#I mean we’re shit so I can only rely on other teams failure as my source of happiness 😌

[champagne-coys]

Me watching all the chelsea fans get false hope for the cl final knowing full well city will obliterate then and this was all part of peps mind games.

#I mean we’re shit so I can only rely on other teams failure as my source of happiness 😌 #Alexa play deja vu #looking forward to it 🤪😁

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

The shifting narrative of God’s interventism and how it reflects on the narrative on John

This post will ignore the issue authorial intent entirely because I can, but it’s also about authorial intent in a way, but I also don’t like to talk about things as happening “accidentally” because a) a serialized story like Supernatural, especially one that got renewed for much longer than anyone could possibly expect or hope in their wildest ambitions, structurally relies on serendipity, because that’s how stories work when they’re work in progress, b) a television show is an extremely multi-authored text and the chance that something happens out of the intent of any of the multiple layers of creators is kind of... statistically negligible. So, yeah, that’s my stance on the topic. Anyway.

The shifting narrative about God is simultaneously something that hangs on fortunate storytelling clicks on an essentially programmed narrative. At first, we don’t know where the fuck God is. Cas starts looking for him with little success. Raphael says he’s dead, Cas doesn’t believe it. Dean relates to his struggle because he knows the feeling of not knowing where the fuck your father is and going looking for him with little success, not knowing if he’s even alive. Then the theory that gets assumed as the truth is that God has left. He fucked off who knows where, who knows why, leaving his creation to struggle alone. Also essentially how Dean had felt after John had died; in that case there was guilt for his demon deal and everything, but the most cruel weight on Dean’s shoulder was that John left him alone to struggle with his devastatingly horrific instructions he doesn’t understand. The angels are also left with horrific instructions they don’t understand. No wonder Cas does his own ‘demon deal’ in season 6, as he desperately tries to do what he assumes his father wants from him, but he doesn’t actually know what that is.

“God has left” is maddening, and everyone is angry about it, but it has its own dignity. God has left us without clear instructions, we are confused and in pain and evil runs amock but at least, we suppose, the evil of it is our own doing. We are alone and we do our best, our best is simply not enough. We wish he gave us guidance, but he won’t. He wants us to figure it out ourselves, possibly. We don’t actually know what he wants. But maybe that’s the point. It’s possible he doesn’t even know what’s happening, he just has left the building entirely.

But then Chuck reveals himself. We find out that he never actually left. He was there. “I like front row seats. You know, I figured I’d hide out in plain sight”. He simply chooses not to intervene. He chooses not to answer. He chooses to be hands-off. He presents himself as a laissez-faire parent, because, he says, it’s better for his children to have the responsibility they need to grow up. He’s absent, but in a different way than we thought! It’s not that he doesn’t know what’s happening or isn’t interested in knowing what’s happening. He’s here, he knows what’s happening, he just stays there and watches as you stumble and struggle and scream. It’s worse, and it pains Dean so much he isn’t even afraid to yell at God. You know we’re suffering and you just don’t give us any support, any comfort.

You’re frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on, real hands-on, for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created... would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. It’s enabling.

But it didn’t get better.

Well, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.

Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to justify it.

I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don’t confuse me with your dad.

At that point of the show, the writing team almost certainly didn’t have the s14-15 twist in mind. So this was probably intended to be Chuck’s truth. Later it gets twisted (retconned?) into a lie, but about that later.

Here, Chuck is really good at manipulating the conversation. Dean has a perfectly valid point, because there IS a middle ground between being overinvolved and not being involved at all. There is a middle ground between enabling your children and abandoning them completely. But Chuck hits Dean where it hurts, plays the emotional card, basically tells him that he’s too emotional to understand, too emotional to think rationally about it, because he mixes his feelings about his father to the issue and thus cannot see it clearly. He basically tells him he’s too close to it to get it. You don’t understand parenting, Dean, because you’re too blinded by your emotions about your own little life and cannot see the big picture.

It doesn’t really matter here if he’s telling the truth or lying, it already says a lot about Chuck that he’s emotionally manipulating Dean, silencing him by hitting the painful spot.

But the thing is, 11.20 immediately presents Chuck as a liar. He makes Metatron read his autobiography and the very first line is a lie (“In the beginning, there was me. Boom – detail. And what a grabber. I mean, I’m hooked, and I was there.” “I’m hooked too, and yet... details. You weren’t alone in the beginning. Your sister was with you.”) and the stuff he talks about his experience as Chuck is not exactly truthful about anything (“That, you know, makes you seem like a really grounded, likable person.” “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” “You are neither grounded nor a person!”). Metatron calls him out (“Okay. There are two types of memoir. One is honest... the other, not so much. Truth and fairy tale. Now, do you want to write Life by Keith Richards? Or do you want to write Wouldn’t It Be Nice by Brian Wilson?”). Chuck SAYS he chooses truth and gives Metatron a different manuscript, supposedly containing the truth, to which Metatron reacts positively. Metatron believes it, and we believe it with him.

Oh! Oh, this! This is what I was talking about. Chapter Ten “Why I Never Answer Prayers, and You Should Be Glad I Don’t”, and Chapter Eleven “The Truth About Divine Intervention and Why I Avoid It At All Costs”.

Nature? Divine. Human nature – toxic.

They do like blowing stuff up.

Yeah. And the worst part – they do it in my name. And then they come crying to me, asking me to forgive, to fix things. Never taking any responsibility.

What about your responsibility?

I took responsibility... by leaving. At a certain point, training wheels got to come off. No one likes a helicopter parent.

This is sort of what he later says to Dean, except that to Dean he talks about “beautiful creatures” “my baby”, talks about helping, none of the harsh tone he’s using here. When Metatron accuses him of hiding from Amara, he retorts “I am not hiding. I am just done watching my experiments’ failures”. What a different language, uh? Then Metatron asks him why he abandoned them, and Chuck answers “Because you disappointed me. You all disappointed me”. Then, he admits he lied about “learning” to play the guitar and so on, because he just gave himself the ability, and then appears to Dean and Sam, after Metatron’s passionate speech about humanity.

So, no matter the authorial intent at the time - the truthiness of Chuck’s words was already ambiguous. He kept lying and being called out, or silencing the conversation with some good ol’ gaslighting.

The season 14 finale introduces the big twist: it was, indeed, all a lie. The whole of it. Chuck didn’t abandon shit. It was all him, minutely controlling the narrative of the universe, putting the characters through all the pain and struggles for his own amusement.

The “absent father” narrative was a lie.

What does this tell us about John? Nothing, according to the authorial intent that shines through Dabb’s Lebanon. But we don’t give a crap about Dabb’s authorial intent about John! He’s just one dude and plenty of other authors have painted a different picture. So I’m going to read the narrative the way I want, because I can, and the narrative allows me to. It’s all there.

I’m suggesting that the fact that Chuck lied when he talked about being a hands-off/absentee father parallels how Dean and Sam prefer to think of their father as an “absent father” when that’s not exactly a reflection of the truth.

You left us. Alone. ‘Cause Dad was just a shell. [...] And I-I had to be more than just a brother. I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe.

Setting aside how “I had to be a father and I had to be a mother” sort of retcons and cleans up the Winchester family picture painted by ealier seasons, the fact that John didn’t really count as a functional father figure and Dean and Sam were essentually alone is not incorrect or anything. It is true that John would leave them to their own devices a lot, thus the long stays in motels, the hunger, the food-stealing, and all. But John wasn’t always absent, at all. He trained them as soldiers, he disciplined them, he was around enough for them to be intimately familiar with what happened when he drank. He drove them around.

It’s almost like it’s preferable to Dean and Sam to spin their own “absent father” narrative, putting the accent on the time they spent alone, painting their childhood as a time they had to grow up on their own, rather than acknowledge they grew up under the thumb of a controlling, looming figure they would regularly live in fear of, even when he was not physically present.

The “absent father” narrative is what Dean and Sam need to use to avoid confronting the reality of the father figure whose moods and whims they had to dance around. “I know things got dicey... you know, with Dad... the way he was. And I just... I didn’t always look out for you the way that I should have. I mean, I had my own stuff, you know. In order to keep the peace, probably looked like I took his side quite a bit.”

John shaped their lives. He shaped their identities. Even in the episodes where he abandons Dean or both children somewhere, he’s portrayed as the figure who drives the car. He symbolically drives the car, you know? John shaped Dean and Sam’s relationship with each other, both on a surface level (the conflicts) and on a deeper level (the parental dynamic).

Heck. The entire first season of the show plays on John’s disappearance as the “elephant in the room”. John is there by not being there, you know? And after he dies, his death - his absence - is again the elephant in the room for Dean, the weight on his psyche that he shatters under.

It is not wrong that Dean and Sam had to spend long periods of time without John. But John structured their lives in quite minute detail. Where they needed to be, what they needed to do, what they must not do, everything had to follow John’s instructions. A drill sergeant, the narrative called him, ordering how his sons needed to live their lives. That’s no absence, except on a level where Chuck not showing himself and pretending he’s not there can be considered absent. That’s a presence, not necessarily always physical, but semiotical and psychological.

John is an absent father as much as Chuck is a hands-off god. He even writes himself into the story around the time Cas has the “season 1” phase (let’s go look for dad/let’s go look for god), which is when John actually was alive and appeared. Then he was no longer physically there, but he was still shaping his characters’ lives, just like he’d always done.

The “absent father” narrative on John is that - a narrative. Spun by the characters themselves because it’s easier and actually kinder on John. Or, better, it allows them not to be crushed by the psychological implications of having to accept that their father was such a looming, minutely formative figure in their lives. They know, but they can wave the “absent father” idea around to avoid thinking about it.

“I had to be a father and I had to be a mother” is something easier to tell yourself. I was the one who did it all. But he wasn’t, and that’s the problem. The fact that John was their father - Dean’s and Sam’s - is the problem. But ironically, blaming himself for every failure is a better option for Dean than fully acknowledging John’s abuse. As long as he blames himself, he has control over it. The moment he acknowledges the extent of John’s influence, he loses control over the entire narrative of his own identity and the family identity, the family dynamics. That’s scarier, just like realizing that God manipulated everything is much scarier than the alternative. “God abandoned us” was indeed a better option, and “John left us alone” was a better option. But neither was true, and the characters faced the implications of the cosmic level, but never got to face the implication of the familial level, because the narrative always danced around it and then Dabb’s apologist version “won”.

But what’s been put in the show is still there. The narrative of John’s abuse is still there. Nothing can take it out of the story.

#my spn thoughts #spn meta #dean and john #dean and sam and john #dean and chuck #dean and god #spn 11x20 #spn 11x21 #spn 14x20 #spn 12x22 #et alii #spn #long post

[jangpoo]

I’ve been meaning to post on here in forever but like I just have had so much going on. But I’m starting to get into Daiya and anime again, so I want to talk about it.

It’s glaring to me that some people haven’t actually watched or played baseball before. And if they have, maybe there isn’t a great understanding of the nuances. And this isn’t me gate keeping or saying I’m better than anyone, but simply an observation based on what people say. But anyway I just want to talk about it.

Terajima does an EXTREMELY excellent job of portraying the sport. The issue I find with baseball is that it’s really fucking boring at times. There are so many times you watch a game and think, nothing is happening (and this can be true of any sport but I especially see it with baseball). However, I believe that many times, if you actually understand the sport or have experienced it before, you find a lot of the nuances come off the panel even better in this story.

I have seen so many people, especially on Reddit and Twitter talk about how this current game is going to be another “come from behind win” and “a cookie cutter version of what terajima always does.” My issue with this is how people are not talking about why this arc is by far the best representation of what baseball looks like and feels like at times and why people consider pitching duels to be the most exciting display of the sport. Sawamura has had this game coming for the past 10 years. All of this build up was for this moment.

From a writing standpoint and story standpoint, I understand it’s fucking FRUSTRATING to see how many times Sawamura has come into a game and done poorly or been given a handicap. Even his first game as an ace was so incredibly frustrating to read. You want him to win. You want him to succeed. Especially after seeing everything he has gone through. I’m tired of watching him come into a game, doing spectacularly but wondering, what would he have been like if he didn’t have the yips. Or what if he could actually hit? Or what if he was given the same opportunities as other players? There has been so much disappointment. So people wanted him to become the ace and suddenly have this outstanding game where he is dominant and amazing and just having an out of body experience. But the truth is, you don’t just get that. You don’t just start a game as an ace and have it go your way. And I hate that shit so much. But it’s the nuances. It’s the small things that makes Daiya so special and realistic.

The reason this whole arc has been so incredible is because we see an accumulation of EVERYONE buying into ace-Jun. First, before this game even begins, we see Miyuki FURIOUS that he couldn’t get Sawamura relaxed enough for the game. He’s angry that Sawamura feels strained enough to put the team on his back and overpitch. And he couldn’t get him out of it. He couldn’t help him the way he is supposed to as a catcher. We see Kuramochi understand that when Miyuki is gone, HE needs to step up. He needs to be the one that coach can rely on to help the team grow and thrive. He wants to be trusted to the team completely. And in this game, we FINALLY see the team get angry and frustrated at not backing Sawamura up. I mean, despite how they act, they never outwardly do that. They believe in him. They’re impressed with him time after time. But they never really back him up the same way we saw them do with Tanba and Furuya. It’s always like he provides some miracle, hypes up the team, but then is the butt of the jokes again. They quietly support him and work with him outside of games. But for the first time in this game, we get them buying in. We get them trusting him and working for him. Getting frustrated for him. And I believe Kanemaru’s “anticlimactic” at bat is the absolute most obvious display of that.

Some people call it anticlimactic but they just don’t get the point. I need us to think back to the very beginning of the story. Kanemaru absolutely could not stand Sawamura. He always said that all he did was talk and had nothing to show for it. But slowly and surely, Sawamura showed Kanemaru that he was dependable. He could be amazing. And little by little Kanemaru showed him more respect. Helped him with bullpen sessions. Helped him study. Cheered him on. He even, at one point, would become so distressed for Sawamura he’d make an error and feel terrible for it. Yet each time, Sawamura proved to him, it’s okay. I’m going to work my ass off. my hard work, your hard work, it won’t be for nothing. It will mean something. And so, in this moment, Sawamura is pulling this team by himself. That’s all he can do. The other pitcher is JUST as amazing. He’s just as talented and hard working. He can do what Sawamura does. And so the team fails time and time again. And like, let’s not pretend we’re the most frustrated in that situation. The team is livid. They can hit here and there but can’t connect. Can’t string together hits to score (which is how most pitchers duels go and is super realistic). And at the peak of this, when the captain cannot hit, Kanemaru comes up to bat with vengeance. He comes up to hit the shit out of the ball, no hesitation in his mind. He wants to kill it. But the part that borderline makes me want to sob, is that it’s not for himself. He wants to do it for Seido and he wants to do it for Sawamura. He wants him to know “I have your fucking back. I am going to hit the shit out of the ball. I’m going to score a run for our ace so it can put less pressure on him.” And that’s the mindset you want as a player. That’s what a good team does. And despite hitting a ground ball and getting out, it’s that effort. It’s the will of running as hard as you can down the line. Because yeah he got out, but who fucking noticed? Sawamura. He saw how hard he tried. He saw how hard he ran down the line. So yes, he didn’t score a run, but he did everything he could. And sometimes that’s good enough. Sometimes that’s what a pitcher really wants to see. So ofc Sawamura says “That hyped me up.” It was not failure. The feelings, the will and that connection came through. And Kanemaru understands immediately and says then let’s fucking go, let’s go out there stop them and hit again. It’s such a small moment and seemingly there to keep the score tied in the story, but the meaning there is absolutely what matters. Because yes, Sawamura is the only one in that moment that can turn the disappointment around, but what it also means is that Sawamura still believes. He tells wolf-boi, “I’m not worried. I believe in the hitters. We won’t go down without a fight” and he’s right. Because he can still believe the team hasn’t quit. Because someone like that, who wanted nothing to do with him at one point in time is working incredibly hard for him.

And it isn’t just there. We see it with Nori. He’s injured and we know how hard he’s worked to be starting games. We’ve seen his hardships and now he’s injured. But he believes. He trusts Sawamura. The team trusts Sawamura. They’re frustrated for him. They’re frustrated on his behalf. He’s bought in. And that is the beauty of a pitchers duel.

To be honest I’m flashy. I like high scoring games. But a show of true competition is always present in a pitchers duel. It’s 2 guys going head to head and the one that breaks first loses. It’s exciting and stressful. And I believe that many people are feeling that in this arc. And that’s why so many people are pissed, thinking this is just another show of the same shit. When Seido get past this, they’re going to Mei. It’s gonna be the same shit. We have progressed past a point where inconsistencies no longer are acceptable. You have to be on or you lose. The other team is just as good as you. And despite how well we want Sawamura to do, we also have to accept that he won’t always be unhittable. He will revert back to bad habits at times. But the Sawamura we’re getting this game? Absolute fucking monster level shit. (And our lord and savior Chris senpai is there to watch)

There are so many amazing moments that show how well Terajima understands baseball and truly loves it. From kids purposely throwing their futures away to finish out the season despite injuries, to having kids having long crises where they have to be demoted to lower strings to get out of the funk and the loneliness that goes with it, to kids fighting about the team and prioritizing winning over friendship. The frustration of the yips, losing games you were supposed to win, feeling like it’s your last chance to win before you graduate and never play again, having to move on with life. It’s all so well done and that’s why I’ll always love this manga. I love Haikyuus story other sports mangas and characterizations but Daiya will always hit different for me.

But anyway, that’s my dumbass ramblings that probably don’t translate well into written form. If you made it this far, why? Lol

#daiya no ace #dna act ii #dna spoilers #sawamura eijun #ace of diamond

[caiminnent]

not designed for the cynical [kylux with side phasma/rey, rated T]

PROMPTS: communication suddenly cut off (@badthingshappenbingo​, 8/25) & bed sharing - pet - delivery (@kyluxxoxo​)

SUMMARY:

Whenever Snoke calls upon only Ren’s service, Hux sends word to all his relevant contacts that he’s available. The job offer he accepts turns out to be far more than he's bargained for.

(This is a low-key Inception AU that requires little to no knowledge of the movie.)

FANDOM: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

TAGS: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Sharing a Bed, Mutual Pining, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, except not really, Armitage Hux Has Feelings, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related

NOTES: This was written mostly during commute and/or sleep-deprived within an inch of my life and edited under the same circumstances. As such, I don't have the faintest clue what this is, but I love it.

5K || ALSO ON AO3

Hux isn’t prone to worry.

He is prone to stress, and he’s got the blood pressure to prove it—but that’s a necessity of the life they lead. It’s got its uses. Worry, however, is for when you don’t have an alphabetised, colour-coded list of plans for every situation that may arise. Worry is for the under-prepared.

Worry is a waste of time.

Knowing this doesn’t stop the fist around his heart from squeezing tight every time he hits redial and finds Ren’s phone still switched off, however.

Then again, there’s no real reason to worry about it. It’s a perfectly Ren move to go off the radar for weeks on end and turn up three countries away from where he was supposed to be, shrugging off all reprimand like he can’t understand why they’re so angry about it. It’s just what he does—he disappears, then he shows up at your doorstep when you least expect it.

He will this time, too. He promised—he will be back by Hux’s birthday.

----------------

Contrary to the popular (re: Ren’s) belief, life doesn’t stop just because Ren is off doing what Ren does somewhere else.

Even with all the safe houses and personas they maintain all across the world, the unreasonable amounts of money Snoke throws at them to be at his beck and call is more than enough to keep them afloat. Ren would be fine with not taking another independent job ever again; but Hux knows better than to rely on Snoke alone. He’s been burned enough times by fickle employers; he’s not ready to bet on the wrong horse and have to build his reputation up from scratch yet again.

That’s part of why, whenever Snoke calls upon only Ren’s service, Hux sends word to all his relevant contacts that he’s available. It keeps him in the game, on the occasion he gets an offer worth considering—and if he doesn’t, he calls it getting a feel for the market and moves on.

