective than debating the policy,” Michaels wrote. “In field after field, year after year, conclusions that might support regulation are always disputed. Animal data are deemed not relevant, human data not representative, and exposure data not reliable.”

In the summer of 2002, two scientists from the E.P.A. visited Hayes’s lab and reviewed his atrazine data. Thomas Steeger, one of the scientists, told Hayes, “Your research can potentially affect the balance of risk versus benefit for one of the most controversial pesticides in the U.S.” But an organization called the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness petitioned the E.P.A. to ignore Hayes’s findings. “Hayes has killed and continues to kill thousands of frogs in unvalidated tests that have no proven value,” the petition said. The center argued that Hayes’s studies violated the Data Quality Act, passed in 2000, which requires that regulatory decisions rely on studies that meet high standards for “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity.” The center is run by an industry lobbyist and consultant for Syngenta, Jim Tozzi, who proposed the language of the Data Quality Act to the congresswoman who sponsored it.

The E.P.A. complied with the Data Quality Act and revised its Environmental Risk Assessment, making it clear that hormone disruption wouldn’t be a legitimate reason for restricting use of the chemical until “appropriate testing protocols have been established.” Steeger told Hayes that he was troubled by the circularity of the center’s critique. In an e-mail, he wrote, “Their position reminds me of the argument put forward by the philosopher Berkeley, who argued against empiricism by noting that reliance on scientific observation is flawed since the link between observations and conclusions is intangible and is thus immeasurable.”

Nonetheless, Steeger seemed resigned to the frustrations of regulatory science and gently punctured Hayes’s idealism. When Hayes complained that Syngenta had not reported his findings on frog hermaphroditism quickly enough, he responded that it was “unfortunate but not uncommon for registrants to ‘sit’ on data that may be considered adverse to the public’s perception of their products.” He wrote that “science can be manipulated to serve certain agendas. All you can do is practice ‘suspended disbelief.’ ” (The E.P.A. says that there is “no indication that information was improperly withheld in this case.”)

After consulting with colleagues at Berkeley, Hayes decided that, rather than watch Syngenta discredit his work, he would make a “preëmptive move.” He appeared in features in Discover and the San Francisco Chronicle, suggesting that Syngenta’s science was not objective. Both articles focussed on his personal biography, leading with his skin color, and moving on to his hair style: at the time, he wore his hair in braids. Hayes made little attempt to appear disinterested. Scientific objectivity requires what the philosopher Thomas Nagel has called a “view from nowhere,” but Hayes kept drawing attention to himself, making blustery comments like “Tyrone can only be Tyrone.” He presented Syngenta as a villain, but he didn’t quite fulfill the role of the hero. He was hyper and a little frantic—he always seemed to be in a rush or on the verge of forgetting to do something—and he approached the idea of taking down the big guys with a kind of juvenile zeal.

Environmental activists praised Hayes’s work and helped him get media attention. But they were concerned by the bluntness of his approach. A co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization, told Hayes to “stop what you are doing and take time to actually construct a plan” or “you will get your ass handed to you on a platter.” Steeger warned him that vigilantism would distract him from his research. “Can you afford the time and money to fight battles where you are clearly outnumbered and, to be candid, outclassed?” he asked. “Most people would prefer to limit their time in purgatory; I don’t know anyone who knowingly enters hell.”

Hayes had worked all his life to build his scientific reputation, and now it seemed on the verge of collapse. “I cannot in reasonable terms explain to you what this means to me,” he told Steeger. He took pains to prove that Syngenta’s experiments had not replicated his studies: they used a different population of animals, which were raised in different types of tanks, in closer quarters, at cooler temperatures, and with a different feeding schedule. On at least three occasions, he proposed to the Syngenta scientists that they trade data. “If we really want to test repeatability, let’s share animals and solutions,” he wrote.