Monday morning finds him curled on the sofa, going through the responses on his phone. Most offers he received are below his notice like he expected, some downright insulting—and then there’s the e-mail from Enric Pryde himself.

He sits up so fast he almost knocks over his empty cup.

Among the dreamshare community, the First Order is as revered as it is despised. They reach out to very few and pay three times what they should; but the cost of failure is equally severe, growing proportionately to the project’s worth. Which seems to be a lot, in this case. While he can’t tell from the sparse details in the e-mail whether this Project Starkiller is meant to be a moving city or some sort of weapon—perhaps both, knowing the First Order—he already estimates at least two layers, more likely three, and a special blend of stabiliser for the dreamer and the architect both, who cannot be the same person for this design.

Because they want him on board as the main architect and his dreams never hold steady after the first layer, special blend or no.

Whatever he was looking for as a quick job, this is not it. It’s far more involved and challenging than he could have imagined—and, he’s finding, everything he needed. He could do this for himself. He could work a job he enjoys, instead of running point to Ren or Phasma’s picks all the time to keep them from working with incompetent point men.

Ren and Phasma, who might be working with incompetent point men halfway across the world this very moment.

No. No, he’s not thinking that. His birthday is only three days away. Everything is fine.

----------------

He e-mails back to say he’s honoured and asks for one week to get his team together. Pryde gives him five days and a thinly-veiled warning that there are others who would jump at this opportunity.

Stomach at his feet, Hux throws his phone on the coffee table and gets up to make more tea.

----------------

As expected, research gives him little of substance about the First Order’s operations and nothing at all about the Starkiller, although he finds a low-quality close-up of Pryde to glare at as he sketches out some ideas. They will get binned once he gets his hands on the self-destructing dossiers or whatever ridiculous security protocols the First Order may work with; but it keeps him busy. Better than watching the hours tick by.

When the clock turns from 11:59 to midnight on what is now Thursday, he considers texting Rey to ask if she’s heard from Phasma recently—changes his mind before he even picks up the phone. Ren wouldn’t like it. Hux has been accused of being a control freak more times than he can count as it is; he doesn’t want to add clingy to the list of his unattractive qualities.

----------------

At two in the morning, the doorbell rings.

He is going to murder Ren.

The door had never felt so close or so far as he rushes to it, heart hammering in his chest. He’s going to let Ren in, he’s going to check him for injuries and he’s going to disembowel that infuriating, thoughtless, selfish piece of shite if he’s had Hux fret all this time for no reason—

“Hi,” Rey chirps, looking up at him with damp eyes and a brittle smile. She raises a bottle of whiskey—Phasma’s favourite. “Happy birthday?”

He opens the door wider.

----------------

Admittedly—not out loud; he would never hear the end of it, from her or her cousin—Rey scores high on the short list of people whose company he enjoys. The booze helps, too. They drink in front of the television Hux hasn’t switched off in days and talk about everything but the aching holes in their chests.

She falls asleep on the sofa. He puts a blanket over her and goes to bed.

----------------

In the morning—practically afternoon, if he’s being honest—he tells her about the Starkiller. The plan was to pitch it to Ren first, to see what he thinks before bringing in the others. As it is, Ren isn’t here and none of Hux’s messages has gone through since their interrupted conversation and Hux is going to bloody explode if he doesn’t tell someone.

“I’m not sure, Armie,” she says around a spoonful of breakfast cereal he certainly didn’t buy. “He will never agree to work for the First Order.”

“Why the hell not? He works for Snoke.” Rather happily, in fact. Ren never prepares more carefully for a job than one of Snoke’s plentiful errands, no matter how simple. “Why wouldn’t he work for Snoke’s own company?”

She considers him for a long moment, chewing slowly. “He hasn’t told you the story.”

The implication—accusation—stings deep. “What story?” he demands, pushing his tea away to lean closer. The words held the intonation of capital letters, which means missing information that could potentially blindside them down the line. His respect for Ren’s private business isn’t greater than his responsibilities.

“Not mine to tell,” she says sternly, pinching her lips in disappointment like he should be ashamed to have asked to begin with. “Ask him.”

He snorts. Ren is hardly the sharing type, especially where Hux is concerned. Everything he’s ever learned about Ren has come through other means—and vice versa, he imagines.

She frowns, a question rising behind her eyes. He tenses on instinct. “Anyway,” she continues, shaking her head—and he can breathe more easily again. “My point is, if we’re doing this, we’ll need another forger.”

We. He doesn’t suppress his smile, relief coating his insides. “I suspect we won’t need a forger for this one. A chemist, on the other hand…”

----------------

She doesn’t leave and he doesn’t ask her to. They polish off the whiskey and pretend not to check their phones every ten minutes while binge-watching Star Wars, including the newest releases even their resident space nerd couldn’t finish.

He visualises Ren’s horrified expression when Hux reveals how he and Rey bonded over their shared love for big guns and hot villains in Ren’s absence. Laughter gets stuck in his throat, forming a painful lump instead.

He bids her good night and slinks away into his bedroom to stare at the ceiling.

Barely ten minutes pass before the television switches off in the next room, soft footsteps echoing lightly in the corridor. He turns his back to the door and feigns sleep as it opens and closes—which is a coward’s way, but he’s never claimed to be a particularly brave man. If he were, he would have asked Ren to stop working for Snoke instead of stewing in his misery right now.

Compared to her cousin, Rey’s weight barely shifts the mattress as she climbs in, sliding under the covers without fanfare. He shuts his eyes tighter and allows himself to imagine, just for a moment, that Ren is back.

“I haven’t heard from Phasma in over a month.”

Over a month? Hells, no wonder she sought him out. “Ren and I talked two weeks ago,” he says—realises with a sinking feeling that it sounded like he was rubbing it in. “Closer to three, actually.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much that I could understand. The reception was horrible.” Bits and pieces through constant breaking: Hux, shit, in case, person and, inexplicably, home. “I didn’t get the impression they were in danger—just inconvenienced.” As is often the case with these missions. Snoke’s got a small army of trained private security under his command and he still sends Ren to the most out-of-the-way places.

That Snoke’s hired Phasma as well for this one is a little more concerning, but not overly so. Reckless as they both can be, Ren and Phasma are forces to be reckoned with on the field—Hux would be more inclined to feel sorry for their adversaries.

Rey sighs. “Hope you’re right, Armie.”

----------------

If Mitaka is surprised to see Rey strut about in Hux’s shortest joggers she still needed to fold at the ankles and an old shirt, he politely doesn’t mention it. He and Rey exchange banal pleasantries over coffee and day-old cake while Hux finishes typing up his notes, then they get to work.

Mitaka listens to the briefing with unwavering attention, his fingers stapled in front of him like a front-row student. Like everyone else in their extended team, Mitaka is an experienced, accomplished dreamer—and yet, Hux can’t help looking at him and seeing the fresh-faced cadet Phasma had dragged in ages ago, barely into his twenties and all the more naive for it.

They’ve gotten old—Hux most so.

Once Hux finishes, “If you both are building this time,” Mitaka starts, looking between the two. “Who will be taking point? The Captain?”

Next to him, Rey inhales sharply, her face mostly hidden behind the curtain of her hair. Shame crosses through Mitaka’s face at the realised misstep.

“She’s otherwise occupied,” Hux responds before Mitaka can break into apologies. No need to make this more painful or awkward than it needs to be. “I will be running point as usual, and Rey is here to help with the heavy-lifting.”

Mitaka nods, glancing at Rey with concern before turning to Hux fully. “Where do I sign?”

----------------

They sign a heavily-encrypted stack of documents digitally, sending them through the First Order’s own communication system. The next day, they receive a link to a private cloud service with a convoluted unlock sequence that can be accessed by one device at a time, read-only.

Hux alone works on three different devices.

On the bright side, the project they receive is well-worth the inconvenience. Their objective is to design and build a superweapon out of an extensively described ice planet in the dreamspace, which must be capable of hitting five targets simultaneously and obliterating all affected life forms on them without causing a single non-predetermined casualty. Controlled chaos, if you will. The First Order wants a catastrophe they can tame and leash.

Hux can make it happen.

Whether he can make it happen in eight weeks is a different question entirely.

----------------

Without Ren to drag him away from work, he’s free to divide his waking hours between his screens and the sitting room, which they repurposed into a workshop-slash-dream den. While Hux is a decent architect in a pinch, he could never build the way Rey does—the way she bends the dreamspace to her will and creates cities that feel alive around them. Between the two of them, they have the groundwork laid out within days, quickly moving on to revising the base design according to the specifications in the main file and the numbers Hux runs.

Instead of using pre-mixed batches, Mitaka mixes their Somnacin from scratch on the kitchen table, reworking the formula per the reactions. None he comes up with works to keep Hux’s dreams steady, although a couple seem to ground his control over the dreamspace. Most just turn the dreams into nightmares for everyone involved.

Many of the nightmares are about Ren. Every time they manage to wake up from one of those, he looks at Rey to apologise. She never meets his eyes.

----------------

Unlike the two of them, Mitaka has family to return to and so he does when it gets late, leaving them to eat take-away and talk around the elephant in the room. On the rare occasion they do talk. Even though Hux gets the most shit for his workaholic tendencies, they all are guilty of it in different degrees; most nights are spent hunched over desks or tablets until they come close to shooting each other over the smallest noise or mistake, then they retire for the night.

The bedroom is where the worst fears come out.

“They might need our help,” she murmurs, lowly enough that the words could get lost among the howling wind outside. “They might be injured or—or lost, waiting for rescue. And we would be here arguing about heat transfer.”

“They aren’t.”

“But how do you know?”

He sighs loudly, turning to face Rey. Her eyes are big and eerily bright in the darkness, shining. “Look, Ren and I have been through this before. We’ve got contingencies in place for any kind of emergency—strategies to scarper and regroup as needed, fake identities with paper trail, codes to slip into lines of communication that will find their way to the other’s ear—all of which tied to systems that would alert us both if ever used. So far?” He gestures vaguely to his phones on the nightstand. “Complete radio silence.”

“Well it might be because he’s—”

His stomach lurching, “Don’t,” he bites out. He’s had enough nights contemplating that possibility himself, reasoning himself out of that line of thinking with more effort each time; he can’t handle someone else saying it.

Especially not Rey, whose unfailing optimism has seen them through many a dark spot.

“They will be back soon,” he says with conviction he forces himself to feel. They always do. This is just taking longer than expected.

Rey’s silence rings in the room.

----------------

At the end of the third week, Enric Pryde reaches out to him. His voice is as cold and serpent-like as he looks.

They talk for two and a half minutes—more accurately, Pryde relays his demands for two minutes and rebuffs Hux’s protests for the next half, then hangs up unceremoniously on him.

Fuming, Hux tries to glare a hole into his phone for about as long before going to wake Rey up.

----------------

“What do you mean, they are relocating us?”

Latching his fingers tight to keep from scraping at his already raw palms, “I mean exactly what I said,” Hux grinds out. “They want to move us into some safe house where they will provide us with everything we’ll need for the rest of the project. We don’t have the option to refuse their generosity.”

“They want to monitor us,” Mitaka says on the other end of the line, ever fond of pointing out the obvious. “Can they do that?”

“Would you like to be the one to tell them they can’t?” Hux shakes his head. They are not small fish; but the First Order is big enough to swallow them whole and not suffer for it. He knows to pick his fights. “If you’d like to drop off the face of the earth, now is the time.”

Rey snorts—as much of an answer as Mitaka’s bitter laughter.

“Well,” Rey says, scraping her chair back. “I should pack some clean underwear. When are they coming to get us?”

“As we speak.”

----------------

Before they leave, they make sure to sketch out First Order insignias on every available place. Just in case.

----------------

The safe house is, for all intents and purposes, a veritable villa in the middle of nowhere.

“A little excessive,” Mitaka comments as they tour the place, noting the bolted down furniture and darkened windows, locked conspicuously on the outside. The cupboards and the fridge are well-stocked enough to keep them fed for several months.

There is no mobile coverage.

In fact, there is no wireless connection of any sort. The multitude of devices strewn about in the house are all connected to the First Order’s own network and communications system, which provides access to every archive they might need for the project and nothing else.

The dread coiled in Hux’s guts grows heavier.

So much for his alert systems.

----------------

Progress is much faster with so much information at their fingertips.

Hux is envious of the berths of the First Order databases. Effective as his own methods of gathering intelligence are, his network couldn’t hope to have the same reach as a well-funded PMC—which he could have been a part of, had he not gone freelance instead of corporate after leaving the military.

The idea is tempting, still. He’s ruined for the civilian workforce—has been since childhood, with a father like General Brendol Hux was—but he seeks the structure and order that comes with being part of an organisation. Under different circumstances, he may have considered applying to the First Order after this project.

As their prisoner in everything but name, he wants little more than to be as far away from them as possible.

----------------

Everything they’ll need doesn’t involve a private chef or buffet, but it involves private delivery people who pick up whatever they want, no matter what they want, in a timely fashion. Because they are spiteful opportunists, they order the most extravagant and unreasonable meals they can think of. The food always arrives hot.

Hux marks the potential restaurants for each food item and how long it took to arrive on a small map every time. Just in case.

----------------

Sleeping in the same bed while Mitaka is in the next room feels too awkward, so they don’t. They don’t sleep much in general, either—not with the question of how to power a machine of the Starkiller’s scale without it overheating hanging heavy over their heads. Dreamshare mechanics are a lot more forgiving than their real-world counterparts; if they can’t pull it off down there, they sure as hell won’t make it work topside.

They have to make it work topside, they now know. The First Order wouldn’t have poured so much money and resources into what is merely Pryde’s pet design project.

“They probably have people looking into it,” Rey says, spinning her pen around her fingers with smugness dripping from her expression. He’s not petty enough to dare her to replicate it in the real world, but the thought is there. “Some super high-tech R&D division working on preventing a weapon of mass-destruction from exploding instead of, like, climate change.”

Watching her fingers like the secrets of the universe lie between them, “I don’t think so,” Mitaka responds. “It’s too much of a commitment. I bet they just wait for someone else to figure it out, then steal the designs from them.”

Something flares at the back of Hux’s mind like static, a connection he doesn’t want to make forcing itself into his awareness.

He shakes his head hard to clear it. Even with the dilation, he doesn’t have the time to dwell on things he’s got no control over.

“If you two are quite done gossiping,” he cuts in, smoothing over the blueprints in front of him for effect. “We’ve got work to do.”

----------------

We’re going to take something someone else worked very hard for, was all Ren had said the night before his departure—the only time Hux dared ask about his new job, once it became apparent Ren wasn’t going to say a word about it on his own. It’s such a non-answer that Hux couldn’t tell if Ren wanted to leave him space for plausible deniability or simply didn’t want to tell him.

He still can’t. As a matter of fact, he can’t say for sure Snoke’s job and this project are connected, either; all he’s got is a hunch.

A hunch he desperately wants to see proven wrong.

----------------

Mitaka’s newest blend is the most successful yet. They go down as far as the third level with only minor tremors under their feet—a huge leap of progress, after weeks of the ground swallowing them up whole.

Knowing better than to push their luck, they call it an early night and celebrate by ordering a feast they’ll have to take their time with. With the dinner table and every other horizontal space that could reasonably hold food covered in their work, they sprawl about the sofa set that hasn’t seen nearly enough use over their involuntary stay.

Once their food arrives and Rey realises what he ordered, a soft look crosses over her face. He ignores it. There’s only one place that serves Ren’s favourite food; it makes for a good reference point on his map. It’s not sentimental if it’s also practical.

----------------

He knew, from a logical standpoint, that having access to communication systems meant people could communicate with them and vice versa. On account of the fact that Pryde and the delivery people are the only ones to use it, he didn’t particularly care.

When the name Blysma pops up on the main screen, he realises what a gross oversight that was.

Heart at his throat, he accepts the request with shaking hands, grateful that no one is awake to see him like this. “Hux speaking.”

“Hello, Hux.”

Oh.

Oh, the ever-loving—

“Don’t say my name,” Ren adds quickly, as if he sensed that Hux was about to curse his name six ways to Sunday. “Or any other names. They don’t actively monitor your communications, but we’re pretty sure some keywords are flagged. Best not to take any chances.”

“We,” he repeats dumbly. So many questions are buzzing in his head that he doesn’t know which should take priority. “You and—ah, our mutual terrifying friend?”

Phasma’s melodic laughter rings through the other end of the line. Hux’s heart soars.

“Yeah,” Ren says, a little breathy. “Yes, we’re both here. And fine. The job ran late. Where the fuck are you?”

About that… “I don’t actually know,” he admits, the truth of it settling dark and deep into his gut. Trying to map out their location left him with more questions than answers. “Near the ocean. Far north of the city, I think; but we shouldn’t have crossed any borders.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down,” Ren says.

Irritation rising in him, “We were hardly given a tour guide for the road,” he snaps. You should have been there to take notes, is on the tip of his tongue—he swallows the words. Ren is here now, in a way. They’ve found Hux and the others. The insignias must have pointed them in the right direction; but figuring out how to contact Hux through the First Order’s own systems? That’s all their doing.

Taking a long breath to calm himself down, “How did you contact us anyway?” he asks.

“By calling in more favours than your sorry life is worth,” Phasma says, amusement lingering in her tone. He has never been happier to hear her mocking drawl. “So you had better give us something concrete to work with before we decide to leave you to rot there.”

Racking his brain, he takes a deep breath to ground himself. He’s got to focus. However Ren and Phasma managed to get into the First Order’s systems, they are unlikely to remain unnoticed for long. He needs to make the most of it.

The answer is so simple, he wants to smack himself upside the head.

“At noon, we will place an order for three servings of Bivoli tempari from the Hosnian. Track whoever is delivering it. They should lead you to us.”

----------------

He doesn’t tell the others about it. For one, he’s not fully sure his stress-addled brain didn’t make up the whole interaction—for another, they have a check-in with Pryde scheduled at 3, during which they’re going to disappoint him again with their lack of progress regarding the overheating issue. They are on thin ice as it is; he can’t take a gamble on the quality of the others’ poker faces and risk attracting Pryde’s suspicion.

At exactly noon, he contacts the delivery people and relays the order. In his periphery, Mitaka and Rey share a look.

Once he takes his seat again, “I thought the Hosnian was eat-in only,” Rey says.

Hux shrugs. “They said everything you’ll need.”

----------------

He orders something different from the Hosnian at the same time for the next four days, just in case. Mitaka is too polite to protest, despite the cuisine clearly not agreeing with him.

Rey eyes him suspiciously every time but says nothing, waiting for him to come to her instead of forcing an explanation out of him. He appreciates it more than he can put into words. He can only hope she understands.

----------------

Dying in an explosion ten times in a row tends to throw a wrench in group morale.

Unwilling to kill themselves just to wake up in the safe house, they wordlessly agree to wait out the timer. The burnout has settled deep onto their bones; Pryde’s implicit threats after every check-in don’t help their mental state, either. If Ren and Phasma hadn’t made contact, Hux might have considered taking his chances with a desperate escape attempt instead of sticking around to see what punishment the First Order would dole out for their inevitable failure. It might prove the better end, at any rate.

“I am going back to my children after this,” Mitaka says with more conviction than Hux has been able to muster up about anything in months. “I don’t care what happens. I don’t care if they kill me for it—I won’t die without seeing my family again.”

“We are not dying,” Hux reassures him. With three real-world seconds to the scheduled kick, he explains everything—Ren and Phasma making contact, the bare-bones of the plan and Blysma’s carefully vague progress update texts, the precautions they’re taking to keep Mitaka’s family safe should something go wrong.

Mitaka cries silent, happy tears at the news. Rey gives Mitaka a warm smile and pulls him close.

“That’s it,” she tells Hux, rubbing at Mitaka’s arm in sympathy. “I’m not letting her take a job without me ever again.”

Raising a brow, “You would be announcing to everyone in the community that she’s the best leverage against you,” he points out, not unkindly. He understands the sentiment—truly, he does—but it’s woefully impractical. Not to mention the kind of commitment it would take.

Her eyes gleam, smile turning secretive in that way he’s learned not to trust. Reaching into her pocket with her free hand, “I was already going to do that,” she says airily, taking out a small, velvet box.