In early 2003, Hayes was considered for a job at the Nicholas School of the Environment, at Duke. He visited the campus three times, and the university arranged for a real-estate agent to show him and his wife potential homes. When Syngenta learned that Hayes might be moving to North Carolina, where its crop-protection headquarters are situated, Gary Dickson—the company’s vice-president of global risk assessment, who a year earlier had established a fifty-thousand-dollar endowment, funded by Syngenta, at the Nicholas School—contacted a dean at Duke. According to documents unsealed in the class-action lawsuits, Dickson informed the dean of the “state of the relationship between Dr. Hayes and Syngenta.” The company “wanted to protect our reputation in our community and among our employees.”

There were several candidates for the job at Duke, and, when Hayes did not get it, he concluded that it was due to Syngenta’s influence. Richard Di Giulio, a Duke professor who had hosted Hayes’s first visit, said that he was irritated by Hayes’s suggestion: “A little gift of fifty thousand dollars would not influence a tenure hire. That’s not going to happen.” He added, “I’m not surprised that Syngenta would not have liked Hayes to be at Duke, since we’re an hour down the road from them.” He said that Hayes’s conflict with Syngenta was an extreme example of the kind of dispute that is not uncommon in environmental science. The difference, he said, was that the “scientific debate spilled into Hayes’s emotional life.”

In June, 2003, Hayes paid his own way to Washington so that he could present his work at an E.P.A. hearing on atrazine. The agency had evaluated seventeen studies. Twelve experiments had been funded by Syngenta, and all but two showed that atrazine had no effect on the sexual development of frogs. The rest of the experiments, by Hayes and researchers at two other universities, indicated the opposite. In a PowerPoint presentation at the hearing, Hayes disclosed a private e-mail sent to him by one of the scientists on the EcoRisk panel, a professor at Texas Tech, who wrote, “I agree with you that the important issue is for everyone involved to come to grips with (and stop minimizing) the fact that independent laboratories have demonstrated an effect of atrazine on gonadal differentiation in frogs. There is no denying this.”

The E.P.A. found that all seventeen atrazine studies, including Hayes’s, suffered from methodological flaws—contamination of controls, variability in measurement end points, poor animal husbandry—and asked Syngenta to fund a comprehensive experiment that would produce more definitive results. Darcy Kelley, a member of the E.P.A.’s scientific advisory panel and a biology professor at Columbia, said that, at the time, “I did not think the E.P.A. made the right decision.” The studies by Syngenta scientists had flaws that “really cast into doubt their ability to carry out their experiments. They couldn’t replicate effects that are as easy as falling off a log.” She thought that Hayes’s experiments were more respectable, but she wasn’t persuaded by Hayes’s explanation of the biological mechanism causing the deformities.

The E.P.A. approved the continued use of atrazine in October, the same month that the European Commission chose to remove it from the market. The European Union generally takes a precautionary approach to environmental risks, choosing restraint in the face of uncertainty. In the U.S., lingering scientific questions justify delays in regulatory decisions. Since the mid-seventies, the E.P.A. has issued regulations restricting the use of only five industrial chemicals out of more than eighty thousand in the environment. Industries have a greater role in the American regulatory process—they may sue regulators if there are errors in the scientific record—and cost-benefit analyses are integral to decisions: a monetary value is assigned to disease, impairments, and shortened lives and weighed against the benefits of keeping a chemical in use. Lisa Heinzerling, the senior climate-policy counsel at the E.P.A. in 2009 and the associate administrator of the office of policy in 2009 and 2010, said that cost-benefit models appear “objective and neutral, a way to free ourselves from the chaos of politics.” But the complex algorithms “quietly condone a tremendous amount of risk.” She added that the influence of the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees major regulatory decisions, has deepened in recent years. “A rule will go through years of scientific reviews and cost-benefit analyses, and then at the final stage it doesn’t pass,” she said. “It has a terrible, demoralizing effect on the culture at the E.P.A.”