Ah. Fair enough, then.

----------------

Hux is above lying to his employers.

Rather, he likes to think he is. Dreamshare, sophisticated as it may be at its heart, is an underground science—as such, it attracts a certain crowd. In a community where lying through one’s teeth is a survival skill, Hux knows to look someone in the eye and spin a tale truer than the truth as well as the next crook; he just prefers to tell the truth as long as it will leave his head connected to his body.

As it happens, this is the last scheduled check-in before the deadline. Giving Pryde bad news now would be signing their death warrant.

When Hux reports their success, Pryde smiles. The sight haunts Hux’s nightmares for days.

----------------

Blysma’s communication request comes the night before the grand plan, unscheduled.

His mind racing with possibilities, he grabs the tablet sitting on his nightstand before the notification wakes the others, accepting the request with, “Hux speaking.” As far as he’s concerned, there’s nothing left to talk about. Phasma has already laid out all she could of the plan without tipping off the First Order; a recap now would do more harm than good.

If this is about a last-minute change—well. Adaptability is another survival skill in their line of work.

“I missed your birthday.”

Hux blinks at the screen in his hands. “I—yes.” By a couple of months, at this stage. Where did that come from? Surely Ren didn’t realise it only now? “If you contacted me to wish me a happy belated birthday…”

“Of course not. I—uh, I called to hear your voice.” Hux’s lungs tighten, all too aware of his heartbeat. “Since we never finished our conversation.”

Their conversation. The handful of words Hux has been turning over in his head for months, to no apparent meaning or answer.

He’s bloody desperate to ask and finally, finally find out; but they’ve waited this long. They can be patient a little longer. “This is neither the time nor the place,” Hux says, as gently as he’s able, biting down on the instinctive Ren at the end. Now would be the absolute worst time for a slip-up. “Whatever it was, you can tell me tomorrow. In person.”

“That’s just it,” Ren mutters. “The last time I tried to tell you, we kept getting cut-off until signal completely went away and I thought, it’s fine. I’ll be back in a few days, I’ll just tell him then. In person.” He laughs, a breathy, bitter sound. “But then…”

But then Ren couldn’t get back until a few weeks after—and when he did, Hux wasn’t there anymore.

He clears his throat to get out the lump lodged there. “Then you’ll just have to be there this time,” he says firmly—his point man voice. “Because I will be, and I won’t accept any excuses.”

After a long beat, “Yes, sir,” Ren says, a smile in his voice. “See you on the other side.”

“Sleep well.”

#Kylux Summer Fest 2020 #Bad Things Happen Bingo #kylux #Armitage Hux #Kylo Ren #Rey #Dopheld Mitaka #Phasma #Star Wars #Cai does words #finished fics #I know I say this for every fic #but this fic was a ride #I can happily go back to my KBB fic now #not designed for the cynical

[osleyakomwonkru]

Failure of Crowds: Wonkru and the Fall of Octavia Blake

So I’ve previously written about the failure of experience and how Team Adults failed Octavia, as well as the failure of empathy and how Team Delinquents failed Octavia.

Now we’re at part three: How Wonkru failed Octavia. And they did, specifically in 5x10. And what’s worse - none of it makes any plot sense. (Which is all building to my magnum opus post, coming in the next few days.)

Now, yes, there’s more to Wonkru than just Grounders, but given that Skaikru only held 99 of 1200 spots, that means that Grounders were in the vast majority (especially given that about a tenth of Skaikru died on day 46), and from what we saw, most of Skaikru had very clearly integrated into the Grounder lifestyle while in the bunker. So most of this is about Grounders and Grounder perspectives.

From season one, we’ve been built up one picture of the Grounders: They’re quick to judge, quick to anger, quick to war. What Lexa was doing in seasons 2 and 3 with making alliances and deals and all that was the groundbreaking thing - and ultimately what got her killed, because pursuing peace was a risky strategy. No one else was on board with her plans.

This carries on in the bunker. It is why Octavia has to rule with an iron sword - people needed to be more afraid of her than of each other. That’s how she could keep the peace. That’s why the gladiator arena was the best compromise for population reduction and punishing crime, because Grounder punishments were already violent (either death or banishment, and you can’t banish someone in a sealed bunker), as was the Ark’s punishment of floating. By comparison, the arena was actually merciful, allowing someone to live and rejoin the society, and also provided a vital aspect of the panem et circensis (bread and circuses) that kept the populace in check.

The time of the Commanders is over, but with Gaia’s careful crafting of the Blodreina cult as a replacement, they’ve found a new leader to pour their hopes and dreams into, as Lexa said to Clarke way back in season 2. And they did. They knew she bore their burdens so they didn’t have to. They knew that she’d give all of herself to save them. If you were Wonkru, Octavia would fight for you. She would sacrifice her soul and her humanity for you. She would die for you. If you were an enemy of Wonkru, it was your ass on the chopping block. It was a very simple system.

Then the bunker opened.

Through 5x04, everything is still fine. Bellamy, Clarke and the prisoners are unnerved by the devotion that they show Octavia. One of Wonkru even jumps in front of Octavia and is vaporized, saving her from the sonic cannon.

In 5x05, Wonkru is ready to march. No issues in getting the first battalion to march into the wasteland, and they all protected their queen in the sandstorm. Quite a few died for it, but they didn’t give up. This was, however, what planted the seeds of dissent for later.

Because now suddenly in 5x06, some members of Wonkru are starting to turn against Octavia, because of their defeat in the wasteland. This much at least tracks with Grounder mentality - losses are bad, politically speaking. This is a time when Octavia needs to project strength, otherwise she’ll lose them even more.

And what happens to mess with that? Bellamy. He openly challenges Octavia in the street, immediately after Cooper’s told her that she needs to take back control. And he’s asking for something huge - for Octavia to forgive Echo, the woman who tried to kill her twice. In this moment, with this public audience, there is no way that Octavia can show mercy. Even if all Bellamy was asking for in this scenario was a sandwich, she wouldn’t be able to grant him that and still maintain control of Wonkru.

After a number of defectors are shot trying to flee to Diyoza’s ship, control seems to be back in Octavia’s hands, for the time being at least. We don’t see much of the common people of Wonkru again until 5x09, when Octavia is in a coma and Indra and Miller are trying to woo the crowd to their sides, as I outlined in this post here.

Along with everything I outlined in that post - namely, how they refer to Octavia and what that means for the message they’re trying to project - there’s one key takeaway from that scene: Despite the appearance of integrated clans, a fair number of the Grounders still have enmity towards Skaikru, as evidenced by the fact that Brell questions Miller’s leadership because “he’s Skaikru”. A fair number of people also appear to agree with her.

Remember this, it is important later.

Later on in the episode, we see that Flame devotees also still exist, as evidenced by the crowd when Gaia and Bellamy are performing the ascension ceremony on Madi. But their excitement is short-lived when Octavia and Clarke put a stop to things, and Clarke takes Madi away.

Back in the pit, Octavia says her speech, and it seems like most people are back on her side, ready to go to war. Not everyone is happy about it, the Flame devotees in particular, but with the Commander gone, what else is there to do?

Which brings us to 5x10, when Miller and Brell are advising Octavia on her best courses of action. Half the army won’t march, because of their devotion to the Flame and the Commander - despite the fact that the only place that Commander could have gone is the place that they’re due to march to. This is the first part that doesn’t make sense in this episode - if they want their Commander, they need to go find her. The only way to do that is march to the valley, so why not do that? There was no way Clarke would bring Madi back to Polis. So marching to war was the only way to reunite with the Commander.

Given that we see Brell as the leader of both the Flame faction and the anti-Skaikru faction, it stands to reason that most of the other Flame devotees have similar stances - and this makes sense with seasons past, because those who followed the religion of the Flame and the Nightblood didn’t like Skaikru bringing their science to the party (see 4x09 where Roan discounts Clarke as a legitimate Commander because she acquired Nightblood, rather than being born with it).

So if half of the army is loyal to Blodreina, and the other half of the army doesn’t trust Skaikru, why in seven hells would they all suddenly be all in on a plan proposed by a Skaikru man (Monty) that rests on science that would then ask them to stay in the place that’s been the source of horrors they lived through for six years? The place where the farm already failed twice, where it would have also been primarily under Skaikru management? This makes no sense.

Some people say “oh they were sick of war”. Really? You mean that after a hundred years of grounder clans fighting each other, even over ridiculous and pointless shit and literally just to have the opportunity to die a warrior’s death (see Polis during the latter half of season 4), 800 grounders were spontaneously ready to lay down their weapons and rely on the scientific know-how of a Skaikru man, when there was an ample and familiar valley there for the taking? 

Not in this ‘verse. That doesn’t make any sense at all. Literally the only reason for this is because plot demanded people to turn against Octavia, even if the reason for doing so was utterly ridiculous and there could be a dozen better reasons why if they really wanted to do it.

So why would the plot do this? Glad you asked. In short: Season five was a not-so-thinly veiled propaganda campaign against Octavia. Why? You’ll have to wait for my next post ;)

#the 100 meta #octavia blake #wonkru #blodreina #the 100

[kob131]

https://caddeter.tumblr.com/post/182525513250/imagine-being-so-fucking-stupid-that-you-decide-to

Well now, let’s give this a REAL stress test huh?

Yeah, no shit they blocked you, all you’ve done is proven that you have an I.Q. score that needs to be represented by a letter to explain how stupid you act.  Remember when you said this:

“ cept 90% of it isn’t criticism, criticism would actually be helpful, no its at the very best nitpicking to the extreme and then crucifying the show and creators who put a ton of work into making a great show over some inane bs.”

1.  Considering that Volume 6 seems to have been made in response to most of the criticisms the RWDE tag has given, I’m guessing those criticisms were actually pretty darn easy to find and were actually quite helpful.

2.  So it’s wrong for us to ‘crucifying the show and creators,’ but it’s okay for you to crucify us?

3.   “put a ton of work into making a great show.”  Dumbass, you don’t fight opinions with opinions, and great shows don’t tend to have:

Uninteresting characters

Underutilized plot threads and potential

Blatant plot holes and contradictions.

Every cliche in the book with no self awareness.

Years and years of queer-baiting.

Unsympathetic characters.

No clear reason for…  Anything.

A plot that relies on its characters all being too incompetent to do their jobs, or even exist for that matter, in order to flow correctly.

Constant ass pulls.

Deus Ex Machinas

Over reliance on cliffhangers in order to keep its audience invested.

Villain Sues.

Mary Sues.

Marty Stues.

Blatant rip offs of everything more popular than itself.  Not even references, just blatant rip offs.

Poor communication between the writers, animators, and soundtrack artists to the point where you wonder if they entered the same room at any point during production.

Writers who flat out admit they have terrible memory.

A good case for sexism.

Failure to deliver on almost everything they promised their audience

And no comprehension of how writing works at all.

Ad Hominin as an argument thus disregard.

Sorry but don’t you know? Everyone in the RWDE tag says they don’t listen to them so an improvement CAN’T be made in response to RWDE. Or, are you just just lying?

Considering you LOVE to bring up the dead and try to harass anyone into silence while saying people who haven’t done anything nearly as bad hould eb crucified:

Yes. By YOUR standards.

And finally:

Opinion

Opinion

Opinion

Opinion

Opinion

Opinion

Opinion

Opinion

Only once so STILL an opinion

Opinion

Opinion

Same thing as before

Same thing as before

Opinion

Proof

Proof

Opinion

Opinion

And Opinion

So out of 19 arguments you used opinions for 17 of them. Funny then huh? Almost like your standards are arbitrary and contradictory.

If RWBY had a ton of work put into it, we wouldn’t have a series of exposition dumps that contradict the episodes, we’d have a much clearer idea of when team RRNJ started their journey to Mistral and when it ended in relation to everything else, we’d have actual distinctions between Semblances, Dust, and magic, we wouldn’t have been making the complaint that Ruby felt like a non-entity in a show indirectly named after her for over five fucking years.  Volume 5 spent over half it’s run time focusing on the main characters sitting around a house and talking, for fuck sake!

Cadder-

They have made distinctions between all three

You’ve been provided with proof to the contrary for years but ignored it.

And you like Red vs. Blue which did precisely for FIVE SEASONS.

You only made one fucking one point out of 23 so far. Pretty damn telling eh?

Oh and if making a complaint makes it valid, doesn’t that mean that OP’s compliant is automatically valid as well? Doesn’t that mean the THOUSANDS of complaints I have made are all automatically valid? And if not thus we must have a set standard: RWDE fails by any standard that is set. So, are you wrong...or are you wrong?

But even if you want to ignore all that, that’s why the RWDE tag exists!  It exists so that you can blacklist the RWDE tag and more easily ignore it.  What you’re doing is the equivalent of diving into a pool of piranhas and then complaining that you got bit.

And yet here you stand, eating food you hate for no reason and complaining about it. Maybe you should listen to yourself.

Here’s a thought:  Maybe the people in the RWDE tag who stick with RWBY actually want to see a good version of it, and you don’t get that by flat out ignoring the bad.  I mean, it’s not like they constantly say that or anything.

And it’s not like the creators are constantly say they work hard or that others constantly say they make great show. So, Cadder, what sets you above them? You know, aside from your narcissism?

Says the guy who can’t handle the idea that maybe people don’t like a show he does, and needs to go out of his way to insult them for no other reason.  The RWDE tag was made so that people like you could avoid the crowd that didn’t like RWBY, but since you can’t handle that idea, fine:  This is going in the main tag.

Says the guy who couldn’t take his own bullshit for a single second before screaming ad yelling like a petulant child.

And gee Cadder, didn’t you JUST say that RWDE sticks around because they DO like RWBY? Huh, was that a Freudian Slip I read?

And finally: Rooster Teeth makes plenty of other content and there are SO many others. RWBY was made for it’s audience and you could avoid it yourself.

But since you can’t handle that idea, fine. I’ll continue to attack you then.

No, you’re an idiot for ignoring what they’ve said, why RWDE was created, and for not following your own advice.

Gee, and yet you ignore what the creators have said, ignore why RWBY was created and ignore your own advice. But hey, takes one to know one right.

The RWDE tag complained about how nobody seemed to care that Oscar was being taken over by Ozpin, not even Oscar himself, and it cast Ozpin into a very negative light by making him akin to a parasite from a sci fi horror movie.  Volume 6 showed that, yeah, the characters in-universe see that as fucked up, and they rightfully call Oz out on it.

Nope. Ozpin being in Oscar was barely brought up and in fact ignored.

So 0-1.

The RWDE tag complained that Jaune took away Ruby’s chance to talk about her struggles in Volume 4 and her big fight with Cinder in Volume 5, once again stealing the focus from her.  One of the first things they did in Volume 6 was remove Jaune from the plot for a few episodes, and even when he came back, they focused more on Ruby.

Nope. Ruby talked about her struggles with Oscar in Volume 5 and you screamed at the creators for it while Ruby never re fought Cinder.

Her focus was said everywhere ELSE but RWDE so 0-2.

The RWDE tag complained that Ruby never took the chance in Volume 5 to ask Ozpin about her silver-eyes, instead seeking to learn hand-to-hand combat that was only important because they changed Mercury’s fighting style.  Volume 6 introduced a new character who had silver eyes in the past and had her teach Ruby how to use her silver eyes.

Except that’s based on the idea of Ruby not taking control, not her Silver Eyes. Still doesn’t apply to what RWDE has said so 0-3.

The RWDE tag complained that, despite setting up and foreshadowing a big confrontation between Ruby and Cinder, Volume 5 did not have Cinder take the chance to attack or even indirectly hurt Ruby.  Volume 6 almost immediately brought Cinder back, and rekindled her hatred on Ruby.

Except that that Cinder never lost it AND since Jaune did nothing else in the Volume, ignoring you was GOOD writing. So 0-4.

The RWDE tag complained that Ozpin was completely incompetent for volumes upon volumes by keeping his allies in the dark, making him a very untrustworthy individual.  Volume 6 has him face some consequences for those actions.

Nope. Ozpin was never treated as incompetent nor showed he was gonna change. Other people said he should face consequence but by your own admission: you never did. So 0-5.

Let’s make that 1-28 to gather all the arguments into one spot.

I could go on.

Please do. I wanna see how far you’ll dig that hole before you realize it’s your grave.

There plan has been to wing it.  They’ve already gone on record and said that Ruby’s development and focus was one of the things they wanted to fix with Volume 6.

Let’s add: ‘I don’t know how writing works’ to the list of reasons why you’ll never be listened for.

Because planning something it doesn’t mean every single detail is planned out. Every single writer knows this.

I said they made Volume 6 in response to the criticisms, I didn’t say they did it well.  It can easily be argued they didn’t understand where the criticism was coming from, which given some things Miles has said about RWBY’s critics in the past, isn’t that wild of an assumption to make.  Also, general consensus seems to be ‘it’s better than last Volume.’ And while that isn’t saying much, it still means its an improvement.

Not according to RWDE *cough* Damage Control *cough* The fight between Sokumotanaka and SSSN *cough*

Do you see the quotation marks, or are you just trying to put words in my mouth?  Of course it’s wrong to attack the creators of a bad show, but the RWDE tag doesn’t do that!  Attacking the creators of the show would be launching death threats their way.   Attacking the creators of the show would be harassing them online through their social media accounts.  Attacking the creators of the show is not making jokes at their expense.  Nobody complains when we make jokes about Micheal Bay, nobody complains when we make jokes about M. Night Shamalan, nobody complains when we make jokes about Reki Kawahara; so why do you complain when we make jokes about Miles Luna?

You know-

Because when this exact same shit happens elsewhere, you call it attacking. When it happens with SU, you scream your heads off at SU crits despite them using ALL your arguments. So we’re just following your standards.’

Oh and no on digs up Micheal Bay’s dead friend to attack him with the corpse. That’s pretty fucked up. You wanna know who agrees with me? Your little inspiration, Doug Walker. When his character The Nostalgia Critic did that, he was treated as someone who made a serious fuck up ad felt remorse. You don’t act like or feel like that. So nice try.

The toxic part of the FNDM are the ones who barge into the RWDE tag and assert their views.  The toxic part of the FNDM are the ones insult and belittle the critics of the show just because they found a flaw in their precious little cartoon.  The toxic part of the FNDM are the people like you.  The RWDE tag was created so that you could ignore us and we could ignore you, it’s the equivalence of a sign that reads ‘Do not enter!  Radiation!’ When you ignore that sign, it’s your own damn fault.

And RWBY is the equivalent of ‘Don’t eat! Fish!’ When you eat fish and bitch about it, it’s your own damn fault.

Also: mind showing me where those people use your dead friends against you? ... No? Then you hold that title.

Oh, I do, you don’t.  Criticism is when you voice your misgivings about a show, backing it up with examples, explanations, and facts, in the hopes that the people who make the show will see those criticisms and try to improve.

Except that if anyone treats a show you like in the same manner, suddenly it’s not criticism anymore and you default to MY definition. Sorry Cadder, can’t have both.

1.  If you think the RWDE tag is terrible, than stop reading it.

2.  Would you rather we complain about a show we don’t watch?

3.  I did stop watching it, after Volume 3.

4.  That doesn’t change the fact that the characters would still be uninteresting.

1. ‘Because we just want the RWDE tag to be good!’

2. You don’t watch it

3. So you have no idea what you’re saying. What a that about examples ad facts again?

4. Says the man who doesn’t watch the show.

Hey, remember back in Volume 3 when Penny mentioned to Ruby how she had a plan to stay with her at Beacon?  No?  Well, neither do the writers.

What about Yang’s PTSD arc, which they seemed to blaze through, and only ever give a passing mentioned to ‘Yeah, she still has PTSD?’

What about Weiss’s romance with Neptune, which came out of nowhere and promptly went back to it?

What about actually having Ozpin be a shady, morally grey individual casting which side of his conflict with Salem could be considered a ‘good’ guy, instead of just having him get sick and then pinning all the blame for everything that happened on Salem?

Or hell, what about any of the racism against Faunus, which only seems to exist at the most minor of levels most of the time?