In 2003, a Syngenta development committee in Basel approved a strategy to keep atrazine on the market “until at least 2010.” A PowerPoint presentation assembled by Syngenta’s global product manager explained that “we need atrazine to secure our position in the corn marketplace. Without atrazine we cannot defend and grow our business in the USA.” Sherry Ford, the communications manager, wrote in her notebook that the company “should not phase out atz until we know about” the Syngenta herbicide paraquat, which has also been controversial, because of studies showing that it might be associated with Parkinson’s disease. She noted that atrazine “focuses attention away from other products.”

Syngenta began holding weekly “atrazine meetings” after the first class-action suit was filed, in 2004. The meetings were attended by toxicologists, the company’s counsel, communications staff, and the head of regulatory affairs. To dampen negative publicity from the lawsuit, the group discussed how it could invalidate Hayes’s research. Ford documented peculiar things he had done(“kept coat on”) or phrases he had used (“Is this line clean?”). “If TH wanted to win the day, and he had the goods,” she wrote, “he would have produced them when asked.” She noted that Hayes was “getting in too deep w/ enviros,” and searched for ways to get him to “show his true colors.”

In 2005, Ford made a long list of methods for discrediting him: “have his work audited by 3rd party,” “ask journals to retract,” “set trap to entice him to sue,” “investigate funding,” “investigate wife.” The initials of different employees were written in the margins beside entries, presumably because they had been assigned to look into the task. Another set of ideas, discussed at several meetings, was to conduct “systematic rebuttals of all TH appearances.” One of the company’s communications consultants said in an e-mail that she wanted to obtain Hayes’s calendar of speaking engagements, so that Syngenta could “start reaching out to the potential audiences with the Error vs. Truth Sheet,” which would provide “irrefutable evidence of his polluted messages.” (Syngenta says that many of the documents unsealed in the lawsuits refer to ideas that were never implemented.)

To redirect attention to the financial benefits of atrazine, the company paid Don Coursey, a tenured economist at the Harris School of Public Policy, at the University of Chicago, five hundred dollars an hour to study how a ban on the herbicide would affect the economy. In 2006, Syngenta supplied Coursey with data and a “bundle of studies,” and edited his paper, which was labelled as a Harris School Working Paper. (He disclosed that Syngenta had funded it.) After submitting a draft, Coursey had been warned in an e-mail that he needed to work harder to articulate a “clear statement of your conclusions flowing from this analysis.” Coursey later announced his findings at a National Press Club event in Washington and told the audience that there was one “basic takeaway point: a ban on atrazine at the national level will have a devastating, devastating effect upon the U.S. corn economy.”

Hayes had been promoted from associate to full professor in 2003, an achievement that had sent him into a mild depression. He had spent the previous decade understanding his self-worth in reference to a series of academic milestones, and he had reached each one. Now he felt aimless. His wife said she could have seen him settling into the life of a “normal, run-of-the-mill, successful scientist.” But he wasn’t motivated by the idea of “writing papers and books that we all just trade with each other.”

He began giving more than fifty lectures a year, not just to scientific audiences but to policy institutes, history departments, women’s health clinics, food preparers, farmers, and high schools. He almost never declined an invitation, despite the distance. He told his audiences that he was defying the instructions of his Ph.D. adviser, who had told him, “Let the science speak for itself.” He had a flair for sensational stories—he chose phrases like “crime scene” and “chemically castrated”—and he seemed to revel in details about Syngenta’s conflicts of interest, presenting theories as if he were relating gossip to friends. (Syngenta wrote a letter to Hayes and his dean, pointing out inaccuracies: “As we discover additional errors in your presentations, you can expect us to be in touch with you again.”)

At his talks, Hayes noticed that one or two men in the audience were dressed more sharply than the other scientists. They asked questions that seemed to have been designed to embarrass him: Why can’t anyone replicate your research? Why won’t you share your data? One former student, Ali Stuart, said that “everywhere Tyrone went there was this guy asking questions that made a mockery of him. We called him the Axe Man.”