1. Hmm, almost like it was a Red Herring. What was that about ‘not understanding writing’?

2. Showed, didn’t tell it. Just like RWDE always says.

3. You mean the character who only barely appeared in this previous Volume? Hm...

4. Hey didn’t you say you stopped watching the show? Well I guess that makes sense as Ozpin was never treated like that.

5. How would you know? You stopped watching the show. As it shows since Meagrie, Illa, Adam’s brand, the Fanaus being locked in cages in Ozpin’s flashback ect.

The Grimm are supposedly attracted to negative emotions, and this is even how they were able to determine where the White Fang were hiding outside the kingdom of Vale in Volume 2.  Yet despite that, the White Fang weren’t being overrun with Grimm down in the tunnels.

What’s more, during the same volume, in the same location, the negative emotions brought on in Yang, Blake, and Weiss when Oobleck questioned their motives to becoming Huntresses didn’t attract any Grimm to the campsite.  The Grimm were only every drawn to negative emotions when the plot called for it.

Even still, this raises the question of why the Grimm are attracted to negative emotions and why they only target humanity and its creations when they were created by the God of Darkness to be the general embodiment of death, meaning that they would go after everything that’s living.

The rules of Aura also tend to fluctuate in how it works and how powerful it is.  In Volume 1, Pyrrha asked Jaune why he didn’t activate his Aura to protect himself during initiation, then in World of Remnant, it was stated that Aura passively protects its wielder, meaning Jaune shouldn’t have needed to activate it.

What about all the leaps in logic required for Cinder’s plan from Volume 1 to Volume 3 to work?  Her plan required matches in the Vytal Tournament to end specific ways despite how even they looked, and the fact that JNPR vs. BRNZ only ended with team JNPR winning because BRNZ didn’t recognize an opportunity to attack.  It required the Fall Maiden to not run away despite having every opportunity to and instead continue to fight Cinder.  It also only failed because Salem never bothered to tell Cinder about her one weakness as a Fall Maiden so that Cinder could be defeated by Ruby’s Silver Eyes.

There’s also everything brought up here.

1. Proof they had negative emotions CONSTANTLY?

2. Except they’re all shown clearing out the Grimm around them so...

3. But Cadder! They do! After all, RWDE loves to cite how they ‘go after’ animals.

4. Hm, would have known that it works like a trained reflex if you watched the show.

5. Well, it’s not like Cinder jut needed a bad match up or is shown hacking the syste-Oh wait,,,,

Gee, three mystery people or one demigod? I would the demigod would think to win.

Hm, almost like CInder’s arrogance was a character flaw eh?

6. ‘Yes let me cite this source to a Tumblr blog, they totally wouldn’t lie right?’

To be fair, one could argue that Miles already knows how to fill these plot holes and just plans on doing it later.  I’d counter that he has already stated that he has terrible memory and out of all of these questions, the only one that’s been answered is the Maiden’s connection with the Relics.

And I’d counter that you still blame Miles for Jaune even as Kerry has stated otherwise so you have a proven bias against him.

Hence the second half of that sentence:  With no self awareness.  It’s often stated that RWBY just uses those cliches as a jumping ground to later subvert them.  It doesn’t.  If anything, the longer RWBY’s gone on, it only becomes more cliche.  And yeah, cliches aren’t a bad thing, when utilized correctly. But right now, we have a light vs. dark McGuffing hunt where our main character has this super awesome superpower that can defeat the bad guys fueled by love and friendship when our characters hardly interact with each other or build up their friendships.  And this is done without an ounce of self-awareness or anything to make the premise more compelling.

Oh so? ... Oh wait, it;s just an opinion. And what was it you said? ‘Can’t fight an opinion with an opinion’? Funny how you forget..

If you view making a show like baking a cake, then most of these cliches are the sugar; and it doesn’t matter how much sugar you pour in, if you forget the baking soda, your cake isn’t going to rise. 

And if you view RWDE as a bunch of flat earthers: Continuously saying something doesn’t make it true.

Xiaolin Showdown, another series that could be considered a McGuffing hunt, has more intrecate characters and multiple factions warring it out for the Shen-Gong-Wu, and more intricately crafted stories.  It’s not just ‘Go to place, find thing.’ There are also often hurdles the characters need to face, be them external conflicts with the bad guys and the unique games they have to play for the Shen-Gong-Wu, or internal conflicts, such as spats with other characters or emotional conflicts.

Gotcha.

Oh that show where the usually useless sidekick character meant for comic relief ends up being the only person able to save the day in an episode only for this instance to never come up again? or what about the generically evil witch? Or the bumbling bad guy whose actually a huge threat in a future timeline? Or the Big Bad beings sealed away instead of being destroyed because plot? Or what about the leader being someone who has been at this for years and yet is treated just the same as the newcomers because ‘different viewpoints’? Or what about the elements being Fire,Water, Wind and Earth with Fire being high energy, Water being sagely, Wind being a hotshit and Earth being serious and bulky?

Funny how you forget all THOSE cliches.

Sorry Cadder, should probably choose something else. Xiaolin Showdown was one of my favorite shows growing up and I remember a lot of it clearly. And you’re not smart enough to be able to defend it like I can.

Well, I’m not seeing a counter argument, and the cases for queer-baiting are pretty self evident, just look at all the times they’ve made jokes about White Rose or Bumblebee in the show.  It took them five years of empty promises and excuses to actually give us some LGBT representation, and it was the Psycho-Lesbian trope.

And Xiaolin Showdown made jokes about cliches-Welp, better go shit on that then Cadder. Now now, no one’s gonna get better if you don’t ignore how jokes poke fun at things.

Gee, not really an empty promise if it comes true eh? And oh my, the lesbian is a psycho but the straight guy whose an actual psycho you defend is A-Ok? Hm, sounds like someone’s biased...

Well, let’s see:

Jaune Arc:  Cheats his way into Beacon and doesn’t do any of the work in order to actually become the hero he claims he wanted to be.  When offered help, he gets mad and explodes at the person who offered it.  Continuously tried to convince Weiss to go out with him and refused to take ‘no’ for an answer.  When confronting Neptune, he treated her more as a prize to be won than an actual person.  Was the only one to mourn Pyrrha’s death in Volume 4 and, because he couldn’t keep his emotions in check, got into a fight with Cinder in Volume 5, stealing Ruby’s big conflict with her and inadvertently getting Weiss impaled.  Now, that all wouldn’t be too bad on its own, but he never faces any repercussions for it.  Far from it, most of the time, he got rewarded in some way.

Ozpin manipulated our main characters into doing his bidding, brushed off Ironwood’s ideas and suggestions and continued to rely on his students who were still in training to get the job done.  This never worked, yet he is continually presented as a wise mentor who knows what’s best.  He also shows no concern for the 14-year-old boy he is slowly overtaking and assimilating.  He lies to his allies, kept secrets from them, and from volumes 1 to 3, it felt like he was making a bad situation worse.  He also needed to use an ultimatum in order to convince Pyrrha to become the Fall Maiden, giving her no other alternative than ‘Everyone dies.’

Qrow is a perverted alcoholic with no self control who destroys military property and humiliates Winter for no other reason than ‘why not’ and gets away with it.  He shows no sympathy for Yang in Volume 3 after the Vytal Tournament incident, even calling her crazy when she explains what happened, and uses team RRNG as bait for Tyrian.

Weiss was a racist prick who never apologized for any of the things she said in Volume 1.

Sun stalked Blake all the way to Beacon and Managery, and seemingly can’t get away from his teammates fast enough.

Yang destroyed Junior’s bar in the yellow trailer because he didn’t give her the information he didn’t have and assaulted several men who were just trying to do their jobs, and even encouraged Jaune’s pursuit of Weiss.

Gee-

Not only is most of this lies (Jaune is treated as in the wrong most of the time, Ruby mourned Pyrrha in Volume 4, Jaune treating Weiss as a prize is your opinion as many others (especially women) disagree, Jaune was treated as in the wrong for exploding at Pyrrha and had to apologize, Ruby did a bunch of things in Vlolume 5 while Jaune did nothing.

Ozpin brushed him off because Ironwood DIRECTLY CAUSED the Fall Of Beacon due to his fuck ups, he’s succeeded far more times than fails, he has no choice where he reincarnates, He’s never shown DIRECTLY lying, he keeps giving Pyrrha outs, he was treated as in the wrong for keeping secrets, that’s an opinion and he had no otehr choice,

Qrow’ shown to be pervy in a joke (remember something similar happening in Xiaolin Showdown. Hmmm), he’s treated as in the wrong for that, he directly contradicts that and tries helping Yang and he didn’t know about Tyrian.

And yet you ignore her character development (despite someone in Xiaolin Showdown being responsible for resurrecting THE BAD GUY)

Not stalking

Yeah, criminals doing criminal shit! Oh and proof? No, RWBY chibi doesn’t count.)

But wouldn’t one say that these intentional flaws are there to make the characters INTERESTING? SO which is it? Interesting character or Sympathetic? Can’t choose both you showed they’re mutually exclusive in your eyes.

That’s…  That’s not how stories work.  For instance:

Instead of going to combat schools like Signal, like our main character Ruby did, Jaune instead cheated his way into Beacon to become the heroes his family was while putting in none of the work for it. He was also never told anything about the world around him, like Aura, Semblance, ect, when those things are incredibly common and there’s no reason to assume the rest of the world wouldn’t know about them.  It’s not like Huntsmen and Huntresses are a secret.

Ozpin is implied to have accepted Ruby into Beacon because of her silver eyes, yet never thinks to train her with the damn things!

Despite wanting nothing to do with the feud between Ozpin and Salem, Raven steals the Spring Maiden’s powers and was fully intending to take the Relic of Knowledge until Yang pointed out how stupid that was.

Ironwood made a robot that is capable of generating Aura, yet instead of telling the populous or even Ozpin about this, he instead keeps it under wraps as he entered her into the Vytal Tournament, which one could argue was to test Penny’s abilities, but with the way it was presented, it felt more like he was trying to cheat.

And then there are all the humans working with Salem, despite seemingly getting nothing out of it.  It’s even worse for Hazel, who’s sister was probably killed by a Grimm, yet he’s now working with the Grimm’s ruler.

So Cadder- How do you rewire the electrical system for a house? How do you repair a TV? How do you replace plumbing? Hm, you don’t know? Gee, it’s almost li8ke you have to *gasp* go to school for this!

And yet he says it’s because of her skill with the scythe. Hm, you reject both show AND tell....

Gee, not like that’s a character flaw stated to be in Raven-OH WAIT.

Gee, not like Ironwood is paranoid or somethi-OH WAIT,

Hmmm, not like *gasp* that could be elaborated on in the future! Or that hazel is DIRECTLY STATED to be a grieving mess who  is shown to not be logical.

And even then, we don’t judge things based on what they could be.  We don’t judge things based on what they claim to be.  We don’t judge things based on what they’re going to be.  We judge things based on what they are right now.  Yeah, the reasons for this stuff could be explained later, it could also not be explained later. 

So I’m just gonna go ahead and judge you based on your first word in each sentence.

Cinder Fall’s plan required absolutely no student from Haven to realize that they were never at that school.  Nobody realizes that the girl who supposedly left with the injured student was still in the audience.  Amber never thought to run away from her fight with Cinder, despite having clear chances to do so. Emerald used her illusion powers to steal mere trinkets and food, when it had the potential to turn her into one of the greatest thieves Remnant has ever known.  It also required for Ozpin, who know she would be attacking, to not do anything about it like Ironwood suggested.  I have an entire fanfiction pointing out how, if Beacon was a little smarter, Cinder would have failed a dozen times over, and very few of my scenarios have been dis-proven by recent information.

Proof that anyone WOULD ask about them?

Proof that Emerald didn’t hide herself?

Stated character flaw for Amber.

Emerald’s not amoral, she did what she had to for survival.

Not like Ironwood’s paranoid.

And you’re a proven liar, so why should we care?

The Maiden’s who didn’t exist until after Volume 2, Ruby’s silver eyes which were only brought up once, the relics that were never foreshadowed, most of Cinders plans, Raven being the Spring Maiden, shall I continue?  I might as well not, the entire tag is filled with this stuff.

Not an asspull, that’s a deus ex machina, Ozpin’s vault, numerous Tumblr posts disagree since you think they’re valid. And please do, I love making you look like a corrupt fuckwad.

Ruby’s silver eyes at the end of Volume 3, the ships to Mistral at the end of Volume 4, the train that Oscar was able to take at the end of Volume 4, one could argue Penny at the end of Volume 1.

Everyone else said it first, basic logic says there should be patrols, INTERkingdom travel is locked down and Penny was foreshadowed.

No, most shows have each episode end with a sense of finality and complete the story each episode is telling.  Avatar:  The Last Airbender is known for its tight continuity, and I can only think of one cliffhanger from that series.  RWBY, meanwhile, never feels like it’s finishing a single story for each season, and it feels more like the only way the writers will expect the FNDM to continue watching is if they never finish the story as opposed to actual investment. 

Yeah...except Avatar tried pulling ‘the hero is totes dead ya guys!’ so it should be consider worse in your regard.

Cinder Fall from Volumes 1 to 3, see four paragraphs above.

You mean the woman whose been repeatedly insulted and shamed?

Pyrrha Nikos, arguable Ruby Rose, Cinder Fall again.

Dead, bullshit, shamed.

Jaune Arc, Qrow Branwen, Ozpin, Sun, through affiliation with Cinder - Mercury.

Characetr with the least respect

Open drunk

Purposefully flawed leader

Called out on his shit

Being Sub-servant.

Here’s a rather big one. What about the comparisons that can be drawn between the Grimm and the Titans from Attack on Titan?  What about the school of adventure trope that has been done to death by the likes of Harry Potter and Soul Eater?  How’s about the fact that you can draw more parallels between RWBY Volume 4 and Final Fantasy Advent Child than you could on a graph in an average math class?  What about how the Maidens are pretty much the Avatar but quadrupled?  Or how’s about the fact that Ozpin is a poor-man’s Dumbledore?

What about the Titans and teh demons from Berserk?

What about the hundreds of other works BEFORE Soul Eater and Harry Potter?

Proof and no, YHH’s doesn’t count.

Cept they don’t need training, their powers aren’t used by otehr characters and a fuckton of powers are like this

Except Dumbledore was never directly called out on his shit nor revived from the dead.

Gee, didn’t cliches meant rip off.

https://youtu.be/RccCIHwM5ow?t=1196

There’s also the fact that in Volume 4, puddles of mud were supposed to be regular puddles.

How’s about the entire BMBLB incident, where Miles had no knowledge of the existence of the song, and Jeff Williams claimed his songs had no meaning?

This stuff isn’t a secret, people have talked about this stuff extensively. How the fuck do I know more about the production of RWBY than a supposed fan?

Slicksickman who has an open grudge against Miles: disregarded

Proof.

They’ve always done that.

Except none of this fits your argument so....

There’s called plot holes, this is how you get them.

AKA ‘google my proof’

How’s about the fact that Yang runs into a situation to save Blake for Adam, and her reward is a chopped off arm, post-traumatic stress, and mockery from her father, where as Jaune rushes into a situation because he can’t keep his hate boner for Cinder in check, and Weiss gets impaled for it, only for him to unlock his semblance, heal her, and no one gives him any crap for what he just did?  There’s a double whammy here, Weiss gets injured for something Jaune did, and Jaune doesn’t face consequences despite doing pretty much the same thing as Yang.

Except that Weiss being impaled IS Jaune’s punishment.

Taiyang made on joke (but yang openly insulting him? A-okay!)

Or hows about the above moment for Jaune, but when Salem goes through a series of responses so akin to the five stages of grieve I’d be more surprised if it was unintentional than if it was, and the narrator and by extension the writers try to paint her as a complete monster with absolutely no one blaming the gods?

Because Jaune didn’t try tricking immortal beings and he admitted to his flaws ad was treated as in the wrong?

Dumbass, the RWDE tag has more citations for this stuff than a Wikipedia article!

And your citations so far have been INVALID.

More like Conservation.

An action packed series that rarely had any action and for a whole volume had most of the main cast talking in circles as well as sitting in circles.

LGBT representation as promised by Monty Oum, only for it to take five years before we had so much as one confirmed homosexual.

A show that focuses on four girls that kick ass until Jaune walked on screen.

A monster hunter series where the monster hunting aspect hasn’t been relevant since Volume 1.

The show began with talking and was mostly talking.

Never said when.

Jaune’s relevance is TIED to one of the females

And I thought it was about four girls kicking ass.

I could say the entirety of the RWDE tag or just point to most of the points I’ve ready made, so I will!

*points to my blog*

Try again...

Well, as you loved to say:  Citation Needed.  Yeah, we make jokes at Miles’s expense, but then again, so did Nostalgia Critic about Micheal Bay and M. Night Shamalan, and Linkara about Frank Miller, Scott Ciencin, and Rob Liefeld.  People rarely, if ever, get on their cases for it.  Once again, there’s a difference between attacking a writer and making jokes about them.

Remember what i referenced before?

Nostalgia Critic using the dead:https://youtu.be/0EVOxDVSAfE?t=1949

You on using the dead: FUCK YOU, I KNEW MONTY BETTER THAN YOU YOU FUCKWADS! DO AS I SAY BECAUSE I KNEW MONTY FOR FIVE SECONDS!

The Nostalgia Critic earned my respect that day.

You and RWDE have earned my eternal ire.

Hey, I think I found a picture of you online:

Sorry everyone, Cadder accidentally posted a selfie.

1.  All evidence to the contrary.

2.  ‘Couldn’t’  You couldn’t give a shit if we liked the show or not.  If you could give a shit about if we liked the show, that means you do care.  I’m starting to notice a pattern, the people who love RWBY seemed to have failed their English classes.

1. You reject evidence so...

2. Says Mr. “ Managery “

1.  Criticism is almost always a good thing, and seeing as to how Miles has at least attempted to improve his writing and address our criticisms, and that general condenses is that this Volume was better than the last, I think we very much are helping.

2.  Why don’t you eat some film and put your talents as a projector to good use?

1. Except by your own statements, he didn’t.

And 2. Why don’t you use your talents as a sentient barrel of toxic waste to go pollute some wildlife. Only thing you’d ever be good at.

#cadder

[quartusbellum-blog]

NICKY for the role of  NARCISSA MALFOY, using the faceclaim SARAH GADON.

Reading this application was delightful. You’ve given Narcissa such a strong voice. It’s clear from your app that we’re going to get the ruthless Narcissa we see in the books and so much more! This app is chock full of detail. You’ve considered so many angles of this character and the skeleton which I am extremely eager to see explored on the dash! Welcome, Nicky!

ooc details

Name: Nicky

Age: 32

Pronouns: she/her

Activity Level: medium; I have other writing projects I am going to (hopefully) be working on, but I should be online at least briefly most every day, moreso later in the week/weekend than the beginning.

Other: None, but I really do mean it when I say you can absolutely make use of Narcissa for plots and events and stuff, even the nasty ones! I’m not precious about my characters lol.

Acknowledgement: I absolutely acknowledge and indeed look forward to it all. I am happy to have Narcissa damaged or to have her damage others throughout, and if a tempting plot presents itself, even to have her killed; I will happily app someone else in the aftermath of her (no doubt bloody) demise!

                                                  ჻ ჻ ჻ ჻

general ic details

Name: Narcissa Carina Malfoy née Black; nickname “Cissy” but only by those who are family, close friends, or who knew her well in school or childhood before Hogwarts.

Age: 25; born May 20, 1955 (if I did the math right lol)

Ships: I am a huge fan of lucissa which is obviously canon here in that they are married, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re in a loving relationship. I have played a great many permutations of the Malfoys’ marriage before and am happy to do so again should whomever apps Lucius prefer not to have a lovey-dovey partnership (or should our takes on the characters simply fail to mesh suitably for that). I do believe that the current set-up with the Silent Daggers requires them to at least be friends and partners who have some level of trust in one another, but whether there’s romance there or not is something to be determined when/if a Lucius player arrives, and I’m good either way!

There are no other ships for Narcissa that I am going to be actively seeking out, but I’m in no way opposed to playing others should they emerge over the course of the game, whether as group affairs with her husband included, acceptable affairs on the side, or not-so-acceptable liaisons or outright betrayals. Narcissa is someone who very much ranks purity (and prettiness) above something as minor as gender (so pansexual, not that she probably knows the label or would use it if she did–”tawdry labels are for idiot muggles, darling, intelligent people don’t bother”) and she’s a shallow, selfish woman, but she wouldn’t be the first Black sister to have her heart betray her… Also, pre-Lucius relationships? Definitely yeah let’s headcanon the shit out of that backstory goodness.

Gender/Pronouns: cisfemale, she/her

Face Claim: 1ST CHOICE: Sarah Gadon SECOND CHOICE:  Imogen Poots

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bio questions

Please note, while this game is “canon” up until the start of the Wizarding War it does not stay canon and it’s quite divergent at the start of the game.

biography:

The third and final of the three Black sisters, Narcissa was one last try for a male heir – and she was, obviously, a failure. (She didn’t even merit a family name – not that she’s bitter for not having been named for the stars too, of course not.) That’s the only thing in her life she’s willing to accept failure for, however. Perhaps knowing that she was an unnecessary spare is what drove her towards being such a perfectionist: perfect hair, perfect robes, perfect smile, perfect wandwork, perfect marks, perfect husband…perfect son. The first few years of Narcissa’s life was one steady climb towards the ideal future she had been raised to claim, from her sorting into Slytherin (where else!) to her appointment as prefect to her position as Seeker on the house Quidditch team to her excellent N.E.W.T.s scores all the way through to her marriage to the beautiful and perfectly pure, perfectly socially-positioned Lucius Malfoy…save for one unfortunate hiccup: Andromeda.

Still, one sister is better than none, and at least Narcissa still had someone to stand beside her at her wedding – and a husband who was gracious enough not to think that her former sister’s choices muddied her purity. There were those who whispered otherwise (there are always those who whisper otherwise) especially when little (former) cousin Sirius followed in similar footsteps, but Narcissa kept her head up and clawed her way back to perfection without them. Let the dregs be cast-off and discarded, forgotten; she and Bellatrix and Regulus were doing just fine. Better than fine, in fact; they were going to be heroes, going to be victors. They were going to make the whole world perfect, at long long last. No, Narcissa never went so far as to take the Dark Mark herself – but she was certainly proud to be married to a man who did, proud to have a sister and cousin who bore it (albeit a little worried about Regulus; he’d always been so sensitive as a child, was he really up for this?) and was thrilled to do her part in service to the Dark Lord. She toyed with the idea of stepping into the inner circle many times – certainly the Dark Lord would have welcomed her, given her connections and lineage! – but ultimately it was just a bit too much commitment. She and Lucius were starting a family, after all; better that one of them have a little less time invested in the struggle so they would have more to spare for the eventual heir. Lucius could win them their glory; Narcissa would lay the foundation on which that glory would one day be spent.

When the Dark Lord finally claimed his victory, it seemed like the perfect time to start their perfect family and it didn’t take long for a pregnancy to take root (never mind all those times they’d tried before and couldn’t manage; obviously her womb was just waiting for the perfect time). For an all-too-brief period it seemed like all was well, all was perfect…but it wasn’t. As the flush of victory faded, the reality that it was his victory – not theirs – set in, and set in hard. After everything they had done for the Dark Lord, everything they had sacrificed, everything they had been promised – there was nothing. No glories, no fortunes, no perfect future. After Andromeda and Sirius this was one betrayal too many and with a baby on the way something had to be done. They were Malfoys, Blacks; they deserved better. Their child deserved better. But Voldemort had made one mistake when he had called them all his servants: he had thought that meant they would be as loyal and harmless as House Elves. Foolish man, forgetting that they were wix – wand-carriers, not creatures – and their loyalty had been purchased, not bred; if he failed to carry out his end of the bargain, then the bargain was defunct. And there is no one more dangerous than a Black betrayed…except perhaps for a Malfoy.

Their determination for retribution didn’t mean she and Lucius weren’t still frightened of the Dark Lord, of course; they would be fools not to be, and neither Narcissa nor her husband were fools. But they were well-versed in old magicks and experimental spells, and clever enough to know that merely marking someone was not enough to ensure their loyalty (they themselves were proof of that weren’t they?) but there were other spells and curses that could. It would require the direst of secrecy, the most careful of planning…but they would do it. They would destroy the Dark Lord and claim their true place at the head of wizarding society. And if there were a few more sacrifices yet along the way, well…they would survive those, too.

The fact that one of those sacrifices had nearly been Narcissa’s very life had not been anticipated, but she survived – and perhaps even more importantly, the baby lived too, although Narcissa spent the rest of her pregnancy fretting about what effect her transformation might have on the child in her womb. Fortunately Draco was born with no complications (at least, none that they’ve seen yet) although it was deemed necessary to hire a wet-nurse nanny (not something traditionally done in the Black family, who prefer that their children be nourished only by their own pure bodies, but there was no way of knowing whether Narcissa would be able to give the boy what he needed now) who was passed-off as a decision of fashion and indolence. Narcissa tried not to let it bother her that she couldn’t be mother enough to provide everything her son needed herself (she failed) and took comfort in the fact that at least no one outside the family knew her blood was now tainted – not even dear Bellatrix. There was no knowing how she might react to the news…especially given what’s happened now to Regulus.

He didn’t take the transformation as well as she did, perhaps given the lack of support around him at the time (he didn’t have a few pints generously donated by a doting husband to carry him through that first night, after all) or perhaps there were other circumstances involved in his condition…or maybe he’d always just been a little bit weaker, more inclined toward melodrama. It was hard to say, especially given how secretive he acted about the whole thing – but at least she can trust him to be discreet about her condition. Even if he wasn’t relying on her to keep news of his whereabouts secret from Bellatrix and the Dark Lord, she’d be able to rely on Regulus – and Narcissa wishes she could do more for him, to help him adjust to their shared misfortune…but there’s only so much time in a day (or night).

Narcissa has to concentrate on other things right now: in addition to Draco (her primary focus and motivating factor in all things now) she had the Silent Daggers to found and control, a task admittedly made easier now that she had access to a very particular sort of blood-based magic…not that any of their allies needed to know that. (Conveniently their not-knowing will make it even harder for any of them to break the binding spell should they be tempted to try…and conveniently even if her secret does come out, none of them can turn their backs on her now that they’ve been pledged, cut, and bound to the Silent Daggers.) Perhaps it’s just as well she has that nanny to help with the baby…but she’ll never, ever admit that to anyone else – maybe not even to Lucius. Of course, the fact that Draco would be killed as punishment if the Dark Lord ever discovers her and Lucius’s treason looms over her every moment like a bleak black shadow…so it’s a good thing she’s learning to avoid the light.

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my character is:

Please Describe a Belief your character has that is wrong. It can be something we, as players, know is wrong (ex. prejudice against werewolves ).  Alternatively: How is your character lying to themselves (and how is is it shown externally).

Narcissa is wrong about a lot of things in this world. One of the biggest, though, has to be her subconscious conviction that her sister would never hurt her. She might have thought better of this whole Silent Daggers thing if not for that delusion – might have been too frightened, too prudent, to take such a reckless risk if she had really believed that Bellatrix would tear the skin from her bones (and that of her child) on the Dark Lord’s command. Narcissa claims to be sensible and realistic in her assessment of Bellatrix, claims that she knows that they’ll come to blows over it eventually…and she does believe that but in her heart of hearts, she doesn’t believe Bella would ever really hurt her. Not badly, not in a way that lasts. Not fatally. And maybe she’s right that the revelation of her vampiric taint wouldn’t be enough to inspire Bellatrix to hurt her; maybe she’s right that her sister would forgive Narcissa for the impurity she didn’t ask for…but betraying Voldemort? Bellatrix would kill her for that…and Narcissa can’t bring herself to believe it. One would think that after Andromeda, she would have no illusions about Bellatrix’s ruthlessness or fanatical loyalty left – but Bellatrix didn’t kill Andromeda either (although she ranted about doing so often enough). Of course, she probably expected Andromeda to come to her senses and come back (certainly Narcissa did) up until the birth of the child (and maybe even a year or two after that – motherhood among the mud? Really!?) and she was quite busy fighting the Dark Lord’s war at the time, far too busy to indulge herself by hunting down their sister…and now Andromeda, wherever she is, is far enough away to be safe (presumably). But Cissy has yet to realize that Andromda isn’t the only one who will need to run, if and when Bellatrix ever finds out what she’s done…

Please Provide a description of either Your Character’s Job (what do they do? how do they feel about it? Do they have any goals or dreams beyond this job) and/or Address the differences between what your character is currently doing and what they would prefer to do?

Celebration, that’s what Narcissa should be doing right now – reveling in their victory, relaxing now that the fighting is over. But it’s not. And if the Dark Lord is left in charge, it never will be. Their grand revolution of purity doesn’t seem to have been his end goal the way it was theirs; or perhaps he just doesn’t know how to let go. Regardless, the rewards that were promised his servants have not come to pass – and they’ve come to realize that servant of the Dark Lord has more in common with the servitude of a House Elf than it does the honor and privilege they were led to believe such a position signified. So instead of resting on her and Lucius’s laurels and smoothing down the last few sharp edges of the world into the perfect future her son deserves, she’s plotting treason.

As joint founder and head of the Silent Daggers, Narcissa is a little more squeamish than her husband about how far into the mud they’re willing to reach if necessary (the Malfoys have always been more pragmatic than the Blacks) but she’ll grit her teeth and force a smile for the filth if that’s what it takes to build a better world for dear Draco. The only problem is the worry teasing at the back of her mind: if the Malfoys turned on the Dark Lord for not keeping his promises, doesn’t that mean they’ll have to keep whatever promises they make to the mud in order to defeat him, or risk the very same thing happening to them? That’s a concern to be dealt with after victory is achieved, though – not today. For today she can shove it to the back of her mind and do her part spreading whispers and recruiting allies and accruing information…and, sometimes, making use of all those things to hurt the Dark Lord they once obeyed so loyally. Bellatrix is another problem for the future – but deep down, Narcissa knows that if (when) it comes down to choosing between her son and her sister…well, she’s already survived the loss of a sister once. She can do it again if she has to, for Draco’s sake.

ooc questions

Writing Sample:

Narcissa forced herself to stand calmly, to keep her eyes from settling on the silver bowl – or more importantly, to stop herself from licking her lips. It was strange how quickly she had adapted to the taste of blood, salty and bitter and somehow more delicious than any lavender cream pastry or herb-crusted quail. It was something she tried not to dwell on – and definitely not something that she could let on about here and now, when they were about to bind the first of the Silent Daggers (what a charming name; Lucius always was so good with words) and take this movement against the Dark Lord from tenuous disgruntlement to active rebellion.

Revealing that half of the couple behind said movement now had vampiric blood in her once-pure veins would have put rather a damper on things, and the baby growing in her belly (unharmed by her recent transformation, she had to hope) needed this. It was their only to build their child the future they deserved…

And if that meant Narcissa had to use her newfound affinity for blood to forcibly bind friends and allies to their cause, so be it. Truth be told it was a convenient tragedy, at least; the spells to hold the tongues and treachery of the Silent Daggers in check would be so much stronger now than they would have been before her brief, bloody death. Not that any of them knew they were binding themselves with vampire blood…but it was too late for any of them to back out now anyway. The time for qualms had come and gone.

Lucius wrapped-up his little speech (if she hadn’t helped him practice it for the past three days, she would have been as enthralled as the rest of the audience, but repetition could make even his dulcet tones run dull) and Narcissa stepped forward with the blade they had spent the last month bespelling. It tingled in her hand and she didn’t know if that was a result of the spells sunk so heavy in its gleaming metal or merely her own anticipation.

The first cut she made was to Lucius’s arm – unlike the Dark Lord, neither Malfoy would hold themselves aloof and above the rest of the Silent Daggers (not so obviously as by keeping their own arms unmarked, at least; obviously they were in charge but it was less obnoxious than it was with the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters) and it was only appropriate that they go first – and the last would be to hers. That was part of the binding spell, using her vampire blood to anchor the magic, although to the others they had merely presented it as appropriately symbolic that the Malfoys should both begin and end the evening’s loyalty pledge.

One by one, they came up to her and bled into the silver bowl; one by one, they presented their arms – marked and unmarked – for her blade, and she fought the urge to salivate at each hot red slash across their skin. No healing spells would be cast until the whole group was done (small, but soon to grow – Narcissa was sure of it) and the spell finalized so they stepped back wincing or stoic as their natures dictated, gripping bloodied arms in bare fingers or pressing handkerchiefs to the warm, delicious wounds.

Narcissa’s stomach grumbled and she nearly dropped the knife, cutting a bit deeper than before with the sudden rush of nerves. She smiled at Marcus and he stepped back without seeming to notice; perhaps for him, pain was still a comfort that let him know he was alive – or something that felt like a bond to his lost family. (Of all the people here tonight, Marcus was one of the last she would have wanted to admit her condition to.) Perhaps he just considered himself too new to their company to complain, or thought she had gored him so deeply on purpose as mute commentary on the necessity of his loyalty now…

A few more tantalizing slices and she was handing the knief to her husband to do the final cut. They raised their wands in unison and the others held their bleeding arms out, showing all eyes that the cuts were true and strong, ruby droplets falling steadily on the stone cellar floor. The words of the spell – some spoken, some not – rose in a cadence as harsh and hollow as the grasping hands of the wind. The blade glowed, the blood boiled, their wounds flashed hot and bright as fire – and it was done. The Silent Daggers were formed, their secrets bound by blood and magic.

Murmured sounds of healing spells rose around the room, interspersed with stilted banter and quiet muttering. It was always awkward, ending a group ritual; magic was not cast like that often, and it always felt somehow artificial or overdone. Narcissa closed her eyes and allowed herself to lick her lips, just once, as though to wet them after the extended bout of spellcasting. She opened them again when she felt Lucius’s fingers on her arm.

“Shall we retire to the study for icebrandy and gin?” Lucius suggested, the room going quiet in response to his brisk and jovial tone. “I mean, I suppose we could have the rest of the meeting down here too, but that seems so unnecessarily bleak to me…”

Laughter, both from amusement and relief, rose in response. “You’ll see to things down here?” Lucius asked her, leaning in close and speaking softly. Narcissa nodded and stepped back, smiling at the others as they filed out past her. She would join the party in a few moments, once everything down here was securely put away and the bespelled blood safely stored for later additions to the alliance.

And if she licked up a few stray drops here and there, well, who would ever know?

Exploration:

Please share three things you’d like to explore. This could be a character changing sides, darker themes, or basic fiction tropes.

Narcissa As Vampire: What does that mean for her physically? (How fortunate that she’s always been the sort to favor parasols and broad-brimmed hats in summer sunlight for the sake of her complexion – and how fortunate that she’s always been so pale! no one will ever notice a difference!) What does that mean for her magically? (She was always such a strong witch; surely she hasn’t lost that power, not with Black blood flowing in her now-tainted veins?) Where does she get the blood she needs to eat? (Is it always pure or is she reduced sometimes to drinking–ugh–muddy blood? Or is that a hardship, or is it easy for her to think of Muggles as food? Does Lucius ever donate to the cause?) What does it mean for Draco? (He wasn’t hurt by it, he can’t have been…he just can’t! Can he?) What does it mean for her internal assessment of purity…or to Lucius? (He says he still loves her just the same, but does he mean it?)  Is it a weapon she’s willing to use in their war, or something she’s too ashamed (or afraid) of to risk unsheathing under all but the most dire of circumstances? (True, she used it for the blood-binding, but was that a one-off exception or the start of a trend?) And so on and so on… For that matter, how did she become a vampire? I kept that deliberately vague in her bio because I’m hoping to explore something there involving other player(s) – maybe it was Regulus who was turned first, and he turned Cissy to save her after she was injured? Maybe that vial of blood around his neck came from a not-quite-disowned relative of theirs who’d fallen to the fangs years ago, and Narcissa made use of the same old relation when she was dying? Maybe it was someone in the Radical Alliance (willingly or unwillingly) who turned her as a favor or to pay a debt, or maybe it was vampires who hurt her in the first place and it was Lucius interrupting before they could finish the attack that led to her being turned instead of merely killed…. There are a lot of different ways to run with her “condition,” both in how it happened and how it affects her now, and my only regret is in knowing that I can’t do all of them at once!

Recruitment: It was Narcissa (and her particular familiarity with blood) who came up with the little trick with the knives and the blood to make sure no one could betray them in the first place, but a revolution can’t be run with only a handful of allies – nor without a few disposable tools. Since Narcissa is generally seen (by fools) as the most “harmless” of any of the Blacks and Malfoys, she uses her unassailable social position to whisper and toy and tempt others, sometimes tricking them into doing what the Silent Daggers need and sometimes adding them to her quiver of allies (with a prudent slash of red to make sure they stay there). It makes her someone who can cross the lines of allegiance for interactions more easily than most other characters, too, which should be interesting! And honestly just the chance to have Narcissa be an active part of the fight (if a subtle, secret one) is exciting, since she’s so often reduced to a wallflower (or worse, a reluctant participant who lacks her family’s blood-supremacist convictions) in these sort of games. I’m really looking forward to getting blood on her hands here – both metaphorical and literal! Narcissa is canonically ruthless…so I’m excited for a game where she actually gets to act like it.

Blood-Status & Family: Narcissa is a blood-supremacist. She always has been, always will be. Being turned – being tainted – hasn’t changed how she thinks of Mudbloods nor of animals like werewolves and Muggles…but vampires were always more fashionable, weren’t they? Of course they were. Besides, she might be a vampire but she’s a vampire with Black blood in her veins – that has to still count for something, especially when it comes to a creature for whom blood is so crucial! Yes, she’s still part of the elite even if she does have fangs…and that means she still looks down on everyone who isn’t. (It’s a delicate balance in her head, but one necessary to maintain for her own sense of self to remain steady.) But now she’s turned her back on Voldemort, she might have to ally herself with those who aren’t worthy…and that’s fine, those sort of deals are necessary in a war. But as she’s learned from having the promises she was made broken by the Dark Lord, those “necessary alliances” can’t be simply discarded after the war is won. Not unless you want a new rebellion on your hands. Which means that anything she or Lucius promise to any piece of filth whose allegiance they want to secure, they’ll have to follow through on in the end…which means she might have to get her hands dirty. Is she prepared to do that? Is she prepared…perhaps…to talk to her former cousin? Or worse – her lost sister!? (I know there’s no Andromeda in the game right now, but that doesn’t mean Narcissa can’t entertain the idea of having to face and deal with her – nor for that matter, the idea of having to deal with Bellatrix discovering her secret. Those possibilities will be relevant to her, even though they aren’t going to be applicable in the game as playable plotpoints. Sirius and Regulus, on the other hand – if either or both of those characters get picked up, then those confrontations should be lots of fun from very different angles: Sirius the disgraced, cast-out cousin who betrayed the family but who might be a useful tool in the fight against the Dark Lord…Regulus the “good boy” who got lost, who now shares a certain proclivity for blood and fangs but much more openly than she; much less stable than she too, given how and when he developed the condition…but he’s still her precious little cousin. And he’s no more tainted than her, even if he’s having a few more problems adjusting…but will she accept that, or ignore his issues because it means acknowledging her own lack of perfection though acknowledging his? Should be fun!)

BONUS: The Diary! I’m assuming (hoping!) this is going to come up as a plotpoint eventually, and I’m psyched for it. I’m also psyched for exploring how Narcissa will react to the revelation of Voldemort using Horcruxes – because we know they’re generally regarded as well beyond the pale by most of the magical community, so will Narcissa likewise be disgusted? Or will her upbringing as a Black (notoriously more comfortable with certain types of magic, it appears) and/or her current position as a member of the Silent Daggers make her more pragmatic about the idea? I don’t know, I think it will depend on how the news leaks out (if it does; maybe they’ll find a way to use and/or destroy the diary without ever learning exactly what it is idk) but either way it’s going to be interesting to play with.