Hayes had once considered a few of the scientists working with Syngenta friends, and he approached them in a nerdy style of defiance. He wrote them mass e-mails, informing them of presentations he was giving and offering tips on how to discredit him. “You can’t approach your prey thinking like a predator,” he wrote. “You have to become your quarry.” He described a recent trip to South Carolina and his sense of displacement when “my old childhood friend came by to update me on who got killed, who’s on crack, who went to jail.” He wrote, “I have learned to talk like you (better than you … by your own admission), write like you (again better) … you however don’t know anyone like me … you have yet to spend a day in my world.” After seeing an e-mail in which a lobbyist characterized him as “black and quite articulate,” he began signing his e-mails, “Tyrone B. Hayes, Ph.D., A.B.M.,” for “articulate black man.”

Syngenta was concerned by Hayes’s e-mails and commissioned an outside contractor to do a “psychological profile” of Hayes. In her notes, Sherry Ford described him as “bipolar/manic-depressive” and “paranoid schizo & narcissistic.” Roger Liu, Hayes’s student, said that he thought Hayes wrote the e-mails to relieve his anxiety. Hayes often showed the e-mails to his students, who appreciated his rebellious sense of humor. Liu said, “Tyrone had all these groupies in the lab cheering him on. I was the one in the background saying, you know, ‘Man, don’t egg them on. Don’t poke that beast.’ ”

Syngenta intensified its public-relations campaign in 2009, as it became concerned that activists, touting “new science,” had developed a “new line of attack.” That year, a paper in Acta Paediatrica, reviewing national records for thirty million births, found that children conceived between April and July, when the concentration of atrazine (mixed with other pesticides) in water is highest, were more likely to have genital birth defects. The author of the paper, Paul Winchester, a professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, received a subpoena from Syngenta, which requested that he turn over every e-mail he had written about atrazine in the past decade. The company’s media talking points described his study as “so-called science” that didn’t meet the “guffaw test.” Winchester said, “We don’t have to argue that I haven’t proved the point. Of course I haven’t proved the point! Epidemiologists don’t try to prove points—they look for problems.”

A few months after Winchester’s paper appeared, the Times published an investigation suggesting that atrazine levels frequently surpass the maximum threshold allowed in drinking water. The article referred to recent studies in Environmental Health Perspectives and the Journal of Pediatric Surgery that found that mothers living close to water sources containing atrazine were more likely to have babies who were underweight or had a defect in which the intestines and other organs protrude from the body.

The day the article appeared, Syngenta planned to “go through the article line by line and find all 1) inaccuracies and 2) misrepresentations. Turn that into a simple chart.” The company would have “a credible third party do the same.” Elizabeth Whelan, the president of the American Council on Science and Health, which asked Syngenta for a hundred thousand dollars that year, appeared on MSNBC and declared that the Times article was not based on science. “I’m a public-health professional,” she said. “It really bothers me very much to see the New York Times front-page Sunday edition featuring an article about a bogus risk.”

Syngenta’s public-relations team wrote editorials about the benefits of atrazine and about the flimsy science of its critics, and then sent them to “third-party allies,” who agreed to “byline” the articles, which appeared in the Washington Times, the Rochester Post-Bulletin, the Des Moines Register, and the St. Cloud Times. When a few articles in the “op-ed pipeline” sounded too aggressive, a Syngenta consultant warned that “some of the language of these pieces is suggestive of their source, which suggestion should be avoided at all costs.”

After the Times article, Syngenta hired a communications consultancy, the White House Writers Group, which has represented more than sixty Fortune 500 companies. In an e-mail to Syngenta, Josh Gilder, a director of the firm and a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, wrote, “We need to start fighting our own war.” By warning that a ban on atrazine would “devastate the economies” of rural regions, the firm tried to create a “state of affairs in which the new political leadership at E.P.A. finds itself increasingly isolated.” The firm held “elite dinners with Washington influentials” and tried to “prompt members of Congress” to challenge the scientific rationale for an upcoming E.P.A. review of atrazine. In a memo describing its strategy, the White House Writers Group wrote that, “regarding science, it is important to keep in mind that the major players in Washington do not understand science.”