Extras:

I have very, very rarely had the privilege of being in a game where both Malfoys are taken characters. Thus I have approached Narcissa’s development largely from the premise of her being on her own and I’ve just gone ahead and stated things as established history that would be better discussed in tandem with Lucius’s player. If there does end up being an app for Lucius I will (after I finish dancing with delight) be very very happy to revise and amend all of this to mesh with their player’s ideas. (Likewise with any eventual Bellatrix or Andromeda players – or for that matter, any family details overlapping with Sirius and Regulus!) I genuinely really enjoy group world building! So please, fellow or potential players: view this as an outline for Narcissa, not as a headcanon that’s set in stone. I’m happy to tweak and twist and rearrange, so don’t hesitate to fling your ideas my way!

#marauders rp #skeleton rp #hp skeleton rp #lsrpg #harry potter rp #quartusbellumaccept #narcissa malfoy #narcissa malfoy bio

[khiphop-stories]

Umbrella - Chapter XIX

You can find all chapters here.

Lesson Nineteen: A Different Side 

[Christian Yu, DPR Live]

“Jenn…I fucked up,” he said in a whisper as he shook his head slowly. His teeth were chattering and his lips were tinted blue. A dark frown covered his face. He leaned forward, burying his head in your shoulders. You had never seen him like this before. Even after his break up, he somehow managed to take care of himself. But as you looked at him now, it was as though his soul has left his body. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was full of guilt. The person standing in front of you wasn’t the Christian you knew. The Christian you had come to know was a happy pill who infected people with his good mood and smile. Whenever you were around him, you felt as light as a feather and all the worries and burden that weighted you down vanished into thin air.

But today he was dark and grim. Truthfully, this side of him scared you a bit. You weren’t used to it. You didn’t know what to say or what to do, overwhelmed by this situation.

“Let’s go in first, you’re freezing,” you gently ran your fingers through his hair. Slowly and carefully, you pushed his heavy head off you. With one of his arms around your shoulders, you supported his weight as you walked towards the entrance of the building. Without resistance, he allowed you to guide him.

Once you arrived in the hallway, Christian pulled his arm back letting it fall to his side. He noticed that you were struggling because of how heavy he was. You had to carry almost half of his weight, because he was in no condition to stand or walk on his own. As you two waited for the elevator to come, he leaned his back against the wall for support.

“Wanna talk about it?” You asked him gently as you inspected his face closely. His gaze was fixed on the tip of his shoes. He was too ashamed of himself, he couldn’t look into your eyes. For a brief moment the two of you were surrounded by silence.

“Or not—” You let out an awkward chuckle.

“I lost the deal,” he said in a whisper as he swallowed down. You furrowed your eyebrows at him in confusion, having no idea what he was talking about, but then put two and two together. There was only one deal he could have been talking about. It was the deal that was in the works with Nike. Dabin was supposed to be the new face of their brand. They wanted him to shoot a commercial and release a promotional song. He had been talking about it nonstop. He was overly excited to film his first TV commercial. In addition to that it was for a brand he really loved. He spent sleepless night in the studio writing and recording verses for the song. But all of that seemed to have been in vain, since there was no deal any longer.

“What happened?” You released a gentle smile, trying to comfort him.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be working with them in the first place. They were only interested in Dabin, but he somehow managed to persuade them to hire me as the visual director,” he began to tell you.

Their team’s loyalty was something that amazed you every single time. They’d rather fall altogether than move forward alone. No matter what projects they were working on, they always made sure the whole team was involved. It was an entirely different approach from your own. Such a strong sense of loyalty was rare to find these days, especially in a society that taught you to step on others in order to succeed.

“I missed the deadline for Nike, because I was working on a different project at the same time. I presented the concept idea to them a day later and I thought everything was fine until I got a call earlier…” He paused and took in a deep breath. You knew it wasn’t easy for him to tell you about his most recent failure. He was someone who took pride in what he did. Every time he talked about his job as a director, his eyes would sparkle with a fiery passion.

“They terminated the contract, said the idea was shit and I was unprofessional and they don’t want to work with amateurs.”

“I’m sorry…Rome,” you wrapped your arms around his torso, giving him a comforting hug. He held you close, as he shut his eyes close and leaned his head against the wall.

The industry was a ruthless place and the people in charge abused their power, doing whatever they felt like because they knew nobody would be able to stop them. One day they were your best friends, The next day they would throw you out on the streets, leaving you to die.

“Don't be too hard on yourself." You slowly lifted your head and looked up at him.

“It would have been a huge opportunity to get his name out there. But I blew it. He got me on the project and I got us fired.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Rome. You did your best.” Tilting your head, you looked at him with a sympathetic smile planted on your lips. That moment when he looked into your warm brown eyes, the frustration and anger in his chest evaporated like hot water into steam. In just one look he was home.

~*~

You took the keys from him and opened the door to his apartment. He held onto you for support while he kicked his shoe off. He used too much force and his shoe flew across the room almost knocking down the vase on the floor.

“Be careful!” You hissed at him sharply. Thinking Dabin was asleep in his room, you threw him a warning glare.

“He’s not home. He’s still in the studio. He probably doesn’t even know we’re fired yet,” Christian mumbled while he took off his jacket, letting it drop onto the ground. With a sigh you bent down and picked it up, before hanging it onto the coat rack.

He couldn’t tell Dabin. He had told Scott and Cream, but he just couldn’t look Dabin in the eye and tell him that he screwed up and robbed him off a great opportunity. He was supposed to be a older brother, Dabin could rely on, but instead he messed it up.

When you turned around, Christian was stumbling towards the couch, throwing himself onto it face forward.

“Get up,” you pulled him up by his arm, but he didn’t budge.

“I’mma just sleep here.” he rumbled tiredly, his arm falling to the side lifelessly.

“No, you still have to wash up and change your clothes. You smell horrible,” you said with a chuckle.

“Come on, can you be a little bit more cooperative?” You slapped his butt to get him to move.

“Oh somebody is kinky today,” he turned his head to you with a cheeky smirk spread across his face. Your eyes widened at him in surprise. His mood had changed just within seconds - he went from grieving to naughty in a blink of an eye.

“Get up. Your whole body will ache tomorrow if you sleep on the couch,” you rolled your eyes at him, disregarding his dirty remark.

~*~

Although it took you a while, you managed to tuck him into his bed, after you had him brush his teeth and change his clothes. You pulled the covers over him and turned around to leave.

“Jenn?”

“Hmm?” You hummed softly, turning back to him again.

“Can you stay?” His voice was a mere whisper, but you heard him clearly. A smile appeared on your lips and you slowly nodded your head.

“Sure.”

Lifting the blanket, you quickly slipped under the covers, lying down next to him as his warmth engulfed you. You used his arm as a pillow. Christian turned his body to the side, now facing you and wrapped his free arm around your body. The way your gentle eyes met his own and the way your hands caressed his face, sent little sparks of electricity dancing over his skin.

After having such a bad day, being able to let off steam, to lie next to you and hold you in his arms, he wanted to say it again; those three little words. But this wasn't the right moment either. Would you even believe him his mind was intoxicated?

~*~

When you woke up the next morning, Christian was still sound asleep. You decided to get up first and make breakfast for him to cure the hangover that would be consequence of him trying to drink away his sorrows last night. 

You opened the fridge to check what ingredients they had, but there was nothing you could use too cook.



“Already raiding our fridge?”

Hearing a soft chuckle behind you, you turned around.

“Well, you guys don’t really have anything worth stealing,” you told him jokingly as your eyes followed his movements. 

Dabin walked over to the cupboard and took out two cups.

“Coffee or tea?”



“Coffee,” you replied.

~*~

“Rome told me about Nike.“

“Yeah, it didn’t work out in the end, but whatever,” he shrugged his shoulders with such a lightness, it surprised you. “Honestly the track Cream and I worked on is way too good to be a promotional song anyway. I’ll rewrite some of the lyrics and release it as a gift for my fans.”

“It doesn’t bother you that they dropped your last minute?”

“Nah, it’s not the first time we experienced a setback. I mean I don’t wanna work with people who think they’re the shit either. They never took us seriously. But they’re gonna regret it. We will work so hard and snatch the scene, they won’t be able to ignore us. In a year or two they will come on their knees begging us to work with them.” A confident, yet innocent grin spread across his face. You released a smile, impressed by his positive attitude. There was a lot you could learn from him. He believed in his craft and in his skills and he wasn’t afraid to dream big. He wasn’t afraid to take risks and experience failures. No matter how rocky the road was, he set his mind on walking this path. If only you were half as courageous as he was.

“He’s still blaming himself, isn’t he?” Dabin turned his eyes to you.



“Pretty much, yeah,” you nodded your head slowly, “I wish I could make his guilt disappear.“

“Oh you know how to do that,” Dabin gave you a wink. You creased your brows and looked at him with questioning eyes.

“Sex is the answer,” Dabin snickered.

“Of course it is,” you let out a chuckle, rolling your eyes at him. Why didn’t you think of it?

“But don’t fuck him too good or he might confess to you again,”  Dabin blurted out without thinking.



For a moment you froze while your eyes grew double the size.
 “He told you?!”

I’m so sorry it took so long to update! I got too busy and totally forgot about it. Please bear with me haha I hope you liked this chapter and don’t forget to let me know what you think! Feedback is always appreciated :)

#christian yu #dpr live #christian yu scenarios #dpr live scenarios #khh scenarios #khh imagines #khiphop scenarios #christian yu imagines #umbrella

[lyzande]

ebarg thoughts - my swan song

just some shitty thoughts that I need to vent

I honestly don’t know how to start this, or what even to write. Where should I begin? How should I spin this tale? What will the ending be?

I’ve been struggling with formulating coherent thoughts over the last few weeks and months, and honestly, I can’t be fucked to start pulling myself together. Putting aside my academic obligations, thinking itself - in a logical, calm, and sensible manner - has become a huge burden. Even with the academic strain, I have struggled to perform and study up to the standards that I should be performing at. 

This year has been ridiculously tough on all of us. At the beginning of 2020, no one could have ever predicted the shitty predicament that we would be in, from the very first month of the year.

I have to say, it’s fucking shitty that I’m in this state of mind once again. I’ve worked so hard to pull myself together back in 2018, and honestly, I managed pretty well in holding myself together all throughout the year of 2019.

I suppose I should reflect on my mental state from the beginning. Honestly, I’ve been struggling with this bullshit internally for nearly seven years, by my most gracious estimate. Although, I hesitate in claiming anything since I have not been diagnosed or even talked to any mental health professional. But, you know, at the risk of misdiagnosis, I have done research, bounced ideas off of different sound boards, ie. the people who I value in my life, and their opinions thereabout.

Having established my fragile state of mind, things could only get worse by the end of 2017. In my third year of college, I was elected to be an officer of our mother org, which I had no experience in at all. It’s not a surprise that there were a lot of struggles that faced me, a lazy procrastinator with whimsical ideas about life who was suddenly handed the responsibilities of a secretary. I did my best, or so I’d like to think, but it wasn’t enough to meet the standards which I should have worked at. I failed. I’m not going to sugarcoat shit. I failed horribly. I tried to learn as best I can from my failures, and I’d like to think that I may have improved from that. 

At the same time, by the end of the semester, I had failed one of my subjects due to my own irresponsibility. I really don’t want to get into it but I accepted everything that happened. It was one of the only times that I broke down in school. I remember, 2017 was the year that two of my dearest friends saved me. To this day, I still love them unconditionally because at my worst, they were there, and at my best, they were the reason.

Anyway, fast forward to mid-2018, the end of our third year in college. By that time, I had lost my love for our org and had started spending more time with another. Although I did not neglect my duties, I had only given the bare minimum. I struggled with a few but our efforts were not enough to salvage the dumpster fire that was our responsibility. Again, I learned and I promised to never make the same mistakes again.

Enter our fourth year of college. It was the year where we had to finish our thesis, finish our internship and pass our other academic requirements in order to graduate. On top of that, I was appointed as the managing editor of our college paper. I was elected into the minor position of PIO within out college subcouncil. I was elected to be the President of our University’s student volunteerism organization. I don’t know if I’ve stressed this enough but I was not a responsible student. I resented my course. I chose neither Accountancy nor Accounting Management, and out of spite, I neglected my academics.

I struggled with juggling my other responsibilities on top of trying to have a social life. So it was a month into our fourth year that I tried to kill myself. I have already been actively selfharming for a few months by then, and it all peaked when I has one shitty night, and I drank a betsin cocktail of my own making. But I was stupid and I didnt have nearly enough to even give me a stomach ache. I probably should have gone for an overdose or something.

But to my shame, I didn’t die. I dont think anyone even knew what I attempted. I was lucky. A few weeks later, we had a team building activity, which I attended with some of my closest friends. They saved my shitty self again that day. For the first fucking time, i saw what I’ve been blind to for such a long time. I had people that actually fucking cared about me. I could not lose them. I’ve pulled my shit together. A friend made me promise to stop selfharming, and honestly, I was pretty good at keeping that promise.

Fast forward to mid-2019, I guess. My family had already decided I was going to be enrolled into law school. I’ve been struggling with the idea, I was willing but I wasn’t quite sure. Nevertheless, I pursued it. It was an amazing first sem, honestly. I met a lot of great people. I made a new family. We all went through the same struggles and joys. It was a whole new unique experience. By this point, I was in a pretty good mental state. I was stable. I made a promise to myself that I’d actually be making an effort, academically-speaking.

Of course, it wasn’t easy. On top of the already harsh standards demanded by law school, there were external stressors. Everyone has struggles in law school. Everyone had their own problems. These were mine: family expectations, distorted self-worth and self-view, struggling social life, and I was missing my first family - my closest friends.

Fast forward again to 2020, and holy shit. What a fucking year. It isn’t even over yet. Taal volcano exploded. Tried to help around in the ways I can. Still studying diligently. Then covid happened. Quarantine and lockdown enforced. That was a whole other struggle. Everyone had to adjust to learning on their own and thru online means. Still, it wasn’t too bad. We missed each other’s company but we managed somehow.

Having been in a stable headspace for the past n months, I decided to get back into the dating and social scene. Being the haliparot that I am, I made landi like it was going out of fashion. It was fun. Met a few people, got watered, figuratively speakin, y’all know what I’m saying? But then fucking shitty people making shitty decisions. Engineers are ghosters, y’all can’t change my mind. Engineer, if you ever read this for some reason, fuck you. (but if you want, I’m still head over heels for you, you shitty fucking fuck)

ANYWAY. Around July or August, my mom got sick. She struggled with her health. Those few weeks that she was out of commission was tough. She’s the only person working in our household, so we all depended on her income. I wanted to drop out and work, because I needed to help my parents. But I kept studying because sayang naman daw if I wasted my time. Im a full time student, being supported by my family. They wanted me to focus on studying. So I did.

Then about a month or so ago, my dad got sick. He can’t get up without getting dizzy. At first it was just blood pressure issues, which became blood sugar issued but now, apparently, it’s some fucking brain issues. My cousins have been covering the medical expenses and honestly, we’re struggling so fucking hard to live right now. I really want to drop out of school and work, just so we can have stable income but with this shitty situation we’re in? holy shit

the past few weeks have been a struggle. academic burn out. social burn out. i’ve been contemplating selfharm again. i want to die. my body is giving up on me. everything is hurting. i cant talk to any of my friends because im scare. i know i can rely on them but im so fucking scared. im becoming naother huge disappointment. im falling into a pit of my own making. i dont know what to do. i cant focus on my studies. im performing subpar. i need to support my family. my social life is dead. my heart is broken. im doing my best but my best right now? it’s worth shit.

im trying to pull myself together but i dont know where im at right now

im trying to reach out but i know how much people are also struggling and i dont wanna take away their time and effort

trying to look for work but im abrely qualified

constant headaches and body aches

my heart is still crying for him

my soul is condemned to eternal suffering

our society is falling apart

our economy is fucked

history is repeating itself

politics is bonkers

people are dying

i dont know what the shit is oging on

i want to die

i want to live

i want to survive

i miss my friends

i miss my fmaily

im tired

im so fucking tired

i dont know what to do

i just want to die

[crimson-blade-blog1]

Dead Space Fanfic Chapter 1

A/N: This is my first fanfic! Please leave a like, reblog, or constructive criticism. Enjoy! My ocs info is in my blog, look for "About Seth Rieger". Disclaimer: I only own my Oc Seth and his dialogue. Everyone else and other dialogue belongs to Visceral Studios and EA. It was five weeks from Planetcrack on Aegis VII. Inside the Planetside Security Office, Sergeant Abraham Neumann comes into Marla's office. "Hey Marla, you wanna catch a Vid tonight? Union Plaza got a new download." Neumann asked her. "Bram, I already told you. I have a lot of paperwork to- Holy Shit, what is that!?" She speaks out as she looked into the monitor. "It's Jen Barrows Dig Team, I'll feed it through." She tells Neumann, he nods and heads out into the main office. "Hey Commander, everyone heads up!" He says to them. Vera then smirked. "You finally hit second base with Marla?" Vera joked, making her boyfriend Seth chuckle a little. "Very funny, look at this!" Neumann points to the monitor. "The hell is that?" The Commander asked. "Now hold on, Commander while I consult my book if weird shit." Neumann joked. "Everyone's a comedian." The Commander says with a sigh. "That's nothing to laugh about. Are we patched through Seth?" Vera asked her boyfriend. "We're patched through, go ahead Vera." Seth confirms to her. "Barrow, this is Cortez in P-Sec. Is that... Could that possibly be what I think it is?" Vera asked. "I don't know detective, depends how fucked up your thoughts are I guess." Jen states as she and her dig team stare up at a black spiraling rock with Red carvings written on it. "No way is that natural. They scanned this place before we came here, right?" Neumann asked. "If there was life on this rock, don't you think we'd have found it in the last two-and-a-half years?" The Commander asked rhetorically. "So what the hell is it?" Neumann asked as he looks at the monitor. "Its a Marker dumbass, don't you see." Vera points out. "Yea, it's pretty obvious." Seth agreed with her. "A Marker? What does that mean? What sort-- Wait, a Marker? As in Unitology? Oh Cortez, Seth. Come on, not you two." Neumann says as he turns toward the two. "What? We've been members since 8th grade." Vera tells him as Seth nods in agreement. "Now just hold on. The Unitology Marker's supposed to be black. Even my ancient eyes can see that... thing... is red." The Commander points out. "Maybe there are different colors. Look at the symbols! It's a dead ringer for the Black Marker!" Vera says to him. "For something that's drawn in a book? That's one hell of a stretch." Neumann says nonchalantly. "If the government hadn't stolen it. We wouldn't have to rely on drawings." Vera raises her voice. Seth got between Vera and Neumann. "Hold it you two. Even though I do agree with the Commander that it's odd to see a Red Marker. Vera does have a point, there could be different colored Markers." Seth says to them, trying to tone down the argument, but then Neumann spoke up. "Oh, says the Marker head!" Seth turned toward Neumann, clearly pissed. "What did you just say!?" The Commander got between them. "Knock it off, you three. Vera, Seth, knock yourselves out, but don't bring it to the office. Neumann, don't take your divorce out on your partner and her boyfriend." He says to the three of them. "Hey, how come I get the surname treatment? I outrank them!" Neumann complained. "Yea, but she's prettier, and you did insult her boyfriend. Now shut up and get down to the airlock in case Barrows team needs an escort. Seth, you head down to Megavent 12. They got a power failure down there." The Commander tells them. "On it Commander. Heading there now." Seth says as he puts his helmet on and heads down to Megavent 12 as Neumann and Vera head to the airlock. "I can't believe you never told me you were a Marker-Head." He says to her. "Because it's nothing to do with my work, Ugly Man. Although, something tells me that's about to change." She says as they leave to the airlock.