In 2010, Hayes told the EcoRisk panel in an e-mail, “I have just initiated what will be the most extraordinary academic event in this battle!” He had another paper coming out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which described how male tadpoles exposed to atrazine grew up to be functional females with impaired fertility. He advised the company that it would want to get its P.R. campaign up to speed. “It’s nice to know that in this economy I can keep so many people employed,” he wrote. He quoted both Tupac Shakur and the South African king Shaka Zulu: “Never leave an enemy behind or it will rise again to fly at your throat.”

Syngenta’s head of global product safety wrote a letter to the editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and to the president of the National Academy of Sciences, expressing concern that a “publication with so many obvious weaknesses could achieve publication in such a reputable scientific journal.” A month later, Syngenta filed an ethics complaint with the chancellor of Berkeley, claiming that Hayes’s e-mails violated the university’s Standards of Ethical Conduct, particularly Respect for Others. Syngenta posted more than eighty of Hayes’s e-mails on its Web site and enclosed a few in its letter to the chancellor. In one, with the subject line “Are y’all ready for it,” Hayes wrote, “Ya fulla my j*z right now!” In another, he told the Syngenta scientists that he’d had a drink after a conference with their “republican buddies,” who wanted to know about a figure he had used in his paper. “As long as you followin me around, I know I’m da sh*t,” he wrote. “By the way, yo boy left his pre-written questions at the table!”

Berkeley declined to take disciplinary action against Hayes. The university’s lawyer reminded Syngenta in a letter that “all parties have an equal responsibility to act professionally.” David Wake said that he read many of the e-mails and found them “quite hilarious.” “He’s treating them like street punks, and they view themselves as captains of industry,” he said. “When he gets tapped, he goes right back at them.”

Michelle Boone, a professor of aquatic ecology at Miami University, who served on the E.P.A.’s scientific advisory panel, said, “We all follow the Tyrone Hayes drama, and some people will say, ‘He should just do the science.’ But the science doesn’t speak for itself. Industry has unlimited resources and bully power. Tyrone is the only one calling them out on what they’re doing.” However, she added, “I do think some people feel he has lost his objectivity.”

Keith Solomon, a professor emeritus at the University of Guelph, Ontario, who has received funding from Syngenta and served on the EcoRisk panel, noted that academics who refuse industry money are not immune from biases; they’re under pressure to produce papers, in order to get tenure and promotions. “If I do an experiment, look at the data every which way, and find nothing, it will not be easy to publish,” he said. “Journals want excitement. They want bad things to happen.”

Hayes, who had gained more than fifty pounds since becoming tenured, wore bright scarves draped over his suit and silver earrings from Tibet. At the end of his lectures, he broke into rhyme: “I see a ruse / intentionally constructed to confuse the news / well, I’ve taken it upon myself to defuse the clues / so that you can choose / and to demonstrate the objectivity of the methods I use.” At some of his lectures, Hayes warned that the consequences of atrazine use were disproportionately felt by people of color. “If you’re black or Hispanic, you’re more likely to live or work in areas where you’re exposed to crap,” he said. He explained that “on the one side I’m trying to play by the ivory-tower rules, and on the other side people are playing by a different set of rules.” Syngenta was speaking directly to the public, whereas scientists were publishing their research in “magazines that you can’t buy in Barnes and Noble.”

Hayes was confident that at the next E.P.A. hearing there would be enough evidence to ban atrazine, but in 2010 the agency found that the studies indicating risk to humans were too limited. Two years later, during another review, the E.P.A. determined that atrazine does not affect the sexual development of frogs. By that point, there were seventy-five published studies on the subject, but the E.P.A. excluded the majority of them from consideration, because they did not meet the requirements for quality that the agency had set in 2003. The conclusion was based largely on a set of studies funded by Syngenta and led by Werner Kloas, a professor of endocrinology at Humboldt University, in Berlin. One of the co-authors was Alan Hosmer, a Syngenta scientist whose job, according to a 2004 performance evaluation, included “atrazine defence” and “influencing EPA.”

After the hearing, two of the independent experts who had served on the E.P.A.’s scientific advisory panel, along with fifteen other scientists, wrote a paper (not yet published) complaining that the agency had repeatedly ignored the panel’s recommendations and that it placed “human health and the environment at the mercy of industry.” “The EPA works with industry to set up the methodology for such studies with the outcome often that industry is the only institution that can afford to conduct the research,” they wrote. The Kloas study was the most comprehensive of its kind: its researchers had been scrutinized by an outside auditor, and their raw data turned over to the E.P.A. But the scientists wrote that one set of studies on a single species was “not a sufficient edifice on which to build a regulary assessment.” Citing a paper by Hayes, who had done an analysis of sixteen atrazine studies, they wrote that “the single best predictor of whether or not the herbicide atrazine had a significant effect in a study was the funding source.”

In another paper, in Policy Perspective, Jason Rohr, an ecologist at the University of South Florida, who served on an E.P.A. panel, criticized the “lucrative ‘science for hire’ industry, where scientists are employed to dispute data.” He wrote that a Syngenta-funded review of the atrazine literature had arguably misrepresented more than fifty studies and made a hundred and forty-four inaccurate or misleading statements, of which “96.5% appeared to be beneficial for Syngenta.” Rohr, who has conducted several experiments involving atrazine, said that, at conferences, “I regularly get peppered with questions from Syngenta cronies trying to discount my research. They try to poke holes in the research rather than appreciate the adverse effects of the chemicals.” He said, “I have colleagues whom I’ve tried to recruit, and they’ve told me that they’re not willing to delve into this sort of research, because they don’t want the headache of having to defend their credibility.”

Deborah Cory-Slechta, a former member of the E.P.A.’s science advisory board, said that she, too, felt that Syngenta was trying to undermine her work. A professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Cory-Slechta studies how the herbicide paraquat may contribute to diseases of the nervous system. “The folks from Syngenta used to follow me to my talks and tell me I wasn’t using ‘human-relevant doses,’ ” she said. “They would go up to my students and try to intimidate them. There was this sustained campaign to make it look like my science wasn’t legitimate.”

Syngenta denied repeated requests for interviews, but Ann Bryan, its senior manager for external communications, told me in an e-mail that some of the studies I was citing were unreliable or unsound. When I mentioned a recent paper in the American Journal of Medical Genetics, which showed associations between a mother’s exposure to atrazine and the likelihood that her son will have an abnormally small penis, undescended testes, or a deformity of the urethra—defects that have increased in the past several decades—she said that the study had been “reviewed by independent scientists, who found numerous flaws.” She recommended that I speak with the author of the review, David Schwartz, a neuroscientist, who works for Innovative Science Solutions, a consulting firm that specializes in “product defense” and strategies that “give you the power to put your best data forward.” Schwartz told me that epidemiological studies can’t eliminate confounding variables or make claims about causation. “We’ve been incredibly misled by this type of study,” he said.

In 2012, in its settlement of the class-action suits, Syngenta agreed to pay a hundred and five million dollars to reimburse more than a thousand water systems for the cost of filtering atrazine from drinking water, but the company denies all wrongdoing. Bryan told me that “atrazine does not and, in fact, cannot cause adverse health effects at any level that people would ever be exposed to in the real-world environment.” She wrote that she was “troubled by a suggestion that we have ever tried to discredit anyone. Our focus has always been on communicating the science and setting the record straight.” She noted that “virtually every well-known brand, or even well-known issue, has a communications program behind it. Atrazine’s no different.”