#Oc #Abraham Neumann #Marla #Vera Cortez #Commander James #Fanfiction

[mcutrio]

Movie Date [10]

Movie Date [10]

Tags: @buckys-little-monster @imaginesofeverykind

That next day, Kat and Thor found themselves awkwardly attracted to one another. The situation that had taken part the day before left them feeling somewhat strange whilst talking to one another, especially given that their relationship was nothing more than mere strangers, or rather… coworkers. They got along well, their powers complemented one another, and though they may agree that one another was attractive, it wasn’t particularly a relationship that either of them had considered pursuing. Tabitha and Courtenay, in a whirlwind of both new found and old love, perhaps got a little too swept up and found themselves dragging Kat along in the drift.

However, she was willing to go along with it. For as long as she would last within the team, as much as she already seemed to be dwindling, she decided that she might as well have some fun with it.

She met Thor in the kitchen and dropped a Chinese menu pamphlet in front of him, spinning it so that he could read it.

“Now this right here is pure heaven in your mouth,” Kat announced, tapping the leaflet with her hand. “And as sad as it is, you have a much larger meal selection considering you eat dead animals. But… if we’re going to show you what food to eat, then this is where to start.”

“Right,” Thor said, looking at the pamphlet and flicking through it for a moment, “what, so you just summon them with this special code and they arrive at your residence with the food?”

“Something like that,” Kat nodded, grinning at his naivety towards earth and mobile phones. However, he wasn’t particularly that far off, which humoured her the most. “And once we’ve tried enough food to feed a small village, I’m sure I can throw in a couple lessons on cell phones and the like.”

“Cellphones?” Thor questioned. Kat lifted her mobile. “Ah, the devices you and your friends can’t seem to look away from. What’s so interesting about them?”

“Uh… it’s like an all-knowing book that also allows you to contact friends?” Kat shrugged, unsure as to how she should explain it to him.

Thor almost laughed. “I find that hard to believe.”

“You come from a world that we had no idea even existed, Thor. Why is it that a mobile phone has you stumped?” Kat shook her head, scrolling through her contacts. “We’ll catch up on this. For now, decide what you want to order later tonight.”

“A feast,” Thor mused, skimming over the words as Kat pulled up FaceTime and called Tony, who was nestled away somewhere in one of his science-tech rooms.

“What do you want, Buffy?” Tony questioned, flipping up his eye-guards.

“I have a proposal to make,” Kat began, reaching for the notepad that she had doodled on out of boredom only to spit out a couple of neat innovations.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Kat, we’ve already been through this. Bruce and I are together, and there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

“Whatever, laser-brain,” Kat rolled her eyes, lifting the notepad to show Tony her sketches and well-thought out tech. “I think we both know that Court’s glasses are in dire need of an upgrade. Her focus has been getting worse; she’s been complaining about hearing electronic white-noise, too. Stops her from sleeping at night.”

“Oh, for sure,” Tony nodded, “bring your doodles down to the lab and Bruce and I will give it the once over, though I’m sure I can concoct something to help her out.”

“Awesome,” Kat nodded, “speak later.”

“Ciao.”

Just as she pocketed her cell phone and notepad, Steve appeared from beyond the doorway with a somewhat calm, somewhat on-edge smile.

“If you’re here to lecture about me skipping out on training sessions, I--”

“No, that’s not why I’m here,” Steve smiled. “I’ve been thinking a lot recently, and you’re right. The training is fairly pointless for an individual like yourself, which is why I’ve found a sparring partner that might actually be able to keep up with you.”

“The only person who can even measure up to me is Thor-- oh, right, fantastic,” Kat nodded, sucking on her teeth and placing her hands on her hips. “You know, Steve, I never pinned you as the cupid type. Why’s everybody so obsessed with the idea of him and I, anyway?”

“You both deserve a win,” Steve teased, before becoming serious again. “But seriously, I think this could be good for you. You’re good with combat, though you could get even better. Think about it; what happens if Hulk decides to make an appearance, and this time not for the better? We can’t always rely on Thor, considering he has a Kingdom in outer space to run.”

“Alright, Steve, I get it,” Kat silenced him, though nodded with a smile. “You had me persuaded at Thor,” she joked, shooting finger-guns at him. “See you tomorrow morning.”

“I’m counting on it,” he shot back.

Meanwhile, Tabitha seemed persistent in teaching Bucky how her PlayStation worked, and though the assassin may be skilled and knowledgeable of many platforms of technology, he was completely dumbfounded when it came to gaming.

“I just don’t understand how I-- just how do I make it go,” he complained, turning the controller over in his hands incessantly. “And why is this man just walking-- oh, there he goes, off the cliff. Who the Hell is this guy?”

“His name is Sam Drake; and it’s not his fault, you controlled him to walk off!” Tabitha laughed, snatching the controller away from him before he caused the team to lose.

Courtenay’s character, Chloe, came bounding round the corner and a chortle of laughter could be heard from her room as she witnessed Bucky’s failure before Tabitha took control again.

“Let me show you how it’s done,” she said, cracking her neck. Bucky was completed phased out, unable to comprehend the game as Tabitha and Courtenay managed to pick up the win between themselves, even after the rest of the team had left the game considering how confused the Sam on their team appeared to be. “See? It’s not that hard.”

“I don’t understand how you ever had time to practice this stuff,” he grumbled.

“What do you mean?” Tabitha frowned, “we had plenty of free time, you know. When we weren’t on missions… this is what we were doing.”

“Living the life, huh?” Bucky grinned. “But, yeah, video games aren’t for me.”

“I’ll make a gamer out of you, just you wait,” Tabitha insisted.

“Alright. Let’s make a deal,” Bucky offered, to which Tabitha held her hands out, gesturing to appeal to her. “If I play through this whole Uncharted thing, I get something in return.”

“Oh, yeah, like what?” Tabitha mocked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, though a grin remained stretched on his lips. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

Tabitha caught onto his tone and socked his shoulder. “Don’t be so dirty.”

“I actually didn’t say anything. These are your words, not mine,” he grinned, turning to face her.

“Oh, is that right? It didn’t cross your mind for just one second?” Tabitha irked.

Bucky made a noise, telling her that he had, in fact, had his mind stuffed somewhere in the gutter.

“I knew it!” she laughed, leaning back onto her elbows.

“To be fair, you were thinking it too,” Bucky negotiated, collapsing onto his back before turning to look up at her as she propped herself up beside him. “Right?”

“Shut up,” she laughed, hand upon his face, feeling the stubble beneath her palm and fingertips.

“So you were?” He teased, “look, I’m just trying to have my point proven here--”

Tabitha cut off him off with a firm kiss, one that had been well-earned after their days of tension after their first one. She retreated with a smile, smoothing her thumb over his cheekbone as the two lay, breathing quietly, staring at nothing but each other.

At that moment, Tabitha's phone buzzed with a notification. She pulled it out from her back pocket and inspected the screen, seeing a text message from Kat that she’d shot into the group chat of herself, Tabitha and Courtenay.

1 New Message From: Original Three

Kat: don’t want to alarm you guys or anything but thor and i are totally eating chinese food in his room rn !!

Tabitha: no way, really??

Courtenay: see this is why im the greatest friend, i swear. This is all because of me and you better name your first child after me

Tabitha: dibs being the godmother

Courtenay: that’s fine, i wear the pants anyway. Ill make a fuckin fantastic godfather

Kat: he’s currently gorging on prawn crackers so im sneaking a text any chance i get because HOLY SHIT IM SO NERVOUS

Tabitha: chill its just thor!

Kat: that’s the whole point! It's! Just! Thor!!!!!!!

Courtenay: just be yourself and all that jazz, i mean he thinks ur hot when ur fighting and you look pretty sweaty and gross then so. Can’t really mess up now can u

Kat: thanks, very comforting

Tabitha: seriously, though. Just be yourself. Maybe a little nicer because you’re a grumpy little shit but yeah, be yourself.

Courtenay: make a move before he does

Kat: HE JUST SAID HE’S NEVER EATEN IN THE BEDROOM AND I ALMOST LAUGHED BC THAT SOUNDS SEXUAL

Tabitha: that was your chance to make a move, kat. Please tell me you used it to your advantage

Kat tossed her phone aside to avoid detection as Thor, face-full, grinned over at her, seemingly in an even happier mood than he was before.

“I’m really glad that this is happening. You know, you really need to consider your life choices,” Kat laughed, “perhaps when you return to Asgard you should make Chinese food a thing?”

“No, no, I definitely agree,” Thor grinned through a forkful of chow mein noodles. “My friends would enjoy this thoroughly!”

Kat eyed him suspiciously, looking at the metal trays that he had managed to finish. “Is that your fourth tub?”

“Of much more to come,” he winked, taking another bite.

“Where does it all go?” Kat laughed sincerely, her face pink with her fullness and contentment.

Thor flexed his arms. “I cannot let my mortal form grow weak, for there is a lot to sustain.”

She laughed again, leaning her head on her hand. “If anybody from earth said that, I'd think they were insane.”

“Do you not think of me in that way?” Thor asked.

Kat, pressing her lips together to suppress her smile, shook her head. “No.”

“Then what do you think of me?” he asked, his voice noticeably softer this time.

Feeling a surge of confidence, she traced her hand over the pattern on his black shirt. “I think that you are…”

“Yes?” Thor encouraged, eyes sparkling as she lifted her head, dangerously close now.

“I-- I think that--”

Her voice stuttered with the proximity of the two before they suddenly jerked apart in surprise, the door slamming open with an excitable Courtenay bursting in.

“Hey, guys! Oh, am I interrupting something?”

Kat stared at Courtenay with a look of confusion, a surge of desperate annoyance on her face alongside it.

“Oh no… I am. I heard that there was Chinese food, you know, and I just couldn’t resist…” Courtenay edged forwards, taking a small bag of Chinese fries and backing out of the room again. “Again, so sorry…“

Finally, Courtenay left and shut the door behind her. Kat rubbed her forehead, feeling a mix of shame and agitation, though holding it all in and scooping up her laptop that she’d brought in earlier to play music whilst herself and Thor ate their food.

“How about a movie?” She offered.

Thor's expression deadpanned, telling Kat that he was unsure of what they were, too.

“Moving pictures? A bunch of actors and actresses portraying a scenario?” she offered, trying to see if that would lure any understanding out of him.

“Oh, like theatre?”

“Yeah, sort of,” she agreed, realising with relief that she was somewhat getting through to him.

Kat pulled her laptop between them, booting up a movie she thought that the two of them would be interested in. Their lives were exciting enough that plenty of action-movie plots were dull, so she settled with Jurassic Park as she was sure that Thor had never seen dinosaurs before. However, after the battle in new york, and even Sokovia, she wouldn't be surprised as to what hid away up in the galaxy.

Thor wasn’t particularly subtle now that two two had had some time together, and he threw his arm around her shoulder and held her close as they watched the movie intently. Although he was partially confused, he found himself enjoying the moving pictures so much so that he didn’t immediately realise that Kat, exhausted from her full belly, had fallen asleep on his side.

He almost didn’t know what to do, in fear that he would move too abruptly and wake her from her slumber. He shut the laptop and placed it on the floor, lying still on his back. He was hardly tired, though he daresn't move. Instead, he looked down at the practically unconscious figure next to him, wondering where their relationship now stood. It was apparent that the two of them were near kissing until Courtenay interrupted, and he was certainly leaning towards it. He felt a great deal for her; he respected her in battle and in normality, though the two were one in the same for her. It was… odd.

With a smile, he clicked the lamp off by his side and closed his eyes, holding her tighter against him as he, too, fell asleep.

#mcu trio #marvel imagine #bucky x reader #thor x reader

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

We R Who We R: Cameron and Donna get ‘Close to the Metal’ (but not as close as we’d like) or, a H&CF recap

In "FUD" Gordon uses the expression 'close to the metal' like it's the engineering equivalent of 'in the trenches' or 'in the field': working without the safe or ideal conditions of a classroom or training, in the 'real world'. If we extend the metaphor from "High Plains Hardware" of hardware as human beings' hardwired behavior, we can guess that the metal we really get close to in this ep is how our characters behave when they believe themselves to be in a real crisis. We see J*e set a fake crisis in motion only to lose control of the entire thing, Bos call in a violent, physical attack on J*e in response to the havoc he's wrought, and Gordon ultimately rely on and use his wife to get through it. More to the point, we see Cameron panic and just  barely pull herself back from the edge of a meltdown, and we watch Donna save the day, only to realize that the day never really needed saving, and that she'll need to let her husband take all the credit for it anyway.

Just two days out from finally finishing The BIOS Code That Nearly Destroyed Her Life, Cameron is devastated when a random unplugging of her computer by a custodian (who later is fired, more collateral damage, thx J*e) seemingly wipes out all her work, which of course she hasn't saved recently. Everyone freaks out, presumably because they need to rush to market and hopefully turn a profit from this entire debacle. Donna, conveniently a specialist in data storage, does not make Cameron feel any better. Donna asks some basic questions, Cameron lashes out at her, denigrating her whole '80s Lady Who Can Have It All!' vibe, and Donna responds in kind by insulting Cameron for sleeping with J*e, and calling her limited sense of self-esteem (or, sense of self, even?) for what it is. Cameron rushes up to the roof to what is never actually described as an actual panic attack, a spectacularly effective example of showing rather than telling.

Cameron's arc in this episode, which is really more of a circle, is sad and hard to watch. At the end of the previous episode we saw her crashing at J*e's apartment because she needed some kind of human contact, but "Close to the Metal" seems to be about how alone she is. She's understandably in tears when her only connection to other people -- her code -- disappears. She makes a genuine effort at a sort of connection or professional camaraderie by offering to look after Donna and Gordon's kids while Donna retrieves her code, but then Haley and Joanie accidentally tell her that Gordon called her 'trash'.

It's telling and kind of gutting that Cameron could've done something to Gordon's office or to his or Donna's car, but that she goes to their home instead. She looks so strange in their house, and uncharacteristically menacing; she does not belong there, and she knows it. Intent on somehow corrupting what looks like the Clarks' warm, safe, happy home, Cameron is about to spray paint something on their living room wall when Brian (aka fake Matthew McConaughey) interrupts her, shotgun in hand. I'm not exactly sure what happens during this exchange -- does his pettiness about being fired and completely real shit talk about Donna 'the career woman' and Gordon the genius and the PC project they've invested themselves in clarify Cameron's loyalties for her? -- but either way, Cameron resists the impulse to lash out at Donna and the rest of the Clarks again.

When she sees Donna again, Cameron acts like a child (meaning, an adult with real emotional maturity/growth issues) who feels guilty and ashamed of her behavior. She makes a point of saying "I'm sorry" when Donna tells her that she scared her daughters, and of saying "Thank you" when Donna says she saved 93.6 percent of her code. She tries to apologize for how she spoke to Donna, who doesn't let her, and she's speechless when Donna compliments her work, as if she's genuinely unaccustomed to such kindness. When Donna encourages her to go home and rest, Cameron jokes that she has to get that remaining 6.4 percent of her code, because she can't say 'I don't really have anywhere to go'. By the end of the exchange, she seems ready to burst into tears. She seems resigned to not having any kind of home, to not having much of anything but her own brilliance and a guy who wants to use it. The final scene in this episode is of Cameron carefully saving her work, and then finally inhaling a sandwich J*e brought her earlier. It's all she's got at this point, but she's probably worked with less.

What's soul crushing for Cameron, though, seems a lot like another day in Donna's life of Cleaning Up Men's Messes. Donna is reasonably unimpressed by Cameron's failure to save her work, but she's a professional so instead of being a jerk about it, she focuses on the problem in front of her, and solves it. She skips a half day at her own job and spins a disk by hand for who even knows how many hours to reassemble the weeks of BIOS code Cameron wrote? (Filed under: Sounds Romantic Even Though I Don't Quite Know How It Actually Worked.) Donna can't take credit for this accomplishment because there's a journalist there, and because she was supposed to be at her own job while she was doing all of this. So once again, Gordon (and J*e, and the rest of the men on Cardiff's PC team) get to own her skill, ingenuity, and hard work.

While they're off talking to the journalist, Donna figures out that J*e 'engineered this whole thing' for 'a little publicity,' and after the implications of this sink in for her, she confronts him. But she seems less upset over how her own day was wasted, and more worried about how they're all stuck with him, particularly Cameron. Donna maybe recognizes that this plan really depended on throwing Cameron under the proverbial bus. It depended, specifically, on Cameron's lax control-S habits (no one could've done this to Donna, who would've pulled a floppy disk out of her top drawer and said 'I have another copy here, we're good'), and on J*e's willingness to intentionally use what he knows about Cameron in a way that will hurt her (and I'll say it again, NO, NOT ROMANTIC, just fvcked up, don't start). Donna is rightly concerned that Gordon will get M*cMillaned, though she's also aware that Cameron is a lot more vulnerable as a woman, subordinate, and one of J*e's sex partners.

When they get home, Donna hesitates, but then tells Gordon that the BIOS crisis was completely faked, against J*e's manipulative 'advice' to keep it a secret. I think we're supposed to be surprised when Gordon says, "Did it work?" instead of responding with shock and outrage, but lol, I wasn't. Donna doesn't seem surprised either, just mildly disgusted, and exhausted, after yet another day in a misogynist industry and world where woman can only be victimized basket cases and competent killjoys, and never get to be the heroes they really are.

Stray bytes:

My guess is that 'close to the metal' is a thing engineers really say, even though it sounds like a thing the Chrises would make up if they made things like that up. It's just slightly corny in a way that sounds authentic, amirite?

I could probably write an entire essay on how Cameron is unexpectedly good with kids because she's emotionally a kid herself in a lot of ways, some good, and some bad

I feel for Bos, and I will never be here for J*e, BUT: if you think about it, J*e gets his ass beat for real for having sex with another man. NOT COOL, SHOW. Even if Bos doesn't actually know that and wasn't motivated by that specific aspect of the whole LouLu Lutherford fiasco.

Also Donna's reward for saving Cameron's BIOS and playing into this whole PR stunt is getting put on probation at work. Really, Hunt? Okay.

"We R Who We R": the early oughts were a strange time where serial abuser producers gave us party jams and artists like Ke$ha, but at least we eventually got Kesha out of it. (Because again: victimized basket cases and competent killjoys.)

#again no cut for accessibility #i keep trying to make these shorter so ofc they keep getting longer #there's no way i'm gonna finish these by the 19th lmao #cameron howe #donna clark #donna emerson #the h&cf rewatch #1x04 #close to the metal #halt and catch fire to the max originals! #original halt and catch fire to the max analysis! #hacf to the max original recaps

[jangpoo]

So here's the thing:

Idk if people actually understand what Coach Katoka just said to Furuya and how important it was for him to hear. It’s gonna be a long ride and if you are looking for me to hate on Furuya, you aren’t going to get it here. This is a novel, so if you are down to read and you finished all of your finals, keep reading.

When I was coaching, the thing I rammed into my players heads was, “If you don’t work hard, you will not be successful.” I don’t give a damn how good you are, how fast you are, how strong your arm is, how well you can block a ball. I don’t give a shit. Because at the end of the day, in a tied ball game, last at bat, down 3 balls and two strikes with two outs, and one pitch can end the whole damn season, you better BELIEVE I’m going to put the player that has been under the most pressure all year and has shown me results through hard work and dedication. A damn natural talent may win little league games, but it sure as hell isn’t going to win championships with the big kids. The ones that are going to win are kids that have the right mindset, the right attitude, and the right work ethic.

The thing about Furuya is that he’s not a bad player by any means. He also doesn’t have a bad attitude despite what many people think. He isn’t lazy. And I see people give him a lot of shit about a lot of stuff. (I don’t feel that way about him at all and quite frankly, if you hate him because he was receiving all the attention over Sawamura, I have difficulty holding any validity towards your opinions of him, plain and simple). But I think the real issue I’ve always had with his character, despite really enjoying him, is his inability to understand what the real definition of success is. Now, this is all my opinion and we’re just talking semantics, so nobody has to agree with me on this, but just try to hear me out.