Last August, Hayes put his experiments on hold. He said that his fees for animal care had risen eightfold in a decade, and that he couldn’t afford to maintain his research program. He accused the university of charging him more than other researchers in his department; in response, the director of the office of laboratory-animal care sent detailed charts illustrating that he is charged according to standard campus-wide rates, which have increased for most researchers in recent years. In an online Forbes op-ed, Jon Entine, a journalist who is listed in Syngenta’s records as a supportive “third party,” accused Hayes of being attached to conspiracy theories, and of leading the “international regulatory community on a wild goose chase,” which “borders on criminal.”

By late November, Hayes’s lab had resumed work. He was using private grants to support his students rather than to pay outstanding fees, and the lab was accumulating debt. Two days before Thanksgiving, Hayes and his students discussed their holiday plans. He was wearing an oversized orange sweatshirt, gym shorts, and running shoes, and a former student, Diana Salazar Guerrero, was eating fries that another student had left on the table. Hayes encouraged her to come to his Thanksgiving dinner and to move into the bedroom of his son, who is now a student at Oberlin. Guerrero had just put down half the deposit on a new apartment, but Hayes was disturbed by her description of her new roommate. “Are you sure you can trust him?” he asked.

Hayes had just returned from Mar del Plata, Argentina. He had flown fifteen hours and driven two hundred and fifty miles to give a thirty-minute lecture on atrazine. Guerrero said, “Sometimes I’m just, like, ‘Why don’t you let it go, Tyrone? It’s been fifteen years! How do you have the energy for this?’ ” With more scientists documenting the risks of atrazine, she assumed he’d be inclined to move on. “Originally, it was just this crazy guy at Berkeley, and you can throw the Berserkley thing at anyone,” she said. “But now the tide is turning.”

In a recent paper in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Hayes and twenty-one other scientists applied the criteria of Sir Austin Bradford Hill, who, in 1965, outlined the conditions necessary for a causal relationship, to atrazine studies across different vertebrate classes. They argued that independent lines of evidence consistently showed that atrazine disrupts male reproductive development. Hayes’s lab was working on two more studies that explore how atrazine affects the sexual behavior of frogs. When I asked him what he would do if the E.P.A., which is conducting another review of the safety of atrazine this year, were to ban the herbicide, he joked, “I’d probably get depressed again.”

Not long ago, Hayes saw a description of himself on Wikipedia that he found disrespectful, and he wasn’t sure whether it was an attack by Syngenta or whether there were simply members of the public who thought poorly of him. He felt deflated when he remembered the arguments he’d had with Syngenta-funded pundits. “It’s one thing if you go after me because you have a philosophical disagreement with my science or if you think I’m raising alarm where there shouldn’t be any,” he said. “But they didn’t even have their own opinions. Someone was paying them to take a position.” He wondered if there was something inherently insane about the act of whistle-blowing; maybe only crazy people persisted. He was ready for a fight, but he seemed to be searching for his opponent.

One of his first graduate students, Nigel Noriega, who runs an organization devoted to conserving tropical forests, told me that he was still recovering from the experience of his atrazine research, a decade before. He had come to see science as a rigid culture, “its own club, an élite society,” Noriega said. “And Tyrone didn’t conform to the social aspects of being a scientist.” Noriega worried that the public had little understanding of the context that gives rise to scientific findings. “It is not helpful to anyone to assume that scientists are authoritative,” he said. “A good scientist spends his whole career questioning his own facts. One of the most dangerous things you can do is believe.“

*An earlier version of this article did not properly credit the organization that produced and co-published the report with Environmental Health News; it was 100Reporters.

Photograph:

Hayes has devoted the past fifteen years to studying atrazine, a widely used herbicide made by Syngenta. The company’s notes reveal that it struggled to make sense of him, and plotted ways to discredit him.

#tyrone hayes #the new yorker #atrazine #syngenta #hermaphroditism #university of california berkeley #long reads #science #black scientists #herbicide #herbicides #ethics #whistleblowing #whistleblower

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