First I want to show you these two panels:

That right there is the first issue. He is probably terrified to be at third. He hasn’t played there before, he probably hasn’t even practiced there. Kanemaru even says it, “His movements are so stiff. At this rate, he won’t be able to catch the ball when it comes flying his way.” But here’s the difference between Sawamura and Furuya: Sawamura don’t give a shit. People call him an idiot all the time, which he can be a lot of the time, but sometimes, idiots make the best athletes. Sawamura doesn’t get fixated in the mood and the stress. He doesn’t worry about making mistakes or about whether or not a ball is coming his way. He simply learns how to play the position and plays it to the best of his ability, even if he ends up making a fool out of himself (every chapter of him playing a position other than pitcher in earlier chapters says enough about that poor boy’s ability to play in the field). And even though Furuya said that he was going to do his best last chapter, he’s still scared (I don’t blame him). Would Sawamura be scared? Probably, but he’d yell to the other about having his back because he’d be making a lot of errors, so that’d probably calm him down (I feel like that’s his coping mechanism).

Okay, the next issue I have is this: A lot of people call Furuya selfish because they think he wants all the attention. They think he only wants to be the ace and nothing else and that he thinks he’s the best. We have found out in act ii that he definitely doesn’t think that and I’ve never thought that he had. However, I do think that Furuya was an “assumer”. This is the name I gave my athletes that came onto the team being told they were great. It wasn’t that they had bad attitudes and thought they were the best for no reason. These “assumers” were usually the most amazing athletes and were the most talented in the bunch. So what is an assumer? An assumer, to me, was somebody who knew they had talent, knew they had to work to keep that talent, and assumed that there were never going to be any issues. The biggest downfall of “assumers” is their inability to understand that shit happens.

Another person I would put under this “assumer” umbrella is none other than Miyuki Kazuya (WHAT? OMG NO!) Yes, you heard me. Because guess what happened. Mr. Miyuki was real gun-ho about his ability to get the best out of pitchers. He felt real good about the whole, “even if they hate me, I’m going to make them the best” mentality. And then guess what happened? Sawamura got the yips. Nori didn’t believe in himself anymore. He got hurt. He wasn’t able to play. And guess who changed? Miyuki. I don’t know if other people noticed, but it wasn’t until after he was hurt that he began to take different approaches. He talked to his pitchers a bit more, he realized he was leaving and didn’t have enough time with them, he agreed to talking to them about pitch sequences, he is working more on his hitting to make sure they get the run support they need, he told the second year pitchers to practice with the younger catchers and stop relying on him. The “assumer” stopped assuming that everything was going to be sunshine and daisies. He now thinks ahead of time and says, “in order to make this team successful, even after I leave, what can I do?” This is not, by any means, the only reason he began to act this way though. He was probably humbled due to the injury and his position as a captain, probably a bit of maturity too. But I stand by the fact that it was an eye opening experience for him to see that he isn’t going to always get to play baseball, and I know I’m not the only one that saw how depressed he was about it.

So how is Furuya an assumer? The same way Miyuki was. He got hurt. Not once though! He’s hurt again. As we saw last chapter, he’s starting to realize that he has very little room for mistakes on the team. He has to play wherever they need him because if that’s what is going to make the team better, that’s what you have to do.

I absolutely respect him for coming to that conclusion on his own and making sure that Yui realized making that decision doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It just means you are willing to do what’s right for the team, something I need Okumura to learn (but that’s a whole other post for another day). Now does this mean he is happy with having to do it? Hell no, and he shouldn’t be because he was too good of a pitcher to do that.

So now for the question at hand: What kind of pitcher is the best pitcher in Japan to you? HOLY SHIT, THAT QUESTION. This is the question that should have been asked to Furuya the second he walked onto the field in a Seidou uniform, and I entirely blame this on Coach Kataoka. This has been a long time coming. I want to go back to “If you don’t work hard, you will not be successful.” The real question he’s being asked has nothing to do with being the best pitcher or anything like that. The part of the question that holds any meaning whatsoever is “to you”. What do you think success is? What kind of player do you want to become? Because while thinking of the team is important, if you allow it to affect you so much that it negatively affects you, you are inadvertently hurting the team. Furuya not being at his best is going to cause the team a lot of issues. Sawamura and Nori can’t pitch every game and to have someone throw as hard as Furuya and then put in either one of them is going to throw the other team so hard off their game it isn’t even funny.

Here’s the semantics part of my little documentary/novel I’m writing here: Success, in my opinion, has never been about the winning or losing. It’s never been about being the best player or hitting a home run or not making any errors that day. Because if you base success on these goals, all you have left is disappointment and fear. You play like you are afraid of failure. Sawamura had the fucking yips, bro. He hit the lowest of the low but even when he was pouting and was excluded from practices and not even allowed to step in the bullpen, he was successful. He ran everyday and gained stamina. He worked on his own in the indoor facility throwing balls to a net. He would visualize a batter and pretend to throw outside to them. He put all of his energy into learning how to perfect an outside pitch to compensate for his inability to pitch to the inside (praise our lord and savior Chris senpai). Because despite how pitiful he looked and probably felt, this wilted sunflower was going to rise from the soil and become a fucking pitcher because that’s why he went to mother fucking Seidou in the first place!!! He had hit his low and there was no going any lower. He had been through disappointment after disappointment, yet continued to fight for his spot on that mound because that was his definition of his success! It was never about just being the ace because if it were, what goal would he have after he achieved it? Be the best in college, the best in the country, the best in the world? No! It was and always will be about the grind! “How early am I going to wake up to go for that run? Where the fuck is Miyuki-senpai so he can catch for me? Haruichi, I want to hit with you! Kanemaru, put your protective gear on, I’m going to pitch to you and if I hit you, my bad!” Because no matter what goal you have, especially when it’s about becoming the best of whatever, there is always going to be that empty feeling when you achieve it! So when you make your success the process, you will never feel that emptiness. You will always strive to be better than you were before.

So, Furuya! What kind of pitcher is the best pitcher in Japan to you? Because to me, it’d be someone who worked outside of the bullpen to become an even better outfielder. To me, it’d be someone who took care of himself and learned new stretches to make sure he didn’t get hurt anymore. To me, it’s a guy that walks out on the field, giving no shits about what position he plays or what the end of the game’s result is! It’s about how hard you are willing to work and how much you love the game, even if that means you have to make sacrifices! And here’s the part that gets to me and made me a little emotional:

I see no beauty in Furuya’s sadness and I am not happy to see him this way. However, what I am happy about is that he is beginning to understand. He’s seeing that he’s fighting a battle against a guy that is never going to give up. So now he has to make a decision: do you continue to pursue your success or do you allow yourself to find a new one? There is no right or wrong answer to that. But what I hope happens is that Furuya spends less time focusing on being in the bullpen and try to separate himself a bit. Try going to the corner and throwing to a net. Work on your grips to make sure you get the spin you want. Work in the cages like you have been and work on bunting more. Try to be a positive influence to the younger players and make an effort to associate with them. And more than anything, I hope we see him smiling and loving the game. I want him to sit back and just realize he’s playing baseball.

And if you made it to the end of this, then congratulations, it’s probably been 2 days since you started this damn rant. I can’t wait to see what happens in this story guys, I’m getting so hyped y’all.

#daiya no ace #furuya satoru #sawamura eijun #miyuki kazuya #daiya no a act ii #love these kids

[unfortunately-truestory]

a digestible guide to my anxiety.

My brain is a constant workshop with people and thoughts running through the hamster wheel. There is a constant assembly line, a constant churn, where every action, word or manner that I have will be scrutinized by an invisible team of experts that live somewhere in my head and (I presume) in real life too. Someone somewhere will shake their head and say “disqualified” if what I do is not on par with expectations that are, well, made up.

I will not eat that whole pizza because that will make me fat, and being fat is wrong because you will be judged and I will feel awful for being judged. It doesn’t matter that eating a whole pizza once will not instantly make me fat. It would take tremendous focus and dedication (or just medication) to make me “fat”. That never crosses my thought process – or it does – but very briefly.

I figure it’s a brain fart.

I will not say “I’m sorry” because that is weak and admitting wrongdoing, but I will say “I’m sorry” because I want to be loved and appreciated. I don’t want to be perceived as stubborn or selfish – those are two very unpleasant labels to have in the world. They’re like scout badges similar to “I killed my first buck” and “Pig strangler”. People wear them like armour, but not the shiny kind I’ve romanticized for a quarter of a century – maybe there is no shining armour – that would mean we all look pretty scruffy sometimes and we should all give each other a pass.

But I look down at my chest plate and notice a scratch – I immediately freak out “This is why I can’t have nice things.”

This panel of experts is real. I’m not kidding. They chime in when I’m getting up from my desk chair for the fifth time today to pee. As I’m crossing the office, it’s like an Olympic jury scoring my performance. My gait, my posture, how long it took me to pee – was it long enough that people may think that I’m actually taking a dump? – and so what if they do? Everybody poops.

But somehow everyone around me manages to mask this routine somehow and they are like bowel movement ninjas, whereas my life is dominated by the ever pressing need to evacuate. I could spin this positively, thinking that I am by far the least shit retentive of the people I know, but I am also chronically constipated, so the panel of experts exclaims that I am disqualified from this more bowel-positive thought process.

There are friendships and love relationships that fill a large part of this churning in my brain and in my life. What better sources of drama than the eclectic mix of people I have chosen to add to my story arc, like a cast of characters in a sitcom, except all of them speak different languages and there’s only the subtitles to rely on but if I look away from the screen only for a moment I’ll miss a part of the performance and I’ll be that deer in the headlights actor who needs to be fed a line.

I love and appreciate all of them, sometimes in waves or specific episodes (everyone has their shining moments and their debut scrub roles where they only get to be an extra or a supporting role) and given that life has never once produced a script for any of its players, I somehow imagine that everyone has theirs figured out before they step out on stage. I can never miss a cue, I must always show appreciation through praise, I must make room for them in the spotlight – it’s theirs after all.

But it is also mine.

Mine to claim, because these friends and participants in my life have stepped aside and, hand outstretched, knee slightly dipped, chest out, they are announcing my arrival in the scene. They are inviting me out, like a guest on a late night show. The audience is clapping, but some are also not impressed – and somehow these non-clappers are louder than the crowd.

Somehow I can hear them.

The experts show that 7% of the audience is unimpressed with my delivery.

I feel rejected and a failure, but in the words of Taylor Swift; I can shake it off. I can be flippant too. I can laugh it off. Just listen to me go:

Ha-ha-ha! Haters gonna hate.

But the hamster is out of the wheel and the cage is starting to smell. The neighbours are judging me and my inability to keep house. Shit. Everywhere.

Spend two days cleaning out factory – no alcohol, drinking lemon water, some other trick the internet says is good for anxiety and write apology letters to those 2 weirdos who didn’t get that they were meant to clap and not be out to lunch.

“Perhaps the stage direction was unclear. We’ll do better next time. Do give us another try! We would love to see you again. Best, Audrey”

Somehow, their opinions matter to me. They must be on to something.

Somewhere along the line, my brain was forced into the shape of a strange vessel that is constantly trying to fill itself while still staying afloat. The obvious problem is that the more tasks and thoughts and conflicting feelings that I bring upon myself, my vessel will feel unstable, I will feel unstable, unsatisfied and get that “I don’t know how this feels” moment.

It is very difficult to reverse engineer a vessel to be a submarine – what was desperately trying to float, should instead appreciate and thrive in the depths – fuck it guys, we’re already underwater. Try to sink us now!

As a submarine, my mind will simply float steadily in the perfect stillness of the depths, with my panel of experts able to churn out their own interpretations of what is showing up on the radar.

Cue sonar.

“Fellow submarine or freaky angler fish thing?”

There would be no room for doubt. Only decisions. Smooth sailing through choppy waters. A rock unaffected by the waves made by others.

#mental health #anxiety #therapy #therapy notes #living with anxiety #anxiety explained

[lisarprahl]

The PCAOB Needs to Just Beat the Sh*t Out of KPMG Already

Story time. Many, many years ago when my favorite show was the Snorks and my Big Wheel was my only mode of transportation, there was this kid on my block who was a real little shit. He constantly broke everyone’s toys and once ran over my plastic Good Luck Bear with his bike, permanently rendering the bear’s formerly cheerful tummy clover into a smudge of cheap paint and road dirt. Worse, he would constantly lead the other kids on our block in a chorus of “four eyes” at me, inspiring them to practically banish me from the neighborhood with their whiffle bats since we were obviously too young for pitchforks. The guy was a dick.

Although I could normally handle myself against him (he wasn’t that bright and could easily be bribed to leave me the fuck alone with half a Butterfinger), one day I’d had enough. I broke down crying and ran back into my house, pleading with my mom to do something. She flitted her hand at me and shrugged, “You can handle it.” So I wiped my snotty nose on the shoulder of my grungy Hands Across America t-shirt, marched back outside, stepped up to the dude (who, btw, was two years older than me, 40 lbs heavier than me, and lacking in my opthamologist-enhanced super vision), and decked his ass. Just flipped the guy over and shoved him ass-in-the-air into the pricky bushes lining his front yard. He never called me “four eyes” again.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not an advocate of violence. I don’t believe in spanking children or screaming at puppies who crap on the floor. But sometimes your only solution is to beat the shit out of someone. And I believe the PCAOB has reached that point with KPMG.

While its Big 4 counterparts have been making strides in audit quality over the years, KPMG has somehow managed to get worse at this auditing thing. And this after they got busted poaching PCAOB talent in order to cheat on PCAOB inspections.

The wait for KPMG’s missing 2016 PCAOB inspection report is over. As proselytized by former PCAOB member Dan Goelzer last September, the delay was directly due to the PCAOB learning about KPMG getting tipped off to which clients were up for inspection, poisoning 11 of the initial audits.

Sayeth the PCAOB:

In 22 of the 51 Audits reviewed and in three financial institution issuer audits reviewed as part of the inspection team’s original inspection plan, certain of the deficiencies identified were of such significance that it appeared to the inspection team that the Firm, at the time it issued its audit report, had not obtained sufficient appropriate audit evidence to support its opinion that the financial statements were presented fairly, in all material respects, in conformity with the applicable financial reporting framework and/or its opinion about whether the issuer had maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting (“ICFR”).

If you’re playing along at home, that’s a 43% failure rate deficiency rate which is pretty hilarious considering the whole point of cheating is A) not getting caught (failure #1) and B) doing better than you would have done had you relied on your shitty merits alone (failure #2).

The AWOL 2016 report would be enough to make fun of, but WAIT, there’s more!

The Santa Clauses over at the PCAOB have also blessed us with KPMG’s 2017 inspection report which somehow managed to be even worse than 2016’s. Of the 52 audits inspected by the PCAOB, 26 were shitty enough for the clients to technically be entitled for a refund if, say, audits were cheap Chinese goods and KPMG was Amazon. As we all know, that’s not how this works. Eighteen of the 26 “deficient” audits had issues with ICFR, for which I guess we can give KPMG a pass since it seems ICFR confounds even the highest caliber of auditors these days.

In its response to the 2017 report, KPMG pledged “continuous improvement” in their audit engagement performance and claimed — despite all evidence to the contrary — that “consistently executing quality audits” is their “top priority.” Yeesh. I hate to know what their lowest priority is if this is how they execute the top one.

At this point in the article you might think we’re done, but just like how I kicked that bully on my block in the shin after I decked his ass, there are even more blows to come. In addition to the pathetic 2016 and 2017 inspection reports, the PCAOB also released revised reports for 2014 and 2015, calling KPMG out for bullshitting about fixing their obvious audit problem. I mean, you can only say “we take the PCAOB’s criticisms seriously” a finite number of times times while continuing to suck at your one job before they finally get sick of your shit and slap you around for blowing smoke up their ass.

Go on, PCAOB, you can handle it.

The post The PCAOB Needs to Just Beat the Sh*t Out of KPMG Already appeared first on Going Concern.

from Accounting News https://goingconcern.com/the-pcaob-needs-to-just-beat-the-sht-out-of-kpmg-already/

[ashleydpalmerusa]

The PCAOB Needs to Just Beat the Sh*t Out of KPMG Already

Story time. Many, many years ago when my favorite show was the Snorks and my Big Wheel was my only mode of transportation, there was this kid on my block who was a real little shit. He constantly broke everyone’s toys and once ran over my plastic Good Luck Bear with his bike, permanently rendering the bear’s formerly cheerful tummy clover into a smudge of cheap paint and road dirt. Worse, he would constantly lead the other kids on our block in a chorus of “four eyes” at me, inspiring them to practically banish me from the neighborhood with their whiffle bats since we were obviously too young for pitchforks. The guy was a dick.

Although I could normally handle myself against him (he wasn’t that bright and could easily be bribed to leave me the fuck alone with half a Butterfinger), one day I’d had enough. I broke down crying and ran back into my house, pleading with my mom to do something. She flitted her hand at me and shrugged, “You can handle it.” So I wiped my snotty nose on the shoulder of my grungy Hands Across America t-shirt, marched back outside, stepped up to the dude (who, btw, was two years older than me, 40 lbs heavier than me, and lacking in my opthamologist-enhanced super vision), and decked his ass. Just flipped the guy over and shoved him ass-in-the-air into the pricky bushes lining his front yard. He never called me “four eyes” again.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not an advocate of violence. I don’t believe in spanking children or screaming at puppies who crap on the floor. But sometimes your only solution is to beat the shit out of someone. And I believe the PCAOB has reached that point with KPMG.

While its Big 4 counterparts have been making strides in audit quality over the years, KPMG has somehow managed to get worse at this auditing thing. And this after they got busted poaching PCAOB talent in order to cheat on PCAOB inspections.

The wait for KPMG’s missing 2016 PCAOB inspection report is over. As proselytized by former PCAOB member Dan Goelzer last September, the delay was directly due to the PCAOB learning about KPMG getting tipped off to which clients were up for inspection, poisoning 11 of the initial audits.

Sayeth the PCAOB:

In 22 of the 51 Audits reviewed and in three financial institution issuer audits reviewed as part of the inspection team’s original inspection plan, certain of the deficiencies identified were of such significance that it appeared to the inspection team that the Firm, at the time it issued its audit report, had not obtained sufficient appropriate audit evidence to support its opinion that the financial statements were presented fairly, in all material respects, in conformity with the applicable financial reporting framework and/or its opinion about whether the issuer had maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting (“ICFR”).

If you’re playing along at home, that’s a 43% failure rate deficiency rate which is pretty hilarious considering the whole point of cheating is A) not getting caught (failure #1) and B) doing better than you would have done had you relied on your shitty merits alone (failure #2).

The AWOL 2016 report would be enough to make fun of, but WAIT, there’s more!

The Santa Clauses over at the PCAOB have also blessed us with KPMG’s 2017 inspection report which somehow managed to be even worse than 2016’s. Of the 52 audits inspected by the PCAOB, 26 were shitty enough for the clients to technically be entitled for a refund if, say, audits were cheap Chinese goods and KPMG was Amazon. As we all know, that’s not how this works. Eighteen of the 26 “deficient” audits had issues with ICFR, for which I guess we can give KPMG a pass since it seems ICFR confounds even the highest caliber of auditors these days.

In its response to the 2017 report, KPMG pledged “continuous improvement” in their audit engagement performance and claimed — despite all evidence to the contrary — that “consistently executing quality audits” is their “top priority.” Yeesh. I hate to know what their lowest priority is if this is how they execute the top one.

At this point in the article you might think we’re done, but just like how I kicked that bully on my block in the shin after I decked his ass, there are even more blows to come. In addition to the pathetic 2016 and 2017 inspection reports, the PCAOB also released revised reports for 2014 and 2015, calling KPMG out for bullshitting about fixing their obvious audit problem. I mean, you can only say “we take the PCAOB’s criticisms seriously” a finite number of times times while continuing to suck at your one job before they finally get sick of your shit and slap you around for blowing smoke up their ass.

Go on, PCAOB, you can handle it.

The post The PCAOB Needs to Just Beat the Sh*t Out of KPMG Already appeared first on Going Concern.

from Accounting News https://goingconcern.com/the-pcaob-needs-to-just-beat-the-sht-out-of-kpmg-already/